The Star 27

When Orison sluggishly awoke from a meditative trance that had been far deeper than it should have been, his heart dropped to his stomach. He knew it was a possibility but had hoped showing some kindness to the the wraiths before their resurrection would have been the key to avoiding his current situation.

"I thought that giving you some comfort in your time of need might have softened your heart towards me at least a little, Mage. Of all the ones to see my 'usefulness', lock me in deep trance and detain me in giga aunt's bower, I kinda expected it to be Little Pete in all honestly. His whole deal in this reality is duty above all else, so to speak." he said sadly.

The fair skinned, raven haired beauty gave him a pained smile. "The debts and depth of my devotion to my mistress are far greater than the others, Orison. You will be treated well and with due difference."

He shook his head. "You mean, treated as a breeder for my own ancestor's clan. At least tell me that things went well for Healer and Assassin."

The look of mournful pity and slight welling of tears that looked so out of place on the devilishly cool and charming face answered him before she said, "Your interest in the matter was divined. Healer's quickening was arrested for extra incentive to your cooperation."

Orison said, "You either have a really good diviner or a bad one. I'm hoping for the first because if I don't get my compromise, I'll flush my whole f***ing potency into elemental sprites and flip everyone the finger before they send me to the abyss. I hope the irony of this isn't lost on you, either. Most of your loyalty to my giga aunt was earned by saving you from the fate you're condemning me to."

Mage's face grew hard. "It isn't even in the same league. You will be treated well, get choice and only be expected to give them two new clan members. I would have been kept in a cage and used up til I died."

The young mage sneered. "Good ol Aunt Satyra is exactly the person she portrays herself to be but her mother was a lying b*tch. No one has the chance to know the whole truth of that time anymore. Giga Granny buried her secrets well along with the bodies of her subordinates that knew them."

Checking internally, he discovered that a few exercises of power would be all it would take to slide into tier four as natural as a fish breathing water. His theory had been right. Aligned well, his concepts only needed to be passively coaxed to grow back into the spiral fractal on their own.

He thought, "I'll start off tier four with enough cumulative law fragments to equal the power of thirteen complete. That's vastly superior to any time before. Since no law ever technically completes, only infinitely grows towards completion, will I naturally slide into tier five once law fragments equal fifty-five complete ones?

"Maybe it'll keep growing until my soul limit is reached and force me to will it. Maybe I'll get to choose. I guess only time will tell but this feels right. Too bad my situation won't let me celebrate that."

His long lasting trance hadn't been a waste of time. Not only had he continued to slip down the echoes of Satyrus, he had passively absorbed power of existence and spiritual strengthening the whole time. Each new layer was more 'real' than the last. The occasional 'slip down' acted as a safeguard against needless absorption from a source that was no longer useful. It also provided a new source of enrichment to keep soul and power of existence growing at a smooth, steady pace.

That wasn't all. With his soul only passively needed to observe the concepts within himself and the world around him, much of its contemplative power had been turned to magic theory. Before the spiritually grafted system had been removed, at some point, he had the perfect primer to troubleshoot his concepts with. The spiral hadn't grown enough to include all he had ever been able to do before yet. But, his old faithfuls were at his beck and call like never before.

The fun thing about the dying Greater Existence, for all of its terrifying possibilities of oblivion, was that the maelstrom swirling about it was losing some of its pressure. That meant the inner void around the maelstrom wall and the Greater Void just beyond it were saturated with essences that were only seen at the birth of a Greater Reality. He couldn't fight for it directly but his ties to the void meant that his entanglement power was practically on auto-pilot, absorbing tiny useful bits here and there as they brushed against his space's dimensional weirdness.

All in all, a less principled and emotionally disconnected person would have gladly popped their cork or bit the pillow a couple of times for the 'opportunity' Orison had been given. But, aside from grim mental preparations to do what he needed for Jammers, he didn't want to concede any of his precious opportunities at being a parent in both body and spirit under someone else's whim in any way. Unfortunately, the obelisk could only show him the possibilities he had explored himself and there had been a limited number of 'what if' copies to draw information from.

He was interrupted from his thoughts by Mage clearing her throat. "If you'll give me your oath to not resist, I will take you as a guest to see the patriarch rather than bound. No one wishes to see you mistreated... Truly, I don't think this will go as terribly as you believe it will."

He replied, "Can I have a few minutes to step into tier four? I just need to validate some magic concepts. I can see all the preparations and defenses in place. I swear on my structure that my casting is nothing more than to validate law comprehension and magic theory."

