A Crack in the Glass

  I rode the carrier wave through the hallways of the Akashic Bureau of Regulations Headquarters. The intangible wave pulled me along its currents along my intent. I swirled around and through other people riding carrier waves, twisting up and around the hall in spirals to maneuver around, the fields naturally brushing in indigo blooms against each other while pulling towards the destination.

  My sister, Alura, floated behind me on her own. She was chattering away like a pixie, excited for our first expedition to attempt to take care of an unstable Akashic being. The incursion rate of unstable Akashic beings had been increasing rapidly as of late, and they had used the excuse of training elite noble children to gain extra forces to deal with it.

  I snorted. We weren't being introduced to our future. We weren't joining humanity's efforts to keep stability. We were cannon fodder.

  My hand clenched. This would never have happened. This never would have happened if Mother hadn't… I shook my head and refocused.

  I began going through the mantras and visualizations. Myself, the center star, pulsing, emitting, igniting into being. A push outwards, my energy constantly attempting to expand. A contraction inwards, my control, keeping myself steady on the correct path.

  My emotions, my thoughts, my memories, the things I knew, everything swirled around, forming into orbits and ellipticals. They steadied and began pulsing against each other, resonating. I let out a deep breath. My entire body electrified, internally and externally, connecting both, letting me feel the space within and around me.

  I breathed out, letting it fade, my focus relaxing. The buzz stayed in the background. It was always on now. That meant I was getting closer to breaking through to Materia. Father said so. And that was all Father really cared about in the end.

  I shook my head again. I sighed, and Alura decided to throw a bit of charge at the back of my head, bouncing it forward. “Ow, Alura!”

  She giggled. “Sorry, Elias! You look like you had a migraine, so I thought I'd help you out, you know? Pushing the right spot always helps my headaches!” She grinned happily, like she had just surprised me and she wanted to see how I reacted. I glared at her.

  Younger sisters were the worst kind of sibling. Sure, an older brother might bully you. Yeah, an older sister might act superior. Yes, a younger brother might be supremely loud, energetic, and annoying.

  But a little sister? A little sister will figure out everything about you. Your interests, your hobbies, what you don't like, your favorite foods, what textures you don't like to touch. And they will use them against you. Viciously.

  Because they're younger. They don't understand the damage. They don't understand the power imbalance they have. Because I could not throw a charge back at her. I glared harder and turned back around, muttering under my breath, tsking. I refocused on the carrier wave, feeling its charge pulling and pushing, losing myself in the momentum.

  It traveled through space in a rolling motion. It was a field moving along the atoms. I nodded. Yeah, that seemed right. The atoms were carrying charge, and the total charge transfer was the field. Each atom stayed where it was. It simply communicated itself to the next one to be connected, the thaum units they contained vibrating their push and pull to the next.

  I shrugged. It was a basic principle, so I wasn't that interested. I turned my attention back to the destination. The grand doorway loomed above us. Pulsing edges and metallic structures, runes inlaid with mercury through channels flowing with Akashic energies that led into the lining of the floor, solemn and weighty emotions waving from them.

  We zoomed through into the cavernous Hall of Balance, the center point of the Bureau. The very air was full of charge, a low frequency with an amplitude that hit like a bass drop.

  We reached the middle of the room, where the ABR had assembled its agents for our “mission.”

  It was a group of people around our age and a few years older, all of us in a charged, prepared state. A dozen, counting Alura and I. I could sense their Akashic signatures radiating off of them, which meant they had to be in the same valence as me. I sighed. Wow, we really were cannon fodder.

  They were just throwing together all of these first valence people to go and deal with an unstable Akashic being. I shook my head again. Wow, what a disappointment. I sighed.

  As we approached, I felt a charge balance in the air shift unexpectedly. Something flickered behind me. Immediately, I latched my senses onto it, my bioelectric field expanding briefly before rotating in reversal patterns, analyzing the energy and information in my environment, positive thaums and negative thaums switching valence as my field pulled on the environment instead of myself, my neutral charge shifting from mind to body between skin and electricity.

  I detected the source of the instability and looked behind me. Alura? Her carrier wave had flickered. I looked at her oddly. “Alura, are you all right?” She cocked her head and raised an eyebrow at me.

  “What do you think I am, a precious flower in a garden house? Get it together! I'm not afraid.” I shook my head. Maybe she hadn't detected the instability. Perhaps she had gotten distracted and stopped focusing on the destination, so the AGI system halted for a moment. I shrugged. Whatever. There were minor glitches in the systems all the time, especially lately.

