Book 2: Chapter 26

Without warning Cyil felt a stabbing pain in his head, forcing him to shut his eyes and grip his temples.

“You!” Once the pain had subsided Cyil opened his eyes and prepared to destroy the glove, but what he saw instantly stopped him in his tracks. Cyil found that he was standing amongst jagged black-ash rocks with magma outlining certain crevices. The sky was mean and pitch dark like a world without a sun. There was no vegetation of any sorts nor any animals to be seen. Not a single living entity existed here and Cyil could feel the confusion of the raw elements whipping wildly about.

“Where have you taken me?” Cyil grabbed the glove off the ground and threatened to rip it apart.

“Cyil my boy, no need for violence, no need for violence. I am simply showing you my powers so you will believe my words. I have not done anything to you at all, and you’re simply here with your consciousness. This place is where the Polite Palm Pub will be in, let’s say, a very very long time. It’s too bad we can’t wander around to explore, but my powers are limited because once I re-entered this plane which Nakrul belonged to, my godly powers were stripped away, forcibly smiting my physical body to smithereens and wrecking havoc to my soul which took refuge in this glove. And that is how I came to be in a glove. Now, to answer you third question--”

--Just as the Nefarious Saint was about to continue, the magma broiled and sprayed 30 feet up into the sky not even 10 feet away from the two. Cyil edged backwards, but found that he couldn’t budge a muscle.

“Haha, Cyil my boy do not be frightened. These things cannot truly harm us for we are just consciousnesses passing by.”

Cyil heaved a sigh of relief then squeezed the glove, “tell me that sooner.”

“Ouch ouch, I can’t breathe, Cyil my boy, mercy mercy!”

Cyil loosened his grip, thinking that for a god level Saint, the Nefarious Saint joked around too much. “You were about to answer my third question?”

“Ahem. Ah yes,” the Nefarious Saint cleared his throat. “I choose you because you were the only one I have encountered to have a soul that contains the same saint attributes as me. I can merge with no other and only your soul can help me regain my strength. In fact, you wouldn’t believe how many mages I saw since I woke--only a whole whopping seven! And they were all mediocre low-grade elemental bodies. It was simply a travesty. But let me tell you about what I have experienced as a glove. My first owner was a poor girl from a farming village. She found my stuck in some bushes and took me home to show her parents. Her parents berated her for having something so expensive and might I add, handsome? Well, they quickly tossed me out back into the woods and it wasn’t until some time later when a magical beast came to take me to its den. It clearly knew how awesome I was and kept me mixed in with its nest. There I watched the magical beast mate and give birth to three little mini-magical beasts. I named them one, two and three. They always slept next to me--”

“--stop stop.” Cyil had never heard someone ramble on so much and had had enough “I get it. Why did you bring me here? What do you want to show me?”

“Cyil my boy, don’t regret not hearing my story later on. I haven’t even told you about how two ate one and three when they grew up! But moving on..eh, it’s better for you to see.”

Cyil could see the air shimmer, like heat rising from the ground on an overly hot day. In the next moment the scenery around Cyil began to slowly change. Cyil observed as the magma slowly settled down, hardening and forming a crusty layer over the deep crevices. Cyil watched as the sky continued to grow a shade lighter until the first beams of sun met the lonely ground. Cyil continued to revel in the changing landscape. He noticed how the little things soon added up to form an entire whole and how much value there was in each seemingly random occurrence.

The elements surrounding the air gradually calmed down and began to work with one another to create an environment suitable for life. The first critters that Cyil saw were not mighty magical beings but small insects. Later came bigger animals until finally Cyil saw one of the very first magical beasts. It was a small rat with razor sharp claws and even sharper teeth. It tore through the ground as if it were air and it moved at extreme speed. Despite its prowess, the rat was not greedy and never ate more than it needed, leaving plenty of food for ordinary critters. Soon, the rat unknowingly became the king of the critters in that area. The rat easily outlived all the other animals, but it grew lonely because it saw how other animals would have mates whereas it didn’t.

Watching up to this point Cyil felt sad for the rat, but he could do nothing and the rat later died of old age, or perhaps of loneliness. This episode was but a fleeting moment and quickly the small trees had already grown large and tall, seemingly able to withstand all of time. But nothing could withstand the power of time and the trees began to decay, eaten through by bugs and becoming the lifeforce for the ground as they crumbled.

This cycle repeated itself in rapid succession with nothing new or as interesting as the magical beast rat; despite the repetition Cyil was entranced with the flow of time. It was like he had experienced millions of years of life in but a blink of an eye.

As the forestry grew thick and healthy, Cyil marveled at how the rocky land could change into something so lush and colorful. Then, Cyil noticed that the trees began to fall and the bushes cut and trampled. Cyil saw his first human and then came a swarm of them. In but a flash a small town was formed then a city then the very place where Cyil now stood. Like a freezing bucket of ice water washing over him, Cyil awakened from his trance, returning to his room in the Polite Palm Pub.

Shaking his head, Cyil felt wide awake and stronger, as if something in him had changed.

“That was amazing,” Cyil admitted, completely forgetting that the Nefarious Saint was also there.

