Chapter 4

  Wherever the soul of man is, there is his true home.

  -Cicero, paraphrased.

  I drew in half a breath and couldn’t pull more into my lungs. I didn’t know where I was, what was going on, or why I couldn’t breathe. The fit of coughing that struck me next hurt. My lungs ejected blood and mucus in quantities that shouldn’t have fit inside my lungs. I tried to move, but a large hand wrapped around my upper arm, and another slapped me on the back half a dozen times.

  I got in another half breath and started another round of coughing up things that should not have been in my lungs. Bone chips and something that may or may not have been part of whatever I’d eaten for breakfast followed the blood and mucus onto the ground between my knees.

  A deep voice with that held fear and relief in equal measure accompanied the sharp slaps to my back, “Thank the Crown, boy, I thought you were dead for sure. My marns got you good. You know Donny doesn’t like you much, and if he goes after you, so will Coo.”

  A third breath in and this time my lungs filled at least three-fourths of the way before the coughing struck. Impossibly, more material joined the previous effluent and splashed onto the sawdust covered ground. One final cough and what looked like a piece of my actual lung plopped down with a wet splash.

  I looked up at the animals as memories, not my own but those of Dean Oketani, rushed into my mind. The one on the left, Donny, gave me a side eyed look that promised more violence. My interface provided me with information that I already knew thank’s to Dead Dean’s memories.

  Marnoch- a.k.a. Marn. A draft animal with draconian heritage. Generally docile, friendly, and easy to handle. Donny hates you, little gremlin. You should pet him again.

  I blinked and read the text a second time. I didn’t know what to make of it, but getting in a full breath of air and clearing my lungs had a higher priority. The next breath in filled my lungs entirely and triggered another coughing fit. More pieces of lung tissue hit the pile and then my stomach emptied itself on top. I knew there were things in there that should never have been in my stomach. I heaved until my stomach emptied at least three times the volume I thought it could hold, then the heaves turned to painful cramps.

  I sat panting and finally noticed the crowd around me, a dozen people, every one of them with the Oketani surname. Their names jumped into my interface and into my head from Dead Dean’s memory. Fergus, the large man who held me and slapped my back, finally stopped and let me go. I flopped backwards, my head hit the ground, and my vision started to go black.

  A woman’s voice from the crowd pulled me back to full awareness, “Fergus, watch what you’re doing.” Her almost shrill tone cut through the static in my head.

  “If he survived what he just survived, a thump to his fool head isn’t going to hurt him, éabha,” Fergus’ calm voice answered. “I healed him, didn’t I?” The way he pronounced her name, a slightly prolonged ay followed by a quick -va, sent me back to my childhood on Earth. Irish mother and a Japanese father. There were stranger mixed heritages out there, but it looked as if I’d landed in an entire kingdom of the same. Dead Dean’s memory informed me that most of Virelion, billions of people, shared this odd mix, though he didn’t understand what Irish or Japanese might be. This was just his normal world.

  I tried to speak, but nothing coherent escaped my lips. The crowd all looked at me with various degrees of concern and amusement.

  “He wasn’t that smart to begin with,” éabha said, “and we all saw his brains leaking out under that cart Fergus, it’s a miracle under the Crown that you managed to heal him with that basic heal of yours. More useful for livestock than people. Best not let him hit his head again until a real healer gets here.”

  Seeing so many people with features and names like my own helped calm my racing mind, right until I turned my head to the left and caught sight of the retaining wall in the distance. The massive structure, even from this distance, filled at least fifteen percent of the view from the ground to the sun overhead. In Dead Dean’s memories, the sight wasn’t anything special, just a thing in his day-to-day life that he knew but ignored. Marnochs hate me, water is wet, the Aurawall blocks out a part of the sky. It mesmerized me. I looked up into the daytime sky and saw the ribbons of the other three rings inside this one at different angles to the central star. The star in question, Aurelium, burned a bright yellow white. Slightly different from Earth’s Sol, brighter and slightly less yellow. My memory, not Dead Dean’s, supplied details about the size and luminosity of main sequence stars. I guessed this one to be about twice as massive as Sol, with the corresponding increase in size. My interface automatically dimmed the light when my eyes tracked across from one of the rings towards the star.

