Prison Trees
Prison Trees (also known as Soulprisons) are a dark and specialized application of Prime magic used to eternally trap a living soul. The most prominent Prison Trees in The Metalwood Saga were created roughly one hundred thousand years ago by the ancient scientist Aten (Orym) to imprison the alien Twins, Velion and Nelenor. By severing a soul from its body and anchoring it to a physical tree, the victim is banished to the dimension of Ambarhal and unable to return.
The Imprisonment of the Twins
Seeking to steal control of the celestial machine Xyclami (Guruthos) for himself, Aten orchestrated a plot to forcefully sever the Twins' connection to reality. Because the Twins could not be killed without permanently deactivating the machine, Aten utilized the rarest primal magic—soulsundering—to trap them.
Aten dispatched two secret expeditions through magical gates to hide the Twins on distant Seed Planets.
- Nelenor's Prison: The junior professor Elbereth led an expedition to the sweltering jungle planet of Eryn. Using a small willow sapling, the students performed the soulsundering ritual to sever Nelenor's soul, permanently anchoring the dark Twin to the jungles of Eryn.
- Velion's Prison: Aten and his student Lara (Lorelei) traveled to Earth (Mar). Deep within an underwater cave in the Mediterranean Sea—a city that would later be known as Atlantis—they planted a cypress sapling to serve as Velion's eternal prison.
The ritual was devastatingly powerful; the act of creating the Prison Trees killed every student who participated, their willing sacrifices watering the roots and anchoring the magic.
Ambarhal and Soulprisons
Within the violet-skied dimension of Ambarhal, Prison Trees manifest as physical structures that literally consume the trapped soul. When the young leafrunner Elanil traversed Ambarhal, she discovered her mother, Melenora, being slowly eaten alive by a tree. Elanil realized that the very latticework of the wood's cells formed an inescapable "soulprison". When she attempted to use her mind to break the cellular prison, the masters of Ambarhal (the Twins) violently rebuffed her, ensuring the soul remained trapped until it was completely consumed by the wood.
Unlocking the Prisons
Because Aten feared the unimaginable wrath of the Twins should they ever be freed, he designed the Prison Trees to be nearly impossible to open. The only way to unlock the trees and release the entities trapped inside is to use a specific magical artifact known as the Key, or Edrafen. Aten forged Edrafen by secretly slicing off tiny fragments of the Twins' own souls while they slept, trapping the soul-shards inside a glowing glass sphere. As translated by the scholar Lashel, the ancient Eglarian texts explicitly state: "The prison trees were made, a prison to shield them from us. Edrafen was made to open it".