Chapter 1.2.2

This chapter arc has two parts!

And a date into an interdimensional pocket that's a hairy crystal.

Warnings: None

These ‘dates’ were better than Chen had thought. Not only did he get to experience and learn some human thing that he could do and talk about later with Minseok, but spending time together specifically to have fun infused him with energy and happiness. The days just felt so full, passing by quickly, and the nights unwound the tension he always held in alertness, wrapping him in warmth.

He and Minseok hadn’t made love since his prey’s home restaurant, and Chen didn’t mind it. He had just as much fun with his Min walking along the beach, learning how to bike, hiking, and watching sunrises and sunsets on the balcony as he did when they were in bed. Besides, he wasn’t entirely certain of the human stages for partners and how often was allowed during each, so he wanted Minseok to be the one to move them and at his pace.

In between all these dates and time spent, they did train. Chen started easy, but Minseok breezed through the practices. Sorta. In terms of aura control, he seemed a master, able to shape, place, disperse, construct, and manipulate his frosty aura with the precision of surgeon. Fighting and combining that control wasn’t too much of an issue. Chen thought that his prey would have trouble with fighting with aura, but after the initial coaxing him out of his hesitance, he struck with focus.

The problem laid in where Chen had anticipated: intents and the fact that he was holding back.

Like the emotions that bared in his eyes, his aura gave his intentions away. He had trouble suppressing his anticipation or channeling it into his aura to hide it, so Chen could easily pick him out of stealth and sometimes even his next attack. What was even stranger was that Minseok never seemed to notice that his aura leaked until it was a second or two after—a fatal mistake if in the field. Plus, since he was constantly holding back his power—whether because he didn’t know he had more or he was afraid of hurting Chen—the former proxy lacked strength. Chen knew that his human mindset to not harm others and the fact that he was naturally a gentle man hindered him here.

Still, he needed to know the root reason Minseok failed in these two categories, not just a broad answer of ‘because he was human before.’

So on a non-date day, Chen asked his commander for permission to use an ellesheimrald, received it, and took Minseok into the pocket dimension. The ellesheimrald was a nifty thing in that its inner dimensions bent to the whims and imagination of who had the strongest will within its boundaries. Commander Suho had received a bunch after respecting a bøjg and even making friends with it. Chen had never personally used the hair-covered crystal before, but he knew that his commander used it sometimes to train without wiping out half of hell.

Of course, before going inside of it, Minseok let out a screech-complaint, so Chen explained how it worked to his guardee and reassured him that it did not come out of any creature’s digestive track.

“Wait, so how does it know who has the strongest will?’”

“Its dimension and standards come from the bøjg. Whatever standard the creature has determines its master,” Commander said.

“So it’s subjective?”

“In a way, but don’t worry, Min. Just trust me.”

Chen rubbed their cheeks together and smiled at his prey’s giggle. Minseok took his hand and pecked him on the cheek.

“Okay. I trust you.”

The words zipped a spark in Chen’s being, and, tightening his hold on their hands, he turned to the crystal with full command.

“Close the day.”

The world cut in half and swung like two blades of a fan, the new horizon the two halves in. Chen and Minseok liquefied and followed, slurped up into a dimensional straw. The feeling differed from Kai’s teleportation. Where Chen would’ve felt aura delivering him into the next place, the ellesheimrald bent him like a plaything. That horizonal void stretched, shrunk, heated, cooled, numbed, and heightened him before ing him out of a too tight hole. Chen rolled out into a nothingness, and he immediately checked on Minseok.

Their handhold held strong, and he pulled his guardee close to him when he saw how he clutched his stomach and saw his head swaying.

“Min?”

“Ugh, I feel like I just went through a cycle in the washing machine, got compacted into a cat’s hairball, then got spat out through an anthill.”

Chen just chuckled at his prey’s very vivid descriptions and rubbed the back of his head. Minseok sighed at the relief and hummed as Chen warmed his free palm against Min’s temple.

“Thanks. So where are we? It just looks like what I imagine space to look like with oxygen and no stars.”

“Just wait and see.”

The words had barely left his mouth when the black, the void, rumbled. Rising out of the nothingness, red terrain rushed them. Dirt and rock sprung to their feet, mountains climbed high in the distance, and a thick patch of trees molded out of the rock. His guardee jumped as the ‘land’ formed itself, and when he tentatively tapped the ground with a shoe, Chen huffed a little chuff.

