| Present day, Ortal's home, The Spires The writer was scribbling down words and fragments on the parchment, trying to form a total image from his mind. It was not often that he had to puzzle together memories, usually one part led to another which led to another. This time it looked like he was going to have to spend time to combine the pieces after he was done. The last fragment of memory entered his mind, recollected after the previous one ended. From the looks of it, the last fragment had been the start of the entire memory. The writer let his eyes shift over the different parchments as he started puzzling them together into a coherent piece of text. |
| Winter, Unknown, Year 547 Crone's tent, Undrykas' Pavilion, Endrykas The Undrykas sat in the middle of the tent. The breeze passed by him, moving from one opening in the tent to the opposite one, creating a passing smell of wet grass, fresh, and rain. The trickling of the rain drops on the tent helped the Undrykas to relax. Over time, shifting in and out of the 'Eye' had become easier. At first, it had been simply a name he had linked to a way of sitting. Now, a few years later, the name was linked to a state of mind where the entire body was calm and collected and the mind had seperated itself from almost everything around it. It helped quite a bit when it came to healing wounds or distancing oneself from the things outside of oneself. For the Undrykas, distancing himself from others had been the easiest part. There had never been anything to keep him close to others, so keeping a distance was a natural state for him. The 'Eye' helped him to relax and focus as he peeled off his spirit from his body. The tent had been the limit of his spirit for a long time. He had tried to push beyond it often but there had been something keeping him back. An invisible wall kept his hands within a certain area. But the Crone had told him that there was almost no limit to how far one could send their spirit if they wanted to. It just required concentration and training. The Undrykas sat silence in the tent. It was one of the only places in the entire pavilion where he wasn't constantly bothered by people or blamed for everything that went wrong. His breath slipped between his lips as he exhaled. The pricking feeling along his wrist ended, always the last part. His eyes opened and he looked at his hand. The one that was not lying in his lap. One part succesful. The Undrykas closed his eyes again and shifted his focus on the left hand. The procedure was the same, he only had to remember that the hand was mirrored so he wouldn't try to pull the spirit of his thumb out of his little finger. The prickling feeling spread out over his hands as the Undrykas focused on it. The tips of his fingers lost any feeling at all as he peeled away the spirit more and more. He often wondered why he got so tired simply from sitting and concentrating. Although he did his best to control it, his breathing became more labored by the time his left hand plomped down in his lap. His mind was all focus as the young boy opened his eyes. Ten fingers wiggled in front of his eyes and floated away. He clenched his fists in the air and pushed his hands further away from himself. It was different from using only one hand in spirit form. The lack of feeling from all ten of his fingers was a little unnerving as the Undrykas watched his pale, blueish hands float out in front of him. The exercises were the same as usual. He lifted up small and near weightless objects with his hands. He tried to lift coins, which was already working much better than before. His fingers grasped onto the coin as he pulled it up. The coin stood up on one side but barely lifted off the ground. Although his hands were now dead, the Undrykas arms still worked and he moved his arm up to his forehead, wiping the beads of sweat that were starting to form from his forehead. He made sure to place his hand softly back in his lap. It wasn't easy to do without losing focus on the other hands as well. It was weird for the Undrykas to see his own hands hanging like dead weight from his wrists. With two hands, focused both on the coin, he managed to lift it up from the ground. It was as if the coin was covered with fat, slipping from between his fingertips. It was difficult to keep a hold on it. The coin was placed back on the ground before it fell from his grasp. He moved his hands out and away from one another, as if stretching his arms as much as he could. His real arms would have met their maximum length quickly but the spirit hands moved beyond his physical reach. He pushed on in both directions, dividing his mind and his focus between the two. His hands stretched out and touched the limit of his reach, pushing against the invisible dome that existed around him. He wouldn't be able to get any further. He had tried once. He had collapsed like a sack of potatoes as the hand had sapped all his strength simply to push further out. He had woken up a few hours later with the Crone standing over him and grinning her evil grin at him as she patched him back up with foul tasting liquids and even fouler smelling pastes and salves. But he had recovered quickly from the incident. The Crone had advised him to slowly work his mind and his control, like a real muscle, with practice. He had taken her advice eagerly. His hands reached the wall, coming to a stop against an invisible force. A drop of sweat ran down the bridge of his nose and dove off the tip, landing on his dead hand in his lap. The Undrykas looked around towards both hands, determining if something near them was able to be lifted by them. The right hand lifted up a quill. He looked to the left. There was not much there but the Undrykas reached for the club of a mortar and pestle. Heavier than most objects he had lifted before, the club barely moved as he reached around it and grasped it with his fingers. He closed his eyes, feeling the club in his spirit hand. He could feel the quill in his right hand as well, although only very lightly. His mind wavered as he tried to keep both hands doing what they were supposed to do. Their response was getting sloppy and slow as he made the left hand go up, trying to lift the club from the bowl. His fingers slipped from around the club, as if it was slick with grease. It stood upright until his fingers slipped from around it, causing it to fall back into the bowl. Panting now, the Undrykas quickly pulled both hands back to him. His mind focused on the right one first. Already second nature to him, the tingling started from his wrist as he started to sew his spirit back into his physical body, reconnecting it to the right pathways and the correct muscles and joints. The tingling feeling spread out towards the tips of his fingers. When they reached it, the tingling stopped by his wrist and the tingling stopped. He flexed his fingers slowly, testing them. No problem. The left hand moved down and into the physical shell. He connected it to the wrist first and moved up to the fingertips. He had to disconnect a few times because of mistaken connections. The left hand took him much longer than the right had. The tingling spread out from his wrist and towards his fingers. The Undrykas carefully put everything back in place, making sure it was all properly connected once again. He carefully moved his fingers, one by one. They all moved as they were supposed to. Using his physical hands, the Undrykas wiped off the sweat from his forehead. With his sleeve he made sure the rest of his face was relatively dry. Staggering and a little unstable on his feet, the Undrykas stood up in the tent and made his way out into the rain. |
| Present day, Ortal's home, The Spires The entire memroy lay mapped out in front of him on the desk. There were small notes in between the different parchments as he connected fragments and shards with each other. Taking a new piece of parchment, the writer started from the first one and scribbled down the fragments in the correct order creating a proper chapter in the life of the Undrykas. His eyes often shifted to one of the drawers of the desk. There were plenty more fragments and shards to be matched together but most of them made absolutely no sense to the writer at the moment. He focused back on his parchment as he continued to write and connect the different fragments and shards. |
