“Let’s go.” Celes took the first step as Kiso and Yuni followed close behind, staring wide-eyed at each other, excitement painted all over both of their faces.

Chapter Five –

A week has passed since that first step onto the path leading from Thunderblack castle into the grasslands known as the Byuki Grasslands.

Currently, Celes, Kiso, and Yuni were all seated around a small fire, close to the dirt road. Celes was acting slightly strange this night, Kiso had caught onto it but he dare not pressure his mother to reveal herself.

“Kiso is considerably talented in Han’s family’s ability…With that much talent for the Thunderblack lightning, could he have any more talent to spare? I truly hope he can grasp the Skyshadow technique. Talented youngster always tend to attract dangerous situations, with the Skyshadow technique, at least I would worry somewhat less for his safety after we part…” Celes was currently consoling herself. “Only one way to find out!”

Celes’ face seemed to grow dark as she called out to Kiso, “Kiso, come see mother for a moment, I wish to give you a little something.”

Kiso obediently shifted his position to his mother’s side as she held out her palm. The empty in air in her palm was replaced by an ancient looking scroll and she willed her spiritual pressure to remove the scroll from her DS ring.

Kiso gave his mother a puzzled look as he carefully inspected the outside title of the scroll.

“The Skyshadow Technique”

Kiso glanced back at his mother, who was smiling awkwardly at him. “Kiso, this is my family’s innate ability, the Skyshadow technique. It differs a little from your Thunderblack lightning as you do not possess the ability from birth and you must cultivate a certain type of spiritual pressure for it to work.”

Celes sighed and continued, “The type of spiritual pressure you must cultivate is known as the darkness type. Just like your Thunderblack lightning comes from heat magic, my Skyshadow technique is a type of darkness magic. You will have to read the scroll to understand the ins and outs of the technique, but I will give you a major hint as to how it works.”

Just when Celes finished speaking, her body flickered and disappeared before reappearing next to Yuni, who had been silently listening to the lecture. Yuni turned her head to look at the now close by Celes as her jaw slightly lowered, “Amazing! I didn’t even see you move!”

Chuckling, Celes flickered back to Kiso’s side, “Unlike how you urge your spiritual pressure into your fingertips and explode it forth when using your lightning, the Skyshadow technique relies on your ability to completely align your spiritual pressure with the air around you. When you have completely aligned your spiritual pressure to that of the air around you, you will be able to travel through the wind, the sky, or the shadows in the blink of an eye.”

Celes seemed to notice her excited tone in her voice and quickly warned, “However! Kiso, the chances of you being able to possess two innate abilities is low, and not without risk. All humans, beasts, gods and the like, are slaves to their genes. If you are born with heat style magic, you will only be able to learn basic spiritual techniques, and heat style magic. The same holds true for water magic, darkness magic, nature magic, and the rest.”

Kiso cut his mother off, “If that is the case, why even tease me?” Kiso was frowning deeply.

“True, it may be nearly impossible for you to possess two innate abilities, but you never know! There have been cases in history of people possessing two innate abilities, so allow mother to be a little selfish in hoping you are such an individual.” Celes had a complicated look on her face.

“Two innate abilities? Then that dark space surrounding my lightning core would be???” Kiso had always felt that his core was a little different. To his understanding, most people’s core would completely resemble their magic type. His core however was shrouded in a dark cloud which was constantly rotating around a ball of intense lightning.

Kiso had always thought that it was just as it was in nature, and that the lightning came from the clouds, but hearing his mother’s explanation, he somehow was able to guess the truth.

“Mother, I feel confident that I possess the ability to cultivate darkness style magic, but does that necessarily mean I will be able to use the Skyshadow technique?” Kiso questioned earnestly.

“Confident you cultivate darkness style…. How can you be sure? If that was truly the case then it goes without saying that you would be able to use the Skyshadow technique, because it is the genes of the technique itself that influence your core’s nature.” Celes was puzzled but offered and explanation regardless.

“I see.. I see, so that’s how it is.” Kiso was growing excited as he quickly stood up. “If that’s how it is mother, we’ll need to stay here another day so I can review this scroll you gave me.”

“Ah…Of course, although a day may not be enough, just return here when you’ve grasped the technique, I’ll use this time start teaching Yuni the Mental Communication technique.” Celes stood up as well, giving Kiso a warm smile, then turning towards Yuni, who was looking on like a lost sheep.

“When I return, it will be from thin air, or my name is not Kiso Black!” Kiso puffed up his chest before dashing into the nearby forest.

– – – – –

Inside the forest, dense trees were tightly packed together. They barely let any light reach the floor, except for one spot near the edge of the forest. In the center of this clearing, a small lake could be found, hundreds of meters across, with a small island near the center.

On this small island in the center, Kiso was currently sitting in the meditative position when an ancient scroll sprawled out in front of him.

On this scroll read:

Mysterious Skyshadow Technique of the Winyon Family

Young ones of the Winyon clan, the time has now come from you to learn two things that will certainly separate you from the common folk and possibly allow you to have some success in life.

The first is how to cultivate darkness style magic. In order to cultivate darkness style magic, you must enter a state of zen, position yourself in a meditative position and feel the word around you, you must feel the nature energy around you and allow it to enter your body through your skin and collect it in your body’s center. Allow this nature energy to form a dark cloud. This dark cloud is what you will draw the power needed to perform the Skyshadow technique from.

“It’s the same? Kiso was delighted, he had thought that he would need to absorb the heat energy and darkness energy separately, but if they both came from the same nature energy he could do it simultaneously.

