Ozzy was still frozen when the haven was split again. Repeating the experience allowed Ozzy to observe things he had been too distracted by the emptiness to notice. That the rift wasn’t growing. The haven was shrinking. The feeling of being a pearl at the bottom of a clam wasn’t simply the way the rift split the sky. He actually felt smaller and squashed into the haven like a sketch on a piece of paper. As if the haven had been steam rolled flat. Either the havens weren’t the only thing capable of warping space, or It was also possible whatever the havens could do to warp space relied on their membranes and was being interfered with by whatever was snacking on it.
The moment of examination allowed him to break free from his frozen state. He had less than a minute before another square would be taken. Regardless of what he did eventually end up doing for now he needed to take some action. His first thought was to send a copy of his murderous little starfish. Which wasn’t difficult. Making a copy only took a few seconds, it just took part of his domain for each manifestation. Setting the new copy next to the rent he also decided to copy his new suit he’d made. He wanted to have a backup in case the murder bot didn’t pan out.
Moving the suit next to the rent as well he then sent the starfish through. Pushing through felt like crawling into a hole in a wall. Inside was cramped and dark with a feeling of no space to move even the slightest bit. Yet at the same time there was nothing to hold to or press in on you. The combination of the cramped pressure minus anything confining you is what resulted in the feeling of being pulled at. Once the source was evident the feeling didn’t weigh so heavily on Ozzy. The rent began to diminish as the starfish continued through. To the point that as the last leg pulled out it appeared to fill the cavity entirely. On the other side the moment the last leg broke contact with the haven the haven shrunk down rapidly until it was almost invisible.
In the void, with no space to enforce its tyranny of relativity the viewpoint from the starfish became a universe unto itself. It knew itself intimately and entirely. Why wouldn’t the haven, a distant and unknowable entity, be a small insignificant point in relation. When space wasn’t a factor, mental focus, awareness, and familiarity had as much to say about relative size as anything else. Yet the viewpoint of the starfish wasn’t the origin, only a focal point through which Ozzy could see. Ozzy… yes Ozzy, not the starfish, was still there with his body able to ground him back to reality. To keep from losing himself in the cosmic scale outside. Turning that focal point back to the surroundings he had a moment of disorientation as he couldn’t find the haven. Yet it wasn’t lost entirely. The rent in its membrane shone like a beacon with energy, matter, and space itself leaking out into the void.
The stream of essence spewing out was being suckled at by a monstrosity made up of nonexistence. Interpreting exactly what he was looking at was difficult. It reminded Ozzy of those memes where someone asked an image generator to draw something and then told to make it angrier, and angrier. Finally ending by asking it to make it so angry it transcended existence itself. The type of images where looking away and back seemed to change the image, even when it was clearly a static picture. The angles and contours seeming to morph endlessly. This angry embodiment of emptiness itself was devouring the light, air, and anything else that came from his haven. In its tangled clutches the last square it had pulled out had been stripped of its membrane and was being unraveled.
The process seemed so much slower than it had from the other side. There were even times where it appeared to be reconstructing the square before tearing it apart even further. It seemed space wasn’t the only side of the coin that didn’t quite exist out here. Time seemed to be flowing in fits and starts, or maybe it was the relativity of his mind playing tricks on him in a place that didn’t have clear reference points. The process did eventually complete and Ozzy watched curiously as he saw it approach the haven. As it seemed to swim up the current of spacetime flowing out it shrunk more and more to be relatively close to the size of the haven or smaller. To the point that it was hard to see what happened. A fine line of light split the haven and as it was split and flattened it grew exponentially, until inside Ozzy could see himself staring back out like a little figurine.
A tendril of the monstrosity reached into the haven shrinking down the further it encroached. Until almost the entirety was inside reaching just barely to the nearest square. While only a tiny portion was left clinging to the void like an umbilical as it snatched at another snack. Switching his perspective to the copy of his suit he lashed out with one of the spears. Catching the tentacle as it tried to grab another tile. The blade passed through as if there were nothing there at all. However, the instant the blade entered the same space that was also occupied by this nothing there was an immediate and extreme reaction. A shrieking wave passed over everything in the haven and even continued outside through the escaping essence and passed over the Starfish. It was from this point of view that it was most obvious this wasn’t actually sound. Rather these waves were traveling through space. Yet the violence and energy contained in them was enough that Ozzy’s eardrums could pick it up as sound. The voidling reeled back from the haven, allowing it to close, and curled in on itself. It remained in the stream of existence flowing out of the haven, but at a greater distance.
With what appeared to be a moment of reprieve Ozzy started patching the edge of the haven as best he could. Effectively just plugging the hole from both sides with two disks of his own membrane and a connection between to secure them tightly to the haven’s membrane. Checking his work along the way with the starfish still on the other side he confirmed no more air or space was leaking out. Yet light was still streaming through. Checking on the voidling he found it still curled up though a small portion was now spread out to capture all the escaping light. The cause might simply be that it was recovering, or that it realized the leak had slowed. In order to hedge his bets Ozzy left the light to stream. Hopefully it would help keep the creature calm while it regrouped. Though he suspected that he wouldn’t have long.
