Gabe and Jean restructured their plan to incorporate a trip into the city to get the materials for Jean’s familiar summoning. Gabe had never heard of a Screech Echo familiar, but it was normal for summoned familiars to be unique considering that there were near infinite beings in the deep astral. Jean was rather hesitant about having a familiar that sounded ominous but was reassured by Gabe that familiars tended to have similarities to their master’s temperament.
The pair walked through the empty market district, even though night had fallen on the city. Most of the shops had lights shining out of the windows. Gabe pulled up to one of the few stores with the lights off.
“So here’s the deal. I’m going to walk in there and grab the quintessences, and then we are going to leave the city lickety-split.” Gabe said while staring at the shop door.
“Wait what?” Jean said, not understanding what was happening due to his naivete.
With that, Gabe twisted the door nob with a brutal crunching sound, looked from side to side, then stepped into the dark shop.
Jean stood in shock outside the store while looking up and down the empty street. He felt like a lackey left outside to keep watch, which he was very uncomfortable with. About a minute later Gabe stepped out and closed the door behind him with two bags in hand.
Gabe looked at the fidgeting Jean and asked, “You good man? You look kinda anxious.”
“Yeah, well I’ve spent my whole life staying out of the life of crime you know? And here you are just stealing like it’s a Tuesday!” Jean communicated in a rushed whisper.
“What’s a Tuesday? And I’m not stealing, that’s my shop. Now come on, we’ve gotta ditch this place.” Gabe said while grabbing Jean in a princess carry. Gabe’s decorated bow staff materialized in front of him, and Gabe jumped on his ride.
Before Jean could respond the pair were flying up with Jean getting a fresh dose of whiplash from Gabe's ridiculous form of flight. Five seconds later they burst through the cloud dome and entered the expanse of the open sky.
“Now let’s go make a friend and find a squirrel. It’ll be the adventure of a lifetime!” Gabe said with honesty in his voice.
_______
A few moments of jostling flying later Jean called out, “Can you stop for a second?”
Gabe stopped with more force than Jean thought was necessary.
“I want to try something that would make this a whole lot more comfortable for the both of us,” Jean said while conjuring a cloud next to them.
Jean was trying out two of his new Essence abilities in his conjuration. He started to make a scoop chair out of the cloud with object permanence so that he wouldn’t just fall through. Conjuring items with object permanence was significantly more draining. Jean was barely able to form the chair before his whole mana pool was spent.
Once the chair was made, Jean said, “Go ahead and put me on there. If I did it right, I won’t just fall through it and plummet to my death.”
Gabe must have had complete confidence in Jean’s abilities because he tossed him through the air at the chair. Jean’s heart sank as he was thrown several feet, looking downwards a mile with nothing below him. As Jean hit the cloud it fell several feet before stabilizing in the sky, slowly moving with the wind.
“Oooh, I’m glad that worked.” Jean said, “Now wrap this around your shoulder.” He said as he took a rope out of his inventory and tossed one end to Gabe. He then wrapped the rope around a loop in between his legs.
“Well isn’t this clever! You get to use me like a sky eel!” Gabe said.
“Um, yes? Is that ok?” Jean asked.
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“For sure, mate.” Gabe then took off with speed heading for where he originally picked Jean up when he was in crisis four days ago.
Jean’s sky chair, as he named it, was a world more comfortable than being held in Gabe’s arms. He did have to adjust it a bit to block the wind and add a safety bar to keep himself from falling out, but Jean decided that this sort of creation was going to be a regular part of life for him.
“I love magic!” Jean yelled through the wind to Gabe, who just smiled in response.
Twenty minutes of high-speed flying later they approached their destination. Gabe tried to slow down slower than usual but still wasn’t slow enough. As Gabe stopped, Jean was like a kid on a skateboard who had been holding onto a car’s bumper, and when said car made an immediate stop, said kid would slam into said car. So, Jean slammed into Gabe who was just as uncaring as the back of a car. Jean bounced off of him gaining some bruises while spinning off into the distance in his floating chair.
