Control Comes from Within

My time on the skyship was mostly spent reading.

Yeah, the first time I saw it, I was impressed with the feat of magical engineering, but it was basically just a magical knockoff version of a blimp or early airplane. Shaped like a bird with wings extended outward, it was completely wooden and only had two decks to it. The crew were a mix of all three races, and each one handled a different area. The elves were responsible for navigation and steering, the bird tribe beastfolk detected any beasts or turbulent air currents in the vicinity, due to their superior senses, and the humans dealt with powering the ship by transmitting their essence to it via the essence stones. It was, from what I could sense, mainly propelled by wind magic, though the wings allowed it to glide for long periods of time, and more wind spells were used to stabilize the altitude so nothing went flying off everytime it turned.

Despite the ‘advanced’ piece of technology, though, it wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen before, and like I said, I mostly spent my time reading. I stuck to my daily routine even now, as I had ingrained the habit into my mind a while ago, and I only read through the merchant’s diary while I was being watched.

Whenever I took the time to look out at the unsurprisingly monotonous sea view, though, was when I could read from my personal collection of books. I had painstakingly copied as many books from the academy library as I could during my time there. I had to brute-force learning water manipulation without the affinity, which took a while but was worth it in the end. I figured there was no such thing as a copyright, and plagiarism wouldn’t be a big deal if I was a whole continent away, so why not do it? The cost of normal ink was too high for me to use it on every book, so I used whatever alternatives were available to me: colorfully dyed water, blood, both animal and my own, and a cheaper version of ink made of soot, water, and animal fat. The paper wasn’t nearly as bad, especially since my repeated bulk orders elicited a price discount.

I now had my own library in my beast space-slash-inventory, and I took every chance I could to peruse something there while my escorts assumed I was sea-gazing.

Though, my ability to do so was a recent acquisition. Very recent.

As in, I think I gained the ability when I finally managed to extinguish the phantom voice that had been harassing and infiltrating my thoughts for so long. I became aware of it almost at once, but I only tested it my first night on the skyship before sleeping.

I was able to project my consciousness into my beast space, while my body remained in the outside world, and nobody could even notice the difference. I got the impression that if I experimented or trained with it more, I would eventually be able to split my focus and see both my beast space and the outside world at the same time, but there was a long way to go before I reached that point.

For now, I looked braindead when I was mentally in my beast space, which had led to some awkward conversations with the others aboard the ship. I tried to pass it off as me just being slow to recover from the ‘majesty of the sea’, and most just took it in stride.

Naturally, books weren’t the only addition to my beast space.

I had hundreds of outfits piled up with every piece of clothing that I could get my hands on. Of course, my wallet took a hit, but it was definitely a worthwhile series of purchases.

Shirts, tunics, pants, trousers, boots, sandals, jackets, coats, robes, underwear, socks, gloves, I had it all.

Where I spent less money was on weapons and armor.

If I ever got into a combat situation, like with that asshole that ambushed me, I would default to using magic as my primary weapon, most likely blood magic. Theoretically, I could hold a parrying weapon or a shield in my left hand, but…magic would serve just as well, and the extra weight would make a difference. I still wasn’t the best at combat, whenever I sparred or trained with my friends, and that held doubly true when I was limited to mundane weapons.

That didn’t mean I was useless with a sword, just…next to useless. I seriously thought my shortsword/shield combo was viable for me, but it still didn’t work out long-term, and I found myself stuck on the same problem of finding a suitable weapon for myself.

All my pondering on weapons and armor didn’t dissuade me from buying what I could, though I spent more on cheap, easily replaceable pieces of armor than the few racks of weapons I did have lying around. My best armor was of course bought with my academy points and it was just exemplary, as it had multiple enchantments and was blood-bonded to me, so even if someone killed me, they wouldn’t be able to use it.

Where I saw the most change was in the…zoological…additions to my beast space, which slowly expanded in size to accommodate all of them. I got over my hesitation over the whole ethics of taming, and just decided to go along with it. For better or worse, I had this power, and ensuring it reached its maximum potential was more important than my personal feelings.

