by Philip Blood
He smiled and spoke again to the man in the other seat, “So Armal, you really think that Olsk is in for a good period of prosperity with the new trade agreements you and Jatar have arranged?” As he spoke he took out a dagger and cut himself a piece of the bread.
“Of course, but hasn’t your country been prospering under the increased trade for years now?” the ruler of Olsk asked in return.
The other noble finished eating his bite of bread before answering, “Indeed, but on the other hand, the Prutians have been a thorn in our side for quite a while. I think it’s about time that our allied countries get together and bring Pruta to its knees. United we have the strength to annex their whole country while only taking acceptable losses to our armies.”
An absolutely incredulous look came over Lord Armal’s face as he stared in shock at the other noble who was calmly sipping his wine after his bold statements on declaring war. Lord Armal gaped with his mouth open for a moment before finally finding words, “You must be joking. Pruta isn’t our enemy, or Lindankar’s, and until this moment I had no idea that you held any anger toward that country. What makes you think that I, or Jatar, will even consider joining you in an attack on an ally that has given us no provocation?” Lord Armal exclaimed, and then watched the straight face of the man sitting across from him as he waited for a response.
The man set his glass down carefully on the table and then a twitching began in the corner of his mouth, which soon developed into a grin, which almost instantly turned into laughter. He slapped the table and then pointed at the staring Lord Armal as if he was the funniest thing he had ever seen. At first, Lord Armal was insulted, but then he realized that his colleague had just played a horrendous joke on him, and the continuing laughter was infectious, so he began to laugh as well.
Finally, their fit of laughter ran down and Lord Armal spoke.
“You really had me going, I thought a monster had possessed you, or maybe one of those necromancers had brain-altered you or something. I can’t believe I bought that line about you taking over Pruta with our armies! I think Lord Rinholt would have turned into a vorghoul if he had heard your joke.”
“Perhaps we should share this bottle with the good ruler of Pruta? Why don’t you write Lord Rinholt a note and I’ll have a servant deliver it. When he gets here I’ll set him up for a good laugh,” the nobleman promised.
Lord Armal grinned wolfishly as he replied, “That stuffy old bird needs a good joke played on him; all right, we’ll do it!” He lifted a piece of paper from the stack on the table, thought for a moment and then wrote a quick note to the other ruler.
His friend across the table was still smiling from his fit of laughter as he picked up the knife again and asked in a pleasant voice, “Bread?”
“Why, thank you,” Lord Armal replied, “it does go well with the wine.”
After cutting him a piece, he scooped a dab of butter onto the dagger and inquired, “Butter?”
“Most definitely!” Lord Armal exclaimed with gusto and leaned forward to proffer his piece of bread.
Reaching up almost casually the man accelerated the butter coated knife and jammed it to the hilt in the ruler’s left eye, and then asked calmly, “Knife? Oh, sorry, I see you already have one.”
Lord Armal’s head hit the table with a dull thud which upset his glass; the spilled red wine ran across the table to mix with the red blood that ran from beneath the dead ruler’s head.
The other man rescued the note that Armal had written before the blood or wine could reach it, and then he picked up his glass of wine, took a sip and spoke to the dead body.
“Actually, I meant every word I said about declaring war on Pruta; I was laughing because I know something funny about Jatar that you don’t.” He leaned down to the dead body’s upturned ear and whispered, “Jatar isn’t Jatar, but don’t tell anyone, promise?” He sat back in his chair, took another sip of wine and had a quiet laugh at his joke. “I happen to be sure that Jatar will be delighted in helping me destroy Pruta, right after we finish taking control of your country. After all, they seem to need a new leader, their old one is kind of down and out; there must be something going around, Lords are dropping like flies.
The new rays of sunlight that angled down through the forest leaves pierced the thin swirling mists that still lingered after the twilight’s departure. Drake squatted by the fire while heating water in a small pot to make tea. Gustin and Hetark sat nearby on a rough log oiling and cleaning their weapons while Elizabeth stood a few paces away looking off into the still forest; she turned and came back to the campfire.
“Tea, milady?” asked Drake holding up the steaming pot to show his modest accomplishment.
“Yes please Drake, that would be very welcome on this unseasonably chilly morning.” She took the cup from the young knight and sat down on the log by the other two knights and said, “Well I have some good news for us this morning; the Tchulians have given up and are headed back toward the city.”
“I don’t mean to presume, milady, but was it a good idea to tax your powers so soon after your wounding?” asked the concerned Hetark.
“Though considerably weaker than I am normally, I have not yet come dangerously close to my absolute limits. Besides, it doesn’t take much power to do a check of our nearby surroundings,” she explained.
“Did you account for them all?” asked Gustin, and everyone there knew that he meant Von Dracek.
“Yes, I had to look a bit further, but I located a shielded person traveling on horseback along the road. The other ten were closer, but headed away from our position on foot; one of them had a mind shield, so it was probably that corporal.”
“A pox on that man,” Drake muttered and Gustin smiled. Then Drake spoke dryly, “So they have given up the pursuit. I’m not sure if I know how to travel without someone trying to kill me every league or so.”
