Túeth's POV
Túeth spent some time trying to think about the three questions the master had made her find the answers to, all the while trying to ignore the temptation to go up those stairs that were so close by. She was not certain why it was that she didn't just leave. She kept telling herself it was because she was sure she could answer these questions quickly. However, she was making very little progress. After all, the temptation to go up, to just look at those girls, it kept distracting her mind.
She squashed those thoughts in herself. For now, she would focus on answering the questions. It was clear that the second question, why only a mage can communicate with normal plants while the average elf can only communicate with trees containing nymphs or dryads like the Lakira tree, was something that she would have to wait to find the answer on. Actually, somehow this seemed like the easiest of the three. The answer was simple. A spell had to be cast in order to communicate with normal plants. However, Túeth knew immediately that would not be considered a satisfactory answer.
That a spell had to be used. That would be a satisfactory answer for anyone on the street, but Túeth remembered the master's words. A mage had to find the deeper answers by their own power. She had heard that mages were able to perform magic by studying their spells, and they had to study them very deeply. That was the purpose of this test. She realized that after thinking this over for a little while. The true meaning of this test is that she has to describe the principle behind the spell to communicate with normal plants.
In actuality, the second of these three questions is probably the only one she actually has to answer. The other two, how a tree with a nymph or dryad in it is different from a normal plant, as well as what spirit energy is, those two must just be hints to point her in the correct direction. He actually expected her, someone who was less than an armature, someone who had never studied magic in her life, to come up with the principles behind a spell on her own completely without assistance.
It was hard to believe such an insane task was thrust upon her. Well, at the very least, this was probably one of the most basic spells. He was not demanding anything too monumentous. It's just talking to plants, right? A magic similar in nature to what elves do all the time.
Túeth looked around the room. The entire house was filled with plants everywhere. It was very clear the master's magecraft was very closely linked to plants. As Túeth considered what she was sure was the true nature of her task, she reached out to the center of the table and pulled one of the potted plants in the centerpiece toward her. She began staring at it intensely, carefully considering it. Somehow, as her mind became more focussed, her head began to become occupied with thoughts about children's finger games, except that it wasn't just a game. Something about this finger game was far more intricate and frustrating. Just the thought of it was beginning to eat at her head.
Túeth sat up, startled at the thoughts that had just occupied her own head. Where had that even come from? Once again, she directed her attention back to the stairs and the floor above. The children were up there. Could it possibly be?
If she was right about this, it might actually help to answer the master's third question. However, in order to find out for sure, she was going to have to go up there. Túeth stared at the stairs for several long seconds before finally standing up and walking toward the source of well over half of the mental conflict she had been dealing with since coming here.
As soon as Túeth's head crested the divide between the first and second floor, she turned to look and saw the two human children sitting and facing each other. They turned to look at her, breaking off whatever it was they were doing before.
The two children seemed to eye her suspiciously for a moment as she came in, before suddenly both of them turned their heads in the same direction. When Túeth followed their gaze, she saw a bed off to one side of the room. On top of that bed were the girls. They seemed to both be sleeping. She considered going over for a closer look, now could be the perfect opportunity for her to see them if they were asleep. However, right now, she had something she really had to confirm. For that, she was going to have to talk to her daughters' humans.
She focused back in on the two of them, going over to the human children and kneeling down next to them. "What were you just doing?" She asks them in as soothing a tone as she can manage. The two turn to look at each other, giving one another a look that seems somewhat urgent. After a quick exchange, one of them turns to her.
"Playing." The child says.
"Can you show me what you were doing?" She asks them, hoping in her heart they will show her. If this proves out right, it really can be the breakthrough she was looking for.
"Umm..." the child who responded to her makes an unsure face and then holds a finger out toward their friend. The other child then does the same, and in a second they touch their index fingers together. From there, they extend the rest of their fingers and then begin carefully matching the rest of the fingers of their hand together. Once they have done this, they begin to do the same with their other respective hands.
This... as Túeth watched the game that these children were playing, she had a feeling wash over her that was very similar to what she was feeling from downstairs. A frustrated feeling about having to micro-manage some very fine and detailed movements of some small hands that wouldn't fully cooperate with what you were trying to get them to do. That was precisely it!
"Thank you." Túeth said and then got up, leaving immediately down the stairs with the excitement of the answer she had just gotten.
['at uus weard!]
Túeth froze and looked back up the stairs for a moment, getting gasps from the humans who could still see her head cresting the floor as she hadn't fully descended the stairs yet. She decides to just keep walking as she recalls the memory of something the master had told her. It seemed the human children had some kind of language between them that was different from the normal language of the humans. It was something strange that the master even could not explain. However, the children had not learned enough Elven and the master had not learned enough of their language to possibly ask them about it in any real detail.
It wasn't worth being bothered about this right now. Túeth had her answers. Now she just had to figure out what it meant.
"Well, it looks like you have made a discovery." Túeth froze yet again at the bottom of the stairs, just as she had rounded the corner into the downstairs room. She could see the master there, still in his meditative posture seated on the floor, except that his eyes were now open and looking directly at her, leaving her stunned and rooted to her place.
