Chapter Four

Ant number thirty-one looked exactly the same as all the previous ants. This time I wasn’t going to just watch, I wasn’t going to let it ignore me.

My tentacles weren’t prehensile: their pointy ends were clearly not made for grabbing things. But with Mana-Glove activated on two of them, I was certain I could at least push the little bugger off its course.

I lunged the two tentacles towards the ant as it tried to crawl past me. The tips of my appendages connected with its body right where I aimed them: the abdomen and the thorax. Those were the words for them, right?

The plan was to push the ant against the tunnel wall and let it wriggle around for a while. Teach it a lesson about the dangers of ignoring me. What actually happened was something else entirely.

‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to do that,’ I yelled out in a panic as my Mana-gloved tentacles pierced through the body of the insect.

I retracted my tentacles, little bit of yellow goo sipping from the wounds as the ant stopped. It didn’t make a sound, only its antennas moved around, its mandibles clacking, probably looking for the origin of the attack. Oh, I felt bad. I didn’t mean to hurt the little fellow this badly. Was it going to die? Were the two, needle sized holes in it enough to kill it? Its yellow-ish blood visible in the wounds, I thought it was probably dying.

Well, it didn’t die. It walked on, somewhat wobbly. I wasn’t sure if it would live — I knew almost nothing about ant anatomy, but it looked pretty bad. Regardless, number thirty-one walked away and disappeared into the tunnel behind me.

I felt bad about this and I didn’t know why. I must have squashed, sprayed, trapped and electrocuted hundreds if not thousands of bugs in my lifetime. Did I feel bad about any of them? No, I didn’t. What was different now? Was it that this time it was up close and personal? That I saw its bug-face as I stabbed the critter? Maybe. I wasn’t sure. But no. If I wanted to get anywhere, I couldn’t just give in to this sudden and unwarranted feeling of guilt.

A few seconds later ant number thirty-two appeared out of the worm-tunnel.

***

The fate of ant number thirty-two was worse than that of its predecessor. Much worse. I decided not to punch or stab this one. Instead, as it reached me, I lifted both my Mana-Gloved tentacles and I slashed down at it. I hit it where the parts of its body were joined. My tentacles sliced right through, and the poor thing fell apart, the head, the abdomen and the thorax slumping to the ground, separated from each other.

I killed an ant.

I concentrated on not feeling guilty. It worked. It was an ant. There were plenty more, no-one would miss one, right? And I didn’t think it was a thinking, feeling creature. It was an ant.

As I observed my handiwork, or tentacle-work, the strangest thing happened.

That faint outline of its spiritual body, or soul — as I preferred that word on account of being shorter and simpler — seemed to have a hard time catching up to the new, sliced up state if its physical counterpart. The soul stayed in one piece, standing over the dead ant parts, flickering and shifting like an image on an old TV with a bad signal. Then, after about ten seconds, it began to fade and it slowly disappeared. I wasn’t sure if it went to ant-heaven, or it just ceased to exist, but it was no longer there.

Was this what was going to happen to my soul, had that wretched Wensah not snatched it up? I didn’t know and I couldn’t be sure after just one experiment. Perhaps a human soul was large and complex enough for something else to happen to it after death.

It was a lot to take in, a lot to digest and to think about. It was kind of a big question, but as big as it was, and as much as it intrigued me, I didn’t think it had any bearing on my current predicament of not being able to move. So I pushed it to the back of my mind and waited for ant number thirty-three.

***

I deactivated Mana-Glove as I waited for the next ant. My MP stood at five and a half, but I didn’t want to waste it while waiting.

Then it came. Ant number thirty-three crawled out of the tunnel. I readied myself to activate Mana-Glove again and waited for it to come. The ant approached, and I was just about to activate the skill and fling a tentacle at it, when the ant stopped. It stopped at the dead, chopped up body of its fellow ant, flailed its antennas around, turning its horned head left and right.

Oh. So … it was investigating the murder scene? Maybe. What a conscientious little bug. That illusion shattered quickly when the ant opened its mandibles and bit into the severed abdomen of its brother. It lifted it up and walked away with it. So much for not disturbing the crime scene.

I wasn’t sure what an ant colony’s stance on food was. I vaguely remembered that ants might be a little cannibalistic, not willing to waste the bodies of fallen comrades. If that was the case, it was a disturbing yet frugal approach to food management. The fact that ant numbers thirty-four and thirty-five carried away the rest of the dead body seemed to confirm my suspicion.

I repeated this process once more; ant number thirty-six become prey to my tentacles, ending up in pieces. Then, ant numbers thirty-seven to thirty-nine carried the pieces of their comrade away exactly the same way as it had happened before.

The conclusion of this experiment was this: with my Mana-Glove skill I had the means to defend myself. And it was redundant. I was a spirit. For all intents and purposes I was invisible and intangible. As much as I liked the skill, it was no use to me at the moment, unless I wanted to take up stationary ant-slaying as a hobby. Which I didn’t.

I needed to try something else. Something new. But what?

***

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I was deep in thought, but I still counted the ants. Ant number fifty was crawling past when my mind circled back to an earlier thought, one I'd had when the worm passed through my tunnel.

I was a spirit. The worm as well as the ants had a spiritual body, a soul. So far there didn’t seem to be any interaction between my body and their souls, even though they seemed similar enough. But that didn’t feel right. If I was a spirit, and if their souls were made of similar stuff, there must have been a way to … to what? Touch them? Would that even help with my problems? I wasn’t sure, but that was the only thing I could think of, and pretty much the only thing I could try. Killing them didn’t do me any good, yelling at them was just as effective, so what did I have to lose? Besides my sanity?

