It’s nothing. It’s new. It’s unknown. It’s a new unknown nothing.
(There is no author or title listed on, or in, this book. The majority of this tome is dedicated to dissertations on magical theory and its applications on the art of Arifice, Golemancy, with a bit of dabbling in Magical Construct Creation and dealing with Elementals mixed in. Parts of the tome are scribbled over with extraneous information, while other sections are redacted with annotations why nearby or at the foot of the page, apparently due to some failure or advance in the Art. Numerous sidebars in the margins are inserted into the formula and notes contained on the pages, cross referencing relevant studies and texts. As a whole, it seems to be more of a working journal of a single experimenting scholar than a compiled text of study. It is not until towards the last few dozen pages of the tome that the tone takes a completely different direction…)
I wish I could write something profound as my first words for this discovery. The stories about the old masters of the craft always have some witty or profound exclamation regarding their breakthrough.
Truth be told: my pulse is racing too much, I probably had a mug (or three) of ale too much for calming my nerves, and I’m Gods be Damned sore as a two copper whore in a bandit’s den.
Anyways, through a series of failures ranging from laughable to disastrous with my work today I managed a complete and utter breakthrough. My latest project required (or at least in theory required) the tiniest sliver of Voidstone from the Negative Material Plane (I had to track down more than a few dusty tomes to even figure that part out – oh the arguments I had to win to even look at those pieces of moldy parchment). I had amended all the proper summoning and protection spells and wards, even had a wall of force set up to trigger as an encapsulating globe just in case.
So, longer story shorter (since I’ll remember today forever, close calls with Death have a tendency to burn the experience into your mind for ages – I know this one.) the summons, quite simply, didn’t work. Well, it didn’t work in any way I had anticipated. Instead of some pitch black oily obsidian of, well, death… in that force bubble was a being, something elemental in nature. A very small one, but still, something Elemental in nature.
I say Elemental, because it reacted in the primal nature I am familiar with from my experiences with those types of beings in the past. What I am not familiar with is anything about the nature of the thing I brought forth today.
It cast no shadow, of that I am sure. Pitch black. Not translucent, but I could see into it… kind of. It was roiling with some sort of inner turbulence – like watching a thundercloud develop overhead in the spring storms of Venhiel. However, that turbulence was not contained within the creature, boiling within a confines, it was more like watching the shades of varying darkness become drawn towards the blackest of singularities at the creature’s core.
It was the first to act after my spells went off and brought it here. While I was doing a visual once over of my protections and wards to make sure things were as safe as possible, it extended what I could but call an appendage and “pushed” against the force bubble.
I would not believe it had I not seen it with my own two eyes, but the thing absorbed the entire thing. Not just absorbed, eliminated. Like watching a thin dusting of sand or salt being blown off of a sheet of paper, I could watch the motes of energy being drawn into this thing, mixing into that inner turbulence I mentioned, and getting drawn into that black singularity at its core – completely gone.
The sheer fact it flew right through my multitude of wards and came right at me confirms my thoughts on its sentience. And since I just saw it eat? Destroy? Nullify? a rather impressive force bubble – my first and only thoughts were on self-preservation. However, the thing absorbed just about any energy I could throw at it. Speaking of throwing, that damnable thing even made a bloody gravity well. That caught me by surprise, let me tell you. I fell right into the thing, falling forward across the floor as if I had stepped right off a cliff. Even though I managed to catch myself on some equipment before ramming into it the latent energy of it still ripped a chunk of my life force right out. (Still no apparent wound, but Damn that hurt!). Needless to say, I now have to replace a sizable amount of the wands I had in stock in my study.
But that energy?!?! What was it? Elementals are quasi-sentient beings of an Element, thus the name. It’s corpse, after slain, even slowly started to absorb the floor – its essence still innately drawing energy and matter into it, the inner turbulence unabated with even the things death. Of note for later: the axe I used to hack at it for a couple minutes after it (have to make sure it’s dead, right?) finally fell to the floor was unaffected by this absorption ability. (Potentially due to the limited contact? I will have to come up with some hypothesis on that.)
Well a Tenser’s Disk is keeping the damned thing off the ground for the interim, and since the air itself had gotten quite thin with that thing in an enclosed space, I’m kind of happy that I had that window in the laboratory installed after that Dire Skunk incident my Apprentice had last year…
PS: On the now growing “Things to Do list” - Figure out how and why a summoned creature did not get shunted back to its native plane upon its demise.
(The next dozen pages are filled with alchemical formulae, notes regarding correspondence with other scholars, and apparent brainstorming regarding what the summoning actually conjured forth. After a page of “It’s not:” and a list of just about anything imaginable penned in, and one sole entry of “It was: Elemental”, the author continued his journaling regarding the incident.)
It’s nothing. It’s new. It’s unknown. It’s a new unknown nothing. A nothing that is a something. A bloody paradox. The corpse still draws in and nullifies any energy nearby, suggesting that is the innate nature of its material essence which is the source, not the Elemental sentience.
Wait a second. That’s bloody it. Anyone who has read up on planar travel, elemental interactions, or necromancy (ick) knows that there is (or can be) a nullifying quality to that Element’s opposite. This stuff is the opposite of EVERYTHING.
Oh damn. What did I find? The only uses for something like this that immediately come to mind are things that I would never, ever, ever wish to release upon this world.
But first, where’s that "Treatise on The Planes and Their Composition"? I am starting to have a hunch about what this actually is… maybe.
(Again, the tome lapses into formula and theory – focused on the known Planes and conjectures about what actually separates them. Lists upon lists of reference materials are scattered throughout the work in seemingly random order. In the middle of the last listing, mid-word, the pen just kind of scribbled a long jagged lightning bolt mark – akin to a child’s fit of anger while learning their letters. It is the next page that the writing continues…)
Separation/Separator?
That’s it? It has to be. Some infinitesimally thin layer of this material separator between the planes, ensuring each are their own. Wait, but what about the Para-elemental planes? Damnit. It’s not a separation membrane, that question disproves it alone.
It’s nothing. From nowhere.
But it exists, damn it! I’ve had that thing floating in my laboratory for the past year and a half! I have studied every known text and treatise and tome and…
Ok. I will actually write down that I just slapped my own forehead in surprise. My initial reason for the casting of the spells was to summon a small bit of Voidstone for my project (long since abandoned, obviously). Negative Material nastiness, sure… but Material nonetheless. What if this actually overshot? Actually pulled from the Void itself? It’s not a plane, it’s not an element, it’s not a place, it’s the nowhere outside of the Planes. It’s from nowhere so it nullifies everything else that is actually from somewhere.
Blessed Jorlin, I’m going to stop at your chapel later and fill a bloody offering box, because it’s the Void in truth. If I’m wrong I’ll burn my journals and notes and go be a cloistered monk of Acedia. It has to be. It has to be.
PS: As they say, if you can find it – you can name it. Damned corpse nullifies everything around it, so I dub thee: “Null Elemental”.
(The last entry was entered on the last page of the bound tome. However, scribbled in the bottom margin of the page, just like the early pages… a footnote is listed and circled three times.)
This is big. Cross reference next volume during further research or discussion.
