Bregg returned from his hunt soon after, dripping wet and carrying a pair of bedraggled carcasses. He stayed silent as he cleaned them, but he occasionally cast glares my way as he worked. It looked like the storm had caught him, as well, and I guessed that he knew it wasn’t a natural one—and blamed me for it. That irritated me a bit, to be honest. Sure, he was right that I’d called it, but he had no way to know that. He just automatically assumed the worst of me. That the worst was true in this case didn’t make the assumption any less aggravating.

We both rather pointedly ignored one another as he worked. He didn’t ask me for help, and I didn’t volunteer. I was still kind of pissed that he’d risked our lives on that trail south just to try and prove a point, and he obviously still didn’t trust me. I wasn’t about to try calling more spirits in front of him just in case, so I moved off to one side of the shelf, running through my spear drills and working on my unarmed combat. I really hadn’t fought all that much in this body, and it took me a while to get the feel of how it moved. It was weighted differently than a human one, heavier at the top and with larger feet that weren’t as easy to shuffle or slide around thanks to the thick, gripping skin of my soles. My reach was also a bit longer for my height, and the weight and air resistance of my fur threw my timing off a bit. I started slowly, then worked my way up to about half speed. I probably could have gone faster, but I was aware of Bregg’s eyes on me as I trained, and I didn’t really want him to see what I was actually capable of. He wasn’t an enemy, exactly, but he wasn’t a friend, either.

Aeld arose just before the sun dropped over the western horizon—northwestern, really, since the sun moved in a wide arc fairly low in the southern sky, starting in the northeast and ending in the northwest—and immediately walked over to Bregg, who crouched at the fire, watching a copper pot filled with hunks of meat and some dried vegetables he’d produced. It smelled—well, not great, but not terrible, and probably better than I could do, at least. Aeld touched the crouched warrior, who grunted and straightened slightly from his squatting position. The shaman did the same for me, and I watched with See Spirits as a light-yellow energy flowed from his body, slipping into mine and moving through my muscles. I felt the tingling in my body as tired, aching muscles relaxed, small tears healed, and light bruises faded. He returned to the fire with Bregg, and after a while, I joined them, taking the meat that the hunter handed me and wolfing it down.

The night passed in an uneasy and awkward silence. The first thing I did was add the XP I’d gained to undkrager, which bumped it up to level 4 and gained me an ability in the process.

Profession: Undkrager has gained a level

New Level: 4

With each level of Undkrager, you gain:

Intuition +1, Prowess +2, Vigor +1, 2 Skill Points

Ability Gained: Channeled Strike

Ability: Channeled Strike

Active Ability

You can channel spiritual energy into a blow, doing additional physical and spiritual damage. You can channel 1 unit of spiritual power per Undkrager level into a blow; the damage done varies with your Skill and Prowess stats.

It was a decent ability, but what mattered to me was that the level gave me more stat points and skill points. I had quite a few of those banked at that point, and I went ahead and used three of them to push my Spears skill into the adept ranks. That gave me a new ability, one that wasn’t half bad.

Serpent Spear

Passive Ability

You gain a bonus to weapon speed equal to your Celerity as a percentage while using a spear.

My Celerity stood at 36 at that point, so I was a full third faster with a spear than I had been. That was significant, to be sure, and it made me a lot more dangerous with the weapon. Of course, for that to be the case, I had to have it in hand, and I’d been caught without it the night before. I needed to get used to carrying it; that, or I needed to have some of those smaller throwing spears the hunters carried on me at all times.

I spent the rest of the time chatting with Sara and Kadonsel, learning a little more about Oikie culture and society. It turned out that their society was something of a theocracy. Their leader, the Kungas, was also the High Priest of their religion, which worshipped the Great Spirits, the ones they believed created everything, including the lesser spirits of the world.

“The ancient ones are the Great Spirits’ first children,” she explained. “They gave them life before this world existed, and they lived in harmony with one another in the place beyond this world. When the Great Spirits created our world, many of their children descended to it in curiosity, wishing to experience this new existence. Instead, they found that to be part of the mortal world, they had to take some of its essence into themselves, binding themselves indelibly to this world and forced into conflict with one another.”

