Kyron and I both jump at the voice, facing the spot where it originated. A space a couple of yards away from us, above the deck. There's nothing there… at first. I notice the shift in spirits a moment before motes of water, earth, and air essence begin to appear, collecting in a single spot, right where the voice seemed to originate.
The cat jumps off of my shoulder and approaches the collecting spirit motes, then jumps up into it… turning transparent as it does.
Then the cat bursts into motes as well, the same types as the collecting ones. As the spirit begins to take form, the feeling of being observed from all directions fades away. This spirit takes awhile to actually shift out of mote form, but I recognized the voice almost immediately.
"Akrazidonn," I say once he's taken on his form.
Unlike the other spirits we've encountered so far, Akrazidonn isn't in human form – he's in catkin form. Well, Volzaminat was in foxkin form, but that wasn't until the end of our visit with him. Akrazidonn makes no effort to blend in with local higher spirits, though.
He's 5'9" in height, with a slender build and a lighter complexion. His hair is brownish-grey, his eyes bluish-green with whitish-grey spikes around his pupils. The spirit has a slight smile, a playful look, and is currently floating upside, as if sitting on an imaginary ceiling, though he's slowly rotating.
Like all catkin, Akrazidonn has no human ears, instead having the ears of a cat higher up on his head, as well as a cat's tail coming out from right-above his ass. Both are the same coloration as his hair, though they each have a whitish-grey tip.
The spirit's halo is made of crystallized air, with earth magic crystals and water magic crystals set into it. A silver necklace hangs around his neck, from which hangs a bluish-grey crystal in the shape of a teardrop. Since he's upside-down, the necklace is hanging downward at the moment, tapping against his halo.
Akrazidonn wears a single anklet and no bracelets, the anklet made of dark brown leather cords braided together, nine crystal beads set into it. There are three each of water, earth, and air magic crystals, alternating elements around the anklet.
Instead of multiple bracelets and anklets, Akrazidonn has just the one, and it's something I made him when I was little. He does, however, have bluish-green markings on the back of each hand, the markings stretching halfway up the back of his forearms.
His dick's as big as my husband's, but I think he has a little more foreskin.
"Hello, Caleb!" Akrazidonn greets me. "How are you?"
"Akrazidonn?" Kyron asks. "Wait, the spirit from where you grew up?"
"Yup!" Akrazidonn answers. "I didn't recognize you the last time you came here, Caleb! Thought you were some other random spirit-beloved kid the same age! You had the same black hair and green eyes, sure, but-"
"Now I know what's going on," I sigh.
"What do you mean?" Kyron asks.
"There was no mortal trick involved in concealing the ship's information," I point at the spirit. "It was this doofus. Look, Kyron – the spirits are still glowing here. And there are significantly less than there were before."
"They don't normally glow for very long," Kyron says.
"Maybe," I say. "But most of the spirits that were here were actually part of Krazzy. Remember how I said that spirits react to things due to the universe making changes?"
"Yeah."
"If the majority don't react," I say. "Then the rest won't. Since the majority were all part of Krazzy, all he had to do was not react when the universe wanted to adjust the lesser spirits in other ways. They would follow his lead instead. He was keeping the secret. And he was apparently also the cat, which explains its ancient age."
This also explains the feeling of being watched from all directions – we were literally being observed by a spirit who was everywhere in the air, the water, and the stone around us.
"Yup!" Akrazidonn grins at me before flipping over so that he's right-side-up now, leaning back slightly with his knees bent and legs lifted up a little, his hands behind his head. "I did recognize him after you guys came here together. I was like 'hey! It's that kid that was here a thousand years ago! It was a thousand years ago, right?' and the little spirits were all 'yeah, it was him can we hug him?' and I was like 'no, you can't hug him, he finds that weird', and then I decided to go back to my cat's form."
"Lesser spirits can want to hug?" Kyron quietly asks me.
"Just roll with it," I respond.
"That thing is really nifty, by the way," he continues. "I can shift into it and hide the fact that I'm a spirit by keeping most of my essence distributed in here, as if I'm just a bunch of lesser spirits. It's why no one else realized I was here. Well, except your dad, but he already knew-"
"My dad?" I ask. "So he was more involved than just helping make the ship?"
