[The Twining] 8. The Nature of Divinity (Patreon)

Isen crouched in the darkness, a bone spear clutched firmly in his hands. Both eyes could see in the mist now, a side effect of tempering with the blood of the bear monster. Free of impurities, his right eye still looked normal, though Isen thought his ability to perceive the mist with it was slightly worse.

Both eyes saw far better than a year ago, when he’d first entered the depths. He could see as well as if the chasms and tunnels were lit, though as he’d come to learn, the mist didn’t reveal everything. Some monsters even manipulated the mist to conceal themselves.

Isen wasn’t that good at it yet, though he practiced constantly in the hopes that it would become second nature. According to Ros, size was a factor—it was a lot easier to conceal a human than a towering monster. He had the distinct advantage that humans stayed small even as they progressed through the tiers.

With the mist partially obscuring his outline, Isen slunk forward on bare feet. His quarry was in sight—a gangly monster with jagged fangs and curved claws. It was a pack alpha for the wolfish species of monster that had lunged at him when the pill maniac called down calamity.

He remembered Ros’s lesson on hunting the creatures. They prowl chasing sight, sound, and above all, scent. Blunt their noses first, then strike from concealment.

Until his recent body tempering breakthrough, he hadn’t been confident enough to hunt the wolven monsters. Now he was finally at the peak of the first tier, and that came with certain advantages. His skin didn’t really sweat anymore, which was convenient, and the oil that had started to become an annoyance over the last few months had evaporated, leaving him with skin that was smooth and silky.

Ros had told him that most monsters stop emitting scents after reaching the bottleneck of the first tier. Isen thought the same was true for himself and he’d decided to hunt the wolven pack as a test. It was going better than he’d expected. That the pack hunted by scent was a testament to their weakness—they only sought lesser first tier prey.

Staring at the alpha after already picking off the rest of the pack, who were all between the middle and higher end of the hollow formation stage, Isen wondered why he’d ever thought these monsters were so tough. They had terrified him on the surface when they’d snapped at his feet, hungering for flesh. He didn’t blame himself for being afraid then—he’d known nothing of monsters and cultivation.

The real question was why humans were so weak when they had a resource like the Twining. The soldiers were clearly strong enough to fight off the beasts that escaped, but normal people were just… normal. There weren’t golden pools of power on the surface, nor were there abundant monsters in civilized territories for people to hunt, but Ros promised him that the ambient energy existed on the surface, too—people just couldn’t see it, and it was weaker in most places.

Sometimes he imagined a different Dawnblade where the people had their own power and could defend themselves from tears in the Twining, where farmers had the strength to plow fields themselves, without needing bulls or other beasts of burden.

Isen shook his head, renewed his focus, then crept forward, partially concealed by the mist. The alpha spun, sensing that something was amiss, but Isen ducked to the side and caught the monster in the chest, spearing it through. The spear was carved from the divine bear’s bones and was exceptionally light and strong. It was a gift from Ros.

As the monster’s blood gushed out, Isen withdrew the spear, then plunged it through the monster’s skull.

The way back was uneventful.

“How was it?” Ros asked, the vulpine beast waiting for him at the sanctum entrance.

“It was just as you said—they couldn’t smell me, at least not well enough to find me before I killed them.”

“It’s time for you to advance,” the beast said.

“I know… but… I’m not sure.” He waved a hand at the shelves of books. “These are all useless to me—and if everything you’ve said is true, I only get one chance to establish the foundation I’ll build upon in the second tier.”

“Isen,” the beast said, walking forward and pressing its massive forehead to the boy’s body, “I’ve done you a disservice by stressing the risks. I didn’t want you to leap ahead too quickly.”

Isen groaned. “To run before walking.”

“Yes. But you’ve always progressed at just the right pace with minimal guidance.” It shifted its face to the side so that one large eye was visible. Isen raised his hand and rubbed it along the beast’s nose without thinking. “Isen… that sixth sense of yours, do you know what it is?”

He revealed no outward reaction, his hand’s motions steady. “Do you?”

“No.”

“Then why did you trust me to guide you when we met?”

“I thought you were a seeker,” the beast admitted. “Someone who can always find their way. To be blunt, I thought I could train you, like a useful pet.”

Isen blinked. “I’ve never heard of seekers.”

“They’re rare—born, not made. But you aren’t a seeker.”

“Isn’t that a bad thing?”

“Not in your case. Whatever your innate power, it’s a gift—and unlike the blessing of a seeker, it’s one more useful for yourself than others. Seekers are highly sought after because they can find their way to whatever they want. Any destination. Any item. Limited only by their knowledge of what they seek and their ability to get there.”

