Dissonance 6 – Achieving Power

Eldred and Avari were Cultivating in one of the many private rooms of the facility. Basic, modern orchestral music played on the provided boxes. Synthesised voices mixed with various instruments into an overall subtle melody, pushed further into the background by the intense drumming of Eldred’s heartbeat.

He wore only his underwear. Though the sportswear Avari had bought him was made to deal with sweat, he saw no reason to soak it while he was just sitting there. No matter how many days or weeks he spent Cultivating, the toll it took on his being remained the same.

Cold winds cut through the heat of his soul. Threads of spun ice that were part of him and yet not him laid a connecting web to the Echo. That which aided him in drawing power out of the rock at an accelerated rate was also what ignited his nervous system. Together they pulled, but the speed was not the same. Stuck in the middle, the facilitator between the power and Nyx, his soul had to bear the burden of the mismatched frequency. Like a cheap cable that heated up from its resistance to electric flow, so did he suffer the consequences of being a slightly improper medium.

Damage of the soul, to such a mild degree, offered no long-term threats. It was repaired as swiftly as it occurred, leaving only the suffering in its wake. It was a pain to the being, given the flavour of frigid winds by the banshee’s nature. His body heated up in response to the chill that wasn’t there.

The pain was unfading, undiminishing. All Eldred could do to stand against it was the tempering of his own will. Every second was a trial. Every minute was another step upwards.

Finally, he reached a ledge on the cliffside. Not an end to the climb, for there was none, just a spot where he could turn, sit and gaze back at the hell that he had escaped. Below him, an infinity away and yet uncomfortably close, was an ocean of fire.

Swirls and flickers of energy reached upwards. Eldred extended his arm, beholding the roiling chaos and the back of his hand. He sat like that for untold moments, the heat below bringing peace to the howling cold.

When he drew his hand back, the shape of his hand remained imprinted on the surface of the flames. It was an island in the ocean of red, calm and almost flat, like the picture of a paradise.

Order spread. It filled the gap between the fingers, then cascaded outwards. Swirls and flickers were smoothed into gentle waves. It was too light to be called a sea, shifting in the slightest breeze. It was a still inferno, burning from within with power. Power that belonged to him.

Eldred’s eyes opened. Like he had in the visualisation, he extended his hand forwards. He held it there for several seconds, feeling tingles of Ki rise from his Core. A pleasant warmth, like a campfire’s radiance, flowed through his veins. Once it had spread all the way to his fingertip, he gingerly grasped for a wish turning real.

Carefully, not to let the spell be broken, he turned his hand around. Caged in by his fingers flickered an honest flame of red and orange. It was small, but it was his.

Eldred smirked at the proof of his Core Formation. Indulging himself a little, he nudged Avari with his knee. The gremlin opened up one eye. The second quickly followed. Her surprise was short-lived. After all the other stunts he had pulled, this development was practically mundane.

“Congratz, you want a cookie?” Avari asked.

“Still yes,” Eldred answered. He had not gotten that sugar craving fulfilled last night and neither had he found one this morning. Clenching his fist, he snuffed out the flame, then re-conjured it. Attempted to re-conjure it, rather. The energy flowed from his Core at a crawling pace. “This is quite difficult,” he muttered.

“It is?”

In unison, human and gremlin turned to the banshee. Hovering just a bit behind Eldred, freshly departed from his back, the naked banshee effortlessly commanded a mass of ectoplasm. A cube, then a star, then a spiral – she puppeteered the litres of fluid until she made them relax into an orange-sized sphere.

“That’s cheating,” Eldred complained. “You already had control over ectoplasm before.”

“Try with water,” Avari echoed the sentiment, tossing a half-empty bottle at Nyx.

The ball of ectoplasm dropped to the floor. In a panic, Nyx tried to grab the bottle. It slipped from her grasp and comedically turned around itself. This repeated several times, until his banshee was making adorable sounds of confused desperation.

