Chapter 38: Non-Standard

“I'm an outworlder,” Nara began after the brief interruption, “but the way I got here was non-standard. Even more non-standard than an outworlder is in the first place.”

Aliyah’s eyes opened wide, excited by the revelation. As a researcher of magic, outworlders were curiosities that were normally hard to come by.

Recognizing her look of excitement, Sen said but one work, “Aliyah.”

She cleared her throat, “The standard way is usually a summoning ritual gone wrong or a magical anomaly blowing back magic through two worlds already connected with an array. Whoever is in the vicinity is sent to the other world as an outworlder.”

Nara nodded, “Neither of those things happened for me. What happened to me was a nightmare.”

“A nightmare?”

“I can only describe it as such. I was only a soul at the time, and the soul doesn’t form thoughts so much as feel. But from what fragmented memories I have, I had fallen asleep on night, and the next moment my soul was being tortured.”

The table plunged into icy silence.

“I’ve only heard a little about soul torture,” Aliyah said softly, breaking the still, “It is forbidden research for good reason. Unethical and unpredictable. Utterly detestable. Minds are irreparably destroyed for no gain.”

“You can gain something from it?”

“I don’t know much about it personally. It is forbidden research. There are errant researchers that believe that those that survive soul trauma develop more powerful auras,” she shook her head, “As researchers, it is part of our duty to contain dangerous research with morality. Harmful research does not progress civilization.”

That wasn’t necessarily true, but the ethics of research was argued on Earth as well. How far should they go? When was human testing acceptable? When is animal testing acceptable?

She weaved her fingers together before continuing, looking down at her fingers. “Those that survive soul trauma tend to have more powerful auras. Not only is the result inconsistent, but it is never worth the experience, and never willing. Sometimes people survive and nothing is gained, they live as normally as they can. Mostly…they’re worse off, minds permanently changed by the traumatic experience. Some heretic researchers pursue soul torture and soul trauma because they believe they can improve ‘humanity’. That this is the path forward to higher power.”

“I can’t really say I survived it.”

“Aren’t you here just fine?” Sen asked.

Nara shook her head, “To give in to soul torture is to grant the torturer the key to your soul. I didn’t give in but…”

“But what?”

“I tore my soul apart so that they may not have it. I didn’t know I’d even come back from that, but I thought death was better than the alternative. The only reason I didn’t chose death was because it wasn’t an option.”

“That’s why your aura is strange,” Encio said in soft realization, “my grandfather mentioned it.”

“It’s not exactly all back together,” Nara said. “My soul. It’s not too big of a deal, I’m mostly missing concrete memories, but the core of my being, at least, I want to believe so—that my values my personality, my preferences—should be intact.”

“What happened then?” Aliyah nudged.

“My soul somehow pulled itself back together, in a rather strange way. In a way that gave me semi-conscious thought in a state where I should not have had such an ability.”

“What state?” Aliyah asked. The researcher within her wanted desperately to record the story, but she would not. It could exist only in her mind.

“My soul sort of combined with a part of the astral, filling in the gaps missing, or expanding its capabilities. Something like that. It grants me a particular ability with two of my racial gifts. It’s called an Astral Domain, according to my guide ability. It’s a part of the astral that I own…or rather, is me. The astral is connected to physical reality everywhere, so I can slip out of physical reality—”

Nara closed her eyes and let herself fall backwards in her chair.

“--and slip back into reality in any location, using the astral as an intermediary.” She said from her new position, standing behind Sen. “I call it an astral jump.”

She walked back to her chair, which Thanatos had caught for her so it would not be damaged.

“Nice follow up,” she whispered to him, “That was epic.”

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

Thanatos softly barked back.

“That doesn’t explain your first statement,” Aliyah said. “How did you become an outworlder? Surely you cannot—” she gestured to Nara, ‘—teleport to locations you have not traveled?”

“That’s right, I can’t. That rule at least still applies in some manner.”

“Some manner?”

“I can slip through a dimensional wall without knowing what’s on the other side. Its just like pushing through a doorway obscured in shadow. You can still cross, but the destination is a mystery.”

“Then?” Aliyah pressed; her curiosity barely contained beneath her normally sharp expression.

“An astral being there called Chrome taught me astral magic and ritual magic of a very particular variety. The astral magic was just so I had enough knowledge to even successfully cast the ritual magic.”

“What was the ritual magic?”

“It was a ritual that searched the entire cosmos for a link from the astral to the physical that fulfilled certain requirements.”

“The first requirement was that too much time had not passed in physical reality if I exited the astral with that link. Encio, you’re aware of the cardinal rule of time magic, right? Since you’ve got a Time Confluence?”

“You cannot travel back in time. Any link you chose could not be too far in the future or else returning to your world lost all meaning.”

“Yes. The second requirement was that the world had sufficiently advanced astral magic that I had a shot at making it back in time anyway. That requirement is more of a work in progress.”

