Chapter Fifty-seven

I had only seen the local equivalent of possession once. The image of the giant, spiritual spider-crab was still clear in my mind, its legs lodged into the souls of elves, not just connecting to them, but merging with them and puppeteering their zombified bodies. Not a pretty sight. But, with some arguably powerful foes on the way to meet us, I thought having a mindless, half-dead ghoul of my own could prove useful. Something to throw between us and the enemy.

‘Do it fucking fast!’ Krissy whisper-yelled as Ork Drummer finally made its move.

I obliged of course.

I had a tentacle in the green wanker’s soul before it could take a step. 20 EP’s worth of Essence wire spread out inside it, connecting to every single node in its soul. I sent a pulse of will along one of the wires, to the node located in its head. That pulse of will contained the words “drop it” along with an angry undertone for good measure. My Tentacle Horror instinct had assured me it would work, and it did.

By the time it lifted the hammer to strike Krissy down, I was in control. Krissy jumped back, anticipating the weapon coming down, but the hammer thudded on the floor, cracking the wooden boards, and the enemy did not move.

The facial expression of the ork was difficult to decipher. It could have been a smile of pure happiness or a mask of rage.

Whadda fuggen gankshit? The ork immediately lamented its newfound inability to move.

The thoughts I was hearing probably corresponded to the series of grunts it let out. Loud. Very loud.

Well, if it could still yell obscenities, then it wasn’t immobile enough, so I doubled down on the poor, green sod, and willed it to shut its mouth, and made it lift an arm, just to test it out. Its body moved jerkily as Ork Drummer tried to resist, but in the end, my will superseded its own.

This wasn’t like Critter Control, this was a new skill. This was Possession.

Playing with ants had been a long time ago. Ants had so few nodes in their tiny souls that even without this kind of possession they would generally just follow instructions much more readily than the green oaf. But resistance was futile.

Up on the quarterdeck, the four spiritualists just about made up their minds to descend on the ladder. They were lining up archers, aiming at the hatch, probably a precaution in case it wasn’t them coming back up. Their familiars were looking at the floorboards of the deck, searching for my tentacles. I retracted the one I was using to spy the moment one of them looked its way. I’d seen enough anyway. They were coming, and we had to be ready.

Down here, I noticed that by now it wasn’t just the Essence wires connecting me to the green fellow. My tentacle’s blue colour was bleeding into the ork’s green soul. It was beginning to look exactly like how the evil spirit had been controlling the elves, but … I didn’t feel like anything special was happening. My body seemed to know how to do this on its own, so I let it.

Whadda … grrr … fuggen ganks …

Its thoughts were still there, but weaker, or quieter. At this point I had to concede that orks were … persons. Probably. Maybe it was time to start saying “he” instead of “it”. But I didn’t let that deter me from my plan to give them a worse kind of hell they were planning to give us. My Tentacle Horror instinct seemed to be happy with this, and was keen for me to try out my new meat-puppet.

‘Alright, you’re my bitch now, drummer-boy,’ I yelled at it.

‘What the hell are you doing? Is it possessed yet? Do I run? Do I attack?’ Krissy demanded, more in annoyance than fear or confusion.

She was like that — focused and determined. The confusion, the breakdown and the crying would come when everything was over and done with. When it was safe. Until then, she was a soldier, tough as nails. My dear Island Queen.

‘I’m controlling it now. Say hello to my little friend!’ I said, and I made Ork Drummer turn around and wave at Krissy with one of its ginormous hands. I thought it might lighten her mood.

‘What now?’ Krissy squeaked, absolutely baffled.

‘Come on,’ I encouraged her.

‘Hello,’ Krissy sighed the word, waving back at the possessed monstrosity, as jerkily as if she was possessed herself.

Oh, she did not appreciate this, did she?

It was worth it though.

A possessed ork of course didn’t help calm the rest of the rowers down. Their renewed and thoroughly futile attempts at escape made the deck sound like a concert hall full of men, screaming for encore while rattling chains. And the rowers’ deck was long. We were closer to the hatch at the back of the ship than to the middle, and I wasn’t even sure if the slaves or their slave-drivers on the other end knew what was happening or not.

Then the time to experiment — or to make jokes and references only I could understand — ran out.

***

The first of the greenskinned spiritualists didn’t so much as climb down the ladder than dropped down, like some sort of special forces commando. He landed in a heroic pose, the floorboards making a crunching sound under him, then he sprung into a sprint towards us, waving a giant meat-cleaver. The second one dropped down right behind him, holding something that looked like a mace.

