Interlude

She was young. She was tiny. He’d taken young bodies before, he’d even been a woman before, but never one so small. To say she was a child was an understatement. It would still be nearly a decade before she reached her teenage years. She couldn’t have been more than six years old.

He’d never tried to take the body of one so young. A part of him feared the experience.

But the voice told him to do it. It had convinced him that taking the body of one so fresh in years would allow them to live longer. They wouldn’t have to worry about finding a new host for a long time.

They wouldn’t need to worry about their minds slipping.

Evrain had felt the slip before. He had felt his hosts fighting back. They never won, it was impossible for them to do so.

But he had felt the resistance. He’d been kept awake by the screams of those whom he had taken. The strongest one had even taken control of their body long enough to let out a message to tell whomever may listen to him of what had happened to him. To tell them how Evrain had stolen his body, his mind, and was using him as a host. How he used bodies as vessels in his destructive quest for immortality.

Nobody had believed him in those few short minutes. They had thought he had been playing and laughed it off. That host had saved up his energy for decades just for that one moment of resistance. He had used every bit of will he could summon over long ages to say a few sentences and it had been futile.

Nobody had believed him.

Still, Evrain had destroyed that nation as a precaution. It had been erased from history. He gathered the strongest Forgotten in the world at the time and had erased every memory, every writing, every receipt of trade, everything that he could find mentioning the small kingdom. He had truly wiped them off the face of the earth. He laughed as historians puzzled over the ruins of the kingdom after its rediscovery nearly two hundred years later.

Evrain’s current body had been a blessing. He had taken the boy when he was a fresh, strapping young lad. Evrain was the name the boy had held, had retained in honor of the ease of his sacrifice. He had been a slave who’s master had beaten him too hard and who’s brain had lost function. He’d found the body not too long before his transformation.

It had been a blessing. But was it turning out to be a curse too? Was he losing control earlier than usual due to the trauma inflicted on this body before he’d taken control of it? Was that why the tremors were coming with more frequency? Was that why he felt himself slipping quicker with each passing day?

What could have been the cause of the early failing of his host body?

Did it matter? He had a new host ready for the taking and Fiell was teetering on the brink of destruction. It was a tinder-box waiting for a spark. It was a school of ravenous sharks awaiting the drop of blood that would send them into a feeding frenzy.

With the help of Edrian Woll’s, the ever-corrupt and power hungry Minister of defense, he could tip that balance. He could bring the destruction, the chaos, that fed the voice and augmented his powers, allowing him to take a new body as a host.

He just needed a little more time.

A little more time and something to tip the scales of violence and disorder that the recent fires that he had his Inquisitors and Forgotten start.

Everything was so close.

It was this part that always had him nervous. It was now when everything could go wrong. It was during the transition that he was the weakest.

It wasn’t only because the voice fed off the chaos and gained power from it that he left the kingdoms he reigned over in rubbles. It was to ruin any who might try to stop him. That traitor Dren and his crew had been far from the first ones to try to destroy him. They hadn’t even been the most successful. But never had he been so weak either. They would always come during the apex of his reigns. They fought him when he was most powerful. Not that they knew it though.

The rebellion that the elder brother of his General of City Guards, Aris Ravenscroft had started though, was different. It had true military might behind it. If the General had turned, he could take the city with him.

Evrain had been mistaken when he’d elevated the man. He’d seen the hero that Aris had become. He was almost on par with himself in the eyes of the public.

Aris was a paragon of virtue in the eyes of the public. It was a mistake making one such as him into a hero. He was one that could raise an army. He was one that could truly bring a challenge to him.

Evrain needed to keep him busy. He needed to foment the unrest. He needed to overwhelm Aris Ravenscroft. He needed to make the man so busy he couldn’t do anything but drown in the sea of violence that Evrain needed to unleash in order to take his new body.

The body of the young girl that his minister, Edrain Woll’s had found so dangerous.

Aris would fight him if he knew what was happening.

Evrain knew that the General knew…Something.

He had felt the power of the man’s touch.

Evrain had suspected Aris to be a mage since his days as a young rising detective. He had seen the signs of his powers even then, but Aris himself hadn’t known it.

He’d never known his own power.

Until now that was.

He remembered the look in Aris’ eyes when he’d caught him as he had stumbled after his small tremor. His heightened senses had told him that Aris had taken memories from him. He knew he had Magic, and had been trained in it.

Aris’ virtue would eventually force him to fight Evrain. He needed to be destroyed.