Chapter Sixty-two

I would have liked to spend some time and delve deeper into orkish naming conventions. The Graal’s Enormous Pride? Now that was a name that deserved a little … dissecting. Unusual for a ship, I would say. It was a big ship though. I wondered, if for orks, ships were like sports cars back on good old Earth — you got one when your midlife crisis started to unfold and suddenly you felt the need to compensate for the size of your … tentacles, or some other nonsense. I wondered what the other ork ships were called. The Peaks of Envy? The Irresistible Thrust?

Unfortunately, I had other problems.

No matter how botched a job I had done, with Orkuz Graal’s surrender, combat was over. Krissy was sitting in the captain’s chair that she’d had the POWs drag out to the deck. She seemed happy enough that her biggest problem had been downgraded from staying alive to enduring some pain and listening to the captain’s eloquent recounting of orkish lore, while waiting for the Solace Navy to arrive.

Personally, I, too, was happy that the fighting had ended. My Tentacle Horror instinct was not. So far I had been able to just push it to the background and call on it only when I needed help with something. But now it was growling at me. It wasn’t the first time the Instinct expressed dissatisfaction with my handling of things. But this was the first time I actually heard it growl, and I don’t mean it like a feeling, or an impression, like I usually experienced it.

I. Heard. It. Growl.

That was concerning.

I had been thinking of the Instinct as some sort of residual knowledge of the original Tentacle Horror. Wensah had been extremely proud of herself for doing such a good job implanting my soul into the monster’s body, giving me full control of it. A part of me wanted to believe her — being certain that my soul and consciousness had fully replaced the critter was a comforting thought. But hearing it so loudly and intrusively yell at me, gave me pause and made me think this through.

I had leveled three times in less than an hour. That was a lot of growth, and it crossed my mind that maybe, just maybe, it was what had enabled my Tentacle Horror Instinct to become louder and more assertive. So … was it really “my” Tentacle Horror Instinct? Or was it the actual monster I had supposedly replaced? Or was I just becoming schizophrenic?

It yelled at me again. A gruff, forceful, commanding shout, echoing in my mind.

No, that wasn’t an extra personality in development, I concluded. It was an entity of its own, and it was pissed with me.

I shuddered. It wasn’t words, but I clearly understood its demand. “Eat”. “Grow”. “Eat some more”.

Oh shit. I felt an urge to eat. I wasn’t hungry. I hadn’t felt hunger ever since my miraculous transformation into this spirit-noodle-blob. But the urge was there now, quite pronounced and growing with every new grunt of the Tentacle Horror Instinct. Oh, the nerve of this guy!

On the outside, things were … calm. Krissy was as comfortable as she could be, the orks seemed docile enough for the moment, and the crew that had fled into the cabins seemed content to stay there. The elves we had freed were still hiding in the hold, since no-one had gone down there to let them know what was going on. The remaining fifty or so rowers were still in their pits, chained and unable to break free. The ship wasn’t sinking despite the car sized hole in the hull. We were as safe as we could be, the only danger present on the ship was me and my artificially induced, growing desire to eat something. Everyone would manage now without the voice-chat.

‘Uhm, listen, I’m going to … disconnect everyone from the voice-chat for a few minutes,’ I announced, sounding like a constipated spirit. ‘Even you, Krissy.’

‘What? Why?’ asked Krissy, making a sudden move, then hissing in pain.

‘Just got to deal with some … uh … personal issues. Don’t worry about it,’ I said to her.

‘Personal issues? What’s going on?’ she inquired, this time staying still in order to avoid another jolt of pain in her arm or ankle.

‘I’ll tell you later. Hold down the fort, will you?’

‘What fort?’ hissed Krissy.

‘Yes, thank you and talk to you later.’ I splattered.

I had to hurry — the Instinct was getting louder and louder. I couldn’t even hear Krissy’s complaints properly anymore, and to my absolute horror, a thought flashed through my mind; she had a very delicious looking, teal-coloured soul. Extra minty. Probably.

Gritting my metaphorical teeth I plunged a tentacle inside my own body. I tore out the threads from my communication node one after another, effectively ending my role as a multi-user walkie talkie. The pain was bad, but at least it didn’t linger — a couple of moments and it was done. And it had to be done. I didn’t have a plan beyond entering a shouting match with the Instinct, and I didn’t want anyone to hear it. Not even Krissy.

Then, I was alone with the monster in my head. What a horrible cliche.

‘Alright, stop this right now!’ I shrieked at the entity.

I was becoming certain it was a separate entity, sharing my head-space.

Eat! It shrieked back at me.

‘No!’

Grow!

‘Like hell! We’re done for today,’

Eat! Eat! Eat! The thing began a scratchy, throaty chant. It felt like a bucket of gravel was rattling in my mind. My soundless bellowing didn’t seem to stop the bastard.

Grow. Need to grow.

‘Oh, come on! What’s the rush?’