Isen’s eyes widened. That sounded incredibly powerful. No wonder Ros had picked him up.

“Yeah, definitely not a seeker,” Isen admitted. “But I see your point about that being a good thing. A power like that is too useful. Dangerously useful.” He could think of endless uses for a seeker’s ability and he was a poorly educated teen. Someone with real education and power would never let a seeker escape their grasp.

I’ll need to be careful that nobody mistakes me for one when I return to the surface, Isen thought.

“Your gift has allowed you to proceed through the first tier without bottlenecks, never slowing.”

“You say that like it’s supposed to be hard. I thought you said the hollow formation stage was the easiest?”

“It is. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, and that it doesn’t take time.”

Isen still hesitated. “I know you said breaking through the tiers is different for monsters, but what is it like in your experience?”

Ros seemed to hesitate, but finally said, “Monsters typically enter what is called the beast dream. It is within the dream that we define who we will become.”

Isen knew that advancement was ultimately a tripart exercise. Within a tier, your goal was to nourish the physical body and metaphysical core. But along the way, you were also tempering the spirit. Gaining experiences, accumulating wisdom, condensing insights. Spirit didn’t have a concrete bearing on the strength someone wielded within their tier, but it was a critical component in reaching the next.

It sounded like, for monsters, all those experiential accumulations fed into their beast dream. Isen supposed it made sense—most beasts, especially at lower tiers, were unintelligent, relying on instinct. But they still experienced the world.

“Everything we have seen and experienced shapes the dream. It is the culmination of our triumphs and failures—more specifically, what we’ve learned from them. The dream shows us many paths, and we must choose the one that suits us best. Choose wrong, and your advancement may deviate. Your foundation may even crack. It is dangerous.”

“But with risk comes opportunity,” Isen said, chewing on the new information.

“I have heard that in humans, the experience is less about all the ways you could evolve yourself, and more about understanding who you truly are.”

The image of sculpting came to mind. Those who worked clay added components, building up a creation from nothing. In contrast, stone sculptors chiseled away at a block of potential to reveal the creation hiding within.

“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea, after all,” Isen said. “I would have no idea how to answer that question. I’m just... me.” He felt like a rough block of slate, brittle and plain.

Ros growled in frustration. “Just advance, gods! You’ll be fine.”

Isen recoiled and held up both arms. “Fine.” He grabbed the bone spear from his back, set it against the wall, and removed his ruined shirt—still his original one. He was happy with how it had held up, even if it was two sizes too small. He used to wear hide armor, but the stuff was disgusting—Isen didn’t know a good way to cure skins. The protection it offered was only mediocre, anyway, sourced from lesser monsters. He’d tried wearing sections of the divine bear’s skin, but it was far thicker and heavier than even plate armor. It drastically impeded his agility.

Unfortunately, his pants hadn’t survived a year of trials, so he’d been forced to assemble a kilt from a torn bed sheet. The sanctum had a bedroom, but only one spare set of linens. He didn’t know how long he’d be stuck in the depths, and while the water never ran dry, the torn linen never repaired itself. In this place, the cloth was priceless.

When he’d undressed completely, Isen made his way to the bathroom. Advancing was messy. Based on the disgusting filth Isen’s body had expelled at each minor breakthrough, he was quite certain advancing to the second tier in the large washbasin was the right call.

His mind didn’t seem to understand yet what he was doing, which was probably best. If he’d planned this moment more, he knew he'd be second guessing himself, his body buzzing with nervous energy.

Instead, as he lay in the basin, he felt perfectly calm. His rough-cut hair draped on the lip of the tub as he closed his eyes, meditating and cycling the mist through his nose. Not in a particularly deliberate way—just because it was now as natural to him as breathing.

He turned on the water—slowly. There was an art to adjusting the knobs. The water poured from on high, but Isen was on the opposite side from the shower, the hot rain falling only on his legs and torso. He pressed against the drain hole with his foot, blocking the water from draining—for now.

As the tub filled up, he let his mind drift, bringing himself to the peak of relaxation.

He just… knew it was the right way to do this. To advance.

As the water flowed around him, Isen thought of himself floating in the world, the mist—drifting in the emptiness between all space.

I’m supposed to think about who I am, Isen mused. Maybe I should start with who—or what—I am not. He grasped at the most extreme example. I am not a god.

He paused.

