Ch 7 - Spontaneous Sentience

Rin opened his eyes. To the east, the sun peeked over the horizon, washing the land in the grey light of early dawn. Yawning, Rin stretched and cracked his neck. Sleeping on the hard dirt was definitely not ideal. The sooner they could find a nice tavern with real beds, the better. While Rin lamented their circumstances he absently stroked Nayla's sleeping head.

She emitted a soft sound, and Rin looked down smiling. Instantly, his expression froze and the last traces of sleep fled from his mind. Indeed, Nayla was still sleeping peacefully, nestled against his right arm. But it was no longer just the two of them. At his other side, another figure was also clinging to his left arm.

Rin was astonished. [Why does it seem like every time I wake up these days, a mysterious beauty has appeared by my side?]

Strangely, this new girl looked almost exactly like Nayla. The resemblance was too close to be a coincidence. Only their hair and eye colour differed, she had Rin's pitch-black eyes, and her hair was as white as pure snow, albeit streaked with soot. She was also much younger than Nayla, appearing to be around half of Nayla's age, but aside from those differences, the two were identical.

[Perhaps this is Nayla's sister? But where could she have possibly come from?] Rin pondered.

He gently nudged Nayla with his elbow, careful not to disturb the white-haired girl as he did so.

"Mmm…" Nayla was reluctant to rise, glaring at him through slitted eyes. "What is it?"

Rin nodded his head towards the sleeping girl. Nayla instantly sat bolt upright and stared for several moments, her eyebrows raised in disbelief. Finally, she turned back to Rin with a somewhat accusing look on her face.

"You little bastard! How in the—" Nayla exclaimed, "We're in the middle of a wasteland! Just where exactly could you possibly have picked up this girl?"

As Nayla's voice grew in volume, the girl opened her eyes. Long, white eyelashes blinked up at them innocently. A small, satisfied smile tugged at the corners of her small mouth as she sat up and stretched like a cat, pushing out her arms and curving her back.

"Ahhhh! To be awake and alive in the world again!" she grinned broadly at them.

Rin and Nayla glanced at each other, unsure how to react.

"You, little girl…" Nayla said flatly, "Who the hell are you and why exactly do you look like me?"

"Nayla! I have missed you greatly! Seems you made it out a little before this child did, but worry not for I am here now!" the girl puffed out her chest proudly.

"As for this child's appearance…" she stroked her chin thoughtfully. "Well, seeing as we've spent so much time together, I am most intimately familiar with your body so this just felt natural!" as she spoke, the girl eyed Nayla up and down with an approving gaze causing Nayla to blush self-consciously.

The girl pouted slightly. "Besides, this little one wouldn't know what other form to take. Everything else I've consumed was long ago refined into formless energy... Nayla was the only model I had to go off of! What do you think, came out pretty nice huh?" she smirked and posed suggestively.

"Everything you've ever consumed…" Nayla's face was pale, caught between fury and horror. "It couldn't be…"

The girl ignored her and continued to chatter happily. "As for who I am, I've never had a name before... Well, you can just call me whatever you like! Rin, why don't you pick a name for me?"

She looked at Rin and tilted her head expectantly. Her smile was innocent and infectious, one couldn't help but want to smile as well when they looked upon her face.

"Erm… Well, I suppose we have to call you something so..." Rin thought for a moment, racking his brain for something suitable. "How about… Airi! It is said that in ancient times there was a very beautiful and precious flower called Airi that grew in the far south."

"That's one flower that should've stayed lost to time..." Nayla muttered under her breath.

Seeming not to hear Nayla's words, Airi beamed at Rin happily.

"Ah~, Airi! I have come across them before, as white as the purest snow and more beautiful than the stars above!" she covered her mouth and giggled delightedly. "How fitting! Thank you, Rin."

After saying this, Airi suddenly threw her arms around Rin's neck and planted a kiss on his cheek.

Shocked, Rin reeled backwards and in the ensuing struggle all three of them ended up tangled together on the ground. Nayla was the first to extricate herself, pushing off the ground and glaring at Airi with barely concealed rage.

"Girl, I'll ask you one more time and you better tell me straight. Who are you and why have you appeared here now?" Nayla spat angrily.

Airi sat up and smiled at Nayla innocently. She was now straddling Rin, who was lying sprawled on his back in the dirt.

"Nayla, Nayla. Come now, you should know who this Airi is." Airi threw back her head and laughed. "I believe that the people in this world once called me 'Oblivion Orb'."

"Impossible…" Nayla said weakly, "the Oblivion Orb was an inanimate, unfeeling force of nature with no purpose beyond consumption and growth. It was thought to have formed from a massive quantity of matter, concentrated into a singular point in space. How could a consciousness possibly develop under those conditions, let alone survive and flourish enough to gain sentience?"

Airi stood up and patted Nayla on the shoulder, causing her to stiffen and freeze in place. She nodded with an understanding expression as if addressing a child.

"Indeed, you are correct! Such a thing would normally be impossible. In fact, Airi may be the first of my kind ever to be born into this world!" she proclaimed proudly.

"However." Airi raised a finger and waged it, again giving the impression of a wise elder educating a wayward youth. "Due to a certain someone's actions, this pitiful little orb was sealed away. Of course, if it had just been you and that other man there would have been no issue, but that old bastard was too crafty! He actually had some understanding of spacetime laws, not to mention that primordial altar artifact!" Airi ground her teeth angrily.

"A temporal seal is a most unnatural environment!" she shuddered, crossing her arms as if cold. "This little orb had never experienced something so terrible. Time moved so slowly there that no energy could enter or exit, so this little orb was forced to starve!"

