38 Ihn'ar

Chapter 38: Ihn'ar

Hello!

It's been a while, I know, but it's me, your narrator. Lately I haven't been giving as much commentary, to preserve the intensity of the scenes, but I am still here! After all, this is my soothing voice you all have been hearing this whole time.

I've simply decided to take some time, just so I could let you all know that I'm locking my door whenever I go on break now, just so Jeff can't come in and snoop anymore. Hopefully there will no longer be any more interruptions from him.

Other than that, I suppose my life has been going well. I went on holiday with my wife and daughter, we spent a few weeks down south. It's been a joy, but work waits for no man. I can only read so many chapters ahead of time, so soon I'll be back to you with a live broadcast.

I hope all of you have been enjoying the work nonetheless. I have given it my best to make the more incohesive passages more sensible, and to take out anything that was extraordinarily repetitive...

Ah, but I'm getting sidetracked again. I quickly just want to mention that currently, Avery is my favourite character.

This has been it from me for now.

Most sincerely,

your narrator.

- - - - - -

In the end, Avery gave Birk a long lecture on the importance of integrity, and additionally, that he should keep his nose out of war. No one wins in war, according to him, and to be fair, usually war only produces losers.

Birk was a little bummed out. The commission would have paid extraordinarily well, and it gave him a chance to travel the world a little. Sigh, if only it hadn't included the part where he needed to blow up a city.

Additionally, Avery put up local commissions in Stormbraver that asked godseekers to seek out and properly take care of Birk's bomb suppliers. And of course, as one would expect, everyone's favourite cat picked one of them up.

Not that Mercury was expecting to face someone head on. But he still got to keep 2 lightning mana bombs from helping Avery stop Birk, as well as a stamp for completing a D-Rank commission for it. With a little more work, maybe he would be able to get a promotion soon?

For now, though, he needed to be a little more patient. After all, while the investigation itself was done, Mercury still had to testify at the trial, to see what reparations the Church of

Order would have to pay. Then again, Avery would definitely make sure that the Merchants' Guild would also be punished.

Who'd be stupid enough to help out a dude trying to destroy the city they lived in? Seriously. Mercury shook his head at them.

He couldn't believe that covering up the smell of the bombs was simply an accident. the charrs had to have been a facade for taking away the bombs, no two ways about it. But seriously, he had to wonder what idiot in the guild would do such a thing? Like, man, if anyone would have wanted him to do something like that, they would've had to offer something susbtantial.

Oh well. He'd just wait it out. Maybe the commission he'd picked up would get him to the bottom of all this, and maybe it wouldn't. Time would tell. For now, all he really wanted was to go to bed. It had been far too long a day. He was kidnapped one and a half times, for god's sake.

Then, he had multiple people trying to go for his throat, and he had seen Avery get really angry at someone. Damn, he really was just looking forward to sleep. A warm night, wrapped in blankets in his log, that would be the life...

He walked past Davis, giving him a nod, and headed up into his bedroom, where he simply threw himself into his fort of fluff, curling up into a ball, as very soon, his consciousness drifted away into the sweet nothing of sleep.

... Until he started dreaming, like every night. Frick.

'Ah, doth haveth returned, young Cat. "Hello".'

'Oh, shit, uh, yes, it is as you say, old Dreamweaver.'

'Mh. This one feels you are... oohn. "Empty". Ah, no, lohre, "drained". Are thee troubled?"

Mercury understood old Dreamweaver again, just like before. This was still a surreal experience, but when he simply went with it, it felt... freeing. He could tell, he could read again. He read the warm softness of compassion, the firm touch of empathy, and a deep chasm of understanding.

'This one does. Lohre, drained. It has been a long day.'

'Mh.' Old Dreamweaver seemed to nod at Mercury in understanding once again, a weird, indecipherable movement of the many veins making them up, that he would have been unable to understand if he wasn't reading.

