Chapter 9

It pulsated.

It flailed about on the sand. The something spasmed, moved in disturbing, unrecognisable pattern, something that while alive, was too not.

Then, it didn’t.

It laid there, now still. It flaked away, pieces floating about as if its form just couldn’t quite hold itself together anymore. Strands of what it was tore and rotted apart, the water, the moonlight, everything that it touches seemed to melt it away.

It had a sense of macabre beauty to it, watching as holes bore into its form, ripping bits from it by the second.

Then, it was sand, dirt, and withered into nothing.

It was then I understood the consequence of what it meant to tear, to forcibly separate a thing’s material bits from its conceptual bits, and to let it exist. Whatever that came out lost it cohesiveness quite suddenly as whatever that it was could no longer sustain itself.

It had lost all relations. No one remembered the body, the water around couldn’t understand that it was flesh and scale. With a push, the world around exerted itself unto whatever that was there, overriding until whatever that appeared there was no longer. With that, the body disappeared, having almost never been there.

The water turned still — no, it was still, having been unmoved. Even I could only tell there was something there, but not what, not until I realized I was the one to put it there in the first place.

In hindsight, the result should be entirely within expectations since I had done quite the same thing to a plant some time ago. It had turned to mush before disappearing, much like the body of Ut’z now.

The [Essence] stilling my grasp was quite a bit smaller than it was, having been {tugged} — no, {sundered} from its whole. Of course, having just released the body from the [Soul Stone] without the rest of it lead to it existing on its own, which obviously didn’t work.

Apologies, Ut’z. I’ve lost your body, but I promise you that you can be put to good use.

On a good note, we now know what happens when you remove the identity from something.

Which lead to experiment number two.

I released Ut’z.

It existed.

It floated there now, for just a second. The water swirled as if suddenly, there was something there. I was startled, tensed for a moment because in front of me was a Saighgair that wasn’t there just a moment ago.

Then it wasn’t quite.

Ut’z looked down at itself, mouth agape as if he couldn’t quite recognise what it was seeing. Its transparency flickered weakly, the pale form even paler than what it was. It took a step —

Dispersed.

It was there, then wasn’t.

Curious.

But I could recognise it. The water swirled, expanded and imploded into the spot where Ut’z was. It was there.

But it wasn’t.

It died, I noted.

Indeed it did.

I did some thinking, as I found myself doing a lot of that lately.

It existed, didn’t it?

I could remember it existing, I knew that it did but no longer was.

What happened to it?

It left its mark in the sand — the world remembers, but it no longer exists. It had no body, after all. Ut’z became an idea, a memory, a reaction, an illusion, a mirage that was.

A ghost, for split second until it recognised itself as something impossible to exist.

Then something happened, moved.

Though in hindsight, I noted dully, I probably shouldn’t have let it go.

Because it moved away, and if I was right, straight towards the Sgnirmah.

That’s not good.

…

Eh, I can take them.

That’s the most stupid thought we’ve had so far, Elisa, and we’ve done a lot of thinking.

Shush, you. Always complaining, never supporting.

I probably should have known about this, since the Iasgairean seemed to… head towards their titanic queen of a Sgnirmah whenever they die to be reincarnated into a new fleshy body.

Either way, it probably wouldn’t be quite a good idea to let the soul goes off on its own anymore. No need for them to know — if they could — that I was messing about with existence over here.

I paused, taking the time to pretend I was thinking. It is good, I thought, to keep up appearance.

From within myself, I felt the other forty-seven [Soul Stones] as clearly as I could tell the number of fingers on a hand.

Then, experiment number one was done, mentally dusting off my hands.

Time for number two.

…

It took a while.

...

In solitude, still within the basin of sand, I toiled away. Some frost had formed, icy patches upon the sand, flakes of white floating through the water. I had missed them earlier, but not I could see it.

The sun rose, filtered blearily through the ocean water, salt and microscopic creatures.

It shone down onto the bottom, some scant twenty, thirty meters away. It was quite peaceful here despite the heated battle just some time ago. Was it days? Hours?

I couldn’t quite remember.

Oh well.

Either way, the sun lit up the bottom in blues and white. On the sands was a fresh pair of bodies, both quite dead and cold.

