Chapter 14 Quoth the Raven “Nevermore” Part 1

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore-

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.” - some poet with a bird fetish.

Lu dreamt of ocean waves.

Pale white sand, glistening like dried bones in defiance of the night. There was an intrusive smell of rot and salt. Like spears, they penetrated his nose as he walked forward, sitting down next to the teen.

“As dark as ever,” Lu began, gesturing at the pure black ocean. Between that and the sand, it was as if a great brush had drawn a dividing line between black and white.

“Still strangely beautiful,” Bu answered, still huddled with his legs to his chest. “It’s gotten a lot louder recently.”

“Louder?” Lu asked, glancing around the silent beachside.

“You don’t remember?” Bu replied, adjusting his glasses.

Lu kept looking around, feeling everything around them. He knew they stood upon an island with many shores, but always the same sea, surrounded by the same glowing-

‘Fish,’ Lu blinked in realisation, for the black seas of infinity no longer held any of the fish he saw before.

He lept a step back but didn’t move any distance. Remembering what the opponent was, he dashed to the left.

But it didn’t matter, for a petal of arms shot out and grabbed his neck, choking the air out of him.

“Yeah running’s pointless,” Bu said as another petal of grey wrapped around him. “I gave up a while ago.”

The black seas parted and it was revealed, a ball of grey flesh, covered in gibbering mouths and surrounded by a flower of arms.

“Please do something about that,” Bu continued to speak, his voice so utterly neutral he almost sounded bored.

Yet the arms continued to draw them closer.

“It’s trying to break out,” Lu realised, somehow speaking even if his breath was stolen.

“Yeap.”

And they were brought to the mouths.

Aiden choked out a strangled scream, a great pressure was grabbing his throat, stealing his breath and speech.

He kicked himself off his bed, falling onto the floor rolling. Oros hissed somewhere, three-quarters of its form blackened and covered with colourful plants. It darted off his leg, onto the floor, possessing a tie that coiled and hissed. Aiden smashed his right arm into the thing strangling him, throwing it off and into sight.

And he realised with horror it was his own left hand, covered with a horrid grey colour.

Oros pounced, wrapping around the arm as it tried to strangle him once again.

Aiden gasped, taking in a much-needed breath of fresh air before he pinned his possessed arm with his right, holding it on the ground.

“You are a memory,” he hissed. “Stay that way.”

And he reabsorbed the piece. The black on Oros receded as the colourful plants withered and died. His arm stopped struggling as Oros became fully white once more.

Aiden lay there for a moment, practically hyperventilating as he tried to process what just happened. His arm was taken over by… his own power. It had released the memory of one of the Invader’s arms and it tried to kill him in his sleep.

Oros unwrapped itself from his shaking hand, sliding back onto his skin. Despite still being in shock, Aiden rasped out a “Thank you.”

The serpent lazily nodded as it bit its tail, coiling back into sleep.

Still, he gently patted it with his stump, not quite trusting his left hand yet, the cool scales a calming sensation to his mind.

Aiden knew he was having nightmares about something, earlier this day he woke up screaming in the medical tent. He was never an avid dreamer, when he slept he simply woke up the next day. Nothing of the dreams or nightmares that seemed to decorate other people’s rest. It has been that way in both his lives and he had never truly questioned it, yet today… he knew for sure he was having a nightmare of sorts even if he was drawing a blank on the specifics, and the fact it only occurred after an encounter with the Invader?

Too much of a coincidence.

Was it also a coincidence, that he figured out a method with his power that toughened his skin with the tattoos of other animals? When he had touched his possessed arm, it was cold, stone-like, just like the sensation he felt with the Invader.

But something was off, if it was his power that did this, then why did he remember, why did he recognise the grey flesh as that of the monster he ran away from? The thing that possessed was only an arm and still-

‘Only an arm,’ he realised.

When it was out, Oros was almost three-quarters covered, meaning that much Hume was needed just to construct a single arm of the monster but did it also mean that it was stopped? Halted halfway through manifesting because there wasn’t enough to fully recreate it?

So what was made was just an arm.