She sighed but nodded and stepped back behind a barrier.

In a few short seconds, he chained together an array of novice level magics back to back and led straight into elemental impression summons. His current limit was two but he still had concentration to spare on instant casts. He wanted to do more but several intense casts so close together drained his tank by a quarter.

The last thing he wanted to do was become fatigued right after transitioning to tier four. The process had already initiated and what magic essence 'gas' he had would condense to a few drops and some fumes as it was. He'd accomplished what was needful and even managed to scare Mage into thinking he'd burned off his potency into elemental sprites as he had threatened for a split second. Her 'O' face tickled his dark humor.

Regaining composure, she lifted the dimensional anchor after he gave his oath to come along peacefully. "Those were too advanced to be sprites but they weren't true elementals either. What exactly were those things?"

She completed something similar to a planar shift while he answered, passively observing her method. "I call them impressions. You kind of have to have a deep connection with a living embodiment of the concept you're trying to summon an impression of to-"

Leading him down an unfamiliar hallway from a circular dais, she raised a hand and said, "I'm familiar with impressions. I've never seen any that didn't have a mark or tie to an actual living being, though."

Orison said, "The only thing that I can explain safely is 'Living Laws'. If you've had a connection to one long enough, you can pick up the knack for creating a false life impression without it being tied to an actual living being. After that, you can apply it to other, less law pure existences as well but each would be a study of lifetimes without the right kind of connection and source.

"Um... Since Satyrus has already been folded into a singular world with no echos, how close are we to -what was it called?- the Great Merge? You know, that event where Greater Existence tries to create a few realities capable of continuing beyond itself before it dies."

Mage said, "That's more of a philosophical question. But if you were to live out the remaining span on Satyrus... anywhere between a few decades to a few hundred years. It's far too difficult to guess any closer than that.

"Look... I know I may not be a person you like or... respect right now. But, if you could swallow your vitriol over my transgressions enough for polite conversation, I believe there is much we could learn from one another. I'm not asking for forgiveness but maybe a truce for the sake of exchanging our wealth of knowledge?"

The young mage sighed. "With a little time, that might be possible. But, until I've secured the safety and future of the most important soul in all of existence to me, I'm not in the mood to play nice. I may be mature enough to realize the futility of throwing a powerless temper tantrum but I'm so far beyond enraged, I actually feel completely calm."

Showing some token signs of remorse, she said, "If we've accidentally delayed this soul's reincarnation for too long and they are born to another, we can help you find them. We'll give you whatever help you need, within reason, to ensure their well being."

Trying hard not to scream in her face, he said, "They crossed the Great Void to come here for their 'dark night of the soul'. I don't think that's a thing you have here but basically it's a way to sever mortal fate before becoming tier five. Several powerful people went to great lengths to ensure their 'well being' and MUCH more. "This was NOT the Greater Reality they were supposed to come to. I don't know what happened but I sacrificed nearly everything I had to come here and that soul is the number one reason. Failure to reincarnate with the only couple I could tie a weak fate to means I only have one possibility left.

"If I fail to secure THAT possibility, they don't just get born to some random person. Their very soul could cease to exist if it's forced to cross the Great Void a second time. Even if it can be saved from that, it's possible that they'll be reduced to a mortal soul. That's not something a little help can just fix."

Once they reached some kind of reception hall looking room with several sets of doors in it, she broke the silence she had been keeping since his revelation. "Wait here a moment. I'll explain everything you've said and we'll do a divination. The patriarch is someone who I believe won't be... unsympathetic to your plight."

Left to his own devices, he sat on a couch and mulled over possibilities and possible solutions. His contemplations were interrupted by a friendly looking young man. Those looks were deceiving.

Despite possessing a kind of spiritual innocence, there was a dense and highly trained killing intent just underneath the surface. The man, who had introduced himself as Teremun, had a soul and body that were the same young age but had killed several powerful enemies. Oddly, judging by the clarity of soul, he was 'innocent' in a lot of different ways.

It was monstrous to consider. A man in his mid twenties, soul and body, was a natural born tier five. Under Orison's spiritual sight, he could visibly see the young man's soul continuing to inch up in power and comprehension. All of this was plainly visible because the man openly displayed it like he was silently showing off but there wasn't a hint of pretension or arrogance to be felt.

