Well that’s terrifying as all hell. Though it also seems to bend physics more than usual. Freezing someone? Sure. Shattering them? I guess. Their shattered remains turning into fluid? That just doesn’t sound right. Still, the trees got rid of the evidence I guess. Those poor unfortunate souls. Ow, brain fritz. Still, huh, more trees drinking blood on my behalf. I send some thoughts questioningly at Lullaby who remains suspiciously silent.
Is the glaive asking the trees to clean up any blood I leave laying around so that it doesn’t hamper travel? That’s a far broader scope to his power than I had previously imagined he might have. Holy crap. Hell, his power basically covered up murders for me. Um, thanks Lullaby. His sending of warm positive flashes of emotion to me tells me I was probably at least in the ballpark with my guessing. Sentient artifacts are scary as f^&*.
Lullaby sends me negative signals as I plan to divulge my thoughts and findings to everyone else. I suppose that would draw more attention and suspicion on us than we need. Thanks again I guess. I don’t think we’re going to see your sister at this rate though Lullaby. At least not with the way things are going here. We haven’t even started navigating the court politics. Lullaby sends ambivalence and acceptance my way. Thanks for being understanding. Gosh, it’s kind of nice to have someone in my head again. Even if he is a literal weapon. I’m sorry I didn’t really pay attention to our bond before now. More ambivalence and acceptance.
Each of us departs this meeting of the minds for our various tasks. Teuila sets about resuming trying to cram learning three to four things while exercising all day into a single activity. I’m pretty sure she has been doing things like balancing on fewer and fewer fingers without her gravity powers, or even with her gravity powers increasing her own gravity instead of lowering it. Teuila’s physical prowess is monstrous, and grows by the day. Dawn joins her just so that she can remain near Boss, and have someone nearby in case her senses fail. She can’t join me since Jarrah forbids anyone else entry while we train.
I’m grateful for the one on one tutelage, but it’s almost odd how stern he is about it. Even his own Enclave members like Alanea had to wait one stair below the landing that led to his meditation chamber. I guess I should feel honored maybe. I feel a tad remorseful at having thought he might secretly be in league with the Celestial Emperor due to being a secretly Celestial being hidden amongst the Fae. Still, we go about our training to little effect.
Hours upon hours pass as we try various things with every single weapon, tool, magical item, or object at my disposal that I might have ever used in some fashion. If I had my original walking stick, I’d pull that out. I’m pretty sure I lost that one on of my many trips in the waters of that main river that divides Can’Z’aas’s southern half right down the center from north to south. Ugh, my head. I miss my home. My family. I even miss my stupid tragic frequent dunks in the drink in that particular river. I can’t think of another object that I have that we haven’t tried yet today. I’ve got three runes mastered though, on my way to my fourth. Too bad runes two, three, four, and five are just instructional runes, no effect on their own. Or maybe that’s for the best, since they might be reused in other spells.
Suddenly, Jarrah curses, “Fel fires! What in this distended reality is the source of your magic!? You’re not a wizard or hedge witch, even the most basic untrained wizard or witch could learn either incantation or bladesinging, but you’re making absolutely zero progress, as if your magic actively defies what we know to be true about spellcraft! You’re no enchanter or enchantress, no manacrafter or sage, no druid or shaman.”
Jarrah mutters to himself for a moment as I roll my eyes and continue my useless training. Suddenly he orders, “You, Reggie. Draw blood or spit blood into your hand. Quickly now, hurry up. Command the blood itself to sing as you try to draw another rune. Feel and sense the blood with any and every sense available to you. If you feel any twinge of any previously unknown sense, tell me immediately!”
I draw a ragged breath and drop it as a heavy sigh. It’s easy enough to up some blood from my esophageal track into my hand. I do as commanded. I’ve a pretty fair familiarity by now with strange additional senses compared to the norm for say, Earth humans. Hell, I’ve even a pretty fair familiarity by now with my own blood, hah. Gosh I’ve bled far more in my lifetime than should be survivable. Still, I alight on no new sense relating to the blood as I attempt to have it sing for me, to have it aid my runecrafting in any way shape or form.
