-Deep Ocean Floor: Red Tooth Hunting Vessel
[Day 2 of the hunting expedition]
A sharp pain attacked Orfals mind when the chains started to pull on him. He fainted immediately. As Orfal's thoughts awoke, he discovered his body could not be felt. No light could be seen. No sound could be heard. No temperature detectable. Even the presence of gravity was gone. He did however start to discover a new sense of perception.
It was hard to understand at first but Orfal started to develop a connection with this sense. His awarness of what was around him opened up and left him baffeled.
'I'm a puddle!?'
He wasn't inside a solid physical body anymore but rather inside a liquid cloud. His awareness was connected to everywhere inside the cloud but his presence was mostly situated inside a denser mass in the center of the cloud.
Orfal was in his spirit body but he didn't know that nor did he understood how it works.
The center mass inside the cloud was Orfal's mind but also something more. His mentality took on new forms and traits. He wasn't restricted to the physical limits of his brain. Instead he could process multiple ideas at once and even control how fast those thoughts flowed beside each other. His focus and deductions were on levels of genius dwarfs. He even had perfect recall of all his life's memories. He just had to focus on finding the memories.
Orfals memories made up the entire cloudy part of his spirit body, while his center mass made up the rest of his spirit. With a little focus the center mass can move the cloudy memories toward it and view his past experiences.
Orfal started to improve his understanding of his puddle form's abilities but became distracted. The access to all his past memories was too tempting to put off exploring. Before halting his experiments on his new body Orfals had an idea. Orfal focused all his attention on his center mass and slowly it released a lesser dense liquid into the cloudy part of his body.
Orfal just created a literal note to self memory--to explore more of his new form later--and he then placed it right beside his central mass. Now begins his walk down memory lane.
The day he was born, his first kiss behind the salty malt saloon and even the drunken fiasco of last night. All his memories were contained inside the the lesser dense part of his spirit body and Orfal was visualizing multiple memories at once.
'So thats what happened after I left the mess hall last night'.
Orfal just finished viewing memories of his drunken body stumbling into the restricted furnace waste room.
'How lucky that I even woke up alive!'
From what Orfals fellow workers explained, this room collects the magic waste from the water essence stones then releases it into the ocean. However dwarven technology is anything but elegant.
To expel the magic essence waste into the ocean the room needs to build up an atmospheric pressure that exceeds the water pressure outside. The water pressure outside is so strong it can crush the body of an average dwarf within seconds. The only way to survive outside of the submarine and fortresses is to be inside an exploration rune suit.
'Yeah how cool would it be to actually wear one of those, by the way I figured out more answers to that side note you had earlier' said a smaller mass to the left of Orfal.
'Huh, who said that?'
'...I did obviously, look over to the side of our center mass,' replied the left side mass again.
Orfal swept his perception all around his spirit body and halted on a tiny dense part floating right next the center mass. If his center mass was a like the size of whale in the ocean then this smaller Orfal mass was like a minnow. The note to self memory was also gone from its spot.
'Are you a smaller version of me? Am I even the real me?'
Orfals spirit body's volume grew a little bit more and another small mass appeared next to his center mass.
'Why yes you are,' said another Orfal to his right.
'Ahh! There are two of you now, what is going on?' panicked the center mass Orfal.
'Allow me to explain,' said the left and right side Orfals in unison.
Immediatly both the tiny Orfal mass' merged back into the center mass. When that happened a sudden wave of processed thoughts and deductions rushed into the center mass Orfal and he had an 'ah hah' moment.
'That all makes sense. I agree too. This is way better then that time we took pychedelic mushrooms with Dundrid'.
Orfal's central mind possesses the ability to create parallel minds or wills--which is what the minature mass' decided to label themselves as.
For some unexplicable reason some of Orfals thoughts pour out of his denser mass, they take on a part of Orfal's personality and become a will. The center mass or master will can then absorb the wills back into itself and the magic happpens.
All sorts of hypothetical and processed conclusions that the wills process instantly are understood by the master will as if it was the one pondering over the thoughts itself. It was a trippy experience almost like time hopping his past self into a future self's mind by a few minutes.
'I wonder if I can do more with these wills'.
Orfal put his focus into desiring a will to be born. But this will was instead for the purpose of following a set of instructions.
Slowly a part of his master will seperated into his experimental will. The will's creation instructions were to swim out to the very edge of the cloudy part of Orfal and see what it could discover.
The will immediatly started to wisp itself through the memory ocean and head for what lies beyond.
The will reached the edge of Orals perception but could not push past the perimeter of his spirit body. It bounced against the edge a few times then circled around 360 degrees before returning to the master will.
Orfal experience an explosion of processed thoughts from the will that returned and he immediately synced up with what it determined.
'There is a strong boundary that resisted greatly when I tried to push through, nothing else was discovered around the whole perimeter.
Next Orfal experimented on the limits of this new ability. Orfal branched out his master will into a hundred wills. Each one started going though sections of his memories. This lasted for only what seemed a few moments though because Orfal ran out of spirit power.
'I feel drowsy all of a sudden'.
Orfal's master will became lethargic and he once again fell into a deep sleep.