Chapter Seventy-nine

This whole anti-evil-spirit-exercise had been a horrid affair, but it wasn’t the reason I was distracted, although I wished we had never agreed to doing it. But hindsight was something that always came too late.

To be honest, I was more irritated than surprised — after the first day the elves had really upped their game, and after Toven’s worryingly efficient display I had only been able to get one or two guys from the assaulting teams, three on one occasion, and each assault had ended with rangers grinning into my invisible and non-existent face.

I knew elves were faster than humans, but this time they were faster than I’d ever seen them. A few of them I could manage, especially if I saw them coming. But when four or five or more of them popped up from nowhere and rushed us from everywhere — and their freaking ghilli-suits made sure I didn’t see them coming — it was near impossible to counter them. These guys were highly efficient, so much so that I thought they’d be the envy of the SAS if they somehow made it to good old Earth. We never stood a chance.

Krissy, Kiwa and Tilry had been bored out of their minds throughout, having done basically nothing but being big fat juicy targets for sneaky elves, and we were in near euphoria when the whole thing ended.

Luckily, we hadn’t been invited to the after-exercise meetings where I imagined Master Fenar and Master Sivaren Rols were giving a tongue-lashing to the participants and calling it feedback. That was fine with us — we were eager to rest, especially Krissy, who expressed her desire to never sit in the wheelchair again, and found a new appreciation for crutches. It hurt my pride a little — I had put quite a bit of effort as well as spiritual ingenuity into making that weelchair — but I understood.

However, they invited us to another meeting the day after, where all the important people sat down to discuss the plans for the upcoming visit to the orks’ homeland, or the Barbarian Lands as they called it.

Master Fenar and Sivaren Rolls represented the rangers, which was to be expected, and of course the five council members — including Fenar’s wife — were in attendance as well. The man representing the Navy was a new face: Ketaven Arte. His official title was Master of the Fleet, which I supposed was like an admiral or something similar, and there was a chap who was in charge of the marines — a younger looking guy toting the title: Commandant.

I was distracted, and I wasn’t paying much attention to the discussions, plenty of other things on my mind.

One thing I had realised during the four-day exercise was this: the elves, or more specifically the rangers, were always preparing, always ready, always looking for ways to make themselves more efficient and formidable. It wasn’t that I was slacking off, but if I was honest — and I had to be — I wasn’t as ready as I thought I should have been. We were going to attack the orks in a few weeks, and after that we’d venture into human lands. I had heard Krissy and Kiwa talking about it, I had heard Toven mention a few things about that Alliance place, but the truth was that none of us really knew what we would be walking into, and I wasn’t ready.

I had been pondering and tinkering to find out more about Black Essence — important of course for my long-term plans, but almost irrelevant to the now. So, resuming the work on my Compressed-Essence-Armoured-Stealth-Suit-Gundam suddenly became priority. I wanted to be able to properly disguise and protect myself, as well as protect Krissy’s soul from possible attacks by other spirits. Unfortunately, not only I had not expended my Spirit Room, but it had shrunk during our reconstruction project while I’d been in the Spirit World. Without it I wasn’t going to be able to store parts for the project, let alone the finished product or products. That was something to work on, and as I considered all this, my mind kept drifting to Hank.

I had promised him I wouldn’t start expanding different organs in my — our — spiritual body willy-nilly, on account of it being detrimental at best, borderline suicidal at worst.

I had my reservations about the fast evolving tentacled menace on whom Wensah had grafted my soul, but I was increasingly convinced he could be of help. After all, he was the OG Tentacle Horror, a proper evil spirit who had gained intelligence, or sentience, or something, by nibbling on my soul and incorporating a small chunk of it into himself.

And on that note, I had to remind myself again to come up with a better word than “evil spirit”. The kind of spirits it referred to weren’t evil, not in the traditional sense, and I felt like using the word was sort of cheapening it, robbing it of its intended meaning. I mean, in the unlikely event of coming across something truly evil, what word would I use to describe it if “evil” had been hijacked and given a different meaning? Bad? Naughty? Unruly? No. I had to stop using the word “evil” in this context. I was thinking “animalistic” or “predatory” spirits. Or simply “wild spirits”, because that’s what they were, and I made a conscious decision to start calling them that.

