“Pyramid”

“Pe-raa-mid”

“Allright... “

“All-right”

“... Nevermind, forget that. Me. You. I am Victor. You are Eala.”

“Mi. Yuu. Ai am Vik-torr, yuu arr Eala.”

“Nonono. Hm, how should I say that, again? I am, see, “Me”. You are, see, “you”.”

“A! Ai am Eala. Yuu arr Vik-torr?”

“Yes, good. Correct.”

---

“By the way, what does Eala mean?”

“???”

“Mean? You know, Victor, originally means a winner. See, look. I make two figures, right? When they fight, one becomes the victor, another becomes the defeated.”

“Viktorr? Difeeted Dis?”

“Wow, you make cool looking figurines with your skill. Ah, yes. Correct. So, Eala?”

“Eala? Dis.”

“Ah, a swan then. Nice name.”

“Naaise neim?”

“Nevermind that. Good, Eala - good.”

---

As it turned out, my emotions were not fully disabled by having no proper hormone glands and whatever other related options a human ought to be equipped with. I had not noticed that before while alone, but when interacting with Eala I could finally feel that only physical responses to emotional states were being curbed.

What I had mistaken for an emotionless state of a dead, or in my case undead, person, was a simple lack of change in pulse, pupil dilation, hormone levels and other natural body responses. Mentally I still got worried, annoyed, excited and bored. Now that I thought about that, no wonder ghosts and whatever afterlife-related myths had a heavy amount of emotions associated with them - resentment, longing, revenge and so on.

Even the feelings of empathy, that I had thought to be buried after an unknown time in solitude, had began to slowly come back through the interpersonal interactions.

Before, by not feeling natural body responses, I had wrongly surmised that I was unaffected by momentary impulses and ideas. Of course, without the tunnel vision, shaking hands and adrenaline rush I was able to stay clear-headed in dangerous situations and react quickly and calmly to sudden changes. But that was mostly thanks to the mental potential freed from the limits of neurochemistry and neurology. Simply having the leisure to observe and deal with the changes in the surroundings, it overshadowed the feelings I experienced.

With no adrenaline I felt no panic, just worry. With no endorphins I felt no joy, only interest and appreciation. Without melatonin I did not get sleepy, but after a while with nothing to do I could still get bored.

---

And all that was learned by spending time with Eala on the steps of the pyramid. The endless source of frustration was the difficulty of explaining vague concepts. How would I explain the meaning of the word “Good” by using body language? Extended thumb from the fist was an unfamiliar sign for Eala, which resulted in long and tedious comparisons of good and bad things in the vicinity and using created-matter figurine puppet show on our palms.

The worry came from the constant thinking about the future objectives. Eala had buried her companions’ gear at the foot of the pyramid and after a long time of digging around, finally found some old bones. Bones were similar to those of the horses, only bigger than those I had seen before. There were also rotten remains of bags, containing some musty equipment. After some cleaning, we managed to salvage some travelling pots made of the same bronze-coloured alloy as the other elven tools and gear I had seen before. Eala refused to keep any armor or weapons remaining from her companions, but took the bag that contained some thin scrolls made of parchment filled with runic script I could not recognize and several pouches containing different powders, leaves and cloth satchels.

For now, we had some dried meat I had prepared before and the water Eala created. As it turned out, the water she created could be drunk, but she had to add some salt to it first. I guessed that her ability simply created water with no impurities or salts just like distilled water, making it unsuitable for drinking if no minerals or salts were added. I did not need the food or drink, but the remaining amount was not too much, and we still had not seen any animals in the forest close to the pyramid. We would have to move soon, but where to?

---

Every twenty or so hours according to my estimations, Eala slept. I still felt not even a hint of drowsiness, so I kept using the available free time to study my poleaxe and inspect myself. Occasionally I would find a way to slightly improve the body’s performance by rearranging few muscle fibres or modifying the shape of some bones. My familiarity with the poleaxe also improved, and I slowly became able to move the matter that gave it its shape.