But he read, and so he understood. Understood that Dreamweaver was old, ancient even, and Mercury understood a deep realm of thought regarding this one word. Regarding lohre. For just a moment he could glimpse-

'Oh, this one trails off. Cereth'bar. "Apologies". "Sorry". Does young Cat wish for rest?'

He did, he wanted to rest so very much, but he couldn't. Not now, not yet, not fully. He needed to be ready, to work, while getting enough rest to keep himself fully functioning.

'Hmm. Ah, Dreamweaver sees. Reads. Feels. Ahn. "Understands". Loss, and grief, and want, and... blame? Also shame, and sorry, and guilt.'

For a moment, old Dreamweaver paused, nodding to themselves. They weren't so much silent as they were processing, laying out words and feelings for Mercury to read. To understand. Ahn.

'Young Cat needs rest. Thee needs pause, to simply think and not try. To ihn'ar. "Meditate"? No, "process"? No, no. It is... hard to find the word. Ihn'ar. It is... to "learn" in a way, but not be taught. Ahn, "to understand", in a way, but not be explained. Mh.'

Dreamweaver found their explanation not quite satisfactory, Mercury could tell. But he still understood, because he read. Ihn'ar. It was... something he would describe with many words. A deep... trance? No, not quite. It was a state within oneself, where one would understand. Ahn all that they had learned, and get closer to its core truths.

But that wasn't all. Ihn'ar wasn't simply about understanding the truth of one's studies, it was about reaching truth in general. About oneself, about one's thoughts, about anything one has seen and experienced and perhaps more.

"Cat ahn. Ihn'ar is... "core". "Truth". "Self".'

"Ah! Yes, yes! Young Cat, thee are swift in understanding.'

Mercury could feel a sense of bright pride from old Dreamweaver, a surprising, child-like pride. But that wasn't all. Behind it, he could feel a deep golden shine of impressedness.

'Oh, you are praising me too much.'

'No, this one doth not. Thee are portraying wit and attention. This one giveth out praise to encourage. Thee doth earned it.'

'Aneth..."

'Aneth'bar.'

'Aneth'bar, old Dreamweaver. "Thank you".'

'Thee be welcome, but this one still knoweth now. Young Cat needs rest. This one shall giveth what is required to make Cat bloom. This one will trikko ihn'ar before morning breaks.'

For a moment there was silence between the two of them. Mercury understood that this meant a lot, and most of all, it meant that old Dreamweaver truly accepted him as a student. For a moment, it mattered not how ancient Dreamweaver was, because for just a moment, they grew fully awake.

Instinctively, Mercury understood. Ancient minds are great, but they are shackled by their might. They grow tired and weary often, lost in thought, in their experiences, and may drift off into tangents. To summon their full might, they need a moment to summon it, and it requires them to fully commit to one state or another.

They need to stop themselves from drifting, from braking off, from sleeping or waking, and for just a moment, all of their power seems to vanish as they need to focus it on bringing themselves fully into existence.

And then, after a moment of full stillness, Mercury felt a rumbling. He felt it deep underneath his paws, far down in the earth. But soon after, the air also began to tremble. It quivered and shook, as Mercury knew his fur would be on the rise if he weren't in his <Astral Body>.

Then, the earth seemed to crackle, and old Dreamweaver grew. They collected the fragments of their mind, their many selves, their many pieces from everywhere they were, everything they thought about. A pulse began travelling through them, as their form shook and expanded, the thick veins made for transporting mana beginning to grow and intertwine, slowly forming around Mercury.

Yet, he knew there was no threat. As he saw old Dreamweaver grow larger and larger, all he could feel was a deep sense of warmth from them. Acceptance, patience, understanding. He was washed over by a wave of deep emotion. Mercury knew that there was nothing to fear from whatever was in front of him.

And so, old Dreamweaver summoned more of their mind, as they grew bigger and greater. As they did so, Mercury could feel the depth of their mind instead growing to become height. It was strange. Before, old Dreamweaver felt vast, like an unending ocean, deep and full of wonders, stretching towards the horizon.

