Law of Freedom- Chapter 2 (Patreon)

Chapter 2- The Weight of Cultivation

I heard voices, but couldn’t make sense of any of it. Except, I don’t think I was actually hearing anything. Whatever, hearing actually was. I knew it meant something Maybe, something I should know about, but right now my thoughts were too sluggish. It was like I was simply picking up the vibrations in the air and my body was translating that into a words and feeling.

There was a great deal of shouting going on. Were they angry at me? It didn’t feel like it. I could feel a concern from all of them. Sorrow to the point of death was buried deep in one of them. One was more closely connected to me than the others. She, I think it was a she, was terrified for me but masking it with anger.

“What in all the hells were you thinking? By all rights I could invoke the law of blood against you.”

“I… I…”

“That’s right you don’t have anything to say for yourself. You sicken me. You have no idea how far he was willing to go for you. I hope he boots you out on your bony green ass.”

“Shut-up! Shut-up both of you. You know that isn’t how Rob will feel about it. You should know better than the rest of us. Rob will not only forgive her but will use it as a teachable moment. But now, I have to keep him alive. Something is interfering with my healing. It’s like my life mana is being blocked.”

“Daria, go get Rava.”

“Why do I have to go? I don’t want to leave him. I care about him too, even if he hasn’t um, you know.”

 That was odd. When that one spoke, I got a sense of something more than just concern. There was like a rush of desire underneath.

“Don’t worry, you’ll get laid soon enough.”

“Josie, stop it. Don’t speak to her like that. You know she is just worried.”

“We are all. You have to save him, Lina. This is my fault. I never should have let him train without me. I swear this man is going to be the end of me.”

“I know you are feeling some of what he is feeling. Judging by what I’m sensing in his body that must be…”

The fiery one interrupted the soft, warm one at that point. I was starting to get a sense of their individuality even if I didn’t understand everything they were saying.

“It’s hell. I hurt so badly that it’s all I can do not to cry and I’m only feeling a fraction of what he is feeling. So, sorry, if I’m feeling urgent but if you can’t heal him then we need to find a solution.”

Then the light, airy one said, “No, I’m sorry. You’re the boss. I’ll go get her.”

“Thanks. She might have some ideas. Don’t take no for an answer. Just haul her here as fast as you can.”

Then it was like the air got disturbed and rushed all around me. It hurt. Why should the air brushing against me hurt? And what was that odd coppery taste in my mouth? I couldn’t seem to shake it.

Around me I heard three heartbeats. No, there was a fourth, but it was much fainter almost like it was enclosed within another of the heartbeats. Some tears were being shed but I wasn’t sure if it was one of them or all of them.

I felt that warm energy flowing into me. Life mana, that was what it was. It felt like a victory to make the connection. But something was wrong. My body on the surface was absorbing it. Cuts and abrasions were being healed. Even some of my bruises were disappearing, but deeper in the mana’s power was blocked.

That didn’t seem right. I wasn’t sure why, but it felt like I should be built for absorbing mana. My entire body seemed designed for that purpose. It was like some architect had designed a complex, beautiful structure but then hidden a secret purpose for all the ornate fixtures. It was a purpose that you couldn’t see at first glance, something that might have to be pointed out to you. It spoke to patterns built into me which escaped my understanding.

Yet, the more I turned my focus inward the more I could see the blockages. It was like my body was stuffed full of some foreign substance. It was a substance which seemed to only have one purpose, namely, to crush my body. No. That wasn’t right or at least that was an oversimplification.

This was the byproduct from gravity mana. That thought came with great clarity. Each of the byproducts had a result. They generally seemed negative at first but with repeated exposures I had been able to determine what they were for. Even the earth mana had served a purpose. I had died and it had been integrated by the phoenix potion to restore my body. More than that it had made my body stronger.

My awareness was increasing, but I still couldn’t move my body. Something had happened to it when I pushed through and absorbed all that gravity mana. Sure, I managed to finish the three push-ups. I won the bet, so there was that. In retrospect, I wasn’t sure that it had been worth.

Clarity of thought brought with it an increasing panic. Was I in a coma or something? TV shows always debated if people in a coma were aware of their surroundings. I most certainly was. In fact, I was able to expand my awareness even without eyes or ears. That was definitely a body cultivator thing.

I could feel my core. It was wobbling but still spinning. There were dredges of ki left in me after I overcame that bone crushing gravity but the thing that stood out was all the residue for the gravity mana. I had to force myself not to panic and then turned my awareness inward. This was my body and I was a body cultivator so it was my domain.

