‘I have an apology to you all. I am partly responsible foreverything that has happened on Mudrun. I didn’t know it myselfuntil Aquitain mentioned something to me this morning. You may ormay not know that some mind wizards have the ability to activelyforget memories or information that they wish to hide. They canalso choose to actively unlock those memories at a later stage andhence remember them.’
‘Some mind wizards also have the ability to manipulate otherpeople’s memories. It seems that I had a lot of memories that werelocked up by another mind wizard. After the meeting this morning Iunlocked those hidden memories and made some surprisingdiscoveries.’
‘You have all met my grandson Aquitain. He is not what heseems. He is something quite extraordinary. His mother is mydaughter but his father was an elemental dragon.’
‘That’s impossible!’ said Heteronymous. ‘That’s a violation ofthe laws of nature. The Lady would have destroyed him.’
‘That is what I’ve been told on many occasions, Your Majesty,yet unbelievably it is true.’
The king lookedat Miranda and asked whether she knew about it and she just noddedyes.
‘How could something like this happen?’ asked theking.
‘In a most unusual way.’ said Granddad. ‘He was born by thejoining of the spirit of my daughter and the dragon inside a soulcrystal. A very unusual soul crystal not made of any material thatI have ever seen.’ And he pulled a silver coated Alpha out of hispocket and placed it on the table.
‘This is where Aquitain was born. This is Aquitain’sbody.’
‘You’re joking!’ said Chantalot.
‘No I’m quite serious. You see my daughter found this crystalhidden in a cleft in the wall of our first house after a spirit init had whispered to her in her sleep. How long it had been sealedin there or who sealed it is still a mystery but shortly after shereleased it a Newman wizard entered my house to reclaim it. Mydaughter tried to stop him and was killed and unknown to me at thetime her spirit was sucked into the crystal.’
‘I arrived at what I thought was my daughter’s murder just asthe culprit was leaving. I managed to trace where he went and wentafter him. When I arrived there had been a battle and the Newmanwizard who turned out to be a dragon had won but was weakened. Ichallenged him but for some reason he refused to fight and in myanger I killed him burnt his body and set a false trail so as tonot have them follow me. It apparently worked as no one ever foundme.’
‘It was one of the happiest days of my life when I sent amindspeak message into the crystal and had a reply from mydaughter. She told me that there were two dragon spirits capturedin the crystal together with her. One was the spirit that wasoriginally trapped and had contacted her while she slept and theother was of the dragon that I had killed.
She also toldme she was a mother by one of them. It took me two years of studyto work out how to get her and Aquitain out of the crystal. Sinceneither of them had bodies I had to find new ones and that tookanother six years. Aquitain was eight years old before he got hisNewman body.’
‘That explains it! ‘ thought Miranda suddenly. ‘That explainswhy he felt so at home when he was placed in the soul crystal inMoonmist by the malign spirit and why he is happy running around asa little crystal statue.’
Solcontinued.
‘It was shortly before Aquitain got his new body that Idiscovered he had an unusual problem. You see Aquitain’s mind andspirit was grafted onto the body of one of the dragon spirits, thespirit of the dragon that I had killed in my fight. I asked for anexplanation and got two. Unfortunately I tended to believe one andhave only just realized that maybe I should have believed theother.’
‘The first explanation was given by the spirit of the dragonthat been sucked in after I killed it’s physical body. It said thatit was an avatar of a greater spirit that had been asked toretrieve the gem. It apologized for the death of my daughter. Itsaid that my daughter’s spirit had accidentally been trapped in thegem and it had not fought me as it was directed by its greaterspirit to give me the gem. By killing it in anger I had trapped itsspirit in the gem.’
‘It said that the gem was a prison made to trap and catch theother dragon’s spirit. The prison could only be opened by the powerthat made it but it had a weakness. Any sprits captured other thanthose of stone dragons could in theory be retrieved. It said thatit had asked my daughter if it could borrow some of her spirit todefeat the trap mechanism so that it could escape and she hadagreed but when they joined spirits Aquitain was accidentallycreated. This was against all known knowledge as the joining ofstone dragons and newmans was forbidden.’
‘The second explanation I got from the other dragon’s spirit.It said that the dragon spirit had forced itself upon my daughter’sspirit in a purposeful manner to provide a reason why it should bereleased. In other words Aquitain was the result of my daughterbeing spiritually raped. My daughter doesn’t know who tobelieve.’
‘This caused a great dilemma. Both my daughter and I wished tohave Aquitain released from the prison gem but which explanationwas correct. I chose to believe that she was raped. I demanded thatall the avatar’s powers be blocked and that it never have access toAquitain once he was released. We wanted Aquitain to have as normalan upbringing as possible. The avatar was only allowed to be awakewhile Aquitain was asleep. Surprisingly it agreed and all itspowers were taken away.’
‘The avatar generally kept with the deal and I got tired ofensuring that it slept while Aquitain was awake. Eventually Idecided to turn Alpha into a fake memory crystal and passed controlof Aquitain over to the dragon spirit remaining in the gemprison.
That seemed towork well, however, in hindsight it was a stupid decision as wenever knew why the other dragon
