Looking around my mindscape, I stood in a futuristic classroom with gigantic touch screens instead of chalkboards. The statement at the top in bold letters was: ‘HOW TO GET RID OF THE HUNGRY ONES’.
Pretty basic stuff, but underneath the bolded goal were different solutions and some of them were crossed out due to lack of knowledge or power, but a few of them held serious promise.
“Grow a mini-Yggdrasil in the North and use it like a portal,” I read aloud. “Then, it might be possible to funnel power, mana, or stored sunlight from the main Tree to the satellite tree to power a forward operating base. Huh, I like it.”
That actually might be possible. I could bypass the entire issue of needing a portal if I could figure out the damn tree in my yard. If sunlight really is the answer, and the Arctic or Antarctic don’t really get the kind of powerful sunlight we do closer to the Equator, then using the World Tree to bypass the distance may actually work.
“Possible solution number two: find a usable leyline in the area and use runed sunstones to convert the energy to sunlight or a weaponized state to battle the Undead,” I muttered. “Also possible, but we really haven’t established if sunlight is the go-to weapon or not.” In smaller letters underneath read: If sunlight works, make solar bullets too!
I chuckled at what unconscious me came up with. I do love bullets. Option three was pretty cool but probably wouldn’t work due to the amount of time it would take. “Option three: bring the forest to the Arctic. Make it grow northward and then let nature take its course. Hahaha,” I chuckled, imagining trees stomping on zombies. “Plants versus zombies, and here I thought it was just a stupid game. Okay, option four, assemble a strike team and assault the area. Eh, I don’t know enough people. Table that for later. Option five, find a magic user who can command the weather and use them to remove the evil cloud cover the Hungry Ones use. Then, all other plans will have a much greater chance at succeeding if their security blanket is gone.”
That’s right, they do use some kind of dark magic to create permanent cloud cover so they can walk about unhindered. It was in front of me the entire time but this bit of evidence points in the direction that sunlight is not their friend. Why else would you plan to cover the planet in darkness, duh. Option six was the last one on my imaginary touchscreen, but it was also the most ambitious. Back when the Earth was manaless, a lot of proponents of solar technology used to say that ‘if we could just harness the sunlight of the Sahara Desert, then we could power the entire world for free’. While I applaud their forward thinking, sunlight simply isn’t as dense of an energy source as oil or nuclear. Our level of technology didn’t allow solar to be an efficient solution. With that being said, those poor hippies didn’t have magic.
“Option six, if the portal bypass system works with the satellite Yggdrasil, then establish large solar farms and energy banks in desert regions such as Texas, Nevada, Arizona and California and use that overabundance of solar based energy to assault the Hungry Ones. Sidenote, since Yggdrasil is a real thing, and it touches all realms, then maybe the frozen plane of Jotunheimr is real too. This would mean that the World Tree can adequately survive the frozen wasteland that makes up the polar ice caps.”
Damn, unconscious me is ambitious, I’ll give him that. Looking at the bottom, there was another note in even smaller handwriting. Leaning down, I squinted for a second until I realized it was literally all in my head. Waving my arms, the touch screen zoomed in. “Possibility for grand future plan: Large solar panels with perfectly efficient crystal batteries would allow for a foundation of a city, a society, a functioning civilization, just something to think about.”
Turning around, I shouted at the blackness that was inside my head. “Fuck you unconscious me, I’m not playing king of the hill! If you see what passes for Pride around here, tell him to shut up!”
Now that my self-indulgent venting was over, I turned back to the options and went over them again. I honestly liked them all, but for efficiency's sake, and because I love overkill, I figured that the most effective plan hinged on pooling most of this together, but it all depended on making a dependable World Tree based portal system work. Which, if I could get it to work, the implications would be earth shattering.
“Now, who would be better to tell me how to travel via a tree, than an actual talking tree? Bitch better be done cookin’ in her pod.” I mused aloud. Finished with my inner dialogue, I came to next to the mana-generator and hopped to my feet. Downing one ration cube that I pulled from Gungnir along with a bit of conjured water, I hustled back outside. “Meliad! Ohhh Meliad!”
“My lord sorcerer,” a familiar voice softly spoke, “Meliad is still currently in her Seed right now. She won’t be ready for another month.”
Spinning around, I saw Lyra standing submissively about ten feet away at the edge of the clearing. “Leafy! Thought you hated me?” I couldn’t believe the aggressive, mouthy dryad I’d humbled not too long ago was right in front of me. I squinted at her as my hand gripped Gungnir tightly.
