Doubt and Conviction

Lyra did not return to her father's home last night, much like Kantan had stood her up to explore the cave she had found. Her self esteem had waned along with the evening sun until she finally grew hungry and frustrated enough to give up on waiting for him. It wasn't like him to go against his word, but his grandfather had also been persistent in their training recently. The more she thought about it the more she chalked it up to spontaneous training by his grandfather. She had received many praise from both her teacher and her sparing partners over the past week, which is the only reason she was not continuing to practice herself.

She had seen Bamor pass through the northern gate while she waited with what looked like a sack of grain over his shoulder, giving her an unsettling smile. He hadn't spoken to her as he passed, merely leered as he walked past the guards.

This led her to leave earlier than she had originally planned to wait to ensure that she wasn't there when Bamor returned from whatever he was doing. Already scenarios were passing through her mind of how it could go wrong, so she retired to the inn she stayed at while her and her father fought. It wasn't a long distance from her house, allowing her to stop and gather clothes on a regular basis. The inn keeper was a family friend, having served with her father in the past as part of the border force.

Tiel, the inn-keep, had gotten hurt in a clan skirmish between their eastern neighbors the Baroli. The Baroli were actually centered in the mountains north east of the clan's primary town, but they controlled a significant portion of the land south of the eastern mountain range. Given their elevation, and the lightning dungeon that they controlled in the mountains, they primarily fielded Soul Warriors with the lightning aspect.

The inn keeper had lost control of his left leg after a particularly dangerous attack that had destroyed both his nerves and chi channels in the area. The resources needed to fix the physical damage were extensive, and the clan would not restore the damage based on his military rank. Her father had pulled the wounded man out of the line of fire, often quoting that moment and claiming himself a hero because of it. Tiel had offered to help her family in their times of need should they ever arise since her father had saved him.

Lyra had called upon the man to give her a place to stay for a short while in order to give her father space. Tiel had set her up in one of his best rooms despite her protesting for something more modest, only his warm and happy demeanor prevented her competitive side from demanding her way. She tried to pay him what she could, but he had turned her down on that front as well, only making her more sure that she would find a way to pay him back for his kindness.

Once she had returned to the inn she picked up some food to sate her grumbling stomach, and retired to her room. Frustration swelled inside of her at being stood up by Kantan, and she fell back onto the comfortable bed with a huff. It wasn't like him to fall back on something he said, making her worry about him potentially sliding back to his old ways. Memories of his fighting and lashing out at people returned to the surface of her mind as a pit formed in her stomach.

Those days had been hard on him, the deaths of his parents sending him spiraling into bouts of anger. She had hated seeing him get punished for not knowing how to cope with the loss, people pushing him farther and farther away. The distanced and anxious looks of the people around him only caused him more distress, and their friendship strained under the weight of his pain. Finally she had confronted him about they way he was acting, and the memory of his shell cracking was enough to bring mist to her eyes.

Lyra leaned back onto the bed properly and her eyes came to rest on the ceiling above her. "I hope he is handling the stress of the trial alright, his grandfather is probably trying to keep him occupied with training so he can't get into his own head." Everyone she knew that was taking the test was scared, even the ones who boasted about their strength and combat prowess. She could see it in their faraway stares during the lulls in conversation, or the darkened expressions when the trial was brought up. Fighting demons was a terrifying concept, even to her. Normal cultivators that were outside of the clan had incredibly hard times fighting demons, their bodies less resistant to the demonic essence that their attacks inflicted. The Astaire clan had, through generations of exposure, developed a resistance to the energy.

Instead of festering and spreading through out their systems wreaking all kinds of havoc, their bodies would contain the problematic essence and slowly filter it out. It would give an Astaire a heavy burning effect in the area surrounding the wound, but it wouldn't kill them if they took a simple blow. If their neighbors encountered a demon, the energy of a single attack could hurt even a stone soul warrior with their reinforced bodies. She shivered at the thought of the essence's vile nature. It didn't attack the body directly, but instead it infected a person's chi channels. Demonic chi attacked the other essences equally, instead of having a diametrically opposed element like fire and water.

Remembering that the trial was first thing the next morning, she went about her nightly routine. She utilized the communal bathing facilities to clean herself up, and returned to her room to perform her breathing technique. Her teacher's had stressed the importance of actively imagining the flow of chi throughout the body, even if one could not actively control it. It was commonly believed that doing the breathing exercises would change the flow of even an unawoken's internal chi over time. The elders believed that it was a person's soul trying to conform to their will on a subconscious level.

Lyra honestly found it exceptionally boring, but it irked her to half-ass things in any manner. Even though it wasn't fun, if it would give her another edge in her awakening she would practice it diligently. She sat for around an hour or so, mentally picturing the inside of her body filled with a pure white energy. It would be pulled from a place just beneath her sternum, and begin to move out and toward her left arm.

The theory of why one must move it throughout the body was so that the body naturally collected essence when it could. By moving one's chi through their channels it would attract the essence that had accumulated through a person's acupressure points and pores. Then it would need to be passed through the various meridians within the various body parts, which would filter the energy toward your aspect. After traveling through all of your meridians for a few cycles you would secrete the impurities or incorrect aspects out and collect the remaining essence in your core.

As an unawoken she had never secreted anything, which confirmed that not much was going on as far as she could tell. It irked her to have practiced this most of her life and never seen proof of its effectiveness, but she also tried to keep in mind that it was not necessarily to make her actively cultivate new chi. Practicing this was mainly to get her mind used to the concept of manipulating her own chi, so that she would not have to practice and struggle as much to begin her ascension toward the stone rank.

Once she had completed her cultivation practice, Lyra retired to bed and and thought about the next day. The trial ceremony would start at the second bell, and would run until sundown. If a person did not return by then, they were considered to have perished. The dungeon actively challenges a person during their trial, trying to awaken their core. If someone could not finish the first floor after awakening their core, than the clan felt no loss when they did not return.

For those that failed to awaken their core in the dungeon, they would be relegated to standard citizens. This removed their right to free education and training, which would limit one's ability to awaken in the future. The Astaire clan was incredibly strict on this, with the common mentality being once weak, always weak. Lyra felt the chemical aggression begin to writhe in the back of her head when she thought of how the clan treated the citizens who could not contribute as warriors. She had thought often about what she could do to change it, but without power she was a nobody. A shine appeared in the back of her eyes, and the determination she usually carried squashed the anger and replaced it with a divine focus.

"If I can't change things right now, then I just have to grow stronger until I can." With those words, she closed her eyes and fell asleep.