Unfortunately, he lacked the time to dwell on that feat. His body had had enough of being deprived of air, and darkness crept in at the edge of his vision.
Vir didn’t allow it. He cycled Parai’s technique faster. First only in his back, then within his arms and legs as well. All while firing Prana Blades as fast as he could. There was no mistaking it; the ability had more than doubled in range.
It occurred to him that Leap, High Jump, and Dance would likely have the same effect, helping to purge prana, but he’d only ever activated those with ground prana, and never with the prana in his own body. There had never been enough to do so.
Vir couldn’t risk accidentally drawing in more from the ground, so he forewent trying to activate them with just the prana in his body. For now.
Slowly, agonizingly, his breaths grew deeper, sucking in more and more air until the darkness abated and he regained his senses long enough to look around.
What he saw made him laugh, though he instantly regretted it when it turned into a hacking cough.
Cirayus sat on the ash, watching Vir in the middle of a field of scorpion corpses. There was something off about the scene, though. Vir searched outward, looking farther and farther away, until he found the source.
“No grakking way,” he whispered.
The ash had compacted a full pace wherever Cirayus had used Balancer. Except, its domain of influence was so large, Vir hadn’t spotted where its influence ended.
That has to be over a hundred paces in diameter!
Vir felt like he’d become an ant in the Ash. Cirayus seemed to have had the opposite transformation.
Turning Prana Vision to the giant, Vir was unsurprised to find the Life, Earth, and Fire prana had all grown far denser and continued to do so even now. The total prana inside the giant’s body was incomparable to before.
Compared to him, Vir felt stunted. He’d blocked out that very prana that desired to rush into him. Prana that would have strengthened him. Doing so saved his life, but it also meant he received none of the strengthening benefits of the dense atmospheric prana.
Back at Brij, he’d been weak and prana-starved. The moment he’d learned to keep it from leaking out, his vitality and endurance soared. He had more energy, and he could run miles without resting. With this much prana around, he could scarcely imagine the feats he’d be able to achieve.
He didn’t need to imagine. One look at the demon beside him showed him. In the Human Realm, Cirayus had been an apex warrior. Strong, skillful, but still mortal. Now? It was as though he’d turned into a demigod.
“You seem better now,” the giant said.
Vir nodded. “No thanks to you,” he said in a voice that was harsher than he’d intended. “I mean, you could’ve given me a tip or two.”
“And who was the one who let their hormones get to their head? Who was it who rushed headlong into the Ash, hmm?”
Vir averted his eyes. “Not the smartest move, admittedly.”
“Lad, everyone deals with the weight of the prana in the Ash differently. For most, it is merely an uncomfortable experience. I’ve never seen someone have such a violent reaction. I’m afraid nothing I said would’ve helped.”
True enough. Vir had to rely on his ability to purge prana from his body, as well as Parai’s technique—which Cirayus didn’t even know about.
“Are you better now?” the four-armed demon asked, rising to his feet. “We’d best get a move on. The Abyssal Flats are no place to linger.”
“You…” Vir coughed. “You know where we are?”
“Aye, I recognize it. ’Tis both a lucky and tragic place to wind up. Lucky, because we are somewhat nearby to some items I stashed before exiting this realm. Items we absolutely need if we are to make it across.”
“What’s tragic about it?”
“It is as far as we can be from all known Ash Gates. We have a long journey ahead of us, I’m afraid. A long and arduous journey.”
Vir tried to stand but found his legs buckling from under him. It wasn’t that his weight was greater here, at least he didn’t think it was. Rather, the prana in his body was out of balance. By struggling to purge the prana from him, he’d overcompensated and burned away too much.
And yet, if he broke his concentration for even a moment, the prana would rush into his body, triggering a thousand needles of pain and suffocation all over again.
It was like someone was trying to inflate his blood, filling it to capacity, then stretching it until it burst.
Vir shuddered. If such a thing ever happened, he would surely die.
Taking a moment to center himself, he worked Parai’s reverse technique, tuning it to allow just enough prana in to feel normal. It wasn’t too difficult—so long as he was sitting down, concentrating on it. But the movement when he tried to get up lapsed his concentration and sent prana pouring into his body again.
Over the next half hour, Vir stumbled and lurched, until Cirayus called out more dangerous threats approaching. Scavengers, hungry to gorge themselves on the feast of dead scorpions that ringed the place, circled high above.
Cirayus picked Vir up gently, hoisting him onto his shoulder.
“It is alright. You survived the initial few minutes. The rest is merely a matter of time, and we’ll have plenty of that later. More than plenty.”
There was something about Cirayus’ tone that piqued Vir’s interest. Like the giant was leading him on.
“What do you mean? Didn’t you just say we didn’t have enough time? Isn’t that why you wanted us to enter right away?”
“Aye. It’s just that time in this place does not progress at the same rate as the other realms. It is something only those of us who’ve spent a great deal of it inside are aware of.”
“You mean time progresses more slowly here?”
Cirayus stroked his beard. “Not quite. Time is… fluid, here. One day in the Ash is closer to one week outside where we currently are. But as we venture deeper, the opposite becomes true. Deeper into the Ash, one week here is more like one day outside, though it is hard to measure. As I said, we have plenty of time to achieve our goal.”
“Our goal. You mean making it to the other side, right?”
The giant smiled evilly. “Oh no. That was never our goal, young Vir. Our goal is to forge you. To temper you. To hone you into a walking force of devastation so powerful that when we emerge, the denizens in the Demon Realm won’t dare resist.”
Vir shivered. There was a fanaticism behind Cirayus’ words that made him uncomfortable. That, more than the Ash itself, scared him. It terrified him.
What does he mean? What’s that supposed to mean?
2ACCLIMATIZATION
By the time Cirayus arrived at the base of the blackened mountains whose jagged peaks endured endless lightning, Vir had nearly blacked out. And that was with being carried by the giant on his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
If he had to walk? He’d have collapsed long ago.
“There’s no shame in it, lad,” the giant said. “The Ash is not to be taken lightly.”
“Thought… it’d be easier… here,” Vir said through gritted teeth. The reason he’d chosen Matali as his entry point was that the monsters in this area of the Ash were supposedly weaker, the prana less dense.
“Aye, easier, not easy. The monsters in the Abyssal Flats are among the weakest in all the Ash. You chose well.”