To Cole’s utter astonishment, Chiron’s torso bent back in an impossible angle. He moved just enough to dodge the munisica, his naked skin resting against Cole’s shrouded forearm. Chiron’s legs spread wide as he wove his arms around one of Cole’s, cranking it into an awkward position. Before Cole knew it he felt himself yanked forward. He teetered off his feet in a flash. Chiron released him mid throw, sending him sailing and spinning. Cole knew he would land badly, likely sprawled out in a vulnerable position, but that was not what worried him. It was Chiron’s deceptively immense weight coupled with the ease of his counter attack that gave him pause. The fact that Cole sensed no magic from the elder troubled him more deeply still.
Cole ploughed into roots and dirt, but not before he wrapped his back and chest in the shroud. His Rage surged. He drank in the bloodlust, allowing it to fill him and replace his reason. Chiron’s passive indifference threw yet more fuel on his Rage fire. Cole grinned, baring his teeth, and his bladed hair lengthened, prickling the back of his neck. The old Master was fast, but when was the last time he had meddled with a true master of Rage?
“Don’t sell yourself short now,” Chiron said. “There’s no point giving half measure here. Let’s have it all.”
“You know what you’re asking for right?” Cole shut his eyes, immolating himself with Rage. Before Chiron could answer, the shroud enveloped him full and true, blackening every inch of him inside and out. Cole was Rage incarnate.
Cole laughed to himself. Chiron had no idea that Cole had been handicapping himself with thickened gravity all along. He had intended on waiting until later in the fight to dismiss the spell, but as his Rage swelled the magic fell from him like a lead coat. There would be nothing slowing him now.
While Cole gave himself fully to the red magic, it did not consume him as it once had. Ever since his flight with Alvani he’d kept part of himself anchored in his center. Every action was of his own choosing. The Rage merely provided the means.
Instead of lunging towards Chiron, he walked with steady grace towards his enemy. The wise one was reactive, so Cole would force him to make the first move. The shroud protected him from any conceivable wound, so he could afford to take his time. Cole stopped in front of his Master, boring a glare of midnight fire into Chiron. Raising a single hand, he slowly wrapped his dagger-fingers around Chiron’s shoulder.
As the obsidian tips grazed over Chiron’s skin, he moved ever so slightly, rolling the shoulder away while bringing the other closer. He obviously wasn’t afraid of the proximity. Maintaining eye contact, Cole lashed out with a kick that would have cloven an anvil in two. His foot met air, though his body twisted on the follow through, just enough for Chiron to wrap around to his side, inching ever closer.
A deep growl rumbled in Cole’s armored throat. He continued his kick, shifting and gripping the ground with his planted foot as he wheeled around. Though he moved faster than a cracking whip, Chiron’s increasing proximity rendered Cole’s kick harmless. Cole was dimly aware of Chiron’s soft hands sliding around his back, pulling his right arm into a useless angle. Knowing his attack was now for nothing, Cole brought his kick to the ground and jumped as hard as he could.
There was an odd weight to his flight. Somehow, Chiron had attached himself to Cole’s back, still trapping Cole’s arm behind his back. They flew up alongside tree branches, spinning and struggling all the while. Cole changed his tactic in midair; he embraced their closeness and pulled Chiron in tight, intent on making the elder strike the ground first. However, the wise one evaded his munisica once again, bending and twisting in extreme angles while using Cole’s trapped arm for leverage all the while. Cole’s face struck the ground first, cranking his neck with the full weight of both their bodies. The impact was harmless, but infuriating. Cole allowed himself to slip from his center, giving every facet of his mind to the Rage. He would kill the old man.
Cole thrashed and whirled, striking and lashing indiscriminately. He would not stop. He would not relent. He needed to feel bone and blood. His free hand and both feet cut and clouted everything they met, the munisica doing exactly what they were designed for; bringing ruin upon all things material. He was only dimly aware of his arm still trapped behind his back. The restraint was the only thing telling him that the old man was still alive, the only thing telling him to keep fighting.
