Arc 2 Chapter 4

Together we create a plan to minimize our losses while fighting the main force. My estimation of their numbers reached a whopping five hundred thousand and then there are still other smaller armies around. Sadly we can't simply destroy their supply line, because they don't need one. It looks like they simply took everything with them. A nation marching to war. I hope they at least left some civilians and their children behind.

Our fighting plan consists out of constant harassing. We will ambush them whenever we find an opportunity. Of course we will have to be wary of traps. But it is rather hard to trick someone who can detect you through a solid wall. When night falls our first operation begins. We will destroy their most worrisome weapons. Their artillery. With a group of one hundred I sneak into their camp. They didn't bother to fortify their camp, a bad choice, but I guess they don't except an enemy that they think is 3 days away to sneak into their camp.

It is really easy to sneak when you know the locations of every guard around you and you can dampen your footsteps by cushioning the sound waves you create. We come and go without anybody taking notice of us. All they found the next day were the corpses of the guards at the artillery and multiple pieces of modern art where their heavy weaponry should have been. While we were their we confirmed the scale of this army. Sadly we couldn't reach their commanders, the inner areas of the camp were much better guarded.

When we returned I decided that it is time to investigate what I saw when this whole war trouble began. The liquid soulmist. I won't have to partake in any operations for a while. The coming battles are small skirmishes which shouldn't be a problem for my disciples. I take my leave and fly towards the mountains, to not disturb the others too much with the ripples I plan to create.

After an hour I finally find a suitable place. I sit down and begin my meditation. This time I don't focus on my surroundings to gather more and more soulmist, my point of focus is in my own soul, the compass I once found there has turned into the very connection with my body, maybe it was always just this. But right now I have no business with this part of my soul. I concentrate on a small portion of my soul and try to make it denser and ever so slowly it liquefies, what once was like a mist is now a tiny drop of liquid. I have to constantly focus to hold it in this form, but with every additional drop I create and join it with the others I gain more and more control. The pressure I need to create one drop is higher than what my body can hold, that is the very reason I couldn't advance. All I needed to do was to stop relying on my body as the vessel of my soul. It is now so strong that it has to contain itself.

As I compress my soul it shrinks to a pitiful size, but it is stronger as ever before, even with the constant strain of holding itself together, soon that becomes a natural thing to do. Since I can now hold as much soulmist as I want, since my body isn't the limit anymore I begin to absorb as much as I can. But the mist is simply too sparse and if I don't want to cause something similar to a soulstorm I will have to limit myself.

And the biggest problem of fighting with the help of the soul isn't its strength anyway. Sure one needs a certain strength to have enough concentration, reaction speed and influence over the world. But the limit is still the energy one can use. We can't use the energy of our body, at least if we don't want to die of hypothermia. Conversion of mass into energy is too slow for most uses. The only reliable and fast energy is heat. But it isn't unlimited and the resistance against the conversion rises the higher the differences in the atmosphere around us are.

Stopping a fast moving object actually gives us energy to work with so one could say that most of our enemies give us the means to defeat them. But should they ever figure out how we do what we do, their weapons would soon change and consist of liquid nitrogen. Those restrictions are also one of the reasons I can't fly too high.

While I meditate and further strengthen my soul I think about the source of this soulmist. Even though we lived with the consequences for ten years we still don't know much about the source of the mist. Sure I know that it is created from souls of the deceased and I know that it is the stuff all souls are made of. But what exactly separates a mass of soulmist from a soul? Why couldn't the soulless return to being humans after they collected a lot of it?

Was it simply the structure? But didn't I just compress my soul? Shouldn't it have changed that? Why was I fine and they aren't? I concentrate again and delve deeper and deeper. The connection with my body is a big simple structure it is easy to find. But are there others? Did I ignore them all the time or can't one find them till one searches for them?

After a short time I find what I searched for. It is an amazingly complex labyrinth of lines. It is a three dimensional maze. I follow a line for some time and while doing so I am filled with memories, memories I have long forgotten. I remember my days I have spent with my parents, before the car accident. This maze seems to be my very being. All those lines are my every though and connections I made between different things. What I once tasted what I though about it, everything absolutely everything is there.

