Summoned A Hundred Years Too Late

Alexandra wanted to look down at the shadow limb that was piercing through her heart, but the elemental’s grip on her throat prevented her from doing so.

For the second time today, she was faced with death. Falling down a ravine hadn’t been enough to end her, but a hole in her chest surely would do the trick.

She waited, feeling the cold seeping through the limb in her torso. There was nothing she could do but accept it.

The instant stretched out, time slowing down to give her a moment. An interesting side-effect of meeting her demise. A last farewell to the world.

Then nothing.

Nothing happened.

The limb was clearly right where her heart should be, but besides a vague feeling of coldness, she couldn’t sense anything. No pain. No weakness.

“Erm…” she said. “What are you doing?”

The elemental didn’t answer. It couldn’t talk, could it? But even the shadow figure it controlled seemed confused. It pulled the limb from her body and impaled her once more.

Nothing.

“Doesn’t appear to be working, buddy.” Alexandra smiled as she understood what had happened. It was the effect of Aggressive Assimilation. Part of her body had turned immaterial as she received an otherwise fatal blow.

The darkness elemental struck her again, its limb slipping through her as if she wasn’t there.

“Not gonna work.”

Alexandra grimaced. While she wasn’t dead yet, she was far from winning the fight. The elemental was still holding her by the throat, and her own stabs into its body were not doing anything either.

Sure, she was siphoning its lifeforce, but at this rate, she’d pass out from exhaustion before depleting it. This deadlock wasn’t in her advantage.

“How about we call it a draw?” she asked, words struggling to push through her throat.

The elemental didn’t answer. It had, however, stopped trying to kill her, meaning it realized something was wrong.

Its faceless head looked at her.

“Yeah, not really working out.”

Alexandra decided to lower the intensity of her Light again to save energy and give herself some respite from the rising heat.

“You know, I can stay like this all day.”

A lie, but she was out of ideas.

“This is stupid. You don’t understand what I’m saying.”

If only there were a way to communicate with the elemental. This thing didn’t seem completely mindless.

She snapped her fingers. Maybe there was a way.

Alexandra opened her hand and let her sword fall to the ground with a clatter that echoed through the cavern. She didn’t need it.

Then, she summoned her journal on the contribution point shop page.

Her balance was dwindling with all those purchases. Worse, she hadn’t had the chance to farm contribution points lately, leaving her to pick up a few scraps here and there. At least she still had enough for common skills.

Contribution Points: 15,288

The elemental didn’t try to stop her as she focused her intent into her journal. She needed a way to communicate with elementals.

No luck. She frowned.

A way to communicate with darkness elementals.

Still no skill matching her request.

A way to communicate with this specific darkness elemental.

Three skills appeared on the page.

Open mind – Common:

Allows one or more entities of your choice to read your mind.

Each level increases the number of simultaneous connections.

This was obviously not good. Opening up her mind to a darkness elemental couldn’t possibly be a good idea. Furthermore, it would only let the thing read her mind, and not the other way around. The communication would be scuffed.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

She hoped the next option would prove to be better.

Soulmate – Common:

Permanently designate someone as your soulmate. Communication with them becomes seamless.

Each level increases the depth of your mutual feelings.

Alexandra blinked. What the hell was that? She paused for a moment. Technically, it would work, with the very undesirable side effect of making her fall in love with the elemental. She didn’t want that, and even using the skill on an actual soulmate felt morally wrong.

It only left her with one option.

Familiar Contract – Common:

Make a deal with a member of a different species, allowing you to communicate and share senses.

Both parties must agree to the contract.

Only one deal can be sustained at the same time, and each deal is permanent, only severable by death.

Each level improves sense sharing.

“Okay, this one isn’t horrible.”

It was actually quite good. So much so that Alexandra almost regretted having to use it on a darkness elemental. Finding a familiar with a deep sense for mana, lifeforce, or other esoteric energies would be so much better.

