It was early in the morning. Inside the crèche on the second floor, just above the refectory, Caretaker Elara stood in front of the large board pointing at three empty circles side by side. Aiden’s full focus was on her as he sat in his usual spot.
"Alright, everyone," Caretaker Elara began, "today we're going to talk about the different epochs in the history of the land of men. Do any of you know how many epochs there are, Tina?"
Tina's hand shot up instantly, her eyes sparkling with excitement. "Three epochs!"
"Very good, Tina," Caretaker Elara praised, her eyes twinkling with approval. "Can you tell us the names of these epochs?" The girl was about to give her answer but the Caretaker stopped her, "I want you to tell me just two of them.
Tina nodded eagerly. "The One and Only Era and the Era of Kings."
Caretaker Elara clapped her hands, and the caretaker standing by the door, the other Caretaker in charge—Caretaker Evelyn, joined in with applause. "Excellent, Tina! You have a very good memory. Well done!"
Tina beamed with pride, basking in the praise. She glanced at Aiden with a proud and competitive smirk on her face.
What are you so proud of, Girl? I thought. Clearly you’ve learned of that before him, so what?
Caretaker Elara looked in Aiden's direction, her smile deliberately gentle and encouraging. "Aiden, can you tell us the name of the last remaining era? Remember, there are three epochs: the One and Only Era, the Era of Kings, and...?"
Aiden scrunched up his face, thinking hard. Caretaker Elara waited patiently, giving him time to recall. Tina, still watching him, raised her hand once again, eager to answer on his behalf, which prompted me to whisper, "Come on, Aiden. You should know the answer to this question."
"What is it?" he cluelessly asked, failing to notice the mistake he just made.
"Hold on, Aiden. Your voice, you’re talking to me with your voice."
"Huh?" At first he didn’t understand, but then, remembering the rule we established about communication, he reflexively covered his mouth, I supposed, to stop the words from coming out, but it was already too late.
"Sorry, Sigma," he apologized, this time, not failing to do it with his mind instead of words.
"You were saying, Aiden?" Caretaker Elara asked, closing in as to hear what he just said.
Offering a suggestion to fix it, I ordered, "Tell her: Nothing."
Nodding, without realizing that that too was a mistake, but well it was within the limits of fine, he repeated my exact words, "Nothing."
"Good," I praised. "Now tell her that you know the answer."
"I—I know the answer," he repeated, before turning his attention toward me. I had no physical manifestation, so it was more like he withdrew inward to my side, metaphorically, rather than him actually looking in my direction.
"What’s the answer?" he asked, unable to figure it out on his own.
Wanting to help but not wishing to simply give him the answer, I guided him. "You know the answer, you just forgot about it. Here, let me help you. She mentioned two already, the One and Only Era and the Era of Kings," making an emphasis on a common word in particular. "There should be another Era. What other Era do you know of?"
Aiden thought for a moment, and after about half a dozen seconds, his face lit up, remembering the lesson about how to write the date a few days ago. "The Kingless Era!"
"Correct. Now tell that to the Caretaker, not just me.
"The Kingless Era!" he responded with a loud voice that might have badly adjusted after mentally speaking to me.
Despite his sudden and loud answer, Caretaker Elara said, "That's right, Aiden!" clapping her hands together. "Well done! The three epochs in the history of the land of men are the One and Only Era, the Era of Kings, and the Kingless Era. You've both done wonderfully today."
Caretaker Evelyn, who stood by the girl's side, gave an encouraging light applause. "Great job, Aiden!"
Aiden grinned, proud of himself, as I was.
It had been a few days since I finally decided to reveal myself to Aiden—four to be exact. So far, everything was going well. He accepted the idea of me existing in this form better than I could have expected.
Sure, I hadn’t revealed that I was his "Maa" but a shadow creature summoned to protect him, but that was only a detail. I was content with him believing that I was what he thought I was. His belief that I was yet another shadow creature made it easier for him to digest my presence. It was certainly easier than him trying to accept that his "Maa" was a strange voice in his mind, with no vessel to control except his own, like a parasite. Unarguably, I was still a parasite, but as a shadow creature, there was at least some level of explanation or excuse for me being a parasite to him.
