Tread Lightly

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Virgil Boone

My mind and body are fading, slowly dispersing and losing what holds me together. As the Bakwa's curse spreads within me, I can feel myself gradually unwillingly enter the plane it was from.

I fall still and paralyzed on the ground after I slay the king of the spirits within this town because of the cerulean lightning within my veins that cause this phantasmal transformation. Even my eyes stop moving and leave a single frame I can see through.

But just because I stop moving does not mean the world does too. Frantic yelling and many tears drop from Vernon, the little brother I have raised, protected, trained, and prepared for as long as I can remember.

He was the only one of my siblings interested in gaining a Sigil. I never had a choice, being dragged out of my house after my parents died and forced to fight other teenagers until I earned my spot to be trained. So, I made sure to offer it to my siblings.

Despite the risks of acquiring access to Ether grants, the world is far more dangerous without someone having it. Every family must have a guardian; I know that. And Vernon does too. That's why he joined me.

If I were to die and he wasn't at least capable of a bit of supernatural might, we would be easy pickings for the wealthy and the hungry. When you're powerless, sometimes it is impossible to tell the difference between a man who acts like a monster and an actual one.

But despite all that is happening to me, I am proud of Vernon. I remember when he was just a tiny toddler; now, he's a brave fighter. Someone who, even after they are knocked down, gets back up.

I just wish I could hear his voice. The paralysis has even reached my ears, disallowing my hearing. Soon to come is my sight, of that I'm sure.

Wyatt also appears in my limited frame of vision many times until he disappears for a few minutes after a silent conversation from my perspective with Vernon. While he's gone, though, Vernon constantly looks over his shoulder every few seconds.

Then, out of nowhere, fragile bits of glowing Ether shards fly out into the sky. Something that only happens when an artifact is shattered, the emotions, desires, and remnant memories being broken or dispelled. A rare event. It takes quite a lot of power to break the inner workings of an artifact. No idea how it's happening.

This is the last thing I see, a beautiful sight, like fireworks after a great victory before the frame I see through freezes. All that is left is a still picture of the drifting lights of a shattered artifact, the final thing I will likely ever see.

I had always figured that when you died, all you saw was black, an endless and cruel void that Death opens for you.

But that's not the case, for the last thing you see stays with you.

I wonder what Death looks like. The old woman is probably hideous. I hope she is.

The damn bitch has taken too many friends. And I guess she's on her way to make a stop for me.

Just as my thoughts touch on Death and her cruel ways, a familiar weight that signals the ire of the Mother Below presses upon me along with an odd feeling.

The feeling is similar to being chained up in a cellar, something I'm also sadly familiar with. The Hunters are not kind to the destitute. I ensured Vernon entered with enough money to not be treated this way despite the misery and sleepless weeks it caused me.

I try to focus on this odd feeling instead of the past, curious about what it represents. Is this how Death takes you? Are the legends wrong? She just encases your soul in spiritual restraints forever in stasis?

As my mind turns to the sensation and ponders its meaning, a vision of what it represents is presented to the depths of my mind.

A perspective in an omniscient third person, one of a dying man chained to a deep dungeon beside a second cell with a featureless man who is equally restrained. The dying man looks like me, but the other man is odd, with a missing hand and a hole where their heart should be.

But despite his oddities, the man reaches out between the bars and offers a hand. Unsure of what is happening, I just watch the hand frantically gesture for something from the other man. Over time the hand grows even more erratic and hurried as the dying man and I simply observe.

At this point, I look at the dying man, and he looks back at me; he is identical to me besides the pitch-black irises around his equally dark pupils. What is happening? This feels like a fever dream or hallucination. Is this real?

I look at the dying man for a while longer until I realize something. The weight of the Mother Below comes from the dying man. Curious, I try to move this disembodied perspective closer to the dying man and meet significant resistance.

It feels like running against a tornado's windy pull, an earthquake's faltering shake, and a flood's unstoppable rush. I consider not continuing for a moment, but a thought reaches my mind.

If the Mother Below is pressing against me, that means my life is not yet gone. She cares not for those who are dead. Only for those who are powerful and can prevent the death of many more humans, those she hates most.

And so, I push on as the other man with the lost hand and the missing heart grows increasingly more desperate.

His desperation only gives me more urgency as I move closer and closer to the dying man lying against the cold stone brick wall of the dungeon. Eventually, I reach the copy of me as waves of pressure emanate from it.

Then, I move into the body, trying to enter it and take control. When I do, my sight changes to seeing through the dying man's eyes, along with the pressure dissipating. And I instantly notice that this dying man is me, only a metaphorical and dimming version of me.

