I took his words with a grain of salt as I kept walking, but what stopped me cold just before I reached the doorway was a vision. It was over in less time than it takes to blink, but the effects of it shook me. [You’re restless because there is something unfinished, you just didn’t know exactly what was missing.] Holding Gungnir up to the light of the evening sun, I waited as Kraken popped out and then I grabbed him.

“Explain,” I growled, scanning him and myself with magic. No injuries or anything malicious that I could tell, but the vision couldn’t really be described with words, it was more a compact eye-fuckery of feelings. Loss, heartache, indecision, loneliness, unfulfilled searching, it was Kraken. Those were his feelings, those were how he felt in the space between Realms without an anchor.

[I’m a Scion of Order, but I am also a spirit-familiar, your spirit-familiar. Maa’lik gave me to you and completed the first part of our bond but it remains unfinished. I can do so much, help so much more, but not the way I am right now.] Kraken explained. [We only exist in the loosest sense in the word without a mortal, a fleshling, or something to keep us here. Even the Knowledge Kings, the first and most powerful of the Scions of Order require a bond to be in the physical realm.]

“Hold up, what are they bonded to to stick around for so long?”

[Dragons, World-Tortoises, phoenixes, Elder Unicorns . . .]

Well shit. This was just weird, almost too weird. And like any good human, I’m inherently distrustful of things that I don’t understand. Pulling out a meal cube from Gungnir, I downed it with some conjured water and walked outside. Standing in the clearing in front of Yggdrasil, I will Gungnir into spear form and planted the base into the dirt. “Everest!” I called, outloud and mentally. “Is Meliad awake yet?”

A soft rumbling no was my answer. “Aight, make sure no one disturbs me for at least a full day. I got some internal therapy to do.” I took his silence as a yes. Sitting cross-legged in front of Gungnir, I closed my eyes and took my time calming down the biological rhythms of my body, using a bit of flesh sorcery to cheat the standard meditation progress. Using my mental sorcery, I brought myself to my mindspace, or soulspace, whatever it is where my visual representation of my soul was.

“Hey soul-tree!” I called, standing in front of the magical visualization of my magic. “How’s SAW treatin’ you? Can’t be bad right? I haven’t gotten and alerts from the alarm protocol.” My soul shook his head, stroking the knot of magitech in its chest.

“Pretty cool in here! I’ve never seen a sorcerer’s soul before!” Kraken’s voice scared the crap out of me. This time, I physically heard it instead of mentally. “Of course dummy, I’m a spirit, and you’re communing with your own spirit, so it sounds like hearing me physically instead of mentally.” Right, the day’s getting weirder.

“Well Squiddy,” I said, gesturing around. “Take a good look. Behold, this is soul-tree me. And that right there in his chest, is my version of Iron Man. It’s some Alpha Centauri magitech that I stole and took. The bonding process is slow because it used to be a sorcerer killer. Once I get this figured out, I’ll have a banging suit of armor and more power than I know what to do with.”

Kraken, who had been flying around my soul-tree, inspecting it, halted and blasted over to me. “YOU HAVE A WHAT IN YOUR SOUL?”

“Relax, it’s harmless,” I said, trying to get him to calm down. “It’s been purged of pretty much all programming since I couldn’t remove the bad stuff piecemeal ya know?”

“I can see that! But that’s not what I meant. I’ve been working your stupid armor trying to get it enhanced with Heavenly rune against scrying and undeath, and you’ve had the perfect material to work with the entire time?! This thing is beyond useful and you haven’t even let me touch it?”

My blank look made Kraken turn a deeper shade of purple. “BOND WITH ME YOU IGNORANT HUMAN!” His tone wasn’t really angry, it was exasperation, as if I had had the answers to some test the whole time and didn’t know it. It was the tone of the tired parent telling a know it all child why ice cream is not dinner for the eighth time. And I wasn’t falling for it.

“Reasons Kraken, I need reasons, not emotion. Explain to me why I should. What would that do for me, why should I do it?” My voice got louder as I went on. “This kind of thing is new to me, I didn’t grow up in a world where magic was freaking real, so spit it out.”

