After deciding to leave the group of guards to their task, I got back to my experiments.
First came reviewing all the techniques (or maybe ‘spells’ was the right term) that I’d witnessed and used so far. I’d noticed that fine control over the wood-manipulation spells took more effort without a body to channel the spells through.
It took a couple of local days to get a better feel for the local spells, healing and plant-manipulating ones in particular. The experience more or less confirmed that the few issues I’d had with them came from these spells being inherently designed for use with the magical veins all the locals seemed to have.
After all, I had no similar trouble with finely controlling my interface layer (one minor miscalculation on its brightness aside) and had originally copied the wood manipulation spells from the imprints left on Helen’s spiritual veins. My acute ability to sense and control the energies in and around me allowed me to nicely compensate for the lack of body.
Then I switched over to trying to use similar ones that I knew of. There was no guarantee that the systems of magic were compatible, but that was why I picked out things that had some similarities to start with.
Needless to say, there was much trial and error involved, even when starting with some minor plant manipulation.
*****
From what I’d pieced together in my afterlife, what the systems of magic allowed in terms of matter creation and manipulation could vary wildly across universes.
In most places, it wasn’t possible to create things ex-nihilo. In others, it was possible but restricted to a select few. Some mimicked the former by summoning things from other places, and others by allowing for highly efficient conversion between matter and energy.
In some realms, there were restrictions on which materials could be manipulated, both organic and not. It could rage from a flat-out law of reality to being increasingly more expensive in terms of energy, time, knowledge, and the like.
Sometimes, it was impossible to manipulate living tissues in ways that weren’t naturally occurring. In others, there were restrictions on how much sapient beings could be affected. In others still, there were no fundamental restrictions on what kinds of terrible things could be done by anyone with sufficient knowledge, save those imposed by some higher power or societal standards.
From the tests I’d conducted so far, it seemed that this universe allowed fairly cheap summoning of matter and decently efficient conversion between it and energy, in either direction. The techniques I’d copied off of the locals so far were all of the ‘summon matter from elsewhere’ type, but it wasn’t difficult to adjust them to use the ‘energy to matter’ conversion.
The latter was something I’d decided to use on the off chance that some local higher power took issue with my attempt to craft myself a body while using ‘local’ resources. There was no guarantee that there were deities around, but it was a good bet in a world with magic and a soul ecology. Places like that tended to frown upon the creation of soul-less bodies and people hopping between fleshy containers. Understandably so, since learning to do such things normally involved horribly unsavory experiments.
The orange-skinned doctor’s reaction to me borrowing Helen’s body and Alexander’s lack of surprise at the idea that a soul-less container could be crafted was clue enough that this world was no stranger to such things. Hopefully, by footing the metaphorical bill entirely by myself and starting from materials I’d been awarded, rather than stolen, I wouldn’t trigger an intervention.
The only way to find out, however, was by doing.
*****
Several local days (and a bunch of unfortunate animals) passed before I felt ready to move on to doing trials with the human tissue samples.
I hadn’t been especially picky about which tissues I’d grabbed with the wooden tools, just that there would be minimal poison contamination and intact DNA. I’d fulfilled the second criterion and while there was more poison than I’d hoped, I was able to remove it with a combination of several adapted purifying techniques.
Normally, the organic matter would have quickly decayed into uselessness, but keeping it exposed to my unfiltered essence as well as the local flavor of magical energy had preserved it (just as it had done when I’d been in Helen’s mostly dead body). The constant energy supply had also altered the tissues, though I couldn’t pinpoint exactly how much since I hadn’t had the chance to scan their starting state. What I did observe was them growing more robust and receptive to channeling magical energy.
I braced myself for a potential mishap the first time I coaxed a few skin cells to multiply, and was pleasantly surprised when the attempt didn’t messily blow up. There were no horrible mutations. No divine intervention materialized either. In fact, there wasn’t so much as a blip in the fabric of reality in response to my actions.
That was a good sign, albeit not proof that further development down this path wouldn’t face issues.
The next step up from that was growing a full organ and seeing if the spiritual veins were encoded into the physical DNA of the locals, or if it was something tied to their souls. The liver I grew for that test didn’t turn out mutated or cancerous and even came out adult-sized with no issues.
My scans revealed that it was notably more efficient than what mundane humans of my time could expect from theirs. But while it was an interesting find, the idea that humans had faced different evolutionary pressures in a world with magic than one without wasn’t too surprising. Nor was the possibility that this was the consequence of genetic engineering. Perhaps even a mixture of both.
The more intriguing part was that the spiritual veins did have significant physical elements to them, ones that naturally developed alongside the rest of the organ. Feeding magical energy into those structures developed the non-physical parts. There was a significant amount of similarity between these spiritual veins and the ones I’d sensed in Helen’s body, specifically in that they imparted energy with several flavors, a woody one being the most prominent.
Messing with the physical structure of the spiritual veins caused changes in their spiritual components and vice versa, with the occasional messy breakdown. Those weren’t as energetic as my initial attempts at adapting spells, but it was interesting to see which combinations of alterations produced which flavors of energy.
