For the rest of the day, Cypher had sat in one place focusing on his Orrium. In all that time he hadn’t been able to feel much of anything other than his aching muscles and bruises. Alvin had patiently waited the entire time as Cypher searched.
Finding the Orrium wasn’t the issue. It was gauging the amount of power held inside it that was troubling Cypher. It had seemed easy enough when his ark was refilling it, or when he was trying to cast a spell. However, Alvin insisted that he attempt to find the results on his own without these methods.
He had mentioned how most Conductors could tell how much power they held inside their Orrium just by thinking about it and if Cypher was to ever become like them, he would have to learn to do the same.
“It should be second nature to you. It should be as easy as breathing or drinking. If you are in a tense situation you won’t have time to stop and figure out how much Zight you have available to you. Try again!”
Alvin drilled him like that for hours until the sun had set and even well into the night. His back was sore from sitting still for so long and his legs were numb and tingling, however, he continued to try and detect the power that lay inside him.
He had returned to his room around midnight with no results and even then he could not simply go to sleep. Alvin had said that he had to examine the next page of the Architect’s Draft and work on expanding his Athenaeum.
It would take him a long time to finish the second page Alvin warned. It might take years, and he wanted to expand his mind as much as possible as quickly as he could. He was eager to become strong enough to hold his own in this world of monsters and if his mind wasn’t up to the task, that dream would remain beyond his reach.
He had opened it slowly, scared of another experience with the void and that crushing darkness. The last thing he wanted was to experience that hellish feeling again so soon.
His fears had been misplaced, however, as when he looked upon it, it only caused his head to hurt. He could feel the walls of his Athenaeum throbbing with each second that he stared at the diagram. As he looked on, the light of the lantern in his mind began to dim at a rapid rate that shocked him.
‘This is no good. How am I supposed to do this if my mental energy is used up this quickly?‘
He had thought that after only an hour of staring at the diagram when his reserves of mental energy had fallen to a quarter of their total limit. Any longer and he might start to pass out, thus he had closed the book and headed to bed.
He was annoyed with himself for burning through so much mental energy while gaining what seemed like no progress toward finishing the second diagram. He could vividly remember the forms and patterns of the first one as if he was looking at it, but with this second one, he could only see a single quill stroke of it when he tried to imagine it.
His annoyance however vanished shortly after, it was only the first time he had looked upon it, and to expect results right out of the gate was probably stupid of him. He calmed himself after that and went to bed with a long yawn.
The next morning at sunrise he had been completely exhausted. Alvin had given him a small device that would wake him at the proper time each morning as long as he filled it with Zight the night before and set the clock to the appropriate time.
The device had gone off exactly at sunrise and woke him with a loud ringing noise that he could not ignore. Worse still, it wouldn’t go off until he channeled Zight into it again and he could not do that unless he was awake and focused.
More time passed, and after several hours of sparring with Alvin, he found himself back on the ground with his legs crossed trying again to sense his Orrium’s power, and for another two days, his training carried on like that.
He would wake, spar with Alvin, and then he would spend the rest of the evening trying to sense his reserves of Zight. What made it harder was that each night he would stare at the diagram in the Architect’s Draft for an hour as per Alvin’s request.
His mental energy was always refilled by the time he woke up, but he still felt exhausted in the mornings when he awoke. His muscles were sore, his bruises had bruises on them and it seemed like he was making no progress at all.
On the last day before he would start his classes, it happened. After spending the entire evening attempting to sense the power of his Orrium, he and Alvin were about to call it a night when a sudden strange feeling crept into his mind.
It was faint, almost undetectable but there was no denying it. Cypher focused harder, eager to not lose that feeling, and at last, he felt a sense of the power contained inside his Orrium. It was like a lake of pure energy, but it was calm and serene.
If he had to describe it, it was almost like looking at it through a thick layer of fog, he could make it out but it was hard to tell exactly what he was looking at. As he stared, his mental energy began to drop slowly but it was negligible and wasn’t anything to worry about.
Cypher exclaimed in excitement after a moment and explained to Alvin what he had done.
“Good, now tell me how does that feel? What are you experiencing right now?” Alvin asked after a few moments, and Cypher explained the sensation.
“A lake you say? That’s interesting… Hmm… Well for now, just focus hard and try to churn up those waters a bit. Not too forcefully now, but just enough to get some waves rolling. That will be the first step to growing your Orrium.”
Cypher did as he was asked and focused harder than before, taking note of the higher consumption of mental energy as he began to churn up the lake of Zight within him. For a few moments, only light waves seemed to bump against the shore of his Orrium.
He forced more energy into the action and to his delight, harsher waves began to start crashing against the shoreline. With those waves though, a sharp pain shot through his lower body and he was forced to stop and clutch at his Orrium.
“Owww! That hurts! Why didn’t you tell me that it hurt so much?” Exclaimed Cypher as he rubbed his waist.
Alvin looked confused and stared at Cypher for a few moments before answering, “I didn’t expect that it would. It isn’t supposed to hurt. Hmm, we can investigate this pain later, it might simply be the lack of use for so long. For now, the important thing is that you just learned how to expand your Orrium.”
“As those waves grow more intense, you can use them to gauge how much Zight you have and how much growth you’ve undergone. You’ll find that as you grow more powerful those waves will expand the ‘shoreline’ of your Orrium and eventually you’ll be ready for a breakthrough to the next level.”
“Right now you’re only able to use Zight in its ‘liquid’ form. As you grow stronger and make bigger waves, you’ll eventually be able to compress your Orrium at will using only mental energy. Once you can do that, you’ll be able to force the liquid into a ‘solid’ state. From there it’ll become ‘plasma’ and at that point, you’ll be near a breakthrough to the next rank, which will return it to a ‘liquid’ state of a much higher quality.”
Cypher took all of this in with great interest, however, the pain in his Orrium still bothered him. But if Alvin wasn’t concerned he decided he wouldn’t be either. Alvin took the time to explain a bit more about the process, stating that it would take long periods of time to reach each successive form of Zight among other things.
Their conversation carried on until midnight, at which point Cypher returned to his room. He didn’t spend time looking at the second page of the Architect’s draft before sleeping. His classes would begin in the morning and he wanted to be well-rested for them.
