>>5614340You elect to ask the legendary healer about your current malady, which muddles your thoughts and causes headaches. It is imperative that you resolve this issue before the diplomatic mission properly starts- for dueling cunning Odysseus without your full capacities would be as foregone a conclusion as Zeus’s triumph over Kronos.
“Castor Akestor, I’ve need of your medical expertise if you’ll grant it to me.” He looks interested.
“Lord Nikandros, the superficial damage you suffered against Pollux hardly needs more attention than it has already received.”
“That is precisely the issue Castor. For there is more than superficial damage. You see…”
You detail to him your condition- from how Diomedes allegedly knocked you out with a spear to the helm, to your memory loss and pounding headaches in the days following. He asks you some questions as well- whether light bothers you (it does), how you’ve been sleeping (much), and other questions of that ilk. Finally, he asks you to explain exactly what happened when you fought Pollux. He groans deeply at your description of the pin you had the blond in.
“I have a sense of what you are describing. The symptoms are common to boxers, to a lesser extent wrestlers, and all such men who use nonlethal violence on one another. It is caused by these blows to the head, great and small, which accumulate to disturb the psyche in your body.” This puzzles you.
“Disturb? How so?”
“What do you know about the relationship between the soul and the body?” Nothing, you respond. Your sister surely knows something about this, as you recall that she has some rituals concerning the manipulation of souls, but you’d never had cause to bring up the topic with her. Castor takes this as an invitation to deliver a lecture on the subject, which even in your diminished state you manage to keep up with.
The soul, he explains, is what differentiates a dead man from a living one. Everything- from the Olympians on high, to the daemons, to mortal men, to mere creatures- has a soul. The difference between the immortals and the mortals is how tightly bound their soul is to their flesh- the spirit of a river, for instance (he does not realize how relevant the example is), is bound up in the flowing waters themselves- thus, the god is as long lived as it’s physical corollary. Further, it takes a greater soul to animate a greater body- thus explaining why, say, an oreiad is both stronger-willed and longer-lived than a man.
When a man dies his soul is irreversibly separated from the mortal coil- a soul shorn of its body is a pathetic shade incapable of effecting change on the world, or even partaking in any but the most dull of sensations. Inevitably a man’s soul is dragged down to Hades for sheer inability to resist the exertions of the myriad beings in the world. However, as you know, the boundary between life and death is not a rigid binary.
