Nightmare Realm Summoner

”Whoa, hold up!” Alex exclaimed, staring up in horror and awe alike as the star plummeted from the heavens on a direct collision course with him. He felt like a child that had just accidentally knocked his mother’s expensive dish off its spot in a cabinet and could do nothing but watch as it tumbled through the air in slow motion on its path to the ground. ”I didn’t try to do that! I’m not ready! I need to practice first!”

”This is practice,” the starry man replied. ”I suggest you learn quickly.”

”Nobody practices by catching a fucking shooting star before it obliterates their soul!” Alex paused. Maybe he was overthinking things. Surely a Visualization wasn’t powerful enough to just straight up kill him after it had already accepted him and he’d passed its test. Maybe this was just a test run. ”Wait. I’m overreacting. Of course. This is just a test run or something, right? What happens if the star actually hits me?”

”No, I would say your reaction was largely apt,” the starry man replied. ”What do you think would happen if your soul gets hit by a falling star? I would imagine it wouldn’t be particularly comfortable, but I have no experience in the matter. I was only created a short while ago. What normally happens when an object is hit by an enormous meteor moving at incredible speeds?”

Goddamn it. I don’t think he’s screwing around. What the hell kind of Visualization did I get? I thought these were just supposed to be a way to build your Mind Palace! Stopping stars that strange men pull from the sky is no basis for creating a castle.

Alex shoved his thoughts to the side. His heart was already pounding as adrenaline pumped through his body. Wasting time whining wasn’t about to change anything. He had — from the looks of things and how fast the light was intensifying — about a minute before the star was upon him.

”What do I do?” Alex asked. He shifted from foot to foot, his gaze darting between the rapidly brightening star and the starry man. ”How do I grab it? Preferably before it obliterates the both of us?”

”That’s for you to decide. ”I am not here to teach you. How would you pluck a star from the sky?”

”If I knew how to do it, do you really think I’d be wasting time asking?”

”If you do not, then I would suggest that you spend time thinking on how one would pluck a star from the sky than asking about it. It was only a short time ago that you asserted your desire to accomplish tasks on your own. Has that changed? Why do you ask me to do your job for you?”

Alex paused. Then his eyes narrowed and he turned back up to look at the brightening mote of light approaching them. ”You know, it’s a bit different when you yank a bloody star down right on top of my head.”

The starry man didn’t say anything, and Alex didn’t waste a second more on him. He didn’t bother approaching Berith either. The Demon was still there, at the corner of his soul, but Alex had no doubt that asking for any help from him was going to come at a cost far greater than he had any desire to pay.

And if he was honest… Alex didn’t actually want the help. The initial panic that had slammed into him had gone up like a piece of magician’s flash paper, igniting and burning away within moments.

All that remained now was the challenge before him. It was like everything else in the System. There was always a way forward. No task was completely impossible. He’d gotten this Visualization because the power, somewhere deep within him, was there.

Perhaps it came from Berith. Perhaps it came from something else entirely. Alex didn’t know how it had come to be or what the origins of this Visualization were. Perhaps, if he were successful, some of those answers would be found.

But he didn’t care about the answers right now. There was only one thing left on the forefront of Alex’s mind, and it was how one would go about plucking a star from the sky. The starry man had been very specific with his words.

He didn’t say how ’can’ you pluck a star. He said how ’would’. A Visualization is something you picture, right? It’s all a mental thing. Like a meditation technique. This is all in my mind… which means it has to follow my rules.

”That has to be it,” Alex said to himself, dropping down onto his backside and crossing his legs beneath him as he stared up at the star above him. ”I don’t have to figure out how someone would literally grab a star from the sky. I’ve just got to determine how I would do it. This is some fancy monk technique, isn’t it? Using a stressful situation to compress your thoughts and force you to push ahead. That seems profound.”

The starry man did not respond. Alex barely even cared. It didn’t matter what the man did anymore. He was just a silent observer. The only one interacting with the star was Alex.

Plucking it from the air does seem pretty cool. No point not giving it a shot.

Alex extended a hand toward the sky, covering the shining mote of energy with his palm. He did his best to visualize his being extending outward and wrapping around the star — that felt like it the type of mental exercise this scenario was meant to encourage.

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He drew in a deep breath and blew it out slowly, drawing on the practice he’d had meditating in recent days to calm himself. Panic didn’t help. Emotion didn’t help. The only thing he needed here was intent.

His eyes closed.

This is my mind. My soul… And things work the way I decide they do.

Then, one by one, Alex closed his fingers.

He felt a grin pulling a cross his lips as a sense of satisfaction washed over him.

Alex let his hand lower. His eyes opened as he looked down at his palm.

It was empty.

