"Are we ready?" Iris asked.
"Hang on!" Autumn said as she walked over and cinched the rope around Iris's waist tighter, "that should do it.”
Iris was pretty sure that had it not been for her hipbones, the rope would have squished her hard enough to put her back in the infirmary.
"You're going to cut off the circulation," Titus chastised, crouching down to loosen the rope slightly while Iris awkwardly held her arms out to the side.
The whole party was gathered on the storage deck, even Eli had made his way down from the crow's nest for the occasion and currently stood off to the side with a carefully restrained but anxious look in his eyes. While Iris and Victoria had an easy time reaching the depths of the storage deck by blipping and ghosting through the floor above, the others had to climb over a jungle of crates and barrels to reach the small clearing where the experiment was being conducted.
Victoria held Littletooth in her arms -- despite his occasional struggles to escape -- while Iris placed the bottomless bag on the floor in the center of the clearing. The drawstrings loosened on their own, revealing the seemingly infinite void within. Iris stood over the bag and looked down into the void as she took a deep breath.
"Don't worry, guys, this'll be fine," she said, sounding more like she was trying to convince herself.
Affirmative tones emanated from the bag. Iris still hesitated.
"It's not too late to back out," Eli suggested.
"Nope," Iris shook her head decidedly, "I'm doing this."
She clenched and unclenched her fists a few times, and then shook her arms and bounced on her toes. Then, she jumped into the void.
It was like jumping into a pond. The void swallowed her like water as reality was left behind somewhere above. The familiar lack of sensation washed over her, and the feeling of falling was soon replaced with effortless floating. She saw nothing, heard nothing, and felt nothing. She was alone in the infinite and empty void.
And then she wasn't. A presence entered her perception, not quite a physical presence -- but not an aura, either. It reminded her of the way she sensed things with her Awareness of Matter ability, except this presence was far too distant for her ability to detect, and somehow not wholly physical. Instead, it was if this presence was announcing itself to her, projecting its strange existence across the void for her to sense.
"Abby?" she asked, but no sound came from her mouth.
Though she could see nothing, she sensed the presence grow closer. It was amorphous and blurry until it entered the range of her awareness ability. First the tentacles entered her range, writhing and wriggling in the empty -- and then something large and bulbous loomed just inside of her range.
A tentacle rose up from below, wrapped around the handle of a lantern that appeared from nowhere and spread light across Iris and Abby. The surprise of seeing light in the void was washed away by the shock of what It revealed before her. The collection of tentacles converged on a huge, round mass of purple flesh that enveloped a single, gigantic eye. The eye blinked, making a slight squishing sound as it did so. There was sound in the void now, too, Iris noticed.
"It's nice to meet you eye-to-eye," Iris said with a smile.
Fluctuating tones came from all around, as if the void itself was laughing.
"How can I see you right now?" Iris asked, "how can I even hear you?"
Abby's response was a mixture of affirmative, harmonious sounds and negative, discordant sounds, indicating she didn't know the answer.
Iris felt another strange sensation -- she was falling again, though quite slowly. In her previous experience, even the concepts of up and down had been alien to the void. Soon, her feet touched down onto a surface, causing her to jolt in shock and yank her feet away. The slow fall continued until it deposited her on the unseen surface in a crouching position.
"What's going on?" she looked around warily.
Another uncertain mixture of sounds.
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Cautiously, Iris stood up and spun around. Other than Abby and her tentacles, there was still only empty void in all directions, even beneath her. Somehow she stood on something, however unseen it was. Abby waved a tentacle to get her attention, and when Iris looked her way, the tentacle reached out and pulled an item from the emptiness. It was the spyglass Milo had given Iris. Abby brought the spyglass up to the center of her giant eye and aimed it at Iris.
Iris laughed, "I guess this is your first real look at me too, huh?"
Affirmative tones.
Curiously, Iris reached out to the void as well, and imagined she was reaching for her walking stick just as she would when reaching into her bag. To her delight, the stick appeared in her hand as if she had plucked it from the void.
"Neat," she said with a smile.
