AbyssalRoadTrip
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Abyssal Road Trip - 466 - Who's the Dreamer
🕑 Added 2024-11-17 21:18:32 +0000 UTCAmdirlain’s PoV - Beneath Wudang Mountain
Rustam rushed through the tunnels after her, his Power reaching out to constrict passages. His first attempts were too slow, and Amdirlain hurriedly dove between closing rock walls. She continued to race along even as he started to close a long length ahead of her. The theme of the Power he’d used to create boulders around his Ki flared louder.
Rustam sounded a loud bellow and tried to work faster, but Amdirlain sprinted ahead of his grasping attempts; each showed her the harmonies of his nature, interacting with the surrounding stone. Amdirlain targeted the involved themes with Analysis.
[Primordial Will
Details: Used to channel desire into reality, this Power is most efficient when the desired effect aligns with an entity's refined nature.]
The passages finished closing off and, instead of returning the walls to their prior state, he threw himself forward. As he hit the wall, he flowed through the rocks, and Amdirlain caught the use of Spirit Passage from the Ki involved. Amdirlain stopped in the enormous central cavern; like the passage behind her, every natural tunnel was now closed off.
It’s been a long time since I used Spirit Passage. Is that the Power Xuan Wu meant as being neglected? It’s seen little use since Ternòx.
Rustam swam out of the rock. “Now we-”
Amdirlain teleported beside him, her right hook rocked him on his heels before she reappeared halfway across the cavern. The small trickle of blood in the corner of his mouth stopped almost immediately. He waved his trunk, and the rough walls started to smooth out, removing hiding places.
The techniques for my Psychoportation still work. Fortitude is mental resilience. Am I only here to learn, or did Xuan Wu send me here to teach? How young a Primordial is this fellow?
As the floor beneath her smoothed out, Amdirlain dropped to the ground and beckoned him to come at her. Though his gaze burned, Rustam continued to smooth out the terrain to the limits of what the deeper vortexes allowed. While he worked, she gained plenty of time to study the Power’s use.
Rustam’s charge came in a near blur, each heavy footstep cratering the stone and setting off a booming echo. As his head dipped to line up his tusks to gore her, Amdirlain reformed; the tendrils of her massive anemone form stretched across the ground and snagged his trailing ankle. Wrapping around his shin, she drew herself across the floor in a tight mass beneath the limb and shot up. His hands lashed out to stop his fall, but he skidded and tumbled, his tusks gouging furrows from the stone. As he orientated himself, Amdirlain changed back into her elven form, but the loose fabric of the robes reformed skintight.
I’m not an elephant, so I’m not butting heads with him. He doesn’t have proper hands, just flattened palms, but his trunk could grasp loose clothing.
“Tricks.” Rustam spat as he climbed to his feet.
He eyed her with furious intensity. Swaying, he lowered himself to all fours and started to step sideways, his attention fixed on her.
Will he charge again, or does he want me to believe he will? Let’s mess with his head.
Amdirlain filled the cavern, her True Form’s mass allowing her to become a giant slime that lifted Rustam from the ground and held him suspended. His limbs thrashed about, but she let him ride the waves of his own motions. Air Mana ran through her Ki Body, and the oppositional forces battered her captive’s flesh. The reverberations ripped through the slime’s outer membrane and she soaked him in acidic gel that caused his flesh to smoke.
“Tricks.”
A hundred mouths whispered the word in Rustam’s ears, and she shrank away, dropping him to the ground. At the far end of the cavern, she appeared in an elven form and playfully brushed her shoulder-length hair back.
“Do not mock me,” roared Rustam, spittle frothing in the corners of his mouth.
The stone beneath her feet stabbed upwards, but Amdirlain flowed atop the spike. Spears, hooks, and serrated barbs lashed out from the stone, but Amdirlain danced in a blur among them. Shifting from Air to Fire in her Ki body caused bright yellow flames to crawl beneath her skin. Trying to perfect her Ki strikes, she left shattered and melted rocks in her wake. As a kick destroyed a trio of stone spears aimed for her guts, the rubble and floor softened beneath her feet and tried to suck her in.
Angry fellow.
