Solo My Will, Your Body

[Alice Weaver]

1st to the 5th of Spring, 522

The graceful walls of the Infinity Manor creaked and groaned almost as if they were alive and flexing with the breath of a giant creature. In all fairness, to those that made that observation the Manor was alive in the truest of senses. The large Manor had wants, needs, and desires of its own. Ones that its master and less than alive residents were in tune with.

Alice was not able to communicate with the house through words but she could feel its desire clear enough. Something happened to a person when they refused to move on in the cycle of life and death to remain a ghost. It let them feel the living structure's thoughts roll through their soulmist. And right now Infinity, the Manor’s name, was projecting to the one ghost within its walls at this very time, Alice.

“Ok ok, I’m paying attention. Shush shush, Infinity. You are going to break your foundations at this point if you keep shifting all about.” Her soulmist swirled around her, the excess falling of her set of ‘work clothes’ as she changed from her usual black dress to brown course linen pants, a short-sleeved cotton shirt that had a v-cut laced with a strip of leather and her feet, as always, left bare. She pushed the door open to exit her room with a burst of soulmist as she bundled her hair back from her face and forced a headband of black fabric to form from her soulmist and push her hair back from her face.

“What ails you, oh grand building?” She said magnanimously as she rapped on one of its walls only to be met with the mental equivalent of an eye roll. “But seriously, what's wrong Infinity?” She asked more seriously. It was her home, after all, she wanted it to be comfortable. She got her answer in the form of a feeling and a flash of an image. A deep sense of discomfort and biting, gnawing pain splashed into the puddle of her mind.

“Oh. You have mice. It will take me naught but a chime to remove them.” She gathered from the images before Infinity butted in once again with a flash of concern…not for her but for the mice. “Do you still want them alive?” A flash of approval emanated from the walls around her. “Fine. But since that’s more work for me I would like a favor.” She got the impression of the walls leaning in to listen closely as an older man would. The action brought a light laugh from Alice’s ethereal lips. “I need you to get me a mirror in my room and when I let you know, seal the room off from the rest of the house until I tell you otherwise. I think I need some serious alone time if I am going to attempt to teach myself a new skill.”

She could feel the Manor stop and ponder for a second before giving its assent. Doing her favor was as simple as a flex of its will and if it removed the mice and kept them alive it saw this as a pretty great deal.

“Very well!” She collapsed her hands in front of her soundlessly, “I shall remove the mice for you, leaving them alive and well!” And she vanished in a puff of cold swirling soulmist.

[Alice Weaver]

Mice hunting as a being that could pass through walls and now grab things with a moderate amount of force from several yards away turned out to be terribly boring. The mice also had the disadvantage that the building they were eating into was sentient and knew exactly where they were at all times. The walls have eyes and all that. Catching them was as simple as a matter of Infinity growing to block their path and heard them towards a convenient mouse hole where Alice had laid a claw of soulmist on the ground. As soon as the little tiny paws of the mice touched the soulmist Alice would spring the trap and the mouse would find itself whipped out of the hole and deposited into a glass jar with the other seven of its brethren.

“They are quite cute I’ll give you that Infinity,” Alice agreed with the house and she felt an emotional nod from the Manor. “Now. Where do you want these? Else I’m just going to go a few blocks away and dump them in the street.” Another wave of agreement passed through Alice and she floated the jar of mice behind her. She took a short stroll into the heart of the city before uncapping the jar and letting the mice scatter.

In under a Bell she had cleansed Infinity of its plight and her isolated room had been prepared.

“Thank you, Infinity. If my body’s eyes start to bleed or something, please send help.” She gave a faint laugh as a wave of concern passed over her along with a feeling of agreement. With that said she blinked into the room that now lacked a door.

The room was still much the same with her hibernating body laying in a bed piled high with blankets and pillows resting in the dead center of the room. A window sat on the far side, across from where the door would have been. The most startling difference would have to be the floor to ceiling mirrors that now surrounded her room. It was almost dizzying. Infinity, for all its childish behaviors, did not do its favors half-baked. It was something Alice found greatly endearing about the Manor.

“The stage is set, Cavan,” She whispered to the empty shell of a body lying in the middle of the room. “Shall we learn how to honey our tongue and bend wills to ours? And just maybe, get good enough to parry Maderia’s own hypnotism.”

She pulled her body to float a foot above Cavan’s chest, sitting with her legs folded under her as if on solid ground.

