Chosen One, Hero, Variant, Superhuman, Caster, and Practitioner. The words all meant the same thing. Used in turns, changing with the age.
The names referring to anyone who possessed a power to access forces that went against the flow of the world and exceed their mortal limits.
Gaining in strength and capability as they grew more in tune with the aether. The primary substance from whence all magic and supernatural ability came.
*****
Billy sat on the empty floor of his new bedroom, legs crossed, eyes closed. He pulled on the darkness that filled the room and the moonlight that filtered through the windows.
He drew on the air and the clouds and the sky. He drew on the loamy soil and the bedrock beneath. He drew on the stars and the empty beige of the cosmos. He drew on the rivers and the seas that came to him as vapor from the air.
He pulled the entire world in and then for a brief moment he ceased to be. His ego scattering as he became a living statue, gloomy eyed and glowing. Sitting perfectly still.
“The Body is a vessel. The Mind a construct. Only the soul is eternal and its presence is too faint and inscrutable to be talked of with any confidence…”
These words were taught to him long ago, in a far away place, in an entirely different world.They echoed through his being like the chimings of a bell. He stayed this way for the next hour or so.
Simultaneously empty and full, endlessly gathering world aether, the magical power that hung ambient in the environment. Infusing every particle and every substance.
The accumulation of aether eventually slowed and as the concentration of aether within him reached a maximum, things started to form.
A new core coalescing together, rising from the cooling chaos in much the same way a sea of stars would form after the birth of new universe. All of them bright and shining. Surrounded by countless new worlds and astronomical bodies.
Billy opened his eyes, momentarily filling the room with a glowing green radiance. The ghostly green fire in his eyes turning his head into lantern. Spirits floated around him, flowing in and out of his being, attracted by his scent, by his presence.
Some of them taking what he could offer in his generous but unyielding terms and becoming shades. Dark masses of iridescent shadow that orbited his person, floating around his body like living vapor before settling down in the world that lay within his shadow.
Billy stood, his body releasing loud pops and creaks as his joints and ligaments re-settled themselves. Pushed out of order by the changes his body went through as he broke through to a new aether rank. As well as the fact that he’d been sitting on the cold hard floor for quite a while now.
Billy smiled he headed into the bathroom and took a shower. Dark, stinking waters ran down the drain as he washed away the impurities that his body’s breakthrough had pushed out of him.
He stayed in there for an extra thirty minutes, not minding when the water ran cold. Just enjoying the feeling of the water cascading over his shoulders.
Billy had not only broken through to a higher rank, he’d actually managed to make it into a higher layer. He was now an entirely different tier of existence than what he’d been a few days ago.
He’d gotten a lot of help from the ‘kind’ strangers and ‘friendly’ wildlife that accosted him while he’d been on his way home. Living aether, the core aether of other beings was like the experience points in a video game.
It served as a stimulant, making one’s core aether growth faster and more focused. Now here he was on the foundation layer. It tickled him to no end to know that he was technically a Saint.
A Saint-Ranked existence with a core aether concentration of four hundred and thirty times the norm. As well as an amplification of his basic abilities that was roughly to the extent of that same number.
In Mondian terms if your average regular human level or common layer existence was like a man holding a rock, than Billy was a man in a space-aged tank. Formidable yes, but somehow he couldn’t find himself getting too excited.
First of all, tangled in his head in spite of its current young mental state was an eons old mind, filled with countless experiences and memories.
Most of them so alien that it practically discounted them from being usable in this world. Turning them into strange dreamlike impressions that held little discernible meaning. All that really remained of them was the lessons he’d learned and there were many.
If you lived a hundred years doing a particular thing eventually you’d naturally at least get a little used to it.
Getting a skilled at thing without actually intending to. A googolplex was a length of time so long that you needed an advanced machine to be able to fully express it and make use of it.
Thirty-two googolplex was even longer. Billy had spent a good portion of all that time sailing through countless worlds and steadily pulling aether into his being.
Cultivating as a cosmic entity.
Now even though he’d suddenly found himself returned to the beginning, dropped down into his enfeebled human flesh, it was just a matter of starting again.
