Soul Construct
An old man sat crouched over a desk, completely engrossed in his work, tinkering with a diminutive glowing sphere. It was not completely spherical, rather is was made of hundreds of interconnected triangles, which in turn was made of runes and glyphs formed in some kind of mana. It was a vastly complicated work, something not even he, the inspired, could create without immense effort, concentration and time. The old man sighed in frustration once more as some of the glyphs started interacting with each other and dissolve the weave around them with sparks of energy flying off of the affected triangles in a flashy display of failure. The old man was not deterred however and had started fixing the mistake as soon as it had reared its ugly head – hundreds of solid mana constructs flitted around the sphere gathering the loose energy, freezing the dissolving runes and cutting off ‘dead’ parts – all at once and all directed by the old man while he at the same time created new glyphs and runes and connected them onto the sphere. The damage to the construct was fixed in less than a minute but after pulling back his tools the old man /*/spotted two more hotspots forming and once again the tools around him sprung to life. His old eyes glowed with fervor and inspiration as he continued working, slowly humming to himself an old workers song from a far-off world.
“99 little bugs in the code – take one down and patch it around – 127 little bugs in the code…”
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After… a long time the old man finally finished his little project, the sphere no longer malfunctioned - not even during testing, rigorous testing at that. He’d applied all kinds of ailments to it and then fixed it, upgraded it and then tried again until he couldn’t even break it anymore. He’d even had a friend, Móral, come over to help him in this regard and she was both mightier and more used to well breaking things. She hadn’t been able to destroy it more than two times and now – 283 iterations later neither of them could harm it without calling upon powers that would leave them weakened for decades. Not something they had a need to try out right now.
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An ethereal hammer of pure condensed divine power smashed down onto the sphere as a last test – Móral, having expended a small fraction of a percentage of her powers over the next few years tried crushing the construct again. As the hammer fell onto the orb with explosive force the orb, instead of being mashed, simply got squished under the blow and then bounced away to the side out into the grey that surrounded them. The old man directed one of his constructs to go get it while Mórla shook her head in disbelief.
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“It sure can take a beating these days.” She muttered to herself. She’d offered up a bit more energy than needed, just to see if she could actually still harm it, but she was pretty sure it had fixed itself right up, even before it had come to a stop again. She looked at the old man.
“Remember our deal – I get to give it a blessing as well if you ever release it out into the mortal realm.” He didn’t hear her, his focus solely on the orb he’d just gotten back. “Hey! Aphiir! Listen to me when I’m talking to you.” She stomped on his foot, which mostly just confused him, but it did get him to look up.
“Huh what? Yeah, yeah if I ever do that.” He answered absentmindedly, his eyes already moving back to the orb. “I don’t think it’ll be worth the trouble though, Phoria will be pissed I made something without her help, it’s kinda her domain.”
“Good enough for me then.” She smiled under her dark hood. He wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation of knowing how it fared or showing off for that matter. Not for any respectable amount of time in any case, he was too selfish by nature. “Anyway I’ve got to go, do tell me if you ever bless the mortals with its presence though, bye!” she said as she fell and disappeared into the nearest shadow.
Aphiir glanced at where she disappeared from with a frown. He had the distinct feeling of being manipulated somehow but as usual he didn’t care much. He’d do what he wanted anyway. He looked down at the pristine orb in his hand and wondered, could he make more? He knew its structure better than his own and he had the necessary magics at his disposal. He snapped his fingers once and saw the outline of another orb starting to form, then coalesce into the proper shape. I took a bit of his power, but not nearly as much as he’d thought. The second orb now lay beside the first in his hand and in comparison, it seemed... Weaker? Younger? It was like the first one had a certain gravitas of its own and the second might as well be an acorn. He shrugged, it made sense he supposed – he’d made the first artificial soul in the universe, he’d put it through more hardening than any mortal soul had any chance of surviving, so it made sense that it’d grow from that. The second one on the other hand hadn’t been through anything, even if it was made from the same plans.
But that didn’t matter – he’d done it, he’d made an actual soul something only the god of life Phoria could boast of – till now that is, even Móral the deity of monsters had only twisted hers. He’d made it from scratch. And he’d made it better.