“____” speaking

‘____’ thoughts

*____* telepathy

translated from Eldritch

---------------------

Maka had called me to come physically talk to her; most likely it was about the constant state of near depression I had been in for the past ten days.

*Do you really need me to come?*

*Yes. Now hurry up please.*

*Fine.*

The travel was quick and painless as was normal, allowing me to arrive at the mansion in only a few minutes.

“Maka what did you want?”

“Well for starters I want to know why you’re still in this mood you’ve had the last few days. Second off, when are you going to start the training with Ormonde?”

“You know why I’m in the this ‘mood’ as you so put it, it’s the same reason I haven’t started training Ormonde yet as well.”

“Humor me.”

“Ugh. Really?”

“Yes. Really.”

“Akhan let me win and I don’t know why. Even though I’m in control now I still don’t trust that something isn’t going to happen when I try and use that part of me. Also it went through some strange changes last time I used it so I’m really not comfortable using it.”

‘And the boredom coming from Ormonde hasn’t helped either.’

“Basically you’re scared because you’re paranoid.”

I had to think about it for a second before begrudgingly agreeing with her.

“Well here’s what I suggest you do. First off, worrying about it will get you nowhere if you don’t test the waters so start small. What did the changes do?”

“I think I’m able to control one of the parts now.”

“Good. So start there. Learn to use that better and slowly move on till you’re sure you can handle any sudden changes.”

“I’ll try that. Also what has Ormonde been doing recently?”

I hadn’t tried to read his memories for fear of doing a similar thing as before and unlocking a door that should remain closed for as long as possible.

“He’s learning about basic math and how to read and write.”

“Ahh. Well good to know.”

‘That explains the boredom perfectly. Can’t say I blame him since I would also be bored.’

“So, um, you need any help here or can I go?”

“I’m good here for now so you’re free to do what you want.”

“Pft. I’m always free to do what I want.”

Maka merely rolled her eyes at my reply and resumed working while tuning me out. Taking the hint to leave, I left and headed towards my pond and then beyond it. I wanted to make sure I was a good distance away from my pond in case something went wrong before I started to try and use my Eldritch form.

‘Here goes nothing.’

I closed my eyes hard enough to see starts as I began to turn my internal store of Arcane into Edin. It felt like a hole had opened up inside me as the Arcane was eaten and I stopped. The feeling was unnerving and constricting like air was being forced out of my lungs even after they were empty.

‘This isn’t working. Maybe a smaller amount?’

Once again the same feeling came causing me to stop; this wasn’t going as planned. Not wanting to force myself to go past what was comfortable, I instead tried to use my link as the base for converting Edin. Although I didn’t feel any discomfort, the Edin dissipated almost instantly instead of gathering. I was going to have to force myself to use my internal Arcane for the Edin or never be able to get into the form of my own free will.

“One more try then. One more try. Just one.”

Just like before, the Edin began to quickly consume the Arcane in my body no matter how fast I replenished it with my link. Even when it felt like my body was trying to turn itself inside out I tried not to stop causing my body to shake from stress and exertion.

Then everything stopped. The pain was gone as was the choking feeling that had persisted through the entire process. Instead there was a wet and warm sensation that swept over me before stopping at my back and focusing in one spot. I let myself fall to my knees and took as many deep breaths as I could until I began to feel lightheaded.

My internal store of Arcane was gone and I wasn’t dead or having an attack; it was a completely foreign concept after the precedent that had been set. The Arcane that my link was feeding me was being turned into Edin the moment it entered my body prior to being dispersed to each limb and the new one that was on my back. It seemed to be a reoccurring theme to have this same upper right tentacle be an outlier ever since I fought the Eldritch dog.

I turned my head to take a look at it, the clear liquid was viscous and much, much thinner that I had ever seen it being roughly the thickness of my fist instead of my head. As it had in the past, the tentacle hung around my face as if looking at me.

“What do you want?”

The question was growled with a mix of frustration and annoyance only to be answered by the expected silence until the tentacle retreated, wrapping itself around my arm as if hugging it. My attempts to shake it off only caused it to tighten more in order to stay on; a small voice in the back of my head was telling me to ignore it.

Having finally given up on removing the tentacle from its current perch, I instead began to try and move the Edin inside me around to see if I could control it to any degree. Grasping the Edin was hard and moving it was even harder, but I finally managed to move it slightly after trying to manipulate it in the same way I use Arcane.