Ant number fifty was lucky — I let it pass. It scurried away, disappearing into the tunnel behind me.

The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced I could do it. It might have been my Tentacle Horror instinct at work, but I was almost certain I could at touch the souls of the critters. My body responded to my will much like a physical body would have, so did my Essence Pool, and Mana itself responded as if it was a part of my body. In conclusion, maybe I just had to will it enough and I could touch the soul of an ant. Or any creature. Now this, this felt right, and ant number fifty-one was going to be the unfortunate soul to help me prove my new hypothesis.

***

Fifty-one crawled into view. It left the worm-tunnel and it was coming my way. I was ready. It came into tentacle range, and I reached for it. I willed two of my tentacles to touch it, to touch its soul. It was going to work. I was sure it was going to work. I could feel it.

I wrapped my two tentacles around the ant, quickly, before it could get past me. Then I squeezed, putting all my willpower into it. Grab! Grab the little bugger! Grab it!

My tentacles didn’t disappoint, and fifty-one was in my clutches. The ant stopped in its tracks, its body trembling as I pulled. What happened next surprised me: I plucked the soul out of the ant.

It was the weirdest thing I’d ever seen or done. Fifty-one slumped to the ground, and I held the soul of an ant with my two tentacles. A translucent, wire-frame schematic of the creature, separated from where it was meant to be, glimmering against the dim darkness of the tunnel.

I gawked at it. I gawked at the body of the critter as it lay on the ground, then I gawked some more. I had not expected this to happen. Then again, I hadn’t been entirely sure what to expect to begin with.

I held a soul before me. I had taken it and it was mine. I felt a strange sensation. I felt a … taste? Not quite a taste, but that was the closest thing I could compare it to. It was enticing. Alluring. Sweet. I didn’t know what went through my mind, if there was anything at all going through it — I simply wanted the sensation to last. My vision narrowed down to the soul in the clutches of my tentacles, my focus solely on the shimmering apparition of an ant. And that taste — it flooded me and filled me, like it was the first time I had chocolate, or ice-cream. It was wondrous. My tentacles coiled and tightened even without my say-so, and they squeezed, cracking the soul. It broke and it changed, and it … struggled. The struggle didn’t last long. It moved its soul-legs and soul-antennas a little, then it stopped, and in a span of long seconds the soul melted away, and my tentacles soaked it up. I could taste it as the soul stuff flowed into my body. I felt a hunger and a thirst and an emptiness I didn’t know I had quenched and filled, and I felt strength and satisfaction.

It wasn’t exactly the fine dining experience I was used to, but there was no denying the dreadful fact: I ate a soul.

***

I stopped counting the ants after fifty-one. One by one they scuttled past, carrying fifty-one’s body away. I saw them do it, but I wasn’t paying attention. The taste of the soul still lingered in the entirety of my body, and to say I had mixed feelings about eating a soul was an understatement. It happened fast and it happened by instinct, rather than will. Tentacle Horror instinct. I remembered Wensah’s words: the creature I’d become was animalistic. Predatory. It would eat and eat and eat and grow. What else had she said? That any Grand Spirit would kill it on sight? Yes. That’s what she’d said.

I didn’t know who or what else inhabited this world. I didn’t know if there were intelligent beings here who might have developed the same concepts Earth had, such as right or wrong, holy or unholy, good or evil. Given how similar the few things I’d seen so far were, I imagined there might just be some sort of people living in this world. And these Grand Sprirts, they might as well be the gods of this world for all I knew. I couldn’t know for sure, but the idea made sense. I imagined they would hold something like the soul sacred, inviolable, just like most religions did back home. And I imagined they would view a soul-eating creature as something wrong, unholy and evil. Souls were obviously not to be eaten.

And I’d eaten one.

I had to face the fact that in my new life I was predator. A devourer of souls. A dangerous monster that took what was holy and consumed it.

I re-focused my vision. There was no sign of any divine judgment approaching me, so that was good. Maybe these Grand Spirits drew the line at eating the souls of humans, or whatever equivalent creatures may live around here, and animals were fair game. It seemed I’d got away with the sacrilegious act of robbing an insect of its soul.

Then I remembered something else Wensah had said: with my human soul in control of the body of this Spiritual Tentacle Horror, it was as harmless as it could be. That statement suddenly made a lot of sense. An animalistic, predatory creature wouldn’t have any moral dilemmas; it would eat and eat and eat and grow, as its animalistic instincts guided it.

I couldn’t lie: eating the ant-soul was pure ecstasy, overwhelmingly so, but despite that, I didn’t feel the need to eat. I didn’t feel hungry. The ant was just a small critter, and I imagined the taste and the experience would get better and better further up the food chain. But unlike an animal that didn’t have a choice but to follow its instincts, I could control and choose what I did, what I ate, and how I conducted myself.

I waited a little bit, a day or so, just to make sure there was no retribution coming my way from the heavens. None came, and it was time to decide how I wanted to conduct myself as Spritual Tentacle Horror.

I decided I wanted to conduct myself as a mobile Spritual Tentacle Horror as opposed to a stationary one, and in order to do so, I needed to know how else I could interact with the souls of animals besides eating them. I was sure no-one would miss a few more ant-souls from ant-heaven.