The revelation of Alex's phasing ability, and his subsequent recounting of Earth's speedster lore, had irrevocably altered the dynamic of their training. Kaelen, ever the pragmatist despite her ethereal nature, saw not just the danger in these "fictional" powers, but also their immense potential. The Silvanesti fighting style, with its emphasis on grace, evasion, and precision, was an excellent foundation, but it was designed for beings who moved within the normal constraints of the Weave and physical law. Alex, quite clearly, did not.
"These… 'moves' you speak of, sky-fallen," Kaelen said one morning, her brow furrowed in concentration as she tried to visualize the concepts Alex had described. They were back in their training grove, the air still carrying the faint, metallic tang of ozone from Alex's recent experiments. "The vibrating hand that can disrupt matter. The creation of… 'speed mirages' to confuse an opponent. The manipulation of air currents to create vortexes. These are not arts known to the Silvanesti, nor, I suspect, to any in the Unheavens."
"They weren't exactly common on Earth either," Alex admitted, a wry grin on his face. "Mostly confined to Saturday morning cartoons and comic book conventions. But the principles… some of them seem almost plausible, now that I know phasing is real."
"Plausibility is a flexible concept in a world like ours, Alex Maxwell," Kaelen observed, her amber eyes glinting with a mixture of scholarly curiosity and a warrior's pragmatism. "If you can vibrate your entire being to pass through solid matter, perhaps you can learn to focus that vibration into a single limb, as your… 'Reverse Flash' did."
The thought of intentionally weaponizing his phasing ability, of using his hand as a tool of destruction, sent a shiver of unease through Alex. It felt… dark. Too close to the villainous powers he'd described. But Kaelen's point was valid. In a world where Gloom Stalkers and Iron Hordes were a reality, being able to defend himself, to incapacitate an enemy if necessary, was a grim necessity.
Their training shifted again. Kaelen, with her centuries of combat experience and her deep understanding of energy manipulation through the Weave, began to help Alex deconstruct the "fictional" abilities he remembered, trying to find a practical path to achieving them through the unique mechanics of his Speed Force.
The "vibrating hand" was their first target. Alex found it surprisingly difficult. Phasing his entire body required a full-body immersion in that high-frequency vibration. To isolate it to a single limb, while keeping the rest of his body solid and stable, demanded an incredible degree of control, a mental partitioning of his power that he struggled to achieve. His first few attempts resulted in either his entire arm becoming intangible and useless, or a full-body phase that sent him stumbling through whatever he was trying to strike.
"You are still thinking of it as an 'on' or 'off' state, sky-fallen," Kaelen coached, watching him with her usual unnerving patience. "Imagine your power not as a floodlight, but as a finely focused beam. Direct that beam, that specific vibrational frequency, only to your hand. The rest of you must remain… anchored."
He practiced for hours, focusing on his hand, trying to coax the Speed Force into that localized, high-intensity vibration. He remembered the visual from the shows – the blurred, almost invisible hand, crackling with energy. He tried to replicate that, not just the effect, but the intent behind it.
Slowly, painstakingly, he began to achieve flickers of success. He could make his hand shimmer, become slightly translucent, the air around it crackling with faint blue sparks of Speed Force energy. He tried it on a thick, resilient Ironwood branch Kaelen had set up as a target. At first, his vibrating hand just bounced off, the sensation a painful, jarring buzz. But as his control improved, as he learned to maintain the precise vibrational frequency, he felt a change. The wood… yielded. Not by breaking, but by… destabilizing at a molecular level where his hand made contact. He could push his shimmering fingers an inch into the solid wood, the sensation utterly bizarre, like pushing his hand into super-dense, vibrating jelly.
It wasn't the instant, destructive power of the Reverse Flash's signature move, but it was a start. And it was terrifyingly effective. Kaelen, watching him, her expression a mixture of awe and profound caution, made him promise to use such an ability only as a last resort. The potential for catastrophic injury, both to his target and, if he lost control, to himself, was immense.
Next, they tackled the concept of "speed mirages." This, Alex found, came more naturally. It was an extension of his ability to move at super-speed, combined with a precise understanding of perception and timing. Kaelen, with her archer's eye and her warrior's understanding of feints and distractions, was an invaluable teacher. She would have him run patterns around her, trying to create multiple, fleeting after-images of himself, to confuse her senses, to make it impossible for her to track his true position.
His first attempts were clumsy, his "mirages" little more than blurry streaks that Kaelen easily saw through. But as he refined his control over his speed, learning to make incredibly fast, minute adjustments to his trajectory, to his acceleration and deceleration, he began to achieve the desired effect. He could create two, then three, then a half-dozen shimmering, translucent after-images of himself, all moving, all seemingly real, while his true self was already in a different position, preparing for a (practice) strike.
"Impressive, sky-fallen," Kaelen admitted, after a particularly effective series of mirages had left her momentarily disoriented, a rare occurrence. "You move like a wind-spirit, a phantom. Against an untrained opponent, this would be… devastating."
He even began to experiment, in secret, with some of the other abilities he remembered from the Flash lore. He tried running in tight circles, attempting to create a vortex of wind, as Barry Allen often did. His first few attempts just made him incredibly dizzy and kicked up a lot of leaves. But as he persisted, as he learned to channel the Speed Force into the creation of focused air currents, he managed to generate a small, swirling whirlwind that could actually buffet Kaelen and send smaller objects flying. It was nowhere near the controlled tornadoes of his fictional counterpart, but it was another tool in his growing arsenal.
Running on water, however, proved to be a spectacular failure. His attempts usually ended with him sinking like a stone, emerging sputtering and soaked, much to Kaelen's quiet, if well-concealed, amusement. "Perhaps some surfaces are less… negotiable… than others, even for your storm," she'd commented, her mental voice laced with dry humor.