[Alice Weaver]

Alice knew she was working from a more than a difficult spot with trying to recreate the learning environment that was needed to bend djet to your will but she had a few advantages. The first being her body was created of dead djet and while it moved more sluggish than standard djet the same principles applied. She was also no stranger to the mental gymnastics that were needed to produce a magical phenomenon. The very act of her moving required intense concentration so she didn’t accidentally leave parts of her body behind. And finally, her ace in the hole, Madeira’s memories, and her soulmist. A jar of which sat at the base of her bed. She’d been in Madeira’s mind and shared her skills, and had felt what it is like to circulate djet through the domain of her personality. Not only did she have the memories but she had the skill in liquid form in front of her, for when a Spiritist made a soulmist they could infuse their skills into. While this soulmist didn’t directly hold the gift of hypnotism it held the echo of it. It was the seamless blending of all Madeira’s skills into a material palatable to ghosts. All Alice needed to do was unbury it and latch onto the fragments. It would act as a sort of glue to paste the fragmented feelings and memories together with the side benefit of reinforcing Alice’s mind and body to better delve into it.

She knew it was possible for her to learn, she simply needed to have the will to take it. Fitting for a skill that was all about the manipulation of will.

But the first step was collecting what she remembered and glanced at in Grace. She might have not realized what she saw while in Grace but now she did. Her eyes screwed shut as her head tilted to the side, red ringlets of vibrant hair spilled around her shoulders with the action. Diving deep into half-remembered memories was an odd and uncomfortable experience but she was Alice, she died at a knife's end, and she would be damned if she turned back due to a slight headache that was forming just behind her temples.

The Spirit thrust her hand into the jar of the soulmist feeling the potent liquid surge up her arm and spread out of her cores in waves. Never had she been so glad that the Manor was always well stocked with soulmist no matter the day. As the wave of soul-stuff rippled out the pressure behind her temples lessened as flickers of lights, sounds, and ideas floated to the surface, pulled from the Grace and the artificial projection of soul.

She felt concepts more than she heard them. Will. Mediation. Force. Subtlety. A hand in the dark. A smile that blinded those with its radiance. A dance that carried a dark meaning. A gentle touch that soothed the rage counterparted by a word that ignited the fire. All of these were what it meant to be a hypnotist. Just like handing an artist a brush, you would never know what you would create. All styles and avenues of imposing your will were valid. It was simply up to the individual to develop their styles and what resonated most with their will

It is like possession, Alice mused to herself, eyes now half-lidded. Each ghost had its own form of possession. Some were pure brute force, others were like a fever that constantly bombarded its host. Others were like her, unsettling and unbalancing their target before forcing themselves in the cracks of their armor slowly taking them over one muscle at a time. Brute force, persistence, and subtly were as much a part of possession as the soulmist that powered it. It seemed that hypnotism also followed a similar vein. But instead of using soulmist to power the connection it used djet. The living counterpart to her cold, ethereal body.

It felt like something thunked into her mind, a partial piece of the puzzle. A section of the whole of how the djet would flow.

It was a part of the puzzle, a theory, a hunch, a path forward.

Alice latched onto that discovery she stumbled upon and pulled it into her mediation, her eyes now fully wide as she stared into the reflective mirrors Infinity crafted for her.

[Alice Weaver]

“I am my will and my will is theirs,” The words tumbled from her mouth, barely audible as her body spiraled down into Cavan’s body as the catalytic body’s eyes flew open and flung his feet to the side of the bed and started into the mirrors.

“I am my will and my will is theirs,” Cavan’s much deeper voice resonated out of their chest. For the briefest of moments in their reflection Alice saw her body superimpose over Cavan’s.

“I am my will and my will is theirs,” They repeated, as they raised their fist at Alice’s command. It was through her will that this body could move. That this body could talk. She was the reason that this body could live.

“I am my will and my will is theirs!” They shouted as one, the voice became higher pitched as Alice began to spill out further into the body. With a large stride they closed the distance to the mirror and placed their hand against the cool surface.

“I am my will and my will is theirs.” Cavan’s eyes shifted, Alice’s storm gray eyes flooding into his. The soft blue replaced and overtaken in a heartbeat.

They…no she repeated the mantra, this was no longer Grace. This was no longer her occupying the body. This was her body now. It was her will that drove it. It was her will that moved it like a puppet on the end of its strings.

It. Was. Hers.

The image of her true body appeared again. It showed her draped over Cavan’s shoulders, arms circling around his neck and gently clasped in front of his chest. A mischievous grin was plastered on her face as a hand snaked up to run a finger down Cavan’s cheek. Her mouth brushed against his ear as she whispered sweet nothings into his, now her, ear.

