A Bad Nightmare

The very first thing that Aiden felt was blistering and scorching heat that dried up every single inch of his skin. Opening his eyes, he saw a burning city, with flames dancing on every piece of flammable material that they could. He was lying at the middle of the road in front of a massive building that had a xie-shan roof.“What the……where am I?”, it hurt his very throat to even utter a word.

“Denzel? Is this a prank of yours?”, Aiden shouted in his mind.

“It isn’t funny at all.”

There was no answer.

Apart from the rustling and crackling of wood all across the city, Aiden was met with nothing but silence.

Getting up, he started walking straight forward. As he reached a forkroad, the dryness on his skin vanished and perspiration was starting to set in. His throat was dry while his skin was wet from the profuse sweating he was experiencing. Suddenly he caught movement in the corner of his eyes.

From the right side, a sudden flash of light passed him, rushing into the building in front of which Aiden had appeared. Immediately a second after that, a troop of 10 people clad in blue robes, with swords in hand, hurriedly followed suit. Although compared to the light before them, they were extremely slow, they would still be regarded unnaturally fast by Aiden’s standards

“Quick. We must not let Wuldrick activate the formation. One of you report to third elder that Lady Meleny has been successfully killed and we have found the clan head going to the Greater Displacement Hall”, the one leading them, screamed as he rushed, making sure that his talk didn’t affect his speed.

The person at the end of the troop just uttered, “Affirmative” and with inhuman agility, leapt onto one of the roofs and dashed off in a different direction. 

Aiden saw that they were going to crash into him and moved away. The men just ignored him as if he wasn’t visible.

“Hey excuse me, could you tell me where I am?”, Aiden asked.

There was still neither response, nor reaction from them. As they neared the hall, the one leading them at the front rushed in; a blinding light emanated from building’s huge arched doorway. The light was so bright that it illuminated the entire area and even outdid the blazing fires outside. Aiden was engulfed in this light and he shut his lids, putting his arm up to shield his eyes. 

Suddenly a female voice shouted, “Aiden.”

“Aiden!”

“AIDEN!”

He opened his eyes in shock and saw Berta kneeling beside him with a worried look in her eyes.

“What happened? Why did you pass out?”, She said standing up and brushing the dirt off her skirt.

“I passed out?”, Aiden felt fuzzy in the head and took some time to readjust his eyes. He was back in the dark dining room of the Bertis inn.

“You sure took your sweet time waking up.”, Denzel spoke.

Aiden sensed that had broken out in cold sweat. Suddenly he remembered what was going on. “Wait what happened to that weird dark smokey thing?”

“Strangely, ”, Berta spoke, “It disappeared just a few seconds after you fainted. It has never done that before.”

“Oh right. What did you mean when you said that he was the reason your inn wasn’t running well?”, Aiden asked, curiosity getting the better of him.

“Sigh. Let me relight the fireplace, I’ll tell you about it.”, she spoke and went over to rekindle the flames.

“Denzel did you see that dream I had?”, Aiden asked as he lay back down and looked up at the ceiling.

“To be honest this situation was very strange?”, Denzel replied, “I saw you having a dream, which in fact wasn’t a dream but something else entirely. Now normally I should be able to peer into your dream or anything that goes inside your head. But some kind of seal that has been placed on you is preventing external spying of any kind. The oddity here is that even if my power was at its peak, I don’t think I’d be able to undo this seal easily.”

Aiden felt a bit lost in thought. The recent events were too strange.

“Are these by any chance, the side effects of starting cultivation?”, Aiden asked.

“There’s not a chance that that can be true.”, Denzel dismissed the idea, “But the gathering of spiritual energy in your body might have triggered something that led to this. The interesting thing here is that the words of the astatonekron somehow initiated your fainting. It was connected to you somehow.”

“The astato.. What?”

But before he could ask more, the fire was burning again and Berta was back.

She sat down on a chair and Aiden got up and sat opposite her.

