Chapter 2

‘I saw Gunnr’s father run out the back door about twenty minutes ago carrying a bow and some arrows. I believe he is going out to hunt something.’ Though Raymond before he began searching the longhouse, getting familiar with his host's surroundings, the shape of the building left little to his imagination and so finding the single separate room was easier than it would have been otherwise. In total the building had two rooms, a large main hall that they currently were in and the larder that was made by building a second wall at most four feet from the outside wall, this made a four foot wide room that stretched the whole length of the building that being twenty some feet long. The larder was built into the floor leaving a great deal of food covered by thick clay during the months when they wouldn’t need it. That last bit meant that these people even if they shared similarities to his original world’s norse people, they had different information than what the people of his original world had.

Inside the main room of the house there was a great fire pit surrounded by stones, the pit being at least five foot wide and long. Right above the pit there was a raised section of roof that would allow smoke to leave the building during winter. Towards the back of the home, if there was a back considering there were two doors leading to the outside, there was a thick staircase reminiscent of a ladder leading into a loft, were a dividing wall was visible, each side of the dividing wall laid a fairly large bed covered with animal skin and most likely using straw as a bedding under the skin. Right before he started exploring the outside of the home, Gunnr's father walked in on his back a large deer, whose throat was cut indicating that it had been bled before getting carried all this way. The man set the deer down and started prepping it next to the fire pit. ‘Why would he not just field dress it before coming back?’ Thinking about the reasons any person would feel that carrying the eight foot tall hunk of meat and muscle through a forest was a better option than to just take a while and cut it into more usable chunks right there in the field. Seemingly one reason was popping up repeatedly, it also explained why the man had taken the time to drain the animal of most of its blood before coming back home, there was something out there that was dangerous enough that it following the trail of blood the deer would have been something really bad, but staying near were you killed it was an even worse decision.

In the time Raymond had spent inside his mind the man had been able to prepare the deer into more manageable chunks and was even prepping some sort of watery soup for the child to be able to enjoy… “My guy I know you’re some super hard core viking, but your kid needs to actually grow up before they can eat that. You are aware of this right?” he said out loud even if the man couldn’t hear him it made it seem so much more dramatic. And so with bated breath, well as much as one could have without lungs Raymond watched in equal parts curiosity and mild disappointment, but seeing the man's futile attempts to feed his child was starting to cause the former to change into a rather high form of disappointment. Thinking of the man who had stopped trying to shove the spoon inside the child's mouth and now sat with his legs crossed, he was looking down at the child with his eyes asking a question that many a parent has most likely asked, what's your game here? The man’s brown light blue eyes seemed to ask his child. Then suddenly, as if struck by a heavy object, the man grabbed his daughter, almost throwing the bowl away in his rush, and started sprinting towards the village. Raymond of course followed along deep inside his mind hoping that whatever sort of medical personnel inside the village would get a good chuckle out of the situation, before laying into the absent minded man. Thinking happy thoughts he made his way following along the trail the panic ridden father was leaving, soon he came upon a single house that stood out amongst the neighboring ones in that not only did it have a well defined second floor but the outside of the home was designed to grow herbs and plants most likely useful to the person living inside’s trade. But definitely not any sort of food crop. For the field was far too small for that sort of thing. The plants outside looked similar to some plants from his original world but each looked slightly different, but he wasn’t an expert on herbs so maybe they were normal and could have been found in his original world as well.

Crossing the threshold of the home, his nose was overpowered by the scent of some horrible type of herb, alarm bells started blaring inside his head considering that as a spirit there was a very limited number of things that could affect him. His eyes, and head were put on a swivel looking for either the person who put that god awful herb inside their home or for the herb itself so that he could gently remove it from this mortal plane. Rubbing the tears from his eyes that had been forced out due to the ferocity of the smell, his eyes adjusted about as well as they could inside the house with no windows and the only light being provided by the open door, and the embers of a low fire pit used clearly to cook the witches brew, seeing as who ever they were possessed such rare herbs that could be used willy nilly meant that they were either aware of his, or other souls existence, or they were well supplied enough that keeping spirits away was worth more than their pocket book. Looking away from the tea kettle his eyes soon trailed towards the man and woman who were sitting at a low table not as low as some cultures tables but it was clearly meant for usage by smaller people than the man sitting at the other end. Who looked down right uncomfortable having to contort his neck so low, at a forty degree angle, to even meet the woman's eyes. That's when Raymond caught them, that woman's eyes, as he was looking around they were coal black yet even with her clearly advanced age those eyes still were able to see, almost hear everything going on around her, and even more than what was physically happening.