But... maybe I will be. So, what does it mean to be part divine? He’d only seen two divine things in his life—the tribulation lightning and the sanctum bear. The only thing people worshiped in Goldbounty was money. While Ros assured him that things were different in other human settlements, Isen didn’t know why that would be. If gods were just powerful cultivators, why would anyone worship them? Did they need worship? Certainly not.

Does a god even need anything at all? His mind buzzed. He was in a state of complete disembodiment, only half conscious, his foot absently plugging and releasing the drain to keep the washbasin’s liquid at just the right level.

No. A god…  isn’t reliant on anything. A god needs nothing, nothing but a place to exist. A god at the peak of advancement, beyond anything Ros had ever told him… they wouldn’t need to cycle energy to survive. They would be beyond thirst and hunger.

But nothing he knew about gods felt particularly meaningful. He simply didn’t know enough about what they were, aside from the obvious. But what did it matter? If he walked long enough on the road of cultivation, he’d become divine himself.

Instead of focusing on gods in the abstract, he considered what it might mean, for him, to approach a divine standard. How would he get there?

The depths were a godless place, but in many ways… they were safe. After a certain point, they couldn’t sustain advancement. To Isen, safe seemed a very relative term. But the more time he spent with Ros, the more he understood. Ros couldn’t advance in this place. Even if he gorged himself on lesser monsters for extra energy or cycled every single second of the day. He just… couldn’t. He was stuck.

He needed something more. He needed challenge, conflict. He needed… tempest.

The nature of divinity… is a tempest. And a god is the eye of the storm, watching, distant. What is its purpose?

Suddenly, he understood. A god was powerful. A god was untouchable. A god didn’t need anything.

That didn’t mean gods didn’t want.

He could feel something happening within him. A shift. But he ignored it, completely lost in his musings. He didn’t like the idea of being a distant divinity, even if he could see everything from afar. He yearned for adventure, to see the open world and explore its every corner.

For me, perhaps divinity is the opportunity to explore forever.

The buzzing in his head intensified. Opportunity. It was an idea that resonated with him.

Or rather... The path to divinity is a steady exchange of dangers for opportunities.

The image of a tree suddenly came to mind. Normal people were the roots, scattered and diverse in their paths. Cultivation was the trunk, the path that normal people could embark on. It was different for everyone, but followed a standard.

The trunk eventually gave way to branches. Shaped by the seasons, swaying with the passage of time but weathering the vicissitudes. But connected to the roots and the trunk—building on earlier growth. They grew glossy leaves that shined in the sun, each opportunity stemming from the divine branch.

Or maybe it’s not that the roots are people, but the dangers and struggles that shape us, Isen realized. And as a cultivator advances, they grow further away from those mortal struggles, but can never escape them. A tree without its trunk is timber.

Isen suddenly realized he was missing a component of the nature of the divine. He recalled Ros biting into the neck of the bear, though reimagined the scene in color. A geyser of gold blood washed over everything.

The gods were untouchable… to most. But not to each other.

An intense pain washed over his body, like the water was boiling him alive. He tried to reach for the knob controlling the water, but he couldn’t move.

It wasn’t that the gods simply wanted to grow, to see the world, to learn and accumulate power. They had no other choice. They could kill each other and grow stronger. Trees in a forest fought for light, good soil, and water. They competed to grow. It was simply the way of cultivation—the way of the world.

He’d been so naive in his thinking. He’d fancied himself as a wandering mage, going from town to town, helping where he could and doling out wisdom. Maybe he could still aspire to something like that, but it couldn’t be the end goal. It was only one branch on the tree.

Isen wasn’t a god, but he would be if he was one of the few who made it that far. And when he was a god, he’d grow his branches toward the neverending sunlight—opportunities. And then he’d consolidate those experiences into power, to keep himself safe.

He felt... oddly disillusioned. The nature of divinity was just the nature of humans. Insatiable and violent, like a beast that, when starving, eats itself. Was that really all that he was aspiring to?

No. He didn’t want to just see the world—he wanted to change it. He wanted to be more than a stranger passing through, quickly forgotten. He didn’t believe in a fantasy like trying to save the world. But he liked the idea of sharing opportunities with people who had none.

He knew that ambitions like that came with chains. He’d be responsible for the consequences of his actions, for who he decided to help and who he ignored. It didn’t bother him, which was surprising. He’d shied away from responsibility after Lady Jin.

It’s not responsibility I fear, he realized. It’s shattering people’s trust. Not delivering on my promises. Leading them into a dead end.

That’s who I am, he thought, his mind blanking. But is that who I want to be?

It wasn’t.

Then suddenly, his mind went white.