Kanin Fyre: Chapter 17 - Meditation

I shut off my sight so I can more completely focus on Ink and our void. It wonders what we have in mind. 

I have a couple ideas for how we can learn more about the Inventory, I tell it. But I’m not sure you’ll like them.

Ink skeptically waits for me to explain. 

Alright. The first option is for me to add you to my Inventory—

Ink erupts with anger that crashes into my mind and knocks me off kilter. My body sways as I briefly lose grip on my glass and void, but I manage to grab it before my body can collapse to the ground like a puppet with cut strings. Ink is seething in my mind, pacing and rippling with distress. Its emotions are crashing over me in chaotic waves, threatening to overwhelm my mind and pull me into its influence. I press back, trying to fend it off, but it interprets this attempt as an attack and launches itself at me, mentally pinning me down. 

Calm down! I yell, trying not to panic myself. I’ve never seen it so upset before. I didn’t even do anything! And I told you you wouldn’t like it! Let me finish, alright?

Ink’s grip on me tightens, and I struggle as I can feel the line between our minds start to merge. It hasn’t forcibly tried to take over my mind since Emrox. With our minds this close, I can more keenly feel its anger, and defensiveness, and betrayal, and… fear. It’s afraid of being locked away again.

I stop fighting it off and let it in, pressing my own feelings to the forefront of my mind. Ink pauses as my emotions and intentions flow into it, processing them. 

It can tell that I don’t intend to leave it in my Inventory. We’d only do this if Ink agreed to it, and even then, it would be temporary. I’m not trying to trick it; I’m asking for it to work with me. I’m asking it to trust me.

Honestly, some of these truths surprise even me.

The crushing pressure on my mind lessens. Ink doesn’t let go, but it does loosen its grip. 

You willing to listen now? I ask, still tense with anxiety, but relieved to see Ink calming down. Like I said, these are just ideas. Just because I have an idea doesn’t mean I do it. 

Ink points out there is evidence to the contrary.

Smartass. 

Weirdly, insulting it is what seems to finally convince Ink to release me. It moves back, regarding me with suspicious anticipation. 

Thanks for that, I say dryly, mentally picking myself back up. Now are you going to listen without any more interruptions? 

Ink can’t guarantee that will be the case.

I send it the mental impression of any eye roll. Anyway. As I was saying. I could add you to my Inventory and you could explore it from the inside, see if there’s anything you can learn about the magic from there. And if that doesn’t work, we can try it the other way around. 

Ink tips its head. I’m suggesting that I am added to the Inventory while Ink remains outside?

Er, no, I say, abruptly wondering if that’s even possible. Could I be added to an Inventory? If I don’t count as alive… I put a stop to that train of thought, abruptly gaining some insight into Ink’s own unease. 

What I mean is, you could go Between and try to access it from the outside. You were able to shred my Inventory from the outside before, so I’m guessing it’s more vulnerable from that side. Maybe we could learn something. 

Ink doesn’t like this plan, either. It has spent too much effort trying to stay out of the Between to go back willingly. 

But you have plenty of magic to get back out on your own, right? In fact, I Check how much of my mana it’s leeched to keep itself rooted in reality: Even if it didn’t pinch another drop of my magic, it could prevent itself from falling back Between for another two weeks. 

You’d have control over the situation, I remind it. You could come back any time. And even if you were in the Inventory, all it would take is me activating another spell or two for the Void stat to hit 100%. 

Ink doesn’t particularly like this plan, but is a bit mollified that it wouldn’t be trapped—it wouldn’t need to rely on me keeping my word. However, it wonders why it is the one who has to do this. Why can’t I go between and examine the Inventory for myself?

The suggestion stops me. I hadn’t even considered that option. Honestly, I’m not really crazy about returning to the “you end up here when you’re dead” dimension. But it’s right that, so long as I’m tied to my Core, I’d also be able to find my way back out. 

You’re the one who knows what to look for, I argue. I wouldn’t even know how to find my Inventory in the Between. 

Ink suspects I’m just making excuses now because I don’t want to go Between. 

That’s not true, I object. It would just be more practical for you to do it.

Then why don’t I use my Locate spell to help find the Inventory?

