Orison began. "There was an Abyss gate down there. It was accompanied by an artifact that changed me. This is the end result, the intermediate stage was much more gruesome... I closed down the portal by pulling off it"s power sources from the other side. One of those power sources was alive and the archmage found them. Long story short, I saved them inadvertently so they were on the positive side of ambivalent towards me. The archmage tried to fight them and got his memory scrambled. They left."

Xia asked, "What happened to the artifact?"

"The world erased it and I got cold chills saying that much," Orison said.

"What is this other information you hoped I already knew?" Xia asked.

Orison let out a slow breath and said, "I think there are probably more Abyss gates under the island, inside of it."

Xia nodded. "Yes, the ancestors know. If you have knowledge of where others are, you need to tell me."

"It"s only a guess but check this spot on the map." Orison silently prayed she wouldn"t ask more as he pointed at the place Nub a.s.sured should just be a watery sink hole.

Xia said, "I won"t dig into your activities but this is your last chance to hand over items of cultural significance to my people, Orison. I couldn"t care less about a few coins or common gems but... The ancestors are looking for something. Things that have been lost to our people for a long time have been shaken loose by the tragedy that struck this island over a decade ago.

"Our people value nothing more preciously than our past and events from thousands of years ago robbed us of that understanding. They will not help us seal away the dangers underneath us until we find what they are looking for. If you have something that will help us move the ancestors to act on our behalf, then give it to me. You are aware of the danger beneath us. It"s a problem for everyone, a problem that will continue to be one until they find the link to our past."

Mixing truth of two events to create a convincing lie, Orison said, "There is one thing I managed to get that was kept from the archmage. It was a gift from the person I set free from the Abyss gate... This is the only thing I have that might match what you ask for. Even if you scoured my soul or tortured me to death I couldn"t help more. I have no knowledge or possess any more items like it."

From out of his s.p.a.ce he produced a scroll, the only writing in the burial chamber that was whole, pristine even. It wasn"t one of the famous ones of this world but it was something special. Orison only looked over it once but even though it was written with the ancient elvish pictographs, the sound combinations were nonsense. Something about it tickled his memory but it didn"t quite click.

With a speed that made lie of her age, she s.n.a.t.c.hed it from Orison"s hand. Her buddenly brightened eyes dimmed little by little as she read through the lines that were as indecipherable to her as they had been to him. Going back to the beginning she started p.r.o.nouncing then phonetically as if she had forgotten Orison was in the room with her.

The way she read it was slightly different. Small marks that meant nothing to Orison had her speaking the words slightly different than the way he had imagined them to sound. As she began reading it in a different direction, she said something he almost wished he hadn"t heard because it was one phrase of maybe a handful he could recognize from a language none in this world should know or even be able to be taught.

Before he could register what he"d done, out of habit he muttered as he mulled over it, "The way is formless... No, "The Formless Way"."

In a frenzy, she dug her gnarled fingers into his hand, breaking a nail off into his palm as she dragged it over the scroll to point at where he understood. Orison wanted to pull his hand back but he was afraid of what the consequences would be if he hurt this woman for any reason. Frantically, he read through it trying to recognize any other part, worried that Xia would react poorly if he couldn"t help at all.

Since the scroll"s writings weren"t in depth, looking to be little more than someone creating a piece of art using their calligraphy while trying to work around the world"s laws that would stop them from writing it, he took a stab in the dark. He didn"t know what was actually written there but she wouldn"t calm down enough for him to talk his way out of his slip of tongue until she heard something so he just recited the only piece he knew that contained it.

In ancient elvish he intoned, "We look at it but do not see it; it is invisible. We listen to it but do not hear it; it is inaudible. We touch it but do not feel it; it is intangible. These three elude our inquiries, thus become one..." He finished with, "Knowing the primordial origin is the essence of the Way."

She released his hand and after seeing what she had done, was mortified. In worried concern, she fished around her her pockets for a kerchief and a flask of clear fluid that smelled sharply. After dabbing the kerchief, she reached over and pushed Orison out of the way as she tenderly dabbed the spilled blood droplets off the scroll as carefully as she could. As she carefully tried to edge a droplet that was near the stylized bagua at the bottom, they touched.

Unbeknownst to her, a mist of spiritual energy carrying a golden marble and a ring barely visible to Orison"s sensitive eyes crept over and into him. An intuitive terror gripped him but he wasn"t able to move due to the strong paralytic agent that was hidden underneath the nail the Dowager had broken off in his palm. If Orison wasn"t somewhat resistant to such things he was sure the muscles that controlled his autonomic functions would have stopped working under the heavy delivery of toxins.

