The First Legacies Of Zion: Omaye

Studying Healing

ESTHER

Being a cleric was not at all as holy and as doped up as it was hyped about. In just three days, Esther has had to rebuff advances from six different apprentices just like her, and two senior priests, one of them was even a woman.

Don’t get her wrong, Esther was not a saint, and she took pride in the effects her body had on men, and now it seems also women. But she has always attached a kind of reverence for religion, even though she has had less than stellar experiences with it. She loves the idea of believing in something bigger than herself, that regardless of whatever sin or atrocity she might have committed, there was always someone up there watching out for her and ready to forgive no matter how much she f****d up.

But this people have perverted the very idea of sanctity, to make it short and simple the church was corrupt, and even the head priest seems to be turning a blind eye to the whole thing, or it might be that he was a part of the whole thing. But there was hardly anything she could do about it, she had zero influence in the church and she also had no idea how things worked here. It would take a significant amount of power and connection to be able to influence change in this place.

However, that was all in the future, she had her hands filled enough as it is trying to understand the principles and laws of holy magic and how to channel it.

The priests of the church, which all round up to an insignificant number of four including the head priest which makes them five, did not believe in holding the hands of their clerics. The only help they had rendered so far was to dump Esther in a very dusty and on its last legs dump of a library to study books on the principles of holy magic. In other words, and a significant amount of air quotes ‘she has to rely on her perception and faith to master the way of God.’

So now here she was, with a dusty and moldy book sitting in her lap, about to do the thing she absolutely hated the most in her life……. study. Esther was not academically oriented like her younger siblings. Nathaniel was good with art and always knew how to see life in a different way. Faith was more calculative, principled and had a completely cynical view of life, making her have the air of an isolated genius who felt she was better than everybody. And she hated both of them for it.

Her brother always felt he knew what was right and understood how the world works, even when the i***t was nothing more than a junkie and miscreant who wasted his time as part of a gang that did nothing but smoke, sniff, f**k and bully little kids all day.

And then there was perfect little Faith, who always felt like she was better than everybody and considered her own family a curse and a burden she had to deal with. Every other member of her family thought that Faith had to be protected so that their sins would not rub off on her, but all those idiots could not seem to notice that Faith was just as broken as the rest of them.

Esther let out a sigh of exasperation as she shifted her focus back to the book in front of her. The problem with her family is that non of them were willing to truly acknowledge that they were messed up, and even if they did. All of them even her were comfortable enough with the current status quo. They were not happy, but they were so afraid of what could change that they would much rather remain together and miserable, than separate and happy.

Esther blew over the surface of the book pushing a cloud of dust into the air cue in a session of coughing and sneezing while she cursed every book in the dusty library and its maker. And after that was over with, Esther with an intense shudder dove into the knowledge the book had to offer, spending hours learning and studying as if her life depended on it.

Every form of magic and energy in Zion had their own unique principles and governing laws. Just like the laws of physics back on earth, Zion had her own set that explains and determines the flow, use and effect of all magic. But each school of magic’s approach are unique in their own right, based on the sense that no two type of magic were the same.

Witches cast spells differently from mages, warlocks or sorcerers. Clerics and any other profession in connection to religion depend on their power of faith and belief. If it was any other game, you would never need to worry about principles and laws, all you had to do was call out the spell and you have fireballs exploding in the face of anybody you see.

But Zion was different, there was a distinct need to understand the skill or spell. Knowledge is not enough in this case, or just saying the spell out loud. Zion regardless of its origin was nothing short of another reality, technology or not, this was a real freaking world and it did not work as expected.

Zion was not rigid and set like any other virtual reality game ever made, there was a surprising amount of flexibility that even earth itself could never have been able to offer.

The mind has become a part of the template that Zion was made and built on. Her perception of Zion was as real as earth if not clearer, and as such she and every other bozo out there who have come to see Zion as another reality would have to do one thing in it……live in it.

Esther already had knowledge about her spells and skills, what she really needed to learn now was how to activate them. And the only way she would be able to that is if she learnt how holy magic worked, and how to channel it into her skills and bring them into reality.

The dusty book in front of her for the most part was quite helpful, if you disregard the fact that sixty percent of its content was religious hogwash, as it was probably written by someone who had a hard on for religion.

But that aside the book explained holy energy as an entity very different from any other form of energy used for magic. The closest comparison would be dark energy, which comes from the big bad down below. Zion was run on the religious principle of the one true God and the devil. But caught in between this two was a host of other gods, demons, devils, spirits etc.

However holy energy is channeled directly from the celestial plane by the help of an object which could be considered a bridge or a gateway to the celestial plane or heaven. The best way to explain it is to think of the celestial plane as a big drum of holy energy and wonders, and Esther was just a small cup. However, she cannot just dunk herself into the drum to get power, she would be vaporized in body, soul and spirit. So this object would serve as a funnel or a nozzle to a tap, that systematically let the energy of the celestial plane flow through it and into Esther.

Esther as a cup would slowly grow accustomed to the energy, and then her capacity for it would increase when she gets to a higher level, and along with it, the intensity of which the energy flows from the celestial plane would increase. And it will be so until she becomes strong enough to serve as her own funnel, having the capability of tapping into the celestial plane at will without the need of a funnel.

But that was a long way into the future. But what she has been able to glean from the book was that holy energy was the lightest and yet solid of all the source of energy. Very few people would understand that holy energy can be used for both attack and defense, it can be used to heal and according to the book even curse.