The next step after that was running through creating other individual organs and seeing how they turned out. That didn’t give me too much trouble, though I was a bit worried about the brain and heart. It was an unfortunate possibility that either of those could cause a new consciousness to be born or one from whatever soul cycle existed here to be attached to them.
Fortunately for me, no such thing happened. Instead, I got more evidence of differences between Helen and the humans of my original life. It looked like the woman had been a low-level superhuman even before the changes caused by being exposed to my essence. I’d suspected as much given that her body had been functional despite all the injuries, but confirmation was useful.
Afterward, I moved on to putting what I’d learned together into a proper body, which meant making a capsule or perhaps a pod to grow it. But having one sticking out of a tree (whether above or below ground) would have been conspicuous and left it vulnerable, so I took the time to translate some of my knowledge of spatial manipulation to work locally and created the needed structure inside one of the trees.
I was careful not to let excess energy bleed off into the ginkgo-like tree’s tissues while I set up the pod to grow my new body in. Translating my knowledge of warding allowed me to do so, and had the benefit of allowing me to add more protections while making the whole thing blend into the background energy.
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It took several false starts before I got the weave of magic, the skeleton that would act as scaffolding for the softer tissues, and my links to the whole thing in place and stable. Fortunately, the containment of my wards prevented the more violent meltdowns from harming my surroundings.
All that remained was monitoring the development for unexpected issues and correcting them.
*****
Despite wanting to have another conversation or even a fleeting but civil interaction with real people, I’d kept out of the way of the perimeter guards since they’d arrived and set up camp. Mostly, it was because I had a project to take up my attention, and to a lesser degree because it was obvious that my presence made them uncomfortable.
The sound-receiving part of my interface layer had enough range to hear them, but while I had picked up on their idle conversations, I hadn’t been actively eavesdropping. The most I’d gotten out of it was gauging whether they’d noticed my various failed experiments.
For the most part, they all seemed to notice and react to the energy surges, and a couple probably had acute enough senses to pick up on the various biological meltdowns.
None of them had tried to venture inside the woods, nor had they gotten any visitors. The only sign of communication these past few days had been the pulses of magical energy being sent out and received by several devices in their holding.
Given all that, spotting someone joining the group and wandering around the camp caught a bit of my attention. Neither the strength of their life sign nor magical energy levels was notably different from the guards, though the tight leash they kept on the latter reminded me of the pair of sneaky would-be assassins that had been gunning for the twins.
The lack of commotion or confrontation, as well as the person seeming content to observe for almost a full day, made me assume that they were only visiting. But all of the perimeter guards suddenly stopping in place, even those that had gone off to do a physical patrol around the edge of the woods, looked like something else. That the guards’ magical energy flickered and sputtered while their visitor’s remained unchanged was even more suspicious.
The way said person moved around to check on those in the camp could be interpreted as something an ally might do, but it could just as easily be otherwise. This development warranted a closer look, though a bit of stealth was probably prudent.
I shifted my links to the growing body a little sideways from the current physical plane and made sure they could stretch for a bit. Some dimming of my interface layer’s visibility and adjusting my energy output to match the ambient levels shouldn’t hurt either. Then I set out toward the camp.
By the time I arrived at the edge of the tree line near the camp, the intruder (an innocuous-looking young woman) had sent out a pulse of energy that was probably a message or a signal. It didn’t travel far, stopping once it reached a group of five people that had arrived in the area in the past couple of days. Those five hadn’t done anything that stood out among the hundreds of others moving in the area, but now they set off toward the woods.
That the intruder didn’t kill any of the guards, was interesting. Instead, she moved over to the side of the woods closest to the approaching group and used some kind of technique to make a hole in the energy construct circling the trees.
I waited until the group slipped through the barrier and into the woods before examining what had been done to the guards. It turned out to be a distinctly non-lethal substance that rendered them unconscious and disrupted their ability to directly manipulate their magical energy. Clearing the substance out of the guards’ systems was simple enough, though it was bad practice to use experimental techniques like this.
I woke Iefyr first since he was the easiest to communicate with, and ensured that my message was the first thing he’d see. Returning to consciousness like that was probably not the best experience, but the elf-like man rolled with it.
“How many… visitors?” he asked after processing my message.
“Six,” I wrote back, “one infiltrated your camp, then called the other five once you were unconscious.”
“Are other two well?” Iefyr asked, glancing in the direction the two who’d left on patrol had gone after he sat up and pulled a metal box out of his belt pouch.
“They’re alive,” I wrote, “Just asleep.”
Iefyr nodded and opened the box. The message he spoke into the device was short and he sent a glower in the direction of the group that was moving through the wood with something like caution.
“Are visitors strong?” Iefyr asked, turning his attention back to me.
How did he expect me to tell whether they were or not? All I could tell was how much magical energy they had to throw around, not their skill level.