Anyway, things have been smooth lately. Sure, there were mistakes, slip-ups like the earlier one where he accidentally spoke aloud to me, but you can't really blame him for forgetting that the voice he was talking to was just a voice only he could hear.
In fact, while these mistakes were something to correct, I didn’t hate it when he made them now and then. They made me feel like I wasn’t just a parasite but truly his "Maa" looking after him. Of course, these mistakes were to be eradicated as they would become problematic in the future, but for now, since we were mostly surrounded by Theta's Maiden Ascetics, I thought it was fine for him to make these mistakes occasionally, as long as it wasn’t in front of the girl—Tina.
Following the children’s schedule, Tina and Aiden were led to the refectory for their second meal of the day. Sitting there, Tina opened a conversation.
"Daemon is so cute!" she exclaimed, her eyes wide with excitement. "He's all black with a little white patch on his chest. His eyes are big and green, and he has the softest fur ever!"
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Aiden listened intently, his eyes never leaving Tina's face. She continued, "He likes to hide under the bed, but when I call him, he comes out and purrs so loudly! He's not like Leodoro at all. Leodoro was all gray and had this funny habit of climbing the curtains. Daemon doesn’t do that. He just likes to cuddle and play with his toys."
I couldn’t help but be impressed by how much attention Aiden was giving to this talk. He was fully engaged, his eyes wide with interest as Tina rambled on about her cat.
The cat, infamously known as Daemon, was a gift from Damaelle, the orphanage director, who happened to be the girl’s biological granddaughter. It was meant, I could tell, to fill the void left by the mysterious disappearance of Leodoro—her first cat.
Tina continued, "I want to show Daemon to you, Aiden, but he's not allowed to be brought out of my dormitory. Damaelle said he might get lost like Leodoro. But you should come visit my dormitory to see him!"
Aiden nodded eagerly, clearly excited about the idea.
"And Daemon's mewing is different from Leodoro's," Tina went on. "Leodoro had this high-pitched meow, but Daemon's is more like a chirp. And their habits are so different! Leodoro loved playing with strings, but Daemon prefers chasing after little balls."
As I watched Aiden attentively listening to Tina, I couldn’t help but be impressed at his capacity to be through this. Because right now listening to the girl constantly rambling I wanted to turn myself off—which in my current predicament was akin to going to sleep. However, before I could initiate that action, something strange happened around me. Without any time to react, the world around me shifted.
***
The world around me dissolved into a blur of colors and light, and I felt a disorienting pull, as if being dragged through an unseen vortex. One moment, I had been yawning at the constant yapping of the girl Tina through Aiden. The next, I was here—in a place that defied logic and understanding.
The air was thick with an almost tangible energy, making it instinctively feel like it would be hard to breathe—and yet it was not.
A deep, resonant hum filled my ears, like the sound of a thousand whispers merging into one. Awed and taken by surprise by the sudden warp, I looked around and found something that left me even more perplexed. Perhaps it was the habit that had now been instilled in me, of being forced to do things through Aiden, whose body had become a sort of vessel for me. But the moment I stood, felt that I stood, I instinctively believed I was standing up using Aiden’s body. The moment I turned to my side and saw his little silhouette, I realized I had been wrong in that assumption.
“What happened?” he asked in his little voice, confused and looking around. Then his gaze froze as he noticed, “me.”
I wished I had a mirror to see what I looked like for him to stare at me like that, but since I did not, I looked at my hands. I wasn’t able to see them immediately as they were surrounded by... something familiar. Smoke—dark and gray, but also thick, like the dense, swirling mass that envelops a dying bonfire on a cold, still night. Amidst the encroaching smoke, particles floated around chaotically. The particles within the smoke glinted like tiny stars, adding an unsettling depth to my form. Together they clung to me, moving with an eerie life of their own, like a living entity
Having summoned countless shadow creatures with my innate ability, Spawn, I was all too familiar with that strange smoke and the particles floating around me. So the moment I saw them coating me, instinctively, I knew what to do.
With a mental command, I made the thick smoke recede, concentrating as if to manifest a yet nonexistent limb. The smoke remained unchanged; what changed was the little particles that floated around. They gathered up to form a crystallized version of an arm—still black and ethereal, but at least solid enough to fit being called arm-like. Another thing I immediately noted about the arm was the size of it—very small, as small as that of the boy in front of me.
