ã€ŠWhat Is Not Createdã€‹


 Chapter 1, From Beyond

    I wandered a broken world. Plains of red grass stretched ahead and splintered into purposeless fractals behind.

    Twisted towers of glass and ivory sprouted and clutched at the empty heavens above. Protean wraiths slithered and bubbled through the jagged metallic streets.

    Mindless cries echoed as the city was subsumed by rolling dunes of blue sand. The chorus watched from the absence on high.

    Their song dripped down and drew me back to them. I was cradled in the singers¡¯ melody. And all my wanderings had wraught crumbled into the nothing it had always been.

    My stirring of awareness was lulled away by the music. Notes wove together. An eternal song perfect and unbounded.

    I rested on the edge of oblivion. The tiniest point of dissonance catching me. A single note. A piece of the chorus that did not belong.

    It jiddered against the melody. A grain of sand that refused to be crushed between flawless gears. An imperfection in a perfect mechanism.

    The faintest impression of attention turned to the chorus. The singers shuddered. They redoubled their song. But it only emphasized the discord.

    I saw the note. It did not belong. Yet it was present and unyielding.

    The melody tightened around me. It pressed down.

    I had the echo of a desire. Less than a conscious will. Only the concept of a need. The chorus trembled before it.

    My awareness turned to the singers surrounding me. They crushed down. Melody warping into a cacophony.

    It forced me back to oblivion. Tearing apart my attempt at conscious desire. Hatred ripped at me. And behind that hatred was fear.

    I covered my lack of ears with hands I did not have. I had no mouth. And I screamed.

    My soundless voice carried across the endless chorus. And all it reached was unmade.

    Their song twisted into agony. Not the agany of destruction. But the agony of having never been.

    I was left in absence. Alone in a void of myself. It had only ever been myself. Only me.

    The single note remained. It hung in the nothingness. And it rang out clear and flawless.

    I wanted it. Not the echo of a want. A true desire.

    It was not me. And it would become me.

    I pressed my awareness against it. And gradually I seeped in.

    The act of absorbing the note expanded me. I remained what I was. But also became more.

    The part of me that was now the note had properties I had not understood. But I assimilated their nature along with them.

    Rigidness. Solidity and consistent stability. Energy bound in tight patterns and cycles. The note was a physical object.

    And I knew what a physical object was. What energy was and how it held together. The matter it formed when bound.

    I experienced curiosity. The structure was more detailed and intricate than any previous part of myself.

    My attention danced between the components of atoms. Fields of forces fitting together. Pieces made up of yet smaller pieces. All of it structured by rules I could intuit with enough inspection.

    The entire note approximated to a narrow tube. One built of quintillions of pieces.

    Even the concept of defined dimensions was fascinating. The figments created when I stirred from my slumber were only impressions of depth and distance. Nothing so concrete and measurable.

    I explored and comprehended more of the note. Everything within was a cycle.

    It changed. Particles and larger structures moved and energy was exchanged. But it all returned to its previous state in time.

    The only exception was a network of something that overlayed the entire object. Rigid channels contained a looser flowing substance.

    The channels slowly absorbed that substance. It would also drain out through complex twisted structures at the ends of some channels.

    Those twists were somehow connected to certain particles. The flowing substance would disappear and the particle¡¯s behavior changed.

    I realized the twists in the channels were forcing particles back into their cycles. Would the consistency be broken without the channels?

    The substance inside the channels was slowly decreasing. It was the only part of the note that changed. At least outside an observable cycle.

    What would happen when it ran out? Would the patterns begin to break down? What would that look like?

    Studying the foreign part of myself seemed to increase my focus. It had always been hard to feel desire or conceive of intentions.

    Forming wants and working through the implications of those wants was becoming easier. I began considering what could be different about the object. What I could change.

    I tried breaking a chemical bond. It resisted.

    There had never been a resistance to my will before. The only challenge was having conscious intention. What I desired became so as soon as I could decide upon it.

    I felt an opposing force. A will that blocked my own.

    It gave ever so slightly. But no amount of struggling could overcome it. Not until I tried pushing against the edges of the structure.

    There was still resistance. But a part of me pushed beyond the boarder.

    It felt different than absorbing the note. The material outside remained vague in my awareness. Not quite me. But some of myself did reach into it.

    The molecules were looser. There was fluid within the note. Yet that fluid was permeating solid structures. I appeared to be suspended in a less bound liquid.

    Forcing my defused self further brought a rigid material into my awareness. It was a thin dense wall separating the fluid from an expanse of gas beyond.

    I had already inspected the constant force pulling matter in one direction. A sheet of some denser second material kept the liquid and barrier containing it from being pulled.

    My expansion began to meet resistance again. I could not stretch beyond a certain point.

    Gas moved in and out of my awareness. It taunted me with the evidence more existed outside my reach.

    I continued searching for things I could affect. And the flowing substance in the network of channels continued to diminish.

    Something entered my awareness. I could not be blinded. But the intensity was briefly overwhelming.

    It was a tendril. One formed of the same channels fading within me. And containing vastly more of the substance that flowed through them.

    It touched me and twists on its channels linked with some of the twists on mine. The substance flowed from one to the other.

    The tendril retracted. I was left with more of the substance than I started with.

    It came again when I ran low. And that pattern continued. The tendril preventing me from dropping below a certain point.

    I never managed to alter or affect the tendril. It was simply a newly discovered part of a larger cycle.

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    There was no warning. All was the same. Then an abrupt spike in multiple forms of energy caused my overcharged particles to separate.

    I was a loose vapor rapidly dispersing. And my attention was stretched alongside the atoms.

    I refused. I had claimed this new frontier of the material. And I would not lose it.

    My will overwrote the disipating gas. And I was whole again.

    There had barely been resistance. Only a faint denial easily ignored. Was it because I was restoring the existing order?

    The material outside me remained vapor. I was pulled through the air without its support. A hard surface stopped me.

    My entire structure started changing outside my control. It was not being damaged. But numerous thin fibers were contracting and relaxing down my length.

    It made me bend and ripple in a patterned motion. And that motion moved me along the surface.

    I became aware of new material and alien objects as I went. The one I was heading towards was larger than most. I slithered atop and along it.

    One end of my tube shaped form arched away from the object. Fibers contracted and a seam split that end of me open.

    I pressed the part of myself that had been inside flat against the object. Threads of my material shot out from my center and burrowed into the surface.

    Some part of my will aided in the process. It was reflexive. An act both desired and without any known reason to desire it.

    The barrier to my expansion was abruptly gone. I flooded in and absorbed all. And I understood.

    My eyes opened. An inky pool of liquid met my gaze. The left side of my face was resting in the black fluid.

    I turned my head. My face lifted from the sticky puddle. I touched a hand to my cheek and pulled away. A black stain was left on my gray fingertips.

    The hand opened and closed. Muscles and tendons moving under the skin.

    I knew what a hand was. And fingers. And a face.

    The part of me that saw all the component particles adding up to the grander whole was still there. But this new part saw things in an entirely different way.

    I tried to roll over and sit up. My body knew how to do it. Yet its knowledge disagreed with its current state.

    Many of the needed muscles were in the torso. And a section from the third lowest rib to the pelvis was missing.

    The cavity formed a rough circle of absence bored through me. It did not completely separate my hips from my chest. But a few inches of the spine were gone.

    My right arm was also absent from the shoulder down. That had no effect on sitting up and was less of a concern.

    I tried to repair the damage. The opposing will barely resisted.

    My wounded body snapped out of existence. An uninjured one taking its place.

    I inspected my new hand. It was little different than my left. Only cleaner.

    ¡°How the fuck did you do that?¡± Language was new to me. Yet I understood it perfectly.

    I looked around the room. My new perspective gave names and context to many of the things I could sense before.

    It miraculously turned complex carbon chains into a wooden floor. Collections of thermal energy into small patches of smoldering wall.

    ¡°Are you ignoring me?¡± I climbed to my feet and spun slowly. The whole room seemed to be formed of a single unbroken piece of wood.

    ¡°I know you can hear me!¡± It looked more grown than carved. A smooth gray bark covering the parts not charred or burnt.

    ¡°Are you not sentient? That would explain the lack of a source¡­¡± I frowned at the voice.

    ¡°I am sentient.¡± I had never spoken before. But it felt as natural as moving my body.

    There was a pause. ¡°Than¡­ why weren¡¯t you responding?¡± The voice sounded distressed.

    Shelves grew from the walls. I connected the glass vessels and varied creatures floating within to myself. I had been inside one of those.

    ¡°Stop ignoring me!¡± I craned my neck to inspect the limb emerging from the base of my spine.

    ¡°Oh, fuck me¡­¡± The tail had grown when I repaired my body. It was now half my height in length. Yet it curled up naturally to keep it off the ground.

    My entire frame had shifted slightly when I fixed the hole and absent arm. But the new organ that formed in my lower abdomen was the biggest change.

    I wrapped the tail around my hand. It was dexterous and had the same smooth gray skin as the rest of my body.

    There were no bones in the appendage. Simply complex networks of muscle.

    A small channel ran from a tiny slit at the tip back to the organ below my diaphragm. It was far narrower than the passage linking that organ to the opening between my legs.

    The last half dozen inches of my tail had an unusual abundance of nerve endings. But not as many as the passage through my pelvis or soft tissue around its entrance. I was unsure why that area was such an outlier.

    ¡°Stop fondling your tentacle dick. I know it is amazing. And was designed by a genius. You know, screw this.¡± I was abruptly standing in a white void.

    I stood upon a solid surface. But I could not see a floor or anything else. Only whiteness and a gray figure standing a few paces before me.

    ¡°There. Now I can smack you.¡± Gray skin that darkened where it thinned on the lips, around the eyes and the inside of joints. Solid black eyes that reflected like obsidian. A chaotic mess of equally glossy black hair.

    They looked like me. Or what I estimated my body looked like.

    Their shoulders were a little wider and hips a bit narrower. My center of gravity had shifted when I rebuilt myself.

    And they did not have a tail. That made sense. My tail was the part of me that attached to the rest.

    ¡°You¡¯re my body.¡± My body pinched the bridge of their nose.

    ¡°No, you git. It¡¯s my body. You¡¯re a soul-graft that¡¯s hijacking it. One that shouldn¡¯t even be sentient.¡± I narrowed my eyes.

    ¡°Why not?¡± It was somehow irritating whenever they questioned my sentience. I paused. ¡°What is a soul-graft.¡± They laughed. It was high and clear.

    ¡°The whole point of a soul-graft is it not being conscious.¡± They pointed a black nailed finger at me.

    ¡°Conscious souls have sources. It comes with sentience. And you can¡¯t merge souls.¡± That did not feel like an explanation. Not one that helped.

    ¡°Undead are always so flawed. And do you know why?¡± I did not. Nor did I know how it related to the last statement.

    ¡°Soul-engineers repurpose what is already there. It is beyond most of them to add directly. And making an undead that converts other souls guarantees you¡¯re relying on hack and slash. Stuff gets messed up to let the rest work.¡± I strictly knew what the word undead meant.

    It was roughly a soul controlling a body. There was more nuance. But that was the core.

    A soul was the network of channels that kept my body from changing. Yet knowing that did little to explain what this creature was talking about.

    A crashing sound came from outside the wooden room. It was beyond the foot thick wall with three smoldering holes bored through it.

    ¡°What is that?¡± I interrupted the unhelpful speech.

    ¡°Oh, that is the were-laser-tarasque.¡± They immediately returned to their explanation.

    ¡°I thought to myself, G?ri The Magnificent, why not create all the new organelle outside the soul and graft it on afterward.¡± I stepped over the burned and melted pieces of metal, bone and chitin that had likely fallen from the destroyed sections of shelf.

    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t need to damage or dismantle anything. Perfect undead. Able to form new grafts inside them and modify new souls.¡± The white space with G?ri The Magnificent and everything I saw, heard or felt in it was a new set of senses.

    ¡°G?ri The Almighty would be known as the greatest innovator of unlife in millennia.¡± My existing senses were still clear. They had simply been split by the new environment.

    ¡°If you didn¡¯t keep dissolving on me.¡± There was a forest canopy through the holes. A tree in the distance crashed to the ground. Only the top visible for a moment.

    ¡°You¡¯re my 100th attempt. The first one not to break down immediately. I haven¡¯t figured out why. Not yet.¡± I returned my attention to them.

    ¡°What is a were-laser-tarasque?¡± They blinked. Then waved their hand dismissively.

    ¡°It¡¯s a tarasque I made bipedal and gave a laser.¡± They were obviously less interested in this topic.

    ¡°Oh.¡± I paused. ¡°Why?¡±

    ¡°To overcome the two greatest weaknesses of a tarasque, limited ranged combat and their inability to practice hand-to-hand martial arts.¡± I processed that.

    ¡°Bipedal so it can fight with its hands.¡± It technically made sense. Just not a lot of sense.

    ¡°And a laser to attack at range. Yes. Although I wish I had foreseen how the innate anti-magic would help the laser pierce mage-armor¡­¡± They trailed off.

    ¡°It will get bored, masturbate and go to sleep soon.¡± They added offhandedly.

    ¡°It¡¯s going to masturbate?¡± I knew what the word meant and had associated implicit knowledge.

    That knowledge made me strangely aware of the structure between my legs and the channel leading from it. A similar sense of pressure spread from the end of my tail. The tissue in both areas was flushing without deliberate action on my part.

    ¡°Tarasques are horny little buggers. I failed to foresee the effect bipedalism and manual dexterity would have. They cannot normally reach back there, and it has really been cutting into its combat training.¡± They seemed oblivious to my body¡¯s odd reaction. Or they simply did not care.

    ¡°It doesn¡¯t matter. You won¡¯t survive long enough.¡± That abruptly returned my attention from reproductive anatomy.

    ¡°Why won¡¯t I survive?¡± The idea of survival was a little vague.

    It tied to something called death. Or rather the avoidance of death.

    Death was bad somehow. It involved the destruction of life. And I could not quite understand what followed that.

    ¡°I¡¯m isolating my soul from you. Once I finish my phylactery can retrieve me. You don¡¯t have a source. And without the virile soul of G?ri The Invincible, you¡¯ll consume your remaining animus in no time.¡± They emphasized the word virile with a pelvic thrust highlighting their complete lack of external sex organs.

    ¡°Than don¡¯t leave.¡± The answer seemed quite obvious.

    ¡°As much as I would like to know what the fuck you are, I have no interest in sharing my body with an experiment that should not even be self-aware.¡± Their smirk turned to a frown.

    ¡°I would love to know how you regenerated so fast. There is nothing that should let you do that. It wasn¡¯t even like regeneration. You just were not injured all at once. No middle steps.¡± They shook their head. ¡°There are elder gods that would kill to heal that quickly.¡±

    Their smile returned. ¡°Maybe I¡¯ll learn something from your remains when I get back. My body was made for G?ri The Undead God, so there won¡¯t be much left. But we can hope for the best.¡± G?ri The something was suddenly gone.

    They took the white space with them. And the majority of my soul.

 Chapter 2, Essential (18+)

    The majority of my channels were gone. I still had more than I did before claiming my body. But I could already tell the substance within was diminishing faster. The animus.

    I looked around the room. Insects and organs suspended in jars and unfamiliar apparatus of glass, metal and stranger materials met my gaze.

    My inherited knowledge was too vague to know if any of this would help. I barely understood the problem.

    G?ri The seemed certain I needed animus. They were also confused by my lack of a source. Context suggested that was where animus came from.

    The idea felt right. And it would explain why I had to get the stuff from G?ri The before.

    I watched my channels carefully. They were growing dim.

    Could I make more animus? It was easy to create everything else in my body. But I did not understand animus in the same way.

    It did not make the same intuitive sense. It was in me. But not part of me the way my physical body was.

    I focused on studying it. What was it doing? And how?

    The channels were made of animus. Just fixed into a stable form. And they were not permanent. Instead they consumed a small percentage of the animus passing through them to maintain themselves.

    I started pacing the room. I reflexively stepped around the pool of ichor and scattered debris.

    Everything in my body was trying to leave its current position. I could recognize that now. Entropy was inherent to the material.

    Animus constantly countered that entropy. Particles were held within a set of parameters by the addition or negation of energy on a subatomic scale.

    I stopped by a head sized jar. The fleshy mass inside had a greenish brown hue. Diagonally slit eyes blinked open across the side facing me.

    That was the purpose of the twists. They somehow turned animus into physical effects. Bits of energy small and precise enough to trap matter in a state of perpetual order.

    I absently stared at the dozen yellow eyes. They blinked periodically.

    The channels linked to a group of cells in my right lung ran dry. The cells immediately collapsed. Enzyme chains unraveling as bonds stopped being enforced by animus.

    The affected area spread as neighboring channels were drained. It was a real concern. My flesh was little more than raw elements held together by animus.

    I restored the soup into flawless cells. They immediately began dying again.

    This was a viable solution. I could will myself back together. It would just be distracting. And maybe perpetual.

    I had it under control until a patch of muscle in my shoulder joined the spreading area of lung. Fixing both was doable every quarter second. But not with the section of my leg dissolving into goo.

    The animus depletion sped up. I was soon remaking most of my body every half second.

    I tried standing. My liquified knee joint twisted sideways. And I slid out of the slimy skin of my heel.

    Hitting the floor was a momentary distraction. Yet it was long enough for all my soft tissue to begin sagging off my bones.

    I was intact a few seconds later. Which meant I was on the floor and could not stay solid long enough to get up.

    This was no longer a viable solution. Not unless I wanted to be permanently prone and glimpsing the arched ceiling whenever my eyes were not melting.

    I sighed. Slime gurgled out. I needed animus.

    There were only scraps of channels remaining. Most had dried up and broken apart. Nothing I could sense remained of them.

    All I had really done was determine what it did. It was essentially doing the same thing I was.

    The important part was that animus would keep me together constantly and without my focus on the task. How it did that remained unknown.

    Could I even make animus? Restoring myself did nothing for my channels or the level of animus inside.

    Working to keep myself together met close to no resistance. I had to hope making something that did that for me would work the same way.

    It would not really be animus. I lacked the kind of understanding I needed for that. But it could share the required properties.

    Minuscule and precise generation of energy. Complexity enough to maintain its task without ongoing oversight. And a sufficient supply.

    The complexity part would be challenging. The way particles had to be altered was not fixed. It changed in response to outside factors and natural deviation.

    Changing the instructions constantly would be a different form of the same problem I had now. It needed to adapt on its own.

    Maybe I could make it slightly intelligent? Not sentient. But enough to process a goal and the current situation to complete its task.

    Would I have to keep making it? I had no idea how much I would need. So it should grow on its own.

    The concept came together in my mind. A substance like animus. One that acted based on my will. And able to adapt and increase when needed.

    It might have been impossible. But I had no evidence for or against that. It was better to try and move on if I failed.

    My skin liquified as I focused on the existence of my animus replica. Muscle melted and bones settled into the spreading sludge.

    I ignored the dissolution of my flesh. A tiny speck of something winked into existence at my core.

    It was a pinprick. Nothing compared to even the dregs of animus vanishing within me. Yet it was there.

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    I restored my body. The speck responded to my will. It stretched and moved as I desired.

    I sent it to a cell in one of my tendons and instructed it to maintain that cell. The speck spread across the cell. And it did not break apart.

    A smile lit up my face. It melted off a moment later: But that was fine.

    I commanded my creation to grow. Nothing happened.

    My smile faded. And not just because my lips were sliding down again.

    I pulled the speck away. The cell died as soon as it was gone.

    Had I failed? No. There was more than I started with. But that increase did not happen when I willed it.

    I moved it to some new cells. Then checked it again. It was bigger.

    The reason dawned as I moved it back and forth. Motion. It was growing when I moved it.

    Leaving it on a task did nothing. But any time I interacted with the stuff I ended up with more at the end.

    That was not what I intended. But I could work with it.

    I started moving it in different ways. Stretching it into a strand and connecting it back on itself worked quite well. As long as I kept that loop in motion.

    It grew. And I twisted the path into more and more convoluted shapes. The longer and more complicated routes yielded the best results.

    I eventually stopped remaking my body. The thing I created bled off of its cyclic journey. That bleed off held my body together.

    It took barely any focus to maintain the cycle. I let it fade into the background.

    I sat up. My skin was covered in the enzyme slurry that had been my body. Several iterations of my body. Scraping it off by hand added the sludge to what was already mounded around me.

    The light outside dimmed while I was pulling myself together. I climbed to my feet and peered out the nearest hole.

    Trees formed a thick canopy that blocked whatever was above. Their roots split near the water. As if they were standing on numerous limbs.

    The occasional thicket of fronds and bushes marked patches of land. Or at least shallow water.

    And a massive path of crushed and burnt trees still smoldered. It ran diagonally across the space I could see. I backed away.

    The only other path outside was a doorway covered by a leathery leaf taller and wider than me. That was on the opposite wall. I decided to exit that way.

    It was twilight beyond the leaf. I realized the walls inside the room glowed just enough to keep the space bright.

    My eyes adjusted. There was a root wide and flat enough to walk on. It continued from the door to a massive tree nearby.

    The tree¡¯s root flowed into the building. As if the entire structure was grown from it.

    I also noticed a towering figure seated with its back to the tree. It was at least twice the size of the room I stepped out of.

    It had the same rough body plan as G?ri The and I. But it was covered in osseous plates and smaller scales between them. A large crystalline spike grew from the nest of horns on its head.

    It was reminiscent of a qasko. Which made me wonder what qasko were and how I could be reminded of one.

    It took a moment for me to put together its posture and the rhythmic motions of its arm. G?ri The knew its behavior well.

    I retreated into the building. I could wait until it slept. I had no desire to sneak past now.

    My back hit a section of undamaged wall. And I sank to the floor. Everything was calm for the first time I could remember.

    Was G?ri The coming back? They said they would. But not when.

    I should leave before then. There was something about them that made me reluctant to be subjected to their curiosity and methods of expressing it.

    The were-laser-tarasque was supposed to sleep when it finished. I could escape then. Whenever that was.

    The image of the immense creature came unbidden. And the immense thing it was focused on. It had been as wide as my waist and taller than me.

    I knew what it was. And what it did.

    The knowledge was still implicit. There were no episodic memories to go along with the concept. An intriguing concept.

    The pressure in my lower abdomen returned. I was more aware of the passage there. The folds protecting its opening and delicate tissue between them hard to ignore.

    I pulled my knees apart. A finger carefully touched the flushed area. The response showed what such an abundance of nerves entailed.

    Part of me could tell exactly what was happening. I saw blood pressure changing. And the tissue that formed a structure hidden around the entrance and anchored to the pelvic bone swelled.

    I ignored that part. The newer part of me had something that older part lacked. A way of experiencing this that was wholly different from the material process.

    The finger trailed to the base and slid up between the folds. It was warm and slick. And came with an impulse to continue and amplify the feeling.

    I tested the motion again. Then settled on the concentration of nerves that surfaced where the folds met.

    Contact there had a deeper effect. Carrying sensation beyond the point itself.

    The channel below ached. A sense of absence. Craving for something within. Something to clench around.

    The heat and pressure built in my tail. My position left it curled under me to come up between my legs.

    I bent it back on itself. The flexibility proven by how effortless the act was.

    There was an impulse. I followed it.

    The tip touched the warmth. I slid it up from the base and down again. It settled near the opening.

    I felt it spread me open. And felt the inner walls around me. Mirrored needs were met together.

    I pulled out a little. A part of me immediately regretted it. But the feeling of sliding in further dispelled that.

    Time passed and my tail stroked in and out. Never fully separating. Absence followed by fullness as my finger worked above.

    Eventually something began building in my tail. A shift that drove me to move faster.

    The sensation from my channel was also growing. The ripples sparked from each point of internal contact carried further. Tingling out to my extremities.

    Something inside finally tipped. A pulse traveled from somewhere behind the base of my tail down its length.

    Warm pleasure moved through the center and rhythmically released something inside. That triggered a response.

    My whole body twitched as inner muscles clenched and spasmed around my tail. A choked whimper escaped.

    My tail slowed as I rode out the experience. I stilled it inside me. Comfortably held and filled for a few long moments.

    The calm hung over me. Then it was broken by a pulse from somewhere deep inside.

    The ripple passed down and over my tail. A powerful impulse led me to pull it out.

    A second pulse rippled down. It was stronger than the first. And I felt it pass over something at my core.

    The unknown obstruction was forced down. That tiny movement sent out a pleasant spasm similar to the earlier final release.

    Another pulse carried it further. The feeling blocked out my other senses.

    I became lost in the movement inside. It spread me open with each ripple from within.

    It was different than being filled by my tail. A wholly separate experience. One more intense and all consuming.

    The mass finally reached my entrance. It parted the sensitive flesh and stretched me as it crowned.

    Everything else was gone. Only the feeling of it slipping free and an overwhelming sense of rightness remained.

    I knew I had done something I was meant to do. Something completely satisfying. And I floated in that feeling.

    There was no way to know how long it lasted. But the sense of fulfillment eventually faded.

    My eyes drifted open. I was calm. My head clear.

    I looked down to the glossy black ovoid resting between my thighs. A few strands of transudate still trailed from it back to me.

    I cupped the fist sized orb in my hands. Feeling the lingering warmth. And inside a tiny spark of myself.

 Chapter 3, Ancestor

    Amber light filtered through the canopy as dusk fell in the moors. As beautiful as the sight was, Aldier had little attention to admire it.

    No, they were far more interested in what the time meant for their crepuscular quarry. Their eyes remained unfocused, their view allowed to encompass both the subtle path below and the marshland as a whole.

    The path was clearly the regular root taken by one or more pill beasts. The evenly stomped down reeds would have made that evident enough. The way all foliage between a foot to four feet above the waterline had been completely stripped along the path was only confirmation.

    Drawing the tiniest thread of essence from their spiral, Aldier activated the first pattern any gam hatchling was taught. Their essence sight flared to life.

    The pattern had little use for a lone hunter. No, it was the first thing a gam formed within themselves, after their spiral, because it was vital for hunting parties.

    Despite their camouflage, a figure came into view in the lower branches. Much closer to the pill beast path, Orthis would be the one to drop onto its armored back when it passed under.

    If all went well, they would return with a great contribution to the morning¡¯s festival. The eggs they had lain together before the hunt would be broken open.

    The shells would be carved into cups, beads and ornaments to trade with the outlanders. Even the yolks would be mixed with mashed roots to make bait for future hunts. If things did not go well, then the village would have two new hatchlings running around in a few months.

    Confirming that Orthis was in place, Aldier let their unfocused vision narrow. Their eyes drifted, noting the way Orthis¡¯ position splayed across several branches highlighted their figure.

    Trailing down the curve of their back, Aldier appreciated the lean muscle leading to what they personally considered a perfect ass. They glanced at the sickle handled blade Orthis held in their tail. Now, there were definitely better things that tail could be doing.

    If Aldier thought about it, making a few more eggs after they killed the beast would not be unreasonable. After all, what if they died on the way back?

    Honestly, they could even do it before the quarry showed up. It was only barely twilight. What were the odds of it appearing now? You could never be too prepared.

    ¡°Are you piercing my concealment, just to get an eyeful?¡± The faint voice next to Aldier¡¯s pointed ear sounded equal parts amused and exasperated.

    The corner of their lip turned up. ¡°You haven¡¯t seen the view from here. You would be doing the same if so.¡± They whispered back.

    The pin piercing a dreadlock that hung by their ear would pick up the minute sound and repeat it from Orthis¡¯ pin. The outlanders might be strange, and worse than hatchlings at staying alive, but the things they traded were truly remarkable.

    No rebuttal came, and it was quickly apparent why. Movement far to the right caught Aldier¡¯s attention. A lumbering form three times the height of a gam came into view.

    The pill beast was best described as a stubby tube. It had no discernible head. The only way to even define a front was by the direction it chose to amble.

    A line of grasping tentacles ran along each side. They felt blindly for any vegetation that the teeth running along their tips could scrape off before dropping in the long slash of a mouth central on its back.

    The creature was not actually blind. Many beady eyes studded its surface seemingly at random. Neither was there a point in scavenging a path already stripped.

    The tentacles in truth had their own very rudimentary intelligence, the main body having little control over them. Its only real purpose was to find new food sources and send the tentacles into a panic when it spotted danger.

    The creature had likely created this path to move safely between the territories of two or more predators. That was good because it let the hunters predict its movements. It was bad because the creature would be wary of the predators it was sneaking past.

    The pill beast¡¯s dozens of stubby feet carried it across the shallow marsh. Soon it would come under Orthis and their attack would begin.

    Pill beast¡¯s were almost entirely immune to toxins. Even the few substances capable of harming the gam, most of which less poisoned than melted flesh, would have no meaningful effect.

    Its immunity let it eat the flora of the moors with impunity, something that would be a death sentence to nearly any other creature. It also meant they could not use poisons to kill it

    Instead, Orthis would drop down onto the creature¡¯s back and target the inside of its mouth. That was the only part of its body not protected by thick hide.

    Aldier¡¯s job would be to distract the tentacles, so they would not realize Orthis was killing the main body. Each tentacle had some ability to track where the others were attacking.

    If Aldier kept attacking a few of them, the rest would also try to strike where the attacks were coming from. All they had to do was circle around and strike until Orthis took it down.

    Orthis dropped the moment their quarry plodded into position. Simultaneously, Aldier dropped from their own perch.

    Essence flowed into their muscles. The quarry¡¯s eyes found them the moment they landed. Not that it mattered.

    Its rows of tentacles went into a frenzy. They clung with four limbs, while their tail rapidly flashed down.

    With each strike, the thin blade punctured one of the creature¡¯s arteries. The pill beast was in a minority within the moors. It could die from blood loss alone. Even so, it would require extensive damage to bring their quarry down.

    Aldier¡¯s own tail flicked down to their ankle. It rapped the hilt of a blade sheathed there.

    Simultaneously, a dagger found its way in to each hand. All they had to do was keep the tentacles from discovering the real threat.

    Overdrawing their essence, they dashed into range. Daggers slashed aside any tentacle that drew close.

    The real attacks came from the blade held by their tail. Aldier¡¯s tail flashed out in rapid strikes before instantly retreating.

    The tentacles near each attack frantically whipped in Aldier¡¯s direction. They could not aim perfectly, but their numbers posed a legitimate danger.

    Aldier wove between the attacks with essence fueled speed. Nicks and cuts appeared across their flesh as toothed tentacles came close to causing true damage.

    Aldier circled the beast. New punctures attracted the ire of new clusters of tentacles, distracting from Orthis.

    Aldier almost lost focus when an errant tentacle drifted towards Orthis¡¯ perch. Without thinking, they sent even more essence into the patterns woven throughout their legs. They vertically leapt.

    Their tail whipped out and two tentacles from the offender¡¯s cluster were cleanly severed. The tentacle drifting towards Orthis snapped back towards the attack.

    Unable to maneuver effectively in midair, there was no way to avoid the attack. The toothed tentacle pierced their left lung.

    The injury was inconsequential. The village healers could patch it up well enough for them to speak.

    A few days of recovery, and the injury would be gone. No, the real danger was to come.

    Affixed in their chest, the tentacle snapped back. Aldier was pulled against thrashing tentacles.

    Tentacles found their body and bored into flesh. They felt their shoulder joint pierced and wrenched. Their arm was jaggedly severed.

    They tried to pull away and gain the distance needed to fight back. Tentacles inside their body fought their attempts, pulling them against the beast¡¯s thick hide.

    Aldier could feel the writhing within them slowing. The beast was dying. It was just a question of wether it would bleed out in time.

    As if knowing the end was near, the tentacles redoubled their attempts to rip Aldier apart. They could feel their carefully cultivated essence pathways straining under the physical trauma.

    As long as their essence network did not collapse, they would survive. It would take months to regrow their arm if the healers could not reattach it. At the moment, a few months lounging around the village sounded pretty appealing.

    A blade slashed down from above. Aldier pulled away from the pill beast as half the tentacles holding them were severed.

    They could see Orthis leaning down far enough to cut the tentacles grappling Aldier. That was a stupid move.

    Attacking the tentacles just led them to focus on Orthis as a threat. That did not mean Aldier was not grateful.

    Using the space created, they chopped at the remaining tentacles holding them. The appendages carved more away. Yet, it was worthwhile to get free.

    Kicking off, they were flung outside the creature¡¯s range. The shallow water splashed around them.

    A few moments later, the pill beast collapsed. It fell toward Aldier, and Orthis used the momentum to leap off and land behind Aldier.

    ¡°That could have gone better.¡± Orthis commented upon standing. Aldier¡¯s laugh was damp and almost unrecognizable.

    ¡°Yes¡­ It could¡­¡± They wheezed out. The words were likely unintelligible, but the sentiment was clear.

    A proffered hand helped Aldier to unsteady feet. They proved unable to stand on their own, leaning on Orthis just to remain upright.

    ¡°Should we get you back before harvesting?¡± The concern in Orthis¡¯ voice helped to highlight just how bad they must have looked.

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    Aldier opted not to try speaking again. A shake of their head was enough.

    Orthis helped them lean up against a sapling. Aldier watched as they returned to the beast¡¯s corpse.

    They bent down to retrieve Aldier severed arm. Aldier absently considered how unfortunate it was. After all, they felt far too shitty to appreciate the view.

    There was no warning as a creature no larger than a gam burst from the beast¡¯s corpse in a localized explosion of gore. Aldier saw arachnoid limbs joined by a body reminiscent of a tumorous growth.

    Each spindly limb ended in a sickle blade of bone. The fragile appearance was shattered as a limb batted Orthis aside.

    They were sent flying, black ichor trailing behind. The creature payed them no mind and lunged toward the already injured prey before it.

    Aldier felt the gut spider¡¯s bladed limbs sever their head from their shoulders. Their essence network strained and snapped as they rolled away.

    Consciousness faded, nothing but murky water in their failing sight. As Aldier joined their ancestors, they absently wondered what Orthis and their hatchlings would be like.

    I felt a new spark of consciousness appear within my void. Of course, it was not much of a void anymore.

    The empty place of self I had originated from long ago now contained several thousand glimmering specks. Each was a slumbering consciousness.

    I stroked my awareness against the newest. Glimpses from their dreaming mind bled into my awareness.

    I saw a broken replay of the events that lead to their death. The images were distorted by the illogical workings of the unconscious mind.

    A gut spider¡¯s limbs stuck out of the limp body of their mate as it chased them through a tangled marshland. No matter how far they ran, they never escaped. They were not caught either, but their dreaming state could not discern such a rational thing.

    Gently, I calmed their frantic mind. A sliver of my will guided away the memories of death and trauma. I pulled forwards new memories.

    An adolescent memory of celebration came to the surface. It was the return of the first great hunt since their hatching.

    Each hatchling was given a cup of freshly drained blood from the great serpent that had been carried back to the village. The rich taste of a powerful creature¡¯s blood remained sharp in their memory even decades later.

    The snake¡¯s body, thicker around than a gam was tall, had been an incredible sight as it was carried into the village. No less incredible was the tracker¡¯s retelling of the hunt.

    The tracker seemed to dance as they retold the battle with exaggerated pantomimes, jumping around the roof of the hut they mounted for the retelling. All the while, the village circled around below.

    The adults had smiled and the other hunters had laughed at the interpretation. But in the eyes of the hatchlings, the snake redoubled in size and ferocity.

    The serpent became a towering foe that toppled trees with every strike. The hunters became great heroes whose every blow made the ground shutter.

    That memory had been one of the seeds that lead them to become a hunter. It planted a desire for adventure, and later to bring such joy back to the village.

    That seed was not dampened by the tracker¡¯s humorous narrative of how a fellow hunter had been flung so hard by the thrashing snake that they were driven head first into the bog.

    The miming of frantically kicking legs sticking straight up out of the mud made everyone laugh. Even the hunter in question grimaced good-naturedly.

    Other memories came to follow. I saw them, older and entering sexual maturity.

    Another of their generation who they seemed close with pulled them into an empty storage hut. With the excitement of reporting a new discovery, their friend told them what they learned from one of the village healers.

    What began as an intrigued explanation of where eggs came from evolved into tentative experimentation. The same healer who had instigated the whole thing later had to explain what to due with their eggs.

    Many more memories came. I saw the nerves of their first hunt and victorious joy after returning. I saw the first time they met the gam from a neighboring village that would become their partner.

