Of course, deciding that this is the perfect place and time to work on my soul doesn’t mean that I automatically know how to do it.

Without any other ideas, I try entering Meditation, but that doesn’t seem to be available to me. At least, I enter a calmer and more peaceful state of mind, but I don’t transition into my Core space or start being able to see the connections around me with my mind’s eye.

However, as I allow the meditation to continue, I start feeling…something. A vibration in the world around me. I’m reminded of when I spoke out loud and how the results had been very different from what normally happens when I speak.

“Hi?” I say, testing. The world vibrates around me, but only for a moment. I need a longer sound, I decide. “Aah,” I say next, drawing out the sound. This time, the vibrations are far easier to feel. But there’s still something not quite right.

I suddenly remember the stereotypical sound that apparently Tibetan monks are supposed to make when meditating on the universe. Well, it’s worth a try, I say to myself with a shrug. Feeling a bit stupid, I even shift myself into a lotus position – my new Dexterity actually makes that possible.

“Ommmm…” I say, drawing out the sound as long as I can make it. This time, the vibrations around me are so much deeper, feeling like they touch on something almost transcendent. The vibrations of my ‘voice’ reverberate around the grey space, somehow amplified instead of deadened.

My sound continues long after I feel like I should have run out of breath. Maybe I don’t actually have lungs here? Or maybe the sound has been so taken up by the environment around me that whether I make a sound or not makes no difference.

And in that vibration of sound, I feel a dissonance. An area where the sound is not echoed, where it is absorbed and not reflected back. Is that the damage? I wonder. Opening my eyes, I see no difference, but I can feel it.

The question, though, is whether actually being able to feel the damage means that I can heal it. It’s got to be a better start than not even being able to detect the damage, though.

Focussing on the damaged area, I use this new vibration sense to feel at its edges. It’s a very odd feeling – I’m kind of hearing it, but in hearing, I also see? It’s almost like I’ve got that condition – synesthesia or something. Either way, I find I get something of an image in my head, created by the vibration – as long as I don’t actually open my eyes. In exploring the area with sound that somehow translates to sight, I find out something interesting: my soul damage is already healing.

That’s the only explanation I can think of, anyway. There is evidence that the damage had been made with clean slices, some edges of the injured areas still completely smooth. But not all of them are still smooth; some have a faint clouding which partially reflects the sound. I can only take that to mean that whatever substance my soul is made from is replenishing itself.

I feel a sense of relief go through me, my emotion so strong that it cuts through even the peaceful state of my meditative trance. If I’m right, and I’m pretty sure I am, even if I don’t find a way of healing my soul, it will sort itself out eventually. I don’t know how long it will take – the repairs which have happened so far are slight enough that I didn’t notice until I started examining the area closer – but I will be whole once more, someday.

Of course, if I can speed up the process, that would be great – walking around with a twenty percent debuff to my Willpower doesn’t really improve my odds of surviving to see the end of the year.

It’s still relieving. And, unlike what I might have thought, the removal of some of the pressure I’d been feeling doesn’t reduce my motivation to do the job. Instead, it fills me with hope that it’s possible.

How, is another question, of course. But at least I’m further ahead than I was.

The key must be in these vibrations. It’s the only thing so far that I’ve tried which has affected the fog-like substance at all.

Though, actually, when I open my eyes, I realise that it’s not the fog which is being affected at all. I’d thought it was, but instead it’s something which is filling the space directly around me. I’d thought it was empty, but as I hum ‘om’, I notice that the area directly touching my skin is instead…thickening.

It’s like the air around me in the ‘real’ world. The air is completely transparent, invisible and undetectable if you sit still and just look at it. However, its presence becomes clear on a windy day when it blows stiffly against the skin, or on a cold day when my breath plumes into it, or on a hot day when it shimmers and creates mirages just above the surface of the road.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

In this case, it’s the vibrations which are making it become denser, hazy. Now able to properly see what I have to conclude is my soul, I also see the damage. Where the haze everywhere else is so dense it’s practically becoming physical, the damage is an absence.

Oddly enough, it’s not at all the same shape as in my internal matrix. There, it was like an ice cream scoop had taken a hemisphere out of my being. Here, it’s more like a four-sided pyramid, with the tip centred on my elbow.

