Wednesday, July 20, 4 S.E.

  Leonidas and Ceruviel arrived at her study minutes later, entered without ceremony, and proceeded immediately toward the hidden, psi-warded meditation chamber. Once inside, the pair separated, with Leonidas proceeding to the center of the room while Ceruviel took up position near the wall, arms folded as she leaned back against the dark manastone.

  “Now then,” Ceruviel continued in English. “It’s time for the most miserable lesson yet, including my castigation of your opposition toward intimacy: Grafting. Remove your upper clothing and settle yourself on the floor.”

  “You make it sound so appealing,” Leonidas replied sardonically, and started to shuffle off his jacket, vest, and shirt as instructed with quick and practiced movements. Ceruviel caught the clothing wordlessly with a flex of Psi mastery, leaving them hovering off to the side without a word.

  “It hardly pays to be deceptive, Achilles, to borrow your Terran analogy.”

  “Fair enough,” he said simply and crossed his legs as he sat. “So what do I have to do?”

  “Once you have claimed your [Manastorm Pinions], you will need to cycle your Mana and your Psi as smoothly and consistently as you can manage,” Ceruviel began without preamble, her eyes locked on him with analytical consideration. “I will monitor the flow to ensure you are not at risk of damaging yourself, but I cannot intercede, or else the graft will fail. This is all on you.”

  Leonidas nodded at her words and settled himself, taking her warning seriously. Ceruviel was rarely censored, but neither was she needlessly exaggerated: if she said it would fail, it would fail. She did not leave room for interpretation if there was none, as he’d learned.

  “Alright, and then?”

  “Once you are cycling, you must use your Intent to attune to the graft, and will it to join with your power—specifically your core. For most cultivators, this is a simple task because their mana and affinity are in sync. For you, Achilles, this will be a perilous step—mainly because your [Cataclysm Core] and your Affinity are, though not oppositional, lacking in natural synergy,” she explained with precise inflection. “Your power is like a mix between Elementalism and Psi at the same time, and that can be dangerous. You will need to balance the inevitable conflict between the powers and find an equilibrium with which to concentrate them through the graft.”

  “What then?” he asked while stowing away the information and idly settling into his breathing method to soothe his heart and ready himself for the circulation of his mana. It was going to hurt, he knew, and probably badly—but after the Tribulation, it wasn’t something he was too worried about. He’d come to understand pain. It was an old friend, by that point. It signified growth.

  “Then, once you forge the connection between your core and the graft, you will need to let it complete the melding. This is the most painful and delicate part of the process because, even though the System will help you, you will need to visualize how the graft will manifest when complete. See yourself, the deployment, and how it will function. Ideation is a key part of this, because it will define how the graft functions in a practical way.”

  “Hm…” Leonidas breathed thoughtfully. “Doesn’t that mean Psi gives me an advantage? Intent and Ideation are a core part of the power.”

  “It does,” Ceruviel said with a rare sign of approval at his swift realization, “but that is primarily true for pure Psi users. Your mana, Achilles, is the proverbial joker in the deck, as you Terrans say. Delightful phrase. The chaotic and wild nature of your [Cataclysm Core] will not allow this process to proceed without challenge. You will have to fight the wild influence of your mana while trying to stabilize the form and function of your graft, which will itself be fighting you as well.”

  “So in short, I need to use Intent and Ideation while harnessing Psi for the second, controlling my mana, and also, uh, dominating the graft itself?”

  “Yes. You picked a particularly interesting one, too, because the [Manastorm Pinions] are elementally aligned. This may be more beneficial than we realize, given your [Cataclysm Core] is elemental fury in its most savage form—but it also may mean you have… unexpected developments.”

  “Great,” Leonidas muttered, and shook his hands idly. “Just great.”

  “Oh, I am sure you’ll be fine,” Ceruviel said bracingly, and offered him a rare smile. “You’ve come this far. Think of it as a small test of your mental discipline before the Delve. That will challenge you as well, and this will be a good way to temper your focus.”

  “Huh. Okay,” Leonidas said simply, accepting her logic as it was presented. “So, I guess I’ll begin.”

