“Do you remember a previous life?” The Warlock asked.

The question triggered something inside him, there was a slight shift and something clicked into place.

Cixrus frowned in confusion. Then he screamed as his eyes rolled back into his head and he fell backwards into darkness, his thoughts becoming murky.

He sank down and down through the layers of his mind and into his soul, until he saw a glowing red fill his mind, then it gave way to an orange. For a moment he paused and a mist seemed to clear.

Below him was a sea of foreign memories.

Before he could do anything a wave from the sea shot up towards him, rushing into his mind in a great torrent that overwhelmed him.

⟣⟡⟢

Cixrus slowly became aware as the tide of memories washed out of his mind, rapid scenes of a whole other person flickering through his mind too fast to process. Wait no, that wasn’t right. His name was Hathra. Where did Cixrus come from?

Hathra sat at his desk, a confused expression painted across his face.

He was in a dinky but cosy room, with bookcases and scroll holders covering all 4 walls, the room had two small doors, one was the entryway where people would enter to request access to specific books or get to the library and the second was by far his favourite, the actual library itself, with shelf after shelf—ceiling high and stacked to the gunnels.

‘I wish I could have a window, if only I wasn’t so far underground’ he thought. Although that might be a bad idea even if he wasn't because some of the books could disintegrate if they were ever exposed to sunlight or even a trace of moisture.

This library was full of academy secrets and he had been carefully selected by a council of paranoid wizards as the ideal person to be its archivist. What danger was a library full of forbidden texts and research that they didn’t even trust each other to look at for long periods of time in the hands of someone like him who couldn’t even perform magic.

He laughed depressingly and closed his eyes, hoping today would be the day he would suddenly gain access to his mind space. Sadly no, there was nothing there, he just wasn’t destined for magic it seemed.

He had of course exhaustively searched for decades, scouring his own shelves and requesting book transfers from far off libraries. There were solutions out there, but they usually required highly expensive materials and aid from powerful archmagi, but there was no way for him to obtain those materials or such powerful help.

It was at least very documented what was wrong within his core. A very common affliction plagued him. It was present within nine tenths of the human population.

The cores of magical beings naturally spun over time, the souls and minds spinning around each other. Where the fringes of the mind and soul collided, magic was generated as a byproduct. The more spin and the denser the soul and mind, the more magic. Though higher spin could damage the core.

His issue was that his core was stationary.

His soul and mind were large enough that he had the potential to reach at least tier 3, but without powerful assistance there was simply no way to make his core spin.

He folded his arms on his desk and cradled his head in the makeshift pillow.

Life without magic felt so boring.

His eyes met an ornate sand timer on his desk. It was fashioned in the image of the latest scientific models of internal cores. Two glass pods shaped like tear drops encased piles of red sand. The sand slowly trickled down, two thirds of it was already in the bottom pod. It was a gift from his wife, before she had left him oh so long ago.

She had given it to him to help keep track of the passing of time at his job, as he could not see the sun underground. Its duration was nine hours, the length of his working day. She could have bought him a magic clock, but he had no patience for paying a greedy mage to recharge such a device, so it had been the perfect gift.

He held her perfect image in his mind, he could see her so clearly in his mind's eye.

“I miss her more than anything…” he mumbled.

Hathra sighed, he was moping again. He should have another peruse of the shelves. Doing that always cheered him up. Hathra rose and scribbled out a note that he would be back in half an hour, leaving it on his desk.

Then he slipped into his library.

The musty smell of ancient books welcomed him with open arms as he set off into the rows, one finger trailing softly against a row of cracking leather book spines.

Many spatial enchantments had been cast on this library, meaning that things could shift around when you weren’t looking. Dangerous books were stored in well-hidden spatial pockets. Sometimes there were multiple ways to get to a book, sometimes there were none.

Of course this was highly inconvenient when you wanted to find a specific tome, but the superstitious magicians had generally adopted the belief that if the library didn’t want you to find a book then your research was probably going in the wrong direction.

But to those entrusted with knowledge on how the library worked almost any book could be found quickly. In fact it was his job to record how these ancient magical algorithms worked so that he could aid those who had a lesser grasp on the library's mechanics in finding a book.

The library was built this way to deter intruders and it did a fairly good job of it. Although it normally made it very impractical. On occasion books could pop up after being hidden for centuries…

His thoughts went off on a tangent for a moment, before being brought back to the present by a sudden shift.

