A Little More Like This

For the following couple of months, we stayed at the shacks outside the Silverpeak Montastery while I trained under the tutelage of Sage Hanor. Meditation, martial arts, and manual crafts were all essential parts to the path that the sage was teaching me.

First order of the morning, at least for me, was to meditate while the others had breakfast. After a good hour, I then went on to explore creative arts.

I was never that much of a creative man. Even in my past life, making art never appealed to me, but I presently found the creation of clay sculptures enjoyable enough. There was something ironic in someone made of stone to be creating figurines of clay, but in a way, it gave me sense. What I was, who I was… it was a strange feeling.

Shortly before noon, it was time to train martial arts.

Leona helped me train martial arts a lot. She was my one and only sparring mate. Sage Hanor was far too old to spar by now, so Leona was just about the only option we had for that regard.

Then, after training with Leona, it came time to meditate again and then proceed with some labors in the monastery garden. With our adventuring being put mostly on hold for the moment, we had to be frugal to survive, and make do with whatever we could muster from the mountains, the garden, and what savings we had.

Sometimes we went to town to get supplies, and here and there do a small quest to help the purse, but nothing too straining.

Sybille spend most of her time in the monastery’s library.

Sage Hanor had amassed quite the collection of times during his youth. Novels, holy texts, magical tomes, historical records, medicinal manuals, among others. The heart of his library, however, was the knowledge it had on soul manipulation. Or, as Sage Hanor liked to call it, soul attunement.

I honestly had no idea what I was doing in that courtyard for the first few weeks. It was a lot of instinct, a lot of improvisation, and a lot of realization that I was going nowhere. It took me some time to finally understand that I was seeking the inner peace of monotony and self-understanding able to be achieved only through a clear mind.

As it turned out, with nothing to do, you get a lot of time to think.

Sybille, however, was not a person who would take kindly to staying put. If she was not studying the tomes, she was working on some schematics for me, giving me some fine-tuning here and there, quarreling with Leona from time to time, and even going to town to do odd jobs. Her expertise in magic did fetch her some coin, even when not working as an adventurer.

At the time that the sun fell each day, we communed with the Divine Scion. Most of the time, it did not talk. Other times it just wanted snacks. One time it marked my shoulder, too, that little cretin.

Thankfully I managed to keep a straight face. I guess that is one of the advantages of having a face made of stone, I suppose.

Other times, however, the blue raven was open for conversation. How I was, what I was feeling, if I felt closer to what it called “clear mind” and such. I never really understood it. At some point I started to even doubt that I was even doing any progress.

In the routine, however, I eventually found solace. It was stability. Maybe, I could enjoy something like this for longer. Wake up, think, sculpt, train, and garden, day in and day out, without a care in the world. It would not have been bad.

I realized that on one day that I talked with Leona after our training.

I had sat down on the cliff's side, beside the tree of the Divine Scion, and gazed to the distant landscape underneath us.

“Leona,” I called her. “Do you think that there needs to be anything more to life?”

“More than what?” she replied.

“Monotony. Doing the same thing over and over.”

Leona sat down beside me, taking a bite out of an apple.

“Maybe,” she said. “If you live long enough, your life will become repetitive at some point. When I first started adventuring, I just wanted to get a lot of money. I don’t even remember what I wanted it for. I just, you know, wanted to be rich. A big house. A lot of food. Retire early. Sleep all day.”

“And did that goal change?”

“Ah, did it change. As it turned out, it was a stupid dream.”

“Becoming well off is not a bad idea, I believe.”

“No, but becoming well off without something to give the day meaning is. Hmph. My old party leader… Titus, that bastard. He could have left us all to die in one of those dungeons and taken enough wealth to live off for the rest of his life, but he didn’t. When we got separated, he searched for each and every last of us, at the cost of us failing the quest. I was so mad at him!”

“You were mad at him?”

“He could have become so damn rich so easily. I guess I was envious of that. I know, I should have been thankful just to be alive, but you know, feelings ran hot. When I asked him why he let the monster we were hunting go, he said that he was not going to let his friends die over some quest.”

Silence took over our conversation. There was a pain in her voice.

“Do you want to talk about them?” I asked her.

“About who?”

“Your party members.”

“Hmm…” she went, turning her gaze towards the horizon. “I have mourned them already. Siege took away their lives. I swore I would avenge them. Maybe I will talk about them one day, but you should not be concerning yourself with me. You need a clear mind, remember, you pile of rocks?”

She tapped at my head with her knuckles.

“I get it,” I said. “Well, the offer will remain standing. If you ever want someone to lean on, I am here.”

Leona stopped knocking at my head, and instead, pulled herself away in silence.

“To lean on, you say?” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Hmm…”

With that, she slid closer towards me and rested her head against my arm, but with her gaze remaining locked towards the horizon.

“Leona?” I said.

“You said if I wanted someone to lean on, you were there,” she said. “Now you own up to that promise.”

“Okay.”

She was hurt. Deeply.

I could tell how much she wanted to cry, but kept refusing to. Maybe if I pressed her, she would. I did not know what to do. So, for the moment, I just lent my arm to her, and let her be.

“Bastion,” she said. “Thank you.”

“You are welcome. Take your time.”

“Just… a little bit more like this.”