Which was quite natural, mind you, considering that I had crushed their heads within my [Arms] the moment I released them upon the ground. It would be quite contradictory to what I had in mind just moments (maybe) ago, but then I had quite good reasons this time.

I waited for a moment, then moved on.

No spirits emerged from the corpses though, and definitely not towards the Sgnirmah this time.

That’s good.

A while ago, I had found the Sgnirmah’s Mark, its little bundle of [Essence] that was neatly tied into the very existence of the two Saighair, rather obvious since it wasn’t quite essential to how they both perceive themselves or were perceived. It wasn’t material at all — it was, in all accounts, something that should work the way it had. The little ball of foreign [Essence] was basically jam-packed of ideas such as “return”, “soul”, “identity” — some simple, straightforward descriptions that in theory, essentially meant to call a “soul” back towards the Sgnirmah.

Whatever that means.

It was almost like a string of thought, really, and most importantly was that it shouldn’t work. The only difference it had from an empty wish was that it was glowing.

Things do not glow in the [Beyond], usually.

It wasn’t spectacular, but it was similar to what I had seen previously in the [Area] where the trees were. The priest company that had led a head hunt on me — they were glowing, or whatever the counts for glowing in this shadowless realm.

The glow itself, however, was not entirely conceptual or material at all. It couldn’t quite be directly touched, not even with my considerable ability. Essence, usually, could be measured with the ideas of “motes”, but these…

Were strange.

It was unfamiliar yet familiar.

If I had to describe it, I would say it was some form of energy; it was like gaseous electricity, slowly circulating, drawn from somewhere in the depths of the [Essence] that I was fiddling with. The comparisons of “more” and “less” came to mind, but it wasn’t quite exact.

With genuine curiosity, I left to trace the trail of “glow” into the body.

Then, it was there that wasted an hour or two.

Hindsight, again, was where things turn apparent.

I had gone down through the [Essence] looking for something — maybe an organ or something like it — but it turned out to be something much stranger. Just when I was about to become frustrated, I realized that it wasn’t drawn from a single spot within the spirit or the physical body.

It was the entire [Essence] that was glowing. In other terms, it was something that was overlaying the entirety of… everything.

It was like an epiphany — I looked at the sand beneath me and realized that it too glowed in its own infinitely small way. Some glowed more, some less. The fishes nearby glowed too.

Not brightly but it was definitely visible.

Even I glow.

My eyes focused, brought on my comprehension. At the same spot, I now see three things instead of one.

It was hard to describe. How would you go around explaining what a three-dimensional world looks like to a cut-out figure? How would you elaborate on how colours could seem warm to the blind?

Even the thought, when reciting to myself, was difficult to parse through in a cohesive manner.

For example, there were plant life nearby. Small tuffs of algae, or perhaps seaweed, littered about on the frostbitten floor. If one were to look solely with their own two eyes, they would see only its form, its leaves, stem, the small imperfections upon its drifting surface.

But something such as I does not see with just eyes.

The [Essence] of the plant, even without touching it, I could see more than just its form, but also its spirit. It was food, it was growing, it was hardy. It was many things — no less than a book could exist solely upon the cumulative idea about its leaves, much less a single sentence. I knew that if I were to dig deeper, touch it, bring it within me, I could tell so much more than the passive concepts that I receive from just viewing it.

Then, thirdly, its glow.

The glow was many things.

Dormant.

Potential.

Change.

It was the only way to explain how it was.

What could glow, what determines how much there is — I couldn’t quite tell, but it was there.

[Essence], as it turns out, was something much more complicated.

Though, with my limited understanding, I could broadly separate them into three distinct categories that made up the self.

[Form].

[Spirit].

And the last, the mysterious Glow.

No, a [Glow].

Like, an actual thing.

The [Glow], as it seems, had the ability to cause the Spirit to… in crude terms, “override” something else. Things that glow, in hindsight, was often the source of things exhibiting behaviours that it really shouldn’t be.

A scatter of paper would light up like a trail. Wings can emerge from a back at the enunciation of words. Little creatures, trapped in stone, can be released to fight on the behalf of their masters.

In other words, magic.

Literally, I could only comprehend the [Glow] as the force that could literally break reality. Thankfully, it was mostly dormant.