With more confidence than my trials warranted I began to take larger steps in moving the Edin only to be punished by crippling pain as if my blood had suddenly tried to flow backwards. My own frustration lingered with what I was getting from Ormonde and for a second the distinction between whose feelings were who’s disappeared. The result left me angrier than I should have been and disorientated as I tried to sort out my own feeling and reestablish the divide between us.

After calming myself and sorting out the issue of mixed emotions I sat down against a tree and thought of what I needed to do next. Using Edin was going to get me no where until I understood it and I could now give words spoken in Eldritch the same power that they would otherwise lack. Edin was being released from my body naturally in my current state so I didn’t need to worry about trying to figure out how to do that on my own and changing back to my normal form was going to be the next largest roadblock until I moved on to trying to control my tentacle.

The hope of reverting was nonexistent and I was more inclined to just shut off the supply of Arcane I was getting from my link in order to starve the Edin out until is dissipated. Knowing that it was most likely going to hurt, I braced myself and stopped the Arcane from entering my body. To say the effect was instant would be an understatement and my body felt like it was trying to eat itself from the inside out while the voice in the back of my head started to scream the word ‘wrong’ over and over again.

As the amount of remaining Edin lowered the pain magnified exponentially and I gave in to the voice that was now screaming louder than my own thoughts and let Arcane enter my body again allowing the Edin to replenish itself. The voice in my head stopped talking but it had annoyed me and now it was going to pay for it.

‘Alright voice in my head. If that’s not how I return to normal then what do I do since you seem to know how to do this so~ much better than I do.’

Instead of answering with words, I was met with the mental image of a small orb of Edin being fed by a steady stream of Arcane without eating everything around it. Other imaged and feeling entered my minds eye and I was able to put together a general idea of what needed to be done.

‘So correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve basically starved this part of myself and need to wait until it's full and then I can condense it and return to normal?’

I was sent a thought of agreement with my assessment but a disagreement on the word normal. The voice finally spoke again only to tell me ‘this normal not other state’. There was no arguing with it about what was and wasn’t normal so I just ignored it and waited, not bothering to try and control the tentacle since it seemed to have a mind of its own.

A gentle nudging against my cheek from something that was wet and warm than should be allowed roused me from a nap I didn’t realize I had taken. It was dark around me and I seemed to have slept the remainder of the day and partway into the night if the positions of the visible moons was anything to go by. The tentacle that ad been poking my cheek did so again in order to ensure that I was awake causing me to brush it away slowly.

I straightened my back and watched the tentacle as it coiled itself around my arm again while vibrating slightly, seemingly content to its new position. Sighing felt appropriate but a waste of energy so instead I checked the flow of Edin within my body.

Things had changed. Instead of a one directional torrent that I could only feel and barely move without consequence there was now a singular point in which all the Edin seemed to gather before being radiated out along my veins and spreading out just like blood before returning. Both surprisingly and unsurprisingly, the Edin had bunched under the base of the only tentacle that had formed itself once I got into this state and was no longer ravenously eating all the Arcane that was entering my body.

It was interesting to watch since, aside from the designated areas, the Edin was ignoring the Arcane and as a result my body had filled with it again and I was actually in a halfway state between my spirit form and the corporeal form that Edin normally put me in. There was no voice in my head anymore; just a feeling of happy satisfaction and fullness lingered in its place. It had been right; waiting out the Edin was the correct thing to do and how I now felt more natural in my body than I had been in a very, very long time.

I stood and nearly fell from shock as I was bombarded by Akhan’s voice.

“”

After leaving me with his ‘words of wisdom’, Akhan disappeared from my consciousness and retreated back to his domain. He didn’t normally do this, or anything for that matter, without me pestering him with the threat of sicking Mark on him. Once again I was left with a bitter taste in my mouth from not understanding his motives as helpful as they seemed.

The next thing I needed to worry about was becoming fully ethereal again seeing as I was stuck between the two states. Instead of cutting off any connections like I had tried prior to the Edin making itself at home, I just tried to shift back to my ethereal form. Unlike the forced cut off, there was no backlash or panicked voice in my head. Instead everything went as it normally did and I was ethereal without any problems. The tentacle had shrunken down to almost nothing before being absorbed by my body and the Edin was thrumming happily without interfering with anything inside me.

