am-books Book 6: Chapter 7: Cycles
Book 6: Chapter 7: Cycles
Book 6: Chapter 7: Cycles
It was almost certainly a bad idea.
Elijah was well aware that he should have at least gone back to the cultivation cave to let everyone know what he was going to do. Yet, as he stepped past the threshold, he pushed those thoughts aside and focused on the excitement building in his chest.
The door itself had been a pain to bypass, and Elijah had been forced to brute force it in his guardian form. Now it lay in pieces. Probably not very scientific of him to destroy it, but that just proved what he already knew about his nature. He might have been trained as a scientist, but he definitely didn’t comport himself as one.
Just like a certain whip-wielding archeologist.
He smiled as he considered that comparison and stepped through the doorway. The air on the other side had already mingled a bit with the outside atmosphere, but there remained a stale smell to it that hinted at what he might find deeper inside. Elijah pushed One with Nature as hard as he could, but he could sense nothing in the subterranean ruins. So, relying only on his mundane senses, he descended a set of worn and mud-covered steps.
He reached into his Ghoul-Hide Satchel and retrieved a mundane flashlight. It was a purchase he’d made back in Seattle, and rather than running on batteries, it used a matrix of enchantments to convert ethera into electricity. Elijah didn’t know precisely how it all worked. That it did was all he really cared about.
When he flipped the switch, the flashlight cast the narrow stairway in bright, white light. Moisture glistened on the walls, and green algae coated everything. Unlike other ruins Elijah had visited, there were no decorations. Instead, it was just a stairway leading deeper underground.
Elijah took one more step, but then he stopped. His heart pounded out of his chest as he realized what he’d missed.
He couldn’t feel the algae.
There was no life to it.
And yet, he could see it. He could smell the musty odor. The scent of decay filled his nostrils, and even so, One with Nature told him that it was all a lie. He backed away, his mind whirling with confusion. His senses – both mundane and ethereal – had never come into conflict, and so, he learned to rely on them, trusting them fully.
But now, he found himself questioning everything. Panic born of confusion filled his mind and body, and it didn’t fade even when he once again crossed the threshold. He could still feel it. That distinct lack of life waged war against what he saw with his own two eyes.
Even amidst that panic, curiosity rose within him, taunting him with the wanting explanation. Until that moment, he’d thought One with Nature – especially now that it had been enhanced by his specialization – was infallible. But now? He refused to accept that the skill was the problem. The issue had to be with him.
So, he pushed against his perceived limitations, focusing not on life, but on ethera. And then, just when he felt on the verge of bursting a blood vessel or two, he felt it. The area beyond the threshold wasn’t entirely empty. There was no life – not as he knew it, at least. Rather, there was something else. A flavor of ethera he’d never encountered.
It was cold. Decaying. Lifeless. The only word he could use to adequately describe it was death. But once he discovered it, he could sense it spilling through the doorway he’d unblocked and infecting everything around him.
But from what he could tell, it wasn’t harmful.
Life. Death. It was all part of the same cycle. Elijah felt a kinship to it, though, at the same time, it was clearly apart. There was something else woven into it. Something unnatural. He didn’t fully understand it, and he knew that it would require a lifetime of study before he came close to comprehension. Still, it felt dangerous to look too deeply, and in a way he couldn’t hope to grasp.
Maybe one day.
A glittering leaf. A guide. Answers.
Only then did he glance down to see that the entire floor was covered in bones. Most were so decayed that they were unidentifiable, but Elijah saw a few skulls here and there.
“You seek my treasure,” a voice echoed through the tomb, so loud that Elijah’s first response was to clutch his ears. “Come and take it, child. My burden may yet be relieved.”
Elijah wheeled around, searching for the source. But there was nothing there. However, the sense of decay had continued to climb, and it only took him a moment to recognize that it came from the coffin. Knowing that his timeframe had been cut significantly, Elijah pushed forward. As he did so, he continued to heal himself even as his body rotted and was reborn in a vicious and painful cycle that stretched his willpower to the very limit.
He leveraged his newly evolved Jade Mind to its maximum capacity, forcing the nine apertures in his Mind as wide as possible. Ethera flooded in, racing through the conduits of his Soul and into his Core, only to be drained by his continued healing. There was an equilibrium there, but one that was beginning to tip in the wrong direction.
Elijah lurched forward, his joints creaking with the strain, until he slammed into the open sarcophagus. Clutching the edge, he hung on for dear life as he reached up and wrapped his fingers around the glittering leaf.
Or that was his intention.
In his state, his aim was a little off, and before he could adjust, his fingers closed around the skeletal hand. His strength gave out, but his grip remained firm, even as he fell free of the sarcophagus. Clutching his prize to his chest, Elijah continued to heal as he dragged himself away from the coffin.
One inch at a time, he left a trail of decayed flesh to coat the bone-strewn floor. Yet, with every foot he retreated, the decay dissipated until he finally started making some headway. Then, by the time he reached the door and climbed a few steps toward the surface, he’d managed to leave the worst of it behind.
Even so, the impact of the experience stuck with him, weakening him to such a degree that even dragging himself up those steps was a massive chore. Only when he finally tumbled free of the tomb did he start to feel better.
Then, he vomited, though when he looked at the resultant puddle, all he saw was a green-and-black sludge that didn’t even begin to resemble any food he’d ever eaten.
What’s more, it emitted a dense aura of death that Elijah couldn’t ignore. For a few minutes, he just stared at it before vomiting again. And again after that. For almost an hour, he steadily expelled the run-off from his encounter with that deathly ethera, and even when he finally pushed himself to his feet and stumbled away, he felt it roiling within.
It was only when he was more than a mile away from the tomb that he started to feel better, but even then, Elijah knew it would be some time before he was completely recovered. So, he returned to the cultivation cave, where he began to meditate on the experience.
Looking back, the decision to keep going had been stupid. He could recognize that much. Yet, at the time, he’d felt something driving him forward. Something integral to his very being, as if his very nature was telling him that he needed to experience what the tomb had to offer.
He hadn’t even questioned it. He’d never considered that he should resist, and even after what he’d been through – he knew precisely how close he’d come to dying – he wasn’t sure that he should have fought against those instincts. Because as he meditated, concentrating on the lingering death aura still clinging to him, Elijah could sense that there was a lesson to be learned from the way it interacted with everything else.
He just wasn’t sure what form that lesson might take.
So, still clutching the skeletal hand that was his prize, he continued to dwell on it.