One that is conjured from my Sigil, my soul, and the small amount of Ether that rests within all Sigiled permanently. This is the inner self. The part of a person that, when destroyed, turns them into vegetables or, if corrupted by an artifact, demon, or god, turns them into an unfeeling puppet.

It is this version of me, the final and only part of me, that yet remains after the Bakwa's paralyzing and phantasmal curse.

I am broken from my inner musings and thoughts by the man in the other cell turning frenzied and rapturous, his arms waving crazily into my cell, trying to reach me. But he cannot, for I am in the opposite corner of the cell.

Looking at him, I feel the natural calamities of pressure arrive again, this time with much more force. If the first calamities were the weakest forms of themselves, a first-class tornado, a weak earthquake, and an expected yearly flood, these new ones are a magnitude higher.

I try to move towards the man simply in spite of Mother Below's desires.

The tornado picks up and spins me harshly as I reach out to the man, but without doing so, I fall to the ground, only a little bit closer.

Then, I try to stand against the wind as the world shakes and splinters beneath me. The earthquake intensifies as I attempt to get up and step toward the man. Once more, my feet go out from under me, the earthly mother in all her hate wishing for my death.

Giving up on standing, I now try to crawl. A single shuffle is made before a rushing wave hits me with freezing temperatures. Gritting my teeth, I hold onto the bricks of the dungeon below me against the unceasing current within a place I never wanted to see again, the memories too painful and dark.

I look up through the metaphysical waves constantly crashing over me and see a hand waving toward me with finality, a sign of someone about to give up.

This is my last chance. I can feel it. If I don't grab this hand, I will indeed die. I don't know how, and frankly, I don't care.

Taking a sputtered breath of damp air, I grip the stone brick as hard as I can with one arm and reach up to the man reaching down.

Our hands don't meet, though. A small gap lies in between. A distance that, no matter how hard I try, I cannot cross. I repeatedly strain to reach the hand despite this fact that is settled in my heart. Even as the fingers that hold me onto the windy, shaky, and torrent-covered bricks peel off one by one, I stretch as much as I can.

Right before the water washes me away, I see something happen to the man before me. His featureless face wrinkles in the effort as the hole where his heart should be grows slightly. Seeing the growth of the darkness in his chest causes me a primal and fathomless fear.

I try to let go at this moment, the man in front of me no longer seems to be trying to help me, but before I am washed away by the pressurized torrent of the Mother Below's will, red-black tendrils come from the man's hand and latch onto mine.

Agony flows through my brain the second it touches me, and shortly after, it spreads down from my forehead until it encompasses my whole body. This torment only lasts a few moments, dissipating when the tendrils pull my hand into the man's palm against my will.

The instant my hands clasp his, two things occur. The first is that I hear a crack resound through my body, starting from my right forearm, where the core of my Ether resides. This crack fills me with a sense of achievement, and the pressure from the Mother Below fades entirely.

The second is that I recognize this hand, which I have shaken recently. Wyatt's. Shock flows through me as my vision shakes, shatters, and shifts into a new sight. A new place.

It is a place that sends both terror and exhilaration into anyone who knows of its origins. A local of literal divine importance and otherplanar interest. Where all must go to grow further.

The Cabin.

But the sight of the eerie wooden hut confuses me. I thought people only came here after they gained a new Sigil. What am I doing here after almost dying? Does resisting Mother Below's will and performing an Absolution send you to the Cabin?

And if that is indeed the case, why? Why would defying the Mother Below send you here? From the rumors and myths about Absolutions, I had figured they were real, but that they more so just enhanced your abilities by sharpening them further through near death. Like improving the way you use Ether beyond your standard capabilities.

But apparently not. They instead hold real, literal ground amongst even the interest of the old gods. What a curious thing. Too far above my pay grade, power, or even want to know, though.

I may only be a humble 3rd Sigil, but I know a fundamental truth of this world from my time in it and the horrors I've seen. Sometimes, it's best to not know. Knowledge itself is a weapon. An insidious and unexpected dagger that can enter the most hardened man and turn them mad. Or it can give those with power a weapon to cripple you eternally.

And knowledge of the Gods? Of The Cabin? And not just the usual stuff like the titles or whatever, but their proper names, what they truly look like, or bits and pieces of Godly knowledge? That stuff changes people. Kills them even.

I once had a buddy who was in a group that came across an old ruin, and they went in to find treasure, weapons, and loot from the past ages. But something in there spoke into the minds of the men in the group, poisoning their thoughts.

Only Norman made it out alive. He said he only made it out alive because he deafened himself after half the group started going back and rambling about whispers. But even Norman, who mutilated himself with knives, was eventually taken over by what little he learned within that ruin.

