When believers of Garnet claimed souls never die and only pass on to new bodies decades or centuries after their previous body lost its capabilities to live, everyone believed it.
It had been engraved into the consciousness of every soul once they awakened in their new forms. They wake up completely aware they inhabited a different body and walked countless lives in the past. But to know exactly who they were, was impossible.
Memories, connections, and emotions fade over time in the soul before they occupy a new form. No traces of their previous lives would stay. None.
But for the traces of pale yellow hovering over the trees in a dark forest, its previous life pulled on its remains, persistently scratching on its bare existence. As if its past life never died in its memories and roots.
The trace of a soul invisible to human sight moved across the canopies, its mind circling back to the first time it woke. It woke in the spotlight of dawn, peeking through the leaves of trees. Without a body.
It had tried to speak, and a faint sound came out of it, but whether it was audible to anyone, it wouldn't know. For decades of wandering, no human ever saw it as it was a lost, bodiless soul.
"Dawn is upon again. Garnet is waking up, it seems." A gargling, shaky voice whispered as he gazed at the rising sun from the porch of his dumped and abandoned-looking cottage.
The man's grip on his staff tightened, his other hand pushing the hood of his dark cloak to the back of his hairless head. Wide eyes nearly popping from his sullen, wrinkled face shot to the trace of soft yellow in the distance.
"Garnet, what is that...?"
His pale, almost silver skin tone folded the more he tried to identify the unusual trace of light jumping from one tree branch to the next, occasionally encircling the body of the old trees before going over the next branch.
The man stepped onto the lifeless ground where his home stood. The trace of light enclosed, and he waited.
It stopped as it reached the nearest tree, only a few meters away from the cloaked man.
A vibration came from the soul for a couple of moments between the two staring at one another. A faint noise.
"Hm?" The man raised a brow. The light must be speaking to him.
He walked on forward, supported by his wooden staff. He stopped once his figure was face to face with the trace of light slowly pouring down from the tree branch to the man's eye level.
Again, a faint vibration echoed in the space where the trace was, but the distance made its message clear this time.
"You see me?" Was the message that came through the man's sense of hearing.
His mouth opened, revealing his crooked teeth. Another vibration came from the light, and its clearly an inaudible sound. But somehow, perhaps due to the proximity, its words became understandable.
"You must be surprised, I understand." It said.
The man breathed in and pursed his dried lips. "You... what are you?"
The yellow trace excitedly circled the man, with space vibrations echoing wherever it went.
"I am a soul. A soul with no body. A lost soul. I'm so happy I found someone who could see me! Communicate with me! I'm so happy!"
"A soul?" The man mumbled.
The soul danced in front of the man as if nodding. "Yes, yes. I have no body. I woke up with no body. It's been so long; I trust it's been decades since I've awakened. Every human I see in the forest does not see or hear me. Now, for a long time, I wandered this forest, and I found you. I'm glad I found you!"
The man placed two incredibly bony fingers on his chin, his pointy nails scratching his skin lightly.
Perhaps it was due to his high forms of magic capabilities. Or it could be due to the type of magic he practiced that he could see a soul. Or the magic talent he possessed and was blessed with that he managed to awaken. Whichever it was, a shroud of amusement to meeting a lost soul occupied his mind.
"Soul." He called out, and the soul stopped moving around. The man smiled, malice hanging over the edge of his mouth. "I am Grogolion, an exiled sorcerer from centuries ago."
"Grogolion. Isn't that too outdated a name?"
The man, Grogolion, grunted and shook his head. "..It is. You may simply refer to me as Leo, just as anyone does in this modern world."
"Modern world! So that's what the world is now."
Grogolion, Leo, beckoned the soul to follow him as he turned his back and walked to his house. "Yes, that's what they call it. Science, or something like that, had been the backbone of everything now."
"Science! Interesting! What of sorcerers? Or the existence of magic?"
