by Des Pensable
‘Llalorax, have you forgotten your manners? First look after your guests, without them I would still be lost, then I’ll tell my story.’
Aquitain was really surprised with this revelation. He had spent days with Yllandril and she had never told him that she was Llalorax’s wife or about the attacks on the villages. Then again he had hidden much of his past from her as well. Somanller had mentioned that rogue Llanlleans had been attacking villages but out of deference to Llalorax had not mentioned that it was his wife. No wonder Llalorax was powerless. This was a carefully planned plot to discredit him and it had worked.
He was about to introduce Alin Amber, when he noticed that the druid had disappeared. He dashed out the doorway and looked down the corridor just in time to see him teleport away.
‘I guess he was too busy to stay for tea.’ said Aquitain a little disappointed.
‘Aquitain, I saw you die yesterday. How are you still alive? How did you and Yllandril end up inside the body of constructs. I’ve never heard of spirits being able to inhabit the body of a construct.’
‘You didn’t see me die Llalorax. You saw my body possessed by a malicious spirit die. It seems to be able to possess bodies at will. When I left here a few days ago, I ended up in what looked like a crypt. The spirit saw me and stunned me using a Word of Stunning and then I think it tried to push me out of my body. Apparently my spirit wouldn’t let it in, so it sucked me out using a soul crystal. That’s where I met Yllandril.’
‘But soul crystals only hold one soul. If you put a second in the first is lost.’
‘That’s what I thought too.’ replied Aquitain.
‘However, that’s what happened. Ask your wife.’
‘He’s telling the truth, Llalorax. We were both in the crystal together, then Aquitain made the new bodies for us and we escaped.’
Llalorax looked a little confused.
‘You seem to have just broken several rules of magic containment yet you seem real enough. I suspect that Newman, if he was real, managed to caste an illusion on me. Damn. I didn’t expect this to happen. How am I going to break it.’
He dropped Yllandril onto the floor and wandered off.
‘Aquitain, what just happened?’
Aquitain thought for a few moments and replied.
‘I think we just created a dilemma. You see Llalorax thinks that we’re both dead and spirits occupying bodies of constructs is presumably forbidden, as is more than one spirit in a soul crystal and constructing your own bodies. To guard against deceptions wizards must believe the rules of magic are true. We broke the rules therefore we are not real and he has concluded that he has been trapped in a deceptive illusion. He will be trying to figure a way to break the illusion, which may include trying to destroy us.
Just then Llalorax appeared in the doorway with a staff crackling with magic and blasted them with chain lightning, then fire, cold and acid spray. Both of them absorbed as much power as they could store. The rest just bounced off them.
‘I might have guessed as much but I had to try.’ he said and raised the staff above his head to use it as a club.
Aquitain immediately stepped beside Yllandril and created an invisible shield of hardened air around them. A strong physical attack could really hurt them. Llalorax pounded the shield a few times then gave up in disgust.
‘I might have guessed that too. Damn powerful effect whatever it is.’ muttered Llalorax and wandered off again.
‘I can’t believe that you’re such an idiot. Llalorax,’ yelled Yllandril.
‘I’m imprisoned for ages. I get out and you won’t believe it’s me and all because of some stupid rules of magic.’
‘That’s it. I’ve got to make him believe that we haven’t broken any rules of magic. Then he might listen.’ said Aquitain and went running off down the corridor after Llalorax.
He found the mage in the hut having a cup of tea.
‘Can’t I have a little break without you interrupting.’ he said pitifully.
‘The problem is you think we’re an illusion because we broke the rules of magic. Would you concede that if we didn’t break them then we might be real.’
‘A logical conjecture.’ replied Llalorax.
‘Good.’ replied Aquitain.
‘Now do you know I spent most of my life until recently working as a magic item maker. We had several constructs from very large to small in our employment. They are expensive to make but once made they can last hundreds of years unless destroyed of course. I was involved in the construction of several others and gained an excellent understanding of not only how to make them but how they work.’
‘Did you know that we animate them using a small part of the owner’s spirit. Now I will readily admit that I have never heard of anyone using a construct as a body but perhaps that’s because we had no spirits as customers. All our clients already had bodies. All I did was to modify the construct to hold all our spirit rather than just a fragment.’
By the look on his face this had obviously got Llalorax thinking.
‘That is plausible but how did you create the bodies so quickly without the appropriate materials and rituals.’
‘Remember my collar. It was made of a most unusual material that we call mind clay. I have also heard it called chaos matter. Using my mind I can form it into most objects. In this case I split it into two parts and used it to model the bodies.’
Llalorax had to agree that this was also plausible.
‘But you were in a soul crystal. How could you manipulate the material outside the crystal?’
‘Well that was a tricky bit. I mentally told the Truth Radiant how to do it and she acted as my proxy outside the soul crystal.’
‘Aha … While inside the crystal you asked for two miracles and they happened. Now you see why I don’t believe you.’ replied Llalorax.
‘You don’t believe in the Truth Radiant do you?’
‘Radiants yes, but Truth Radiants, no! I’ve been around a long time and seen a lot of things in this world but no one has seen a Truth Radiant. It is a myth.’
