5 – Pondering the Orb

The breakfast Bagavash left me was delicious. I ate it at my desk, staring out my only window and thinking about everything he had just said. It made sense, in a way. I’d heard of the idea of chakras, energy centers in the body, but I’d always just dismissed it as a bunch of wooey crap. But in a world where magic was actually real, it made sense that there would be a place in the body to store magical energy.

My window overlooked a few of the raised beds, lush with spring vegetables. Myrl was already out tending them, ripping out weeds and throwing them in a compost pile. Directly across from my window was a recess in the wall around the tower that contained a statue of a woman. It reminded me of the figureheads sailors would put on old ships.

When I finished with my meal, Linli came in to take the dirty plate. He nodded to a door in the corner of my room. “You probably figured it out already, but the water closet’s in there.” Before he left, he said, “Good luck,” then shut the door behind him.

I walked over and peered inside the water closet. It was one of those toilets with a box on the wall above it with a drawstring hanging down, probably gravity-fed from some rain barrel on the roof. Thank god these wizards had developed indoor plumbing. I wasn’t prepared to be using a bedpan while trying to figure out how to consolidate my “orb.”

With nothing else to do, I decided to get down to it. Going off what little Bagavash told me, it seemed I simply had to visualize an energy orb forming in my chest. So I did just that.

I imagined a glowing ball of energy sitting right behind my solar plexus. I decided it should be a light blue color, like the massive crystal that hung in the central chamber of the tower. Something gave the feeling that it was glowing with raw mana.

Visualizing the orb wasn’t that hard. Anyone could imagine a ball of glowing energy. I kept at it for about five minutes, but kept getting distracted with other thoughts, like who would water my spider plant? Who was going to finish that TPS report I was working on before I took my little “vacation”? I knew none of that mattered anymore. I was in a world of magic. And necromancers, for that matter. The most important thing I could be doing right now was concentrating on forming this orb. But that’s easier said than done.

I had never been good at meditating, and this felt exactly like meditating. I guess that was going to be the real challenge. Keeping my thoughts focused on my orb and nothing else. Bagavash had mentioned something about prolonged distractions at this stage being dangerous. I didn’t want to mess up my orb at the nascent stages.

So I focused. I wasn’t sure if it was doing anything, but every time my thoughts wandered off, I would drag them back to contemplating my orb. Instead of visualizing just a generic ball of energy, I decided to get serious about the details. My orb wasn’t just a glowing sphere. In my mind’s eye, it looked more like a snow globe with a whole world inside. An archetypal world with a huge tree of life dominating the landscape.

Envisioning a little world inside my orb made it easier to focus, and I noticed that eventually I would reach a different mental state. I kind of felt like being on the verge of sleep and wakefulness. That hazy feeling of lying in a hammock on a summer afternoon with bugs flitting about in the grass. It was hard to hold onto that feeling, like trying to grasp a fistful of water, because every time I noticed it, it tended to slip away.

Around noon, Linli returned with a plate of cold cheese and bread. He didn’t say much. Just dropped off the meal and left. I ate it gratefully. The cheese was the kind with those little crunchy crystals in it, while the bread was tough and crusty. I polished off my meal quickly enough, then got right back to pondering.

After having eaten something, I felt like it dulled my senses. It was harder to get into that meditative state, and all my body wanted to do was take a nap. And in fact, without realizing it, I fell asleep on my bed in the middle of visualizing.

It must have been hours later when I woke back up, because the shadows in the courtyard were getting long and the light had a golden tinge to it. I knew Bagavash said that sleep was alright when consolidating your orb, but I didn’t want to make a habit of taking these naps. It felt like wasted time. I sat up on the edge of my bed and envisioned my orb again. The interior was getting pretty lush as I gave more detail to my little inner world. Rolling hills, deep forests. For a second, I thought about creating deer and birds, but then thought better of adding wildlife to a magical construct I was forming inside of myself. Who knew what kind of ramifications that could have.

As I pondered my orb, I felt myself falling into that relaxed meditative state. It was getting easier to notice it without it slipping away. As I did, I noticed something else. I could sense little specs of blue light being drawn to my orb. Yes, I could see them in my mind’s eye, but they were different than my orb, which was purely a product of my imagination. These flecks of light had a different quality to them, as if I were seeing something that was actually there.

Before I could make sense of them, Linli opened the door to bring me my dinner, and it completely knocked me out of that state.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

I thanked him, though I was secretly cursing him for interrupting what felt like a very important stage. As he shut the door, I noticed the other wizards were gathering around the round table for their own dinner.

They certainly didn’t keep the noise down for my sake. There was lots of talk of “the new south bed,” “summer squash harvest,” and “the lusty witches of Westbrook.” Needless to say, it was hard to concentrate. So I just enjoyed my dinner in peace, watching night fall over the inner courtyard, bathing the garden beds and the statue of the woman in dusky twilight.

Eventually, the wizards retired to their chambers, and I could return to pondering my orb in earnest.

It was becoming easier to fall into what I was calling the meditative state. The normal state was when I was just trying to force a visualization of my orb, fighting off the intrusive thoughts that were always threatening to pull me away from my contemplation. But the meditative state was distinctly different. The visualizations came easily, and it felt as if everything flowed.

It was in this state that I could see the little blue motes of light.

It was also in this state that they became attracted to my orb.

I could see them floating aimlessly around in the empty space outside my orb, but when they came close enough to it, they would become magnetized to it, like a static-electrically charged comb attracting lint.

I became lost in reverie watching these little bits of what I presumed to be mana gathering on the surface of my orb. Since I had a nap in the afternoon, I wasn’t tired at all, and continued in this state until late into the night.

The next day, I awoke to Linli bringing me my breakfast. He merely set it on the floor just inside my door, then pulled it quietly shut. This day went much like my first day, except this time it was much easier to get into the meditative state.

When lunch came, I decided to forgo it, seeing as how yesterday a midday meal dulled my senses. I just kept on sitting on the edge of my bed with my feet firmly planted on the ground, visualizing my orb.

The bits of mana were becoming more numerous. Whereas yesterday I counted twelve motes that had become stuck to my orb, today there were almost too many to count, coating it in a thin layer.

I stopped visualizing my orb as glowing because I realized that the mana was providing the glow of its own accord. Inside, my orb was still the same: a sprawling, verdant landscape dominated by a central tree of life that shaded my little world with its massive branches.