April 25th, 629

  “I’ll head back to the estate tonight, spend a few days there with you to recover. My experiments are done so I think it’s about time I take the spells to the field. Once I'm done resting, I’ll deploy to the Hardpoint.”

  “Sounds good, love. See you soon.”

  I gave my goodbye to Umara, her image on my Aerial screen blowing a kiss at me before cutting out.

  With a smile, I looked back at the report I was sent.

  Umara had basically finished all the research she needed to do in the Verks territory. The Violet Madness had found its cure by her hands. Wonderland had already fielded mass producible enchanted medical pods that could halt the functions of the Violet Madness, the spells for which came from Umara. Then, they found alchemical concoctions that could attack the disease directly.

  Helped by recovery drugs that heightened the immune system, these new products would help wipe out the Violet Madness. The only downside was that they were incapable of helping those who had already been overcome by the disease. Some people, the worst of them, were so violently infected that killing the disease meant killing them. Umara had theories that their biological functions were already so warped that they were irreversible with current tech, or at least with any reasonable and accessible magic. Perhaps only a Sovereign healer would be able to help them, and one that was willing to do so on a large scale didn’t exist.

  That meant that around half of those who hadn’t already died some time ago were a lost cause. We could only wait for them to die off, or put them down early, which Marquess Verks was trying to push for. He was just waiting on my approval, which I was about to send him.

  With some more quarantine and systematic deployment of the cure, we would be able to eradicate the disease with a bit of time. Even if it popped back up, quick action would simply kill it right back off.

  The boons Umara had gained from this venture were great. The efficacy of her healing magic had been launched forward multiple magnitudes, and she said that she had gotten even closer to the Great Barrier. Now she was getting ready to reenter the battlefield so that she could put her new comprehensions to the test. With more study and experience, her next advancement and subsequent breach of the Great Barrier was guaranteed.

  I was quite proud of her work. Now, I just needed to get my own shit together.

  Putting the report away, I looked down at the broken Beacon in my workshop.

  I still hadn’t repaired it. Hell, I hadn’t so much as touched any of the debris. Although the bedroom had been blessed in order to keep out supernatural influences, I still got visions whenever I entered the workshop. They had faded over time, but even now as I looked at the broken pieces of my magnificent machine, I could hear voices from around me, whispers coming from the dark corners of my workshop and beside my ear.

  It was difficult to ignore. Getting near the metal of the beacon infused flashes of the entity I had spoken to. I hadn’t dared to even utter its name. Words carried power. Names did too. I wasn’t interested in invoking them, so I opted to simply keep my mouth shut.

  Still, this was something I needed to tackle eventually. I wouldn’t shy away from the risks of greatness. I had told Umara that I was working on these things while she was gone at the Verks territory, but I hadn’t been working on this particular Beacon. My primary concerns were with the Psykic arrays that I had installed on and derived from it and my projects.

  I had been touching upon the Firmament when I was developing my Beacons. Now I knew it was real. Luna and Anderson simply called them the Outer Waters. Either way, there was a barrier out there on the spatial boundary of this planet, and beyond it were powerful entities that could be communed with.

  But therein lay the problem. It wasn’t a problem that the Firmament existed. No, the issue was with a single word that Luna and Anderson had spoken.

  Commune.

  There were only two other contexts where that word was used. The first was in Communion during Mass. That I didn’t care about.

  It was the second. Commune, as in what a Summoner did in order to summon Spirits.

  I hadn’t noticed the peculiarity at first, but there was little that I wasn’t critical of. Luna and Anderson had said more than once that I communed with an entity. Sure, the occurrence could simply be coincidentally similar to the process that summoners used to call spirits, but Maxwell, the man who invented the Call of the Fallen Angel, was unique in his verbage.

  Call spirits, Commune with spirits, Marriage with Spirits. These were unique terms in his Call. Other Calls didn’t refer to the processes like that, primarily because they didn’t exist in other Calls. No other Summoner could marry a spirit as I had with Totenstahl. No other Summoner could actively Commune with a spirit. When I brought out a spirit, I actively fed it Psyka. Other summoners had to pay a lump sum of Psyka up front, and then their spirit came out for a limited duration before going back.

  Two different processes, two different terms. That made me wonder.

