“Daddy?”
“Yes, Calla, my precious orchid?”
“Can we battle today? Building stuff is boring.”
Rai chuckled.
His daughter was 5 and was influenced by her friends at school and in the neighborhood.
Battling tended to be popular among both boys and girls.
He supposed growing up around the rangers might’ve contributed to her burgeoning hunger for battle.
It also didn’t help that his attorney wife, nearly half his age, approached her work through the lens of battle. All the way from the macro of a military campaign down to the micro of a one versus one fight between opposing champions.
Kids picked up on that sort of energy, whether intentionally-projected or not.
“What was the rule we agreed on, Orchid?”
His precious daughter’s lower lip jutted out and she crossed her pudgy, little arms.
“No battles until Saturday,” she mumbled.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that?”
She repeated it louder, fully pouting now.
“Those are the rules. You agreed to follow them and so, here we sit on a Wednesday.”
“It’s boring.” She sighed and exhaled loudly as she placed her pudgy cheek on one hand while fidgeting with the small rat.
He had carved it himself out of mahogany straight from the Philippines.
It had taken a lot of time and effort to get good at carving and sculpting using different mediums.
An effort well worth it since it allowed him to gain a better understanding of the spirits he bonded to himself while allowing him to create a way to provide for others the ability to summon spirits without the drastic step of taking them into their bodies.
Do as he said and not as he did.
The irony of vague childhood memories of the adults telling him that when he repeated it to his daughter and anyone else that came up to him to ask for tutelage in the art of spirit summoning.
One side benefit was that he had gotten so good at carving and sculpting that he had built a thriving business providing the empty vessels for others.
He snapped his fingers.
“Surprise quiz time!”
Calla perked.
Glum expression replaced by wide-eyed focus.
“Can you tell me why I used this wood for Pinky’s home?” He tapped the wooden rat in her hand.
“Um…” her brow furrowed in the cutest way, just like her mother.
He said a silent prayer of thanks to Jesus that Calla took more after his wife than him.
They were both from the Philippines, but his wife was beautiful beyond belief. Raven black hair and skin as fair as snow, would be the description he’d go with if it was a fairy tale.
Some old cultural prejudices died hard. At least for him.
He was much darker and that had always been a bad thing from what he remembered of his childhood.
Everyone had always fawned over his lighter-skinned cousins and the movie stars and pop stars.
Calla worried her lip for a few minutes.
Like her mother, she didn’t like giving answers without being completely certain.
“Cause Pinky likes being reminded of his old home?”
“Close enough! Shall we start building!”
“Okay.” Calla placed the wood carving on the table and concentrated while keeping one finger on its head.
He stifled a squee at how cute she looked with her furrowed brow and almost cross-eyed gaze.
“Please come out, Pinky. I summon you.”
The small carving rattled for several seconds before a significantly larger spirit rat emerged ready to defend his summoner from any and all threats.
Pinky calmed down immediately when none were forthcoming.
He had pulled the spirit his daughter now called Pinky from a giant cloud rat.
True to its name it was a very large rodent.
Naturally, the spirit summon didn’t weigh the 2.5 kilograms that the actual animal weighed, so it wasn’t a problem for him to scamper up Calla’s arm to perch on her head. He was bigger than his platform, but Calla only giggled.
Pinky had a black mask and collar on his otherwise gray fur.
As a spirit the colors were muted and gave off an ethereal glow that wasn’t easily visible in the golden sunlight.
“We’re ready, Daddy!”
With Pinky free from his unjust prison— as she called it when she thought he wasn’t listening— she didn’t seem as disappointed with a non-battle lesson.
He placed a box of Legos on the table before summoning his own spirit rat.
Two of them in fact.
Forest rats native to the Philippines.
Much smaller than Pinky at perhaps only a third to a fourth as their giant cousin from nose to tail.
“What shall we build?”
“A battle golem!”
Of course.
They had built their custom versions of a skyship, the Emerald Raptor’s glider and a skyfury among many other battle-related things.
“What about a house for the ones helping us build?”
“I guess…”
“Okay! For this lesson, I want you to focus on imparting what you want Pinky to do, rather than taking direct control.”
“I know, Daddy.”
The golden orb in the sky climbed as they built.
