Peculiar Soul

Recognition of the self is not a simple thing; our close perspective distorts our view and makes it hard to discern truth from illusion. Often our baser fears and needs skew our perception - that we are flawed is inevitable, but even the best men shy away from confronting their flaws for fear of that intimate and personal disquiet that follows.

To have a soul makes this at once easier and more difficult. It is an abrupt and dramatic change, and the attendant shift in perspective can be enlightening. It can also be a trap, however, as such a shift naturally leads one to consider a division between the prior self and the sum of those changes which we thereafter call the soul.

Lingering overlong on this division is not constructive; the division does not exist. Pour a dram of water into a cup, then later fill it to the brim and ask: where is the dram?

- Leire Gabarain, Annals of the Sixteenth Star, 692.

Michael tasted blood. He opened his eyes, frowning - and saw Spark staring back at him through sightless eyes, the ashes of his grin still fixed on his face. The sight jolted him fully awake. He pushed himself fully upright with the bruised, distorted face still fixed in his vision. His cheek was wet - no, his whole side was. Spark had bled out onto the floor; Michael had collapsed into it.

It took another second before he connected the sight of the blood with the taste in his mouth. Sudden, convulsive nausea overtook him; he vomited the meager contents of his stomach, then heaved again. He was still kneeling in the blood, bracing himself on hands planted in the middle of the crimson puddle.

His knees trembled as he tried to stand, so Michael pushed himself away from Spark’s body in a sort of half-crouch. He collapsed in the middle of the floor when his sight skewed to the side for a moment. His head spun with the vertigo of the spector’s viewpoint. He didn’t bother realigning his vision. Michael kicked his legs to push himself along the floor until he felt the cool solidity of the wall at his back. There he sat for a long moment, panting.

A dull pressure grabbed at his temples. The blindfold, he realized. He pulled it off and immediately regretted it; his vision blurred and doubled, his eyes adding their discordant input to his free sight. He closed them and brought his vision slowly back towards a more natural location.

Michael wanted to close off his sight entirely, but Beni’s soul was not so merciful; there was Spark amid the blood, a crimson smear of mad calligraphy tracing Michael’s path across the floor. He could not stop looking, so he looked without seeing.

Spark was dead.

He was Spark.

The memory of the light flowing into Michael came back with surreal force, hitching his breathing and speeding his heart. Pain shot through his abdomen as his stomach tried once more to empty itself. He spat bile onto the floor and sank back against the wall, shivering.

His thoughts strayed. He might have been sitting there a minute or an hour, but at once he heard a noise at the small room’s door. Michael jerked his sight upward and saw Claude walk into the room.

The slender anatomens stopped abruptly as his eyes found the darkening red of Spark’s blood on the floor. A stab of despair tore through him; Michael found that he could feel it just as clearly as he could read it on Claude’s face. Anguish, denial, loss - rage. Anger lit in Claude’s eyes as he found Michael and began to stalk towards him.

“Damn monster,” Claude spat, reaching his hand out.

Michael’s eyes widened, he knew all too well what would happen if the anatomens were to touch him. He tried to scramble away by instinct, heels sliding blood-slick over the tile. Claude drew near and bent down. His hand filled Michael’s vision.

“Stop,” Michael croaked.

Claude stopped. His eyes bulged, his hand trembled, but he did not draw closer to Michael.

Michael, too, froze in place. Spark’s soul had bound his intent into the words, rippling outward to tear into Claude’s mind. The effect was immediate and brutal; he had not merely wanted Claude to halt his motion, although that was a large portion of his desire. This was a man who had hurt him, threatened him, taken enjoyment from Michael’s suffering. He had been party to the death of Stefan and Beni. He had, apparently, been the one responsible for the horrid stranger’s hand now resting on the end of Michael’s arm.

Hatred was a proper term for what Michael felt, albeit lacking the nuance to describe the depth of his loathing for the man. Hatred was what carried in his voice when he spoke, the conviction that the world would be boundlessly improved by Claude’s absence from it.

He saw that hatred impact Claude, carried along with his command. He had wanted Claude to stop moving; he had wanted Claude to stop being. The anatomens now stood motionless save for spasmodic clenching of the muscles in his face, eyes twitching and bloodshot as they stared past Michael at whatever formless horror had become of Claude’s mind.

