The rest of the night after the ritual is something of a celebration. After Pua holds me down and triple checks that nothing has gone wrong and that I haven't tripped into some new unforeseen problem, I'm released to enjoy the party. I think she takes that she didn't see the soul tangling coming personally.
Pulled pork, sweet bread, and a dozen other things make up the food offerings. There's music and dancing, and I actually get involved for a change. My recent brush with unexpected metaphysical doom has left me more introspective than I would normally be. So I decide to give in to Sarah's urging and actually socialize for a change.
So I dance and flirt awkwardly with pretty village girls. I can safely say I can see the appeal.
I don't do more than dance, though.
Morning finds me waking up in the same bed I've spent the last three months in. This time, though, I wake feeling great. I slept well, not waking up a dozen times during the night from the pain of trying rolling over.
I go through my morning exercises, noting that I'll either need a new routine or some other way to make this one harder, and start packing. My body and soul are working again, and would continue to, and it's time to get back to work. Canon is right around the corner, and for the first time I think I might actually be minimally ready for it when it happens.
I take a few moments to write an email to Asia telling her that I'm much better, and that the problem has been fixed. She's been worrying enough, I'd have felt terrible if I waited too long. I send one off to Cait as well. She worries about me too but, both as a Sidhe and as someone with more knowledge about what's going on, is more laid back about it. Of course, I also ask some pointed questions and call in the favors she said she owes me from my encounter with the Sidhe in Briton.
Then it's downstairs. I plan on a quick breakfast and then using a transit Script to head back to the mainland.
That plan dies the moment I enter the kitchen. Pua, Ku, and Sarah are waiting for me when I step in, all sitting around the table waiting for me. Behind them I see Thea, who glances at me, mouths 'good luck' and leaves.
Well, that's ominous.
"Um... Good morning?" Nobody responds, "Ah... I was just going to tell you that I was going to be heading back to the mainland..."
"Sit!" Pua barks and my legs almost give out underneath me in my haste to comply. I manage to make it to the chair though.
"Is... this an intervention?" I'm trying to be funny but I sound more hesitant than anything else.
"Yes," Sarah says flatly, and I flinch.
"Ericka," Pua's voice was much gentler now that she isn't keeping me from bolting, "we understand you feel you're under a lot of pressure. And recent events have legitimately required you to move quickly. However that's no longer true, and even in a rush only so much recklessness can be excused. Now that you aren't rushing to solve problems, you can take the time to do things right."
"I'm not..." I try again, only to be interrupted by Ku.
"How were you planning to feed your vampiric nature?" he asks, raising an eyebrow.
"Um..." My first instinct is to say that I'll just keep killing things. A glance at Sarah though reminds me of her fear that I'll become some sort of mass murder, so that can't be the answer. I'm not sure I really have another one. I'm not going to keep making Pua distill life energy for me, and I doubt chickens have enough life energy without Pua's help to keep me going.
"What were you planning to do next?" Pua asks in the tone of somebody proving a point.
"Uh... I'm going to use a few favors Cait owes me to see if she can put me in touch with a really good fae smith to get arms and armor."
"At least she thought of armor," Ku murmurs.
"What were you planning to pay the smith with?" Pua continues.
"Uh... I don't know. I figure that could be negotiated. Once I knew what they wanted." I know even as I say it, it isn't a great plan.
"And you were planning to ask me for help with that, right? Seeing as it is part of my job to negotiate with ancient supernatural powers and get the better of Faustian deals?" the Kahuna continues inexorably.
"Ah..." all of them frown at my hesitation, "I didn't want to ask for more? You've already helped me a lot, and I figured I'd used up what favor I got from you for the help I've already given."
Pua stands, calmly leans across the table and smacks me upside the head, then sits down again, looking at me expectantly. I'm getting really tired of people hitting me in the head, "Pua would you help me negotiate with whatever fae Cait finds for me?" I scowl at her and rub my head where she smacked me.
"Of course!" Pua says happily, "Don't worry, you'll pay us back in the future for it." She drops the cheer and leans forward to put a hand on mine, "We're worried about you, and how casually you've been risking yourself. So here's what's going to happen. I'm going to help you get a handle on your powers, Ku is going to teach you how to handle your new physical capabilities and some other useful things, and until we're satisfied, you're not leaving."
