Soul Reaping

It always amused me that the soul of another could be reaped to keep me alive and well. Recently my curiosity overcame me as my brother Carneggon hacked violently through a Bright Wizard during a fight for control of a keep, and repaired my wounds with his essence. Watching the red haired fire toting fool fall into a bloody slump, I wondered if some of ‘him’ was actually going into ‘me’. The thought repulsed me, so naturally I had to inquire.

Carneggon went into a confusing soliloquy while we looked out from atop the Covenant of Flame in Dragonwake later that hour. I’ll convey his explanation as best I can, though some of the more technical talk evaded my understanding. All creatures start as nothing but flesh, he says, and are no more special than a rock in the field. Yet there’s something intrinsic to the structure of the flesh that after a time, small amounts of the winds of magic precipitate to it. It’s as though you were to throw a handful of metal dust across a piece of paper, under which lay a magnet. The bits of metal would snap to attention as directed by the curious will of the magnet.

After a time, this precipitated magic shadows the workings of the body in every way, yet is inseparably attached, embedded in space perfectly to the physical body. At this point, I remember a glimmer in Carneggon’s eye, and he went on to say that ‘inseparable’ isn’t really the correct word. This magical sub-texture to each creature, this ‘soul’, can actually be torn from it’s footings with the proper application of Shyish magic.

A druchii with the appropriate skill can divorce the soul from the body, though the details of this my Disciple brother wouldn’t divulge. When the soul is reaped, it can be distilled so that it no longer resembles the creature it once inhabited. Like taking the magnet away from under the paper, the metal bits would fall into a random heap. Properly focused, this soul material can be infused into the living soul of another. Likewise, when channeled into a wound, the soul fortifies whatever current ‘soul material’ is already in that area, and stimulates the flesh to rapidly reform. In this sense, it’s almost as if the soul material has switched functions. When fortified in an area, the amount is more than natural, and the flesh then precipitates around it, using the energy of the ‘soul material’ to form into the proper organic configuration.