The World Walkers: Quiar: The Case of the Counterfeit Enchantments (part 9, 113th continuation)

[k_a_webb]

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Part 9, 112th continuation

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‘You can do that?’ Peric asked. The thought of the worlds choosing to remove anyone’s memories made him feel uncomfortable and he thought, from the wariness in Quiar’s voice, that she knew how he was going to feel. ‘Is it a choice you make often?’

‘It’s something we only do if we really believe we have no other option. When Ilya made the decision to try to destroy another soul he showed how dangerous he could be and yet we still tried to find another way of fixing him. Unfortunately there was nothing we could do, apart from remove all of his memories and try again, in the hope that he would make better choices during his next attempt at life.’ Quiar sighed. ‘There is, of course, a chance that he won’t, that he’ll make the same mistakes all over again, but we couldn’t just give up on him.’

‘What happens when you do give up on a soul?’

‘Giving up is something we’ve only done three times and that was after each of the souls had been given three chances. In the end there was nothing we could do to help them, so we ended their existence. Most souls do make better decisions the second time, but those we do make the choice to end haven’t, for whatever reason, which means that the only conclusion we could come to was that there was something wrong with the souls. For someone currently living a life that can be very hard to understand, but we’re the last to be called upon to pass judgement. Souls will always attempt to help other souls, by trying to help them make better choices, and they did with Ilya, until they came to the conclusion that he wasn’t listening to them and probably never would.

‘They keep records, so they knew if they’d come to us more than once about a soul. When it gets to the third time… as it doesn’t happen often I’m not certain that it would happen every time, but the three times it has the souls were the ones to say that there was nothing more they could do, which meant the best option for us would be to end their existence, even though we were willing to give them another chance if the souls were. As they weren’t, and we couldn’t convince them to, we really did have no other option. If the souls had been open to trying once more we would have been too. I’m not saying it was the wrong choice, because we know how hard they did try to guide them along the correct path – and that’s what made them think there was an issue with the soul itself, which is very rare.’

‘Exactly what was it that made them give up?’

‘You’re dealing with criminals, Peric. They’re souls who have chosen to live that life for one lifespan, to see what it’s like and what they can learn from it, although there are times when they decide to try it more than once, often on different worlds. What it’s important to keep in mind is that, to begin with, a soul is a blank canvas, so with every life you live you get another colour added to you, for want of a better way of phrasing it – one life may be green, another will be blue, and as there are shades you may have three blues lives, which each add a different shade of blue to your canvas. We have an issue when the soul lives more than one dark life, the blacks, the greys, the darker shades of all the colours, as that can have an effect on them which means they’re more than likely to make bad choices.

‘However there are times when a soul will be different. If they’ve split off from another soul they’ll often have a few colours, because that’s why souls split – they want to live different lives. Some of those souls might be darker than the others, but there isn’t anything wrong with living dark lives as long as you also live light ones. That’s why we have guides, to make certain that this happens, that the souls live a mix of lives, although they might prefer the darker ones, so that they don’t become like Ilya or the other souls we’ve had to remove memories from. Not all souls listen. When souls are created they are meant to be entirely blank and you have the same thing when souls are born. Unfortunately we don’t know what might make them different, although with the Weavers it was because of the magic of Athare – she wanted them to know certain things and by talking to them she woke them before they should have been.

‘The Dragons woke early too, but no one quite knows why. It might have been because they weren’t put into crystal quick enough, as it’s the crystal that keeps them inert until they’re placed into a body. Souls can decide that the body they were given wasn’t for them, but it’s a decision they have to make in less than a second, and something they don’t make the right choice. Unfortunately the fae didn’t know enough about creating souls to understand this issue, although the Weavers did, which is why they helped the fae to make bodies for the souls they had already made and to make the souls they needed to for the bodies, although they didn’t help with everything. A few of the race creators weren’t willing to work with the Weavers, because they couldn’t understand how a created race would know more than they did.

‘We’ve talked to the Weavers about the darker souls, as they’re better placed to help than we are a lot of the time, so they keep an eye out, knowing that the place they have is a very important one. If Athare hadn’t woken them they’d have been just like the other races, but they aren’t. They take their position very seriously and the Weaver on the Council always does their best to stop the fae from making stupid choices, unless they know that those choices are ones that have to be made, like when the fae decided that the natural Moonjumper were too dangerous to exist. Even though they hated what was happening they let it, because Athare told them to and they trusted Athare. Of course a number of the Weavers were also natural Moonjumpers, but they’d never joined the Council so they knew they weren’t in imminent danger, at least until someone started hunting the naturals, which, unsurprisingly, did happen, in part because the fae offered a reward for the removal of any naturals.

‘Some were taken to the Council and executed. Others were killed by the hunters.’ Quiar sounded as though she was on the edge of tears. ‘Most of those who were found weren’t even naturals. The Council believed them to be, but what the Council believed often wasn’t the truth, and the only reason the Council believed they were natural was because a member of their family had been. What the fae have never understood, because their own magic is passed down from one generation to another, is that being a natural may not be passed down from parent to child. It might skip a generation, it might go from uncle to niece or from grandfather to granddaughter, as it all depends on whether the magic believes they are capable of being a natural.
‘Even though the fae are a magical race they actually know very little about magic. From what Athare said all they’ve done is use it – they’ve never tried to understand it, which is why they didn’t know how long the magic within Athare’s core would last them. They should have, in the same way they should have known which of the races they created would actually do what the fae so desperately needed them to do, but it was the Weavers who told the fae creators what they needed to know. Emrys knew as well, but the race creators were much less likely to listen to him than the world creators were, because he was a Blue and they were Yellows. It was easier for them to accept the Weavers than it was for them to accept Emrys.

‘Fortunately Emrys worked closely enough with the Weavers that they were helping him to make certain the right races were in the right places and the wrong ones weren’t created, but then Aubrie started pushing, because she wanted the Witches on Raenarin, even though Emrys told her that it was a huge mistake. She wasn’t comfortable with either Emrys or the Weavers, wouldn’t accept they knew more than she did, so she did what she wanted to, while the others were doing their best to work for the Web, rather than for themselves. After that Emrys felt that the hard work he’d done was for nothing, as he was certain that placing the Witches would, eventually bring about the end of the Web, so he allowed the placement of some other unusual races after that.’

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

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The discussion of souls is fascinating!