Chapter 138: Understanding Will

“…BUT you’re all a long way off from doing that kind of thing.”

Lioraeth yawned as she poured herself more wine.

“Your father seemed confident you all would be able to get there at some point though. Especially if you reach his mastery of Will.”

The fae queen poured her glass around half full before stopping when she noticed the silence.

She looked up at the rest of the table, her expression innocent.

“Oh… do you all need a moment?”

Nila, Dakota, Solomon, and Everett all had their jaws hanging open.

Yari raised her hand and closed the mouths of her young lover and her niece. “No, they’re fine… Please continue.”

“Oh. Alright then.” Lioraeth shrugged.

“Well, you asked me about Will a second ago, didn’t you, little girl?” She asked Dakota.

The youngest sister was already a legal adult, but she didn’t feel like debating her age with a monarch of an entire realm. “…Yes, ma’am.”

“How should I put it… Will is a power that the zoha naturally exhume from their bodies. It’s not like mana, and it is certainly not like aura. Will is the ability to impose one’s inner truth on the world. To make oneself unshakeable.”

Everett seemed to have finally recovered from his earlier shock. “Okay… what does all of that mean?”

Lioaraeth demonstrated by picking up a tablecloth.

“I am proficient with flame. If I want to burn something, I have to feel and manipulate the mana in the air to cast it, and naturally wait for it to combust.”

The cloth went up in flames, but it was extinguished almost as quickly as it lit up.

“However, the way Eir’Vael explained it, casting isn’t necessary with Will. You don’t have to think about magical reserves, or mana density, or anything like that. You simply decide that something burns, and it burns.”

The eyes of the horemen slowly widened.

Lioraeth flexed an admittedly very small muscle.

“Where an aura user like Giselle decides to strengthen her body through tempering, you would think something like… ’I refuse to be weak’. And your flesh would harden in response.

Fate can be denied. Divine law can be resisted. Bloodlines and hierarchy mean nothing before the force of your wants. Admittedly, there are some drawbacks…

The mental strain becomes tremendous the bigger your desires are, and sometimes reality resists manipulation…

In addition, depending upon what you have realized about yourself upon reaching clarity, some things may be much easier for you to do, while others may not come about as smoothly.

But your father once told us that at the height of his power, death, pain, or even curses were not absolutes to him. He was, in all essence, a god.”

While the horsemen were still reeling, Giselle chose that moment to add to the lesson.

“I am certain you already know this, but Will comes in four stages.

The first is Clarity.

Through a state of meditation, you must confront yourself on the inside. The goal is not to best your demons, but to understand who you are, what you value, and the principles you will not betray. Until you recognize who you are, good and bad, you can never hope to awaken Will.

Clarity makes you untouchable within your own soul. Your mind becomes immune to outside illusion, temptation, mind control, and the like. You can refuse pain and exhaustion, and command your body to act beyond it’s mortal limits.

A person who has true clarity of themselves understands that they cannot be ruled.

The second stage, Conviction, is what Lioraeth here has just demonstrated. It is when you begin to use your will to overrule local reality. Starting fires is small potatoes.

Think of a sword that passes through impenetrable armor without a scratch, but cuts the body within into a million pieces.

Think of spoken word turning into physical pressure, or crippling one’s inferior mind with your mere presence.

Imagine your desire breaching time and space to teleport you across great distances.

When you have true, unshakeable conviction, what stands before you must yield. Even if it is the world itself.”

Lioraeth took over again, and her tone had become noticeably sadder than before.

“Stage three… Well, that is Sacrifice. It allows you to give up certain things for overwhelming power, either temporarily or… permanently.”

“Things such as…?” Yari put down her fork.

“Memories. Flesh. Emotions. Vices. Desires. All can be exchanged in order to greatly enhance the abilities already granted by reaching Conviction. The more it means to you, the more you get after losing it.”

Everett found himself looking down at his hand. “Well, thanks to this new immortality thing, it seems like I’ve got plenty of flesh to spare…”

His mother fell silent again. Her eyes became like sheets of glass that threatened to shatter at any moment.

“…No, my baby. If you sacrifice your body for something… I don’t believe your healing will work. What weight does a sacrifice truly hold if it will return to you all the same?”

Silence rippled across the dinner table once again. The way Everett looked at his body had already changed.

His mother must have noticed this, because she immediately tried to comfort him.

“From our understanding… Many did not make it past the second stage in Eir’Vael’s day. If you manage to reach the third, it will be an immense accomplishment.”

“…And the final stage?” Dakota asked quietly.

Lioraeth and Giselle glanced at each other. A lengthy conversation was exchanged between them without a single spoken word.

“W-We don’t have to get into that right now, dear.” Giselle smiled kindly. “For now, we should just focus on-”

“We want to know.”

Nila spoke for the first time in a while. Evidently, her words came out much more forcefully than she had meant them to.

“…Please.” Her eyes darted back down to her plate.

Giselle could not bring herself to deny her daughter. So, she began to speak while staring into her wine glass.

“From the way your father explained it… He was the only one to ever reach this stage. He called it Embodiment.

He described it like… Your inner truth is no longer just expressed by your will.

Rather, your Will, Identity, and inner truth all meld together to thrust you into a new state of being. You become a living principle. A force of a concept.”

Giselle swept her eyes over all of the horsemen. Looking at her now, it was almost impossible to tell that she had just been fighting and cursing at Yari several minutes ago.

The gentle air she exuded was infectious. Soothing to the mind and spirit.

“What exactly that will look like and what power that will give you will be different for all of you. But I suspect that in time, you will all discover what kind of power each of your spirits desires the most.

However… frankly speaking, that is a very long way from where we are now. So, for tonight, you should eat, rest, and in the morning, we can begin building you into the horsemen destined to save the realms.

But right now… Let’s just try to enjoy our dinner, okay? And… maybe tell me a little more about this unique relationship my sister has found herself in.”

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