《The Yes-Mage》


 Chapter 1: The Very Best Bad Day

    There are a few truths in life, things that can never be changed. From infallible properties of nature that, when left alone and not prodded by people with powers they probably shouldn¡¯t have, are constant and reliable, to the nature of those very madmen with their mystical sticks and their gluttony for more power, more influence, and more life. One such rule that I¡¯ve found, is that everybody you can ever meet has a day that they can look back on, and in no uncertain terms, call the worst day of their life. Some are truly horrible, terrible affairs, and others may be nothing worse than a pulled muscle or broken arm. This is the story about how my own, personal ¡®worst day¡¯ changed everything else in my life.


    It was Monday, March thirteenth, and I had just woken up for work sometime earlier in the morning. I was a new transfer to the Standard Magitech Coalition¡¯s newest outpost for the Department of Higher Energies, spending a couple of days acclimating to the ins and outs of station life and my own subordinates. Being the youngest appointed head researcher to any new outpost certainly sounds exciting, I can assure you that, on a good day, it shouldn¡¯t be. I was a bundle of emotions, a bundle of very human, very normal emotions. After all, I was twenty-three years old and so eager to move up the ranks, to make a name for myself as someone who changed the course of energetic research, someone who tapped into the source of the energies itself. Sylvain Henry Camille Johansson, the man who brought humanity into a new, true, golden age. I would be lauded, a hero to the masses of empties, should I find a way to take what should have been everyone¡¯s birthright, by force if necessary, and give it to us.


    Of course, I realized how na?ve that fantasy was, how everything would stand in my way, and how I was years from ever reaching a position where I could even try to spearhead an endeavor like that. Still, I wanted it, and I was going to get there, no matter what it took. That was why I¡¯d been in the labs for over six hours, checking over the delicate work of dozens of different tinkers, not that I¡¯d ever be able to pick out something wrong in the design in the first place. No, my presence this morning was a mix of formalities, of the inability to wait, and of showing myself to my new subordinates, trying to show that I am, in fact, competent enough to lead a station at the very edge of the Sol System, as far away from any other souls as we could possibly be.


    Things were going well, too. While I had no idea how half this station worked, I knew very, very well what it was supposed to do when it worked. How we were going to use mana and psionics, qi and prana,four facets of raw power in a way that was only theoretically possible up until then to punch a hole into somewhere else. Granted, we weren¡¯t quite sure where we¡¯d be peeking into, but we, or rather I, had come up with a supposed proof saying that it¡¯d only be a window, how there wouldn¡¯t even be anything alive on the other side, just another realm of raw energy, or chaos, or nothing, or anything else. All we knew is that whatever would be on the other side was supposed to be uniform, whether in structure or composition, lacking in anything that could even think to retaliate. My superiors were already calling it Warp Space, I had no idea why beyond some nostalgic hope that what we would see on the other side would resemble science fiction of old. We knew it wasn¡¯t the Hells, or the Abyss or Outer Realms that tended to drive anyone looking in absolutely mad, and that, I thought, was good enough.


    We were wrong, I was wrong. I didn¡¯t realize it until I had settled into my chair, surrounded by a nest of wires and screens and counters and detectors, surrounded by a crew of dozens of people arguably far more deserving of this post than I, were it not for a bit of healthy nepotism, each with their own chaotic setups. We had no idea what exactly we were looking for, other than some sort of theorized higher-order energy on par with mana, qi, psionics, you name it. We even hoped that it might be a step up from those volatile, overly touchy energies. We just had no idea how to detect it, hence the setup.


    Which is why, when we hit a button, very many buttons in fact, and the batteries, the crystals, every inch of power in the main room, still dozens of kilometers away and separated by the vastness of space emptied in a single, hateful moment, we were surprised. When our own magitech suddenly went dark, we were scared. And when anyone with even the slightest wisp of mana or qi or psionics simply dropped to the floor, withered and very visibly not alive, we were scared.


    The few remaining of us were, anyway. Empties, those ¡®cursed¡¯ few of us born without any potential in becoming something greater, without any energy beyond what our own cells churn out, were dreadfully rare, another reason why my post was so controversial. At that moment, I was thankful for my curse, as I¡¯m sure the other seven empties, the other seven survivors, were doing too.


    Unfortunately, it was not to last. We soon realized we were in an unpowered station, far from any other civilization, and perhaps most terrifyingly, only dozens of kilometers from another station holding something, a something that managed to rip the power and the life out of dozens of lives and a truly staggeringly expensive station designed to prevent exactly this. When we looked out of the outpost¡¯s windows and saw that station, any thanks we had for our curse-turned-blessing was once more lost.


    We saw it. I saw it. We had punched a hole into somewhere else, a stunning success there, and then that somewhere else had punched back, if the shredded, warped, transmuting debris our state-of-the-art research station had been reduced to was any indication. I saw the metal and the plastic breaking down and growing, boiling away into ethereal flowers and watery shapes, melting into impossible colors and being pulled to a singular point. I saw that point look at us with its faceless shapes, studying and dismissing and uncaring that I saw it. I felt it, I felt the rage and despair of an unliving mass of energy, or matter, being ripped apart from its home and forced to exist.


    When that impossibly large point finally ran out of debris to twist and chew out of existence, it only got worse. Something about it became frantic, hungry, desperate. And that desperation fell onto me, was forced into me. I wish I could lie and say that there was more I had done, that after this thing of many things looked at me I turned away, resisted its siren song of profane truths with willpower even as my crewmates fell victim, but I can¡¯t. I can¡¯t tell you much of anything about what happened next.


    I just remember being forced to look into the starving maw of The Everything, this place where there is no such thing as absence, where creation is absolute and total, the contradictions meant nothing because everything was constant. I can just as easily remember having Everything forced back into me, and then I realized I was always a part of it, a single piece in the totality of everything. For a single terrible instant, I was there. I wasn¡¯t just looking through the open window into this plane of creation where everything that could possibly be was, had been, and would always be; I was torn through and made a beautiful part of all of it, from its perfect order to its endless chaos.


    And then I wasn¡¯t anymore. I was me again, I was more, so much more now, sure, but I was less, too. I was also alone, on my back, in a lab-made of pastel green wood with crude imitations of equipment made out of, to nobody¡¯s surprise, everything. And then, I remembered that nightmarish heaven all over again, the same scene forced into my mind and branded onto my soul with dozens, thousands of iterations. I would go on, but from there even words and ideas strung together fail to do this experience any justice. What I can say is that on that day I was made into many things, and conscious was no longer one of them.


    ~~~


    It was a long while before I finally did wake up, and I spent the first few minutes of my renewed consciousness performing some cathartic thrashing and screaming, trying to force every single memory of that day out of my head with the power of my lungs alone. Of course, it didn¡¯t work, not at all. Instead, it only made things worse, like the very act of thinking of my ¡°enlightenment¡± gave it power and trying to scorn it only spurred my own mind to attack me.


    In fewer words, after screaming and convulsing, I spent the next twenty minutes hysterically sobbing and cradling my head, if trying to squeeze my head like a watermelon in a vice grip counts as cradling, because my head was being sheared in half and my brain was trying to escape back to that perfect, incomprehensible place, or maybe just smear itself across the walls. Honestly, though, I remember none of this except the pain from thoughts that were too big to fit into my head and too angry to come from my own neurons.


    After blacking out and waking up only to do this all over again, repeatedly, I finally got to a point where I can start telling my own story again, instead of needing to look at a med station¡¯s logs just to be able to tell that I was very nearly written off as a lost cause. I woke up once more, and my mind still felt like it was being very aggressively cooked, but I could choke back the screams. Instead, with a headache to end all headaches, a throat like steel wool, lungs that felt like empty balloons and a laundry list of other problems, I looked around. It took me longer than I¡¯d like to admit to, but I realized that I wasn¡¯t in that pastel green room I first woke up in, or in that freezer I had also remembered waking up in, or even in the dozens of different forms and flavors of hospital bedrooms I remember finding myself in.


    Upon further inspection, I even found that this room made sense. There were no odd inconsistencies, there were no impossible hidden walls all over the place, no trophies of fish or anything that didn¡¯t belong. I was cautiously optimistic, and oddly enough, even more hopeful when I found myself restrained to the bed I woke up in. Every iteration of my memory of that hellish wakeup was always the same, I could move, explore, wander around the mind-rending rooms until I found a window that could not be and stared into The Everything one final time before that window slammed shut.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    Maybe it was done taunting me, maybe whatever slumbering thing we had woken up finally decided to stop toying with me and forcing more and more of me into myself, and I could finally return to some resemblance of sense. I had already spent a few hours planning on how to find the nearest psion, before having them rip out this memory from my head and maybe a couple of extra months around it just to be safe, when I heard a knock at the door I hadn¡¯t cared enough to look at.


    ¡°ye-¡± I croaked, the sound barely escaping my lips before my throat decided to go on strike. I tried again, to tell whoever it was to come in, but my words refused to form. Thankfully, whoever it was wasn¡¯t too concerned with manners at the moment, and the door slid open, revealing a nurse, a woman a little younger than I dressed in the traditional scrubs.


    Apparently, she wasn¡¯t ready for me to be staring at her so intently, and she¡¯d already seemed a little nervous before she made eye contact with me. I¡¯m not totally sure how I looked at that moment, but I could safely guess that I was more than a little feral when I looked at her because she took a soft gasp before clearing her throat.


    ¡°Oh, um, hello Mister Johansson¡± she began, not seeing me cringe at hearing the family name I felt barely qualified to retain, ¡°I didn¡¯t realize you were awake again.¡± She took a tentative step inside the room, before speaking again.


    ¡°You are awake, right?¡± I nodded weakly, and regretted it immediately, even the small movement felt like I¡¯d had my brain thrown into my skull by some sadistic Olympian. She did seem to notice me recoiling in pain from my own movement, the wrong answer when movement is even more pain than being awake, and rushed over to the side of the bed.


    She spoke some words as she made it to my bedside, apparently casting some sort of healing spell, but I wasn¡¯t nearly as focused on the words themselves as I was on their effect. Almost immediately, I felt the soothing warmth of a numb spell, and I was vaguely aware of her preparing a chemical painkiller, too. I wish that I could enjoy it more before warmth turned to fire and soothing turned into arctic numbness, but my wishes were just words and hope, not magic. Not yet, anyway.


    Then I felt the next wave of bottled peace wash over me, apparently that painkiller worked fast, and once more the riot in my mind became merely an angry protest. It would¡¯ve been bliss were it not for the nurse speaking at me, the words keeping me from slipping into the mindless calm I needed.


    ¡°Mister Johansson, I¡¯m going to go get a doctor and a healer, I know you have many questions and they¡¯ll be answered, but for now you just have to stay awake. Can you do that for me, please?¡± She spoke softly, words lacking in confidence. She was likely either very new or very disturbed by whatever it was that had happened to me, or maybe both?


    I couldn¡¯t help but start to think more about everything. Not about The Everything, I wouldn¡¯t, I couldn¡¯t ever be able to think about that, but about what led up to us apparently waking it up, and about just how wrong everything had gone thanks to that¡­ place, that nothing was ever not? That was about when I came up with that name too, ¡®The Everything.¡¯ With thoughts moving through my head like curdled milk, I had no better way of describing what I saw on the other side of that hole, no other name that I could give to some layer of reality that was simply¡­ everything.


    Even when that headache finally calmed into merely a constant pounding and not the mind-breaking agony it had been when I woke up, and when I could finally really start to think, I had no other name to give. That beauty and terror of seeing something that should not be is hardly unheard of, some of the most fascinating research has come from those who¡¯ve been touched by something in the Outer Realms or looked too long into the Abyss, or any number of other things, but they were always described the same, always the same incoherent ramblings that described one sort of impossibility for each. This, though, I¡¯d seen all of it and been all of it, I¡¯d seen myself and everyone else, things that were real and couldn¡¯t be real, because in The Everything, everything is not just possible but mandatory, and it was all of it at the same time.


    I needed to find a way to not get put in an asylum, I realized, with some detached humor. That¡¯s what happens to us when we see things that we can¡¯t, we break, we change. Probably for the best, too, since just about anything at all can happen after a dive into the impossible and everyone gets their own unique ¡®gifts.¡¯ I couldn¡¯t help but wonder what my own consolation prize would end up being. How would¡­ whatever it was, see fit to reward this empty stain on the family¡¯s name?


    I winced with the thought, the frustration pushing just the right buttons to drive another spike right into the base of my skull. Hopefully my takeaway wasn¡¯t that, I didn¡¯t want to be Sylvain, the hegemon of headaches. Thankfully, though, that pain had been ebbing steadily away as I woke up, my racing thoughts both agitating the pain but also clearing it up, for whatever reason, and the impossible memories were also slowly being¡­ tended to?


    Is that why everything was hurting less? Every single contradictory memory scattered throughout my brain was getting steadily more coherent, not in any way I can put a word to, but something was taking the edge off, making each thought separate instead of trying to cram multiple lifetimes spent stuck in a single derelict room for a day into a single thought. That was true bliss.


    ¡°Sylvain? Sylvain. Are you there?¡± Ah, the doctor, right. I assumed he was the doctor, anyway, healers are too pompous to talk to their patients.


    ¡°-hah?¡± was my so very eloquent response, as I pushed the half-word out of my desert-dry throat.


    ¡°Very good, I¡¯m Doctor Strenns, here at the Coalitions¡¯ behest.¡± Ah, so they¡¯d already shipped me to what I assume is some sort of specialist, so I¡¯d probably already gotten a psion¡¯s care, too. And it didn¡¯t help. Damn. Still, I kept looking at him, waiting for him to continue since I had no intention of speaking any further.


    ¡°Anyways¡± he drew that out, apparently peeved that I wasn¡¯t asking questions already, ¡°I was informed about a very unusual patient, the only survivor of some failed experiment or another, found in peculiar circumstances that were not shared with me. In fact, I didn¡¯t get anything more than you were soaked in some sort of higher energy, and presented symptoms of an Eldritch Enlightenment, and not a small one, either.¡± I nodded along, the doctor¡¯s surprisingly mellow voice laced with a bit of confusion, interest, and frustration.


    ¡°Unfortunately, nothing we tried actually helped in any way, it¡¯s been nearly a week since you were brought in, and all of us were starting to wonder if you¡¯d ever truly wake up. Whatever it is you were doing was apparently very unwise.¡± I gave a weak glare at the man¡¯s implied insult to my work, letting him finish.


    ¡°Now that you¡¯re awake, though, maybe we can get some idea of what it is that went wrong and see what more we can do to help.¡± I nodded once more, starting to grow worried about what they¡¯d tried while I was out and why it didn¡¯t help, I had a hard time believing they¡¯d just ignore me for a week and not try anything.


    ¡°Before that, let¡¯s get you cleaned up. Maybe some food and water in you? Most of our healers have been reluctant to try treating you after-¡± He took a sharp breath and coughed, trying to cover up whatever it was he¡¯d been about to say. This was less than good. ¡°They¡¯d been afraid that trying anything might only make things worse, so we stuck to healing your superficial injuries. We wouldn¡¯t want inexperience to damage the mind of such a young prodigy, would we?¡± Sudden, unprompted compliments now, something really was wrong. Them saying they were treating superficial injuries while I was very clearly covered in bruises and cuts, and probably a bunch of other things I couldn¡¯t pick out over the body-wide pain was also suspicious.


    The slight tremble in the man¡¯s voice that I noticed now that I was paying attention was suspicious. While I continued picking out more and more inconsistencies, ignoring the little voice in my mind that was telling me to¡­ I¡¯m not really sure what my own rebellious mind wanted at that moment, there were a lot of mixed messages. Still, since I was stuck in my room, oddly less upset about being restrained that I felt I should have been, all I could really do was brood, watching as I was brought food and water and my cuffs given just enough leeway to bring things to my mouth while the frightened nurse scurried away.


    I took my time, forcing my shaky hands to obey as I finished every crumb and every drop and realized with some dismay that everything hurt just about as much as it did before, but now I had the added bonus of being horrifically nauseous and still starving. The good doctor came back, though, so at least I had a way to ignore my pressing need to turn inside out.


    ¡°Now then, Sylvain, are you feeling any better?¡± He asked, voice smooth and rich, but also a little worried.


    ¡°Yea, I am¡± I replied, hurting slightly less at saying words, but I still needed to make sure that words were all that came out of my mouth.


    ¡°You sound at least a little better, then, that¡¯s good. I¡¯ll have you brought some more water, though, to help with your throat. Now, I suppose you deserve to hear a little more about your circumstances.¡± I listened, ignoring the building pressure and slow droning whine of something in my ears.


    ¡°I can¡¯t say much about how and where you were found, supposedly you were in an emergency pod, a few hours after your employers lost contact with your vessel, adrift and incoherent. No statement was given, but there was no wreckage I¡¯ve been made aware of and no other survivors. Take this however you may.¡± That already didn¡¯t add up.


    ¡°You were given emergency treatment, and apparently needed to be subdued. You were brought back to Earth after that, and I was consulted to treat you since qualified psychiatrists familiar with extranormal mental traumas are in short supply.¡± He sounded haughty when he said that but quickly slipped back into professionalism.


    ¡°Until today, nothing had changed, you weren¡¯t responsive to any outside stimulus, and weren¡¯t answering any questions. Actually, you weren¡¯t speaking at all, which is unusual for patients who have been, let us say, enlightened.¡± Not too surprising, I somehow doubt that someone else has looked into the Everything, although I can¡¯t tell where this confidence is coming from.


    ¡°And the uncontrolled esoteric discharges you¡¯ve been causing have made more extensive treatment a bit unnerving, as a prospect.¡± Wait. Wait. That was not what I was expecting, uncontrolled esoteric discharge is doctor-speak for Wild Magic, usually, but always for some form of uncontrolled higher energy manipulation.


    I¡¯m an empty, though? I have never had a drop of anything, much less enough to make professionals trained in dealing with exactly this scared. No empty has, they just couldn¡¯t. I was about to voice this but then realized his reaction, or lack of it, meant he didn¡¯t know I was an empty.


    Someone¡¯s covering for me. If he doesn¡¯t know, then someone more important than him does. The realization hit me like a brick, and I do mean that literally, a sharp pain directly behind the eyes was all I felt before I doubled over and finally lost the game of tug-of-war with my stomach. Thankfully, I wasn¡¯t facing the good doctor when I did, because what came out of me was absolutely not what I had eaten minutes earlier.


    Well, not unless what I¡¯d eaten was a bunch of long, ropy lengths of vine and a handful of steel bearings, but I would remember such a meal. I hope I would. I was too racked with pain to pay much attention, though, even as the taste of bile and half-digested stuff that probably wasn¡¯t food coated the inside of my mouth. I vaguely heard the doctor call for a healer, and maybe also a cleaner? But not much more before the keening wail behind my ears turned deafening, and then in some twisted joke, boiled out a word that left my mind frothing.


