Warrior of Light
mrsquishr
Chapter 5: With these Wings of Mine
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Though he had no idea the ramifications of his actions had on the hidden world, Lucien did not rest entirely easy. His encounter with the shard of Dark inside of that creature had reignited his paranoia, and he was now certain that there were forces driving this new world he had been previously unaware of.
Not finding any information when he searched on the computer, beyond that a string of morbid killings in his area had mysteriously stopped, only solidified his suspicions.
‘There’s some kind of hidden world here that I’m not privy to, and I need to be prepared if they come for me.’ He didn’t really trust that Rob and Lucy would keep what had happened a secret, and so needed to be ready for some kind of attack urgently. Also, he needed to prepare himself for his upcoming entry to school, something told him that sitting in a room full of young children was going to be trying on his patience. Something to occupy his attention was sorely needed.
He had come up with the beginnings of a technique that could solve both problems but had not found any sense of urgency to complete it until recently. It was something that he had read about in his first life, faded as those memories were now, and had researched further during the lull between battles in his second life. It was a form of Light manipulation that involved the tendency for the Light to thin the barriers between dimensions but involved many moving parts and calculations to be pulled off effectively.
He planned to use it to hide his wings away from prying eyes once he formed his first pair, and making the adjustments necessary to avoid cutting them off his back once he shifted them into a higher dimension would take most of the following year. This would give him plenty of time to build up the supply of Light necessary to form his first pair of wings, as well as keeping his mind occupied.
In the meantime, his Light fueled physicality, ability to heal from most injuries, and admittedly awesome laser eyes would have to be enough to fight off any attackers.
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Surprisingly, the next months of his life were danger free, and he hadn’t seen or heard anything related to the incident in the woods. Whether it was because the two he had helped had kept him a secret, or because people had better things to do than attack a child in the middle of nowhere, it didn’t change the results. He was left to his own devices for his kindergarten year, and the only danger was to his fraying patience after dealing with young children for months on end.
It was exhausting mentally to keep up the illusion of normalcy, and Lucien couldn’t wait until he reached an age where he could skip grades without drawing too much negative attention.
‘Highschool? What’s that, some place where spirits go to get crushed under the uncaring heel of popular culture and the American education system? Not for this guy, college here I come!’
By the middle of the sixth summer of his new life, Lucien was ready to make the most significant step in his advancement yet. It was also going to be the flashiest, and so he needed to concoct some way of getting privacy for most of the day, as just waiting for his parents to fall asleep was not going to cut it this time.
His moment came on a random weekday with his parents announcing that they were going to be leaving town for a few days, and that a family friend would be coming to watch over him and the house.
Once his parent’s car had left view of his bedroom window, Lucien put his plan into motion. Wandering down the stairs he quietly walked up behind the woman sitting on the couch, and slowly raised his hands until they were almost touching either side of her head. Concentrating, he gathered his will and drew a measured portion of Light from his heart.
Lucien knew he had to be careful here, the brain was a delicate thing, and he could have it dribbling from this innocent woman’s ears if he misjudged how much energy he used. His fears went unfounded though as a pulse of dim light flashed between his hands and her head, and she jerked once before falling limp onto the furniture.
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He let out a sigh of relief when he felt her steady heartbeat and regular breathing. She would stay asleep for most of the day now, giving him time to work without chance of interruption or discovery. Pulling a blanket over her legs, Lucien made his way back up the stairs to the bathroom and began his preparations for the ordeal.
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First, he stripped off all his clothes, and moved all the flammable objects like towels and the bathmat into the hallway. Running the bath as cold as he could make it, he retrieved ice from the freezer downstairs, and added it to the tub.
As he slowly sunk into the water facedown, Lucien began to actively channel Light through his boy and into his reservoir. The water would help to keep his body cool for a little while in case the flow got away from him but couldn’t save him if he was unable to quickly wrest back control.
He made certain to leave a little Light circulating through his veins, keeping them primed for the influx they were about to receive, and began to draw the Light that had collected in his reservoir into the air above his bare back.
