Artorian gritted his teeth. There was no point in quipping back. Her eyes were closed and she was ‘gone.’ As much as she could be. Cheeky brat. He rubbed at his face, and closed his eyes to look for the available body. Given it was best to take lessons from important parts of history, what was the right question here? Not ‘where is the body’ but rather ‘how do I find the body.’ That one he could do.
Funneling Mana into his Law, he tried something different and directed the flow towards himself. He needed to see his own connections, rather than someone else’s. His bonfire room exploded with lines, patterns, and pieces of people. Chunks of memories played, organized themselves, and neatly folded together in orderly rows. Well, well. Looked like he could locate Scilla. Now that was interesting.
According to this odd mishap of a map he was looking at, she was wherever he was. Though that was perhaps because he was in the Silverwood Core. Next he saw strong, direct lines to all his chosen. A glance in their direction let him get a general feeling for what they were up to. Well, that was neat!
Zelia was yelling at someone. Halcyon was asleep, and Yuki was… Was Yuki destroying scores of Beasts coming out of a lake with ice bolts? Hmm. Seemed like it. Best not to interrupt then. His attention moved to his family, and the bright lines turned blurry gray. Those all connected to memory Cores. That was definitely going to be one of the regrets. He had already dallied far too long with decanting them, and finding reasons to wait longer didn’t sit well. “One day, my sweets. One day.”
Odd. One of his chosen lines was also blurry gray. “Oh. Looks like Vol was stored. Wonder how that happened.”
Just thinking of the question must have satisfied some condition, as Artorian became privy to the last five seconds of Vol’s life. The hungry boy had charged at a fracture made of thin wiring, and… yup. It shattered him when he bit into it. Classic Voltekka.
Closing that visual, he followed more of the bright lines. Dawn! Oh, well, hello. Where might this be? How interesting. He’d never known this pleasant little location to exist before. Cal’s private, special workroom was in Hel’s core? Tatum seemed to be there as well. He supposed it explained why Hel was so insanely oversized. It overshadowed Jotunheim, and that realm wasn’t even round. He could sneak in on them… but a faint ethereal glint caught his attention.
In Cal’s workroom, one of the warehouses had… Aha! The Long! Found you! Artorian rubbed his hands together, and focused purely on that connection as the rest of them fell away. He wondered for a moment how to get there, but changed his question to a statement. From ‘how do I get there’ to ‘I’m going there.’ Will to action! His consciousness shot from his Silverwood Core straight to the longest of noodles.
Stirring in the small confines of the warehouse, which was really just a carved-out rectangle in solid… What was this stuff? He thought of the words ‘corrupted concrete’ but didn’t know what that meant. It didn’t matter. There didn’t appear to be a door, just an open space that led to an unlit hallway. So now it was just a matter of figuring out where his face was.
Puzzling that out was as strange as one might expect. All his movement was Long-like, rather than human-like. The limbs… helped? Sure. In a kind of whine-while-agreeing way. Aha! Found the face. Now what?
He laid in the storage room for a while, just trying to get used to the feeling. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t clicking for him. He may have done this before, but it was like he was a human-sized thing operating a body that was otherworldly in size difference alone.
Artorian was approaching this incorrectly. He was trying to fit his existing self into a form that wasn’t an appropriate fit, then expecting that form to smoothly function as intended anyway. That was the bottom-up method. He sucked at the bottom-up method. What was he doing? He was the big ideas first guy! So. Big ideas!
Did the Long need to be the entity that was larger? What about flipping the script? Artorian had a grand thought, and bloomed out his Presence. With Cal unconscious, perhaps he could take over some of the space, rather than just reform his Aura? Yes! Success!
His Presence filled the entirety of the workroom, and now it was the Long that was tiny! Ha! This was just like what he’d done while stuck in The Between. Except as a rectangle instead of a sphere. Eh. Potayto potahto. Still, the experience was liberating. Akin to finally taking off a confining suit.
After a breath of relief, he collapsed himself around the form of the dragon. He didn’t know how long he spent painstakingly re-molding himself so he and the form were a custom-tailored fit. It was important to get this right, since this was his only body. He couldn’t afford to play it fast and loose with his backup chance. If he lost the Long as well, he really would be stuck until Cal was back. Unacceptable! He may not like it, but he was going to flawlessly meld with the dragon’s frame. Cost be abyssed!