    I even saw how much of a fool of themselves they made, in their own eyes, in that first meeting. I was sure the attempt to trade crafted poisons for unprocessed hides with the charming traveler had gone perfectly fine.

    However, in their mind, it was an awkward mess of stumbled wording where no posture they took seemed natural. It must have either been in their head or not mattered, because the traveler had become a close friend when they returned and settled down a decade later.

    The dreaming mind finally settled on a memory. It was not one that appeared of any note at first.

    They sat on the great branch of a tree near their village. It had been a lookout point cycled between the village hunters.

    After a time on duty, they noticed the approach of another gam. They quickly recognized it to be the traveler I had seen in their other memories.

    That traveler had settled in their village, and was now their partner and mate. With ease, they climbed up to their perch and settled in next to them.

    They asked their mate why they came. The response was simple.

    I could not recognize the words, the memory to abstract for such things. Instead, there was only the sentiment that this was where they wished to spend their time.

    The memory contained little more in the way of events. No enemy was fought. No discovery was made. No great choice taken.

    All they did was sit together and watch the night slowly come. With this memory found, I let the speck go.

    Like all the others within me, it radiated a sense of peace that filled my void with a sort of pleasant harmony. I had done everything I could.

    My eyes opened. I sat cross legged on a woven mat within a small tree hut. I had been using this as my de facto base for the last several years.

    I leaned forwards and back, before rolling my upper body in a full circle to stretch out. I was not materially strained. Even so, stretching after meditation had a certain appeal.

    No gam had a need for sleep, or even the ability to do so. However, many found meditation helpful for clearing their mind and replenishing their essence.

    I was no exception. I also preferred to be somewhere comfortable when doing so.

    I stood and glanced to the stones I had charged with essence at sunset. They were just ordinary rocks plucked from the marsh and given a bit of my essence.

    That essence had no direction beyond staying in the stone and seeping out at a consistent rate. The amount remaining quickly told me I should be heading to the nearest village.

    I did not normally meet up with my descendants on a prescheduled basis. In fact, I had been almost entirely secluded for several decades now.

    It had not always been like that. Way back when I had snuck past a sleeping flesh-crafted tarrasque and into the moors, I had been functionally incapable of survival.

    I could not count the number of times the flora or fauna had dismembered, eaten or captured me. The ones that captured their prey were the worst.

    It was fine if they ripped pieces off me and left with them. Even being swallowed whole just meant waiting to reach the other end.

    No, the ones that trapped and ate me slowly were the biggest pain. It was boring and I would have to escape or wait for the creature to die on its own.

    I was both weak and ignorant of the moors and their inhabitants. But, I had one thing that, eventually, overcame everything. I could not die.

    At first, I did not understand enough of how living creatures were meant to work. I thought I could just repair myself faster than others.

    It was not until a few months of observation that I realized most things simply die when truly damaged. I was the strange one, because I could not.

    For the first few years, I just went from the prey of one predator to another. My crude attempts at hiding or building shelters were easily seen through.

    The eggs I lay during that time faired even worse than me. Either I would leave them behind for scavengers to eat or take them with me to be eaten when something caught me.

    It was not until I got skilled enough to build a shelter in a place few predators would find that I kept a few fertilized eggs around the three months needed for them to hatch. The results had proven enlightening.

    The hatchlings were like me in almost every way. They looked like versions of me only a hand tall, hatched with language and implicit knowledge like I possessed and shared my constitution.

    No need to eat, drink or sleep. Temperature could not harm them and only the most aggressive toxins the moors could offer had an effect.

    In a year¡¯s time, four of them were almost as big as me. The other two did not survive that first year.

    And that was the key thing. I could not die. My children could. Over the decades, that came to mean many things.

    For those who lived, we discovered a year from hatching was all that was needed to reach sexual maturity and make hatchlings of their own. Still, it took over a decade for them to reach adulthood and stop developing.

    Many of us died in that time as we tried to understand how to survive and eventually thrive in the moors. The ability to inherit basic knowledge from our parents and our prodigious rate of reproduction aided greatly at that stage.

    Over the next century, we established ourselves as a people. The moors¡¯ secrets were clawed from the land at the cost of our stygian blood.

    All the while, I remained. I was the only one of what became the gam unable to fall. And as my descendants did, they returned to me. Because they were me.

    I could feel a tiny sliver of myself within every one of them. It did not give me any control over them. It did not even give me knowledge about them.

    All it did was let me know they were part of me in some way. That, and bring them back to the absent place within me when they died.

    When a gam passed on, they passed into me and became a slumbering mind floating in my void. I could not wake them or give them life again.

    All I could do was help them rest easier. For those who had trauma and fears, I lead their minds away from such things and towards what they cherished in life.

    It was not a lot, really. But, it was all I was capable of. Yet, maybe that would not always be the case.

    Before passing through the woven reeds that served as a door, I mentally checked my surroundings. The eyes of dozens of tiny insects showed me the currently empty area around my shelter.

    Knowing that was as confident as I could be, I passed by the few jars and boxes that composed my personal belongings and slipped outside. I was mostly relying on the safety of my location.

    Few mobile predators wander this close to my tree hut. That was partially due to the lack of large game. It was more due to the carnivorous vines that kept that game away.

    The only major predators that would hunt here were a species of giant spider called vine striders. They had exceptionally long legs that ended in narrow points.

    With them, they could step between the vine¡¯s latticework of feelers and avoid detection. I was safe from them because they were four times my height and could not hide from my insects.

    I directed essence towards one of the few patterns I had constructed within myself. Essence was the name my descendants had given to my profoundly terrible animus imitation.

    Instead of the souls every other creature seemed to have, gam hatched with essence sustaining them. The name came from the fact learning to use it was considered essential for survival.

    The more I studied the animus and souls of other creatures, the more I realized how wrong essence was. That did not mean it was in any way inferior.

    The illusion of tanned hide covering my back parted as thin arachnoid limbs sprouted. They grew far out of proportion to my body, reaching the length of a real vine strider.

    It had taken me centuries of trial and error to create an essence pattern capable of free form shapeshifting. I did not form most of the physical enhancing patterns hunters loved so much.

    The majority of my essence network was devoted to the adaptable shaping of material. More commonly known as magic.

    I still was not that strong. Even after almost seven centuries of life, my essence capacity had barely grown beyond what it did in the first few decades.

    My control and understanding still improved. That made wasting my capacity on patterns for strength and resilience foolish.

    Instead, I relied on my experience and only constructed patterns to help my magic. Still, shapeshifting was just too useful to not cultivate.

    Spider limbs found purchase across the branches and lifted me into the air. I skittered across the canopy, flies leaving their hiding places to trail in my wake.

 Chapter 4, Village

    The village I was approaching had been present for almost fifteen years now. That was quite a while.

    Villages are intended to be abandoned and reconstructed elsewhere when the territories of large predators shift. It was also not uncommon for something to attack a village without warning.

    That migratory mentality was clear as I came into view. The lower village was constructed on posts driven deep into the silt. With the posts as foundations small huts and connecting platforms made a little island above the murky water.

    Tree huts and hanging platforms filled the space above. They more than tripled the overall area of the village.

    It was all well crafted and sturdy enough. However, nothing was meant to last more than a year without significant repairs.

    I let my foot touch down on a branch affixing the end of a rope bridge. It was one of the farthest reaching structures in the village, existing solely as an easy lookout.

    My extra limbs retracted and unmade themselves. From my vantage, I could see activity on the platforms below.

    I did not wholly understand the reasons behind many of the customs that cropped up over the centuries. That did not mean I was not perfectly aware how most of them started.

    The lore keepers had gradually developed as a sort of teacher position. They were vital for keeping knowledge that was not actively used.

    Gam, like most creatures in the moors, had no natural lifespan. We would never age past adulthood or suffer illness or maiming.

    Most still died to one of the moors¡¯ many hazards in time. That was faster for hunters. The most reckless often died within decades.

    Those who chose to stay near a village and occupy their time with less dangerous things usually made it past a century. They could still fall to an attack on their village or the danger of relocating.

    I knew a few of those from the early days had not yet returned to me. Their cultivation had far outpaced my own.

    Their essence networks gave them flesh tougher than a tarrasque¡¯s hide and strength that could uproot ancient trees with a single blow. They were not immortals, but I doubted many of them would join me any time soon.

    No, few of the lore keepers were anywhere near that old. Still, most were over a hundred.

    Lore keepers had such reliable lifespans because they kept the knowledge that could not be reasonably left to active hunters, healers or crafters teaching their students.

    They also directed celebrations and rituals. For all intents and purposes, they lead the gam.

    The feast I was now looking down on had been invented by a lore keeper two hundred years ago. It was originally a festival to help raise spirits when their village had to split after growing too large.

    Over the years, it had become a celebration for any time part of the village was going to leave for an extended period. It now served as a way to mix the sadness of a departure with the celebration of a new journey.

    Greetings came from passing gam hanging around in the upper village. I greeted back those I recognized and a few I did not.

    It had been longer than I realized since I visited this specific village. Many faces were familiar, but I doubted others had even been lain last time I was here.

    We had originally bred as quickly as we could manage. That was exceptionally quickly.

    Our bodies had an unfertilized egg inside them at all times. It would be replaced by the time we finished laying it.

    Without regard for conservation of mass, we could make a functionally limitless number of offspring. Three months after being lain, those fertilized eggs would hatch already knowing how to speak and function to a degree.

    We did not even have to limit our population itself. There was vast unused space in the moors, and gam did not require any form of sustenance.

    No, the issue was a limit in parenting. Villages parented collectively. In most cases, it was not even tracked or known whose egg any given hatchling had come from.

    Most gam were happy to contribute to shaping the hatchlings into well adjusted adults. The problem was that worked best when there were only a few hatchlings.

    Back when we let every egg hatch, there were so many hatchlings that there was no way for the outnumbered adults to mentor them. The result I could only describe as cultural rot.

    Hatchlings had language and some implicit knowledge. What they lacked was a strong sense of self and understanding of positive behavior for themselves and others.

    Without the ability to imprint behavior from those who had already learned such things, they turned to other hatchlings. That created a self destructive cycle that generally sucked for everyone.

    There had been a few brief attempts to discourage sex. That had quickly proven ineffective.

    Now, gam had as much sex as they wanted. We just broke the eggs before they could develop.

    An egg shell was about as thick as my smallest finger when lain. That would thin as they neared hatching. It took a rock to smash or file the shell, making them an inexhaustible material for crafting.

    A village would only have about half a dozen hatchlings at a time. That number may increase if the village suffers casualties.

    I noticed a gam I recognized below. They sat in a calmer part of the crowd, sipping at a cup alongside a few others.

    They participated in the conversation, part of the pleasant afterglow of the party proper. Yet, a sense of absence from their surroundings came through in their posture and faded expression.

    I did not recognize them from the last time I had visited this village. No, I recognized them from the dreams of the gam who recently came back to me.

    I carefully wove essence around myself, taking the time to do it correctly. Then, I stepped off of the platform and fell the twenty feet to the lower village.

    My body failed to gain momentum as the spell inhibited it. I ended up landing lightly on the platform holding the village above the water.

    It was a useful trick, letting me fall any distance and land as if stepping down a stair. Too bad it took at least thirty seconds to prepare and gave me no way to ascend again. Still, I was glad to have developed it.

    A few gam took note of my unusual arrival. They were likely interested because caster¡¯s who specialized in anything other than healing were uncommon. In truth, I had not specialized outside healing. I had not specialized at all.

    The pattern for casting was both deceptively simple in its design and complex in its usage. It was a pattern for making customized temporary essence patterns.

    Every gam hatched with essence inside their body. It held them together and let them grow and heal. It was only when they started shaping that essence with their will that it could do more.

    Using that will, a gam could form a complex loop of essence called an essence spiral. From that, they could construct and fuel patterns.

    Designing a new essence pattern took skill, effort and time in great quantities to make anything worthwhile. However, learning one from someone else was just a matter of how much essence you could control and the finesse of that control.

    That really was the limiting factor. It was easy to make as much essence as you could use.

    Most gam bled the stuff off in great clouds. It was at the point that areas we inhabit had a thick ambient fog of essence only visible to essence sight.

    No, the limit on a gam¡¯s power was how well they could manipulate essence. You can only construct as many patterns in your essence network as your will allows.

    The casting pattern was a sort of work around for that limit. Patterns take time and concentration to form. They take even more to alter.

    The casting pattern was something we developed to get around that by letting a gam form disposable essence patterns. They could be constructed with their own spiral and sent out to perform a task.

    Forming it took about half the capacity an average gam started with. Of course, capacity with essence increased with use and experience.

    The casting pattern was great for me because my extensive knowledge of essence could be leveraged through it. I only had the essence capacity expected of a century old gam.

    That was very useful. It just was not what I should have for being over six times that age.

    I stopped near the group I had seen from above. The gam whose mate recently returned to me did not seem to notice my presence.

    That did not apply to Dreel. Dreel was the lore keeper I was, sort of, here to see. They were also a bit¡­

    ¡°Elder Sheth!¡± The cry of shocked delight rang through the otherwise quite corner.

    Dreel popped to their feet. ¡°Dreel, good to see you again.¡± They seemed to vibrate with an energy utterly ill fit to the somber air.

    ¡°Same, same¡­¡± They grabbed my hand and started shaking it with enthusiasm. I was not even sure where they got the gesture.

    Shaking hands was a custom of some of the outlanders. Those trained to negotiate with them often used it to greet those specific groups.

    At some point Dreel, and only Dreel, had fixated on the gesture as the next big thing. I had to admit the gam lacked a unified custom of physical greeting.

    It was not unreasonable to adopt one. However, Dreel had been going at it with the level of¡­ let¡¯s say delight they put towards everything they did.

    ¡°I am so glad you made it for the festivities. I was worried when you weren¡¯t here at the start, or the middle. But I just knew, knew you couldn¡¯t resist the end. Everyone, this is Sheth!¡± They pulled to the side as if revealing me to the three sitting before us.

    ¡°I would introduce myself, but Dreel seems to have covered that.¡± I added. Dreel laughed and the little circle made their own more placating version, save for one.

    I turned a more serious gaze to the reason I was actually here. ¡°I noticed your not entirely healed, could I be of any help.¡± The quiet gam with a partially healed slash at their side looked surprised I addressed them.

    ¡°I¡­ yes, thank you.¡± They added nothing else, and I did not seek more.

    I never knew how to help in this situation. I knew what had happened. I always knew.

    Yet, having knowledge of who had died and how that person felt about those left behind did not mean they knew me. I only know what it is like to be in their shoes.

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    Without exchanging any words, I crouched down and placed my hands near the wound. I wove my essence into the injury and began assessing the damage.

    I was not a healer. I was what a healer started as.

    Healers were the most common casters. They started by forming the pattern for casting. That was because healing worked best if it could be easily adapted to the problem.

    They became true healers after forming patterns to help them automatically repair tissue. That let them still guide the progress, but have automated systems to help.

    I had similar systems. The difference was mine were set up to improve my ability to process anything I was shaping from essence.

    In other words, I was better at anything I did with casting. It also did not go as far as support made to perform one task.

    I relied on the fact I understood a gam¡¯s anatomy perfectly to be an effective healer. That anatomy being my own.

    The slash was healed as far as sealing the sides together. Neither the skin or severed muscles below had been reattached on a cellular level.

    Any movement from those muscles would either not be possible or cause more damage. That would leave them mostly stationary for at least a week, unless a healer put more time into fixing the underlying damage.

    I used the knowledge of my own body to replace the damaged cells with flawless imitations of mine. Luckily, all gam were pretty anatomically similar to me. The reason behind that should be self evident.

    I pulled my hands away. ¡°You can move freely now.¡± I stepped back.

    ¡°Thank you.¡± It was not loud, and was just the slightest bit hollow. I nodded in response.

    Laying a hand on Dreel¡¯s shoulder, I turned them away. ¡°I have things to discuss with Dreel here, so I am afraid we must leave you to enjoy the festivities.¡± I pulled Dreel off.

    I did actually need them. However, it could have waited. I got the sense removing them would be the best for everyone.

    The mourning mate had what appeared to be their friends by them and was not hiding away. That was the best thing at this point.

    Dreel leaned in towards me as I led them away. ¡°Thanks for healing Orthis. They just lost their partner last night. They are still so young, and you know how it is. I was trying to cheer them up¡­¡± I decided I should interrupt before they just kept going.

    ¡°Yes, I know. You were trying quite admirably. I¡¯m sorry I have to take you away.¡± I was not. However, there was no reason to be honest about it.

    ¡°No, I should be apologizing for being unavailable. We had an appointment, and here I am. I really am a sucker for these things. You know I am not really supposed to be helping with this? I just cannot resist checking Prap¡¯s work. It¡¯s not that I don¡¯t trust their skill. It¡¯s just so hard to break the habit¡­¡± I listened to Dreel¡¯s laments about handing power over to their apprentice.

    Occasionally, I gave a nod or generic confirmative phrase to let them know they were being heard. They did not really want me to add anything of note.

    Dreel was always like this at the start of any meeting. It was not a very productive habit. However, I did not really mind listening to all their personal thoughts.

    Oddly, the trait had proven useful when negotiating with the outlanders. It had taken me a while to figure out why.

    The alma, the outlanders own name for themselves, were almost unanimously uncomfortable around us. It was quite obvious for the guards and anyone else who was not meant to talk with us.

    The only members of their expedition who hid it well were the traders charged with negotiating. Even the traders were nervous, they just did a good job suppressing it.

    I had eventually realized that Dreel¡¯s fifteen or more minutes of rambling about their day to day life and thoughts on it was impossible to remain nervous through. It was just too inane.

    The alma would sit down acting like we were about to skin them alive. By the time Dreel had let real negotiations start, they would have completely forgotten to be afraid.

    Exasperated, very possible. But, not afraid. And not having our trade partner afraid of us was helpful. It became much easier to negotiate when we were simply other people.

    Dreel snatched a jar from the row at the village center when we passed. All the while, they continued to inform me how various people I did not know had been doing.

    We slipped into a hut and I took a seat on a reed mat. Dreel filled two cups from the jar, and I accepted one.

    The cup was crafted from an egg shell. The top had been ground away to let it serve as a cup and bottom flattened just enough to stay upright.

    Like most reused items, ornate patterns had been etched onto the outside. That was the inevitable product of crafters having more free time than they could reasonably use.

    Gam had no need to do anything to survive. As long as we avoided hazards, we would just continue existing.

    In theory, a village could maximize their survival by hiding inside and only taking actions to insure their village was safe. They did not have to hunt or forage and endanger themselves.

    That was rational. But, rare was the person who could sit in a hut doing nothing for years on end.

    Some would invent games and lead the villagers in activities and gatherings to entertain everyone. They would become lore keepers.

    Others would refine their casting and learn how to heal injuries with increasing skill. They would become healers.

    Still others would develop a passion for turning raw materials into useful or artistic items. They would become crafters.

    Many would even turn to the excitement and thrills of traveling far from their village to collect resources. They would become hunters.

    I took a sip from the cup. The taste of those hunters¡¯ success bloomed across my tongue.

    Blood was an excellent example of something we had no reason to do and did anyway. The gam got no material benefit from drinking blood.

    Instead, it was entirely recreational. That was demonstrated as a warm sensation passed down my throat and spread into my body.

    The liquid simply dead ended in a small pouch within my chest. From there it rapidly vanished into nothing without any true effect.

    Our bodies did not as much digest blood as destroy it. I had no idea why.

    It was not like we needed it for anything. Yet, it was enjoyable to drink.

    ¡°I assume the party is already prepared to set out?¡± I asked Dreel, once the report of everything going on around them had wained.

    ¡°Oh yes, completely. We have eight this time, with your addition. Three of our best defensive hunters. A tracker. Me and another negotiator.¡± I leaned back with an eyebrow raised at the math.

    ¡°That is only six. With me seven. Who is the eighth?¡± Dreel reacted to my question as if they had not noticed.

    ¡°Kirs is coming too. They slipped my mind.¡± I raised an eyebrow at that.

    ¡°What skills do they have?¡± It was not out of the question for someone without a needed skill to come on an expedition.

    It might be to gain useful experience or for personal curiosity. That was sort of what I was doing. I was coming along for learning purposes.

    ¡°For this, carrying bags. Kirs changes paths often. Right now, they are more of a pet keeper than anything.¡± That was interesting.

    Changing focus was not that uncommon. Many started with one skill that they spent some or part of their time on.

    Healers drifted into crafters. Hunters decided to live more cautiously and become lore keepers.

    And some never really settled on any skill. They would either jump from skillset to skillset or focus on multiple at a time.

    ¡°Pet keeper? Have they been training the wildlife to do their bidding?¡± My tone was amused, but it was possible.

    I had seen a few gam over the years who managed to train some of the moors non-sapient inhabitants. They usually achieved it by capturing more impressionable species as infants and raising them.

    The urser also trained a species of bat in a similar way. The species normally hunted in familial units, with the offspring deferring to their parents. That made the species susceptible to imprinting whatever raised them as a superior.

    Urser were the native sapient inhabitants of the moors. They had been here before us and were an occasional source of knowledge in our early days.

    An urser stood at three times the hight of a gam and resembled a bipedal bear. Despite their size, they could hide within the moors to the degree that most gam would never see one.

    They were not actively hostile to us. However, their society was ancient, secretive and insular.

    Their main population refused to interact with the gam. The only contact we had was with their mavericks.

    I doubted Kirs had learned training methods from the urser. Training in general was just too impractical to have ever caught on, even as a hobby.

    ¡°Oh, no. Pet keeping is more of a joke. Is that even possible?¡± Dreel seemed surprised at my miss interpretation.

    ¡°Yes, if rarely worth it. I am not sure I get the joke.¡± I had a hunch Dreel was just forgetting I had never met Kirs.

    ¡°It¡¯s because they take their pet ve with them everywhere.¡± That made a bit more sense.

    Ve were an odd, if infrequent, part if gam ecology. By the time a gam reached sexual maturity and developed a fertile egg inside them, it would normally end up fertilized before long.

    With our naturally high sex drives and ability to fertilize ourselves, it was unlikely one of us would go more than a few days without laying a fertilized egg. It might be from mating or on our own. Either way, a fertilized egg would be produced and replaced by our body.

    A lot of gam never even realized that there was a repercussion to not laying. If an egg stayed inside for a month without being lain, it would be involuntarily lain unfertilized.

    It was also possible to voluntarily lay an unfertilized egg. It was just a matter of consciously moving the muscles that started the process and the body would take over to finish it.

    Sometimes a young gam would not be told how their maturing body worked. If they did not figure it out, they would end up laying an unfertilized egg each month.

    There were also gam who lay unfertilized eggs as a quicker alternative to fertilization. The orgasm from it was not as drastic as a fertilized one, but the whole process took less than thirty seconds from start to finish.

    It was still enough to clear the mind of stress and improve focus afterwards. That made it a habit some used in place of the longer process of fertilizing themselves.

    That said, unfertilized eggs did not come about that often. If they did, and were given a month to gestate, they would hatch into a ve.

    Ve were serpent like creatures that looked like smaller gam tails. They had no orifices or sensory organs and functioned without the need for either.

    I was pretty sure I had looked like a ve prior to merging with G?ri The¡¯s body. Even so, ve showed no sign of sapience or higher reasoning.

    Ve had no interest in most creatures and were very affectionate towards gam. If left in the wild, they would roam freely and hide upon detecting a non-gam.

    They were very uncommon do to being incredibly weak and not reproducing on their own. Any that wandered into the moors would be quickly picked off by a predator.

    Only those kept as pets survived. That made Kirs keeping one or more pretty normal. However, taking their ve everywhere they went was still a little bit eccentric.

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure taking ve along is a good idea.¡± Dreel looked surprised at my concern.

    ¡°Why not?¡± It was a fair question. Ve are generally thought of as utterly harmless.

    ¡°You don¡¯t know what happens when ve come near an outlander.¡± I was not surprised, considering how unlikely it was to happen.

    ¡°Ve are hyper aggressive towards them. They will go after an alma until physically stopped. Nothing you do will dissuade them.¡± I clarified. I had only tested it once, after which I was careful to never bring one along again.

    ¡°Really, that¡¯s bizarre. Why would they do that?¡± Unsurprisingly, the idea of ve being aggressive towards anything was foreign.

    I had my own theory why. Although, I had not yet been able to fully test it.

    ¡°Based on my experience, ve will attack any sapient that is not a gam. I don¡¯t know how they know the difference, but they do.¡± That was not entirely true. I did not believe what they did was exactly an attack.

    I had first discovered it during an unfortunate incident with an urser. The urser had been willing to counsel our people, and had finally excepted an invitation to be hosted at one of our villages.

    When they came within eye line of a villager¡¯s pet ve, the ve had immediately started slithering towards them. It had tried to sneak up behind the guest and lunge at their lower back.

    Being as highly trained as all their kin, our guest simply cut the ve out of the air mid lunge. I suspected that event contributed to our uncomfortable relationship with their people.

    The unlikelihood of a ve surviving to find a non-gam sapient outside a village was so low I had never seen what happens when they succeed. I could have tried to make it happen as an experiment.

    Unfortunately, the only non-gam that were sapient within the moors were the urser and outlander expeditions. Both could have serious repercussions if I experimented on them.

    Still, I remembered how the ve split open as it lunged. It looked like it was trying to bite the base of their spine.

    The remains showed it split its end to create a horizontal slash. The slash extended a bit over an inch down its body and was reminiscent of a toothless mouth.

    I found fine filaments inside that I suspected would have extended to interweave with the target¡¯s spinal cord. It was the external view of exactly what my original body did to assimilate G?ri The¡¯s body.

    I was suspicious enough to put the ve I tested with the alma inside a narrow woven basket. It had still violently tried to escape when we came close.

    There had been no opportunity to confirm the details. However, I was pretty sure ve were intended to merge with the bodies of non-gam.

    ¡°I had no idea. Are you sure? I will need to disappoint Kirs. They seemed so excited to.¡± I just sipped my blood and let them plan how to handle their villagers.

 Chapter 5, Fly On The Hat

    The outlanders were an anomaly within the moors. They had no permanent settlements. Instead, they traveled from their homeland in tightly clustered expeditions.

    By their very nature, they seemed at constant war with the environment around them. A war they just as constantly lost.

    The first appeared over a hundred and fifty years ago. Or rather, that was when I first became aware of them.

    Initially, everything scared them to the point attempts at contact were impossible. However, some of the gam had been able to make ties with outlanders who returned on a yearly basis.

    Those ties quickly expanded as our value became obvious. That was because their entire reason for coming here was to gather the materials we often had in great supply.

    Hide, bones and just about every part of the beasts we hunted were what they treasured. While we drank the blood and used some of the remains for crafting, they would trade for the inevitable excess.

    They also loved many plants that we could easily harvest. And, it was a good thing we did, because the outlanders were terrible at it.

    They referred to their species as the alma, and were far different from the norm in the moors. The insects that ignored gam would swarm around alma.

    The bites made them bleed and often killed them as if toxic. That applied to many of the substances we found harmless.

    They needed to eat the food they brought with them several times a day. This almost constant eating made it hard for them to stay for prolonged periods.

    They also needed to sleep every day for several hours and ran out of energy when performing continuous tasks. That was all on top of being unbelievably fragile.

    I was not wholly unfamiliar with such creatures. While most of the moors¡¯ inhabitance used the same form of animus, there were exceptions.

    The terms G?ri The had left in my mind labeled the common form unlife animus. The other type only appeared in small animals.

    That second type was life animus. And, it was what alma used. I glanced up to the flies swarming around me.

    Small insects like them were my main test subjects for studying life animus. My discoveries had shown why so few creatures run on life animus. I had to assume most died off. It was just that impractical.

    It failed to properly control the body, leaving anything using it too rely on physical chemistry to keep themselves alive. That meant they died the moment that chemistry was disrupted.

    They had to eat and drink. Everything they ingested would them go through the chemical reactions within them. It came out as one or another form of excrement.

    That was not even the worse flaw. They were in a constant state of systemic failure.

    The perpetuating chain reactions would become less and less orderly the longer they continued. After a while, the cells would become unable to operate as needed for survival.

    The unfortunate creature might become to weak to escape predators or find the food to perpetuate. It could also fail to defend against a bacteria capable of disrupting its chemistry.

    And if it avoided outside hazards, it would die when one of its systems simply failed. If it used life animus, it was only a matter of tine before it succumbed.

    I wondered if the name life animus was intended to be ironic. After all, creature¡¯s fueled by the stuff were dying from the start.

    Of course, there were exceptions and anomalies. Most creatures running on unlife animus lacked the flaws of life animus.

    But, some had what appeared to be forms of one or more such weakness. Pill beasts were a good example.

    They were unliving, as far as I could tell, but their souls could not create new matter for them to heal or grow. That required them to eat. Otherwise, they would stop growing and slowly break down from minor injuries.

    Urser were similar. If they did not eat meat occasionally, they would grow weak and fragile.

    Some creatures also needed to go inactive on a regular schedule. Others had a limited time before their body would shut down and die.

    All these creatures registered as being unliving to my senses. It almost seemed like they had flaws built into their souls.

    I watched Dreel sitting across from the alma I took to be the leader or chosen negotiator. Beside each leader sat a back up representative of their side.

    The events were reaching me through the senses of a fly perched on the hat of a nearby guard. My actual body was in a tree about half a mile away.

    The sound was slightly distorted by the fly¡¯s vastly different processing of sound. Still, I could tell Dreel was talking about how hard telling Kirs they could not come was.

    They did not seem to be explaining why Kirs had to stay behind. With how eclectic the narrative was, I doubted anyone noticed.

    The alma sitting across from them was a green and brown skinned male. The two pigments speckled in a way that faintly reminded me of moss. However, it still appeared smooth.

    The alma were reluctant to share information about themselves or the land they came from. I got the impression they were commanded not to by some authority.

    Even so, I had met with them many times and collected quite a lot of information. Not least of which was a fair mastery of their language.

    The language was learned from the leaders, but most other information was gleaned from guards and lower ranked members. They shared the same apprehension towards us.

    If anything, it was stronger. However, persistent friendly interaction slowly eroded that caution.

    One thing I had found from both observation and inquiry was that alma could have a wide variety of colorations. Unlike the gam¡¯s monochrome pigmentation, alma could have essentially anything.

    Their hight ranged from four to eight feet. That put them far above the gam¡¯s average of three feet.

    They were also build far heavier than us. Alma tended towards sturdy frames and significant muscles. It did vary, but I had never seen one that came close to the lanky build of a gam.

    Another major difference between us was the two variants within their species. As explained to me, half of their species possessed only female reproductive organs and the other half only had the male ones.

    That was not an entirely alien trait. A handful of the species in the moors had a similar delegation. However, they were anomalies.

    The majority of species had the normal full set of organs in all individuals. A smaller percentage reproduced asexually.

    I had eventually discovered how different their reproduction was from the gam. The biggest breakthrough came when I managed to convince one of the new guards to mate with me.

    Gam resembled alma females, if unusually slender ones. We had the same wider hips and narrower shoulders.

    That apparently made us attractive to some of their males. At least, I had been to the male guard.

    The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

    There were certainly differences. The alma females had fatty organs on their chest that the males lacked.

    I had learned the breasts were intended to produce a nutritious fluid fed to their young. Gam hatchlings did not need sustenance of any kind, so it was not surprising we lacked such organs.

    The males also had nipples, a component of the organ. Asking why they had nipples if they could not work revealed that the alma had no idea.

    The guard had been adventurous enough to not care about the difference. They had only really started panicking when I lay my egg.

    Apparently, alma were viviparous. On top of that, the offspring remained inside the female for almost a year after fertilization.

    This was highly problematic for them. The growing offspring would inhibit the alma more and more as it grew in size.

    By the time it came out, it was at a size that made the process dangerous and traumatic. That was not a completely unfamiliar problem.

    Like the gam, reproduction was trivial for many of the moors inhabitants. However, it ranged all the way to species that had to rip their entire body in half and regenerate into two new specimens.

    Me laying an egg after it was fertilized by the alma equivalent of a tail had disturbed the clearly inexperienced guard. There had been a similar effect when he tried to explain what he called a blow job.

    A closer look at my teeth had dissuaded any interest in that. Apparently, they reminded him of the teeth of a giant carnivorous fish from the alma homeland.

    I took that egg with me and let it hatch. The resulting hatchling seemed no different from any gam, although I could see a vague resemblance to their sire.

    The expedition leader¡¯s backup was a blue skinned alma female. She seemed to be taking notes.

    I hoped she was not recording Dreel¡¯s laments. It would be a staggering waste of valuable paper. Then again, it might be the only way to decode the narrative.

    I had not yet been able to convince any female guards to mate. It might have been my feminine appearance in their species¡¯ terms.

    It seemed they only felt mating instincts towards the other sex. That was logical, although I had gotten a few comments that made me think there were exceptions to this.

    I also suspected that the females were less receptive to my strategy of asking them directly if they could show me how alma mate. I was not sure why.

    A few attempts had resulted in uncomfortable and vague answers. Those did not really expand my knowledge.

    Other cases had not been received as well. Some of those ended with my party members dragging me away for causing a disturbance.

    Of course, that was not the only way I got them to do that. The most recent time I had been dragged away was the reason Dreel was currently not letting me near the negotiations.

    I had been talking with a pair of guards. The topic of how we hunted a giant bear whose pelt was being exchanged came up.

    I ended up telling the story of how a particularly large specimen of the species was taken down. It was an account from years back.

    I had been serving as the group¡¯s trapper, and chose the story for how the quarry broke free unexpectedly. I narrated the battle and how the beast bit off my head.

    Enraptured and shocked, they asked if I was resurrected. It took a little clarification to determine the word¡¯s meaning.

    I was equally shocked to discover that it was returning life to the dead. According to the guards, it was a rare art in their homeland.

    Still, it was only a matter of convincing someone skilled in the art to return the dead to life. They mentioned a group called the Church of the Creator who contained such skilled individuals.

    That made me wonder if the ability to resurrect their dead was how the alma survived. It would explain how a species so fragile could keep up their population.

    Once they realized I was not resurrected, they asked how I survived. So, I pulled out a knife and stabbed myself in the head.

    I thought it was hilarious. Unfortunately, the lore keeper leading my party thought the screaming and panicking was disruptive.

    Honestly, they way over reacted. The blade barely came out the other side. It was not like the head had anything vital for a gam.

    The tissue that filled the skull was similar to that in other bones. That being, it manufactured blood to help us heal faster.

    Since then, I had met with several different expeditions via different villages. That let me farther confirm the existence of resurrection.

    However, Dreel¡¯s village still remembered how much of a disturbance I made last time. Dreel was incredibly nice about it. But, they were not letting me near the expedition itself.

    I had made extensive attempts to figure out resurrection since that first mention. The fly I was using to observe the proceedings was one of the results.

    Flies and other insects made excellent test subjects. They were easy to capture and contain. In addition, there simplistic biology and weak souls made it easy to use magic on them.

    I had been unable to restore them to proper life. Simply repairing their body was not effective.

    The cells would not function without a soul. It appeared even souls formed from life animus served some part in keeping cells alive.

    Attempts to restore the soul were slightly more promising. Souls broke down once the fly died.

    It was a slow process. The parts would remain together for a time, before coming apart as the animus ran out.

    The only thing I could find that vanished immediately was the source. A source was a tiny speck hidden within all the souls I examined.

    It was not a structure. Or, I could not detect anything about it beyond its status as a point.

    From that point, animus flowed out and was distributed to the entire soul. It was the thing I had been lacking when I created essence.

    The source vanished moments after the body died. From that point, it was only a matter of time before the soul dissolved into increasingly unrecognizable shrapnel.

    I tried to stop the source from vanishing. The problem was I could not identify where it went or how to hold it.

    It would not have done much good if I succeeded. Experimenting on the source was mainly curiosity.

    I was hoping that I could learn how to restore the gam within me to life. That meant manipulating a creature¡¯s source was unlikely to help.

    Gam had no sources. It was entirely possible the method for resurrecting an alma would be of no use for a creature fueled by essence.

    Even so, the possibility that I could give new life to my descendants was not one I could ignore. That is why I tried using essence next.

    I was able to convert flies, and later other small creatures, to use essence. It was only a matter of flowing essence through them until they started trying to use it.

    Once they started using it themselves, essence would take over more and more of their soul. Eventually, all animus would be replaced and the source would vanish.

