by C. M. Carney
“Apart from fire mage,” Errat said with a grin, pleased to contribute to the conversation.
“Yes, exactly. See you’re getting the hang of this socializing thing.”
Errat’s mouth split open in what Gryph guessed was an attempt at a smile, but looked more like the visage of a murderous clown.
“Right-O then,” Lex said looking the warborn up and down. “Errat here has only one magic skill, Aether Magic, but he is … level 69?” The NPC looked up in shock at the huge artificial man. “Dude, wow.”
Errat grinned. “Errat is wrong. Warborn should not have magical affinity. Resistant to magic, yes. Use magic, no. Errat can use Aether Magic. That is how he knew things about friends Gryph and Ovrym when first meet them.”
Errat told them he had several useful spells, including Aether Shield, Aether Sense, Imprint Item, Shudder and Enhancement.
“How did you come to learn Aether Magic?” Ovrym asked, his tone intense.
Gryph understood the xydai’s apprehension. Magical abilities were not common among the sentient species of the Realms. Perhaps ten percent of the population had a high enough affinity to learn magic. Of that ten percent the vast majority could use one of the elemental spheres of fire, air, water or earth. The primal sphere of life, death, thought and aether and the eternal spheres of empyrean, chthonic, order and chaos were much rarer, and among those Aether Magic was among the rarest skill. The only sentient race who focused their abilities in that sphere were the Prime, the very creatures who had enslaved Ovrym’s ancestors. Errat’s ability with the sphere was both a curious and troubling mystery, one he had never explained.
The warborn sighed, a learned physiological response unnecessary for his people who did not need to breathe. “Errat is different. Father made me, as he did my brothers, but I was made wrong.” He turned to Gryph. “The Last Stone King was not happy. He named me Errat, which as you know means wrong. He ordered my father to destroy me, but…”
“But I refused,” came a voice both powerful and injured. The group turned to see Grimliir striding towards them, his sad eyes gazing up at Errat. “It is time ye knew the truth about yerself Errat.”
23
Grimliir motioned to Errat and the seven-foot automaton knelt. Despite his fearsome size Errat seemed a child kneeling in front of Grimliir, a child desperate to understand. Grimliir bore the face of a man who wished he stood anywhere but where he did.
“It was at the height of the war against the Prime. We were losing. The xydai were striking terror intae the elves. The Nimmerian city had been destroyed and thousands of lives lost. Though I did not yet know, Mahlgriim, my friend and my king, was already under the sway of the arboleth.” Grimliir stole a sideways glance at Gryph.
Gryph knew from his Soul Reverie, that he had been Mahlgriim in a past life. He did not understand how a soul from the Realms had been reborn on Earth. Could he count the Soul Reverie as evidence? How did he know it was real? It is, you just wish it were not. came the Colonel’s voice. Stop being a coward who yearns for things to differ from how they are. Have the courage to bend the Realms to your will.
Gryph had neither the time nor the inclination to worry about the metaphysics of his Soul Reverie. Like the others, Grimliir’s tale of Errat’s origin riveted him.
“We needed more troops, or we would not survive the year. So, I designed the warborn, and the Alliance put every effort intae building an army. And what an army ye made. The warborn are the epitome of not only artifice but of biomancy.”
Grimliir paused as if trying to choose his next words.
“The Alliance heaped praise upon me for the warborn's creation. As Chief Artificer I deserved some praise. Never had there been a more elegant automaton anywhere on Korynn. Ye and yer brothers were perfect, powerful, strong, resistant tae magic. Better yet, ye dinnae need food, water, or even air tae survive. The Alliance was starving so that alone saved thousands of lives. But, I would be a charlatan and a liar if I claimed responsibility for the true greatness of the warborn.”
Grimliir looked into Errat’s eyes, and Gryph swore he saw the tinges of tears at their corners. The aged, yet powerful dwarf reached a hand up to touch Errat’s face.
“I created the shell, but yer mother gave the warborn life. She was an anomaly among the Thalmiir, interested in all things that grew and blossomed. The El’Edryn, and their Life Magic fascinated her. Some among our people slandered her because of it, but she cared not for such foolishness. She discovered how tae capture the souls needed tae power ye and yer brothers. I suspect she had an affinity for Soul Magic even if she'd never cast a single spell. She was gentle and kind and saw the best in everyone though she dinnae tolerate fools.”
