Another 500 Celestial Energy Cycles each pass.
I can move all of my fingers at once, and even shift my whole hands.
My back muscles against the hard ground are able to flex and shift.
My abs and pecs feel strong, now able to contract and withstand the weight on top of me.
I can bend my legs and move my feet to grip against the hard black rock ground.
Maria is able to move with even more ease than I can. She has managed to lift herself up off me multiple times before falling back down to continue the next cycle.
It’s been multiple days in this abyss.
Simultaneously, it feels like an eternity of total darkness has consumed my mind, while also no time at all has passed.
This is like a state of mental meditation.
I may be pushing my body and mind to the limits each cycle, but it is not only painful.
It is satisfying as well.
I’m repeating the same exact motion over and over, with only a single task: to repeat it, and to repeat it better than last time.
My lips, mouth, and throat have become strong enough when Celestial Energy is rushing through them to call out into the darkness.
Yet, each time I try, not a single word comes out.
Even in my own ears, I cannot hear what I say.
I watch Maria try to call back multiple times, but her words are consumed by the void around us.
It is a strange phenomenon. I cannot understand it.
All of my blood-bonded armor, and even Celia’s ring on my finger, they are all dark black.
No energy runs through them.
I can feel that they are all in pristine condition, but they are as dead and disconnected as stone. The system that allowed me to empower them has disappeared from my mind… and I don’t know why, or where it has gone…
Even my soul sword has disappeared.
I know its energy form was destroyed alongside my Sacred Body while traveling through the rift.
There are even faded memories, of both mine and Maria’s swords orbiting around us closer and closer as we traveled through.
Yet, the last I remember of them is orbiting so close, it was like they were touching our bodies, then, we were plunged into darkness.
Unlike all of my other dormant gear, I feel that my soul sword has not left its bond with me. It is still here with me… but not in a physical state.
This is quite the confusing mental problem, but my main focus is increasing my ether sense to see what is around me, and Celestial Energy strength so I can actually move around freely.
With each passing cycle, I feel my area of vision expanding ever so slightly, as well as its depth.
Watching the Celestial Energy move through both mine and Maria’s entire bodies has become far more of a second nature, and a soothing experience.
Small adjustments are made each time, as both of us try to refine the energy in slightly different ways, and attempt to move larger parts of our bodies or push our perception to further limits, into each other and also out into the environment.
No real words can be spoken to each other, but we are having an extremely slow and intimate conversation as time passes in this void.
It feels like abstract concepts and emotions I cannot put into words are being heard, and echoed back with answers or even greater replies to make me reflect on them further.
–
It takes another 500 cycles each for us to move enough to finally sit up off the ground.
Our hands move together, to stay clasped, as Maria rolls off me, and we sit back to back.
These movements take over 10 full cycles to complete, using the intensity at the top of the cycles where the most Celestial Energy runs through our veins to move.
Our points where we cycle this energy even shift, pushing red and blue energy through our palms, then shifting the transfer point to the center of our backs, then even the back of our heads as they rest against each other.
Both of us breathe heavily, even many cycles after, from the shift in position.
The only way I can tell is her heart beat’s heightened rhythm and the rise and fall of her body.
It isn’t hot or cold in this dark abyss… nor is there any moisture in the air. But—there is sweat coming off of our skin.
The most terrifying part of this all was the moment she rolled off me…
Because, for a moment, all I could sense was her hands only from the pressure in my grasp, and no other part of her body once the cycle of Celestial Energy rippled through me.
There is no sense of direction in this darkness.
If we let go… I don’t know how I’d possibly find her.
As we’re sat against each other, my hands are only squeezed tighter, so I know she knows this too.
–
It takes about 300 more cycles each for us to build the strength to try to stand.
It’s been over a week in this darkness, yet my ability to tell or keep track of time is starting to become obsolete.
Since we both made it to this sitting upright position, the speed of our Celestial Energy cycles has increased.
We move portions of energy through our palms, back, and head to evenly distribute the cycles. This allows even more absorption per round and allows for a faster way to cycle energy back through our cores to the other. My guess is two or three minutes now, cutting the time in half, but it’s only becoming easier each time.
Now, I can feel over a full meter around me on all sides at the peak of each cycle.
