Kara awoke with a scream.
The moment she opened her eyes she was assaulted by a splitting headache, causing her to slump back into the bed she had woken up on.
While her mind did its best to pull her fragmented consciousness together, a pained groan escaped her lips, alerting the other occupant of the tent.
The moment Kara wondered about the aftermath of her meeting with the abomination, a strange feeling came to her. It felt like a loose string was present in her mind, but not demanding attention. Yet the moment she realized it was there, she couldn't ignore it.
Following the string with her mind was difficult, as she wasn't aware of the proper extremities to use. As she had no talent in mana cultivation, she had never learned to interact with the world through her mind.
In the end the image of her class info was the closest she came in comparison and with that mental image, she pulled at the loose thread, following it to the spot it emerged.
In her mind's eye, Kara saw a shimmering, multicolored sphere. Despite it only being an approximation of her understanding, the vision of the sphere was accompanied by an almost overwhelming influx of sensory information. Kara knew what the sphere smelled, tasted and sounded like.
Before she could lose herself in the deluge of information, the string demanded her attention again. With a slight bit of effort, Kara pulled at the string.
She had expected many things. For the sphere to unravel completely, for the string to snap or for her to fail. What she didn't expect was the sphere bursting into flame.
The entire thing, in all its multicolored evershifting glory, suddenly ignited with a strange white flame. Kara could feel the overwhelming heat the flame radiated, yet it did nothing to actually hurt her. Instead the heat that would usually feel overbearing, felt extremely comfortable as it spread throughout her physical body.
Kara basked in the feeling of the strange warmth in her body for a moment, before she unconsciously tugged at the string again.
This time, a slow trickle of information entered her mind. It felt like remembering a long forgotten dream.
Not true information, but a mixture of words, thoughts, feelings and understanding.
Two eyes snapped open on the multicolored sphere and kara couldn't look away in time. The moment the sphere's eyes and her mind's eye met, it felt as if someone was looking at her, causing Kara's concentration to shatter and her real eyes to open.
Again, a splitting headache assaulted her mind, but it was less severe than the first one. Still Kara closed her eyes, only opening the left one a tiny bit.
Despite only opening her eye a sliver, her field of vision was incredibly wide and even in the dark tent she found herself in, she had almost no trouble observing her surroundings.
Kara let her head drop onto the stack of blankets she was resting on. The information in her mind was still present, but muted. It felt like an annoying trivial fact she had learned but couldn't banish from her mind.
Deciding to follow the impulse of her newly acquired knowledge, she took a deep breath and pushed.
Almost immediately, a pulse of white fire washed through her body, closely followed by a searing pain.
Immediately kara relaxed the mental muscle responsible and the feeling ceased.
Letting her attention wander through the areas where the flame had passed, Kara noticed that her muscles felt as if she'd just worked out close to failure. She raised her arm and flexed her bicep.
The feeling was almost identical to a good workout, but something was still strange. Something was left behind by the flame, still present in her muscles.
Just as Kara was about to tug at the string again, the flap of the tent opened.
Immediately daylight flooded inside, causing a new wave of pain. Though the feeling of her pupil constricting was strange, she decided to investigate later.
Through the opening, Commander Doreos entered, causing Kara to immediately shoot out of bed, snapping straight into a crisp salute.
“SIR!”
Kara had trouble staying upright, the rapid movements only aggravating her headache.
“At ease lieutenant, sit back down.”
Grateful, Kara followed the suggestion, slumping back onto the pile of blankets.
“The most important question first Lieutenant. Are you alright?”
Doreos sat cross legged on the ground on a few pillows to Kara's side.
Despite her position of Lieutenant, Kara hadn't met Doreos that often. But everyone in the circle talked of their commander as a man that valued his own people more than the payouts of their contracts, so it was no wonder to her that he would ask such a question.
“I dont know.” She honestly replied.
The circle was something like a family for most of its members and Kara was one of them. To her, Doreos was something akin to a famous grandfather. Everyone knew him and valued his leadership.
“It's difficult to explain and even then, I don't know how much I'm allowed to speak about.”
Doreos raised his eyebrows at the word ‘allowed’ but chose not to comment.
“I entered a pact and I'm no longer sure if I'm human.”
A strained silence stretched through the tent as Kara kept her eyes closed.
“I’m fairly sure that Morningstar woman is some sort of demon. She offered me the opportunity to become a warlock.”
Kara heard Doreos quietly curse under his breath, though she didn't know why exactly.
“Commander, I'm not exaggerating when I say this, but only looking at her body destroyed my eyes. Even trying to remember what she looked like gives me a headache.”
Kara suppressed a shudder.
“She had so many eyes. It was as if she could see right through me. Like she was looking at my soul. Which I'm pretty sure she actually did.”
Doreos watched as Kara forced a strained laugh, his mind whirring.
“I can feel the power she gave me burning in my chest. But she said that it was not enough. I dont understand what she meant, but she talked about having left a Kingdom behind and starting again. And that me just being a warlock isnt enough. I dont know what came over me, but i accepted.”