I scowl harder. I'm twenty one, dammit. I do not like the idea of people controlling me, and this is starting to set me off. It isn't mind control, but it certainly looks like the curtailing of my choices, "Don't I get a say in this?" I demand flatly.
"No," Sarah replies just as flatly. My teeth grit and I'm about to start yelling at them when Sarah scoots her chair next to me and hugs me tightly, "I know you're going to leave as soon as you can, but please take care of yourself so that you only leave when you're ready." Not because you're dead.
She doesn't say it, but I hear it anyway. I slump in my chair, "Fine."
God dammit, Sarah.
###
Ku gets me first and starts immediately after breakfast, while Pua heads to the beach muttering something about people panicking, thinking that there are sharks inside the reef. To my surprise, instead of dragging me down to the beach where most of our fighting practice happens, Ku takes me inland to a grove of Koa trees and sits me down.
"The first thing we need to do is take care of your feeding problem," Ku explains, "otherwise, practicing is going to be very hard for you. You can't really work on something if you collapse in exhaustion after a few hours. You also need to know how long you can go on one tank of gas so to speak. Before any of that, though, you need to be able to feed yourself."
I make a face at the phrasing, but I can't really argue that it's been Pua feeding me thus far, and I can't really do it myself. So I nod, "I assume you have a solution?"
"I'm going to teach you something that we call Mana Breathing. It's a technique that's been developed in a lot of places under various names. Cultivation, Bodhisattva Enlightenment, Senjutsu, all are names for pretty much the same thing," Ku explains, sitting cross legged in front of me.
I frown. I've looked into Senjutsu briefly before, during my frantic scramble to keep from starving. I tossed it out because it looks remarkably like what I had tried to do for the first several years of my life and failed at, and because I'm not sure I'll be able to use it everywhere I go in the future. "Doesn't that draw on some sort of field of 'natural universal energy'?" I ask doubtfully.
"It's not the Force," Ku deadpans, "Mana is an interesting word in Hawaiian. Before fantasy authors co-opted it to mean 'magic' generically, it meant... there's no really good English translation. Power, sort of. Everything has mana, it's what you take from food to nourish you, it's what parents try to gather throughout their lives and leave to their children so that each generation is greater than the last. Among many other things, it's life."
My eyes widen as I listen. Mana sounds a lot like life energy, "And Mana Breathing is...?"
"The art of taking in the mana of the world around you, and controlling your own mana," Ku says with a smile that's more than a little smug. Bastard.
"So how do we start." I'm a little eager now.
"Fortunately for you, meditation."
###
After a few hours of meditation, I learn that feeling the mana around me is easy. The only reason I've never pulled it off before is because I was metaphorically looking in the wrong direction. That's embarrassing. I haven't managed to do anything else with it yet, but finding the mana isn't hard.
Ku then starts helping me get used to my new capabilities by beating the crap out of me until lunch. We break an hour before it's time to eat and he helps me rework my exercises so I can continue to get some benefit out of them.
Lunch is quiet. I'm exhausted already and slightly depressed about how close I'd been to a much simpler solution to my power problems that I just walked right past. I have a sneaking suspicion that Pua isn't going to make things any better.
Pua has two tasks for me to begin with.
The first is to run an analysis Script on myself and go through it with a fine-tooth comb. Honestly, I don't learn a lot, but what I do learn is good to know. My muscles and bones are made of the same stuff that troll's are. Some sort of advanced carbon allotrope that I'd need a degree in molecular engineering or something to really make sense of. They consume a lot of energy, and with the life energy fuel they are getting now, they're actually working as well as they can.