The ruined garden that Spark had made of Michael’s own mind had been reprehensible. It was violation of the highest order, a trespass against the sanctity of the mind and soul. It offended every sensibility of his being.

Michael looked at Claude and saw what manner of landscape he had made.

Revulsion and nausea lurched through him to wring bile from his stomach once more; he scrambled away from the frozen anatomens and towards the door in a mindless panic. Blood-slicked hands slid from the doorknob without finding purchase. A fingernail tore. He clutched at it again and managed to wrench the door wide.

The passage through the administration hall’s twisting corridors barely registered to his mind, nor did the bright shock of evening sunlight as he exited. Michael found himself walking toward the harbor for the second time that day.

There were no people on his path, and the occasional sight of distant figures between the slapshod buildings of the town filled him with a spike of dread. He could not be near people. The fear pulsing with every heartbeat was less for his own well-being than for any who might cross his path. He had not intended the horror he had made. That Claude deserved death did not matter; Michael had not given him death.

A pang of agony caught him as he turned to look back toward the building. Michael had left the anatomens alive in his torment. He could return and put an end to the man-

Spark’s fading smile flashed in his vision, and Michael shuddered. Claude had obsessed over him as well. The thought of his soul sliding in to rest beside Spark’s nearly made Michael buckle at the knees again. He turned away. It was weakness, he knew. He could not bear to look at what he had done to Claude, could not bring himself to risk further taint by the souls of evil men.

Michael turned and walked toward the harbor. Perhaps he was an evil man too. Jeorg had said there was always a choice, and in leaving Claude to suffer he had made it. A choice driven by weakness and aversion, fatigue, trauma - but a choice nonetheless.

He kept moving toward the shore, using the vantage provided by Beni’s soul to avoid the few people he saw. The gate he and Stefan had used to gain entry earlier was barred, with a doubled guard; he veered away as soon as he saw them standing there. Instead he walked along the perimeter of the harbor until he reached a stretch of rocky beach and waded into the water.

Michael began to swim. He had not had the opportunity in years, not since his father’s brief flirtation with the outdoors in his youth. His stroke was inefficient and sloppy, but he had little trouble moving through the water as Stefan’s soul began to pulse warm vigor into his muscles. The bracing temperature of the water was unpleasant; he considered it a sacrifice well-made to wash away some of the blood caking his face and clothing.

It took some time for him to muddle his way through the surf back to the harbor, keeping his spector’s sight hovering above the waves to watch for guards. It was awkward - the first few times he tried to purposefully shift his view it fouled his swimming and left him coughing up cold brine. It turned out that he needn’t have worried much, there were few men in a position to see the ocean from inside the harbor complex and none of them were looking outward with any frequency.

He found his way to a ladder bolted to one of the piers and hauled himself upward, his arms and legs feeling as fresh as if he had just rested. Michael muttered his apologies and thanks to Stefan, turned to look back at the harbor - then untied the dinghy and began to row away from the island.

If his departure had been noticed he saw no sign of it; no alarm was raised at the docks and no ships appeared to chase him down as the harbor receded. Michael rowed until he sat between the two outcrops that defined the island’s bay.

A choice pressed itself upon him. East, to Ardalt, or west to the continent. Ardalt was tempting - it was closer, for one, and had the benefit of familiarity. But the Institute had successfully hunted him once before, and given that he had just killed their leader he deemed it likely that they’d come after him again.

The continent was foreign to him, wracked with conflict and infighting. It was also where he would find Mendian.

He let the boat drift for a few moments, thinking amid the gentle rocking of the waves. Jeorg had seemed confident that his friend in Mendian could help Michael understand his soul and divine its purpose. Containing Spark’s malevolent soul was a different task entirely, but if they could help…

He sighed and dipped an oar into the water, pivoting the boat roughly north-west - and then he began to row once more.

It was easy to fall into a rhythm. The seas were relatively calm under the evening sun, with no breeze to speak of. His progress away from the island was worryingly slow, however. Stefan had been right, this boat was not meant for traversing an ocean alone. He had no food, no water, and amid his bouts of unconsciousness and captivity he could not recall when he last partook of either.

But he was free. The island slowly receded into the distance as Michael navigated by setting sun, his back warmed by its rays. The remaining water soaked into his clothing became chill as its light dwindled, and finally sank below the horizon in a purpling smudge. Michael glanced over his shoulder at it and thought of Spark’s bruised face; he turned back with a shudder.