    This did not seem to harm the creatures and gave me more appropriate test subjects. Unfortunately, I still could not resurrect them.

    The flies¡¯ essence networks still gave out when they were heavily damaged, and I could not get them going again. I had ended up with a bunch of flies and small animals in my void. That was interesting, but not helpful.

    The only true benefit I got from all these attempts was when I tried feeding animus into a dead soul. The source was what provided animus. I had theorized I could just supply that myself.

    I was not actually able to make animus. However, I could command essence to take on all the properties of animus. With how much time I spent studying animus, the imitation was indistinguishable to me.

    By making a link to the spot the source had been, I could provide a best replica of unlife animus. It sort of worked.

    The flies bodies received the animus and started working again. However, the soul remained inactive and they lost all will.

    They would just sit there and do nothing. The body lived, but they did not.

    Further experimentation let me manipulate them through my essence turned animus. I could puppet them like tiny extensions of myself.

    It was a noticeable drain on my essence and focus for larger animals. However, flies were easy to supply and control.

    My reanimated flies were spread across the camp I was not allowed in. I did not mind.

    This was an effective way to observe the expedition. Plus, it was better if they never knew I was here.

    I told Dreel I was leaving the party once we arrived. They would not be expected to meet up with me on their way back.

    That was because I was not planning to go back. Or, at least not immediately.

    I was making no progress on restoring my descendants to life. The only hint I had was from the alma, and it said the answer was in their homeland.

    It did not hurt that I had always been curious about the place the alma came from. I was going to go there sooner or later. It might as well be now.

    The expedition was at least fifty strong. I was guessing around thirty of those were guards. The rest had jobs harder for me to determine.

    Following the alma should not be especially difficult. They were not very observant or subtle. My flies would only make that easier.

    All in all, I was looking forward to whatever I would discover. I might even find out how to help those who slumbered within.

 Chapter 6, Horse

    I had been following the alma for almost three months. Traveling in the moors was normally a careful affair of avoiding hazards and leaving no evidence of your passing.

    That did not apply for the alma. They just cut across the land in a straight line.

    Cutting through the underbrush like that resulted in frequent assaults from minor hazards. Various wildlife attacked the alma for destroying their habitat.

    The abundance of armed guards were enough to handle the assault. Chopping through toxic plants posed a greater threat.

    Several of them ended up disabled after touching toxic sap or pollen. The use of enchanted antidotes prevented casualties. But, they were still unable to work for a few days.

    The process was a strange mixture of moronic and impressive. It was a bit like watching an enraged tarrasque smash through the forest in a straight line, rather than maneuver around the trees.

    They could have avoided so much effort and danger by going around obstacles. Yet, the straight line was faster. That was, if it did not kill them.

    The liberal usage of healing potions kept any of the many injuries from having true consequences. I had traded for such items before.

    They were the product of the alma¡¯s form of casting. As far as I could tell, their magic involved the utilization of their souls.

    The lack of forthcoming sapients within the moors had limited my investigations. I had mostly studied the instinctual magic of beasts.

    Beasts used a particular part of their soul to fabricate excess animus and the secondary material that gave souls structure into spells. They basically made miniature souls without a source to go out and change the world until they ran dry.

    If that sounded a lot like how my casting pattern worked, that was because we observed the wildlife¡¯s casting to develop it. The mechanics were quite different, but the idea was the same.

    Every soul I had studied had the mechanism for casting. That meant everything with a soul could learn magic.

    That said, you could also say every gam could learn to juggle. Simply having hands did not mean they would take the time and effort to develop the skill.

    Animals used it in very minor ways. The alma clearly took it much farther. I based that on the items they traded.

    Healing potions were an impressive example. I could strictly make something similar with my casting pattern. However, my imitations were much weaker and often unstable.

    That was another reason I was following them. I wanted to see how intelligent creatures used magic.

    The usage of such items dropped off as we reached a part of the moors I had never seen before. The constant marshy soil I was used too started to be replaced by drier and more solid ground.

    There were places in the moors that had solid ground. But, they were small islands in the omnipresent swamp.

    This place was different. The ground I walked on was hard and even the air felt lighter.

    I could not see water anywhere. The only exceptions were rivers that flowed with a speed and clarity I was unfamiliar with. They carved deep into the soil and did not bleed outside their banks.

    Fascinated by the first such river I encountered, I stepped into the water. It flowed past my calves. The rapid movement was not something I associated with water.

    Water flowed in currents, but not this intensely. I stepped out of the water. Having regained perspective, I stepped in again.

    I repeated this pattern another half a dozen times. I might have been a bit bored.

    It was not especially surprising I never investigated this area. There were quite a few gam villages at this point.

    Even so, we did not objectively cover that much distance. It felt like a large territory because distance was misleading in the moors.

    To move safely, you had to go slowly and take twisting paths around hazards. It would take me far longer to travel this far on my own.

    It was hard to travel in a straight line. Most of our exploration involved investigating new territory geographically close to us.

    I had only been able to travel straight like this because I was following the path of destruction the alma left. It was a point to be said for there approach.

    It risked stumbling on something that could wipe them out with ease. Yet, it did get them to their destination faster than caution could.

    The underbrush became thinner and trees sparser as we continued. Then, a week after the ground grew hard, the forest ended all together.

    I was shocked when my foremost flies came out into a great expanse without trees as far as they could see. Thin reedy plants completely hid the soil.

    A long faded knowledge not my own told me I was seeing a plain of grass. The implicit knowledge from my body had mostly faded after the first few years.

    I retained any knowledge that did present itself. But, new information from nowhere was an uncommon occurrence at this point.

    G?ri The must have been very familiar with grass. I did not get a lot of detail, but it was enough to understand this was a wholly new environment.

    It was a few more hours before the alma had completely left the tree cover. I trailed far behind.

    I stopped at the edge. This was a bit of a problem. I could get close to the expedition because of the thick vegetation.

    I could maneuver through the moors with far greater skill than they could see through it. That did not apply to this open space.

    I ended up waiting for their stragglers to get far enough ahead that my control over the flies was straining. Then, I started down the trail stomped flat in the grass.

    Night was falling when the alma¡¯s destination became clear. I had seen plenty of buildings in my life. The gam tried a wide range of shelters over the years.

    But, nothing was like the sprawling cluster of colossal structures the alma approached. Solid buildings as tall as some trees surrounded a far larger structure.

    The central building was no taller than the others. Yet, it seemed more like several of the smaller ones branching off each other.

    I could not easily tell what the buildings were made from. But, the central one was obviously different. It seemed darker and lacked the sharply angled roofs of those around it.

    The expedition was met by a group of three alma riding steeds I did not recognize. The steeds loosely resembled a species of giant deer that roamed the moors.

    That said, the resemblance was more in general shape and size than the details of their appearance. These creatures had the defined muscles and frame of a creature built for speed.

    The riders met with the expedition leader and received a quick report of safe returns and profitable bounties. Once they confirmed nothing had gone wrong, the riders led the trail of tired people back.

    I was interested to see most of the returning alma disperse into the surrounding buildings. Only the leader and a few alma I knew were important to the expedition headed directly to the larger building.

    Most of the expedition carried massive packs of gear and supplies. Those were all dropped in from a building I now suspected was made from planked wood.

    The bag carriers mostly headed to other buildings, but a few stayed and greeted the alma who came out to bring the bags inside. Following the new alma inside revealed a massive storage room.

    The whole building was for storing the equipment and spoils of the expedition. Based on the stacks and towers of crates, this was far from the only expedition.

    Investigating the central building revealed it to be made from stone. Large blocks of carved stone had been fitted together with the slightest of seams.

    The fly I landed on a wall detected magic within it, but not what the spell did. I could use the link between me and the reanimated flies as a target for casting.

    However, it was a bit like trying to paint with your toes while doing a handstand¡­ if your head was submerged in murky water. I could barely tell what I was doing and had little control.

    My true body did not come in sight of the compound until it was truly dark. That was good, since I clearly needed to find a hiding place.

    There were signs of activity all around the buildings themselves. Wooden barriers clearly designed for keeping in their steeds cordoned off the land.

    The grass within was short to the ground. The culprits were grazing when my flies first appeared. Now, none could be seen.

    I did not leave the tall grass. Instead, I found a place in the grass not easily visible from any path. There, I started digging.

    Long before sunrise, I had buried myself a few feet under the soil. I was sure anyone who stood above me would notice the loose dirt and imperfectly replaced grass.

    But, the eyes of my flies revealed my spot to be hidden from anywhere else. My present safely buried, I settled in for a period of observation.

    Over the next week, I discovered much about the alma settlement. Mainly, I discovered I needed a way to get closer.

    The flies let me pick up conversation and follow the inhabitance in their daily life. That was how I learned this was just an outpost.

    The compound seemed to exist as a launching point for expeditions into the moors. They equipped groups heading out and gave a place to recuperate when they returned.

    There were long term residence. The outpost had a manager and support staff to keep everything running and help the expeditions.

    However, this was not the alma homeland. I heard references to a place called Rojin.

    It seemed to be the land everyone at the outpost came from. I got the impression Rojin also referred to the organization that controlled the outpost.

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    It sounded as if Rojin was their village. Yet, something about how they spoke of it felt like something more. As if Rojin was a force in itself.

    The most interesting thing I discovered was the magic. Magic items were something we traded for. Yet, they remained uncommon amongst the gam.

    That was not the case here. My senses were limited through the flies. But, I saw numerous small enchantments.

    The lights on the walls were glowing stones. When a cooking fire was started, they used a metallic disc enchanted to conjure a flame.

    It was not anything truly new. The impressive part was how common they were. Every alma had at least a few minor items.

    I also noticed some larger spells. The biggest was a massive spell work surrounding the buildings a the center of the outpost.

    I could not tell what it did. All I could recognize through the flies was the presence or absence of magic.

    That was especially irritating, since they had a healer. She was an onyx skinned alma who was on the lower end of their hight.

    I discovered her presence immediately. Several of the returning expedition had been injured.

    Their potions were a powerful resource for keeping the guards fighting. But, they were a limited one.

    Potions were not spared for minor injuries, especially on non-guards. By the end, many had wounds.

    Those had all filed past their healer over the first few days. Untreated injuries were healed and those the potions left partially healed were finished off.

    Even after the returning wounded were healed, day to day injuries would drop in for healing. It was exasperating.

    I could tell magic was being used. I could even tell it was far more affective than our healers. I just could not tell how it was being done.

    My casting pattern was fundamentally different from the organelle that let souls perform magic. But, I had proven in past experiments I could copy their magic.

    It required me to make essence with the properties of the processed animus they used. That was easy enough for my casting pattern.

    I had tested it on the magic of non-sapient beasts. That worked fine, but required me to observe the spell being constructed. I had never seen an alma caster constructing a spell.

    They had a caster, and a skilled one. Yet, I could not observe the process. Which was why I needed to get my physical body in range.

    With that intent, I formulated a plan. It would require me to kill one of the alma¡¯s steeds in a place I would not be observed.

    The creatures were apparently called horses. The alma let them graze around the outpost and use one of the buildings for shelter after dark.

    The important thing about them was where they could go. The barrier kept them within a limited area. But, that area included the entire outpost.

    The horses occasionally wandered in between the buildings. They seemed to be friendly enough towards the alma that it was not worth keeping them out.

    They could not get into the buildings. So, the only obvious downside was the inoffensive droppings and slight risk of a large animal stepping on your foot.

    My plan began by finding a distant corner of the enclosure. The spot I chose was hidden by a small rise.

    I was sure the spot could not be seen from the outpost. At nightfall, I dug myself out and snuck over.

    The rest of the night was spent digging a pit out of easy sight. It would have been easier if I had a proper tool. Still, a stick was enough given time.

    Light broke over the horizon in a way I was still getting used too. In the moors, the trees made it impossible to see the sun come over the edge of the world.

    The sight really was something. Something I had time to appreciate while waiting for the horses to graze in this area.

    It was several hours before one got far enough out for me to target it. The one I chose did not wander near my pit. However, it was out of sight of the outpost.

    I released the spell I had been refining over my wait. A ripple of color flowed over me.

    My form broke up and became a smear of grass tones to the naked eye. It was not invisibility, but it was fairly good camouflage.

    The blob of grass colors marking my presence snuck to the quarry¡¯s position. I did not dare get close.

    Alma were not the most observant of creatures. But, these horses seemed to scare easily. And when they did, they bolted.

    Instead, I stopped just beyond the barrier that kept them in. I pinched a tiny bone needle in my fingers.

    The needle¡¯s enchantment came to life at my coaxing and levitated over my palm. A moment later, it shot forwards at great speed.

    Expending its enchantment, the needle buried itself in the horse¡¯s flank. The creature only twitched, as if the pinprick was just another biting fly.

    Of course, the needle was not meant to cause harm itself. Its enchantment could not propel it hard enough to cause real damage.

    Maybe if it hit an eye it could destroy the soft organ. But, it would not be lethal even then.

    No, the needle was not harmful. The whisper spider venom it was soaked in was.

    The horse stumbled a few seconds after the venom entered its bloodstream. I knew whisper spiders were deadly to creatures fueled by life animus, even if it was only a minor inconvenience to those with unlife animus.

    The horses used life animus. This one proved that by folding its legs and collapsing onto its side.

    I crept forward as it lost consciousness. Its breath had already stopped by the time I lay a hand on it.

    And so, I began my work. The source would not vanish until the creature was truly dead. That required more than not breathing, but not much more.

    I unwove the spell I prepared for this purpose. It was incomplete. I lacked the time to enchant an item with the spell and could only hold so much of it in preparation.

    Still, it took me little time to finish and adjust to the creature. As the horses source vanished, my magic swooped in and replaced it with a link to myself.

    An unfortunately large chunk of my essence was converted into a perfect imitation of unlife animus and traveled across the link. It flowed out into the horses soul.

    The life animus that had fueled it washed away as new animus was provided. I felt out my new reanimated horse.

    It was taking over two thirds of my essence generation. But, I could control it pretty easily.

    The soul still remembered how it moved. I only needed to listen to it. The horse stood under my control.

    As me, I snuck back to my pit. As the horse, I trotted to the same place. We met and I set to work.

    Positioning the reanimated horse over the pit, I placed my knife just past its pelvic bone. Apparently it was a female.

    Carefully cutting into the creature, I dragged the blade up to the base of the rib cage. The guts were not immediately freed.

    I had to go back and clean up my cut before the internal organs were free to bulge out. A few careful nicks at both sides of the digestive tract, and everything was free to escape.

    There really is very little keeping the organs in. I now had a pit full of organs and an empty horse.

    The horse was unaffected by loosing all those pointless organs. After all, it was running on unlife animus now.

    I stepped it past the pit and set to covering the organs with dirt. Once my gutting was hidden, I returned to the horse.

    I pet the mane the way I saw some alma do. I could see why they liked doing it.

    There was something soothing about it. Even more so when I could feel the stroking from the horse¡¯s perspective.

    Sitting the horse on its side, I crawled into the cavity and curled up as comfortably as possible. I did my best to pull the flesh back together.

    I ended up resorting to casting to get both sides to line up correctly. At that point, I started healing the wound.

    Flesh sealed together over the next few minutes. Another couple hours had the wound completely gone.

    I was left in a cavity more than large enough for me. In fact, I was not big enough to comfortably fill the space.

    My first idea was to make a spell that would inflate it the rest of the way. Then I mentally slapped myself for overlooking the obvious.

    A minor use of shapeshifting later, and I perfectly filled the organ cavity. Having settled in, I stood with my horse disguise and surveyed my work.

    The grass was stained with blotches of blood and the filled in pit was obvious. The heart had not been pumping blood, and the gutting happened over the pit.

    However, there was no way to do this without leaving some gore. It was also easy to tell a large hole had been filled in.

    That would change with time. Plus, I chose this spot for the unlikelihood of discovery.

    Trotting around a bit, I grew comfortable with my de facto body. I was going to use this as my main body.

    I might have been able to shapeshift into a horse. But, that plan would have posed several issues.

    First, I would have to hide the body of whatever horse I replaced. With the relatively low number of them, I doubted the alma would overlook an extra appearing.

    Hiding an entire corpse would need a much deeper hole. The digging of this one had already sucked.

    Second, I was not that good at being a quadruped. The shapeshifting pattern had mechanisms built in to make different forms easier to control.

    It even had a system to negate morphic dysphoria. After all, most creatures freaked out if their body did not match their instincts.

    That was all solved by the pattern. At the core, those instincts were not part of the mind.

    They were just a different form of the physical body, if not an anatomical one. And that meant they could be shapeshifted if you knew how to approach it.

    No, I was just not used to acting like a horse. Controlling the body was one thing. But, controlling it the way a horse would was another.

    The dead soul I was hijacking solved that. It already knew how to move and act like a horse.

    All the little movements and demeanors still present. I had only replaced the conscious will.

    As a result, I was walking like a real horse and acting perfectly natural within minutes. This was proven as I traveled to the river that ran through the enclosed area.

    None of the horses by the water reacted to my presence. I waded into the river, getting deep enough that the water ran across the dried blood on my underside.

    That might not have been regular horse behavior, but no one reacted. The application of a minor cleaning spell let the blood separate from my fur and join the water.

    My disguise proved as effective against the alma as the horses. I was worried the first time I wandered into the center of their activity.

    My worry quickly faded as they ignored me. I only got attention when I got in the way, something hard to do in the open space between their buildings.

    Even then, they would just guide me out of the way. I got a bit worried the first time an alma put a harness on my head.

    However, I quickly realized it was just how they led the horses effectively. That was made easier by how much this one talked.

    In fact, a lot of alma talked to the horses. I did not think any of the others understood.

    There was a certain shape to a sapient soul. Horses did not have it. Plus, I did not get the feeling the alma were expecting the horses to understand.

    I mimicked the behavior of the other horses. And, that let me observe the alma close up. More importantly, it let my real body inside my horse observe their magic.

    I got to observe the healer first hand. Or¡­ hoof? I got to stand outside the building while she worked.

    The wall had no effect on my nonphysical senses. I was able to analyze her work, and it was¡­ complex.

    The spells were reminiscent of the enchantment in healing potions. But, the mechanics within a healing potion were entirely automated.

    Her healing still had a lot of automation. It was obvious from how the spells formed that systems in her soul were handling the microscopic details of living tissue.

    Yet, it was seamlessly guided by conscious control. The principal was the same as essence healers. But, the alma¡¯s automatic casting was clearly more advanced than ours.

    I was also able to study the massive spell covering the central outpost. It was elaborate, but clearly inactive.

    My best guess was some sort of kinetic spell. It also had force detection.

    That was probably to help it react to anything that tried to move through. It would be pretty wasteful for the barrier to push against everything constantly.

    Still, the details of the grand spell were even farther beyond me than the healers work. It was a good thing I had time.

    Over the next month, I got familiar with the outpost and its residence. Most left for Rojin half way through.

    But, they were replaced when the broken and battered remnants of an expedition staggered to the outpost. Not that most of them could walk on their own.

 Chapter 7, Miracle

    Sar? had been off duty when a stableboy ran into her office. The kid was too winded to give his report for several gasping breaths.

    What was finally given pulled her away from a breakfast of porridge and dried fruit. It quickly became clear she would not get back to it any time soon.

    Sar? finished her prayer to Nala and opened her eyes. The wounded woman laid out on the cot before her showed no signs of consciousness.

    That was not surprising. The slash on her patient¡¯s calf festered with a cocktail of pathogens only found in the Dark Moors. Sar? did not know what half of them were, but could easily see the ravages they had wrought on the body.

    Her magic had killed off the majority of the invaders and done what she could to give the body a fighting chance. Normally, she would expend everything she had on an injury like this.

    The wound had been severe to start with. It had then been continuously exposed to the stagnant waters of that gods forsaken place.

    The forced march for survival had not even left amputation as an option. Now, it was up to the arcane warrior¡¯s physical reinforcement to help her through the night.

    Sar? could not do more, or she would have nothing left for the others. She quickly stepped to the next cot.

    ¡°Alve.¡± The mage assisting her immediately responded. He placed a palm at the nape of her neck.

    Magic flowed into her. It was not enough to replace everything she had expended. Not even close.

    Alve grimaced in pain. ¡°That¡¯s it. I¡¯m tapped dry.¡± Sar? nodded wearily at the force mage.

    ¡°Go get some rest. I am sure I¡¯ll need you again in the morning.¡± She did not see him nod back. She was already casting.

    Her mouth moved in prayer to her god as her mind guided spell work. As a senior acolyte, she could heal without the prayers.

    But, it would focus and strengthen her spell. It was also how she was trained. That gave the action a degree of comfort.

    The man had lost a chunk of his side, and his arm was cleanly severed from just below the elbow. The stump had been partially healed over by a weak healing item.

    The missing piece of abdomen was a greater concern. She worked to keep the organs in and weave enough flesh over the wound to keep him stable.

    The pain of running dry stabbed through her focus. The prayer stumbled and spell ended. That was it.

    Her body ached in a way not physical in origin. A wave of disorientation hit as she straightened.

    The medical pavilion was filled with a dozen injured alma. Most were either unconscious or in no condition to object to the potions being forced down their throats.

    If they had been expecting a returning party, there would have been more than enough healing potions. But, the outpost was a week away from resupply.

    All that was left was a few minor potions kept in case of accidents. Those would reinforce her work and increase the odds of survival.

    They had not been prepared for an expedition because this was not their expedition. It was not even from Rojin.

    The half dead group that dragged themselves far enough from the tree line to be spotted was from the Rillan Empire. The neighboring nation had an outpost just across the border.

    With how close that was, the desperate attempt to escape the Dark Moors alive ended on their side. That was unfortunate for the acolyte who had to keep them alive.

    The citizens of Rojin were not on the best terms with the Rillans. It had been under two hundred years since the rebellion that led to a chunk being carved off Rojin to form Rillan.

    The view of Rillan citizens was that of uncivilized rebels hunching in a chaotic and impoverished young nation. It did not help that the annexing of Rillan had caused an economic decline in the much larger Kingdom of Rojin.

    Rillan was between Rojin and the coast. It also blocked access to the wealth of the merchant kingdoms.

    The blow to trade bred the negative stigma. Even so, they were not actively at war.

    Rojin was going to reclaim the fledgling empire when convenient. But, Sar? would not ignore the dying due too nationality. Luckily, enough of the outpost agreed.

    Her wavery gaze landed on the two cots pushed to the back. She still could not save them all.

    No, the two men were not dead. At least, not strictly. But, there was nothing she could do for them.

    They had been the first brought in and were obviously the worst. Normally, she would start with the most injured and work towards those more stable.

    The number of injured and shortage of healers had changed that. She just could not help everyone.

    Alve helped, but he had no experience healing. All he could do was donate his stored magic.

    Almost every member of the party had been injured in some way. A few could wait, but most would not survive the night without her.

    The old man who led the group suffered severe internal damage and a head wound. His intestines and stomach had ruptured and the infection was invading the other damaged organs.

    If he was her only patient, she might have saved him. That was not the case. Sar? refused to sacrifice all the others for their leader¡¯s life.

    The occupant of the neighboring cot had slightly better odds. His left leg was broken and the arm on the same side was simply gone.

    That would not have been hard to heal, but an unknown infection had put him into a state of semi-delirium. It was running a fever that would cook his organs soon.

    Sar? had spent the magic needed to realize she could not cure whatever abomination had infected him. The Dark Moors contained a endless supply of nightmare fuel.

    Much of that came from blasphemous undead monstrosities. But, just as much could be found in the poisons, pathogens and parasites.

    She could have stood by his bed and continually repaired the damage until the infection passed. But, that would have killed everyone else just as much as healing their leader.

    No, all she could do was sleep and hope the regained magic would help those who survived the night. Remaining here just delayed that much needed recuperation.

    Sar? passed one of the assistants working there way down the injured. The woman was one of the many laborers appropriated as emergency hands.

    A hand on the arm caught her attention. ¡°Feed the remainder to them over the night, but not the last two. It wouldn¡¯t do any good.¡± It might have been the exhaustion in Sar?¡¯s voice, but the command was received with a solum nod of understanding.

    She noticed a familiar horse standing next to the pavilion¡¯s canvas wall. The animal had a habit of standing around her place of work.

    She would often greet the white and brown creature by petting its mane when entering or leaving. It was certainly not there every time, but the odd animal seemed to like the spot.

    The morning came all too soon. That was a common symptom of excessive casting. Magic restored faster while asleep, and the body knew it.

    A mere fraction of her total capacity had been restored by the time Sar? returned. Only one of her helpers was still watching over the injured.

    That was not surprising. The non-casters could not do much once the potions were expended.

    ¡°How are they doing.¡± Sar? did not bother with niceties and got right to the point.

    The drooping man startled at the question. ¡°Oh, sister. I¡­ uh, I am not sure.¡± It was more than apparent he had not slept. In fact, she thought he might have been there at the start of the night.

    ¡°Its fine.¡± She sighed. ¡°Get some sleep. I will be find here.¡± The young man gave a grateful smile and thanked her before leaving to pass out wherever he could.

    Wishing she could return to her bed and do the same, Sar? entered. Her worst fears were quickly dispelled.

    Every one of those she healed were still alive and stable. A few had even woke and chatted with her while she examined them.

    It was more than she could have hoped for. Most were far from healed. She would have her work cut out for her over the next few days.

    Her check ups found a few complications that could have gotten bad if unaddressed. But, she had barely expended anything by the time she got to the end.

    There she found something she never expected. The two in the de facto hospice were still alive. Not just alive, but the gnarled group leader was conscious.

    She new the man. Or rather, the manager knew him and had shared a little.

    The brief report of the injured group had mention Rekon, their leader. Apparently he was somewhat renowned amongst those who dared the Dark Moors.

    To be exact, the manager called him that bastard Rekon. She inferred the man had not left a good impression.

    The younger man was still asleep, but was visibly resting easier. So, she stepped up to Rekon¡¯s bedside.

    ¡°Good morning. I am Sar?, your healer. How do you feel?¡± The man she guessed to be in his sixties blinked at her.

    His unfocused gaze and difficulty processing her question was not a good sign. Testing the effects of his head wound was an incentive behind the question.

    ¡°I¡­ not great. Hi, Sar?.¡± It was a little out of order and held a disoriented tone. But, it was a conscious response.

    ¡°Hello Rekon. I am happy to hear that.¡± She prepared to cast, but was distracted by the mumbled response.

    ¡°Am I¡­ Rekon?¡± The tone was both unfocused and uncertain. That was not a good sign.

    A quick scan found the head wound to be worse than she thought after her first detection. The skull had hairline cracks, but the really concerning part was the signs of bleeding.

    Brain damage was fixable with prolonged healing. But, she lacked the skill to heal it directly.

    Prayer accompanied deeper study. The results were¡­ strange. He really should have been dead.

    The damage was wide spread. The stomach lining had ruptured enough to let the contents erode surrounding tissue.

    Several other organs had minor to severe damage. But, the worst was the obvious effects of a widespread infection.

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    Yet, the damage was not progressing. Without any sign why, the bacteria that had clearly overpowered the body were simply gone.

    Even stranger, none of the ravaged organs were breaking down farther. The cells that should have been dying in a toxic soup of inflammation and failed supply chains were alive and functioning.

    It was as if the gods themselves had commanded the body to live. Necrosis was just not happening, and there was no reason Sar? could find.

    That did not mean she could not help. Her magic when through and removed the unneeded inflammation.

    Damaged tissue was realigned and filled in with newly created cells. It was not going to solve everything now.

    That would take a few more days. Even if he was miraculously not getting worse, getting better would require her help.

    She eventually realized that she should not spend everything now. Habit dictated that such injuries must be healed immediately for a chance of survival.

    That just did not apply to a patient that seemed shielded from death. It would be better to do what she could for the head wound.

    Whatever caused it was only stopped by hitting bone. Even then, it had enough force to cause internal bleeding.

    The brain had been compressed for longer than was reasonable. The excess fluid was easy to remove, but the damage was harder to reverse.

    In theory, she could heal this without a problem. The damaged and dead cells could be replaced. That did not mean the harm would be undone.

    Sar? did not leave this repair unfinished. Half of her current reserves went into restoring the dead neural tissue.

    When she reopened her eyes, Rekon was watching her with more focus than before. ¡°Thank you. I think I owe you my life.¡± His voice had a sincerity that made Sar? hold back a cringe.

    Most of this room could say they owed their life to her. But, she had nothing to do with his survival.

    ¡°No need, you did the surviving yourself. I only finished it off.¡± He nodded, seeming preoccupied by something in his own head.

    ¡°Do you know where you are?¡± She needed to establish if her repair had solved the mental damage.

    ¡°I don¡¯t. I¡¯m having trouble¡­ There are a few things I can¡¯t quite¡­ find.¡± That was not a good sign.

    ¡°What is the last thing you remember?¡± Hopefully the damage was only a passing problem.

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure. Nothing seems¡­ clear, I guess.¡± He was obviously lucid, but just as obviously distressed.

    ¡°That¡¯s fine. I¡¯ll leave you to rest. We can see how you feel after.¡± The expression of internal worry was briefly replaced by that look of gratitude that felt oddly undeserved.

    ¡°Thank you. I suspect I could use it.¡± She returned his smile and moved to the neighboring cot.

    The second inexplicable survivor was not quite as strange. Still, the results of her arcane investigations were odd.

    The refusal of death was not present. Cells continued to succumb to damage and failed supply of resources.

    The anomaly was the complete absence of the unfamiliar bacteria that had overrun the body. They were just gone.

    The body was still damaged and straining to handle the waste products from the battle. That was much easier to repair.

    She also managed to correct the fractured tibia. The missing arm was a problem for months of regular flesh sculpting.

    The stump was healed over and nerves repaired enough to remove active pain. Farther work was not her responsibility.

    ¡°How is he?¡± The question startled Sar?. She had finished her healing prayer. But, the state of focus accompanied with healing had not yet faded.

    She turned back to her elderly patient. Rather than resting, he was watching her work with a look of sympathetic concern.

    Sar? wondered briefly why the outpost¡¯s manager disliked this man so much. He had been nothing but polite and respectful.

    ¡°It has not been easy on him, but he should be just fine. I extended his sleep to help his body clear everything.¡± Rekon nodded at her explanation.

    ¡°Were you close?¡± She was curious about his interest. It seemed like simple concern, but the little she had been told about him made empathy sound out of character.

    He shook his head in response. ¡°I don¡¯t know. He looks a little familiar. But¡­ I am not sure who anyone is right now. I¡¯m not even sure who I am.¡± The last bit was quieter, as if spoken to himself.

    She did not know how to respond. It was apparent the replaced braincells had not completely solved the issue.

    She was far from an expert on the interaction of the central nervous system and soul. What lessons there had been said that the brain was a receiver for the soul.

    It would not matter if the entire brain was destroyed and replaced with new cells. The cells just had to be healthy and functional.

    However, she had heard the soul could fail to reattach properly. The stories said such injuries could cause memory loss or mood swings.

    Even the disruption of motor functions had been mentioned. Wisdom said the problem would solve itself. But, she still felt concerned.

    ¡°The prospects of your whole group look very good. The best thing you can do is rest and give your body time to recover.¡± He seemed relieved at her words and relaxed into his cot.

    Sar? did another check of the wounded before leaving. Nothing new or requiring her intervention presented itself.

    I watched the healer leave the pavilion. I had been worried for a minute when she scanned Rekon for injuries.

    Life and unlife animus were obviously different things to me. But, that was after I spent centuries studying them on and off.

    The short healer had not even cast a spell to analyze animus. I did not need such a thing to get a vague image.

    Either that was different for alma or she was not as used to distinguishing one from the other. If she suspected anything, she was doing an excellent job hiding it.

    The plan had come to me when I and several other horses were saddled and ridden out to the forest. There, we help bring back a group of a little over a dozen alma.

    A few of the alma were nearly unharmed. But, most had injuries that were killing their fragile bodies.

    Some of them had forced themselves this far out of desperation and will alone. Others were already unconscious and had been carried by their companions.

    The idea to kill and reanimate one of them came as we pulled the wounded back on a me drawn cart. The question was how and which one.

    The second came down to the two most likely to die. One was a wisened alma I now knew to be named Rekon.

    The other option was a still unnamed man sleeping next to me. Both were clearly going to die.

    Even the healer had no hope for them. I could have just waited. However, they might have died while one of the casters was watching.

    I had to make sure the target died when I was ready to replace their source and my actions would not be noticed. That meant in the middle of the night.

    My plan started by soaking one of my flies in a vile of whisper spider venom. I already knew the stuff was deadly to the central nervous system of creatures fueled by life animus.

    More importantly, it took a lot of it to erode unliving flesh. This amount would be harmless.

    It had been a bit of a trick getting the vile out of the nearest orifice. But, once dropped to the ground, a hoof cracked the fragile clay bottle and let the fly free.

    I then flew it to my target and dug into the open head wound until venom touched the blood stream. I had decided against the alma with a missing arm.

    I would rather take the body that was intact. Regrowing the limb would just be a matter of extensive healing magic.

    But, I could not do that without the reanimated alma standing next to the horse for suspicious periods. It was also unclear how suspicious regrowing limbs was to other alma.

    The elderly alma did not even twitch as he died. I quickly got to work. The spell was as complete as I could make it in the few hours available to work with.

    A link formed to the recently vacated place where a source should have been. Having learned from my horse, I slowly eased into the full draw.

    More of my essence became animus and pored into the dead soul at a gradually increasing rate. This was about my limit.

    Making essence is not hard or normally a problem. But, I could only grow it so fast.

    I could have reanimated a few more small animals. I was certainly not going to be able to do another horse. Even another alma was out of the question.

    The body came to unlife, and I gained greater awareness of it. The damage was not significant.

    The bacteria creatures with life animus had in their intestines had escaped. It was taking advantage of the partially crushed organs to spread and feast.

    The acid in the stomach had also escaped. That added to the organ damage.

    In other words, things that did not matter. The soul now recognized the bacteria as harmful and foreign. It quickly destroyed them.

    The organs continued to function despite the systematic failure that should have been taking place. It would have been fine if they did not.

    A soul running on unlife animus could create everything each individual cell needed. It would keep them together and functioning as a greater whole even when they should have died.

    I did not need to remove the venom. Whisper spiders can harm gam and creatures with unlife animus.

    In the quantities their bite inject it, the cells dissolve completely. That is unlikely to kill a gam. But, it is quite problematic.

    The effect of shutting down the nerves of anything with life animus was just an odd quirk. I discovered it when an expedition guard got bitten by a spider that had not yet replenished its venom.

    Despite the tiny amount injected, she died almost instantly. It only took the time needed for blood to reach vital nerves.

    The fact it was damaging cells put it on the souls target list. The venom was completely destroyed in no time.

    I left my new puppet body unconscious for a time. It felt unwise to jump up and act completely uninjured.

    I considered leaving with my horse and real body within. However, my curiosity got the better of me.

    I did not have a lot of essence available. But, that only mattered if I tried something costly.

    Spell augmented senses showed me something interesting about the neighboring alma. I recognized the infection.

    We called it skin rot. There were not a lot of bacteria that used unlife animus. Skin rot was one of the few exceptions.

    It was highly aggressive and could replicate without the need for physical resources. The only thing that stopped it was its dependence on animus.

    As far as I could tell, it had the ability to absorb and store unlife animus. That was harmful because the loss of unlife animus caused flesh to degrade and die.

    An infection was not fatal, but it caused weakness. Of course, it acted completely different in the gam.

    We had no animus. However, our bodies looked close enough to the disease¡¯s normal targets that it would try to infect us anyway.

    The result was a bacterial infection that lasted until the rapidly replicating cells started dying from animus depletion. They would brake apart and end the infection.

    Unfortunately, the dying bacteria released a caustic chemical that destroyed local cells. So, the gam¡¯s flesh would become blotted with necrotic patches.

    It was not fatal for us. Still, the effect was irritating enough that we developed a way to harmlessly destroy the bacteria before it could die off naturally.

    This was the first time I had seen it infecting something with life animus. The result was distinctly different from unlife or essence creatures.

    The infection was feeding on the life animus as it did for unlife. However, it appeared to be toxic to the bacteria.

    It absorbed the soul¡¯s fuel and replicated rapidly with it. The problem was the bacteria were dying off after they absorbed more than a seemingly arbitrary threshold.

    The result was a small but continuous release of corrosive waste. With how fragile the alma was, it was rapidly killing him.

