The Imprisoned

Haalfrin is rather confused when he wakes up... at all really. Honestly, after realizing he was betrayed by Kanus (again), he expected to be murdered in his sleep or something. Why would the man bother to imprison him instead when killing him is both easier AND safer?

Believing it had something to do with his terrible blessing from Das, Haalfrin chalks it up to luck and spits out, 'Tch. The gods' fate is really hard to fight against. It seems all the luck in the world is trying to make me survive.'

He then looks around and he sees that he's been pinned down in a kneeling position with a perfectly carved boulder shaved around his body. With this on him, he can't move at all, and he barely has enough room to breathe.

Not being able to see anything with the nonexistent lighting, and not being able to move at all, Haalfrin feels that the space around him is much smaller than it is, and it makes his heart race and his mind go mad with that claustrophobic sensation.

'Ugh.' Haalfrin curses in his mind, 'Staying here feels like it's going to be hell… and if they bothered to lock me up, then this is likely a life sentence.' Haalfrin shudders thinking about living and dying in such miserable, humiliating conditions for the rest of his long life.

… And naturally, Haalfrin won't just sit down and do nothing; of course, he'll try to find a way to escape.... but how?

When Haalfrin tries to reach out and absorb mana, the rock above him seems to be blocking all his energy. The only mana he can circulate is in his own body.

…The problem is that even with his body strengthening magic available, he's unable to use his own brute strength to break apart the rock; he doesn't have the titanic strength a dragon has, even with 3rd circle soul.

With his body bound, he also can't do any physical based spells (like freezing things he touches or enchanting his body) without being able to move. After all, the amount of physical energy behind a spell is proportional to how much physical energy you put into it. For example, a 1st Gate mage can punch out, and his spell can only have 4x the kinetic energy of his punch.

The only kind of physical energy Haalfrin has at his disposal is the movement of his breathing... that's such a pitifully small force that Haalfrin doubts he could do anything to this boulder on top of him - even with 16x times the force that a 3rd Gate mage has.

Haalfrin rolls his eyes. 'Obviously, my current abilities aren't enough to help me escape,' he mutters, 'the only thing left to do is train.'

The young mage looks into the cold darkness around him. 'If this is a life sentence, then I'll certainly have plenty of time.'

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Since he has no access to new magical knowledge of any sort, the only kind of training left to Haalfrin is the time spent with his own soul, as well as his familiarity with the Wills inside himself.

There are suitable bodies for his Wills lying around, so he can't use his Wills to escape.

He tries sending them out of his soul in their disembodied forms to leave his cell and look for bodies… but the cell is laced with spirit stones – a type of material that exists in both the physical and spiritual plane at the same time. This means his Wills have their own barriers they can't pass by or see through.

…Unfortunately… the only free objects in his cell are pebbles on the ground… These pebbles will have to do.

Haalfrin tries putting a Will inside a pebble, but the Will is too large to fit inside, and the shape is WAY too unsuitable. Arg! It's a failure!

Well, since Haalfrin has nothing better to do, he'd mind as well keep trying. He tries harder and harder, and the Will he's pushing inside is just contorting with pain.

After some time spent vainly trying to force the Wills into unsuitable bodies, Haalfrin looks up at the cold, dark ceiling, and he wonders how long he's been going at this. With no sunlight, and no visitors, he has no way of knowing how many hours passed.

Rather, the only way Haalfrin has to mark the time is when a servant boy comes into his room and feeds him food through a ladle. The food is always very watery soup, so they don't bother giving the prisoner any glasses of water to drink alongside it.

Soon, lot of time passes by that's spent contorting his face and straining to bend the Wills into the right shape. Without bodies, they're basically useless, after all.

Eventually, he loses focus. He starts getting the feeling that he's been here forever, and he eventually gives up. 'Hopeless. It's going nowhere.'

Every span of time feels like an eternity… So, after an "eternity" of lying motionless under his boulder, he finally screams out, 'Arg! Nothing to do! I'll try it again!'

And thus, he'd go at it on and off as he tries thinking of ways to escape.

He really does try everything… but nothing ever works.

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During one of the food visits Haalfrin receives, he decides to try something new out of desperation.

As soon as the feeding servant steps inside his cell with a bucket of soup, Haalfrin tries inserting a Will into the man's ladle…

All the Wills spiritually rejected such a lame body, as none of them were ever super attached to such a random object. However, it's just barely good enough.

