Chasing the Sun (CMGQ Spin Off)

You picture the Sun.

It is everything to you. Your beginning. Your end. The reason you were born, and likely the reason you will eventually die.

Veere wanted you to save it… but what does that mean? How do you save the Sun? The Sun is untouchable…

Ah, maybe that's how. The Sun's curse is its isolation. Unreachable and untouchable, none can even get close without burning away. So the best way to save the sun, is to be selfish; to be with it. But in order to be with the sun then you need to dive into that impossible heat and not burn away.

You need to become a…

"Sun Diver."

Your Transient Light envelopes you, and you feel your connection to the real slip just a little more away.


Looking down at your hand, you can't help but feel a bit put off by your power; your form has become blurry even to your eyes, and every motion makes your eyes hurt as you move through space in some kind of motion blur. On the other hand though, you somehow know that it will help you get close without instantly vanishing from the heat. Or at least, that is the intent because the feeling Selene left you of her own power tells you that it's not enough. Not even close… but the potential is there.

If you work with your Grace enough, you'll eventually be able to hold the Sun and be with her.

"Interesting effect." Sister Mist's voice pulls you out of your musings. "It's definitely not some kind of barrier; if anything it feels more like an alteration to your own relative existence."

"I'm not meant to exist." You comment idly, fascinated by the feel of your magic. "If anything… This just reminds the world of that. So I can go where I shouldn't be, and touch what I shouldn't be able to touch. It-"

Your gut clenches and your perspective suddenly lurches.

Balance disrupted you suddenly tilt far to the right, and it's only Sister Mist's fast reaction in catching you that you don't suddenly find yourself flopping face first into the ground. "Woah! Looks like whatever it does doesn't agree with your relationship with Cosmos, does it?"

"N-no, I don't think it was on her side." You groan out, "More me; suddenly super nauseous."

"Drawback of the spell you think?"

You think about it a moment before sighing, "Only on a technicality I think. A bit of practice and I should be able to adjust: it's my Grace, isn't it?"

Sister Mist doesn't look like she wants to let the conversation go, but seems to come to some kind of decision before nodding, "Yes, an Angel's Grace is an Angel's Grace and nothing can really change that. Some can come with side effects, but it's always because either the Grace isn't complete, or they're using it wrong. So you just need some more practice with it."

Incomplete, huh? Your instincts say you're using it correctly, but the thought that something is missing nudges something within you. So the idea that it's just not complete feels more accurate than the other option to you right now. Sadly, Sister Mist is correct; all you can really do is practice with it.

Figuring out what's missing won't be easy, but the simple fact that you know something is missing is enough to point you in the right direction. An Angel's Grace is meant to be a power to help them achieve their Prayer; War Angels and Valkyr are the two most common Angels because of the War, but it doesn't mean they're the only Angels born. Brother Raguel for example had a healing Grace, because he was born from the Prayers of the injured and infirm. Or Sister Angelo who had a travel Grace.

Theoretically you could learn other Grace like the more mortal species learned Magic, but it would never be as easy to you as the one you were born with. Or even learn mortal Magic yourself, but if so that would be something for the far future. For now though, your unique Grace somehow manipulated your nature as something that exists in relation to your source being something that didn't.

In essence, it was pulling on the fact Veere was a False Existence to change your own relationship with reality to be closer to the imaginary.

Maybe…

No, you don't have the time right now to explore that. "Sister Mist, what next?"

"Well, the first thing would be to test your Judgment; using it should come instinctually. Test it on one of the dummies." Sister Mist motions to said dummies with a hand.

"Alright." Looking at them, you find yourself stuck in a moment of uncertainty. A sword is a sword, but your new gauntlets aren't just gauntlets. They're more a grip you think.

Raising a hand, you stare at the back of the gauntlet for a moment before twisting it at the wrist and-


Something warps the space between you and the dummy before the wooden construct explodes into a small cloud of splinters. You and Sister Mist both blink at the annihilated dummy for a moment before she chuckles.

