Episode 13: The Gate to Power

Arson whistled as he looked for Xani. The girl was always hard to find as her constant magic practice kept her on the move.

She was a prodigy in magic and was also the kind of talent Arson thought a person like Jade would adopt—driven, intelligence, and calculative—all traits Arson didn’t believe he possessed.

“Took you long enough to find me,” said Xani from her seat on the roof’s ledge. Arson approached her from behind and stepped up to stand on the ledge.

“Yeah, well, I can only do so many things at once and Khalif and his people skipped in line.”

“You got away with only a beat-down. You should count yourself lucky,” said Xani as she looked up at his bruised eye. Arson nodded and decided to keep the fact that he’d given the beatdown to himself.

“That’s beside the point. I’m here to make you an offer,” said Arson as he crouched and rested his elbows on his knees with a hand under his chin and the other afloat near his middle.

“What kind of offer? You know I won’t join a gang, right?”

“Geez, I’m only seven. There’s no way that’s enough time to become enough of a terrorizing menace for you all to immediately assume I started a gang,” said Arson.

“Arson! You blew up Gregory’s birthday cake with 100 cherry bombs, you tried to start a gambling den in the basement only two summer cycles ago, and you’ve lost more fights than you have won, and you still seem to get into a scrape every other day,” said Xani.

“So I’m automatically a career criminal,” said Arson with a raised eyebrow.

“Well, you chose the wrong Keeper to follow if that’s not what you’re going for,” said Xani. Arson frowned, Xani knew more than most, so if she hinted at Jade being cut from stained cloths, it was true.

“What do you know?” She looked him in the eyes again as she flipped a page in her sketchbook and started to depict his features.

“Jade, formerly known as Elizabeth Carter, is known to be the only living descendant of Carter Omni, the literal patron god of criminals,” said Xani.

“No sparking way,” murmured Arson, unsure if he was intimidated by his mother’s past or exhilarated at the thought that the law hadn’t been able to confine Jade in her youth.

“Yes, and Elizabeth Carter, before she was given the Jade title, was probably CloudLake City’s most notorious criminal youth. She took the title to avoid the Final Stop for the second time,” explained Xani simply while she drew Arson’s face in many different expressions, as they spoke.

Arson was shocked at the claims being spouted, but the problem was who shared the details. Xani was an epistemologist, a seeker of truth, these things wouldn’t be shared otherwise. Her people believed lies and rumors were as evil as demons.

“Second time, how is that possible? I thought once you were teleported into the prison train that you couldn’t escape no matter what, you become a career criminal, you're caught and never seen again, right?”

Xani giggled at Arson’s furrowed brow. “Yeah, unless you destroy the train from the inside, derail it, and and slam it into a skyscraper. That was her second escape. The first one is even more insane to believe actually occurred,” said Xani. She closed her sketchbook and stepped into the air. Arson gasped as she floated nearby the rooftop.

Arson hadn’t looked down a single time because he feared heights. He only managed the top of trash heaps with the knowledge that he’d climbed them and could probably fall off and roll to safety without harm.

What Xani did now was Arson’s greatest dream. To fly the skies and be freed from gravity’s draw.

“Close your mouth, cutie. I’ll teach you if you become strong enough. Now hurry up and make your offer.”

“I will hire you and the rest of the bookish that follow your direction for 100k and 10k prospectively, for all my crafting needs. I have some huge projects that I need help with and they are going to take a lot of work,” Arson repeated the same pitch he’d given all the others. He had a spacial restoration device in mind that, if completed, would turn the dump into pure credits. Without Xani and the bookish, it would take a lot of untrusted sources, and Arson didn’t have the time to network with his training schedule.

“Introverts don’t like change, but most like money,” said Xani. Then she disappeared. The only proof that she’d ever been there at all was the sound barrier being broken in the distance. He sent her a payment offer and assumed that if she signed and accepted, she and her people could be relied upon.

“Sparks, I hope I learn to fly soon.” He glanced down and jumped back from the edge. Arson turned around and became dizzy. So dizzy that he lost his balance.

For Arson, the next few moments of his life were a blur. He fell backward and a surge of energy muddled his entire mind. Within his Soul Realm a pillar of solid light broke forcefully through his soul node’s gate and external energy surged into the space.

Blood sprayed in every direction as mana pushed through his pores and forcefully ejected anything the energy felt lacked purity. His blood began to boil, as it was also changed through his every cell being consumed by mana.

An even larger explosion burst free of his body and would have threatened to break his bones if he hadn’t undergone his last round of poisoning.