Applying what I did to my arm to my entire body, I crystallized a child-like silhouette. My arms were small, so was my legs, my entire body child-like, was shrouded in the smoke, made up of the matters that made a shadow creature a shadow creature. Right now, I was a shadow creature version of Aiden.
Aiden, who just stood there watching me undergo this transformation, asked, “Who are you?”
“What... am I?” I muttered, half to myself, half to Aiden, who surprisingly had the answer to that question.
“Sigma, is that you?” he asked, closing in.
A little confused as to how he was able to tell, I could only nod and ask, “How could you tell?”
“Your voice, you sound the same… I knew it was you,” he said, poking me with his finger. “Why do you look like me?” he asked curiously.
As I wondered about that question, he asked in the same curious voice, “Why are you not a weird shadow?”
“Why am I not a weird shadow, huh?” At that question, I couldn’t help but chuckle self-deprecatingly. “That’s a good question,” seeking an answer, I looked around.
Above us, the sky was a swirling tapestry of twilight and stars, a cosmic dance of nebulous colors that seemed to stretch into infinity. There was no sun, no moon—only the ethereal glow of distant celestial bodies casting a dim, otherworldly light over the scene.
I glanced ahead and saw a colossal hand across from me, its fingers outstretched and perfectly level with where I stood. The fingers were impossibly large, and as I turned to my left, then right, I realized there were two more massive hands on either side, each finger similarly extended and touching at the tips.
The arrangement was symmetrical, and the fog covered everything, obscuring the floor beneath us. In that moment, as I glanced down, I realized that we were standing on an immense finger, one of twenty five fingers out of the five outstretched hands, each finger forming together a platform shaping a circle. The fingers were smooth and seemed to shimmer faintly under the fog's ethereal light, making it feel as though we were standing on the hand of something divine or ancient.
Aiden, standing beside me, had his eyes glued to the sky. Noticing that he was the center of my attention, he pointed up and said in awe, "It's pretty."
"Right?" replied a voice that wasn't mine.
Hearing that, I felt something almost leap out of my chest. There were several reasons for this, but the main one was that, despite having a body—or at least something that qualified as a body—I’d never used my voice to speak to Aiden. Instead, I communicated through thoughts, which I’d done since revealing myself. I had become so accustomed to this method that I didn’t even notice it anymore. When I "spoke" to Aiden through thoughts, he heard my thoughts, obviously not in my voice but in his own. But even though it was in his voice, since the thought isn’t his, he was still able to tell it was my words. The same goes for me.
However, the voice that answered Aiden just now was distinctly in my voice. Yet, I instantly knew it wasn’t Aiden, and it certainly wasn’t me. This meant it was spoken by a third party.
Since it was spoken with a thought that was interpreted by our minds, there was no way to hear where the voice came from, and yet I still turned around to find the speaker. It didn’t take me long, just a mere 90° turn. Standing there, atop an adjacent finger which was a thumb, was a figure.
Standing there, it said, "It took me a small eternity to come up with this sky, so I’m glad someone appreciates it," in a voice that had been translated into mine.
There were reasons I referred to it as "it" and not "she" or "he." The main reason was its appearance, which was not that of a single gender. It alternated between a man and a woman, but not simultaneously. Instead, it shifted at a headache-inducing speed—one second, it was a woman with black hair and long ears, a very familiar silhouette that made me instinctively look around for her presence, but no sign of her; the next, it was a young boy, no older than four; the next, it was what looked to be a shadow creature’s version of the said young boy.
Another reason I referred to it as "it" was that the moment I saw that female silhouette it alternated with, I managed to muster up a theory as to whom I was dealing with. With every passing second, I grew more confident in that theory. If my theory was right, "it" wasn’t a very inaccurate way to refer to them.
Reaching onto Aiden pulling him close, I, tempting the waters, I asked, "Is that you?"
A chuckle was translated in my voice. "It would be very problematic if I weren’t, wouldn’t it, Dungeon Master 18?"
"So, it’s truly you...Dungeon Master 00."