Slow. Too slow.

‘Slow? Are you serious? We’ve been doing rather well, don’t you think?’

Don’t think. Grow.

Oh man, this was like talking to Akela. And it made sense. Akela was a wild animal, so some concepts — such as patience and self-control — did not come naturally to him. The Tentacle Horror was a creature from the spirit world, equivalent to a wild animal. I wished I could have just resolved this with a small snack or a belly-rub. I didn’t think either was possible. A snack would just enable it to exert more power over my own will, and that wasn’t something I wanted to happen. And I didn’t think Mr Instinct had a belly to rub. If it had one, I sure couldn’t see or sense it.

Wait.

Where was Mr Instinct?

I could sense its will, its thoughts, and as of late its growly words, but I couldn’t see or sense its actual presence. Where was it?

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No more waiting. Eat! Mr Instinct spoke, its voice grating on my mind.

‘Shush!’ I said.

The Instinct sent some wordless, annoyed grumbling my way, which I interpreted as “how dare you shush me”. I ignored it and started looking into my own body. Well, I didn’t mean looking visually — I was feeling and sensing, using everything I had learned from studying Essence and of course Wensah herself whenever she graced us with her presence.

So I looked and I felt and I sensed, and … nothing.

I wasn’t surprised. I had determined long ago that my real body existed on another plane, the spirit-world, and the beach-ball sized blob and my danger-noodles were either a projection or an avatar that could exist in the material realm, allowing me to … feed. Tilry wasn’t sure how this worked, but she couldn’t refute the theory, so I had accepted it as the closest thing to a fact.

I had to look for something else. A connection. A portal. Some dimensional sinkhole or anything else crossing the boundary between the spiritual and the material. I was connected to Wensah by an invisible thread — she used it to siphon Essence from me, and probably to keep track of me — so I was sure my cute little avatar was connected to my real body out there in a similar manner.

Slowly I tuned everything out. My vision faded first — I no longer saw Krissy, the orks, or the ship. That was fine, they were safe-ish. Then I started getting rid of my internal senses. I stopped feeling Jack’s Room first. The Spirit-Room was next, and then my Mana-Pool’s presence faded, too. I was almost alone in my own body, Mr Instinct and a vague sense of my Essence Pool the two things remaining with me. So this was how floating in a dark, empty void felt. I imagined a space-walk would be something like this.

There was silence for a few moments. Or minutes. Or hours. I wasn’t exactly sure.

Then Mr Instinct got its bearings, and decided to continue with its tantrum.

Eat more! Now! Its voice echoed in the darkness.

‘Bad idea,’ I said.

It was a bad idea, but I doubted a Tentacle Horror would understand that if we went around eating everything and everyone, soon Wensah or some other god would hunt us down and destroy us. So, instead of trying to explain it, I looked intently as the Instinct kept whining like a child whose mom refused to buy him ice-cream.

Need to grow!

And there it was. As the Instinct spoke, I saw — or otherwise conceived of — a small patch of darkness that was even darker than the nothingness surrounding me.

Hm. A ring. A tiny ring. The growly bitching of my Tentacle Horror Instinct was coming from that ring. I focused on this miniature gate of Mordor, and I suddenly felt like I was a camera with powerful lenses, zooming in on it. The ring became larger and larger until it filled my … well, field of vision. The circular thing was … black, and the inside was the most literal nothing I’d ever seen. Not even black, or dark, or any other colour. It was the nothingiest nothing I had ever seen.

The next thing I did, for the lack of a better word, was sniffing the ring. It smelled like Essence. Black Essence. Oh, so I did have a tiny amount of that stuff, didn’t I? Well, thinking I knew my own body turned out to be a mistake, one I had to rectify now.

I pulled a single EP from my Essence Pool. I felt it rushing out of the pool, and what do you know, it arrived in a fraction of a second, bursting out of the nothing the ring contained, along with another, aggressive plea of the Instinct.

The ring of darkness really was a microscopic portal, wasn’t it? Right inside of my body somewhere. I was sure the other side of it was the spirit world, more specifically, the body of the Tentacle Horror, and all the pools and rooms it contained. And the Instinct was there, too. Or perhaps it was the original Tentacle Horror itself, sticking a noodle in my human soul, trying to control me.

The Essence whooshed around in the dark empty space like a jolt of electricity along a copper wire. I could sense it leaving a trail as it was bouncing between some weird objects like a pinball. Oh. My nodes. It was bouncing between my nodes. I willed the small bundle of Essence to go to one of my tentacles. Nothing happened, it just kept going around. Of course. Essence on its own wasn’t the obedient sort, so I extended my senses, and I willed one of my tentacles to suck it into itself. I felt my spiritual muscles contract, drawing the Essence away, taking it to the tip of one of my tenties. Then it sat there doing nothing. Typical Essence. I instructed the tentacle to expel it and let it dissipate in the outside world.

The Tentacle Horror Instinct groaned with exasperation.