Raymond froze dead stop, daring not to meet her eyes again even if he was confident that she couldn't see him. Thankfully the old hag had more important things to do than staring off into seemingly empty space, and started speaking in a low disarming voice, almost understanding, like how a parent or a teacher is able to convince you that yes they understand and that yes they will help you fix the issue. “Deary let me rest while you explain that again, now that you are no longer panicking like a boy on his very first raid.” Said with a smile and while sipping some bubbling liquid that clearly gave the old hag her mystic powers, “Ah, well yes, I went and hunted a deer for Gunnr here, and then I prepared the meat and made it into a watery soup, with the meat cut into small bits so she could chew it.” The man said with all the confidence that an almost six foot tall bear of a man could have, a dumb smile on his face, almost asking the lady to tell him that he’d done a good job getting his daughter food. “Well that’s very responsible of you.. Other than the fact that your child has the same number of teeth as I do,” she stated matter of factly, then opened her mouth to show her toothless gums, before continuing to talk “And I almost forgot this poor babe was part of the culling, so the little one probably doesn’t even know how to eat what she’s supposed to be eating at her age. Why don’t you have a wet nurse already prepped for this situation?” The woman spoke into her cup while glaring at the clearly dense man. As if to prove the previous statement the man in question tried to make an excuse if you could call it that “I, ah, what’s a wet nurse?” And as much as Raymond thought the man to be a barbaric example of a person, he couldn’t help but feel some sort of sympathy for his fellow gender's plight, but remorse aside ‘Just how dense is this man? Does he sink in water? Does he allow the planet to fall towards his skull, with only his muscles to keep him and the planet from becoming one, in some sort of gravitational mating dance between celestial bodies?’ He thought becoming more over the top as he progressively thought about the sheer bullheadedness of the man who sat in front of him. The woman looked like she was going to add another body under the floorboards.

Almost as if the woman was pulling teeth she answered the rather stout headed man’s question “A woman who provides milk to another woman's child and cares for them.” She calmly said, all while at a best guess trying to think happy thoughts as to not beat some common sense into the warrior. “Oh that does make sense… But why can’t my kid eat meat?” And like that the sense of calm that had been cultivated by the old hag suddenly shattered, leaving a woman nearing a third of the man's size to stand up, eyes twitching and set firmly on glaring at him, and possibly through him if at all possible. “Listen here ye blundering hammer of a man! There is nothing wrong with this child other than the poor dears' relation to you most likely hurting her intelligence.” Yelled the woman who quickly trailed off into cooing at the baby who had woken up from their nap. “So I need a wet nurse to make sure my child will grow old enough to eat meat, very well then…aum, where would one go to get one of these people?” And once again the man's thickness in the skull department increased by orders of magnitude, all while showing that he somehow heard only the bare minimum of the old hags words, those being what he had wanted to hear.

“Go to the thrall market, they should be returning from the last raids of this year soon enough.” The hag stated dismissively, seemingly understanding something that I was clearly not privy to, the man made an attempt to scoop up his child before he found his fingertips blistering from the lightning quick strikes of the woman's cane. The woman added matter of factly “I’ll keep the child here, till you have a method of feeding the little thing.” The man paused his desire to keep his child within eyesight battled with some sort of self preservation against what the old hag could do if denied their rather odd requests, before he reluctantly nodded and left the building.

