>>5815163>>5815075>>5815062>>5815050>>5815023Your studies ad speculations carried you down a path that was informed also by your adventure in the Goblin Wastes, and your meeting with Nemenmo of the Neme Ashurati. She and her people—a fey-descended people like your mother’s people—frowned upon the summoning of elemental spirits, such as you conjured with you <summon Elemental I> spell. But why?
‘You should not do such things,’ she had said. ‘Summoning the elementals… The soulless ones, from beyond.’
That was an answer which had only raised further questions for you, though. What WAS a soul? It seemed a simple question, but it wasn’t. You had one, of course—it was the source of your life and your magic, the centre of your self, and when your body died it would carry on and persist into the beyond. Elven tradition held that your soul would join a Fairy Court—perhaps even the Court of the Sun or the Court of the Moon, or return to that heavenly realm called the Feywild. Human tradition was that you would ascend to one of the Upper Heavens, high above the clouds and among the stars, where Creation’s firmament was laid bare, to serve and be served in the halls of the Gods Above.
But… Those were other planes, weren’t they? Divine spirits such as Angels and True Fey could descend from them to the material realm, and (more commonly and troublingly) demons and the souls of those damned to the Hellish Realms could be called up. A soul, or soul-like being, could be conjured and bound just as an elemental could be; traditional theosophy among Tower mages held that the essence of divine or demonic being was a source of soul-like metamaterial, a quasi-energy akin to life, and could be manipulated and sued in much the same way…
But then, WHAT WERE ELEMENTALS? They were entities from beyond the material realm, with a mystical force which made them up, capable of acting and reacting. You could summon them, bind them, direct them. If you lost control of them, they were not INERT—that was the danger of upcasting a summoning spell you lacked sufficient understanding of, after all, lest your elemental go berserk. What, then, made them ‘soulless’ in a way that angels, and demons, and men, and elves, were NOT?
“And what of animals?” you asked. “MUFFINS has a soul, surely… And Hershy. Yet they can’t wield magic.”
“Hershy can breathe fire,” Zith-Zi reminded you. “Well, could. Still can, a little, when he’s feeling spry… Can’t you, little guy?”
You waved her off. You were mostly speaking to yourself… But then, as your gaze settled upon her anew. Your eyes,a nd understanding, widened once more.
