Inkway to Albreton

Chapter Twelve

Fragmaroginog was hovering about, bodiless, after having been torched from Kurventhor by the dragon's exceedingly violent wife. The Dragon Queen was as relentless as her reputation depicted and, quite frankly, Fragmaroginog was rather glad to have gotten out alive. That is, if you could call aimless flotation living. Vexed, the wizard travelled in the wind, giving the water beneath him a subtle but definite ripple as he approached the end of the Icy Mountains and the entrance to Reshauwenath.

When he found himself in this predicament before, he had a way out. Kurventhor was a being Fragmaroginog had possessed previously, way back when he needed to take control of someone powerful enough to break Albreton's outer wall. Because of this, when Fragmaroginog's toad body was destroyed—and he would pay the princess back in kind for that one—his soul zapped back into a body he had already learned how to inhabit. Unfortunately, there was no such body to take control of now. A phoenix heart was a curious artifact (or Element as most other wizards called them), in that once ingested it would provide life eternal. However, naturally, there was a catch. For one thing, the affect cannot be reversed, which for anyone willing to live forever is inconsequential, but the other problem was the one Fragmaroginog presently faced: phoenix longevity encompasses the soul but not the body.

A wizard cannot do much sans a physical body and Fragmaroginog was no different, no matter how powerful he had become over these long, gathering years. So it was that he drifted, sensing the world around him in the soul's manner: of emotions, of energies, but not of physicality. Fragmaroginog was blind now, and deaf, and likewise he could no longer feel the things he brushed against any more than whatever spiritual impact they gave off. Ice was rigid in its energies yet invigorating, tree trunks were porous against his soul and water became a presence both effluent and surging. Stone encompassed its space in the way animal tracks dip into earth; they were, to Fragmaroginog, rough energies that merely interrupted the negative space that had become his world since he was forced out of Kurventhor.

Mentality was another matter. Devoid of sensory stimulus, Fragmaroginog became himself an entity of thoughts. And one thought prevailed over all else: Would he, the greatest wizard ever to live, face insanity out here, forever trapped in solitude? When nothing else can be felt, those fleeting inferences transform into impossibly definite outcomes in one's mind. They seem the only things perceivable in such a derived state.

So, when Fragmaroginog spontaneously found himself inside the body of a cat, he was entirely surprised. His vision returned, as did the warmth that bodied things take for granted, and he wiggled the cat's whiskers. Smell returned next, the scent of mist and pine needles and water-polished bedrock entering into Fragmaroginog's new, pinkish nose. His hearing was sharper than before, allowing for perception of far higher frequencies than dragons or humans.

There was a whistle in his head. Pawing around, kneading the dirt under his claws, it took Fragmaroginog a good few minutes before he realized just who he it was he was inhabiting. This wasn't any common alley cat—this was his former apprentice's familiar. Something sinister shone in his newly black, pebbly eyes and he willingly returned the call in a yawning feline cry. He would meet Lindargra and use this unforeseen opportunity to do something he had been meaning to ever since she betrayed him: to kill her. Or, barring that, rid her to some other dimension, just as he had intended for Prince Albert when he handed the naïve boy that first vile of bewitched ink.

Another whistle, a Singer's magical song, slipped into the cat's mind. Immediately, Fragmaroginog knew the way. He ruffled his fur involuntarily, not yet accustomed to such a body. But the song in his mind had revealed something he had been wondering about for some time now. So that was how Lindargra kept such a close watch on him, how she knew to thwart every plan he had come up with thus far. Lindargra's home, and all of Nevramere, was beyond—underneath, in a way—Castle Albreton's mote.