[Severed Divinity] 60. Shadow Aspect

Isen sat down on the white sediment and closed his eyes. He drew in the energy of the world and focused on how it flowed through his rings and into the meridians in his shoulders. The technique wasn’t actually very complicated. It seemed like all he needed to do was expel the energy with a sort of... spin on it, so it would wrap around him.

The main point that eluded him was how this was supposed to generate a shadow cloak, rather than just… producing some energy effect around his shoulders. The technique mentioned something about visual shadows, but the meaning evaded him.

He considered what he did know—how to form energy balls. It was a technique in a rough sense. If he had to ascribe an element to it, he’d say wind, though it could affect whatever medium it flowed through. If he unleashed an energy ball underwater, it would work just as well.

It was… neutral, then, he supposed. A technique that expelled pure energy from wherever Isen desired, so long as he had two points of contact, whether those were his upper and lower teeth, his fingers, or anywhere else.

The shadow cloak required something new that the energy ball didn’t. It was just a basic technique, though. Isen figured he must be missing something obvious. He could ask Meridia, but he wanted to think about it on his own, first.

Isen cycled energy according to the manual. It ebbed, flowed, and resisted his attempts to control it. Still, it wasn’t that hard compared to forming an energy ball between his teeth.

An indeterminate period of time later, someone called his name. “Isen!”

He opened his eyes to see Freyan hovering an inch in front of his face and jerked back.

“Gods,” he swore.

She laughed. “You were really into it. Cultivation training is over. We’re free to go.”

Isen looked around. Sure enough, the other clade members were in various stages of departure. “Freyan, when you did the movement technique yesterday, was it shadow step?”

“Heh. Not exactly.” She sighed. “It’s hard to manifest the shadow aspect of it in a fight, which Jorin says means I need more practice.”

“Can you show me?”

“Shadow step?”

He nodded. “That, and the version you used in the duel.”

She looked to the side. “We should still have a few more minutes before others use the ring. Sure.” She widened her stance slightly and bent her knees. “The shadow step meridians are in the calves, rather than the feet,” she explained. “Common misconception.”

She breathed in and energy flowed faintly around her heels. It was the displacement of ambient energy caused by Freyan’s refined energy leaking out.

When Freyan kicked off the ground like an arrow from a bow, Isen clearly saw how her refined energy tangled with the world’s. It still looked... normal, for lack of a better term.

“That’s the one I can do consistently,” she said. She exhaled and cycled for a few breaths before trying again, her eyes narrowed in concentration. When the energy escaped Freyan’s legs this time, it was… different. Murky, like Welco’s shadows. It shimmered almost imperceptibly over her calves.

After a moment of charging up, Freyan walked forward. She moved instantly, and without a significant change in her momentum. It was almost like she’d teleported, but Isen saw a shadowy after-image where she’d cut through the ambient energy.

She breathed heavily. “Damn. That’s… always so exhausting.” She groaned. “One day, I’ll be able to chain them one after the other, like the A’s.” She collapsed dramatically on the ground. Isen stood over her. “One day.”

***

Isen returned to the D-ranked chamber in the cultivation cave. While he cycled, he contemplated the difference he’d observed in Freyan’s vented energy. It reminded him of the power used by mages. Druinala wielded fire, Lumina used… fire, but different—starfire? And Welco, of course, harnessed shadows. Mages all had their given aspects, and so too could cultivation techniques, apparently.

He couldn’t properly concentrate on cycling, so he cut his session early and returned to the surface.

The first thing to catch his eye was the shop across from the armory where he could exchange sect points. Meridia had said the shop held techniques, ones that evolved the clan’s base techniques as well as techniques from beyond.

When Isen entered, he found himself in a large room filled with random stuff, seemingly without rhyme or reason. He didn’t know how anyone could find anything.

The shopkeeper was a wizened woman, nearly as old as Meridia, and without the instructor’s warmth. She smiled thinly when he entered. “New boy. Welcome to the sect shop. If you’re looking for something specific, let me know.”

