Skyvenom: Chapters 12-13 (Patreon)

Here are your chapters for this week.

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Chapter 12

"Alright, we need to begin with some deeper theory."

Though they were all there to listen to Senka, they formed a rough circle with the sleigh as one side. Theo realized that he'd forgotten to eat during his recent thoughts, so he chewed a few nuts while he listened. He tried to throw in some of the Arbaian crystals, but though they crunched between his teeth, his soulhome couldn't quite accept them as food. Krikree crouched beside him, eating a haunch of sublime beast, while Nauda and Fiyu sat together on a log.

"Why does the soul take the shape it does?" Senka threw up her hands. "Sporped if I know. It's probably for the same reason we have two arms and two legs-"

"Krikree not!"

Senka rolled her eyes. "Or the same reason Slescans have whatever number of arms they have. Bodies seem to have basic forms, but the exact reasons have been lost to time. The general shape of soulhomes is consistent across worlds and over time, so it's been thoroughly studied. Your experts still know most of this blook today, I just have to be the one to explain it."

This explanation made Theo immediately think of evolution, but he didn't want to bring up Earth concepts, since his companions wouldn't understand. When he thought about how he'd acted before at times he still cringed. Fortunately, he could get at the same thing with a more reasonable question.

"Are there theories about why beast souls take a different shape?" Theo asked. "Animals have soulhomes that grow outward, sapient beings grow upward... there must be some connection, or logical rules that bind both of them."

"That's getting into myth, not verifiable fact," Senka said. "There are some creation myths that say divine beings elevated the intelligent species from animals and gave them the ability to soulcraft upward. Other legends say that the first animals to figure out upward soulcrafting gained intelligence. It's all just making up stories as far as I know."

Nauda leaned forward, her eyes narrowing. "I can see why they'd think that way, though. There aren't any sublime beasts that can expand their souls upward, are there?"

"Not to my knowledge, at least not really. There have always been people who try to claim they have some ability to expand soulhomes outward, usually by eating rare sublime beasts - something they can charge for, if you get my drift. But the two methods seem very separate, likely incompatible."

"Wouldn't it be better to expand the diameter of a soulhome if possible? More cantae, more space..."

"Maybe it would, but maybe you'd be more like a sublime beast." Senka grabbed up one of the bones Krikree had finished with and waved it around. "There are reasons we rule the Nine Worlds and they don't, after all. Sublime beasts grow slowly outward in rings instead of breaking through, which means their souls don't receive the same reinforcement. Their natural advantages like claws and teeth do get stronger, but they don't get any tier benefits like using their soulhomes to hold things, or cantae flight. In my time, it was theorized that if you could become more like a beast, you'd actually weaken yourself."

"This is all theoretical, is it not?" Fiyu asked. "We do not truly know?"

"Right, this is all nonsense. You've taken this conversation in entirely the wrong direction. I was trying to explain th-"

"Ants!" Krikree spoke up sharply, then flinched and glanced at Theo before continuing. "Some ants have wide soulhomes, but short. Those ants dumb. Smart ants build normal soulhomes."

"I guess that could be true, I'm not sure. Higher Slescans soulcraft like everyone else, so people didn't care about the lower ones in my time. Or-"

"Senka-what dumb too!"

"Go sporp yourself, you cretinous insect."

While they bickered, Theo considered what he'd learned. He strongly suspected, though he'd probably never be able to prove, that soulhomes had in some way evolved from the natural soul capacities seen in sublime beasts. Whether it was natural or technology was probably a question that could never be answered - that quickly led to ideas of "spiritual genetics" and other concepts that suggested that the analogy shouldn't be taken too far.

But combining the two models with what Krikree said about Slescan ants suggested to him that there was probably some sort of "conservation of volume" when it came to souls. Unless the ants truly weren't as stunted as most believed - after all, Krikree wasn't. He'd need to gather more evidence before he held his conclusions too closely. For now, he would operate on the assumption that just trying to expand soulhome volume at all costs might have serious drawbacks.