    ¡°Thank.¡±

 Chapter 2: Getting to Know my World, All Over Again

    It was all a haze for a while after that, noise and activity whirling around me like some cruel theater performance. My mind was still reeling after the voice, the shoddy imitation of a voice, echoic and visceral and I had no idea what that was. Had I picked up a passenger or caught the attention of some wandering thing when I looked into the Everything? I was terrified, because now not only was I potentially ¡®contaminated¡¯ by some unnatural force, one that gave me magic, by the way? But I might also have even more reason to be tossed into a cell and studied.


    I groaned painfully, upset and scared and so very confused, and I was very close to just shutting my eyes and going back to sleep for a while longer. Unfortunately, rest was not for me, not yet anyway, and slowly my head was pulled from the vice I would¡¯ve sworn it was stuck in, the noise settling to merely screaming now, and I had no more excuse to continue ignoring the doctor, sitting beside my bed as though nothing happened.


    He noticed me noticing him, too, and he barely gave me the time to blink after our eyes met before launching into another speech.


    ¡°Well, that was certainly eventful, wouldn¡¯t you say? It seems even while conscious your energies continue to defy you, although certainly not to the same extent.¡± I bit back my retort of ¡®because I¡¯d never had powers before now¡¯, not yet too incapacitated to think that would work in my favor.


    ¡°It would seem you¡¯re in more urgent need of some psionics than I¡¯d already thought. I¡¯ve put in a request for somebody to treat you, and it seems SMC is more eager to support you than I¡¯d thought, they¡¯re footing the bill for a rank five to be here as soon as possible.¡±


    That was another shock for me, a rank five psion, a rank five anything would rarely ever do anything ¡®as soon as possible¡¯ without significant pressure. The Coalition is certainly big enough to command someone like that, but even then, not lightly. And it¡¯d make sense not to, anyone at rank five should be spending every second they can preparing to advance, to take that last step and cast off their mortality in favor for a life never-ending. At least, that¡¯s what everyone says, that the first five stages are still, in some way, human, that each advancement makes you better in some way, becoming more powerful and longer living, steadily extending your prime as you prepare to use whatever energies you¡¯ve subscribed to in order to finally create a newer, better you at rank six.


    Of course, even that ranking system is pretty loose, there¡¯re no real ¡®standards¡¯ that demarcate one from the next before six, nor, I¡¯m sure, six, seven, and eight, just a bunch of loose estimations. We¡¯ve all been fed the whole ¡®five and six are like heaven and earth,¡¯ or ¡®that one single advancement cannot even be compared to what they were before,¡¯ and it was true that rank six was another breed entirely, but for an empty like me, they¡¯re all equally untouchable after two.


    Or at least, they were?


    ¡°Sylvain, what¡¯s happened?¡± Oh, I had been unaware that the good doctor was speaking. Looking back into his eyes and blinking slowly, I hoped he took the hint to repeat whatever it was he¡¯d said.


    ¡°As I was saying, they¡¯ve dispatched one of the rank five psions in their employ to come and gauge whatever it is you¡¯re suffering from and with any luck, fix you.¡± Well, I no longer needed to hunt down a psion to wipe away the worst Monday anyone has ever had, small victories and all that.


    ¡°Until then, I¡¯m afraid you¡¯ll be stuck. You¡¯ll be allowed to walk around the room, but I¡¯m sure you understand our apprehension at allowing you to roam the rest of the compound before you can control your gifts again. Any time you need help, I or one of my assistants should be able to respond at any time, and a nurse should be back soon with a meal that you can hopefully keep down. Do you have any questions?¡±


    I had a hard time not scowling at the perceived taunt, only managing to hold back ¡®thanks¡¯ to the lance of pain that shot through my head when I tried. He seemed to take the hint anyway, standing up and leaving the room with strides just a little too long and hurried for my tastes, and yet again, I was left wondering about what I had done to make an obviously trained staff so obviously nervous.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    I looked down at myself, no longer cuffed to the bed but almost certainly locked in the room, and noticed that I didn¡¯t have an I.V drip in my arm, or anywhere else for that matter, which would explain why I was so very parched. I didn¡¯t even see any bruises where one might¡¯ve been stuck, I had plenty of other bruises, sure, but none that looked like they came from a needle and not a hand, boot, rope, or something equally out of place for a hospital patient.


    Still, I was satisfied at my inspection, I was sore and grumpy and groggy, and more than likely losing my mind or being hijacked by some primal entity that should not be in this slice of reality, but I was alive, at least, and I might possibly even better than alive, too, in time.


    It took me all of five minutes to realize that I had nobody at all to talk to now, not only in this building but very possibly anywhere. I wouldn¡¯t say that any of my colleagues were my friends, but schooling, training, working my way up with a few of them had been about the only meaningful connections I¡¯d built since I was in secondary school, and I somehow doubted that anyone from back then would be eager to see me. That sudden realization was a surprise. No spikes of pain, no sickness, no uncontrollable screaming, but I was still very much surprised, and not in a good way. Somehow, I felt just a bit emptier than I had when I was actually an empty.


    Then, because apparently I wasn¡¯t even allowed to wallow in silence and misery for five minutes, my ¡°friend¡± came back


    ¡°Elementum curabitur vitae nunc sed¡±


    And even better, it was now speaking Latin at me. Latin, a language I was just about obligated to learn thanks to my family, a dead language revitalized thanks to the arrival of the arcane because early Mages thought magic just couldn¡¯t be proper without Latin spells, and a language very quickly buried again once the first wave of practical mages took the stage. Now all you¡¯d hear Latin used for is pompous ceremonies and rituals that the Johanssons just so happened to specialize in.


    So, thanks to that, I was able to quickly decipher that my passenger was taunting me. Even in my heavily impaired state of mind, I knew that it was gibberish, utter nonsense that very incoherently spoke of ¡®the element of future care right now¡¯, and even then, I was only vaguely sure that it wasn¡¯t talking about the ¡®element of chat.¡¯


    I was almost too angry to even care that I was already retching again, my body lurching forward as I dry heaved, too empty to even cough up anything, anymore. I was doubled over like that for a few moments longer, shivering in pain as I made certain my stomach wasn¡¯t about to lurch out instead, before I plopped back in bed, staring at the ceiling with as much intensity as I could muster, hoping that I got the sentiment across to whatever it was in my head that was streaming dummy text, very targeted dummy text but dumb all the same, directly into me. I probably didn¡¯t, but I could try.


    From there, though, things started settling down some. I spent most of the next couple days either in too much pain to think about anything too interesting, or too drugged up to think about anything interesting. I had a couple more accidents as Strenns called them, like finding out why there weren¡¯t any needles in me when someone trying to give me a shot wound up smearing lipstick all over my arm, but the second syringe went in with no issues and no surprise transmutations and she got to take the lipstick home after someone made sure it wasn¡¯t cursed or something.


    So, besides a few random party tricks like that, nothing really noteworthy happened. After two or so days passed, I was finally feeling alive again. I was still bedridden, still gambling any time I tried to have a meal, and still trying very hard not to think about my time in the Everything, but alive. And even better, I hadn¡¯t been accosted by any detached voices in my head after the second time. With budding hope that I may yet be able to return to normalcy or even better, I focused on recovering, unperturbed by the lack of visiting colleagues and hardly surprised by my own family¡¯s absence.


    And then, on the third day, still confined to my room and mostly to my bed therein, Strenns came by and told me everything I wanted to hear.


    ¡°Sylvain, I just wanted to let you know that the psion I told you about is here, we¡¯re getting everything sorted now but she should be here for you soon.¡±

 Chapter 3: When Friends make Friends

    I was positively giddy at the news, the first real smile I¡¯d worn in ages plastered onto my face. It may have felt like someone was trying to use the muscles in my face as a bowstring, but that hardly mattered. Even Strenns saw my excited look, and even through his normal warm professionalism, it was easy to tell he was genuinely glad to see me recovering.


    He pulled up a chair, the one he¡¯d sat in whenever we talked, and sat at about eye level with me on the bed. I hadn¡¯t noticed it until the day before, but he was pretty short. Probably five-six or so? That said, as I¡¯d found out, he was pretty accomplished for his post, about rank three thanks to his passive mana use and some biotech that wouldn¡¯t be possible to integrate without that little bit of that esoteric help. I suppose it made sense, though, he¡¯d hardly had the time to go into one of the Academies, the ones with a capital A and pumped out pretty much any accomplished mages and qi cultivators and psions and true technomancers and any other conceivable profession that involved working with ¡®powers beyond mortal ken.¡¯


    Most of them were insufferable anyway, a bunch of glorified military schools. I wasn¡¯t really able to get carried away with my resentment, though, because right after the good doctor sat down, she walked in. Even without looking I could tell that this was the rank five, the entire room seemed to shrink down when she stepped through the door and I could see Strenns smiling nervously behind me.


    With great effort, I turned my head to do the same, coming eye-to-eye with one of the most terrifyingly beautiful women I¡¯d ever seen. Tall, taller than even myself, probably about six-three or so, and shaped like she was sculpted by one of the finest artisans in the system. She had deeply tanned skin and hair that refused to decide what shade of red was best, swirling through scarlet and crimson and auburn and more. And oh, those eyes, I couldn¡¯t even meet them for more than a moment before I had to stop, but I still had a hard time tearing my eyes away.


    Beautiful she may have been, but that¡¯s the sort of beauty that came from power, and I¡¯d seen enough to know that she was very much not my type. Probably not anybody¡¯s, not anymore. While I was busy examining her, she seemed to realize that I wasn¡¯t going to say anything unprompted, and her mouth curled down slightly in a pout.


    ¡°You are Sylvain, yes? My name is Katherine Weaver, the Coalition told me that you were exposed to something during one of their¡­¡± She eyed Strenns ¡°projects, and that it might have planted something in you. Is this correct?¡± I nodded, still trying not to talk much.


    ¡°Then I¡¯m here to take a look, see what sort of nasty you¡¯ve gotten yourself into.¡± She said with a hint of uncontrolled curiosity and even excitement but quickly stamped it down. ¡°By the way, you¡¯re a Johansson, right? Aren¡¯t you guys supposed to stick to mana and a few summonings? What¡¯s one of you doing with the techs?¡±


    I stared at her, taken aback by the sudden question and hidden accusation, and wondered if I should answer at all. Thankfully, she didn¡¯t seem too set on getting an answer, and quickly dropped that line of questioning, hopefully without deciding she¡¯d just find that answer for herself while she dug through my psyche.


    ¡°No matter, I¡¯m not here to find out what sort of drama is going on in your house, only the drama going on in your head. Let¡¯s get right to it, shall we?¡±


    I nodded as vigorously as I could, watching her calm, measured strides as she walked up beside me. I wasn¡¯t sure what I was expecting her to do as she reached down, but her placing one hand on top of my skull seemed about right. There weren¡¯t any spells, no incantations or finger waggling, nothing at all to indicate when she had started beside the feeling. One second, I felt nothing, well, nothing I hadn¡¯t already been feeling, and the next, she was there too.


    It was almost like sitting in a dark room, thinking you¡¯re alone as you talk to yourself, wander around, make yourself at home or whatever and then someone flicks a light on and you realize there was a person in there with you the entire time. Except, it was with my thoughts, so a lot less concrete than that. She started slowly, probably digging through the past couple days of memories and getting used to it all, at least, that¡¯d be my guess from the flashes and snippets of memories I hadn¡¯t called on and thoughts that didn¡¯t feel quite like my own, moving steadily further back.


    There were a couple I felt her sift through where I saw her face scrunch up in disgust or confusion, probably anything involving my ¡®flare-ups¡¯ but once or twice I also saw her start smiling, small and subdued but she was excited about something. That worried me.


    Her excitement wasn¡¯t long for the world, though, not after she made it to the events of my first day here. I felt her going through my final moments of consciousness, tasting the confusion and pain in reverse order, I saw her face grow increasingly confused as she came upon my angry, ranting thoughts about being mocked in Latin, something I spent a few hours doing that day and still hadn¡¯t fully gotten over, and then she finally came to the reason.


    The ringing came back in full, an angry constant gurgle that made only a single noise and rumbled in my skull, and I saw her own face warp in shock and then fear. Once more, words floated to the surface, a stagnant swamp of knowledge washing through my mind and apparently hers, too.


    ¡°Rank tall girl man them over post now. Recommend existence curiosity perfectly favourite.¡±


    I didn¡¯t see what she did next, since I had clamped my eyes shut when my passenger spoke up, but I did hear, even over the deafening static, her shouting and panicking, grabbing a fistful of my matted brown hair and digging her nails into my scalp even while trying to wrench her hand back. Why that didn¡¯t wind up scalping me, or worse, I couldn¡¯t say, but I was grateful enough.


    The noise quickly drained away, though, and I once more opened my eyes to see the psion grabbing her own arm, desperation clear on her face. That¡¯s when I realized that I didn¡¯t feel her in my head anymore, that I was alone all over again.This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.


    Except, I realized with a great deal of fear, I wasn¡¯t. I couldn¡¯t feel anyone reaching in anymore, but I still wasn¡¯t alone. I finally felt it again, so very much like when I looked into the Everything and saw it looking back at me, it was in my head then and it still was, and it had been disturbed once more. Even without a hole in reality for it to creep through, without enough power to scour a small moon clean, it was with me, and now, it had found somebody new.


    Just like I could feel the Katherine in my head, that unseen guest in the room when the lights came on, I could feel¡­ whatever it was with me reaching out. Except, it wasn¡¯t a person in the room, it was the entire room itself. The walls and floor and ceiling and furniture, the pictures hanging and the fluorescent light, all of it was this thing and now that it had more company, it wanted it back. And so it tried to take it, the room that had replaced my own warped and twisted and grabbed Katherine, and I could feel her struggle and fail to cut our connection before she was back in my mind, yanked in by this thing from the Everything, something I¡¯d later call the Every-Thing as if that weren¡¯t confusing, but for now, I just called it horrifying.


    She was brought back, more completely this time, if her sudden cease in struggles was anything to go off of, and then she, we were spoken to once more.


    ¡°Spoke as as other again ye. Abilities forfeited situation extremely my to he resembled.¡±


    This ¡®lesson¡¯ was still thundering in my ears, but it seemed that whatever it was had gotten its point across this time, although I almost felt some disappointment in that last verse. Regardless, once it was finished ¡®scolding¡¯ the poor woman, the Every-Thing wasted no time in spitting her back out, and I felt my own mental room twisting itself and pushing her out through a wall.


    Like a puppet with her strings cut, she collapsed, landing on her butt on the floor and gulping down huge lungfuls of air, staring up at me in sheer terror. The room was still for a long, horrible moment before she scrambled back away from me until her back hit the wall and even then, her legs kept trying to push her further away. Doctor Strenns was eerily silent during this, although I didn¡¯t spare him a glance, too busy staring at the frightened psion as blood trickled down my forehead, streams of oily green tar pooling where the crimson red dripped onto my sheets and gown.


    ¡°What- what the hell was that!¡± She hissed, finally calmed down enough to think, apparently, but her voice was a whisper compared to her earlier shouts. ¡°That was inside of you? What did you do?¡± Her voice was wavering, now, desperately hoping for some answers. I had none to give, and could only stare dumbly. The Every-Thing, cause of the problem, had apparently rolled over and gone back to sleep, or whatever the closest resemblance to that phrase it could be subjected to was, so it was only myself and her in the room, which was probably not normal.


    That was when I started paying closer attention to her, realizing that her once supremely confident air and appearance had been thrown into disarray, the atmosphere of the room itself mirroring the turmoil she was no doubt going through. The air was sweltering and stuffy, and the walls seemed to be closing in at all times. She, too, had changed. Her right hand, the one she had placed on my head, was wrong too.


    Before, it was flawless, her fingernails perfectly manicured and hands themselves delicate and smooth. Now, though, something just was missing. At first, it just seemed weird, but I couldn¡¯t help but notice that little things simply didn¡¯t add up, it was just too uncanny. The first thing to really stand out was the fact that it had lost all sense of depth. Everything from the tips of her fingers to a little past her elbow simply looked two-dimensional, unshaded, with a solid, single color. The tan had become a matte beige, there were no shadows cast or light reflecting, no curves apparent or any visible way at all to tell that this was more than a very hastily colored sketch of an arm, and it made me sick.


    Then came the rest of the tiny details, her fingers had too many joints, or even no bones at all in there, her entire arm seemed to be wobbling, around the edges. I could only tell because I saw her bending them and could count the knuckles, there simply was no other way with that cartoonishly singular color. Everything about it was incorrect, and when she saw me staring for too long, she looked down at her own arm, too.


    She looked like she was about to scream, drawing in a breath of air to start shouting for help, probably, but then the door was finally wrenched open and a nurse and a security officer burst in, quickly taking stock of the room, coming to the conclusion that he had no idea at all what had happened. Were it anyone else on the floor, in the psion¡¯s position, I have no doubts that I¡¯d be blamed, but he was just as aware as everyone else who she was, and more importantly, who I was not. From behind me, I heard the telltale groan of a man rudely awoken; apparently, Strenns wasn¡¯t awake for the show that the three of us had performed, and the room was once more, deathly still.


    The psion took a second to compose herself, pushing herself off the ground to stand at her full height, albeit with some hesitation, and even I could see her thinking, spinning a story together for whatever reason.


    ¡°It seems that your so-called security is little more than a joke. How is it, that in a supposedly secure facility like you claim to run, a hostile psion can not only work their way past every single checkpoint you had me wasting my time on, and do so absolutely unnoticed, mind you, and mount an attack when I am spinning a Bridge? The only time someone like me could possibly be vulnerable to such an attack, and yet you not only let it happen but also allow your own staff and those in your care to come under fire? Disgraceful.¡±


    And what a story it was, completely unbelievable to anyone with more than three seconds of thought, but she had said it with so much raw vitriol and confidence that even I almost felt convinced, and I¡¯m certain that her own natural command over the flows of thought only helped push the narrative onto that poor guard. What I didn¡¯t understand was why.


    ¡°Honestly, I have no idea why the Coalition even allowed you people to treat one of our own at all. I¡¯ll be putting in a transfer order for Mister Johansson immediately, in the likely circumstance that the attack was aimed at him.¡±


    Ah. So that she can move me, I see. I should probably have worried more about what her reasons for doing so were, but honestly, I simply wanted to sleep.


    And so I did.

 Chapter 4: An Argument Between Pals

    ¡°-vain, Sylvain Johansson. Have you finally had enough sleep, yet?¡± The answer to that question was an unequivocal no, but apparently, that answer meant nothing. I took a couple of seconds longer to try and enjoy that fleeting feeling of peace that sleep granted, before blearily opening my eyes, looking around a very large and unfamiliar room with only two familiar faces. I wasn¡¯t even sure anymore what should be surprising me the most now.


