Aaron woke to multiple persistent pulling sensations in his mind. He quickly identified a broad collection nearby, his closet of collections. His focus then shifted to a massive but distant sensation which he determined to be east by southeast.
He decided to get breakfast before examining the closet’s contents, his meal quick and simple. After an equally quick shower, and a change into his standard wear, he went to the closet. The items in the closet now seem to glow with varying strengths of metallic white luster. They clearly contain the same energy that now fills his body. He picked up one of the rings which shined brightest of the closet’s contents. He attempted to push his mind into the ring as he did with his body. His mind touched upon the ring and slid into a separate space. The space appeared to be about 30 cubic feet, or the size of a somewhat small house. Aaron noted that several of the other rings felt like the one he held but weaker, which likely contained smaller spaces.
He wondered how one would go about filling the space. He picked up a dragon sculpture that sat on a side table in the hall. The first attempt was to simply will the item into the space, which produced no results. He considered before attempting to instead coat the statue in his own energy. A thought brought him “into” his body, where he traveled to his vessel. He slowly teased out some of the energy from his spiral. Pulling it slowly through the paths and then through the skin of his hand.
The energy became much harder to control once outside his body, causing him to lose some of the held energy. It quickly dissipated into the air, mixing in with the present energy, causing the air to get slightly heavier. He used what he still held to carefully coat the statue in a thin, shimmering white layer. His attempts to press the now coated statue into the ring’s space were also unsuccessful. He got a feeling from the ring, a lack of connection, or something of the like.
Aaron carefully considered that feeling, wondering what it meant. He then considered what made the ring he was currently wearing different. Thinking over the short time he had possessed the ring, his mind latched onto blood. The ring had spent several hours in the same pocket as a cloth soaked in his own blood. Perhaps absorbing part of him had forged a link between himself and the ring?
He found the idea intriguing and thought it worth pursuing. Pulling his energy back into his body and vessel, he set the statue down on the side table. He went to retrieve one of his pocket knives from the drawer in his bedside table. Moving into his bathroom, he set the ring into the plugged sink. Pricking his finger with the tip of the knife, he allowed some of his blood to drip onto the ring.
The sense of connection was instant and powerful. His perception of the ring's internal space deepened. This revealed several sets of robes, equal sets of standard underclothes(mixed male and female), a small selection of swords, a small stack of books in an foriegn language, and several dozen bottles made of what appeared to be frosted glass. With his new connection to the spatial ring, Aaron attempted his storage tests once more. The first test still failed, while the second sent the statue into the ring. Several follow-up tests showed that instead of a coating, he needed only touch the item with a single thread of energy.
The function of the ring now discovered, he quickly bound and accessed the other spatial rings in short order. He found that each ring contained; several sets of robes, some varied weapons, mostly melee with the occasional bow, some number of books in the same language, and a number of the frosted glass bottles. Several of the rings also contained odd miscellaneous items; a bronze bell, several chunks of metallic ore, freshly plucked plants, and a miniature boat.
Aaron then decided to examine the closet’s other contents, the uncut gems all contained the luster of energy within their depths. The cut gems, in contrast, contained light of varying colors. Each color gave off a feeling on contact, blazing heat, freezing cold, an electric tingle and more were present.
The robes maintained a steady temperature within their folds when a thread of energy was attached to a symbol on them. The swords, when similarly powered by his energy, became supremely sharp. The Yumi consumed energy to produce its own weightless arrows. The miniature boat swiftly grew to its full size through one of its symbols, shoving Aaron into the wall as the hall was filled with a two-man rowboat. The boat's second symbol appeared to do nothing, it likely propelled the boat.
He performed various tests that ate up the rest of the day, interrupted by a small lunch break. Despite this, he could not determine the functions of the non-spatial accessories or the bell. After dinner, he decided to use his five days of remaining vacation to pursue the larger pulling sensation.
Aaron awoke the next morning,performed his morning routine; stretching, meditation, shower, teeth, dress, breakfast.
He then reordered the spatial rings, removing all but two of each type of weapon and keeping only a dozen of the robes. The largest spatial ring, now on his right index finger, was then filled with; the basic weapons, robes, the non spatial accessories, the Yumi, the gems, and the misc. Treasures. The remaining spatial rings would not enter the largest ring, so he falled a small travel bag with them. He then added to his spatial ring a dozen sets of his own clothes, several cases of water, a week's worth of food, a full set of cooking gear and eating utensils, his mattress and bedding, and a travel bag of toiletries.
He then set out, locking his apartment behind him, and settling into his car for a long drive. Keeping his heading in mind, he began driving. 7 hours later, he was in Galveston, staring out to sea. The sensation continued to pull at him, leading out onto the ocean. Moving his car to a full time parking location, he locked up and pulled out and enlarged the boat. Hefting the boat onto his shoulders, Aaron began making his way to the nearest dock.