“Haha! Cyil my boy, that was nothing but a simple parlour trick! No, what is amazing is you, Cyil. Your soul has gotten stronger yet again. Even I didn’t expect you to benefit so much from this experience. It seems your soul is much more special than it appears. Could it be that you’re not fully human?”

“My father and mother are both humans,” Cyil responded with confidence. “What do you mean my soul has gotten stronger?”

“Of course, of course. That was only a suspicion I had, but the soul is a complex subject so there could be many other causes.” The Nefarious Saint paused, then instead of answering Cyil’s question he asked, “Cyil my boy, do you know what a soul is or what strengthening it means? What weakening it means?”

Cyil recalled the information he had read from the Ravenous Serpents’ library and quoted with precision: “it is said a soul is the flame of life for any living being. It is a what holds all our memories and personalities, making us who we are. The body is a vessel for the soul and cannot survive without it. The soul cannot survive without a vessel so the two compliment each other. A lack of one or the other and only death awaits.”

The Nefarious Saint laughed. “What bum wrote that?”

Cyil frowned, “a rank 8 mage wrote it.”

“Cyil my boy, let me educate you a bit more than this ‘rank 8 mage’.”

Cyil nodded, welcoming the information, but prepared himself for the possible ramblings and off-topic information that could come along with it.

“The soul is awareness. It is the ability to think. It is the ability to realize the self. The soul need not be connected to anything, but it is connected to everything. The soul is also referred to as the mind, the consciousness, the spirit, the life force, the identity, and much more. These are all the soul, yet they don’t quite capture the whole picture. That is how complex the soul is.

Moving on, when someone has a weak soul they will be susceptible to illusions, easily afflicted with emotional confusion, or frequently fall prey to wandering spirits. There are many negatives that also affects the physical body such as constantly falling ill, having a weak body, and dying at a young age. The benefits to a strong soul are the opposite from what I just listed and there are virtually no negative effects. Perhaps the only thing a person with a strong soul has to worry about is the possibility of a lack of emotional display; their mind will be in such a state of clarity that they will often act on logic instead of emotional impulses. But that is not to say all people with strong souls are cold individuals. In fact, people with strong soul tend to protect people with weaker souls by simply being next to them.

This is especially relevant with strong souled individuals that are not mages. These entities can often establish communication with spirits or even display extraordinary strength in times of crisis. During my travels in Nakrul, I once met an old woman who had a strong soul, much stronger than even rank 6 mages. She had no physical training and lived and ordinary life, but when a rank 4 magical beast rampaged around her town slaughtering civilians she single handedly killed the beast--punching straight through its skull in a single blow. After she completed the task, the old woman passed away. She had overexerted her soul, which is a form of burning your life force. Alas, if only she had some training then she would’ve been someone to fear!

There was also a fellow dwarf I encountered on my travels that had escaped from the prisons. The dragons could not track him because his strong soul obscured all scrying spells. But even if they could they probably wouldn’t have gone to the trouble. This dwarf had a soul so strong that he could see my rank 6 level 2 guise and although he didn’t know about rankings, he knew I was a powerful mage. I wouldn’t have known about him if he hadn’t approached me to ask for help. He offered to be my slave, if I only freed his family from the prisons. I agreed and easily extracted his family from the prisons, but I didn’t take him as my slave...later on, I heard his family was captured by bandits and in an effort to rescue them he was killed.

In Nakrul, there are not many individuals who are not mages and born with strong souls. They are much more rare than even high-grade elemental bodies. As saints, we naturally have strong souls because we are intune with the law(s) of Nakrul. You and I both have two saint attributes so our soul is much stronger than regular saints. Of course, there are no absolutes so some saints, usually Life attribute saints, can have stronger souls than ours. But to increase your soul strength is a difficult thing to do and only someone who has become a god can even begin to understand its mechanics. Others simply use brute methods or accidentally manage to train their soul strength.

Cyil my boy, there are much more things to talk about, but the main thing I am saying is although each soul is unique, there are similarities too, and your soul is the most similar to my own; thus you are the most suitable candidate for me, and I for you.”

Cyil looked at the glove with a serious expression, his thoughts lingering on a single phrase. “You said ‘there are no absolutes’, where did you hear that from?”

“Hear? I was the one who invented the term! There really are no absolutes in Nakrul, Cyil my boy. You would do well to listen to this principle. In fact, let me tell you about….”

Cyil was no longer listening to the Nefarious Saint’s ramblings, but instead thought of his grandpa Baccaus then of his grandmother Kara. He remembered the rushed and pained expression on their face and the urgency in their voice. He had never forgotten the promise he had made: to get stronger then return to reclaim his body, but more importantly to save his grandpa and grandma. Only after that would he look for his mother. Cyil was no longer naive and had learned much from the library and the cruelty of Nakrul. Cyil knew that at the rate of his improvement, it would take decades until he could even reasonable face off against the crystal Cyil.

Suddenly, Cyil said, “how much stronger can you make me? My soul. Will it be strong enough to contend with a Death saint’s soul?”

“Hmm,” the Nefarious Saint, a previous saint god, didn’t mind being interrupted by Cyil, and instead smiled a devious smile. He said with the utmost confidence, “Cyil my boy, I will make you the strongest entity here on Nakrul!”

Cyil nodded, thinking about his options and the consequences it may have, then adamantly said, “then let’s start right away. Come, the Nefarious Saint.”