Dammit, why is it having good ideas all of a sudden? Fine, I think. We can both go. 

Ink is still not excited about this plan, but reluctantly accepts since I am willing to go with it. 

Great, I think. It abruptly occurs to me I’m not actually sure how to get Between. Every time I’ve ended up there before, I’d died, gone through a magic portal, or had been dragged there by the predator. So, how do we—

Ink vanishes. One moment it’s in my mind, and the next, it’s simply gone. I cast a Bond Trace spell, and can see the tether that binds my soul to my core like a glowing, twined fishing line. Similarly, there’s a second tether leading away from my soul, only to vanish into nothing. 

Wow, I guess Ink really did it. I’m surprised it went along with my plan, although there’s not much risk given it's fully capable of following our tether back into reality.  But now what? I wonder if I could follow its tether…

An invisible force yanks on my soul. It isn’t painful, but it is deeply uncomfortable and disorienting. One moment I’m in my body, and the next—

I’m summer-salting through nothingness. Existence falls away. Anxiety rises within me, even though I know this is the Between. That doesn’t make this any less unsettling. That doesn’t stop all of my memories of this place from returning to me. And they haven’t exactly been pleasant memories.

But I can feel that my tether is leading back to my core. I grab onto it like a lifeline, and its presence calms me a little. I have a way back. Yet, I can’t help but feel the line seems terribly thin and fragile. It’s hard to blame Ink for not wanting to come back here.

At the thought, my mind is drawn towards Ink’s nearby presence. It, too, seems to be carefully holding onto the tether between us. Weirdly, I feel a bit better knowing it’s nearby. At least I’m not alone in the dark. And if there are other sorts of predators out there… Well, hopefully Ink will be enough to deter them.

All right, I think. Lead us to the Inventory.

Ink hesitates. It isn’t sure how. Last time there had been more of it inside the Inventory, so it was able to sense itself.

That’s not terribly useful. I’m about to suggest we start over, this time with a bit of Ink added to my Inventory, but I have a feeling that won’t go over terribly well. Instead, I go with Ink’s suggestion.

I activate a Locate spell. It’s strange, using magic in this place. Echo doesn’t seem to be able to reach me here. There’s no voice or stats that appear in my mind. I guess this is what it feels like for everyone else all the time.

Since there’s Attuned glass still in my Inventory, I figure I can attempt to track down the glass to find the Inventory. Not that it should be far—though, in this space, ideas like distance don’t really mean much. But from what I understand about the Between, traveling—like talking—is more conceptual than literal. I focus on my Inventory, on my Attuned glass, and will myself toward it. 

I’m not sure it’s working until I feel Ink move to catch up with me. It hovers close, watching me, but also our surroundings. 

Are there other things out there? I ask it.

Ink isn’t sure. Its memories from the time it spent Between are fractured. Much of it was stripped away during the Emrox explosion, but even before then, it thinks its memories were splintered. It only started developing new, whole memories after it latched onto my soul. Perhaps it needed something physical to ground it in time and space.

You think there could be more of you—or, uh, the predator, or something similar—that’s still wandering the Between?

It doesn’t know. 

Probably for the best we don’t linger, then. 

Ink notices the Inventory before I do. It feels something approaching—though whether it’s us moving toward the Inventory, or the Inventory moving toward us, is all the same here. But even when I can sense it, too, it’s difficult for me to wrap my head around what it is before us. 

The best way I can think to conceptualize it is as a kink in spacetime. Like someone pinched a piece of fabric and twisted, pulling the surrounding material tight and wrinkled in a spiraling design. I also struggle to understand if it’s very small and close, or very large and far. It feels like both these things at once. And perhaps it is—I feel like I can switch between the two like it’s only a matter of perspective. 

The conflicting impressions I’m getting don’t seem to bother Ink. It peers curiously at the warped pocket of Between, recalling bits and pieces of its struggle here—both from inside the Inventory and out. It had clawed at the space, shredding through the barrier to allow the rest of itself to escape. It had been much easier to get in than it had been to get out. 

