And presto! I was awake again! I don't know what's wrong with that realm or why I keep ending up there, but I sure don't like going there. Ah yes, let's check souls and make sure we're all good, that was the emergency, after all. My soul... is full of holes again..... shit. Well I guess I know why it was full of holes last time. Frigging soul eating doom tower is making me mad. It's not critical, I think... but I probably should patch up all the holes in my soul tube soon, it's kind of flopping around like a ragdoll when I move. That makes me very uncomfortable. Oh... Herman is awake, but Eliza is still out. I grab Herman's senses, and he doesn't feel so great honestly. His soul is swiss cheese, and it wasn't in great shape to begin with. This is actually probably critical. No, I won't let this happen! Uhh, I'm panicking. That's not good, I make bad decisions when I panic. Quick, Deep breaths! Shit! I don't have lungs! Triage! Triage! Umm. You, and you, put some honey in them. They'll need some food, they were complaining of hunger earlier. Ideas, Ideas... Maybe I can donate a little soul? I did get better at moving bits of it around. Lets see, if I grab a little piece of soul, and pinch it off here... Ooh, that doesn't feel very nice. Not very nice at all. Lets see. We'll take a look through Herman's senses and try to patch up the holes in his soul with it. I can only see my soul with my own soul sense, and I can only see Herman's soul through his senses, and juggling these two sensory streams while attempting to steer the little wisp of soul is very difficult. My grasp is tenuous at best, and that's when I'm looking right at it. Switching over to Herman's senses and trying to steer the thing is downright impossible. I end up getting them stuck together and making a blobby mess. He starts feeling a little better the moment I do, which is nice, but at the same time I feel like I've failed. Whatever, I guess, he doesn't look like he's going to die anymore and I stopped feeling that weird nausea from him. He goes to sleep and I catch a flash of some dreams about the sun. I turn my attention to Eliza, she's not in great shape but she started with a bigger soul than Herman I think. It's still a problem but I have a little more time to get it right, so I put some focus in. The tower had that soul based spell construct and I still have the shreds of it I was making near my core. I remember it, it wasn't a complex pattern but it did have a lot of little parts. Let's try to finish that really quick, and if it works I can either do one for Eliza and Herman, or I'll have spare soulstuff with which to patch them up. I worry a little about the suction being an issue, but then I remember it was inscribed on a miles wide and high tower, whereas I am making one about an inch tall. I also worry there were bits I couldn't see performing other works, but there's little I can do about that. A little here, a little there, and bam! One segment done. Again! After a while of sculpting little soul threads into all the right shapes, I feel like I'm done, and I connect little threads from the input and output to my soul, just like I do with my mana core. Suddenly the spell starts up, sucking on my soul a bit, and I see little wisps drifting in through the walls. There's an awful lot coming from the rodent murder hallway, it looks like those vile vermin are good for something. Unfortunately the spell is also sucking soul through the intake, and spitting it out the outlet in a strand. To say it feels uncomfortable is an understatement. I thought the nausea of merging soul cores was bad, that was a cold and this is the flu. I hurt, and I have no mouth but I must vomit. Soon, by sucking up the damaged soul and spitting out eight long strands of soul in a big pile, it turns my holey soul into what looks like a plate of spaghetti noodles. The pain and nausea subside but I still feel... wrong. I've messed myself up somehow, and I don't like it. This is gonna bite me in the ass and I know it. I feel a little chill as I realize I might have died and left Herman and Eliza wounded, possibly to perish without me. Maybe even the whole hive would have died. No wait, most of the hive would have been happy to hang out in the sun forever. The looming threat of invading vermin tunneling through the walls would get them in the end but most of the bees would like it if I stopped moving around... Sigh. I need to kick them out or something. Maybe I can get them to make a regular beehive somewhere safe. But not yet, this place is still a deathtrap. I don't think I should do the soul spell to Herman or Eliza, I don't think they have enough soul to survive it. I get the suspicion the only reason I did is because I have been collecting an awful lot of it. The spell is working though, and I have 13 strands of a very fine soul material braiding themselves into a very thin twine spitting out the end of the tube of constructs. It's actually pretty cool to watch. And the twine itself is amazing! It's so much easier to move! I just have to will it and it contorts into any shape I want! I guess it worked out after all because with this, patching holes in some souls will be easy. I'm glad my recklessness will help me save my friends. Threading twine into the holes in their souls, it doesn't stick together quite as well as pure soulstuff, but that's a boon since I don't accidentally stick it in the wrong spots. I insert and snip the tubes until they both have souls that look like slightly lumpy marbles instead of swiss cheese. I take a look at the other bee's souls and wrap Herman and Eliza's souls up into big yarn balls over the course of an afternoon so they're back to the same size as the other bee's souls. I use all of my soul thread on the task, and it seems like it's working! They don't feel profoundly ill anymore when I examine their surface thoughts, they just feel like they're resting. That's good, because I still feel pretty bad myself. It's been getting worse as I put it off, every time my soul noodles cycle through the spell I feel a bit worse, but I don't really have any ideas about what to do besides shut it off. I probably shouldn't do that, since I'm pretty sure this soul thread will make it way easier to fix the mess my soul has become, but it's continuing to make a mess as we speak... Hmmm. What to do... I have an idea. What is this soul thread for, exactly? It might be for feeding spells like this one. It also might be for making spells, so maybe this won't work at all, but I'll try it anyway. I take the line of soul thread coming out of the spell and I cut one of my soul noodles feeding into the spell, and feed the end of the thread generated by the spell into it. The spell keeps running, and after about a minute, the thread comes back out the outlet, looking a little melted but still intact. I take the soul thread and cut it at the output of the machine, and link the ends up in a crude joint so I have a giant loop of soul thread going from the input of the spell to the outlet spinning slowly like a bicycle wheel. It worked! Now I just need to get the other 12 strands of my soul free from the spell, and make 12 more loops, then it will leave my poor plate of spaghetti alone. 11 more. 5 left... 2 more... Done! Wait a minute! The first loop I made just broke! it looks all melted! Crud! At least I have a lot of spare soul thread after how long it took me to get my soul free. If I make the loops way bigger they'll last way longer, right? Let's make a giant loop and get it started again. Oh, it's tangling with itself... I guess that's too big... Wait, there we go, that's about as big as I can make it... Another one broke. I have a thread long enough now to redo all the threads at once, so I do, just so I can switch from constant upkeep to doing all the loops at once and not worrying about it for a while. Now that I have the luxury of time and the crisis is over, I really want to nap. I look over at Mr. Biggs, and he's snoring lightly while lying flat with arms and legs outstretched. That's how I want to be. Instead I start planning. Now that I have the luxury and an awful lot of really pliable string, I can make a soul jar in any shape I want. Ming Vase? Boring Ammo crate? Maybe not, there won't be ammo in it after all. Barrels? Maybe, they're boring but at least they're space efficient. Except for the fact they're round and they waste space on the corners. If you made them so they didn't waste the space though, they'd be hexagonal... wait a minute. When life hands you a theme you might as well roll with it I guess. Looks like my new soul jar is going to look like a honeycomb. A beehive with a beehive soul. You did it, Brian, you came up with the dumbest idea ever! I'm absolutely going to do it anyway.