As it turned out, when the disembodied voice had said, “holding cell,” that was exactly what they meant.
Rough hands carried my paralyzed body through the central archway into a tunnel that descended slightly into the ground. The walls were dark, striated, and somewhat uneven, with a crystalline sheen to them in places that made them look like they’d been coated in a layer of rough, scratched glass. Light whose origin I couldn’t make out in my helpless state glittered and sparkled on the stone, which shone with myriad prismatic dots that danced in the clear light. The air was warmer inside the tunnel, and as we delved deeper into the ground, the temperature kept rising until it was at a level I would have called uncomfortable without my Temperature Adaptation ability.
My captors finally dragged me through a door and tossed me ungently to the stone floor.
“Prepare yourself, traitor,” one of them said contemptuously. “Soon, the rashi will come and strip you of your spirits, then chain you so that you’re no danger to anyone.”
They stepped back into the tunnel from which we’d entered, and the stone between me and them turned fluid and flowed over the arched doorway, sealing it shut and plunging the room into utter darkness. As the door sealed shut, the paralysis holding me fading, and I collapsed onto my back with a groan.
“Well, that wasn’t exactly the welcome I was hoping for,” I thought silently.
“Not in the slightest, John,” Sara laughed weakly, appearing in the room before me.
“Do you think that’s possible, Sara? Can they actually strip the spirits from me?”
“I—yes, it could be possible, John,” she said with a sigh, her face turning melancholy. “Your melds are a linkage between you and your spirits, and with enough power and skill, those links could be severed. It could severely damage both you and your spirits, but it should be possible—and the high spirit they used to hold you might be powerful enough to do it with the right ritual.”
“It’s possible,” Kadonsel said in a whispered tone. “We do it to any Redeemed Elders who fall from our teachings and join with a spirit the way the savages—the Menskallin do. It hurts them, but our teachings say that it’s the only way to avoid angering the Great Spirits. I assume that the rashi have their own way of doing it.” She paused. “Do you think that they truly believe that you’re a Redeemed Elder, outsider?”
I sighed and sat up, leaning my elbows on my knees and staring at the darkness. “Possibly. It might also be that the rashi doesn’t like the way I meld spirits and is using this as an excuse to get rid of me—or that there’s something else more sinister going on.”
“Sinister?”
“Yeah. Bregg once said that Aeld was really powerful for a letharvis—as powerful as some elders. The rashi might not want him to get any stronger or more influential. This whole thing might be a way to discredit him—or even get rid of him.”
Kadonsel laughed harshly at that. “That—that would be comforting, wouldn’t it? It would prove the Kungas correct; even the Menskallin seek out conflict.”
“There’s a problem with that, though,” Sara broke in. “Aeld would know it if that were the case—and so would Fifa and Bregg, and anyone they spoke to.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, confused.
“Remember how Aeld explained the way the Menskallin communicate? They don’t just sense one another’s thoughts; they can sense feelings, intentions, and—I assume—deception. That’s the whole point of that type of communication for them, after all. They can’t hide things from one another. He would have felt their intentions when they communicated.”
“Maybe Fifa was the one who actually talked to them,” I suggested. “Or her elders.” I paused. “Of course, they still had to communicate that information to Fifa, who had to tell Aeld…”
“Exactly. I don’t think the Menskallin can hide things like this from one another.”
“So, Aeld, Fifa, and Bregg had to have known this was going to happen,” I said with a low growl.
“That’s possible, but it’s also possible that the rashi decided this after they communicated with Fifa’s valskab. That seems more likely to me; if the rashi just wanted to capture you, I think it would have been easier to do it after you lost consciousness fighting the undottyar, don’t you?”
Sara had a point, but I wasn’t completely convinced. My instincts still urged me to trust no one, and I was inclined to listen to them for the moment. None of that really mattered, though, unless I could get out of this cell before the rashi came to—do whatever it was they planned to do to me. Fortunately, the rashi had made a classic villain blunder: they assumed that their trap was inescapable and didn’t bother setting a guard to watch over me.
“That’s not necessarily true, John,” Sara said gravely. “And escaping might be harder than you think.”
“I have a plan for it,” I said. “The door’s being held by an earth spirit, right? I can either dominate it or use Spiritual Strike to wound it and drain it enough to send my own earth spirit to open the door.”
