Owyn’s spirit sits on the ground, chin resting on clasped hands as he intently listens to Mizzle’s questions and considers how to answer them.
“While I cannot answer for Surdak, I can tell you a bit about the process. It’s not horribly different than training an elemental for a task, assuming those techniques haven’t been lost to time.”
“First you prepare a vessel to house the fragment. The process is quite violent on a spiritual level and it is difficult to ensure that the fragment will survive, so you want to give it the best opportunity to recover and become something that will survive on its own.”
“Next you ready for mind whatever purpose you want the fragment to carry out. While a true spirit can hold much information a fragment like myself can only carry a small fraction of the whole, so you must be judicious. Once you’ve prepared yourself, you excise a sliver of your spirit off from the rest and store it in the vessel. And then you hope that it turns out alright.”
“Bah,” Surdak interjects, “one does not have to go through such menial efforts if you have truly dedicated yourself to a singular purpose. Then each fragment of yourself carries the totality of your will.”
Owyn grimaces a bit as he listens to Surdak. He bobs his head in indecision for a moment before saying, “I don’t think that’s correct.”
“Only because you are a lesser fragment of a greater whole who grew beyond your feeble understanding.”
Owyn smiles as he shakes his head, “No, not really. Were we closer to my creation, the threads might still be there, but from the moment the real Owyn and myself were separated the divergence had already begun.”
“While I can grow and learn beyond my humble beginnings, I’ll never truly be Owyn again, because that Owyn took a separate path from the one he set me on. At this point any attempt to converge our spirits would only destroy each of us into some new third entity.”
“Again your flaw understanding of this process is troubling,” Surdak calls out. “Convergence simple matter if one remains focused on their goals. Any divergence is the true aberration.”
Owyn solemnly shakes his head, but doesn’t otherwise respond to Surdak.
“This is a bit more in keeping with my intended purpose,” Owyn says. “The Aquarians are—were?—our enemies, intent on conquering our lands with their technological might. They first attacked the Warring States, creating a massive land bridge across their two continents to allow their war machines easy access. My home was the next besieged by their flying ships, who rained down fire and troops. Our magi were able to repeal them for a time, but it was always a loosing effort. I was a child when that first started.”
“As an apprentice, I was tasked with recovering the Aquarian’s destroyed war machines and to see what we could learn from them. It turned out that their science and our magics were not so different, and so I worked combine them into a single discipline. From what your writing say, I—er, Owyn was successful beyond my wildest dreams.”
“Based on your writings, this land of the Merchant Princes was the land bridge the Aquarians created and the Desert of Ruins is the Aquarian’s homeland.”
“This flawed facsimile of the Archmagus has no use to me beyond his function as a key to the Archmagus’ technologies.” After a brief pause, Surdak adds, “I had hoped for more from the true Archmagus had survived the severing.”
(One thing I hope this has conveyed that wasn’t asked is whether or not this Surdak could be considered the real Surdak or not. Much like this Owyn, they are a splinter of the original and whether each Surdak you faced along the way was this particular fragment or different ones is up for debate. And now much of the original personality would have survived his various splinterings and reconvergences over the years is also questionable.)