Regardless of what I would call them in the future, Hank wasn’t one of them anymore. And he had one thing I did not: the inborn instincts, intuition and knowledge of how our spiritual body worked and what we could or couldn’t do with it. His presence in my life was a non-negotiable fact whether I liked it or not, so I might as well take advantage of it. But I needed some peace and quiet for that, and I didn’t think Krissy would have appreciated a separate conversation echoing in her head while trying to listen to the people in the meeting. Because, unlike me, Krissy was listening intently. The little teacher’s pet. Either she found the meeting refreshing after the exercise, or perhaps she was expecting Fenar to do a little pop-quiz at the end. I wouldn’t have been surprised if that happened, actually.

But it was a good thing: despite not paying attention, I heard our names coming up a few times during the meeting, but I knew I could count on Krissy to be able to fill me in on the details of what our involvement in the upcoming trip would be like.

The meeting lasted the whole day. To my pleasant surprise they had served Earl Grey as the main refreshment during breaks, and everyone seemed to like it. I suspected a concerted, joint effort had been taking place somewhere in the background, most likely by Devalet Niraki and Councilwoman Korolan Mirei, and the results spoke for themselves. After a lot of tea, non-sweet elven scones and crumpets, and the promise of another meeting to hash out the plans some more, we were all dismissed.

***

The night was warm, and Krissy was sleeping quietly without the usual snoring for a change. The meeting must have tired her out more than I had thought. Even Kitala Iwani had opted to sleep in her bed in the next room, as opposed to her usual spot on the large armchair in our room, as she had been so far. I wasn’t sure why she’d been doing that in the first place, but now that she wasn’t, I found the night a little too empty without Tilry’s blueish, four-armed figure hovering there, and the occasional conversation she was willing to engage in while our respective hosts slept.

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Being a spirit had its drawbacks, which were a lot more pronounced if you had been human once. But it also had its perks. Not having to sleep was one of the main ones, followed by being invisible to physical creatures such as humans, elves or animals. Being immaterial was a really good one as far as perks went, and at times like this, I took full advantage of it.

I pushed my spherical body away from Krissy’s sleeping form, through the plastered stone wall, and into Kiwa’s Room. Tilry slowly turned her head to look at me as I appeared, and my cute, wiggly tentacles spread out in the room.

‘Kevin? What are you doing?’ she asked as I settled myself somewhere in the middle of the room.

Her four-armed form was hovering over the sleeping Kitala Iwani. Her head was like that of a post-modern mannequin in a boutique, smooth and mostly featureless, but I had spent enough time with her to be able to know where she was looking and to roughly determine what expression she might have had on her face if she actually had one. She was more or less comfortable with me now, having accepted that I wasn’t a wild spirit hell-bent on gobbling up every soul and spirit around me, so we were good.

‘I’m working on something,’ I said to her, and I brought out a small sheet of compressed Essence from my Spirit Room, holding it with one of my coiling tentacles.

‘What’s this?’ she asked.

‘Touch it! Try to push a finger through it!’ I held the A4 sized sheet up to her.

She lifted one of her arms and poked at it with a clawed finger. It didn’t make a sound as she touched it, and her finger dented it slightly but didn’t go through it. She looked surprised as she withdrew her arm.

‘What’s this?’ she asked again, but this time her voice conveyed an interest. ‘It feels like Essence, but …’

‘… but your finger should have gone through it.’ I finished the sentence for her.

‘Yes.’

She was right of course. Everything spiritual was made of Essence, including Mana, Spirit Stuff, spiritual beings including the gods themselves. As such, it should have allowed her finger to go through it as if it was made of air, like most spiritual objects.

My own soul was probably made of Essence, too, but it was different from the human souls in this world. For starters, it wasn’t the pleasant teal colour like the souls of the local humans. It was white. Also, if I could believe Wensah, it was more resilient for some reason. They way the weird goddess had put it, a soul from this world wouldn’t have endured being in the Spirit World and being grafted onto a wild spirit, like mine had been. And there was the fact that Hank could somehow use portions of it to enhance his own spiritual organs, particularly the large node-thing that was basically his brain or thereabouts. I’d have to ask him how that worked later.

‘So, I’m making something,’ I said to her.

‘What?’

‘Well, I suppose I could call it armour for spirits and souls,’ I explained. ‘One that could hopefully double as a disguise for me. I mean, if we make it to that infamous Fentys Alliance, I don’t think the local familiar community would be happy to see a multi-tentacled beach ball in their midst.’

‘Fuk yu! We’ll eat them!’ Hank joined in the conversation.

‘We’re not doing that, Hank.’ I sighed.

‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Eat, grow, become stronger. Then no need to hide.’

Huh! The Tentacle Horror had a point, actually, in a way. In a wild way. Obviously Tilry had thought so too, and when I didn’t answer immediately, she looked around nervously, probably looking for an exit she couldn’t use anyway.

