Finding Pathways (solo)

[Dhissir]

7th Day of Spring, 512 AV Through Humility comes Reason... There was nothing more than his body. Dhissir’s conscience existed solely as an internal entity. His muscles, his bones, his joints. All connected, all a union of individual potentials woven together to make the creation that was…him. His breathing was shallow and slow, calming. His lungs filled and pushed oxygen through his blood to his muscles, fueling them with the energy of life. With every breath his forked tongue dipped out of his reptilian maw, tasting the air. His heart beat in time with it’s own unique rhythm, pushing the blood to it’s many and varied destinations. He began to focus his mind. The body was too general of a foci. He narrowed it to his chest. Tight pectoral muscles were all but still, shifting ever so slightly with his breaths. From there he moved his concentration along his left shoulder and down his arm as he had many times before. His bicep and tricep were relaxed as was his forearm. He moved on, down past the intricacies of his wrist and on to the knuckle of his smallest finger. He was almost there. He began to press his focus in deeper, searching for that key. He began to fill his mind with the tiny nerve-endings of the smallest knuckle on his hand. He had found it, the key to unlocking the Flux. Through Reason comes Control… Dhissir frowned slightly, or would have if his pale, serpentine skull allowed such human mannerisms. The more he concentrated on shifting his djed to the pathway within his knuckle, the more his conscience grew to encompass his entire finger. He redoubled his efforts to no avail. He could not focus so keenly on the knuckle when pouring his djed in, it always pushed him father away. He was a blade of grass against the dainty breeze, tumbling backwards. Dhissir grudgingly settled for filling his arm to the elbow with djed and then trying to focus through the magical essence at the knuckle again. He felt the djed starting to converge on the knuckle vaguely, leaving his forearm almost bare of the magical influence. He steadily, slowly, shifted the hazy focus from one knuckle to the next, going back and forth between them. Then he shifted to the other hand. Achieving single muscle focus was another goal he had been set on. But was not today’s purpose. He let the shabby focus encompass his entire fist. He opened his eyes for the first time in fifteen minutes. His focus fell on the shabby husk that was his punching bag. The fist shot out from his side to strike the leathery surface of the sack. His torso twisted with the motion to give his fist an extra explosiveness. He exhaled a quick breath with a hiss. The impact, though physically satisfying, was followed by a disappointingly soft thump. A soft swirl of dust danced into the air, briefly riding the minuscule currents before disappearing. Dhissir punched again. Through Control comes Power… Sand and dust caked itself to the sweat upon leanly muscled arms as they slid through the air in quick flowing movements. The air of the sunset splayed yard was glittering with particles of sun baked dust. The Eyktol desert was within the city and the very breath it’s inhabitants lived off of. Dhissir relentlessly kept up an implacable attack of quick, precise strikes with fists and elbows. Each pummel paired to a raspy exhale as the Dhani quickly moved his focus from one contact point to another, his mind barely thinking up the random sequence before his body followed. Like thunder after lightning. When he alternated fists his attacks became slightly slower, djed focus taking a moment longer to shift than the instinctive change that he had trained his muscles to adopt. He felt if he could just maintain two pathways he would be able to work on speeding up his flurry of blows. Presently he lacked the skill to maintain two pathways at once. But he felt it growing ever closer. He could shift the focus with almost reflexive speed, but not fast enough. Thump, thump, thump… Perhaps the speed of the change was not the issue but the control of the djed? Through Power comes Victory… It flickered into existence and Dhissir paused. It was gone before he even knew he had felt it, like a face scene caught from the corner of a sleepy eye. He had opened the pathway at his knuckle and, briefly, one at his elbow. He stood unmoved, inwardly exhilarated at his infinitely small but equally vital triumph. A deep sense of euphoria seeped into him, loosening his muscles and making his heart flutter. He knew this was not the invinciblity-complex euphoria of a dangerous Flux over giving, but real happiness. The moment had come and gone in that small space of time between heart beats and he had no idea how it had been achieved, but it had. He had succeeded in opening two pathways to his djed. All that remained now was finding out how to repeat the event. He closed his eyes again…

[Dhissir]

