Father had waited for me in the tavern and diced and drank with some of the pirates. He was in high spirits and a little tipsy, but I still felt secure on his shoulders. By the time we got home, everyone had gone to bed. Mother was still awake, though, and I gave her the important parts while she fussed over me.

Eventually she let me sleep, which was good, because I was exhausted. A god-primordial-spirit-thing that had attempted to crush my soul or something for intruding in his personal spirit domain had been mentally a little taxing.

I plopped into a free mattress on the floor. We were all sleeping in the consecutive two rooms, with the mattresses scattered around. It wasn’t the most comfortable bed, especially after the luxury of the governor’s manor, but I was too tired to care. I closed my eyes and snuggled under the blankets. 

Just as I was drifting into sweet oblivion, I started hearing insisted dragging upstairs, and I think I heard the damned stool topple again, with a thonk.

I sighed to myself and turned to my other side. I heard Alik do the same.

Then I heard a sharp sound coming from upstairs. Something had gouged the floor. Then there was a loud crash and a bang of metal.

“Oh, for the love of—” Veena muttered.

I pulled my blanket over my head and tried to ignore the sounds. It didn’t work. The banging only got louder. Then I heard something creak until it gave and cracked.

“I think that was a bedpost…” Alik said.

Veena growled into her pillow.

Then as suddenly as the noises came, they were away. We all sighed in relief and started drifting into sleep.

Until later that night after what must have been only five minutes of blissful sleep, the banging started again. None of us slept much that night.

By breakfast, Veena was sitting with her cheek resting on her fist and glaring at anyone who made a sound. Danek looked like he had fallen asleep at the table. Alik was eating, but even he seemed less enthusiastic about it than usual.

Mother put a cup of hot tea front of me. “Did you ask about the spirit?”

“Yes. Bombasar said I should learn Spiritcasting and deal with him.”

Father lowered his bread. “That was his answer?”

“Pretty much,” I said with a shrug. I had started meditating somewhere half way through the night. It helped tremendously. It wasn’t panacea and wouldn’t replace real sleep, but it kept me going with just a few hours. Unfortunately, my family wasn’t equipped with such a Skill, and this probably wasn’t the time and place to start teaching them. I felt their pain, being tired sucked. It meant you couldn’t focus on learning magic or other interesting things.

Mother closed her eyes and took a long breath. 

“Yep…” I muttered.

“Little gem, I know you learn fast, but won’t learning a new art take weeks, if not months?”

“Hard to say. Maybe if I get stronger, and get an audience with the Baron, I can advance faster.”

“You always do seem to meet interesting people,” mother said.

“Fix this now. I’m not sure how much longer I can stay polite, Luka,” Veena grumbled as she looked at her plate despondently.

We all gave each other tired smiles.

Alik didn’t join the moment. Instead he wanted to throw his groggy irritation around. Unfortunately he chose the worst target. “You know, just once, you could say plea—HMPHH”

Fortunately father saved us from a world class calamity by clamping a hand over Alik’s mouth.

After breakfast, I went upstairs with father.

The workroom looked much the same as before, except the stool was on its side and several tools had fallen off the bench. The shutters were open again.

I activated Spirit Communion and saw our problem immediately.

The spirit was much bigger than the ones I had played with in the cemetery. It occupied most of the space above the workbench. It was a dull, gray shape that mostly resembled a humanoid, but was more a discordant swirling mass.

“Can you see him?” father asked.

“Yes.”

“What’s he doing?”

“Nothing.”

I sent a small greeting. Hello. Who are you? Why aren’t you letting us sleep? Are you pissed at us?

The spirit stopped moving.

Then it turned its attention on me, and I immediately regretted standing so close. All kinds of loose crap started flying towards us. The spirit hurled bits of metal, a chunk of the three-legged stool it had apparently broken, and even the brass bell in the corner.

I immediately cast a cultivated barrier to protect me and father. Most of the junk clattered harmlessly on the floor, but the bell was swung hard. It was heavy, and it crashed into the master bedroom, making a dent in the floor.

I tried forming a connection, but the raging spirit rejected all my approaches instantly. It was sending out indignant rage in insistent pulses and told me to leave this instant and never come back. How dare I and all that.

“We should go,” I said.

I sent a pulse telling him I was sorry, I disturbed it, and we left. I really needed to train Spiritcasting, because my family wasn’t getting enough sleep, and that was a problem.

*

I didn’t get rum immediately. Instead I got a bootcamp from Bombasar and Jalani. Mostly Jalani, who had become even more sullen than before for some reason. I think he was afraid of Baron Zamadi. I couldn’t blame the man. I tried talking about the Baron and how scary he was, but that only pissed him off even more, so I mostly just tried playing the part of a good student.