Amdirlain reappeared mid-air and dodged spikes from the floor and ceiling, as well as boulders thrown by Rustam’s Ki blasts.
“Calm.”
In reply, Rustam stomped a foot, and the ceiling collapsed atop her. Protean sucked in the mass and, unexpectedly, consumed the lot.
My level in it is still low, but my True Form is significantly bigger, so it’s easier to draw mass inside my form.
Amdirlain burped dramatically.
The trumpeting scream he responded with sent cracks spreading across the floor.
He lowered himself to charge, and Amdirlain shifted her Ki Body back to an Air alignment. Her skin returned to a snowy white, warning of the shift, but he didn’t stop.
Options bounced around, and when Muse’s Embrace remained silent, she took another approach. Her Willpower turned raw Charisma into a battering ram that smashed into his mind. Staggered in mid-charge, he slipped and tumbled, only to rise to all fours, shaking his head from side to side, his trunk and ears flapping vigorously. Under the battering of her presence, Amdirlain heard segments of his theme coalesce and gain strong tremors of vitality.
“You’re nothing,” wheezed Rustam, his limbs shaking against the pressure.
Do I taunt him?
She lifted her chin imperiously and looked down her nose at him. “Then why is it so hard for you to stand up, little calf?”
The approaches once used to shackle its force now channelled her Charisma, corralling it into a firehose to blast harder against his natural barriers. She sent it coiling around him when he started to slip free from the effect, squeezing tight to increase the mental strain through continual distraction. As his mental bulwarks rose, she shifted her attacks into a soothing warmth to lull his aggression into stillness.
It's time to change the rules of the game. I need his mental resilience to get strained, not his body.
He pushed her efforts aside and charged, a furious roaring slapped against the chamber’s wall. The initial clumsy steps smoothed out as he crossed the distance between them. His speed reached the point where his sprint had all his limbs temporarily off the ground, and Amdirlain lifted him telekinetically. As the rock floor rose towards him, she enfolded him in a bubble of ectoplasm, keeping him isolated from the stone. Caught between stone and Rustam, the gel compressed into the barest hair-thin barrier before a water-wrapped Ki Blast sent him sailing across the cavern. Repeated blasts bounced the intact bubble along the walls he’d smoothed, and telekinetic techniques kept it tumbling until the next attack struck. With his mouth and trunk flooded by the ectoplasm, the tumbling triggered an instinctive panic from his original animal self. Spikes and hooks tore at the membrane, but she controlled it to flow around them, resealing it behind what successes he scored.
His fortitude is already struggling with being overwhelmed by his unbalanced refinement of too much aggression.
She struck with techniques to incite the panic to further heights; though at first he struggled, finally he caught onto her mental touch and lashed out with raw willpower. He paused for a fraction as he slammed against her shielded thoughts, so she grasped at his vulnerable awareness and yanked it inside her mind’s Hidden state. Before he could pull back, she shut the door and, with his attention in her mind, trapped him inside.
The mind palace’s entry foyer was the same one she’d shown Athena in the Maze.
A surprised Rustam spun around as he took in the mental imagination and objects that represented memories in the polished stone entryway. Each object his focus landed on tried to draw him into its moment, and he kept his gaze skipping erratically. Rage surged from him, but Amdirlain interposed the techniques for mental healing. The channels and shunts Sarith had taught her robbed the outburst of much of its force, but it still battered against her mind. A symphony resounded through her nerves from the damage inflicted by keeping Rustam contained, yet she didn’t let go.
She twisted the entry foyer and dumped them into a memory of the Abyss; they both appeared on a barren plain. A hot wind blasted, swirling abrasive dust across his skin, and though Rustam was initially dismissive, within her mind the rules were those Amdirlain set. As the winds picked up, blasts scrubbed layers of skin from Rustam. He’d never experienced or even read about the Abyss, and its nature rocked him back on his heels. The vastness of its amoral malice had him clamping his forelimbs to the sides of his head. As he tried to shake off the effect, she focused on her Abyssal Affinity, and the sense of the place’s malicious self-interest was amplified.
“Stop this!”
“You’re in my crucible now,” Amdirlain snapped. “Forge yourself.”
