Resonance//Dissonance [BOOK 2 in progress]

Following through with the momentum, he left the Tool to soak in the refining powers of the Inscription Anchor he just formed. One task was done, many more were still at hand.

He turned his back to the center of the parking lot and took a step, lowering his lumbering body onto his leg, he then shot up with immense force, propping himself up with kinetic energies that were drained from his surroundings, just enough to reach the top of the building. The same place where 'Theru would observe him from.

He paused for a fraction of a moment, confused and held back by her reaction and absence, but he knew, he could do nothing about that. So, Luke did what he could, and he focused on becoming better, something more, something more worthy.

Now, the sun reached it's peak, and it showered him with warm rays that rained upon his skin with warmth and care. He took that feeling in, and allowed the external to influence the internal. He allowed the sensations, feelings to flow deeply in, and listened intently for any and all that would come from within in response, a reaction, to an unusual to him action.

And his mind sung. A melody ignited along his veins, starting at his Heart and lungs and followed through his body, an orchestra reaching a crescendo as it reached his mind. His whole body achieved a sort of incomplete Unity, it was complete at it's base, but the body was not enough, the Being it held yearned for more, and finally reached outside for more to complete it's needs.

The set of magic Luke held sway over flashed in his mind, seperete schools of reality bending arcane expressions of will, all so diffrent, yet all stemming from the same source.

Chaos, Primordial Chaos.

The threads that connected these techniques to the source thrummed louder than ever, and the sound resonated with Luke, he picked up on the discordant notes, on the empty between the sounds, he tried to fill in the gaps to allow the melody to reach new heights.

"A technique is like humming a melody you half-remember. Enough to get it out. Enough to make it dangerous. But if you stop and learn the notes—the rhythm, the harmony—you don't just hum it anymore. You conduct it. You command it." an epihany dawned upon him.

The focus on his Teleknetic, Thermal, Physical and Internal-Healing arts seemed so limited to him right now. He was mad at hinmself for his lack of versitality, blaimed it as one of the reasons for letting the Twins be taken away.

The powers, they needed to expand, to deepen, to draw from the source and bloom into a song worth of singing.

Lukas spread his arms wide, and inhaled deeply, mind scant of thought, filled by feeling, by concepts, by unity with the world outside and within.

He breathed out, and with it a waft of magical haze was expelled from his body. It crackled and sparked, it smoothed and grinded against his surrounding. Takin up shapes of what filled the space nearby.

„I need things more esoteric in nature, to Hunt, to Bind, to Reach." his words echoed as his body tensed and twisted, overvcome with how unity radiated within and without. His eyes wide open, he steeled his heart and did what he attempted before, near the home he shared with his Father. The same thing that brought him to his knees then, now, he challanged it once more, he demanded a fight, he was set on conquest. On pillaging what more he could reach.

He still felt a tremor of terror when thinking about what he saw, how it shook him. He closed his eyes, yet released his senses ever so deeper, the binds snapped open and his mind flew outside of the confines it previously occupied. Slowly, but surely, like sludge going downhill, whatever his magic senses were, they crawled out with increasing sensitivity, into his body and outised of it.

The stimilus was intense, and only getting more difficult to handle every second he performed the Release. But now he could Gaze into deeper layers of reality. He could see within, and the forces that roar through his body, his pathways, the Void Infection and how it's held at bay by the roaring rivers of primordial Chaos that spread into his flesh, steming of the tide of Entropy. He could see how his flesh overloads, breaks down and adapts, being reborn anew, embers rekindled by the energy of Origin. Guided by... the healing matrix, the same spell Monsoon taught him, the same spell he conciously, and subconciously etched into his etheral body to mainain the physical one.

„No, not a healing one, not exactly..." He remembered. His own words echoing like bells tools in his ears, defeaning yet so distant. He could feel the blood sloshing in his veins, and them starting to slowly burst under the strain, in his ear cannals, eyes...

„The eyes..." the moment he focused on them he felt as if he started falling down a well, so much meaning, so many variants of possibility, such depth, they truly were the Entrence to the Soul.

By a miracle or grit, he managed ot latch onto his senses, and not fall down this rabbit hole, once again focusing on his internal, noticing how just within few seconds his body temperature rose, and how much perspiration his body produced simply to maintain his current state of Insight.

