Chapter 28

Frank awoke to once again find himself in a room filled with dark energy. Just as before it was a matter of pulling in the dark energy deep inside himself and holding onto it tightly.

The only real difference between this time and last time was the sheer volume of energy that he was expected to remove and condense.

Before he could start, he felt a surge of violent energy being forced into his body.

At first the intense stream of energy was so violent and fierce that it momentarily caused the dark cloud that seemed to coat everything to be repelled.

Suddenly there was a gap around his body.

Then looking down he saw that dense strands of green energy were being forced into his body. Trembling the energy was so fierce and potent that if he just stood there and did nothing, he knew he would be swept away in the flood. Not quite knowing what to do he almost panicked, yet as soon as he felt the energy something kicked on in his mind, something primal. Something that was almost akin to breathing was for him at this point.

Breathing in Frank focused on the stream of violent life fulfilling energy that simultaneously threatened to rip and tear his body apart, while simultaneously healing any and all damage. Feeling the torrent of energy, Frank focused deeply on the motions and let his natural meditation take over as his body began cycling the highly potent Qi quickly.

Apparently seeing the reaction of Frank to the external energy, Frank noticed that the dark energy that had been momentarily pushed away try to surge around him, but was held back.

The partial blocking of energy was not permanent and was not something that could be sustained for any true length of time. But there was enough time afforded by the reprieve for Frank to once again set his foundation. He was life, and he knew from the brief conversation with Dr. Evans that he would be given the chance to chose which of his affinities took priority for this realm of cultivation.

Focusing inward, he felt the unmistakable scent and memories of Dr. Evans laced with the highly potent life energy that was coursing through him. Memories that seemed to contain deeper thoughts, moments of time that have long since passed.

There were images of a man wearing a lab coat right alongside Dr. Evans. As he stared at Frank, who was in position of Dr. Evans’ memories he felt it. He felt her love for that man. Then Frank felt the moments of joy when Dr. Evans’ little sister got selected to the special forces unit, how she managed to pull her life around. Then there was extra excitement as their daughter, said her goodbyes with the little sister.

“Protect her,” Dr. Evans’s final words to her sister rang out in memory.

“I will,” the sister replied.

Yet, hearing the words from the doctor’s side those words rang hollow, and empty.

For what happened next was doubt and pain.

The images and people were just blurred faces, the way one would find in dreams. Dark emotionless faces that have meaning and clarity in the moment but are gone once you try to focus too hard on the emotions lingering on the energy.

For a moment it felt like he would drown in the flood of emotions that clung to the torrent of energy like foam on the sea. Frank was able to paddle to swim just hard enough to get his head over the waves, only for dense salty mist to fling itself into his open mouth that was gasping for air.

That is how Frank felt, until he realized that there were more intricacies to the memories. In addition to the surface memories, there were deeper truths and understandings that were within the energy. Inside the energy were fragments of memories of how to build a cultivation body, not just a regular body but a perfect one. Frank found the guidance he needed in the oddest places, these were in the moments after tragedy struck, as Dr. Evans heard the worst news possible. News that shook her to her very core, she collapsed and began going through the basics of cultivation.

For Dr. Evans it was a simple question of survival, where the only thing possible was to cultivate and further cement her foundations, or let her mind shatter and break. In the end, she chose the latter, which was great for Frank as he felt those thoughts, those emotions coming, but only if he watched without forcing.

In the end, finding the memories he wanted and following the thoughts to their conclusion was an odd game. He had to focus on the types of thoughts he wanted to see and experience, this would bring the base of the memory forward.

Then once he had it summoned, he had to patiently wait for the memory to scroll by. Any attempts to pause, stop, rewind, or otherwise alter the memory were quickly squashed as the memory would disappear as if Frank passed his hand through a thick cloud of smoke.

So it was that Frank focused his mind and eventually managed to follow the teachings of Dr. Evans, or at least he managed to copy her movements.

Badump.

With one successful rotation, Frank felt his heart beat. In the back of his mind, he knew it had always been beating this entire time, but this time if felt right. This time he could feel the altered blood coursing through his heart and organs.

As the blood circulated he could feel his body relaxing ever so slightly, as the blood went around and reacted to the pools of death energy that had grown stagnant within his body.

This was when he realized that death energy too needed to spiral to move, lest it be allowed to rot and fester. There was something there, something deeper, but for his part Frank couldn’t grasp the memories from the residual death energy that was within his body. The memories were so distant that they either had already been stripped away through numerous rotations through his body, or were never there.

No, that last part wasn’t true, as there were clearly memories there. Memories that seemed to react and spur on Dr. Evans’s memories. Again, Frank knew there was something there, something obvious and profound, but in the haze of the dream like fog that filled his mind, he could not focus long enough on trying to determine those deeper universal truths. In the end, all he could think about was the way the energy moved in his body.

