I should give you a little context as to how I came to my decision to leave the Physical long-term before I get into my actions afterward.

Fortunately for the humans, I started to mellow out in the latter half of the fifth century before the common era. My interest in the darker applications of mana slowly declined in lieu of more intellectual pursuits. Undoubtedly, I have to attribute some of my change in temperament to the Athenian golden age wherein I met many men of learning who sought to understand the world on a more fundamental level than their predecessors. The other reason rested with my advancement as an astral being.

As a creature of the Astral, I existed fundamentally on a conceptual level. That is to say, I was an abstract creature defined by the several key facts tied together through the understanding of rules. These facts and rules pertained to mana and the Astral respectively. At the turn of the fifth century, I hit a plateau in my advancement. No matter how much mana I cultivated or how I innovated with the creation of new structures, I simply couldn’t capture that sensation of progression that I had become accustomed to throughout my existence. It took several decades of contemplation to realize what I was doing wrong.

I had to turn my attention inward to the core structures within my astral body, the essential idea that drove my being.

Said realization came while I brooded in the Astral and I scanned Libbu’s core structures for the millionth time in a fit of reminiscence. Her structures weren’t as robust as mine but they were much more nuanced. They contained small deviations from standard designs that culminated in a completely different finished product. When contemplating the why of this difference, I recalled how her love for humans had changed her so drastically. I had personally observed the changes in many of her higher-level structures but it stood to reason that the shift pervaded her entire astral body given how devoted she became.

With this knowledge in hand, I inspected my core structures. They were immaculate in execution but ultimately, basic and lacking in any of the subtleties inherent in Libbu’s. I attempted to apply my considerable skill at astral construction to altering them and found the process beyond me. It seemed ridiculous at the time, similar to a master blacksmith being vexed by a commission for a dagger or hammer. Although I knew I had the mastery necessary to make the changes, my core structures resisted my attempts no matter what I tried resulting in one failure after another. Only after I began to question what my core structures truly meant in the grand scheme of my astral body, and thus, my existence, did I feel the slightest bit of flexibility. And so, the insight came.

To progress, I had to change the center of my existence. I had to give meaning to all that I was.

Unfortunately, giving oneself meaning was easier said than done. It was with this on my mind that I engaged the philosophers of man. Together, we scrutinized the meaning of self and the nature of existence. During this period, I conversed with some truly fascinating thinkers. I bounced my hypotheses off of these men of learning using their intellects as whetstones to sharpen my ideas. One such man proved especially gifted at honing a thought due to his method of cutting to the underlying principles of a concept and challenging said principles to test the veracity of the overall claim. I heard that man later became quite famous for his teachings and eccentric behavior.

From these broader studies, I delineated the framework with which I would alter my core structures. Unlike Libbu, my attachment to mankind and its offshoots, born of my fleshcraft, wasn’t strong enough to enact the change. Thankfully, my attachment to Libbu was.

After all, what better way to give one’s existence meaning than to devote oneself to a purpose?

In my selfishness, I briefly considered waiting a few more centuries to ensure that I couldn’t continue my progression with the sole purpose of gaining strength but some introspection quickly identified the issue with that way of thinking. I had worked with and observed enough great men to understand that true greatness came not for greatness’s sake but as a result of some other goal threatened by the obstacles of life. To live freely, to protect one’s beloved, to defy the fate allotted by others; these sorts of resolutions were a few among many that fueled the rise of the strong. Only a few truly unusual individuals mounted the summit of power purely for power’s sake and those few would appear mad or unfairly gifted depending on one’s perspective.

I had not the madness to maintain such delusions. So, restoring Libbu became the purpose through which I sought meaning and through meaning, strength. My “research” into death following her integration with the Old World had already provided me with an avenue forward. Specifically, the unique relationship of natives of the Physical with the Astral.