  “Make sure you are absolutely focused before you do,” Ceruviel warned, “because failure could result in more than just mere item loss—it could damage your Core. However, I have faith you will succeed. If you are ready, claim the graft from the [Aetherium Store] and proceed when you have properly established your energy cycling.”

  Leonidas nodded to Ceruviel’s instructions, grimacing at her warning, and focused inward without another word, plunging into his awareness to find the chaotic power of his [Cataclysm Core] nestled in his dantian. His senses honed in, allowing him to feel the tempestuous roar of power seething within his energy source, yearning to be released—to destroy, consume, and obliterate. His lips quirked upwards at the corner, momentarily amused by the irony of inheriting a power that would have made Azrageth seethe in impotent jealousy.

  Too late now, asshole.

  His Willpower seized at the energy of his core, and Leonidas drew it forth, allowing the rushing tide of savage current to sear through his mana channels in a flood of blistering, crackling scarlet power. It was a maelstrom, an earthquake, a tsunami, and a tornado all at once—a crackling storm of lightning, fire, and raw destruction that burned its way through him in a familiar and welcome remembrance of power.

  From there, he summoned his Psi in kind, drawing his Affinity from within the same place and layering it with practiced ease over the hungry rampage of his Cataclysm Mana. Violet threads wove into scarlet tides to create an insulating force, now riding the storm of power in a way he had been unable to manage prior to his Tempering and his core’s evolution. The power surged within him, cycling through his mana channels in rapidly spreading currents that forced him to grimace at the eager hunger it aroused for violence.

  Even now, as before, the mana urged him to act.

  His Cataclysm Mana craved freedom to rampage, and his Psi reinforced his control, creating a delicate and ultimately precarious balance—one he was learning to recognize as an old friend. His eyes flicked up to find Ceruviel nearby, pacing around him without his realizing, her gaze fixed on him with hawkish intensity. She seemed to be observing in silence, reading him, but not interfering as promised.

  “Good,” his Mentor said simply, her small nod worth far more than grand praise from anyone else. “Your cadence of aetheric alignment has grown more stable. You are controlling the confluence, not wrestling with it. Your mastery of Psi has improved considerably. I can see it tempering your mana properly, now.”

  “It’s… not easy,” Leonidas admitted with a grimace, “but it isn’t an uphill battle anymore, not the same way it was.”

  “Your tempered mana channels will be stronger, which means you are less impugned by pain and the displacement of focus it heralds. You are better at it, Achilles. I am impressed.”

  Leonidas smiled slightly at her words and let out a steadying breath as he felt his Cataclysm Mana and Psi fall into a delicate, tempestuous rhythm of movement throughout his body.

  “Now, when you are ready, claim the [Manastorm Pinions]. If you do so with a specificity of Intent toward grafting, they will appear in place immediately. From there, it is up to you and your Intent and Ideation. Be ready for the pain.”

  “If I lose control—”

  “I will contain it,” Ceruviel assured him, “as will the chamber. Let me worry about what is outside of you, Achilles. Focus only on your task.”

  A ripple of relief rolled through him, and Leonidas nodded before articulating his desire to the System.

  “System! I wish to claim my [Manastorm Pinions] for Grafting.”

  Immediately, a red screen appeared before him.

  SYSTEM MESSAGE

  You have elected to claim your [Manastorm Pinions] for a [Grafting] process.

  Failure will result in a loss of the item and damage to your [Cataclysm Core].

  Do you wish to proceed?

  [Y] | [N]

  Leonidas tapped the [Y] option wordlessly, and the moment he did, the System chimed. The window vanished, and a second later, a sudden heat assaulted his shoulder blades and spine—followed by a searing agony that ripped through his nerves, blood, and marrow; lancing down toward his [Cataclysm Core].

  Leonidas snarled at the sudden assault against his senses and focused on his control, ensuring his cycling remained interrupted as he felt something like hooks digging into the essence of his being. His eyes narrowed, teeth gritting into a rictus of pain as he felt muscle spasms roll across his body.

  “Focus, Achilles,” Ceruviel said bracingly. “You can do this.”

