image [https://i.imgur.com/jpOYNWV.png]

That more than anything pulled me out of my trance, and I opened my eyes to look at Colson in shock.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait. What?” I asked.

“Yeah, that part usually gets people’s attention,” he laughed. “I’ll explain it later, for now, let’s try to back it up a bit. Head back in, please.”

I’d been hanging out with Colson long enough to know that he wouldn’t expand on the issue when he got like this, and I reluctantly entered the tranquil mind once more. The aether was gone now, and I had to concentrate to activate my inner eye. I told him when I managed to enable it again.

“Faster this time. You’re a damn quick learner. Now what I want you to do, is start pulling at the aether in the air. Try to imagine you’re a sponge and the orbs are the only things you can absorb. You want to pull them close and into yourself.”

Doing as he asked, I tried to imagine I was a sponge, of all things. It sounded exceptionally silly, and I was therefore surprised when the ethereal balls of light started moving my way.

“They’re moving,” I whispered.

“I see it. As I said, they aren’t really in your soul space, but the aether in the room’s starting to move your way. Keep at it.”

Wanting to absorb the orbs, I willed myself to become the sole foci of their attention.

I am the sponge.

They came closer and closer and started hovering around my Sigil, the light glaringly bright in my aether vision. One of the orbs hovered near my mouth and when I took a deep breath it abruptly jumped down my throat. As it happened, I sort of expected to feel it going down but there was no sensation until I could feel a slight tingling in the middle of my chest. It was warm and pleasant, like a physical manifestation of content.

“Congratulations, Ethan. You just pulled in your first strand of ambient aether. Well freaking done,” Colson intoned enthusiastically. “Keep going and let me know when the experience changes.”

Soaking up the orbs, I sat there for what felt like a long time. After the initial orb had jumped down my throat, the rest just sort of floated into my chest and settled, the feeling of warmth intensifying. Sometime later, there was a strange sensation of fullness, as if I’d eaten a big meal and couldn’t possibly take another bite. I told Colson about it.

“Precisely. You’re at capacity now. Right now, you can only hold what your body allows and it gets to capacity pretty quickly. When your Sigil develops, it’ll act like a sort of reservoir, and you’ll be able to funnel aether into it to fill it up.” Listening to his explanation, I decided to try something.

As when I’d funnelled lifeforce into my foundation turning a part of it red, I imagined the aether inside of me to be a pool of water and tried pooling it around my hand. It immediately responded. It was like the aether wanted nothing more than to follow my command. I released it into my Sigil. The feeling of warmth diminished until nothing was left, and I felt out of breath and extremely tired. I missed the feeling already.

“What’d you just do?” Colson asked.

I explained what I’d done, and he was silent for a moment.

“You intuited it. Damn fine work, kid. That’s exactly what I wanted you to do. Take a look at your Sigil now.”

Letting aether vision go, I looked at the outer base formation and saw that a big part of it had transformed into a rust-red colour. I explained what it looked like.

image [https://i.imgur.com/iiRqLtV.png]

“Great work, kid. I didn’t expect it to go this smoothly. How’re you feeling?” he questioned.

"Tired. Doesn’t feel all that much different from using my own energy, to be honest. I figured I could just keep repeating the process until it’s all full, but I don’t think I could manage it right now,” I answered.

He nodded at me a couple of times.

“That’s to be expected. What you’ve just done is trace your Sigil. You’re sort of priming it gradually. As you progress, your tolerance will increase, and aether fatigue will take longer to kick in since you can store a small amount in the opened part to use. Right now, it sits empty because you focused on tracing it. Tomorrow, when you repeat the process, you can siphon the aether into the traced part first and then fill yourself to the brim. Then you’ll use all your stored aether to expand your Sigil further. It kinda works like compound interest, which is good, since the process gets more difficult as you progress.”

“Can’t I just continuously draw aether and fill the Sigil gradually?”

“You can, but you’ll run the risk of stunting yourself. Until your base formations are completely traced out, it takes a lot of concentration and energy to endure the process. If your concentration slips or your Sigil tries to trace more than it’s capable of, the weakened parts won’t hold aether as well.”

“What about using the green aether? It’s already gathered, right? So I wouldn’t have to work at pulling it in, I can just lead it directly into my Sigil,” I thought out loud.

“Same physiological response, I’m afraid,” he smiled shrewdly. “The green aether is more potent but manipulating it will tire you out just as quickly. We’ll work on it tomorrow. For now, let’s eat, and then head to bed. We’ve been at it for a while.”

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"One thing," I said nervously, deciding now was as good a time as any.

It had slipped my mind multiple times because we'd kept busy, but sitting here I was reminded of a question that I was anxious to get an answer to.

"What's up?"

Unsure of how to proceed, I mulled over a formulation for a minute. I wanted to know what part my father had to play in this. If he knew about everything that Colson had told me.

"Is my father a mage too?" the question tumbled out of me.

Colson took a deep breath and looked thoughtful for a good twenty seconds.

"He is," he said eventually, "strong too. Listen, kid, I'm not one to mince words, but I can't answer why your dad hasn't taught you any of this himself. It's strange, but maybe he didn't even know you were a Holder, because of the block. He did me a solid a while back which is why I agreed to take you in, but I can't answer any questions as to why your family dynamic is all screwed up. And it's not my place to talk about his Sigil and affinities, that's his prerogative. I'm sorry."

A feeling of frustration went through me, but it passed quickly. Truth be told I hadn't expected much and I knew it was a long shot. Colson looked crestfallen, but I didn't hold anything against him. He couldn't know why my father had made his choices.