  More and more unstable Akashic beings and odd inconsistencies were cropping up in the material realm and Akashic field. I tapped into my wrist terminal for the AGI system, and I looked through the transcript, finding the data on Alura's carrier wave.

  I took a look at it and shrugged. It didn't seem too odd. Just a weird flicker in the information transfer of her data, as if the desired direction had been lost for a moment. Directionless. I shrugged again. Yeah, it just seemed like a momentary loss of connection.

  I flicked the mental screen away and turned back to Alura. “Just be careful, alright? Don't act recklessly. Dad would kill me if something happened to you while we were on this expedition.” Alura's smug smile of pretense softened.

  “Don't worry, big brother. We've trained a lot. We've spent almost every moment working our hardest. Training, sparring, learning. Enriching our charge. We're ready to start.” She beamed.

  “ Besides, there's a whole bunch of other people and a Materia valence expert coming with us. We'll be alright. This is a low-grade instability.”

  She waved her hand while speaking, smiling at me. Her gray eyes shifted into mirthful crescents, but I could see the hard wall of determination behind them. Alura wanted to prove herself just as much. Show everyone who looked down on the Vantrell family that although our financial status had fallen, our strength had not.

  “And the instability isn't at such a high frequency that it needs someone in the second or third valence simply to be in its presence.” She shrugged, her smile shifting into a pseudo-exasperated pursed frown.

  “Besides, you know it's always me looking after you. When was the last time you ate, huh? Oh right, this morning. Because I made you. How much water did you drink yesterday? That's right, two bottles. Because I made you.” Her carrier wave had caught up to mine and she poked me harshly in the side, enunciating her points.

  I rolled my eyes and pushed on her. Her carrier wave bobbed over to the side a bit before coming return to balance. “I'd be just fine if I didn't have you nagging me. But seriously, just stay sharp, alright”. She stuck her tongue out at me, an Akashic frequency somehow transmitting the sound “Bleghh,” in a formless shape and smacking into my face with a wet plop.

  I wiped my face instinctively with my red biosuits sleeve, the liquid resistant material doing nothing to rid me of the filling of someone spitting on my face. “Oh, what the hell Alura, when did you figure that out.”

  We finally reached the group gathering in the middle, our carrier waves dissipating, letting us stand on our own feet as we got ready for the briefing. I took a look at the other first valence level thaumatologists around me. None of them seemed particularly experienced. Some seemed to have some confidence, and some amount of skill, judging by the frequency I was picking up off of their bioelectric fields.

  No one really strong, just normal first valences. The gruff man in the middle, however, was clearly at the Materia valence. The energy waves coming off of him were much more intense, confusing my scans with their frequencies and amplitudes. I shrugged. At least they were sending someone capable with us.

  “Good afternoon. I'm sure everyone has received an initial briefing already and an explanation on what we will be doing today. Allow me to clear up the details.” His steely blue eyes matched each one of our gazes with a frequency much more intense than we could output. We each looked down in turn, recognizing his authority over the group.

  He nodded, then spoke again. “My name is Agent Torque. Today, we are going to be handling the instability of a second valence level Akashic being.” he paused. A wave of energy bounced from him and back, and he frowned a bit.

  “This being has proven itself dangerous, and has attacked innocent people. It's the duty of the Bureau to handle such problems quickly, efficiently, and with as few lives lost as possible. Those are always our prerogatives.” His steely gaze once more passed through the gathering, the weight of a planet's core contained within his eyes.

  “I will not tolerate anyone slacking, anyone not taking this with the utmost seriousness. This is not a game. This is not an expedition. You are not being protected here. Just because you are the children of the elite does not mean you don't need to cut your teeth. And that is why you are here.” I felt a chill go down my spine. Why would they be forcing the children of rich, powerful people in the corporations to harden up?

  Only if they were preparing for confrontation. Whenever the focus of elite noble children became development and strength and ability, it meant they were making generals. And me? My family, disgraced? I wasn't even that. They were just throwing me in to see if I could become a foot soldier or if I would die and my family line would end.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  My already clenched fists grew tighter before I took a deep breath in, stabilizing my charge and relaxing before anyone could pick up the fluctuations, a skill I had become good at around the house.

