Chapter 10: Chapter 10: On the Soul

“For this lesson, I’ll ask you to sit comfortably on the floor and close your eyes,” Stultus said.

Agatha did as instructed and sat with her eyes closed.

“Very good. Now try to link together a chain of thoughts, ideas, and emotions that are most meaningful to you, one after the other. In doing so, you’ll enter a trance that will lead you to the core of your essence.”

Agatha again did as she was told, forming images and sensations in her mind that surfaced almost of their own accord. Stultus sat in front of her and placed his hands on Agatha’s head.

“Now open your eyes.”

She obeyed, but what she found before her wasn’t the cave beneath her master’s house. She now stood in that depression within the mountain valley, surrounded by the lake that sprang from the rocks. But this time, the sky was dark, like the deepest night, and not a single star was visible.

“So this is your soul,” Stultus said, studying the place with curiosity.

“But it didn’t look like this before,” said Agatha, concerned.

“Of course not. This place is being taken over by darkness.”

“What!?” Agatha cried, alarmed. “How can you say that so calmly? I’m going to become a shadow!” Her anxiety grew, her breathing quickened as the implications of what was happening settled in.

“Calm down. The darkness within you can be felt from miles away, but this is a perfect opportunity for your training,” he said, trying to reassure her and make her feel in control.

“This is part of my training?”

“That’s right! We’ll have to fight shadows eventually, so this is a good chance to gain experience, and purify yourself. Otherwise, your ego will die.”His last words sent shivers down Agatha’s spine.

Despite her fear of death, Agatha looked at Stultus with great determination.

“I won’t die and become one of them. That I promise you. Just tell me what I have to do.”

“First, I must teach you what my grandfather and father taught me during my own training: what the soul is and how it functions.Our souls possess three types of energy, each with a specific purpose. Virium is the energy of strength. It forms the chains that anchor us to our body. Since we’re inside your soul, you can see them as five crimson stars shining in the sky.”

Agatha raised her eyes to the abyssal darkness of her soul’s sky and spotted the faint glow of five red points, defying the dark with their light.

“Their light has weakened due to the darkness consuming you. They’re usually larger than this.”Seeing the worry on Agatha’s face, Stultus added, “Don’t worry. Your chains won’t break, just weaken, making you feel frailer and more vulnerable to having your body usurped.”

His words had the opposite effect, tears began falling from Agatha’s eyes.

“A thousand apologies! I truly didn’t mean to upset you! I only wanted to explain what could happen. But I promise you, with my training and with me by your side, nothing bad will happen to you, Agatha. I swear it.”

“Yes, forgive me, Master,” replied Agatha, wiping her tears.

“Alright, the second energy,” Stultus continued, clearing his throat, “is the mana that flows all around us. It composes this inner world; it’s the matter in which form is imprinted. One who controls their mana can bend reality to their will, or at least that’s what my grandfather told me.”

“Bend reality?” Agatha asked, intrigued.

“I don’t know exactly. My grandfather had some odd theories, but I think he meant that manipulating mana allows you to change the world more profoundly than through mere physical actions.” Seeing Agatha’s confused expression, Stultus sighed and said, “Maybe it’s best if I show you the three types of manipulation.”

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He raised his hand, and a cloud of sparkling blue particles emerged from his fingertips, swirling around Agatha. The particles began to form threads with a liquid-like texture. These threads descended to the ground and twisted into a spiral, solidifying into a crystalline bench.

“Wow! How could I ever do something like this?” exclaimed Agatha, inspecting the bench closely, moving about in fascination.

“To do that, you’ll need to form a bond with your mana. That’s something you’ll achieve by knowing and exploring your soul. The more connected you are with yourself, the more access you’ll have to your true potential.Just being here already marks a great step in your progress as a knight. Now that you can access your inner world voluntarily, you’ll be able to control your mana, and that alone has made you far more powerful than before. Though… you might not notice it, since that power is being drained by the darkness.”

Agatha looked around, the miasma of darkness surrounding them, the starless night sky, the corrupted water in the basin where they stood.

“I never realized it was this bad,” said Agatha, placing a hand on her chest.

“It’s understandable. Many don’t suspect how deeply their wounds run until it’s too late,” said Stultus, looking into her eyes with concern. “That’s why this next explanation may be the most important for you. Are you ready?”

Agatha simply nodded, eager to learn what came next.

“This lesson is about dark energy, also known as Caligo. It’s born from strong and weak negative emotions alike. It devours us from within, growing stronger until it overtakes us.Once it takes control of our soul, we become nothing but drops of light in a sea of shadows, kept alive merely to anchor the darkness to a body so it can continue growing in power.”