The scene in the mirror grew and warped. The images played in the mirror of Alice spinning Cavan in a rapid dance. He threw her over his head, spun the two away until their arms strained to keep them together, he dipped her till her back brushed against the ground before she rose smoothly again. Each step was calculated, each step was planned.

Through her position of watching the reflection and apparition dance across the mirrored wall she could see that it was not Cavan leading but Alice. Each step was preceded by a gentle nudge of the apparition that placed Cavan’s foot in just the right location, a hand on his back to twist him this way and that, using his own force and speed against him without him being the wiser.

The real Alice could see what the apparition was doing. She twisted Cavan into white threads as they slowly draped over his arms, seeking entry to his body, twisting around his neck and joints. Soon the apparition was plucking at the air around Cavan with a tilt of her head, taking the dance to a more violent affair as their bodies jerked to a single entity's will.

Alice recognized the gossamer threads as soulmist. Her apparition, born of deep reflection, was showing her possession. Her possession.

No! She mentally shouted sending the reflection and apparition rippling, I need not know how to use my own self to control my world but I need to know how to use my world to control the World!

The apparition in the mirror almost seemed to ponder this for a second as a large cheshire grin grew across its features and it grabbed Cavan softly by the hips and pulled him close. It was a delicate dance they began, sedated and soft. The white gossamer threads still remained but were slack against his body, almost tempting her to pull on them again, to reassert her control, but she restrained herself.

The apparition seemed almost exasperated by her innaction and kept the slow drift of Cavan and her body around the room.

It was after almost ten chimes that something changed. The air grew charged and poignant with an unknown feeling. It was such a sublet change at first that she almost missed it. It was just a simple flick of the apparition's eyes that drew her to it.

At the very edges of the gossamer threads color was beginning to drift down, like dye through silk. The gossamer thread was being coated in an auburn red as it snaked down the hundreds of threads. The color inched ever closer to Cavan’s bonded limbs as Alice’s breath hitched in her throat.

A spot of motion drew her attention. The apparition of her turned her cheshire grin towards Alice and made a goodbye wave. Before Alice could process what that meant she felt a violent tug at her chest and catapulted out of Cavan’s body. Her form was dashed against Infinity’s Mirror, her soulmist going wild and shattering one as she impacted against it.

She ran out of time in the body.

Six Bells gone like that.

Red clouded her vision.

She was so close.

She was there.

Alice screamed.

[Alice Weaver]

It took a good few chimes for the red to fade from her vision. The cracking and shattering of her soulmist from her body being violently ejected from Cavan were not doing anything to soothe the balm of her failure.

She felt Infinity flitting around her head in a nervous panic, watching but not wanting to interrupt the ghost as she had asked it to do. She waved the concerned house off as she floated down from the shattered and dented mirror her active soulmist had collided with.

Mirrors were fragile things and even the few pounds of force she could produce was enough to break one of them entirely, leaving glittering shards sprayed across the floor. The Twilight Shard that hung from her ceiling cast its light that bounced off the shattered pieces, spraying rainbows across the room.

She glanced around for further damage, thankful that she had no flesh to tear and blood to spill else the room would have been coated as she crashed into the mirror. Alice spotted Cavan slumped down across the room, palm pressed against the cool glass as his slow and shallow breathing fogged the reflective surface.

It was not often Alice hurt as she did now. Her body was a pale and flickering imitation of what it normally was. The large chunk of soul-stuff that was dissolving around Cavan showed why forcing past the time limit on her false life was a terrible idea.

She ran a hand across the great rends in her body and, with a tremendous mental effort, twisted the soulmist shut around her core and stopped more of the substance from going up in smoke.

Alice let out a great sigh as she slumped down against the walls of the Manor, sitting among the shattered pane of glass, head in her hands as she rubbed her eyes.

Was she expecting to get it within a day? Not really, but the failure still stung. She wasn’t back at square one at least. If anything she was almost there. She just needed the final push to see what she was missing.

She ghosted over to pull Cavan’s body from the mirror and lay him across the floor in a more comfortable position as she pondered her issue.

The infusion of soulmist from the Manor’s pantry helped to stabilize her thoughts as she floated in her room, drifting here and there as her body and mind wandered, processing what she saw.

[Alice Weaver]

Her mind was a churning sea as she tried to quantify what she saw in the glass. The barest flicker of motion drew her eye to one of the large chunks of shattered mirrors that lay strewn across the wooden boards. It was her apparition shaking its head in disappointment at her boiling thoughts.

