The Ogre Strength Fairy and the Eldest 'Son'-Chapter 499 - The Moral Of The Story Is To Use Your Head Better
As she Walked the perimeter of the room, spiritual avatar searching... Sevra thought back to other famous incidents across the continent. Such as the Continental Army library that collapsed during renovations fifty years ago, burying centuries of copies of scrolls that had been recovered from ruins during peacetime explorations. Or the master spiritualist of a millennium ago who’d died in a ’cooking fire’ that somehow also burned his research in the annex of the next building over through a highly convoluted chain of events hailed as the worst fire in known history.
Used as a cautionary tale with the very loosely accepted moral of ’not pretending you were *so* smart that you failed to admit how hot oil and cold water interacted’, she now thought it was one of many incidents that had more truth behind it than fable. A pattern of loss and destruction by seemingly unconnected times and peoples, only sharing the one throughline of ’spirit energy’. Individually, they looked like accidents or local tragedies - but by stepping back and taking a wider look, one could see the many, many lifetimes worth of Intent slithering through the ages all over the world.
’Especially the continent.’
With many of her Elder’s memories passed on to her, Sevra’s understanding had expanded greatly. It had even been a lot more than could have been transferred before she trained in the Exclave with tips from the heiress. Including how to compartmentalize things into what she called ’fragments’, though the scout could only really conceptualize them as little figurines on a shelf and not the complex circuitry of a library that Elua tended to use to store them.
While that was a ’downside’ to El, the woman’s Astralism gave her an edge in finding things laced with spirit energy - which usually included rituals that had been activated recently. But judging by the body, the man had been dead a week or so. The trail was cold and the room itself spattered with a minefield of little spirit shrapnel all over the place. A kind the likes of which Qat may have had some experience with in the past.
Though rather than negative emotions, this time it was more like the shattered Intent of all the Aspects involved in the destroyed tool’s workings were present. Concepts taken partial spiritual form, like they were contained in the sigils themselves before being ripped to shreds. Scintillating shards whose broken state felt extra dangerous to her heightened sense... but none of it seemed deadly.
Eventually something finally drew her attention near the deceased’s right leg, but it was too late. The ’idiot’ had ignored her warnings from outside not to touch anything. He’d been pushing up the hem of pantleg and found an opalescent anklet with a faint pulse of essence that made her teeth ache as it latched onto her partner. Worse, his fingers pressed on it and secured the link - and his body dropped right to the ground.
His essence field fractured in a way that looked terribly wrong in her astral state, but overall she would later describe it like watching someone fall through ice-covered water on a vertical plane. His spirit fell right out of his body, mostly cohesive and humanoid, looking astonishingly like someone who had her very Astralism. His eyes went wide as he stood where he had been when his body fell. More transparent than her own form, due to his lower spiritual energy accumulation and also the *forced* sort of state that was making his identity waver in ’terror’... she approached the young man with her hands raised to try and instill calm.
Panicking was never going to make it better and it usually didn’t help anything, in her opinion. Most of her worst life choices were made in panics. Mouth opened but no sound came out - and of course it didn’t, she wanted to tell him. If cultivators with this Aspect could *talk* as their spiritual avatars, it would solve a lot of reconnaissance and messenger problems. Or create a whole new set of them... but variety was the spice of life, the scout felt, while also acknowledging she just wished for more options for her power.
’I could do with less variety in this young man causing me trouble... why did I agree to look after him again?’
Looking away for a moment and toward the artifact, her thoughts raked against her knowledge base until she found an answer. Not coming from her own experience or that of Thelassi, she actually discussed what this item was with Elua er Goltbred one terrible morning after a ’flight’ - or being picked up and flown off with - from one side of the Astral Exclave to another. The topic had been about Astralisms and Mimicry of their techniques through other spiritual means. Which of course led to artifacts and the kind and form that others used to emulate their personal Aspects.
The Spirit Severing tool was a crutch to force the separation in a way that would never be as quick or smooth as a natural practitioner, but was good enough for those versed in all the techniques around it to make a basic sort of use of the ability. The only problem she could see was that the person wearing it and the person who just touched it had no idea what they were doing. She suspected that one died already because he did not know how to reintegrate his soul with his body... leaving no one ’at home’ for long enough that the organ functions simply stopped.