Also, the world needed magic that connected the astral and physical reality. Since Earth had no magic, she wouldn’t be able to find that connection and use it.

“But I found a magic ritual that connected physical reality and the astral, and used the property all outworlders share to force the creation of a physical body. A property that everyone shares.”

“Outworlders have their original body annihilated and then re-created as they traverse the dimensional boundary. One of the few phenomenon of self-resurrection regardless of rank,” Aliyah said.

“There’s self-resurrection?”

“I have an ability,” Encio said, “it only gains self-resurrection at gold rank.”

Nara stared at him, “Of course the Time Lord has a self-resurrection ability.”

“I haven’t styled myself a time lord,” Encio said, not understanding her reference.

“What’s your aura called again?”

-------

Ability: [Time Sovereign]

Essence: Balance

Aura (recovery)

Cost: None

Cooldown: None

Effect (Iron): Allies within aura have increased mana regeneration while enemies within aura have decreased mana regeneration.

-------

“…That’s just the name of the ability. According to your ‘ability’. It’s slandering me.”

Aliyah’s expression was one of rapid calculation, “…that ritual must have taken an extraordinarily long time not just to complete, but to finish its operation.”

“Yup. I’m probably pretty damn old now.”

“You don’t feel old,” Encio said, “I’ve been around enough high rankers to feel the difference between someone who is young, and someone who looks young for their age.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment. But It’s probably just because I wasn’t really growing as a person during that time, and my mind was still pretty messed up. My memories have been returning faster in physical reality now that I don’t have to go pick them up one by one, millisecond by millisecond, sense by sense.”

“Don’t have to do what?” Aliyah said.

“My mind interpreted the fragments of my soul as pieces of string lost in physical and non physical locations and I had to traverse the astral in a literal and metaphorical sense to retrieve the memories in a situation given recognizable form in a realm otherwise incomprehensible? Simply put, I was putting my soul together piece by piece, if a piece was the size of a grain of sand.”

Aliyah closed her eyes, resting her forehead on her fist.

“I did that for a while until Chrome found me, and you know the rest, more or less.”

“More or less? There’s something else?”

“Uh, I may have met The Reaper? Like, the uber-god of death? Not sure how that works with an actual god of death here.” She pointed to her earing, “He gave me this.”

Aliyah sighed, mournful like a poet realizing their lost love would never return, “I could spend my whole life researching a single topic you’ve just described.”

“Aliyah,” Sen said warily. “Do not try to outworld yourself for the research experience. It won’t turn out the same way.”

“Do you think I’d really do that?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t even know how to outworld myself. A summoning ritual is highly complex, and I’ve never heard of one that sends you to the location, rather than pulling the target to yourself. It isn’t a summoning then, is it? It’s self-sending.”

“Aliyah, I do not doubt for a moment that you could figure it out once you set your mind to it.”

“This time, did I cover everything?” Nara asked, “Any more questions?”

Aliyah started to raise her hand, but Sen held it down, “No, that’s very thorough, thank you.”

Vallis, Gento, and Kiris entered the restaurant, revitalizing the stilled atmosphere. Kiris was as shy as ever, curled up small in her chair. Nara wondered how Vallis convinced her to join.

*****

“”Cheers!””

The raised their glasses into the air, downing the traditional Sanshi celebratory drink in one gulp. The fiery liquor was surprisingly tasty (for alcohol), contrasting sour with plum, honey, and floral hints. It was a favorite of Vallis, who quickly poured herself another glass to savor. Sen consumed it with considerably less vigor, but he couldn’t hide the small smile of content on his face.

Nolan brought out a feast for the eight of them to enjoy. The food was magically preserved at peak flavor, heat, and texture in Nolan’s conjured cabinet. All were Sanshi traditional celebratory dishes with a monster-component: rock-rodent dumplings, soup of the cloud eel, 8 vegetable “vine tyrant” stew, slow braised tyrannical pheasant with fire chili sauce, crisped roller ball skin, shadow dark ink dyed rice.

Thanatos enjoyed his own plate piled tall, while Caspian flew down like a trickster fae to snatch morsels of food for himself, with Sen attempting to wrangle him properly, half plucking him out of the air, other times pressing a hand to keep his energetic familiar in place.

Sen, well, did his best to eat amongst the chaos of wrangling a flying familiar.

“I’m going to feed you,” he muttered. “So please, behave.”

There was a small plate portioned aside for Caspian, but he wanted to choose his food, not the food Sen got for him.

“Look,” he said in rare exasperation, “Big brother Thanatos is an admirable familiar and properly eating what his summoner chose for him. I think you’re a reliable familiar too, Caspian. Don’t you want to be like him?”

“Yes!” Caspian said in a childish squeak, apparently able to speak. “Like Big Brother!”

Sen’s eyes swam, looking desperate. Nara knew what his expression was asking. A team-up to save his sanity.

She brought out a pen and notebook, jotting down with a smug smile on her face:

“A weakness of Sen Arlang: Sen Arlang is not good at handling children.”