Almost like me?

Almost like you, but not quite.

In the case of the Sgnirmah’s Mark, it caused the forceful but nonsensical bundle of thoughts to come true by syphoning its glow from the host, ready to activate whenever its host dies. When the body of the Saighgair dies, the bundle of thought would suddenly whisk the soul — a part of it, at least — away to the Sgnirmah.

In which case, it was simple to just tear that little portion of [Spirit] away from the entirety of the Saighgair’s [Essence]. The tiny chunk came off pretty easily, a small {Tug} was all it took to slice the foreign [Essence] off and along with it, the portion of [Glow].

Then, I tossed both I’ruth and Evrist out onto the sands and killed them.

Pulped. Just like that.

A dead body, in hindsight, looked like dolls, or maybe a toppled mannequin. Unmoving, limbs flopping here and there, devoid of life. Their brains leaked out like tomatoes that fell a bit too far and this deep underwater, the crimson red appeared blue.

Not that I could quite see that it was red.

And as expected, the souls of the two didn’t emerge.

Time passed for a bit.

The experiment is a success, I guess.

Conclusion?

Magic.

What a strange thing, magic is.

How does it work?

No fucking idea.

As to why this little bit of [Glow], now isolated in its own little blob of [Essence], could achieve something like drawing a soul through the ocean at the time of death, was even more of a mystery.

How do I use it?

I had done it before, I think. Again, within the [Area] of the forest, I had used something rather similar in nature.

What did I call it again?

It was… something like {Barrier}, right?

That could have been magic. Another thing added to the to-do list.

Ask yourself another question instead.

What did I learn?

As I now knew, some part of the [Essence] bundle, this “pact” of some sort, had the property to be able to draw the soul to the Sgnirmah. At the same time, these Iasgairean had the ability to… stack with their own past lives until they become sentient.

Like Russian dolls, like onion layers.

Next experiment.

I moved forward, my [Spears] poised at the ready. With but a thought, they plunged down into the chests of the two Iasgairean. In the blink of an eye, the two Iasgaireans was back within me, cradled within my own body.

However, for one of them, I only took the body back, tearing the [Form] from the [Spirit].

And now, I have the [Soul Stone] of a dead Iasgairean and the body of a dead… thing. And just as before, the [Spirit] that was left behind dissipated on its own, scattering into everywhere but remaining in memory, somehow.

Ex-Iasgaireans, maybe.

Oh, and their tridents as well.

Dead bodies have no souls, after all. Void of personality, the [Spirit] that the bodies once contained changed, tore asunder until only memories of the two were left intact. The bodies, the [Form] of two too changed the moment their brains and head was smeared.

I’ruth and Evrist were no more.

Where do souls go?

Is there a god that scoops ups these little bits? Does Iasgaireans believe in a god?

I shrugged — or tried my best to. I don’t have shoulders, after all.

Either way, I had just witnessed how death, or how some form of trauma could quite quickly change the entire make up of a thing.

It was oddly sad, you know, the way that the identity could be so fragile, so vulnerable to change. Poke a bit here, lose a bit of your [Form] or [Spirit] and you are toast, broken, changed beyond repair.

However, it was also oddly entrancing. Peeling the wings off a fly, watching a snail shrivel up in salt, looking at the way a tornado could tear a house down, the way a spike at the end of a plastic tube thrust itself into your veins. Watching it scatter about was… interesting, filled with a sense of macabre curiosity that seemed to beckon you to watch it despite your misgivings.

“That’s fucked up,” I said out loud, “This is evil.” Water rushed into my throat where my face was. I had forgotten that I could speak, and water dripped through into my lungs.

That hardly mattered. It was just [Essence] forced into the shape of a lung, not a real one.

My voice came out like a gurgle, much deeper than intended but there was no one to hear it but me. With an idle squeeze, I forced the water right out of my chest in a sigh.

I had waited for the guilt to hit, but it seemed that it's gone for good. Besides, killing things had been what I had been doing for a while now.

...

Well, the moment’s over. Back to work.

I produced another [Soul Stone], the fourth in forty-eight.

This one called itself Kilhus, or something close enough. My will {tugged} once, and tore off the patch that was the Sgnirmah’s Mark, letting to little but tangle a moment before storing it with the other shards of [Essence].