There was a corridor there, where he had never seen one before.

Hathra frowned and hastily walked into the narrow gap before it could close up. It seemed to press tighter against him, narrowing until the point he almost felt he was stuck before he finally popped through the other side into a dark space.

Fumbling in his robes he quickly extracted a vial of Starlight Glimmer. Starlight glimmer was an esoteric potion, invented by alchemists in the long past. It could exchange kinetic energy for light. He shook the useful potion hard, watching the reversible reaction give the contents the bright glow they were known for.

The potion illuminated a dinghy stone passage that stretched into the darkness.

Hathra frowned, what was this place? There weren’t meant to be any hidden exits to the library. What if someone else found one and used it to steal books? He shivered at the thought of some sneaky intruder carting his books away under his nose.

He better investigate this.

The tunnel twisted down into a narrow spiral that went down a few levels, then it shot out, completely straight. He could feel it arrange itself slightly, with the slight lensing effect in his peripheral vision that came with old inefficient spatial enchantments.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Eventually the tunnel opened up into a small workshop. It was around the size of his archivists room, most of the space was taken up by the large bulky frame that was typical of translocation portals. There was also a shelf full of books that had crumbled into mulch. Some people really didn’t know how to take care of books.

After examining the room his eyes fell upon a short obelisk carved with runes that sat in the shadow of the translocation portal. He took a step closer and there was a crunch.

His foot had gone through the skull of a skeleton that lay on the floor. He grimaced at the sight of the aged bones and kicked his boot a few times to get the dust off his boot. Then he carefully stepped over it to the obelisk.

The obelisk was waist height and appeared to be inert until he touched it. Then with a whoosh it lit up, runes glowing white as a purple gateway opened up within the portal.

“What’s this?” He took a closer look at the gateway. Unlike other portals where the fabric of the gateway would sort of pull away into a cone behind it, indicating it led somewhere, this portal seemed to stay flat.

Hathra reached forward in fascination, he knew portals weren’t that dangerous and you could always pull yourself back out before you got transported.

His hand seemed to touch it, and then pass through, then suddenly a great force grabbed him and in one fluid motion, pulled the rest of his body through.

Hathra found himself floating in purple energy, suspended in the portal. He felt strange.

Slowly he watched his viewpoint dislocate from his eyes as his body fell out of the gateway. With a sinking feeling he realised the portal had somehow extracted his core from his body.

The obelisk lit up again and seemed to pulse. Conduits he hadn’t noticed before lit up as more energy was pumped into the magitech portal. It seemed someone had heavily modified this machine. He had no idea what it was meant to do though.

He should have been scared, but he felt no fear, instead a powerful curiosity seemed to fill him. Had it malfunctioned greatly? What could this portal be about to do to him? Would it send his soul somewhere?

The gateway seemed to fill with energy and then it sort of folded in on itself and shrank until it wrapped his core. Slowly and solidly he felt his core suddenly start to spin.

He would have shrieked with victory if he still had a body, although he had a hunch that he shouldn’t celebrate yet. In his centre an energy sparked and then sprung into being.

Magic.

His core spun faster and faster, more magic appearing at an accelerating rate. However soon he realised that the magic was just accumulating. He had no control over it yet and it could not leak out into his body.

His core spun faster and faster until it was just a blur, slowly swelling with the forced accumulation of energy. He felt something almost elastic seem to stretch out slowly.

Then the magic burst out of his core, ripping through walls with sudden piercing pain as his very being got torn apart. He would have screamed, but all he was capable of doing was watching himself slowly be destroyed.

His thoughts left him as his mind got mostly ripped apart, leaving only a large fragment of soul intact.

Hathra didn’t remember anything more except for the vague feeling of being flung around, through the ground, down and down, until eventually the last remnants of him found itself in a small doppelganger's body, with a soul fragment that seemed to fit together with his like two pieces of puzzle.

⟣⟡⟢

Cixrus' mind cleared as the last vestiges of the memory faded. This was the first memory he had relived. He could feel many more that pushed against the back of his mind. But currently they did not concern him. He could experience them later, when he next slept.

He forced his mind to awaken and found himself lying on a hard stone floor, he seemed to be in a cave, a very organised cave. There were some books in a corner and a warped ancient wooden door. On the ceiling hang down luminous light green tendrils of some plant or fungus. There was a pile of clothes by the books, a long grey tunic and some black leggings, also a pair of boots.

