Chapter Eighty-five

Ah, being on a ship once again brought back memories. Krakens, for instance, which I had been more than surprised to learn were a thing in this world. Sure, there were old sailor’s stories back on good old Earth about them, but no definitive proof. But here I had seen them with my own tentacles, in fact, I resembled them quite a bit myself. And since Hank had been present at my encounter with one of the giant squidy-things — plus he had ransacked my memories and knew nearly everything I knew — he was rather excited about the prospect of meeting one in person. Luckily, and much to his disappointment, the elven sailors seemed one-hundred percent sure there were no such monsters in the waters we were sailing. Besides, we had more pressing issues to deal with, namely the Kevin and Hank Independence Movement, or KHIM for short. His idea, not mine.

Our first order of business was to establish a more or less private channel of communications. Krissy and Kiwa were constantly busy, either going through different sword drills and Mana-exercises on the quarterdeck, or complaining about the food, the tight sleeping quarters down in the hold, and about the stench of the dozens of rangers and marines that I was thankfully unable to smell. We didn’t want to disturb them in their activities, so Hank had guided me to create a new communication node inside my body — sorry, our body — for KHIM use only, which for the moment consisted of Hank, Tilry and myself. I was sure Krissy would occasionally hear a few stray thoughts leaking out of the node and touching upon the threads connecting me to her, but shipboard life was noisy anyway so I didn’t think it would be a problem.

Once that was done, and we were sure our hosts were absorbed enough in their workouts, our brainstorming sessions could begin.

***

First, we needed to get the immediate necessities sorted.

Problem was that Hank and I had different ideas of what “immediate” meant — he wanted to jump straight to trying to figure out Black Essence so we could enlarge our internal portal, making it possible for him to create and control his own avatar here in physical reality, and as a side effect, to allow me to move my consciousness between here and the Spirit World freely. He also speculated that Black Essence was the key for a spirit to be able to move without a host — something that was definitely a point of interest to both of us. As such, he started pestering Tilry to give up the Black Essence cube she had received from Wensah. It was a small thing, the size of a normal dice you’d find anywhere from board games to casinos, and Hank insisted he could figure out how to manufacture the substance if he could just get his grabby little tentacles on the thing.

Tilry of course was more than just reluctant to give up her only way to feed on souls as well as her ticket out of the physical realm upon the death of her host, and she told Hank, in very polite terms, to sod off and get stuffed.

I took Tilry’s side on this matter — not just because I thought it was unfair to demand this of her at this point, but also because figuring out Black Essence was in the back seat as far as I was concerned.

‘Look,’ I said to Hank, trying and failing to imitate a proper sigh. ‘Let’s focus on extending the range of our voice chat, and on the Soul Shields, shall we? That’s more important right now.’

‘Oh, brother,’ he purred like a grumpy lion. ‘It’s almost as if you aren’t taking our movement seriously. Our victory comes at a price, and we should be prepared to pay it!’

‘Oh come on, that’s a load of bollocks! You make it sound like we’re some weird terrorist organisation about to blow up a train station,’ I protested.

‘I prefer the word “gobbledigook”, and no, we’re not doing a jihad, if that’s what you’re worried about,’ he sang the words. ‘It’s about our own, personal freedom, bro.’

‘What’s a “jihad”?’ Tilry asked before I could tell Hank that our personal freedom of movement — while important — could wait a few more days, since keeping all of us alive was slightly higher on my list of priorities.

‘Just one of the nasty things humans do when they have too much time and hate on their hands. Don’t worry about it, love,’ Hank explained, no doubt according to the memories he had plundered from me.

Tilry flinched. I doubted she was used to tentacle horrors calling her “love”. I would have flinched, too.

‘Well, regardless, let’s focus on the voice-chat and shields. Can we agree on that?’ I demanded.

‘Fine, bro, fine.’ Hank gave up, and Tilry visibly relaxed now that she wasn’t in danger of losing her Black Essence to the tentacles of a flirty monstrosity. Oh, how wrong this all sounded in my mind was incredible.

I had to give it to Hank though: once he calmed down and put his newly built mind to it, he displayed a staggering amount of knowledge about our spiritual body and communicated it fairly efficiently.

‘Alright, listen up kids! We will need tons of Essence, and a way to store it as well as the finished products,’ he began. ‘Alright bro, show me how you make those threads for communication.’

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Not that he didn’t know, but I obliged.

I took a tiny bit of Essence, then an equal amount of Mana, and a microscopic bit of Spirit Stuff from my own body. I kneaded the Essence and Spirit Stuff together as if I was making noodles, forced the Mana to permeate it, and willed it to change the thread and impart the desired characteristics to it. Mana was the most useful and multipurpose substance ever, and it was almost unbelievable that I still didn’t know how my body produced it from Essence.

I presented the metre long spider silk-like thread to my audience.

Tilry gawked at it, clearly impressed, but Hank just hummed for a few seconds, then said,

‘That was fucking inefficient, and it looks as durable as wet cardboard. Bro, you suck at this.’

‘What are you talking about?’ I asked, suddenly angry.

