“____” speaking

‘____’ thoughts

*____* telepathy

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Maka’s directions were surprisingly accurate and it made me view her in a better light. I had done as instructed; line myself up with the city and go north. What should have been a day of travel was only a few hours on the Highway, something I am grateful for.

After what should have been roughly the correct distance I brought myself back to the material plane. I was in a swamp. The willow trees and the vines that climbed them and every other plant in the area created an atmosphere I had enjoyed in the past. The water around my ankles was muddy, but undisturbed by my materialization.

With a bit of effort I made as much of myself corporeal as possible and started to move through the fern filled underbrush. Each step I took churned the water slightly sending out small ripples to announce my coming. I took great pleasure in the feeling of water on my bare skin and much to my delight there was no sign of human activity here; a possible side effect to humans not caring about the trials.

My travel through the swamp continued and to curb my growing boredom, I began to hum. It was one of a few songs I knew instinctively. The song had words and other parts to it that could be ‘played’ by using sound Arcane, but all I wanted was the melody. It was a slow song, five minutes total in length, and I hummed it several times before I found the cave’s mouth.

The sight of the cave stopped me dead allowing only silence to perpetuate. It was large, easily four times my height and it was repulsive; unnatural. The stone looked like melting flesh and had a distinct aura of filth. None of the ripples from my walking made it to the mouth they all disappeared as if stopped by an invisible wall. The water that was allowed to be near the mouth was a dark black that reminded me of crude oil. It truly was the entrance to a catacomb; the smell of rot and death emanating from the mouth of the cave was unmistakable.

I swallowed the breath I had been holding and resumed breathing normally. There was nothing for me here. This place would repel me and continue to make me feel unwelcome for as long as I stayed close to it. The trials were for spirit and a select few only, Eldritch and humans were not allowed and neither was I apparently. I was going to have to ask Maka or Tanzi if they had had a similar experience.

With nothing left to do here I decided to head towards the forest where I had been killed. It was in the far north and would take a few days of travel even going by the Highway. I wasn’t going to be leaving or using the Highway right off the bat though. There was training to be done and I had neglected it for too long. Using Arcane I created an earthen cocoon around myself and sat cross legged.

‘Ok, let’s do this.’

Drawing in a deep breath, I slowly began making my body fully corporeal and held it in that state. Doing so was like running as fast as I could and tired me out very quickly. Even when I reached the state were I felt like I couldn’t go on anymore I held myself together. Eventually I collapsed back into my ethereal form having held the fully corporeal form for as long as my body could currently handle.

I washed the sweat from my body with water Arcane and turned my attention to my link with the ethereal plane. The link had been growing steadily from feeding itself, the pink swirls had grown more vivid in color and pattern and a second color was trying to start at the base. It was good development but I no longer knew how much Arcane it could supply me with or how fast it could do so.

The easiest way to test the link’s strength would be to expend all my Arcane and see how long it took the link to refill my capacity. However, I was in no mood to act suicidal and had another much easier method I could use; Aldite. Aldite was crystallized Arcane or, more specifically, a form of filtered Arcane that occurred when a spirit resided for long durations in one location. Depending on the type of filtered Arcane used, the Aldite would have the same properties. I wasn’t aiming for a specific type of Aldite and would just be crystallizing as much Arcane as I could until I got a grasp on the strength of my link.

I cupped my hands slightly and began to focus filtered Arcane in the space above them. I started the crystal and the let the Arcane do what it wanted as all my attention was focused on watching how my link coped with the strain. My Arcane reserves were draining fairly rapidly, but once I let the link start replacing the Arcane I was using, the drain slowly dwindled to a small trickle.

Content with how the link had developed thus far, I stopped releasing Arcane and returned my attention to my link. I was interested in the second color it was trying to develop and wanted to encourage its growth since more complexity and color meant a stronger link. Ever so slowly I started to try and awaken the new color with raw Arcane. After a brief span of time it was clear that raw Arcane was not what was needed, but some filtered form of Arcane.

I began to try each type of filtered Arcane I knew of starting with the four elements. There was a slight reaction to water Arcane, but the color still refused to manifest. Within a hour I had used all of the filtered Arcane types I felt comfortable using, I would have to delve into unfamiliar territory to continue. I was going to start off with light Arcane.

Filtering Arcane required one to have a grasp on what they’re going to use the Arcane for and aside from brightening things, I had no other Ideas on how to use light. I hoped that would be enough to create the light Arcane and it seemed to work although my conversion ratio was horrid. Like the previous tries this one was also a failure. There were only three other types of filtered Arcane that I knew enough about to try and even though healing Arcane was on that list, I was skeptical about the backlash of failing to filter it correctly.

