Chapter 25: Chapter 28- A Genuine Encounter

When I came too, I was looking at a cloudless night sky. I didn’t even notice I had fallen asleep.  

Feeling a little embarrassed, I raised my head up to look around, only to realize I was laying at the edge of a small lake. The water reached up to my ears. It felt nice, so much that I wanted to stay put a little longer. Sadly, the strangeness of my current position didn’t allow that luxury.

“Wasn’t I in a Park?” I thought, still looking around.

It was then I realized I was back in another one of those dreams. Although they are realistic enough to fool any other person, I’ve had these dreams enough to know when I ended up in one. Well, I questioned if those were even dreams to begin with.

I looked up towards the sky at the many points of light staring back at me. Everything felt so still, so quiet, tranquility I have never felt before.

Layers of forest surrounded the lake on all sides. I strolled along the shore for a moment, inspecting the lake. Little specks of light moved separately within it, illuminating the water. As if exchanging stars from the night sky above, some rose out of the lake and drifted up while some came from above, lightly dropping onto the water’s surface.

“Strange, I never expected you to come to me on your own.” A voice spoke out from across the lake.

I turned to the source, only to see the same veiled woman, her lower face still the only thing exposed. Her long silver hair flowed all the way to the ground. Which glided effortlessly on the water’s surface, not daring to sink, nor get wet.

The tiny motes of light that swam beneath her responded to her presence, glowing brighter as to greet her.

“But now that you’re here, come. I have yet to take a closer look at you.” She smiled slightly and approached me, hands outstretched.

Still feeling a strong sense of uneasiness and borderline danger, I stood still. Though my mind was calm, a deep primal fear took root within my body. These conflicting feelings left me at an impasse. 

She paused while her hand dropped to her sides, her light smile gone and replaced with a childish pout.

Though I could not see her face all that well, I could tell she was disappointed or, more accurately, saddened.

“Even now, you still reject me. Why?” she said, not moving a muscle, and looked towards me. 

“I don’t know; I just can’t bring myself to come near you.”

“I have no intention of harming you. It’s actually the opposite. I want to help you.”

I stood up, the water dripping off me.

“Help me how?”

“Take my hand and I’ll show you.”

I thought about it for a moment, while looking at her now again outstretched hand. I walked towards where she stood, stepping over the water, which no longer allowed me to sink.

 Her hands were pale, and covered in runes that I couldn’t even begin to recognize. They looked more like stylized tattoos than runes. She has some connections with my mother, so I’m guessing she’s fine. “

Mom would never let bad people near me, right?? I said, trying to rationalize my decision.

I looked at her one last time, in which she returned a smile. “There was no point being a coward. This is a dream, after all. Right?” I thought before taking her hand.

Shivers ran up my spine as I touched her palms. Her hands were like ice. A strange mana invaded my channels, carrying that same icy sensation. There was no pain, instead it felt as if a weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

“There, isn’t that better?” she said, still smiling.

“What did you just do?”

“Nothing much, just cleared out some junk.”

“Who- what are you?” I asked.

“I wish I could tell you.” She said as her shoulders sagged. “But I am bound by certain rules to not reveal myself. I’m not even supposed to be meeting with you.”

“What rules?” I asked.

“Can’t say either, just know I did some bad things in the past, so now as punishment I am imprisoned in my own domain. I don’t even know what’s happening in the real world.

She perked up and held up her index finger.

“But don’t worry, my sentence is soon up.”

She turned to me before holding my hands once more

“I want you to do something for me. I want you to focus. Feel your surroundings.”

I closed my eyes, trying to get a feel of the mana, but strangely enough, it was like this place was void of any. I couldn’t feel even a hint of mana.

She recognized this and stopped me.

“Not with your body. Right now, you are only mind and spirit.”

I was a little confused by this statement. It was like telling someone to feel the heat of an object without touching it. Or taste food without using my tongue, but I tried nonetheless. After a few more minutes, still nothing. 

“I don’t really know what I’m supposed to be doing.” I said aloud.

She thought about it as she floated around in a fetal position. 

“Your body here is not physical in form, just a representation forged by mana, so traditional methods of mana sense won’t work. If everything else here is pure mana. What should you use to comprehend it?”

There was no way to feel the mana here with my body. As she said, my body was not here.

I looked at my hands and feet.

“If my body is not here, then what am I looking at?”

I could clearly feel many distinct sensations around me, such as the water between my toes or the chill nighttime air.

I got up and swung my hand downward in a chopping motion. With a whoosh, I felt the wind flow around the edge of my palm like normal. Then I did it one more time, this time infusing it with mana and qi forcing a reaction as if I was doing a Sky Blossom Technique and sure enough it worked, wind attuned mana was present.

If my body is just mana, it could be the reason I could feel things but not sense the mana. 

I was still in default mode trying to feel mana with my body, but in this place, these sensations are felt because everything here is only mana. After considering the thought, I considered trying to simulate my body using my internal mana. 

I sat down and let the mana flow out from my core. I had never done this before, so when I tried to mold my internal mana into the shape of my body, it just simply took the form of a bubble and no matter how hard I tried to modify the bubble it just bounced back into its round shape, so I just decided to work with that.

