If you give a mortal a boon (3)

As per Thalia's request, I went back to our parent's house with her. While I did want to try out my new abilities, I obliged. She did just die after all. 'What did she see when she died? Did she see at all? Witness anything? Or was it a time skip, like falling asleep.' Thalia's power lets her bring any creature she has read about and understands into reality. The potential of this is extreme. From Teething Scorn to Grouifs she could bring anything into existence. Could she even bring in creatures from Mercedes' personal collection? Those books always stuck out to me, the locations, people, gods, monsters. All felt so powerful and captivating. I might lend her a few books with my boss' permission. The counter to this ability is that she can't command the summoned creature at all, and it can't be a creature that understands language. In my opinion, even with those limitations, I believe that her power is trump to the rest.

My ability is a little harder to use than the rest. I asked for an alchemy lab in Roc's Rest and a book that could teach me how to make different materials that could never be acquired under normal conditions. Things like turning iron into gold and making potions through various extractions and infusions. What makes this my exclusive ability is that only I can read the book and only I can use the lab. While maybe not as supernatural some of the other gifts we received, well, the least supernatural would probably be the cardboard box that Harrison got. "Want to order something for dinner tonight?" Thalia had opened the door to my room to find me lying on my bed, sprawled on top the blankets and sheets. I sit up and slide off my bed. "Well?" I glance over to the window and see the vague shadow of the night patrol moving across the streets. "It's up to you." I mumble as I stand up and stretch. Thalia sighs and walks into my room, past me, and sits down on my bed. "Sit back down. Let's talk." With a hop I land on the old bed, its springs straining under the unusual amount of pressure. "What about?" "How about... your boon. Why did you go with something that requires more work? You could've just as easily asked to be able to conjure up those potions without any of the extra steps." "But if I did that, I wouldn't really understand what I had created." "I kind of understand." My sister reaches over me and grabs my pillow. "What about you? I never took you for someone who likes animals. Not that you dislike them or anything." I quickly added that last line. She placed the pillow atop her knees and summoned a small bird onto it. The bird wasn't anything special, just a jiec, common to almost anywhere in the world. It tilted its head, flicking it around the room glancing about with whatever air and emotion this newly existing bird could feel.

"You don't know everything about me just because we're siblings." She stood up carrying the pillow and with it the bird, which still didn't know if it should do anything, or how to do anything, and took a blank paper from my desk, and some drawing utensils. "I picked up a hobby of drawing animals after you moved out." "It's been almost two years, how have I not known about this." "It's never been the subject of conversation. There was never any reason to bring it up, I only did it as a hobby." I watched as she carefully drew the outline of the jiec, its plumage flat and precise. "But if it's just a hobby, why did you ask for this? To enhance a random and petty hobby?" She stopped her drawing and looked back at me. Perhaps because of her stance, I remembered the image of her corpse in the chair, skin flayed and charred, eyes burnt away. I flinched as I remembered. She then spoke: "What better reason is there?" 

We sat in silence for a while. Only once the drawing was finished did we continue our conversation. This time we left it to the more benign topics that had first entered the room. "How about we just order fast food?" She asked. "That feels like the most underwhelming dinner for a day in which we met an extra-dimensional PMC." She lets out a laugh. 'No point in arguing though.' So, I stand up and grab the phone to call us the most ordinary and simple meal of the month.

____________

Roc's Rest is beautiful. The landscape was overgrown and rank with all sorts of flora I had never seen. And if one was quiet enough, fauna. The first animal I had seen was the Roc. A colossal bird that flew with such grace that, despite gliding just above the canopy of trees, didn't disturb a single leaf. The others were far harder to spot, however. A small mammal was the second one I found. It blended in with the forest floor so well that I had only seen it when Nezha pointed it out. "Those rabbits are so hard to spot sometimes." He had mumbled. I was messing around with Nezha's gift when the rabbit showed up. The creature had been sitting on the edge of the clearing where we were. Nezha looked at me with a grin and said, "Want to see it?" I nodded enthusiastically, standing up and walking towards the small beast. "Approach slowly and without an air of malice." He guided me. It felt weird to be instructed by a child. But then again, this child had created this entire space. The rabbit was a delicate creature, with soft fur and tender muscles. It twitched its little nose, preparing to bounce away should any threat be posed. I had managed to coax it into my lap, lightly brushing its pelt.

The other creatures were not as calming as the rabbit though. A behemoth hound that slid through shadows, a small spindly insect that, according to Nezha, could "crush a hundred skulls in the time it takes to blink." An invisible long-limbed thing that I needed special goggles to see, and much more. The ecosystem seemed to be a mash up of abstract horrors and immaterial creations. Despite the dangers that these creatures could pose, Nezha assured me that no one would be harmed by these, even if they escaped the Rest. Just to prove his point, he walked to the forest and brought back one of the previously mentioned shadow traversing hounds and told it to sit, it did. He then told it to roll over, it did. Not going to lie, it was adorable. Our little show had been cut short when the behemoth, which was called a Leshy's Bane, spotted a Roc flying overhead and went into its shadow to chase it.

That was a nice break from practicing my new abilities. But a respite from work is always followed by more. "How about you try to catch up to the Roc?" Nezha offered the practice. "I think that's out of my capabilities for now, I can find the positions of still objects and spaces, but something dynamic would be far more difficult." 'I don't think this is going to end well.' "Come on, it'll be fun. I'll catch you if you fall." "Fine..." Nezha smiled, that's a smile I feel that I'm going to have to get used to. I took a deep breath, and took a step forward, into the abstract plane.