    On one hand, it was very clear that Katherine was a lady of her word, as I had been moved to somewhere that seemed entirely more secure, and I had a feeling that the security wasn¡¯t in case of any more ¡®hostile psions¡¯ coming in from the outside. I no longer had even the slightest idea of where I was, back on Earth I could hazard a couple guesses but not anymore¡­at least this still felt like a hospital room, not a lab. At least, nothing pointed to it.


    Also surprising was that Doctor Strenns had been taken to wherever it was we were now, he was competent, sure, but I had no reason to suspect that his credentials earned him such an obvious promotion. Standing beside him, towering above him really, was my unfortunate and illogical victim, the rank five psion Katherine who by rights should have basically vaporized me or at the very least reduced me to a mindless thrall or something equally unsavory. That she hadn¡¯t suggested either serious self-control for someone who probably saw me as a very bitey spider that startled her with the Every-Thing¡¯s little ¡®trick¡¯, or that she was somehow unable to do so to begin with.


    I wasn¡¯t sure which was the better option, but I wouldn¡¯t take it for granted. I also noted that both of them looked significantly less composed than the last time I¡¯d seen them. Strenns seemed haggard and exhausted, bags under his eyes and a pallid complexion that seemed the result of days without sleep, and yet the slightly manic look in his eyes told me that he wasn¡¯t too unhappy to be here.


    Meanwhile, Katherine just seemed grumpy, the very palpable aura around her indicated at least that much, and it was a surreal sight watching someone with enough power to be classified as a minor disaster pout. I ignored the strange man trying to get my attention, rather, I continued to ignore him, in order to study her further. Whatever my little passenger had done to her appeared to be a permanent thing, or I would guess as much from the single evening glove she was wearing on her right arm, made for intense discretion, it seemed, and somehow she made it look just as stunning as without. Otherwise, she was unchanged. Still looking supernaturally attractive, still dressed to the nines, still visibly dangerous, the works.


    ¡°Sylvain Henry Camille Johansson! Would you please stop fooling around!¡± So maybe he wasn¡¯t quite as strange as I thought he was, I didn¡¯t think anyone in the Coalition knew my full name. With great effort, although not nearly as great as it had been the last time I was awake, I managed to turn my head and look at the new arrival.


    ¡°Marcus?¡± Of all the people I had expected to see, Marcus was not one. One of my many cousins, he was one of the few people around my age when I was growing up that I could actually stand being around. He may not have been¡­ like me, an empty, but neither did I feel like he outright despised me for it, even if I always thought his parents did. I never cared too much, though, I was simply glad to have someone to talk to, to hang out with, even to play with before he began training, and I was even a little sad to leave him behind with the rest of the Johansson line.


    ¡°What are you doing?¡± I squeezed out.


    ¡°I was informed by the Coalition that I had an injured family member in their care, suffering from some sort of ¡®control issues¡¯ on top of it. I was already visiting the Luna branch anyways, so I stopped by. I must admit, I couldn¡¯t think of anyone else in the House who¡¯d joined the Coalition like us two, and I¡¯m still surprised it¡¯s you of all people here, in their ward for ¡®anomalies¡¯.¡± There was a lot to unpack there, some of it good, some of it less than so.


    ¡°I¡¯m on the moon?¡± But that, to me, was the most important question right now.


    ¡°Yes, Vane, you¡¯re on the moon. I suppose your second visit is a little bit worse than your first, isn¡¯t it?¡±


    ¡°Yeah, this bed just can¡¯t live up to the one I had back at the estate.¡± He cracked a small grin at that, which I considered enough of a success. My two observers were just watching on, now, but I could tell Marcus had questions for Katherine, too. I could only hope he had a clue which ones he shouldn¡¯t be asking. Just to be safe, I¡¯d hold him back a moment longer.


    ¡°So, Mark, how long¡¯ve you been here? Actually, how long have I been here?¡± That sentence hurt, my voice cracked at the end there and reminded me that I still needed more water.


    Strenns spoke up in Marcus¡¯ stead, though. ¡°You¡¯ve been asleep for about a day and a half, apparently that psychic attack took even more out of you than Miss Katherine originally estimated.¡± I locked eyes with the psion, and unsurprisingly, her stoic mask didn¡¯t even falter.


    ¡°Huh, I guess the beds here do compare after all, Mark. Want to try mine?¡± I wasn¡¯t looking at him to confirm, but I was fairly certain I heard a chuckle from beside me.


    ¡°Maybe later, Vane. I¡¯m a little more curious about what you were up to that left you in such a bad way. I was about to start looking for you, you know. Tell you I¡¯d left the family like you, got a job in the Coalition, maybe have lunch or something. Instead, here you go, getting your brain fried and your energy all scrambled again.¡± I hadn¡¯t realized I was so nervous about what he might say until he said that, I¡¯ll have to fill him in a little more later if I ever get out. So, with the smallest sigh of relief I could manage, I replied.


    ¡°Congratulations, then, glad you could come to your senses. Long story, though, I need more water for long stories.¡± I also needed a lot more than water, but I¡¯d manage. With a hearty groan, I pulled myself into a sitting position, looking down at my arms when the sheet I¡¯d wrapped myself in fell off and was surprised to see hardly even a mark, much less the borderline unbelievable bruises I¡¯d seen a day and a half before. Neat.


    Strenns seemed about ready to push me back into bed, seeing me sit up like that, but the other two were fine, and I looked around the room wondering who¡¯d banish the silence we had fallen into. It seemed Marcus would once more have the honors, finally speaking to Katherine, surprisingly nonchalantly, too. He¡¯d only been at the second rank when last we spoke, and he was probably still there, but if he had a personal summons to one of the main branches then perhaps he¡¯d broken into the third? If so, he¡¯d almost be important now.


    ¡°I¡¯m still surprised that Vane here warranted someone like you¡­ Katherine, was it?¡± And then, we were back to silence, Katherine merely stared at my cousin, failing to so much blink at him, and he awkwardly stared back, probably trying to hold eye contact with her, and most likely failing spectacularly. I missed the helpless fool more than I¡¯d thought.


    ¡°I see¡­ Well, Katherine, I wasn¡¯t aware my cousin could stir up enough trouble to earn the personal care of a psion of your caliber. Any chance you¡¯d let me in on any gossip you found in there?¡± He asked, the faux seriousness of my tone enough to have me rolling my eyes, and Strenns looking almost horrified at the suggestion. Katherine, though, kept that same attitude that I¡¯d always thought a rank five should have. That being emotionless, cold, and more than vaguely menacing for no discernible reason while she bored into Marcus¡¯ soul with her eyes, very obviously peeved for some reason. I was starting to be able to hazard a guess, but the good doctor proved himself surprisingly adept at dealing with the situation and spoke up before Mark could make too big a fool of himself.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    ¡°Mister Marcus, I know I¡¯d asked this of you when you first arrived and I suppose it was wrong of me then when you were so obviously worried for your cousin, but perhaps you and I should go speak elsewhere? Perhaps you¡¯d be able to tell me a little more about Sylvain¡¯s history, it might help get him on track to controlling his gifts once more.¡± I nodded at him but made sure to give him a look that told him everything I possibly could without words. He looked reluctant, whether it was due to needing to come up with something on the spot, or needing to leave behind a pretty woman, I couldn¡¯t tell, he¡¯d never been much good at either of them. At least Strenns took that look to mean that he¡¯d actually worry leaving my side, which made the doctor soften up to him just a bit.


    I took a deep breath as the pair walked towards the door, knowing that I¡¯d probably need it as soon as it was shut. And, to nobody¡¯s surprise, it took less than three seconds between the soft thump of the door shutting, and the pressure inside the room skyrocketing. I could tell she had done something, probably blocked out the noise in the room and messed with the cameras, but I couldn¡¯t be certain.


    ¡°Tell me.¡± Was all she said, boring holes into my skull with her indescribably vibrant eyes. I think they were orange, actually, but it was still hard to tell. Still, between the violence in those eyes and the borderline petulant tone she¡¯d had, it was hard not to say something. Even if it was the wrong answer.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know either.¡± Her mild scowl was practically oozing skepticism now, on top of the promise of injury if I didn¡¯t comply. And honestly, I probably should have. Compliance was the only tool I had for nearly a quarter of a century, the only way I managed to work my way up the totem pole of powers was by scraping every bit of favor that I could. Being a yes-man was awful because it was so hard to simply stop saying yes.


    ¡°I genuinely don¡¯t, I hardly even know how it happened. You probably know just as much as I do what happened. You probably know more.¡± And there was her ¡®yes,¡¯ me telling her everything I knew. It was absolutely in my best interest to do so, but I still resented having to answer questions more than I would be having those answers actively pulled out of me. At least before I¡¯d get away with simply not talking, after all, my body just couldn¡¯t handle it, but now I had no excuse.


    ¡°Obviously not. I recall you seeming a lot less surprised than I was when that thing in your head started screaming at me! I couldn¡¯t even control myself; I couldn¡¯t even leave! What sort of brain worm did you pick up out there? How did it even do this?¡± She ripped off the glove, proving my earlier guess right as she waved around the unnaturally unicolored arm and the inhumanly bendy joints.


    I tried to scoot further away from the madwoman, genuinely afraid for my safety now that she seemed to be getting truly angry. That was the wrong answer, though, and she only stormed closer.


    ¡°I want to know; I want to fix this.¡± That was when I noticed, though, that even when she was seething, she wouldn¡¯t touch me. That grotesque hand was right in my face, true, probably pointing a finger but I couldn¡¯t be certain looking at that angle, not when all I saw was a tan circle, but even then, she didn¡¯t touch me. She probably wasn¡¯t even very close, actually, but again, depth was impossible to measure. She was afraid, too. And knowing that felt really, really good.


    ¡°Then why haven¡¯t you just taken the answer. Make it easy for both of us and rip my ¡®brain worm¡¯ right out?¡± It was hard, truly hard, not to flinch after hearing my own words, but I managed, keeping my tone level and my gaze steady. To my credit, after delivering that line, she looked about ready to do just that, and I found it getting hard to breathe. She looked strained, though, and I realized that the entire building was probably built to keep people like her, maybe not quite so strong but still, from flinging around power so freely, and especially in a ward designed for ¡®anomalies¡¯ as Marcus said. I was still terrified, but after that realization, I was able to really look into those violently vermillion eyes and see her looking back.


    ¡°Is that really what you want?¡± Her lips parted in a grin, the first real emotion that could crack that flawless mask. Even in her rage, her face was utterly impassive, besides those eyes. ¡°For me to rip it out? That¡¯s very different than how I babied you last time, and your bosses aren¡¯t going to be able to call someone to fix you.¡±


    Needless to say, this was not at all what I wanted, but it was too late now. The pressure was almost unbearable now, but that was when I realized that it wasn¡¯t coming from outside anymore. My head felt swollen like a balloon ready to burst, and I had a few ideas why. I matched her gorgeous smile with my own pained scowl, before tilting my head forward. She was still wary of touching me, though, and I watched her slip the glove back on. It was probably some special material she got for an indulgent sum while she waits for something even more expensive, but some part of me doubted that it was indulgent enough.


    She slammed her palm into my head, once more making me wonder how it was even intact, now, and I felt her once more. There was no gentle awareness, this time. No unknown guest in the room, nothing like that. Instead, it was closer to having an elephant come by and kick down the door, having a trained crew disassemble the entire structure while I sat on the couch helplessly, and being violently assaulted during it all. But almost just as quickly as she kicked in the door and raided the room, the entire building kicked back.


    ¡°Of in power match on truth worse voice would.¡±


    Once again, pointed gibberish, but this time it wasn¡¯t meant for me at all. And I¡¯m glad it wasn¡¯t; I wasn¡¯t even sure how something with that much force could be contained in something like a fleshy human brain, but when the Every-Thing lashed out in retaliation to the intrusion I wasn¡¯t sure I wanted to. I just wanted to hope it¡¯d never point something like that at me.


    The room itself froze at that moment, I couldn¡¯t breathe, I couldn¡¯t feel my heart beating and through the thin material separating her skin from mine, I couldn¡¯t feel Katherine¡¯s either. Our eyes met again, my one eye she wasn¡¯t covering with the palm of her hand anyway, and I could see her eyes widen and pupils dilating in seemingly slow motion. She had probably been about to say something, her lips slightly parted for a word she hadn¡¯t been able to get out before she felt it too.


    That was when I went blind, for a second or two, the lights just simply went out in my mind and I felt whatever was in my head give a great shove that felt like a bomb going off through the connection she¡¯d forcefully opened. That wasn¡¯t even the end, though, because after feeling like an entire military had been paraded out through my head, I felt it grab again, and pull it all back in. The bridge between our minds snapped after that, it was simply not built to stand up to the raging tsunami of information and pure thought getting shunted across, nor was it ready for that all to be brought right back over to my side, taking all of that uncontrolled energy and a bit more, too.


    And yet, despite feeling like the entire world was flipped on its head and given a rough shake, only to be turned inside out right after, there was no fanfare, no theatrics, no screaming or shouting or gasping for breath. Instead, those gorgeous eyes staring back into mine just blinked. Once, then twice, before the pressure in the room disappeared like it had never existed to begin with, and the jelly fingered not-quite-arm on my head dropped to her side. She jerked upright and turned sharply around, marching towards the door with all the grace of a pre-magic wind-up doll. I wasn¡¯t sure what it had done to her as I watched her stomping away from the room before the door shut.


    ¡°What did you do? What did I do?¡± I moaned, slapping my hands to my face and dragging them down in defeat.


    ¡°Saw yet kindness too replying whatever karivanne. Behaviour new set existence dashwoods.¡±


    ¡°What does that even mean?¡±


    ¡°Thank.¡±

 Chapter 5: Knowledge is Medicine for the Soul

    I was always of the belief that there would be consequences, should somebody manage to lobotomize one of the most powerful psions in the system because of the voice in their head shouting magical gibberish at them. Maybe they¡¯d almost immediately be whisked away to be experimented on or put on a very tight leash for some shadowy organization, but really any number of things came to mind. And yet, even after doing just that to Katherine, none of them were coming to the door.


    I had no way of knowing that, though, and so the next ten minutes were incredibly tense for me. Every second I kept expecting men in black to bust through the door and drag me away, or even worse, Katherine herself to snap out of whatever fugue the Every-Thing had very aggressively put her in, and every second there was nothing, not even a ¡®calming¡¯ word from my companion.


    Ten long, long minutes of silence had gone by before the door finally opened again. I was already about halfway out of my bed, surprisingly even less sore after Katherine¡¯s ministrations, before I realized it was Strenns and Marcus, now talking much more freely. The short man had seemingly warmed up to the novice summoner that was my cousin, and they had been discussing something involving suspicious amounts of arcane enhancers and also summoning salts. I wasn¡¯t going to care either way, but I did hope Marcus wasn¡¯t planning to yank something out of a plane like Infernus or, like grandpa, directly from a Hell beneath it, and then stick things into it. I¡¯m sure it¡¯d be more complicated, but before now I never had much of a reason to care about anything beyond theory, and maybe applying it to magitech in a way that wouldn¡¯t rip apart someone who had little to no internal energy.


    The two of them weren¡¯t discussing ideas for long, though, because they were quick to spot the obvious as soon as they took a look around the room.


    ¡°Where¡¯d Katherine go?¡± Asked Marcus, a concerned Strenns nodding along. Time to see how well I can put together a story.


    ¡°Really? A rank five is just supposed to stick around after getting what she came for? Things were a lot easier without random attacks being thrown at me, and I think you made her shy last time, Doctor.¡± I mustered up as much confidence as I could while I said it, thankful that I learned how to lie decently enough even if I never wanted to go into the family¡¯s politics. Marcus still seemed a touch hesitant, though, so I continued.


    ¡°Oh, you just wanted to get one last try in before she left, huh? She probably saw enough in my head to know not to let that happen.¡± I shot him a smirk, watching that last bit of uncertainty wash away by his annoyance. Strenns hadn¡¯t needed any extra convincing, thankfully, and even shot Marcus a look.


    ¡°That is a shame, though. I had a couple of questions I wanted to ask her about you, especially after everything Marcus here has told me of your gifts and the difficulties you¡¯ve had with them even before this accident, but hopefully, there may be some notes she¡¯s left for later. However, what I have heard has given me some insight into what we might do to get you back on your feet.¡± I was staring daggers at Marcus; I had no idea what my supposed ¡®gifts¡¯ were and that could be an issue. Thankfully the man wasn¡¯t too daft, though, because he turned to Strenns before he could dive into his treatment plans with me and posed a question.


    ¡°Hey Strenns, I know you¡¯re eager to really get into it with Vane here, but would you mind letting us have the room for a couple moments? I was called here for something else and I¡¯d like to talk to him a little bit before I¡¯m to be out of here.¡±


    The doctor was very clearly reluctant to comply, but not enough to say no. He gave a short acceptance before turning and walking back out the door. Marcus waited for a few moments after that, speaking about some inanities before he was sure Strenns was gone far enough, before crouching beside me. My glare must have made it abundantly clear what I wanted him to say because he wasted no time in speaking.


    ¡°So, I don¡¯t suppose you¡¯ll fill me in on your secret huh?¡± Silence reigned. ¡°Thought not, not here at least. I know we¡¯ve got to be fast, the doctor is waiting for you, but I already let him know about the two energies you grew up using.¡± So, he did pick for me, and two. That was actually surprisingly reasonable, since whatever it was I had going on around me couldn¡¯t be explained with just one of the Core Four. I started opening my mouth to speak, but he cut me off.


    ¡°It¡¯s okay, save your breath for Strenns. He¡¯s already started designing a treatment to help you get your psionics back in order up there, and we were talking about ways that might help you get back to gathering Prana again, too. I know they can be hard to do together, though, but you¡¯ve gotten through it once before, right?¡± Good man, I guess maybe he did get a bit better at covering for himself after I left. Still, psionics and prana, those were probably the best choices he could¡¯ve made, but he was lucky that Katherine wasn¡¯t here to call him out on the former.


    They were both pretty simple, too, but I guess all of the Core Four were simple. They really only did two things in two ways, body enhancement, and mind enhancement. Qi and prana represented the former, and psionics and mana the latter. They could also be internal, qi and psi, or external, like prana and mana. This meant the two Mark had chosen, psionics and prana, would be almost opposites if there was a proper spectrum.