There was a sense of being watched and not just by the girls, but no matter how far I expanded my awareness I wasn’t able to discern who might be watching me. Worse, I got the feeling that they let me know they were observing but wouldn’t allow me anything beyond that. Maybe that was just my overactive imagination but trapped inside my body it didn’t take a lot for it to go wild.

Once I truly began to focus, the damage wasn’t nearly as bad as I had expected. Certainly, it shouldn’t be bad enough to keep me from moving. There was at least one fracture in each of my limbs. Most of them had multiple breaks as did all my toes and fingers. My skull appeared to be intact except for that nasty spiderweb of hairline fractures which covered almost the entirety of it beneath the skin.

My skin seemed to be the most intact part of me as whatever Lina was doing worked at least to heal that. So far it hadn’t been able to extend to my ears, eyes, or further in. My muscles were shredded, but that was to be expected. In fact, I did that to myself all the time. It might not ever be quite this bad, but I pushed my body to the breaking point again and again. That was how I got stronger.

It was deeper inside where the real trouble was present. This type of awareness isn’t the same as seeing, but I got a clear understanding of what was happening. Every significant organ from my heart and lungs to my kidneys and bladder had all been crushed. Presumably, that was a side effect of trying to survive in 30x gravity or whatever it ended up being.

There were small tears in my heart valves which were causing the blood to leak where it shouldn’t. My lungs were slowly filling with fluid. Even my stomach was crushed to the point that it couldn’t finish digesting what was in it. Bile and stomach acid were leaking out into my body cavity. It was gruesome and a good reminder why I hadn’t gone to medical school.

The question was what could I do about it. Moving was out, but that didn’t mean I was ready to give up. In fact, that gave me another realization. My mobility was limited by more than the damage to my body. If that was all it was, I would simply channel a bit of ki and force it to move even if I injured myself further in the process. No, it was like I was pinned down and that thought was what did it for me.

Gravity wasn’t simply a matter of heaviness like Mactosh always implied. I didn’t expect any experts in physics on Olimero and I was far from one myself. But, I did recall that gravity was the attraction of one celestial body on another. Heck, I could be getting that all wrong. I’d been far more interested in Shelly Herman while I was in my science class than in what was being taught.

I knew or thought I knew that mass affected the pull of gravity. If my body had more mass then it would be pulled on more strongly. All that was fine but it missed one key element, the thing which made Olimero different from Earth. The existence of magic made everything different.

If I hadn’t been in my current predicament, I doubt I would have taken the time to study it closely enough, but it became obvious that Mursha’s gravity mana didn’t change my mass. No, it directly affected the pull of gravity. That was both staggering and cool at the same time. I would have grinned if I could.

Now, I just had to figure out what went wrong. I wasn’t feeling the same crushing pain as before. Mursha would have released the pull. No matter how much orcs hated to lose, I couldn’t imagine that she had purposely tried to kill me. Even if she still wasn’t sure about how to respond to me, her honor meant too much to her. It would to any daughter of Mactosh, of that much, I was certain.

So, this must be something else. The conclusion was obvious. I didn’t know anything about mana and they didn’t know anything about cultivation. Mursha wouldn’t have thought about my ability to absorb her mana. In fact, that absorption is probably part of what made her push harder. She couldn’t have planned for me to flood my body with contaminants.

That had to be it. The sludge in my ki channels was the byproduct of converting gravity mana into ki. I hadn’t known what impact it would have on my body, but now I did. It was creating some type of gravitational field connecting my body with the greater mass of Olimero.

It wasn’t as simple as increasing the pull of gravity on me. If that were the case, I would be dead, crushed under the pull. No, this was causing my body to merge into the field of gravity extending from the planet. For all intents and purposes I was one with the planet at least in a gravitational sense.

With that figured out it should be simple; except I didn’t know if it was. I had to assume that the sludge was what was creating the effect. If not, I was good and truly screwed. If not, I would be stuck here till I died. If my body was permanently part of the planet, well I guess I wouldn’t have to figure out who the new gang in town was. That would become someone else’s problem.

Not that I was looking for a way out. I had come to love my new life, difficulties, and all. So, that meant I couldn’t consider this as anything other than a problem related to the sludge. Which in turn simply required that I expel, said sludge from my body. The how was still escaping me, but there had to be a way. I should be able to excrete it through the pours in my skin, but that would require me figuring out how to move it.

Then my attention was drawn back to the conversations going on around me. At with my mind being a bit more clear now, I could recognize the speakers.

