A Calm Moment

Oddly enough, this was less panic-inducing than the actual **** process itself had been. It was still terrifying, a cold and deeply seated sense of dread that pervaded his chest and clenched his irregularly beating heart - but somehow, not as immediate.

After the paralysis and pain had faded, he could think clearly despite the fear, unlike before, and was able to calm himself. It was not too unlike how he’d cope after one of Frank’s thuggish beatings. Deep and steady breaths, wait for the pain to subside to tolerable levels, and clear his mind, pushing the anger and other negativity elsewhere. If anything, this was easier for him than before, with Gamer’s Body quickly reverting damage he took and translating it into hitpoint loss. As far as John could tell, it was a set period of time, around about half a minute, in which the physical damage remained, before it fixed itself, something he figured might end up being important.

The first thing he did when he was fully clear-headed was sit up and open his inventory, pull out the dagger, and try to pry off the magical bracelets on either wrist. He may not know exactly what they were, but they couldn’t be anything good if the kidnappers put them on. Or, he would have done that, if not for the message that appeared when he tried to remove the dagger from his inventory.

Access To Inventory Restricted

Well fuck. Why was that then? Must have been because of the cuffs, or bracelets, or whatever they were, that he had been trying to remove. He lifted one wrist to take a closer look at one, squinting in the dim lighting at the engravings on the metal. He continued to do this for a few seconds before thinking to himself, ‘Yep, just as I thought. I have absolutely no idea how to read this, even if it is possible to read.’

Well, he could try Observe at least, since he couldn’t visibly see anything. It went through, and he wondered to himself why it was that he could Observe, but not use the inventory. Maybe it was because Observe was cast through his eyes, whilst the inventory was accessed using his hands? He put that thought aside for another time, and read the Observe result.

“...Manacles? Mana-cles? Seriously?” It was such a lazy pun that John couldn’t help but ask under his breath, and then almost jumped out of his skin when there was a soft, if somewhat nervous, giggle from the other side of the van. He suddenly remembered that there was another person with him. “Oh fuck! I’m so sorry! God, I can’t believe I forgot to check on you, I was just so distracted!”

He still couldn’t get a good look at her in the dim lighting, but what he could see? Well, if this wasn’t a literal ****, he’d probably be staring way too much, and his sweaty palms would be because of her, rather than the intense fear response he was forcing down. Aside from her oddly enthralling snowy eyes, he could see that she had a lithe frame and long dark hair, though he couldn’t see how long. He couldn’t even properly see how ‘well-endowed’ she was, with her jacket covering her chest, and her sitting down. Which was a shame because the denim he’d glimpsed earlier probably complimented her derriere very well. Still… she was cute, and her giggling was kind of adorable, and he was really glad that there was no chance he could get a semi in this situation.

The girl had a moment more before getting a hold of herself enough to speak. “Don’t worry about it, please.” Her voice was warm, and not overly loud, though that could have been because of the situation. “I could’ve spoken up before now if I’d wanted to. Can I ask a question, though…?”

John sat there dumbly for a moment before realising she wanted his name. “God, sorry. My name’s John. I really should have started with that.”

“John?” She smiled in his general direction as she spoke his name. “I wanted to ask… you’re not an Abyssal, are you?”

“A what-now?”

She sighed before continuing, “I had a hunch. Don’t worry, everything will be alright for you once they realise.”

“Er… does ‘Abyssal’ have to do with all the new powers I have? These charms, abilities and such?”

The girl went quiet for a moment. “Oh no. You must be a late bloomer.” She shuffled closer to him, feeling her way out using her hands across the corroded metal floor of the van, then once she found his hand, she asked, “May I touch you?”

Immediately, John’s lizard brain started making innuendos about how she could touch him somewhere very special before he got control of it and replied to her, “S-s-sure?”

She giggled at the nervousness in his voice. She gently glided her fingertips across his hand, following up his arm until she reached his shoulder, then wrapped her arms around him unexpectedly, and gave him a hug. “I’m sorry that this is your first encounter with the Abyss. It’s a harsh lesson you’ve been dealt.”

She let go after just a moment when the van shook them both as it went over some bump, but John doubted he’d forget her breathy voice in his ear.