The ground gave way beneath them as Cole’s munisica passed through root, rock, and dirt as if swimming through water. Cole’s vision darkened as they dug deeper into the ground. His arm was still somehow trapped. Chiron was there, clinging like a fluid magnet as he exploited Cole’s every movement. Cole attempted to shift his pattern of slashing and carving, using the subterranean boulders as a means to scrape Chiron off him. He hammered his free limbs every which way, but he eventually ran out of boulders to push and patterns to weave. His imagination drove his munisica wild, but Chiron flowed along with them, unharmed and unyielding. Cole halted, seething.
They were beneath the ground, covered entirely in dirt and broken rock. Cole pushed his munisica blindly through the dark, hoping to find something for leverage. There was none to find. Chiron was still wrapped all around him, just waiting for him to move. Gripping the loose guts of Aeneria, Cole focused all of his strength and Rage into freeing his trapped arm. Crackling power hummed through the ground. Chiron had the mechanical advantage over his chicken-winged arm, but Cole’s Rage had pushed beyond the limits of bone and muscle. His arm broke free.
There was another desperate tornado of claws and dirt as they dug deeper into Aeneria’s crust. For the first time, Cole felt hot, wet flesh through his dragon claws. He didn’t know where or how, but the old man had been wounded. Cole pulled and roared into the dirt, reveling in the violence. After a moment’s struggling, however, he became disoriented once again. Before Cole knew it, his other arm as well as a leg were twisted uselessly behind his back.
“I give up,” Cole huffed through a mouthful of mud.
Cole felt himself pulled by unseen forces. Chiron rose behind him, keeping a firm grip on Cole’s ankle and wrist. When they emerged into open air, Cole dismissed his shroud and munisica. He may have lost, but at least he had victory over his Rage. Months ago he wouldn’t have been able to accept the defeat. He would have kept fighting and digging until one of them eventually stopped breathing.
Chiron set him down gently on a patch of soft grass. Cole shook out his hair and glanced down the hole, which was twice as deep as he was tall. The area around the hole was covered with fresh dirt and clean-cut rock.
Cole winced at the sight of his Master’s leg. There were five deep gouges torn in his shin, exposing muscle and a clearly broken bone. Blood ran in a steady dark ooze in between flaps of pale skin. Without a word, Cole made for his Master’s leg, hands lit with lavender Passion. It took him a bit longer than he would have liked, but his recent lessons on anatomy proved invaluable. For the first time his Wisdom blended with Passion. Skin had different layers that needed accounting, muscle needed to be woven in certain patterns, bone must knit in a tunneled lattice to allow for marrow to flow. The finer points of the nervous and vascular systems still eluded him, but Cole prodded and coaxed everything back into its proper place. Once satisfied, he ceased the flow of Passion and looked up to his Master, who was thankfully smiling.
“How sporting of you,” Chiron said, putting weight back onto the leg. “Good as new. Better than new, actually.”
“Your muscle and bones are as dense as metal,” Cole remarked. “How is that?”
“There are ways of combining our magics,” Chiron said as he inspected his leg. “As you just combined Wisdom with Passion, Wisdom and Rage can be mated as well. We will progress to it eventually, if your patience will allow us to get there.”
“I knew it!” Cole blurted. “I knew you were using magic!”
Chiron’s winged eyebrows went up with mild indignation. “I did no such thing. Your Rage was the only magic I detected after you released your Wisdom
-induced handicaps. Very clever by the way.”
“You did all that without magic? That’s impossible.” Cole shook his head, unable to wrap his mind around the concepts. “I took down a decent-sized Colossus by myself.”
“Of course I did,” Chiron said, twisting Cole’s arm in a gentle demonstration. “With the proper application of leverage, a weaker man can easily subdue a stronger one. You are one of the strongest and fastest combatants I have ever witnessed, and that’s including the Elites of old. We might still be down there if I hadn’t offered you my limb for two of yours. However, as strong as you are, you lack flexibility, technique, and most importantly, creativity. Having a touch of those qualities at my disposal, I exploited your absence of them. If I may assume your thick skin extends to your ego, we need to address your atrocious flexibility. Can you touch your toes from standing?”