Rustam thrashed his head about. “This isn’t real?”
“Maybe not, but it can still kill you. How would you fare if Judge Po got his hands upon you? Are you that weak you can’t stand against my recollections?”
“Your memories are foul. The ground is dead and corrupted beneath me.”
“Are you weaker than me?”
“Never,” snarled Rustam.
“Then stop your tantrums.” Amdirlain whipped him with an unsympathetic, passionless tone. “I’ve endured worse.”
The ground underfoot became a wild, wind-tossed sea, and Rustam flailed about frantically to stay on the surface. His limbs churned beneath the water, searching for anything to support his weight. His mind yanked back against her hold, and the backlash rocked her physical body, but she didn’t release him. Ignoring the blood trickling from her eyes, Amdirlain focused on the music within her mind and the principal themes in Rustam. One far softer theme within him was under considerable pressure as his mind grew frantic; the springy resistance within its notes made it clear what nature required the most development.
He’s let his fortitude ebb far behind the others.
The memory of the whirlpool in an underground chamber provided the image that sucked Rustam downwards. A waterfall spat him out in the wild jungles of Ûbuthan; climbing out of the pond at its base, he found himself alone and nervously eyed the overly ripe flora.
“Just in my mind,” grunted Rustam, vigorously shaking himself.
In my mind, I control the rules. What does it take to get through to him? Maybe if I restrain him?
Hearing the snarls of more wildlife, he braced himself, and when a giant leopard rushed from between the trees, he stomped on its head. The great cat vanished, yet he’d already committed, so the below smashed down. It crashed deep into the loam, and he found his foot stuck fast when he tried to shift his balance. He futilely tried to yank it back, and she redirected the energy of his thoughts into an illusion of the ground drawing him in. He frantically thrashed, each movement transmitting through her mind. Amdirlain tried to shunt the power away from her mind and changed the loam from rich soil to a vile, decaying mass.
With his cheek planted against the now rotting loam, Rustam roared. “Let me go.”
“When you calm down.” A vision of Amdirlain appeared in his restricted line of sight. “If this is just in your mind, why are you panicking? The more you lash out, the more this will hurt you. The more you attack, the worse this place will become.”
Rustam stopped thrashing, and the ground beneath him returned to a rich loam. Yet when he spoke, the words were still a roar. “Let me go.”
Unruffled by the mental shout, Amdirlain waggled a finger reprovingly. “Centre yourself, and then try to ask calmly.”
“How are you doing this?!” His strength of Will battered at her control, but she hid the impact.
“You entered my mind, and here, the rules are what I say they are. You’ve neither the mental strength nor training to overcome that advantage.”
He struggled and fought frantically, his mind thrashing against her hold but, as promised, the situation worsened. The foulness of the ground washed over him.
“Let me go,” Rustam whispered, his words muffled.
“I’ll let you go from these nightmares if you agree to work on your mental resilience,” said Amdirlain. “Your natures are off balance.”
“You must get something from this?” accused Rustam.
“If you let me listen to the refinement of your nature, I’ll consider us even.”
She felt him try to nod.
The ground beneath them disappeared, and Rustam’s ears sprung out like fins from the sides of his head. Shooting nervous glances at the surrounding emptiness, he managed a choke-off response. “That’s all you want?”
Amdirlain smiled. “I could help you less dramatically.”
“How would you do that?”
“By putting your mind into high-pressure situations, without the horrible visions and sensations those contained,” explained Amdirlain. “I’ve got plenty of imagery I could use to ensure your meditation is harder, which would speed up the process if you could stand them.”
“I don’t know you. Why would you help me?”
“I know that strength isn’t the only thing that matters to you.”
Rustam glared sullenly at her but didn’t raise his voice. “The strong bull can protect the herd, and his children are strong. In tough times, he can continue going,”
Though she felt like arguing the point, Amdirlain opted to meet him halfway. “If I observe how you refine your nature I’ll learn more about the process and it will help me get stronger later. The more I help you, the better my chance of learning something useful. If you don’t feel that’s enough, teach me Spirit Passage techniques.”
