I began drawing a scheme of my sacromotor over the untarnished sheet of paper. I knew of her expectations, or of the ones of the Retrievers at large: they wanted a quick explanation of our plans, and a rough drawing of the architecture of our sacromotor provided an excellent mean to do so. One could refuse to draw and elaborate orally, but the supervisors were often unhappy without a visual aid.

  It was considered best practice to get started with the central circle, the core, for most sacromotor designs were modular. A one-piece sacromotor was possible but highly discouraged, for it had low versatility, in addition to being impervious to the whims of its owner. A modular sacromotor was much easier to shift around, to change along its owner in their path through a Soulgyver’s life, that at times was supposedly equivalent to navigating across a calm sea and at others to riding a kayak with a machinegun mounted on it down a rollercoaster. And man, I wanted the calm sea.

  I began drawing the connections of the central sphere to a few modules I marked with “il”: three minor illusion modules. The interconnectivity of my motor was the simplest there was: like a sun shooting off rays into the modules. One ray for each mod.

  A pair of minor enhancement modules were added, labelled “enh”. I drew three more spheres in addition to this, and marked each with the following: “enc”, a minor enchantment module; “h” for the minor healing module, and “m(gen)” for a minor manifestation module of non-specified nature. Eight casting modules, each one to be managed by a single soul. Three souls in the core, generating the energy needed to power the rest of the structure, properly marked on the draft.

  I handed the sheet of paper to her and her eyes went wide. He let air out her nose and stifled a single laugh. “Good joke, Saon. For a second I almost believed you were going with this mess.”

  “Oh, but I really am. The minor manifestation module would let me create ammunition out of thin air with a little bit of effort, the enchantment module would power my guns up, the healing module would let me regenerate from minor wounds and douse off minor pains. The enhancement modules would let me run faster than many, and the illusion modules are, well, the first line of defense and attack,” I quickly explained my theory behind my choice of architecture. “It’s not meant to serve the interests of the organization: it’s meant to serve mine. And my primary interest is surviving the jobs you give to me.”

  “Yours is a deserter’s build, Saon.” she spat with an amount of poison that would have made anyone who cared run out the room crying like a little bitch. “And sadly we Retrievers have use for cowards.”

  “I am no coward. I will fight for the things I care about. Those being my comfort and safety. Others will fight for their ideals, for their families, countries, or even things as nebulous as the greater good.” I stared in her eyes as she regarded me with the expression one would a rotting, reeking corpse. “I am not a coward, Amaldia. I am a man who knows what he wants and needs.”

  “And who’s impervious to disciplinary actions. You seem earnest about this, so I’ll approve your plans. It’s not my job as a supervisor to ensure your sacromotor is useful, but to ensure it is safe and functional. Your design is basic, unspecialized, and, frankly, offensive to my sensibilities. But I should not judge it with any of those parameters in mind. So, know two things, Saon: I despise this design you made, and I will regret approving it.”

  I handed her my Retriever booklet as she dampened the rubber stamp in the blue ink. She didn’t even look at it as she slammed the circular seal over the yellow pages. “Go and do exactly as you told. If you lied in these plans, Saon, it will be exclusively to the detriment of your team— of which you make part of, I should remind you because… you are a rather special youngster.”

  I snatched my booklet back from her old hands and stashed it in the upper pocket of my uniform. “If you’d be so kind, Officer Amaldia, I’d like to request a small accommodation for my ritual.”

  “What in hell will you ask for now?”

  “Paper tissues. Or toilet paper.” I said, pointing at the bird shit on my shoulder with my thumb. Behind me, I heard a commotion, and refused to turn to see what was happening, but it sounded like a crow had let their bowels go wild over another. Judging by the pitch of their voices, the drama was between Execution and Meat, the little runt that had earned his name by behaving like an annoying little vegan. They both would be sacrificed soon, but one would be covered in shit and grumpy about it.

  “Go ahead to the ritual chamber and forge your sacromotor, Saon,” she said, defeat visible in her tired face. “Here.” she passed me a pack of paper towels somebody kept in the drawers of that often-unused office.

  I swept the scat off my shoulder and spearheaded the way through the flimsy door and down the short, dim lit corridor, my army of maniraptoran dinosaurs following as they had been trained to.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The ritual chamber wasn’t any ancient, derelict room left behind by some of our wise ancestors, as the name could suggest. No, it was an unblemished, gray marble floor. A cold light coming from threads of LEDs that clung close to the intersection of the walls and the ceiling. A trio of security cameras staring at you soullessly, their red little dots blinking in and out of existence constantly. A place as dead and devoid of life as almost every room of my workplace. Except the ground floor cafeteria, where the—then tragically out of service— coffee dispenser was, for she fostered a family of quite social cockroaches.

  And on one of the walls, a mirror. We all knew it wasn’t so from the other side, that behind it our supervisor would watch the consolidation of our sacromotor with great interest.