  If Maxwell was as intentional as I knew he was, as smart as I knew he was, as critical and as particular as I knew he was, then using that term was no mere coincidence. He used it because the process that he used to summon spirits in his Call was similar in some capacity to communing with entities beyond the material world. Either that or vice versa. It meant the same regardless.

  Of course, that was just the talk of a conspiracy theorist. I had just about completely disregarded the train of thought as soon as I came up with it, at least until I looked into it just slightly deeper.

  It was as simple as taking another look at the formations used in Maxwell’s Call, from the advancement formations to the actual techniques used to do things like Project into a dimension, to call, and to commune. And from them, I saw a few formations identical to what I had used in my Beacon. Others were similar, but still different given the application.

  That sealed the deal for me. I could only come to one wild conclusion.

  The Call of the Fallen Angel was either derived from or founded upon the ability to commune with the beings beyond the Outer Waters, the Firmament. Reaching the Firmament was one thing. But as soon as you did that, the formations and arrays within the Call became eerily applicable in being able to speak with those entities.

  Looking back, it was no wonder I had such an easy time with the Beacon project. I had already learned some foundational principles. I had been taught from the very beginning how to commune with spirits in an active and deeper fashion than any other summoner. It was so deep that I had already allocated a portion of my soul to a spirit.

  And as it turns out, the only thing stopping me from doing the same thing with entities from the Firmament was reaching toward the sky.

  I was powerful enough to do so personally, even without a Beacon. I could establish an active connection with that outer barrier, beam Psyka to it, creating an open link between the other side and my mind.

  That meant Maxwell had also been capable of it. Perhaps he had done so. I don’t know why he would, but he had been high up in the Church, familiar with the supernatural and spiritual conflict of the world.

  Luna and Anderson had said that it had been studied. I wouldn’t be surprised if Maxwell had been a chief researcher.

  But that still begged the question.

  What the fuck had Maxwell been doing? And was it linked with his brand as a heretic? I was willing to bet that it was, but there were too many details missing, and too many pieces that fogged up the picture. I couldn’t be sure.

  I wasn’t even sure how much I cared. What I did know though, was that going and talking to the man was out of the question for now. Until I got things under control with my newfound spiritual awakening, I couldn’t let him see me. He would notice, that much was a certainty. Then I wouldn’t hear the end of it.

  Either way, given all of the information, it was no wonder the Call of the Fallen Angel was so effective.

  After using the same sealing arrays that I had used on the Neural Gem, I shut down the residual influence lingering within the broken fragments of my Beacon. I couldn’t cleanse it yet, but I was sure that ability would come in time.

  For now I just had to make sure neither Umara or I were being whispered at.

  I pushed the Beacon to a corner of my workshop afterward. The sealing arrays were good for years so I was just going to leave it be for now.

  I had already pushed multiple updates to the other Beacons in operation. While Sector 4 had reported a few eldritch disturbances, they were all handled rather easily since those other Beacons weren’t as potent as mine had been. With my updates, they no longer allowed extraterrestrial influence, now able to be used on a wide scale.

  Their primary purpose was found in communication between the Island of Continuance and the mainland. However, they also provided channels for Iron Legion chatter, allowing things like planes more ways to communicate. Soon, we would need them by virtue of location, but that time was still a little ways away.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  It gave more options and solved a major problem on the back of my mind.

  I hadn’t been solely focused on the Beacons though. Most of my attention had been on my advancement formations. I still worked on them daily, and the time for my advancement wasn’t far off. I was hoping to take the step to Authority 9 by the end of the year.

  However, there was one project that I had revived, one I hadn’t thought about for quite some time simply because I hadn’t yet found a lead that told me where to start.

  The act of passing off summons to other people.

  I hadn’t found any information on it from my surveillance over the Church or the Kingdom. It was pretty safe to say that nobody had ever managed to work out how to do so. I had a few pieces though, ones that made it especially suitable for me to be the first.

  Initially, I figured my Call would make it easier. The active communion with my spirits made them a bit more dynamic.

  Then, just recently, I figured that I could use my newfound knowledge of the esoteric to help with communion over a distance. It’s exactly what allowed a lesser god to talk with me in the first place. If I combined it with my power to infiltrate minds, as I had learned to do over at the Island of Continuance and by studying the Neural Gem, I could try to mimic the power of a summoner in the mind of another person. Or, at least commune with the mind of another person.

