Chapter 43: Chapter 43: The First Trial: Spirit Song

Just as Nay was about to start chugging water into her lungs, enraged and terrified that this lady had tricked her so she could drown her, the water receded enough to create an air pocket for her mouth and nose.

She gasped and sputtered, spitting sea water.

Then she sucked in as much air as she could.

“Let me out!” she said. She thrashed against the ice lid, her teeth chattering. “Let me out!

“Nay,” Ilyawraith said, in an irritatingly calm voice. “Calm down.”

“Don’t tell me to be calm! You’re trying to fucking kill me!”

The water rose again, taking away the air pocket. She was once again immersed and forced to hold her breath.

She focused all of her fear onto Ilyawraith and channeled it into rage.

That’s when she remembered her Chef’s Thermometer ability.

She focused on a part of the ice lid and conjured forth a ring of heat.

But before it started to melt, the ice started to harden even more.

Ilyawraith waggled a finger at her. No you don’t.

Then the air pocket was back, the water receding again.

“Focus on the rhythm of the water, Nay,” Ilyawraith said. “Let your breathing fall in line with it and you don’t have to worry about drowning.”

“What?!”

“Close your eyes and focus on your breathing and you’ll make it through this.”

Before Nay could retort, the water rose again over her mouth and nose and she had to hold her breath.

She tried to calm herself. She just had to make it until the water lowered again and she would be okay.

---

[Quest Detected]

[Quest: Learn Spirit Song Breathing Technique]

[Accept Quest Y/N?]

---

She accepted the quest and held in her breath and tried to remain still.

What the hell was the Spirit Song Breathing Technique?

Maybe counting would help.

She started to count, but by the time she got to the number five it already felt like it was making this ordeal last longer. Seconds felt like minutes.

She wished she had bigger lungs. Or hell, an extra lung.

The air pocket was back and she sucked in big gulps of air as if she was a beached fish.

“That is an inefficient way of breathing, girl,” Illyawraith said.

Nay glared at her as she took shallow, panicked breaths.

It didn’t feel like she could ever get enough in.

Then the water was back, tickling her mouth and nostrils and she was underwater again.

She accessed her interface to see if she could find something that would help her. She looked at her inventory and saw the Boon of the Mewlipped Tadpole.

She scanned the text again.

Boon off the Mewlipped Tadpole. Consuming this Boon will accelerate your current Vigor Rank up by 25 percent. Side-effects may result in turning into a toad for a day and being compelled to catch and eat nothing but flies. Will be in all the danger that toad form is susceptible to while a toad.

Ribbit!

The green toad gummy appeared in her hand and she shoved the whole thing into her mouth and started chewing.

Ilyawraith squinted through the ice to confirm what she was seeing. “No!”

A moment after Nay swallowed, she was seized with what felt like an adrenaline boost.

Something was surging through her and she couldn’t stop shaking.

Please turn me into a toad please turn me into a toad please turn me

Her interface chimed and her HUD was blinking.

She clicked on the Vigor Rank Menu.

Dammit why am I not a toad yet come on did it not work please toad me oh well

The bar from Base Rank to Iron Rank was ticking up, getting closer to Iron. The bar filled rapidly and then stopped.

---

Vigor Points to Iron Rank: 57%

---

The trembling stopped and Nay never felt so strong in her life. She felt like something inside of her had grown. Like she had a stronger center.

She felt like she could punch through the ice and free off herself.

She reared her fist back and punched.

And in mid-punch, her world shrunk.

/////////

The sea water ice grave she was trapped in suddenly seemed massive, an ocean of its own.

Her fist had become a spade hand with four fingers. They looked like they should be webbed but upon closer inspection they weren’t. They pulled at the water like a child grasping for a cookie.

And she was no longer holding her breath.

Nay had gotten her wish.

The side-effect of the Boon had procced, turning her into a Mewlipped toad.

Her lungs weren’t flooding with water. Rather, the water ran over her gills.

thank god i have gills it's working mewlipped toads have gills!

The gills filtered the oxygen out of the water.

Above, Ilyawraith had cleared the ice and was looking down at her, hands flailing and shouting.

She was now gigantic. “What have you done?!”

Nay tried to speak but the tip of her little tongue poked out of her mouth instead. She may have croaked. She felt a hunger for flies but there were none in this iceberg.

Ilyawraith threw her hands up in exasperation and then floated into the air. “Quincy!”

She flew up into the iceberg, leaving Nay to herself.

Nay swam around her own personal sea, enjoying the sensation of her new amphibian legs, no longer having to worry about breathing.

/////////

When the metamorphosis effect wore off, she was sleeping. She was pulled out of the dream where she was floating through jello and she discovered she was her normal human self again, lying on the disc of ice.

Ilyawraith was hovering in the air above her in the lotus position.

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Her eyes flicked open. “Is there anything else in that magical inventory of yours that I need to know about?”

/////////

Nay was back inside the pool, the ice lid reformed above her.

She began to feel a sense of panic again. This time she had no escape plan.

As the sea water trickled in she mentally clicked on the Quest Log. There was an indicator next to the Spirit Song Breathing Technique Quest.

