Chapter Ninety-five

Up until now I had the elves pegged as teetotal; we had spent almost a year in Solace, and I had never once seen an elf consume alcohol. Tea-houses were the most popular venues, and even in restaurants I had not seen wine or beer on the menus. But shortly after the battle for The Raagh’s Indisputable Pigheadedness, the elves proved me wrong. The crew was working on repairs, but kegs were popping up from thin air aboard the Furious Fist, many taking breaks to have a swig of whatever the drink was, and those who did, looked instantly happier.

I recalled Kenta or Tommi mentioning that elves didn’t handle alcohol too well, and considering they were generally peaceful and mild mannered people — except for the Fenars — I supposed letting them drink after a vicious battle was a good way for them to take the edge off, blow off some steam, and protect their psyches from the horrors of war as well as help mourn their fallen comrades. Well, regardless of the reasons, a navy ship wasn’t a navy ship without rum flowing like a river, in my humble opinion, so I approved of this new phenomenon. Although, I wasn’t sure it was rum they were drinking. I’d have to investigate this at some point.

It seemed that along with the alcohol induced good mood, rumours were also spreading — probably courtesy of the marines who had seen my eating spree — and sailors who had previously been indifferent towards us, got out of our way in a hurry as Krissy walked along the deck. They were looking at her as if she was an unholy amalgamation of Bin Laden, Jack the Ripper and Tom Cruise. In sharp contrast to that, nods and smiles of approval came from the rangers present on the deck, some even patting her on her shoulder, saying “well done”. Krissy smiled at them, appreciating the praise.

Kiwa caused quite a stir on the deck; she decided she deserved some of the booze, but the moment she approached the nearest group of drinking sailors, they scattered in a panic, taking the keg with them. Luckily, she was still in tentacle-range, and I took her jolly-mask back to Jack’s Room. I was confident that showing her pretty face instead of the creepy-cool theater mask would give her a chance to obtain a few cups of the drink, and we left her to it.

Once down in the crew quarters, Toven found a bucket of clean water and helped Krissy wash the blood and muck off her face and clothes as much as it was possible, and in relative privacy — the loitering crew members had fled upon seeing the “soul killer” entering the place. Yep, that’s what they were calling my host: the Soul Killer; a moniker that had been no doubt bestowed upon her by those few marines who had been with us on the rower’s deck. I supposed the name was somewhat accurate, and it had a better ring to it then “Misery the Ruthless”, as the rangers tended to refer to her. What the marines had got wrong was the person; Krissy hadn’t killed any souls; it was me who had done that. But couldn’t blame them for it; I was invisible to them, they probably weren’t as knowledgeable about spirits as rangers were, so if they saw a masked figure walking along and everyone dropping dead around her, of course they would think it was her doing. Oh well, at least there was a bright side to this: no marine or sailor would ever give us a hard time about anything, that was for sure, not if they feared for their souls at all. A bad reputation was still a reputation.

Kiwa dropped down through the hatch, favouring Mana over the ladder, landed in a weird superhero-type pose, and by some miracle she managed not to spill a single drop of booze from the cups she was holding in each hand. She wobbled over to us, barely avoiding getting caught in the numerous empty hammocks stretching between posts. The grin on her face was suspicious, her eyes a bit too red and glossy. She handed one of the cups to Krissy while taking a swig from the other.

‘Try thiiissss, boooossss!’ she squealed, the words drawn out and slightly blurred.

Krissy and Toven just stared at her in disbelief.

‘Okay, how much did she have?’ I turned to Tilry, who was hovering behind her as usual, managing to look guilty without having a proper face.

‘Uhhh … I tried, but she didn’t listen.’ The familiar went on the defensive immediately. ‘She told the sailors she’d take their souls if they didn’t relinquish the whole keg to her.’

‘Oh yeaaaah! They ran like cowaaaards!’ Kiwa cheered and almost fell over, this time spilling a little bit of her drink, but she steadied herself. Sort of. ‘Shiiit! Get back in the cuuup!’ she yelled, glowering at the small, alcoholic puddle at her feet. She then shrugged, downed the rest of the drink and chucked the cup at one of the posts, grinning like an idiot.

