The Fusionist Book 5 -- Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Creating a completely new type of Fusion, with elements to it that he’d only tangentially used in a formation that he was given and didn’t put together himself, was a lot harder than he expected.

But that didn’t stop Larek from pushing everything he knew about Fusions and the way they worked into his efforts, because he needed to succeed.

Granted, it wasn’t a life or death situation that required he make something that would prevent them from dying, but if he wanted to use his Pattern Manipulation to form some sort of flying transportation for both himself and Nedira, then he would need some way to hold the supplies they would take with them. As it was, he was fairly certain that he could make a fairly simple Pattern-based contraption that could hold the two of them if they didn’t mind literally sitting on each other’s laps, but that would be about the extent of it. Therefore, there wouldn’t be room enough to hold more than a very small pack of supplies, though he could probably find ways to be creative with it by adding hooks or something to the outside of the box, thereby allowing them to bring more with them that way.

However, even as he improved his Pattern Manipulation Skill, he became aware that keeping complicated shapes together for an extended period of time mentally exhausted him. A simple box was something he could maintain for hours, perhaps a whole day of traveling, but adding hooks or other storage solutions would quickly exhaust his mental reserves.

All of which led to him working on this next project of his: a way to use voids or “the void” to hold the supplies they needed to take with them. His understanding of it, based on his experience being transported through it and with his Perceptive MisdirectionFusion, gave him enough to go on that such a thing was possible, though executing that possibility successfully was a challenge and a half.

That was because the void wasn’t exactly something tangible, a material or element that could be easily manipulated. Rather, it was the absence of anything at all, a nothingness that encompassed all of reality; warmth, light, air, space, and even time were suspended in the void, something that he had intimate familiarity with after being sucked into it by the attack by a Warped Void Hunter. With that quality being evident, how in the world was Larek supposed to harness the power of the void and give it the structure he needed to contain the supplies they would take with them.

A Fusion, of course, but one more complicated than any he’d made before.

First, he had to determine the Effects he wanted to accomplish, which were further complicated by the spectacular ideas that Nedira had given him. First, he needed to be able to connect the opening of the void to the opening of the bag she suggested as a means of storage, though a simple sack would work just as well for the purpose. Second, he had to formulate a way to create multiple voids within the same bag or sack, so that each one could hold a certain type of supplies, otherwise they would just get all jumbled up. Third, he had to find a way to retrieve the supplies that were shoved into the bag without having to pull out everything. Lastly, but most importantly, Larek had to define the undefinable and restrict the very nature of the boundless void into an easily manageable space.

And he had to do all that without unleashing an ever-growing void that could potentially swallow everything in the world if left unchecked.

Needless to say, it was a hefty challenge – but he was ready to push himself to accomplish his goal. There was always the possibility that it wouldn’t work, of course, but he wouldn’t know if he didn’t try.

The first problem he ran into while contemplating the different Effects he needed for this new creation was his lack of experience actually manipulating the void through Fusions other than with the Perceptive Misdirection Fusion that Grandmaster Fusionist Shinpai had given him. Even thatFusion didn’t apply void as more than a carrier meant to disguise the pulsing waves of Mana that the Effect send out to identify the origin of any observers, and not necessarily as a storage device. Therefore, he found that he needed to start at the beginning and work his way up to his final product.

Back to basics, I guess.

Pulling up the Perceptive Misdirection Fusion in his memory, he analyzed the void carrier Effect to get a better understanding of how it operated. The simple principles of its function were already known to him because he had learned how to recreate the Fusion, but the intricacies of its properties were still unfamiliar because he didn’t fully comprehend its full processes. This was largely different from his other Fusions because he understood them better thanks to the spells he had learned, most of them at least based off of an element or other effect that he could relate to. With void, his only experience was being completely inundated in it, which – while still giving him valuable insights into its properties – didn’t exactly help with being able to manipulate it in a way that was useful.

Therefore, Larek spent some time figuring out how to incorporate the void carrier Effect from Perceptive Misdirection in some of his other Fusions to get a better understanding of it.  Almost immediately, the Combat Fusionist discovered that the void carrier did almost nothing when used in conjunction with other Effects, especially ones that were visible. Using a simple Illuminate Fusion, he witnessed absolutely no change in the illumination Effect’s brightness or execution – but that didn’t do anything; instead, what it did wasn’t visible, because it was originally designed to conceal Mana… which was exactly what it accomplished.

