Erin waved her hand dismissively. "The worries of the young shall not be taken seriously. What matters is attaining the skill. Now you need to catch something in the voidal plane to be able to manifest."
"Catch something?" Gale asked. "In the voidal plane? What does that even mean?"
"The space between spaces. The in-between," Erin said, as if that explained everything. "You have a skill that aligns with its presence, correct?"
Gale nodded.
"What is it called?"
"Breath of the Void."
Erin's face stared at his eyes for exactly three seconds before continuing. "Huh. That is a new one I have not heard of."
Not great. She was supposed to know everything.
"Regardless, you shall pull from the voidal plane. A subject."
"That doesn't answer my question," Gale said. "What exactly am I supposed to catch?"
"You seek answers rather than guidance. Typical uncivilized Cev warrior behaviour. The blood runs strong." Erin sat down on her frozen armchair and pointed to the floor below. "Sit. Cross your legs. Your Guide will show you the way into the void."
Gale hesitated. "You want me to do this now? While everyone's sleeping?"
"Is there a more appropriate time to peer between planes than when the conscious world slumbers?" Erin asked.
"Fine." Gale moved to the spot she indicated.
"The barrier I've erected will prevent disturbances," Erin said. "However, heed my warning, child of Cev. Your mind remains weak. Do not linger too long in the void, or what lurks there may seek to claim you forever."
That made Gale pause halfway to the floor. "You're telling me this after making me put all my Origin grains into Mind?"
"Precisely because of that allocation," Erin said. "Your mental capacity has expanded, but your control has not. You are like a child given a weapon too heavy to wield properly."
Great. Perfect. As Kyle and Clyde would say, famous last words. He sighed, sitting down and crossing his legs awkwardly. "So what now?"
"Now you must ask your guide for instruction," Erin said. "The path into the void differs for each bloodline. The Weber approach would destroy your consciousness."
Gale closed his eyes, trying to block out the strange woman's unnerving stare at the back of his head.
"Guide, how do I meditate to peer into the void?"
[Accessing Dainv meditation protocols...]
[Dainv Void Meditation requires specific physical and mental alignment. Allow motor function assistance.]
Without warning, Gale's body moved on its own. His back straightened, hands repositioned themselves onto his knees, palms upwards. His legs adjusted into a perfect lotus position.
[Please remain silent. Initializing meditation sequence.]
His eyes closed. A moment later, he felt two cold hands press against his back, right between his shoulder blades. The familiar feeling of essence poured from her hands into his spine.
"Focus," she said, though that sound gradually lowered in volume. "Allow your consciousness to detach from physical form. The Guide will direct your path."
[Meditation sequence initialized. Heart rate reduction: engaged. Respiratory control: engaged. Consciousness projection: commencing in 3...2...1...]
The change in location hit him immediately as if he fell into somewhere else. One moment, sitting on the cold metal floor. Next, he was falling… or at least he thought he was. He floated through absolute darkness. Not the black of a dark room or a moonless night, but a true absence of light. It stretched in every direction, infinite and empty. Only glimmers of tiny motes of light drifted past him, each no bigger than a grain of sand.
Origin grains. They were exactly like the visualizations he saw when allocating points in his status page.
One drifted close to him. Gale reached out to it, and the grain moved toward his hand.
[Origin grain: 1]
The notification flashed through his awareness, but Gale pushed it aside. Collecting grains wasn't why he was here. But what was he supposed to be doing? Erin told him to catch something, but this whole place was empty. What was he even supposed to catch or what did it look like?
Gale floated through the darkness. The sensation was like swimming without the need to do strokes. He moved purely by intent.
After what felt like minutes of aimless wandering, his senses tugged at him, telling him that there was something below.
He dove downward, following the sensation. The darkness grew heavier, more substantial. Pressure built around him as he descended deeper into the void.
Then he saw it.
An eye.
Not a metaphorical eye, but an actual eyeball, floating in the darkness. It was massive, about the size of his head, with leathery bat wings sprouting from either side that flapped slowly as it propelled itself forward. Its iris was pitch black against a yellow sclera, the pupil a vertical slit that widened as it noticed him.
What the fuck?
The eye didn't react to his thought. Instead, the grain on his hand caught its attention. When Gale moved the grain to the right, the eye followed. Left, the same.
Cautiously, Gale extended his awareness toward it, offering the grain like a treat to a stray dog.
The eye didn't move at first. Then, a seam appeared below the pupil. The seam split horizontally, revealing rows of triangular teeth, like a shark's but perfectly symmetrical. The mouth opened wide, swallowing the grain in one quick snap.