"Wow, what did that dummy ever do to you?"

"It dared to get between me and my Sun." You snark back on reflex. Silence reigns for a moment before Sister Mist slowly turns to look at you with a raised brow and you bury your face in your hands. There are moments where Selene's influence on you can be a little much at times, you've just decided. "Please, can we forget I just said that?"

"Nope, that was far too adorable. Wait until I tell everyone else that the sweet anxiety-ridden Adriel has a snark streak buried under everything." You give her your best look of betrayal, but Sister Mist just smiles wider at you, "I can hear them now, 'No way! Adriel is far too innocent and cuddly to be a snarker!'."

"Sister Mist, no!"

"Sister Mist, yes!"

(Touch of Reality ability revealed: Vacuum.)

__________________________________________________

Thankfully, Sister Mist doesn't actually announce your horrible personality secret to everyone she meets. The Valkyr being far too nice to do something that embarrassing. What she's not too nice to do though, is immediately nickname you 'Solar Snarker' much to everyone else's complete confusion and your abject humiliation.

Okay, maybe not that bad, but it's still extremely embarrassing to tell the third person in an hour that no you're not explaining your new nickname to anyone thank you very much.

Either way though, your little one on one training session with Sister Mist to learn a bit more about your Judgment has led to a couple useful details. To begin with, your gauntlets really are what you thought they were; namely little more than decoration for your real Judgment, namely your Light. When you focus and flex your Judgment, then your light does something to space at the point you focused on to cause it to 'flex'. (It's a poor description of what's happening, but you really don't know any better way to describe it. You're functionally inducing wobbles in something you can't accurately define.) The more energy you dump into the spot you're focusing on, the harder it 'wobbles'.

Good news means that it's really hard to block unless you know what to look for.

Bad news is, it's really hard to aim for you, because one distraction can mean you 'wobbling' a place completely different from what you were aiming at because something moved out of the corner of your eye at the wrong time and you reflexively ducked.

Super bad news is that if you get really unlucky it means you can accidentally wobble the insides of a friendly.

Super good news though, is apparently whatever it is you're doing to 'reach out and touch' things, you can't hurt yourself with it. So no accidentally doing something horrible like blowing out your own eyes because you blinked.

You can potentially do a lot more than just 'wobble' space, but you don't have a clue what nor how, with no real idea on how to find out either. It's… not something you're very happy with if you're honest about it.

Regardless though, it's a powerful Judgment and like it or not, it's strong and useful. And yours.

It'll be the thing you rely on to catch up to the Sun.

Until then though, now that you've Formed, training has changed some. Sword lessons are still an option, but no longer mandatory for you, instead Sister Mist has you practice with your Judgment by having a volunteer Angel chuck rocks randomly into a large open space while you try to blast them with your Touch, trying to improve your speed, the amount of power you put into it, and the accuracy of each 'wobble'.

Grace practice has also picked up. Though instead of trying to guide your energy into a practice sword, you're now instead working through how long you can keep it up passively, seeing the effects of dropping it early has on the side effects, what focusing on keeping it up for as long as possible does, and even on one occasion trying to use it on someone else.

In order the answer to those questions have been: ten seconds so far, lessening to the point you barely noticed them, literally face planting after getting an extra five seconds out of it, and literally nothing.

The most interesting thing to happen though was when Sister Mist had you try your rock blast practice with it up: if you didn't focus too hard on it then you could see something reaching out to grab at what you were trying to 'wobble'. If you tried to focus on whatever it is though, your wobble would go wildly off course, and you'd lose sight of whatever it is.

Either way though, the last two days have felt like more progress than the last month. You still have a long way to go, but you finally feel like you're getting somewhere! The first things to do right now though, are figure out what you want to learn, if anything, or just focus on what you currently have.

The former will give you more options in the future, but the latter would get you out into the LDC far sooner.