Chapter 10 #2
This one is handwritten, and it took some water damage before it arrived here. Many of the words are lost to splotches. Some of the paper sticks together too tightly for me to risk cracking it apart.
What I can read appears to be instructions for various games I’ve never heard of, with other pages holding tallies of scores. New entertainments that past inhabitants made up to pass the time here?
I set that one back in its place and lift another book that looks more professionally bound. It turns out to be printed, with ink that’s held up fairly well over the years, but it’s a guidebook to the animals of the Abandoned Realms. Interesting but not particularly useful to my purposes.
I work my way through several more books until I reach one with thick leather binding and an attached strap. The strap snaps in half when I loosen it, and in my horror, I almost put it back.
Leaving it alone won’t fix the damage, though. I take a deep breath and peel back the cover ever so delicately.
This is one of the books where the pages have started to fragment. Chunks are missing along the edges in an erratic pattern.
What’s left of the pages is hand-written in a scrawling, disjointed style that I’d find difficult to decipher even without pieces missing. Staring at it, I almost give up again.
Then my eyes catch on the word riven in the midst of the mess.
Girding myself, I study the letters closely.
They call us riven… don’t know what that… something happened to us… I want to keep a record… went through the Great Retribution… but when the fire came…
My heart beats faster. Is this the writing of one of the original riven sorcerers, born in the wake of the Great Retribution? They might know more about the scourge sorcery that brought down the All-Giver’s rage than we do.
I peer at page after page until my head starts to ache from deciphering the messy scrawl and the fractured sentences.
As far as I can determine, the writer was alive not long after the Great Retribution. They saw the effects of the destruction and kept their magic hidden because of a few early experiences where people reacted with horror.
There’s no mention of scourge sorcery, though. I suppose the writer had enough of their own problems without accounting for anyone else’s illicit magic.
Then I come to a page that’s nearly whole, just ragged along the edge.
…never asked for this. Did I want our world torn apart by those who use death for their own gain and seek to bend the entire continent to their will?
Of course not. But to be turned into a vessel for the gods’ power—to be used like a weapon with no will of my own so they can defeat those villains, bringing down a hail of fire and destruction—and then left with my soul cracked open now that they no longer need me…
Why have I been punished for serving our deities as they chose?
I stop at the end of the page and simply stare blankly, my breath halting in my throat. The writer can’t really mean…
It sounds like they’re saying the gods used them to fight the scourge sorcerers. That the effect of the divine power is what cracked their soul.
Not born that way as a lingering punishment, but purposefully created as a tool.
That contradicts everything I’ve read before about the origins of riven magic. Why would the gods let people who served them be shunned and driven to insanity?
Maybe this one was already going mad and had delusions clouding their mind. Or maybe they convinced themselves of this story to justify other destruction they caused with their magic.
I turn the page with a shaky hand, but the next few only vent about the hardships of a trek on the road between towns with no mention of magic at all.
The several pages after have lost too many chunks for me to glean much of the subject.
There’s a brief account of seeing the silvery mountain top and deciding to try to reach it.
And then I arrive at the end of the journal.
There’s nothing definitive, nothing to confirm his stories. They’re as likely to be the ravings of a near-lunatic as anything we should put any stock in.
What good would it do Ivy to bring up the possibility when I have no reason to believe it isn’t utter nonsense? I can’t trust a word of it unless I find other accounts that corroborate the writer’s story.
As I get up to search the shelves for any records that might give a clearer picture, a thud in the hall brings my head jerking around. I dash over to the doorway.
Rheave is kneeling on the floor a few paces down the hallway, his hand braced against the wall. He’s frowning at his knees, but he looks up at my arrival.
“I… My feet moved the wrong way,” he says. “I tripped right over them.”
I offer him a hand to help him back up. He shifts his weight tentatively and then stiffens.
“What?” I ask. “Are you all right?”
His frown deepens. “I think the creator of this body is trying to call me back.”
The daimon’s gaze darts up to meet mine again, panic flickering through his expression. “It’s only a faint tug right now, but what if they pull harder? How can I stop them?”
That… is a very good question.
I open my mouth and close it again, realizing I don’t know what to tell him.
Until a few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have believed it was even possible for magic to create a living body to house a daimon that could pass for a human being. How would I have any idea how they might control it?
But the fact that he’s asking at all, that he cares this much, makes me want to help him. Is this how Ivy felt when she agreed to have him join us?
Gods above, how many other types of magic have I read about? I should be able to give him some sort of answer.
As I grope for the right thing to say, Rheave adjusts his posture in that slightly alien way that reminds me he isn’t used to having a body at all. He’s a creature of pure spirit trapped in a physical cage, as much as he’s come to enjoy his new home.
Perhaps the answers aren’t in the magic involved, but in the rights of possession. I watched my parents haggle with customers often enough to know that negotiating any kind of deal centers around claims of ownership.
My thoughts whirl and come together with a quiver of inspiration. “It’s your body they’re trying to take back, not your spirit, isn’t it? They can’t control what you think or feel?”
Rheave nods. “The body is the part they made.”
I tap his chest lightly. “But it’s yours now. They gave it to you. The more you can convince yourself of that, the more you may be able to pull away from their hold.”
The daimon peers at me. “How do I convince myself?”
“Think about all the ways you control that body now. All the things you can do with it. Move it around to prove that you get to decide what it does.”
Rheave looks down at his well-built form. He claps his hands together and stomps his feet against the stone floor, and a grin springs across his face. “Yes. Yes, it is mine now. They can’t have it back.”
He bounds off down the hall with renewed energy. I watch him go with a tendril of dread winding through my gut.
I hope he’s right about that.
What will it mean for the rest of us if my little trick isn’t enough?