Ozzy sat in the field across from his home holding up the containment he’d created around the voidlet to inspect. In front of him on the ground was also the voidlings membrane still speared with the tree, and the second he’d tossed next to it.. These three were the only membrane left in the haven other than that of the haven itself. There were so many questions he had running through his head as he examined them each in turn. He was in a bit of a fog from the direct mental attack by the voidling that was technically still ongoing. The bulk of the disorientation was from the initial exchange of blows, the ones that he was experiencing now barely registered as anything. There was a feeling of just finishing being told an epic tale and not knowing how to return to his life after. Mixed with the realization that a major belief that not only he’d held his entire life, but one that his entire lineage held, was completely wrong.

It made everything happening around him feel a little less real and significantly less important. Yet at the same time he couldn’t remember exactly what it was the voidling had been countering his thoughts with. On the one hand it felt like fractured gibberish without any meaning, yet perfectly crafted to obliterate any coherent thought. On the other it felt as if they were thoughts on a completely different level of understanding which he simply couldn’t grasp. Shaking his head he turned back to the construct holding the voidlet. He’d made a few changes already. Removing the restrictions had allowed the voidlet to draw in waste energies. The slow rate of growth he’d previously seen returned and also slowly increased as the voidlet increased in size. While this was the only substance he knew of that could absorb and utilize even the most base of energies, it was also an incredibly dangerous thing.

He had no idea if it would simply turn into another voidling if he let it consume enough. The likelihood was high as he saw the voidling itself improve significantly when growing before. While he had no good reason to believe this would be the solution he was looking for he also had lots of experience now dealing with voidlings. If this droplet of nothingness showed any signs of self locomotion he’d be able to dispatch it quickly even if he didn’t resort to touching his domain to it directly. Though he had no reason to continue having it sit so close to his membranes unprotected. Which is why he’d brought these three pieces together.

Turning his attention to the protective membranes he touched them with his will. These membranes were entirely different from those he’d made or seen the membranes produce. There were no parts to these membranes. They were one cohesive whole. Well other than the gashes the suits had been able to put in them. Like the feeling he’d gotten from the voidling that each section was simply a reflection of the whole rather than something separate. While he could break or damage, or even separate portions off of the whole it was not because he had taken advantage of a weak point. There was something unnatural and unintuitive about this single observation that he couldn’t quite follow. Everything he knew about any theory of physics, speculation about future discoveries, or conjecture about how magic could or should work said that it shouldn't be possible.

On a fundamental level the world was believed to be made up of infinitesimally small and individual parts. No matter the form they took, be it particles, waves, strings, or any other possible interpretation, it was always some thing indivisible, and inherently isolated from all other things. The unitary form the voidlet, voidling, and the protective membrane took were contrary to not just everything he’d ever experienced, but to every conceptualization of all of humanity for all of time. The fundamental incongruity of it was enough to create another wave of disorientation, though it was helped along by a sudden resurgence of the voidling's battering at his mind. Whatever reserves it had held for this were not enough. The flurry of thought obliterating blows had less than a tenth of the original strength behind them.

The only concerning note was that he could feel those blows inside his physical mind as well. Indicating at some point the voidling had crossed the gap and infected his brain directly. Even there the damage was minimal, causing barely more than a stutter in his thought process. While he had no idea what this meant for him going forward he wasn’t as concerned as he might have been just a short while ago. Whatever it meant that the voidling had taken up residence in his domain, and now his brain, this attack showed him that it wasn’t nearly the same threat level it had been before. While it was a concern He had other more pressing problems to address and so returned his attention to the membrane before him.

The structure of the membrane still gave the impression of a cohesive counter to all that existed, although unlike the voidling and voidlet it implied opposition instead of deconstruction. A few quick tests later confirmed that the only things capable of crossing the membrane were forms of energy. While the energy could cross the barrier the membrane didn’t interact with the energy at all. Slicing off a portion of it and surrounding it with his domain he applied his will to manipulating the section. First attempting to reshape it. Which was successful yet took a large amount of energy for even minor changes. When trying to merge the edges and reform it into a smaller hollow sphere he ran into a roadblock. While he got no feedback from it like the haven, he did feel an impression that he was effectively trying to press his hands together and expecting them to fuse. This visual did help him slightly in allowing him to form a layered connection between the two sides and form a zipper like seal.

While not a perfect seal it should work well enough for a while. Transferring the voidlet inside he finished the seal and added several additional layers of his own membrane just in case the seal wasn’t as good as he’d hoped. The issue of energy draining from his containing membrane into the voidlet was at least addressed by the boundary between the two, and that it no longer needed to actively hold the voidlet in a stable position. As it would take a while to see how this played out, he sat back with half an eye on the altered containment and the rest of his awareness turned inward. While physically he had energy to spare to go on testing the rest of the day, and he even had a desire to, his mental state was shot.

It wasn’t entirely due to the recent and intense mental battle or the ongoing intermittent internal assaults. It definitely played a large part but wasn’t the sole factor. It also wasn’t a simple addition of numerous world shattering revelations in how this part of existence worked. Again those had an effect and couldn’t be left out of the factoring but they weren’t the last of it. While he’d been shaken by these he had steadied his metaphorical feet after those conundrums. Though like a natural disaster might shake the world and you come out unscathed it doesn’t mean that no other damage or change occurred. While his faculties were sound he’d discovered many of his assumptions, and even foundational beliefs were not grounded, and had fallen apart.