In a way, it reminds me of the Mana Storage spell that Trenevalt had originally trapped me and Noli inside of. We hadn’t been able to get out, but the predator had managed to pierce it from the outside. It seems these spells aren’t designed to withstand an assault from something in the Between itself. Why would they? There’s not supposed to be anything here.

Yet, here we are. 

Ink prods me, reminding me that we shouldn’t linger. What is the plan? How are we supposed to learn about how this spell was made?

Being able to Check it with Echo’s help would be nice, but that’s not an option currently. But I do have Inspect—a spell I learned on my own. Whenever I’ve used it, however, it’s been Echo’s voice summarizing what the spell detects. There must be a way to use it without Echo—Zyneth has a similar spell that lets him detect the affinities and purpose of spells. So how does it work for him? 

I figure it can’t hurt to try. 

Like with the Locate spell, I have to put my will behind it. I reach for my mana and feel it swell from within my soul. I envision what I want. I press this thought toward the Inventory, and feel my magic expand around it. 

At first, this doesn’t seem to achieve anything. Unsurprisingly, I’m not provided with a response or any straightforward summaries. But I do feel… something. 

There’s a complex network of magic here. I’m getting impressions of what it does, but it’s difficult for me to parse. It has to do with extra dimensions and spacetime compression and singularities and… Maybe if I had a degree in physics some of this would make sense.

Lacking that, I have a void monster.

Ink, I think, I need your help with this. My magic is telling me things, but they’re concepts I struggle to understand. Meanwhile, Ink seems at ease with such abstractions. Maybe together we can make sense of the magic we’re examining. 

Ink doesn’t need to be told twice. It much prefers when we act as one. The tether between us shrinks until there’s nothing left of it at all, and together, we examine the Inventory. 

Like this, the spatial contradictions no longer feel jarring. It can be both small and close, and large and far away. We move closer to examine it, at the same time wrapping our consciousness around the pocket dimension. Its volume isn’t finite. In fact, it’s infinitely small. Now we understand why the size of the object placed into the Inventory doesn’t matter; the Inventory has no size. It's only designed to fit one thing. One concept. 

We begin to realize that the spell is far too complex for us to recreate. Much like Echo, we’re only looking at the tip of a significantly more complex spell network. This isn’t something we can disassemble and reassemble without breaking it. But multiplying isn't the only way to double the quantity of something. 

We squeeze our void around the pocket dimension. It resists us, but only slightly. We concentrate our void around one section of the Inventory and press harder. The null space contracts beneath the pressure. We continue to tighten our void, pinching it like a tourniquet squeezing a limb. Eventually, we’ve compressed it as tight as we can manage, and it will contract no more. Pulling mana from our soul, we funnel the magic into our grip. We squeeze harder. Twist tighter. Again, the null space compresses.

It takes more mana than we would have thought. But eventually, finally, we managed to crimp the nullspace shut, pinching the pocket dimension in two. We press more mana in, willing the void to seal itself off. And when we finally let go, nearly drained of all the magic we had, the single volume of null space has been divided in two. 

With little else to do, we withdraw. Ink separates from my mind. Following the thread back to my core, we both spill back out into reality. 

“Kanin?” I can feel Zyneth’s hand on my arm. I switch my vision back on. “Kanin, are you alright?”

“I’m okay,” I say, sitting up. Zyneth’s brows are pinched in concern. “Why? What happened?”

Relief spills over his face. “Your body went slack, and you weren’t responding.” 

Oops. Yeah, I probably should have thought of that before we went Between. “Sorry. Ink and I decided to take a look at the Inventory up close.” 

Siqi watches me curiously. “You accessed the Between?” 

“Yeah,” I say, unsurprised he was able to figure it out so quickly. Zyneth is back to looking concerned, though he reluctantly lets go of my arm.

“Was your investigation successful?” Siqi asks. 

I hold up the beaded bracelet that tracks the time left on my Core Bond spell, and tap it to my core in my chest. 

[Bracelet added to Inventory.]

I remove it. Then I remove my glass. 

[Two items removed from Inventory.]

What’s my Inventory capacity? I ask Echo. 

[Available Inventory slots: 2]

I can’t remember the last time I’ve wanted to grin so badly. Ink also feels quite pleased.

“Oh yeah. I’d say it was very successful.”