With the first part of my new task done, I now needed to start training Ormonde. It felt right to do so, like I would be hurting a part of myself if I didn’t help bolster his resistance to Edin and the Eldritch language. Before meeting his parents I would have been cautious or even outright resistant to go to his house, but now I had a reason to go and was less caught up about doing so since I knew that, if nothing else, at least Maka would talk to me.

I was undecided on how to begin his training and the walk back to the mansion gave me ample time to ponder different things I could do. The fastest and easiest method was to do it while he was asleep and let his unconscious mind develop the resistance to it instead of him needing to pull up a mental barrier each time he face an Eldritch like I had to. Although convenient, it wasn't the safest method and carried a high level of risk to it since it could warp his personality or outright destroy it if things got out of hand.

Edin acted like a poison to living this, slowly corroding them until their humanity or earthly connections had all but disappeared making them ripe for the Eldritch to take over. Thus, like any poison, a resistance needed to be build up over time and in small manageable doses since Edin was highly addictive, giving the person it affected a power trip. Not even the Eldritch were immune to high levels of Edin addiction and some whittled themselves away into empty shells just to get more of it in exchange for their lives. I didn’t want Ormonde to become addicted to Edin as human became addicted to Edin much faster than spirits of Eldritch did and I personally knew those limits since I had been pushed past them.

That was the primary danger of influencing Ormonde while he slept. If his mind decided that it enjoyed Edin then he would be addicted to it at an unfixable level and the craving would destroy him in months. It meant that I had to make Edin undesirable and have him reject it and, in a sense, me as well. I could use the fear he felt towards the Eldritch dog as a basis for this but I needed him to fear me without wanting to run away from me.

All of my contemplation came to a stop when I reached the mansion’s wrought iron gates. I needed to make a decision and I knew what I had to do even if I didn’t want to do it. Like a gently breeze, I raised myself up and went through the side of the house and made my way to Ormonde’s room. Very little had changed in the last few years. A bed now took the place of the crib and a small shelf with a few books on it sat beside a chest of drawers.

I moved closer to the small figure that had curled itself into a ball underneath the strewn sheets. He looked so peaceful and at ease knowing that he was safe and I was going to have to ruin it. My feet tapped lightly against the ground as I became corporeal and stood over Ormonde; the Edin I was releasing was making him shift in discomfort. It was with a heavy heart that I shattered the silence.

“”

It was only the first letter of the Eldritch alphabet but because of that it held more power than it should. The one letter spoken at nigh unperceivable levels was all it took to destroy the dream’s that had graced Ormonde, replacing them with nightmares fueled by the deep seeded fears of his mind.

The raw primal fear from Ormonde hit me in the gut hard enough that I felt physical pain even though it wasn’t the first time I had felt it. It hurt enough that I teared up and was barely suppressing sobs of my own from the memories of nightmares that easily surpassed the horrors I had unleashed upon him. I didn’t leave Ormonde alone that night; instead I spent the entire time watching him to make sure he was going to be okay.

By the end of the week I had slept for maybe three hours, the fear was constant even during the day as he fought against the single letter, trying to conquer its influence. I was exhausted from constantly supplying Edin and from a lack of sleep but I couldn’t stop until he’d won. He didn’t even try to visit me during the time it took him to finally win over the letter; it hurt but I couldn’t blame him.

Our normalcy had been broken because of my actions. I had become accustomed to do things with him and at some point I even began to look forward to it; I just didn’t realize it until now. The epiphany only brought pain of a different sorts for me to deal with and in the end I secluded myself for a few days in order to lapse into a near comatose state of much needed rest.

The first thing I noticed when I woke was that the pull I normally felt that let me know where Ormonde was had changed. It was no longer a vague direction that had a random strength to it. I knew exactly where he was in both distance and position. The pull was also much stronger, more demanding instead of the normal informative pull that I was accustomed to.

After emerging from my burrow, I waited till night and returned to the mansion to test Ormonde. His sleeping pattern had returned to being calm and at ease, the nightmare seemingly a thing of the past.

“”

There was no reaction from him, not even movement. He had won. The next few letters would be easier for him to fight against. The first held to much power and, as if to compensate for that, the following four had a vastly reduced strength before it once again rose to a more balanced power level.

