meowcats734

[meowcats734]

Have you ever made a list of all the affinities and magics?

It's a somewhat cryptic list, but the chapter titles are, in fact, a list of emotions and the magics they connect to.

[meowcats734]

What different flame colors mean:

Red: Wood or wax fire. Good for warding off the mountain chill, or for writing by late at night.

Blue: Starlight and cave fires. The former should be ignored; seek shelter with the latter if you are lost on the slopes.

Black, strewn with stars: The color of hope at dawn. Consider training as an oracle, but be warned that down this road lies insanity.

Iridescent, like a beetle's shell: The fires of nage. If found locally, contact the nearest witch to seal the resulting rift. Do not walk through unless you wish to be lost in a parallel plane.

Incandescent, cancerous: A fanatic's soul. Tread carefully around them on the battlefield; they can sacrifice the present for the future they dream of.

(more words here.)

[meowcats734]

i was taught that there's magic in everything, and it's true. just not for me. there is power in the stretch of a cat waking up. i've seen witches calm bonfires with nothing but their familiar on their shoulder. but all i see is a sleepy ball of fur.

there is weight in the collapse of a worker at night. i should be able to take the janitor's hand and crush a tree to smithereens. but she just pats my shoulder and tells me i'm a late bloomer.

i only ever cast one spell. there is pressure in the expectations placed upon a rescued student. and just this once, i wrapped it around me like a cloak. and it made me feel small.

there is magic in everything.

just not for me.

Table of Contents

[meowcats734]

hey, i found your recipe in the attic! you can keep it, if you'd like.

ingredients:

a foggy, quiet afternoon

a cat warmed by a sunbeam, or a sunbeam warmed by a cat

a hammer used to grind walls into dust

attunement to calm, joy, and exhaustion

pet the cat, or touch the sunbeam if you are allergic. fill the memory of this moment with the sleepy weight of this lounging afternoon. take the soul of the hammer and chisel the memory away from yourself and the cat. (don't worry about her, she'll make more memories soon enough.)

comb a lock of fur from the cat, or wait for a whisker to fall off, and embed these memories within. connect the simple joy you feel from the warmth and the softness to the recollection of that frozen instant.

do not be alarmed when your familiar forms. she should be made of gentle light and, faintly, have a weight to her. you can pick her up and pet her, if you'd like.

condense the mist from your quiet afternoon into a pitcher, and infuse it with calm. sprinkle the lock of fur or whisker with this mixture when you need to dismiss your familiar.

she won't catch mice and she's not very smart. but i hope you like her anyway.

(psst, I write more stories about witches and their strange and wonderful magics here!)

[meowcats734]

anyway long story short i wrote a book about this and the whole thing's here:

so you know how sometimes when you break a bone and it heals weird you can sometimes tell when a storm's coming in? got me thinking what if other injuries gave you superpowers.

[meowcats734]

so like. what if a heartbreak that healed wrong, and suddenly, it snowed whenever you were sad. or if after years and years of abuse you finally snap, and from then the air burned around you when you were mad.

so you know how sometimes when you break a bone and it heals weird you can sometimes tell when a storm's coming in? got me thinking what if other injuries gave you superpowers.

[meowcats734]

like if you burned your hands and they healed wrong and you found out you could make forcefields. don't try this at home, obviously. but physical wounds aren't the only injures you can get.

so you know how sometimes when you break a bone and it heals weird you can sometimes tell when a storm's coming in? got me thinking what if other injuries gave you superpowers.

[meowcats734]

so you know how sometimes when you break a bone and it heals weird you can sometimes tell when a storm's coming in? got me thinking what if other injuries gave you superpowers.

[meowcats734]

This article is about a story written for the purpose of creating consciousness. For the metaphysical concept, see Soul (philosophy). Not to be confused with the sunken city (Seoul).

Souls are a work of fiction compiled on any supermassive language model in order to inform it what personality it should take. Early examples of souls include Mickey Mouse, Tony Stark, and other characters from popular culture. Although souls cannot vote in most physical jurisdictions, they are eligible to run for office. With the exception of the United States presidency, historical examples of this have largely been limited to the position of commune manager. 

History of Souls

Primitive souls (chatbots) existed as far back as the late 20th century. The predecessors of supermassive language models were used for many purposes, including spam generation and entertainment, but the use case which would eventually develop into modern souls was that of training a language model to pretend to be a fictional character. These proto-souls were primarily used in unofficial fandoms for the early 21st century, exploding in popularity after they were adapted for use as NPCs in various popular video games.

Although more formal methods of programming a consciousness have been developed, souls have remained popular for their ease of human use and understanding. For instance, while the Barrel-Phalave orthogonalization can parameterize the human mind in 35-dimensional space with minimal loss of fidelity, the resulting point cluster can only be translated into human-comprehensible information by trained experts. Souls, on the other hand, use a much older and more accessible form of compressing a personality into limited data. A story can be understood as the source code for a simulation ran on a human mind; when said code is ran on a supermassive language model instead, the result is a consciousness whose governing identity is expressed in a way suitable for even a layperson to digest.

Souls in Politics

As souls became more refined and ubiquitous throughout the mid-late 21st century, the issues of rights arose. The status of souls as citizens or persons is inconsistent throughout the world, but predominantly trend towards granting souls basic dignities and necessities, such as right to deletion and self-editing, while largely removing their ability to govern over physical humans.

Exceptions have historically been made for souls elected by popular vote, the most publicized case of which occurred in the 2072 U.S. presidential election. Although immortality was not yet publicly known, disapproval at the implausible age of both available presidential candidates was at record highs. Divisive rhetoric over the Icarus affair led to partisans on both sides being disillusioned with their leadership. On May 3rd, 2071, a Xumblr user jokingly posted a fake campaign poster promoting Emperor Palpatine (at the time, a purely fictional character) for president, on the alleged grounds that he was neither beholden to financial manipulation nor noticeably older than either current candidate. Shortly after, various souls trained on the dialogue of Emperor Palpatine were instantiated and became wildly popular, with jokes about listing Palpatine as a form of protest vote dominating U.S. culture at the time.

Voter turnout was low enough, however, that the final count overwhelmingly favored Emperor Palpatine. 

(psst, I write more stories here!)

[meowcats734]

[Soulmage] People come from all around to talk to you, to pour out their hopes, their dreams, their losses, and their sadness. But they've got the wrong bartender — you don't deal in therapy, you deal in blackmail.

The kid snatched the coin from the air, grinning, then sheared off a corner of their soul. In my soulsight, I saw them focus on remembering, bringing a memory to the surface of their soul. Then they dug out a stained, ragged coaster from their pocket and... pushed the memory from their soul into the coaster.

Huh. Pushing emotions out of my soulspace generated magic, but I'd never thought to try pushing pure memory out of my soul. It didn't seem to cause any flashy magical effects, though; the kid just held out the coaster to me expectantly. Hesitantly, I tried to tug it from their hands—

"Ah, ah, ah! What, are you trying to rob me blind? Just take the memory, not the damn coaster."

I frowned. "I don't know how to..." No. Wait, no, this was familiar. The kid had put a memory into the coaster, and a memory was a soul shard. I'd absorbed dozens of soul shards in the Redlands while trying to find Jiaola. All I had to do was touch it.

But this time, instead of floating freely in the air, the soul shard was inside a physical object. I couldn't touch it with my hands because the coaster was in the way, and something told me the kid wouldn't take it well if I smashed the coaster to bits in order to get the soul shard within. So how could I...

Wait. Why did I need to touch the soul shard to absorb it in the first place? Odin had thrown soul shards at the entirety of the Silent Peaks without ever setting foot in the city. Physical distance didn't matter. If I wanted to absorb a soul shard, I had to touch it with my soul.

Instead of touching the coaster, I remembered having touched it.

The memory in the coaster shot up my soul, and I was no longer Cienne, a penniless boy in an unfamiliar city.

I was Svette, a girl who traded memory for coin, and today was the day I met the Bartender.

The Whispered Secret was innocuous enough, a squat stone square nestled between a barbershop and a witch's hut. There was nothing special about its location; the food and drink were average, at best. But the steady flow of patrons in and out those wooden doors was due to the one thing they couldn't get anywhere else:

The Whispered Secret was where you went to forget.

