Chapter 471: Raising Questions
Tala stood with Terry, Rane, and their Defender unit at the end of an all too familiar style of tunnel, right inside a cell.
They all were a bit awkward because of the requirements of this particular cell.
None of them were naked—or even indecent by the standard of Mages—but they were all wearing much less than usual… except Tala.
They’d all been obligated to shed everything that wasn’t soulbound to them because of the nature of the prisoner within. It was good that some sort of defensive item was a standard recommendation for bonding, and the most common of those were clothing or armor in appearance.
This Mage’s only magic of consequence was to soulbind whatever he encountered. Thankfully, with sapient beings, that still required consent from both sides, but it meant that unbound equipment or clothing wasn’t allowed.
As to why this man was imprisoned? It seemed that the act of soulbinding himself to what was—essentially—uncounted things had torn him apart on a fundamental level. That distribution had made him virtually unkillable, because he was bound to everything near him, but it had also removed his humanity.
He now simply existed as an extension of his binding magics.
Additionally, something about the man’s magic was such that he always took dominance in such bonds. Apparently there had been… losses. The negatively affected Archons had been allowed to pass on, but the deaths had been significantly detrimental to humanity at the time. So, they hadn’t continued to try.
Overall, the concept of the prisoner’s power was more interesting than the actual encounter.