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BIII: Chapter Two
🕑 Added 2023-06-21 21:47:13 +0000 UTCEli floated weightlessly in the air while he watched Maeve test Lyra, Cyrus, and Lana with her trademark over-the-top spar. He smiled at the reminder of his own trial under lightning on a rooftop a few days ago. So much had changed since then.
Gravity twisted out of his micromanaged grasp. He drifted as he spun like a top. Space felt like a natural part of him no matter what power let him wield it, but he still had issues not being clumsy with gravity. A united tug with Stellar Body and Starspace Nexus righted him.
Eli watched Cyrus hurl himself at Maeve. He wore a video game character’s model as he swung a familiar sword sheathed in red lightning toward Maeve’s head. She grabbed Cyrus’s wrist and tossed him over her shoulder.
Cyrus flipped head over heels scissor-kicking Lyra in the chest. Spectral blue flames guttered out as the pair wiped out.
Silverlight chains whipped out of the ground to lash around Maeve’s ankles. Lana drew the chains taut while she shot toward Maeve with a chaotic gravity shift. Molten light reshaped itself into an oversized hammer that Lana rammed—
Electric sparks flickered from Maeve’s skin into the silverlight hammer inches from her face. A thunderous shockwave threw Lana back into a shrieking skid.
Maeve stepped forward naturally, snapping the chains. “Again.”
“This is unfair,” Cyrus muttered under his breath as he shoved himself up to his feet. His eyes practically shone with a determined intensity. “I didn’t even get to do anything.
“You at least got to do something.” Lyra stood with a pained groan. Blood dripped from her nose, where Cyrus’s flailing kicks caught her. Eli watched the flow while he counted down the seconds for it to stop or heal.
“If I had the rest of my powers, I could beat you,” Lana spat. Spikes of silverlight jabbed out of her palm into a sword.
“Stormshrine’s challenges aren’t usually like this, but many dungeons will challenge you by suppressing your powers,” Maeve said mildly. “Your stat powers should be your best anyways.”
“They are.” Lana flew. Dust and grass ripped out of the ground in the wake of her movement. Gravity redoubled around her.
Thunderclouds crackled into a gauntlet around Maeve’s hand before she backhanded Lana’s silverlight sword into mercurial mist. Dull shrapnel rustled into the grass. Maeve’s other hand snared Lana’s ponytail before she drove her into the dirt.
Silverlight armor crumpled with a crack.
“Then they must be pitiful. You don’t need them. I don’t care if you rushed slotting your stats or not, but you’re using them like tools. Like cards you use in a game. They’re more.” Maeve let go while she lectured. “As it is now, you aren’t ready.”
“I am!” Lana launched her fist in an uppercut that Maeve batted aside.
“Enough. Give the others a turn.” Maeve pushed Lana back, so she stumbled a few steps. She turned toward Cyrus and Lyra, who watched from the sidelines with wide eyes. “Come at me.”
Eli frowned as he noticed that Lyra’s nosebleed had only just stopped. Puffy red swelling still surrounded it. Was her Geomantic Vitality really so weak? Sure it was Common, but still. He doubted Recovery was a higher rarity when he had it.
Lyra shoved her hands forward, unleashing a torrent of icy flames and blazing red ice shards.
Cyrus’s video game second skin peeled off him as the projection launched a magical missile. Grass rippled at his feet as they bent into 2D and ripped forward enlarging into jagged green knives.
Maeve whistled, creating a shield out of sonomantic crystal in the path of Lyra’s flames and ice. The shield popped dispersing both. Before Cyrus’s grass volley reached her, she hopped over the magical bolt to stomp the video game character flat. Motes of static crackled all around her. All the blades of grass whizzed harmlessly past her.
“They aren’t doing so hot, are they?” Roman hovered next to Eli.
“Not at all,” Eli chuckled. “I’d say she’s being hard on them, but if Devil’s Forge is supposed to be easy…”
“Yeah, no kidding. Surprised you gave up the volcanic power you got from it, by the way.”
“Me too. I don’t know. She offered to give it back and I might take her up on it.” He sighed as Lyra used her illusion power to gloss the ground she stood on into sheets of obsidian. Chips of obsidian splintered, then buzzed toward Maeve before the sound silenced.
Sonomantic Crystal crusted over them before popping them off course.
Maeve turned toward Cyrus, who held his hands up. “I can’t really take a hit until he respawns.”
“They’re not going, are they?” Eli sighed as he spun on his axis to face Roman. “Hey, do you want to show me what you and Les have been working on?”
