Chương 19: Lock it Down

She shook her head. Eoin wasn't someone worth missing. She was just going to have to get used to being alone for a while. Now she was going to have to solve her most immediate problem. Later tonight she would sneak out to inspect the keelwell, but she would have to wait until most of the ship was asleep. For now she needed to figure out how she was going to get lessons in Life Nature from Róise without regurgitating a rotten, soggy mess of vines.

Closing her eyes, she re-entered the visualization of her fórsa she thought of as her mindspace. There was her river of Water and its Life twin, which was less of a river and more of a long lane of wheat and grasses which undulated from an unfelt wind, now that she really pondered it. Then, beyond them, the lake of Blight. Forever cold and unforgiving. Just a vine, she thought. Hold back the others. Just make a vine. In her palm there was just a greasy smear of wet, rotting leaf matter. Miriam gritted her teeth.

Trying to hold back Water alone was like standing under a waterfall. Trying to do it while holding back Blight, which felt like trying to stop mist from moving, was impossible. Ok then. Just hold back one to start, maybe. She focused on Blight. How could she stop Blight from coming out with her Water and Life fórsa? Just visualizing the mist stopping seemed to have no effect at all.

She recalled how she had washed the oily influence of Solas's Reel out of her mind with Water, but when she had tried it with the Blight lake, her fórsa had just skittered off. This time, rather than trying to hold Blight back by force of will, she employed her Water fórsa like a wall to stop the black lake from misting out. To her delight it seemed like it was working - tiny shoots of green were beginning to swirl up from her palm, even free of the Water fórsa.

However after only two or three seconds her head felt like it was going to burst; she was still calling forth the fórsa, but two-thirds of it weren't going anywhere but back into her body. She was getting… overloaded, maybe? It wouldn't be long before her Water dam burst and her held-back power forced its way out.

Miriam was nothing if not persistent, so for the next two hours she tried experiment after experiment until she was forced to stop by a raging headache and the fear that her whole closet room was going to smell like rotted vines. Tears of frustration leaked down her face. To have been spirited away to this world, to begin to learn its magics, only for gods-damned Solas to ruin it by forcing her to corrupt her own Nature, was almost unbearable.

Sniffling, she came to terms that she had only one option left - the last resort she really didn't want to use. Honestly, one she wasn't even sure she could use. Early in her captivity to Solas she had sewn a pocket into the inside of the yellow overalls in the one place the snug outfit provided any room - in the chest area. Abruptly she realized that she had been in front of the whole crew one wrong breath away from exposure and grimaced. She would have to see if Róise could find her any new clothes.

In that pocket, she had intended to hide something sharp she could utilize on the Wisp during one of their outings, but no matter what she put in there, as long as he had that chain on her wrist she couldn't even imagine taking it out and using it. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. It had found a useful secondary purpose as the Reel's new hiding place.

This was a complete shot in the dark - if it could only be activated with Mind fórsa Miriam would be out of luck. Looking at it again, she felt the same revulsion she had when Solas had first pulled it out, but after a day of dealing with the Blight in her spirit, she found it was something she could tolerate. She cupped the little glowing gem in her hand and slowly poured her horribly mixed-up fórsa into it.

Back in her mindspace Miriam grimaced as the block of purple ooze sat out of place amid her other fórsa natures. It was not moving this time - there was no Solas on the other end of it to make it advance or consume. Miriam's idea had been to take back what Solas had stolen. There were weeks where trickles of her fórsa were sucked up into the Reel like a sponge left in the sink - back before she had adopted Blight.

She hoped to draw that pure Life and Water fórsa directly from the gem as needed - at least enough to get her through however long this voyage would be. However, when her mind touched the ooze, she knew it was a lost cause. She felt nothing of her power in it - just raving echoes of Solas. Even in Solas's story Eoin had been right - as a power source the Reel leaked like an old bucket. Miriam growled in frustration. She would have to go back to trying to isolate her fórsa natures - or just give up and go to sleep.

Just as Miriam was about to disengage with the Reel, she had another thought. She couldn't use Mind, but she had the sense that the Reel hadn't been built the same way as Eoin's Amethyst Reel. There it was meant to be a coaxing force - cajoling fórsa from the ocean into redirecting fórsa from the vents. Solas had not cared for such a gentle approach - he built a tool, crude and sturdy. Perhaps… perhaps even her polluted fórsa could use it. Not to steal fórsa from others - she had no need of that.

Fórsa was never her problem - she was overflowing with the stuff. Instead, maybe she could use it the way Solas had at the end… Like a crystalline arm made from purple ooze, a lock slammed down over her Water fórsa flow. It was like taking a punch to the gut, but it seemed to be holding back the flow of Water Nature. Each move left her headache worse, but she had more to do. With a grunt, she unlocked the Water again - just to make sure she could. Then she turned the ooze to the black lake.

The Blight in her heart seemed unending. Indomitable. But so was Miriam, so she directed the Reel to lock down the rot and decay that had invaded her body and to her surprise it was even easier than the Water had been. Perhaps it made sense - she had developed her Water fórsa over weeks. It was more mature and refined - more powerful. She had not spent a single second trying to improve Blight. With one more effort that nearly made her pass out, she locked Water down again.

Then, singing a lilting tune under her breath, she focused on her palm, from which arose a perfect little green vine. Miriam grinned through the pain. It was not lost on her that Solas, the architect of her misfortune, had proven helpful in resolving it. This time there was no buildup - the excess power of her Water and Blight fórsa was trickling into the Reel, where she assumed that it would fade eventually, unused, as her previously drawn fórsa had.

It was a pain and a half, but she had a path forward that wouldn't get her kicked off this ship. There, with a blinding headache and a body that felt like it weighed five hundred pounds, Miriam decided that she could wait another night to check out the keelwell. The gentle rocking of an anchored ship at sea in calm waters lulled her almost instantly to sleep.