Time seemed to slip away as it always did when he did activities with his precious orchid.
It was a surprise when he realized the shining blaze had made it directly overhead.
“Hot today,” he said to nobody in particular.
Strange for late October.
In fact, he remembered the weather forecast had called for a mostly cloudy and cool week.
And yet, it felt like summertime.
He regarded the work their spirit rats had done with pride.
“It’s looking good, why don’t we take a break for lunch?”
Which would be a break for the day.
Wednesday’s meant Calla’s classes didn’t start until after lunch.
Just a few hours.
Kids her age didn’t need to be in class for most of the day.
And since parents didn’t need to work jobs that took up most of their day there was no excuse to keep kids in classes longer than what the personalized data said was best for them.
“Can’t stop, Daddy. We’ll die if we do.”
“What—”
Pinky and the other five spirit rats turned their beady eyes to him.
When had he summoned that many?
Black eyes shined gold.
Glared gold.
They attacked a split-second later.
Calla’s screams—
— woke him up.
He checked the hidden spirit he kept on his daughter at all times.
Safe and sound in the kitchen, eating breakfast.
He lay there and counted his breaths until his heartbeat returned to a normal pace.
Another nightmare.
Different packaging, same flavor.
He took his time in the bathroom before joining his daughter.
“Heya, Orchid! Sleep well?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“No weird dreams?”
She shook her head, engrossed in a cartoon on her tablet.
One of the new, modern ones.
The Adventures of Rayna and Her Rangers.
A child-friendly retelling of adventures.
He had mixed feelings, especially since he had participated in some of those adventures and nothing about them had been child-friendly.
“Mommy went to work?”
“Uh huh… oh, breakfast is in the oven. She said, um, she said you have to eat it all.”
He ate mechanically, testing with his spirits to make sure he was actually awake.
“It’s Wednesday, right?”
“Yes, Daddy.” Calla looked up from her tablet and regarded him suspiciously.
“I’m not testing you.”
“You’re being weird like when you are though,” she pointed out accurately.
“No, I’m not. Just thinking about your morning lesson.”
She perked up.
“Can we… battle?”
“No— you know what, why not. Let’s battle today.”
“Yay!” she jumped out of her chair and ran around the table to hug him. “Thanks, Daddy!”
----------------------------------------
“Before I go for my turn, may I ask one for one clarification?”
Spiritwalker resisted the urge to call for a spirit to help him penetrate the witch of portents’ magical shadow shroud. Shining eyes and sparkling white teeth didn’t inspire trust, especially when leering at him from a black abyss like some hungry eldritch monster.
“You may.”
“This whole thing isn’t some trick to isolate each of us,” he glanced at Captain Butcher, “to get our captain alone for what you’re truly after? Perhaps, her soul?”
“It is not.”
“Okay, good enough for me. Let me know when to go over there.”
Without using his magic he couldn’t test the truth to her words, which meant he had to trust in the fact that she had apparently obtained permission from command for the whole weird game.
“Not to impugn your integrity, but I’ve been in something like this before.”
The witch nodded.
He assumed she wanted him to elaborate.
“Weird vengeance demon thing, possessed a guy, made a house into a revenge-based death trap. No offense, but you can see why this reminds of that. Anyways, we ended up at a table, like this, but more round with spiked collars around our necks and needles poised to plunged into our orifices… all of our orifices. So, thank you for not utilizing violation needles.”
“I cannot say what awaits you beyond this room. I have largely left the specifics of the readings up to my apprentices.”
“They’re not into weird penetration stuff, right?”
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
“Most assuredly not.”
“Good. Too young to be even thinking about that sort of thing.” He eyed the cards in front of him. The death one bothered him more than the one with the number. “Right, back to my story. We were lucky to get out of that alive.”
“And how did you manage to escape and defeat such a powerful entity.”
“I managed to sneak a spirit tarsier over to Aims and loosen his manacles enough that he could draw and bounce a few bullets around the table to take out the rest of our manacles. Then it wasn’t so much as defeating the demon, but fighting it off just long enough for it to lose concentration and drop the magic separating the house from the real. At which point back up in the form of a tyrannical young lady flew in, tore the roof off and took care of it. I believe she threw it into the sun or rather toward the sun. Our estimates figures that its got maybe 10 years before it actually gets to the sun.”
