Trials. Follow the path. Reap what you sow. Marked.

Seeker.

Each phrase reverberated through my mind as I sat in my meditations, each one serving to clarify a memory as substantial and hard to grasp as a half-remembered dream. A name lay hidden in that dream somewhere, but it refused to reveal itself no matter what direction I looked, what leverage I used. The name screamed of answers, answers that might justify all the suffering I’d endured.

Had the loss of everything I loved only been a trial? A trial for whom? Seeking whom? Of course, the context of the near-death experience had given me clues that fueled my suspicions.

The King and I, so long ago, had discovered ancient texts filled with hidden knowledge. Of course we had used that knowledge. Fate had practically preordained that two young nobles would try to abuse power that had seemingly fallen into their hands.

How to summon a Deep God, was what the book showed us. Summoned probably hadn’t been the right translation, with twenty years of hindsight, more like ‘commune with’. That hadn’t been enough for we ambitious, power hungry young men. No, we had needed a way to stamp ourselves onto the world, so instead we had tried to shackle a Deep God.

I had spent years thinking that the curse had been retribution for attempted enslavement, the destruction of my everything a just punishment for my hubris. But what if that being hadn’t even noticed? With the knowledge I had after all this time, I doubt it even thought our little hacked together ritual had been a shadow of a threat.

Seeker. Maybe the text hadn’t even been forbidden knowledge at all, just instructions for how to Seek? Seek who though? We had thought we were summoning a Deep God, but the entity had named a name, now just a fading concept at the back of my mind, slipping further and further out of reach.

So, what then was the trial? I suspected that overcoming the curse had been the trial. The great mind had said I received the Mark of Selfishness, which had fit me like a glove back then. Assuming the curse was the Mark, then I’d overcome the curse by putting others before myself, to stay in this mudhole and fight, against all my instincts telling me otherwise.

Did a second Mark mean I was cursed a second time? Two curses? I hadn’t seen any evidence of a second curse yet, but maybe ‘follow the path’ was meant to be the second curse. Or Trial. The concept behind the voice hadn’t sounded like it was supposed to be a horrible affliction, just a test. Was mass murder and enforced wandering ‘just a test’ to a Deep God?

Then the most important question. What was it all for? What we had originally intended had fallen apart, bringing down my world with it, if not the King’s, so what was the purpose, the end goal? The mind had just assumed I knew, and maybe I should have, but it was the biggest unanswered question. I didn’t appear to have any choice but to see the current events through to the end, in any event.

I looked out over the town and forests through my awareness of the Flow and my mental filaments. While ruminating on the unknowable, I’d unconsciously fallen into a rhythm, pushing and pulling the currents in long waves that undulated out into the world. Each wave brought increased clarity, filling in details that I hadn’t thought possible. I sensed everyone in the estate as distinct people, the Baron in the courtyard, the mass of buildings and townsfolk, the trees, everything. Trying to force my attention onto everything at once split my head into shards of pain, but I could hold a fair amount in the forefront of my consciousness, sensing the details.

Stunned, I realized that anywhere the rhythmic waves of my consciousness traveled it pushed out the influence of the Inculid ritual. Almost like my area of influence superseded everything else, until it faded away at the edges. Taking that a step further, I concentrated on the furthest edge of my awareness, closest to the Labyrinth entrance.

I was taken aback as I realized that my waves were incredibly similar to the Inculid Queen’s. We had different rhythms, different flavors, but they were cut from the same cloth. What did it mean? Her power, her area of influence, dwarfed mine.

One thing was certain; whatever the Mark was, whatever the meaning behind being a Seeker, I had reached a new level of power. A leap bigger than the one I’d taken by discovering I could see the Flow, but more profound. And I didn’t understand it. It had taken me years to figure out what I could do with the Flow, and with these new abilities, I was forced to learn while weathering the attacks of a malicious race of deep ones, who for unknowable alien reasons decided to consume a mid-sized logging town.

I’d get no more answers, as I was now, so I withdrew my active awareness from the Flow, settling down to rest. Aside from the near-death state of the previous night, I hadn’t actually slept in what felt like years. Healing fixed the injuries, but it took a while for the body to realize that they were gone. It also didn’t substitute for sleep. My body and mind screamed at me to go to sleep, so with one last sweep of my mind out over my domain, I closed my eyes and let the impressions of the world from the Flow lull me to sleep.

###

I woke up, comfortably tangled in blankets, and allowed myself to remain in my half-asleep daze. Nobody slapping me awake, nobody throwing things at my head. I’d forgotten what it meant to wake up like a normal person.

I levered myself out of bed into a slouched sitting position, resigned to having to get up and go out. If I was going to harangue others for being lazy, I’d at least have to have the appearance of being a diligent busybody.

