Unbearable pain swarms my entire being and my head feels like it's going to explode. For a moment I feel like I'm going to black out.
FUCK.
Something brushes past me; Wind, maybe. I can't tell. Everything has suddenly gone pitch black.
MAKE IT STOP.
My core oscillating in ways it shouldn’t—
WHEN WILL THIS END.
—throws my senses off for a pitch.
The pain vanishes. My whole body suddenly goes light and cold.
Something brushes up past me again, but this time, it’s like my skin is getting ripped off; Melting and Vaporizing.
My vocal cords rip open in excruciating pain- Nothing.
I try to talk; Nothing.
Not even a breath of sound leaves me.
Try to move. But the reality of the situation hits me; I can’t feel my body.
WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON RIGHT NOW.
My brain is reporting sensations I can't verify; Maybe real, maybe phantom, no way to sort them.
FUCK. FUCK. THIS WASN’T MEANT TO HAPPEN.
I try to calm down and make sense of the situation, and whether what I’m feeling is true or not; Something registers at my back. I keep a tight grip on the sensation to use as an anchor. A point of calibration for my sense of direction.
Then a point of white light appears ahead of me.
So I can see.
More lights follow, and with them, something like pins across my skin.
A cold tingling sensation runs up my body. Rippling up like a wave crashing on a seashore.
I can feel mobility over my body returning piece by piece. Hands. Chest. A faint sense of falling. My face.
My eyes aren't open.
The second that registers, they jolt open,
"Ok what the actual fuck"
Dots of dim stars light up the entire sky. Darkness surrounds the rest.
I'm in space. That much registers immediately. What takes longer is the thing directly in front of me.
A supermassive black hole.
Accretion disc spinning at three times its own size; Light bending at the edges, matter pulling inward in slow catastrophic spirals that have been running for longer than anything I could name.
A supermassive celestial void.
It fills my entire field of vision, and I can't process it all at once.
Shivers run through me in a full-body wave.
I am so, deeply, completely fucked.
My body continues on a free fall as I end of facing down towards the object pulling me towards it.
I fucking blackho— A BlackHole.
I don't realistically have enough time to think or make a decision. I don't have time for the obvious questions either; How am I breathing, where am I in relation to anything, what the hell did I do in life to end up here.
I take a deep breath and relax even though I'm falling into the literal description of a never ending void. My thoughts scramble in place trying to find something. Even a skill could work at this point.
A pulsation passes through me and- is that mana?
My heart thumps against my chest, but I just barely manage to cancel the sound off. My fear flatlines, but it doesn't fully dissipate. I've been through scenarios that should've killed me. Way too many to count. Every time I get out alive using a skill as a last resort. But never have I faced anything like this.
Are you sure that’s mana? No way that… I-In a place like this How can mana—
One more pulsation passes right through my soul core.
Holy shit it is mana. No way in hell would I switch up that signature- Wait a minute.
This changes things. I don't have any mana in my allocate right now and the ambient mana is too raw to use directly. But if I'm able to capture one of these waves, I might be able to build enough of a defense field to keep myself intact. Escape isn’t—
Sure about that.
I… can’t escape. But at least survival will be my target.
My fall doesn’t accelerate for a while, and the sudden silence, helps clear my mind. Falling through the abyssal space to predestined doom ahead of me.
I really did fuck up bad. And on top of all of this, there's Kida.
Where is she.
Not the analysis question. Just… where is she. What… happened to her.
The image of her face right before the beam hit, looking at me like she trusted me to fix it-
I shove that back down before it does something to my chest I can't afford right now. Figure that out after you survive. Figure everything out after you survive. Come on we don’t have all fucking day.
If the circle interpreted us as a single entity, we should've ended up in the same place. Same logic as a teleportation circle; Contact within the boundary means shared destination. There's no clear reason that condition wouldn't hold here. She's somewhere near me. She has to be. There’s no other logical and factual explanation.
I'm holding onto that…
..I know.
Another wave passes and now I'm certain; it's mana.
All my skills are soul-bound so they're still accessible. I have something to work with.
My heart is about to arrest from the pressure, but if I don't move now, I'm dead.
How do I capture the wave.
Thoughts cloud and I can't get traction.
