§
For the recovery party, the focus turned to breakin’ camp and puttin’ themselves into a mobile posture. Gear stowed in order to move at a second’s notice, no tents to break down or kit to pack, no fires to douse and constant vigilance. Adventurers on Huade know the drill well; when you run afoul o’ the tribal monster types like goblins or orcs, you gotta travel like fugitives unless you’re prepared for a fight to the death. These folk were gonna travel like that.
For this sailor, who don’t know nothin’ about the ground, except maybe how to land a ship on it and take off– which is frightful harder to do than dockin’ it at a proper sky harbor, so I reckon that’s plenty enough to learn– I was feelin’ useless and out o’ place, and wonderin’ what I should be doin’.
After all, I flew out to shake Amana loose o’ the Green Tower, not to walk home. My work here was done. But I couldn’t just kiss Amana goodbye and run home, either. Even useless as I was in this situation, that would only feel like I was runnin’ away.
The spiritual vessel is a precious resource, like powder on a long voyage. I can only use its full power sparingly, because the princess don’t got enough pneuma in her body. Seems all that pneuma in her blood core can only be used for that purpose at a fraction of its real value, and her vessel is far larger than that fraction can handle twenty four hours a day.
In other words, it’s like magic. Havin’ the spiritual energy is like havin’ the mana or havin’ the gun and ball. It’s just useless weight on its own, and useless weight on a ship is no better than ballast stone.
Your crew needs to run the wad-screw and the sponge down the barrel and safe the gun for the powder, to pack the powder bag, the shot and the wad, to prick the bag and push in the friction primer, and to aim and, at last, to yank the lanyard.
But see, you still got only the person and the materials to fire your gun. Y’see, you ain’t shootin’, not even once, not even with all that in hand, if you got no powder in that powder bag.
The powder is the pneuma. Okay, so maybe it ain’t a great analogy, since you don’t burn pneuma like you burn powder, but you burn the vigor in it. It’s like those batteries in Robert’s world. You don’t consume the battery, but you consume the charge in the battery. If you don’t plug the charger in, once in a while, it becomes too weak to work.
So maybe, the powder is the ‘charge’ in the pneuma. It’s the vigor, the liveliness, the freshness. Does that make sense?
I feel like I’ve wandered a bit, or maybe I’m makin’ it clear, I hope. Pneuma works in that fashion, here in Huade’s universe, for both mana and spiritual energy, cause it’s the ‘charge’ in the pneuma that moves the spiritual energy or the mana, to make them function.
And we, or maybe in this case I should say the princess, given it’s her body, don’t got enough pneuma to use that spiritual energy for more’n a couple hours a day, before her body needs a recharge. And it ain’t like we can use it all, ’cause the princess needs some pneuma to live the other twenty-two hours.
Thus I hesitated to expand her spiritual vessel so I could try to sort it out. If I use too much o’ the resource, it’ll not be there in an emergency.
‘Course that’s the same as a captain reckonin’ how much powder to hold back in the magazine. You fear usin’ it up, but it ain’t wise to let yourself get shot out o’ the air with powder still on board.
It looked to me like folks were about done, so I had to make up my mind soon. With considerable reluctance, I expanded the vessel.
– Ah, you should tough it out longer, Captain. You’ve been doing far better than you feared on your own, and should trust yourself more. Your native cunning mimics a reasonable likeness of proper intelligence most of the time.
My skin crawled as the vessel I had expanded was instantly hijacked by the old hag.
I know I’ve said it before, but I really gotta go a round or two with you someday.
– Trust this scholar’s advice, dear Captain. You would never last beyond one round, so saying ‘or two’ is unnecessary.
I stewed for a handful o’ seconds while I fought back the retort I wanted to make. I had a different row to fight. My suspicions had grown past suspicions regardin’ thoughts I’d had before.
It was time to make it known. Old Hag, you’re not dependent on the spiritual vessel, are you? The rest of us are only aware when we have a share of Her Highness’s mind to use, but you can think about things and stuff while you’re supposedly not awake at all.
I felt honest shock come back. But also, dead silence.
You’ve worked out these spells, and decoded all the mana and pneuma and miasma and other stuff o’ nature o’ this world that’s as foreign to you as the rest of us. You didn’t manage all o’ that in the short spaces that you’re active.
The old hag finally answered, with a bit less of an air than usual.
– This small one stands corrected, Captain. Your animal cunning rises to actual intelligence at times.
I know for a fact, because I can at least follow some o’ the thoughts that pass through the old hag’s mighty mind, that she’s havin’ fun with me when she yanks my lanyard like that. But I also reckoned she was schemin’ to throw me off the chase, and fought off her ruse.
Old Hag, you can think, and invent and act without usin’ the spiritual vessel, can’t you? Why do you only act when you’re able to use the vessel?
It had to be so. She just good as admitted she’d been watchin’ me while she was ‘asleep’.
And that fib you told the princess about some technique to wake you on your own in an emergency, when you expanded the vessel yourself before you were supposedly awake?