"In that place, this hungry orb had no choice but to adapt to circumstances. But even once Airi had emerged, this one could do nothing! Airi waited for many centuries for the seal to weaken but it was still too strong. But then, I found you Rin."

Airi gazed at Rin with an expression that couldn't be mistaken for anything other than passionate devotion.

"You were much smaller at the time. At first, Airi could only watch from afar, at this point, Airi was not very well developed and my thoughts and inventions were vague. But watching you grow also helped me grow, and soon Airi was strong enough to guide you to my prison. The time seal had weakened enough for Airi to exert a tiny bit of power on the outside world, which Airi used to transport you inside."

Rin had sat up on the ground and was staring at Airi with disbelief. [Could it really be possible? Has she been guiding my actions for years, only to lead up to the point where I would release her from her imprisonment?]

"After you penetrated the time seal and entered this little orb's internal world, it was a simple matter of helping you to refine your body so that we would be able to fully integrate. After this process was completed, Airi released you back into the outside world. Airi has been with you ever since, but until you developed your Source Energy Airi could not enter this world with you! Now that you have, Airi shall never leave your side!"

"As for you…" Airi regarded Nayla disdainfully. "Her existence is an even bigger coincidence than my own! Your Source Energy was fully depleted and your last drop of vitality drained away into the water you sent into me."

"Normally, your soul would have been ground to dust and refined away within this orb, but under the effects of the temporal seal, this orb was essentially frozen in time. Thus, your soul was able to exist in a kind of stasis for the last ten thousand years, until Rin pulled you out. Somehow over that time, you managed to integrate with that vast store of water within me and it became a replacement of sorts for your missing Source Energy, allowing you to sustain a physical form."

Nayla was staring at the ground with a stricken look on her face. "I— I remember now. Kaeya… What happened to him after I was gone?"

Airi snorted contemptuously. "How should this one know? Did you forget this orb had been locked away and unable to see or sense the world?"

Seeing Nayla's distraught expression, Airi relented somewhat. "I can at least tell you that he survived. He and that old bastard were both definitely still living when they left."

A silence enveloped the three of them. This was certainly an enormous amount of information to process at all once.

"Airi, do you think you could help me understand and use some of the power in the orb?" Rin asked, changing the subject to something less heavy.

Airi smiled, appearing delighted. "Of course! As time goes on you should naturally start to understand more, but for now, I can help you get started!"

Reaching out, Airi placed her palm on Rin's forehead and closed her eyes. Rin followed her lead, closing his eyes and calming his mind. He felt a wealth of knowledge flow into his mind, a sea of formless thoughts and ideas that seemed to contain countless secrets. Rin gasped and Airi withdrew her hand and winked coyly at him.

"That was just a taste! After you've sorted through that somewhat, you should be able to start accessing more on your own. After all, the orb is the source and that is already inside you." she tapped his sternum meaningfully.

For the next hour, Rin sat there. Silently comprehending the vast amount of knowledge that Airi had bestowed upon him. Nayla and Airi remained by his side, not exchanging a single word over that time. Finally, Rin opened his eyes and rose to stand.

"Alright, let's get going," he said calmly.

Instantly Nayla and Airi rose to stand as well and the three of them continued the journey westward towards civilization. Along the way, Rin practiced developing a new technique from the information he had managed to decipher.

While helpful, the information Airi had dumped on him had been an incredibly jumbled mess. There were no fully defined techniques or secret arts that he could cultivate, but only vague principles that seemed to hold great power. Rin knew that if he could comprehend just a fraction of the power behind these principles, perhaps he would be able to develop his own techniques which might be more spectacular than any the world had ever seen before.

From what Rin could understand, the Oblivion Orb seemed to be an object formed out of a massive amalgamation of energy. These energies had been crushed under spatial and gravitational pressures into a single point of extreme density, rivalling the weight and power of an entire planet.

With this newfound comprehension of spatial and gravitational principles, Rin began to understand how to exert this power on the outside world. After several hours of experimentation, he was left with a tiny black spec sitting in the center of his palm.

No bigger than a grain of sand, this particle had actually been formed using gravity magic. Rin had managed to condense a small amount of the nearby materials into a single point. Exerting himself once more, Rin observed as streams of dust and ash flew together into his palm and the tiny spec grew slightly larger. As it grew, the strain on Rin's body and mind grew exponentially and he was quickly forced to cut off the flow of material.

Curiously, Airi peeked over Rin's shoulder to see what he was doing. "Impressive! To think your comprehension of gravitational laws has improved to this degree!"

Startled out of his state of deep focus, Rin instantly lost control of the technique. The next moment, an enormous force lifted him off his feet and blew him back several metres where he lay on the ground, groaning and blinking up at the sky in a daze.

Above him, Nayla and Airi's faces entered his field of vision, but for some reason, they kept swimming in and out of focus.

"Would you guys stand still… This is making me sick." Rin complained weakly.

"What happened to him?" Nayla turned to Airi with a worried expression. "Is he going to be alright?"

Airi shrugged. "This is gravity magic we're talking about, sometimes accidents happen. He'll be fine!"

And it was true. Rin had been stunned but nothing more and he quickly recovered and got to his feet.

"What was that? Something like that happened to me before, back when I had just woken up."

"You lost control of the gravity principles you were manipulating," Airi explained, "all of the concentrated matter that you gathered in your palm exploded outwards all at once. Luckily, your strength is still low so the density of the sphere you created was still low. If it had been more concentrated, the effects of the explosion could have been fatal."

Rin felt as though some barrier in his understanding had been unlocked. The beginnings of a powerful technique were forming in his mind, but it would still require further refinement.