∗ ∗ ∗
I'm drownin–
H e m m e r a g h i n g !
Which will happen faster? Will I bleed out…
…or will I drown? Will this place burst from the sheer volume? Will I be crushed by this…
Pressure.
Raging, a great flame feasting on a parched forest. Forever razing, all consuming, everything – fuel for an unending hunger.
Triage! STAT…gotta fix this.
Aoi was grasping at the surface, impossibly out of reach. Falling.
"Steel yourself kid."A low, rhythmic growl, of grit and of smoke. His voice.
Aoi stopped himself from struggling.
No thing, no external force could help him now. The wound, he knew, was his own. Pouring, gushing. Threatening exsanguination.
I'm coming apart. I need to get a handle on this. There's no option. Halt the tide. This tempest. If I don't take control of this…
Aoi halted his breath, a momentous task.
Close your eyes..
Aoi closed his eyes, and searched. He found a version of himself, one designed for this very situation.
Breathe.
One. Two.. fall..fall deeper.
Aoi fell into himself, he was no longer drowning, but actively allowing himself to sink, unaware of the need for oxygen, it was of little consequence now. The deep dark, unending ocean was his and his alone.
I am…just going…make it mine. This is all mine, this is me.
Trident proudly in my grasp; I am the ocean, river, pond. Winter's blinding rage, Spring's healing tears. Vapors. Unheld. Seasons upon seasons. I am infinite. Many. Exponential.
Shift.
A brief stillness. Recognition.
Aoi had been here, in this same place. Struggling, collecting the ocean with his tiny hands, liquid smoke, pouring through his grasp. The loss of himself, devastating. World shattering. Trembling.
I know this.
He has to imagine himself larger than the ocean, and separately and simultaneously imagine the ocean small enough to be contained within himself. His body can handle it. It is his own life-blood after all.
The pressure is a non-existent nonentity, it is the undoing of himself that caused this, he has eons of evidence. Imagining the ocean small...that was everyday, every waking and sleeping moment of his existence for...always. Constant compression. Always forcing itself back against his own cold hard gravity.
This fight, this tussle was not the main event. Control was his game. The issue lay in, of course, the grasping of something with no form; all form. Corralling aether.
The true master forms the bank of the river. Gouges out a path, and wills the river through. Aoi was not a true master. He was far cleverer, and much more learned.
To give form to the formless. To conduct the very same tempest as your own, as an extension of oneself. To envelop, and devour the formless.
I am sight, perception and strategy. I am the artisan, forging the cage. Divine though you are, I carry you. My burden, my strength eternal,
I; the Sacred Vessel, you the Holy Flame.
The unfathomable, unending, and all consuming flame, was now his meal. To become the hunter, to feed an insatiable hunger – the endless depths of aqueous starlight..all him, all his. Aoi held it, solemn and resigned. An old friend.
Root.
∗ ∗ ∗
Sitting. Undisturbed. Even. Aoi was struck dumb with awe. Not even he had, nor does he still have, a clue to the vastness. He was transfixed. Watching every nanoscopic fluctuation, sparkle, glint. Purest of radiation. All the stars in all of the sky melted down and he was sitting, basking, deep down, in the center. Dwarfed to this form, this bright, dancing, warm; seductive power. Just to relish for another moment.
Wait…
This is…beautiful.
Time wasn't passing. Aoi, in all its grandeur, was held captive. A prisoner to this treasure, these marvels, he had discovered. The glory of him, in naked majesty. His gaze met no ends, no rigidity. The raging ocean, now the finest silk, was embracing him. The life-giving sun itself cradled him.
Beckoned him..
Shall I dance?
Aoi, transfixed, hypnotized, compelled to stone by this sense of safety, of power, of..
Life like this would be coo…l. I cou–
What was that? I swear I felt…
"Maggi?"
"Hey, MAGGI?? Are you here?"
No.
Only a low, crystalline ring, a vibrating frequency, the back of his teeth, humming. His own harmonic resonance.
I am alone..still. Nothing.
He shook his head, a whiplash effect, burning him back into the moment.
I am the night which consumes the Sun. I challenge, conquer and create. I am the obsidian ocean that drinks in the stars. The crushing weight of all that isn't.
All that is, all that was, and all that will ever be must BEND…TO….MY….WILL!
The mighty ocean's surface, once so far, was moving closer. The torrents of blood once receding to the vast reaches, now returned from whence they came. Time was moving in reverse. No, that's not quite it, is it?
The raging wildfire was being summoned to its master.
Shroud.
∗ ∗ ∗
Aoi forced himself into an abrupt consciousness.
He let out a calm, measured breath.
Aoi released every muscle in his body. He dropped to the ground. Heavy.
"FRIGGGGGG! THAT WAS SO CLOSE, SO SCARYY!!" The sound ripped through the air. His body, clammy, and trembling. He was exposed nerve. Raw.
Ohmanohmanohmanohmanohmanohmanohmanohman..
Aoi sat himself up. He swallowed back that gnawing, aching, burning in his throat. He wiped his eyes, and he got to work.
Touching the physical structure of the barrier, or whatever this thing was, Aoi felt no warmth, nothing reminiscent of B. Not even the faintest trace of h–
Aoi's head tilted, eyes narrowed.
Yaya, are you obscuring your mana somehow? Weird..
Breathe..
Aoi closed his eyes yet again, not that it made much of a difference, everything devoid of light.
Listen..
..feel…quiet the mind…
..extend my energy outward…what's this..
..weird interference..?
