Charles sat in the command chair, and turned to the station commander "what's the situation Felix?" the man looked shaken, eyes wide, a bead of sweat on his brow, his hands trembling, and a pit formed in the Emperor's stomach "we've recieved reports of nuclear detonations on every planet and planetoid in the Solar System, the Uranus Orbital Station reported incoming two minutes ago, and we haven't heard from them since, we're trying to cont-" light painted the room white as the distant flames, hot as the sun filled his vision.

  Charles watched aghast, as a thousand suns flashed into existence on the planet below, one by one dotting the surface of Mars with every passing second, even his Palace atop Olympus Mons, now a smattering of atomic slag dotted across the red sands of mars "YOUR MAJESTY, BRACE YOURSELF!" a blur at the edge of his vision, and in that moment, his world exploded into a thousand colours he had never seen before.

  There was a quiet serenity to the peace that overcame him in that time which never passed, it was as one of those moments of tranquility in life that a person could fall into if they simply allowed all the weight of life to slip from their shoulders, usually it only lasted moments, but this seemed to last for an eternity.

  When he awakened, Charles almost felt a sense of wistfulness, a melancholic longing to return to that peaceful sleep, But he had always posessed a lust for life, even in his darkest moments he had forged on with optimism.

  His life had been a long one, born at the dawn of the third millenium, he had been a soldier for the first century of his life, a Briton, and a proud one at that, even after such distinctions became meaningless to most by the inevitable centralisation of Human civilisation, when nations melded into a single polity, by the end of his life at 436 years old, he was Terran Emperor, and a lot of other things besides.

  Now he was.... well he didnt quite know, he was aware, he was sentient, he felt he was suspended in the air.

  Being sensetive to spiritual and psionic energies as he was, after a long life of training and experience built upon an abnormal level of natural talent, he could feel the energies within his body and the energies without, and as such, he could tell the general shape of his body, which was round-adjacent, somewhere between the shape of an acorn and a Horse Chestnut, the exact dimensions of his new vessel were beyond his ability to calculate, but given that he felt a foreign entity was...attached to him in some way, he quickly discerned that he was some kind of nut, seed or berry on a tree or bush.

  He took a long moment to have an existential crisis, and then focused on more important matters, gathering information and taking steps to ensure he doesnt die again. It would be hilariously depressing for his second life to end within hours of it beginning.

  'Reincarnated into a Conker' he mused, mildly amused, he had read novels about this kind of thing as a young man in the early twenty-first century, and he had funded experiments on the viability of transplanting souls into different vessels, the results had been mixed, to say the least.

  He began to stir his own spiritual energy, shaped and directed by his will, a practice he was long accustomed to, but had never quite utilized in this manner. There were experts and Mystics who had mastered the process, but Charles had always been somewhat preoccupied with Statecraft or other duties to hone such powers to their fullest potential.

  He pushed outward like blowing a bubble ever-bigger, although the larger it became, the greater the strain to maintain it grew, not that something on such a minute scale as this was a challenge to him, but he didnt know the situation he was in, and he didnt want to waste his energy and mental strength if he would need it to defend himself in the immediate future.

  Below him was simple empty air, above him was a branch full of bright green leaves and thrumming with vitality, this manner of sensory perception allowing him to perceive color, but not "see" it, just as some people could taste colour or see sounds, it acted as a whole additional sensory organ, which surpassed the abilities of every and any material organ, it allowed the individual to process the same information that the sensory organs fed the brain more directly, let them interpret that information in a more raw format, and of course, allowed them to sense information that hte sensory organs could not.

  It could be challenging to maintain this, as there was a reason that the brain processed this information subconsiously, one could never do anything else if they had to actively, consiously process everything, and indeed a "spiritually awakened" individual could filter out those senses they didnt need, such as taste, sound, smell, touch, for the body already took care of that, yet those with a greater depth of focus, a more potent willpower, could spread their focus even further, could handle more information than spiritually-able individuals.