If he let couldn’t manage this much and had difficulty after having all that practice he’d be a waste as a person. So long as he kept himself alive, cultivating aether would and should be the same as breathing for him. He could literally do it in his sleep.
As for the second reason that Billy had a hard time getting excited about his current level of aether was the fact that he knew it wasn’t all that impressive. Being a high-tech tank in a world full of humans who only had stones and spears and guns might have seemed good.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
However Billy knew better. He knew there was a sky beyond the sky had seen the skies that lay beyond “that” sky. What good was it to be a mere tank when the heavens were darkened by dreadnoughts that could rain enough fire to turn a kingdom to ash.
What good was a tank when the night sky was filled with star harvesting dyson sphere that channel enough power to sunder a world. What good was a tank against an existence so vast and incomprehensibly powerful that the very laws of physic couldn’t hold it.
A being whose scale was profound enough for it to possess its own physics.
The cosmic sea was like any sea filled with small fish and big fish and very big fish. Like in any other ocean, the small were eaten by the big who were eaten by those who were larger. Who were in turn nested upon or parasitized by the positively tiny.
Thus having only his Saint-Ranked power was actually a cause for concern for Billy. He knew exactly how strong he was and he knew exactly how weak.
*****
Billy wandered downstairs, to the first floor of the lodge. The hallway was cluttered with boxes and luggage cases and there was a delightful smell of honey roasted venison wafting from the kitchens.
When Billy left the chateau he didn’t leave empty handed. After all, since he was leaving his home for the very last time, it was only right that he take his things with him.
Before he signed the contract that he and his Uncle wrote up he’d had a few extra caveats. Milking the man for a little extra since he didn’t see any reason to be reserved on the matter.
In the end Billy got to take all his parents things, everything that had been boxed up and put in the storeroom. Everything that was just laying around gathering dust. He took half the books in the chateaus library and the entire contents of two of the guest rooms.
He even secretly emptied a wall safe that his uncle hadn’t known about. There was one last thing he took one of the two real reasons for his return to Monde and the mortal world. One of the only two, maybe three things that’d be enough to get Billy come back from hell, heaven, purgatory, whatever icy unknowable place he’d been resting in at the time.
Part of an increasingly small group of things William still cared about. Things that could get Billy to give up all the vast power that he’d collected. Giving up on a transdimensional war, all so he could come hurtling back across the entirety of time and space to the year where his “adventures” began.
“Mhm...something smells good.” said Billy.
There was a laugh. A young woman stood at the stove, sleeves rolled up, the apron that covered her dark blue frock, spotted with stains.
“Oh, I’m glad you like it.”
Edna Maddoc was Billy’s second or third cousin once removed but he’d known her from since he was little. She and Billy and the other one, used to play together when they were kids.
Her parents died and Billy’s parents took her in. Billy’s parents died and Billy’s uncle turned her into maid. Billy would later learn all this, while a certain foe was taunting him about his attachments and regrets, learning that she was later sold into slavery in a manner similar to how he’d been sold.
Billy had it on good information that his uncle’s faction of the family were worse with money than anyone had thought. Hemorrhaging money, and cutting their own throats.
In a few months or weeks or years, he wasn’t sure which, things were going to get bad.
Then the Maddoc clan being the upright and “honorable” folk that they were, they’d arrange for their homes to be ransacked and have their staff sold into slavery, while they were quietly fleeing their debts.
The rest of poor Ed’s life wasn’t worth going into, a dreary cascade of pain and indignity. Billy’s mind was made up around the point where the guy started describing the wretchedness of her death.
Just before the creature actually told him the methods one would use to return back in time. Aware that it was a trick a distraction because till that point he’d been devastating their numbers.
Billy hadn’t cared, he didn’t regret the decision. The war had been just another thing to do for him. Another way to kill time while he waited to get strong enough for his final ascension. He decided he couldn’t let her suffer an end that bad and so he came back.
Dinner started shortly after. It tasted exactly as good as it had smelled, rich sauces, fatty meat, all of it washed down with a light ale and followed by a sherbert. While he resented the hell out of his Uncle’s treatment of his cousin, Billy had to say that she was good at the job.
