Resonance//Dissonance [BOOK 2 in progress]

„Yes, no matter the terms, yes. We need to find them, I need to make this right."

„So you will allow me into the depths of your mind?" she asked with hope in her voice.

„No...I can't." he almost whispered in response.

„What?! Why! You were just so adamant! Do your words mean nothing?!" her outrage suprised him, this seemed true, real, she really cared.

„I WOULD ALLOW YOU TO PARSE EACH AND EVERY INCH OF MY PSYCHE IF I COULD!" he screamed as he neared her. „ I CARE NOT FOR MY PRIVACY NOR PAST, I OWN MY FAILURES, I OWN MY MISTAKES! TAKE IT, TAKE IT ALL AND MOLD IT HOWEVER YOU WISH! I SIMPLY CAN'T! I AM NOT ABLE TO LET ANYONE IN!" he swiped his clenched fist in the air, the power of it making everything in the room shake and rustle, wrappings and cans flew from the force exhibited.

„I... I really would give my life for these two, and for all that will follow if we don't stop these creatures. I really would, without a moment of doubt..." and she felt the sincerity in this statement. His words rang true, he truly cared less for his life than for those he aimed to free. The impotence of his inability rang true, It weighed heavy on him, a burden he was unable to let go.

A moment of silence passed as a tumolous storm of emotions raged within the two.

„I...I get that...I do." She tried to level with him, calm him down, bring him back from the edge.

„I know it's not easy, and I expected this to be the case, I let HOPE get the better of me and pushed too much, I apologize." Her voice was timid, so unlike her.

„But!" and so the spark of her joy returned. „ As long as you are willing, I am sure we can do it, it may take some time, but there are ways, methods, spells, and simple patience that will allow us to achieve that!"

Somehow, he was dobious of that. But he knew where he stood, Once you are out of options, you are more than eager to grab the edge of the razor.

And so he did.

„ I agree, let's try." Determination cemented in his voice, eyes rigid and focused.

„I need to be sure you understand, not only am I unable to let you in, I was told that anyone trying to get in my mind can suffer a fate worse than death. I even build mind bridges across an outside proxy to avoid tainting the one I'm talking to."

„Yeah, I know, mister Smarty-Pants. I may have not met one of the Void tainted before but your kind is quite infamous in almost every circle. Mind Mages included. But it is doable, especially with your cooperation. The other thing may actually be harder."

She neared him and started knocking her knuckle on his forehead. The fact that she stood almost a head taller then him started to annoy him more and more.

„That Palace you build there, quite the show. I do enjoy the technique of the Bastion you used usually, when I encounter it. It's basic, practical and easy to pass through. Being based on the users actuall will power and Trauma response and perceived pain, most people armed think they wield a wall unpassable, their own trauma's seeming impassable to them while in reality most of them are paper thin. You though? Ouch." As she spoke she circled around him, touching things unseen with her slender fingers, like a musician playing on a harp, her gentle movements snapping on mental constructs that surrounded Luke.

She tugged and pulled on his psyche, gently probing for it's structure, grazing the throny walls that entombed his mind.

„Multi-layered, deeply entwined Trauma pattersn, a twisting maze of an inferno of emotions, propped up by that immense Guilt, manifested into rough Pillars of Penance."

„What now?" he moved back, unaware of what she was speaking about.

„Your mind, it's such a miserable, twisting construct, I am honestly impressed it hasn't collapsed in on itself. You carry such burden, and hold it so tightly to your self...." It seemed like her eyes were looking at something hundred miles away, or a hundread years in the past.

Suddenly, she snapped herself out of it and pulled her hand back from him.

„No matter, to put it shortly, to get into your mind by force would take me alot of time, be really painfull and would probably leave you in catatonic state, not very useful for the later stages of the plan. So...I need you to learn to open up."

„Yeah, many women in my life tried to get me to do that and none succeded so far."

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„None were like me" she winked at him with a joyful smile.

Luke remebered Her, how she used to smile at him, how warm her gaze was, how the shy grin almost blinded him when mixed with the haze of her ginger hair, it burned itself each and every time into his mind.

He frowned at that, at the fact of her absence, and the tall woman in fornt of him scowled. Just for a second, even less then that, but she felt a pang of anger, unaware fully at what, but she felt something from him that was infuriating to her psyche. She held firm, and returned to how she appeared.

One short breath sucked in through her teeth and she was good to continiue.

SNAP SNAP

„Oy, big boy, focus." As he came out of his stupor, she pushed him on his chest, making him fall into the seat again. His body fell with a heavy thud.

„I can see that for you talking about your past would be like shitting out pieces of broken glass" that truly startled him, leaving his mouth slighlty agape, not knowing how to respond. She smirked at that sight.

„So I don't really know what to do," she raised her palms and shrugged her shoulders in helplessness." I guess we will just have to spend some time together and feel each other out."

He muled over those words for a bit.

„So you are going to shadow me?"

„Or I can simply join you in whatever crazy stuff you are doing big boy, are you so afraid of a companion?"

He scowled at that but didn't reject, with a moment more for thought, he nodded his head in agreement.

„Fine."

„Yaaaaay" she started jumping up and cheering all around the bed.

He grabbed the bottle and poured himself a glass full of hard liquor, swallowing it down in one go as the noise and chatter she emitted increased in volume.

After that, days passed and he reasembled his sanity step by step, with her as a source of constant buzzing orbiting him.

The staff at the club snickered and grinned whenever they saw the two of them together. It was a nice change from the fear and terror they usually exhibited. He found it calming, soothing, to be treated as a human again. He mostly stayed silent, even during the meeting with Baldie where most of the happening of the incidents were re-capped and an update on what followed during his weeks of absence were provided to him.

