The next room was smaller, but the floor was entirely covered by scattered bones. There was a single spirit in the cavern, and it was large and looming mid-air, like it wanted to be the lord of this room.

“You… Dare?” the spirit asked after I made a connection. “I am Ne-IIIIIIIGH!”

There was something fundamentally wrong in the high-pitched voice the spirit was making. I could see that it was twitching as it moved in a swirl in the air.

“I am Luka. I seek Tiamat. Who are you?”

“I am Ne-IIIIIIIGH! DO NoT INtrRUdE!?”

The spirit was sending urgent and discordant pulses of madness. I kept my barrier on, but otherwise tried to be calm. This thing was lucid enough to not be aggressive, but it was certainly unwell.

Suddenly all of the bones in the room clattered, and dozens rose in the air. They danced and swirled around and some even came close enough to take a swipe at me. 

“STAND BACK!” the spirit commanded, and I listened and took a few steps back. 

The swirling mass of bones intensified and some even formed around the spirit, creating a skeleton. It was a mismatch of the wrong kinds of bones, but it clearly took human form.

“I sense?! Who? Who are you?”

“I am Luka,” I said calmly. “I come here at the behest of Baron Zamadi. I seek Tiamat.”

“No… No….” the spirit muttered. “Tiamat is lost in a sea of madness. There is pain. Too much pain…”

The spirit seemed to calm down. There was still wanton madness in the pulses it was sending, but at least it was coherent.

“Would you like some of my mana?” I asked and started using Passage Between Spirit and Magic.”

“Ma…na? Power. You offer me power? Freely. Take it ? TAKE IT ALL?!”

In the last one, I felt a mad elation that surged into action. The mad spirit drank in the mana, and all of the bones in the room rose into a wild storm.

I immediately started strengthening my barrier as the bones whipped around and struck it fast, like hard rain on a tin roof.

The storm of bones only intensified, and I had to send a strong Barrier Pulse to throw the bones back before they got too much. I hadn’t trained my barrier to withstand such a fusillade of a thousand paper cuts.

“Stop!” I commanded and pressed my will against the mad spirit. It screeched in outrage, and tried to push its will on me, which was surprisingly potent.

We struggled in a battle of wills, each pushing and pulling against the force of our spirits, and neither would give. The struggle was so intense, that it lost control of the bones, as I did of the barrier. I felt naked without protection, but this was a true stalemate. 

Then the spirit started cackling. “I forgot… forgot the pacts. You gave mana! I MUST! RETURN!”

So the mad spirit blasted me with spiritual energy. But it was a gift. It gave it to me to wield. I immediately mingled it with my Spiritual Presence and pressed down on its will, which slammed the swirling spirit into the ground with the bones. 

“STOP! PLEASE DON’T HURT Ne-IIIIIIGH!”

I relented on the pressure, but I got a whiff of a sneaky pulse, and the mad spirit immediately tried to wrest free. I doubled down and really pushed my will into it. I needed it to play nice.

This was a potent spirit, and I didn’t have enough force of will to make it dissipate against its will. But I could exert a presence strong enough to overpower and terrify it.

“Yes! WIN! YOU WIN! PLEASE!”

“Do not betray my trust now,” I said calmly. “Promise?”

“Promise… NO!”

It struggled again, but to no avail.

“Listen to me. Create a pact with me,” I said while it whipped and growled and struggled.

That calmed it down. “Pact. Pact with Ne-IIIIGH?”

“Yes,” I said. “A pact. I will give you more mana. You promise to not hurt me and instead use it to make yourself more lucid. Then we talk. Can you do that?”

“Pact..? Yes. Yes Nes-IIIIGH accepts pact!”

I wasn’t really sure how this worked, but it seemed Nes-IIIIGH had an idea. I sent out my intent as a pulse, and there was a counterpulse that met it in the middle. I sent another pulse accepting this, and the mad spirit answered.

“Good,” I said. “Have some mana. Use it to calm yourself or something.”

I sat down among the bones. I still had a barrier on, because, well, obvious reasons. 

But the spirit rose from amongst the bones and sampled my mana. It shuddered and was silent for a while, and then it sent a tentative pulse towards me. This one was much more quiet and subtle than before. Shame and apology.

“I am sorry,” the spirit said. “I was… overtaken by the Leviathan.”

“I figured,” I said. “It’s okay. Are you okay now?”

“For a while…” the spirit said solemnly. “Your mana is potent. It will keep my mind stable.”

“I’m glad you like it,” I said. “I have some questions if you don’t mind.”

The spirit sent a pulse of agreement. But then it spoke again. “This will not last. I can already feel the madness return.”

“Do you need more mana?”

“No, it would not help. I have a request.”

“Sure.”

“After your questions are done, please release me. I do not want to return to madness. It is worse than death.”

“You are a powerful spirit,” I said. 

“Which is why you must do it before madness overtakes me again. “I will accept your scattering of my essence. That is the only way. Promise to do this, and I will answer any question I can.”

“Okay,” I said, and fed some more mana to the spirit. “What is your name?”

There was a gentle sense of delight pulsing from the spirit. It was happy to be asked. “I had almost forgotten…. My name is Nes-III-NO! Nestor. My name is Nestor!”

The spirit was pleased. Something solidified inside it. Like the madness gave way.

“Nestor…” it muttered again.

“Hi, Nestor, I’m Luka.

“Luka… you are a bold child to come here.”

“This is a spiritual domain right? Made by Tiamat?”

“Tiamat or Leviathan,” Nestor said. “Their spirits are mingled, and I cannot tell. Other spirits are here too, many of them. We cannot escape the Leviathan, but can only add to it. Here we wander in madness and bloodlust, for we are trapped inside. I was a Scholar once, you know. I was traveling towards Baros, but the Leviathan caught me, and slowly my mind unraveled. Now I am but a hungry ghost.”