“Cultivation techniques?”

She sighed and pointed to the stairs in the back. “Third floor.”

Isen found them on a table in the center of the room, each technique rolled up in a clean scroll with gold-encrusted handles and set on elevated prongs.

To his disappointment, he couldn’t read the techniques—not even part of them. All he could see for free were basic descriptions of what the techniques did and their names. Unsurprisingly, the more expensive techniques had more expressive titles. For instance, one available evolution for shadow cloak was called Hide the Sun. One of the non-clan techniques was called Skate the Wave, and supposedly allowed a cultivator to manifest and ride waves across long distances.

With every description he read, Isen’s impatience grew. He wanted all the techniques he could lay his hands on.

In the end, he forced himself to turn away without any of them. He hadn’t even figured out shadow cloak—he shouldn’t get ahead of himself.

Instead, he returned to the ground level and asked the shopkeeper about another area of interest.

“Pill making? Of course we have manuals on it. It’s not typically the pursuit of children, though.” She pulled one out titled A Pill Acolyte’s Primer and set it on the black-cloth counter, then rifled around in a section filled with enchanted cooking supplies until she retrieved a small, brown vessel without embellishments. “A clay pill furnace. Cheap, and if you break it when your first pills explode, you can just buy another.”

“How many sect points for both?” Isen asked, his eyes shining with anticipation.

“Point totals haven’t refreshed this week, but every new sect member starts with fifty. The two together are forty-five.”

According to the guide he’d received when he registered, going to class gave him ten sect points a day. Forty-five was a few days of points. The price actually seemed pretty cheap, especially compared to the techniques. Hide the Sun had been a hundred thousand sect points. Isen figured clan members could earn more than ten points a day depending on what they did and how hard they worked, but still... it would take years to save up for.

“I’ll take them.”

On his way back, he made one more stop. He knocked on the door of A3.

“Isen,” Jorin said, eyebrows raised as he held open the door flap. “You caught me right before I went to dinner. Come in.”

Jorin’s room was all but identical to Kelsina’s. Isen set his spoils from the shop on the kitchen counter and pulled out the paper with the shadow cloak diagram.

The man’s eyes widened in realization. “Ah. A cultivation question.”

“I’m trying to understand what makes shadow cloak… shadowy.”

“Would it help if I demonstrated the technique?”

Isen nodded his head emphatically.

Suddenly, Jorin’s body was wreathed in murky darkness, giving him an eerily similar appearance to Welco’s puppets. Even his face was obscured. He strode forward and Isen tracked him, trying to see beyond the murk.

Isen remembered what Meridia had said about the technique. Shadow cloak obscured the user from people’s eyes, not their other senses. Isen could clearly see the energy all around Jorin, though it was distinct from ambient energy. It looked so real, so solid, like he could touch it.

“You can see me, can’t you?” Jorin said suddenly.

The sixth sense flared unpleasantly. He shouldn’t be able to see Jorin, not without his ability to see ambient energy. Did it matter if Jorin knew? Was this a card better kept up his sleeve?

“What should I see?” Isen said, rebuffing the older man with a question. He narrowed his eyes at the wall, knowing that Jorin had moved away. He tried very hard to ignore the cultivator circling behind him.

“In the light, you should see an outline marking my presence. In shadows, you should see nothing at all. This entire room is in shadow.”

Suddenly, Jorin’s hands were on Isen’s shoulders, over his meridians. “Try the technique.”

Isen swallowed and breathed in a shallow breath, then a deeper one. He envisioned the way the energy was supposed to flow.

“You’re not letting the energy out,” Jorin said. “You know how to do it—I saw you expel energy earlier.”

Annoyed at the rebuke, Isen vented the energy in his shoulders, not that it did much more than stir the air. That wasn’t the real issue, here.

“Good,” Jorin said. “You have the basic energy flow down, but you’re missing the most important part. The shadows.”

“I know.”

“Do you recall the visualization component of the technique?”