I tracked him down and put him out of his misery myself before he could return to wherever the ruin was. The bounty paid for half of Vernon's Hunter training.

My thoughts leave the rumination of my past, which Vernon tells me I do far too much and that it's unhealthy. I disagree. Every time I recall my past and all the times I barely survived, or when others did the same, it cements something in me.

Just how unforgiving this world is. How necessary preparation and intel are. The recent fight is a good example. We thought we were prepared. Two 3rd Sigils and a 2nd, along with many artifacts and other powerful tools. Surely we'd win, right?

No. It was a close and brutal fight. One that could have gone better with a few more days of preparation and thought. It might not have been lowered to an easy one, but certainly, with a few makeshift explosives, molotovs, and other weapons, the fight would have been a bit less dangerous. And something that would have really made the difference?

If we knew that the progenitor Bakwa was so powerful, it could prevent the dissipation of its created Bawka when they died, effectively making us fight an unending ghost army.

Another tally to add the next time I prepare to retrieve a bounty or kill a target.

Even if I've fought and killed it before, do more research. Things change. Not all creatures of the same species or type are the same.

After my mental note for the future, something I do after every fight, no matter how dangerous, I allow my attention to turn to the tome that rests on the table. The object that tells us of our Sigils and their meanings.

I take a single step, all that is required to get close enough to see the already opened book, an oddity compared to the other three times I've been here over the years. The book is always creepy and unnatural no matter how often I see it, seemingly made of leather from human skin and littered with ancient symbols that none know the meaning of. The difference between human and other creatures' leather that I can only notice from seeing it in person.

My eyes peer at the already opened new page. The ancient runic words that hurt the mind if one looks too long at an individual one translate and enter my mind just at the sight of them.

Congratulations, weathered Nightwhip. You have displayed an overwhelming pure resonance to the aspect of the Wraith.

You have performed an Act of Absolution in your attempt to enter and return from another realm unsuitable for your kind. You have been turned into a phantom and slowly pulled back from the film that holds the worlds apart. As your body and mind began to fade and quiver in this reality, seeking to join the next, you refused. The world itself refused your reentry; you refused its refusal. You defied everything while your body phased in and out of this world. But amongst that phantasmal event, a formless connection emerges between you and your Sigil. And so, may your Nightwhip's Sigil shift into a purer form, for you, the soon-to-be Wraith have performed.

The Wraith's Absolution.

You have prematurely resonated with a future step along your path, and as such, your current Sigil shall shift its Absolute Form to match it. It will never be the same again, and neither will you, weathered Nightwhip. Like an old revenant starved of sustenance given souls to feed upon, your Sigil shall now be more swift, erratic, and pure.

From the weathered Nightwhip you once were, now, you are the Flickering Nightwhip. One who flickers from this world into the next, unceasing, unending, and without notice.

With this new form, your Sigil shall grant a new strength. A new aid to you in your long journey, one that may not be wanted but that is needed for that which you walk amongst.

In and out, you flicker from your current realm to the next, sometimes formless, sometimes discrete. This unpredictable and unexpected phantasmal force shall aid you greatly despite the damage it might cause to your mind. Tromp cautiously when you flicker as a Wraith would. You are not yet ready to fully withstand the realms beyond. Few are.

The form of your Sigil shall now be revealed to you, as it is fading and unpredictable.

My mind takes in the knowledge that the tome gives me, and I stare at it in shock. I had heard that Absolutions give new skills, but I always thought they were just expanded or enhanced versions of what was already had, not possible futures.

A Wraith. Their kind are terrible specters that stand near the apex of the formless. Not quite at the top, but not that far. I believe they are ordinarily 6th Sigiled threats. I had no idea that a potential path ahead of me lies the Sigil of those terrifying spirits. Some of the words, though, make me view the new ability to Flicker, as it is put, as something hazardous.

I've never heard of a warning alongside an ability before from the tome. The book usually just gives basic information and leaves out the side effects or negatives. For it to speak of them, they must be truly dangerous.

The whole bit of being formless is scary too. I'm no coward, but the idea of having no body is enough to make me hesitate even using the skill. Being blown by the wind, unable to regain a body as I'm slowly affected by the realms beyond, is a risk that might be too high for the reward.

I'll have to see, though. At least I did something I always thought impossible, no matter how weird and unnatural the event was.

I made the Mother Below lose a bet against me. An orphan who started at rock bottom. Now even those high-up Hunters and Estates will have to treat me with just a little respect.

For only those who absolve themselves can go beyond the limits of the 6th Sigil.