His muscles split open as if torn. Blood vessels burst while Arson’s soul drank in mana from the environment.

All of this occurred and Arson hadn’t even completely drifted into a horizontal position in the air. By the time his head fell below his feet, his mind cleared and he woke up. Something was wrong as time seemed to slog forward at an incredibly slow pace.

Arson wondered if he was going to die. Still unaware of his internal changes, he entered his Soul Realm and gasped mentally.

The inside of his Soul Realm shone with a bright light that painted the sky a sunset crimson, and golden white that dazzled the eyes. His core still converted energy into stat points, but Arson was confused by where that extra energy had come from. He once again followed the line of power. The journey somehow took longer, and Arson struggled to look away from the pillar that had formed.

The runes seemed to speak to him, but he didn’t know what their language was, nor how to decipher them. After what felt like a week, Arson made it to the soul node’s gate, and found something far more interesting than the runes.

Stars shot out of the node and entered his Soul Realm with every thought that passed through his mind.

Are these stars the physical representation of my thoughts within my soul?

He didn’t know what else to do, so he entered the gate, by pushing through the brilliant white light above.

His brain tingled as he entered his Cerebral Realm for the first time. It was much like the first drop of warm water on his body when he showered on a cold day.

When he entered the space, he saw a new area that confused him. With himself positioned at the center, many points of interest could be found.

Below him, was a vortex that reminded him of images described as “black holes” in the scientific texts he’d read in the library.

He found himself afloat in a space that seemed to have four rounded walls in addition to a domed ceiling and floor.

Arson took in the odd symbols on the walls then his eyes drifted toward the black vortex at the center of the space’s floor.

The hard-light pillar poked through the hole and a beam of light could be seen connected from its pointed tip to a tree-like pattern behind him. Its branches appeared to connect to every portion of the area—the light a beautiful web that spread above his head and beyond.

To his left and right were what Arson could only describe as four saxophones connected by their mouth pieces. They rotated clockwise, and a soft hum could be heard from their ends. Arson found this truly odd, until he concentrated on what was in front of him.

The sky could be seen through two open windows, windows that seemed to have vortexes of their own that surrounded their edges, and Arson was momentarily lost in the stars that filled the portrait like images.

Is that what I am looking at? Now that his Cerebral Realm had begun its creation, he’d receive instinctual sensations about the elements within his mind and soul. The same way he understood the stars that poured into his soul were his thoughts, he now intuited that these were windows that led to his mind and then his soul. The more he understood about the mental space, the more it solidified around him.

The tree that represented his spine and neural network, transformed from the flat perspective he’d seen originally, and solidified into a real tree. It then moved to position itself above the pillar of light.

An even stronger connection was formed and the golden tree pulsed. Arson didn’t know what he was doing, but his innate talent for ancient practices flared to life.

Outside of Arson’s body he’d managed to fall an entire floor, but also triggered the creation of his mental core in full, which had an external effect.

His pores and eyes drank in more mana than ever before. His body needed it both to recover from the node he’d opened and to be able to handle the effect that made his mind perceive everything around him as slowly as it currently was.

Arson knew he needed to do something, but his mind told him that to finish his mental core would be the most beneficial thing he could do. So he continued even as he fell.

Inside his Cerebral Realm, he focused on the saxophone-like constructs. He correlated these two objects to sound and movement and the flattened objects transformed.

One morphed itself into a storm that flew above the tree. Its precipitation was crystal clear, and the light it emitted only rivaled by the light that the tree itself created. Lightning shot outward from the cloud instead of down, in pulses that seemed to tell Arson his cardinal directions.

The second of the two instruments formed what appeared as an ocean around the black hole itself.

In the next instant, a tsunami-like wave burst into creation underneath all the chaotic pressure at the perimeter of the water, which seemed to increase the intensity of the spacial vortex that the water surrounded even further.

The final two pieces to his mental core creation distorted Arson’s mind completely. One window became the sky itself, which also allowed Arson to see all around himself at once. The moment this happened his brain nearly shut down until the second window moved. Once in place, it transformed into a halo that sat above the cloud, which sat above the tree, above the black hole, above the now perfectly aligned pillar of light that had extended itself from his soul into the limits of his Cerebral Realm.

Arson felt he’d done something right, but then he felt very tired. He wasn’t aware of how the effects of adrenaline on his body made his cores push his every cell into overdrive. His mind saw his current predicament as potentially his final, and had tried to give him every opportunity it could.

Oddly enough, he saw a way out of his fall in the breath before he passed out. The path lit up to his eyes like a beacon. Every foothold and hand position given to him like a simple calculation.

