Divine Apostasy Book 6 - Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Ruwen stood, excited to get started. Meeting his future self had improved his mood, even if future-Ruwen hadn’t given him any actual information. Just knowing a version of himself had visited reassured Ruwen things would work out somehow.

Settling into the first Step, Ruwen started his Viper Step forms, and immediately recognized a problem.

Ruwen had used Sow Seeds to keep himself pressed against the floor. But for his Step training, this felt very unnatural. He needed an environment much closer to home, which meant he needed gravity.

Ruwen pictured the bloody puddles of the six Elders he’d revived in New Eiru. He’d used all his Mana at the time to power the Gravitational Role, and the results had been dramatic. But if he did that to himself here, it would be catastrophic. He wouldn’t revive to try again.

The idea of a disaster paralyzed Ruwen, and then another thought occurred to him. Once he began experimenting with the essence recipes, many things could go wrong. He needed to acknowledge enough of his fear to make him cautious, but not enough to stop him.

Like everything, balance would be crucial.

When dealing with the Elders in New Eiru, Ruwen had started with one Mana per second, and that had gone almost unnoticed. Ten Mana per second had caused them to stumble, and five hundred had turned them into puddles.

Ruwen needed to figure out how to channel the equivalent of one Mana per second to his Gravitational Role. Rami had managed that with the Elders, so he had no idea what to do.

For sure, though, Ruwen couldn’t use the Gravitational Role to figure that out. One mistake and he’d be a floating bubble of pulp. It would be much smarter to learn how to channel Spirit with something safer. Safe like a Fireball!

Opening the Profile display, Ruwen went to the Spells tab and searched for the Mage spell Fireball he’d learned on his first day of Ascendancy. That Fireballhad set off a chain of events that had landed him here. But that was the past, and he needed to focus on the present.

The Fireball spell, while greyed out, still had the essence ingredients listed. Essence ingredients had appeared under all Ruwen’s spells when he returned from the Spirit Realm. He guessed the creation of his Core in the Spirit Realm or maybe all the essence he’d collected absorbing the storm over Stone Harbor had been responsible. Regardless, the ingredients list, while not a recipe, would still prove incredibly valuable.

Five ingredients were listed under Fireball. Three Rami had figured out from her research and observations: Fire, Air, and Chaos. After fighting Phoenix, the flying and fire expert of the Sky Clan, in the Spirit Realm, Ruwen had added two more ingredients to his fire spells: Light and Death.

Unfortunately, these ingredients didn’t have an order or amounts listed. Ruwen would need to figure out the recipe for himself.

Ruwen had made a process for creating spells while in the Spirit Realm. For simplicity, he’d used three intensities for fire, going from small amounts of essence to large: ember, blaze, and magma.

Ruwen had paired them with three delivery methods. For fire based spells, he’d picked: sphere, lance, and barrier. The combination of intensity and delivery allowed for nine different types of spells.

Grinning, Ruwen created level ten essence rods in his mind and dipped them in the five appropriate Meridians: Fire, Air, Chaos, Light, and Death.

The darkness outside made judging distance difficult, so Ruwen created a Scarecrow Clone and moved it twenty feet away from the missing shed wall.

Ruwen only had a second or two before the clone dissolved from star-energy damage. Picturing a flaming ball, he whispered “Ember Sphere,” and used a mental fist to crush the essence rods on the clone.

A bright explosion of fire consumed the Scarecrow clone, causing Ruwen to squint. The brief warmth felt wonderful.

The small Fireball made Ruwen feel better. But the process he’d used to create the spell didn’t seem practical for the Gravity Role. He needed to figure out a less manual way of generating his spells and powering his Roles.

Not only that, Ruwen had no idea what essence would power the Gravity Role. So for now, he needed to just use Spirit. He thought about the problem for a minute and decided to start like how he Refined Spirit. But instead of threading Spirit into his Meridians, he would use it to power a spell he’d placed in the external world.

Ruwen tapped his Core with a mental hand, and it immediately spun rapidly. When he’d first Refined Spirit, he’d learned the hard way how much pain a fast Core Velocity caused, so he slowed his Core until it barely turned.

When Ruwen threaded Spirit through his pathways into his Meridians, the process felt natural because he could sense the spiritual structures inside his body. But he had no idea how to link his Core into something outside his body.

Starting simply, Ruwen created a Scarecrow clone and pictured the icon for Fireballon the clone’s chest.

Using a mental hand, Ruwen tried to pull a thread of Spirit from his Core to the Fireballicon. Instead of a string of Spirit, only a sliver emerged, and it shot toward the icon like an arrow. When it struck, the clone erupted in a fiery explosion.

The small bundle of Spirit Ruwen had thrown from his Core was not what he’d intended, but it gave him an idea. If he could perfect this type of Spirit transfer, he could paint spells over everything he saw, and then activate the spells with a flick of Spirit.

