Track 09: Space
We quickly made it back out from the pool and the exercise center, into the main floor, and made our way past the elevators. We all jumped when the elevator dinged right in front of us and opened wide for us to come in. Too tired to check for a trap or monsters, we all shuffled on. And I would say I was surprised when we get to our floor, but I genuinely can’t generate an idea other than bed. I think I even moaned it a few times.
We split up. Neon and Gabrielle are gonna sleep in her room while Kohl, Lukaelin, and I are gonna kick it at my place. I suggested we all stay together because safety in numbers but neither of us had enough beds or couches. Mine being a studio anyway, there’s barely any space for privacy. And she probably hadn’t been there in ages. The same way I needed to be in my bed. I’m sure she felt the same way.
Saying good night to Gabrielle was so surreal. We were just in that position before the world went insane and for me that was a last night and for her... I’m not really sure. It’s in the way she looks at me sometimes. It makes me think there’s something she wants to say. Something that will change things. Part of me just wants her to just tell me, the other part just wants her to stay quiet. I want to say that whatever it is. It doesn’t matter, that it won’t change things. The only problem is that’s a lie. I think we both know it will have consequences.
Once we got into the room, I almost collapse in the doorway, making a beeline to my bed. But then I remember there was another reason I wanted to be here. Something Aquilan’s whip reminded me of. I went through all the things in my music equipment stuff. Pledging to spend sometime with My Voidwalkers and pack them up before we left. I look under boxes and through some of the milk crates of the vinyls. I finally find it under a jacket which I had hanging on a chair and in between the couch cushions. Wrestling the from its hiding space makes me feel a bit like King Arthur taking the sword from the stone.
“What is that?”
“It’s a sound sword.” I say as I strike the large tuning fork against my thigh and the sound comes out reverberating. And just like that, I turn it into a blade and sing its resonance through my body. “Now I’m like you.”
Congratulations! You have found a new weapon, Sound Sword, Rank 1!
Utilizing the powers of Siren, you can turn the sound waves produced by this device into a blade of pure sound.
You have found another strength of your innate power. Use this to further drive The Dominance back to their planet.
The smile on the face of a child who has never really known happiness blooms on his face, and I’m almost taken aback when he draws his weapon and attacks. I block and our swords clash but repel milliseconds later.
“Let us spar, Master.”
“I don’t love that word.” I say, wincing, but he doesn’t relent.
And just like that, I get swept up in his boyish excitement. I learn more in those few hours about sword fighting than I’d probably ever learn to swinging it at random enemies. I don’t become Errol Flynn, but I learn that swinging it like a bat is completely wrong.
Spending the last of his hours here this is what makes Lukaelin happy. He’s such a sweet boy. I’d give him a hug if he’d accept it. But he might accept… I dig through my clothes until I find it.
“Here.” I say, putting it in his hands. He opens it up. “It’s a hoodie like mine. Now we match.”
I help him put it on and the white hoodie with gold letters honestly looks good on him. The logo of the six wings bordering a halo was a bit much and I don’t know how that will go when he returns to the other Warchildren. I muss his hair and look at the time over his head. 5 minutes. I shouldn’t be so attached to him, but he reminds me of Carter when he was little. I just can’t realistically let him leave, knowing he wasn’t appreciated.
“This is for you.” Lukaelin says, pulling out a sample. The enchantment sparkles in his hand.
“I wondered what happened to this.” I say with a warm smile. I knew something should have dropped from the Leviathan King. We were fighting two levels above our weight class. “Why did you take this?”
“I thought I could trade it for something when I got back.”
“That’s pretty smart.” I rub my unkempt beard. “Honestly, I wonder what you’d get for an enchantment… It’s not like it would be useful for everyone. They’d have to be enchanters.”
“My Warfather has many skills and magics. I’m sure he’d fine use for it.”
“Definitely, especially if he gets you all to bring something back for the work you do. Either way, thank you, Lukaelin, for giving it back to me.” I take it from his outstretched hand and welcome it into myself.
Congratulations! You have found an enchantment!
You have found the enchantment, Crystal Carapace. Crystal carapace gives a piece of armor or raiment +1 chevron.
“Did you mean to complete the binding?” Lukaelin says, looking up into my eyes.
“Wha-“ I begin, but a notification pops into my view.
Congratulations! You have bound the Warchilde, Lukaelin, to your service!
Lukaelin will be influenced by the changes in you and as you level up the ability to summon him, you may evolve and increase his power level. Lukaelin will now reside in your soul, only awakening when you summon him.