Stefan’s soul kept his muscles fresh, but it was not a panacea. His hands were burning with pain before long, the rough wood of the oar and the fine dust of salt from dried seawater wreaking havoc on his skin. The calluses he had built up chopping wood and working the fields were inadequate to this sort of punishing, repetitive task - and the stranger’s hand lacked even those. There was a macabre satisfaction in that, and Michael found himself smiling.

He tore strips from his pant legs and wound them around his hands, which helped a bit. The pause in activity brought his attention to another problem, however - he was ravenous. One of his tutors had attempted to instill in him a knowledge of animetry’s biological mechanisms, of which he had retained little; the subject had seemed pointless to a younger, soul-less Michael. It was nevertheless apparent that his exertions were depleting his body’s stores of energy even if his soul kept him feeling rested.

Reluctantly, he slowed his pace. Night fell in slow languor around him. With no light, the ocean became an endless plain of black below the starry sky - and yet, Michael found he could see rather well. He moved his sight higher over the boat to look down and saw detail rather than vague silhouettes. It was nowhere near bright enough for reading or other intensive activity, but the vision of Beni’s spector soul was a marked improvement over mundane eyes.

Pleased at the revelation, Michael continued to row under the starry expanse until fatigue of a different sort began to dull his focus. He pulled the oars into the boat, stretched out along the bottom - and slept.

Michael walked through the neat rows of trees in the orchard, letting his fingers brush against each trunk as he passed. Young trees, but firmly-rooted and growing well. He saw in each the bounty of its future harvests, the sturdiness of its trunk and lush spray of its branches laden with flowers. The vision flowed from his fingers into the trees, a subtle realignment that infused vigor and lent strength to each.

He paused at the end of the row and smiled, turning to face the orchard-

A frown crossed his face. There had been something amiss when he swept his gaze over the garden, an irregularity in the corner of his eye. He considered looking - but, no. There were more trees to invigorate, more rich soil and tilled fields to inspect. He could investigate whatever that had been later.

Michael resumed his walk, moving back along the row of trees to instill them with a vision of growth and strength - but now that vision, too, was marred by a discontinuity. His thoughts kept returning to the thing he had seen from the corner of his eye. The temptation to ignore it was strong. He could continue his walk among the perfect trees and watch them grow, relish in the leaves overhead and the soil underfoot.

But it would still be there, and he would know. The vision of growth he passed to his trees would forever be attainted by its presence. Michael stopped walking and took a breath, then another. He was stalling for time again, he realized.

Michael turned.

Near the house at the top of the hill was a tree, as there always had been. Its branches stretched up high, its roots grasped deeply into the soil at its base. The tree had always been gnarled and knobbly, but now - now it was twisted, pocked with galls and bulbous growths that disrupted the natural lines of its bark.

Worst by far, though, was the hollow at the base of the trunk. A thin gash scored deep into the heartwood, suppurating and diseased. Only blackness lay beyond, but in that dark there was the sense of meeting eyes, of recognition and response. Michael did not need light to know what lay within, regardless. He was only too aware of what afflicted the tree.

He walked up as close as he could bear to it and forced himself to meet the stare from within. His eyes watered, his breath caught - and after a few long seconds that stretched into eternity, he dropped his gaze. He knelt on the grass with his breath coming heavy, fists clenched, tears staining his cheeks.

Footsteps walked up beside him and paused. After a moment, another man joined him on the grass.

Michael turned to look. “I thought you left,” he said.

“Not a question of leaving,” Jeorg replied. “You made yourself whole. Now you don’t want to be.”

The instinctive reaction to look at the tree pulled at Michael, but a thrill of adrenaline quelled the impulse. His cheeks flushed. “I don’t,” he said. “Not if it means accepting that this thing is a part of me.”

“It’s not easy,” Jeorg said. He paused to draw on his pipe, then exhaled. “Probably shouldn’t be. Power always has its consequences. You can hold them yourself.” He took another drag. “Shift them to others. Someone bears the burden. The weight of the imbalance.”

“This power shouldn’t exist,” Michael said. “It’s evil.”

Jeorg snorted. “Evil,” he said. “You’re stuck on the concept. Evil isn’t a thing you can point to. Not something that can be measured or labeled. It’s a process.” He reached down and grabbed a loose fistful of dirt, watching it slowly trickle through his fingers. “Are you evil, because of what you did to Claude?”

