“____” speaking

‘____’ thoughts

*____* telepathy

---------------------

If there’s one thing I’m thankful for it’s that spirits don’t need to eat. I’ve been watching this brat for the last year and all he does is eat and sleep, not that I’m any better at the moment since I slept for about seven months uninterrupted. His parents decided to name him Ormonde, it’s a stupid ass name in my opinion but I wasn’t asked and there’s nothing I can do about it.

I’ve gained a little bit more strength while napping and have two goals to accomplish before the brat tries to channel my power. The first should be simple, reconnect myself to the ethereal plane. Whatever the ritual that bound me to this kid, if there was one, it partially severed my ties to the ethereal plane and that’s slowing down my recovery by more than I’d like to admit. The ethereal plane is divided into two parts, an upper and lower plane. The lower plane doesn’t require a strong link and is easy to find if you lose said connection. It would be better called the Highway since traveling there is much faster than in either the material or ethereal plane. The upper plane is a strange place and it’s also where I need to connect myself to since I can currently go to the Highway without a problem.

The second task will be to get my forms back. I’m happy playing the sleeping beauty and all, but I need them if I’m going to be doing any sort of fighting in the future. That’s only part of the second task though, the other part is to strengthen my material presence and regain my corporality.

Now you may be thinking that every spirit has different forms and that they can all become corporeal as well. You’d be partially wrong. Typically spirits have three forms, one for the ethereal plane that show us as the type of spirit we are, a human like form for when on the material plane, and a more, shall we say, personal form that most of us use for fighting. As for corporality, due to some nasty encounters I was forced to develop a way to become corporeal and so far I’ve never met another spirit similarly gifted. It’ll be nice to be at full strength again but for that to happen I need to get myself established in the ethereal plane again.

Now, no spirit in their right mind would tell anyone how they personally connect since it could open up a path for other things to get in. For most spirits, it’s the information they erase from their memories first if caught by anything. I don’t have to worry about that though since my method is kinda bizarre. My method would be better to thought of as highjacking or me being a temporary parasite on another spirit’s link. They have a link and I trace it, mimic it and turn the copy into my own connection. That’s how I normally go about establishing myself, but I can’t do that this time because I want to keep up my ruse of being dead. What that mean is that I’m going to have to make the connection to the ethereal plane by myself for the first time.

If a ball of fire could enter a meditative position I would be doing so, it wouldn’t help me even if I took it but I’d still do it. Depending on the type of spirit, birthed or natural, each had a different way they learn to make their link. Birthed spirits are the equivalent of a human child, but for spirits, and they’re able to learn from their parents how to connect the ethereal plane. Natural spirits don’t have parents since we’re usually the representation of something, like a location, animal, or icon, and most of what we know is instinctual knowledge we have at creation. Sadly I’ve never really been the instinctual type despite being a natural spirit. I use to have my own link as well but I had to turn to parasitism to make connections and links after some past events I will not be divulging.

I have a vague idea of what I need to do in order to create a link and I’m hopping that it will work and I won’t be stuck pulling in almost no strength for the rest of my life. All spirits can sense connection and links to some degree, whether or not they’re useful is another thing entirely. My ability to sense them is very underdeveloped since I’ve never had to use it aside from finding other spirits and their link to the ethereal plane. Sensing links and connection is like using a permanent sonar to “see” everything in a given radius. Each spirit views links differently and for me they look like pieces of tangled string with colors and patterns giving each link it’s own unique signature. The stronger the connection I was sensing there would be more and thicker string and it would be more tangled. I was going to look for links similar to the one I use to get to and from the Highway.

To say I activated or spread out my senses to find the links isn’t really right and most spirits use the word “pulse” and it’s different tenses. It’s like opening your eyes after actively having them shut for a few weeks. The flood of new information is more annoying than painful and once you remember how to process the incoming signals again you can start interpreting it. Thankfully, there wasn’t much around the manor and the few links that I could see I already knew of for the most part. I currently had two links; one to the brat and the other to the Highway. My link with the brat is a single sickly yellow colored string, most likely since it’s one way and he’s not very strong nor I trusting. The Highway’s link it a neon green with a red spiral going across it’s length. This connection was thinner and neater than I had anticipated it being, most likely another set back from whatever bound me to the brat.

I ignored all the other visible links and focused purely on the one connecting me to the Highway. Using that link as my starting point, I began to look for any and all links and connections related to the Highway, getting hundreds of thousands of links . If my theory was correct since the two levels where part of the same plane then I should be able to find the Highway’s link to the upper plane and mimic that. Sorting through all of the links would take me a couple of months at a minimum due to my poor skills at pulsing. I could, however, filter through what I had found to hopefully reduce the needed time greatly. Roughly half of the connections to the Highway lead to the material plane and that meant that I could completely ignore them.