He glanced at the alarm clock, 3:19 am. It was dark out, but the light of the moon was filtering through his window. He walked briefly to one of the pale rays that breached his room, putting his left arm out.

“The front right paw of a cat.”

And only the paw of a cat appeared on his skin, illuminated by the pale moon. When he closed his eyes to imagine a three-legged creature, the mental image of a cat quickly appeared.

If the tattoo was not right there on his arm, then he would’ve thought it was perfectly normal for a cat to have only three limbs, but cross-referencing that tattoo, along with the mental image he had of the cat, not to mention the lack of bilateral symmetry.

And he fixed the memory of a cat within his mind so that it now had four limbs.

The front right paw tattoo was still on his arm.

On his right arm, he resummoned the crocodile that he used for testing. There was still a small wound on it, where he broke its skin with a knife.

It was a wound, he recognised it as such, reabsorbing the crocodile, he mentally imagined it, seeing that wound on its back, then he extrapolated from the rough skin around it and added it to the hole, fixing the wound.

He recreated the tattoo, now noting that the hole was gone.

His memory was not a finite thing, used and never recovering, it seemed so long as a large portion of the creature still remained, he could repair it. It was here that the knowledge of bilateral symmetry became so important, so long as he knew half of what a creature was, he could repair its form. The behaviour would still be damaged, as evidenced by the rabbit he first tested on.

Actually, now that he thought about it, there wasn’t a lot he could practically do with this. The material animation portion of his abilities remained largely unaffected, he might be able to mentally extrapolate how the creature moves if enough of it remained but just repairing based on bilateral symmetry wouldn’t be enough. No, this was specifically useful for armouring himself. Though that too is questionable, because if he was hit by an attack that destroyed half of a tattoo, his body should similarly be heavily wounded. If anything, all this does is slightly lower his memory repair time.

It’s the ability that inspired the discovery that was most interesting.

He grabbed some paper, folding it into a vague shape, then, “Rhino Horn.”

And the ivory colour of bone covered the paper.

Knocking it with his knuckles a few times, he noted that it was as hard and rigid as an actual bone now. He reabsorbed it, noting the small sliver of black turn to white on Oros’ body.

Imbuing was the Meta Technique that put Hume into objects, making them more real and less susceptible to Bleed.

His power put his Hume into an object to animate it.

The Dire Wolf he created did not at all fall victim to Bleed, thus it could be extrapolated his power worked the same fundamental way as Imbuing.

What he would do with this information he didn’t yet know, and heavily depended on how long his creations lasted. He hadn’t yet had the opportunity to stress-test them, still, better late than never. And he needed to answer another curious question he had.

He held out his hand, “Dragon.”

Nothing happened.

Odd.

“Slime?”

No response, no tattoo.

“Goblin?”

Again, nothing.

He paced around as he thought. It seemed like he could not create fantasy creatures, but it was odd, he was able to manifest the arm of the Invader was he not? Dragons, slimes and goblins were real things here- well, at least similar creatures bore superficial resemblances to them. ‘Goblins’ in vast numbers were significantly more dangerous than the traditional game mob he was aware of.

Was he just missing something about a dragon or slime that made him unable to create them? Something that allowed him to create a shambling eldritch monster but not the base mob of most RPGs?

He wasn’t sure, he was never that into the fantastical, his knowledge of mythical creatures was nowhere as in-depth as of the real ones, a fact he was now kicking himself over. If his power was based on that inclination, then it would mean he had no access to the worst things human imagination can concoct. A creature with straight-up magical powers would be far more useful than any single animal he can create.

Oh well, the hard way it is then.

Aiden couldn’t create the Invader, if one arm took most of his Hume, then the entire thing would probably kill him outright. He would need to ask someone how Hume increased, it regenerated based on his observations, but capacity was a problem fundamentally linked to his power.

Hume, memory, material, all were things he needed for his power to fully flourish. He had one of the three in vast number, but memory was arguably one of the most dangerous things to spend.

Sighing, he looked at the clock, 3:28 am. Still very early, he wasn’t so inclined to go back to sleep. So what to do? It was dark out and there was little to do inside-

Wait.

