Call of the Abyss [Book 2 Complete]

The first thing Julia noticed was the smell of rain after a lightning strike—ozone, as Braden had once called it. It was a pungent odor that shifted back and forth across the line dividing pleasant and dangerous. It spoke of the thrill of immediate danger having passed, but lingering danger still being present.

Julia opened her eyes, her body having reformed subconsciously, to a world of…well, something.

She had a hard time making any singular thing out. It was like gazing far off into the distance, but her eyes refused to focus on anything—things were blurry no matter where she looked.

Collecting herself, she realized that she was seeking familiarity while accessing higher dimensions—a fool's errand. The nonsensical was likely routine here.

Julia forced her eyes to unfocus, and strangely, the world became…not in focus, but more discernible. She saw shapes that made no sense, twisting and twining around themselves. She found she couldn't trace the surface of any single shape, as it would loop back on itself impossibly.

The shapes were ubiquitous, both near and far seeming to be made of them. Even the ground beneath her feet seemed to undulate with the shifting shapes, despite feeling solid.

She jumped slightly at the sound of thumping, realizing it was the sound of boots hitting the ground. However, when she jumped, no sound came from her own feet. Had the sound of her own boots somehow looped back from the future and startled her in the present? Was this even the present?

She recalled Braden mentioning things like paradoxes and time loops, but it was always in the context of stories he told. He never spoke of them as they might appear in reality—if they even could be real.

Suddenly, she was inundated by the smell of sweat—her sweat, she could tell. It was that familiar scent of moisture and salt that filled her nose while she sparred, though she never paid it much attention during those moments.

The smell shifted to one of a late summer evening, the heat slowly dissipating and the insects beginning to stir. She could almost hear a stream babbling lazily in the distance—wait, did she hear that stream?

Focusing on her ears, Julia realized she heard a great many things—none of which made sense.

She heard birds chirping in her ear, as though they were perched on her shoulders, yet she also heard them far, far away. It was as though the echo of the chirping in her ear were louder than the source of the sound—not that she knew the distant chirps were the origin, but surely they must be, right?

Thump!

A sound so low that she couldn't hear it passed through her. Though, if she couldn't hear it, was it even a sound? Perhaps "vibration" was a better descriptor. It shook her body as it passed, making her organs feel like they were bumping into each other.

Overhead, lights blared, shifting in colors across the spectrum, before disappearing—only to reappear elsewhere.

The more she acclimated to the strangeness, the more she began to recognize things—or was it simply her brain making sense out of nonsense? Did she truly see the feathers of a bird pass by before disappearing, or was that just what her brain distilled the impossibilities into so that she could latch onto something—anything—familiar?

She began to walk forward, her footfalls not making any sound. And yet, they did—it was over there, in the distance. It sounded like someone was walking parallel to her but far away.

Now it was there—back where she'd started waking a moment ago—the footfalls sounding like they were delayed by a few seconds.

Here, now, in front of her—her future footsteps reverberated back to her. Was she to infer that was where she was going, or could she turn from her current path and invalidate that future, despite having already witnessed it?

Julia shook her head to clear her knotted thoughts. She bore down on the one strand of logic in this illogical place—the one thread of truth she had: Trixy.

Her bond with Trixy transcended dimensions—it was etched upon the World itself. She could always feel Trixy's presence, no matter the distance. And, even if the path to her was winding and looping and nonsensical, Julia would follow it.

The original plan was for Trixy to deliver the explosive and retreat back to the marsh interior to await Julia's return. She should be somewhere about halfway between Veshari and the border, safely secured within its boundaries. Julia would then follow the thread of their connection until she found a place to exit the dimensional rift.

The problem, Julia now realized, was that traveling within the rift was not to be taken lightly. The path she walked seemed to loop back on itself, which made her wonder if she could ever progress.

It wound and looped and twisted—sometimes she felt like she was walking up, sometimes down, and sometimes even backward, despite definitely taking steps forward.

The thought crossed her mind to fly, but she immediately shut it down. She had no proof, but she had a suspicion that leaving her path and wandering the rift blindly would be dangerous—both physically and mentally. She was already feeling the mental strain that this place had on three-dimensional minds.

She felt there were…presences out there, somewhere. They called to her, but not consciously. It wasn't so much that creatures called with purpose—more that their very presence, their existence, tempted her mind. They seemed to promise secrets that no mortal should learn, yet were nigh irresistible.

The more Julia walked, the more she began to doubt herself. The very ground beneath her seemed to want to make her give up. One step was as firm as stone, the next was like walking through deep sand. The lack of consistency was exhausting—not physically, her spiritual body didn't suffer physical exhaustion, not really—but mentally.

