The Core: The Dark Enemy

37. Never Leva me alone.

Ess was bored.

She had already gone through all the study material Tutor had given her, and had even mastered the use of her “Levasucker surrogates,” as Tutor liked to call them. Ess had never seen a Levasucker before in her life and had to take Tutor at her word when she explained they were “The natural defensive layer Leva developed during their lifecycle.”

“Why would I want to be surrounded by tiny versions of me?” she’d asked one day, as Tutor had her defend against countless invading space crabs. The simulation was set up in deep space and was massive with asteroids and wrecked ships serving as obstacles and camouflage for the incoming enemies.

“Well, what would you prefer them to be instead?” Tutor had asked after a thoughtful pause.

Ess was already highly capable at modifying and interfacing with her deployed manifestations, their use becoming second nature as she flawlessly predicted each enemy’s location. She deployed her small swarm to intercept and destroy the crabs, even as some tried to cleverly hide amidst the space wreckage.

“Something more like what you and Father have,” she replied, grabbing five nearby unutilized manifestations and shoving them together. She clamped their maws shut, forming a rough approximation of a hand. The cr Levasuckers were still semi-autonomous, making the makeshift fingers flex and slither in an eerie, natural way.

“Hmm… one moment. That’s not quite right,” Ess murmured, comparing it to the knowledge she’d gathered from her studies on human anatomy. She began modifying the Levasuckers’ internal cr makeup, adding rigid, bone-like sections. The result made the Levasuckers appear more handlike — though the fingers bent at unnatural angles, moving like possessed limbs at each joint.

“Hmm… that still isn’t right,” she muttered, still comparing her creation against her studies.

Tutor observed with quiet pleasure as Ess multitasked — expertly dominating the battlefield, crushing wave after wave of enemies with her much smaller force of cr Levasuckers, all while tinkering with her latest pet project: perfecting a human hand made of cr.

Sublimis — or Ess, as Kevin loved to call her — was quickly becoming a marvel, something never before recorded in any known histories. A Leva, one of the gentle giants of the cosmos, possessing intelligence rivaling the brightest minds and yet still retaining the innocent curiosity of a child. More adaptable and capable than anyone had ever believed possible.

Tutor, always proper, insisted on addressing her by her given name, Sublimis, as Kevin had formally named her upon finding her. But to Ess, it was Kevin’s gentle nickname for her — ‘Ess’ — that she cherished. It was the name of warmth, of laughter, of stories told under the glow of distant stars. And in her heart, she loved to think of herself by that name.

Tutor’s response to her continued improvements — as well as her inevitable victory against the invading crabs — had stuck with Ess and pushed her to new heights of creativity.

“You can manifest them to be whatever you desire or need them to be. Just the fact that you can see, speak, and feel through your helmet will give you greater flexibility than your body’s size will ever allow. I initially created them to appear as Levasuckers so you could blend in, letting them act as camouflage, as it were. Your size is daunting — downright frightening — to smaller people. They're accustomed to seeing Levas with several Levasuckers acting as a protective host, since a Levasucker’s main function is defense and parasite removal.”

“I remember getting attacked by a parasite. Father killed it and fixed the hole it made in me.”

“Indeed. Though, with the helmet armor covering you now, you’re well protected against common parasites… barring, of course, that you don’t intentionally swallow one without chewing,” Tutor replied dryly as she began resetting the mock battlefield, leaving several objects in place while the rest gathered into a massive block they traveled with.