Chapter 4 Part 3 of 4 (Patreon)

“What the hell are you doing with your domains?” he said, ignoring their groans. “Use your domain as if it’s your nose or ears. Always active, always perceiving the world around you. You treat it like a light going on and off, using it only when you remember about it. Your domain is a sense above your other senses, one that detects the elements, the other that senses mana. Last more twenty minutes without attacking the Telarri and I’ll let you out.”

He threw out two bags. Powder exploded over the duo, recovering their wounds and stamina before they teleported away.

“Twenty minutes? You’re growing soft!” Weebla yelled from her room.

“Who said they were too old to teach!”

“I’m spry enough to tan your hide!”

Xun Liang mimicked her voice without daring to actually say it ouloud and continued watching the duo.

“And stop mimicking me or I’ll put you through a round of training!”

Xun Liang shuddered watching his students.

They look angry now. He smiled as Rugrat used distance from the Telarri. Erik tried to dodge the first Telarri and was hit several times, leaving bloody wounds as he lashed out in pain or rage.

Still, he was tending to move himself out of the way of attacks now, instead of trying to take the Telarri on.

Might be the pain, but pain can teach.

“Erik, you’re not a punching bag. Move, more. Rugrat, I see that rifle one more time and I am liable to break it!”

They barely had time to recover as they disappeared again.

And so it went several times.

He made sure they were ready and sent them back in, they didn’t even try to run anymore. A quick pointer here and there each time.

“Hmm, maybe they are workable.”

“Reminds me of training you,” Weebla said next to him.

Xun Liang ducked his head, turning to face her slowly. “Wear a bell or something!”

She smiled and walked back to her room. “You stubborn lot, think you know everything when you come up here. Sometimes you just need to get thrown into a few trials to keep you on your toes. Get them to try and prove you wrong.”

***

Erik had been punched, scratched, and wounded a dozen different ways. He rolled over with a groan, blood spilling on the teleportation formation as he raised himself to seating, the wounds closing. With a hiss he grabbed his arm bent at an unnatural angle and moved it into place with a whimper. A flash of fusing spell and he stretched out his fingers, his strength returning as the pain receded.

He withdrew a stamina potion chugging it down.

“Well that was suitably gross.” Xun Linag’s face was pulled back into a series of wrinkles, they disappeared with a shake of his head as he held his hands behind his back. “Erik, dodging is more than just moving out of the way of an attack, you need to read what’s coming for you, focus on your domain. Rugrat, ughh, the trees are your friend. Why are you so focused in making a clear line of sight between you and the enemy? Domain! Stop turning around so damn much and maybe your ankles would stop spraining, hmm? Again!”

Erik arrived in the forest, again landing on his feet. At least he’d started to get that, falling on his ass or in some other unorganized heap had gotten old. His eyes scanned for threats, wincing as Xun Liang’s words rang through his head. He used his domain like a pulse but there was so much information even in that short burst.

It was all so confusing, not replacing but adding a layer of complication he wasn’t sure what to do with. Maintaining it constantly, it would just overwhelm him!

It wasn’t like he was out of his body when he used his domain, his senses were everywhere, flipping his entire perspective. He had always been an observer, one point looking out upon the world. Now he was a big sphere, sensing everything inside and outside, through the air, the trees, the ground. He only knew where his body was by the mere fact it was leaking elements and mana all over the place.

He dismissed Xun Liang’s orders, using the pulse instead to find his quarry before he could get ambushed. That was getting old fast.

There you are.

Erik jumped to the side as a Telarri appeared. Trees bent around it as the ground rippled with roots, snapping out at Erik. He pulsed his domain again, jumping out the path of the attack as he enhanced his body with elements, touching the ground.

There was a sudden rush of air as a bush near his feet hardened and lashed out.

Erik burned the bush with the fire elements in his leg while ducking under the tree limb aimed at his head.

A root shot out of the ground for his neck. He side stepped, using a pulse of his domain to see the Telarri, and used a fire spell on its side. Spinning away, he landed on his feet and ran, his mind swimming as his domain showed the crater where he had been standing while his vision tried to organize what he was seeing with the domain’s flood. He barely caught the Telarri rushing him.

Roots and limbs wrapped around the creature, using them as a second set of limbs. Like Aziri and his water tentacles.

