My Own True Calling 58 - Myself Again (Patreon)

It takes weeks for us to get back to anything approaching normal. Weeks during which we aren’t exactly bedridden—we’re physically quite healthy despite everything—but have precious little to do. Talla barely talks or eats when she’s conscious, though Allie makes a point of keeping her company as often as possible. The order to keep us away from sharp things means no spear practice—not that Vi’s up for it—and we can’t help with the usual chores like cooking and mending. Even Allie gets sick of nothing but gambling and laundry all day. Jira won’t even let us above deck until she’s confident that neither us nor Talla are going to throw ourselves overboard again.

What this ultimately means is that we’ve got a shitload of free time on our hands. Allie—bless her heart—is still trying to keep our daily rotations going, even to the point of proactively working out on Vi’s days. But she’s so bored that she barely uses more than a few hours before giving up her time to those of us with more motivation.

That is to say—Eve and me.

I don’t think she’d be willing to give up the vast majority of our waking—and sleeping—hours to us if not for the whole crushing depression thing, but I’m not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Actually, hold on, that makes it sound like I’m celebrating Allie’s suffering. I’m not—really! But having all this extra time to work on stuff is a real silver lining.

“Who are you trying to convince?” Evelyn asks me with an arch expression.

I flip her off without looking up from the [Astral Shaping] I’m working on.

“Quit reading my mind, bitch.”

“It’s our mind, and that’s the price we must pay to work within dreams.”

Except, conveniently, when she’s the one in front—which she almost always is unless there’s more of us in here. Hell, we didn’t even know it was possible for her to give up the front while [Dream Walking] until we tried it. I bet there’s all sorts of weird mental configurations we could take advantage of if we really put our minds to it.

“Blood and acid, stop snickering—that was terrible,” Eve chides me.

“Sh-shut up!”

I wasn’t giggling at my own bad puns, and you’ll never prove a thing.

To distract myself from Eve’s accusatory glare, I focus back on what I’m working on. Alas, my work here is somewhat dependent on my partner in crime, which means that she vetos anything truly inspirational because I’m still “suffering” from magical strain and “even more unhinged than usual.” Philistine.

Our first tests of [Astral Shaping] have gone quite well. Using what I’ve learned from research with Talla, studying my [Magdalena’s Metamagic] spell, and practicing with Eve and River, I’ve turned Evelyn’s sanctuary into a real construct resting on the foundation of the Alchemist’s curse.

It’s a bit a of a pain in the ass, because [Astral Shaping] creates a blessing attached to a person that gradually shapes magical mass. Working with only the spell, it would be kind of like planting seeds and watching them grow—which is cool, but painfully slow. So Eve and I have been hard at work figuring out shortcuts.

And shortcuts we have found. I’ve still never managed to completely unravel one of Engie’s skills, but I’m getting a lot better at finding cracks in the boxes and breaking down weak points in the walls. Right now, our work is primarily centered around the combo of three particular skills and one suspiciously convenient curse.

[Magdalena's Metamagic: Spreading Embers]

Grant a temporary blessing to a willing entity that allows you to spread a single self-affecting skill or spell to them.

Pretty much my magnum opus at the moment, and maybe the reason I was able to unlock [Eldritch Witch] despite Engie being a tight-fisted little bitch about it. On its own, it doesn’t do much to help us, but of course something called metamagic isn’t going to do much on its own. The loophole here is that it almost certainly wasn’t meant to be used on ourself.

After all, why bother giving ourselves a skill we already have? Hehehe.

[Dream Walking]

You remain aware while sleeping and may either control your dream or create a projection of reality within it.

Here’s where we start breaking things. After all, that’s not my skill, so I can’t give it to others with my spell, but Engie generally has a somewhat fuzzy view of whether we are one person or several. While I can’t just shove the skill into my spell, I can cast the spell, hold it, let Eve take the front and have her do it.

So now I’ve got [Dream Walking], but that doesn’t do much since we could already control dreams when Eve brings us into them with [Dream Guide] right? Wrong!

For one thing, I can use it to join the dream independently of Evelyn, freeing up one of her [Dream Guide] slots. For another, I can use it to create my own separate projection, and we can travel between each other’s projections. In other words, Eve and I each have our own dreams happening in parallel.

And all of that cool-ass shit is just a side product of the real benefit, which is that I can now spread [Dream Walking] through my metamagic spell. Yes, the same spell that’s giving me the skill in the first place. And who am I giving the skill to? Myself again, obviously.

More specifically, I’m giving a piece of the skill to a piece of myself. This is why it had to be me instead of just letting Evelyn do it directly. She doesn’t have the fine control over her magic or the willingness to flagrantly ignore the rules laid out by the skill descriptions.

The Alchemist’s curse? Obviously that’s me. It’s attached to my soul—part of our astral body. It’s “me” as much as any of my headmates, or Engie’s interface, or—and this is the real kicker—the skills provided by my blessing. See, it just writes those skills onto our interface, and as Talla discovered, those changes are permanent—they just get covered up later. So attaching the skill to the curse is just a matter of changing where the skill gets written. I’m not changing anything about the fundamental function of the spell, just twisting it a bit.