I slowly manipulated my poleaxe to grow longer and slightly slimmer. The originally overly thick and bulky head became wider and longer, forming a wide blade similar to a halberd or bardiche, while retaining a sharp spear tip and beak on the opposite side. So I spent time alternating between the shorter, bulky shape and the long and thin one.

---

“So, Eala, why do you keep flinching each time you look into my eyes?”

“Flinch?”

“Like that.”

“Ah. Aa, ee, look. Eyes - power. Victor - a lot power. Father - many power. Victor - many many power. Victor many power than father”

“Power? Ah, MUCH power.”

“Much power.”

“That is it, good. So you say, you see much power in my eyes? How?”

“Umm, see? You not see you?”

“No, I have not seen myself for quite a while. No mirrors, you see.”

“Mirrors?”

“Reflects your image. Like metal, well polished? We don’t have a flat piece big enough…”

“Water, good? Look.”

“Oh, cool. You can actually change your water into reflecting surface? Interesting, manipulating reflection angle of the water, how you do that?”

“???”

“Nevermind, we will talk about later. Oh fuck, what is that shit?!”

“???”

From the water mirror Eala created, I could see my reflection. First of all, I still somehow retained the basic face shape from Earth. Guess I had subconsciously changed the skull shape into a familiar one when reforming my body here. Not that I liked my jawline, I would have to change it a bit, but later.

First of all… that arterial blood red of my hair was something any punk would be envious of. And also my eyebrows and eyelashes were of the same colour. My skin, which used to be slightly olive thanks to my father’s genes, was now white enough to put Snow White to shame. Not even a hint of rosiness from skin capillaries could be detected. But lips compensated the pallor by juicy redness of fresh blood, making me look like an especially movie-influenced vampire with bad table manners. And to top it all, my eyes. Around the (thankfully still round) black pupil there was iris at least two times wider than normal, and it was living fire. Red with specks of yellow or gold was swirling there, constantly changing, and as I could hazard a guess in broad sunlight, glowing. No wonder Eala flinched each time she saw my eyes. It was enough to make people crap their pants or shout about CG-graphics becoming real.

My looks were a definite shortcut towards ending up being chased by pitchfork-flailing mob of peasants. Hmm, I remembered something about butterflies having their wing colours determined by different angles of the light reflected from the multilayered scales of their wings. After thinking for a while, I decided that copying that was pretty much impossible and would only add a nice sheen and iridescence. But yes, modifying the structure to absorb all the wavelengths should be possible.

---

As I concentrated, I managed to look into the reflection of my eyes and beyond. Oddly, I could see no physical reason for the weird color of my irises. I actually had it colorless, as it turned out - I had neglected that when shaping the body, and now something was shining through. I used my eyes as a focus for my observation power and link it to my mind core, so was the glow the manifestation of my energy? Well, the materialization of the energy and the poleaxe that I had changed were both red, so that sounded plausible.

After I fiddled with the structure of my irises for a few hours, I managed to turn it darker until they became black. I lacked the proper related knowledge in physics, but the technique of mixing guesswork and constant trials proved to be effective enough. Just a few hours to get it done? I felt proud of my analytical power. Not being tied down by limitations of the brain was wonderful in such moments. Anyway, now my pupils and irises were both pure black. Looked slightly creepy, but now one had to pay very close attention to notice some glow flickering deep inside my eyeballs.

When I finally looked up, I saw heavily perspiring Eala still standing before me, trying to maintain the mirror. Uh, I had forgotten that the mirror was her magic. And she kept it going for several hours. I did not know how draining it was, but it seemed to be much more difficult than ordinary water manipulation. Good thing I had not gone on with modifying my hair colour. I hastily nodded at her, smiled and said “Thank you.”. She slumped down, breathing heavily and nodded in response - “You are well-kom.”. “Welcome.” - I corrected her automatically, and we shared a smile.