Chapter 319: Chapter 307 – A Place Beyond

Excerpt from the second draft of An Earthling’s Guide to the Larger Universe

Training Abilities

Training abilities are abilities that are given as part of your Path to help you learn what’s needed to follow the Path. For example, a warrior might get ‘Basic Sword Use’ while an herbalist might get ‘Basic Useful Plants’. Later on, the warrior might get ‘Sword Combat’ or ‘Basic Melee Combat’ while the herbalist might get ‘Advanced Plant Harvesting’ or ‘Common Tincture Concoction’. What you get depends on both your Path and your current knowledge base; there are a wide variety of options, and to some extent it seems like the Voice will choose things it thinks you need.

They are all useful simply to have; you can immediately use the skill they give. With that said, they are far more useful as training aids. Pay attention to what the skill tells you and practice. Simply using it in the field is not enough; practice and paying attention will get you farther than simple use. Training abilities come in multiple levels and you will not get a direct upgrade until you have mastered the lower one.

If you get an ability that seems to upgrade only part of a training ability you already have, you have either focused that portion high enough to qualify (for example, someone with Basic Melee Weapon Use might earn Basic Sword Combat) or it’s something you haven’t practiced enough (that same person with Basic Melee Weapon Use might get a skill in Basic Combat Footwork). If the second happens, it’s a signal from the Voice that you have some work you need to do.

---

Rissa sat in her empty-feeling hotel room and stared at the dragon’s core sitting on the desk before reaching over to pick it up. She rubbed it like a worry stone and sighed. She couldn’t leave until Jacob was able to take the time off work to go see their father for more training, but this place was so dull without Serenity.

Back home, she had friends she could go out with for an evening when he wasn’t around, at least if they could get a sitter. Often enough, it was her, a friend, and her friend’s kid. Well, except for Christine; her oldest was sixteen, and she was perfectly happy leaving him to watch his siblings to go to a movie with Rissa - usually the afternoon matinee, since Christine didn’t work and Rissa could set her own schedule.

Rissa gripped the worry stone harder as she felt her foresight kick in. She expected to see something horrible happen to Christina, since she’d just been thinking about her, but that wasn’t what she saw.

In front of her somehow - even though there wasn’t room - was a dragon made of darkness. As it turned towards her, she saw lights begin to glow, spread out through the shadow’s body.

No, not a shadow. A nebula. The sparks were like the tiny stars she’d seen as Serenity’s shadowlike form interacted with the magic attacking Jacob. They were more colors, though; all the colors she could think of were present in these stars, while that had simply seemed bright and colorless.

She felt a feeling of danger. It wasn’t aimed at her and it didn’t come from the dragon. Was it aimed at the dragon, then?

She couldn’t see the source, but sparks flowed out of the dragon like blood from a wound in its side.

The dragon vanished as the vision ended.

What the hell was that? The dragon had to be Serenity, didn’t it? But what the heck did it mean? Rissa’s visions were generally very straightforward; what she saw was what happened. They weren’t symbolic allegories, so this wouldn’t happen until Serenity was somehow a star-filled dragon-shaped nebula. She didn’t always know when; it could be years away.

Assuming it was Serenity after all.

She started to dismiss it, then changed her mind. She’d write it up and send the details to Serenity. She didn’t have to know what it meant to have a pretty good guess that it was likely to be something he’d want to know about.

It didn’t hurt that it would give her something useful to do while she waited for Jacob to finish teaching for the day other than make money. That was useful, but not very interesting.

---

Serenity was searching all over Serenity Settlement for the Lord’s Door when Rissa’s text came. He read through the message, shrugged to himself, and sent back a simple ‘Love you’ to Rissa.

He could guess why she’d gotten that vision now; he was looking for the Lord’s Door as a way into the Void, and that vision certainly sounded connected to the Void somehow. He wasn’t convinced it was a vision of himself, but he also didn’t know what else it could be. Perhaps he’d meet something in the Void?

Or perhaps the vision wouldn’t come to pass. It might be likely right now, but that didn’t mean it would happen. Especially not something so vague.

Serenity went back to hunting for the Lord’s Door. He wasn’t satisfied with what he knew of the Void, and another visit seemed like the best way to find out more. If he was going to be part -

No. That wasn’t the way to say it.