The void carrier acted like a very thin sheet of invisible glass that surrounded the magical effect of the Illuminate Fusion; it was designed to surround the Mana that was used and expelled through the Fusion’s use, which was visible as light – but did nothing to impede the Effect. When Larek looked at the illuminating effect from the Fusion with his Magical Detection Skill, he realized he couldn’t detect a single trace of the actual Mana being funneled into the light; in other words, it simply looked like a light without any magical basis to it, which was extremely odd to see.

The Fusion, on the other hand, was still visible to his Magical Detection Skill. It was also able to pick up the very subtle area of ambience as the Fusion absorbed the ambient Mana around it, meaning that while he couldn’t tell that the light was magical in nature, the Fusion gave it away.

That inevitably led him on a tangent to discover if he could conceal the actual Fusionand area of ambience using an altered version of the void carrier Effect. It took a few tries to get it right, but after about 15 minutes, Larek discovered a way to completely camouflage the entirety of the new Concealed Illumination +1 Fusion that he created.

“Can you see this Fusion here?” he asked Nedira, who had been watching him work with a bemused expression on her face.

She looked at where he was pointing, which was a square piece of flat steel that he had been using and reusing for his experiments. “Larek, I think you’ve been working too long. There’s nothing there.”

The Combat Fusionist smiled and touched the steel slab and willed the Concealed Illumination to activate the light. Nedira gasped when the light came on, and she looked closer at everything, trying to find any hint of the Fusion underneath. “How did you do that? Can you see it?”

He immediately shook his head, but added a shrug. “I can’t see it, but I can, let’s say… feel it. Because I created it, I have an odd connection to it that allows me to pinpoint its location, but I can’t actually detect it with any of my other senses. The void carrier is concealing its Mana, which included the Fusion itself because it is infused with Mana; the Pattern Cohesion used in its construction being concealed as well is a byproduct of the void carrier Effect, I believe.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “So, it’s completely undetectable?”

He thought about it for a moment as he looked closer at the now-invisible Fusion. “For the most part, yes.” He stopped as he waved his hands all around the area where the Fusion was located. “What do you see here when you use your Magical Detection Skill?”

“Nothing.” It only took her a second to respond.

He nodded. “Exactly. While the Mana involved in the Fusion’s operation is concealed, obviously, you’ll also notice a lack of any Mana inside this area here,” he said, demonstrating what he was saying by encompassing both the main body of the illuminating light and the Fusion. “You don’t see any Mana because the Effect is concealing it. While not exactly the same as what I’m learning how to manipulate through my Fusions, you’ll notice that this lack of Mana creates a void that is easily noticeable if you’re looking for it.”

After a few seconds, she nodded slowly. “Still, if you hadn’t told me it was there, I wouldn’t have noticed it.”

“True, and I barely notice it even though I’m aware it’s there. However, on a much larger Fusion and subsequent Mana expenditure, I can only imagine that the ‘void’ created would be highly visible. Still better than being easily visible as a Fusion, though.” Larek immediately thought about utilizing this Effect on the Fusions on Nedira’s and his own clothing, because they had drawn a lot of attention in the past. A void of Mana around them might still garner a few looks, but not nearly as much as the sight of the powerful Fusions would. While the Mages in Tarvada who had seen them were used to it by now, Larek and Nedira were planning on leaving soon; being confronted by other former Mages of the SIC when their Fusions were noticed would only hinder them on their journey.

“Good point,” she conceded. “So, how does this help you, otherwise?”

That was a good question. It wasn’t until he saw the void carrier in action that he realized what it actually did, which was to create a pocket of its void Effect around Mana so that it was contained without inhibiting its overall purpose. Thankfully, that was exactly what he needed in order to progress with his ultimate Fusion, at least in part.

“Well, I believe that I can use these void carrier pockets to encapsulate different, definable sections of the void within my Fusion. What I need to figure out is what I’m going to use as a basis for definition, as trying to contain void with void isn’t likely to work.” In fact, that sounded like a recipe for disaster, based on his rather limited knowledge of all things void-related.

