‘What are you up to?’asked Yllandril who was riding along on the body of Miranda just abit further down from Aquitain. The Rat Catcher was not interested;she was sniffing around the room for mice.
‘Both of us have lostour own bodies. I don’t want Miranda to suffer that loss if I canhelp it. I’ve always been against mind control, possession andanything like that and I know you feel the same way but I also knowhow important above all it is to have your own body.’
‘I’m going to try topreserve Miranda’s body until I can give it back to her. If I don’tdo something it’ll truly die and be lost permanently.’
‘How do you know herspirit hasn’t gone to the realm of the dead?’ asked Yllandril.
‘I don’t.’ repliedAquitain. ‘However, I’ll bet the Mentarin have her spiritimprisoned in a soul crystal somewhere like they did with us. Theywill probably try to use her spirit as a hostage to ensure Gemelicais made Queen. Until I can find out I have to believe she is aliveand preserve her body for her.’
‘How can you preserveher body?’ asked Yllandril a little worried. ‘That type ofknowledge is forbidden.’
‘Yllandril I don’t knowif I can yet but as you know I have a lot of information locked upin my mind and some of it may show me the way. As a mind wizard Ihave been taught that no knowledge is inherently good or bad, it isthe intentions behind it’s use that may be good or bad.’
‘I know your intensionsare good but I worry about the road you are taking.’ repliedYllandril. ‘I have firsthand knowledge of possession and it ismalevolent no matter how you argue its benefits. What will you dowith her body if you discover she is truly dead?’
‘I don’t know. I willhave to consider that problem when it happens. No more discussionplease I must act now or we might lose it.’
Aquitain in hisminiature green crystal body was standing on Miranda’s stoneabdomen. He looked around the room and spotted what he needed. Themirror used by Bellen to show trixies fitted with magic woodenmasks their new faces. Using telekinesis he picked it up, moved itacross the room and laid it on Miranda’s abdomen and stepped ontoit.
He activated hisability to see spirit auras and viewed his own spirit aura in themirror. He noticed immediately that it was different from before.Terren or his father must have done something to him but he didn’tfeel any different. He pondered on what it meant for a while thendecided to continue with his current course of action.
He placed his mind in astate of autohypnosis and called forth the sealed divinity seedthat he had taken from the malign spirit Schlum and chanted themantra to open it.
He withdrew from thestate of autohypnosis and sought the knowledge of how his spiritcould escape from his physical body. It turned out to be remarkablysimple. The spirit and the body both appeared to have a uniqueindividual identification. By marking the spirit with a sort ofpsychic tattoo identifying the body in which it was housed, thespirit remained in that body and couldn’t leave it unless the bodywas destroyed. On the body’s death the tattoo was erased allowingthe spirit to leave.
The divinity seed gaveinstructions on how to erase and write a new tattoo onto a spirit.This would allow someone to escape their own body and enter and useanother body as their own. It also gave him a wealth of otherknowledge on the nature of the spirit and how it interacted withthe body. He would have to spend considerable time thinking aboutit to understand how this new knowledge would mesh in with the restof his knowledge.
The one real problemwas that it didn’t give any indication as to the hazards of leavinghis body and he guessed that there would be a few. With greatapprehension he chanted the new mantra that allowed him to wipe hisbody’s identification off his spirit.
His senses immediatelyfelt dulled. His sense of touch felt more like he was wearing thickgloves and his vision was more like he was inside a buildinglooking out through a window, then remembering back to the timewhen he was a slime mould, he pushed out a small pseudopodium-likepart of his spirit and budded it off.
The ritual to create aconstruct was normally quite detailed and took a lengthy amount oftime. With his new knowledge he now knew how to do it veryquickly.
‘Hello.’ he said usingmindspeak to the small part of his spirit he had separated from themain.
‘My name is Aquitain.You are a part of me. You are a construct. Your name is Crys. Youwill follow only my commands. You will keep this crystal body aliveand safe. You will watch and listen. You will communicate with meby mind speak.’ And then with a series of high Draconic commandwords it was done.
Aquitain wrote thecrystal body identification onto the small part of his spiritcalled Crys then flowed the bulk of his spirit out of his crystalbody into Miranda’s stone body. Slivver’s spirit was pushed backinto his small body, which had also been turned to stone. Heimmediately felt the effect of the power that had polymorphedMiranda’s body to stone. It was like a paralysis numbing his mindand body.
Bellen returned andusing his magic wand made a stone copy of Miranda then asked whathe should do with it. Yllandril told him that the Warden was busytrying to somehow preserve Miranda’s body but wasn’t quite sure howhe was going to do it.
‘Bellen I need you todispel the magic in Miranda’s body. Can you do that for me.’ Heasked using mind speak.
‘I can surely do thatfor yer but I’m not sure what will happen if her spirit is nolonger within it.’ he replied and left again.
Twenty minutes later hereturned and used his marvellous wand again this time dispellingthe polymorph effect. Aquitain knew the feeling instantly. He wasNewman again but now even though he thought of himself as a malehis body was in reality female and he could definitely feeldifferences. His senses were still dulled as he hadn’t labelled hisspirit with the body’s identity but otherwise everything
