Aodhán sat in a meditative pose high in the sky, calm and at peace even as a storm raged all around him. Clouds roiled, and lightning flashed incessantly, followed closely by deafening booms of thunder, so loud that they drowned out Varéc’s roars of excitement as he soared through the colossal clouds and added his own special brand of chaos to it.
Winds blew strongly, and rain poured down to drench the ground in heavy torrents. However, amidst all this chaos, Aodhán felt completely at peace. He felt more at peace than he had ever been before, and in that moment, he finally understood Master Gyatso’s religious words of finding peace even within a storm. He had found that peace, literally, and it was all thanks to his new skill, {Eye of The Storm}.
Before checking out the skill, though, Aodhán decided to scrutinize his core and spirit first. Focusing inward, he turned his attention to his core and the blazing ball of willpower floating within it. His core shone brightly to his senses, and after verifying that all was right with his core, Aodhán shifted his attention to his pathways, which had enlarged slightly since the last time he’d checked on them.
Surprisingly, they weren’t the only things that had widened; the essence threads connected to his eyes had also widened, albeit by a negligible degree. It was certainly not enough to make any major difference yet.
Satisfied with the general state of his core and pathways, Aodhán shifted his attention to his spirit, specifically his opening. The spiritual rift had also grown larger, not enough to evolve into something else, but enough to be more than halfway there. He mentally probed the opening for a moment before turning his attention to his seals, both of which glowed with an enchanting luminescence.
Finally, he turned his attention to the last and most drastic change within his spirit. The simmering rage wasn’t gone; instead, it had transformed into a vortex of storm that completely surrounded his mind. The vortex raged and roared, lashing out chaotically, but it made no move to invade his mind.
It was like his mind was impenetrable; however, Aodhán suspected he could harness the raging vortex at will, perhaps even invite all that rage into his mind if he wanted. This change was one he was most thankful for at the moment, as it practically placed his destiny back in his hands where it should have been in the first place.
He was at the eye of the storm, a state of perfect calm, control, and tranquility. Nothing could touch him here unless he allowed it, and he couldn’t wait to test out the limit of his new abilities.
With a small smile, Aodhán pulled up his status screen and reviewed its contents, starting from the bottom where the details of his new skill were outlined.
[STATUS]
Name: Aodhán Ashoka-Brystion.
Title: Neophyte, Storm Spirit, Bronze, Origin Marked, Seal Bearer (2), Silver.
Class: Evolved storm awakened: 99.9% (PENDING)
Tier: 22–27%
Glimpse—>Opening: Increases elemental affinity and abilities by 2.5%.
Techniques: Perfect will imbuement (9), Energy Enhancement (crude), Empathic Link.
Skills {Innate}: [Storm creation and manipulation] [Lightning creation and manipulation]
{Other}: [Lightning Surge] [Lightning Beam] [Lightning Descent] [Create Constructs] [Absorb Lightning] [Spear Rain—Lightning] [Spear Rain—Storm] [Vortex of Lightning] [Vortex of Storm] [Elemental Lightning—Stage 1] [Eye of the Storm—Passive]
Bloodline: Origin storm supremacy. {Unique}
• Amplifies storm abilities by 3% + {Eye of the Storm—passive}
• Grants major resistance to Lightning
• Aura of Origin supremacy.
Familiar—Dragonkin (Fury)
Perks: Psychic bond, Merge, Berserk.
Congratulations! You have gained the approval of your origin plane. New seal gained.
Congratulations! You have gained a new skill.
{Eye of the Storm—passive}: You have entered a heightened state of awareness and perception that can be tweaked as you wish, enabling you to see clearly through chaotic weather and magical disruptions. A deeper sense of tranquility can be achieved by immersing your mind deeply into the effects of the skill.
Extra effects:
• Grants a minor ability to identify enemy weak points.
• Effect can be imbued into some skills.
Even at a glance it was obvious that the skill didn’t have a single function; rather, it had a vast number of functions that complemented each other well. Aodhán wondered if perhaps high spiritual cultivation also aided in getting high-grade skills, because this was certainly not normal.
Aodhán hadn’t met any other storm awakened yet, but he doubted their skills would all be this powerful. One thing that made the skill even more valuable was the passive tag, which meant he couldn’t ever turn it off if he wanted. In a sense, the skill seemed almost like his core sense ability, and although there were similarities between the two, they were vastly different.
The heightened awareness his new skill granted was the first thing Aodhán noticed, realizing that despite the chaotic weather around him, he could still see the academy as if through a slight film of fog. His lips tugged up when he saw students running through the rain, cursing up at him in annoyance.
