Noone’s eyes were extremely well adjusted to the dark of caves at night. With or without the sun-stone he didn’t feel uncomfortable. After a few hours when the cave began to brighten from the sun’s rays, it helped ease his nerves. No matter how dark-faring his people were, there was something inherently comforting about the light.
Noone had remained restrained and standing through the night. After a few hours he even chose to stop using his sunstone. It wasn’t going to help him now anyways, so he felt he might as well not be using it up.
As dim light filled the cave Noone took some time to really analyze the roots. Due to only having one sun-stone, the shadows cast by it made his surroundings exceedingly difficult to interpret. Now though, he could see the gentle veins snaked within the small roots wrapped around his arms. They were a soft brown like freshly turned top-soil, however they weren’t flaky the way wood tends to be under stress.
He twisted his arms in the hold of the roots, friction and heat built around his wrists, but the roots had no qualitive change to them.
“If only I could…” Noone looked towards his equipment and thought about his options, if only he had access to them.
He could only lament his lack of foresight. But in reality, how could have expected this?
Weighing his chances, Noone’s frown only deepened. His options were severely limited.
Noone had been left thinking back to all the records he had read within the annals. There had been mention, he realized, of a large section of extremely brittle and crumbling rocks on the cliff face. He assumed this was the area which he now was trapped. In those records though, there was nothing written in relation to roots which he saw. Or of any strange reactions like he had been feeling. This told Noone a lot.
Chances were that almost everyone looked at the fragile mess of cliff in this area and used their attunements to easily circumvent it. Either that or… anyone who traversed it were in the same position he was in now.
The fact that no one else had mentioned any beckoning like he felt, he doubted others had come here before. Noone couldn’t help but wonder why that would be.
Either there is something special about me… or this is something new. Given how deep they were embedded into the stone, I don’t think they’re new. The roots binding him presently gave him cause to fear that this could only be related to the strange state of mind he had been experiencing.
He was afraid.
The only saving grace that he could see was… since being bound, nothing had changed.
Noone continued to study the surface of the roots. Both the ones holding him, and the ones lining the ceiling of the cave.
Visually they looked identical, apart from varying in size.
Hours passed, and the sun began its descent towards the horizon again. Noone had at this point tried a range of things to escape from the grasp of the roots, and had exhausted himself in the process. His wrists now hurt from the extreme abuse they had suffered in his attempts to free himself.
It wasn’t too much to say that he had even considered – for a moment - removing his own hands. However, he quickly took that idea and buried it. Even if he got out of the predicament, he had no clue how he would climb the rest of the cliff without hands. And that was assuming he didn’t bleed to death before that became an issue.
As the minutes ticked by into hours, Noone was at a loss for what to do. The sun was now just above the cloud-line, and Noone only had an hour at most before the world was plunged into completely darkness again.
“Okay.” Noone said gently. His expression calmed and he closed his eyes. For the first time he stopped struggling. His arms laid relaxed in the grip of the roots and he stood up straight, like a prideful prisoner unwilling to bow his head.
Noone had been too worked up to feel it before, but after a full days-worth of inept struggling, his mind had calmed quite a bit. There was a gentle tugging in the back of his thoughts.
“It’s you that got me here.” He thought, taking in a deep breath. “So you can get me out of this.”
The ‘you’ he was thinking of, was whatever called him to this point. The feeling inside of him that had been molding his body and his strength since he arrived at the bottom of the cliff. The trance he would fall into when everything else was put aside. He had been working very hard as he climbed closer to the source to maintain his awareness and not lose himself to that portion of his mind, suppressing it quietly.
Now that he had calmed down though, he could feel it very vaguely in the back of his mind. Whatever was calling to him, or whatever he was calling to, was now directly above him.
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Noone had not considered it before, but when digging out the cave, he had dug it to the exact spot beneath whatever it was he had been climbing towards. Even worse, was that he had done it entirely unconsciously.
Noone looked up towards the spot where the feeling culminated, there was a small pin prick of pain in the back of his mind, and his whole body suddenly shivered, he felt his mouth go dry as if he was thirsty.
His eyes closed, and his breathing steadied. He thought back to how he felt that first time when he was watching the horizon for days. The mental image he needed of his body and mind synchronizing.
For weeks he had been fighting this feeling, not wanting to lose himself to the trance like what had happened for the final three months in the mines. Now though, he didn’t have a choice.
Some small warmth in the corner of his mind began to spread. Noone felt his awareness and his senses become muffled as though being smothered in thick cloth. His thinking slowed but his breathing became steadier. He stood taller, but his muscles also became more relaxed. There was no wasted energy in his body. No movement, other than that which was absolutely necessary.