This was his second obstacle toward achieving his goal, because everything he thought about using wasn’t going to work. Even if he broke down the process to incorporate a single pocket of the void, the void was a bunch of nothing and endless; his effort to define a sole section of it for use in storing things was seemingly doomed from the start.

Using air to create a barrier that would define a space? Nope, air didn’t and couldn’t exist in the void. A box of stone? Ice? Light? None of those would work, as he instinctively knew that any constructs that were created by the Fusion would be lost within the void, scattered to its furthest reaches and beyond as it became disconnected from the real world. The same would happen with any items placed within it, which was why he needed definable pockets in the first place.

What he needed was some sort of anchor that would allow whatever he used as a medium for the pocket of void, which also needed to be target by a void carrier Effect to keep it into place so that the Mana contained within that defined space didn’t drift off into the great expanse of the void. However, the more he considered using something that could be created both outside the void opening and inside, such as a loop of air that was connected to the outside of the bag and formed the internal section, the more he realized such a thing wouldn’t work. It would be too unstable, for one, and maintaining a near-solid loop of air outside and a large defined box inside the void would require a lot of Mana being constantly funneled into from the ambient Mana around. It was also possible that it would simply collapse internally, as it had nothing to push against in the nothingness to maintain its structure.

As far as he was concerned, there was nothing in any of the spells or Fusions he knew that would work as both an anchor and possible pocket inside the void. Just as he was starting to give up, he realized there was one thing that he hadn’t considered. It was the one thing that Larek was convinced was the only reason he had been able to survive inside the void at all.

Pattern Cohesion.

Using it externally from his body – first in spells and Fusions and then later with his new Skill – had taught him a lot more about what it could be used for and how it could be manipulated. He was even planning on using to create something that would allow them to travel within it, after all, so he was aware of how versatile it actually was when he was able to manipulate it in ways that were useful.

As soon as he thought about using his Pattern Cohesion, it was like everything suddenly fell into place. What he needed wasn’t something rigid or a construct that was prone to breaking in the void; he needed something a bit flexible and wouldn’t break if stressed a bit, as well as being anchored to the Fusion outside. In fact, what if the defined pocket was part of the Fusion? If that was the case, then he could easily make multiple pockets that would hold different supplies… but was that actually needed if everything was contained as part of the Fusion? A single sectioned off part of the void could hold everything that was needed, and since it was part of the Fusion, the process of retrieving those items would be part of the Fusion as well.

All it would take would be a mental command to find the right supplies inside, allowing him to reach inside and grab whatever he needed. It would take a manipulation of the pattern pocket to push it forward into his hand, of course, but that was easily accomplished through his knowledge of his Pattern Manipulation Skill. Just thinking of the Pattern being used as the pocket as a giant, expandable and contractable net was more than enough for him to work out the exact processes.

There were bound to be some issues, of course. Placing something inside would require an accompanying mental command, which would then label the item to be retrieved later. If he forgot what that exact mental command was for that item when trying to retrieve it, then it wouldn’t come out; anything shoved into the void without a mental command wouldn’t necessarily be lost, but it wouldn’t ever come out. That process made the whole Fusion even more complicated, because he needed for it to be able to differentiate between different items; unfortunately, he didn’t know how he could allow it to “learn” different commands, so he would have to have a certain number of pre-created mental commands as part of the Fusion. This could be numbers or simple phrases, but they had to be easy to remember when putting items in and taking them out.

Which was when he realized he also needed a mental command that would empty everything inside the void pocket, so that anything not labeled could be retrieved. The entire Fusion was becoming more and more complicated as he went on, until he came to the point where he needed to design the opening to the void. He wanted to design it so that it opened around the same opening that the bag or sack he used would have, but that seemed almost impossible considering that it could change shape and wasn’t easily definable as part of the Fusion construction.

It wasn’t until he considered his Pattern pocket idea that he came to the realization that if he was already incorporating the Fusion as part of the actual Effect, then he could also use the Fusion for the opening. It took a major shift in his perception of what defined a Fusion, but he smiled as he considered what he was planning on drastically changing.

After all, who said that the different parts of the grid formation all had to be the same size?

It certainly wasn’t Larek, and he was about to prove that size really didn’t matter – unless it came to creating void-based storage containers, of course.