Struggles and observations

There I was in a bottle dangling around. With not much choice left but to observe the outside world. Swinging to the left and back to the right and back to the left and… you know what comes next. My biggest problem? I had no soulcore! That, in turn, means I cannot form a mana sphere. Therefore, I can’t use any magic AT ALL.

Well, in the last few hours, I solved at least one mystery, or at least I think I did. The reason why my soul isn’t being dragged into the ley lines is because of the bottle. I could see a rudimentary rota sequence etched around the bottle neck, with multiple functions all powered by ambient mana. It was there to strengthen the glass, causing its contents “me” to stay cool and fresh. I guess I’ll stay fresh! I sighed internally. My biggest problem solved…

Is this what I am reduced to? Either way, I think that somehow the combination of rota is keeping me from being dragged away. That raised one small question though, does this mean souls are a liquid?

I had some time to think about my situation and realized that my best chance was to find an undamaged soulcore that was empty. But therein lies the problem, those are hard to come by, and I wasn’t even able to communicate with anyone. One would need someone willing to donate their soulcore after their death, or just uhm well, kill someone and just take it. Ah, the thought alone made my soul shudder. That was out of the question. And even if I somehow got my non-existent hands on one, was it even possible for me to just claim it? Or would I immediately be dragged into the vast mana-filled ley line network below the surface? And nobody knows what happens then.

So that’s that.

And my kidnappers? Unlikely companions?

I had figured out their names, I think I understood them correctly. The pointy-eared one is called Dust, the Draigkin’s name was Olgore.

Occasionally, they talked, and I noticed they seemed to be fighting often. I observed that Dust seems to have a good connection with animals, especially birds, which always flock to him. Sometimes, some of them would land on Olgore, which angered him at which point, he would start arguing with his companion.

I was slowly picking up the language, I figured out what yes and no mean. I know, amazing, my genius was working overtime finding those difficult context clues. But it was a start!

Once we come across other Kirin, I hope I can find a way to talk to them and maybe find a way out of this situation.

I was quite on edge, what if one of my companions decides to open the bottle I am inside of? There is a high chance that that would be the end of me. Or they decide to sell me?

Stop thinking that way, I need to stay positive! At least somehow, I am still alive.

But that wasn’t the only thing worrying me, my surroundings frankly scared me. There was nothing I recognized.

At one point, we came across a split in the road with some road signs, and my worries that I could not read the language either were confirmed. Then, when we came across a village, my heart sank. The buildings were wooden, only one or two were made of stone. This all seemed so archaic to me. The village was quite diverse, I saw more people who looked like Dust, less pale than him, and without pointy ears, seemingly coming in all sizes. But what concerned me was, I still had not seen any Kirin anywhere. Even if this were another planet, there was almost no known place us Kirin hadn’t somehow influenced. We had gates leading to every major settlement across the known planar universe, and yet… it was missing Kirin. Also, this place resembled an age long ago, something I had been taught back in history class.

Sure, I saw some rota here and there, used to power lamps or ovens, but not to the extent I was used to. The runes were the only thing that currently kept me from a mental breakdown, the only sign that my people must have had some degree of influence here. We had invented the runic language after all.

But then, why was there no sign of any of my people? It made no sense. The only thing currently within my power was to observe and learn. With enough time, it might be possible for me to gain a rudimentary understanding of the language.

Either way, learning the language might take months if not longer. I don’t even know if I have enough time, but do I have another choice? If there really are no Kirin anywhere near wherever here is, I don’t. With some understanding of the language, I could at least try and make contact with my companions to seek help from them. At least Dust seemed nice! No one who was so gentle with animals could be mean, right? Olgore, on the other hand, seemed a bit rough, but looks could be deceiving.

With nothing else to do, I went to work while observing the people around me, listening to what they were saying, day and night, as much as I could. It was difficult, I had never learned another language than the one spoken by the majority of my people. The only other “language” I had learned was rota, and I was quite good at using it to create sequences to tell magitek devices what they are supposed to do. I was even quite decent at casting spells with them. Yet that did not help me learn now.

