Chapter Thirty-five

  I could hardly believe what I was seeing, and I had seen some weird and horrible things since becoming the cute little tentacle-spirit I was.

  Krissy rushed to the spiritualist. The woman collapsed to the ground, screaming in pain, spasming.

  Tovaron Ento — probably sensing that the coast was clear now — sent his entourage to check on their fallen comrades, but he himself trod over to us to see what was going on.

  ‘Get away from me! Get away from me!’ the familiar screamed at me as it began absorbing the woman’s now murky-black soul-arm, all the while the taint was slowly spreading to her shoulder, leaving her a writhing mess.

  ‘What the fuck, Misery?’ Tovaron Ento demanded immediately. ‘Stop it! Why are you killing her?’

  What the fuck, Kevin? Stop it! Why are you killing her? Krissy demanded, sending me her agitated, screaming thoughts.

  ‘It’s not me. It’s her familiar.’ I yelled. ‘I’ll stop it, I’ll stop it!’

  ‘Stop it! Leave me alone!’ the familiar wailed as I grabbed its arm with two tentacles, pulling it out of the woman’s soul.

  I quickly ensnared its three other arms, too, restraining them with a coiling tentie each. This familiar was a far cry from the beast I’d just managed to eat — no matter how much it struggled, it couldn’t wriggle itself out of my grasp. And just like Jevan’s familiar, it didn’t even attempt to eat me. I was beginning to think that consuming other spirits was an exclusive purview of the so called evil spirits, like the giant creepy-crawly … or myself. But what about souls? Wasn’t eating a soul the exact same kind of activity? It must have been this blackish taint: the only part the familiar had tried to consume was the tainted soul-arm. Was it some sort of pre-digestion, breaking down the soul into a state where a familiar could absorb it? Possibly.

  ‘What the hell did you do to her?’ I yelled at the familiar.

  It just kept twisting and turning, trying to get out of my clutches, albeit in vain.

  But whether it answered or not, the black taint was spreading, slowly but surely, and I was sure it was going to kill the woman sooner or later. Probably sooner. I stuck a tentacle into the affected area and I was instantly astonished. The black stuff? It was Essence, I could feel it. But not the kind of Essence I had in my pools, or any kind I’d ever seen before. Suddenly I had a lot of questions I wanted to ask this stupid familiar.

  Krissy and Tovaron Ento had entered into a shouting match for one reason or another. It seemed the elf was blaming Krissy and me for the agony of the spiritualist. Questions had to wait: it was time to please the crowd.

  But … the only idea I had was spiritual amputation. My Tentacle Horror instinct kind of sort of agreed with my assessment and gave me the go ahead.

  Cutting off a part of a soul — or a spirit for that matter — was a much simpler and quicker task than doing the same to a physical body. There was no blood, no guts, no danger of infections. I had two free tentacles to use, and thus I began my second ever soul-surgery. Well, soul-surgery wasn’t really what I was doing — I basically ate whatever was left of the fully tainted arm, and kept eating the affected area until I reached a line beyond which there was no taint at all. The woman cried, her eyes rolling back — by the time I finished, she was unconscious.

  Her entire left soul-arm and a chunk stretching from the shoulder to the arm-pit was gone, but the rest of her soul was … fine, and I hoped it would be enough for her to keep living and functioning. Luckily, her chest was still rising and falling, her eyelids were trembling, and she let out a few whimpering sounds, so … it was all good. I had no clue what percentage of the soul could be lost without dying, but it seemed this woman — Kitala Iwani, if I’d heard it correctly — had not reached the threshold yet.

  I watched her soul for half a minute, checking if there was any of the strange Essence left there. There wasn’t, and I checked my own Essence pool: 12 EP and filling up. I tore a small, negligible chunk of Spirit-Stuff from a tentacle, mixed it with a coulple of EP, and I spread the resulting spirit-goo onto the area of her soul where I’d performed the amputation. I hoped it was going to help her with the pain as it had helped Akela. Her breathing became more regular, her eyelids stopped trembling, and I was reasonably confident that she was out of the woods.

  ‘Uhm … I think she’ll live.’ I said to Krissy.

  She held up a hand to stop Tovaron Ento from speaking, and said to him,

  ‘She’ll be fine.’

  ‘Fine? What do you mean fine? What’s happening to her?’ the man demanded.

  I wasn’t sure why the man was so hung up on this; the woman wasn’t one of his. Shouldn’t he have been with the rest of his rangers, dealing with the fatalities of this scuffle? Hm. Maybe he had realised there was nothing he could do for the dead and decided that the two dodgy spiritualists had to be dealt with. Tovaron Ento was somewhat of a pragmatist, it seemed.

  Kevin, you’d better explain everything to me this instant! Krissy demanded.

  ‘I will, I promise, but I still have this girl’s familiar to deal with,’ I said. ‘I’m restraining it, but my tenties are getting tired.’

  I have to tell something to the elf. He’s losing his patience, and so am I. What the hell is happening? She thought-yelled at me.

  ‘Tell him the familiar tried to eat her and I’ve just saved her life,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ Krissy gasped, her eyes widening underneath her mask.