My power is rather complex. I can traverse the different planes of space that make up my reality. To anyone who would see me doing this, it would look like I disappeared into a cloud of smoke and reappeared somewhere else. To me, however, it was like suddenly being thrust into a super-liminal variant of whatever location I am. Walls would appear to stretch to infinity but could be crossed in a single step, trees became thin two-dimensional silhouettes which were impossible to move around. Nezha had called this abstract plane: "A non-Euclidean span of three-dimensional space wrapped around a single ineffable point." When I wrote that as an acronym, it became: N.E.S.T.D.S.W.A.S.I.P which doesn't roll off the tongue. And so, I dubbed it: "The Wasp Nest." A geometric wonder of nature.

I look around trying to spot the shape of the Roc in the warped and irrational space. I notice one of its wings appearing to coil around a fence post and extend past the edge of the wood. I walk over to it, careful as to not step into the sky. I make a small hop, clinging onto the post, making sure as much of my figure as possible is over top of the wing's projection. With a small pop, I return to the natural plane.

____________

I look down from my vantage point, floating above the canopy of trees, as Hannah appears below me. She immediately began to yell as her misjudged position within the N.E.S.T. had resulted in her appearing halfway between the Roc and its shadow. She begins her descent with bravado, screaming and spinning wildly. I flicked a finger, and she began to slow, stopping with a soft thud on the branch of an eternal blossom ash tree. I teleported to an adjacent branch, laughing at her shocked face. "That was terrifying! You could've pointed me the right way to go or something!" "I could've. But that would be breaking the rule of: 'You have to navigate the abstract plane by yourself.' That we agreed on."

She began yet another descent, this one more carefully. The hems of the branches made a soft humming sound as she reached out to them. Though she didn't know it, the tree was absorbing the oils and sweat from her skin. An eternal blossom ash tree achieves its name's sake by being able to consume any matter from the surrounding area and repurpose it for whatever it needs. There are even some rumors of some eternal blossoms becoming magnetic to attract more things.

As Hannah reached the bottom of the ash, she made a small jump and landed on the grass, which immediately began to study this new intruder on their land. The blades of grass began to fold and coil around her shoes, the ones out of reach flinching like a snake's tongue tasting the air. "Uh! Nezha! What's the deal with this grass!?" She lifts her right foot out of the grass slowly, the grass strained as she removed her shoe from the ground, it wanted to study this invader further but lacked the strength to keep it here. "It's called wise grass. Though I feel like curious grass is a better title." "So why is it coiling around me?" "It's the same as you, it wants to know what you are." She walked toward the path, and lightly brushed off the green pigment from her shoes left over by the peculiar encounter.

"Why are there so many weird things here?" "That's a weird question. You're asking a being who you saw resurrect your friend and create this entire pocket dimension. But what you're asking is not how? But why?" "Well, I'm guessing that I wouldn't understand whatever magic extra-dimensional bullshit that fuels your abilities. And if you are a single private in the Noctambulists then I really don't want to know what the general can do." We were walking down the pathway, kicking rocks around and what not, when she said that. I pause, thinking back to the first time, and the only time I had met the general.

"The general can't be called any specific gender or pronoun. But for the sake of simplicity, I'll use feminine pronouns." "Oh! You're actually telling me something!" Hannah remarked with a sarcastic air. "Ya, ya, ya... Okay, so, the general isn't someone that I have jurisdiction to meet, even in dire situations. She has complete reign over the Noctambulists, she could delete an entire multiverse in a second, she could kill all her employees millions of times over just as fast. But even with that strength; she works for someone. The boss of the Noctambulists, our one and only client (least the only one who has the capacity to pay us)." "So there's an even higher power..." "Yup, and probably an even higher power than them."

Hannah leaned against the picket fence, which was now lining the path, we had entered a new section of the rest, a wide plain with small hills overgrown with various bramble and vines. Hannah slid down the fence, sitting with a defeated thud on the soft dirt beneath. "Could you at least tell me something reassuring?" "Uh..." "Great, just great. So, everything in my life is just the same as an ant to a lion." "Well..." "Oh, what? Is it worse than that?" I wait for her to calm down, her eyes are unfocused but fearful. I was there once. No. Once is an insult to my past, I was in that state of mind thousands, millions, billions of times over my life. I knew that the fear of an unfathomable infinity could shatter a mind if it wasn't approached carefully. "It's less like a predation interaction, and far more mutualistic. Like an industry giant donating to charity." "I've never heard of anything like that happening, people are far too greedy to donate to a cause that doesn't affect them in any way." "Maybe not in this world, maybe not." "Though on a cosmic scale, it seems like those anonymous entities are far more altruistic than your; uncharitable, gilded, lustful, oligarchs."

Hannah looked down, defeated and unwilling to fight back. It was an unfortunate truth to her; that the people who held closer control over her life, her town, and even her country, were the cruel and uncaring rulers that were said to be wiped out in the great fissuring war. I hid a grin. It was, admittingly and frightening so, fun to watch someone break down once they beheld the cold truth.

I wave my hand, a door manifests, and I step aside. I look back at the defeated form of Hannah, eyes staring blankly at the line of trees now off in the distance. She, along with many others, had known that their rulers and superiors were, or are, corrupt for a long time. But to be told that, by someone who had only just arrived, was crushing.

"Once you're ready to go home, just walk through this door... and... goodnight."