Physical existences, be they objects or creatures, are separate from the Astral. Unlike astral beings who can freely manifest and act in the Physical, physical creatures require a soul which acts as an anchor for their consciousness once they unlock the ability to wield mana. Once awakened to mana, the soul will breach the Astral and establish a basic astral presence before being pulled back to the body. The awakened can then will themselves to enter the Astral through dreams or extreme focus at which point they can consolidate their astral presence, cultivate mana, or pull ambient mana from the Astral for magic. It’s usually a long, difficult process to awaken and even harden to consolidate one’s astral presence which restricts the potential of most mortal races. Fortunately for humanity, Libbu’s efforts and later, my own spared them the trouble of having to overcome this natural obstacle.

In any case, the mystery of the soul was where my answer lied.

Through experimentation, I discovered that I could guide the soul of a recently departed individual into the Astral wherein the soul became the equivalent of a “core structure” for their astral presence assuming they had any before death. A continued study even revealed that a very small percentage of these guided souls retained their intelligence and independence..

Add all of that to Libbu’s innovation of integrating the “Bridge” into the souls of her children and my mind came to a single conclusion: Libbu needed a soul. If I could give her one, I could integrate her core structures into the provided soul and pull that soul into the Astral through a Bridge or better yet, an Astral Gate. From there, theoretically, it should be possible to transfer her structures bound to the Old World and restore her astral body.

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All of this was far easier said than done, mind you. My experimentation divulged that I couldn’t simply rip a soul from a human and use that. The few attempts I made at such a transplan resulted in… unfortunate creations and something deep within warned that I was treading into territory best left alone. Additionally, recall how I mentioned the synchronicity of the soul and body? If I used a soul unsuited for the task, the soul, body, or both could potentially undergo drastic changes. I had no desire to accidentally destroy the Old World especially if I wouldn’t even get what I wanted from the equation. To succeed, I needed to do something special.

I had to create a soul and not just any soul; a soul capable of synchronizing with an entire planet. I think that statement alone encapsulates how difficult the road to fulfill my chosen purpose was.

Ironically, the best entity to consult on the matter would’ve been Libbu. She had personally birthed thousands of humans and most likely, she had witnessed the formation of their nascent souls. That she couldn’t share her insights due to her new state of being worsened the sting of my grief.

I played with the idea of manifesting as a female human in the Physical and attempting to give birth to witness the creation of a soul firsthand but I never did. My emotions around Libbu, though tempered by time, still ached more than anything I had dealt with prior. In hindsight, I likely suffered from a case of PTSD from the event that ruined the idea of manifesting a fully human body for me.

However, I did observe several pregnancies from conception to the birth of the child documenting each step and the eventual appearance of the soul. The soul seemed to show its earliest signs of development parallel to the development of the brain.

Taking all of my findings, I delved deeper into the philosophy of the soul. As I said before, astral beings are conceptual by their very nature, and to have any hope of progressing to the level of power necessary to create a soul for the planet, I had to reinvent myself around that pursuit in much the same way Libbu had changed to become the mother of sorcery for mankind. I tackled a very difficult question for the time.

What is the nature of a soul?

My breakthroughs among mortals ground to a crawl as my questions and hypotheses became too esoteric for general discourse. Some didn’t handle this well calling me mad or refusing to talk at all. Once, a sorcerer even destroyed my physical body for challenging his intelligence too forcefully on the issue of metaphysical essence and its relationship to societal morality. Obviously, I could’ve crushed him like an ant but as I said, I had mellowed out.

I did end up humiliating him and ruining his family’s business pursuits a few decades later though. All in good fun, of course.

Needless to say, after a certain point, the company of mortals no longer offered the stimuli necessary to justify the time spent on them. So, I withdrew. Not because I had anything against humans or had suddenly stopped caring about them but because the mystery that I aimed to solve was beyond their ability to unravel. I still checked in now and then with humans I deemed special; however, in time, even that interest faded.

For years, I combed over my astral structures relating their function to my new purpose and pushing my mind to its limits to gain insights wherever I could find them. Eventually, I made a breakthrough.