By the time he could flex his claws, he could also roll his shoulders, and feel the sensation of pressure to his scales just as clearly as if a leaf was pressing onto his skin. The Mana-form body had been too solid, rigid, and stale with its senses. The Incarnate version, on the other hand, was fantastic for haptic feedback. He no longer felt like he needed to completely rely on water pressure just to gain a sensation of what was where.
With his Presence cleanly molded to the Long’s shape, he could even make proper facial motions after a few tries. The Incarnate form added new muscles according to his mobility needs. He loved it. So much more responsive and reactionary! ‘More complicated’ must have meant ‘more adaptive.’
Sending a shake from his neck all the way to the very tip of his tail, he was pleased with the progress. “That’s full dexterity. Feels nice and natural.”
His voice didn’t boom when he spoke. He only realized after that it hadn’t. So this form didn’t wreck that for him either? Such convenience! A little deep and gravely, but not bad for his first attempt at speech. He wouldn’t break the environment just by talking. Big plus.
He tested his Law connections, and found that he would have no issues teleporting. Great! Now why had it been blocked off beforehand? He wasn’t certain, but he had a gut feeling that infernal goose had prevented it somehow.
Could he hover? A quick test said yes. As a bonus, due to his Presence controlling the hover, he didn’t bash into the ceiling or fly several miles up into the sky like last time. Honestly, did they think flailing around in this thing and being a flag was fun? It wasn’t! Being stuck in a body that disagreed with you was anything but a good time. Hmmm. He was likely not the only person that felt that way. Perhaps once back in Eternium, he could make some of these quests to do something about it? Yes. That sounded nice.
Arrive with poor eyesight? Have a quest to set it to the average instead. Don’t like something about your body? A quest to customize it sounded fair. Just like he’d just done with the Long form. An excellent series of ideas! Let people be who they want to be. All for it. In the event there ever were new people. Maybe skip the quest entirely and let people change how they begin? He’d put that on the backburner for when he could do something about it.
First. Taking stock.
Artorian couldn’t reach his chin with his physical hand, so he formed an extra light-construct arm near his neck to scritch at it instead. “What’s my to-do list? Let’s see. I’m not getting the iridium back from Wagner. I’m just not. Visiting Hel at all is a one-way ticket to nowhere. Crossing that off. Realm checks are going to be fruitless for me. While I’m this big, I can’t fit in person-sized places. With my tenuous grasp on dragonflight, I’m just going to accidentally bump into a wire tear and get shattered. No good, plus others are on it.”
He performed a silent barrel roll in slow motion, and continued musing. “What about this Barry fellow? Is he actually stuck in Eternium, or was he in the Soul Space? I’m having severe trouble recalling. My Silverwood Core connection must be hampered. Actually, that needs to go on the list; my connection has to be solid. I need to check myself before the event where I wre
ck myself.”
He added it to his temporary to-do list. “Barry himself was an Incarnate. So that’s outside of my scope. Was he the one blamed with being responsible for demons? No, that was Eternium. Barry was… doing something with them. Talking? Influencing? Something. Either way, demons are back, and that’s a big no-no. Demons I can do something about, so that goes on the list. I need to find out how they are getting into the Soul Space, since they were certainly stuck in Eternium. Plus how they managed to use my beacon network.”
A thought struck Artorian. “Those are probably directly connected. Yes. It’s such an obvious link. So what to do… do I just go play exterminator? A little dangerous in a brand-new body that I’m not in the slightest accustomed to. Still, it should probably go on the list. That’s my vendetta.”
Adding it to the list, he figured it best to start with safety measures. Let’s check if forum connections functioned.
Her voice was as surprised as it was elated.
Warmth returned on their connection.
Shaking himself from the distraction, he addressed his needs directly.
Zelia’s reply took a little long, but she grumbled when the answer came.
Artorian resigned himself, but remained stalwart.
Zelia was happy to oblige.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
*Zwip*.
Artorian’s outcry cheered loud and proud when he appeared in the sky above Niflheim. The Long-form uncoiled from itself, having fumbled together into the equivalent of a ball of yarn. He extracted himself from the tangle, clouds of fog pouring from his back as he stretched with regained freedom.
Zelia cleared her throat in their connection.
The dragon coughed at the sudden embarrassment, steadying himself with a throat-clearing grunt. Like he was trying to play it off.
*Mhm*. Her tone was flat. Amused, but flat.
Artorian coiled through the sky. Straightening himself out while cloud-swimming along.
Zelia was appreciative, but she had more questions.
