Solo A Ghostly Hand I

[Willis Efram]

1 Summer 525

Stretching from atop his bed Willis Efram prepared himself for some training. Unlike the training he did back in Riverfall it did not involve hitting things, sparring, running, or other such physical activities. Instead it involved sitting, and doing very little. Once they felt suitably stretched Willis rose from his bed for a few moments to gather his coinpouch and returned after placing a few gold mizas atop his sheets next to were he planned to sit. With that done Willis took up a seated position once more, Efram silently waiting in the back of his mind and letting Willis get things started and ready to pitch in if a problem arose.

Being a new season and ready to take a bit of a break from work Willis had decided to do something that would strengthen his abilities and that he hoped would prove useful in the future. Namely practicing his projection. While the Akontak seemed to almost innately grasp his own internal energies used in magic the magic itself still required training and refinement. As Willis thought on this he mentally pictured a tail growing from his tailbone, and him trying to move it. Even if he had a strong and solid tail and knew it was there, surely training the muscles required to control it well would take time and practice. Similarly to this Willis thought of his magics. He could perceive and move his magical energies easily, but turning that energy into a specific magic was like controlling said new limb freshly grown and took time to learn and strengthen. But with enough work, or so he theorized, he would be left with a solid well connected limb he could freely control and with well built muscles allowing it to do heavier tasks.

Focusing down on his hands laid out before him Willis pondered for a moment before focusing on his left hand, feeling the energies within his body and willing the parts of it in his left hand to begin to move in the proscribed fashion of projection. Then picturing it in his minds eye Willis raised up his physical right hand and with a gesture paired with the mental image lightly chopped at his left wrist with his right hand. In his mind though he imagined his astral body being detached there, and began to work at accomplishing this task.

Having been shown the proper method before, Willis began the slow work of detaching the astral body of his left hand starting at his wrist and working outward. Focusing on the first joint he had gestured at Willis pushed his energies into his astral wrist, willing the joint to detach from the greater whole of his astral body. And he kept at it... And kept at it... Focusing his energies and mental image until finally after a chime or two he "felt" the pop of his astral body as his wrist joint came away from his remaining form.

With his wrist free Willis felt a small numbness in that part of his hand as that part of his body lost the ability to be used directly. With that first step done Willis continued his work, slowly working his way up his hand from his wrist to the next sets of joints he wanted to work free within his astral form.

WC: 555

[Willis Efram]

Having freed the astral form of his wrist, Willis worked on freeing the rest of his hand further up from the joint. Once the main joint of the wrist was free the process was easier for a bit, the center of his palm and the meat of his hand being freed with just a few more moments focused attention and direction of his internal energies with focused intent to do so. However once the next set of joints was reached the process once more slowed.

Focusing for a moment Willis looked down at his hand and slowly moved each finger. Then one by one he counted out the joints. One, two, three. Each finger from his pinky to his thumb had three joints, the one where his finger met his palm, then two more along his finger on each knuckle. For uniformity he could try to release all of the fingers at once, but at his current skill he did not think he could manage that. With five fingers total that meant... Fifteen joints, the Akontak slowly did the math to figure it out, fifteen finger related joints plus his wrist... So from wrist upward on one hand that was sixteen joints total.

With this in mind Willis continued his work, once more mentally picturing the astral form at the joint releasing from his body, and making a chopping motion with his right hand. Starting with his thumb Willis pictured the astral body separating from his flesh and willed the djed within his body to act as he so desired. Flowing said djed into the first joint of his thumb he pictured it separating and kept in flowing more energy while he focused on this action... Much easier than the larger wrist joint the thumb's first joint did not take long to separate. Perhaps, he reasoned, the smaller the joint the easier or less work it was to do?

With that first one done Willis repeated the action on his other four fingers, one by one chopping at each and willing his energies to that spot to pull the astral form there loose. In short order all five fingers initial joint connecting to the palm was loosed, and with more shifting and willing and pulling the rest of the hand and flesh of each finger was loosed... Up to the next set of joints.

