by David Burke
He could hear the mirth in her voice and he wasn’t above acting the fool at times to make a beautiful woman smile. Not all the time, but every now and then it helped to make sure they know you didn’t take yourself too seriously.
She replied, “Most mortals simply breathe it in. You will have to find your own technique that works for you. From what I have seen, once you find it, it will just click into place. If sitting on the ground and meditating doesn’t work for you, then find what it is that you do that allows you to create the greatest amount of focus in your mind.”
Kyle thought long and hard about what it was that he did to help him focus back on Earth. Batting was undoubtedly the most focused activity he had ever needed to perform. It required him to pick up on all those little details. The angle of the pitcher’s arm, the plane of the pitch, even picking up the release point all aided him in timing his swing.
When he was locked in breathing, swinging, stepping, it all became instinctual. It was a feeling that he had captured here a few times, when he let go and got out of his own way. The key was that such demanding focus could only be maintained for a very brief period of time, measured in seconds at the most.
The thing with hitting was that your brain gathered all that information, but it had to be able to use it without you parsing out the details. That ball would reach the plate in four tenths of a second, so it wasn’t like you could take the time to think through your strategy. It wasn’t about decision making. It was about reaction.
He thought back to the trouble that he had when he first hit the majors. Instead of hundred mile per hour fastballs being a great rarity, as they had been in college, they were suddenly everywhere. With pitches that fast, there was no way to do anything but react. The problem was when you were reacting, you were always playing catch up. That led to strike outs or lots of foul balls.
The breakthrough for him had been when one of his hitting coaches had told him to stop thinking about where the ball was and focus on where it was gonna be. It sounded so lame at the time, but Kyle was never one to try something halfway. Once he made the commitment to a training technique, he worked it into the ground and proved definitively whether it worked for him or not.
He couldn’t say exactly what it was about that technique, but it was certainly a turning point. He stopped trying to see the ball so clearly and instead let his brain, or instincts as he would call it, take over. His subconscious simply processed the data faster, and he tried to empty himself of focus to enable his body to follow whatever command his brain gave him in that moment.
That was it. That was what he needed to do. Supposedly all the divine mantle of Krig, what passed for his soul, was inside of Kyle. Kyle was his reincarnation; some blending of the two was supposed to occur. He was gonna be damned if he would let the soul of a dead god change who he was, actually quite literally. But that didn’t mean he was unwilling to benefit from the knowledge that hidden part of him possessed.
The key was undoubtedly to just relax and stop letting his rational thinking process get in the way. Hopefully if he emptied himself in a moment of precise concentration, he would be able to feel the essence and then absorb it.
Kyle stared at the wall. He adopted a loose batting stance and stared at the stone. Rather than feeling silly as nothing happened, he doubled down and pushed. He was proud of his commitment and wasn’t going to let it falter.
Without even trying, his breathing settled into a deep, slow pattern. His mind became empty. He wasn’t trying to absorb essence. He wasn’t even trying to detect it.
Miniscule details about the wall leapt into his mind. The way the space between two stones was slightly greater than that of the surrounding bricks. The tiny pitting in another stone, or a band of faint blue in the gray stone all took on a profound significance without any consideration from him.
And there it was. His conscious mind didn’t even have a chance to register it. Suddenly he was aware of where the essence was, but he didn’t focus on it. Its unique characteristics, or the way it felt like stone but wasn’t stone didn’t matter.
What he focused on was where he wanted that stone to be. He mentally reached out and made contact with it at the exact point he envisioned it to be, and suddenly one of the two fatter spokes of his inner wheel was filled with a fine, dark brown mist. It wasn’t much, but the space was no longer empty.
Then his focus faltered. That level of concentration could only be retained for an instant. Yet it had been enough. When he looked at his character sheet, he now had a single point of Earth Essence out of a potential twenty-five.
What was more, his raw essence had jumped up dramatically. He knew the amount he had stored swelled after the attacks on the dummies earlier, now it was even greater and was more than six thousand all in.
When he told Hilde, she practically squealed. “That will be more than enough essence for you to safely manifest me for an hour.”
“Only an hour?” Kyle asked. “What happens to you after the hour?”
Her voice trembled a bit as she said, “Why, I have to return to your mantle in the void, silly boy.”
“That is awful. What will it take for you to be free of that place? I can tell that you hate it there. You try to hide it from me, but it was pretty obvious when I caught a glimpse of you that you were miserable. More than that, since you swore your oath to me, I can sense your emotions more strongly.
“You are excited for me to be able to summon you from the void. But it isn’t just because you want to serve. You don’t have to lie about it. I know that you are frantic to get a break from the void.”
“You are gonna make my head swell. Krig never thought this highly of me, or any of his servants. It is almost like you genuinely care what happens to me,” Hilde said. The last statement she drew out slowly as though unsure she should speak the words.
“Not almost. I do care what happens to you. Remember, you are my teammate. I will do whatever it takes to get you out of there. I don’t ever give up on a teammate. I may not have ever been in the military back home, but they had an expression. No man left behind. Well, my personal expression from now on is going to be no smoking hot celestial left behind,” Kyle replied.