“Magic frays the mind. It’s different for some people, some it drives them mad, and others just a little bonkers. Your consciousness sorcery definitely helps you in that department but familiars act as a buffer between the mind and the magic when necessary. No, it doesn’t separate you from it as it is tied to your soul, but you aren’t made of magic necessarily which introduces a sort of spiritual friction,” Kraken said, propping himself up on the leg root of my soul-tree. “It’s why all of society views magic users as crazy, because to some degree they are. Now tangibly, if we finished our bond, then I could finish your suit of armor by tomorrow morning, regulate and fix your programming for the empty Centauri tech, and even be a solid fountain of ideas for you. I could use your sorceries as starting points and just create a giant list of possible solutions and ideas for you to work with.”

I stroked my chin, noting the sizable beard growth and wondered why in the world that would be something I noticed inside my head. I mean, I’m not really here, or am I, this soul place is weird. Maybe it’s more real, who knows. Refocusing on the matter at hand, Kraken hadn’t even stopped.

“From what I’ve seen from the memories you’ve shown me, I could function as a director of spells from inside Gungnir, forming complicated offensive reactions with SAW, enhance your ability to multi-task to the nth degree, and even work on separate projects while you’re doing something else. Bonding with me will allow me to use your sorceries. I could be making a workforce of earth golems if you put me and this spear next to one of the solar panels while you work on the icebound prisoners. Shoot, I can even act as a second repository for extra mana, the list goes on.”

“So how does it work,” I asked. “And I get that it’s good for me, but what does it do for you?”

“I gain knowledge. I gain a bit of power. I get to live. Without you, I don’t get to taste or touch or feel anything! Do you know how much that sucks!” he ranted. Generating a hologram of a table covered in platters of fruits, he looked at it longingly and then back at me. “The worst part is, I can remember being solid. I remember what I’m missing. I can’t wait for your jungle of delicacies, the forest of fruits, the symphony of smoothies that awaits!”

This, this I could understand. This was honesty, true desire that had the ringing tone of truth. Everybody is selfish in some way, or maybe a better way of putting it is that everyone has self-interest. It is what keeps us alive, even charity is a form of self-interest as it makes us feel good. The best self-interest is when it lines up with someone else’s, the farmer who needs a shovel and trades his extra produce to someone who’s hungry and doesn’t need the shovel. Self-interest drives everyone, but mutual self-interest builds everything.

“Fine,” I said, a small smile peeking out. “I get it, I accept. Bond with me, as long it doesn’t mean we have to do anything freaky.”

With a whoop of joy, Kraken spun around and dove into Centauri orb in my soul-tree’s chest. [It’s a perfect fit! You won’t regret this!] The silvery lines began to glow as Kraken sank deeper into the runed recesses. My soul-tree let out a soft sigh, a pressure I hadn’t known but sometimes felt lifted off of me, but that was it, no earth shattering change, no crazy realizations or boosts in power. Reading my face, Kraken laughed, “Most of the work was done weeks ago when the angel bonded us, and that wasn’t much work to begin with. You just had to actually accept it. Now, I’m going to get used to everything here and I’ll get my own little tattoo that mirrors your soul tree and then we can rock and roll.” Finally accepting that my life was far beyond the scope of normal, I ate a meal cube and went to bed, resting far better than I had in a long while.

******

The next day brought all of the promise of a lighter soul, a free mind. I figured that I’d get a little bit of peace since Kraken was in my freaking soul-tree doing who knows what, but since I couldn’t see anything wrong with it, and trust me, I’m constantly monitoring that entire area, I decided to just continue with my day. Part of the day was spent restoring the area by the river back to its natural state after the battle with the nephilim and then the rest of it was split between monitoring the pack of humans moving on to the place I laid out and doing an in-depth examination of my alien prisoners.