  Although taking on the burdon of consious processing could allow one to increase their Psionic Energy production a thousandfold, generally however, it wasnt worth frying your brain to do so.

  Quickly he retracted his will, the energies returning to him from those directions in which it was simply too strenuous to keep up, and so he directed all of his focus to pushing his spiritual tendrils upward, to brush against the branch he was attached to, and in the moment he attempted to probe inside the branch, beneath the wood, and in a single moment, he felt a presence focus on him, and with a simplistic rage and fear, it ejected him. 'Its aware' he gawped as well as a being lacking in the eye department could gawp.

  It was a simplistic mind, reactionary and almost animalistic, but it was certainly aware, and its spiritual presence was both defined and potent, it had a sense of self. He supposed this simple being was his new mother, or perhaps progenitor was a better term.

  Now that he knew what he was, what had happened, he only needed to discern how much danger he was in. Charles had seen beasts endowed with great and extraordinary abilities, both physcial and metaphysical power from an overabundance of spiritual energy, Mana or Qi depending on who you ask, in the atmosphere.

  And he most certainly felt that this place he found himself in was overflowing with the stuff, he was certainly not on Earth or Mars. If he was, it had been millenia since he had perished judging by the abundance of life and lack of harmful radiation.

  He began to expand his field of awareness once more, he felt every element in the air, ever cell of the branch holding him, every speck of earth on the ground below.

  He determined that, if he were average sized for a Conker, then the tree was about 22ft tall and it seemed to be some kind Oak.

  Soon he reached the limits of his field of awareness, any further and he would begin to feel a real strain, and so he retractd it, re-absorbing the energy he had expended.

  As he engaged in a bout of self-reflection, he examined the deeper parts of himself, the very soul he had been excercising in his explorations, and found something strange.

  A gold and purple latticework that seemed to glow with a strange luminescence had interwoven itself with his essence, his soul-matter, it almost remined him of Solar-attributed Spiritual Energy, but there was something personal, something familiar to him, as much as it had become a part of him, he had become a part of it.

  As he examined it closer, he realised that it had formed a sort of structure within his soul, a... space that was similar, yet different, to the space beyond his soul, the space between stars.

  Experimenting a little, he found that he could change its shape, shrink or enlarge it, although enlarging it only marginally immediately exhausted his willpower and drained him mentally, for what though? nutrients? he felt his vessel begin drawing more and more nutrients from the "mother tree", but before he could get his fill, the little stem connecting him to his progenitor snapped.

  To say he was suprised would be an understatement, though he could not express it, either a biological redundancy had taken effect and disconnected him from the tree, or the tree itself had decided that he was a threat, and taken action, and he was inclined to believe the latter 'amazing that it has such mastery over itself' he marvelled, although granted, it wasnt as if it had the material world to distract it like humans did, trees (at least normal ones), couldnt move, talk, see or hear, all they had to contemplate was themselves, yet without perspective, what did they have to reflect upon? what did they have to contemplate when any physical action was beyond them, it must have taken centuries for this tree to accumulate the experience to develop this kind of intelligence, he had already estimated that its psionic presence was formidable in its own right, far more potent than its spirituality, it was a strange disparity that he had never seen before, but then again he had never examined a tree so closely before.

  Psionic energy and Spiritual Energy were two different, yet fundamentally intertwined forces. Spiritual energy was the product of life, living things living their lives and creating new lives, decisive thoughts and feelings that brought mental and emotional growth to the self.

  Psionic energy was created through congnition, any thought, any ponderance, any minor decision, deciding whether one would have a pretzel or a croissant would generate psionic energy. The more one thought, deliberated, studied, examined, contemplated, the more psionic energy they would generate, and this would amass and consolidate to become their "Psionic presence", this was what one might call the "consiousness", and it was from the very beginning, a part of the soul, like different atoms bonding to create more complex substances, the Spiritual and the Psionic bonded to create the Soul. It was also the origination of Spiritual Energy, for when a person experience strong emotion such as love, grief, hatred, enlightenment, determination. A small part of their consiousness underwent a sublimation of sorts, a transformation into spiritual energy which would then nestle itself into their soul, becoming "essence".

