Chapter 3

Eventually, I gave up trying to rebuild my body. I also gave up waiting for something with bones to coincidentally walk nearby enough for me to kill them, remove the flesh, and study how mana interacted with bones. Another issue would be whether different bones required different runes, and I would have no way to know before I ruined my own body. Instead, I utilized the earth circuits I'd built to get myself out of that crushing embrace.

First was the same wave-type circuit that I used while underground. I didn't need the spreading circuit in front to open space for me to move, which would make my passage much less draining. It was simple enough, all I needed was a single wedge risen out of the ground with the right angle facing me sliding across the earth with less space between the earth on the bottom and my wedge. This was easy since I caused a ripple in the earth directly below my body to close the gap to nothing. I didn't even have to worry about the earth consuming me anymore, which was nice. I realized, however, that outside of the omni-directional crushing force of the earth my body liked to go in every direction.

My heap scattered as soon as the wedge hit it, sending my pieces all over the place. That was discomforting. Especially once I realized that my will was starting to lose the functionality provided by the rest of my body. Bad. Very bad. I could exist in the skull alone, slowly gathering more mana into my core, but most of my functionality came from the rest of me. The first problem would be the shackles still trying to make me a mindless slave. Without the ability to build circuits, granted via will modulation circuits on my ribs, my will would be shredded and pieced back together again every so often, like my Creator intended.

It was a little funny to me that the shredded pieces of deceased wills were pieced together so flawlessly that they overpowered the very will shredding circuit that put them together in the first place. I thanked the incompetence of my Creator once again. I wouldn't have cared had the circuit worked as it should, but the will that existed because of the failure preferred existing as it did. If anything showed the irrationality of the shredded wills, I couldn't imagine what would do it more than will to live existing within the shattered remains pieced together by a lackluster circuit.

Gathering my pieces was needed, and quickly. My only form of locomotion wasn't particularly helpful, so the first step should be making sure all of my pieces remained my pieces. I spread my will to all of them, manually channeling mana into them to keep them mine. Some of the bones that rolled farther than the others were starting to deteriorate by the time I reconnected with them. The worst ones were the fingers and toes, those were driven the farthest away. Most had rotted to black as the circuits drained energy from their construct to remain active. Hopefully that wouldn't be permanent.

Once all of my pieces were securely my pieces, I thought about how to gather them. The first thought was each bone having its own wedge. Seeing no downside, I proceeded to slowly knock my pieces into a new heap. Many of the pieces moved in imperfect ways, but I learned it was more due to shape than intrinsic problems with the spell. After I got the hang of how to hit myself in a controlled way, it became much easier.

And now I was back to exactly where I started. Wonderful. Now I had a problem, once again. Well, if a wedge lacked control, I simply needed to block where my bones would go when the wedge hit. My next attempt was much more complicated than mobility underground. I built a circle around myself and had to drag the whole thing around. That was a horribly inefficient method. Moving it took more mana than I'd spent on the whole of my journey to the surface to move my heap two of my former body-lengths.

Then I had a perfect solution. My body spread around because it wasn't held together by anything. My next circuit encompassed my body in a sphere of earth that I would push with the wedge, since it was a single object it should function as a single bone, making mobility much easier And removing the threat of bones being lost. I needed all of them.

Unfortunately, now I had a new problem. My sphere was moving without the wedge. At first, it had been a happy accident. If it moved by itself, that was even more efficient than I could have hoped. However, it wasn't a controlled type of motion. With every moment that passed, the velocity of my new home increased. As I continued to gain speed, I realized that if I ran into something, I could damage my body quite badly. That problem became more pronounced the faster I moved, and I was now moving very rapidly.

I built a wedge ahead of myself, making it rush at my sphere with enough force to slow me but not enough to hurt my body inside. Hopefully. My sphere reacted differently than my bones, however. It launched into the air, leaving the earth far behind.

It didn't take long for me to recognize another problem I hadn't anticipated. The mana surrounding my hurtling sphere was becoming much more violent as the earth became more distant. Apparently, the air had a similar reaction to unauthorized earth as the earth had with non-conformity. The resistance from the air increased exponentially, building itself into a solid that ceased my separation from the earth, but increased my speed as I maintained the same distance for a moment before heading back toward the earth. The resistance was now acceleration as the air hastened my exit from forbidden territory. Given my momentum still heading in mostly the same direction it was before the wedge, I'd probably be fine. I hadn't slowed down at all, though. I was now going almost twice as fast as I had been before I tried stopping myself with the wedge.

Perhaps it was the size. The first wedge had been only a quarter as tall as my sphere. I reached out with my will, trying to build a new wedge as larger as I could. I was moving too fast, though. I barely left the earth as the tiny wedge was crushed beneath my sphere, not slowing down at all. At least the air didn't have time to accelerate me again before I was back touching the earth.

I tried again, reaching out as far as I could as fast as I could to give the wedge as much time to grow as possible. This time the result was equivalent to the first. My speed doubled once again. Well...this was less than ideal. I really wasn't looking forward to knowing just how much damage my bones could take before the circuits on them were no longer operational.

Directly confronting the speed was not the answer. I needed another approach. So...why was it moving in the first place? That was the biggest question. I had the motion of my wedges built in to their circuits, making the wedge move with mana. Did earth simply move? Was that its nature? No, solidarity was its nature. The room was proof of that. Perhaps my sphere shape was to blame, as the portion of the earth that my sphere contacted was tiny in comparison to the size of the sphere itself. It lacked solidarity. Was that why?

I hoped I had nothing to lose as I started trying to implement my next plan. I dug out the earth in the shape of the sphere as I sped past, allowing much more of the sphere to touch the earth at the same time. It didn't slow down. It did speed up a bit when I gave up on that plan and my sphere was launched out of the little divot just enough to start speeding me up before I hit the earth again.

Another approach would be asking what didn't accelerate by itself. My bones had stayed where they were without my being able to make them stay. That meant it was either a problem of shape or composition. I'd already tried a composition-based solution, so it was shape's turn. I altered the shape of the sphere to match my skull.

The shape change was effective, in a way. The smooth acceleration was indeed slowed down significantly. Stopping was now inevitable, assuming the same conditions that allowed for the acceleration in the first place were unchanged. It was significantly less comfortable, though. I had to pull my will into my bones to keep as comfortable as possible.

It took a while for me to stop, but eventually I did. My earth skull had finally stopped moving without permission. I resumed my journey in the same direction, but controlled this time.