"What I wanted to talk about," Senka pointedly pulled the conversation back on track, "was the fundamental shape of the soul. The air definitely represents potential, the potential we soulcraft or increase in ascensions. But the rest? The grass, the soil, even the weather... these may not seem relevant in elementary soulcrafting, but they can be extremely important in the right contexts."

"Like my soil killing most plants," Theo said. "It embodies something about my character that has to be taken into account when soulcrafting."

"Yes, thank you for the useful interjection. There are individual variations in details or ascensions that we don't need to talk about now. What matters is the rest. Let's start with an easier question: what exactly are the boundaries of the soul?"

They'd been talkative up to that point, but they answered that with silence, except for Krikree's contribution of [What? What?] pheromones. Theo had a strong suspicion of his answer, but Fiyu spoke up first.

"They are nothing, right?" She looked between them, then continued with slightly more confidence. "The soul is not like a sack, with fabric defining the edges. The edges of our soulhome are not barriers, they are nonexistence."

"Exactly right!" Senka began waving a finger in different directions. "So we have nothingness to the sides, new potential upward... what's downward? The foundation of the soul, obviously, and for most soulcrafters that's all it will ever be. But for the strongest, the details of that foundation become relevant."

"Are there sublime beasts that burrow?" Nauda asked.

"Not to my knowledge, but shut up about animals for now. There isn't infinite dirt or rock underneath you: like all the other parts of the soul, your foundation ceases to exist eventually... until it gets built up. With every ascension, particularly effective ones, more cantae seeps into the ground. It gets a little more real, a little deeper. If you try to dig as an Archcrafter, you can plant at most a tree before you start running up against the boundaries, just like at the edges. But later..."

[Basement! Transcendent Monument!] It wasn't clear if Krikree knew she was emitting pheromones, she just leaned forward with antennae quivering.

"Now, digging is obvious, so why don't more people have a basement?" Senka raised her hand again to begin counting off. "Three major reasons. First, the foundation is too tough unless you go through a slow maturation stage. Second, if you want to dig more than a foot or so, you need to break through, similar to an ascension, and that's harder than it sounds. Third, messing with your foundation can make a weaker soulhome collapse."

"That's what I'm worried about," Theo said. "Logically, I'd be afraid my first floor would collapse into it."

"You don't need to worry about that. Think of it like a spiritual barrier, similar to the one between tiers. That barrier will reinforce your ground floor and hold things together... well, unless you really sporp things up on the construction side. But all the other logical principles of soulcrafting will take you through that just fine."

"So what goes into this first preparation stage?"

"It gets easier with each ascension, but fortunately all of you have some advantages. Using those lighteggs and darkeggs on your foundations helped mature the soil. Beyond that, it will vary by person. For example, Theo, take a look at that grizzleroot of yours and see how far it's grown..."

They split off to examine their own soulhomes with only a little guidance from Senka. Theo rummaged through his old tools before finding a spirit trowel - not a particularly powerful tool, but it would function. He went to an unoccupied part of his soulhome's yard and stabbed the trowel into the grass.

At first it was exactly like using a physical trowel: the roots of the grass resisted a little, then the trowel punched into softer dirt. When Theo tried to focus his will and push down lower, he could feel a sort of resistance, similar to an ascension.

That thought made him think about his sky and he glanced up toward the green clouds. Not the time to experiment.

Instead he stabbed the trowel down several times and dug out a rough cube of earth. It crumbled somewhat at the bottom, but otherwise it worked well. He could see the foundation of his soul, exactly as he'd expect: the roots of the grass as well as a much tougher gray root. It looked like the grizzleroot had not only been growing up the columns of his soulhome, it had been spreading downward.

Even though Senka wasn't available to lecture, Theo understood. The grizzleroot had been slowly growing along with him, driving deeper into the soil. Up to that point he'd been thinking about the foundation as a rock barrier that need to be broken down, but now he realized that he'd been wrong. His soil didn't fully exist, not until he enriched it with cantae and sublime materials.

Which he thought he'd been doing for some time. The most obvious contribution was definitely the grizzleroot, which was so aligned to him and spread his will throughout his soulhome. Theo fed it a little spiritual blood as thanks while he continued to examine the foundation.