He could see how the matrix came into play even during this process. His magical pathways, they were erractic, damaged and healed over and while it allowed them to handle more strain, they leaked, and they stuttered in the flow. All of that influenced his flesh, his blood coagulated and thinned in random parts of the body, his muscle fibers decayed or became denser or cancerous, his bones became either brittle or soft, hundreds, no, thousands of such processes were happening at the same time all across his body, from his hair folicles to his nails, tendons, everything.

And it was in large part thanks to this little, begginer friendly Healing Matrix that he did not turn to sluge begging for mercy as his body mutated beyond his control, and the range of his wildest horror.

Luke's fascination with this thing rose even more, and he strained his mind to draw upon the memories of the information Monsoon, The Stitcher and even the Avian gave him on this particularity of his.

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They all made it very clear, that this is not exactly a healing matrix, as it does not use magical forces to substitute for missing tissues, or to immidietly enforce the „Healthy" state upon his body. This was something that didn't require active specification of what is good, bad, and specifics how to obtain it. It was more akin to rejuvetation, instead of forcing a healthy state, it coaxed his cells into being in as optimal of a condition as they could, and as they were almost constantly exposed to different kinds of pressure and stimuly, they were forced, change and adapt, and the spell helped propagate this effect even faster and better than his natural abilities did. An unexpected synergy being engraved into his being. This basic Matrix became something bigger, more advanced, deeper and broader in scope. It developed with him, with his powers, twisted and entagled the new aspects he developed, helped him handle the strain, bear the load. It was a much, much better choice than most healing spells he was shown, Monsoon really hit the nail on the head with one of the first gifts he offered his prodige.

His gods damned Void infection made it extremely ineffective, and even dangerous to use healing magic on him. The Void distorted the commands guiding the spell, it could cause his flesh to twist and contort, mutate or disintegrate at best, at worst, it could come into play with the everchanging nature of Primordial Chaos, and the scattered motes of the spell, influenced by the Change could twist him into a monster unheard of on this world, his body could turn into acidic gas, bones turn to glass and cut into meat, nervous system overloaded with electrical currents.

Thankfully, most spells of such kind and intricacy would simply desintegrate completly upon contact with his internals, swept away by the tides of fiery Chaos or crash upon the ice cold barrier of Void, and subsumed by it.

His skin began sizzling as bubbles of blood seeped through his skin, the vapor haze his body emitted started thickening enough to obstruct his image to anyone looking at him.

The time was limited.

Using the Gaze, he dug in deeper and started to grab and twist what he felt wrong during his Introspection. With the intensity of his gaze increased, he felt the body melt under the strain, but instead of panicking, he used that to his advantage, he wielded the points of failure, scrutinised them and found a common issue. The spell matrix was having issues offloading the irregular power spikes and the vast amout of it, the power was leaking from or cloggin up the pathways, causing the spells effects to stutter and glitch. With most haste, he used his will to grab the places where the power clogged, thin channels squeezed into the vast, vast circutry of his bodys power, most of it too esoteric for him to comprehend. The pain that hold caused was interesting, and somewhat familiar. Similar to when he had his bicep stabbed with a knife and thought one of the main veins was cut open, he reached with his dirtied fingers then and clamped the vein that spewed blood, held it there and rushed calling for help. The feeling of clamping around a life pumping vessel was intimetly stuck in his mind, and right now that same mind was clamping around a life- pumping vessel that brought restoration to his ruined body.

He stretched it. The feeling unnerving, hollow in his chest yet gratifying. Slowly, as not to rip the matrix, he spread it out further, one, two, three, many places at once it started to widen, allowing his power to flow more smoothly.

He breathed in relief. The flow's blockage lessened within minutes and his body, still overheating slowed it's rise in temperature and even his skin that started sloughing off his body firmed up and started crawling back up the limbs sprayed across concrete. Positivly surprised by the permanence of his changes, it seemed his body instinctivly held the new form of the rejuvenation matrix in place, content with the upgrade.

Happy with his progress, he decided to combat the second point of failure in his spell. The inability to handle the strain of his unregulated power. The first idea was to create valves, failsafes to lesses the flow, and halt the onslaought of the power transfer. In lesss than I moment that silly idea was dropped.

Luke could say many things about himself, mostly bad things, but one thing he couldn't claim is that he liked, or could hold back. And this self imposed limiter would likely shatter at the first usage of his powers, and a rush of power would damage the spell matris even more than the current predicament.

