The Other Side

Chapter 5: The Seer

Raphael looked around as they walked forward into the depths of the cloying darkness, feeling a slight chill in the air as every step seemed to echo in the passage.

A touch revealed that the corridor was carved into the stone, hewn roughly, leaving jagged edges in the walls.

He could hear Donna walking right beside him, seemingly unaffected by the cold despite her torn off sleeves.

They continued walking wordlessly in the dark, waiting for the corridor to end.

After a good while of walking, just as Raphael began to suspect something off with the passage, they stumbled into a well lit and warm room.

‘Strange. The light from this room wasn't seen until we actually entered it.’

What was more striking, however, was the man sitting at the desk in front of them, scribbling away at some papers. 

At first, he did not appear to be the extraordinarily powerful and terrifying figure he was made out to be. 

Wearing a simple white shirt, paired with a darker shade of pants, he cut a harmless figure, especially with the finely crafted monocle adorning his left eye.

He was not physically prominent in any manner, and if thrown into a crowd with a change of clothes, he would be unrecognizable.

His brown hair was slightly overgrown, once combed neatly but now a bit ruffled.

His skin was fair and pale, but not sickly. It was difficult to tell while sitting but he appeared to be around 180 cm tall.

A simple, unremarkable person.

Or so one would think, until they looked him in the eyes.

The eyes are the window to the soul. They reveal more than one would think about a person.

Raphael had learnt this from experience.

But what he saw in the Seer's deep black eyes was…..nothing.

No emotions, no thoughts, no worries, no fear.

His black eyes seemed more like they were carved from the abyss than belonging to a human.

‘What sort of life would create such eyes?’

The answer came to him at the same time as the question- 

‘A life of seeing horrors beyond everyone else's perception.’

Faced with such a person, Raphael instantly felt a sense of dislike bubbling up within him.

‘It feels wrong.’

The man sitting on the desk looked up to see them, smiling politely, and yet the smile didn't reach his eyes.

He said, “You must be Donna and Raphael. I am aware of the role you two played in the most recent containment event, quite impressive.”

His voice was sonorous, with a slightly lilting accent as he continued, “Most people do not awaken their powers in such a dangerous Supernatural Event.”

“But I suppose you-”

“How do you know those names?” Donna cut him off as she asked him with a hint of danger in her voice.

He merely smiled, unperturbed by her agitation.

As if he had everything under control. Everyone under control.

It annoyed Raphael more than he cared to admit.

As someone from the Pit, pride should have been the first thing he discarded, and yet he had his own twisted sense of ego, unbroken by his circumstances.

The Seer continued with a smile, “I merely saw you two refer to each other as such in the future.”

‘Seeing the future.’ 

Yet another thing that Raphael disliked about this man.  

He had met many such self-styled oracles and foreseers, with their crystal balls and tarot cards, charlatans who gave vague and untrustworthy information about the future, and fleeced naive fools.

He didn't dislike them, for they too were trying to make ends meet.

What he disliked was the fact that this man might not be a charlatan, and what that implicated.

He wasn't foolish enough to not believe in such powers, especially after their experiences until now.

But if one such destined future existed and could be seen, like what the Church preached, then were any of them truly free to make their own actions?

He hid his burgeoning frown behind a mask of silence, as the Seer continued speaking.

“Raphael. Your observational skills and on-the-spot adaptation are excellent. These skills will greatly benefit you in a Supernatural Event.”

"Donna, your ability seems to be based solely around your physique. It's a rare case, but we do get a few like that. Once upgraded enough, your capability to solve Supernatural Events shall greatly increase as well.”

“I had you brought here because I personally wished to give you this.”

He handed both of them a small, rectangular slip of jade, mysterious symbols inscribed upon its glossy surface.

“And this is?” Raphael inquired, feeling the smooth material.

“An entry ticket. To the Sealed Gate, specifically.”

“That is where most of the Supernatural objects we retrieve are kept.”

Donna furrowed her brows, “Why not just destroy them if you're so worried about this stuff?”

“Because they are useful. Once an object is created or tainted by a Supernatural Event, it sometimes retains its abilities, to be harnessed by anyone with a shred of spiritual energy,” the Seer answered instantly, as if he had already known her question before she even asked it.

‘He probably did,’ Raphael mused to himself.

“Ordinary weaponry often fails against the entities and rules within these occurrences. Thus, we have no choice but to fight fire with fire.”

Raphael had a question bubbling within, and finally asked it-

“What exactly is Awakening? And how do we use these….Supernatural Powers and spiritual energy?”

Like clockwork, the prophet replied, “When one comes into contact with the altered rules of a Supernatural Event overlaid onto our reality, it affects their souls in different ways.”

“If one survives a Supernatural Event, while having their souls affected in a specific way, they awaken powers based on, or around those rules.”

“There are also Natural Awakeners, beings whose souls function differently from birth, Awakening without such external stimuli, to an entirely new power of their own, but these are few and far between.”

“Spiritual Energy is essentially what defines your limits. After a great amount of experimentation, we discovered that one common rule that is engraved into every Aberrant's soul, is the Rule of Spiritual Energy.”

“It's a measure of how much your soul has been altered or enhanced.”

“Once your entire soul is fully transformed to its limit, you undergo a metamorphosis into a higher being with a stronger soul, and the process begins anew."

“After the first Metamorphosis, you become a Level 2 Aberrant. After the second, a Level 3, and so on.”

“Each Level is like an entirely different entity compared to the Level below. A difference as wide as the gulf between a drawing on paper and the one drawing it.”

“Even Supernatural Entities that come about from an Event are classified into five levels based on the amount of differing rules they bring into the world.”

“The mutant wolf you two faced would be classified as a Level 1.”

Both of the newcomers felt a chill running down their spines at the thought that such beings existed in their once ordinary world.

‘Then the [2] on Frank's badge…he's a Level 2 Aberrant.’

Raphael had already begun planning around these new, shocking developments.

‘The world was a dangerous place before… and it still is. Just a bit more dangerous.’

Their end goal hadn't changed. It wouldn't, no matter what happened.

‘Still…with how strong Frank and that wolf were, just how powerful would even a Level 3 or 4 be?’

“And what's the highest in the world?” asked Donna, adapting to her new reality just as quickly.

“The highest recorded human Level on the planet is Level 4.”

Raphael caught the hidden meaning in the Seer's sentence, “Human level?”

The Seer sighed, “It is theorized that a possible Level 5 entity may exist in the far south oceans.”