  Aurelium- Don’t stare into the sun, gremlin, it might strike you blind. Aurelium is a main sequence star with a mass of, well, it’s impolite to discuss a girl’s weight, that burns a perfect and beautiful bright yellow white. Bask in her radiance while you can.

  The message faded as my gaze tracked across the sky and back down to the mound of effluent and sawdust between my knees. I didn’t know what to think of the messages, but my presence here clearly annoyed someone. I pushed myself up on my elbows and tried to scoot back from the mess.

  éabha waved a hand towards me and a small gem on her glove launched a wave of gentle white light towards and over me. The disproportionately large mass of effluent from my stomach and lungs disappeared, and the light caused a tingling sensation when it passed over me. She waved it over me another three times and when the light faded; I felt freshly showered, and my shredded clothes sewed themselves back together. Dead Dean’s memory kicked in, and my interface highlighted several things.

  éabha Oketani- It’s pronounced AY-va, gremlin. éabha is your first cousin, so don’t be a creep. She’s also fifty spins older than your sixteen spins. She’s young, successful, an accomplished fighter, and oversees several of the clan’s sawmills. She’s your boss.

  The object on her gauntlet drew my attention next.

  Caster- A valuable utility item. A caster allows its wielder to use a wide variety of spells via spell shards. Simple to operate, once a shard is slotted the user provides mana and the slotted spell is cast. A caster can draw mana from the user, or a provided mana stone. éabha’s caster can hold five shards, same as the one in your inventory. She used clean and repair on you, gremlin. Be polite and thank her.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  I tried to sit all the way up and speak, but all I managed was a weak flop and a croak. My vocal cords didn’t feel like they were arranged correctly in my neck, nor did my vertebrae.

  éabha rolled her eyes. “Just shut up and lay still, idiot.” She popped a small dull stone out of her caster and replaced it with a small glowing white stone. “You owe me a shard, Dean.” Her tone betrayed concern. As my boss she would need to reprimand me, as my cousin who genuinely cared for me, Dead Dean’s memory informed me he looked up to éabha as a big sister and she thought of him as a slightly annoying younger brother, she was happy and relieved I wasn’t dead.

  Another memory from Dead Dean let me know a shard was a denomination of the local currency. I earned five shards a day for my work at the mill. A mana shard sat between a mana glint and a mana stone. A glint held one point of mana, shards held ten points, and mana stones held one hundred points. The denominations scaled up three more times: mana core, mana heart, and mana crown. After mana stones came mythical Aurelium coins, Dean had never seen one, though. The smallest denomination held the same value as a mana crown.

  She flicked the dull shard at me. It hit me in the forehead and fell into my lap. I took the dull shard and held it up to my eye. It looked like a small glass coin with a sword on one side and a shield on the other, etched into the crystal. The Oketani clan name repeated around the edge of the coin, on both sides, several times.

  “It’s a spent shard, idiot. Just relax, a healer will be here in a minute. Fergus saved your life, but I can see without using inspect that some of your parts are not arranged correctly.”

  “Well, he’s not dead, is he?” Fergus asked, his deep, calm voice more amused than annoyed. “Enjoy this brief time where he can’t talk your ears off, éabha.” He stood from where he knelt and walked over to his two monstrous marnochs and began inspecting them and the cart for any damage.

  I closed my hand around the spent shard and sent it into my inventory. I hadn’t, until that exact moment, realized I had an inventory. I felt amusement from Dead Dean’s memories. I had one hundred cubic feet of extra dimensional storage space where time did not pass. His memories informed me that enchanted devices with larger capacity existed, with a variety of abilities and effects. Very expensive enchanted devices. I browsed through the contents of my storage space and found it surprisingly neat and organized. A sword, shield, and some basic armor in Oketani colors. Dean’s memories filled in details. The armor and shield were issued to him after he recently completed the Landwarden’s militia training. Four weeks of an accelerated boot camp, a mandatory event for everyone when they hit sixteen spins of the ring. Enough food and water for a month, several tools that might be useful in a forest, his personal caster with six spell shards. I smiled when I saw he had his own clean and repair shards, along with sharpen, heal, flame, and light.