I’m not even sure if I should call them aliens, I mean, they didn’t come from space and they don’t have rocketships full of anal probes. I lack a term to properly identify them as a whole, which means alien might have to do. Everything I’ve met or heard about so far seems to have some relation to tales of Earth from our lore that we all just believed was made up. But to be fair, Earth or old Earth, didn’t have evidence of dwarves or minotaurs or dragons, we had dinosaur fossils but nothing in the last couple eras that would have given us a hint that we weren’t alone.

Choosing not to overthink things that don’t matter, I had a ball just letting my flesh sorcery get familiar with the physiological structure of the dwarves and minotaurs. My own magic kept trying to start enhancing my body with concepts that were garnered from the different bodies like an overeager puppy. The dwarven bone structure is unbelievably dense, traces of different metals that didn’t exist on this planet were woven through the latticework of the bone cells. The musculature supporting this was almost just as heavy, easily several times denser than what a chimpanzee would have. It definitely made sense as to why they fought the way they did against the minotaurs. Dwarves are low to the ground and freaking heavy, which meant that their planted tower shields would be literally unshakeable.

The minotaur on the other hand, their bone structure and musculature definitely had some serious differences to the dwarves. In fact, their entire body, every bit of it was far more open or receptive to magic itself, but in a plantlike kind of way. They didn’t really seem to have the ability to form scar tissue. In cutting them and healing them to see how the body would react, the normal human response of making scar tissue just didn’t happen. A burst of stem cells, or their equivalent of it, would flood a latticework of magic that covered the area, following the blueprints of the magic to bring the flesh back to brand new. The dwarven body healed from the cut far more similar to humans in that scar tissue formed from the cuts, but magic was the healing helper instead of the director.

Sitting back in my chair in the lab, I looked at the two bodies kept unconscious by my flesh sorcery in front of me. Turning my vision towards my own hand, I called Gungnir to my hand in knife form and shallowly cut the meat of my palm. My hand healed just as fast as I was cutting it. “Fuck,” I grunted, making sure to temporarily cut off the pain receptors in my hand as I tried a couple more times, each attempt I quickened my brain to make everything look like slow motion. Yeah, my body not only responded with stem cells, but there was a magical latticework helping and directing the flow of stem cells. The damaged parts of the skin also used mana to just stick itself right back together like play-doh, my flesh was freaking play-doh with the magic I wield!

I hadn’t played around with my flesh sorcery too much as of yet, it had mainly become a support based capability centered around keeping me healthy, whole, and focused. Conjuring the bone armor and enhancing my dog were probably the craziest things I had done with it so far but so many possibilities were open with the simple concept of flesh sorcery. I knew that I hadn’t even begun to plumb the depths of what I could do with it, the issue being time. With the Hungry Ones biding their time at the poles, and if Kraken is right, then maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to try some flesh sorcery stuff out. My main problem is that I’m comfortable in my body, I know how to use it. The real question is how do I make it more durable, more physically hardy, without sacrificing the great and flexible design of the human body? It seems that even dwarves and minotaurs and probably Aelves are designed roughly the same way, two legs with two arms and one head.

Thinking about it some more actually made me want to not do this. If I could learn a bunch from these measly bodies, holding off and gathering information might be the better course of action. Using flesh sorcery, I scanned each body and created a holographic matrix of it in my head with mental sorcery, storing it away for later. As I was about to put them back in stasis, I made a small incision on both and stuck my finger in, allowing my flesh sorcery to create a copy of both of their DNA sequences to add to the mental matrix of their bodies.

“Now to get my hands on some epically magic creatures,” I said, wondering about what made the Aelves so different. “Or the NEPHILIM!” I shouted, running to the freezer. Grabbing the door, I wrenched it open and went to the foot section, rifling through to get the staff-user’s foot. “Ok, ok, this is the big one,” I said, trying to keep my excitement on a tight leash. “Let’s see whatcha’ got big guy.”

I slowly peeled the top layers of the box off, the runed platinum taking much longer than the stone underneath. It was goop. There was no foot in the damn box, only goop. I was about to stick my hand in just to see if my eyes were deceiving me before I thought better of it. Making one of the experimental bloodthirsty trees in my lab grow a small branch, I tossed some of my blood on the tree and then snagged the branch when it was occupied. Pulling my power through the length of the stick, I made sure that it was good and dead and then stuck it in the goop and pulled it back out. The hissing sound it made was disgusting as the goop began to burble and smell like mint that someone shit on.

