I miss space.
Or rather, I miss living in space.
I fully enjoyed having the ability to control gravity as I pleased. But I still missed looking down on entire worlds from the comfort of my living room.
I missed worlds themselves.
Not standing on them, but looking up at them. Here, even in the middle of the sea, the sky was just… bland. Only a dozen stars or star clusters could be found in the night sky. Enough to collectively bathe the night in enough light to pass for a full moon. But nowhere near enough to fill one with the same sense of wanderlust that Sol's skyscape provided.
Though, with everyone else locked in their berths sleeping. There wasn't much else to do but smoke and gaze upon the empty sky while we churned across the ocean.
I wound up spending around two hours fishing and managed to add an octopus to my menagerie before I put the pole away just after nine to eat and go upstairs to meditate for the night.
I emerged just past one in the morning to find Toril to be the only one still awake. After taking over for him, I sent my doppelganger to take control of 'Valoo' and got us underway to our destination.
Come sunrise, I was relieved by Ed and Giorno. And with nothing else to do, I retired to my room to spend the next five and a half hours writing, listening to music, and watching old shows through my Eternal Eye.
My binge-watching was eventually called to a halt from Toril's shouts leading me to peer over my balcony to see an untamed expanse standing only a few kilometers away. With that, I joined my vassals in hurrying through the ship to stuff any and everything we'd need for our journey into my shadow before we all assembled on the bow.
While Toril and I settled into our chairs a Jaimess unfolded his frame to begin layering it with paper magic, Roheisa conjured a steel bucket for her and Lucia to sit inside, then we simultaneously took to the air.
After taking a moment to store the two ships in my shadow, we took off. Making it to the coast in less than a minute.
There, the same process was repeated in reverse. Resulting in eight initiates frozen on the precipice of an untamed tropical wilderness.
With a heavy breath, I stepped away from the beach. Prompting the others to follow me into the brush, thus marking the beginning of our great journey.
To put it simply, the Epethian coastline was remarkable. At least, it was when compared to the drab, white, black, and gray palate of Deapou Island. Here, the days were bright and sunny and the land was lush enough to reflect a vibrant range of colors into my eyes. Not only that but the silent snowfall had been replaced with a perpetual cacophony of chirps, screeches, hoots, and hollers that came from the thousands of unseen life forms around us.
While the others were just as awestruck as I was, I couldn't help but feel an immense appreciation for my newfound affinities. If it weren't for them, I would've turned into a seizing heap of flesh the moment I stepped outside. Instead, I could use the full scope of my elven senses to look, listen, and smell for potential additions to my Menagerie.
Sadly, however, our hour-long waltz through the woods ended with no noteworthy specimens. So I turned my attention to the wood and stone buildings peering through the brush ahead.
Due to us hugging the beach on our approach, we were met with extensive piers after breaking the woodline. Surprisingly, however, there was no wall, gate, or even a checkpoint for us to pass through. Only a dense wall of brush and a noticeable rim of buildings that surrounded the main avenue like a bubble.
The avenue itself led from the docks to the heart of an extensively decorated city that stretched to the southwest, and then further beyond to the wide, worn road leading away from the city.
While it was indeed beautiful, it took only a few steps down the cobblestone path to see that it was just a farce. The lavishness seen in the shops and inns along the avenue bled through only a few blocks before falling off on the prosperity scale. I only saw glimpses of it through the alleyways: buildings half-reclaimed by nature, beggars, and people dressed in rags roaming the streets, and worse.
Glimpses, but they were there.
With the Epethian capital being well over ten thousand kilometers away, I've always been skeptical of the bustling port city I've seen from afar being as prosperous as it seemed. That, and the sparse stream of ships coming and going from the far south to the Twin Capitals told me that this 'port city' was really just a backwater region a heart.
That said, I didn't think it would've been this bad.
As far as I was aware, the avenue was a symbol of what the place was supposed to be, and the person in charge simply couldn't keep up with the job. Or, it was the typical case of a tyrannical noble letting their land go to ruin. If it was neither of those, I assumed the place was simply poor. Or, they were wealthy in the past but blew their money on the expansive decor seen around us.
