===

  Jevrick’s Main Quest: Restore Maplebrook

  

  
• Win Election


  
• Earn Maplebrook’s trust.


  
• Bring back the town’s dead.


  
• Rebuild houses.


  
• Restore population.


  

  Side Quests:

  

  
• Find out who burned down the chapel.


  
• Deal with Nightfire weeds.


  
• Deal with the wolves.


  
• Fulfill obligation to Atan.


  

  ===

  I pushed the little diamonds into place on the back of a flattened tin plate I had brought as a spell component, using sap as a binding agent by heating it using Create Fire cantrip. The fragments formed a tiny mirror that was about the shape and size of a heart—ventricles and all. My fractured reflection appeared within, my Visage still holding up; remember, despite not having a blood-magic focus, I was still able to conjure spells through lengthy ritual means.

  I then set the makeshift mirror upon a rock so that it’d lay flat.

  Fern, Oon, and Bee had been watching me closely, but stepped clear back when I brandished my scythe.

  I examined the curved blade, a small glimmer of aether rippling along it. Good ol’ Green Thumb’s soul seemed to have been sucked into the thing and I wondered if I could release it. Diamond was known as hardened anima, or otherwise called soul gem by those in the necromantic field of magic. Typically small fragments, such as these ones my gracious Kipsic had given me, didn’t make for great soul holding conduits as they simply couldn’t contain such energy well. However, I had known of cases where souls could be transferred from a full soul gem into a fractured soul gem. This of course permanently fractured the soul as well, and almost always prevented the soul from being able to be reincarnated. It did, however, make for a great way to eternalize a powerful entity without risking them being brought back lesser mages. Even someone of my skill had never successfully brought a fractured soul back into the material.

  Transferring a soul into a fragile vessel came with an obvious risk of course, as it was easier to break than a solid diamond would be.

  Anyway, I took the tip of the scythe and pressed it against the shard mirror.

  Nothing happened.

  I squinted and chattered my teeth. I truly hoped that soul transference was the intended purpose of this scythe, what other use would one have to store souls in a weapon if not to export them? I feared that the fractured soul gem was the issue. But, I considered what alternative methods of transference might be utilized instead.

  Hmm. . . Well, what if there were theoretically multiple souls within the scythe? Would it randomly transfer one, or would I have the choice of what soul would leave the scythe? If the design was for a choice, then there might be some mechanism or somatic component to the execution.

  “Green Thumb,” I said.

  Nothing. Happened.

  “Afterlives. . .” I pulled back the scythe and stroked my chin. I could not simply give up yet, I was a man of intellect after all, and I was determined to solve this problem.

  “Green Thumb?” Bee asked.

  I didn’t look away from my tools as I responded. “Yes, that was the name of the dark druid who led the Greenfolk Bandits.”

  “A dumb name,” she scoffed.

  Coming from someone named ‘Bee,’ I mused.

  Wait.

  I pressed the tip of the scythe back to the diamond and said, “Giacomo Borris.”

  The scythe vibrated in my hands. Silvery tendrils of magic dripped from the blade and seeped into the cracked diamond surface. The diamonds glistened once the transference was complete.

  “By The Great Three, I think it worked,” I cheered.

  Then came a booming voice. “AHHHH!”

  I nearly toppled the fractured soul gem—which I deemed to refer to as the Soul Mirror—with the scythe as the sudden voice startled me. It was not that I wasn’t expecting to hear a voice, souls often reacted this way when imbued into a gem, but the intensity was quite surprising. Was that due to the scythe, perhaps? Something I very much looked forward to experimenting with sometime after my immediate problems were dealt with.

  I glanced behind me to make sure my party was still there. They were, though all of them looked as though they’d encountered a ghost. . . I supposed they weren’t so far off, in a round about way.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Do not worry, my friends. The druid will have no power in this state, other than the ability to commune with us. It is quite safe to approach the Soul Mirror.”

  Oon asked, “if he has no power, then how is he to help us remove these weeds?”

  I smiled. “Through a matter of scholarly conversation!”

  He did not look convinced.

  I cleared my throat and approached the mirror. Something was being reflected on its surface. It shifted around like, well, a figure upon a shattered mirror.

  “Drek, where am I? What is going on?” the voice within said.

  I leaned over the mirror and waved at the broken image of Green Thumb; he was not a tree, mind you, but a man. His face was bearded, but his body was bare skin. The mirror showed his entire being, standing there like a feral hermit, trying to push his way out of the Soul Mirror fruitlessly. The space around him was the empty ethereal of the diamond interior, so it looked as though he were standing upon nothing at all.

  “Hallo, master druid,” I said. “I understand that you are quite confused by your—.”

  He stopped, looked straight at me, and shouted a range of expletives that I found to be quite uncalled for.

  I realized also that he might not recognize me, so I dispelled my visage, wondering if that might interrupt his tirade long enough to get a word in.