His magic and spiritual resistance was fighting a losing battle with the spiritual energy attempting to burrow the golden marble into his body as the ring forced itself onto his finger. With no other choice available, he exercised his will to move them into his s.p.a.ce. With no resisting pressure in front of them, the marble and ring shot into the recesses of his s.p.a.ce like a cannonball. The force of their wake was just enough to knock the paralyzed Orison off his feet. Turning around at the noise, Xia saw Orison looking up at her with accusing eyes.

The dowager looked down at Orison with empty eyed grandmotherly kindness. "Oh, you precious thing. Granny didn"t mean to hurt you. An old woman has to have her protections from you rebellious youngsters after all. Let"s get you all fixed up and take you to the ancestors."

She removed the fingernail and applied some powder to the wound. Whatever it was she had given him, it wasn"t the antidote, it was another poison.

Orison mumbled around his numb face, "Worthless."

With a kindly smile, she said, "What was that dear? What"s worthless?"

"W-world...kill us all. You, m-me, ancestors."

Chuckling indulgently, she asked, "And why would you say that?"

Since he saw how the calligrapher"s trick worked, Orison had a good idea of how it was done. In ancient elvish, using the blood, dust and cold sweat in his palm, he shakily drew out MAN DAy RIm Now,

"Read b-big p-part." Orison pushed though in mushy speech.

Curious, she sounded it out in parts. Sensing nothing wrong, she said "Mandarin" and fell to the floor hugging her chest and gasping. Orison felt his heart squeeze tightly as well, a backlash from the sharing that he survived only because all his muscles were relaxed and the momentary hypertension caused by heart cramp only served to move his blood more quickly rather than rupturing something. Deep within himself, an ent.i.ty that was slowly invading him in parts screamed in agony, shredding into a mult.i.tude of pieces. The world was unforgiving and would follow unwanted things back to the source from which they sprang. An instinct within himself let him know that he was quickly making reality"s sh*t list and if he didn"t stop, he"d suffer the same fate as the spirit now being absorbed by his s.p.a.ce.

Under the impetus of the increased blood pressure, he squeezed out, "Just one word"s worth of real meaning did that. W-what do you th-think w-would happen-" He pointed at the scroll laboriously while barely managing a casting of cure poison.

Staggering to his feet while she was still clutching her chest trying to remain conscious, Orison looked down at Xia and said, "You"re one nasty b**** sometimes but better the Abyss Lord I know. I take it my little demonstration under duress has clarified everything for you?"

The old woman forced a nod while her eyes, no longer empty but filled with the fear of death, begged him for help.

Orison knelt down and worked some healing into her as he said, "All the innocent people of this island don"t deserve to be pulled under by greedy old monsters. I want you to know I"m doing this for them. If you were to fall here, I"m afraid your grandniece isn"t enough to hold it all together yet and as far as I know, this is the only stable governing body here worth a d.a.m.n.

"Find a way to give that scroll to your ancestors that keeps you and me out of it. If they want to kill themselves by figuring it out it"s something small figures like you and I should stay out of but hopefully it"s enough to move them. Are you recovered enough to use your own methods?"

Xia nodded and popped a small bead into her mouth before crunching down on it. After a few stabilizing breaths she said, "I"d find some witty way to threaten you but what"s the point? Go about your business while I figure out which naughty lamb I don"t like enough to send this... thing to the ancestors."

Orison made his slow, stately way out of the private room and down the hall leading out of the council building, trying desperately not to let his growing panic show on his face. He felt bloated to the point he was worried he was going to burst like a tick and every second made it worse. His inner s.p.a.ce was so chaotic at the moment that he couldn"t look anywhere in it without seeing impossible geometries that made his consciousness hurt and mind spin.

An elf directed him to his own personal quarters in a succinct conversation he could not properly recall only moments after having it. As he turned the corner, the familiar face of a young adult Northlander met eyes with him. The familiar face said his name which caused him to reflexively nod in agreement. Before he could say anything to stop the Northlander, Venito had picked him up into another world shattering bear hug.

Pressure both within and without caused a small, body damaging sliver of his inner s.p.a.ce to break free of it"s confines within Orison and slide past the weak spiritual barrier of Venito"s aura envelope. Under Orison"s strengthened spiritual sight, he watched the intruding polyp of s.p.a.ce rupture. A forceful expulsion of excess energy "structure poison" shot into Venito"s spiritual s.p.a.ce along with the slightly dimmer golden marble and fractured remains of the ring.

He watched as the marble, under the last directive of the dead ent.i.ty"s shreds clinging to it, settled to a point so low on Venito"s abdominal area Orison wouldn"t have followed it if he weren"t fearful something bad might happen to his brother. Simultaneously, the remains of the ring and the few small pieces of Orison"s own inner s.p.a.ce that had been subconsciously claimed by Venito"s soul reenacted an implosion and subsequent extrdimensional explosion that Orison was familiar with. The last remaining instinct laying within the dead shreds of spirit body, circulated the energy inside Venito in the pattern it was most familiar with, making small adjustments as it went along to fit it"s new physical vessel. Divested of purpose, the ent.i.ty"s remains slowly drifted up towards Venito"s seat of spiritual consciousness where they"d be absorbed and processed over time.

