Rising from his seat, Ulric decided that a break was necessary to reset his brain. He went to his table and pick some jamfruit, peeling it with happy memories. That sweet giggling lady had completely ruined this particular food for him; never would he be able to have a meal of it that didn't lead to impure thoughts. Impure and hilariously fun thoughts.
Humming and eating he grabbed a slice of roasted meat that reminded him of duck, with its rich fattiness. Ulric had always enjoyed the gamey flavor of his hunted meats. A good thing too, when everything you ate for months was either freshly killed or dried game. The animals of Varda were patently delicious though, probably thanks to magic, for which Ulric again was infinitely grateful. Water to cleanse his pallet and he was done with brunch.
He briefly considered leaving his apartments for a jog around the corridors of this housing complex but discarded it. The Elves were holding vigil for their fallen, it would be rude to go parading around, even if he didn't strictly have to observe the same customs that they did. When in Rome, he told himself again. Instead. he settled for another two hours of stance work. It wasn't as good as with Idra'se's guidance, or even Geyrt's brusque commentary, Ulric was sure he was out of alignment, even while he tried to be diligent about the small details.
All the same, hours of practice was making him more comfortable with the motions. Soon, all conscious thought faded to the background, the steady movements became trancelike. Calmly, he found a zen, the absence of thought while the body ran through cycles of movements at a constant rhythm. Awkwardness couldn’t be avoided, especially those cross steps and back steps that left his knees feeling like they were pointing in odd directions. The discomfort faded as the cycles of stance, hold, and return to ready polished the rough edges.
Distantly, the cataloger of things in his brain started to draw connections between the act of taking a step and its purpose, its role in the grand scheme. He was starting to see why they were as they were and to find a logic in their sequence. The Dance of the Elves was exacting and each step was taken to lead to the next, and to the next after that, with the ultimate goal to land a killing blow. Small angles, incremental advantage, it was meant to be taken together as a comprehensive whole.
Ulric imagined fighting Idra'se would be like playing chess against Bobby Fischer. The openings might not make sense, but that was because they were twenty moves ahead and had already cornered you, you were just not aware of it. Even knowing that he stood no chance, Ulric got a fleeting urge to spar against the man, just maybe he could see the height of the tower from its bottom. Not yet though, he was still clumsy, still uncomfortable with the foundational steps. The flowing dance of some two score elves, feet so lightly and gracefully drumming, bodies weaving, all with perfect control, balance, and in unison, flashed into his mind. Nope. Not even close to ready to spar with Idra.
It did bear some further consideration that Ulric had been ultimately fortunate that Geyrt had thought so little of him. She'd basically considered him the same way he'd consider a [Bolt Deer]. They could be dangerous, maybe, if you were very stupid, but the objective reality was that they were prey and no real threat. If she had taken him even remotely seriously, if she hadn't effectively ignored her own [Scan] and let him provoke her to unreason, there was a good chance she'd have gotten her wish about the drought under his feet. He was fast, and damned strong. But he'd never even see the strike that killed him if he tried to fight her straight up, that was no longer in question. The ambush with a bow, from significant distance, was now, in Ulric's estimation, the best case scenario for having met his Shadow. More luck than a man had any right to, that was what he had.
Exiting his ready stance Ulric stood up tall and raised his arms overhead to stretch his entire body. Bringing his arms down together he folded himself in half with palms on the ground next to his feet, his hamstrings and tendons stretching pleasantly. Even lower he went until forearms and elbows lay flat, the tension in his legs now reaching that almost pain that had been so familiar with his old body. Ulric raised back to lay palms to the floor and shifted his weight to his hands and, slowly, spread his legs to rest his body's mass completely on his arms. He raised his legs over an even, gradual, minute until he had assumed an arrow straight handstand. It made him want to laugh, the ease of it. He bent his arms bringing his face to nearly kiss the fragrant wood of the floor, before a violent shove of his arms launched him upwards and he rocked his weight around his center of gravity bringing his legs easily underneath him in a slight crouch as he landed. Now he did laugh. Unreal. This must be how Spiderman would have felt.