  No. It only served to drive him into a frothing madness. Some of the vile things he said to me were quite perplexing as well, though it was the threat about turning me into bonemeal that felt the most degrading for some reason.

  “Listen now, Master Borris, we have not the time for this!” I snapped.

  He spat, though nothing came out—as this was just a projection, and he was not a true physical manifestation.

  I just about had his attitude and flipped the Soul Mirror upside down so that he was face first against the rock surface.

  “Wait. . . What did you do? I can’t see!”

  I made the motion of sighing, now in my true skeletal form, and turned back to my group.

  “Perhaps,” Fern said, meandering through the plants, which had grown past our calves in the time I had been working on this, “this plan is not for the best? If he has no source of power while in there, then is this worth the precious moments we have?”

  I did find it difficult to argue with the apothecary. I may have simply been wasting my time. But, if I could convince the druid to assist, I hoped that he might direct us to the origin point of the weeds as well as guide me in learning some spell to undo the cursed plants as Fern suggested. It seemed far from a likely outcome, but I deemed it unwise to ignore the woodswoman’s advice. If burning through the brush risked taking the whole forest with it, then I needed to determine another solution.

  “Turn me over!” Green Thumb demanded. “Show yourself. Let me break you!”

  “Now, Green Thumb,” I said in my most parental voice to show him who was in charge, “do not misunderstand the situation. Your fits will not lead to any positive outcomes, because you are quite totally, and nigh-irreversibly, dead. You have no anima, your headless body was scooped into a ditch, and your soul is now tethered to a rather fragile fractured soul gem. So, you might yell and scream all you’d like, but it won’t do you any good. In fact, I have half the mind to smash you to bits right here and be done with it. But, I think against it because I believe you have a role yet to play in the grand scheme of things. That’s right, master druid, you have a purpose—even in death. Sure, you attempted to kill me and all the innocent people of Maplebrook, but I am nothing if not a man who believes in redemption. Zyon, I would be a hypocrite of untold proportions if I did not believe that all men and women had some means of finding redemption. That is the grand design, if you believe in that sort of thing. We each are born, and we each will die, and it is between that very conundrum of existence that we make a plethora of mistakes and cause a great deal of pain to many people. But, unlike the stories of a wordsmith, our lives do not simply halt after our misdeeds. They continue on, and—bar meeting a fitting death—we must wake up each morning and decide if today is the day we break from the bonds of our past and do something good with the time we are given. It is never too late for the likes of you or I, good druid, for if it were then what would be the point? Nay! You and I are granted a fresh hand in a game set to fold us. Mind you, you are indeed very dead. But, if anyone understands the inconsistent finality of death, it would be none other than yours truly. My villainous compatriot, I beseech you—nay, beg of your assistance. The Nightfire has spread to an unprecedented level, and should we fail in our endeavor to eradicate it, then many more lives will be snuffed out. Now, I understand that you had taken to the path of a criminal, murderer, and scoundrel by choice. Whatever the motivation for venturing down that path was, it is of no concern to me now. What does concern me is how you are a druid whom the land, the very creation of the world, relies on. What concerns me, as in, involves me, is that you are the bridge between the natural and the fabricated. You are the bulwark against the desolation of this world. You are the one we now turn to in our moment of greatest need, and to whom I once again must beg; please, will you aid us in eradicating these weeds for the good of all that is and is to come? Will you take this opportunity to paint a new mural of yourself, unfettered by your past self, and emboldened with the righteous strength of heroism? Will you, fair druid? Will you aid us? Will you make things right? Will you choose redemption?”

  There was a good silence after that barrage of words. I. . . I truly could not put where that had all come from. . . talk of redemption, and will, and heroism. Had that always been bubbling beneath my chest, or was this a new revelation? Or was I just so desperate to earn the druid’s cooperation that I would say just about anything in a bid to win him over? It was hard to say. . . but I was titilated by the possibility that I had always, deep down, longed to find some way to make things right.

  Then I thought about the lives of those who would never experience my attempt at righting my past wrongs. What about them? Did I owe them some recompense? If I did, how would I fulfill it? Was it enough to be sorry and pursue a life of dedicated philanthropy? Hard to say. Perhaps too obtuse a concept for now. I would need to reflect upon these revelations for some time.

  Anyway, it seemed a good amount of time had passed before the druid finally said, “Ok. Turn me over. . . please.”

  I gave a hopeful look to my party, and flipped the mirror back over.

  Green Thumb’s demeanor had softened. He asked, “Do you really believe it's not too late for me?”

  Well, too late was somewhat hard to define, as he was most likely trapped within this mirror until I set his soul free. But, I didn’t burden him with those technicalities. I simply said, “Yes. Will you help us?”

  He took a deep breath, and nodded. “Let us fix this together.”

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