Spritely Fellow Ch. 04

I'd like to make a quick note here. If you want to sleep soundly and have normal dreams, don't get involved in the supernatural. Seriously those fuckers take a sleeping mind to be a sign that you are open and willingly asking for business. They don't make you tired physically, but it can leave you frustrated and mentally strung out if you had a bad day and want some alone time or, gods forbid, sleep.

I woke up after the fight with the lycans as drained as I had been before sleep. My soul was drained far beyond what I had done in my two training sessions and had sort of thinned out to compensate. It fell to about half its normal size during the fight and for the time I was tapping into it with my extrasight, but as soon as I had relaxed my soul swelled out to its normal boundaries with what energy it had. This incurred a feeling similar to if you get up to fast, only ten time's worse. For a better analogy, imagine a jet pilot in a nose dive. So you can imagine I was quite content merely laying there on the dirt. That biting cold dirt. I tried shifting to a more comfortable position before I froze, in more ways than one. Dirt was not this cold.

I had gained the motivation to get up and look around. I was no longer in the forest I had slept in. A white blanket of snow covered everything as far as I could see. Some flakes were drifting out of the sky in a slow march. The horizon did a familiar curve upwards into the ceiling. There were mountains several miles away, although it took me a while to gauge their full size as they seemed to crawl up the walls. I knew this type of place. I was in someone's soul. I REALLY wanted to sleep.

Getting to my feet, I noticed I had torn up my shoes and pants. I would have some trouble explaining that, but figured that war for another time. I didn't see anyone around for miles, so I decided to head for the mountains. I got about twenty feet before the whole "no shoes in the snow" thing registered. I turned my feet into wood and grew an inch of bark to make do. The cold still seeped through, but it was workable.

After about an hour of walking, I started to get a little upset. I was tired, cold, and in dire need of some homemade dinner. Whatever was planned needed to happen sooner rather than later. Triggering my extrasight, I re-swept the horizon, picking up a few signatures. I immediately noticed there were several lycan souls around. They seemed to enjoy running around in packs in this terrain, as they didn't seem to have the stern seriousness about them that they usually have. It was the first time I really paid attention to what the soul of a lycan looks like. A standard human soul is a colored ball the size of the torso. It is big enough to have all the organs in it, but nothing else.

The lycan soul is shrouded in a mist. The mist covers an area large enough for the entirety of their transformed body to be covered, but it doesn't have the density of souls. The mist itself makes it hard to pin where they are with the extrasight, yet I could still make out the vague shape of their soul in there. When I looked closely, I saw a human and a wolf. They both seemed like nothing more than a shadow in the fog, both phasing In and out of sight, but it was clear that they both existed there at the same time even if one was more dominant than the other at any given time. Sometimes it would be a wolf head, and then would change to a human head. One moment it was a paw, the next it was a hand. I was entranced by this shifting existing. It seemed like it should be confusing, but there was a natural flow to it. I couldn't put my finger on what it was, but there was something primal that was guiding this change.

The cold began to penetrate my core as I walked up to the mountain. I had made a pretty steady pace in this cold because the snow didn't seem to pile up here. As I approached the base of the mountain, I was reminded of Everest. It wasn't that tall for a mountain, but it was completely covered in snow and was capped by a large ridge that looked like a giant knife edge. Something about it just seemed to beckon anyone nearby to climb. I started the ascent, determined to do it without my abilities. It felt wrong to do it any other way. The feeling is hard to describe. It was a subtle, yet overpowering compulsion.

Another hour of climbing saw me a quarter ways up the mountain. It only seemed like 1000 feet up, but it was all sheer cliffs straight up. The very stone seemed to be trying to discourage me, as it cut deeper than it should and burned with the cold. If I was more equipped or sturdier, I might have made it the whole way. As I was at the time, I saw a ledge on my right and climbed to it. It seemed to lead to a ledge with a frozen pool about fifty feet across. I climbed up and rolled onto the stone edge of the pool. Completely exhausted and out of breath, I did not see the lycans walk onto the lake.