Following the remembered motions of various Olympic events he stretched himself out of his stance funk, limbering the muscles of his limbs. It was only then standing in the room with slightly cool air on sweat slicked skin that he realized he had completely forgotten to clothe himself at any point that morning. Oops. He dressed himself in the blacks of the Elf warriors, blaming his oversight on the weeks of nudity he'd spent on the [Plateau of Ancients] when he'd first arrived. Clothes were a very secondary consideration to fire, shelter, and remaining unconsumed. Ulric was willing to put his lack of body modesty over in the same category of changes he'd undergone as with his near instinctive heightened aggression.
Maybe his new body was secreting uber testosterone. It was not an incredibly unlikely scenario that the glandular functions of his reforged body were dissimilar to his original. He ate a metric shit ton of calories daily. Muscle tone like his should have been accompanied by near constant hunger, like a body builder preparing for a show. Normally those athletes were under fairly strict dietary patterns, sustained for only a few months, and only following an intense bulking period. Ulric's body lacked the gross bulk of such individuals. He was probably a lean eighty or so kilos. Hard to say though, despite how easily he moved there was a feeling of density to his body that might indicate a significant underestimate on his actual mass.
Enough of that though. Ulric wasn't here to hit the gym, this day was for magical bullshit. He had tentatively arrived at some solid conclusions regarding fundamental aspects to what mana was and how it was rendered into mass. In all likelihood, mana was mass in potentia. It could be matter, if it was arranged properly. Just like it could be plasma or electric potential or kinetic energy. It could be anything because it was everything. Heavy stuff, philosophically.
He wondered how close he was to the reality of things. Those quantum physicists would probably laugh behind their hands and bark about things like Hilbert space or some such shit. He was an engineer, those nerds were way too abstract for his tastes. Just knowing was useless to him, he needed an application. In this case, just knowing that mana could be tuned to different forms was imminently applicable. It was how he fabricated tangible spells. Even the term "spell" was sort of a weak way to describe it.
What he was doing was more like composing music or coding software. Take the raw mana, harmonize it to a specific elemental form, and then guide it through a series of patterns and rhythms to give the abstract form a specific, tangible outcome, well defined sequences and processes, just with the aether instead of sound and programming logic. Far from being a Hans Zimmer he was currently playing Greensleeves. At the current moment he could handle a single type of mana and make it do relatively simple, if sometimes subtle, shenanigans. Travel in a straight line, compress, spread out, that kind of shit. He couldn't juggle different types of mana or make highly complex forms. The strength of his core let him "play" loudly for his level of experience but a novice still he would remain until he had better hold of the basics.
So. Before he got lost on another tangent he was going to sit down and try to figure out how body magic worked. Deed followed thought and he was soon seated cross legged on the floor, hands resting on his lap. Ulric turned his thoughts again to his core but instead of taking hold of any mana and doing something specific with it he stilled his mind and listened. Figuratively listened of course. His own mana pulsed to a beat alongside his heart. As Ulric's mind fell inwards he started to pick up on his own distinct mana signature, a unique pattern of notes that fluctuated with the rhythm of his core. It coursed through his channels so quietly that he had a hard time noticing it when he wasn't absolutely still like this. Especially quiescent as it was, since he wasn't actively pulling his core to draw out the reserves inside himself. This subtle harmony was his baseline.
For a while he just sat and observed himself, trying to pick out his own flow at will. It was hard. Any movement drowned the impression of his own mana out. The sound of his own breathing made it difficult to perceive the mellow tones. Slowly it got easier to find and hold the melody, to hear its variations. Like picking out an individual instrument in a complex orchestra, it took a practiced ear to find a specific flute in and amongst the other woodwinds. It was necessary that he figure this out. How else was he going to control fine mana flows in his body if he couldn't even detect it at rest? It was much easier to tell what was going on when he was dealing with huge flows that were obvious in their motion, but Ulric had a feeling that internalized magic was going to require finesse. Best to go slow and do it right the first time than hurt himself, somehow, by hurrying. The lightning incident came to mind, only body magic was going to be inside himself with nowhere to go if he cocked it up.
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Hours passed by and Ulric ever so steadily improved his perception. Eventually, he managed to hold the tune while he rose to his feet, though moving washed it away again. A stroke of inspiration came to him. Why not just do more Elven stance work while he learned to recognize the feel of his own mana? The movements were familiar and it was light work so he could pick out the baseline of his mana while his body made regular, methodical movements with frequent pauses. Genius.