Like with the other these were not too hard to loose, chopping at each knuckle one by one till each of the five were freed. And then pulling further the rest of his finger flesh was loosed up to the final joint... With one final push and a few simple chopping motions one by one each finger joint was freed and but moments later the rest of the fingers flesh were loosed from their astral form. Something he noticed while doing the work, each small joint was easier than the former bigger ones, until it was quite easy to loose the final few joints. Finally having completed this task Willis felt his entire left hand from wrist to fingertips pull free, sensing it slowly floating above his hand at his direction and watching it slowly move at his willing just as his normal flesh hand did.

With a thought Willis flexed and moved the ghostly appendage, feeling out each finger. To the Akontak it was an odd sensation, his fleshy hand numb but his projected hand there above it. He also noticed he had a sense of where it was, sort of how he knew without looking where his normal hand was, and wondered if this was some tenet of his body inherent in it and not lost when in astral form.

WC: 616

[Willis Efram]

Having managed to free his astral left hand from his body Willis was now prepared to actually use said hand. While not something he was very skilled at yet the Akontak planned to start small, hence the coins sitting in front of him.

Focusing on the floating loose hand, Willis willed it to move down and grab one of the coins. At his willing the hand moved down slowly, opened, and... Passed right through the coin and top of the bed like a ghostly hand was known for doing. Frowning in concentration Willis puzzled on this for a few moments, before realizing he needed to also focusing on making the hand interact and become physical when going to touch the object not just focus on moving the hand over the coin as he would with his normal physical hand.

His frown turning into a smile at his realization, Willis moved the hand back up and prepared for another try. Focusing on his ghostly hand Willis mentally pictured and willed the invisible hand to become physical, and then pictured his hand moving to reach down and scoop up the coin. At the same time he did this he moved his other hand through the air, miming out the action with the simple gesture to help him understand the motion. With a movement of his energies and ghostly hand the appendage moved down toward the bed and coin. While he could sense this through his awareness of the limb he could not see it, and so it was like reaching to pick something up while looking at the thing but not the hand that would be doing the picking up. An odd experience, the Akontak found.

This time he could feel the physical nature of the hand if not see if, and felt it slowly reaching down... Only to crash into the bed and miss the coin entirely by several inches. The bed, being a large physical object, and his hand currently being physical, did not let the other pass through. Instead for a moment he thought he saw his ghostly hand flicker as an outline, and then felt it bounce back up and away from the bed.

Realizing just how clumsy his astral form was when not inside his flesh body, Willis let out a sigh and steeled himself to keep at his work. Practice was key, and while he was rough now he was sure with enough practice he could do anything. Even pick up a coin! Efram for his part laughed silently in their mind, sending a mental picture of a toddler trying and failing to pick up a small object to Willis, only to celebrate greatly when they eventually manged it.

"Whatever Efram, its small steps okay! Maybe it is small, but this small step will help me up to the next larger one!"

With a concerted effort Willis once more moved his astral hand to try and scoop it up, focusing his will, intent, and energies on scooping the coin up in his hand. Once more he slowly willed the hand down, willed it solid... And reached out with his scooped hand while miming the motion with his other physical hand in the open. And... He failed... However, a bit of excitement running through him, Willis had managed to move the coin. Or nudged it really as his hand passed it, but still he had moved it! An entire half an inch to the left! Celebrating at the small win and improvement Willis redoubled his efforts again.

WC: 590

[Willis Efram]

Having managed to slightly move the coin which was his target, Willis slowly maneuvered his hand back above it. While he could move the hand, it was no where near as dexterous as normal when directly controlling his flesh hand, and was more like trying to move another hand by moving the first hand and getting the second hand to do the specific action. To call it a disconnected feeling was putting it mildly.

However Willis was not one to give in just because something was difficult, and so he kept at it. Despite his perseverance though Willis was beginning to feel the projected limb grow... Tired? That seemed, in the Akontaks mind, the best term to describe it. Going back to his earlier mental imagery of a newly grown tail, he assumed this was because the astral equivalent of the forms muscles were tired from the effort. It was not so much that he had to quite now, but he could feel the limb slowly growing more sluggish and decided after one more attempt he would begin the process of reattaching the body part.