It would be easier to use Muse’s Embrace, but holding onto his mind while his fortitude grows will stress my Advanced Telepathy.
“I can understand that.”
The experiences had stretched for subjective hours but had only lasted a fraction of a millisecond.
She ejected him from her mind and let the ectoplasm membrane split. Rustam dropped to the stone, shivering uncontrollably. “Don’t do that again.”
“Why would I need to, unless you don’t keep your side of the arrangement? I can feel the difference in your fortitude from when you struck at me,” said Amdirlain. “Seems like I didn’t need a deal at all. I could have just kept squeezing you.”
Rolling onto his stomach, Rustam rose to his hands and knees before standing in one smooth motion.
“Why did they seal you in here with me?”
“I’m not sealed in here. I’ve got options to get out, but since I got sent here to learn, leaving immediately seemed pointless.” Amdirlain deliberately jabbed a finger at Rustam. “The question is, why are you sealed here? What led you to give into your aggressive nature and trash a temple?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” rumbled Rustam, his ears flapping vigorously.
“I’m not asking you to discuss it, but you must consider it. What led to your nature becoming unbalanced towards violence, and what can you do to prevent it?”
“I can smell the injuries I inflicted on you. Why didn’t you let go?”
It would be easier to handle him with Muse’s Embrace, but it’s a chance to stretch my Advanced Telepathy and see if I could gain a better understanding.
Amdirlain smiled at the blatant subject change. “I’ve endured worse. How do you get out? Do they check on you regularly and decide when you’re right to be unsealed?”
Rustam’s truck drooped. “I don’t know. I was told I’d be able to free myself. After they left me here, I started smashing at the walls, hoping to find a break in the seal. It didn’t work, and I got angrier. Whenever I tried to approach the seal, it rebuffed me.”
“Are you talking about the vortexes within the rock?”
Rustam waved his truck towards an outer wall. “Try to move through it, and you’ll get thrown back, but you can move fine between passageways that run beside each other. That’s the seal at work. I can’t get past it by reforming the stone, and even using Spirit Passage, I’m rebuffed. You asked me to teach you techniques, but mine probably won’t be suitable.”
“Listening to it while you use it will be helpful enough,” said Amdirlain.
“How do you listen to Spirit Passage?”
Amdirlain smiled mysteriously. “I have my ways. What’s more important is your Fortitude. How have you increased it in the past?”
Rustam rubbed the back of his head with the side of his forelimb. “To tell you the truth, I’m not sure I have.”
“What?”
“Being mentally resilient is just part and parcel of life,” offered Rustam. “What do you recommend?”
Amdirlain tried Analysis again to see if it would report any changes.
[Name: Rustam
Primordial Tier: 3
Nature: Strength / Aggression / Earth / Fortitude
Rank: 11 / 12 / 8 / 2
Health: 37,983,900
Defence: 48,982
Ki: 1,496,990
Magic: 52,228
Melee Attack Power: 55,060
Combat Skills: Muay Thai-Prince [GM] (285). Affinity: Earth]
A thousand health, a hundred and twenty defence, more Ki, and increases in Magic and Melee Attack Power. I’m unsure if I want to know what the greater primordials in the Abyss will be like. I’ll absolutely need to avoid attention down there.
“One of your refined natures is your fortitude, your mental resilience,” said Amdirlain. “To push it, we’re going to do two things. First, you will attack me with your Muay-Thai without Ki techniques, but I want you to remain calm. No matter the provocation, you keep your cool. If you lose your composure, stop until you regain it. While we’re running this drill, I will keep taking jabs at your mind.”
“What-”
Rustam cut off when the screams of the damned howled across his mind; looking around nervously, he frowned at Amdirlain. “Was that from Di Yu?”
“Nope, a less pleasant place,” replied Amdirlain. “What is the worst part about being trapped here for you? There must be some reason they’d have trapped you in a cavern.”
“The loneliness,” offered Rustam immediately. “Being isolated from the herds is so foreign to me. Whenever I trumpet in frustration, it echoes back to me and sometimes fools me into thinking it might be someone, and that turns a dagger in my chest when I realise it’s my own noise taunting me.”