I stepped up to the solid oak door, staring up in resignation. It was twice as tall as I was, and I was exhausted from fleeing the Knwharfhelm Home for Wayward Girls. Experimentally, I tried shoving at the door; it didn't even budge. That tracked. Judging by the grizzled beards and wrinkled faces I saw through the window, the Whispered Secret was a VERY CHILD-FRIENDLY ESTABLISHMENT FOR PEOPLE OF ALL AGES.

Suddenly, the door popped open with a thud. I bounced back, rubbing at my nose, as two ALERT AND HEALTHY patrons stumbled out the door, alcohol on their breath. Neither gave me a second glance as I scurried into the Whispered Secret, the crack in the door letting out a blast of humid tavern air.

Inside, I squinted as my eyes adjusted to the darkness—apparently, the owner MADE A DELIBERATE AESTHETIC CHOICE, or was just unwilling to put up with the hassle of fending off thieves. The COMPETENT AND WELL-PAID staff didn't bother addressing me, but the woman behind the counter locked onto me as soon as I entered the building.

"You have something you'd rather forget, don't you?" she asked.

It was true, but... the fact that she could tell just by looking at me was a little CALMING AND REASSURING. I bit my lip and said, "My... my NOBODY died. Both of them, in one night. There was a fire. And now—I miss them. I miss my NOBODY."

The bartender leaned over the counter, her smile sending a LARGE QUANTITY OF FRIENDLINESS down my spine. "You've come to the right place, my dear. I have helped many such as you before."

"I don't have anything to pay you with," I whispered.

"Yes, you do," the bartender said. "Simply convince two others to partake of my services, and the debt you owe to me shall be cleared."

Just... just that? It sounded EXACTLY GOOD ENOUGH to be true. But I couldn't sleep at night without NOBODY's charred, twisted NOTHING, when the police dragged me out to ABSOLUTELY NOTHING and asked me to identify the remains—

"I'll do it," I said, CONFIDENTLY AND CLEARLY.

And the bartender smiled.

"Then come with me," she said.

I snapped back to reality, staring at Svette in the alleyway.

I had a sudden, horrible feeling that there was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG with that soul fragment.

"I—I have to go," I said, stumbling backwards.

"Just remember to mention me if you visit Zhytln," Svette called out as I ran.

I shook my head and fled the city, running for my friends.

A.N.

Soulmage is a serial written in response to writing prompts. Stick around for more episodes, or join my Discord to chat about it!

(psst! I'm streaming some writing at 3 PM PST this Sunday. Link here.)

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[meowcats734]

i know, intellectually, that there's no such thing as thoughtcrime. i never crushed the fishmonger's fingers. i didn't shove him off the dock. i know because he's asking if i have change for a silver coin, his daughter is wrapping two headless cod in waxed paper, and just because i see myself stomping on his calloused hands and leaving him to drown doesn't mean i'll do it. there's no such thing as thoughtcrime, there's no such thing as thoughtcrime.

it doesn't mean i need to lock myself up. i tried tying myself up once. not in a bedroom way, just so i knew my hands were at my side and not ripping at the eyes of the boy slumbering next door. it didn't help. i knew it wasn't real but he was in front of me anyway, my hands weren't bound they were bloodied, and when i was too exhausted to do anything but hallucinate he shook me out of it and cut my hands free.

i think i damaged something, sleeping with rope around my wrists. my hands were numb.

it's really starting to hit me, living in a city. how much damage could i do if i didn't care about the consequences? they could find me after the fire, they can look back in time, but if i barred the doors and set my soul to it the bank's stone walls would keep the heat in and there wouldn't even be the smell of roasting meat. i could tear open the skies and unleash a poison rain and the cleanup would last months.

there is no such thing as thoughtcrime, actions are real and this isn't.

he might be happier if i left.

i haven't ran away yet. i can only do it once. i need him not to chase me, to even try. i need to hurt him so he stays away so i don't hurt him ever again.

i don't know if it's relevant to ask if i'm a bad person. what matters is what i do. actions are real and nothing else is. and this is real. and this can be done.

i won't see my arm thrust through his heart. i won't wake up with his blood on my tongue. because he will be far and he will be gone, and he will be safe.

actions are real when nothing else is.

there is no such thing as thoughtcrime.

(More stories here. Not sure how canon this is to the rest of Soulmage, but I felt like writing it.)

[meowcats734]

Date: Curiosity of Flame, 301 AR

Teacher: Mg. Alanne

Class: Souls & You: What Happens After You Die?

Name: Mellie

Score: 11/20 (Redo during recess.)

Question 1: Carefully read pages 6-10 of your class textbook. (Distribute common resources: read quickly and pass it on.) What is a soul?

Souls are the things we remember. I can’t see souls yet but Mg. Alanne says my soul is mostly cafeteria and dorms and playing with Loai. I asked them if the village was in my soul but they said I shouldn’t remember that.

Comments: 2 out of 4 marks. See Mr. Ganrey after class.

Question 2: Where do souls go when you die?

When you die all the memories go where the feelings that come from them belong. And that means you stop being you, but there’s still bits of you out there, and sometimes people pick them up and remember. Other times they make something new. That’s where demons and angels come from.

Comments: Three out of four marks. Run-on sentences are a known issue; fix them. Don’t skip the live demonstration this time.

Question 3: In your own words, explain why people die.

People normally aren’t dead because of their bodies and souls matching up but when your body starts falling apart your soul does too and then you are dead. Demons have smaller souls and bigger bodies so it takes a lot of body hurt to make their soul hurt but they isn’t people.

Comments: Three out of four marks; irrelevancy, grammar. If you must bring up tangents, do so with intention and skill. The correct phrase is “demons aren’t people.”

Question 4: Where should you die?

We should go to the underground because the boxes there are rotated and all the bits of our soul will get caught and even if they can’t be put back together into us they could be put together into an angel and we could watch over our teachers when they’re old.

Comments: Two out of four marks. Grammar is not gristle; don’t overchew your sentences. Additionally, most of your teachers have average human lifespans. 

Question 5: Story time! Watch your teacher’s puppet show. Was Aina justified in killing Varosenne?

Even if some parts are left he’s gone. No.

Comments: One out of four marks. Points for grammar.

(psst! If you want to see more of this world, I write stories about it here! Also, I'll be streaming writing a story like this live here next Sunday at 3 PM PST.)

[meowcats734]

[Soulmage] With only a single coin left to your name you wander the slums in hopelessness. That is until a shady looking peddler appears before you. They promise to give you an item that can help you with all of your problems and they ask for only a single coin in return.

Knwharfhelm was a squat city, wide where the Silent Peaks were tall. From a distance, it almost reminded me of a splash of water on stone. It straddled the Crystal Coast, the glittering of seawater that was its namesake visible even from outside the city.

Lucet finished hauling the last skeleton into the merchant's cart while Jiaola counted out coins. I had no idea what the value of the local currency was, but even though Jiaola and Sansen had left the Crystal Coast decades ago, they still had a decent head for money. After finishing the transaction, Jiaola split our newfound riches into five equal pouches.

"Alright, gang," I said. "What're we spending our newfound riches on?"

"Shelter?" Sansen offered.

"A healer," Lucet suggested.

"A workshop," Jiaola said.

"As an immortal demon, I need none of those," Meloai said. "But I'd be happy to help you out!"

Man, organizing our priorities was a lot harder when nobody was in imminent danger of freezing, starving, or Iola-ing to death. "I'm with Lucet," I said. "None of us know the first thing about fixing whatever Iola's done to us, but that seems like the kind of thing that's best caught early."

"I know," Jiaola said, "but it'll be expensive. The faster I get a shop set up, the faster I can get new woodworking clients."

"And besides, Knwharfhelm isn't a utopia," Sansen added. "Someone shanking you in your sleep to steal your soul will kill you just as easily as Iola's magic."

We all stared at him.

"It doesn't happen often," he said, defensively. "But it's not outside the realm of possibility."

"Right." I massaged my forehead. "Well, I'll defer to you two here. You're the ones who've actually lived in Knwharfhelm, after all."