Laughing, Eldred simply grabbed the bottle midair. “Never have I seen you make a face like that before,” he teased his banshee. Her black lips moved from open-mouthed distress to sad-girl-pouting as she took the bottle from him. “Don’t worry, I’ll be there to catch things for you.”

“It is simply not within a lady’s skillset to throw and catch,” Nyx defended herself, that noble haughtiness shining through again. “I will gladly rely on you, my Eldred.”

“You are just adorable.” His voice reduced to a whisper as he leaned in to kiss his woman.

Two dark grey hands got between them, prying apart their approaching lips. “You can smooch after you get out of here!” Avari proclaimed. “Nyx – water – show!”

Icy blue eyes glowed, both of them visible despite the draping that typically covered the right one. Blackened hands gripped the bottlecap, twisting it off. Avari had wisened up to Nyx’s possessive episodes. When the water struck like a serpent, the gremlin already dodged to the side.

“Tsk,” Nyx clicked her tongue. Even that sharp sound was somehow turned into a tragic note by the forlorn timber of her melodic voice. Before the water could collapse, the ghost lady made a simple ‘come hither’ gesture. The quarter litre of fluid came back to Nyx, forming a spiralling sphere above her index finger. Practically speaking, it was as large as the one made of ectoplasm. “It exhausts me faster.”

“I can feel that,” Eldred remarked.

“Oh…” Nyx quickly made the water flow back into the bottle. “I am sorry.”

“It wasn’t bad,” he assured her. Compared to the Cultivation, anything else she had made him feel was mild, but in this particular case he did not need to downplay it. “Feels like you are drawing on my vitality as your own Ki diminishes.”

“That should be exactly what happens in your contract type.” Avari was back on her butt, exposing information to the two of them. “She’ll have her own reserves, but they’ll be limited. Both of you fighting at the same time will be pretty taxing on Eldred. You can do it, just don’t expect to get the same mileage out of it.” A bratty grin showcased her sharp teeth. “With how much of a genius Nyx is showing to be, maybe you should think of yourself as her battery?”

Eldred grabbed Avari by one of her horns. “Don’t forget who the boss here is,” he growled at her.

The grin on her face only grew. They both knew how this was going to end. “Awwww, you can conjure one little flame and you think you’re a big shot now? Face it, she’s a genius and you’re just a guy with strong nerves… well, strong nerves in the brain.” Her gaze did a quick bob down to his straining undergarments. “Quickshot.”

Twenty-five minutes later.

“Sh-shoorrrry, Masshtehrrrrr,” the short and stacked cocksleeve slurred. Glistening with sweat, mouth and cunt gaping, she laid on the floor. Her legs flopped down as soon as Eldred pulled away from her, releasing her from the folded position that typically accompanied a good mating press.

“Yeah, you better be.” Eldred tried to sound chastising, but breaking the brat always put him in way too good of a mood. He just made sure the towel he had put under her butt was in the proper position. He was perverted enough to rearrange her insides in the middle of the day in a facility shared with around a hundred other people. He was not degenerate enough to leave someone else to clean that up after him.

Nyx’s tongue lapped up the immediate excess – not that there was a whole lot of it. As Eldred understood the biology at play, humans and most ‘regularly’ shaped females of the sapient species had the male’s semen pool at the entrance to the womb. Shortstacks, or at least gremlins, instead accepted the deposit directly into the depths of their womanhood.

That fact was hot to think about and it made the aftermath a bit less messy. It also took the joy of watching his excess cum dribble from her out of the situation though.

‘This is great enough.’ Eldred treated himself to the view of Nyx’s perfect ass swaying left to right while she tongue-fucked a cockdrunk cumdump. It was enough that he could have been roused right back to a hard-on.

He only kept watching for as long as it took to empty that half-empty water bottle.

“Let’s leave Avari to her Cultivating,” he said, before lust could consume another half-hour of his day. He wasn’t rich or powerful enough yet to indulge like that. “We have work to find.”