‘What? The whole keg? How is she still alive?’ I asked, staring at the woman.

‘It wasn’t full, almost empty in fact,’ the spirit replied. ‘Luckily.’

‘Is this any good? What is this?’ Krissy inquired, sniffing the contents of the cup in her hand.

Toven — who wasn’t included in our voice chat at this time — shrugged.

‘That’s Milkysip,’ he informed us, realising quickly that the name needed an explanation, and added, ‘Because it tastes like sweetened milk. It goes down easily, but it’s strong, and if you don’t know when to stop …’ he said, nodding his head at Kitala Iwani, presenting her as the proof of his point.

As if on cue, the woman promptly fell across the nearest low-hanging hammock like a sack of potatoes, her arms and legs sweeping the floor as she was swinging on it, muttering something unintelligible.

Krissy shrugged and took a sip of the drink.

‘Oh, it’s nice …’ she began to say, but her face quickly distorted, coughed a few times and delivered her verdict. ‘It burns.’

It was definitely some sort of distilled drink.

‘Careful there,’ Toven warned, reaching out to take the cup away from her. ‘Humans handle drinks like this a lot better, but too much of it can still bring a lot of misery for Misery by tomorrow morning.’

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‘Haha, funny.’ Krissy rolled her eyes then took another sip of the apparently sweet but strong drink.

‘Alright, alright, that’s enough now. The Fenars are waiting for you to explain what in the hell you did to the captain of the galley. I don’t think you should do that drunk.’ Toven suggested.

I was pleased to hear I wasn’t the only one referring to the father-daughter duo of epic vulgarity and violence as “The Fenars”. And he had a point: getting drunk before a meeting with Fenar and Fenar would be a bad idea. Luckily, a few sips of the elvish liqueur weren’t enough to rob Krissy of sobriety.

She handed the cup to Toven, who then put it down on a nearby crate. She shot a glance at the now unconscious Kiwa, shook her head and said,

‘Let’s get this over with then.’

***

Krissy and Toven stood on the quarterdeck in the middle of a space the crew had cleared for us. Four sailors were on standby next to us, ready to shackle Raagstrom Raagh the moment I’d bring his body out of storage. I wasn’t too happy to have his body in Jack’s Room: he was large, and the place was already stacked with food, clothes, all our money and a lot of knick-knacks I had collected over the past year, so it was kind of full. My Spirit Room was less crowded, having two prototype soul-shields and the remnants of my old spirit-costume, but with the ork’s soul in there, it was also dangerously close to full capacity.

Master Fenirig Arte, Captain Fenirig Arla, Captain Rimarle Alas and Fifi were a few steps behind us, along with a bunch of marines and rangers, all ready to pounce at the first sign of failure to restrain the ork. Honestly, we could have done this whole interrogation business without having to bring Raagstrom Raagh out; all it would have required was to connect the officers to the voice chat, and they could have had all the fun talking to the brute’s soul without any of the risks. But it seemed the elves had all bought Krissy’s makeshift explanation about the green guy actually being in hell, and they decided that bringing him back for an in-the-flesh conversation was the way to go. Which required them to be on the voice-chat anyway. But who was I to argue with the illustrious leaders of the elven expedition, so I readied myself and hoped shoving the soul back into the body would work just as it had worked with the pug. At least this time I wasn’t drunk.

So, under the watchful eyes of everyone on the Furious Fist — not that they could see anything I was doing — I reached into Jack’s Room and willed the body of the brute out of it. The green mass of muscle appeared as if out of nowhere, about half a meter above the flooring of the deck and plonked down unceremoniously. The four sailors, instead of rushing to put the restraints on the arms and legs, just stood there with their mouths open in astonishment. Even Master Fenar and the ship captains looked taken aback by this.

‘Krissy, can you …’ I began to ask my host to spur the sailors into action, but she understood what I wanted before I could finish the sentence.

‘Hey, don’t just stand there!’ She turned to the crew members.

That snapped them back to reality, and the four elves quickly put wooden shackles on the big guy’s arms and legs and put some chains and ropes as well for good measure. When they were satisfied that the seemingly lifeless body wouldn’t be able to break free when revived, I got to the good part.