Setting the boat down into the water, he retrieved a single short oar stored under the boat’s rear seat. He used the oar to press off from the dock, ignoring the strange stares he was receiving. Several minutes later he had maneuvered the boat into facing towards the pulling sensation. Pulling a single thread of energy from within, he touched it to the boat’s second symbol. The boat began drifting slowly across the water, several threads twined together produced much greater speed. Half a dozen threads wound into a thicker cord produced what Aaron deemed to be the greatest speed he could still control. He sped off into the distance as the watchers on the dock muttered to each other about the strange man in the odd wooden rowboat.
Several hours later, Aaron was forced to stop, frowning, as the boat had consumed almost all of his energy reserves. His mind felt fuzzy, his body weak, his paths frantically drawing in energy. His vessel took only an hour to refill, enough time to have a basic cold dinner. After pondering the issue for several minutes, he decided to test a possible solution. Settling back onto the rear seat, he slid into his internal space. He focused on spinning his energy spiral ever faster. The increased pressure causing his pathways to draw even more energy from the air. While spinning his spiral, he attempted to draw an unbroken energy thread back through his pathways. The two tones of energy, gray and white, pushed against each other, causing both to grind against the walls of his pathways. He pulled the energy thread back into his vessel with a grimace. Aaron spent the next quarter hour pondering the problem, before an idea occurred to him like a bolt from the blue.
Diving back into his internal space, he resumed spinning his spiral as fast as possible. Pulling an unbroken energy thread from his spiral, he moved it once more into his pathways. This time he attempted to drive the white thread into the path at a slight angle. This caused the repulsion within the energy to push both tones of energy away at an increasing angle. The new angle pressed both tones of energy through his pathways in a dual colored helix. The constant pressure from the repulsion forced both tones of energy to rush even faster through the pathways. Both tones soon saturated his entire network, his vessel and all of his paths.
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Aaron pulled himself back into the world, noting as he did that the helical pressure caused his network to draw in energy as fast as if he was spinning his spiral. He pulled out a thread to power the boat, the new helical pressure in his pathways causing the thread to twist into a spring shape. He drove until the sun began to dip low in the sky, then he pulled out his twin sized mattress and laid it atop the boat to sleep on.
The next couple of days passed in a simple fashion; he woke, ate a cold breakfast, drove until midday, ate a quick lunch, drove until the sun began to dip, ate a cold dinner, then slept upon his boat mattress.
Around midday on his fourth day out he saw it, a massive lustrous white dome sitting upon the waves. Aaron sailed up to the dome, the prow of his small boat sliding through the glowing curtain as if it wasn't there. He reached out and laid his hand upon the solid energy wall.
Wondering how this had not been noticed, he suddenly realised there was a different kind of pressure on his mind. This new sensation immediately drew both his sight and his thoughts away from the dome. He was already turning the boat around by the time he caught himself.
Curiosity sated, he turned the boat back to the dome, laying a hand back upon it. Reaching out an energy thread caused his hand to slide through the dome. Passing fully under the dome revealed to him an island with a massive miles-wide multi-floor temple built upon it.
Aaron ended up sailing about one hundred and twenty degrees to the left around the island before finding a worn stone dock half submerged in the sea. He ascended onto the dock and shrank the boat, returning it to his spatial ring. Then he set off up the slightly crumbling stone path to the temple.
The temple was mostly low and broad, with vine covered walls and faded red shingle roofs. Half a dozen pagoda towers rose several floors above the main structure. Gaping holes in the pagodas leading out onto stone balconies showed where there were once doors and perhaps windows. He saw as he approached that the front entrance was also empty where a door had once been.
The floor of the central hall was covered in a layer of dirt while the walls were hung with vines partially covering beautiful murals of men in elaborate robes. All of the interior surfaces were covered in small symbols and glowed faintly with energy fighting a losing battle against the ravages of time. The ceilings were grand things, easily ten feet above the floor. The heaviness of energy in the air seemed to be flowing down the hall towards an unseen point.
Aaron spent several hours searching through the massive building, finding that the pagodas and the above ground section were filled with a mix of bedrooms, baths, kitchens, and rooms that had no readily apparent function. He also found four underground levels filled mostly with storerooms full of decayed boxes and barrels.
The first basement level contained one set of massive, heavy metal double doors which still glowed strongly with lustrous white energy. Inserting a thread of his own energy opened the doors to reveal a small library, filled with books in the same strange language as the ones he already possessed. He quickly began sorting and stacking the tomes, comparing them to those he already had, and leaving behind the few copies. The books now took up nearly an entire corner of the spatial ring, stacked from bottom to top. The second and third floors were strange, being squares set around what appeared to be a large empty section in the middle. The stairs between each level seemed long, each at least twenty to thirty feet from top to bottom
It was on the fourth and final basement level that he found what was producing the pulling sensation. Another pair of massive, inscribed metal double doors sectioned off what seemed to be a single immense chamber in the center of the floor. Opening the doors prompted the energy in the air to rush into the room.