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Over a few minutes, I could feel the tiny ripples through the bubble as the ambient mana bounced against my own. Slowly I retracted the ball of mana that surrounded until I felt a strange sensation like a resonance within myself. My go to method of sensing mana was understanding it through smell, hearing or touch and then visualizing it. Now my core was making the distinctions based on how ambient mana interacted with my own. Up to this point, I never knew mana cores could sense mana directly, I simply thought of it as a generator. 

I was basically relearning mana sense all over again, doing brief experiments and molding my internal mana and just waiting to see what happened. Taking notes as I go on. 

“Seems like you have an idea of what you are looking for,” She said.

“I think so.”

I explained what I found to her, and she listened.

She paused before laughing hysterically.

“Well, you are half right.”

“What do you mean?”

“You completely ignored what I intended to teach you and learned something even more complex. You really are intriguing”

“You learned mana forming, creating shapes with mana will be a wonderful skill to have. Although the other one I was not expecting.”

“And what is that? I asked.”

She smiled. You just comprehended a component of universal sensing.”

She laughed, her soft voice slightly echoing. “You really saved us a lot of time. This is something that very few people can master and you just figured out a major part of it. I want you to keep these findings at heart. You will need them as you get stronger. The bad thing is that you skipped a lot of steps, so don’t try too much to comprehend these weird findings until you understand the prerequisites.”

She reached out her hands once more. “For now, let us get back on topic.”

Once again, I felt cold hands meet mine, and she lifted me from my seated position.

I held it and immediately felt her mana pulsed through my mana channels once more. She held my hands and guided me through the water, not taking her eyes off me, or at least that’s what it felt like.

“I want you to keep that sensation while we dance. Ingrain every movement in your memory, because you will need to do it on your own.”

I shook my head nervously.

As someone who never took an interest in dancing, I struggled to keep up with her. We twirled, leaped and crouched. It was the most bizarre thing I had experienced to this point. Her movements were precise and elegant, like a professional ballerina performing on a stage.

It didn’t take long to notice that a pressure was building. Realizing what it was, I closed my eyes, while leaving my dance to instinct. I inspected her mana closely as it moved between us. Like a loop, it went through me and back to her, becoming stronger with every rotation. This mana, it was familiar. I know I had encountered it somewhere before, but I couldn’t quite remember what it was.

My mana churned and became even more agitated as we continued. Even so, there was no pain. The sensation was getting more and more pronounced, each rotation piled in more and more. I gasped for breath as I felt my core vibrate in resonance, but I didn’t stop. 

I felt light so much that the water below no longer splashed between my toes. Never had I encountered or learned these sets of movements, but my body moved on its own. I was so lost in dance I didn’t even notice that the veiled lady was no longer with me, but stood at the sidelines, spectating.

I stopped and looked at her.

“I was wondering when you would notice, so how do you feel?”

“Like a completely different person.” I said, panting.

She giggled and approached me. “We are more compatible than I initially thought. I am happy. Our first genuine encounter was fruitful.”

She then clasped her palms, lighting up every rune on her body. Her serene and mysterious presence was now one of grand authority. “I would usually provide a choice, but with the way things are, I will grant you this until you are ready. Then, when the time comes, you can choose to keep or relinquish this gift.”

“what are you t-

With little warning, she placed her finger on my forehead. Pain I’ve never felt before crippled my entire self. My senses were now in disarray. It was as if I was being repeatedly stabbed in the head with hot knives from every direction, while underwater. I tried to form the words, but I simply slurred as my entire body seized up.

“Our time is now up. I will leave this place open, so you can visit when you need to, but I will seldom be here. Some advice before you return. When you are in this place do not under any circumstances enter the forest. Only use ambient mana to meditate when in this domain and never on Gaia or Theia. Do not meditate in direct sunlight, and do not walk barefoot on Gaian soil, at least not yet.”

She pressed her finger harder on my forehead, causing the pain to reach new unbearable levels. At that point, the pain spread to the end of my tailbone.

“See you again soon, Little one.”

 

 

I woke up not too long after, just barely hanging on to my sanity. I put my hand to my forehead, expecting to see blood, but there was no break in the skin.

“Why does she keep messing with my body like this?” I said aloud.

Although a dull pain still throbbed in my head, I stretched and yawned, shifting my stiff body that had been sitting for what seemed like a few hours.

“Why does who keep messing with your what?” A voice spoke out.

I rolled off the bench in surprise, only to see Allan standing menacingly next to the bench.

“Do you know what time it is, young lady?”

“Six Thirty?” I asked nervously. 

“It’s almost 11 pm. You really have a habit of making things harder for me.

“I’m sorry. I lost track of time.”

He started walking ahead, which I in turn followed. “It's fine, let’s just get you back in your dorm.”

Remembering that I didn’t live with Allan anymore, I asked. “How did you know I was missing?”

“I have a rune connected to your seal, so if anything went wrong, I would now, and the runes were acting strangely, so I came looking. It seemed that I had no reason to worry.” He said as he gave me a thumbs up.

“Congratulations on your breakthrough.” 

 

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