“As you say, Master,” Nyx cooed, still steeped in the submissive mindset. He had given her plenty of attention as well, just not enough to knock her out.

‘I am really good at this,’ Eldred thought. ‘I may have a special gift for sex… not very flashy, but I am not going to complain.’

One parting lick later, his banshee disappeared into her incorporeal state, following Eldred around as a proper ghost. By the magic of her condition, she could store a limited number of outfits in whatever esoteric space she existed in. Whenever she manifested herself, she could (currently) choose between nudity, that tattered white dress he had found her in or the secretary outfit. Whether her storage would expand as the rest of her power did, not even Avari had known.

Eldred got dressed and moved to the showers. One quick rinse later, he smelled less of sweat. The scent of Avari’s favourite wash (honey) was harder to get rid of. Not that Eldred wanted to. Was there any more masculine scent than the one sticking to him after he railed a woman into needing a nap? He certainly did not think so.

‘Heavens, Hells, Fate and whatever else, I feel fantastic!’ Every step Eldred took, he could feel the consolidated power ripple through him. He was more awake than any energy drink had ever let him feel. All of the little aches and inefficiencies in his body seemed to be gone. He hadn’t even realized how clumsy his steps felt before. Now, the entire motion was smooth, muscles and sinews moving him forwards, bones moving in their sockets with total ease.

The Ki was his now. He was superhuman now. Eldred itched to test his new limits. How much could he lift? How long could he run? How many women could he turn into gooey piles in a day? Now that his capacity was expanded, so was his appetite.

‘Rein yourself in,’ he warned himself again. He vaguely remembered various warnings from the teacher and Avari that people who got their first Core felt like demigods. It was the leap from ‘baseline person of your species’ to ‘above 99% of people’ that easily turned someone arrogant to an insane degree.

Eldred felt that arrogance in his bones. It really was difficult to keep that held back. Perhaps he deserved just a little bit of arrogance? Since he had decided to turn his life around, all he had done was win.

Then, just as he started to grin widely, he remembered the foot in his ribs. He remembered the time spent aimlessly wandering the tunnels of the molten planet. He remembered dragging the Cannibal Golem back, all the while struggling to breathe, his nose broken.

‘You are not absurdly powerful,’ he reminded himself. ‘You’re a daredevil and you made it work. Don’t make yourself bigger than that.’

Eldred reached the front desk. The man sitting behind it recognised Eldred immediately. “How can I help you?” he asked.

“I have finished Core Cultivation,” Eldred reported flatly.

Despite his attempts at remaining grounded, the new Cultivator felt a bit irked by the man’s lack of surprise. A simple “Oh?” was all he got out of the desk-drone. “Impressively fast.” The two words sounded honest but not actually impressed.

Eldred chewed on the inside of his cheek. ‘Get a reality check,’ he warned himself. “Out of interest, what’s the quickest recorded Core Cultivation at this facility?”

“Let me see what I am allowed to tell you…” The man began to tap away, checking the ledgers on his screen. Though it was holographic, a cover had been put around the hovering illusion, preventing Eldred from reading the mirrored text.

Eldred had no problem at all with sharing his advanced state. Who would get any use out of knowing he was now stronger, except the people that he had already agreed to employ him? He expected many people to feel the same.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” The man looked up from his screen. “Two years ago we had someone called Neora Cultivate here. She fully formed two Cores in nineteen days.”

Even by Eldred’s limited understanding, that was an insane statement. That was the kind of prodigy that served to drag him back down to reality. He was thankful for that, if nothing else. “Interesting,” he commented aloud, before getting to the actual matter he had come to the desk for. “I am looking for work now. Best the kind of work where I can do some fighting to get my Elemental Mastery along.”

“I’ll pass it along. You can hang around the facility or do whatever you want as you wait. You will be sent a text message with further details once we have something for you.”

“I’ll be in the sparring room then,” he stated.