Michael’s breath caught in his throat. He remembered the look on Claude’s face, the ruins stretching out behind his eyes. “How could I not be?” Michael asked.

“So that’s it,” Jeorg said, arching an eyebrow. “Just a black-hearted villain now. You plan on burning orphanages first? Widows’ cottages? Maybe start slow, kick a few puppies.”

“What?” Michael asked. “No, I don’t - I don’t want to hurt anyone else.”

Jeorg smiled around the stem of his pipe. “Ah, so,” he said. “You have the capacity for evil. This frightens you.”

Michael shook his head, settling down onto the grass with his knees drawn up against his chest. “Shouldn’t it?” he asked. “I feel dangerous, Jeorg. I wanted to hurt Claude, and I did. That I regretted it later is poor consolation for him; he’s still - broken.” A breeze ruffled through the leaves around them, though the branches of the gnarled tree remained quiescent.

“I’m not saying he didn’t deserve something,” Michael said, exasperation coloring his voice. “He was a monster. Like Spark.” His lips twisted, more words hovering unsaid as the breeze gusted forward again.

“Spark,” Jeorg grunted. The old man got up and walked over to the tree. “There is no more Spark. No more Jeorg.” He laid one hand on the trunk, his fingers tracing slowly down the ridges of its bark. “No tree, no garden. Just lines that you draw for yourself.”

The darkness within the tree shifted, and Michael shuddered. “I know,” he said. “And I thought erasing those lines was what I needed to do, but - maybe some parts of me should stay hidden. Some boundaries need to exist.”

Jeorg gave him an expressionless look. “Could be,” he said. “Whatever you choose, some paths will close.” He pressed his hand more firmly against the trunk and paused, tilting his head to the side. “You sure?”

Michael looked at the darkness for as long as he dared, then closed his eyes. “No,” he said. “But I don’t see any better choice.”

A creaking noise emanated from the tree as new wood began to stretch over the opening. Michael watched it knit together into a scar along the trunk, a smooth expanse of deadwood that obscured the interior from view. There was still darkness within, but the oppressive force of its presence was subdued.

Michael let out a long breath and stood, dusting off his trousers. It felt as if the air had freshened and the temperature mellowed, the ambiance of the garden returning to something more pleasant. He turned to smile at Jeorg.

“Thank you,” Michael said. The smile faded a bit from his face. “Will it be enough?”

Jeorg grunted, straightening up. His hand stayed oddly motionless against the tree, as if it had been wedded to the bark. “What do you think?”

Michael looked at the tree for a long moment and said nothing.

He woke before morning had truly come, the ghostly light of the sun tinting the horizon. Salt crystals glittered from his clothing and dusted from his skin as he pulled the oars into the water and oriented the boat to the west once more.

Through the morning, Michael rowed. The sun was not overly hot, but the lack of water and constant exertion soon had him feeling lightheaded. His heart was beating faster than it should, he was certain. It struck Michael that he might very well die in the crossing, having underestimated the range and time involved.

There was nothing to do about it but row. Stefan’s soul was enough to spare him the feeling of exhaustion, at least. Michael had heard stories of runners and couriers endowed with a durens soul that had crossed countries without stopping for sleep or rest - but half of those stories ended with the durens in question dying at the end.

Then again, half were said to have lived. He tried to focus on other things as the heat of the day built. Moving his sight proved to be an entertaining diversion for some time; he found that he could shift it about three times the length of the boat in any direction he pleased. In a moment of whimsy he plunged his vision underwater and watched a few little fish swim along in the boat’s shadow.

Morning stretched into afternoon. The sunlight dimmed from overhead as clouds swept across the sky a bit after mid-day; Michael looked up with giddy anticipation while the rainstorm gathered. There was chop in the water, but he did not care; the thought of fresh water was paramount.

When the rain did fall it did so gently, washing away the crusts of salt that had decorated Michael’s skin and clothing, soothing the raw skin of his palms. The chill of the wind was welcome. He caught water in his hands and gulped it greedily, wrung water from his shirt into his mouth. At the storm’s height he spread his hands wide and let the rain fall into his open mouth, shouting wordless joy up at the clouds for his slaked thirst.

He resumed his journey as the rain tapered off, although he had some concern about his trajectory - amid the chop and the wind he was sure his aim had drifted. Michael had been navigating roughly north-west to this point, hoping to find the Mendiko lands at the mouth of the strait. His spector’s sight could not pierce the clouds, however.