Grimliir smiled as a memory crested in his mind.
“She had a great sense of humor. Once this pompous grump of a dwarf named Durnheim ran afoul of her. He was an ancestor of Krovoor's, which explains a lot. Ha! Anyway, he hated the elves with such a passion he could not even abide the smell of flowers. He called them ‘perfumed like them pointy eared bastards.’ So, Maevnera…”
A fit of laughter rumbled through Grimliir and he begged apology.
“Maeve cast a spell that filled the dank cave he called home with hundreds of blossoms. Each morning when Durnheim awoke his room overflowed with the most fragrant flowers. He would rage and tear them up by their roots and stomp on them with his ragged boots. And the best part; she made the spell permanent. It cost her a heck of a lot of mana, a full day’s worth, but no dwarf has ever spent mana more wisely. Driven mad by the ‘rancid stench,' Durnheim moved tae the lower depths, near the trash furnaces. If ye ask me he fit right in.
Grimliir laughed so hard that tears flowed down his face. Gryph laughed as did Lex and Vonn. Even Ovrym cracked a smile at the Thalmiir’s tale. Errat bore the expression of a child wowed by his father’s tale, and Gryph realized that that was exactly the dynamic he was witnessing.
Grimliir’s laughter calmed, and he wiped away tears. “Aw laddie, I miss her terribly.”
“I do as well, father.”
Grimliir eyed Errat. “Her grace and goodness lives on in ye son, despite yer...” The Thalmiir broke down, unable to continue.
“Why am I different father? Why am I wrong?”
Grimliir’s gaze grew dour, guilty. “Ye were an experiment son, one ordered by the Stone King himself. We built ye tae be an improvement upon the standard model, an evolution of yer brothers, a warborn capable of wielding magic.”
Gryph's eyes went wide. He couldn’t even imagine the power of an army of warborn mages. The Prime wouldn’t have stood a chance. The look on Grimliir’s face said there was a reason no other warborn had an affinity for magic.
“I knew the process had flaws, knew it was dangerous. I should have said no, but my king commanded me, and we were desperate.” Grimliir’s shoulders hung heavy, and he looked down. “No, that be nuthin’ more than an excuse. I cannot ease my guilt with excuses. It is the coward’s way. If I had only kept that truth closer tae my heart there would be less blood on my hands.”
Grimliir told a tale of pain and experimentation. Of warborn tied down and exposed to raw mana, channeled by Masters of every available sphere, hoping to awaken their affinities. While the warborn had all been volunteers, what Grimliir described sounded very much like torture.
“None survived the process.” Grimliir’s voice cracked, and he looked down in shame. “I was responsible for the torture and murder of dozens of yer brothers and had nothing tae show for it.”
“Then how is Errat here? How can I do the things I can do?”
Grimliir paused, struggling with his emotions. “I once told ye that ye were the last of the warborn tae emerge from the Crucible.”
“Yes father, I am the last of my brothers to awaken,” Errat said.
“While technically true, it dinnae be the whole story.” Grimliir paused, his hands kneading each other at the memory. “Ye were my greatest accomplishment and my greatest sin.�
� He looked up at Errat and placed his hands on the warren’s shoulders. “Ye are the second soul to be wear this body Errat.”
“I do not understand, father.”
“I know son." Grimliir paused, trying to find the words to tell his tale. "The Stone King asked for a blank warborn body. He claimed that awakening an affinity before seeding the body with a soul would ensure that no more of ye had tae die. I was desperate and let myself believe him, even when the signs of his madness were clear as day. I simply chose tae ignore them. I knew sumthin’ was off with ye the moment ye awoke. Ye could cast aetherial magic and ye was wrong.”
“Wrong?”
"I saw it right away and had to act quickly, definitively, tae protect us all from what you’d become. So, I risked damning my own soul tae the Abyss and forever imprisoned the soul that once resided in this body.” He placed a gentle hand upon Errat’s chest.