Goddamn it.

He glanced up to the sky, where the star was still hurtling down toward him just as fast as it had always been. It was even closer now — as falling objects falling above one’s head to be — and the light was so bright that it forced him to squint.

”Mm. No, I don’t think that was it,” the starry man said with a thoughtful shake of his head. ”Maybe you should try it again.”

Oh, go pound sand.

Alex gritted his teeth and dug through his thoughts. He’d already figured out why his attempt had failed. As cool as the idea of literally plucking a star out of the sky was, his mind just didn’t work like that. Things still generally made sense in accordance to the System’s rules. This was no exception.

He didn’t have any ability that let him literally yank stars from the sky. If he’d had some form of telepathy or control over his soul’s shape, then it would have been a whole other thing. But he didn’t. And without it, he couldn’t actually visualize himself just invisibly stopping the falling star.

It has to be something physical. When I’m stronger, I know for a fact I can picture myself just yanking things out of the sky like chips from a bag of cereal. But that power and who I am right now aren’t aligned.

A Visualization. The clue has to be there, in the name. I need to be able to picture what I want. And if I want to visualize some kind of power, then it has to be something I can actually see or observe.

Something that makes sense. If it makes sense, I can imagine it. But what can I use to grab the star? Certainly not my own hands. Even if I wanted to, they aren’t big enough. I need to use something else. Glint? Spark? Princess?

None of his monsters worked. They weren’t truly part of him. Alex’s summons were allies, integral parts of his fighting techniques and valued members of his team… but not him. And this was about him.

Berith was equally as useless. The demon wasn’t even a part of his team. If anything, he was an enemy… though there was one thing that Alex could probably use him for. It wasn’t like Berith could dodge anything. If the worst came to the worst, he could always use the demon to take cover behind. Something told him Berith would probably survive getting hit by a falling star.

Now that would be a funny Visualization. Screw some fancy monk shit. My special technique will be holding someone in front of me and letting them take the hit in my stead.

Alex snorted in amusement at his own joke.

”You find something funny?” the starry man asked.

”Shut up,” Alex replied, his words turning strained. Pressure from the plummeting star was bearing down on him even harder now, fighting to force him beneath the rippling water of his lake. ”I’m doing important thinking right now.”

”Important enough to be laughing at it?”

”Don’t turn your nose up at a good snicker. It always helps get the ducks in a row.” Alex’s eyes darted around his soul. Waves were lapping all around him now, crashing against his basin and rolling over the scattered building materials littering the ground in huge heaps.

What do I have to work with? What can I —

Wait.

Alex stared at a pile of rubble. The star was so close now that he could feel the heat from it radiating against his back, but even that couldn’t stop the grin from splitting his lips. He had his idea.

There was no time to think of anything else. It was this or bust.

”You’re part of my soul, so time to pay rent and do something instead of sitting around and making everything look like trash,” Alex snarled. With a roar, he thrust both of his hands into the air.

Instead of willing the star to vanish from the sky, he willed his very being upward. It was more than his hands that rose. It was his very soul, rising up from the lake around him with the roar of a crashing waves.

Debris and material was swept away as the ripples of water emanating from around Alex magnified a hundredfold. They were mere ripples no longer. His soul was like a stormy night at sea. Furious waves that towered higher than his basin slammed against his soul, shaking it to its very foundations.

None of the tremors reached Alex. He stood in the roaring sea, as still and indifferent as the sky above. Above, the star drew closer still. It was only mere seconds away now. Fortunately, Alex didn’t need any more than one.

The thundering waves swirled together around him before exploding upward. Bricks flowed through the wave, slamming into place to form into the shape of a massive hand. The stone and marble coated the dark water like skin to form a protective barrier.

A shadow passed over Alex. The fingers of the massive hand unfurled. It reached up toward the burning star plummeting down toward him.

Despite everything, he braced himself.

The star slammed into the palm of the hand. A resounding explosion tore through his Mind Palace like a bomb had gone off. An enormous shockwave followed after it, tearing through the air with a visible white trail and slamming Alex down to his back as tremors rolled through the very foundations of his soul.

Power drove into Alex’s heart like a railroad spike. The sky shuddered. And, even as his vision darkened and sputtered, his eyes squinted up at the fading vision above him.

The massive hand still stood. Its fingers had clenched around a brilliant mote of burning white light. Energy radiated out from within it to wash over his body in gentle, almost comforting waves. They soaked into him like water into a sponge.

He’d caught the star.

Something about his body felt… strange. Not wrong, but different. He didn’t know how, but the star was changing him. Evidently, Visualizations were a whole lot more than just a way to meditate.

Heh. Who would have thought?

A smile crossed Alex’s lips.

Then the world went black.