His achievement spurred a salvo of renewed vitality within him. Dhissir knew the implications of focusing all his djed into one strike, even if he could pinpoint his focus to the individual muscles of his body. The key to a powerful blow was not to focus too much of his djed on the striking surface but the complexity of the supporting muscles and bones within his body. When his fist landed on the punching bag, the force was protected out of the first two knuckles of his hand, but the strength behind that force did not come from his knuckles, but his bicep, his shoulder, and the twisting motion of his torso. Even the slight flex of his coiled tail added the momentum of his weight to each blow. To truly expand his potential he would have to maintain djed throughout the different elements of each attack. Laughing ruefully to himself, Dhissir realized that this level of complexity and djed management was still very far off for him. Right now he was still struggling with the shifting of djed and multiple pathways. He began to whip his tail out at the dutifully still punching bag. A low swipe, a high arcing slice, a few quick jabs. All attacks subtly influenced with his own astral energy. He spun onto his hands, slamming his tail down on the bag with a satisfyingly deep thump. He lunged forward with his thick scaled tail and a stiff left arm. Wrapping the tail around an imaginary knee, he jabbed his elbow hard into the imaginary throat of the punching bag, sending it on its side. The bag showed neither fear nor pain, but Dhissir was reasonably sure a less flinty opponent would not react the same. Pouncing on the bag viciously Dhissir dropped low and kept his elbows tight to his sides, to block any daggers or fists the bag might be hiding. With a quickness sprung from his cold blooded roots he coiled his softly shining tail around the bottom of the bag, simulating an opponent’s legs. Then hissing in triumph he bit down and felt the warm rush in the roof of his mouth as venom seeped from his fangs into the wound given. He pushed himself up with a soft hiss. Relatively pleased with himself he gazed down at the black bag while dusting off his shoulders. It had taken the beating admirably but his fangs had left two holes near the top he would have to get stitched up. A repetition of the double pathway had not happened yet and Dhissir was beginning to become agitated with himself. The euphoric victory had all but worn off and left him with a hollow sense of weakness. He practiced every day, and still his mind and body were too weak to maintain two pathways. His own djed, his own body, seemed out of his control. A hiss of anger escaped his lips as the Dhani reset the lopsided bag. Always his mind moved so fast from good to disappointment. He turned his back on the bag, sweat running in droplets, leaving shining tracks through the grimy dust on his back. His tongue flickered. Such selfish emotions would never help him accomplish anything here. He must forgo all of that and ignore the pain, physical and emotional. Progress in this area was born of weakness and despair being overcome by confidence and skill. How could one raise his endurance without first finding his point of failure? In short, he had to suck it up.

[Dhissir]

The punching bag taunted him silently with it’s battered leather surface and it’s stoic acceptance of his every cannonade of attacks. He hissed and set the thing down on it’s side. At close quarters Dhissir, or any Dhani, was deadly efficient at ending a fight. But he did not do this so he could end fights. It was a ritual of release, a therapy he needed desperately. His every morning with the bag was another occurrence he didn’t dwell on the past. He must continuously rid himself of his negative storm to make room for positive. His failures haunted him always, like venom in his blood. He failed to return to his nest when he was a youth. He had failed to defend himself from the Eypharian slavers. But worst of all, he had failed to hate them for taking him. Looking back on the years his every enjoyment, every memory of the good Doctor and their time together came with a pang of guilt and a bitter sense of disgust at himself. Betrayer, coward, weakling. These words were not far from Dhissir’s conscience. They followed him, shadowing his every happiness and forcing him to come up with some resolution. He had turned to his martial arts and the Flux. Breath heaved from his lungs in rhythmic bursts, the battle drum of his war upon weakness. He slid atop the bag and jabbed elbows into the thing’s fictitious ribcage. Flat section of bone making quick contact with leather. And again, twice, thrice, and a fourth. Arms pressing either side of the bag’s throat, bone squeezing each femoral closed. The choke, when preformed on a real person, could have them unconscious in eight seconds. Dhissir rolled onto his back, the force of his motion bringing the bag on top of him. The small Dhani quickly spun it perpendicular to his own torso, pulling the thing’s ghostly arm to touch cold stone floor while his tail did the same to the other arm. The crucifix hold. He had executed it too slowly and fumbled his arms together. Hissing again he pounded a fist against a dust covered stone, leaving a windblown circle where his fist impacted the hard, unyielding stone. So weak, so unworthy of the power the Flux provided. This was why he could not find two pathways at once… He reset and executed the crucifix correctly. These moves were not a regular part of his routine, being more his larger cousins’ field of expertise. But they were worth familiarizing himself with. Constrictors were able to coil around an opponent many times and slowly squeeze the life out of them. Vipers needed to rely on speed and their venomous bite. The bag was stood up again. Dhissir went through another exercise of djed training. He systematically attacked every pressure point with a simple finger jab complemented with a deep outward push of djed. This, of course, did nothing to the punching bag but leave wrinkled indents in the leather. Some would simply create a deep violation in the opponent’s body, sending a penetrating wave of pain. But some pressure points, when struck with enough force, would numb a limb or spastically relax a muscle for a few moments. And in a fight a few moments were everything.