“Forced?” I asked casually, not really interested in the details. The mindset behind all this was what mattered to me. It was obvious that the Oikithikiim and Menskallin saw the spirits in vastly different ways, and I had a feeling that understanding those differences would be important to figuring out what was happening here.

“Yes. This world is a world of conflict. All mortals are born with the need for conflict within us. Hate, jealousy, fear, even love—all of these are just ways our need to fight expresses itself. The savages are the embodiment of this, attacking and killing our people just because they can and forcing us to respond in kind.”

I didn’t tell her that the Menskies had a much different view of things, according to what Aeld and Bregg told me, of course. I doubted she’d listen or believe anything they had to say.

“The war with the savages is the most obvious demonstration of that, of course, but the need for conflict can be found even in the most basic units of society,” she continued. “The females in a family jostle for rank and the favor of their male so that their own offspring are born to a higher status. Those offspring then compete, the few males to become their father’s successor and the females to be placed within a more favorable family with another male. Clans contest with one another for resources and political favor, and those battles spill into warfare a few times each generation.

“Within the Elanjurr, the political hierarchy, those battles are fiercer if less bloody, as the clan patriarchs struggle to accumulate more favor and influence and rise to greater heights. The ojaini compete to rise in our own ranks by growing our personal power and making alliances among ourselves, the patriarchs, and the military with the hope that we’ll one day join the Vimat, the Elder Circle, or even rise to Kungas. Even those of our kind who say they’ve sworn off our need for conflict, the Mellungin, still contest their borders with us regularly. Conflict is part of this world, and by being part of this world, the ancient ones are bound to battle one another and us endlessly.”

She sighed wistfully. “Only when we die at last are we free of that cycle. Our spirits go to join our creators, and we’re lifted out of the endless cycles of violence and death. There, we’ll wait for the day that this entire world finally ends, and all the spirits—ours and the ancients—will be free. We’ll greet the savages and Mellungin as brothers and sisters, and all of us will be joined with the Great Spirits as a single family, united not by blood but by our immortal essences.”

That wasn’t the worst religious philosophy I’d ever heard, to be honest, although the part about how conflict was an integral part of life seemed dangerous. It sounded like a way to justify violence, bloodshed, and political infighting. It isn’t anyone’s fault; it’s just human nature. Or Oikie nature, or whatever. The point was, I learned a fair bit about the Oikies in that conversation. They were patriarchal, with a single male having a harem of several females—the more powerful and influential the male, the more females, obviously. Blood-related males and their wives or mates or whatever joined together to form clans, the main social group. A patriarch headed each clan, and those formed a sort of hierarchy, the Elanjurr, almost like a pecking order of clans. The higher a clan was in the Elanjurr, the more influential positions in society their members received, and the more power they held over lesser clans.

It also seemed that my earlier guess about the nature of Oikie weapons was correct. They fought amongst themselves as much or even more than they did with the Menskies, so their weapons were designed to kill others of their kind more than the enemies they called “savages.” Clans battled for control of sacred sites, for access to raw materials, for means of production, and even just to fight. The soldiers in these conflicts were all lesser males, ones without harems, and those battles were ways for them to distinguish themselves and earn enough favor with the clan to have women placed with them. I also guessed that it was a way to keep these lesser males occupied so they weren’t working against the patriarchs and family heads; the Oikies seemed pretty aggressive and territorial by nature, and a bunch of bored males with no women and lots of aggression seemed like a recipe for disaster.

I slept uneasily that night and woke early, before the sun had risen. Bregg and Aeld lay still on their furs, and it occurred to me that this might be a chance to make that decision that the hunter mentioned earlier. I was healed; I knew how to call and meld spirits, and I even had an idea of where I needed to go eventually. That Herimal had been the one to issue the orders to the various kateens, which meant he—or someone in his staff—knew more about what was happening. Eventually, I’d probably have to go find him, which meant I’d be leaving the Haelendi and heading into Oikie lands.

