B5 Chapter 62- Unseen but not Unheard

For a time, Tyron drifted in a field of white. He expected visions to assail him, strange truths and esoteric knowledge, as they did when the Unseen granted him a mystery, yet there was nothing.

What was happening to him? He’d reached level eighty, but the status ritual still wasn’t complete. After making his choices, he’d expected to select a new Class, to step into the unknown realm that lay beyond, and yet here he was… in a void of… nothing.

Clearly the Unseen had something to show him, but what?

He blinked.

Until that moment, he didn’t realise he had eyes. Wasn’t this a vision? Wasn’t he inside his own mind? He looked down, there were hands, his hands, resting on his lap. Seated on a strange, woven cushion he didn’t recognise, he was wearing the same robe he’d had on when performing the status ritual. This was so odd, nothing like what he had expected.

He blinked.

Before him, seated on the same sort of cushion, with a low table formed of shimmering light, sat a creature unlike anything Tyron had ever seen before. Basically humanoid, but with blue, leathery skin and a single, golden eye in the centre of its face. Dressed in simple, even humble robes, it gave the impression of simplicity, if not for the intricately woven and enchanted ornaments it wore around both wrists. A long beard grew from its chin, the hairs a sea-green colour, but what really caught his attention were its hands.

The strange being raised a hand to stroke at its facial hair, a seemingly unconscious motion done out of long-established habit, and Tyron fixated on the strange arrangement of its digits. There were six of them, but oddly arranged, into two sets of three, each set with its own opposable thumb.

It didn’t take him long to realise that this creature could use a single hand to form many of the sigils Tyron needed both hands for. What an advantage!

“You aren’t really here, and neither am I,” the strange being spoke into the stillness.

Its voice was deep, yet oddly musical. Tyron tilted his head, thinking. There was no question in his mind who this was sitting in front of him. Only one being could create a vision like this and embed it within the Unseen: the creature who had created it. In a way, this individual was the Unseen.

“Nor am I speaking your language, but you should be able to understand me just the same,” he said, shaking his head. “Language analytics and acquisition weren’t easy to build in, I assure you. Thankfully, I had help I could rely on. Linguistics was…” the Unseen pulled a face, “not my strong suit.”

“Can you hear me?” Tyron tried speaking, wondering if he would get a response. He didn’t, and he hadn’t expected one.

If only he could actually converse with this person! The secrets he would learn! He genuinely felt as if his heart was breaking at the lost opportunity, but he listened intently, not wanting to miss a single word.

“I don’t want to take too much of your time,” the Unseen continued, still absently stroking his beard, solitary golden eye half-closed as he seemed to consider something. “Technically, I’m not taking any time at all, but… you know what I mean.”

The creature sighed, shoulders slumping just a little, and for a moment Tyron could see the impossible weight that pressed down on those shoulders.

“I have created this message so that it would appear to you at this time, as you took more of the power into yourself, you are ready to learn just what is happening, and why this system was created in the first place.

“It began with the magick. That’s how it always starts. It came to our world, much the same way it came to yours, I imagine. Trickling through the weave, little flashes of energy, pockets of potential, growing stronger over time until the first of the rifts appeared.”

Chuckling to itself, the Unseen shook its head.

“We took to it like male sexual organs to female. Hah! How are you going to translate that?” he jabbed a finger randomly in the air, addressing someone or something that Tyron couldn’t see.

“Magick was… a seemingly infinite and malleable source of potential. With the right controls, it could become anything, do anything.”

Flowing like water, the Unseen’s hands shifted through various sigils, and Tyron almost choked as he saw the perfection of each movement, the effortless control.

“We were a fairly advanced society when we discovered magick, and we were good at it, very good. When the first rifts opened and arcane energy flooded our world, we rejoiced. What an opportunity, we told ourselves. What sort of blessing had come to our world, with this new power, and these new worlds which we could make our own.”

The Unseen shook its head at the foolishness of it all, but Tyron’s brows only rose. Conquering the worlds beyond the rifts? They’d done that?

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“It may have been the same in your world, perhaps even now you sit in a realm beyond a rift, wondering what this ancient fossil is rambling about. Believe me, for hundreds of years, we did not see the danger either.

“Of course, there were the monsters, there’s always the monsters, but we could handle them, did so handily, in fact. Once we conquered a new realm, we found ways to pacify it, or to… manage the uncountable kin that were created. From there, we went through more rifts, extending backwards. Obviously the original people of the worlds we had taken had fallen, we understood that, but they simply weren’t as strong as us, not as wise or as capable.”