Training with Maul was like trying to teach a tornado ballet.
For the next week, Jonah spent every spare moment locked in the reinforced stone room with his new Progeny. It was a constant, exhausting struggle.
The moment Maul appeared, the psychic roar of its rage would slam into Jonah's mind. It was the same blind fury he'd seen in the eyes of the Raging Boar in the Preserve, now given form and amplified a hundred times. He had to lock it down fast, or it would destroy everything around him.
Seraph came to observe him on the first day. She watched for a full hour, her face a mask of stone, as Jonah wrestled mentally with the seven-foot-tall creature. He would force Maul to stand still, only for its rage to bubble over, causing it to mindlessly swing a clawed fist at the wall. He would command it to walk a straight line, and it would end up trying to gore its own reflection in a polished metal plate.
"You are trying to command the storm," Seraph said finally, her voice cutting through Jonah's strained concentration. "You are shouting at the wind, telling it which way to blow. That is suppression, not command. True mastery comes from understanding. Figure it out."
And then she left him there. Alone with his monster.
He tried everything. He ran drills, summoning Nyx and Shard to act as sparring partners. He ordered Maul to attack a fixed point - Nyx. But the moment Maul charged, Nyx would release its disorienting dust. Maul would lose its target, swinging wildly at phantom images while Nyx stood perfectly still. Its brute force was useless against illusion. He commanded it to defend a point, but Maul's aggressive instincts were too strong. It would abandon its post to chase after anything that moved. Its sheer power shattered his carefully planned formations, making it more of a liability than an asset.
It was beyond frustrating. He had created this perfect engine of destruction, but he couldn't find the right key to turn it on and off.
Four days in, and Jonah was completely done with this mess. He was tired, his head ached from the constant mental battle, and he was close to just giving up and declaring Maul a failed experiment.
He had Maul standing in the center of the room, a low growl rumbling in its chest. The psychic roar in Jonah's mind was a constant noise.
QUIET!
He mentally yelled for the hundredth time, trying to force it into silence. The roar only intensified in defiance.
He slumped against the wall, defeated. Shouting at it wasn't working. Maybe… maybe Seraph was right. Maybe he was trying to command the storm instead of understanding it.
He took a deep breath, trying to clear his own frustration. He closed his eyes, and instead of pushing against Maul's rage, he simply… listened to it. He let the raw, psychic noise wash over him.
Beneath the anger, he could feel the echo of the Raging Boar's life – a life of constant struggle, of fighting for every meal, of defending territory against bigger, nastier things. The rage wasn't just mindless anger; it was a survival instinct, cranked up to a thousand.
It didn't need to be suppressed. It needed to be soothed.
An idea sparked, born from a memory of the Undercroft. He remembered how a cornered Skag-hound would get more vicious, but a well-fed one was lazy. Their moods changed their actions. The Essence Link wasn't just a one-way command line... he'd felt their power flow into him. It had to be a two-way street.
He stopped trying to shout commands into Maul's mind. Instead, he focused on his own feelings. He pushed aside his frustration and exhaustion. He reached deep inside himself, searching for a feeling of calm. He visualized the soft, glowing light of the moss from the Preserve caves, the silent, purposeful movements of Shard.
He took that feeling of profound peace and, using his Essence Link, he didn't command. He projected. He sent that quiet, focused calm flowing down the psychic tether and into the hurricane of Maul's mind.
The effect was instant.
The raging glow in Maul's eyes dimmed to a deep, smoldering red. Its massive, tensed muscles relaxed slightly. The deafening psychic roar in Jonah's head subsided, quieting down to a low, manageable grumble. The beast was still there, the rage was still there, but it was no longer boiling over. It was waiting.
Jonah's eyes shot open. A breakthrough. A real, honest-to-goodness breakthrough.
He could influence his Progeny's emotions. He could soothe the beast. He didn't have to shout at the storm; he could change the weather.
A new command style, a new way of thinking, rapidly formed in his mind. He wasn't a puppeteer pulling strings. He was a beast master, calming his animal.
He spent the rest of the week practicing this new technique. He developed a method. He would summon Maul and immediately project that sense of calm, keeping the brute in a state of what he started calling "smoldering" rage.
It was like banking a fire, keeping the coals hot but not letting them erupt into open flame. Maul was still a powerhouse of aggression, but now it was a focused aggression, waiting for a release.
Then, at the moment of truth, Jonah would do the opposite. He would pull back his calm and project a sliver of his own focused intent to attack. He would "unleash" the fury.
He set up a new training dummy. Maul stood by, simmering.
Target. Destroy, Jonah commanded, releasing the calm and picturing the dummy's destruction.
The crimson light in Maul's eyes flared to life. With a roar that was no longer just rage but focused intent, it charged. This time, it wasn't a wild, clumsy swing. It was a precise, devastating gore with its tusks. The dummy wasn't just shattered. It was stabbed through, lifted like a toy, then torn apart mid-air.
Then, just as quickly, Jonah projected the calm again. Maul slid to a stop, its fury fading to a low growl as its huge chest rose and fell.
Jonah shouted in triumph, his voice bouncing off the stone walls. He had done it. He had fine control over a massively powerful weapon. He hadn't just created a beast. He had learned to tame it.
And in doing so, he had taken his most significant step yet.