Sachihiro

I manage to calm myself down enough not to immediately start demanding answers about the Doorway to The Dead on the map.

One step at a time Sachihiro, I can’t just keep rushing into things half-drawn and expect shit to go my way. First I need to figure out what’s going on with me.

The crystals came out of me as if from spirit bound storage ring, but I’ve lost my storage ring haven’t I?

I stumble back slowly, sitting on an outcropping rock jutting out of like a table. I’m dizzy, I feel weak from the sudden depletion of spiritual energy. I’m suddenly nervous, it’s cold, there is sudden fear in my heart. Strong fear, guy twisting, I need a bowel movement now typa fear.

Forcefully I stop myself shaking, deep breath Sachi, deep breath.

My hand has already reached behind my back but the spot is empty, I’m clenching thin air a second time before stopping myself coming to my senses.

Where is Honour in Death?

I blink, suddenly not comfortable with everything I see. Sight is no longer something I’m used to, the grayscale bichromatic experience unsettling. Every shadow is heavy with implied threat, more crooked and sharper than you’d expect, shadows with teeth and claws salivating to pull me in.

"Steel."

I jolt towards the threat before stopping myself attacking. The word pulls my attention to the odd figure in this dark unfamiliar forest of stone.

It brings me back to myself to see his curious expression and taste his carefree aura still hasn’t changed.

Intuitively I can read aura's much easier nowadays than I ever could before. I wasn’t sure at first but with how easily I’m feeling a higher tiereds aura I’m sure. Aeonian's personality is easy for me to see into because I can literally feel a lot of his aura and it was the same with his brother, the strange Castro Black.

Or is it just they both don't hide their auras from being read? No, I've felt them activity trying to keep them masked.

"Steel," his curiosity brings me back to myself.

"Yes?"

Okay calm down, mind calm down as well. There are no teeth in the shadows my awareness confirms.

The dizziness eases.

And if there are shadows I’ll fight them off with nails and teeth if I have to. I am not yet ready to give up fighting.

"Are you dying?"

I use his feel and appearance as a weight to anchor myself in the moment. I tie his appearance to my awareness with what I’m seeing visually. I look at him fully with every sense I have and try to catalogue him, see him as much as possible. He is one of the few things I know to be real, I felt his vibrations. He mana is very muted right now but its a very neutral flavour, his aura shifts between curious/bored/contemplative/excited.

"No, I’m not dying."

My attention goes back to the crystals on the map with uncanny precision. Those points mark themselves in relation to each other on the map. The division makes me sure what I’m seeing. Two groups separated, one on the ocean another in the Foothills, safe I hope.

Again a dizzying bout of fear grabs my heart with cold claws.

[BA-BA].

It beats in loud staccatos that have my own hand clawing at my chest in a mudra whilst reaching for my now non-existent warding necklace.

This is a spiritual attack!

I lean over, [euuuuk].

Puking watery acidic slim onto the rock, breathing, unleashing cleansing Spirit-Aura with a heavy effort of will.

Slowly, ponderously it comes as I keep pushing against some resistance, but I'm determined. Why is this so hard? I grit my teeth pushing spirit-aura out from within me.

Slowly I’m freed from the dizzying confusion of fear as spirit mixes with my weaponized cleansing aura in Spirit Aura. I throw the stick with a dash of spirit energy pulsed in the action.

The blood crystals scatter from the impact, the connection to my spiritual self severed. Things saw that map alignment with my spirit, things out there.

I look around in paranoid worry reflexively in a fighting stance. I stand straight, quickly collecting the scattered crystals under the watchful Sleeker who has been passively watching me this whole minute.

"You were saying something?" I prompt him as the stones disappear into my left hand without any trouble.

"Oh, I forgot you can see me," he says like I’ve caught him in a trick.

Ahh, I can only see him through my awareness. I didn’t realise he had suddenly disappeared from sight since I see/feel him as clear as day through my awareness.

He grins, "you have spiritual powers. Yes, brother did mention you were a sorcerer," he says with a smirk.

And you can exclude yourself from the sight buff you've given me. This guy is dangerous.

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He floats out of my awareness the map rolling itself following him. It disappears from sight outside my awareness, as the giver of my sight he controls what I see. Strong power, since it doesn’t seem like I could resist a 'buff' if I didn’t want one.

Everything seems back to normal. The shadows not as scary, nothing as heavy as it seemed but a moment ago.

"You're leaving?"

"Just sitting over here," he says back at the high ledge across the dark crevice I want to cross. The ease with which he crosses the divide mocks me.

"Aren’t you worried about us being overhead by preditors?" Like that scavengers that took the opportunity to leech my spirit energy from the working that just took place.

"Nothing in any direction for miles," he waves away the concern. "Unless of course, you sense spiritual ears dropping eaves at our feet?" he asks in conspiritual whisper.

"I trust your assessment," this guy is strong or careless.

…

"So what was all that?" he waves his hand at me encapsulating everything in the gesture.

"What was all what?"

"Oh come on don’t be coy you know you need my help getting back home."

"That’s an option now?"

"Oh come on, if you have business at the Doorway to The Dead and you’re crazy enough to pursue it then you might be interesting enough for me to have another argument with brother over."

Think Sachi think, "what are you offering?"

"Nothing much really," he shrugs then thinks.

"How about you speak and I see if I like you or not."

"So I divulge my secrets and when I have none you leave me here having satisfied all your interest."

"Is everything of interest about you in the past? Is your history and current power all that you’ll ever have to trade? If I know all your secrets do I truly leave you that bankrupt of further interest?"