He could almost hear the quivering in her lip as she spoke back to him, “I don’t know what to say. I will strive to excel beyond my oath. You haven’t achieved it yet, but there is something about you which causes me to believe that you will achieve it.”
Then she paused for a moment before adding, “Do you really think I’m hot? Like… not just cause I’m fiery, but because you find me attractive?”
“Of course, any man would have to be blind not to think that. But I didn’t mean to offend you. Not sure if there are particular rules for celestials, I was just speaking my mind. With me, what you see is what you get,” Kyle replied.
“Oh, I’m used to having caught the eye of other celestials, many mortals, a few monsters, and even some fiends over the years. But you are hardly just some mortal. Just in what you did, you shattered all of my expectations and proved once again how unique you are. You don’t have to humor me about my silly little infatuation.”
“Humor you? Ha. I thought you were humoring me,” Kyle said. He so badly wanted to ask more about what she meant when she’d said infatuation, but he needed to play it cool.
“But to be serious, summoning me for an hour would be a great accomplishment. When I was not bound to Krig, a circle of mortal wizards summoned me into the field of a great battle. Their combined power was only enough to summon and control me for ten minutes. It was more than enough time for me to destroy hundreds of the enemy. Were it not for wizards on the other side, I could have slain them all to the last man, prior to my time expiring. So, don’t worry, I can accomplish most any task you set for me within an hour,” Hilde said.
“Again, it wasn’t that I didn’t think an hour would be long enough for you to serve, it was more that I was worried about you. I though
t the goal of mastering this power was to free you from where you are bound. Maybe I didn’t understand, but I assumed that you wanted to be physical all the time and living with me.”
“You are just too sweet. Big, strong, and muscular. Bold and you know what you want and will fight for it. And on top of that, you actually care. Once again you show yourself to be a treasure amongst men. Even more so, if you are compared to the other gods. Know that I won’t hold it against you, if your attitude towards lesser beings changes after you fully regain your divinity,” Hilde said softly.
“Don’t think like that. I don’t know what any of this means yet. What I do know is that doing the same thing and expecting different results is doomed to failure. Before, I ignored every meaningful relationship I could have had. Not anymore. I am going to value the people around me,” Kyle replied.
“Well, lesser beings like myself may not be anything to you but servants, once you are divine. It isn’t really becoming for a god to sully himself with those meant to sate his needs,” Hilde said.
“Tell you what, when we get there, we can cross that bridge. But if I am really going to be the war god, then you are just gonna have to trust my judgment about what I want. Fair enough?”
“Yes, m’lord. Forgive my presumption,” Hilde said.
Kyle laughed. “I thought we already agreed you would call me Kyle. Consider it an order, if you need it to be. Oh, and if there is going to be any sating of needs; it will be a two-way street, if you know what I mean. I’ve always taken great pride in that, even if I wasn’t very good at the relationship follow-up.”
Excitement crept into her voice. “Well, we still have the rest of the night. You could keep working on gathering essence. Or… well, you could summon me now. I bet I could teach you how. I’m feeling exceptionally motivated right now. I’m sure I could make it worth your time.”
Kyle groaned out loud at that. Just the glimpse he had gotten of her made it quite the temptation. And it had been a while; heck, it had technically been over three years while he was reforming in the void. But no. He steeled himself. He had decided to build real relationships, and that didn’t mean they all had to just be about fun.
He had high hopes for what was budding between he and Hilde. He wouldn’t ruin it by moving too fast. A part of him kicked himself, but another knew that a little discipline would make it all worthwhile in the end. Once the decision was made, he no longer second-guessed himself but instead felt that this was the right path.
“You have no idea how tempting that is,” Kyle began.
“Good, because that is my intent,” Hilde replied with a full dose of her sultry tone.
“But remember, I said I’m committed to changing who I was. I want this. I believe this is gonna happen, but not yet. I want to keep getting to know you, so that when it does happen, it will be all that both of us could ever want. For now, though, I need to focus on learning how to absorb more essence,” Kyle said.
He could almost feel the disappointment in her words as she said, “You are probably right. We will make you strong, and then you can have me whenever you want.”
“No, then we will have each other.”
Chapter 16 - Focusing
Despite the focus that Kyle had to get stronger, to master this essence power, he was still a man. At least, he was mostly still a man. And the not-so-subtle offers and hints from Hilde played in his mind. It was adding a greater degree of difficulty to the task of gathering Earth Essence.
So much so, that over the next hour, he was only able to pull two more points of it into himself. He berated himself and not even Hilde’s attempts to remind him that many mortal mages would be thrilled to have three points of Earth Essence to work with, especially on their first night of learning how, helped.