  ‘What is it?’ Tovaron Ento demanded.

  Krissy told him. The elf scowled, looking down at the woman and said,

  ‘That’s … unusual. As far as I know familiars only feed on their host’s soul when the host dies. She’s alive, isn’t she?’

  Hm. It made sense to eat your host’s soul once they were dead — I had done it myself. Jack and Gladys. Their souls would have just evapourated into the air otherwise, and I was still unsure whether there was any kind of afterlife waiting for them. But I couldn’t even imagine myself eating Krissy’s or Akela’s souls while alive. They weren’t my “hosts”. They were my friends. The familiar eating the soul of her still living host? It must have gone against some rules or regulations.

  Questions were popping up with every passing second. I had been here for nearly three years and I knew almost nothing about spirits — why they did what they did, what the hell was up with godlings like Wensah and Sivera, and so on. This familiar was a treasure trove on information if I could get it to talk.

  ‘You’d better start talking!’ I growled at the familiar. ‘Why were you eating her?’

  The spirit stopped struggling for a single moment, turning its featureless head to look at me — probably — but it remained silent. Then it tried to break free again, but to no avail — my tenties held all its arms as tightly as a … as a kraken. Yes. That was a good comparison, although the scale was off.

  Now, how to get the spirit to talk? I wasn’t sure yet, so I turned my attention to the unconscious woman.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  I didn’t know this elven spiritualist. I had no reason to do anything more for her. But the fact that the familiar had tried to eat her alive pissed me off — I was supposed to be the evil spirit here, so why was a familiar doing something even I wouldn’t do? I decided to take the next step in ensuring that that the woman was safe from her own familiar.

  I looked and I found the nodes in the familiar’s body, tracing the Essence wires connecting them to those in the woman’s soul. Then I got down to the not especially gruesome but extremely painful work of ripping the connections out of the spirit. The memory of intense pain from not that long ago came back to me — disconnecting myself from Akela had been … well, something I wasn’t keen to experience again.

  The familiar shrieked and screamed as I ripped the nodes out of its body one after an other. I had no qualms doing it: it wouldn’t kill it, and I knew the nodes would grow back soon. Mine had.

  I was just about halfway through, when the spirit’s painful wails became words.

  ‘Stop, please stop!’ it cried, pleading. ‘I’ll talk, I’ll talk, just please stop!’

  I stopped for a moment. I knew it was painful, but … did this four-armed soul-eating horribleness think I was …

  ‘Do you think I’m torturing you? Do you think I’m doing this to cause you pain?’ I asked, ripping another node out of its body.

  It screamed in agony, its voice shrill like metal grinding on metal.

  ‘Kevin, are you torturing the familiar? Why?’ Krissy asked.

  I’d almost forgotten she could hear my part of the conversation.

  ‘I’m not torturing her. I’m severing its connection with the woman.’ I said to Krissy. ‘It’s painful, I know, I’ve done it to myself once.’

  ‘I see,’ Krissy said, then relayed the happenings to Tovaron Ento.

  ‘Stop … please!’ the spirit begged.

  Unfortunately for it, there was no stopping. I tore the remaining few nodes out of its body. It screamed, it begged, and I knew I was probably coming across as cruel — an evil spirit indeed — but I firmly believed it had to be done for the sake of the now ex-spiritualist.

  I observed my tentie-work: the loose Essence wires dangled freely inside the woman’s soul exactly the same way I’d seen them in the drill sergeant elf’s soul … what was his name again? Fenirig-Arte. I wondered what had happened to that man to end up like that. Had his familiar tried to eat him? If yes, then how had he got away? Had a wandering Tentacle Horror taken care of his familiar for him, too? I wondered if he’d be willing to answer some questions. But that had to wait, and I focused on the familiar.

  It hadn’t been my intention to torture the familiar, but pain was pain, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t take advantage of the situation. So I lifted a tentacle again, reaching for another, unused node in the familiar’s body, pretending that I was going to tear it out.

  ‘Please, I’ll talk, I’ll talk,’ the spirit cried.

  I lowered my tentie — the spirit was more than ready and willing to answer my questions now.

  ‘Alright, let’s start with the basics,’ I said to it. ‘Do you have a name?’

  ‘Tilry,’ it squealed a reply immediately.

  ***

  I wasn’t paying any mind to the ongoings around me — questioning Tilry had my undivided attention. I was only vaguely aware that team after team of elven rangers were arriving, talking with Tovaron Ento, shedding tears for their dead comrades, then gawking at the downed spiritualist, then at Krissy and the sailors who stood behind her now, as if guarding her.

  Krissy made no secret of how unhappy she was with me: she complained, she demanded answers, but I just told her to wait until I had finished interrogating Tilry.

  I asked every single question I could think of. When I ran out of questions, I racked my brain for more.

  Krissy was getting tired of listening to me, but not hearing the familiar’s answers. She laid down on the grass, trying to relax. Even Kenta and Tommy sat down, and Krissy delegated to them the job of shooing Tovaron Ento away every time he came for an update.