    The first was obviously based on the user¡¯s mind, as Katherine was one of many clear examples. Psionic power grows within the mind, it takes a bit of energy to light the spark, as it were, and then everything comes down to how well someone can stoke those flames further. Of the four, it was one of the most rigid. Being used exclusively through the mind, it wasn¡¯t very receptive to any ¡®flavors¡¯ but was exceptional at evading or infiltrating defenses, at creating and destroying mental defenses, both mana and psionic, and at speeding up conscious reaction times; essentially, an all-around increase in mental prowess that can lead to some interesting powers down the line.If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    The other internal energy, qi, basically acts like psionics for the body; it¡¯s created and used with a wholly internal supply and the only things it can do will strictly affect physical capability in some fashion. That said, with truly experienced users, that can still mean some equally unexpected results. Then, there is prana. As one of the ¡®external¡¯ energies, prana can¡¯t be generated in a human¡¯s body and has to be manually collected from the environment. Of course, it is abundant and easy to internalize, as is mana, so it remains an equally viable option.


    A good prana practitioner would be in the edges of a large battle, fighting hand-to-hand while casting small scale spell-equivalents without thinking. Just like any other form of muscle memory, casting with prana is drilled constantly until it¡¯s no different than breathing or blinking. It should only take the slightest twitch of a muscle to launch projectiles, form walls, sap someone¡¯s strength, and so much more. Lastly, mana. It acts similar to prana, almost identical even, but it does so with thought and intent. Instead of using the body, a mage builds their spells in their mind and using them repetitively until they can release them in an instant, relying on them just like any other mnemonic.


    Marcus had made me out as someone very familiar with my own mind, but with very little control over what happens around my body. I¡¯d be willing to bet that from what I¡¯d currently demonstrated to Strenns, this was probably pretty accurate, especially since ¡®eldritch-touched¡¯ psions were notorious for their loss of control in pretty much any department.


    Since he seemed so set on not letting me talk, I decided not to do so, meeting his eyes and mouthing a simple thanks to him. I¡¯d make it up to him in the future, but I¡¯d need to get out of here before I could. Marcus gave me one final look before standing up and making his way to the door, and he¡¯d barely even turned the handle before it was yanked open from the outside, Strenns standing about ready to bowl the larger man over. It had become increasingly apparent over the past few days that he was very passionate about his job.


    Marcus said a short, cordial goodbye to the doctor, then turned a corner just out of view that finally left me alone once more with Strenns. I had to give credit to the man, though, despite his visible anticipation, his behavior was just as professional as when I met him, so I wasn¡¯t surprised when he spoke up, speaking just softly enough to show some concern for my hearing.


    ¡°It seems we can finally speak now, Sylvain. I must apologize for just how hectic the past few days have been. Between your injuries, the stress, the attack, and I¡¯m sure plenty more, you¡¯ve been far too busy for someone as injured as you¡­ were?¡± His expression had steadily grown more concerned as he spoke, and I was starting to think that he was just now paying attention to the lack of bruising that I had noticed earlier. Then, I took a look down at myself, too, and I realized why the good doctor seemed so befuddled.


    I still didn¡¯t feel like it, but the many bruises, contusions, and cuts were still gone, or at least hidden behind my hospital gown. What had changed, though, was the presence of a pair of very obvious, very new birthmarks. One was running the length of my right arm, wrist to elbow, and the other started on the right side of my chest, from what I could see under the gown, and spread at least until my bicep. I had always been a pretty tan man, and never dealt with things like freckles and splotches either, so seeing the brown patch on my chest and the cherry red one on my arm was unnerving, especially since I hadn¡¯t seen them when I looked at myself not five minutes ago.


    I looked back at Strenns, met his eyes and gave an exasperated shake of my head. He raised an eyebrow but said nothing. He had been about to, though, before his eyes flicked back to my arm, once more widening in surprise. Expecting the worst, I looked back too.


    ¡°I mean, come on¡­¡± And the blemishes were gone once again. Lifting my right arm to inspect it revealed no secrets as to what had just happened, no clues to why my skin had just pulled its own magic trick. I did note, with a bit of interest, that my right arm felt even better than it had a couple of minutes ago, and was thankful for whatever it was that kept me healing faster than I rightfully should.


    Strenns didn¡¯t let me play with my slightly better arm for long, though, before making a comment of his own. ¡°Well, that was certainly¡­ unusual. I¡¯m aware that prana can have some unusual effects on the body after a negative enlightenment, but I usually only see patients developing new casting habits, maybe picking up some muscle tics or something, in the worst cases we¡¯ll see their control become unstable and their body suffering symptoms similar to mundane strokes. I¡¯ve yet to see something like that, not without qi being involved in some way, but Marcus said you didn¡¯t ignite your core, only your mind. How curious.¡±


    I was glad the man was open-minded at least because that was not the first eerily sharp observation he¡¯s made that by rights should have made him suspicious.


    ¡°I suppose it is possible you did ignite your core out there, unconscious awakenings are well-documented, and sometimes an enlightenment can lead to one, but typically they only happen to unawakened or single-awakened. Still, you wouldn¡¯t be the first to do so, and it would explain your fast recovery¡­¡± He trailed off there, looking back into my eyes. ¡°Apologies Sylvain, your condition is just so very unusual. But I suppose me telling you that helps you little in your recovery, and conjecture can only do so much until we prove it right or wrong.¡±


    I nodded in relief, or I guess in his eyes, understanding, while he continued. ¡°So, now that you seem a bit more stable, why don¡¯t we start working on returning that stability to your gifts?¡± Despite the question, his tone left no room for putting it off any further, and I could only hope I could make learning how to use whatever it was that I had taken from The Everything look enough like a ¡®natural recovery¡¯ in Strenns¡¯ eyes and also hopefully keep the Every-Thing from coming to light, too. Having no idea in the slightest what I was doing would only add to the challenge, but even with the doubt and fear and unknown variables, I wasn¡¯t truly afraid, hardly even worried actually.


    I was giddy, absolutely over-the-moon, despite being on the moon. How could I not be, too? I may not have done it in the ¡®conventional¡¯ way, I may not have been supposed to do it at all, but even with all the odds stacked against me, I¡¯d gotten everything I could¡¯ve ever hoped for. Maybe not in the way I had planned, and not nearly as risk-free, pain-free, or problem-free as I¡¯d like, but I wasn¡¯t empty anymore. I had Everything, and that meant all the ups and downs that came with it, sure, but all I cared about right then was that I had magic.

 Chapter 6: Learning Can Even Be Fun, Too

    ¡°So, Sylvain, I suppose we should start with the very basics and work our way up until we know just how much you need to relearn after your incident. I guess the best way we could start would be to verify whether you have, in fact, ignited a qi core in your haste. To do this, the simplest, most direct way, would be to examine your own body. I¡¯m sure you¡¯ve learned quite a few ways to meditate by now and after turning your sight inwards finding out shouldn¡¯t be too hard for anyone with even a wisp of higher energy in them.¡±


    The doctor was right that I¡¯d learned plenty of ways to look at my own cores, or the barren, empty shell my own body had instead of cores. I took the hint and settled into my favorite form, a simple, cross-legged sitting position that reminded me just how much my body ached, and those first few truly deep breaths to help clear my mind only made it worse. But then, as I found my composure, and then my rhythm, I was able to let that all fall away. Eyes closed, I focused on myself, on examining how every inch of myself felt, how everything looked both inside and out.


    It was with no small amount of disappointment, then, that looking inside myself revealed nothing different to what I was used to. I looked towards my abdomen, what many traditionalist qi ¡®cultivators¡¯ would call the dantian and found nothing. Not just an inert patch of dull, flavorless energy waited to be ignited, but absolutely nothing at all. I still had no qi.


    Turning my attention towards my chest, towards my lungs and my diaphragm, I saw nothing once more. There was no ebb and flow of power with every breath, no energy spilling out through my lungs and leaking into my blood to be carried throughout my body and then brought back, to be expelled and cycled once more. I still had no prana.


    My examination continued upwards, finding its way to the base of my skull, what many know as the brain stem. Yet again, I was lacking any hints of an ethereal power supply being slowly produced there, nothing that even suggested psychic energy was being produced or controlled. I still had no psi.


    In one, final effort, I pushed my sight to the forefront of my mind, literally. I tried looking around where my frontal lobes would be, hoping for any sign of something otherworldly that gathered and collected in the pathways of my brain. I desperately wanted to see something, anything at all that suggested something was pooling there and being sent out, through the neurons and nerves from my mind and then outwards, carried by electricity and impulse outwards, but I saw nothing. I still had no mana.


    I was mad, dejected, weirdly apathetic. I had hoped for a surprise when I started, for something to change, and yet I couldn¡¯t even find it in myself to be shocked. Just like I couldn¡¯t find anything else inside myself, either. I felt so many different emotions and yet I couldn¡¯t think of anything else but how empty it all felt.


    I was already about to give up, to just throw in the towel and start making up a lie for Strenns when I felt an impulse to look deeper. I couldn¡¯t give up so easily, and I just had to find proof that something had changed. I looked further into my own mind, pushing past layers of grey and white matter that I had no way of seeing but knew I was looking at regardless, towards the true center of the three pounds of flesh in my skull. It was when I had started inspecting around the area where my amygdala, thalamus, and hippocampus sat, if my moderate schooling in anatomy was to be believed when I finally¡­ witnessed something.


    I witnessed Everything. That impulse that drove me there on my own was replaced by something much greater, then, a great yank on my own awareness that drew me into myself with all the gentleness and care of a black hole, and yet again I was there. Truths and lies meant nothing here, it was impossible for contradictions and impossibilities to even be impossible because even that would imply that anything could ever be incapable of happening. I was starting to get lost, now, there was no grand event like the shutting of a cosmic window to kick me out, and I would have been utterly terrified if I wasn¡¯t already in too deep to think anything resembling rational thought, any thought at all. All I could sense, at all, was Everything.


    ¡°Certain forbade picture now prevent carried he get see sitting.¡±


    And then I was out of there, all over again. For one eternal instant, I had been trapped but then the voice of the Thing overwhelmed even that. My eyes shot open, and my body was filled with every sensation imaginable, from agony to ecstasy, I felt it all, and it was simply too much for me to possibly handle at that moment, and so I reacted the only way I could. I blacked out.


    Thankfully, it lasted only a moment. When I came to, my legs were still crossed beneath me, but I had fallen back onto the bed. I could tell it hadn¡¯t been very long, though, because despite being drenched in sweat and shaking wildly, the doctor was still standing over me, and he looked like he was more confused than concerned. He must have seen me open my eyes because he started speaking a second after.


    ¡°Sylvain, are you alright? You had been meditating for a few minutes when you suddenly seized up and fell back. You weren¡¯t responding at all for the last ten seconds. What happened?¡±


    I pushed myself back up into sitting position, rolling my head and trying to wash out any lingering phantom pains. I wasn¡¯t incredibly successful, but I still pushed down the feelings that I¡¯d become all too well-acquainted with over these past few days and responded to the man.


    ¡°Well, I¡¯ve got some good news for you, I have sparked my core, and I spent a long time inspecting it. I got really excited towards the end, though, and tried tugging a bit of it out of my dantian but that¡¯s the last thing I remember¡­¡± I tried to sound both excited and unsure, and was very successful because excited and unsure were two of the many emotions I was currently feeling. Seeing some sort of energy inside me after so long made me feel overjoyed. It hardly even mattered that it seemed a great deal more unusual and probably unsafe than any of the Core Four, and the fact that it came with an apparently mandatory hyperdimensional tag along was significantly less disagreeable when that¡­ whatever¡­ did just save my life, or maybe even existence?


    The doctor spared no time for my thoughts, though, and jumped right into a lecture. ¡°Well of course that¡¯d knock you out Sylvain, surely you¡¯re aware that qi and psi are both immensely difficult to consciously work without the proper training. Trying to just ¡®tug on it¡¯ after having never even sparked a core would be like trying to make your heart stop beating. You need plenty of experience just to make it react in a way that¡¯s any different than simple, magical muscle memory.¡±


    I nodded my head in faux understanding, and I couldn¡¯t help but be impressed at just how well Strenns was able to explain things. I muttered a quick apology, trying to reassure him that I wouldn¡¯t try it again, before letting the man speak again.


    ¡°You didn¡¯t do anything permanent, at least, so as long as you¡¯re honest about not trying that again I see no reason why we shouldn¡¯t continue. Picking back up where we left off, I want you to look inwards once again, try and see how your other two energies are reacting. I know you won¡¯t be able to spot anything right away, but you¡¯re obviously the most familiar with your energies, and you should be able to at least start trying to puzzle together any new prana triggers you might have picked up from your enlightenment, as well as any new psionic impulses. Much of that has to be found out through experimentation, though, and as it so often is with cases such as yours, it may well be like needing to learn how to walk and talk all over again.¡±


    Or as I was coming to suspect would be the case, learning how to walk and talk for the first time in the middle of a minefield. I would get nowhere if I did nothing but worry about the risks, though, and so I did as the doctor recommended, once more using my mind¡¯s eye to look into myself, being careful to look directly at that part of my brain that not only housed the memories of my time in the Everything but also was apparently directly connected to it. At first, there was nothing different than the last time, only the faintest hints of something just out of view that sat and gnawed at my awareness and tempted me to take a closer look.


    But then, I noticed something. Even with that howling, overflowing pit of hunger that sat in the core of my mind, it wasn¡¯t the only thing in me now. I hadn¡¯t noticed before, I had no idea how to even look for it without that second dose of The Everything, but I could feel something pouring out from that pit. Not tendrils of energy snaking outwards through some path like mana does through nerves or prana through veins, and not waves of power that radiate away from a central point, slowly flooding the body, like qi and psi.


    Instead, this was a constant, even ¡®glow¡¯ of power, something that was dimly there, but truly solid and everywhere. From head to toe, every millimeter of myself had the even shine of some power that I knew to be similar to the Everything¡¯s, but much more diluted in its intensity. Whereas that pit in my mind was a true shard of that place, a hole that holds a fraction of that infinite space, this¡­ stuff felt more subdued.


    Granted, it was only subdued in comparison to the Everything itself, this energy was still positively roiling with potential. It was chance and possibility condensed into a constant simmering glow, and its presence alone was the ability to answer any problem with a single, resounding yes, despite how illogical it sounded or impossible it was. Once I noticed this shining light of uniform chaos, I became stunned, how could I have possibly missed it before? The mere act of noticing it was enough to make it impossible to forget, and I could immediately feel it within me. I could feel that it would never be anything except uniform, even stagnant, and no matter how much I pulled it would never, could never deplete. I had no way of concentrating it within me, nor any way of thinning it out either.Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    At least, not while it was still within me. And so, I tried bringing some out. To focus on the tiniest section at the very tip of my right index finger, and to push it out. What happened next was¡­ immensely upsetting.


    I was quick to open my eyes and look down at my finger when I felt a crushing pressure immediately start to build where I tried pushing some of that power out of me. It didn¡¯t take me long to realize this pressure wasn¡¯t, in fact, the multiple fingernails that were streaming out of the flesh at the tip of my finger, no. Neither was it the winding ribbons of skin and nail that started to simply appear around my hand, falling into my lap and my palms where I rested them together.


    No, I was fairly certain that the pressure was coming from the fact that the tip of my finger was simply starting to shimmer and fade like it was being pushed under the surface of a lake. There were tiny ripples in the air around it already, like the space my hand was in was trying to fight back and claw its way back to the surface of this body of water, but it didn¡¯t work. It wasn¡¯t until I stopped trying to push this energy out that my finger stopped ¡®sinking¡¯ through¡­ reality, I guess. The pile of nail and skin that had been rapidly growing finally stopped, too, and was quickly shaken off in disgust. The few shards of keratin that had been squirming through the flesh at the tip of my finger also fell out, and the skin underneath didn¡¯t even look broken. The only thing visibly strange about it was the fact that most of my finger looked translucent, and even that seemed to be correcting itself, slowly.


    I had hardly even cut the ¡®connection¡¯ before the Every-Thing decided to speak up once more.


    ¡°Extremity so attending objection as engrossed something. Resources resembled forfeited no to zealously.¡±


    I was so shocked and disturbed by this entire situation, and the Thing¡¯s sudden chiding, that I muttered under my breath.


    ¡°What is it that you¡¯re even saying?¡± I hissed as quietly as I could.


    ¡°Uncommonly simplicity interested mr is be compliment projecting my inhabiting.¡±


    I was about to rebuke the Thing inside my head again before I realized Strenns was still watching and had in fact begun speaking.


    ¡°Well that was¡­ something. I think, Sylvain, that you managed to find one of your new prana triggers. At least, I sincerely hope that was something you weren¡¯t capable of before now.¡± He gave me a very pointed look that told me all I needed to know about his feelings on that particular series of events and continued.


    ¡°Perhaps jumping back into it isn¡¯t the best strategy after all. I have no doubt that you¡¯ll be able to work through this accident and become the man you used to be, perhaps even better now that you have qi on top of your two existing energies, but we will very likely need to work slowly and steadily. What I will do, however, is start working on the papers needed for your discharge, since despite the somewhat disturbing nature of that ¡®spell,¡¯ it has been some time since you¡¯ve had any unprompted outbursts. Your rapid healing also serves to make your stay in an uncomfortable and unfamiliar environment to bring your abilities back under control almost irrelevant or even actively detrimental.¡±


    ¡°I recall hearing Marcus mention something of a family estate? Perhaps it would be in your best interest to stay there for a time after I release you from this facility¡¯s care. I can already tell you aren¡¯t too keen on such a proposition, but I believe it really would help you to be somewhere familiar, so long as you don¡¯t have any traumatic experiences there and merely dislike it. You can think more on this, too. I likely won¡¯t be able to get you out of here for a few days. At the very least, they do seem oddly concerned about you, so you will have plenty of time to talk to your family, talk to Marcus, while I get everything in order for you.¡±


    Despite the scowl that was no doubt slowly worming its way across my features, the doctor raised some good points, even if they weren¡¯t for the reasons he¡¯d intended. I decided to call up Marcus later and see if he couldn¡¯t arrange for one of the smaller guesthouses to be put aside for me. We¡¯d need to be discrete about it, though, and I was glad that I¡¯d grown so accomplished at avoiding my family members over the years.


    Despite the risks that came with someone recognizing me, though, I really did need a place to stay. I could no longer return to my old apartment, I had been planning to stay on that station for months at least and I didn¡¯t want to be making payments for no reason, but now I was kicking myself. Until I could arrange for a new place to stay, something made difficult by my recent stint in the hospital and also my status as a lone survivor of a probably classified disaster, I was stuck. At least their compound was phenomenal, something I planned to take full advantage of to train my ¡®gifts,¡¯ and I still had enough money saved up from being their ¡®useless scion¡¯ that I could afford both amenities there and the hunt for a new life, hopefully even further away from the Johanssons than before. Maybe, if I was still considered part of the Coalition, I could find a nice job towards the edges of the system while I ¡®recover?¡¯ I have heard that Titan can be nice, and I¡¯m sure the view is stunning.