"Ahh! Umm... yes!" She managed to squeak out.
"So, does what you learned help you to answer any of those questions?"
"Yes." She could say that rather definitively.
"Well then, how close do you think you are to an answer?"
"Umm... well, I think I know something more about spirit energy now." She said, considering all the humans she had been around up until now, and yet this was the first time she had ever felt anything like that so distinctly. At the same time though, she had never been around any single human or pair of humans able to produce such an extreme and overwhelming amount of the stuff.
Túeth could see the master waiting on her to continue. She realized how easy it would probably be to say the wrong thing at this point though. She had to be careful not to jump to conclusions.
"Well, I never felt anything like this before, but, I could feel some of the human children's thoughts through their spirit energy. It must have been because of how strong their spirit energy was. Plants produce spirit energy too though, so, if there was a way to take in more of it..." No, this was it! It suddenly hit her! Túeth knew the answers to all three questions now.
"I'm ready to answer!" She declared. "The way we communicate with the nymphs and the way a mage communicates with plants is completely different. It's really not even the same magic at all. All we are doing is sending some mana into the tree, and that's enough to tell the nymph what we want."
"Normal plants are different. I am not sure how it is a spell that a mage uses can get our thoughts to the plants, but if there is some way to use a spell to make it easier for us to read the spirit energy from the plants, maybe we can... well, first off, before that, maybe I should answer the question about spirit energy first. Spirit energy has something to do with the thoughts of whatever is producing it. So, if all spirit energy acts the same, if we can use some magic to make the spirit energy of plants stronger so we can sense it more easily, then a mage can know what it is a plant is thinking."
"Yes, very good." The master says, causing Túeth to almost collapse in the relief she feels from hearing she was right after sticking her neck out that far. "Now then, would you like to move onto your second lesson immediately, or would you like to take a rest?"
The master was in the process of standing up from his meditative pose. Meanwhile, what he said was ringing in Túeth's mind. Second lesson? Wasn't that a test? She had half expected him to say something about how now she was really his apprentice and she had passed the test or something of the sort. Second lesson? So, in other words, that meant that what she just did really was just a learning assignment? If this was how all of the lessons were going to go, Túeth was not sure how much of it she could take.
"I would like to move on now." Túeth said for reasons she could not possibly comprehend. She was really exhausted just from this first lesson and really did want to recover, but something inside her had filled her with some kind of fear that said she could not allow herself to stop now. This thing was drowning out all of her hesitation and whispering to her that she had to become stronger as quickly as possible.
Stopping to rest now would be admitting she was weak. She could not allow herself even a short moment of weakness right now. That's what this thing inside of her was saying.
-
Aerien's POV
"Yeah, I have absolutely no idea what I'm looking at at all." I say as I look around Gaerien's inner world. We seem to be in the middle of some kind of giant geode lined with pinkish crystals. There is a liquid that fills the lower half of the crystal laden sphere we are inside of that seems to faintly glow. It pulses regularly, and almost seems to be synchronized with the pulses of light that are coming from the gate that Gaerien says leads to my spirit.
However, the most striking thing in this space aside from the gate to my spirit is hovering right above and half submerged in the glowing liquid. A single large perfectly clear crystal lined with glowing runes that seem to be etched inside of the massive gemstone. I don't know an awful lot about gemology, but I do know there are a fairly limited number of gems that are completely see-through clear, and all of them are considered rather high-end.
The cheapest of the clear see-through gems is quartz. However, quartz being the fragile thing that it is will almost never be found in a perfectly clear state. It will always be blemished in some way giving it a smoky white quality. If quartz were perfectly clear, and especially if it were at this size, it would be worth the same amount as the same size of diamond. On that note, diamond was another one of the perfectly clear gemstones. The third was corundum, crystallized aluminum. If corundum had some impurities, it could turn blue or red and was known as ruby or sapphire in those states. However, pure colorless corundum would actually be the cheapest of all the possible clear crystals once you get to this size and level of purity just due to the fact it can be manufactured easily.
There was something in me that was tempted to doubt the idea this thing could be corundum. I had noticed earlier from the violet Gaerien was wearing on that robe of hers, she seems to have some kind of thing for understated wealth symbols, the type that actually are quite outrageous to those who know what they are looking at but could be easily overlooked by those who don't. Unless it was some other kind of mineral that did not exist in the real world, I was going to lean on this thing being either diamond or quartz.
"Well then, I am sure you have plenty of questions," Gaerien says, "but since you have said yourself several times that you do not know even the first thing about cultivation, I should probably start at the absolute most basics and just talk about this space itself.
Both my young and old self turn to face Gaerien as she begins to explain to us. "So, this is my inner world. I have arranged it as a sea of mana. These walls around us are the manifestation of my spirit itself and it is comprised of spirit energy. The natural state of the boarder of your spirit is a blank pale white wall, and that's how it begins for everyone. However, as you begin cultivating, it will begin to naturally form impurities that take on the form of whatever your cultivation method is, thus why it began growing all these pink crystals. That represents the form of my cultivation."