  The words were heard but not responded to, and her confidence subtly buoyed his determination. Leonidas focused on the next step: connecting the graft properly to his core. The lance of pain rippling toward it was something like a guide, and he seized on its feeling of rightness, using his Intent and weaponized Willpower to stitch a thread of mana and psi into an instinctive double-helix—one he then used to connect his dantian, and the core within, to the reaching hooks of the [Manastorm Pinions].

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  Pain redoubled at his efforts, and Leonidas arched his back reactively at the pressure building within him from the effects. Pain and awareness became a blended part of reality, and he kept one part of his mind focused on cycling, on keeping the tempestuous rhythm of his mana and affinity rolling together as one unified energy. Vicious snarls of power attempted to resist his efforts as the first threads of the [Manastorm Pinions] essence filtered into his cycling energies, but he mastered his Intent to force them to conform—to be assimilated, not destroyed, by his [Cataclysm Core] and Psi Affinity.

  Resistance and a nascent sense of long-dead awareness flared from the graft, and Leonidas growled without awareness, fighting against the lingering Intent of the Storm Phoenix the wings had once belonged to. Rampaging elemental energy, tasting like the static charge pre-empting lightning, flooded through his channels as the power contained within the graft met his cycling power and the two forces collided, then converged.

  Another spasm of agony rippled through him, and Leonidas wove Psi, driving it into the conflict to corral and control the rapidly destabilizing conflux of magic searing through his channels. At the same time, his focus split again, and he drew the metaphysical connection between the pinions and his core together—binding them with a surge of energy that forced him to cough blood.

  “Focus!” Ceruviel said again. “You are reaching the critical juncture.”

  Leonidas panted against the pressure building in his spine and wove Psi once more, this time slamming it into the base talons of the wings seething within his marrow. He coerced its submission, drawing his mana in its pure form to suffuse and wash across those impaled hooks and push out into the [Manastorm Pinions] themselves.

  Ideation took over from there, and Leonidas focused on what Ceruviel had told him: visualization. He imagined how they would look, how they would deploy, and how the golden-red effervescent energy would manifest in scarlet blisters of cataclysmic lightning and violet crackles of psionic might. He visualized how they would appear from his back, vast and glorious, to bear him aloft on wings of ionized mana and psionic force.

  A flicker of distraction needled him suddenly, and Leonidas felt a dance of uncertainty pulse across his focus.

  Aylar’s body, bare and exposed—her blue eyes watching him.

  Synthra’s fiery words, her earnest golden gaze searching his soul.

  The images swirled together into a dangerous malaise of distraction, and Leonidas felt something other fuelling the loss of focus, a presence, an existence, an echo of life resentful at being tamed and dominated. It seared his consciousness, willing him to fail, and cracked the clear image of Ideation brewing within his mind.

  The faces of the two women he felt confused feelings for pulled at him, and his quiet fear of the future—of them, of him, of their unions and the risks his trauma created metastatized dangerously. His aversion to intimacy mocked him in the voice of Lyara’s hateful castigation, imagined and never heard, and he shuddered under the weight of it.

  The throne’s daunting weight pressed upon his consciousness.

  The dragon’s imperious bloodline scoured him with doubt over his worth.

  Leonidas felt his doubts and self-confidence rise and fall in equal amounts; the latter reacting with quailing submission as the former grew in despairing might.

  His mana seemed to amplify it, cajoled by the presence within him, and Leonidas snarled in refutation.

  Anger and stubborn will defied the mental assault, and Leonidas did what felt right—he dove into his mindscape while his conscious self continued his efforts.

  Within his own subconscious, a majestic creature of blue and white lightning exploded into being, spreading its mighty wings with thunderous, crackling flaps of power.

  YOU DARE?

  The words were a cacophony within his mindscape, and Leonidas felt his focus shudder and scream at the force of it.

  WHO ARE YOU TO DEMAND MY SUBSERVIENCE?

  The creature beat its wings again, slamming its lasting, final Intent against his focus as Leonidas glared up at it, and felt his mindscape fracturing and shivering around him—held together by manifested threads of violet Psi that embodied his Willpower Attribute in visible manifestation.

