Aurelius felt self conscious the entire time that he held that weird orb.

  The two commission mages just… stood there the entire time! Aurelius personally had no idea what that stupid ethics commission mage was scribbling away on his bloody clipboard. And that old geezer just looked at Aurelius the entire process with a blank expression. It was incredibly creepy.

  Aurelius decided that the weird ethics committee member was actually some sort of artist and was just doodling away on his clipboard, as he spent the two hours just glancing awkwardly around the cell. He had no idea where to look in a situation like this!

  To sleep was out of the question. He was encased in a bloody stone slab, plus Mr. Tona’s gaze continuously sent prickles down his spine. He had traced the way that the ethics committee member’s pen moved a few times in the long wait, attempting to speculate on what exactly that man was doing.

  The ethics committee member actually noticed his gaze a couple of times, causing Aurelius to stare at the terribly monotone walls of the cell for a while afterwards. The man would stop writing (or drawing) for a while after each incident, just adding on to the already suffocating glare from the commission sage.

  Overall, a rather unpleasant 2 hours.

  The commission sage glanced at his watch, taking a rare break from staring daggers at Aurelius.

  “Hmm, time flies. Your two hours are up. You may let go of the soul-imager now.” He said, his voice slightly hoarse from his 2 hours of silence. Or perhaps it was just that his throat was in bad shape from his horrendous smoking habit.

  Aurelius sighed slightly, letting go of the orb and rapidly clenching and unclenching his fist to return proper blood circulation to his poor old hands.

  The orb floated over to Mr. Tona’s outstretched hands, landing gently against his palms.

  With no effort, Mr. Tona started to channel the meager mana in the cell into the crystal, causing it to glow slightly in a warm orange light.

  An illusory circular shape appeared first in the orb, faintly at first, then with more clarity. Aurelius could swear that Mr. Tona was on the verge of smiling at the sight, probably from laughing at Aurelius’s rather lacking qualifications as a mage.

  There was no more change for more than a minute afterwards, causing Mr. Tona and the ethics mage, who had at some point intensely started to scrutinise the orb to furrow their brows in puzzlement.

  There didn’t seem to be any corruption!

  “Hmm… Perhaps Ms. Sylven was wrong…” Mr. Tona started fearfully, as if he could just envision the amount of paperwork that was approaching his desk. False imprisonment would definitely not be the most enjoyable incident to write up a report on, after all.

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  Even the ethics committee member seemed to feel a certain level of dread, as he scratched the side of his head with his pen, his eyes slowly turning watery.

  That was when the first thread appeared.

  Mr. Tona let go of the orb immediately when the thin golden thread outlined itself against Aurelius’s soul.

  With a quick glance at Aurelius, Mr. Tona’s face hardened once more. The man snapped his fingers twice, summoning his wand to his hands.

  With a serious face, he continued to channel more and more mana into the ball, creating more illusory threads to force themselves into the image. They intertwined and intersected, crafting a shape of divinity.

  The two commissioners' expressions started with a frown, then puzzlement, and finally, horror.

  The ethics committee member dropped his clipboard, his hands cupping his mouth as if holding back a torrent of vomit.

  Mr. Tona also seemed slightly paler, as if blood was draining out of his face in real time.

  When the general outline of Aurelius’s soul blueprint took shape, he ran out of the cell, not even casting a glance towards Aurelius or the commission mage stuck up against the wall in terror.

  Aurelius pretended to be clueless the entire time, just blinking rapidly in pretend confusion.

  From the two mages and their reactions, it seemed that this whole soul blueprint business was more serious than he had realised.

  He cursed Ms. Sylven and Seraphine for their apparent lack of warning as to the seemingly horrifying realisation that these two gentlemen had come to in their observations.

  As thoughts raced through his mind, Aurelius noticed the clipboard on the floor.

  Sure enough, there was a damn flower doodled on it.

  ???

  Aurelius rubbed his wrists again. He grumbled inwardly about the design of these ignivite cuffs that the commission used. After experiencing them twice already that day, he could definitively tell that they were not designed with user experience in mind.

  In front of a yawning Aurelius stood three commissioners. Two were familiar faces, consisting of Mr. Tona and Ms. Yeltz. As for the last one, he was vaguely sure that he had seen him before…

  “Well, this is a fucking mess.” Ms. Yeltz spat.

  “Language Ms. Yeltz!” Mr. Tona scolded, his tone completely alien to one he had put on in his conversation with Aurelius and his friends.

  “Unfortunately, I’m inclined to agree with Ms. Yeltz…” The unknown man sighed.

  Aurelius was seated in a modest but spacious office. It seemed that they were relatively high in the Tower at the moment, as the view from the windows suggested.

  He was seated in a rather comfortable couch, and sipping some complementary tea, courtesy of The Commission. Yet, he was far from comfortable, given that the three people opposite him exuded the opposite of… welcome.

  “We need to keep this from reaching the ears of the churches…” The man muttered.

  “It’s not like it’s possible for him to complete that shape!” Ms. Yeltz retorted.

  “Dammnit, it’s not a matter of him reaching that shape!” Mr. Tona yelled exasperatedly.

  “I suggest we kill the damn boy VERY carefully. Dissection is also on the table. Maybe a lobotomy on the boy would take my headache away!” He continued.

  “Hmmm… Tempting…” The man mused.

  “Y-You can’t say that in front of the potential v-victim!” Aurelius defended, completely horrified at the suggestion.

  “Do you even know who I am?” The man said, leaning back in his seat tiredly.

  Aurelius did not.

  “I’m the Secretary General of the damn Commission.” He sighed, regret lining his every word.