18. Exploration

  “So now they’re growing tea on my butt.”

  “No they’re not. Your butt isn’t big enough for that anyway.”

  “No, really they are. I mean, not this butt, my rock butt. On the other side of me. You know.”

  “Shut up. I don’t believe you and you know that.”

  “But I’m telling the truth.”

  “Shut up. But at least you show up with clothes on now.”

  “It’s really hard to do that, you know? It’s so easy to just show up, but bringing clothes with is hard.”

  “Whatever. Let’s play tag.”

  Hien Ro glanced up from where he was reading reports on the status of the alliance and the establishment of the tournament to watch his eldest daughter playing with Atla. The Eidolon was somewhat clumsy and awkward yet, but was getting better at chasing after the five year old girl.

  He shook his head at their childish banter and watched them play for a moment. He knew how much his master appreciated the time when Atla was distracted by his girls, and he didn’t mind babysitting. But his role in the alliance, stemming from the perception that he was the highest ranking disciple, meant that he was busy a lot of the time.

  The waygates had made his job both easier and more complex. On the one hand, he could more easily travel to distant points of the globe, rush to a flashpoint, flex his power and authority and settle a dispute.

  On the other hand, he was expected to do so more frequently because of the fact that he could.

  ?

  And no small amount of the disputes involved who would be getting a new waygate to one of the hubs that Little Bug had just established. While he touted the examples that Litha and Liris had set, of mutual cooperation and benefit being the way to earn the alliance’s attention, the old way of thinking and zero-sum ideation remained predominant in much of the glob.

  And soon, he reminded himself, he and his family would be sent to establish relations with Count Beailor. He sighed, turning the page. He wasn’t looking forward to that, but fortunately he had some time.

  Little Bug had to figure out how to protect his little ones from the tidal forces of the travel, which would require some experimentation. His master loved Hien Ro’s children almost as much as their father did, so he was confident that either the solution would be perfect, or there would be no solution and Hien Ro would be asked to make the journey alone after all.

  For the thousandth time, he wished that he could tease out the secret to forming a Dao Avatar so that he could balance his work life with his family life. He thought he knew the secret, but he couldn’t quite figure out how to make the commitment real . He closed his eyes, searching for the times in his past when he’d been on the edge of an important decision, one which would effect his path, his life, his future. And he tried to replicate the feeling.

  He kept searching, pushing back further.

  The decision to follow Little Bug and become an official disciple, not just a companion.

  The decision to throw the tournament to protect Yara’s father.

  The decision to enter the tournament in the first place.

  The decision to follow Little Bug south.

  The decision to walk in front of a truck--

  No.

  He frowned.

  That wasn’t him. Well it was, it was a memory of a past life. His life as Lucas, a man in another world. A world of technological marvels and no spirituality. Full of knowledge and lacking in substance, Lucas’s world was hollow and weak compared to the life that Hien Ro had lived in Little Bug’s shadow.

  He knew that Lucas had made mistakes, but those were in the past. He shouldn’t dwell on them.

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  ...Or should he?

  Hien Ro frowned, and then pushed slightly on the edge of his awareness, aligning him just a little more with his past life, on the corner of his soul, where the waters of lethe flowed into the sea of memory, looking once more for Lucas to --

  He gasped as he was plunged into the water, naked and cold. All around him were the bubbles of past lives, but he couldn’t touch them. The membrane between himself and the other selves were so thin, yet the distance between them was so vast that he couldn’t reach them. He was drowning, alone and--

  A hand reached out and grabbed him, and he was back in his body. He lie on the ground, with his family gathered around him and looking afraid.

  Little Bug was there.

  “Sorry,” Hien Ro said. “I lost myself for a second.”

  “You should not go exploring your soul without someone to help guide you,” Little Bug scolded. “There are places in there that are dangerous to look at. Dangers you cannot understand or face in your current state. Some of the things your past lives have done will shock you, and some of your past selves left the world with great regrets which will follow you into your present life if you allow them to.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Do not forget who you are speaking with,” Little Bug said sadly.

