Breathe in.

Fight. It’s like being invaded Energetically, but with the added component that my Energy is also harder to control. No, scratch that. Some of it is, some of it isn’t. There’s me, and then… there are cages. I built them. Energy lies within these cages. The Energy isn’t hostile, but it isn’t mine. It belongs to another. Every once in a while, the Energy in the cages convinces some of the surrounding Energy, the free Energy, to turn… and it does. I’ve destroyed their bodies, stolen their wills, but their wills are not mine. I am… we are divided. The image cracks, a wave of fury roiling up from within me. I make a grab at my sword, but force myself to miss. I’ve already scored the interior of this prison with previous fits. They’re fruitless. Sit down, fight. My body complies, if slowly. Blood runs from my palm, semi-circle wounds litter my palms from where I’ve clenched too hard.

I close my eyes. It’s so hard to concentrate, battling these errant thoughts. I want… the same kind of battle focus I get when I use River’s Flow, but for my Energy. The skill resists. I bent it once, to allow for things other that strict ‘swords’ to be allowed, but this… this would be breaking it. I have no reason to believe that skills can be broken. I need to try.

I press on the skill, trying to activate it, and I can feel it guiding me. ‘Pick up the sword’. But the sword I need is not physical, it is my mind. The skill resists. The process repeats. This skill stretches as I strain my mind, trying to make it understand: all things are weapons. A weapon is not an item, but an intent. What I intend to use could not matter less, as long as I wield it like a weapon. As long as I intend harm.

(Insufficient) A low hum, meaning. My argument? No, the skill itself. It’s too small, part of a whole. This is the flow of the river, but there is a source. The water comes from somewhere, and so, it must go somewhere as well. River’s Source, and River’s End. The end feels… physical, brutal. Finality as in the fall of the executioner’s axe. Incorrect. The River’s Source… very focussed. Mental. The Flow… the combination of physical and focussed mental. Fitting.

This Source is what I need. I need to see what I’m missing in my Energy. Something broke in me... something taints me. I need to find it. I need… to see.

(Requirement) The meaning intones again, and I start to see a vague imprint in my mind’s eye… but my mind falters before emotions that aren’t mine. The image disperses, my hand stings… I struck the wall in my aggravation. Damnit…

What am I missing? The only guide I ever had in regard to Energy was my mentor. Did Calminus tell me anything? How to heal, how to imbue, but… the status? Yeah… there had been a weird status screen. The ball of string that was my brain.

With some effort, I call forth that old menu. It glows brightly in the pitch darkness of my cell… and it has changed. The ball, once gray and relatively ordered, now has colors. Some red threads, many green, many gold, a ton of blue running through everything… and some sections that seem to absorb all light. Not just black, but a void. The ball looks lumpy, as though it were over pressurized inside, and had failed in several areas. I don’t know what most of the colors mean… I assume ‘physical’ for red, ‘healing’ for green, ‘Energy’ for gold… blue could be mana? But there’s a ton of it, which wouldn’t make sense. The dark sections I think I can say are the corruption… and this is my soul. The damage is clear, and if this is what it looks like with minor damage, I’m glad I didn’t look when it was moderate…

I wish I could say it was possible to just pick out the corruption, but… that’s not how this ball works. I’m confident that, if I tried to remove it, I might die at worst, or end up a broken mess at best… and neither would be acceptable outcomes.

Responding to my desire, the ball rotates, and I find a snarl. A knot, made of a red thread with veins of blue running through it. It… no, it’s not unintended. It’s a very meticulously crafted knot, but it’s also fairly simple. This is the skill, I sense it intuitively. I don’t know why my other skills don’t have knots, but that’s not important. This one isn’t done yet. Red for physical, so the tinges of purple must be mental… and there’s so little of that. I can’t pull from somewhere else, but I know the general shape of how the knot should continue…

I carefully tug at a nearby string, and a strange sensation ripples through me. I laboriously work the new thread into position, twisting and turning, looping it without having beginning or end… the work is difficult, especially when I have to pause to contain the Other… but I finish it. A dull ache emanates from my chest, but the knot has grown… if crudely. The color, though, is entirely beyond me.