“I have been instructed in the error of my ways master,” she said quietly. “Meliad was quite cross with me. All nurtured fruit from my tree is given to the grove for the next score of seasons and I am to be your beck and call as well.”
“I don’t want a slave,” I said, a bit of anger darkening my features. “I just want answers, and without an attitude if at all possible.” Her head dipped even lower.
“Of course Master.”
Growling with frustration, I pushed her chin up. “None of that, just don’t be a dick, that’s all I ask. Now,” I continued, noting the hints of fear in her eyes, “Do you know how to travel via Yggdrasil?”
She gasped. “The Mother? Only the strongest of dryads dare to do so. We simply cannot bear the strain!”
I felt an incoming headache. “Wait, what? Then how the fuck did you get here in the first place?” Again, and again, and yet again, I was missing some crucial piece of information.
Dipping her head back down to stare at her feet, Lyra seemed to shrink in on herself. “We crossed through the tears. When the veil broke, many such rips were opened across the fabric of existence, and many things came and went. We took a chance as our world was dying.”
Not really what I wanted to hear, but she didn’t say no to my original question. “So, you could travel via Yggdrasil, but only if you were strong enough. What would it take for you to survive a trip through there? I’m pretty sure I can shield you from pretty much anything.”
“You would do that, for me?” Her surprise was not amusing. What I wanted was simple, but she was making it out to be some huge deal.
“I will shield you and take you on a journey through the World Tree,” I said slowly. “I just need a tree,” I pointed at her and then at Yggdrasil, “to show me how to travel by tree. Got it?”
She was so happy she couldn’t even speak, her mouth wide open and her hands clasped together as if in fervent prayer. I kinda wanted to poke her in the eye because she wasn’t even blinking.
“Today Leafy.”
“Oh yes of course Master!”
This version of the World Tree, Yggdrasil, my fiance’s incubator, was a ginormous monster of a tree. Even though it was less than twenty feet away, the scale of the monstrosity is hard to capture for anyone’s perspective. I’ve seen the redwoods a couple times in California when I visited family out there, but somehow this tree was bigger than even those. It was thicker and wider and exuded such a radiant feeling of raw unbridled life and unconscionable power that it was almost uncomfortable. And that’s not even describing the amount of mana it gave off, as if it weren’t functioning like a normal tree where it gets its nourishment from the nutrients and water in the ground. This tree seemed like it was giving nourishment to the world, like the natural process was backwards.
Lyra physically shrank as we walked closer to Yggdrasil, eventually becoming the size of a small house cat and climbing up my armor to sit on my shoulder. “Now,” she squeaked, “Touch the tree and extend your shield to cover us up, but let just a bit of your hand actually touch the bark. Feel it with your magic, let your rhythm match the Mother’s.”
Accepting that hippy crap is now a constant part of my life, I slowed my breathing and extended my Nature Sorcery to Yggdrasil. While this was just a tiny cell of the World Tree, the amount of power and breadth of vastness of the main tree was too much for me to handle all at once. “Fuck, I’m not ready for this,” I cursed as it felt like I licked a livewire of the universe. Gritting my teeth, I grabbed Gungnir and touched it to the World Tree as my magic reached into Svalinn. Forming a three part system, I closed the circuit with Yggdrasil and the pressure eased.
With both hands somewhat touching the bark, Lyra’s tiny voice spoke up. “Now feel where you want to go. Any tree that has been touched by those blessed by nature have more life and can support you. Pick one close by and take a step.”
With the circuit of magical power closed and my magical tools helping to insulate me from the white noise of Yggdrasil vast flowing ocean of power, I could feel what Lyra was talking about. Soft green and brown lights stood out in an expanse of gray and black. Keeping my focus small as I could feel innumerable twists and turns in the vastness, I found a calm glow about a mile away from where we were. Turning my attention there, I started to take a step when Lyra shouted, “NO! Not that one! Meliad isn’t ready yet!”
Luckily, my Consciousness Sorcery was reinforcing my focus enough that I didn’t act up or freak out. Taking the wrong step right now could land me in some weird or scary ass place on the other side of the multiverse. Another light glowed softly and I felt Lyra’s mind ping off of mine as I looked at it.