My voice box is a complex structure with a range that I can barely hear at the top end, and can't hear at all at the bottom end. In addition, with the more supernatural aspects now receiving power from my vampire energy network, I'm capable of all sorts of sound feats that I have no idea how to perform. Matching resonance frequencies, sonic impactors, focused sound beams that can cause anything from the feeling of burning, to just punching a hole in whatever it's aimed at. The mesmerism works almost like The Voice from Dune. Some general influence is possible from just sound and intent, but the really impressive things will require me to tune into an individual's specific... frequency isn't really the right word, but it's as close as I'm going to get. Unfortunately, knowing what that frequency is, is something that Sirens apparently have some apparatus to figure out instinctively. I do not. So while most sound tricks I'll be able to figure out with time and training, more than the basic mesmerism will probably be beyond me unless I go hunting for Sirens again. Assuming instinct is something I can steal at all, I haven't actually tried that. Not that it's something I really want to do in either case.
The vampire stuff is really very straightforward. I have a network that pumps life energy around my body to saturate and power everything attached to it. Which is great. On the other hand, while I have the network, I still only have about as much life energy production as a normal very in-shape person. Nothing is improved, yet, and I have a very limited amount of power to work with. Sadly, the only solution to that will be time. I'll be able to hold more as I use and stretch my network, but until then I'll have to budget power carefully.
The best thing I learn is what I had taken from the Sidhe. After looking over my analysis and the knife a dozen times, I finally figure out what happened and what I'd taken. The knife receiving no direct input from me about what to take, took whatever power he was using at the time. In this case I had acquired the Tuatha De Denan glamor. Which is awesome. The only downside is that it's a power hog of truly spectacular magnitude. How long I can keep something up will probably depend on the size and complexity of the illusion, but I can't imagine keeping it up for more than five minutes. At best. If I'm lucky. I'm probably being optimistic.
The second thing Pua wants me to do is to socialize.
I can't quite believe it when she says it, "Why?"
"First, because it's healthy. Humans aren't made for isolation, even if it's just social. So as your friend, and your Kahuna, I'm making you interact with people as a stabilizing influence." She leads me out of her house where I've been reading the results of my analysis, "Second, even if you don't intend to socialize here, you will probably want to at some point. Your life will be easier if you learn how to deal with people now."
"You do remember that I lived an entire life before this one, don't you?" I ask with a raised eyebrow.
"And how much do you remember of your last life?" I open my mouth to answer, then slowly close it, frowning. Pua has mercy on me and keeps going, "Third, the more connections you have to people and the world around you, the less likely you are to just jump into things without thinking." She glares at me slightly, I just roll my eyes back at her. Pua stops at the edge of one of the open grassy areas of the village that are used like parks.
"Pua, where are we going?" I sigh.
"Here. I've volunteered you to look after the village kids twice a week for a few hours." She waves a hand at the field.
Slowly, I turn my head to look at the grassy expanse and find it populated by children aged between eight and thirteen, moving about in an approximate mush. "Pua," I mutter trying not to be overheard by the swarm in front of me. It feels a little like staring down the pixies again. "Pua!" I say a little louder when I get no response. "Pua!" I finally look over, and find that Pua has snuck away and left me here!
That bitch.
I turn back to the field.
Okay.
I can do this.
Just remember, they can smell fear.
I need some way to keep them focused, and more importantly, here. If they start running around the village I'll never find them all. So I need to keep them interested and engaged.
What did I like at that age?
I'm not sure I ever was that age in this life... but I do remember the first time I went to gymnastics and saw the older girls practicing. It was enthralling to watch them move and spin, fly through the air as though gravity was a mere suggestion.
That was the first time I really wanted to be a good gymnast. Before that I was determined to take the classes just enough to get my body to do what I wanted it to, and have a safe way to build balanced muscle. Afterwards, though, I wanted that freedom. Both physically, the ability to move however and over anything I want, and after I really started, there was a kind of freedom in the total focus required.
For a little while I wasn't rushing to outpace some oncoming supernatural disaster, and I didn't feel more pressure afterwards, because my escape was still helping.
But most of all, I remember seeing the older girl doing her routine and being enthralled.
I can work with that.
The kids are everywhere, but for the moment still sort of central to the park. I aim myself just past the edge of the swarm, and start with a short run up. I really hope that my new strength won't screw this up too much. I start with a series of handsprings, using as little force as possible, and still go through them faster than I ever have before. It's one of the most intense series of tumbles I've ever done. Each action being recalculated on the fly to not be too forceful, and to adjust to avoid disaster when I am anyway, or I'm not forceful enough. I actually get enough air on a front flip to rotate all the way through twice before landing too far forward. I manage to save myself by going into what I think is a pretty smooth forward roll.