I willed my Spirit Room to release Raagstrom Raagh’s soul. This part was easy. The soul appeared in front of me, right at the tip of one of my tentacles. The hard part was to put it back into the body. I only vaguely remembered how I’d done it with Fifi, but it had worked at that time, and if I could do it while drunk, I could do it now.

I used all my tenties to push the soul back into the body. The greenish, ethereal, translucent replica of the ork didn’t fit snugly into the body at first, but I was able to move the spiritual limbs around, almost like an action figure, and in the end, I made it fit. And nothing happened; Raagstrom Raagh did not show any signs of coming back to life. I had really thought — or hoped — this would be a cut-and-paste kind of thing. Clearly, it wasn’t.

‘Bro, you’ve done it wrong,’ Hank said, almost laughing.

‘Yeah? You think you know better?’ I scoffed at him, knowing full well that I had done it wrong. Somehow.

‘Of course I do. I’m Hank,’ the answer came as expected. ‘Let me use one of our tentacles. I’ll fix this in a jiffy. We’ve got about thirty seconds before the soul starts to degrade or the body dies properly.’

‘You’re not having a tentacle,’ I refused instantly. ‘You’d just eat everyone.’

‘No, I wouldn’t,’ he wailed, sounding offended in the extreme.

Enough of this! Hank, tell him how to fix this, we’ll talk about tentacles later! Krissy stepped in before we could start arguing in earnest, and she did not sound happy.

It made sense; she would be the one facing all the elven officers, having to come up with a plausible explanation why Raagstrom Raagh was dead after bringing him back from “hell” for the interrogation, and I imagined she wanted to avoid that.

‘Fine,’ Hank said after half a second of hesitation. ‘But we’ll talk about the tentacles later, Krissy is my witness.’

‘Fine.’ I agreed.

‘Alright then, bro,’ Hank began, suddenly cheerful again. ‘See those weird looking, darker green nodes in the head and chest area?’

‘Yeah? What’s with them?’

‘Well, my darling little brother, that’s where the souls connect to the body. In the brain and in the heart.’

‘Okay,’ I acknowledged, and I reached for those nodes with two tentacles, but Hank screamed at me to stop.

‘The hell you’re doing bro? Don’t touch them directly like that! Get some Essence and some Mana ready!’

‘Uh … how much?’ I asked, a little confused.

‘Half an EP and a quarter of an MP, then split that in half and sprinkle them on the two nodes separately.’

‘Sprinkle?’

‘Splash, splatter, spread, sprinkle, just make sure they are in contact with the nodes, and the soul will do the rest,’ he groaned at me, as if this was all self-evident and I somehow should have known all this.

But there wasn’t a lot of time left: less than ten seconds before the soul would begin to break down, so I did what Hank told me to do.

I dropped the amount of EP and MP onto the nodes, and I was amazed that the nodes immediately sucked it in like a sponge. A second later a bunch of little soul-tendrils sprung forth from them, forming a web and permeating the creature’s heart and brain. Then, lo and behold, Raagstrom Raagh was whole again, and his large chest started to rise and fall.

‘Oh, look! He’s breathing!’ I called out excitedly and unnecessarily.

‘Yep, good job, bro, good job,’ Hank commended me with a flat voice.

I tried to recall if I had even seen the nodes when I’d done this with the pug, but I couldn’t. Maybe I had, but I’d been too drunk to realise? I wasn’t sure. But this time, I would remember how this worked.

Some of the elves — mostly sailors — gasped as the arms and legs of the brute twitched a few times before he opened his eyes and stared at the darkening sky above. The ork captain groaned loudly, and his thoughts filled the voice-chat once again.

Aaay, I ain’t likin’ that shitty gank-hell. He stated.

Phew. It worked.

All I had to do now was to facilitate the interrogation. So, I connected the two captains and Master Fenar to the voice chat. The boss of Third Rangers was of course used to this, but Fenirig Arla and Rimarle Alas shuddered as if I had poured a bucket of icy water on them. Good thing they couldn’t see my tentacles rummaging around in their souls as I attached my threads to the comm-nodes in there, and I didn’t wait for their complaints and questions to come.

‘All yours. One Raagstrom Raagh ready to go,’ I announced.