Cato Emberson's Perspective:
I stood with my sword in a defensive position a couple of meters away from the Goddess. Sweat pouring out of my body, and my breath ragged. I brought up a sleeve to wipe off my face when she appeared behind me.
I quickly spun and thrust my sword forward, extending the length of it with source energy.
Her eyes locked onto my blade, the Goddess flashed a grin before side-stepping my attack and dropping her fist onto my shoulder.
I felt my collarbone snap as my right arm dangled uselessly by my side. Wincing at the pain while still managing to hold my sword with my left hand, I advanced.
Without the fear of death in this realm, I only had to overcome the pain. However, this was no small task. Wincing as I sliced and stabbed my way towards the Goddess, I pushed out my source energy in one final attempt to at least inflict the tiniest scratch on the Goddess.
To my surprise, and much to the Goddess', my attack wasn't entirely in vain. As she continued to evade my onslaught of one-handed sword movements, I noticed the smallest of openings.
'Her right-hand returns to defense a tad slower after I strike low." I grit my teeth as I swung my blade down at her right knee.
The Goddess quickly blocked the strike with a hand now engulfed in flames. As my blade practically bounced off of the Goddess' gauntlet, I spotted the opening.
Almost as if an invisible source pulled my sword to the Goddess, I thrust diagonally, aiming at her center-mass.
I must have gotten close because instead of side-stepping this attack, she completely disappeared.
I spun quickly to determine where she might end up next, but as I turned to scan my surroundings, she had appeared in my blind spot. A swift punch gifted me a shattered spine and another three-meter pool of blood that stained the transparent floor.
~~~
The two of us had been training in this hellish realm for what felt somewhere in-between a few years or a few days. There was no apparent change in time throughout this realm—only the ever-growing patches of red on the ground gave me an indication of how long I had been training.
The injuries I sustained throughout this realm, as the Goddess so lovingly put it;
"They are not real injuries, Child. This—" she pointed directly at me, "is not your physical body."
"You are inside my realm, and the realm could not preserve your physical form."
"Why am I experiencing pain when you inflict these wounds, then?"
"Well, your brain notices the hole in your chest and believes there is a hole in your chest, which provides you with this pain you continue to complain about."
"What about time?" I asked hesitantly, "How long have we been training?"
I closed my eyes at the thought of having been stuck in this hell for years without knowing it. As I pressed my eyes shut, I heard the Goddess' voice ring out.
"Child time flows when it flows and stops when it stops. There is no need to worry about such an irrelevant topic." She stared back at me, completely serious and holding a slight glare.
I began to open my mouth before quickly closing it.
"I assume you disposed of that question you were going to ask?" She stared, even more menacingly than before.
"Correct," I said plainly, thinking about how I definitely would have made her repeat herself had she not spoken up.
I had been sitting on the ground in a pool of my blood, waiting for my legs to reappear. Once they had, I gingerly stood up and brandished my sword towards the Goddess.
"Before we begin, may I ask another question?" I hesitantly asked.
"So be it, Child. What might it be?" The Goddess sighed as she answered.
"If time is flowing when it flows and stops when it stops," I thought about my following words carefully as I leaned on my blade. I did not want to make the Goddess repeat anything she had said previously.
"What is happening to my physical form? I entered this realm at twelve. Let's say I train for around four years. Will my physical form not grow?" I gingerly asked the question hoping for an answer.
"An intriguing question, Child." The Goddess replied.
I stood in silence as I stared back at her, waiting for more.
Suddenly, the air, with a stench of blood almost palpable, was now coated in a heavy, heavy silence.
I stared in disbelief as the Goddess refused to elaborate further in her answer.
"Child, may we move on?" The Goddess asked impatiently.
"Uh, sure—I mean, yes. Let's move on." I brought my sword to a defensive position and stared at the Goddess.
"First, I'm going to let you start using your contract, and with some time, the True Power abilities as well." The Goddess extended an arm in front of her with her palm up.
On top of her palm appeared what looked like a square piece of fabric suspended in the air.
"This is your source energy pool." She gestured to the fabric, and a small marble appeared. The marble rolled on the material in a circular motion before settling into the middle, weighing it down slightly.
I put my sword back down and craned my neck to get a better view of the floating image.
"Now, imagine the marble was not there. You would have a small pond. That is the source energy you are capable of storing and producing."
I stared in awe at the scene in front of me and nodded my head.
"This pool is an accurate representation of your energy. I gathered this data throughout the time we have been here, and you are not the most gifted child."
I thought I noticed a flash of a smile on the Goddess' face after she said that, but it disappeared immediately. She gestured to the demonstration in her palm, and the marble vanished.
The small marble was replaced with a ball roughly twice the size of the original.
"This is how much energy you would be capable of storing with a contract."
I nodded as excitement filled my stomach for how deep the Wielder's 'pond' might be.
Finally, the second marble vanished, and a new marble, perhaps a little less than twice the size of its predecessor, appeared.
This marble was a glossy black, unlike the monotone gray marbles I had seen before.
As the marble settled into the material floating in the Goddess' palm, my jaw dropped.
The material had been floating roughly seven centimeters above her palm. The first two marbles brought the material down a centimeter and then three, respectively.
Although not much more prominent, the last marble carried more mass—the material sunk a near six centimeters, almost touching her palm.
