Dreamer's Throne

Using his fork to lift a bit of potato, Garrett paused and looked at Gorn, his forehead furrowed.

“If you can’t access your soul spark energy, how do you move into shaping it?”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Gorn said, his tone taking on a tinge of annoyance. “You have to awaken it. Different people use different methods, but at the core it’s all the same. For example, I try to spend time every day unraveling my energy.”

“So it’s like a kind of meditation?” Garrett asked, his piece of potato still hovering in the air.

“Eh, sort of. I try to pull energy from my soul spark in two different directions at the same time. You might think of it like having a tangled knot. If you want to straighten the thread out, you have to pull at it, working it apart carefully until it’s loose enough. It’s tough work, but so long as you keep at it, eventually the time comes when it’s suddenly easy, and that’s when you know you’ve become a Shaper. But everyone does it differently. Some people try to smash the restriction. That tends to produce more energy at a faster pace, but most of those people have a really hard time reshaping it when it’s time to shape their soul spark. Like I said, everyone does it differently.”

Taking a bite of his potato, Garrett chewed it slowly as he considered what he was hearing. Gorn’s explanations were a bit jumbled, but Garrett was beginning to get a clearer understanding of the whole picture. He had assumed this whole time that the shape of an Awakened’s soul spark was static from the beginning, so finding out that soul sparks could be, and had to be, actively shaped shed new light on the whole process. Additionally, it sounded like the way an Awakener woke their soul spark had a significant impact on their ability to shape their soul spark later.

According to what Gorn is saying, there’s an inherent feedback loop built into this. If someone uses a method to fully awaken their soul spark that lends itself to the shaping of their spark, the whole process will be faster. On the other hand, if they use a method that isn’t linked, it becomes harder. This means that the most important part is understanding your end goal before you even start. I need to clearly understand what it is I’m going to be creating in the shaping stage before I start the process of awakening. And I wonder if the third stage is linked like that as well? I bet it is.

Spearing another piece of potato, Garrett kept a mild look on his face as he looked across the table at Gorn.

“What about the manifesting stage?”

“What about it?” Gorn asked, giving Garrett a half-scornful, half-amused glance. “Look, there isn’t a person in this city who has ever even seen someone in the manifesting stage. The royal duke is a Shaper, as is the commander of the city’s garrison, and the master of the adventurer’s guild. But so far as I know, those are the only three. There are a few hundred thousand people in this city, right? Of that, there are maybe ten thousand Awakeners. Of the people who have Awakened, there are three known Shapers. It sounds easy, but it’s actually almost impossible to cross from awakening to shaping.

“Now that doesn’t mean all Awakened are the same. Far from it. There are grades inside of the Awakened, but it’s too hard to quantify exactly how strong someone is without fighting them directly. But that’s why our gang is able to hold on. Because me, Obe, and the boss are stronger than most normal Awakened. Does that make sense?”

Nodding, Garrett took a sip of his ale, grimacing slightly at the bitter taste, much to Gorn’s amusement.

“It does, thank you for answering my questions.”

“Yeah, sure,” Gorn replied, waving his fork. “Why are you so interested in all this anyway? Are you thinking about Awakening?”

Letting out a loud laugh at his own joke, he slapped the table, causing the dishes to jump as Garrett gave him a wry smile.

“If only it was that easy,” Garrett replied. “Are there schools that teach this sort of stuff? Or do you just learn it from other Awakened?”

“You just pick it up as you go. Our original boss was the one who taught me, Henrick, and Obe. After he died, the old boss I mean, we’ve been holding down the fort.”

“How did he die?”

“An unfortunate case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” a heavy voice said, causing Garrett to look over and Gorn to flinch slightly.

Walking up next to the table, Henrick glanced back and forth between Gorn and Garrett, his lips twisted in a scary smile.

“Isn’t that right, Gorn?”

“It is,” Gorn agreed, the moment of panic passed. “He was caught by a gang of monsters in the crypts and ended up dead.”

“Truly a shame,” Henrick said, pulling out a chair and sprawling out in it. “Ryn said you wanted to see me?”

Nodding, Garrett put his fork down and looked around at the room. There were a dozen gang members sitting at the nearby tables, along with a few other locals who had stopped in for lunch time. Lowering his voice conspiratorially, he leaned forward.

“One of my sources tells me there’s more to this trade than meets the eye.”

“Hold on, sources?” Henrick stared at Garrett like he was seeing him for the first time.

Smiling slightly, Garrett didn’t respond to the question and instead continued with what he was saying.

“The location is a prime candidate for an ambush, and the goods we’re moving are worth a small fortune.”

“While that might be true, the only people who know where the trade is happening are either in our gang, or part of the merchant company buying the goods. Are you saying they’re going to be attacking us?”

“No, I don’t think it’s the merchants.”

“Then who could it be? Unless there was a…”

Trailing off, Henrick’s expression fell. Seeing he had figured it out, Garrett nodded, his lips still curled into a small smile.

“It’s as you imagine. I’m still investigating what’s going on, but I hope to have more information tomorrow.”

Dense silence shrouded the table for a full minute as Henrick stared down at the table top, his expression growing more stony with each passing second. Flicking a burning look at Garrett, he spoke quietly.

“This is a major accusation. What happens if you’re wrong?”

“Then you can respond however you want,” Garrett said, his tone placid, “but I’m not wrong. As I said, right now I only have a little bit of information about what’s going to happen, but I should have more in plenty of time for us to react appropriately.”

“From these sources of yours?” Henrick asked, his eyes narrowed.

“Correct.”

“I see. In that case, I’ll wait for your word. Gorn, not a word about this to anyone. And I mean anyone, okay?”

“Sure thing, boss.”

