Divine Apostasy Book 6 - Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Once the fire disappeared, Ruwen stripped down to his shorts, placing his Overseer armor in the corner. Training in the Steps felt wrong in full gear.

The intense internal focus Ruwen had used to perfect the control of his power had made him desire some physical activity. He had made immense progress with his Steps since Fortifying his body to Diamond, but many small improvements remained.

As always, Ruwen prepared to start with the Viper Steps, building up the energy he would return with the Bamboo Steps. This gathering and returning of energy was the second pattern he’d discovered in the Steps.

Ruwen transitioned from the first to second Viper Step, stepping forward with his left leg at a thirty-degree angle while blocking with his left arm and chambering his right for a strike.

After Ruwen’s movement, Shiny, framed in the doorway, slowly rotated out of view.

Ruwen stopped, confused. Had the star moved? That didn’t make sense, but he hadn’t detected any change in the shed. He stepped toward the door and looked out into the vast darkness.

Shiny had disappeared. Three seconds later, it rotated into view again. Ruwen’s movements in the shed had caused it to spin. His shoulders sank as yet another obstacle appeared to his simple desire to practice the Steps.

But as Ruwen thought about it, he realized the shed’s rotation didn’t matter since his gravity ball made only one direction down. Without the disappearance of Shiny, he wouldn’t have known the shed had turned.

The pressure Ruwen exerted against the ground as he performed the Steps had never really occurred to him. He had learned some forms had softer sequences than others, but as a whole, he’d ignored the force of his actual steps.

As Shiny rotated into view again, Ruwen smiled. He had already found four balanced patterns inside the Steps.

The first pattern had been the actual Steps themselves. Viper moves contained hard and rigid actions, while the Bamboo Steps had soft and fluid movements. The two together balanced each other.

Bamboo and Viper Steps physical location was the second pattern. Once Ruwen had learned the basics of the Bamboo and Viper forms, he’d noticed the start and end locations were identical.

The third pattern Ruwen had discovered had been the energy the Viper Steps generated was balanced by the energy the Bamboo Steps returned. Done properly, the energy state in his muscles remained the same at the end of the forms.

It had taken Ruwen longer to notice the fourth pattern. It was the first one he considered hidden, and it related to breathing. He had discovered it upon returning from his Metal to Gem transition. His enhanced Perception had noticed the breathing issues in Sift’s attack, and Ruwen had found them mirrored in his own forms.

Ruwen had, in fact, wanted to practice different breathing sequences here, to determine the best order and duration. He knew the total breaths, duration, and volume would balance to zero from beginning to end, but the variations in between were endless.

Ruwen thought about the first dozen Steps, and his smile turned into a grin. Now that he knew to look for pressure against the ground, he discovered the order of the Steps balanced around a central point.

Without this shed, floating freely in an ocean of nothing, he’d never have noticed. Maybe if he’d practiced on a platform sitting on a pole, he would have noticed the need for this type of balance, but he’d never seen that done. Probably because it gave away this hidden pattern.

Ruwen had found a fifth pattern. The second hidden pattern. Of course, there would be a balance in the forces he exerted around him.

How many layers did these Steps have? Every time he thought he’d reached a degree of expertise in them, they revealed another level. The amount of thought and care used to create these Steps awed him.

The good news was Ruwen’s breathing, and foot pressure could be trained at the same time, as they didn’t interfere with each other. Although once he had a rough idea of the proper sequences, he would probably need to slow his movements down into the Shiny levels to perfect them.

Not only that, but the pressure pattern, while hidden back home, was painfully obvious here. He would immediately know when he lost the proper pressure balance when Shiny disappeared from the doorway.

Ruwen returned to the center of the shed and performed the step backward, applying the same pressure as he had at the start, trying to negate the current spin. He walked to the door, and found he’d altered his rotation too far to the right.

Stopping the rotation would be more difficult than Ruwen thought. He could dismiss the shed and recreate it, but he would just end up in the same situation. If he wanted to learn how to control the pressure he exerted on his surroundings, he might as well start immediately.

