The trip back to the valskab was slower than the one south had been. Apparently, the fight with the mud spirit had tired Fifa and Aeld out a bit, which honestly confused me. I got why I was wiped—I’d gone full melee on the thing, been knocked around, and had a spell backlash on me—but both of them could tap on their valskabs for power. Before, when Aeld was exhausted, he’d been going for days. How did a short fight exhaust him?
“It’s a question of flow and capacity, not just power, John,” Sara said in a subdued voice. “At least, I think it is.”
“What do you mean?”
“Aeld and Fifa have spiritual flow and capacity ratings, just like you do. Everyone in this world does. They might not know them as accurately as you know yours, but everyone has a limit of how much power they can store to be used for spells, and how much they can move at once. And just like you, it’s easier to push power out than to draw it in.
“When Aeld healed you and Bregg on the run through the High Reaches, he was probably putting power out at only a slightly higher rate than he was taking it in. That meant that he was losing energy overall, but it drained slowly over days. In that fight, though, Aeld and Fifa had to push power out at their maximum levels the whole time, and they can’t draw on the valskab to restore themselves that quickly. They’re probably both fairly drained.”
“So, there’s a limit to how much help the valskab can give a letharvis,” I mused. “That’s useful to know—just in case.”
“Most likely, yes—although I can’t guarantee it.” Her voice was quiet as she spoke, and I felt a touch of concern as I listened to her.
“Sara, what’s the matter?”
“John, I…” She paused, and when she spoke again, she sounded miserable. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I did wrong back there.”
“Wrong? What did you do wrong?” I asked in genuine confusion.
“The calling spell. I don’t know how I got that so wrong. Everything I’ve learned about this world says that shouldn’t have happened. I would have sworn that the power levels you used were far too low to draw even a handful of spirits, much less so many—and I don’t know how you could have awakened that high spirit!” She sighed. “I’m going to have to rework my analysis of this world using that new information, but I’m not sure how it’s possible to fit it in. I—I don’t know if I’ll be able to completely analyze this world, John.”
“Why not?”
“Because that wasn’t just an anomaly. It—it doesn’t remotely fit into the models I’ve built of this world and its energy fields! The few high spirits I’ve analyzed aren’t just sleeping, John. They’re in something closer to hibernation, with their energy moving in a specific pattern that’s unique to each of them but that keeps them more or less cut off from what’s going on around them. All my models say that to wake one, you’d need power equal to a significant fraction of their energy and you’d need to move it in a pattern that would disturb theirs. What you just did is like—it’s like you spit in a river and caused it to shift its course! My models say that it shouldn’t be possible, but it obviously is.” She sighed. “Which means there’s a serious flaw somewhere in my models.”
“Or in your assumptions,” I pointed out.
“What do you mean?”
“Sara, if I spit into a river, and it suddenly changed course, I wouldn’t assume that my spit did it, and neither would you. I’d assume that something else happened, and me spitting was just coincidental—or that someone had set it up so it happened that way. Just as if I touched a mountain, and it collapsed, I wouldn’t think that I was strong enough to shatter the mountain. I’d assume someone rigged it to fall—probably hoping it fell on me.”
“You—you think Fifa set you up,” Sara concluded quietly. “Or Aeld.”
“Either of those are possible, but they honestly aren’t likely. Aeld didn’t seem to know where we were going, so he wouldn’t have been able to set this up. And if Fifa had, I think she’d have been better prepared to defend herself, unless she was willing to die to feed me to the mud spirits.”
“Who does that leave?”
“The valskab elders, in all likelihood. If we’re still inside the area they can watch, then they probably could have told Fifa to bring me here, then riled all the spirits up so that any call, no matter how weak, drew all of them.” I hesitated for a moment as another realization struck. “And it might not just have been directed at me, either.”
“You think they were trying to kill Aeld?”
“I think it’s more likely they’re afraid of or pissed off by what I can do with spirits, and they wanted to end all knowledge of that.” I snorted silently. “Of course, it might not have been them. For all I know, it could have been this rashi—or had nothing to do with me at all. Maybe a rival of Fifa’s saw this as a chance to remove or disgrace her. Maybe someone doesn’t like Aeld—Fifa did say that he wasn’t very popular. Or maybe someone like Bregg just really hates outsiders.”
“That would make sense,” she said slowly. “And it would make my models accurate again.”
“Well, it probably wouldn’t hurt to triple-check them, even so, right?”
She laughed. “John, I run these models against thousands of test subjects before I tell you the results. We’re well past triple-checking!” She paused for a moment. “But I get the point. Just because it could have been an odd coincidence or something deliberately arranged doesn’t mean it wasn’t a flaw in my models. I haven’t really run them against enough elder and high spirits to be sure that they’re accurate at those levels, and I really need to find more outliers like the spirit you just melded to make sure that the models can explain them. They aren’t truly complete, yet, and I’ll keep testing them to make sure that they’re as accurate as possible.”
