Stronger Together chapter 77 (Patreon)

I spent the next week or so working on force spells. I almost died  about eleven times doing it, Ebenezar hadn't been kidding about how easy  it was to overdo them, if my control slipped even a bit any frustration  or excitement I was feeling would ride the spell and tear the energy  right from my soul. At the same time I felt my soul growing, Yang told  us about how Aura grew over time, and more so with use, and I could tell  it was. I'd had at least six or seven accidents that would have killed  me as I was. My body felt stronger too, even when my Aura was dormant,  the soulfire beginning its slow long term job of scouring the mortal  weakness from it.

At  the moment I suspected it was mostly just keeping me healed to peak  shape, maybe pushing a bit past that, but not having any of the normal  aches and pains even a young body like mine would normally feel was  almost like a drug. Finally, on March third, the day that had originally  been Cinder's ascension to godhood before we stopped it, I finally  managed to control a proper force spell consistently ten times in a row.  Ten times was Ebenezar's earmark for whether I had this down. Each  success made the nervous tension build and made it even harder to  control, but if I could do that tenth casting and keep it under control  he said I could start working on using the spell through my Aura.

The  first three castings were childs play. I used enough force to knock  over a whiskey bottle into the snow without breaking it. Four through  six got a bit tougher but still doable, seven was when it started to get  away from me, I actually cracked the bottle a little but it didn't  break. Ebenezar let me keep going because the crack would make it harder  not to break it for the last three tries. Eight widened the cracks,  nine barely knocked it over, and ten was absolutely perfect. I'd cast  this spell over and over, letting my soul recover between bouts and  using the least energy possible to make it stretch and it was finally  done.

I  turned to Ebenezar, who nodded with pride "You're a damn prodigy boy,  but that doesn't mean you don't need to work hard. Anything worth doin'  is worth doin' right. Now that you have that spell under control you can  work on your Aura nonsense this next week. Your girls are working on  their training still and I hear they're doin' well. The last week of our  little training camp we cover shields. You took to force magic well  enough and shielding builds on that. Once we got you up to speed on  basics I'm afraid we need to take down the Skinwalker. This will be a  hell of a fight so any tricks you pull out are likely to keep you  alive."

I  grimaced at the fear I was feeling for that "Are you sure we can wait  that long? I thought the thing was going to keep getting stronger, and  what if he jumps us before the time is up. He's not expecting us to know  where he is but if we sit here too long he's going to get suspicious."  The old bastard was wily and letting it build up or gods forbid get its  hands on the Firebird spirit would be a world ending disaster. I'd  talked to Barb and Cinder about it a few times, Kara was back and forth  between here and Chicago every night to check up on Raven and the girls  so she wasn't as involved.

Ebenezar  laughed "Boy we weren't born yesterday. Why do you think you never see  any of us at night. We've been combing the forest  harryin' the bastard  and takin chunks out of him where we can. We just haven't been pushin'  too hard. We don't want to back him into a corner and force a final  battle. We've just been keeping him off balance so he can't find the  spirit and taking a quick shot at him where we can. We've wounded him a  time or two but as long as he can escape he does and sneakin' up on old  River Shoulders is no easy feat. Wizards can do a fair bit of damage  with time to prepare. We'll keep him busy til it's time."

I  wondered briefly if Ebenezar was using the Blackstaff when they went  out hunting at night, I figured odds were good he was. I'd have loved to  see some of those skirmishes, but I suspected they might not be as one  sided as the older wizards seemed to think. The Skinwalker was old and  nasty and sly, I suspected it knew that Kara and Cinder were two of the  more powerful foes and was holding back and playing with the wizards to  draw the girls out. It wanted more of Kara's blood I was sure of that.  Both sides thought they were winning, I just hoped our side was right.

Speaking  of Cinder she and Barb really had been working their asses off. Cinder  said her maiden powers, though incomplete still, were being refined and  sharpened every day. River was apparently a hell of a taskmaster and a  brilliant teacher and Cinder grew more confident daily. She also said  the power seemed to be growing. As it grew the flames seemed to take on  more the aspects of soulfire our powers had. We'd called and asked Raven  about it when we did our nightly check in and gave her Yang's lesson  plan, and she said most likely being separated by worlds caused the half  mantle to split from the original mystically.

The  soulfire was reforming the missing portions of the mantle, which Raven  said would probably bond the power to Cinder permanently. What effects  that would actually have were unknown for now, but it would be a massive  advantage against the Skinwalker. Barb had been training with Liberty  and Joe and told me she almost had her first real spell down. They were  teaching her a wind spell, since it seemed to work well with her veil  and she said she was right on the edge of getting it right. They gave  her the same rough timeline as I had, and we would be working on  shielding together in that last week we had here.