  I am Leonidas Achilles Romulus Paendrag, he replied to the Storm Phoenix’s residual spirit, his eyes narrowing faintly. I am the Cataclysm, the Terran Forerunner, a Mana Sage and Archon. I am the Hero of Elatra, Slayer of Demons, and future Sovereign of Terra.

  The declaration felt right. It felt arrogant, but not improper.

  The Phoenix seemed to hesitate as his words washed over its ghost of consciousness, and the Intent subtly diminished for a moment.

  I AM THE STORM. I AM THE LIGHTNING. I WILL NOT BE CONTAINED.

  Leonidas lifted his arm in his mindscape, shielding himself against a buffet of aetheric lightning as the walls of his awareness rattled again, and his physical body coughed up more blood. Cataclysm Mana and Psi warred with the Storm Phoenix’s power, and Leonidas knew he had little time—he was not tempered enough, mentally or spiritually, to risk a true confrontation.

  You are the Storm, he agreed without argument, eyes drinking in the Phoenix’s majesty. You are the Storm, but I am the Greater. You are the aspect of lightning, I am the harbinger of Cataclysm. You fear containment, but I offer you freedom—the chance to soar once more, through me, upon a stormwall the likes this world has never seen.

  Another flicker of failing Intent echoed from the ghostly consciousness, and words assailed him, testing his resolve.

  YOU SPEAK OF FREEDOM, BUT DEMAND SUBSERVIENCE.

  No, Leonidas willed, his right hand rising—snapped at by lightning, but undeterred—toward the Storm Phoenix’s echo of Intent. I ask for loyalty, I do not demand servitude. You are dead, Storm Phoenix. Never again will you taste the endless blue, never again will you ride the lightning—save by my hand. I ask not for you to be a slave, but a loyal compatriot. I will ride the skies in your name and write the legend of your legacy in Wings of Cataclysm. You have but to permit me the chance.

  Another ripple of thunderous Intent rocked his mindscape, and Leonidas gritted his teeth against the force of it—the intensity of the backlash, though it seemed directionless this time. It was an echo of grief and frustration, but not, he noted, a rejection.

  I HAVE NEVER BOWED TO ONE OF YOUR KIND. YOU ASK TOO MUCH.

  You have never met one of my kind, Storm Phoenix. Search my Core and know the truth: I am Cataclysm adorned in flesh, tempered and controlled, but never absent the primordial truth of obliteration. I am the Storm. I am the Fire. I am the Tides. I am the Gale. Join me, become my loyal wings, and I will grant your memory the glory it deserves.

  The words felt right, emanating from something deep within him he could not name, and Leonidas felt the moment that it settled on him with startling clarity: the moment his awareness of his nature blossomed in a way it hadn’t before. He was those things, inasmuch as he was himself, and fighting it was a foolish choice. He controlled it, he guided it, he directed it—but he never could deny it.

  He was the Cataclysm. He would become a Storm to shake the World.

  I DO NOT WANT TO DIE. I WANT TO LIVE ON.

  The quiet, honest fear and grief in the words were shocking, but Leonidas also felt resonance with them. He had said those words himself when a Hydra descended to destroy him. He knew their meaning. He knew their depth, their texture, their indefatigable truth. He knew the Storm Phoenix’s fear, and in that moment, he knew he would succeed.

  It was simply right that he did so.

  Then live on through me, he said with unerring steadiness, and the bloom of his Intent—his Cataclysm Mana rising around him in a wash of primordial power. Become my wings, and I shall be your new beginning. Like the Phoenix you are, arise once more by my existence.

  Silence greeted his words as the mana swelled around his feet, dense and thick, and licked at his mindself with destructive intent—only to be forced away by a field of Psi that surrounded him passively like the Divine Skein he had once held on Elatra, denying its attempts to devour his consciousness.

  Above, the Phoenix trembled, and then bowed its head at last.

  I ACCEPT YOUR WORDS, CATACLYSM. I WILL BE YOUR WINGS, THAT WE MAY BRING THE STORM OF EPOCHS UPON THOSE THAT WOULD SEE YOU FALL.