  But the soul was not simply the union of two factors, but three. The Mind, the Spirit, and the Will, Willpower was not energy, at least not in the traditional sense, it was more a force, a distillation of a soul's conviction, refined into a potent force of ego, it is the cumulation of both spiritual and psionic growth and the animus behind the two, giving them their focus and direction, it is motivation and inspiration, it is concentration and focus.

  It is the Spirit that encompasses a soul like an aura or a halo, the wall of the cell and its Nucleus at the same time.

  Every blade of grass his senses swept over was swelling with vitality, and infused with abundant spiritual energy, abundant for grass at least, his surroundings were lush with life.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Charles had found himself in a vast forest, his "Mother Tree" had sprouted in a crag beside a small creek, and now towered over the treacherous bank down which its roots slithered. 'This world must be on some sort of Cosmic Ley-Line' he mused as he examined the energy-rich atmosphere. Experimentally, he flexed his spiritual might and lifted himself into the ai-*SNAP* 'SHIT' he cursed as he was swallowed up by a Stag.

  Really should have been paying more attention to his surroundings, but e still held that the ability of flight was something worth investing his attention to. Before this transmigration, he had only been capable of levitation, due to his somewhat undeveloped spiritual strength and his not insubstantial weight.

  Tall and bulky, it was larger than anything he had seen on Earth, and looked like a cross between a Moose and a Red Deer, he wondered for a moment if this was the extinct "Irish Elk" but there really wasnt any way to confirm that, what he did know was that it had a formidable set of antlers on its head.

  Thankfully, the thing failed to break his shell and simply swallowed him whole, Charles found himself bathing in acid, but thankfully his progenitor had endowed him with a ludicrously thick and resistant shell, idly he wondered if he was poisonous too, but wast too eager to put that to the test.

  Although soon it became apparent that the animal would not be pooping him out, as he quickly proved too large to pass through the animals digestive system, becoming a blockage.

  For a moment, he considered forcing himself through, or raising himself up through the throat and forcing the animal to vomit him out, but then he realised that this was an opportunity. Were he to undertake a posession of the Stag's body, he would aquire for himself a less vulnerable and far more mobile vessel.

  Slowly, though he had no way to measure time, he disgorged energy, hour after hour, he suffused the flesh of the Deer with his own spiritual energy, cell by cell, absorbing its own into his soul-space, or "inventory" as he had taken to calling it.

  It was a marvel, and he spent a great deal of thought on how it came to be, or who had gifted him with this ability. It opened up at his will, he could even manifest windows in the world around him to allow material objects entry, and they simply disappeared into the space, although there was an obvious limit on how much he could store away, and that was the size of the inventory, and whilst he could increase that size, it took a massive amount of energy and willpower to do so, even an inch worth of space had knocked him unconsious for an indeterminate amount of time.

  Of course, he made sure to manouver himself so that he did not block the Stag's digestive system, there was no sense in having the animal starve when he wanted its body for himself.

  There was no sense in piloting a skeletal bag of skin and bones that would fall prey to Wolves just as soon as he took control of it.

  As he went about his procedure, Charles pondered the nature of Souls, which for much of his life, he had known almost nothing about besides the basics espoused by damn near every religious group on Earth, and although most of them flew wildly off the mark, all of them held that little kernel of truth that only became accessible to those who didnt meditate in seclusion for a century straight in the twenty-third century, when the higher-energies of the Universe became open to study by human minds and people began to interact with the nature of life on a more profound level.

  Souls were not static, unchanging things that appear at a random point during gestation and disappear to some paradise upon death.

  As all living things grow, so too do their souls, and like the body which grows from its parents genetic material alongside nutrients provided by its mother and after birth, sustainence provided from the world around it, the Soul is also made up of ingredients, or "essence".