I reached into my cubby for a fresh set of clothes, and came up empty. Empty not because I didn’t have spare sets of clothes, but because the space in my cubby was… big. Much bigger than it should have been, so big that it felt cavernous to my searching mind.

I felt all the odds and ends I’d stored in there hovering at the edges as if pushed aside for a tide. Manipulating the currents, I brought everything into a pile and pulled out articles of clothing.

Once dressed, I poked my mind back into the void I called the cubby. There shouldn’t be any external currents or flows to carry things around, at least not that I’d ever experienced, but then again, the cubby had only ever been as large as a small room.

I stuck my hand through the Flow, trying to feel a difference, what had changed. I paired my mental prodding with my hand, pushing at the infinite edges of the space. There was an odd feeling there, it shouldn’t feel like anything except maybe an impression of stretching but not being able to reach. This felt like something substantial was just out of reach.

I gathered more of my new mental strength and pushed… hard. My hand pushed through something, and half my body fell into the cubby. Panicked, I yanked myself out and withdrew my hand.

My breath came in strangled gasps.

“What the deeps damned, cursed hells was that”?

Looking down at my hand, I slowly calmed down. Some sort of silt or soil covered the hand. My hand. It didn’t feel like my hand. Or it did, but only slowly returning to me, as if I’d interrupted some process.

I’d pushed through to somewhere. That shouldn’t have been possible. I called it the void for a reason, there was nothing there, just a weird sideways trick of the mind and Flow that led to a place right next to the place I was, containing nothingness.

Where was that somewhere? My hand had returned to feeling like my hand, and on closer examination the dirt appeared to be normal loam you would find in any random forest. Maybe even the nearby forest.

“Shit.” Too much had changed too fast. My power spiraled out of my understanding faster than I could keep up with the new developments.

It hadn’t felt wrong, penetrating the void, just different than I’d come to expect from all my experience with it. It had always felt like sliding my mind and hand just out of view, but never away to some other place.

I needed to experiment, to understand. If I could use it to reach to somewhere else, a real place, did that mean I could use it to travel there? It sounded risky. Risk.

I clutched my head as a little batch of memories unlocked itself in the back of my mind.

“’Have we become so risk averse?’” I said, echoing the thoughts that the voice had forced into my mind.

I’d never been risk averse, as could be attested by my life as a whole. I grinned a little feral grin to myself.

I stuck my hand through the currents back into the cubby and repeated the attempt. Pushing through the edges of the void, I searched for the same feeling I’d achieved only a few moments before. The sensations were the normal stuff, just an endless ‘edge’ that I could never reach, at least until I put a little more oomph into it, pumping my now plentiful power into it.

My hand slid out of the void to somewhere else, but instead of letting panic cloud my judgement I let the feeling sink and grabbed a handful of whatever my hand fell on. The void sucked power out of me like an ocean vortex pulling a ship into its grasp. Gasping at the power of the pull, I yanked my hand back through gripping whatever it was I’d found.

Falling to my knees on the floor, I heaved for breath. Just that little act had consumed over half my power. Over half my power after it had grown by an order of magnitude since the day before. If I had tried the same stunt as I had been, I’d have been left a dry, powerless husk on the floor. Maybe that was why I’d never discovered such a thing; I just hadn’t had the necessary tools.

I opened my hand, letting whatever I gripped fall to the floor. The hand in front of me felt like that of a stranger, but I’d pushed more through this time, all the way up to mid arm, where the feeling of strangeness faded away. Familiarity bled back into the appendage. It felt so alien.

I examined the prize that I’d dropped. Completely different than the normal dirt I’d picked up before. Doing a little dance of excitement there on the floor, I scooped up my prize and dumped it on the desk near the bed and sat down in the chair to gaze at it with wide eyes. The implications of such a thing… endless.

My skills with the cubby were already unique, as far as I knew, and until recently I’d gone far out of my way to hide the means, if not the act, of using it. This changed everything though. If I could figure out a way to use it to go places, I would become a nightmare for anyone trying to keep me contained, or prisoner.

I cackled to myself, my energy renewed. Not even Clyde could ruin my mood. I might even compliment his fashion sense if he walked into the room right at this moment. I’d be able to hold this over Kan’on’s head forever... He already peeked at me when I used the cubby, now I’d would get to see his bulging eyes as I appeared out of nowhere and kicked dirt on his fancy clothes.

If I could figure out how to use it, that is. I’d reached two different places but hadn’t done anything differently that I could feel. There must be a way to direct it. Another thing I’d need to experiment with.

Newly energized, I realized that my stomach was on the verge of revolt, so I threw on the clothes that had started it all, then walked out of the room to find some food and take a bath.

The midafternoon sun still peaked in through the windows, so I had plenty of time before I had to worry about whatever nonsense the Inculid Queen decided to send my way tonight.