“I’ve come to set Tiamat free and destroy the Leviathan.”

“This I gathered,” Nestor said. “But she is powerful, far more powerful than I. I am but a greater spirit, one of countless. But Tiamat is a primordial spirit. She is the sea, and she is old.”

“I heard she was reborn.”

“This is true,” Nestor said. “This is why we are all mad down here. She is but a nascent spirit, and was born again before she was meant to. Now she is like a child, and a confused one at that, and her mind is damaged.”

“Tiamat is ahead? I heard her voice. Is she lucid?”

The spirit sent a pulse of shaking his head. “No… no more lucid than I was. Only glimpses of truth within the fever dream. But if you heard her voice, maybe you can form a connection. You are a strange child, and your presence is calming to spirits. And this mana… if you can convince Tiamat to drink your mana and use it to calm her storming mind then… maybe.”

“It worked for you,” I said. 

Nestor laughed. “Only because you could impress me. But can you impress the primordial sea herself? Especially when she is throwing a tantrum.”

“I’ll have to try. I don’t see a way out otherwise.”

“This is true,” Nestor said. “You are in a spiritual domain. I believe… No— surely it could not be…”

For a moment I was worried that Nestor would go mad again, as he muttered to himself, but he sent a reassuring pulse back to me, when I pinged the thought at him.

“You are alive,” Nestor said finally.

“Well, yes,” I said. “I quite like that.”

“Nevermind your dry jokes,” Nestor said impatiently. “You are alive, and not crushed and wandering as a spirit. You entered this domain intact, because Tiamat must have wanted it.”

“You are saying she let me in?”

“Have you ever entered a spiritual domain unwanted?” Nestor asked.

“Yes,” I said immediately. “A distinctly unpleasant experience.”

“Quite,” Nestor said. “And yet here you are, roaming freely. Not stripped of your flesh, not driven to madness.”

“What are you saying?” I asked.

“You body and soul are intact, because Tiamat, in a moment of lucidity, wanted it. It is in pain and confusion, as we all are. Maybe it… was already impressed by you. Who are you? Some great sorcerer of great repute? But you are so young…”

“I’m just a guy who got lucky a few times,” I said.

Nestor chuckled. “How many times must one get lucky, before it stops being luck?”

“That’s one for you Scholars to crack,” I said with a wry smile. “I’m more of a hands-on guy.”

I felt impatience in Nestor, so I asked one final question. “What should I do with her?”

“You have already done the first part, which is gain her attention. She has given you a chance. Next you must prove your strength. She will not accept anyone weak. If you can prove that, she will finally test your character.”

Nestor paused.

“Judging from my experience with you, I think you should worry more about strength. If you are as earnest with her as you have been with me, she will melt.”

“How do you know that?”

“I am one of the ones tangled with her. I sense her mind. I can understand why you intrigue her.”

I felt vaguely uncomfortable being on the radar of an ancient primordial spirit of the sea, but I guess this was my life now. Nestor was getting increasingly impatient and twitchy. I was ready to move on.

“Please,” he said.

I pressed my force of will on him, and started to scatter him.

“Thank you…” Nestor said solemnly. “You might not be a Scholar, but you have the mind for it. I can tell. It was… pleasant to have such a conversation with an inquisitive mind before my end. Thank you for ending this madness.”

Nestor sighed, and sent a final pulse of gratitude towards me. Then he was gone. The bones rattled softly on the ground one final time, as Nestor passed from this world like a warm gust of wind.

I carried forward. The next room was full of lesser spirits. Dozens and dozens of them. If I didn’t have my particular set of abilities, they would have swarmed on me like angry hornets. But with Spiritual Presence, I overpowered them all. They were all so individually weak, that I could suppress them all simultaneously. I was getting pretty good at exerting my will like this. The little spirits raged under the weight of my will, and there was nothing lucid left in them. I released them from their madness and their essence scattered.

Then I faced another room with greater spirits, and they took the form of ship wreckage and bones again, and I had a pretty tough battle with them. One of them became a snake made of bones that slithered quickly on the floor, whereas the second was one of those jellyfish things. They came at me from above and below, and I had to move around a lot, but ultimately I overpowered them with my magic, and managed to scatter their weakened spirits. During all of this intense use of magic, I even gained a level.

[Mana Transmutation level 16!]

[+2 Magic Power]

[+2 Mana Flow]

Then I moved further down into the spiritual domain. I entered a complete darkness, and I heard something faint and rhythmic in the distance. It had the frequency of a heartbeat, but it sounded like the ocean’s waves. I used a flashlight cantrip, but to my surprise it illuminated absolutely nothing. There were no shapes in the darkness.There was a seabreeze that tasted like salt and adventure. I carried on in this strange darkness, and soon I felt a discordant presence made of a cacophony of spirits. A blue luminescent light alit a cavern that was shaped like a tower. I looked up and saw the height was incomprehensible. It went on for miles upwards. 

It had to. To accommodate what must have been Tiamat.

The blue light was emanating from her. She was a massive sea serpent of incomprehensible size. Beautiful, majestic and fierce. She breathed through her gargantuan snout, and it was the sound of ocean waves. She was curled up into a ball, and the tip of her tail had a fin that glittered with blue light. Her scales were pristine white and sapphire blue and they emanated a spiritual force that was simply terrifying.

But she was asleep and peaceful. There was a certain emptiness inside her that I found peaceful.

But soon I felt another presence. Discordant, violent, chaotic and wild. I looked towards the other end of the cavern. A giant dragon of mismatched bones stared at me, and I could feel a pulse of lustful hunger for violence mixed with an insistent madness staring down at me. 

Then the bone dragon drew in a breath, and shot a torrent of scalding water at me.