Sachihiro

I come awake with a start my head whipping up but immediately sagging back onto the floor cushioned by a tuft of my hair. I breathe through my nose then immediately roll away, things sticking to my face and hair, things that smell like vomit. Carefully I touch my face, winching at the tenderness I find there, tasting stale cotton balls in my mouth I feel with my tongue for any missing teeth. I feel like shit, at this point this might just be my constant state of being, I smell like shit too.

I push myself upwards with some effort; groggily I get to my feet after a minute of trying and stand breathing. I winch even as I do it but with a mote of spirit-energy dark red crystals appear in my palm, still alive, they are all still alive. I almost sag back on the floor in relief but sway on my feet instead, my eyes going to my zanpakutō at a corner in the darkness. It’s still too dark to see but I can tell I’ve been moved, was I so far gone... Is that what it’s like to experience my spirit oppression?

If it is it’s a really fucked up ability I have. That was intense, I pull a water skin from a storage ring and just hold it in hand funnelling mana into its contents. My weapons are all within arms reach, the important ones I can feel without even looking on the rough wooden table in the middle of the room.

‘’Finally awake I see,’’ a voice says. I turn my whole body to face the too loud too chipper voice stabbing into my skull even without spiritual force behind it. The man from before stands at an overly large doorway some 12m away, just outside the range of my awareness but I can see him just fine with my eyesight. His immediate surroundings are also visible but there is no light source.

‘’Get yourself cleaned up and we will begin your instruction,’’ he says then disappears like a dust painting in the wind. I’m not surprised by his appearance and disappearance nor do I really care.

I pour the mana infused water over my head manipulating it into and through my hair; puke, dust, snort and other things are washed away. With a flick of my head filthy mana infused water is flung from my now puffy dry hair onto the stone floor, I lean on the table until the dizziness passes. When last did I eat?

My stomach chooses this moment to rumble its protest at the ill treatment I’ve put it through; I wash the rest of my body before anything else. Stripping naked and washing myself entirely in mana fused water careful to get myself completely clean. I remove some dried meat from my ring and cut it into strips with a dagger, eating the small strips hardly chewing with my swollen jaw.

So that’s what if feels like to be completely outclassed, I didn’t even see the attacks coming, I didn’t even get to cast a shielding spell. I wrap my ribs in a bandage and tend to all my other wounds, breathing a test of masculine perseverance. I eat some clovers and lili flowers someone gathered from the Dawn Dungeon, these are suppose to help with healing. I drink a little cup of mead whilst sitting on a stone bench against the wall listening to the many aches of my body.

‘’Still conscious I see, here I brought you some water,’’ the man says limping up to me carrying a giant bowl of water filled to the brim. He places it carefully by my side then sighs before taking a sit on the other side of the bowl; I’m too tired to be dealing with this man. I really don’t have the patience or mental capacity to be weighing all my words and his right now.

I close my eyes wishing I couldn’t see him but I do place a hand on the bowl and start infusing the water within. I don’t know what to think or do but I know he cannot be as harmless as his presence and demeanour implies he is sitting there pouting up into the all encompassing darkness like he can see things above us.

‘’So here is what will happen; the Lord heard your plea and has decided to help you achieve some of the goals you expressed an interest in.’’ He gives me a sidelong look, my heart rate is already increasing as I wonder what I’ve gotten myself into. Did we finish the deal, I don’t feel like we sealed the bargain. I look within me and find no new spiritual threads besides the ones I expect to feel already tied to me.

‘’We’re gonna go over your summoning spell, we will modify it for the Lord’s needs to my satisfaction and whilst we do that I will teach you all about Lord Phosphorus and the many blessings he brings to his followers.’’ The man stands, taller now than he was when he sat but that’s only one of the many peculiarities I’ve already noticed about him, ‘’we’ll talk again soon.’’

He leaves without making a sound, no limp to speak of.

I refill my water skins from the bowl, drink to my stomachs content, lie on my back on the wooden table in the middle of the room and fall asleep on a fool stomach and empty mind, I’m just so tired.

‘’I see I see, and what does this section here do?’’ The man, Wilson, asks pointing at a section of the glowing summoning circle drawn on the stone floor for him to peruse.’’

I grumble impotently whilst trying my damnest to learn anything I can from this quaky undecipherable man, ‘’I already told you I don’t know.’’

‘’Yes yes its not your spell, you’ve said. But how does it feel when you empower this part of the ritual?’’ he asks floating a foot from the ground in some way I am yet to figure out.

‘’This here section is the relief section of this part, its where I unwind explosively outwards after being bound tighter and tighter in these sections here,’’ I say talking him through the summoning dance. He grunts and nods sternly, his face that of a disapproving old man though I expect it to change sooner or later.

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We spend hours on it with him asking me about the broader strokes of the +++written sigils, dance and then into more details on the significant of each symbol and how it feels when I go through each section. Honestly speaking I learn a lot about the dance just from figuring it out with him asking and sometimes answering the questions.

Before I know it we are done for the day with me having drawn three different summoning circles of varying sizes for the outer boarder. The man, Wilson, leaves returning with another bowl of water I drink from without infusing with my own mana this time. I can taste the salts and other metals in the water but it goes down smoothly, surprisingly refreshingly so.

