Soul

"Oho, that's a bit distracting…. Do you think you could….. Never mind." The snail shaman shrugged as he looked at me.

I was currently sitting on top of the dead baldur. Which apparently used to be the shaman's pet before it went crazy and out of control. So it was a bit of an uncomfortable sight, but it's not like I had anywhere else to put the body.

"So, first of all, I think we accidentally skipped our introductions. I am the snail shaman. You can simply refer to me as Shaman. It is not in the culture of my people to freely give our names."

"...You can call me… Knight?... Do I give you my real name? Is this a no-name mutual thing?" I asked.

The shaman let out a short laugh before speaking.

"Ohohoho, just Knight is fine. Now tell me, how much do you know about soul?"

"...."

"Ohohoho! Wonderful! A blank slate. Let me teach you the ways of us snail shamans.

Soul is the lifeforce of all living beings. However, it is not limited to them! It is in the air, in the water, and in the ground. It is a truly wonderful thing!" The shaman exclaimed as he began waving his staff in the air causing some white particles to form all around us.

"All creatures have access to the soul inside of them. But only a few consciously are able to draw its power. Most of the time it is used subconsciously. It seems like it comes quite naturally to you though. Almost as if you were molded specifically to use it.

Even us snail shamans, with our natural connection to it, have quite a difficult time learning to use it. You learned how to coat your body with soul by yourself, isn't that right?"

I nodded my head before covering my soul in aura for a moment.

"I also experimented a bit inside the temple while fighting the baldurs and I was able to do this."

I summoned the spell in front of me before covering my hands in soul and grabbing chunks of it. Before throwing them in different directions.

"Since it takes so much soul to create one of these ones I thought it would be good to be able to split it to attack more than one enemy."

The snail shaman stabbed his staff into the ground before letting out a joyful laugh.

"Ohohohohohohoho! A true prodigy! I knew my eyes didn't deceive me when I saw you. You truly were handcrafted to use soul! I am sure the soul sanctum will be quite happy when you meet them. To have already modified my vengeful spirit."

As he mentioned the spell I perked up and asked.

"When I used the spell it just killed the target without damaging the body. Why is that?"

"Soul nourishes your body, it's what keeps you alive. When you use pure soul, such as with the spell, you will disrupt the soul inside of the creature. So by attacking with the vengeful spirit you are directly attacking the soul of your enemy. Depending on who you are targeting the disruption of soul is enough to kill them. I believe it worked so effectively on the baby baldurs since they were young and relatively weak.

I would be able to take quite a lot of vengeful spirits since I have good control over the soul in my body. However, if you target a creature that is either inexperienced or physically weak you might be able to kill it instantly."

"Physically weak? Why does their physical strength matter?" I asked.

"Oho! Soul nourishes the body, do you think that a strong person would not have a good amount of soul? If you can't disrupt all of it then you can't kill it!" The shaman said as he gave me a strange smile.

I took a moment to take in the information before asking.

"Since soul is so essential to life, how will vengeful spirit affect a creature that is strong? It will not kill them instantly, but it should mess them up. Right?"

"Oho! Correct! By disrupting the soul of an enemy you will be able to weaken an enemy. Soul disruption comes in a lot of different ways. They might become more sluggish, some of their organs might temporarily fail, they might become disoriented or paralyzed, and it might even cause them to feel an immense amount of pain. There are so many different possibilities I cannot list all of them.

And if you continue to disrupt the soul in their bodies they might just fall down and die just like the little baldurs. Though this once again depends on their experience with soul and their strength."

The shaman smiled widely before raising two fingers.

"You have two questions left!"

I almost let myself unconsciously exclaim "what?" before I luckily shut my mouth. I didn't want to stupidly waste a question by accident.

Closing my eyes I took a deep breath and thought about what I should ask.

"Why do I absorb soul whenever I harm an enemy?"

"Ohohoho! You are simply absorbing the soul that is released whenever an injury happens. Think of it like blood, when you are cut you bleed. Same thing with soul, when you are harmed you bleed. It usually gets released into the air, but you wouldn't be the first to take that soul for yourself."

"I see… Then what about the whispers I hear whenever I use vengeful spirit? I never experienced that before."

The shaman smiled before answering.

"Soul tends to get recycled from one creature to another quite often. Yet fragments of their past remain imprinted onto the soul. When you use a spell to harm you are awakening those fragments. Those fragments are the ones that cause the disturbance in the target's soul. Think of it, if you simply threw pure soul at a creature wouldn't you just invigorate it?"

The shaman raised his staff before exclaiming.

"This is all I can teach you! You must either ask someone from my family or go to the soul sanctum if you wish to learn more. I will return to my tasks as a shaman now."

I jumped down from the baldur before asking.

"Why do we have to stop here?"

"Ohohoho! I thought you were out of questions? But oh well, I will give you this one for free. As a snail shaman I cannot teach you all I know. Otherwise, I might teach you something that is wrong that I believe to be right. Us shamans are meant to learn from many different teachers to prevent us from becoming trapped in our mistakes.

We are found across all of Hallownest, and we are all growing and learning at the same time. When one of us begins our journey to become a shaman we must learn from different teachers before settling and starting our own journey of discovery of soul."

"It makes sense to want to avoid learning something wrong and becoming attached to that idea. But doesn't this just slow down the entire civilization's growth?"

The shaman gave me an understanding look before he spoke in a slightly sad tone.

"Knight, we do things this way because using soul incorrectly is a dangerous thing. If we do something wrong we want to contain the damage it causes. We have learned this the hard way…

Now go! You are wasting your potential by staying here. So get out before I kick you out! And don't come back here unless you have learned something new. I will give you no more answers to your questions. Ohohohoho!" The shaman said before beginning to laugh loudly once again.