Matter over mind

[Mike]

What is the soul?

I have been an archmage for ten lifetimes. I know that the soul is a tangible thing. How many times did I not extract it from the flesh of those less fortunate? It can be quantified by its mass and qualified by its properties. A soul can be ripped from a demon lord and placed within a container, and if placed next to a similar one containing that of a rat, they would be dinstinctly different. Their effects vary, when used as components in the arcane art. The soul is non-physical, yet real. It is of the aether.

I have been a priest all my life. I know that the soul contains character. I know that it allows devotion. When the gods speak, they speak to the soul. Where creatures look similar, the soul makes them individual. When many souls are aligned to one purpose, one can speak of a faith. When they are united in common ritual, one can speak of religion.

What makes a soul?

I am starting to find an answer. The soul can be strong, or weak. The soul is made up of one's ancestors, but it is tempered by experience into something unique. It comes into existance at the start of a life. It gains properties as it is trained - and the soul of the archmage is a powerful one. It dominates the body. It controls every aspect of the physical, and makes it subordinate to the aetherial. That is what I believed to be true, because the separation of pure spirit from petty flesh is a powerful vision to follow. It is false.

I do not know who I am. My soul was forged in one body, then took another when the first would no longer serve. I have changed this body, but it has changed me. The soul has knowledge. The body has memories. Every nerve, every muscle fibre, every drop of blood remembers another life. The soul believed it made this body Titus Albinus, but as it did, this body made the soul Alus Vitellus. I lost my objectivity, buried alive in that horrendous tomb. The sensation of astral flight across the Void in the ancient days is as real to me as the vision of a golden sun rising above the walls of Luna. I hope that I can still tell the difference when I am awake. In my dreams, the two lives are one. They call me Alus, because they know no other name, but I do not know who I am.