"-that I was here," it looks like we'll have to wait this out, though Kyron's expression of bafflement is amusing. "But other than him, no one realized because I was devoting most of my essence to imitating lesser spirits. Eikrikodoz liked to come down and visit, and I fooled even him, and he was an Elder Spirit long before I reached that status. Since I knew you were probably going to go pay the local higher spirits a visit – at least, the big-shot – I decided to tag along. I mean, you guys had been talking about the ship, anyway, and you'd said some stuff that confused me.
"It wasn't until you were talking with Eikrikodoz that I realized that you were little Axel!"
"Axel?" Kyron asks.
"He changed his name, his outfit, his way of speaking, his-"
"Krazzy!" I exclaim. "I changed everything so that I blended in more with the locals instead of standing out!"
"Yeah," the spirit says. "But you made yourself pretty much unrecognizable! Your father and I had even heard of rumors of you, but we didn't realize it was you because he didn't recognize you!"
"My father?" I ask. "Wait, he was here?"
"Yeah," Akrazidonn answers. "After you ran away, he went straight to Rezzy to ask him if he knew where you'd gone, only to find the dragon gone. He immediately realized you'd probably fled the continent, and so spent a year and a half sourcing materials for this ship, then built the ship. Asked me if I'd bind into it and let it feed on my power for its defenses and weapons, as well as to manipulate the waves and wind to guide it. It was a pretty fun journey. Promised him I'd keep the ship safe until he found you."
"Until he fo-you do realize he died at least nine hundred years ago, right?" I ask. "And that it's unreasonable to expect me to have lived much longer than that, if I even reached a century in age?"
"Well, we were certain you were dead," Akrazidonn says. "Your father let me know after the war that Rezzy'd told him that you'd died in it. That was the first time Rezzy would actually talk with him, and then he told your father to bug off. I was just having fun being a ship. Sometimes, I'll even take my ship out to sea just to mess with the humans in the nearby town. They always freak out over it. There are a couple of ocean spirits that live near where I take the ship, and we sometimes play games, too. Or have sex. That part's fun, too. There was this one time-"
After another minute of Akrazidonn's rambling, Kyron looks at me.
"I can see why you two got along," he says. "Does he always ramble this much?"
"When he has a story to tell, yeah," I nod. "Don't worry, I know a surefire way to stop him."
"Really?" Kyron asks. "Can you do it?"
"Not yet," I shrug. "I'm actually enjoying listening to his story, and we've learned the cause of the ship's mysteries."
An Elder Spirit bound into it, which is how it can function without sails, and he takes it out to sea sometimes just to mess with the locals. He also spread most of his essence into the surrounding area in order prevent the lesser spirits from revealing the ship's secrets. Akrazidonn still reacts to things as normal for things like moving around and casting spells and such, but not when it comes to the ship's secrets.
The mysterious cat that's lived for a thousand years was apparently Akrazidonn using only a very tiny portion of his power when taking on a physical form.
The ship came over here because my father wanted to look for me after I ran away, and he apparently figured things out really fast after I fled. How did we never hear tales of him, though? Before I realized I needed to change things, I'd already confused an entire town. The way I blended in wasn't available to my father, so he couldn't have possibly done that.
Stories of him should have spread around. Quickly, too. I get the feeling that Akrazidonn won't give me answers about that if I ask, so I decide not to and just let him keep talking for a few minutes.
"So you left your cats behind to come look for me?"
"Of course!" Akrazidonn stops mid-sentence in a story about a time some people tried stealing his ship and he fed them to a leviathan that lives a hundred miles away. "I wasn't going to just uproot them from their homes, they'd already become part of the area! I told them to make sure that whatever spirit took over the area knew how things worked there for a smoother transition. Now, I haven't actually checked in on them in a thousand years, but I'm sure everything's going well."
In other words, either his cats are now submissive to a spirit, completely wiped out, or have become domesticated by the locals. Well, I guess there's also the possibility they got moved somewhere else, too.
