Getting caught by Suul raiders and having my soul nearly destroyed in a diabolic ritual wasn't exactly the plan when I started this adventure. I really just wanted to get away from my wives for a while. It's not that I don't love them. They’re both good women, and still lovely, despite their years. However, like most beautiful women they are accustomed to deference, and getting their own way, and after twenty-five years of being alternately, nagged, controlled, or manipulated, I needed a break. So when I heard the Celestine army was recruited mages, I saw my chance.
I’m not sure what kind of folk the Celestine recruiter was expecting to answer his call for magical talent, but a middle-aged hedge wizard from the backwater Moaring swamplands clearly wasn’t it. However, beggars can’t be choosers. I’m a fair healer and fit enough to travel, so I was in. As far as I knew at the time, the Celestines weren’t at war so I was expecting a couple years of easy duty in a field hospital accompanied by a nice paycheck. Instead they slapped me with some rank to represent my “life experience” and marched me across half the known world to fight the Suul.
I had been at the front for less than three months when our camp was attacked and I was captured. The next thing I knew I was locked in a cage beneath an enormous stone temple deep inside the Suul desert; my only company the tortured cries of my fellow victims echoing through the halls. When my turn came I had already watched two other mages perish before me, their souls painfully destroyed and their bodies now inhabited by dark spirits. Watching the rituals, I had seen the very moment when one of those dark spirits leapt from the old sorcerer casting the spell, and into the victim bound in the circle before him, leaving behind the discarded husk of the old sorcerer.
As I was pulled from my cage, the remaining sorcerers paused to examine me. There was some brief discussion followed by laughter. My Suul is worse that my Celen so I caught only a few words, “old man”, “justice”, and the name “Ashiel”. Still laughing, one of the old sorcerers retrieved a dusty urn from a nearby shelf, a soul jar judging by the dark magic radiating from it, and placed it on the altar where I lay bound.
Expecting painful death, I prepared my mind for a lengthy battle of wills. Ultimately it wasn’t my own knowledge or preparation that enabled me to win the fight that ensued. It was the fortunate fact that the spirit contained in the urn was female, a beautiful, seductive, manipulative woman whose sole purpose in life, and death, was to utterly control me… just like both of my wives. With my will reinforced by stubbornness only a twenty-five year veteran of marriage can muster, I pushed back the dark spirit, preserving my soul and retaining mastery of my mortal coil.
Sadly, my victory was not truly complete. When the ritual failed I was locked back into my cage by the grumbling old sorcerers. Worse yet, I can still feel her there… the spirit… scrabbling around in the back of my mind…