CHAPTER 18

  Ten days later.

  My stomach spasmed and almost collapsed in on itself the second the ice water hit my waist.

  Every nerve in my skin screamed, and my chest locked up. My lungs, once again, forgot what breathing was. For a heartbeat, I thought I would die in six feet of nearly frozen water.

  Focus and breathe. You’ve done this yesterday, and the days before. Your body has endured this and worse.

  Fern’s voice pressed into me, like a hand between my shoulder blades pushing me forward. I couldn’t answer him with my jaw clenched and the cold piercing my temples, but I listened.

  The water-clogged breathing reed they jammed into my nostrils just barely broke the surface. I forced a blast of air through it to clear the channel, and when the water was gone; I inhaled deeply through my nose, and my lungs thanked me.

  Okay, good. Now, six counts in, twelve out, Fern said.

  I pulled a shaky sliver of air through the reed, filling my lungs. The cold made my ribs feel brittle, and it took everything within me not to cough. After six counts, I exhaled for twelve, fighting the urge to inhale again.

  This was the deep end of Breath training. Or so Leace said.

  But we did not start here.

  Nine days ago, Guru Kale had each squad split up with a ‘Head Crier’ to train the fundamentals of Breath. He assigned Nanda, Raine, and me to a woman named Leace, who introduced us to her own version of hell.

  SMACK.

  I breached through the surface, shivering from the ice plunge, and rubbed my head where I had just been hit.

  “Why is your breath so shaky, Erik? I told you that a steady breath is mandatory. If you don’t have a steady breath, you can’t use any of the techniques!” She snapped her whipping cane towards the crystal tied at my throat, flickering red.

  The Head Crier in charge of our group had tanned skin, short, spiky black hair, and calculating brown eyes that never stopped looking for the slightest mistake. Her cane was an extension of her arm, and she swung it with calculating precision whenever any of us messed up.

  “Fuck,” I muttered. “Yes, Head Crier. Apologi—”

  SMACK.

  “No apologies,” she said. “Do it right.”

  We were in a large underground training chamber connected via tunnels to the main central room. Along the outer walls, a long oval running track, about two hundred meters long, circled us. The room was lit by small hanging yellow crystals, and a cool, windy breeze came through man-made wind vents carved into the walls.

  After hours of underwater conditioning, we were now running suicides followed by more breath control. Nanda and I knelt side by side at one end, both of us shirtless, our backs nursing throbbing from red welts courtesy of Leace’s cane. Raine knelt on my other side, hair tied back, and shoulders heaving. She wore a tight training wrap around her torso, and minor red marks peeked out from under it. Leace did not discriminate.

  “Again,” Leace shouted, pointing with the cane. “There and back. Then, drop and breathe.”

  We sprinted. Two hundred yards there and two hundred back. We could not use our infusion forms. Leace thought it was cheating. She wanted us to condition our natural body from the ground up, which made sense. The training was all very intensive, and I could feel progress, but that didn’t make her methods any less violent.

  We all ran back to Leace at the same time and slid into a position that kept our spine straight.

  “One, two,” Leace began counting. We had 30 seconds to bring our heart rates down to the range she wanted. “Three…”

  I flipped my palms toward the ceiling and let all the air in my lungs hiss out through my nose. I focused on my breath first, making sure I counted every breath in exact time, beat by beat. Inhaling for three, and exhaling for six. All of this while only nose breathing. Apparently, that gave us the most control, according to the Head Crier.

  “Sixteen, seventeen…”

  When I got into a smooth rhythm, I focused on the formation of energy at the base of my spine. I clenched my perineum on every inhale and felt my muscles contract, creating the space for energy to grow. As I continued to inhale and my muscles remained flexed, I visualized energy being pulled up my back, vertebra by vertebra. When I exhaled, I held the energy where it was on my spine and relaxed my muscles, until I inhaled again and continued dragging the energy up, until it reached the base of my skull. I maintained my breathing, concentrating on directing energy above and around my head, focusing it on a single point between my eyebrows. Closing my eyes, I imagined a white dot in the black, where I guided energy into. I was close to reaching the equilibrium the Head Crier sought.

  “Twenty-nine, thirty.” Leace finished and moved down the line as we kept breathing. Her attention was most likely on the training crystals at our throats. Each one glowed faintly, colors shifting from red to green depending on how close you were to reaching coherence.

