What Will Be | Chapter 62

Author's Notes: Thank you all for your continued support. It means the world to me. Summary chapters are always interesting as, by design, they lean on 'telling' more than showing to account for the passage of narrative time. It's a fun excuse to get playful with the prose as opposed to keeping things flat. It does mean that the prose should be tight, and even after a couple of edit passes I think there is still some fat I could trim from this without butchering the tone. But if I dwelled on it too long I wouldn't get anything else done, so it has been bookmarked for later.

“When one considers the seemingly endless possible Specializations that could feasibly be attributed to a Skill, most recorded Core Skills seldom stray into the absurd. There are exceptions, of course, like the infamous case of Shaving [Body Hair, Left Shin], but the point stands. More likely you’ll see someone with Blacksmithing [Copper] or somesuch. It is one of the many quirks of The System we still do not have a definitive explanation for.”

~Unknown  

Much to my pleasant surprise, Tina had been pondering the question of how to utilize Perseverance in conjunction with Taming techniques designed to mitigate the Beast High. Her exasperation stemmed not from unpreparedness, but the unexpected; putting her ideas into practice had become an unfortunate necessity well ahead of schedule. For my part, it was a touching revelation, one that highlighted the contrast in our respective priorities. 

Seldom did I consider ways to help my parents with their Advancement. When it came to matters of Skills and The System, what mattered most was my own progress; even then, with all the freedoms afforded to me by my relative youth, I often felt like there weren’t enough hours in the day. 

Tina was burdened by adult responsibilities, the pressures of raising children, her own Advancement and a laundry list of other circumstances that sucked up the seconds like an enthusiastic sponge. Despite that, she put time aside to give me what were - in her mind - the best odds of success. 

Tina’s actions were another stark reminder of my good fortune, relatively speaking. Untimely death in my first life aside, having Tina and Tulos as parents in my second was a blessing. My exposure to the broader echelons of my new world might have been limited, but I had no doubt the darker sides of humanity had carved out their dens, lairs and havens. I could have just as easily been born into one of them. 

Selfish. It was a fitting adjective for my mindset, one difficult to refute or refuse, but neither did I regret its suitability. I often made selfish choices or acted in selfish ways; I was a selfish man chasing the impossible. I wish I could say I’d made peace with it, but the stabs of guilt I often felt seemed to suggest otherwise. Besides, it was not the focus of my day with Tina; I’d have a whole lifetime to turn my doubts into regrets and invalidate my earlier statements. I could pace myself.       

Specifics techniques aside, Tina and I spent the majority of our time together brainstorming how Perseverance would tie into my management of mana-sharing, should the need arise, and - ideally - stave off symptoms of the Beast High. There was a simplicity to Tina’s theory on the matter, but in that simplicity lay a solidity devoid of delicate components or fracture points. When discussing ways in which to bolster one’s sense of self, I saw the appeal of that approach and decided I would have eventually reached a similar conclusion. 

The essence of who I was could be battered, beaten, boiled or blasted into a million shards then a billion more; shaved, shredded or shoved into the acidic anus of an angry alligator, it mattered not. When the dust settled, when the fat lady sang, and when that electronics store down the street finally finished its decade-long ‘going out of business’ sale and closed its doors for the last time, everything that was ‘me’ would still remain. I would Persevere.   

Easier said than done, of course, since dramatic declarations can come easy if one were so inclined. What mattered most was turning that vague notion into a core belief, a touchstone to conjure when faced with turmoil or strife. Anchored to Perseverance, the strongest source of mana available to me, it would have the potential to overpower any influences to the contrary.

That was the idea, at least.  

Naturally, Tina phrased it differently at the time, but I felt my interpretation hit most of the same notes. Intent is important. Despite the positive impact my mantra had on the development of my Skills, it painted doubts in a poisonous light, so I endeavored to address them as a matter of course. 

When The System recognized that proficiency in a Skill was developing, the coveted prize it bestowed were the ever-ephemeral proficiency points. The means by which it judged, measured or even observed the necessary criteria existed beyond the realms of my comprehension, nor did Tina have any reliable knowledge on the subject beyond vague notions. It simply was. 

Now that Taming [Fudge] had Advanced, The System refused to acknowledge my efforts with the Skill. Day after day, the display in the System windows I conjured remained stagnant. 

Taming [Fudge] Level 10/10

Granted, implementing Perseverance into the exercises would net me much-needed proficiency points in my Core Skill, but the question remained; why bother practicing a Skill that had already reached the threshold of its current Advancement? 

For weeks, I’d been struggling to manage the overflow of ‘connection’ through the Tamer Bond. Part of me wanted to attribute that lack of progress to the metaphysical wall imposed by the cap on my Skills’ proficiency points. If that were the case, then concentrated efforts to manage my use of the mana-sharing or similarly new applications of the Taming Skill were doomed to be seized by stagnation, mired down in a mosquito-infested bog. 

