“I like it.” Cael declared as he looked at the finished design for the spellbinding collar. He’d certainly hope that was the case. The design they had decided upon was a window into his soulscape that stretched across the majority of his upper back like a puddle of paint.
At first, he’d honestly doubted the collar could be displayed like this. Not only was it technically no longer a collar, but it was also changing slightly as he watched it, his neck craning to look over his shoulder at the mirror.
The window into his soul was incredibly pliable, and the natural mana currents of his soul slowly pulled the window around his soulscape and altered its shape just as easily.
By default, it was set to look upward at the sky, resulting in a shifting night that covered his back. He much preferred it to the original design.
Seriously. A boring black line wrapped around his neck? How uninspired.
“Are you sure you want a portion of your soul to be left on display? Most believe the appearance of a soul to be quite private.”
Cael shrugged. It was just a reflection of the stars. “I like to think I’m pretty open. Besides, if I don’t feel comfortable letting someone see, I can just have Tar pull the curtains.”
As if to demonstrate, the elemental in his soulscape covered the window in its entirety, blocking his stars from sight.
‘Ta-da.’
“Tada, indeed” Cael nodded in agreement.
“Huh.” Macera stepped forward and tapped the black splotch across the changeling’s back. “I can sense Tar quite powerfully through this connection.”
“Yes. I feel a pure being near your soul. Even in his reduced state, Tar remains more powerful than you. If not for the love Tar has for you, I would advise caution.” Mercy noted.
‘I have no idea what love she's talking about.’
“Come on, Tar. She doesn’t lie. There's really no competition about who I’m believing here.” Cael had meant to say that in his head to the elemental only, but it didn't really matter. “At least I know I still have to speak my mind. It’s a bit hard to tell because that’s what I normally do anyway.”
The elemental grumbled and receded from the soul window, revealing the stars once more.
“I think it’s also important to point out that I can feel your emotions pretty clearly by looking at your stars.” Enken took a step closer to inspect the false sky.
“Ooh! Really? What am I feeling?”
“Curious, amused, and satisfied. A bit smug too, but that’s faint.” The drake reported accurately.
“He’s right, and I can feel it without looking as long as Tar isn’t blocking it. I think you are exuding your emotions into your surroundings as faint mana signatures.” Trista shoved the giant and the drake to the sides to look for herself.
“That’s good to know, but it doesn’t bother me all that much. Also, emotional mana?”
“Most elements are tied to a few emotions, so if your emotions excite certain elemental sequences, it’s possible to faintly detect your emotions. Most of the time, this is practically undetectable, but your soul window makes it a fair bit more obvious.” Trista explained.
“But it’s only a tattoo that shows what’s going on in my soul. How does it leak like that?”
“The tattoo is tethered to a mana construct in your soulscape. All magical tethers should go both ways, so it can leak out just a bit easier.”
“Is that dangerous?”
“Not really. That isn’t harmful in any way and it doesn’t make your soul any less safe in practice. You’re just as vulnerable either way. If anything, it might make your spellcasting a bit easier and faster.” Trista speculated.
“Alright, and you’re sure I’ll be safe?”
“As long as I remain alive,” Mercy promised.
She’d totally just jinxed them. He opened his mouth to tell her that but was stopped by a well-timed tail swipe.
‘Cael, what do we say to the nice lady who saved your life?’
“Ah, thank you, Mercy.”
She smiled. “It was my pleasure. Now, I recommend we go and celebrate before we send you off. We are running out of time to do so.”
“What are we celebrating?” He tilted his head.
“Having met you.” She responded.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“Is that reason for you to celebrate? I’m sure you meet new people every day.”
“It’s more of an apology than anything. Macera is apologizing for arresting you based on a false accusation based upon personal bias, Trista is apologizing for not properly teleporting you to a shelter, and Enken is apologizing for leaving you unsupervised and allowing you to be kidnapped.” Mercy clarified.
“Ugh.” Macera groaned. “I knew we shouldn’t have let Mercy talk for this long. Whatever just consider it a send-off.”
“Aww, well I hope you all know I don’t hold any of that against you. It’s not your fault; I’m just pretty unlucky.”
“Regardless of what you think, it has already been done.” Mercy turned on her heel, almost smacking Enken with a wing as she left the room. “We have cake.”
Cael pulled on his shirt and followed her. “Well, I won’t ever say no to cake.”
In the dining room, Mercy served the cake, cut into perfect sixths with a massive sword made of light.
Objectively, the cake was too sweet, but subjectively, Cael couldn’t imagine anything tasting better.
