Chương 29: Chapter Twenty-Nine: Two Experiments

It was morning, and though the sun had not yet lit the canyon, a pale pink glow overhead let Hollis see well enough. He had hiked down to the place where he planned to grow his walking stick, with a goal for the day: to deplete his Spirit until he could feel it. He needed to feel the emptiness, the pain that was supposed to come. Tawny had told him that was the secret to learning how to manipulate your own Spirit.

It was hard to believe that somewhere inside him was a force that could give life to inanimate objects, even to dead things if the legends were to be believed. Could that power really rest invisibly within him? Breath, Blood, and Mind had been easy to manipulate. All he had to do was try, and it simply worked. Giving Breath was as easy as breathing; sure, it was deeper and more meaningful, but it hadn't taken long to figure out. Blood simply felt like flexing a muscle.

Mind was the most intuitive of all, as it only required him to think about what he wanted and focus on it, something he had practiced ever since trying to color in the lines in kindergarten. Spirit was an enigma. If he found out that Kaziers didn't actually have access to it, he would believe it. It was a blank space in his consciousness. All that was left was to harness it and put in the work. Then, he would have access to a world of possibilities.

The secret to his success, if he was to succeed, was his little glowbug friend. He could tell Willo what to do with his mind, but he still wanted to verbalize the instructions.

"I need you to create as many will o' the wisps as possible," he said.

"Fire them off like crazy. Same as you were doing with the bat last night. You can do that, right? You can power illusions with Spirit?" Willo flashed his yellow light, meaning "yes," as if this were nothing to him. That wasn't quite true. On the night Hollis had met him, the glowbug had nearly worn himself to death by the time the accord was struck that saved him. Now he flew around Hollis in circles as if warming up.

Pretty soon he began blasting illusory copies of himself out into the canyon with no particular target. They didn't look special at first glance. They simply looked like large fireflies, no different than Willo himself, but if you focused, you could see there was a little bit too much glow to them. Willo continued this for some time, and before long Hollis' Spirit Vital had begun to fall. Spirit ▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▱ [10/11] Still, he felt nothing.

He had been at nine the night before, and even that hadn't given him any physical sensation. He would have to go further. The problem was that simply creating copies wasn't enough. After thirty minutes, his Spirit seemed to be stuck. It wasn't going lower. Spirit ▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▱▱ [9/11] Perhaps there was a little more math under the hood for how Vitals were measured. It wasn't like emptying a gas tank.

Those first two pips seemed to be the easiest to get rid of, but after that, no matter how many times Willo created copies of himself fluttering around the canyon below, Hollis' Spirit never lowered. The illusions would simply flutter off into the distance and fade away in time for the next one to take their place. While Willo danced in the early morning light, Hollis felt useless as he sat in the grass and watched.

He worried about straining himself with cultivation or some other task; any pain or stress his body endured might make it harder to focus on the sensation of losing Spirit.

"How long can you make those copies last?" he asked. Willo blinked slowly as he thought. Then he sent an illusory copy of himself out into the canyon and let it fly in lazy circles on the wind. He strained to keep it from fading to fairy dust.

"Another," Hollis said. Willo seemed uncertain, but soon enough managed a second copy, which flew out to join the first, the two of them dancing around as if they had life of their own. Hollis sat and watched them. He could see that Willo was struggling to maintain whatever connection he had to them, but the critter dutifully continued. A third copy flew out and joined the other two, but as it did, Willo himself gently landed in the grass. The strain was not just spiritual for him. It was more than that.

The limitation, Hollis knew, might not be with Willo at all. The bug's ability to create copies of himself, Will o' the Wisp, scaled off Hollis' Storytelling skill, and he didn't know whether pure effort alone was enough for the bug to manage much when that level was only 2.

"Can you do that thing you've done before?" he asked.

"Where you turned your copies into other types of light?" Willo had four principal light-based abilities: Warning Beacon, Light Mimicry, Spotlight, and of course Will o' the Wisp. While Light Mimicry and Will o' the Wisp used Storytelling, Warning Beacon used Signaling, which was currently at level 3. Better than that, Spotlight used Investigation, which was at level 5. Hollis had observed that Willo could mix and match his abilities, creating will o' the wisps that were also light mimics or warning beacons.

So if his low Storytelling level was to blame for Willo's limited output, what if he could incorporate abilities that used other skills? Would that allow him to drain Hollis' Spirit faster? There was only one way to find out. It was still early, so the bottom of the canyon was dark. He couldn't even see what was going on down there for the most part, other than some whitecaps in a stretch of rapids in the river.

"All right, buddy," he said.

"Create a will o' the wisp copy, and then use your Spotlight ability through it so I can see down into the canyon." Willo allowed the copies he had made out in the open air to fade. While they had been successful in lowering Hollis' Spirit a bit, he needed more. Spirit ▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▱▱▱ [8/11] Willo created a new copy. This one was brighter than the others, and its light shone further, as the ability name Spotlight would indicate.