“Uh...” He wracked his mind. “You mean the part about visual shadows?”

“No,” Jorin stated firmly. “Not visual. Visualization, like picturing a scene in your mind.”

Isen felt like smacking himself. Visualize shadows. He silently cursed the elven script.

“I think... I misinterpreted the instructions slightly.”

Jorin snorted a laugh. “Luckily, it’s not complicated. Consider how shadows conceal those who stalk the dark. Think about what a shadow is. Every cultivator’s contemplations and insights will differ. The more familiar you become with shadows, the easier it’ll be to consistently call upon the aspect.”

“What about other aspects, like water or fire?”

“You could ruminate on them as well, but they are unsuited for this kind of technique. It’s worth saying that most cultivators focus on only one aspect for their techniques. Part of that is because of rigidity—conforming your meridians to the Femera sequences will make it far easier to practice shadow-aspect techniques.”

Isen shifted. “So if I learn the sect’s art, and the sect’s techniques, I’ll be forced to become a shadow cultivator?”

“In time, yes—though you’ll always be able to use other aspect techniques, just not as well.”

It was a lot to take in. He’d need to be careful regarding which techniques he learned and how they shaped his path. Maybe one day he’d decide to align his cultivation to an aspect, but he wasn’t at that point yet.

“Focus, boy,” Jorin said. “Think.”

So he did.

Isen didn’t like darkness. Darkness stole the sun and drowned the world in frigid cold.

Vague memories of years past flashed past. He saw himself as an outside observer. A small bundle of rags, shivering relentlessly as the moon loomed above Goldbounty. Safe in a shadowed crevice. Still freezing. Waiting for the sun’s fire and the hope of the next day, since nothing good ever happened in the dark.

More recently, memories of his room, the dark hiding Lady Jin’s hands as she stroked his hair. The impenetrable depths, where the only way to see was beyond sight.

For a moment, he was falling, tumbling, blind and terrified as the Twining sucked him into the blackness. The memories were so strong, so raw, he shuddered, his jaw clenching. He’d tried to hide the terror beneath laughter and adrenaline, but he knew now how fragile his facade had been.

Darkness was lack of control, being lost. Not knowing what dangers lay in wait, not seeing the path to providence.

Gods, how Isen hated it.

But shadows... Shadows were something he knew very well, even before he’d entered the depths. Shadows were his companion whenever he’d hidden from dangers on the streets, and while fulfilling jobs gathering information.

And when he did enter the depths... shadows were his first comfort. Nothing in the depths could be described as truly bright, aside from the artificially lit sanctum. The first shadows he’d ever seen there came from the radiant lake. It had cast nearby monsters as golden silhouettes, no longer formless monstrosities lurking on all sides.

And when he’d turned from those gold-limned monsters, he’d seen his guardian for the first time. Barely visible, lurking like a wraith.

Cast in shadow, Ros looked like a monster. Teeth poked over its lips, and its scaled body appeared cold and rigid. A black, sinister scar crossed over its face, one that not even divine flesh and blood could soften.

In the light of the sanctum, Ros looked like a blazing white beast from legend, a half step from divinity. Beautiful and full of power.

In the end, shadows weren’t the same as darkness. Both light and shadow could reveal the world. Harsh light blinded; deep shadows obscured.

Suddenly, energy gushed from Isen’s shoulders, pooling shadow all down his back, like midnight wings. They unfurled and wrapped around him, a dark watery cloak. Unlike the impotent, formless energy from before, the shadowy energy clung to him like sap.

Almost as soon as the manifestation began, it fell apart, unraveling, then dissipating like drops of water on a sizzling pan.

Jorin removed his hands from Isen’s shoulders and said something, but Isen didn’t hear.

Words of Legacy drowned out everything else.

Technique recognized: Optical stealth. Aspect: Shadow. Technique successfully registered. Warning: evolutionary suggestions unavailable. Novice Bearer system has restricted capabilities. Return to your nearest Compass for assistance until tier up.