Artorian wiggled his tail. So quaint!
Zelia sighed with relief.
Artorian understood, feeling apologetic as he knew how he could get when chasing after a theorem.
After confirmation that she would do so, Zelia closed the conversation. Exhausted. Good Great Spirit, her Dreamer could ta~a~alk. Not wanting to use her voice again for at least a year, she flopped face-first into a pile of pillows next to Halcyon. When one of her spiderlings rudely came to prompt her, her only reply was a dejected groan. It was not time to get back up yet.
Not after that slog.
Artorian felt a little bad. He’d needed lecture after lecture to get this far. Teleportation was complicated! Still, the hurdle was jumped. Time for the next problem. Where the heck was his Core?
Turned out, his Core was easy to find. Shifting from hovering, he flew right towards it in a serpentine pattern before he realized he’d made a grievous mistake. Compounding this newfound fun, he was intercepted before he arrived at the Silverwood Tree.
Marie jumped in the way of the wailing noodle that beelined it towards her charge. The Queen’s halberd and regal armor shone bright, the effects of both fully active as she planned to rebuke the creature like some common monster. Which is exactly what she saw Artorian as before the wailing turned into words. “Marie! Good to see you! Catch me!”
Rather than hack the falling creature in twain, Marie blinked under the helmet when her senses registered the call. It was the understanding bit that held up the queue. She hiccupped in disbelief. “Administrator?”
“Catch me~e~e, I don’t know how to sto~o~op.” Artorian flailed his dragon arms, but it was to no avail. Flight and hover were vastly different animals. While hovering was manageable, flight interacted with the Runescripting on his bones. Those sneaky buggers functioned all on their own! Unfortunately, that meant he didn’t know how to properly control them.
Marie caught him alright.
Funneling Mana to her Law of Glory, she dropped her halberd and swept her arms out to the sides. Her feet set against the air as if planted on the sturdiest of stone, and a powerful radiance spread from her form. It looked similar to when his Aura expanded to make a light construct of himself. The larger form he used to hug the tall ones.
Marie instead grew considerably larger herself. French horns blared to orchestral life in the background as the boat-sized Queen caught him without moving a hair. He bashed right into her armored chest, half-crumpling into a noodly pile. Thank Cal for sturdy plating! *Oof*! “Got you!”
“Administrator! Why are you a… this?” Squeezing him by the face, she pushed him away so she could inspect him properly through her helmet. The strength of the push caused the rest of his body to fly outwards. Making it clear just how poor his flight control was. “Do… do you maybe need someth
ing to hold on to?”
Artorian sighed, mumbling with muted tones while his cheeks were held. “Yeah… Just don’t call me a flag…”
Marie snorted out a laugh, extending a hand to the ground. Her halberd stirred, shooting skyward from where it had landed. The weapon cut swaths through the air as it spun, whirling right up into her waiting grasp. She turned it upside down, holding the halberd right above the sharp and pointy bit to allow Artorian a handhold on what was ordinarily the bottom of the pole. Sure enough, the Long mark three looked like a wavy flag. One fantastic at complaining. “I’m going to figure this out. I will! In the meanwhile, I will just have to learn to deal with all that infernal giggling!”
*Pfffbrlt*. Marie pressed a hand to her helmet. It did nothing to help stifle the continued snorts and spouts of giggling. This was just so funny to her. She tried to speak through her amusement. “First you show up as a twelve-year-old. Now you’re in this noodle form again. Honestly, I should have this sight painted, and then embroidered as my Queendom’s heraldry.”
“Don’t you dare.” Artorian glared at her with his puffed-up, leery dragon face. However, since he was holding onto the halberd with both his arms while also being somewhat coiled around for proper grip, he couldn’t really stop her. Not without letting go. Artorian couldn’t even alter his Aura or Presence! If he did, it would destabilize the form he was inhabiting. So Artorian had to just hang in there and bear with it while Marie suffered another giggle fit.
*Ha~aha~aaah*. “Oh, that was good. Well. Since you’re here. Come meet the Wisps. I’m guessing you’re here for your Core? I’m handling it. Chandra has been feeding me instructions, and she’s coming herself when able. There’s a few nasty tears through the tree, but nothing we can’t heal or salvage save for the tar streaks around Eternium. The Wisps have been our saving grace. Without them, we would have lost Odin. Hang tight. I’m going down.”
Anima: A Divine Dungeon Series (Artorian's Archives Book 6) Page 31