Hundreds of animals.

Dozens of creatures.

A handful of beasts.

And scores of voranders. Unfortunately, not all of them were living. However, that didn’t mean they were useless to me, no, quite the opposite.

Nope, some of them had been ‘tamed’ by me while they were on the very brink of death, and that somehow meant that once they appeared in my beast space, they died ... .and then were reanimated.

And not by me.

So I now had undead voranders that I could unleash on someone if they pissed me off too much.

I had to find out the extent of the change, so I attempted to tame other fully dead entitites, but it never worked on any of them, so my fears that I was a budding necromancer were, ironically, put to rest.

That didn’t change the fact that I had undead voranders in my beast space that I definitely couldn’t show to anyone.

Oh, and in my rush to review everything I had acquired, I had forgotten something else that infuriated me.

Being deported out of the kingdom and sent to the beastfolk lands meant all my money was worthless, as they had a completely different currency system there.

So yeah, the piles of money I had stumbled into through gambling were now just dull pieces of iron.

Yet another reason for me to hate the king.

“Are you alright, little brother?” a deep voice asked, bringing me out of my beast space and my ruminating.

I turned to my left side and saw Afon, the panther-man who was the leader of this little band of envoys. He had been nothing but respectful to me, despite the circumstances, and I returned the courtesy. As I learned in my beastfolk language classes, calling someone brother or sister was a term of respect or friendship, though it didn’t help that the same word was used for literal brothers and sisters.

“Apologies. I was just thinking of the nature of change and how it arrives whether we wish it to or not.”

He narrowed his eyes, though I could tell he wasn’t upset with me, as his tail continued to swish back and forth at a steady pace. “Do you often consider such…profound truths in your thoughts?”

I smiled at his response, taking extra care to ensure it didn’t come off as a smirk. “Hardly, I’d like to think I’m a simple man. But, as the world has repeatedly shown me, life isn’t fair. Simplicity often isn’t enough to live a life of peace and happiness.”

He considered my words before replying with a smirk on his face. “Well, now I can’t tell if you’re a liar or not.”

I shook my head in amusement as I turned back to the sea, the conversation dying out as the two of us simply took in the sight of the rolling waves and the sparse islands. It was a rare amicable silence that reigned over our time watching the waters.

Though that silence was eventually broken by loud shouts, as the crew were informing everyone of an incoming obstacle on our trajectory.

An obstacle made of pitch-black, dangerous, and violently sadistic bodies. The voranders had shown up. They were soaring towards us and would be on us in less than two minutes.

“Should I assist in the defense, Brother Afon?” I hurriedly asked him. I could kill anything that got too close with my blood magic, but I didn’t want to interfere if the crew had their own methods for handling these situations.

His eyes gleamed as he looked at me and squeezed my shoulder. “This is not the time for boasting, so be honest. What magics can you perform?”

“Blood and nature, and a few water spells I know of.” I replied quickly.

“Use your blood spells for now. Though, try not to damage the ship.” He said, before rushing off to find someone else.

I quickly drew some of my blood and shaped it into dozens of needles, a shield with serrated edges, and a small length of chains. I could use them to restrain or choke out any enemies that approached me. I had the idea to use the shield as a buzzsaw if I could rotate it quickly enough to cut through limbs.

Judging by what I could see, the horde was about two hundred bodies in total. If I timed it right, I could clip their wings and tame them without anyone seeing. I had done it before in previous monster waves, though I would have to keep an eye out for the vaunted beastfolk senses, said to be far superior to a human’s.

There were barely any souls aboard the ship, so everyone who could be spared for combat was on the upper deck, weapons or spells at the ready. I counted ten crew members, eight envoys, and me.

Great, we were outnumbered ten to one and had nowhere to retreat to. If we fell back to the lower deck, the monsters would have free reign on the upper deck and could corrode or destroy it entirely if left unchecked. With skyships being the only viable mode of intercontinental transport, losing this one would be a huge blow in more ways than one.