“”

The fear hit again; not as hard as before, but still hard enough to bring me to tears. Once again I didn’t sleep and merely watched and waited.

It became very apparent during the fourth day when I was unable to stand up and couldn’t see straight that I was going to wear myself out far faster than Ormonde was going to become resistant to each letter. There was a need for pacing and recovery that I hadn’t thought to factor into my plans. In short we both needed a break.

I tested his resistance to the second letter after another six days and was overjoyed to see no reaction at all. Content with Ormonde’s current state I left for my pond. Since I started the resistance process I had gradually moved it closer and closer to the mansion; being too far away felt unnatural and made me uneasy because of the strengthened pull.

A month and a half had passed in order to make Ormonde resistant to the first two letters and there were another twenty some odd left to go. Both of us were going to be getting a much needed break; him from the nightmares and myself from the exhaustion and crippling fear that he was transmitting to me which in turn made me feel awful.

Ormonde came to the relocated pond two weeks after I stopped visiting him at night and giving him nightmares. I could feel him making his way towards me and was relieved to be able to do something that wasn’t going to potentially destroy both of us.

“Did your pond get closer to my house?”

“I’ve been slowly moving it for a while now.”

“Um, why?”

“No reason really.”

‘Unless you count the feeling of emptiness that hangs in my gut when I’m too far away for long periods of time.’

“So what are we doing today?”

“Huh? Why would you think I had a plan?”

“Well, you’ve basically chosen what we’ve been doing for a while now so I figured you had something planned.”

“Oh. I guess that makes sense.”

‘Had I really taken over choosing what we were doing?’

“Um. Well for starters I’d like to see where you are in terms of using earth Arcane and then we may do some mock battles or I can start teaching you another type of Arcane, whichever you prefer.”

With a quick nod Ormonde agreed to my on the spot idea and started to show me how his progress with earth Arcane had come. His rapid improvements had slowed down but his learning curve was still shockingly fast and I foresaw him catching up to me within a year of practice.

“So. Battle or practice?”

“Battle. I’m sick of practicing ever since I started having to learn math.”

“Alright in that case we need to set some ground rules so neither of us get hurt. Battles tend to always move around so there’s no limit to where we go as long as none of our attacks are hard enough to damage anything. As for what we’ll be attacking each other with.”

I stopped talking and made a ball of dirt that was very loosely packed and held together with Arcane. Once I finished creating the ball, I handed it to Ormonde and let him get a sense of what he needed to create.

“Spikes, chunks of earth, pillars, projectiles, anything goes as long as it’s made the same way this is since it’ll leave a mark but won’t hurt.”

“Will you also be using earth Arcane?”

“Yup. Even playing field for now but once you get better at fighting I’ll start mixing in different types. On that note, ready?”

Before he could respond I sent a dirt ball at his chest with enough force to possible knock the wind out of him if it had been solid. Ormonde looked at me with a disgusted face.

“First rule of fighting! Your enemy won’t wait for you, so don’t wait for your enemy! Surprise will win you half of your battles!”

With my words of wisdom said I began to pelt Ormonde with a collection of small dirt balls and watched to see what he would do. His response was lackluster, a little bit of floundering on the ground until he got himself behind a tree and had some time to think.

“Second rule! Your enemy will move to take any advantage they can! You should be doing the same!”

Earthen spikes aimed at the back of the tree Ormonde was behind came from either side of the tree most likely spearing him if they where more than slightly compressed dust. I could hear the grunts that were the result of my attack.

“You just died. Get out here so we can start again.”

Ormonde came out from behind the tree, two very large dirt patches standing out against his skin and clothes.

“Couldn’t you have gone easier on me?”

“Nope. Going easy isn’t an option if I want to keep you alive in the future.”

“Fine. Any more of those rules of yours.”

“Yeah, always be on the move, run if you can’t win.”

I started to count off all my rules on my fingers when a ball of dirt hit me in the face. My mouth opened even wider as I coughed and tried to scrape the dirt off of my tongue in between glaring at Ormonde through watery eyes. Ormonde was running away from me as fast as he could while screaming ‘rule one’.

“I’ll get you for tha- Mpth! Ack!”

Another dirt ball hit me in the face causing me to inwardly moan.

‘I didn’t even get all the dirt out from the first one. This you know means war.’