A nice oak tree, full of life and one that welcomed the wash of mana since the Ripples came, sat proud at the edge of a valley south of where I was. “Oaks are good, oaks are strong, go there! Not too far either!” Lyra’s excitement spiked as I took a step into a from Fredericksburg, Virginia into a whirlwind of color. In that wild ride of pinwheeling colors, all I could hear was the song “Stairway to Heaven” as I screamed my heart out.
The wild ride was over before I knew it. One second I was swirling down the nature drain and the next thing I knew I’m in a tree, or what passes for the living room of a tree that can or maybe will have a dryad in the future.
“Yo, what gives?” I sputtered, looking around. There were no lights that I could see, and yet I actually could see everything around me. The bare room seemed to be made for someone at least several feet taller than me, and the wood that made up the walls was moving, inhaling and exhaling from the looks of it.
“Is this alive, like in the sentient sense, or the ‘can be’ sense? Leafy?” I questioned, turning to take everything in, not that there was much to take in.
“Master, of course it’s alive, all trees are alive.”
I looked down at the squeaky voice down by my feet, but the rapidly growing figure of Lyra was pointing at the far wall. “See, there, that’s how we get out. Just touch it like you did the Mother and done.”
Squinting didn’t really work. It wasn’t until I switched to my magical senses that I saw the knot of power that looked like an actual doorknob complete with a keyhole.
“You’re kidding right?” I said, turning to Lyra. “That’s kind of an odd shape to be here naturally without pre-existing intelligence huh?” With a flick of power, I summoned all of my gear including Gungnir and Svalinn and then slammed the dryad up against the inner wall of the tree with Gungnir’s knifepoint at her throat. I didn’t really trust Lyra and my suspicions were driving my paranoid self just a bit crazy.
“This stinks Leafy,” I growled, “And it ain’t just the tree. Don’t make me rip it out of you. This blade hasn’t been fed in quite a while.”
Lyra’s eyes went white with fear, sweat burst out of her as if she were a sponge that I squeezed. “It’s not a trap master! It’s not! All dryads have such doors!”
My magical senses flooded the area, laying everything bare. I can’t believe that I was this wound up, but something just didn’t seem to add up to me. Forming two tendrils out of mental energy, I sent them straight into her forehead. She didn’t like me from the outset, and I honestly didn’t really like her. The fact that I tolerated the stupid dryad in the first place is because I was way further up on the totem pole than she would ever be, that and the fact that my blend of sorceries literally made her my bitch.
“The truth, now!”
Gungnir’s blade pricked her throat just enough for a bead of greenish blood to ooze out. My Nature Sorcery held her completely still as my Mind Sorcery forced her to be honest. Her mind connected to mine and it all came tumbling out. She was trying to help, but there were ulterior motives, jealousy at not being picked to be the guardian of my grove, rage at Meliad for always one-upping her, planned helpfulness to get me to look at her in a better light, and so much greed.
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Greed for the power she gained traveling through the World Tree while shielded by me.
Grasping the thread of that last thought, I pulled more information from her. Apparently if she had tried that stunt without my protection, she would have been completely subsumed by Yggdrasil. Using me as a filter, she gained enough power to start several groves of her own and bargain with an earth elemental to become a treant. People are selfish, it’s the inherent concept that drives them, and apparently dryads are close enough to humans to have the same flaws. Keeping her still, I conjured a small battery crystal etched with the proper runes and placed it on her chest.
“Push the power into this crystal until I tell you to stop,” I ordered, my blade pushing just a cinch deeper into her neck. “Nobody uses me. Honesty is the best policy bitch, especially with me.”
Not even having the room to gulp, Lyra pushed the power from her overstuffed core into the battery, tears leaking out as over half of everything she gained left before I cut it off. I watched with wonder and a bit of suspicion as the vibrant green mana trickled out of her, her aura dimming as I pulled at the strings.
“There, you can keep some,” I said slowly, far less angry now that I figured out that this wasn’t malicious towards me. She just saw an opportunity. I can understand wanting to move up in the world and doing whatever it takes to get there, in fact, I respect it. This would have been far darker if she meant to harm me in any way. I continued after putting Gungnir away and healing her neck, “It's definitely more than you deserve but it’s not as much as Meliad can hold. I’ll let you keep that much for showing me how to travel via tree.”
With tears in her eyes, Lyra fled into the forest as I looked on. While I might have overreacted a bit, the deception ate at me. If you can help it, you don’t let people you don’t trust get free power.