With a flick, I tossed the Saighgair into the sands. In a split second, the flesh and scales returned before landing upon the basin with a small thump. The warrior tumbled for a little bit before finding itself upright again.

As soon as it saw me again, it froze like a deer in headlight. Not that I knew what a deer in the headlight look like, but the startled emotion that I could {Taste} was apparent to me. In its hands was his trident, still bound to him as a collective bundle when I… acquired him.

It brandished the trident in a threatening manner, a few hisses escaping it. “Back with you, serpent!”, Kilhus cried, thrusting the pointy tips toward me.

I didn't quite expect to understand its speech, but I did.

Rude.

My own [Spears] flashed.

The trident flew out of his grasp — or rather, there was no trident, having been taken back.

The Saighgair stared at its hands in surprise, not quite comprehending. It snapped back into the present once it realized I had begun to wrap my [Tendrils] around it, binding it up like the way an octopus would wrap around a clam. With an almost audible svuuu!, I pulled it into my waiting jaws.

It struggled desperately as its webbed hands and feet beat ineffectually against the water, attempting to slither out of my grasp but to no avail. My teeth had hooked into its chitin, holding it firmly in place within my jaws.

What I wished to test now was what changing something’s [Essence] while they are “out” would do to them. Previously, I was simply modifying its captured [Essence] while it was in the shape of a [Soul Stone], but changing it in real time…

It should definitely be possible. There is no reason why it shouldn’t work.

With careful precision, my three [Spears] snaked out from within my cavernous head and stabbed into it, {puncturing} its [Essence] with ease.

I observed carefully, watching its reactions with scrutiny.

…

Nothing extraordinary, aside from the quite literally palpable fear, that is. My [Spear] fished within his [Essence], pass through with little to no issue, {tasting} as the Saighgair thrashed around.

It was quite curious.

It was like a video, a thousand and one screens each displaying a different episode of a tv series. You could understand that each was inexplicably linked to each other conceptually at every moment, but yet it could change so rapidly and endlessly while still somehow maintain its cohesiveness.

That wasn’t the strangest part, however.

It was the way that the thoughts not only came from the [Form] but also from the layers of souls that it had hidden away within it. The physical brain that it owns was small, weak, seemingly only capable of the basest thoughts. However, the [Tethers] rising from its previous lives into the brain and back down again — it was as if the entirety of its past was a brain on its own, hovering about in a lucid, metaphysical way.

Strange. Marvellous.

Seems like you were correct in your assumptions, Elisa.

That lead to the next possible step.

“I apologize for my intrusion, Kilhus,” I gurgled, not quite feeling it.

Gently, slowly, I coaxed the old souls to separate from the Kilhus’ identity.

I observed, waited. Whenever it paused in its attempts, my [Spear] goes snip and cut off a [Tether], crossing out a possible train of thought with surgical precision.

Snip goes its senses.

Snip goes its home.

Snip and there goes your loyalty.

Snip snip snip.

Snip.

Snip.

…

With every single cut, Kilhus shook and spasmed. Its mind grows dull, slower as it became confused, each thought abruptly ending as the pathway between the brain and souls were severed. It became lesser and lesser, even though I was strictly simply freeing the mind of “Kilhus” from the parasitic souls of… a past incarnation? Even so, its feeble resistance turned even more frantic, now desperately scratching at my own scales and carapace.

It did so until it wasn’t quite a person anymore.

And before long, it wasn’t.

I released Kilhus — and only it. The other souls within screamed in outrage as they were forcibly rent from m the flesh, away from the mind but yet cohesive enough to curse at me.

It was bestial, the way it moved now. Limbs spasmed, tail twitching and its facial tendrils twirling in madness. Its scent — I could {Taste} it, its thoughts was a jumbled mess. It could remember its old thoughts but could no longer form them, alien memories in a brain too small to fit them.

It’s dying, I noted.

No shit it's dying, Elisa.

The body fell over, clawing and grasping blindly at the sand below, scraping scales off in a frantic delirium as it rubbed against the odd piece of protruding rock or ancient barnacles.

Then, not before long, it stopped moving at all, aside for the slightest twitches.