Why did she bet her entire plan around being able to navigate higher dimensions, despite having never done it before?

When she'd sent the apple toward the dimensional distortion back at Tirn'Aleya, it had passed through as though it weren't even there. She had discovered through testing that, at least at her current skill level, only mana could cross the boundary. She had inferred this to mean her body would pass through without issue—which was obviously true.

How could she not have tested further? She'd stuck a finger in successfully and called it good enough. Perhaps Ithshar was right; perhaps her head was in the clouds. The metaphor of uneven ground seemed especially poignant here.

Would she ever make it back to Trixy? Sure, she had a heading to follow, but what good were directions in this place? What was up and down, or left and right? It meant nothing here, as far as she could tell.

Even now, she watched herself pondering in consternation just three or four strides away, as though she were looking in a mirror that showed her a few minutes into the past.

Was time even consistent here? Was the time she experienced the same as what someone in three dimensions experienced? Would she exit this transitory space having been gone years rather than minutes? Though, if her sense of time remained consistent, it was nearing an hour since she entered the rift.

Julia's nerves were growing frayed as she wandered, still aiming toward Trixy—or was she? Did this sense of direction account for extra dimensions?

If she followed the flat person analogy that Braden had once used, if the flat person jumped off the sheet of paper, they could land farther away on that same plane, appearing to have teleported.

But what if that flat person jumped over and off the paper itself? What if they jumped onto the floor, and the paper was sitting on the table above?

The flat person didn't necessarily know how to navigate the third dimension just because it figured out how to jump, right? So, how would it get back to the paper that was its home?

Would it even know it left the paper in the first place? Did it realize it was on a completely separate level in the third dimension from where it started?

Julia's breath was becoming quick, though being so lost in her thoughts, she didn't notice.

That possibility was the most frightening for Julia, as she was on a time limit. It took a significant mana investiture to remain in this rift. It felt like the world was constantly trying to pull her out of it, and she had to actively channel her own mana into resisting that pull.

This meant that exiting the dimensional rift should be as easy as ceasing her mana investment, letting the world drag her back to where she belonged. But…where would she end up if she did that? Even in the three dimensions she was familiar with, there were plenty of places she didn't want to be.

What if it dumped her out high in the sky? Well, that wouldn't be the worst—assuming she could gather her wits quickly enough to fly.

What if it forced her into the earth? Would the world move the ground out of her way before depositing her there? She doubted it. She'd end up crushed beneath potentially a journey of rock and earth above her, trying to take the space that it already occupied.

Julia's fingers began to shake and distract her, so she clenched them tightly into her fists.

Her attention was drawn by the sound of several sets of footsteps. She couldn't trace their sources, as they seemed to echo all around her, and also far off into the distance. However, upon looking around, she realized she was being followed, as well as paralleled.

There were…her, following her. Several versions of herself walked in front of, beside, and behind her, keeping pace.

Some were herself from recently, as they were looking down with looks of grim concentration on their faces.

Others were past versions of herself. She saw a very young girl, fear in her eyes, sprinting toward something not present—perhaps a bridge in the forest around Rockyknoll?

She saw herself from a few years ago, fighting invisible enemies, taking a nasty cut across her back. A jagged laceration opened, and blood poured freely. This would be during her first solo dungeon run.

In front of her walked future versions of herself, some echoing what she'd seen in the distortion just last week.

She saw a Julia that was glowing with an inner radiance, a bright smile on her face. She wore armor resembling her current set, though it was mostly black metal with gold trim, the familiar crimson lightning pattern originating from the center of the breastplate rather than the bottom corner that it occupied now.

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This version of Julia threw up her sword and shouted in victory, looking around with an even wider smile. She couldn't see anyone but herself, but Julia could just imagine the cheers of jubilance and victory surrounding this version of her, so full of gratitude and happiness for simply living another day.

She briefly caught glimpses of other versions of herself, including the melancholy one she'd seen before, but her eyes were drawn to a version similar to the haughty, arrogant Julia she'd glimpsed before, as though it were a magnet, and her eyes made of ferrous iron. She was drawn and couldn't look away.

This version of her was the cold, cruel woman that she remembered, but something was different. It was aware; it could see her.

Their eyes were locked, and a cold, twisted smile spread across the other's face. Julia recoiled in horror, but she couldn't pry her gaze from this other's magnetic grip.

Her breath came in fast and ragged, and Julia's chest heaved up and down, moving her cuirass so much that it was clanking against her other armor. The vision took a leisurely step down from whatever invisible throne it was occupying and began to advance on Julia.