Storing the now dryad-centric power battery in Gungnir, I walked over to the door knob knot of power and simply turned it with my magic while touching it with my hand. Sunlight hit me instantly. Yup, I was certainly not in Fredericksburg anymore. Hopping back into the tree, I made Lyra shrink down again and tree-traveled back home, all the while making sure that she didn’t get any extra power.
“Whew, that was fun,” I said to myself, mentally checking off one experiment off my list. With a bit of magic and coaxing, I managed to get a bit of rootwood from our neighborhood Yggdrasil and shape it into a ball. Getting a chunk of wood from Yggdrasil was harder than it was a few days ago, as if the wood was more unwilling than it used to be.
Shaking my head at the ever-changing circumstances, I focused on my next opportunity. In that softball sized portion of the World Tree knob was several drops of sap and a tiny bit of heart wood. Using Nature Sorcery, I split it into two smaller identical halves and then made the bark form runes of stasis. Chuckling to myself, I pulled out the battery that I kept Lyra’s stolen power in and very carefully split that into two pieces as well, gently forcing the Yggdrasil seeds to accept the foreign substance. With my seeds complete for transplant, I stored those away.
Going back to the Lab, I set out the seeds of Yggdrasil and went back over my plans. “Ok, so I can tree walk, great,” I muttered, tapping out an unsteady rhythm on the table. “But I’m forgetting something . . . AHA!”
Working over my thoughts from multiple angles, I engaged my Consciousness Sorcery to assist my train of thought as I spoke aloud. “Traveling via tree is definitely possible which I proved by moving myself through Yggdrasil with magic . . . which then means that moving energy the same way is most likely within the realm of possibility as well!”
My Mind Sorcery pinged a followup thought right after I said that. I closed my eyes, bringing the thought packet to the fore. “Huh, in fact, it may even be easier or more efficient to move energy than matter!” I muttered. “Right, right, but how to test that. What do I have in my possession to put this to the test?”
Peering into Gungnir, I saw with my magical senses that all of the things that I had stored in there so far were perfectly organized in what looked to be a large white room with nice stone shelves. Everything was well lit as if shadows didn’t exist at all here.
“That’s new.” I whispered, looking around with a wary eye. The Centauri food was nicely placed at the bottom of the shelves in their boxes while the stored experimental weapons were beautifully displayed on the wall, and all of my gems and stones and bullets were organized off to the side in individualized crates. There were even two pedestals with indentations on them that perfectly fit the Yggdrasil seeds I’d made.
Above the pedestals for the seeds was a sight that I didn’t know how to process. Two blazing swords, one crackling with white lightning and the other burning with a fire so blue it was almost white were crossed into an ‘X’. Where the blades intersected floated a clear glass ball with a tiny fire that glowed like the sun. Trust me, I didn’t do that. I just used magic to shove things I wanted near Gungnir and the damn weapon sort of just made it vanish. My Mind Sorcery shot me a quick memory refresh of the last interaction I had with Maalik the Fallen.
“Holy Cannoli BATMAN!” I screamed. Is this what grief and trauma do and adrenaline do? Do they make you forget, do they make you freaking forget that Gungnir stored away the answers to all of my goddamn problems and didn’t tell me?! AND, just to twist the knife a bit more, Maalik said he left a ‘familiar spirit’ for me in Gungnir as well. Mentally willing Gungnir to change its shape, it flowed to become a smooth foot-long shaft of wood with a multi-colored sphere on top.
“Come on out dude!” I called out from the inside of my weapon both out loud and mentally. “You’re gonna have to forgive my human flaws, because even though my memory is ‘magically perfect’, it still ain’t.”
What appeared wasn’t a dude, in the literal sense of the word, but I meant it more in the California sense of the word where it refers to anyone or anything. The object flamed into existence, a white and purple orb of light that flashed and sparked like an angry lava lamp on crack. Like any good sorcerer who doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing, I put my hand out for it to land on. I mean, if an angel gave it to you it can’t be all bad right?
Wrong.
Maalik was a ‘fallen’ angel, maybe not his decision or his desire, but he was running outta Grace when I saw him.
I still couldn’t resist. My inner child cut loose. “Oh great Spirit of the Spear!” I said pompously with a horrible English accent, waving my arms as if in religious rapture. “Soul of Sky’s Fallen Swords! Speaker of the Staff!” Every irreverent word made the orb pulse a shade brighter. When the core of the orb finally became apparent through the vibrating light, it was definitely not what I expected.