Except, I had gotten better. 

Despite relying on my other Skills to prop up my efforts, my understanding of the modified Tamer Bond between Fudge and I had undoubtedly deepened, albeit marginally. A contradiction existed, and while my conversations with Lionel and experiences with Mana Sense brought to mind hypothetical explanations, they were merely conjecture. When given the opportunity to seek focused guidance on the issue, I did not hesitate.

As had become somewhat of a pattern, Tina’s explanation - prefaced with an acknowledgement that she was by no means an expert on the subject - only raised more questions. 

In many ways, it came down to a comparison between Skills, with a capital ‘s,’ and skills. While the latter were somewhat self-explanatory, the former were what a person used to shape their Advancement and progress through the System. Skills nestle within the core of a person’s being, becoming ingrained in ways that touch upon the spiritual. There is a permanence to that, an influencing factor that I suspected people came to terms with in myriad ways. 

Compared to the man I was without Perseverance, the ease with which I could dedicate myself to a task was like comparing night and day, such was the contrast. That flash of insight - of supernatural aptitude - was one of the defining characteristics of Skills bestowed by The System when compared to their more mundane counterparts. So far as Tina was aware, proficiency points would not atrophy, but once a Skill was at its threshold any supernatural guidance practically evaporated.

That was all well and good, but it didn’t explain how I so easily identified Fudge’s mana as it trickled into my mana pathways; it was hard to describe that sensation as anything other than a ‘flash of magical insight’. Was it a case of evolved Skills like Taming [Fudge] being an exception that provided the rule? Could hyper-specialization explain it? The new Skill Augmentation? A combination of all three? Or none of the above? Was it somehow a matter of Fudge subconsciously communicating it to me? 

Given that I hadn’t received similar feelings regarding matters of the Tamer Bond, there was no obvious pattern that I could discern. It was a tangled bramble of unknowns, and I lacked the time to navigate it given my other priorities; that way madness not just lay, but lounged on a bright purple chaise while idly smearing peanut butter on three of its seventeen belly buttons. Specifics aside, I could conclude that The System would not recognise my efforts until I Advanced to the next Tier; every scrap of progress in my Taming Skill would be hard won, and that difficulty would only continue to spike as my Skills reached higher levels. 

So, again, why bother? 

Logically, one should push a Skill to the side - only using it when absolutely necessary - once it reaches its threshold for that Tier. That is, of course, assuming one wanted to maximize their rate of Advancement. I’d gotten so caught up in the puzzle of it all that, when I raised that point to my mother, it took me a hot moment to realize why the question inspired an expression that edged into pity and bordered on tragic. 

“Because there is more to life than Advancement.” Simple words. Obvious words. They touched upon a realization I’d had when I witnessed Myra casually detonate the local foliage with a literal rock she’d scooped out of the dirt. Most people didn’t spend all their time obsessing over the magical blue screens that lurked in a layer beneath reality. It was a factor, of course, in the same way people worried about their careers or social lives or education, but it wasn’t the be-all-end-all. 

Sometimes, life gets in the way of an optimal path. Perhaps the immediate stability of a job is chosen over an uncertain dream; a misguided romance, so pure in the moment, inspires one to start fresh in a new city; the wants of society give preference over the hopeful, fragile needs of the soul. Instead of fighting, we compromise, and in doing so become the ocean cliffside, and with every passing wave we recognize ourselves less and less. 

The world might have been different, but there was much that stayed the same. For most people, that was life. That was my life, before the fucked-up cocktail of grief, denial and hope I still hadn’t properly acknowledged gave me the motivation, the drive, I needed to drag myself, bloody and battered, beyond the comfortable domain of ‘good enough’. Depressing, it is, to wonder how many people we praised for greatness were similarly fuelled by tragedy. 

I would not lose myself to the tides. I would burn myself in the furnace. 

Selfish desire took hold in the days, weeks, and eventually months following that conversation with Tina. Surely, if I worked hard enough, I could compensate for the necessities life thrust upon me. The days began to blur together, my increasingly rigid routine broken only by the occasional whims of my parents and the - more frequent - pleading eyes of a mischievous, charcoal dog whom I found it borderline impossible to disappoint. 

Perseverance maintained a jump in progress under the weight of my mana-bolstered discipline. Recovery was creeping towards the bottleneck as I increased the demands on my body and relied on the Skill to compensate. My progress with Taming, by comparison, was glacial. The Bond remained distracting, and the exercises with Tina had run into a conceptual hiccup I hadn’t been able to kick. 

Who am I? 

In hindsight, it should have been obvious. When one feels torn between two lives it can make defining the self a challenging prospect. Facing my demons in solitude had been an exercise in circular logic and uncertainty. When one can only talk to themselves, it does not do well to feel like you are conversing with a stranger.