Slowly, my way of learning the language purely through immersing myself in it at all times showed results. I am not sure how much time had gone by, but it must have been weeks, even months. This surely wasn’t good for my mental health, I missed talking with people. Which was unusual for me, I quite liked being by myself, but this level of social distancing was too much, even for me. I could use a hug…

My new life continued like this for a while. Observing and learning every day, all day. I lost track of how often I noticed the sun rising and going away again. But surprisingly, even without a body, I still managed to doze off, needing less sleep than before. Another new thing learned about souls. These would be amazing insights when I get back to my coworkers.

With time, my control over my senses also got much better, I was able to pretty much change the strength of any sense at will now. It felt like second nature to me now, if I had to compare it to something, it was like using a muscle, clenching and unclenching it.

As for the world around me, for most of these last weeks, it was the same, endless planes of grassy hills, farmland, and small villages just like the first one I had seen. My two companions seemingly traveled between the villages. In each, they went to a large building that housed a counter, a bar, and rooms for sleeping. They would go to the counter and talk with one of the people there. It took me a while, but from what I could gather, they were taking job offers. If I understood them correctly, the organization they belonged to was called Eventyr. The annoying part was that Olgore always left me in a room with some of his other belongings when they would go on these jobs. Only when they would move between villages, I got to see my surroundings. So most of the time I just sat there alone in the room, at first that was quite boring, but I realized that I was able to stretch out my senses far enough to hear what was going on around me. While that meant sometimes I heard some activities I’d rather not hear, I also heard lots of conversations, which helped me further learn the language.

Honestly, it confuses me that they still kept me with them, they didn’t try to sell the bottle I was in, nor open it. What was the point of carrying me around? Maybe they thought I was worth something and wanted to sell me at a larger settlement? Well, I was just happy that my fears did not yet come true.

Then one day, when I thought we were once again just travelling to the next village, a large city came into sight. A welcome change in scenery. I have to say it was quite impressive, at first I didn’t even realize that it was a city. What I saw when it first came into sight was a massive wall disrupting the farmland. By my guess, it was probably around 200 meters tall and multiple kilometers long. Truly a monster of a wall, I wondered what would prompt the need for such a large wall? It wasn’t built straight up either, it had a very sharp but noticeable incline, and multiple towers were built into its side at regular intervals. As we got closer, I could see that some people made their home in front of parts of the wall, there were dozens of small huts in clusters. Many, no almost all of the ones I could see, looked improvised. Another thing I noticed was that the city was built right at the ocean.

Maybe this was it, they might be an interplanetary gate here, and if there was one, that meant my people couldn’t be far!

Our small downtrodden path merged with a larger road that was paved, and there were quite a lot of people traveling on it, to and from the city. Again, I thought I was already used to it by now, but their technology just seemed so archaic. They had carriages made out of wood, dragged by weird-looking two-legged, wingless, rainbow-feathered birds with long necks and sharp-looking beaks. Never mind the weird birds, why not just use magitek to power the carriages? It would be so much more efficient. We soon reached the settlements of makeshift huts, which were quite literally plunged into shadow by the wall towering above them.

I didn’t bother to use my senses regarding temperature, but I would guess that it was quite fresh here until midday, when the sun would probably rise above the wall. A second sunrise, huh? Something bitter suddenly hit me. A smell so horrid, I regret keeping that sense open. The grasslands were pleasant, comparatively. This it smelled like, well shit. Was this a society where they had people in such unfortunate positions that they had to live in these conditions? That was new to me and again something I only knew from history class… It scared me and brought back my fears about where I was, but I quickly pushed that back down. Probably not the healthiest thing to do.

Soon, we reached a large gate, where the travelers around us started merging into different lanes. We went to a line that seemingly was for people without a cart. It didn’t take long till we were at the end of it, facing what I assume was an official checking people going into the city. Why did people need to be checked here? That was new to me. My two companions pulled out some sort of emblem that they also used for that Eventyr place, and were let in pretty much immediately. As we walked past the city official, they said: “Welcome to InasGate”. I assume the last was the name of the city.