“So...here’s the part where you explain where you’ve been all this time.” said Edna.
“Um…”
Billy blanked. Thrown for a loop. It wasn’t that he didn’t have answer, it was just that the question was one so loaded he didn’t know how to approach it.
“Okay….I guess we can start with what happened after the thugs Brutus hired kidnapped me.”
Her eyes went wide, she’d been partially joking, testing the waters when she’d asked, not really expecting Billy to answer.
“Uncle Brutus really did that?” said Edna.
It wasn’t that she couldn’t believe it, the supposition was one that had circulated widely in the Maddoc clan. And in truth it wasn’t unusual for big families to be a bit ruthless when it came to inheritance.
“I was in the way, Ed. Anyway so I was sold into slavery and I went through a few owners.”
He didn’t tell her the full story, he gave her an abridged version. A very abridged version. Light and matter of fact in his recounting of his time at the bordellos and the factories, and the farms.
Neglecting to mention the abuses and the beatings and the times things got bad enough that he’d started “trying” to make his captors kill him. Unable to understand that they were trying too and equally puzzled as to why none of their attempts to get rid of him were sticking.
Simply assuming that he came from a peculiarly hardy bloodline. As there were several people and races that came equipped with a natural healing factor. Continuing his tale till he came to the suicide campaign where he and three thousand of his fellow slaves were ordered into the maw of a camp full of material-layer bandits.
Reduced to charnel within moments. In an earlier time line he’d died like all the rest but had been lucky enough to not really stay dead. Slipping out of the chain of death and rebirth and eventually becoming a loose immortal.
It was actually even the same time line. It just so happened that seconds after his young soul left his body, an old soul came and filled it again.
A younger him was out there, somewhere in the universe, experiencing all the things Billy would need to go through for him to be able circumvent the laws of causality and fate like he had.
“Then...my last owners died so it wasn’t exactly hard to get away and now I’m here.” said Billy.
Edna nodded as she ate without any sign of real appetite.
“Gosh, that’s just awful….”
“Nh?...It was what it was. How about you? What have you been up to in the last few years?” said Billy.
“Oh, m-. Me? I was a maid. I did housework and occasionally gardened” said Edna. Going on to the describe what that detailed. Laundry, cleaning the house, helping with the preparations of the meals.
She ‘also’ kept some things abridged. Not going into how she became a maid. Not explaining how the family and its current head Brutus, arranged to have her father fall on his sword after they’d gone and botched a bad deal.
Having her father Linas take the fault and eat the costs by himself because he wasn’t directly related to the core Maddocs. Dangling the promise of salvation in front him by telling to throw what turned out to be a catastrophic party.
Where he invited the incensed company of elite practitioners in what ended being a surprisingly successful attempt at placation. She didn’t describe the moment when the captain of the company got drunk and slapped her father’s head clean off of his shoulders.
His skull shattering into pieces on a nearby wall. His neck erupting in a short lived geyser of red. The blood splashing everywhere, splattering onto everything. She didn’t describe what the men from the company did to her mother and the maids. She didn’t go into what happened to her and how she ended mute for three years.
“All in all...It wasn’t that bad, I guess. How about you?” said Edna. A weak smile crossing her face, as she finished her story.
“Yeah...well at least I learned to use a sword. Hell, I’m even practioner now.” said Billy.
“Oh, really?!” said Edna. Pleasantly surprised because on Monde rising to the status of a full practitioner was akin to buying oneself a whole new future.
“Yeah...I actually just broke through to the Foundation Layer.”
“No way!” said Edna. Genuinely happy for her friend.
“Way.” said Billy, feeling more sure of his decision as he smiled. Feeling at ease for the first time in forever. Deciding that he’d leave his power and position as a cosmic entity a second time if asked.
This was the second reason for his return. Based in a perhaps misguided wish to return to his humanity. To no longer wander the void as the thing he had ended up becoming.
There was no where else that he could feel human, no where else where he could feel at ease. He’d missed this feeling and realizing how much he cared for it, made him feel just a little more concerned about his current lack of power.