“Okay. I’m going to explain what I can. This is going to be a lot to take in, and I don’t know how much time we’ve got.” That brought John’s attention back to the fact that they were literally in the back of a kidnapper’s van, going who knows where, and school would have no idea where he was, an extremely panicking thought. So, naturally, he simply decided to ignore it until reality **** itself onto him again. The drivers clearly couldn’t hear them, or they would’ve been shushed already.

She sat back and leaned against the wall of the van and took a deep breath. “I’m really not good at explaining things, but, to put it simply: the whole mundane idea of magic is real. Not everyone has it, but there’s probably a few million, most of them gathered in the more civilised nations. There are a ton of types of magic and different specialisations in it. It’s almost like an alternate reality, laid atop the mundane world. Think of, like… like a swearing censor, kind of? No, that’s not right. There’s a filter, basically, that stops anything Abyssal, or magical, from influencing the ‘normal’ world, which is why you’ve never heard of it, obviously. Anyway, this magical world is called the Abyss, which is why the term is Abyssal.”

John simply listened and watched this girl as she bounced from sentence to sentence with a seemingly endless amount of energy.

“This is an extremely condensed version, and I’m probably doing an awful job of explaining everything, so ask questions if you’ve got them. I’m going to skip about the governments of the Abyss and all that. What is important for you to know right now, with this situation, is that it’s possible, if you’ve got the right ability, to see someone’s ‘aura’, which is, like… I don’t know exactly how to describe it. It’s kind of like a visual scent? It tells you how much raw power a person has, as well as the way that power has manifested, though only on a basic elemental level - There are a few elements, so that can be handy knowledge. Usually, I have the ability, since I trained for years to learn it, and then to use it, as a way of knowing who’s around me, but with these things on…” She jangled the bracelets on her wrists with a wry smile. “I don’t have that.”

That made John stop for a second. If he could use Observe with the manacles on, why couldn’t she use this aura-thingy with them on? Surely both worked through the eyes, right? A question for another time. For now, John had to focus on the information that he might need to survive.

“So… magic is real, but everyone has it differently, and there’s a whole other world of magic that’s forcibly kept separate… somehow,” John recapped what she’d said as he thought of his questions. “And each person with magic has one of these auras, which lets some others tell how powerful they are?” As he said it, he realised why she was telling him. “And if others can tell how powerful I am, they can know, on a basic level, how dangerous I could be.”

She nodded. “It also can give some suggestion of their potential, though it takes a fair amount of skill to be able to tell that. I probably couldn’t do it, though the Order’s seers could. There are other indicators of it too, but now’s probably not the time.”

John realised something. “Er… not really a question about all of this, but…“ he said slowly, amusement creeping into his voice, “…you didn’t actually tell me your name.”

The girl immediately blushed, her pale cheeks filling with pink embarrassment in the dim lighting, and she said, “Ah! Oh, you’re right!” John chuckled, and she giggled again before answering with a tiny nervous stutter for the first time, “It’s V-Velvet.”.

“Velvet…” John let her name sit on his tongue for a moment. “I like it.”

If she’d blushed pink before, this was a vibrant crimson, and he would have loved to find it funny, but his own cheeks were burning from embarrassment.

“Oh! That must mean the knife is yours!” John realised

“Knife?” Velvet queried “What knife?”

“I- I found a knife at the alleyway entrance. It’s the reason I was actually even slightly dangerous to the kidnappers. I realised what was happening, and was working out how to help when I saw one of them grabbing you and…” He trailed off embarrassedly again, muttering the last bit, “I had to do something, I guess.”

There was a moment of stillness as that sat in the air, the pair of them sitting silently. John could almost feel her judging him - Guy finds out he has magic, and immediately throws himself at a thug? It sounded stupid to John, and he’d lived it.

He **** himself past the anxiety building in his mind, and asked, “I-I do have a couple of questions, actually. What… how did they get you, if you’ve got that detection ability for auras and stuff?”

She sighed. “It was such a stupid little thing…”

“Ugh, I hate this so much” Velvet muttered under her breath as she tapped her mundane cane along the ground. With so much of her life spent in the Abyssal side of the world, it was a real annoyance to feign true blindness for the mundane standards. She’d fought really, really hard to get her mana flowing for her aura reading, specifically so that she didn’t need to use one of these canes!

