Discordant Note: Crescendo | TBATE

Chapter 233: Within the Sea

Thank you to my beta reader and editor, GlassThreads!

Toren Daen

The wind rushed past my face in a gentle caress as I flew high above the clouds. The warm touch of sunshine made my shoulders relax, and the even warmer heat of Aurora's Vessel Form beneath me lulled me into the state of mind I needed.

Aurora flapped her massive wings, allowing me to feel a steady wave of reassuring thoughts as I sat cross-legged across her broad soulmetal back.

We'd crossed the Grand Mountains not long ago, and now we flew toward our destination from high above, invisible to watching eyes on the ground. In several hours, I'd need to touch down in the Beast Glades to search for Wolfrum Redwater in earnest.

But right now, as the light of the rising sun anointed me in its healthy glow, I allowed myself to settle into a light meditation.

This wasn't the same as when I assimilated with my Beast Will, though it was similar. I allowed my emotions to flow like a meandering river, each like a bright splash of shining starlight against abyssal dark waters.

My heart beat softly in my chest, the sensation coasting along the river of my emotions like a simple boat. And following the rush of insight I'd experienced upon ascending to the white core, I allowed myself to rest in that boat. To allow my emotions and heartfire to draw me where they would.

"I will be here to pull you from this place when it is time," my bond informed me softly, barely audible over the rivers of emotion and contrasting color that pervaded my mindscape.

I didn't acknowledge her words, not really. As the world outside fell away, all my senses focusing inward, I found myself subconsciously remembering that impossible void beyond death. The nothingness that awaited me at the end–the reflectionless black and oblivion.

But this wasn't like that. There was a backdrop of void that waited beyond it all, but the flow of my heartfire still trailed on like a lifegiving river, changing that darkness into something...

I opened my eyes.

Instead of a layer of sun-kissed clouds, the Sea of my Soul spread out before me in a calming expanse–Aurora's dawn-like essence on one end, and the infinite darkness of the Void on the other. Beneath me, a still, reflective lake surface mirrored my calm expression back to me.

The fiery songbird of my Phoenix Will chirped happily as it flitted around the space above me. I smiled lightly as I watched it wheel about, enjoying the expanse.

I allowed myself to bask in the heat of Aurora's comforting soul for a minute, just breathing in and out. The feather that rested in my core–the one that tied me to my bond's soul–had constantly outputted mana and power for all the time it had been there, pushing me onward through core development at an unnatural pace. Yet I could tell just from the proximity that all the mana it had granted me was but a drop in the bucket compared to the lifespan of an asura's cultivation.

There was something supernaturally calming about being here in this representation of my deepest essence.

I didn't really know if what I stood on was my true soul or if it was just the only way I could visualize it. In fact, I knew precious little about this aspect of my abilities.

Which is why I'm here to learn, I thought–except it wasn't really a thought. More like an echoing vibration, like pure concepts injected directly into my mind. I didn't so much think the words, as I did... understand the ideas and intent behind them.

I stared down at the mirror surface beneath me, taking the time to inspect my features. The scar Darrin Ordin had given me stood out over my brow, and I looked more hardened than I thought I remembered. My jaw appeared a bit sharper and my hair more lustrous after my ascension to white core, but besides that, everything I saw was Toren.