There were six of them, a full pack, complete with an alpha to lead them in. The pack noticed me and started moving towards me. I almost deactivated my extrasight to conserve energy, and then I remembered the whiplash it caused last time. The alpha looked very different than the other lycans. He stood easily eight feet tall and had three inch claws on each paw. His eyes were completely yellow with a large black pupil and his teeth seemed longer than usual. The part that stood out was his fur. It was such a brilliant white and was riddled with scars. He wore rudimentary satchels around himself that were organized to show every battle scar. He looked ferocious, deadly, and very pissed to see me.

Instead I looked down to check the size of my soul. It had shrunk to a foot shorter than me. It was brighter than I had ever seen it before, about the level of a black light, and the soultree had a smaller balcony cut out for it. I wagered it was about 60% smaller. I would normally just o what I did last fight, but I didn't want to push it as this was my life essence. Instead I took in my situation and tried to think it through.

The ledge was three feet behind me, leading to a seven hundred foot drop. They might be able to climb, so that was out. They entered from a pathway that was 60 feet away. I would have to give them a diversion to pull that off. The cliff continued straight up everywhere else. Maybe they weren't hostile? No, they were moving into a half circle and closing in. My back was to the ledge so there was no retreat. It seems like I invaded their territory, so I wouldn't be able to scare them off either. I then thought back to my fight with the lycans. A cold lump settled in my stomach as I realized the only plan that could work here. I wasn't sure I could pull it off, but I wasn't about to just roll over dead.

"Hey, listen I didn't mean to come here, so I'll just be on my --" The two on the corners started moving to my sides. Well, I tried. I formed wooden spikes from behind my thighs to use as support and took a stance like I was about to wrestle. The other four wolves put the alpha in the back with a football line of the other three. 'Fuck territorial instincts.'

I had enough time for that one final thought before the two to my sides charged. I released the energy I had stored in my feet to make two long stilts shoot out. The lycans collided and snapped the wood with their bodies as I reformed the stilts into spikes. The two outside linebackers saw my plan and lunged at me. I smile das my plan worked perfectly. While the first part of their plan was thought out, the second part was pure instinct. Wolves try to bite and lunge. It was a powerful, lethal, and predictable.

I shot the energy through my spikes to plant them into the spikes I had placed from my thighs. The connection gave the leverage necessary to create two large elastic wooden whips and redirect the lunging lycans at the two on the ground. It took every ounce of coordination and focus to pull this off. I was rewarded with the sight of the four lycans careening off the cliff to their deaths. The last two stood shocked at the sudden change in the tides as I landed on my feet. I checked my soul again and saw I was at 30% capacity. I needed to end this quickly.

Taking the initiative, I charged the lycan in front of me and grew three spike arms from my wrist. I moved them around to make sure they would bend properly to my will. Putting my right hand on point, I extended them like four lances. The lycan ducked to my right and lunged. I was not expecting the speed and got tackled for my weakness. I didn't touch the ground for way too long before I hit the rock. The mark on my back took the brunt of the blow, but my eyes still flashed red with little black spots everywhere. My extrasight didn't fail thankfully, so I could still track their souls. It wasn't reliable for pinpoint, but I could tell he was over me with the mist everywhere. A wolf materialized in front of me in the soul. It looked right at me and snarled.

I should have been scared. Should have regretted the way I was about to die. Your life was supposed to flash before your eyes. The only thing I could see was the spots going away and my vision coming back. The lycans massive maw was coming towards my face. The ledge was right there, if I rolled off I could've made it with my abilities. I could run away and hope it didn't chase me. It sounded smart, but didn't really register as an option. I had to do something else until the end. I had to fight. And so I reached my arm back to punch that lycan son of a bitch in his smug giant head.

I poured every single bit of the energy I had into my entire arm. My arm reeled back before shaking with tension. It was like a tree branch bent back hard. It slammed into the side of his head knocking him out cold as I sat limply against the wall. The alpha stood close behind and looked at me. He growled in rage as he walked over to me. He dropped to all fours in front of me, turning the growl into a full snarl with his teeth showing. I looked him in his yellow wolf eyes and took a deep breath. Then I roared right back with the residual energy in my arm pouring into my voice. My immature little twelve year old voice mixed with the wind and fury of a forest. A typhoon's roar entered my lungs as I yelled and screamed my defiance to this wolf.

