Chapter 11: Yes, but what makes a servant?

Toro Yacobs looked at the altar. His thoughts aligned with Gander’s. The altar was far too dubious. Apart from anything else, it would have been a bit out of place even without the humps of crystal swirling in a circle around it.

“We’ll go around it, no point in being fools when we have a choice to avoid being so” Toro said.

Olice was a bit curious about the altar, scratch that, she was quite interested, but she didn’t want to be a fool and her experiences leading to her ending up in the Red Crystal Realm had left her a bit more wary.

They carefully made their way past the altar. They had actually left it behind when something happened.

The weak voice of what sounded like a child cried out! It wasn’t at all like Olice’s voice.

“Wait! Wait! Have you no inquisitiveness in your patterns? Would you really just pass up a mysterious altar such as this one?”

It was really a terrible idea to do in a realm like the one they were in, but Toro and Olice turned to look at the speaker.

Sitting atop the altar was a being in the form of a thin child. It wore a mottled ruined robe that had long since lost much of its colour and all of its embroidery. The being had eyes like that of a cat’s but the irises were the colour of grey clouds. It’s hair was as pale blue grass, and grew in a strangely coherent fashion, and obscured all of its face apart from those eyes, which held far too much age in them for the being to actually be a child. Its skin had a faint grey tinge.

Poking out from the sides of this being’s head was a pair of large mouse ears. The being however had a tail not unlike that of a cat’s, this too had that strange uniformly groomed grasshair. On its lap was a housecat, covered with the same grasshair. On its head, a mouse peeked out, also of that grasshair.

Each had those cloudy eyes, and the eyes moved in unison.

“I think I would pass it up” Toro said.

“Yessss” Gander instantly answered.

“I don’t want something ghastly to happen again” Olice said.

“Awww, don’t be like that, I’m harmless! Please, I’m begging you! Don’t leave me alone!”

There was only one voice, but it came from all three of the beings on the altar.

“What is it anyway?” Toro asked, he somehow got the feeling it wasn’t actually a threat.

“I used to be considered a deity you know!” the being said.

Gander sniffed. “Sssome kind of Order ssspirit, sssupremely weak certainly no chlan. All of thosse bodiesss are the one sssspirit. Even Missstresss would be able to give it an end though”

“Hey!” Olice objected.

The being let out a distressed squeak.

“Surely you travellers would not be so coldhearted as to snuff out this poor one’s heartflame?”

Gander grinned and licked his teeth. “Oh, I don’t know, I could alwayssss go for a little bit of a sssnack, I did ussse up a lot of my body recently, I’m ssssure even a being as flimsssy as you would give some ssssssssustenance”

“Oooh, stop that!”

Olice batted at Gander, who nimbly dove into her shadow.

“Don’t mind him, he’s a big meany” Olice said.

“Ahaha” The being weakly laughed “Yes, I see”

Toro was glad enough to encounter a being that was both too weak to be of harm and not hostile, still he kept a hand ready to pull out his rod.

“Would you happen to be trapped in that altar?” Toro astutely reasoned.

“Yes, when this place was first made into what it is now, I expended all of most of my power just to save myself… I suppose being trapped in this altar is fitting punishment for abandoning my followers”

“Hrm, you could have not told me about abandoning your followers, I might have been more disposed to trying to free you” Toro said.

“Protecting yoursself isss alwaysss a good idea though” Gander objected.

“That is a wicked thing you did” Olice said firmly.

To her mind, a deity that abandoned its followers was no deity at all, the innocence of a child to not understand that people would even exalt a being that served nothing but itself. She was only thinking of how the Spirit Behemoth, Waerghruv had been kind to her home’s people, and how her father ruled, and the faith her mother had in Carmos. She did not know of how people even worshipped the likes of Preahma, Deva of Poisonous Song, who not only did not care for any that worshipped him, but was fatal to most of his devotees that found him.

Though, if there is one thing that is discussed by the drunkards in taverns till the dawn, it is what a deity truly is.

Toro for his part, could not currently remember if he had faith in any being that claimed to be a deity or that was claimed to be one by others.

The ex-deity shook its heads.

“I could have omitted it… but regret is heavy in my heart, I could have used my power to save those who had faith in me, though it would have cost me my life. I will not be free from this shame, even if I am free from this altar.”