I wonder. What would happen if I recreated those lines in something different than my soul? Could someone else read it? Could I preserve and share my thoughts? Could I recreate humans from the soulless by imprinting them? At least one of that thoughts I can test right now. I take a small rock and rearrange the atoms recreating some of the lines. Then I begin to read them. It isn't easy but I can get all the meanings from it that I imprinted. It is like a faint picture of a picture.

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I ask myself “How long will it take someone other than myself to actually read one of those?” I know how to interpret all that seems unclear, I know them already anyway, but how shall I create it for someone who doesn't? The solution soon comes to me. I have to create it in a way that every possibility reveals a part of the truth. Then there can't be a wrong way to read it.

But there is a problem with that. I can't capture my entire history like that. It is too complex and filled with too many thoughts. A simplified version will have to do. Like that I begin my work while still strengthening my soul. I create two crystals. One holding the story of my live and one holding all my training manuals and knowledge about the manipulation of the world.

Ironically I finish with the one holding my knowledge first. The one with my history isn't finished yet, I will have to continue on it at a later time, which could lead to a never ending cycle of work. Satisfied with my progress I head back to our base. When I arrive night has fallen. I return to the council and explain what the crystals are and hand the finished one over to them. I am the one that has the least use from it.

After that I listen to the reports from our operations this day. We have a few wounded, but most are capable to treat themselves. I will go to the field hospital later. We dealt the troops of New Eden some heavy losses, but their response is strange. At this rate we will need to place a spy in their ranks to gather some informations. When this comes up I am the first to volunteer. I simply am the one with the highest survival chances.

I could be ripped apart and still recreate a body. With my current state of soul I am rather confident that I am completely unable to die. I probably could leave my body behind and wander the world as a soul. Actually.... Why don't I do exactly that? I could dominate the body of one of their soldiers and gather the needed intel. I need to steel a body though, without one it is rather hard to hear, sure I could try to read the waves in the air with my soul, but the error rate is too high to be reliable. Reading is also hard when one only relies on the soul.

I tell the others of my plan. It has been a long time since I last surprised them. I guess it became harder over the time, when I have revealed new ways to use ones soul almost every day. But today I once again achieved it. After everything is said and done, including treating those that can't heal themselves, I head to my tent and prepare my body for its hibernation. I prepared a mechanism for that a long time ago, it can be a effective tool to fake ones death or to survive a wound long enough to regenerate.

I shut down my body and begin to leave it. Other than before when I left it with just tendrils to manipulate the world this time I left it behind completely. The area that is a symbol for my connection with my body turned once again into the compass that saved my live when I was stranded in that endless corridor.

I leave the base, but not without playing pranks on some of the guards. One isn't a ghost everyday. Although it is an option for me now. Of course I made sure the guards recognized me after I had my fun, I don't want to create too much of an uproar. It is rather easy to do that, every soul is different in its colours and its patterns, which as I learned are the product of the tiny lines, that represent our very being.

As a soul I ain't bound to the laws of physics. I can move faster than ever before. Soon I reach the enemies camp, which they finally fortified. I guess their losses robbed them of their sense of security. I search around for someone to possess. I find a lot of sleeping people. I guess one is as good as the other. I approach a young man and try to push his soul. But it seems I wasn't careful enough. Abruptly he wakes up, looking aghast as if he awoke from a nightmare. Which I guess isn't too far from the truth. He begins to pray. It is the first time I witness their prayers. He doesn't speak them though, I guess he thinks them to not wake up his companions. He prays like a Christian would do. I guess this religion originates from Christianity. It was the dominant religion in this area after all.

This failure taught me that I should either be more careful or find a victim whose connection with his soul is weak. I guess I should once again visit a field hospital. Surely I can find a poor guy at deaths door there, after we mangled some of their forces today.

Sure enough I find a soldier with a live threatening concussion. That is an excellent body for my cause. Nobody will suspect if I have 'forgotten' something and its hard to judge a head wound with the currently available technologies. His soul, like mine once did, already left the body, only a faint connection remains. I don't sever it, if he can return he is most likely one of us, if he can't... well no harm is done then.

I take over the body and begin the repairs, cooling down the surroundings in the process. I awake and with a croaking voice call for help. Soon a nurse draws close and begins to check my condition.