The air clung to the last wisps of morning crispness and all but the laziest of shopkeepers had opened their businesses along Reveller’s Avenue. When they reached the pavilion, Jay noticed it was busier than half an hour ago.
Probably a more important fight on.
At least he had some company this time. While Lyra stayed tight lipped, deep in thought as she led Jay to their destination, Akira wouldn’t shut up. He pointed at almost every statue they passed, telling Jay a fact about the fighter.
“That’s Solstice.” He said, pointing to a giant beige statue of a lightly armoured man posing with a spear held up to the sky. The plaque underneath was a bit too far away for Jay to make out, but a golden box appeared when he tried to focus on it.
Solstice “The SunSpear”
173-1
Burn brighter
The morning sun had watched over Jay this entire journey, but until now he hadn’t truly felt its warmth. A hot blanket, shielding his soul from the eternally cold night. The Lifegiver. The Lightbringer. The one hope, forging life from nothingness inside its loving embrace.
A hot flush rolled over Jay's body. The wispy hairs on the back of his neck stood on end and goosebumps rolled down his spine. Soon, every hair on his body shot up. Well, every hair except the ones attached to his lifeless bruised forearms.
“-he fought with solar essence and, surprise-surprise, a spear. His path to Harmony was a strange one. Initially he was a fire harmonizer, but then he spent a year learning about light. When he returned to the coliseum, he managed to fuse the two into solar essence and went on an insane streak of fights. He only lost to an illusionist called the Dreamstalker that managed to use his power against him. He got-”
“Can you guys not feel that?” Jay felt somewhat bad about cutting Akira off, but the kid was going to talk anyway. It might as well be about something Jay wanted to hear. “I read that guy’s name and all of a sudden it’s like I’m sunbathing on a beach on some island.”
“Well, you are on an island.” Said Akira, not even trying to hide his smile. “Lyra, let’s stop here. If you’re going where I think you’re going, he’s gonna want to know about domains and essence perception.”
Lyra deliberated for a moment, before agreeing. “What you’re feeling is his residual domain.” She said, walking towards the statue and waving Jay along with her. “I believe you touched on it with the storm sage. A domain is basically a manifestation of your personal essence. When your personal essence is solidified enough, and aligned for a single purpose, you can manifest it as a domain. If you’re a mess internally, and your personal essence is a mishmash of different desires, you can’t form a domain. Following?”
Jay nodded. He wondered how a statue could even have desires but didn’t interrupt.
“A person’s domain can be concentrated, it can be disperse. It can be aggressive, or comforting. It entirely depends on the person’s character. When you trained with the storm sage, he used his domain to grant you some of his essence manipulation ability. Solstice is dead, so he can’t do anything fancy like that, but he was so powerful that his domain stretches beyond the grave.”
“That’s the main explanation.” Akira added. “But domains aren’t strictly an ability, they’re more of a phenomenon.”
Here we go again…
“While the most accepted description of a domain is a manifestation of personal essence, some people describe it as a harmonizer’s essence seeping into the universe around them. As you understand the world more, and get closer to Harmony, your personal essence expresses itself. Initially as a rigid domain, but later as more of a zone of control. A place where you have more sway over the laws of the universe.”
Jay thought he was pretty good at smiling, nodding, and pretending to understand things. Lyra’s exasperated sight let him know he wasn’t good enough.
“Don’t listen to any of that, you don’t need it.” She said. “A manifestation of personal essence covers 99% of what you need to know about domains. You can study the specific effects when necessary, but it’s really not important right now. Vega and I can manifest our domains, but they’re not particularly useful in battle, so there’s no point in us studying it until later.”
Akira’s cheek twitched in the corner of Jay's eye. He didn’t like that.
“Okay I think I get that. But what’s essence perception?” Jay asked. He was perfectly fine with Lyra’s strategy of not thinking about domains until they became useful to him, and he had two pressing reasons to hurry up the explanation. One hanging from each shoulder.
By now they’d reached the base of the statue. Jay looked up at the golden stone gladiator. The sensation of sunlight kissing his skin had faded, even though he was now closer to its source. Was it because he was focusing on learning, rather than simply thinking about the SunSpear?
“Sit down.” Said Lyra. She took a seat, leaning her back against the statue’s plinth. “Close your eyes and detach yourself from your physical form.”
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Detach?
“Just try it.” She said, closing her eyes.
Jay joined her. After a fruitless minute of fidgeting, Akira's voice chimed in from above.
“Separate everything’s form from its essence. You’re not sitting on stones, you’re above the essence of stone. You’re not sitting next to Lyra, you’re near the essence of Lyra. You’re not leaning against a statue, you’re in front of the essence of Solstice.”
…
“You’re not Jay. You’re the essence of Jay.”
You’re not Jay. You’re the essence of Jay.
Sure.
Akira’s words echoed throughout Jay's mind, permeating through his every thought. Jay needed to change how he perceived the world in order to grasp essence perception. Years as a fighter had turned his worldview into a detail-oriented one. Jay didn’t need to know the essence of the man stood in the ring with him. He needed to know if he was about to punch. This kind of holistic perception was the exact opposite of everything he’d trained to do.
But he had to start somewhere.
And just like learning anything else, there was only one place to start. Looking inwards.
You’re not Jay. You’re the essence of Jay.
Sounds great. What the fuck does it mean?