In lieu of a better option I decided to try spatial Arcane. It was less dangerous than healing Arcane and static Arcane so I felt more at ease using it. As I had with the light Arcane I carefully filtered some spatial Arcane and fed it to my link. The color on the link responded and grew slightly finally revealing itself to be a milky and silvered white. Now that I had coaxed the color out, all I needed to do was keep feeding it until it formed a pattern or full strand. From there I could have the link feed itself the correct type of Arcane to promote growth.

My conversion ratio for spatial Arcane was bad, almost half of my capacity created only enough spatial Arcane to feel the immediate area around me. If there were other uses for spatial Arcane aside from bolstering awareness of surrounding, I didn’t know what they were. I had never encountered another spirit that used it. The tiny bits I was able to feed the new color it greedily accepted and continued to grow until one strand of my link had converted itself completely. The latent fatigue I had ignoring was catching up and I was crashing hard.

Knowing I could do nothing more without hurting myself I returned my awareness to the area around me. The cocoon I had created was untouched and illuminated by a dim rainbow of colors. I had forgotten about the Aldite that I had created to test my link out and took the time to observe it. Since I had let it form by itself the crystal was a vibrant red in the middle that was surrounded by oranges and yellows before tapering off to a silvery blue on the edges.

For a spirit this piece of Aldite would be useless, it wasn’t refined enough to act as a form of storage nor did it house the type of Arcane I would have desired. However, to a human it would be near priceless; each color was a type of Arcane it could store. The four colors meant the crystal I was holding had four different types of Arcane that could be drawn from it: fire, wind, heat, and a tiny bit of water. I’ll admit it did look nice and may have made a good piece of jewelry, but I had my spirit crystal and that held a place far above anything I could produce myself.

There was no way to bring the Aldite crystal with me so I opted to bury it since destroying it would take more effort that it was worth. I shattered the cocoon and stood up, arching my back and raising my arms above my head. The trials would have to wait and I couldn’t do anything else to practice my corporality or strength my link at the moment. Happy with everything I had accomplished so far I moved myself onto the Highway and began to make my way north.

If anyone asked me what the Highway was like I could use one word to describe it; empty. It’s just a never ending flatland devoid of everything including color. When on the Highway only two things exist, you and your shadow. This makes travel dull and mind numbing, but the increase in speed is worth the tedium. Personally, I didn’t like the Highway; the nothingness of it freaks me out. Another problem is there’s no real way to judge where you are in the material or Upper ethereal plane, it’s all guesswork.

This meant that when I left the Highway after a few hours of travel I was still about an hours walk from my hunting ground. The forest I materialized in was almost nothing but pine trees and snow. It was a peaceful sight and I enjoyed being able to see my breath on the air once I was partially corporeal. It served as a reminder that I was still alive.

A quiet crackle sounded with each footstep I took towards my destination. I loved nature but that was just my heritage talking. My walk continued uninterrupted for half a mile before I heard a slight bubbling sound. The slight detour wouldn’t be imperative to my goal, but I was curious as to what was making the noise. As I got closer the smell of filthy flesh and old blood became noticeable. I quietly approached a tree and readied myself before peering around the edge of the trunk.

‘Please be wrong. Please be wrong. Please don’t let it be what I think it is.’

The tree slowly revealed a little blob of mutated and disproportionately puffed flesh no larger that a cat. It was undoubtedly an Eldritch. From the looks of it, this Eldritch was a mutator, one of the types of Eldritch in the Eldritch god Kal’s dominion. I was relieved by the fact that it wasn’t Volm’s or Nix’s since their Eldritch used Edin and most of Kal’s Eldritch couldn’t. I had a chance as long as I kept my distance and used something physical to attack it. There was a lesson I had learned the hard way about dealing with Eldritch unarmed and it was not one I would be repeating.

I stopped my corporality and took my battle form, the weight of my lantern rested comfortably on my hip. Ice and water would have been my first choice of armaments due to the prevalence of snow but it wouldn’t be effective against an Eldritch’s regeneration. With slight difficulty I created a rod of metal using metal Arcane and tried fruitlessly to shape it. Deciding the rod would have to work as is, I pulled fire from my lantern and began to heat the rod until it glowed a soft red.

