Soon, Otonia ◐ and Krateros ◮ were approaching ten years at the College, maturing as they were into young adult Fell. Otonia had continued over the years to release various new spells inspired by System Skills (though many were impractical unless enchanted, and even those were very expensive). And Krateros had continued to demonstrate his veteran’s instincts, arguably the most promising body enhancement mage the town had seen in centuries. His prowess only improved as Otonia’s private projects created for Krateros spellforms based on his prior System Skills, which she either taught back to him or enchanted for him.
Nonetheless, they felt a touch of disappointment and unease with the Fell’s true magic. Yes, it was seemingly powerful, but the Fell’s application thereof hardly seemed sophisticated both from what they had seen and how far the pair had pushed the field. This perhaps was no better illustrated than when Otonia created a true magic version of [Lost World *M].
Creating the spellform was not necessarily any more difficult than any other modern spellform Otonia had created. It was comprised of three parts: conjuring cold water in the finest of mists in order to create a fog; extremely powerful illusion magic; and a significant amount of metamagic to manage the whole thing, reconjure the mists if dissipated, and make sure it actually covered a significant area. It was a subtle bit of craft, but, again, that was not the troublesome bit.
Rather, it was the Fell reception to the spell. When presented to their Fell instructors, while it was praised as novel and powerful, there was little interest in it aside from as a piece of study. The Fell may have been powerful, but they feared little and so there was in some respects little to do. They sang, they laughed, and they loved. They ignored the World and the World ignored them right back. They were good folk. And while there were always the obsessive in every generation who would push their magic forward, there was no broad social drive to do so.
And so while they had learned the fundaments of true magic, and there was “advanced” true magic, there were no further levels of improvement to be had among the Fell. No masters, no experts, no sages. The two largely were building their own road to greatness. And this often led them back to an repeated argument. For Otonia still had not answered Krateros’ question:
What are we doing this life?
They had just finished another round in old fight when Circe appeared and took the pair to Aeetes’ office. As they entered, rather than simply old man Aeetes, two older women were also present.
“Otonia, Krateros,” Aeetes began, “Glad to see you came so early. I’d like to introduce you to Menelaea, the head of the capital Mycenae, and Asclepia, head tutor of the Mycenaen College of Magic, and one of the foremost experts on souls.”
The four exchanged formalities as Circe snuck back out the door, her student delivery complete. “Please be seated,” Aeetes welcomed. “Would you like anything to drink?”
“No, head tutor,” Krateros replied aloud, then glanced at Otonia, who shook her head.
“Alright. Well, I suppose you’re wondering why I called you here today.” Another glance between the pair, but neither cared to speak up. As the length of the silence turned awkward, Aeetes coughed, then plowed on through. “Right, well, we’re here because we have something to tell you. Asclepia, if you would?”
“Well, I assume you are generally familiar with how a soul binds to possibly animate matter turning it into life?”
“Yes,” Otonia replied. “The more potential the unrealized life has, which is a function of, at least, the size, complexity, and lifespan of the adult form, the larger the soul is that is attracted from the soul realm to bind and quicken the life. These souls are both better at generating experience and at using it.”
Asclepia nodded along at Otonia’s description. “That’s sufficiently correct for our purposes today. Now, have you heard of Thales’ Third Observation of the Soul and the related conjecture?”
Otonia shook her head vigorously as the rest watched on this dialogue.
“Thales conducted widespread censuses of the population, particularly taking the measure of the soul. From this, he was able to adduce various facts regarding the soul, at least among our people, though this was later extended to other lifeforms by subsequent scholars. His Third Observation was that within any given population, there was variation in the quality of souls, based around a certain average size. His conjecture was that, on very, very rare occasions, individuals in our population would be born with truly gigantic souls. Most commonly know this as the Guardian-Born Conjecture.”
“Oh,” Krateros piped up. “I’ve heard of that.”
“Good. Well, since then, we’ve tested every newborn. And Menelaea and I are here today to inform you that both of you were found to be Guardian-Born when you were, well, born….” Asclepia trailed off as she glanced back and forth in confusion at their lack of expression. “You… don’t seem surprised?”
“We… have large, complex souls? Why wouldn’t we know that?”
“Well, that’s the thing. Usually only one Guardian-Born comes, with a big imbalance in the pair bond, and it’s obvious to the children that one is Guardian-Born. But you two, a pair bond, are both Guardian-Born.” Asclepia threw her hands up, “It’s never happened before!”
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The pair glanced at each, quickly exchanging a few words with Telepathy, confusion writ on their faces, before turning back to the overexcited academic. “We don’t know what you’re expecting from us,” Krateros answered.
“Oh. Well, I was hoping to surprise you. Not many of those in my line of work. But no. We’re here to take you to the Edge and meet a Guardian.”
