NOVEL WEB Chapter 11
As the meaning of the message settles into my brain, I feel a slight headache starting out of frustration. Why couldn’t that message just be printed on the cover of the book? Why did I have to suffer for a year trying to decode a damn meme? I look up and stare at the roof of the tent while taking deep breaths and slowly calm down.
“It’s just a stupid prank, no need to get angry. It’s just a stupid prank.” I murmur to myself as I grab the book again. I close my eyes and try to feel for my aura in my body. It doesn’t take long as I have been interacting with my aura in a small capacity for a year now with my meditation technique. I slowly guide a strand down my arm and into my hand and then try to pass it into the book. The aura doesn’t fight me until the last little bit where it feels like it hits a barrier. I try to push it through the barrier but I suddenly feel a sharp pain from the same hand I am guiding my aura to. I quickly stop what I was attempting and the pain goes away.
‘I guess that was the wrong way to do it.’ I make the decision to change up my approach and try to diffuse my aura through my body, making sure that it fills my body which makes it feel like I could punch through a wall of solid rock. While I was enjoying the feeling of power, I could feel a pull on my aura into something that felt like a vacuum. As the feeling persists, through my closed eyes I notice a growing light from where my hands are at. I am tempted to open my eyes to look, but the pull on my aura increases and I have to concentrate to keep up with it.
The suction continues for a while longer as the light gets increasingly bright before stopping just as suddenly as it started. The light also disappears and then I feel a cold sensation in my head. The cold slowly intensifies and grows throughout my body. Every place the cold touches seems to change in some nearly imperceptible way. The best way I could describe it is that every cell in my body has been optimized in some way to make them more than they were.
The intense cold slowly dissipates starting from where my inner flame is and working its way out towards my skin. Once the cold is gone I slowly open my eyes, only to be taken aback by the scene in front of me. My entire tent is filled with beautiful, pure white snow, coming up to just below my chest. I look around, not finding my pokemon until I notice that beside me the snow seems to raise and fall like it is breathing. A moment later a rather flustered looking bird shoots out of the snow and lands on top of it.
“Fletchling!” Zephyr looks around and notices me and the snow and tilts her head in wonder. I look back at the little bird in wonder myself. She has suddenly grown to be about twice her usual size and the feathers on her head are now mostly white with a few red ones at the fringes.
“Are you alright Zephyr? You have changed quite a bit from how you were.” She seems to think for a moment before nodding at me and replying with a happy sounding chirp. I smile at her warmly, happy that my not so little bird is okay. I decide to dig Skadi out from the snow pile in the tent and found that besides her being a little bigger, nothing has changed for her. Hell, she is still sleeping, not minding the commotion.
It is at this time that I realize that I can’t see the lantern that should have been on, yet I am able to see with perfect clarity. There are no off colors, no dark spots, I just see everything as it is meant to be. I take a moment to admire my new vision before looking for my lantern. A few seconds later I pull it from the snow, which doesn’t seem to be melting, and realize I can look at it normally without hurting my eyes at all. ‘So, super vision is a thing now. I wonder what else has changed.’
I close my eyes and attempt to follow my meditation technique only to find that it does not respond at all. It is like my body is rejecting it like it is something harmful to me. As I am about to stop, my mind is filled with mnemonics that feel foreign yet I can understand them. I repeat the words internally and I start to feel like something is slowly flowing into my body. The feeling is quite comfortable and makes me want to continue, so I do and slowly sink deeper into my mind while not noticing the passing time.
I am brought out of my mind by a nudge against my hand. I open my eyes to see Skadi nudging my hand and when she sees my eyes open she gives me a little lick on the hand.
“What’s wrong sweetie?” She just looks at me like I had a second head or something before she shook her head and grabbing my phone that was still buried. I take my phone and turn on the screen, only to see that it is nearly ten in the morning. I can’t say I am a punctual person, but I am normally awake far earlier than this. To my surprise, I feel well rested even though I was still sitting in chest high snow. That is another mystery to me, why hasn’t the snow melted yet? My phone indicates that the current temperature should be twenty-two degrees celsius which means the snow should be completely gone and everything should be soaked through.
I climb out of the snowy heaven that is my tent currently and feel the morning air on my skin. It does not take long before I am covered in a sheen of sweat as the air nearly feels like a sauna to me. Despite the feel of the air, I start doing a light bout of training, not wanting to completely disrupt my routine. To my surprise, my normal hour long light workout was smoothly completed in less than thirty minutes and at the end of that the air no longer felt as hot. I take a look back at my tent to see my pokemon sitting outside and the tent still being full of snow. I shrug my shoulders as I’m not sure if I will be able to figure out what is keeping the snow from melting anytime soon.
I grab a handful of snow and use it to wash the dirt off me, as my sweat has already dissipated, and grab my things from inside the tent before dressing again for the day and packing up. Once everything is packed up and we eat a quick breakfast we set out training again. Skadi and Zephyr have both successfully learned their respective steel type moves so I have them training on their type energy attack.