  “We will be moving through a portal to the Akashic field. Before we go, here are the main details of the Akashic Being we will be handling today.” Agent Torque waved his hand in a hologram form next to him.

  It was a translucent sort of spirit being, composed of lines of twisting white and blue energy. It seemed to be the rotted corpse of a woman, an old woman, almost desiccated, hollowed out in places. Its eyes were empty. There was blackness within, sometimes sparking with blue implosions and the flash of pure hatred.

  I shuddered. This was a second valence level being? How much farther did I have to go?

  “This being falls under the archetype of Banshee. It emits screams that can damage those within its range. It can cause effects spanning from disorientation to kinetic jolts. Some of them can even warp minds, drive you insane.” Agent Torque explained, his hands reaching up to pluck and tap parts of the hologram, expanding frequencies in various colors and intensities.

  “Based on the frequency we have picked up from the instabilities in the Akashic Field surrounding this being, we believe that it is of the kinetic variety. Its screams should carry a crushing, contracting energy with a negative charge before releasing for impact.” Agent Torque flicked his wrist in a semi circle, an arc of midnight blue, crushing space, bending even light, wafting out before vanishing with a thump.

  “Dispersing them by channeling the charges should be manageable. First valence thaumatologists should be capable of this, which is why you will all be coming with me.” His hands fell to his sides, hawk-like face and corded muscles demanding attention as charge fluxed through his veins in faint lights.

  “I will handle the main combat, directly fighting the Banshee. You all will be focusing on fixing the instabilities its scream causes within the Akashic Field and surrounding clouds. Is this understood?”

  “Yes, sir.” we chanted in response to Agent Torque's last statement, he moved on. “Weakn-”

  Before he could get started, the hologram flickered briefly. Distorted. Something darker than black seemed to take over the lines, flash through for less than a second. A flicker that I almost didn't believe I saw if it wasn't for everybody reacting to it, tilting their heads, making a humming sound. Agent Torque glared at his Porterm. He smacked the wristband a little bit.

  “Damn system. All these instabilities lately have been really messing up the resonances in the Akashic systems that we have set up. It's one of the main reasons we're taking such a hard line to this.” He said gruffly.

  I almost chuckled. Yeah, these instabilities were causing the problems in the system. For sure. Dumbass. That's like saying a particle obviously created the field. These instabilities in Akashic beings were coming from somewhere. Previously peaceful and helpful Akashic beings suddenly going on rampages, or inciting plots.

  So, did Agent Torque think we were dumbasses and was lying to us? Or was Agent Torque the dumbass who was lied to? I didn't know which option displeased me more. The one where they underestimate my intelligence, or the one where I had an incompetent field commander. My previous estimation of him as “capable” dropped a notch.

  I looked over at Alura, the visualizations and mantras for Stellar Alignment meditation rolling through my head instinctively, my field expanding and contracting in response. I focused and resolved my determination. Even with this idiot in charge of us, I had some confidence. Alura and I had worked hard, and were close to stepping into Materia ourselves.

  Agent Torque continued the briefing. “You will focus on fixing the instabilities and redirecting the vectors of her kinetic forces. You will attempt to harmlessly weave them back into the environment and balance the charges that are disrupted by the kinetic force. This will be delicate and quick work, so make sure you are fully stabilized and deep into your body synchronization before we begin. You have five minutes.”

  I sat down smoothly, my legs folding over each other, crisscross. My hands came up, fingers lacing together in a manner that felt comfortable and natural to me. They sat relaxed and loose in my lap as I took deep breaths. I let my frequency rise and drop, and simply focused on feeling how it changed and moved, how that wavered into the environment, and how that came back to me as information on the surrounding fields and charges.

  I felt the balance and I relaxed, the flowing motions of my energy a comforting, calming presence before whatever was coming. My hand reached over and gripped Alura’s. Not tightly; just enough to remind her that we were here together. I felt her field brush up against mine, a couple of our nodes balancing out between each other, a playful spin from her bringing both of our orbits into a bit of chaos.

  I built a bit of charge and gave her alignment a push. We smiled, brought our fields back into stability, and turned our gaze back to Agent Torque. One by one the other first valence Thaumaturges opened their eyes.

  The charge in the air increased several fold as red, blue, and indigo lights flickered at once through the air in a crackle. I smiled. Sure, being used as cannon fodder for corporate interests always sucked. But I was excited.