Neither of them were the hammock-spiritualist that had made a run for it. Not that I could really tell orks apart — they looked kind of the same to me — but I could tell the familiars were different. These ones had arms ending in giant, sharp-looking claws instead of hands. These guys were in the spirit-killing business, or at the very least, looked eager to get into it.

Krissy hissed and lifted her sword as she fell into a defensive stance, drawing on more Mana, increasing the 4 MP per minute to 7. On top of that I was still keeping Mana Armour on for 5 MP per minute. That was fine for now, and it seemed only two of the orks were coming down, the other two opting to stay on the quarterdeck for some reason.

Orks obviously weren’t built for speed; they were green tanks made of muscle and bag language. But add a spirit to the mix, and suddenly we had two of them whooshing towards us like the Grinch on steroids on Christmas Day.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

But I just so happened to have an ork of my own, right at the tip of my tentacle. I willed Drummer to jump in front of the first spiritualist and deliver a punch. My puppet moved like a … puppet with tangled strings. The punch didn’t happen, but he turned out to be an excellent roadblock. The walkway wasn’t too wide, three metres at most. At the speed our first opponent was running, he couldn’t dodge my ork in time, and crashed into him. They tumbled to the floor, rolling towards us. That was one problem temporarily solved. The other problem simply leaped over them, and he was in front of us, his mace in a downward ark to smash Krissy to bloody bits.

His familiar slashed at me as his host swung his mace. I shot four of my tenties at it — two to block his arms, and two to coil around his neck.

Krissy jumped back, fast as ever, the mace missing her by an inch, then she immediately sprung forward, her sword aimed at the beasts neck.

I lost a portion of one of my tentacles to the familiar. He just sliced a third of it off. It hurt, but it was nowhere near fatal. The meat-cleaver ork was already up, my puppet’s face bashed in, his brain probably scrambled because he wasn’t reacting to my orders. My little friend didn’t last long, did he?

Krissy tried to stab at Mace-Ork — he parried it with his mace with incredible speed, pushing Krissy back. His familiar struggled to keep my three, intact tentacles off him.

I had to launch the rest of my appendages at Meat-Cleaver-Ork and his familiar, thus dividing my attention between them. That’s when I saw the third and fourth spiritualists.

I’d been called dumb before. More than once. I was beginning to think there might have been some truth to it, because how could I have not realised that the hatch at the back of the ship wasn’t the only one. The other two spirit-riddled orks landed on the walkway somewhere near the middle of the ship, using another hatch, and were rushing for us. For Krissy.

‘Behind us!’ I yelled, almost in a panic.

That was the wrong thing to do. Krissy turned her head to look. Of course she did, and it was my fault — I had distracted her. A normal ork might not have been fast enough to take advantage, but with Mana induced speed, Mace-Ork was in a good position to deliver a right hook with his free hand, and he did so as fast as lightning.

I just about managed to double the Mana protecting Krissy a split second before the giant fist connected to the invisible Armour. The hit sent Krissy flying to the side like a rag-doll, bouncing off the hull and falling into the rowers’ pit. For a terrifying moment that was both short and almost an eternity long, I thought this was the end of her. I couldn’t recall if I’d ever been this scared in my life.

Then Krissy breathed in, she wheezed, then squealed once, blood from her nose covering the inside of her mask.

Holy shit and thank fuck she was alive. I wouldn’t have forgiven myself if she had … I didn’t want to form the word in my mind. It was too scary.

The slaves in the rowing pit grabbed Krissy’s arms and legs the moment she landed, holding onto her, pulling on her, as if she was an oar. A few of them even bit into her, but Mana Armour was still there. Bloody savages! I was going to eat the lot of them from the start, but there was a tiny part of me, a very tiny part of me, that had been objecting the plan. Well, it wasn’t objecting any more.

The two spirit-fuelled orks, Mace and Meat-Cleaver, stepped to the edge of the walkway, lifting their weapons to strike at her again. This was bad. Krissy groaned in pain, unable to move. I wasn’t even sure if she was conscious. Another two spiritualists arriving in a few seconds made the situation even worse, and all my tentacles were already tied up in a weird fencing match against the bladed arms of the two spirits in front of me.

Oh. Of course. This looked very much like the tactic the rangers had used against the evil spirit: surround it, immobilize the host, then get rid of the spirit.

‘How the fuck did this thing get here?’ Mace’s familiars sputtered the words as he fought four of my tentacles. His host jumped into the pit, crushing a slave underfoot.