I ran off after Ormonde and we spent the remainder of the day pelting each other with clods of dirt and running around at least half of the surrounding forest. There was no point in playing games like tag or hide and go seek anymore since both had been rendered obsolete by either our strengthened pull towards each other or the shift into live battle training.

We spent the next two months having mock fights and getting incredibly dirty by the end of each one before I started to use other types of Arcane in our fights. Since I was going to be teaching Ormonde wind Arcane next that was what I used when we fought so he could get a sense of one of the practical application of it.

We had finished another of our bouts and we’re sitting against one of the trees that dotted the area around my pond. I had thought long and hard about what I was about to do even when I knew what the outcome could be.

“Hey Ormonde there’s something that I think you should know.”

“What is it?‘

“You know how you had all those nightmares a while back?”

“Yeah but how do you know about them, I didn’t tell anyone.”

“I know because I was the one who gave them to you.”

If I pulled my knees any closer to my face the two would be merging together but it still didn’t feel like it was going to be enough to hide from the adverse reaction I was expecting.

“Though so.”

Ormonde pumped his fist and I was left with no clue as to what was happening.

“Am I dreaming or are you not mad at me?”

“Why would I be mad at you?”

“Because of what I did!”

I waved my hands frantically in front of me as if it would explain and emphasize my point.

“But you had a reason to do it right?”

“Well . . . yeah.”

“And you felt bad about doing it right?”

“Yeah. . . ”

“So just tell me why you were doing it and stop thinking I’ll be mad at you.”

“It was to make you resistant to Edin and the Eldritch.”

“Like that dog thing?”

“Yeah”

‘And like me.’

We sat in silence for a minute before Ormonde stood up.

“Well I’m gonna head back now since it’s gonna take me ages to clean up again. I swear Maka’s going to kill one of us soon.”

“You could just take the dirt off you. I showed you how.”

“True, but it’s the only time I ever get to see Maka actually angry without fearing for my life.”

It wasn’t until Ormonde was gone that I realized he had known, or at least suspected, it was me without me telling him.

‘Another thing to chalk up to the linked emotions I guess.’

The next time Ormonde returned I started to have him work on using his earth Arcane fast and more accurate in a shorter timeframe before I moved on to teach him wind Arcane. While he was doing that, I spent my time trying to make sense of what Akhan had told me about space and its relationship to distance. I was getting nowhere with it and was at a loss.

“So more fighting today?”

“Yeah but one small change from normal.”

“You’re going to be using another type of Arcane?”

“Sure we’ll go with that. Only corporeal bodies today.”

Both of us took our starting positions and I tapped into the orb of Edin and woke it up, allowing the tentacle to grow and form. The change hurt, not quite as much as the last time it happened, but it still hurt nonetheless.

“Water? And are you okay? That looked like it hurt.”

“Sure. And I’m fine. It’s just a little painful at first.”

The fully formed tentacle vibrated slightly while coiling itself around my arm like a snake, the resulting warmth and pressure felt reassuring and welcoming.

‘How can something be so creepy and comforting at the same time?’

I would never understand and the resulting sigh of exasperation was an apt result of my feeling on the situation. Ormonde was holding up just fine in the presence of the Edin I was emitting which was nice since my control was so poor that most of the Edin I was creating was leaking out of me.

Since I was using the tentacle this time it meant we were doing close combat. Each swing I made had a little bit of Edin in it in order to test Ormonde and myself on our resistances and stamina in the face of it. Ormonde wasn’t accustomed to the fight getting up close and personal so he was at a disadvantage for our first few spars.

Eventually he got used to it and started trying to dodge or block the strikes I sent towards him with my fist, the tentacle or both together. There was no question that I could easily win, but that didn’t mean I wanted to. I needed experience using my tentacle and Ormonde needed to learn to fight all types of enemies.

Each fight was much shorter this time than any of our other since the Edin ate away at our strength as if it was nonexistent. In a quarter of the time it would normal take us to finish we were on the ground utterly and completely exhausted.

“Stupid. . Huff. . . Tentacle.”

Ormonde was breathing even harder than I was and when he caught his breath he finished his thought.

“Why is it so strong?”

“No clue.”

‘And I’m even starting to like having it around. It’s like another arm that I needed but didn’t know about.’

The tentacle had once again wrapped itself around me and was vibrating happily. It was becoming a customary action that each time was less and less annoying and unnerving.