  Hien Ro sat up and looked sheepishly at his frightened daughters, at his wife, and at his master and his master’s son. “I’m sorry. I was thinking that maybe the secret to Dao Avatars lie in the past, and I went looking for Lucas to see if I could learn from him.”

  “You could learn much from Lucas, I think,” Little Bug said. “But he is lost in the sea where Lethe drains, and that is the best place for him I think. The secret to unlocking a Dao avatar lies not in the past, Brother Ro, but in the future.”

  Little Bug turned to leave. “If you wish to explore your soul further, come and find me. Do not go delving into its depths without someone holding a rope to keep you from drowning.”

  Hien Ro nodded, promising that he’d follow the advice. Then he hugged his family and kissed his wife, before leaving to solve a centuries old dispute on the other side of the world.

  ~~~~~~

  Rather than allow the avatar I’d dispatched to save Hien Ro to dissipate, I decided that it was time to test something I’d been meaning to test for a while. Picking up a small box, I formed the protective sphere around it that I hoped would protect Ro’s daughters from the tidal forces between dimensions and placed a rabbit, some lettuce, and a handful of worms inside it.

  I closed the lid on the box, carrying it under one arm as I went to find the dagger that Kuto had left behind. Unsheathing it, I looked at the celestial steel for a moment. The dagger by itself was beyond anything that had ever been crafted on Atla, and but that was before the quickening. As the smiths of my land learned to work with the increasingly spiritual metals and the warriors demanded improved weapons to deal with the increasingly dangerous threats, the quality of my blacksmiths would increase considerably.

  Was this blade a taunt? Was Duke Doe teasing me, saying ‘I can afford to send this out as a simple travel talisman, while on your world it would be a priceless heirloom, a treasured gift from heaven by an ascended ancestor.’ Or was he saying ‘challenge yourself, and such wealth may also be yours?’

  I would only find out by accepting the invitation.

  Severing the link between my primary self and this avatar, and more painfully my link to Atla, I channeled my Qi into the blade and allowed myself to be whisked away into another dimension.

  I was not entirely my own person, but I could not speak with my other selves or sense them. Nor could I commune with Atla, which is the only thing that allowed me to ascend. If I had tried to send my true self into another dimension, the weight of my bond would have kept me from leaving. While Atla was my child in my respects, he was also a weakness, as our bond was a metaphorical anchor keeping me in place.

  I could not abandon him without breaking the chain that connected us, and he was literally a weight the size of a planet. With the Divine Fates no doubt preparing to come after me once more in the near future, being unable to run without abandoning my world-son, and all of the people who lived upon him, was a significant weakness.

  One which my enemy would undoubtedly be certain to capitalize on.

  I needed allies, and I needed to prepare.

  With this in mind, I appeared in the arrival platform of Duke Doe’s demesne. It was stark and plain, open to the elements, but as I stepped to the side of the platform I saw why.

  I was atop a tower half a mile high.

  A servant appeared a moment later, prostrated themselves, and greeted me by name. I acknowledged them and asked to be shown to my quarters. A hovering conveyance appeared and brought us from one tower to another, just on the edge of the horizon. I was told that the entire tower had been given to me for the duration of my stay, and was encouraged to explore.

  I was not alone on the tower, although the penthouse had been emptied and prepared for my arrival. Ten thousand people lived inside. Mortals all of them, I asked what they did and they simply shrugged.

  “We live,” they said. “We are under the protection of the great lord, for if we ventured out of the tower we would surely die.”

  I frowned at this, and decided to investigate. Splitting off another Avatar, I sent it out of the tower.

  It was immediately accosted by a roc of the diamond path. I dissipated the avatar rather than do battle with it.

  As I meditated on this world, I wondered if, perhaps, this was the future of Atla.

  ?