‘Because, at this point, causing that kind of trouble would ruin the plan,’ I said to Hank.

Tilry seemed to relax.

‘What is the plan? And why are you telling me?’ She asked.

‘Well, let’s see,’ I began. ‘First of all, we’re all in this together, I suppose, you, me, Hank … we’re going to be doing some dangerous things. Ideally, I’d like all of us to survive, including Krissy and Kiwa.’

‘Right. That … I agree with.’ Tilry nodded.

‘Right. I agree. I’m Hank,’ Hank said, and suddenly I really missed having a face and a palm.

‘Okay, thank you, Hank, much appreciated.’

‘I’m Hank.’

‘So, the plan isn’t fully formed yet,’ I continued, ignoring Hank, who for some reason still felt the need to keep asserting his new name and identity. ‘But the first stage is to prepare for the near future, namely the upcoming trip to Orkland, to survive, and to get the most out of it for ourselves.’

‘Sounds like a good plan,’ Tilry commented, and poked at the dense Essence sheet I was still holding. ‘Is this … armour a part of it then?’

‘It is indeed,’ I said, wishing I could smile. ‘I don’t think the elves, or even Krissy, realise what we’ll be up against.’

‘Orks?’ Tilry offered the answer.

‘That too, yes,’ I said to to her. ‘But there were spiritualists on that ork galley. I killed two of them, but the familiars got away, back straight to the Spirit World. Another couple of them fled. We have to assume Sivera, and by extension the orks, are already aware that a Tentacle Horror is roaming around these parts. If I’ve learned anything from the reaction of spirits to my presence, it’s that I’m not going to win any popularity contests. Got to be prepared.’

‘Hm. True.’ Tilry nodded thoughtfully. ‘So disguise and armour is the solution?’

‘A large part of the solution. And not just for me.’

‘For us as well?’ Tirly asked, looking down at her sleeping host.

‘For everyone.’ I nodded. ‘For me, for you, for their souls.’

‘For me?’ Hank asked, sounding offended. Was he feeling left out all of a sudden, or something?

‘If I get armour you get armour. We’re in the same body.’

‘We are,’ he agreed, then added, ‘I’m Hank.’

‘A fucking broken record, are you?’ I growled at him.

‘I’m … Hank. Fuk you.’

I heard a strange noise coming from Tilry, one I hadn’t heard from her before. It wasn’t loud, in fact it sounded like she was trying to suppress it. A giggle.

‘Is this amusing to you?’ I asked her, rather amused by the first sign of a sense of humour from the familiar.

‘Oh, no. Of course not,’ she blurted out the words, almost snapping to attention.

Maybe not all her wariness were gone, but she was making progress, and I didn’t want to discourage her.

‘Ah, that’s fine, don’t worry. What’s funny is funny, and it’s okay to laugh,’ I said to her.

The giggle didn’t return, but she loosened a little, her four arms easing back into more comfortable positions. Which was weird. As a spirit I had never experienced the kind of discomfort I had as my former human self — pins and needles, numb limbs, muscle pain, or the kind of unpleasant sensation in your neck after sleeping in a bad position were a thing of the past. Was Tilry’s more comfortable looking posture actually more comfortable, or was it just a visual representation of her being more relaxed? I wasn’t sure.

After a few more seconds of silence, Tilry said,

‘So … are you telling me all this because … you want me to help?’

Bingo. Tilry was a smart girl.

‘Well, yes. You’re a spirit, always have been, so I think you can help.’ I said, holding up the small armour-sheet again. ‘We’ll need to do some brainstorming first as to how to make this into a usable product for everyone, and then how to store it.’

‘Brainstorming? What’s that?’ Tilry inquired.

‘Uhm … I guess … exchanging and discussing ideas. To see what would work and what wouldn’t.’ I explained.

‘I’ll help,’ Tilry stated.

‘I’ll brainstorm! I’m Hank!’ Hank chimed in, his indignation from moments ago replaced with sudden enthusiasm. I was sure the only word he’d understood from all that was “storm”, and he probably thought it was cool.

‘We’re not doing that, Hank. You’d need a properly functioning brain for that.’

‘Fuk yu!’ he screeched at me. ‘I have brain. I grow brain.’

‘Yeah? How?’

‘Give me your white stuff! I drink and grow,’ he roared.

I wished I could have just bashed my head against a brick wall right now.

‘Hank, you’re lucky you have no idea how wrong that sounded.’