I started to feel echoes from the souls of man while in my dream state. These echoes were like discordant whispers carried on the wind yet with enough focus, I could decipher meaning from them. Most of it was nonsense, trivial details about mortal secrets and emotions about individual humans; however, some of the echoes muttered broken truths, not of their human vessels but the souls themselves.

Naturally, I spent more and more time dreaming until it simply became my normal state of being; that I could feel the low hum of Libbu’s structures within the Old World thanks to my expanded awareness made it all the better.

I ruminated on the fragmented truths hidden in the echoes one by one. Like a grand puzzle missing a few pieces, I slowly assembled a larger Truth. I had revelations about the foundations of the universe, physical and astral. Mana, the Astral, and the astral beings: there was a titanic Truth underlying them all that called for me to understand it. I heeded its siren song and my astral body underwent a radical change.

Like a dam unable to hold a mighty river, the boundaries of my astral body burst spilling all that I was throughout the Old World’s sector of the Astral. In the past, mortals like Enlil and Sage had noted that my astral body looked to them like a “star without light” in the Astral, a consequence of my strict control over any mana I produced, whereas Libbu reminded them of Sol radiating mana instead of light. However, when my body changed, I became more akin to a mist enveloping my astral sector completely. All of my structures still existed in altered forms and my core structures had taken on the essential changes I had sought. I didn’t know it at the time but I had broken into the Ninth Order of Astral Power, a single rung on the ladder away from Aspecthood.

Nevertheless, I continued my dream. My enlightenment had come at a cost of realizing how far my goal was out of my reach at the moment. I wasn’t worried though. I knew the distance I had to travel and in that knowing I was secure. I had to ascend higher but not to the next rung on the ladder which felt impossible at the time.

And so, several centuries turned into a millennium and a millennium turned into two. I made steady progress. In my estimation, I might have succeeded in my goal if given another thousand years.

Sadly, as you know, I didn’t have that much time.

My concentration on restoring Libbu had blinded me to the affairs of the Old World. I noticed small bursts of mana extending into the Astral yet I paid little attention to them. I later found out that they were rituals, tiny workings performed by would-be occultists and underground societies of opportunistic individuals enticed by glimpses of power. I should have kept a closer eye on these flailing attempts to probe the Astral instead of dismissing them as I did. Maybe if I’d been more attentive, I would have been able to stop the ritual that brought ruin upon the Old World.

My only warning of the ritual was a disruption in one of the channels I had carved into the Old World. My consciousness surfaced just as a pulse, fueled by the latent mana contained with Libbu’s structures, ripped through the Astral. I reacted as quickly as I could destroying most of the pulse before it left the sector. A small section escaped my grasp.

It had been a long time since I worried about the consequences of meeting others of my kind. I had reached a pinnacle of strength surpassing even the mightiest and most complex astral beings I had witnessed in my dreams so long ago. Still, it occurred to me then that such others of my kind might find interest in Libbu’s condition and seek to exploit it. I might’ve been powerful enough to defeat any who tried but I wasn’t omnipotent and I would be alone against an unknown quantity of foes. To ward against being overwhelmed, I prepared defensive structures throughout my sector independent of my body, a technique I had devised with my deepening understanding of the Astral. I also set up an array of traps and restrictions specifically designed to hinder and weaken my kind unless I granted them certain permissions. These defenses took more time than I would have liked but I never regretted setting them up.

When I finally returned to my dream state, I hardly had any time to settle in before I felt something wrong. It was akin to feeling the shadow of a massive beast fall over you only to look back and see nothing. Then, the discordant whispers of mankind’s souls became a choir of screams.

Terror and madness drove their song to a fever pitch.

Confused and alarmed, I directed my attention to observe the Old World for the first time in centuries. Yet, I saw nothing. The world was dark and clouded, obfuscated by a type of mana that I had never felt before. I immediately thought of Libbu, her body cut off from my sight, and my dream ended as I brought my power to bear against the foreign mana scattering the shroud.