The thought equal to a deep sigh filled my skull, then a wry thought followed it.
– Well, she’ll know it was a white lie now, when recalling your thoughts, Captain. And she’ll remember any explanation this scholar offers you. So if that explanation is not given, she’ll become anxious.
So the old hag understood how fragile the princess is, underneath her brave front. I took this to mean, she understood she needed to start talkin’. After all, the princess turns into a loner at the slightest change in the wind, unable to depend on anyone, thinkin’ she has to do it all herself. The last thing she needs is thinkin’ she ought not trust her own past-life selves.
First, tell the rest of us how you kept it hidden from us all this time.
– Robert has a word, ‘compartmentalization’, which fits, I think.
So when concepts from the other lives come to me, I get their meanin’ as long as the thoughts behind their meanin’ aren’t too foreign to me. This one I understood.
I get the meanin’, but how?
Another of those sighs. She wasn’t bein’ impatient with me, or disdainful, she was just ruein’ the inescapable necessity o’ revealin’ her hand.
– Well, for the moment, let’s say your answer comes with the answer to your very first premise, so it will be most effective to just recall and answer that.
I fought through all the fancy speech, and worked out she meant my words, you can think, and invent and act without usin’ the spiritual vessel.
– Indeed.
So talk. I’m listenin’.
– To begin from the start, when our soul was reincarnated into Earth, some senior stripped it down to only a pure soul, with no spiritual attainments, having only a few imperfections, remnants of the damage from the Affliction, ten thousand years ago.
I don’t pretend to understand these things, except to say I imagine the soul they’re talkin’ about as a sort of jewel that is somehow ourselves, and it had flaws in it.
– The working theory is that a reduction of spiritual energy level to that of a cradle world, where mortal souls may safely be born, would allow the soul to safely repair its last imperfections and become fully whole. But the spiritual attainments attached to that soul were too great to allow it to enter Earth. So that unknown Senior, whom this scholar suspects must be either Immortal Mother or another expert at her level, stripped them away.
I held back the Aye, old hag, get on with it! I wanted to say. I needed to hear the whole thing for Princess to hear it when she woke. Even though she was just braggin’ about her immense great self and her great spiritual growth.
– That growth is not this small one’s, alone. Frankly, it began with Daq R’mion, seven lifetimes ago, counting Robert as ‘one lifetime ago’. Which means it includes you, Dear Captain.
I ain’t got no ‘spiritual attainments’!
– On the contrary, you have many. They simply grew deep within you rather than as extrinsic skills.
I was really gettin’ annoyed now. When was she gettin’ to the point?
– Specifically, you were of the Wind Seeker tribe. Just like everyone from Daq onward, you were not a simple being of your world. Your spirit side made you different.
I felt… a bit frightened of what she was sayin’, and I couldn’t say why.
– Understandable. Your difference with the normal folk deeply affected you in your youth. As mine did for me. But I’ll pull the scab back on that wound and hope you will forgive me.
Why did this become about me?
– All in good time. Your ‘friends’, the Wind Spirits, are your friends because they sense their kinship to you, whose heart was born of a race descended from the Wind Spirits of your world. Your spiritual advancement came merely by growing yourself as a living being; you had no knowledge of your progression. Your kind have the potential, if they were to actually understand their nature, to grow into beings beyond human, creatures at home in the air with no need of ships. The mortals of your world instinctively fear this, just as they fear the spirit tribes of all other elements, and their expression of that fear was the wound which turned you into my Dear Unreasonably Violent Captain. But I shall admit, you turned your anger to good, so I’m certain the gods of your world forgave you.
None of this was in my memory at all. But for some reason, tears were tryin’ to form in my eyes. I blinked them away and put it out of my head.
– I’ll teach you more later. The fact is, everyone grew. Daq grew due to his electronic side, which, for reasons not yet understood in his world, formed a spiritual strata. Lhan had a nature not unlike mine, as a part-spirit according to the manner of her world, so even in her short life she made gains. Kwelabi was a quasi-man, a Fae creature of nature whose kind is cast in imitation of humans. With his intellect, he made great strides. You, and this small one, and the Monk named Rhugau whose lifetime fell between the two of us, everyone one of us are fusions of Human and Supernature after the fashions of each of our worlds who built a spiritual vessel a bit more with each lifetime.
So what about it? Get to the point, Woman!
The travelin’ party finished their packin’ and our hike began at last. As one of only three party members able to take to the air, I was scoutin’ instead o’ carryin’, so I could keep up this conversation while walkin’ apart from the rest. It wasn’t a lot different than how the princess worked, when she traveled with the Hero’s Party.
– What happened to that vessel after that Great Senior stripped it from us? Where did the spiritual vessel that you and I formed go?
I struggled with that thought.
Didn’t it just… vanish? Dissolve or somethin’?
– It belongs forever to our soul. It cannot become a thing that is other than us. At most, it can be split for a time apart from us.
A chill hit me. A great fear actually.
Old Hag, have you been stuck in that thing all this time, since you died?