He realized at some point, that the problem wasn’t so much an inability to execute the technique but an inability to focus for long enough. The wall that he had been working on had already surrendered the readily available essence, and now he needed to move onto another wall. With that, he also needed to learn how to maintain his concentration for longer than three or four seconds.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t focus on it, but rather something he had learned a long time ago. The type of hyper focus required for hitting a hundred plus mile per hour pitch could actually only be maintained for a few seconds. After that, the brain simply wouldn’t keep it up. So, he had learned techniques to keep himself on the edge of that focus and ready to fall into it at any point.
One coach had called it being the coiled snake. He needed to find little details to focus on, ways to keep himself acutely aware of what was going on while being ready to snap into that super keen precision instantly, just like the snake would be ready to strike. The problem was that he didn’t have much to focus on here. He didn’t have a pitcher to watch for body language cues. He couldn’t take stock of where the defenders were on the field.
As he thought through this process, Kyle realized that this level of focus was a good corollary to the training he had done as a gladiator. It was also about picking up on all those little cues and finding ways to be relaxed in his motion, while still watching for just the right instant to react either to an incoming strike or to an opening. The connection between the two excited him and made him feel more at home with the idea of being a fighter. That inner part of him that he took to be Krig’s memories or soul or whatever also resonated with the common ground he had found. Kyle wasn’t sure if he should be pleased or scared about that connection.
For him now, the difficulty was with how boring the wall was. He could only stare at it for so long, thinking about its surface and looking for minute defects. It never changed. That thought caused him to feel like something had clicked into place. Earth Essence was about stability, lack of change. There was the potential for growth and movement in it. He could feel it, but it was always slow and deliberate.
In that moment, he had a flash of a memory. He remembered how his sister Jordan had always been so deliberate and slow to act. Except he didn’t have a sister named Jordan. The thought or memory was still so vivid though. Then he realized that Krig had a sister named Jordan, the earth goddess. That made his head spin.
Rather than delve into that or why he suddenly had a recollection like that, Kyle just focused on finding a memory of his own. He hadn’t thought about his one true long-term girlfriend, Tessa, for a long time. That alone was a testament to how strangely content he had found himself the past few weeks. Yet somehow thinking about her as a way to focus himself didn’t seem to work.
Hilde came to mind and while he was feeling a budding connection with her, he simply hadn’t seen her for long enough to truly dwell on the details of her appearance. So he started thinking about Nyda. The way her hair shimmered in the light cast from the sconces in his cell. The light blue of her eyes and how he could get lost staring into them. The shape of her lips, lines of her neck, the surprisingly full curves of her breasts in proportion to her slender frame.
Nyda became his meditation. Maybe she was an infatuation. She had only spent all that time with him because she was his tutor. Maybe he was being a silly schoolboy, but he still liked to dwell on her. The more he focused on her, the more at peace he became. Yet throughout it, he kept his mind open to the Earth Essence in the walls around him.
Drawing it into himself seemed to be much easier now. So, he pushed and drained until it seemed like there was nothing more around him. He hit a wall, as though he couldn’t fill up the spoke of his wheel any further.
He looked inside himself and his core was pulsing. The portion of it that held the Earth Essence looked full, but the number still only read as 10/25. He should have been able to absorb more, but it was like it was like the space was too small to hold more.
Apparently, Hilde was either able to read that thought or knew enough to react to it. “You will have to learn how to condense the essence before you can move past the first tier. Besides,
the stone walls around you are depleted. You may need to call upon them in the future if you can’t learn to convert raw essence to Earth Essence. The good news is that you have over seven thousand raw essence available now.”
“So, can I ask you something?”
“Of course. Where you come from, promises may be given flippantly, but in Verden, words have meaning and oaths even more so. My being is pledged to you,” Hilde replied.
“Not sure how I feel about that. I mean, I can’t afford to turn away your help, or any help that I can get. Maybe someday, I will be back on top of the world and able to write my own ticket. But not now. Still, I don’t want you to start being just some kinda yes man, er… yes woman, or yes celestial. You know what I mean,” Kyle replied.
“Strangely enough, I do. My oath doesn’t prohibit me from calling you out for stupidity. Krig didn’t like to be questioned. At least not publicly. But my oath demands that I make my mind and superior knowledge available to you, even if that means letting you know when you screw up,” Hilde said.
“Good, I could use a true friend. Someone who will speak frankly with me. But for now, let me ask this. I’ve got this essence, but so what? I barely know how to do anything with it,” Kyle said.
“So, I think there was a question in there. Well, first off, I don’t know entirely. I wasn’t expecting you to be able to absorb Earth Essence. So, for most of the time you use your War Essence as an instinctive reaction. It enhances your speed, lets you bring down the wall of a quarry, or allows you to stop the momentum of your hammer to swing with full power but still not crush everything you hit.”
“It isn’t that all those things aren’t cool. ‘Cause they sure as shit are. But I can’t control any of that.” Kyle’s hands rose up in a gesture of frustration as he spoke.
“Believe me, if there was an easy fix to this, I would tell you. I want it more than ever before now that I have gotten to know you just a little bit. I think spending time with you might be… um… mutually rewarding. But I’m afraid to tinker with what you are doing too much.