Focusing on the hand closely while mirroring the motion with his other hand Willis guided the limb down towards the coin atop the bed. Along with that he willed the hand to be solid, and to make contact with the coin. Slowly he moved downward with his hand, aiming towards the coin on the bed, flattened out his hand, and brushed it across the top of the bed while moving towards the coin. Finally he bent his hand to the side and tried to scoop up the coin... Only to catch the edge of the coin with his hand and ended up flipping the coin over rather than picking it up.

Still, Willis reasoned, this was an improvement over his former attempts. Likewise, he believed, once he had a rest and was ready to make another attempt he would do much better the next time after having strengthened his control and endurance in the projected body part.

Slowly willing the tired limb back towards his fleshy hand Willis lifted the rest of his arm up until the flopping appendage at the end of said limb roughly met with the ghostly insubstantial body part. With that Willis began the process of reversing what he had done before, starting by willing the finger tips back into place and pouring his focus and energies into bonding the two back into one whole.

Though the limb was tired he had not been at it that long and so it was not that difficult to reattach it, and while slow but steady he knew he had to properly do things now just as he had when removing the limb. Using his right hand to massage his fingertips he willed the astral to join the mundane hand before him, and slowly felt his finger tips go from numb to aware. Once he had started this the process grew a bit easier, at least until he ran into the first outermost knuckle on each finger and the process suddenly grew trickier as it had been when detaching those same joints.

WC: 528

[Willis Efram]

Focusing on the task at hand, Willis slowly worked on reattaching his hand bit by bit. The first hurdle was the smallest set of joints, the outermost knuckle. While he had made a chopping motion before when detaching, now he made a rubbing motion on each joint in turn while mentally picturing the two pieces joining and fusing back together in his hand. Between these gestures and his mental image he was able to flow his energies properly and slowly one by one reattach the joint of each knuckle.

With the inverse of a popping sound that was only audible in Willis mind he felt each knuckle slowly come back as he rubbed on them, similar to what one might do when a finger fell asleep from something sitting on it. Then moving on to the next finger he would repeat this process, until each outermost knuckle's astral form was refused to his flesh body.

Pressing onward Willis slowly fed his astral form back into his physical, feeling his fingers slowly expand their area of awareness from their earlier numbness. Soon enough the second set of knuckles in from his fingertips was met, which being a bit bigger was a bit harder than the more outer ones. However the process he had used before seemed to work. A mental image, a massaging gesturing on the joint with his good hand, and willing the energies along to the desired task seemed to do it and one by one each of those joints joined.

From there Willis met a longer bit of flesh before the final finger joint, stroking along his fingers as he imagined massaging and kneading the astral form back into its proper shape and place. One by one each of the fingers reworked itself and awoken from its slumber, finally reaching the finger joint where the finger met the palm of his hand. Having repeated the action several times it did not take long to do these, and felt that he was slowly growing more practiced with it.

Finally Willis had reached the largest open part of his hand, the palm, which he massaged back into place by rubbing his other hand against it palm to palm, running along the meat of his hand till he reached the writ. With that done all that was left was the final joint that had been disconnected, the wrist joint, which was also the hardest.

Stroking across his wrist Willis pushed his energies and urged his astral form to settle back into its proper place. In his mind he pictured a slow melding, and a slow trickle of power into the task of bonding the two. This time it took nearly a full chime, but finally the process was done and Willis had finished. Checking his work Willis felt along his hand and checked each part. His wrist, palm, fingers one by one, and each were no longer numb. With a final sigh Willis opened and closed his physical hand, slowly feeling it out, once more feeling the confident motion of his hand. Tired, more mentally than physically, Willis flopped back across his bed which sent the few forgotten Mizas flying onto the floor. With a sigh Willis hopped up and picked them up, with his left hand which felt both tired and not, before resting once he had placed them back in his coinpurse.

WC: 563