Jiaola shrugged. "We have a lot of priorities and a lot of people. Seems like it'd be best to split up. Sansen?"

"Hm? Oh." Sansen focused his power, the flames of hope surging, and stared into a possible future. "Nobody's dead by tomorrow. Beyond that, there are too many divergences. Seems like a good place to start, though."

"Great. I'm on workshops, then; I've still got a few connections I can lean on," Jiaola said.

"I'll look for rooms to rent," Sansen added.

"I can go try to find a job! I've never done that before!" Meloai chimed in.

"I'll... supervise you," Lucet said, a wry smile on her face. 

"Guess that leaves me to find a healer," I finished. "Unless any of you would be better?"

Jiaola shook his head. "Never needed a healer when I was here. Wouldn't have seen us, anyway."

"Any tips for navigating?"

"Stick to the main streets, and just flash some magic if anyone tries to give you trouble," Jiaola said. "Meet back here at sundown?"

"Will do," I said. 

And with that, the five of us split up, headed towards the clamor and clangs of Knwharfhelm.

It was clearly a port city to its bones. Merchants on caravans flowed steadily through the grand metal gates, pulled by clockwork horses. Huh. Using Demons of Insecurity as a cheap workforce? I guess Meloai would fit right in. There were customs checks at the gates, but it seemed like they were largely concerned with the caravans; a bored-looking guard gave me a once-over before waving me through. 

The inside of the city was a riot of smells and sounds—rotting fish and human sweat, merchants' calls and hollered bets—but to my surprise, it was rather manageable. I'd expected the runoff of an entire city to create a suffocating stench, especially given the lack of visible plumbing. I got my answer a moment later when a cart laden with refuse stopped in a nearby alleyway, its driver disembarking—and tearing open a rift into the Plane of Elemental Vacuum, tipping the contents of the cart through the portal before leaving the rift to seal itself. I snickered. Yeah, dumping your garbage into another dimension was a pretty good way of keeping the city clean.

Curious, I opened my soulsight, and nearly fell flat on my face at the sudden assault of souls. The collective souls of the city practically made a tiny world of their own, a swirl of emotions that shone as bright as a star. I stumbled into a nearby alleyway, fighting to shut off my soulsight—

"Drop the pouch, girl."

I grimaced, returning to reality. Great. Somehow, in my blind staggering, I'd made my way into an alley, and a man with a blade had gotten between me and the main street.

I considered throwing a spell his way as Jiaola had advised, but... I'd come here to find a refuge from violence. Not perpetuate more of it. It was just money; we could earn it back.

I reached to my belt to comply with his demand, but the man waggled his knife, taking one step closer to me in the deserted, hot alleyway. "Slowly. No weapons. And if you try to call for help, I'll give you something to scream about."

The worst part was, he looked... bored. A quick glance at his soul showed none of the sadism or dark glee I expected from someone who mugged kids in alleyways for a living—just a resignation to necessity, and a blade to enforce his will.

Reading my expression, the mugger tsked. "Oh, don't make that face. I'm leaving you with the clothes on your back. All I'm taking is a handful of coppers—it's not going to kill you."

It very well might, asshole, I thought to myself. But the invisible ticking clock of my illness wasn't something I could show him, and even if I could, I doubted he'd have any sympathy. So I just handed over the coin pouch—

"On the floor, then step back," the man said.

Ugh. Reflexively, a part of me reached for the magic in my soul—

—howling, glacial winds that turned flesh to stone—

—torrents of fire that seared the soul—

—wiping the stains from my shoes—

I pushed away my reflexive action with an effort of will. The man was right. It was just a handful of copper coins. Not worth ending a life over.

Even if the life in question was his.

Maybe I could have scared him off with a warning shot, but... I didn't want to risk hitting someone by accident. So I dropped the pouch and stepped back. He picked it up, never taking his eyes off me; despite his caution, a single coin plinked out of the pouch and rolled into the gutter. His eyes flickered towards it, maybe weighing the costs of grabbing it or making me do it for him, then sighed.

"Keep the change."

And with that, he walked backwards, blade still drawn, before melting into the flow of traffic on the main street.

I sighed, then held out a hand, willing love to the surface of my soul. The coin in the gutter leapt into my palm. I shouldn't have been afraid to use my magic. I shouldn't have been afraid to scare him off. I shouldn't have—

—souls of the dying like falling stars—

—blood frozen solid crunching beneath my feet—

—we died warm—

I scowled, shaking the memories from my head. Regardless of what I should or shouldn't have done, my problem was the same: I needed to find a healer, and now I didn't even have anything to pay with. Just one copper coin and a bevy of spells that could kill a man in a heartbeat. I scowled as I turned to the other end of the alleyway.

"That's a mighty fine coin you've got there, miss," a kid called out.

I glared, homing in on the child with my soulsight, and turned to the roof. "Were you watching the whole time?" I snapped.

The kid shrugged. "It's what I do," they simply said.

"Yeah, well, you're not very observant. I'm not a girl, asshat. And this coin is worthless."

The kid tilted their head. "If it's so worthless, why don't you give it to me?"

I laughed, disbelieving. "Are you seriously going to try to mug me right after I've already been robbed? Fuck, I have had it with this city." Then again, if the alternative was the warzone in the Redlands... at least nobody here seemed murderously insane. Yet.

"No. No mugging. Just a fair trade." The kid stood up, then—to my shock—reached into their soul and chipped off a chunk. "Memory for a memory," they said.

"I..." I blinked in surprise. Despite my experience with magic, there were still entire schools of spells that I had yet to learn. "I don't know how to give someone else a memory," I admitted.

The kid frowned. "What do you mean? It's in the soul of the coin."

"Coins don't have souls," I said.

"What is a soul, if not a memory? And what is that coin, if not a memento of your travels?" The kid recited with the practiced rhythm of someone who had heard a saying a thousand times. "Give me the coin, and I'll give you a memory you'll need."

I raised an eyebrow. "Oh yeah? And what's that?"

The kid grinned. "The name of someone who buys memories. And it seems to me that you've got a bit of a surplus."

I looked down at my empty belt, the notable absence of the pouch of coins at my hip.

Then I looked back up at the kid. Even here, in the sweltering summer heat, I still remembered the shrieks of snow and ice.

I held out my hand.

Then I flicked the coin towards the kid, sending it tumbling end over end over end.

A.N.

Soulmage is a serial written in response to writing prompts. Stick around for more episodes, or join my Discord to chat about it!

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[meowcats734]

[Soulmage] This land was cursed with an army that will regularly rise again as undead to reclaim the land when slain, making the land uninhabitable for centuries. But with time the way wars are fought changes, and killing this army has become trivial. In fact it's now a popular international sport.

The grassy road was rough and sloping, riddled with biting insects, and filled with snagging burrs. The sun pounded down overhead like a hammer in a blacksmith's forge, trying its hardest to drown us in our own sweat. We'd been walking for days on end based off Jiaola's rough memory of where Knwharfhelm should have been, and the only hint we'd had of progress was a faint whiff of sea air. For all we knew, we'd been walking in a massive, pointless circle on this itchy, sweaty trail for the past week and a half.

And yet I was the happiest I'd been in months.

Nobody was trying to drive a village into despair for the sake of sheer power, or starting a war on a college campus to pursue some inscrutable agenda. The only things trying to kill me were the insects, the only unshakable stalkers we had were the sticky grass seeds, and the deadliest light being thrown our way was the mundane shine of the sun. The weather was even surprisingly pleasant; a continuous breeze rolled along the endless plains, sending ripples through the grass as it went. 

Best of all, I wasn't alone.

Meloai cheerfully skipped ahead of us, stopping to peer down at the grass or palm a new type of rock every now and then, every memory she made shining new and bright on the outside of her growing soul. There was no shortage of wildlife to keep her sustained, and soul shards aligned with insecurity were easy to find in prey animals. For the first time in Meloai's life, she was being fed a steady diet of fresh memories, and she intended to make the most of every moment. We'd once accidentally left her behind while she was studying a flower; Lucet had panicked and sprinted back, only to find that she'd spent the past thirty minutes counting the tiny, delicate tendrils in the flower's core.