Kara opened her eyes, causing doreos to flinch back. Wincing through her headache, she asked “Does it look that bad?”
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"It's….. disconcerting." He answered, cringing.
Kara closed her right eye, causing the ache to lessen. The vision in her left eye was strange, but not nearly as detailed as her right one.
"I'm scared, commander. That demon read me like an open book. With only a few words she was able to figure out that I'm seeking revenge. And now there is something in my mind. Somehow I know that I'm no longer my own person. It feels like she owns me."
Doreos hesitated for a moment.
"To be honest with you lieutenant, I don't know how to help you. I know that there are records of warlocks among our members, but the last one died more than seven hundred years ago. I'll get one of the keepers to look for the information, but right now, there isn't a whole lot we can do. I've looked for Lady Morningstar, but I've been told that she's currently outside the city, somewhere in the wilds. The best course of action is for you to recover properly. Once she comes back I'll talk to her."
Before Kara could respond, he continued.
"Without you. We don't know what she is, but no-one hurts a member of the circle without retribution."
Doreos rose to his feet, looking down at Kara.
"I'll get another healer to look at the burns on your face. For now rest!"
With that final command Doreos left, leaving Kara to stew in her own thoughts.
Before long a giant bespectacled man entered the tent. Kara didn't know his name, but had seen him amongst the healer corps. The young man applied a regeneration spell to her face and gave her a polished bronze mirror to look at herself.
Kara didn't even notice the young man leave, her attention wholly occupied by her reflection.
She looked much less changed than she had expected. Yes, the eyes would take some getting used to and the burn scars around her eyes looked severe, but that was it.
No horns growing from her temples, no new hair color. No feathers, no mouths and no extra eyes.
Kara slumped back onto the blankets with a sigh. Before she knew it she was asleep.
—--------------------
Kara stood in a small clearing free of distractions. The area the circle had chosen to set up camp had more than enough space for multiple training areas. The ground beneath her feet was packed dirt, surrounded by privacy partitions borrowed from the orcs.
Kara gripped her broadsword, heaving it into the sky. After a deep breath she brought the massive blade down with tremendous force. Simultaneously she flooded her body with the now somewhat familiar, white flame. Instantly the sword accelerated downwards faster than she could have made it move on her own.
The massive blade crashed into the ground, sinking a good 40 centimeters of the sword into the ground. Kara clicked her tongue.
She still hadn't managed to arrest the swing fully.
Whenever she ignited the fire, her physical prowess would skyrocket, far higher than a mere second tier warrior should be capable of. According to the information the demon had left in her mind, the flame used something known as anima to fuel itself.
Neither doreos, nor the smart folk of the circle had ever heard of it, but whatever it was, it made for a very potent fuel.
With the knowledge of the use of the white flame, also came a warning, telling her to not use the flame outside of her body.
Piecing together that tidbit of Information had taken Kara longer than she'd like to admit. Trying to make sense of the dense clump of knowledge in her mind was a tedious task that needed her to meditate for extended periods. Something Kara had never properly learned, having never needed it. She knew that she wasn't talented in the manipulation of mana and any possible manipulation of qi could only be achieved at the third tier. Thus she had never learned to meditate, having instead focused fully on her physical body.
With a grunt Kara heaved the massive sword from the ground and reset her stance.
Setting her feet, she moved into the basic stances and swings she trained almost daily. Only occasionally igniting the flame to add to the power of her swings.
The information had been very clear on the fact that she should practice with it's use. Not only would familiarizing herself with the flame be an obvious decision, it also apparently deposited left over anima in her muscles, strengthening them in the long term.
Kara had heard of many body cultivation methods, but none of them could be used without mana. And none of them seemed so simple as to just flood herself with power and work out.
While sweat began to drip down her brow Kara wondered, not for the first time, what the price for this power would be. A method to so easily cultivate her body would be fought over by any organization that heard of it. Any kingdom, sect or church would start a bloody war over this method. There had to be some drawback to this. Nothing in life was supposed to be this easy.
She'd only practiced this method for two days and already she had broken through the bottleneck into tier two.
Was she permanently crippling her future advancements? Was she giving up ownership of herself a little bit at a time with every pulse of the white flame?
Kara took a heavy step forward and swung her sword in a heavy upwards slash.
She held the position for a moment. In the end, it didn't matter. She had resigned herself to the fact that she would never advance past the first tier without external help. Now she could do it by herself and that was all that mattered.
Kara feinted into a thrust, taking an imaginary enemy off guard, before sidestepping and transitioning into a devastating sweep. Once again she pulsed the white flame through her body. The additional force caused her to overextend and lose her Rythm.
"Well you're not completely terrible, though I do wonder what she sees in you."
Kara whirled around, seeing a heavily muscled orc woman leaning next to the entrance to her training area.
The woman was about as tall as Kara and of similar build, though she had extremely muscular legs and bare feet. Her entire body was covered in strange red tattoo's and Kara could swear they were pulsing in a strange red light.
The orc woman removed a one-handed axe from her belt, flipping it in her hand, before she suddenly dashed towards Kara with bloodlust in her eyes.
"I guess I'll just have to see for myself!"