Of course, that was fairly problematic in and of itself. Menskies didn’t have the right to travel freely in Oikie territory, as I’d learned, but it was worse than that. Apparently, nobody had the right to travel freely, not even the Kungas himself. Each clan patriarch was sovereign on his lands; the Kungas was a religious leader rather than a political one. To travel across the nation, I’d either have to sneak—which would take a long time—or get permission from every clan to cross their borders, which seemed really unlikely. The other possibility was to travel by ship, but I doubted that even if the Menskies had ships, which I wasn’t sure of, I could hitch a ride on one to a major Oikie city. I’d have to do what Bregg suggested: travel down the coast, cross the southern mountain range into Mellung, and hope that I could get transport there to Kemjarvi. That was a lot of hoping: hoping that the Mellungin were freer with travelers than the Oikies, hoping that they traded with one another extensively enough for there to be a ship headed that way, and hoping that I, as a Menskie, could book passage at all, much less into Oikie lands. Kadonsel didn’t know much about Mellungin—Mellie—society, and what she did know sounded like propaganda about how weak and pathetic they were.

All that meant that I still couldn’t make a decision, not really. Did I really need to go to this Oikie city? The Herimal had worried about Menskie infiltrators or sympathizers, which meant that this rashi might have sources of intelligence all over the Oikie nation. They might have magical ways of finding out information, similar to the auguries of Soluminos, or they might have operatives there, hidden among the “Redeemed Elders”, gathering information and passing it on. I know that in their shoes, that’s what I would do. Knowledge was the most dangerous weapon in any war, and knowing when and where the Oikies planned their attacks would be a massive advantage, as would knowing all the weak points in the Oikie defenses.

No, it wasn’t time to part ways with Aeld and Bregg just yet, but I had a feeling that time would come. If I figured out how to move through the Oikie lands undetected—maybe with a spell that hid me or disguised my appearance—or I worked out how to use spirits to spy on people at a distance myself, I might not need the Menskies anymore. At that point, I could safely part ways with them and head out to do what I needed to.

I slept poorly that night, waking up frequently as the wounds in my legs and neck throbbed painfully. Bregg, I noticed, did the same; he shifted frequently during my turn at watch, and I felt his eyes on me more than once. Neither of us spoke much once the sun appeared over the northeastern horizon and we began to pack up our camp. I felt sandy-eyed, grouchy, in pain, and had a minor headache that I bet a good cup of coffee would have cured. I really missed coffee—and beer. I would have given a lot for a nice, cold beer right about then.

Aeld didn’t say much when he awoke that morning. He healed me without a word when I came to sit around the fire, and I noted Bregg’s eyes watching my wounds heal. The shaman kept glancing between Bregg and I, his expression a little regretful, but he didn’t say anything—at least, not to me. For all I knew, he and Bregg spent the entire time arguing or gossiping silently.

We packed up the camp, what little of it there was, and Bregg led us onto the path leading down toward the plateau below. As we set out, Aeld dropped back to walk beside me. I steeled myself for him to scold me or ask me to make peace with Bregg, but to my surprise, he had a totally different topic in mind.

“That was quite the storm last night, Freyd,” he observed in a curiously neutral voice.

“It was,” I replied just as evenly. “I wasn’t sure if you noticed it, to be honest. You seemed to be pretty deep in your communion thing.”

“I don’t think it’s possible to commune so deeply as to miss something like that,” he laughed lightly. “Or to miss when an undemmra attacks the camp and badly wounds one of us.” He looked me up and down, his eyes appraising. “I notice that you added its power to yours.”

“I didn’t have much choice once it attacked me.”

“You could have allowed it to flee or bargained with it for its surrender…” He paused. “However, I think doing what you did was probably the best thing. Storm spirits are particularly vengeful, and if you’d released it, it would likely have attacked you again once it healed. And bonding it might have been worse; a greater spirit like that is much harder to control.”

“I thought it was just a land spirit,” I said curiously. “What’s a greater one? I’ve never heard of those.”