I just…need to resonate with the frequency of the barrier, and ...force mana with the opposing frequency repeatedly into this structure..I can interrupt the fre..quency…of said barrier.. and make this thing…crumble.
Breathe. Analyze.
Aoi called forth his mana through his hands, into the structure, allowing it to seep and ooze, creeping its way, insidious.
I; The divine conductor, Creation; destined to subservience. I am the Moon pushing and pulling the wave, I am the very Air which feeds the flame. Movement, Passion, Expression. My divine right.
Emit.
The formulas were foreign and many; tangled and tied, Gordian Knots, labyrinthine. The structure itself, a puzzle, and any trace of the crafters' signature, gone.
A gap.
The strategy was simple. Fill a space with gas, find the holes. The same principle applies here.
Aoi projected his mana outward to force itself into any gaps or inconsistencies, and expand to shatter its wall.
"Brute force it."
Another.
His mana, now an extension of himself, moving as limbs of sentient smoke. Eyes, ears, raw exposed nerve cracking away at the secrets of this prison. Unwinding spell, after spell, forcing deeper and deeper into its structure. The crystalline humming that was once in the back of his teeth Aoi now felt throughout his entire body, a body which now included this creeping network of taproots penetrating this ominous cloister, this cage.
Another.
Another. You're done for.
Aoi's magic permeated deeper and deeper.
One more... Another, then…last one.
Aoi smiled. He laughed to himself, and at his opponent, which he deemed a worthy adversary.
Beautiful…such a complex layering of spells…goodbye!
crrrraaaAACKK!!
Lightning ripping through the atmosphere preceded the crumbling of the walls surrounding him.
Glass shattered. Ethereal oil-slick shards dancing to the ground, exposing light in their absence. They glistened, refracting the blinding sun. Aoi was bathed in a harmony of light and color.
Aoi's face blanched.
Danger!
The prison was no longer able to protect him.
Aoi shivered.
This is lawless.
Aoi was miniscule as he stood. He looked up and saw only clouds above him, and around him, and at his feet. The floating chain of islands in the southlands, of which he was at the highest peak, were known as the Tolimas.
The ground beneath him; uncharacteristically hard, dark, black, and dry for the sheer amount of humidity up here. It was rock. Or rather mountain? He was somewhere impossible.
The Sun felt only a stone's throw away, bright and unobstructed. He felt its powerful rays, hot on his skin, but the sky itself, dark almost deep purple, somehow like a night sky and somehow not.
I'm on a cliff.
His body tensed up. Aoi reflexively tempered his mana; a lowly wisp of itself.
The rush of cold mountain air his body was bracing for, was warm, turbulent. Shallow. With each breath, his lungs grew more unsatisfied. And yet, still, the air was…pleasant.
A perfume of living emeralds. Wet bark, rich loam. Ancient, and strong. Decay, paired with a forest floor canvas, painted of fungi. A citrus, but still floral, scent hung in the humidity, lifted by the crisp, clean, sharpness of altitude. Of the ripest fruits, and a permanent dew. A heavier scent, a would-be pungent odor, was light, and dancing with the smell of the forest.
Sulfur.
Everything was silent, save the sound of gales; and large wingbeats Aoi couldn't ascertain the location of. His ears ringing, the silence between gusts, oppressive, enormous, a physical absence. The sturdy unyielding mountain beneath him, sky in all directions but down. After such an exercise in imagining himself large, the sheer breadth, the vacuousness could've easily brought him to his knees.
Aoi moved slowly. First inching out his left foot, as he vehemently scanned with his eyes.
It's hard to get a read out here, this mana everywhere… it's not the same. Hard to make heads or tails of anything when everything seems like a threat. I don't recall any place like this in any of the books at h–
Pain.
Aoi jolted his head, once again.
"Don't even think it!" He spat. The silence, a chasm in its own right, overtook his words.
Resigned, now, not to speak, lest he summon the raging tides he had just finished quelling, Aoi scanned his surroundings, extending himself to the absolute limit of his mana detecting capabilities, which happened to be about three meters, three and a half on good days. Today wasn't a good day.
I don't sense anyone. No mage, no person…not even fae or spirits, none that I can recognize anyway. If someone were to be waiting in ambush they would have had plenty of time to make a move by now.
Am I…safe? No, but, at least for now, I am alone.
Alone..?
Before his mind could catch up, his body was already moving toward the edge of the cliff. His mind lingering on his last thought…he looked down.
"..uhh…"
His eyes were assaulted by the scene below, rendering his mind just as inoperable as his body.
His own shadow, magnified by the sun behind him, stark, contrasting, sprawling spans and spans and spans of pockets of white. At the very apex of this enormous shadow Aoi, a crown of the most divine light. Inexplicable hues of greens, blues, coalescing with reds and yellows, and tones and colors he had never once seen nor had any explanation, context or name for except–
"Holy shit.."
Wh…where..
His eyes darted left and right, up and down, neck following suit, unable to drum up context for this experience. His vision was blurry with tears from the wind...probably. He wracked his brain, his entire existence, and strings of memories to find anything that could help to prepare him for his current situation, in this…world.
His eyes traced themselves back up the shadow's legs, shoulders, head. Frozen not in awe of the brilliant crown of light, which was magnificent, but rather where it ended. Countless spans away Aoi saw a tree.
His eyes popped out of his head.
Below the cover of the clouds, through a rare break in the white expanse before him, miles or meters below, bright green waxy leaves, and deep jewels of garnet.
Aoi spotted–
"A COFFEE TREE!"
∗ ∗ ∗