By that same logic, the constructs created with [Dream Walking] are part of the skill. Sure, they are also part of our subconscious, but the skill gives them magical form so that we can interact with them more viscerally in our fancy lucid dreams. Thusly, I can attach Evelyn’s dream sanctuary to the Alchemist’s curse.

But that’s not the end of it, because that sanctuary is still just a temporary construct created by the [Dream Walking] skill. Unless someone with the skill stays permanently unconscious to maintain it, the construct will vanish when we wake up. River volunteered, but it’s too awkward and fragile a setup—especially since I’d also have to maintain the metamagic spell forever.

That’s where the final piece of the puzzle comes in. None other than [Astral Shaping] itself. Instead of planting a seed, we’re transplanting the whole-ass tree, and by applying [Astral Shaping] to the construct that’s already there, we let it lay down roots.

I’m sure I make it sound easy, and for an amazing, talented, sexy, and humble witch such as myself, it’s not too bad, but none of these skills like what I’m trying to do with them. They fight me every step of the way, and nothing fights more than the last step. Anything that even starts to infringe on the interface in unplanned ways gets instantly shut down, and trying to apply this mad scheme directly to our own soul is...let’s just say uncomfortable.

The curse, though? I think it was made for this. The perfect fertile ground for the spell’s roots to latch onto. Did Al expect us to do this, or something like it? I don’t know, but thanks to the foundation he laid down for us, it’s way easier than it would have been otherwise.

And with the roots settled, the sanctuary is truly part of us. Doesn’t matter if we’re awake or asleep, or if we even have the skills that made it anymore. It’s just there. It’ll probably take some practice, but we should be able to visit it in our sleep without [Dream Walking] or even just by meditating. Making it easier to access is on the list, but as a proof of concept? I take a step back to admire my handiwork.

“Our handiwork,” Evelyn reminds me. “And it’s functionally identical to what we already had.”

“Don’t be a spoilsport,” I complain. “This is just the first step. We’ve proven that it works. All that’s left is to build the rest.”

She rolls her eyes. “Because it was so easy to get this far.”

“Yeah, exactly! So let’s get to it!”

“It’s like you’ve stolen all of Allie’s enthusiasm for yourself,” she grumbles. “I think I might actually prefer you when you’re grumpy.”

“Hey, c’mon, there’s no need to be hurtful.”

*

[Level up!]

Eldritch Witch has grown from level 4 to 6.

+6 Resilience.

+6 Awareness.

+12 Ego.

[Level up!]

Dreamwalker has grown from level 5 to 6.

+3 Awareness.

+3 Ego.

+6 Will.

I stare blankly at the words in my head, trying my best to muster up the energy to care. They’re leveling up—that’s good. They’re up to something, and Magdalena is leading the charge—that’s bad. I can acknowledge these things as true, but my mind refuses to be moved.

Something in me is broken. Magical strain has stripped my soul bare and scraped it raw, and while I understand that this condition is temporary, that too fails to move me.

How do I even describe it? “Magically induced depression” is too trite and reductive to encompass this feeling. It hurts so much that it stopped hurting, and somehow that just makes it worse. I don’t feel happy or sad or even bored. It’s a nothingness so complete that it’s not even neutral. It’s torture. I feel like I’m already dead, but my body just hasn’t realized it yet.

And the worst part is that it’s familiar. I’ve been here before. I know that it will end. And I know that I’ll return here again.

My headmates don’t understand—not even Allie, though she tries. I think Maggie might have an inkling, but she’s not in any condition to empathize. She’s busy anyway.

Yet, there is someone who gets it. Someone who knows what I mean when I say that I’d rather suffer a hundred years of endless pain than another second of nothing.

“It does get better, with more Will,” Talla whispers quietly. “Not by much, but it also helps prevent it from getting this bad in the first place.”

“You tried to warn us,” I mutter in response, leaning listlessly against the wall next to her bunk. “I should have listened. Or been more insistent. Did I even try to convince them? I can’t remember. I don’t care.”

She nods. “I did. But I knew you wouldn’t listen. Nobody does. It’s a lesson everyone has to learn the hard way.”

“I thought we had learned it.”

We had not. I can see that now. What would have happened to us if not for our unique resistance to strain? I’d probably be dead. Is that possible? Could I die and leave the rest without the need to carry my—

Talla flicks me in the head, interrupting my thoughts. “Stop that.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“I’ve still got an echo of you in my head,” she reminds me. “And I know you. You should be taking tinctures but...”

But we’ve already been overusing them, and we’re running low despite the huge supply the Alchemist left us. But it would run the risk of pushing Maggie over the edge of her current manic episode. But I don’t matter anyway—it would be a waste.

“Yeah...” I sigh.

“It’s still an option,” she insists. “If there’s an emergency or if you—if it gets really bad.”

“I’m not going to kill myself,” I assure her.

Talla grimaces. “I know you won’t, but it would be a lot more reassuring if I didn’t know exactly why.”

Because it would take the others with me. That’s not new, though. The silence between us grows long enough to be uncomfortable, and I try to fill it out of habit.

“How long until the strain wears off, do you think?”

She shrugs. “I’ve almost never gone this deep, and backlash from overusing tinctures is new to me. The fact that we’re having this conversation is a good start. We should recover before the end of the journey, at least.”

So up to another two months, give or take. I suppose I can handle that—not that I have a choice.