  We are about to do it! Fern said, interrupting my counting.

  Shh, I am trying to—

  SMACK.

  Pain exploded across my back; my breath shattered. I lost focus and I fell forward, gasping.

  “Erik,” Leace barked. “You were close. Why did you stop? Did you get distracted again? You will never develop true Breath if you cannot stay focused.”

  I grunted and pushed myself back up onto my knees and looked sideways at my companions. Nanda sat perfectly still, with palms stacked on top of each other, and eyes half-lidded, looking like a painting of a monk. Raine was also a statue. She had clasped her hands together, with her left thumb pointing up, and her necklace, like Nanda’s, glowed green.

  “This is bullshit,” I muttered.

  “What was that?” the Head Crier said, leaning over my shoulder. “Complaining about my methods?”

  Her tone shifted back into Leace’s usual mocking drawl. “In case Guru Kael did not explain this to you, we are up against actual demigods. Demigods, we have fought for centuries. Demigods we have lost to, and died to, until only a handful of Criers remained. No one joins us anymore. They think our cause is hopeless.” She narrowed her eyes. “So excuse me if I demand nothing but excellence from you, so you do not get yourself or my Criers killed. We have so few as it is. And now, thanks to this damned prophecy that Kael and the other ‘believers’ keep pushing, we are forced to rely on you.”

  I pushed myself upright and shook my head. “No, ma’am. I do not have a problem with your methods. It is the process. I can’t grasp it. I spent almost two months, hours every day, meditating to reach my Third Form. But this concentration…it is different.”

  “Heart rate, breath, and energy,” Leace said. “You are right. It is not the same. You Cinders only focus on compressing emotion into your hearts. Here we use all three. Breath demands more if you want to unlock its true potential. Tell me now what you must do.”

  “I already know. You have explained it.”

  “Explain it to me again so I know you know.” Leace crossed her arms and stared me down. Beside me, my companions still sat perfectly still, crystals at their throats glowing a soft green.

  I sighed. “With Breath, you slow your blood flow as much as possible. Keep your inhales and exhales steady. Inhale for half the count of your exhale. With each breath, you also build energy at the base of your spine and visualize pulling it up each vertebra, wrapping it over the top of your skull, and into the point between your eyebrows. The Kutasha.”

  “And do you know where you keep losing focus?” Leace asked.

  “The Kutasha,” I said. “The point between the eyebrows. I know.”

  Leace frowned. “If you know, then go back to the wall and practice your stare for another thirty minutes. You are too distracted. Fix it.” She glanced at Raine and Nanda. Their crystals glowed with that constant green flow. “Once you are like them, we can move on.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  I groaned under my breath as I pushed myself up. “I do not know what to fix.”

  “Yes you do. You need silence. Your ability to grasp things twice as fast as others makes you lean too hard on the twin-soul,” she said. “That is why you are failing the focus part. Your mind has to be clear of him.” She said with a stern gaze. Leace implied that Fern was distracting me, which, I guess, was the case when I thought about it.

  I brushed sandstone dust from my pants and walked to the wall. Leace had painted an X on the floor for the Kutasha gaze drills. Nanda and Raine were already experts at it.

  In front of the X, a tiny white star was painted just above eye level when you sat. Kutasha gazing meant sitting perfectly still, angling your gaze up at the star, then closing your eyes while still staring at the same point behind your eyelids. The Criers claimed that anyone who performed the four requirements correctly could learn true Breath. But unless you knew the exact steps and had the training, one would never know about this hidden power within all of us. That promise of a new kind of strength was enough to make all of us endure Leace’s training.

  Achieving the base requirements for Breath meant four things.

  First was the breathing itself. The timing had to be exact. One count late or early, and the whole thing resets.

  Second was the clench. Leace called it that. On Earth, I would have called it a Kegel. It felt stupid and uncomfortable, but when I did it in rhythm with my breath, I could feel pressure form, like drawing a bowstring.

  Third was the visualization. On each inhale, I pictured a light rising from that clenched point, dragging itself up my spine like a burning fuse towards the base of my skull. From there, I pulled the energy forward over my skull and set it in the Kutasha between my eyebrows. When I got it right, the back of my neck tingled as if the light really was crawling through my body.

  Fourth was putting it all together and repeating it the same way every time. If done correctly, the body would be ready to activate different Breath abilities. At least, that was what the Criers said.

