Duchy of Pelgaid, secluded pond
Don’t let you catch me peeping? Gerald thought amusedly, smiling to himself as he glanced in Jillian’s direction as she went before averting his gaze and turning his attention back to his business with the campfire. As if you even could catch me, if I really wanted to look. Though he was far from skilled at moving stealthily and was furthermore currently located right by the only major light-source in the area, the warlock knew that it would be a fairly simple matter for him to spy on her with a Shadow Image if he really wanted to, either creating it below the surface of the water or in the air above her so that she would be unlikely to notice its black contour. Neither location would be ideal for the purpose of looking at her, of course, but for the purpose of avoiding detection that was just a sacrifice that had to be made.
Not that he was going to, of course... though it was tempting. It was sometimes hard to remember even for himself that he, despite his body being like this, was only twenty-eight years old and surprisingly close to being the same age as her, which also made her about the same age as his wife would have been by now. Jillian’s built was admittedly scrawnier than hers had been, and shorter, but he would be lying if he claimed that her appearance did not appeal to him or that he was certain that he would never amuse himself with fantasies of her. It was not even out of some sense of loyalty to his late wife that he opted not to spy on the witch – as far as he was concerned his wife, as much as he still loved her and had spent years plotting the her resurrection, had no business trying to control his actions while she was dead – but, surprisingly, rather as a favor to Jillian herself. He did not want to give her reason to distrust him, even less hate him, more than she was naturally liable to do with everything she knew of him, let alone his treatment of her thus far. It was a thin line to walk, keeping her at a distance without making her leave, but it was better that way.
Sighing to himself and making sure to keep his face turned away from the pond, lest she catch a glimpse of the fire playing in his naturally bright amber eyes and presume that he was really peeping, Gerald produced a pewter cup from his robe as he decided to make himself some tea after all... only to subsequently realize that he would have to go to the pond to fetch water, which would definitely be viewed with suspicion by his red-haired companion.
Cursing under his breath and pondering the wasteful nature of what he was about to do, particularly since there was a perfectly fine source of water practically right next to him, the emaciated magus held out the cup in front of himself in one hand while he gestured over it with the other, quietly muttering the word maaez while his fingers weaved the associated pattern. It was a simple single-word incantation the kind of which were often employed by rune-mages, but it worked well enough; with the spell invoked a gentle tickle of water appeared in the middle of the air, pouring into Gerald’s cup until he was satisfied with the amount and stopped feeding the spell energy. At least this way he was certain that the water was clean, but using magic for such a mundane purpose still seemed so very wasteful and unworthy...
Conjuring the water – or condensing it from the air, as was what he had actually done – had brought something rather interesting to his attention, however, namely that the spell had not required quite as much magical energy as it would normally have. Turning his attention inward as he set his cup aside he realized that he had nourished the spell primarily through the energy he had taken from the soul of Anaxim, which made sense since his own energy was attuned to shadow and would have been less cost-effective in needing to be converted to another element first, but it raised other questions that had not occurred to him yet: why was Anaxim’s energy still distinct from his own? Normally when someone acquired new energy, either through sleep, piaan or, he had discovered, by draining it from other people, one’s soul would convert the new energy to match the natural affinity of the soul pretty quickly and make it indistinguishable from what was previously the soul. Anaim’s energy should logically have been very easy for his soul to adopt and change considering that it would just be raw ambient magical energy constituting the flow through the plants of the forest, yet somehow it appeared as though it was downright resistant to conversion. The implications of that were... puzzling. Did that mean that Anaxim – and presumably other Living Woods as well – actually did have actual souls as opposed to a simple network of energy flowing among the plants? And the fact that it behaved differently than magical energy normally did, accelerating natural healing and decreasing the potency of spells... was it possible that this soul was not even entirely mortal?
Gerald shook his head regretfully, wishing that he had the time and means by which to investigate this further but knowing that time was a very limited resource for them, that the Anaxim Forest was probably destroyed by now and that the energy from the forest he already had would probably be cleansed from his soul after he had gotten some sleep. It did raise another question, though: if Anaxim had had magical energy distinct from other ambient energy resistant to reverting to raw energy, creating a semblance of a soul, what happened to that energy when it died?
As the necromancer pondered the nature of the energy within him another thought occurred to him, though, that was even darker and more dangerous: that if he was able to drain and use energy from the not-entirely-mortal Anaxim Forest, who was to say that he could not do the same with other non-mortal energy? Immortal energy, for instance, like that held within the pendant hanging from the chain around his neck?
He pulled on the chain and took the red, oblong crystal in his hand, laying it on its palm while he examined it more closely. It was so slight that not even he could detect it normally, even when he focused his senses on the crystal, but with the demon prison on the palm of his hand he could just barely feel a slight, subtle and slow tickle of infernal energy escaping the crystal, slipping through and gradually further eroding the seals that trapped what was presumably about half of Hazzergash’s power and which had originally contained all of it. He idly wondered whether the crystal was special and distinct from other crystal prisons somehow, created especially for the purpose of imprisoning a demon lord, or if it was purely the seals placed on it by the Nomad that had held the Swallower of Worlds in check for what was likely almost four thousand years? It spoke volumes of his how powerful the Nomad must have been, to have been able to make seals to hold something that potent for so long... and brought into question their own ability to renew those same seals, which would be necessary in order to prevent Hazzergash from escaping a second time.
More interestingly, he could tell by examining the gentle flow of demonic taint that the mirgration of energy was anything but passive, and that some force – most likely Hazzergash’s will – was drawing the energy out, even as another force was actively trying to pull it back. Most of the energy that escaped the crystal was quickly reabsorbed by it without Gerald even having to do anything, being sucked right back in by the seals that were meant to hold it. He suspected that the seals were the real reason that Hazzergash currently required a mortal host in order to act; not because he was incapable of creating a vessel for himself, but because he needed an anchor to tether his own soul to so that the crystal prison could not draw him back in on its own accord. It was an interesting thought, implying that any of Hazzergash’s energy that did not manage to form such tethers would inexorably be drawn back into the crystal...
And which meant that the energy within the crystal – half a deity – could be pulled out of there by someone capable of siphoning energy from others’ souls.
Doing so would probably be a bad idea, considering that immortal energy was generally quite toxic to mortals such as himself, but the thought that he could potentially control Hazzergash’s power... to say that it was intriguing would be an understatement.
Smiling grimly to himself Gerald tugged the crystal back inside his robe and retrieved his cup, staring at the water within for a moment before tracing a symbol on the bottom of it with a finger, his lips forming the word dregoth as a red light shone from the inside of the cup, and within seconds the contents were steaming hot. He got out a pouch and threw a few dried herbs from it into the cup, and was almost immediately rewarded with a pungent, acrid smell.
He took a sip and winced, but swallowed nonetheless; this tea was one of the main reasons he was still alive, so he was willing to forgive it for being thoroughly disgusting.
He sighed. Soon... soon it will be over. I will be rid of the Withering so that my body can recover, and I will regain the strength to pursue other goals... and I will have vengeance. Kreshtaat took everything from me with his damned plague, so it only seems fair if I take everything from him. Somehow, someday, I will be the one to destroy him.