Just for fun, he increased the intensity of the rain and laughed when the spiritual attention of several people landed on him all at once. Aodhán could feel Principal Zatya’s attention on him, but he ignored her too. The woman deserved every wrench he threw into her plans after the foolish mistake she had made by placing him and Yurin within the same chamber.
He wasn’t trying to undermine or belittle Yurin’s traumatic experience within the chamber, but Aodhán could beat his chest that he had come out even more mentally scarred than Yurin. After all, he had watched himself almost rip one of his closest friends to shreds, and had the principal not arrived on time, it would have been too late.
Her churning with a rebellious need to cause trouble, Aodhán turned his gaze away from the academy and looked towards the growing number of people gathered underneath his storm cloud, most of whom held pails and buckets to the sky, shouting and shoving each other in excitement.
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He couldn’t hear their voices from his position in the sky, but he didn’t need to to know what they were talking about. It was the Warren all over again.
Somehow, rumor must have spread from the Warren about his supposed miraculous rain, but had Calrin, the farmer, not disproved that rumor? How had it managed to rear its head up again? It made work wonder if perhaps there was some truth to it.
Rain was one aspect of his skill set that had been severely underexplored and underutilized, mostly because he hadn’t created or gotten any useful rain skills yet. Frankly, Aodhán didn’t think rain bore any real usefulness aside from the watering of plants and other such mundane activities, but perhaps he was mistaken.
Focusing on the colossal cloud he had created, a feat that had drained a large chunk of willpower from him, Aodhán began to manipulate it. He couldn’t expand the cloud anymore as he had already reached his limit, but he could definitely amplify some parts of the storm and reduce others.
With a quick activation of {Storm Manipulation}, Aodhán reduced the booms of thunder to a distant rumble and even the flashes of lightning to the minimum. This caused the energy fueling those aspects to diverge into others, and the cloud darkened even further. The swirling wind increased drastically, and all that excess energy began to leak into the atmosphere.
Eyeing his status screen, Aodhán began looking for anything he could divert the energy to, and his gaze soon landed on the last function of his newest skill.
Effect can be imbued into other skills!
He eyed the clause for a moment, wondering if it meant exactly what he was thinking it did. He didn’t bother wondering for too long, as this was a perfect opportunity to experiment. Grinning, Aodhán diverted the excess energy into the rain, and the storm cloud practically exploded with water.
His intention wasn’t to increase the intensity of the rain, lest he began killing sleepers with the force of each droplet. No, his intention was to test out the last effect of his new skill, and without hesitation, he did so.
Sinking his mind deeper into the effects of {Eye of the Storm}, Aodhán tried to imbue the peace and tranquility he was feeling into the storm around him. The result was nearly instantaneous.
A wave of calm spread out of him like ripples on a lake, and the roiling storm stilled.
The howling winds died, lightning winked out, and the distant rumbling of thunder grew comforting like the promise of rain after a hot day. Aodhán felt his muscles relax even further, and he sighed in utmost bliss, unaware of a tiny aspect of the storm that he had overlooked.
Peace and quiet seeped into the rain, carrying with it a grain of enhanced perception, and as these droplets fell to the ground, drenching hundreds of sleepers to the bone, something was awoken in them.
***
It had taken an absurd amount of jabbing, shoving, and screaming, but Yue had finally made it beneath the cloud, leaving her clients far behind, but her job was the farthest thing from her mind in that moment.
Quickly, she raised the pail she had stolen to the sky and began to fetch the miracle rainwater, already calculating how much she might sell it for and how much money she could make if she marketed it right.
Regardless of how well she marketed it, though, the amount of money she would make was certainly not enough to sustain her for life. That brought her to a single conclusion. One pail wasn’t enough.
Eyeing the bucket of the old man beside her, Yue wondered if she could steal it without getting caught. Her feet shifted, and she felt the temptation rise. Just one quick grab. She could snatch the bucket and flee before the man even noticed. It wouldn’t even take long.
Her grip on her own bucket tightened, but before she could act on the temptations, the storm suddenly stilled. The wind, once howling through the streets, dropped into silence, and a ripple of calm spread through the roiling clouds above.
This caused another wave of cheers, but Yue wasn’t happy at all. Her bucket was barely full, and from the look of things, the show was about to end. Growling, she raised her face to the sky, and the rain touched her.
It hit her skin like a soft tap to the forehead, causing Yue to shiver, but not from cold. Rather, heat spread out from the point of contact and flowed into her mind like a whisper. She stumbled, hand going to her chest, eyes wide as the world... shifted.