“Sure, I’m pretty excited about it. It’s not really working, but I’d appreciate any insights you have.” Roman led the way as they flew away from the rough and tumble field back toward the Newton estate. “So we’re trying to do a couple of things. Primarily, we want to mimic your power a bit so we can dimensional travel ourselves. Another idea we’re working toward is cross-multiversal communication. We’re also looking into creating devices that’ll act as expanded spatial storage too.”
“Oh. That’s easy. Do you want me to make some expanded storage now?” Eli blinked in surprise at that. He had completely forgotten that was one of his original goals way back when he had Spatial Control. It completely slipped his mind ever since he figured out how to store whatever he wanted in spatial bubbles, his void, and then the vault tied to his sanctum.
“I wouldn’t mind studying it,” Roman called over his shoulder as they dove toward the workshop behind the house.
“Okay.” Eli twisted starspace into a ring with Starspace Nexus while he enchanted it to have its own instance of a demiplane vault. It dropped in his hand complete a second later. Shifting diamonds spanned across the ring in a curved band of fractals.
Just touching it, he felt it tug his awareness toward the empty vault inside of it.
Eli landed as easily as if he rolled out of bed. Roman had to walk the momentum off until he could stop.
“Here you go.” Eli tossed the ring at Roman. He swept his spatial field across the workshop to get more detail. Workbenches, tools, and multiple cars covered in tarps all greeted his senses. Tucked in the back was a dome obscured to his spatial field.
“Wait, what the fuck is this?” Roman held the ring up so he could study it. Light shuttered through the prism as cracks of iridescence tracked across the workshop’s driveway.
“It’s expanded storage?” Eli frowned while Roman continued to examine it.
“Is this actual constructed space that you enchanted?”
“Yeah, I didn’t enchant enough, so it got limited a bit more when I evolved my space power. Was thinking of taking or making a new one when I get the chance.”
“You think this is limited?” Roman shook the ring in front of Eli’s face. “This? Oh restricted sure, but limited? Bro, you literally turned an abstract concept into not only an object I —or anyone else!— can interact with but you also enchanted it?”
“Um, yeah?” Eli frowned. “I can only enchant starspace or things with my spatial powers. Before I could at least enchant objects using my other powers, or tweak natural effects, but I don’t think I can even do that now.”
“Oh.” Roman snickered as he put the ring on his finger. “You think that’s enchanting? Come inside.”
“I mean, you don’t have to be rude, I’ll take the ring back—“ He said while he followed Roman into the workshop.
“No, no! It’s great. I’m not insulting you. This is incredible, but what you just said was enchanting is the same as a toddler holding up their fridge artwork next to a Picasso or the Mona Lisa. It’s technically art, but it’s not art.”
“Wow. I think you are, in fact, insulting me,” Eli chuckled. Their footsteps echoed off the cement floor. Curtains cordoned off a large area of the back. He focused Starspace Nexus on them and their obscuring effect as closely as he could.
It was so intense he couldn’t even sense the underlying enchantments. Unless that ability had also been restricted by the evolution, too? He really hoped not.
“Maybe a little. But enchantments are so much more than shoving your other powers into an object or changing its functions. It’s almost like you’re giving whatever you’re enchanting a power, or programming a power into it. Les actually mentioned that he’s going to become a Weapon Enchantineer, like a Software Engineer or something, but with weaponry.” Roman stopped outside of the curtain. “Step right through and see what I mean.”
Eli ducked under the curtains.
Needles of air hammered into his skin. Every breath lodged in his throat. On the table in front of him rested a machine the size of a microwave welded onto a bowled shield.
Hash buzzing droned in in Eli’s ears while he stared at the abomination of machinery. Sparkles fluttered through the air as enchantments of Dream made a mockery of space. Starspace Nexus twitched in time with the pulse of his heartbeat in his right eye. The needles from the machine stitched in and out of space as it sought to pin it. Trap it.
Roman was talking.
“—Dream does a lot of the heavy lifting. We tried to use enchantments to exert physical force on space, but it’s too slippery. So we wired a bunch of cameras into a slightly conscious artificial system. The AI senses the Dreamweaver’s surroundings and uses the programs I fitted it with to Dream of other locations. It’s synced up with a specific frequency, so the hope is that we can send a decrypted message to it and the coordinates we want, and boom! Easy dimensional travel or regular teleportation.”
Eli stood shockstill while he listened.