I finish my impromptu floor routine as we'd been taught, legs together arms flung high. Sticking the landing is so much easier with cat balance and reflexes and troll's strength. The extra height is more than a little awkward, though. It messes with me more than the extra strength, honestly. I turn to look at the Swarm to find them all staring at me wide eyed and open mouthed.
I wink at them with a smile, "Who wants to learn how to do that?"
The cacophony of positive responses turns my smile into a grin.
Victory is mine.
###
It isn't until a couple of hours later that I get the full scope of Pua's evil plan to socialize me. Because that's when the kids get picked up. Parents, older siblings, they all want to talk to me. Some of them actually try hitting on me, fortunately only women. Someone, Pua, must have let my sexuality be quietly known. I eventually decide to be grateful for it as nobody gives me a hard time. Which really shouldn't surprise me as much as it does, given Pua. I still have to deal with kids and adults in a friendly fashion twice a week.
Well played, Kahuna, well played.
That establishes my pattern for the next several weeks. Mornings with Ku, afternoons with Pua when she has time, apparently the shark problem is more serious than she first assumed, and twice a week I'm socialized.
Ku guides me through meditative exercises to gain control of my own life energy and to reach out to the mana of the world around us.
Manipulating my internal mana is something that I'm slowly getting a handle on, in the most crude sense. I can make the energy circulate faster or slower, and I'm starting to be able to pull it away from things that I'm not using, like my voice. I'm not there yet, but this sort of manipulation is coming easily, if slowly. The techniques that most use to boost themselves don't really work for me, though. The channels of the vampiric network are too rigid to be adjusted the way the more free-form flows that other users have can be. And for some reason, I can't reach outside myself to draw mana in for the life of me.
I can feel it there. Pua has checked me over and there's no physical or metaphysical reason for my difficulty. The conclusion that Pua and Ku have reached is that I have some sort of mental block.
Which is a rather large problem.
So I do what I always do when I run into a problem. I write a Script for it. The idea is to create a zone of increased mana pressure around myself. Not too high a pressure, just enough so that I won't have to reach out to get it, I can just let it in, and the pressure will force the mana into me. With the right amount of pressure and a way to open myself to the energy, it should work out fine.
I make a note that as soon as I have the free time, to get started on that. I'm planning out what the Script will look like in my head when I remember that I don't have to do this on my own. I have two people who, in theory, know what they are doing with Mana Breathing, and can probably tell me if this is a good idea or not.
I hesitate.
Normally I would proceed on my own best judgment, and deal with the problems as they come up. Now though... I'll continue to work on the Script and show it to Pua and Ku when I actually have something to show. I don't even know if this is possible or not just yet. Better to have something solid before bringing it up.
After meditation and beatings with Ku, I'm given over to Pua.
What we can do is limited while I'm dependent on her alchemical chicken life. It's enough to keep me going but it isn't the most efficient medium for absorbing energy. Still, we learn a few things.
Most importantly, the glamor is the next best thing to useless. Tuatha De Denan glamors are some of the best illusions in the world. They can account for sight, touch, hearing, everything including supernatural senses. There are stories of faerie lords making entire cities complete with populations that people lived in for years, without ever knowing that what was around them wasn't real.
The problem comes in with the amount of detail that one has to keep track of in order to make even the most basic of illusions. Fae brains are built to keep track of all of that.
Mine isn't.
We start with me trying to make an apple, just the image, with an apple there in front of me for reference. I start with a red sphere and try to add details one at a time. While whatever I'm focused on at the moment looks good, everything else basically vanishes. I give it shape, then try for the shine on the apple skin, which makes the shape vanish. Then I try to give it texture, which means the shine vanishes, and so on. The glamor ability is literally too powerful and versatile for me to use, I physically can't focus on enough things at once to make it work. Which doesn't even get into how much lower fidelity a human's imagination is compared to a fae's.
Trying to do the image all at once is almost worse. It's like seeing an apple in a dream, as in you have to be in an altered state of consciousness for it to be at all believable.
