It felt like I was both engulfed in the waters of life and the nothingness of the void.

Soon though I felt nothing at all, as I drifted off into an oblivious sleep.

I dreamed of nothing, thought of nothing, and was nothing.

And then, I awoke.

The ocean was disappearing and reality was returning.

And I had once again become stronger, well not really but knowledge was power and I had certainly gained a surplus of knowledge.

I now knew why the Rovers and Arthian Empire were at war, the Rovers wanted the fertile farmland that the Arthian Empire had cultivated over the centuries and the Empire wanted to reclaim their lost mines and repel the invaders.

The Rovers had come from the east of the Emberlands and swiftly conquered the vast majority of the region. This couldn't go unanswered otherwise the Empire would be starved of iron and its fledging industry which had just begun to recover after the series of brutal civil wars it had undergone, would be decimated.

Hence a bloody and horrendous war ensued. The enormous peasant levy armies overwhelmed Rover bastion after bastion and in order to compete with their numerous foe they had turned to bandits and tribes in order to fuel their own armies.

Supplying them with armaments crafted from the stolen mines. Though I would imagine they would be more lacking quality than Arthian crafted weapons.

Still it explained why even though the cloaked figures I had been ordered to kill upon my first summoning had been equipped with costly weapons they were relatively weak. They were just a bunch of bandits ordered to attack the Arthian Empire’s supply lines.

More importantly though, I also knew what I was now.

I was an Eclipsian.

A creature manifested out of nothing by the melting pot that was the vast collective psyche of humanity and mana.

Though I think I’m a rarity as I was formed primarily by the thoughts and memories of a single human instead of the tens of thousands of human thoughts emotions and memories that typically birth an Eclipsian.

Eclipsians such as myself were often bound into servitude by summoners who put their souls on the line in order to ensure that the Eclipsian would obey their will.

The summoner would bring their summon forth into reality at great cost of either their mortal soul or the souls of their sacrifices.

It was a practice shunned by many to sacrifice anyone in order to summon an Eclipsian though, as if you killed to bring them into existence then you would lack the proper control over their actions that a summoner who was using their own soul would have.

Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

And naturally once brought forth into the world of cause, effect and natural laws, our most common usage would be as a soldier in the numerous conflicts that plagued the physical realm.

The reason why I knew all of this was because as a summoner began to lose their soul, fragments would reach their summon and infuse themselves with their consciousness.

I thankfully didn’t know why though, hopefully that was because my creator still held onto the majority of their soul and wasn’t because those fragments hadn’t reached me yet, or that they simply didn’t know.

I was still myself and my creator was still well!

Though, now that I thought about it and reflected on my first summoning compared to my second…

When I was first created and summoned I had simply charged at the humans, I didn’t even weigh up the best strategy to deal with them. I just improvised.

Then on my second summoning, some of the fragments of my creator's soul must have fused with me because I had weighed up the threat of the humans surrounding me despite no orders having been given to do so and I had even briefly inspected the camp for the best location to fight at if it came down to that.

I had changed and that meant that my creator had to have changed as well. What if the reason they were less afraid of me during their second time summoning me wasn’t because they had gotten more used to me but because they had lost a great deal of their soul?

I don’t have any time left to dwell on these unsettling thoughts thankfully. The nightmare realm is morphing into the arid sands of the Emberlands. My physical form is nearing completion.

And I knew that despite my rarity, I would still be performing the most basic of tasks demanded of my kind, murder.

Once my form had fully materialised, my suspicions was proven correct as I quickly received my orders from my far less skittish creator.

“Go into that cave and kill everyone inside it, there shouldn’t be any prisoners but if you do find some bring them back out alive and unharmed Phaeraxion.”

I bobbed my tendrils up and down in a mimicry of a human nod and transmitted my confirmation through the link. Not a single Rover would be spared, I promised this.

And then I started heading towards one of the few landmarks in this whole span of the desert, a human sized opening in between a small mountainside.

It would be a bit of a squeeze and any living creature my size would surely have backed out but I wasn’t exactly alive, not in the traditional sense at least and even if I did die I would simply be resummoned.

So I had no fear of a cave in or becoming trapped.

Of course a lack of morale while helpful, wasn’t the most crucial aspect that was on my side in this situation. No, my most beneficial trait was the ability I had to squeeze into even the tiniest of spaces.

I wasn’t like other Eclipsians who were formed out of the collective consciousness of humanity and a healthy dose of mana. no, I was modelled after the thoughts of a single mortal mage.

A hydromancer to be more specific. One who was obsessed with sea life like octopuses and squid and as a result, my form had taken on similar characteristics to those creatures. Perhaps I was more jellyfish than octopus as I lacked any bones and had a supernatural ability to compress my form.

And so when I arrived at the opening, all I had to do was deflate my centre of mass a little and curl up my tentacles and tendrils.

And then I just had to wiggle a little and bam, I was inside.

Now all I had to do was hunt down the Rovers inside