Stronger Together chapter 115

That night found me in our backyard alone. I left Barb and Raven to  cuddle and came out to do a bit of solo training. The week of  independent study back in Colorado had paid off well, and I was going to  try to make it a habit to work on things on my own once in a while so I  could collect my thoughts. My big goal for tonight was to figure out  how to recreate the fight in the Skinwalker's lair so I could use my  powers to their full potential. At least as I currently knew what that  was.

During  that fight I had actually managed to use Ebenezar's split headspace  trick to use two aspects at once. That particular ability was a huge  asset if I could figure out how to do it again. Speed worked way better  paired with strength. especially with my force multiplier aura on. The  issue was using that combo had been a fluke, if I tried it at that rate  again without the massive power supply of a fully charged arm I would  suck myself dry instantly. I needed to try to get them both running at  incredibly low draw, like I used my lightning aspect when we had been  making the trip to the lair.

First  on the agenda was getting to that state of mind again. After all that  had happened and in a totally different city it was surprisingly  difficult to find that sweet spot again. I sat down with my legs crossed  and focused until I could finally reach that state of being two. Like  my mind and body were separate entities and I was living in both. Once I  was in that headspace I reached out to cast my first spell, tapping the  minimal amount of lightning to make my aspect as weak as possible. Once  I managed to cast it though I noticed something strange. I could feel  the energy as I ignited it in a way I never had before.

My  new mental tune up let me sense the energy in my body in an odd way,  and I could control the flow of power to my spells in a way I never  could before. Hell I could even vaguely perceive the shine of my soul, I  wasn't casting blind anymore. I could sort of tell how much power I  had. What's more I knew this refinement could be extended further if I  could figure out a way to purify my brain again without shattering it  with a psychic sledgehammer. It was almost easy to cast my second spell  and slip into another aspect using that same fine control to minimize  the draw.

I  flowed to my feet, fluidity enhanced along with my speed and strength as  I sensed the magic flowing through my muscles. I could feel my entire  body, control my entire body. I felt amazing. Like this was my natural  strength, though I could feel with my new senses that even at minimum  draw I couldn't keep this up forever. I didn't need to though. This was  training time, and I was going to train. It was time to do my klurkor  forms. I began steadily, my katas already rote memory at this point and  simple for me to manage from muscled memory alone.

As  usual the kata used the muscles against themselves, which is where I  ran into some problems. My muscles were stronger and faster but not  tougher, I almost stuttered and stopped my movements as I felt the  intense pain, but then something amazing happened. As I finished my  first set of movements the pain wasn't all that grew. So did the energy  inside me. I could almost feel me soul refilling as I moved. Some of it  drained into my muscles knitting them together and then destroying them  all over again I felt like a light inside me was ramping up, getting  stronger and stronger.

I  grinned, the pain almost unbearable but I followed the motions. As I  moved I felt certain times when the movements were wrong, the energy  began to dissipate only to be picked back up on the next movement, I  assumed theses were spots where the Kryptonians had altered their  ancestral arts to "improve" them. Honestly I was grateful because as I  kept going I felt like a glass bottle someone was overfilling with no  open spot for the water to escape. Even with the messed up spots in the  forms I was having trouble moving further.

This  had been what I was missing, the soulfire was purifying us, using the  klurkor to purge the mortal weakness, but we weren't really using  soulfire. My aspects were part soulfire part semblance and interacted  with my body in a unique way. They were the perfect compliment to  klurkor. Of course, I wasn't having these thoughts in anywhere near a  coherent manner. The agony in my muscles had spread to my bones and  nerves and honestly given that I felt like a lightbulb full of expanding  liquid sunshine my mind too.

On  the upside I'd found a way to refine my brain, on the downside even  though it wasn't as bad as Calliope's little vision quest it was still  the most excruciating thing I'd ever felt. My soul was straining, trying  to adjust to the overflowing power the klurkor was generating, and I  realized how this art was supposed to work. If Kara had any divine  energy it would ramp the stuff up until it strained her reserves just  like this. It was supposed to slowly expand the energy source by  overfilling it. But divinity wasn't the same as soulfire. I was burning  my fucking spirit, it might not be running out but it was nightmarish in  other ways.

I  was shaking, crying bloody tears of light, but I couldn't stop or I  would explode. My senses hurt. Literally, not like my ears were in pain  from sound but like the actual sounds I was hearing were in pain with  me. The light I perceived with my eyes was in agony, the whole world was  screaming in torment at the rampaging power running through me. Every  cycle it got bigger, got stronger, and my soul became strained, cracking  a little as it was stressed near to breaking. I was the pain, I was the  power, I was me, and the ground and the tears on my cheeks and the  blood in my veins.