I explore the catacombs I’ve found myself stranded in. The walls are thick and hard, made of brick and mortar of a type I have never come across before. The walls sometimes house rows of shelves my perception can’t penetrate but I know hold old corpses, I looked. Other times they are just walls separating sections from each other in ways that make no sense to me from an architectural point of view, not that I know much about building.

The second day the man approaches me with a new face and another bowl of water, had I not had my own food I wonder what I would be eating down here. We get back to drawing and this time modifying the circle in more drastic ways than we did the day before, at least I think it was the day before. The sigils sparkle to my spiritual spectrum as I draw with a stylus the man has provided, it cuts into the floor easily pooling my channelled spirit-energy perfectly into the little groove wrought into the floor by its passage.

Its as easy as writing with quil on paper almost, I wonder how I could steal this implements without getting myself into permanent trouble. We try out the different circles in small sections.

If something isn’t done right there isn’t a continuous circulation of spirit energy from sigil to sigil and the ritual doesn’t feed on itself cascading onwards until the final result is the sum of all those little spells written into sigils and interpreted into the world. Done right its a work a geometric astrological art that channels spiritual energies for a specific purpose, thinning the barrier of reality.

It’s genius really, and as much as I look forward to getting out of here I enjoy learning about sorcery and the different ways I could apply it into the world using sigils. I learn much, improving control and understanding of my summoning circle and dance.

We test section by section of our modifications, he going by some sort of instinct and mumbling ravings of a madmen, me with my conclave training and years of experience living and interacting with spirit based creatures and abilities on a daily basis. A few attempts at a new type of summoning sigil fail, some staying dull duds that do absolutely nothing, others imploding on themselves taking a chunk of the solid stone floor with them.

There is great potential for this being a new weapon in my arsenal.

On the 4th day of this routine the man Wilson, now with a young handsome face thinks to add a three sided shape to the four sides of the circle and like that the sigil stabilises. Finally, whatever they wanted to do is done I feel in the way the sigils resonate with each other to my spirit senses. Senses I have been using constantly to see and get around in this lightless place of the dead.

Spirit Sense giving broad strokes of most things happening around me in the spiritual whilst focused details I perceive in my Spiritual Sphere of Influence when anything is within my Awareness. I know the symbols but I study them again greedily as I feel the resonance and power locked within these innocuous symbols, I can’t help feel excited having helped create a new spell. Or at least modify an old one.

‘’Ready to try it out?’’ The Acolyte asks with a wry little grin on his face floating up to me like a ghost to whom gravity is only a suggestion.

I nod, concentrating. This is a sorcerous ritual modified specifically for me to summon one of the spiritual threads I am connected to, manifesting it into the physical world but only if it itself is physically stable. Theoretically since Kier has a body this shouldn’t affect him negatively but one can never know with new spells, especially a new spell modified so radically that I no longer have to dance to activate it.

‘’Ahh hum. You have to say the words,’’ the Acolyte says needlessly. I ignore him playing out the spell activation in my mind before I speak. Here goes

‘’Ahham. As much as it pains me to say this I would rather the first attempt not be the intended body incase this fails and the body is destroyed and such, but otherwise carry on,’’ he gestures dismissively floating further away.

I really wasn’t gonna summon Kier anyways, his stolen body is my only bargaining tool I have. I breath, clearing my mind whilst looking at the complicated sigils drawn into the circle carved into the stone. I can feel the resonance within because its my energy that empowers it, its mine.

What is flesh must have spirit

What is spirit must become of flesh

Within and without intertwine into one.

What is mine I take from beyond the veil of space and time.

My words are laced delicately with spirit energy surgically fitting into the circle like a key in a keyhole. The circle glows brightly to my spirit senses with a heavy pressure cascading outward from the sigils. I grunt stumbling forward as a large amount of spirit energy just disappears from within me creating a void, I fall on my knees breathless, unable to move. The summoning circle is a door into my spiritual connections, I feel the Acolyte float forward with greedy eyes reaching into the circle.

It’s a door to my spiritual connections and I don’t know how to close it I realise in horror as the thing wearing the Acolyte reaches a hand forward within the circle, within me. What the fuck have I gotten myself into now? I do the first thing that comes to mind, I pull Honour in Death to the forefront like I would when summoning it through the dance.

My nodachi disappears from besides me leaving motes of floating fire, the Acolyte/Phosphorus or whatver pulls his smoking hand back holding something in the chured remains of an appendig and the circle closes with a pop casting everything back into darkness.

I pant on my knees hoping that I didn’t just get robed of the one bargaining tool I had in all this, my body is fine but I feel drained. I can hardly keep my eyes open and the rage has been far from me since I ate the spirit oppression kamikaze.

‘’Clever,’’ the Acolyte says with a snort then throws my nodachi back at my feet like some useless implement. So long as I’m alive I doubt anyone could wield Honour in Death, so I guess to him it s a useless implement.

‘’You have done well,’’ the spirit within Wilson speaks. I can’t tell how I know but I know its Phosphorus floating leisurely towards me like he didn’t just try to double cross me. Did he intentionally let me sense him before to later hide so I wouldn’t know whether I was dealing with Wilson or him directly? Did it teach all this for the chance to steal from me without paying for anything?

‘’Get some rest,’’ he waves dismissively and suddenly I can move again. ‘’We will speak again soon.’’