“SIgh. It all started 12 years ago. This inn used to belong to my elder brother Bertis. He was a great cook, the best in town if I may dare say so. The inn used to be filled with travelers and merry makers who’d stop by town on their way to the bigger cities around the area. Good old days of meat, wine and plenty of laughter.”, her eyes betrayed a longing look for a past that’d never return.

“Well all that ended twelve years ago. It was evening and my brother had just returned from the city of Rathmir after finishing some business of his. He reached home safely but he seemed to have fallen ill from the journey. His illness worsened and the medicians who inspected him, all deemed that it was a strange illness that they had never seen before.”

“His suffering got worse, and after about half a month, he died. But with his death came this….spirit too.”, her expression got serious.

“After I took over the inn, people told me it’s the ghost of my brother. But I know for a fact it isn’t. They won’t believe me, but I know. My brother would never wish ill for the inn. The spirit usually came after dusk when the sun had just set and he’d haunt the inn the entire night until the sun rose again. This has been the case for many years now. It has never hurt people but things belongings started going missing after it appeared, and……….let’s face it… no one would have their peace of mind living in a place where a ghost roams the halls.”

“The popularity of the inn took a huge hit because of these events happening one after another and it has ended up in the state that you see it in today.” By the end of her tale, she let out an exasperated sigh.

“I think the spirit was to blame for my brother’s illness too. But that aside, what did you do to it? I saw it pointing it’s fingers at you before you fainted. But then it vanished. This has never happened before.”

“I…..”, Aiden opened his mouth but held back suddenly, “...I don’t know Berta. It just pointed it’s finger at me and I got too scared so I probably fainted for that. I’ve never seen such a thing in my life afterall.”

Aiden knew that telling the truth would not be the best choice right now. He wasn’t clear on half of the things himself.

He was tempted to add that maybe she should have warned him about the spirit before inviting him to the inn, but kept his thoughts to himself.

Berta eyed him lazily, a sad light deep within, “I’m sorry to be saying all this to you. You are just twelve, what was I thinking?” She got up and sniffed back a sob.

“The key to your room is on the counter. It’s the first one on the left when you go up the stairs.”, she spoke and walked away through the door behind the counter.

Aiden exhaled deeply and went off to his room.

The room was dimly lit with a few candles here and there and  a comfortable bed lay near the right wall of the room. Taking his sandals off he washed his face with water from a pail in the corner and jumped onto the bed.

“Ooooffffff, this feels nice”, He said as he arched his back and stretched around.

Suddenly as if remembering something, he sat up.

“Hey denzel what’s an astatokon or whatever you called it?”

“Astatonekron!”, Denzel corrected him.

“They are spirits of the dead who died while not having stabilized their nascent soul properly during cultivation. These spirits bear resemblance to the person they were, back when they still lived. Now do not ask me what a nascent soul is. You haven’t cultivated long enough to be worrying about such things. What you should do instead is worry about reaching innate meridian stage.”

“Sigh, fine!”, Aiden pouted.

Sitting cross legged, he calmed down his breath and like the last time, opened up his entire body to absorb energy from the surroundings. After just ten minutes or so, he finished recovering all the mana he had lost. Proceeding to hungrily absorb even more mana, he slowly pushed his capacity to the limit.

93 percent

95 percent 

97

98

…..

99

When his core was almost completely full with just a teensy bit left to fill, he felt a kind of force resisting his breakthrough. He tried pushing mana in again, but he couldn’t push anymore. But he knew he hadn’t filled it completely, there was still a bit of space left, albeit very small.

Concentrating, he gathered the environmental mana into his body without pushing to the core. As if slowly drawing a bowstring, he kept absorbing mana until his entire body tingled lightly at the intense amount of energy gathering in it. The mana tried to move towards the core, but he held it back. Finally when he felt the accumulation was enough, he immediately directed all of the mana to the core in one go, as if releasing an arrow from a bow.

The final bit of space in the core filled up and his core gave off a low hum. As he opened his eyes, the excessive mana dissipated back into the surroundings and he was left with a core that vibrated with energy. Aiden exhaled a mouthful of turbid air.

He had broken through to the Innate Meridian realm.