The illusion fluttered down into the canyon below, casting light on everything, magically allowing Hollis to see even at a great distance. He could see bugs on top of rocks. He could see the fish in the water. Anything the light of Spotlight touched had so much detail that it might as well have been within arm's reach. He could see a scar on a small snakehead lying on some rocks in a lazy part of the river.

The bright copy of Willo flew from place to place, allowing him to see inside the various crevices and tree canopies along the cliffs. It was immediately noticeable that his plan was working. His Spirit dropped to seven, and then not long after that to six, then five. It started dropping steadily after that. Spirit ▰▰▰▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱ [3/11] He picked Willo up and allowed him to rest on his finger as he looked out over the edge of the canyon.

While Hollis was willing to continue, and he was certain Willo wouldn't put up any complaints, he could tell the bug was struggling. His abilities were, for the most part, not meant to be used constantly like this. Spotlight was for a quick look around, and Will o' the Wisp was designed to create a fleeting distraction, not a sustained illusion.

"That's enough for today," he said. The sun was coming up further, and the light was reaching down into the canyon anyway. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. Willo allowed his Spotlight-imbued copy to fade into a thousand little sparks of light, and then nothing. Hollis lay down on the grass, focusing to feel any noticeable difference between having a full Spirit vital and having reduced it by almost half. Was there any difference? Did he feel pain? Not exactly.

But there was something mercurial and fleeting. He didn't feel physical pain, but there was a sensation in the depths of his soul. A waning of the will, so to speak. A hunger, almost, but not for food. For something more. For purpose. For certainty. For sustenance beyond the physical. It was as if whatever it was that made him Hollis Hood was lesser. Was it depression? Not exactly. He had felt depression in the years after his brother's death, and his father left, trying to salvage what remained of his family.

This was a listlessness that felt foreign. He couldn't tell if it was a presence that wasn't there before or an absence of something, like he had been scraped out with a spoon. He glanced over at the small mound of dirt where his prized sour gum root was buried and contemplated whether he was ready to try to give it Spirit. Not yet. He needed time to recover. But soon, he hoped.

~-~ After a quick breakfast, hearty enough that his Spirit had already begun to recover from the morning's experiment, Tawny, Royle, Otis, and Jane joined him on a trek up above the canyon, out east. Dakota stayed behind to sleep in. They weren't going all the way to town, just far enough to reach land the fog would touch. They managed to get out there so early that the grass was still covered with a slick of dew. They walked in silence, mostly.

Even if they knew this part of Beckett's Sound had few, if any, animals, there was no part of Periapt that was really safe. They had an experiment to perform, one of greater significance than the one Hollis had done that morning.

"First question," Tawny said.

"How far apart do we need these to be?" They had ten torches, five of which were crafted from campfire moss and five of which used good old-fashioned pitch and fabric. They were large, designed to last a full night. The test was simple: they would string up meat next to two different light sources, one next to the bioluminescent campfire moss and the other next to regular fire. The next day they would see if there was a difference in how the fog treated the meat. Seemed practical enough.

They weren't going to set them up quite yet, but they needed to plan out their locations.

"To do this the right way," Hollis said, "we need to make sure they're the same distance from the sea, so that one doesn't spend longer in the fog than the other."

"I reckon that makes sense," Tawny said.

"What do you say, one here, and then one on the other side of that copse of trees over there?" Otis said something Hollis couldn't understand, but that sounded to him like a dismissal.

"Fire don't work," or something like that. It was true that fire alone was unlikely to succeed at keeping the fog at bay. After all, as Royle had said, the town was already lit by traditional methods. Ordinary light could not be the solution, but it needed to be the control for a proper experiment. The rig Hollis had designed was pretty simple: just a wide log with five holes drilled into it with an old hand drill, each capable of holding one torch. In the center was a skewer they could put some of their fish on.

He had to catch it himself; they didn't want to use any of their communal food for this experiment. It was no bother. The river provided. All they were doing that morning was setting up the rig and getting a good look at the area. There were no animals anywhere, just trees and fields with those faint traces of the neighborhood that used to be there before centuries of hurricanes turned it to rubble. Even though this was seen as Hollis' experiment, from the way they talked about it, he could tell they were excited.

One added layer of protection would be great for peace of mind as the fog got closer and closer to the canyon's edge.

"I don't think it's going to work," Royle said.

"Just because it keeps the fog away doesn't mean it keeps the monsters in the fog away." It was a fair criticism. If they had more torches, Hollis would have spread them out further to try to create a buffer space.

"This is just the first test," he said. Jane didn't seem satisfied, but she said nothing. Hollis still wasn't sure what her aversion to him was.

"If it works," Tawny said, "we're going to have to line that canyon with these things." She smiled, which was rare to see but welcome.

"Torches?" Royle asked.

"No, no. If this works, we're going into production with our own clothing line. I'll take a cloak of flames any day if it keeps the fog away." The mood was optimistic. Hollis didn't remember seeing that in the time he had been at the hospice. He wanted to believe it was the solution to all their problems, but it was hard to forget that they had made this discovery in the grave of explorers it had failed to save. The knowledge, however, was worth a little failure.

