Chapter Thirteen

‘Are you okay?’ I asked Akela.

Fine. He assured me.

He ran, navigating between the trees, and he didn’t seem injured. Mana-Armor had worked better then I hoped. I imagined a spear-tip wasn’t all that different from the sharp horn of a unigoat, and holy shit a unigoat could put some force into a stab. So it was nothing out of the ordinary. That mana-blade the swordsman flung at us, that was no joke. It was an interesting idea, but developing and testing a similar skill for myself had to wait. We had to put some distance between us and that weird spirit and its human mount. At least until I came up with a new plan.

That spirit was hell-bent on killing me — that’s how it looked — and I suspected trying to convince it again would be a futile effort. It turned out Wensah hadn’t been joking when she said Tentacle Horrors were usually killed on sight. I had to defend myself, didn’t I? And if I wanted to do that, fighting was a better long term plan than running and hiding,

But that gave rise to another question. Several questions, actually. Did I have a chance of defeating that spirit? Was it on its own or did it have a bunch of friends hiding somewhere? And even more important than that: could I attempt to kill the spirit without killing its host? Based on what I’d heard the spirit say, I was leaning towards rapist rather than lawman, so… did the swordsman deserve to be spared? And … did I have any right to dish out judgments and punishments just like that? Damn!

When I had first arrived here, I had lost all hope of finding humans. But for God’s sake, did it have to be like this the moment they finally showed up? And bring a trigger-happy spirit to boot? This was just unfair. Bloody humans and bloody spirits.

We arrived at a clearing not far from the river. Here the trees were sparser, the place was brighter, and rocky outcroppings of all shapes and sizes littered the place. Akela slowed down and arrived at one of the larger rocks that I could almost call an abstract, avantgarde statue. I knew that rock very well: it was a navigational landmark for creatures like me who could only rely on visuals.

‘Akela, stop!’

He stopped and sat down on the shrubs.

I needed to defend myself, that much was clear. It was the right of any creature, and I had no intention to just offer my metaphorical neck and wait for the ghostly, scythe-like arms to slice me in half. No way. Regardless of circumstances, the situation boiled down to this: I could either be the hunter or the hunted.

‘Akela, we are going to hunt,’ I said to him.

New prey? He inquired.

‘Yep, new and strange prey.’

***

Everything I knew about spirits — which wasn’t much — was based purely on my experiences with my own body. But I had no reason to believe that run-off-the-mill spirits — save for the likes of Wensah — were much different from me. She had mentioned familiars, and I figured I was dealing with one of those. I made some educated guesses: it couldn’t move without a host, it produced Mana and supplied it to its host, and it could probably eat souls, and therefore it could harm me or eat me. It had a featureless face, so it might have only seen in the direction it was facing, but the safe thing was to assume it could see as well as I could.

I turned to my companion.

‘Akela, find the prey. Not the one whose leg I cut. Not the one I first said wasn’t prey. The third one.’

Fine. He acknowledged.

I wasn’t sure if Akela understood the concept of revenge, but when I conveyed a vague mental image of the swordsman, his “fine” carried a substantial amount of animosity and an uneasy anticipation of violence. I found this both strange and comforting. Strange because this had never happened with regular prey: prey was just prey, no hard feelings. And comforting because I would have felt bad if I was the only one angry and worried. It was great not to be alone.

Akela left the Rock-Garden behind, and we ventured back into the thick of the forest. I let Akela do his thing — my own senses consisting of vision and hearing only, he didn't need my meddling. Akela did not disappoint. It took him less than half an hour of sniffing to find the swordsman named Jevan.

The man was trudging through thick undergrowth, trying to navigate from one tree to the next without tripping over roots and rocks.

Akela wasn’t exactly a silent hunter, but with the uncountable noises of the forest — the rustling of leaves, the bustling of birds and critters and bugs — neither man nor spirit heard us sneaking up on them from behind.

