There was something about the way Ashani lapsed into her third-person dialect that made her incredibly endearing to Vir. One moment, she was a wise, ancient goddess, and the next, she felt more like an innocent child.
Which only exacerbated Vir’s frustration. He wanted to save her. He needed to.
Vir racked his brain for ideas. “Your cores use Ash prana, right?”
Ashani tilted her head. “Ash prana?”
“Er, do you call it something different? Y’know, there’s the eight affinities, and then there’s Ash?”
“Ah! The prana of origin! Yes, of course. Elemental prana has its uses, but the Origin is the most potent of them all. It wouldn’t make any sense to use the other affinities.”
Origin, huh? So it did come before the others.
“Okay, that’s good,” Vir said. “Can I handle that orb, then?”
“You may keep it if you wish. ’Tis useless to me now,” Ashani said, handing over the prana core.
Vir sat on the pristine white floor, prana core in hand, and closed his eyes.
He’d never once been able to power an orb in the Human Realm, for the simple reason that Ash—or Origin—Affinity orbs didn’t exist. But here was one, right in front of him. There shouldn’t be any reason it wouldn’t work.
Her life rests on this. Don’t screw it up, he thought, focusing on the orb.
Having watched Maiya, Vir understood that mejai charged orbs by sucking prana away from their hands, creating a suction to pull in ambient atmospheric prana. It was analogous to what Vir did with his legs to suck ground prana into his body.
Here in the Ash, though, Vir didn’t even need to do that. He simply let the saturated wall of prana near the skin of his palm lapse, allowing prana to rush into his body… And the orb.
It was that easy? Vir stared at his hand in wonder.
His whole life, he’d been derided as a prana scorned. How many nights had he sat with Rudvik’s utility orbs, praying, willing them to charge? How much had he agonized over his inability to use magic?
And here he was, powering an orb that was entire realms apart in its complexity to even S Grade orbs fielded by the apex of the mejai.
It was silly, he knew. He’d known he wasn’t magicless for over a year, now.
A year… huh? Come to think of it, my birthday would’ve happened sometime recently. Maiya would’ve baked me a cake…
Vir pushed those thoughts away, returning to the orb.
Wonder what this thing can do if used directly, Vir thought, then realized it probably didn’t work that way at all. It was designed to slot into Ashani, to power her. It wasn’t supposed to launch fireballs or summon lightning.
“How fascinating!” Ashani said, squatting on the balls of her feet to look at Vir’s prana manipulation. “You are altering the flow of prana within your body to pull prana into the orb!”
“I’m surprised you haven’t tried this,” Vir said, feeling a small flame of hope light.
“I cannot. I am an Automaton—my prana functions in very different ways to beings of flesh and blood. Prana does not circulate through my body as it does with yours.”
Vir peered into her body with Prana Vision and found it to be true. There was prana there—a staggering amount of it—but it was mostly static. Condensed into hyper-saturated balls that spun rapidly at tens of thousands of places within her body. There were also millions of inscriptions weaving throughout her, glowing with prana.
Merely looking at it gave Vir a headache.
“I can’t believe this is working,” Vir said, ensuring he moved saturated blood away from his palms to maintain the suction effect. Eventually, his body would fill up with prana and he’d have to purge it, but that was easy enough to do. He had Parai’s reverse technique, and he could also power any of his Talents off the prana in his own body to bleed off the buildup.
“There is… one slight issue,” Ashani said, looking at him awkwardly.
“What’s that?”
“Your method will work. But at this rate, it will take you two years to fill that prana core.”
35PRANITE POWER
Two years?
Vir despaired. Even with the time effects of the Mahādi Realm, it was too long to linger; Cirayus would be worried sick. Worse, he might wander away looking for Vir if he took too much time. If that happened, Vir would have no chance of finding the giant. As he’d learned, Ashani’s gates could only reliably open at locations she’d created gates before. The placement was otherwise random.
Besides, it’s two years only if I charge it every day without sleep.
An impossible task. One look at Ashani’s face wiped all dark thoughts from his mind. This was a goddess he was talking about. A living, breathing goddess. Actually, Vir wasn’t certain if she did breathe, but what were a few years if it meant saving her life?
“Please stop,” Ashani said. “I thank you for trying, but the task is impossible.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. I have a few tricks up my sleeve.”
“Your… sleeve?” Ashani asked, looking at his arms.
“It’s a saying,” Vir chuckled. “Let’s try this.”
Vir evacuated the prana from his body, boosting the density difference between the ambient prana and his body. As expected, the prana suction force multiplied.
Ashani stared intently at the orb. “Impressive.”
“Well? How much time did we gain?”
“It appears to be charging four times as quickly as before. Around six months.”
Six months! That’s… still not practical. But it’s a lot better.
“Smart,” Ashani said, shifting her gaze to Vir’s body. “You maximized the potential difference between the atmosphere and your own body. Your layer of saturated blood prevents external prana from building up within you, maintaining a localized prana vacuum.”
“Er, yes?” Vir replied. Some of the terms she used felt familiar, thanks to the bits of knowledge she’d transferred, but it was like he recalled them through the veil of a dream—like he’d heard them before, but didn’t really know what they meant.
“Do you have any more of these tricks?” Ashani asked.
“Maybe a couple,” Vir replied snarkily, activating Prana Channeling in his palm.
Channeling sucked in prana to boost his body’s vitality, and, like all his abilities, it wasn’t choosy about where it got its fuel from. Finding none in Vir’s body, it sucked from the air instead.
Prana Dam stopped it from entering, except for the area on Vir’s palm where he’d let it lapse.
Through that small opening, energy sucked in with even more force, into the orb.
“Three months. That doubled it again!” Ashani said, bringing her face to within inches of the orb.
“That’s a lot better,” Vir said. “Figure maybe four months accounting for eating and sleeping? I can do that.”
“That is simply unreasonable,” Ashani said. “You would have to concentrate every moment you’re awake. But how did you…!”
The goddess shifted her gaze to Vir’s body, eyes widening in surprise. “You are altering the flow of blood within your body, to alter the flow of prana. In doing so, you’ve created an attractive current.”
“Sounds about right,” Vir replied. “What’s wrong?”
“Vir, this feels very dangerous to me. Altering your blood flow in the wrong way can easily lead to injury, or even death. Do you understand the risk you’re taking?”
“I do,” Vir replied grimly.
“How would you even learn such a thing without killing yourself?”
Vir winced. “Painfully. For this particular technique, you could say I had a little help. I got to watch someone who’d mastered it. I just copied them in a safe environment,” he said, thinking of Parai’s memory vision where he’d learned it. “Still hurt though. A lot.”