It felt like his home had been broken into and bombed in some tragic accident. All its guts and windows defaced from the explosion and slapdash reconstruction. Worse even. Visceral revulsion strangled him as if he were staring down at his own corpse and soul laid out on the table.
“Does it work at all?” Eli asked as he used Profound Erudition to contain himself. He was being dramatic. Still, he had to warp space subtly to hide his trembling hands.
“Not yet!” Roman smiled cheerfully. “Dream is all about approximating or bending reality in different ways. If I tried to do what you did with your ring, I’d have to build a massive machine and enchant it all to work with space. I don’t even know how Les would do it, since his whole thing is weapons and armor. Maybe a quiver or sheath?”
“Yeah.” Eli leaned down to peer closer into the exposed port which was covered in unsecured circuit boards, wires, and other technological bits he didn’t understand. Profound Erudition prodded him. He was being rude, his perspective changed with a moment’s focus. “It really is impressive what you’ve managed to do, though.”
“It doesn’t do anything yet?”
“No, but it’s obvious how you’ve tried.” Eli gestured at the pure insanity of the machine enchanted to interact with the fabric of space as if it were that easy. Apparently, it almost was that easy. “And from what I can tell, you’ve made a solid effort. I think the issue is that you’re forcing not only Space, but Dream, to do something that neither naturally want to do.”
“Dream can almost do anything though, that’s half of its point.” Roman crossed his arms. Eli prepared to pull back, he didn’t want to shit on their proj—
<”Stop being an idiot. If you’re afraid of being rude or lashing out because you’re upset after seeing Space bastardized, then explain how to fix it.>” Profound Erudition berated Eli in his own voice, <”Wasn’t that the whole point of this anyway?>”
“Okay. You’re starting way too high level here, okay?” Eli restarted. “When I merged Teleportation with Telekinesis, I had to rediscover how to teleport. It wasn’t something I could aim and flip a switch to do anymore. All the mechanics had to be rebuilt from the ground up.”
“Like what?” Roman nodded with a slight frown.
“Well, originally, I thought that because I could now manipulate space that I needed to fold space so I could walk through it.”
“Makes sense. That’s basically teleportation. You’re cutting out all the space in-between.”
“You would think so, but no, all that space congealed together and became almost impermeable. I couldn’t pass through and it acted almost like a rubber band.”
“It snapped back?” Roman’s eyes widened in horror.
“Yes, exactly.” Eli winced at the reminder of how he’d torn up the park trying to get a handle on it. “That wasn’t it it all. I’m not interacting with space that’s already there, but passing through a layer of space into a void where I make a corridor, and then I re-enter this layer of space. Then, I’m exactly where I want to be.”
“I guess that makes sense?”
“All your Dream enchantments are trying to cram its work in one layer of space. Not to mention, I’m working with more than just Space. I’ve had to build and merge power after power. Space, Voidspace, Subspace, and Nullspace. All of that together creates a sort of Starspace, at least according to the System. Dimensional space is less cut and dry, it’s not necessarily a veil or a curtain,” he pointed at the curtains enclosing them, “but another room entirely. So, to dimensional travel, I slip through layers in the exact same way, but I have to create a sub-pocket dimension or create another room that I attach a hallway to whatever room I want to go to.”
“So, why can’t you teleport to other dimensions like that then?” Roman snapped. “If the mechanics are the same, then there shouldn’t really be any appreciable differences, right?”
“Who says I won’t be able to now or later?” Eli raised his eyebrows. “I still have to go through the same process for teleporting that I figured out for Spatial Control. I’ll likely just get faster in the same way.”
“Okay, okay.” Roman patted the table with a gentle rattle of loose parts. “So, you’re saying that since we’re trying to cram everything together, it won’t work?”
“That’s what I’m guessing anyway. I don’t know how Dream powers work, but my understanding is that Space has layers to it.” Eli teleported across the room in an instant, faster than he normally did. For a split second, he existed in two places at once. “Just because you don’t sense those other layers doesn’t mean that I skipped across the room.”
Roman turned the machine off while he stared at it for a few moments. “Too bad Les isn’t here. Would you mind explaining it again when he and Herbert come back from their finals?”
“Sure. I feel like between the two of us we can make something that allows for some basic Teleportation at least, too.” Eli pointed out.
“That’d be pretty cool.” Roman grinned.
“Let’s get out of this stuffy workshop then.” Eli gestured for Roman to lead the way. Thank god, that disgusting machine wouldn’t be used. Space didn’t need to be polluted with abrasive dreams. Maybe he could convince them to let him scrap it?