She sighed as she looked at my face that screamed in disbelief,
"Had you been more talented in the ways of source energy, Child, you could have reached my palm in this demonstration." The objects floating evaporated into thin air as the Goddess brought her arms across her front.
Attempting to hide my slight disappointment from her statement, I formed a question after watching the final demonstration.
"Why was the last marble only slightly bigger than the second yet weighed almost twice as much?" I stopped briefly, "Oh, and why was it darker?"
The Goddess rarely had to think before answering a question. Today, however, she responded unusually quickly, as if she had been waiting for me to ask the question. She, being the Goddess, covered it up neatly and answered my inquiry flatly.
"That third marble is what you and the other subjects of Terra would consider the source to a True Power Wielder's power. That name you 'locals' adapted is unique, and I do not particularly care for it. The name we gave that marble that we Gods and Goddesses so creatively designed is the God Source."
Her words rang through the barren wasteland, a sizeable portion of the floor now covered in my blood.
"And as to why it was darker, that was also my own creative choice." The Goddess stated proudly.
I slightly scoffed before an explosion of pain radiated from my stomach to the ends of my body. I buckled onto one knee and ran my hands over my body to check for wounds. I hadn't seen the Goddess move, but I was sure of the pain.
After finding no external wounds, I looked up to meet the Goddess' gaze.
"Normally, when someone receives a contract, they spend time in the lovely crystal cavern where the temperature is cool enough to make the assimilation process bearable for most." The Goddess bored holes into my eyes with her golden gaze.
At the mention of the crystal cavern, a lump rose in my throat; I felt the urge not only to sob but also to vomit. The gory scenes left after the attack burned into my brain, and the images slowly began creeping into my mind. I hadn't had time to fully process my emotions from the event because of our constant training. The only feeling I was able to process was fury.
Before the pictures could fully settle, the Goddess' voice sliced through the pain and imagery.
"However, in my realm, the process is not nearly as welcoming. We have waited long so that you could withstand the pains of assimilation." She continued to stare down at me. However, this time, it seemed as if she was almost proud. Her ashen face had never shown much emotion, making her very hard to read, but the small flashes that did show themselves made some situations easier than others.
'Perhaps the pain and injuries I experienced were worth something.' I thought while the pain that indeed would have made me blackout at the beginning of my training continued to pulse through me.
I grit my teeth as the pain spread again. As it started to sharpen throughout my body, I closed my eyes.
As images of my friends and family brutally massacred appeared throughout my closed vision, the sensation increased again. This time, with the more significant pain to accompany it, rage flooded my head. Similar to when I had retrieved my sword after the attack, a craze spread throughout my body.
It wanted me to kill. Vivid images of me dismembering and slaughtering battalions of every single Tribe on Terra flashed in my head.
As the frenzy reached the tips of my body, I felt a wave of relief envelope me, pushing away the pain. With the comfort came an unsettling feeling of satisfaction and content at the scenes my brain had presented before me.
I opened my eyes and held up my sword. The sword that had once been almost too big for me to wield. Now paired nicely with the length of my arms and torso. As I stared at the sword, I realized that this was one of the only means of measurement I had to gauge my growth.
Because the Goddess had so benevolently answered my questions about my body's growth while we were training, I had never thought about using the sword as a tool for measurement. I guessed that this 'realm body' wouldn't grow with my physical body, assuming I continued to grow; however, it seemed I was wrong.
Glancing at the once enormous sword, I guessed I was about a head or two above Blaze now. Thinking of my tall friend brought back unwanted emotions, and when they subsided, all that was left was a thin but prominent layer of rage.
After becoming content with my growth, I turned inside myself and searched for my pool of source energy. I located it with ease after I closed my eyes and immediately felt the difference.
I had an incredible amount of energy. The once clear, stagnant pond now had a visual depth to it with a bright, white flame flickering and dancing on the surface.
I opened my eyes and held out a finger. I pushed some of my now abundant source energy to the tip. When the energy condensed, a small flame bloomed out of my fingertip. It danced in the windless realm we resided in and held a much cheerier shade of red than what surrounded us.
I dispersed the energy and held my sword in both hands. Thinking of my best friend, I poured my source energy into it. I could feel the power begin to coat the edges of the sword, but when it condensed enough to catch flame, nothing happened.
The pitch-black blade stayed unfazed and unlit. I sighed, disappointed, and faced the Goddess one more time, signaling I was finally ready.
"Someone made that sword out of the same material as the statue in the square, I believe." The Goddess stated.
I stood silently, unsure as to what this might mean.
The Goddess sighed and continued, "The attackers did not destroy the statue because they could not destroy it. This material was a gift from the Goddess of the Mountains and is nearly indestructible. She had created it to deter me from demolishing her structures. Sadly, besides being very sturdy, it only absorbs source energy emitted in a flame form, making it less valuable now."
I stared blankly at the sword as I realized only my source energy or the Goddess' could ever get absorbed into this blade.
"However," the Goddess continued, "the contractors who used to forge these tools and that sculpture were the most potent God Sources the Fire Tribe had ever seen." She began to pace from side to side.
She looked stressed, or possibly, excited, for the first time.
"In a pleasant surprise, you have quite the affinity for our humble flame. The white fire you observed sitting above your energy pool is the most potent variety. If you can feed that flame—"
She stopped pacing as she turned, almost as if she was genuinely conversing with me rather than simply addressing me.
"You might become our very own mortal God of Destruction."