They say time flows like a river and whoever said that would be correct except for the fact that if you hate what you’re doing it’s a very, very slow river. Three months after I started this little endeavor and I’m down to two possible links that could be correct. Both are the same size and messiness and, aside from the pattern, each has the same color scheme as my link to the Highway. In order to test which one was correct I had to know what direction each flows in. Although I described what I see as static, which is true, in actuality links flows in either one direction or both. All I needed to do was see which one would take raw Arcane from me and move it to the upper plane and bring it back. Feeding the raw Arcane into the two links, I waited to see what would happen. To my joy, after a brief wait one of the links spat the raw Arcane back out while the other did not. All that I needed to do now was align myself to the two way link and mimic it.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

As I had done countless times in the past, I created a thread matching the same colors and pattern. All I had to do was connect the link to the upper ethereal plane and I would be set. Feeding Arcane into the link I waited for it to connect.

‘Nothing happened. Did I do something wrong?’

After using every type of Arcane I could I was still no closer to connecting than when I started.

‘There’s only one more method to try and I really don’t want it to be the right one.’

I tentatively put some of my energy into the link. To my horrified surprise, the link devoured the little bit of energy I had given it and had tried to forcibly take more from me. I had been correct on my guess as to what was needed and it did not make me happy.

‘I just had my soul played with recently. I really don’t want something else trying to bind itself to me. What if I?’

As it stood, my current idea was that this link was another thing that must bind to the soul and if I could somehow trick the link to bind to a proxy instead of myself I would be elated. Using raw Arcane as the base, I made a proxy soul with a tiny bit of my energy infused into it in order to draw the link into action. Satisfied with my work, I got both myself and the potential link ready.

‘Here goes nothing.’

I connected the link to the proxy soul and began to feed as much raw Arcane as I could into the proxy. The link seemed almost angry that I had tried to trick it and possibly would succeed. It started to absorb the Arcane I was feeding it faster and faster like a gluttonous child that’s just discovered sugar. Despite the amplifying amount of Arcane it was requiring, feeding it seemed to help make the connection grow and strengthen.

To say I had a battle with the link would be an understatement. Several time it almost overcame my proxy or the limit of Arcane that I could supply and some times its devouring intent seemed to almost fade into oblivion before rearing its head again. In the end I proved to be the victor in our little struggle and was rewarded with a connection to the ethereal plane that would act as if bound to my soul but was not.

Like any normal link, this one was connected as if it was tied onto me instead of being stitched in like the brat was. However, since the link though it was bound to a soul, mine in this case, the amount of control I had over the link was much greater than a normal link. This meant that I could change the flow of anything coming through it and even stop it altogether making the link turn invisible to others.

I set the link to the maximum it could currently let through and sat back and relaxed for a while after the heavy exertion I had just gone through. Most of my store of raw Arcane had gone into my fight to establish the link and for someone with a tiny capacity that was a big deal. It took a few days before I felt back to normal and I then had the link start to divert part of what it was letting through go to itself to strengthen it.

Since I now had the leisure to do so, I took a step back and looked at my newly created link. Unlink my link to the Highway which was green and red, this link had pink in place of the red and had a repeating swirling pattern along its length instead of a spiral. Overall, I liked the look the link had taken and was excited that I had managed to form a link by myself regardless of how garbage I was at the instinctual spirit stuff. I fed a little bit of Arcane into the link in order to test that the link would let things pass the other way through it. I traced the Arcane through the link and watched as it gracefully spat out into the upper ethereal plane.

I should quickly review Arcane since using it is like breathing for a spirit and I’ll need to explain it to the brat eventually. Arcane is a power source that can bend the laws of the universe to the users will. It comes in lots of forms and raw Arcane is pure power, it’s also what spirits use to nourish themselves. Every spirit can handle different amounts and types better than others. I’ve also said I’ve used my energy. That like my life force, the energy that’s contained within my soul. Most spirits don’t even touch their souls aside from some basic protection, I was forced to be different in that regard.

During this mini study session the link had strengthened enough that I’m prepare to pull myself into it and towards the ethereal plane. It’s a weird feeling from what I remember and that’s not much seeing as I’ve only been to the ethereal plane a handful of times. I let myself become more and more in tune with the link until I was near identical to it. Ever so slowly I began to feed myself into the link, making sure it wasn’t going to try and consume me during my travel.

Passing through the link out into the ethereal plane was like coming out from underneath water through a hole you didn’t quite fit through. The pull of resistance, the feel of something other than air running over your body, It felt great. The link spat me out into the plane without much care for how I landed leading to me getting a thorough soaking. It’s been years since I’ve been back to the ethereal plane. I could feel myself taking on the appearance I used to have before I became a wild spirit. Hair down to my ankles, a white dress with light blue concentric circles embroidered in random places, and the distinct lack of weight around my neck. That missing piece served to jog my memory as to why I hadn’t returned in so long.

I stood up while looking around for the nearest landmass since I was currently in ankle deep water on the small piece of land that the plane created for me so I didn’t fall into the surrounding ocean. Still clear water all the way to the horizon, not a single piece of land or train track in sight. I would have to walk till I found one or the other and I was actually looking forward to it. With a pep in my step I headed straight forward with no destination currently in mind, the ground coming out of nowhere to be beneath my feet as I walked. After about five feet my steps were slowed and it felt like someone was pulling me back.

‘What the hell is going on?’

I looked back to see what was behind me and was not happy. Somehow I had brought the small whimpering brat that was bound to me along for the ride. I spoke out loud for the first time in over a year.

“Fuck.”