He will never have to go back to that dark world again. You have saved a soul.
Thank you, Composer!
You have made an enemy of Vikarin, Lukaelin’s previous Warfather. You have taken a great ally from him. He will not stop until you last draw breath or you kill him yourself. Good Luck, Composer!
“I didn’t mean to complete the binding.” I say, and his face falls. “But I’m so glad I did.” He picks his head up and smiles. “Welcome to Rebellion.” I hug him and he wraps his arms around me as he disappears.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
I lay awake on my bed, looking up at the ceiling. Can’t sleep. So much has happened since the last time I closed my eyes. I create a ball and throw it up and down, catching it. I’d taken a shower and washed my hair. Brushed my teeth, but none of it felt normal. I don’t feel normal and the aggressive normalcy of my surroundings made me even more uneasy. I let out a long sigh.
Kohl bounds onto the bed and looks at me with the feline expression that seems like a eight on the annoyance scale.
You have to sleep so I can sleep.
Of those awakened, my best guess would probably be somewhere in the thousands. I mean, not everyone is able to use it to any degree… The Sulikani were here a long time ago, not in the grand scheme of space or the powers we’re dealing with, but for human genetic knowledge they were here a while ago. Some of their descendants died out… there’s been a lot of genocides on earth and whole phenotypes have been removed. That being said, though… Siren isn’t that rare of an ability. What’s probably rarer is choosing to take it and then expand on it. You have the perfect occupation and education to use it and have fun with it. You know sound
How you got it is interesting but the skill itself isn’t, really. Leadership can come in the smallest or largest groups. Of course politicians and commanding officers might have it but teachers, leads in bands, and HOA presidents. Anyone who has worked with a group of people has a chance to gain the skill.
That really hit me. I mean, I know I’m not a hero but, when you really think about who I am… it’s really just an accident of circumstance. Would someone else have led Gabrielle and Neon out of ECU? Would they have died? It makes you think about your place in the universe. We’re so small, and yet there are things like interplanetary forces at work.
How do I you think I feel? I woke as a cat with the ability to read minds and basically the FBI for a few people. That is to say, you might not be special but, what you choose to do with the opportunities that come to you that is what is important. We did a thing and we could spend the rest of our lives trying to live well somewhere on the fringes and that would be a perfectly valid choice, but I believe you and I and the rest of our merry band want to change the world. And you help us do that, leader. I believe in you, Mix. I believe you can change things. What you’ll do with that, I want to see. Now get to sleep. We have much to do in the morning.
I woke up to rustling in my room and when I look over, the there’s a creature. Pure black skin is haloed by the shadows. Deeper than black, it’s a void. Oddly enough, the stick-straight hair and witch’s hat were shining brightly, like fireflies. Bioluminescent amber, purple, oranges, light up like a light up peg board. Their eyes were dazzling and when they show on me, they were like flashlights in the dark.
I try to wake up Kohl, shaking him awake, but he doesn’t move. He can’t move. Like he’s frozen, just not with ice. They just can’t move. Petrified.
“What are you? And why are you in my apartment?! And what did you do to Kohl?” I say.
The figure stumbles and falling over itself, clattering through my stuff and disappearing behind my couch. I got out of bed and walking over to where it fell. I peek behind my couch and nothing. And then I feel the hair raise on the back of my neck and my chest get tight.
I turn and slowly lowering to my eye level is the creature. Floating maybe five inches from my face. I can feel it examining me, taking me in, almost absorbing me. It’s expression, an odd thing to contemplate in a being with only eyes, seems to be looking for something specific. And just as it read me, I began to understand it. I realize that understanding its mood is only possible while taking it in as a whole. While it seems so completely different from me, there’s a thread that keeps all things in life connected.
Dream. I think the longer I look back at this creature, the more I feel like I learn about the very nature of the power that powers us all. I could see that it was the energy of Id. An energy of want and desire. I know in this moment that it is just a tiny fraction of the beginning of what how Dream works. Like the tiny sliver of the sun coming over the ocean, there’s so much more in the light and in the horizon itself.
[Hello Traveler] It speaks or something of a kind like it. It has no mouth, but words are still put into the air. So part of me and the magic I hold tells me no molecules vibrate in it. There was no sound, but the lack of it and that lack echoes. Not a sound, but something more, something older than before there was a molecule to vibrate. It’s an experience. Oh no, I sound like everybody who’s taken an ayuaska trip for funsies. I’m making an ass of myself. [Mix, Child of Waves, Composer, it is this one’s pleasure to have made your acquaintance. You need not worry about your companion. I just needed a moment to talk with you. He is in stasis. He will be returned to normalcy when this one leaves.]