“Why, father? Why would you do such a thing?”
“Because it was a Prime soul.”
Gasps of shock flowed through the room.
“The Prime do not have souls,” Ovrym said fiercely. “That is why they seek false immortality through their offspring. They do not breed as we do, they clone themselves. Individual bodies may die, but they live on persisting for eons in a series of identical bodies. Even if one were to eliminate every egg, an individual arboleth’s mind will flow through the aether until it finds and merges with another of its kind. They are aberrant, they have no souls.”
Ovrym’s chest moved up and down with the passion of his words, but Gryph saw more, he saw hatred.
“That was the original reason they took and tortured my people. They wanted to understand our souls. They wanted a way to replicate them.”
“Could they have succeeded?” Gryph asked.
“No,” Vonn said. “Souls are not made like some artifact. Life generates them. Exactly how remains the biggest mystery of the Realms. Even the Source cannot create them directly. It made the Realms, seeded them with life hoping to create the conditions where souls were possible. It tried, experimenting with the denizens of the Elemental Realms and then the Higher and Lower Realms. Each time it failed, until it didn’t, with we mortals.”
“Seems to me that your Source isn’t as badass as you made it out to be,” Lex said.
“The Source is the Great Experimenter, the architect of reality, ever willing to take risks, to give second chances. That is why the murder of a soul is the most heinous of crimes. It removes that chance.” He looked at Grimliir. “You are certain it was a Prime soul?”
“I am, and worse yet, I understand how it came tae be.”
“How?” Gryph asked, every cell in his body on edge.
“It gave up its immortality.”
“No Prime would ever do that,” Ovrym said in shock and Gryph could see that the xydai feared this uncharacteristic behavior of the Prime more than facing off against an illurryth or an arboleth. “They are zealots. They ‘know’ they are the most important beings in all the Realms. To allow themselves to end is as impossible as you or I willing our limbs to fall off. No Prime could even conceive of the idea, much less accomplish it.”
“But this one did. It killed its own eggs and then sterilized itself.”
“How can you possibly know any of this?” Lex asked. “The Prime aren't really the chatty gossipy types.”
“Because I was there when it did it,” Grimliir said. “I’m the reason it knew it would work.”
24
Worry moved through Gryph like a slowly building quake. Did I make a mistake in trusting this man, in granting him so much power in my city? It was easy to become paranoid, to let supposition replace facts. Gryph knew this better than most, having grown up under the tutelage of a man whose life’s work was all secrets and lies.
He forced himself to relax, to let the man have his say. After all, Grimliir was the one who’d brought the topic up. If he was untrustworthy or trying to hide something all he had to do was keep quiet. But he had not. I will listen to what he has to say.
“In addition tae fighting against the Prime, the Alliance had long held a secret purpose. We knew virtually nothin’ about our enemies. We dinnae know where they came from, what they wanted or why they wanted it. It was a state of affairs that the leaders of the Alliance could not abide, so we sent out a task force of our best warriors and mages tae capture an arboleth.”
Grimliir looked right at Gryph.
“Few beings in all the Realms have faced an arboleth and triumphed. They were near impossible tae capture even though they moved about in giant floating aquariums. An arboleth on the verge of defeat would unleash all of their psychic energy at once. It was akin tae a bomb, and it was indiscriminate in its violence. Alliance and Prime alike died in these explosions.”
“Don’t those jack holes think they’re gods,” Lex said. “Why would they do such a thing?”
“Because they don’t reproduce like we do,” Ovrym said. “Every arboleth has existed since the dawn of their race. They do not birth the next generation from their eggs. They replicate themselves. For them suicide is an inconvenience, not an end.”
“Indeed noble xydai, but there is more tae it. Before entering battle each arboleth left an egg behind in a place they called the Creche. When an arboleth fell, it was born again from this egg. It was the highest priority of the Alliance to find this Creche. We never did.”
“Nor has anyone since,” Ovrym said. “It has been the main goal of the Purity, a brotherhood of adjudicators and vigilants sworn to destroy the Prime. We have got no closer to finding it than you did.”
“So, any defeat is but a minor setback to them,” Gryph said.