Abby's tentacles began a flurry of movement, reaching out to the void and grabbing items at random and releasing them to reach back for me. Books, rocks, and weapons soon were all floating around her, the heaviest items slowly drifted to the floor while lighter items seemed to float indefinitely and drift in whatever direction they were last pushed. It seemed like Abby was excited to demonstrate what was possible here.
Iris spotted several items she had forgotten she even had, including her Grand Hunt registration card, a shovel, and the bow she had once taken from a member of Jacquie's gang of thieves when they had first tried to rob her party in the forest. Next she spotted the last of Mrs. Rousey's painkilling candies drifting by, not far away from the now repaired pocket watch she had recovered as part of one her earliest quests. The memories brought a reminiscent smile to her face.
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"Hey-- okay--just calm down!" Victoria stammered as she struggled to contain the writhing baby wyvern in her arms.
Littletooth managed to squirm free enough from her grip to kick off her chest and launch himself away from her. She lunged after him with a grab that should have caught him, but her arms closed around nothing as he blipped to the bottomless bag.
"You little shi--"
Littletooth scrambled headfirst into the bag and tumbled into the void. A few seconds later he found himself landing atop a hat, where he attempted to take a seat and look around for Iris. Instead, two hands appeared from below and grabbed him, lifting him off the hat as he squirmed and whined in complaint.
Iris brought the baby wyvern down over the brim of her hat and held him out before her, giving him a critical look, "you okay, dude?"
It was hard to describe how wyverns looked when they were happy. They didn't smile -- in fact, if they looked like they were smiling, it was probably because they were showing off the teeth they planned to eat you with -- but instead they adopted a rather relaxed, expressionless face. That's the look that came over Littletooth when he saw Iris and promptly stopped struggling.
Iris placed him on the floor -- or whatever it was, anyway -- beside her feet, and he immediately began scampering around and leaping up in attempts to catch the floating objects. He didn't seem surprised at all that the floor existed, so Iris guessed it must be somewhat normal.
While Abby's tentacles corralled Littletooth away from anything dangerous or delicate, Iris turned her attention to the rope tied around her waist. The slack of the rope extended up a few feet before disappearing into the void. Looking up, she had no sense of where the entrance might be, but it seemed like it would be much higher than where the rope disappeared.
"Any idea how I get out of here?" Iris asked.
Abby made affirmative tones.
It occurred to Iris that Abby couldn't actually explain how, even if she knew. A thought came to her, however, and she focused on the process of choosing a location to blip and activating the ability. It certainly felt different in the void, but the ability was still there and didn't seem to be pushing against her in anyway. The main difference was that it felt like things were out of order -- usually she chose a location, blipped into the void, and reappeared. Instead, she was already in the void, and her intuitive understanding of her ability told her that if she only chose a location, she would appear there.
The problem was that she couldn't sense any locations to appear in. It had to be somewhere in physical reality, but she was surrounded by only void. After a moment of focusing her awareness ability upwards, however, she finally sensed something. There was a faint disturbance in the void, almost like a small hole in a quilt. She chose that location to reappear, and instantly left the void behind.
Her head was poking out of the bag, looking up at a circle of her friends who had been looking down at the bag, and were now jumping back from her surprise appearance. She reached her arms out of the bag and placed her hands on the floor to either side, lifting herself up out of the void and back into reality like climbing out of a hole.
"So?" Autumn nearly shouted, "how did it go?"
Iris couldn't help but laugh in excitement as she answered, "that was the coolest thing I've ever done."
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IRIS ORION
Recent Accomplishments:
New sub-ability discovered: Void Pocket
Void Pocket:
Source : Thread of Power (Void, Special Ability)
Description :
Your extra-dimensional familiar has corrupted a pocket within the void with its presence. This pocket is neither fully void, nor fully physical, and the rules by which this space is governed may fluctuate between elements of the two. You may enter or exit this space at will, and may safely exist within this space indefinitely.
Discovered Trait : living beings which spend extended periods in this pocket may develop a latent affinity for the void.