Finally, after what felt like hours, Frank let out a sigh of relief as he knew his body had adapted to the first of his affinities, and being as this was his first it also meant that it would be the base from which he would be able to build upon going forward. This too was important, though at the moment Frank again could not understand why. Instead, all he felt was tired.

Frank was tired of how exhausting it was to force dense foreign energy through his body and force it to meld to the way his body not only was, but the way it would be when he got to his final destination. It was exhausting to have to live through the vague memories of others over and over, knowing that with each viewing the images were just that much harder to find, that much harder to reveal and that much harder to get to run in any chronological order.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Taking a deep breath, Frank used this moment to relax.

SHRIEK!

At least that was the original plan, but it seemed that whatever invisible barrier had been separating Frank from the darkness that surrounded him was gone with the complete infusion of the life energy into his blood.

WOOSH.

Frank felt the dark energy crash into his body like a wave, there it sat and clung like slime that was both solidifying and releasing a stream of goo constantly.

Feeling the slime on his body, Frank could feel minor memories on this goo as well. This dark sludge also had memories of the past, but they were not just memories of the previous owner, but of multiple iterations of change.

It almost felt like the dark energy was alive, a parasite that swam from body to body in an attempt to corrupt and spread. At least that is what Frank’s training taught, yet there was something that this explanation was missing. Yet, before Frank could get too lost in the new thoughts of what mysteries might lie within the dormant memories of the dark energy, frank felt it.

Burning.

The skin under which the dark goo had congealed was now beginning to burn. It was a slow methodical burn similar to what Frank always initially felt when he took in dark energy to his body. This was that moment of complete shock one would feel when they jump into a freezing pool of water, or have their body’s natural movements freeze up due to an extreme change in temperature. There is a burning that the body tells the brain, move or we are done.

This was the same type of physical response, at least that is what Frank interpreted these signals to his brain.

Move or we are done.

For a moment, he had a flash back to his re-awakening, where dark energy was forced into his body. There was a moment when the pain was so severe, so intense that if he had paused, he would have died, just as everyone else who had been exposed to the same caustic substance had.

With this, Frank realized something, the reason why he had managed to survive was the fact that he wanted revenge. Rather than staying still and accepting his fate, Frank forced the painful energy to pulse through his body as he enacted revenge against his rival Luther Camello.

Had he been wrong? Maybe.

Though at the time he was surprised to have survived. Now he wondered if there was something more to what had happened, to why he had survived. Rather than fight or resist the dark energy, he pulled it in, made it a part of him, then and only then was he able to control the energy.

“Focus,” Frank said to himself, as he relaxed his mind. A mind that tried to fight back against the dark energy just outside of his body trying to get in. Now rather than fighting against it, he accepted the energy in.

Pain.

There was the familiar sting as the congealed goo began to melt apart and slowly bleed its way into his skin. Yet, it was only once he forced the dark energy in, and the forced it to continue to move about that its painful sting slowly went away.

At first Frank wondered if the disappearance of his pain was due to the fact that his healing energy had a chance to come by and heal. While this might be the case normally, Frank knew that there was a second piece to this too, that so long as the dark energy was forced to move about it could not linger, it could not cling to parts of his body, and most importantly when it cycled it could not rot out his body from the inside out.

With that, Frank began pulling in the residual dark energy around him. Just like last time images of lands began to form.

On the right side was the stone gothic hallway that held two sets of feet. One in polished leather shoes, while the other wore shiny plated boots. By contrast the new vision or hallway that also appeared was a bit of a godsend all things considered.

The new hallway or path, or whatever these segments were supposed to represent was of a dense forest. While the forest was clearly rotten, showing moss and mold covered ground where grass should be, and trees that were clearly dead and withered, Frank couldn’t help but feel slightly more at peace with this new forest than he had with the other pathway. At least in comparison to the old cold stone gothic archway that led to the crazy vampire queen with glowing red eyes.

Then again he didn’t know if there was a darker monster here, one that would put the vampire queen to shame in terms of horror.

Silver paws.

That was the other stark contrast of this new outdoor view, is that four silver paws were aligned showing an animal standing upright, the coiling muscles in the body showed that for the moment the monster was relaxed, if only just barely. Though the tension in both views seemed to be all but palpable, Frank continued drawing in more of the dark energy, forcing it to move, forcing it to not be stagnant and malingering in the air.

Then just as expected in the cobblestone archway on the right, the more of the dark miasma that Frank drew into himself, the more the base of the throne that held the uninterested queen appeared.

However, this time unlike the last time, a dark cloaked presence stood on the left, on a small, raised mound within the dead forest clearing.

As the miasma cloud dissipated, Frank finally saw the two scenes for what they were. A contrast in powers and styles. Almost as if there were two competing forms of power available to him.

Was this his mind interpreting something hidden within the dark miasma that was in his body, or was this something deeper? Honestly Frank didn’t know, no doubt this was something that should have been covered in one of his classes, but he had apparently been forced down the path of quick evolution. What this meant Frank didn’t quite know.