It wasn't simply the grizzleroot: even the health of his grass was contributing. When he had first opened his soulhome, had the grass had roots like this? He struggled to remember the details, but he was fairly sure the roots hadn't been so strong or fully realized. If he had rejected the natural environment of his soul and tried to transplant in other soil and grass, he intuited that he wouldn't have seen this growth.

"Sounds like you're all done." Senka clapped her hands in the real world and Theo shook off some spiritual dirt before returning. "Now you see why sublime plants are recommended, even for those who don't want to get into spiritual gardening. Before you ask, yes, that part is intuitive. Aathali who use lots of plants usually have an easier time developing a basement."

"Then is it especially difficult for Arbaians?" Nauda asked.

"They don't use plants, they have to excavate the rock of their foundation. But the principle is always similar: various steps flesh out the foundation until it stops being simply the lower limit of the soul and becomes a layer that can be logically worked."

"When I tried digging, I started to feel... well, it's hard to describe, not quite like the sky..."

"The resistance will get worse as you go lower," Senka said. "If you try at lower tiers, you'll just hit a wall, maybe damage your foundation. But at your stage, eventually you'll feel a pressure you can push through. If you manage it, you'll get a new flood of power. It won't unite or reinforce your soulhome, but it does intensify your cantae."

"That would be a significant advantage." Fiyu smiled and bobbed her head. "Is it possible to only break through, then not build a basement?"

"Honestly, lots of people get that far and then stop, for that exact reason. But if you take yourself seriously as a soulcrafter, that's just leaving power on the table. Breaking through is like opening a new floor... as wide as your soulhome and just as deep as one floor. Instead of building bricks, you have to empty out the rooms, which generally takes even longer."

"What about the dirt?" Theo asked. "Is it just... abstracted away?"

Senka opened her mouth as if she was going to mock him, then frowned, then rubbed her forehead with both hands. "Don't... don't throw it out. I can't... I used to know more about this. But no, the dirt is actually part of your soul. You can... do, uh... things with it."

Nauda glanced through the group, eyebrows knitting together. "We started all this by talking about what the soul is, but... what are we doing to ourselves by making a basement? Does a normal soul need a foundation? Are we altering our natures by hollowing it out?"

Theo immediately shook his head. "I doubt it. Remember that people who haven't awakened as soulcrafters don't have spaces for soulhomes."

"It does make you a little less mortal," Senka said somberly. "Making a basement won't guarantee an Immortality Conduit, but those who can do it tend not to have catastrophically bad reactions when they try, like they're a little more aligned with immortality. But no, I don't think there are fundamental changes. You can't tell if someone has a basement except for their cantae."

Of course there were dozens of other questions, ranging from the mechanics of basements to optimized digging to whether shielding walls could hide basements. Theo eagerly absorbed it all even as his fingers twitched to get back into his soul and get to work.

Based on everything they'd discussed, he hoped that he could break through within a month, though Senka cautioned it could be difficult. That alone might give him a significant advantage against any Strongholds they needed to fight. But the real potential lay in the fact that he could begin excavating his basement, continuing his soulcrafting despite the poison that Esaire had thought would cripple his progress.

"So what are we all planning?" Senka asked eventually. "Obviously Theo is a soulcrafting obsessive and won't be able to help himself, but what about you two?"

"My foundation feels very hard and parts are cracked," Nauda said with a shake of her head. "Probably because of the damage done when my soulhome collapsed. Right now I don't see how I can get a basement at all, but at minimum it needs to be enriched more."

"I intend to dig slowly," Fiyu said. "My relative created a basement at Authority, but it took him many years. I believe it would be better to focus on my shielding wall instead of beginning prematurely."

"Krikree not dig now!"

"I didn't ask you," Senka snapped.

"Senka-what dumb!"

Ignoring them, Theo reached into his soul and pulled out the bags of Aathali seeds that he'd mostly forgotten about. "Nauda, didn't you say that you'd found some sublime fertilizer? I was thinking you have a good space for a garden, in the spaces between your three towers. You could try to grow these, because they definitely won't work for Fiyu or me. Even if they don't produce useful sublime materials, they could help your foundation."