He was another couple of hours into this newest meditation before he felt comfortable with finding his own mana signature while slowly moving through the dozen steps of the Dance with which he was most familiar. At last, satisfied that progress had been made, he released a heavy breath and decided it was time to take a break. The light had changed again with his concentration, it must be well past Sunscrest. Perhaps even Midsunsfall? Four or five p.m. by his old reckoning, if he had to guess. Hard to tell with the clouds.
The howling storm outside was beating against Irielhos with fury. Brighteyes had laid the understatement of the year on him back then: "Unwise to be caught in the storm". You said a mouthful with that one little buddy, Ulric thought, before his laughter echoed in the empty room. Rain sleeted heavily against the balcony doors which, powered by the magical protections of the citadel, did not so much as vibrate, nor allow the humidity of the storm into the room. Lightning roiled now in the clouds. Peals of thunder booming with muted intensity from the warding spells of the fortress.
Glad he was at that moment that he wasn't huddled in his shelter within the burned out cave of the fallen godtree. It had been a structurally sound shelter, well built, given his materials and available time. But it would be damp in there and the wind would have made it drafty. Ulric would have had to burn his fire indoors at a heavy wood consumption to offset the loss of heat through such air movements. Given the sheer strength of the gale outside, it was even entirely possible that his shelter would not survive the storm unscathed, though the enormous trunks of the elder trees should break even a wind so ferocious as this. No indeed, he was happy to ride this out in the comfort of his apartments and in the generous hospitality of Iriel.
It was no wonder that the Elves here would choose this time to make remembrance of their fallen. What more stern reminder of the smallness of a human, or, well, Elf life than that raging storm? Ulric briefly thought of his sister, buried in an avalanche far too young. A loss that had badly hurt him and his parents. He then thought of his parents, well advanced in age who had lost their last child when he was taken away from his old life and delivered to Varda. That was essentially the only regret he had about this entire experience. His folks were solid people, loving parents, and they deserved better than to bury their children, he thought bitterly. A lot of people deserved better. Most of them didn't get it, just like people who actually deserved to taste all the suffering of the world rode Scott free of anything close to justice. Sour thoughts, Ulric. Too sour. Leave the past where it belongs, leave that life behind. Dragging its corpse behind will achieve nothing but sadness, to taint your second chance he told himself.
Rousing himself from such brooding he returned to his hoarded wealth of food. Since it was close to dinner time, he had a heaping portion of the various offerings and drank away several cups of the provided pitcher of juice. Pitcher must have been ensorcelled too, the juice it housed was still cold. Good food did its work on him, restoring his cheer. He really had grown to appreciate his change in demeanor with this new lease on life. Where he might have let that down mood extend for days prior to, he was now able to shrug it off and turn his thoughts towards more positive things. Like the prospect of one day jumping tall buildings in a single bound.
As he sat, Ulric looked at his status. He had a class, with class skills and traits. There were skills there listed. Whether he had those competencies before the skill or it only updated to reflect his abilities afterwards Ulric did not know. Maybe there was a little of column A and a little of column B, the Akashic stuff had demonstrated elements of both, of feedback and two-way interaction. He had a core which had three significantly powerful properties: the ability to mana saturate, which passively boosted his entire body; the ability to overcharge spells, raising their power as he fed them more mana, so long as he didn't fumble it; and the core capacitor, which allowed Ulric to completely discharge all of his mana in a single fantastically powerful burst. These modifiers to his core were what allowed Ulric to boost his combat potential. He could refrain from casting, maintaining his saturation for a physical and mental buffing effect, increasing his stamina and sharpness of mind. He could manipulate the amount of mana utilized in spells, so long as they weren't dependent on external factors like [Lightning Strike] which needed to achieve a breakdown potential in air or do nothing, or even worse, backlash.
His instructors in the arcane arts, along with their husband, had told him his core had tier three traits and Ulric was guessing they must have been speaking about the additional mana modifying traits. He'd have to verify his suspicions later. The real curve ball had been all that awakening talk. Pure, unaspected mana was reactive eh? That was not a way Ulric would have described it, but, now that he had delved more deeply into the relationship between pure mana, its analogues to white light, and the “color” of the specific elemental forms, he could see how that might arise.