I close the menu, and notice I’m covered in sweat. My palms throb angrily, and a steady drip of blood drops to the floor below. I wince as I retract my nails from my hand… they were in very deep this time. It kept me focussed, but did some actual damage. I need to be careful about leaving myself unattended for that long.

I take a deep breath, and lean into the River’s Flow again. It resists, as before, but I feel like I’m sliding along its exterior, moving somewhere else. (Sufficient) The soft meaning fills my mind.

[Swordsman of the Great River: River’s Source. Cost: 300.]

The notification is more bare than any previous one. No fluff, no pretense at a reason for it being there, just information.

I agree, and feel a strange, cooling sensation in my brain. It feels... pleasant, like feeling a breeze when you’re too hot.

[Swordsman of the Great River: River’s Source (Active) - Uncommon skill. The user enters a trance, raising awareness and focus specific to the target the longer it is active. While active, the user, gradually loses cognizance of all other sensations that do not pertain to the target. Speed of entering trance and maximum awareness during usage increases with level.]

A small smile is all I allow myself before putting it to work. I enter my Energy view, activate the skill, and wait.

My senses sharpen, slowly bringing the Energy into fine focus. I can see small imperfections in the golden strands, and tell the difference in quality between them and the green healing strands. Some of the golden strands resist my manipulations, and I cordone them off. I study them closer, and notice they are rapidly deteriorating. It’s noticeable now, where before I couldn’t see anything of the kind… and I don’t think it’s just from my increased focus on them. They’re worse off when not around my Energy…

I reintegrate them, and the decay slows, then stops. It doesn’t reverse, at least, not at a rate I can see. Fuck. Exposure… slowly makes them more like me. Exposure to my will also makes my will less strong. Now that they’re integrated again, I can see that the Energy that responds easily to me is decaying very slightly, but it’s replaced quickly enough that those that are lost cause no issue. Every once in a while, a decayed strand doesn’t just vanish, but becomes a hostile strand instead. Kill them, move on.

I sit and watch my Energy for some time. I mark the passage more by my ever increasing awareness of my little world, because it has long since become all consuming. I know there is a world outside this, but I would be hard pressed to say I believe it is there. It doesn’t matter anyway. Not now.

“....monster…”

I open my eyes. A grassy meadow extends around me, with the sun shining brightly overhead. Kaythe sits on my shoulders, intently focussed on a group of Carnines… and a Lieutenant.

The Carnines growl, but do not approach, and the Lieutenant merely stares… and repeats:

“Monster.”

My sword flashes into my hands. “We both know what we are. Your words mean nothing, so why speak? Give up. Join me. Stop fighting.”

This time, the Lieutenant bares its teeth. “Never.”

“Then die.”

I dash forward, instinctively trying to activate Fortify, but finding nothing there. No burst of speed, no sudden strength… but that’s fine, I don’t need it. It’s odd, though, I don’t feel as strong or as fast as I do even without Fortify… I feel…

Normal. Like how I would have two weeks ago, if I’d been exercising regularly. My skills with the greatsword, however, stick with me, which is extremely good because seven weak opponents and one strong one is too much for me to take down without skills otherwise. It might be too much for me anyway. But, I also have Kaythe, and though he is unskilled, he becomes a whirling mass of terror among the ranks of the lesser Carnines. I lose sight of him in the throng of bodies as I become too focussed on moving enough to keep from being surrounded. The monsters, too, seem slower and less strong than before, but their loss is nowhere near as noticeable as mine. I slash the head off an approaching Carnine, but the Lieutenant sneaks around and sinks its teeth into my calf, dodging away before I can strike it down. But, when I switch my focus to it, it cleverly feints and dodges, baiting out missteps and letting the smaller monsters punish me for it with more minor bites and scratches. My legs are a bloody mess before long, and I feel exhausted. The monsters pant heavily, but have an air of grim determination about them. So be it.