Bie could tell that whatever the bridge represented, it was important. There was also a tickling sensation that pushed against the back of his head as the whistles intensified, the boy still unable to make out what they meant. They seemed to be getting stronger when he moved towards the tubes, however.
Picking up the tubes and holding them firmly, he looked up to notice a long red thread identical to the one that bound his hand simply floating in the air. It was limitless in its length, expanding deep into the dark nothingness he couldn't perceive and waving gently as it undulated. There was an odd lingering sensation that occurred as he looked at it, each second similarly intensifying the loud, almost blaring sounds in his ears.
He let the whistles intensify even longer as he stared, realizing he had lost control over his body. The shining red thread rippled a bit to the right, and he took a couple steps. He was guided by the whims of the whistles and the thread, walking a total of 4 meters away from the well, before plopping the tubes on the ground. Reaching out his hand, colorless Ink streamed out of his body, covering the tubes, before they erratically rumbled back and forth.
Sha-sha-sha shakkk! The tubes stood upright and stacked each onto each other, reaching up into the dark sky into nigh on infinity. There was a faint imprint of closed eyes on the ground the ladder was situated on, and the foundations of the space around him shook!
The floating rune-like effigy on the Bridge glowed, emitting a stream that surged up and down the ladder before the eyes solidified as a marking, the color just as black as the space around him. The campfire a while back from him lit it's first ember, and Ink surged out of the well and into the unknown sky. The light fixture emitted a glow that was blinding compared to the darkness around him.
It was the last thing he saw before his eyes opened and all he could see was Amitha's wolffish grin.
"I was talking to ya, ya know? All nicely. And yet you couldn't even hear me? Better focus on constraining that itch unless ya gotta let them help ya, yeah?" Her face was held up by two propped elbows firmly pressed against the table, and her eyes were trained on his.
He could see his reflection in those eyes, and noticed the white plus sign like cross that replaced his pupils, before quickly dissipating as fast as he noticed them. Amitha rapped the table in thought before extending a hand forward.
"Cham Buk." With these two seemingly nonsensical utterances, her face crumpled, strained. A dark earthen rock formed from her hand before a light rose from its surface, before fizzling out entirely. Amitha shrugged her shoulders and gave him a sheepish smile, embarrassment written in her eyes.
"I can't teach ya magic, or techniques. I don't really have much talent in that field, so all I know is how to smash things? But I think ya'll have more luck than me, seeing as how it took me a day to do what you did in oh…about an hour?"
"An hour???" Bie's voice was caught in his throat, the small breaths he emitted to speak sputtering out confusedly. His eyes enlarged into shining saucers, and a few hair strands fluttered up in surprise.
"I told ya ya couldn't hear me. My throat's reallll dry from repeating nonsense for yer sake." Amitha faked resentment by leaning back with a frown, though the displeasure couldn't reach her eyes. "Anyways, I don't think yer body specs would have changed, though if I had to venture a guess ya'd be about Rung seven? Yer summation WAS at four hundred sixty-one points. Ya need 19 more points of potential."
"I won't even ask what that means," Bie sighed with a drained smile. He felt like his pores opened as there was a stream of energy he could sense undulating within and around him. The outside power could be called over, though it would take a bit more effort to access that compared to the rippling within him. He could tell that he was maybe at half capacity left, and there was a lot of room for the energy to expand towards.
"Good on ya! Yer learning. So, here's the plan: I'm going to duel ya for about a week, letting ya explore how and what to do before I take ya upstairs to get some REAL experience. I assume ya wanna go see what the world up above is like?" She didn't need to hear his response, as the telltale sign of his enthusiasm was displayed front and center.
It was the gleaming of the topaz orbs that a emitted a flickering glow, announcing to all that knew him personally that he was indeed enthused.
--
A week of battering soon passed as the two blue undead smashed either fist, weapon, bodies, and even hair together in a deadly dance that seemed to resemble a knife's sharpness. Each cut and bruise faded as durability went to work, healing to its best capacity and eradicating the rather shallow wounds the two inflicted onto each other. Of course, Bie's wounds were similar in severity to Amitha's because the giant was simply playing around, where each and every scratch he could put on her was earned by fighting tooth and nail.
Amitha looked at the cerulean skin where her wounds once were with pride. To tell the truth, she had never had a 'disciple' before, and was used to the life of a hermit. She went to the Aboveground every once in a while for supplies, feeling like an outcast among the midst of the more talented Guides. As a woman who carved her way up to realm C by undergoing day after day of body tempering with no assistance of the shallow pool of Ink she possessed, she was respected in the Guide community for her diligence, disputing her low evaluation of her own skill.
She was similar to Bie, in a way, much beyond race. When she saw how every weapon squirmed in his touch, how they bent and broke and cracked in his very hands, she felt that it was reminiscent of her attempts to control her very own Ink. She simply couldn't do it, and each and every attempt simply fizzled out before she could be happy about it. Although she didn't know if the young man's mind was as troubled as hers was as a childe, she could admire his steadfast perseverance.
"Hello? Oi, here's a hand! Five fingers, count em! One, two, three..." Bie was waving a hand in her face in a struggle to break the woman out of her reverie. Much to his chagrin, she stood there like a hill, unmoving. It took a while from his point of view for Amitha to snap out of it and fix her attention back to Bie.
"Follow me, daylight." Amitha strode forward, her body lit aglow with a faint white, bright enough for Bie to see the deep cavern's depth. His eyes shone before lighting up, allowing him to see a bit better in the dark anyways.
Checking if the burlap duffle bag was properly attached as it hung perpendicular to his upright spine, he tightened the straps and accompanied her.