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With a modicum of protection restored Ozzy took a minute to reevaluate. Examining his suit mk 2.1 he went over the blade of the spear he’d sliced into nothing with. While he’d been disoriented by the shriek at the time, he hadn’t entirely lost focus. As it sliced through he’d felt a familiar bubbling sensation along the weapon. At the time he wasn’t sure what it reminded him of. Though now he realized it was somewhat like the reaction that happened when swallowing foreign trips. Looking at it closely he found that the surface was pitted and gouged in places. At one particularly badly damaged section he could still feel a slight sizzle as something ate away at the membrane of the suit. As it did there was a stream of all different kinds of energies billowing off the blade. Inside the deepest gouge he found a dwindling speck of nothing still reacting with the suit. As quickly as he could Ozzy gripped the substance with his domain and pulled it out of the suit. Despite leaving the armor it was still sizzling and spewing energy while touching the air as it also continued to dwindle in size.
Adding another layer of energy to push back the air around it he found the energy billowing from it cease. Focusing back on the speck of void he found that the energy immediately around it began to absorb back into it. His own energy, holding it in place, was also draining into it. Cinching down his will around his energy holding it decreased the loss to nearly nothing. However, the energy permeating the haven was still being drawn in. Taking a different approach, Ozzy surrounded the object with trips and formed a membrane. Adding intent and pores he had it maintain a vacuum that was better than any possible with any technology back on earth. The ability to individually grab atoms and shove them about while also maintaining a perfect seal was just Clark tech plain and simple. Although that might not follow if he was using magic to achieve it.
Having the trips also hold the microscopic cross between a black hole and antimatter in place he set it down and watched it for a bit. The energy suction didn’t extend very far from the surface. As he wasn’t specifically blocking energy from the new construct there was a steady stream of what he would call waste energies. Yet the void particle was happily feeding off of it. Even the types that the havens and trees didn’t seem to like were gobbled up as well. After a bit he confirmed it was growing now. Incrementally and infinitesimally, but growing all the same. Layering in intent to purge energy from the center he watched again. While he was still seeing an errant bit of energy lost to it from the very energy used to contain it, the vast majority was being handled and removed as he’d intended. While the particle would technically still grow it would be months before it could achieve what it had in the last few seconds with its new near zero absorption rate.
With the voidlet secured he returned his attention to the real danger outside his haven. The voidling had moved since he last checked. The amorphous body was now closer to the haven. Spread out in the light streaming from the plugged rent. Twitching around in what appeared to be adjustments to its angle of observation, despite the lack of any obvious light or other sensory organs. It had recovered quickly from the minor slash. Likely it wasn’t even harmed per se, just surprised, and unfamiliar with being attacked at all. While he continued to gauge its reaction he pondered its origins.
It was highly likely this was something like what Vonder had described. Something that floated in the void and fed off of stray matter it ran into. In the case of the one Vonder had found it fed on a fragment of a world, and fought Vonder, Benjamin, and their Mentor all to a standstill. Possibly to death in the case of their mentor. Yet none of them had mentioned one of these ever reaching a haven of anyone else. Or even mentioned another of them at all. The likelihood that this was some random appearance as nil to none. He’d suspected when the boar showed up that something might be off with his haven, yet this was another matter entirely. Other beings that spawned inside of havens at least had the benefit of the havens themselves, and their list of connections to direct their travels. Whatever method the boar used to arrive could easily have relied on this information. Yet this denizen of the void had no such assistance. As much as Ozzy wanted to solve that problem right now the voidling was becoming agitated.
The twitching of its nebulous body was faster and sharper. Meanwhile it was moving closer to the porthole into the haven. It seemed to know something had changed with the rent and it appeared to be examining it from every angle it could. A portion of its form flicked out and impacted the plug he’d made. Causing a burst of energies that spread out spherically, both into and out of the haven. The voidling recoiled and jerked about as if agitated. From the plug itself Ozzy could see that barely a pinprick was taken out of the surface. The voidling lashed out again, this time to the side. Its slash this time tore through the less resistant membrane of the haven itself with nearly no resistance. Again the Voidling reacted but this time the movements somehow translated as excited rather than agitated.
From the plug Ozzy watched as the Voidling reeled back and then froze there staring at the new rent it’d made. Another wiggle went through its center though it was hard to tell exactly what it meant. Perhaps glee at its pending retaliation. Rushing forward it again slit the haven flat. Though it didn’t reach in, at the squares. Instead it again twitched about examining from the new viewpoint. Suddenly it stopped and spiked into the haven directly at the spare suit. Which is when Ozzy took action. From behind the Starfish rocketed toward the last tendril it had left outside.