Prism Academy 5- Chapter 39 (Patreon)

Chapter 39- The Other Shoe

This couldn’t be happening. I tried to pull as much progenitor energy into me as possible rather than simply waiting for it to fill up from inside. It was like what happened before and I felt as though I could pull more power, it just was different. I had to make a mental effort to build up the flow.

Error… unquantified ability has been identified. Seeking to examine.

Analysis pending… 5% complete.

That same stupid message popped up again, but I shoved it out of the way. I stumbled to my feet forcing down any down any signs of weakness. I just needed a bit more time. My capacity had been knocked down to forty percent by the void and it was still pulling at me. I needed to get away from it. More than that I needed to get my bonds away from it, away from him.

“Krig.”

“Well, at least you remembered my name.”

“Not often that I meet someone who calls himself a god, so yeah, you were a little hard to forget.”

He grimaced. Something about my words upset him and it was me that he was upset with or at least not mostly. “I was ready to rip you to shreds at our last meeting, but then I felt something. I still might, but I wasn’t in my right mind before. The battle with you was exactly what I needed to clear my system of the influence the beings you call the shadow were trying to impose on me.”

“You’re welcome then. Does that mean we aren’t going to fight, now?”

“War is the natural state of the universe. It is neither good nor evil. It simply is. Struggle is what it means to be alive. You seem to be one who has undergone your share of struggle.”

I was having trouble reading him. He didn’t seem quite the same mindless killer than before, but the arrogance was still dripping off of him. “I suppose so. Where does that leave us?”

“You had an awakening, or at least the potential. I realized I no longer have the mantle and need to start thinking differently.”

I paused long enough to send a tendril of Light’s Judgment into each of the bonds closest to me. Hopefully, they’d become strong enough to get up and move away from here. Krig seemed oddly civil in the moment, but I didn’t believe for a single moment that it would last.

“You’ll have to forgive my ignorance, but I don’t know what half the words you’re talking about meant.”

“And therein lies your problem. There can be no denying it. You fought me to a standstill with your handmaidens and even if I no longer have the mantle that is still saying something for a mortal.”

The smug expression on his face was begging me to smack it off, but this was a time for discretion even if I couldn’t muster much of it. “I see that you’re looking much better than the last time I saw you.”

“Yes, I suppose I am. Pushing myself to my limits helped me to grow stronger and learn more of what I can do in my current state. As it is, I think you have potential. But before we discuss that, I need to do something about that.” As Krig spoke, he gestured at the small hole in space. He shook his head. “The real reason I’m here is to close that. Finding you is just a happy coincidence.” Then he pointed to the tear in space.

Now, I was confused. “Why exactly would you want to do that?”

His eyes narrowed. “I have been called many things, but everyone who knew me knew that I stood against the void. I was there long ago when we locked it away from this universe. So don’t question my motivations.”

I was still confused, but if he was trying to close this then all the better. It was then that I noticed something about his essence was keeping the portal from draining my capacity. I was already past fifty percent and recharging. My efforts to pull in progenitor energy from around me seemed to be successful.

He waved his hand then. “See you’re doing it but doing it in ignorance.”

“Doing what?”

He shook his head. “Drawing in energy, but you don’t even understand the basics of cultivation. That energy you are absorbing is an altered version of essence. You’d do better if you learned to handle pure essence.”

“So, what do we need to do to close that portal?” I asked as I ignored his comments.

“Simple, we have to destabilize the energy that is holding it open. You broke apart the energy from the creature quite easily, but there an odd type of essence there that I’ve never seen before.”

Then Krig reached out and touched the area right around the tiny rift. He pinched at it and as I activated Energy Sense, I could see him pull something back. It might be essence, but it didn’t look like what I’d seen before.

“That doesn’t look like essence.”

He ignored me and held it up to his face. I almost lost it when he sniffed it and then touched the tip of his fingers with his tongue. “This is new. Perhaps some of the others' presence still exists. If I had to call this something, I’d call it Revenge Essence.”

“Sounds about right for the shadow.”

“They are petty creatures. Their entire race is nothing more than leeches. Now, if you want to hold on to your energy in the presence of the void, you’ll need to come up with more control. Consider this a free lesson. Focus on all of the Essence or what you’d call energy. Then think of forming it like a skin around you. At first, it will be difficult to maintain that thought as you do other things. Every time it slips you’ll lose Essence, but as it becomes habit, you’ll be truly ready to learn to gather.”