“Well, that looks fun,” Gabe said while watching Jean twist in the air. After retrieving Jean, the pair went to the ground.
Upon reaching the safety of the solid earth, Jean popped his sky chair into his storage space.
“Ready to summon the Screech Echo then?” Jean asked while rubbing a fresh bruise on his hip.
“Let’s do it. I’ll guide you a bit, but the knowledge you got from the skill book should be enough for you to do it.” Gabe said.
Jean started by clearing and leveling the ground a bit and then began to arrange the spirit coins into a ritual circle. He placed the quintessences in various piles creating symbols with them. He honestly did not know what he was doing or have any of the foundational knowledge to understand why he was doing things in a particular way. His artificial knowledge, however, seemed to be giving him good enough guidance since Gabe just stood back and watched.
Once Jean was done, Gabe stepped in and made various small adjustments while explaining why the textbook knowledge could not fully function. He said something about the variety of magical saturation waves in the region, but Jean could not track what Gabe was saying. A few minutes later Gabe nodded and said, “It looks good. Now you just have to say the summoning ritual incantation and you’ll have a new friend!”
Jean stepped up to his spot with his toes touching the ritual circle and chanted, “Don’t judge me for this ok?” Jean said before closing his eyes and chanting the required incantation to summon the Screech Echo, “Screams of the past and future, echoing across all worlds, show yourself a friend. Piercing sounds of the lost and sharp, come to a land fraught with silence.”
With the ritual finished, Jean took a step backward as the ritual circle looked like it glitched. All the materials shifted and then disappeared without fanfare. Standing in the center of where the materials were was a figure made of grey and white static. It was featureless without clear boundary lines of where it started and stopped. It was difficult to see in the haze of late night, and Jean thought it would be difficult to see during the day too.
Jean jumped as it moved. Shifting forward in static teleports a couple of feet at a time. When it was a foot in front of Jean it let out a piercing screech, which made Jean and, surprisingly Gabe, flinch.
Jean stared at the echo who just stood there in front of him.
“Hey buddy, how’re you doing?” Jean said, thinking of the thing as a frightened pup.
The thing made a much quieter sound like nails on a chalkboard. It sounded morose.
“It’s ok buddy, I’m not afraid of you. You’re a nice Echo, aren’t you?” Jean said in a comforting voice.
At that, the echo glitched toward Jean, plunging into his aura.
“Oh,” Jean said. And looked at Gabe, “He’s actually happy to be here! He just doesn’t know how to communicate here yet. I guess he’s kinda like a baby?”
Gabe blinked a few times and said, “That’s a really creepy baby.” Then Gabe let his trademark smile cross his face. “I’m glad you’ve made a new friend, even if he is freaky. What are you going to name him?”
“I’m not sure, I haven’t thought about it yet. What do you want to be called little guy?” Jean asked the echo in his aura.
The echo blipped in front of them and made another piercing screech making both people flinch again.
“Umm, maybe I’ll work on it for you,” Jean told the echo.
It responded by bleating and entering Jean’s aura again.
“It looks like he is good with staying in my aura. That’s good. Otherwise, he might get me kicked out of a restaurant or something. There are restaurants in North Tips, right?” Jean asked.
“Yup, it’s the biggest city on the planet, so there’s everything you could imagine.”
Jean perked up at that, “Sweet. Then let’s get moving so we can go check it out! I’ll be good here for a while.”
“Sounds good to me. I’ll head out and I’ll come search for you in 24 hours, and hopefully, you will have caught a squirrel by then. If I notice a gold rank monster manifest in the area, I’ll come running, so just do your best to hide. Until next time, sir!” Gabe said, and then he was gone, leaving Jean alone in the forest once again.
_______
Two minutes later Gabe flew back and landed in front of Jean, “I forgot to give you the other bag!” Gabe handed Jean the heavy bag the size of a basketball, gave him a wink, then hopped in the air out of eyesight once again.
Jean checked inside the cheap dimensional bag to find what he thought would be the materials for his Screech Echo to be summoned again, and then maybe an additional time at bronze rank. Jean yelled into the sky, “Thanks, Gabe!”