Mage Tank-Chapter 229: Change of Plans

“Soooo,” Xim chimed into our thoughts. “What do you want to ask the Dread Star next?”

I was once again strapped into a harness below Varrin, who flew us northward above the flat, frozen tundra. We whipped over the ground two hundred feet up, moving at airliner speeds while everyone else hung out inside the Closet. Despite having been through this before, I was having a more difficult time dealing with my frosty-ass toes.

“You know what?” I thought back. “I think we can solve this mental soul nonsense on our own. Or, at least get ourselves most of the way to a solution.”

“Okay… I’m curious,” thought Xim. “But are you sidestepping my question, or does this have to do with the Dread Star?”

“It has to do with everything,” I grumbled. “As far as the Dread Star question, can I even trust myself to come up with one? No. Why even think about it?”

“You sound grumpy,” thought Etja.

“It’s so fucking cold, you have no idea.”

“We can always brainstorm,” thought Xim. “We don’t have to ask the question until later.”

“What if we brainstorm something infected with mental bullshit, and then we convince ourselves that it’s such a good idea that we either ask anyway, or still think it’s a good question later?”

“That seems–”

“I agree that we should wait,” thought Varrin. “Mainly because I feel that Arlo is being unreasonable. However, I cannot find a clear rationale for why I find fault in his thought process. He may be onto something.”

“Gods above,” thought Xim. “You’re doing mental backflips to get to that conclusion. If I decided my feelings were backward every time I didn’t understand why I felt a certain way, then decided that doing the opposite was the obvious conclusion, I’d be living a pretty stupid life.”

“We aren’t doing the opposite,” I thought. “We’re hitting pause on major decision-making until we can trust our faculties.”

“Isn’t the opposite of doing something not doing something?” Xim asked.

“The opposite of doing something is doing the opposite,” Nuralie countered.

“What’s your idea, Arlo?” Etja thought, breaking up the mini-argument.

“Every single one of us has some ability to manipulate or affect the soul,” I thought. “I can See souls and Reveal what I see to others. Varrin can divide his soul into independent identities, formed from a notional part of his soul–such as his ancestry. Nuralie is Spiritually attuned, which naturally grants her some capacity to affect souls with her skills. Her revelation may also let her experience the history of a soul like she can do with objects.”

“She can poison the soul, too!” Etja added.

“This is true,” thought Nuralie.

“Right. If we’re laying everything on the table, maybe we can use that. In fact, I’m betting we can. Xim hails from a realm of mind and dream, where the barrier between the soul and reality is blurred. Plus, she’s a powerful cleric for the goddess that created that entire realm. Divine magicks also frequently affect the soul.”

“Judgment weighs a soul according to the person’s deeds,” Xim thought. “My blessings also empower the soul of their target. They’re hybrid Spiritual and Divine skills. My existing revelations reshape my body according to my soul’s interpretation of my physical form, and the revelation I’m working on lets me, sort of, imbue my soul out onto my surroundings. It’s still fuzzy.”

“There’s a lot of pieces there we can work with. Beyond that, Grotto and I have a literal soul connection, so he can peer into my soul whenever he feels like it.”

[A power I use liberally in order to comprehend your decisions.]

“Finally, Etja can take other people’s souls into her own. We’ve barely explored the limits of that ability. I mean, she trapped a piece of an avatar inside her for a while. That’s pretty potent.”

“Still trapped,” Etja thought.

It took me a second to process Etja’s statement, after which I decided I wasn’t able to process it and thought, “What?”

“I still have Hysteria’s soul fragment in there,” she replied, matter of factly. “Did you think it disappeared? I would have said something if it had since that would probably be a big deal.”

“I thought you, you know, burned it up.”

“Burned it up?”

“With your pseudo-avatar form. When you were kicking Hysteria’s ass all over the Closet. I thought you ran out of power and that’s why the form wore off.”

“Nope! I used what I could, but got worn out and Hysteria dodged me. I flew into a wall. After that, I had to stop and take a nap.”

“Souls don’t really work that way, Arlo,” Xim added. “They’re persistent. They don’t ‘burn up’ when you use them.”

“I’ve seen avatars annihilate pieces of one another,” I thought. “Avarice and Fortune were killing bits of each other’s souls just by being in the same hallway.”

“Yeah, they can be attacked and damaged. But used up? I don’t think that’s a thing.”