It was shaming her for her thoughts. Her overthinking. Her want to quantify a hallucination into real-world ideals was missing what the reflection was trying to tell her.

Her reflection didn’t matter.

Her body didn’t matter.

It was Her that mattered. Her reflection didn’t have any meaning, only the meaning she gave it. To learn how to impose her will on others she had to first impose her will on herself and to do that she needed a blank slate. She needed to lose meaning in her image and build it from the ground up to be able to stretch her persona to warp others.

Alice got to it with a single-mindedness only a ghost could commit themselves to. She wanted not for sleep, food, or comfort. All that mattered to her at that moment was to make the girl in the mirror vanish from her sight and make something of her own in its place.

The first step was easy, she removed her limbs from the mirror. They were easy to lose the meaning of, she hardly used them anyways. They became hazy and indistinct in the mirror before vanishing from her senses.

She felt a brief wave of concern from Infinity pass over her…something about her being still for an entire day and her limbs vanishing but she ignored it. The concerned emotions pinged off her focus like buzzing flies.

The next part of her reflection was harder, her hair. With its fiery red color and volume, it was something Alice was quite proud of, she thought it was its most striking feature, and for that reason, it had to go. Her hair didn’t define her, she defined her. If she was bald she’d still be Alice. Her will would not degrade simply because her hair was no longer present.

The lone window in the room darkened and lightened as her hair turned shades paler and paler as if being dusted with leeching snow before it faded entirely from her reflection.

The Spirit let out a sigh as she cricked her neck to let out some of the mental tension that was pounding at the corners of her mind.

The next two parts were not going to be easy. Those parts were her torso and her face, the thing that was her hello and goodbye to the world, the thing that made Alice, Alice no matter what. She’d save the face till last, she decided as she focused on her neck down.

It…wasn’t as hard as she thought it would have been. Another perk of a ghost she assumed. Her torso didn’t have any function, no lungs to take in air, no beat of a heart. It was just the most centralized place to put her swirling mass of condenses soulmist she called her core that sat where her stomach would have been. The mirror version of her was now just a face floating on a black void, almost all meaning had been lost in her reflection. She took the meaning from her body and now she had to take it from her face.

Staring down just a face in the mirror was a little disconcerting to be completely honest. It screamed without saying anything that something was missing and silently begged her to not erase it. It was her and without it she was nothing. She would be faceless. But with a face, she wouldn’t have power, and without power, she’d be stuck like this forever. If she became faceless she’d have power, have freedom, have a way out! She could make another face some other day. But at this moment, her face was a hindrance. It was a lid on her ambition and it. Needed. To. Go!

With a final act of will, her reflection twisted into a picture of agony as it was blown away in an unseen breeze, leaving behind a mass of rolling smoke held together only because she wanted it so. It felt like someone turned a key at the base of her mind and some understanding flooded through her mind. It was like a limb she was always unaware of made itself known as she rapidly funneled her way back into Cavan, completely ignorant of the fact that she could enter the body so easily meant a large amount of time had passed to let her soulmist and body recover. Time had lost meaning in this room as she pressed her hands and forehead against the mirror and looked into her own eyes mentally grasping at that spot in the back of her mind.

“I am Alice Weaver and I will live again,” She whispered to Cavan’s reflection as a warmth washed out with her words, a tug that started at Cavan’s heart and flowed up and through her voice. Her voice was always hers, though her body might change, her voice, her way of speaking, would always stay the same. Something flowed out with her declaration, Djet she absently realized, as it collided with the mirror before bouncing back and from its eyes and settling into her body. She didn’t fight the Djet but let it settle into her, weaving through Cavan’s body before allowing it to slip into her soulmist and her being. It was a command, decree, a suggestion that she was in full agreement with.

It was only fitting the first person to feel the bite of her power was herself.


With a gasp, she pulled herself away from the mirror in an action that was akin to pulling one's head out of fridged water. Almost instantly she felt Infinity looking at her as she flopped back on the floor, feeling a burn deep inside of her from flexing something that she had never flexed before.

“Infinity.” She croaked out, “How long? How long have I been here?”

The sentient house ponder for a moment as it thought before sending the feeling of one of the roosters crowing five times at the rising sun.

Five days. She’d been here five days. But it was worth it as she felt the shift of energy she was previously unaware of flit from her heart and suffused her body.

“Today, Alice Weaver, you are a mage.” A mad giggle escaped her body as she twisted on the floor and Infinity let out a deep sigh as it had yet another unstable resident in its halls.