Chapter 39: Negotiation

  "Let me get this straight," Alex said, staring at the glowing, faintly pulsing stone cradled in his dirt-caked palm. "You advised a soul-eating psychopath, she died, and now you want to help me?"

  The rock was silent for a moment, if rocks could be silent in a pointed way. Then, with a smooth, vague accent and the confident tone of someone who had absolutely no shame, it spoke.

  "Technically, yes. But she had excellent taste in runes." The rock pulsed slightly in Alex’s hand as it spoke, even though the words were in his head instead of out loud.

  Alex blinked. "Did you just compliment a crazed lunatic?"

  "Not her personality. Just her [Glyphcraft] penmanship."

  He rubbed a hand over his face, smearing ash across his cheekbone. The glyph-scarred altar still smoldered behind him, its runic channels scorched into smoldering glass in some places. The scent of ozone and burnt blood still clung to the inside of his nose. The fragments of stone crunched underfoot as he walked around the center of the ritual, or what was left of it.

  Alex could remember the feeling of all the aether thrumming through his body. The hum of energy coursing through his core, his body gate. Then the pain inside his soulspace as his core shattered into pieces… and now.

  He had no mage core. No connection to his aether, nor a path forward.

  The only thing he had was this sarcastic, glowing rock with a morally questionable resume. And, what sounded suspiciously like, a British accent.

  "Okay," Alex said, more to himself than the rock. "I’ve lost my squad, my magic, and my last shot at stable sanity. So sure. Why not take career advice from a talking pebble that used to work for an insane lizard-shaman."

  "Advisor. Not employee. I’m freelance."

  "Oh, that makes it so much better."

  He sat down hard on the stone platform, dust wafting around him. The cave walls seemed to press in at the edges of Alex’s vision. It was unnervingly quiet. He didn’t hear the ambient sound of scratching animals, and no wind. Just the faint sizzling of dead magic that still hung in the air.

  "You could try asking the important question, you know."

  Alex raised an eyebrow. "Which is?"

  "Why you’re still alive."

  He stared down at the stone. For a long beat, nothing moved. Then slowly, Alex set it down on the ground in front of him, leaning in close.

  "...Okay. Why am I still alive?"

  "Because Doudra was trying to drain your soul, not destroy it. She wanted to pull all the aether from your core, and then suck down your soulspace along with it. Then you used that condensing item, setting a feedback loop of energy, with yourself as the focal point. Your mage core couldn’t handle the stress, but somehow, the rest of you did… Sorta. You’re still here. But you’re different now."

  Alex narrowed his eyes. "Different how?"

  "Ask me again when I’ve finished scanning whatever fragmented mess this is that you call a soul and body."

  "What?" Alex stood up now and loomed over the little rock. “I didn’t agree that you can scan me. I knew I couldn’t trust your ass, alright I’m just burying you.

  "Wait, wait. I’m not doing anything in an ominous way, okay. You connected to me with your aether, so you chose this.”

  "I didn’t choose anything."

  The rock pulsed again, slightly warmer this time. Not threatening, just… alert. Aware. And maybe, just maybe, something else too. "We’re bound now, you and I. A symbiotic tether, a nested arcane link. Actually it might be more like a partially fractured soul imprint. Regardless, I can monitor your health, vitals, and all that. I can also check the surface impression of your soul, to make sure nothing is messing with that. Spirit attacking spells, poison or what not. The usual."

  "The usual?!" Alex had heard enough by now, he bent to pick up the stone.

  "You have questions. I have answers. And if you want to walk again among the mages of this world, you're going to need more than a pity story and sharp sticks."

  Alex paused.

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  "You're going to need me."

  Alex stared into the pulsing glow for several long seconds. Then he sighed, raked his hands through his filthy hair, and picked the rock back up in his hand. He knew it was a bad idea, he knew this thing was probably going to be the death of him at some point. It was in all the fantasy novels he had read back home on earth.

  At the same time though, Alex knew that in those books, the sentient inanimate object had a buttload of knowledge that was useful. Such as glyphcrafting, apparently. Not to mention whatever this real-time health monitoring it was talking about now.

  "Alright then," Alex said. "Tell me about this connection, what can you do?”