  Almost an hour passed, and I pieced an interesting story together from Tilry’s answers. I could finally tell Krissy what I’d learned in a coherent way.

  ***

  At the tippy-top of the spiritual pecking order stood the Grand Spirits. They were the ones that had manged to level — or grow — to the point where they could afford to expend copious amounts of Essence and Mana in one go, could produce that black Cube thing for familiars, and they themselves could travel freely between what Tilry called the Spirit World and our material reality.

  Wensah and Sivera fell into this category. The problem was — their problem, not mine — that they had not yet established themselves as proper gods. Apparently they needed to set up shrines and hire monks or something, so they could start the business of renting out regular spirits as familiars. It was supposed to be a good deal for everyone involved: the god would collect a tithe of Essence from the familiar, the familiar would get to eat the host’s soul upon his or her death and grow, and the host would get to use Mana — or the familiar’s power as they called it — becoming a magical warrior of a sort.

  As far as Tilry knew, there was no afterlife waiting for the souls of the so called “material races”, so it was good deal … well, maybe. Hell, for instance, seemed to be something people just assumed existed, because evil spirits had to come from somewhere. In the absence of an actual heaven or hell, I had to wonder if there was any other purpose to souls than being food for spirits. There must have been.

  I was beginning to understand the mystery of why Solace elves had renounced and despised gods and spirits — whether there was an afterlife or not, they weren’t keen on the kind of spiritual organ donations the familiars required. But Solace elves were the minority it seemed: the material races — humans, Sitanse elves, dwarves and more — apparently weren’t fully aware of all the details of what being a spiritualist entailed, and were more than keen to utilize familiars.

  Still, they weren’t very trusting of gods without long-established shrines. It was the difference between buying a meal at a reputable restaurant or a dodgy-looking street vendor.

  The two bickering godlings — Wensah and Sivera — had been in a competition to see which of them would set up a shrine first, but apparently it wasn’t an easy thing to do without stepping on the toes of the already established gods. Nonetheless, the two of them constantly tried to hinder each other’s efforts, and it seemed I had become become the latest weapon in Wensah’s arsenal.

  Then there were the familiars. They were the average, working people of the Spirit World, if I could use the term here. They were intelligent creatures, but they had a lot of growing to do if they wanted to amount to anything. They couldn’t travel between their realm and ours, so the more ambitious ones usually signed up with one of the gods to become familiars. Then the god in question would arrange the details through his or her shrines.

  I had been right about the Black Cube. It was Essence, altered and refined by a god, or Grand Spirit, or whatever they called themselves.

  Familiars were unable to eat souls, so they used the Cube to dilute it to the point they could absorb it. Of course when they ate a diluted soul, they also ate the black, godly Essence. The black stuff then would enable the familiar to make a single, one way trip back to the Spirit World. Somehow.

  I had asked Tilry about the Spirit World, but she’d said she couldn’t describe it with words.

  Yes, Tilry was a she. Sort of.

  As it turned out, I had also been right about familiars taking on some of their hosts’ characteristics. Tilry was currently on her third stint as a familiar — all her previous hosts women — so she had slowly began to resemble them in appearance. It was an unconscious process, as far as Tilry could tell. She had expressed that she didn’t care whether I called her he, she, it, bitch, bastard or anything else, as long as I didn’t torture her again.

  Tilry was terrified of me — she had been since the moment she’d first seen me, even more than she had been of the crab-spider. This was the reason she had thrown all the rules of being a familiar out a window, and tried to eat her host alive. She … had wanted escape back to the Spirit World, to get away from the most horrifying evil spirit she’d ever seen or even heard of — her words. That was how she saw me. Tentacle Horrors had a bad reputation, didn’t they?

  Evil Spirits — the third type of spirits Tilry had told me about — were more or less what I had suspected them to be. They were the wild, instinct-driven animals of the Spirit World: deadly predators preying on spirits, souls — and if they managed to grow enough — even gods.

  I was beginning to understand why Wensah’s first thought had been to kill me upon discovering I wasn’t where she’d left me. I didn’t like it, but I understood: I wasn’t just a vague and general threat to material creatures and familiars — I was a potential threat to a Grand Spirit. To her. She really had taken a gamble with me, hadn’t she? I could … actually respect that.

  ***

  Krissy hadn’t bothered to sit up — she had been listening to my tale, lying on the grass, watching the clouds and humming or asking questions occasionally. She took it quite well, in fact, she seemed to be somewhat relived when I mentioned the afterlife not being a thing at all. I supposed she could stop worrying about an evil spirit like me dragging her soul to hell, or something like that. To be honest, even I felt a little better, now that I knew I hadn’t robbed Jevan or that pirate-looking guy of their chances to go to heaven or hell.

  ‘Is everything okay? Too much information?’ I asked Krissy.

  ‘I see,’ she said.

  ‘See what?’ I asked, not understanding.

  ‘So … the familiar is a her, and her name is Tilry,’ she said with a wondering voice, then she hummed a few times.

  I felt a chill running down my non-existent spine.

  ‘Krissy, you’re … not thinking about replacing me, are you?’