If it was going to be a part of him, he wanted to know what it was. Right now, the one thing he could safely say it wasn’t was empty, and that was what “void” meant. He needed a better word.

---

Hours after Rissa’s text, Serenity finally found the Lord’s Door situated at the base of the trunk of one of the trees near the Settlement Crystal. Naturally, it wasn’t visible from the crystal; it was on the opposite side of the trunk. He’d walked near it any number of times, but it hadn’t occurred to him that it might be in a spot no one went until he’d checked all of the inhabited areas twice.

Serenity relocated the Door to his treehouse before checking on the options. They were the same as before, except for “Use Void Spark”, which now simply said “Void”.

When Serenity stepped through the door into the Void, he found it much the same as before. The one large difference was that this time there didn’t seem to be another Void Sovereign waiting for him. Serenity missed the presence of someone to help guide him, but perhaps this was for the best. He needed time in the Void to figure out what it was and make sense of the words he already had.

You are reading story After the End: Serenity at novel35.com

You see nothing where I see everything. That was what it had said, wasn’t it?

Serenity floated as one more darkness in a place without light and stared around himself. The last time, he’d started to see something in the Void Spark. This time, he wanted to see something in the Void.

Something from nothing and nothing from something. It sounded somewhat like the tales of the Primordial Chaos, yet this was nothing at all like that. The Primordial Chaos was supposed to be a hot, painful place where everything tried to be and become, all at once.

Perhaps then it was more like Order, the common point between Life and Death? Ordered Chaos was one of the ways to see Life, while Serenity’s interpretation of Death held notes of the Final Order that became Stillness and Stasis yet not quite Entropy for even that required Change.

That didn’t feel right, either. It wasn’t Order or Chaos, yet what else was something from nothing and nothing from something?

Serenity opened his senses; all of them, even his Time’s Eye. He saw nothing at all until he realized that there was a hint - a gleam - something of Time laid over the whole place. It did change, it always changed, yet that wasn’t quite right.

It could change. That was the right word. It always held the chance to change. The possibility.

Magic threaded through the space that no longer seemed so empty to Serenity and suddenly he saw farther than he had before. It was empty, yes, but that was because there was nothing there yet. There might be or there might not be in the future.

In the far distance, Serenity saw others like himself. Others who could wade in the sea of that-which-might-be and find what they wanted.

Some were creatures native to the space, similar to Serenity’s Void Sovereign shape. They partook of the nature of the place and were shaped by their experiences rather than their surroundings.

Others visited for only a moment, taking a piece of the space back with them as they left. Serenity suspected that many were summoners, while others were dreamers or visionaries. It was not a place to linger if you weren’t made for it. Serenity didn’t quite understand how he was handling it; it seemed like it ought to hurt to see so much at once, yet it did not.

Serenity slowly realized it was because he wasn’t truly seeing all of it at once. He was seeing one thing that could be, then moving on to the next. Some of them were, while others were only possible, yet it wasn’t through Time that he was looking. No, he was seeing things that were possible and yet weren’t true right now.

Oh. That was why.

This place was like Chaos in that it could be anything; indeed, it was entirely possible that some of the tales of the Primordial Chaos were of this space. That wasn’t what it was, though. This place was a place where anything could be, a place of Potential.

Everything drew on It, for It was a place of Origin.

Those were both better terms for it than Void, but Serenity knew that Void was not completely wrong. After all, what was there before anything was other than nothing?

Well, there was potential.

Serenity felt his mind growing tired of having the potential around him pushed into his thoughts and the world around him grew dark again. This wasn’t his place and he wasn’t truly comfortable here. Not for long periods.

This was where a piece of himself came from, his origin, but he’d left. His home was on Earth.

As he wished to be home, the place-that-wasn’t that surrounded him disappeared and was replaced by the pillow-filled treehouse. The Lord’s Door was gone.

Exhausted, Serenity slipped from his Void Sovereign form back to the hatchling dragon shape. He wanted to be himself and at that moment, that meant the dragon. In some ways, he was more the dragon than he was the chimera, even though he was far more familiar with a bipedal form.

Serenity burrowed into a pile of pillows, almost too tired to read the Voice’s messages as he fell asleep.

[Void Sovereign form has become Sovereign of Potential]

[Void Dhampir of Mana and Essence has become Magic Dhampir of the Origin]

---

General