A Jaded Life

Chapter 1351

Looking down into Joshua’s cell, I was struck by a sour, unpleasant smell. Since the guy’s mind was almost entirely fried, he had stopped acting like a human and degenerated into a lump of flesh barely able to move under its own power. Due to that, even the minimal nutrition I provided him, just enough to survive, was enough to create a mess, though that would cease to be a problem after today.

Sniffing once more in distaste, I conjured a stream of water, drenching the cell below and soaking Joshua completely, until the water drained away through prepared grates. That made the entire affair a little less fragrant, but some of the stink lingered, and likely would remain even after Joshua was gone. The man himself had barely reacted, just moved enough to keep his head above the water, but that was it, no complaints, no screams of surprise, just a few moans and grunts. It made him a much more pleasant person, now that he couldn’t talk any longer.

Grinning to myself, I focused on the lump of flesh in the cell below and used my latest trick, letting him drop into the shadows and land in a nearby room, only to follow suit, stepping through the shadows so I could sit on the throne he had landed in front of. He might have sensed my presence and wanted revenge, or maybe he was so far gone that he would react aggressively to anyone. I wasn’t sure and, frankly, it didn’t matter. What mattered was wrapping him up in chains of Ice, immobilising him so he wouldn’t be able to act on his desires to strike me. He might not be strong enough to truly harm me, but I wasn’t about to risk him getting in some stupendously lucky shot. To say nothing of the annoyance his attempts would create.

With Joshua bound, I began my last experiment on him. No longer was I trying to work on his mind; now, I was seeking out a deeper aspect. By now, his mind was just too far gone; my experiments had smoothed over too many of the points and edges, ground it down until nothing but the deepest, primal and animalistic instincts remained. I knew he was still feeding himself, and I had seen something that might be territorial aggression, so those instincts were still there. It would be curious to see if his instinct to procreate remained, but to do so, I would have to present him with a willing female, and that was a step too far, even for me.

My target for today was to see how much information I could extract from his soul. Not just the usual, scanning the soul for affinities or trying to understand how it influenced a person’s magical development, but also the way the soul created the rest. It was an incredibly interesting question, as Body, Mind and Soul were all part of the complex that made a person who they were, that quite literally made the person, but I only had vague ideas about the interactions and connections between the three.

The existence of an afterlife seemed to suggest that the Soul was, somehow, external to the body, an eternal existence that would go through cycles of life and death, always fundamentally the same but developing in different ways. Or maybe it was more like a seed or bud, sprouting into a different being depending on the environment, though that, too, left many questions open.

To say nothing of the whole issues around apotheosis. By now, I was fairly confident that the majority of deities didn’t ascend while still within the realm of the living. Lady Hecate was far too curious about my situation for that to be the case, and quite a few comments she had made regarding it seemed to confirm that. So, the Gods who used to be people ascended after they died. Unless the deity became an entirely different being from the person they used to be, that suggests that a person's memories somehow remain in their soul but aren’t accessible in their next life. Maybe some echo remains, or something could be teased out, but it didn’t seem to be some trivial thing. Otherwise, the Grandmother would likely have done something to Adra, allowing the supposedly star-crossed lovers, Kallista and Adra, to reunite, not letting Adra run off with us and eventually get together with Rai.

Thinking about them, I had to give some respect to Kallista’s self-control. I knew I wouldn’t be able to let Sigmir just wander off if we were reunited, even if she didn’t remember me. I doubted I’d be able to help myself, to just carry on. No, I might just give in to my worst impulses and imprison Sigmir, desperately trying to make her remember, to make her love me as I loved her, as she had loved me in the memories I treasured above all. Just to keep her safe, I could even hear that small voice in my head, suggesting that it was for her best. A voice I couldn’t really squash down, given how far I was willing to go in order to get her back.

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Maybe that wasn’t healthy, but I wasn’t about to veer off my path just because I had a moment of doubt.

Shaking my head once more, I pushed any distraction away, reigning in my wandering mind and focusing only on the task ahead. I had an experiment to complete, and destroying one of my test-subjects just because I let myself get distracted would be quite rude. And wasteful, I didn’t want to waste too many lives on my experiments, not if I could help it.

Once my mind was settled and my focus sharp, I began to stretch thin tendrils of magic into Joshua. They easily slipped into his flesh, slowly suffusing his body before starting to burrow deeper. By that point, I was fairly certain I could have puppeted his body with ease, just from the bit of excess magic that was radiated out from the tendrils of Soul Magic, but that wasn’t what I was trying to do.

Past the body, my tendrils started to dig into his mind, the damage my earlier experiments had wrought allowing me to traverse it quickly. There just wasn’t enough of his mind left to inhibit my progress, only a few minor, and not terribly cerebral, instincts, nothing that would recognise a non-physical intrusion as an attack.

Finally, I felt his soul directly. My eyes started to glow with magic as my Soul Sight allowed me to observe the process directly. As usual, I saw the soul as an orb of numerous colours, some of which I had seen in reality, others subtly different, impossible to perceive with the eye. As I was observing, the glowing strands of my magic started to poke and prod the soul, adding a different sensation to my perception, and I quickly realised that my eyes, even with my Soul Sight, wouldn’t be the best tool to use here. Just like a person could distinguish certain properties a lot better by touch compared to sight, I could sense a lot more about the internals of the soul by solely relying on the feedback from my Soul Magic.

That became doubly true when my magic started to burrow into his soul, remaining under my control despite the intrusion into the last, maybe the most important, part of his being. By that point, I was starting to get a light headache. It might have been because I was literally holding the entirety of his being within my grasp, everything he was, everything he ever would be, his entire past, his present and every possible future he might ever have. It was all held within my hand.

For a minute or five, I simply paused, letting the feedback from my magic fill my mind, trying to make sense of the data I was receiving. The complicated connections I was sensing, stretching from his body into his mind and even deeper, anchoring his soul. To call the web complex would be a joke; it was worse, it was more.

And yet, despite the impossible, nearly overwhelming complexity, I could hold on. I was starting to understand connections, even if it would likely take me some time to fully understand what I was seeing. Time, effort and quite a few headaches.

But, for now, I was simply working on his soul, gently tugging on strands of his very essence, observing how the vibrations travelled into the damaged remains of his mind and, through that, into his body. Sometimes, my tugs caused him pain, similar to what I had already experimented with; in other cases, it was physical pleasure. A part of me wondered how his mind would have reacted to this, if it was still there. Something I would have to figure out with a different test subject.

Just as I was tugging at another strand of his soul, observing how the feedback rippled through his mind and body, I felt something snap. It wasn’t some sudden, massive change, no thunderclap from the blue sky, instead, it felt like a small, almost innocuous change, but the results were just as troublesome. Within moments, the entire complex I had suffused with my magic was starting to unravel, the soul rapidly deteriorating, the mind crumbling and the body convulsing, with blood leaking from every orifice. I barely managed to detach myself from the magic I had used, watching as it was rapidly tainted by death before dispersing back into the Astral RIver, leaving me lightheaded due to my depleted Astral Power and with a massive headache.

Then, to make matters worse, the body on the ground started to twitch.