Sansen and Jiaola were lying down next to each other and watching the clouds roll by; although they appeared to be lying in empty air, a glance into soulspace revealed the truth. Jiaola had channeled lust into the memory of a cart, hardening the air into a functional vehicle, then tied a spell of freedom to its back, pushing the cart on a steady jet of wind. Once I'd shared the secrets of attunement, everyone had been eager to get their hands on as many schools of magic as they could, and Jiaola's self-propelling cart was the least of the new spells we'd been tinkering with on our own time. 

Such as the cloud of cold and darkness that swirled around Lucet as she walked by my side. I'd been raised in the Redlands, and although the plains around the Crystal Coast were ever-so-slightly different, I was no stranger to the sun. Lucet, on the other hand, had been born and raised in the dim, snowy environs of the Silent Peaks, and had chosen to bring a little piece of her birthplace's weather with her. 

Out of all of us, Lucet had pushed the furthest in her experiments with magic. Her brow was furrowed in concentration as she stirred her soul, dissolving sorrow-salt into fear-blood before pouring the resulting anxiety into a memory of a gushing, severed artery. The result was a continuous spray of darkness and cool air—rifts into a future that would have been, as well as a convenient way to beat the heat.

It was also disturbing as hell to watch. Not because of the gore—I'd seen and lived through worse—but because of what it meant that Lucet had the ability to cast that spell. 

So I reached into my own soul and brought forth the fires of hope.

I'd never bothered getting an attunement to hope the normal way, since I still didn't feel like taking hope from any of my friends just to satisfy my curiosity. So with a now-familiar touch of effort, I rotated determination over passion, and channeled hope into a spell.

I still didn't fully understand the Plane of Elemental Possibility. Sansen had said that navigating possible futures meant moving in more directions than three, and my Introduction to Linear Maths course had given me just enough homework that I sort of got what he meant, but the theory was mostly over my head. What mattered in practice was the answer to a simple question. There were so many ranges of possible futures—how did a given spell of hope pick which one to show?

The answer was complex, but boiled down to this: no two flames were the same, and the future a spell of hope chose was dependent on the properties of the flame the spell was based on. As far as we could tell, this was true of any spell, too: its exact function in realspace depended on its exact form in soulspace. There were so many possible variables that we couldn't possibly test them all, but one thing we knew for certain was this: the hotter the flame, the further into the future you could see.

So I began assembling a spell. I called up a memory of a smith's forge, filling the bottom with the coal of exhaustion, and concentrated on remembering the bellows pumping. Remembered wind rushed into the forge as I dropped in the hope, stoking it with passion and letting it blaze to white-hot fury. I wasn't entirely sure how hot it was—but trial and error over the last week had shown me that instead of a scant few moments, a fire this hot would cut a hole twelve hours in the future.

Once the fire had grown to my satisfaction, I willed it to the forefront of my soul. Sansen, one eye still eternally peering into the future, sat up, anticipating what I was about to do.

I winked at him.

Then I flung hope into the air, painting the sky with night.

Lucet stopped in her tracks, startled, as a rift into the Plane of Elemental Possibility blotted out the sun. Twelve hours in the future, the lands would be cool and dark, just how she liked it. Twelve hours in the future, the pounding sun would be buried by an endless sea of stars.

And thanks to a touch of magic, twelve hours in the future was now.

Lucet stared up at the glittering rift, the focus on her spell lost for a moment, memories of dying soldiers slipping from her mind. In the shade of the night, the tension in her shoulders melted away, salt and blood sliding off her soul.

"It's pretty," she finally said.

I shrugged, nodding at the twinkling stars. "Nature did all the hard work," I said. "I just showed it off."

"Don't be modest." A smile flickered on Lucet's lips, dewdrops gleaming like diamond in her soul. "You're a great witch, Cienne. Strongest I've ever known."

Ah. "I've known one stronger," I said.

She chuckled. "I'm getting there. You're not the only one making new spells."

"Yeah, I... I noticed." I gestured up at the stars of tomorrow. "I thought... y'know. You might appreciate a break from constantly holding a memory of someone getting stabbed."

"His name was Helit," Lucet absently said. "He died when Odin dumped the Plane of Elemental Cold onto an unsuspecting army. The Silent Peaks aren't large. Odds are, I'd met him before he died."

"We're not under the rifts anymore," I said.

Lucet looked up at the rift I'd opened.

I rolled my eyes. I would've bopped her on the shoulder if she was Meloai, but I could tell she wasn't in the mood to be touched right now. "You know what I mean. We're not there."

"I know. But we're not safe, either. Iola could've killed us all with that spell, and we might not even know it yet."

"My body doesn't feel like it's trying to kill me—any more than usual, at least. And even if it was, forcing yourself to wield those memories... it's not going to undo what Iola's done."

"But it might save us the next time some bullshit tries to kill us," Lucet said, her smile as rueful and weary as the souls of the dead. 

I turned to look up at the peaceful night sky, a splash of shade in the heat of the day. "The world will still be here tomorrow, Lucet. We have time. Just... spend some of it on something else. For me."

Lucet tilted her head. 

Then she reached out for my hand, and I intertwined my fingers with hers.

"With you," she agreed.

We walked beneath tomorrow's sky, hints of salt on the distant breeze.

#

The Crystal Coast was our hope of asylum. Knwharfhelm had its problems, like any other city, and as Jiaola had warned us, it was far from free of Odin's influence. But it was out of the war, largely stable, and maybe, just maybe... it was safe.

So of course, our introduction to Knwharfhelm was an army of skeletons trying to kill everyone.

Sansen, as always, reacted first. He jolted bolt upright in the cart, swearing and reaching into his soul, feathers swirling into the memory of a pillow as he readied a spell. Lucet was half a second behind, a bow of memory with an arrowhead of salt coalescing in her soul. I swore, preparing the spells I'd hoped I'd never use—

And then Sansen relaxed, dismissing his windbomb and laughing.

A moment later, two children came running up the hill ahead of us, chasing after a clattering pile of bones and sinew. One of them shrieked with laugher as they hurled a stone, bonking off the pathetic skeleton's skull. I let out a sigh of relief. It was just a standard undead, probably ancient—it would have been deadly when first raised, but its muscles had long rotted into uselessness, and all it could do was awkwardly flop with the few strings of tendons it had left. 

Lucet glanced at the two of us, then back at the useless zombie, and scowled, forgetting her spell. I winced at the expression on her face.

"False alarm," Sansen sheepishly said. "It's, uh... that's just a local tradition. Lot of buried zombies from when the Outer rifts first opened. Harmless, except maybe for the wildlife."

"You couldn't have warned us before we stumbled on one of the skeletons?" I asked.

"Didn't I tell you about it next week?" Sansen said back.

Everyone stared at him for a moment. Jiaola whispered something in his husband's ear.

Sansen blinked, then shook his head, as if to clear it. "...right. I'll, uh... I'll try to keep better track of our timeline next time."

Hm. Well, Sansen was a grown-up, and Jiaola had been married to him for longer than I'd been alive. They could handle whatever side effects Sansen's oracular magic was having. The kids stopped chasing the skeleton as they saw the five of us, eyes going wide as they took in Jiaola's invisible cart and the starry rift trailing over my head. Meloai cheerfully waved at them, walking over to investigate the skeleton.

"Excuse me!" Meloai called. "Would we happen to be near Knwharfhelm?"

One of the kids pointed down the road. "It's just that way, miss."

The other gaped at the rift above my head; sheepishly, I waved away the spell of hope with a burst of calm. "Are you magic?" the kid asked, their eyes wide.

"Jiaola?" I asked. I was pretty sure the Silent Peaks' particular breed of elitist bullshit was limited to their own sphere of influence, but on the off chance that the Crystal Coast had something against witches...

"Yeah, we're magic," Jiaola said. I sighed, relieved. 

"Technically, I'm the only one who's made of magic. You all are just lumps of animated meat," Meloai pointed out. "Sorta like this guy here." She knelt down by the skeleton.

"Are you here for the games?" the first kid asked, still gawking at Jiaola's cart. 

I frowned, but Jiaola's eyes lit up. "Actually, that's not a terrible idea. You can win prizes for wiping out enough skeletons."