Aquitain thought about this for a little time then said. ‘I bet I know why you people don’t know about her. She’s sneaky. She probably covers her tracks. You’re quite right. You’ve been around for a long time and your position with the Queen is too important for you not to have had dealings with her. I think she has blocked your memory of her.’
‘Can I form a mindlink with you and I’ll unblock the memory.’
Glammer suddenly appeared. ‘Don’t. You mustn’t do that. Llalorax’s memory is restricted. He must only tell you what you need to know.’
Llalorax jumped up spilling tea all over the table. ‘I know you. You’re the … Truth Radiant. Then what Aquitain has told me is correct. It’s not an illusion and that really is Yllandril.’
He quickly ran off to the cell block to get his miniature stone construct wife.
Aquitain felt a flash of magic, then another. It was Glammer.
‘Now, now Glammer. I presume you would like to block my memory of you but unfortunately for you and happily for me I’m immune to magic in this body. So leave me alone or I’ll tell more people about you.’
‘You’re ungrateful. I won’t help you anymore.’ she shouted angrily.
‘That’s your choice.’ replied Aquitain. ‘Now no more interfering with my memory or I’ll work out a way to read some of your secrets.’
Glammer suddenly vanished as Llalorax came back into the room cradling Yllandril in his arms. Aquitain was left wondering if she left because of what he said or because of Llalorax returning. Yllandril had formed a mindlink with Llalorax and they were talking privately, so he just stood there on the floor facing the door thinking about Glammer and waiting for them to finish.
It was quite boring standing in a room with two others totally immersed in catching up with what happened to each other so he decided to investigate his new body. How could solid crystal move? He looked internally using his crys
tal vision. It seemed that the crystal wasn’t rigidly structured as he expected but more like thick honey that had stood in a jar for a long time and had begun to crystallize. He moved his arm and could see the crystals flowing smoothly over each other.
For curiosity he withdrew his spirit out of one of the arms and saw the crystal there suddenly go rigid. So it was the interaction between his spirit and the magically primed crystal that allowed it to flow. He continued experimenting fascinated by his new creation.
After about ten minutes there was a knock on the door and Aquitain turned his attention to the door. Llalorax called ‘Come in.’ without even bothering to look at the door. It opened slowly revealing one of the guards standing there but as Aquitain looked at him and saw the tortured angry face and glassy eyes, he knew that trouble in the form of the angry malevolent spirit had found them.
A dreadful voice mouthed a word of power. Out of habit Aquitain put up a mental defence but the word wasn’t meant for him but for Llalorax. It hit him like a sledgehammer. He was instantly unconscious. His arms flew outwards hurling Yllandril across the room and his body crashed to the floor in a dishevelled heap.
Aquitain immediately created an air shield barrier across the doorway to prevent the guard from entering. Using mindspeak he shouted to Llalorax and Yllandril that they were under attack by the spirit. Llalorax didn’t reply and Yllandril still in shock at what had happened simply muttered a few incomprehensible words. It was up to him alone.
He suspected that the spirit would try to possess Llalorax before he came to his senses. It also made sense, as it wouldn’t guess that the two small constructs actually housed Yllandril and himself. He had to buy time. He probably couldn’t kill it but Llalorax might be able to once he regained consciousness. He blacked out the room.
‘What’s happening Aquitain? What are you doing?’ screamed Yllandril, almost deafening him.
‘I don’t know how to fight this thing but Llalorax should. He needs time to recover. I’m going to attract it into my crystal body and try to hold it there until Llalorax becomes conscious again. When he does you must ask him how to destroy it.’
‘Now to test the hypothesis that illusions on Moonmist are almost like reality.’ he thought. He shrank his spirit aura and moved it inside the head part of his body. The rest of his body went rigid and its crystal structure solidified. He created an illusory sphere in the centre of his body and inside it he put an illusory spirit aura which was the same as that of Llalorax but brighter. He added blurriness around the edges as if some type of magic protection surrounded it. This was the bait. He was going to try to use the idea that the moth gets attracted to the brightest light.
It took the malign spirit inhabiting the body of the guard about half a minute to realize that it wasn’t going to get past the wall unless it became incarnate. It left the body and passed through the wall as if it wasn’t there and headed for the mage’s spirit aura, which was unusually bright in the darkness. All the better, it thought. It passed into the mages body easily enough then saw the mage had created some type of defence. It was excited, a new challenge, what fun.
It swirled around the spherical shaped shield that protected the mage’s spirit aura. Curious? It felt like the mages body was much more dense than it should have been. What was the mage up to? Never mind, it would subdue it like it had all the countless others. Suddenly the fuzziness around the sphere disappeared and it took the shape of a diamond that had the feel of a soul container. The spirit was sucked inside the diamond. No. No. It thought. This can’t be. Not me. It can’t happen.
Aquitain quickly flowed his spirit throughout his body engulfing the region of the illusory diamond. He now had it trapped in a spherical region of solid crystal surround by his honey-like liquid crystal body. It was mainly contained by the illusion that it was trapped in a diamond soul crystal. What would happen if it suddenly realized that it wasn’t he didn’t wish to think about.