“Three have more magic than you,” I wrote back, deciding to stick with the energy reserves as a reference, “two are the same as you. One is very weak.” To be precise, the last one felt like someone had tried to frankenstein pieces of two souls into something functional.
Judging by the way Iefyr winced at my answer, he’d understood the limitations of his question. He was distracted from responding by the return message from the communication device and whatever had been said surprised him.
As the elf-like man sent off another message, I idly noted that the group of ‘visitors’ had stopped not far from the odd not-tree at the heart of the wood and were milling around it. More interesting was that Alexander’s life sign had been where this batch of Iefyr’s messages had gone and that he seemed to be on his way here.
“I’m going to see what those visitors are up to,” I wrote, making sure the elf-like man saw the message before putting those words into action.
Iefyr made as if to try and stop me, but relented with a sigh. What he did do, was send off another message through his communicator, presumably reporting what I’d just done.
*****
I dimmed the light output of my interface even further and shrank down its visible form into a sphere that was about the size of a fist as I reached the tree line. Then, I flew up into one of the trees and peered out to study the scene in the clearing.
A gray-haired man was kneeling before the glowing not-tree, flanked by a man and a woman who bore a strong resemblance to him. There was a limp figure in the arms of the gray-haired man, being held out before the not-tree. All four were dressed in expensive-looking clothes, made of colorful and heavily embroidered fabric, and carrying enchanted items. The young woman that had poisoned the guards was standing further off, next to an older man, their more muted clothes giving the feel of a servant’s uniform.
The whole group had fallen silent by the time I arrived, but there’d been someone (presumably the oldest-looking of them) that had been speaking in an imploring tone earlier. They all seemed to be holding their breath, waiting for something to happen with the not-tree.
Only, as the tense silence stretched on, nothing did.
The fancily dressed woman’s expression fell and she reached out to touch the older man’s shoulder, murmuring something in a conciliatory tone, only to be shaken off. She flinched back at whatever the older man snapped at her in response and stepped back with clenched fists.
The older man took a long breath, before turning back to the not-tree and beginning to speak again. He stood up and tried to step closer to it, but couldn’t seem to get past the last couple of meters as the very fabric of reality around it refused to let him.
That was interesting. Both Alexander and I had been able to walk right up to the object with no issue, and the man had claimed that it would ‘burn out’ any unwanted possessions. That implied that it could sense a disconnect between a soul and its container and either had opinions on such things or was programmed to react that way.
That seemed to be the limit of such functions though since the not-tree wasn’t reacting to the patchwork soul in the unconscious boy’s body. A patchwork held together by what I could now tell was the older man’s magical energy.
I slipped away when the older man devolved into shouting at the tree, no longer seeming to care about remaining stealthy or respectful as whatever he’d been hoping or asking for hadn’t happened. The others present were looking much more uncomfortable too, though didn’t seem to have the option of ducking out.
They didn’t seem to notice Alexander’s approach, too caught up in what looked to be a family drama, though the way the man was keeping a tighter leash on how much magical energy he was radiating into the world might be responsible.
He wasn’t clad in full armor this time, but in a set of well-tailored but deceptively simple-looking clothes instead. They were, however, loaded with more enchantments than all of the artifacts the other fancily dressed people in the clearing combined. He also looked much less exhausted and disheveled.
“I suppose those uninvited guests disturbed your work?” he asked with a rueful smile, immediately noticing my presence, and coming to a stop.
“Not really,” I answered, using a sound-making spell this time instead of light-writing. The voice didn’t sound quite right, but it would make for more natural communication. “Is that glowing tree of yours supposed to fix damaged souls as well?” I asked, drifting down so that my compact form was floating at eye-level with him.
“There have been stories that it has done so after dealing with a possession,” Alexander said, then glanced in the direction the shouting was still coming from. “Did it fix the boy up?” he asked.
So, he knew about this group? I supposed that they might have tried to go through legitimate channels to get to see the not-tree and only resorted to sneaking in after being turned away. Which meant that this incident was partially my fault.
“No,” I replied, “there didn’t seem to be any reaction at all.”
“How curious,” he said, looking a little surprised, then thoughtful. “What’s your impression of the child’s state?”
“It looks like someone took two damaged souls and crudely stitched them together,” I answered, making a frowning expression in the direction of the group to underscore my distaste for the situation. “The same person’s energy is lingering in the damaged parts like the residue of an attack.”
“So, you wouldn’t call the situation a possession then?” he pressed.
“No,” I said, “I’d call it someone’s experiment gone wrong. Though I was under the impression this kind of thing was frowned upon in this land.”
We both glanced over to where the shouting was now joined by flares of magical energy. Alexander let out a long-suffering sigh.
“It is,” he answered, “but not entirely illegal. So I suppose I’ll have to get the details out of the Count.”
“Sounds like a tricky issue,” I conceded as I followed him when he resumed his trek toward the group of visitors.
Alexander only smiled sardonically in response, and as we emerged into the clearing proper I wondered if this Count was going to get away with mutilating that child.