This is the most useful aspect of slipping into the trance. Noone thought to himself. Fusion of mind and body, no wasted energy. He knew that there was no way he would ever be able to attain this state consciously. Specifically, he thought of Elder Azelle, and how similar this must be to what he feels when attuning and synchronizing with the world.
Finally, Noone passed the point of no return. He had consciously given himself over to the unconscious heritage in his bloodline – or so he assumed. Although it was through a haze, he could still feel and see. But he could not react.
For a while Noone’s body continued to stand there, lacking even a single muscle twitch or reaction. The only thing that moved was his chest and diaphragm as he breathed.
Noone felt a subtle twitch inside of him. It wasn’t the twitch of a muscle or anything physical though, it was the movement of something incorporeal. From the core of Noone’s body, an amorphous feeling began to circulate out in a spiral. It was not hot nor cold, and it felt neither like water or like air. He very quickly identified the energy as his life force. He would often tap into it to trigger sun-stones and the like. However, he had never moved such a large amount of it before. He couldn’t do that, and before now, he assumed it was impossible.
Noone was shocked as he watched the condensed life force in the core of his body spiral out into his limbs, up into his head, filling out his body like water filling a glass, but not. Like air filling a Noone-shaped-balloon, but not. It was gentle and almost unnoticeable.
Although it spread out with equal parts in all direction, Noone could vaguely feel some resistance from his physical form. He thought back to the recent troubles he had with moving his life force.
However, the spreading of his life energy did not stop. It continued out until filling every inch of Noone’s physical form - Settling down just under the skin.
“Okay… what now?” Noone continued to watch as a passive observer, anxiously biting his abstract lip. Because he had given himself over, he could not understand how this was occurring. But he knew some things about it.
Although in much smaller portions, he could move the life force in his own body and knew that in needed to travel along certain channels. There were millions of these channels across his body, so it barely mattered.
After the life force would reach his hand, he would then have to exert a bit of pressure to force it through his flesh and into the elemental stone to activate them.
When he thought about this and then observed his own body, there was a slight chill as he stumbled across an idea.
“The roots… reacted when I activated the sun-stone.” He mused with trepidation. “Not to the stones energy though...” His eyes widened. “I was wrong. It was reacting to my life force!”
If Noone had been able to take a deep breath he would have. He had a vague feeling he understood what was coming next, and he wasn’t prepared for it.
When Noone forced his life energy from his palm, there was a small pain that came with it. On the scale he normally worked with, this pain was negligible, but…
He continued to observe the energy underneath the surface of his skin. All of it. Every inch, from his head to his toes.
“Oh boy…”
As if waiting for Noone’s understanding, a force was exerted throughout his body out of his control. It began squeezing the life force from the inside of Noone, through his pores, and onto the outside.
The first thing Noone’s aware consciousness felt was awe. The amount of finesse needed to perfectly move that amount of life-force was indeed incredible. Noone thought about Trisha who was barely capable of doing it after months.
The second thing his aware consciousness felt… was pain. It was dulled significantly due to having handed his physical body over. However, that didn’t stop it from charring through his thoughts like a wildfire.
On the outside his breathing remained calm, but he was now covered in cold sweat which beaded up and dripped off him. Noone dreaded to think how this would feel if he was still in control.
In the time it takes sparks to fly off a piece of flint, Noone’s body had been covered in a second skin of life force. But just as quickly, the roots that were holding on to Noone’s wrist suddenly sprung to life.
Like lightning-fast serpents they wound their way across his entire body, immobilizing him from even so much as moving a finger.
Despite his physical body continuing to breath regularly, Noone began to panic. Not only was he wrapped up, but the roots were draining his life-force! It was slow, but now that it covered his whole body, he noticed it in an instant.
10 seconds passed with no change.
20 seconds.
30 seconds and a tenth of Noone’s life force had been eaten away but it was quickly replaced by fresh energy.
40 seconds.
50.
60 seconds and he was down a fifth of his life-force. Noone was beginning to feel odd.
The roots wound slightly tighter.
2 minutes. Noone was down half of his life force, but there was nothing he could do. He had given his body over, and even if he managed to wrestle his consciousness back, he wasn’t sure what he could do after that. He knew he wasn’t strong enough to break through the roots.
As he watched everything occur outside of his control, without warning his body lurched headfirst. He felt all his organs shift and he was lifted at an incredible speed, faster than when falling down the cliff.
In a moment he saw the ceiling of the tunnel inches from the top of his head, fear overwhelmed him, and he assumed he was about to be brained on the top of the tunnel. But in shock - he watched as the roots lining the ceiling parted, and he rose through the rocks at a breakneck speed.