Chimes

From Sword of Truth Wiki

The Chimes, or the Chimes of Death or Chimes of Doom when translated from High D'Haran, were dangerous underworld magic, that if released into the world of life, would completely absorb magic. The presence of the chimes in the world of the living alone will extinguish magic at an alarming rate. If they were present for too long of a time, magic would never again be restored to the world. Not only do the chimes dissolve all earthly magic, but they also dissolve the world's bond to other worlds - such as the underworld. Some of the damage caused by the chimes would remain forever irreversable without the use of the power of Orden.

The three chimes were known as; Reechani, Sentrosi and Vasi. They represented water, fire, and air respectively. While their gender would be mutable, much like the way the skrin does not have a physical body outside of the underworld, to Zedd they appeared as "queens" of their respective elements, and thus can be considered to have been female.

[edit] History

The chimes were released sometime around the Great War, though they were defeated by Joseph Ander. Ander in fact entrapped the chimes into an artifact known as the Dominie Dirtch which he surrounded around the land of Anderith as a means of defence against intruders.

Thousands of years later, during the Imperial Order War, Mother Confessor Kahlan Amnell spoke the names of the chimes, on the advice of Wizard Nathan Rahl, during a magic ritual to heal her husband Richard Rahl of the plague. This unknowingly released the chimes into the realm of the living which immediatly began the process of siphoning Additive Magic from the world.

At this point, all Additive Magic was, for at least a time, completely siphoned from the world. However, Richard Rahl ultimately discovered what Joseph Ander had done thousands of years ago, and was able to convince the chimes to consume the spirit of the man who had entombed them; in the process causing them to leave the world of the living, and instead inhabit Joseph Ander's sanctuary, so that they could destroy him.

Unfortunately the contamination of magic caused by the chimes appeared to be permanent. The Chimes caused untold damage to many types of magic in the New World and the Old World, such as bringing down the Boundary that secluded the empire of Bandakar from the rest of the Old World, causing the deaths of many creatures of magic, and contaminating the Chainfire spell, causing it to erase memories unrelated to the subject of the Chainfire Event, and creating gaps in the people affected by Chainfire, allowing a few of them to remember who the Mother Confessor was. The damage caused by the presence of the Chimes was in danger of quickly unravelling the fabric of existence, until Richard used the power of the Boxes of Orden to counter the Chainfire event and restore magic.

[edit] Powers and Abilities

The presence of the chimes in the world of life was enough to completely erase all traces of Additive Magic. However, as they were themselves underworld magic, Subtractive Magic remained unaffected by their presence. The chimes were also able to possess certain living creatures, and were capable of luring people to their deaths; each chime seemed to use the earthly element that it represented in their attempts to claim the souls of the living.

[edit] Appearances

• Temple of the Winds (First mentioned)
• Soul of the Fire (First appearance)
• Faith of the Fallen (Mentioned only)
• Naked Empire (Mentioned only)
• Chainfire (Mentioned only)
• Phantom (Mentioned only)
• Confessor (Mentioned only)