I caught glimpses of the man’s back and of the sinister looking apparition hovering above his shoulders. Akela trailed them, getting closer to them little by little. He ducked down when the man stopped to look around and resumed stalking when the man walked on. Jevan spoke occasionally — I could just about hear him — and even though I didn’t understand the words, I was sure he was complaining to his familiar, or questioning the necessity of finding and slaying the Tentacle Horror. I wished they would just give up and go away, but if the curt and angry replies of the familiar were any indication, that wasn’t going to happen.

From what I could tell, they were heading towards the Rock Garden. I hadn’t been paying much attention to what paths Akela had taken to find the strange prey — I wasn’t that kind of a backseat driver — but we must have circled around. But this was a good thing. The Rock Garden was a nice spot for an ambush as far as my understanding of ambushes went. But Akela, the lone hunter, he knew all about ambushing his prey.

‘Akela! How about an ambush at the Rock Garden?’ I asked.

Good.

‘So … lure them there?’

Good! Strong teeth?

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‘Sure.’

Since he gave me the highest level of agreement he was capable of, I had no reason to withhold Mana from him. My pools were full, and if it came down to being nice and careful with the swordsman or keeping Akela as safe and efficient as possible, it wasn’t even a choice.

Lure! Now! Akela announced.

Then he sprung up and sprinted. The swordsman pivoted when he heard the noise of the approaching predator, sword raised, ready to strike. But Akela wasn’t aiming for him; he ran past him, making sure there were trees between us, leaving him behind within seconds.

‘He’ll follow us! He’s following us!’ I cheered as the man broke into a run, no doubt urged on by his familiar.

Akela was clever about this: he kept a pace fast enough to be safe from the flying Mana-blades, but not fast enough for Jevan to lose sight of us. We slalomed around the trees, avoiding Jevan's attacks, and we were in the Rock Garden in less than ten minutes.

If there was any place suitable to confront someone who had a Mana-fueled ranged attack, this was it, and I smiled in my soul as Jevan and his murder-hobo of a companion approached.

We hid behind one of the rocks as they arrived. The man rushed into the Rock Gardern, his footsteps loud, panting and muttering unhappy words.

I activated Mana-Armor, and Akela knew it was time to do what we came here to do.

***

Akela rushed from one outcropping to another. The first Mana-Blade crashed into rock, leaving a shallow scratch on it. I was sure that the projectile would slice or tear through an unarmored body as easily as a bullet from a gun. Akela didn’t stop; he ran to the next rock and hid behind it. Jevan stood in the midst of the natural stone monuments, turning, looking, trying to follow our movements.

‘Kill it! Now!’ the familiar urged him, to which the man replied with angry grunts.

'Akela, when you think you can do it, bite his arm! The arm that holds the sword,’ I whispered to him, sending him as clear a mental image of the man’s sword-arm as I could.

Good. Akela agreed

He broke into a sprint again, reaching for another rock to hide behind. Another Mana-Blade struck, flinging little peaces of rock into the air again.

We were running circles around Jevan, seeing him only when we were between rocks; the man took small steps, holding his sword in front of him with gritted teeth, sweat rolling down his face.

Akela finally judged the time right to make his assault. He took a sharp turn between a rock and a tree and charged the man. Either Jevan was too slow or Akela was too fast — before the man could bring his sword to bear, before he could let loose another Mana-Blade, we were there. Akela, drawing on my Mana Pool, willed the magical substance to gather in his jaws and on his teeth. He jumped and bit into the wrist of the man. Jevan screamed, and the sword fell to the ground.

I flung all five of my free tentacles at the spirit, trying to wrap them around it, to restrain it. The familiar swung his scythe-like arms. I maneuvered my tenties the best I could, hoping to snake around the dangerous limbs, but the damned creature was fast. It sliced through one of my tentacles, and for the first time since I’d been thrown into this world, I felt pain.

Akela dragged the screaming, flailing and kicking man to the ground, and we — the two spirits — went down with them.

The pain I felt was weird. It wasn’t just one pain. It was two. One was akin to accidentally cutting myself with a Stanley knife; nothing to panic about if you a had some plasters handy. Luckily I wasn’t the kind of creature that could bleed, and my body started sealing the wound with Spirit-Stuff.