‘Got it.’ he shouted to Yllandril. ‘How is Llalorax?’
‘What did you do to it?’ asked Yllandril at last realizing what had happened.
‘I created a illusory soul crystal to catch it.’
‘What are you going to do now?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know.’ Aquitain replied. ‘This is about as far as my plan went. How’s Llalorax.’
‘He’s still unconscious.’
He felt the malign spirit begin to push at the walls of its container as if it was trying to find a way out. He looked internally at it using his crystal vision. Its spirit was swirling violently around. He could imagine it at first panicking and then began thinking about what had happened. Sooner or later it would realize that it had been tricked. He mindlinked with Yllandril and sent a mental picture of it to her.
‘Any ideas would be welcome. I don’t think the container will hold up too much longer.’ he said.
When Yllandril saw its spirit aura she nearly died of shock. She recognized what it was immediately. She had been shown one before. Had she been in her normal body she might have panicked but she was in her body made by Aquitain. He would be up to the task. If he could create a body for people then he could destroy the spirit of a dragon.
‘If it wasn’t swirling around so violently could you modify its memory?’ she suggested
‘Perhaps, but how do we slow it down?’
‘I have a calming song that I’ve used to calm patients overcome with madness. Let me try that.’ And she began to sing a magical song through their mindlink. Aquitain redirected the song to the trapped spirit but nothing happened.
‘I might be able to freeze it.’ she offered then directed a power at the trapped spirit and it worked , it froze.
Aquitain magnified the detail of the spirit’s spirit aura so that he could see its memory bubbles and sent the images to Yllandril as well. They saw almost no memory bubbles. It had forgotten its past life. There were however lots of small bubbles containing a blue crystal.
‘What’s that blue crystalline stuff?’ asked Aquitain.
‘I don’t know. I’ve seen it before but don’t know what it is.’
Aquitain began chanting the sixth mantra to change another’s memory. He asked it about its mission. A small memory bubble lit up which was partially translucent. He made it opaque. He asked it about magic. A large clear red walled bubble and several smaller bubbles lit up and began to cluster.
‘Take care.’ said Yllandril. ‘Those red bubbles are dangerous knowledge. Don’t read them. They may corrupt you.’
Aquitain didn’t take heed of her warning. He blocked the memory bubbles then discretely stole them. Next he wondered how the spirit could so readily leave a body and possess another.
‘Possession’ he said. This time a clear golden bubble that had been hidden behind the red ones lit up and floated into view.
‘Oh Dear Lady.’ stated Yllandril. ‘It’s been using knowledge from a divinity seed. You must block that off.’
Aquitain wasn’t so sure about that. There was some really valuable knowledge in there. With that knowledge he could block possession. Maybe he could read it first. He tried to read it but it suddenly went opaque and then vanished.
‘Great’ said Yllandril. ‘You destroyed it. That type of knowledge is too dangerous.’
Then as they watched all of the memory bubbles started to vibrate and burst open. They saw the diamond soul crystal start to glow and heat up as if energy was being released. Aquitain had a bad feeling about this as his whole crystal body began to glow and heat up. He looked internally and saw that it was no longer red but orange and getting hotter.
Llalorax sat up holding his head. ‘What happened?
‘Quick. Get me out of the bottle I think I’m going to explode.’
Llalorax looked at Aquitain and seeing the light and heat pouring out of him didn’t wait for answers but leaped up, ran to the food preparation area and returned with a frying pan and placed it on the ground for Aquitain to step into.
&nbs
p; Aquitain couldn’t help thinking of the humour of this situation. Normally it was out of the frying pan into the fire. This time he was the fire getting into the frying pan. Llalorax wasn’t amused. He picked up the frying pan with Aquitain in it and ran to the teleport circle in the cellblock. They instantly appeared in the crypt room. The mage ran through the crypt and up some stairs down a corridor up more stairs and finally burst out the front door of the crypt into a darkened hillside.
He lay the frying pan on the ground then ran back into the crypt closing the iron door behind him.
‘Thanks for sticking around to pick up the pieces.’ shouted Aquitain getting a little worried. This could be a terminal situation. It was his life spirit that he was using to contain the energy trying to escape from the diamond. If it blew up both his new body and his spirit would be scattered all over the countryside.
Glammer appeared. ‘You’ve done it this time. I don’t think you’ll survive this. I don’t know why you’re still in one piece. You should have melted by now. You shouldn’t have taken the divinity seed you know. That’s what caused this problem.’
‘I didn’t purposely try to take it. I just thought about reading it and it disappeared.’ said Aquitain desperately.’
At that moment the light coming from Aquitain changed from a greenish orange colour to blood red. Glimmer vanished and Aquitain began to panic but checked the fear by chanting a calming mantra. He wasn’t dead yet. He looked internally and used his crystal sight to look at the crystal structure of his body. It had changed. It now looked like Beryl rather than Aquamarine. It’s the heat he thought. Aquamarine and Beryl are made of the same substance but with different crystal structures and colours. While one was a greenly blue the other was a dark red brown.