The inside of the city was extremely busy, people were buzzing about absolutely everywhere. The carts coming from the outside were struggling to move down the main street.

I was surprised to see another wall roughly half the size, a good distance away. That is when I took a look back and realized that on the inside of the city wall, there were hundreds of buildings all across the slanted back of it, with hundreds of stairs and even some lifts connecting them to the ground.

I was pretty sure that both walls encompassed the city in a circle. More like a half circle, they probably stopped at the ocean, but that wasn’t clear from my view. The streets were paved, and most buildings were built with bricks. Many of them even had up to 3 floors.

The main street we were moving down was littered with small and large shops on each side, some with small food stands in front of them. What I would do for a fresh loaf of bread right now. Thankfully, I couldn’t feel hungry. I was quite happy to realize I was able to understand most of the basic everyday conversations around me! After we reached a large plaza, we moved towards a large building, displaying a large version of the emblem my two companions carried.

I knew almost immediately that this must be another branch of their employer. So this probably meant this would be my new home for the next few days.

And that it was, the entrance hall was quite large, there were multiple counters with people waiting in front. Dust went to one of the counters while Olgore waited with “me” for him. Afterwards, we left for a room on the third floor, which was quite spacious, and as usual, I was placed on one of the tables, while they decided to leave again.

That’s when I noticed that it was eerily silent inside the room. I had gotten used to my hearing being extremely good, often letting me listen in on conversations far away, but this room was silent, unnaturally so. If I could break into a sweat, this would be the moment I would probably do so. One of the things that had kept me sane in these last weeks was that while I was left behind, I could at least listen in on people! But now nothing, of course, the darn big city had fancy rooms enchanted with noise-cancelling rota sequences.

Fuck!

I truly hoped we didn’t stay in this place for too long. I was already feeling like I was slipping, barely holding on to my sanity. Waiting was all I could do again! This really had to change, now I was finally in a place with thousands of people, and I simply had to know if there were any Kirin around. I could not stay in this bottle any longer, it was a prison and I needed out!

After what felt like hours, Dust and Olgore came back. They looked a bit beat up, but seemed in high spirits. I wished I could have been with them, I craved any kind of entertainment.

Just anything by now was better than a room and listening to conversations about food.

Then my ears picked up something worrying.

“…and **** we can get the bottle ********* soon and sell it.” Dust said.

Wait a second, that doesn’t sound good, I missed most of the conversation, I was busy with self loathing, and of course that is when they decided to talk about me. I did not understand everything but it was good enough for me to get what was going on.

“Yes, good, ***** as well get it over with tomorrow. And **** we can sell this, ***. Olgore answered.

Oh no no no no no, tomorrow was way too short notice. My entire soul shivered, I couldn’t stop it, I was shaking all over. My thoughts just went everywhere. Do I try contacting them? I was able to understand some things now, maybe it was enough to talk with them. But then, how do I even achieve that? Would they be selling me in the morning or evening? How much time did I have to figure this out? This can’t happen so suddenly! I genuinely thought I had more time before they would try to sell me or otherwise rid themselves of me. In my panic, I started looking around for something, anything that could help me. But it was not like something that convenient would just be dropped in front of me!

“Well, you ****** have given this to the ********* already. We don’t know what it is!” Dustin said.

“Oh please, it looked *********, it might be worth something!” Olgore answered unbothered.

That’s when a glossy, almost crystalline ball was dropped in front of me.

It had a very faint glow of mana within it, pulsing a slight purple that changed into a light blue.

If I had a jaw, this would have been the moment it would have dropped. All my thoughts stopped immediately after my eyes landed on the small ball.

I had seen these many times before. There hadn’t been a day without seeing these before the accident. It couldn’t be, could it, especially after just hearing of their plans…

It was too convenient, but yet there it was.

A soulcore right in front of me.

That I did not see coming.