Chapter 8: 7. I Heard a Voice

My flight was very gentle at first, the driver was very efficient at keeping its altitude and not swaying too much, but it had to stop to rest the next night, and as a passenger who cannot communicate, I couldn’t really tell it to be careful with the landing, and it wasn’t.

So, when I hit the trunk of a tree, I felt a pain that was the equivalent of being punched on the side of my face. The next time it was a rock, it hurt like a severe back pain for a moment and was gone in the next. On the third night, the landing just happened to be on a wide branch, so I didn’t hit anything.

Nothing against the harpy airlines, not having traffic in the sky is a good selling point, however the treatment is certainly not family friendly.

On our fourth day of traveling, by noon, the flight altitude suddenly started to lower. I could barely see the harpy’s whole body but it was enough to know that it wasn’t hurt or seemingly tired, so I presumed that our destination was near.

Within the range of my lens I could see a mountain, steep, tall and extremely rocky, with little to no grass growing over it, as well as a few trails that seemed to go across the mountain range from the sides.

That place just spells danger all over it.

Unsurprisingly, my driver was headed towards that mountain, maintaining its altitude just high enough to reach the holes that were hardly visible from above. I could compare them to caves, but it’d be more precise to call them burrows on the rock wall.

And perhaps in a stroke of luck, or maybe the harpy did learn about how to treat its passengers with proper care, there was no collision while entering one of the burrows, nor during the landing.

The burrow was deeper than I expected, and bigger than the harpy, so my view couldn’t reach any further ahead as my lens also looked at pure darkness.

Harpy reached down to its leg and used its beak to try and cut the rope. After a while it noticed that their talons would be a better cutting tool, and once they did, it was easily cut off, leaving them with the tied part and me with the rest.

Wait, where are you going? As soon as they were separated from me, they walked past me, towards the entrance, and took flight once again.

Guess I’m playing the wait game again.

Or so I thought.

A hand suddenly grabbed the cut end of the rope, reaching out from the dark depths of the burrow, and then slowly reeled me into  the darkness. I could feel the tug through the rope but I couldn’t make out anything in the darkness, even when it entered my six meter radius.

Though, weirdly enough, I wasn’t scared. It didn’t give me a bad foreboding, nor the urge to get away from it, even if I didn’t have the option of doing so.

I hope I’m being taken to a spa for cameras. My thoughts grew lighter as my body got dragged.

I wasn’t sure for how long I did stay in the dark. I was getting pulled, and dragged along, with no regards for any scratches that I might get.

It wouldn’t even be an issue if it wasn’t for the rope digging into what felt like my skin whenever I was pulled.

I couldn’t complain about this during the flight, but in this case they could’ve just held me in their hands. I justified my complaints right after making them.

And after going through the dark passage, we reached a single candle-lit area. A sort of naturally formed room, with a bed of grass and a pile of things, where I was then thrown at.

How hospitable. Once the pain subsided, I took a look around me.

There were many different kinds of machines, tools, and even clothes in this pile, some were clearly broken, some seemed to be older than my body. All kinds of things, since I couldn’t exactly classify each of them, unless I took my time doing so.

Not exactly how I wish to spend my time, but if I ran out of things to ask to the floating screen, then maybe?

The pair of hands came back from the dark side of the room holding a large knife, much like a kitchen knife but the metal was purple and shimmering. They picked me up by the rope and slowly cut off the knot, then untied me and held me with a calloused hand.

Despite being right in front of them, I still couldn’t make out their body outlines or their faces as they hid in the darkness. One flaw in having lens for eyes, I guess.

They brought me to the other side of the room, where the light of the candle didn’t reach, and set me down on a sort of table, it felt hard to the touch so I guessed it was made of stone. 

One of the hands went under the table and brought up an assortment of tools, mostly things that I recognized as mechanical equipment, such as a small hammer, a stake, something that resembled piledrivers, I couldn’t be sure of the rest but they all had a sort of glitter that shone in the dark.

With all of those laid around me, I grew suspicious of what their intentions were.

Good feeling or not, I can’t get dismounted by a stranger, I still feel pain!

“Oh, you do?”

…Huh?

I might’ve been imagining things, or maybe my crazy thoughts started to gain a new tone of voice, but something had spoken inside my mind.

It wasn’t the woman's voice that usually came from the screen notifications, as I call them, it was deeper and actually humane, with a hint of curiosity as well.

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Am I overthinking it?

“Overthinking what, exactly?”

Whoa!

Yes, there was a voice, a third person’s voice appearing within my mind, it was a kind of male-like voice, but I couldn’t be sure since it didn’t sound like the intonation that I’d expect from a man.

Though, regardless of their gender, the main issue remained.

Who is talking in my head like this?

“Ho, so for you it’s as if I’m talking inside your head? Even though you don’t have a head, or a brain for that matter?”

Hmm… Yeah? That’s a very detailed way of putting it, but I guess so?

On this third time the voice had become slightly clearer, so I couldn't help but lose track of my actual thoughts, as both my thinking and my ‘spoken’ thoughts came from the same mind as the one receiving this third voice.

“Interesting, you have enough understanding of vocabulary and expressions to get confused and apply that to your speech. Even to determine what’s above your level of knowledge in real time,” the more they spoke, the more excited they sounded.

That’s, huh, thanks? I tried to wait until they were done, but they began to mumble incoherent things and move the tools around, so I decided to quickly speak up. Sorry to bother your focus, but who are you?

“Hoo, you still seek new knowledge, that’s really surprising. I don’t believe any other has ever developed this much…”

And then they went on an analysis of my speech until some sort of realization hit them.

“Oh, right, since you already asked, I must now introduce myself, seeing as it wouldn’t be necessary to ask the same from you. I am Condrovur.”

Con-dro-vur? Did I spell it correctly, with a ‘C’, right?

“Precisely. And that’s a quite decent learning speed, perhaps above average for your kind,” while they sounded slightly proud of me, the way they phrased it did come off as demeaning.

What do you mean by ‘your kind’? Are there others like me? And what even am I?

“Ho, so you don’t even realize what you are yourself? It’s almost as if you weren’t born as is… Oh, I almost trailed off the topic at hand. To answer your question, first I must impart some information with you.”

I wasn’t sure of when they picked a chair, or a stool, but their arms lowered to my height and the outline of their forearms became visible as they supported their still hidden head.

“Firstly, you must know that there’s a difference between your composition and that of others whom you must’ve met beforehand.”

You mean, the part where they have meat and breathe, while I don’t?

“In short, yes. Though that also includes how they can control their bodies by themselves, whilst you have to remain at the mercy of their whims.”

That’s true, I can’t do anything if someone decides to break me.

“Exactly, and the reason why that occurs is because of the difference between organic bodies and inorganic bodies.”

A long scientific explanation about the insides and outsides of both beings went on, which I didn’t try to meddle in as their knowledge might contain something I actually didn’t know already. And they did teach me a lot about biology, including things that I should’ve known already, and a little about machinery.

“Now, while many different cultures may refer to your kind with different titles, the one I’d preferably abide by is ‘spirit-bound items’, a term that I learned about from an acquaintance.”

Spirit-bound, that’s an odd name. I thought I was a relic.

“That’s what the rarity of your composition, your body per-se, is in a general sense. Not all spirit-bound are relics, nor are all relics spirit-bound.”

That’s weird, couldn’t we get separated from the usual rarities? Or is it that uncommon to be a spirit item?

“I can’t speak for others, but I do consider spirit-bounds a league of their own. Although, they aren’t capable of reaching the same conclusion that you just did.”

Wait, what?

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