“I-I-” My brain can’t quite connect and form thoughts.
[This one and this ones’ plethren have come to contact one such as yourself. Can you guess why I have come?]
“I can not fathom.”
[We are Fathomless. Travelers of The Abyss. Navigators of The Void. In short, we are Space Mages.]
“Space Mages?” I ask, my mind being blown.
[Indeed.] The Mage answers. [I have come to inquire about a certain item in your possesion.]
“The Raiment?” I offer him the raiment after calling it to my hand.
[No, while this one does find the robes interesting from a time standpoint. This one is no Chronomancer. This one is a Traveler. This one concerns oneself with Space and all beings’ movement through The Third Dimension and the others besides. This one would like to look at your… deck.] The Traveler pointed to the Asteroid 67 on my desk. It teleported into that one’s hand. The movement was so quick, without any bright lights or fanfare. It was simply there and then it wasn’t and into that one’s hand. If I couldn’t teleport myself, I would wonder how it was done. And even as I can, it seems effortless to the Fathomless.
“Y-you want my deck? Are you into music?”
[Not particularly. Music has no place in The Void.] The Traveler still looks over the peripheral. Ten minutes just looking over it and looking past it, pulling at unseen tethers as it floats above its hand. I could feel the power emanating from the creature’s naked analysis. [I want to study this.] This one was silent for so long that I almost nodded off, just standing there watching it. [While I have completed my first essay, I need to understand why music and space seem to intertwine on this planet.]
A deep, haggard breath comes from The Traveler and the impression of many silent light-years into the outer reaches of space fill me. As if I take in his breath. A vision not unlike the first with time I’ve connected with the ancestral magic.
I zoom out until I’m floating above earth as my body lays suspended in outer space. My sight slashes like comic panels, but each panel comes in at erratic angles like a stained glass. Each pane shows a different world and goes on forever. A thousand, thousand planets, with different biomes and some with teeming with colorful and bountiful life and some a hauntingly beautiful empty landscape in its own way, just as wonderful and even more forbidden. I could feel that it was both memory and reality fitting together.
I understand now the reality of travel. Space Magic is about the infinite possibility of movement throughout the cosmos. The little kid in me who wanted nothing more than to see the stars is wide awake, reveling in the aww of what our universe is capable of.
“I want to see it all.” I don’t realize I’m saying it out loud until that one responds.
[This one agrees. This one has spent many lifetimes seeing much of The Void and I want to know of more. I want to understand why some items are connected to separate and higher dimensions. Why they have appeared here on earth and why, even though they are parlor tricks for most of my plethren. They seem to continue to show up where The Minority and The Dominance fight. This one wonders if that means we must be drawn into their conflict…]
“We could use your help.”
[Your pleas have been heard. The Travelers will talk. We never sided with the Minority or The Dominance. We are non-combatants, our magic doesn’t do much to fight, but This One will return. We have given you the ability to reach for our power. Use it wisely. Protect your home.]
Congratulations, Composer!
You have unlocked Space Magic by meeting and conversing with one of The Fathomless and a Traveler of The Void!
You may yet have a chance to recruit their help for the Dream Runners.
Stay Strong and continue the fight.
When I look up from the notification, The Traveler was already gone. And I’m left alone in the freshly quiet space with my thoughts.
Kohl settles in to go to sleep again. And I ease off the bed and go out to the balcony. Looking out, it doesn’t feel like my city anymore. The lazy jazz coming off from Harlem Street is gone, silenced either from the powers that be or whatever is messing with the power. I add that to my to-do list:
Find Carter
Get Stronger
Find The Angels
Find The Dragon
Find The Queen
Figure out the Power situation and solve it.
Understand Space-Time Continuum
“Did you just add something to your to-do list?” Gabrielle says. Looking across two balconies, she’s in long pajama pants and a tank top. Hair wrapped in a silk wrap and spilling over. Holding a wine glass and swirling it around. She takes a sip. “You’re really taking this leader thing seriously. Good. You aren’t in this alone. I’ve got you. So CC me that to-do list.”
“Wanna come over?” I say.
“Yeah, there’s something I have to tell you.” She says solemnly. The words drop in my stomach like a stone.