’Irony exists in everything, but particularly in this. A cultist trying to steal or hide one of the spiritual artifacts he was meant to destroy, unable to control it because they also don’t seem to bother learning from the texts they burn. People are ridiculous!’
Trying to erase the momentary surge of misanthropy while turning back to the Cloak Astralism wielder, she placed one hand over her own heart and pointed at her own mouth. Her form expanded and condensed slightly back and forth - like breathing, if it was done with your entire body... and if it *felt* more like the sonorous vibration of a red giant’s starquake, at least according to the reincarnator.
Eventually he caught on and tried to emulate her. It was a meditation pattern usually done while engaged in a Walk, but often while sitting right in the same spot as the body itself. If she could get him a few fractions calmer and to do just that, then Sevra was sure she could save his life - before taking half of it out of his hide for not listening again. The former merchant’s apprentice and former body double was rapidly looking into also being a former ’scout’ all because he was not familiar enough with the once-an-assassin’s life background.
Painfully slow, seeming to take many hours, his spirit-form began to stabilize. The wild and weak flickering smoothed out as he gained the focus needed. Directing him to take the position of his collapsed body - which required her to mime the motion beside it and add another quarter of his hide to her anger, picturing him nice and bloody with her needles... he finally stopped looking at her like she was acting odd after the third time she hopped up and emphatically pointed and gestured.
She waited until the right moment, but she was past the point of being gentle. The illusionist had taught her many things in her downtime. Perhaps too many, as quite a number of them she had yet to master or even practice seriously. But spiritual barriers that a Primalist (usually) were capable of performing happened to be one of the few things she had been complimented on.
Sevra let that rarity of praise that held no snark get under her skin. Practicing them frequently on the journey to and from retrieving Thelassi, she had grown proficient enough to weave them away from her own body. Nowhere near as efficiently or cleanly as someone five millennia old, but certainly at the level close to genius that would have made Elua kick her out even if she had NOT wanted to go back home twenty seven months ago.
It extended like thread to wrap and press the weaker spirit down, constraining tightly to the physical flesh as she awaited the young man to reintegrate and get to his feet. Another thing which took a while, as she had to start over again... to make sure he knew to perform the very exercise she’d already shown him before that. Honestly, she was sure he couldn’t eat and walk at the same time!
"...Sorry."
The anklet came off the body without much more care than Sevra had shown anything else that day. She let it fall into a treated leather messenger tube from her gear while ignoring the apology. His essence field still felt fragile, like the dry crumble of baked desert sands. It would stabilize over the next few hours if he was careful and got rest - which, given his track record and her mood, seemed unlikely.
Exiting through the same door they entered in, the woman felt like they’d run down another lead that earned them nothing. No closer to Teovar, no hints about the cult she didn’t already know... Sevra’s eyes swept the building one final time for threats or witnesses. Clean air outside was inhaled and, for a few seconds, the nice sunlight made her whole self feel crisp and clean compared to the smell of death in the building.
She turned to face him and the young man must have seen something he didn’t like in her expression. Because he took a very voluntary step back.
"Dranuil."
Orange eyes widened at the sound of his actual name. She’d avoided using it for so many months, preferring ’apprentice’ or ’you’ - or, more frequently in recent times... just pointed silence. But if she was going to keep dragging him through investigations that could kill him, she supposed she owed him that much acknowledgment. It was also polite to show some respect to people you were about to teach lessons to in the manner she was raised under.
"You’re going to run down the mountain now." 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚
Her hand moved to the needles at her leg holster and pulled out two of them. Waving them side to side in front of his startled squirrel-like expression, she could hardly believe that this person was ever expected to represent the solid and assured Qatrand. It was fine not to be held to the exact same standards as someone clearly a number of steps beyond the average. But cultivators were meant to always be reaching beyond their own limits.
’It’s been a while since I did this training myself. I never *really* learned the right way to do it from the other side of things.’
"You should make sure not to let me catch you. Twenty seconds."
"Wait, are you really? We can just talk-"
"Nineteen."
Dranuil, with a sharp sense for ill-intent, ran at eighteen.