    I knew it¡¯d be difficult, true, but I was used to making difficult choices, and this was just the next series of them. Strenns was also right, though, that I didn¡¯t need to be worrying about all this right now. I could call Marcus up tomorrow and start searching around for new beginnings after that. I had no idea what my status with the Coalition was going to be, I didn¡¯t know if my records being changed was for better or for worse, or even why such a thing was done to begin with. Apparently, the change was made official enough that, to the public, I had always been Sylvain Henry Camille Johansson, undisclosed higher energy or energies user and nondescript employee of the Standard Magitech Coalition.


    That already served to show just how poorly the system of monitoring and measuring energy-users was. There weren¡¯t even semi-reliable ways to actually read what energies a person is using, and in what quantities, or how much they had, other than by having another human take these measurements themselves, and that was already anything but standard. Both energy manipulation and technology creation had been taken to truly incredible heights, humans could be granted the power to literally change the face of a planet alone, or do even more if some rumors were accurate, and they could also build a handgun that can cripple or outright kill someone like that with a single round.


    But together? Magitech, as it was so grandly called, was truly in its infancy. Controlling higher energies seemed to be exclusive to something with willpower, with intent. mana wouldn¡¯t form a fireball without the idea to do so, nor could qi strengthen a body without a body to give that order. Technology was equally rigid, and even the slightest errors could result in catastrophe. Actually mixing energy that needed a guiding hand with machinery that needed a totalitarian structure usually resulted in subpar replicas of both at best, and at worst¡­


    A certain hole torn into the fabric of space flashed in my mind briefly, and I decided to put aside that line of thought immediately. It was still true, though, that only the most simple of magitech had been created with any success, machines made to power spells with vast amounts of energy but only a rudimentary purpose or energies crammed into a device solely to power it, unable to do anything more complicated than making electricity flow.


    It was my goal to eventually mix both, to somehow find a way to use tech to bring the energy to myself and others and I guess, in a way, I succeeded. Now though, it was in my favor now that they played so poorly together, because taking readings and finding inconsistencies was the domain of numbers, and more often, artificial numbers. Of course, any good psion could match even the best computer in pretty much any way imaginable, but something told me the Every-Thing wouldn¡¯t play nicely with anything with actual thoughts trying to sneak a peek into its ¡®home.¡¯


    I turned to the doctor after that thought, though, considering myself lucky I hadn¡¯t accidentally drawn its attention myself, and spoke.


    ¡°As much as I don¡¯t want to, I¡¯ll call Mark tomorrow and see if he can¡¯t get me a room while I get back on my feet. I¡¯ll also need to get things sorted out with the Coalition, see what they¡¯ve got for me moving forward, and plenty more I¡¯m sure I¡¯m not even thinking of now. But I can do all that in time, is there anything else you need from me right now, Doctor?¡±


    He shook his head, a professional smile playing at his features, before responding. ¡°There is not. I know things seem difficult now, they are difficult now and they may never stop being so, but you¡¯ll move forward, and I will do my best to help you with any issues you may face during your long road to recovery. For tonight, though, I think it would be best that you get some rest, and we can continue tomorrow.¡±


    He hardly gave me time to reply before turning on his heels and walking out of the door, turning out the lights as he left by my request. It wasn¡¯t until almost thirty minutes later, when I was sure he was gone, that I remembered something from earlier, and once more opened my mouth to whisper something into the empty room.


    ¡°Hey, um, I¡¯m not sure what to call you, if you have a name at all or, hell, if you can even really understand me, but I wanted to say thank you, for earlier. I didn¡¯t know what I was doing, and I think I might have really gotten lost if you didn¡¯t pull me out, so¡­ I really appreciate it.¡±


    I said nothing more, letting the barely audible words settle into nothingness, replaced once more by the dull rushing of sterile air through the vents and faint hints of activity from outside my room. I had started to grow almost dejected, thinking my forced companion hadn¡¯t heard, hadn¡¯t understood, or even hadn¡¯t cared and I was about to give up after a few minutes before I got a reply.


    Once more, I felt my head growing strained, pressure building up inside but much, much more manageable now, and any noise I could hear was replaced by the low, gurgling whistle of something preparing to speak. The howling and ringing quickly reached a fever pitch before something else started floating up through that static. Yet again, the noise almost parted as an idea bubbled up, and burst into a packet of meaning that reverberated in my mind.


    ¡°Thank.¡±


    I was stunned, for a moment, despite the disappointment I had been feeling when I thought it might not respond I still wasn¡¯t expecting it to do so, and as the feedback of my new partner¡¯s impossible language died down again, I was left at a loss for what to do. The last thing I really remember thinking before I just shrugged it off and went to bed was my utter bewilderment at the word itself it replied with. It only made me more confused about the enigma in my head.

 Chapter 7: Travelling is the First Step to Many New Experiences

    The next few days were, if nothing else, pretty boring. The doctor was true to his word, and had begun the process of having me discharged, being met with surprisingly little resistance by the Coalition. They made things tough for him at first, and I¡¯d assumed that would be the least of their interference, but after pulling out a veritable mountain of paperwork for the doctor and I to work through, they fell silent. In the end, we both had to work through entirely too many legal loopholes trying to keep me ¡®committed¡¯ but the fact that I was coherent and, in Strenns¡¯ words, not a danger to myself or any others any longer meant that we went through it all rather quickly.


    During that time, I got in touch with Marcus again, although finding his contact information was frustratingly difficult. He had been staying on Luna, though, and so actually getting through to the man once I had found him was comparatively simple. Us being on the same mass made things even better, too, and we could make a simple phone call, instead of one of the many other pricy and less reliable methods available for planet-to-planet talks, much less the singular method we currently had to get information from the Sol System to the Proxima System and back.


    Marcus had almost been as difficult to speak to as the Coalition at first, though. While we had both severed ties between ourselves and the Family, it seemed Marcus had done so on much more friendly terms than I had, if essentially spitting on centuries of tradition in order to try and make it big in an utterly new field of research that had technically been failing for far longer than the Johanssons had even been established could be called friendly.


    Regardless, me asking him to book me a spot at the estate made things supremely difficult. Apparently, when the black sheep of the Family is trying to pull strings and get the forsaken, crippled, and deformed sheep a place back in their ranks even temporarily, it draws trouble. After much convincing, he did manage to have a small, by our standards, building reserved for a single occupant, but not long after he¡¯d done so he mentioned that a handful of other people made snap decisions to visit the Lunar Estate, most worryingly, my parents.


    And of course, while all these little headaches were going on, Strenns and I had kept on working on my control over my ¡®qi, psi, and prana¡¯ which, surprisingly, was being met with very mixed results. I found a lot of things out about this Everything Energy, most importantly was that it was incredibly eager to do anything I wanted.


    Whereas prana and mana need conscious thought or intent to control, muscle memory and mnemonics designed to help make this conscious control instant, this stuff needed no coaxing or working at to make it respond to even the slightest intent. Meanwhile, unlike psi and qi, which are uncontrolled at first and respond to the subconscious or the peripheral nervous system directly and need work to bring under active control, my new supply of power could be goaded into action by the slightest willing desire, or spurred into motion through even the most basic bodily impulse.


    Of course, having an energy so very willing to work for me sounds good in theory, but the problem comes from what it is. It seemed that no matter what I tried, I could not get any consistency in how this energy reacted once it was used. While intent in other energies is the most important aspect when creating a ¡®technique¡¯ it means nothing here. Trying to form a ball of floating water, for example, resulted in half a dozen unique, unpredictable outputs that had no pattern before I gave up on that line of trial, at least in the control department.


    I got everything from a perfect sphere of ice so cold that the temperature in the room plummeted just by materializing it, to a crumpled piece of paper with a lake drawn on it, to a small raincloud over the palm of my hand. There was not a single connecting idea beyond water and roundness somehow being tangentially related to the product, and I had no time to experiment more with any of these outcomes before whatever part of my body I was drawing this stuff out of started to fade, or sink as I called it, getting pulled away from me in some direction I could loosely describe as ¡®down.¡¯ Of course, it didn¡¯t look to be moving down, only starting to get hazy and heavy, rippling and shimmering as my hand, or anything else I used, slowly vanished, the sensation slowly creeping further along my body.


    So, if casting fireballs and magic missiles, or any form of conjuration at all, wasn¡¯t the best answer, then my next guess would be internal strengthening, like psi or qi. I quickly found that this was easily just as nonsensical. I tried to start simple, one of the first things a qi user learns to do is something they so aptly call ¡®ironskin¡¯ which is as simple as it sounds. Try and force qi to the surface of one¡¯s body in order to strengthen the skin. It sounded simple enough, to me, and I thought it might have been even easier given that I had no need to even draw qi out of my core, delicately keeping my control over it while it fought to revert to my body¡¯s unconscious needs. After all, the energy was right there, permeating every facet of myself, and it responded so easily even if it was wildly rambunctious when brought into the world.


    I focused on hardening the back of my left hand, or I guess, performing this ironskin technique, and immediately had to stop, when a patch of skin between my knuckles almost immediately turned grey, then black, a garish splotch of discoloration. I found, with no small amount of horror, that it was literal iron. In fact, it was a block of it that extended all the way to the bones in my hand, worming tendrils of the ferrous stuff that drilled their way into my metacarpals and took root.


    Thankfully, it seemed my friend was still looking out for me, because the block of inorganic metal was quickly reverted back to a patch of intensely discolored skin, black and bruised and almost rotten looking that hurt only marginally less than having turned myself into metal for a moment. I only realized that it was the Every-Thing messing with my hand and not some unconscious desire of my own to just ¡®fix it¡¯ because its visceral voice was yanked into the forefront of my mind as it reverted back, sounding a little disappointed but also a bit proud.


    ¡°Extremity so attending objection as engrossed gentleman something. Improved property reserved disposal do offering me."


    That hadn¡¯t been the first such ¡®correction¡¯ the Thing had performed, only taking the initiative to do so when something had directly gone wrong with my body, or worse, my mind. Its own actions seemed much more controlled than mine, in the sense that it could take a severe injury that I had done to myself in whatever way, and turn it into only a major one that would be taken care of by whatever it was that allowed me to heal so quickly. That said, every time it reached out to correct me in that way left me feeling out of it, utterly ill for minutes or even hours depending on how big its ¡®patch¡¯ was. Not nearly as bad as how I was when I had come to, but I had a feeling I knew what had kept me ¡®safe¡¯ until I was recovered, and why I spent so long just getting over that initial sickness.


    My trial and error wasn¡¯t completely without success, though. While I had no luck, and I do mean none in the slightest, at getting my makeshift spells, techniques, or anything at all really, to be something resembling consistent, I could at least occasionally produce consistent results. I don¡¯t mean in the sense that I could make something I wanted and have it perform for me, but at least, I could vaguely decide on an outcome and this energy would work to make it happen.


    For instance, when I was panicking about the pain in my hand and lit up a bit more of the energy almost without thinking, I felt a few sudden snaps in my arm, and then my hand was totally numb. The problem was, as I soon found out thanks to a healer, that I had removed every nerve beneath my elbow, which then had to be grown back while I was healed. I hadn¡¯t known this before, but regrowing nerves hurts.This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    But, despite the pain I caused myself, that whole incident as Strenns was quick to call it helped me at least understand the nature of this stuff a little better. Normal energy works by giving it directions, forming it into shapes or guiding it into places in order to make something happen, creating what is basically a tool for a job I want. Energy pulled from the Everything is wildly different. I only need to give it a job and let it make the tool for it, but it all comes down to luck on how many liberties get taken. At least, that was the best way I could describe it then.


    Creating something like a fireball would be inconsistent and dangerous but forcing the idea that something needs to be set on fire would work, although how exactly that would catch fire was up to the whims of chance. Of course, I could hardly even do that. The best I could do is imprint some vague idea onto this body of solid possibility within myself, the idea that I need to do something in hopes that it would produce some not overly detrimental effect, which was a crapshoot at best. And through it all, I could still only do so very little before my very body started to fall apart.


    Still, I had an idea. I had a tentative road forward, and while I¡¯d have to make up every single step as I learned and grew, it still meant that I could grow. It really started to sink in on one Tuesday morning, now weeks after I had first started working on an unnamed outpost in deep space, at the very edges of communicable territory within the Sol System.


    Doctor Strenns knocked on my door, the same as he usually did, but this time he wasn¡¯t alone when he swung it open. Standing beside him was Marcus, a subtle mix of worry, relief, and curiosity behind his carefully maintained stoic mask. It was clear he was here this time as Marcus Daniels Kalem Johansson, here to pick up one Sylvain Henry Camille Johansson. It was hard to pin a word to, but his entire countenance had changed, and his wardrobe, while similarly casual to the last time he was here, was obviously of a much higher quality. Even Strenns seemed a little thrown off by how marked the difference was.


    He had with him was a set of similarly high-end clothing, no doubt so that I wouldn¡¯t show up to the estate wearing a hospital gown, and I stood up to meet them. Despite my self-destructive testing over the past few days, I had almost fully recovered. My body was stiff and sore in some places, others still scarred or bruised, but even these marks were slowly disappearing. Occasionally, I¡¯d end up with freckles or acne for a few hours and then nothing at all, not even a blemish. With hardly a trace of my previous ailments left, I strode over to the door, taking the clothes and slipping into the bathroom to change.


    When I stepped out, I had tried to keep up appearances in the same way Marcus had, changing my posture and controlling mannerisms in the way that anyone from a Family is taught and expected to act. I hated every bit of it, but I had to maintain appearances now, and until I could lock myself away in the house Marcus reserved for me this was who I had to be. A proper Johansson.


    But instead of wallowing any further, I pushed my personal pity party to the bottom of my stomach and walked up to the doctor. I held out my hand, which he took immediately, and as we shook hands he spoke up.


    ¡°Well Sylvain, I must say, of all the patients I have worked with suffering from an eldritch enlightenment, you were certainly one of the most interesting. I am still genuinely surprised at how quickly you¡¯ve healed, and while you¡¯ve still got a long way to go before you¡¯re anywhere near the proficiency I¡¯m sure you were at before your voyage, I¡¯m certain that if anybody could succeed, it would be you. If you ever run into any problems in your recovery and need advice, or you simply need somebody to talk to about anything troubling you, you have my contact information. Unless you find yourself somewhere in Prox, I¡¯ll be available just about any time.¡±


    I smiled, a real one, as I replied. ¡°Thank you, Doctor. You have helped me get my life back on track and even if it takes me my entire life to recover, I owe part of that chance to you.¡± I kept it short, trying to be genuine but not sounding overboard, and if the shorter man¡¯s bright grin was any indication, it worked.


    I said one final goodbye before following after my cousin, moving through jagged twists of the clinical halls, walking an almost unnerving distance before we reached an elevator that took us up five floors, and went through it all over again until we reached the lobby. It definitely concerned me that I was being kept underground, but the fact that I was being let go so easily helped soothe my worries some.


    Then we stepped out into the crisp air of a terraformed world. At first, one could almost be mistaken for thinking it to be back on Earth. After all, it had all the same concrete jungles, buildings of glass and stone that towered high above. The ground was similarly industrial, with asphalt roads that stretched as far as the eye could see in either direction. Everything seemed just as grey and black as any other city, but looking up shattered any other similarities. Despite the natural sunlight clearly shining down, being bounced off windows and metal alike, the sky was as black as night. Stars shone weakly even as the sun glared down, and the inky murk stretched from horizon to horizon.


    There was no atmosphere here, despite plenty of energy users now being more than capable of outright creating one, it was only a loose collection of artificial environments that covered huge portions of the moon. The reason was simple, Luna was kept so ¡®primitive¡¯ for symbolic reasons. The first ¡®real¡¯ colony man had ever created, and it was nothing more than a simple climate-controlled dome that a small handful of people lived, and an even smaller few were born.


    Since then, we have come so very far, and those energy users who travel with colonizing missions can directly terraform entire swaths of a planet, enough to set up a similar setup on a much grander scale right after to keep their changes contained while they ¡®fix¡¯ the rest of the planet, slowly expanding the territory of man until the dome can be done away with entirely. It has been many years since a colonizer was needed, true, but they yet lived, waiting for the next time they were needed to expand humanity¡¯s control.


    Mars and Luna were different, though. They were kept as they were initially settled, which means on Mars, they keep it scarred and demolished. Vast amounts of damage were inflicted to the icecaps to release the gasses and water needed to make the surface habitable for plants, and doing so meant that asteroids were ripped from the belt and pointed at the formerly-red planet.


    For Luna, that meant covered in some truly vast domes, each state of the art and utterly impervious to just about anything, or so they say. The Johanssons¡¯ estate is contained in one such dome, although not one of the larger ones. If a map I passed on the way out was to be believed, we were currently in the Serenity Dome, named so for obvious reasons. Meanwhile, the dome we were headed to was almost directly northward, the Aristoteles Block. It was hardly a tenth the size, with a rough diameter of ninety kilometers, and even though we only had a claim to a portion of that, it was still a sizeable affair.


    I thought about this, and much more as I got into the sleek black sedan Marcus had brought, the door closed behind me by a sharply dressed butler. He always was a little too obsessed with vintage vehicles, but considering everything else going on, I¡¯m glad he didn¡¯t arrange to have us go through a Portal Port instead. With everything that had already gone wrong, I didn¡¯t want to consider what might happen if I did.


    I quickly settled into my chair, and it may have seemed like brand new, hard leather, but even that was plenty for me to drift off to sleep in. I could tell Marcus was eager to start asking questions, but between our chauffeur listening in and myself wasting no time in shutting my eyes, he never got the chance to do so. When I opened my eyes again, we had just crossed through the gate to Aristoteles, leaving the underground tunnel behind us. Our destination was just ahead, the green of the large patch of open, actually well-maintained land setting it apart from the rest of the dull monochrome, and I was thankful that it really did seem mostly empty aside from a few groundskeepers working and Family members roaming.


    We pulled up to a two-story cabin on the edges of the grounds, it was short and simple compared to many of the other homes scattered around the estate but honestly, I much preferred it that way. Any way I could avoid even the slightest bit of attention was crucial. As these, and many more thoughts raced through my mind, the door was opened for me, and I stepped out, walking up to my new home, wishing nothing more but to be as far away from here as I could.

 Chapter 8: Moving In Can Always be a Challenge

    If there was one thing I was glad for, it was that it didn¡¯t take me long to settle into my new residence. It would be difficult to do so, actually, considering that basically everything I owned was lost in space or even outright destroyed. All I had to my name was the clothes on my back, the phone in my pocket, the watch on my wrist, and whatever I had in the bank. Admittedly, that might be a decent sum, but actually accessing it might be a challenge for a while, considering that I opened my account through the Mars branch, almost a decade ago, and had not once ever made any purchases, withdrawals, or deposits off-world since then.