“That might work, but there’s a problem. Try using See Spirits.”
I activated the ability and immediately understood what she meant. The room itself looked fairly normal. Gray earth spirits tinged with copper surrounded me in all directions, outlining a spartan room maybe ten feet across with roughly hewn walls. A cloudy white wind spirit hovered above, no doubt processing the air so that I didn’t suffocate in the small, sealed-in space. A mottled brown spirit hovered in the direction of the door, which I took to mean that they’d placed a single guard in the hall just in case. All that, however, was overlaid with the silvery sheen of the high spirit that still hovered around me, enshrouding my body in a thick haze. It looked like the rashi hadn’t taken the dumb villain route after all; that spirit could probably clamp back down on me the moment that they realized I escaped, and if they could communicate with it, they’d know right away when that happened. If I wanted to get free, I first needed to rid myself of that spirit.
“Can I drain it, Sara?” I asked. “It doesn’t look as powerful as the spirit that filled the barrier outside.”
“It is, John. It’s basically the same spirit; you’re just seeing part of it. It’s sort of like it has its hand wrapped around you. You could try to drain it, but you’d still have to drain the entire spirit to weaken it, and the spirit would know what you’re doing. That might alert the rashi.”
I swore and stood up, smacking a fist into the nearest wall without any real force. My mind whirled as I sought a way to escape. First, I had to get out from this thing’s hand, but none of my abilities were strong enough to really work against something as powerful as this high spirit. Maybe if I empowered them with the energy of my own high spirit, but that would also leave me too weak to actually escape afterward. It was a Catch-22. Anything I did to free myself would either draw more attention to myself or leave me too weak to follow up on escaping.
I stopped and refocused my thoughts. My thoughts were spiraling, and the best way to stop that was to start back at the beginning and take things step by step.
“Stop thinking about this as a spirit,” I told myself firmly. “Think of it the way Sara said. It’s a hand locking me down. How would I deal with that normally?” That was a much simpler question, obviously. My first instinct would be to attack the thumb, a weak point on a hand. Twist and bend a thumb, and you control the motion of the entire hand. If that didn’t work, I’d try to lock up the whole arm at the elbow, putting pressure on the joint, and if that failed…
My eyes narrowed as an idea occurred to me. “Kadonsel, this ritual that your people use to remove spirits from your Redeemed Elders—do you know it?”
“Of course,” she replied hesitantly. “At least, in theory. I’ve studied it and know the ritual circles involved, but I’ve never actually performed it.”
“And it severs a spirit from the Elder?”
“Sort of. It’s designed to attack the link binding the two, but if it just severed it, it would leave both the Redeemed Elder and the spirit damaged. It cuts the link, then binds what remains so that it doesn’t spread or open them up to a spirit fever.”
“Sara…”
“It might work, John,” the AI said thoughtfully. “The problem would be doing it in a way that the larger spirit didn’t instantly know what happened. If the cut was fast enough, though, and you sealed the wound behind it almost instantly, the spirit might just become less and not realize it lost anything. As Aeld said, the awareness of most spirits is severely limited, even high spirits.”
I looked down at the stone floor, seeing another issue. “Would I even be able to carve a diagram into this stone, Sara?”
“With brute force? Maybe, but it would be hard to keep the lines straight. It would be easier to use your stone spirit to soften the rock. Of course, the problem with that is that there’s already a spirit in the stone, one bound to the valskab. You’d have to draw a circle around the area you want to use first.”
“And that means trying to scratch a line in stone,” I sighed. “Well, better to do it for one circle than a whole diagram, right?”
“Why are you scratching the stone at all?” Kadonsel asked curiously, and I remembered that she still couldn’t hear Sara’s side of our conversations.
“I want to soften the stone to draw the ritual in it, but the valskab has a spirit there,” I explained. “I need to draw a circle to push it out so I can work inside it.”
“You don’t actually have to mark the surface you’re drawing a circle on, Outsider,” she said with a chuckle. “That’s just a way to make holding the circle easier.”
I froze in the act of touching my spear to the floor. “Wait, what?”
