Symon maintained his position, kneeling in the sand as he stared blankly at the distant horizon. Even his positivity had its limits. He'd been buried alive in the sand, attacked by giant centipedes, and fought a giant chimera monster just for a slim chance of making it to some far-off -- maybe not even existent -- water. Maybe he could have stretched his vitality long enough to get to the trees before dying of thirst or the incessant heat, but that was before this spirit decided he'd like to take half of it. And he can't even get rid of the thing now?
I think I might just be doomed.
Symon wasn't sure how long he stared at the horizon. He wasn't giving up -- he'd spent his whole life struggling to survive and wasn't going to stop now -- but even his willpower could only go so far. He needed a break, to just sit for a while and not think about survival or this horrible situation he'd ended up in. The spirit was silent at least, and hadn't resumed its attempts to steal his vitality.
Small mercies.
----------------------------------------
Symon liked to think he was meditating, but it was more like the truth of the situation had crashed through his carefully built walls and momentarily shut him down. Thankfully, he was a practiced hand at this sort of thing. Eventually, he managed to force all his worries into a nice little box and focused on what he could actually do.
"So, I guess we're partners then," Symon said.
"Yep."
"Yep."
Symon took a deep breath. The spirit wasn't fighting him any more at least, although he wasn't sure if that was by choice or if the new ability forced it. Either way, he wasn't too worried about the chances of it turning on him again -- he'd already proved to them both that he could maintain the painful essence drain for as long as he wanted.
"Right, if we're going to be stuck together I'll need to know a few things. First of all, who and what are you?"
"You're a sailor?" Symon asked. It wasn't an important question, but he'd always had a distant fascination with the sea and couldn't stop himself.
Symon furrowed his brow, but he had more immediate questions he wanted answered. He'd have plenty of time to ask the sailing expert questions once he ensured his survival. The suns were getting close to dipping below the horizon, so he began making his way back towards the topmost section of the collapsed tower while he talked.
"Right... where are we and how do we get to civilisation?"
He had to tread carefully here. He didn't want to raise some uncomfortable questions about how he'd ended up in the middle of a desert he didn't know the name of. Maybe it was common for lost souls to get reincarnated here and it wouldn't be a big deal, or maybe he'd get kidnapped by the local government and experimented on for all of his world traveler secrets like electricity and germ theory.
He decided it would be best to just keep it to himself until he trusted the spirit, which at this rate would be never.
"I woke up half buried in the sand not so far from this tower. I don't remember anything from before then," Symon delivered with a straight face. It was simple and partially true, which meant it was good enough for his purposes. It would be the perfect cover for his lack of basic knowledge, he hoped.
Did Keelgrave... actually believe that? Symon would have been happy with that news, if not for the fact that it implied wizards wiping your memories and dumping you in a massive lifeless desert was a known occurence.
"Err yeah, probably something like that. So how do I get out of this place?"
"And there are people there?"
He let out a deep sigh. He'd been really hoping there was a town nearby. It still sounded better than the desert.
"Is this coast close, at least?"
Symon glanced down at his vessel tattoo. It was almost empty. He passed by the body of the bearcat as he clambered through the entrance to the tower, considering cutting the creature up for its meat -- but he had no way of cooking it. Even if he did, he'd die from the lack of water first anyway.
"I might have had pretty decent chances until someone came along and helped themselves to most of my vitality."
"Uh, yes? I most definitely can fault you. I'm going to continue faulting you for it for a long time."
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
Symon just rolled his eyes. He wasn't sure if this Keelgrave was being serious or not. It was even odds, he thought.
He asked the ghost if he knew what their new ability actually did, to which he claimed he was as new to it as Symon was, and by the time he made it back to the top floor he was quite frankly tired of talking with the spirit.
It hadn't been very long in terms of time, but communicating with him was uniquely draining. He supposed it was fitting, he had powers to suck the life out of things and in turn he was possessed by a spirit that made his life suck.
Symon laid down in one of the empty bed frames, the soft parts having deterioated away into nothingness. It wasn't comfortable, but he found he wanted to sleep bad enough that it wasn't much of an impediment. He wasn't physically exhausted -- it seemed his healing took care of that -- but his mind needed rest.
He was a little worried about the spirit trying something while he slept, but he was confident he'd feel it if the spirit started tugging on his vitality again. Besides, it wasn't like he could just forgo sleeping.
Almost as soon as he laid down, the swirling thoughts in his mind calmed down, his tense muscles relaxed, and he drifted off to sleep.
----------------------------------------
Symon had many dreams that night, although they all blurred together into one. He was clad in full plate armour like a european knight, fighting the enemy soldiers with his mace and shield. He was taller, stronger, better than all of them; with each step he would shoulder someone to the ground, his sabatons trampling them as he charged alone into enemy ranks. A single lazy swing would cave in ribs, making men fly a dozen metres through the air with the impact. When they retreated like cowards, he reached out with the thick, dark grey coils of his magic and yanked them back, sending them sprawling to the ground. They begged and pleaded, but he couldn't understand them through the euphoric haze of battle. He wouldn't have listened, anyway. His magic coiled up like a snake before plunging into their hearts, refilling his reserves and sending them to oblivion. The arrows embedded in the gaps of his armour pushed their way out, his wounds sealing over as he resumed his slow, steady, inexorable harvesting through the cattle.