Ruwen’s joy at finding a new way to create spells faded as a serious problem once again surfaced. His use of mental hands to do everything from spinning his Core, to smashing essence rods, to now throwing Spirit from his body, took too much time and mental focus.

Ruwen needed to mimic his Step training. The difference between an awkward sequence of moves and the dance of the Step forms resulted from one thing: practice.

Practice created muscle memory, and muscle memory created automatic action. That meant Ruwen really needed to find his Spirit muscles, and then train with them until he only needed to will something to happen.

Ruwen had only wanted to practice his Steps, but it felt like he’d tumbled down a rock-strewn mountainside. To do something as simple as moving naturally in his shed, he now needed to learn an entire new set of skills.

Depression loomed at the edges of Ruwen’s thoughts, but he pushed back on that darkness. Even though his lack of knowledge prevented him from doing something he thought would be simple, it exposed a critical need, and that made it valuable, not depressing.

Ruwen used Sow Seeds to push himself against the floor again, sat down, and crossed his legs. He decided to practice with something he knew worked with essence rods and pictured the Fireball icon just outside the shed’s missing wall.

Ruwen could sense his Core, the center that surrounded it, and the pathways that led to his twelve Meridians, but he felt nothing resembling spiritual muscles. How did he exert something that probably didn’t exist?

Step training had taught Ruwen how to control almost every muscle in his body, so he started there. Tensing and relaxing individual muscles and then moving into groups of them. But nothing physical he did seemed to affect his spiritual side.

The Fireballicon floated at the shed’s edge, mocking Ruwen.

“Overlord?” Ruwen asked.

Overlord appeared at the shed’s missing wall, next to the Fireball icon, his legs hanging over the abyss. He looked at the icon and then turned his head to look at Ruwen. “What’s up?”

“I’m trying to simplify how I handle my Spirit.”

“Okay. What have you tried?”

Ruwen shrugged. “I used the muscle training exercises, but none of them affected my Spirit.”

“Hmm, and you don’t want to use the essence rods anymore?”

“Not all the time. Those are great when I need precision. But I feel like I need something faster. Plus, I want it to be automatic and not need my constant involvement.”

“I could do it,” Overlord said.

Ruwen sat up straight. “I hadn’t thought of that. I still want to come up with an automatic way to do this, but we should at least test if you can utilize the Spirit. Do you know how I use the essence rods?”

Overlord nodded. “I know everything you do.” Overlord turned to face Ruwen, mirroring his cross-legged pose. “Actually, I just realized I don’t know everything. Since we split during that trap in the library, I don’t automatically get access to your thoughts or feelings anymore. I’m a lot like Rami now, I guess.”

This entire conversation, while sounding out loud, really only existed in Ruwen’s head. He tried to ignore the fear having Overlord inside his mind caused. Could Ruwen trust that version of himself to not try and take over his body?

“Are you thinking about me taking over again?” Overlord asked.

“No.”

Overlord shook his head. “First, I can’t take over. Second, why would I trade my perfect life for your miserable one?”

“That is actually a really good point. Now I do kind of want to trade.”

Overlord laughed. “Not a chance. Anyway, what do you want me to try?”

“Try and activate that Fireball icon with Spirit.”

Ruwen felt a tiny pressure on his Core and the icon melted in a burst of flames.

“Nice,” Ruwen said. That meant Overlord could use Spirit. Ruwen wondered if that control extended to essence and using the essence rods, so he created a Scarecrow clone outside the shed. “What about an Ember Sphere?”

Ruwen felt pressure in five meridians, and the clone exploded in fire.

“Wow, that is amazing,” Ruwen said.

“Thanks.”

“And really useful,” Ruwen added. “But transferring the creation process to you feels like the wrong path. What if you're busy or misunderstand, and it still adds a manual step.”

“Very true.”

“I’m not sure what to try.”

They sat in silence for a minute, watching the distant star.

Overlord snapped his fingers. “If we used the angle of the arc length perpendicular to the central axis and created a funnel—”

“Uru, help me,” Ruwen said, interrupting Overlord.

“Did you have the same idea?”

“No, but listening to you reminded me how I overthink and overcomplicate everything.”

“You think so?”

Ruwen nodded. “After hearing you, who sounds just like me, I understand people’s frustration with the way I think sometimes.”

“Logically, you mean?”

“Yes, but maybe a little too much ‘thinking’ in general. Before I spiral into my intellect, I should spend a little time looking for simple solutions.”

“And is there a simple solution to your Spirit control issue?”

Ruwen shrugged. “Let’s see.”

Ruwen triggered his Scarecrow Aspect, created a clone, and pushed it away until the clone almost disappeared into the surrounding blackness. He figured it had traveled about a thousand feet away.

The distance gave Ruwen some comfort, as experience had taught him his experiments sometimes didn’t go as expected. This trial deserved caution.

Ruwen stood and stared at the distant scarecrow. His Core still barely spun, and instead of essence rods or mental hands or any of his other constructs, he willed an Ember Sphere into the distant clone.

The world turned orange and yellow as the clone and shed both vaporized.