“Right,” said Scorio, and rubbed his suddenly sweaty palms on his knees. “Everything I know. I’ll begin with the, ah, relationship between our Hearts and the ambient mana.” And he outlined, as clearly as he could, the triangle of power, and how one’s inner flame was sparked by applying tension to their Heart once it was suffused with ambient power.
“Correct,” said Hera with a smile, and Scorio felt a rush of pride. “Stress, tension, or a sufficiently honed will can cause the very substance of your Heart to release as a spiritual vapor. This vapor reacts with the saturated mana to ignite your Heart, unlocking your ability to draw ever more power from the world around you. But note that you cannot ignite your Heart without consuming some small part of it; a balanced Great Soul will rely primarily on mana, and never consume more of their Heart than it can easily regenerate. Desperation, greed, or untempered ambition can lead Great Souls to empower their techniques with too much substance, resulting in the deterioration of their Hearts. The more you consume, the longer it takes to regenerate; the rate is exponential. A large part of what we practice here, therefore, is mindful control over the ratio of spirit vapor to ambient mana, so that it becomes instinctive to never use unhealthy amounts, no matter the short-term temptation.”
Scorio tongued the inside of his cheek as he absorbed this. “Naomi told me that some Great Souls can extend their ignition purely by consuming their Hearts, but that you change as a person the more you burn.”
“Correct. Your Heart is not merely a source of fuel for your techniques. It’s very literally you. Your sense of self, your morality, your values, your goals. If you burn your Heart away completely, it will never regenerate, and you will become a monster that others will hunt and put down.”
“Is that what happened to Imogen?” he asked softly, wondering if he dared too much.
A shadow passed over Hera’s face, and then she nodded. “Yes. She burned the entirety of her Heart, and was left with what’s called a Lacuna, a space where her Heart once belonged. This is thought to be a direct channel to the Pit, and results in ever-greater power, though the mechanics of this tragedy are not fully understood.”
“I see. But… she claimed to still love Imperator Sol.” Scorio searched Hera’s face, looking for some hint that he should stop speaking. “That she wanted to return to his side.”
“If she truly loved him, perhaps as she once did, do you think she would have created the situation that forced them to fight?” Hera’s smile was pained. “The Fallen, as they’re called, don’t see themselves as monsters. Nobody in this world does. Imogen no doubt still believes herself guided by love and the same virtues as before. But they’ve come untethered from reality. They are now little more than justifications for whatever she desires. If you were to ask Sol, do you think he would say he recognized the love that his former wife once had for him?”
“No,” said Scorio softly.
“No,” agreed Hera. “After what you witnessed firsthand, you more than most then will be served by this example and understand why you should never be tempted to burn your Heart recklessly as fuel. But moving on.” She sat up straight again. “What else can you tell me?”
So he told her about the variables in mana, ranging from degrees of purity to its density to its regeneration rate. The variables that governed training, namely frequency, intensity, and sheer amount. How Naomi had sought to find his edge where he was pushed to his limits but not overwhelmed. How the power of an Igneous Heart was determined by its depth, its reactivity, and ability to condense mana.
“Very good,” said Hera, her warm smile returning. “All the basics that we cover during our first month. Anything else?”
Scorio searched his memory for a moment, then smiled. “Ah—right. That what determines the limits of one’s advancement is the nature of one’s ambitions.”
“Excellent. Yes, and that’s what we work on during the second half of the year. Clarifying and identifying your motivations, and trying to modify them by finding deeper roots that will allow you to quest ever further for more power and change. Unfortunately, all Great Souls are hampered by a natural limitation. Do you know what that is?”
Scorio narrowed his eyes. Did he know? His long conversations with Naomi felt blurred now, a jumbled mass of information and discursions that probably had contained that fact. But nothing specific came to him, so he shook his head.
“Motivation and ambition stem from experience. A regular citizen of Bastion is born as a baby, with nothing more than the simple and primal desires to flourish, to love and be loved, to be safe, well-fed, and eventually be fulfilled at work and to create a family. Those desires are insufficient to fuel a Great Soul’s ascent to power. No, what drives us to reach the rank of Imperator is the injustices, the wrongs, and the traumas that we experience along the way. They must outrage us to the point that we strive to correct them, not just for ourselves, but for all others. Yet when we reincarnate, what have we lost?”
“Our memories,” said Scorio softly.
“Our past. The very experiences that drove us to become the legendary heroes that helped defeat the demons almost a thousand years ago. Those drives are still there, within us, but lost to our conscious minds. We cannot access them except through vague, emotional impulses. Angers that we don’t understand, intolerances that surprise us. But what is our salvation in this matter?”
Scorio’s blank face was answer enough.
“The Four Trials,” said Hera with an air of quiet satisfaction. “It is forbidden for Cinders to learn the details, but each trial reveals a facet of your original past. It is a process of rediscovery, though what you learn may shock you, disappoint you, challenge the person you are today. Regardless, these recovered memories are what ultimately drive students to Dread Blaze and possibly beyond.”
“I see,” said Scorio, her words crystallizing a sudden and undeniable desire. “We rediscover who we were, and that allows us to harness our old ambitions to become more powerful today.”
“Precisely. Now, the Academy begins this process by inculcating in our students a raw desire for power in and of itself. This desire is ultimately insufficient to get you far, but it reliably gets you to your First Trial, where your own memories and drives then take over and push you all the way to Dread Blaze. That is where most Great Souls find their natural choke point; unable to reconcile the person they’ve become today with the host of memories they’ve inherited, they stall out, not from lack of desire, but from an inability to collapse their former and current selves into a new whole.”
Scorio felt gripped by wild, rushing energy that swirled within his being like an unleashed vortex; he sat up straight, gripped his knees tightly, and studied Hera with renewed fascination. He’d spent so many cycles, so many Eighthdays, so utterly focused on his immediate problems that the complete lack of past, his lack of self-knowledge, was often something he forgot; but now the need to know who he was, what he had done, who his parents had been, where he’d grown up, what he liked, everything and anything about himself was so strong that it brought tears to his eyes.
With a breath that was half-gasp, he forced a self-conscious smile, and bounced his knees a few times as he sought to master the tempestuous emotions that sought to overcome him.
“I understand exactly what you’re feeling,” said Hera warmly. “We all do. We’ve all been there, many, many times over. It’s a void you can’t quite wrap your mind around until you face it fully; an absence you don’t appreciate until you’re given the chance to fill it. Almost everyone makes Emberling, Scorio, though it takes time, extreme effort, and access to the finest treasures. The drive to know coupled with the desire for power ensures that everyone reaches their First Trial eventually. How far you go from there will depend on what you discover about yourself and how well you can reconcile that knowledge with the world you live in today.”