"Think of something damn it!”
Minutes pass as space warps around me from the pull of the black hole. I get too close for comfort, my angst grows the closer I get, my blood pressure skyrockets, and eventually something surfaces.
My eyes instantly shut. I spread my arms out facing the endless void in front of me and release the breath that's been knotted in my throat.
"Steady Awareness"
<̷͓̌/̴̭̌&̴̥̏A̸̳̅c̸̬͒q̴̝̌ü̵̟i̵͕͌ī̸͉i̷̺͌i̸̧͐i̴̫͐i̷̧͊i̷̛̯i̴̥̅i̶̧͘ḯ̵̖ḯ̸̺ỉ̶͇i̷̝͝i̴͖̎i̷͝ͅỉ̶̢͇̰̜̔̈́̀i̸͙͊ỉ̴̢͓̓͜i̵͖̓̑͜͠ĩ̶͙̟̰̝̅͌̚i̸̭̐͒͝i̷̡͚̩͚̒̇͝͠į̸̼̭̭̽́̒͑į̴̯̠̿̌͊i̵̞͆͂̀͛i̷̦͊́i̷̠̰̮̇̚i̴̪̹̼̽̈̽̓͘i̴̺̙̰͌̈́͐͘i̸̠̖̭̮̼̣̭̥̩͇̿̊͛̀i̴̦̦͋ì̵͈͉̺͓̬̖͎̙̱̟̾̓ì̵̡̢̙ǐ̸̲͚̩̙̬̯̟̭̓͗ḭ̵̩̝̫̏̈́͐̌i̶̛͚̠̞̲̙͇͔͚̦͒͂̍̃̚i̸̧͎̮̫͍͉͚̗̔̽̑̽̇̕i̷̢͔͔͓̥̓̈́͆̄͘͝͠i̷͎̫͆̀͌̿̕ ||
The skill forms in the heat of the moment; Built, according to Analysis, from the raw mana around me, running off any ambient source. As a prerequisite, I've also gained the ability to convert mana more efficiently; Along with 3 more that go by the- “First of the Three Series”.
With the citation of the name given, the key binding of the skill triggers and I enter the state: ‘Steady’ Mode.
Through the new awareness I can see the next wave incoming; Nearly two kilometers out and closing.
I extend both index fingers and trace slow spirals in the air on either side of me.
A white cloud forms around each hand, curls back behind me in a loop, and connects.
I close my fists and the cloud condenses into a single glowing string that extends outward fast. Covering nearly 200 meters in under two seconds.
My heart races faster as my eyes lock onto the wave like a heat seeking missile. I’m more scared than I’ve ever been, but the raw mana running throughout me due the skill is like the alcohol of a Mana Manipulator.
The wave makes contact with the string and slows. I can feel the mana siphoning into my very core.
And then I feel a problem.
The purity is too high. My core wasn't built to process this volume of undiluted mana. I can already feel it straining. If this fires up my core, there goes my actual soul.
I need to let it out now. I’m not going to be risking my soul.
I redirect the incoming flow through the efficiency conversion and the pure mana shifts into something workable as it enters. The last of it absorbs in.
Then I stop.
My short-term memory catches up with me.
I could've done that from the start. The conversion ability, the prerequisite I acquired when Steady Awareness formed, I had that before trying that the technique, before any of it. I could've just fucking converted the ambient mana directly. The entire construction, my core NEARLY burning up, the thirty seconds of thinking I was about to DIE-
Fuck me…
At least I can do proper skill execution now.
My fall accelerates, bursts of mana passing by me increases in frequency. Tension on my head is slowly making me lose my sanity, and I activate Crimson Bloom alongside Soul's Guard. And brace.
Magic circles appear in sequence beneath me leading toward the black hole. Some fall ahead of me and fracture on contact.
I pass through the circles. Both skills trigger. The converted mana forms a shielding layer around me and the defense boost holds.
Stars stretch into long streaks as I cross the threshold and I feel it; Not my body, my soul; Starting to come apart even though nothing visible changes. No skills trigger. No mana flows. The layer around me freezes and the only sensation left is pure pain. Ten seconds pass, or what I count as ten seconds.
Everything goes dark.Unbearable