Grott wasn't the kind of man you could ignore for long.
Vlad understood this on the seventh day, when he returned to the shed and found the door broken down. Not just opened. Forcibly broken, so that the hinges were bent. Someone had been inside. Vlad stood on the threshold, looking at his few scattered belongings: a couple of rags, a candle stub, a small supply of food in a cloth sack.
The sack was ripped open. The food was scattered across the floor.
"A message. Not a robbery, they would have taken everything. Just a message."
The small dark servant was sitting in a corner under a beam. Vlad found it right where he'd left it. He didn't know if Grott's men had been observant enough to notice it, or if they just hadn't paid attention to a dark lump in a dark corner. Probably the latter. The servant was small and motionless. Easy to mistake for a shadow.
Vlad gathered the scattered food. Some was spoiled, some was still good. He ate what he could, methodically and without irritation, and sat down to think.
The situation was simple. Grott wanted either money or submission. Vlad wasn't going to give him either. So, sooner or later, this would escalate into something more serious than a broken door and scattered food.
"Leave Lower Harrock for good."
This thought wasn't new. He'd been considering it for days. But leaving just like that, without money and without knowing where to go, was stupid. Beyond Lower Harrock began Serhan. A free city with its own rules, quarters, and hierarchies. It had its own Grotts, only bigger and more dangerous.
Money solved a lot. Vlad had no money.
So, first, money.
He stood up and looked at the servant.
«Come here,» he said aloud. Not because it was necessary. Mental commands worked better. He just wanted to check if it heard voices.
The servant didn't react to the sound. Vlad sent a mental command; the servant immediately stood up and came over. So, it didn't perceive voices. Only thought.
"Good. Less chance of anyone understanding how this works."
Vlad left the shed and headed for the market.
Lower Harrock in the mornings was almost tolerable. The market by the eastern gate filled with merchants laying out goods on wooden counters. Food, clothing, tools. A few street money-changers with small scales. An old woman selling herbal infusions, claiming they cured everything from toothaches to curses.
Vlad walked between the stalls and watched.
Not the goods. The people.
He had long ago learned to read the market. Who was a real merchant, and who had just come to sell some extra things. Who was guarding their goods, and who was just pretending. Who looked around too often, and who, on the contrary, tried not to look at all.
He found what he was looking for in about half an hour.
An elderly man at a far stall. He was selling small amulets and trinkets. Nothing interesting in himself. But at his belt hung a purse that he touched too often, every few minutes, automatically, the way people do when they're carrying a large sum and they're nervous. The purse was heavy. Heavy enough to notice.
"No."
Vlad stopped that thought immediately.
He wasn't a thief. Not because he considered it wrong in some lofty sense. Simply, thievery in the Lower Harrock market was a quick way to get your fingers broken, or worse. Grott kept the market under control and punished thieves harshly, because thieves in the market interfered with his own people quietly extorting the merchants.
Money had to be earned.
Vlad found work by noon. Unloading again. This time in a different place, at a grain merchant's in the northern part of Lower Harrock. The work was hard, fifty-kilogram sacks, three hours straight. They paid a bit more than yesterday.
By evening, he had enough for food and nothing else.
He sat against the wall of an abandoned building, ate the bread he'd bought, and looked at the few coins left. The servant sat beside him, small and quiet. Vlad sometimes noticed he almost forgot about it, then remembered when his peripheral vision caught the dark spot. The servant needed no food. Needed nothing. It just waited.
"One servant. Small. What can it actually do, besides walk and follow simple commands?"
Vlad mentally gave it a series of commands. Stand up. Take three steps left. Stop. Bend down. Pick up that stone over there.
The servant did everything precisely and quickly. Without the slightest delay. As if there was no gap at all between the command and the action.
"Reaction speed. That's useful."
He gave the next command. Throw the stone at that wall.
The servant threw. Not hard, it had no muscles in the usual sense, but it threw accurately. The stone hit the wall exactly where Vlad mentally indicated.
"Accuracy too."
Interesting. He hadn't thought of the servant as a tool of that particular kind. He'd thought of it as a helper. Someone to fetch, hand over, lift. But accuracy of movement was a different quality.
"What if there were several. What if I create more than one."
He tried.
He closed his eyes, found the inner silence, reached for the void. Created a small sphere, held it open, and waited. A long time. Almost fifteen minutes, until he felt the same thing he'd felt the first time. A stirring in the depths. Something forming.
The second servant emerged from the sphere and fell to the ground next to the first.
Vlad felt the difference immediately. Two servants required more than one. Not much, but noticeably. Like holding two objects at arm's length instead of one. Your arms don't tire quickly, but there's a difference.
"So, there's a limit. How many I can maintain at once. I don't know. Need to test gradually."
He gave them both the same command. Stand beside each other.
They both stood. They stood identically, in the same instant, synchronously. Vlad looked at them. Two identical dark, fist-sized silhouettes, motionless and waiting.
"An army. Someday."
The thought came by itself, without effort. He didn't develop it. Too early. For now, something else was important.
The next few days, Vlad spent finding a new place to sleep, further from Grott's people, and continuing to figure out the void. He moved to the Grey Wastes, found a half-ruined building of a former pumping station there with a roof that held, and settled in. It was a half-hour walk to the city. Not ideal, but acceptable.
No one was looking for him there.
There, he could work in peace.