  She may have pulsed a button, because the speakers of the cameras spurred to life:

  “Saon, you may begin whenever you are ready. If possible, make it swift.”

  “You know, I have tight-fitting dress covered in silver sequins under my uniform ready to go at all times, baby.”

  The speaker turned off, but putting my ear against the one-way mirror I could hear her cursing in some foreign language.

  I made my way to the center of the room and dropped my whole body to the floor, as if ready to do some pushups. Instead, I let my tongue hang out my mouth, and got ready to lick that salacious slab of plutonic rock before me.

  “Recruit, the fact every bodily fluid works for the sacromotor consolidation doesn’t mean the organization condones the use of most of them,” the speakers told me in the mellifluous, raspy voice of Amaldia.

  In raised my head to glance at one of the cameras. “Is semen okay, then?” I deadpanned.

  “Stick to blood!”

  I grumbled as I got to my feet, merely a theatrical gesture. I knew I had to use blood since the beginning, but having Amaldia as my supervisor meant that I could have some fun teasing her. There were others that wouldn’t give a shit. The kind of field agents that reacted to someone blowing their brains off in front of them with a “cleanup on aisle four” message to the janitors. The kind of motherfucker I aspired to be. I had been shoved into life, never asked for it, and I intended to do everything I could to let the world pass me by as I indulged in my introspective interests. Some believed they were born for greatness, some believed they owed the world some sort improvement. I believed —and, to an extent, I still believe— that being able to take a nap while on service stood as the peak of luxury. Life wasn’t made for me, I wasn’t made for life, and we were on bad terms.

  I took my penknife from my pocket. I kept it sharpened and clean for two reasons: One, because cutting myself with a rusty knife to bleed on the floor remained unusually far from my general idea of hygiene. And two, because it allowed me to easily cuts things in the way of my goals: rope, cloth, plastics, branches, hobos, etc.

  A small cut on the tip of my middle finger to smear some blood on the palm of my other hand, an artist with his palette. Using my index as the paintbrush I drew around myself a circle, taking care of leaving eight cuts in the line, spaces that I would later extend into links towards the minor circles. I marked its center with the rune reserved for the core, a sort of S horizontally impaled by a couple parentheses who refused to speak to each other.

  I moved on to draw the accessory circles and marked them with their respective runes. The sounds of flapping wings and the metallic stench of my own blood filled the room. Soon enough I had finished drawing the design, with each module labelled, and connected by straight lines. Except the last one, that I connected with a wiggly line just because I could. It would work just as well, I’d bleed a little more, really, that’s it. Magic is not a whimsy whiny thing that requires perfectly straight lines.

  Strictly speaking, it didn’t even require drawing the scheme up with bodily fluids. But it was safer, it was an aid, a crutch, and I am not the sort of man that gained sentience from being a brat one day and went all “oh, this is way better than crawling, this walking thing. It rocks!”. Long live crutches.

  The design finished, I spat on the middle of it and flipped the bird towards the mirror. I could picture Amaldia either not paying a smidge of attention or restraining herself from banging her head against the nearest solid surface and/or resistant object.

  I turned towards my lovely pack of theropods and raised my bloodied finger. First, I would regard the triplets, as I liked to call the three ones I had raised from the eggs of a momma crow that died due to outneighborly reasons (cat, of the stray persuasion): Abortion, Back Alley, and Legal. I called for them to come and stand at my feet, and then gestured for them to stay with an open palm. I didn’t want to split the siblings, so they would chill in the core of my soul more or less forever.

  I stepped away from them without looking back: crows were intelligent, and they had to suspect not that I was minutes away from killing them all to use their souls as batteries and catalyzers.

  It’s a good moment to dedicate a heartfelt Fuck You to the Interstate Bird Welfare and Ethic Treatment Association. I killed those crows and, you know what? I ate pigeon (The supermarket label said “Chicken breast”, but I know better) the day prior.

  Returning to the narration of how I consolidated my legendary sacromotor, I walked into every circle, and called for the crow whose soul I wanted to infuse in the module. I circled the room once again, on the outside of the figure, looking at it from every angle, making sure all birds had stayed in place. And they did stay in place. They were such good boys and girls. Were.

  I unbuttoned and unzipped my uniform, a V shape revealing the glistering sequins underneath.

  “Saon! No! Do not strip in the premises! Disciplinary actions will be taken if you do so!” Came the voice of my supervisor through the loudspeaker.

  Message sent, I zippered my jacket back up. “I am immune to discipline. But not to cold. You people need to lay off the aircon addiction.”

  I clapped twice to get the attention of my birds as I stepped to the center of the pattern, where Legal, Back Alley and Abortion stood. Execution cawed at me, impatient.

  “Shush, you. Soon enough you will be… rounder, I guess.”

  With all the crows in position, I was finally ready to expose my deepest self and reform my soul into a Soulgyver’s one.