Problem was the abilities he’d triggered were so far above his own body, he could make no move toward what he now knew to be a route to safety. So instead, Arson fell from 11 stories up.

The sound of his body when it hit the ground remained long after inside his memory, as his newly increased mental perception seemed to record everything his mana touched around him, which by the cloud of ambient mana that his pores now leaked, was absolutely everything.

His mind may have been dormant, but his brain was not. So as he slept for the next week, all he heard in his mind over and over, was the sound of his own fall.

When he woke up in the middle of a scream the following week, he vowed that he would learn to fly, and soon. As he knew he’d survived by the skin of his teeth, and what had felt like a few drops of life-force energy. Then he realized his watch had been ringing with a notification that indicated a payment invoice for over 1 million credits, followed by a payroll invoice that immediately took 500k of his earnings. He rolled his eyes.

Looks like the members of my team are hard at work.

“Sparks, looks like it's back to work.”

From the strange bed Arson found himself in, he used his Holo-watch to register his business with the CityNation of Maelstrom. With the assistance from the device’s advanced functions, the complicated paperwork was simplified to a degree that allowed for the less experienced Arson to finish quickly.

He hadn’t known what he wanted to name his company but as he thought of what he wanted to do with the dump, a name came to him. He was inspired by what Jade had told him about the dump, and what the area could one day become. So he did what any other young boy would do in his situation and named his company the most terrifying thing he could think of—a name that also symbolized his new home.

“The Black Hole Conglomerate,” said Arson as he finished the digital paperwork.

His company was registered as a merchant group, and had even managed to start the documents necessary to be an international exporter of goods. All that was left for him to do now was build the funds required to finalize the registration, then he remembered the invoice that had woken him up, and laughed to himself before he gave away every credit he’d just made.

He stretched, ignored his growing list of Overlay notifications, which explained the changes to his soul and mind after he’d broken open his first node gateway, and finished his mental core, all before he rolled out of bed and fell onto the ground.

“Ha, looks like the runt isn’t quite healed yet,” came an unfamiliar voice. Arson rolled around on the floor, not yet able to stand, still under the effects of extreme mana exposure.

“What, who said that?” Arson spoke to the room, but sensed no energies nearby. The home he was in seemed familiar, but Arson couldn’t be sure because of how many houses Jade made appear and disappear with the wave of her hands. So a strange voice in a foreign place was a thing Arson wasn’t surprised by in the slightest.

“Geez, look down here kid,” said the voice. Arson looked down and saw nothing, until he noticed his watch.

“Hi! What’s your name? I’m kidding. I already know your name, runt, but I wonder if you could guess mine?” Arson shook his head at the beautiful face. His mind flickered to what Jade had said about the watch’s AI function, and he wondered if he should already have attempted to turn off the AI, as well as if the AI had been on and operational the entire time he’d slept.

“Am I in trouble here?”

“No but I shouldn’t be talking to you. Momma Jade warned me not to. I’m sorry,” said Arson as he began to look for the controls to turn off the AI’s systems. Controls that were absolutely nowhere to be found.

“Hmph. You’re no fun, but it is nice to meet you Arson. I am Anastasia and I have a proposition for you.” Arson nodded as if he cared what the woman said, but he continued looking for her “off” switch.

“I need a body, and you’re going to build me one. Doesn’t have to be now, but for my illustrious services it is my only requirement. Either you do that, or I tell your mother that you turned my systems on and deleted the coding linked to my off switch, in direct defiance of her commands.” Arson stopped his search and gaped at Anastasia. He didn’t know what to do. Arson was normally very decisive, but he had only just been adopted. And here was this AI already threatening his bond with his new family. A bit of sadness-tinged anger heated the top of his head.

Jade should believe me over this sparking AI, right?

He sat frozen and began to nod slowly. He was sure he could get out of this situation with time and experience. Until then, he would use this AI to get ahead, as most Cultivators gained guardian spirits and AI assistants much later in life, though Arson did not understand why it must be so much later.

“Ok, demon, but threaten to reveal your functionality in any way to my mother again, and I will make sure you are destroyed. Even if I do cherish what you are housed in, I value my relationship with Jade far more. Do you understand?” Arson forced down the smile he felt tug his lips at the sight of the disgruntled AI. Apparently the AI didn’t like to be threatened in the same way she had just done to him, nor did she seem to like Arson’s given nickname.

“I’ve met demons, and I am far worse than any of those simple beasts, child, but…” Anastasia put on the smile Arson felt that he hid. The AI’s smile seemed far more dangerous than any glare Arson had ever received as Anastasia finished.

“You have a deal.”