It felt like someone had attempted to violate her very soul. As though someone had peered deeper, even past her nakedness to the secret corners of her being.
Nekea sat on her bed, the bedsheets tangled on her pale skin. Her chest heaved with heavy breaths, as her crimson eyes darted across her thighs. Holding on to her pale shoulders, she continued to breathe, calming herself.
The light of the midday sun poured through her window, the red moss glittering with happiness as they absorbed the sunlight. The vast network of roots in her abode were most concentrated in her bedroom. A lone book with a green cover, lay on a small table next to her bed, a stylized quill next to it. It was one of the many little inventions of hers; a little tube of ink within it. She had wanted to take a short nap, but it seemed some external forces had other plans.
"You dare touch me, cretin.", she hissed.
She felt the dark feeling of cold fingers caressing her. It was unmistakable. She felt sick thinking about it.
Malum.
That jagged, chaotic energy. It stood against everything she had built, against the Breath itself.
The room soon fell silent, the cries of distant birds easing into it.
One of two things could've caused the breach.
The first would be an undeliberate, simple coincidence. Most likely the fault of a creature possessing some amount of that Malum, by chance, interacting with the barrier.
The second would be Nekea's worst fear. And a serious threat to her peace.
Human beings.
She was dead sure it was the second one.
Nekea relaxed herself, and closed her eyes once more. The breach had disappeared. It seemed the force had been successfully warded off by her awakening. However, it had left a scar. Nekea could see it, a seemingly insignificant spot. She needed to fix it.
Immediately.
Nekea got off her bed, and a gentle knock came from her door.
She knew at once who it was.
Roe'nika entered the room, and instantly felt the negativity from her Mistress.
"Mistress," she said with concern, as she helped Nekea into her clothes, Nekea addressed her.
"Roe'nika", she started.
Roe'nika could feel the unease in her Mistress' voice.
"There has been a breach", she continued, a mild despair bubbling in her being.
Roe'nika froze for a moment, as the words met her ears, and slowly continued, pulling the strings on her Mistress's attire tight.
Nekea continued, although Roe'nika already understood what she needed to do.
"I need you to take a look at it. Fix the seam that is broken, and reinforce it so it doesn't break again.", Nekea ordered.
Her voice had a sickening amount of insecurity within it. The veil of authority had been torn, now she seemed very much like a vulnerable woman. It wasn't like the Blood Witch at all to be so on edge over a mere breach.
This wasn't any regular intrusion.
Nekea could count on her two hands the number of breaches she had encountered, ever since she had constructed the barrier. Roe'nika had aided her with most of them. In all her reports, the culprit would turn out to be a creature of sorts, and the Blood Witch would mark it. Roe'nika would patch it up perfectly, as though it had never broken, and everything would return to normal.
This time however, Nekea had a deep sense of unease within her. It was like an alarm sounding in her mind, pulsing with danger. Nekea trusted her instincts as much as she trusted Roe'nika.
"Yes, Mistress. Let your heart be at ease. I shall do so.", she replied reassuringly. She held Nekea's shaking hands and led her out of the room. Nekea's heart opened up as her servant took her. She wondered what she would do without Roe'nika. Her warm hands went further to warm her scared heart.
As Roe'nika began to head out, Nekea spoke once more.
"And one last thing…", she began.
Roe'nika turned, facing her.
"Do not step out of the barrier. Inspect it from within, and do what is required. Add a double layer while you are at it. When you are finished, do not step out of the barrier. Return, and be quick about it."
Roe'nika could feel the sense of urgency with which her Mistress spoke. She asked no questions. She simply affirmed and left.
Nekea watched as her trusty servant left her sight, swallowed by the turns of the corridors.
The dirty feeling clung to her like slime as she headed to her sanctum, her brows furrowed.
Things seemed to be picking up, and her peace was being threatened in greater volumes.
The days flew by as Nekea worked. Roe'nika patched the breach, however unease continued to gnaw at Nekea.
Days passed.
Within the sanctum, every experiment, every achievement, every study she had conducted, and every note she had made, seemed to be diminish in comparison to the body on the Workstone.
Through Nhea, Nekea had found out the man's name and his feats.
His name was Quantum.
And his origins?
Unknown.
Nekea walked across the short grass of the sanctum, and it swished as her sandals passed upon it. The morning sunlight beamed through the ceiling, periodically dimming and growing bright, as white clouds passed.
He was a being shrouded in mystery.
Nhea had simply met him in an alley in the border town of Rhea-Nori. He had spoken briefly about his origins, and Nhea had understood two things. He was a wanderer. And he was from the west, far, far away from Karakh. Upon studying maps from travelers from beyond Karakh, Nekea had found that there were no empires or important kingdoms that lay west of Karakh.
There were only mountains first, and lush forest past it. Finally, beyond all these things a sea was said to exist.
Quantum seemed to simply emerge from nowhere. Most likely, there were groups of little human settlements scattered across the way to the west. Quantum had to come from one of them.