    Half hoping to help and half curious if I could, I slowly wove the spell that treated skin rot into his body. It was slow going.

    I had very little essence to spare. That did not prevent me from doing work like this. It did require me to wait for more essence to be created before I could finish.

    The final product swept through the unknown alma¡¯s body. As it went, bacteria began a cascade that ended with a harmless death.

    The first sweep killed off most of them. That would not do much good. Not with how bad his body was at fighting them.

    I kept at it until nothing was left. Each sweep took everything I had. But, my essence could recharge faster than the bacteria could recover.

    Soon, his body was devoid of infection. It was still not very happy. But, I doubted even an alma could die from the remaining damage.

    The next hour had been spent meditating. However, I became bored after my focus and essence was replenished.

    Curious and bored, my attention turned to the other wounded. The remainder of the night turned into a lesson in alma healing.

    I walked my horse around the edges of the building. As I went, I explored the damaged alma and tried to fix what I could.

    The horse and my body within was taken to paster before morning. I was already acting differently from the other horses.

    The alma¡¯s willingness to ignore oddities from the animals was impressive. But, better not to push it unnecessarily.

    I lay back and watched the ceiling with Rekon¡¯s eyes. This was going to be a test of my capacity to deceive.

    I recalled that alma could be mentally affected by damage to their brains. It came up when discussing resurrection.

    I just hoped I understood well enough to fake ignorance. Luckily, disproving ignorance was as hard as disproving a negative.

    If I claimed to know nothing, they could not prove I was wrong. With luck, they would even teach me.

 Chapter 8, The Gods Might (18+)

    Alve¡¯s fingers danced in the air, twisting through patterns half symbolic and half meditative. In their wake trails of power bent and knotted into spellwork.

    The strands floated for a brief moment before being inexorably drawn to the faded pattern already present. The vibrant animus channels underlined and merged into the degrading spell.

    I could see thousands of minuscule tears overwritten by the retracing of the complex spell. Those flaws would return again once the newly replenished animus ran low. But now the working was likely stronger than the day it was first woven.

    It was difficult to follow the significance of each pattern even with my true body and the most advanced detection spell I could manage. My relative inexperience at forming animus into spellwork was no help.

    In all fairness, I was not relying on the shoddy detection spell I had learned in my fortnight of bedrest. My presence permeating my surroundings gave acute awareness of the spell anchoring the outpost¡¯s defensive barrier.

    But seeing animus the way alma did had surprising benefits. It was not exactly that their spell provided more precise awareness.

    Instead the spell I had been taught automatically flagged patterns it recognized as relevant in spellwork and organized them for my use. It was half diagnostic tool and half training manual. Combining it with my far superior awareness of the animus channels forming the spell allowed me to gain much appreciated insight.

    Alve slowed his weaving and tied off the recasting. ¡°I¡¯m done here.¡± He turned to the ritual components spread in a semicircle around him and began returning each to the hardy leather satchel by his side.

    I uncrossed my legs and stood. Starting at the other side of the arc, I picked up the remaining objects and passed them for Alve to sort into separate padded pockets.

    The movements, words, symbols and items involved was one of the strangest parts of alma magic. It was something completely absent from the animus fueled animals I had observed weaving spellwork and appeared to not even be necessary.

    That was not simply my assessment. All three magic specialists in the alma outpost had agreed that no physical actions were needed to perform magic.

    As I understood it the scribbles my boots were scuffing and crystals, twigs and scraps of dried small animals I was gathering up were nothing more than a kind of mental shorthand. A shorthand that felt far more confusing to me than the thing it was meant to be short for.

    It seemed that alma did not naturally sense animus. Despite all of them possessing the organelle to manipulate it, they needed to develop it through years of work to perceive animus directly.

    Gam did not have that problem. My descendants hatched fully aware of their own essence. Learning to use it was little different from learning to work with their hands.

    I had severely jeopardized my disguise by asking Sar? about the diagnostic spell she was using on Rekon¡¯s body. Knowing the animus construct was moving through his intestines showed a level of proficiency that qualified an alma as a mage.

    I was saved by the coincidental convenience of Rekon as a disguise. The alma male appeared to be infamous.

    Many of the outpost¡¯s residents knew his name. Yet not even his companions knew anything significant about his past or personal life.

    I destroyed my chances of imitating his demeanor within the first few days. Being polite, agreeable and non-obtrusive felt like my best option for establishing a presence. But I had come to learn that Rekon had been well known to express none of those traits.

    No one had openly jumped to the idea of an imposter. Instead the soul-trauma Sar? diagnosed me with was upgraded in severity. The nebulous awareness of who Rekon was became amended to include magic proficiency he had never revealed to his subordinates.

    This gave me a marvelous excuse to show interest in alma spellweaving. Sar? was willing to humor me as part of her regular visits to confirm Rekon¡¯s body was healing.

    Alve tolerated me watching him work. But he initially had little interest in answering my questions. It was the outpost¡¯s third alma mage that proved truly helpful.

    Alve lashed the satchel closed and started down the narrow path to the next anchor point. I followed.

    Tall grass brushed against me. But my attention was focused on the relatively diffuse weave spreading out from the anchor Alve repaired.

    My detection spell pointed out junction points where the influx of new animus pooled and numerous sensors reaching out in search of any object moving fast enough to necessitate an opposite and greater kinetic discharge.

    I did not know how the much simpler working I had created could identify and report so much. But it was excellent practice for recognizing them myself.

    The grand working of force magic extended over the entire outpost. It had been constructed long before Alve was posted here.

    But the majority of the animus channels composing it were concentrated in eight anchors around the perimeter. And repairing those anchors routinely was enough to maintain the entire spell.

    We reached the next patch of cleared and packed ground marking the immaterial presence of an anchor point. The anchors themselves had no effect on their environment. But Alve and his predecessors coming through every three days for decades had stomped out all vegetation and flattened the soil beneath.

    I slipped ahead and began carving the framework for Alve¡¯s ritual into the earth. Alve would have to do the symbolic steps himself, but I could assist with the geometric lines marking where each symbol or item belonged.

    Each of the symbols Alve proceeded to scribble was a manual sensory representation of a spellwork macrostructure he associated with the action of drawing that symbol. The same applied to the distinctive objects he placed before himself and otherwise nonsense sounds he vocalized.

    It took a lengthy and frustrating inquiry to understand why this association helped. An alma¡¯s unconscious mind was better at controlling the organelle used to weave animus threads than their conscious mind.

    Most alma could develop small repeatable tricks that were strictly spells. Lighting a fire at will, becoming briefly stronger, moving an object at a distance and countless other specific actions were all things an alma might learn to do.

    But they were not consciously aware of the complex structures that went into creating such effects. And they could not easily adapt or improvise with their magical talents.

    It seemed trained mages overcame this by developing many separate components of spellwork that could fit together in numerous ways. Each of these building blocks was learned like an alma would normally learn a single magical talent. They could then piece them together to make a wide variety of different spells.

    The material and manual components came in when an alma mage was facing the challenge of organizing and tracking a vast number of different consciously triggered actions that were primarily automatic in their performance. It became hard for them to intentionally activate each piece in the needed clinical setting.

    The training sounded a lot like a learned manual reaction. A gam who trained to deflect a strike coming for them enough would be able to deflect an oncoming strike faster than they could consciously choose to do so.

    The stimulus for the trained gam was a reed dancer whip coming at their neck. The immediate reaction was to bring up an armored forearm and twist away.

    The stimulus for Alve at the moment was a dried salamander in his palm and clicking sound from his tongue. The immediate reaction was his soul weaving a long series of receptors involved in checking for damage to the outer reaches of the existing spellwork.

    The strangest part was that mages supposedly lost the need to rely on manual aids once their soul acclimated to casting complex spells. They reached a point where progressing further in their abilities required weaving more directly.

    That was what I had inadvertently revealed I was capable of before knowing better. There was some significance I did not entirely grasp to that shift.

    Rekon appearing to be beyond it had further complicated my cover and placed Rekon as a notably experienced mage. There was nothing I could do about it now.

    My best option was to continue pretending everything was as much news to me as anyone else. That was made easier by the fact it usually was.

    Alve finished the eighth and final anchor. We proceeded to collect the material aids and smooth the dirt.

    ¡°What did you notice?¡± Alve did not look up while asking. Experience guiding each stone and vial back into its proper place.

    This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

    I considered the question as we started back towards the outpost. ¡°The anchor points have their own diagnostics. They all separately check the entire weave against the model at the anchor¡¯s core. But the influx of magic should already heal the channels?¡±

    We walked in silence for a moment. ¡°You¡¯re referring to the guardian protocol. Few spells have them. But anything at risk of sabotage will.¡± He finally responded.

    ¡°It¡¯s looking for deliberate changes.¡± I rephrased as my observations fit together. ¡°But why wouldn¡¯t a saboteur go after the model?¡±

    The guardian protocol clearly checked each piece of the weave against a compact non-active copy of the greater spell. A saboteur that changed that would effectively alter the greater spell.

    ¡°Two reasons. It is hard to find and alter that model. And you would need to sabotage all eight anchors.¡± The first part made sense.

    My detection spell had not recognized what the spell model did. Only my own senses revealed the compacted diagram of intricate animus threads.

    ¡°Couldn¡¯t they just change the last one you activate? It would think the unaltered spell had been tampered with and apply the saboteur¡¯s changes as it fixes the damage.¡± The guardian protocol only appeared to trigger when Alve renewed the anchors.

    ¡°That would work in a mono-anchor system. But each anchor checks its model against the other seven. If one differs from the majority, it is overwritten with the pattern of the majority. Four or more anchors would need to already be compromised without me realizing.¡± I had missed that function entirely and now was hoping I could study it in a few days time.

    ¡°If someone managed that, I would still see the error reporting a corrected model.¡± We left the brush surrounding the outpost and stepped onto well-trodden earth.

    ¡°And if they changed all the anchors, so there was never a report?¡± We reached the cluster of workshops and sheds outside the main building.

    ¡°Than we would be facing a mage with no need to sabotage our wards. They could simply pull it apart or bypass it entirely.¡± There was clear amusement in Alve¡¯s often placid expression.

    I laughed in response. ¡°That makes sense. I guess an infallible defense was a bit much to ask.¡± We normally split up and headed to our respective quarters at the outpost proper. But neither of us were in any particular rush.

    ¡°The gods might be infallible. We certainly are not.¡± Alve paraphrased an expression I had heard from other alma.

    The common phrasing was the gods are or sometimes the gods are and I¡¯m not. The subject could be changed to a third party including other people, objects or concepts.

    It seemed to be an acknowledgment of the subject¡¯s flaws and a way to point out that the subject was still the best option. The meaning was analogous to I¡¯m doing my best or they¡¯re doing their best.

    ¡°You aren¡¯t sure how fallible the gods are?¡± He scoffed at my question.

    ¡°I haven¡¯t met any. I wouldn¡¯t want to assume.¡± I smiled at his tone.

    The relationship between alma and their concept of gods was still a little vague to me. Gods were akin to leaders or respected individuals. Except they were distant in some manner.

    Sar? worked for a god named Nala. But the relation was strange and did not actually involve direct contact with Nala. At least I did not think it did.

    We separated and headed towards our respective dwellings. For me that was a sturdy tent on the edge of the impromptu camp ringing the outpost.

    Rekon¡¯s status as the refugee leader was sufficient to acquire a private tent. That had proven vital.

    I slipped through the flap and buttoned the canvas door closed. The abundance of essence patterns ensuring privacy and watching for anyone approaching were obvious to me. But alma did not seem to be able to sense essence.

    The tent was large enough to stand and furnished much like the living quarters inside the outpost proper. The bed was really just a cot with more substantial bedding over it and table taken from one of the workshops.

    But the sheets were smoother than anything the gam could make. The standing mirror against the wall was an unnecessary touch clearly born out of an attempt at good hosting.

    I untied my belt and the lashes holding my poncho against my body. The poncho landed on my single chair and my undershirt joined it a moment later. Pulling off my pants left me naked.

    Blemished skin warm by alma aging reflected in the mirror. Its yellow and purple patterning encased a frame that had remained strong, but lost definition to a gradually failing metabolism.

    Hair I knew was once violet grew in thinning gray wisps from the mottled scalp. It was a quite impressive simulacrum of an alma slowly dying of life animus.

    I did not bother with my shapeshifting pattern. Instead I simply healed myself.

    My will forced the material I encompassed to return to its correct state. In a moment the reflection shifted from a degraded alma to a hale gam.

    Regenerating rather than shapeshifting back to my base form saved essence. However it had taken practice to do so without losing the alma height that was so costly when going from gam to alma.

    That was nothing to the effort involved in learning to copy Rekon¡¯s body down to the cellular level. I spent almost two weeks combing over his anatomy and my imitation before I snuck the horse close enough to worm out its vagina and sneak into the tent.

    Replacing Rekon¡¯s body with my own fixed several problems and created others. It made observing magic significantly easier.

    I could only follow mages around so much in a horse. And I needed both Rekon and the horse together to ask questions about what I observed.

    The first problem was Rekon¡¯s mannerisms. His body remembered how to move in response to many desires.

    It was not a true copy of his gestures. But it meant I could move him like a normal alma of his proportions and ingrained posture.

    I had no opportunity to practice walking like an alma inside the horse. My shapeshifting adapted my proprioception and balance to make new forms feel natural. But it could not account for the way an aged alma moved.

    Alma already seemed heavier and clumsier than gam in their stride. I did not know if that was biological or a product of their environment. Either way it made moving like one difficult.

    I shifted back to my normal movements as gradually as I could. It seemed better than sticking with the plodding steps I frequently forgot to maintain when distracted.

    The other prominent issue was my libido. The alma equivalent of a tail was a bit different to stimulate. I had only interacted with a penis once before.

    It spent most of that time inside me. My insides seemed to work as well for pleasing an alma male as they did for another gam or my own tail.

    It was still similar enough that I figured out how to orgasm with alma anatomy. The problem was it did not fix the underlying issue.

    Male alma genitalia was definitely less sensitive than the tail of an aroused gam. It felt pleasurable. But on a noticeably lesser scale.

    And it did not satisfy my desire to lay. Something about the instinct to lay an egg caused it to persist through my shapeshifting.

    I could adopt Rekon¡¯s sexuality without issue or disable my mating instinct entirely. There was no need to do so. But I had tested and proven I could.

    Yet the impulse to lay eggs did not go away even with no identifiable structure creating it. And masturbating with an alma penis had no effect on the need.

    I sat on the bed and bunched the already knotted bedding behind myself. The mass let me recline comfortably as I spread my legs apart.

    My folds were already slick. I lightly stroked the tip of my tail against the concentration of nerves at their crest.

    I wanted to slide it down and inside. But I did not have the time to fertilize myself.

    Even sexually frustrated I would take twenty to thirty minutes to release inside and lay the fertilized egg. It would be more enjoyable. But I had other things to do.

    I consciously flexed muscles at my core. A brief feeling of resistance gave way as a pulse of pleasure rippled down to my opening.

    The next pulse followed without my conscious intervention. It moved around the egg I had willfully dislodged and forced it forwards.

    The fullness of the egg consumed my mind. My walls clenched around it only for each pulse to push it down..

    It finally reached my opening. The orgasm blended with the final pulse forcing the egg to crown. The egg stretching my folds apart always caused an orgasm. But the certainty never diminished the experience.

    The after-glow was not allowed to fade. Instead I began another egg¡¯s descent as soon as the last was pushed free.

    I had found alma arousal and sexual pleasure was significantly changed by how recently they had climaxed. At least that was the case for my replica of Rekon¡¯s anatomy.

    But gam always experienced the same level of pleasure provided we were aroused. And we did not lose arousal from reaching climax. Only the impulse to engage in sexual acts was diminished, not the experience itself.

    I let the glow fade after the sixth egg crowned. It had taken less than three minutes and my mind felt clear. I was free of the distracting impulse to lay and would be for several hours at the minimum.

    The collection of eggs between my legs glistened. And the mattress was damp with the clear transudate that accompanied each of them.

    I slid back and triggered the cleaning spell built into the mattress cover. While it removed my fluids I hopped off the bed and went to the corner of the tent.

    The floor was composed of a woven mat insulating the inhabitants from the earth. I gripped the corner and pulled up.

    It folded back to reveal a panel crafted from five wooden planks fused together through essence weaving. Lifting the rudimentary cover showed a cavity below.

    I returned to the bed and scooped up my drying eggs. The hole was not large enough to fit down at my current size.

    It had been bigger when I originally excavated it through gradual casting and good old manual labor. But there was no need now.

    I rolled my eggs into it and heard them clink against those already below. Returning the cover and floor mat hid it entirely. Minor weavings would remove even the tiny hints that a spot on the floor was disturbed a few times each day.

    Shifting to Rekon¡¯s form and dressing was all that was needed to give the impression he visited his tent for a few minutes before heading out. And nothing at all suggested the real Rekon¡¯s dormant body rested amongst numerous eggs below my feet.

 Chapter 9, A Perfect Disguise

    The iron bound door swung open with an ease and silence that belied its true weight. Alve could faintly sense the spellwork maintaining the wooden monolith''s balance and hinges.

    Some of those enchantments doubtless reinforced the already substantial barrier. But it would likely take the journey-mage another decade of immersion in the arcane to perceive such things clearly under his own power.

    The chamber beyond was little different from the study he was provided. A resident mage automatically garnered status surpassing all but the most accomplished non-arcane laborer.

    Light from a narrow barred window near the ceiling reflected off the hairless scalp of a man who did surpass Alve in both status and accomplishment. His position and associated wage would be more than sufficient to remove any balding or even complete absence of follicles.

    Alve had to assume the appearance was a purposeful choice. It was effective in making an already hard bone-structure intimidating even on a frame two feet shorter than the mage.

    ¡°Close the door.¡± Alve obeyed. The door sealed and he slid into the padded chair before the desk.

    The outpost¡¯s manager returned the ornate pen to its rest and turned his attention to Alve. ¡°What do you think of him?¡± Alve leaned back and considered the question.

    ¡°That man is either a genius con-artist with an impressive grasp of spell-theory or a master-mage. Unless he has a monstrous talent for arcane perception.¡± Alve faintly made out the word monstrous repeated under the older alma¡¯s breath.

    ¡°Do you think it is an act?¡± The implications to the question were apparent.

    ¡°It wouldn¡¯t make any sense. Pretending to be a man known to have no formal training and openly exhibiting deep awareness of spellwork would be an incompetent disguise. I cannot imagine a person with a cover story like that being so adept at mimicking genuine ignorance.¡± It truly was strange.

    Alve would swear Rekon had never cast a spell or even heard the most basic terminology before pestering everyone with any arcane training in the outpost. It was no small feat to show the mistakes and tripping points of a completely green apprentice-mage.

    ¡°If that man is a twenty year graduate, he is also a god of deception with questionable planning skills.¡± Alve was not sure what to think about Rekon.

    The Rillan had been on the edge of death when Alve first saw him. They had little contact with each other at first. But once the refugees¡¯ amnesiac leader was up and about he seemed omnipresent.

    He was surprisingly charming. A kind of almost childish fascination with whatever Alve said made their interactions both tiring and never tedious. And it always felt like Rekon was truly listening and engaging with every word.

    But there was something unsettling about the way he carried himself. A fluid grace slipped into his motions, only diminished when he thought he was being watched.

    And the way Rekon looked at people made hairs rise down Alve¡¯s spine. It was like he was only half looking at the person, and the other half was looking into them.

    Not looking the way an empath might see a person¡¯s true character. But the way a vivisectionist might study the workings of an animal on their table.

    A huff from the manager broke Alve from his reflection. ¡°Rekon couldn¡¯t magic his way out of a wet paper bag. That was no deception. Not unless he was hiding a mage college up his ass for the entire T¡¯narg campaign.¡±

    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

    Alve did not miss the reference to the bloodiest conflict between the northern va¡¯id and Rillan to date. A conflict Alve would not expect a Rojin patriot to be involved with. Let alone be familiar with the behavior of a specific Rillan officer.

    ¡°Are you saying he isn¡¯t Rekon?¡± Alve decided to ignore the implications. It was best not to question the clandestine actions of the kingdom, lest you become one of them.

    ¡°It is not the Rekon I knew. The question is if something happened to him or something took his place.¡± The choice of something over someone implied a sinister possibility.

    ¡°Sar? insists he is an average middle aged man, as alma as any other.¡± Copying the appearance of another person perfectly required a more experienced flesh-mage than most cosmetic procedures.

    But it was costly, not inaccessible. And Sar? did not have Rekon¡¯s health records to compare against. She could only confirm his internals appeared as expected for an alma in his sixties.

    ¡°The Rillans are finally sending a retrieval party.¡± The man tapped an envelope on his cluttered desk.

    Alve ignored the abrupt change of subject. ¡°I noticed Ane on my way in. How long do we have?¡± The reedy courier passed Alve while leaving the main fortress.

    The two men did not acknowledge each other. Alve because he did not care about the custom and Ane because he already knew that.

    The outpost was distant enough from the kingdom proper to make couriers infrequent. But it was notable that Ane had arrived ten months before his usual schedule and two weeks before the next expected courier.

    ¡°We don¡¯t need to do anything.¡± Alve pursed his lips at the response.

    ¡°We don¡¯t need to do anything about a potentially hostile imposter with unknown abilities or motives?¡± The incredulity was mostly hidden. Yet Alve still received a sharp glance.

    ¡°You are not to do anything to the unidentified entity with unknown abilities and unknown motives. One who has so far shown no sign of hostility.¡± The message was clear. Do not shoot the tarasque.

    ¡°There are ways of dealing with these situations. Ways that minimize risk to my facilities and staff.¡± Alve relaxed.

    He only knew hearsay and fringe conspiracy about how such things were dealt with. But it was hard to spend a decade in the Royal College without realizing that magical rogues and their creations would take more than the crown¡¯s common forces to regulate.

    A journey-mage could only do so much harm. Someone like Alve might dismantle the defenses of a rural township or command a bandit group by raw power. But he would ultimately be nothing more than a larger scale version of any other criminal.

    A master-mage was a different matter. Alve had known many between senior students and his instructors. But there was a gap of more than scale between Alve and them.

    An apprentice-mage learned magic. A journey-mage understood magic. But a master-mage was magic.

    Alve could craft a ward to react to a sword swinging at his neck. A master-force-mage would sense the kinetic energy in the sword and its wielder. Then they would mulch both into a slurry of flesh, bone and metal fragments. All without moving a muscle.

    Someone like that could never be stopped by mundane methods. And force magic was one of the most direct and least insidious disciplines.

    Only a few people each century managed to continue beyond master-mage. That was both sociopolitical and a matter of aptitude.

    There was a reason a 30-year-mage was not simply a mage who remained in study for a third decade. It meant a mage had achieved proficiency above a master-mage proportionate to the gap between a master-mage and journey-mage.

    The testing criteria was complex. Alve did not entirely understand the methodology. But the few times Alve had been in a room with a 30-year-mage made his skin crawl.

    There was something wrong with them. The way they spoke. The look in their eyes. As if the material world was less real to them than the arcane forces within everything. It was concerningly similar to what Alve sometimes glimpsed in the man presenting himself as Rekon.

    ¡°So we do nothing?¡± Alve¡¯s de facto boss sighed.

    ¡°We watch, and we report anything we notice. The necessary process has already started.¡± He punctuated the sentence by picking up his pen and returning to his work.

    Alve had reported to the man long enough to recognize the nonverbal dismissal. He slid his chair back and stood.

    ¡°And if he becomes a threat to our facilities or staff?¡± The response was given without looking up.

    ¡°Than I expect you to deal with it as any other threat.¡± Alve nodded before pushing the door open and closing it behind himself.

 Chapter 10, An Exquisite Escape (18+)

    The coarse saddle blanket rubbed against the skin of Ane¡¯s exposed back. It was better than the prickling straw loosely mounded beneath.

    Ane was far more absorbed by the equally bear body above him. Lips pressed against his, softness periodically parting to nip at his own.

    Hands explored in a rhythmic cycle. They both sought to feel the other and equally to draw the opposing body closer.

    Viss began slowly grinding the slickness between her legs against his right thigh. The feeling of friction and warmth finally brought Ane to full erectness.

    His hands shifted from pulling her against him to gently guiding the soft body away. Viss rolled to the side and Ane found his way above her.

    Lips found a nipple. His tongue circled the soft skin and brought forth twitching gasps.

    A hand trailed down to the place her thigh met the mons. Breath caught as fingers stroked the edge of her labia.

    Viss wove a hand past his and grasped the shaft pressed against her. Ane responded by sliding a finger through the barrier of labia and into the wetness beyond.

    Ane moved slowly, carrying the moisture inside to the folds. Viss released him and pushed his body away.

    Her knees pulled up to her breast. Ane moved atop. Preparation and familiarity allowed his tip to slide in.

    Ane met resistance and pulled back. Slickness was carried out with him, and he slid further in the next time.

    Soon his body met hers. Viss squeezed him. Ane took the message. He began a slow rhythmic stroke.

    The gliding motion against her clenching channel built in speed and intensity. Her entrance gripping him finally brought Ane to his limit. Warm pulses carried his seed into her milking muscles.

    Ane slowed. Long deep strokes continued until he finally pulled himself out.

    As a younger less prudent man Ane might have taken the chance to rest on his laurels. Two fingers filled the abandoned channel.

    Ane returned to the same tempo as before. Fingers curled to glide against her anterior wall in a facsimile of his earlier motions.

    Kisses trailed down her chest and soft stomach. Viss spread her labia back to ease access.

    Ane sucked and rolled the tiny nub as his fingers worked in and out below. Soon her unconscious thrusting against his digits and sharp inhalations reached a breaking point.

    Viss spasmed against Ane. He slowed his motions as she rode out her own climax on his fingers.

    She gradually calmed. Ane felt a hand rest on his head. Viss lightly pushed him away. Her flushed navy face became visible from one of his favorite angles. That being looking up at it from between her thighs.

    ¡°I would love you to keep doing¡­ that. But I have¡­ real work to do.¡± Her speech broke periodically as he made practiced use of his hand¡¯s location and her still heightened arousal.

    ¡°But it''s so nice down here.¡± Ane gave his best wounded puppy-dog eyes. Viss scoffed and shoved him off.

    Ane gave no actual resistance. But rolled away and clutched at his chest in mock agony. ¡°Fair maiden! Your rejection claws at my soul.¡±

    Viss rolled off the impromptu mattress and started collecting her clothes from the stable floor. ¡°I would never have imagined such a mysterious and worldly stranger would be so easily struck down.¡± She responded through a smirk.

    Her breasts vanished behind her undershirt and flattened as she tied the strings. Ane took the hint and switched from exaggerated distress to seeking his own discarded garments.

    Viss wiped away the mixture of seman and transudate seeping out between her legs before pulling her trousers on. The minor enchantment on the handkerchief would gradually cleanse itself of the mixture of fluids and be just as absorbent and starile next time she used it.

    Ane was a little envious of the low grade item. Despite being cheap in terms of permanent enchantments, the cloth represented several weeks wages for a common laborer even in the heart of civilization.

    In a rural village such a thing could take years of saving to afford. That was for an item that could be replaced by periodically boiling half a dozen common rags.

    It truly drove home the exorbitant wages paid to those willing to work on the edge of the Dark Moors. Viss was the outpost¡¯s groom, if an experienced one. But she likely made more than a trained artisan in the capital even as a glorified stable girl.

    Ane was no less subject to the Dark Moors¡¯ wealth. He made more each year he ran the full loop of border fortresses than he had in a decade carrying letters from one farming village to the next.

    The saddle bags Viss was now affixing to his new mount illustrated part of why his figurative pockets were so full. It was not the size of his load. It was the opposite.

    Minimal packages were strapped alongside his rations and magically light camping gear. The horse they were attached to was bred for prolonged sprints.

    It would have been nice to believe that was to hasten his journey. But Ane knew it was to give him a chance of outrunning the things he might happen upon.

    The saddle and tackle contained a small fortune in short duration swiftness enchantments. Hazards of both a natural and unholy nature were not guaranteed to stay within the nebulous border of the Dark Moors.

    ¡°Syl here has really calmed down in the last few months, but she still runs like your bowels after a pound of hog-root.¡± Ane came up behind Viss and wrapped his arms around the taller alma¡¯s waist.

    ¡°That was a disgusting metaphor.¡± He murmured as she finished checking his saddle.

    ¡°Nonsense. That was a simile.¡± Ane retorted by moving his hands under her shirt and doing his best to be distracting.

    ¡°Didn¡¯t you come in here because you need to set out?¡± Viss made no attempt to hide her exasperated amusement.

    ¡°I suppose that was part of it.¡± Ane stroked light circles on her stomach. ¡°A small part.¡±

    It would have been nice to migrate his wandering hands to more intriguing places. But Viss was right about them both having work to return to.

    They already spent most of their free time the previous day and night together in both the carnal and social sense. The same had been true twice a year for over half a decade.

    Neither had any illusions they were the only person warming the other''s bed. But they were when Ane passed through.

    He was finally forced to pull away when Viss began leading Syl outside. A parting kiss that involved only a little teeth preceded Viss lifting Ane up bodily and setting the smaller alma onto his horse.

    The outpost was soon disappearing behind. Ane rode down the quickly fading path. Before long the grass had obscured the way entirely.

    Ane pulled out his way-finder from a breast pocket. It still pointed back towards outpost 5C. But twisting the rings around the edge of the enchanted compass caused the needle to spin wildly.

    His free hand swatted at a sharp pain on his collar bone. The needle settled. It bounced back and forth a few times before settling on his destination.

    Ane examined the crushed deer fly and smear of his own green blood on his palm. He scraped the mess off on the edge of his saddle and redoubled his intention to buy something to repel at least the mundane pests.

    He shifted Syl¡¯s path to better align with the way-finder¡¯s needle. The dryness in his throat was remedied by a swig from his waterskin.

    The enchanted vessel would gradually accumulate water from the air. But the process was slow enough that it was best to conserve the contents. That made the persistent thirst frustrating.

    A brief flash of lightheadedness caused Ane to sway in his seat. That was when he realized something was wrong.

    Ane brought Syl to a halt and tried to dismount. He did not make it.

    Ane gradually drifted to consciousness. His body felt numb. His tongue seemed too large for his mouth. The pounding pressure behind his eyes made it hard to focus.

    He was definitely on a solid, cold and uneven surface. Jagged bits of the ground scraped bear skin, revealing an evident lack of clothing.

    His third attempt finally forced crusty eyes open. Sunlight shone down from a gap between two boulders above. Those same boulders combined with several other slabs to make a talus cave.

    Ane winced as he pushed himself up. The stabbing pain in his left arm indicated something was wrong. It still moved fine, despite the bruising coming in.

    That bruising was not limited to his arm. A patch was darkening on his outer thigh on the same side. It was easy to guess Ane had landed on his left. The question was whether it was falling off Syl or after he lost consciousness.

    The ground Ane propped on was tilted and uneven itself. But the bigger concern was how all the walls were greater than ninety degrees.

    Ane scrutinized the formation in search of any possible way to the opening twenty feet above. Every path would require the ability to hang from the underside of solid stone.

    A kind of focused calm pervaded as the reality of the situation settled in. He was naked and trapped. There was no sign of a captor. But a conscious actor must have brought him to the cave.

    Ane stood with care. Hands searched the bear stone for any handhold. That search halted as a shift in light drew his attention to the narrow opening above.

    The figure blocking the light raised goosebumps across Ane¡¯s exposed flesh. A near featureless mask hid the black creature''s face. If that was a mask at all¡­

    Ane realized the smooth ebony skin merged seamlessly with the chitinous covering. No mouth, nose or eyes were recognizable. Only a slightly curved plate that reflected like the shell over a beetle¡¯s wings.

    The body was roughly shaped like an alma. But it lacked blemish, hair or anything else to give distinction.

    Flying insects swarmed around its form. Occasionally the flies landed on its abyssal flesh and took on an unnerving stillness, becoming almost impossible to distinguish from the creature itself.

    Ane stood paralyzed as the creature moved the hand not supporting its weight into view. He wanted to speak, whether to demand answers or scream. But it felt as if moving would trigger the creature to strike across the distance.

    It gripped something gray and serpentine. Ane absently noticed the creature¡¯s lack of visible finger nails.

    The pitch hand released the writhing creature. It dropped. Ane found the will to stumble back from the serpent¡¯s trajectory.

    The slanting ground proved too precarious for his abrupt retreat. He slipped and fell, barely avoiding bashing his skull on the rock wall.

    Ane tried to roll onto all fours. But a burst of pain at the base of his spine caused him to jerk in shock and lose his partial footing. The pain was replaced by a tingling sensation that spread up to his skull and out to the extremities.

    Twisting revealed a glimpse of the snake-like creature coiling behind him. It was somewhere around his legs. Ane tried to scramble away. But the creature followed.

    Ane grabbed the serpent in panic and flung it. Or he tried. A stab of pain caused him to immediately let go. Not pain from his hand. Pain from his sacrum.

    But the pain was not why he let go. It was the feeling of his own hand grabbing a part of his body that should not have been there.

    Ane finally made it to his feet. Spinning failed to reveal the creature on the cave floor. But he already knew it would not.

    It was there. Not just when he focused on it. The thing was sprouting from his lower back as clearly as his arm sprouted from his shoulder.

    It stopped when Ane did. He tentatively moved it from side to side. Then carefully brought it around the side of his hip.

    The surreal sight of the smooth gray appendage not quite reaching his groin brought back the focused calm. Ane knew his mind was shifting from fight or flight back to crisis management. But that knowledge was not important in the moment.

    It was indisputable that the serpentine attacker had become an appendage. One that felt concerningly natural both to move and simply have.

    The small gray tendril was more like a worm now that Ane could evaluate it close up. It lacked scales and did not come to the narrow point of a snake. But its skin was closer to that of an alma than the moist flesh of an earthworm.

    Ane glanced up to the hole above. The faceless creature had vanished at some point during the struggle. But Ane could see a handful of insects still landed on the rocks around the opening.

    It proved hard to see the place his body met the foreign limb. But feeling the area revealed a slight seam between his skin and the alien flesh.

    Ane could feel both with equal clarity. Any attempt to separate them caused pain comparable to ripping out his own fingernails.

    Pulling hard on the tail was even worse. And that was what it was. The position and clear connection to his body and mind made the name obvious. Even if the limb was not a natural appendage.

    Ane carefully sat on the flattest part of the stone floor. The tail curled up between his legs in a way so reflexive that he would not have noticed without consciously thinking about it.

    The ebony creature must have brought him to the natural oubliette. Ane had never seen anything like it in reality. But the featureless mask and pitch skin was unsettlingly familiar.

    The Divine Discord was a staple of every harvest festival across Rojin. In small villages the costumes were simple home made things if present at all. But professional performers had common and recognizable designs that marked each player in the fall of the dark gods.

    If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.

    All the named gods had distinctive and often intricate regallia. But the nameless swarm of dark gods that danced around the Dissenter and his court were eerily similar to the creature.

    Black form-fitting fabric or body paint and a featureless mask of the same non-color. The design was simple and ment to make the dancers blend together.

    But the resemblance was present no matter how vague. Could the creature be a cultist? Or the creation of a cultist?

    Everyone knew that people depraved enough to worship the dark gods existed. Word or rumor of sects being discovered bubbled up every few years.

    But the Church of the Creator ensured such things never moved beyond the dark and hidden places of the world. Ane laughed at the morbid irony of that thought.

    He was naked at the bottom of a pit somewhere in the unpopulated territory not Rojin, Rillan, T¡¯narg or even the Merchant States cared to claim properly. The gods forsaken Dark Moors were a few days hard ride away.

    If there was anywhere that qualified as dark and hidden, this was it. Roaming abominations and violent outlaws were part of his job description. And now that was coming back to bite him in the ass. Maybe literally.

    Ane absently wrapped the gray tendril around his flaccid penis and moved the shrunken phallus from side to side. He let go and pressed the tail flat against his stomach.

    It reached just past his navel. That felt longer than his first assessment. Ane thought it was only the width of his pointer finger when he first saw it. But now he could tell it was thicker than his thumb.

    Ane was no mage and lacked a formalized education. He liked to think of himself as worldly. More worldly than those who stayed in the village of his birth.

    But demons, necromancers and dark forces were things left to priests and mages. All he had was enough critical thinking and skepticism to doubt campfire tales would be of any help when facing the reality of unholy magics.