Leaving Raymond, the hag and the babbling Gunnr, all alone inside the house. The lone man left inside the room decided that there had been enough excitement to last him multiple years, thinking this he started seeping into Gunnr, or rather discontinued the illusion of a body being outside, since he was really inside a space all races capable of housing a soul had, it was inside the deepest part of their mind, the environment simulated the void remarkably well, as a way to make souls feel more at peace. Now that his mind wasn’t being bogged down with maintaining a shell and puppeteering the thing around, he was more able to delve into his thoughts and feelings. ‘I need to not get so attached to this one host, I know she will most likely live a short and brutal life, filled with the bodies of her friends and foes alike, and oh how glorious it would be, a human who had never been able to accept their lot in life, one who stood by their ideals the same as they stood with their sword and the same way they would die by either of the two.’

The soul was unaware of the fact that even as it searched for a way to ensure that he wouldn’t be harmed from the eventual loss of Gunnr, she had already gotten under his armor, and there was no getting rid of her now unless he made her sad… That wouldn’t happen any time soon, and so it seems the soul was one step behind where he needed to be but was still carrying on as if he would make the same journey a thousand times.

His thoughts drifted back and forth between being a guide and helper for his host or if he should only do so much, but these thoughts had started to drain away with time, leaving calm, he made his attempts to take stock of his energy stores, finding them filled to the brim as per his expectations, but soon realized that he had no way of replenishing his energy stocks, but thankfully the abilities that he was providing to his host had already taken root and would continue to grow in strength and power for the rest of her life, and he would be there to uptake these traits back and use what he learned here to make his next host that much better.

Otherwise he would have needed to maintain the upkeep for these abilities and would soon be no better than a natural soul born in this world. This had been something he had been able to notice while walking through the village, all the souls he was able to see seemed at least at first glance, weaker than they normally should be, and now that could mean almost anything. But it most likely means that souls in this tier wouldn’t have been able to absorb enough soul energy to get to where he was, he was technically a tier two soul even if he was in a tier one world there was no way a soul here could really fight him, or compare for that matter.

While the abilities that he was giving his host were less powerful than they would have been at tier two, the natural benefits to having a soul was clearly seen if you compare his current host to a regular baby. You would notice that while they seem to be the same age, internally there is a whole different ball game, his host would grow faster than what should be physically possible, the sheer damage this would cause to a being's body ensures so, if nothing else. But with his soul energy he was able to ensure that this damage was not harming his host in the slightest. This power would only grow as he advanced through the tiers. At some point his hosts would be as developed as a twenty year old in as few as eight years. With no drawbacks other than the prospect of a world where science was a big part of things would feel the need to experiment on his host to figure out how such a unique specimen was able to be born.

Thankfully these developments would be internal rather than external, so a child with the internals of an adult, and yet some parts of their biology would demand that they stayed there, for instance the stage in a person's life where they start sprouting up like a bean pole, this would happen again, leading to his hosts growing larger than normally possible for their species. His current host was physically similar to a four month old rather than the one week old they were in reality.

Having such vast reserves of energy did make him wonder if he could assist his host even further along since the passive development of his host was rather lackluster, especially if my host was ever in a situation where death was imminent. He would have to spend vast amounts of his time trying to get everything ready for his host, even if that meant he would have to stay inside here rather out there where he’d be able to actually see his host growing up.

And so like that Raymond stuck his nose to the figurative grindstone and started working out a way for his host to get an active boost to her abilities. ‘I could go about this in a couple of ways. First I could try and understand how I naturally boost my host and focus on improving that. The second way would be to just absolutely flood my host with energy and see what cracks, any damage I see would have the exes energy right there to heal it. Then of course there was the option for if I was feeling crazy, I could try and create energy for the host to use themselves rather than relying on me for something as basic as that.’ Out of many ideas these seemed to be the ones with the most potential for making sure his host was as great as possible, at least as of right now.

