Call of the Abyss [Book 2 Complete]

Julia sat with her back to the wall, eyes closed. She'd seen what she was looking for already, but its regularity had made it fade—especially considering she'd forced herself to ignore it initially. Now, however, she wanted to see it—wanted to be aware.

She slowly opened her eyes, focusing on the distortions and haze about the space.

She was in her room at Tirn'Aleya and a couple days had passed since the council of Zal'Nadir. Julia was waiting for word of the Assembly's cooperation (or refusal), so she had decided that this brief lull was the time to become acquainted with some of the obscurities she'd acquired after her most recent evolution.

The world seemed to shift—what had once been in focus now grew hazy, while the distortions sharpened. As Julia focused on them, she started to notice peculiarities.

The higher dimensions, as obvious as it sounded, were not easy to understand. She had all but confirmed that these distortions in her vision were higher spatial dimensions—or their effects on the three she was used to, at least.

They confounded perception, making it difficult to intuit anything from them. As Julia gazed into the central haze of one such distortion, she found herself looking back—at herself. It was as though a mirror lurked within the haze, but—no. That wasn't right, for as she stared, the vision shifted.

Suddenly, Julia was looking at an older version of herself—or what she assumed was herself. She recognized her own face, but it had wrinkles at the corner of the eyes that she lacked, as well as more lines on her lips.

She seemed to have a look of satisfaction on her face—not from something good happening, but more a recognition that no matter how bad things got, they'd also eventually improve.

The face then shifted back into Julia's current visage, like a reflection rippling in water after a stone's throw, before shifting again into an older version.

This one was haunted, with a look that said great evil had occurred stretched across her face, and her skin looked gaunt, as though the haunted expression had pulled it tight. There were several more scars present than she had right now.

Her form shifted once again, now to a dignified, almost regal vision. That was just what was revealed at a quick glance, though, as the longer she stared, the more disgusted she became.

She saw herself with regal bearing, her skin unnaturally flawless. She had gaudy jewelry hanging from her ears, shining in some alien light whose source she couldn't identify.

The real discomfort came from her eyes, though. Those eyes were cold, cruel, calculating, and—almost worst of all—indifferent.

She saw a version of herself that didn't care what was going on around her. She saw a version of herself that put her own needs, her own wants above everything, and everyone else. She saw a version of herself that would knock down obstacles and trample anything in her wake without ever looking back.

She shook her head furiously to banish the image, as well as the thoughts. She didn't know how she could intuit so much from just a still image of herself—she'd never been the most socially adroit, after all.

Perhaps it was because they were her own images—her own face, not a facsimile. It made sense she would know what was going through her own mind, even in a still image.

Once the vision had begun to recede from her mind, she realized she was breathing quite quickly, as though she'd just sprinted a good distance. This was peculiar, as her spirit body needed no oxygen to function. The final image must've disturbed her deeply—more than she realized in the moment.

She closed her eyes and tried to straighten her thoughts out. Why did she see those things? What did she know about higher dimensions? Let's see—dimensions, dimensions, dimensions…

Oh—time. Braden had always been precise, always saying 'spatial dimensions' rather than just 'dimensions.'"

Apparently, time itself was a dimension as well. And there was something about space and time being interwoven into this "spacetime fabric," though Julia had cast those thoughts away when he mentioned them, feeling they were beyond her at the time.

Was that what was going on here? These effects of higher dimensions that she could now perceive were all dimensions, including time? She was…what…seeing forward in time? Were those glimpses of who she would be at different points in her future? No, there's no way. She would not become the person she saw in the last image.

Did Braden ever say anything about time? Did he ever mention anything relevant that could help her process these visions? She wracked her brain, but he had said so much that she was too young to understand. She had fleeting memories of this-or-that, but they were all jumbled together in her mind.

There was one memory, though it wasn't related to time, that bubbled to the surface.

"Your body evolved to remember action, Jules. It might be hard to believe, living in a town and civilization as you do, but there was a time when all humans wandered the land. They hunted beasts and gathered wild plants for food every single day. Farming hadn't been discovered yet, nor had the knowledge of how to create fire propagated.

"Believe it or not, that period actually lasted far longer than the current period of organized groups and civilization.

Being that the hunting and gathering period lasted much longer than the current period, that's when the human brain did most of its developing, so that's what it's good at doing: tasks relating to hunting and gathering.

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"If you want to remember something, tie the memory to a sense. Visualize a chair, and imagine the memory as an object sitting on it.

Put the memory-object on the front porch of our house, and imagine the feeling of the wood beneath your feet, the smell of the morning air, and the sounds of distant wood cutting as you access it."

Julia had largely written this moment off, as she was a young girl at the time—perhaps seven or eight, at the oldest.

Her eyes still closed, Julia imagined the fireplace in the sitting room of their house in Rockyknoll. This was where she'd spent the majority of her life, and it was steeped in memory. She could recreate it almost exactly as it was when last she saw it in her mind.