  Any slip, and I had to start over. The whole purpose of these twenty days was to make that state second nature.

  SMACK.

  “Ah!” Nanda groaned as the cane struck him.

  “You lost focus,” Leace said. “Did you feel your eye twitch while staring at the Kutasha?”

  “Yes, Sister Leace,” Nanda answered.

  Leace grumbled. “Enough with the ‘Sister’ stuff. I know it is your culture, but here you call me Head Crier, or Crier Leace, or Head Crier Leace.”

  “But, it is a form of respect in Vecla—”

  SMACK.

  “I said what I said. I do not care where you came from. I care that you came here into our city and brought a whole feast of powerful souls for the Siblings to devour. Now we sit on a death clock before they become unbeatable.”

  “…yes, Head Crier,” Nanda said.

  “Good. Now, get up and rerun it.”

  He stood, sprinted, and slid back into his lotus. Raine held her position, her crystal keeping its steady glow, and I returned to my Kutasha training, while telling Fern to be quiet.

  By the end of the twelfth day, we all achieved perfect coherence, and my body somehow clicked into that state naturally, as if I had been doing it for years.

  In three. Clench. Light starts. Out six. Light climbs. In three. Light travels and sets in the Kutasha. Out six. Repeat.

  My perception of the room fell away. The smell of charcoal and sweat vanished, and my world shrunk into only the black space in my mind. As I dragged the light up my spine, I felt the power to have complete control of my body. My heart was a drum I could muffle and slow at will. My veins became channels I could manipulate to control the speed of blood. The light that crawled to the base of my skull from my spine settled between my eyes, and the painted star burned itself in the darkness like a blooming silver flower.

  “Alright, you three,” Leace said, pacing in front of us. “That’s enough.” I opened my eyes and saw her smiling. The Criers around the room watching, all wore masks, but they were clapping softly and whispering to eachother, their pleased reactions to eachother.

  Leace continued. “Good job. I know I was harsh on you, but you’ve already done in twelve days what takes most, several months.”

  I looked over and smiled at Nanda who returned a grin and Raine nodded, holding down the corners of her lips from curving upwards too much.

  “How did you know we would be able to do it that quickly given the time limit we have?” Raine asked.

  “Kael figured that since you all have the ability to transform, it would give you an advantage to picking up the technique than someone with zero training.”

  Like when an athelte of one sport tries out another and is able to learn it quickly. I thought to Fern.

  I wonder how the others, who haven’t been able to transform to their Third Form yet are doing. He wondered.

  “We have seven days left before we move to on to the next phase,” Leace said.

  “And then we go to the Third Tier?” I asked.

  Leace shook her head. “First we have a small mission, but you need to achieve the first Breath technique to do so,” she said looking off into the distance, and for a moment I thought I saw a flash of worry on her face.

  Leace looked over to the three of the masked Criers who have been watching us train, and waved to them. “Clover, Alexia, Sammi, go get the things needed for the baths.” The three masked women left the room with a bow and a nod each.

  Raine was stretching her legs out, after sitting still for hours all of our limbs were tender. She cocked her head. “Are we going to learn the techniques yet?”

  “We are cramming years of Breath training into days,” Leace said shaking her head. “You’ve set the stage for your body to begin to accept the techniques, but you still need time to develop a kind of tolerance to keep that state while you are moving, or fighting. Normaly, this would take years, of dedicated meditation and training drills. However, after years of research, the Guru who lives on the Third Tier, found a way to fast track it.”

  “What is the technique?”

  She walked to the far side of the room and grabbed a tarp that covered a long trough of water. When she pulled it back, the brackish surface rippled.

  She moved to a second tarp and pulled, revealing another pool of dark water. The three masked Criers who had left came back with two chests. They opened one, and smoke rolled out. One by one, they dumped red-hot coals into the first trough. The water hissed and gurgled as the coals sank, sending up thick white steam.

  The other chest full of ice. They hauled it to the second trough, the one I had trained in days before, and dumped the chunks out. The water, already nearly frozen, churned as the ice hit, then a thin layeer of ice formed across the surface.

  Leace saw us eyeing the water suspicously and smiled. “The clear water up above is the one you should be weary of. But this water is safe from Nerida. You’ve already been in the cold one. Do not worry.”

  “The Sibling who rules this floor, what else do we need to know?” Raine said.