However, there is one illusion that I manage almost perfectly right off the bat. The illusion of my absence. For whatever reason, the concept, 'I'm not here', is easy to hold in my mind, and it's impressive as hell. I can't be seen, heard, or touched, which isn't to say I became incorporeal. People just won't notice or feel anything if they touch me. Even supernatural senses won't pick up anything. The only real problem with it is how much power it takes. With my current life energy I can keep it up for thirty seconds. Maybe a minute if I'm not doing anything else.
It isn't as useful as it could be, but I'll take it. After all, just like everything else hooked up to my vampiric mana network, it'll only improve with time.
###
It's almost a month later that I'm working with Pua, when one of the village men bursts into her house and into the room where we're working on my ability to reach outside of myself. He's breathless, pale, and gasping for air. Which is impressive because there isn't anybody in the village who isn't in fantastic shape. Ku makes sure of it, as most of the adults have at least some combat training under him. The stench of terror is what really gets my attention though.
"Kahuna!" He manages to get out with his first steps into the room, "So-Something... at the... at the parking lot..." He fights to get words out through his gasping, "asking for..." He gestures at me, unable to get any more words out as he tries to breath.
"Something?" Pua asks, demands, her voice full of tension. I glance over at her, her face is in her professional mask, nothing but comforting certainty. I can smell how worried she is though. Something that only gets worse as the man's only reply is to pale and nod.
We glance at each other and head for the parking lot at a fast walk. Pua's in the lead, and I follow just behind her to back her up. I hope somebody is getting Ku as well, I don't like my chances against anything that can just stroll past Pua's protections.
When we reach the lot I almost attack on sight. Waiting for us is an impossibly beautiful woman, with midnight black hair pulled back into a simple ponytail, complemented by eyes the dark blue of deep water, and pale porcelain skin. Except for her lips which are blood red and set into a serious frown. It's the kind of enthralling beauty that I've only seen once before, in what turned out to be a bog in England.
The woman is a fae, a Sidhe.
What stops me from immediately lunging for her are two things. The first is the sense for the mana around me I've gained with Mana Breathing. The Sidhe radiates power like a volcano radiates heat. It's almost oppressive, and I have to remind myself that there's actually no physical reason I should be having trouble breathing. That if I hadn't been learning Mana Breathing, I never would have even noticed the power, and that the feeling of pressure is all in my head.
As if to drive home just out-classed I am here, she's leaning against an old steel-framed truck, waiting for us. Showing not only no discomfort, but no awareness that she's so close, and in fact touching, a great deal of iron. True, it's iron in steel, but for most fae that wouldn't matter. Even greater fae would be weakened and harmed by steel, if not nearly as much.
The other reason I hesitate, though, is because of what she's wearing. It isn't a fancy dress made of spiderwebs and dew or some such. It isn't bright shining armor made of the silvery metal that the fae are known for. Instead, she's wearing work boots, jeans that look like they've seen a lot of hard use, a tank top, and denim jacket.
Her clothes, casual as they are, do nothing to reduce the noble and refined bearing of not just a Sidhe noble, but a Sidhe noble with power. Power that has nothing to do with her title or position.
As we approach, she stands up from the truck to meet us. Pua and I both bow politely, mine deeper than hers, and the fae after studying us both for a moment nods to Pua in some form of acknowledgement.
Before Pua can ask any questions, the Sidhe lady speaks. "I look for Ericka Rhostana," she declares, her voice far from the bells or music I expect. Instead it rings like a hammer on an anvil, and carries the crushing weight of deep water.
I step forward, even with Pua, where she grabs my wrist to keep me from advancing further. She doesn't need to worry though. I'm not getting any closer to the Sidhe than I have to, and I'm certainly not going to leave the side of the nominal powerhouse on our side.
The Sidhe examines me again with greater interest than she had before. I feel her power wash over me, no doubt performing an examination that would leave me feeling violated if I had any idea how much information she got from it.
"I have come because Caitríona, the Queen of Cats asked that I do so. I am Vivain, Lady of the Lake, and I am here to see if you might be worthy of one of my blades."
Cait... What did you do?!