Jarrah curses again when it’s evident nothing new is happening. He returns to muttering to himself. After a moment he demands, “Be honest with me, have you been in contact with any extraplanar entities?”
I scratch my head as I postulate, “There was a, a pyramid, the way it disappeared later in our adventures makes me think it was actually some kind of interdimensional ship or something, maybe. Especially with the kinds of creatures that dwelt within it. Creepy as hell brain eating squid faces. I. I.”
I begin to devolve into panic as tears stream down my face. The room itself glows intensely and I feel the panic burned painfully away from me. I’m left gasping for breath, and I’m fairly certain I’m bleeding from the nose or eyes again. I continue to gasp and pant, struggling to orient my dizzy, woozy head.
I plead, “I, I was being honest, I swear. There might be more too, but, but that’s the first thing that—“
Jarrah interrupts, “Shush now, my chamber just accelerated your panic attack, we both know you’ve no time for those. I’m not punishing you you self-absorbed, pompous, inveterate ignoramus. Let me think. That may be close, but I doubt it. By your own telling, you’ve had your powers since what you call your spawning. What about any beings that can exist outside time? Outside space?”
I collapse into a pained fit of laughter as I double over clutching my stomach and head. I nod emphatically as I explain, “Yeah, yes, haha. I, haha. I sent myself, my personality back in time to before I spawned. So I technically interacted with myself before I could ever interact with anything. Then there’s TQ, a being that wasn’t an actual being, they were the collective wills of so many people I had failed to save in so many different timelines. Despite my failures, they only ever wished for, and guided my success. Their existence ended when the primary timeline met up with the furthest they’d ever been though. Heck, there’s even the void beyond the edges of space that I tried to contact in order to find a source of energy that wasn’t the tainted radiance corrupting my world. We reached some sort of accord somehow, I think.”
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Jarrah Bettergrove’s ever-moving wild eyes widen, and widen, and continue widening til I’m sure his eyeballs are about to spring forth from their sockets by the end of my explanation. He suddenly looks inward again, gazing down as he mutters to himself, “Time and math, or aberrant entities? Time and math? Aberrant entities. Which is more dangerous? Hm, no, one better.”
Jarrah asks, “What about dragons, beyond your friend Lil, older, more powerful dragons.”
I snort, “Pfft, hahaha. I mean, recently I slew an elder purple dragon by cutting off her head from the inside, accidentally swallowed some of her blood and spit. I also sort of claimed most of the power from her heart or something? Not sure. Plus, hell, this is going to sound unbelievable, hahaha.”
I pause, trying to refrain from laughing, “I um, I connected to the minds of two different god-class dragons, Lord Deckard Agni, the Pure and Desolate, and Lady Tenith Grayl, the Sky Unending. Both were miles upon miles upon miles in size. I’m not sure if a few miles, or dozens, or hundreds. By the time you’re in those orders of magnitude, it’s hard to gauge anything. Anyway, both were very pleasant to speak with, once they let me use my communication method, instead of melting my brain with lava or lightning by trying to speak.”
I then mutter, mostly to myself, “Tenny is actually a friend if she’s still alive, if she even still exists after the convergence. I hope they return to their original forms after wiping the slate clean. I don’t want Tenny to only exist as some fraction of some walking apocalypse that I’ll have to defeat one day.”
Jarrah looks incredulous as he requests clarification, “You’ve reached out and touched the void, battled interstellar brain eaters, sent yourself beyond your own past, and survived the speech of actual literal dragon gods? And to top it off, you then connected with their minds to speak with them in a non life-threatening manner!? What in all the fel hells even are you!?”
I can’t help laughing as I respond, “Pft, hah, I’ve been asked that question -sooo- many times in my life. I’m incredibly sorry, something about what the room did, everything is funnier, I beg that you believe I mean no disrespect with all this laughter.”
Jarrah mumbles as he waves dismissively, “Yes yes euphoric side effects of post panic. Whatever, shut up for a moment.”