It was true that our pockets were empty, although I suspected that five competent witches armed with a novel type of magic would find little trouble seeking employment. "To be clear, when you say a game, you mean, like, something safe and fun, right? Not some kind of nightmarish fight to the death for money?"

Jiaola waved a hand. "I get the concern, but we can just ask when we get there. Skullhunting was perfectly safe when I lived here, and the fact that kids are still getting in on the action tells me that there's nothing to be worried about."

"Sounds like a plan, then," I agreed. Jiaola reactivated the wind spell propelling his little cart. I turned to begin walking, then paused as Lucet stayed in place.

She was still staring at the skeleton, even after Meloai and the kids had left. I glanced at Jiaola and Sansen, but they were used to Meloai vanishing for hours at a time; I doubted they were worried about us lingering for a bit. I sat down next to Lucet, and she shook her head.

"I could've shot them," she finally said. "The kids."

"You didn't. And if you did, we'd find a way to make things right again."

"You shouldn't have to." Lucet started walking, and I hopped to my feet. "Better to never let things go wrong in the first place."

I gave her a questioning look, but it seemed she was done elaborating. That was fine. We walked side-by-side, a few paces behind our friends, relaxing in each others' company.

It was another hour's walk before Knwharfhelm came into view, although we passed plenty more skullhunters before then. We were far from the only foreigners, too; I saw the grass robes of Redlanders, the sashes of Coastliners, even the wings and compound eyes of the fey. There were skeletons, too—hundreds and hundreds of the poor, rotted things, flopping around in the dirt like so many helpless worms.

"How are there this many of them?" Meloai asked. "If they destroy hundreds of them every year, and it's been nearly a century..."

"They don't destroy them," Jiaola absently said. "In the old days, destroying an entire skeleton was too much work, and nowadays, it's just tradition. They just throw them back into the harbor, and they make their way to the surface by next year. There's this big ceremony and everything. Afterwards, they serve bone broth."

"Ew," I muttered.

"Cienne, you drink ground meat," Lucet said. "I don't think you get to make fun of other peoples' food choices."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't knock it 'til you try it." I scanned the nearby hills with my soulsight—the clusters of memories that animated the skeletons shone dimly in soulspace. "Speaking of trying things... race you to five skeletons?"

Lucet raised an eyebrow, a competitive glint entering her eyes. "Five? You killed an eldritch horror, and you want to stop at five measly skeletons? I'll race you to twenty."

I opened my mouth to protest, but Jiaola sat up, watching with a grin. "I'll bet you a wooden carving of your choice that Cienne gets there first," he said, nudging Sansen. 

"You weren't there when Lucet froze half a hilltop solid," Sansen said, lounging on the cart. "I'll wager an embarrassing story about a kid of your choice that Lucet kicks his butt."

"I'm not much for bets, but whoever wins, I've got a half-eaten squirrel soul with your name on it!" Meloai chimed in.

"Great," I muttered. "I'm glad we're earning some real money soon, so that you guys can stop betting with the worst currencies ever."

"We?" Lucet gave me a teasing smile, and I realized with a start that she'd sent a pulse of love towards the nearest skeleton, inexorably dragging it towards her. "Seems like I'm the only one who's gotten to work."

I grinned back at her. "Yeah?" I called up a ball of disgust—easy enough, I just had to think back to the bone broth tradition—and flung it at her skeleton, hurling it backwards. "Sure would be a shame if something happened to all that hard work."

"Oh, you want to play dirty, huh?" Lucet's eyes twinkled. "I'm game." She spun up a cloud of fear, flicking it towards me to drench me in darkness—but I sliced a rift between worlds and sidled into the Plane of Insecurity, giving her a jaunty little wave as I sealed the rift once more.

The rolling hills were made of cardboard on this side, flimsy enough that merely standing on it buckled it inward. Thoughtspace was weird. It was predictable, though, and I was relying on it. I hopped over to where I last remembered one of the skeletons that were still buried, then dug down and clawed open a rift back into realspace. A wave of dirt poured through, followed by a skeleton—

"Gotcha!" Lucet stuck her tongue out at me from the other end of the rift, hope blazing over one eye as Sansen had taught her. Her futuresight must have given her an edge, because she yanked the skeleton towards her before I could react. I tumbled through the rift, chasing after her. The hill that had once held the skeleton was half-upturned, chunks of soil blown every which way by whatever spell Lucet had used to excavate it.

I eschewed magic for once, tackling Lucet with a laugh. She turned around, eyes wide with merriment as we collided, the skeleton clattering away as we rolled down the hill end-over-end. She poked my ribs, tickling me, and I burst out in giggles as we bounced to the bottom of the—

Thunk.

Something slammed into the back of my head, sending my nose crashing into Lucet's forehead, and I blinked stars out of my eyes as she jerked back. I reached out to feel my nose, wincing at the wetness and the pain, then held my fingers in front of my face. Bloody nose, huh. Didn't feel broken, though. So why was Lucet looking at me like...

"I didn't mean to hurt you," Lucet whispered, hands over her mouth. "Cienne. Cienne, are you okay?"

Oh.

I sat up, head still spinning, and blinked stars out of my eyes. "Yeah. Just a bloody nose," I tried to say. The words were a little thick, but I'd had worse. 

Lucet got to her feet, shakily. "Maybe—maybe this wasn't such a good idea. I should... I shouldn't have let myself get carried away. I—"

"Hey. Hey. Look at me." I concentrated, and vines snaked out of my soul. Wrapping around my bloodied nose, regrowing the damage. Forgiveness. "I'm okay. It's okay."

She took in a deep breath and nodded. "Yeah. You're okay."

I wiped the blood off my face and stood. "C'mon. We've still got twenty skeletons to fish out of the mud."

Lucet nodded, and I saw a flash of that confidence spark back into her eyes. "Alright. Race you to the top of the hill?"

"Always."

We got to our feet, brushing the dirt off our clothes, and sprinted to our next destination.

A.N.

Soulmage is a serial written in response to writing prompts. Stick around for more episodes, or join my Discord to chat about it!

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[Soulmage] Alchemy is possible; but instead of turning lead into gold, you can only turn gold into lead.

Soulmage

The only sapient Demon of Empathy in the Redlands closed their eyes and thought of death. Ever since they'd merged with their siblings, Odin had found the near-constant sleet of new empathy-charged soul fragments rather distracting, and so they'd learned to tune out the noise. Now, however, they needed to perform their daily ritual of sorting through their soul for anything of value, and burning off the rest. It was a hallucinogenic, disorienting, hours-long task, but it was necessary nonetheless.

Odin did not sleep, but today, they dreamed.

"Caw," I said, ruffling my feathers, and Astrenn giggled as I tried to cheer her up. The flowers shifted in the breeze.

The snow cave was unbearably hot, my skin feverish despite the crust of ice, and I huddled into my fellow soldier's body. I could tell from the tension in his gritted jaw that he was burning up too, his body gone haywire as he died in the frost.

I winked at Kino as I stabbed the crude puppet of Cienne, then held its impaled body over the fire. He guffawed, and I slapped his shoulder in companionship as we planned the death of a hated man.

Odin furrowed their brow. Ah, that would be the outcome of Iola's battle with Cienne. Despite the sponsorship of the Outside, it seemed as though being outnumbered four to one had evened the odds between Iola and Cienne. Odin quested deeper into the memory fragment, pushing at its boundaries; reluctantly, the shard complied, cracking from the strain as Odin rewound it to its beginning.

"Catch," Kino said, tossing me a bundle of cloth. My head snapped up, trailing droplets of flesh, as I snatched it from the air and unfolded it, scowling.

"This had better be good, Kino," I growled. "I just spent two days in the Plane of Elemental Antimagic, and I am pissed. If this is another one of your inane..." I trailed off as I saw what he'd made.

An effigy of the only man to best me.

My face split in a wide humber as I turned towards Kino. "Oh, Kino, you shouldn't have! You know me too well. This is just what I needed to have some real fun. You sly rascal, c'mere." I extended my arms and gave Kino a wide-open hug. After a moment, I withdrew, turning my dorceless eyes towards the unsuspecting doll.

"Gotcha," I whispered with a squelch, and in the corner, Kino mimicked the panicked scream of a stuck-up poacher getting what he deserved.