“Obviously not, which is the whole point of this conversation,” he sighed. “It appears, Freyd, that you’ve been watching me perform my duties with the spirits, and you’ve somehow discovered how to call one from that. Unfortunately, what you did last night was very dangerous.”

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“That spirit was pretty powerful,” I admitted. “Stronger than I anticipated.”

“Yes, but that’s not why. If you’d lost to it, it would have hurt you, but then it would have left. That’s the nature of storm spirits. Just like the great storms themselves, they inflict their damage, then move on. Once they’ve defeated an enemy, they don’t look back.

“No, that wasn’t the danger. The danger is that you’re drawing power from the hunt spirit without control, and that power is a lot stronger than you realize because of its source.”

“You mean, that it’s a hunt spirit? Are they stronger than other types?”

“No, that it’s a close spirit.” He made a sour face. “This is a good place to begin your education, Freyd, and it’s something you should have learned before you started tapping that power inside you. This is why loralvisa learn first and bind spirits later, but that particular passage is gone, and there’s no point in looking back.”

He lifted his staff, and a glowing ball of light appeared before him, one that was crisper and more defined than the one he’d used to light the ship’s cabins. “Imagine this orb, Freyd, to be our world, Sojnheim. The part that you see—the part we all deal with every day—is Deyheim, the mortal world. That’s the world that Bregg and his hunters live in, the world of everyday life. If you ask most Menskallin, it’s the world, but that’s wrong. Deyheim is only part of our existence; there’s another world, as well, one that exists side-by-side with ours.”

He waved the staff, and a golden haze suddenly shrouded the sphere, coating it in a transparent shell and seeming to undulate beneath and through its surface. “This is Undaheim, the spirit world. As you can see, every place, everything on Deyheim touches and is touched by Undaheim. The two exist side-by-side and can’t be separated. Everything, from the tiniest pebble to the mightiest mountain, has an existence in both worlds—everything, Freyd, is touched by the spirits, and most things you see have a spirit attached to them.

“However,” he continued, “just because everything has a spirit doesn’t mean they’re all equal. The spirit of a small stone isn’t the same as the spirit of a mountain, obviously, but both have far more in common with one another than they do with the spirit of an ishvarn, for example, or the hunt spirit you claimed. It’s not just that one is a spirit of earth while the other is the spirit of a creature; their fundamental natures differ wildly, and the energies they can offer you are very little alike.

“That’s why we’ve created a hierarchy to help distinguish them.” He smiled ruefully. “And it is our hierarchy, Freyd, not theirs. The spirits care nothing for our labels. This system is one that we mortals designed to help us categorize them, nothing more.”

He lowered the staff, and the ball winked out, to be replaced with a dim, flickering flame. “Spirits of the land are the bottom of that hierarchy,” he said solemnly. “Spirits of natural objects and phenomena. Stone, wind, flame, water, ice, lightning—all of these are spirits of the land. Whether it’s the spirit of a drop of rain or a mighty sea, it’s still a land spirit, and it’s still the least of the spirits.”

“Why?” I asked curiously. “I’m guessing that the spirit of that mountain behind us is stronger than the hunt spirit, for example, probably a whole lot stronger. So, why is it lower ranked than the hunt spirit?”

“Because it’s simpler, Freyd. No matter how powerful it becomes, a spirit of the land has only a very limited understanding of the world. The spirit of that mountain only knows about stone and solidity, about endurance and strength. It doesn’t understand the wind that blows around it, or the sun that shines on it, or even the ice that shrouds its peak, not really. It knows these things exist, but it doesn’t know what they are, and it has no way to understand their nature. A child has a wider and broader understanding of the world than the oldest land spirit, and that simplicity affects the type of energy it possesses.”

The flame on his palm winked out, and a hazy white cloud swirled into being where it had been. “Some land spirits are more complex, but even they are limited. A mist spirit like this one knows wind and water, but only in a limited fashion. It would have no problems understanding the water in a drop of rain, but it would struggle to understand the existence of a puddle, and the concept of an ocean—or of ice—would utterly elude it. That storm spirit you claimed knows rain, wind, and lightning, and it might know about ice. It wouldn’t understand the fire that its lightning started, though, or how its rain can form ponds and streams, or still and calm air. Those concepts would elude it.”

