A Short Contract

I finally finished work on the ship and we were only a mile away from the arrays, I decided that this was my last chance to go through with an imbuement because the arrays would interfere with the deal otherwise.

"Imbuement always requires a deal." I said as I set my wire coil into an imbuer. "Since you have to break the spirit core to imbue, you only get one chance."

Laveki watched all of my movements intently, hoping to gain some insight into the process she had only heard of.

"Hey, Laveki, did you go to school?" I asked as I prepared to set the core into the imbuer.

"Yeah, but only for a year before my parents got me scooped up with their big mouths. I was working on a tube that could launch objects with pressure without exploding."

"Well then, welcome to intro to imbuement, take my hand and put your other one on that thing."

She grabbed my hand eagerly. I tried circulating Eneru between us and the core like you would normally for imbuement, but the Eneru wouldn't go between our hands.

"Wait, give me a second." I detached my arm and Laveki let it fall to the ground. "Grab my stump."

"Huh?"

"Grab my stump, my arm won't circulate the Eneru properly."

She awkwardly put her hand on my stump and the Eneru started circulating.

"This feels weird. What are you doing?"

"I'm establishing a link with the core before we puncture it, start synchronizing with my flow."

She started circulating her Eneru and our energies mingled, once the Imbuer detected a link, a spike pierced the core.

Fthwip! CRUNCH!

The shell of the core crumbled with a sickening sound akin to bones breaking and the torrent of the flow swept Laveki and me into a featureless, dark, room with a wisp floating in the middle.

I looked to my left and I saw a wisp that I instinctively knew was Laveki and I spoke to her.

'In here we have no mouth so everything is done with mind-links, this dimension facilitates them well.

'This is weird, I feel like I have to hide my memories or they will flood the link.' She thought to me.

'No need, I couldn't perceive them anyway, the link is too weak, let's go talk to the spirit we are trying to contact.'

I opened another mind-link with the spirit, separate from the first.

'Hello great spirit, what is your name?' I thought, trying to seem as friendly as possible.

'You free Ften?' it spoke with very few words as was typical from lesser spirits.

'If you work for me I will.'

'If Ften doesn't?' it asked.

'You will lose your vessel and die.'

'Ften accepts deal for one hundred years?' He left the time-frame open for negotiation.

'One hundred and five.' I said sternly.

'Deal.'

It switched to Laveki's mind-link. 'You get all that?' I had been repeating the conversation to her over the link.

'Yeah, it looks like you got a deal easily.'

'Yeah, now we just have to leave and guide him into his new vessel.'

'How do we leave? I should have asked before.' Shreds of regret accompanied the message.

'Easy, just imagine yourself in your body and will it to be so. You go first so I can help you if you can't do it.'

Instantly her wisp flickered and disappeared.

I mind-shrugged and went back to my body, it must have been easy for her.

Once I started seeing through my eyes again I guided the spirit into the wire which was to be its new vessel.

"There, easy." I fell backwards and laid on the floor, it was exhausting to keep myself and Laveki in sync the whole time and some of Laveki's Eneru was still in my system and my body was rejecting it. I looked to my left and my eyes met Laveki's

"Easy my ass, I feel like I just fought an army."

We laughed at my contradiction for a moment. I turned on my side and reached out my hand.

"Take my hand and reclaim your Eneru."

Laveki gladly obliged and I took my Eneru back.

"There, now we can set up the nervous system," I said as I stood up with a bounce.

I took the imbuer off of the wire and inlaid the wire by hand, the wire had a spirit in it so I wasn't looking to let the energies conflict as a test when I only had one core to imbue with. I spent quite a while with Laveki installing the wire before Devin burst into the room.

"I did it!" He shouted. "I've successfully created a potion out of Banzai's leaves!"

I looked at him confused for a second before I remembered the tiny treantling that had quietly accompanied him everywhere.

"Awesome, that means we will have remedies for the crew right?"

"Nope, the potion enhances your metabolism so while they will heal faster, it won't be much. What it does do is allow you to get the energy from food faster."

"So you made a physical enhancement potion that relies on a full belly?"

"Yessir!" Devin bounced up and down in excitement.

"Well, I guess that's useful for labor, keep a supply of like ten of them." I went back to installing the wires.

"Absolutely!" He ran out of the room to tell more people.

"What if you put the nutrients into the potion?" Laveki thought aloud.

I did a double-take.

"That's genius! Go tell Devin, I'll take care of this." I exclaimed, praising Laveki for her idea.

"Thanks, I'll go right away!" She dashed out of the room, chasing down Devin.

I spent the rest of my day inlaying the wires and when I was finished I did a few refinements to Golem Glass to reflect my new style of golem creation.

With the update almost done, I called it a day and slept.