I was far more cautious when I turned my attention to the other mana crystal I held. With the first, I had plunged my mana into the thing and simply started claiming its contents.
That had worked rather too well.
This time, I tried to be a little more subtle. Rather than just stabbing my will into it to create a connection, I looped a strand of my mana around the crystal, then chipped a piece of it away.
That wasn’t a great description. It didn’t come close to what I actually did. Then again, how could I describe a whole new layer of reality, senses and sensations included, with completely unique rules of interaction bundled in for extra complexity?
I couldn’t. The best I could do is to reach for familiar terms grounded in the reality I already knew.
So, I chipped a piece of the mana crystal away.
In truth, it was more akin to slipping my presence between the stable layers of mana that made up the crystal, then gently and slowly claiming that portion for myself.
To my great relief, this worked. I ended up with a small surge of mana in my hand, one that I could handle and direct as I pleased.
Here’s another image. With the first mana crystal, I had punctured a water balloon carelessly and then struggled to gulp down the contents before it all spilled out. This time, I approached a barrel of water and plunged a cup into it. I could drink at my leisure.
I didn’t direct the mana towards my core at first. In fact, I was careful to keep the mystical substance from making any contact with that semi-corporeal organ, or the actual organ occupying the same space. My heart was still spasming. I needed to let it recover if I wanted my body to continue basic functioning.
I started by guiding the mana through the area of my body most heavily damaged by the previous surge. The damage wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It was the natural first step of toughening myself up.
The problem was, my body couldn’t absorb the vast amount of mana quickly enough to heal. Instead of a virtuous cycle of damage and healing, I ended up with just progressively more damaged flesh. But now that I was feeding it mana in a trickle, the flesh soaked it all up like a desert would do to rain. Bit by bit, it rejuvenated, tougher and more receptive to mana than ever before.
By the time I worked the mana-drip around to my heart, I was dead tired and starving to boot. Still, I couldn’t exactly stop what I was doing and go find myself an inn. Not in this condition. I paused just long enough to scarf down some stale rations, but then it was right back to the healing for me.
My heart was the most difficult to heal. The healing process produced constant pain in whatever part of my body I was targeting, along with an odd sense of itchiness that made me want to either tear my hair out or scratch wildly at the affected area. It shouldn’t have been possible to feel itchiness in some of the places I was healing, but that logic did nothing to stop the torment.
My heart sent me waves of both sensations, far more strongly than any other area. When I was finally done, I realized I had been squeezing my fist so tightly that I could barely unclench them. My nails had also dug deep into my palm, drawing plenty of blood. I hadn’t gotten a chance to clip them since my awakening as Hayden.
Funnily enough, the pain of those wounds didn’t even bother me. They stung, sure, but after soul surgery and, to a lesser extent, the mess I just endured, I found it difficult to care.
I stretched happily, relieved to do so without wincing, then paused when my ribs failed to protest. Cautiously, I poked the spots that had been sore, then grinned.
Well, what do you know! Nearly frying myself through mana-burn is good for something!
I found it a little funny, in a very depressing way, that I was doing better on the murder front than Hayden ever could. After all, I knew exactly what came after life. It was a hell of a motivator to stay alive, pun fully intended.
I shouldn’t have let myself get so lost in thought as I walked through a city full of demons and bloodthirsty mortals, but I did. I only focused on my surroundings long enough to pick up some suspicious meat skewers from a street vendor. The transaction was mostly an excuse to ask for directions to the local Apple Infernal branch. Still, I did eat the skewers as I walked. No matter what they were made of, it couldn’t be worse than whatever went into our dried-out ration bars.
The combination of food and my musings about Hayden was so distracting that I got careless. I was only a few streets away from my destination when I realized something was wrong.
I wish I could say I heard some scuff on the ground behind me, or that I was smart enough to keep an eye on the window reflections I passed to spot pursuers without giving myself away. It would be cool to claim I was alerted by a mysterious sixth sense of lurking danger.
None of that was true.
Instead, it was pure luck. A demoness three times my size happened to blow me aside as she bulldozed her way through the milling throngs of civilian demons. This spun me around, affording me a brief view of the street I had just walked down. That was when I spotted a pair of cat ears poking out of the crowd.
Even then, I turned back towards the inn and continued my journey. I didn’t give the ears much thought until I cut a sharp left two streets later, and caught sight of the same ears from the corner of my eyes. Finally, a jolt of recognition surged through me.
The cat-like woman who competed with me in speed was stalking the streets of the city.
And unless the sudden bad feeling in the pit of my stomach was just a delusion, she was following me.
I slowed down at that point, turning a brisk walk into a stroll. I stopped at a few stalls and pretended to peruse the wares. Suspicion and a hint of worry bloomed inside of me, but I did a good job of keeping them off my face. I kept telling myself that I might be mistaken. Maybe she was just exploring the city.
I told myself this until I stopped for the fifth time, and she still failed to pass me. I couldn’t deny it anymore: she stopped every time I stopped. Still, I had to give her some credit. She mirrored my movements perfectly, stopping just long enough to approach a nearby vendor, then disengaging quickly as soon as I moved on.
What could she possibly want? Does she know about the souls, somehow? Or the mana crystals?
When I first claimed the superior soul, I was deathly afraid that demons would come after me. After all, the army was tracking us and monitoring our soul count. I didn’t think it would be difficult for a demon to learn about another soldier’s success, especially a mortal recruit.
But I never suspected that claiming a superior soul might lead to trouble with other mortals. How could she know what I had, or how I’d gotten it?
Then again, she might be acting on someone else’s orders. If a demon wanted to be subtle about things for whatever reason, they could hire one of my mortal rivals to kill me.
It’s just fifty greater souls! Demons get way more than that every month! I groused angrily, still trying to act calm. This was getting harder to do the closer we got to the inn.
Chances were high that something bad would happen if I let her catch up. Of course, this left me with one rather urgent problem.
How in the world am I going to take care of this quietly in the middle of a city?