“How do you want to do this?” Roman asked as they walked down the center of all the cars. Eli glanced at some of them with no small amount of longing. Even if he could teleport or fly wherever he wanted, he still missed driving. Too bad he had thrown his car at Sandra in their fight forever ago.
“We have a few options, I suppose.” Eli counted off with his fingers. “Teleportation with paired objects or anchors might work. Throw a ball or shoot an arrow or bullet and teleport to it. Or maybe create portals with a wand or something? It’d be hard to aim, but it could work.”
“Hm. I think your first idea has some merit, but using a flashlight or laser with a scope would be better for both.” Roman hurried out the door while he swept his arms out.
Swarms of metal parts, wires, and paneling disassembled from wherever they lay in the workshop to streak toward Roman. They orbited him in a buzzing cloud. Reality fuzzed and blurred as his Dream cleaved into the laws of physics. Moments later, ten completed objects hovered suspended around him.
Four coin sized disks, two pairs of goggles, and four gloves. Half of the objects drifted toward Eli.
“I thought about making vests instead of gloves, but I want something that can recall everything else to them, too.” Roman explained while Eli slid the gloves and goggles on. “If these anchors work, we’ll scale it up to lasers.”
“Sounds good.” Eli suppressed a grimace. Where the objects touched him, his skin crawled like insects roved over his body. He worried that his aversion to Dream was a bit more intense than he had realized. “How do you want to start?”
“Try teleporting naturally. The tech I gave you will monitor what you do, then they should all sync,” Roman said, then pointed at a tree close to a gazebo. “Go over there.”
“You got it, boss.” Eli smirked at his own reference to Profound Erudition’s joke the day before. Wait, was that concerning to not only laugh at what was not already something his power said to him, but that his power made a joke in the first place?
Eli hoped Dr. Simmons was alright. When they got back home in a couple of days, he really needed to check on his psychologist’s office in New Faram. Plus, they still needed to travel cross-country to see how his grandparents and Scott were doing. Eli also wanted to trade some spatial enchantments and any other powers he built to people.
All the different dimensions must offer some incredibly unique powers.
One thing at a time.
The comforting fabric of space tugged him across the lawn, leaving him beside the gazebo. Energy crackled with a whine from each of the devices Roman gave him.
Glowing lines of Dream-light strobed across the lenses of his goggles. A small circle in the corner of his vision blinked with a rudimentary map. Four yellow dots pulsated on his position. Warmth blazed through the gloves on his hands.
Eli turned his hands over so he could look at the two anchors Roman gave him. Reality thrummed around them.
Discomfort scratched and grated along Eli’s regular and spatial senses. At least it wasn’t nearly as bad as the monstrosity Roman and Les had cooked up.
“You ready? I’m going to come to you,” Roman said through small speakers in the goggles. He reared his arm back before he lobbed one of his anchors.
“Wait, Roman, what if—“ Eli cut himself off as the anchor overshot onto the gazebo where it rolled. It adhered to one of the planks with a loud hum. A flood of Dream swallowed Roman whole.
He vanished.
One second passed, and Roman didn’t appear on the gazebo or anywhere else. Eli clenched his hands tight into fists. Rough fabric and hard plastic creaked.
Detail screamed into his awareness through his spatial field.
Both Lana and Lyra sat on the sidelines while they watched Maeve spar with Cyrus. His sisters were caked in dried blood, grass stains, and smears of mud.
Inside the house, he sensed Dad and Other-Rick sipping beer together while they lounged in the basement. It seemed bizarre that everyone got along so well with their own counterpart compared to him. Was that healthy or—
Wasn’t important.
Eli shoved his spatial field out further to the swathes of farmland his parents’ counterparts set aside for the community of Rockford. Corn, wheat, and other crops he couldn’t recognize were tucked in tidy rows.
Roman wasn’t there either.
Anxiety fizzed in his boiling bloodstream. Stellar Body primed alongside Aurora Stardust deepening his view of space. Profound Erudition went into overdrive.
It had been six seconds since Roman disappeared and he still didn’t know where he was. What—how?—was he going to tell Cyrus? Or Roman’s genocidal brother if Theo was ever found?
Mental precision strangled his fraught emotions. This would not help anyone if he went too far, like he always did. He had to think. Solve this. Be the master of himself and his powers. Already, hairline fractures in space spread in a tangled web around him.
