Starfire Ascension

Chapter 21 - Training

Holly warmed the milk up and was first testing the warmth of the milk in the bottle on her forearm before she bottle-fed the Dalith babies, which was so cute Kimberley kept pulling out her phone to take more pictures while Holly made gentle cooing noises. Nadir and Naphtali had a creature that was weaning young and had milk that they had stored in a room similar to a walk-in fridge. Oddly enough the room did not feel cold, yet somehow the food was kept perfectly preserved in compartments. Cyrus couldn't help but think mom would have loved a storage area like that. Cyrus thanked Nadir and Naphtali for their hospitality and the girls added their gratitude as well. Holly asked if it would be okay for Naphtali to look after the Delith. She kindly said she was prepared for what to do, and that it would be no inconvenience. Holly thanked her profusely nonetheless.

After Holly had tucked the Delith back away to sleep Cyrus, Holly, and Kimberley turned to leave. Cyrus looked at the Hierarch realization dawning. Cyrus had never asked what his name was. "What is your name sir?" The Hierarch turned to face Cyrus. "My name is Hierarch Caius," but you may call me Caius. The three smiled at Caius and headed out the door as he lead the way to the transport system. It was a quick trip across town again back to the Oasis of Khaldier. When they arrived in the courtyard again Hierarch Caius led them down halls and corridors. When he entered the room it was not at all what Cyrus had been expecting. He had imagined a classroom or something of the sort. Instead, it looked like a sparing room. with mostly wooden floors and an upper level that wrapped around the walls in an overlook of the center. There were tables within the room too. There were many odd tools and he supposed what were weapons arrayed against the wall. Some of them looked downright cruel. Caius then took their necklaces from them that they had still been wearing after teleporting.

Cyrus could tell Holly was feeling out of sorts. And apparently so could Caius. Caius asked, "What's wrong Holly?" Cyrus knew full well Caius knew the answer, but it was most likely for her benefit that he asked the question. She looked back up at him. "Well it's just this looks like physical training and I can't help but feel like I am the weakest one here." She finished looking down at the ground. Caius smiled. "Physical strength only accounts for a small amount of our ability as the Seraphim. Our true strength comes from within. From the Ruach. I have seen children hurl tens of times their weight over great distances. I have watched elders bring down threats to their families that were far stronger than they were. Part of it is here, yes," He said pointing at Holly's head, "But most of it is here," He said pointing at Holly's chest. "Those elders were protecting their families because they meant everything to them. They found a strength they did not have otherwise."

Caius continued, "My job is to teach you to harness that strength and how to discipline yourself to use it." The trio nodded. Caius showed the three necklaces he had just taken out of his pocket. They were the ones they had worn earlier to teleport. "These crystals are like a focus. We have created a machine called the C.H.A.R.G.E. here on Paragosis that draws energy directly from our star. That energy is stored, and can be accessed via the crystal pendants we wear which are tuned to specific wavelengths of energy the C.H.A.R.G.E. machine can emit if it is requested from the necklace. Think of the machine as standby power. It's waiting for a draw signal. We use the necklace to call on that stored power."

Caius turned to look at Cyrus. "C.H.A.R.G.E. stands for Convergence Harmonic Adaptive Redacting Gravitic Emanator. We created nodes at points along the inside of the world rings. They can draw energy directly from the star. Each ring has six nodes in total. This totals to eighteen nodes that converge and feed into a power matrix that harmonizes the different energy bandwidth emissions from the star and stores them for later. As the machine detects a draw on the energy it adaptively tries to predict which energy wavelength is the closest to the one it needs and it redacts it or modularizes the wave to repurpose it before emitting it through gravitic emanations." The necklace then tunes or modularizes the gravitic emanation into an energy wavelength, or many different energy wavelengths."