In the corner of its mouth and various lacerations on its limbs, a cloud of blue slowly drifted out, leaking in little spurts.

I slowly approached.

Brain damage. Kilhus is gone.

What was Kilhus was now a mushed up, bleeding piece of flesh, dribbling from the skull like water from a wet sponge.

What a waste.

Why is it dead? I had simply cut away the lives that weren’t its.

Elisa, it was clear that it thinks of itself as a single entity, no? Kilhus probably had never had a moment in its life where it wasn’t under the back and call for every past incarnation.

But how would they survive their first lives then? I quizzed, not fully understanding.

The rest of the soul, or souls, however… Well.

Unexpected.

They were still here.

Thin strands hanging onto each other, the little ball of identity hovered indecisively within the rapidly dying body. It appeared that once separated from the host consciousness, these souls would find themselves effectively stranded from the…

Well, the afterlife.

Maybe that’s what the [Blobs] are.

Souls?

Yeah.

But…

I squinted.

Yeah, that’s a [Blob] alright. A big one, to be fair, but it is definitely a [Blob].

I wasn’t quite sure what to think of that. It wasn’t grey, wasn’t blue. It was an odd myriad of colours, sharp against the dreary backdrop of white.

Blob two, return of the Blobs?

But that’s weird since the [Spirit] also contains their relationships with other people. Why would the [Essence] float around in blobs rather than being… everywhere?

Maybe it’s just the soul?

That couldn’t be, right? Maybe I’ve been thinking about this in an entirely wrong direction...

Look how it's glowing.

I peered closer and closer.

It was, indeed, glowing, however so slightly. [Form] and [Spirit] do not glow, for the [Glow] is a separate entity that occupies the same… space?

But it was glowing.

A ghost?

No…

Perhaps because it was whatever magic that allowed it to adhere to a new body? I asked.

But that… Well, the [Glow] does allow other forms of [Essence] to override reality, but does it allow the conscious to exist independent of a body?

Well, it definitely does. Have you looked at us recently?

Good point, I conceded.

I poked the body with my [Spear]. As I thought, the remaining souls had been severed from Kilhus but manage to stick around somehow.

Are you sentient?

I gently swiped at the blob.

It went poof and scattered its motes everywhere like a burst water balloon.

...

Ah.

What did you expect? I scolded myself for not quite thinking through with this.

Something more, I guess.

...

And what did we learn?

The [Spirit] is consisted of… more than just the soul?

I paused, trying to formulate my thought into something that makes more sense.

The [Spirit], as far as I could tell, consists of several key parts with behavioural differences. There is the [Soul] which dictates the idea of self on the behalf of the thing, which includes thought processes, likes and dislikes.

There was also the free-formed ball of [Spirit] such as the Sgnirmah’s Mark, which was essentially a thought made… real? Permanent?

It's a [Thought], separated from… where ever it came from.

On the other hand, the [Spirit] also contains the effects that something has on the world around it, which was somehow different from [Form]. Things like memories, perceptions, connations — that sort of stuff. Like, a black rose would have a connotation of dead romance, but removing that little part of it would make it impossible to be perceived that way.

An example of that in action was how I could effectively remove something from existence — even memories of it despite it quite clearly having existed there and then.

It's… some sort of…

Let’s call it [Presence] for now.

This is getting confusing.

You know what? Let's make it [Spirit: Presence] instead.

That’s not much better.

Oh, it could get much, much worse. Imagine calling it, [Essence: Spirit: Presence] and [Essence: Spirit: Soul] or something like that, every time we think about it.

…

Just [Presence] is fine, I think.

Good, so… Just what do we not know, or think we know, about [Essence] and the [Beyond]?

I spoke again, ignoring how water once again finds its way into my lungs, “[Essence], is what dictates existence. It can be separated into three categories: [Form], [Spirit] and [Glow].

“[Form] dictates the physical essence of a thing, and is the one things would interact with the most. A grain of sand, two grains of sand, is unique and set to exist on its own, provided nothing interferes with its existence. The [Form] cannot exist without its counterpart of [Spirit], and without it, the [Form] will dissipate from existence.”

That seems about right.

