5 Frenzy

As John continued to scream more shadows arrived and continued their cry, John's head felt like it was on fire. The pain caused by the shrill cry of the shadow beasts seemed limitless, his only release was to yell. So yell he did. The two strangers on the porch began to panic, this was not what they had been expecting. "This is bad!" Lexi said, "he needs to shut up, he's only attracting more of them and driving them into a frenzy. Markesh! Can you help or not? Okay, fuck this!" By this point John was on his knees, ready to bang his head against the porch in an attempt to drive the horrible pain away. Lexi stopped him, with a well aimed snap kick to his temple, knocking him instantly unconscious. John stopped yelling at that point but they were still surrounded by shadow beings. "Give me 30 seconds, I can drive them away. There are too many for us to fight off conventionally." Markesh began what looked like a complicated dance, he was stepping in a semi circle while moving his arms into smaller circles. All of his movements were fluid, flowing into each other with ease. His arms would form "C"s in the air, one rotating forward while the other rotated backwards. The "C"s forming at different angles from his body. His movements began to give off bits of blue light from his arms and legs, mostly from his joints, feet and fingertips. His third eye was also glowing with a blue light, the air began to crackle and emit random blue sparks when a new "C" was formed or when he reached the apex of a semi circle with his feet. All at once Markesh jumped into the air, at least 6 feet off the ground, then came back down with his right fist hitting the porch while landing in a kneeling position. A large blue shockwave formed around him, spreading outwards quickly and banishing all shadows within a 60 foot radius. "Quickly! We must move him to a safe area before they reform!" Markesh said to Lexi. She scooped up John in a princess carry and they began to move.

"I'm not sure what the hell happened back there, but he didn't make it any better. The beasts are naturally attracted to those with newly acquired power, they can sense it. But when he began to shout or roar, whatever you want to call it. He made it worse and more began to arrive, more quickly then what I normally see. I say he's a liability, we should ditch him and leave him to die. Or to thrive. Whatever happens, happens. Or we can just kill him, before he actually becomes a problem for the entire plane. Attracting so many shadows can only lead to trouble." Markesh was ready to call the mission a complete failure, John had exceeded all expectations but he seemed to be more trouble then he was worth. Lexi felt differently, what Markesh saw as a liability she seen as an unforeseen anomaly of epic proportions. She also could see through Markesh's act, "I call bullshit Markesh, if you really wanted to leave him for dead you wouldn't have used such a powerful display of chi to cull those shadows. You could have easily ditched him there and left him to die or thrive as you said. So drop the act and tell me why you saved him or quit spouting nonsense, your words don't match your actions." Markesh limited himself to stop talking, he did have ulterior motives for saving John but he wasn't going to share them with a hopeful novice like Lexi. Markesh was a 3rd degree Chi Master, he had practiced his chi for over 20 years and he had only accompanied Lexi at the request of a much more experienced master then himself. Lexi had only reached the 5th degree of chi missionary, she had practiced for only a few years. Even though she was a very competent martial artist, her chi abilities were minimal at best. Especially in comparison with Markesh, he had already passed her rank by several degrees at the end of his first year of training. He had attracted the eye of many masters and was considered a true prodigy in the art of chi battle tactics. He could employ his chi in defense or offense on a moments notice with almost no preparation, his last attack had been a powerful chi attack that few masters could achieve. The duo stood over the top of John's unconscious body, he was lying unceremoniously in the center of a circle made of arranged bricks over 35 feet wide at its widest point. The edges glowed with power, power that was collected by the formation of the stones, they acted as a natural anchor for the rogue chi and the chi naturally emitted by chi warriors. His third eye was still open and was now glowing with a reddish light in sequence with the edges of the stone circle. As the power flashed from the stone formation a much smaller flash of power would occur around John's third eye. The only discernible difference was the color of the glow, while the light from the circle was blue like Markesh's chi, the light coming from John's eye was red. John had began to wake up but was feigning sleep to see if he could learn anything useful, he couldn't understand anything though. Oh well he thought, time to wake up. "God damn my head hurts, where the fuck am I." He looked around until his eyes landed on the duo, feigning surprise. "Oh yeah, now I remember. What the fuck were those shadow things? Where the fuck are we? Who the fuck are you people? And what is that strange glow?" John went back to bewildered and belligerent, hoping to get some answers. He had many more questions than those he had voiced but he hoped they would answer most of them on their own, he only asked those which he considered most important.