“Orrrrr, Cyclopian Squid of the Spear?”
I’m not kidding. The shape inside of the glowing orb from Heaven’s fallen soldier was a damn underwater-looking thing with one big ass eye and a whole bunch of tentacles. It was even speaking in bubbles! Right around a foot tall now, the miniature cephalopod undulated as it floated closer, bubbles rapidly frothing and bursting between its tentacles. Finally, it plopped on top of the mental project of Gungnir, resting on the spherical crystal top and just stared at me. A questing tendril of mental magic from the creature reached forward and gently knocked three times on my forehead.
Since the knock was so kind, I answered with my own strand of mental energy while at the same time pouring some serious magical power into my mind shields. The deepest voice devoid of any accent sounded, [Greeting mortal sorcerer. To your implement I am bound, to your will I am not.]
I didn’t really know how to take that. [It’s uh, nice to meet you too.] I looked around taking in the scenery yet again. Pointing with my eyes, I continued with our mental conversation. [So you’re the reason that everything is super organized in here? My magical storage area within my weapon? Gungnir?]
A feeling of rank disgust mixed with smug superiority stank up the mental connection we had going on.
[A weapon of the gods? This pitiful excuse for a sorcerer’s staff?] I heard it sniff even though my slimy intruder clearly had no nose. [As a Scion of Order, it was simply beneath one such as I to reside in a dimension in a state of complete disarray.]
I shrugged. [Well, I didn’t know that it was such a mess in there, err, here? I haven’t had it long.]
It’s inaudible mental grunt showed me that it really didn’t care about my sufficient time to tidy up. But, seeing as it was a literal gift from an angel, I decided to cut it some slack instead of letting loose some beautiful insults.
Gathering my patience, I stood up a bit straighter and released the grip on my power. I could feel that the spirit was not a threat. [Well thank you so much for being so kind. Is there something I can do to help or make your day better?]
When in doubt, pour on the good old southern charm, that is, until I remembered something missing from my storage space. [Where, by chance, good sir, are the piles of full crystal batteries that I put here?! There should be a metric fuckton more than what I’m seeing, cause I’m seeing ZERO!]
Another sniff. [A sorcerer who doesn’t deign to organize his possessions doesn’t deserve to have a say in how they’re used.]
My eye started twitching. Fuck southern hospitality. [Listen here you slimy ass piece of worn out sushi. Where the fuck is my stuff?]
It’s one eyeball looked off to the side, almost as if it were ashamed, or lying. It turned a shade of dark pink. [I was hungry. You hadn’t seen fit to feed your own Spirit of Knowledge nor had you even thought to rearrange anything in your space so that your possessions wouldn’t react improperly in the demi-dimension. Besides, the space you had was far too small for any magic user worth their salt, so I expanded it.]
[USED? FEED? The fu . . . wait, hold up!] I stuttered, putting my hands up. [Explain that to me. You expanded the spatial storage? As in you made it bigger? That’s a thing?] I pushed my senses out as far as they went. Due to my lack of experience, I couldn’t really get a grasp on the available size. [How big is it? And what in the world do you eat?]
I heard a spray of snooty bubbles. [Higher beings subsist on the base material making up the universe, what you call mana. Your purified dense collections of it were quite satisfying, so much so that I even did you the favor of expanding the tiny box that was my home.]
[I see . . . ] I thought at the creature, figuring this series of events out a little more. [You thought that your home was too small, not that my storage space is too small. Ooohhhhh . . . . this was all about you! You know the whole thing is mine right? That weapon, I made it, enchanted it, fed it, it’s mine through and through and you’re just an add-on. Besides, if you want more crystal batteries to eat then you’re shit outta luck dude. I found out that I’m the only one in the universe who can make those.]
A wave of sadness and submission drove through our mental link. [You wouldn’t deprive your own gifted familiar of sustenance would you?]
Uhg. Another damn thing that I have zero frame of reference to actually deal with. When in doubt, push for info. Dig for info. Peel back the motha’fuckin’ LAYERS for some info.
I threw my hands up in the air, the projection of my mental self perfectly mirroring my exasperation and bridled disbelief. [Given to or cursed with? Seriously man, which is it? What the hell are you and what can you do? I really don’t wanna make a new weapon but if you’re some kind of alien parasite then we’re gonna have problems.]