“You didn’t know?” She sounded surprised. “I thought the letharvis would have taught you that. The physical representation of a circle doesn’t matter. It’s the spiritual presence of it that’s important. When you draw a circle, what you’re doing is using your will and power to put bounds on the area within the circle so that spiritual energy can’t get in or out. It’s your will that holds the circle, not a line in the dirt.”
“Then why does everyone draw those lines?” I asked skeptically.
“Because they’re helpful in holding your will on that area. They represent a physical boundary, and it’s easier for our minds to work with that physical representation. They aren’t required, though. They can’t be. Nothing physical can affect the realm of the spirits, after all.”
“She’s right, John,” Sara said with a wondering laugh. “I never thought of that, but she’s absolutely right. A physical line can’t actually affect anything in the spirit world. I assumed that it was containing the energy you put into it—or take out of it, in your case—but it’s probably more a guide for your will than anything. As long as you believe the circle exists and concentrate on maintaining it, then it exists.”
“Would that work for a ritual, too?”
“It would,” the ojain answered me, “but only if the ritual’s really simple. Picturing a circle in your head is one thing. Picturing most rituals is another, even with a diagram’s help. That’s why most complex rituals are drawn in paint mixed with powdered spirit crystal; it actually guides spiritual energy and takes a lot of the work off your imagination.”
“That might be what that silver liquid the Oikithikiim were pouring was,” Sara mused. “Some sort of heavy oil-based paint mixed with powdered crystal. You’ve still got some in storage; I’ll have to analyze it. In the meantime, though, if you draw the circle, John, I can light it up for you and give you a physical representation of it. From what Kadonsel just said, that should be enough to work.”
“Let’s hope. Okay, Kadonsel, walk me through the ritual. Sara, can you look for ways to optimize it?”
“Of course, John.”
Working out the new ritual took me nearly an hour. Sara reformed my spear, and I used it to trace out a glowing circle on the floor that cut off that section of floor from the stone spirit inside it. That let me soften the earth using my own stone spirit. I carefully scratched the lines and curves of the ritual in the stone floor, dutifully following the glowing patterns that Sara laid down for me. In a way, it was easier than drawing a rune since I didn’t have to draw each part in a continuous layer, and if I made a mistake, I could use my stone spirit to erase it and try again. At the same time, etching stone with a crystal spear wasn’t the easiest thing in the world, even with the stone softened somewhat, and the tip skittered and jumped a lot despite my extremely improved strength and dexterity, both of which were several times what they were back on Earth.
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“How does that work, anyway, Sara?” I asked as I drew a simple curve in the floor. “My Skill stat is about five times what it was back on Earth. Does that mean I’m five times more dexterous than I used to be?”
“It’s not really that simple, John,” she laughed. “You have to take into account your new body, the conditions of the world you’re in, and more. Your stats here are about twice what they were at their highest in Kuan Yang, for example. Do you feel like you’re twice as strong and fast as you were then?”
I frowned and shook my head. “No, not really. If anything, I felt stronger and faster there.”
“And in a certain way, you were. Kuan had slightly lower gravity than Earth, and the matter there was slightly less dense on average—at least, judging from your memories of the place—so even when you had the same stats there as you did on Earth, you could do more with them. Plus, qi as a type of magical energy is just really, really good at transmitting force but not so great at improving mental functioning, so it magnified your physical stats and weakened the effects of your mental ones.”
She gestured around at the walls. “On Sojnheim, it’s the opposite. This world’s gravity is higher than Earth’s, and everything here is denser on average. Spiritual energy also tends to disrupt all physical processes while enhancing mental ones, so while your physical stats might be twice as high as they were then, you don’t feel like you can do as much with them because the world itself is inhibiting you.”
She laughed. “Of course, part of it is subjective, as well. On Kuan, the only comparison you had was Earth, and you were vastly improved from your original body there. Plus, there were plenty of people with ‘normal’ human stats there, and that made your gains seem all the more impressive. Here, you’ve had a lot more experience to compare to, and the people around you are naturally much stronger, faster, and more durable than humans on Earth, so you might not feel all that powerful by comparison. You are, though.”
“Okay, but if I had these stats on Earth, how much stronger would I be than a standard human?”
“Considering that a standard human stat is around 7, your stats would make you anywhere from three to about twenty-two times the human norm, depending on the stat and how things work on your planet.”