"Okay," I say. "So you just hang around here, watching the ship and messing with the locals?"
"Yup!" Akrazidonn answers. "But now that we've found you, I'm gonna hang out with you for awhile!"
Kyron doesn't look to sure about that. There's a difference between a spirit accompanying us into a Dungeon – and we only just learned that was possible, and it was a calmer spirit – and one actually traveling with us. Spirits being bound to an area kind of has a reason, even if some are able to move about freely if they so wish.
"Oh! And don't worry about my cat form!" Akrazidonn says. "I heard you mentioning you don't like cats! Watch this!"
He transforms into the cat form he's been using here, only its body is a little bit shorter, as are its legs, which are also a little bit thicker, resembling a bear's legs more than a cat's, and his tail is more fluffy, like a fox's. Now, his coloration is a dark bluish-green with white-grey tips to his ears, tail, and on his paws that darken in a transition to the bluish-green. There's a brownish-grey patch on his chest in the shape of a teardrop and another on the top of his head that's more like a blob, as well as a pattern in that color on each side.
"I'm more adorable in this form," he tells me as it transitions to become a tangible form, stretching and doing some twists and turns to show it off, his tail flowing about to help accent his movements. "Aren't I just the most adorable thing ever?"
"Sorry, but that title goes to me," I stick my tongue out at him.
"What about the ship?" Kyron asks. "I take it that means you aren't going to be bound to it anymore? How long are spirits able to remain unbound?"
"Elder Spirits can remain unbound indefinitely!" Akrazidonn says. "And I was only looking after the ship until Axel's father found him!"
"Yeah, and he would've died no less than nine centuries ago, Krazzy," I roll my eyes.
"That's not that long!"
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Akrazidonn is one of those spirits that really needs to get a better grasp of time and mortal lifespans. Even I, a being who knows the full Truth, would be unable to escape the laws of this universe we live in. My father would never stand a chance.
"You do realize that most people don't live for more than about fifty to sixty years, right?" I ask. "And even the most powerful of us, with the highest of Vitality, can't make it past about three centuries? The latter being because the universe comes to wipe us out due to our influence upon this world and its state being too high? You do realize that, right?"
Akrazidonn just looks confused, as if this is a new concept to him.
"He's not all there in the head, is he?" Kyron asks.
"He's a spirit," I say. "They don't measure time the same way that we do. Krazzy, how long have you been an Elder Spirit?"
"Hm…" Akrazidonn thinks, his catlike form jumping into the air, returning to his catkin spirit form in a seated position, slowly rotating through the air. "It was before Paxton was born. How long ago was that?"
"Who?" I ask, but the spirit's lost in his thoughts.
"Paxton died long before Ryker was born. How long ago was Ryker born? It was during that beautiful meteor shower. Or was that his son? Or was his son conceived during the meteor shower, and born during the eclipse? Maybe Ryker was born during that meteor shower, and his wife gave birth during an eclipse? How long was it between the meteor shower and the eclipse? Seven months? Seventeen? Seven years? Seventeen?"
"What's going on?" Kyron quietly asks as Akrazidonn continues.
"There's a reason I almost never asks spirits how long something has been," I say. "Surely you've noticed before that they tend to be bad at measuring it. There's a reason Boraniavos said 'the other century' in reference to finding my staff – he probably quite literally couldn't remember exactly how long ago it was in human terms. Spirits tend to measure time by events they found interesting. But this doesn't make sense… I thought he was just a normal higher spirit. He was an Elder Spirit even before I was born?"
I guess that so far in our lives, Kyron never realized this about spirits and their measurement of time. Usually, they're okay with more short-term things, usually within the last decade. Beyond that, they tend to not care unless it relates to a significant event.
While I do know how long ago Boraniavos likely found Novabodos, he wasn't what told me. His explanation was that it happened about the same time most people died off. He was out traveling to see the effects on the world of the great disaster, and came across the staff in the ruins of a temple. That disaster was likely the one six hundred years ago – when the universe killed some dragons.
