Flying...But Not Flying

"I guess this wouldn't be much of a trial if it were easy." I had thought to myself.

I looked over towards the next island and I lifted myself into the air. Once I was floating, I noticed more of those stingray-like creatures flying toward me.

"It's ok. Just do this quickly and don't fall into the darkness."

I rushed over to the next island as quickly as I could. Even with my newfound flying it still took me a few minutes to get to it. As I landed, the creature finally caught up to me and started to swoop down swinging its tail at me. I reached my sword only to realize that I had launched it over the edge of the first island.

I looked around for anything I could use as a weapon all while dodging its attempts to spear me with its tail. Unless I wanted to throw my own body at the creature, I could not find anything that could be used.

"Wait…throw my body. Can't I just like throw it or choke it using psionics?"

I felt the psionic power in me again as I tried to manipulate it. I felt my connection to the weave strengthen. I used what I had gathered to push it…and saw it did nothing. It felt like the energy I gathered just harmlessly washed over it.

"Ok, so that didn't work. Can you not push things? What about grabbing them?"

I reached out with my hand and focused my mind once again on my psionic energies. I focused my energy like how a hand grasps something, of course, there was no hand nor did my energies even resemble a hand. Using this thought process, I grabbed the flying sting ray and found I was able to halt its movement.

"Awesome! So that works, I feel like I don't even need to use my hands for my psionics, but it helps me to focus my actions better. I can grab things now, so what else can I do. Crush it? Throw it?"

I chose to throw the creature to get some practice in. I found that I can indeed throw the creature, and quite far at that.

"I think I understand it a little better now. You can't push anything as psionic energy doesn't have any kinetic energy but instead, you can generate the required kinetic force by simply grabbing and then throwing. So, if I do this right, I can make it appear as if I pushed something when in reality, I just threw it."

I spent what was probably an hour practicing throwing the creature around at different angles. I had gotten proficient enough to throw it to one end of the small island and then catch it and throw it back to myself.

"Now that I am good with throwing things, let's practice that while flying."

While still holding onto the creature I then tried focusing on lifting myself. The result was a massive migraine and losing control over my hold on the monster. I noticed I had some blood dripping out of my nose, but it seemed to have stopped just as quickly as it came.

Once I saw the monster flying around, I grabbed it and decided to try again, this time taking things more slowly than before. I focused my mind once again to sense the psionic weave. I studied how it bent as I tried interacting and shaping it. If I tried to force it a certain way, it would push back. If I directed the 'flow' to my will rather than force it, it was much easier.

It was then I realized my errors, the way I tried to do multiple things was wrong. It was like trying to put both feet into one sock. Sure, it could be possible, but the poor sock would hate you or just rip. If I think of every task I wanted to do as a sock and my will as a foot, then for every action I wanted to take I had to split my will to do so.

With this newfound knowledge, I then focused my will on two different actions. One was to hold the creature and the other was to hold me. It was still a bit taxing on my mind, but I felt I could do a max of three wills at my current level.

I started to practice dragging myself around or 'flying', while simultaneously throwing and catching my new friend. I guess the saying the mind is a muscle is a bit true. I noticed it started to get much easier with multitasking with me flying and force throwing a strange space creature.

"Well, I suppose that's enough dilly-dallying. Time to complete this trial."

I flew over to the next island and found a second creature had appeared. I used my psionics and threw the first creature at and continued. On the sixth island, I now had four creatures trying to harass me, but I found them easy enough to deal with. If one got near me, I would just toss it away. I even started to make myself able to jump super far. It made me feel like I had those powers from a certain sci-fi franchise about space wizards.

By the twelfth island, I had around 14 creatures flying around me trying to attack me. A few of their attacks got through so I decided to change up my tactics. To practice my multitasking, I grabbed three creatures by their tails and used them as makeshift clubs where I would beat away any incoming attacks.

The first time I did this one of the creatures I hit exploded as well as the one I was swinging. Let's just say it covered me in more bits than I was comfortable with. With my newfound tactics, I finally reached the last island.

"You have done well in reaching the end of this trial. Your methods were a bit unorthodox, but it doesn't matter. I would have just killed them by destroying their insides, but you are still new to this and learning. My Queen will be happy to hear of your progress. Now go to your next trial."

"Your Queen? Who is that?"

"Just someone who has taken an interest in you and orchestrated these trials for you. You need not know more at this time."

"Sounds a bit shady but nothing I can do about it right now. Well, I'm off then."

I then opened the lone door that was on the island and walked through it. What greeted me on the other side was something I was not expecting. I saw large…something. It was like a large floating spherical mass of flesh with a large singular eye and mouth. Its body sported numerous tentacles all ending in an eye. It appeared to be wearing a bowler hat and was playing chess with…me?

"Ah, so you are finally here. Don't mind the other you sitting in the chair there I assure you she is not as good as you are. Can't even play a decent game of chess. Where are my manners, my name is…ah it doesn't matter you couldn't pronounce it anyway. Welcome to your next trial."