Little did Kiso know just how important that little revelation would be in his life…

The Skyshadow technique itself has many different applications, which you must use your head to determine the best of which applies to your current situation. In order to use the technique you must align your spiritual pressure from your core to match the energy of the position you wish to move to. This requires another ability unique to our Winyon clan.

In order to detect the spiritual pressure in nature, you must send your own spiritual pressure outside your body. The distance you can “teleport” will rely on the depth of your own spiritual pressure. For example, most of you will only be able to teleport a maximum of ten feet for your first few years of cultivation.

When you have sent your spiritual pressure outside your body, do not fight nature’s spiritual pressure, which will naturally try to push yours away, but allow it to enter into your spiritual pressure’s area. When nature’s spiritual pressure enters your own, you will know its makeup and it is up to you to discover your own method of changing your spiritual pressure to match it.

When you are able to send your spiritual pressure outside your body and align it with nature, you have mastered the easy part to using the Skyshadow Technique.

The hard part, is actually moving your physical body to another location instantly. To accomplish this, practice will be your best method, that is why it is difficult. The only words I can use to help you are these: When your spiritual pressure leaves your body, picture your body becoming the entire area in which your spiritual pressure resides. Naturally when you condense your spiritual pressure your body will move to where it is condensed.

One last thing. When you have gained the ability to push your spiritual pressure outside your body, the only benefit is not the ability to use the Skyshadow technique. Inside of your zone of spiritual pressure, nothing can escape your detection. Think about what benefits that will bring, this is what separates a member of the Winyon family from common practitioners with innate abilities.

Bring pride to our family and let your name roar through the world.

Kiso was currently pushing his massive spiritual pressure outside his body. It must be noted, this had taken him only one hour to accomplish. His spiritual pressure could currently stretch to the edge of the shoreline hundreds of meters away.

If Kiso were to tell Celes how far his spiritual pressure could already reach, her jaw would likely leave a crater in the earth.

“Spreading it outside my body is easy, and I can certainly detect any movement or object within, but aligning it with nature is not simple!” Kiso was currently stumped. He had been pondering different ways to align his spiritual pressure with nature for several hours now and the sun was about to set on the first day of his new training.

“I can’t help but feel like my heat magic is disrupting the calmness of the nature energy wherever my spiritual pressure touches…If only there was a way to only separate the two types of magic in my core and only send out spiritual pressure from one type.” Kiso, stumped could only sigh and open his eyes.

“I’ll just sleep on it.” He rolled up the scroll in front of him and withdrew it into his ring before laying down into the grass and dozing off peacefully.

– – – – –

That night, Kiso was dreaming of a powerful storm that shook the planet. Inside the storm were countless bolts of lightning that left nothing alive, plant and animal alike. Although the storm was vicious and ruthless, it was a familiar feeling to Kiso as it was similar to the lightning in his core. As the storm raged on an eerie calm seemed to travel along with the storm near the center. In the center of the storm, the clouds swirled forming a small hole in the center.

Kiso’s eyes shot open. “This..Could work?” He instantly sat up and entered a meditative position, focusing his inner eye on his core.

The inner eye is something unique to spiritual pressure practitioners, that allows them to view every cell in their body like a tree on the side of the road.

“I need to move the darkness energy to the center and let the lightning exist on the perimeter.” Kiso urged the energies in his core to switch positions.

A terrible pain, like a million needles being shoved into every part of his body, suddenly attacked Kiso’s conscious. Kiso was not the type to back down from something simple like pain, no matter how bad it was and continued to urge his core to bend to his will. He knew if he could not get the energies to switch positions in his core, he would never be able to align his spiritual pressure with nature’s and thus would never be able to use the Skyshadow technique.

Kiso fought the pain for several tens of minutes before loosing conscious.

When he woke up, he was still seated in the meditative position and his entire body felt like it was different. Immediately using his inner eye to observe his core, he discovered the two energies had not switched positions. “Failure.” Kiso was extremely depressed.

Then something caught his attention.

“Wait. Although the dark cloud and the lightning did not switch positions, they seem to have fused.” Currently in Kiso’s core, a dark cloud was rotating like a hurricane with countless lightning bolts flickering inside the clouds, at the center was a calm space unaffected by the surrounding chaos.

“If it’s like this, perhaps I will be able to align my new spiritual pressure with nature’s.” Kiso began to urge his spiritual pressure outside his body.

This time, his spiritual pressure spread all the way into the distant trees beyond the shoreline. Not only that, but Kiso could clearly feel another presence he could not feel before. “I see! So it’s like that!” Kiso could now feel nature’s spiritual pressure as if it was a living thing. The same way he could sense the fish in the water and the bugs in the air before, he could now sense nature’s spiritual pressure wherever his own existed.

“Now just condense my spiritual pressure at another location. Hmm, those two pressure over there are rather strong, it must be mother and Yuni..” Kiso could sense his companions and started to condense his spiritual pressure next to them.

Celes and Yuni were currently sparring with each other.

Celes had made a bet with Yuni that as long as she could hit herself, she would allow Yuni to marry Kiso in the future should she be able to win him over.

Celes was a stubborn woman, and would not give her precious son away so easily. She was currently flickering away from every lightning bolt like it was as easy as opening and closing her own eyes.

Yuni would not back down either, although she wasn’t confident in roping in Kiso, she didn’t want to be denied by his own mother should the opportunity ever present itself.

Just as Yuni had finally predicted Celes’ movement and sent a bolt of lightning towards where she knew Celes would teleport to, another body flickered in front of Celes, only to be directly struck by the bolt of lightning.

“Ouch! That still stings you know!” Kiso was rubbing his arm where the lightning had struck, while Celes was staring at Kiso eyes wide and jaw open.

To be continued!