Gustin answered him in an amused voice, “I could fill in for them, if that would make you feel better, Drake.” Gustin fingered the dagger he had just cleaned suggestively.
“Perhaps you could fill in, they WERE kind of inept,” responded Drake.
“Ha… ha,” Gustin said in a pretend laugh.
Hetark sheathed his clean sword with a thoughtful look on his face, and then leaned forward and put his forearms on his knees with his hands clasped between as he said, “Milady, I know this is a painful subject, but I feel we need to ask more questions about what happened to your husband. We need to learn everything about our enemies if we’re to be any help in unraveling this twisted plot. I’ve learned one thing for sure during these last two days, there are many things that I have taken for myth or old wives’ tales that are actually real. Is it too soon to ask you questions?” he asked and the concern for her grief was evident on his serious face. “If so I can wait,” he added.
“No Hetark, I have sworn to avenge my husband and place my son on his rightful throne, so if I am to expect your help it’s only right that you know everything that I can teach you. Ask your questions and I will answer them as honestly as I can,” Elizabeth assured the knights.
“Could you explain again how it is possible for a person to take over another person’s body?” he asked, obviously having difficulty with the idea of magic.
“It has to do with cathexis metal artifacts,” she said, and then considered for a moment before saying, “Long ago a blacksmith discovered a single strange rock in an ancient crater. It was made of solid metal, not of this earth. We don’t know how, but he used this metal to make various objects. It wasn’t until much later that people discovered that these objects had a unique property; they stored the memories of a person. In fact, cathexis metal stored them so thoroughly that it made a duplicate of the person’s memories and personality, pretty much everything non-tangible about a person.”
“You mean the person’s mind was put in the metal?” asked Drake, scrunching his face up in a frown.
“No, it made a duplicate; we call it an imprint, bu
t it didn’t affect the original at all. They discovered this by accident when an imprint “talked” to a different person who picked up the same object later.”
“How did it talk without a mouth?” Gustin asked.
“The imprint speaks within your mind; it’s similar to your own thoughts, but distinctly someone else. I know that sounds confusing, but it’s something that you have to experience to understand completely,” she explained. “Your mind fills in the ‘voice’ for you, in fact, it even sounds like the person, if you knew them well, but it’s not really words you hear.”
“Do people get to talk to themselves when they have made an imprint?” Hetark inquired.
“No, something about your memory meeting itself doesn’t work; you just meld back together again. In a way you’re talking to yourself every time you think, it’s more of the same thing.”
“So,” Drake said, “the blacksmith made a bundle selling these things, right?”
“No, the way the story is told at first the cathexis metal didn’t show anything special other than being as shiny as good silver, but much harder. After a few months he had sold most of the objects he had made, but it wasn’t until a few years later that the unique properties of the metal were discovered. You see it takes a while for the imprint to be created; the metal has to be touching the person for quite a long time. It takes at least a few years before the imprint will happen. Once they found out what had happened everyone tried to get the blacksmith to make more, or tell someone else how to do it, but he had used all the metal he had found and he told them so. It’s said that they killed the poor man trying to force him to tell them the correct alloy mixture for cathexis metal.”
“How many of these things did he make?” Gustin wanted to know.
“Nineteen is the number that has been accepted by most scholars, but there may have been more that were just lost or hidden before anyone tried to account for them all,” she answered.
“So people can talk to these imprints. What happens after the person dies?” Hetark asked.
“That’s what makes cathexis so valuable, the person’s imprint isn't lost, you can always speak to an imprint once it is in the metal.”
Drake leaned against a tree trunk a few feet away. “What happens if another person imprints the same piece of cathexis? Do the two imprints get mixed up, or does the new one replace the original?”
“Both imprints are kept, and they are completely separate. The newest imprint is usually the dominant one unless a prior one has an incredibly strong aura in life, but that is rare,” the sorceress answered.
“What do you mean by dominant?” Hetark prompted.
“When you pick up an imprinted cathexis artifact the dominant imprint can talk to you, and if you will it, any other imprints can speak with you as well. It has something to do with your spirit being the strongest influence on the metal, normally,” she added after a pause.
Drake interjected a question, “You keep making exceptions, what’s that all about?”
“Well, this isn’t well documented, but it seems possible that an imprinted artifact with a strong aura attached can overpower the real person’s weaker aura if there is a severe enough difference between their aura strengths. The theory is contested by many scholars, the only historical cases happened way in the past,” she explained.
“You’re saying that we aren’t sure if it’s possible for one of those things to take over any person’s body that picks it up?” Gustin asked, not sounding too happy about the thought of things taking over his body.
“No, an imprint lacks power over a person’s body,” she corrected.
“Wait, but you said that the scholars weren’t too sure about that,” Drake interjected.
