By the Lifewell, Ori inspected himself, ensuring that whatever changes had happened in the Trial had carried over into this new reality. His skin, muscles, and tendons felt tighter; the imperceptible flex in his bones was vastly reduced as if mere collagen was no longer the predominant strength-giving material in his skeleton. His sensitivity to all types of energies made the goosebumps on his skin prickle. He could even feel the Crucible's presence boring into him. It was like that invisible pressure behind your sinuses, except felt across his skin and flesh.
"Yes… yes. I should have expected no less from my chosen guardian. Such a compelling specimen, yes… yes. I shall indeed enjoy myself watching this one walk the path. Yes… yes… I knew it was possible, but yet… and this… just a glimpse of Transcendence and yet, so compelling, This shall be a marvellous enchantment." Crucible continued as if unconcerned by the fact Ori was present and could hear it. Ori coughed to get its attention.
"So, how did I do?" Ori said, suppressing an eager smirk.
"Ah, yes... yes… he finally deigns to speak. Please mind that you will not be truly Transcendent in anything until after you awaken —if you survive that long, so, keep that ego in check, Astral Adept."
"Adept?"
"Yes, yes. I'm sure the accolade has been acknowledged by the library by now. As we can't insist on calling one with both transcendent and primordial affinities an aspirant, can we?"
"Also, was that dream real? Or, was she… the demon in my dream, real?"
"You have a greater ability than I do to ascertain if a dreamer, in your own dream, is real…” Crucible sighed. "...But yes, as you're still a newborn baby in such things, I would be remiss in my duties if I did not, in fact, confirm that Melisandre the Wayward had walked your dream. Now, moving swiftly onwards. To the next phase before we find ourselves with an army of her minions forcing themselves in."
"How long have I been in the trial so far? And what’s this about Primordials and Transcendence; did something change with my catalysts?"
"Five-ish of your days have passed by since you entered my domain, and as for your catalysts, see for yourself," Crucible said distractedly.
∞ [##Unknown##]
∞ [Quintessence]
∞ [Astral]
∞ [Celestial]
∞ [Abyssal]
989x [Material]
769x [Domain]
31x [Polydexterity]
24x [Aether]
7x [Mana]
"So—" Ori began, only to be interrupted by Crucible.
"Aht-taht-tah, no more questions. Three more trials, three more chances to change your fate. When you are done, we will begin the refinement and our agreement will commence. A word of warning: these realms lie outside of my domain, and as a summons, you should never disclose your gifts. Even your lowest talents would be fiercely sought after out there and while a mundane death will see you returned, there are worse things than a mundane death. Now, brace yourself."
Before Ori could do more than parse Crucible's words, the grey featureless room went white.
----------------------------------------
A man far too large—as if a strongman or weightlifter had been scaled up to be eleven feet tall—stared intently at Ori. Ori was wearing nothing but a loincloth, while the man, sitting as high as some men were tall, wore a bright blue Gi.
"So, this is the summons," spoke the giant, radiating menace and strength. His skin was pale, leathery, and oily, with wrinkles enough to suggest an age of fifty or sixty, although some intuition spoke otherwise. His voice was a basso growl, as if his apparent discontent was only the baseline and that his mood could get far worse than it already was. The room itself was a Dojo, with mats and familiar punch bags, the atmosphere cold with enough of a draft to cycle dusty, stale air.
"A mortal on The Path, as promised, I have delivered," spoke another man, though this time with a lighter, almost reedy voice. Ori didn't dare to look around.
"So it would seem. Will he obey? Can he be compelled?"
"He has free will. And if he could be compelled, it would not be by me. I believe this concludes our agreement, Rachisan?"
"I suppose it does," the giant, apparently named Rachisan, nodded and gestured dismissal with his chin. A moment later, soft footsteps followed the sound of a door opening and closing, leaving a deathly malevolent silence.
"Can you speak, summons?"
"Yeah," Ori replied after swallowing to test his tongue.
"What are you? A human? No, don't answer that, I don't care," the powerful voice of the giant echoed. "I've been told that both the summoner and the summoned must seek something from the other," Rachisan said before venturing off on a new tangent. "It's unfortunate that I find myself encircled by such mediocre subordinates. However, I must accept responsibility for this shortcoming, as my nature shuns deceitful words and seductive promises. For me, loyalty is born of strength, not words, but strength! Not wealth, but STRENGTH! Not threats or cruelty, but STRENGTH!" The giant's voice grew more fervent. "Only with absolute strength can you conquer those who would exploit you as they please. Your presence here, weak as you are, indicates that you seek something only I can provide." His words resounded with an air of command, as Ori's apprehension manifested as a grimace. "Swear a binding Soul Oath of obedience to me, and we shall begin."