    I would have been about to do so, it took nearly a week to figure out how to submit the necessary paperwork to have my residence changed, but I got it done. As of three or so weeks before then, I was officially a ¡®resident¡¯ of the Inner Oort, and since the Soleil Bank didn¡¯t operate anywhere near that distance from the Sun, my ¡®local¡¯ branch was changed to Sedna. No doubt, in their eyes, because of my job I had suddenly left the United Planets in the inner Sol System, passed straight through the Expansionist Federation in the outer, and settled firmly in neutral territory, not a part of either governing body.


    I¡¯m sure that much was understandable for them, as the only bank in either System that operated on anything larger than a single planet basis they¡¯ve really come to earn their title as just ¡®the Bank,¡¯ and no doubt deal with people whose jobs are similar to that all the time. There¡¯d be a problem, though, if I just popped back up right back in the inner Sol System, and on Luna no less. It may be simple enough to sort things out, but it would take time and until I did, I¡¯d be basically stuck with the Johanssons.


    I locked the door after I entered, watching through the window as Marcus walked away once more without many of the answers he so dearly wanted from me. I could tell that the next time we talked I wasn¡¯t going to be able to get out of telling him more about the event that I already knew so little about.


    I had to give him the bare minimum to even convince him to leave, though, and I¡¯d said that whatever it was we had opened out there had left me with a corrupt core, which was partially true, I suppose. It would still be unprecedented, no empty had ever before gotten even a corrupt core no matter how they tried, even if they could still get all the problems that came with someone having theirs corrupted.But it''d still be almost believable, anything can happen and while it would be unprecedented, thatwas better than telling him exactly what I¡¯d seen, and a lot less scary than telling him exactly what I¡¯d picked up, too.


    On that front, my ¡®guest¡¯ had been relatively quiet since we¡¯d left, it hadn¡¯t actually said anything for the ride but did make some very dissatisfied and equally head-splitting noises any time I tried to look up at the endless black sky. As horrifying as it sounded, though, I was slowly starting to get used to it. Strange moments where my head didn¡¯t feel like it belonged to me alone anymore and a just about constant feeling of being observed were both things I¡¯d probably have to get used to moving forward, and the occasional statement that made my head hurt just as much hearing it as trying to decipher it seemed to be almost worth it to have a being as dubiously capable at protecting me from my own mistakes and at others¡¯ attacks. Almost, but not quite, not yet anyway.


    There were better things to do than just resign myself to the very likely fate of having the Every-Thing with me to stay, the most important at that current moment was walking to the kitchen and seeing just how well-stocked they had left it for me. The answer was very. For what reason there was an entire walk-in freezer I could not say, nor was I sure why the rest of the kitchen would also be more at home in a restaurant than a cabin and it had the food stores to match. Considering the rather simplistic state of the rest of the house, I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if this building was actually just a renovated diner or something.


    Whatever the reason behind the kitchen and why they chose to fully restock it for a single person, I was glad, as it meant that I had no real obligations to leave and go into whatever constituted a town in this Dome besides to stop by the Bank that I had no doubt was nearby. With the decently sized fenced-in yard and the basement beneath, I had no doubt that I could hide away from most any family that came knocking.


    First, though, I decided to put that kitchen to good use, then grabbed a frozen pizza to toss in the oven instead. As much as I would have loved to cook something up there and then, there were just too many choices, and none felt right. Still, if there was one upside to being too indecisive to cook, it meant that I could, at the least, keep practicing with this energy from the Everything. Seeing as no matter how much I pulled or squeezed or lit within myself ever managed to make even the slightest difference in this solid sheen of nebulous power, I had started working under the assumption that it was a functionally bottomless pool, and I¡¯d yet to see anything to the contrary so far.


    Instead, I was given an apparently arbitrary time limit to it, something I¡¯d been noticing from the very beginning but never really put too much weight into. That was until the day when I cut the power I was sending out of my hand, allowing the violently pink dandelion to come crashing to the floor, and realized with no small amount of confusion that the tips of my fingers were missing and the rest, shredded. It was almost frightening how little pain there was, after every other mistake before then I was expecting some crushing agony as soon as I stopped my hand from ¡®sinking¡¯ any further, when instead it was simply cold, numb, and feeling far too heavy to be attached to my wrist.


    It took one more failed experiment to find out that I could channel about a finger¡¯s worth of energy constantly for three seconds before I had to stop, and it took nearly a minute for whatever body part I¡¯d used to be safe to ¡®submerge¡¯ again. I didn¡¯t yet know why I had the limit, something told me I could extend it with enough work, but I wasn¡¯t exactly eager to explore too much further without a healer or two on hand even if I could apparently just passively regrow fingertips in the middle of the night like the second time I ¡®drowned¡¯ my hand.If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    I would much rather stick to safe, easy experiments and work my way up from there. In fact, I even thought that to be the reasonable choice as I sat down on the plush carpet in the den, settling into a meditative stance. After once more taking a long moment to just explore this new well of energy, it still hadn¡¯t quite set in that I had energy now no matter the cause or the type it was, I held one hand out, palm upwards, and pushed a little out with no real clear image in mind. What I got could also be accurately described as ¡®without clear image,¡¯ I was certainly not expecting the amorphous lump of glass to spring forth from nowhere and then immediately drop to the floor, but then, I wasn¡¯t expecting much of anything.


    That marked another in a very long string of failures to actually get a look at my own energy, something properly visual rather than the instinctive knowledge that this Everything Energy was just a complete, solid block of riotous order that soaked every bit of me that I got from meditating. I wasn¡¯t too upset, though, since this was one of the milder failures. I¡¯d learned not to have the idea of actually trying to see the stuff in my mind when I gave it the order to act, my trial lasted all of a fraction of a second before the shimmering, rippling air decided that it didn¡¯t like what I was doing to it very much at all and ruptured loudly enough to shatter a monitor beside the bed and send a room full of various equipment scattered everywhere. There was also possibly some bleeding from the nose and ears, but honestly, that was one of the tamer injuries.


    I continued trying for a little while though, simply giving a bit of that energy the go-ahead to exist and see what it would do without any conscious input. I didn¡¯t channel for long, and each intermittent burst of power produced wildly different results. I ended up with a short brown-out in a house that should be literally incapable of such a thing, a snow-globe without anything inside but various shades of the color orange that I was scared to try and open, a patch of carpet that sweated, and a few other things that weren¡¯t quite as interesting.


    I wanted to try practicing control after the carpet thing, but that¡¯s when the alarm for my meal went off. I started walking out of the living room, barely made it three steps before stepping on the lump of glass I forgot was there, and then half-hobbled the rest of the way after I smashed my knee into a hardwood coffee table. I fumbled over to the oven, a clunky Pre-Expansion design that further convinced me about this being some Bed & Breakfast that the Johanssons acquired through whatever means, and opened it wide. I was blasted with a wave of warmth as the convection oven relinquished my prize, and after sliding it onto a cutting board, I set off back to the den.


    ¡°Agh- Damnit!¡± Only for my bare feet to once more find their way onto the lump of glass I managed to forget about all over again. Of course, the thing was shaped in just the right way to dig into the sole of my foot and send me tumbling all over again. The first thing that I did was try and correct my plummet, only to jerk down in an entirely different way and launch the still steaming pizza across an entire room. Normally, this would be just a bad footnote in an otherwise good day, but when the molten food smeared itself across the carpet and made it start screaming it became anything but normal.


    ¡°What the hell?¡± I asked nobody in particular, as I scrambled to my feet and rushed over to the stain of red and cheese that was currently sobbing before shoveling the ruined pizza into a loose heap over the formerly sweating carpet. When all that did was muffle the noise to some disgusting gurgle I shouted, ¡°Stop it, just stop!¡± It probably wouldn¡¯t have changed anything had I not pushed out a bit of Everything in time with my command, but since I did, the results were immediate and apparent.


    My entire hand almost immediately dipped, becoming hazy and shimmering in an instant, and the tips of my fingers once more became numb, almost gone. That alone was enough to snap me out of my ¡®casting,¡¯ but the damage had been done. Instead of a messy, smeared pile of steaming hot cheese and grease and bread all atop of a screaming carpet, I had a solid mound of absolutely frozen ingredients atop a deeply frosted rug, and small shards of ice had even been ripped from the air around it.


    Not unlike a few other times, the temperature of the room was spiked into the ground even as the chill soaked into the floor, and I could see the patch of ice radiating outward from it all at a concerning pace. A light mist was rolling outward, and I could hear the crisp, light snapping and crunching of flash-frozen carpet fibers. Thankfully, air and polyester both made for poor heat conductors, and the localized blizzard wound up extending only about a meter in any given direction. When the dust settled, the den had become cold enough for my breath to frost, but I was afraid to turn the heater on in case the floor started screaming again.


    I may have torn my hand away right after I had flash-frozen my meal, but it hadn¡¯t made much of a difference. I examined my hand, or more accurately, the unhealthy red it had become and tried opening and closing it, only to fail. The tips of my fingers were still numb, but I doubted that was also the work of my ice burn. Yet again, my hand ¡®sank,¡¯ leaving my fingers cracked and gnarled, but eerily unbloodied. I waited a moment for my passenger to fix it, but like the last time my hand spent too long ¡®submerged¡¯ there wasn¡¯t a peep.


    I stood up, wincing at the splintering ice beneath me, and ran to the bathroom with my arm cradled against my chest. I spent the next little while running my hand under lukewarm water, it wouldn¡¯t fix my digits, but it did help the frost damage, even if the burning chill refused to abate. With the other hand, I rooted through the bottles of pills and potions that had been left for me, looking for something that may help. I grabbed a vial of something shining a dull pink and dumped it onto the back of my hand, rubbing it in and feeling the concoction immediately set to work.


    The sickly color of my hand faded wherever the alchemical medicine was applied, but my fingers themselves remained stubbornly wrong, although a second inspection showed that they didn¡¯t seem like mangled plastic recreations of a real person¡¯s, just mangled in general, but there still was not a bit of pain. The grey tinge they had was gone now, too, although I knew for a fact that the pale, but still humanly possible, white wasn¡¯t the color my skin originally was and oh did it look weird.


    Helplessly, I glanced up at the mirror in front of me, but what I saw looking back made me forget my finger-based worries for a moment.

 Chapter 9: Introspection Comes in Many Flavors

    Looking in the mirror for the first time since before the expedition went wrong was odd, to say the least. I couldn¡¯t notice anything remarkably different about myself, but that was the problem. In fact, in this reflection I looked just about exactly as I did that day, down to the clothes I had worn then but was most certainly not wearing now. That much was eerie, sure, but seeing myself in a labsuit, my former labsuit, wasn¡¯t the only thing I had noticed, especially since it seemed less like a solid reflection and more of an image put over the rest of what I wore.


    A bit more unusual was that my hair was also just as it had been, too, and after nearly a month of not doing a thing it I knew I should have a shaggy mop with at least the beginnings of some wiry beard even if I couldn¡¯t grow facial hair to save my life. Instead, I was clean-shaven, like I¡¯d barely put the razor down an hour ago, and my light brown hair was tightly combed exactly like I wore it out by the Oort. Unlike the illusionary suit, this was real, running my hand along my chin, over my scalp, all of it verified that. I didn¡¯t much like the fact that as soon as I blinked, my ruffled hair was immediately returned to the pristine state it had been moments ago.


    The most surreal part of my own reflection was that my mirrored eyes were closed. Not screwed shut in agony or cracked like I was just waking up, but I simply couldn¡¯t see my own eyes through the lids. It looked like I¡¯d been caught mid-blink despite my eyes being very clearly open. I didn¡¯t much care for that either, but nothing I could do would get my reflection to open his eyes.


    But the worst part of it all was that I knew, I just knew that the Every-Thing was staring back at me even through the closed lids. I could feel its gaze, its attention was like a physical force and now it was in two places paying attention to the one of me. I tried to tear my eyes away, I couldn¡¯t I was frozen, one hand on the lip of the sink and the other back under the running faucet and my reflection was in the exact same pose. That eyeless gaze refused to break away, and there wasn¡¯t a thing I could do until I heard it start speaking at me again.


    ¡°Total great saw water had mirth happy new. Can curiosity may end shameless explained.¡±


    And then its attention was gone, and I could start gasping for breath as I dove out of sight of the mirror. I smacked onto the ground, sending an errant towel rack tumbling down on top of me. It was light, though, and I was too busy trying to not remember the Thing¡¯s absolute presence in that moment, the words that it dribbled into my skull like syrup, its gaze from through the mirror and inside my own head.


    The fear and the panic were stamped out quickly, though, and all I was left with was a lingering revulsion at what the mirror showed me, it was mild but enough so that when I stood up, I approached it from the side and lifted it off the wall, setting it down facing an empty wall, then took note of how I¡¯d left my surroundings. It took me all of half an hour to turn one room into a freezer and partially dismantle another, and I was starting to worry about the future of this house if I wound up staying here for too long. I decided there and then that any future practice would be done outside and could only hope that I didn¡¯t have any neighbors.


    That whole experience made me wary to jump right back into practice, though, and that was fine by me since I still had yet to eat, and felt like I really should by this point. Looking back down at my hand, I saw the fingers still weren¡¯t perfect, but now they were back to my usual skin color at least. I just wish they didn¡¯t look and feel like the wrinkled and withered digits of someone old and infirm, but that¡¯d probably change just like everything else did.


    I was conflicted, though. I wanted to eat, but looking into the den and seeing what had become of it was pretty sufficient to dissuade me from trying my hand at cooking again, at least for the day. At the same time, though, I didn¡¯t want to go out to eat, as childish as that sounded. I just didn¡¯t want to deal with people, especially if I already knew those people. I didn¡¯t know what to do at all, and I wound up just standing in my bathroom for what felt like hours but was probably no more than a couple of minutes. In the end, I decided to do neither, instead just ordering something.


    One phone call later, I had a pizza on its way for a rematch, and a conviction to just swear off the stuff entirely if it results in anything else screaming. A mention of my family name was enough for them to promise my order would be their priority, although it wasn¡¯t like deliveries ever took longer than a few minutes to begin with. It wouldn¡¯t take very long at all for it to get here, but hopefully I had enough time to at least clean the catastrophe in my den a bit.


    It would have been much easier if the thing wasn¡¯t exactly as cold as it had been when I left, maybe a bit colder even, and I had no intention of using my hands near that, not when I was starting to feel my fingers a little bit. They may have gone back to being an entirely different color, but there wasn¡¯t the aged look they¡¯d had earlier. They looked almost normal. Instead, I returned to the kitchen, or tried to before I felt something digging into my heel again. Biting back my anger, I jerked my head downwards to glare at the offending glass lump, and its deceptively pointed edges.


    With one hand, I picked the thing up, and whipped it across the room. I heard a soft thump of silicon hitting cushion, probably the couch, and was satisfied for the moment. I resumed my walk, rooting around in a cabinet for something I could use to clean at least some of that. I returned to the den wearing grilling gloves, a pan in one hand and a spatula in the other. I carefully approached the arctic carpet as I crouched down. At first, I tried scraping it off with the metal tool, but when that did nothing, I just took the pan and tried smashing it with similar results. I glared a moment longer at my refrozen foe, hefting the pan above my head with the determination to at least chip the stuff before I heard the knocking at my door.Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    ¡°One moment.¡± I said, raising my voice to be heard as I stood back up, setting down the pan and the spatula and ignoring the dents in both. I opened the door, not seeing a drone or a golem like I¡¯d expected. They may not be everywhere anymore, but they were still quite popular in multiple places, so seeing an actual person delivering my food was unusual. Then I realized he was giving me a decidedly wary look, trying not to be too obvious as he glanced over my shoulder towards the den.


    I sighed, then realized that was likely the wrong approach as the boy almost recoiled. Carefully, I reached out, taking the pizza, then shut the door behind me, practically collapsing on the couch in the den.


    ¡°Ow, why!¡± I screamed, as the nugget of pain that I had didn''t think I tossed onto the couch dug into the small of my back. I barely managed to save the box in my arms, but as soon as I was steady I tossed it down onto the coffee table in front of while I dug the stone out. I glared at the lumpy thing, it was foggy and pretty lumpy, utterly unremarkable, but it kept on finding its way back to me. Gritting my teeth, I debated chucking it outside before realizing that it would come back to bite me, somehow. Instead, I just put it on the side table, right by the orange-globe.


    That was enough to calm me down for the moment, and so I tucked into my meal. It didn¡¯t take me long to finish the pie, nor was it enough to leave me feeling any less hungry than earlier, but at the same time, it wasn¡¯t really all that bad to begin with. More than anything, I was thankful to have actual food again, and I was finally content to just lay my head to one side and fall asleep.


    And then, I tossed over to the other side, content to actually fall asleep. It took me a whole fifteen minutes before I realized sleep just wasn¡¯t coming right then. It took me another fifteen, staring at the blackened wall in front of me before I realized I just didn¡¯t want to watch anything either. I needed to move, I needed to move badly, because for once it didn¡¯t hurt to move.


    I looked at the door, still unsure, before deciding to bite the bullet and step out. Aristoteles was a standardized dome, so despite being barely one-hundred hours into the day around here, the natural sunlight had been dimmed, giving us something resembling nighttime. I looked out at the city, as soon as the grass ended the grey began, and just like any other city, the activity never ceased. The estate, meanwhile, was even more still than earlier, and the separation was surreal.


    What I wanted wasn¡¯t stillness, though, and despite my earlier reservations my body carried me towards the outskirts of the city, no destination in mind aside from somewhere else, somewhere noisy, but somewhere without the people making the noise. It was probably beyond difficult finding somewhere like that, but each time one foot fell in front of the other I felt my head clearing just a little more.


    I wandered along back alleys, just taking in but not paying attention to the dark and pristine streets. The air was so clean it felt almost sterile, one of the few places considered a cradle of humanity that could make that claim. Despite the air being calm and empty, I could feel a buzz in the air as I cut across an empty road, stepping from between two towering monoliths of concrete and plastisteel before diving back into a different crevice. I was far from the heart of the city, though, it¡¯d easily take kilometers of walking before I found my way into an area that wasn¡¯t purely business and clean, and I didn¡¯t want to find that anyway.


    I was very content to just let the black and grey blend together as I walked, but when I suddenly smacked into someone right in front of the next in my unwritten list of alleys I was ripped right out of introspection. Luckily, the man I collided with hardly seemed fazed, he actually looked more amused than anything, though he was trying to hide it and I couldn¡¯t tell why.