On the left was a man, or at least a male, whether it was a human or not was almost impossible to tell given that all Frank saw was the faintly male features peering out from under a covered head. The eyes here were a deep red, much like those owned by the queen vampire on the right. However these eyes seemed to be both more powerful and slightly less passionate.

Then to add balance and symmetry, just as the vampire queen had two people in the field a warrior on the right and a magician type figure on the left. The robed male with glowing red eyes had a wolf symbolizing power on the right and a crow nestled in one of the dead branches of a nearby tree.

Balance.

That is what Frank felt from each pathway, though he didn’t know exactly what to make of what he was seeing.

Yet before he could fully process everything that he was seeing, both creatures began speaking almost over top of each other, yet they spoke in a way that projected their thoughts directly into Frank’s mind. Meaning that despite them talking over each other, he could understand the both equally.

“So, you have returned?” The Queen asked somewhat disinterestedly, as if she was being punished by having to deal with Frank. The fact that she seemed to recognize Frank from his two previous encounters seemed significant in some way, but for the life of him, Frank couldn’t understand why.

But before he had too long to think about the words from the queen, the words of the robed male came through simultaneously.

“And who might you be? I see that some of my power has gotten to you, but I don’t quite understand how? Most peculiar. Did you by chance steal my power from one I bestowed my essence to?”

HISSSSS!

Just as Frank was trying to make heads or tails of those comments from the robed male, the vampire queen apparently heard the same thoughts, as she turned away from Frank and hissed violently towards the wall dividing and separating her from the robed male, as if she knew exactly what and who was there.

The robed male having heard the hiss turned to his left, Frank’s right and seemed to also stare at the boundary separating the two parallel but unique worlds.

However, rather than the robed male getting mad and hissing back, he seemed to take on a more measured approach. A sinister smile crested his lips as he seemed to understand something.

“I see,” the robed male began, his words speaking directly into Frank’s mind, apparently knowing that the vampire queen could hear him speak. “You have apparently already gained the attention of the old hag. Most amusing.”

“Old Hag, I will smite you down where you stand.” The vampire hissed, snarling as she jumped up from her throne and looked like she was trying to melt the stone structure with her eyes.

“Come now, this is no way to speak in front of my future disciple,” the old man goaded.

“Your disciple? I’ll be damned if you take another of my chosen.”

“Not to mince words, but aren’t you already damned once?” The robed man began.

By now Frank was entirely confused, though he did feel an odd sort of connection to not just the one but both of the entities. Now that he had not one, but two different reference points to view, he could tell that this was a sympathetic bond of the dark essences, that he had somehow consumed dark energy from not one but two different sources. Each source had a slightly different flavor or texture to them, the one to the right was, well it was hard to describe other than it was just different.

“Oh, good. You are a natural when it comes to powers. This is why I will take you in as my disciple with my blessing.” The Robed man said, as he let his staff glow for a moment as a stream of energy traveled at the speed of light and began piercing and searing itself into Frank’s mind.

“AHH!”

Frank cried out, trying to shield his mind from the sudden burst of burning energy, but to no avail.

“You dare try to steal my disciple, from me.” The queen vampire hissed as she made a quick gesture with her left hand and then a beam of dense energy flew from her hand towards Frank’s mind. “I will not let you take him from me so easily.”

Burning.

“Ahh-ha-hah-ha!” The robed male laughed with delight, “you fool. You have played right into my hands. Now when he finally choses to follow my path, he will be twice as strong for his efforts.”

“Never!” The vampire queen hissed, though as she did, Frank saw the true monster that lie underneath. What had been the tempting of perfectly proportioned and displayed flesh hid a monster of fangs, power, and endless rage. Rage that was now being used to infuse Frank’s blood with not one but two different dark blessings.

“AHHHHHHHH!” Frank cried, out. Feeling the burning of both dark curses burning their way through his mind and searing themselves into his very blood. Spinning away, Frank tried to leave the dreamscape but found that he was bound so long as the two beams of energy continued to burn into him.

Acid burn.

Frank felt the world burn away around him, until there was just nothing but pain. Then finally the pain too burned away and all that was left what the residual burn.

The next thing Frank remembered were small hands, grabbing at him and holding onto him.

Fear.

For a moment Frank knew that the small hands belonged to the vampire queen, that she had somehow found him, and was now threatening to drag him to hell. Or wherever the vampire queen resided.

“Let go!” Frank hissed, fear gripping him as he desperately tried to move his sluggish body and get away.

“Calm down. It’s me, Dr. Evans.” The familiar voice of Dr. Evans called out to him.

Exhale.

With that Frank opened his eyes to see that the doctor and a lot of other people in lab coats were present.

Looking down Frank found himself bound to an operating table just as Constance had been earlier. Seeing that he too was strapped to a table, Frank began to panic, then he asked the two words that caused everyone to have a slightly downcast look before being able to answer.

“What happened?”