“Now that is why I do this. Such interesting tales you share. I accept it as freely given.”
Crap!
He could’ve gotten something in exchange for it?
Damn witch rules!
He should’ve remembered his talks with other witches.
Half the fun for them was keeping people off balance through creative omissions and half truths when it came to what the rules of any game at any given moment they were playing.
“I’m just going to go now.”
“Ah! How serendipitous! It is time!”
Dark hallway void.
Abyss.
Whatever.
He refrained from summoning a spirit or casting a spell to try to pierce the unnatural blackness.
What awaited him upon emergence was a bedroom that was not a bedroom so much as it was a small arena.
High stone walls surrounded dirt-covered, hard, flat ground.
Empty seats—
Not quite.
He sensed and sometimes saw shadowy figures cheering and waving flags.
“Since when did fortune-telling crossover with gladiatorial combat?”
“The craft picked out that which was at the forefront of your emotions.”
He got the little witch.
The girl.
Dark robes. Pointy, dark hat. Face shrouded in black shadow with the exception of her eyes and mouth.
“As a magic user, myself, I know this isn’t mostly real. Even so, I refuse to fight you. Not because you’re a girl, but because it is against my ethos to fight girls… human… sapient… not just girls… children. I don’t fight children… unless they’re irredeemably evil, like at an 110% evil.”
“We’re not fighting.” The little witch pulled out a ball from… somewhere.
He regarded it through narrowed eyes.
Half white and half red.
“No—”
“Our summons will battle. Through their struggle, they shall reveal the skeins of your fates.”
He heard a faint cackling from somewhere behind him in the stands or was that back in the living room?
Skeins?
That was like weaving or something, right?
What the heck did that have to do with summons battles?
An array of nonsensical images flashed through his head, growing more grotesque as he quickly dismissed the possibilities as too stupid to be likely.
The last image he held was that of a losing spirit summons being unraveled to— quote-unquote— reveal his supposed fate or fates?
A booming voice from nowhere and everywhere rattled him.
“Battlers! Call forth your first fighter!”
Embarrassing for a veteran Rayna’s Ranger to flinch at that.
“This is so dumb,” he muttered. “What even are the rules?”
The white and red ball in the little witch’s hand gave him a good idea, but it couldn’t hurt to ask with hope in his heart.
She tilted her chin up and glared across the dirt-covered arena floor.
“You know them well! Cease delay! Your fates cry out to be heard!”
“Okay, sure, I get that. But, are we blind picking or alternating?”
“Battlers! Call forth your first fighter!”
The little witch pointed to the sky.
“Fine,” he sighed. “I summon the spirit of the noble carabao.”
Ethereal gray light streamed from his outstretched hand, quickly coalescing into the bulky spirit of the water buffalo.
“I don’t name them.”
The spirit carabao tossed its horned head and snorted nonexistent air from nonexistent lungs, while it stomped its front hooves into the dirt.
Its agitation mirrored his annoyance.
At the same time the little witch hurled the white and red ball down at her feet.
“I choose you, Domtigris!”
“Dom— oh come on!”
The ball emitted a blinding light for a moment and when it faded a lord among tigers stood roaring.
“Is that even a spirit summons?” He gestured angrily at the huge, orange and black-striped cat.
Domtigris looked decidedly corporeal.
The little witch shrugged.
“It shouldn’t matter, right?”
He supposed she was right.
His spirits, while technically incorporeal could mimic the physical presence of the actual creature depending on his will and how much mana he wanted to put into them.
“Alright, but I don’t want hurt him? Her? It?”
“His given name is Sir King Claws-a-lot. And don’t worry. He’ll heal as long as he goes back into the ball.” She narrowed her glowing eyes. “Unless, you’re planning to, like, vaporize him?”
“No, no I’m not.”
“Okay, good, cause I’m borrowing him and Witch Ash will be very said if you kill any of her friends.”
“Of course, she will.”
“Battlers! Are you ready?”
“Ready!” the little witch smiled.
“I guess.”
“3… 2… 1… Battlers, fight!”
“Sir King Claws-a-lot use pounce!”
“Um… carabao spirit… use horn charge…”
That wasn’t a thing for him.