“So next time want to work on wind Arcane?”

“Yeah. I need more ways to fight against you other than earth.”

“Good. You gonna head home now?”

“In a minute since I’m so tired.”

We both lay there in relative silence while recovering from our respective exhaustions. Ormonde left and once night fell I went to the mansion as well. It was time to start on the letters again.

Like every other time I had visited him Ormonde was fast asleep unaware that I was there. I knew what was coming and didn’t look forward to it.

“”

For some reason this time the fear was almost as bad as the first, bringing me to my knees and causing Ormonde to start moving frequently. I managed to stand using his bed for support but each time I moved away from it I fell down again. My legs felt like putty and their shaking mirrored it too. I had no intentions of leaving but it quickly became apparent that standing and watching like I had done in the past wasn’t a viable option this time so was going to have to sit.

I leaned against the bed and tried to control my breathing in order to avoid giving it to the fear I was and had felt. At some point in the night Ormonde stopped moving around and settled back into a restful sleep. He hadn’t won against the letter yet but he had gotten close enough that he could hold off its influence even while asleep; having to fight against me while being slowly weakened by Edin seemed to have helped his resistance.

‘I’ll just close my eyes for a little since everything seems to have worked out alright.’

Any dream I would have had was forgotten, surrendered to the inky darkness of sleep and thankfully so. Nightmares were the only thing I ever saw, each of them tailored to weaken my resolve or break me down into an empty husk. Worse was when I dreamed of the past. Those nights could rival even the worst machinations the human mind could come up with, except their fantasy was a reality I had experienced.

The hands were getting closer, each finger tipped with a needle that could and would cause me insurmountable amounts of pain. One of the hands reached out, nearly touching me as I did everything I could to push myself through the wall that was at my back and had held me in place for far too long. My own arms were useless as they were always pinned to my side, the wall, or each other and my legs refused to respond to my commands.

Mumbling in words I didn’t understand was accompanied a rough push on my shoulder. The voice and gesture repeated again before the hand gripped my shoulder, holding tightly and in my mind painfully. The voice resounded once again with slightly clearer quality while my body was shaken back and forth like a leaf in a violent storm.

Panic set in and I tried to struggle and fight back but an unseen force weighed down my body. I heard someone call my name, weakly and almost hidden beneath the cacophony of guttural laughter that had always come whenever I was experimented on. My name was called again this time being followed by more words that I couldn’t make up.

Each subsequent calling seemed to warp and distort everything in my vision. Light came out of nowhere and eradicated the scene in front of me as I opened my eyes to see Maka and Ormonde looking at me.

Ormonde was much closer; his hand on my shoulder from trying to wake me and Maka was on her side for some reason. I blinked the sleep from my eyes and looked around me; I had crawled underneath Ormonde’s bed and pressed myself against the wall it was up against.

“You okay?”

“I think so. It was just a bad dream.”

‘It was just a dream. He’s gone and I’m no longer trapped there. I’m safe. He can’t hurt me any more. I’m safe.’

No matter how many times I tried to reassure myself, the fact that I knew I what had been left behind after that time would mean I could never be safe or at ease. Maka spoke breaking my train of thought and the stillness that had permeated the air while both of them were watching me.

“So do you want to come out from underneath the bed so we can talk?”

“I’m fine here for the moment. What did you want to talk about?”

Maka’s head disappeared as she sat up and leaned against the bed even though she couldn’t touch it.

“Well for starters, why are you under Ormonde’s bed.”

“Don’t know. I was only leaning against it last night. How I got under here is anyone’s guess.”

“So what were you doing here?”

“Making Ormonde more resistant to Eldritch stuff. I’ve watched him each time I’ve done it to make sure nothing happens. Don’t know why I fell asleep this time. Anything else?”

“When do you think you’ll be coming out from underneath the bed?”

“Not for a while. I don’t think I could move even if I tried.”

“Alright. Let me know if you need anything. Ormonde let’s go we need to start your lessons.”

Ormonde groaned but complied and I was left alone in the room not knowing what to do with myself in the meantime. It had been one of the dreams where the pain stayed even after I had woken up, my shoulder hurt as did the four burning sections on my abdomen. With nothing to do but wait out my body’s decision to stop working I closed my eyes and let myself fall into a state of half sleep.