I shook my head. I didn’t want to give him credit for anything. The monster in the guise of an overgrown man in front of me was responsible for the death of millions of humans and to him it had just been an attempt to find two people he was looking for. I think that was what made it the hardest for me. There had been no malice, but nor was there any remorse. It was just something he had done.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt to follow his advice. As I did, I found that sure enough, with some concentration, I could keep the energy from being drained out of my body. “I need to move them. Will you wait here?”

He shrugged like it was of no importance. “I suppose one must care for the handmaidens after they swear themselves to you.”

He continual use of the term handmaidens made me wonder exactly how he saw women. With a combination of telekinesis and just carrying them, I was able to move all of my bonds away from the portal. Once they were a good hundred feet away, they started to recover on their own.

I walked back to talk to Krig more, but telepathically told them. “Stay back and flee if things go south.”

They wouldn’t like it, but I’d rather they were alive and angry with me than dead beside me. “You have handmaidens of your own?”

He stared at the ground and for a full minute; I thought he wasn’t going to answer me. When he did, the words came out haltingly. “I did, but as with the rest of my rightful place it was stolen from me by a combination of treachery and my own willfulness.”

Silence fell again after that and I wasn’t sure what to say, but thankfully he handled that for me. “Enough of this. I can close the portal, but if you wish to do so, I can respect a man who cleans up his own messes. Either way, an opening to the void can’t be allowed.”

“What is the void?”

“It is the absence of anything. It is the concept of nothingness and it only takes on a form for limited duration to interact with the material world. It is the end of all things, but cultivators refuse to bow before it and we stand for the principle of existing forever.”

“So it’s like death?”

“Bah, Dod, was the goddess of death. She was simply a part of the cycle of essence. Death and life are twin sides of the same coin. The void is the end. It is nothingness and yet somehow it takes on itself a from to ravage reality. Some of my kind once tried to ponder it but to stare into the void allows the void to stare into you. They all went insane. Now, I simply know one thing. It must be stopped and never allowed to gain a foothold. I fear what has become of my realm since my self-exile here.”

Once again, there was too much for me to unpack there. “Fine, tell me one more time what I need to do to close this.”

“As I said, you simply need to destabilize that which is holding it open. It has no presence of its own and something from this world must be keeping it open. In this case, what I believe to be the malice of that creature you slew in the form of Revenge Essence.”

I pushed my sight into it and stood there lost in time. I couldn’t say if a single second had passed of a lifetime. I was simply wrapped up in the tangle of this Essence. It wasn’t orderly or compact like the other, but it squirmed to my touch. I reached out with my mind and began to unravel it, but it was very much like that episode I’d seen of what was called a sit-com where the father was trying to untangle the garden hose after his children put it away.

It seemed simple, but I constantly would find new knots and have to work my way back to a previous section and start over again. My frustration grew, but the need was great, so I tamped it down. ANOP started helping by tracking the best courses for me to untangle. And slowly but surely it started to come part. Then when I thought I was only halfway it suddenly popped. It was like there had been a minimum level of cohesion necessary and once I crossed that it simply fell apart.

When I opened my eyes, I saw that the sun was rising. I had been working all night at this. I reached out and felt that my bonds were tense, but okay. Their temporary boost of power would have been gone by now, but it appeared that Krig had left them alone. He was, in fact, sitting cross-legged on the ground looking more like a Buddhist monk than a bloodthirsty warrior.

“It took you long enough, but perhaps that will show you your need for a master.”

“A master?”

“Yes, I’m offering to teach you how to cultivate. Something I’ve never done for a mortal in more than a thousand years.”

“Sorry, I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around all of this. How am I supposed to work with you? You killed millions of my people. Where would the justice be in that?”

“You are not my brother, Lige to pronounce judgment on anyone. And I have always lived by the rule that there is no such thing as right or wrong, there is only power.”

We stared at each of for several minutes and I could feel the tension in my bonds rising. Then he stood up and started to walk away.

“You’re just leaving?”

“Unless you wish to fight now? But I don’t advise it. You’ll find that I’m not as weak as I was before, and you don’t appear to be at your best. I’ll make you this oath. I will only kill humans if they are hiding the ones I seek.”

“And who is that you seek?”

“Two godlings from my world who are also stranded here now. They betrayed me and turned me over the shadow when I was mindless. Fighting you helped to shake the cobwebs free. I may not have my mantle, but I still know the rush of war. Seek me out when you would learn how to cultivate.”

Then he was gone, flying through the air. I could see Essence swirling around him, but barely understood it.