"Thank you, Theo." Nauda squeezed his wrist as she accepted the bag, then set to work.

Seeing Nauda and Fiyu soulcrafting side by side made Theo smile, but he wouldn't let himself be distracted by relationships. Not when there was new ground to break, literally.

Soon enough they'd have to resume their journey, directly into the heart of a hostile Deuxan Court they needed to convert to their side to avoid a war. But for now, all he had to do was step inside himself and soulcraft. Theo picked up his trowel and got to work.

Chapter 13

Nauda had a glorious lull to thoroughly enjoy their journey together, in between the time she accepted they weren't likely to be attacked soon... and the introduction of basements. Oh, she was interested in the concept and glad in an abstract way, but it changed the tenor of their trip.

With a new objective that required more brute soulcrafting than finesse, Theo was back to obsessively working again. That was just Theo being himself, so it wouldn't have bothered her on its own. Fiyu wasn't overly focused on her shielding wall either, and they still had time together. The problem was that, watching both of them, Nauda found herself wondering whether all her blueprints were going to fall apart.

She sat in the middle of her soulhome, tending her plants, trying not to look up at her towers and her partial work sticking out like broken branches.

Building three different towers at the maximum of her soulhome's diameter had been audacious in a way that felt graspable to her, wildly aggressive but workable. Now, however, she needed to turn those three towers into a unified statue of herself, which she was beginning to think might be more than she could manage. She had skill with stonework, and even stoneshaping with Navim, but could she actually create a statue worthy of the name?

Her next goal was to unify the two towers that represented her legs, in the form of her hips. She hadn't gone in blind, of course, having studied both conventional arches and their applications in soulcrafting. It was very rare for soulcrafters to have a full floor over such large gaps, but it wasn't impossible in theory. The problem was getting it to work.

At first she'd tried to build a brick archway from one leg to another, but it had begun to buckle under its own weight. She could have made it work by sheer force of will - this was her soul, after all - but the result would have been weak. Her worst nightmare was building this far and then seeing her work collapse, maybe even damaging her towers on the way down.

Now she was trying to build the center of the arch on the ground, then she could levitate it into position later. This seemed like a sounder idea, but left her with design choices. The legs representing her towers were basically just columns, without more elaborate shaping. If she did the same with the hip joint, she would feel a bit like her statue was a child's crude drawing. Yet actually shaping a statue of her own hips felt strange in so many ways, she wasn't sure she could do it.

Everything had seemed so clean when she'd been discussing the blueprint with Theo... had it really been over two years ago? Nauda shook her head as she returned to the real world.

As before, the sleigh was slicing over the Deuxan landscape, which was growing flatter and more desolate as they went further west. She didn't have much time for it, instead looking toward Theo. He slept in the back seat, feet propped up on the side of the sleigh.

Truthfully, he looked dead to the world. He was pushing so hard on his new work that he practically soulcrafted in his sleep, and he didn't need her disrupting him. Senka and Krikree did enough of that already. Nauda smiled as she pushed his pillow better under his head and left him to it. She was an adult soulcrafter, after all, she could figure out her own problems.

While she was outside her soulhome, Nauda made sure to monitor her new life senses. They should work even while she was soulcrafting, but she wasn't used to it. So far it seemed like they were working, there was just almost nothing to sense. Even the metallic plants of Deuxan seemed to struggle in this wasteland.

After a smile at Fiyu to reassure her nothing was wrong, Nauda plunged back into soulcrafting. She headed down to her storage chests and pulled out her old blueprints, which she'd saved even though she'd memorized all the details. Just looking over them helped, especially reminding herself of the proportions of the statue.

If she stuck to human proportions, her statue's thighs really should start on the third floor. She hadn't done that, since partially finished they would just be a liability, especially during ascension. But perhaps that was the right step now.

As she thought about the problem, Nauda grabbed some of her newly crafted bricks and leapt up to the top of her staff tower. Whenever she stalled, she always returned to work there, since that was the only easy part of her blueprint. Just a fourth floor, exactly the same curling design as the rest. Forging Authority-tier bricks took longer, but she hoped she could finish off that third of her floor soon enough. That should strengthen her techniques, so she could still help the others even if she struggled with her main statue design.