"Sorcerers are no more. As for magic," Leo opened the door and held it out for the soul. "it's still prominent. However, it's become quite creative."
Leo flickered the lights open as he tapped his staff on the wooden floor. He walked over to the table with scrolls splattered all over it. The soul wandered around the small inside, and broken furniture, objects, and scrolls hanging and lying everywhere filled the place.
"Souls began developing inborn magic unique only to them," Leo said, shuffling slowly around the mess on the creaking floor planks. "Of course, anyone could still practice the basic types, but certain people now have certain magic they are born with."
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Leo reached the table and turned his head towards the soul.
"As for me, as I've lived for hundreds of years, I've only focused on the practice Garnet forbids." He chuckled, voice shaky. Leo eyed the soul and raised a brow, the smile on his face not leaving. "The same magic Garnet practiced."
"Oh, oh! The power to create magic?"
Leo waved a hand. "Not exactly. I am no god like he is, after all." He squinted his eyes toward the soul. "But it is magic that forces a soul to awaken their inborn magic."
"Oh!" The soul danced around the table. "Then you could make everyone have unique magic of their own?"
"Heh, if only it were that simple." He pushed the scrolls down the table. "If cast on someone with no real hidden talent, they die."
"Oh..."
"And if they do have it, I made it so whoever I cast it on will fall under a spell."
The soul stayed in one spot in space for a moment before a soft vibration echoed from it. "..Why?"
Leo smirked. "Why not? It'd make people's lives miserable one way or another. I get to toy with them since I get to be the one to choose the severity of the spell."
"..."
"At least it's consensual."
"..."
Leo raised a brow at the silence of the soul.
"Soul?"
"So you've done it to someone before?"
"Of course."
"What happened to them?"
"Garnet knows. But I'm sure they've died now. It's been decades since anyone's been here. Other than myself, of course."
The soul quieted down and then moved slowly to the closed door of the house. Something about what Leo does, or did, or liked to do sparked something in the soul. A sense of morality. Or maybe it was a sense of right and wrong, or good and evil. But a strong sense of something nonetheless.
"Soul, what do you want?" Leo asked after a moment of silence. "Do you want... a body?"
Suddenly, another sensation bloomed from the soul. What it was, it had no idea. But it felt powerful. It tugged onto the vague and blurry remains of its previous life. It knocked on its existence with an unyielding will to do something. To know something. To find something.
"Or do you desire to uncover the truth behind the body-the life-you housed centuries ago?"
The soul swiftly raced back close to Leo, an evil glint appearing in the bald man's barely lit eyes.
"How do you know this?" It asked, surprise evident in its inaudible sound.
Leo sneered. "I have the eyes of Garnet, Soul. I am no god like he is, but I forced myself to awaken inborn magic I may or may not have. I would've died if I had none, but Garnet blessed me with one."
"The magic to... see people's desires?"
"Close enough." Leo shrugged. "It's actually the power to see what lies in a soul. Not just desires, but everything in a soul. Everything. All I needed to do was stare right into the person's eyes. In your case, you don't even have an eye. So it must've worked with one look at you-a vulnerable, bare soul."
The light of the soul darkened a bit as if a negative emotion powered through it.
"But I could awaken your inborn talent. And I feel it's going to give you a body."
The soul instantly flew close to Leo. "Really? I could have a body?"
"Yes, not only that, but a power unique to you will come forth. How about it?"
"..."
If the soul had no talent within it, it would disappear without ever housing a body. It would have to wait for decades or centuries to be reborn again.
It didn't want it. Something from its past life clawed on it; more than anything else, it wanted the knowledge of its previous life.
"You know, I could also amplify the spell so that all the hazy memories from your previous life, which I surmise is about a thousand years ago, will become clear."
"Really?"
"Forbidden magic, I say. But it would cost you." Leo grinned. "Or you could walk away from my abode and exist to be but a bodiless soul."
