Exile: Old Life Yearns for New (Birthday Vignette)

[Nyrath]

21:34? Hmm, little more than an hour before I need to leave. At least I've almost got my head around this ritual spell. Wilhelm von Treissen sat hunched by the library table which so frequently served as his work space at home, at least until he could further arrange things to his liking. The usual clutter of scrolls and tomes on matters arcane have been cleared off the immediate area, their place taken by a handful of notebooks, a few leather bound books and a slim goldplated volume of some sort. Though most eyecatching, and certainly out of place, are the stacks of Japanese manga; hardly the kind of thing you'd expect to find there.

Bookmarks could be found sticking out of every single volume bar one; the gold-plated book which lies at the centre of it all. But perhaps goldwrought would be a better term to describe it; golden pages with silver lettering fills the unsurprisingly heavy work. The argent script inside was written in a script readeable by perhaps a dozen people within the city and less than half of those would be able to make any sense of it. Of this handful probably only two or three would possibly dare attempt to call upon the powers within for its proscribed purpose, and only one would be able to attempt to do so on his own. Unfortunately Wilhelm wasn't that one individual, that would be Eldritch.

Well, at least I will only be having to do it alone on this side of it all. Glancing at the little clock in the corner of his workspace he saw that it now showed 22:01; tonight he needed to enact a ritual straddling the midnight hour, a night on which the moon would be born again.

...tonight it will be eighty years since I was born... Wilhelm stiffened, the voice had reached him without bothering with his ears; a telepath was likely on the loose. Except, it hadn't felt quite like that, more like ... something he should recognise... ...like his own thoughts back when, he was caught... ...in the Zero Zone...

At the memory the ancient mage shivered again, it hadn't even been a year since he'd been able escape from that hellishly dull, sapping place and instead moved into the service of his new liege, pretty brutally replacing a mage by the name of... The sorcerer suddenly had a slightly off-putting idea where the voice had come from.

Howard, Howard Gentle?

...yes...

I'm surprised you're still around. I honestly thought you had been torn out rather cleanly.

...hardier than that... ...managed part of ritual...

Ah, the ritual you intended to sever your vassalage and give you new life?

...ghost clings to life... ...voice of memory lives as yet...

As the 'conversation' went on von Treissen's mind, that which wasn't doing the talking, raced to figure out what had happened to suddenly prompt this shadow of what was once Howard Gentle to suddenly start making itself heard months after the mortal mage's soul had been ripped out of this earthly shell. The magician hadn't been long for this world in any case, for most humans over four decades as a shut in bookworm wouldn't be considered the most healthy of lifestyles, and messing around with magic tended to be harmful in the long run. And Wilhelm knew just how long that run could be if done properly.

It was likely due to the ritual he'd been studying for the last week; magic being what it was messing around with a massive spell involving as far as he could tell copying, or possibly even fabricating a soul and attendant memories and then binding it to a earthly shell was almost certainly bound to cause some side effects; and now he apparently had one of those living in his head.

...life... ...family... ...never got one... ...regret... It was 22:29, he had to leave about now to set up the trappings for the task.

...task... ...another's bidding... ...yet again... though day of birth...

Well, even though tonight we are doing the bidding of another you might take some comfort in what this will result in. Westberg and Fredrickson did their shifts during the day, so those second rate magicians won't get in the way, and the young man paying for the work of all three would be busy testing Ako following her reboot so he to wouldn't interfere, all seemed to be in order.

...result... The elderly wizard smiled as he slipped thin tome of precious metal into one of his pockets while replying.

After tonight you might just be considered a father. Then Wilhelm stepped through thin air and vanished, as he was known to do.