Jarrah returns to muttering to himself, something along the lines of, “Dragons? Gods? Aberrations? Time and math? The Void itself? Column A, Column B, a little of both? All of the above? Their own future self? Fel fires this child is vexing.”
I can’t help adding, “Recently I had this terrifying thought that the Celestial Emperor is also somehow the red-eyed entity that hounded me my entire life on Can’Z’aas. It roused gods to try to destroy me, it took over loved ones whom I had to trounce and splash with pure river water to free from its grasp, it inhabited and enhanced monstrous creatures from dungeons to try to take me out.”
Then I recall another detail, “Oh, and it passed through me frequently whenever I drove it away or defeated a body it was inhabiting. I got weird glimpses of shared memories that I’m just now realizing were quite similar to Aces’ memories. Is that in any way relevant?”
The room glows again as I begin to devolve into panic from recalling the red-eyed entity, and I’m sent hurtling into a blinding migraine as it feels like I’m blasted backwards against the wall that I’m sitting against. Ow. I attempt to flex my jaw, neck, and spine, but every bit of me is frozen in place where I’ve been blasted into the wall. Jarrah looks incredibly disturbed by my recent revelation. He actually stands and approaches me while I’m temporarily dazed.
Jarrah withdraws something sharp from the right sleeve of his robe and continues approaching me. He wears a sad, apologetic expression on his face. Oh hell. Is he about to try what I think he’s about to try? Oh hell no. My muscles are spasming, a tiny spasm is all I need. I flick my left hand just enough to unlatch the secret holster for my most powerful magic staff, and it drops into my hand. The first thing I do is summon the spectral hand to attempt to simply deflect Jarrah’s attack at the last instant. It barely succeeds.
Jarrah frowns and barks, “I’m sorry, I have to do this, it’s for all of our sakes!”
I retort, “Well I’m sorry, I’m not going to just give up and die you lunatic. I’m warning you, I don’t know how powerful you think you are, or that you think I am, but I will remind you, everything I’ve ever faced has either been subdued, or wound up dead. That includes extradimensional entities, dracoliches, calamity-class beasts. All dead or subdued. I want neither for you. Actually all of those ones I listed are dead.”
Okay, one or two things sort of technically beat me, but he doesn’t need to know that. Technically the rock elementals only ended up dead because Dippy left the massive stick of dynamite lit, laying next to us. But I survived that explosion after having already been beaten to a bloody pulp. That sort of counts as a victory, right?
Jarrah begins to laugh. He allows himself to fall to his arse and laughs further as he drops his forehead into his right hand. He shakes his head incredulously, and I can just barely make out a scant few tears splashing downward. I can’t tell if they’re from humor, or something else.
I demand, “Okay, out with it, if you’re going to have to kill me anyway, do you have telepathy or psionic abilities? Have you been reading my thoughts? Are you laughing about the rock elementals?”
Jarrah nods sadly while laughing and weeping into his hand. Friggin’ hell, was that so hard? Although, I guess it’s better to leave people guessing than to let on that you have that particular ability, so that people don’t begin guarding their thoughts. Jarrah continues nodding at my thought train. I guess I can keep his secret. If I survive whatever’s coming in the next few moments.
I huff a sigh as motor control slowly returns to my body. I ask, “Are we still going to do this dance of you trying to kill me, or can we get back to training?”
Jarrah waves dismissively before stating, “Fine, fine. Yes, fine. I suppose even if you were touched by our mutual manxome foe, you’re not some deep sleeper agent. Your thoughts are too honest, too random. The fact that your first thought was to deflect and offer mercy rather than attempting to kill me with any of your available tools is a testament to that, not that most would have succeeded mind you. Our foe doesn’t know my limits, and wouldn’t let such an opportunity to end me, or test them slip by. Fel hells I doubt even he has a grasp on your powers if that was truly him, or even a fragment of him. It definitely sounds like his modus operandi however. I’ll reiterate, what in all the fel fiery hells even are you?”
I shrug. That’s something I’d like to know myself.