Standing up, Henrick gave Garrett one last look and then walked off, heading for his office. One he was out of earshot, Gorn let out a low whistle.

“Sheesh, you really got some guts, don’t you?”

“What do you mean?” Garrett asked, not understanding.

“You just came right out and told him someone in the gang is a rat, you know? He hates betrayal. That’s what got the old boss killed, and when Henrick found out, he slaughtered more than half the gang. Everyone in the gang right now are those brothers who walked through the bloodbath with him, so to think that any of them are selling secrets... actually, I don’t want to think about it at all. Don’t let his smiling face fool you, kid. When Henrick is mad, blood flows.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Garrett said.

Standing up from the table, Gorn nodded, his face serious.

“You’ve been a help to us so far, and if you’re right about this, you’ll have earned your place among us. But if you’re messing around, things will go bad for you fast.”

“Warning noted. I’ll keep that in mind.”

“See that you do.”

After Gorn left, Garrett finished his food and wheeled himself back to his room. Along the way, he stopped by the kitchen to talk to the cook for a few minutes. Ever since the gang had picked up the extra supplies the cook’s attitude had done a full one eighty, and every time he saw Garrett he would smile widely. After chatting for a while and getting an updated expense number from the cook’s early morning trip to the market, Garrett pushed himself down the hallway and into his room, shutting the door behind him.

Sitting at his table, Garrett filled in the number on the account book, but his mind was elsewhere. He had no idea what the difference was between the system he had in the Dream and the traditional development of Awakeners Gorn had just described, if there even was one. Currently, he benefited from the increased toughness and healing common to every Awakener, but if he understood Gorn’s explanation correctly, he hadn’t yet tapped into the energy his soul spark contained.

When he was in the Dream he had no trouble using his soul spark, but during the daytime all that energy was tightly bound up. If he wanted to access it, he would have to start the process of breaking apart the energy. Most Awakeners he’d seen so far appeared to feed the energy into their limbs, increasing their strength and speed to inhuman levels, while a few appeared to put it into their skin, granting them supernatural defenses. From what Garrett had heard during his studies in the palace, Awakeners tended to manifest signs of their soul shape even before they became Shapers, though from what Gorn had said, there were only a handful of people who’d managed to finish the process of shaping their souls.

Organizing his thoughts, Garrett took a clean piece of paper and began to list out the Awakened he knew, along with the soul shape he believed they were developing. He wasn’t sure what sort of Awakening method Henrick was using, but he’d witnessed the unnatural ease with which the gang boss had cut through his enemy’s body in the alleyway outside the warehouses. The innkeeper appeared to be walking down a fairly standard Weapon Spark path, feeding his available soul energy into using the large cleaver he carried.

Gorn, on the other hand, fed his energy into creating a sealed space that allowed him to ambush his enemy, gaining an upper hand by restricting their movement and power. Putting together what he’d seen when Gorn had ambushed the guard outside of the warehouses with the way Gorn had described his awakening technique, Garrett was beginning to understand the connection. Gorn pulled his energy apart, creating threads of energy he then used to surround himself and others, almost like he was tying them down with a rope. In many ways, Gorn’s method seemed superior to Henrick’s, since the method he was using to awaken his soul spark’s energy was feeding into the eventual shape of his soul.

If Garrett was going to develop an awakening method that suited himself, he would need to understand exactly what he was aiming to shape with his soul spark. Under the other two names, Garrett wrote his own name and then began writing different ideas for his soul’s shape. There were three categories—weapons, monsters, and tools—so he listed the strongest things he could think of in each category. Under weapons he started with basic things like swords, spears, and axes, but eventually began moving into weapons from Earth, including guns, tanks, and bombs.

Letting out a small laugh, he shook his head and moved to his monster list. Lions, gorillas, and Komodo dragons were on the top of his list, but after a moment of thought he added dragons, griffons, and the kraken since there didn’t seem to be a restriction limiting him to real monsters. The tool list was last, but it was also the one Garret was the most interested in. Tools tended to be the most versatile of the soul shapes, at least according to what Garrett had been taught, as they could be used in multiple ways, but they were also much harder to develop.

Writing down a few ideas, Garrett was surprised to realize he’d only ended up with three ideas. He had written quill, book, and abacus, three items that not only sat on his desk, but were used in his current circumstances. There were dozens of other tools he thought of, but for some reason they all just felt wrong for him, so he hadn’t written them down.

I guess there’s an element of compatibility I need to think about too. Interesting. That suggests that the effectiveness of a soul shape is going to change depending on the individual.

On top of the items he listed, he also needed to match them with a way of breaking down the energy wrapped around his soul spark, so he began to brainstorm ideas for that as well. He had no idea if any of his efforts would actually work, but with nothing else to do, he figured it wouldn’t hurt to try. One by one the items on his three lists were crossed off. The first to go were the weapons, as Garrett felt the least amount of connection with them. Given his current physical situation, the best sorts of weapons for him would be ranged ones, but if he chose a weapon he would be committing himself to fights, which he had no desire to do.

The monster list was the next to go, as many of the abilities he would want to gain were similarly combat-oriented. As he was crossing out dragons from his list, a curious thought struck him and he wrote down a new word, kun-peng. In the mythology of Earth, the kun-peng, a fish-bird hybrid, was able to transform itself from a fish while in the water to a bird in the air, and back again. Thinking for a moment, he shook his head and crossed it out.

His idea had been that choosing a creature that could transform could help him with his physical limitations, but once again the idea of shaping his soul in a way that would drive him toward combat set his teeth on edge. His greatest asset was his mind, and rather than try and restore his physical ability, Garrett much preferred to focus on his strengths. With both the weapon and monster lists completely crossed out, only one list remained—tools.