How dare he disparage my efforts? As far as I was concerned, it was a perfectly serviceable comm-thread, and I could make at least two miles worth of the stuff using no more than 100 EP, 100 MP, and a pinch of Spirit Stuff. Inefficient my ass.

‘Oh, for the love of all tasty souls, I will have to teach you from scratch, won’t I?’ he moaned like a schoolteacher who just realised the class he had been assigned to teach was a collection of the dumbest kids in the whole city. ‘Listen, for that much Essence and Mana we should be able to make at least five miles of threads.’

‘Fine. Show me then!’ I said, hoping he’d fail.

Hank didn’t have any control over our tentacles, so he began giving me instructions, and as much as I wished to prove him wrong, I did everything he told me to without trying to sabotage it. His instructions were sometimes precise, sometimes contradictory, but mostly just difficult to follow because they required a high level of mental dexterity — willing Mana to do simple things like forming a shield or coat my tentacles was easy, getting it to do complex transformations of Essence was not. And while I was struggling to produce the threads the way he wanted me to, he was explaining things to Tilry.

‘Listen love, the way we connect to our hosts is similar. We have a tentacle stuck in Krissy’s soul, and you have … whatever that tail thing is in Kiwa, right? So, part of the threads exists within our own bodies, and a part of them within their souls. Which means they’re protected from the influence of the physical world. They won’t dissipate even if they’re made of pure Essence. My brother then decided that adding material from our own body and using Mana to change the mix was the way to go. Well, it is one way to go. The stupid way.’

‘Oi!’ I grunted at him, but he ignored me.

‘There is no need for any Spirit Stuff, really, there are better uses for it than simple comm-threads. And if by some miracle he manages to get this right, then we can do a better thread with half the Essence and Mana,’ he explained as condescendingly as possible and no doubt enjoying it.

But condescending or not, I was struggling, and as the minutes passed, I was beginning to think it really would take a miracle to get this right.

Hank had taken an issue with using Spirit Stuff — the bloody spirit-nerd — and insisted that I should just incorporate Mana into the thread instead of only using it to change the Essence. Well, that was easier said than done. Sure, in theory it was a good idea — it would result in twice as much thread. But Mana — while made of Essence like everything else — didn’t really want to stay and do more work as part of the thread. Mana was kind of lazy. Actually, lazy wasn’t the right word. Mana was strong in a strange way; it responded to will, and it was the only substance I knew of that could interact with both the physical and the spiritual. But it was unstable. Using Mana-glove or Mana-armour had an MP/minute cost precisely because it would break down and evaporate if I didn’t keep the Mana constructs constantly replenished. I really didn’t see how it would stay in the thread without a little Spirit Stuff to hold everything together. It was the same case with my world-famous spirit-glue, which I had been using with astonishing success when building ships and wheelchairs. But I did my best to try and do what Hank wanted. Simple enough as a concept but quite difficult to do. At least at first.

I had to merge Essence and Mana together, then get Mana to do two separate things while the merger was taking place. The first of those things was the usual: imbue the Essence thread with the ability to conduct thoughts. The second was to make it mimic Spirit Stuff and act as its own bonding agent, holding the thread together instead of just disappearing.

I spent the whole day trying to get it right; individually none of them were too difficult to do, but doing them at the same time required more finesse than coordinating the movements of all my tentacles. Then again, I had managed to master the Way of the Tentacle, so I was increasingly confident that I’d be able to manage this too, then practice it to the point it became muscle-memory so to speak, and I’d be able to do it with little to no mental effort.

When I finally produced the first ten-or-so metres of the new type of thread, I wanted to jump up and down with joy. It was evening already, and Krissy and Kiwa were down in the hold, trying to get into their hammocks without knocking any of the rangers they were sharing a space with out of theirs. They noticed something was going on. Yep, my new comm-node was a little leaky, but I couldn’t get myself to care about that.

What are you so happy about? Krissy asked using the voice-chat, so as to not disturb her temporary shipmates as they were trying to rest.

Before I could answer, Hank spoke.

‘We’ve extended our communication range from two miles to at least five. Maybe more,’ he said, using our original comm-node so our hosts could hear him properly. He sounded as proud as if it was solely his achievement.

‘I worked hard,’ I groaned, and I wanted to say more to explain that I was the one who had done the bulk of the work. But the words, the thoughts, just wouldn’t come. I was tired. For the first time, I realised.

It was a weird feeling. Ever since I had become a spirit, I had not felt tired. Not having a physical body meant I didn’t need sleep, I didn’t rest. It turned out mental fatigue was a thing after all, and having done all this work with Mana and Essence felt like the equivalent of a twelve-hour leg day at the gym.

‘Yeah, yeah, you worked hard. Good boy,’ Hank cooed, imitating a stereotypical annoying aunt speaking to her three-year-old nephew.

And I didn’t have the energy to retort. Aw hell.

Then my vision started to fade. That was unusual. My vision only faded when I willed it to do so. What was happening?

‘Tomorrow we’ll move onto your Soul Shield thingy, so get some sleep, bro, we’ll need you in tip-top shape, alright?’

Sleep? What sleep? I had only slept once, and that had only happened due to being intoxicated by Black Essence. I didn’t need sleep.

Then I fell asleep.