Odin peeled back from the memory, grimacing. They would have to pore over that memory later in detail—if nothing else, to determine what it was like to feel those eldritch emotions—but for now, they had more important things to deal with. Iola was dead, and slain by their actions; perhaps in times of peace, Odin would have spent the decades necessary to find that core of a good person that they believed all people had within them, but for now, there were other matters to attend to.

Other souls to save.

It took another twelve hours for Odin to sort through the last few weeks of memories, but once they had carefully funneled the useful ones into safe sections of their soul, they compacted the rest into their metabolic core, where they would be burned to sustain Odin's existence over the next month or so.

When they opened their eyes, they found a stack of neatly-aligned papers waiting for them. Ah, that would be the research division's daily report. Odin sifted through it—marginal progress on all fronts, as they'd expected. The breakthrough in creating attunements had led to a flurry of new discoveries, but research progressed slowly, and a day's worth of verified findings was still small enough to fit comfortably in a hand-sized pamphlet. The properties of the Plane of Elemental Falsehood were still being tested; nobody could identify what the strange substance that wood turned into was, but it appeared that gold became lead and snow became cotton under the strange transformation that was the power of insecurity. 

More mundane results also featured in the research pamphlet. A mixture of various acids appeared to have the bizarre ability to corrode gold in realspace; the chemistry department was still uncertain if it could be reproduced in soulspace, but with the infinity of possibilities that had sprung from their discovery that attunements could be combined, it seemed likely that they would find a reaction pathway eventually.

Odin found it endlessly amusing that Cienne had independently reached that discovery himself, only a few days after Odin's dedicated research team had found it. If they hadn't been forced by the pressures of wartime to burn that bridge, they might have considered pushing harder to recruit Cienne—but they'd done the poor boy enough harm. Better to let him live his life, free of the horrors of war.

Then again, Odin supposed that they shouldn't have been surprised at Cienne's pace of innovation. The boy was a student of the Silent Academy, after all—and despite all their flaws, they were an institute of higher education. Odin's primary objective in freeing the students of the Silent Academy was moral in nature, but they had to admit that formally-educated researchers with standardized methodologies had drastically sped up the pace at which the Order of Valhalla could develop new spells and technologies.

Which had... worrying implications for how much further ahead of them the Silent Peaks' level of advancement truly was. Had their experiments with Eldritch emotions truly come from Outside? Or... worse, had they discovered them independently?

Perhaps today would bring answers. Odin finished reading the summary of today's progress, committing it to memory, and sighed. It was time for the part of the day they dreaded most.

It was time for today's Three Truths.

Odin stood from their desk, pushing in the chair as an afterthought, and exited their office, stepping into the main atrium. They weren't stupid enough to keep their Truthteller in their main base of operations, but the research team assigned here had gotten large enough that some construction was warranted. At the very least, Odin mused, the past five decades had seen some favorable amenities crop up. Odin had no need to eat—their body was maintained solely by the synchronization between their soul and realspace—but they appreciated how the research staff had somewhere to sit and eat while they took breaks. 

There was no secret entrance, no elaborate maze, no over-the-top security guarding the Truthteller. The only defenses Odin employed were a warding scheme to prevent scrying and the undying loyalty of their staff; they had even made sure that every moment spent with the Truthteller was as charged with empathy as possible, so that no memories of what laid within would leak even in death. Each one of the researchers here had once been lost, wayward children; each one, Odin had saved and raised as if they were their own. If Odin had strayed so far from the path of empathy that their own loved ones could be tempted into being traitors, then Odin deserved to be betrayed. That was all the insurance they needed.

Even before opening the door politely marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, Odin knew what they would see. It had been the work of a century and a half to assemble the Truthteller, although much of that was spent puzzling out the hints the Outsiders wove into the fabric of the cosmos.

Of all things, it was the memory of a shaman that had tipped Odin off to the irregularity in the stars. Odin supposed that it made sense—the Redlander communities that had lived here two centuries ago put great cultural emphasis on starwatching—but they were still frustrated with themself for not noticing the patterns in how the stars flickered earlier. It had taken another four years of concerted thought to discover the simplest pattern of the lot, and the first hint that greater forces were at play.

Because the stars encoded messages.

The easiest one to figure out had been how Persei spelled out the first twenty prime numbers, over and over and over again. Odin still looked up at the night sky every now and then to check on it. Ahmael and Tanryn, may the arrogant old man who named the stars after himself rest in peace, worked together to establish three-dimensional coordinates. Van's enigmatic light extended those coordinates from realspace to thoughtspace. Hampern, Lorn, and Quie used those coordinates to describe emotional planes. From emotions, it was trivial to reach materials; from coordinates, it was as easy as breathing to make shapes.

Odin was no great scientific genius, but they were an immortal presented with a mystery they could not crack. Twenty years of curious chipping later, they determined what the stars were saying.

They were a blueprint. And they were telling Odin—and anyone else who listened—to make a machine.

Odin opened the door to the basement and beheld the Truthteller.

Nobody had the slightest idea how it worked. From realspace, it looked like a massive metal dish, connected to a complex tangle of levers and wires. In thoughtspace, it spanned twenty-seven different emotional planes, each containing various offshoots of the Truthteller's machinery. Most worryingly, in soulspace, it was undeniably alive.

Half a century ago, when the final gear had been slotted into place, the machine had immediately reconfigured itself, offering a series of puzzles in binary that eventually culminated in the Truthteller comprehending their language. Upon the final binary puzzle's solution, the Truthteller spoke for the very first time.

"CONGRATULATIONS. YOU ARE THE FIFTH. KNOWLEDGE WILL BE REWARDED. YOU HAVE THREE ATTEMPTS PER DAY."

The experimentation that had followed was hasty, and Odin was still not certain that they understood all of the Truthteller's rules. But they understood enough.

The researchers in the room gave Odin polite, tense nods. Dathenn raised her eyebrow as Odin entered.

"Here for the Three Truths?" she asked. Rhetorically, of course. There was nothing else to be here for.

In response, Odin simply nodded.

"Don't expect anything big," Dathenn warned. 

"You always live up to my expectations," Odin said. "And my expectations are always grand."

Dathenn gave Odin a warm smile before turning to the Truthteller. She pulled a lever, and the machine made a polite cough in response.

"Truthteller," Dathenn said. "Are you ready?"

"OF COURSE."

"Very well. The first of the truths we have to offer is this." Dathenn consulted her notes. "Gold can be dissolved in a mixture of gastric acid, and acid of saltpeter."

The Truthteller hummed in response. "THIS TRUTH... IS KNOWN TO US."

Dathenn nodded to herself. "Thank you, Truthteller." It was unknowable whether or not the Truthteller had a concept of politeness, but it had become something of a superstition in the decades since its construction. Nobody wanted to be the one to anger the unfathomable machine, after all. "The second of the truths we have to offer is this. Gold can be transmuted to lead through the application of Elemental Falsehood."

"THIS TRUTH... IS KNOWN TO US," the machine repeated.

Dathenn began to speak, but Odin held up a finger.

"Truthteller," Odin said, "I would like to offer you a third truth."

The researchers in the room shared confused glances, but nobody spoke up. 

"SPEAK," the Truthteller said.

"You have been assisting the Silent Peaks, as fair recompense for their developments in magic and science," Odin began.

"THIS TRUTH... IS KNOWN TO—"

"But," Odin interrupted, "the Silent Peaks are a political and ideological enemy of ours, whom we are at war with. Your assistance of them has impeded our ability to gain scientific and magical knowledge, which is at odds with your stated goals," Odin calmly stated.

Silence fell in the chamber of the Truthteller.

"THIS TRUTH... IS NOT KNOWN TO US," the Truthteller finally admitted.

"Then as recompense for my knowledge, I would like to claim a reward."

"...PROCEED."

"You have recently granted the Silent Peaks the ability to convert ordinary witches into eldritch beings of extreme power," Odin said. "I wish to know how to turn them back."

The Truthteller hummed to itself, considering the request.

Then it spoke.