The shed provided Ruwen peace of mind by hiding the immense darkness around him. But even if he removed one entire wall, it wouldn’t be enough to keep Shiny in view so he could judge his rotation. At least in the beginning, he would need to start somewhere more exposed.

Turning in the doorway, Ruwen placed his back to the black emptiness. The gravity’s pull felt less forceful here. He squatted, grabbed the bottom of the door, and let his legs drop out of the shed.

Ruwen’s heart thumped loudly, and his breathing turned rapid. Leaving the shed like this felt like hanging off a thousand-foot cliff. He knew letting go wouldn’t cause him to fall, as there was nowhere to fall to. But his mind ignored this logic and instead panicked.

Ruwen’s arms trembled as he forced himself out the shed door. His legs immediately swung toward the outside surface of the shed, as the gravity sphere in the shed floor exerted its pull.

After a few seconds, Ruwen’s entire body lay flat against what had become the new floor. The gravity provided a comforting pull, and he crawled to the center of the platform. Standing, he forced himself to look around.

Ruwen stood on the outside of the shed’s ten-by-ten-foot floor. Shiny came into view as the shed continued to rotate, cutting across the right portion of his vision before disappearing again. The star’s appearance acted like an anchor for his vision, and he suddenly felt like he spun out of control.

Kneeling, Ruwen closed his eyes as vertigo made the spinning worse. Once his eyes closed, the spinning stopped. Opening his eyes again, the sensation of movement didn’t reappear. It only occurred when Shiny came into view.

This time, when Shiny appeared, Ruwen focused on altering the shed’s rotation, quickly shifting his weight across the floor. He had never needed to take such care with how much force he exerted with his feet, and the first few attempts only made things worse.

As Ruwen got a feel for how much influence his movements had on the shed, he straightened out the shed’s rotation so Shiny remained in view. He spent ten hours perfecting his control over the shed.

Shiny blazed directly across from Ruwen, and he jumped forward, landing with significant force. The shed tilted forward, and Shiny swung out of sight. Three seconds later the star reappeared, and with a practiced movement, he jumped backward to the rear of the shed, stopping the shed’s rotation completely.

How far from the center of the shed Ruwen landed mattered as much as the force he applied. He’d recalled his Alchemy lessons to help him understand this leverage relationship. And while his force and pressure technique had a few flaws, his control had improved considerably.

Facing Shiny, Ruwen bowed to the distant star, as if they meant to spar. Finally, he felt ready to begin working on his Step techniques again. With his newly gained expertise, he sank into the first Viper Step and immediately moved to the second.

In five Steps, the shed rotated wildly, and it took Ruwen twenty seconds to stabilize it again.

Instead of starting over right away, Ruwen analyzed the first five Steps, running them through his mind, and visualizing the effects of his actions. Seeing the movements as a whole, where one action affected the initial state of all those that followed, he recognized the problem.

This time Ruwen stepped lightly into Step two, hard into three, a light four, and medium five. The shed wobbled throughout, and slowly rotated after the fifth Step. The fifth Step also needed to be lighter.

In five seconds, Ruwen stabilized the shed. Dropping into the first Step, he tried again.

This time the shed’s rotation barely felt noticeable, and Ruwen smiled in satisfaction, because something else had occurred.

Ruwen’s Intelligence, always searching for patterns, had latched onto the variables of pressure and distance and calculated solutions, like a complex math problem.

Now, as Ruwen moved through the Steps, as long as Shiny remained visible as a reference, he knew exactly how much force to exert to bring the shed back to zero movement.

Most of the time he didn’t want zero movement because future Steps required a moving platform, but knowing the value to reach zero served as an anchor and made determining his next movements enormously easier.

On the three hundred twenty-third attempt Ruwen stopped on the fifth Step, and the shed remained motionless.

Ruwen grinned and returned to the first Step. He would continue adding Steps until he’d balanced the entire sequence of Bamboo Viper Steps.