Depthless Hunger

The group gathered not just outside the outpost but outside the Windborn community. Kai thought about the region as wasteland even though it was far richer than what he knew in Goralia. In any case, it looked empty enough for a real demonstration of power.

Talndim set up a half dozen boulders in a line, each about the size of a person. Kai could only watch, along with Zae Zin Nim, Omilaena, Inafay, Orotaisin, and the Tonjin brothers. It seemed like they were the only ones who would be participating in this lesson. Once he was done, Talndim hopped up onto the last of the boulders, sat on the edge, and brushed off his hands.

"First off, forget this being some easy trick that will make you unstoppable right away," Talndim said. "That's not why we keep it secret. It's more like giving a sword to an infant. The baby isn't any more dangerous, it just might hurt itself. Anyway, question: what is power?"

Everyone looked back at him, taken off guard by the sudden switch in tone. Talndim chuckled and shook his head.

"This ain't philosophy here. You could say something like 'The ability to do shit' or 'Who's stronger than who.' It's all close enough. But if somebody gets a bigger and bigger sword, is it more powerful? Course not. That's useless unless you can actually use it for something. The same applies to magic and all forms of power."

"I don't know," Inafay said. "If people are throwing fireballs at me, I'm going to avoid the bigger one."

"Yeah, and a dagger is better than a toothpick. Scaling only matters up to a point." Talndim leaned back and scratched at his head. "This about it this way. Imagine two strong guys, really strong. One of them can blow up a mountain, the other one can blow up two mountains. But if the second guy is trying to hit his opponent by blowing up two entire mountains, isn't that kind of just... stupid? He's not fighting a mountain, he's fighting a guy. He should concentrate all of that power into a more focused technique."

"You're saying that phases exist to focus on powerful human opponents?" Kai asked.

"Don't get ahead of me now. Just talking about the basics here. Power is useless unless it's applied, and that means focus. Precision. If you take two men with the same strength, the one who applies his strength better will win. Why would that change as power increases? People who just try to blow up bigger and bigger mountains are idiots who'd never survive a real fight."

Even though they hadn't gotten to the core of the issue, it made sense to Kai. The god-like beings he'd seen at the abyss had all been focused and prepared to fight equally god-like opponents. When the cultivator had needed to destroy what must have been a moon, she'd been able to do so easily, but she hadn't thrown that type of power around needlessly.

"Isn't this still just a basic of combat?" Inafay asked. She raised both hands, one with a broad sphere of wind and another with a ring of wind that whistled ominously. "Everyone can focus their power to some degree or another. You use what's more appropriate for the situation."

"You've got the idea. Think of phases like compressing your power on a fundamental level." Talndim sighed and hopped off his boulder. "Maybe this is too much yammering. I got these boulders to do a demonstration, so watch closely."

Their group shifted back as he stepped in front of the leftmost boulder and began winding up his shoulder. After a while, Talndim stepped up and punched it - the impact cracked a large chunk of the boulder and made it rock backwards.

"See, that's what happens when I give it a little tap," he said. "Now, let me put some more power into it." When he punched the second boulder, the cracks spread further and it fell onto its side. "You see, some of the power basically got lost knocking it over. That's fine if you're fighting boulders, but no person or monster is going to sit there like a dumb rock. Now let me concentrate the force, like Inafay said."

Talndim raised his hand and began flexing his fingers - not due to punching boulders, just focusing his power. Kai could feel the mana concentrating, compressing down to a focused aura just larger than the man's fist. When Talndim punched the third boulder, his fist tore into the stone effortlessly and he buried his arm into the boulder up to his elbow.

"Ya see? That'd kill a person, but it's..." He grunted as he struggled to extract his arm. "Can be a bit inconvenient. Specially against a monster, or if your opponent heals. What we want is a way to apply a higher level of power. Not to punch through, to obliterate. Now, I'm not a master at this, so you'll have to bear with me."