The other pain I felt was like a sudden stomach-ache. That familiar … it hurt me. It hurt the part of me that was hidden away in a spirit-dimension somewhere. It could have chipped away at my human soul for all I knew. I did not like this pain, and both fear and anger bubbled up in me.

‘Listen to me you piece of shit spirit-bastard! You either surrender or …’ I screamed at the familiar as I wrapped my remaining four tentacles around its two arms, finally restraining him.

‘You must die!’ it hissed at me, interrupting my insult-filled last offer of peace.

‘Is that your last word you stupid fuck?’

Instead of replying, it tried to swing its arms at me again, but my tenties coiled up on them like a giant squid around a ship on the high seas. I could feel the strain, almost the same kind of strain I used to feel in my muscles when lifting something heavy. I didn’t know how long I could keep it up; the familiar was writhing and twisting, doing its best to free itself from my grip. It even tried to headbutt me. But … it wasn’t doing what I had expected it to do: it wasn’t eating me.

Akela’s jaws tightened around Jevan’s wrist; blood was flowing freely, but the man drew one of his small blades from his belt with his other hand. He stabbed at Akela with abandon, shrieking and crying, his voice reaching higher and higher notes. Mana-Armor did its job, and Akela, despite the whimpering sounds he let out, didn’t let go of the man’s arm, sinking his teeth deeper. My Mana-Pool was emptying fast as Mana-Armor had to draw more and more of it to protect him against the flurry of stabs. But my Essence Pools were still full. I could drag this out if I had to, but I no longer saw any use in reasoning with the spirit. And I certainly didn’t enjoy this sort of struggle. I wanted to finish this. I wanted to get it over with and I wanted to do it quickly.

‘Abomination!’ the familiar shrieked with its weird, boxed-in spirit voice. ‘You’re eating me!’

‘You bet! And who’s fucking fault is that now, huh?’ I growled at him, letting my anger take control.

With my tentacles wrapped around its arms, consuming the familiar didn’t take much effort on my part. It was no different than eating an ant-soul, or a squirrel, or a unigoat. I just had to make a conscious decision, and my body did the rest. The fact that the familiar still wasn’t doing the same led me to believe that it couldn’t. It seemed I had the advantage here after all, the same way Akela the predator had the advantage over prey. As I began to consume my opponent, I realised at last why it reacted to me the way it did: if a Tentacle Horror was a wild, instinct driven predator, an indiscriminate devourer of souls and spirits, then it just made sense. Unfortunately. What I didn’t understand was why it wouldn’t listen to me. Didn’t it see and hear that I was different?

Bones crunched, and Jevan’s hand fell away from the rest of his arm as Akela bit all the way through. The man was getting paler, his movements slowing, his cries dying. Akela let his arm go and bit into his shoulder. Jevan’s wrist was an ugly, mangled stump now, as far from a clean, surgical cut as it could get, bleeding profusely.

The familiar wailed and tried anything it could. It threw Mana at me. It threw Mana at Akela. It commanded and pleaded that Jevan get up and run. Until it couldn’t speak any more. First its arms, then its torso and then its head lost its shape, becoming a blue ghost-jelly that my tentacles sucked up like a spirit-smoothie through a straw.

For a minute I ate. It tasted wonderful, and I hated it. Then I was full and I grew. The pain disappeared, and I reached Level 22. But there was still more to eat. So I ate until nothing was left of the familiar. And I reached Level 23 and I grew again.

Jevan was barely breathing now, his skin turning white, his eyes sinking. He lost too much blood, and even if I’d been able to make a tourniquet, it would have been too late. Probably.

‘Akela, let him go!’

Akela released him; the bite wound in Jevan’s shoulder bled only a little. The wolf sat down next to the dying man, staring at him with his red eyes. Jevan whimpered. I wasn't sure he knew he was done for. I could see on his face that expression of terrified incredulity. I felt a sudden sympathy for Jevan the swordsman. I remembered the time I got shot. I remembered what went through my mind that time: “Was this really happening? Am I going to be alright? Am I going to die?”

Then I had died.

And now, so did Jevan the swordsman.

Shit!