Some remnant of Hathra pulled his attention towards the books, but he wrestled his mind away from those thoughts and brought it back to a more concerning topic. Where was he?

Cixrus slowly stood up, and changed into the clothes, impressed at how warm they were compared to the hated sheet he had always worn before. Not making a noise, he crept up to the wooden door. The door had no window and the mechanism was a large metal ring with no lock. Slowly he turned the mechanism, which felt very stiff and suddenly rotated with a clunk. Next Cixrus pushed the door open, wincing as it screeched loud enough to wake the whole cave system.

The door opened into a rocky chamber that had been carved out into a roughly hexagonal shape. Each side of the chamber had an inset door leading off into a different direction, and in the centre of the chamber was the gaunt warlock, sitting on the floor with its legs folded up.

Staring at Cixrus.

Cixrus froze, as he faced the warlock again.

The warlock continued to stare at him, not saying a word.

“Hello, thanks for.. Not killing me? I guess.” Cixrus finally said.

“You interest me” it spoke in that coarse gravelly voice, raising a thin finger from its dark robes to point at him. (In case it wasn’t clear that it was speaking to the only other person in the room)

“Wh…Who are you and why?” Cixrus stammered.

“I am Gilver Knine Kron. Your core is formed from a weak doppelganger's spirit, fused together with a damaged possessive spirit. Normally this would be impossible, but both your soul and your mind lacked what it had and its soul and mind lacked what you had so they stuck together like magnets.” The creature explained.

“So… I’m two people?”

“In a way, I have never encountered such a perfect example of this. All of the creatures who had similar experiences to you have nowhere near as perfect a soul. I can’t even differentiate between where yours begins and it ends.”

Cixrus took this in with vague understanding, it explained why the connection with the hive had broken.

“So what do you plan to do with me?” Cixrus asked, looking curiously at the warlock, it was certain the creature meant him no harm currently, though he wouldn’t put it past the fearsome warlock to be only interested in him as a test subject.

“As it happens I seem to be in need of an apprentice. The stronghold that held the warlocks has fallen, and as such, the chains which bound my soul to it with forced loyalty have gone slack. In order to free myself of them I have to take on the last duty asked of me; that of taking an apprentice. You are my only candidate and you don’t seem to have the morals that I so despise in humans.”

Cixrus was confused, then he slowly came to the realisation that the new soul of his must have given him the ability to do what its species normally couldn’t: Magic. This was a useful opportunity, although he didn’t trust the warlock, at least he would be made capable of defending himself.

“I accept your offer” he said, anything was better than dying and escape was always possible.

“Then let us delay no further.”

The warlock ushered Cixrus through from the main chamber to another one of the side chambers. This chamber was plain and far smaller than the one he had awoken in. In the middle of the chamber was a White Stone Pedestal, with a gently rippling transparent orb on top. The orb was full of a murky shifting substance and suspended in that substance were segments of black and red chains that snaked around a black centre that couldn’t be made out.

The warlock motioned towards the orb “This is the heart of the Kron bloodline of warlocks, of which I am the last, an oath that you will never leak our secrets to outsiders unless they are themselves apprenticed and oathed to yourself. It will not force loyalty from you, but it will prevent you from telling outsiders of the location of any warlock strongholds or safe houses.

Cixrus pondered the Oath, it was not bad, he would still be able to escape and even if he escaped there would be no danger of warlocks coming after him if they knew he couldn’t share their secrets.

“What do I do?”

“Plunge your hand into the orb and do not resist what happens to you”

Cixrus nodded, and braced himself in case it hurt, pushing his hand into the orb.

At first nothing happened, it felt just like he had pushed its hand into water. Then a cold feeling ran into him, pushing through his mind and body and entering a lazily rotating place deep inside of himself which he assumed was his soul. He could feel a chain wrapping around that place. The singular black and red chain looped itself in a circle, before it could join together though it suddenly connected to his mind. The terms of the oath that the warlock had spoken were communicated to him in a thought form that was intuitive to understand. There was a mental query of agreement attached to the end of the thought which he agreed to.

The chain snapped into place and he felt his soul suddenly become denser, as the oath aided the healing of his soul and somehow reinforced the structure of it too, it turned out this oath had benefits to it.

Cixrus felt the new part of its soul suddenly match up with the old in a way that it hadn’t quite before.

He slipped into a dream-like state as the oath burst an internal dam, a sea of knowledge and memories from his past life filling his mind.

⟣⟡⟢