He created spheres and held them. Large and small. Learned to change their shape. Spheres were the most natural manifestation of the void, rounded, enclosed. But when he concentrated and mentally pulled at the form, the darkness slowly changed its contours. He could make it flat, like a sheet. Long, like a thread. Elongated, like a spear.
This was difficult and required concentration.
On the fifth day in the Grey Wastes, something unexpected happened.
Vlad was working with a large sphere, holding it before him, about a meter in diameter, trying to keep its form stable, when he heard footsteps outside. He closed the sphere instantly and spun around.
Through a breach in the wall, a boy entered the building.
About twelve years old, no more. As thin as all the children of Lower Harrock, in a jacket that was too big. Red hair stuck out in all directions. He had a round, impudent face and eyes that looked straight ahead without fear, which in itself was strange for a kid from such places.
He saw Vlad and stopped. Then he saw the two dark servants sitting by the wall, and he didn't run. He just stared.
«What's that?» he finally said.
«Leave,» Vlad replied.
«This is my place. I've been sleeping here for a month.»
«Not anymore.»
The boy didn't move.
«Are you a mage?» he asked, nodding towards the servants.
«No. Get out of here.»
«A mage wouldn't answer like that. Mages always say they're mages.» The boy took another step inside, curiously examining the dark servants. «Are they alive?»
Vlad silently looked at him.
"He's not afraid. That's either stupidity, or something else."
The boy approached one of the servants and leaned down, looking at it closely. The servant didn't move. Vlad hadn't given an attack command.
«They're warm,» the boy said in surprise, reaching out a hand. «Or not. Not warm. Just… not cold.»
«Don't touch.»
The boy withdrew his hand. Straightened up. Looked at Vlad.
«I'm Rick,» he said.
«I don't care.»
«You're rude.»
«I told you to leave.»
Rick crossed his arms over his chest and stared at him with the air of someone not used to leaving just because they were told to. Vlad understood such children. They grew up in places where words meant nothing, only actions. If he didn't hit the boy and physically throw him out, he would stay.
Vlad wasn't going to hit a twelve-year-old child.
"He's not a hindrance. Just extra."
But the boy was already settling into a corner, pulling some kind of bundle from inside his jacket.
«I won't get in the way,» Rick said. «I just need to spend the night. I have stuff here. Under that beam.» He nodded towards the far wall. «Grott's men are looking for me in the city. I can't go there right now.»
Vlad was silent for a moment.
«What did you do.»
«Nothing special. Just took something that wasn't nailed down.»
«You stole from Grott's people.»
«Technically, yes.»
"Idiot. Twelve years old, and already an idiot."
Vlad looked at him for a few more seconds. Then he turned away and continued his work. Not because he had decided to let the boy stay. Simply because forcibly throwing him out was impractical, and he didn't feel like talking further.
Rick settled into his corner, chewing something from his bundle, and watched what Vlad was doing with undisguised interest.
Vlad created a small sphere. Rolled it between his hands. Enlarged it. Shrank it.
«That's the void,» Rick suddenly said. Not asking. Stating.
Vlad stopped.
«How do you know that word.»
«I learned it in school. Well, at the market, one old man used to tell stories for food. He said there used to be several types of power. Elemental, System, Primordial. And Void. But Void was last seen a few hundred years ago. He said a person with Void power is like a hole in the world.»
«The old man talked a lot.»
«He was interesting. They killed him later. For something.»
Vlad was silent.
«So, you're the last one,» Rick said thoughtfully. «Or not the last, but very rare. That's dangerous. If anyone finds out…»
«No one will find out,» Vlad interrupted. Quietly, without inflection. But Rick fell silent and looked at him carefully.
«I won't tell,» he replied after a pause. «It's not in my interest to tell. If they take you away or kill you, I'll lose the most interesting thing I've seen in the last two years.»
Vlad looked at him for a long second.
"Pragmatic. For twelve years old."
«One night,» Vlad said. «You leave in the morning.»
Rick nodded with the air of someone who had already understood he'd be staying longer but wasn't mentioning it aloud yet.
Vlad turned away and continued working.
That night, when Rick was asleep, curled up in his corner, Vlad sat against the wall and looked at his two servants. They sat motionless, as always. Quiet. Waiting.
He thought about what the boy had said.
Void power. Several hundred years. So, it wasn't just rare. It was practically non-existent. And if someone with the right knowledge saw him doing this, it would be very bad. States, mage guilds, System organizations. They would all want either to use him or to destroy him. Depending on how afraid they were.
And they would be very afraid.
"So, no one must see. At all. Until I'm strong enough that it doesn't matter."
He looked at his servants and understood that for now, he was weak. Two little dark fist-sized creatures weren't power. The ability to absorb objects into a sphere was useful, but not deadly. He could control the space inside the spheres, but not outside.
For now.
"What happens to a living thing that stays inside the void for a long time. The rat survived. But I didn't keep it long. What if for longer. What if something changes inside."
That was the next question. He hadn't tested it yet.
Vlad lay down on the cold stone, closed his eyes.
In his chest, the void pulsed quietly. Steady, deep, infinite. It had become familiar over these days. Like breathing, which had always been there, he just hadn't noticed it. Now he noticed. It was part of him. It was him.
"Vlad Abyss," he thought. "Orphan from Lower Harrock. Nobody. Nothing."
Then:
"For now."
Outside, over the Grey Wastes, the night was quiet. Wind blew dust across the abandoned quarries. The stars looked down coldly.
Two small dark servants sat by the wall, waiting for dawn.