  The room thrummed with the power of a dozen or so charged valence thaumatologists. Agent Torque nodded firmly. “Good. It seems everybody is ready.”

  He waved his hand again, the hologram disappearing, now being replaced by a swirling vortex in space. It started as a brief swirl of purple in the middle, quickly expanding outwards with a silver flash until it stabilized. A deep, dark pit centered in the middle of a purple portal frame, completely circular, around eight feet in diameter.

  “When you cross through the portal, you will feel a touch of spatial instability. That's normal. Just keep your focus and hold your field tight to you.”

  We all nodded and confirmed, “Yes, sir!” I felt the connection between me and Alura tighten. She was contracting her energy just a touch, and I responded with a gentle contraction of my own. A negative resonance that made her smile. She expanded, and I expanded to meet it, a light resonance harmonizing. I smiled back. We nodded and followed our peers through the portal.

  Alura stepped forward first. She crossed through the pitch-black threshold, and something rippled. I wasn't sure if that was normal or typical for a portal. This was my first time actually using one. I halted just a moment, staring. It had seemed to flicker like static for a moment, white and black overlaying and kind of fizzling.

  Agent Torque swiftly reprimanded my hesitation, shouting “Get it moving, recruit!” I shook my head and contracted my field tightly, binding my outer nexus points to my inner ones. I raised the frequency to a nice medium pace and stepped through the portal.

  It was an odd sensation, like walking through silk or olive oil turned into a curtain. I felt my perception of space twist. My sense of balance spiraled inwards. Some sort of folding, twisting. And then I felt something shake, a pulse that went through the channel. My field registered it and twisted in an instinctual panic. Before I could really react or register to what it was, I was through the portal.

  I floated behind Alura. We stood in a vacuous space. Mists and nebulas formed and swirled around us in endless, nameless colors, and below our feet was an ephemeral, cloud of blue. I looked around. Stars speckled everywhere I could see, down, up. Fragments of colored panes of energy seemed to phase through reality, folding on top of each other, shifting through existence.

  I became lost in the dance. I stared into the weaving, bobbing, shifting energy that never stopped. I felt the frequencies in the air, more intense than I had ever felt before, more whole, more complete. But there was something, some discordant note, some tune being played against the chorus.

  The last first valence thaumatologists made their way through the portal, followed by Agent Torque, who wasted no time. “Welcome to the Akashic Field. This should be your first time within this dimension. This is a weird place. Keep your charge focused, keep your intent sharp, and always be aware. Your very thoughts can pull things here, can stir, summon beings, create beings. You must be careful and responsible with the power and knowledge of Thaumatology. Otherwise, you will destroy this delicate balance that we do everything to maintain.”

  Agent Torque looked around once more, meeting the gaze of every single first valence thaumatologist, forcing us to look down in acknowledgement. “Yes, sir!” We all said in unison.

  He nodded firmly, then began giving out orders. “I'm sure you can all feel the discordant frequency within the field. We are going to be following that. Start trying your best to parse the frequency and understand where it's sourced from. This will be your first,” he paused, as if briefly searching for a word, “practice run dealing with instability.”

  I clenched my hand again. Practice run. The slight hesitation before he said the words. He knew damn well that this was out of our league. That yes, first valence thaumatologists could indeed handle something like this. That was, experienced first valence thaumatologists. This entire group was composed of the children of failed corporations. Of dying branches. Of noble families who have come to their close.

  This was not a test. This was not a challenge. This was not practice. This was trial by fire. This was throwing us to the wolves and seeing which one of us managed to become a beast ourselves.

  I kept several of my Meridians close to Alura's. Our fields constantly extended between each other, passing a little bit of information in charge, making sure we were updated on each other's bodily systems, current physical health, charge levels, and balance states. In fact, we had practiced quite often merging our fields to create even more stable and powerful push-and-pull effects on charge. I nodded at her.

  She grinned back. I couldn't help the small smirk that formed on my face, mirroring her excitement, the thrill of something new, the beauty of the Akashic Field. I then reminded myself, ‘Focus. Maintain awareness of every frequency, parse and test each one.’ I stabilized my field, then set it into cyclical patterns, rotating in multidimensional shapes, negative charge points pulling in environmental energy and information, refracting it in a positive pulse through my system for analysis.

  Alura caught the wave of charge and information, and quickly began forming the same patterns, reversing the direction of charge flow and merging her field into mine, a resonance effect increasing our frequency and stability, while allowing us to diffuse ambient signatures to an even finer level of detail.