----------------------------------------
He was on the very top of a massive mountain, his skinny, shrivelled body locked in a meditative pose, milky eyes staring at the brilliant night sky. It was perfectly silent, save for the whistling of the wind. A woman had made the journey up from the small town at the base of the mountain, a babe in one hand and a leash leading a large goat in the other.
His gaze dropped from the stars, settling on a sprawling city that must have housed half a million souls that nearly filled the nearby plains -- this was no tiny mining camp. Just how long had he been in his meditations? It was no matter anyway, time had little meaning after the first thousand years.
The mother was still standing silently behind him. He could feel her heart thundering inside her chest, but she was waiting patiently without a conscious sound. Good, he thought, at least these new generations still have some respect for the old ways. His magic twitched and vibrated through the air, invisible to all but him -- it was begging to pull the vitality from her defenceless body. He denied it.
Back still turned, he focused on the two other sources of vitality. The babe was weak, its heart fluttering like a candle on a cold, windy night. Some sort of sickness. The goat's life was strong, although a little old. It opened its mouth to bleat out and break the silence, but he had already turned it to dust. The babe let out a mewling cry, and the woman stiffened in fear. He let them go with a wave of his hand and returned his gaze to the stars.
The woman held the babe closer, then turned and made her way back down the mountain, two hearts steadily thumping.
----------------------------------------
He was inside a giant worm, holding onto daggers lodged into the inside of its throat to prevent him from slipping any further. He'd been paid more than generously for needing to come out on such short notice -- the adventurers who were supposed to deal with it almost certainly dead -- but truthfully he would have culled the monsters for free. With such a bounty of vitality just waiting to be harvested, who knew how far he could push his vessel? Which previously impossible places would be open for him to explore? He smiled to himself as the worm writhed in pain, jostling him around as its massive form leaked vitality into him. Hmm, perhaps it would be enough for him to finally get his vengeance on the-
----------------------------------------
Symon lurched his way to wakefulness, finding himself back in the darkness of the collapsed tower. He let out a shuddering breath as he centered himself -- what were those dreams? They felt so vivid, so real. The magic felt so familiar to him and yet different from what he'd begun to grow used to.
Forcibly blinking his eyes, he pushed himself upright and took stock of his situation.
The room was blissfully cool, but he knew it would be short lived. Soon, he'd be back to trudging through the white sands while the suns try and roast him alive. Staying in the tower would mean dying of thirst, and he knew the dark stone would do an excellent job absorbing the sunlight and turning his room into an oven.
The ghost was silent, and it didn't seem like it had done anything untoward while he slept. Symon briefly wondered if the ghost slept too.
"So, any clue what this thing is?" Symon asked, referring to the giant brass contraption in the middle of the room. It looked kind of like a steampunk telescope, but only vaguely. He wasn't happy about being stuck with the spirit, but he'd be a fool to not get what use he could from him.
"And what do you think would happen to you after that? Going to hitch a ride on a desert centipede after I croak?"
Keelgrave didn't reply, but Symon wasn't expecting a proper answer anyway. Instead, he was giving the contraption another look over for anything useful. The metal was in surprisingly good condition, but some of the joints and screws were made of a different material that hadn't resisted the ravages of time near as well as the main base of the machine.
Inspecting a particularly rusted connection, he had an idea. Grabbing onto a long protruding pipe, a little narrower than his forearm and a little longer than one of his arms, he began pulling at it. Nothing happened, so he braced one foot against the base of the machine and heaved back with all his strength. It creaked and shifted ever so slightly.
"Oh shut it," he said between breaths, as the pipe slowly bent back at a glacial pace. He pulled and pulled with burning muscles, shifting his grip as he tried to find a better way to grab it. If only he was as strong as one of the guys from his dreams, he could probably have snapped the whole machine in half if he so wished. Well, probably not the old guy, but Symon felt he had a different type of strength.
Still, by using the weight of his whole body and grabbing the tube by the end to use it as a lever, he eventually broke it off with a snap, one of the bolts flying off and pinging against the wall.
Thanks, Archimedes.
Of course, the downside to throwing your whole weight behind trying to rip off a pipe is that you go flying backwards and land on your ass when it eventually does snap, in this case much to the amusement of an accompanying spirit. Nonetheless, after dusting himself off Symon was quite happy with his find -- if you squinted it was effectively a metal baseball bat. It was a little heavier than Symon would have liked, but not to the point that he wouldn't be able to use it effectively.
The next time a centipede tried to take a bite out of him, it'd get hit with a big chunk of metal in exchange. It wasn't exactly a sleek and deadly sword, but its heft was still reassuring to Symon -- not to mention more effective in his inexperienced hands.
Part of Symon was tempted to try and study some of the books -- who knows what interesting things he could learn about such a foreign culture? -- but he was already pressed for time as is. Besides, he wanted to make a start before the sands warmed up too much.
Stepping outside, he couldn't help but take a few moments to appreciate the sunrise. It was beautiful, bright pinks and oranges streaking through the sky and colouring the sands. Even the spirit constantly churning around his vessel seemed to slow down, as if it was taking in the view.
He supposed it must have been a long, long time since Keelgrave had seen the sunrise.