Skadi is training to use Icicle Spear as she learned how to use Ice Shard during one of her many battles. For Zephyr, I have her learning Heat Wave which can be built upon Ember. As Zephyr trains, I constantly keep an eye out for and fires that she starts and have Skadi put them out. Through Skadis repeated use of Powdered Snow she also learned how to do Icy Wind which quickly puts out any of the small fires.
While we are walking along and training, my ears start to pick up a slight buzzing sound. I look around trying to see what is causing that sound that is getting louder quite quickly. I can’t tell which direction the buzzing sound is coming from as it seems to come from every direction. Soon, we pass through some underbrush that was blocking my vision and we step out into a large clearing with a huge tree in the center. Around this tree is a huge structure that looks like it is made from paper and wax. Though, as awesome as the tree and structure are, the swarm of Beedrill looking at us is enough to make my heart nearly stop. From behind me I hear the sound of leaves rustling and look over my shoulder to see a huge number of Weedle behind us, their stingers not looking friendly in the slightest.
“Oh… Fuck.” I swear as I take in the situation around us. “Run!”
I take off at a full sprint aiming for a clear path I noticed diagonally from us. Zephyr is flying near my shoulder and Skadi is running right beside me. Our training thus far has greatly increased our stamina so I wasn’t worried about them falling behind by getting tired. As we took off running, the sound of buzzing suddenly intensified as the swarm of Beedrill bore down on us, the stingers on their arms glowing with a sickly purple color or a yellow green color.
“Skadi, if they get close, hit them with Icy Wind or Powered Snow. Aim for their wings if you can. Same for you Zephyr, attack them with Ember while aiming for their wings. We just want to drive them away, we can’t handle that many.” I order my pokemon while looking over my shoulder. It is a good thing I did look back as a yellowish stinger was quickly approaching my back. I do a quick spin on my next step and use my hand to hit the stinger hard downward, causing the unsuspecting Beedrill to miss me completely and slam its stinger into the ground which then makes a sickening crack as it breaks. I use the momentum from my strike to finish spinning around and resuming my stride. The whole sequence took a split second so I had not lost any of my speed.
Skadi then sends a blast of cold air behind us but I don’t check to see what happened and keep running. A few of the smarter Beedrill fly above us and try to get ahead of us to cut us off. I quickly order Zephyr to stop them.
“Zephyr, use Quick attack followed by Ember. Burn their wings off!”
“LING!” Zephyr glows white with the energy of Quick Attack and disappears from sight. Next I hear a few distressed buzzes from above and I glance up to see two of the Beedrill falling from the sky with their thin wings punctured and unable to keep themselves up. The rest dodge Zephyr but back off slightly as Zephyr returns to my side. I feel another blast of cold air from beside me as Skadi attacks again.
She has been alternating the two attacks causing the group behind us to start to spread out from being slowed or partially frozen. I glance back again as we are about half way through the clearing, only to see another stinger glowing white this time about to touch my shoulder. I lean to the side to dodge the attack which passes by my shoulder successfully only to have a burning hot pain score across my back. I cry out in pain as my steps falter. I plant my foot and whip around in fury and punch with all my might, making my back burn in agony.
“FUCK! OFF!” I roar as my punch lands on the torso of the Beedrill. As my punch lands, the world seems to slow down to a crawl as the Beedrill turns into a solid block of ice and flies backwards like it was shot out of a cannon. The Beedrill behind it get hit and knocked to the ground, not getting back up and the ones nearby have this icy blue coloring on them as they slow down.
“FLETCH!” From behind me, a loud enraged call sounded followed by a feathery missile shooting towards the Beedrill as it starts to glow brightly as it gets closer. The light dies down to show a huge Fletchinder wreathed in flames tearing through the remaining Beedrill with extreme prejudice. She tears the wings off any Beedrill she passes that don’t catch on fire when they touch the flames around her. “CHINDER!” Her rage filled call sounds like it comes from the depths of the underworld.
Not to be outdone, Skadi starts to shoot down any Beedrill out of Zephyrs range. She starts by firing at them one by one but soon she is firing multiple ice spears at once. Not long after I was attacked, the Beedrill back off to be just outside of range as Zephyr flies around my head protectively and Skadi holds several Icicle Spears floating in the air watching for any to get close to me. I eye the Beedrill warily and start walking backwards towards the path out of the clearing. Upon seeing that the Beedrill are not approaching, I turn around and hurry towards the path. Once on the path, I keep moving until I can no longer hear the buzzing.
Once in the clear, the adrenaline bleeds off and the pain in my back flares up intensely and I feel myself getting weaker like I was out of energy. My eyelids seem to get heavier as I stumble along the path. Suddenly I trip over a root and fall hard onto the ground. My body feels so weak that I can’t even get enough power to stand back up. Before I pass out, I make sure to give an order to my pokemon in a weak voice.
“Protect me…”
