22 Nia's Perspective #1

Nia followed her mother into the manor slowly, looking around at any trace for a potential monster. She had heard from Shea and Carla that her youngest brother, Louis, was trapped in the manor and they were trying to break him out, but to no avail. She remembered their disappointed faces as they left to school. Calvin had whispered to her after that Louis was trapped in the manor because they learned that she was truly a monster, a bookworm they called him. That was not the impression she got from Louis when she first met him. He had entirely ignored her, which both relieved and disappointed her, but now she had to face him and steal a martial art from his hands. She would be lying if she said she was not the tiny bit excited. It was like those fairy tale adventures in the books her mother always read to her. She was going to be a hero and join her sisters as a martial artist soon

Yet, when she and her mother found Louis, he was holding a fire in one hand and throwing plants into the fire. He was a monster who wanted to destroy nature and she was going to stop him and then steal a martial art from him. She could not leave without the martial art, her mother said. Just as she was about to run into the room to stop him from destroying more plants, her mother picked her up.

"Just watch carefully," Her mother said, putting Nia into her lap. "He is making pills right now, even at such a young age. I don't know whether to call him a genius or a monster."

"A monster." Nia said confidently. "He eats books and worms, so he is trapped here by father."

"Who said that?" Her mother asked, suddenly curious.

"Big brother Calvin and big brother Jack." Nia said. "They called him a bookworm too."

Her mother laughed for a minute, shaking all the while. "A bookworm is not a monster, Nia." Her mother patted her head. "A bookworm is someone who reads a lot of books. Louis has spent a lot of time in the library reading, so some unkind people have been calling him that. Don't listen to Calvin and Jack. They don't know what they are talking about."

"Okay." Nia said, nodding. "Why is he burning up the plants? They plants do nothing wrong."

"It's a little more complicated than that." Her mother said, pausing. "He is making a meal with the plants, like dinner, so he is not destroying them. You like eating dinner right?"

Nia nodded. "So he is making me dinner right now?"

"Not quite for you. You cannot eat them yet, but you will learn about them later." Her mother said.

"Alright," Nia promised.

When Louis put out the fire and came out, her mother stood up and brought Nia to him, placing her down before him.

"Please look after my daughter." Her mother said. "Can I watch as you do?"

"Of course." Louis said. "It would be easier if I only had to explain it once, rather than twice. She will need your and my mother's help as she practices martial arts. Let's go see my mother first."

Louis returned into the room and grabbed a glass container of pills, one out of the many containers. Then he brought them up to the third floor where Nia saw Melissa, the woman who often played the violin with her mother.

Her mother put her onto a black marble slab and Louis grabbed her two hands. She felt something warm enter her hands and was about to pull away, but Louis' grip was too tight. She looked at her mother, but her mother only smiled and patted her head.

"Relax, Nia. I'm done." Louis said. He then looked at her mother. "Alright, I'll explain the first stage of the martial arts technique, Planetarium, and the two main activities that Nia will be doing to get her started.

"Planetarium is a Water-Earth dual element martial arts technique and requires a lot of qi, which Nia has, however it requires a lot of elemental affinity improvement and control on her part. To do so, she will need the clay orb." Louis said, pulling out the clay orb Nia was all too familiar with.

Nia had played with the orb a lot as a baby but stopped using it since it did not help her at all.

"Isn't this the normal clay orb? Why does Nia need it?" Her mother asked, as she grabbed it.

"The shape is the same, but the array within it is of a much higher class. It will help improve her elemental affinity and soul strength. Try to get Nia to play with it as much as she can, but considering her affinity to the water and earth elements, she will find it particularly interesting.

"The second activity," Louis said, moving on instantly. "is a type board game. It is called "Journey to the West", where two players play against each other. Depending on whether it's my mother or Renee playing against Nia, the game changes. Against my mother, Nia will have to bring a few drops of water from the right side of the board, the east side, to the left side of the board, the west side. My mother will try to stop her, while restricting her martial arts to the first level, by using her wind elemental qi to push the droplets of water into the holes scattered throughout the board between the start and finish. Renee will also try to stop Nia when she plays, but since Renee has the earth element, she will change the landscape of the board, adding hills or valleys to push the water droplets into the holes on the bottom (south) side and the top (north) side. Nia can use her water qi to increase the number of water droplets she has at her disposal as well as manipulate the terrain to help her reach her goal. As long as a single water droplet reaches the goal, she wins. Does this game make sense?"

"It makes enough sense, but how does it help?" Her mother asked.

"It will make her think about how to win and make her much more familiar with actually controlling the water and earth qi, unlike the orb which only strengthens her soul and affinity but gives her no actual experience or practice." Louis said.

Nia quietly as the three of them talked, having no idea what they had said. Although most of the words were familiar, their arrangement and meanings made no sense whatsoever. So she sat down and played with the orb her mother put in her hands. She poured her qi into it like she did with her own orb. Instantly, it felt like her soul was pulled into the orb. She was not sitting on her mother's lap anymore. Instead, she was floating in a world of water and earth elemental qi. It was like blue and brown fireflies spiraled around her, slowing pulling closer to her bit by bit. As the water elemental qi passed through her body, she felt her body become colder, as if a bucket of icy water was poured onto her. She felt her soul became slightly light and stronger, the water elemental qi became more tangible, though only for an instant before it disappeared. She tried grabbing it, but, like catching a falling leaf, the orbs simply moved just out of reach before continuing its path away from her.

The earth elemental qi passed through her body warmed her body like basking in the sun. She felt that the earth elemental qi became brighter, clearer, as if there was something within each orb of light, waiting to be seen if only she could open her eyes and see properly. Nia squinted and drew closer to the orbs to no avail, so could not make anything out within the orbs. She shook her head as she looked around, what she saw earlier must have been an illusion.

It seemed like she was standing within a giant blue-and-brown cone that got increasingly narrow as she went up. Faster and faster she went and faster the orbs passed through her body in an unending cycle of coldness and warmness that she could not seem to quite get used to despite the thousands upon thousands of orbs that passed through her body.

At the peak of the cone, the cone and the orbs spiralling around her disappeared. Two giant orbs, one blue and one brown, were forming off into the distance. The orbs gotten bigger as more orbs continued to gather. After the two orbs reached a size too big for her to fathom, they began to disintegrate. At the bottom of the blue orb, water starting dropping, first by drops, then pouring out of a bucket, yet the orb never seemed to decrease in size. Dirt and earth was dropping from the brown orb, first by a speck of dust each time, then by handfuls until the amount of dirt and earth falling seemed to eclipse the amount of land she had ever seen. Eventually, however, the two orbs grew smaller and smaller, disappearing from where they came. Below, the earth and water intertwined, forming her home and the canal beside it.

Nia ran to it, but it seemed too far into the distance. Although it had the shape of her house, it lacked the color, being only brown and blue before falling onto itself and disappearing. Once she reached it, she grabbed not earth and water but the earth and water orbs of qi that quickly escaped her grasp.

When Nia finally opened her eyes, she was laying in bed as her mother was turning off the lamp. Her mother snuggled in with her and said good night, gently hugging her. Nia did not understand what was happening, but a wave of exhaustion overcame her as she closed her eyes, dead asleep.