Blaize and the Maven: The Energetics Book 1 (13 page)

And they agreed to start now.

They started with a picnic, which was … okay. He couldn't really say much more about it than that. She'd told him about her education in the UK, and later working in the human business world in Hong Kong and Singapore, and, as part of her training, as a Manipura Warrior all over Southeast Asia. She'd certainly travelled a great deal in her short life.
 

All while he'd locked himself up in Cathair Cuinn for the last fifty years.

The girl seemed smart enough, but she had no concept of Ajna Chakra and the energies it contained. She was too steeped in her fire energies. Not unusual considering the short time between training in the two chakras, but it might make things harder if she wasn't a fast learner.

Cuinn was back in his rooms now, still unsettled after their tempestuous morning. It was rare he had to apologise, and yet he felt as if that was all he'd done since she arrived.

He decided to try another dreamwalk. He'd use the energy of the morning to encourage more of the prophecy to emerge.

He made his preparations. He lit a candle at each corner of his mat and eased his long body down onto it. His body prone and still, he faced the white ceiling and took some deep breaths, clearing his mind.

He had to let go of the anxiety he felt about the prophecy. To forget Blaize, their arguments, and the fact she was now a millstone around his neck for the next however many years.

He had to be totally focused on the present moment. Mindful only of his breathing. To let everything around him fade away. He took another deep breath, and his body relaxed, some of the tension leaving him.

There was a rap at the door.

The noise jerked him back from the calm, empty state he'd been in, and confused, it took him a moment to place the noise.
 

There was another sharp crack, knuckles on wood.
 

He rose from the mat and went over to pull the door open. Blaize stood in front of him.

What is she doing here?
“Yes?”

“You said to pop up later and you’d show me around the house. And your working area. It’s late afternoon now.” A slight crinkle appeared on her forehead, and she tilted her head a fraction.

Cuinn looked at his wrist, at what turned out to be a non-existent watch. “Oh.”
 

He didn't remember saying he'd take her around the house. It didn't seem like him. And he really needed to get back to the dreamwalk. It felt as if she was at the end of a long tunnel, and half of him was with her, and the other half was still preparing for the ritual. He couldn't concentrate on what she wanted.

There was a beat while they looked at each other, her expectant, him unsure.
 

“So … can you show me around now?” She spoke slowly.

“Oh.” He paused, processing what she'd asked.“No, not now. I’m in the middle of something. Maybe tomorrow.”

“Right. Of course. I'll ask Tierra then shall I?”

“Fine.” Cuinn was distracted. The meditative state was fading fast. He'd have to start again. He frowned.

“Right. So … see you at dinner?” Blaize was backing away from the door and shaking her head.

"Fine." He shut the door and she was gone; he could get back to the ritual.

He lay back down, the girl disappearing from his mind, and breathed deeply until his body felt weighted and heavy. He relaxed more, his breathing slowed, his body still as death.
 

After some minutes, his body no longer felt heavy, but like nothing at all, as if he was no longer tethered to it. This wasn’t literally true—some Ajna Masters could project their spirit, their energetic body, out of their physical body and move to other places on the Earth, but his movement today was all in the energetic world, and not on the physical plane.

He was now in a sleep state of sorts. But a lucid, conscious sleep state, where he knew he was dreaming and could act in the dream. He was on the energetic, the etheric, plane.

But his actions could have consequences for the real world.

He opened his eyes and looked around. The energetic plane was a wondrous one, where the mind could create a different reality—the energy that the energetics were able to pull through into the physical plane was all around here, and could be shaped and moulded as long as you knew how. There was some danger—unprepared energetics could kill themselves with the almost unlimited energy here.
 

When he visited this plane, he always began in his Haven, the name Ajnas used for their ‘safe place’ on the energetic plane. His Haven was a tower of thick stone walls, stretching up several stories, with one good-sized room on each floor.
 

To get into Cuinn's Haven would take an energetic of enormous strength if they could even find it in the first place, which was doubtful without an invitation or a previous visit.

Though much of his work on the etheric plane could be done from his Haven, for his dreamwalk today he needed to go to one of the unclaimed places in the energetics world. One of the places that was unshaped by energetics, full of untamed energy that might show him a glimpse of the future. It was dangerous because of who or what he might meet, and because the energy itself was so wild it could almost be said to have a mind of its own.
 

But that itself was a risky thought. Sometimes in the dreamscape, the energy reacted to your thoughts—good and bad—and created a reality from your mind. Which, given how jumbled and confused most people’s minds were, could go very badly indeed.

His Ajna training had taught him how to keep a clear mind, how to focus, and how to be in the wild energy but keep his mind on the question he wanted answered. And sometimes, just sometimes, the wild energy would bring him answers.

The first inklings of this prophecy had been six months ago, and had been strange. He hadn't sought out the prophecy but been drawn by a feeling to one of the places of wild energy, where he had been gifted with a confusing jumble of images and feelings.
 

The few images made little sense, but the feelings that came with them hit home.
 