He quickly began working on the first task on his list of potential methods of getting his host well and truly above their peers. Starting on such a boring task was quite daunting but he still threw himself into it with all of his gusto, his first action was to attempt to find out where his energy was being drained from and then follow it along to see all the spots that were getting reinforced. After much soul searching… He was able to locate three areas on his back, they formed great lines of soul energy leading into the host. Now the reason most souls weren’t able to make conscious decisions made sense, they would barely have enough energy to keep this going for the first twenty or so years of their host’s life. And that was if they had a fairly vast energy reserve for a basic tier one soul. He on the other hand was attempting to up the intake on his host so that they would be able to make better use of his tier two energy reserves.

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The largest of these great lines coming from his back lead straight to his host's heart, the next two both went to the body as a whole, sometimes criss crossing and other times merging into one line almost as large as the main line to the heart. Seeing as these lines were able to grow to that size he knew he could try and make them larger, but a different idea had called out to him, but either option would need further testing and with all this time he could definitely test out the limitations of his current passion project. So like that testing began, his first attempt was to add new paths using the already developed highway of ethereal green soul energy.

He thought he had been successful on his first attempt but these lines would slowly fade away for some reason not known to him, seeing as that wasn’t working he started trying to force the other side highways to be larger. This resulted in a much easier and more linear progression for him. It was slow work and he had to focus on both of them at the same time or else the gains would get split amongst the three lines doing essentially nothing for him or the host other than wasting valuable energy. And soon the effort of building these lines had stolen away all of his attention from the outside world. His only desire was to ensure that every inch of these things would be as large as the main on going towards his host heart….

He had finally finished up the last parts of the lines. He could tell that his energy reserves were dangerously close to running out, but he knew with his current expenditure he could keep boosting his host for well over two hundred years. And seeing as this had brought his host closer to being tier two rather than her original tier one, just knowing how advanced his host was with only one of his ideas being put into place made him want to go right back to working on the next one, but inside he knew that doing so would cause him to lose focus again, and he wouldn’t even be able to keep his hosts current enhancements going for very long if he wasted most of it experimenting. Thinking these thoughts he began pulling back out from his host's soul space and started to take his first look around in what must have been a few months.

As soon as he exited his host's soul space he wanted to go back in, or even ask for directions back to his host since he had appeared outside a small child, who was far older than his host should have been…”How long was I gone?” He watched his host stalk through the woods, most likely the very same ones behind her house. She had a very small bow and some arrows. Her long almost bleach blond hair was tied into a braided ponytail. Only ending directly below her shoulder blades. Looking at his host he could tell she was a very serious child with lines made in her face from an admittedly short lifetime of scowling at things. It almost made him want to curl up in a laughing fit but he was able to resist that urge in favor of paying attention to what his host was doing.

‘What could a little girl be doing out in the middle of the woods all alone, at least she looks properly equipped to be out here, probably after her father was beaten to near death by that one old hag.’ He thought as he watched Gunnr travel at an impressive speed through the woods, the idea of her father getting a light thumping to the head, had made his day much better after realizing that he’d missed out on possibly years of his host's life. These happy thoughts began drifting away as he realized that his host was starting to slow down. Seeing such a decrease in speed caused him to dart over to her as fast as he could hoping that she wasn’t hurt in any way.

As he circled her looking up and down for any injuries he sighed as he realized that she had stopped for a different reason and was not hurt at all. “Oh little Gunnr you nearly gave me a heart attack, I thought something happened to you.” He said all while looking in the same direction as his host, he never noticed those pale eyes looking up at him, one eye pure blue and the other being blue with specks of green.

Pov Change-Gunnr

Gunnr couldn’t believe herself for a moment, ever since she was a child she had memories of vivid green orbs of pure lights looking down at her when she was put into that building, she could still feel the cold dirt floor some days on the training yard. But those lights had given her hope. And then after being taken home, she was rushed to meet that old nasty woman. Gunnr had seen her protector freeze like a rabbit caught by a hounds hungry eyes. It had stayed like that for a while, before fleeing inside her. She had felt like she could lift mountains after she started hosting her protector. But she never saw him again. Only a few months ago she had asked the old woman what was causing that horrible smell inside her house. The old bag had the audacity to wink and tell her that it was something that made spirits weak. That’s when she found out why her protector had left, her guardian had fled the outside world trying to be protected, only to find that she wasn’t a good enough host and died. Or at least that's what Gunnr had though till now.