  Spiritual energy is very, very rarely pure, it is generated by many things, but the things that generate this energy also "flavour" it, the birth of an aquatic creature might form "water" attributed spiritual energy, the moment a child first learns how to swim might also generate such energy, and there are a thousand other concepts with which this energy might be attributed besides, even down to more abstract notions such as "war", "death", "motherhood", "Nurturing", and over the course of a creatures life, through the accumulation of their experiences, this energy condenses into their "essence", their "soul-matter", glued together and enshrouded by their spirit.

  When a child is conceived, alongside the genetic material which combines within the womb, so too does the essence of the two parents combine, the bodies being so suffused with the accumulated and shed spiritual energy of however long it takes for the organism to reach sexual maturity, they can usually discern when conception has occured on a subconsious, spiritual level, and donate a portion of their essence in response to light that little spark of life.

  And that spark is the foundation of the soul which is built upon by subsequent life experience. This is why, in part, babies have dinstinct personalities at a very young age, and clones can be almost robotic and lacking in that department.

  The spiritual "conception" is also theorised to play a role in keeping the biological growth of an organism from diverging, from preventing mutations and optimising the organisms development, many had theoriesed that this plays a role in evolution, this is a part of how life "knows" what path to walk from generation to generation, because a little sliver of the previous generations' life experience is passed down to the offspring, and on a subconsious level, the maturing soul uses that information to steer its growth.

  And with that lifetime growth, their soul semi-constantly "sheds" small amounts of that energy, like the body shedding its dead skin, although the shed energy is not necessarily "dead", it is inactive, due to the lack of animus, it had no will to drive it, no mind to stir it into growth.

  Over the course of a life, an organism can shed a hefty amount of energy, said energy generally being imbued into people, places, objects that hold significance to the originating soul, and one of those objects to which the majority of an organism's spiritual energy ends up bound to is its body, the vessel it pilots through life, which it knows, loves, cherishes, and bonds with over the course of however long it lives, and the longer it lives, the stronger that bond becomes.

  It is not unheard of for people to be successfuly resurrected using the spiritual energy stored in their body. Of course, the decomposition of the body diminishes its bond with the energy which inhabits it, and causes said energy to disperse, some of which is infused into the spirit of the organism which devours said flesh, some of which is drawn to the bones of the originating organism which do not decay, and over the course of millenia or longer, when those bones disappear beneath the earth, that energy will be absorbed into the earth and stone alongside the bones to which it is bound.

  That energy, made up of essence, also binds itself to sympathetic objects, people and places, a family heirloom, your children, your childhood home. And essence tends to carry a spark of Psionic energy, which can also persist beyond death, but unlike spiritual energy, psionic energy degrades over time, and it must remain active to form the bond with spiritual energy which forms the will, and stirs the soul to growth and action, Psionic energy can only remain active beyond the expiration of the brain if the Soul has grown strong enough to maintain its psionic congnition without the use of such an organ.

  When a close friend dies, their memory can grow sharper in your mind, your memory of them more potent, their words echoing to you more often than when they lived, this is a result of grief, but it is also because a portion of their essence has divested itself into you and into your memory of them, and when you die, it will again find a new refuge from the erosion of discorporation.

  Psionic energy can be stored in objects too, but it is only shed during moments of intense mental activity, perhaps a textbook might contain a sliver of psionic energy from hours of study, it is far more difficult to find residual psionic energy than residual spiritual energy.

  The Stag had accumulated a substantive amount of Spiritual and psionic energy in its body, and slowly, inch by inch, he replaced it with his own, the most challenging parts being the head and spine until finally, but eventually, only the brain remained, it had began to fight him when he had reached the head, a reactionary instinct, it wasnt actively doing so, it wasnt even aware that it was doing so, it likely felt a sense of danger, and a sense of alienation from its own body.

  He usurpsed control of the Stag's hearing first, and Charles basked in the sensation of sound trickling into his new ears, a more acute and comprehensive auditory picture of his surroundings than anything he had experienced as a human.

