7. Of Poise and Zen


    An unlikely duo of a Rakshasan prisoner and a sentient six-shooter had set out to scale all of Mount Meru, but first, they had to climb the spiral stairs of the Aviary. Baby steps.


    As was appropriate for baby’s first foray into Wayfaring, the education of Serac Edin continued, now with a less cynical and somewhat kinder Trippy dropping theory with plenty of buffer before practice.


    “The next mechanic you need to understand is Poise,” he explained while Serac crouched low and snuck past a Jailer that was gleefully shoving inmates off the ledge and down the stairwell. “Every attack in the afterlife, in theory at least, deals damage to two separate parameters that are definable by Pathsight. One is HP, and the other is Poise. If you consider HP to represent one’s overall physical health, then you may think of Poise as one’s mental fortitude at any given time. Breaking a soul’s Poise, therefore, is tantamount to interrupting their ability to focus on their immediate endeavor.”


    So that’s what happened to Porky! Serac thought rather than spoke, loath to make any noise with a Jailer within earshot. When I hit him with that third bullet, he sort of just stopped and keeled over.


    “Precisely. Unlike HP, and much slower than Stamina, Poise will ‘recover’ on its own, if you give a soul enough time to regather their courage. But if you land enough attacks within that lengthy recovery window, you can Poise-break the opponent, thereby bringing any brute—no matter how large or how powerful—to their knees.”


    And that’d be my cue to sneak in a few free hits. Serac nodded silently, then made sure the nearest Jailer’s eyes were turned before she dashed to the next hiding spot further up the stairs. Or it could be a chance to safely close the distance and try a melee attack.


    “Yes, but that’s not the only benefit. You see, ‘Poise-break’ isn’t just a state of immobility, but also one of vulnerability. Every hit you deal to a Poise-broken opponent will produce critical damage, multiplying your base Attack Value severalfold.”


    Serac nodded again, thinking back to how PULVERIZER’s [Grind] had atomized Porky’s face (yuck!) and removed a huge chunk of his HP in one fell swoop.


    “But remember, Wayfarer, that the same rules apply to you. You can just as easily be Poise-broken by the enemy, leaving you vulnerable to a critical attack. What’s more, you would’ve noticed that there’s no ‘Poise bar’ to speak of, and the only damage numbers that do show up pertain to HP.”


    Yeah, I did notice. Why is that?


    “Frankly, no one knows. Whether due to an oversight or perhaps a conscious ‘design choice’, Pathsight refuses to show just how much Poise damage is dealt with each attack. All we know on paper is that you currently have 65 points of maximum Poise. What does that mean in practical terms? How many hits could you withstand before being Poise-broken? I’m afraid that’s something that can only be gleaned from first-hand experience and keen observation. In other words, you’ll have to learn it ‘the hard way’.”


    Serac found herself liking this new and mellower Trippy more and more. See how nice it is just to have a calm conversation like two sensible adults?


    In fact, she was enjoying this lesson so much that she couldn’t help but voice her approval, “You know what, Trippy? As weirdly math-heavy as all this Karma and Pathsight stuff is, I can see myself warming to it. I don’t know what it is about it, but it feels like… I’m playing a game—with its own rules and challenges. I just wanna get out there and see what I can do, you know? See if I’m any good at this stuff.”


    “I can understand it. Wayfaring offers a clear goal to work towards, alongside a feedback system to indicate successes and failures in digestible increments. I’m not surprised that someone like you would be enticed by its appeals.”


    “Someone like me? You mean someone that’s—oh shit!”


    Serac had been too hasty to break her vow of silence. For lumbering up the stairs behind her was the same Jailer she’d snuck past just earlier. It’d evidently run out of inmates to chuck to their deaths, now turning its bloodshot eyes and giant ‘poker’ of a tethered weapon toward its newest toy.


    This Jailer dispensed with the formalities of trying to subdue a Penitent by her Circlet. Instead, its very first move was to lunge forward and thrust the rusted (but still plenty pointy) end of its poker into Serac, as if she were a Furnace that needed its coals rearranged.


    Serac twisted away from the attack by the skin of her teeth, before quickly sliding back down the stairs to create a safe distance. She’d learned a bit about Stamina management from her previous encounters and was now diligently mindful of the green bar that fluctuated at the edges of her consciousness.