Josie said, “That was fast.”

“I’d like to claim credit, but she was already half way here. Apparently, she felt something happening to the sheriff and felt compelled to come here.”

“Compelled, might be too strong of a word, but I definitely felt a tug.” The new speaker was my alchemy instructor or mistress as she preferred. Rava was a long drink of water which would have turned head on any runway, but I suspected she had a list of secrets longer than her legs.

Lina snapped, “The particulars can wait for later. Now, can you do something for him?”

“I don’t know. I certainly hope so. But it would help if I knew what happened to him.”

Josie snapped. I could feel her so much more clearly than the rest. Then it dawned on me it was the soul bond with her that I was feeling. Her concern for me was practically shouting. “This bitch tried to crush him.”

For a second I felt something stir within the other person who I took to be Mursha. “I didn’t… uh… no, the deputy is correct. This one is without excuse. This one lost control of her power. It was like it was being drained out of me and then when the drain stopped, gravity leapt up to 50x normal. The Lord Sheriff was crushed into the stone before I could drop it.”

“And what about now?”

No one answered Rava’s question. I imagined perplexed expressions on all their faces even if I couldn’t see. “What do you mean, esteemed alchemist?”

“Cut that shit, you weren’t bashful just a few minutes ago when you tried to kill Rob. Just speak clearly. You owe him that much.”

“You may kill this one for my failure if you deem it necessary, but I would never intentionally cause harm to the Lord Sheriff. I swore my oath as a clerk, even if he hasn’t take me to his bed yet. My body is his and I would sooner die than fail.”

I was pretty sure that Daria mumbled something about Mursha not being the only that that I hadn’t bedded, but no one seemed to pay attention to her. I kept my focus on the main discussion.

Rava said, “What I want to know is why he isn’t getting up. I’m not nearly as strong as some of you but I can’t even budge him. It’s like he is fused to the ground.”

“This one is not doing anything to him. This one swears it.” Then there was a pause. Mursha seemed more hesitant when she spoke again. “Although, it is like there is a type of gravity mana still in him, but it isn’t gravity mana. This one has never felt anything like it.”

That launched Josie, Lina, and Rava into a discussion about byproducts and the little bit they knew about my cultivation. At one point Lina exploded, “This isn’t fair. If I was soul bonded with him, I might be able to heal him. I need to know where and how to apply my mana.”

“It isn’t like we are keeping him from you,” Josie said. “No one knows how the soul bond happened, not even him.”

I could sense Rava shifting from foot to foot then in an uncharacteristically nervous gesture. Something was off about that. “That may not be entirely true.”

It was then that another presence popped out into the court yard. I didn’t recognize it at first. My mind began to race. I was afraid that this was an attack. That fear ignited a protective instinct inside of me. No one was going to hurt my family. Even though Daria, Mursha, and Rava might not be officially part of my family they were still people I was going to protect. And the very thought of someone coming after Lina, in her condition now awoke a monster within me.

I began to spin my core. It wobbled but I locked it down with my will. This was my body and I was going to take charge of it. The residue within me was an invading force but I was master of this domain and I would have nothing to do with it. I should have been able to do this before. It was silly that I didn’t, but I was learning time and again that body cultivating was done more by feel than by logic.

As I built up the pressure within me, I scoured my channels free of the residue. Some it I sucked back into my core. A quiet voice in the back of my mind worried about damaging my core, but that would have to wait. I needed to deal with this new presence. Never mind how capable my women were. I knew that, but knowledge was not driving me, it was emotion which coursed through me.

I took what I needed and pushed the dense residue of gravity mana into my core spinning it for a second time as I sought to pull ever last bit of ki. I felt the mist of ki within my core become denser. It was like before when I had been condensing it, but that wasn’t my purpose this time. This time it was just happening as I sought to gather enough power to make it to my feet.

The rest of the byproduct I began pushing through my skin. I think I opened up new wounds as great gouts of the waste erupted from me. The pain was terrible but compared to my fear for my girls it was nothing. I was up on my feet and moving towards the threat before I even realized it.

Mana swirled in a dense cloud around the creature. I could feel vibes of danger coming from it, her, him. I wasn’t sure of the identity. This way of sensing through my body was a great breakthrough but it had limitations and couldn’t completely replicate sight or hearing. I reasoned that anything tangled up with this much mana had to be a threat. I didn’t need to see a threat, I only needed to squash it, so I drove my fist straight at it with all the power I could pull out of my still broken body.