It was really useful getting lessons from both Bombasar and Jalani, but I found the fastest learning was done with the spirits. They were found around the island, and a lot of my bootcamp consisted of trekking. Bombasar was cool about it and carried me on his shoulder. I think he liked parading me around the town, and always made me perform magic. Jalani always bickered about me walking too slowly. I was a toddler, how fast do you expect me to walk!?

I told Jalani about my attempt to speak with the spirit in the house.

“He was really angry, and I couldn’t really form a connection.”

“Peh, your Skill level is low,” he said. “Of course you cannot. You cannot sense all the subtle things, and can’t even begin to understand what it wants. Spirits need containment and then they need to be pacted with.”

“So I just need levels?”

“Yes. You get levels when you understand the art. The first step be to interpret the pulses correctly and respond with your own. It be like talking. A language.”

“I understand,” I said and nodded. “Structured magic is like that too. It’s like a language. Teach me, please.”

Jalani grumbled something under his breath about my savage magic and his high arts, but it didn’t feel like a conversation I wanted to join, so I stayed silent.

We practiced with one of the smaller spirits near the docks. Jalani made me establish a connection, receive a single pulse, and then close it again. The spirit seemed to think this was a game, and kept trying to send something else before I could finish. They seemed to enjoy very high speed engagements, and laughed at me when I couldn’t keep up.

But once I started getting the hang of it, I could actually distinguish between what the spirit was sending and I could untangle my own reaction from it, creating a clear two-way channel.

[Spirit Communion Level 3!]

[+2 Spiritual Power] 

Jalani was a good teacher, giving me the basics. But once I got the hang of communicating with the spirits deliberately, they were the best teachers by a mile.

The reason why spirits were the fastest way to learn was because I just kept asking them how to communicate with them better, and how this connection was made and what they liked and so on. 

It really baffled me that neither of the Trola did that. Bombasar kind of expected the spirits to work with him, because he was Bombasar, and Jalani seemed to rely on structures and rules for the spirits to work with him. 

Well, I wasn’t really looking to get anything out of the spirits. I just wanted to increase my levels and learn about the spirits. I would need a couple more levels on my Spirit Communion to actually be able to stand in front of the Baron and understand his intentions.

So my long days consisted of training. I also snuck in some magic training to keep my skills up, but that meant I had to wake up really early, which was annoying.

My family was also settling in. My father liked it here the most. He was starting to get quite the reputation by bringing in loads of fish from the shore. He also did some spearwork with Alik, when the young warrior wasn’t training with Veena and the buccaneers. 

I had found Bombasar had plundered a full library of books, so that was where Danik spent most of his days. My mom’s pregnancy was well in the third trimester, which meant she couldn’t do much. Mostly she spent time with Alik and cooked for us when we came back to our cabin from our work.

The angry spirit upstairs was slowly whittling down our generally positive morale.

We moved everyone’s beds as far from the workroom as possible. That helped with the smaller noises. It did very little about the shutters or the bell it liked to throw around. Screw that bell in particular…

Some nights were blessedly quiet, but overall the nightly poltergeist attacks were getting increasingly loud. I could almost draw a graph based on how quickly Veena’s composure was deteriorating.

I went upstairs a few more times as my Skill improved. I could now form a line of communication clearly with the spirit. But it just kept throwing stuff at me, and refused to send anything except indignation and rage towards me. I tried asking it what the problem was, but it outright refused to tell me.

Fortunately the spirit didn’t use violence unless you went upstairs to ask uncomfortable questions, like why was it being so unreasonable? So it mostly just did its best to ruin our sleep.

I really needed to figure something out. Low sleep was not doing wonders for my mother, and we were all suffering from Veena. Even Alik was starting to get uncharacteristically grumpy. Danek carried the sleep deprivation with a certain grace, and was the least snappy of us all. But that was likely because he just didn’t have the energy for it.

Like this a few long weeks passed and I managed to increase my Spirit Communion to level 6. 

When I told this to the Trola, Jalani muttered something about being lucky to have such good teachers, but Bombasar only laughed and told me he would get some rum for me. He invited me to his study immediately and gave me a beautiful bottle made by a pretty high-skilled Glassmith. The dark, ambery liquid sloshed inside and I could tell it was the good stuff, because the fragrance was strong enough to emanate even through the wooden cork. I wondered idly if the booze was enchanted or something. I checked it with my Mana Sight and indeed it was. That was interesting, but I had bigger fish to fry.

It was time to meet Baron Zamadi again.