She walked over to the mantle just above it, imagining all the appropriate knick-knacks in their places. In the center, though, was something that hadn't been present in the actual house: a small clock.

They had a clock, of course, but it was hanging over in the hallway. This clock Julia had placed in her mind-home to invoke any memories related to time that might help her.

Knowing the idea alone wasn't enough, she imagined herself picking the clock up and holding it, noting its texture, and the smell of lacquered wood. She then said aloud, channeling mana into her voice:

"Please, show me what I need—something that will help—if there's anything for me to find."

She wasn't really sure who she was asking, or why she even decided to do this. It seemed to work, though, as a memory swam to the surface of her mind.

Strangely, it didn't feel as though she'd remembered it naturally—didn't feel as though it popped into her head as memories often do. It felt more like an external force gently guided it to her consciousness, as underwater forces might gently push a leaf as it floats along the surface.

Julia thrust her wooden practice sword forward, attempting to stab right into Braden's gut. He stepped to the side so precisely that he barely seemed to move, and the thrust brushed harmlessly against his flapping robes.

"Ouch," she said instinctively, feeling a light tap on the top of her head.

Looking up, she saw it was Braden's staff. He'd dodged her thrust and been so unthreatened by the possibility of her retaliating that he'd bopped her on the head.

"The thrusting form was good, but you're telegraphing your attack too much, not to mention you didn't have a plan for what to do after the thrust.

"By the time the thrust completes, you should already be directing your sword into the next attack. You can't pause after a strike in a real battle and expect to live," he lectured as they both relaxed their weapons.

"You say that as though it's a certainty. How do you even know I'll be fighting people? I could just take jobs that only involve monsters," Julia replied, a little miffed at his criticism—despite it beginning with praise.

"I don't know for sure, but I've been an adventurer for a long time. All my years of experience tell me you will have to fight people at some point, one way or another," he explained.

They made their way over to a large rock that they liked to sit on during breaks. The garden in this house wasn't huge, but it was big enough to have a large open space that was suited to both training and leisure.

Julia had no idea what real estate was like in Striton, but she figured this must be a pretty expensive home just due to the amount of land it sat on alone.

"Oh, good. I was worried you were about to say that you could see the future or something," she joked as they sat down.

"Ha, no—I can't. No one can. The future doesn't exist, after all," he chuckled, pulling a waterskin out from…somewhere.

"What the hell does 'the future doesn't exist' mean?" Julia asked, though she was worried about getting baited into one of his favorite pastimes: making her squeeze answers out of him.

"I mean exactly that. Neither the future nor the past exist—there's only the now. The past did exist once, but it doesn't any longer—only its effects on the present remain. There are also possibilities that might exist in the future, but those aren't the future. They're what it might look like.

"Some Classes can even read the likeliest of these possibilities, but that's all they are—possible, not certain. Anyone that tries to tell you they can tell the future with absolute certainty is probably trying to sell you something," he said, taking a large swig from his waterskin.

"So, some of these possibilities are more likely than others…shouldn't that mean that there are some potential futures so likely that they may as well be certain?" Julia asked, drinking from her own skin.

"Maybe. If I ask you to go to the kitchen and grab me a knife or something, and you start walking to the door, what are the odds you'll actually walk through the door? Probably pretty high, right?

"But, what if you suddenly realize you didn't even ask what I wanted the knife for? What if you turn around and come back here to clarify? Or, what if Trixy suddenly wants your attention and you get distracted? What if a damn meteor that no one saw coming obliterates the entire city or some shit?

"The problem with guessing at the future is that there are an infinite number of possibilities, and any single one of them could force the real future to diverge completely from whatever nearly-certain possibility you've glimpsed.

"This is especially true for very specific predictions. It's not too difficult to predict the sun will rise tomorrow morning, but can you predict whether you will wake up with a dry mouth or not? Specifics are incredibly difficult to predict, and even generalities aren't guaranteed.

"No one can see the future, Jules, because it doesn't exist. The future is not written in stone until it happens, and by then, it's the present."

"Thank you," Julia whispered as she let out a relieved breath, thanking both Braden for his words and who or whatever had provided the memory at her prompting. It had nothing to do with dimensions, but it was what she needed.

It seemed so insignificant at the time. Braden was always waxing poetic about weird things like that, so much so that his endless need to lecture was almost a game he used to tease her with. Now, accessing and contextualizing memories like those were both a way to help her in the present, as well as a way for her to get closer to Braden.

So, the future didn't exist—only possibilities did. She didn't see what will be in those distortions, she saw what may be. That was a tremendous relief.

She might not become that cold, detached version—but it remained a possibility. She'd need to be careful not to become…whatever it was.

However, now was the time to proceed with her original plan. She picked up an apple—as ever—and began floating it toward the spatial distortion.