The small spirit puffed up in anger. It crossed several of its tentacles to mimic a defiant child. [I am NOT a curse! I collect knowledge and organize data! The library of Alexandria was managed by spirits of knowledge such as myself. In fact, we were the curators of the Atlantean Arcaneum! We Scions are noble spirits of the Ethereal Constants.]
I raised one eyebrow. [Uh huh . . . right . . . . So you’re basically an OCD librarian?]
[It is NOT a COMPULSION! It is ORDER!]
I couldn’t help but tease the poor off putting creature. I could feel through our mindlink its need to prove itself and its ocean of insecurity, both of which are marks of being very young. This creature may be the descendant of something that works in the library of Alexandria or whatever the hell the Atlantean Arcaneum is, but it doesn’t have that kind of knowledge or it wouldn’t be here.
[All right, all right, calm your squiggles dude, haha. I’m just messing with you. So, I can’t really let you off the hook for eating all my crystal batteries, but you did do me a huge favor. So how about we call it even and start fresh?] I put a hand forward.
Its lone eye turned back towards me. [Fine], it sent sheepishly. Cautiously extending a tentacle, we shook on it. I did check my hand to make sure it didn’t leave any slime there.
[Great, let’s begin. Hello, my name is Ben, what’s your name? I’d like us to be friends.] I explained slowly, simultaneously teasing the young spirit as well as making sure that I was perfectly clear. [I’m a sorcerer with multiple elements and epic amounts of power. I lack training and knowledge but I’m doing all right on my own so far. I have a dragonized dog named Spot and a whole bunch of cool gardeners who happen to be dryads.]
It felt like platonic speed-dating but as long as it opened the doors then I’ll take it.
[You can call me Kraxin’eldra as my full name should never be given.] The amount of noise between the syllables of its name could not be pronounced properly by a human mouth. Shove a bunch of popping bubbles and crashing waves and then a dolphin call and you’re almost there.
[I’ll call you Kraken then just to keep it easy. Ben is my nickname and I won’t give you my full name for the same reason.]
With a quiet pop, Kraken vanished back into the glowing depths of Gungnir but our mental link did not.
[And don’t you eat anything else in there! If you need something to eat just let me know! I’m gonna make some more batteries but those are for me!]
Grudging acceptance traveled down our mental link as I started a long day of remaking my emergency power banks. Two days worth of careful conjuration and crafting later, I had made a whole bunch of crystal batteries roughly the shape of a Lego brick but scaled up to the size of a normal brick. My three magical solar panels pumped my pile of bricks full of converted mana and I popped them into Gungnir’s storage. Kraken and I had worked out a pretty good deal. He, yes it’s a he because I asked, organizes everything I put in there and will consult me before expanding the storage space if need be.
Also, Kraken agreed to work with me in decrypting and managing all of the magical knowledge that I have to include Reeanth’s and Rath’s brain. It was interesting to find out through our conversations that the Scion is basically an immortal creature or spirit, they’re really kind of both, but they don’t grow up based on time like humans do. Scions grow when exposed to power, of which I had more than enough. My pure generated mana from the generators and converted solar panels is exactly what the little thing needs to grow but I need that just as much as he does.
Figuring that assisting my allies with basic needs would be a good way to secure future goodwill and foster good relationships, I went ahead and made the issue of his growth pretty easy. Conjuring, shaping, and crafting runes on a few solar panels set the stage for a replenishing source of mana. Then I attached a crystal battery mana converter and then put a larger than normal power bank underneath it so there wouldn’t be any issues with not having enough energy storage. And when it’s full Kraken can come out at any time and suck the thing dry.
Kraken was so grateful about the basically infinite-over-time mana supply that he even offered to help me complete a round of upgrades on all of my gear. Through our mental link, I directly shared all of my knowledge, from the magics I had to my less than great public school education and my ideas for the future, and Kraken organized and re-compiled it into a mental database.
After finishing that, he did the same thing with Reeanth’s clone brain and added all of it to his storage and then began on the dead dragon’s brain. Kraken was able to work through the night like Gungnir used to do because spirits don’t need sleep which worked wonders. We had complete schematics of all of my gear in a mental framework, but working with it and Kraken at the same time was like watching a sci-fi movie. Everything, because it’s all in our heads, was like when Tony Stark had Jarvis rework his Iron Man suit. Waving my hands made bad parts go away and another wave added runes to particular pieces. The next two weeks were an exercise in creative bliss.