Chapter 54: Currents

BOOM BOOM BOOM

A young man carried a gigantic backpack filled with the leftover food reserves of the camp and on his face, was a gleeful smile. The weight of each of his footsteps boomed as he trotted back to his tent. Seeing the servants were not yet done with removing the scent, he figured he might as well raid the rest of the reserves. Gayle and the rest of the convoy could only watch as he stuffed tens of pounds of dried meat inside the oversized colossal backpack.

At least their leader was capable however. The girl was already sending out hunting squads led by her crew to gather more food, which in the end, Zan would probably plunder once again.

BOOM BOOM BOOM

Gayle watched from afar as Zan entered his spacious, stolen, tent. As she heard a larger boom, probably from the man slinging that huge backpack on the ground, the owl-eyed girl wondered when the stranger would leave.

It had been days since he stayed here. Frequently, he would simply walk around and watch the convoy operate their normal duties, or he would climb some tree and lazily lay there for hours on end just watching the clouds pass by. While he was not a bother, his mere presence was nerve wracking for her crew. The bloodline carriers were still afraid of the pureblooded stranger who could snap their necks without effort at any given time. Many of the timid ones came up to her, begging her to do something. We know he asks for you late at night…Maybe he’ll listen to your words if you ask him to leave?

While Gayle’s face turned red from the weird assumptions that must have been taking place, she had to admit…a part of her did not want him to leave. Over the past few days the two would meet during the late hours of the night to simply talk. Talk about anything and everything. Whether it would be about the mysterious fog lands that still remained vastly unmapped, or whether it was about the empire of Agni and its enemies such as the Greatforests Alliance and the secluded southern territory of Everrain.

The two even talked about their favorite foods. Zan mentioned the steel box with freezing capabilities that contained numerous foods he had never seen before while Gayle talked about different spices that the Greatforests uniquely contained, offering various flavors to their otherwise stale meat. Zan’s favorite food was the triangular piece of bread with cheese and smashed tomatoes while Gayle’s was her mother’s homemade mutant cheetah stew seasoned with several different native spices.

The owl-eyed girl had companions and various acquaintances but this was the first person that she had ever talked so much with. To her companions she was curt and aloof but Zan knew her as a somewhat socially awkward girl with brains. And she was not aloof but just the opposite. The girl simply did not know how to conversate with others about topics that were not about business.

Zan once observed a conversation she had with a companion and saw as she went from the talkative girl that chattered on and on about the weird mechanism called clocks, to a cold, distant and serious leader that gave short and unquestionable orders.

The point was, Gayle had shown a side to herself that no one else knew. It was a side of her that she kept to her parents and to herself, the only accepting people who she viewed she could be vulnerable with. Now that she had shown this side to someone else…she did not want to see him go so quickly.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

‘A friend…is this what a friend could be called?’

There were many things going on in her mind as she stared at the tent Zan resided in.

‘Why did I feel comfortable enough to tell him all those things? Will we meet again tonight to talk about anything? You know what…I still don’t know his name!’

One question in her mind however, was so loud that it started to drown out all her other thoughts.

‘...When will you eventually leave me?’

…

Zan sat on the comfortable tent ground covered in numerous soft sheets. His eyes were closed as he focused on his mind’s eye, the images that he saw in his head. The red haired youth saw a vast plane of darkness, before he created the image of his body in the same sitting position as he was in. The body was ethereal, translucent, and it was closing its eyes just as he was.

In the next moment, the youth thought of intention and willpower. Once again it was a vast plane of darkness, but suddenly a red force manifested from within the darkness, and it expanded limitlessly until it was all that he saw.

His mind’s eye zoomed out in response to the scene he was seeing. The vast plane of red slowly turned into a plane of darkness once again but in that darkness he saw the same ethereal body that he made from before and it was now bathed in red auric flames.

It was weird. Those red auric flames seemed to absorb the darkness around him and for a moment he saw twinklings of light in the surrounding atmosphere. The very fabric of space, the darkness and little stars that appeared, were being pulled into the auric flames, they were being pulled into Zan’s body. It was like the flames had a sort of gravity towards the time-space of his consciousness, and he was not wrong. The “will” that Zan was manifesting was very minutely, very slightly, shifting the abstract energies of fate from their predestination.

The youth had no idea of the sheer power he held in his hands. Yet he did know either that the power he commanded could only truly steer the direction of fate within the opportune window of space-time. In fact, the youth did not know that his new ability was even called the power of will.

What he did know was that once he filled his body with this intentional will, the energy that was previously so difficult to manipulate would obediently and submissively follow each and every command. Concentration of his spiraling energy was much easier, and much more powerful too.

Within the past few days Zan was also able to observe the energy circuits of his body. Comparing his human body and his eldritch limbs was like comparing a hallway to a maze. His human body’s energy pathways were clear and direct. Each of the pathways led to another path of his body, whether it be to an organ or to cover the other side of his stomach, they each had purpose.

The abomination limbs however were vastly more complicated. Within them was literally a maze of energy pathways that held no clear destination nor purpose. Yet, the sheer amount of tiny circuits within his limbs acted as a multiplier to the amount of energy he could store and explosively use inside his already monstrously strong eldritch limbs. The problem however, was that he had to manually push that energy into each and every corner of the maze-like energy circuits.

The way energy moved within the body was simple. There was a source of energy within the body and the user would simply steer that energy through the body’s natural pathways. It was possible to simply force that energy towards certain parts of the body and totally ignore the organic pathways, but doing so would waste most of that energy to the surrounding air, or to the meat of the flesh. Even while fortifying and strengthening the body, once the energy went through the pathways it would empower all the flesh near it much stronger than if it was to be forced directly into the muscle. Therefore doing so would be most times, pointless.

In the same manner, once the energy left the human circuits of Zan’s body, the simple lines that were like hallways would transform into a maze of energy pathways. Pathways that the youth had to skillfully fill each and every part of. There were many pathways within the eldritch limbs that also held deadends.

As energy exited Zan’s shoulder to his left arm, suddenly he was met with several different pathways that each branched into several more pathways. About three or four of them would end in deadends, yet each of those pathways seemed to be geometrically aligned in a way that although they were not straight and direct like the human pathways, they boosted the overall storage and explosiveness of his energy. So Zan was compelled to fill each and every pathway within his eldritch limbs.

Though, it was also very possible, and it happened while in combat, that the energy he was inputting into his limbs could not find the right pathway to keep flowing along his limb. Meaning that the energy he sent to his arm could totally stop at his biceps and not cover his forearm. Or that the energy he sent down his leg, could reach his thigh and cease to flow down towards the rest of his leg.

These past few days Zan had to get used to traversing the maze pathways of his eldritch limbs, and he had to remember each and every pathway so deeply that he could explosively fill each one instantaneously. Currently, Zan had memorized four hundred and thirty-two pathways inside his left arm, and he had not even reached his forearms yet.

A devious smile appeared on the red-haired youth’s face, he could just imagine how strong he would become…