Limitless Path

Beth woke up with a great start, sitting straight up in the bed next to Blood. She didn't know how she knew, but she knew that she had both been the silver flame in the dream and that it hadn't just been a dream. It had, in fact, somehow been a kind of memory, a memory of a fight that had happened centuries in the past, a thousand or more years grinding on since the time of that great battle.

As she wrestled with herself to get a grip on what she had just experienced Blood, who had awoken and reacted instantly when Beth had bolted upright, gave out a plaintive whine. This alerted Beth, who glanced over at her companion before something caught her eye; namely, the fact that she was on fire. Not literally on fire, but as she held her arms in front of her, she could see wisps of silver flame dancing lightly across the backs of her hands and her forearms. They swayed and undulated slowly, a mighty power waiting for a call, her call, slowly pulsing as it idled.

Beth closed her eyes and took a deep breath, calming herself as she focused on her body and what was happening to it. She tried to feel her arms, seeing if she could feel the flames flickering across them, trying to use a sense she didn't even know she had to connect to them.

It turns out that it was easy, at least for her, as she felt the connection there, not as if it snapped into place, but as something that had always existed. She concentrated further, biting her lip as she willed the flames to dissipate, but felt almost no response. That clearly wasn't the right way to go about this, and she grunted in frustration as she fumbled about with this unknown power, trying to figure out how not to be on fire anymore. She tried extinguishing the fire, she tried pushing it away, she tried cutting the flow of mana, but none of what she tried seemed to work.

As she got more frustrated, she finally decided to just say fuck it and absorb the fire. It turned out that this was exactly the right call, as the flames disappeared back into her arms before being sucked into her core. It was like she had started developing a new sense she had previously not known about, as she could feel the fire within her, but not actually inside her torso. It felt strange, like a new limb that she suddenly had, but not at all unpleasant.

Blood whined again and Beth, now fire free, turned and tackled the massive wolf back into the bedding, wrapping her arms around Blood's neck as she buried her face in the wolf's warm fur. Blood shuffled around, wrapping a front leg around Beth's back, and the two of them stayed like that for a while, giving Beth a little time to calm down.

She eventually released her companion and got up, seeing that about six hours in total had passed since they had laid down. It was approaching five in the morning, and she decided that meant it was high time to get started with the day. She slouched over to the bathroom to take care of some business before brushing her teeth and roughly combing out her hair. She then got out some food and prepped it before sitting down with Blood on the couch to eat and watch a little more interstellar entertainment.

When close to an hour had passed, she cleaned up the remains of their breakfast and headed into the bedroom to toss on some clothes quickly, noting that she still had a handful of clean clothes so laundry could be put off a few more days. She then entered the main room and threw her armor and sword belt on before stomping into her new boots. She finished by tossing the new pack on, intending to go out adventuring again today and it seemed dumb to have bought such a kit and not take it. She grabbed the axe and shovel she had bought and tossed them in the pack, taking it off one shoulder to twist around in front of her so she could work the clasps. Once it was again secured, she gave Blood a few firm slaps on the side before moving over to the door and heading out of the room.

They made their way up to the lounge first, Beth wanting to get a little consultation in with Baelvyr before they did anything else. She was hopeful that he might have some idea why she suddenly woke up that morning on fire, and she also wanted to check in to see if he knew anything about the weird arch they had found. She saw that he was alone in the room when she entered, taking up his usual corner of the room while he ate from a massive platter of cooked meat and drank from a stone mug that had to hold close to a gallon.

She moved over to his table and took the pack off before setting it on the table and sitting down, Blood sitting on the floor next to her. Baelvyr just grunted at her, continuing to demolish his very sizeable breakfast, spearing great big chunks of what looked like beast meat with a huge fork before tossing them in the yawning cavern of his mouth. Beth turned to watch one of the large walls screens while he was demolishing half a cow’s worth, seeing that some kind of big arena fight was playing. When her instructor was done with his meal, he let out an explosive burp so powerful Beth felt the joints where her ribs connected into her sternum pop.

"Gross, dude," she complained, waving a hand in front of her face with a deep frown.

"Better out than in," he replied before taking a huge pull from his tankard.

"Right, whatever, I have a couple questions," she replied, still waving away the heavy meat smell.

"Yeah, girlie, out with it," he grumbled.

"So, uh, I kind of woke up on fire this morning," she said, scratching at her temple as she adopted a little more sheepish look.

"Ya don't look too burnt," he replied, taking another pull from his drink.

"Yeah, it wasn't, like, normal fire," she continued. "It was silver, and it was just my arms, and it didn't actually, like, burn anything."

"Alright, first off, don't tell nobody but me or Jaq or Tazeen about this," Baelvyr said in a more serious tone. "Not that I don't trust the others, but I don't want nobody messin' with this but one of us three for now. As for what's happenin', you're startin' to touch upon an Ideal."

"Sounds like you said that with a capital 'I'," she returned with a raised brow.

"Yeah, yeah, I did. Don't go jawing 'bout this with your other little girlies yet, but I'll fill ya in on some stuff that they don’t need to worry 'bout for a while," he answered before lifting the tankard and guzzling the rest of what was in it. "Ah, better. Now, an Ideal is something that ya gotta have before ya can get past Ascended. So let me explain a couple things real quick then ya can ask some questions.

"Remember that ya reach a max level eventually, and the only way to continue your path to gettin' stronger is to rebirth, which resets ya to level one and lets ya keep a portion of your strength. Now, that's all fine and dandy and whatnot, but you eventually hit more walls, and yes, there are a couple of 'em. The first I told ya 'bout briefly before, but ya need to build a Mana Physique, to infuse your physical body with mana in an organized way, before you can hit Enlightened. Now, that's the limit from nine to ten rebirths, and ya can't ever do the tenth rebirth without a Mana Physique. I don't wanna go into all that now, so just accept that that's the way it works for now.