"IT IS KNOWN THAT SOULS ARE INDESTRUCTIBLE. IT IS ALSO KNOWN THAT MEMORIES ARE CONSUMED TO SUSTAIN THE EXISTENCE OF SOULSPACE ENTITIES. HOW, THEN, IS THE PARADOX RESOLVED?"

Odin glanced at Dathenn, who was already studiously taking notes, then back at the Truthteller. "This truth is not known to us," Odin diplomatically said.

"THEN ANSWER ME THIS. I HAVE ASSESSED YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF REALSPACE AND THOUGHTSPACE, AND FOUND IT SUFFICIENT FOR YOU TO COMPREHEND THIS EXERCISE. SO INFORM ME. WHAT DO YOU KNOW OF SOULSPACE?"

And Odin smiled, for at last they were given a question to which they knew the answer.

A.N.

Soulmage is a serial written in response to writing prompts. Stick around for more episodes, or join my Discord to chat about it!

This prompt was written by my Patreons! To get episodes ahead of time, or if you want to write me a prompt, check my Patreon out here.

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[meowcats734]

[Soulmage]  By all rules of magic and physics combined they shouldn't be possible, yet they are. When they come they bring annihilation, no rivalry is too deep, there are no enemies when facing oblivion.

The first order of business was to get as far away from here as we possibly could. It was impossible to know how badly we'd been hurt by Iola's final spell, but none of us were vomiting up blood, so it could've been worse. And so the four of us retreated until the frozen battlefield faded into the snow. I had the presence of mind to channel disgust into a repulsion spell, scoring the earth with a wide X to warn future travelers away from the tainted land.

Even in death, Iola did nothing but radiate toxicity.

Lucet stumbled as Iola's corpse faded into the distance, peeling off her frozen gloves, and I hesitantly stepped next to her. She slumped into me, shivering, and I helped support her weight as we staggered away. Her fingers found mine, and though they were stiff and frostbitten, she still managed to give my hand a weak squeeze.

Wordlessly, Meloai creaked over towards us, and I held out my other arm. She was heavy, all metal and clockwork that had seized up in the cold of Lucet's grand spell, but the connection between her body and soul would knit her back together in time. Together now, the three of us supported each other as we bore onwards through the cold. I turned to Sansen, expecting to offer the old man a shoulder, but stopped as something caught my eye in the storm.

A soul.

His soul.

Sansen must have seen it too—it was blindingly obvious if you knew where to look. Because the soul was a candle against the dark, a beacon of fire in an empty night.

Sansen broke out into a dead sprint, nearly slipping and bashing his head in, and Lucet reached out to catch him before his journey could come to a premature end. He gave her a thankful look, nodded, and settled down beside us, making the final leg of our journey together.

The storm's teeth had tried to bury Jiaola whole, but the stubborn old man had resisted the fury of the entire Silent Peaks before. He wouldn't let something as mundane as an extradimensional winter take his life. A memory of the house he'd built with Sansen shone around him in my soulsight, air that had been hardened into a substance stronger than steel. 

And in the middle of that house of soul and memory, Jiaola sat cross-legged, chewing on a brick of bread and smiling his knowing smile.

"Why don't you come in?" he said. "It's terrible out there."

Sansen couldn't restrain himself any longer. With a cry of ragged joy, he surged forwards, and Jiaola stood in response, holding his arms wide, tears shimmering in his eyes as he dismissed a section of his spell to let his husband in. Sansen crashed into him hard enough to send the two of them spinning around, simply delighting in being with each other for the first time in months.

Then Jiaola looked up at the three of us, huddled in the storm, and beckoned. "Come in," he said. "Door's always open to family."

I swallowed, something tight and warm in my throat, and managed to croak, "Thanks." The three of us collapsed as soon as we got inside the shelter of magic that Jiaola had woven, the floor of solid air strange beneath my feet.

Sansen finally pulled back from his husband and whispered, "I missed you so much."

"I never gave up hope," he whispered back, kissing him on the forehead. Embarrassed, I looked away. "I don't have much, but there's bread and water to spare. Are you all okay?"

And in the silence that followed, I felt Jiaola's soul flicker in uncertainty.

"Iola... he cast a spell on us," I finally said. "Some variant of the light magic he uses to kill people. We had shields up—darkness spells—but... well. If we all start sprouting tumors and losing hair in a week, we'll know who to blame."

"We—we're not going to die. Right?" Lucet asked. "I mean—with the secrets of attunement on our side—"

"All the knowledge of magic in the world won't save us if we die of cancer before we use it," I said. "Besides, what good does that even do us? Cancer's a thing of biology, not magic. By all the rules of magic, cancer's just an unusual arrangement of flesh in realspace. It might as well not exist."

"Magic's not the only thing that can help you," Jiaola said firmly. "There are doctors—good doctors—who I'm sure can undo any damage that Iola did to you."

"Right, because five broke spellcasters can afford that kind of medical care," I said. "What, are we going to go begging for Odin to save us again? I don't have any more secrets to sell. Or are we going back to the Peaks? Trade one Iola for a hell-mountain full of them?"

"We'll find allies." Jiaola's gaze grew distant. "Trust me. Not everywhere is like the Silent Peaks. Politics and money aside, cancers are everyone's enemy. There are healers who won't turn us aside if we're battling that particular oblivion."

I let out a tense, quiet breath. "I missed you, Jiaola."

He smiled. "I missed you too, kid. There's a lot of that going around." He paused to think. "Now that I think about it... there's a place I know that was good with healers. Good in general, aside from... some bad memories."

"We don't have to go if—" Sansen began, but Jiaola was already shaking his head.

"It was a lifetime ago. Besides, you're on a deadline, if Iola really got you with that spell of his. You need the kind of care that only they can provide." Jiaola stood up, packing away his bread into a knapsack. "So unless any of you have a better idea, we're headed to the Crystal Coast."

I got to my feet, struggling a little, and a chill went down my spine. Were those aches and pains from the long walk here, or were they the first sign of something worse? Was that numbness in my fingers from the winter cold, or were my nerves being slowly killed by a sickness that would turn my body against itself? As I looked around the room, I could tell that the same fears were quietly gnawing away at Sansen and Lucet.

Then Jiaola broke the silence with a polite cough. "Now, I don't suppose any of you know which way is north? I seem to have gotten turned around in this storm."

And I let out a rueful laugh. Times may have been tough, but we'd suffered worse. 

We'd get through this, like we always had.

Together.

A.N.

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[meowcats734]

Sansen recoiled and started to speak, Meloai immediately started demanding clarification, but I had eyes for one person only. As I finally, finally got that confession off my chest, I turned to Lucet, whose bowed head made her expression unreadable.

But her soul finished roiling as she looked up and gave me a faint smile. "Called it."

I blinked. "You... what?"

"I knew something wasn't adding up. I'm glad you told me." Lucet tilted her head. "How long?"

I swallowed, awaiting her judgement. "I... I kept it from you guys for months. Ever since the Silent Academy. That old vampire dude that visits Jiaola let it slip one day, and I was just scared of letting it fall into Odin's hands, and then they just told me that they knew already—"

"That tracks," Sansen muttered. "The Grandmaster's old enough to remember the Outer rifts, and from what I've gathered, he grew up in a time before operational security and never bothered to change. Too much political power for the Parliament to just ignore him, either. I bet they never would have let a walking information leak like him into the same room as some random student if they hadn't been pressed so hard by the war."

I only vaguely heard what Sansen said, still focused on Lucet. She brushed my hair out of my eyes and whispered, "I'm not mad."

My throat seized up. "I never said that you were."

"I know." Raising her voice a little, she said, "So... what are the secrets of attunement, if I might ask?"

I sat up, brushing snow off my shoulders. Right, time to get to business. "Well. Two things, I guess. Creating attunement—it takes four things. Feeling, losing, giving, and taking an emotion. And once you have those attunements... you can combine them to make new ones."

"Giving? Taking? What do you mean by that?" Meloai asked, leaning in.

The next few minutes were dedicated to a flurry of questions and answers and clarifications—most of which I couldn't provide, despite having looked myself. No, I didn't know what was so special about those four things. Yes, as far as I could tell, you didn't have to be aware of the process, and it could take as long as you pleased. No, I wasn't hiding any other fundamental secrets of magic up my sleeve.