“Regardless, why are we just hearing this now?” asked Varrin.

“Uuuuhhhhhhmmmmm,” Etja stretched the word out in our minds for a very long time.

[I have a theory.]

“Please come to my rescue,” thought Etja. A feeling of embarrassment undercut by a touch of shame filtered through with her words.

[Etja’s resistance to mental effects seems to stem from her overarching goals. When an effect seeks to force her to act in a way that runs counter to her truest desires, the effect fails. I believe this is part of Etja’s avatar heritage. Although she is not bound by any concept that dictates her existence, the drive to satisfy her deepest needs is unconquerable. That is, she cannot be deterred from her path, much as an avatar cannot be deterred.]

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I absently flexed my toes as I listened to Grotto, but couldn’t feel them. Emptying my boots of my own frostbitten toes was somehow the most disturbing thing I’d ever had to do because of my Like a Flesh Wound regeneration.

“If so, that sounds pretty fucking useful,” I thought. “But why would that mean she wouldn’t tell us about her Hysteria soul shard?”

[Because she feels no deep need to tell all of you that she’d claimed a piece of divinity for herself. She has still been–]

It felt like Grotto’s statement cut off abruptly, but I realized I’d been thoughtlessly staring at the passing ground for half a minute. Whatever the rest of his message had been, the mental fuckery deleted it from my memory. Even so, I thought I’d gleaned enough information to understand the situation.

“It’s a natural part of you,” I thought. “Both from when you were a golem and because of your relationship to avatars. Having an avatar fragment in your soul was your original purpose, and seeking divinity must be like trying to find a piece of you that’s been missing.”

Etja went quiet. She may have been having a private conversation with Xim and Nuralie, or she could have been saying something my brain couldn’t hold onto. Who knew?

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“She was affected by the shit in a way that made her forget to mention the soul fragment,” I continued. “Her limited immunity didn’t apply because it wasn’t something that interfered with her goals. When it came up directly, she corrected a misunderstanding, because Etja is a wonderfully honest person.”

[Yes, that is more or less what I think has happened.]

There was another stretch of silence, where I wondered how much of the conversation wasn’t making it to my conscious mind. I felt a swell of frustration, one that wasn’t helped by the miserable cold.

I asked Varrin to stop and set us down. He did it without question but gave me a curious look once we were on the ground.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

I opened my inventory and pulled out the token Avarice had given us back in the Descent. She’d told us that she had allies in the north that might help us, assuming we made it worth their while. I flipped the heavy gold coin over, looking at the fang on one side and the leathery wing on the other. It glimmered with mana.

“Every cell of my being wants to go see Avarice’s mystery allies,” I thought. “But pressing forward relentlessly and hoping a solution comes up for our biggest problem isn’t like us. We’re not chasing down a lead, we’re moving on blind hope.”

Varrin grunted but motioned for me to continue.

“What if these people don’t have anything for us? What then? Do we go to the next Delve? Meet with the next powerhouse? We didn’t want to allow whatever is affecting us to change our plans, and we didn’t. Not at first. But now we’re making new plans. Throne’s Delve wasn’t something we’d decided to do beforehand, we decided to go after meeting with the Littan empress.

“I put the opportunity to grab Deific skills on hold. Now I want to put my Dread Star questions on hold. We decided against speaking to Yara and we’ve trusted Xim’s opinion on how helpful Sam’lia could be.”

“Hey,” thought Xim. “Hmm, actually, you’re right. It’s not like Etja or Grotto have been in on my communions.”

“We’re avoiding all chances of godly intervention,” I continued. “And we’re rushing into things without stopping to make a plan. I know we have Grotto and Etja as our, I dunno, guiding stars? No offense to either of you, but Grotto is much better at creating problems for other people than finding solutions, and Etja, you’re not what I would call calculating.”

“I accept my limitations,” thought Etja. “Your Heavenly Gates evolution also had some System text along with it. We all kind of ignored it.”

“What do you suggest?” asked Varrin.

“Let’s head into the Closet and figure this shit out,” I replied. “We should explore every option we have as a party that deals with soul stuff. Avarice’s allies aren’t going anywhere, as far as we know. We’ve got a soft deadline for the Littans, but we don’t owe them anything. We need to get our house in order before we do anything else.”

Everyone thought about the strategy for a while. It was deeply uncomfortable, but none of us had a good reason for why it felt that way. After a few minutes, Etja and Grotto approved the idea and I opened the Closet portal.

