It soon becameobvious from her comments that Yllandril was female andconsiderably older than Aquitain. She even had children of her own.Once she started talking she couldn’t stop. She had been alone inthe soul crystal for a long time and now she had someone to sharethe ordeal with. Since neither she nor Aquitain had a body theydidn’t need to sleep so each in turn heard the other’s life story,at least the parts that they were prepared to reveal.
How long theytook was hard to measure as time was different when trapped in asoul crystal and mind to mind conversation was much more efficientthan normal communication. Aquitain learnt a great deal aboutLlanlleans and Yllandril. She was honest and likeable and a sort ofsorcerer healer.
Likewise shelearnt a lot about Aquitain, newmans, Logicons and bears. They bothlearnt that while Llanlleans looked vastly different to newmans,the values that their species held important were remarkablysimilar. They both felt a reasonable measure of trust in eachother. In real time several Moonmist days had passed.
Aquitainquizzed Yllandril in detail about everything she knew about the madspirit in case he was able to get out and needed to fight it.Yllandril thought that was quite funny, as she didn’t think itcould be beaten. It had destroyed countless lives many quitepowerful themselves. It had recounted the terror of some of them toher. It was totally deranged, sadistic, ruthless and very, verypowerful. Two things stood out. It either pushed its victims out oftheir bodies causing them to die instantly if it was in a hurry orpossessed them so that it could debase and torture them bothmentally and physically.
In her case itwas the latter. It stayed in her body for weeks and did unspeakablethings, which she refused to discuss. She described how it was ableto completely cut her off from her own body as if her spirit wastotally enveloped by its spirit. Aquitain had a clear vision of itforming a pocket or compartment within its spirit body where itrestrained its victims almost like a soul container.
After thismorose topic had run its course they had got into a livelydiscussion on how mental energy interacted with matter. Aquitainhad told her about the healing skills of his mother and hadcompared notes on the similarities and differences between how theLlanlleans and newmans practiced the healing arts.
Aquitainmentioned that his granddad had great skills in reading spiritauras when Yllandril mentioned that spirit auras gave access topeople’s memories. This immediately grabbed his attention.
‘Do you knowhow to block and unblock memories.’ He asked casually.
‘Yes it’sfairly common for mages to block and unblock memories in Moonmist.As a healer I was often called upon to block out bad memories andsometimes to unblock secrets.’
‘Can you readother people’s memories?’ asked Aquitain.
‘No. That isbeyond me, although I have heard of others that can.’
‘Can you teachme to block and unblock memories?’ asked Aquitain. ‘I think that Ihave some knowledge that is blocked that may be useful to ourcurrent situation. I’ll teach you how to adjust the intensity oflight in exchange.’
‘Well I canshow you how it’s done but most people need to study for weeks tolearn the details and you would need considerably more power to doit than is available in this crystal.’
Yllandrilexplained how a spirit aura was the glow of a person’s spirit. Youcould normally tell their species, gender, mental disposition,general health, alignment towards chaos and order and size of theirpower source. Aquitain knew all this. It was what came next thatwas new.
From memory sheshowed him how you could amplify the view of a spirit aura toexamine it in fine detail using what she called aura magnification.A spirit aura appeared as a froth of bubbles of different sizes.Many of the larger bubbles contained smaller bubbles. She explainedthat the small bubbles were memories and the larger bubbles weregroups of memories.
The thicknessof the bubble walls was important. If you used a memory a lot thenits walls got thicker and the memory lasted longer. However, if youdidn’t use a memory bubble and its wall got too thin then it couldburst and the memories were lost forever.
The most commonway to block a memory was to use magic to make the walls of memorybubbles go opaque. Unblocking the memory was simply reversing theprocess. She said people with painful memories often blocked themunconsciously themselves but it was extremely rare to find anyonewho could unblock a memory without outside help.
‘How do youknow which memories to block or unblock?’ said Aquitain fascinatedby this new insight into his own mind.
She told him itwas normal to put the person into a hypnotic trance then ask themto remember an item. As they did so the memory bubbles lit up andmoved together into a cluster. It was then that you applied thepower to turn the bubble walls opaque or tried to clarify them.Since people couldn’t normally put themselves into an hypnotictrance and see their own spirit auras, they couldn’t block andunblock their own memories.
Aquitain wasn’tpaying attention. The mechanism of how the Yith mantras of memorymanagement worked suddenly became clear. He now knew why they onlyworked when you were in a state of autohypnosis and could guess howthe remembering and forgetting process worked.
The realproblem was that he could only remember the first two mantras ofYith and he knew for sure that there were more. What memories werehidden from him in his own spirit aura? He had to find out. Afterall he could forget them again if he wished.
‘I need to seemy own spirit aura. Can you help me?’ asked Aquitain. ‘I need youto send me an exact mental image of what you see.’
‘Let’s have alook at the detail. Good heavens. What have you done to yourmemory? There’s lots of it blocked and look at the thickness of thebubble walls. Some are so thick they’d exist long after youdied.’
‘What happensto the bubbles after you die?’ queried Aquitain becomingside-tracked by his own curiosity.
‘Well mostpeople can’t refresh their memories so the bubbles degrade quicklyand burst and their memories are lost. In some ghosts andmalevolent spirits their pain and hatred is so intense it