"Err… Naah, thanks," Ori said, his frown deepening as he tried to exit the trial to no result. The giant simply stared at Ori’s growing discomfort with impassivity.
"I had spent some considerable wealth in preparation, building a… special summoning ring around this building. Within, you cannot die, your soul cannot leave. I did so to teach you the first lesson. The most important lesson." At this, the giant rose blocking light spilling out from one of the few windows in the dojo. "When you are weak, you can never be free from those who are strong."
Between one moment and the next, Ori found himself tangled in a cloud of brick and debris as the wall he had apparently passed through, crumbled. He hadn't even seen the fist that had sent him flying. "Fucking, fu…" Impossibly, his skull was still intact even though he was certain it had been caved in just a second ago. Bricks continued to fall on his battered but rapidly healing body, as the giant's shadow a room away watched on, motionless until he was suddenly close enough to reach into the rubble to hold Ori up to dangle in the air.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
"Pride is weakness," the voice said before Ori's vision turned white with pain and damage. He was certain that his soul had left his body before whatever magic the circle consisted of, reformed his body and rebound his soul.
"Delusion is weakness." A stomp squashed his abdomen to paste before it reformed, leaving Ori heaving in a sea of agony. He didn't have time to think, didn't have time to properly form a spark of hate against his aggressor. Instead, the part of himself discovered in the first trial as he disintegrated, and further refined in the void, allowed himself to be porous and completely open to the experience. Experts back on Earth might have called Ori's state a kind of extreme mindfulness, as, despite the pain, being broken and reforming himself was no longer a novel experience for Ori.
"Failure is weakness."
"Division is weakness."
Punches that turned brick walls into dust and cinder followed, leaving behind an unanchored mind.
In this brief moment before sparkling pain and blistering awareness, something resembling Ori could think. It was like a drowning man catching those few precious gasps between the waves. Here, Ori no longer paid much attention to the thrashing his body was receiving; instead he latched on to the only real strategy his fractured mind could reason; that if magic was keeping him here, magic or its lack thereof, would allow him to escape.
And so he tried to focus on the force re-knitting his bones back together. He couldn’t feel magic, not really, but its effects, it was subtle at first and despite his ability, he was still unable to completely blot out the distractions of the situation. But through enough focus, he could feel how his body was being put back together—how the magic expelled blood, conjured and reformed bone, with more energy needed to strengthen tougher bone than weaker soft tissue.
Ori knew through Freya’s knowledge that magic used paracausal energies such as Mana and breath, energies that could be sustained if given a source. If the energy output exceeded the source's output, even a Mana source would drain and, for a while, be unusable. Meanwhile, the giant had told him of a circle around the building that kept his soul from leaving. If he could exploit either vulnerability, he could fashion a chance for himself.
He could feel the magic in his flesh at the moment it was re-knitted. It was unfamiliar, and not one he had much affinity towards, but he tried nevertheless to pull on that distant source, teasing out more energy by insisting his bones were denser here, his ligaments tougher and more resilient there, all to pour an ever-increasing amount of Mana it into each restoration of himself.
"Ignorance is weakness."
For while the magic was not his own and he knew not how to wield it, it was being used upon him to arrest his soul, rebuild his body and recreate his mind. And who else would know better than himself on the subject of just how to recreate himself? He pulled, his intent forcing the necromantic magic to work harder and pour more power into himself. While this strengthened bones and tissue an imperceptible amount beyond their original toughness each time they were broken and re-knitted, this also, hopefully, drained more Mana than expected from a source designed for a mortal.
"Mortality is weakness."
His mind rushed back into his body, he doubled over and retched. He picked himself up from the ground. Upon straightening himself up, his femur snapped into place with a sickening squelch. Still, with his plan now set. the majority of his attention focused on drawing in as much power as possible from the summoning circle while keeping the giant's attention from noticing something was going on. Bonus points if he could do something to unsettle his foe. It was with those goals in mind, that Ori squared his shoulders, tilted his head up, and spoke.
"Perseverance is strength," Ori gargled and then spat out a mouthful of bloody teeth he no longer needed. He never saw the punch that sent him through the ceiling, but in a refreshing change of pace, he enjoyed the brief journey skywards until his skull caved in and his soul tried to leave this plane of existence once again. Sensing a unique opportunity and temporarily unburdened by pain, Ori pulled as much power as he dared into his mind. Unlike his bones that seemed to have a limit to their capacity, power flowed into his brain so much so, that Ori feared it would glow. Still, he didn't stop until he felt himself back in his body. Before even waiting for his body to recover, Ori spoke once more.