Weapon in hand, I began my attack hoping that my preemptive strike would lead to a quick victory and another soul to consume. The rod was swung in a downward arch that had all my weight behind it in hopes of splattering the Eldritch. My swing was rebounded with a clang, spraying sparks and fragments of heated metal while leaving a dent in both the rod and Eldritch.

Like some deranged construct, the Eldritch began to unfold into a creature much larger than physically possible. It had spindly arms that reached the ground even when standing at full height, a carapace like shell covered part of its back and head leaving me with little to attack. Tiny legs supported the whole thing and the lack of a real face on the creature was unnerving. All of its joints were exaggerated and strands of who knows what connected each joint like webbing. My view left me staring at the elongated gut of the Eldritch, a mix of disgust and horror on my face.

“Fled Ooh Lo.”

I reeled in shock as the Eldritch spoke, my mind became hazy and my stomach tried to empty itself. Cold sweat covered my body and a splitting headache remain after I regained control of myself. A toothy grin wormed its way onto my face. This was going to be a good fight.

I took a few steps back and used mind Arcane to protect myself from any more words that may be spoken. Earlier I had failed to shape the rod when using metal Arcane so this time I would shape it with heat Arcane. The changes happened almost as fast as I could think them and I pushed the hilt-less blade into the snow to cool and temper it. Brittleness wasn’t a concern since I could use metal Arcane to strengthen the premade shape.

During this time the Eldritch hadn’t been docile and was now within striking distance. Most Eldritch didn’t rely on speed since they could heal from most wounds that didn’t instantly kill them. The Eldritch lunged at me its chest and abdomen opening vertically into a large mouth riddled with jagged and broken teeth, a large pink tongue creating strands of saliva.

Without any way to dodge all I could do was block the incoming Eldritch. I wasn’t foolish enough to do this myself though and lifted a block of condensed snow up in front of me to serve as a barrier. The snow wall quickly disappeared inside the Eldritch mouth but the brief moment allowed me to chop off one of the Eldritch arms.

Droplets of blood flew in an arch that followed the swing I had used hissing on impact with the snow and trees. This Eldritch’s blood was corrosive and the chunk of metal being eaten away on my blade served to verify this. Now I had to fight with a damaged weapon until I got an opening to either create a new one or fix my current one.

Without a wall to stop it the Eldritch took in a deep breath and spat a mucus like liquid at me. I stepped to the side to avoid it but didn’t move far enough and my left arm was grazed. The flesh that had been hit burned even though I was in my ethereal form. One of the nastiest abilities of the Eldritch; they could hit spirits regardless of form.

I needed time to think and promptly created a block of ice around the Eldritch. It would hold for a minute at best, plenty of time to fix the blade I had made. Using the pre-established shape I removed the corroded parts and filled the blade out again. I began to heat the blade again this time to white hot temperatures. The blade needed a constant supply of both metal and heat Arcane to prevent it from turning into a formless mess.

The Eldritch had just about broken out by this point and refreezing it would be futile so I waited. Upon freeing itself from the ice the Eldritch let out a sickening screech and charged me.

“Id Do Foe!”

The words hit the mental shield I had made for myself and put it under tremendous strain. I couldn’t afford to let my concentration on the blade laps and the Eldritch words were left to freely do their damage. A piercing headache and slight nausea had come to full effect by the time the Eldritch reached me.

With practiced ease I swung the blade parallel to the Eldritch’s mouth slicing it in twain. The molten blade cut without any resistance and the resulting halves were cauterized to prevent it from healing quickly. I turned to look at the split Eldritch, two small paths carved into the snow from its simultaneous landings.

Tiny tentacles began to sprout from the Eldritch’s body in an attempt to bring the two parts back together. Although it was one of Kal’s Eldritch, this one seemed to lack the usual regenerative ability his kin carried. The head had successfully put itself back together by the time I reached it and cut it off.

I kicked the head away from the body and walked over to it, letting the molten blade cool before impaling the Eldritch’s head with it. Despite the blade in its head it was still struggling to free itself. I bent down and stared it in the eyes, a small piece of my fire coming to my hand. I ignited the head and spoke to it.

“A efnace kroe nolt fotov Akhan’s“

The Eldritch at my feet shuddered and finally stopped moving; the fire and my words had done their job. Once my fire had fully consumed its head I move on to the body, the soul was already being eaten away inside my lantern.

I left the bloodied snow behind and resumed my travels towards where the cult had killed me. The forest was once again silent aside from the soft crunch of snow as I walked at a leisurely pace. A half hour passed before I heard the distant murmur of people. Once again I approached with caution. The voices sounded human and there had been no humans in the cult. Hiding myself in a bush, I peeked out to see what was going on.