Cole hid the shame that rushed to his cheeks. He didn’t have to try it to know he couldn’t. “No. I can’t touch my toes.”
“Fortunately that weakness is the easiest to remedy,” Chiron said, walking around Cole and appraising him with a sharp eye. “Your muscles are too large. They affect your range of motion more than anything else. You will have to shrink them if you ever want to be more nimble than an ox.”
Cole rubbed his arms absentmindedly. He didn’t want to lose his muscle. Even without his Rage, his strength and physique had been earned through hard months of training and fighting for his life. He loathed to go back to the days of being the chubby kid who couldn’t make first cut.
“Can’t I just do some stretches?” Cole asked. “It took me a long time to get as strong as I am now. I don’t want to give it all up.”
“I said nothing about losing strength,” Chiron said, finished his second loop around him. “What I’m referring to is called a condensing. The condensing will alter the anatomy of your muscle, bone, and all of your connective tissue. Your body is too thick in places, so you will make it denser. Without your Rage I am many times stronger than you, though I am much smaller because I have been through the process several times in my younger years.”
“That explains why you’re so damn heavy,” Cole said with a laugh, resisting the urge to give Chiron a shove. “It felt like you were made of lead.” A thought popped into Cole’s mind. “Master, has Roth been through a condensing? He’s massive, but I’ve seen how he moves in battle. He’s definitely not lacking in flexibility or finesse. Looks more like he’s dancing.”
“Rothael is an anomaly,” Chiron admitted. “He has been through a condensing every cycle of his life, but his body can’t compress much more. How he has maintained flexibility and finesse is beyond my understanding of the process. I may have some talents with Wisdom, but when it comes to the dance of death, Rothael is wise beyond reason.”
Cole remembered Roth dueling with Captain Seive, looking more like a ballroom dance than a battle to the death. He also recalled the unrestrained ferocity with which he’d disassembled a Colossus. If Roth thought condensing a good idea, then he should too. Shrinking his muscles didn’t seem so unnerving a thing to him after giving up his ability to sleep. He could always train and grow himself bigger again.
“All right then, when will you show me this condensing?” Cole asked, feeling the tightness of his hamstrings and shoulders.
“Right after you fix the damage you did to this sicara tree. Your arbitrary thrashing cut several of the load-bearing roots on this side. It will develop a permanent limp if not remedied today.” Chiron stepped to the edge of the hole, cocking his head. “That’s quite a bit of work for a less than a minute’s scrapping. I shudder to think what you’d be capable of with the proper technique.”
• • • •
After his match with Chiron, Cole was allowed an hour a day for fighting so that his Rage wouldn’t distract him from lessons. Chiron never sparred with him again. Instead the elder suggested Cole work with some of the other warriors still residing in The Sill, as it would expose him to different fighting styles. Cole never felt comfortable enough to use much of his Rage fighting with others, and as a result he lost every single bout. The other warriors had cycles of experience with the fighting arts. They exploited every one of Cole’s glaring weaknesses just as Chiron had. He learned quite a bit however, and the condensing along with guided stretching from the other warriors remedied his flexibility.
It took Chiron a full day to teach Cole every step of the condensing, and another day for Cole to perform it. His Rage needed to be present but passive so his Wisdom could take control. Cole found that the green and red magic wouldn’t mix readily, but with Chiron’s guidance he got there in the end. When every muscle, tendon, and bone had been altered, Cole retreated to his room to assess the damage. He half-expected to look emaciated and skeletal, but to his relief he looked more like a lean runner. His strength remained undiminished and he could finally touch his toes, but he would still have to labor for Chiron’s flexibility.
To Cole’s relief his training took an aggressive pace ever since confronting Chiron. They still spent a good portion of their time in the library, meditating in meadows, and discussing the day-to-day activities of creatures such as spring-heeled mice. Now though, the monotony was broken up by practical magic.