Whatever the reason, it reminded me of North Korea. Specifically of my trip to the DMZ so long ago. Where, just beyond the border, one could see a vast city with vibrant lights and a beautiful skyline; only, the streets were empty and the stores were full of cardboard cutouts of people and food.
It brought some solace to see these buildings having at least some purpose, to trade what they had with whatever visitors happened to come their way.
Excepting us, apparently.
With them seeing such a bustling Empire blind the horizon every night, it was easy to see why they fostered ill will towards us.
The changed directions and crossed streets after noticing our presence, the side-eyes given to us as we passed, the slurs and curses under their breath once they were out of earshot. They were signs of something I was all too familiar with.
Being unwelcome.
I was unsure of who the bad guy was in this case, or if there was even one at all. Regardless, I didn't really care to learn about the cause of their hatred. All I knew, was that seeing people live in such a way when the power existed for them to live better reminded me far too much of old Earth.
But again, they would have their turn in due time.
Thankfully, no one seemed to want to stop and smell the roses, so we veritably ignored the foul gazes aimed our way and quickly made our way south through town.
After walking a few hundred meters away from town, we stepped off the path for a quick bathroom break. At which time, I spotted a snake and a very strange and very large frog and captured them both in my shadow.
If I were to count my wolves and the three orcas as one, the new additions brought me to a total of nine.
A nice start, but there was still far more work to be done.
"Alright." I returned to the others with a great sigh. "Our next waypoint is four thousand eight hundred-something klicks away. If my math is right, we can fly for four hours, make camp tonight, and arrive tomorrow after another four hours of flight."
"Eight hours of flying?" The Princess recoiled in disbelief. "That requires us to fly…"
"Six hundred seventeen kilometers per hour." Jaimess finished for her.
"Thank you." She curtly nodded to him. Then turned to me. "Six hundred seventeen kilometers per hour!"
"Half of the speed of sound. I'm aware." I slowly nodded. Then plopped onto my chair with a mocking grin. "I'll carry you if you can't fly that fast."
"Hmph." She turned away with a sneer to conjure and step inside a sleeker version of her bucket seat. "Let's go, Lucia."
"Toril and I will take point and set the altitude," I said to the rest of them. "Jaimess and crew, you take up the middle while Roheisa takes up the rear."
With their affirmations received, I cast my most favored spell on myself and then on my chair, pinning me to it as a planet would to everything sitting on top of it. After that, I conjured I tiny gravity well with a pull weak enough to affect me and my chair alone.
"Alright." I grinned at everyone as I was lifted into the air. "Let's go!"
So saying, I increased the pull on my artificial well, accelerating my chair through the air and into the sky, ass-end first.
With a flap of his chair's wings and a screech from his rocket, Toril shot off of the ground. Accelerating to my side in an instant with Roheisa and Lucia in tow. Leaving Jaimess on the ground, rushing Ed, Letta, and Giorno into a house-sized flying saucer made of paper and obsidian.
With a burst of Ed's torch magic, the disk was off the ground and flying in formation behind me and Toril a few seconds later.
Giving us all the leeway to accelerate to our heart's content.
Once up to speed, I settled the jetstream around me with air manipulation, sparked a joint, and settled into my seat to try and settle on a way to pass the time.
Next to me, Toril was keeping a periodical eye on the sky while he read through the books I gave him. And so too did the saucer riders. When they weren't chatting idly or heatedly arguing with each other, that is. Due to the conical nose of Roheisa's seat, I couldn't exactly see what she was doing. Though, it wasn't as if I wanted to disturb her. Or any of them, for that matter. I was simply searching for ideas.
And after finding none, I turned away from the ideas of binge-watching in favor of letting my mind wander about the present and the near future.
At the forefront of those thoughts, was the small sense of relief I was feeling now that the locals' glares were long behind us.
Being instantly recognized and hated by everyone we came across would prove to do far more harm than good during our travels. That said, our destination was way out in the sticks. And even though our clothing and accents may give us away once we traveled to the capital, we weren't exactly wearing anything that tied us to our homeland. Putting my mind a little at ease.