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While some had been revealed to be less stable than he’d thought others showed themselves far more integral. He’d known long before the boar had appeared that he had to grow and protect himself. Cederick had specifically warned of nefarious individuals he himself had run into. Now having seen some of the more dangerous things in store he knew he couldn’t let himself slack. The last direction he’d chosen had led him directly where he was now.

So, still he found himself uncertain on the path forward. How could he grow stronger without bringing exactly the dangers he feared, or worse, down upon himself? What was the next step in improving his domain? What should he do about the splinter of the void in his mind? How did the voidling relate to everything else he’d experienced so far? Did he even want to know the answer to those questions? What did he even want? All of these questions and more swarmed around in his head as he gave them all a fresh look. Some answers immediately followed some of the less pertinent questions. He wanted a break, to hang out with people, and obviously he wanted to grow stronger.

Every one of these questions had importance but some were not as critical. As much as he had always been a curious person wanting to ask and answer every question he was thankful that he was also a practical person. It didn’t matter how accurately he answered a question if it had no immediate effect on his situation. While at the same time even if he perfectly answered a question that greatly affected his current situation there was no guarantee that it wouldn’t result in a worse situation later on. He needed to narrow his focus, and refine the questions he asked himself

He knew more than anything else, and more than ever before that this was not a safe space he found himself in. Everything he’d seen so far also suggested the danger would continue to grow, not lessen. Stepping into the unknown by its very nature was dangerous. Something as simple as uneven ground in the dark could break an ankle in a careless step. The places he was stepping lately had more than just an absence of light. The entities he was interacting with could bend space itself in the case of the havens, and even devour it in the case of the voidling.

This was a place where doing nothing was easily more dangerous than taking action. He needed to shed more light with every step he took. He’d been slow and methodical in many of his experiments and explorations so far. He could easily continue the testing he’d started with the voidlet and the voidling’s membrane. The results of which would likely propel his understanding beyond what any humans, even here, had ever known. The problem was time. It wasn’t a question of when he would act, he needed to act now. The real question as he saw it now was much more clear. What was the most daring step he could take right now that would teach him the most, and have the least backlash? He let the question marinade as he looked over the things he had at his fingertips. He now had access to the spaceless void beyond the havens. He had access to a voidlet, a droplet of the voidling that he also still had drifting through his mind. There were also the membranes the voidling had left behind. Out of all of them the least volatile, and inert was the membrane.

Without wasting any further time he sliced off a tiny bit of the nearest membrane and put it in his mouth. While surrounding the voidling it had appeared as a fluid able to morph and react blindingly fast. In his mouth it was as solid as diamond and as smooth as glass. Already he could feel a reaction beginning like when he’d stolen the trips from the imp. In his mouth it was incredibly slow but he couldn’t swallow yet. The sharp edges were already uncomfortable in his mouth. He had no desire to see how his esophagus would fare with those poking all the way down. Applying his will to it he reshaped it into something akin to a pill, then tilted his head back and swallowed.

A rather familiar sight greeted him as he watched the pill reach his stomach with a fizzing and energetic exchange of wills. There was one thing he noticed through the process. The energies exchanged were in a completely different class than those that he saw in every other interaction throughout his time here. Maybe it was will being exchanged. Whatever the energy was it dissipated into some form he still couldn't perceive after all his advances here. As the process finished he saw another difference. The pill membrane stayed in his stomach afterward. Unchanged and unmoving after he became its owner. And he had become its owner. He could feel the pill as he could the rest of his domain, its structure and makeup becoming much clearer. There was indeed no part or piece of the pill, it was in its entirety one thing. Likewise it was still one with the membrane it had physically been separated from.

That wasn’t the end of the entity. Past that membrane he could feel the other also entangled, as well as the portion he’d separated and used to surround the voidlet. Which itself was more distantly connected. Like the line rat havens when he’d first started this journey, many more connections appeared hazy like an iceberg seen from above the water line. While he could feel them he couldn’t pinpoint their location, size, or contents, nor could he feel them or interact with them quite like he could the pill. Pulling at the pill to remove it he saw that he’d been going about it all wrong. The way he’d been trying to reshape and move it about had been like trying to make a cubic triangle. It wasn’t a three dimensional object, or a plane, or even a line. This was a singular point which just happened to be considered local by many other points in space and time, and some outside of them as well. There was no such thing as moving it, only adjusting what points it was adjacent to.

He started small and worked his way up. Limiting its contact with his insides until it could barely be said to be inside him at all. Looking deep inside he could barely perceive it still residing inside his abdomen. While it had appeared to shrink he could tell there was still exactly as much potency behind that spec as it had when the size of a pill. Touching his will to the portion of membrane surrounding the voidlet he used the reference to entangle that local with the voidbrane inside him and then remove its internal connection. As he began to reshape this new extension of his domain he felt a change in the connections to others through it. A new voidlet membrane had appeared inside his haven, and from behind him he heard “Wh... wha.... what did you do?”