I paused for a moment and considered the implications of what she said. If I’d been on Earth, my stats might make me around twenty times stronger than a standard human. That should mean that I could bench press over a ton, an utterly ridiculous amount. Of course, I didn’t know if my human body could handle the strain of lifting that much weight without things snapping and breaking, but my Vigor was high enough that it might be able to.
“You have to remember, too, John, that a world’s magical field plays a part,” Sara reminded me. “Physical bodies have hard limits to how much force they can apply, how fast their neurons can fire, and how much stress they can absorb. I can use energy to improve that to some extent, but without magical empowerment, stat increases hit a ceiling at some point, and every improvement afterward becomes logarithmically smaller. It’s really impossible to say just how strong, fast, or intelligent you would be on Earth, but my guess is that with stats like these, you’d be at the very peak of what’s possible for humanity.”
I shook my head and pushed the errant thoughts aside, focusing on the ritual. Sara and Kadonsel both guided my hands and thoughts as I worked, the latter explaining the original ritual and the former modifying it to be more effective and efficient. When it was complete, I hesitated before pulling out a few of my Henguki crystals and placing them carefully around the diagram. If someone walked in at that moment, I was probably shit-out-of-luck, but then, they were already planning to execute me for being an Oikithikiim spy. It wasn’t like I could make things worse.
“What do you think, Kadonsel?” I asked, looking appreciatively at the complex pattern of whorls, curves, and lines that stretched between an inner and outer circle, glowing in my vision thanks to Sara but otherwise dark and invisible in the blackness.
“It’s—different. I’m not sure what the changes you made are going to do to it, but it otherwise looks pretty close to what I remember.”
“It is,” Sara assured me. “However, the initial version worked like a pair of scissors slowly cutting through the link, then a needle and thread sewing up the cut ends. This version should work more like a hammer and chisel, cutting the energy free in a single strike, then sealing it shut as if the injury never happened.”
“What’ll happen to the energy we cut free?” I asked.
“It will probably dissipate fairly quickly—unless it forms a spirit of its own, of course. That’s possible, as well, but if that happens, at least it won’t be one controlled by the rashi.”
I nodded, then stepped into the center of the diagram. I closed my eyes and began to envision the pattern of the spell that Sara showed me. It was much easier to do than it had been the first time I’d empowered a ritual. That time, I’d been going for speed. This time, while I had no idea how long I had before the rashi came to get me, I doubted it would be immediately. If they were going to act right away, they wouldn’t have bothered to hold me, after all. They could have kept me paralyzed and done whatever they wanted.
I had a feeling that Aeld, Fifa, and Bregg were the reason for the delay. The rashi probably wanted to interrogate them as thoroughly as possible to learn what they could about me before acting. Honestly, that made sense, and I couldn’t help but admit that they were being smart about all this. They kept me captive, bound by a spirit that could lock me down at any time, then learned enough about my abilities to make sure they dealt with me safely. Fortunately, though, their plan had a flaw: Aeld, Fifa, and Bregg didn’t really know my abilities, at least not all of them. I’d hidden some things from them, and my growing skill with rituals was one of those things. Hopefully, that ignorance was all the edge I needed.
I pictured the start of the ritual in my mind, then reached into myself and touched the spirit of the Lerlauga, drawing up the smallest strand of power I could. The key to this ritual was a swift strike using overwhelming power, and the high spirit’s energy was the only type that was strong enough and dense enough to have a chance to succeed. I trickled the power into the pattern in my mind, then slowly fed that into the diagram before me. The energy swirled and writhed through the twists and curls on the floor, gradually filling it. As it touched each crystal, it drained them of energy and swelled in power. That power resonated and flowed throughout the ritual, never touching either circle as it built steadily to a powerful crescendo. Those would be last by necessity.
The energy rose and ebbed, growing stronger with each crest, until at last, it filled the entire diagram and burned with a brilliant radiance in my magical sight. I took a deep breath, then triggered the last part of the spell. Instantly, both circles flared with power as the inner circle slammed into place, severing the part of the spirit around me from the rest of its mass. The outer circle pulsed as energy flowed from it, sealing shut the injuries left on the spirit and the remaining mass surrounding me.