There was also the important detail that the elemental had to agree to the contract. She wasn’t sure how she was going to make it happen, but at this point it felt like her best bet.

She purchased the skill.

Contribution Points: 15,288 -> 10,288

A quick look at its training quest told her she’d need to make use of the sense-sharing part of the ability to level it. That was fine, and not really what she needed now anyway.

She extended a thread of mana toward the elemental, offering it the contract.

The shadow figure shifted as it received the offer. Slowly, it put her down and moved back.

Alexandra massaged her throat, sore from all this time spent hanging.

“You understand?” she asked.

She figured that the skill should at least take care of communicating the basics of the contract to its target.

The shadow figure went still.

Then it nodded. Once, with a stiff motion.

A pulse ran up the thread of mana connecting them.

“I. Accept,” it said, more breath than voice, and with a distinct pause between each word.

She exhaled. "Good. I’m sorry about intruding. I just didn’t think our fight was going anywhere."

“It. Wasn’t.”

She nodded and fell silent. How did one talk to a lump of darkness?

“Erm.” She hesitated. “Do you have a name? Mine’s Alexandra.”

“No.”

“Okay… We’ll work on that.”

The shadow figure shifted. “Light.”

Alexandra opened her mouth. “You want to be called… Light?”

“Light. Off.”

“Oh.” Alexandra looked at her Light that was still active. “But if I do that, I won’t be able to see.”

“Pain,” it whispered. “Can. See. Contract.”

“Right,” she said. “I should be able to share your senses.”

Alexandra turned off the light. The world dropped away.

There was no comparison to what replaced it, no up or down, only a sea. Darkness stretching in every direction at once, and she was in it. Ripples moved through the sea, and each ripple carried a shape, a feeling. Cold. Weight. Pressure.

She tried to make sense of it. It was less like seeing and more like knowing, the way she knew her own hand was attached to her arm without needing to look. Except the knowing came in smears, half-formed, the edges dissolving before she perceived them in detail.

A ripple passed close by, sharper than the rest, and she understood that it was her. Her own body, standing at the sea's edge, a hole where a person should be.

"That's..." She shook her head. "That's a lot."

"Low. Level," the elemental said.

"Right. Should get better." She rubbed at her temple, the ghost of that sea still sloshing behind her eyes. "How do you even find your way around in that?"

The elemental didn't answer. Maybe it didn't have an answer. Maybe the question didn't translate. Maybe it was so natural to it that it was like asking Alexandra how she was seeing. She just was. There was no explaining that.

Alexandra stretched her new sense toward her new companion. The shadow figure was nowhere to be felt. With no light, what was darkness in a sea of more darkness? But through her skill, she found its source, a minuscule drop in the ocean, floating near her shoulder.

"Why did you agree to the contract?" she asked. "The fight wasn't going anywhere, sure, but you could've just walked away instead."

A pause, longer than the others.

"Don't. Know."

"You don't know."

"No."

She waited for more. Nothing. She supposed that was an honest answer, at least, and stranger things had happened to her today than a darkness elemental making a decision it couldn't explain.

"Okay," she said. "Different question. Do you know a way out of here? To the surface?"

"No."

"Of course not." She sighed and looked past him, toward a tunnel mouth that led out of the larger cavern.

She winced. She now had a familiar bound to her, permanent, unable to be severed except by death.

"Do you want to come with me?" she asked. "Wherever the surface takes us."

"Yes." It said with a long, drawn-out breath.

No pause that time. Just the one word.

“Then we really have to give you a name.” She mulled it over. “Any preference?”

“Alexandra.”

She shook her head. “That’s my name. You need to pick another. By the way, are you a he or a she?”

“Don’t. Understand.”

“I guess elementals don’t really have genders…” She hummed. “Your source is really small. How about we call you Speck?”

“Okay.”

Alexandra smiled. “Then it's settled. Let’s go.”

Where to, she didn’t know yet. But she had to get home before Kam and Willow started to worry about her absence.