She selected it and a menu opened.

Spirit Song Breathing Technique. A basic but effective breathing technique used by Cultivators of the now extinct Banshee Sect. It’s used to strengthen your vigor pathways and to extract vigor from the atmosphere, fortifying your core. A mastery of spirit song is a reward in its own right.

She held onto the little air she managed to gulp down. She wouldn’t count, because that made the period of preserving her breath agonizing.

As she went under, she listened to the water around her. It was a dampening sound.

She could hear the hum of the water, and nearby, she even felt she could hear the vastness of the ocean.

She felt small, just another infinitesimal creature in an infinite sea.

Just as she settled into it, the air pocket was back again.

Except this time when her mouth and lips were exposed to the air she wasn’t panicking. She inhaled through her nostrils, accepting a slow but deep breath, she held it in momentarily, letting it feel natural, then she exhaled, pushing the air out as if it was wind leaving her body.

And then, the water rose and she let herself fall into it, yearning to float in its expanse.

The thought of holding her breath didn’t even occur to her this time.

She was too entranced by the fuzzy motes of light drifting through the water. She felt like she could almost see the individual components of the water and they all contained those ectoplasmic globs of spirit light.

She wanted to pull the vigor into herself.

She could feel something happening with her, at her very center.

Her vigor veins were stretching, reaching out to call for the ectoplasmic light, wobbling there in the water like lava lamp globules.

Then she could breathe again, the water sinking.

She imagined the vigor veins within her contracting and expanding. On the contraction, she pulled at the air around her and imagined the pathways expanding with the air.

She envisioned the oxygen traveling along the pathways to her center, where it strengthened her.

Above her, Ilyawraith leaned forward.

As she watched Nay a smile started to form on her face.

Then Nay was one with the sea again.

She could sense its song. While holding her breath, she sent a vein out and she could feel the spirit tendril of her core pathway connecting with the ocean.

She immediately felt enlivened and unafraid and forgot that she even needed to breath as she began to extract vigor motes out of the ocean.

Her veins accepted them with a hunger and she could feel her spirit soar with the sudden rush of vigor.

When the water receded a song filled the air pocket and vibrated the ice above her.

Above, Illyana heard the muffled spirit song coming from the tomb of ice.

Nay was using the spirit song technique and was drawing vigor out of the air.

She had never felt stronger in her life. The warmth and comfort and power of the vigor was contained in her veins, in her spirit passageways.

Illyawraith melted the ice-lid and beckoned Nay to sit up.

Nay obeyed and was surprised to hear that the song that was filling the chamber was coming from her.

She stopped and gasped, ending the song.

---

[Quest Complete!]

[Learn Spirit Song Breathing Technique Completed!]

[Congratulations!]

[You have been rewarded with Vigor Points]

---

Nay exhaled and put a hand to her chest. How could just breathing make her feel so much stronger?

She looked at her interface again and accessed her Vigor Points.

---

Vigor Rank: Base

Status to Iron: 67%

---

Did she just gain like ten percent by learning this new technique?

“You see,” Ilyawraith said. “You can breathe in the vigor around you and let your veins and core process it into vigor essence. It’s important to master spirit song so you can acquire and obtain vigor. Converting it to essence is essential for amplifying everything you do.”

“How come Quincy never taught me this?” Nay said.

She was starting to get upset that she didn’t know this technique sooner.

“He probably didn’t want to make a mistake and sabotage your foundation,” Illyawraith said. “Or maybe he didn’t want you to settle for an inferior technique. Either way it seems maybe he wasn’t confident in teaching you.”

“Inferior how?”

“There’s all kinds of techniques for breathing and harnessing vigor. Not all are as effective as the Banshee Sect’s way. It may be harder to learn, but the results are that much greater.”

“Is that your Sect?”

“Was.”

“What happened to them?”

“I am all that remains.”

Nay wanted to probe further, but she could tell that was the end of the discussion on the subject.

Perhaps the Spirit Song Breathing Technique would also help her be a better cook in some way.

If anything, the breathing would help her during those more stressful moments in the kitchen. And it would help her get to Iron Rank so she could use her Marrow Abilities without conking out.

/////////

They had returned to Ilyawraith’s hearth to find that Quincy was awake, warming himself in front of the fire. His mustache was in disarray from the way he slept, and there was something about his appearance that gave Nay a glimpse of what he must have been like when he was a child.

“She knows the technique now?” Quincy said.

“I'm still alive so what do you think?” Nay said.

“Thank celestia,” Quincy said. “Pupils have perished during that teaching. I thought I was gonna have to fend for myself for breakfast. What a shame that would have been. What a shame indeed.”

“Now we know how you really feel about me,” Nay said. “So what were you saying? You’re skipping breakfast this morning? Fine by me. One last mouth to feed.”

Quincy stammered. “Now, hold on a minute. Let’s –“

Ilyawraith interrupted him. “Since you’re skipping breakfast this morning, the fauglir can have yours. Will you make yourself useful and bring it to them?”

“Dammit.”

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