  If I did all that, I could create a dimensional link with another person’s mind, a link that allowed a spirit from my dimension to drop into another person’s hands without actually removing the spirit from me. An issue all summoners faced was that their spirits couldn’t leave them, even in the case of hot summons. It was only the form that manifested, and the spirit always resided in the dimension.

  But with the link, it could go to another person, and manifest for them instead of me. It would still be fed and controlled by me, but it could at least be wielded by someone else.

  I had experimented extensively with these theories, using Feiden as a guinea pig to see if it would work.

  It didn’t work. Not a single time.

  Until I implemented my Mind Palace, that was.

  I only found out recently that the Mind Palace was not just helpful in this process, but critical. If I was correct, the entire ability of passing off summons to someone else hinged on the Mind Palace. The reason for that was actually a phenomenon that occurred when a spirit was summoned.

  No summoner ever noticed it because they never had to stress the ability, but when a spirit manifested, there was a mental load placed on the summoner for the duration of the summon. Hot summoners felt this the most since they had to actively control their summons while they were out. They couldn’t bring out so many, otherwise they’d overwhelm themselves, not to mention the burden of paying the upfront Psyka costs of summoning.

  That issue was solved with Maxwell’s call, but I wasn’t a hot summoner. Even I hadn’t really noticed it, or cared. The most amount of summons I had out at a time was no greater than five or six, if that. Most often, it was just a rifle, armor, and maybe a pistol or some piece of auxillary gear. I never felt the mental load. But it was there, and it was important.

  In my mind, whenever a spirit was summoned, it was brought down into my mind first. Even before I had the Mind Palace, such was the process. It was just that, with the superiority of Maxwell’s Call, and my Mind Palace being the first of its kind, I hadn’t noticed such a small detail.

  But I was critical of everything, even that. So I made the hypothesis and got to testing.

  With my Mind Palace, I could perfectly reconstruct the details of the spirit that I summoned, even without perfect memory. However, others could not do the same. I figured that was exactly why they couldn’t hold onto a summon. They weren’t given the direct mental load a spirit placed on the summoner. They couldn’t ‘construct’ or ‘comprehend’ the spirit, and therefore couldn’t sustain it.

  It wasn’t just a matter of providing the Psyka. It was a matter of mental visualization. A summoner had to carry that burden for whoever they wanted to hand a summon off to. Apparently, it was impossible to do without a Mind Palace. Why? Likely because my Mind Palace codified everything in my mental headspace.

  Even if a summoner knew everything about a spirit and could perfectly visualize it, that didn’t mean another person could make sense of his jumbled mess of an abstract mind. He couldn’t hand off his own understanding.

  But a Mind Palace solved that issue by codifying the mind, making it more objective, not subjective. It had already been proven that other people could comprehend my Mind Palace. Several people had seen it personally. On the other hand, I’ve never heard of a summoner bringing people into his mind before. It was a unique occurrence, unique to me.

  All thanks to my Mind Palace.

  So it all came down to communion, active summoning, and the Mind Palace.

  I worked on the formations and arrays, turned the ability to tamper and latch onto the mind into a proper Psykic spell instead of just my own manipulation. Then I pulled on the formations for communion, improved upon them, and assembled them into something specially designed for the projection of exact information. Not just for words or images, but for dimensions and spirits.

  In a way, it was all simply about communication. An extremely advanced, and borderline occult, form of communication.

  And then I waited, Umara arriving home from the Verks territory.

  “John?”

  She walked into my workshop, glancing at the piles of ghostly scrap in the corner before walking over to me.

  I turned to her, staring at her. My fingers still flickered with runes and arrays, but I decided to simply settle on one and try it.

  “I need your help with something, dear.”

  “With what? Are you alright?”

  “I’m very alright. Put up your palm.”

  She did as I said, her hand raising so her palm was facing toward the ceiling. I walked to her, putting mine on top of hers before letting out a long breath.

  “Now, I’m going to touch your mind. It’s not going to be like telepathy, not even like when you were brought into my Mind Palace. It’s gonna be different. I’m going to be reaching into yours a bit.”

  “Okay?”

  “I haven’t figured out how to make it less invasive yet, but either way, this might just be the first step to a class revolution.”

  “Well, I trust you.”

  I smiled at her, and then, Psychic arrays bloomed around our hands.