“But why would something like that grow inside us? Why does it happen?”

“No one knows for sure, but we do know it’s because our soul contains all our information. That is, our soul splits into two: the memories, holding our dreams, aspirations, teachings, ambitions, and the feelings, which are generated from subjective judgments made by our reason about each experience or fantasy. Like dreams, for example. Dreams can be normal or become nightmares depending on how our being perceives them.Here in your inner world, you’re taking the role of part of your reason. The feelings born from the union of memories and judgments can be good or bad, and they either weaken or strengthen your connection to this world.”

“So the more darkness there is in me, born from bad experiences in my life, the weaker my bond with myself becomes?”

“Exactly. And that ends in the death of your ego. Although I prefer the terms real and fictional over good and bad, since the latter are more subjective. Real feelings come from judgments about recent events or experiences based on the actual world.Fictional ones arise from judgments about imaginary events or heavily altered memories, warped by intense emotion. Depending on the judgment, your perspective, and thus your emotions, will shift, either feeding or resisting the darkness.”

“So this is happening because my perception of some memories is distorted?”

“Exactly. Your reason is forming judgments that are creating all this corruption. I assume it has something to do with what we talked about when we first met.”

“And how do I fix it?” Agatha asked with great concern.

“What you must do is change the judgment, by examining the memories you believe are creating harmful conclusions, analyzing them, and shifting your perspective.”

“But those memories… they must be from that strange dream I had in the desert… I let them go! I released them!”

“Don’t worry. A memory is never fully destroyed, it only moves to another part of your soul.”

“Then they must be in the firmament.” Agatha pointed to the sky.

“That must be why the sky is so dark, and the crimson stars so weak.”

“What are they supposed to look like?”

“In my case, at least, they appear like five suns hanging over the horizon.”

That comment didn’t help Agatha’s nerves, in fact, it made her even more aware of her dire situation. But slapping her cheeks, she straightened up and, looking to the sky, declared:

“Then I’ll go to the sky and find those memories! …How do I do that?”

“This is your soul,” said Stultus playfully. “You have great control over what you can do here, just imagine yourself flying.”

Agatha focused on the image of herself flying into the dark firmament. She felt her feet leave the ground, slowly rising higher into the sky, toward the densest shadows. Surrounded by darkness, Agatha felt suffocated and frozen to the bone, but no matter the cold or the crushing dread, she kept ascending, until she saw the faint bluish glow of the memory-lamps.

The power of the darkness grew stronger the closer she got to the orbs, triggering painful involuntary memories. Images from the failed revolution resurfaced, of the day she lost her home, running through the cries and pleas of her comrades.She remembered watching her captain and fellow knights be slaughtered with ease by that hooded monster, and how she abandoned them, fleeing while the creature laughed. That laugh, maddening and echoing, still haunted her.

As these terrible memories overwhelmed her, the shadow she had once seen in an alley while begging materialized before her.

“You’re a failure. Useless. A coward who only manipulates others for gain, then discards them.”

Agatha tried to cover her ears, but the voice reverberated from deep within her.

“Always running. Always fleeing your duty. Making others pay for your weakness. People like you don’t deserve to go on living, don’t deserve peace or happiness. You deserve only to suffocate in your grief and anguish. Drown in it!”

The darkness closed in around Agatha, surrounding and smothering her.

“So you’re the manifestation of my judgments... I won’t let you keep spreading inside me!”Recalling everything her master had taught her, Agatha tried to respond to the shadow’s words, even as it enveloped her.“It’s true I couldn’t do anything… I abandoned them. But I couldn’t do anything! If even the captain fell to that monster, I never stood a chance!”

Tears fell from Agatha’s eyes.

“The truth is… I am weak. I didn’t want to throw away my life to that foreigner, or to Cruentus! But dying wouldn’t have helped anyone! Staying alive means I can avenge them. I can grow stronger and make sure horrors like that never happen again!”

The darkness began to recede, and the manifestation of her judgments vanished.

“I’ve already taken the first steps toward that goal, because that’s the only thing I can change, the only thing I can control! I swear I’ll grow stronger and protect everyone!”

Reaching toward the orbs of memory, Agatha passed through the shadow and managed to grab the glowing globes. With the last of her strength, she focused on the new judgment she had forged, causing the light of the globes to grow, illuminating the sky until the turquoise firmament returned.

And so, the darkness was banished to the edges of her soul… for now.