Learning history can help tell when things were, but if a spirit is referring to specific people or just events that didn't make it into the notes of history, it can be more difficult. We do at least know the minimum amount of time that Akrazidonn has been a spirit, however, due to me knowing at least one of the people he's talking about.
"You already know how long things have been?" Kyron asks.
"Ryker's my dad," I tell him. "I was born during an eclipse, which is what tipped me off to that being the same. I don't know who Paxton is, but that's a name from the eastern continents. Krazzy. Krazzy. Krazzy! KRAZZY!"
"Yes?" The spirit quickly switches to an upright seated position.
"Who is Paxton?"
"Paxton was that annoying mage that sealed away the demons," Akrazidonn says. "Really annoying. I'm glad the universe wiped him out after awhile. Most of us spirits were. He was like you, but annoying and arrogant. Maybe that's the difference of a true mage in their core who knows the Truth and one who doesn't?"
"Well, the Truth is a sobering thing," I shrug. "If I learned it after getting a bit strong, I'd have probably been a lot more arrogant than I am now."
"Arrogance is when your sense of self, your importance, or your abilities is exaggerated," Akrazidonn says. "You're quite aware of your powers and limitations as well as your own limitations. You're not arrogant. We could say cocky, but cocky also includes arrogance, if you look at the definition. You're simply a confident people dealing with people who are beneath him."
"A confident… people?" I raise an eyebrow. "You mean 'person', right?"
"Sure, yeah," Akrazidonn splits into two identical people, who then each split into two, resulting in four identical Akrazidonns floating in the air. "Look, Axel! Now I'm people!"
"And my name is Caleb now," I say. "Not Axel."
"But Axel is such a cute name," the four Akrazidonns return to one. "It suits you so much, especially now that you're older."
I sigh.
"Alright," I say. "You can keep calling me that. The only reason I even changed my name was to make it more like the names of this area, to avoid standing out. I do actually like my original name."
"Awesome!" Akrazidonn exclaims, pumping out his fists and feet in his excitement. As he continues talking, he returns to a cross-legged position and leans forward, holding his ankles in a motion that causes him to slowly start spinning again. "What next, Axel? You going to rest here for the night? Get straight back to adventuring? Beat up some monsters that could really use a beating?"
"There's a town we're using as a rest point while we do our adventuring right now," I inform him as I flick his forehead, reversing the spin. He stops the spin on his own power once he's leaning back some, but otherwise still in the same position as before. "Whatever being resurrected us must have manipulated things to ensure the Dungeon's spawn there, so that we'd have a central base to start off with. Nearly everything we're doing right now, even the stuff that's coming up as we go off and do things, is within five hundred miles of there."
"Ooh! Fun times!"
"Yeah," I say. "We're going to return there and rest for another day, and I'm going to make a present for Rezovekk. After that, we're going to go visit him and say 'hi'. He's probably upset that I haven't come to visit already, but I'm sure he'll understand once I give him a present and let him know that we needed to build up some strength and regain our casting skills first, to ensure we could make the journey more safely."
"Good idea!" Akrazidonn says. "Hey! Before you go, want to go somewhere that's only about three hundred miles from here? There's a lake with a water dragon, and he's holding onto Durazvokir right now. He's a baby, only has about 50 Constitution."
Which means the dragon's somewhere between 150-300 years old, depending on his Level. I wonder how he found that sword? It's possible he inherited it from another dragon, though at least that means we can get the sword before going to retrieve the matching shield. That will make things a lot easier.
"He's holding onto it?" I ask.
"Yeah," Akrazidonn says. "He'll give it to you once he knows your husband is the true owner of it. He's a massive fan of the Sage of Fire and the Saint of Frost."
"Really?" I ask.
"Yup!" Akrazidonn switches to a position that makes it seem like he's just reached the peak of a jump. "I heard from other spirits that he's always talking about you two and how strong you are!"
"That's nice," I say. "So back to previous questions that we never got answers to, Krazzy. First, did you figure out how long you've been an Elder Spirit for?"
"I was only an Elder Spirit for four thousand one hundred and eighteen years," Akrazidonn says. "I became an Ancient Spirit eight thousand six hundred and seventy-three years ago."
