Of the reincarnated deity’s nine mutations, Spectral Ark was arguably the most mysterious. Leaving aside the fact that it had come from the repurposed fragments of her internal world – something that had probably never been seen before in the universe – it was the only mutation that Percy and his familiar had yet to figure out.
They’d obviously been itching to experiment with it for years, but they had understood that they couldn’t afford to be too hasty. The slumbering souls of Nephthys’ subjects were stored inside the pyramid-shaped gem embedded between her eyes, and nobody knew how fragile they might be.
Now that Percy and the Ruby Princess had grown more capable and had some free time in their figurative hands, there was no point in delaying any further. After all, there was no guarantee that the remnants of the Amenthei civilization had no expiration date, so delaying their tests indefinitely might be just as dangerous as rushing them.
After practically forcing his main body to take a day off from granting the Moirais’ Decree to the allied nobles, the clone called the original to the cavern to assist him and the wasp with their experiments.
‘Let’s not touch the souls of your subjects just yet, since we don’t know what that might do to them,’ Percy told his familiar through the connection. ‘I’ve been wondering since I first read the mutation’s description whether it can store other souls. I suggest we start by answering that question. If we’re lucky, we’ll have lots of expendable test subjects for everything else.’
‘Makes sense,’ Nephthys agreed. ‘How many wasps should I summon?’
‘A dozen Starry Soldiers should do,’ Percy replied. ‘Your Drones and Workers might be too undeveloped compared to a sapient to draw any useful conclusions from, but there’s no need to start sacrificing Knights or Commanders.’
The Ruby Princess nodded and, around ten minutes later, several human-sized wasps were standing in front of their much-larger ruler, patiently waiting for further orders.
Percy’s main body took the initiative to injure the first creature, since his human hands allowed for more delicate actions. They didn’t want to damage the bug’s soul or flesh too badly, as they might need them for the follow-up experiments, so Percy simply applied a few spectral incisions to weaken the Soldier and loosen the soul’s connection to its carapace.
‘Your turn,’ the original told his companions through both cords, clearly on the same page as them.
Nephthys and the clone hadn’t explained their intentions in detail, but they didn’t have to, since Percy’s main body obviously shared the same thought process as the clone and had easily come to the same conclusions.
Stepping closer to her subordinate, the familiar gently pressed her gem directly against its body, willing it to absorb the wounded soul. According to her, she hadn’t attempted anything of the sort over the past decade, but it was something that she couldn’t avoid forever.
Carefully scanning the Starry Soldier with his Sage’s Pond, the clone watched as the glowing gem did something to the creature’s soul. The mutation was clearly trying to suck the silver flame out of the bug’s body, though it seemed like a losing battle at first.
‘Hmmm… How are we even meant to sever the soul’s connection to its flesh without mutilating the soul itself too badly?’ the clone wondered, sharing his doubts with the others.
They could obviously injure the creature further, but that would leave the wasp in a poor state even if they managed to extract it.
‘How about we just pull harder?’ the original suggested.
‘Easier said than done,’ Nephthys protested. ‘I’m already doing my best.’
‘Then let me help you,’ Percy offered.
Concentrating two large chunks of his soul at his hands, he added some phantom mana and willed the spectral fiends residing within him to wake up, causing a few wriggling grey claws to protrude from his fingertips. Stabbing his hands a few centimetres deep into the creature’s carapace, he grabbed the flickering flame hiding even deeper, before dragging it towards Nephthys.
A lot of bug goo gushed out of the deep lines that his fingers carved into the Soldier’s exoskeleton, threatening to rip the whole front side of the creature’s torso right out. At least its soul still seemed relatively intact when Percy finally managed to pry it out of its body, and a few Blue healing potions should be enough to mend the physical injuries – in theory. In practice, there were certain problems with that, but they could worry about them after confirming that everything else was as expected.
Ignoring the wasp’s mutilated body for now, Percy was more curious to see how its soul would interact with the gem. Within mere fractions of a second, the silver flame shrank into a barely perceptible dot and got absorbed into some corner of the pyramid where it floated silently like the others.
‘Success!’ The original smiled. ‘I also registered a spell upgrade – in case either of you is curious,’ he added, sharing the notification through the cords.
[Congratulations! Your spell has evolved: Spectral Art: Parasitic Connection – Refined -> Spectral Art: Soul Surgery – Masterful!]
After overcoming his momentary amusement, the clone turned his attention back to his familiar. ‘Do you have a way of telling the glowing dots apart, or will we have to manually keep track of every soul you absorb?’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ Nephthys confirmed. ‘Their faces and names didn’t mean much before unsealing my most recent batch of memories, but I now know enough about them to instinctively tell which soul belongs to whom.’
‘Convenient,’ the clone noted. ‘Do you want to try restoring the bug?’ he asked, nudging the lifeless body of the Yellow wasp with his borrowed foreleg.
The Ruby Princess attempted something that caused the tiny star that had just appeared inside her gem to shudder. It started enlarging while moving closer to the surface of the crimson crystal, before eventually emerging outside in the form of a smooth silver blob.
While the blob was still attached to the pyramid, it appeared remarkably stable. However, it simply refused to re-enter the Soldier’s body, regardless of how hard Nephthys pressed her forehead against the broken carapace or how forcefully she attempted to eject the foreign soul.