  “The queen of Tier Two,” Leace said. “She is a perfectionist. Values uniformity and purity more than anything. If any living thing falls into her precious pools other than her prized rainbow fish, she appears in the water and tears that disturbance into pieces. Like a rabid, flesh-eating seamonster.”

  “Now, enough about that. One of you in the hot bath, one of you the ice bath, and the third keeps practicing on dry land.”

  She pointed. Raine was already walking toward the steaming trough, and Nanda gave me a look that said, I need a break, before he sat back into lotus position.

  Which left the ice bath to me.

  “Great,” I muttered, moving toward the cold pool. I already hated getting into the plunge when I was practicing just keeping my breath steady. But now I had to do the whole sequence, and not lose focus.

  “Erik, Raine,” Leace said, following us. “The goal is to put your bodies under extreme stress while maintaining the Breath coherence state. You will expose every inch of your skin to scalding heat and freezing cold. Do not panic, and remember your training.”

  Leace handed us our breathing reeds, which I hooked into my nostrils.

  I looked back down at the cold trough. The surface was black, dotted with floating chunks of ice. My legs started to shake at the mere thought of the cold.

  Behind me, Raine screamed.

  “Shit,” she yelled.

  I spun. She was thrashing in the steaming trough, trying to haul herself back up by the edge.

  “Get used to it, girly,” Leace said, pressing her boot on Raine’s fingers. “This is nothing compared to what the Siblings will do if they catch you and you have no Breath.”

  Raine bit down on her lip so hard I thought she would draw blood, and with a guttural growl, she forced herself to let go and submerged completely.

  Leace turned back to me and cocked her head.

  This woman is a fucking psycho, I said to Fern.

  I am very glad I cannot feel the cold or heat, Fern answered.

  “Well?” Leace said, taking a step toward me.

  My legs wanted to bolt. Fern felt the hesitation and pushed me forward.

  Three, two, one. Now, he said.

  I jumped.

  The cold was like a solid wall hitting me. It punched the air out of my lungs and wrapped its fingers around my heart. For a moment, everything in me screamed to get out. But, like Raine, I bit my lip and submerged.

  I let myself sink until my knees hit the bottom. I forced the clogged reed above the surface and blasted a sharp breath through it, clearing water from it.

  Six in, twelve out, Fern counted with me.

  I inhaled, and it burned. I exhaled, and my lungs shook desperately wanting to cough, but I held on, and my breath began to steady. I clenched my perineum and imagined the light pooling at the base of my spine. Then I tugged the light up vertebra by vertebra.

  The awareness of my body sharpened until I could feel each beat of my heart like a drum in my palm. I grabbed the rhythm of it and urged it to slow down. Each exhale stretched the space between heartbeats. The cold stopped feeling like knives and the sensation drifted from me. My skin went numb.

  The light reached the base of my skull, then poured forward between my eyes. A painted star’s afterimage formed in the dark and turned into a silver point of light floating between my eyebrows.

  Fern remained silent for my concentration.

  I repeated the process and felt my body enter into coherence. I floated underwater, beathing in slow for ten minutes. The crystal at my throat glowed a bright and steady green, and when I felt a tap on my shoulder from Leace’s cane, I broke the surface.

  Leace stood over me, grinning like she was standing over a hanged man. Her gaze was locked on the glowing crystal at my throat.

  “Good,” she said. “Very good. You may have eased my doubts even more. Now do the same in the hot trough.” Her smile widened. “Then I get to have some fun with your spine.”

  A low laugh rolled out of her.

  What the hell does she mean by that? I wondered.

  Who knows, she really gives off a psychotic impression, Fern said. Also, good job. You got there faster than I expected.

  Thanks, it’s becoming second nature to me.

  I wiped water from my face and looked over to the other side. Raine was crawling out of the steaming trough, skin flushed red, and hair sticking to her cheeks. Her crystal glowed green as well. She met my eyes and gave me a short nod.

  I felt Fern light up inside me like someone had poured liquid fire into our veins.

  That is the first time she has looked at us without wanting to stab us, I thought. Maybe she likes you. I teased.

  I…I, uh… yes, Fern stammered then his voice lowered. She doesn’t even know me that well though. How can she when I’m stuck in here.

  I snorted and shook my head. Oh calm down, one day youll get your body back and can talk to her.

  She jerked a thumb toward the steaming water behind her as we walked past each other. “Good luck with that one.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and turned toward the hot trough, and took a deep breath before jumping into the hot water.