The rest of the day dragged by. Fifa vanished into the depths of the valskab when we returned, and Aeld begged off more training for the day, claiming tiredness and preparations he had to make for travel. That left me to wander the valskab, but rather than heading back to my room, I set out on the northern road, running at a decent pace. I had something I wanted to do, and I couldn’t do it in the valskab. I knew that the elders had spirits watching me—I couldn’t see Fifa’s little beast spirit nearby, but plenty of the copper-shaded valskab spirits surrounded me, and realistically, any of them could be reporting to a letharvis.
Fifteen minutes later, I left the last of those coppery spirits behind me, and I dropped into a walk, looking for a bit of relatively open ground. It took me only five minutes of searching to find a gravelly spot near the river that would suffice. I sat down on the rough gravel and closed my eyes, turning my thoughts inward.
“Okay, Kadonsel,” I thought silently. “Let’s talk about Henguki. How does it work?”
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she sighed. “I’d be cast out of the Elanjurr for what I’ve already told you, but this—this would get me executed.”
“I thought you said that you allow the Redeemed Elders to learn Henguki,” I pointed out.
“No, they’re allowed to use items created by ojaini, not make them themselves. No one who isn’t one of the people has ever been allowed to actually learn the secrets of Henguki. That’s one of our oldest laws, and the only punishment for it is death.”
“Why?” I asked curiously.
“I don’t know. Our teachings say that it’s because it’s going against the will of the Great Spirits. If they wanted the savages or Redeemed Elders to know Henguki, they would have given them the ability the way they did us.” She snorted. “Anyone who thinks about it knows that’s not true, though. No ojain is born knowing how to bind spirits into orbs or draw power from them. We have to learn. And if the Great Spirits didn’t want the savages using Henguki, they’d prevent them from doing so.”
“Maybe it’s because if the Menskallin could use Henguki, they could match your technologies, and that would take away your biggest advantage against them,” I suggested.
“That—that’s probably part of it, yes,” she admitted. “Henguki’s a sacred art, though. No one wants the savages to profane it.”
“But you’re willing to teach it to me, even though I’m one of them?”
“First, I don’t have much choice. I want to be free of this confinement, and to do that, I have to help you learn. Second, I don’t know what you are, but you aren’t one of the savages.”
I frowned at those words. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve heard enough of your words with the other spirit to guess that you aren’t from our world. You came from somewhere beyond, just as the Great Spirits did. I don’t know why you’re here or where you came from, but I do know that you aren’t one of the savages, whatever you are.”
I silently berated myself. I knew that Kadonsel could hear my thoughts as I spoke with Sara–she’d answered them far too many times for me to miss that—but I hadn’t really guarded against that. I didn’t know if I could hide my conversations with Sara from the ojain, but until I did, I’d have to be more circumspect about what I said to her.
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“Fine,” I finally sighed. “You’re right. I’m not from here. Where I’m from doesn’t matter, but I came here to stop something terrible from happening.”
“What?”
“That’s the problem. I don’t know. I’m trying to figure it out, and learning Henguki might help me with that.”
She remained silent for several seconds. “You think that my people are involved in whatever you’re here to stop, don’t you?”
“I don’t just think it; I know it. Whatever your ship was doing was part of it.”
“Then, you’ll use what I teach you to work against the Oikithikiim and help the savages?”
“No,” I said firmly. “I don’t care about your war, and I’m not for either side. I’m here to stop something, something like that Uprising you told me about. Whatever’s happening, it’s probably on that scale, and I’m here to make sure that it doesn’t happen.”
I felt her shudder. “If—do you really think that it’s another Uprising?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But it’s probably something similar, at least in the effect it’ll have on the world. If someone had been able to stop the Uprising, wouldn’t you have wanted them to?”
“Yes.” She fell silent for several moments. “Henguki—I’ve watched what you do with spirits, outsider. How you bind them to yourself and hold them within your body. Henguki isn’t that different, except that you’re binding the spirit into a crystal, rather than yourself.”
Her voice turned crisper and more instructional as she spoke. “To bind a spirit typically requires three steps. First, locate or create a suitable vessel and a spirit you wish to bind. Second, place the spirit and vessel together within a circle of your creation. Third, place a bit of yourself within the vessel as an offering to the spirit. If it accepts, it will enter the vessel and remain there.”