The Frontier elite shook some stone off his hand and then took a deep, slow breath. Kai could feel something shifting within Talndim as he stepped toward the next boulder. He was half-certain he could see the air shimmering around the other man's arm and he wasn't sure if it was his physical eyes, his spiritual vision, or something more instinctual. It felt like the man's entire soul was setting its feet, getting into position, and preparing for one clean, perfect punch.

When he struck the next boulder, the movement was deceptively slow. At the moment his knuckles hit the stone, the boulder exploded. It didn't crack, didn't tremble, didn't fall - it just shattered into fragments that shredded through the trees and ground behind it. Anyone who hadn't been paying attention before was now completely alert.

"Was that the same punch?" Raghi demanded, on his feet. "If it was a different technique..."

"Not a technique." Talndim winced and rubbed his upper arm as if he'd pulled a muscle. "You could blow up a rock from the inside out, sure, but that's not what I did."

"How did you focus your mana like that?" Orotaisin asked.

"That's the real trick of it. It'll take you a while to learn all that."

"What are the actual practical effects?" Omilaena asked her question more sharply than the others, and unlike those who were impressed, she waited with her arms folded. This broke up the excitement and they mostly settled back to listen.

Talndim answered slowly while rubbing his shoulder. "Energy that's been compressed on a fundamental level will tear through energy that isn't. Now, nothing is a guaranteed kill no matter what, but if you use it properly, it will be. That punch would break through any armor, any Physique, you get the idea. We call that being 'up a phase,' or similar language."

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Kai glanced over at Zae Zin Nim, who nodded. They'd seen Matiavel the Destroyer consume all opponents with his subtle flames - it was a relief to know he was using a fundamental principle instead of just having some magic special technique. Of course, that didn't make it any easier to deal with.

"So how do you defend against it?" Inafay asked. "It wouldn't make sense if the strongest fighters all killed each other in one hit. Could you... compress your defenses somehow?"

"You're getting it!" Talndim snapped his fingers and pointed at her. "What I demonstrated was called a 'power phase' because I compressed my destructive power, but anything can be focused into a more powerful form. If you have enough, you could compress your defensive mana into a shield that lesser powers would never break. Defense phase."

"And if your opponent is using a power phase?"

"Then neither one of you has a decisive advantage."

Omilaena no longer looked so skeptical, but she regarded the boulders thoughtfully. "How many types of phases are there?"

"Depends on how you count." Talndim gave an odd shrug. "Power and defense, obviously. There's also speed phases, which I wish I could show you but I can't. Some of you who are fast enough may have noticed that if you really move, you create shockwaves and cause trouble. That's not great, if you want focused movement, and pushing against all that air actually slows you down. But if you can focus whatever power you're using for speed enough, you'll slip around without slowing down, the fastest thing on the battlefield."

As the Windlord had no doubt done. Kai's mind automatically shifted on to the strongest elves... "What about presence, or soul?" he asked. "Can you concentrate power like that?"

"I think you can compress anything up a phase, if you have the strength and can get a handle on it. The principle is always the same: if you have an excessive amount of power, there should be a way to focus it into a more effective form."

Zae Zin Nim had been silent throughout the demonstration but now shook her head. "I am not sure this applies to all power. In cultivation, we steadily condense our qi at every stage."

"Thanks for bringing up the next subject, young lady." Talndim grinned at her and then jumped up to one of the remaining boulders. "The most effective way of using phases is to completely compress your strength, but not everyone can do that. When you have some of the principles, but not the strength, we call those 'half-phases.' For example, I have a half-phase for speed. I can't move around faster than everybody, but I can see and track those that do."

"So half-phases are like defenses against other phases?" Inafay suggested.

"You could think about it that way. Or if you don't want to be fancy, it's just being 'pretty fast' instead of 'insanely fast.' But the idea is the same: knowing how to compress your power will unlock a lot of new options for you."

"So cultivation uses half-phases?" Zae Zin Nim asked. "Or... third phases? Two-thirds phases?"

"That's my best theory," Talndim said with a grin. "You folks on Cloudspire tend to compress your qi and make yourselves just a little better at everything, all at once. Hope you won't be offended when I say that's not fundamental superiority, it's just another path. We're all trying to use the same laws of reality however seems smartest to us."

