Qin andIgnatius chatted together for nearly an hour until it was time forthe dragon’s procession but he couldn’t work out whether Ignatiuswas telling the truth or not. While he was idly talking to IgnatiusQan was also busy working on another problem.
Glammer hadtold him that she knew what his mission was. She had been made byK’wala to do the same job as him but Borse had stopped it. Borsehad used Glammer as a template for an army of mothra that would beused to invade the netherworld.
Why then hadBorse not continued with his plan? Why was Borse keen for Aquitainto release K’wala? There was something wrong about the whole lot ofit. There was a hidden agenda or two. He would have to proceed verycautiously. Qan cautiously shared his thoughts with Qin.
‘Let’s go up to the dragon end of the gateway.’ said Ignatius.‘We can look through the gate into their den once they comeout.’
‘You’ll need some protection against fire as they’re prettyhot. The best protection against fire is changing to a fireelemental of course. With your dragon abilities you can change intoone can’t you?’
‘Err ... no.’ said Qin a little embarrassed.
‘I discovered centuries ago that shape shifting to elementalswas a great way to manipulate and control the elements. All thedragons I know can do it so you should be able to it aswell.’
‘You’ve obviously never thought of a job as a field engineer,have you?’ said Ignatius as he created a skill crystal with theknowledge of how to shape shift to a fire elementalform.
Aquitainswallowed the crystal and used the knowledge to change form to afire elemental. It was actually quite interesting. Fire elementalslived in and around large sources of permanent fire such as larvapools in volcanoes. They sucked in magic essence as food much likethe Rock elementals.
He had no realweight and sort of floated across the ground, more by will powerthan by any obvious motion. He could even walk up walls and acrossthe ceiling if he wanted to. He could see in a strange sort of wayin shades of black and white from all over his body. It remindedhim of when he was a slime mould. It was difficult to hear as thefire all over his body hissed and crackled and he didn’t appear tohave a sense of smell, which wasn’t all that surprising as theirwouldn’t be much to smell other than rotten egg gas smells around avolcano.
‘Do fire elementals communicate with each other.’ asked Qinusing mindspeak.
‘Never had one trying to chat with me.’ replied Ignatius.‘Then again I wouldn’t recognize their language if I heard it Isuppose.’
‘You said that about the Rock elementals.
‘You’re right. We capture them and steal their spirits to makemagic items. Maybe they’re not happy about it. Perhaps we shouldtry and work out whether they can communicate.’
They stoodaround thinking about fire elemental speech until the gatewayopened. Aquitain tried to see through the gateway but his new typeof vision was poor and blurry at the best, which meant that hecouldn’t make out any detail in the dragon’s den on the other sideof the gate. He could see many balls of fire waiting to comethrough the gate so moved back so as to be out of the way.
It was just asIgnatius had described. About two dozen orbs of flame troopedthrough the gate waited, proceeded half way down the corridor,waited again then moved to the Moonmist gate, waited then went downto Moonmist and discharged their magic essence load. This timesomething occurred to him.
‘They’re following those purple cairns which you said wereused to guide the spirits of the dead.’
‘But that’s impossible.’ said Ignatius. ‘That would mean thatsomeone on the other side would have had to place them here forthat purpose. I’ve never heard of any of the Mentarin able tomanipulate the spirits of the dead. It’s supposed to be a one-waytrip. The gods have decreed that no mortal can return from thedead.’
‘What about resurrection and reincarnation?’ askedQin.
‘From what I’ve heard, that can occur only for a few daysafter death and only then with a god’s permission.’ said Ignatius.‘When a person dies their spirit separates from their body. Thespirit is then attracted to a light from one of those purplecairns. Periodically the light goes off, and another deeper downgoes on, and the spirit progresses down to the next one. It takes afew days before it reaches some sort of processing station where itis sent to its final destination.’
‘If you want to be resurrected or reincarnated it has tohappen before your spirit reaches the processing station and you’resent to that final destination.’
‘That suggests that the deities must have helpers down therewho can be contacted to find a spirit on the way down and send itback for resurrection or reincarnation.’ suggested Qan.
‘That makes sense I suppose. Do you think that the designer ofthese gate worlds somehow contracted one or more of these spirithelpers to build the cairns in this corridor? That suggests thateither a deity employed his or her helpers to do the job or someoneoffered one or more of the helpers something they really wanted.’said Ignatius.
‘And the consequences of either of those two possibilities arebad. We either have a god as a silent partner involved in thisproject to pump magic essence from one world to another or we havesome spirit creature that wants something from this side and theobvious thing that they might want is to come back here without agod’s permission.’ said Qin.
They were bothpondering on the possibilities when the fiery orbs returned fromMoonmist and started on their return trip to the Dragon’s den. Oncethey had passed by, Qan moved their body back twenty paces andchanged shape to his Newman form and activated his ability to seespirit auras.
‘They’re not complete dragon spirits.’ Qin said toIgnatius.
‘They are parts of dragon spirits turned into fieryconstructs. They have no memories. I’ll bet they follow a set ofinstructions to carry the magic essence to Moonmist, dump it andthen return. The other part of their spirit must be back in theden. I’ll follow them back and see if I can