Plans and memories crashed into the forefront of his mind one after the other.
Maeve could help or know something. With the uncertain interference of Dream, he could be anywhere.
Now that he thought about it, Lyra or Cyrus were also options. Both had core Dream powers.
The device Roman threw fuzzed with blurry space. Was he coming back?
When Eli was first getting the hang of Teleportation and Spatial Control, his teleports were slow. It used to take seconds with each one, and there was the time he mentioned earlier with Dad in the park. He had disappeared for minutes, not seconds. Was this similar?
It had been sixteen seconds.
Or Eli could push one of his new powers to their limits as fast and hard as he could. Max it out. Pray that Warlock’s Dreamspace was still available. Melting plastic dripped as Eli’s gloves burned.
Was there a roundabout way he could approach Dreamspace? Could he corrupt Profound Erudition to enhance its latent aspects of Dream? Maybe it’d let him at least sense it and wherever Roman was.
Twenty seconds.
Profound Erudition strained instantly.
Connections drifted from thought to thought, idea to idea, memories ignited like beacons. Tears streamed from his eyes. Colors in his vision ran like wet ink.
Greens softened like wax into strands of blue and yellow until the grass and leaves of the trees swayed with kaleidoscopic reflections. Primary colors heightened. Transformed into blades of vibrancy that gouged at his eyes. Seared his retinas, sizzled up his nerves into his brain.
Eli blinked.
Fragments of his vision and other stimuli distilled into rote symbolism. Everything howled at him with paramount meaning. Gazebos, wealth, happiness, community. Clouds in the sky, heavens, obscurity, sto—
Tension went out of his body as he dropped.
Thirty seconds? Forty? Eli didn’t know anymore.
Something in his mind broke or was about to in his mind. He had to stop. Gravity flexed underneath him as he caught himself.
Maybe Roman was okay? He better be, or Eli wasn’t going to forgive himself unlike Lana. He had been such an awful friend for so long and he was trying so hard to be better.
If only he could teleport into a better person. He took a deep breath, held it, then exhaled.
Corrupting Profound Erudition wasn’t going to work. If he continued, he’d not only damage it, but himself. It was time to do his least favorite thing.
Ask for help.
Eli let his spatial field slip toward Maeve—
New sparkles sputtered from the thrumming disk Roman had thrown onto the gazebo. A low whine rumbled as the sparks shifted in on themselves. Lights that weren’t there coiled into a shape. Roman’s silhouette.
Spacetime stuttered as Eli forced Stellar Body, Starspace Nexus, and Aurora Stardust grasp onto time itself. If Roman came in too hot or was injured, he’d be ready.
Strings of sparkling light chained together as the silhouette filled in. Thunder cracked, not aloud, but in Eli’s mind and spatial field as Roman snapped back into reality.
Roman’s irises glowed golden as he met Eli’s eyes. He smiled as they faded back to normal. “Dude! Is that what it’s like for you? I was in this empty white space with these bridges of light everywhere. It was incredible. We have to make the Dreamweaver work.”
“You’re okay?” Eli’s voice caught in his throat before he cleared it with a cough and tried again.
“I’m better than okay!” Roman moved closer. “With this? We can figure out so much. Hell, I want to make more of these for the delve tomorrow. Maybe we can build something really cool if we have enough time”
Roman vaulted over the railing of the gazebo in a single bound. He held his hand out for Eli to bump their fists together. “Ready?”
“Hell yeah.” Eli swallowed his concerns while he vowed to try everything first. There was no way Eli was letting him take a risk like that again. “Let’s do this.”
“Oh, did the gloves overheat? Their synchronization should’ve ended before I jumped.” Roman squinted at the simultaneously slagged and scorched gloves still on Eli’s hands. “Oh well. I’m pumped! Let’s make more of these.”
Material shifted around Eli’s hands as they hummed back to pristine condition. One moment ruined, the next perfectly whole.
“Here, let me help a bit more.” Eli opened a portal into his sanctum behind them directly to his workshop and study. Bars of starmetal flowed out on rails of gravity while he bent starspace to his will.
While he was excited to truly push his newly specialized enchanting aspect of Starspace Nexus, he was more afraid what Roman would do without him. Eli hadn’t been able to sense or do anything when Roman had disappeared.
That was unacceptable.
He vowed to not only be stronger, but better.
Comments
weas97
By God I already believed that Roman was really lost and I was already panicking author don't do those things my heart can only take so much.
Steven Beal
Thanks for the chapter
