Threads of the Soul

The 'Spider's Lair', that was what Seth called his little hermits hovel, also known as his work station. It didn't take much thought to realise that it was in reference to his assistant, the towering, lanky puppet with half a dozen arms.

In actuality if this was the lair of some kind of spider-like beast, it would be a terrible lair and would cause the beast to quickly starve to death. After all, Spider's built their lairs to lure in and ensnare their prey, but with his lair there was no prey able to find it in the first place.

It had started off as a simple secret passage way, the type that littered old castles like these. This particular one could be accessed by pushing the back wall of a fireplace, which led to a small slide and a corridor. Although it was unfinished, so the corridor never actually led anywhere in the end. A fact that Seth found out the hard way.

Why it was never finished, he had no clue. But in the end all that was left was a corridor that led deep into the bowels of the hill the castle sat upon.

The secret entrance of this unfinished escape corridor, was found within the so called 'Master Bedroom' that people insisted Corvus took, Seth assumed it was supposed to be some kind of escape passage for the initial owners of the castle. Strangely enough, despite Seth taking a different bedroom, a servant room, so as to not raise suspicion about his identity, he rarely actually used either of them for sleeping.

Corvus obviously didn't sleep, and would just be laid down in the bed for a few hours while Seth focused his mind elsewhere, to give the illusion of sleep, while Seth himself simply spent most of his nights down in his little secret lair. Usually passed out after over working himself or after a few all-nighters in a row, a habit he had held onto from his previous life. A dreadful habit.

Did he feel guilty about taking up two perfectly functional bedrooms when he hardly used them? A little, but only at first. The castle quickly became a status symbol, and a bedroom within denoted prestige amongst them. So even with Seth taking up two different rooms, they still had quite a few extra.

Anyways, when it came to his hidey hole in the ground, very few people even had knowledge of its existence, and of those people none but Seth himself knew of it's actual location.

Not even Lee, his teleporting delivery man, knew its actual location. His powers worked based on a memory of a location, to which he opened a spacial breach. It didn't allow or require him to know the position of the location, only be able to picture it clearly in his mind.

As for getting him that picture, well it was nothing that a little blindfolded field trip couldn't solve. Even if it was a bit awkward leading him throughout the castle and into the passage way, after messing up his sense of direction of course.

However once Lee was able to breach to the passage way, he simply transported those with the relevant powers to complete the construction, although instead of finishing off the tunnel they simply turned it into the perfect lab beneath the earth.

Of course to them, they were simply digging out a room and reinforcing the earth surrounding it. The purpose of the room was kept secret, just like its location. And while all of this work was going on, Seth took extra special care to ensure his 'spectre' didn't pay his sanctuary a visit.

That was the last thing he needed, a room where she knew he would be alone. The mind shudders at the type of things she would do if given the chance.

It was a lot of work to create a few rooms, all in all, but it was worth every shred of effort to give Seth a place where he could be free from the prying eyes, not having to worry about some crazy lady trying to attack him in his sleep.

A place where he could study his teachers notes about runes and implement them in all sorts of experiments. Experiments such as the ones involving these wonderful new mana storage devices.

Like some kind of mad scientist, Seth loomed over a body that was laying atop one of the metal tables as he studied it carefully. It wasn't a human body, nor was it even made of proper flesh.

It was instead just wood half heartedly carved into the rough shape of a human. Mostly different collections of sticks and logs bundled together and laid down in such a way that gave it a humanoid silhouette.

Seth connected his threads to the wooden golem, moving each of its limbs to test for mobility and any issues with the test subject as a puppet. When he found no such issues, he laid the puppet back down and severed the connection.

Using his new metallic hand, Seth reached into the pouch and gently plucked one of the crystals from the pound. All he had to do was charge it with mana and he would be able to move on with the experiment. It wasn't difficult, it would just require a little finesse and-

CRRRCK!

The white crystal cracked and shattered under his grip, his metallic fingers clamping together with a heavy thunk.

'Damn... So much for finesse.'

Seth should have realised that it would take some time to get used to his new prosthetic arm and the quirks it brought with it. It was like being handed a controller that had all the buttons set to different actions, as well as a look sensitivity that changed wildly with each different kind of input.

In all honesty, he had thought that the arm would feel like his own straight away. I mean he could feel the entire body of his fake puppets when he possessed them, so why couldn't he feel through the arm connected to his true body when he inhabited it?

Unfortunately, fate would never be so kind to Seth. It enjoyed punishing him far too much for that. Perhaps, it was because he still considered it a foreign entity in terms of his body. Thinking of it as his body and the arm, rather than all as one.

If that was the case, then perhaps all it would take to fix the issue was time. But, until that time came, if it came at all, Seth would simply have to focus on controlling the arm with even more effort than he was used to. It was still incredibly stiff to move, requiring more thought to do simple movements, and the strength was difficult to gauge too. Hence why he had crushed the crystal into powder when he simply meant to pinch it gently.

The delicate work should probably be left to his flesh hand too, just so that he didn't waste any more destructible materials.

Plucking another crystal from his pouch, and mentally thanking Bob for gathering so many for him to experiment with, Seth charged it with mana until a miniature azure sun was resting in the palm of his hand.

Unlike before, however, that was not where the work ended. Once it was charged, Seth gently injected his spiritual threads into the crystal.

He started with one, dipping it in tenderly like he was testing the waters of a swimming pool. It was only natural for him to be worried about the thing backfiring and attacking him, or trying to consume his soul threads.

It might have been his own energy, but he still knew very little about how these things worked beyond their capacity to store mana.

Once he was sure he wasn't going to suffer any adverse effects from the crystal, Seth began to feed the rest of his threads into the crystal. All five of the threads, each originating from a different fingers, moved through the centre of the crystal like he was threading the eye of a sewing needle.

He gave himself plenty of length to work with, in fact the length was essential to the experiment, as he slowly began to weave the threads back over themselves. They looped and swooped through the air like jets performing a spectacular air show, feeding themselves through the needles eye at the centre of the crystal each and every time.

Slowly but surely, as Seth repeated this process, the threads began to weave themselves into a Gordian Knot, not dissimilar to the one he had created when he was on death's door. However this knot was far less complicated, mostly because he had his wits about himself in the process, as well as the fact he was having to compress it down to fit within the centre of this radiant crystal.

But Seth wasn't just mindlessly tying a knot for the sake of it. As the knot grew closer to completion, beads of sweat began to form on Seth's head. His forehead glistened with a perfect sheen of sweat, beads dribbling down between his eyes before dropping off the tip of his trembling nose.

Throughout every second of the process, Seth was imbuing the threads with the most important factor in any enchantment. Intent.

As he imbued this intent and added the finishing touches to the knot, Seth used the remaining length of his threads and reconnected to the puppet once more. The intent poured from Seth's mind, churning through the threads like a coursing river, and flooded the knot at the centre of the crystal.

It bathed in the energy within, before flowing out once more and into the wooden body laying on the table, as it began to tap its finger against the table in a rhythmic fashion.

TAP TAP TAP TAP. TAP TAP TAP TAP.

It was working so far, but the next part was what Seth was unsure about. If it worked though... well it could change quite a lot.