There are spirits that old? I didn't think there were any older than around three or four thousand years. Even if Akrazidonn has difficulty measuring time the way we mortals do, I trust his counts once he actually figures them out. If he says he's that old, then he truly is that old.
"…what's an Ancient Spirit?"
"Wow! You actually understood what I said this time!" Akrazidonn exclaims, almost looking happier than I've ever seen him in my life. "I tried telling you that not long before you ran away, but like your husband there, my words never reached your brain."
"Am I going to get an answer?"
"Nope!"
"Why not?"
"Because it wouldn't be fair for you to know, but not your husband."
"There's a lot of things I know that my husband doesn't."
"Like how incredibly sexy he is," Akrazidonn says. "Have you married him yet?"
"Krazzy," I say as Kyron looks absolutely confused. "Husband is what a man is after he marries. Boyfriends are what we were before we married."
"Oh! I mix those up a lot," Akrazidonn shrugs, then switches back to my old language. "Ancient Spirits are the oldest of the higher spirits. We're among the first that ever came to be, but being this old isn't enough on its own. We have a certain level of spirit essence within us, as well as a certain other thing I can't say, a direct result of when we formed and how we were back then. Not all spirits from back then can become an Ancient Spirit because of that last part. Eikrikodoz is an Ancient Spirit as well. We tend to pretend to be just normal higher spirits or Elder Spirits.
"In reality," he floats toward the cave entrance, seemingly a faint glow around him. "We are spirits with expansive domains. Eikrikodon is the Ancient Spirit of the Sky. I am the Ancient Spirit of the Ovoldros Ocean."
The glow isn't something he's consciously doing – some spirits react to certain light levels by emitting a glow, and I kind of stopped casting the [Fire Orb]s, and the sky has turned even darker. The reason I stopped casting the orbs was intentional – Akrazidonn looks even more spirit-like with the faint glow coming out of his transparent form.
"You're the what?" I ask in my original native language. "You're not just 'an' ocean spirit, you're the spirit of the entire Ovoldros Ocean?"
"Yes," he nods, then stretches out his arms and legs. "The entire ocean here is my domain. It is one of the reasons I could fool even the Sky Spirit himself. My energy is already everywhere. The waters within this cove already belong to me. All I had to do was disperse the motes that make up my core self into the air, to imitate lesser spirits, and my camouflage was complete! Ah, but do not think that Eikrikodoz is superior to me just because his domain is larger, being the sky itself. In terms of power, we're roughly equal."
"And this information can't normally be understood by people?" I ask.
"Nope!" Akrazidonn answers. "I mean, your father actually figured this stuff out on his own – it's why he asked me if I knew which way you'd gone, and if not, if I could find out. At the time, I'd just thought you'd gone to play with Rezzy, so I didn't think you'd actually run off. It's also why he asked me to help with the ship. I think he just meant for me to control the waters and keep the beasts away, but I decided to bind my core into the ship because that sounded like fun and I'd never done that before. He was probably going to ask a different higher spirit for help with that bit, to actually control the ship."
After thousands of years, spirits still find ways to entertain themselves. Some of them just change how they interact with mortals, some of them decide to bind themselves into a ship to cross the ocean… that they can probably cross in an instant, anyway. Akrazidonn was definitely looking for a fun experience, and I'm guessing he found it.
"Alright," I say. "So how come I can understand it? If even knowing the Truth didn't enable me to learn it before?"
"Ah!" He exclaims. "That's because our ranks aren't related to the Truth! The prevention thing is actually a rule placed on the world, to minimize the number of people who know about us Ancient Spirits. We asked for it a long time ago, back when-"
What he says next is absolutely nothing. Not that I didn't comprehend it, but that literally nothing comes out of his mouth.
"Huh," he says. "I guess you aren't allowed to learn that little bit of information right now, if I'm prevented from actually saying it."
"The gods or the universe?" I ask.