  Soon, he had claimed one of its eyes, and for the first time in this second life he opened an eye to view the world from a visual perspective, although this sense was more of a downgrade from what he was used to, the animal had not lost its sense of sight or hearing, the organs were still physically connected to the brain, even if they were spiritually connected to Charles, still, it was growing more and more anxious by the day, its sense of danger growing.

  It led a small herd of about six deer, females all, and from his observations they seemed to be traversing a temperate climate. It led its herd through grassly plains, towering forrests, mountain passes, and verdant meadows.

  The interactions between the Stag and its girlfriends was cute, and he almost felt guilty, almost, for what he was trying to do. But then he remembered that if he didnt, he would have to resign himself to a stationary life, unless something managed to eat him.

  Charles spent a lot of time on self reflection, whilst slowly taking control of his host's body, and realised that he had acquired posession of an eidetic memory, completely perfect recall at his command.

  It was a wondrous thing, almost as wondrous as the fact that he hadnt noticed it yet, but he just knew that he would be putting that to use sooner or later.

  He felt, on several occasions, the biological desire to sprout from his shell, like a thirst to spread his roots and gather up all the nutrients to futher his growth, but he suppressed that ruthlessely, this was not the place to undergo that process, and he wasnt sure if he would ever be ready to undergo that process.

  Taking posession of the animals' body was a slow process, and as it advanced, the Stag and his herd passed into a snowy climate, the trees grew more and more sparse, the snow on the ground grew deeper, and, on one occasion, there had been an encounter with a truly monstrous Bear, emerging from the treeline and thundering across the landscape with the speed and power of a freight-train, they had lost a doe to that beast.

  'I have a bad feeling about this' he thought apprehensively as the Stag began crossing a frozen lake, the sound of crunching snow turning into a clatter of unsteady hooves on the ice, and it was mere seconds before a dark shape shifted in the blue beneath the frozen surface.

  In a single, long moment, a great noise pierced the whistling quiet when a humongous not-Orca breached the ice in an explosion of white, launching from the depths a good fifteen-feet above the ground, and coming down on the Stag, its jaws agape in a display of its rows of knife-like teeth.

  Briefly, Charles felt the terror of his host before the maw snapped shut, and the ice crumbleded beneath them, they sunk beneath the waves, and the not-Orca began swimming deeper and deeper.

  It was so quick, that he almost didn't notice when the soul of the Stag was swallowed up into Charles' inventory, much to his surprise, and it began passively absorbing all of its stolen spiritual energy which had been stored away, and Charles almost felt Robbed until he realised that he actually hadn't lost anything at all.

  Charles examined it, finding it to be dormant, too undeveloped to support its own cognition without the aid of the requisite organs.

  He wasn't quite sure how long passed, but he soon found that he was easily able to pass through the Whale's digestion system, and before he was able to get a foothold in the animal's body, he was passing through its intestines.

  He wasnt keen to challenge the not-Orca's spirit, even passively, he sensed a sharpness to its mind that the Stag and the Tree hadnt posessed, he didnt know how advanced it was, it was a large creature, with an abundance of spirit, and it was probably decades older than the stag had been, there was no telling how strong its mind was, how focused its will, how much of a challenge it would pose.

  He found that he struggled to keep himself stationary within the beast, its musculature was far different than that of the Stag, and the force of suction drew him through its digestion system beyond his ability to exert himself in the opposing direction, and he quickly came to realise that he wouldnt be conquering this monster.

  He was ejected from its body rather hastily after that, so hastily in fact that Charles suspected the beast had sensed him somehow and sped up the process intentionally, it did seem that creatures in this world were more capable, spirtually, or at least more aware of that facet of reality.

  He attempted to move, but he was stuck inside a rather hefty clump of faeces which descended rapidly through the blue and into the black, and by the time he had removed even an ounce of the offending substance, the water-pressure had grown to such a weight that he couldnt lift himself and could only glide about, with great effort.

  Eventually, he landed on the sea-bed, kicking up a cloud of chalk-white dust, and shortly after became buried in Whale dung.