Lucien had spent most of his time in school practicing the complex symbols he would have to carve into his skin, and calculating exactly how he would need to arrange them. It was not as simple as forming his wings and then creating the dimensional shift pattern, as that would leave them disconnected from his system permanently once he hid them away. He would have to link the two aspects together during their formation, and this added the complexity that had taken him months to work out.
Starting near the base of his neck, where the tips of his shoulder blades would meet if he squeezed them back, the Light began to carve into his flesh.
Twin trails traced across his back, each a perfect mirror of the other. Any significant deviation would ruin the final product either failing completely and leaving him with nothing but a strange looking brand covering his skin or causing his whole body to be shifted to a higher dimension and leaving it to be consumed by the Light.
He held completely still, ignoring the pain and continuing his work with absolute focus, until he had finished the first set of inscriptions. These looked like a pair of wings, each feather burned into his flesh with machine like precision. These feathers would in turn be filled with complex spirals that would allow them to absorb and filter Light once deployed, this new energy being channeled into his system by the limbs the feathers connected to.
Pulling his face out of the water, Lucien took several deep breaths to center himself before he plunged back into the icy tub to continue with the second part of the equation.
Each piece of the wings would need to be with each other, to stay together under the stress of the shift to a higher plane, and then linked to him so that they would reform without injuring him or overloading his system.
Completing these inscriptions took no longer than a few minutes, but to Lucien it felt like a small eternity. The Light inside of him ensured that he felt no strain after just a couple of minutes without air but was difficult to control his heartrate without breathing. Once its job was completed, he drew the Light back into his reservoir and prepared for the final part of the job.
Activating his new appendages.
Channeling a large pulse of power Lucien guided it into the veins connecting to the base of the inscriptions on his back, and it began to fill the new channels. A whole year’s worth of energy that had been once again painstakingly gathered by him was once again being spent in mere seconds, and he had to ignore the surge of annoyance at his inefficiency.
Inefficient or not it was working, and within moments his back was incandescent with barely contained Light. As the last bit of the script was filled, and Light began to flow back into his veins, Lucien pulsed it in a very distinct pattern. He could feel his supply of Light rapidly draining, and the water around him began to boil with the excess heat he was generating. He had to finish this quickly, or he would burn under the strain, and was relieved as he felt a click in the back of his mind signifying completion and wasted no time in activating the script.
With a horrible tearing, tugging sensation, the skin of his back split wide open and brilliant white wings unfurled into the steamy bathroom air. Instantly the almost depleted pool of Light that rested in his chest started to re-fill, and he stood up in the bloody bathtub.
Peering over his shoulder he could see the wings extending from the skin like he had been born with them, the Light they pulled in quickly healing the gashed they had caused by bursting through the skin. The flow of power from them was much faster than that from his eyes, and at a higher purity, each of the hundreds of feathers adding onto his ability to draw in energy from his surroundings.
There was one last thing to test before he could declare a complete success, and it was arguably just as important as the wings themselves. His back was now free of any sign of symbols he had carved but, as he channeled Light towards where he could feel them, they burned themselves back into sight with a flash of pain.
Lucien walked over to the bathroom mirror and sent a pulse of power into the script around the base of the wings. With a flash of light, he watched as they became hazy and indistinct, before fading from view entirely. He could feel them on his back still, but when he turned, they didn’t hit the walls surrounding him confirming that they were hidden completely.
There was one downside to this method of disguising his wings though, the stream of light from them had slowed to a mere trickle, and he would have to bring them back into reality before they could operate at their full potential.
Despite this he was pleased with his success, and practiced calling and dismissing his wings several times before he washed out the tub and put the bathroom back together.
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Pulling his clothes back on, he made his way downstairs to where he had left the babysitter sleeping and gently channeled a whisp of Light into her, startling her back awake.
“Oh, Lucien! I’m sorry, did you need something? I guess I was more tired than I thought if I fell asleep, but I can make you some food if you’re hungry.”
As he walked behind her toward the kitchen, Lucien felt content. He felt that he could take on the world with the power he could now access, and his body’s advancement would be greatly sped up by the influx of Light.
‘I think I can take it a little slower for a while now,’ he mused, ‘live life a little.’ Maybe he could try making a few friends? They would have to be fellow children, but if he was able to find a smart one then it wouldn’t be the worst.