Soul Bound

1          Soul Bound

1.1        Finding her Feet

1.1.4      An Intriguing City

1.1.4.9    Plane sailing

She turned on group chat. {Hi guys, just scored my third apprenticeship. About to set off soon to the orphanage.}

Tomsk: {It is nearly 3 bells of the Afternoon now. You’re still in Libri? You’ll never make it in time. The orphanage is 6 km away from Mercato, and the road is in terrible repair, like pretty much everything down here. Carriages can’t manage it. Even ox drawn wagons have a hard job of it.}

Kafana: {I bet you 10 gold I make it on time.}

Wellington: {I accept. You’ve not seen the roads. No matter what speed boost you use, you won’t be able to run.}

“Captain, my friends have just bet me 10 gold coins that you won’t manage to get me to the orphanage in the 30 minutes left before my appointment. I accepted. I can’t wait to see how you’re going to help me win the bet.”

Nafaro walked over to one of the other tables, and spoke to a lanky Slav wearing purple robes, “Dimitri Yusupov, my friend. I have a bet to win! May I call upon you to get our joint project ready to lift off outside the tower’s gate as quickly as possible? I need to grab some books for this, my new apprentice, and it would never do to start such a relationship with a miserable failure.”

“You will owe me a fine dinner?”

“Yes, agreed.”

“Massimo, will you and Madame Kafana please wait for me about 50 meters north of the tower? I will join you in five minutes. Just walk into the circle over there with the intention of leaving the tower.”

And with that he departed for the circle at a run. Yusupov had already left.

Massimo muttered softly: “What is it with you and getting other people to run? Whatever happened to leisurely strolls?”

Still, he moved towards the circle himself at a respectable speed, and she had to stretch her legs to keep up. She had a feeling that all the other Grandmasters in the dining room were watching and judging this blue-haired disturbance in their midst.

Just as they exited the gate, they heard the bells: *ding* *dang* *pause* *ding*

Alderney spoke on chat: {Kafana, how are you doing?}

She replied {I’m just standing around on an empty piece of grass, just north of the tall Mage Tower in Libri. Why? You want in on the betting action?}

Alderney: {I’m flush from quest reward money. So yeah, I’ll place 100 gp on you being late. If I lose, it will be worth it just to see how you manage it.}

Kafana: {Done. Anyone else?}

Bulgaria: {I try not to gamble, though you can’t avoid it entirely in business. But it is always preferable to be the house that takes a cut for arranging pairings, than to be the gambler.}

Bungo: {I’d bet, but I have no money.}

Kafana: {You studied chemistry. Know anything about making ice cream?}

Bungo: {There’s a neat trick you can do with liquid nitrogen. I can flip out and look it up if you like. I’m already here, waiting around. }

Kafana: {Yes please.}

Captain Nafaro turned up, carrying an armload of books. “Don’t lose these, some of them are quite rare. Let me know when you’re done reading them, and I’ll answer questions and suggest some lectures and practice exercises for you to try.”

Kafana slipped them into her inventory box, much to Nafaro’s interest, but she dismissed it as just an innate ability of questing spirits.

“Still no sign of Dimitri.” she noted

“He gets ‘Dimitri’ but I’m ‘Captain Nafaro’?”

“You’re my teacher. I owe you respect. He gets respect when I win the bet. Which, by the way, has now reached the dizzying heights of 110 gp.”

A shadow fell over them. She looked up. A shape descending towards them blotted out the sun. A rope ladder fell down in a coil.

“If you wish to win, climb quickly” Nafaro prompted.

She dashed for the ladder and put her new DEX to good use, swarming up it confidently. Massimo followed her more nervously, muttering to himself and making the ladder swing. Nafaro stood on the bottom rung once Massimo had cleared it and, rather than waiting for them all to get to the top, he hailed in a loud voice “We’re all on, Dimitri. Raise the sails!”

A minute later they were standing on the deck of a small yacht, covered with brass inlaid runes. It was beautiful. In a joyful voice she called “Permission to board, Captain?”

“Permission granted. Welcome aboard The Icarus. Now find somewhere out of the way, space is quite tight.”

She made her way to the foremast, where a figurehead would be, while Massimo got dragooned into hauling up the ladder and stowing it. She felt tempted to sing the Ride of the Valkyries, but that really needed the strings and horns for the full effect. Instead, she went for something she thought an old sailor might appreciate. But she used orglife to set up some runes and visual icons to solidify the intent of what she wanted before setting the deck thrumming to the words of 'Ol Man River. The lyrics had such weight to them, the history and sense of place they embodied felt almost tangible. Without making a conscious decision, Kafana switched her focus away from seeing the people with her as an audience she wasn't full part of.

Singing to herself, not because she had to practice for some performance, but just because she felt like it, was something she done so often that it had become a habit, almost to the point of becoming part of her identity - a way to take a bunch of partially resolved emotions sheltering inside her and bring them under the scrutiny of her her conscious mind. It had been hard at first, because the flow juddered to a halt each time some wisp of thought she'd stopped made her fear she'd be seen as nasty or stupid when exposed. Over the years, though, she'd learned to how set judgement aside when using singing as part of her internal discourse, by visualising herself as something intangible or transparent - a glass pipe which didn't itself get touched or altered, a sturdy wide pipe a sculptor putting on an exhibition might use as a conduit into the art gallery used as a stylish way to move each of a series of varied and complex sculptures into the room chosen to display it. Expensive sculptures which seemed endlessly detailed but so delicate that, if even one sculpture were shattered, damage to the other from bumping into the resulting shards would leave the delivery looking more suite to a scrapyard.

