Meditation was hard. Harder than anything he had ever done. The specifics of this particular branch required extreme surrender, a complete and utter submission. For him to release his attachment and search for his own soul. The pressure was compounded by the unsubtle observation by the birds. Tuzo must be able to observe him through her followers, as they perched on his window sill, followed him as he walked to Voche’s kiosk. They were so obvious Voche had even remarked on them, teasingly asking him if he had become a religious man and succumbed to the cultish members of Tuzo’s followers. He was unable to answer her, unwilling to explain the truth behind their stalking.

He began to explore numerology, manipulating the glyphs in order to expedite his meditation, using their intrinsic patterns as a form of rumination and attempting to align his mind along the ley lines of the soul world. He could feel himself getting closer as he worked to resonate his soul along the ley lines of time, the synesthesia becoming more pronounced, time looping for him, rather than just whispers of its forays into the past and future. But still no souls. Not until he came to the hospital. It had been a routine check, just a routine yearly physical to make sure he was still healthy, a freely offered service of the city. Getting lost in the building, he happened across the section of the hospital dedicated to hospice, elderly and terminally sick patients living out their last days in as much comfort as the city could provide.

He could tell the older woman was dying, and not just because of her location. He could perceive with extrasensory perception that her shining, pure soul was leaving her body, losing its anchor to the physical realm as it decayed past the point of return. It wafted, half attached, half not, like an anemone in the ocean, swaying gently in the miasma current of the soul world. Unlike a ghost, she was already dissipating, the edges of her form slowly dissolving, fizzing away. He watched fascinated, as the woman took her last breath, a raspying rattling thing, her lungs seemingly failing her and the rest of her soul releasing from this realm. That’s right, the miasma, the plasma making up the extracellular matrix of the soul realm where pure souls resided, it was perfect for collecting soul energy from. It was unlikely to be as strong as an individual soul, and condensing it seemed too close to reincarnating a new being, but if he could perhaps just trap some of it in one of his talismans he might be able to approximate a god’s magic. He would have to study this more at home, he was lingering, and the attendants tending to the deceased woman were beginning to look at him strangely.

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How would he absorb the soul energy? He lay a talisman before him on the floor as he sat cross legged, looking down at it with a frown as if he could will soul-miasma into it. It was a huge relief that there was another option besides ghosts in their entirety, despite his previous resolution he had been squeamish at the prospect of capturing and manipulating a whole human soul. But that was overcome, and he was now running up against his next hurdle. How to actually absorb the magic. Maybe he was going about this the wrong way. He was thinking of putting the magic in after creating the talisman, perhaps he needed to be in a meditative state while creating it, to be actively channeling the soul world. He wondered if that was something he had inadvertently done before with the previous talisman he had sold, he had found the practice meditative then. Was this talisman already full of soul-magic too? If that was the case, how would he access it? The couple had successfully used it against a vengeful spirit. Was it the intention? Or had he stumbled on the correct symbols for that particular use case? He looked at the talisman again. Roughly translated, it said ‘I am a fire and a rock. To be is a great adversity.’ Well, may as well start somewhere.

He returned with a rock. He had decided to try and help the process along a little, borrowing a firestone fossil from Voche. If any rock was predisposed to fire, this would be it. Well, perhaps something volcanic, but he already had this one. He placed the talisman on the rock. It seemed to stick, tagging the stone. Promising, it seemed like a willing test subject. What next though. What could the couple have done? He doubted that they, oh! It had caught flame. The rock burned first, flames leaping high a bright yellow-orange, sparking. No doubt that was the iron in the stone from the limonite inclusions in the quartz. He watched as the stone burned, until it was little more than a sooty smear on the floor, the talisman the last thing to burn away. In slight daze he wondered what he was going to tell Voche about her missing gem.