'What time is it?'
I haven't checked the time in a while. I knew it had been more than an hour since I started training but I wasn't sure of the exact time.
I walked over to my bag and pulled out a sweat rag and bottle of water to help me cool off a bit. After taking a few sips of water I set the bottle down on the bench and reached into my bag once more.
"Ahh where is my watch?"
I took my watch off earlier when I was changing into my training clothes. It should be in here somewhere, after shuffling through my bag I felt a band of sorts.
"Ah- got it."
I let out a sigh of slight relief.
I put the watch on my wrist and checked the time.
11:00 PM|
That sounds about right, the sky was dark and the wind blew swiftly.
'Maybe I should take a breather.'
When I met Fukuyo earlier she seemed so at peace.
After taking another sip of water I placed the bottle back in my bag and took a seat on the bench and looked to the sky. The moon was bright and full like a child on their birthday and it was peaceful to look at.
The Onyx was wrapped around my wrist and it constricted and released like a snake around its prey. As I looked at the moon it got larger before eventually, it engulfed my view and the atmosphere around me changed drastically like it had so many times before.
"What is it this time?"
I said with a displeased voice.
Taking my eyes off the moon I looked down at my surroundings and it was pitch black. My eyes went dead and my expression was aloof, of course I'd be here again. None of these "visions" happened before I came to Aethra so It had to be something. I had to figure out what it was before these visions got out of hand.
I had a hunch though.
I stood up and walked forward into the pitch-black night. I walked and I walked until I saw it once more, the object that had been here before.
The Black Monolith.
Once again when I approached it the moon in the sky fell, turning into a dark sun, turning into an eclipse. It looked like something straight out of a movie, the monolith towered above the surrounding dark sea as it pierced the sky. Dragging my feet through the black water beneath me I inched closer to the monolith, and as I neared it I saw etchings carved onto it.
I put my hand up to the cold dark stone and swiped my hand over the surface. It was rough and tactile but smooth and cold, it was beautiful in a way. The carvings were etched all over the surface like this monolith was meant to be read, something meant to store information.
"I can't read any of this..."
The glyphs carved onto the monolith were in a foreign kind of language I had never seen before. Maybe if I took it to an expert I could decipher it but that was the real challenge. How would I even get it outside of this "reality"?
As I looked up at the towering object I could see that the glyphs traveled further and further up as far as the naked eye could see.
Pssssst-
"Ouch!"
My hand was searing red and a glyph was burned into my palm. It was engraved in the same place where the Onyx lay in its necklace state.
Before I knew it the glyphs on the monolith grew in luminosity before fully exploding with light, the glyphs were projected across this strange reality and one of them came to me.
In front of me was a glyph hovering with ominous dark energy, it whispered to me but I couldn't really grasp what it was saying.
It beckoned me.
So I reached out and responded to its call, I held my arm out and the glyph engulfed me. Sending waves of information directly to my brain was the glyph.
Over the course of a few hours I was relentlessly being pummeled with Rift Arts I had never heard of or seen. A new way to manipulate the energy of the physical world using RC as its catalyst, there were endless things being fed to me right now.
"Hahhhh- what the hell was that?"
I was sitting in the black shallow water and profusely sweating. My lips were trembling and my eyes were in pain. They stung and felt like they were burning, so I tried rubbing them before I fell to my hands and knees and faced the water beneath me.
My eyes were glowing white and my reflection faded back and forth between myself and another man.
A man with white hair.
My head ached and felt like it was being run over by a truck ten times over.
Visions of dark fire and white light flooded my mind as I fell to the ground even more, lying down with my back submerged and my eyes looking to the sky. What I saw was without a doubt, the most intricate way of manipulating RC I have ever seen.
In my vision, they raised their hands to the sky and pulled down lightning from the heavens, and called upon the black flames of hell without even breaking a sweat.
"Master it."
I heard something or someone.
Whispers in the dark guiding me, instructing me on what to do. I raised my hand and pointed it towards the black sky, the dark eclipse being the last thing I saw before closing my eyelids softly. I focused on the whispers with the intention of learning more, searching for how I could learn this RC manipulation.
"Look within."
My eyes shot open and I took a deep breath.
Crackle*
The eclipse above me had started to crackle and move erratically before breaking apart into threads of white lightning that flowed out into the veil of darkness. Until suddenly the strands of lightning suddenly turned and gathered themselves into one large beam zipping through the air and hurling towards my hand.
I stared directly at the bolt that lit up all of my surroundings and took one long deep breath. I held that breath until I knew the time was right and then it happened.
"Phew-"
As I exhaled the bolt struck down and met my hands, and at that exact same time, I was thrown out of my dream and back into reality. This time I didn't wake up in a hospital, instead I was in the same place I was before falling asleep. My eyes shot wide open as I quickly checked the time.
11:10 PM|
"Oh thank god."
I sighed with relief.
I thought that I had been sleeping for a few hours but thankfully it turned out to only be a few minutes. All of that time within the dream only amounted to ten minutes in reality?
No.
That couldn't be the case, the past times I was sent into the dream it felt like I had been there for less time but I awoke nearly a day later. Maybe it was due to my prior injuries before experiencing the same phenomenon.
Psssssst-
"Ah! What the hell?'
My arm was aching and felt like it was being cut off. I quickly rolled up my sleeves and looked at my forearm only to see the Onyx gripping my wrist and etching a glyph onto my arm.
A tattoo.
The glyph was in the shape of a crescent moon engraved on the bottom of my wrist. It had a black outline and the glyph itself was white in color, after burning the tattoo onto my skin the Onyx necklace disappeared into it.
"Eh? What the hell? Did it go in there!?"
I was confused and scared about how the Onyx managed to merge itself with the glyph on my wrist. I really needed to get rid of this thing somehow it's been behaving weirdly ever since I got my hands on it.
I could probably get a good amount of money for selling it to a collector somewhere in the city.
'I'll sell this thing the next time I go out.'
All I've gained since I got this artifact were painful visions and bizarre dreams. I guess there were a few things that were positive though. Ever since I've had this thing I could use RC when I slashed those chains, it gave me a rift art of sorts but I hadn't put it to use yet so I didn't know its validity.
I paused my thoughts and just looked at my wrist for a moment. The wind made my black hair flow with the air and my eyes matched the full moon.
'Maybe I could try out those arts before selling you off.'
I thought to myself while staring at the room Fukuyo entered a while back.