What she did now felt like it went beyond even that. As she released hold of any sense of self-consciousness, of having her own purpose, or even her own identity separate from the song, she experienced a sensation she didn't recognise. Kafana knew, on some level, that Soul Bound was a game could only be played by those wearing a tiara, and that it openly boasted about its dedication to continuously scanning each player's brain, and the advanced technology it had developed to let it understand and use the resulting data in ways no previous game could match. But over the last few days she'd stopped seeing it in technical terms; in her mind, she now thought of game's system as an individual she had a personal relationship with. She had to consider the new sensation she was experiencing for nearly a minute, before she felt confident identifying it as being in connection with something outside her own mind - something nebulous and yet unnamed, which had accepted an invite to use Kafana to channel itself.

The sensation didn't frighten her, because she didn't connect it with an expert system used by a game to implement its magic system or reason out that this program must have analysed her thought patterns and coldly decided that it was efficient to re-use those patterns to frame Kafana's experience of casting a spell, in the way that met priorities set by some the game designer. On the contrary, she kept her conscious attention detached from the problem, calmly trusting the other parts of her mind to assess it; and a bit later, as she noticed that sensation was now also accompanied by responding emotions from her mind, she realised those other parts had reached a decision: the sensation didn't herald a threat to her. She didn't know why her instincts felt this was the appropriate emotion, nor couldn't name it exactly; if she'd had to put it into words, she might have compared it to the experience of finding a person who will be your life-long friend - someone who understood you better than nearly anyone and yet who still accepted you unconditionally.

But she refused to self-guess herself and, as she accepted it, Kafana felt her eyes widening in wonder. She fed all her feelings, and that sense of belonging, straight into the music flowing out of her. Flowing to the three other people on board the Icarus, to people on the ground, and to one tiny stream of data, that Kafana had entirely forgotten about - the one still being received by Alderney and carrying a unedited record of all she experienced, though or felt.

Not bothering to check the effect of the first song, she set a maintenance timer with System and moved straight onto a working speed buff and then her buff to skill levels.

She looked down. They were now flying low over the market square of Mercato, with hundreds of people looking up and pointing. She spotted a group of children and threw sweets down to them, a handful at a time. Even if she lost the bet, this wonderful ride was worth the attempt.

Might as well keep the concert rolling. Wildly inappropriate to her voice, but who cared? These folks had no original to compare it with. She was free to do as she liked!

The previous song had left her feeling so high she was almost giddy, and wanted to share. Her eyes shone and she smiled widely as she started singing What A Wonderful World.

She put no intent behind it, just pure emotion, opening herself to Cov and trusting in him to make sure nothing bad happened as she sang her gratitude to the Captain and her enjoyment of this life.

They were passing over Basso now, far faster than a galloping horse, a strong wind blowing from directly behind them, bending the occasional tree and moving loose items on the ground.

Bungo: {Five minutes left and I can see a kilometer down the road. You’ve failed.}

Alderney: {I’ve got a skill from my scouting that boosts my vision. I think I can see something}

Kafana: {Alderney, how about you bounce to the orphanage roof, keep your eyes fixed north and keep recording? Trust me, win or lose, this is going to be worth watching.}

She turned back to look at the others on the ship. “4 minutes to go. Is there a rope we can throw down, and some thick gloves I can use to slide down it?”

Dimitri sent Massimo to rummage in a chest, while he prepared a rope. Massimo looked a bit green in the face, and she hoped he wouldn’t get sea sick. She checked her clothes. It was lucky she hadn’t had time to go clothes shopping yet. She was still in her sturdy travelling leathers. There was the orphanage approaching fast, with Alderney on the roof “Orphanage ahoy!” she bellowed “Stand by the rope, Grandmaster Yusupov”.

Now this was a role she could get into. Why had she never considered piracy? With a cry of success, Massimo found some leather gauntlets, and she shoved her hands into them, not caring they were too large. They’d do! She sang a quick buff on herself, hoping for luck, speed, strength, dexterity or anything that would help her avoid a prat-fall. She visualised herself as Columbina nailing a landing.

With consummate skill, Captain Nafaro bled off the speed by doing a turn which circled the orphanage and brought The Icarus to a dead stop about 50 meters away from its front door. “Toss the rope!”

Judging by the feeling of energy and confidence inside her, the buff was strong but of very short duration. She ran for the still falling rope, grabbed it with both hands, wrapped her boots around it as well, and slid down as fast as she dared.

*ding* *dang*

She landed at the bottom, and steadied herself, orienting towards the group of orphans.

*ding* *dang*

She sprinted, hair whipping behind her, face intent.

*ding* *dang*

10 meters, she could do this. There was a fence, she dived over it, into a forward roll and then tripped face first into a big puddle of mud.

*SPLAT*

Mud flew everywhere - including over the gathered group of orphans.

*ding* *dang*

She raised her head, appalled at the sight of the epic mess she’d created. The buff had worn off just 2 seconds too soon.

Alderney: {Well, when you’re right, you’re right. That was worth recording. I’m going to flip out and send it straight over to Mary-Lynn.}

Kafana, outraged: {Alderney, don’t you dare!}

Wellington walked over to her, and handed 10 gp down to her. “If it is any consolation, Madame Kafana, you won the bet.}

She dropped her head back down in despair.

Alderney: {Aaaaand that’s a wrap. I’m gone.}