Eventually, Percy’s main body decided to interfere again. Grabbing the blob with his new spell, he pried it off the gem, though he still failed to stuff it back into its original body. Even worse, losing contact with the pyramid caused the blob to rapidly fall apart into countless tiny wisps that slipped through Percy’s fingers and faded away.
‘Good thing we tried this on a wasp instead of the Amenthei,’ the clone pointed out.
‘Indeed. I can’t even imagine what I would have done if this had been…’ Nephthys didn’t complete her sentence, but it was obvious that she was thinking of her son. ‘Any idea what we did wrong?’ she asked, clearly trying to harness her emotions productively.
‘Maybe its body was injured too badly,’ the original suggested.
The problem was that flesh tended to die completely when its soul got removed. A full extraction was quite different from Percy’s usual hosts who still possessed fragmented wisps that he could latch onto and attempt to mend. Life mana simply didn’t work on true corpses, as they were no different from inanimate objects. Consequently, healing potions would stop working on any creature that had its soul pulled into the pyramid.
‘Well… if it’s just that, we can fix it by acting sooner. We’ll have to feed the bug a few healing potions before its soul is completely gone, though I suspect that’s not the main issue,’ the clone said.
‘You’re probably right, but let’s take it one step at a time,’ the original concurred.
Working together, they repeated the process, extracting the soul of the second Soldier while timing everything so that they left its carapace in a significantly better condition. Of course, the creature still technically died, but they hoped that its body would be more receptive to its soul like this.
Nephthys acted more quickly this time, expelling the silver blob from the gem mere fractions of a second after absorbing it. Taking over, Percy immediately tried to stuff it back into the exoskeleton.
Unfortunately, he failed again. No matter how hard Percy tried, the spectral liquid simply refused to re-enter the lifeless carapace.
‘Placing a soul into a body is clearly much harder than pulling it out – even if it’s the soul’s original vessel,’ the clone concluded.
‘We should have expected that,’ the original added. ‘Isn’t that the reason why nobody but me can possess others?’
‘So, what if we use your bloodline?’ Nephthys asked.
‘It’s worth a try,’ the clone replied.
Testing their hypothesis proved more complicated than expected.
The first problem was that they still didn’t want the clone to leave Nephthys’ body and permanently lose access to his Empowered domain, so the trio had no choice but to try something that they had never attempted before: to stuff a second clone into the same body.
Thankfully, the original did have a spare cord that he normally used to pass the Moirais’ Decree to the nobles, so cutting out another wisp wasn’t an issue. Even keeping the new clone from fusing with his familiar was as simple as coating the clone with a layer of phantom mana.
The biggest challenge was keeping the two clones from merging with one another – since the pristine pieces of Percy’s soul were attracted to each other even more strongly than they were to the mutated wisps residing within his familiars.
Keeping the clones apart required several times more phantom mana and a lot of conscious effort from everyone involved – Nephthys, the original Percy, and both clones – which all but guaranteed that they wouldn’t be able to take advantage of this state in any other situation.
The good news was that the new clone just about managed to envelop the silver blob that belonged to the third Starry Soldier, carrying it back to his own body. Activating his bloodline once more, Percy severed the piece of his soul that contained the dead insect and tried to force it back into its own flesh in a manner similar to how he had created both of his familiars.
The next problem he encountered was that the wasp’s body produced no attracting or repelling force, due to being completely lifeless. Percy got around that by shooting his clone directly into the bug’s exoskeleton and relying on sheer momentum to penetrate its unresponsive flesh.
Despite the extra steps required to return the Starry Soldier to its body, Percy finally elicited a promising response from the creature. Its flesh and soul seemed to recognize each other at last, slowly re-establishing their original connection.
The recovery process lasted over an hour – during which Percy had to keep feeding the bug both healing potions and large amounts of soul mana – but the Starry Soldier eventually regained control of its limbs.
‘Promising, but not good enough for our purposes, is it?’ Nephthys asked, struggling and failing to keep the disappointment from spilling into her voice.
‘Afraid not,’ the clone replied.
They had confirmed that her gem could store anyone’s soul, and that they could return a disembodied wisp into its own body under the right conditions. Unfortunately, given the difficulty involved in even returning a soul to its rightful place, stuffing one into a foreign vessel would never work. The bodies of the Amenthei had rotted away a long time ago, so there was nowhere to place them.
‘Well… I should be able to sacrifice a cord to place one of your subjects into a newborn body – thus creating another familiar,’ the original Percy explained. ‘I don’t have nearly enough cords for all of your people, but I suppose that we can start looking for a good body if it’s just for your son.’
Other than turning Nephthys’ compatriots into familiars, the only useful application of the mutation that Percy could think of would be to preserve the soul of one of his hosts if their body got destroyed. For example, if somebody were to assassinate Archibald right now, the clone possessing him should be able to bring back his soul and work with Nephthys to temporarily store it inside the pyramid.
Had Percy possessed this ability as a teenager, he could have taken his sweet time figuring out what to do with Micky’s soul, instead of shoving it into the first semi-viable crow egg that had crossed his path and knocking himself out for weeks.
‘Don’t do that,’ Nephthys said with a mental sigh. ‘I appreciate the offer, but it wouldn’t be fair to the rest of my people to only think of my family. Not is it fair to you to selfishly eat up another one of your cords. As much as it pains me, we’ll have to find another way to restore my subjects.’