Lightning or thunder. They were static things, all Jay had to do to learn about their essence was study and observe. With some help from the storm sage and Akira, he’d gotten his head round them. But again, they were static, they were simple. He was a person, a real, living, breathing person. How could he figure out his essence? Surely it was more than just the things he did, right?
I’m a fighter, a boxer. Well not a boxer anymore I guess, but still a fighter. As soon as I finish my fight in one world, I go right into a fight in the next. I’m an athlete too. Even in a world of magic, the only way I figure it out is through my body.
And what about lightning? That also carried over, even if it was somewhat by circumstance. Being called Lightning Leonard two lives in a row has to mean something right?
What else?
Jay grasped for anything that might give him a hint. Anything that might unlock his perception. He kept combing through his history, hunting for the building blocks that made him, him.
There was no quick trick to it. But if both Akira and Lyra thought essence perception was worthwhile, he’d go for it. Even if that meant throwing everything he had at the wall until something stuck.
Jay spent a few minutes trawling through the most important elements of his life one by one and thinking about how they had made him into the person he was today. Not just boxing, but everything that went into it. The training, the roadwork, the sparring, the analysis. Not just speed, but lightning. The flash, the explosivity, the awe.
He worked himself into a trance. Not mindlessly, but somewhat thoughtlessly, combing through himself. Light began to seep through the deep black curtain that his eyelids had cast over the world.
But it all started from him.
Jay looked inwards. Not down at his body, inwards.
A pulsing nexus of brilliant white and deep sky blue spun around itself. Bright flashes of ingenuity sparked out from it, releasing sparks like solar flares that orbited the nexus before sinking back inside.
But it didn’t remain that way. The nexus expanded slightly, and reformed itself into the shape of a head. The sparks that flew off now held their shape. Luminous blue jagged lines, streaking out from the brain and drawing the angular corners of his face and neck. The expansion continued. The azure streaks continued. Running down his torso, recreating the lines his muscles followed then immediately accentuating them. The electric brushstrokes extended further, painting sapphire limbs onto pure darkness. Jay's and his legs now reformed in glowing electric blue.
Specks of light poked pinholes in the darkness like stars in the night sky, but three beacons of light surrounding Jay almost drowned them all out.
The first sat beside him. A gunmetal grey portrait of serenity. Motes of white light whirled within this figure too, much like the skittering sparks within his own body. But these followed more measured paths than the wild sparks within Jay. The white lights inside who Jay assumed to be Lyra marched steadily. Like traffic watched from above. All just cogs in a machine working together for a greater purpose.
As Jay shifted his attention away from himself. The figure looked back. Half its attention pushed onto him. He watched the motes of light stray from their preordained routes. Cutting corners, slicing through space previously deemed unusable as their very nature changed.
She’s changing to match me.
Why?
Jay twisted his focus to the second figure. A multi-coloured pillar of energy stood just in front of him.
Akira?
Every colour of the rainbow separated and swirled into one as it felt like the existential forces of the universe were torn apart and reformed at this figure’s will. While Jay and Lyra’s manifestations seemed vaguely human, Akira’s was remarkably abstract. Streaking waves of myriad colours that Jay could observe and reflect on, but couldn’t calculate or comprehend.
But those two paled in comparison to the roiling sphere of fire spewing out light behind Jay. The SunSpear didn’t have the vividness of Akira or Lyra, but it had size.
The grey veil of death had clearly dulled the SunSpear’s manifestation of self. Jay watched the monochrome orb behind him rotate and writhe, deep currents or energy within the star dictating movements beyond his comprehension. Warmth rolled over Jay, he heard undertones of power, but didn’t quite feel them. A whisper, a remnant, a suggestion in his ear. Warning him of immense power but with no substance behind it.
For a split second, Jay envisioned the sun when it was alive. If the beams of warmth were replaced with the burrowing drills of radiation. If instead of a warm fuzz on his skin he felt the individual cells of his body disintegrating into the cosmos.
Existential fear yanked his perception back home. Refocusing on his whole body. The sun couldn’t hurt him, it wasn’t real. Jay looked over the blue recreation of his torso, his and his legs. Far more comprehensible than the dulled-out star behind him, or the kaleidoscopic mess that was presumably Akira in front.
A head, a torso, two legs. He could understand that. He didn’t need anything more.
Wait…
It didn’t matter how other people manifested themselves. Jay didn’t need any of that shit. He had his body, and that worked just fine. All he needed were his two .
His two .
My two what?
----------------------------------------
“Where the fuck are my arms!”
Using his voice snapped Jay out of his trance. The morning sunlight forced him into a squint. He’d gotten used to the dark void, and the bright lights of reality woke him up like a sudden nightmare.
Jay looked down.
His arms were still there. Just as bruised, battered, and unresponsive as they were two minutes ago.
But still there.
Jay breathed a sigh of relief. How had he completely forgotten about his arms? Jay forced his eyes shut and tried to remember his headspace from before. He did envision himself with arms… Right? He had to. He was a boxer.
A boxer without arms was… Nothing.
“What the hell!” said Akira. “You’re right, they’re simply not there.”
Jay watched as the young man tried to figure it out but kept coming up blank. Lyra remained in thoughtful silence too, although she was far harder to read. She eventually broke the silence by getting up and waving Jay after her.
“I’ve got no idea what you did to yourself, but it can’t be good.” She turned to Akira, who shrugged and shook his head. “And I think we need to hurry up.”