I admit that I felt a little nervous calling a water spirit out of the river. The last few times I’d called a spirit hadn’t gone well, after all. I braced myself for anything as I trickled a tiny bit of power into the stream, resonating in the pattern that Sara showed me. I sighed with relief as a single sea-green blob drifted up from the current and flowed over the ground toward me, stopping just in front of me. A quick analysis showed me that it was a simple Class K water spirit with a power rating of 17, nothing special or powerful—which was exactly what I wanted.
I reached into storage and took out one of the chunks of crystal I’d picked up earlier, placing it on the ground next to the bubbling, flowing spirit. I picked up my staff and began to scribe a circle around the pair, keeping my call active so the water spirit didn’t flee before I’d finished. When the circle snapped into place, the spirit began to dart back and forth inside it, rushing from one edge of the circle to the other, seemingly unable to cross the barrier I’d made.
“Okay, what’s next?”
“Normally, you’d pour a bit of your energy into the crystal,” she said dubiously. “The spirit would then decide if it wanted to enter the crystal or not—and with an unprepared crystal like that, it probably wouldn’t, not unless you put a lot of power into it to entice it. However, with the way you claim spirits, I’m not sure.”
What followed was a half-hour of trial and error. I tried simply putting power into the crystal, but as Kadonsel suggested, the spirit simply ignored the vessel and tried to break free. I tried grabbing the spirit mentally to force it into the crystal, but that simply resulted in spiritual combat, and I didn’t really want to meld the thing. Fortunately, it had no interest in fighting, and when neither of us engaged, the combat ended quickly, returning me to my body.
“The problem is that when you meld a spirit, John, that energy flows into you automatically,” Sara mused. “What you need to do is meld it but deposit the energy into the crystal rather than yourself.”
“Sounds reasonable. Any idea how I can take its energy without letting it into me?”
“The crystal will contain any power placed in it,” Kadonsel suggested. “You just have to get the energy to go there first, before it reaches you.”
“That might work, John. If you engage the spirit through the crystal, rather than directly…”
That wasn’t anywhere nearly as easy as it sounded. I had to reach out with my mental fingers, but rather than grasping the spirit, I had to guide them into the crystal, then through it to the spirit. The hazy world of spiritual combat formed around us immediately, but it had an odd, prismatic sheen to it that I hadn’t noticed before. Everything seemed mildly distorted and flattened, and I realized that I was seeing the spirit world through the lens of the crystal.
The water spirit attempted to flee when I reached for it, but the circle held it in place. It lashed at me with jets of water that cut into my skin, but I ignored the wounds and tore at it, drawing its energy out. The power flowed back toward me, but rather than sinking into my wounds and healing me as it normally did, it seemed to float all around me, hovering in place without touching me. The battle lasted less than a minute, and when I crushed the spirit in my fist, I found myself back in my body, staring at a crystal that looked normal but glowed with power. I analyzed it and smiled at what I saw.
Unprepared Henguki Crystal
Unusual
This item can be used to store spiritual power.
Current Storage: 24/49
Contains:
Class L Water Spirit
Skill Gained: Henguki Channeling
Rank: Neophyte 2
You can create and draw from Henguki crystals.
Spirit energy gained from Henguki is increased 1% per skill level.
I reached into the circle and picked up the crystal. It tingled slightly in my fingers, and I could feel the energy pulsing inside it. I reached out to it tentatively and drew a strand of power from it, pulling it into me. The energy flowed more slowly than I was used to, and when I tried to return the energy to the crystal, it slid back in like molasses.
“It looks like your Spiritual Flow is reduced by about a third when drawing from or putting energy into a crystal, John,” Sara said thoughtfully. “You should practice it to see if you can improve it.”
“You did it!” Kadonsel broke in excitedly. “You fully contained a spirit’s energy in a crystal without trapping the spirit!”
“I think it’s still in there, Kadonsel,” I said skeptically.
“It feels more like its awareness is attached to the crystal, not inside. And I can barely sense that—I don’t think I would have been able to back in my body. It’s incredibly faint.”
Honestly, that didn’t matter to me, so I turned my thoughts back to Sara. “This says it’s not at maximum capacity. Does that mean I could add another spirit to it?”
“I’m not sure, John. You could certainly try.”
I broke the circle and sent out another call, this time for a wind spirit. One answered almost instantly, and I closed the circle back behind it, then engaged it in combat through the crystal once more. The weak spirit didn’t really put up any more of a fight than the water spirit had, and to my excitement, its power swiftly flowed into the crystal and joined the water spirit’s there.
Unprepared Henguki Crystal
Unusual
This item can be used to store spiritual power.
Current Storage: 41/49
Contains:
Class L Water Spirit
Class K Air Spirit
“You stored two spirits in one crystal,” Kadonsel said wonderingly.
“I take it that’s not normal,” I chuckled.