So you want me to put a value on my life experiences vs the possibility of you helping getting me out of here?

"My life is a private affair, my privacy is very valuable to me."

"To make new friends we have to open ourselves to some vulnerability."

Friendship cannot be bought, "it’s your friendship I’m buying by divulging myself then?"

"No, but it will go a long way in peaking my future interest, unless it doesn’t. It’s better if we find that out now rather than waste both our time no?"

This guy is very shrewd, I don’t like it.

"What do you want to know?"

"What was all that?" he asks again in almost the same tone.

How do I even begin to answer that?

"Its hard to interpret,"

"As all sorcerer’s claim about sorcery, please try."

Where to even start?

"My spiritual energy is depleted, I use it a lot and often. I received a spiritual attack, I don’t know from where. It could have been a spiritual creature in the spirit-realm that happen to be passing close by on the other side of the boundary here, it could have been something here with spiritual powers. It or they were attracted to me by the casting of those stones on your map, there was a spiritual draw from me to align them as they were."

"How did you 'cast' those stone by the way, where are they now? I didn’t sense any mana fluctuations on you."

"Not everything relies on mana."

"True, but I studied you very thoroughly before bringing you to my camp. I found nothing on you that’d suggest you can do that. I’ve estimated the amount of energy or time it would take for you to be able to do what you can do.

"At only 2nd level Awakened you shouldn’t be as physically tough as you are unless you’d maybe fully specialised and Awakened as a full physical specialist. A warrior variety of some sort, but you clearly have gift’s with mana and sorcery as well, and this vibration wave sensing ability you have which is neither mana or sorcery based.

"You can’t be older than 80 at most Victoria affirmed, so it’s not time that’s given you such depth. It could be treasures, amulets, artifacts hidden away on you somehow but Doc would have spotted even invisible trinkets giving you a boost.

"But now I see you have some sort of sorcerous portal Doc couldn’t pierce with his eye, meaning it’s part of you. Tied to you physically somehow though if I understand sorcery well enough. An enchantment?"

"It’s a storage ring," I blurt out 'cause that surprised me as well.

"Huh?"

Could it be?

"When I went into the stone I had a storage ring on my finger. Fae made to be spiritually bound and accessed. I lost it with everything else I had in the suicide tuning-stone, it melted, I think. But it’s still part of me somehow."

He cocks his head to the side analysing me again, or thinking, or both.

"Let me get this straight. You had a sorcery bound fae made interdimensional storage device when you went into the stone to kill yourself."

"I wasn’t trying to kill myself," technically not true.

"A ring and other equipment, forged equipment, tough, made by fae of spiritual steel was reduced to slag. But you, a soft skinned, water based biological being wasn’t. But then it turns out your equipment was basically broken down to liquid it still somehow works."

"Basically," I shrug.

"Since it uses sorcerous mechanisms I suppose," he sounds skeptical.

"You sound skeptical."

"A bit, but I know you haven’t lied except once and the fae are excellent craftsman."

"Your brother said something similar."

"What?"

"Nothing," does that mean I haven’t lost anything I had stored in my spirit bound ring? What of Kata and Razor?

"Okay, I guess that tracks somewhat as a theory, back to-"

"Maybe we can travel and talk, if we’re going to become traveling companions we might as well start now. You’ll learn everything about me as we go, you gonna help me or not?"

He frowns, getting up from his crouch on the ledge.

"I’m still on an expedition now, you’d have to wait for it to finish before I could see about getting you home. I have other responsibilities as well, might take years really."

"Will it be quicker than if I tried to get home by manual travel?"

"By a factor of 10 or more."

"I don’t mind waiting for you to finish your business so long it’s not longer than two years and we help each other out along the way."

"Mmmh, I’m not making an oath. But I promise to help you however I can so long as it doesn’t hurt me or mine."

"And try to help me get back to my people."

"And try to help you get home," he nods once.

"Thanks," I say lifting my empty hand out to him.

"Sure," he says lifting his towards me.

…

This has been an odd conversation.

"Can you help me across to your side?"

It sorta embarrasses me to ask someone like that but beggers can't be prickly with their pride. Need to test the extent of this new understanding anyways.

He grumble at me.

"Fine, but I don’t like carrying people. So I’ll buff you so you can make the jump yourself."

You can do that?

"Thanks,"

"Whatever."

Neither of us moves. I'm not gonna push, I can sense he's not satisfied with our exchange and is taking in the information we've shared.

Honestly speaking I'm taking it in myself. I'm still self assessing what happened to me. Judging by the stones' locations on his map it's one of the kid's with Shae and Isis that's recently passed.

Why are two of them so far from the Foothills though? Could that mapping be inaccurate? I felt it connect to me spiritually though, energy left me as the crystals aligned themselves revealing where my kids are.

No, that was an accurate depiction of where my kids are on the map. I can't doubt that though I can't fully say how I know. Some sort of spiritual scrying, not to be done out in the open like that ever again.

My spiritual energy is very depleted, I need to find a way to replenish it. I can only think of bad options currently.

I had so much of it. Where did it all go?

"Now you have to tell me where you're going at least."

Shit, I only thought of him helping me home. Forgot completely I had other places to be as well, how will that work?

Know what, fuck Phosphorus and fuck his new body. He can keep the body I got him, I wanted to be rid of Airell anyways.

I'll get the promised power 'cause I'm so close to it but I'll find another way to be free of spirits for good and make my own wealth.

"You'll see I guess. Come buff me and let's go, I'm tired of being here."

"Fine, but I'm not gonna babysit you. If you die you die."

He says that so matter-of-factly.

"Same to you."