However, considering his inhuman nature, Nekea doubted he came from any human settlement. She could only imagine, who exactly Quantum was.
She approached her work, which was almost complete. Within a few days, Nekea had set Quantum within a mass of moss that interacted with his body and was reintegrating him. He had set a lower jaw for him, and the stitches were still quite visible. His skin was almost completely rehabilitated, along with his muscle structure. She couldn't replicate the intricate structure perfectly, for it was truly divine work.
Beyond human hands.
Nekea looked down at the man whose face had returned. Red moss covered his countenance. It seemed the engineered moss had done the work. She had spent the whole night creating them and multiplying them, for the very purpose of repairing and renewing body tissue.
Many tubes and vessels were connected to the body, supplying the little organisms with a constant source of materials to construct with. The moss bathed in the morning sun, energising itself.
It was only a matter of time before Quantum would return. It amazed Nekea, for she knew it wasn't her genius. It was the divine knowledge of the being himself. The dreams were clearer with every iteration that came, longer, and filled with more messages. At the end of every dream, she received instructions. The instructions would sound, to any unskilled commoner, as gibberish. To her however, it was pure knowledge and ingenuity.
She never knew that her creations could be engineered to work in such a way.
It marveled her; how much was hidden beneath those closed eyes.
As Nekea looked down at Quantum's face, she was drawn to him, as though she had been charmed. She bent and peered at his closed eyes. She then drew her hands towards his face, hesitantly, and touched his moss-covered cheeks. They were inconceivably soft, even beneath the moss. However, they possessed a masculine hardness.
Deep within, Nekea had begun to desire Quantum's resurrection as much as Nhea.
She wanted to know everything about him.
Everything about the hands that made him.
There was knowledge and power, beyond the so-called perfection of Calor, and all the other authorities of the world.
Nekea sought to have it.
Nekea drew herself back, removing her pale fingers now reddened with moss from his face.
She had completed arrangements of muscle fibers, designed authentic respiratory systems for supporting immense releases of internal energy, along with bones constructed using inconceivable compounds.
There was one last barricade Nekea needed to maneuver.
Quantum's heart.
The instructions given were clear; the heart was the last piece to be dealt with. And that was her agenda for the day.
Quantum's chest was opened and laid bare to her, revealing a thick heart, motionless.
For some reason, the moss seemed to be avoiding the heart. Nekea had observed the strange behavior a day after setting him in the moss, and she couldn't wrap her mind around it.
Today, she would find out why.
She had been preparing for days.
Nekea picked an incision tool, and carefully cut Quantum's heart open. With every millimeter length she opened, she was made to understand that Quantum's heart although ordinary looking was vastly extraordinary.
Soon she saw it.
It was a blue material, like a crystal, at the center. There were thin yellow tendril-like appendages emerging radially, connected to the walls of the heart. The crystal seemed to pulse gently.
It looked alive.
Nekea studied the peculiar object as it glowed within its chamber, the tendrils glowing alongside it.
"Amazing...", Nekea remarked.
She opened up the incision, and the moss drew back even more in response to this.
Quantum's heart was an interesting find, however Nekea believed it was even more interesting than met the eye.
Nekea touched the crystal with the tip of her tool, and suddenly, an energy coursed through it to the tips of her fingers, making them tingle with mythic force.
A warmth spread from her finger to the rest of her hand.
'What is this?', she thought, her excitement growing. Suddenly, the tendrils began to shake and slither, pulling off the heart's walls and climbing up the metal tool.
Nekea didn't pull away. She wanted to see what would happen. It appeared they were reaching out to her.
As though they wanted to touch her.
The sun shone brightly once more, as another cloud passed.
The tendrils forged onwards, seemingly invigorated by the sunlight that met them.
Nekea's heart began to sound within her chest, each muffled thump vibrating in her ears.
Her pupils dilated.
The tendrils reached her finger.
Almost instantly, with a force she never believed such tiny tendrils could have, they removed themselves from the scalpel and latched directly onto her finger, pulling it closer towards the crystal.
Nekea was amazed.
Adrenaline began to rush through her as she turned the scalpel away, and extended her finger, almost making the tendrils scream with glee.
The crystal began to shine brighter and brighter.
A large smile drew on Nekea's face.
This was a whole new experience for her.
The tingling feeling on her finger grew stronger and stronger as it drew closer and closer to the crystal.
More tendrils latched themselves onto her finger, painlessly, and drew it closer with more force until it was within a millimeter of the crystal.
Fear clashed with awe within her.
It was the pinnacle of all her dreams. Everything she had ever hoped for.
It had finally come true.
Nekea touched the crystal.
Instantly, her mind went blank.
The world went dark, as she lost strength in her legs.
Her eyes twitched with releases of hormones.
Convulsing and frothing at the mouth, Nekea's eyes slowly rolled back.
There was a sudden silence.
Within the darkness, the voice of a being hissed.
"Herald...awaken"