Still, as she cemented more bricks into place, Nauda began to feel that it was workable. She wouldn't try to remodel anything in her leg towers to reshape the statue, not when she had already done so much remodeling. Instead, she would start with a buttress, the lower parts of which could represent her thighs. That would make her statue's legs into a strong foundation for the rest.

Just how many bricks would she need? Nauda realized that she would have to work even more carefully to craft bricks in wedge shapes, so perhaps she should borrow Theo's Esoteric Chisel again. The problem would be making sure it was all thoroughly fused, since even her new mortar might not be enough. Maybe the bondsfungi could contribute to structural integrity as well.

All of that began to seem manageable... so Nauda's mind automatically moved on to the next problem. She needed to fuse not just her life and death towers, but also the staff statue to the other two. The only logical way to do that was via the arms of her statue, but how exactly?

In the original blueprints, Theo had drawn slanting arm columns. That made perfect sense with a completed statue, but they'd have to start on her Dominion floor, which didn't exist yet. Just having lower arms extending back from her staff as stumps was absurd, clearly a huge risk through her middle tiers that were likely to be filled with danger and warfare.

The sturdiest method of doing her arms would be to have them be completely horizontal corridors... except that her three towers were so close together, that would make her arms absurdly stubby. Imagining how her statue would look made Nauda laugh as she worked. She wasn't aiming for realism, but she hoped that she could do better than that.

No, she would need to come up with another solution for the interim. Nauda turned that over while she soulcrafted and they traveled. A week later she still didn't have a solution, but she was dutifully soulcrafting when she suddenly felt a prickle.

She recognized her life sense by now and pulled out of her soulhome. The landscape was flat in all directions, yet she could feel a strong source of life stabbing ahead. Theo was sleeping again and she didn't want to wake him, but... Nauda flew to the front beside Fiyu in the driver's seat.

"What is wrong, Nauda?" Fiyu had started to smile at her when she arrived, but immediately saw her expression.

"There's a source of life ahead, possibly more," Nauda said. "My senses can't pick up anything more precise than that, but what about yours?"

"The ground is hard with consistent density in all directions. But you said ahead of us? I..." Suddenly Fiyu's eyes opened so wide that silver spots were visible even through her mask. "Oh dear, I do sense a disruption. Humanoid forms are hiding in a special cavern, obscured on the surface. It seems likely to be an ambush, should I...?"

"No, keep flying at the same rate so we don't tip them off. I'll go wake the others."

Nauda headed back through the sleigh, waking Krikree by scratching the base of her antennae and poking Senka with a foot. When she got to the back, she tried to take Theo's shoulders gently, but he immediately jerked awake.

"What's going on?" The words tumbled out as he leapt up. "An attack?"

"Not yet," Nauda told him, "but we'd better be ready."

~ ~ ~

Finally, their enemies were moving. Theo couldn't be certain that the Deuxans hidden ahead were lying in ambush for them, but he'd eat his nonexistent hat if this was a coincidence. Between their combined senses, they had discerned a small army ahead: two Authorities, three Rulers, eight Archcrafters, and twenty-two first tier soulcrafters.

The Deuxans were distributed across several different holes in the landscape, arranged so that the sleigh would pass between them. Their positioning suggested a carefully planned ambush, so Theo wasn't about to let himself be taken off guard like he had been in Nlukoko.

It was just a shame that he hadn't been able to break through to unlock his basement. The intensity added to his cantae would have made him far more capable of handling multiple Authorities at once. He was reasonably formidable as an Authority, but against well-organized opponents, he needed to be even stronger.

If their opponents used another formation to suppress their powers, he would be ready. Since the Deuxans didn't know very much about Krikree, he had Fiyu hide her retreat to follow the sleigh on foot. Senka would stay with them, since her cantae blast would be a trump card no one predicted. He'd also managed to secretly levitate several boulders overhead, so if anyone tried to cut off his gravitational abilities, they would soon be bombarded by the simple laws of physics.