Cole learned other aspects of Passion, many of which were useful in battle. Plants could be fed and coaxed into a riotous state, twisting with bone-breaking roots or biting with venom-filled needles. Whind was particularly adept in the art, which made sense to Cole as the gatekeeper always had seemed more plant than person.
Chiron also showed Cole how to listen with his Passion, allowing him to sense the living essence of other beings around him. Chiron would take his sight for days at a time, forcing Cole to navigate The Sill by Passion alone. It was terribly disorienting at first, but eventually Cole’s bubble of awareness stretched from just arm’s reach to over ten paces. After a few weeks he could even differentiate between the vital songs of plants and animals.
There were other aspects of Passion that Cole flat out refused to take part in. Chiron tried time and again to expose him to creative exercises, but Cole had neither the interest nor innate talent to make anything worth his time. In Cole’s eyes, every second spent crafting a wonky poem or carving out a dreadful sculpture was another second he could use for battle training. The Arts District was captivating and never ceased to entertain him, but Cole never fancied himself a creator. He was perfectly happy with observing and enjoying other people’s work.
Long weeks of lecture and observations had granted Cole greater control over his Wisdom, allowing him a broader range of flexibility and efficiency with the magic. After learning the majority of the common elements and how to find them, Cole started experimenting with alchemy and crafting solutions. Chiron confiscated his entire stock of ingredients after finding Cole unconscious in his apartment from a failed experiment. All alchemy experiments were closely supervised thereafter.
Apart from his other studies, Cole took zealous fervor with the flashier, more destructive spells. Despite Chiron’s visible irritation, he took every opportunity to summon a gout of fire or a bolt of electricity. It seemed nearly every day Cole picked up a new piece of Wisdom. Some spells were silly and useless in his eyes, such as changing the color of a spoon or making ice hot. No matter the application, Chiron impressed the significance of expanding his catalogue of spells, as there was no telling when a piece of magic might save his life.
When Chiron deemed Cole was ready, they dabbled in the more costly applications of Wisdom. Chief among the weighty spells were the conjuration of material objects. It was the same magic that the others used to summon their emerald wings and telescopes. Creating something from nothing took constant, unwavering focus and an explicit understanding of the item. Cole immediately understood why Chiron had delayed these lessons. After weeks of practice, he could barely summon a passable replica of his old dagger, an object he knew better than any other. His main issue was that his focus was to
o fine, too specific. The blade of his crystal dagger would have all the right angles and hardness, but the hilt and handle would come out vague and mushy. Cole took his creative exercises in the Arts district a little more seriously from then on.
Another month flew by, taking Aeneria from the house of Wulfmont and into the house of Jindaere. Cole was so engrossed in a Wisdom lesson that he barely noticed the sunrise. It didn’t bother him much however. There would be others for him to see.
He kept in touch with Eliza, talking with her most nights before she drifted to sleep. Cole never had too much to share, but Eliza would fill him in on how the others were doing and what was going on around Oberon City. The Celestial Council had stood firm on their rulings, confining the others to the temple and stacking an ever-growing list of violations against Cole and Chiron. Envoys had been sent across Aeneria’s Light Side, carrying open invitations for peace treaties and trade agreements. To Eliza’s knowledge, none of the envoys were heard from after they crossed over. Cole asked every day, but Eliza hadn’t seen or heard any trace of Goran, even after taking several covert trips out into the mountains. Cole rested on his faith in Goran’s toughness and ferocity to protect him.
Though Cole eventually stopped asking about her, Eliza’s reports on the others would reveal hints on Lileth. Through the fraternal bond it was impossible to hide his elation or dread when conversation drifted towards her, though Eliza was tactful enough to pretend not to notice. Cole knew that his feelings towards Lileth were not about to change anytime soon, but he had grown accustomed to the pain of losing her. It was as if his heart’s skin had thickened, or Lileth’s knife had dulled. There was always a chance that when next they met she would see him in a different light. That chance, however slight, gave him hope. With that hope rooted deep in his heart, Cole resolved to master all of Chiron’s lessons so that he would become the most desirable Aenerian she’d ever laid eyes upon.
Saving The Dark Side Book 2: The Harbingers Page 40