"You know how to light it, I assume," Tawny said.

"You only need Breath. Shouldn't need any Spirit for this. Not for one night. Now, if we ever need to set this up to last longer than that, that's a different story. I'll have to do it. Me or Otis." Was she needling him? Hollis nodded. He hated being reminded of his insufficiency, but it really drove him to master Spirit manipulation. There was a whole world of magic unlockable once that simple threshold was crossed.

They walked back to the hospice to spend a day catching food, caring for the elderly and infirm, surviving. Their routine was well set. That night, Hollis would sneak back up to the east of the canyon and light those torches while baiting the skewers. It was a strange thing to be excited for the fog to come, but he was. It would bring answers. ~-~ He couldn't risk waiting for actual darkness. He had to make his way out to the test area quickly as the sun set, before any tendrils of fog made an appearance.

The memory of how close he had come to being devoured by it on his first night still haunted him. He had been a sitting duck, and had he not met the Lambent Maiden and been given Willo as a guide, there was a chance he would have let the fog envelop him, and that would have been it. He ran with the pace of a sprinter. First he lit the normal torches. That was easy enough. He had plenty of ways of making fire, and the pitch was ready to go up in flames almost immediately.

As soon as he sparked his flint and steel, they lit one after another. The campfire moss torches were even easier. A little Breath got them going. It was like the opposite of blowing out birthday candles, though he didn't get to do that much growing up. As for the bait, he had some meaty drumcarp, which he knew would be irresistible to pretty much any predator. He had to hope that would include those inside the fog.

With that, he ran back to the canyon as fast as he could, with little thought to how silly it might seem to anyone watching. He wasn't letting the fog get anywhere near him. ~-~ As he waited for full dark, he found that same patch of grass next to the sour gum root he had planted days ago. His Spirit had refilled all the way to nine. Spirit ▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▱▱ [9/11] He wasn't going to ask Willo to try to drain it again. He wanted to give the glowbug a good rest. More than that, he wanted to try using Spirit.

This was not supposed to be some huge obstacle in the path of an explorer. It was just one more skill to be practiced and put to use. He focused on the little mound of dirt the root was buried in. He could easily make the plant matter in there spring back to life with a little Breath and Blood. It would live as long as he continued to give it both. But to have it sprout and be its own tree, to be a living thing again, he would have to go further.

He stared at the little tip of root sticking out of the dirt, and Willo did too, even crawling over to it. Then he began, first with Breath and Blood, allowing the root to dig into the earth and sustain itself with nutrients and water. That was easy. Next came the hard part. What was Spirit? Was it a drive? A willfulness to exist? There was a reason Spirit was used to animate illusions and plants alike, to give them just enough existence beyond appearance and utility to make them self-sustaining.

It might only last a moment. It might only be a limited life. Still, a spark of life would be enough for Hollis to feel successful. He tried to draw on those feelings of having his Spirit drained. Was it his essence? That energy source that existed when all others were gone and depleted. Willo helped him out. He could create a will o' the wisp that copied anything his light shone on, so he made a copy of that little bit of root sticking out of the ground. It floated right above his tail.

Hollis watched it, wondering if the bug could somehow give life to the illusion that the plant itself did not have. But he didn't. It was just a dribbling little stub of wood, still, even if it was made out of light. Hollis got an idea.

"Put the copy on top of the original," he said. He didn't know why that felt right, but if the copy already had Spirit in it by virtue of the glowbug's power, maybe he would have an easier time mimicking the process himself. Willo did as asked, crawling up in front of the little root and covering it in a cloak of light, causing it to glow like the bioluminescent plants back at the hospice. Hollis focused on it. He willed it to life.

It was hard to find the words to describe what he felt, but there was something there, an idea he was circling.

"You want to live," he whispered. And with that, some little burst from within him flowed from his hand into the root and seemed to envelop the illusion Willo had cast before seeping into the wood itself. More Breath. More Blood. A bit of Mind to direct it. And finally… Spirit. At first it wasn't clear if anything had happened. The root seemed normal.

He still gave it Breath and Blood, but after a few moments, instead of devoting that life force to digging deeper into the earth, the roots started to grow in the opposite direction. A small stem rose from the earth, and on it, a little bud of a leaf. Hollis didn't want it to die, so he continued to channel Breath and Blood into it until it had grown to a small sapling. And then he stopped and watched, waiting to see if the plant would wither and die without his help. It didn't.

What it did instead startled him so badly that he nearly backed up off the edge of the cliff. The plant spoke. Not with words or with sound, but he understood it well enough. It felt like something was whispering against the back of his neck in a language as old as the wind. The inspector was kind enough to translate it into English. You feel a question in the air, a sensation that you cannot describe. The Great Bee Gum Tree asks: "Are you the one I felt down below?" Its voice carries through its sapling.

It is waiting for you to respond.