He closed his hand, and the cloud vanished into a wisp of vapor. “Land spirits grow stronger by proximity to their element. The longer one exists, the more of its element it calls to itself, and the more aware it becomes. The spirit of the mountain knows more about the world around it than the spirit of a boulder on its slope. If you reduced that mountain to gravel somehow, you’d change the spirit’s strength and awareness, but not its nature.”

“How—how can he know that?” Kadonsel asked in my head, her voice confused. “No one knows the thoughts or minds of the ancients!”

“I’m guessing that’s easier when you can actually talk to them,” I thought back with a mental snort. “Aeld can ask the spirit of a mountain what it’s thinking about, remember?”

“I…” She fell silent, which was good since Aeld was speaking again and I didn’t want to be distracted.

He opened his hand again, and this time, a light that spread upward like a swift-growing tree, branching out over his palm. “Above land spirits are living spirits,” he said. “The spirits of plants, moss, lichens—even tiny spirits of living things that we can’t see. Living spirits inhabit things that are alive but mostly ignorant of the world around them. The spirit of a mighty tree can feel the wind, taste the water and soil around its roots, and sense the sun on its leaves. It can feel the touch of the creatures nesting in its limbs or fire licking at its bark, but it doesn’t really understand any of those things. It knows they’re there and that they’re entities separate from itself. It can come to learn that the sun’s warmth brings food, or that a tirkorna’s teeth digging into it will relieve it of the discomfort of a rapui infestation in its bark. However, it has no idea what those things really are or mean.

“Despite that, though, even the least living spirit has a more profound awareness than a spirit of the land. It knows that it is, and that it’s separate from other things, and that those other things have existences of their own. A fire spirit understands the world as things that can burn, things that can’t burn, and the flames that burn them. The spirit of a strand of moss has a better perception of existence, and that awareness is reflected in the energy it offers. Its power is richer, denser, and subtler than that of a land spirit. Even if you get less power from it, you can do more with that power; it’s more flexible and enduring.”

The light dwindled into his hand and reappeared, this time looking like an outline of the bird I fought the night before. “Beast spirits are greater than living spirits,” he continued. “Not because they’re stronger, but because their existence is far more complex, and so is their awareness. Beast spirits, like the beasts themselves, perceive the world around them and have a sense of their place in it. A tiny snaerbig knows that a shadow passing over it means a hunter is coming, and it knows to hide. A hemmorn soaring the peaks can read the winds from the snow blowing off the summits. A stornbyor can feel the changing seasons and knows when it’s time to retreat into the depths to ride out the deep snows and Dark Season in slumber.

“The spirits of these creatures are more aware, as well. An ishvarn’s spirit knows the world about it and understands it in a limited way. It knows its hunting grounds; it understands what is and isn’t prey; it knows what snow is and how it can affect its host. It isn’t intelligent the way we are, but it’s aware of its environment and sees how to move through it and interact with it, so it’s more complex than a living spirit. Its energy is, as well, and you can do a great deal more with its power. Hunters and warriors typically bind beast spirits in preference to all others because it’s easy to ask them to make you stronger, faster, or improve your senses, things they did for their hosts back when they inhabited those bodies. A spirit of the land or living spirit would have no concept of your body, not really, and wouldn’t know how to empower it—or do anything but damage it, to be honest.”

He lowered his hand, and the light vanished. “Above beast spirits are close spirits, like the hunt spirit you’ve claimed—or the healing spirit I’ve bound to me. Close spirits can form when a large number of living beings spend time in close proximity. All thinking, aware beings draw energy from the spirit world to themselves, meaning the latent energy near large numbers of them is denser. If all or even many of these creatures begin experiencing a specific emotion or are overly focused on a single concept, it can taint the spirit world and coalesce into a close spirit. A pack of ishvarn who go too long without a successful hunt could spawn a spirit of hunger, while one that’s been highly successful could form a spirit of the hunt—that’s how your spirit likely formed, by the way. A valskab experiencing a drought could spawn spirits of thirst or fear. Large battles often create spirits of pain, rage, fear, and bloodlust, among others.