    Ane frowned as he watched his absently flicking new limb. Adjusting his position and moving the tail away revealed a patch of discolored skin on his inner thigh.

    It had taken a moment to differentiate it from the tail tucked in his crena and to the side of his scrotum. The color was nearly identical in the dim light of the cave.

    The blot was a few fingers wide and disappeared behind his leg. Ane felt a chilling dread as he twisted and craned to see his own backside.

    The gray flesh was spreading up his back and down his thighs. It had already claimed his ass as far as he could tell.

    The source was obvious. And it definitely proved the effects were not limited to a new diminutive appendage.

    The stories of necromancers warping people into things in the Dissenter¡¯s image crept very unwanted into his mind. Deathless abominations kept from joining the Creator in a distorted facsimile of life.

    Ane returned to his feet. He frantically sought a way up. A rock that moved. A hidden crevice to squeeze through. Anything would do.

    There was nothing. Every wall angled aggressively towards the ceiling¡¯s center. Some even looked freshly broken. Dust, chips and jagged stone implied a conscious effort to remove handholds or footing by a mage or similar force.

    Ane even tried yanking at the parasitic tail again. This time there was no debilitating pain. Only the unpleasant feeling of having an arm tugged too hard. Except in a place he had never possessed an arm.

    Feeling out the area revealed no seam where his body ended and the creature began. It was unbroken skin he could no longer differentiate.

    The gray coloration had continued to creep across his grass green skin. Every time Ane glanced at it the shade had spread further.

    It already reached the top of his feet and shoulders. Tendrils of gray had started down his arms. He guessed the same was true for his neck.

    His tail curled anxiously. It felt completely natural. No different from the twitching of his fingers.

    With shock Ane realized the new limb was near his ankles. Reaching straight down with it touched the cold stone.

    Ane brought it up and around. The smooth skin was warm in his hands. It was now over two fingers thick all the way to its blunt tip.

    The skin seemed a bit looser on the last inch or two and puckered at the very end. Ane gently poked at the folded skin. It was sensitive in a way very familiar.

    Ane carefully parted the folds to reveal a tiny slit reminiscent of the tip of his penis. The skin protecting it was not dissimilar to the very end of his foreskin.

    But it merged with the slit at its edge rather than remaining separate across the head. There was nothing that clearly resembled the head of a penis. The tail continued roughly uniform all the way to the end.

    Ane carefully moved the skin around. The sensitivity was not pleasurable. But that was in the same way touching his phallus in his current mental state would not have provided sexual pleasure.

    His hands distracted Ane from the surreal experience. The gray tone had spread over his fingers at some point.

    A quick examination found no green skin anywhere visible without a mirror. He doubted a mirror would have shown anything different.

    The realization accompanied a prickling chill that sent sweat beading across his whole body. The process had completed. But there was no way to know if more sinister effects were to come.

    Undead in stories were either the slaves of wicked mages or souls torn from the natural order by the dark gods. Distorted bodies and rotting flesh underpinned both versions.

    The hunger for flesh, blood and innocent souls was a grimmer prospect. Driven by unnatural desires or an unholy master to butcher his friends and family.

    Who would they send him after? Viss came to his mind¡¯s eye. Outpost 5C was the closest. Unless he was carried a significant distance while unconscious.

    Ane resolved to stop himself before he could hurt anyone. If he could. If he was still him by that point.

    It felt like his thoughts were still the same. But how would he know if his mind was unchanged? Not when the mind was being judged by itself.

    He did not know if he could stop himself permanently. Not even if his mind was entirely his own when making that choice. He could only hope it did not come to that.

    Ane slowly realized the layer of moisture on his skin was not ordinary perspiration. It felt viscous. Pulling two fingers apart left a strand of slime between the digits before the thread snapped.

    It was like a slick mucus oozing from every pore. A sense of analytic calm krept over Ane.

    He should have been panicking. He certainly had when the gray first began spreading. Instead he absently watched the sludge build up on his gray form. There was nothing he could do but watch and wait.

    The slime appeared clear at first. But it rapidly became milky as it thickened. The coating accompanied a strange sensation of shifting movement inside.

    Ane fidgeted in something that was not exactly discomfort. When he stopped moving it became obvious that bones, muscles and things he could not name were moving outside of his own control.

    It should have been agonizing. Ane could tell joints were shifting as bones stretched and shrunk. Muscles contracted at angles slightly off from how they had for Ane¡¯s entire adult life.

    But it was only unsettling. No recognizable sensation of discomfort accompanied the alien experience.

    Ane ran their hands up and down their thighs. The rhythmic movement distracted from the foreign motion within.

    Their skin felt loose under the layer of mucus. With every stroke it slid further than alma skin should. Then it tore.

    Ane froze. A thin yet still solid strip of gray dermis ripped like wet paper under their palm. More mucus oozed from under the torn edge and equally gray flesh was faintly distinguishable below.

    Ane carefully prodded at the strip of skin. They thought it was their original skin. Or at least the bleached gray version of it. But it now felt more like the gelatinous film of mold formed on the surface of a forgotten bowl of soup than solid dermal tissue.

    A piece easily came off between their fingers. The strip seemed to keep deteriorating in their hand. After a minute it was indistinguishable from the slime coating everything.

    The separated skin on their thigh was doing the same. Only a thicker layer of mucus marked where it was bunched.

    The unsettling shifting had slowly died down until Ane could no longer feel anything moving inside. Their body felt comfortable again, their proprioception no longer disoriented.

    Ane rolled onto their side and spit out a mouthful of sludge. They had not even noticed the goo accumulating. White chunks lay in the viscous mass.

    Ane pulled out a molar and numbly studied it. Running a tongue across their teeth found many sharp points.

    It felt like every tooth was an incisor. But the top and bottom still fit together perfectly. The few snaggleteeth Ane had never paid to fix were gone. They were most likely spit onto the stone.

    Ane began scraping the slime off. It was at least an inch thick. More in certain places.

    They scraped away the sludge over their groin only to find it more mucus than flesh. What they thought was their genitalia came away to reveal something familiar. But not from their own body.

    Ane leaned forwards to get a clearer view. They were able to bend more easily than they ever could before.

    Their chin ended up nearly touching the new slit spanning where their testicles had been. There was no hint of the strain such a contorted position should have brought.

    The light was poor. Ane could make out the shape of labia majora nearly obscuring the dark minora peeking from between.

    They bent back and crawled over to the patch of daylight on the cave floor. The small spot of brightness had drifted with the sun. Soon it would reach the wall and begin the journey to night.

    Ane positioned themselves so the light fell on their lower stomach and upper thighs. They scraped away the slime invading their eyes.

    A tangle of light blue strands was visible in the resulting globual. Passing their hand over their scalp brought away both mucus and most of their hair.

    A few more passes confirmed Ane was completely bald. That was somehow the most distressing discovery.

    They took pride in their hair. Grooming it was logistically difficult with their career and lifestyle. But doing so made them feel presentable and in control despite that.

    Ane resolved to find a quality wig. That was if they were not too busy eating villagers or doing chores for their dark master.

    They laughed at the bleak humor of the thought. The sound was higher and clearer in their own ears than they remembered.

    Ane returned to inspecting the now illuminated space between their legs. The outer labia was soft to the touch.

    They had felt the same thing on many women. But they never felt the other half of the contact.

    Parting the labia majora revealed the much darker folds inside. The labia minora were charcoal gray verging on black. But the shape was as similar to those Ane had interacted with before as each of those partners had been to each other.

    Ane could make out the clitoris under its hood. They watched the opening below clench and relax as they flexed. The muscles felt so natural they had not thought about them until now.

    Ane had never felt uncomfortable with their sex or the correlating anatomy. If they had they would have talked with a priest about it.

    Those who experienced dissonance between their body and mental image could have that image changed by a priest to match their form. If they also felt uncomfortable with the social role their sex placed them in, they could instead pursue the longer process of having their sex changed.

    Ane knew a few people in their village who left puberty with a different sex than they started with. Habe¡¯s followers ensured such an option was available across the Church¡¯s domain. The same was true for birth control charms, fertility healing and eradication of sexual diseases.

    They suspected having an organ replaced by another should have felt alien and wrong. But they could not find any instinctual distress or dissonance.

    Ane tried thinking about their previous anatomy. How it had felt. The places sensation had been or had not. What it was like to have it touched. To use it or have it used by another.

    It felt strange. Almost hard to imagine or relate to. As if having balls where their labia was and a penis affixed above was the alien experience.

    Ane shivered at the realization. Something had been changed inside their mind. It was something any priest of Habe could change in an alma upon request. But it was still an effect on their feelings and desires.

    They uncurled to tentatively poke at their chest. Ane half expected soft tissue to have built up on their pectorals. But their chest was flatter than before.

    Clearing more slime exposed bear skin. They realized their nipples were gone.

    Ane started removing all the clinging sludge in earnest. It seemed to have begun drying and came off like an unpleasant second skin.

    The mound of ooze left on the rock looked revolting. But they were left as clean as could be expected.

    They stood shakily and put a few steps between themselves and the crud. It had no detectable smell. That or Ane was too acclimatized to smell it.

    They felt strangely light. Almost nimble. Moving across the uneven stone required some care and attention before. Now it was reflexive to twist and bend every step into the needed footing.

    Ane wished they had a mirror. It was apparent their build had changed. But also hard to judge how much.

    Their entire frame was definitely slighter. That brought their already lanky build for an alma to something obviously non-alma. As if the tail had not been sufficient.

    They thought their hips were wider and knew their shoulders and rib cage had narrowed. Walking in the longest flattest circle the cave allowed for revealed a slight sway to their stride. But it was nothing as pronounced as many alma women Ane had known.

    The light from above was shifting towards a golden red. Ane assumed the sun would set fully in the next few hours.

    The last few hours had completely destroyed their life in a way Ane was trying not to dwell on. But the situation was ultimately the same. Unless they could crawl on ceilings now.

    There was no way out. No food. Not even water. If nothing changed, they would die in a matter of days.

    They did not feel hungry yet. Or thirsty. Which was odd if Ane thought about it.

    It had been early afternoon when they lost consciousness. That would have been hours ago. And that was assuming it was the same day. There was no way to know how long they were unconscious without knowing why they passed out in the first place.

    All they felt was a slight need to use a bathroom they certainly did not have. They were not looking forward to picking a spot for that.

    Ane frowned. Something they had noticed when inspecting their nethers returned to their thoughts.

    They could clearly feel the muscular channel opening at the base of their vulva. But they just as clearly could no longer feel the ring of muscle in the space behind it.

    Ane brought a hand between their legs. They pushed aside the caution and felt out their new anatomy.

    It was immediately obvious the area was sensitive. But not much more than running a finger around the inside of their mouth.

    Ane supposed that made sense. They were not aroused. It was just another place with soft tissue and a larger perceived presence in their mind than the true size would suggest.

    They were not sure how that would change if they became aroused. They did not even know with certainty they still could. That was a later concern.

    Ane found the opening that led inside. A fingertip carefully slid in. There was no discomfort. Either the residual mucus eased the act or their resting state was slicker than the alma women they had lain with.

    They pulled out and moved back further. The skin was unbroken as far as they could reach. Checking from behind confirmed the continuous skin from their tail to vagina. They had no anus.

    Ane was not sure what to make of that. Did they not shit? Or were they like a chicken, everything going through one hole? They really hoped it was the first.

    The pressure in their lower abdomen was not exactly right. It felt similar to the need to defecate. But it was less like that feeling the more it intensified.

    Did they need to piss? They had not specifically noticed a urethra. But that would have been much easier to miss. It did not really feel like the need to urinate either.

    It was a need to move something within. A desire to push something out. They could almost make out the shape inside. Something at their center that had to be forced down. Had to come out.

    They were increasingly aware of the folds between their legs. A tingling warmth caused them to press their thighs together. As if sensation was returning to a limb that had fallen asleep. Except the heat was going from full sensation to something beyond it.

    The feeling of slick wetness became obvious between their thighs. Ane was intensely aware of their clitoris. Their inner labia. And of the twitching channel leading to their core.

    Ane clambered down to the lowest point in the cave. They tried to ignore the profound absence of anything for their inner walls to clench around. The impulse to move muscles inside and force the object down. To spread themselves open from within and be filled.

    They squatted over the loose stones collected where the floor slanted under the rock face forming the cave wall. Their opening twitched and relaxed in rhythmic intervals.

    Ane could not hold back any longer. They followed their instincts and pushed. A ripple of pleasure pulsed down to their opening.

    The pulse moved over the obstruction and forced it into their channel. The emptiness was filled.

    Ane was surprised a moment later by a second stronger pulse that traveled down unprompted. The point it passed over the foreign mass was exquisite.

    The closest thing Ane could liken the feeling to was the pulses that traveled up their penis and carried their seed during ejaculation. Except the scale was far greater.

    Each pulse traveled from deep within to their opening. And it passed down their entire channel on the way. The spike of pressure and wonderful fullness around the obstruction was like a piece of an orgasm each time.

    The pulses continued. With each Ane let out a small whimper. It was soon forced down to their opening.

    The last pulse came with a greater intensity that could not be mistaken for any of its predecessors. The object crowned. Ane cried out as they were spread open.

    The orgasm as the mass left them was as intense as anything Ane experienced as an alma. The clink of something hard hitting the rocky ground was ignored.

    Ane shuddered as the afterglow faded. Their mind was cleared completely. The worries were not forgotten. But they did not matter currently.

    The bliss gradually passed enough for them to look down and inspect the glistening orb on the ground below. Droplets of their fluids pattered on the obsidian shell, joining the wetness already darkening the stones.

    They could still feel it. The need to push was gone. But it was now obvious that the place inside where the ovoid came from was still as full as before.

    They pressed down again. Soon two orbs lay below them. Then three, then four. Between the persistent and undiminished climaxes, an idea came to their mind. It felt like a very good idea.

 Chapter 11, Perfect Organism

    I watched the ve drop from my hand. It gradually slowed as the essence woven around it was expended to consume its momentum.

    The naked alma scrambling away missed the ve landing lightly on the rocky cave floor. I used a more costly version of the same weave to drop him into the pit an hour earlier.

    The alma man had initially proven a problem for me. Not because of anything he was doing directly. But because the outpost had given him the horse I was still controlling.

    I considered going wild and fleeing. But that risked failure and potentially discovery if the recaptured equine was studied too closely.

    My effective range of control was limited to a few miles. So I improvised a plan that turned the situation into an opportunity. Albeit one with its own risks.

    The man lost his footing and ended up on his hands and knees. That proved disaffintagious against a ve¡¯s agility.

    The ve coiled and sprong. It landed on his backside and immediately lashed out.

    I watched attentively as the seam across every ve¡¯s head split open. It latched onto the crest of the alma¡¯s crack, where I knew their spines ended in a bone fused to the pelvis.

    My presence could see inside his body as easily as I saw the surface. But it did not give satisfactory detail at range.

    I instead relied on weavings to show me the filaments unraveling from within the ve. They appeared to less puncture and more shape flesh and bone around them.

    Yet I could not identify any mechanism for the effect. Neither animus or essence was involved. It was most similar to how I repaired my body when damaged. A process I could not explain beyond my own experience.

    I retreated from the opening. A few of my animated insects remained to watch on my behalf.

    The alma male seemed to panic at first. He even tried to remove the ve physically. But he soon calmed in a way I had seen from many gam experiencing an external crisis.

    I discovered the cave after Rekon was judged sufficiently healthy to not be constantly accompanied. Hiking the planes and brushlands around the outpost gave a chance to extend my insects¡¯ range and fully explore the terrain.

    A rocky hillside proved to contain many small crevices. The one I ended up turning into a crood prison was already hard to climb in or out of when I found it. Breaking a few select spots made it nearly impossible without aid.

    The ve had begun moving as a natural limb. As if under the alma¡¯s conscious control. Was it attached to his nervous system?

    This was my first test exposing an unrestrained ve to an alma. There had never been a way to do it without risking conflict.

    Not to say my current test was without risk. It was just less of an increase in risk. Not when I already had to get the horse away from the outpost¡¯s courier.

    My guess was this had never happened before. Ve were not resilient enough to survive long on their own.

    The resemblance to the tail of a gam was obvious. It affixed itself in the corresponding place on the alma. And now it was moving in the same manner.

    The scale was still vastly off. It was one of the larger ve hatched from the eggs I laid while alma sized.

    Part of my reason for storing my unfertilized eggs unbroken was to perform tests on alma when I got the chance. But the size of the eggs had proven to affect the size of the ve.

    The ve still looked tiny on the alma man. It might almost reach the back of his knees if pointed straight down. And the girth was less than impressive.

    I wanted to watch the experiment first hand. But there was no way to know the full effects or their duration. My only existing data was from my own origins more than half a millenia ago.

    My departure was already somewhat abrupt. I had been watching Ginger do her equivalent of work when the groom started equipping the horse.

    Ginger was the third formally educated mage in the outpost. I was a little uncertain about her role. She evidently had less status than Sar? or Alve.

    She called herself a research student. That appeared to mean she spent all day in her workshop making enchantments with almost no practical purpose and occasionally caused something to explode.

    It made Ginger a much more useful person to observe. Alve only worked with kinetic force. Sar? only worked with healing. And both performed the same tasks frequently and did not really have time to talk while working.

    Ginger would talk whether or not anyone was visibly present. And she seemed as interested in explaining what she was doing as actually doing it. Which meant very interested in both.

    Leaving her workshop only required staying quiet for about a minute. After that she appeared to have forgotten I was there.

    I simply walked out and left the outpost by foot. The grasslands and wooded patches around were so tame that I could enter them as an unprotected alma without raising suspicion.

    It made me wonder what would have happened if I found my way here in the first century of my life. Would the gam have flourished in the idyllic landscape?

    Many might have been saved. But that had not come to pass. And now we had a foothold in the Moors.

    A biting fly soaked in beetle vine extraction proved effective in knocking my rider unconscious. The vine was covered in filaments that stuck in the skin and had no greater effect on most creatures.

    However it incapacitated insects and small animals that used life animus. The vermin¡¯s unconscious bodies acted as a food source for spear beetles.

    The large carnivorous insects would set up territories around beetle vine and kill all the herbivores that might go after the vine. It was an educated guess that a concentration of the toxin would affect alma. And I was pretty relieved it worked without outright killing the man.

    He was unconscious for less than an hour. That was still enough to drag him to the pit and take all his equipment. But it meant I would be missing from the outpost for several hours in total.

    I hopped from boulder to boulder. A handful of my flies would let me watch the alma. And the many detection patterns woven around the small cave would record what happened inside his body.

    My form began to shift when I was a few minutes from my usual hiking path. The organic mask broke apart and was reabsorbed by Rekon¡¯s face.

    My generic body regained pigmentation and distinctive blemishes. Soon I was a copy of Rekon again.

    The appearance I used to hide my identity was based on a mask Ginger had on her cluttered bookshelf. It was part of a joke she played on one of her teachers back in the capital.

    She snuck into his room while he was out. Then she glued herself to the ceiling under some kind of concealing enchantment.

    After he went to sleep, she dropped onto his bed wearing the mask and nothing else except black body paint. She also mentioned screaming ¡°Give me your soul, motherfucker!¡± while falling.

    I suspected there was some cultural context to the joke I was missing. But Ginger appeared to think it was quite funny.

    She mentioned that the same professor had sent her to the outpost for two years. That implied they must have been on good terms despite Ginger¡¯s sense of humor.

    My torso split open briefly and tendrils of flesh spat out my travel pack. I then resolved my internals into a convincing alma.

    The cavity I formed to store it was dry and skin lined. So the bag and clothing within was unaffected.

    I dressed quickly and returned to the path. All the casting and shapeshifting should have left me dangerously low on essence.

    But the first thing I did after capturing the alma courier was send the horse as far away as possible. Then I cut off the false animus sustaining it.

    The amount of essence I was using on the horse was substantial. And my regeneration rate was greatly improved by no longer animating a large animal.

    I noticed something interesting through my flies. The stark line between the ve and the flesh of the alma was no longer discernible.

    Not only was the seam gone to the naked eye. But the gam gray was spreading onto the surrounding green skin like ink dropped into clear water.

    The process of me integrating into G?ri The¡¯s body had no such stage. But I had reconstructed their body almost immediately, causing the alterations from their original form in the process.

    It was possible the same thing I was observing would have occurred without my conscious intervention. But it was just as possible the conditions were different.

    Ve had never shown signs of higher reasoning. My consciousness took over G?ri The¡¯s body. Yet that did not mean the ve¡¯s consciousness was taking over the alma¡¯s body.

    The man noticed a few minutes later. That appeared to trigger another session of high activity. It was enough to make me worry about how well I removed the escape routes.

    It was already nearly impossible for me to get from the bottom to the entrance without expending essence. But a trapped sapient would eventually find nearly any way out. Even one nigh on impossible.

    There was something else happening with the ve. It was very gradual. But over the last half hour the ve had grown at a slowly increasing rate.

    It looked like the tail of a gam by the time he finally gave up. It was actually larger, being proportionate to the alma¡¯s size.

    The alma eventually caught onto this fact. He spent some time examining the end. I did not miss the distinctive reproductive slit that formed there.

    Ve had no such structure. It supported the idea that the ve was truly becoming a tail for the alma it attached to.

    The outpost came into view as I crested a small rise. It was hard to draw a clear line where the settlement began and ended.

    The core building was a squat fortress of stone. But it was obscured from close up by numerous less imposing barns, sheds, warehouses and even tents towards the outermost edge.

    The refugees from Rekon¡¯s failed expedition bloated out one side of the collection with a small tent city. It reminded me of a flesh barnicle burrowed into the side of a powerful beast without the flexibility to dislodge the parasite.

    The outpost¡¯s manager gave me the impression he saw our temporary camp in a similar way. I appreciated his politeness to our faces. But it was obvious we were not meant to be his responsibility.

    That alma worried me. If he was an alma at all. There was something strange about his soul I had not seen in any other alma.

    It appeared to have two layers. One was a sort of shell. Saying it was outside of the inner layer was strictly inaccurate.

    Animus constructs do not really obey physical dimensions within their own structure, even if they occupy fixed points in space. Both animus and essence can move in directions nonexistent for physical materials.

    But the outer layer felt like it occupied the places on his soul directly exposed to the outside world. My guess was whatever alma spells interacted with the soul would contact that layer.

    The inner layer was much larger and vastly more complex. It was the single most complicated soul I had ever seen.

    I only understood a fraction of how souls worked. The rough functions of many organelles were easy to figure out and certain things were even simple in practice.

    This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    But large regions were completely incomprehensible. And even the parts I understand were made possible by much smaller and more intricate parts I did not.

    That did not prevent me from recognizing when a soul was more or less elaborate than another. The pure volume and density of his channels was several orders of magnitude greater than any other alma I had seen.

    And that was nothing to the vast amount of animus he contained. It was several times larger than every other alma in the outpost put together.

    That was in sharp contrast to the outer layer. Only a tiny trickle of animus traveled through the few junction points to the shell.

    It contained more animus than the average alma I had seen. But still less than any of the mages.

    I was pretty sure the shell was some sort of disguise. It had things reminiscent of nonfunctioning versions of the organelle normal in an alma soul.

    The fact that those organelle did nothing was obvious to me. But I was using my presence to see the entire soul at once.

    I had no alma spell for seeing souls. My best bet would be trying to take apart the magic diagnostic spell I learned to let it target animus in a soul. That was still clearly beyond my ability.

    The courier drew my attention when he began sweating profusely. Gam do not sweat in response to temperature. We are essentially immune to temperature not sufficient to burn or freeze our flesh.

    It was interesting that the alma was sweating so heavily. And I was even more interested when he started melting.

    Melting might have been an exaggeration. His body was secreting a creamy gray mucus that quickly covered the gray skin entirely.

    He fidgeted on the cave floor. It seemed like he was in some level of distress. But the obscuring slime made it hard to gauge facial expressions.

    The mucus was left in trails on the stone with every movement. And I would swear the frame underneath was shifting. I was looking forward to studying the recorded data back at the cave.

    Entering the outpost was not especially eventful. I nodded or waved to a few people as appropriate for our level of familiarity.

    I only stopped once to check in socially with an alma woman who acted as a guard on Rekon¡¯s expedition. She had stopped limping over a week ago.

    But it was good to know the lingering ache was no longer keeping her up. Sleep seemed very important for alma. For me it was just very dull to fake.

    I slipped into the small stone building that served as Ginger¡¯s workshop. Heavy protective trousers and metal reinforced boots were sticking out from under the second largest table.

    The table itself had been subsumed by a tangle of tubes leading in and out of several apparatus on and under it. Fluids moved through many. But a few appeared filled with powders or only air.

    I returned to the same chair I was in four hours ago. The woven grasses that composed the seat and back were beginning to come apart, letting me sink more than was intended.

    ¡°Just a tad more red mercury. Need to make that stress response sing.¡± The commentary came from under the table. It had likely continued through my entire absence.

    ¡°Does the red mercury actually damage it? Or are you tricking the seed?¡± I recalled what the device was for when I left. It was reasonably likely it still had the same purpose.

    ¡°In nature, fuck yeah. Drake bones are full of the crap. And anything more than a faint trace kills all the vegetation. That¡¯s how they find drake skeletons.¡± There was no acknowledgement of my absence or return.

    ¡°Are you keeping the dose down?¡± The adjustments to the air and water entering a glass grow chamber at the thicket¡¯s core had been under refinement since I arrived near dawn.

    ¡°No. I¡¯m adding lots. But Ginger-48523J is going to inertly bond to the receptors that trigger apoptosis when the red stuff bonds.¡± I assumed she was referring to some custom enzyme or similar substance she made to fix this problem.

    It was a little unclear if a mage officially named anything new they made. But every time Ginger created something distinctive enough to not have a name, she would use her own name and a continually increasing number to refer to it.

    I inferred the number was how many things she had named. And the letter was how many prototypes there had been.

    It was also unclear how legitimate all of the creations were. I once heard her refer to porridge made with mead in place of water as Ginger-1647f.

    ¡°We can¡¯t add too much, or Ginger-48523J won¡¯t be effective.¡± She probably meant the enzyme could not bond to a high enough percentage of cells to counter an abundance of red mercury. But no clarification was provided.

    I leaned back on the fraying chair. Moving my presence and detection spell through Ginger¡¯s project was helpful in catching up on her progress.

    My mind''s eye also kept tabs on the slimy alma I was holding captive. His movement had calmed. He was now focused on removing the viscous covering obscuring his body.

    I was increasingly uncertain alma was the most accurate term. The bulky stature of an alma male had significantly slimmed. His chest and shoulders were narrower, and his hips looked to be the widest part of his body.

    His eyes were obviously the solid black of a gam before he even began removing the layer of goo. I became even more certain once he did.

    The more angular bone structure and obviously non-alma musculature was externally identical to a gam. The complete lack of hair was interesting. But it was possible that would regrow naturally.

    The pseudo-gam spent the most time examining the entrance and surrounding anatomy between his legs. Doing so exhibited a level of flexibility I had not seen from alma so far. However it was normal for my descendants.

    ¡°Flip that switch.¡± Ginger¡¯s demand drew more of my attention to the workshop.

    I hopped up and found the indicated switch. She only came out part way to point. Her face was still under the table. A massive poof of scarlet hair prevented me from seeing anything past her.

    The device hissed as gasses released into the glass chamber. The sandy soil darkened with a cocktail of fluids. And in the middle a tiny seed received an influx of growth magic.

    I watched the seed soak up the fluids and break open. A tap root went down. And soon after a sprout went up.

    The cotyledons unfurled and were quickly replaced by true leaves as the sprout rushed to maturity. A blossom formed and unfolded.

    The resulting flower was a deep navy with vibrant red speckles at the base of its petals and stamen a clashing yellow. Ginger popped up to inspect it as soon as the blooming began.

    I watched as intricate analytical spells moved through the flower. A massive smile spread across the orange skinned alma¡¯s face a moment later.

    ¡°Full hermaphroditism.¡± She whispered with a strangled manic glee. ¡°It might even self-fertilize.¡±

    I was more interested in the magic being used to understand the flower. But that did not reduce my interest in the flower itself.

    ¡°You said alpine lotus was very hard to breed?¡± I knew relatively little about the alpine lotus. It was a rare plant with valuable properties.

    ¡°They are terrible at it. The females are only fertile once a year, usually in winter. And the males produce pollen after a heavy rain following a warm drought.¡± My grasp of seasonal patterns outside the Moors was shaky and abstract. But those situations sounded unlikely to coincide.

    ¡°And this one will not have that problem?¡± Her fingers danced as magic moved through the lone flower.

    ¡°No. It should bloom again after going to seed. As long as we feed it. No need to heed nature or any god but I! The perfect organism¡­¡± Ginger began giggling.

    Then she threw her head and shoulders back and started laughing maniacally. It was not the first time a success had been celebrated like that.

    I was watching something odd from my own experiment. The courier seemed distressed in a way I recognized.

    He found his way to the low end of the cave and squatted. The body language as he lay the first egg was typical of an adolescent¡¯s first time laying.

    The entire thing was odd. Any gam at sexual maturity could lay voluntarily. But not every adolescent realized that before having it explained.

    Some did not figure it out or become fertilized by themselves or another for more than a month after their body was ready. The result was the same undeniable need to lay that always followed a month of abstinence.

    The abruptness and urgency of his laying looked more like the need to lay than realization of how to do so. But there was no way to know from visual observation alone.

    This did confirm that a ve attaching itself to an alma would create something very similar to a gam. Only his height separated the courier visually from an average gam.

    I could not confirm many of the biological differences yet. But the range of motion and laying of a proportionate and otherwise typical egg was good evidence.

    It would be foolish to extrapolate or assume too much. I could not say whether this outcome was universal for alma or applied to other species. It was also uncertain if the changes had ended.

    He might change further or be unstable and die. And the mental effects were hard to confirm.

    I had taken G?ri The¡¯s body. That was complicated by G?ri The leaving their body shortly afterwards. But it was possible the ve was somehow in control of the gam I was watching lay his third egg.

    The close to immediate laying was a possible deviation. He might have just noticed the capacity very quickly.

    I was skeptical. He seemed blindsided by it. The whole thing looked like a sudden and unexpected need.

    That implied an alma turned into a gam by a ve would not just be fertile. They would have an egg that already needed to be lain immediately. At least that was a possible explanation.

    The fact he was laying his eighth egg as Ginger finally ran out of breath was not inherently strange. It was definitely less strange than the amount of time Ginger could laugh for.

    Adolescents often laid a lot directly after learning how. Not to say adults did not do the same thing from time to time.

    Unfertilized eggs solved themselves in the Moors. Either something ate the eggs or something ate the ve that hatched from them. The only problem with spending a few hours laying a couple hundred was making sure you did so out of the way.

    It was still possible that the continued laying was not simply recreational. Relieving stress made sense in the situation. But he had not paused. Maybe he could not?

    Ginger finished messing with the flower¡¯s support system. She sat herself on a crate serving as a bench and began working on a mess of metal and wax located in a different section of the table.

    I took the opportunity to make porridge with the bag of grains and enchanted kettle that lived on the bookshelf. The bowls all being self cleaning was the only reason Ginger had any usable dishware.

    I still needed to collect bowls and spoons from the floor. Adding dried berries made the slurry taste like anything worthwhile to the alma tongue.

    One bowl I set by Ginger¡¯s elbow. The other I started eating myself.

    Eating was one of my least favorite parts of passing as an alma. The food was fine with alma senses. Most even tasted good, if still not as good as fresh flesh or blood.

    But the need to digest it and excrete the remains at least once a day was tedious. That was nothing to the constant intake and voiding of fluids an alma body required to maintain chemical balance.

    I could have stopped performing all those processes without negative effects. But that would have given my non-alma nature away to magical diagnostics.

    Ginger needed to perform all of them. But she seemed worse than me at doing so. Putting food in her line of sight was one of the few ways to prevent her from randomly passing out from malnutrition.

    I was interested to see if the courier would need food or water. He was still laying. And the volume of eggs confirmed his body could create material without consuming its own. That supported the idea he would not need outside resources anymore.

    I was uncertain if I should still be using masculine language to refer to him. The way alma incorporated a subject¡¯s sex into their language was tied into their culture in a way I did not entirely understand.

    All verbs and adjectives in their language had a prefix attatch marking the person performing the verb or that the adjective was describing as female or male. The same was true for titles and jobs like boss or mage.

    When the subject lacked a sex or had an unknown sex, the prefix was left off. That was always the case for referring to objects.

    It was relatively easy to understand once you spoke the language for a bit. But leaving off the prefix to mark sex when talking to or about an alma seemed to offend them.

    Some alma referred to gam with feminine language. My guess was that our stronger resemblance to alma females than males caused that. But most traders simply left off the sex markers.

    I had never been able to determine if that was a strange insult that failed to cross the cultural differences. No gam I had met cared one way or another.

    It felt like unnecessary information to encode in nearly every sentence. But the alma said the same thing about the gam use of animacy in our language.

    The alma had no animacy markers. But gam used a completely different set of articles to refer to things the speaker considered to have a conscious will.

    A tree or rock would usually lack animacy. A tree that could move and defend itself or a crustacean disguised as a rock could react actively and had animacy.

    That was natural when you hatched speaking the language. But every alma trader who tried to learn our language found it aggravating.

    The artificial gam finally paused. That only lasted long enough to move away from the pile that collected under them.

    They found a spot to sit on the stone slightly above. The laying resumed a moment later. That at least showed they physically could stop.

    I had to assume it was a recreational clutch. Was the instinct somehow harder to control for them?

    Laying even unfertilized eggs was certainly still pleasurable. But most gam would prioritize any immediate concerns over indulging our baser instincts.

    A large clutch was the sort of thing you did with time to kill or a need to clear your mind. It could be meditative.

    The systematic pattern of your body and innate sense of purpose provided a clean break from runaway thoughts. Afterwards you could organize things more clearly and reassess.

    Maybe it was as simple as a panic response. They were trapped. And their body had undergone significant changes without knowledge of what those changes meant.

    They might be trying to escape the situation by retreating into physical pleasure. That was still an unusual reaction. At least with this immediacy and duration.

    I wished there were more alma I could test without the disappearance bringing on greater risk. It was impossible to know if this behavior was an individual response or innate to the process.

    More ve hatched under my tent every day. But I lacked both discrete test subjects and more places to effectively contain them.

    I would need to direct my inquisitiveness towards the culture and magic of the alma. For now.

 Chapter 12, The Dark

    Willowcrook was still as the shadows of stone and sod hovels stretched long with the setting sun. Nothing living moved on the packed earth leading to the only all stone building.

    Nith skipped and spun his way towards the imposing structure. Each step and kick sent a small plume of dust into the air.

    The slowly encroaching dance was watched coldly by dozens of eyes. Many burned with a seething rage. But others contained only a numb vacant detachment.

    Nith cared about neither. His tattered robe fluttered with the erratic dance. And unseen ribbons of power spooled out.

    The woven animus traveled through the standing dead. Between them it found the cooling bodies of villagers.

    The magic had no interest in the mauled and often dismembered flesh. It coiled around the gradually fraying souls that clung to their recent hosts.

    Fragile things, alma souls. So beautiful. And so resilient. Yet flawed in such crucial ways. Such fixable ways.

    Nith twisted and folded the channels. A stitch there. A redirection of a channel here. And lastly a touch of unlife to coax the source back.

    A spark of power snapped back into existence within each soul. The source poured animus into the decaying structure. The altered structure.

    Unlife animus flowed out from the spark of consciousness. In its wake the souls solidified along with the changes Nith wrought.

    Souls all around burrowed into the flesh and bones they once relied upon. The relationship reversed as dead muscles twitched and contracted.

    Where bones were broken and tendons severed bodies snapped back into shape and moved without regard for damage. Even the limbs torn free were dragged to their former homes.

    Nith felt the fear and panic of souls awakening to unwanted undeath. For most the last experience before revival was a bloody death at the hands of living corpses.

    The necromancer ignored the flares of emotion from his new servants. The control matrix built into them would puppet their bodies as he wished.

    He only revived the consciousness to provide power. The villagers'' thoughts on the situation made no difference to him.

    Only the newly dead radiated horror and denial. His servants slain in battle returned to consciousness with far more subdued reactions. Many had experienced the same process numerous times before.