Shit. That scared him. He almost punched it on instinct, not expecting the way it ate it to be grotesque, alien, or something straight out of a nightmare. But after consuming it, it seemed like it smiled. Probably it smiled. It even curled up to him, and now it seemed more cute if he could ignore the rows of triangle teeth.
[
List of Subjects:
- Unnamed Overseer
]
So this is what Erin was talking about. But what can this little eye even do?
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Just as the thought formed, a deep, low vibration shook through him.
Gale looked down.
Below him, impossibly far yet somehow right in front of him, something opened. Another eye, but this one was colossal, filling his entire field of perception. It was an eye. Its red sclera filled his entire view until its slit pupils rotated into view. The pupil contracted, focusing on him.
Gale's breathing grew ragged. This wasn't right. He needed to run, to get out of this place. But he couldn't look away from it. It had frozen him, trapped in the gaze of the void.
The eye opened fully.
And Gale snapped back to reality with a violent jerk.
He toppled backward, head smacking against Erin's knees. His lungs heaved as if he'd run for miles, sweat pouring down his face and soaking his shirt.
Erin stood over him, her hands now at her sides, her expression unchanged and unemotional as ever.
"You went too deep," she said.
"No shit," Gale gasped. "What the hell was that thing?"
"Do not mention it. You were not meant to encounter such beings nor do I have the qualifications to know," Erin said. "If I may say, your inexperience led you past the shallows into the deep void."
"But what was it?" Gale pushed himself up to a sitting position, legs shaking too much to stand just yet.
"That is not relevant to your current task," Erin said. "Did you capture a subject?"
Gale shook his head, trying to clear his mind. "I think so. There was this smaller eye with wings. I fed it a grain, and something called an Overseer showed up in a list."
"Excellent," Erin said. "The Overseer in its beginning stages is highly useful. It will become a dependable subject in the future."
"So what now?" Gale asked, pushing himself up from the floor. His legs still trembled from the pressure the thing in the void had given him. Forget about the pressure from Abel. Whatever that was in there, he didn't wanna know.
"You must name it to form the king and subject relationship. This establishes your dominance over the creature and binds it to your will," Erin said.
"Look, I checked the skill. It costs 25 essence per second. That's insane. I'd burn through my reserves in just over a minute," Gale said.
"There exists a way to summon it without active duty privileges. A method to conserve your essence while maintaining its presence."
She was probably thinking about the passive state summon. It was listed as part of the ability's actives, costing just 1% of the active summon state.
Closing his eyes, he recalled the image of the bat winged eye ball called the Overseer. Just like with his other abilities, he willed it into existence, into passive form. Hopefully passive. For a minute, he waited, willing the same thing over and over again.
Nothing happened.
No flash of light or any dramatic event. Not even any essence that pushed from his pathways. Just silence in the cold metal room they stood in.
"Where is your summon?" Erin asked, staying completely still in her chair. "Hurry it up, child of Cev. Time grows short."
Gale sighed heavily. "I'm trying."
He concentrated again, focusing harder this time. Image of the eyeball. Overseer was its name or what it's called. He visualized it to appear in front of him, bat wings flapping in the air.
Concentrating more, he willed Overseer into existence and pulled him out of the in-between. That thought did it.
His essence pathways lit up, starting from his spine and flowing near his core. More essence spun in the pathways that circulated around his heart, until it grew into solid light that formed a circle around his heart.
Then, with a soft rumble, the Overseer materialized before him. It floated at eye level, semi-transparent like a ghost and its leathery bat wings beat slowly to keep it afloat. Its black pupil took him in and the sclera glowed a dim yellow in the dark room. Up close, he could see even more details he missed in the pitch black of the in-between. Tiny veins ran through the sclera, and a faint blue-purple tinge coated its bat wings. The creature had its own ether signature at the level of a low-Attuned individual.
The thin sound membrane around him and Erin suddenly popped. Sound flooded back, breathing, rustling clothes, the scuff of boots on metal as everyone scrambled to their feet.
Throughout the room, the sleeping figures jolted awake. Kyle sat up first, hand automatically reaching for his pistol. Breath of the Void's tendrils fed him the sound from outside the sound layer membrane that Erin had conjured.
"What the fuck?" he shouted, eyes wide as he spotted the floating eyeball.
Clyde rolled to his feet, long-gun already drawn. Ollie was up a split second later, already pointing his own deagle at the eyeball.
Rachel scrambled up from where she'd been sleeping, flames already engulfed her arms.
Overseer darted behind Gale, peeking over his shoulder with its massive yellow eye. Its wings fluttered nervously, creating small puffs of air against his neck.