“Typically, it’s easier for those spirits to form around intelligent creatures rather than plants or beasts, of course, simply because we experience so many more emotions and have so many more concepts,” he chuckled. “They form in the valskab every so often, especially during times of turmoil or upheaval.

“Unlike lower spirits, close spirits are aware and intelligent. They understand almost as much of the world as we do, and while their thoughts are fixated on whatever concept spawned them, they understand basic emotions and can reason. That means that their energy is complex and deep. While my healing spirit functions best at healing, for obvious reasons, it can also hurt, encourage growth, cause disease, strengthen me, or weaken another. If I had to, I could have it create a breeze or light a fire; it could move a stone or harden ice. It wouldn’t be good at any of those things compared to a land spirit, but it could do them if I gave it sufficient guidance.”

He gestured toward my chest. “When you were calling last night, your hunt spirit—even as weakened as it is—understood what you wanted, and it acted to help you. It might have believed that you were calling prey for food or another predator for battle, but it knew that you wanted to draw something, so it drew something. Because its energy is so much more potent and denser than a land spirit’s, even a small amount of it was enough to call earth spirits to shake the shelf on which we slept and pull a storm to us.”

His face was grave as he spoke. “Close spirits are dangerous, Freyd, even when bound—or whatever you did to that one. While free, they actively seek out a thinking creature to inhabit in order to more fully experience the concept that birthed them. Bound, they have far more understanding than other spirits, and they tend to act on what they think the intent of your commands is. You have to be very careful when calling on them and give them very specific guidance. That’s why no loralvis is allowed to bind a close spirit; doing so is usually part of the rite of passage from loralvis to letharvis.”

“Can you teach me how to call on mine safely, then?”

“That’s the bargain we made—one that you’ve already begun to uphold, in fact. I watched in spirit as you claimed the storm spirit last night, and while I still don’t understand how you did it, I think eventually, I can—especially if you explain exactly how you did it.”

“I’ll try,” I replied honestly.

“That was very useful, John,” Sara said thoughtfully in my head.

“How?” I asked dubiously. Really, I hadn’t learned much that I didn’t already know. Aeld had already told me that land spirits only really knew their element and little beyond that. I hadn’t known about living spirits, but it made sense that if animals had spirits, plants would, too.

“After what he said, I went back and did a more detailed comparison between the three spirits that you’ve melded, and I can see the differences he’s talking about. The beast spirit’s energy is a lot denser and more complex than the storm spirits, and the hunt spirit’s power is even more complex than that. I think it’s all linked to that idea you had about the spirits being like vibrations in the spiritual field. Close spirits seem to be made of much more complicated vibrations, and all those interlapping harmonics give them a lot more power.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that I’m going to have to rethink my power scaling,” she laughed. “I’ll have to recalibrate it using the energy from a land spirit as the baseline and work from there. Plus, I think I can work out how to summon more complex spirits this way. Something like Aeld’s healing spirit could be useful, after all.”

“Or something like a spirit of strength or battle,” I mused.

“Exactly. I’ll have to play around with the calling spell a bit, but I think I can work out how to draw a specific type of close spirit with it eventually.”

“Or something stronger—assuming there are such things.”

“I think the spirit of that plateau shows that there are,” she laughed.

“Yeah, but if that’s just a really powerful land spirit, then it’s not fundamentally different from melding an earth spirit, is it?”

“You could probably ask, you know. He seems to be in an answering mood.”

I refocused on the shaman walking beside me. “So, what comes after close spirits?”

“Nothing that you’re going to deal with anytime soon—at least, I certainly hope so,” he said feelingly. “Elder spirits are living or beast spirits that stayed in this world after their host died. Most of those dwindle and fade swiftly, but some last long enough to start gathering power to themselves. They can become truly powerful, strong enough that they desire admiration and even worship, and many are willing to link to a valskab in return for that. Every valskab is built around at least one elder spirit, in fact, and only a group of letharvisa acting in concert can have any hope of binding one.”