Aaron first noticed the air, almost unbreathable, almost ten times as dense with energy as the air outside. The weight of it crushed down on his lungs, and the energy almost forced itself in through his skin. He slowly sank to his knees, struggling to breathe. The increased amount of gray in his pathways caused the angles of the helical twist to sharpen. The increasing angles pushed the energy through even faster, seeking the angles further. His pathways finally evened out at five times as many rotations per inch. Then he felt himself dragged into himself by a stretching sensation in his vessel as it filled to the brim with energy. The spiral now large enough to grind against the vessel’s walls. The stretching sensation grew more and more uncomfortable, until it suddenly vanished, along with the vessel suddenly expanding to three times its previous size. Energy from the spiral soaked into the vessel walls as it expanded, consuming half of the stored energy in the process. The remaining half of the energy rushed out through his pathways, briefly increasing the pressure to painful levels, before all the white energy in his pathways bled out through the walls. The energy strengthened both the walls of his pathways and the rest of his body. Bones became both stronger and more flexible, muscles became sturdier and more powerful, blood flowed faster and contained more oxygen, his skin became smoother, softer, and sturdier, organs became more efficient, his senses sharpen, his thoughts became faster, crisper, and flowed more fluidly. His vessel filled once more with a writhing sea of energy, he tiredly began to spin up a new spiral. Far too tired to do anything, Aaron felt his thoughts slipping away as unconsciousness overtook him.
Aaron awoke inside the massive chamber, the weight in the air now feeling far more manageable. The chamber was enormous, easily five hundred yards across and at least one hundred feet tall. The center of the room was taken up by a circular structure of metal inset into the floor. At least 200 yards across and comprising multiple circles containing thousands of the arcane symbols, the edge was ringed by two dozen short pedestals with a four clawed holder atop each. Each of the walls was marked by five similar circular structures without the pedestals, arranged in an x shape.
Large growths of multicolored crystals grew around the edges of the room where the walls met the floor. Closer examination revealed that the entire growth was filled with lustrous white energy. Aaron pulled one of the uncut gems from his spatial ring, comparing it to the crystalline growth before him. The two crystals were clearly the same material, and yet the crystal from his spatial ring seemed stronger, somehow. Aaron considered the two crystals for a moment.
He finally determined that the crystal from his ring seemed to contain more energy than a similarly sized section of the growth before him. He reached out and grasped a spar of crystal with his free hand. The crystal snapped off with surprising ease, considering the strength the crystals had displayed in his previous testing. Dust began to flake off the bottom of the crystal he had just removed, drifting into the air before dissolving in energy. He was left holding two crystals of nearly identical size and roughly similar overall shapes.
Aaron had not consciously noted before that while the crystals had differing surface shapes, they were all nearly identical in size. It became clear to him that these crystals were functionally solidified energy. The material holding the growth together rapidly broke down into energy when force was applied to it. This left behind only the much stronger energy crystals. He placed the denser crystal back into his spatial ring.
Aaron began to examine the chamber as a whole; he believed that the structures carved into the walls were drawing in energy from outside and condensing it into the chamber. This seemed to be what had produced the massive pulling sensation. Which implied that the lesser pulling sensations were the items pulling in ambient energy to fuel themselves.
Further consideration of the chamber as a whole led him to note that the pedestals ringing the central structure had claws apparently sized to hold the energy crystals. Inserting one of the native crystals into a pedestal caused the symbols carved into its surface to light up. The light moved down the pedestal's length in a wave. The light then bled into the structure, causing the outermost circle to light up with a faint, wavering radiance.
Aaron set to gathering the native crystals, the air gaining even more weight as the weaker material dissolved back into energy. An hour later he had collected every crystal within the chamber. He now possessed around three dozen of the more powerful crystals, and just over two hundred of the weaker native crystals.
He swiftly filled the remaining pedestals with the native crystals, noting that there were two dozen all told. Both the outermost and middle circles shining with the same strength as the pedestals. Only the center circle remained dark. Suddenly, several of the symbols in the middle circle began to glow more brightly. The energy in the air was swiftly drawn into the structure. The center lit up after consuming the energy for a full half hour. The air now felt no different than that of the outside world, all of the extra energy having been consumed by the structure.
A single symbol in the very center of the structure began to glow much brighter. Walking into the center of the structure, Aaron touched a thread of his energy to the symbol. His surroundings were fully consumed by a blindingly bright flash of light. He was overcome by a feeling of lateral motion and then a sense of compression and great speed. Once the light and motion ended, he was immediately crushed to the floor by air that weighed at least a hundred times as much as the previous chamber. The immense weight swiftly forced an equally crushing blackness to overcome his mind.