“You have no eyes. How are you doing that?” Cael complained.
“Doing what?” Tar rolled his eyes again.
“Nevermind. Is this what you’re always seeing?”
“More or less. As I said; I keep an eye on you in the peripheral and there's also my perspective on the outside.”
“Hmm.” Cael traipsed up to the elemental and poked him. It was a little difficult to see where the world stopped and Tar began. He was one solid color with no reflecting light, so the depth was hard to gauge. Still, Cael found that he was able to just feel where Tar was instinctually.
Under his hand, he felt the surface of the dark blob ripple gently like a pond after a leaf had fallen into it. He could feel a light pressure against his hand in its place in the inky blackness. The changeling pulled back his hand and inspected it. Nothing was left on him. That made sense. Despite the nickname, Tar wasn’t all that sticky, more liquid than anything else, really. And in actuality, this place didn’t exist. At least, Cael didn’t think it did.
The wall of pitch-blackness was a bit intimidating. It reminded him of a certain memory of being slowly dissected.
He frowned. Thoughts like that were really irritating him. They weren’t really fair to Tar, who was younger than even Cael’s System age. At the point he had even done that, Tar was just a ten-minute-old being of the shadows without a real sense of morals.
Being afraid of someone due to their actions as a newborn was just insulting. Cael was also a bit irritated with himself that he couldn’t just ignore that feeling outright or forget it as he seemed to often do.
In the end, it was Cael’s absolute trust in Tar that finally convinced him.
“Can I?”
“Yes.”
With just a hint of trepidation, Cael took a deep breath and stepped into the elemental. If seeing Tar’s larger form had reminded him of their bad first impressions, being immersed in the weight of the shadows brought the memories to the fore of his mind along with a powerful feeling of pain and fear.
But that was only a memory. No actual pain accompanied the shadows that swirled around him welcomingly, and a moment later, all fear had been swept away too; overshadowed by the Familiar Feeling the System impressed upon him. More than all of that, it was the open affection that Tar was displaying across the bond that washed away all Cael’s worries.
“For the record, that was not affection. I merely tolerate you.” The elemental asserted, pulling away when Cael began struggling to breathe.
“Shut up, ya big Bastard. I know what I felt.” Cael shot the elemental a big grin that was only minorly shit-eating. He really was glad to be getting over his fears, unfounded as they were. He knew Tar wouldn’t hurt him. “Uh. Would you mind if we did that more? It’s really relaxing and makes me feel safe.”
“I don’t mind, but I know how much you hate meditating to get here.” Tar pats Cael’s head with a flat tendril.
“It’s so boring!” Cael confessed to the being that could read his mind, “Like, I’d do anything for magic, but surely there must be some other way!”
“I can’t speak for the magic portion, but if I gain a few more levels, I can increase my size and we can just cuddle whenever we want without having to come here first.”
“God, you had me at gaining levels. I’m so sick of being stuck at level one.”
“Speak for yourself, I’m theoretically at level nine.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Cael pulled up the [Spirit of Shadow] Skill on his System terminal and saw that Tar was right.
“How did you know that?”
“We are literally inside your soul. I can pull up whatever System boxes I want in here.”
“Hmm. Alright. Anyway, we should get back to the point. Why did I come here again?”
“You wanted to make sure you could, and then if that was possible, you wanted to see if you could use your mana to affect the world elementally as you seem to be able to do in your soulscape.”
“Ah, right! That was it! Thanks.”
Cael clasped his hands. Now, how exactly was he supposed to go about moving the mana inside himself to the outside? He imagined the mana coming out of his body in the physical world.
“Er. How will I be able to tell if it’s working.”
“My external form is watching for any sign of mana leakage. You have not been successful.” Tar wiggled encouragingly, which Cael knew he was doing, but couldn’t see. “Try channeling mana through your form here. That’s how I do it. Your forms mirror one another, so if you feed mana into your soul-self, it should emerge similarly from your material self.”
Cael nodded and absorbed the mana floating purposelessly throughout his soul, inhaling deeply and exhaling with a bit of uncertainty.
“That worked pretty easily. There wasn’t much there, but I can see a haze of mana coming off of you.” Tar reported.
“I guess that’s all I needed to know for now.”
“You didn’t want to do anything else?”
“Nothing comes to mind.” He patted the elemental, but there wasn’t much resistance so it was more like a mime act. “It was nice seeing you again.”
“You see me all the time.” Tar pointed out.
“Not all of you.” He countered. “Now how do I get out of here?”
Cael prodded around with his mind.
“Well,” Tar began, “First try-”
Cael snapped out of his soulscape like a bucket of cold water had been dumped over his head. He looked around disorientedly at the entire Constabulary standing over him and Enken with a suspiciously upturned bucket. Next, he looked down at the puddle and ice cubes on the floor around him.
“I’m not cleaning that up.” He blurted. “Uh, unless you want me to.” When they did stuff like that it was a bit hard to remember that these were people who could wipe him from the face of the planet with a sneeze.
“No worries.” Trista waved a hand and the water was sucked back into the bucket.
“Cael, you have three hours remaining before your Portline opens. That leaves us two hours before you must be ready to leave. Considering the state of your belongings, we will be supplying you with clothing and a bit of money.” Mercy handed him a small metal card, which he pocketed after a brief inspection. It was a bright silver with a black engraved face that detailed his name and three different codes and serial numbers. It kind of looked like a credit card.
“With packing out of the way,” she continued, “is there anything you would like to do?”
“Yes actually. Would you mind giving me ownership over the… uh.” Cael paused "Over myself?"
“Unfortunately, the spellbinding collar cannot be owned by its victim. We may try transferring ownership to Tar if you wish, but if the System considers him a part of you by extension of your familiar Skill, then it is possible the transfer will not be accepted.” It was Mercy who said this, so he knew it must have been true.
“Well, there’s no harm in trying.”
“Untrue. If the collar transfer is semi-accepted, the collar could leave my possession but never make it into Tar’s hands. If the System detects that the collar has no owner, it could become a floating connection that any capable mage could connect to temporarily. It would be difficult to permanently re-bind it to one of us.”
“Ah.” And knowing Cael’s [Luck] There was really no possibility of the transfer being successful. “And we can't just get rid of the collar?”
“There is not. At present, your soul is much too delicate to survive the severance. It could be possible if you found a soul mage beyond level three hundred, or gained that strength for yourself.”
"Ugh. Well, there goes that idea. It looks like I'm going to be stuck with the collar for a while longer. Is there some way we could make the collar less visible at least?”
Macera waved her hand. “There are many options for the collar. Some slavers prefer cleaner looks for, uh. Nevermind. The collar can be made invisible, but is pretty hard to hide from mana detection abilities.”
“I think it can be moved and restyled. As long as it remains relatively balanced on each side, you can do pretty much whatever, right?” Enken offered.
“How abstract can this design be?” Cael asked.
“If you have something in mind, just say it and I will do my best.” Mercy offered.