  His caster looked like a pair of red lensed sunglasses; the spell shards loaded into the arms like gems. It leaned towards gaudy for my taste, but Dean had cherished it. A gift from his older brother on his fifteenth birthday. I’d been in this body for maybe ten minutes now and I’d integrated enough of Dean’s memories that I’d stopped calling him Dead Dean in my head. I looked up at his cousin and felt a warm affection for her. Dean and I were merging, and I didn’t know how to feel about it.

  My new inventory also held a stack of paper notes. I browsed through them quickly. Love notes from a girl he met at the Landwarden’s boot camp, Maeve Sakaya. The Sakaya clan specialized in brewing and distilling. Their mana infused spirits were known throughout Virelion and several of the neighboring kingdoms. Dean felt a strong attachment to this girl, and now so did I. I was not prepared to deal with the volatility of teenage hormones and emotions.

  The sword in my inventory did not trigger any of Dean’s memories. I started to examine it when a buzz and three loud snaps broke the almost silence around me. When I focused on where the sound came from, ten feet to my left, three people who hadn’t been there a moment ago stood and assessed the situation.

  One of them, a young woman, spotted me on the ground and rushed over. My interface tagged her.

  Gráinne Oketani- GRAWN-ya. She’s your mother, gremlin. Well, the mother of the body you’ve stolen. Be kind, show respect. She loves you dearly and is a well respected and high ranked member of the Oketani Clan.

  The woman, Dean’s mother, knelt and almost crashed into me when she pulled me into a tight hug. Dean’s memories and emotions overwhelmed me for a second and I returned the embrace.

  When she released me, she turned an angry glare towards éabha and Fergus. I grabbed her wrist and shook my head. With my other hand, I motioned towards my neck and tried to speak. Nothing but a slight croak emerged.

  She took my face in both hands and I felt her inspect power run through me. A real version, not a spell shard version, of the power. One linked to a stat and aspect. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t have resisted her.

  “Dean, what under the Crown happened here? éabha?”

  éabha gave a cupped fist bow. My mother oversaw the clan’s lumber yards in Dunhollow Reach, éabha’s boss, “Chief. The marnochs got him. The big one, Donny, has a real dislike for Dean. Fergus pulled him out from under their paws and healed him. Basic heal is all he has.”

  Fergus had moved back to us and gave a short bow. “Chief. I don’t think he’d have lived if I’d waited for the healers to get here. I didn’t get all his parts back in the right places. My apologies.” He bowed again, deeper this time.

  My mother stood and returned their bows. “You saved my son’s life, Fergus. Do not apologize.” She turned to the healer who’d been extracting information about me with his own abilities while the conversation went on, “Healer Iyashi?”

  The healer, one whom Dean had visited many times in his brief sixteen spins, smiled and nodded. “Nothing to worry about, Chief. I’ll have him patched up in a blink.”

  I followed Dean’s lead and from my seated position, I gave the healer a deep bow over my own cupped fist.

  He looked back at the third person who’d teleported in with my mother. “Attend, apprentice. We’re going to see this type of injury frequently in beast waves or dungeon breaks. All members of the militia have a basic heal, courtesy of the Landwarden, as you know. It functions perfectly well for minor injuries and as an emergency measure for serious wounds. Without dedicated training in the healing arts, you get situations like this. Alive, but not everything connected the way it should be.”

  “Yes, Master. I see,” she said. “What’s wrong with his status? Everything looks scrambled.”

  “Yes, Róisín. We see this with injuries to the head. More often, if the injury is from something that can damage the soul.”

  He reached into his inventory and handed me a small vial. “Drink this. What comes next is going to be uncomfortable. Fergus did okay with most of your bones, but a couple of your ribs are still inside a lung, your vocal cords not connected to your airway, part of your skull is angled into your brain, that’s probably why your status is corrupted, and both of your kidneys are crowded together on the left side. Some of your small intestine is looped around your liver, too. That and a few other minor things. Old Donny really got a piece of you, boy. It’s a genuine miracle under the Crown that Fergus could save your life.”

  I shrugged and examined the vial he gave me.

  Nocleaf Extract- A powerful anesthetic. A kindness you don’t deserve, gremlin.

  I flipped the stopper out of the vial and downed it in one gulp. My vision faded quickly to black, and I knew nothing more.