Fall 1, 123
Sjal felt like she was running around in circles with nowhere to go. She had hadn't gotten very far with figuring out new ways to push her swordsman skills. Chaining slashes was a nice addition but it didn't really make her 'stronger.' Feeling desperate for progress, Sjal set aside time during her travels to meditate. She had started to develop a habit of clearing her mind and letting her troubles leave her during her journey.
All she had to do was focus on ignoring all the noises around her and then she could start to think freely. Oh how peaceful and happy she was feeling to just be by herself and not feel like a worker bee for once. She would be content with spending all of eternity in this kind of focused trance.
She might have been sitting by a camp fire in reality, but in her mind she was in a house in the middle of a bustling city. She pictured herself trying to crack into a safe that held the secrets to being a good fighter. She would like to be productive during her travels, and learning a new technique would make her very happy.
She worked at getting the safe open for hours, making little progress. Her peace was thrown off when her door was thrown open and an angry looking man walked in. The man, no, the creature was covered with techniques. Something must have put him in a sour mood and it must have been pretty serious for him to barge in. Sjal tried to push the man, or whatever it was out. It was her mind, simply deleting it ought to be easy.
She pictured the thing being tossed from the home and the shut slammed behind it. That worked, for a time. However it came back once more. This time he took the form of her father. Sjal gave him a confused look.
"What did I tell you about meditation training? It's all a waste of time. I'd rather you just take a nap all day or maybe even take up some sissy hobby than sit around like some monk. You've got potential and I won't have you wasting it!"
The man changed shape even as she focused on him and took the appearance of a strange creature floating there in the middle of the room. The technique emitted an eerie sound that made Sjal's real body flinch. It didn't take a scientist to realize that this was pointless.
What was more interesting was that the thing was even there to begin with. She chalked it up to her consciousness being contaminated by the stress. She was not good at meditating to ignore outside disturbances… but distractions within her own mind were especially difficult to deal with. She thought it important to ignore these distractions for the sake of her own sanity. She was honest with herself when it came to what she could handle. She felt as though embracing these intrusive thoughts were the first step towards self destruction and going outside of her limits.
"meditating did help me with a couple things. I was able to figure out many techniques, including this one, among other things that you never bothered to teach me. You can't have it both ways. Either teach me everything or accept that I have to meditate to figure or teach me yourself!"
Sjal opened her eyes and realized that she'd been talking, no, shouting out loud. A couple people she was travelling with looked at her strangely which made her feel embarrassed. Her words had been meant for her adopted father, though she doubted she would ever actually tell them to him. She had a feeling that with this journey she was going on she might not even see him for years.
She was surprised that she had learned a technique so suddenly. She'd expected to eventually break into the safe to pry the knowledge away. To have the knowledge come to her like that was unexpected. She wasn't complaining though.
The question was, did she even want to practice the technique? Being able to hear well seemed fairly useless. She found herself talking through potential scenarios. "What will you do when your eyes get flashed then? Just hope nothing kills you for however long it takes to recover?"
"Fine then, let's just get this over with," Sjal sighed.
The first proper step was for Sjal to spend a couple hours becoming familiar with the form of the technique. Even though she could very easily practice the technique with only a few swings of her sword, new techniques could be difficult. She was in no rush to start applying it in a fight either since she very much wanted to stretch out the evening as long as possible. Until she learned the full meaning behind the technique she would have to draw the sword out meticulously to make sure she didn't mess up. This was a more complicated technique to draw out for sure which was really doing a number on her wrist with all the necessary movements.
After practicing the technique perfectly several dozen times the next step was to try using the technique with minimal power. Over her many trials and tribulations she had gotten quite good at not putting too much effort into this part of the process. Her body seemed to recognize the risk of going too heavy at once. It delicately applied force into the technique of sound as she moved her feet along the ground. Of course, she couldn't successfully imagine trying it on anything living yet. She just needed to make sure she could do it right before trying it out in a fight.
Another trying of the technique and Sjal succeede dfor the first time. She felt the familiar rush of joy from the success but she accidentally tripped and fell on the ground. Her head didn't directly hit the ground, but most of her paint went to her ears instead of her other sensory organs. She felt like a ton of ear wax had just been taken out of her ears and every sound was magnified. She was gung-ho about her success for the first couple minutes and then everything went south. Her ears started ringing and she started experiencing ear pain. It was a new experience for her but she knew something was wrong when she couldn't hear anything other than the dull throbbing of her heartbeat.
She imagined once more what her father might say next "Stop failing and accept what it is. If you're going to wimp out then there's no reason to ever learn another technique." To which she would think "Just because I don't live up to your expectation doesn't mean that I'm scared. I'm trying my best"
Sjal tried to make sense of the world with her fucked up hearing out of one ear. Noise blasted into her ear drums as she held back a scream at the last second. Thankfully the pain didn't last for long.
"Ear pain aside, I think I've got the hang of it, but I still need some work," Sjal admitted to herself when the technique wore off. She typically didn't fail at using a technique after she got it down once. Knowing how the technique was supposed to feel was usually good enough for her to pull it off again and again.
Finally feeling content with her progress, Sjal finally noticed that the intrusive thoughts had gone away. It was almost time for bed so she laid down and stared up at the stars for a while. She couldn't sleep, so she closed her eyes and tried to meditate once more. She focused on her steady heartbeat, then the heat of the campfire. When she fell into a trance, she focused inwards to see if she could gleam anything else about herself. She came to the conclusion that the intrusive thoughts were at least partially due to how she continually failed to live up to her own expectations.
It was tough being alone. The only person she had in her life that could use magic was Caelum and Abraia and she hadn't learned much from them since their first couple meetings. Lying there under the stars, she felt very much alone despite all the people sleeping nearby. Still, she felt as though she could still be mighty even if she felt alone. With her strength she would be able to harness the power of many in the future. With that final thought in her mind, she finally let sleep take her.
