Ray - Preparation (1)

Bright spheres floated around her, tethered by golden threads, covering the entire eastern side of the hills. They rose slowly and grew smaller until they finally faded high above Ray. The air shimmered faintly with warmth as if charged by the Light itself, a quiet humming filling the space between the hills. Not all ascended to the same height; some hummed on for a long time into the blue infinity, others maybe only three hundred feet, though it was hard to tell.

Ray watched her own sphere, one of the highest to rise, still faintly connected to her by an invisible thread until it too dissolved. The connection pulsed softly in her mind until it was gone. She hadn’t let it fade because she’d lost control of her Lucidity at such a distance, but rather to avoid drawing too much attention. Somewhere in her, an instinct warned her that being noticed might mean being seen by something she didn’t want to.

Not far from her, Nobea pointed upward with a bored expression as her sphere continued to climb, though Ray could see the slight tremor in her arm.

Finally, Nobea gave up and let out a suppressed gasp as her sphere vanished.

“Very good. Yet you can do even better,” commanded Tise.

The Scholar’s sharp eyes moved among them without following the spheres; her interest lay more in the disciples themselves.

“The more consistently you create the same lucid idea, the more natural it becomes, easier, more subconscious. Your Lucidity is an ocean, and your deliberate control is only an island rising from it. However, the more often you walk that island and explore it, the farther the parts beneath the surface extend. And the more of the ocean itself truly falls under your control. Eventually, you won’t need the threads at all; your connection to what you create will become invisible.”

She spread her arms before her as if describing an endless sea. Around her, a few spheres wavered and broke apart, leaving their creators with small, startled gasps. Shimmering fragments rained down like dust, briefly brightening the grass.

Nobea’s gaze brushed over Ray for a brief, searching moment. A tingling ran down Ray’s shoulders and neck, and she had the distinct feeling that Nobea knew she was holding back. The air between them seemed to thicken for a heartbeat, a silent challenge neither wanted to name. Yet the student soon turned away and focused on her hands, which she threw aside in frustration moments later.

Scholar Tise nodded slightly, her short black hair swaying in the increasingly frequent gusts of the midday breeze. Her mist-gray eyes drifted over the lines of her disciples, satisfied. She stretched her back. She was a small woman, at least two heads shorter than Ray, but her presence made easily made her the center of attention.

“Again,” she ordered. “It’s best to keep your opponents at a distance and drive your Lucidity away from yourself. Being able to control it even then is a potentially powerful weapon. And remember: if you still need to visualize the threads connecting you to your creations, your enemies can see them too. So train until you can conceal your intent.”

“Excuse me, Scholar,” called a young student from the far end of the hill, barely audible to Ray. “If Lucidity is harder to control in large volumes, wouldn’t it make sense to keep it as small as possible, so we can send it farther away?”

“That’s true,” said Tise. “The less space your Lucidity occupies, whether it’s a sphere, a cube, or something else, the farther you can still control it. Even so, everything weakens the farther it travels, no matter its shape, and not gradually but rather quite quickly.”

Ray looked down at her hands, still glowing faintly white, and thought for a moment. The Light pulsed in her palms lokking like water reflecting sunlight, and she felt its cool rhythm slide up her arms.

“Then why don’t we use small points instead of spheres?” she finally asked, her voice echoing across the slope.

“As an exercise,” Tise replied. “You are correct, Ray, points and dots are indeed much more efficient, though they’re also harder to visualize and keep in sight. In the end, it all depends on how clearly you can imagine what you’re creating, at least in the beginning before it becomes instinctive. And a single point can easily fall apart the farther it gets. A bit like how a memory starts to blur over time or something you see disappearing over the horizon.”

The small Scholar nodded to her and turned back to the group, pointing toward the sky.

“Once more. Go!”

The training didn’t tire Ray much, though many of the others soon ran out of breath and had to sit down to rest. Sweat glimmered across their brows as the light of their fading spheres reflected in their eyes. Eventually, only she, Nobea, and Demoa were still standing while the rest scattered along the slope, meditating to recover or continuing their cultivation in silence.

“You two are still up? Interesting; arriving at the same level at the same time,” Nobea remarked, sweat beading on her forehead.

“Well, we did both see the Circle,” Demoa replied, looking calm yet beginning to sway slightly.