Humans, lots of them, some in armor and others in priest’s robes were all meandering around an area that looked like hell on earth. I recognized the symbol on the priest’s robes; it belonged to the Church of the Radiant Sun, a detestable group of racists who cared only for humans. Even though I hadn’t ever met face to face with the church I had seen the aftereffects of their actions several times.

“Who are you?”

The sudden voice behind me caused me to jump and let out a squeak. I turned and was greeted by the sight of a haggard looking spirit, another casualty of the Church. The spirit was easily identifiable as a plant based spirit, most of the leaves that covered its body were wilting and brown on the edges.

“I asked who you were.”

“Ah. No one special I can assure you. It was just happenstance for me to be traveling this way. What happened here?”

The plant spirit’s shoulders dropped an inch as it sighed, the twigs on its body rustling slightly.

“Although you still didn’t answer me, I’ll take what you did tell me on good faith. You’re not the first spirit to come through here recently so things have been a bit tense. I’m not to sure of the details myself, but from what I do know this area seems to have been the home of a corrupted spirit.”

“I don’t see why that would be a reason for all these people to be here.”

“The reason for that has to do with what was found at the sight. An unseen type of Aldite, crystallized corruption. We’ve also had an increase in the sightings of Eldritch in this area because if it.”

“Is it like Madman's Rock?”

Madman’s Rock was a solidified form of Edin that required the corpse of an intelligent creature. Just being close to the rock was like listening to an Eldritch talk; it would drive most mad within days. The fact that whatever this was could attract Eldritch was bad news for everyone involved but it explained my earlier encounter.

“Similar, but it doesn’t affect humans very much. It is, however, disastrous to spirits.”

“That doesn’t sound pleasant. How did you figure that out?”

I had my suspicious that I would not like the answer I was about to get and began to gather wind Arcane beneath my feet. The plant spirit spoke again with a wry smile on its face.

“I told you; ‘You’re not the first spirit to come through here recently’.”

Before he even finished speaking some of the priests had thrown an aldite net over me. The net was composed of various types of Aldite and absorbed the wind arcane I had gathered leaving me temporarily defenseless. I shot a look of loathing at the plant spirit.

“To betray your own kind. Just how low have you fallen?”

The plant spirit chuckled weakly and knelt to look at me.

“I just don’t want to go back into that accursed area even if it means someone else is corrupted in my stead.”

The priests had run off to gather something, most likely the tools necessary to bind me to an object. The Aldite net had a crystal for every type of Arcane I could come up with, it even prevented me from gathering enough raw Arcane to bring out my lantern.

After a minute the priests returned with a dull orange metal sphere, they were going to try and bind me to it.

‘Oh you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. Ha! I can’t wait for the looks on their faces.’

Seeing the look on my face, the plant spirits own face twisted in annoyance.

“I don’t know what you’re smirking about, but I doubt it’ll help you.”

“Traitors have no need to know.” My retort was spat out with no restrain on the venom.

I felt a tug on my being as the priests began to try and bind me to the metallic sphere. I could see the link they were trying to establish coming towards me.

‘But which soul do you bind to? Isn’t that is the question you stupid thing.’

The link reached my and seemed to flounder; unable to find somewhere to latch itself onto. Deciding to do the priests a favor, I had the link turn around and head back towards the sphere.

‘This is gonna be great.’

I could hardly contain my laughter as the link got closer to the sphere and attempted to bind with itself. A moment later the sphere disappeared with a clap of thunder and the loss of a few hands due to spatial distortions.

“And that ladies and gentlemen is why you don’t form a link with yourself.”

With no one in control of the Adlite in the net, a wave of my hand was all it took to throw it off. A tsunami of slush and snow swept the crowd to hinder anyone who wasn’t dazed as I made my escape from the hectic situation I had created.

The priests were left in utter confusion, some in pain, as I move onto the Highway and began my trip back to the mansion. The cult was either already dealt with or had dispersed so there was nothing let to do here.

Even if I didn’t want to admit it, the mansion was a good place to train myself in relative safety. If I was going to be getting my spirit crystal back I would need to be stronger and part of that was to find out why the trials seemed to refuse me.

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AN: Hello readers! Another chapter for you to peruse at your will. Here's an idea of what Aldite looks like for those of you that are curious click here. Feel free to leave any questions, comments, or concerns and until next time I will bid you adieu.

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