    She knew also that, with her current low HP (just 137/577), there were only so many more hits she could absorb with PULVERIZER. [Catharsis] was also out of the question, lest she push herself into the last slivers of HP and MP long before she could complete her prison break. No, she would have to find a new way to take down this latest Jailer.


    Oblivious to its opponent’s scheming ways, the Jailer took another lunging step to close the distance and bring Serac back within poker range. This gave the Rakshasa the briefest of windows to fire off one REVOLVER shot ([111!]) before she shifted her focus (and Stamina) onto evading the Jailer’s next attack. She spun, feeling the poker cut dangerously close into the space she’d just vacated, then ran back up the stairs to reset the distance between the two combatants.


    This latest maneuver ran her Stamina down to its last green segment, but she forced herself to keep calm and wait. The Jailer, with its towering frame, was slow to turn around and retrain its sights on Serac, which gave the agile (and patient) Rakshasa the time to replenish her Stamina.


    Then this exchange too fell into the same pattern as the previous one. The Jailer took a lumbering step to close the distance. Serac responded with REVOLVER and its modest damage ([111!]). Poke, dodge, run to safety. Rinse and repeat.


    Serac was starting to see that not every Jailer was—to put it kindly—as proficient with pattern recognition and problem-solving as Porky, her former personal tormentor. This one, even after falling for the same trick twice, persisted with its single-minded approach. And Serac dutifully punished this stubbornness by landing a third REVOLVER shot—the same number it’d previously taken to bring Porky to his knees.


    Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    With a pitiful groan, the Jailer dropped its weapon by its side and crumpled to the ground. Poise-break. Serac recognized the phenomenon and knew what to call it. All she needed now was to lay into a defenseless opponent and shave off what remained of its HP with some good old-fashioned ‘critical damage’.


    But as she raised REVOLVER for a fourth and (hopefully) final shot, she was suddenly struck by the question of choice. Which was strange, considering this should’ve been no choice at all.


    She didn’t have enough MP to activate [The Grind] like last time. [Catharsis] here would be foolish and frankly overkill. The only thing that made sense was to shoot the Jailer with REVOLVER’s regular ammunition, and keep shooting it until it died.


    And yet, she couldn’t help but notice that the Jailer had its back turned to the edge of the staircase, beyond which was open air and a sheer drop. She couldn’t help but recall the procession of helpless inmates this brute had shoved down the same stairwell. She couldn’t help, also, to turn an analytical eye to her own available resources, chief among which was ‘Cartridge’ ([2|24]).


    She gave each of these thoughts their proper weight—all within the space of a nervous Ksana. And she used the next Ksana to act on their combined conclusion—long before a simple-minded Jailer could hope to mend its broken Poise.


    Serac lowered the gun in her right hand. She then dug her heels into the fleshy ground before swinging with her left hand as hard as Rakshasa-ly possible, PULVERIZER-first and into the Jailer’s center of mass.


    Contact with the Jailer’s bare skin proved to be an affront to the senses, and the foul breath expelled from its chest even more so. But the punch was a clean and weighty one, with enough force behind it to dislodge the Jailer’s massive body and send it hurtling over the ledge.


    Much to Serac’s surprise, it’d even elicited its own damage number: [178!]. Much smaller than what [The Grind] would’ve produced under the same circumstance, and nowhere near enough to deplete the Jailer’s HP on its own. It was a good thing, then, that Serac hadn’t counted on it.


    She stopped short of falling over the ledge herself, then listened. It didn’t take long for a meaty splat to announce the exact moment of a Jailer’s demise. This was soon followed by the Karma pop-up of [300 ?], crediting the Wayfarer with her latest successful smiting.


    And only then did Serac let out a sigh of relief.


    In all honesty, she had no way to foresee that her gambit would work, and she thanked her lucky stars that her instincts had proven correct. Trippy didn’t have to know that though (albeit he probably did know), and Serac dusted herself off with outward nonchalance as she picked up their conversation where they’d left off.


    “You were saying? About someone like me being the perfect fit for Wayfaring?”