Less playing more eating!

Well, I couldn’t let the vile thing trick me into eating Krissy, so I wasn’t done playing.

I ignored the Instinct — it was easier than it had been minutes ago — and focused on the wee little portal to hell. There was more experimenting to do here.

I could still feel the trail the Essence had left, leading back to the ring.

Jack’s Room was on the other side of it, too. How the hell could a physical object fit through the teeny-tiny portal? I knew what it did, now I had a chance to witness the how.

I focused on Jack’s Room. The ring darkened a little, and I felt a fraction of my consciousness reaching into the portal, landing in the room, getting a feel for the room itself and its contents. Hm. I quickly found a jar of tea. Earl Grey of course, the best and only tea Kevin’s Spiritual Tea House was stocking. I pulled the jar out of Jack’s Room. I felt Essence moving from my Essence Pool, entering Jack’s Room, enveloping the jar. A quarter of an EP, perhaps less. And … there was some Mana, too. Huh. It was only a fraction of an MP — a tenth — going along with the Essence, without any explicit instruction from me. Such a small amount. Probably that’s why I had never noticed it, but now that I was really looking, I was sure a minuscule amount of the magical substance was there.

Without warning, that drop of EP-MP mix came through the portal, just like the full EP had done before. Except it felt different than its predecessor — I was certain that the small EP-MP-bubble was now different, and it had that jar of tea inside it, all laws of physics be damned. Who cared about matter, mass and size anyway? The bubble flashed through the space inside my avatar body, and vanished to the outside world. I supposed the tea had been delivered. I doubted Krissy was fast enough to catch it with her broken arm, so … it was probably a waste of a perfectly good, steaming jar of tea. Damn.

However, this exercise answered a few questions. And raised a few more.

My consciousness was on this side of the portal, but I was fairly certain my human soul was on the other along with everything else. I hadn’t known consciousness could be separated from the soul, then again, until I had got to this world, I hadn’t known the soul could be separated from the body, or that souls were even a thing. But more importantly, the portal itself was made of Black Essence, and it seemed to be a natural part of me. More than that, I was able to poke a consciousness-tentacle through it and rummage around the rooms and pools. Which meant it was — or should be — possible to get the entirety of my consciousness over to the other side, back into my soul, which was supposedly in control of the Tentacle Horror. Oh, if I could do that, I could do a little sightseeing in the spirit-world, have a look at my actual spiritual body and give Mr Instinct a what for. It seemed like the way to go if I wanted to ensure I wouldn’t accidentally eat Krissy. Also, there was no time like the present.

I gently pressed my entire being against the little portal, trying to test it a bit.

The Instinct yelled at me with all it had. I was a little surprised — it wasn’t the “eat, eat, eat” chant it had been bombarding me with. Instead, I got a “stop, you stupid cunt” kind of feel from it. Mr Instinct clearly didn’t have much faith in me.

Then I saw why.

The ring began to crack the moment I had willed my consciousness to go through it.

Shit. I shouldn’t have done it, should I? I pulled myself back immediately, but the Black Essence of the ring began to morph, losing its circular shape. Oh shit! Did I break it? That was a good reason to panic, so I panicked. If that thing broke or collapsed, would it mean I couldn’t access my pools and rooms? Or worse? Could my consciousness even survive without a path to my soul, or vice-versa? Oh shit.

I had been called dumb before, but this was a winner. There was no emergency protocol here, and I watched helplessly as my will bounced off the Black Essence, my attempt at stabilizing it doing exactly nothing.

The ring was falling apart now, or more like it was melting. Black Essence droplets formed then vanished through the deformed ring, as if going through a portal. And there was nothing I could do about it. All that was left to do was to force my metaphorical eyes shut, and brace for impact.

There was no impact.

Im. Pact. Lame word. How could there not be an impact? Or at least a lamepact? I was disappointed. And … groggy. I was feeling groggyyyy. Was that the word, though? Or wobbly-y? I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was the dark matter being sucked through the dimensional asshole. I should punch it. I should definitely puuuunch it. How dare that puckered, melting ring take away my dark matter? Dark matter mattered. To me. It was the best.

Then, something grabbed me by the scruff of my non-existent neck, and pulled me. It was a bluuuurrrrrr. Yay! Then, I saw something.

‘Ramming speeeeed!’ I yelled at the galley. It didn’t move. Oh yeah, I’d eaten the engine. Fine, be like that! ‘Cruising speeeeed!

Kevin! You’re back? I heard a voice. I squinted all my noodles, looking at the source of it.

‘Krissssyyyy!’ I greeted my girl. I was so happy to see her. That black ring had nothing on her.

Then I saw something else. Shiiiit! I’d seen that red dress before. She had nothing on Krissy either — although her blonde hair was graiiiit. I remembered that I disliked the owner of the dress. But it would be im-po-litical-ite not to greet her.

‘Bitchy Biiiitch!’