‘You may have a preference for sweets.’ Tar commented
“I absolutely do. There is no maybe about it.” He offered a forkful of cake to the elemental. “Are you sure you don’t want any?”
‘I’ll have a bit, but my lack of tastebuds renders the act of eating less enjoyable. I get all my satisfaction through the joy I can feel through the bond.’
Cael offered Tar his perception of the cake’s flavor. It was a bit like chocolate and raspberry, but with twice the sugar that either of them should have.
‘That’s sickeningly sweet.’
He shrugged and finished his slice, content to be spending time with the people he had befriended.
:(:):(:):(:):
All too soon, Cael had to leave. At Tar’s reminder, he rushed upstairs and fetched the metal flask Mercy had given him.
They had discussed the Portline process with him over cake, which was now one of Cael’s favorite ways to discuss anything.
The Portline hub was on the surface for convenience, which meant he would be seeing the sky again before he left. At the scheduled departure time, a one-way portal would be opened to a planet called Codisco, which was a Tier 1 re-education planet. It was an entire planet dedicated to safely retraining individuals who had changed their Classes.
This meant each city had an academy of its own and a surrounding community of re-Classed merchants and crafters working to level and support their city-schools.
Trista claimed there were three such planets across the galaxy.
They all chose to accompany Cael to the portal.
“I hardly ever see you guys working. Like, it’s nice that you all want to say goodbye to me as I leave, but don’t you have more important things to do? Supposedly this entire city relies on you for its safety.”
“It’s fine.” Trista waved him off. The box floating along beside her bobbed with the motion. “The Constabulary’s branches in this city decided long ago to split responsibilities. We were working on the day you arrived, and we will be working tomorrow. Our assigned days are Sunday and Wednesday 2.”
“Wednesday 2..?” He squinted at her. “Wait, how many days are in a week?”
“Eight,” Enken responded. He rattled off the names of each day, and they were all what you would expect, except between Wednesday and Thursday, there was a second Wednesday. Cael wondered if he had finally found a gap in the abilities of his [Read] Skill to translate the world around him.
The group stopped by the orphanage briefly to give Flint the final slice of cake and allow Cael to hug the spiky mugger farewell. After another quick healing session, they were on their way once more.
By that, he meant that Trista teleported the group directly to the surface, where she set down the floating box. Trista sighed when she noticed Cael struggling to not throw up from the vertigo and disorientation that always seemed to follow her teleportation.
Once he'd reoriented himself, she snapped her fingers and a set of wheels popped out of the bottom of the box.
When he asked why she hadn’t teleported them to the orphanage, she had informed him that her [Mass Teleport] Skill had a cooldown of ten minutes. Half an hour if she was teleporting sentient beings.
Ten of those minutes were spent in Portline customs, where he and his box were screened by a dozen magical objects and Skills. Most of that time was spent verifying his spellbinding collar.
Screening Tar took an additional twenty minutes for a hundred reasons he hadn’t had time to read when they had given him a pamphlet about elemental familiars and Portline travel.
Basically, by the time they'd finally made it through Portline customs, Trista was all set to teleport back home.
The Constabulary, of course, was able to just pass by without any questions. After half an hour of Cael being searched, he was just about ready to call that an abuse of authority, but Tar had his tail ready to stop that.
“Oh, Vera! I almost forgot!” Mercy jogged over, wings fluttering anxiously, “Remove all collar commands.” she ordered.
Ooh yeah. That would have been bad. If Cael was remembering correctly, there had been a persisting command preventing him from harming another without any exceptions.
“Thank you for everything. It was great to meet you all.” Cael stepped toward her awkwardly. He didn’t know any of them well enough for hugs, so there was a round of fist-bumps, which he was glad to learn existed in this universe.
He said farewell to everyone he knew in the world and waved as they left.
‘Are you ready to go?’
“Yeah. I guess I am.” Cael reached up and scratched the cat behind the ears.
The Portline hub was a large industrial type of building that didn’t fit at all with the surrounding buildings of the surface town. At its center was a large white warehouse-sized chamber.
By the time he had arrived, six other people were already waiting.
Four of them were an even split of the scarabs and baixan he had grown to expect, but there was also a short fuzzy cat person and a completely non-humanoid individual that somewhat resembled a hairball. Were there more species on the surface?
Every single one of them had a minimum of ten large crates. Some even had them on wide metal pallets that Cael would bet were able to float.
As directed by one of the Portline staff, Cael wheeled his box onto his section of the floor.
Cael didn’t have to wait long. A loud static crackling split the room. A wave of distorted space washed out from one side of the room like a heavy wave of water that swept over him and dragged him under.
He clutched his cat tightly and waited for the world to come back into focus.