To some, the Void is the absence of everything; to others, it is that which lies between or the structure of Space itself. To still others, it is nothingness, negation, or even madness manifest. For some it exists, while to others it hungers. As with any Concept, all of these are true and yet they are all incomplete, for they do not see what I see. To me, Void is the wonder and horror of the Unknown, that which we have yet to explore. The Void is all of these things and none, for it is simply a label we give when we try to understand.

Serenity sat in the chair he’d created in his dreamspace and closed the book. He was nowhere near done with it, even though he’d read it cover to cover - or tried to, at least. He wondered what the book itself represented, but put that thought to the side.

What it told him was that he needed to find what the Void was to him, and even to decide if he wanted to have a Void Affinity. Void seemed oddly disparate, even as higher-end Affinities went. For some people, it could act similarly to Space or even be the Ether through which magic worked. Neither of those ideas resonated for Serenity.

He knew what space was and wasn’t, and it was part of Space-Time to him, not Void. He also saw no need for an Ether; it was an emergent property of the interaction of SpaceTime and Mana or perhaps Mana and Essence, rather than a thing of its own. In that way, it was sort of like gravity.

Serenity paused. He hadn’t really thought about gravity in terms of magic before, but it was a result of the curvature of space. That meant it was truly part of Space-Time.

Serenity’s dream shifted to one looking at space itself and how movement in space and time occurred. He wouldn’t remember details when he woke, but the central concept stuck with him: Gravity was not a separate thing at all.

And magic could imitate that by affecting space, time, and mass.

They were all connected.

It was a good thing the Rothmer house was as large as it was. They’d been able to give Serenity and Raz each a bedroom. Serenity could wake up in the middle of the night without disturbing anyone else.

Memories of war, fighting, and loss flowed through Serenity’s mind and all he could do was let them pass. He’d been able to hold them at bay until he was home with his family, but now he was back in his childhood bedroom and couldn’t simply push them away.

He’d learned many tricks for how to cope over the years, and it was never the difficult circumstances where he locked up. No, it was the quiet moments, the moments where he was safe. When he let down his guard.

It wasn’t recent memories that bothered him; it was ones long past, in a past that now hadn’t happened. Most of the people involved weren't even born yet. He repeated that truth to himself and held to his conviction that he was going to do better this time.

He could fix it.

It helped, a little. Nothing would ever make the memories stop hurting, of course. If he made a new life for himself, a happier one, it would surely help.

Serenity was fast asleep when he felt a hand shaking his shoulder. He looked up to see his mother standing next to the bed, smiling.

He could see her normally, which meant he was back in his hatchling dragon form. “Mom.”

Her smile widened. “It’s fine. Rissa warned me.” She sat down on the bed next to him, and ran a hand across his wings. “I’m not sure how you ended up a dragon; Rissa wasn’t clear about that, but I know where you got your wings. They remind me of my grandfather’s. They were larger and pure silver, instead of dark on the top … he couldn’t ever fly with them.”

Serenity froze and looked up at his mother. “My grandfather had wings?”

“Great-grandfather. You never knew him, he passed on before you were born.” Bethany paused and ran her hand along Serenity’s wing again. “He never talked about where he came from. I know my mother never met her grandparents, but that’s all I know. He loved riding, said it was the closest he’d get to flying in this lifetime.”

They sat there without speaking for a while. Serenity didn’t have any idea what to think about the revelation or the fact that his mother had somehow never mentioned it.

Well, there was one question he could ask. “Do you know why he had wings?”

Serenity’s mother laughed softly. “No idea. I asked him, the way a kid will. He’d always answer something silly, like one time he said he had them to hold me and keep me warm.”

His mother’s hand was warm on his feathers and Serenity found himself relaxing tension he hadn’t realized he still had.

The moment was short and yet it lasted a long time until Bethany stood up. “I should let you get ready for the day. Rissa’s parents should be here to pick you up in a few hours, and at ten you have a call with a very insistent young man with the Metro. I think he wants to know more about that dungeon you found on the Blue Line.”

A pickup by Rissa’s parents was the best solution they’d figured out to get Serenity and Raz back home to Rissa. Neither of them had the ID to be able to fly commercial, and since Serenity couldn’t see street signs or the dash of a car, neither of them could drive. They’d considered a bus, but the less time Raz spent in public the better, at least until he was more commonly known.