It was coming—it was becoming. Julia didn't even know what that thought meant, nor where it'd come from, but it sent a spike of horror shooting down her spine. She didn't know what this vision was, what it wanted, but she knew she couldn't let it near—couldn't let it in. It wasn't her—not yet, but it could become her, if she let it.

Having no other options, Julia did the only thing she could think of and stopped resisting the world's pull.

She plopped into the green, murky water, and her armor quickly dragged her to the bottom. Still heaving, she sucked a lungful of water and began gagging. She thrashed on the floor of the marsh, sending bits of muck and mud that had laid undisturbed for years flying about, darkening the water and further obscuring and confusing her.

Some logic returning to her only because she realized she'd have surely drowned by this point, had she required oxygen to survive, she planted her feet underneath her and launched up out of the water and into the sky, spraying water out like a geyser.

Julia perched atop a branch of one of the huge marsh trees, shaking as though freezing, despite not being affected by temperature beyond being aware of it.

Her connection with Trixy told her she was perhaps 10-15 journeys away, comfortably within the marsh's interior, but that thought was a tiny candle in the back of her mind. It couldn't compete with the overwhelming light of her panic.

A fragment of clear crystal about the size of her thumb plopped down into her shaking hand—nearly falling into the marsh below amidst her tremors. She managed to clench it tightly in her palm before it fell, and thinking of nothing beyond being safe—being her—she spoke to it.

"P-p-please, help m-me. Please," she subconsciously, working almost exclusively on instinct, connected her mind and the Etherium to the sun. It wasn't an actual connection, of course, but her instincts remembered Braden telling her that such a mental image was required for Summoning.

The crystal tore itself out of her hand with a force she couldn't resist even had she tried. She plopped down on the branch with a yelp of surprise, her trembling and panic momentarily forgotten.

A thick, white fog rose and surrounded her, so that she could barely see the branch a stride in front of her. White lightning crackled through the fog, illuminating it momentarily and casting long shadows across the part of the branch she could see.

A shadow grew in front of her, just where she imagined the Etherium was—though she couldn't see it through the fog. It grew into a humanoid shape, obscured by the fog but for the bright, blue eyes. They glowed with a familiar light that she couldn't quite place.

Out from the fog stepped Julia—an exact replica of her, but for the glowing blue eyes.

"Not again, please," Julia whispered under her breath. She couldn't bear to face another of her potential futures, not when she now knew they could be dangerous.

"Who are you!" she shouted, voice cracking with both emotion and the force of her shout.

"WhO ARe You?" Julia's facsimile replied, though it sounded nothing like her.

The words had a strange reverberation to them, as though they carried gravitas not by their content, but by who had spoken them.

The tone was inconsistent, sounding somewhat like the fake her was asking a question, while also sounding like someone reading off a script—a sort of inquisitive, but dull tone.

"What do you want…please, what do you want," Julia said, growing quiet as tears streamed down her cheeks.

She was exhausted, mentally, physically, and emotionally. She was stretched beyond her limits—like a rope so frayed that only a single thread held it together.

She just wanted it to stop, she wanted to go back to being concerned about her next dungeon run, she wanted to walk to the city gate with Braden every day, she wanted to be scolded for doing something reckless during a spar with Ravina.

She didn't want to be whoever she kept seeing in her visions, she didn't even want to be who she was right now.

"WHaT DO YoU WAnt?" the other Julia asked, tone leaning more inquisitive than dull this time. Julia felt it wasn't quite mimicking her any longer.

"What do I want? I want to know who I am! I want to know who I'm becoming! I want to know why I'm here! I want to know what I did to deserve all of this!" Julia shouted, her panic shifting to anger.

What did she do to deserve this? Why did she have to suffer not just now, but her entire life? Why did bad things keep happening to her and those around her?

"Julia…Nȳralin," it said haltingly, though much more fluently this time.

"That's my name, yes," Julia deadpanned, anger simmering within her, kept down only by a lid of mild frustration and curiosity with the entity before her. Why did it speak this way? Was it a child taking her shape to mock her?

"It is…who you are, yes?" it asked, and this made Julia pause.

"I guess that's true, yes. I'm less concerned with who I am right now than who I'm becoming—what I'm becoming," Julia huffed.

Her anger and frustration were shifting target from the entity toward the Summoning ritual that, although performed under…less-than-ideal mental conditions, still should have provided her with something more useful when she directly asked it for help.

"You are becoming…more Julia Nȳralin, yes?" the entity asked, cocking its head to the side like a confused kid.

"Becoming more myself? What does that even mean? Everything I've seen suggests I'm going to become less like myself! That's the fucking problem!" she spat.

"You…do not wish…to become…more?" the entity asked, still with its head cocked to the side.