A few seconds later the goop went back to being still and I examined my stick. The part that went into the goop was gone. My frustration almost made me throw it against the wall but my curiosity wouldn’t let me. Extending my senses, it was too easy to perceive the goop in the magical spectrum. It burned with a white purifying light that hurt to look directly at. From this side, I could see sparks of white power drifting up like it was actually burning. The motes hit the ceiling and phased right on through.

“What the fuck?”

[Heaven jealously guards its secrets.] Kraken said, popping out behind me into existence. [I’m not expert but it looks like that if the nephilim is butchered and then kept in small enough pieces, it loses its structural integrity and can’t maintain the connection to Heaven. You did it, you actually killed a nephilim, or you will if you open the boxes one by one and let the stuff evaporate.]

I rounded on the innocent looking spirit, his eye looking around as if anything else was more fascinating at the moment. “And since no one has managed to kill a nephilim that we know of,” I started.

[Yup, it means I did not know this would happen.]

“Grrrhgfhgf,” I snarled, quickly capping the container of goop all over again. “So I have the world’s most exotic acid, great. Fuckin great. Does that mean they aren’t snacks for Spot then? I figured the dragon part of him might like something new.”

[Give the mutt a small bit of it. Dragons eat all kinds of weird shit. Have you heard about the shadow dragons that live in the darkest part of hell? They’re worshipped by demons for their torture techniques as their fire makes you feel like being dipped in a bath of needles that slowly burrow their way through you. Long story short, those dragons got that way by eating too many demons and dark magic users. ‘You are what you eat’ applies to them more than most.]

“So a dragon mixed canine with a bit of fire and flesh sorcery stands a good chance of eating an angel’s bastard, tight. I can dig it.”

Carefully setting the box down, I conjured a clear quartz bowl big enough to put a watermelon in comfortably and then filled it three quarters of the way up with water. Placing the acid goop container in the water, I slowly peeled away the layers again.

[What are you doing?] Kraken asked, floating in front of my face staring down at the concoction and getting in my way. [That stuff burns, like a grease fire, and you don’t throw water on a grease fire!]

Shoving him off to the side, I decided that he might be right and took the precaution of conjuring a clear quartz covering over the bowl. Using my magic, I kept removing the outside of the container bit by bit, explaining what I was thinking as I did so.

“You probably don’t know this Kraken, but during pandemics, the Catholic popes put holy water in squirt guns and shot it on their parishioners. Now the way I see it, they prayed and got holy water, but how much more powerful must holy water be if I mix in a bit of Heaven itself, hmmm? And what if those squirt guns shot real holy water?” Images in my head of me mowing down hordes of zombies with epic squirt guns distracted me for a second, ah, it was glorious.

Taking a step back from the workbench, I banished the last layer of the containment box, the burning white liquid pouring out, mixing with the water. Watching carefully in the magical spectrum, the white sparks that burned off last time when exposed to air simply mixed with the water. The feeling of danger slowly went away as the entire bowl joined with the small portion of dismembered nephilim.

“Voila bitches!” I yelled, dancing around the room, pointing and laughing at my very confused spirit familiar. “You won’t get it, but I just completed the first steps to manufacturing the ACTUAL Holy Hand Grenade!” Artfully making my voice deeper, I got into character. “From now on, I shall fear no undead or decapitating rabbits!”

[Humans make no sense,] Kraken muttered, wondering why I found any of this funny. [You just made glowing acid water, big whoop.] Wrapping up a copy of a memory from a beloved movie, I shot it over to Kraken through our mental link.

“Watch this and trust me, there’s more but we’ll get to that later. But with this stuff, if we do it right, there’s a solid chance that I’ll be able to make some damn good anti-undead gear.” Darting out the front door, I stood in the middle of the clearing, mentally calling for Spot at the same time as I yelled for him, “Come here boy, I got a real nice treat for you today!”