Not to mention the possibility of death.

The voranders looked like distant cousins to birds, as they had feathered wings and sharp talons, but I spotted other features as they dove on us, tentacles and extra mouths, multiple tails that were more appropriate for a snake than a bird. There was even one that had a scorpion stinger the size of my body.

As they descended, I was struck with another bolt of inspiration and reshaped most of my blood, leaving only the shield in its original form, into a pair of blender blades as large as I could make them without compromising their integrity. Without any hesitation, I started rotating them in the air, sending them above us to meet the enemy.

Most of the horde avoided it, but I snagged at least twenty before they realized how lethal it was and swerved away. I quickly drained them of their blood and superheated it to the point it was boiling. With precision, I reformed them into needles and launched them at any targets that were unoccupied.

The other combatants on the ship were engaged with their own opponents, and more were headed my way soon enough. Combining my ability to sense blood with my ability to launch blood projectiles made me a lethal magical marksman, at least, the voranders would think so.

In the few moments I was free to look around, I noticed how the others fought.

The elves were all armed with wooden bows that glowed a faint white, a magical effect I had never seen before. As they drew their empty bowstrings back, arrows formed from thin air into essence projectiles. I had learned the hard way that for everyone except me, launching pure essence had the same effect as a physical blow, with some minor burning or freezing occurring sometimes. The elves’ arrows mimicked physical arrows, save for one effect that was different.

I had never heard voranders scream in pain like that when they were shot by mundane arrows.

Turning away from the ungodly screaming caused by the elves, I saw the group of envoys fighting as a unit. The wolf brothers, Skarl and…his brother whose name I never learned, were clawing and biting at any monsters that flew into their ranges. Their natural weapons were covered in a thin brown layer, which I assumed was an earth spell to ward off side effects of biting into monsters.

The four reptilian envoys used a variety of weapons, a spear, shield, greataxes, and a –

A glass trident. The same kind of glass that I was familiar with, as it was used for all of the academy’s buildings.

I set aside the matter of the weapon’s composition for later. The envoys mostly fought in melee, using their essence-covered body parts and weapons to great effect. The spider guy’s bite was paralytic, as I saw him chomp on three monsters in quick succession, wait a few seconds for the venom to take hold, and finish them off with a stab of his legs, or were they arms?

The few that had their wings cut down fell into the sea, their fate unknown. I only managed to snag one into my beast space without being detected, and even that was a risky endeavour.

I kept the shield-saw spinning around me and my immediate vicinity, splitting apart anything that got too close. For enemies out of my immediate range, I either burst their blood while it was still in their bodies, or siphoned off the blood from the corpses, turned it into spears or arrows, and flung them at whatever was still snarling.

The battle lasted just a bit over three hours, the sun about to set on the field of corpses and blood. Amazingly, only one person had died in the battle, a human of the ship’s crew. There were injuries and wounds on almost everyone else who had survived. I only had a small nick on my back that was easily dealt with thanks to a minor healing spell.

I offered to heal everyone else, and most of the others accepted with a grateful smile and a sigh of relief. The envoys gave me nods of recognition, and I returned the gesture. It was a small act to engender a bit more goodwill in them, even if it ended up being pointless.

The elves, however, politely declined my offer, and I saw why, as their healing vastly outstripped my own efforts.

The post-combat burning of the bodies was conducted in a different manner than I was accustomed to. The elves and the surviving human mages levitated all the bodies and mashed them together into a giant sphere hovering above the waves. Once I mopped up the blood and added it to the pile, the bodies were set ablaze, the ashes falling into the sea, and the ship looked like it had not just gone through a battle.

I went down to the lower deck to rest in one of the small hammocks hanging from the ceiling, a pair from the envoys following behind me. I ignored the fact that their role was to spy on me and closed my eyes, hoping to rest my body while my mind had some undisturbed reading time until dinner.

I just hoped that the first island of our chain of teleport formations was close by.

The sound of beastfolk snoring was thunderous.