Zemfira had about had it up to here with this so-called “instructor.”
She groaned, pushing her scrying bowl away from her, and stalked away from her desk. That new soul she had summoned was giving her a splitting headache.
An orb pulsed at the upper corner of her room, intoning a reprimation. “Please return to your duties, Initiate Soulbinder Zemfira Yusupova. Further ignoration will notify your supervisor.”
Take the summer job. Her parents had said, urging her to grow into a prime model for her younger clan members. It can only help.
Stupid. Stupid supervisor. Stupid parents.
The clan superiors had stuck her in some old boiler room, probably chuckling at some pathetic reanimator sweating their ass off.
Zemfira pressed at her temple, trying to knead the pain away. I’ll drop my control a little bit. It’ll be fine.
Probably.
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Monsters are sickening.
I stared into the eyes of a dead man— submerged in a dark green slime, flesh long boiled off. The slime paid me no mind, of course. I doubt some floating paper looked too delectable.
Now, how do I kill this thing?
I wasn’t much of a gamer in my past life (to my knowledge). But the floating text, the talk of ‘Status’? I can put two and two together. Even though I could resist control to a degree, I was too weak to get rid of it completely. I need to get stronger.
My senses scraped through the slime, nearly filling up the tunnel. There. I found what I was looking for— the core. It sat deep inside gooey flesh, a hard sphere crawling with tendrils.
I stepped forward. My soul pulsed in fear. Before I could hesitate, my hand shot forward, and my body seared in pain. The slime’s body burned not only the paper, but my soul itself, a bullet wound to my will.
I groped forward. My hand twitched with every spike of acid, and before long, the protecting paper was gone. The pain jumped threefold. FUCK. FUCK. FUCKFUCK—
[You’ve had a breakthro—
SHUT UP.
I felt my soul stick to something hard, and for a moment, my ecstasy dwarfed the pain. Half my body was stuck at this point, but I didn’t care. The only way past the agony was out, and the core was coming with me.
Luckily, the rational part of my brain was shivering in a corner, so I didn’t really think about the logic of grabbing something with my soul. As fast as I could, I ripped the core out, feeling tendrils snap and the body collapse as I went. I watched bones and cloth fall to the ground, sticky with goo. The pain slowly scaled down, feeling the remaining paper attempt to cover the rest of my soul. Oh my god. I did it.
The core was a mush on the ground, and my emotion swelled with the feeling of power.
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Lets see if that did… anything.
I called on the same feeling I got while reaching for the core, and information graced my perception.
[You have leveled up.]
[You have leveled up.]
[You have level… x8
[You are now level 10]
[Soul meets requisite strength for Evolution. Only one evolution available.]
[Commencing Evolution to Revenant]
Wait, hold on—
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Status.
Name: (???) de Almeida
Level: 10
Race: [Revenant]
Power: 11
Presence: 14
Soul: 12 (24)
Instinct: 8
Traits: [Unliving] [Necromancer’s Control] [Beast] [Deep Depression]
Skills: [Soul Control - I] [Lesser Empathy - V] [Pain Resistance - VIII] [Tactility - I]
I gazed into the muddy puddle on the cave floor, pondering my reflection. I’m fairly sure I wasn’t so… feminine.
A haggard, gray-tinted and strangely androgynous face looked blankly back at me, skin wrapping around bone like hide on a war drum. The hair was a wispy white, falling down just below my chin, and three tattoos were etched deep across my new form: An outstretched hand, just below the left wrist of my real one, a wavy orb on top of my heart, and jagged lines, wreathing my ankles. These must be my skills.
I didn’t really care about my appearance, anyways. Considering how fast it changed, I didn’t plan on getting too comfortable. The most pertinent thing was my mind. A quick thought brought up the description of Necromancer’s Control, just as easy as breathing.
[Necromancer’s Control] - [Your will contends with the directives of your summoner, but your body remains your own. [Soul] is halved.]
Although I didn’t know the details of the former brainwashing spell, the difference was clear as day. Whispers still poked and prodded at me, but did little more than a minor aggravation.
I stood back up, grabbing a ratty cloak from the dead man, erstwhile slime food. My vision was functioning perfectly now, perhaps even better, the dark pregnable to my stormy eyes, but instead, I felt for the vibrations that heralded me for the past few hours. Although they didn’t trace far, a small path to my right trended upwards, (presumably) to the surface.
This made me more excited than I’d like to admit.
I trudged along the path, minutes turning to hours, and hours to days as the black rock turned to a red sandstone, home to some freakishly large centipedes. During my travels, I managed to gain a new skill—Pathfinding. I hadn’t received the extravagant “You’ve had a breakthrough.” (How exciting! Not.) message, however. It seemed that was only when I was prodigiously depressed, or in enough pain I would gain a moderately useful skill. What a milestone to revere.
The skill combined with Lesser Empathy were a godsend. A significant number of subterranean predators had been avoided through detection, and it gave me scraps of hope for this world. The fight with the slime had blossomed a paranoia in me, yes, but it gave me a new resolve:
I’ll find a home here. In the caves, under the sun, I don’t care. I’ll carve a path to safety, and relish in it.
Not hours later, when my Pathfinding skill had made a handy increase to Pathfinding II, I got my wish.
Endless dunes, seas of orange and red, burned under a beating sun. Lesser Empathy told a tale of impossibly large insects, burrowing between the roots of ancient desert plants.
For the first time since my incarnation, I smiled.