It felt like just as Cole had managed to get to sleep, he finally received word from a footman that the Soulsteel was active again. Heading down to the second floor, he went to the bedroom it had been placed in after dinner. He had been starting to get worried, as they had attempted to kickstart it with their own mana, but after an initial burst, it would only accept a slow trickle of mana. He arrived at the door, and the maid waiting outside had a flushed face.

“Is something wrong?”

“No, my lord. It’s just that he'd taken his armor off when I went in to check on him.”

“He what?”

“He was naked, my lord. Only wearing one of the bedsheets about his waist.”

“Is he, uh, dressed now?”

“He should be, by now. I left him some spare clothes.”

Upon entering the room, he saw that Creighton still looked the same way he’d remembered him, but only at first glance. When he looked closer, the armor’s joints had reverted to a traditional look, and the gaps under the shoulders showed a white linen shirt. As Cole entered, He removed his helmet and sat it on the bed next to him.

“Creighton?”

“Cole.”

“Yeah, you still don’t speak any Wernst do you?”

“Tommen? Natasha?”

“They’re fine, uh, and sleeping.”

Cole was struggling his way through the conversation by miming his answers and talking with his hands. He paused for a second, and as the living metal pointed at itself, it said its name.

“Creighton.”

“Yeah.”

Cole was absolutely stunned. Living Metal could turn into a facsimile of a human, but he’d only heard of one Elder Soulsteel that had talked, and maintaining multiple separate forms was almost as rare. He’s certainly never heard of one who could do both. Normally Soulsteel would rapidly lose control over its divided mass if it wasn’t brought back into contact in time. Longer duration deprivation would lead to its regression into metal and order mana. Remembering when it had fallen to pieces outside his lab, he wondered why the thought hadn’t struck him then.

“Daniel? Archibald? Cole?”

“I don’t know what you’re asking me. Do you want to talk to everyone right now? They’re asleep. It’s late.”

The normally pearlescent sheen of living metal’s faux flesh was not present. Creighton’s skin looked like marble, with subtle streaks of light, dark, and order mana. He mimed speaking with his two hands, and then unrolling a scroll.

“Yes. Daniel. Sleeping. Tomorrow?”

When it replied with a nod, he stood up. If they were gonna solve this communication problem, he’d need to get some sleep. Before he left, however, there was one last thing he needed to do. He stuck his hand out for Creighton to take, and pulled him into a standing hug.

“Tommen. Natasha. Thank you.”

~~~

My first proper conversation went better than I expected. He got most of it across with his hands, and I could infer the parts he couldn’t manage with just gestures. I had been surprised when he came so swiftly, but it makes sense with how badly I must have scared the woman who came in. She ran out of the room so fast I was worried she was gonna trip. The clothes she had brought were soft, and while it was strange to have them between the me that was me, and the me that was armor, it was also comforting. I was right at the limit of my density and mass, but I felt like myself, and the armor made me feel safe.

Ever since I’d started trying to focus on how my body had used to feel, like how talking had felt, I found the things I had failed to brute force my way into coming to me naturally. It was a strange feeling, a lot like when I first was trying to escape my crater. The upside is that even if I didn’t understand the underlying structure, the higher the complexity of mana I was working with the more likely it was capable of filling in the gaps in my understanding. Tommen had taught me a lot of new recipes, and I found almost all of them useful.

My familiar voice had come from sound mana, base red woven one to one with green, and I’m calling it sound mana because of the wonders it worked for generating sound. When I used it to do some tests, the mana had taken on a shape. Then I’d grown physical vocal cords with that mana’s form as a base. I thought of it like the mana was leading me, and it has worked out remarkably well. I did have some trouble, as I had been so distracted by my results that I almost didn't grab the sheet fast enough when the door opened. The other problem I had with letting the mana lead was that it seemed to like to idealize. I certainly didn’t have this sixpack when I died, so I spent the rest of the night doing little things to get comfortable in my new, creighton two point oh form, mostly toning down my greek statue level physique.

I heard a knock on the door early in the morning, and I assumed it was either Cole or another one of the servants again. When I made a grunting sound, Tommen opened the door. His eyes seemed red,and when he came over to me for a hug, he started crying again. I picked him up and put him on my shoulders. This had always worked for me as a kid.

We spent the rest of time until breakfast scaring the shit out of random servants we bumped into as we wandered the halls. My steps were heavy now that I was using all of my mass to maintain both human form and armor, but not that heavy. The floorboards were sturdy and I didn’t see any bedrooms on the first floor that we could be disturbing.

Cole found us in one of the gardens next to the big main hall, and he had Natasha with him. Tommen was distracted, having been trying to make a snowball. I got his attention by saying Cole’s name. Their conversation was short, and Tommen seemed a little embarrassed, but then the three of them moved to enter the main hall, and I figured I might as well join them.

The people at breakfast included two of the first faces I'd ever seen, the female mage and the brawny looking knight. They were sitting together, and seemed almost afraid of me. I figured that that made a certain amount of sense. The last time they’d seen me I was a two foot long lizard, and now I was walking around at six foot plus in full plate armor. I went over to Brawny and offered him a handshake.

“Creighton.”

“Tarrik.”

“Leona.”

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

I pointed at the empty seat next to them, and it took them a second to guess at my question.

“Rodney.”

“Rodney?”

“Rodney.”

I wasn’t really sure what to do with myself now, so I sat down next to Natasha. Tommen was already flanked by her and Cole, so this was the next logical place. The noble guy arrived next, but that was overshadowed when Archibald showed up, and as soon as he saw I didn’t have my helmet on he started laughing again. Three times is when bad behavior starts to become a habit, so I scowled at him.