“They’ve bound the elder ancients?” Kadonsel gasped. “How? The elders respond only as they will and can’t be coerced, compelled, or commanded. Any attempt to do so is disastrous!”

“It sounds like they bargain with them to me. They offer it worship—which I assume translates out to power—and it helps bind them together in return.” I turned my thoughts toward Sara. “Any way we could call one and see if I can meld it? It sounds like it would be useful.”

“Depending on how strong they are, that might be a possibility,” Sara said. “If you can get a good look at some beast spirits, I might be able to extrapolate a call to a more powerful version of one. If it’s as powerful as Aeld and Kadonsel seem to think, though, that might not be a great idea.”

“Well, not yet, but I plan to get stronger,” I chuckled. “I’m thinking long-term, Sara.”

“That’s probably more realistic. Might as well see if there’s anything above that, just to be sure.”

“Anything else?” I asked innocently.

He looked at me uncomfortably for a moment, then sighed. “Yes. High spirits are powerful land spirits of entire regions or areas, and their understanding has grown beyond a land spirit’s to encompass everything within their region. The high spirit of a mountain valley, for example, understands the living creatures within it, the rocks beneath it, the air that flows through it, and so on. Their existence is something we have difficulty even comprehending, as they know everything about their region all at once but have no awareness of what lies even a stride beyond their borders.”

“I think I’ve sensed one of those,” I said. “Back in the valley when I hunted the enyarv. I thought for a second about trying to speak to it, but I decided it was better not to try.”

“Wise of you, Freyd. High spirits are very powerful, the strongest spirits of those that exist in this world. They’re hard to awaken—it would be practically impossible for you to by yourself—but when they do wake up, if they aren’t appeased immediately, they cause terrible destruction.”

“How do you appease one?” I asked curiously.

“It doesn’t matter. Only hundreds of letharvisa working in concert can even rouse one, much less bargain with it. If you’re ever at a place where you have that opportunity, you’ll be a full letharvis, and you’ll understand.”

“Blood,” Kadonsel whispered quietly in my mind. “The hallituki can be roused with blood, and blood can appease them. It’s possible that enough worship might, as well; the muanuki, those that the savage called elders, gain strength from praise and adoration, which is why remain in this world, so the hallituki might respond to the same if enough praise was given them, but the only sure method is rivers of blood.”

An image of a spirit hovering over a massive sacrificial altar flashed in my head, and I shuddered at the concept. I supposed it was possible that I’d be able to summon one that way, but from the sound of it, I’d never be able to meld one. My guess was that the spirit of the plain before us was one of those high spirits, and I wasn’t ever going to try ripping that thing to shreds and absorbing it.

“You said the high spirits are the strongest ones on this world,” I pointed out. “Does that mean that there are stronger ones out there?”

“There are tales of outer spirits, spirits who found their way to this world from another. These are usually very powerful, but they seldom remain here long before either dissipating or returning to their world.” He paused. “And above all are the First Spirits, those who dwell in Enverthen, beyond this world. All you need to know about them is that they can’t be summoned or bargained with, and you should never call on them. Doing so invites destruction.”

“If they can’t be summoned or spoken to, how do you even know they exist?” I asked curiously.

“Just because they can’t be called here doesn’t mean they’ve never entered our world.” He shivered slightly. “They did once, long ago, and it was a time of terrible destruction. Since then, it’s been forbidden to call on the First for any reason—not that they would hear you in the void beyond our world, anyway. All that matters is that you’ll never see one, call on one, or speak to one—and if you do, then the entire world is in terrible danger.”

I felt a pang of anxiety at that. Summoning one of the First Spirits would put the entire world in danger—and here I was, brought to this world to keep something from going terribly wrong.

Yeah, I hoped I was wrong, but something told me that I might end up seeing a fucking First Spirit sooner than Aeld thought. And I was definitely not excited to meet one.