The next time I opened my eyes I was in the corner of the kitchen instead of under Ormonde’s bed. I didn’t need to guess who moved me it was easy to tell and the blanket was both warm and welcome.

“Awake again?”

I grunted to let Maka know I had heard her and continued to lay where I was instead of getting up.

“I didn’t think you would fall back to sleep.”

“Neither did I. Guess I needed it.”

“Well nightmares can be stressful.”

“A nightmare would have been welcome over what I had.”

“That bad huh?”

“Hmmm.”

A calm and relaxed quiet set itself up as Maka went about doing what she was doing and I slowly roused myself and stood.

“So how goes the Eldritch ‘stuff’ as you so put it.”

“Slowly and painfully but he’s becoming resistant to it.”

“I expected slow but painful?”

“No for him, for me.”

“Ah, gotcha. Honestly you haven’t been looking great; even the time you were here you looked sick.”

I didn’t continue the conversation with Maka and left after placing the folded blanket on the counter.

*It’s rather rude to leave in the middle of a conversation you know.*

*I just can’t do this right now. Too many things are happening at once and I’m becoming overwhelmed.*

*So ask for help.*

*No one can help me with this.*

My hand drifted to my still burning stomach out of habit.

‘I should have had a near infinite amount of time still so why did it start to hurt?’

I continued to ignore Maka’s continued attempts to help and found myself walking around the forest aimlessly instead of going towards my pond.

A month passed before I stopped walking randomly and returned to my pond and Ormonde, who no doubt was going to be displeased with my absence. The break had helped me in the short run, but the memories and thoughts I was trying to bury refused to stay in the parts of my mind I didn’t visit.

There was no point in continuing with the resistance training if I couldn’t get myself out of the slump I was in since it would only lead to one of us getting hurt or something worse. Instead I started to have Ormonde learn wind Arcane using the same method I had done with earth Arcane. He picked it up much faster than the first time he had to learn to use Arcane and the prior experience was the most likely reason for that.

“Vio, are we going to be fighting today?”

“Dunno, you want to?”

I had been trying to make some headway with spatial Arcane while Ormonde worked on wind and the occasional break was both nice and frustrating.

“Can we? I want to see if using wind Arcane will help me fight you.”

“Sure.”

I fed the spatial Arcane I was messing with into my link in hopes of making the strip for spatial Arcane grow since it hadn’t done so in a few weeks. As per the rules we had established, both of us started without having gathered any raw Arcane or filtering anything. I wasn’t using my tentacle today since I was still couldn’t use it and Arcane in tandem despite the happy balance I had reached between the two.

“Ready?”

Ormonde nodded.

“Go!”

Both of us jumped back, separating ourselves in order to gather an abundance whatever type of Arcane we were going to be using. In order to be fair I was only using what Ormonde could use until he learned how to use types that I couldn’t.

Having gathered sufficient earth Arcane to mount a small offensive I launched a dirt ball at Ormonde while moving myself into an area where he would be unable to see me. Ormonde protected himself with an earthen wall and in doing so had to expend a good portion of the Arcane he had gathered. There was a chance that he could surround himself with walls and hide in order to buy time but I had ways around that that he knew of.

Instead of letting the wall go to waste as a one time use Ormonde kept moving around while keeping his eyes moving it in order to stay out of the line of fire from anything I would throw at him. He was skilled at the planning portion of fighting but not so good at execution or on the spot decisions.

I didn’t know exactly what he was planning but whatever it was he was gathering a massive amount of wind Arcane. I had shown him how to weaponize wind in order to make it cut things but after the first dozen trees I had to regrow we quickly decided that using it in our fights was never going to happen. There was a chance he was going to be doing something along the lines of a wide spread attack to try and get me out of position and then strike and the small amount of earth Arcane he was gathering simultaneously only further validated this idea.

With a guess as to what I was going up against, I started to create several small dirt balls before clumping them together inside a wind ball. It would act as either a smoke screen if Ormonde blocked it or as a weapon if it hit him directly. I sent a blast of wind to my left and moved to my right in order to try and take advantage of Ormonde circling the pillar he had made.

The tree that was blocking my line of sight quickly gave way, allowing me to see Ormonde’s back wide open for an attack. Feeling rather happy that my distraction worked I flung the wind and earth ball at him before I kept moving. Even though I didn’t get to see the result I had a vague idea as to what it would be but the lack of a reaction caused me to do a double take.