"Well, I should probably clarify that a bit. I say they are impurities, but it also represents a step further down my path. Those pink crystals lining the wall of my spirit also make any magic that I perform related to my path much stronger and easier to perform. However, it also makes other forms of magic more difficult. The size of your spirit from one end to the other represents the amount of potential for power you have in your spirit."
I look around. It really is an impressively large space as I observed before. So big in fact it's hard to get a real sense of scale. I can see from one end to the other, but I would certainly never want to swim the distance through that liquid down there. Although, I could probably consider walking it. Going on a rough estimate, I would say it was around 3 miles to any one wall with us at the center. This would mean this sphere was a total of 6 miles in diameter. It really was quite impressively large.
"Wow!" My younger self gawked. "Does that mean that Gaerien is really powerful!?"
"Hmm... well, I don't really know how my power stacks up to the cultivators of this world, but back on Earth this wouldn't even be half as much power as you need to get close to achieving god status. Also, I was really only even able to make it this far this fast because of you, and also because of the fact that I have done this all once already. Anyway, I should probably mention that this arrangement you see here is very strongly oriented toward divine class magic. That is, magic that most mortals should not be able to do on their own and would need divine assistance to perform. I figured that it would be pretty useful when I try to go the final step of getting the worship of the god-born of this world if I could already use divine magic."
"Anyway, the reason why a larger spirit is able to contain more power is because of what you see below you. That is liquefied mana. That's the form it takes when you accumulate it and store it inside of your body. Normally it would be a pale white or blue depending on the nature of your cultivation, however mine is glowing like that because of the divine nature of my cultivation. I have to alter and prepare my mana in a special way by mixing it with neutral energy. That's... actually why it is so important for me to have you creating that hole in the world barrier. The world rules of this world really don't seem to like me making this stuff at all."
"Well," I say as my older self, "I guess a mere mortal having god powers would qualify as breaking the rules after all."
"Yeah, right" Gaerien agrees with an almost mocking sarcastic tone. "I'm certain the gods of this world would not like it much. Anyway, the crystal at the center is actually the most important thing here. That is the control center where my power is focused and all my spells are written. That's those glowing runes inside of the crystal. Those are the innate spells to my cultivation, and I form them during my meditation. The spells written inside of there will be my absolute most powerful spells I can use, and it also becomes easier for me to use them."
"Just out of curiosity, what is that crystal made out of?" I ask her. It had been bothering me ever since I saw it.
"It is made of pure condensed spirit energy" She said. "There is nothing else the central crystal of a mage's cultivation could be made from. It has to be spirit energy. Spirit energy is the energy that relays thoughts and intentions. As such, spirit energy is needed to convert the mana into a spell."
"I see," I say while looking around this area again. "Well, I think I have learned one thing by coming here. Your method of cultivation is completely useless to me, and if I were to ever want to attempt anything like it I would have to completely drop my current meditation."
"What? Really!? Well, I guess it wouldn't be too unusual for a high grade meditation to be incompatible with the principles of another, but why do you say completely useless?"Gaerien asked in an unsettled tone.
"That!" My younger self gestured downward before my older self could manage a more dignified version of the same thing. I guess she got too excited and wanted to be the one to be dramatic about the whole thing, and she immediately turned to look back at my older self with a not so apologetic smile.
I, as my older self, just look back at her and then back to Gaerien. "My meditation will not allow me to store energy of any kind in any form. It relies completely on the idea that energy does not like to remain stagnant. It forces the energy out of my body to be replaced by new energy flowing in."
"Ok, well then, maybe you don't use the spiritual reservoir method, you can still pick up something from the crystal I bet. Just try and capture and use some of the energy from your meditation and use it as it passes through your body instead of capturing it and storing it like everyone else would."
"Hmm... yes... but how would I manage something like that?" I ask, considering the crystal at the center of Gaerien's spirit. Somehow, as soon as I thought to go somewhere inside of this space, I was instantly there already without having to waste the time moving from one point to another. It wasn't so much that I had traveled there, and more like the location had come to me. It was quite the interesting experience.
"Well, I don't really know a whole lot about your meditation, so I guess you will have to figure out most of what will work on your own and form your own path."
"Alright, one more question. What language are those runes in? It looks a little like sand skrit, not that I know that ancient Sumerian language very well."
"Well, yes. It is. It was one of the first written languages on Earth, so that wound up being what most of the cultivators of Earth used."
"By the way you say that, can the spells in the crystal be written in any language?"
"Yeah, but it is probably better not to make it in your native tongue. But, it should still be a language you understand well. Do you know any second languages from Earth?"
"Yes, I know a few, and I think I know one in particular that would be perfect."
"That's great!"
"But, I still don't really know where to start."
"Well, how about I help you out? I was able to form that door between our spirits because we were already connected since being reborn in this world, our spirits were attached for a while as we came across the barrier. You ought to be able to create the same kind of door for me on your end, and then I should be able to help you get started."