He apologized, for how unprofesional his outburst was. And for the delay it caused. A neccesary evil. Baldie accepted it all mostly silent, his gaze placid but expectations were visible throgh his eyes. They were saying: The job is not finished, the deal is not done.

As Luke stood up to exit his offcie, he nodded his head in somber mood to confirm, he agrees.

He could hear diffrent rumors, his heightened senses picked up on the staff of the place whispering about him and the tall lady being non stop together, spending their nights and days in each other company. It made him chuckle. Their nights were definitly not spent as the staff thought.

They traveresed the Veil during the night, and that was the only moment he could expierience silence. She allowed him to refine himself, she asked quite insistently that untill she says so, he can only cycle his energy and refine it in whatever meditation method or gathering one he prefers.

Five nights have passed, five nights starting the same way.

As they left The Real, and magical energies coated their bodies, soaking into their cells and revitalizing their beings, he would head out of the building into the glassed parking lot, picking the same space in the dead center of it. She would usually perch up on top of the building, her visage lit up by the moonlight, pale skin shimmering even more so. Her petite fingers would curl around as she rested her chin in her palm, her arm propted up on ther crossed over legs as he observed in silence. Spreading her awereness and trying to absorb and assimilate this brutes way of being. Holding back so many things to say, to yell at him untill she felt sure. So once again, she started her little peep show, entranced in what was about to come.

He started his first cycle, turning wisps of energy into sparks within. In the darkness of the night, his form, rugged, rigid and taught started shining, casting away the darkness that surrounded him, yet not the Trails that covered his form. Each beat of his heart thundered louder and louder, and with each thump, more energy was drawn out of it, flushing it through his system. He stood still, impossibly still as his innards started to heat up to inhuman levels. His fingers digging into his palms, and teeth gritted tightly.

She saw his cycling technique before, when he was out of his mind, in the frenzy it was much more rabid, uncontrolled and violent, on himself and the surroundings. Now, she could see him improving night by night, and it scared her. 'Teru could see his potential, for power, for destruction, given time this man will change many lives. The question that bugged her was, will it be for better, or for worse?

The first cycle completed, and metaphysical weight seeped out of him, the energy that filled his body was rousing back from dormancy, the shine intesified, and so did the thrumming. The energy he produced, it was Primordial, Chaotic, versetile and in a sense, Pure. It was dazzling to her, she could call it beautiful if not for...what she felt emanating from his mental scape.

This technique was great, she had to admit that, the body forging improvements it gave were honestly something to envy, while the increase in magic capacity and purity it brought stunned her once she saw it, how self sufficient it was, a roaring engine flooding it's vessel with power unending.

Yet, the vessel could not hope to contain the gift it's given.

This technique cut him off from foreign magic, making it entirely self reliable, and dependant only on his will. Will, that was being tested to it's limits by the backlash the energies he wields brought on his body.

He was literally setting himself aflames. Night after night, fight after fight, and she could feel it, he did nothing to dampen the Pain. That immesurable, haunting pain that seeped of him like sticky tar, he was covered by it, drowning in it.

And yet, he brought on more, to the point where it was a miracle he didn't collapse under it's weight. And even then, he accepted more.

Accepted. That was what baffled her the most. She could see it as his second cycle entered it's middle phaze, Through the Emphathic Haze, she could feel her own body tensing up as his back tensed even more, spine cracking loud enough to echo in the parking lot, threatening to break. Another thrum, and his blood ignited with a mellow ember. Water sizzled out of his pores as she witnessed a man set himself aflame from within, willingly, and continiue to do so more and more. Like roaring water filling out empty riverbed, light traveled from his heart, along his veins to every nook and cranny of his body, from the bigger veins, into the smaller ones, into the blood vessels. Each and every inch increasing in pain.

He was silent.

His thoughts were.

She still could not believe it, underneath all the pain, the animalistic roars his psyche emitted in response to trauma his true mind, his Will was steady, maintained, in his grasp.

Haze surrounded him as the temperature of his body rose into the hundreds of celsius. Air whined and whirled as it was displaced by the heatwaves. His eyes shone with focus, the Void nestled deeply within not allowing for the flames to consume them.

„RAAAGH!" he coughed? Or simply his lungs expelled what was left within, and a tongue of flames escaped, marring the ground like a volcanic whip.

As the second phaze finished, his body suddenly jolted, so quickly and without prompt she herself flinched, making herself laugh at that.

As her melodic voice rang out his figure stood straight and valiant, clenched fists near his hips as his elbows bent, ready for a punch that will not come.

From his veins, the power bled further into every cell of his body, muscle, bones, skin, it all came asunder, all burned and melted as more and more power forced it to regenerate, adapt and acclimate. In this chaos, he brought controll, a shephard of erractic flock of energy guiding it to the pasture of his choosing, around the chasms of Void, the rivers of dark that could swallow what he guided.

Hours passed untill the sun started rising, at which point he started cooling down. As the sun rose, rays of light kissed his skin, Dying Embers slowly setting within once again, another cycle completed without exploding, without turining to ash.

He exhaled deeply, and with slow, jerky movements he tore his fingers out of his palms, the blood scabbed aroud them.

She jumped down, landing on the top of her toes, like a balerina, not even a grain of dust rose in response.

With click and clacks of her heels, she moved closer to him as he shook of the discomfort, stretching his body. As she neared to almost an arms reach, he turned his back to face her, face questioning.

„I think we can go a bit further now, you and I."