Moments pass and I remained unaware of anything beyond the cold facts of reality. The man was dead. The killers too, but that fails to matter in the same way.

I think was in shock. It was hard to accept reality, but reality wouldn’t go away, so I did. I pulled up like a turtle into its shell. Time poured by in cold confusion. Some part of me was still awake enough to shout from the depths of my soul. I have to wake up.

Their souls were breaking apart. A soul is like a kernel of golden warmth inside the flame of life-attuned Mana that lives between the eyes, in the center of the brow. Stronger souls sprout outwards, becoming the heart of a network of golden threads that span the body. The structure of the soul guides the Mana-flame as it grows, strengthening everything. This is how a mortal grows and learns magic.

This is how a mortal is set apart from an ant, from a frog, from a bird in the sky. Although birds and frogs and ants have their own smaller souls, and perhaps can grow into something more.

Now they were all dead, and their flames of Mana unwound, losing color as they bled into the air. When it was gone the soul within will crumble apart and be lost.

Ramses dipped below the water, and his broad, leathery face nudged the core. That little action sent a violent shock through my soul. Cores do not like to be touched. It’s rather a rule that we’d set the world on fire before letting someone lay hands on us.

But in that moment, the sharp cold shock is what it took to snap me into motion. I seized the souls of the elves and ground them down to sparks as my Mana burnt their corpses to thin air and vanishing wisps. Nothing would remain. Not a memory, not a single breath of their lives got to live on. I dragged the remnant shards in and drowned them.

The last was the vagabond. I drew the soul from him slowly, doing my best not to further harm the golden light that wavered and flickered beneath the water. I didn’t quite know what to do. Something. There had to be something in my power, if I could reach out hold a soul so easily.

Press it into another body? It seemed dangerous. Likely to fail, and if it failed, likely to destroy the soul beyond repair.

But I knew a soul can exist without a living body. I was one. I searched myself, send my senses radiating down the complex crystalline structure of my core, looking inside.

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I wa…

A rift in the fabric of the world. A wound that dives down into the infinite sea below, and lets Mana bleed into the world. Five rings of spellwork circled around me. Each was a disk of golden soulfire etched in runic symbols that shaped and contained the rift below, each containing within smaller circles, rotating on their own axis as the five greater rings turn. A lock of infinite complexity.

But I didn’t need to hold a singularity of Mana and torn planar fabric in place. I just needed to save one dimming soul.

Crystal formed around the flame, encasing it in a shell of emerald shot through by golden veins. I poured Mana into an orbit around the soul, forming two rings moving in opposite directions. That seemed to be the smallest form in which the binding is stable.

The runes and symbols were strange. Unlike every other language I’d encountered, I couldn’t read them with my natural gift of tongues. So I borrowed like a thief, copying rune after rune from my own inner binding to scribble across the scaffolding of Mana and sheer will I built to keep him from fading away. When it was done, when I’d done all I could think to do, I released my mental grasp.

A ringing, shattering sound pealed out. Spiderweb-thin fractures spread through the gemstone. Then…

Then the cracks ceased to grow, and even began to recede, a pulse of light from within as the jewel healed itself, the damage shrinking down to minor flaws. It shone bright for a moment before fading, and sank slowly towards the depths.

The soul inside dormant but safe. Sleeping, in a way.

I let out a breath didn’t know I was holding. Mentally. It was impossible for me to breathe, and if I somehow did, I’d definitely know about it.

But the metaphor holds true, if tired.

Ramses took the stone with a surprisingly delicate grasp, and pushed it into the hands of the faceless goddess statue. It seemed appropriate. I was still unsure why he’d decided to throw himself in the way, but…

Oh I could imagine, if I really wanted to. Mercy was rare enough in these lands to seem like a miracle. I suppose he wanted to thank the ‘god’ who’d spared him. It didn’t make me feel any better.

Still trying to shake free of the lingering bitterness, I finally allowed myself to address my own situation. I’d absorbed seven souls and their outer flames of Mana in a single moment of gluttony. I’d drunk so much I was becoming unstable, tiny flames flickering into existence as the Mana in the atmosphere grew so thick it would randomly collapse into material form.

I was either going to surrender to unconsciousness and let myself level, or I was going to explode and leave another radiant crater on this god-forsaken world.

I chose the former. I slept, and I dreamed.