Cederick sat at the edge of Benjamin's haven listening to the chorus in the void. The vibrations and emanations from the havens and all the other things out there produced the most interesting of patterns. At times like this they were a much needed relaxing, and calming influence. They reminded him of listening to waves crashing on a beach. The sound they produced wasn't some grand symphony, and could arguably be characterized as chaotic. Beneath that there was a constant and repetitive nature about them that implied that things would go on, that this wasn’t the end. They told a story of cycles in which anything that was lost would come again, though not in the exact same manner or form.
He’d spent a long time here. Long enough that he wasn’t so worried about adding to his haven or growing stronger. He wasn’t even all that interested in how things worked, or ‘what it all means’ like some were obsessed with. He had been exposed to many circumstances he had no desire to experience again. Many others he had hopes to relive. Meeting people was one that belonged in both categories. There were numerous reasonably good experiences interacting with others in the last couple years. While in his first few years he had had a couple incredibly horrifying ones. It was only in meeting Ozzy that he’d thought he might have had a great one. Sure he hadn’t gotten to know him all that well, but a few factors stood out to him.
The guy was the only one even remotely close to his own age. Conversations with him had felt like actual human interaction and bonding on an equal footing. In contrast, dialogue with Vonder had felt a bit like a checklist of etiquette being gone over until it was time to leave. While exchanges with Benjamin had come across as an awkward faux social interaction with a boss or uncle. There were many others he’d met and even still met with on a daily basis. However, many were in too much of an existential crisis, what with the entirely new universe they found themselves in, to be social on a casual level. Ozzy had almost immediately come across as if he’d already come to grips with his new reality, and was excited to have finally met someone.
Which had made it all the more onerous to have Benjamin essentially turn into a father figure telling him ‘I don’t want you hanging round with that boy no more’. Granted Benjamin had explained and it had brought up nightmares he’d long buried. The memories those nightmares had spawned from were another set of things he never wanted to recall let alone experience again. The horrors and terrors themselves were something he’d thankfully built a wall around in his mind and every time they tried to resurface he barricaded them even further. The internal struggle at the time had cowed him and the later embarrassing interaction when introducing Ozzy to Vonder had reinforced the drive to stay away.
The last few weeks had both diminished the embarrassment and increased the longing for comradery. Yet Cederick still kept his distance. The reminders of his past were too great. A haven drowning in energy. Growth that outpaced almost anything he’d seen before. A set of abilities and powers that even other outliers like Benjamin and Vonder were fearful or in awe of. Finally there were the things he couldn’t put into words or those barricades he had spent years fortifying would crumble. He turned back to the void and listened again to the calming ebb and flow of existence and its opposite warring in the deep. The near silence with faint interruptions followed by great crescendos.
The song it wove told a story of life moving on. The quiet long lived havens held their occupants with great care while the latter, and the other denizens of the void went about their lives in a hurry causing the loud counter current. There was also a backdrop of scattered noises that Cederick had never identified. Most of these were incredibly faint, suggesting they were either very quiet or very distant. Either way, not something he was interested in. His experiences hadn’t started great, but he’d gotten past them and returned to a childish wonder at everything around him. The amazing abilities and fantastic structure of the world around him had distracted him from his poor initial introduction to them. Discovering other people had also been a boon despite the first few he met being half starved, barely sane, and jumping at every noise or movement. Their state not being all that different from his own not long before he’d made exceptions and interacted as best he could.
It was that forgiving mood and desperation for interaction that got him into trouble several times. The first few regrets were not overly terrible. Hot headed individuals, or maybe just skittish ones reacting poorly to being walked in on. Which was a direct inspiration for learning to better understand the havens and their emanations. Reading the state of a haven and the occupants, beyond “there’s something happening” wasn’t easy but he’d learned to do so. Then he only had to learn the hard way that just because someone wasn’t immediately aggressive or actively murdering another being didn’t mean they were good people. He’d had to learn to read people to an even deeper level than he could the havens. Which was where he learned that just because someone believed their intentions were good, didn’t mean their actions would be. This was as close to thinking about the worst thing that had ever appended to him as he could get.
Something worse than having to live in pitch black darkness for months. Fighting for his life and being forced to eat what had felt like demons on a good day, and babies on any he wasn’t able to delude himself on didn’t compare. Running into people who attacked him immediately, leaving him hopping away and hiding while holding his broken body parts together by hand had not been equal. Even when he’d found himself on the receiving end of a twisted form of love hadn’t quite reached this pinnacle. Granted that was another experience he tried his best not to think of but it didn’t pull his mind apart at the seems so much as burn a raging fire of hate in him.