Despair, loss, destruction, emptiness—he’d woken up pale and sweating in his workroom at home, thrown from the dreamwalk without the usual decompression in his tower, and had staggered to the bathroom to throw up. He'd shared the images with Adam and Tierra, and later with Minh.

Since then, the prophecies had continued to come—some, unasked for like the first, powerful and exhausting in their intensity, and some, actively sought, usually clearer, but also much lighter in detail. These latter were like tiny shards of glass—whatever you could see in them was crystal clear, but only a very small part of the whole. The unasked-for visions were like opaque windows—a much bigger picture could be seen, but at the cost of clarity.

Both had an impact on him. Sometimes he woke up utterly drained. Tierra, Fintan and Adam all knew about his dreamwalks in search of more information on the prophecy, but as none of them were farseers, none of them knew quite the toll each dreamwalk took on him.
 

A dreamwalk involved not just a visit to the etheric plane - which could be taxing at the best of times, even when he stayed in his Haven, his safe place - but once there, a trip out into the wild energy on the etheric plane, a world that would react to his very thoughts. That he could shape to his will—if he was powerful enough. ‘Thoughts become things’ wasn’t just an inspirational saying in the dreamscape.

But the effort, the control needed, could be exhausting and dangerous. He’d been hiding the impact on his mental and physical condition as much as possible, fearing that Tierra, in particular, might try to stop him. And he knew he couldn’t let her do that.
 

His health was nothing compared to the survival of his race.

Today, emerging on the energetic plane in his Haven, he walked downstairs and to the heavy wooden door that provided access to the etheric plane outside the tower. He breathed in and out, using the familiar energy of the tower to create a shield to protect himself as much as possible outside his own Haven. Some of the grounds were warded - energetically guarded by him - too, but his strongest protections were in the tower itself.

With the door open, he stared out onto the flat grassland that he’d surrounded his tower with and was his preferred terrain—all the better to see something coming. Everything within his boundaries he had created, by drawing on the energies of the etheric plane. Beyond his boundaries all he could see was what looked like mist, fundamentally grey, with the occasional spark of colour.
 

Pure potential.
 

He strode to the edge of his Haven’s limits, where he paused for a moment to take a deep breath - and then stepped into the mist.
 

He experienced weightlessness, vertigo, claustrophobia, and agoraphobia all at once. His energetic essence on this plane was untethered, and he needed to ground it or he’d never manage to focus enough to gather more shards of prophecy.

He reached for the energy, which responded to him like a very sticky, resistant toffee. It took great amounts of effort to shape his own body and some of the environment around him. Eventually, after much work, he found himself standing on a barren, rocky plain with little but scrub in either direction. The horizon was formless, and even the sky was an unrelenting grey, with no sign of the sun. There was no life to be seen.

Now came the dangerous part. He’d managed to define a small slice of reality, and he needed to let some of the wild energies back in, but in a controlled, focused fashion, that might help answer his question.

He opened himself very slightly to the wild energy. He focused his mind on the image of the twelve energetics facing the threat. He wanted to know who they were, and the part they would play.

Holding his focus, as well as holding the environment steady took huge amounts of mental and energetic effort. He breathed deeply.

The image blurred, shifted, changed. Eleven of the energetics disappeared, till just one woman, the one who had been standing closest to him, was left.

Blaize.

The picture of her shifted. Her eyes, a dull olive, looked at him from a face that was bruised, with a smear of dried blood under her nose. She was tied to something underneath her, and her energy was fading, though he wasn’t sure why or how.
 

As always with a dreamwalk, he couldn’t alter the vision, just watch in despair as her energy drained, and her green eyes turned glassy.

As the life left her face, the image of the twelve energetics came back to his mind.

But even as he watched, the vision changed. In it, Blaize turned to meet his gaze, smiled sadly, and faded from the vision.

This change was accompanied by a desperate sadness, a longing, and a deep emotional pain. The wrench of her disappearance shocked him like a sudden blow, and he felt himself thrown back into his body in the physical plane.

He barely had the energy to open his eyes, let alone the energy to sit up on the mat. His eyes and cheeks were wet, and he realised he was crying.

He lay like that, empty, silent, tears falling, until dawn.

Blaize had an unsettled night. Dreams came and went, slipping though her mind like stagnant water down a drain, leaving anxiety behind like a bad smell. But she couldn’t catch any details as she swam in and out of consciousness, and when she finally woke, she felt as tired as she’d been the night before.

She put it behind her, as today Cuinn was taking her to the local town. He was already belting up as she opened the passenger door and got in beside him.
 

Blaize admitted to herself she'd been a little disappointed at Cuinn's choice of car for their trip, a tricked out charcoal Land Rover Discovery. He'd told her, disinterested, that Adam chose their cars, though they did have several in their garage. Given Adam was a Muladhara energetic, it was unsurprising that the cars turned out to be brutes, built more for safety than for speed. And logical, she supposed, given the terrain. But her own penchant was for sleeker cars, cars that were powerful and fast.
At least he didn't choose the pickup.