As that remnant started to dissipate, I reached out and grabbed it with my mental fingers. The power resisted, writhing and twisting in my grip, but I held it tightly and pulled it into myself. I could feel a dull, hazy sort of awareness emanating from it, but the newly formed intelligence didn’t seem to be quite aware enough to stop me from siphoning its power. The energy poured into me with growing swiftness, and in less than a minute, the last vestiges of it filled me, swirling and churning in my core as I quickly molded it into a simple spherical shape.
As the power faded, I watched closely with my spiritual sight, looking around in all directions. The guard outside hadn’t moved an inch, which I supposed meant that he hadn’t sensed anything, but he wasn’t my concern. If the high spirit realized I’d cut something off of it, I’d probably see it soon—or a bunch of guards coming to take me back into custody. When nothing changed, I let out a sigh. It looked like I’d done it—or more accurately, Sara and Kadonsel had. I’d just followed their instructions, really.
I hefted my spear, collected the mostly exhausted crystals and returned them to storage, and pulled up my waiting notifications.
Ritual Created: Spiritual Severing
Power Required: Variable
With this ritual, you sever part of a spirit from its main body. Doing so requires power equal to half the power contained within that portion of the spirit. This power must come from a spirit of the same rank as the affected spirit or greater. The severed spirit may be unaware of the severing, and the severed remnant may form a spirit of its own.
Spirit Melding: You have Melded a High Spirit!
Class B High Spirit
Spiritual Power: 369
Benefits: All Mental stats +2, Shielded Spirit
Shielded Spirit
Passive Ability
Your spirit and bonded spirits are harder to detect and resist spiritual damage based on your Vigor stat.
Skill Increase: Ritualism
New Rank: Savant 1
All Rituals gain 1% stability per skill level. Ability gained: Arcane Understanding
Arcane Understanding
Passive ability
You have an intuitive understanding of rituals and how they function. This improves the effects of all your rituals based on your Intuition stat and makes your rituals harder to resist or overcome. You can use this understanding to alter rituals without destroying them, although the more complex the ritual, the higher the chance of failure.
I closed the notifications and willed my stone spirit to smooth the floor, erasing the evidence of my ritual. I hefted my spear and touched the wall between me and the guard with it, slowly and steadily drawing a circle larger than me in the stone while draining power at the same time. Instead of holding the stone spirit in the wall out, I wanted to trap it inside. Once the circle was complete, enclosing one of the rashi’s earth spirits inside it, I took out a depleted crystal, activated Spiritual Strike, and plunged the spear into the bound spirit. The weapon slid easily into the stone and sank into the spirit, pinning it in place as I drained it of its energy and used that to recharge the crystal. I returned the crystal to storage and sent my earth spirit into the wall.
The guard didn’t even have a chance to react as I exploded through the thin layer of stone my earth spirit left in place. My spear plunged into the back of the man’s neck with ease, severing his brain stem and killing him instantly. As his body fell, a thought popped into my head, and I knelt beside his corpse and placed a hand on the chest. I could see his mottled brown spirit flickering and writhing inside his body, still bound to the corpse and to a half-dozen other land and beast spirits that seemed to hold it in place. Even as I watched, though, those bonds seemed to weaken, and the spirit began fading as it prepared itself to depart to whatever fate awaited it.
Before it could, I activated Spiritual Strike and stabbed my spear into the spirit, pulling hard on it. It resisted, trying to remain within its body, but I closed my eyes and focused on the ritual I’d just used, picturing it in my head. Sara and Kadonsel had explained it as it went, and while it was far too complex for me to cast it, it wasn’t too hard to replicate a specific part of the pattern, the part that actually did the severing. The pattern wasn’t complete without the rest of the ritual, but with all my practice writing rituals and casting spells, it wasn’t hard to work out how to finish it. I held that portion of the spell in my mind and channeled power into it, and spiritual energy flowed down my arms, encircling the struggling brown spirit. The energy condensed in a flash, and the spirit practically flew out of the cooling corpse as the spell severed the bonds surrounding it. It vanished into my spear as its Spirit Draining ability activated, and the weapon pulsed with new power. At the same moment, a new notification popped up, and I glanced over it quickly.
