bindsthedead | Ximilia inbox

Because since no one was pursuing me romantically, it didn't matter.

[After all, it's not like anyone here is likely to visit the Old Kingdom anytime soon.]

As for your questions- yes, but my position as Abhorsen is more important, Touchstone is the king of the Old Kingdom and he's from there. He's the last survivor of the royal bloodline- two hundred years ago, a previous Abhorsen put him into a kind of magical stasis to keep him safe when the rest of the royal family was killed. I ended up stumbling across him and waking him up as I was looking for my father.

[ Honestly the only thing Yzak kind of vibes with there is being the last survivor of a royal bloodline and that's only because even though Yzak is just the last son of his family, to himself and how he views his worth he might as well be royalty tbh. ]

Two hundred years ago?

Yes. I think the Abhorsen at the time knew that Touchstone would be needed after Kerrigor had been defeated, and that... took some time to accomplish.

[Two hundred years, in fact. But it was done at last, and the kingdom could rebuild without a rogue member of the royal family trying to tear it down.]

That sounds like a long time to be asleep ... not to mention be alive, if the guy who did that was still around after two-hundred years. Do people in your world really live that long? Or does it have to do with the ... magic and Death things?

He wasn't really alive or dead, just- suspended between them. So more the latter.

[Some Charter mages did live for well over a century- Charter magic might not be able to cheat death, but it cold certainly prolong life.]

And? What about this Kerrigor guy? How did he last that long without being defeated?

Because he wasn't alive- he traded Life for power, and became one of the Dead centuries ago, turned his original body into an anchor and hid it just south of the Wall, in northern Ancelstierre- so he couldn't die permanently until someone found his body and destroyed it.

Previous Abhorsens forced him deep into Death, but none of them were able to completely destroy him.

Okay so in that case it was something like that.

Life for power ... is that hard to do? There are plenty of power-hungry people out there so I imagine if it were easy there'd be a lot of it. And thank god some of the psychos I've known didn't have that option.

Kerrigor was a unique case, in many respects, but as for using his body as an anchor... well, it wouldn't be impossible for someone else to do that, but they'd need to be exceptionally powerful in and knowledgeable about Free Magic.

Not something you could do just because you'd heard about it and wanted to be invincible. And Free Magic isn't a power easily sought out.

[It had been outlawed in the Old Kingdom, when there had still been power to enforce such things. But even without that... sorcerers and necromancers saw others of their kind as threats and competition- or useful minions, if they were much weaker. Unlike Charter mages, they generally didn't cooperate.]

So it's something that would require a big, dedicated undertaking to accomplish.

This guy sounds like a piece of work, then. If he went that far. What was his goal for doing all of that?

I don't know. Free Magic can be addictive, and warps people's minds, but- for some people, power is an end in and of itself.

For Kerrigor... I don't know which it was. In the end, I think he just wanted power, and to weaken and break the Charter as much as he could, because it was a threat to him.

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