Once we were back inside our depressing situation room, Xim crossed her arms and looked at me seriously. “How do you want to approach this?” she asked.

The trio hiding from the cold inside the Closet had set up a small fire in the center of the room, flickering with Divine flames. It emitted a gentle, harmless warmth, and I stuck my hands right into it. Xim’s fire wouldn’t burn her allies, but it sure as hell could make me toasty.

“Everyone knows their own skills better than I do,” I said. Once my hands were comfy I stripped my boots, checked them for dead toes–hadn’t lost any more yet–and stepped into the fire. Then I started taking off the rest of my cold weather gear as I pondered, gaining access to my beard for a thoughtful rubbing. “First, we need a way to perceive what we can’t perceive. This manipulation hides itself from most of us, but to address it we need to find a way to detect it.”

“One can never see the invisible gogatron,” said Nuralie. “One looks for how it affects its environment.” She blinked as we all looked her way. “Footprints, broken branches, mounds of shuffler moss that are too big.” Pause. “It likes to sleep in the moss.”

I nodded. “That’s a good idea. What sort of tracks does mental manipulation leave? Aside from weird-ass behavior.”

“The mind and soul are linked,” said Nuralie. “A change in the mind will evoke a change in the soul.”

Throne popped into our thoughts. {You’re half right! Which is the same as being wrong. It goes both ways. Do you think I did brain surgery on a bunch of zombies? I bind their souls which binds their minds. It’s a way better direction to attack the problem from.}

“Acerbic,” I said. “But helpful.”

{You’re welcome,} Throne thought to us in a tone that said the opposite.

“She did not let me finish,” Nuralie muttered.

“Alright, so the common wisdom is that something that affects our thoughts will leave traces in the soul,” I said. “Which means I should be able to See whatever is causing the problem.”

“Can you?” asked Xim. I hesitated, then took a long, hard look at her soul halo. I peered intently for a full minute before the cleric started striking noble poses like she was trying to look regal in front of a crowd.

“I can’t tell if anything’s out of sorts,” I said. “I’ll keep trying, though.”

“Gaze into me,” said Xim, spreading her arms. “Become lost in my radiance.”

“You are not using your eyes when you look at souls,” said Nuralie, ignoring Xim’s antics. “It is a spiritual sense. It is likely blocked by the effect in the same way as when you look into yourself.” Pause. “Even if you did use your eyes you probably could not see it. Like the parts of Avarice’s letter we could not perceive.”

“So I need to look for animal tracks in Xim’s soul,” I said, continuing to push up the sensitivity of my Sight. “Dust it for prints.”

“Please don’t get dust in my soul,” Xim said, spinning and looking back at us over her shoulder. “I try to keep it tidy in there.”

“Do you know Xim’s soul well enough for this?” asked Varrin. “I know that you are always aware of our souls, but have you committed every nuance of them to memory?”

“No,” I said, deflating a bit. “Unless I have a reason to look, I mostly keep it surface-level with you guys. It feels like I’m peeking into something private, so I don’t stare or anything.”

“I remember!” said Etja. “Anytime you’ve used Reveal, I get all the Soul-Sight stuff along with it.”

“Right,” I said. “Perfect Recall. But does that help us? If you try and point out the problems, will I even be able to see them?”

“Maybe if I point out the, erm, dusty tracks?” she said. “But not the problem itself. That’s the whole idea, right? To look for the signs.”

“Hmm. Reveal shares the world as I perceive it,” I said. “If I use Reveal, whatever is hidden from me will also be hidden from you.”

“Then I’ll notice where the blank spots are,” Etja offered.

She had a good point, so we gave it a shot. I connected to Etja using Reveal and let the mage peer into Xim’s soul. Xim eventually got tired of posing and chose to meditate instead. Etja and I sat side-by-side, staring at Xim for the next hour. For me, the time passed in silence, until I suddenly realized Etja was talking to me.

“...around her emotional center,” she said.

“Huh?”

“Oh, good!” she said with a clap. “You heard that one.”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling another chill run down my spine. Having my memories fucked with was a terrible experience. Zero out of five stars.

“Okay,” said Etja. “I need you to start with Xim’s inner child.”

I prepared myself to dive in, realizing that I was about to be getting to know everyone in the party way, way more intimately than I already did.