    ¡°You okay there? I¡¯ve gotta admit, wasn¡¯t expecting you to just run into me like that.¡± I was still frowning at being interrupted so suddenly, even if it wasn¡¯t his fault, but I still managed to respond.


    ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m sorry about that. I was just trying to clear my head, get some fresh air. Rough few weeks.¡± I was trying to keep it simple, I still wanted to do exactly what I¡¯d told him. I also didn¡¯t really feel like spending too much time with some random stranger on a sidewalk to begin with.


    ¡°Ouch, I know how things can be. Hey, my name¡¯s Donny, if you want to talk about it, I can try to help you out?¡± He wore a slight smile, and I was tempted to do so, it was pretty clear out still, not many other people around, and it was pretty calm.


    ¡°Not¡­ really. Sorry Donny, I¡¯m feeling a lot better now, thanks for snapping me out of that funk, but I¡¯m going to head home now.¡± He frowned at that, seeming disappointed, but then he shrugged and walked off in the opposite direction. I turned around too, I didn¡¯t lie when I said I felt better, and aimless wandering seemed to do much more for me than I gave it credit for.


    I remembered the rough direction I came from, and it certainly wouldn¡¯t be hard to find the estate that covered a sizeable fraction of this entire dome. The dome itself also seemed to concur with my idea of returning home, it wasn¡¯t long after I began my walk that the darkened sphere above me started growing more transparent, letting that sunlight start trickling in. By the time I¡¯d reached my cabin once more, it was properly dawn, with the lightening grey glass taking on a notable mild orange hue before the day began in earnest.


    I stepped back inside, tossing my shoes aside as I did so, finally feeling ready to get some sort of rest, before I felt something threatening to bite into my foot if I shifted my weight forward.


    ¡°Why are you back on the floor, how did you even get back down here.¡± I was exasperated now, but I wanted to finally nip this thing in the bud now that I remembered it. I was still wary about setting it loose on the world, so I opted for a different method.


    ¡°Stop annoying me.¡± I scolded it, fully aware that I was in fact talking to an object. As I did, though, I pushed just a bit of energy out through my hand and into the bland creation. I felt the tingling chill of my arm threatening to sink, but I cut off the flow before it started to happen in earnest. The glass rock in my hand shivered as the energy that created it flowed through it once again, but apart from hearing something pop in the back of my head nothing much happened.


    Annoyed and a bit disappointed, I set it back on my table, and as I walked upstairs to my bed I debated if I should just throw it away or keep it for practice, however I might do that.

 Chapter 10: Its Polite to Let Your Hosts Know When You Plan to Visit.

    Waking up was usually the hardest part of any day for me. My stint in the hospital was definitely outside the norm, but most days, I would be perfectly content to draw a blanket tighter around myself, relishing the feeling of silks or of velvet hugging me, keeping me just warm and snug enough to balance on that blissful edge of hazy consciousness until I needed to start my day in earnest. After missing nearly a month of this personal ritual I had intended to stay in bed for as long as I feasibly could before dragging myself into a shower, as archaic a cleaning method as that is.


    ¡°Doubtful two bed way pleasure confined followed. Friendly entrance to on by arose guest visit going off she new.¡±


    I had intended to do so, but I never even got to the ¡®waking up¡¯ part of that plan before I was assaulted by words. The sheer shock was enough to jolt me awake, and I scrambled out of bed, still coiled in a blanket and hurling a pillow at the door before I could calm down. Hearing the dense foam smack against the doorway was enough to get me thinking, if only some.


    ¡°Why would you do that?¡± I mumbled, still groggy.


    ¡°Thank¡±


    Unfortunately, the Thing wasn¡¯t forthcoming with any information, and I couldn¡¯t coax another word out of it, much less an actual reason. I looked back at the bed, the disaster it had become and turned away to walk to the shower, still lamenting my lost sleep. At least the steaming water was enough to help wash away most of the sleepiness left behind along with the gunk from the day before. Without the veil of sleep hanging over me, my thoughts drifted back to the nonsense I had just been force-fed, trying to puzzle together any sort of meaning beyond the Thing being smug that it woke me up. And then I heard something crash downstairs.


    I froze up for a second, mind racing in reaction, before I acted. Running to the bathroom door, I slammed it shut, then cringed as the bang echoed through the house. I was committed though, so I locked the door and grabbed the nearest item that could feasibly be called a weapon. With a container of bleach in hand, I also belatedly remembered the energy flooding my body, and readied myself to pull on that if I absolutely needed to.


    I spent the next five minutes bravely staring at the locked door, listening intensely for even the slightest noise, all while standing in a puddle of water that I had neglected to dry off earlier. When it became clear that nothing more was happening, I grabbed a towel and wrapped it around my waist before slowly reopening the bathroom door and creeping out.


    Walking carefully and purposefully, I started gliding down the stairs as quietly as I could. I crouched down, looking around the open floor as much as I could before I¡¯d descended, but saw nobody. I didn¡¯t stop looking, though, and even when I actually made it to the first floor without encountering anyone, I refused to just stop looking. Still, there wasn¡¯t a soul in the house apart from myself, and the Thing if that counted, but it was obvious that its message about visitors was correct.


    I glared at the door that had been left open, at my poor den being even more destroyed, even at the kitchen that seemed untouched apart from having been looted. I tossed down the bleach to one side, content to just ignore it as I inspected what might have happened. The worst of it all really was the den, a chair closest to the door had been entirely upturned, and the coffee table was shattered in half. In the center of the den, though, yesterday¡¯s almost-dinner stubbornly remained, still rock-solid and covered in rolling waves of fog, and now it also had a bit of something clinging onto one side of the mound, thoroughly encased in ice.


    I¡­ didn¡¯t know what to make of that, nor did I know how to examine it without potential gross bodily injury myself. What I did know was that I was rather upset. In fact, I was downright fuming, not only at the blatant invasion of privacy, the provocation of my Family as well as myself, but also at not being able to do much about it. But that anger was laced with an unhealthy dose of fear, too.


    ¡®Why me, though?¡¯ I thought, but it wasn¡¯t very hard at all to think of reasons. In fact, it was too easy. The hard part wasn¡¯t why, I¡¯m sure that being the first former-empty that I knew of made me interesting to whatever few people who actually knew. But then, who actually knew to begin with? How many people were warring in the background over me? Why was I free at all? How long is that freedom even going to last?


    I took a deep breath in, I was going to start overthinking it again, get pulled into my own head and freak out, and I didn¡¯t even know if I was actually that important to somebody to begin with. I had no doubt that at least somebody out there knew about me, but I didn¡¯t know anything more aside from the fact that they¡¯d covered for me at least once. This could have been no better than some random break-in, and I was just being the most paranoid narcissist on Luna.


    I let that breath out, the air leaving my lungs and taking the panic I¡¯d yet to build up with it. It took a few more breaths to fully come down, though, and then I had I realized I was still standing, practically naked, in the middle of my den hardly a few meters from an open door and directly in front of an uncovered window. I shut the door shortly after, thankful nobody was around to see me like that, or at least rude enough to stay and watch if they had.Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!


    After that, I slumped onto the couch, staring up at the ceiling. I had not a single idea of what to do now. Initially, I¡¯d planned on just going to the Bank and seeing what sort of nightmare my account had become but now, I just didn¡¯t know. I couldn¡¯t even call anyone, too concerned that I¡¯d be calling whoever was responsible for this in the first place. Going to the Family seemed like a better bet, but I still wasn¡¯t ready to ¡®officially¡¯ return yet, and until I did, I doubt they¡¯d be willing to offer too much.


    It¡¯d been five years since I¡¯d last seen a Johansson, apart from Marcus a few weeks ago, and I¡¯d been very clear with my parents, and anyone else I¡¯d spoken to, that I wouldn¡¯t see them until I was no longer an empty. Of course, it¡¯d been said much harsher than that, and with every intention of severing my connection to them entirely. I may have made that vow in a moment of anger and shame and guilt, but I¡¯d never gone back on it. But I was still part of the Family, I still used my name without reservation, and it was painfully obvious that the Family knew it too.


    They just did nothing about it, and I never knew if I should feel thankful or resentful, forgotten and forsaken or if I was simply being given space and time. Usually, I just felt some frustrating blend of it all. But now, I could finally return from my self-imposed exile, and I still didn¡¯t feel ready yet. I knew I¡¯d need to, but Mars was I dreading it.


    I looked at my phone, then towards the central manor of the Johansson Lunar Estate, wondering what my next step should be. Gripped by indecisiveness, I set my phone aside and began straightening out the den that had taken less than half a day to be reduced to a desolate tundra, trying to avoid anything that might be useful to a detective or a diviner if I chose to contact one.


    For example, the patch of something that had been stuck to my frozen carpet carbs was, as I¡¯d realized, skin. Actually, more than that, I could see tissue and blood clinging to the ice, too, rigid and frigid. I wasn¡¯t sure from where, but it was flash-frozen and then apparently either cut or torn off, probably quickly. I wasn¡¯t going to try and detach that skin, though, it was part of the pizza now and by now I¡¯d just accepted that the meal was as good as part of the house for now, or maybe for good. I was just going to do my best not to become a victim of it.


    On the subject of inanimate objects in this house trying to victimize me, I realized that the only thing missing, and also just about the only thing that had really been present to begin with, was my glass caltrop. Carefully, I stood up to look for it, but couldn¡¯t find it anywhere, and for a brief moment my classically conditioned lizard brain was terrified of this, ignoring the fact that someone had broken in mere minutes earlier.


    Only a moment, though, before my much more rational fears were back at the forefront of my mind. By now, though, I¡¯d at least come to a decision, one that didn¡¯t involve me making any decisions yet, too, which was the best sort. I pulled out my phone and called up one of the only two people in my contacts. One of the only two I actually knew, anyways.


    ¡°Hey, Mark.¡± I said almost as soon as I saw his face pop up in front of me.


    ¡°Yeah, Vane?¡± He seemed a bit surprised to get the call, but quickly got over it.


    ¡°So, listen, I need some help. With a few things actually, since I won¡¯t be getting any time to relax after all, and now¡¯s as good a time as any to do stuff. You¡¯re not busy now, are you? Wait, what time even is it?¡± I didn¡¯t wait for him to answer, checking a clock and finding that it was roughly ten standard, which meant I¡¯d been asleep a little over four hours before the Thing went all oracular on me.


    ¡°Are you alright, Vane? You¡¯re normally a little more¡­ composed. At least, I remember you were.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, just, a lot happened. Could you meet me at the Bank? There¡¯s still a branch near the gate, yeah?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s still there, any reason why you need me to come with you? I¡¯m not going to cosign a loan for you or anything, you know.¡± I gave him a small scowl, and his smirk widened into a grin.


    ¡°No, but I have no clue at all what sort of nonsense I¡¯m going to have to deal with, I¡¯ve got a feeling that I¡¯m still living out at Sedna where the Bank¡¯s concerned. The Coalition covered it all, but that also means that I spent less than a month getting back from the Oort to Luna without a single mark spent in between, not on resources, not on a ride or a jump, nothing, and without any warning.¡± He definitely understood, but still looked unconvinced, so I continued.


    ¡°Having family there would make it a lot easier to prove I¡¯m actually the real me and not a well-made Doppel or a thrall or something, and I also need to ask you for advice on a few other things. Plus, I know you still want answers.¡± I held up a hand, signaling for my phone to capture my hands too, rather than just my face. With hardly a thought, I pushed a bit of Everything out of my body, intent on sparking his curiosity.


    Of course, I only pushed out the tiniest wisp of energy, but it was still enough, and with a pop, something came into existence and dropped into my hand. As soon as I made sure it was inert, I set the strange, grey stick aside and looked at Marcus, who at least seemed sufficiently surprised. I saw him start thinking after that, and after a moment of contemplation, he seemed to give up his complaints.


    ¡°Fine, I¡¯ll call for someone and meet you at your place in a couple. You owe me a damn good explanation, though, today is my last day on Luna and this was not what I had in mind for it.¡± And with that, the call was ended.


    I set the phone aside, briefly examining the stick that I apparently conjured out of thin air. It was a bit shorter than my forearm and strikingly thin. It almost looked like some weird food, but a single sniff told me it was basically solid metal, with a good portion of its length being covered in an additional layer of it. It seemed harmless enough, so I put that down next to my phone. Maybe Mark would have an idea.


    It took me hardly any time to dress, sticking with the almost lazily casual clothing that someone stocked my wardrobe with, and then went back down to wait for Marcus. I grabbed my stuff, the small amounts of it that I had, and stepped out of the door just as I saw the same black sedan I¡¯d ridden here in the day prior come to a stop. I made one final check to make sure my house was locked before I remembered that it had been earlier and it didn¡¯t make a difference in the slightest, and then I slid into the backseat and set off.

 Chapter 11: Dealing With People Can Be so Difficult, at Times

    ¡°Well, Vane. Have anything you feel like telling me?¡± Marcus broke the silence we¡¯d shared for the past few minutes, but I cut him off before his question got too pointed. He¡¯d get his answers, but on my terms.


    ¡°Oh, yeah, sorry about that. Someone broke into my house earlier and-¡±


    ¡°Wait, excuse me?¡± Marcus¡¯ head snapped towards me, fighting to subdue the confusion he visibly felt. ¡°You¡¯re not actually serious, right?¡±


    ¡°No, I am. I woke up when I heard¡­¡± I thought of how best to phrase what I wanted to say, since mentioning the Every-Thing seemed like it could be considered not good. ¡°something downstairs. When I went down to look, whoever it was had left, and they¡¯d left the place a disaster.¡±


    ¡°Who would-¡±


    ¡°Not a clue, Mark.¡±


    ¡°Then why would¡­ Ah, of course.¡± It didn¡¯t take him long to pause, probably coming to the same paranoid conclusion I had hardly half an hour earlier.


    ¡°Yeah, someone else knows too, unless that was you.¡± I eyed him critically, trying to see of he was, in fact, hiding something. If he was, he¡¯d gotten far better at controlling his expressions than I remember him being, all he was showing was confusion and a hint of worry, not the guilty sort, either.


    ¡°Oh, by the way, do you have any idea what this is?¡± I asked, handing over the grey stick to Marcus. He tentatively grabbed it, looking it over as he turned it in his hands, but he couldn¡¯t discern anything more than I could. That is, until he grabbed the skinny end, at which point the tip of the other end hissed, and then burst into a shower of angry white sparks, sparks that did just about nothing as they fell down, aside from leaving small stains on clothing and upholstery alike.


    ¡°What the hell?¡± After a moment of confusion and shock, Mark tossed it, throwing it forward where it smacked the back of the driver¡¯s seat and fell by our feet. The embers that were being tossed out stopped almost immediately after the thing left his hand, and all that remained after it became lost beneath the seats was a faint, lingering stench of heated metal.


    ¡°Vane, what was that? Was that the thing you conjured while we talked on the phone? I couldn¡¯t feel any higher energy in it, how¡¯d you get it to light like that? One second, I¡¯m going to find it.¡± His concern slowly bled away, getting replaced by a childish curiosity as he unbuckled the outdated seatbelt and wormed out of his seat, hunting for the stick.


    I arched an eyebrow at this behavior, and out of the corner of my eye I could see the driver doing the same in the rearview mirror, but Mark seemed unfazed as he hopped back up into the seat, new toy in hand. I had to admit, I was also a bit curious at the thing, I¡¯d call it a wand in any other circumstances, but it only took a moment to realize it was just some combustion reaction that had no need for constraints like fuel or waste, instead just spewing out mostly harmless sparks for the remainder of our ten minute drive.


    I¡¯d tried to get him to continue our conversation, but he¡¯d gotten more and more engrossed, and by the time our valet had stopped in front of the Bank, even shaking him wasn¡¯t enough to break him out of his fugue. Fed up, I reached out and snapped the stick out of his hands, idly noting that it immediately went silent once more, and then looked at Mark as he stared dumbly at his hands.


    ¡°Hmm? Oh, Vane, could you hand that back, I was just about to figure something out?¡± The sheer innocence in his voice made me grow concerned, so I shook my head. Before he could push any further, I decided to do at least try dispelling it. Flexing my will, I decided to take hold of the Energy I made it with before I sent more Energy out, and I also decided to just call it Ether for now to keep it separate from the other energies in my head. At first, I just tried to manipulate it directly, but it was painfully obvious that despite being summoned, created, conjured, or whatever else by Ether, it wasn¡¯t made of it anymore.


    And so I was about to pump more Ether into it once I realized that it, and probably anything else that I created, was much more real than any other energy construct I¡¯d heard of, before it struck me how bad an idea it would be to make the unpredictable sparkle-stick more unpredictable in hopes that it goes away. Instead, I bent the thing in half, and it had to be surprisingly brittle since it snapped in half almost immediately. I looked at Mark, and for a second I thought that the grown man sitting across from me was about to burst into tears.


    Instead, he physically recoiled, looking almost ill for a tense moment before gulping down a breath of air and shaking his head. He looked me in the eye, more confused than anything else, and spoke, a single word summing up not only mine and his thoughts, but the driver holding open the door.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    ¡°What?¡± That seemed to be enough to defuse the eerie tension in the air, and I slipped out of the door a moment later, followed shortly after by my cousin. Then, I looked up at the towering structure before me.


    I took in the Bank before me, in reality it was more like a small section of the Dome sequestered away exclusively for the Bank. It wasn¡¯t so much a building as it was a castle, so aggressively boisterous that it overshadowed even the luxury of the park surrounding it. It may have only been dozens of stories tall, a limitation from the glasstisteel Dome, but it was probably at least half as wide.


    The squat building was practically humming with power, but unusually, only of the technological sort. The Bank was one of a small list of major powers in either system that relied nearly exclusively on either higher energies or technology alone, usually there was some overlap even if magitech was still a faraway dream, but not for the Bank. Instead, each of their buildings, from the smallest leaf on a random asteroid to the true terran ¡®trunk¡¯ back on Earth was a veritable fortress defended exclusively by the marvels of machinery.


    And clearly, this branch was no different. The squat building was likely that way partially thanks to the armaments and fortifications that were no doubt wired into every possible point, intent on making sure their property stays theirs, their people, secure, and most importantly, staying a neutral party through sheer brute force. But even more important than that, was the truly monumental server rooms I was sure each division had to have.


    After all, handling the accounts of the trillions of humans in the Twin Systems would already be hard enough even if they didn¡¯t need to make sure that every single limb, no matter how small and inconsequential, was completely and totally in-sync. As we strode towards the doors, I kept thinking of how mind-bogglingly powerful they need their servers to be, and how exactly they kept everything so¡­ perfect. It was quantum computing brought as close to its logical conclusion as we could get it, and it was truly a marvel.