“What I said was an artifact with a strong aura attached might overcome a weaker one, but an imprint without its aura has no power. You must separate the idea of the imprint of a person's mind from the presence of a person's soul. A person can imprint cathexis, but they do not leave any of their aura attached to that imprint, however, when a person dies their aura is released. Normally your soul departs, but not when you have imprinted a cathexis object, the imprint attracts the departing soul. The soul is attracted to the cathexis imprint and they join within the cathexis object. Once united the imprint becomes the real person without a body.”
“Excuse me, could you translate what you just said into understandable language,” Gustin pleaded.
“When someone dies after a short time their healthy spirit leaves the dead body and joins the 'River', departing our world for the next. I know this because I have witnessed it myself."
Drake interjected a question, "Why did you say 'healthy'?"
"I have also seen the auras of the souldead attempting to leave their dead body and join the river, but they cannot, and in the end they just dissipate to nothing, that’s why they are known as the souldead.”
“Why don’t the vorghoul’s spirits depart?” Hetark wondered.
“When Vorg created the souldead he distorted their auras to the point where they can no longer journey to the next plane,” she answered.
“Vorg, don’t tell me that he was real too!” Drake exclaimed.
“Of course, you don’t think that the souldead just made themselves, do you? The term vorghoul comes directly from the name of their creator, Vorg the Desecrator, but don’t worry too much about him, he lived more than three thousand years before you were born. His body is dust by now,” Elizabeth counseled.
“All right, I understand that your spirit leaves when your body dies, what was the rest of that you said concerning the cathexis artifacts?” Hetark asked, trying to get things back on track.
“Your aura leaving is the normal way of things, except if you have a cathexis imprint of your personality; it seems that the aura will seek out the imprint and attach itself rather than seek the river to go on,” was Elizabeth’s explanation.
“But that means that a person with a cathexis imprint can never go on, how horrible!” Hetark said.
“That’s what was thought for many years, and then they found that if the imprinted person wanted to be released and the physical owner of the cathexis object willed it, the aura left for the next plane, it was as simple as that,” she explained.
“Well, I like that a bit more,” said Hetark.
“Yes, but if the person with the aura imprint wants to go and the owner doesn’t will it, they are trapped. People have used this as a kind of extortion if the imprinted person helps them with skills and knowledge that they possessed in life then after a specified time they would release their aura. The flip side of that is if the imprint doesn’t want to go, nothing we know can drive it out of the artifact.”
“But what good is staying? If it takes massive aura power to take over a person’s body, then most couldn’t do it anyway,” figured Gustin.
“Yes, but that brings us to the part that deals with Jatar. If the aura of a body is destroyed, yet the body is intact, then an imprint within a cathexis artifact can take over the empty shell. All it needs is to touch the empty body.”
“How can an aura be destroyed, but the body left intact?” was Hetark’s next question.
“Generally, it cannot, but there is time between the destruction of an aura and the decay of the body. During that time, the body can be saved if a healthy aura takes up residence."
After a moment to digest her words Hetark asked, "And what can destroy an aura without hurting the body?"
"There are a few ways; a sorcerer could use their aura to destroy yours like Von Dracek tried to do to me in the ambush. Or a Darknull beast could do it; they consume auras like food.” Here her voice grew soft as she said, “I believe that is what was done to my Jatar. At the church, I felt a Darknull enter the world in the direction of the palace. I believe it consumed Jatar’s soul and then a cathexis artifact was used to implant a new aura and personality into his vacant body.” Elizabeth shuddered as she remembered the alien aura in her husband’s b
ody.
“It’s too bad that Lord Jatar didn’t have one of those cathexis things, we could get rid of that evil thing’s aura that has his body and put the real Lord Jatar’s back!,” Hetark exclaimed forlornly.
“But he did have one Hetark, the Ardellen family signet ring is made of cathexis,” Elizabeth said quietly.
“Then what are we doing, we need to find that ring and restore Jatar to his rightful body! Drake cried out and jumped up from the log like he was going to charge right out and find the ring.
“Believe me, when I say that I wish we could, but there is one thing about a Darknull’s attack that you aren’t considering. When a Darknull beast attacks a body they don’t kill it physically, they consume the aura. His aura can’t be in his ring because the Darknull consumed his soul.”
A single tear left a glistening trail down Elizabeth’s right cheek as a small crack in her walled up emotions opened for a moment, then she regained control and continued speaking, “But you are right about one thing, I plan to find that ring so that I can at least speak with the imprint of my husband. It won’t be the living person, but it’s the only thing I have left.” She looked down at her tense interlaced fingers and then made a conscious effort and relaxed them before continuing, “Now you know that our enemies did far worse than just kill my husband, they destroyed his immortal soul.”
“Where is the ring now?” Hetark asked gently.
“Jatar's cousin G’Taklar has it in Zinterdalin. I haven’t yet had time to make a plan on how to contact or meet up to get the ring. Still, as far as I know, we are the only living people who know that he has it, so it should be safe, however, we must stop him from going back to the false Jatar.” At the thought of the murderous necromancer in her husband’s beautiful body, Elizabeth felt a flash of rage, but she quelled it, for the moment.
“I have another question about cathexis imprints if the minds of more than one person are in the same object can the imprints communicate among themselves?” Hetark asked.