Not really interested but not wanting to make things any more difficult for himself by being rude to someone so lacking in malice, the young mage politely listened to the young man. He was the grandson of some god named Thoth, the child of Djehuty and the void walker patriarch Hiidan. It suddenly made all too much sense why this guy just randomly approached. As a son of the patriarch, he was most likely one of the candidates for Orison to choose from. Nice guy or not, the situation made it impossible for the young mage to feel an impression more positive than nauseous fatalism.

Impotent anger burning through him, impulse seized his mind and mouth long enough to spit a saintly smiled vitriol before rational thought took hold again. "Thanks for introducing yourself, Teremun. When it's time to decide which of your family members get to r*pe me, I'll keep you in mind."

When the guy stood up in confused embarrassment and more than a little defensive anger, Orison added as Teremun stomped away, "That was harsh. If I made a wrong assumption, I'm sorry. But, those are my honest feelings about this."

The man spun around with a fake smile of his own to hide hurt feelings. "Well, just so you know. Because of some weird belief that gramp's worshipers had back in the day, I inherited the ability to lay an egg once. Since I felt for you, I figured I could get that crazy over with and go to being a normal dude looking for a good woman to have a regular family with, you know, one day.

"I take a 'too much cheese' dump. You slap a hand and some spirit. Bam, done. We could let Pops sit on the damn thing, since he wants to expand the clan so badly. But you know what? At the end of the day, it's still a kid that's going to crack out of it. I was trying to get to know you and see if it was worth it. You're not the only one who has choices to make."

Mind racing to seize a potential convenient opportunity, to stall for some time, Orison said, "Your heterochromia is cooler than mine."

It was dumb and nonsensical but it was the kind of thing that made people's mental gears grind. It was effective. Teremun spluttered as his emotions hard shifted from righteous indignation to confused curiosity.

While formulating what he'd say next, Orison casually inspected the eyes of Teremun as the young man got pretty close to his own face to inspect his. One eye was a natural shade of dark brown but the iris of the other looked like it had been carved out of eternium, a cold blue with nearly metallic multicolored flecks. His facial features combined to create an appearance of strength that was reassuring rather than being hard and dangerous.

On a purely physical aesthetic, Teremun gave off the vibe of the friendly neighborhood 'big brother' that would shoo off bullies. It was a pleasant contrast to the blatant killing machine appearance of Jarvis or the cold soldier vibes of Dustin and Corvinus. Aside from the fire opal eye, the subtle lack of supernatural perfection and otherworldly features made him more appealing.

It was at that moment Orison realized he was ogling in a way that was against the grain for him. He suddenly remembered that he was still wearing the form that the closet jock had given him. In a humiliating flash of insight, he understood that he was subconsciously checking out a guy... as a guy. What was worse, Teremun had became aware of it and had backed away in subconscious rejection of that interest.

Closing his eyes, the young mage willed himself to keep neutral and avoid further embarrassment by blushing. "Sorry. This isn't my default pattern. I might be open to genuine feelings from anyone. But when it comes to physical attraction, I like my male form instincts to be pointing their interest at ladies and vice-versa. Things are confusing enough for me without adding that. As soon as I can, I'll reset my pattern and that... won't happen again."

Chuckling, Teremun said, "Um, don't sweat it. I'm flattered... I am a little curious, though. Usually maelstrom born make a bond and that's it. You're able to switch your bonded without spiritual trauma?"

"Bonded? I don't... bond. I just borrow a pattern. And even if I can change, it's actually not healthy for me to do that more than what's absolutely necessary. It's taxing on my soul, pattern and even my physical life span if I flip from one to another too fast," the young mage said.

Teremun blinked owlishly. "You've never bonded... anyone?"

Not particularly up to being generous with information but wanting to earn this particular person's goodwill, the young mage said, "Not in the way or for the reasons you mean. I don't need another soul to help me process or condense essence. For your father and siblings, maelstrom born is a species and void walker is a sub-race that came from that species. They have strong ties to the violent energy of the maelstrom and need help leashing it.

"Although it's only a technicality, you could consider me an outsider who accepted and conformed to the laws of existence. Maelstrom born was the definition slapped over my potential so I have structure. But, I have little pieces that stick out of that structure, here and there.

"Yes, you could consider me a void walker but you could consider me a great deal many other things, as well. From the stand point of void walker alone, I'm actually not a very good one. Quite sh*t, really."

The sudden appearance of a battering spiritual wind created by the mere presence of the entity behind the young mage preceded a mature and commanding voice. "That last sentence took the words right out of my mouth."