She tapped it against the ground especially hard with a huff. “...So worth it though.” She paused for a moment and used her free hand to reach into the pocket of her jacket and quickly popped another jelly bean into her mouth with an ‘om’ noise, then smiled happily and continued walking.

A moment later, a cyclist went zooming by her, startling her with their presence and making her drop her cane in surprise, entirely validating her earlier private rant about the injustice of it all.

Resisting the urge to fiercely swear, she carefully knelt down and searched around for her cane. Her senses might usually be better, but that wouldn’t have helped her here anyway.

Then suddenly someone grabbed her shoulder and pulled her; from the way there was much more echo, it must be an alleyway. This was bad.

“Got her, Bob. You hold her while I grab the cuffs.” Oh Gaia, this was really bad. This was some kind of arrest, or ****. Or worse. She was pushed forward and someone else grabbed her. Bob, the other man she had been hearing shuffling around, was now holding her. He replied, “You fuckin’ idiot! I haven’t set up a barrier yet! If anyone shows up, it’s your fuckin’ ass!”

Aha! These were Abyssals which meant she could fight bac- There was a metallic clink around one wrist and the man holding her, Bob, spoke again, “I had a pair on me! C’mere and help me with ‘er, before anyone shows up!” The other wrist clinked as well, and she could feel a strange effect coming over her, her abilities dulling.

Panic started to settle on her when she realised she couldn’t use her aura abilities, or any of her actual attacks, such as they were. Then she remembered her dagger. She pulled it out of the sheath resting in the small of her back, and lunged towards where she could still feel one of the kidnappers, feeling as the blade glanced off of some kind of barrier. Then the man, whichever it was, grabbed her wrist and pressed, forcing her to release her grip, and she heard it clattering across the ground away from her.

“…After that, I made to shout, but one of them stopped me, and I think that’s where you showed up, right?” she finished her little tale.

“Yeah, it was. So… you don’t know exactly where we’re going either,” John mused regretfully.

“Nope. And the worst part is that I lost the jelly beans.” She pouted, and by all that was holy, that was adorable. Still, he couldn’t entirely resist.

“So… the worst part isn’t that we’re defenceless and helpless in the back of a **** van, but that you lost your sweets?” John teased her with a grin on his face, and then chuckled quietly as her cheeks darkened in the dim light again. “I actually found your dagger, by the way. I cut one of them with it when they noticed me. That’s what I meant earlier with the knife.”

“Oh… That sucks. I was hoping to recover it, if we make it out, but if one of these thugs has it, it’s probably lost for good now.” She seemed genuinely crestfallen at the thought of losing it.

“Actually? Nah. I managed to grab it before they put me in here. Bracelets don’t let me get it out, but…” He trailed off, not wanting to think too much of their situation, but happy with the relief he could see on her face.

“I have a question.” He redirected the conversation ‘subtly’. “You mentioned a barrier, but… what actually is it that keeps this Abyss and the normal world separate?”

“Not a what,” she said, then paused. “Well, sort of a what, but also a who. The most powerful thing in existence. She’s got many names, depending on where you go, but the most popular name is Gaia.”

“Gaia? I-” As he spoke, it was almost as if the name reverberated in his mind. For a moment, the air seemed to thrum with power, and a distant noise reminiscent of chimes sounded as a pop-up appeared.

Achievement Unlocked - Speak My Name.
Speak the name of your patron.
Names hold great power, John Newman. They carry with them the weight of a being’s actions. Let this tell you that I am watching most keenly to see what your name brings to this world.

John stared in silent shock at the achievement window as the last note of the impossible chime faded, and his head stopped thrumming. He stared for so long that Velvet reached to touch him again as she called his name, just to check he hadn’t left somehow.

“J-John, are you alright? What’s the matter?” Her voice had a tinge of panic that was new. Of course, she couldn’t see anything, could she? He was her only lifeline right now, and he just went silent, of course she was going to be worried.

“I-it’s alright. I’m alright. Just a little shaken, I think.” He took a deep breath. “I don’t know if I should, but I need to tell you about-”

The van stopped with a shudder and a clunking noise as the handbrake was engaged. The two of them froze in fear, remembering where their conversation had been taking place. It felt casual for a short while, but reality had come knocking once more. Velvet’s hand reached and took an iron grip on his knee, her anchor in the storm.