The Story of the Doll Mage, #2
Artheus’s wife, Tylia, was herself a psyker on Artheus’s homeworld, with the gift of Empathy. Empathy, on its own, was the ability to feel what others were feeling. Tylia, however, as an Empath, could make everyone in her vicinity experience either her own emotions, or the emotions of someone in her vicinity. She knew at all times what Artheus was feeling, and if she concentrated she could make someone feel specific emotions from a great distance. They found it easy to love each other, for few others could perceive the trials of Artheus, and to Tylia no one else was half so interesting.
They arrived in the Realm of Solaris, where Earth resided. Here, the meta conflict was thick and furious, and soon after their arrival they needed shelter from it. There was no sign of whoever sent them their distress signal. Conveniently, however, they were able to feed off the ley energies of some likely targets: fel Brutes, who sought glory, loot, and bloodshed, were easily justifiable victims— they were already raiders, after all. Artheus used the muscle of his strongest doll, Mister Relentless.
Mister Relentless was born with the purpose of “collecting cool nicknames”. He would do nearly anything if it meant earning a new nickname. The raiders, being commonplace brutes, were not too difficult for Mister Relentless to dispatch. They gathered enough ley energies to stay alive for at least a week.
Havenforth University was somewhat nearby, but there was interference from the roiling tide of rival factions in the Metaverse, each contesting for their right to establish their presence. Artheus and Tylia were no faction— Tyranel was a dead planet, and they only had a handful of dolls. If someone would agree to feed them and provide for them, Artheus could farm out his dolls to provide services. With Tylia’s approval, they set about searching one of the local townships to trade with.
This realm in Solaris was full of people who would do nothing unless you gave them cold, hard cash, and even then they weren’t content until they squeezed all the juice out of you. Artheus considered exterminating them and collecting their ley energies, but Tylia disapproved. Although Artheus was personally convinced he should kill the sour humans who would not value his services, he refrained strictly because of Tylia. Instead, he made do with feeding off the life energies of fel Brutes, which he could not continue doing for long without attracting the wrath of the Horde. Meanwhile, however, he set about finding odd jobs for his dolls to perform, content to receive meager wages per hour. His dolls were not slaves— they were happy to do grunt work, for now, but he could not push them forever.
Meanwhile, no one had attempted to contact him to tell him why they sent his world a distress signal. The Brutes were, in fact, deadly enough, but they didn’t seem so dire as to warrant summoning Artheus from a distant planet. If they had that kind of power, why were the Brutes a threat?
Tylia advised Artheus to create ley energies by providing services to the mortals, such as growing food and performing other tasks. The denizens of Solaris were niggardly— they would sooner wait to force Artheus to sell himself into slavery than pay him for anything he did— but Artheus knew how to harvest ley energies through acts of benevolence. Therefore, simply by providing goods and services to mortals free of charge, he was able to collect ley energies to feed him, Tylia, and his dolls.
But by the heavens, it was a slow-going process…
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