He didn’t name his spirit summons’ attacks, nor did he use verbal commands, not since his early, lower- leveled days.
They either followed his will to varying degrees of complexity and accuracy depending on the individual spirit’s innate intelligence or he controlled them directly as though their bodies were his.
Spirit carabao and extra large tiger met in the middle of the arena.
The impact threw clouds of dust and dirt into the air.
“Gore! Gore! Go— shit!”
An audible crack rang out as Sir King Claws-a-lot dispatched Rai’s spirit carabao with a neck-shattering paw swipe.
“First battle! Winner!”
The little witch’s side of the arena lit up as the hazy crowd roared.
Flashing lights, fireworks, confetti and streamers filled the air.
“That’s a bit much for just the first battle,” he groused. “How many are we doing, anyways?”
“Best of five!” The little witch took a moment from cooing and scritching under the Domtigris’ chin. The beast was so huge that she was forced to tip-toe to reach.
“You know, I had no idea a tiger lord was a thing until now. So, thank you for that. At my age and with my experiences it is always nice to find something new that isn’t some sort of horrible, incomprehensible nightmare… so, please don’t summon nightmare-types or eldritch-types… if those are things.”
The little witch pouted.
“I guess,” she sighed.
“Round 2! Battlers, are you ready?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m ready.”
The little witch pulled Sir Claws-a-lot back into the red and white ball.
Rai watched her intently as she pulled the ball behind her back and pulled a red and white ball out in her other hand.
It looked identical to the first one, so he couldn’t gain any sort of intelligence on what her next summon might be.
He was hoping something like ball size, shape, and color could give him hints on what might emerge next.
“Fine, you went big first, so you’ve only got yourself to blame for this.” He held both hands out wide in perhaps an overly theatrical way. Death by embarrassment if any of his fellow rangers saw this. His daughter would love it, though. And his wife? Well, she’d just about die of laughter. “I choose the spirit of the titanic saltwater crocodile.”
Unenhanced and unboosted.
He didn’t want to accidentally kill some kid witch’s animal friends.
The spirit croc topped at about 5 meters in length.
He could’ve pushed more power into it to make it much longer and heavier than the actual animal. He could’ve add a few extras, like tougher armor plates, venomous spit or a tail that shot spines, taken from the mutated and monstrous versions. Or he could’ve went the other way and made it much smaller, but stronger by making the power concentration denser.
The little witch spiked the bi-colored ball like a football.
“I choose you, Kidlatibon!”
…
“You’re just mocking me now.”
He wasn’t amused at the child-sized bird flapping in midair a few meters off the ground.
Yellow-blue arcs danced across its black feathers and eyes.
Less eagle and more giant parrot.
“Are you guys breeding weird animals?”
This wasn’t anything he had seen before, nor could he remember anything in the monsterpedia.
“Once is a coincidence, twice is suspicious.”
Water was weak against electric?
Did that even apply?
Was his spirit crocodile considered a water-type?
Experience hadn’t given any indication of that.
Were the rules different in this place?
“Ah… fu- funk.”
“… Battlers, fight!”
“Use tail whip—”
“— zap vortex!”
…
“Second battle! Winner!”
Rai glared at the light and sound show across the way, at the smug grin on the little witch’s darkness shrouded face.
She tipped her pointy hat.
He sketched a halfhearted bow.
“I have your measure, now.”
“Lose this battle and you will lose your chance to see what awaits you at the end of your journey.”
“Oh, that’s not ominous at all. At this point I’m not going to lose just to save myself from some embarrassment. I can’t go home to my daughter being swept.”
“Round 3! Battlers, are you ready?”
“I summon the spirit of a… tree squirrel.”
The tiny reddish-gray spirit animal coalesced at his feet.
This time he wasn’t holding back.
He dumped an embarrassing amount of power into the spirit squirrel.
Its ethereal form glowed brighter, denser.
He held the hidden tricks behind his back, so to speak, for the battle.
“I choose you, Nuchiku Jird!”
The white and red ball disgorge an equally small creature.
“That gerbil is using nunchucks?” He pointed an accusatory finger.
The little witch shrugged.
“… fight!”
“Bruce Leejird, activate paws of fury! Use whirlwind reaps a deadly harvest!”
