PSTH: Chapter Fifty-Four

A step that ENTIRELY too many rookie essence users – be they magians or tamers – make is that they don’t allow their spirit time to rest. I partly blame entertainment for this. Training sequences and constant work sounds good, and makes for fun books, shows, and movies. But the reality is that people can’t work constantly. The person who spends ninety hours a week cultivating and training spellcraft will just break their spirit, in the same way even a professional weightlifter isn’t going to be able to work out for ninety hours a week. Rest is not just part of the process, it’s perhaps the single most crucial part of the process. 

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Charm’s Guide to Essence Development, published 194 Modern-Era

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Gawain led us down to the bottom layer of Galena, the lights of the city emitting a faint buzz around us as we moved. He moved with confidence, so I thought that he probably had loaded up directions on his eye implant – either that, or he’d done something weird and memorized all the directions. I could honestly see either or being the case with him. Heart’s truth, I wouldn’t even be shocked if he’d memorized a map of the city-town-thing in its entirety, just because he thought it was needed or something like that. 

As he led us through the bottom layer, we increasingly moved into seedier and seedier parts of town, the ones that didn’t get enough sunlight even at noon, and that were technically closed off. The right to wander made it a little bit difficult to keep an area completely closed off, unless it presented a genuine threat to the safety of the general public, but this part of the town wouldn’t be opened or renovated unless the population suddenly doubled or tripled. With the fact nobody was supposed to live here, the town government didn’t pour nearly as many resources into keeping everything clean and powered. The street slowly moved from bright and full of colored art into dull, flaking paints and broken lightning, and the ceiling began to expose more and more pipes and wires far ahead. 

“Are you sure this is the right way?” River asked, tucking his hands into his pockets and looking around. His eye caught on a rat, which let out a noise somewhere between a squeak and a hiss, and then scampered off. 

“Yes,” Gawain said, nodding. That apparently was all he felt like he needed to say, as he only continued walking forward like nothing at all was wrong in the world. In Gawain’s defense, 

I glanced around, taking in the scenery as we walked, and wondering who lived down here, if anyone. I was sure there were a few. Anyone could get free housing and food at the Oceanseed National Hostels, as well as get enough of a UBI to cover some other things like clothing, with no questions asked. Study after study had shown that helped people get back on their feet, follow their passions, and do more productive work. But for all that I thought Oceanseed generally did a good job, there would always be those who fell through the cracks, or those who intended to become lost for whatever reason. What would it be like? Living in shadows down here, getting maybe two or three hours of sunlight in a day, and not being near many others. 

I was pulled from my contemplation as we began to see more people. It was a slow but steady stream of people, all headed in a generally similar direction as us. They’d taken other passages down to this floor of the city, but we were getting close enough that each of them were starting to flow together. Sure enough, after another twenty minutes of walking, we arrived at the decommissioned warehouse where the concert was being held. 

The warehouse had been transformed, and it now stood as a sort of stark opposition to the entire area around it. Lights flared, beams of a hundred thousand different shades rushing through the air and pulsing in strange ways, and helping to put some of the medical forms I’d needed to sign when buying my tickets into perspective. The air was filled with smoke, enough to nearly make me start coughing, and there was already a rhythmic thrumming. Within my essence sense, I could feel a few emergency medical personnel mingling through the crowd, their wood element anima standing starkly against the backdrop. There were a few other cultivators in the crowd too, mostly tamers who were already in the city to see tomorrow’s fight, but a few magians as well. I could sense several arcane magians that might be technicians or engineers in training like River, but also a few radiant element people who might be working lights, and a single metal element person who glowed like a beacon at level seventy-something. 

As we got to the entrance and scanned our augpads to confirm our tickets, I could feel the music vibrating through the floor, up my legs, and into my chest and brain, where it continued to pulse. It was… weird. Each thump seemed to cause my entire being to shake, and it stirred emotions in me that I’d never really experienced when just listening with my headphones. Nor with Gawain’s, for that matter, no matter how fancy his were. Gawian said something next to me, but I couldn’t hear what he said.

“What?” I asked. 

“I– cool opening–” he said, his words hard to hear over the slamming of the band on stage. I must have just stood there dumbly, trying to process what the tall man was saying, because Rane reached out and lightly smacked me on the back of the head. 

“Hey!” I said. 

“–e sai– it’s – cool opening band,” she shouted, her words louder but still barely audible over the music. At least she was loud enough that I could piece together what her sentence was probably meant to be. 

“Yeah!” I agreed, nodding enthusiastically as we continued to trickle in, before making it to our area. With the concert being a renovated warehouse, the amount of actual seating was limited and primarily going to those who needed to sit. We instead were given a spot in a general area, and Rane threw a rough spun blanket over the floor for us to sit or stand on. 