“That stupid Circle! It’s done nothing for me!” Nobea muttered, more to herself than anyone else.

Ray glanced at her, uncertain what to do. She didn’t particularly like Nobea, or at least not the version of her she usually showed the world, yet somehow she wanted to help. After all, weren’t they all in the same situation? The thought left a strange ache in her chest, a quiet longing to connect that surprised her.

Perhaps because I know Dio would have tried to help her?

“Disciple Nobea, you should rest as well,” said Tise gently. “You’ve reached your limit. Your endurance is remarkable, but don’t push yourself too far. I know how much it unsettles you that you haven’t yet felt as though you’ve found yourself, even though you’ve been here longer than I have.”

Nobea isntantly exploded.

“Really? Yeah? Those words are supposed to cheer me up? They’re nothing but empty phrases! Why can’t I understand myself more clearly? Why am I still here when I have more control over Lucidity than most people present, including you? That is unfair and shitty!” she shouted at Tise.

“Calm yourself, Disciple Nobea. I can only imagine how frustrating this must be, yet try to think about the Circle again. It has great potential—it’s clearly helping us others unfold faster. That’s what the Abbot says, at least. I still need to experiment with it myself, but even I’ve made some progress thanks to that new image…” The Scholar tried again to steady the situation.

“Oh, really? And what’s it supposed to do for me? It’s just a damned circle! Sure, I’d forgotten what a circle was, but it’s hardly something essential! It’s only a line crawling into its own ass!” Nobea snapped, then dropped to the ground.

Her eyes drifted to Ray.

“Hey, prodigy, what do you think about that?” she grumbled.

Ray thought she caught a flicker of genuine curiosity beneath the roughness of her tone; maybe she only wanted to believe that. It reminded her of the fleeting moments before a storm.

“I… what should I even say to tha? I’ve only been in the Dream for about thirty days, maybe even less. I can’t imagine knowing anything you don’t already,” she replied evasively.

Nobea closed her eyes and tried to speak more calmly, though she failed miserably.

“Again, different question. What do you think my problem is?” she asked, sharp and focused now.

“I… how should I—”

“Eri said it before. I could learn from you. You were there. I don’t want vague answers! Be clear: what do you think I’m missing?”

Ray shifted uneasily from one foot to the other.

“You? Humility?” she said aloud, uncertain.

Nobea’s face went pale, and her yellow eyes flashed like those of a predator. It didn’t help that Demoa burst out laughing and nodded in agreement.

“Humility? Are you kidding me? That’s what you think? My true nature is supposed to be humility, or something related to it? Have you even looked at me? Talked to me? That’s about as far from me as anything could possibly be,” she hissed, then froze.

To Ray's suprise, Nobea fell silent, glancing first at Demoa, then at Ray while ignoring Tise, who was listening intently to every word.

“I need to think about that,” she said, her face turning red.

A moment later, she was already hurrying away, and Ray couldn’t tell whether she was embarrassed or simply filled with new determination.

“I didn’t think she’d actually listen to you,” admitted Demoa.

“She isn’t stupid or stubborn, even if it sometimes seems that way. When I first came here, she was different. Not so bitter. Still a rather self-absorbed person, though others before her were like that too. It’s tempting, when you arrive here and are told that you’re someone special. I think it was even worse for her because she arrived near the sea,” said Tise, absentmindedly brushing a hand over her bun.

“Why?” asked Demoa and Ray in unison.

“Well, Lucidity is valued even more highly there. They hope that the talented ones return as Sages to help against the sea’s unpredictability. The ocean borders the Voids,” explained the Scholar.

Ray looked once more toward Nobea, now a small figure moving toward one of the buildings on the other side of the valley, almost like the spheres they had sent into the sky. The wind picked up, rustling through the tall grass, and for a moment it sounded like the whisper of waves.

“Shall we continue?” asked a young man who had just come out of his meditation, interrupting their conversation.

Tise cleared her throat. “Yes, let’s continue. We should work a little on defense. You’ll protect yourselves against most things instinctively, though with Nightmares it doesn’t always seem so easy. So now we’ll practice holding our Light as a protective shell around and within our bodies.”

Ray nodded and prepared herself. She would learn to shield herself. The darkness had escaped for now, yet she was certain it would return and strike again. She could almost feel it still, a faint echo pressing against the edges of her mind, waiting...