Rai smirked.
“Sorry, gerbil.”
His spirit squirrel obeyed his will.
It breathed a cloud of noxious gas in the path of the charging, whirling, nunchuck-wielding gerbil.
The cloud turned cloying, sticky.
It turned, exposing its butthole to expel fire.
Bruce Leejird was like unto the whirlwind. His nunchucks spun like a jet’s turbines, driving away the flames.
Rai almost felt bad to see the tiny creature stagger forward.
The little witch gasped.
Burnt bacon.
Except worse.
“Bruce Leejird!” she wailed.
Now, he felt really bad.
“Give up?”
“He is prideful.”
“Pride kills.”
He willed his spirit squirrel to dash in with blurring speed to land a thunderous kick to the gerbil’s chin.
The crack resounded across the arena.
With the increase to the spirit squirrel’s density and the small surface area of its foot he figured that had hit harder than a bullet.
The little witch thrust the red and white ball forward.
“Return!”
“Third battle! Winner!”
Rai basked in the fireworks and confetti.
Two more battles, but he couldn’t look ahead when he still faced elimination.
“One battle at a time.”
----------------------------------------
“What am I looking at?”
Rai took in the large tapestry hanging in midair or on a wall, which was mostly hazy, so, for the sake of his sanity he decided that it was the former.
The main problem, as he saw it, was that the tapestry appeared as if it had been woven by either a child or an adult that had about an hour practice right before weaving time.
A lot of blobby shapes that could’ve been people or not.
“The skeins of your fate woven into—”
“As you have repeated.”
The little witch shrugged.
“I mean, I won our Pokemon battle… I expected something more… worth it.”
Well, what did he know about weaving fates and such.
He knew summoning spirits.
Like, say, a Philippine eagle spirit that could shot explosive feathers like a VF-1 Valkyrie’s missile spam.
That had come in clutch against that which shall never be named.
The little witch had dipped into a bag of nightmares for that deciding fifth battle.
“Okay, what is that supposed to be?”
He pointed at the black blob streaked through with gold that occupied most of the middle part of the tapestry. ‘Most’ because there was a much smaller part next to it that was empty. And not, say, normal empty, like the weaver had left that part out or it had been cut out. It was more akin to the concept of absence. He could see it and not see it. He knew and not knew that there was a void.
He had tried to explain it to the little witch and she had agreed with her habitual shrug.
“I’m interpreting as all these other little blobs fighting it or maybe more trying to fight it.”
He pointed out the things he felt he could sort of recognize.
“That one looks, to me, like a half flesheater, half not. This one gives me a sense of a frenetic sort of… chipmunk… jumping around? Don’t like the way it looks like he’s getting broken. That one’s either a wearing a construction helmet or a traffic cone on her head. Why’s that one spewing vomit? This one reminds me of the first, but why’s it glowing yellow, like that one glowing a blue-white? Let me tell you something, Miss Witch, definitely not a fan of him looking like he’s getting sucked up like that last bit of gulaman out of a sago at gulaman.”
There were a few more blobs that he couldn’t quite get a sense on.
“I think I have to say that looking at this makes me feel gray. You know, sad, depressed, despairing. That seems unfair since your teacher said it’d be helpful. I mean, after I crushed you back there I though for sure this would be that. All in all, I am full of regret for hurting Bruce Leejird, Tremorlina and that last one if this is the reward.”
“I understand.”
“Thanks for all your hard work, though!”
He meant it.
Children should always be encouraged when they put earnest effort into literally anything.
“Please pass my apologies to Witch Ash for the unfortunate-ness in the arena. To be fair, it was you guys that set that all up.”
“I promise to never divulge even the slightest hint to your identity to Witch Ash.”
Did he want to ask for an elaboration?
No.
No he did not.
“Okay, then I guess I’m done. I owe you some sort of personal trauma, right?”
She nodded.
He gave it some thought.
Children were supposed to be protected from the things he had seen.
Then again, she was a witch.
He decided if her teacher had any problems with the content of his story she’d put a stop to it.
“Have you ever seen an aswang suck a fetus straight out of the womb?”
She shook her head.
“Well, younger Raimundo did and he can still see it to this day as fresh and clear as it was that full moon night.”