Michael rowed until nightfall once more. The hunger in his belly had not faded, but it had hardened into something less strident than the pangs he had felt the day before. Bouts of lightheadedness had become more frequent, although he felt much better overall after having had his fill of the rain.

Sleep came, fitful and dreamless. Michael woke before dawn once more and began to row. No rain came to relieve his thirst. The sky was cloudless and clear, the sun beating down punishingly over a glassy-calm sea. It made for easy, miserable travel, and though he had no way to truly gauge his efforts Michael thought he was making quite good time across the interminably vast sea.

That evening, as the sun was sinking low over the waves, Michael heard something odd. He frowned and twisted to look, but could see nothing but the sun. Some minutes later it happened again, and mere seconds after that. He turned again to look and saw clouds obscuring the lower horizon.

Michael grinned and rowed with renewed enthusiasm. He had worried that more rain would not come, and even if this was to be a thunderstorm he would gladly chance it over the prospect of dehydration. He risked glances over his shoulder once more and thought he saw the brief flash of lightning, then the peal of thunder-

But too quickly. He frowned and paused to send his sight up high over the boat, affording him a better view of the horizon. Once again he marveled at the advantages of a spector’s soul - though he stared into the setting sun, there was no pain or fear of injury from the act. His vision sharpened on the haze, and on a few odd objects at its base.

Light and smoke blossomed from the side, followed seconds later by a booming report. Further off, at the limit of his vision, a smaller pinpoint of light bloomed with fiery warmth. For a bare second the scale of it swam in Michael’s mind, and then it clicked.

Warships, shelling the coast.

The elation at finally having sighted land was tempered by the looming bulk of the ships. He could make out some of the details now that he knew what they were - the smokestacks and plumes from their boilers, the squat protrusion of the gun batteries. Further inspection eluded him, however - the ships had been painted in a wild chaos of contrasting lines and angles that rendered their shapes hard to discern.

He paused to consider his situation. Rowing through the battle was obviously a bad idea, and that there was a battle at all meant that he had come in south of his planned route - somewhere along the Daressan coast. He could not tell from this distance whether the ships were Safid or Ardan, which would have given a further clue as to his position.

Michael turned the boat to the north and began to row at a diagonal to the shore, ensuring that his course took him nowhere near the fracas thundering away in the distance. Regardless of the allegiance of the boats, he was sure they would not look kindly on an unknown sailor intruding into their waters.

The shelling had dropped into a regular rhythm, he noticed. Not a fight, but a bombardment of something on the shore. The waning daylight was too poor to permit much detail at this distance, the coastline still a barely-visible shadow on the far horizon.

Night fell and the guns continued unabated. Their booming regularity seemed to Michael like a great heartbeat tolling over the sea. Then, at once, it stopped. Michael frowned and paused in his rowing, and in the silence he heard another faint noise - an angry sort of humming. He peered to the utmost limits of his sight at the ships, but it was too dark to see much.

A blossom of fire appeared amid one of the ships, then another. In the light from the explosion he saw the dot of an aircraft - a biplane, banking low over the ship. Another followed, then a group. Scattered explosions from the bombings rippled through the fleet, chased by the faintest chatter of small-caliber weapons.

The ships were not defenseless against the assault. Aircraft straying too close to the ships were sent tumbling down in pieces, their wings falling away as scalptors from aboard cut at them. Michael thought of the keen edge of his father’s soul and shuddered; the light metal of the aircraft was no match for that sort of power.

What eventually drove the assault away, however, was a searing beam of light that sprang forth from the citadel of the largest ship. The naval forces had a lucigens of rare talent, Michael realized - the light speared through one aircraft, then a second before the remainder of the squadron disappeared into nebulous Ember-clouds of darkness and fled.

Michael was left transfixed as the fires on the ships dwindled and the guns resumed their assault. The fight had been brief and spectacular, a frenzied clash of weapons and souls that had - well. That had undoubtedly left many dead. He felt a pang of guilt at his excitement.

But despite such death he had not been affected. Was it that he had not reflected on the death as it occurred, or was it the distance involved? He pondered for a moment before concluding that it was not a question he ever wanted to answer. In the deepening night, to the cadence of pounding guns, Michael set the bow of the ship towards the distant coast and continued on.