The  soulfire was bleeding my consciousness into the world around me and  into my own body the parts of my soul that were burning had surpassed  the parts that weren't and ignited the whole thing, I was in an inferno  of soulfire, immolating myself for power that should be running out but  instead of being released it was shoving itself down my throat in a  blazing stream of perpetual torment. I was the snake that eats itself  shedding my skin and getting stronger. I heard the door open and the  girls ran out, I was screaming and light was pouring from my mouth and  eyes but I kept moving.

Barb  and Raven were terrified, they tried to run forward but Cinder and Kara  caught them, both having noticed I wasn't stopping and sensing it could  be dangerous. I was almost done, almost finished with my forms. Kara  realized what this was and blitzed off to fill the tub with the most  concentrated medicine bath she could make which I would have been  grateful for if I was still capable of sane coherent thought other than  an unceasing internal scream of agony. My muscles were somehow mush and  steel and something else all at once inside my skin, which was cracking  as I moved, bleeding that same soulfire light between the cracks.

Through  it all though one part of me didn't hurt, one spot stayed stable and  steady. My arm. I hid my mind inside my arm, taking refuge in it somehow  with that odd split meditation technique. I would have gone insane and  died if I hadn't had that godly arm, this art was not for humans, not  for anything mostly mortal. A half god might have no trouble surviving  this but someone like Kara? I was grateful we had been doing this wrong  or we'd all be ashes in the breeze. I finally managed to force myself  into the last stance and it all ended, but the energy didn't stop, it  didn't end and the rotation got stronger ramping faster and growing.

I  thought I was going to die, and made the decision not to do this again  until I was much further down the path to being an angel if I did  survive when all of it...stopped. One second the energy was building and  screaming and then it was gone. I collapsed to the ground, not  unconscious, gods know I wasn't that lucky, I still hurt in ways that  couldn't be described, but the soulfire and the power and all the  momentum just went out like a candle. Or rather, it went somewhere else.  My arm was glowing, a soft warm light. It had just fucking eaten all  that power.

Not  just that, it was feeding it back into me slowly, spreading it through  the cracks in my soul and body and mind like they had described during  my coma only I could literally feel the damage being patched up. The  girls ran up to me and tried to ask if I was ok but I couldn't speak.  Every single muscle in my body was shredded, every bone cracked though  none of them broken. I felt like a pyrex someone dropped right before it  exploded. Pressurized glass full of cracks. Kara came back and dragged  me into the bathroom gently laying me in a tub of water so dark it was  black.

As  soon as i was submerged the spiderwebs of power flared up and I could  see the fluid start to slowly lighten. Not fast, but quick enough I  would be in regular water within ten minutes. Kara noticed it and  frowned. She started dumping in more chemicals to increase the  concentration altering the mix as I went. As I healed I thought about  Aura and the soul and soulfire and what we knew and thought we knew  about it. Being a living bonfire of soulfire had taught me some things  and contradicted some things.

Aura  could grow, we knew this, and so could the soul, but only so quickly.  If we pushed too hard it could break in ways that couldn't be fixed. I'd  managed to cheat a little because my soul had been on fire when it was  happening and fire can't really break, but fire also isn't stable and  isn't supposed to be survivable. People who burned up their whole soul  in soulfire ceased to exist, which was good because judging by that  little incident they would go insane otherwise. We had been idiots.  Mixing together divine powers and mysteries of the soul from multiple  worlds and assuming they would just work.

Klurkor  was not meant for mortals, soulfire was not meant for gods, Aura was  not meant for angels. They certainly weren't meant to be used together.  Not like that. Not yet. I felt like there was something there, something  powerful that only I, with my aspects to bridge the gap, could make,  but I knew instinctively I wasn't ready. For now I would do regular  klurkor, I would refine myself slowly and use the enhanced mental  faculties to perfect the art back to what it should be and I would not  use my aspects while doing it.

In  the meantime I would sleep. It was night anyway even if it was still fairly early, Kara would keep me  topped up and I was too tired and too damaged to talk about any of this  now. I would rest and heal and in the morning I would be strong and we  could all talk, though gods knew I couldn't put this madness into words.  As I drifted off though I had one last thought. I wondered what I would  be when I woke up. What this experience had done to me. I was oddly excited to find out.