She had learned much about spirits, trying to find a way to make it up to them for the loss of one of their own. During this time she found out that spirits who had human forms were things called demigods. And could tear entire countries apart if angered. Let alone their divine parents if they found out their children had been slighted. Those could wipe out entire worlds if they were so inclined. And during the last few months she had thought herself responsible for the death of a demigod. But seeing her guardian pull himself out of her, made Gunnr almost shiver in happiness, this meant that she hadn’t killed him. Now being older Gunnr could tell her spirit friend was a man. His frame looked lithe and his face seemed different than the faces of people she met till now. His face was overly circular still having what could be called baby fat. But his eyes were what really clued her in on what she was seeing as no normal spirit. Out of each of his green eyes shot a beam of pure power that seemed to share the same color as his eyes. Then she heard his voice. It sounded boyish and fit him perfectly. The only problem being that instead of talking to her he ignored her and only seemed to care about how long he had been gone.

Getting frustrated at this man who was clearly just as dumb as her father she began speeding away from him hoping to leave him hopelessly lost in the woods. Soon she lost track of him and started slowing down as fast as she could manage to not scare her prey away from the area. Almost as soon as she had stopped moving, suddenly the spirit appeared directly in front of her looking down at her, he floated around her scanning for something. Before remarking that she had worried him by slowing down so suddenly. He seemed happy that she wasn’t hurt but had almost immediately started looking in the same direction as she was paralyzed in.

Gunnr had trained her whole life to be able to do things no person should be able to do at even three times her age. She could always tell when things were moving towards her, or at least move but he had popped up out of nowhere. It clearly found her attempt of losing him as funny and didn’t care that she had tried to pull a little prank on him. Deciding that taking this opportunity and the fact that he was too dumb to notice her. She started focusing on more important things, like the food she was going to eat tonight. And with that she drew her bow and started planning out a method of getting closer to the animals she was hunting. Looking for some sort of pattern with this type of creature was worth less than hair on a ship, rather than the men on said ship.

So instead she started looking for a way to force the animals into creating an opening. Out of the corner of her eye she could see, the spirit floating along behind her, seemingly interested in what she was doing. Realizing something Gunnr started to smile, a smile only seen very few times in the year and a half that she had been alive. “Ha… I wish I had some way of getting these animals to split off into smaller groups, that's the only way I could get something to eat, especially after being hungry for so long.” She said out loud fully intending to see exactly what her guardians' response to her being hungary would be. Then she heard said dumb spirit say with no fanfare “Seriously? I was certain you were using at least one of your talents without meaning to since you were pretty good at this whole hunting shtick.” Gunnr paused and really thought about what the spirit had said, almost tasting the words on her tongue as she said it over again in her head. She did this for a moment before blowing up at the spirit, as loudly as she could without alerting the animals grazing in the clearing only a few hundred feet away. “Listen here ye scrawny, spindly arm spirit, I’ll have ya know that I’m not pulling a shtick as you call it I’m trying to get some food out here, while I’m sure the importance escapes you. Oh mighty spirit but us common folk have to eat the creatures of the land to survive!”

The two of them stayed rooted in place for a while both wondering if what just happened had really happened or if they were crazier than two whales playing with snakes and ladders under the ocean.

Then tentatively the silence was broken by Raymond first who was looking quite shell shocked at his recent beratement by his host.

“You can see me?” As reasonable as that question might be, it did nothing but bring extra questions to the table for Gunnr, who was now even slightly more upset considering this another one of Raymonds games.

“Yes, yes I can see you now please stop messing around and help me get food.” Her statement was filled with enough venom to drop a small family of humans but there stood nothing to protect Raymond from its humbling effects other than pure pig headedness.

Such as see by the quick response from Raymond with little of the tact he so like to claim to have “Well, that’s odd, cause I could have sworn that people aren’t supposed to see me. And how am I supposed to help you when I’m already doing so?”