  I reached out toward her mind, establishing the connection. For a brief moment, I saw her mental state, saw her recent memories and the jumbled structure of her thoughts. It was all confusing, no rhyme or reason to it.

  Then I called down a spirit, pushing its codified form into her sea of thoughts and images.

  It settled nicely under my influence, maintaining a direct connection with me, as if it had never left at all.

  I gave it Psyka, and then, it manifested.

  We both looked down, a pistol appearing between our hands. I shifted it around, allowing Umara to grab it properly. A standard 1911 pistol chambered in 45 ACP, it barely fit into her grip, her fingers unable to completely clasp around.

  Then, I slowly lifted my hand.

  Umara’s eyes bulged, looking between me and the pistol as I stepped away. She remained rooted, unwilling to even twitch her hand around the weapon.

  “John, did you just…”

  “I’ve finally done it.”

  I could sense the active connection between the spirit and her mind. I was right. All I had to do was accommodate the mental load for the other person.

  It took two techniques completely foreign to this world. One that I had invented, and the other derived from the occult and study of the Firmament. Then, it was topped off with a summoner Call that had only been passed down to a single person: myself.

  I smiled at Umara, slumping down into my chair as she gained the courage to turn the pistol over in her hand, inspecting it.

  “Here, a magazine. One bullet.”

  I sent the spirit into her mind, a magazine soon appearing in her other hand, with one bullet inside.

  I chuckled at her as she looked at it like a new toy.

  “Go ahead. You’ve seen me do it a million times before.”

  She smiled at me, slowly inserting the magazine before tapping it, making sure it was locked.

  “Now rack the slide.”

  She did as I said, her Vigor from temperings making the task easy.

  The bullet was in the chamber.

  “Now, point it at the wall, and pull the trigger.”

  “You really want me to shoot inside your workshop?”

  “This is a historical moment for the entire summoner class, dear. I couldn't care less if you blow a hole through it, let alone scuff the finish.”

  I waved toward her, her smile widening as she hoisted the pistol, mimicking my stance. I guided her into the proper position, helping her aim.

  Then I took a step back and waited, her finger slowly pulling until the pistol snapped off with a bang.

  She jerked, the recoil kicking her like she wasn’t several times stronger than the average man on Earth. The bullet flattened on the wall, which was reinforced up the ass.

  “Holy… That was awesome!”

  “Right?”

  “You… You can really hand off summons! I can use your guns!”

  “Damn right, baby. This stays between us for now, though.”

  “No shit.”

  She rolled her eyes at me, and then, the pistol suddenly disappeared from her hands.

  “Where’d it go?”

  “I took it back. Seems like it's fully within my control to give and take. I just need to work on arrays that actually hand off the spirits. It's invasive, as I’m sure you felt.”

  “Yes. I saw the memories you peeked at. Doesn’t feel great, having your mind and thoughts directly looked at. Still better than your fingers around my brain though.”

  “Hm.”

  I smirked at her reference to our time at Continuance. I still apologize to Aria for that one, occasionally. She had gotten the worst of it, and she was not the only one.

  “Wait, how did you do it? What changed that you suddenly gained this ability?”

  Umara asked curiously, prompting me to wave toward the Beacon.”

  “I just used my newfound knowledge, the last piece. That, my Mind Palace, and Maxwell’s Call are the requirements to use this. At least for now. I imagine I can remove the necessity for Maxwell’s Call, but the formations I used to commune with your mind and my Mind Palace are absolutely necessary.”

  “You mean, three things that only you have access to?”

  “Indeed. I’m calling it Bestowal. I'll think about how to handle this ability and when to reveal it.”

  “Well, the second you do, the world will go insane. The entire summoner class will undergo an upheaval.”

  “Yup. It’ll make all summoners massively more valuable, which honestly, I can’t have right now. The timing will have to be divine. So for now, I’ll have to settle for simply giving you some fancy new gear.”

  “Well, if I wear your gear, then I can’t wear the witch hat.”

  She smiled, making me stare at her for a few seconds in thought.

  “...Nevermind then.”

  “Aww come on! I was just kidding! Hey, let’s go outside and do some shooting. I want to try the big guns!”

  “No shooting until I teach you about weapon safety! There are five rules of weapon safety! The first rule is to treat every firearm as if it is loaded! The second rule..!”

  “Ughhh!!”