Keeping Raz around fewer people was also helpful because it slowed down the rate the bracelet went through monster cores. Even with only three other people, translating was using nearly one an hour; in large groups, the wristband could need a new core several times an hour. It wasn’t a permanent solution, though it would work for a while.

They’d gone through those options and others, but what it came down to in the end was that it was simply not that far from Arlington to New York City. A round trip drive was simply easier than any of the other options.

Serenity especially didn’t want to think about what would happen if he hit a ley line in flight and found (founded?) another dungeon in midair.

Once he was up and moving, Serenity found out he had longer than he’d expected before the call at 1000. Breakfast was over before 0700, even though he took his time. There simply wasn’t much point in sitting there after his parents left when Raz wasn’t up yet.

Serenity tried to reach out to the new Blue Line Enigma Dungeon. If it was really his, he should be able to reach it the same way he could reach the A Rest from Death Dungeon.

It wasn’t the same.

He couldn’t reach it now, but back on Tzintkra, connecting to A Rest From Death had felt like he was there, while the Blue Line Enigma seemed more like he was looking at a program he’d written. They were very different in another way, as well; the Blue Line Enigma could only handle a few people at a time, and would eventually develop pocket dimensions to put them in. A Rest From Death was only a single space, but it could hold as many people as there was room for.

The Blue Line Enigma was still exhausted and it felt like it would be a few days before it was able to handle more people.

Serenity walked out to the back yard. It was still the same completely fenced yard he’d grown up with, but there wasn’t a dog waiting anymore. Instead, there was a small propane grill next to a table with four chairs. Serenity took one of the chairs and pulled his mind away from the past.

He needed to be doing something, not thinking about everything that had changed. Life was change, and sometimes life meant death. He knew that.

Perhaps he should think about the revelation he’d had the previous night. He hadn’t expected to learn about SpaceTime when he was researching the Void, but simply because it was unexpected didn’t mean he should ignore it.

What could he do with control of gravity?

The first thing that came to mind was obvious: he could hurt enemies with it. Whether that was crushing them or simply making it harder to move freely, it would be useful.

A point was probably the simplest, so Serenity tried to build a spell that would bend Space and Time just a little to change gravity locally. He then picked up a rock from the ground and tossed it at the spot of increased gravity.

It worked, but it took minutes to build the spell and it was mana-hungry. Moving it around was faster, but took even more mana. It was definitely not a combat spell, though Serenity expected that it could be improved with practice. It would probably make a good Path Skill, with the Voice handling the speed and structure.

He tried spreading it out into a wider field, simulating being farther from the mass. It was far easier to manage, with a far lower mana cost. The setup time was still extreme, but it was something he could potentially maintain as a useful out-of-combat spell if he had a need for it.

The problem was that he couldn’t come up with a good out-of-combat reason to want to be heavier. Lighter, maybe; he did want to fly, and he was pretty sure he wasn’t built like a bird, even if his wings were big enough. No matter which form he was in, they weren’t big enough.

Could he use this to fly?

Serenity reversed the setup he’d started with and tried to reduce gravity in an area. It wasn’t like trying to increase gravity; there he could yank a bit in the direction things were already moving and it would work. For this, he had to somehow invert - no, mirror the effect the Earth had, but only in a small area.

He carefully limited it to a few feet around himself. He couldn’t manage to completely negate gravity; he could see where Space bent and trying to mirror it completely quickly gave him a feeling of nausea. He couldn’t act on the same scale as the Earth’s mass, and that was what would be needed to properly reverse it. Even getting close caused strange ripples and eddies on the edges that Serenity didn’t have a good feeling about, so he tried not to push too hard.

He took a step forward and bounded into the air. He had managed to reduce gravity for himself, and he’d even managed to anchor the effect to himself instead of to the Earth. He spread his wings and he could feel them slowing his fall and changing the direction, but they were simply not enough to actually fly with.

He didn’t care. This was close enough for now.

He didn’t bother to try to be serious; this was the most fun he’d had in weeks as he jumped high and floated down slowly.