Throughout all this, his connection to the Weave, his ability to act as a "bridge," continued to develop in subtle ways. He found that when he was in that calm, receptive state, trying to "listen" to the forest, his Speed Force would sometimes… resonate with the ambient mana, creating small, localized effects. Flowers would bloom slightly out of season in his presence. Wounded animals would sometimes approach him without fear. The bioluminescent flora in Tel'Syth seemed to glow a little brighter when he was near.
Kaelen encouraged these gentle explorations, seeing them as a vital counterpoint to the more aggressive, combat-oriented aspects of his training. "Your power, sky-fallen, is not just about speed, about destruction," she told him. "It is about energy. And energy, in its purest form, is life. The Weave understands this. If you can learn to truly harmonize your storm with its song, you might discover abilities far beyond anything your world's storytellers ever dreamed of."
But as Alex's powers grew, so did the sense of unease in the Weirdwood. The disturbances in the Weave that Kaelen had spoken of became more frequent, more pronounced. The forest felt… tense. The air was often heavy, charged with an unseen, unsettling energy. The distant, guttural calls of unknown creatures grew more common, closer. Even the ever-present hum of the forest seemed to carry a new, discordant note.
The Warden's council at the Heartwood was fast approaching. Alex knew, with a growing sense of certainty, that his time of relative peace and training was coming to an end. The Unheavens were stirring, and the ripples of whatever darkness was spreading from beyond the Weirdwood's borders were beginning to reach even this hidden sanctuary.
One evening, as they were practicing phasing drills – Alex attempting to pass through a series of increasingly complex obstacles Kaelen had set up – he pushed himself too hard. He was trying to phase through a thick, gnarled root while simultaneously altering his trajectory in mid-phase, a maneuver he hadn't yet mastered.
He felt the familiar vibration, the shimmer, the scent of ozone. But something went wrong. The frequency of his vibration faltered, became unstable. Instead of passing cleanly through the root, he felt a sudden, agonizing resistance, as if his intangible form had snagged on something solid within the ethereal plane.
Pain, white-hot and unlike anything he had ever experienced, exploded through him. It wasn't physical pain, not exactly. It was… deeper. As if his very essence, his soul, was being torn. He cried out, a raw, choked sound, and collapsed, his body flickering erratically between solid and intangible, a chaotic storm of uncontrolled energy.
Kaelen was at his side in an instant, her face a mask of alarm. "Alex! Hold on! Anchor yourself!" her voice, both mental and audible, was sharp with urgency.
He tried, but the pain was overwhelming, his control shattering. He felt himself… dissolving, his connection to his physical form becoming tenuous, frayed. Images, memories, sensations from both his lives, from Earth and from the Unheavens, flashed through his mind in a chaotic, terrifying torrent. He saw the lightning, the battlefield, the Gloom Stalker, the faces of his parents, the skyline of his city, the amber eyes of Kaelen, all swirling together in a dizzying, nauseating vortex.
He was losing himself. He was coming apart.
Then, through the pain, through the chaos, he felt Kaelen's touch. Her hands, strong and sure, gripped his shoulders, her own energy, the calm, steady pulse of the Weave, flowing into him, a lifeline in the raging storm of his dissolving self.
"Focus, Alex Maxwell!" Her voice was a beacon in the darkness. "Find your center! Your storm has an eye! Be the eye, not the tempest!"
He clung to her words, to the feel of her hands, to the steady, reassuring pulse of her Weave-energy. He fought against the dissolution, against the terror, drawing on a reserve of will he hadn't known he possessed. He focused on the image of Kaelen's face, on her amber eyes, on the intricate, glowing patterns of her skin. He focused on the feel of the Silvanesti clothes against his skin, the scent of the Weirdwood, the solid reality of this new, impossible world that had, against all odds, become his.
Slowly, agonizingly, the chaotic vibrations began to subside. The flickering of his form stabilized. The pain receded, leaving behind a bone-deep exhaustion and a lingering, terrifying echo of that near-dissolution.
He lay there, gasping, his body trembling, Kaelen still holding him, her own face pale, her breath coming in ragged gasps. The air around them was thick with the scent of ozone and something else, something that smelled like burnt Weave.
"What… what happened?" he finally managed, his voice a hoarse whisper.
Kaelen looked at him, her eyes filled with a mixture of relief and a profound, unsettling fear. *"You… you almost came undone, sky-fallen. Your phasing… it is more than just making your body intangible. You are vibrating your very essence, your soul-stuff, between… between the layers of reality. If you lose control, if your anchor to this world falters…" *She didn't need to finish the sentence. Alex understood. He had glimpsed the abyss, the terrifying possibility of ceasing to exist, not just in one world, but in all of them.
"I… I saw things," he said, his voice still shaky. "My old life. This life. It was all… mixed up."
Kaelen nodded slowly. "When you phase, you touch the currents that flow between the worlds, the echoes of what was, what is, and what might be. It is a dangerous path, Alex Maxwell. One that few, if any, have ever walked and returned whole."
She helped him to his feet, his legs still unsteady. The experience had shaken him to his core. Phasing wasn't just a cool comic book power. It was a profound, terrifying manipulation of his very being, with consequences he was only just beginning to comprehend.
As they made their way back to Tel'Syth in the deepening twilight, a new, sobering understanding settled over Alex. He was a legend in the making, Kaelen had said. But legends, he was learning, often walked a razor's edge between triumph and annihilation. And his path, it seemed, was more perilous than most. The Unheavens had given him a power beyond imagining. But it was a power that could just as easily destroy him as save him. And the coming council, the encroaching darkness Kaelen had sensed… he had a sinking feeling that his control over that power was about to be tested in ways he couldn't yet fathom.