Gasps of confusion rose from the crowd, but Yue could barely focus on them as her vision swam for a moment before snapping to clarity. A clarity so resounding that it was jarring. The once dull sounds around her—the chatter of several individuals, the horns of shuttles, the patter of rain—became vivid, layered, and crystal clear.
Sounds of amazement and confusion rang in her ears. Footsteps echoed like distant thunder, and the scent…Yue’s nose twitched as new smells revealed themselves. She smelled the rain, but beyond that, the earth. Damp soil beneath cobblestones. The metallic tang of rust…
The rush of newness overwhelmed her, but Yue could help but laugh out loud. This rain—it was sacred. Holy. Miraculous. It was more than just water. It was magic!
She glanced around, noticing that almost everyone seemed to be going through the same thing while a few simply stared at others in confusion. Yue turned her head, catching a flutter of wings—a bird, hidden in the shadows of a rooftop several meters away. She’d never noticed anything like that before.
Tears blurred her vision as she stared at her hands, feeling the world open to her senses. She was no longer just Yue, the tour guide struggling to survive. She could feel everything, sense everything. And for the first time in her life, she felt powerful and important…until she didn’t…
A minute. That was how long the feeling of power lasted.
The first thing that diminished was her hearing—the sharp clarity of sound started to dull, like someone slowly wrapping the world in wool. The footsteps she had once heard so clearly turned into dull thuds. The distant rustle of leaves lost its distinctness, fading into a blur of background sounds, and her grip on the details, on that heightened state of being, slackened.
“No,” Yue whispered, her voice trembling as her vision dimmed, returning to how it had been formerly. She wasn’t the only one too. People staggered as their senses dimmed, falling from the high the rain had given them.
Yue hastily turned her face to the little droplets of rain that were still falling, but they did nothing, and with a desperate cry to hold onto this feeling of power for a while longer, Yue dunked her head in her bucket of water, seeking the magic she had just tasted.
When nothing happened, she downed the entire bucket, drenching herself in crystal clear water, but once again, nothing happened. Slowly, the clarity in her mind dulled, and her senses lost their edge, turning soft. Vague
Her chest tightened in panic, and Yue gazed up at the sky with pleading eyes, but the storm that had had so much potential a while ago was already dispersing.
“No, please.” She cried out, but no one heard her cries, and before long the golden clouds of the nexus reappeared, smiling down on her as if to mock her with a beauty she could not fully comprehend. People cursed around her, and reporters ran around, interviewing people with their snappers clutched tightly as they took pictures left and right.
One rushed towards her, but Yue couldn’t even reply to his questions, too busy feeling empty and ordinary. She had known that awakening enhanced a person’s perception, but she hadn’t exactly understood what she was missing. Now she did, and Yue was more than certain she would kill herself if she didn’t awaken. What was the point of living life if she didn’t get to feel that every moment?
The world soon returned to its usual dullness, leaving Yue feeling hollow and weak. She stared at her hands, once so alive, so connected. Now they were just hands again—cold, wet, and trembling.
Sighing, she dusted her dull hands and turned to walk away only to come face to face with her clients, both of whom were glaring at her, seemingly not having been affected by the rain's effects.
“I can’t believe you just left us here and disappeared,” The man shouted. “We could have gotten lost, or something terrible could have happened to us while you went ahead to gallivant in the rain without us.”
“I’m sorry—” she began, but the woman cut her off.
“We demand a refund or at least half our money back.”
Now, that was a problem, because Yue had spent their money already to settle her debts. She was wrong, though; she had been so carried away by how much she could gain from selling the miracle water that she had left her clients behind in a city they knew very little about. It was unprofessional, and the woman’s request for half their payment wasn’t entirely unreasonable.
She couldn’t do that, though, because, as she said earlier, she had spent the money. However, she was still a worker of the Phoenix’s nest, and they had a reputation to keep. So, rather than cry as she really wanted to right now, Yue plastered on a smile and replied in the same tone her mother had used to scam people before her death.
“Apologies, sir and madam. Let me make up for my inexcusable behavior. Have you seen the famous church of the collective? It’s just by the corner, not too far from the statue of Raol, which is an irony because the collective church does not pray to Raol or any other Ascendants for that matter. A shame really. What is a religion without a god?
She rambled on, drawing the couple's interest with each word, and before long, she had persuaded them to see the Church of the Collective and the Statue of Raol, hoping that they might forget her transgressions and perhaps tip her, as she would be unable to afford dinner otherwise.