Spell Created: Sever Bond
Power Required: Variable
You attempt to sever a binding or bond between a person and spirit. Your chance of success depends on your Intuition stat, the level of your spirit-based professions, and the strength of the spirit and person in question. The spell requires power equal to a minimum of double the flow rate of the person to be affected, although more power is required for stronger spirits. The severed spirit is freed of the binding or bond.
“Oh, well done, John,” Sara said admiringly. “You created a new spell all by yourself!”
“No, I adapted what you created into something new,” I chuckled. “I wouldn’t have known where to begin if I were doing it myself.” I held up the spear, reaching out to connect to the spirit trapped within it, then activated Dominate Spirit. My will rolled out and slammed into it, enclosing the spirit and holding it tightly. It fought back, trying to drive me out, but I clamped down brutally on it. I felt its will shatter beneath mine, and my ability plunged into it. It stilled as the last of its resistance crumbled, and it fell under the sway of the ability.
I lifted the spear and sent my thoughts out to it. “Tell me about this place,” I commanded.
I felt a weak sort of resistance as it tried to fight against me, but I squeezed it in my will again, and it began to talk. I questioned the spirit extensively, learning the layout of the tunnels, where I could find the rashi, where the others were being kept, and what sort of resistance I could expect to encounter. It even told me about the places where the guards were prohibited to enter, and I made visiting those my first priority. Thanks to our silent mental communication and the spirit’s inability to resist Dominate Spirit, it only took a minute or so to wring all the information I could out of it. When it finished speaking, I reached into storage and pulled out one of my depleted crystals.
“What—what are you doing?” Kadonsel asked nervously.
“I’m going to shift this thing’s energy into this crystal,” I replied evenly. “I don’t want it in my spear; someone might sense that.”
“No, Outsider, you can’t!” Her voice sounded concerned, almost frantic. “You can’t deny it its return to the Great Spirits!”
“Why not?” My thoughts were hard and blunt as I spoke. “They’re planning to use that chaining ritual on me, Kadonsel, and to execute me for no reason whatsoever. You think they deserve mercy?”
“I—”
“Let’s say I let this spirit go,” I continued. “What happens if it doesn’t pass on to whatever’s waiting for it? If it can’t because I severed it? It might go directly to the rashi and tell them I’ve escaped, or they might find it and get that information from it.”
“Letharvisa can’t see mortal spirits, though,” she protested. “You said so yourself!”
“Maybe. These rashi are supposed to be the most powerful and skilled letharvisa, though. They might be able to. I’m not willing to take the risk.”
“You could—you could claim it yourself, though, couldn’t you? Then, when you work out how to release me safely, you could release it, too.”
I hesitated. I could, but doing so would put the thing in my head. Kadonsel could already hear my thoughts and speak whenever she wanted. I didn’t need some guard railing at me about how I was evil and going to die the whole time. The stat boosts and potential ability might be nice, but were they worth the distraction?
“I think I can help you cut the spirit off from your thoughts, John,” Sara offered. “I’ve been considering how to do it since we realized that Kadonsel can hear what you’re thinking. It shouldn’t be hard.”
“Fine,” I sighed, then concentrated on the spirit, pulling it into myself. The dominated thing didn’t even fight back, and it took only seconds to draw it into myself. Following Sara’s directions, as I melded it, I guided it into a compact shape and wrapped it in a layer of energy that would hopefully cut it off from my thoughts. Once it vanished fully inside me, I paused, listening and waiting for it to begin railing at me. To my relief, I heard nothing.
I straightened and hefted the body off the floor. I stuck it into the hole I’d made, then had my spirit repair the wall, hiding the evidence of my escape and sealing his body inside the wall at the same time. When the rashi and their guards returned, they’d hopefully be confused enough about my escape and the guard’s disappearance to hesitate before sending their spirits out to find me. Of course, once they did, I was screwed, unless…
“Sara, do you remember how you were talking about shrouding me so that a letharvis can’t see me? Would that work to hide me from the high spirit that trapped me?”
“Only if you used energy from a high spirit, I think,” she replied hesitantly. “And that might not be easy to maintain for long.”
“Let’s work on it as we go,” I decided. “Maybe we can find a way to do it without hurting me.”
“We can try,” she sighed. “I can’t promise you anything, though.”
I readied my weapon and examined the floor for traces of people’s passage. It was time to hunt, and this time, my quarry was the rashi itself.