  “Oh lots and lots. If you count looking at everything you do as lots. You connected me to your soulspace, so I’m almost a piece of your soul now, but separate. Besides all the stuff I said before, I can key into your senses to see and hear what you do. Monitor your aether usage, and teach you all sorts of things. Like I taught Doudra stuff.”

  “You’re a magic brain parasite, got it.” Alex looked around the cave, noting the various passages. He had no clue which one led back out into the forest. Or where in the forest he would be. “How about, for now, you teach me the way out of this place. Sound good to you?”

  “The passage over there,” A particular opening on the cavern was highlighted in Alex’s vision. “Follow it, then take your first right, and you will exit the cavern.”

  So it turned out one of the options the rock could provide was essentially an interactive display, or at least something close to it. All this information was unsettling for Alex, especially the whole having access to his senses part. Could that mean the rock could eventually access my brain and read all my memories.

  It was a thought Alex had, but one he pushed away quickly in order to not give the creepy little stone some ideas to fuck with him.

  “Alright, thanks… uh, what do I call you? Rock?”

  ***

  “ Okay, I’ve decided, you can call me Rune! No wait, Obsidian! Obsidian is cool right? Yeah I like that. ”

  “I’m not calling you obsidian. That’s dumb.” Alex walked through the forest confidently as he talked with the stone.

  He got the stone to tell him his relative position to his team’s old camp, then started heading that way, due what he understood as northwest. While Alex wanted to go straight for the kobold village and his friends right away, there was still the issue of his broken core, having no gear, or food. He needed to resupply himself first.

  From what the rock said, his friends wouldn’t be in any physical danger being held by the kobolds. Doudra may have been crazy with a wild ambition, but the other kobolds were not. If they had his friends, they would want to use them as work labor, not kill them.

  So Alex had time to prepare himself to break them free. And he would need every hour of it. He didn’t think he could kill a whole village of Kobolds by himself, at least not as he was right now.

  “Obsidian is a perfectly fine name, I don’t know why you fight me so much. Doudra would have never treated me like this. “

  “How do you not even know your name though?” Alex still wasn’t sure if this item was a creation of The System, or crafted by some powerful mage and then lost, forgotten. Doudra certainly didn’t make the thing if it was teaching her about glyphs and not the other way around. “How old are you? Were you always an item? A rock? How long have you been stuck like… this?”

  "Hard to say. I can’t remember much of anything to suggest I wasn’t always just a dazzling handsome rock. Though, subjective time is tricky when you are just an anchored consciousness. Days? Decades? Eternity in a shoebox?"

  Alex frowned. “So you’re not just sentient, you’re... conscious?”

  "Most of the time. Occasionally I sleep. Or meditate. Or sulk. Depends on the company."

  Alex mentally rolled his eyes at that remark. He very much doubted that his company was at all worse than a mad kobold shaman. He didn’t smell like dirty lizard, first of all. Then Alex remembered he had just gone through three refinements and still hadn’t showered. He probably still reeked of ‘Demon-juice’.

  “Based on company? You were working with Doudra,” he said slowly. “You gave her crafting glyphs. Helped her set up a ritual to... suck out my soul?”

  "She asked the right questions. I gave her correct answers. That doesn’t make me responsible for her idiocy."

  “And now you’re stuck with me.”

  "A downgrade, but tolerable."

  “How am I, a downgrade?” Alex was starting to get a little peeved at being seen as inferior to a Kobold.

  “She had a higher wisdom stat. Remember how I said that I’m connected to your soulspace? The strength of that soulspace is determined by your wisdom stat. So, I now have subpar working conditions. ”

  “So the higher I increase my wisdom?”

  “The more help I am able to give you. I can process more information, and it lets me access higher level data. Such as glyphs, and system knowledge. So you worry less about your fleshy meat suit, and more about maybe getting that soulspace into better shape huh? ”

  “Then what? Are you are able to infuse yourself with me completely, attach yourself into my soul and posses my body? I don’t think so.” Alex pushed through the foliage, finding himself half stumbling into a semi-cleared area that looked rather familiar.

  Somehow, he had made it back to the area of the badger den. The two bodyguard badger corpses were still lying on the ground at the den entrance, mostly. They were half eaten by the badger warriors and small badgers that were still swarming around the elephant sized corpses.

  As Alex entered the area, nearly twenty pairs of eyes all turned towards him.

  “Ooooh, these guys seem to know you. Friends of yours?”