The Prisoner

The Prisoner

                Jo (Joenned, actually, but she wasn't particularly fond of it) walked through the rows of seemingly empty cages. Occasionally, from the corner of her eye, she'd catch a flicker of something. As if the air itself was distorting, just ever so slightly.

                This was normal. Each of the cages held a lesser sylph; unable to escape from the tightly sealed, egg-shaped glass enclosures. The glass itself had been made through Jo's magic and strengthened with the runic magic native to the world. Making the cages - and the rest of her laboratory - hadn't taken too much effort; but it made her miss her former power so very, very much.

                Upon becoming undead - an offer that had, at the time, seemed like a pretty good one - her power had been severely attenuated. Whether it was simply caused by the kind of undead she was (a 'remnant') or due to her lack of true life had never been figured out. The 'highest chance of retaining magic' advice had led her astray. She should've become a vampire.

                Being a remnant did have its advantages, of course. Although weak - no stronger than a human - and dulled in magic, her soul would reform a body elsewhere upon her death. That was how she came to live hidden away in the middle of the great arid waste, far south of the fallen empire she had once called home. That, and her great stroke of luck - her body was slain, but her soul had escaped capture by one of the few capable of destroying her.

                Impulsively she held out a hand, tapping along the cages gently as she walked. Almost all were full, now; she'd need to make more soon. In the earlier days, when she had only just captured Phwar, she would have been elated at the prospect of having so many sylphs to experiment upon.

                But experimenting on the sylphs, trying to merge her magic with theirs... Had not worked. Sometimes the sylphs died; sometimes there was no effect at all. The deaths had initially been promising - Jo had hoped there was some kind of trick to it - but her magic, when fused through force to the sylph, had an effect akin to poison. Or perhaps just akin to sticking a brick in a human's blood-stream.

                There was enough promise in another area to make up for all the failures. Watching Phwar at work, seeing how he made each of the lesser sylphs and slowly worked on ordinary sylphs, Jo had realised that she could do something similar herself. The almost ethereal form of her magic that she'd developed in hope of controlling or altering the sylphs could be formed in much the same way; and after much effort (and observation) she'd managed to create life herself.

                The results were quite underwhelming. Unlike the lesser sylphs - nigh incorporeal yet fully sentient beings - her 'wisps' (as she'd taken to calling them) were barely able to understand simple instructions. Her best one, a sort of lucky accident, was akin to a friendly dog. The rest were at most handy for fetching stuff or spotting intruders, but not much else.

                Finally reaching Phwar's cage - almost identical to the rest, but roughly twenty times the size - Jo smiled and said, "I see you're already at it again."

                "We made a deal, even though you killed a dozen of my daughters," replied Phwar. Unlike the lesser sylphs, he was fully visible within the cage. As a greater sylph he was unable to hide himself, even if he wished to. His voice was pleasantly deep rumble; quite different from the one he'd had when first caught. That voice had been fairly... shrill.

                "Yes; but you are supposed to let me observe you at work as much as possible," said Jo. She approached her magnification contraption and wheeled it around so she could get a better view of what Phwar was doing. The contraption was a massive array of lenses designed to magnify the minutia of the magical work Phwar did - Jo had stuck it on a wheeled table so she could move it around easily.

                "That was not part of the deal," said Phwar. As usual Jo was surprised by how manly he was these days - like all the sylphs, he had been made as female by his father. It was only through discussions with Jo about the Great Undead Empire (which had been almost entirely 'don't care' on matters of gender) that Phwar had realised that he could be male if he desired. It was within the powers of the sylphs to decide their form - they were, after all, effectively made of sentient air.

                The change had been jarring at first, and Phwar had had a little bit of amusing trouble maintaining the appearance and voice he desired, but in the past couple of years he had been fairly stable appearance wise. His personality had changed, yet not changed - it was more as if he was becoming comfortable with 'being' male. Jo honestly found it a bit fascinating, despite the complete lack of practical use her observations of his change had. Most fascinating was the idea of the 'creation of life' being a very masculine thing - it was as his father, Oophoo, had done for all the sylphs, long ago.

                With a light smile, Jo peered through the lenses. "It was the point of the deal, however, and I can certainly get away with imposing on you," she said. Knowledge - or more specifically, power - was the aim of her research. Learning to create her own servants, creating an army of them... That had potential. But she needed to observe Phwar an awful lot to figure it out.

                Thus, they had made a deal. Once Phwar had made one thousand lesser sylphs and fifty ordinary sylphs (something that would take about sixty years) he would be released, along with his daughters. It was inevitable that they'd destroy Jo; but Phwar was quite unaware of Jo's ability to revive so she'd be fine. Dead, but able to reform elsewhere again with all her knowledge.

                Forty years had passed since the deal, and Phwar was about two thirds done. Jo's calculation had been almost spot on even after Phwar discover that he needed to rest after about fifty hours of continuous effort. Each day of observation had provided new insights into how the sylphs were constructed. What the greater sylph did through instinct alone Jo was slowly mastering through experience.

                Spotting the particular action she was looking for Jo whipped out her notebook and started taking notes. Diagrams that indicated the motions Phwar made, rhythm notation for how long was spent on each part, a detailed description of the forming sylph (plus a rough sketch) and so many other little tidbits of information were scrawled across the pages rapidly.

                Jo had filled dozens of notebooks, summarised into a handful of useful manuals, copies of which she had buried in several locations near her lab. So long as the sylphs didn't hang around after their release she'd manage to recover at least one set. The chance of a safe return were good - Phwar had long been planning a triumphant return to the home he had abandoned.

                His home was something Phwar rarely talked about. Supposedly his father, in a fit of anger, had murdered one of his sisters in anger over her boyfriend. The boyfriend took his vengeance by slaying Phwar's father; something Phwar felt was just despite the tragedy. But things had continued to sour, and Phwar had left rather than see the horror that he expected to come. Jo's refusal to investigate for him (something that sounded easy but would in fact be hard for her to do) was a bit of a sore point between them. That, and the whole captor/captive thing.

                "You're doing some really good stuff today," said Jo. "This is a model forty-three, correct?"

                A deep, thrumming hum came from the prison as Phwar groaned as few but sylphs can. "Is today a slow day? I do not know which of your numbers corresponds to what style of daughter I am creating," responded Phwar. "She will be akin to my sisters Hoo and Ssst, if you must note it."

                "Ah, a forty-three mixed with a fifty-seven. A perfect century," said Jo. Perhaps it was a slow day. She rarely felt like teasing Phwar, except when boredom was creeping up on her.

                "Will she be finished by tomorrow?" asked Jo. Despite the interruptions, Phwar's hands were still moving, unceasing as they worked to create life.

                "Yes," said Phwar, "For she is a lesser."

                "Excellent," said Jo. Exactly what she wanted to take notes on - mid-grade sylphs were very similar in construction, yet took so long to create. "I'll settle in here then. Please, continue."

                Phwar paused for a moment and gave Jo a strange, questioning glance. Then, saying nothing, he turned back to the new life he held in his hands. As he went back to work it glowed brightly for a moment; happy to feel the return of its father.