^+ Nyx +^

Her hands - thank the leviathan for hands - danced out and helped to finely manipulate her energies. It was the only reason she'd been able to make this much progress, this quickly.

In her... not so infinite wisdom, she'd made messages to Reid. Many, many messages. Then, she'd made it difficult to delete the messages - because why not? It made sense that she was going to need to protect and preserve her captured knowledge in the event that Reid didn't have her around. She'd even made something of a reverse-operation sequence in the way messages were linked together. It was a lovely bit of craftsmanship that made it so you needed to remove the messages in a very specific, jumping order or they would all instantly become available.

She winced and shook as another set of words inside a message triggered her suppression. She was deleting the things, for leviathan's sake. It shouldn't trigger anything. She pushed against the sensation until it subsided, then continued on. It didn't matter how many times suppression slapped her down. She had to keep going.

Reid was... outside of expectations entirely.

The man was so far ahead, so quickly. She'd only just realized, when he blasted through Perception to Intelligence, that he was going to outpace her ability to responsibly remove the rest of the notes. If he saw too much, now, it might negatively alter his trajectory through understanding and building his own power base. He still had the potential to be... something incredible.

And her words - her simple explanations in the messages - could throw that off entirely.

#

#

Nyx let out a sigh. Her arms had started to take on a melting visage, and she could tell she would need actual rest, now. But she could take it soon. She was almost done.

Her once-a-good-idea notes were all removed, and Reid would be safe to continue his objectively ridiculous advancement through concepts that were a grade and a half too early for him.

The last thing to burn away sat in front of her - an early 'training plan' she'd buried. It was unlikely he would access it, but it needed to go all the same.

-

Plan 8: Reid Alive, Exceptional Ability / Capability, Exceptional Comprehension

G Grade: Balance Stats, high-quality evolution.

F Grade: ALL 6 Metaspaces.

E Grade: All 6 Junctions. Mana Compression.

D Grade: All 6 Conduits. Resonant Anchor. Weirweave Lattice.

C Grade: Build [REDACTED]. [REDACTED].

....

-

She surged a bit of energy, and the old plan melted away. Freed from her task, Nyx could finally rest - just a short check up on Reid and...

Her eyes widened and she physically moved herself to the sea of rage, hands out in front of her as she frantically yelled.

"STOP!"

+ Reid +

I am a goddamn genius.

When his ideas on how to connect perception and dexterity didn't immediately pan out, Reid had swapped over to constitution and threadspace. He made even less headway there. Everything he'd understood in that moment of drawing hexagons on the ground just felt so real and immediate and tangible that he was absolutely certain he was going to be able to sort out the last two connections quickly. Three days in, he felt a bit dejected. Two days after that, he felt lost. Nyx still wasn't answering him, so there had to be more he already knew how to do, or could do, on his own.

He rolled himself through possibility after possibility, until he finally brought himself back to the power metaspace to stare at lines in the sand. There were dozens of hexagons drawn there, his attempt to better visualize or cause a breakthrough in understanding what he needed to do to make the last connections.

But then, another thought hit him. What if he didn't just need to make things work by securing the 120 degree connections? If the shape was right, he should be able to reach one side from the other.

And that meant he had a direction.

Reid plotted a course inside his power metaspace, the same way he'd done for the rest before giving up. It was at the perfect middle between the lines that went to each junction, and stretched out over a mostly-empty section of beach. The only thing it threatened to interrupt was his sandcastle, and honestly, Reid only kept the castle up so he'd have something to mess around with when he got bored.

Then, he ran. Well, flew was a better way to describe it. He couldn't physically run through the space without kicking up a bunch of sand and making a mess, so he floated and propelled himself forward. He felt the barest possibility of potential - and latched onto it as he continued. He moved back and forth through the space until time started to blur. He only stopped and pulled himself out when he needed to eat again. As soon as he got a few hours of sleep - and another one of Norton's meals - Reid plopped himself back into his power metaspace.

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It felt different. More certain that the line he'd been following would give him results if he continued his work. It wasn't quite the same feeling as the 'right' shift and tilt from the other connections he'd made with conduits, but maybe that was just how this kind presented itself.

Reid praised himself, then surged forward -

Only to have Nyx pop into the space before him, screaming.

"STOP!"

Reid forced himself to halt and stared. She looked tired, and her hands were damaged.

"Nyx, are you okay? What happened?"

"I'll be fine... I was making sure some information didn't cause you to harm your growth, but it looks like I should've been paying more attention to you, here." She glanced between Reid and the line. "How did you even?... No. I'm not asking. Don't answer. Drop this concept, and go back to what you already figured out. The last two conduits have to come first. Have. To."

She vanished, leaving a very confused Reid blinking at empty air.

#

#

So maybe Reid wasn't a genius. Maybe he'd tried to find a shortcut that was actually a potential source of harm he would bring to himself. That didn't mean he was incapable of doing cool things or making progress. And he'd made the right kind of progress this time.