So, the ladle comes to life and tries smacking the servant out of frustration. "No, stupid spoon!" Haalfrin shouts out. "Go search for a way to break the enchantment on this boulder on top of me!"

Unfortunately, the Will inside the ladle isn't a mage at all, so as it floats above the boulder and looks at it, bobbing in confusion, some guards patrolling the hallway run inside and use magic to yank the ladle out of the air.

They give Haalfrin one good smack over the face for good measure, then they leave the cell again.

Haalfrin wiggles his feet in frustration and growls in a low voice. "Blast! Stupid, stupid!"

After this incident, the people in charge of the prison start grinding up all his food and feeding him through a flimsy straw – the straw, of course, being too weak to serve as a weapon for his Wills.

After what Haalfrin assumes is many years of hopeless attempts at escaping, he notices that the servant who feeds him seemed a little different.

"S-sir…," Haalfrin calls out with a voice too weak to speak with his normal gusto, "One… question…"

"You know I'm not supposed to talk to the prisoners," the servant replies firmly while not daring to meet the prisoner in the eyes.

"Are you the same boy who fed me long ago?" Haalfrin asks, "Why do you have wrinkles?"

"Oh. That's because about 50 years passed… since you came here…" The now old man shakes his head and quickly scoots out of the cell.

"50… years?" Haalfrin didn't even realize it. In hind sight, all those years spent lying prone under a rock felt like a moment. "I've tried for 50 years, and nothing's changed?"

A part of Haalfrin's heart breaks in this moment.

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As the years pile on, Haalfrin starts to hallucinate in the dark – sometimes seeing his Kareen clan, but more often seeing the stuff of nightmares.

As he slowly loses his hope of escaping, his mind gradually disassociates itself from reality, as the things he sees with his eyes more often than not aren't even real.

Over time, Haalfrin's hallucinations of his Kareen family become more and more blurry and vague…, until one day, Haalfrin snaps awake from a fevered dream and realizes that he can't even remember their faces anymore.

Eventually, as the darkness of his cell devours his mind, an irrational rage starts to well up inside him.

'Why am I even here?!' Haalfrin shouts in his mind, 'Oh that's right… It's because a that loser, Kanus, betrayed me… Even when he put himself on that throne and was about to let me leave his kingdom forever, he had to betray me and lock me up. Why? WHY?'

"Is it because I served his brother for a while? That twit Tallus was a stupid loser. Why would I serve a loser?"

Haalfrin narrows his eyes and growls, 'That's right… I wanted to die…'

His eyes soften. 'But why did I want to die…? Isn't it because I wanted to be reunited with my clan?'

The prisoner pauses, then starts breathing heavily as he tries to suppress his anger. 'But… Arg! Why did I want to be reunited with them? I can't remember them at all. They're just a vague memory of people I used to live with!'

As Haalfrin slowly loses his reason, the only thing left to him is anger – anger at the one who betrayed him, and anger at himself for making such stupid choices…

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Time marches on, and Haalfrin pays less and less attention to the feeding servants' faces. Instead, he starts looking more closely at their fragile necks and the perfect spot of the ribcage where stabbing would pierce the heart easiest.

As his feelings warp and grows sharper… so too does the Death aura in his soul.

He didn't gain any NEW Death Aura, but with his sharpening hatred, it's slowly pulling in on itself – growing denser, sharper, and more sinister in nature.

Even Haalfrin knows that something is changing in his soul.

He doesn't know how long it takes for him to really realize what the change is… but when he does, his eyes go wide, and his breathing quickens.

Deep in his neglected memories, the prisoner recalls a lesson his old master had taught him.

"Now Haalfrin," Kalastros had told him, "There are multiple ways to strengthen your soul, and only one of those ways is to discover new Names. What I'm about to teach you is more advanced knowledge – something a common mage won't know anything about."

"Is it confidential, sir?" Haalfrin had asked.

"No," came the reply, "but you do need some connections to know it. It's a method that common mages will be too weak to use… so why would they learn it?"

The Archmage coughed and continued, "When a person becomes completely in tune with one of their Names, they can discover a deeper meaning to it, and their magic will become sharper. In your case, since you have spells written into your Names, your Name powers will become a lot stronger and evolve."