Richard Howard heard the dark whispers in his dreams for years. He lived his pitiful little life surrounded by pitiful people for years while the whispers spoke of power. For years he went to school like a good little sheep, not ever doing as well as he "should" but doing as well as he was able to bear. In his dreams though, he saw what he could be, and whispers told him how to become it. He had the will, he just needed to shape and hone it.
Willpower grows with practice and exercise just like anything else. Eventually he decided to try what the mad whispering in his dreams prompted. He would be a predator who feeds on predators, not a sheep shorn by the shepherds. His weapon wouldn't be his arm or anything it held. It wouldn't be his hands he would use to grasp for power; it would be his mind.
Richard sat behind his cash register after he dropped out of college for the third time, stooped under the burden of debt and failure. He owed the banks for what they had loaned him. He owed his family for their support. He owed his friends for all they had done for him. He owed the world for every opportunity he had been given and had failed. The pressure in his mind built from the weights of his debts, the weight of what he could never repay. Bearing their weight he became stronger. He did not collapse under it, he walked forward, and he kept failing no matter how much he wanted to succeed. He walked the path of self destructive madness already.
The first mastery of his will was over physical pain. He would poke and prod himself, stand in awkward yogic poses, stretch muscles, and tell his mind to disregard the pain. Pain is only information, he knew it hurt, the signal could stop being sent. He still felt the pain, and it still hurt, he learned to be it's master not the other way around. The day he mastered pain was the day a scar was ripped off of his skin and he poured salt, lemon, and hot sauce into the wound without wincing. This was the first and easiest step on the path of the Kraken.
The next victory was over desire. This is not the victory sought on the path of Buddhism where you seek a place of quiet peace with no desire. This was a victory of a roiling chaos of desires growing higher and higher and honing his will to deny them all. He did not quiet his mind of desires, he sought them, fixated on them, denied them, and then sought more to deny himself. He learned new desires, forbidden desires, impractical desires, and impossible desires. He would place himself by the subject of a desire; focusing on how much he wanted, how much he yearned, pined, and thought he would die without the subject of the desire. He was careful at first not to fixate on desires that denial of could cause him harm. He would fixate on luxuries and forbidden things at first. He fixated at first on what he should do without. Then he branched out.
His search for new desires to fixate upon was twofold. In one direction was self denial of things that verged closer to necessity. On the other hand, he nurtured desires that went further and further into the bizarre and forbidden. He noticed that his occasional satiation of necessary desires merely whetted his appetite for more, so occasionally he tried whetting his appetite for the forbidden and bizarre as well with mixed results. Some of the dark desires were disappointing when indulged. Others did not disappoint in the least.
Some of the darker desires soon eclipsed hunger and the need for warmth. His will grew stronger. He lived an even more pitiful life than he had before he began to walk the path, but his strength had grown so much beyond what he had before been. His desires grew stronger and more ephemeral by the day, but his will became stronger still.
Then came the day when he learned he could hear the desires of others and push them towards or away from them. He learned he could move his hair and flex his fingernails. His will was no longer limited in it's control of his nerves and muscles. He tried to bend his bones to disastrous result. If he had not mastered lesser pains, the pain of manipulating his own skull could have killed him. His skeleton was limiting him though, it needed to go. He focused on the furthest bone on the first finger of his right hand; and compelled it from his body slowly and painfully, as it left he whimpered. He repeated the process over and over until there were no longer any bones in his right hand. He grabbed a steel conduit on his wall and crushed it with his grip that now was subject only to his diamond will. He had not eaten in months, he had stopped needing that long ago. He willed the other bones from his body; every last one, one at a time. The skull was the trickiest.
He washed the blood off in the shower, and stood in front of the mirror, practicing pretending he had bones still. That was when he realized he had much greater weights against which to push his will than desire now. He had the raw physics of the world to push against. He no longer needed to fixate on these desires, he no longer had to deny himself. For a moment he laughed harder than he ever had, and wasn't sure when the realization of what not denying himself anymore would mean hit him, and the laugh turned into a scream.
Richard sat behind his cash register after he dropped out of college for the third time, stooped under the burden of debt and failure. He owed the banks for what they had loaned him. He owed his family for their support. He owed his friends for all they had done for him. He owed the world for every opportunity he had been given and had failed. The pressure in his mind built from the weights of his debts, the weight of what he could never repay. Bearing their weight he became stronger. He did not collapse under it, he walked forward, and he kept failing no matter how much he wanted to succeed. He walked the path of self destructive madness already.
The first mastery of his will was over physical pain. He would poke and prod himself, stand in awkward yogic poses, stretch muscles, and tell his mind to disregard the pain. Pain is only information, he knew it hurt, the signal could stop being sent. He still felt the pain, and it still hurt, he learned to be it's master not the other way around. The day he mastered pain was the day a scar was ripped off of his skin and he poured salt, lemon, and hot sauce into the wound without wincing. This was the first and easiest step on the path of the Kraken.
The next victory was over desire. This is not the victory sought on the path of Buddhism where you seek a place of quiet peace with no desire. This was a victory of a roiling chaos of desires growing higher and higher and honing his will to deny them all. He did not quiet his mind of desires, he sought them, fixated on them, denied them, and then sought more to deny himself. He learned new desires, forbidden desires, impractical desires, and impossible desires. He would place himself by the subject of a desire; focusing on how much he wanted, how much he yearned, pined, and thought he would die without the subject of the desire. He was careful at first not to fixate on desires that denial of could cause him harm. He would fixate on luxuries and forbidden things at first. He fixated at first on what he should do without. Then he branched out.
His search for new desires to fixate upon was twofold. In one direction was self denial of things that verged closer to necessity. On the other hand, he nurtured desires that went further and further into the bizarre and forbidden. He noticed that his occasional satiation of necessary desires merely whetted his appetite for more, so occasionally he tried whetting his appetite for the forbidden and bizarre as well with mixed results. Some of the dark desires were disappointing when indulged. Others did not disappoint in the least.
Some of the darker desires soon eclipsed hunger and the need for warmth. His will grew stronger. He lived an even more pitiful life than he had before he began to walk the path, but his strength had grown so much beyond what he had before been. His desires grew stronger and more ephemeral by the day, but his will became stronger still.
Then came the day when he learned he could hear the desires of others and push them towards or away from them. He learned he could move his hair and flex his fingernails. His will was no longer limited in it's control of his nerves and muscles. He tried to bend his bones to disastrous result. If he had not mastered lesser pains, the pain of manipulating his own skull could have killed him. His skeleton was limiting him though, it needed to go. He focused on the furthest bone on the first finger of his right hand; and compelled it from his body slowly and painfully, as it left he whimpered. He repeated the process over and over until there were no longer any bones in his right hand. He grabbed a steel conduit on his wall and crushed it with his grip that now was subject only to his diamond will. He had not eaten in months, he had stopped needing that long ago. He willed the other bones from his body; every last one, one at a time. The skull was the trickiest.
He washed the blood off in the shower, and stood in front of the mirror, practicing pretending he had bones still. That was when he realized he had much greater weights against which to push his will than desire now. He had the raw physics of the world to push against. He no longer needed to fixate on these desires, he no longer had to deny himself. For a moment he laughed harder than he ever had, and wasn't sure when the realization of what not denying himself anymore would mean hit him, and the laugh turned into a scream.
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