“Well, since you are resigned to it, I’ll take this chance to not end up with more complications” Toro said.

Then he turned away. “Come Olice, onward, we’ll leave this spirit to what it chose”

It turned its head away. It did not blame Toro for his choice, it was quite risky to trust one that had betrayed their followers.

Olice did not follow Toro. She didn’t like what the spirit had done, but this also seemed too sad to her. Then she hit on an idea.

“Gander, can you cut out part of the altar?” Olice asked.

“I could cut the altar into fine dusssst Missstresss” Gander said eagerly.

“Please don’t” the spirit said.

Toro turned around once more. He did not say anything. As far as he was concerned, Olice was free to make her own choice about the altar. Gander was fairly strong, he was not worried that she would be harmed. Rather, Toro had a strange feeling in his heart, he could not remember, but he felt that he had been in a situation like this one before.

Olice frowned at three-bodied spirit.

“What is your name?” She asked.

It hesitated, but only for a moment.

“Sula, Saraun, Solpnir are my names, I was once called Susasov, I am a spirit most strongly…”

Gander sniggered at the word strongly being connected to Susasov.

“…connected to the element of Order, once I was a dolanir.”

A dolanir, Olice finally remembered her reading on spirits. She was never good at remembering them, as there was so many and so many variations. A dolanir quite simply was a spirit that preyed on those that frequently broke with plans or oaths they made. Nothing was tastier to a dolanir than the flesh of the ill-commited. They took a form like a cat, sometimes like a mouse, sometimes a child’s form.

They didn’t usually take the form of all three at once. Susasov was however, not even as strong as a dolanir. At most Susa could manifest and speak.

Olice’s red eyes began to glow, and she gripped her heartflame, its power coming through her voice, lending it authority no child would normally have. It distorted with the power of the magic.

“I am Princess Olice Hjord, apprentice of the Witch of Dimensions, would you submit yourself to me, Sula, Saraun, Solpnir known as Susasov, and become my servant, until such a time as I release you from my service?”

Susa’s bodies knelt. “I am unworthy to be your servant, doubly so since you are the apprentice of an exemplar”

Olice for a moment returned to her normal childish appearance.

“Father said that if only the worthy got anything, then most of us would get nothing”

Susa laughed.

“I submit. By my own will I am bound, made servant to another, pass my will beneath her’s, Olice Hjord is my mistress, her words my will.” He recited.

“Thus I take this servant as my own, let this chain be forged, until I end, or break the bond myself!” Olice finished.

The flows of magic stirred, and shooting out from Olice was an ethereal silvery chain of fire, This looped around Susa’s necks and then faded away.

It was a simple binding, but when one being offered up their will, it usually was.

Toro wasn’t quite sure what to make of these events.

“Gander” Olice began “Cut from the altar an amulet”

Gander grinned.

“Make sure it is tasteful! What I’d consider tasteful!” Olice said, remembering it was Gander she was dealing with.

Gander grumbled, but went over to the altar all the same. His shadowy fur shot out, carving out something. In moments he returned and dropped into Olice’s hands a carving of a sleeping mouse with a cat’s tail. There was a shadowy ring on its nose and looped through this ring was a cord of Gander’s fur.

Olice held up the amulet.

“Come my servant, Susasov!” She called out.

The altar twisted, as it tried to keep Susa within, but the now long old magic that had saved Susa and trapped him at the same time could not resist the servant-bond, nor the fact that the amulet was once part of the altar. There was a loud crack, and the altar split into many pieces. Susa vanished into the amulet. The eye of the carved mouse-cat flashed grey and then went dull.

-I thank you mistress and forgive me, but I must rest, the escape wore my being- Susa said

Toro had a complicated feeling in his heart. He knew that there had to be some memory he had of someone that had betrayed him, when he was a follower of the betrayer, the memory felt like it was from when he was a boy just becoming a man, quite some time ago. Toro shook his head. Susa was freed, Toro likewise did not want to be bound by a memory of the past. Besides whoever did betray him in that past, it was certainly not Susa.

Olice looked up at Toro.

“Now we can go Sir Yacobs”

Toro looked at the child who actually didn’t look that much like his daughter, memories shifting about just out of his reach.

“Yes, I guess we can, all of us”

“Next sssspirit we encounter I’m eating it” Gander pouted.

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