He leapt back a few feet and took a defensive stance. I laughed with the last breath in my lungs before I passed out. Everything rushed to black as my head fell limp. I heard one last thing, from a voice I had never heard before. It had a deep rumble to it, but showed a surprising degree of emotion for a lycan.

"You have some fight in you, boy. You might be just what I need."

I woke up back in the forest completely tanked. I want you to realize something; I was a durable little dude. I was more mature than others because of my constant conversations with forces of nature. I could take more at twelve, than some can take at twenty. I still couldn't change the fact that I was twelve. I would love to blame what happens next on being tired, but that's not entirely true.

As I got to my knees in an attempt to stand, I was assailed by a searing pain throughout my entire body. I fell onto all fours and the impact of my hands onto the dirt caused even more pain. I shut my eyes against the agony as hot tears streamed down my face. I fell to my side, unable to hold myself up any longer and was hit by another spike of pain. It was too all consuming to scream, instead my mouth was locked open into a silent scream as air wheezed out. I have heard people say that it hurts to breath, but the breath itself felt like fire going in and out of my throat. I lasted about five seconds of it before I blacked out again under a smooth light of green.

I awoke again, terrified of the pain returning to those horrifying levels. I froze and felt my heart rate soar. That pain had been...crushing. It was like thermite put under my skin and in my lungs. My entire body felt like it was tearing at itself using my nerves. After a full hour of sitting there with my eyes closed, I finally mustered the courage to wiggle a finger. Sensing nothing I stretched my leg from the fetal positionI have never in my entire life been happier to just have cramps everywhere from sleeping on the floor. I slowly got to my feet, carefully moving bit by bit to not cause more pain, and dusted myself off. The pain looked like it was gone for good, and I was young enough to completely lose all apprehension once I thought that. I stretched out as many muscles as I could to get some of those kinks out of my body.

After a few minutes I looked up at the sky to check the time. I must have been out for the night and then some because it was at least three in the afternoon. That's about when I checked my surroundings for the first time. A few things became evident, all of which held great importance: The feral was gone, my clothes were missing, I had scars on both of my shoulders shaped like claw marks, and the area around me in a perfect circle was now a six foot wide charred crater.

Threat-wise, the lycan was the biggest threat. Given my interaction with eleven out of twelve lycans, I wasn't in a very welcoming position. Despite my dread of the possible pain, I had to check my assets. My extrasight kicked in with no incident, but now I could feel it coming into effect. I felt the energy streaming up to my eyes and filling them up. I then stretched out with a single tendril of my soulreach and felt every bit of its motion. I tried tweaking it into positions that I couldn't do before to no avail, but it definitely felt like I had more control of it. It was then that I took inventory of the most important part, my soul.

It had changed dramatically to something more...fierce. Before it was a liquid blob with stubs for my arms and legs, but now it was completely defined. It was now a full body representation that seemed to swirl around me like a fire given form. I looked at my arms as my soul raged around my physical limb. It looked like I was wearing an oversized gauntlet with sharp, defined edges at every joint. The fingers were all slightly longer and ended with a spike and the arms looked formidable as well. I needed a better look at myself, so I used the trees around to give me a better vantage point.

My soul's surface was a full four inches away from my skin. The exterior was a slower moving red energy with a faster paced fire raging past the first inch. It spiked at my shoulders and at the tips of everything, but in a way that seemed to accentuate the overall shape. It looked like a violent suit of armor over me, but it felt right. In hindsight, it was my soul so it makes sense that it looked natural to me. I tested my how it looked as I moved and saw all the joints actively change shape to compensate. I also notices that extremities seemed to leak as I moved, leaving a smoky trail of my soul as I moved. When I stopped it seemed to refill from my core and look more solid.

