Aetolian Game News
Echoes of Power, appendix a
Written by: Anonymous
Date: Wednesday, April 16th, 2025
Addressed to: Everyone
The Grand Library, in its efforts to compile all information available to its archives, employs practitioners of various arts to perform specialised duties in the pursuit of knowledge. One such librarian, a practitioner of Oneiromancy, brings forth a recent experience where a wandering soul briefly connected with her in its journey. The sensations and feelings that this wanderer experienced were conveyed through our medium's connection.
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It is unclear how the soul found itself in this state, for it conveyed outright panic from the first moment of our connection. Each moment in which I could sense it, the notion that something was incontrovertibly wrong took hold of its thoughts and utterances. Attempts to commune with it or calm it were rebuffed.
Through our connection, I could witness its most recent memories - each a visceral flash from its viewpoint, staring out into an unfamiliar world. I could see it trying to make sense of the ethereal state of its being, amorphous features that didn't - couldn't - resemble who they were.
It moved from place to place, and I caught glimpses of vast forests and never-ending roads as it got turned around in unfamiliarity. I could feel its panic rise, bubbling over, each movement to subsequent locations upon its trek faster than the last.
The spirit was determined to find where it belonged, somewhere it barely realised it could not reach. I felt it flee through the forest. Time after time in these fleeting minutes, it tried to make sense of where once-familiar trails started, only to find sprawling growth that beckoned forth only more doubts.
It screamed wordlessly in my psyche, piercing the tenuous bond it had unknowingly allowed me to create. I do not know what happened in the interim, as it was not until a few minutes later that I could rebuild my connection with the wandering soul.
It ran without effort, for what is exertion to a soul? It walked without moving, for what are steps to the limbless? Every action was a memory of a time gone by, every moment spent in an ever-higher creeping notion of the wrongness of its state.
I could feel that it had concluded on something to cope with its forlorn state: it must be dreaming. Nothing made sense in the world of dreams, and nothing made sense here in this bodiless form - they were one and the same, clearly.
This process of losing connection to it only to re-establish the link moments later became commonplace as time passed. Flashes of newly-made, in-the-moment memories would accompany each of these reconnections. This soul's panic only grew with each it revealed unwittingly to me.
The first was the strongest: everything changed from one moment to the next, the world itself gaining new hues - familiar colors of life and vibrancy - that had been naught but a memory for so long. The first inhalation of breath was a sensation not felt in days, months, years, or longer.
Next, I sensed the despair set in: a vision of a Pixie lifting its hands to stare at the unfamiliar skin tone, the places where scars should be and weren't, where scars shouldn't be and were!
Then came a different memory, but no less desperate: an unfamiliar Pixie's voice yelled, hoarse and deranged, as eyes the wrong shade stared into a puddle. "NOT ME NOT ME NOT ME NOT ME NOT ME," it echoed in my thoughts, threatening to overwhelm me.
I remember the thought that resonated upon connecting the final time we made such contact: the plight of the wandering soul, of the wandering dead as of yet unwelcomed to the Underking's halls.
IT WAS WRONG. WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG.
Penned by my hand on Falsday, the 4th of Haernos, in the year 10 AC.