“Ooh!” they echoed. They had both heard of the Guardians, given the role of the Guardian’s in the joint history between the Fell and the rest of the World. And yet while references were pervasive, the Fell were strangely coy about details, unwilling to discuss, write down, or draw any images thereof. All they had gotten was that the Guardians served at the Edge—presumably the perimeter of The Top of the World, as the rest of the World knew it—and that they were there to separate the Fell from the rest of the World, particularly the Pantheon’s System.
“Now?” Krateros asked.
“Yes,” Menelaea finally spoke. “We’ll journey there today, then return tomorrow. You needn’t bring anything with you, but we’ll be moving very quickly with a lot of experience usage.” The Top of the World was roughly two thousand kilometers from east to west and twelve hundred kilometers north to south. The town they lived in, Trope, was only two hundred kilometers from the Edge, so even assuming they were heading straight out, they’d burn a lot of experience moving that fast through the mountainous terrain.
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The pair were looking upwards at a dragon. Barring one possible encounter when they were but a wee [Kobold] and [Bat], they had never seen one themselves. They had met plenty of [Wyverns] and had thought that evolved [Wyverns] were rather big. But the dragon? The dragon’s skull was the size of an adult [Wyvern]. In length and wingspan… it was at least the size of a large sports field. Of course, they were standing next to a five kilometer cliff, so the overall impression at a distance was lessened. But he was still huge.
His name was Ladon.
“Welcome, Guardian-Born,” he intoned, using a true magic version of [Belly Speech]. “It’s good to meet young Fell. Too few of you visit when you are still young and impressionable.”
Also, they realized belatedly as the dragon’s speech rumbled, that meant that the Fell literally regarded the two of them as dragonborn.
“It’s good to meet you too!” Krateros finally replied with some cheer.
Ladon chuckled, with his lungs, not his magic, and it came across as a booming rockslide. “So eager. Tell me Menelaea,” he said, turning to the woman. “Do they know yet why you have brought them here?”
“Nay,” she smirked. “I don’t even know why I’m here.”
“Bah,” the dragon tsked. “Don’t play the fool. It’s doesn’t suit your temperament or your station.” Returning his piercing gaze to the two young Fell. “Here it is in a… bite. Have you ever examined your own soul by using your external experience sense?”
Otonia’s mouth opened and closed a few times. “N-no?” she finally got out. “Internal and external senses for experience are wholly separate, and are-are not interchangeable.”
“Ah, at least we have a learned one this time,” he spoke to himself. “That’s right young Fell. But there is a spellform that will allow you to use your external senses self-reflectively. And that is what we will do. In so doing, you will gain a better understanding of yourself, and I of you. Are you ready to begin?”
“S-sure?”
“Okay, watch this spellform closely.” Ladon the dragon began to draw out a spellform. It was on the simple side, even for true magic, and the pair almost immediately memorized it. And, at Ladon’s further instruction, cast it, closed their eyes, and turned their external experience senses inward.
Swapping notes later, what they both found was fascinating. The only other souls they had ever seen were the souls of the recently deceased, and those were uniformly smooth on the outside and homogenous inside. For Otonia and Krateros, the surface was wrinkled, for lack of a better word. The membrane, though soft and flexible, had clearly assumed a very specific pattern. And while they had never seen a soul inside another’s body before, this struck them as very odd.
The inside was even stranger. Not just a homogenous liquid, there were crystalline, fractalized structures on the interior of the membrane that in turn seemed to follow the pattern on the outside of the membrane. If they figuratively reached out to one of the fractals, they were suddenly drowned in a memory from a life long past. A few more touches at different parts of the structure showed different memories from different lives.
Their internal reverie though was soon broken by Asclepia shaking the two.
“Ah good,” Ladon intoned, a touch of glee present. “You truly have souls fit for a Guardian. Too bad you were born Fell.”
“Is that literal or figurative?” Krateros got out, still reeling from what he had sensed.
“I’ll leave that to you to decide,” the dragon told the young Fell, then turned to the elder. “Menelaea, I see no concerns with them and they may return. You all must be tired, so please retreat to the nearby facilities. I’ll be by later tonight to check in with you.”
At the dragon’s dismissal, the four Fell began to make their way over to a nearby cabin specifically built for visiting Fell.
As they walked away, Ladon the dragon reflected on what he had seen, piggybacking on the spell to more closely examine their souls. Fit for a Guardian indeed, he thought. The Fell usually use Guardian-Born just to mean a very large soul, but that pair very well could have been Guardians with a soul that large. Hmm… actually, if there were any lifeforms with a greater potential than Guardians, they’d probably fit that. But there aren’t, or so he thought. That they were put into a form that small and low-potential is odd.
Little did Ladon know that his voyeuristic look into their souls was less successful than he had hoped and, for everyone’s sake, he remained blissfully unaware of their textured soul membrane and the crystallized memories therein. If he had, even Ladon’s hypothetically greater lifeform would not have been enough for the dynamic duo.