~~~

Everyone was becoming more at ease, as despite being far taller than anyone else in the room, Creighton had been nothing but personable and polite, even if he didn’t have the words to hold a conversation. That all changed when Archibald started laughing at him. Its face went from slight interest as it passed Duke Drake, and as his eyes rested on the most powerful spellcaster in the dukedom, he showed Tarrik what a real death glare looked like. This wasn’t what anyone had expected, and with a far more booming and forceful voice, he said the Archmage’s name.

“Archibald.”

The old man simply laughed harder, until Duke Drake struck him in the back of the head.

“He saved your apprentice’s apprentices yesterday, the least you can do is show some respect.”

“I can’t help it.”

“Yes you can, now go sit down and stop causing more problems. I thought you wanted it to like you, so it would tell you more of its strange ideas.”

“I know, I know.”

He sat down, and while the soulsteel did stop glaring when he did, the old man had a smirk on his face for the rest of the meal.

“We, uh, didn’t get a chance to talk about it yesterday, but me and Tommen think he might be from a different world.”

“Why?”

“The planet he drew didn’t look like Trezemek.”

“So you think he’s been reborn from Duozemek or even Unozemek?”

“I didn’t look at the planet for very long, but I didn’t recognise any of the landmasses.”

“If he’s from a whole other planet, why does he look human then? Is he just duplicating our appearance?”

“When I look closely, it’s clear to me his features are distinct, in ways I've never seen before. If he was copying us, instead of having been a human, he’d have a more average face.”

“That doesn’t mean he couldn’t have been a survivor on the lost continent, right?”

“Yes, but we know what it looked like before it was lost, and what he drew wasn’t even close.”

“This isn’t relevant right now. No one still thinks it’s a soul in its first life, right?”

“...”

“Then that means that he must speak some kind of language. Daniel, have you tried teaching him the translation spell yet?”

“No, not yet. He taught us his alphabet instead.”

“Any reason you can’t get started now?”

“Sure, and if it doesn’t work Remin is still looking for more references to Gormtra, the Conclave said to have had some kind of universal translation spell. I won’t promise anything, as everything we’ve found so far doesn’t do more than specify that the conclave was active soon after the creation of Trezemek.”

“None of the grimoires had a spell that could translate?”

“No, I checked all of them. The most general translation spell is what I brought to show him.”

“What about spells to help him learn the language faster the old fashioned way?”

“That’s a whole new kind of translation spell, it would learn his language as he learns ours.”

“How long would it take to expand the scope of existing translation spells?”

“The problem isn’t of scope, it’s of the base mechanism of the spell. All modern translation spells were made to translate between specific languages, and the general ones just pick a common language, like Wernst, to translate all others through. I would have to make a whole new spell to translate between the meanings of two different languages. It might take me six months, or it might take me the rest of my life.”

“Could the soulsteel manage it in less time? He seems to have a knack for distilling spells down and then building up new ones.”

“Based on how inefficient the wings he made were, he might have trouble trying to rework it.”

“Let’s stop talking about it and give him the damn spell already.”

~~~

The paper they handed me didn’t mean anything to me. The words were in their language, and I hadn’t learned their names for most mana yet. I still had hope it would be a translation spell, but not a great amount, as this spell was unlike the patterns that actively glowed with the different mana types where I could see the way they mixed, and were utilized by the spell. I tried to watch for patterns, or to discern the magic at work here, but the only mana it used was the silver-gray, and as it continued to do nothing, and I continued to try and force more mana in, it caught fire.

I waited to see if they had other options for me, but everyone present seemed shocked, and then went back to their conversations. None of the mana Tommen had taught me seemed like a good fit, well other than the silver-gray. I could just work on trying to learn it the old fashioned way, but I’d only taken the bare minimum Spanish in high school, so I didn’t have any idea how to actually start learning other languages. I was just about to take my chair, put it on the table, and declare it was a chair, when Daniel walked up to me. He gestured for me to follow him, and when I looked at Cole and the kids, they all seemed reserved. I guess they aren’t coming.