Amdirlain tilted her head thoughtfully as she regarded him. “Loneliness.”
“Do you find that pitiful?”
The bitter, self-mocking laughter that burst from Amdirlain set Rustam blinking furiously.
“I’ve got some experience with loneliness. The question is more: how much can you withstand without breaking?”
Rustam met her gaze, the rage that had been there before replaced by wary confusion. “You sound like you’ve got far more than some experience.”
“I’ve been through events that have broken me both in this life and past ones,” advised Amdirlain. “I heard your resilience increased earlier, so I’m positive we can achieve more gains together.”
She motioned Rustam forward. “Let’s start with some drills at a regular pace.”
“Why?”
“To give you something to focus on. No matter what you feel, work to keep your pace steady.”
“You’ll be too close to avoid me.”
“Then I’ll get some combat training time if you go berserk.”
When he squared off against her, Amdirlain hit his mind hard with the despair and loneliness she remembered from destroying Torm.
Rustam dropped to his knees and dry heaved repeatedly.
It’s certainly good that I didn’t go straight to one of Ori’s memories for inspiration.
“Too much? I’ll try a lighter memory.”
“How do you function?” rasped Rustam.
“I’ve healed a lot since then,” said Amdirlain, lifting him to his hind legs. “That is just an unpleasant memory, but I’ve perfect recall. Unfortunately, that means I can remember all the pain when it hollowed me out.”
I won’t tell him that; it’s just music now to me
Shaking off the lingering emotional pain, he started to piston alternating punches at a regular pace.
When he’d settled, she broadcast the loneliness and isolation she’d experienced wandering the dark tunnels of Ternòx, ambushing groups of demons.
This time, Rustam didn’t flinch, though she felt the impact on his mind; the foulness of the tunnels, as much as the isolation, caused him to recoil mentally.
Amdirlain absorbed how his mental defences reacted and smoothed the process out, intensifying her focus on the elements he found the most offensive. As he fought for balance, she slowly increased the pressure of her projected thought until he crumpled.
Now I know his current limits.
“Why is it so hard for me to hold you off?” gasped Rustam.
“I hear the fears that get under your skin even when your composure remains intact,” admitted Amdirlain. “And I’m being mean by amplifying your reactions.”
“I take it you have a lot of experience in unpleasant training,” stated Rustam.
Amdirlain gave a crooked smile. “Normally, I’d inflict it on myself and not others. Doing this to you isn’t enjoyable, but I’m reminding myself I’m creating the opportunity for you to regain your freedom.”
“Is freedom or creation most important to you?”
“I’m not a Primordial, and that is something I’m still working out,” Amdirlain replied, her tone hardened. “Now pull yourself together, and we’ll start again.”
She waited for him to nod before she struck.
As the pressure ramped up, Amdirlain used his vulnerability to draw Rustam’s struggling awareness into her mind seamlessly. Though he believed they were still in the cavern, hours rushed by in seconds. The effort of keeping it undetected strained her telepathic techniques to their limits, and his innate state sent up shockwaves. Despite the damage his mental thrashing inflicted, her intensity bore down on him like tectonic plates grinding against each other.
Comments
Gopard
Thanks for the chapter! I did expect some variation of this turnout but damn, reading about those memories the conversation and remembering reading that stuff actually had me crying a bit.
Glenn Wright
They set up the 'systems' rules to be consistent between mortals and all outsiders, just the type: classes vs nature varies when you get to that strength. Xuan Wu showed his natures were all variations of yin, just faceted differently.
CringeWorthyStudios
Is having four natures considered normal for a Primordial or can it be less or more? I’m really curious to see what Am’s natures will be now too. Maybe similar to her domains as a goddess? Freedom, certainly, but what else. New Beginnings could be conceptualised as Redemption, maybe? Hope, Self-Improvement or Creation might also work. Thanks for the chapter!
James Skinner
Until I get cursed to Hell I'll stick with wants rather than needs ta very much 😂
Glenn Wright
As Xuan Wu told her, it's about what the combatant needs rather than what he wants.
James Skinner
Thanks for the chapter! Not sure I'd want to undergo training Am-style lol.
