Harnessing the Energy

After he first got used to the feeling of attracting the energy, he began to experiment with it.

He discovered that he could condense the energy using the cosmic vortex around it and produce a denser more violent form of spiritual energy that rippled in waves while bouncing in on itself.

The more he did it the more chaotic the r+ipples bounced until reaching a balance of sorts and fusing together further into a thick, viscous liquid form that conformed to the swirl of the vortex once more. 

Sensing no other option to utilize the vortex, Null began his preparation to release the energy into his body to cleanse it with the denser spiritual essence.

Because he was going in blind, he willed the energy to spread in all directions and circulate around the vessels and tissues in a natural order. The more it spread, the more he could feel his power growing.

Finally, the process halted as the essence was used up entirely and Null let out a breath of clean air as he opened his eyes.

"You're on your way it seems," Theef said from the inside of his ship. Over the course of time, he managed to fix what he could with the materials he had on hand, but there were still some things he was not capable of repairing. 

"How much food is left?" Null felt helpless at the thought of Theef starving, so he began skipping out on the food and relied solely on the spiritual energy for sustenance.

Nevertheless, they both would be out of luck if no solution was found in time. 

"Enough for a week or so, but we're helpless without a replacement piece for the engine to run," Theef sighed, "What's worse I'm down to my last drop of beer."

Null sat in thought; he had been looking over the options they currently had in order for them to leave together to find food.

Theef's ship was a makeshift heap of junk but could at least survive in the vacuum of space, so it was an essential part of the plan.

The way the engine worked— explained from the novice pilot Theef— was that a reactive crystal, Nyrtride, is rotated inside the engine in order to generate enough electricity to power the ship's propulsion thrusters.

The missing component responsible for rotating the crystal was deformed from the crash and made powering the thrusters impossible.

"What if there was some other power source to operate the thrusters with?" Null began brainstorming with Theef these days.

"Maybe. But the reason everybody uses nyrtride to power their stuff is because of its rapid regeneration. I'd have to find a way to reconfigure the thrusters depending on the power output of the hypothetical power source so that we have enough to make it to the nearest habitable planet."

Theef had debriefed Null about the position of the nearest planet from their current location and to get there at the top speed of his ship would take at least three days of nonstop progression.

"What if we used spiritual energy as the fuel?" Null wondered if he could help somehow.

"If I had something as fancy as a spirit stone forget the ship, we could use one of my treasures to teleport straight back to a place I know. Alas, all the known spirit mines are controlled by whoever is strong enough to claim ownership of them. The few monopolies around wouldn't dare to give up on any without a reasonable offer made," Theef explained.

"What exactly is a spirit stone? Is it made out of spiritual energy," Null asked with a hopeful tone.

"That's exactly what they are; they're the solid form of spiritual energy found mainly from planets and asteroids that absorb enough spiritual energy."

A stroke of genius hit Null as he remembered the surge of energy from the dimensional tear. 

'There might be a whole untapped mine of spirit stones right beneath our feet and we didn't even notice.'

Theef never mentioned an abundance of spiritual energy in his retelling of the spaceship winding up on his planet. Therefore, he felt more confident that the possibility was likely.

The only problem left was to find a method to locate the mines. 

"You wouldn't happen to have anything capable of detecting ore mines would you," Null asked to his dismay.

"If I had one of those I would either be super rich or super dead, unfortunately the closest thing I have to something like that would be a spirit sensor, but it just so happens to work on live spirits. Can't do nothing when it comes to stones." His response was just about what was expected. 

At least there was another cool item for him to play with; to pass the time, Null had fun messing around with the things inside of Theef's stash.

There were blasters, wands, gloves, gauntlets, caps, hats, capes, crowns, you name it. There were even live plants, insects, and even a few fairies in a cage dancing very... stupidly. He could even hear them singing a sort of rythmic tune that made them seem like a cheerful choir.

At the discovery of them, Null questioned Theef, "What exactly are they doing in there?"

"That's the Ritual of Misfortune these little guys do when they get captured by someone. It makes the target insanely miserable in normal circumstances, even to the point where some choose to end themselves before they meet some other misfortunate end."

He told Null of a really unlucky fellow who managed to kidnap an entire new generation of fairies to groom into servants. When the older generations realized, they all performed the ritual together at once in the Fairy Wonderland and sentenced the poor guy to a life of hell.

He was made wanted by every race that took the side of the fairies and hunted down wherever he was seen. As a spatial wizard, it made escaping relatively easy, but when it came down to it, he was unfortunate enough to escape into the territory of a collapsing star and meet his untimely end.

"Obviously, I prepared backup for that," he fished out a coin from a little pouch necklace he wore.

"The lucky coin of a leprechaun is more than enough to keep those cute little dancing fools at bay. These guys are more of the reject kind so no typical, proud Fairy would even try to claim them as their own. Their names are Myr, Finn, and Bibibibi; I mostly keep them around for support."

Null had no clue where to even begin when it came to Theef's obsessions.

When Null managed to power up the scanner present time, he saw a lit scan of Theef and a display of some kind with a chart of colors.