All of that had been done in a short time, which was fortunate, because they didn't have long before they hit the ambush point. Nauda sat on the side of the sleigh, pretending to be relaxed as she swung her staff against her legs. Fiyu still drove, but looked back to him.

"Are you sure that confronting them is wise?" she asked. "We could use stealth to avoid them entirely."

"I think going off into the wilderness is already avoiding conflict," he said. "This has to be one of our Deuxan enemies, so better to face them now. If we keep avoiding them, it might just incentivize Strongholds to come after us."

"But will they be fighting to the death? Would fighting seriously cause more trouble?"

"That's what we don't know. This is a war, so don't hold back if it would cost you, but we shouldn't be ruthless until we understand their objectives here."

Then there was no more time, because their sleigh flew over the ambush point.

Instantly the false stone coverings - flawless to the naked eye - exploded with cantae. A column of yellow light seized the sleigh, binding it in place and sending all of them hurtling over the front. The light tried to bind him in place, but it wasn't very strong, so Theo pushed through.

He immediately cast the strongest gravitational field he could over the two Authorities, hoping to interrupt whatever they had been planning. His greatest concern was all the distributed lower tier soulcrafters, in case they might be planning some sort of formation. From the corner of his eye he saw a green streak as Krikree hit one of those groups.

Meanwhile Fiyu had vanished, while Nauda grabbed one of the Rulers with her binding technique and sent the Deuxan woman tumbling through the others. That would hopefully disrupt them, but what were the Authorities doing?

Theo had expected them to break free from his gravitational field almost immediately, but they were struggling despite the cantae glowing around them. A Deuxan man and woman, relatively young, both Authorities with shielding walls. Physically they were hunched over, apparently struggling to fly against his gravity, but what could they be hiding behind those walls?

Was there another component to the ambush? Did the other soulcrafters serve a purpose he hadn't perceived? Could there be even more hiding in-

"Alright, we surrender!" The male Authority raised his arms while the female one laughed. "Looks like we underestimated you by a lot."

Everyone stared at them, Theo included. Was this another gambit, some misdirection to hide the true threat? Or...

Or were these simply mediocre Authorities? The formation wasn't a genius double-bluff, it was just an average ambush. Their struggle against his gravitational field wasn't a feint, they were actually struggling. After fighting Esaire and Amaeli and their allies, Theo's sense of the average Authority had been seriously skewed.

"Kill?" Krikree asked from below. She'd knocked down a group of soulcrafters and currently held two of them over their pit while menacing them with spears in her other hands.

"No, no, we surrender!" the female Authority called out. Krikree's antennae barely twitched in her direction while her focus remained on Theo.

"...not kill?"

"Fine, all of you drop your weapons and surrender together." Theo cast a lighter gravitational field over all the Deuxans, just in case, and gestured for them to gather.

It seemed like they were going to cooperate and he thought the intimidation in their eyes was real. He was more nervous about the Authorities, who whispered to one another. Fiyu appeared behind them, her stealth disappearing as she released the cantae blade she had been aiming at their backs. Her arrival made them both jump and laugh nervously, which seemed authentic as well. Then it seemed they had truly surrendered with no more tricks.

This was likely the best outcome, but honestly, he was just a little disappointed.

Even if this group was truly incapable of handling them and the ambush was a failure, that didn't mean the event was a strategic failure for whoever had sent them. Theo didn't need to look at the map again to know that they were currently within the borders of Southern Ostic. The Deuxans surrendering wore robes and badges marking them as members of Occoire Court.

Unless this was a false flag operation, which would be uncovered very quickly, this group was outside their own territory. Occoire was nearby, but they were definitely over the borders. Either they had invaded specifically to attack Theo or he'd just stumbled into an unrelated political machination. Given how convocation warfare worked, he supposed there could be multiple wars going on at once.

There was nothing to do but ask the Deuxans. Theo had a feeling that, whatever they answered, he was out of time for breaking open his basement level. He might not have needed it against these opponents, but he definitely could if he faced off against Strongholds.

Or, even worse, if the politics were tangled enough, a little more power would make no difference at all.