People aside, I was thoroughly enjoying the land itself. Though my hereditary affinity made me immune to the cold, I was still a tropical person by nature. Thus, it went without saying that Epethia was far better than Deapou in terms of climate. After all, there could only be so much white, black, and gray until even I turned into a moody little bitch. As such, seeing the dense field of greens and hearing the constant presence of life was a more than welcome change of pace.
***
I eventually grew bored enough to give in and lose myself in a vibe of fine vistas and funky jazz until the sun began to set on the Mortal Plane. At which time, my attention was caught by Toril signaling for us to land.
Using my senses, I scanned the expansive forest from above to find a location with minimal life before guiding everyone down to a seemingly random patch of forest to set up camp.
With the one-person tents and field chairs Giorno made for us, that task wound up being completed not too long after we landed. When all was said and done, a large campfire was roaring at the center of a ring made of eight tents suspended on lines pulled taut between the trees.
The place itself was an unremarkable section of woods. Trees and a wide range of plants stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction. Shrouding the thick layer of humus in a dense layer of live foliage.
With our sleeping arrangements set up, we all went our separate ways to either tend to whatever tasks needed tending to or to lounge about before we went to bed. Ed and Giorno went off into the distance, muttering somethings about making an impromptu outhouse while Jaimess and Toril educated Roheisa and Lucia on how to make a stew with pemmican.
I, however, did like Giorno and Letta and lounged in my tent to tune my senses for any animals that may be scattered around the place.
Much like I learned during my scan above, there were none of the vicious predators I so desired in our small patch of woods. There were, however, many smaller creatures that needed my investigation to figure out what they were. So, while Roheisa gave the others history lessons about her father uplifting these lands after my grandfather plagued the continent with death magic, I eased off into the shadows to light a smoke and do some exploring.
After an hour or so of meandering, I returned from my trip with a slight increase of birds and bunnies to add to the collective's provisions and not much more in the way of troops.
While the wildlife was abundant, I didn't see anything that particularly stood out to me. But I knew that in a place like this, one would appear in due time.
Regardless, I peered into my shadow after returning to my tent and was surprised to see both the snake and the frog taking on their final shadowy forms while the orcas and the octopus were still flailing around helplessly, despite me catching the latter pair two hours earlier than the rest.
Due to my negligence in the past, I was unsure of exactly how much time was needed for the animals to transition. With my Well being chock full of arcana now, my ignorance on the matter was ultimately nonexistent.
Things that I resolved to change at this very moment.
Based on what I saw, I decided to base my hypothesis on either mass or intelligence being the primary variable that influenced the change, rather than time, and resolved to check up on all of them every couple of hours.
With that in mind, I lounged about in my tent until just after ten, when Roheisa came knocking at my tent with a bowl of stew.
After thanking her kindly, I pulled my feet to the ground and followed her back to the campfire, where the others were gathered.
"I've never been a fan of stew." She groaned after settling into her seat.
"Me neither. But, it feeds a lot of people. So." I deflatedly sighed, then took another bite.
"Speaking of." The Princess perked up in her seat after a short moment. "You do an awful lot of hunting. I assume for more of your summons?"
"Good guess." I frowned in surprise. Then decided to play into her inevitable questions. "I call them my Tenebrous Menagerie."
She mockingly raised her brows and scoffed. "Fancy."
"Very." I nodded. "They're ordinary creatures turned magical."
"And what can they do?"
"Different things." I shrugged my hands. "The first of them is a rabbit named Roger. He can duplicate himself and so too can his clones. So, I won't bring him out."
"A fitting power for a magical rabbit." Lucia chuckled to Toril.
"After him, I captured Skoll and Hati." I gestured to the two midnight-black dire wolves heeled at my sides. "Simply put, they can track prey through the shadows.
"Then, Kit was added to the squad." I paused to gesture towards the jet-black fox stepping from behind me. By chance alone, she settled her pearly eyes on Letta, triggering a mist of shade to twist and condense around her body. Aggrandizing the umbral mass into a feminine form that stood around my height and reformed into a visage that even I gasped at after seeing.
"Caia?" Letta stood in shock.
"Not Caia." I rolled my eyes. "My cousin is still at the estate. This is obviously an illusion."