Shifting my arm, I notice how it moves with my arm, though in a sort of delayed reaction. A bit like how moving one’s hand quickly leaves afterimages in the air, the damage to my soul takes a little bit of time to catch up with my movement.

Interesting, though I’m not sure whether it helps me much. Oh well, when I know as little as I do, any knowledge has got to be good to have, even if it doesn’t ultimately prove to be of much immediate use.

Holding my arm still, I inspect the damage with my eyes. I notice similar things to what I had already sensed with the vibrations. I confirm that it looks like my soul is healing itself – it’s starting from the tip and moving outwards, but from the looks of it, the rate is very slow. If I leave it to its own devices, I’ll probably have healed by the time I’m due to go to Nicolas’ world, but not very long before.

Since vibrations seem to have been key so far, I hum again, this time putting as much force into it as I can.

I notice how the visible density of my soul thickens further, though I can still ‘see’ all parts of it at the same time, in a strange contradiction to the normal laws of reality. I try not to think about it too much: it’s helping me; that’s what’s important.

The healing which has already happened to my soul thickens too, but doesn’t seem to spread. Instead, it just swirls gently on the spot, not pushing at its boundaries.

I reduce the hum, relaxing a bit as I try to think about a possible next step. What am I doing wrong here? Or what am I not doing here that I should be?

Sitting with the question for a little while, a thought slowly bubbles up from under the surface. Everything I’ve done with magic so far seems to have needed intention as well as action. When earning a Skill, I’ve had to intend to do what the Skill’s objective is and then make an effort to achieve the goal without the Skill at all.

Take Stealth, the very first Skill I earned by myself. I had to intend to make as little noise as possible, then I had to make an effort to walk quietly. As a result, I gained a Skill which enhanced my ability to move quietly through the forest. Or Fire Taming, my most recent Skill. I had to intend to gain control over fire, but the reason I must have ended up with Fire Taming instead of Fire-Shaping was because I bargained with it, offering promises in exchange for it obeying me.

It’s even applied to my Skill rank-ups – I’ve long noticed the connection between the new developments of a Skill and what I’ve been doing with it. That’s intention and action combined.

So what if this is the same?

Determined to test it, I once more start humming, the sound never having completely disappeared but now returning with renewed vigour. Focussing on the damaged parts, in particular the ones which have already started to heal, I project my intention that they heal.

Nothing happens, but I’m not daunted.

Instead, I redouble my effort, straining all my Will to make those swirling areas of haze extend until my whole being starts to ache.

Nothing happens.

I huff a tired sigh, a little dismayed nonetheless. I realise now that I’d been so sure that my idea would work.

Perhaps it should, but I’m missing something. Once more, I close my eyes and just breathe – I don’t care whether I need to in this space or not, but the action is familiar and calming.

An indeterminate while later, I open my eyes again. By this time the vibrations have almost disappeared and the area around me is clear once more. I don’t mind – I know how to make it solidify again.

The thought which has occurred to me is about fuel. Fixing my Core required using Energy. Fixing my internal matrix involved using mana. What does fixing my soul need?

It’s possible that it could consume either Energy or mana, just like one of the others, but something inside me doubts this. Which leaves two other resource pools I could draw on: stamina…or health.

Given that Wisdom and thereby my internal matrix are linked to mana regeneration and that I needed to use mana to fix that stat, I have to guess that the most likely option for fixing my health regeneration stat will be health.

However, I’d still like to test with both Energy and mana since I’d much rather use those than my health directly – what if I pull too much and empty it entirely? Could I accidentally kill myself? No, I have to hope that either Energy or mana will be able to heal the damage.

Actually accessing my resource pools while in this state is another question. It takes me a good few trial and errors to succeed in touching my mana pool at all. It takes me even longer before I’m able to pull at my mana while focussing on the damage done to my soul. And when I do succeed, I find that it doesn’t work.

Feeling a sense of inevitability, I nonetheless attempt to pull at my Energy store, but this seems to be impossible. I try for double the time that I attempted to access my mana pool, but when none of my efforts work, I eventually give up.

Resigning myself to what I suspected would be the result from the outset, I turn my attention to pulling from my health pool.