"Ah well, it was worth a shot," I told him with a forced smile.

"Yeah, yeah it was. If I had any info to share I'd tell you in a heartbeat. Now, we've really gotta eat something and then hit the hay," he changed the subject with the subtlety of a chainsaw.

Tabling my frustrations I looked at my phone and was shocked to find that four hours had passed, and I was feeling both ravenous and exhausted. Colson had finished his six-pack while I’d been working, and we ate our meal in quiet.

Afterwards, he made me promise I wouldn’t work on my Sigil when I was alone, and I assured him I wouldn’t even dream of it. I may have considered continuing when he left, but he was adamant that it was a bad idea, and I resolved to comply.

When I went to bed, a deep sense of satisfaction at the day’s events filled me and sleep came easily. I couldn’t uphold my promise, however. I dreamt of battling the empousa, but instead of our usual scuffle, I stood at a distance and drained it of aether. The aether was red instead of green, and I didn’t stop draining it until it was a dried-up husk on the ground.

Despite my muddled dreams, I awoke feeling refreshed. We ate a quick breakfast at the hotel and packed up the car, continuing our drive to Oklahoma City. During our trip, Colson explained what he meant when he told me that some beings were not native to our world.

“Have you ever heard of the many-worlds interpretation?” he asked after a couple of hours.

I’d heard it mentioned before and recalled some vague examples but asked him to explain it.

“Basically, in quantum physics, the theory holds that any possible action we can take, or have taken, happens in similar worlds that run parallel to ours in the universe. The theory states that this happens in an infinite number of worlds similar to, but different from the one we know,” he explained. “I can’t expand more on it than that since I don’t have the mind for quantum physics, but what aether scholars theorise is that during the creation and shaping of Earth, any number of small deviations on the cosmic scale resulted in the creation and evolution of entirely different species than those native to Earth. All of these worlds occupy the same place at the same time but in an infinite number of different Solar systems.”

“Okay, for argument’s sake, let’s say that’s true. How does that translate to what you teased about yesterday?” I questioned.

“Coming right up. This could mean that several worlds hold intelligent life completely different to our own, right? Well, what we think sometimes happens is that aether converges on a single point and creates a sort of… fissure. What we know happens is that you can use that fissure to cross into another world, or that something can use one to cross into ours.”

“Really? We don’t know how they form, but we know that they do, and if you stumble across one you could enter it and end up in a completely different world. That’s… pretty cool actually,” I conceded.

“The fissures always appear where no one is observing what happens and they’re pretty short-lived,” Colson continued. “Something about observation versus non-observation changing how aether and quantum mechanics behave. It’s not fair really, that the outcome changes when we observe it. We know of several creatures that have gone through a fissure on our end, but nobody’s ever come back. If the odds of you stumbling across one are small, imagine stumbling across another that leads you back here. It’ll probably never happen.”

“But on other worlds, things stumble across a fissure into our world,” I thought out loud. “You think that’s what happened with the empousa? It came here from another world and just started its spree? But then how did it know English?”

“Don’t know, kid,” he frowned at the road. “Usually there’s an aether imprint when a fissure has expired, but I didn’t sense one in the building. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen though, maybe the empousa just changed locations. As to how it was able to speak English, empousa are smart. Devious, like I said. It could've picked up on our language through observation. Or if it came from another world, maybe that world has developed English as well.”

He turned thoughtful for a minute.

"Guess we’ll never know and honestly it doesn’t matter all that much. What did happen was that it started killing and eating people, without even trying to live a peaceful existence or potentially find out how to conform to our norms. It had to go," he finished.

That I could understand. But if this happened occasionally, there were bound to be creatures who were able to process aether from the atmosphere who had crossed over. Some of those probably lived peacefully among us.

“Colson six, Ethan five, by the way. There was a Futurama reference in there,” he told me in a happy voice.

Crap, I hadn’t caught that at all.

“Never got around to watching that,” I admitted.

Instead of letting him savour the victory, I pressed on. “Some species are native to Earth though, right? Not everything comes through fissures?” I asked.

“Precisely,” he confirmed. “Who knows, like I said there are some old things out there, so technically they could’ve crossed over thousands of years ago and reproduced, but then some of the numbers we see wouldn’t make sense. And some species can trace their lineage back as far as humanity can. We also know that you have to be a Sigil Holder to cross either way, normals can't go through, let alone see the fissures.”

These past days had been revelatory. My mind was swimming with all the terminologies, the fight, and the implications that Colson’s statements provided.

“I think it’s a good idea to hold off on explaining more of this right now, honestly,” I told him. “I can’t even wrap my head around most of what you’ve already told me.”

“Wise beyond your years, you are,” he winked at me. “We’ll turn it down a notch and focus on getting to our destination, how’s about that?”

Liking the sound of that, I turned up the music and rolled down the window when Colson magically lit another smoke with a bit of aether. I hadn't noticed it before, but the smoke never floated over to my side of the car, and there was a lot less of it to go around than what I assumed was normal.

Another three hours went by, and the road signs told me we’d be hitting Oklahoma City soon. Colson veered off course slightly and we headed northwest towards a smaller city called El-Reno.

“There’s a dive bar there that’s affiliated with the Board. Run by a British bloke named Jasper. Serves some killer fish and chips! We’ll get the lay of the land and see what’s going on. Get a couple rooms so you can meditate and work on tracing your Sigil tonight.”