In close, Erik reduced the area his domain stretched out to but pinged it constantly. Sometimes he saw the roots coming through the ground or the tree moving behind him, sometimes he didn’t try to compensate and increased the frequency of the pulses without losing his footing or where the hell he was.

He pressed down on his frustration, for every attack he dodged two more slipped through his defense.

He increased the frequency of pulses but he kept getting hit. What he was doing just wasn’t working; it happened time and time again. He’d teleport in, get torn up by the Telarri until he returned to the training hall, where Xun Liang would glare at him, as if expecting better and he’d be teleported back in, repeating the cycle.

Damn you, Xun Liang! He gritted his teeth, cursing the man who did nothing but sit on his ass and send them back into the fights as if he was some god given trainer.

His information was useless. Erik had disregarded most of it, it would only get him sent out quicker.

Fine. I’ll do what he says, right down to the letter to show him just how wrong he is, then I can get on with my own damn training.

He recounted everything that Xun Liang had said, his short snippets of information between bouts of pain, and started to follow it.

Several minutes later he lay battered and bruised on the teleportation pad, but he felt that he was at the edge of something, that things were starting to congeal.

Rugrat was already waiting for him.

“Shave off your motions, Erik. Use the space around you, eventually you will be able to twist and turn out of the way of the attacks. For now, try to read the elements, the mana, and your enemy’s body language for their attacks. Eventually you will not just see the body, you will understand the movement of their mana, the elements, reading their true intent. A spell a punch a kick a feint, enhanced with fire, or water or earth.”

“Okay.”

“Ah good, you aren’t mute.” Xun Liang smiled, and the forest appeared around Erik again.

And so it went on. Erik turned into a sponge, trying to forget everything he knew and accept Xun Liang’s information. He had rare moments where things flowed and he was so focused on what he had done right that he would mess up the next thing that happened.

“Baby steps, forget the bad habits, learn the new ones, you don’t need to do it all in one go, just by degrees,” Xun Liang said. Erik and Rugrat were battered and bruised but they drank in his words now, even as their bodies repaired. “Erik, work on your hips. Your hips move and your body will move, it gives you the greatest motion. You’re used to always advancing. When dodging, you must learn to give ground before you learn how to advance.”

Erik was fighting a Telarri with the metal element. The chaotic forks of lighting numbed his limbs and made his muscles twitch as they passed him. He kept his fists tight to his chest as he moved backwards, using domain pulses constantly, spreading out from himself as he stepped backwards between roots and stones, finding sturdy footing by information turned instinctive.

Erik jumped backwards as iron nails tore through the ground before him.

The Telarri’s lightning retracted and it shot forward, its speed jumping upwards.

Erik drew on his elements, increasing his perception, defense, and speed.

The hell?

Erik’s momentary shock allowed the Telarri to hit him twice before he adapted to the new speed.

He shifted to accept non-lethal wounds that would still hurt but wouldn’t restrict his mobility while using his domain in combination with organic scan to see what was happening in the body of the Telarri.

The lightning flowed through the creature’s body, activating its limbs faster than it could on its own.

Erik forced his perception, his domain, and his scans together to try and predict what the creature would do next. He was accurate one time in five as he continued to take hits, the numbing effect running through his limbs, reaching deeper into his body.

Erik yelled as the white transportation light surrounded him.

“Lightning Telarri are among the most annoying.” He squatted down across from Erik. “What were you trying to do with those rapid directed pulses?”

Erik shuddered with the leftovers from the lightning, jerking suddenly as he pushed himself up into seated as the lightning was transmitted to his bones and drawn into his elemental core.

Erik let out a heavy breath through his nose. “I was scanning him, could see how his muscles are reacting sometimes, depends if they are protecting against it or how strong they are.”

“Oh,” Xun Liang tapped his finger on his chin. “Rather interesting.”

Rugrat appeared on his pad, bleeding and battered, but in one piece.

An old lady walked into the room. She looked like she was attending a wool wear convention in the arctic circle, thick but small glasses hung on the end of her nose. Her hair escaping the cap was blue, purple, yellow and pink, fading into a regal silver. One side of her head was braided while the other hung straight down.

Twin pointed ears poked out on either side of her toque as she puffed on a pipe that let out green smoke.

“You two still here? Liang,” she growled.