Today  though, today I was ready to try to adapt my force magic to my Aura. I  wanted to see what the cloak could do. That and my aspect. Barb and Yang  had both been trying to aspect their spells for ages and they couldn't  manage it. Finally after intense meditation and soul searching and  talking to our resident mistress of magic, I came to the conclusion that  this was my Semblance. The aspect was a unique ability only I had, and  I'd discovered it completely by accident. My instincts had told me the  lightning aspect would lead me to discover my Semblance and they had  been dead on, which made me pretty excited for my force aspect.

First  thing I did was push the force magic into my cloak. Much like the  lightning cloak there was a visible change in the Aura around me as it  started to ripple and distort. Cascading waves of green white flaming  distortions rolled throughout the Aura, slowly shifting around me in  eddies. I took a step forward, and nothing happened. I frowned down at  my hands taking another step and lashing out with a punch. Nothing  still. I considered what I knew of force versus lightning. Lightning  conducted through water or metal or flesh, force conducted through touch  mostly.

I  crept slowly to a nearby tree and reached out with my hand, where the  distortion coated hand touched there was a slight thump and the tree  shook dislodging snow. The snow fell on my head, shifting a bit as it  fell through the force field (see what I did there?) but not stopping  like it was a shield. I ended up with a head covered in snow and small  cracked section of the tree in front of me. I studied the impact site,  I'd only touched slightly but the force magic amplified the impact. I  tried again with my palm, and more surface area seemed to increase the  amplification.

A  palm print was dented into the tree, clear as day in front of me. I  grinned and tried a palm strike. I put real force behind the attack and  the amplification created a huge crash as the tree fucking exploded in  the middle and I had to dash out of the way before it fell on my head.  The snow made it clear this was direct force amplification not  reinforcement. I wasn't stronger or tougher. I tried several other  methods of attack, shoulder charging things seemed to work pretty well  as did just throwing my body at things, though the second also kind of  hurt. I experimented with kicks and punches and they only really worked  on impact but they were scary fucking impacts.

As  I tested all the different methods of attack this gave me I considered  what the aspect of force might do. Lightning had been a bit of a fluke  as far as the aspect went, since I was so attuned to it I had an easy  time with the stuff. I realized that I'd touched on it earlier when I  was thinking about attacking. Force was how we interacted with the world  it's aspect would amplify not just impact but that interactions as a  whole. I closed my eyes and tried to feel for the interactions Ebenezar  told me to feel for when I originally learned force magic.

I  focused on his voice when he had talked to me and his instructions on  how to enter that peculiar state of mind. I followed the directions the  same exact way, and having done it before made it easier to reach that  severed place where body and mind were both one and separate. I felt for  the force again, in my muscles, on my skin, the vibrations of my heart  beating and my blood flowing. The Force tying me together and tying me  to the world around me. I reached out for the magic and laid that force  into my magic using the same instinct I'd had with lightning to manifest  my newest aspect.

I  opened my eyes and saw my Aura was calm and steady as it always was.  Just its normal green, showing that I hadn't placed any of the magic I  had just used into my shroud. I stretched and flexed and punched, and  this time I felt the air tremble a bit as I lashed out. No  amplification, not externally. This was just raw power. I was stronger  like this. I grinned, looking down at my hands in glee. I had fucking  super strength. I walked over through the snow to the broken half of the  tree I had shattered, beaten and cracked from my other force Aura  tests. I reached down to sink my fingers into the wood and had to hold  back a bit so I didn't just tear through the stuff like play doh.

After  adjusting my grip a bit to allow me to distribute the power a bit  better I hauled off and with barely any effort lifted half a fucking  tree right over my head and into the air. I stared in shock at my hands  holding this huge object aloft with no effort, well almost no effort.  This wasn't heavy but the longer I held it up the more difficult it  became. Not like I was getting weaker but the same way holding something  only slightly heavy up got hard normally. Like I was lifting a big box  of stuff that only weighed thirty or forty pounds.

Regardless  I cackled with glee at my new Aura, right before it cut off and the  tree dropped. I tapped my lightning aspect in the split second it took  to see it coming and managed to avoid it. Ok so super strength was going  to take some practice. I felt a stab of pain in my brain from the rapid  switch, and I knew that had cost me. I needed to learn both of my  aspects and both of my Aura's a hell of a lot better. I had a week  before the shield training and I'd better make use of it. This was going  to be how I would fight the Skinwalker. This was my next step.