“Yes,” Grimliir nodded. “But it was not their only tactic. Whenever the battle would turn against the Prime, one illurryth would disengage and retreat tae a safe distance. It would just watch, never raising a hand tae defend the arboleth and it retreated whenever Alliance soldiers got close.”
“They were scouts, keeping an accurate record of the events of the battle,” Ovrym said.
“Indeed, and when the arboleth was reborn, they consumed the illurryth’s brain and assimilated the memories of their own demise.” Grimliir sighed and looked down. “It was why no tactic could ever catch the Prime off guard more than once. We lost thousands of troops trying tae take one of them bastards alive, then one day something changed.”
"You captured an arboleth," Gryph said.
Grimliir nodded and looked at Errat. “I shoulda known it was too easy, that it was an elaborate trap set by an ancient mind of terrible power, but I let hubris blind me.” The dwarf placed a hand to his son’s neck and pulled his forehead to his own, relishing the connection.
After a moment he released the warborn and turned to the others. “The group tasked with taking the arboleth found the sentry illurryth and using powerful Thought Magic, fed false imagery back to the arboleth. The Prime believed the false battle they fed into its mind was real. We got close and poisoned its tank with a paralytic agent that dulled its psychic abilities. When it woke again, it was a prisoner in my lab.”
Gryph could feel the tension rise among the group as the inevitable outcome of the tale unfolded.
“I learned too late that it wanted tae be there, that it had played us all for fools.” Grimliir hesitated again, but nobody interrupted his need to compose himself, so riveted were they by his tale. “In our arrogance we thought we’d contained it, but it counteracted our paralytic, or perhaps it had never fallen victim tae it at all. While we worked tae find a way tae destroy the Prime, it was studying us, it was studying me.” Grimliir looked up at Errat. “And yer mother.”
"The greatest collection of minds on all Korynn had come together, all dedicated tae the goal of eliminating the Prime. We were sure of our brilliance. We knew we would succeed.” Grimliir lowered his head again. “As, it seems, were the Prime. What we dinnae know, could not have known was that the devious bastard had used what it learned from us
tae evolve, likely the first time the Prime had evolved since the moment they became sentient. Using its untold millennia of life experience and knowledge it generated a soul. Then it killed itself in a massive psychic explosion.”
“Why go to all the trouble and then commit suicide?” Gryph asked. A sensation like a spider crawling on one’s skin while sleeping tickled up his spine, and he knew Grimliir’s story was about to get worse.
“Because it discovered what we had been doin’. Knew the secret of the warborn and our plan to seed captured souls into the warborn bodies. It did exactly that.” Grimliir grabbed ahold of Errat’s arm and squeezed. He did not look up as he struggled for words. “It put itself intae a warborn body, somehow retaining every memory of its past lives, every ability, every skill, every power.”
Grimliir gazed up at the others. “It was a terrifying evolution of the most evil creature in these Realms.” Grimliir paused and looked down again, then turned his eyes back to the warborn. “The foul creature had all the strengths of yer brethren but was also a Grandmaster in Aether Magic. It took control of many warborn and slew dozens of my fellow researchers, my friends, my family. Your mother and I barely escaped.”
Grimliir stood and walked away from Errat, gazing around the Nexus as he relived unseen memories of the past.
“We feared we would lose Dar Thoriim, that the Prime warborn would escape, not only at the head of a warborn army, but also with full knowledge of how tae create Prime souls. I could nae let that be. So, I adapted the technology we used tae capture the willing souls of Alliance warriors and turned it intae a weapon, one that would drain the soul from a living body and contain it.”
Grimliir turned to the others. “Once I had the soul, I planned tae destroy it, tae murder it, but I failed. I wish I had not.”
“No, you don’t,” Gryph said.
Grimliir looked to Gryph with fury. “Do not doubt my courage boy.”
“I do not,” Gryph said, staring at the dwarf. “Quite the opposite. I am praising you for it. You knew the soul was unique, precious, despite the evil it would have wrought had it become free. But you are no Morrigan, no Ouzeriuo, no Aluran. You are a good man, a strong man, one who does what is right, even when it is dangerous, even when it is hard.”