"Hold your fire!" Gale shouted, raising his hands. "It's with me! It's a summon. A pet, I think. It's friendly. I promise."
Rachel stepped closer, extinguishing her own flames and walking close enough to peek through Gale's shoulder. "And where exactly did you get... this?"
"New ability. I can summon stuff now," Gale said, realizing how ridiculous that sounded. Not exactly sure how to tell them that he got it from the void, the in-between, or whatever flavour Erin had told him.
Ollie holstered his Desert Eagle, moving closer to the pods to inspect. The others followed.
"Does it do anything useful?" Ollie asked, circling around to get a better view. "Or is it just... watching?"
The Overseer retreated further behind Gale, its single eye wide with what looked like fear. Its wings trembled as it flapped the air.
"I haven't figured that out yet," Gale said.
Lily leaned in. "It's actually kind of cute."
"Are you serious?" Kyle looked down at the thing hiding behind Gale. "It's the size of our heads and has bat wings. How is that cute?"
"It has personality," Lily said, smiling as the eye blinked slowly at her. "Look at how it's hiding. Like a scared child."
Rachel relaxed her stance, putting her weight on one side. "What's it for, Gale? What does it do?"
"Like I said, it's a summon," Gale said, still not entirely sure himself what the Overseer can even do. "Just learned how to do it."
"Neat," Ollie said.
Gale looked around at their faces. "You guys don't think this is weird? An actual eyeball with wings?"
Ollie shrugged. "It's unique, but not out of hand. There are Aurians that can summon companions. Witch Moura is the most famous one, runs a shop down Eglinton West. Her crocodile can give the Arcanes a run for their money."
"What's its name?" Clyde asked, strapping his long gun on his shoulder.
Gale reached back, surprised when his hand met solid flesh. The eye's surface felt leathery but warm, not wet and mushy like the other eye he knew about. It was like touching a baseball glove left in the sun. He guided it around to float in front of him.
"Doesn't have one yet. I'm still choosing."
"Name it something cute," Rachel said, "like Cookies or Pickles."
"What about Milo?" Lily said. "Or YumYum, or Batsy?"
The overseer's pupil contracted. Its wings drooped. Somehow, Gale knew it was disappointed at the names it had just been presented with.
Kyle scoffed. "Those are terrible. Name it something cool, like Valithor The Greater One or Mighty Thunderous God."
"What about Doomed Harbinger?" Gale asked.
Overseer's pupil dilated, and its wings perked up, flapping faster at the sound of the names.
"Gale!" Rachel shook her head. "Don't listen to these idiots! They're bad influences."
Even though she said that, Overseer spun in small circles, clearly excited about the damnly cool extremely awesome sounding names. And he made that name himself, and if he could, he’d name his Weber as Tainted Blade of the Doomed Ones just like the bone spears he crafted before.
"Great, it's got a taste for the dramatic," Ollie said. "Just name it something normal so it doesn't attract attention."
"Moura named her pet croc 'Fangs of the Wild,'" Clyde said.
"That's because she's old," Ollie said. "And runs a tourist trap. You want to be taken seriously? Don't name your summon like you're fourteen."
Erin, who had been watching silently, spoke from her frozen chair. "Valithor the Great One and Doomed Harbinger hold power. Names have meaning. The creature clearly prefers them."
Ollie rolled his eyes. "Of course the oldie would think those are good names."
"What about... Dani?" Gale said suddenly.
Kyle grumbled. "That sounds lame. What about Valithor for short?"
"I like Dani. Reminds me of Dyani, that little girl from the Hotel Frankley incident." Rachel's expression softened into a warm smile.
Gale cleared his throat. "Yeah. That’s totally it."
It definitely wasn't short for Diabolical Apocalypse Nether Inquisitor. A perfect name for the new partner of the dark hunter. Gale imagined saying that in a growling voice.
The Overseer floated closer to Gale's face, smushing its leathery eyeball onto him as if wanting the name.
"Dani it is," he said.
Rachel smiled. "Hello, Dani."
The newly named Dani spun in a slow circle before Gale, its wings beating faster, floating over to Rachel. It hovered before her face, softly tapping her forehead once before returning to Gale's side.
[Subject Named]
[Name: Diabolical Apocalypse Nether Inquisitor]
[Alias: Dani]
[Description: A young voidling of the Overseer race.]
[Active Ability 1: Tether.][Description: The Overseer grants its kin access to its senses.]
[Passive Ability 1: True Sight][Description: In the domain of the Overseers, it is they who look back, capturing those with weak minds.]
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