‘Don’t know. Sivera said the elves got rid of it already!’ the other familiar groaned, fighting to fend off my tentacles.

Sivera? Eternal mortal enemy-slash-rival of Wensah? This was a worrying development, but I didn’t have the time to worry. Regardless of who they “worked” for they were fast, and the other two were on the way, almost here in fact. Protecting Krissy was something I absolutely had to do, and … had no chance of doing. Unless …

A long time ago, there was a war. A legendary battle. The Ant-God’s chosen, a hero named Jack, found himself surrounded by enemies on all sides. The hero fought valiantly, and when all seemed lost, the Ant-God unleashed his power to strike all foes on behalf of his chosen.

I poured everything from my Pool into the Mana-Armour around Krissy — around 45 MP’s worth of the stuff — and I willed it with everything I had to expand out in all directions, all at once, with the force of an explosion.

‘Eat this you cunts! Mana-Blast!’ I yelled.

The result was … disgustingly glorious. This skill really was my trump card.

Everything around us turned into a murky vapour, containing bits of wood, flesh and bone, spreading and splashing in all directions. At least a dozen of the rowers disappeared, if not more. Mace and Meat-Cleaver didn’t stand a chance either. The pit-floor suddenly wasn’t there, and the hull developed a hole the size of a car.

I quickly transferred all 64 EP from my Primary Essence Pool to replenish the Mana Pool, getting 32 MP for it. Much better.

Krissy fell through the hole, down into the hold below. The floor of the hold was a good three metres down. I wrapped two of my tentacles around her in a split-second, pointing four others down, my Mana-Glove skill sucking at least 10 MP out of the pool, coating all of them. I held her tight as gravity did its deplorable work, but instead of the hard, wooden boards, she landed on a springy pile of coiling, Mana-coated tentacles.

Phew. That was close.

I gently put her down, making sure I didn’t change the position her body was in. I wasn’t a doctor or an expert, but I had done a first aid course once, and one of the things I remembered was to move the patient as little as possible if there was a chance of a spine injury. I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t want to take the risk to make things worse for her.

She was breathing and wheezing. Her eyes were blinking under her mask. She was alive. Properly alive. I simply couldn’t find the words to express how happy that made me. I would have shed tears of joy if that had been possible.

I quickly reached up to the rowers’ deck with two tentacles. I had to check what had become of the four spiritualists.

Mace and Meat-Cleaver were gone. Their bodies were no more, and I just about caught the last of their souls turning black and then vanishing along with the two familiars. Bloody hell! That was fast, a lot faster than with Tilry and Kiwa. Was it maybe because Kiwa’s soul had been attached to her body at the time? I couldn’t even get a tiny sample of the Black Essence. But there were two more of the spirit-powered orks, so I turned my attention to them.

The other two spiritualists hadn’t been completely out of the blast radius of my manasplosion, but they survived. And they had chosen to run. Well, running was a charitable description of their limping scramble towards the hatch in the middle.

The rowers. At least four rows of them were gone in this trench. Twenty-one of them. Their teal-coloured souls hovered in place where their bodies had been in their moments of death. I kept two of my tentacles with Krissy, checking her body for broken bones and other injuries. My six other tenties gobbled up the souls of the rowers. 840 EXP. I now had over a 1100 EXP and that was a good start. The 3200 EXP to Level 33 didn’t seem that distant of a goal. But Krissy was priority.

Dislocated shoulder, a broken arm, twisted ankle and probably concussion. I didn’t feel qualified enough to start rummaging around inside her body — it was dark in there, so I used only a tiny bit of Mana on my tenties to look for signs of internal bleeding. Luckily I didn’t find any, and nothing struck me as life threatening. Serious, painful, but not life-threatening.

Oh, my dear Krissy! I had never been this pissed in my life. I was angry at myself partly for letting this happen, but most of all, I felt a burning hatred for the barbarians. No mercy! This ship is going down!

Seawater splashed into the hold from the car sized hole above.

‘I didn’t mean it literally, you bastard!’ I yelled at the ship, shaking a couple of tentacles at it. ‘You stay afloat, you hear me? Krissy is here.’

The ship just groaned like large wooden structures usually did. Typical.

But damn. That hole in the hull was … unfortunate. It seemed to be above the waterline, but any hole in a ship was an unwanted occurrence.

A few of the slaves who were lucky enough to be outside of my Mana-Blast, managed to free themselves. Three of them were peeking down the hole, cheering when they saw Krissy lying in the hold, injured and unmoving.

Oh, just you wait!