I immediately turned around to check on my soul's tenant. Cassandra's soultree remained on my back as it had been before. It seemed more like the edges were clearer, but overall it looked the same as before. Instead of a roughhewn chunk cut out at my back, my soul seemed to have a platform held up by what looked like support beams. The roots draped over the side and plugged into the beams and I could feel my energy flowing into it. The drain itself felt less strong than it had before, but I figured i had just gotten used to it.

'Cassandra? Are you okay?' I saw her appear on the platform beside the tree and she nodded in the affirmative. She didn't look at my body, but instead at the eye in the trees I was looking through. She looked unharmed, but something seemed different.

'I am unharmed, thank you. I was about to ask you the same, but you seemed to have come out better than before. After you went to sleep, I saw your consciousness be pulled out of your body along with your soul. I tried to follow, but your body began to fail after you left and I was forced to remain in order to keep you alive. After you returned, your soul was but a spark. I was scared that you had died or ended your own life in the realm you were brought to until I saw it slowly begin to grow. Something from that realm reached at your soul and took a piece of it. I tried to stop it, but I couldn't. I swear I tried, but it was too strong. I...I wasn't strong enough to help you and you were dying. Your soul was so fragile that I was sure that you had been killed.' She began to shake as she spoke. I could see her rose colored eyes shift around in a desperate attempt to keep from tears. 'The piece was returned a few moments later, but it had become more ancient somehow. It altered your soul as it grew into what it is now. The ground burnt from the energy the changes gave off. I was barely able to contain it to such a small zone. I couldn't stop it or even slow it down...' She leaned against the soultree and covered her face in her hands.

'I thought you said you wouldn't save me?' I said in a soft joking voice. My Dad taught me many things, including how to comfort someone. Sometimes they just need a distraction. It was clear she didn't get it completely as her head snapped up. She looked pissed and was about to speak until she recognized I was joking. Her face froze when she saw me holding in a laugh with a wide smile. I poured energy into our connection so she could take full form. My smile softened into a small grin as I hugged her. I pulled back and looked at some dirt as I got some emotions out.

"Thanks Cassandra. You probably just saved my life again by keeping me together, so don't go falling apart on me, okay?" Not exactly Shakespearian prose, but it seemed to have gotten the point across as I finally got a smile on her face. It really lit up when she did that and I was able to stop fidgeting. I could see her face starting to tremble as she quickly pulled me close. Her breath caught in her throat as she nestled her face in my hair. I felt something warm on my head that began to flow down to my face. I pulled back from her to feel my head for an injury. My hand came back with a tinted yellow liquid.

"What is this stuff?" I looked up at her to see her eyes brimming with the stuff. She was crying. A supernatural being with no tear ducts was producing tears. I don't know what it says about me that this concerned me more than her emotional state. "How are you able to cry? What happened to you?" I looked closely and finally put my finger on what was different. All of her colors and placement were the same, but she was no longer made entirely of plants. Her skin was no longer a mesh of leaves and petals, but instead was a translucent green-tinted skin. Underneath this was a flurry of the old materials blowing as if she was a self-contained typhoon. Her eyes still had the rose iris, however it was now contained on a leaf green eyeball. She looked considerably more...human.

"I think your souls awakening had an effect on me through our connection." She was looking at her hand as if this was a normal thing. "It's possible that this is a variation of what happened when you first tried to manipulate your soul. Our coalescence seems to have the potential to transform both of us."

"Is this a big deal?" I was panicking while she was her usual calm again. "Wait, does this mean that our connection could change you completely? I don't want to change you Cass."

"It could potentially render me unable to use some of my abilities, however I can keep tabs on my energy to counter these effects in the same manner that you do." Her hand dropped again to her side as she looked back at me. Her face had instantaneously returned to that royal indifference that I was used to seeing. Only the slight glistening wetness on her cheek remained as evidence of any emotions showing in the first place. I was always awestruck by her self-control and ability to return to calm after any emotion. It was like a switch. If I was an observant man I would have seen this as a problem to be solved, but I wasn't observant or a man. Besides, I had bigger problems that were rushing back into the spotlight. It served to push my concerns for Cassandra to the back of my mind.