Chapter 31: A Dance of Shadow and Wind
The morning sun had climbed, washing the training field in a pale gold. The air was fresh and cool, carrying the clean scent of dew-damp grass and the distant, earthy perfume of the forest beyond the city walls. A lone hawk circled on a thermal high above, a silent speck against the vast, cloud-dappled sky.
Reginleif stood, brushing a stray blade of grass from her trousers. "Alright. Let's try again. The basics." She held out her hand, palm up. "It's not just about release. It's about presence."
A shimmer, not of light, but of clarity, gathered above her palm. The air condensed, becoming visible as a gentle vortex, a miniature spiral galaxy of moving atmosphere. It hummed softly, a sound like a distant hive. She didn't throw it. She cradled it. The wind swirled, holding a few plucked blades of grass aloft in a delicate dance within its heart. "You don't command it to go. You ask it to be. And then you direct what is."
Azazel watched, the morning calm settling into his focus. "I see."
So it's about holding the potential, he thought. Not just shooting a bullet. It's like keeping a charge. Letting it pool. That's… easy. I've been treating it like a spigot. It's a reservoir.
He stood, planting the butt of his dwarven spear in the soft earth. He reached inward, not to the abyss, but to the Qliphoth Sphere—the dark, silent heart of his power. He didn't pull from it. He invited it to the surface.
Darkness seeped from his skin, not as a wave, but as a fine, clinging mist, violet at the edges where it caught the sun. It wreathed his arms, his shoulders, the shaft of the spear, humming with a soundless, gravitational weight. The grass at his feet didn't die this time; it simply stilled, as if holding its breath under a sudden eclipse.
"It was easy," he murmured, almost to himself. "I think… I've been doing this without knowing. Holding the cold. Holding the dark. Just before letting it go." He looked at Reginleif, a spark of mad inspiration in his eyes. "Hey. Watch this. I just got an idea. It's gonna be insane."
He settled into a throwing stance, not with heroic bravado, but with the calm precision of a javelin thrower. The dark mist around him thickened, concentrating along the length of the spear until the weapon seemed carved from a piece of the night sky, trailing nebulae of violet-hued shadow. He didn't roar. He didn't summon superhuman might from his muscles. He simply threw, with the clean, practiced mechanics of his own body.
The spear shot forward, a black comet against the green and gold of the field. It flew far, faster than any normal throw, carried by the momentum of the released kinetic energy stored in the Mythic cocoon he'd wrapped around it.
Reginleif's eyes widened. "What are you doing? You put so much power into that! You just released it!" But her trained senses shrieked a contradiction. Wait. The Mythic signature… it's not dispersing. It's still active. He didn't sever the connection. Why is he—the spear is still—
Azazel, standing perfectly still, raised his right hand. From his clenched fist, a thin, tensile line of pure, liquid shadow unspooled. It was connected to the vanishing spear, a tether no thicker than a spider's silk but thrumming with immense, elastic potential. He made a sharp, pulling gesture, like a fisherman setting a hook.
The spear, at the apex of its flight, stopped. It hung in the air for an impossible moment, defying gravity and momentum. Then, with a soft woosh of displaced air, it reversed its course, flying back along the exact same path, the shadow-line reeling it in swiftly and smoothly. Azazel caught it out of the air with a soft slap against his palm.
"Darkbane Fishing Rod," he announced, a grin touching his lips.
Reginleif stared. Then she burst out laughing, a genuine, unfettered sound that echoed in the field. She doubled over, clutching her sides. "What kind of stupid name is that?! A fishing rod!" She wheezed, trying to catch her breath. "I'll… I'll give you credit. You shocked me. You threw with all that power, and it went so far… I thought you unleashed your Mythic into the throw itself. But you never released it. You just… extended it."
Azazel shrugged, the shadow-tether dissolving back into mist around his hand. "It's simple. Using Mythic gives us temporary strength, right? So I just… kept that 'strength' as a physical tether. I wrapped the spear in a long wire of solidified shadow potential. The throw was mine. The retrieval… is the Mythic's. Crazy, right?" His grin turned teasing. "Anyway, thanks for the training. I think I get it now. But you're not done being my teacher. I still need to get back at you for trying to suffocate me."
