Chapter Eighteen -- Unnatural Powers

– Lewis –

"Again."

That same ethereal voice boomed within my hollowed skull for what seemed to be the thousandth time.

I got up from the blank ground that made up the Mental plain and closed my eyes to prepare the art again.

My back lit aflame with that same grey fire as I felt the sparks channel out of my lungs and through my body. The fiery sensation seemed the spread from under my skin, covering my entire body, yet without any trace of burning.

'Karae,' hovered at the top of my vision in dark grey letters that screamed the very meaning of ruin. The opposite to the Natural Arts I had learnt previously.

Did you have to know how to create for ruining? Was ruin ultimately the final path of nature?

Questions. Questions. And questions.

My mind snapped back into pure focus as the burning sensation reached its zenith.

A moment passed as the flames died away.

...

"Again."

***

The man was so thin that even his bones seemed to be only a fraction of what they should be. His hair hung down like dead branches, and clung to the sides of his face, which were covered with deep creases. He sat on a rock, staring blankly into the distance, eyes dull and lifeless. It looked as though he hadn't seen anything for many years.

His clothes were tattered and ragged – just like him. There weren't even any buttons left on them, but they still managed to stay up, somehow.

It seemed like everything about him was pasted from the same mold. Old, and ruined.

When the figure spoke, it was like wind blowing through trees and stone -- Trees crowded full of old and leafless branches. Rocks carved into the shape of headstones.

"FoS. Who is this... new subject of yours. He has a peculiar air to him."

The usually quiet and calm voice that spoke softly within my head was replaced by one of pure authority.

"He's beginning to grasp hi-, I mean, your Node. Will you help, or not?"

I looked down at the ground beneath me. A faint grey glow began to form there. I could feel the ruin filling my body.

It felt... nostalgic.

My soul actively gulped up the ruin sparks like a dehydrated man with water after walking across a desert.

Since when was my soul this.. thirsty for something?

Had I missed something about my own self?

"... Yes," I whispered, an unknown pleasure rising up from deep within me. I looked back up at the man who stared at me with those empty eyes.

"Good." That soft voice said, pleasure also evident within his tone.

There was a loud crackling sound as the gray light took over my being once more and covering my sight in crackling sparks of grey fire.

Then it vanished, like it was sucked into my body.

The man had disappeared too, gone just as fast as he had arrived.

"FoS... aye? Interesting name..." I murmured, hoping for confirmation.

"... focus on training. I can't have you failing again." FoS said, now retreating back to her usual quiet voice.

Again, I focused on manipulating the sparks out of my core, well, my lungs.

There were four main paths to Spark Arts; World, Life, Blood-Body and Mind.

You could learn from any, and some arts required prerequisite knowledge from two or more base arts before you could start learning it.

From what I could gather, most arts have a "core", with the main four arts having the main "cores". For life its my lungs, but for Aeryn's world arts, it would be her eyes. Here, sparks were controlled after being refined in the soul, but this was also the weak spot of every spark user. Find the core, kill the core, cripple the user.

... and that's all I can remember.

It had been days in here -- consistently being tortured through lessons on the sparks, even though FoS couldn't say much about it, and most was up to me connecting four hundred different dots together.

My train of thought was derailed as a sharp, searing pain wreaked havoc on my brain.

"Train, Lewis."

I opened my mouth to protest, my exhausted mind and body both on the brink of complete collapse.

"Even Aeryn did better than you."

The snappy comment I had prepared was forced back down my through as more questions surged my mind.

Aeryn got training?

When was this?

Why was this?

Why didn't she notify me?

"All questions are irrelevent." She stated, almost as if she was predicting my thoughts.

"Train. Or become a burden." She finished with, matter of factly.

I shut my eyes and pushed the refined sparks through my lungs.

'Karae.'