"I don't wish to become someone else!" Julia shouted, closing her eyes tightly to keep the tears in that threatened to fall again.

"...Are you not…different…from when…you were born?" it asked.

Julia opened her eyes and looked up at it again, finding it floating there like it was submerged in water, the mist curling about it as though driven by underwater currents.

"Well…yeah, I am. I got older. You learn and grow as you age," she said, not sure how to feel about teaching this entity what it meant to be alive.

"You do not…dislike the…changes you underwent…to become who you are…from your birth?" it asked in obvious confusion.

"Well, no. I mean, I didn't become someone different, my physical appearance just changed a little…I guess," Julia replied, now also confused herself.

"These physical changes…do not…concern you?" the entity questioned, now floating down until its—Julia's—toes brushed the branch beneath it.

"No. They're an essential part of growing up," Julia said firmly.

"Why then…do you dislike…the changes…you go through now?" it asked, twirling its hair about its pinky finger, as though a child just discovered how soft it was.

"These changes…they're turning me into…something—something not human. Who even am I if I'm not human?" Julia inquired, finally getting to the root of the discomfort that'd been growing in her since she first landed in the swamp.

"Humanity is…a shape? All humans…occupy this…shape? Look the…same?" the entity asked, now bent over and rubbing its palm on the branch, feeling its texture.

"Yes—er, well…no. I guess not. Humans come in all shapes and sizes, so I guess I would say humanity isn't really so much about shape as…who you are on the inside…" Julia said with a dawning realization, a light beginning to shine in her eyes.

Of course, how could she be so blind? Humanity wasn't about one's shape—indeed, it wasn't really even about one's species. The Jadhariin were some of the most humane people she'd ever met, and they weren't even technically humans.

"If humanity…is not…a shape…what is it?" it asked, now looking at Julia from its bent over position, while still running its fingers over the branch.

"It's a feeling. It's a fire that burns in your heart. It's what prompts you to reach your hand out to someone who's suffering. It's what makes you pity a dying animal. It's what makes you want to take care of an abandoned child!" Julia exclaimed, rising to her feet and continuing with renewed vigor.

"It's the old man giving up the last of his savings to buy bread for a starving child!

"It's a mother defending her children from a wild beast!

"It's a soldier marching into certain death, just for the chance to defend his family—his home—from invaders!

"It's a force that moves within us, a fire that burns internally, but exerts its influence through our actions! It requires no shape, no form! It's always present, and all one needs to do to access it is choose!" Julia shouted, huffing and puffing once again, though not from panic this time.

A heat burned in her chest. It seared away the doubt and fear not just from past couple hours, but the fear of change she had been accumulating since she evolved beyond her humanity.

That's right—it was so simple. Her humanity was always there. All she had to do was choose to access it.

Nothing could take that away from her because it didn't depend on fleeting concepts like shape or form. It was the unending human spirit that she craved, and that would never leave her.

The entity was silent for a moment, likely processing what Julia had said. It seemed to have trouble understanding simple sentences, so her impassioned speech would likely be a challenge for it.

"I…see…thank you for…teaching me," it said, and Julia noted that it was a statement this time, rather than a question.

"Our time…runs out," it said, shifting its gaze to the Etherium that Julia hadn't seen until this point, the fog having thinned such that it became visible again.

It was being unmade. Its crystalline structure was breaking apart and dissolving like a chunk of sugar in water. It was so small now that Julia couldn't even see it with her naked eyes—only visible to her Spiritual Sight due to the intense glow it emitted.

The entity's body began to disappear with the Etherium. Its legs were gone before she even realized, and as Julia watched, the dissolving action continued up past its torso and head, until there were just blue lights hovering amidst the thinning mist—remnants of its eyes.

"I will be watching," it said, the voice echoing from all around her, as though the sound came from everywhere at once, and then the eyes were gone. The fog cleared, and the sun shone brightly through the canopy overhead.

Julia took a deep, refreshing breath of the thick marsh air, feeling more relaxed than she had in weeks.

A bump from behind informed her of Trixy's arrival, followed by a nuzzling at her cheek.

"Sorry, Trixy. Things went a little sideways, but we made it," Julia chuckled, petting Trixy behind the ears.

"Let's get back to Veshari. They need to know of the Assembly's betrayal," Julia said, her lighthearted visage turning grim.

She set off at a brisk flight, Trixy wrapped around her waist. She didn't like being the bearer of bad news, but not even the confirmation of a traitor among the Jadhariin could dampen her lightened spirits. A smile crept back across her face.

This was the dawn of a new day—a new Julia—and she felt a spark of hope that she hadn't in a long time.