New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

Chapter 788 Using Their Aspects

"How do I do it?" he asked.

'You just do. It should have become second nature for your body to undergo the changes. During the month you were out, your body often underwent the same changes as we wrestled for control or balance. It sometimes reverted to your normal self, although very briefly.'

Alexander frowned at the statement.

"So you guys fought for control even though I was still there?"

'Don't get me wrong, it wasn't that we didn't each want to control your body. But we couldn't. Psyche's power held us back. It would seem it no longer sees me as its rightful owner…'

He sounded disappointed at his words, but Alex couldn't care less.

His mind stuck at the fact that Psyche's powers had acknowledged him. He wondered what had caused this.

But he could think about this later. For now, he needed to return to civilization, to his life.

Looking at his hands, he imagined them turning into the hands of the demon he had seen in his nightmares.

The next moment, his skin turned red up to his forearm, and his fingers cracked and popped as the bones in them elongated slightly, the nails growing an inch longer, as well. Alex had to grit his teeth through the slight pain accompanying the change.

Once his hands stopped sounding like popcorn, he opened and closed his fist, asserting that this was his hand, not the imp's, and that he was in complete control.

Feeling no resistance in his thoughts or movements, Alex looked at the cliff before him.

Swiping his hand vertically, Alex sliced through the stone facade easily, like he was slashing through a film of water. His gaze hardened.

"I'm becoming like the monsters we don't want to see…" he murmured.

He changed his hands back to normal, imagining them back as his human hands, and they reverted, the pain much lighter this time.

"Let's hope I get used to this pain. Feeling this every time I change would be tiresome…"

He focused on his back and imagined Geminae's wings growing on it, to the best of his memory.

The sound of wings flapping echoed behind him as two magnificent white feathered wings unfurled at his back. There was no pain this time; his back instead felt slightly warm.

"Huh… Why did this not hurt me? Every time I meld with Morpheus, I feel a slight pain. This was painless…"

Geminae replied to him mentally.

'My powers are from the divine. Ascending shouldn't be painful. It should be relieving, like reaching your true form. Red skin over there strives on that pain. Using his body will always be painful. Using mine shouldn't.'

Alex focused on the wings, trying to will them into moving, but nothing happened.

"How do I use them? Because, right now, they are just a fancy aesthetic…"

A moment of silence later, Geminae replied, his tone confused.

'I… don't know. You just… use them? I never had to think about it.'

Alex clicked his tongue in annoyance.

He closed his eyes, remembering the feeling of flight from his first time melding with Morpheus. He tried focusing on the feeling in his upper back as the wings beat to keep him airborne.

He remembered feeling tension in his shoulder blades, like something was pulling and releasing his muscles. Focusing on this memory, he tried emulating the muscle movement.

It was fruitless at first, as all he did was shrug his shoulders, looking like a clueless idiot.

But with a few minutes passing, he eventually lowered the muscle movement to where the wing base was, and the wings twitched.

He kept practicing for an hour until he could move the wings like he wanted, although he never exerted too much strength in the movements. He wasn't ready to launch himself off the ground yet.

But once he felt like he had mastered the basic movement, he grinned.

'Let's head to the top of this mountain first,' he thought, lowering his posture.

Bending his knees down almost to the ground, he extended his wings up, widening them to the maximum.

He jumped and pushed the wings down with as much strength as he could in one swift movement. But he had miscalculated the power the wings contained.

In that single wing beat, he launched up a hundred meters, the sudden acceleration gripping at his stomach before slowing down mid-air.

"Woah!" he exclaimed, seeing the top of the mountain a few hundred meters above him.

He smiled and beat the wings again, rising to the sky.

Controlling the power behind every movement was more complex than he had imagined, as it required fine-tuning every muscle in the wings as he went, and he wasn't used to them enough yet.

But without too much effort, he reached the jagged peak of the mountain and landed on it.

It wasn't a flat surface, and he had to change his hands back to the demonic hands to grab onto the pointy stone surface. But as he stopped struggling to get a good hold, he beheld the scenery, and his eyes widened.

As far as his eyes could see, there was wilderness. Not a single trail of smoke from a fire or top of a house to see in a distance that he could only imagine was way beyond twenty miles.

Mountains, trees, rivers, lakes. There were so many beautiful scenes, but no sign of civilization.

He wondered how the demon had managed to find and kill three people. He must have hunted much farther than what he could currently see.

Who knew what was behind those mountains in the distance?

Sighing in disappointment, Alex hopped off the ledge of his mountain and headed to the next one south. With a good lock on the sun's position, he could at least determine his directions.

The next mountain over was much flatter on the top, but trees covered its surface, so he had to land on one of the top branches to keep his vantage point.

He didn't dare venture higher in the sky yet, as he had no idea how long he could maintain flight or what kind of flight path he was flying into.

What would happen if he went over the first layer of clouds and came face to face with a small Cessna? How would the pilot react, or worse, what would happen if the plane slammed into him?

It was better to fly low for now.

After repeating this manoeuvre a few times, he finally caught signs of human life ahead of him.

He grinned as he headed toward there.

'I can finally find out where I am. How far did they bring me, I wonder?'