An idea popped into his head as his eyes looked over the blurry outlines of the world.

His vision has always been poor, wearing glasses has always been a staple of his life, but perhaps…

He imagined it, the eyes of a cat, their slightly different structure, just a cat’s eyes, and he used his power, directly over his own eyes.

The world lit up.

He could see his room in a greyish tone, the outlines of everything was barely visible, but he was definitely seeing in night vision, though annoyingly, everything was still blurry.

He found his glasses, clean after almost an hour of scrubbing. Putting them on, he could now see clearly in the dark, thanks to whatever he got these eyes from.

“Looks like I’m not rid of you yet,” he muttered, adjusting his glasses.

He absorbed the eye tattoos as he turned on the lights, ‘cat eyes’, and wrote it down on a notepad, just in case.

And he did it once again.

The world drained of colour, becoming grey, but the dark corners seemed to light up, he saw the night clearly now. Glancing into the bathroom mirror, he noted that his eyes glowed slightly through his glasses.

As for why he still needed glasses was a mystery, though not at all unexpected. Even if he covered his body in scales, the flesh underneath still had the same softness, a similar principle must’ve applied to his eyes as well.

The material mattered more than he expected.

But that didn’t explain how the full creatures he made were able to sense, surely the lack of light receivers inside the material would blind them? Perhaps it was the fullness that did it, maybe created the rabbit and dire wolf with their nervous systems intact, so that their bodies still functioned as expected?

Was there even a point in attempting to explain the details of what was essentially magic?

There was, Aiden knew. For the more details on how his power, Colorful, worked, the better he could utilise it.

Aiden reabsorbed the eyes. Back onto stress testing. The most important thing he wanted to create was an effective combatant, but given his lack of good material in convenient shapes, he had to put it off.

The next thing he wanted was a pair of eyes.

The rabbit he created as a warning had worked, it sensed the infected dingoes and possibly the Invader, but he wasn’t able to properly understand it. Seeing Dr Oliver and Mr Nadir had given him an idea of what he should strive for, he needed something that could effectively communicate and work together with him, able to intelligently understand his actions and move autonomously from him. A symbiotic partnership.

There were many creatures that fit that descriptor, but on a material budget like he was, not to mention the fact this was planned to be a semi-permanent creation, so he would need to be able to house it, leaving him only a few options.

Birds.

Grey parrots, ravens and crows. All were highly intelligent and capable of human speech, grey parrots did so more often, but ravens and crows in captivity were known to learn how to talk as people did. Their senses wouldn’t be that much better than humans’, but A, Aiden was already half-blind so any kind of extra eyes would be a plus for him, and B, they would be capable of flight.

Of the three, he decided he would go first with a crow. Though they weren’t known to speak as parrots did, he had a feeling he could overcome that with his power, they were also smaller than ravens, making them more compact.

On a piece of paper, he wrote down the things he wanted, a loyal, intelligent crow that could talk with him.

Three ideas, three words, all pumped into the same thing. The most he’s done thus far, the dire wolf only had two, loyal and afraid. With four bookmarks placed in the dictionary, he used his power.

Oros stirred, the growing black a sign of his Hume usage, growing all the way to a quarter of the white serpent.

The tattoo appeared on his right arm, two dimensional at a glance, but it was moving even as a tattoo, turning around curiously at its surroundings. Only Oros displayed any semblance of movement whilst it was still a tattoo, all others had remained still until the moment he pushed them into something.

Ripping out some spare work paper, he began folding the vague form of the bird, the task significantly more difficult now that he was missing a hand. The tattoo watched with undisguised curiosity as he worked, and when he was done, the shape leapt of his arm without encouragement.

It was strange, watching his tattoos unfold. Like lifelike drawings, they dotted the surface of his skin, showing only one side when not possessing something, appearing almost like flat 2D drawings. It was when they moved to possess something that they unfolded, the drawing turning three-dimensional, covering every nook and cranny of the animated object until the crow perked its beaked head at him.

He read the definitions in the dictionary as he worked, as well as the animal encyclopedia he had on hand, and so, he tested it with a hesitant “Hello?”

And it opened its beak, “Greetings.”