“The [Spirit] dictates the conceptual qualities of the thing, consisting of the [Soul] and [Presence]. The [Soul] is the sense of self, intention and the train of thought, while the [Presence] is what world perceives of the [Soul]. The [Soul] of a person can change separately from the [Presence]. At any time, there could be any version of [Presence] at the same time. The [Spirit] doesn’t seem to be tied down by [Form] and can exist independently from having a physical conduit. A [Soul] can float around as a ghost if it was sufficiently charged up by [Glow], while [Presence] doesn’t seem to care for a location at all since it exists everywhere.”

I paused.

“Unless forcibly removed from reality by me, of course.”

You forgot about [Thoughts]. And also being able to perceive feelings from just being around.

“The [Spirit] can also emanate waves of… intention. Most notably, something such as I can seemingly understand the language that a target speaks just from its broadcasted intentions.”

Better.

“The [Glow] is a kind of metaphysical energy that can cause the [Spirit] to override reality. How it is quantified or how it functions is still unknown, but its effect can quite literally break reality. Such as, and not limited to, setting up magical boundaries, soul-returning reincarnating fish people, magic paper trails, ghosts and me.”

…

That’s it?

… Yeah, that's about it.

That sounds like a whole load of horse shit right there, Elisa.

I giggled.

It was odd how laughing doesn’t quite promote hilarity that it used to, but what was odder still was that I could literally say all of that and absolutely meant every word of it. With every understanding of this queer, messed up world, it became clearer and clearer how I knew nothing at all.

It was akin to relearning how to walk, how to keep your balance. It was as if I was finally — finally! — reaching a part of reality that I was expected to understand even though I had nothing to work on.

Reality, magic, information about the dying and deceased. All these little bits that no fourteen years old would quite expect themselves to be delving head first into without warning post-mortem.

But it makes sense. I hate how it all makes sense.

Stop being so dramatic, me. You just got over this and now you are getting all angsty again.

Shut up, I breathed out, You are just a figment of my imagination.

You know, from what we know of the [Spirit] and [Glow], I might actually be real.

I paused again.

Don’t be stupid. You can’t even keep your thoughts in order. Weren’t you supposed to refer to yourself in the third person? Or me?

I relaxed, relieved.

Yup, that makes sense.

Focus, Elisa, what else do we not understand? I reminded myself.

How we came to be, for one. Also, what on earth are these… [Areas] or [Corridors]? What can’t I leave the ocean? How to keep me from unravelling? If [Souls] disappear, why and how did I come back from beyond the grave?

Those are some good question right there, Elisa. I have no idea how to answer any of that.

...Then…?

Uh, no. Let's work on what we know instead.

Like?

Mad science? Unravelling the secrets of reincarnation? Trying to give ourself a body that can be comprehended?

… Sounds like a working plan to me.

I laughed, giggled.

It came crashing back to me — the memories of all I did in the past few weeks, months. From living to dying, from forming to killing, from eating sentient creatures of [Essence] and ripping apart souls of the living.

The clusterfuck that was my past filled me up with senseless mirth.

I laughed more and more, choking each sound out until I think that it should hurt.

I hated it all. I hate how all of this broke everything I thought I knew about existence. I hated how this was my life even though I had chosen to kill myself. I hated how angsty this made me sound like. I hate how stupid my past actions were. I hate how I had definitely irrevocably damaged a colony that I no part to play with. I hated how far away I was from whom I was. I hated how what I was doing was definitely terrible and I feel terrible and —

— and —

— Yet, it was funny.

Relieving too, to know that nothing quite need justification as everything finally makes sense. Maybe because I had a goal to head towards to, maybe because none of this is real and reality can be blown apart like sand dunes in the wind, maybe because I couldn’t feel a single scrap of guilt for tearing apart the Saighgairs, the deers, the worms.

But mostly because I finally understood that I couldn’t deal with this with the way a human mind works.

And so, I continued working. It was a nice, sunny day in an underwater beach. The water was freezing and the ground was covered in a layer of ice. Fishes nearby were starting to gather around the shrivelling corpse of Kilhus, worrying away at the flesh.

Meanwhile, I set off to tear apart reality as we all knew it in order to bring sense back to it.

Just one soul at a time.

God, you are so angsty.

Shh.