On the physical side of things, Venito"s chest gave two lurching thumps strong enough for Orison to feel them through his hug compressed rib cage. Less than a second later the circulating energy linked the marble, protean s.p.a.ce and spiritual seat together. The sudden welling of power and vitality surging through Venito"s body caused him to turn beet red and made Orison aware of a part of his brother"s anatomy he was certain neither of them wanted him to be acquainted with.

The incredibly spiritually insensitive Northlander, released Orison incrementally like a deflating blood pressure cuff before he quickly turned around in confusion. "Something came up. I mean, sh*t, I"ll be back later."

Venito took off with an expression similar to when a person doesn"t know if they"re going to make it to a toilet in time, grim faced and with a sense of dire purpose. Orison wanted to stop him and explain what happened but he himself was in a different kind of serious need for alone time. And as far as Orison could currently tell, his brother was in no life threatening danger.

Once behind closed doors, Orison sunk to the floor, running healing over an arrow shaft wide wound that went through the center of his chest, taking a small circular chunk of bone with it. Fortunately, the way it was made had sealed capillaries and did little harm to the integrity of the bone the sliver of inner s.p.a.ce had pa.s.sed through. The incident, as a whole, enlightened Orison to the consequences of what would happen should the s.p.a.ce grow faster than what his spirit could contain. Spontaneous spherical matter annihilation may be a unique way to go but it didn"t appeal to the young mage.

Taking a look around in his s.p.a.ce that was settling back into old form, Orison noted that whether it was the ent.i.ty"s spiritual essence, the s.p.a.cial power of the ring or the golden marble, little of it had been of use to him directly. That was in comparison against the total amount, however. The "little" each one had contributed before accidentally shunting the lion"s share into his brother, had each contributed to a noticeable if not drastic change.

His soul body was half again as dense and large, taking up a rough two-thirds of the growth potential his current body could contain. The sudden growth had left worrisome stress marks around it"s outer perimeter but as long as he didn"t experience more "growth spurts" any time soon there was no real danger. The rise in strength of will and magic potential such an increase represented meant that it wouldn"t be long before he could reliably hold journeyman spell models with some study and practice. Such a growth represented years, if not decades, worth of intensive dedication to the arts. It was no small wonder few could persevere to reach even this height much less strive for mastery.

The growth of magic reserve and regeneration having doubled from it"s original baseline may seem impressive but it was a standard that only put him even at "seventeen" with the potential he had shown at "ten". With a stretch of educated guessing he"d place himself somewhere around a reserve magnitude of five and a channel magnitude of two. There were probably at least a handful of early twenty-somethings, forty for elves, in each college with comparable ability. There was a good possibility that there were slightly more than a handful total that have or at least had that same potential at seventeen.

Orison"s physical capabilities hadn"t changed much at all. Individually they weren"t impressive but taken into total consideration he could be considered at the lower end of elite. In actual martial combat, however, two standard soldiers with good coordination could put him into dire straits if magic was taken out of the equation. Where he really shined in this area was the magnitude of his healing and stamina. Both of which were fairly close to the upper limits of natural possibility.

He hoped he"d never have to find out for sure but Orison was confident he could bounce back from the average physical issues with only a quarter of the time. After the bay incident, Orison had opportunity to know that five hours of sleep could put him in good standing for the day without enchanted equipment. With as hectic as his life was, he didn"t think it would take long to discover if four hours would be sufficient or if he could run two full days on a standard sleep with little to no ill effect.

The disintegrated bits out of the ring"s stone had dumped some pretty bizarre stuff into his s.p.a.ce. After mixing, chopping and spitting out what it didn"t want, a small plane of calm, life supporting area existed within it. Upon a flattened mound of five colored soil resided a thick patch of gra.s.s not quite large enough for an average adult to lay on and a sapling tree a little shy of five feet tall. The small plane orbited around the eternium crystal formation and when Orison focused on it, he could see it taking in minute amounts of the dust and the tree was "breathing" in the light shed from the eternium crystal in some kind of parallel to photosynthesis.

The most visually impressive of all changes to his s.p.a.ce was the eternium crystal. It was no longer a black crystal formation with a bit of eternium inside. There was no black to be seen. The main "finger" was a little over a foot in height and a third as thick. Two supporting ones were attending it on either side, each a little over three inches long. The ring around the formation had a variety of crystals in various shape and size devoid of energy but quite a bit of powder that carried a good deal of potency. Only one of the large opal sheen crystals remained, swinging in counterpart to the small plane.