All of the wind Arcane Oronde had been gathering was gone and I quickly found out why when I ran into a wind wall that I couldn’t punch my way though without using more power than I was allowing myself to in our fights.

‘Limiting the battlefield to something he can control. Nice move but doesn’t get him any closer to winning.’

I moved away from the wall and back towards the area Ormonde had erected his pillar in while gathering as much earth Arcane as I could. Wind Arcane had it positives but in a close quarter fight earth Arcane worked much better and I was about to bring the fight to Ormonde.

The area where the pillar sat was empty, void of Ormonde from what I could see and all in all untouched since my last pass. I slowly progressed towards the pillar and armed myself with a massive chunk of earth that took most of the Arcane that I had gathered to materialize and control.

Each step I took placed me more and more into whatever plan Ormonde had come up with and took the battle further out of my control and placed it firmly into his. Very soon I was going to be marching to his tune without a way of regaining my own momentum. Being able to feel Ormonde’s location and emotions would have helped me keep track of what he was doing but it was another thing I chose to avoid doing in order to at least give him a chance of winning.

The air by my head change slightly and I ducked just in time to avoid a wind ball to the face. Ormonde’s first shot had almost ended our fight; it was time to get a little more serious and less conceited.

Another salvo of wind balls was sent in my direction with the express purpose of getting me to move in one direction over the others. I did what Ormonde had been doing and moved behind the large boulder that I had previously been floating behind me. It took the hits without any visible damage since I hadn’t made it loose dirt due to m intentions of using it as ammunition instead of a projectile.

Momentarily hidden, I left the boulder to float where it was and move behind a tree and started to run as quickly and quietly as I could in the direction the wind balls had come from. Even if Ormonde had move and was no longer in the same spot, there was a chance I would still be able to pick up a trail of some sorts to track him.

As I crept closer I kept getting a strange sense that something was off and the hairs on the back of my neck had started to stand on end.

“Ormonde time out! Do you feel the same thing I do?”

“Yeah. I thought it was you doing it.”

“It’s not. I think we need to put this on hold for now. I’ll meet you back at the pond.”

“ ‘Kay”

I went to the pond and waited for Ormonde who was only a few seconds behind me. In the few moments that we took to regroup the air around us had started to fluctuate and shimmer as if it was hiding something. There were massive amounts of Arcane being gathered in the air as well and it felt incredibly close to what spatial Arcane felt like to me.

“Vio what’s happening?”

“I have no idea.”

Ormonde was hiding behind me even though it was going to do him no good if this turned out to be an attack since it would have an area of effect that would make it to the nearby town.

The space directly in front of us started to warp and bend, a purple glow began to fill the air as something began to take shape. It was almost as if the area in front of us was opening up to create a mouth leading to who knows where. Both of us shielded our eyes and I created a thick stone as the glow became blindingly bright and a screech started to fill the air. The shrieking became more and more intense to the point that I could hear it though my hands.

Even the air was vibrating around us as the ground began to shake and the trees started to sway, some of the closer ones were even losing branches and breaking apart as if forced away by something so massive that it was overflowing out of the space provided. Dust began to fly into the air obscuring any visibility if we had the ability to see past the glow that could now blind at a distance.

As if reaching a peak the noise stopped being audible but I could still feel it as my body began to resonate with it. All at once the lights and noise stopped. It was so quiet my ears began to ring and I could even hear Ormonde’s heartbeat and my own.

“Is it done?”

“I think so.”

I peaked around the corner to see if I could look at the end result of the lightshow through the dust. A large oval hole that slightly warped the air around it with a glowing purple edge sat barely above the ground only a few steps from us.

“What is that?”

“I have no idea. Go get Maka.”

I nudged him in the direction of the mansion and he started to slowly walk away while watching the hole before turning and breaking out into a jog. The hole in the area in front of me seemed to be beckoning me, asking me to enter it and see what was inside. Ormonde was far enough away that he wouldn’t make it back to me if I were to do anything about the portal that had materialized.

*Maka, a portal appeared out of nowhere for no reason that I know of. I’ve sent Ormonde back to you for now until I know that it’s safe here.*

*Got it. Are you going to go through it?*

*I don’t know.*

*If you do just be careful.*

*Got it.*

I took a deep breath, walked closer and then entered.

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