"Neither," he answers. "The same being that we asked to implement the rule to prevent the reveal of the existence of Ancient Spirits to mortals who have less than a certain level of attunement to spirit energy. I guess it makes sense that we can say the first one but not the second. People can learn that there are spirits whose domains are as expansive as ours, they just need to meet a certain criteria first. The other thing, however… well, only us Ancient Spirits know it, so it makes sense we can't even say it at all."
A being that's above the spirits and can influence the very laws of the world, but also affect the spirits themselves. Could it be that the rumors of a Spirit King are true?
"Alright," I switch to the language of Meredith and her people. Spirits can speak all languages, even though they often pretend they can't. "Kyron, it turns out that there's something in place in the world to prevent the reveal of what Akrazidonn said to those who don't meet a certain qualification, so I can't just tell it to you."
"That's fine," he gives me a kiss. "I know you'd tell me it if you could. We're going to the camp now, or the lake?"
"Let's go to the lake," I tell him, then look at Akrazidonn. "Guide the way?"
Akrazidonn morphs into his cuter catlike form, then hops up onto my left shoulder.
"First," he points. "You have to leave the cove."
"Alright," I say as [Flight Wind]s begin to wrap around Kyron and me. "Is it okay to leave your ship here? You never did answer that question, and we got side-tracked and I just remembered I was going to ask you again."
"I've already bound one of the local ocean spirits to it," Akrazidonn asks. "He'll make sure it's taken care of while I'm gone. The GVS Axel is a quality ship, and I want to make sure it's still in peak condition for when your dad decides to return home."
"You do know he's been dead for at least nine hundred years, right?"
Akrazidonn holds up both of his front paws and starts counting on his little toes. I roll my eyes and ask him where to go. The spirit guides us across the land, until we reach the great forest where the water dragon lives. Once we reach it, he points out the lake the dragon's made his den at, then Kyron and I land to recover our Mana.
"Century counting follows the same pattern as berry counting, right?" Akrazidonn asks as I work on cooking some rabbits I caught after landing.
While we're resting, it's a good idea to fill our bellies. If the dragon is a fan of ours, it might want to ask a lot of questions. We're far enough away that he probably won't come to us directly unless he realizes who we are, but close enough that he can probably sense us.
"In pretty much every case," I say. "Counting follows the same rules. One comes before two comes before three comes before four, and so on."
"Okay," he says. "So nine centuries ago would have been… around the same time the Tomb of the Fire Prince was broken into. If I'm estimating the times right."
"The Tomb of the Fire Prince?" I ask.
"Yeah, it's this-"
"I know about the tomb," I tell him. "Someone broke into it?"
That thing was believed impenetrable. It was a tomb in the Fire Plains, and no one knew who constructed it. Rumors were that even an earth dragon couldn't break its walls. Considering that I accidentally threw one at it, I actually believe that rumor, too.
Well, to be fair, it was more that I accidentally annoyed an air spirit that plucked the earth dragon out of the air and threw it at the tomb, but the aim wasn't intentional. Nor was annoying the air spirit, and I quickly cleared things up with him. The dragon's claws didn't even scratch the tomb.
"Yeah, it was a huge mystery," Akrazidonn says. "I don't know if they ever found out who broke into it. I just know that Imiokroz was annoyed and venting about it to me. I may have fooled Eikrikodoz, but Imiokroz wasn't fooled at all. We'd meet up underwater, so that Eikrikodoz wouldn't catch on."
"Who's Imiokroz?" Kyron asks me.
"I've never heard of him before," I say. "But if it's a spirit that knows of something in the heart of the Fire Plains, but also able to meet with Akrazidonn underwater… I can make a guess."
If there are Ancient Spirits of the sky and the oceans, then who's to say there aren't any of the continents, too?
"A really friendly spirit," Akrazidonn nods. "We'd sometimes play strip poker underwater."
"You guys are already naked," Kyron says.
"Don't sweat the fine details."
Akrazidonn isn't much help with any other information regarding the Tomb of the Fire Prince, so we let the topic sit there. Chances are slim of us finding out anything now, so I decide that investigating it isn't important. Instead, I ask Akrazidonn for as much information about the dragon we're going to meet as possible.
Even if he does already like us, knowing more about him can't hurt.