But now it was... different. Instead of being deep and vast, all of it was in front of him. It was like staring at an infinitely intricate building, towering high up into the sky. He could see every stroke of brush for its art, and every single ridge in the carved stone on it, and yet, the more he looked, the more fascinated he was.

It was a sight of wonders, incredible, surprising, and ever growing.

'Breathe, young Cat.'

A voice echoed in his mind, incomparable to before. It was strong, yet Mercury could feel it was but a hushed whisper of a thousand voices, a whole chorus of thoughts wanting to crash into his mind, yet being toned down so he could simply understand it.

To breathe. It was natural, of course, so why did he need to focus on it? He was sure he would be-

'Breathe.'

Fine. Only this once.

Mercury took a breath, even in his Astral body, and he felt two shocks. The first was his heart. It had simply frozen at the wonder in front of him for but a moment, but now it was beating again, and he even felt revitalized.

But the second shock was the air his astral body breathed.

He shouldn't have been able to, yet as he breathed, he felt air rush into him. He was simply a construct of mana veins, yet he was able to breathe.

And additionally, when he breathed in, he could feel the air rushing all throughout his veins, crackling with electricity as it seemed to want to find the very edges of him and tear at their seams.

It did.

When the crackling air hit the end of Mercury's mana veins, it rang against the walls there and tried to go further. And after a moment of standstill, Mercury's body held strong, fully staying himself.

After all, he understood it.

He understood the very basis of breathing, and understood the very foundation of what it meant. He could do it limitlessly. Unstopped. It came so naturally to him, so much so that oftentimes he barely noticed, but with a simple thought and an action, he had been shown the very meaning of breathing.

To breathe was to push air all throughout one's body. It didn't stop at the lung, or the heart, or the arteries, or even the mitochondria, though the journey for O2 was technically over there. To breathe was to go another step, another heartbeat, another piece of energy in a symphony with changing tempo, yet uninterrupted until death.

And for some, even past it.

'Breathing beeth the basis of ihn'ar. It is a gateway into it, a step onto a road that cries out for exploration, for unguided, uninterrupted, true self. Use it, and practice ihn'ar to rest. Now, this one must leaveth thee alone...'

Mercury was sure he could hear old Dreamweaver trail off at the end, the thousands of whispers going into hundreds, then dozens, and finally there was only a single one left echoing in his mind.

Yet, Mercury felt awake as he had never before. The air was still thick with... energy, of some indeterminable form, and his head still rung with the words of old Dreamweaver. His spirit felt rejuvenated, to a small degree, and he felt in incredible health.

But that wasn't what had him surprised.

Dreamweaver's expansion, their gathering of parts and strings of consciousness never once peaked. Mercury had felt them grow, and grow, and grow, until eventually, from one moment to the other, it began shrinking again. It was an incredible sight to think about, that something that he had already read and perceived as so large had not even been the fully developed form of whatever he had been talking to.

And even after all of that, he was sure of it. They hadn't bound him to them at all. Mercury was free to leave and never speak with them again, and if he still made advancements on ihn'ar, that would be enough to make Dreamweaver proud.

It was not a relationship where they were the master and he the disciple, though of course he had much more to learn than Dreamweaver. This was something much more equal than that, a sharing of thoughts, opinions, and understandings. Perhaps one day, Mercury would find something he could teach old Dreamweaver, he thought.

Yet, somewhere deep beneath him, somewhere far away and yet close, in a place that may as well have been anywhere or nowhere, Dreamweaver had already learned much from him. They had learned "Sorry". "Thanks". " 'Sup".

Dreamweaver thought that since they only taught to breathe, they still owed Cat a bit.

But then, as their thoughts drifted off a little, they were well on their way to recovering the debt. After all, their gift of breathing had opened up a much further path of ihn'ar. What was it Cat had named it? "Core". "Truth". "Self".

Mh, Cat had done it. Trikko. Two ways. Exchanging knowledge.

'Aneth'bar, young Cat.'

'Aneth'bar.'