This was one of the reasons he found himself again looking into the void. As frightening as emptiness was it didn’t have the same level of horror that could be cooked up in the minds of men. Whether out of hate, a desire to help, or a broken understanding of love, any could make a man commit atrocities that a void simply couldn’t touch with its worst. At least with the void he knew what he was going to get. True it was never the same thing, but there was a pattern one began to recognize the more they listened. Currently he could perceive one ever growing reverberation that came only rarely. Somewhere out there a haven was dying.
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Whether it had taken on an occupant it shouldn’t have, or had been found by some of the other denizens out there he wasn’t sure. Either way it had been damaged and was asking for help. He had learned to steer clear of those as well. Thankfully the first time he had tried to intervene the assailant had been distracted and he hadn’t been noticed by it upon arrival. He had later learned it was Benjamin and Vonder’s mentor that had been covering their escape. At the time she had hissed at him to run, that there was an invisible, and dangerous assailant after her pupils and he needed to run. He’d tried to tell her that as blind to other things as he was he could see this one clearly battering her. Even trying to warn her of incoming attacks yet she seemed to, despite not seeing her attacker, be able to intuit its movement through some other means.
He’d found himself mesmerized at her fluid and impossibly fast movements in reaction to things she wasn’t tracking with her eyes. He could even see her closing them tightly as she reacted to multiple avenues of attack. Though she was quick, and efficient she didn’t seem to be able to injure the thing in turn. Cederick had thought himself strong and capable, especially since he could see and feel the thing moving. Eventually he had tried to join the fight. The enemy didn’t react to him more than easily dodging his every attempt. Though it had given the woman enough slack to begin to return attacks to the entity. Which is where things changed drastically.
While the entity was visibly injured by the others attacks it appeared it was more annoyed with Cedericks antics than anything else. There was no face with which to gauge a reaction or emotion from. Yet something about the way it vibrated and twisted about in his direction as it still simply dodged him implied it was trying to communicate anger or frustration at him. The culmination of it all being that it eventually rushed toward him and picked him up, then tossed him across the haven. “Noo!” shouted the woman as he flew backward but was caught unawares as a spike shot out simultaneously at her chest. Even as she looked down surprised at the unexpected damage the enemy lashed out repeatedly at her neck and chest. Ripping at her violently to ensure this was the end.
Cederick landed as it continued its onslaught. He felt frozen as the carnage played out in front of him. Her movements were still surprisingly quick and she defended herself the best she could. Though with a tentacle jammed straight through her able to hold her steady she didn’t have much leeway to move. The accumulating damage eventually overcame her resistances and endurance with the monster coming out victorious but it didn’t let up until she was little more than shreds dangling from its grip. Cederick sat crying as it dropped her and turned to him. Though as before it simply vibrated and gyrated in his direction before turning back to the corpse. As it tore into it again Cederick vomited onto the square under him before running away in shame.
He’d never told either Benjamin or Vonder about the experience. First because he had not wanted to relive the memory, and finally because he eventually learned who exactly it was he got killed with his antics. Returning his focus to the emanations from the dying haven he listened as the calls for help and vibrations from the haven intensified and waned over time. A pattern he’d heard several times since that fateful day continued to progress. Then it suddenly altered completely. Chaos he was used to, different rates of increase, a longer or shorter time until the haven died, but not this. The haven was no longer being damaged directly or calling for help. Instead the haven was giving off the same emanations as if someone had entered and begun to fight the resident. As well as a lower vibration indicating the haven was attempting to heal itself. This he hadn’t felt from the outside, and not at all since watching the mentor die before him. Usually he intentionally divorced himself from detecting exactly what havens he was listening to, and especially so when he heard one dying, but this broke his resistance.
Standing quickly, he stepped forward, and his eyes opened wide as he realized it was Ozzy’s haven. Though he stopped even as he started. There was a reason that Benjamin had warned him away from Ozzy and refused to meet him at all, or entertain him in his haven. The things he was dabbling in were dangerous to more than just himself. The unwanted visitor he was now dealing with was just another reminder that he needed to stay away. As Cederick shook his head and began to turn away Ozzy’s haven began to vibrate in earnest. More so than he’d ever felt from a battle before.
The vibration increased and grew rapidly until it felt like he was vibrating himself. Then continued on and expanded until he knew he was vibrating. He could feel it throughout his body but his abdomen most of all. In fact even as he realized it his abdomen began to resonate and reciprocate the emanations from Ozzy’s haven. He felt as if he’d swallowed a hornets nest. Which quickly morphed into a feeling of wild swaying of his whole body as it was brutally jerked from side to side and forward and back. He was even lifted up off of the ground and unceremoniously flopped back down onto it. Then again the vibrations changed. Every pull back was followed by an even more aggressive push forward toward the edge of the haven. Any sideways momentum was canceled out unless it directed him toward Ozzy’s haven. As he felt his body near tearing itself apart the vibrations from Ozzy’s haven stopped entirely. He almost sighed in relief but realized that while Ozzy’s haven had stopped his own shaking had not.