The Legend of Asahiel: Book 02 - The Obsidian Key by Eldon Thompson

forward, unable to deny his growing fervor.
    “In their arrogance, a sect of Finlorian magi, commissioned by Sabaoth himself, created a rift beneath the city of Thrak-Symbos within the tunnels of their dead, at a point where the veil between this realm and what they believed to be the realm of departed spirits was at its thinnest. Thinking to open a doorway to their gods, they instead breached a realm of chaos such as never before had been imagined. From this rift poured the Illysp.”
    Torin blinked. He had never heard of an Illysp. He had no notion of what they were. But he was fairly certain that he had no desire to learn.
    This sentiment must have been scrawled across his face, for Darinor addressed it almost immediately. “Do not bother to envision these denizens,” he said, raising his lacerated hands, “for they are unlike anything you may have encountered before.”
    Torin was not sure whether to be relieved by this, or horrified. It was decided a moment later as Darinor finished his pronouncement.
    “They’re far worse.”
    The young king’s stomach growled with hunger—or perhaps in response to the slow dread boring its way through the pit of his belly. He didn’t bother trying to hide his unease from Darinor, but waited for the other to take delight in it.
    But Darinor, it seemed, was past any hope of delight, even at Torin’s obvious discomfiture. “In their natural state, the Illysp can best be described as spirits, lacking bodies material to our plane. When first unleashed, they had only limited mobility, like a foul scent in dead air.”
    “Then how…?” Torin began, before Darinor waved him off.
    “They quickly overcame this limitation by clinging to the mind of a host creature—whatever crossed their path—where they lingered like a thought unbidden. Slipping from mind to mind, they learned to travel as might a swarm of flies among a herd of cattle, dancing from host to host. They even learned to influence their hosts through the power of suggestion, with silent promptings to lie, thieve, and kill, thereby carrying out their innate desire to spread mayhem and violence. As with any undesired thought, these urgings were not easy to dispel.”
    “I don’t understand,” Marisha admitted, stealing the words from Torin’s lips. “Mortal beings have always been tempted. Were these so much harder to resist?”
    “They were,” Darinor assured her. “But what the Illysp really craved were bodies of their own, that they might touch the physical world and sample for themselves the sensations of flesh, in order to participate fully in the hatefulactivities for which they were bred and to exercise dominion over others. It was not until they learned how to obtain these bodies that their true horror was exposed.”
    Torin’s heart slipped into the chasm that his stomach had become. “Possession,” he presumed grimly.
    “A suitable term. Although still not quite what you think. For it required a dead body, a mortal housing from which the living essence had already departed. Presented with a coil thus abandoned, an Illysp could infuse itself therein. After a brief incubation period, the original essence returned, but as a prisoner in his own mortal shell, subject to the whims of the controlling Illysp. A collection of memories, a consciousness, and nothing more. Upon waking, the Illysp consumed this former consciousness, laid bare its knowledge and experiences while retaining its own, and made this the vessel of its destruction.”
    Torin glanced at Marisha and wondered right away if his eyes were as wide as hers. “Could they be killed?”
    “In a manner of speaking. For an Illychar—as it was known once it had taken physical form—did not live in the traditional sense. It did not require nerves, a brain, or vital organs. It functioned via a form of innate memory. Like the phantom pain of an amputated limb, an Illychar retained whatever abilities were inherent to its chosen vessel in life. It