Reginleif's laughter subsided into a smile, but her mind was racing. He's learning not just fast, but laterally. He sees the rules and then builds a new game around them. It's unsettling. I should test the limits of this understanding.
Without warning, Azazel sat back down, cross-legged in the lush grass. He closed his eyes, seeking the inner quiet. The vibrant sounds of the field—the chirp of crickets, the sigh of the wind—faded as he fell inward, through the layers of self, down to the silent sea where his power resided.
He Rifted into the Qliphoth Sphere.
It hung in his mental view, a perfect, dark orb. And now, connected to the line representing You Shadow, was a new, starkly geometric branch. It led to a small, pulsing node. The concept within it was clear, labeled not with words, but with the essence of the act: Kinetic Tether. His mind provided the nickname: Darkbane.
"Would you look at that," he whispered internally. "Another branch on the inverted tree."
He lingered for only a moment before pulling himself back, rising from the depths like a diver returning to the sun. He blinked, the world flooding back in with shocking intensity—the green, the gold, the endless blue.
He walked a short distance to the shade of a solitary, ancient oak at the field's edge. He sat with his back against its gnarled trunk, the bark solid and real against his spine. He looked out, not at the distant spires of the fortress city, but away from it, towards the rolling, untamed hills that melted into the haze of the horizon.
Here, the beauty of Noctyra unfolded before him, raw and breathtaking. Wildflowers dotted the meadow in bursts of violet and gold, swaying in a rhythm older than kingdoms. The wind, channeled playfully by Reginleif from where she now lay in the grass, made the sea of green ripple and shimmer, as if the land itself were breathing. It was alive in a way concrete and steel could never be. This was a world that grew, that breathed, that existed gloriously without intervention. For a moment, the dungeon, the guild, the platinum, the iron tag—all of it fell away.
I think I love moments like this, he thought, the words silent in the cathedral of his own mind. In this otherworld. There are no buildings in my view. No sirens. No smell of exhaust and decay. Just the kingdom's wild edge. The atmosphere here… it's just beautiful.
Nearby, Reginleif had stretched out on her back, one arm behind her head. She let her Mythic idle, a gentle breeze swirling around her fingers, plucking at the heads of clover and making the tall grass bow and sway around her in a gentle, waving circle. She was playing with the world, a child of the air.
Her thoughts, however, were a turbulent current beneath the calm surface. He figured out foundational principle in an hour. It's not just fast, it's… instinctual. Like he's remembering, not learning. I haven't asked. We both have our vaults, locked tight. But I want to know. He's an oddity. Could he be from the White Dynasty up north? No, his demeanor is all wrong—too direct, not layered enough. The warrior tribes of the Valley Highway? The spear fits… but his mind doesn't. They are strength and honor, not calculation and cunning. His intelligence… it's of a different kind. A gatherer's intelligence. An analyst's. He watches, he remembers, he replicates. He took my wind-sense for traps and applied the logic to his own shadows. Who does that?
A familiar pressure built behind her eyes. "Ugh, my head hurts," she groaned aloud, shutting off the torrent of speculation. She let her body go limp against the earth. "I don't want to think about it right now. I'm just gonna lie down. Have your fun."
She closed her eyes, focusing on the sensory symphony: the sun on her eyelids, the soft scratch of grass on her neck, the living scent of soil and pollen. With a whisper of will, she sent a gentle gust skimming across the meadow, watching with her other sense as it ruffled the sea of green, a visible sigh passing through the land.
Azazel watched the wind's passage, a visible ripple of life moving across the field. He saw the hawk catch a new thermal and rise higher. He heard the rustle of the oak's leaves above him. In the quiet, under the vast and beautiful sky, with the earth solid beneath him and his partner resting nearby, he felt not like a displaced soul or a dungeon delver, but simply a part of the world. For this moment, it was enough.
End of Chapter 31