With the angle, I could see down onto the stage pretty well. That was probably concerning – a building that was at an angle like this probably wasn’t the most structurally sound thing in the world. But I was frankly more concerned about the fact that the stage was surrounded on one side by a gaping hole. Barricades, about five feet high and glowing with weak repulsion spells had been erected around it, but it was still unnerving to see such a huge gap in the ground. A hundred or so feet below the hole, I could see one of the rivers on which the city had been built atop of, rushing by and kicking up sprays of white water, as well as one of the support columns. The columns, at least, didn’t look in as bad of a shape as the warehouse or the rest of the non-residential, partially cordoned off area. Nobody wanted to skimp on the maintenance of the things keeping the city held above the water. 

“–ey – o– perm– for,” River tried to say, but I still couldn’t hear anyone. Why did people keep trying to talk when the music was so obviously drowning out all other noise?

Laurel, thankfully, seemed to understand what I was trying to do. She pulled out her augpad, wincing as the bright, sterile white light beamed right into her eyes through the strange light that was nevertheless dark. A moment later, per pad dimmed, and she held it up for me to read. 

“They had to get permits to play here, it’s been checked out and it’s safe,” I mumbled under my breath. I nodded to Laurel and gave her a thumbs up, before turning and leaning back some, watching the stage and enjoying the thumping of the music in the air. 

After some time, the main act emerged, and I focused on the lead singer. He was a handsome guy in his early thirties, with gray hair and steel gray eyes that glowed with essence, marking him as having awakened his essence. An instant later, I realized that the singer was the level seventy metal magian who I’d sensed somewhere around earlier. He shouted something, though between the amplification of the microphone, the bouncing off the rough steel of the warehouse, and the general shouting nature of his voice, it was pretty indistinct. The crowd roared something back, and he leaned in as the guitarist and drummer started up. He shouted something, and it amplified enough that the voice was actually audible. 

“Jump, jump, jump, jump!” he shouted, before the guitar really kicked in, and he started singing. People around me were clapping to the beat, and if I’d thought that the music of the opening act had been loud, it was nothing compared to the wall of sound that rushed through the entire warehouse. The dust in the air shook, and I nearly lost my balance as the rhythm of the music almost felt like something was trying to explode out of my chest, but in a pleasant way. I wasn’t even sure how to describe it, not entirely, but there was a presence in the air that made 

About halfway through the first song, I realized that the metal magian was using a spell of some sort, sending pulses through the steel beams and aluminium walls of the warehouse. With each pulse, anima rocked through the building, adding an additional layer to the music. I didn’t think it was doing anything to actually change our perceptions, at least not directly. Sure, it was somewhat making the music sound different thanks to the fact that it was changing the medium part of the sound travelled through, but it wasn’t any sort of mental magic. But it still added a layer of depth and complexity to those who had the essence to feel it, like a hidden extra sort of sensory engagement. 

There was sound next to me as they moved on to another song, and I realized that Gawain was shouting the lyrics to the next song. He continued on into the third song, and Rane joined him, having apparently listened to them beforehand. The pair started to dance, and though Gawain seemed very stiff and formal at first, he began to loosen up quickly. Rane had always possessed that sort of strange quality about her that got others to relax and let down their guard, and he seemed to be enjoying himself after a short bit., especially as River and Laurel started to dance too. I sulked at the side, splitting my attention between the two pairs of dancers and the music. Then Rane grabbed me, and shoved me toward Gawain. I stumbled and almost fell over, but firm hands grabbed me and steadied me as Gawain said something. I pointed to my ear, getting frustrated again. 

“I can’t hear you!” I shouted, and he blinked, then shook his head and pushed me back. I thought for a moment he was throwing me away, but it became clear after a second he was trying to dance. The dancing was… strange. Since we were in a massive open section, and a lot of other people were also dancing, it was almost more like the entire space had turned into a mosh pit. Elbows and knees were thrown around, and more than once, my pneuma flared to protect me from a blow that might have caused me to bruise. 

As the concert wound down, I was absolutely exhausted, and I had no idea how I’d be able to walk to the hostel, sleep, wake up before seven in the morning, and get in line

“Let’s line up outside of the Consortium!” Laurel suggested, grinning, her eyes red. “We can be super early, make sure we got good tickets.” 

“Get good tickets,” Gawain mumbled. “Tenses.”

It seemed like a great idea to my brain at the time, and we clambered up to the mid-level along one of the escalators, before making our way to the consortium. A few people had set up tents there already, highly intent on getting tickets, but it was one in the morning. Most hadn’t arrived yet. In our sheer genius, none of us had thought to bring a tent or anything of the sort, so Rane just threw the blanket down again, and we all sort of collapsed into a pile on top of one another. I passed out nearly the moment I was horizontal on the concrete.