"Resilience is strength." Ori could have dodged or at least tried to as he saw the air distort ahead of the man's fist. Time slowed as so much Mana flooded into Ori’s skull, that before the fist could even reach the bridge of his nose, his skull popped like a melon bashed by a club.
Power was rerouted into his headless body as his disembodied soul tried to repair his corpse. For a moment, both Ori and Rachisan wondered if this was the end of the summoning. But as his body reformed itself and his soul was once again stuffed back into his body, Ori groaned, fearing he’d miscalculated.
Despite this, without the strength to stand, Ori rolled onto his back and spat, "Defiance is strength."
Rachisan, shaking himself from his brief moment of confusion, simply raised his foot, then crushed Ori's lower half; bone and organs exploded in a fountain of red mist. Ori's eyes rolled back into his skull as his control over his re-formation slipped. Between being unable to move so that his abdomen could reform without the giant's foot in the middle and the excruciating pain this caused, even Ori's ability to dissociate himself from the happenings of his body dwindled.
"Such arrogance to enrage one such as I, at the peak of Sovereign rank with strength enough to snuff out your mortal soul like breath to a candle flame. Such foolishness to spit on an offer thousands would kill to receive," the giant's gravelly voice resonated in the air, dust trembling as light seemed to warp and then emanate from the giant's skin upon Rachisan unleashing his full might. Witnessing this, an errant memory caused something inside Ori to break, and he began to laugh. "Oh? Has pain driven you into madness already?" Rachisan asked.
"Nah," Ori wheezed. "I was just comparing you to anime villains and I realised that even Captain Ginyu had more going on."
"Insolent—" Before Rachisan could even continue, Ori's body exploded into a fine red mist, seemingly of its own volition. "What?" Rachisan whispered, his gaze darting around, fearing something had happened to the wards. Meanwhile, within the mist, Ori's unbound soul floated above the ruins of the dojo, its will consuming ever greater quantities of mana.
Ori couldn't cast spells. Even if he had Mana to spend; he simply just didn't know how. Freya's memories provided little assistance as they all focused on esoteric theories on spell constellations, which were part of the Library of Fate's system, or arcane rituals that required preparation and special components.
However, Ori could, through enough focus, resist the effects of a spell occurring within him. It was the same innate magic resistance all sapient creatures possessed due to the very nature of a person's influence on mana. While intent directed mana, travelling into another's body stripped much of the intent from any spell cast upon a person. Additionally, the host's will had an amplified ability to affect unaligned Mana within the environment.
After his brain exploded due to oversaturation, Ori changed his plans. No longer fearing disintegration from Mana over-saturation, he committed to replicating what he had done before in the void: remaining formless, coherent but incohesive. His presence spread first to every airborne piece of flesh and then infused each blood vessel, nerve ending, and every stray fragment of bone to and beyond their Mana saturation capacity. Ori felt the affinity responsible for his reconstruction had more to do with flesh and meat and little to do with the life or light he was accustomed to. Even still, with his soul forcibly held, he had just about enough control to continue charging more Mana into his body parts without recombining them back into a physical body.
As Rachisan's confusion grew, he retreated a step on reflex, feeling the quality of the air shift and then glow a deep scarlet.
This was no abyssal void. While the power source of the summoning ritual far exceeded what was needed to heal even an Awakened, with Ori's new plan in place, that was no longer a detriment.
'Though you may misdirect, you will never master deception.'
"Creativity is strength," something uttered in a voice far too peculiar to seem as if it came from a living being. Rachisan, now thoroughly unnerved, reacted predictably: his fist blasted a hole in the world, vaporising the exterior walls and gouging out stone and brick in a perfect blast cone, dozens of yards long. The force of the punch would have been enough to obliterate whatever remained of Ori's body and destroy his soul. However, Ori saw no need to make it easy for the giant and, through a minor feat of misdirection, he had remotely animated a gory, partially formed chest and head, complete with a voice box and mouth with his disembodied soul lingering on the opposite side of the room.
Feeling the soul-arresting magic loosen its hold, Ori's body swiftly reformed from the mist of floating flesh particles as the circle's effect broke. He stood beside a Rachisan who heaved more from rage than exertion. As he stood, Ori noted that he felt different, as if a qualitative change had occurred. Perhaps he was physically stronger; if so, it might have been no more than ten or twenty per cent. No, the qualitative change stemmed from his perception, as if he now knew there was a difference between his body and soul. With it, his mind was sharper, the world more focused.
"You think you have won? You dare to insult me and then escape? I will find you, hunt you down like a dog no matter how long it takes. This I do so swear," Rachisan spat, his burning gaze fixed on Ori's profile while Ori gazed up at the sky of a world he would never know.
"And I swear when that moment comes, I’d 've already forgotten your name," Ori replied before leaving the trial.