CH640

The connection made, Ben’s mind clashed against another.

Alien and grand, it wasn’t quite as powerful as his own but it made up for it by acting in ways entirely foreign to the way he himself thought, experiencing reality through vacuum and void in a manner reminiscent of some other strange forms of life he’d connected to, even if it was on an entirely different scale as his suspicion as to what had been contained was confirmed, with Ben coming face to face with the great space spirit.

Long ago, Thera had told him about how two groups of spirits had vanished before the fall of their world, the time ones off to see the end of the universe itself and the space ones off to explore it, never coming back, with the answer as to why before him.

There were more containers of them aside from the one he’d broken, holding the spirits in their entirety, trapped for untold ages in tight confines that bound a race that craved freedom and exploration more than any other and used to power the demon’s conquest of the stars but that was a problem for after. First, he enveloped the alien thing before him into the confines of his mind, feeling the sheer scale of it resist everything he was as he joined their thoughts, bringing the speed the other would think to match his own to do what he needed to. Convince the spirit to save them.

A goal that had hit a roadblock as soon as it had started. When the connection had been made, Ben had been expecting something, anything, but what he got was silence. The spirit didn’t react to him, too withdrawn into itself to even notice he was there.

“Hey, hello there,” He at least tried, needing to get its attention and was more than willing to go far farther if it was going to come to that. “Could you please react to my existence a little, I’m in a hurry.”

“Go away.”

“Oh good, you’re acknowledging me, that’s the sort of progress I love to see. Anyway, I’ve freed you, you aren’t trapped anymore so why not do me the favour of helping me and a few others escape this hellhole and then we can call it square.”

It felt like the least he could ask for, all things considered. There were certain implications behind the greatest space magic user in the known universe being trapped in the world of a species that was going out to conquer the galaxy as a whole, but Ben wasn’t interested in getting into that. All he cared about was getting away and getting home, something the spirit seemed to have no interest in.

“I said go away, you’ll see no help from me.”

“Alright, interesting stance you’ve taken but there’s literally no way in hell that’s happening considering that there’s nowhere else for us to go. You’re my option here buddy.”

He could feel the great spirit ignore him and Ben briefly considered whether he’d have to put his newest awakened skill to work. If it came down to it, he was more than ready to see if he could take over the space spirit’s mind to force him to bend to his will if it meant saving himself and the others, ethics be damned, but before he gave in to that last option he instead dug deeper into the mind he was touching, feeling its depths.

Guilt, horror, self-hatred and despair, all of that screamed across the spirit’s thoughts. It knew how it had been used. Not completely, but to a great enough extent that the immortal being felt the weight of lost lives pressing down on it, leaving it all but crippled if not for the last feeling that clung to it. Desperation.

If not for all of the regular space spirits trapped there, Ben was sure it would have tried to end its existence long ago, only holding on because of an ancient mistake that had led them there.

The space spirits were especially curious among their kin and like any other, loyal to their great ones, perhaps to a fault. When the one before him had been captured and trapped, the ones that followed it had given up their own safety in return for its life, in return being used as bargaining chips themselves to bend to the demon god Oaun, leading to the conquest of worlds and the deaths of hundreds of trillions of sapients across reality with the loss of total life being uncountable, all to ensure the safety of those few.

Feeling it confirmed parts of what Ben had already guessed during his imprisonment, even if seeing it through the other’s memories left knots in his stomach as he forced himself to keep going, feeling the strain from connecting to something like a great spirit affecting his body, with his god’s warnings about connecting to sufficiently powerful beings echoing through his head.

But it didn’t immediately kill me, which is good enough for now.

How long he’d be able to handle it was another question entirely. He could feel the strain growing in the fractions of a second he was thinking at, warning enough that he was placing a huge burden on his mind and body by doing such a thing and creating a time limit to work through as he spoke again.

“The other spirits are trapped beside you! Scoop them up as we go and I’ll be able to break them out but every second we waste is a second for Oaun to notice and do something! So stop wasting your time and get going already!”

“It doesn’t matter. If he wants us back then he’ll be able to take us, he’s become too strong for a simple matter of distance to change things and I don’t want to know what would happen if we left. No, it’s safer for us to stay here.”

God, this is going nowhere.

It wasn’t like giving up was an option though. This was his only hope, one he needed to take advantage of, so before he finally gave in to what felt like might have been inevitable and just dominated the great spirit’s mind, he tried his last angle.

“Don’t you want to see the other spirits again after so long?”

“The other spirits?” It asked, perking up in a way that made Ben feel like he had a shot. “How are you so aware of my kind?”

“I know them! I’m even dating one’s daughter for god sake!”

“I don’t understand what that means.”

“It means your old world got just as conquered as any other and they were stuck trying to adapt to the reality you helped create! So are you just going to stay here or are you going to help me get home and then maybe you can own up to this a bit!”

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

It felt harsh to say and only made the spirit’s guilt and anguish explode. It knew some of the part it had been playing across the cosmos but it hadn’t been able to tell the finer details through the chains that bound it. It hadn’t known the harm it had caused its own race on top of everything else.

“I caused that…”