"I..." The soul pranced around the house, then stopped. "What exactly do you get in return for doing this?"
"Why do you think I still live?"
"...Immortality?"
"Perhaps young'uns can refer to it as such." Leo shrugged and shot the soul an amused look. "For every soul I cast on that dies, their remaining lifespan transfers to me."
Dangerous.
The word that forced its way into the soul's existence.
But if it agreed to awaken its inborn talent, assuming it has one, it could have a body. In agreement, Leo could also force memories from its past life back into its soul. And if it had a body, it could fulfill whatever unfinished business it had a thousand years ago.
All this could cost the soul something.
And to have its memories back? It's unheard of. The power to know one's previous life felt heavy and immense.
"Alright." The soul steadied at Leo's eye level. "Please awaken my inborn talent. And amplify it so that I could recall my memories."
"Just so you know, this amplification does not always work. If it does work, I will base the negative spell I'll put you under on it."
"Alright."
While this could cost him something of profound importance, it agreed nonetheless.
After all, it had nothing to lose.
-
What the soul used to be now stood a nine-foot, hairy, ugly being that broke the home due to its enormous size. It, now he, stared right into his massive paws with a mixture of wonder and confusion.
"What am I?" He asked, his voice now audible, but it was gnarly and echoed like a growl.
Leo, who stepped out of his now-broken house, smiled up at him. "A species you've wiped out in your previous life, saving the world of an imminent tragedy."
The creature trembled. "A... a guzzarok?"
"You remember." Leo raised his staff, the wooden carvings from the bottom brightening with a dark hazel light. It reached the head of the staff. "Now, before you can use your inborn magic, I'll have to cast you under a spell!"
He, the guzzarok, stepped back. The usage of his newfound magic power only came to him as the hazel light from Leo struck his body. Clouds wept and cried on the scene while Garnet's lightning struck their surroundings.
"Garnet seems mad for the umpteenth time, eh?" Leo yelled, a wide sneer on his face. "Former bodiless soul, now a male extinct creature people of today only know as a myth. Do you remember who you were back then?"
The guzzarok growled, sending powerful waves of the wind across them, but Leo still stood steady, perhaps due to his magical prowess. The guzzarok cupped his head, its bright cyan claws digging into his colorful combination of magenta, cyan, and pure white hair.
He does.
He remembered everything.
"Now, you will remain a guzzarok." Leo declared, shocking the guzzarok. "In other words, you will never be able to use your inborn powers."
Tears blurred his vision amidst the pouring cold and hard rain, the thunder's bad accuracy between trees, and the wind's howl hurling branches and planks from the broken house everywhere.
"Do not worry, creature." Leo twirled his staff, a fury light of red-orange emerging from his staff and jumping to the guzzarok. "This spell will break on one condition."
The guzzarok placed a hand, or a paw, on its chest. Impulsively protecting the circular gem etched right there from all the wood flying about due to the wind. Despite the dangers of the current situation, Leo was unharmed. All wooden planks, tree branches, and even trees deflected away before they made contact with Leo's stance.
"The body inhabited by the other half of your soul must touch the core on your chest-the core of your very soul. Protect it well, or else you'll have no way of ever breaking the spell."
With one last wave of his staff, Leo's casting finished, and the guzzarok emerged to a roar of frustration from what he had to do, mixed with the emptiness in his soul from the remembrance of the past.
Not only did he become what he slew, but the memory of the dearest person in his life dying before his eyes slammed into his mind. He howled. A cry disguised as a howl resembling a call.
A call for the other half of his soul he might never find.
With tears mixed with rainwater that obliterated his vision as he stomped and stood on four, he lunged forward towards the sorcerer protected by a magical barrier.
As Leo smirked at the guzzarok's charge toward him, the world didn't know that only the gods' magic could ever defend anyone from guzzaroks.
As the persistent droplets of the dying rain combined with an ear-piercing shriek, the guzzarok fell unconscious.