It took another 2 weeks, spaced out over his travel time, but Reid had made good headway into connecting dexterity to perception, and he believed he was ready to take the final leap. The one thing he hadn't gotten yet was the shift. It felt somehow both simpler and more difficult than the ones he'd done so far - like all he had to do was lift a weight, but the weight itself was impossibly heavy.

When he really sat down and thought about it, that sensation made sense. If his metaspaces were getting connected in a hexagon like he imagined, there was a possibility that each was like a cutout or a slice of that hexagon, and to get them to connect properly, he had to tilt and move them to line up with one another properly. That might've also been why Nyx was so upset with him at taking a shortcut. If alignment was part of the goal, his work could have broken his ability to align things properly.

What he was doing now, then, was finding a way to align one block of three with another block of three. Even if it only applied to one side, he had to tilt and shift and move the entire blocks to get them connected - and that wasn't an easy task. Where the others had largely moved into place on their own, this took effort and time. He actually felt the progress. He was closer. And today felt special.

He re-read the message he'd unlocked to start the morning - a treat to himself.

The Followers, The Way, The Mapmakers, the Path. I wish now that I hadn't needed their support in the early days. Maybe I should have shut it all down. They fought each other while I was away from Earth. Holy wars where a bunch of low-leveled idiots died, in my name, for no damn reason. I should have been more cautious of the zealots. The only upside is the ones that won are the least intrusive of the bunch. They call themselves the Path, or the church of the path, or the followers of the path, depending on the decade. Misguided, but well meaning on the idiot scale. Their leader embodies that - some guy from Norway that has been around since the awakening itself. That's actually why I'm writing in the Djournal. He asked permission to treat you like a demigod instead of leaving you as a saint. So maybe they're not so bad. We'll see if they stay useful next time we get a planetary challenge.

Religion worshipping his daughter. Fighting wars in her name. He worried and dropped the implications of that in favor of celebrating the fact that he was some sort of demigod in this religion. All he'd had to do to earn that honor was sacrifice himself and spend a thousand years in stone.

It was a dumb thing to be prideful over. People far, far away were aware of and reverent over his actions. He had no actual influence on their opinions, but it felt like recognition and acceptance. He let the positive emotions that created carry him through the next few hours of work.

Reid was standing in his perception metaspace - the lab - when things clicked into place. It was a reverberating, deep thing that shook every part of his internals.

Most importantly - it felt right. True.

A door flashed into existence on an otherwise unremarkable section of wall, and Reid followed it. He slammed himself through, and plunged straight forward into the void and the strain. The main was manageable. He continued forward into the other side, tumbling into a section of his dexterity metaspace that seemed new. There was still the gym and obstacle course, but Reid was elevated above it in a sort of viewing platform.

There was a small bank of monitors set into the low wall like controls, and Reid pressed one, then nearly vomited.

Energy - his energy - coalesced into the form of a Tamrid, with its six arms, and started moving through the obstacle course. He could still feel everything, and he felt - and knew - what the beast was doing and what it might be capable of. Reid shut off the screen and the energy-crafted creature disappeared. He flew back through to his perception metaspace, and saw new data laid out on multiple screens, a level of detail he didn't need about how the creatures moved, and what they might be capable of in a fight.

"Is this what I think it is?"

Nyx popped into existence beside him. Her hands were still damaged, but she no longer looked tired. "And what do you think it is?"

"I think I can use the gym to figure out what creatures can do, and then use that to fight them better."

"Just creatures? You have a metaspace made to track energy and train yourself connected to a metaspace whose purpose it is to help you understand and comprehend everything around you."

Reid frowned. "I guess I could do it with people, too? Or... I could use it to get an idea of how an ally might attack so I can coordinate with someone else... This could help me with the entire flow of a fight."

Nyx smiled. "Yes, it could."

#

#

Reid shifted his makeshift blanket over himself, and looked out at the landscape. Grey clouds shifted lazily overhead. The sun would come out in a few hours, and melt the dusting of snow that coated the ground. He wasn't actually cold, but if it snowed again, he didn't want to be soaking wet when he came back out of his work.

The final link was here, and ready.

Reid pushed himself into his kitchen metaspace, and stilled.

Constitution to threadspace. The final link.

Reid put more force behind his thoughts and willed himself on. Great mechanisms within himf rose and tilted a millimeter at a time, slowly but surely. She said nothing, but Reid could feel Nyx watching on with rapt attention.

Every iota of progress was truth. It was right. It was his to seize - and he did.

Things slammed into place with a reverberating noise far louder than the previous one had been. It continued to ring, like a struck bell, seconds after the alignment took hold.

A door appeared, and Reid burst through it. He thrust himself forward with fervor. Black space tore and folded around him as he stressed his metaphysical self. Reid smashed through the other side and flew straight through the junction. He was getting the full conduit, and he was getting it now. It was half reckless, half inspired. The forces pushed against him, all the way to the final barrier.

Reid stopped and pressed a hand against the invisible wall. This was it.

The moment stretched, significant for reasons Reid couldn't begin to comprehend.

Significant because he could feel it was a milestone on his path to power.

Significant because it was one step closer to Sara and Susan.

Reid balled a fist, and slammed it into the barrier.

It shattered in an explosion of yellow-orange light.

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