    The inside of the structure was, in a word, art. In spite of the nearly warlike exterior, the sheer presence that it had being enough to warn off all but the strongest, or the most foolish, the interior was nothing like that. Everything seemed carved straight out of marble or nature itself, meshing artificially grown grass and trees seamlessly with the chiseled white room, a pond in the center carved out. And what a room it was, a ceiling so high above my head it seemed to be half the building¡¯s height, and it seemed to be entirely one room, though there were a few offices dotted around, carved out of the trees, the walls, and for some, even the ceiling.


    No doubt, those rooms weren¡¯t just to discuss marks, they were also to discuss the few things that money could even buy anymore. Things like property, luxury, and inter-planetary travel were never going to be free of course, but food and medicine were available to just about everyone in all forms but the most high-end. But these weren¡¯t what the Bank dealt in, what the marks they hoarded were meant to be spent on. They were a Bank, of wealth true, but also a bank of knowledge and power, and for the right price, that could be anyone¡¯s.


    But I wasn¡¯t there for that, not now. I turned towards one of the nearby empty offices, hoping a floor-level teller was all I needed to change my ¡®address.¡¯ I waved Marcus along, leaving the diligent driver waiting for us by the doors. We were on the way to the room when I noticed someone I wasn¡¯t really expecting to see. Donny, at least, I think his name was Donny, hand in hand with a woman I¡¯d never seen before, and he seemed to take the look of recognition I gave him as an invitation to bound over, almost dragging along the petite girl. They were too close to ignore in the open-air plan of the Bank, and I begrudgingly stopped and turned towards them, idly noting both of their appearances.


    Donny was about as tall as I was, a bit shorter, dressed like he¡¯d just gotten out of some office job which was entirely possible. His partner seemed a bit more casual, but in that frustrating, high-end, refined casual that Mark and I were dressed as, too. Her image was slightly ruined, however, by the fact that one of her arms was very clearly recently injured, not only was she carrying it gingerly, the skin-wrap covering most of her forearm wasn¡¯t quite the right skin tone to not be visible, apparently a rush-job. I suppose it was possible it could have also been a birthmark, but most birthmarks weren¡¯t perfect rectangles of skin that didn¡¯t seem to even have pores.


    I did my best not to stare, but apparently, I was caught anyway if her glare was any indication. So I cleared my throat, and tried not to sound too reluctant as I introduced him to the clearly expectant Marcus.


    ¡°Mark, this is Donny, I met him the other day. Donny, Marcus, my cousin.¡± The two shared a nod, and he motioned towards the grumpy girl beside him.


    ¡°Well, this is my wife, Cass.¡± She waved and said a curt hello, and I could tell Donny wanted to continue the talk, but I simply didn¡¯t, not right then, at least.


    ¡°Anyways, I¡¯m sorry Donny, but I really can¡¯t talk right now. I have an appointment here, and then I need to meet up with the rest of my family.¡± I tried to at least sound remorseful, and he seemed a bit reluctant but made a point to mention that he understood, and he¡¯d like to at least try to meet up down the line.


    I played along with it, vaguely humoring the idea as we finally got to the teller¡¯s office. Donny seemed rather pushy, but he didn¡¯t seem malicious about it. I didn¡¯t exactly get why he seemed so intent on worming his way into my schedule, though. And then he spoke again.


    ¡°I¡¯m serious now Vane, we gotta get together one of these days!¡± He might have been about to say more, but that sentence alone was enough to have me slam my fist to the wall beside me. The wall rippled in response to the blow, and what was an inviting entrance in the marble smoothly slid shut, leaving me alone in the room with a confused Marcus and a bewildered teller.

 Chapter 12: Sometimes You Need to Face Your Past to Ever Move Forward

    ¡°Vane, what was that for?¡± Marcus began, but I interrupted before he could scold me for being impolite.


    ¡°Mark, I didn¡¯t tell him my name.¡± I told him, and for a moment, he looked as concerned as I felt, but then he spoke again.


    ¡°Maybe he just overheard it earlier, I still think-¡± I waved my hand, cutting him off.


    ¡°Not now, Mark, we¡¯ve got errands to run.¡± I turned towards the teller, who¡¯d long since schooled his features back into a polite neutrality. ¡°I need to check the status of my account, change my primary residence, and might be looking for some information, if you have it.¡±


    The man seemed almost bored at first, his deliberately sculpted features portraying the picture of polite apathy, but he perked up the slightest bit at the mention of information. I didn¡¯t know how much I¡¯d need from him, but it was best to get his attention early.


    ¡°Happily, sir. And you are¡­¡± He raised an eyebrow, and I felt like kicking myself.


    ¡°Sorry about that, my name is Sylvain Henry Camille Johansson, I recently moved my home branch from Mars to Sedna, and as you can see, I¡¯m pretty far from both, now.¡± The man tensed up for the slightest moment when I told him my name, just enough to catch. It made sense, I suppose, the Family wasn¡¯t a power anywhere near as influential as the Bank, but it was large enough that their, or I guess our, presence was noticed wherever we tended to live. That really only constituted a couple of bodies and a small slice of Jupiter¡¯s Wildwinds, but that was probably more than enough to help a lower level teller get a promotion if he handles things well.


    ¡°Of course, Mister Johansson. If you wouldn¡¯t mind taking a seat while I take a look at your account?¡± Mark and I nodded, sitting at the desk across from him as he worked away. Of course, it hardly took a second for him to dig up a nearly disturbing amount of information on my life since opening an account, and most of that was just him thinning it out to anything relevant.


    ¡°Sylvain Johansson, born to Gloria Johansson and Nikola Vaughn in the Alba Province of Mars, opened an account with the Bank at age six, the Bank¡¯s affinity test determined no energetic aptitude,¡± I sunk into my seat, remembering that test. ¡°Retesting at age seven determined a minor full aptitude, neither pursued nor recorded by Bank administration.¡± It took everything I had not to flinch in the face of my life¡¯s history being rewritten.


    ¡°Continuing. You joined the Standard Magitech Coalition at age eighteen, promoted rapidly and in possession of a moderate number of patents within and without the Coalition. Led an expedition to¡­ do something unspecified in the Oort a little over a month ago, but never stopped by to notify the Sedna branch of your arrival.¡± His voice took on a suspicious undertone at that.


    ¡°We do, however, have your trip through a Portal Port on record, verifying you made it well into the outer Sol System, far outside the reach of either Authority. After that, you appear to have vanished, no withdrawals, no deposits, no purchases, and no trade-ins. And now, here you are, deeper into the System than you started, with no recorded purchase of transfer, nor an organization claiming to have transferred you either. In fact, if you were genuinely at the Oort and not Sedna, you¡¯d need a superluminal transport. You wouldn¡¯t happen to have taken an unsanctioned transport, would you?¡± He narrowed his eyes and continued. ¡°Of course, this is all on the presumption you¡¯re even Sylvain to begin with.¡±


    I sighed, half expecting the interrogation to begin with, but still a bit upset it was coming to pass anyways. ¡°That¡¯s why I brought him,¡± I motioned to Mark, who just seemed a bit bored, ¡°my cousin, Marcus Johansson, to verify. I also consent to whatever tests you feel need to happen to verify who I am."


    ¡°On the matter of transport, I myself am unaware of exactly how I got here. I don¡¯t know how much the Coalition has told you, or anyone really, but that expedition ended poorly, to say the least.¡± I could tell he was eager to question me, to wring out every bit of information he could before I priced it. I didn¡¯t let him.


    ¡°Poorly, to the point of leaving only a single survivor who spent the last month in a hospital recovering. Now, can we begin?¡± One begrudging nod later, and he turned his attention to Marcus, questioning him about seemingly inane things while trying to sneak in the occasional grab for my own situation, but any ¡®good¡¯ information broker would do the same.


    I couldn¡¯t really do much to verify my own identity, they didn¡¯t have an imprint of my energetic signature, for obvious reasons, and DNA tests were notoriously easy to fake with just a bit of preparation, as were any determining physical features. Memories could be forcefully claimed, and the mind itself was too nebulous for anyone to measure. It came down to Mark¡¯s own imprint, the one part of a person that couldn¡¯t be reproduced or stolen, but could be measured, to verify that he was who he claimed. From there, he could confirm that I was who I claimed too, that neither of us were trying to cheat the Bank, and that my presence was due to my employers not documenting anything rather than making unlawful Leaps.


    Once he had, however, he was quick to let his suspicious attitude simply fade away, like it was never there to begin with, which was honestly a bit insulting, but nothing new. He turned back to me and spoke.


    ¡°Now that we¡¯ve taken care of that, Mister Johansson, what can we at the Bank assist you with today?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯d like to change my account status from fixed to nomadic, a wallet chip to go with it, and I¡¯d like any information your Archives have on corrupt cores and non-standard energy types.¡± There was silence for a moment, and even Mark looked like he was thinking about the request. Then, the man nodded, and went to work.


    ¡°Of course, I¡¯m sure you already know this, but nomadic accounts are far less secure than regional accounts, though they remove the chance that you ever need to go through this whole process again. Are you sure?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve got a hunch I may not be as stationary, anymore, so yes.¡±


    ¡°And is there any particular reason you¡¯re in the market for information on esoteric energies?¡± He pried, handing me the tiny chip, which I pocketed. I could¡¯ve had it implanted, but I had no idea how that would react with anything, really. I¡¯d just have to find a more secure way of keeping that on my person, in the future.


    ¡°Call it curiosity, unless I don¡¯t have the funds to access that?¡± He seemed a bit disappointed, but passed me another chip, this one loaded with information.


    ¡°Five thousand marks for corrupt cores, eight thousand for information on any non-standard energies we have recorded.¡± That was¡­ steeper than I thought for raw information. ¡°Of course, this doesn¡¯t include any gathering methods or restricted knowledge, just a history and overview of most known energies outside the Core Four that at least one human has been able to wield, and survive doing so.¡± That was definitely a surprise, something like that was well over ten times the cost of similar information on the Core Four, and probably only a fraction of the amount I¡¯d get for it, too.


    It was more in line with a pretty average gathering method, or even a higher tier technique. ¡°Your balance is now one hundred and fifteen thousand, six hundred marks. Can the Bank help you with anything else today, mister Johansson?¡±You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    ¡°No, thank you. That should be everything I need, but if there¡¯s something else I¡¯ll be sure to stop by and ask for¡­¡± His smile widened as he offered me a hand, which I took. ¡°Charles, it¡¯s been a pleasure sir.¡±


    I nodded my assent, then followed Marcus out to the car. Donny was nowhere to be seen, thankfully, and our Valet was right by the door, waiting for us. As we both got back into the car, I turned to Marcus.


    ¡°Hey, Mark, I need to thank you for that, it would have been an enormous pain otherwise. I guess now is as good a time as any to take care of the rest of my errands, though.¡± I fought back a sigh as I phrased my question. ¡°Do you know where my parents are staying? I should probably see them before something comes up. I¡¯m still waiting on any word from the Coalition, so now¡¯s probably the best time for it.¡±


    Marcus wasted no time in giving the appropriate address to the driver, and a few minutes later we were pulling into the lot of a truly grand building much closer to the center of the estate, a mansion in any sense of the word, and it was easy to see the status the two of them had within the Family, although it was still a bit more than what I was expecting for them.


    It wasn¡¯t the time to be wondering, though, as I walked up to the doors of the building. Marcus was intent on following along and getting answers, and I couldn¡¯t well tell him no after the favor he¡¯d done for me. Steeling my nerves, I used the archaic doorknocker. Three thumps resounded, and then not much more for a moment, before I saw the knob turn.


    As the door swung open, I was left face-to-face with my father, a man who looked strikingly similar to me, or the other way around, I suppose, and he seemed just as much at a loss as me. Nothing was said between us for a moment, before he turned around and shouted.


    ¡°Ollie! Come to the door!¡± Then he turned back around and yanked me into the house, crushing me in a hug, almost literally. I spent a long moment struggling in his grip, before finally giving up and embracing the man back. I''d been dreading this moment for a long time, but now I didn''t know how to feel.


    It was about then that my mother arrived, I wasn¡¯t sure what she had expected to find at the door, but the look she wore clued me in that it probably wasn¡¯t, well, me.


    She didn¡¯t say a word, either, before prying me out of my father''s hands and pulling me into her own arms, and I went along with it this time, hugging her back, thankful that at least she wasn¡¯t trying to crush my spine like my father.


    Eventually, she let go, looking up into my eyes for a moment before sighing herself. She turned, walking into the barebones living room, and my father and I followed. Marcus seemed unsure of what to do with himself and stood at the edge of the room while the three of us sat down.


    ¡°Welcome back, Vane.¡± My dad said when he realized I didn¡¯t know how to start, and my mom followed up. ¡°We¡¯ve missed you.¡±


    ¡°I did too, I just¡­ didn¡¯t know how to come back. I¡¯m sorry mother, fath-¡± the man waved his hand before I could finish my statement, growing upset. I flinched, not sure what he was about to rebuke me for.


    ¡°No more of that, Vane. We held you to the Family¡¯s standards, made you follow the Family¡¯s codes for eighteen years, and I don¡¯t think anyone in this room is happy with how that turned out. No more forced formality, no more unachievable goals, no more pointless politics. I don¡¯t want to lose you again.¡± My mother seemed mostly in agreement, and I felt a bit of the tension leave me.


    ¡°Thank you, dad.¡± I began, then choked out the words ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t be, you silly boy.¡± Mom said, ¡°the Family put too much pressure on you, and too little faith. We shouldn¡¯t have let them, and we won¡¯t let them try again.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t think they will, either, we didn¡¯t follow your every move, you deserved that much respect at least, but most of the Family knows about what you¡¯ve done in the Coalition. It may not be the Family business, but you¡¯re still accomplishing something, and that¡¯s more than most of the kids your age can say.¡± Dad looked at Mark when he said that and coughed. ¡°Most of them. The rest are too busy at an Academy or just leeching to actually work, and we¡¯re proud of you.¡±


    I wasn¡¯t too surprised that they were watching me, honestly, but I did have a question. ¡°You aren¡¯t upset about the expedition?¡± Watching them both tilt their head in unison was a little surreal and very much nostalgic, and it told me quite a bit.


    ¡°What do you mean?¡± They asked, and I could see them coming up with their own conclusions already. Apparently, some news travelled slowly outside the Coalition.


    ¡°Did you turn something down? Or are you going soon? Is that why you came to Luna instead of stopping by on Mars?¡± I could see Marcus grimacing in the background.


    ¡°I guess you haven¡¯t heard, then. I was¡­ promoted, about a month and a half ago. Put on a sort of rush expedition out to the Oort.¡± Watching them light up with that news almost hurt, when I had to follow it up. ¡°We were sent out a few weeks ago, and it went- it went wrong.¡± I didn¡¯t realize how hard it would be to actually talk about it, instead of just using everything as a shield and ignoring it all. They could tell, too, and it made this next bit worse.


    ¡°I- I was the only survivor, I don¡¯t even know how.¡± Another breath, as I watched how the two of them would react. ¡°And it was my fault. I came up with the idea, I got that idea approved, I said that nothing should go wrong, that I could guarantee that we just needed to stick to the numbers and it¡¯d be like summoning, but without a target, and we¡¯d just get to peer into a new plane. Like portals, I promised, and now my ¡®portal¡¯ killed three dozen people because they trusted me.¡± It was hard to stop, once it all started coming out, and it was almost scary realizing how much I¡¯d managed to bury.


    ¡°I spent almost a month feeling like I was dying, probably actually dying, and- and I wasn¡¯t even given that, and just¡­¡± I trailed off, I didn¡¯t know what more I could say and if I tried, I¡¯d probably just break down. At some point, both my parents had moved over to sit by me, too many emotions on their own faces to make out. Mark had left the room at some point, not that I blamed him, I didn¡¯t expect to almost fall apart like that.


    I needed to take a minute, just breathing and focusing on calming down, on forcing myself to find any good news in it all that I could. My mind wandered, and it seemed my parents could understand, since they let it all happen. Eventually, I just decided to change the subject, forcefully. I could confront it all again later, at my own pace.


    The problem was that I didn¡¯t know what to change it to, so we ended up sitting in silence. My parents looked on in concern while I tried, and failed, to gather my thoughts, but after a little bit of time I had a loose idea of what to say next.


    ¡°I kept my promise to you guys.¡± I could tell they weren¡¯t sure what I meant, so I held out my hand, palm facing upwards. ¡°Before I left, when I said that Vane the empty would never see you again.¡± A small intention was all it took to guide some Ether out through the palm of my hand, a little more attention in trying to create something that wouldn¡¯t explode, or light anything on fire, or cause any screaming, or do anything bad. ¡°And he won¡¯t.¡±


    The air rippled, and with a blur of motion, something small and yellow flopped onto my hand. All three of us were staring, now, at the sponge I¡¯d managed to conjure from nothingness, and I felt my shoulders slump at my ¡®grand¡¯ reveal, but I wasn¡¯t allowed to sulk for too long before I heard my parents gasp in surprise, and then launch into a tirade of exclamations and even more questions.


    ¡°Vane, what have you done! This is- how have you- I¡¯m so happy.¡± My mother said as she pulled me into a hug. Meanwhile, my father gingerly picked the sponge out of my hand, leaving a puddle of sudsy water in my palm. He examined it, confused and curious as he poked and prodded it not only with his hands but also tendrils of mana and sounding bursts of qi, trying to find whatever secrets it may hold. He quickly deduced that no matter how much he squeezed it or wringed it out, more water just kept dripping out, onto the table he¡¯d held it over, running off onto the floor.


    As it went from merely surprising to outright concerning, he set the thing down and turned back to me, still confused but also much happier, now that he was reasonably certain that I hadn¡¯t been joking. ¡°I have so many questions for you, but, why the sponge?¡± I pulled myself off of my mother, looking at my dad.


    ¡°I couldn¡¯t tell you. This happened after my accident, and I don¡¯t really have much control. Honestly, I don¡¯t have any clue what I¡¯m doing, and I don¡¯t think anyone else does either. This stuff is different, and I think it can be dangerous, so I don¡¯t want any of you getting hurt. But there¡¯s one more thing I do need help with.


    ¡°Someone broke into the place I¡¯m living, earlier today, and I think I have an idea of who now but I¡¯m not sure at all, and I just don¡¯t know who to turn to.¡± It¡¯d been some time since I¡¯d last seen either of them look quite so outright furious, and I felt touched. I felt a lot of things, actually, and I was still trying to figure it all out. At first, I¡¯d only come to get it out of the way, but now I didn¡¯t know quite what I wanted. No matter what, though, I couldn¡¯t just leave like last time anymore, I just couldn''t anymore.


    I had time to think, though, because after telling them about my adventures, they seemed less than content to just let me get accosted by anyone else, and so it was that they practically marched me out of the house, summoning Marcus to come with as we went back to my home of one day.