The Gaze allowed him to notice a sliver of truth at that moment. He, weather guided by his powers or his own folly, wished for one thing greatly, to be Unbound. He felt this need Resonate with him, his whole egistance craved freedom unschakled from any aspect of reality, from within or without. And as this epiphany settled, something about him became lighter, easier for him to walk with further, to drag another step into the maelstrom that awaits him in the future. A sense of melancholy filled him as he smiled.

"Into the fray, Unbound, Free, a man shaped by his own choices, that sounds like something to strive for." the thought turned to speech, and speech turned into a preminition.

.

This moment lasted for a minute as his body slowly reconstituted itself, the changes he already made were granting him visible benefits, with more only to come. He came back to his conondrum. How to handle the excess power so it doesn't overload his spell and fray it's workings. He felt the threads of this delicate, yet frim construct split into smaller strands and frey at the edges as more power than it could handle was pushed into it. The disentangling lowered the effects the most, it casued the process of regrowth to be incomplete, to stutter and deviate, causing him more harm.

Taking in the sight of his body he was at a loss of words, there was too much he could See and he barely knew what singular of these things meant, represented or could be. Even in his recklessness he didn't want to risk medling with a structure so complex as his own internal workings.

"Don't want to conect my eye to my ass and shit every time I need to blink or something..." Luke's joke was meant to lighten his mood, but he firmly believed in that possibility becoming true with his bad luck.

So, he refocues, and tried to find what he knew. He saw what trasferred force through him, kinetic energies toughened up the vessel, lighting and fire made it more resiliant, conductive to magic. He felt the etheral mix of Chaos suffuse him into milions of different variants of power laying dormant within his grasp, too abstract or unknown to use for now, and...he felt...

The Emptiness of the Void.

The cold, seeping darkness, enthropy incarnate, the lack of substance that drew in everything it could, destroying the natural balance, making everything around it crumble and collapse. It twisted his flesh in ways he couldn't peer into or understand. So far, it was kept at bay, not neutralized, but counterbalanced by the scorching flames of Chaos that burned so bright within him. But Lukas knew.

He knew.

The Darkness was there, all encompasing, depthless, endless, without form to break, a purposless Void hell bent on consuming all matter and energy that it... could...

"Reach?" he asked himself, and immidietly a lightbulb lit up above his head.

The idea seemed to good to be true, and he had to test it immidietly.

Grabbing with his metaphysical palms as many loose strands and frayed edges as he could he dragged them all into the nearest Scars of Void Taint. Centering their ends towards the corruption he increased his power output and slowly brought the strands closer and closer. They freyed and struggled, but the closer they got to the Void markings, the less Chaos could destroy them, it was being channeled, sucked into a depthless hole that absorbed it without any delay or leftovers. A perfect, all consuming maw.

It took him hours, each and every part of the matrix that was "Overheating" was brought closer to the Void markings, finding the golden spot where the excessive energy was sucked away, but far enough not to disentangle the whole structure was tricky, and took many blood stained tries. But after a period of struggle, Luke stood up straight, back stiff as his head pointed towards the sky and he finally opened his eyes, switching his Magical Gaze into his normal perception.

His whole body trembled, not from the pain he was so used to by now, or from a power overflow.

He was jittery from excitement.

He did it.

He fixed it!

He essentially used the Void as a heat sink, and that idea seemed so universal and finally at least a measure of control over his untamable power outbursts! Balancing the two extremes against eachother. Not only that, he felt his spell develop once more!

It was adapting to the new stimuly, the drain of the Void, and revitilizing the parched flesh that held it. Not fully, not even close, but he could feel strands of flesh aching less, skin becoming less crumbly and blood not run so cold through them. It wasn't better exactly, it was different. Not knowing what it may bring, somehow, he was sure, it held great potential.

"I count that as a success on my part." self admitance without any shame, for a begginer stumbling in the dark, he felt this as his first true self acomplished achievement in the mystical, and pride swell within. Not only did he develop it himself, it wasn't just another method of raw destruction, it was a controlled guidance of creation, enough to make him smile and add a shine to his dead, depthless eyes.

Now, this method was not a perfect fix, it did not resolve any of his problems fully, the spell matrix could still overload, shatter and burst apart as the magma like energies ran wild within him, but at least the treshold was higher now, it was more stable, more efficient. And this opened up many new opurtunities to him.

„I guess there is no time to waste, let's get started on the next project." Luke hummed to himself, spreading out his domain of influence subtly outside of his body. Ready to become more.