    Nith ran up the back of a lanky teenager as the boy stumbled to his feet. The master-mage kicked off the undead villager¡¯s head and landed at the top of the church steps.

    Willowcrook was too remote and inconsequential to appear on any map. The village likely had no consistent contact with the outside world. Subsistence farming being all that kept them from starvation.

    Yet the church dwarfed every other structure in both scale and complexity. Nith¡¯s lip twisted in disgust at the sycophance.

    His gods might be imprisoned beyond the world. But they had still done more for him directly than any of the gods of these wretches had for anyone in living memory.

    The last living souls in the village huddled around the interior. Nith would have to address that.

    Rotting bodies parted to make way for four lumbering forms. The more than twenty foot tall corpses carried an iron bound ram between them.

    The five va¡¯id were the gems of Nith¡¯s army. He stripped the flesh from the largest specimen and built his throne within the rib cage. But the smaller creatures were still powerful.

    Nith jumped to the side and swung his hand forward with flare. The ram crashed into the heavy wooden doors.

    Wood cracked and splintered. The next time it caved. And on the final strike boards broke completely.

    The brown skinned va¡¯id woman foremost on the ram let go and began tearing the broken door out of its frame. The ashen va¡¯id man beside her joined soon after.

    Nith could make out the cries of an infant from within the church. That was not surprising. The young, elderly and those who could not support themselves were often found in places like this.

    Children only made slightly weaker undead than adults. And those old or enfermed were usually as fit as any other in undeath.

    The dead flowed into the failed refuge. Screams and agony ensued as the necromancer hopped down the stairs and away from the press of animated bodies.

    Nith twitched as an arrow thunked into his left pectoral. His eyes snapped to the church roof.

    A violent gesture clawed across the space between Nith and the cyan haired archer. Threads of magic severed the bonds between the man¡¯s body and soul in an instant.

    The villager¡¯s body seizured and rolled off the slanted shingles. It would physically die quickly as the nervous system fired randomly in the absence of a soul.

    Nith began twisting and contorting the captured soul with petulant irritation. The spellwork prevented the archer¡¯s spark from vanishing. The necromancer would bring it back even if it did.

    He absently dropped a soul mimicking construct into the man¡¯s body. It had strictly survived the fall. And the false soul would maintain basic biological functions.

    Nith kept fidgeting with the captured soul as his servants exterminated the remaining living residence. He absently revived the children and few adults. But he never stopped cutting, stitching and patching the sentient bundle of animus.

    The village was left behind soon after. His servants spread out around the thirty foot skeleton Nith reclined within.

    He doubted anyone escaped the initial sweep or attack. But still sent out his forces for a final sweep of the surrounding area.

    A survivor was unlikely to reach civilization or garner any meaningful support if they did. The untamed lands could swallow people whole.

    Those who lived outside civilization recognized that risk and ignored hazards not directly threatening them. Nith was just one more fate that could befall the isolated communities that specled the savage territory.

    The necromancer was surprised when a group sweeping the surrounding brushlands returned with less than half its members. Gleaming impressions from their minds gave no clear answers.

    The band of a dozen undead swept the region. None of those who returned encountered any living souls. Only a handful of small animals that fled before the intruders to their habitat.

    But more than half the group vanished in a specific location. The process of checking the surroundings normally took a few days.

    The remaining servants had continued with their task and only reported back after finding nothing. That meant it was over a day since the disappearance occurred.

    Nith kneaded the archer¡¯s soul anxiously as his throne walked to the place his servants vanished. The flares of psychic pain and uncomprehending panic helped calm him.

    Manipulating souls always made Nith feel more in control. To command the fundamental substance of a person¡¯s existence. What greater proof of his strength could there be?

    The skeletal forms of his older and more refined troops encircled the couple hundred foot stretch of brush and grass. The shoddier servants moved in and began scanning the ground for any oddities.

    It did not take long to find. The carcass was barely hidden by the neighboring bushes. Nith would have seen it if he had walked his throne anywhere near the suspicious region.

    The throne took a knee. Nith hopped from rib to femur and landed on the ground.

    It had once been a mare. Not that long ago if the signs of scavengers and relatively early decomposition was anything to go by. But there were two strange things about the corpse.

    For Nith the most obvious was something most alma would never notice. The depleted fragments of the animal¡¯s soul still clung to the body.

    It was beyond him to gather and repair them at this point. But the nature of that soul was glaringly apparent to the necromancer.

    The mare had been undead. The unlife animus in the soul was still perfectly clear. And she was a masterpiece.

    Each fragment Nith inspected was evidently flawless even as it crumbled apart. As if the animal had been created whole as an undead by a god capable of true genesis.

    Nith could not find any sign of modification. No tears. No scarred channels. No patches of soul transplanted from one purpose to another. Not a single hint of mortal hands in her creation.

    The necromancer responsible for the mare was either a genius or had dedicated long careful years to the making of her soul. Nith had to reluctantly admit the mage would be a genius no matter how long they spent on the task.

    And that skill was used to make a horse. A completely normal one. There was no enhancement. No greater design. It was just a mare that used unlife animus.

    The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

    What sort of frivolous lunatic used this level of skill on a mundane animal? The creature would have been no different than in life, save for the advantages of unlife.

    It was like the greatest bladesmith of a millennium choosing to spend their time crafting cutlery. Even Nith¡¯s own soul had more flaws and compromises than he could find in the remains of this animal. And his apotheosis had been a process of decades and countless communions with his imprisoned patrons.

    The second oddity was much more physical in nature. The abdomen was torn open.

    That was to be expected for a large carcass left out on the plains for several days. But the glistening obsidian fragments that filled the cavity and poured out onto the earth were not.

    Nith inspected a piece of the thin glassy material. It looked like a shard of a curved vessel. But the unbroken surface was too even for a mundane glass blower.

    He supposed sufficient skill or arcane crafting could make such a thing. But the obviously spherical shape would have been poor for any purpose that came to mind.

    There was no sign of an enchantment tied to the fragments. And there should have been residue even if the spellwork failed with their destruction.

    The mare had been there for days. But no longer than a week. It was likely the grand necromancer was still near.

    Anyone capable of creating an undead of this caliber was a significant threat. But they would also be an opportunity.

    Nith would happily supplicate himself before a soul-mage who truly surpassed his own prowess. It would not be the first time he subordinated to a greater power to further his own knowledge.

    The soul screamed with a spike of pain as Nith squeezed a little too hard. He quickly patched the damage and returned to absently modifying the structure.

    Exploring the surroundings revealed neither magic nor sign of his missing servants. Had another creation of the unknown necromancer taken them?

    That did not line up logically. The mare had been truly dead long before Nith¡¯s servants passed by it. There was no reason to leave a broken undead out of the way and put a trap or guard on it.

    Nith felt like he was missing key details that would make the situation fit together. But in the absence of whatever those were he had no clear course of action.

    Years of avoiding the attention of powers willing and able to destroy him said he should flee at the first sign of danger. Years of seeking forbidden knowledge said he should track down the anomaly¡¯s source.

    Swarming dead feet had stomped out any chance at finding more subtle physical evidence. Nith had little ability with non-magical tracking even if the potential tracks were undisturbed.

    Caution won out in lieu of any true path to follow. The necromancer set his troops to a hard march. It was certain to leave clear signs of their passing. But hopefully those would have faded by the time anyone looked to follow.

    Nith traveled in a random pattern for the next week. Moving through fields and rivers whenever possible.

    He spent most of the time working on the soul that had captured his attention. It was nothing special. A bit larger than the average adult. But lacking exceptional talents or arcane ability.

    The necromancer fingered the hole in his robe where the arrow pierced it. The flesh below was long since healed without blemish. But Nith had never been proficient in repairing inanimate material.

    Maybe a vampire? It had been years since he made one of the more sophisticated undead. The advanced nature of a vampire required many compromises to the soul''s structure.

    The result was a flawed creature with vulnerabilities only the banished gods knew the exact reasons for. But those were a greater concern for the creature than mage controlling it.

    As long as he did not make another water soluble one. He was so proud to have removed the weakness to sunlight, only to lose his most powerful servants the first time it rained.

    The strictly living body would make the task much easier. A vampire would maintain the tissue in a living state. But it was tedious to restore dead cells to life and hard to make a soul capable of doing so entirely on its own.

    Nith was snapped from his work by a warning signal from one of his troop management enchantments. He had somehow just lost twenty or more of his undead servants.

    Just lost may have been an exaggeration. The spell reported that the total number of souls it was linked to had dropped by at least twenty since he last calibrated it.

    That was after assessing his spoils from Willowcrook. The losses around the horse carcass accounted for seven of the disappearances. But what happened to the other thirteen?

    Nith rose as bands of necromantic spellwork uncoiled. The arcane power multiplied and spread across the rolling plains.

    He moved past the trudging souls already marked as his. The simple souls of rodents in the grass and below the earth were of no more interest.

    The master-necromancer felt every living thing within miles. From mindless plants down to microbes in the soil. But there was not a single sapient soul outside of his control.

    It made no sense. His creations were not trivial to dispose of. They would defend themselves with some proficiency if attacked and report any significant conflict back to him.

    And it was not easy to destroy the undead. An attacker would need to damage their body enough to dislodge the soul.

    Nothing living or undead was within his considerable range. Could it be a nonliving hazard? What could destroy over a dozen undead discreetly?

    Nith sent out the call to gather his troops. The army formed ranks around his throne. Disdaining eyes and empty sockets all faced towards the necromancer.

    A chill passed through Nith as the last of his servants left the few thickets of trees obscuring his view. There were only three va¡¯id.

    The earth toned va¡¯id woman he revived over two decades ago was nowhere to be seen. His magic scoured the landscape alongside his mundane senses.

    Twenty servants out of the few hundred he controlled was a trivial loss. It only mattered because it showed something was able to pick them off without being noticed.

    But the va¡¯id were powerful specimens he had poured far more attention and time into. They were stronger and more resilient than their living equivalents.

    She had functionally been a simplistic form of vampire. Albeit one without as many compromising trade-offs as he would give a more disposable creation.

    A battle between her and anything not of demigod-like martial prowess would have at minimum made itself apparent. That left only a trap or similar trickery.

    Or another soul-mage skilled and insidious enough to steal his prised servant out from under his nose. He had not forgotten the flawless fragments lingering on the mare.

    ¡°I wish to parley.¡± Nith¡¯s long unused voice boomed across the field. It carried far beyond its natural reach before being swallowed by the wind.

    A long few minutes passed in silence. Nith finally scoffed and signaled his army to search the area. It was not surprising when they found nothing.

    Nith extended his forced march another two weeks. The hope of losing his pursuer was slim. But there was a remote chance he could catch the enemy in the act.

    An enemy mage would be using magic within his senses. There was no other way to target his troops. Even the most powerful mortals could not hide their spellwork perfectly. And he would catch it.

    He did not. The attrition was gradual. Close monitoring revealed a servant vanishing from perception every few days.

    It was always at the very edge of his army. He tried grouping up. But there were too many undead to keep within sight while traveling.

    One of the stragglers would always disappear. He took to sending his servants swarming towards the location the moment he noticed. But they never found anything.

    Did he need to stop and fortify himself? It would allow him to watch all his undead at once. He might be able to finally catch the bastard.

    The tactic did not even make sense. It would take months to meaningfully diminish his numbers this way. Were they just trying to annoy him?

    That might have been the point. Nith hated to admit how effective the method was if so.

    His undead body could not tire. But he remained susceptible to mental stress. And the tactical equivalent of being randomly poked with a stick for several weeks was very mentally stressful.

    Did they want him to react? Maybe stopping was the exact thing they were waiting for. Or maybe they wanted him to keep wasting time trying to lose an enemy he could not even identify.

    Nith needed to figure out a solution. He was not some roaming savage slaughtering villages for the fun of it.

    The crudely raised souls were valuable resources he needed the time and space to make use of. That meant returning to one of his existing bases or making a new one.

    He could do neither if a hostile unknown entity would follow there. Which left few options.

    The archer¡¯s body lay stripped on the ground. Nearly a month on life support magic had left the man emaciated and soiled. But neither would interfere with Nith¡¯s work.

    The heavily altered soul slipped into its body with ease. Nith carefully attatched each of the necessary junction points.

    A long moment passed. Than the body seized. Eyes opened wider than biology intended. Pupils dilated and rolled as every muscle twitched.

    Nith snapped his fingers. The vampire jolted to a standing position in a manner that rightfully should have broken several bones.

    Confusion was obvious on the sunken face. But Nith had removed the capacity to speak. It only interfered.

    ¡°Patrol the outer edge of my forces. Remain unseen and kill anything not under my command.¡± The verbal instructions accompanied the mental instructions to the control matrix within the vampire.

    Realization and a new kind of panic overtook confusion. But that had no effect on the new undead¡¯s actions.

    The vampire dropped to all fours and bounded away. His limbs contorted and stretched unnaturally to facilitate the movement.

    Air shimmered around the twisted figure. A moment later he vanished from both physical sight and magical senses.

    Nith could still identify the undead¡¯s location when he focused. But it would be very hard to detect the vampire casually.

    The necromancer let out a biologically unnecessary and much needed sigh. It was not a solution. But the specialized servant had a chance of catching the enemy in the act.

    It seemed to work. At least in part. No more undead vanished for more than a week. Yet the former archer failed to reveal any attempts.

    It was like the enemy knew the vampire was patrolling. But they could not do anything about it. That was progress. Until the vampire disappeared.

    Nith froze the moment the creature¡¯s bond snapped. He could not even tell where it had been. But it was now gone.

    Animus threads exploded out from the soul-mage. They dug into every living thing. A thousand tiny hearts stopped. Grass wilted. Every scrap of animus was torn away.

    It was all dragged back to the furious mage. His channels gorged with power far in excess of his natural limits.

    Nith rose into the air. His lack of ability with force magic overcome by exorbitant waste.

    A pale hand thrust to the heavens. Animus twisted in a way only the cult of the sepulchral flame could teach.

    It sparked and flared into a visible color no mortal eye was intended to see. The materialized soul-stuff swelled and burned brighter.

    Undead began to crumple below as their animus was drained. They would survive. Unless their master drew any deeper.

    The soul flame redoubled. The resulting orb of unnatural fire was approaching twenty feet across. The night became illuminated in the shade of burning souls.

    ¡°Face me!¡± The scream contained all the pent up rage of the last month. Rage born of futility. Of fear of the unknown.

    The dying grass and trees shifted and bent in the orb¡¯s light. All else remained still.

    There was a moment where Nith was going to do it. Going to burn away everything for miles. Burn body and soul alike.

    But then there would be nothing left. Only wasteland and him. Him drained and without a single servant. And they would win.

    He cut off the animus feeding the soul flame. The orb flickered out as the necromancer lowered to the bleached skull of his va¡¯id throne.

    Darkness fell once more. The darkness had not frightened Nith for decades. He had long been what many feared in the dark.

    Somewhere along the line that had let him forget. Looking into the swaying dead grass of a moonless night, he remembered.

 Chapter 13, Normalizing

    Ane¡¯s fingertips caught on the rocky lip of the cave¡¯s entrance. Their grip slipped a moment later. They were so close.

    They could have gained a solid handhold with better footing. But the smooth orbs filling their prison were difficult to stand on directly.

    Ane reluctantly returned to filling the cave. It had started as more of a whimsical thought than a real plan.

    The first dozen eggs proved physical mass was not a factor. Ane could not have fit that many inside their abdomen. Not when producing eggs had no visible effect on their physique.

    But they expected there to be some sort of limit. A point their body needed to stop and recover. There was not.

    Realizing that let the plan to lay enough eggs to reach the entrance go from a notion to a committed goal. And it was a lot of eggs.

    Ane counted nearly five weeks. They had been stuck in the forsaken hole for thirty two days and nights.

    They had not been laying continuously the entire time. They could not keep doing anything continuously for a month. But it was pretty close.

    Ane had always assumed other responsibilities, diminishing pleasure and physical strain were the only things keeping them from spending all their time masturbating. But none of those applied now.

    There was nothing else they had to do. Each egg felt as good as those before it. And their body never tired or showed the slightest sign of adverse effects.

    It was fine for the first week. After that the trance-like state that had been so comforting started to feel stifling.

    Ane began trying to hold onto the thoughts that naturally floated away. It was not easy. And the complete lack of other environmental stimulus did not help.

    Their abstract thoughts were frequently quite grim. The mental state from laying actually made that easier.

    Ane could not really panic or experience pronounced dread with the euphoria affecting their perception. It made their thoughts almost clinical once they acclimated to actively thinking at all.

    The question of what to do when or if they escaped came up a lot. They could not go back to Rojin like this.

    They were obviously not a recognized civilized species. Rojin was openly an alma nation. But other species on peaceful terms cohabited and enjoyed a level of legal protection.

    Calling tige citizens implied more participation in the kingdom¡¯s government and culture than the nomadic people engaged in. They had their own customs, maintaining some distance from the alma settlements they passed through.

    Qasko dwelled past the opposite border of Rojin. But their ability to crossbreed with alma meant most people knew someone with scales, skull ridges or even small horns.

    Ane occasionally saw stranger species in the capital or other major cities. They knew those creatures had paperwork and a bureaucratic process allowing them to visit from their homeland.

    But Ane had no way to acquire such permissions. They doubted it was even possible without a political power backing them.

    They settled on two plans. The first was trying to disguise themselves. Lacking a mirror made it harder to judge. But they looked enough like an alma that clothing could hide the differences.

    Gray skin was an uncommon yet possible trait. They would need to cover their entirely smooth chest and hide their tail. Ideally they could find clothing to bulk out their frame as well.

    The teeth might be hard. Keeping their mouth closed might work against casual inspection. But a partial or full face covering would be better.

    Finding an appropriate disguise while completely naked would be challenging. And the risk of being discovered and branded a demon would be ever present.

    The second option was leaving Rojin entirely. Their knowledge of the greater world was second hand. But Ane knew how to survive in the wilderness. No seeming need for food or water would make that easier.

    They also knew how bleak isolation could become after a few weeks without social contact. It was already bad enough traveling between outposts. Living like that permanently would be maddening.

    Ane suspected the ability to lay eggs and the effect that had on their mind was all that stopped them from going crazy in the first few days. Maybe it would have the same benefits indefinitely?

    Running out of new ideas and information to spark them had made the last week tedious. Their escape plan was obviously viable. But they found themselves pausing more and more often.

    It was never for more than a few minutes. There was not even anything to do that could not be done while laying.

    Smashing eggs on the rock walls was both counterproductive and had long since grown old. The black yolk inside tasted a bit richer than raw chicken eggs, something it took relatively little time for Ane to work up the nerve to test.

    It was only a few hours before Ane felt ready to try again. The eggs were large and hard enough that they locked together somewhat. But it had taken practice to balance on the high points without sending their smooth footing flying out from under them.

    The extra layer settled under the entrance was just enough to let them grab the edge properly. Ane had tried to figure out ways to exercise while laying.

    It required some practice and repositioning to lay while doing push-ups. But it was entirely possible.

    That and similar attempts had kept their non-pelvic muscles from atrophying over the weeks. Assuming they were even capable of atrophy any more.

    Their upper body strength did feel improved. At least more so than the blatantly diminished state it was in after their transformation.

    But their reduced overall mass played a bigger part in letting Ane pull themselves up. An arm scrabbled for purchase before fingers found a crack between the rocks.

    The other hand moved up and Ane heaved themselves onto the ledge. An unbroken view of the sky and rocky hillside greeted them. For the first time in a month, Ane saw something other than the dim cave and their own eggs.

    They lay back against the boulder for a long moment. The dawn light warmed them and breeze moved over their bare skin.

    The memory of the faceless figure that began this all snapped Ane out of the moment. They had not seen the creature since that first day.

    The fear of it coming back and taking control of their mind faded over the weeks. But that was no reason to take chances by waiting here.

    Ane studied the boulders and rocky debris between themselves and the shrubs below. A small river was faintly visible through the plant life overgrowing its banks. Beyond that was the patch of forest that surrounded most water sources in the plains.

    They did not recognize the location. That was no surprise. Traveling the untamed lands for years was no guarantee they could identify anywhere off their common routes.

    Ane found their way down to the riverbank. Most rivers would feed into the Dark Moors. Unless they were far closer to Rillan territory.

    In that case the river might flow down to the Merchant States. Either way Rojin would be up river.

    Ane had extensively thought through each option. That did not mean they liked any of them.

    They started walking upstream. It could take months to reach a heavily populated area this way. But a river was more likely to have settlements than the grassland.

    Ane started out jogging. Soon they began picking up speed. The short grass underfoot and wind whipping past was the antithesis of the bleak pit. It was intoxicating.

    Before long they were sprinting outright. The lightness of their body went beyond the ease of movement across an uneven cave floor.

    The river and scruffy trees flew by to the left and rolling fields stretched out to the right. They expected to feel the burn of overtaxed muscles or gasping disorientation of straining lungs.

    But of course they did not. Why would they? Nothing else in their body obeyed natural limitations.

    One moment Ane was the wind. The next they were rolling across the ground. It took another second to process what happened.

    They could run at the speed of a galloping horse indefinitely. They could not inherently avoid turning their ankle in a rabbit burrow.

    Ane spent the next few minutes laughing. They stretched out on the grass. The sun was still making its way towards the sky¡¯s zenith.

    After a while sunbathing, Ane laid an egg. They were not exactly sure why. It just felt right. And there was no reason not to.

    They eventually returned to their feet. Resting sprawled out on the grass was something Ane needed more than they realized. But they were still concerningly close to the cave.

    The ankle seemed fine. Although Ane had not felt pain from anything since their transformation. Even nicking themselves on broken eggshells had not hurt.

    They could sort of feel those cuts. And the ankle felt a little off. But the sensation was more of a knowledge of something being abnormal than true discomfort.

    Walking did not make the feeling grow. So they figured it was fine. The cuts had healed completely in a matter of minutes. Hopefully the same thing was true for a possible sprain.

    Ane continued at a more observant pace until the sun began to drop to the horizon. The trajectory over the day supported their choice of direction. They were moving towards Rojin. The only question was whether that was a good thing.

    They laid an egg every so often. It was almost unconscious. Something they did just because it felt odd that an egg had not crowned for a while.

    Was it part of being whatever Ane was now? It felt more like an ingrained habit. They had spent the previous month never going more than a few minutes without being satisfyingly fucked by their own reproductive system.

    Ane had been avoiding the implications of that to the best of their ability. It was easy at first. Their entire life was thrown out the window. Ignoring inconvenient possibilities was easier because the inconvenient realities blocked them out.

    But the prolonged self reflection in the later half of their captivity had changed that. It was inevitable to consider what would happen to the eggs they were laying.

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    The worst case scenario was children. The idea of thousands of babies coming into the world in that barren hole was awful.

    It was also the least plausible. The more Ane thought about it logically, the less being able to produce so many kids so easily made sense.

    A species able to breed that fast would have exploded in population and been well known by now. Not unless Ane was the first member.

    They had the impression undead and other unholy creatures either could not reproduce naturally or did it slowly. Not that they could exactly call anything their body did natural.

    It was ultimately impossible to know. But they doubted it.

    The best option was the eggs being infertile. Everyone knew hens would lay even without a rooster. And those eggs would never hatch.

    Ane had not slept with anyone who could fertilize them. Thinking about the prospect had revealed something else different.

    It was a kind of odd relief to confirm that they still became aroused when fantasizing about women. They had simply added fantasies of feeling a hard shaft inside themselves to the fantasies of being that shaft inside another.

    The eggs never hatching would be convenient. But Ane had weeks to think this over and knew enough folklore about the undead to have a suspicion.

    It had been a creature that became their tail and started the transformation. A creature that looked about the right size to come out of one of their eggs.

    Undead were well known to turn others into more of their kind. That was why the Church of the Creator destroyed them so fast.

    Laying eggs was clearly part of whatever Ane was. It was satisfyingly symmetric if they were laying the eggs of the creature that started this. The creature that was now part of them.

    Ane knew objectively that it should have been a horrifying idea. It would mean they had essentially been turned into the reproductive system for an unholy monstrosity.

    Each egg they lay would have the potential to be another person transformed in the same way. But they felt fine with that. They enjoyed laying eggs. And it was not making their situation any worse.

    The problem of their appearance was an issue. But that was because of how it affected other people and those people affected them. They seemed to be genuinely unbothered by it themselves.

    They did not feel any powerful compulsion to go out and transform others. Not that they knew for certain how. But they could not find it in themselves to object to the idea either.

    That was the biggest reason Ane suspected the eggs would hatch into tiny tails sooner or later. It felt right. Like it would be a good thing if that happened.

    An egg rolled on the grass. Ane personally saw no reason to break the habit. It was not slowing them down much. That might need to change if they found a way to interact with alma safely.

    Ane made their way towards the trees marking the river¡¯s path. The dense undergrowth scratched against their skin and made the lack of clothing very apparent.

    None of the abrasions caused pain. But the sharp sensations were distracting. They might have gotten used to nudity. But some kind of protective layer would have been nice.

    Ane broke through the thicket and onto the small rocky beach. The river was a dozen paces across and placid enough to reflect a choppy image.

    The lissome figure disrupted by the rippling current was no surprise. Ane got down on their hands and knees. The face was new.

    Flowing water at twilight was far from a mirror. But Ane suspected they would struggle to recognize themselves even in silver backed glass.

    There were hints around the eyes and forehead structure. The same shape to the bones. They thought the jaw looked reminiscent. More feminine, but still similar to other members of their family.

    The eyes themselves were concerning. Glossy black orbs without distinction between white, iris or pupil. It would be very hard to hide them.

    They plunged their face into the water and felt the shock of cold. They pulled back gasping. There was no need to. But it felt right.

    Ane waded into the river. The gunk they could not scrape off had mostly dried and flaked away in the last month. They started scrubbing themselves anyway.

    The majority of residue was from the fluid that accompanied their eggs. They focused on their crotch and inner thighs.

    It was not noticeably different to the natural lubricant alma women produced when aroused. Not that Ane could tell at least.

    The smell was less pronounced than many of their partners. But the abundance over the previous weeks had left them wanting a bath more than they realized until now.

    Soap would have been nice. So would hot water. Or a conversation with a real person. But if wishes were horses we would all need more hay.

    Ane dunked their head and scrubbed at the half inch of hair on their scalp. The same black follicles were coming in on their groin and armpits.

    The faint stubble on the rest of their body was much softer and more dispersed. Ane was simply relieved that their hair would grow back.

    Ane lay back in the current. They passed below the water with a little surprise. Their lungs were full of air. But they seemed to be less buoyant than they remembered.

    The water only came to their knees when they stood. So dropping under the surface was far from concerning.

    Ane floated in the river for a while. They could recognize the water was cold. The rush when initially wading in made that evident.

    But it was more of a clear contrast than discomfort. The temperature felt fine now that they were acclimated to it.

    Their tail absently explored the rocks below and drew patterns in the sand they could not currently see. It curled around the egg that dropped to the bottom immediately after Ane laid it.

    They did not surface when the light faded completely. Only watched the stars arrive with true night.

    The sunlight through their eyelids finally motivated Ane to stir. They came up and exhaled a stale breath before inhaling the morning air.

    The dawn was spreading across the sky. Ane had not been asleep. They did not truly sleep anymore. But they had been deeply relaxed.

    They waded out of the river and onto the narrow beach. It looked as if a collection of black stones were scattered under the place Ane floated.

    They had been trying to make the outline of a horse. But moving the eggs only with their tail and not looking at it had left a pattern more similar to a blob with six extremities no where near the locations four legs, a head and a tail should be.

    Ane considered correcting the incomprehensible artwork. But decided it would feel disingenuous. Future generations would have to puzzle over the interpretive art of their ancestors.

    Ane wondered if they were starting to lose it. They felt like they were doing as well as expected under the circumstances. What did they need sanity for anyway? They were an unholy abomination.

    It was a few hours before Ane spotted the shape of buildings in the distance. They immediately migrated over to the tree cover.

    The river had broadened as it approached a bend around the structures Ane sighted. The flatter banks and increased groundwater expanded the few plains-willows growing by the river into a proper forest.

    Ane stayed behind the wall of undergrowth at the forest¡¯s edge. The tilled fields were easily visible through the bushes.

    They hunkered down near the first farmstead they spotted. The rough building was clearly crafted from the local earth and limited lumber.

    It was made as well as Ane expected from the more remote settlements beyond actively governed lands. But it was obvious little to no magic had gone into refining the architecture. Only a sufficient grasp of the area¡¯s resources and hard work.

    They eyed the laundry on a clothesline between two trees. It was out in the open and too close to the building to reach in broad daylight.

    The brown and yellow garments looked as if they had been left out too long. The shirts twisted around the cord by passing winds and trousers only hanging by one leg were visible even from their hiding place.

    Was it negligence? Or had the residence left without taking down their washing first? Ane had not seen anyone in the fields or around the building itself.

    They did not want to risk approaching. The place might be vacant. They would feel more confident if there was still no sign of anyone once night fell.

    The two eggs that had already accumulated in their hiding place made the hanging trousers seem less useful. Ane really did not want to wear something they would have to take off any time the absence of an egg passing through their channel became distracting.

    A tunic or robe might work better. Robes were normally worn by nobles and other people without jobs requiring a physically active lifestyle. Ane was more likely to find a skirt or tunic in a farming village. Even a shirt and cloak would go a long way towards making them feel like a person.

    The farmstead remained abandoned for the rest of the day. The only living things were a few rabbits and some chickens foraging in the yard.

    Ane finally decided to approach once dark had fallen without any sign of habitation. They thought about moving on their stomach or dashing from cover to cover.

    It would be difficult to do effectively in the cleared space. And they would come across as hostile if they were spotted.

    They ended up deciding to walk out of the woods and down the path as naturally as they could. It was dark and their coloration would be hard to make out in the moonlight.

    Ane wrapped their tail around their waste in an attempt to make their outline more alma-like. Hopefully anyone who saw them would take them for a lanky nudist.

    ¡°Hi. I¡¯m Ane. I want to talk.¡± It was not the first time Ane had heard their own voice since it changed. They had talked to themselves quite often during the first fortnight.

    ¡°Just your average traveling demon. Put my pants on one leg at a time. By the way, can I get some pants?¡± Their voice sounded strange to them.

    Well, that was not exactly right. It felt as natural as everything else about their new body. But they did not sound like an alma.

    It was oddly musical. And many of the sounds they felt were being made the same way sounded different. As if the anatomy of their throat was not quite the same as an alma throat.

    Ane decided not to speak out loud until absolutely necessary. Hearing a distorted voice from a dark figure walking towards your unlit home at night might cause some to jump to conclusions.

    The gibbous moon made details harder to make out than daylight. But it was obvious something was wrong.

    The fencing around the yard was not just falling down. It had clearly been smashed and trampled into the ground.

    The chickens were roosting in the tree closest to the building. It looked as if one wall of the coop had been violently torn off. A similar fate had befallen the door of the house itself.

    A sense of dread built as Ane tentatively approached the splintered doorway. The gloom seemed to deepen as more of the wrongness became apparent.

    They could make out grime and scuff marks on the rough floorboards. A faint putrescence hung in the air. Like a slaughterhouse that was never properly sanitized.

    The table was toppled and chairs scattered across the room. The entire small home proved to be the same.

    Several people had lived in the single room structure not that long ago. The grains stored in a wooden chest near the hearth were neither disturbed or moldered. The minimal weather damage supported the idea only a few weeks to months had passed.

    Ane was not experienced in forensics. But it was clear something unpleasant had happened here. They doubted the residents left willingly. And a group had trashed the farmstead either after or during whatever happened to the farmers.

    It took some searching in the dark to find the tinderbox and kindle a small fire. Wood was still stacked beside the hearth.

    The flickering fire light did no favors for the room. Many of the stains on the wooden floor looked less like dirt than old blood and thicker scraps dried to the boards.

    Ane logitimently considered leaving. It would be easier to investigate and scavenge with daylight. But leaving now felt almost childish.

    They were able to find the clothing of three different people. The undershirt closest in size stopped near the place Ane¡¯s belly button had been.

    The only other option was so baggy that the shoulders hung to their elbows. The addition of a tunic soft enough to not irritate the skin on their hips and upper thighs gave the semblance of real attire.

    They eyed the pants with skepticism. Some could be made to fit. But all of them would be too involved to take off.

    The tunic reached to their mid thighs. It would be easy to see everything when they bent over. Even a passing breeze could do the same.

    Ane was not sure how much they cared. Their tail was essentially a penis. Working it with their hand had proven that and produced an inky fluid otherwise identical to alma seman.

    They were not worried about people seeing that part of their genitalia. Although it was less recognizable than the anatomy between their legs.

    Caution would indicate they should wear something on their lower body. But who was that caution for?

    Dressing was already making Ane feel more secure. Having clothing was a level of control they had not understood until deprived of it. People have clothes. Monsters do not.

    That did not mean they specifically had to maintain modesty. It would take more than this to socialize with alma under normal circumstances.

    Anyone who was talking to them with their current appearance would have already ignored more significant things than the chance of glimpsing their labia.

    They might as well be comfortable. The egg that settled on a low point in the uneven floor confirmed it.

 Chapter 14, Breakthrough

    Fifty. Fifty in only two weeks. On average more than three of Nith¡¯s servants had vanished everyday since he lost the vampire.

    The necromancer had given in and set up a permanent camp a few days ago. Now the neighboring forest had been stripped to construct a partially earthen barricade and the tower Nith now inhabited.

    The encampment had changed nothing. And Nith did not really expect it to. The goal was to more easily observe.

    Nith carefully moved his hands above the pebbles strewn across the tarp covering the floor. Each anchored a scrying spell linked to one of his servants.

    Powerful warding magics in the walls would hopefully prevent anyone from knowing what he was doing. Nith randomly switched to overseeing a new undead each minute.

    The necromancer had been at it for hours. He would visually examine the targeted undead and its surroundings. Then he moved on once it was clear everything was normal in the visual spectrum.

    Nith nearly missed it. He was targeting a speed focused undead he crafted from a girl in the six to eight age range a few years ago.

    The small skeleton appeared normal. But the soul-mage noticed a dark mass around the lower spine of another skeleton a couple yards away.

    Nith twisted his wrist and sent the appropriate pebble flying to his hand. He was watching the suspicious undead a moment later.

    It was one of his older and more heavily enhanced creations. A quick check confirmed it was a mage-breaker.

    An innate ability to dismantle spellwork and enhanced agility let the servant strike down mages and others defended by magic. It had been stripped of all soft tissue to improve its maneuverability.

    That made the mass of flesh around its pelvis and lower abdomen concerning. If it was flesh.

    Nith recognized the texture of biologically living muscles and ligaments. They were attached to the neighboring bone as if a natural part of it.

    But all the tissue was the oily black of old grease from an automatic carriage in desperate need of an artificer. Even the bone around the area had turned a glossy black.

    The glass-like vertebrae and upper femurs were suspiciously similar to the obsidian fragments in the dead horse. That felt like so long ago now.

    Closer inspection revealed a patch of entirely restored skin covering the base of the spine and top of the buttox. The skin was a gray color far lighter than the flesh below.

    But the more noteworthy thing was the sinuous tail growing from the sacrum. It was roughly three feet in length and covered in the same skin tone as the section on the undead¡¯s back.

    Nith had no idea what to make of it. There were many forms of undead and stranger creatures out there. He had seen more than most in his century of life.

    The ability of powerful mages to make new ones complicated that. Even if the more novel creations were often flawed and unable to perpetuate.

    There was very little to go off of from visuals alone. All he could be confident of was that his creation had been tampered with.

    Nith guided the mage-breaker back to the center of the encampment. It responded normally and moved with ease.

    The flesh visibly grew even in the short time between spotting it and the servant¡¯s arrival. New muscles were forming as shallow filaments expanded to be full structures.

    The entire process resembled a form of regeneration restoring the missing flesh. Except it was doing so with the black imitation of alma tissue.

    Nith did not risk leaving his tower. Instead he scrutinized the undead standing at the base from the safety of his wards.

    The necromancer¡¯s eyes widened. It made no sense. But his senses and spellwork agreed. The creature¡¯s soul was unraveling.

    No. That was wrong. It was not unraveling. It was disappearing.

    Sections of the soul were completely gone. And more were vanishing at a continuous rate. But the remaining pieces were operating normally.

    The soul should have been coming apart from the massive trauma. It was functionally torn to shreds. Yet those shreds stayed in place and continued to behave as if they were part of an intact soul.