“Not at all. Normally, once one spirit inhabits an orb, no other spirit will enter it, and there’s no way to entice them since any energy you put into it is absorbed by the first spirit. That’s why we have so many different sizes and qualities of orbs: each is designed to hold a specific type and class of spirit without wasting capacity.”
I picked up the crystal and stared at it. I’d gotten rid of everything in my storage because I didn’t really need most of it, and I was worried that the Menskies might have a way to detect anything in there. I didn’t really need this crystal, to be honest, but I hadn’t seen anything that suggested that the Menskies had storage devices like mine. If they didn’t have them, then they probably wouldn’t have defenses against them—but that didn’t mean that they couldn’t still detect something inside storage.
Fortunately, that was easy enough to check. I slipped the crystal into storage in my spear, then looked at the weapon with See Spirits. It looked perfectly normal; no strange glow emanated from it, and no trickle of spirit flowed from the spear to show that it held a crystal within it. The same held true when I viewed it with See Magic, as well.
“Looks like spirit crystals in storage aren’t detectable, doesn’t it?” I asked Sara with some satisfaction.
“It does, John, which makes sense. You can’t see those items with your normal vision because they aren’t really here for light to reflect off them. They’re somewhere else, in a manner of speaking. That means that magic and spiritual energy shouldn’t touch them, either.”
I looked at the crystal, debating. I could see serious utility in the item as a sort of backup power source in case my spirits ran low. However, being found with one would likely get me in a lot of trouble if not executed by the powers-that-be. Keeping it was a risk.
“Not much of one, John,” Sara suggested. “I would think that if they had those defenses, they’d have put them up on the valskab, wouldn’t they? Certainly, they would have if they were bringing in a stranger.”
“Good point.” I grinned. “Okay, I’m sold. Let’s make some more. I think this could be really useful.”
I spent another couple of hours calling various spirits and placing them in crystal chunks. I summoned fire and earth, ice and lightning—although that got me rained on briefly. I even called a few more complex spirits, like a lava spirit that appeared in a blast of heat and glowing stone and a sand spirit that swirled out of the riverbank. That one was a mingling of earth and water, just as mud was, only with more earth and less water mixed in. All of the spirits were small and weak, Classes J through L, so melding them into the crystals was an easy enough matter, and I only had to pause for a but every so often to let Draining Aura heal the damage my spirit took in those combats.
At last, I picked up my last crystal, one that held three small spirits: a Class J earth, a Class K light, and a Class J fire. As I went to place it in my storage, though, Sara stopped me.
“Hold on a second, John,” she said. “Can you hold that crystal up to your spear? I think I can get something out of it.”
“What do you mean?” I asked as I picked up my spear from where I’d dropped it on the ground.
“I mean, I think I can add an adaptation to your weapon from this. Just touch the crystal to the spearhead.” I did so and waited for a minute or so before she spoke again. “Got it! Here, take a look.”
Adaptive Spear
Item Type: Basic Weapon
Abilities: Adaptive, Bound Item
Adaptations: Golost Blade (Locked), Storage, Spirit Containment
Golost Blade
This weapon does extra damage to spellcasters and can be used to deflect or block spells.
[Locked–This adaptation cannot be used on this world]
Storage
You can store up to 130 cubic centimeters of nonliving material in your weapon. Storing and removing an item requires the use of magical energy.
Spirit Containment
This weapon can attempt to drain and hold any spirit wounded by it. Success depends on your Henguki Channeling skill and Intuition stat, and the strength of the affected spirit. You can tap this stored energy with your Henguki Channeling skill.
Max Capacity: 350 Power
I whistled in appreciation. “That’s quite an upgrade, Sara,” I noted. “So, I just have to stab a spirit with my spear, and it’ll try to contain it?”
“It’s an activated ability, John, so you have to do it deliberately. Also, the spear has to wound the spirit first, so you’ll want to use Spiritual or Channeled Strike first—or maybe Spirit Drain.”
“How did you turn that crystal into that sort of adaptation? That’s not what it does, is it?”
“No, not really. Basically, I’ve been watching how it works enough to improve on it a bit—and I got some inspiration from how you were able to drain the high spirit only after you wounded it earlier. The only warning I’ll give you is that, unlike the crystals in storage, your spear will radiate energy stored in it, so once you’ve absorbed it, you might want to use it quickly before anyone sees it.”
“Good call.” I slipped the stone into storage and rose to my feet. I had nine crystals, now, all holding about forty to fifty units of energy in them, hidden away and ready to be used. That wasn’t the same as being linked to a valskab, obviously, but it served as an excellent ace in the hole. I was as ready as I could be for our trip to Aldhyor, whatever that was.
At least, I hoped I was.