“What do you mean you’re helping. I’ve been dragging your dead weight for the past year and a half. Now again stop being stubborn and help me get some food.”

“Dead weight, now that's a good one. But I’ve already given you everything I have to offer and in fact I’m still helping you.”

“Everything I am is from my hard work over the past year, I don’t remember you doing anything to make my life easier all that time. Other than making a week of my childhood more bearable.”

“How in the blue blazes do you figure that? Because I know for a fact that you wouldn’t have been able to be as physically developed as you are now, if it weren’t for my efforts to make up for your lack of good food, and rest. With prodigious amounts of energy.”

“Wait, how did you do that while you were hiding away inside of me this whole time?”

“I’m always with you, but sometimes I’m not focusing on what's going on out here, and instead I’m dealing with what's going on in there.”

Pov Change-Third Person

A painfully stifling silence began to surround the two people, and there stood not a single reason for it to end other than a single soul crushing, sniffling sound coming from Gunnr as she turned away from Raymond. The idea that her guardian angel of sorts was refusing to help her with such a simple thing like being able to eat was wreaking havoc on the young child's mind. No matter how thick headed a person might be, there were lines in what was allowed to happen that were older than they had any right to be. One of those lines being children needed to be protected, it didn’t really matter if it was yours or not. It was more important that the members of the next generation were successful and had the tools to survive. An incredibly basic need such as food and water, that would result in massive amounts of losses in both life and mental stability in a group if such a thing as running out were to happen.

Seeing his host starting to cry about him not helping forced his hand and while it would require far more effort on his part, the idea that his host would go hungry and not for the first time according to their conversation burned a hole into his heart, like how a parent would happily go hungry to ensure that their kids have eaten their fill.

‘There is only one way to really help her, that would be to teach her how to use her talents since she evidently doesn’t know how, or at least doesn’t see how they could be helpful.’

Thinking that he made his way behind his host, her muffled crying became almost too much to bear for the soul who had spent the last year doing everything in his power to help them, but had forgotten to make sure they were doing okay in the real world, his form stopped just short of arms reach for the girl, taking a moment to make sure none of the earlier tone would make its way into his voice he began speaking as softly as he could.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t protect you from the things happening out here, I’ll never be able to make up for that, even in a hundred years. But if you would let me, I will make sure you never feel hungry again.”

Even as he spoke, his voice felt weak and seemed like it wanted nothing but to shatter leaving him to his fate as a failure to his original host and his second one too, never able to keep his promise to his original host to avenge his lost opportunity for greatness. And never able to see his current host reach their peak. All because he lost track of time, and got defensive about that fact. The little girl looked so vulnerable he knew he had made a mistake by leaving her alone for the last year.

But inside he knew that the benefits to his host from his action would leave her in a better place than she would have ever had, that benefit meant he would have to do the same thing for his other hosts, even if he spread it out over multiple months or only doing it while his host slept.

“Will you keep this promise or will you break it like your last one?”

A few words had broken his spirit and resistance towards admitting his wrong doings, she had evidently understood that he had promised to protect her from as much as he could as soon as he stepped in front of her father, meaning she could see him even back then, and she had memories going all the way back to when she was a child. She knew well and truly that he had failed, and was giving him a single chance to make it up to her.

“I swear to you, Gunnr, I’ll do my best to protect you from the evils of this world.” He swore right then and there gathering his will, he had so much to do to make up for the year he’d been gone but that only made his decision to verbally promise to the child what he had already planned on doing so much easier.

“Let’s get started then, as soon as you became my host I gave you a few boons. The talent of Geometry. I have no idea how well that will translate into your life considering you don’t have traditional geometry in this world. Then there was the talent for understanding people, now that one is gonna be the one we need to use to get you fed today. And I gave you passion. That last one is well above my pay grade so we’ll have to learn what that does together.”

And for the little girl's credit she seemingly absorbed this information quite well and was already looking for ways to fix her food issue with any of the three powers she had. But was clearly focused on the one that was clearly labeled as giving her the best chance at getting her food.

—Fin