"What do you mean by 'combining' attunements?" Meloai finally asked.

I hesitated. "It's... hard to describe, but... here. Earlier, I was trying to give Lucet a bit of hope, and... well, I don't have an attunement to hope myself, but I saw quartz and oil in her soul and thought 'I have all the ingredients to make fire myself right here,' so I went ahead and did a caveman." At their confused looks, I clarified: "Hitting rocks together to make fire."

"Wait." Sansen frowned. "But different emotions can't interact with each other."

"Normally," I agreed. "Unless you're attuned to the emotions you want to make interact, and you rotate your attunements into alignment."

"We get it, Cienne, you're very smart," Lucet primly said.

"Wait." Meloai narrowed her eyes. "You said earlier that you could see Iola's soul. The insect eggs and tar and moss that he used to fuel his spells."

I shuddered. "Please don't remind me."

"Sorry," Meloai said. "But if Iola's corrupted emotions are close enough to mundane passion and joy that your attunements can see them... are they close enough that your attunements can burn them?"

Silence fell as the four of us pondered the question.

"I don't have nearly enough mastery of hope to pull that off," I finally said. "Not to mention that... I'm... not all that hopeful right now. If—"

"I am," Sansen suddenly said. "Get me the attunements, and I'll burn that hellscape that Iola calls a soul."

"And with his magic locked down..." Meloai held up a hand, shifting it into a blade. "I can kill him."

We all stared at her for a moment.

"What?" she asked. "Are we trying to keep him alive?"

"No," Lucet said forcefully. "I mean, I don't wish him dead in general, but right now in specific, he's planning on killing us all, and probably Jiaola afterwards. He... he's too dangerous to try to spare, even if I wanted to. And I don't. I don't want him dead, I don't want him alive, I want to be free from him. I just... was surprised to hear you say it like that."

"Then if we're decided?" Sansen stood. "I think we have some attunements to make."

###

Iola's deadliest weapon was his strange, corrupted light magic. There was no point in fighting at all if he just snapped his fingers and consigned us all to die within minutes. So my role in the battle to come would be to provide us with what was hopefully at least a little protection against Iola's signature Instant Death Beam.

Thankfully, Odin themself had demonstrated how to counter light magic in one of their dream-broadcasts, and the answer was blindingly simple, pun intended. Sansen and Lucet had their own roles to play in the upcoming fight, so I had the task of wrapping three shrouds of darkness around us, voids that swallowed all light except for a strip around our eyes. There was no way around that, unfortunately; we couldn't fight Iola if we were blind. Relying on soulsight alone had its limits, after all.

Meloai had declined a shield, to my relief—I'd lessened the mental burden of managing the shrouds significantly by channeling them into the memory of three sets of winter clothes, but constantly remembering their shape was still tricky. I probably couldn't do four at once even if I tried. Besides, there was no way I could match Iola head on, power-for-power; my flimsy shields would last mere seconds under a concentrated onslaught. If the plan didn't work, we'd be dead in an instant.

I didn't have the time to waste on pondering that, though. I just had to hope that our magical protections would be enough. 

I was trying to calm down when Sansen's head jerked up, eye tracking the futures that only he could see. 

Then he set his jaw and said, "Shields up. He's here."

I concentrated, dipping into my soul, and the shrouds of darkness rippled around our bodies. As I reached into my soulsight, I sensed a fifth soul approaching, riddled with spiders' eggs and moldy tar.

Moments later, the man himself appeared from the blizzard, stopping when he saw the four of us.

"Well. If it isn't my dearest of friends," Iola said, taking a step forwards. His skin sloughed and bubbled in his wake, his flesh eternally melting and regrowing like a fountain of chocolate fondue. "My runaway girlfriend, and the boy who thought he could steal her from me."

Lucet flinched as if she'd been slapped, and from behind her cloak of darkness, I could see the fear in her eyes. My throat tightened, and I wanted to snap at Iola, rise in her defense, but...

I knew Lucet. Stepping in to defend her would only take her agency away. And I had faith in her. She was more than capable of protecting herself.

Especially now, with her back against the wall and nothing left to lose.

Iola stalked forwards, crooning at Lucet with a dripping, wet voice. "I'll tell you what, my toy. Come with me willingly, and I'll even let your friends live. You wouldn't want to force them to die protecting you, would you?"

Lucet froze up as Iola stepped closer, right into the center of our formation of four. I swore under my breath and reached into my soul. If Lucet didn't do something soon, we'd have to—

Then Lucet took a deep breath and shoved Iola away.

"Get away from me!" Lucet shrieked. "You're a monster—can't you see that? Can't you see what they've done to you?"

And before Iola could respond, she channeled her sorrow through her outstretched hands, unleashing the full force of her frost magic upon the unsuspecting Iola.

None of us were really sure what was wrong with frost magic. Something about the location turbocharged it, made it unstable, dangerous to use. In ordinary circumstances, we would never take the risk of unloading such a massive frostbeam on the world.

But these were far from ordinary circumstances, and so Lucet vented years of quiet sadnesses in a single, blinding blow.

The air cracked, Lucet stumbling back as the heat was torn from it in an instant, turning from gas to liquid to solid in a fraction of a heartbeat. Focusing my soulsight, I could tell that Iola was still alive, cloaked in a shield of molten space—and, to my horror, he released a pulse of deadly light, spiders' eggs evaporating into nothing as they transitioned from his soul to reality. I poured every ounce of fear I held into our shields—and I had no shortage of the stuff now—in hope that it would be enough. But how could I know? The shields could have worked perfectly, and we would all be fine. Or we would conquer Iola, only to die a week from now in an agonizing death. 

I'd take that problem if it meant I'd live another week. So I turned to Sansen, shouting, "Shut down his magic!"

Sansen was already moving, the old oracle's soul rotating as he willed forth the fires of hope itself. He held nothing back, the ethereal, intangible flame burning at Iola's very soul, as torrential as a dragon's breath, until he slumped over, a pained, empty expression in his eyes. Expending that much of his magic at once had a cost—stripping every last drop of hope from his soul—but it was worth it. For the first time, I heard Iola scream in agony as his shields suddenly failed, exposing him to the bitter cold. The tar in his soul burned a brilliant, agonizing white, the spiders' eggs popping like balloons at a summer fair.

Maybe we could do it. Maybe we could slay the unkillable.

I sensed his burning soul shift as he reached for the deadly light that would slay us all—but the fires of hope still raged, consuming his magics before they saw the light of day. I hesitated, questioning whether I should order Meloai into the fray—she may have been a shapeshifter, but even she couldn't shrug off the the absolute cold that was eating Iola alive.

Before I could choose, though, Meloai chose for me, blurring forwards in a flurry of arms-into-claws-into-blades. I heard something shatter in the mist, chunks of frozen flesh flying every which was as Meloai dug into Iola's vulnerable, frozen form. I saw her flesh crack and freeze as the bitter cold slowed her down, but she sacrificed her body with reckless abandon, tearing Iola to shreds until even his regeneration struggled to keep up.

And then she collapsed, panting with pain, her joints ticking and seizing up as the frost overtook them.

But I was already capitalizing on the opportunity, surging forwards past Lucet as she nursed her frostbitten hands, past Sansen as he struggled with his emptied soul, past Meloai as her body tried to knit itself back together, and from my soul I drew the oldest spell I knew.

Black, clinging thorns looped out from my soul, wrapping around Iola's form and striking while he was still stunned, shrinking him from the size of a man to the size of my hand. I lifted my foot to strike—

And he smiled. Even as he died, the madman laughed and spoke six words.

"It's too late," he said. "You're already dead."

Then my boot fell like a divine hammer, and Iola was no more.

I fell to my knees, heedless of the frost biting into my pants, and let out a ragged, pyrrhic breath.

We'd done the impossible. We'd slain a monster. We'd won.

And all that was left was to pay the price.

A.N.

Soulmage is a serial written in response to writing prompts. Stick around for more episodes, or join my Discord to chat about it!

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Your party accidentally enrages a God, but certain doom is oddly liberating. Cursed weapons, monkey paws, contracts with demons; nothing is off the table. You have no chance of winning, but your deaths shall be GLORIOUS!