"Now here, this part is what yer askin' me 'bout now. The next wall is at the top of Ascension, which is forty-nine rebirths. When you complete your fiftieth rebirth, ya hit Exalted, which is a whole different kind of knife fight, ya see? Anyway, just like that tenth rebirth into Enlightenment, the fiftieth into Exalted has more requirements than just levels. Ya gotta develop and understand what we call an Ideal before you can become an Exalted. Ya followin' along so far, girlie?"

"Yeah, mostly," she replied with a nod. "You're saying that there's various types of, like, powers or concept you have to either acquire or understand at certain points to keep leveling up. I'm also assuming from what you said earlier that the reason I woke up on fire this morning has something to do with an Ideal?"

"Ya got it right, girlie," he replied, lifting his tankard before frowning at it and setting it back down. He made a handful of bottles appear from nowhere as he continued, "Now, ya don't necessarily need to know too much about Ideals right now, but it can't really hurt. A lot of stuff won't really hurt ya too much, just ain't much use to ya yet."

He mixed the contents of several of the bottles in his tankard as he continued, "Yer a little bit of a special case, though, and that's why ya gotta know a decent bit now. Ya got a little more than I think ya realize from the crystal or knowledge box or whatever that hard-ass Liveria left as part of her Legacy. Not only did ya get that snazzy skill ya already been usin', ya got at least a wisp of her Ideal from it. Now, this could be good or bad, dependin' on yer thinkin', but I don't think it hurts nothin'."

"You mean I have an ideal now because I got a fragment of Liveria's?" she asked him as he paused to drink again.

"Yes and no," he replied. "This is a little tricky to wrap yer head around, but Ideals aren't unique to one person. At the same time, they are unique to each individual. So, what I mean by that is that Liveria had the Ideal of the Silver Flame, a fire that burns and purifies all of creation. Ya also now have a wisp of that Ideal formin', but the real important part of an Ideal is how ya actualize and interpret that power."

"The hell does that mean?" Beth asked, both eyebrows climbing.

"Real simple, girlie," he replied. "The way ya interpret it is different. Liveria might have thought of the Silver Flame as a weapon to strike down her enemies. Ya might think of it as a tool to clean away the impure things out there. Somebody else might have it and attach it to the concept of burnin' away others' negative emotions, cleansin' their negative selves. It's all in the interpretation, both with how ya complete your Ideal, and how ya link yourself, who ya truly are, to the power that an Ideal is. Truth, justice, love, greed, hatred, anger, enlightenment, tranquility, and on and on. Those are the ideals a person holds most dearly, though I'm really oversimplifyin' a lot here, that shape who they are. Linkin' that personal ideal to an external power and fully integrating it all is what an Ideal, capital 'I,' is all about."

"Well, that's a lot to take in, but you're saying I have some kind of external power in me?" she asked in reply.

"Yeah, somethin' like that. The big thing ya got from Liveria that ya can think of as an advantage is a piece of the Silver Flame. That's a kind of power that ya got to get from somewhere else, not like just makin' yer mana into fire mana, ya gotta go eat a non-sapient dragon's heart or some such shit to get access to that power. I mean the 'ya' there in the sense of the royal 'ya,' not ya specifically, girlie. Ya took a shortcut on the whole finding the external power part because of the special opportunity ya got, but understanding both the power and your ideal, little 'I' that time, is still up to ya."

"So, getting from Ascended to Exalted must be pretty easy if you just have to eat a monster part or something to do it," Beth replied as she started tapping her chin.

Baelvyr bellowed out a laugh before replying, "Haha, don't say that to anybody else, they'd skin ya alive. It's a helluva lot more complicated than I made it out to be to get the external power; I said that was a simplified example. Ya gotta get a bunch of ingredients, special mana stones and beast cores, and do a whole damn complex ritual thing just to start to tap into it. And THAT is the easy part of it all."

"What do you mean, that's the easy part?" Beth asked, scrunching her brow as she tapped her chin slightly faster.

"What I mean, girlie, is that the hard part of completing your Ideal is everything else," he replied with a shake of his head. "Ya gotta figure out who ya are, what your deepest beliefs and the most core concepts to yourself are, and then ya gotta link them to that external power. When ya can manifest the external power in a way that can alter reality around ya based on yer ideals and beliefs, that's when ya complete your Ideal. People spend millennia tryin' to do that and wind up failin'. Liveria spent over a millennium at rebirth forty-nine with her external power fully developed before she disappeared. Don't know if she's actually dead or not, but I ain't seen or heard hide nor hair of her in a century at least, so who knows."

"OK, that's a lot more than I initially thought," she replied. "But how do you even go about figuring that out? Like, there has to be some way to get an idea of what your strongest ideal is and how to link that to an external power."

"Yeah, girlie, there is," he responded with a deep chuckle. "It's called 'living life.'"

"That doesn't seem like a great answer," she frowned at him.

"Why do ya think there are thousands, maybe into the low tens of thousands, of Ascended in this galaxy, but only a handful of Exalted?" he answered with a question. "It's because both completin' yer Ideal is crazy tough, and that we're a poor galaxy. But ya ain't gotta worry about all that just yet. Hell, ya ain't even gotta worry about your Ideal yet, just good that ya know what it is and what's happening. Just keep trainin' and fightin' and explorin' and lovin' and hatin' and livin', girlie. You'll get there eventually, I know ya got what it takes."