Chapter 11: The Projection

(Eris)

I had been sloppy again. I knew father would scold me, but how could I have seen the punch coming? I was practically blind in that eye because of the necrovirus that had committed me to the grave so many years ago. That was no excuse and I knew it, I could see without my eyes, just as I was doing now. My body had sustained a fierce wound, an abrasion with bruising just across the left side of my jaw, possibly from a magical weapon. Just when I was feeling comfortable with my freakish appearance too. It didn't matter, it would heal just as every other injury had before. I hadn’t even seen the punch coming, let alone the battle that must have ensued from this action. More than likely the rogues would be executed both for their actions and for the use of magic; the forbidden art.

I could see a woman with my father. The air around her chilled everything within a few centimetres of her, and I could see the heat turn to stagnant and eventually still whenever she spoke. She must have been Taiga. I always found it hard to make out great detail in this way and so people just wound up looking akin to cheap store mannequins and paper was always blank, however, the powerful waves of frost and the marked chill in the area around her, left her identity unmistakable to me whereas the difference between my mother and my sister would normally be difficult if I did not see the particles of light floating around my sister. 

From the way the sound waves coming from their mouths seemed, my father must have been angry about something and the empress of ice was trying to remain calm but she seemed very obviously frightened by him. I didn’t blame her. It seemed they were looking over a map and father was talking about our path. First, we would leave to Noxurnos, then Somnias, and from there-

“Eris, I would prefer you not to be using your omniscience to hear this conversation. It’d spoil how our trip will turn out.” He said as he looked dead-centre at where my mind’s eye would’ve been. His eyes always glowed visibly with a pale violet light whenever he saw more than what he let on. Pity, I wanted to see where we were going next. 

I walked my mind through the hotel until I found my mother and sister outside. My mother had dark grey particles that flew around her slowly like an atom, while my sister shot out beams of yellow light all around, illuminating every surface. 

A migraine soon swept over me as I was bombarded by the thoughts of everyone else. I tried to tune them out but it was very difficult to accomplish and I’d never been properly trained on how to do so. I’d only recently learned to use this skill last year with a lot of father’s instructions being more vague than any of his other teachings. 

Though this skill was called ‘omniscience’, it didn’t truly give pure, unadulterated and complete knowledge of what the viewer saw and could only be used when the user was unconscious or incapacitated in some way. I suppose father just called it that, seeing as how the other title he gave it sounded much less eloquent, ‘astral projection’, something or other he’d borrowed from human science fiction or mysticism. 

A migraine pulsed from my eyes all the way into the back of my head as I lost focus thinking over this and I felt like I slipped a bit, making my mind-form briefly visible. I quickly caught myself but not before my sister’s emotions changed suddenly from a sad rainstorm to a scared partridge. My family was very good at concealing their thoughts in such a way that I couldn’t hear them, but Fantasia was very bad at hiding her emotions. She turned and looked dead at me, one of her eyes flickering a golden light not too dissimilar to dad’s as she searched the spot I’d just been in. Could she...see me?

“Hey, wake up, princess!” My father’s harsh voice sundered me from the world I had just been in as he smacked my head with a pillow. In a sudden rush I woke up and promptly vomited over the side of the bed. I felt like trash and dad wasn’t making it too much easier for me. I never threw up, there was simply no need for it especially since I rarely ate. However, this had carried over, unfortunately, from my previous life. 

“That’s what you get for listening in on private conversations, I thought I taught you better!” He said heatedly as he set my hands in ice water. The cold definitely helped with the pulsing pain behind my right eye (albeit in regards to the migraine) but nothing could help the vertigo and motion sickness I felt as I lay back down and closed my different coloured eyes with a groan. 

“You made yourself sick because you used your omniscience for too long. It looks like you tried to manifest a form of yourself too?!” He said incredulously as he smacked my hand harshly, fortunately it didn’t hurt as badly as my headache. What he spoke of was an advanced technique of omniscience that allowed the user to manipulate physical objects at the cost of making their mind visible. As he was now lecturing me, I soon remembered why we didn’t practise this technique as much.

“Eris Seraphim Caelorum Skyforth!” I winced at the full pronunciation of my name from the man who had first given it to me. He had only spoken my full name sparsely in my life and only whenever I was in deep, deep trouble and mom wasn’t around. It meant ‘You, seraphim of heaven’ in the human language of Latin but my mother thought of me as something from the depths of hell, but that was after they had already named me.

 “At least you don’t complain of our accommodations as much as your sister does.” He growled as he cleaned up my mess. “Tell me the consequences of trying to manifest physical form from omniscience.” He said quietly as he worked.

“It was an accident, I lost focus. I was checking up on mom and Fantasia.” He growled low and I quickly changed my tone. “Loss of one’s mind, dissociative personality disorder, psychosis, replacement of one’s own self with something else, and culmination of a shadow of one’s most violent, chaotic desires. Physical manifestation should never be attempted by amateur wielders of psychic abilities.” I nodded, feeling my hands carefully as the feeling began coming back into them. 

I felt numb and awful and the realisation dawned on me that I could've disappeared and never returned, wandering endlessly as an effigy of the person I once was, accident or not. I shivered at the thought, yes, I hated my life as the daughter of a mother who disdained me for something outside of my control, but not enough to hurt my father like that. 

He had brought over a large metal bucket and held it to my face. 

“Please throw up into this if you have to. I don't want to make any more work for the cleaning staff than we need to.” He said as he gently squeezed my hand. Without a shadow of a doubt, this man loved me beyond anything I had ever known and all the more so since that day I'd come back. He had his rough moments and his times in which he seemed cold and heartless, but there really was a love for his children deep down inside and it blazed more brightly than any light I'd ever seen.