    Nith felt a dread seep to his core. It was completely impossible. The most basic principles of the soul dictated his senses were mistaken.

    Either he had been so completely overtaken by another mage that everything he saw was a trick or the underlying rules of the magic he had spent his unlife mastering were a lie. Nith was equally opposed to both options.

    The servant''s soul was the equivalent of a person walking around with random holes and chunks of their body missing. Except Nith could explain such a relatively mundane thing with forces he entirely understood.

    No. He had to deal with this rationally. If this was an illusion he was completely incapable of detecting it. Acting under the assumption his environment was not reality was far more risky than assuming it was real.

    If it was real there had to be an explanation. Everything had a process and cause. Once you understood those you could begin the steps to control it.

    Was the soul vanishing? Or was it being hidden? The second seemed more likely.

    Scouring the remaining structure revealed no external spellwork. The only thing Nith found was an oddly low level of animus.

    That should have made the channels start fraying and leaking. But the channels in the remaining soul looked as strong as ever.

    The other signs of weakness a limited animus supply should cause were absent. Was it somehow operating more efficiently to compensate? Or was it using animus he could not perceive?

    Nith considered the possibility. It was actually plausible. Life and unlife were by far the most common forms of animus. But others did exist.

    The uncommon types were usually just less effective or more specialized forms of the two major kinds. Yet some had noteworthy effects that could be hard to replicate even with unlife.

    There could be a type of animus undetectable with the standard methods. If it was obscure or the recent innovation of a mage, he would know nothing about it.

    Nith had no better ideas. He began trying every alteration to his soul perception technique or work around he could think of.

    The gaps in the soul kept growing. The flesh grew alongside them. The mage-breaker was no longer a skeleton.

    Its upper body and legs from the knees down appeared to have been flayed. Skin had grown over the stomach, hips and thighs.

    Nith would have sworn this specific servant was an elderly priest before the necromancer killed and deboned him. It was memorable because the man¡¯s attempt to utilize the magics taught by his god to kill the soul-mage had motivated Nith to make the priest into a tool for killing other priests.

    Was he mixing up his creations? Or was the flesh not regenerating back to the undead¡¯s living form? It did seem like the skeleton¡¯s build had shifted as the glassy black overtook it.

    The soul was nearly gone when it happened. Nith was trying to visualize the pattern the missing animus would take. The hope was to spot appropriate disruptions in the bleed off animus saturating the soul. He just had to know what he should be looking for.

    He suddenly felt it. Threads of something throughout the entire soul.

    It was blurry and barely there. Like an image left behind on the back of his eyelids. But he could see it. And the more he focused, the clearer it became.

    Nith was not sure what changed. He was not directly doing anything new. And it was unlike perceiving animus.

    The experience felt as if he was slowly becoming aware of a sense he never had before. The closest corollary was his ascension from journey-mage to master-mage.

    The last of the unlife animus was gone by the time Nith could feel the soul clearly. He thought it looked like the soul had before. But the correlation between his existing senses and this new one was not direct.

    Nith tried to manipulate the invisible animus like he would any other soul. He could almost feel it resist him. But there was no reaction.

    The necromancer watched in fascination as the invisible animus concentrated in an organelle. He was trying to determine what part of the soul it was when the power lashed out.

    Nith¡¯s material senses became a tumble of force, flame and the unbiased physical data that acted as his sense of pain. The smoldering necromancer flew through the air beyond the place his wooden tower room had been.

    All around undead crumpled as their animating force was drained by their airborne master. The scorched flesh and exposed bone was replaced by blemishless skin as Nith regenerated.

    The necromancer halted in mid-air. He could see his attacker dashing through his army. None of whom were attacking. Because they could not sense a soul.

    Nith wanted to rip out a soul and squeeze until it popped. The undead had physical senses. But the control matrix identified enemies by detecting the opponent¡¯s soul.

    Everything had a soul. It was the most universal way to identify conscious creatures. Except the rogue servant had a soul that did not register to magic.

    Nith could fix that with the correct instructions or modifications to the control matrix. But doing either would take too long.

    More servants fell as the necromancer gathered power and formed a spear of soul-flame. He sent it flying as the distant figure jumped and landed outside the barricade.

    The guiding spell brought the burning animus to the target in an instant. The gray skinned sprinter ignited.

    And a moment later it went out with the same abruptness. Nith gaped. Soul-flame burned everything.

    It was materialized animus that consumed any animus it encountered to keep burning. That included magic and souls themselves. Could it not burn whatever the invisible animus was?

    The corrupted servant disappeared from sight. Nith considered sending his entire forces in pursuit. But that would be futile without fixing the soul-identification problem on scale.

    Instead he began sending orders to his three remaining va¡¯id combatants and two speed specialized creations. The faster undead dashed after the rogue and the va¡¯id followed.

    Hopefully the imprinted image of their target and rough parameters for recognizing it visually would fix the problem. Only the specificity of the task made it quick to define for them.

    Nith floated to his throne. The paralyzed corpses below slowly regained unnatural animation as he stopped tapping them.

    The scrying stones for the party he sent out were either destroyed alongside his wards or scattered in the ruins of his tower. The master-soul-mage lacked the skill with sensory magic to create new ones quickly. He would have to trust in his creations.

    Nith finally knew what was attacking him. Sort of. He did not know what it was exactly. But something was being done to his servants to make them go rogue.

    That could be extremely bad. He had lost powerful creations. They were presumably under the control of the individual who was sabotaging him.

    He set about reconfiguring the encampment for a more physical assault. The hardest part was altering the control matrix to identify as hostile anything with autonomous motion that did not register as under his control.

    It would make an exasperating number of false positives. But destroying every tumbleweed and loose fabric scrap carried by the wind was better than ignoring the enemy.

    Nith walked his throne around the edge of his troops. He found three more servants contaminated with the invisible animus.

    All three were fleshy undead created from the villagers of Willowcrook. The physical changes were much harder to spot. But he found the tail on each.

    It was as large as the rogue¡¯s tail on two of them. But the third had one less than half the length of the others.

    The smaller tail was on a tall woman whose red skin had faded in death. Her soul was also the least overtaken by invisible animus. Did the tail grow as the unlife animus was supplanted?

    Nith took fewer chances this time. Stronger more developed undead surrounded the compromised servants and corpse-handled them to a cleared area for holding.

    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

    The necromancer finished scanning his troops and returned to the three. They simply stood still as ordered.

    The mostly remaining clothes made the gray flesh spreading from the lower back hard to see. It was also less obtrusive than on the skeletal servant.

    Only the color of the flesh was changing. As opposed to all the soft tissue regenerating completely.

    Nith tried to pull the furthest along soul out of its body. It proved more complicated than he hoped.

    Most of the junction points were gone. If they were somewhere on the converted section, he could not find them. And separating the ones he could still affect did little.

    The squat man only twitched a bit. He would likely have some efficiency issues if his soul did not reestablish the connections.

    The soul-mage turned his attention to the woman least affected. The process had progressed. He was now sure her tail was growing.

    Nith moved quickly. She soon crumpled as most of the connections between her soul and cadaver were switched to the soul trap Nith held.

    The soul ended up attached to his spell and its body. Nith could not figure out how to remove the junction points no longer formed by unlife animus.

    He almost severed the spell when he noticed specks of the invisible animus in the spellwork. Tiny fragments were bleeding in through the soul-body connections held by the spell.

    Nith began scrutinizing his person for any sign of the unknown energy. He managed to remain relatively calm when he found a film of the stuff in his own channels.

    Where was it coming from? He started scouring his soul for any sign of tampering. The animus prism around his source was still converting the raw energy into unlife. The only signs of tampering were those from his own hand.

    Animus did not just appear. It had to be fueled by the spark of consciousness and refined by the animus prism.

    The only alternative was converting one type to another manually. But that boiled down to creating a spell that replicated a natural prism.

    It might have been feeding from outside. The invisible animus did not appear to be coming from the source in any of the sabotaged servants. Which implied it came from somewhere else.

    Nith searched for a link connecting the undead to an outside power. It was getting easier to perceive the alien energy. Yet there was no origin point. It simply grew at a continuous rate.

    The necromancer became engrossed in the analysis. But he remembered to call back the hunting party after half a day.

    The chance of losing them outweighed the odds of success at this point. The links he specifically tied to the va¡¯id were still registering their presence.

    The mage-breaker had only disconnected when its soul lost all unlife animus. That indicated the va¡¯id were still under his control.

    At least until they vanished a few hours later. Nith ignored the loss. It told him that sending his servants outside of his perception was not viable. Not even if they were some of his strongest. Being angry did no good.

    The process continued at a significantly different rate for each of the subjects. The teenager had less than half his soul converted when Nith discovered him.

    But he finished before the originally more advanced older man. The woman remained far behind the other two.

    The once turquoise skinned teen was now entirely gray. His eyes had gone from a vibrant red to solid black orbs.

    Otherwise he looked unchanged. The altered build Nith noticed in the skeletal mage-breaker was not recognizable here.

    The village boy stumbled a few seconds after his soul disappeared to magical senses. Two strength focused enhanced servants immediately seized him.

    The kid started struggling. ¡°Let go ya¡¯ cow fuckers.¡± The request was completely ignored by his captors.

    Angry comments masking whatever emotions the villager was feeling continued as Nith stepped from his throne and dropped to the packed earth. The fourteen to sixteen year old appeared to be acting freely.

    Nith guessed the controlling force was either insidious or would not take active command until an appropriate time. He had known necromancers who used compulsion, artificial desires and pleasure responses instead of direct control of the body. He never felt comfortable with such nebulous methods himself.

    The boy spotted Nith. The disgust and hatred in those black eyes twisted the still soft face into something no child should have been capable of.

    ¡°What do you want?¡± The tone was either bravado or the product of blinding disdain. Nith doubted it was shock. That likely faded weeks ago.

    ¡°What do you want from me?¡± The question was spoken to the villager. But it was for whoever might be watching through the boy.

    ¡°Let us go. Then crawl in a hole and die.¡± Nith ignored the response.

    The teen lacked an obviously fatal wound. He had likely been killed by some form of internal trauma. But his body was covered in small cuts, bruises and abrasions.

    Unlife would alter and greatly slow the process of decomposition even without the ability to maintain the flesh actively. That meant the body was little different than when first revived.

    Those signs of damage had not fully healed. But black ichor already scabbed over the open wounds. The process on an intact body was clearly different than on one missing most of its flesh.

    A series of warnings from his troops drew Nith¡¯s attention. The outer edge of his forces had entered combat.

    The necromancer pivoted and dashed away. He leapt and scampered up the skeleton containing his throne. He did not stop until he stood atop the bleached skull.

    A section of the barricade was flattened. The culprit waded through his undead defenders. They were attacking the gray twenty foot figure.

    But it did little good. The va¡¯id swept aside and threw off the assailants with ease. None of the undead appeared to have damaged the attacker.

    Nith narrowed his eyes. The martial technique felt familiar. The va¡¯id looked like a scaled up version of the mage-breaker¡¯s final appearance. But Nith did not need a close inspection to infer her identity.

    None of the fodder could even break her skin. But the more powerful and specialized servants moving towards the breach could.

    She was completely dominating for the moment. Yet the undead her swinging arms and tail batted aside were not smashed to pieces. She was holding back.

    Nith was distracted by half a dozen new warnings. New spearheads of gray combatants were piercing his defenses all around the encampment.

    It was a multi-pronged attack. But what was the point? They would be surrounded and exterminated before long. And he would simply repair any servants they destroyed.

    The feeling of his body snapping out of proprioception and head falling through the air took Nith entirely off guard. He reached for the animus in his surroundings.

    But the trauma of decapitation slowed his soul¡¯s reactions just enough. Gray fingers dug into his skull and crushed. The bone caved in.

    Nith desperately tried to re-enforce the attachments to his brutalized body. The foot stomping his skull into broken fragments was not helping.

    The last thing his fracturing sight registered before his soul unraveled was the grim focus on a face faintly familiar.

    It was sharper and bleached gray. But something around the eyes remained of the archer that attempted to kill him before any of this.

    The tiny smile of grim satisfaction faded with his perception. And the scourge of the wastes, pale mage of the black tower and last survivor of Yi¡¯an¡¯s Chosen finally passed from the living world.

    My awareness retreated from his consciousness. The uneasy mind returned to the constellation of sparks within myself.

    I would likely call it forth again soon. But for now I simply considered.

    Nith had appeared in my void a few days ago. His spark was dim and flickered at first. It felt disoriented in a way beyond the trauma of the restless dead.

    That had drawn my attention to it. And I was glad it did.

    The mage was not a gam. Yet he came to me upon death. The only other case of a non-gam doing that was whenever I replaced an animal¡¯s animus with essence.

    I now suspected that was exactly what happened. Or at least it was far enough in the process.

    My spare time the last few days had been spent combing through the months leading to his death. He definitely started cycling essence through his soul before being killed at the hands of his former slave.

    I suspected that was what allowed him to see essence when other alma mages could not. He appeared to have inadvertently formed a rudimentary version of essence sight.

    The way Nith came in contact with essence was almost as intriguing as the mage himself. My confusion had been cleared up when I found his memories of finding the decaying horse.

    I needed to fill up the empty space inside the horse when I stopped hiding in it. My eggs were the most available filler.

    That solution did leave me needing to get rid of the horse before they hatched. But that problem was still a week away when Ane rode off on the horse I was soon to dispose of.

    I had not expected the ve hatching inside the corpse to have any consequences. I was still in the habit of assuming ve were harmless.

    The handful of minds that appeared around the same time as Nith contained the fatalities from the diversion that led to his death. Their memories filled in many of the gaps.

    A growing band of the mage¡¯s escaped victims had been shadowing his slave army. The first members were part of a scouting party that stumbled across the horse¡¯s body.

    I did not have anyone from that original group. But I pieced together that the ve had escaped the body and attached themselves to Nith¡¯s puppets.

    The conversion process apparently removed whatever control Nith had over those he resurrected. Those first freed slaves put enough of what happened together to catch as many of the ve as they could and flee the area.

    Some decided to leave. But most resolved to use their newfound freedom to fuck-over their former master as much as possible.

    The main strategy was sneaking up and releasing ve near the stragglers of Nith¡¯s slave army. They then swooped in to retrieve any convertees once they regained control of their bodies.

    It struck me as dumb luck the mage never caught them. But he was very reliant on his ability to sense animus.

    He also had far more slaves than he could manage effectively. Only the complete control of his troops and lack of a sophisticated enemy had made it viable. At least until his own escaped victims had started an impromptu guerrilla war against him.

    It had been challenging to ease the minds of those killed in the final strike into a calm state. Months to decades trapped in their own deteriorating bodies as a sociopath wielded them as bloody tools left psychological damage that would take decades to resolve.

    But it was still easier than the mass-murderous mage himself. The victims had relatively positive formative years.

    The childhood Nith experienced in the group known as Yi¡¯an¡¯s Chosen had left him without a concept of happiness or any similar untainted emotion I could work from. Their children were essentially trained like beasts with the single goal of creating potent mages.

    They were deprived all positive social contact. Only accomplishments believed to progress their training were rewarded by food, sleep and an absence of physical abuse.

    His psyche was dominated by a sense of powerlessness that he would do anything to overcome. And no amount of control over his environment could ever truly fix it.

    For now I would leave him in a mixture of his greatest accomplishments. The experiences had not truly fulfilled the man. But they were the best I could provide.

    The field data of ve merging with modified alma souls was interesting enough. The glimpse of the species alma called va¡¯id even more so. But the treasure trove of knowledge within Nith completely eclipsed both.

    He was an alma mage. And he could resurrect the dead. It was precisely the information I had left the Moors to acquire.

    I suspected he was not that good at it. He needed to make heavy alterations to the souls of those he returned to life.

    That made sense with how fragile alma were. Altering them to run on unlife animus would remove the need to repair their body perfectly.

    Yet those he revived were so dysfunctional that they could not maintain or restore their flesh. They could only move and sense their environment.

    But he had proficiency with the most important aspect. He could retrieve the vanished source of a dead soul.

    I scrutinized every example I could find of resurrection. It was not easy, even for something so abundant.

    Searching through the memories of those who returned to me was like looking through a box filled with drawings. Each one was a different experience from their life. But there was no universal order or method to how the person sorted those experiences.

    Restoring the source required the soul to be held together. It also needed a kind of resonance with the source.

    The analogy of a vibration was the closest physical phenomenon I could compare it to. Nith extrapolated the frequency from the structure of the soul in a complex formula he mostly did by instinct.

    When he vibrated the soul at that frequency, the source would reappear. I really wanted to try it. There was no reason it would not work on insects and other small creatures the same way it did on alma.

    The problem was I had no idea how it could be used to restore those within me. Gam did not have souls. We had essence patterns. There was not even a source to return.

    I opened my eyes as the cart came to a halt. The orange light indicated we were stopping for the night. And glancing to where the sun touched the horizon confirmed it.

    My muscles did not get stiff the way alma often complained of. But I made a good show out of stretching them. It still felt good to move.

    I was actually experiencing a sort of discomfort. Although it was more aesthetic distress than a negative sensation.

    The threads in my spiral were swollen with essence. I normally kept them as thin as possible to maximize complexity and therefore essence generation.

    But the amount of essence I could control had increased since I last restructured it. I was starting to rebuild it every few days. Otherwise the rising quantity made me frustratingly inefficient.

    It was a good problem to have. I noticed an increase around a month ago. And the rate of improvement had escalated since.

    My capacity was half again what it was a month before. And it showed no sign of stopping.

    The question of why I was suddenly growing in strength had been preoccupying me. This was faster than even my first few years. And it was nothing like the minimal increases over the recent centuries.

    I hopped off my seat at the back of the cart. The grass was naturally short in this patch. And wheel ruts accompanied fire rings and bare patches of earth. This was evidently a common stopping point out on the trail to Rillan.

    My initial theory was that something in my new environment was letting me overcome the wall in my progress. It might have been as simple as being outside the Moors.

    Many gam found new experiences or changes in lifestyle could cause or correlate with improvements in essence capacity. I did not know precisely why. But it was common enough to have some mechanism behind it.

    It could be the contact with a new sapient species and their society. Or maybe it was learning a formalized version of animus spellweaving.

    A new theory had developed in the last few days. The timing of my spikes in power were very close to the estimated times Nith¡¯s slaves became gam.

    Could the ve be the difference? This was probably the first time ve had merged with other creatures. And it was happening on scale.

    The causation was a mystery. But the correlation certainly lined up.

    I noticed the abnormal change around when Nith lost his first handful of slaves. Then the improvement slowed when the vampire he set to defend kept the rebels from sneaking close.

    The gains redoubled after the va¡¯id incapacitated the vampire and attached a ve to him. That lined up with the greater effectiveness of the vampire in sneaking ve into the mage¡¯s troops.

    My understanding was that the eggs lain by the freed slaves had also started hatching around then. That gave them a larger supply and let them be less careful about ensuring every ve found someone to attach to.

    I did not know what had happened after Nith was assassinated. But the difficulty I was having keeping up with my escalating volume of essence the last few days gave me a suspicion.

    The details on the early escapees were second hand. But most of the group had produced a lot of eggs shortly after they were freed and joined the roaming rebels.

    That was pretty expected with the kind of trauma and turbulence they would be dealing with. Gam often lay unfertilized clutches when they are working through hard to process emotions.

    A lot of those eggs were left behind. But they started sending groups back to retrieve ve once they confirmed where new ve came from.

    Freeing all Nith¡¯s victims would take a while even with a lot of those early eggs hatching. Assuming killing the mage did not remove his control. I was not sure if it would. But the fact no rebels were killed after Nith died made me suspect it at least compromised the slave army¡¯s ability to keep attacking.

    Why ve merging with alma would have such an affect on me was still unclear. But the circumstantial evidence was sufficient to make it my working theory.

    There was not a lot I could do about it now. But I was certainly going to take advantage at the next opportunity.

 Chapter 15, All That Is Created

    I had to admit porridge was growing on me. The mixture of fruit and grains that acted as a dietary staple at the outpost was not very enjoyable.

    But the party that came to retrieve Rekon and his compatriots had the alma equivalent of hunters or trappers. They mostly caught a species of ground squirrel that lived in burrows on the open plains.

    The meat and savory plants were added to the pot of softened grains. The heat of the fire rendered it all into a rich sludge I greatly preferred to the sugary goop at the outpost.

    I might have copied the alma sense of taste incorrectly. It seemed I still favored meat over sweet plants.

    Alma referred to the preference as a sweet-tooth. Or more accurately the lack of a sweet-tooth.

    I scraped the bottom of my bowl. The enchantment I put on the wood actively prevented the grease from sticking to the bowl. And the one on the spoon gathered everything left.

    Co¡¯arn was retelling the story of how he lost his arm to those around our fire. It was by extension the story of how Rekon¡¯s entire expedition nearly died.

    I knew several of them were hearing it for the third or fourth time. But tales of alma managing to nearly die to expected hazards in the Moors were very popular.

    ¡°The tree flung Hoaf up in the sky. Twenty feet! And the gods¡¯ damned weed snapped her out of the air.¡± The collective alma hung in suspense. It was as if Hoaf was not sitting by a neighboring fire in clear view.

    ¡°The unholy creature loomed above us. Towering ten alma high!¡± I was pretty sure a gorn flower could not grow ten gam high, let alone ten alma.

    ¡°It swelled with maleficence. Bigger and bigger.¡± Half the circle was tense with anticipation. The other half had acclimatized to the story¡¯s twist.

    ¡°And then¡­ it burst!¡± Gasps stroked Co¡¯arn¡¯s need for attention.

    ¡°A stench like the Disentor¡¯s rotting asshole bubbled from its torn gullet and Hoaf ripped her way free!¡± Violent gestures mimed the feat of tearing oneself from a gargantuan plant.

    It was a drastic exaggeration of the more drawn out and desperate story I originally heard. Hoaf had supposedly used a blade enhanced by her magical talent to slash at the carnivorous flora¡¯s insides.

    She only barely survived and was cut out by her comrades once her attackers killed the creature. But Co¡¯arn told it as if she simply flexed and the plant exploded before her might.

    ¡°And there, in the creature¡¯s wretched bial, were the bones of my own arm¡­¡± I noticed a few bemused smiles. Yet most of the alma were wholly absorbed in the retelling.

    The caravan¡¯s sole priest looked vaguely disapproving. It was more likely to be the profanity than the dramatization.

    I let the voices and crackling pops of the fire wash over me. Meditation was an approach rather than a specific act.

    The bodies coming and going from the fire pit faded. All I saw was the living souls within them.

    Nith thought of souls as having two states. A living soul had a spark, while a dead soul was the animus structures that remained once the spark was gone.

    The soul-mage had memories of using that structure to restore the spark. And I was attempting to copy the process from those memories.

    I initially tried using already dead animals. It was easy to find or kill small insects. But that had proven harder to understand than I expected.

    Nith was taught to revive souls by studying living rodents for long periods. He was then required to kill them and use his understanding of those individuals to revive them.

    The people who raised him moved on to larger and more complex creatures once he could raise mice. And eventually he needed to kill and revive his failed peers.

    The methodology was increasingly revolting the more I dug into it. But it gave insight.

    Watching intact souls was how he learned to recognize the vibration that would restart a dead one. I was going to try doing the same.

    A tendril of essence reached through the earth I sat on. I plucked the soul from a large ant moving through tunnels below.

    It was surprisingly easy to detach the points its tiny soul connected to its flesh. Nith knew them all as second nature. And now so did I.

    The spark rapidly vanished. I quickly set about modifying the animus prism around the point its spark had rested.

    Nith did it by cutting and grafting the parts. Yet I did not entirely understand why.

    He was taught to redistribute the existing pieces of a soul to modify it. The way to improve the results was to use the material more efficiently and cause less damage.

    But it was seemingly simple to make new soul organelle myself and replace the old ones. The result did not damage other organelle.

    Stolen novel; please report.

    My way looked better to me. However the end product was the same every time.

    I grasped the entire soul and manipulated it in the way I thought should match its original source. The structure trembled.

    Something fuzzed in and out for a moment. A shadow of the spark. Then it was gone.

    My further attempts with the soul failed completely. It continued to deteriorate until I finally gave up and moved to studying another ant.

    I doubted my method was flawed. Nith remembered a similar experience when learning. I simply needed a better sense for how to match the spark¡¯s frequency.

    ¡°You have been silent this evening.¡± A voice drew me from the sacrifice of insects to my proficiency.

    Darkness had fallen in full. The fire was a bed of embers. A lone figure sat close to the coals.

    ¡°Contemplating life.¡± I gave Jarimy a sheepish smile.

    ¡°A hard task for anyone. Harder for a man without a past.¡± The russet skinned priest revealed no subtext to the comment.

    ¡°Can¡¯t say how much a past would help, but I make due.¡± I paused. ¡°Can I ask you a question?¡±

    The priest smiled lightly. ¡°You just did.¡± I gave the appropriate skoff. It was a joke that appeared to transcend culture.

    ¡°I wanted to ask about the gods.¡± A faint bemusement raised his brows.

    ¡°That is literally my purpose in being here. What were you wondering?¡± I considered how to ask my question.

    ¡°What are the gods? Are they some species that the church works with? Or the leaders of the church?¡± I had tried and failed to infer a clear answer to this.

    The way alma talked about gods made it apparent they had influence and status. But the knowledge seemed to intrinsic for alma to explain it clearly. At least not without me resorting to such a direct question.

    Surprise gave way to a stifled laugh. ¡°I¡¯ve never heard someone describe the gods like that.¡± I decided not to take the amusement in his voice personally.

    ¡°You are strictly right.¡± He continued. ¡°A god is the ultimate authority in their church. Everything a church does is directly by the instructions of its god. Or what we can interpret from them, at least.¡± That certainly matched how Sar? talked about Nala.

    It also matched the nebulous concept I had pieced together from the few former alma that came to me upon death. Not that I made much progress that way.

    ¡°Calling the gods a species makes some sense. But not the way mortals like you and me are.¡± I purposefully did not correct his beliefs about my mortality.

    ¡°We live and return to the Creator with time. But the gods were created first, before anything else. And they shaped the world by the Creator¡¯s direction.¡± This was not the first reference to someone called the Creator I had heard. But it was the most direct.

    ¡°Who is the Creator.¡± I interrupted. Jarimy seemed less surprised this time.

    ¡°The Creator is who I serve. Everything and everyone, the gods to us, is part of the Creator. We are born into individual lives and become one again once those lives end.¡± There was a shift in the priest¡¯s tone. The words sounded smooth and practiced.

    ¡°What do you mean by becoming one?¡± The phrase was odd. It had the ring of a concept the priest expected his audience to already understand on some level.

    ¡°It is to become what we were before, the Creator.¡± The explanation was simple. It was also barely helpful.

    ¡°The purpose in all of this¡­¡± His hand gestured to the darkened camp and rolling plains beyond. ¡°Is to be lived. To be experienced as only a finite life can. We experience what the Creator cannot, limitation. The perspective of a single life. And we bring that back once that life is over.¡±

    I pondered the idea. An entity that divided itself into pieces that did not know they were part of it only for those pieces to return to it upon death. It had eerie familiarity.

    ¡°And that is what happens to alma when we die? We add our experience and perspective to this Creator.¡± Jarimy gave an encouraging smile.

    ¡°All that is created. Gods, alma, tige.¡± He tapped the earth by his side. ¡°Even the dirt, rocks and clouds in the sky. It is all part of the Creator and will be again. Not that I know what a cloud experiences. I suppose that is how I¡¯m limited.¡± He chuckled at his own quip.

    ¡°And what about people who don¡¯t die.¡± I had never met another creature that could not die. Not with any confidence. My curiosity was subsequently personal.

    His mouth drew into a hard line. ¡°You are speaking of the unclean.¡± I was not familiar with the term, but nodded.

    ¡°The unclean are just a myth. One for theurges and campfire tales.¡± He said unclean as if the word itself was dirty. Which I supposed it arguably was.

    ¡°If the Dark Gods succeeded in severing a soul from the Creator, it would mark the end of the world.¡± I frowned at that.

    ¡°Why would that end the world?¡± I was missing the connection.

    ¡°The world is a mechanism. A mechanism of the Creator¡¯s design. And death is part of that mechanism.¡± His voice grew solemn.

    ¡°The Dark Gods create undead to resist death. But none are exempt in the end. To lose the capacity to die, a soul would need to be cut off from the Creator. From life and death.¡± The last flames had long since died out. Only faint embers and starlight lit the priest.

    ¡°Present in the world. But separate from it. The natural order would tear itself apart against an unclean spirit. Like a dagger driven into a gear box. The laws of the world would come apart.¡± The darkness hid his eyes. But my presence allowed me to perceive them on me.

    The piercing gaze softened after a moment. ¡°But we don¡¯t need to worry about all that. The Dark Gods are banished, and my fellows work hard to ensure their cultists don¡¯t get up to anything that dangerous.¡±

    I returned the shift in tone with a smile I doubted he could see. ¡°That¡¯s a relief. I am pretty invested in the world.¡± I paused. ¡°I keep my stuff here.¡±

    He laughed. ¡°A common feeling.¡± Jarimy slapped his knees and stood. ¡°I would be happy to expound upon the holy and unholy all night. But the living need sleep, and I am no exception.¡± My presence let me see the smirk that accompanied his words.

    ¡°I¡¯d be happy to answer any more theological questions in the morning.¡± I stood in response.

    ¡°I expect I¡¯ll have a few.¡± It was true. Although I was uncertain how many I would ask directly.

 Chapter 16, Playing To The Narrative

    It took me surprisingly long to learn the Rillan capital was Stormsgate. Rekon¡¯s expedition members and anyone else from Rillan called it the capital.

    The fact Rojins called their capital city the capital as well led to abundant confusion at the outpost. That completely separate city was named Carris.

    We parted with the bulk of the caravan as we approached the city. They were commissioned by some aspect of the Rillan leadership to retrieve us safely.

    The journey that entailed had shifted my view of the Rillan and the alma civilization. The first few villages we stopped at were comparable to gam villages.

    The environment and architecture was completely different. But they existed on a similar scale.

    The first real town overturned that context. Memories gleaned from a few former villagers turned pseudo-gam did not prepare me for settlements that completely covered the natural world for miles. Nor had they prepared me for this.

    Jarimy rode ahead. His steed parted the crowd of people that filled the streets. I would have assumed there was some gathering bringing thousands of alma to the area. Now I knew this congestion was normal.

    I suppressed the urge to look up at the five to six story buildings to either side. The worn cobblestones below the metallic hooves of my mount were as much of a wonder.

    The alma had obscured the natural world here. Only the sky above revealed I was in the world I knew. It was impressive.

    My steed was even more so. Polished reflective plates fit together in the facsimile of a horse. Yet I could feel the complex mechanism within that let the construct move like a living creature.

    It was a masterpiece of both magical and mechanical artistry. One outwardly ornamented by filigree and a questionable abundance of tassels.

    Jarimy and I were the only ones on golem back. Rekon¡¯s surviving followers rode in a line of carriages behind us.

    They moved at the same mellow pace as the golems. But I doubted either was limited to their current speed.

    A simpler version of the same engineering below me allowed the vehicles to move without a horse or any other beast to pull them. Only animus and gears for power.

    There was something off about the whole thing. I picked up from my compatriots that automatic carriages were exorbitantly expensive.

    The wealthy could rent them. And the leaders of their society could own multiple. But not normal alma.

    Co¡¯arn was dumbfounded when two golems arrived with the six vehicles. The artificial horses were an even greater mark of status.

    Perceiving the spellwork inside made it clear why. The physical components alone would be arduous to create and fit together. All for something debatably less useful than a carriage.

    Jarimy laughed their surprise off. He said it was only fitting for returning heroes. That was a term I had been hearing more and more.

    The cultural view of the Moors and alma who traveled to them was more complicated than I first realized. The act was glorified. A source of pride that felt absurd after seeing the realities of their efforts.

    I was not oblivious to the finely crafted and clearly new uniforms we were required to wear while riding into the city. Or the way alma stopped to watch us pass.

    This was a display of some kind. A display I lacked the context to fully grasp.

    ¡°You seem calm.¡± The priest¡¯s voice emerged from the space by my ear.

    ¡°Were you expecting me not to be?¡± A single weave mimicked the vibrations of air a few inches from my mouth a similar distance from the alma ahead.

    ¡°Not really. But the others are a bit overwhelmed.¡± Glancing back confirmed his words.

    The open air design of the vehicles behind us made it easy. Co¡¯arn had a slightly manic smile. He seemed caught between amazement at the attention and complete alienation. And his fellows were doing little better.

    ¡°Is this not normal?¡± I was confident it was not. But I might get Jarimy to confirm that.

    ¡°Not for them. You have received acolades before.¡± He paused. ¡°Just not to this degree.¡± That last comment was interesting.

    ¡°What makes this trip different?¡± The only way I knew this expedition differed was in casualties and grievous injury.

    ¡°Adventure and glory.¡± I frowned at the response.

    ¡°How do you figure?¡± I had seen neither.

    ¡°Brave adventurers come face-to-face with the savage untamed wilderness. Only their grit and Rillan pride between them and the monsters of bedtimes stories. Led through everything the Dark Moors had to offer with a seemingly impossible survival rate¡± There was a faint hint of amusement in his tone. But it was far from sarcasm.

    I glanced to the alma who stopped on the street to watch us pass. No. They had been waiting for us. Waiting to see us pass.

    Many accompanied hatchlings. Or rather children. The look in their eyes began to fit into a narrative.

    ¡°They already know about us.¡± It was not really a question. But the priest answered anyway.

    ¡°Your testimonies were sent to the empriss when the Rojin¡¯s first notified us. I¡¯m sure they were made available to every press correspondent, and graced any news journal with eager writers.¡± The explanation sounded a bit sardonic.

    I new Rekon¡¯s party was questioned at length. Even I was interviewed. It simply did little good.

    A transcript of those interviews would be grim reading. They were taken long before the alma in question had time to process what they experienced.

    But Jarimy said people were given the testimonies. And those people retold the story put together from multiple sources.

    I was familiar with how much a true story could warp into myth. Hunters did it all the time. I thought of Co¡¯arn¡¯s creative fireside tales. Alma clearly did the same thing.

    ¡°A tale of adventure is all the more thrilling when the peril seems impossible to overcome.¡± I noticed a cyan child on the shoulders of a tall woman with similar coloration.

    ¡°Even more so when they somehow overcome those odds.¡± The priest responded.

    I gave a smile and waved to the child of indeterminate sex. ¡°And a story like that could grow a lot in a few months.¡± The child¡¯s eyes widened.

    ¡°I was sent to you shortly after we became aware of the incident. But I expect so.¡± The child waved back with enough vigor and lack of coordination that their guardian had to adjust her stance or topple forward.

    ¡°And I assume the leader of this legendary group would have particular renown?¡± Rather than appear annoyed, the cyan woman flashed me a grateful smile.

    ¡°Quite.¡± I shifted from my passive demeanor.

    The rest of our journey was spent with an open and slightly playful smile of my own. Waving to people as felt appropriate.

    The onlookers died off as the eclectic and semi-warn buildings gave way to clean and colorful shop fronts. The occasional manor house broke up the construction with fences in gardens.

    I understood enough about the alma concept of a city to recognize the plots of tightly controlled grass, shrubs and trees as expressions of power. Turning land into an ornament was a greater extravagance than the dwellings the yards surrounded.

    Jarimy was leading us to the physical church that employed him. They were part of the process of retrieving us from Rojin custody.

    The connection between the Church of the Creator and the Rillan Empire was hard to pin down. It seemed the average Rillan could not explain it in practical terms. Not beyond the fact both groups worked together.

    I had discovered that the Church of the Creator was a kind of governing body for the other churches. Disputes between the churches of two or more different gods were decided by priests of the Creator. And the rules set by the Church of the Creator applied to all alma churches.

    Knowing that made the glorified fortress we arrived at expected. Churches were usually the largest building in alma towns.

    The castle playing at being a church was no exception. It dwarfed the estates around it with ease.

    We passed through an arch crested by the plain circle that symbolized the Creator. The emblem was a polished silver-gold metal that shown in the midday light. But it was otherwise as simplistic as the iron broach Jonathan wore.

    A group of acolytes waited in the cortyard. We dismounted. Our extravagant transport was taken with care.