  Leonidas smiled at the Intent behind the words. The creature’s echo of self said one thing, but the meaning was another.

  I will defy the fate of Death, it had meant in its statement, through you as my new life.

  HOWEVER.

  Leonidas’ smile froze on his face.

  YOU ARE YET TOO WEAK TO BEAR MY POWER IN FULL. YOU MUST EARN ITS TRUTH.

  A moment of trembling followed, and the mindscape shuddered as an insistent System ping ripped through its entirety.

  YOU WILL BE TESTED. BE FOUND WANTING AT YOUR PERIL, CATACLYSM. THREE TASKS I SHALL GRANT, FOR THE THREE TIERS OF OUR DISPARITY.

  Leonidas stared at the Phoenix, and then bowed his head in respect.

  I accept your price, Storm Phoenix, so long as they do not impede my path.

  A moment of further consideration came from the creature, and then Leonidas felt the System affirm something, and felt the connection to the [Manastorm Pinions] firm. A prompt, like a blade held at his throat, manifested in confirmation of the bargain struck—and Leonidas felt the System finalize the promise.

  The Storm Phoenix let out a thunderous, glorious trill as the System echoed its consent and the beast’s latent Intent accepted his desire for unity at last. The manabeast echo spiralled upward, flaring its wings before arcing over and diving down into the washing mass of his Cataclysm Mana with an almighty splash, infusing itself with the power inside, and permitting its body to shift—dyeing itself the scarlet of destruction, as violet threads of Psi wove themselves into its form and infused Ideation throughout it.

  RISE, O CATACLYSM! RISE, AND TOGETHER, WE SHALL SOAR THE STORM AGAIN!

  Leonidas opened his eyes slowly, and with only the subtle burn of his mana cycling through his veins, with an almost sulky guilt. Light pervaded everything, and instinctively he turned to find the source—only for his eyes to widen at the sight that awaited him.

  A pair of resplendent wings, forged from blistering red power, wreathed into arcs of lightning and contained within violet outlines that misted and crackled with psionic power. The core of the wings deepened to those same violet-like veins, running through the scarlet body of the pinions like soothing currents arresting their wildness into a controlled variable.

  Beside him, Ceruviel let out a sigh of relief.

  “I had to contain you,” she said briefly, gesturing to the psionic dome surrounding him, which he only then noticed. “Your power exploded calamitously. I take it you succeeded?”

  Leonidas nodded and looked around the chamber for the first time. Scorchmarks lined the walls, divots and vicious fissures had been torn into the floor, and the manastone—impervious, psi-warded, nigh indestructible—had been dented and blasted across its length, assailed by a force that it could not resist. His eyes widened at the sight, and he turned back to Ceruviel, who regarded him with a wry look.

  “Yes, Achilles,” she said with a snort, “you are a handful. You’re welcome.”

  Leonidas laughed at her words.

  “Thank you for—”

  His words abruptly cut off as a System Screen appeared before him, and his eyes fell to it in surprise.

  Congratulations, you have unlocked a new [Title]!

  STORM RIDER

  [Rarity]: Epic

  [Description]: You have successfully won the conditional loyalty of a Mature Storm Phoenix, a manabeast several tiers your superior. As a result of this act, you have catalyzed an evolution in the nature of your Graft and awakened a hidden variable! New quests will be awarded at each subsequent tier to affirm the Storm Phoenix’s fealty. Failure will have [Consequences].

  [Effect 1]: +25% Lightning Resistance

  [Effect 2]: [Locked]

  [Effect 3]: [Locked]

  [Effect 4]: [Locked]

  “What happened?” Ceruviel asked immediately, no doubt noticing him reading the invisible screen.

  Instead of explaining, Leonidas simply willed his Intent to show her the new title and looked back at his wings with an exhausted smile of triumph.

  The curse of disbelief and uproarious laughter of his mentor filled the chamber a moment later, and Leonidas grinned.

  Leonidas Pinions Concept Art

  Please comment on what you liked or with theories you have!

  40+ Advanced Chapters can be found on my .