The group was silent for a while, considering the consequences of this. Kai's mind leapt to the great powers of Rosemount: each presumably dominated via mastery of one phase while trying to defend themselves against their opponents' advantages. That would definitely match what he'd seen in the battle of Traeton, the question was whether he could master the same abilities himself.

"So why isn't this taught to everyone?" Orotaisin asked eventually. His question pulled the group's focus back together.

"Partially because people like keeping secrets." Talndim grinned at them. "But also because it'd be easy to hurt yourself or mess up your energy. Remember, this ain't some gimmick. You can't teach a novice a power phase and have him go around killing anyone with one punch. To compress your power, you need to have enough power to compress! It requires great strength and deep understanding of what you're trying to phase, otherwise all the secret training in the world won't do you any good."

"But are we ready?" Inafay leapt to her feet and knocked her fists together, creating a small gust of wind. "I'd love to give it a try."

"Hold on now, don't jump too quick. Even if you understand the idea, you can't just do it so easily. You need a lot of preparation, body and soul. Once you get far enough, we can teach you which phases you're suited to and you can start working on them. For now... better test."

Talndim made them all line up and then formed a fist, which was a little unsettling given what they'd just seen him do. But when he stepped up to Raghi Tonjin first, he just tapped his fist against the man's forehead. After harrumphing in a way that gave absolutely no indication what he thought, he stepped over to Lofgan Tonjin and repeated the punch, then went down the line.

Kai waited at the end and met the Frontier elite in the eyes, ready for the hit. The old man grinned before tapping him on the head. There was no explosion of power, no pain or shock... and yet Kai did feel a flicker of something similar to what he felt when he witnessed the Windlord.

"About what I expected," he told them, then pointed at Inafay and Orotaisin. "You two are starting to build a foundation for a speed phase, but your spirits aren't ready. And you Tonjin brothers - you're going to have to decide which direction you go soon. So all four of you, your next step would be training with elites who are better at this than I am, getting used to the compression."

They nodded with varying degrees of eagerness or acceptance. Talndim had already moved on, and he seemed to be moving up. When he stood in front of Omilaena he scratched at his chin before speaking.

"Now you, your soul is ready to go multiple directions. I assume you've been exposed to higher phases before?"

"A few times," Omilaena said mildly.

"I'm sure you can get the trick of it, but your problem is that you need a stronger foundation of power to actually reach a higher phase. I think you already know how to work on that." Talndim moved on from her to look at Kai and Zae Zin Nim, then began shaking his head. "And the two of you... uh... well..."

"What?" Kai demanded.

"Something tore your souls wide open. Like you took a phased punch to the heart and survived. I've never seen anything quite like it and I've got no theories."

Kai glanced over at Zae Zin Nim and saw that they were thinking the same thing: they'd both been encased in a strange rainbow phase and witnessed god-like beings fighting with these powers. If that wasn't enough exposure to phases, nothing was.

"It was probably due to the incursion," Kai said. "Now I'm glad for the lesson, but we were hoping for more than just a demonstration. Can you actually teach us to attain a higher phase?"

"Won't be easy, but it should be possible." Talndim took a step back to address the entire group, then kicked over one of the remaining boulders. "Forget about the big explody demonstrations for now! You need to start with basics. You're already training yourselves, but you need to work on the compression techniques and prepare your souls to endure it. We can start on all that."

Apparently Talndim intended to start the lessons that day, because he began pushing them around the field for different exercises. Kai considered his potential strategies while waiting for his turn, but when the Frontier elite came around to him, he found he could only focus on another question.

"Are there higher phases?"

Talndim sighed and scratched at his chin. "Maybe. In theory, if you had so much power that even after compressing it, things were overflowing... yeah, you might be able to compress it again. But as far as I know, no one has ever actually gotten that much power."

Except that Kai had seen them. Power phases, speed phases, and likely far more as the god-like beings fought at the abyss. For the first time since that mind-boggling event, he felt as though he'd taken a step closer to them... or perhaps his entire journey so far had been preparing him for that step.