At my order, Kit changed back to her original form and took a quick lap around my leg to rub her cheek against my pants. Warranting a vigorous petting before I sent her back into my shadow.
"Kit was trying to eat this guy when I captured him." I held up my arm to allow the ink-black rat to perch on top of my splayed-out hand. "Stewie."
In response to my silent order, Stewie turned his grayed-out eyes towards a nearby tree and leapt after it like it was a full course meal. After latching onto the bark, an incessant scritch-scratching rang through the campsite from him burrowing into the wood like it was mud.
Within a couple of seconds of him disappearing entirely, Stewie emerged from the bark nearly half a meter higher and fearlessly jumped down to land on my shoulder.
"He can burrow through things." I belatedly explained. "The deeper the darkness he's in, the harder the material he can bore through. And after him." I paused for him to crawl under my sleeve, then reached behind my back to pull my boy out.
"Comes Pora Bora!" I proudly proclaimed.
The Princess shook her head in confusion. "A death owl?"
"Death owl?" I raised my brow in return. "Pora Bora was a barn owl."
"What's a barn?" She shook her head again.
'Goddammit.' I sighed.
"An owl with black eyes, a black body, and a white face. They look like ghosts or devils. Death owls." The Princess heatedly spat. "Why's he your favorite?"
"She." I spat back, much to Roheisa's annoyance. "And, look at her, she's beautiful. And." I added with a wagging finger. "She's an owl."
I'm going to assume owls are your favorite animal so you can tell me what she can do." The Princess sighed.
"Even though I spent good money on those glasses, I suppose you can't see her." I shook my head in somewhat mocked disappointment. "Pora Bora's covered in white-spotted, midnight-blue feathers and her eyes are reminiscent of a night sky filled with stars.
"As for her power." I dismissively muttered. "I can see what she sees."
"Ohh." Roheisa nodded with feigned interest. "That is fascinating."
"Indeed!" I beamed, wagging my finger at her. "But, there's more! The first of my newest additions, Jake!"
Matching my overenthusiastic announcement in kind was a black python that anticlimactically slithered away from my shadow towards the nearest brush.
It was average-sized when I caught it and it was much the same now. Though, that changed once it made it a fair way away from the campfire's flickering light.
Once within the brush's shade, it quickly grew and grew until it was about the size of a log before snaking around back towards us and disappear.
It remained hidden for a few moments after that. Plaguing the camp with a constant slithering sound that grew ever louder with each passing moment. The sounds of snapping twigs and breaking brush were slowly added onto the mix soon after. Only to be outplayed by the rising chorus of felled trees and upturned earth singing all around us.
While everyone else was staring at me with nervous confusion, I was staring in awe at an impenetrable night occluding the distant forest in a shade so deep that even my eyes couldn't pierce.
It took more than a few moments for me to see the matte-black scales snaking through the trees. Shadow scales that were larger than my face and growing larger by the moment.
After I noticed it, I couldn't help but gasp as my eyes trailed to the massive beast slithering among the treetops."You can't see it." I gasped again. "But… it's huge."
Despite its size, however, it took almost no time to shrink to its former size and slither back into my shadow after I gave the command. Leaving the strange frog as the last item to show off to the others.
Or toad.
To be used interchangeably, in this case, as the ambient mana played a crude prank on evolution and created a poison dart frog that was as large as a bulldog and just as lumpy as a toad. Now, it was the size of a pit bull and its vibrant flesh was now coated in a pungent and slimy oil-like sheen that bent the light hitting it like it was a sort of umbral camouflage.
Despite his domineering size, however, Gero kind of just sat there until I grew bored and pulled him back into my shadow.
"I also captured three orcas and an octopus," I added with mild enthusiasm. "But, they have yet to turn."
"Quite the versatile spell you have there," Roheisa said. "I assume your summons will aid us greatly during our journey."
"That they will." I dropped my empty bowl into my shadow with a smug grin. Then stepped off towards my tent with a wave over my shoulder. "Skoll and Hati will stand guard while we sleep. once everyone wakes up and has their breakfast, we'll take to the air and arrive at the town sometime around noon. So, sleep well."