  Our gazes firmed, and we began training our senses towards the discordant frequency within the field around us. Our fields rotated in synchronization. Each time one of our nodes left a space, the other’s crossed through it. Each of our waves rebounded between each other's meridians, information traveling between both of us.

  Using the combined computation to analyze details we otherwise would not be able to grasp, our combined charges leveraging together to expand and distort the charge fields around us to fully parse the details of the data.

  We quickly refracted and bent the frequencies of the Akashic field, humming within our pineal glands flowing all the way down to the base of our spines, through our fingertips, through our feet, and resonating together. As each node spiraled around, folding in and out at its corners and edges and center, it refracted and analyzed what data they detected.

  Quickly, me and Alura locked on to the disturbing frequency and oriented our fields to point towards it. “Agent Torque!” I said briefly.

  He looked over at us, the weight of his eyes once more making me look down. Did he have to keep channeling his charge like that? It was so rude. I spoke again. “We have found the direction of the frequency's source.”

  Agent Torque nodded. Not a nod of yes, well done. Not a nod of acknowledgement. Not even a nod to say yes, I heard you. More like one of dismissal, as if we had just performed our function, and now we were irrelevant. He began walking in the direction that Alura and I had sensed the frequency in. The group trailing behind him. I sighed in my head. That just felt pointless.

  We floated through the Akashic Field, not really walking, even though we took steps. There was a weightless sensation, where you could feel your own mass, but no resistance to it that you did not want to feel. It was odd. I experimented with it some. I lifted into the air, I stopped walking, and I simply imagined going forward, following the group. And I did. My feet lazily relaxed, as my toes dragged against the blue surface below us, stirring up swirls of faint blue mist.

  Alura giggled, and began doing the same. Then she giggled a bit harder, and started doing a full rotation.

  I grabbed her by the scruff of her neck and held her still, and then gave her a little bop to the back of the head, admonishing her firmly. “Stop fucking around. It's okay to test. Don't play. We're in the field. Literally.”

  She looked down. “I know. I'm sorry. I won't do it again.” She looked up, her eyes once more roving the environment, taking in light refractions and EMF readings. I smiled, and gave her a little pat to the shoulder, before focusing back on our environment.

  Our fields returned to their synchronized orbits, passing data and charge between each other, enhancing our sensing capabilities. The frequencies that passed through our resonances began to split even deeper, even finer frequencies coming apart, their information calculated within our minds.

  Then something odd peaked through. It was that same static I had felt on the portal. Instead of coming in the form of a black and white curtain, it felt more like the wrong kind of static.

  Not the hum I normally felt when I was using full body synchronization in the stellar alignment meditation. But almost like something that was offbeat, that cut through that, that landed in the spaces between my meridians, disrupting the waves.

  Alura and I shuddered, and looked around. No one else seemed to notice.

  Alura spoke up, “ Agent Torque, I think I noticed something amiss, I-”

  “Hush, recruit.” He bit out. “It’s close.”

  Then, Alura and I lost focus on the odd frequency we were reading between the lines, as it collapsed back into the clouds as a sudden wavelength washed through. The Banshee formed straight from the blue ground below us.

  Large volumes of the mist we had been standing on suddenly slurped into one pile, refining, disappearing, phasing, forming until before us stood a twelve foot tall behemoth. It was ghostly, transparent, translucent, made of moving, thin veils of white and blue, black static flashing along the lines.

  Her face was twisted, disgusting, caught somewhere between rigor mortis and a trench of utter rage and hate. The distortions made just by her presence alone in the Akashic Field set my hairs on end, made me feel like my teeth were grinding against each other. I shuddered, losing focus on the previous distortion, realizing that it truly was the echo of something wrong, unstable in the Akashic Field. Even though we were being used, at least it was for a worthy purpose. Because, this? This could not be allowed.

  I could sense within her raging, convulsing, hungering field that the memories, lifeforce, and information of several people were gradually being refined, condensed, until vanishing into one of the crackles of black electricity jumping between wisps of blue.

  I shuddered against the feeling. Every wave emanating from the Banshee felt just wrong, even worse than any sort of documentary or text I'd seen describing Akashic Beings. I looked to Agent Torque, hoping that he would know how to deal with this. He had a deep frown etched into his face, and something that almost looked like concern in his eyes.