    “… You’re putting words in my mouth, Wayfarer, but I’ll humor you just this once. I meant to say someone with your ambitions—and evidently the talent to match. That was well-fought, and without me having to intervene once. Sound strategy. Impeccable display of Stamina management. And even a spark of inspired improvisation to finish things off. You used the terrain to your advantage, and managed to conserve some Cartridge because of it. The fact that you’ve pulled this off at only your fourth encounter does bode well for the rest of our journey.”


    At Trippy’s praise—hard-earned and unexpectedly effusive—Serac’s mask of nonchalance melted in an instant. She couldn’t hide a big goofy grin as she said, “Stop it! No, keep going! Tell me more about how awesome I am and how you’re so glad you chose me as your Wayfarer!”


    Joking though she was, she was nevertheless disappointed when the praise didn’t keep flowing. Trippy instead paused for a moment, seeming to choose his next words carefully.


    “You… do continue to surprise me, Serac Edin. And my latest surprise is at just how Zen you are about your predicament.”


    “Zen?” Serac parroted, finally stumped by a word she’d never known, in this life or another. “What’s that?”


    This was followed by another pause, long enough to make Serac wonder if her question might’ve stumped Trippy in turn.


    “… Zen is… not unlike Poise, I suppose. Except it can’t be defined by a number, not even with Pathsight. And it persists, unbroken, through all the ups and downs of a soul’s existence.”


    Trippy stopped again, but Serac kept both her mouth shut and her mind blank. Somehow, she could sense that her six-shooter had more to say.


    “When I first found you, you’d already suffered through heaven knows how many lifetimes of torture and misery, and yet you still had the heart to joke around with your Jailer. You’ve put up with me and my abrasive ways, lived through the shocks and horrors of what it means to undertake this journey with me, and… you seem to have taken it all in stride. Still upbeat and eager for more. How do you do it, Serac Edin? How are you so resilient when, as far as I can tell, you’ve had no foundation upon which to build that resilience?”


    As pleasantly confusing as she’d found it, Serac was ready and willing to give Trippy’s long-winded question its due consideration. She started to think of a response… then stopped almost immediately.


    The feeling was familiar. A kind of dissonance that caught against memories of murky origin. She’d felt the same thing not long ago, as she’d pondered the ‘three’ things that could happen to souls when they died. And here, again, she hastily interrupted her recollections of self—the source of her dissonance—as she put on a slightly stilted smile for no one’s benefit.


    “Not sure about you, partner, but I’m not enough of a narcissist to have spent much time psycho-analyzing myself. Besides, I don’t think it’s that deep, anyway. Let’s just call it one of my ‘talents’ and be done with it, yeah?”


    “… As you wish. Onwards, then, Wayfarer. We still have a ways to climb.”


    And onwards Serac climbed. Sneaking when she could, and fighting when she couldn’t. Along the way, she managed to dispatch two more Jailers and another Frenzied Penitent, bringing her total Liminal Karma to an increasingly juicy-looking [1,660 ?]. Not that she knew what exactly she was meant to do with that number.


    While progress remained smooth, resource management became something of a worry. Serac managed to avoid taking further damage, but her careful approach had the side effect of drawing out each battle. By the time she made it just past halfway up the Aviary, Cartridge was down to only [6|10], causing her to wonder if she had enough bullets left to gunsling her way out of prison.


    She was still preoccupied with questions of attrition when she was suddenly distracted by a voice.


    “Hey.”


    Serac froze in between two steps, knowing full well that the voice didn’t belong to Trippy, nor could it be attributed to the unintelligible wails and barks that still rang throughout the Aviary.


    “Psst! Yes, sweetcheeks, I’m talking to you.”


    Sweetcheeks? As far as Serac was aware, she had no one in her life who could be allowed to call her ‘sweetcheeks’. Thus, it was with equal parts alarm, confusion, and indignation that she scanned her vicinity for the source of the voice.


    Eventually, Serac’s eyes fell upon one of the hanging jail cells that were nearest her. Then she jumped, biting down on a startled yelp at the same time. For staring back at her through a small perforation on the alveolar wall was an eye, one that blinked several times as the voice spoke its next words.


    “Oh, thank the gods. I was starting to think I’d be stuck in this… fucking bird cage forever. Now, hurry up and get me out! I’ll make it worth your while.”