Without any words being spoken, we begin pushing against each other’s backs as a brace, and push off the ground with our feet.
It takes multiple cycles to lift ourselves upward, and the other has to lean on the person not cycling energy to not fall over.
Yet, we succeed.
Both of us stand back to back and stare off into the endless dark.
In perfect sync, we begin taking small strides to my left, Maria’s right.
As much as I try to remember how or from where we fell, and tumbled down some kind of ledge to get here, I have no sense of direction at all in this abyss. We’ve chosen a completely random path.
Every step forward is ominous, as I feel the pressure of my foot hitting the hard ground, but no sound comes back. No echo, nothing. There is only a tiny amount of Celestial Energy loss when I try to sense the steps, as the hot sparkling light fades away into the dark stone beneath my feet and disappears almost instantly.
The strain from walking makes me completely lose my breath every few steps. Maria’s breathing rises and falls as well, but she does not get as winded as I do.
We still stop to regroup, and only cycle Celestial energy, standing in place every few times before stepping deeper into the void of the unknown again.
The movement and completely upright position of our bodies allows the energy to cycle even faster and more efficiently.
We create cycle points through the base of our spines, and even through the center of our calves, bringing the cycle time down to 1 to 2 minutes at most.
A bright Celestial visual of the exact makeup of Maria’s entire body, inside and out, glows bright in my mind as the only thing other than myself in existence.
Without any visuals or stimuli of anything, even my memories become hard to picture correctly. It’s like all of my pattern recognition that does not have to do with what is in front of me is dulling, but I’m becoming far more in tune with the single task before me.
Yet, there is still a barrier that tickles at my consciousness, holding us back from a perfect resonance.
It is the small black dot at the center of Maria’s soul energy core.
The more times I cycle Celestial Energy through her, the more prominent it becomes. It is the only part of her I can’t see, or understand.
The more times my energy flows around it, and my senses are misguided, the more ominous it becomes.
This is because I have something almost exactly the same hidden behind a barrier inside my body too.
My Royal Demon’s core.
The more cycles we process through each other, the more aware we are that the other knows we are hiding something.
It is a very strange dance because the more it is ignored, the larger this invisible divide becomes. Yet, at the same time, we are understanding each other on a deeper level, and becoming far closer as well.
The tension surrounding these blind spots rises and falls as the cycles continue, but with no words or deeper way to explain what either of them are, we are both left completely in the dark…
–
Another 200 cycles each pass, and we’re able to take multiple strides together, and complete a full cycle in less than a minute.
We are walking in what feels like a straight line, but it is truly impossible to tell if this is the case.
I can feel outward around me about 2 meters on all sides at the most heightened stage of my cycles, and no more than a few centimeters in my resting state.
Right now, we are in a very calm stage, where both of us have suppressed the feelings of what the mystery within each other’s bodies are, to only focus on a single goal: find a vantage point or landmark.
In this process, the Celestial Energy that flows through us is almost like a single machine, as an extremely high amount of energy is transferred each time. What was only small white sparkles and a tingling sensation on my skin the first time is now multiple waves of pristine white and blue icy source resin that I accept into my body from many different points, to flow through my soul energy core and flow right back around with a red fiery flair.
The purity of the ether’s base is almost unrecognizable to what it was weeks ago, like muddy water has been forced through microscopic strainers that get smaller and smaller thousands of times, it continues to become more pure.
Yet, our progress comes to an abrupt halt.
Both of us stop in place, and stop cycling Celestial energy into each other completely.
This is because, for the first time since we entered this strange world of darkness, something else makes itself known.
The ground shakes beneath my feet.
It is in a slow rhythmic pattern.
It isn’t strong enough to make me lose my balance, if anything, it is nothing more than a small vibration that makes the bottom of my feet tingle. In fact, the faint glow of white celestial energy sparkles in the ground flowing from each light shake.
What makes it stand out is the rhythm itself, as it comes in twos; and isn’t perfectly consistent. There is no way to know how far away its source is, but from the direction the faint waves of Celestial Energy begin hitting my feet, I can tell where it’s coming from.
The closer it gets, the more my subconscious begins to fill in the gaps, and I realize these must be heavy footsteps.
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