The Hollow Estate had been a corpse in the emerald twilight of the Whispering Woods, a monument of stone and decaying oak slowly being reclaimed by the earth. Ivy as thick as a man's wrist had crawled up the noble pillars, and the air in the great hall had been heavy with dust and the smell of dampness. Aleric had moved through the ruin with the cold, efficient ease of a predator that had already planned every detail of the terrain. He had chosen this place for its stillness, for here the only sounds had been the creaking of the wood and the steady pumping of his own heartbeat.
He sat in the center of the destroyed library, his brown skin drinking in the filtered light that cut through the destroyed roof. In his hands was a leather-bound book, a leftover of the magic that a commoner such as myself can't afford until this. Until now, Aleric had dismissed the idea of summoning with a calculating gaze. Summoning a beast was a waste of resources. Biological summons were erratic variables; they required constant mana to fuel their instincts, their simulated hunger, and their complex physical models. A drake required the calculation of every scale; a wolf required the simulation of fur and bone. To Aleric, these were "aesthetic wastes" – mana spent on looks rather than pure necessity. He had no use for a companion that would drain his ledger simply for the sake of appearances.
But as he looked through the old book, his eyes landed on a discarded, crude template: The Faceless.
This is the variable I was missing, Aleric thought, his fingers tracing the crude drawing of a featureless, humanoid shape. It is not a beast. It is a void, shaped like a man. It has no skin, no eyes, no organs. By taking this out, I remove seventy percent of the mana overhead. It is a pure tool, a shadow given form.
His aim was not companionship, but information gathering. He started working on personalizing the template right away. Using the might of his Crimson Eyes, he set to work on reprogramming the fundamental logic of the summon. He would not grant it autonomy; he would grant it a sensory link. He wove a strand of his own visual sense into the shadow matrix, transforming the creature into a distant outpost of his own mind—a spy who could infiltrate any darkness and report any distance.
With the calculations finished, he began the Void Gestation. He did not call the magic into the room; instead, he infused the mana directly into his void. It was an instant sensation of a subtle, insistent tug on his core—a parasitic drain that would sustain the shadow as it grew in the darkness of his storage chamber. It was a constant subtraction from his daily ledger, a toll on his existence that would continue for exactly one week.
For the next seven days, the Hollow Estate was a crucible for his ship. Aleric did not merely sit back and wait for the process to finish. He knew that only at the edge of failure did growth occur. He tapped the last eighty percent of his mana to drive his body to the point of collapse.
Each morning, when the mist was still heavy among the Black-Root trees, Aleric stood in the courtyard. His sword was a blur of silvered steel, slicing through the air with a ferocity that was purely mathematical. He bolstered each blow with a burst of mana, compelling his muscles to move at a speed that was impossible from a biological perspective. Each blow was a conscious act, a means of forcing his core to provide more power than it was capable of handling. He was not training for battle; he was training for fatigue.
However, when his body became too cumbersome to wield the sword properly, he retreated to the grand hall to continue working on "Mana Purging." He sat in the complete silence of the ruins and made a point to relax his grip on his core. He allowed his magic to leak out of his skin in a weak blue mist, leaking away bit by bit. He wanted to be drained. He wanted to feel the "Famine." He would have looked like a crazy person to someone who did not know anything about magic, going from frenzied attacks to complete immobility in a split second. He stayed in the critical area all week, never letting his mana levels rise above thirty-five percent.
His body was taking a toll from the lack of mana. While his brown skin seemed to be in good condition, he now had cold sweats on his forehead, and a tremble had begun to form in his fingers from the low levels of mana pressure. His heart skipped a beat in his chest, a sound reminiscent of death at ten percent mana.
When hunger pains or chills of depletion threatened to distract him, he constructed an efficient fire in the library hearth out of the broken bookshelves. He extended his hand out, touching the middle finger to his thumb, and snapped out a sharp, dry crack. The familiar ripple of the void opened up, and he extracted bits of salted cinder drake meat from it. He cooked it on the fire, sizzling as it rendered out into the flames. The mana-dense meat would be a biological fuel, regulating his vital signs and providing the raw materials necessary to 'scare' off the 'scarring' of his mana channels. As he ate, he could feel his veins expanding, growing wider to accommodate the tremendous surge of power he would soon wield.
On the seventh day, the "weight" in his void had changed. The pregnancy had ended. The leak in his core had closed itself off, and a new, icy entity had formed in his storage area, ready to be unleashed upon the world. Aleric stood in the center of the library, his breathing light and steady. His brown skin glowed with renewed vitality, reflecting the new and improved power of his core. The cycles of famine and feasting had expanded his body to the point where he no longer felt as if he had a well, but a deep, dark lake.
He raised his hand. He did not strike this time. Instead, he pressed the end of his middle finger against the end of his thumb in a closed circuit of will.
"Summoning."
The air rippled, not with a sound, but with a sudden, heavy pressure that made the dust dance on the floorboards. A tall, featureless silhouette stepped forward from the void, emerging from the space where Aleric's own shadow met the stone. It was a hole in reality—a six-foot-tall matte-black shape with no face, no eyes, and no sound. It stood perfectly still, a silent sentinel waiting for its master's intent.
Aleric shut his eyes, focusing on the resonance. Suddenly, his sight doubled. He saw the library from two different viewpoints. He saw his own strong, brown-skinned face leaning against the pillar, and he saw the world through the monochromatic, silver-tinged eyes of the Shade. There were no colors, only different levels of heat and density, but it was sharper than human sight. He saw the weaknesses in the manor walls, the heat signatures of small rodents in the rafters.
Test complete, thought Aleric, his voice low and rough in the empty house. Stamina expended, stretched to the limit. The audit of self had brought its profit.
He looked at the Faceless Shade through his own eyes, and then at himself through the Shade's. It was a good tool, efficient, silent, and connected to his core. The week of calculated agony had brought its dividend. He had his first eye in the dark. And now, he needed two more.
He sat back down beside the dying embers of the fire, already thinking of the seed of the second Shade. He would not return to the Capital until he had completed his network. The Auditor was no longer just a man; he was becoming a system.