If the pure mana, with no particular primordial harmonies dominant, were exposed to an aspected mana where there were distinctly emphatic primordial chords, those might induce a resonance with the unaspected mana, encouraging their shared waves to build on each other, like ocean waves meeting, combining to make taller waves. Ulric was starting to get a clearer picture for how a dense pocket of pure mana could interact with a sort of priming mana and kickstart some kind of resonant node that could become destructive. Like the wind through a suspension bridge at just the right frequency can build a sway that brings down the entire structure. Ulric's core was, currently, able to put down such interferences. Until it couldn't, and then he was in serious trouble.
That train of thought had some deep implications. Ulric had noted that Brighteyes was moon aspected, he had a Lunar core. Even young as he was the Elven kid had a tier three, an awakened core? Was that the mark of an accelerated training regimen or did all Elves aspect early? Was it an indication of how powerful the individual core was, that it could condense mana more stably and thus took longer to make awakening happen? More questions. Everywhere Ulric turned, he was bombarded by unknowns. He would have to put that on his list of things to ask the Ladies of Iriel.
For now though, Ulric had an idea for how to ready his body for internal magic: pushing large pulses of tuned, elemental mana, through his mana channels. Much like he had learned he could do with [Voltaic Riot] Ulric was going to push the mana through his body in cycles. Unlike the active spell though he wasn't going to do anything external with it. He'd have to remember that trick for coating his channels too, that seemed to assist greatly in reducing a curiously uncomfortable pressure or not friction he'd felt in them at the act. Perhaps this was a necessary thing, using unaspected mana as a lubricant to prevent tuned mana from unduly effecting the body, avoiding that spooky turning into an elemental problem, perhaps.
Resuming his seated position on the floor Ulric began, using very small pulses first, to cycle each elemental form he had mastered throughout the channels of his body. Core to stomach, stomach to left leg, left leg to heart, heart to right leg, right leg to lungs, lungs to left arm, left arm to head, head to right arm, right arm to core. Over and over. It reminded him of some of the Tai Chi breathing exercises he'd refused to do during rehab over his shattered knee.
He'd thought it a foolish waste of time back then. Breath into your organs? Phooey. Well, the joke was definitely on him, Ulric could distinctly feel, with the mana pulses through his system lighting up the channels in his mind's eye, clusters of channels around each organ. The pulses widened the channels, stretching them as he increased the amount of mana in each pulse. It was supremely uncomfortable, like sinus pressure. After a few pulses though the sensation of pressure went away and instead, the mana flowed more easily, smoother. Like stretching the tendons in his legs, there was a way to build resilience to how much energy he could push through his body. The type of mana used appeared to change nothing. Within his body, absent any specific construct or intent, it would seem that one form of magic was just as good as another. Energy was energy. And "breathing" the energy through the channels around his organs and through his limbs was helping their function.
Timeless hours Ulric sat, dragging different types of magical squeegee through his internal systems. Larger and larger he was able to form pulses that would pass, uncomfortably at first, and more easily later through those arcane vessels. There was a distinct stopping point though. The first pulse Ulric tried at that level felt like when you swallow a too large chunk of food, a desperate moment where he wasn't sure whether he'd simply choke on it. Firming his will and increasing the density of the coating on his channels helped and he managed, with great pain involved, to finish the cycle. But no more, his body felt raw. That was the upper limit then. He noted that this limit was not far greater than what was required to cast [Voltaic Riot] so he was pushing a little with that spell at this point in his development. Good. It meant he was finding his limits, testing his capacity, and, hopefully, surpassing those limits in time.
Ulric rose and finished his plates, ravenous for so little physical activity that day. Ancient magic breathing techniques took the piss out of you, it turned out. Speaking of which Ulric realized he was holding a bladderful of it and had, after eating, a resounding need to do the do. Elven bathroom facilities were, thankfully, somewhat normal. Think Asian squat toilets with a flush handle. He took a prison bath with a rag after that, missing greatly the glory that was the Elven bath hall, and tucked himself into bed.
Tiredness leaded his limbs. Greater tiredness than he'd known following many days in the glade chopping wood, hunting, and doing any number of camp tasks. Magic is hard he thought before sleep took him, the hushed thunder and flashes of cloud burst lightning making for a turbulent lullaby.