“It’s solid until I say it’s not.”

“Are you actively maintaining this… stuff?”

“It will change if I will it to. Like if I wanted a lake over there—”

He jerked a thumb behind him, pictured the water, and the lapping of the waves reached his ears. Minseok’s jaw dropped.

“Oh my g— glockenspiel.”

Smirking, Chen led his prey around to give him an idea of their training grounds, showing the rocks, the formations, the fact that if he peeled back the layer of appearance, they were made of a jelly but hairy violet substance that reformed at Chen’s will.

“Okay, so I assume we’re going to do some sort of fancy training with these special properties?”

Chen nodded. He set Minseok in the middle of a clearing and jumped to its edge. Minseok knew of his weaknesses because Chen had told him, but he needed to see if his prey knew these facts or felt them. He would find those root causes and see if he couldn’t at least mitigate one or two of them.

His guardee twirled around, looking at their grounds, inspecting the dirt, sniffing the air. An open face of wonder and curiosity made Chen’s chest twinge in the pleasant fuzziness, and he smiled at how his prey found a rock and started feeling it between his hands. He let him play a little longer before he pulled a glass shield in front of him, larger than himself but impossibly weighing almost nothing. Then, he pushed his will into the terrain. Outwardly, there shifted no change, but Chen felt how the world obeyed.

“Minseok.”

His guardee looked over, raising his voice a little even though Chen, and obviously Minseok himself, heard him fine—human habit. “Yeah?”

“Nothing lives here. No one here is alive except for you and me. I want you to pull out all your power, every last drop of aura, and destroy this land. Take however long you need to, but if you hold back, something will happen.”

“Something?”

“Whether you find out or not is up to you.”

“Wait, Chen. I can’t. What about you?”

“Don’t worry about me. You can’t hurt me here.”

“But—”

“No buts. I won’t talk to you anymore, and you won’t sense me. Use all of your power, Minseok.”

“W-Wait!”

Chen did because he heard his panic. Minseok’s breaths turned into pants and his eyes filled with fear. The sight twisted Chen’s chest, but he steeled his emotions. Chen would not fall for an illusion of Minseok’s human mind, but he gave his guardee a nod, determined and faithful.

“I trust you, Minseok. Will you trust me?”

He stopped, searching Chen’s eyes, and he seemed to see what Chen said because he took a breath in, no matter how shaky, and breathed it out. He nodded. Giving him one last smile, Chen commanded the world to make his presence disappear to all others. Minseok stared at him, the spot, for a while, and when Chen moved, his eyes didn’t follow. Chen saw how his eyes darted, his senses trying to find him. By the time he gave up, his breath had calmed though.

Circling around, Chen watched his guardee. Ideally, he would be able to gather the right amount of power to release near instantaneously, but since he subconsciously held back, Chen allowed Minseok the leeway of his ten-minute moment to calm himself. He used the breathing techniques that Chen had taught him, so that was a plus.

At first, there didn’t seem to be anything happening, even on the aural level, but then aura swelled into place. The granule cold clouded, densified, sloshed in waves. Chen hadn’t willed for the terrain to react to cold, so he resolidified that fact at the freeze descending around them.

Minseok had closed his eyes out of concentration, and when he opened them to the blizzard, the aura faltered. Chen could see why—the whirlwind expanded past the clearing and dominated the little forest Chen stood near too. He negated the elements around himself, but the closest trees had already ripped from their roots. Minseok was afraid, and the wind slowed a bit.

He suddenly shook his head, closing his eyes again. The aura picked back up, filled in with power, and burst. A current whipped out across the terrain. Cold exploded, striking across the rock, the forest, half-way across the mini world that Chen had imagined. The shapeless hairy substance of the world exposed itself at the parts closest to Minseok, leaving bits of the terrain’s skin in patches. It was certainly impressive, but the attempt was a failure.

Chen had felt Minseok’s hesitance, and the world, willed to sense and decode that hesitance, sent a mirror of it back to Chen. In his head, he picked out Minseok’s fear of hurting someone but also a fear of not deserving this power, misusing it, and turning arrogant and careless. Chen frowned.

Very few angelics had those thoughts if any did at all.