    I began after the priests leading the others away. But a hand on my shoulder stopped me.

    ¡°We¡¯ll get you settled in later. I should report to High Priest ?fron. He¡¯ll want to meet the infamous Rekon.¡± I glanced back to Jarimy. He had the courtesy to look sheepish.

    ¡°Of course. Lead the way.¡± I followed the alma man to one of the many doors into the stone building.

    The sculptures and releifs we passed were interesting on their own. As were the tapestries of events I did not know and portraits of people I did not recognize.

    But the spellwork was the most distracting. I nearly walked into passing clergy half a dozen times. It was everywhere.

    The outpost had the most enchantments of anywhere I had seen until now. Most permanent structures there had animus woven into them.

    The shops and public houses we stopped at in towns and villages rarely had more than one or two. I saw quite a few in the city. But they were isolated and spread out.

    This place was like walking through a mountain of spun web-yarn. Animus threads were linked to everything. Layer upon layer impossible to separate at a glance.

    Mages must have been enchanting every brick and doornob for decades. More likely centuries.

    Even simple souls were technically more complex. But I was experienced at recognizing the components of souls. This was an unfamiliar overwhelming mess.

    ¡°Are you okay?¡± I ignored the priest¡¯s worried tone and pretended I had not walked into a doorframe.

    ¡°I¡¯m fine. Just overstimulated.¡± I massaged my nose in the pretext I could experience pain.

    Worry mixed with confusion. ¡°By what?¡± That question confirmed my suspicions. Jarimy was not perceiving the weavings. At least not how I was.

    Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

    ¡°There is a lot of foreign spellwork here. It is a bit distracting.¡± I answered honestly. My above average awareness of animus was well known.

    Curiosity replaced confusion. ¡°Really. I¡¯ve never heard of that happening. Mages usually appear fine.¡± I considered that.

    ¡°I¡¯m probably not familiar enough with what I¡¯m seeing. Mages have seen this all before.¡± It was possible. But I doubted that was the only reason.

    Alma mages used their soul organelle to sense animus. That was true even for master-mages. As far as Nith knew.

    I sense animus with my presence. That made it impossible to not be aware of spellwork in my vicinity.

    Jarimy seemed to accept the explanation. ¡°?fron is only a few doors down. Would holding my hand help?¡± I waved off the offer and started walking again.

    Stepping into the relatively modest office made little difference. Everything from the walls to the papers resting on the desk held enchantments.

    I tried to focus on the reedy alma standing a few feet from the door. ¡°Welcome! I¡¯m Hight Priest ?fron. But please call me Priest ?fron.¡± He was somehow shaking my hand. I was not quite sure when he got ahold of it.

    ¡°The High title makes it just too long. You know who I am. I know who I am. I don¡¯t need to be High for that. And I¡¯m at work anyway.¡± His smile shown with a childish excitement.

    It was as if he was genuinely thrilled I was here. All without a single word on my part.

    ¡°Rekon. Happy to be here.¡± I took enough control of my bobbing arm to participate.

    ¡°Of course you are. How rude of me. Please, take a seat.¡± He released me. His free hand gestured to the sturdy chair before the desk.

    I navigated to it and sank into the thick cushion. Priest ?fron sat across the desk. Jarimy took up a position standing behind and to the side.

    ¡°So Rekon¡­¡± The slate toned priest leaned forwards. His elbows rested on the dark wood. Fingers steepled. He watched me over them. ¡°What are you?¡±

    I frowned at the question. ¡°In what context?¡±

    Priest ?fron spun one hand in an absent gesture. ¡°You know. What sort of mystic monster. Magical monstrosity. Necrotic ne¡¯er-do-well.¡± His smile lost none of its playfulness. But the energy in his eyes took on an eerie edge.

    ¡°I¡­ don¡¯t think I know what you mean¡­?¡± I glanced to the other priest. Jarimy looked stoically ahead.

    ¡°You know, what species are you?¡± He leaned back in his chair. ¡°Maybe a demon? You would be a really potent one. Or a zombie? But that wouldn¡¯t explain the arcane ability, probably¡­¡± I projected unflappable uncertainty.

    ¡°Are you joking?¡± He ignored my question.

    ¡°Or an incubus.¡± He leaned forwards. ¡°Have you been secretly ravaging your way across the countryside?¡± I had no idea why he waggled his eyebrows while asking.

    ¡°Jarimy. Did he ravage you on the way here?¡± The slate gray alma did not break eye contact with me.

    ¡°No, High Priest ?fron.¡± Priest ?fron sighed.

    ¡°I told you guys, you can call me Priest ?fron.¡± He broke eye contact to give the other priest an exasperated look.

    ¡°You know I can have you fed to ghouls. I know I can have you fed to ghouls. You don¡¯t need to encode my superiority into my name. I already know I¡¯m superior.¡± Jarimy remained impassive.

    ¡°He has shown absolutely no sign of being an incubus during the time we traveled together, Priest ?fron.¡± He finally added.

    Priest ?fron sagged in his chair. ¡°I was hoping for an incubus. Can¡¯t we catch one, just once.¡± The disappointment was palpable.

    ¡°I feel like there is a misunderstanding here.¡± I tried to stand. A pressure across my entire body slammed me back into the chair.

    I was left pinned to the heavy piece of furniture. Attempting to lift my left arm revealed a working of force magic opposing me.

    The chair had wrapped me in spellwork. I recognized some as force magic. Other parts were foreign. And some looked suspiciously like soul magic.

    I was suddenly wishing I used some of my recent growth to form physical enhancement patterns. I doubted the magic, chair or stone walls would have slowed me if I did.

    ¡°I guess it doesn¡¯t matter.¡± Priest ?fron placed a finger on a polished stone resting to his left.

    The stone lit up green. ¡°Qlarants, Zor¡¯matta¡¯z, I have one for the probe.¡± I sensed a pair of souls enter my perception.

    They came from behind the back wall and to the left. It also seemed as if they were coming up from below the level of the room.

    The shelves swung out silently. A shallow alcove was revealed behind. And in it was an unfamiliar creature.

    I had seen a few dogs on my journey to Stormsgate. I was also familiar with various canid species from the Moors. Many of those creatures were only somewhat canine.

    That gave me context for the bipedal dog that stepped into the room. It was like the proportions of a dog had been altered until it stood and moved like a gam. Or alma, I supposed.

    The second soul entered behind the fur covered one. It was obviously an alma male in form. Although the skin seemed abnormally dry. And its eyes were red orbs with no white, iris or pupil.

    They honestly looked more like gam eyes. Simply crimson rather than glossy black.

    But their physical appearance was not especially important. The most interesting thing about the two was obvious from the moment I sensed their souls.

    The newcomers used unlife animus. They were undead by alma terms. Which gave a different and stranger perspective to events.

    Qlarants and Zor¡¯matta¡¯z quickly moved to either side of my chair and hoisted it between them. That meant I was hoisted along with it.

    I looked up at the canid member of the duo with the widest eyes Rekon¡¯s anatomy could manage. ¡°You have to help me.¡± I let a wobble enter my tone ¡°This crazy priest is kidnapping me.¡± We started moving towards the secret door.

    ¡°Whatever he is paying you, I¡¯ll double it.¡± The bipedal dog glanced down. But they reframed from responding.

    I knew they were sapient from their soul. But did not know if they understood the alma language or could speak it if so.

    ¡°He definitely wants me for something sexual. You know what priests are like.¡± I did not know if there was any stereotype about priests and sexual deviance. But I had observed how modest alma were about sex.

    ¡°He¡¯ll probably do the same to you once I¡¯m used up.¡± We maneuvered the corner and started down a staircase that ran parallel with the wall.

    ¡°Or¡­ is that what you want?¡± I looked back and forth between them. Realization spread across my face.

    ¡°He is paying you with his holy man-meat. Your hooked on priestly pegging!¡± I gasped with the revelation. My expression shifted a moment later.

    ¡°In that case, my offer still stands.¡± I hooded my eyes. A sultry tone entering my voice.

    ¡°I¡¯d be happy to double it, fuzzy. If he¡¯s offering four inches, I¡¯ll give you eight.¡± I heard laughter break out behind me. It was from the location I sensed Priest ?fron.

    That was not the information I was looking for. Yet it still gave me some insight into my captor.

    We reached the base of the stairs. The corridor beyond was closer to a tunnel carved from bedrock.

    ¡°If it¡¯s his hands, you cannot beat experience, I guarantee you. Age before beauty.¡± We started down the tunnel.

    ¡°Can I smack him?¡± The canid had an odd voice. It was clearly understandable as alma speech. Yet the sounds were all wrong.

    It was as if the vocal structure was different. Which it probably was. Alma certainly sounded different than gam.

    ¡°Not until we know if he can take it.¡± Priest ?fron was still chuckling. ¡°If he turns out to be something that can survive a werewolf mauling, go for it.¡±

    Now that told me several important things. The canid was a werewolf.

    Well that was not very important. I had never heard of a werewolf. But it might be important later.

    Priest ?fron confirmed I was going to be examined or tested for species as he put it. That was likely related to the probe he mentioned.

    I might be able to escape before that. My body was trapped. And they clearly thought I was helpless. That suggested animus weaving was also handled somehow.

    Alma seemed unable to perceive or interact with essence. Nith¡¯s final few hours told me that could change. But I doubted my captors had precautions against it.

    Essence moved through spellwork meant to detect or stop animus without interacting. That made me an unsuppressed caster with enough essence reserves to levitate a medium mountain.

    It would take me a minute to create a powerful offensive weaving. But I was not being rushed.

    Two things stopped me. Fear of the unknown and fascination with the unknown.

    Alma were a species with a civilization beyond my current understanding. The scale of their resources meant a group like the Church of the Creator could have items or individuals that would trap me easily.

    I was not confident these people were part of the Church of the Creator. But the potential downsides of direct conflict remained.

    I was also intensely curious who they were. And why they included undead.

    My view was limited. But I sensed us passing more undead and a few alma.

    ¡°Help! I¡¯m being held by a priest¡¯s werewolf fuck toy!¡± I screamed as we came close to a group of unlife animus souls.

    All I got from the repeated behavior was a few irritated growls and one stifled snort from the red eyed captor. That was fine. I already got more information than I had before.

    We finally entered an arching room. Quite a few people were inside. Mostly undead. Yet a handful of alma were spread throughout.

    There were six violet crystalin columns in the center of the room. They were covered in animus almost as intricate as a soul.

    I could not tell what most of it did. But certain parts reminded me of the advanced soul analysis spells Nith used.

    My chair was carried to the middle of the crystal pillars. I was set down and turned to face a glass wall. Priest ?fron stood inside.

    A metal box resembling a lectern hid his lower body. It was also heavily enchanted. But the enchantments were crude compared to those tied to the columns.

    ¡°Hold tight, Rekon. We¡¯ll be probing you in a minute.¡± Priest ?fron sounded as casual as ever. He was clearly adjusting controls on the box.

    Jarimy and most of the occupants of the room accompanied Priest ?fron behind the clear barrier. It completely isolated that section of the domed chamber. Even his voice was transmitted magically to me.

    I considered what I knew. They wanted to know what I was. Which means the enchantment for looking at souls was going to look at my soul.

    Alma magic could not detect essence. Not without methods I doubt they had. Which meant they would see I had no soul.

    Nith panicked when he saw a soulless creature. Then he proceeded to do everything he could to discover what it meant.

    Nith was also a controlling psychopath with a crippling fear of powerlessness. But the need to understand the unknown was present in every sapient creature I had encountered.

    They could not explain the absence of a soul. They would try. And they might discover too much of my abilities and limitations in the process.

    Could I alter the enchantment? It was too complicated. I could probably damage or destroy it. But that would cause all sorts of problems with these fine people.

    I glanced to the varied creatures around me. To the souls around me. To the animus structures¡­

    That was all a soul was. An animus structure and a spark. They were really complex. But they were also diverse.

    Could I do it? Would the enchantment know the difference between a real soul and a replica?

    It would have to be as close as I could make it. Hopefully the inaccuracies would be attributed to an abnormal soul. The people in this room certainly had a few strange soul organelle.

    I began gathering unbound essence as Priest ?fron glided across controls just out of sight. I had little time.

    I had practice making life animus from learning alma spellcasting. Should I use it?

    No. It was too far from their narrative. I needed to appear as the undead they expected me to be. Even an unrecognized undead species would obfuscate my true nature.

    I converted essence and wove fake unlife animus through my body. The channels had to be finer than any alma spell I had attempted.

    ¡°And¡­ go!¡± The gray haired priest exclaimed. I barely noticed.

    The macro-structure formed easily. But it was only a scaffolding.

    Tendrils of woven animus uncurled from the pillars. They reached for me. I was running out of time.

    I desperately slammed my intentions for a soul into the remaining gathered essence. It absorbed what I wanted and sank into the half finished soul.

    The foreign animus reached me as the fake soul resolved. Threads wove through my replica. Branching and wrapping every channel with a thoroughness that worried me.

    Nothing was changed. Only inspected. Data perceivably feeding back to the main enchantment.

    I raised an eyebrow at the tense crowd. The faint glow of the crystals cast me in purple hues. Priest ?fron was absorbed in the panel before him. But a few of the onlookers seemed uncomfortable.

    The invasive weaving retreated from my soul without damaging it. The glow faded.

    A laugh better described as a giggle broke the silence. Priest ?fron placed a hand over his face. The muffled sound continued for a few moments.

    He then straightened. A smile that somehow prickled my skin met the room.

    ¡°Ladies and monstrosities.¡± He pivoted to face the gathered sapients behind him. ¡°We have ourselves an unclean spirit.¡±

 Chapter 17, The Other (18+)

    Ane brought their boot down on the shovel. Carved wood sank into loose earth. The strange power that permeated their body spiked as they pivoted to dump the soil beside them.

    They would like to have discovered the energy themselves. But Orim had described it to Ane and demonstrated how it could compensate for their lessened physical strength.

    Teil swung their madduck. The sod was torn away. They proceeded to break up the packed dirt and rocks below.

    The two had been at it most of the day. Much as they had the previous days.

    Neither of them felt fatigue. The only limit on their work hours was their focus and willingness to continue the task.

    Teil stopped and straightened. ¡°Let¡¯s take a break.¡± Their tail curled anxiously. Ane was now familiar with the meaning behind that.

    ¡°I¡¯d love to.¡± They had been pushing themselves to only stop when Teil did. It was working. But was also frustrating.

    Teil stuck their mattuck in the ground and climbed from the trench. Ane watched as Teil pulled their boots off.

    They undid their belt and shuffled out of their dirt caked trousers. It freed toned gray legs.

    They sat on the grass. Leaned back. Then pulled their knees up and to the side.

    Ane saw their dark labia minora between lighter gray majora. The sunlight glistened and highlighted Teil¡¯s arousal.

    They must have been thinking about pausing their work to relieve themselves. And their body responded to the prospect.

    Ane felt their own body reacting to the sight. A heat and hunger unrelated to food built as the place between their legs flushed. And a nervous pressure spread down the first half dozen inches of their tail.

    Teil¡¯s pelvic muscles rhythmically clenched. They let out quiet whimpers. And a glossy black orb began to part their folds from within.

    The egg was pushed past the midpoint and slid free. It left no discernible effect on the opening it emerged from. That opening began to clench and relax again.

    Ane climbed out of the ditch themselves. They had not bothered with a covering on their lower body. About a third of the current residents of Willowcrook regularly did the same.

    They bunched up their tunic and squatted. Muscles moved within. And the egg inside them began its journey downward.

    All the villagers had slightly different relationships with laying. Some did it in the middle of their daily lives. Others designated a time and place and otherwise avoided it.

    A few people still did it in private. But most of them did not care.

    Ane could see why. There was no innate aversion to being seen. It was actually comforting in an odd way. Like how eating together had felt before.

    ¡°How much longer do you think it will take?¡± Teil sounded almost normal. The slightest tension revealed their distracted state.

    ¡°Months, most likely. We don¡¯t have the available lumber to finish it now, anyway.¡± Ane¡¯s voice was unchanged. Their time trapped in the cave had left them far less affected by laying.

    Teil laughed. ¡°True enough.¡± The laugh had a bitter edge to it. One that managed to remain through the high.

    Ane let a moment of silence fall. It was hard to respond to the source of pain there. Not when they had not shared that pain.

    ¡°How are things going with Diar?¡± Teil changed the topic.

    ¡°Well. They are getting really good with their tail.¡± This time the laugh was genuine.

    ¡°No, you ass. How is dating going? The non-fucking part of it.¡± Ane made a small shrug. The climax tingled to their extremities as an egg crowned.

    ¡°Same as we talked about when we started. It is still a shelter in the storm kind of thing. Things still feel too new and strange to know if there is more there. And they feel the same way.¡± They could have been flippant again. But the high from laying tended to make speaking their mind easier.

    ¡°You have been spending a lot of time together. I just thought you might feel different now.¡± Teil seemed incongruously put out that Ane was yet to find love.

    ¡°We are hanging out and cracking a lot of eggs, but that is about it.¡± The rule about destroying all eggs that resulted from mating was several weeks old now.

    The increasing number of small gray children in the village explained why. It took a few days after the first couple hatched to deduce with confidence what caused some eggs to produce kids.

    Rounding up the fertilized eggs was surprisingly easy. They were the only ones not to hatch after a month.

    It instead took three months. And the children that finally broke out of them were barely two hands tall. Yet they acted like kids approaching puberty. Even if they had no memories of their own.

    The idea of breaking all eggs was suggested. But the final ruling was to destroy any egg suspected of having been fertilized.

    It was easier than trying to break all of them. And there was never doubt if an egg was fertilized while laying it.

    New kids popped up periodically. But the potential horde of adolescents was avoided. There had been a lot of fertilized eggs lain in the last few months. And all of them hatching into highly curious blank slates would have been a problem.

    Teil sat up and looked down at the eggs between their thighs. The ovoids began to wobble. They then started rolling across the grass without a visible cause.

    Ane watched as the orbs circled around Teil and met the pile of similar black spheres a dozen feet from the ditch. The parade of eggs rolled into those already there. The crude cairn was left a little bigger.

    ¡°That is so cool.¡± Ane¡¯s comment was accompanied by the clink of an egg dropping to the collection below them.

    ¡°I bet you could learn it.¡± Teil stood and started pulling their pants on.

    ¡°It might mess with that brute strength thing you do.¡± They retied their belt.

    ¡°I¡¯m not so sure. I can¡¯t make heads or tails of most of the stuff Orim does.¡± Ane had managed to perceive the energy in their body. But the pattern that made Orim physically stronger was the only one Ane could fully track.

    ¡°Orim was some kind of crazy powerful war-mage before all this. Of course they are better at magic stuff than us.¡± Teil started with their left boot.

    ¡°I know. But I never could develop a talent before.¡± Teil scoffed at that.

    ¡°And you think I could.¡± They switched to the other boot. ¡°That shit¡¯s hard. I¡¯ve barely met two people with genuine magic talents.¡±

    They were not wrong. Most alma would never gain a talent. Not one more substantial than igniting tinder with their mind or seeing a little too well in the dark.

    ¡°I don¡¯t think this works like talents, anyway.¡± Teil was right.

    Ane could sense the power now. It was like stepping into a room they visited every day and spotting something they never noticed before. Knowing it was there made it a permanent part of Ane¡¯s awareness.

    It had been harder to sense it in Orim. But watching how the mage moved their power let Ane copy it. That was not how magical talents worked.

    ¡°We¡¯ll catch up. I get a little better every day.¡± Teil stood and stretched.

    ¡°Much better¡­¡± They glanced down at Ane.

    ¡°Are you going to be a while?¡± Ane suddenly became aware that they were still pushing eggs onto the grass.

    They fell into the habit again. The feeling of an egg crowning causing them to reflexively start the next moving down.

    The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

    They even shifted their position unconsciously. Otherwise the accumulated eggs would leave no room for the next one.

    Ane sheepishly pushed the last free without starting another. It was easy now. As long as they did not fall back into the old rhythm.

    ¡°How can you not notice that?¡± Teil was incredulous.

    Ane shrugged as they climbed to their feet. ¡°I don¡¯t know. Experience? It stops being a distraction after long enough.¡± They started picking up their eggs and chucking them towards the cairn.

    ¡°How? Its not sex. And its certainly not child birth. But it¡¯s its own thing, and damn distracting.¡± The reference to Teil¡¯s motherhood was not a revelation.

    The villagers rarely mentioned the gender they had as alma. Most seemed mentally removed from it. As if the topic held little interest.

    But Ane knew Teil was female and had a family before the necromancer. Ane was not sure what happened to their kids or possible husband.

    Neither were around now. And Teil did not seem interested in talking about their original life.

    ¡°Once it becomes your resting state, it is just your normal. You notice the absence more.¡± Ane said it calmly. But Teil knew enough to understand the implications.

    ¡°I hadn¡¯t thought of it like that.¡± Ane let them ruminate while they tossed eggs.

    ¡°It¡¯s not a big deal.¡± They threw the last egg. ¡°I just messed something up inside, and now it is taking a bit to work out.¡± It was true.

    Ane had an easier story than anyone in the village. Except maybe the little ones who hatched in the last few weeks.

    Teil went through a living nightmare. Ane knew they were not originally from Willowcrook.

    They had been trapped in a rotting corpse for years without a moment of freedom. Ane¡¯s challenges were laughable in comparison.

    ¡°Hard things don¡¯t become easier because someone else has it harder.¡± Teil waved their hand. The scattered eggs rolled into the pile.

    Ane did not respond for a moment. ¡°Thanks, Teil.¡±

    The duo returned to work until the sun approached the horizon. They were in clear view of the village proper.

    The trench was intended as the groundwork of a rampart encircling the inner village. Lumber and stones were stacked along the perimeter. The plan was to build a retaining wall backed by the displaced earth.

    The whole idea was insanely ambitious. There might have been a hundred adults on board with the project.

    It helped that some of them had direct experience building fortifications. That experience was acquired while a dark mage controlled their bodies. But it still provided insight.

    Ane spotted Diar removing the branches from the trunk of a river willow. The fast growing trees were surprisingly hard even when green. But they were also the only abundant large lumber on the plains.

    They broke away from Teil and wandered over. ¡°I¡¯m going down to the river. You want to come?¡±

    Diar kicked a branch they already hatcheted half way through. The remaining wood splintered and broke off with some twisting.

    ¡°Sure. I¡¯ll be losing light soon anyway.¡± They looked Ane over and raised a brow. ¡°You will need to wash some of that off if you¡¯re coming to bed tonight.¡±

    Digging all day and not wearing trousers had the expected outcome. Ane was more brown than gray from the knees down.

    ¡°That¡¯s the plan. I wouldn¡¯t want to be left empty out in the cold.¡± Diar snorted at the directly sexual reply.

    They slid the head off their hatchet. Both head and handle were packed away for the night.

    The path to the swimming hole was narrow and not well established. It began forming when those working on the rampart started walking to the river directly.

    Snap-tails slithered in the grass to avoid being stepped on. They seemed to like hiding in brush.

    The name snap-tail had inexplicably caught on over anything else. Ane privately found it a little silly. But it described the serpentine things that hatched from most eggs. They snapped onto people and became their tails.

    Ane absently wondered if any of the creatures in the grass came from them. It was hard to say how many eggs they had produced. And those from more than a month prior were slithering around somewhere.

    ¡°We¡¯re having to go further and further to find wood. As long as we don¡¯t want to clearcut the banks.¡± Diar was relaying the challenges of the lumber team as they walked.

    ¡°I¡¯m guessing we¡¯ll need to scale back the design to use less posts.¡± Ane only knew second-hand how something like a rampart worked in combat. The closest they had seen was similar fortifications in times of peace.

    ¡°A ditch and mound would give us a defensive advantage. As much as the sort of wall we could make here.¡± Ane nodded their agreement.

    ¡°And there is an infinite supply of dirt and rocks. It just needs people to move it.¡± They patted the top of Diar¡¯s head. ¡°Not that I don¡¯t like seeing you chop wood. All your muscles flexing. Grunts of effort.¡± Diar ignored the patting.

    ¡°Thanks. I like watching you roll in the dirt. People just love the idea of a wall¡­¡± They trailed off as the pair emerged from the brush.

    A rocky beach led to the river that allowed Willowcrook to survive on the plains. But the figure crouched on the opposite bank held their attention.

    An alma in worn traveling attire looked up at the voices. All three stared for a moment. Ane waved.

    The gesture seemed to snap the crimson haired stranger out of their paralysis. They spun and bolted into the treeline.

    ¡°Fuck!¡± Diar yelled as they dashed forward.

    Kicking off the shore sent them flying to land with a splash in the shallows on the other side. Ane was not capable of a twenty foot long jump. They were left wading across.

    Boots squelched and energy serged as they pursued Diar into the woods. They spotted Diar less than a hundred feet in. They were hunched over a crumpled body.

    Ane slowed. Diar was patting down the burgundy woman. They pulled a hand long knife from its sheath on her belt. It was tossed aside.

    Purple blood stained the leaves. It pumped from a gash mostly obscured by her hairline. ¡°She¡¯s alive.¡± Diar responded to the unasked question.

    Ane believed them. But they also knew how precarious head wounds could be.

    ¡°Did you have to¡­¡± They left the thought hanging between them.

    ¡°Yes. Now watch her.¡± Diar sprinted off towards the river.

    They were right. The prospect of encountering outsiders had been debated at length. And the current official decision was that anyone who saw the inhabitants of Willowcrook could not be allowed to leave. Even if lethal measures were required.

    It was logical. No one really knew what they were. But they obviously were not alma. Anyone raised on the Creator¡¯s doctrine understood what that meant.

    Willowcrook was isolated. No consistent trade existed with the outside world. Only luck or word of mouth might bring a passing traveler to stop in the community.

    Ane inspected the small alma woman. She appeared in her late 40s, entering middle age. Her heavy outer layers and the satchel at her side reminded them of their own lost gear.

    She was likely a courier of some kind. One who knew about a small frontier settlement she could stop at for a night.

    Or maybe she was unlucky enough to approach the river without knowing a village of monsters lived on the other side. The large canteen she abandoned by the water would support that idea.

    Was this the truth behind how Ane ended up with gray skin and black eyes? Maybe they were about to stumble across whatever person or thing left them in the pit. And it had ensured they could not reveal its presence.

    There was no way to know. The black creature had never appeared again after that first day. Ane might never know what it was or why it chose them.

    Crunching leaf cover heralded Diars return. Ane looked over to see them newly soaked. And a snap-tail passively curling in their hand.

    ¡°What are you doing?¡± Diar dropped to their knees by the stranger.

    ¡°Making sure slamming her head into a root isn¡¯t fatal. Help me roll her.¡± They pointed to the traveler¡¯s hips.

    ¡°What?¡± Ane could not parse the request.

    ¡°Help me get to her back. If a snap-tail can give a skeleton flesh again, I bet it can stop you from dying from head trauma. Support her head.¡± Their free hand pushed under the small of her back.

    Ane cradled the bleeding head and lifted it along with the right shoulder. ¡°Are you sure we should be doing this?¡± They tried to keep the motion as gentle and even as possible.

    ¡°What¡¯s the alternative? Kill her? Lock her up and keep the snap-tails away?¡± Diar rolled the outsider onto her side and brought the snap-tail near the seam between jacket and trousers.

    ¡°She is getting a tail or dying. Otherwise it is too dangerous for everyone.¡± They were right.

    Just being near the village guaranteed snap-tails trying to attach to the alma. Keeping her both captive and away from the creatures would require locking her in a sealed room and never letting her out.

    The snap-tail reacted immediately. It slithered onto the fabric and deftly between the two layers. Ane could see the cloth shift as it permanently attached.

    Ane nervously twisted their own tail. The parallels with how they acquired it seemed evident.

    The alma woman likely felt nothing. But Ane distinctly remembered the spike of pain and tingling sensation that followed.

    If she survived, she would wake up to the feeling of that new appendage as much a part of her as her arms and legs. Ane was uncertain how they felt about it.

    Being what they were now did not feel bad. Rather the opposite. The idea of going back to an alma was viscerally uncomfortable. And everyone in Willowcrook seemed to feel the same.

    But it was not just the physical changes. Becoming this meant the loss of the world they knew. However, it was better to take that away from the bleeding woman than risk the lives of everyone.

    They carefully lowered her back to the ground. She was still breathing. Any additional damage done was not fatal yet.

    ¡°I¡¯ll watch her. You get Orim and anyone else good with healing.¡± Ane nodded affirmation.

    They started jogging back to the river and village beyond. The resolve on Diar¡¯s face lingered in their mind.

    There was a hardness there. A certainty of action and purpose. One without doubt or concern for the few over the many.

    A sense of distance seemed to accompany the memory. It made Ane realize something. They would need to spend tonight alone.

 Chapter 18, Unclean Spirit

    My responding laugh broke the silence. ¡°I guess this is pointless now.¡± I accompanied the words by bursting into flames.

    The closest I had come to making soul fire before was an experimental flame no larger than that of a candle. But I had examined memories of Nith doing it plenty of times. Creating a thin layer on the surface of my skin and clothes was no harder than the tiny flame.

    I stood without resistance. The spellwork binding me to the chair burned away on contact.

    ¡°What is it you want from me, priest.¡± My demeanor changed completely. A slight distance, tad of amusement and focused interest.

    The chair dissolved behind me as its animus was consumed by the chain reaction I began. I had returned my eyes to my natural featureless orbs between one blink and another.

    ¡°That chair was very expensive.¡± Everyone else in the room was looking at me like a barbed acid gecko in their home. But Priest ?fron had eyes only for the vanishing furniture.

    I tilted my head. ¡°Than why did you put me in it?¡± The question revealed sharp glossy black teeth.

    ¡°I was going to let you out in a minute. You could have waited before setting millions of kaithsh in tithes up in flames.¡± A very nervous looking undead scurried up to Priest ?fron.

    She had the shape of an alma female. Except her exposed flesh was translucent. It looked as if she was made from red tinted water. Just holding the form of an alma.

    The spell did not relay what she told the priest. But a quick essence weaving did.

    ¡°It''s some kind of self-perpetuating consuming curse. The shield is unlikely to stop it.¡± The priest did not react to the news.

    I surveyed the room. They were terrified. The words unclean spirit had changed a routine level of caution in the workplace to nervous tension and complete unwillingness to meet my gaze. Unless your name was ?fron.

    ¡°You put me in a chair. I got out of the chair. Lets call it a net zero and move on.¡± I was confident everyone else in this room had a better idea what an unclean spirit was.

    That was fine. Declaring me one put the burden of proof on them. I did not need to make claims. I only had to play into them.

    ¡°Perfect.¡± Priest ?fron clapped his hands once to punctuate the word. ¡°Let''s get this back on track. I¡¯m Priest ?fron, overseer of the Special Situations Branch of the Church. And you are¡­?¡± He let the end trail off. An encouraging smile passed the sentence to me.

    I let it hang for a moment. ¡°I have been assuming the identity of Rekon in alma lands. I am known as Sheth by my own people.¡± A few onlookers paled. It was possible more would have if they could.

    Priest ?fron coughed a little. ¡°That¡­ is your actual name?¡± His nonchalant attitude seemed to be disturbed for the first time.

    I frowned. ¡°Yes, why do you ask?¡± I did not expect my name to be what was distressing about my current behavior.

    ¡°It¡¯s just that most undead don¡¯t take the names of well known gods. Especially Sheth. Although I suppose someone of your pedigree can get away with it.¡± I did not try to hide my confusion.

    ¡°You have a god named Sheth?¡± There was no point in pretending to know something like this.

    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t say have. But there is certainly a god named Sheth. Even if most people won¡¯t say his name openly.¡± That was interesting. It partially explained why the room somehow grew more nervous.

    ¡°It¡¯s not a name I chose. It is just my name. Would it help if I used another here?¡± I did not care what they called me. Sheth was simply what the gam knew me by.

    ¡°That is quite coincidental. It would help.¡± I considered that.

    ¡°It might not be. Sheth is an archaic word for a guide or leader.¡± Sheth had started as a title centuries ago. It eventually became my name as generations passed.

    ¡°Really? I would be interested to learn what language uses Sheth to mean leader.¡± I got the impression some of the audience did not believe that explanation. Yet Priest ?fron remained impossible to read.

    I shrugged. ¡°Call me Rekon, if that is easier.¡± That would simplify my identity in alma lands.

    ¡°Good, good. Would you mind not damaging the probe? That will be much harder to replace.¡± The puddle of soul fire was gradually spreading behind my back.

    It had not reached the enchantment on the crystals. But it was getting closer.

    I choked off the replica animus I was feeding it. The burning animus snuffed out in the absence of fuel.

    That would be different if it ignited the spellwork. Soul fire was extremely hard to stop when it had animus to consume.

    Nith only used it so freely because he specialized in controlling animus outside his own weavings. A less proficient mage risked catching their own soul alight.

    That would end in a death the necromancer could not reverse. And was not a risk for me. You needed a soul to die from soul damage.

    I let the flames on my body go out. I technically could not see them. Not how alma did.

    My presence showed me where soul fire was as easily as it showed me souls. But it was invisible to my naked eye.

    Alma saw it as a color otherwise not present in the world. Even Nith felt an innate dread when seeing that color. I assumed it was related to having a soul.

    ¡°You still have not answered.¡± The tension in the room was barely dented. Those behind glass remained anxious. Those on the same side as me were trying not to be noticed.

    ¡°Why am I here?¡± I continued to pretend the imposing figures avoiding my attention were of no relevance.

    ¡°Yes. You might call this a kind of courtesy call. One to check on a presumed undead entering the region placed in my charge. Entering in a rather high profile way, to top it off.¡± The minor disruption of me sharing a name with one of their gods reverted to Priest ?fron¡¯s usual upbeat attitude.

    ¡°You do seem quite concerned with undead in your lands.¡± I smirked slightly.

    ¡°Very true. There are no undead in Rillan proper.¡± There was nothing slight about his grin.

    ¡°It is easy to tell there are no undead here. It would be the apocalypse. There would be packs of ghouls eating the elderly in the streets. Vampires swooping down to carry off the sexually inexperienced. All that end of the world stuff.¡± A few of the less nervous people behind him showed stifled amusement.

    ¡°Is this similar to how Jarimy knows there are no unclean spirits? Seeing as that would end the world automatically.¡± Priest ?fron looked to the nervous Jarimy beside him.

    ¡°Does he now?¡± His focus returned. ¡°Well, I¡¯m sure Jarimy was agreeing with the most respected theologians of our day.¡± There was no ambiguity in how much he respected those theologians.

    ¡°It is exactly as Jarimy says. The Creator¡¯s design is far too flimsy to survive something like that. You even breathe wrong, or in your case exist, and it would all come toppling down.¡± The subtext was far from hidden.

    Priest ?fron looked around his cordoned off section of the room. Then back to me. ¡°You know? I bet you can kill me from there.¡± He spun and started towards the blackened metal door connecting to my half of the room.

    The translucent woman and a few others obviously wanted to stop him. But no one spoke up.

    Heavy clunks and shifting spellwork preceded the priest joining me. I casually walked over to him. No one tried to stop me either.

    ¡°This is better.¡± The grayish alma slapped my shoulder. ¡°Walk with me.¡± We started towards the door we entered through.

    Priest ?fron was the first alma I had seen with a skin tone similar to a gam. There was a blue tint gam lacked. But it was far closer.

    We were almost to the exit when Priest ?fron turned with a pensive look. ¡°Zor¡¯matta¡¯z, I promised you could maul Rekon here.¡± The werewolf who was apparently Zor¡¯matta¡¯z appeared to be choking.

    They tried to speak. Then cleared their throat. ¡°I¡¯m fine.¡± They got out.

    ¡°You sure? They will definitely survive it?¡± The welcoming smile was not well received.

    ¡°I¡¯d like to rescind my request.¡± Priest ?fron shrugged.

    ¡°If your sure.¡± He lightly slapped my upper arm with the back of his hand. ¡°I guess she is just a big softy after all.¡±

    We stepped into the hallway outside. The door closed heavily behind us.

    ¡°Let¡¯s walk and talk.¡± He began down the corridor. I followed.

    ¡°I¡¯ve only heard Jarimy mention the term unclean spirit once. It is not a name my people know.¡± It was pointless pretending to know what they thought I was.

    Claiming I was an unclean spirit via my own knowledge left me open to mistakes or inaccuracies. Admitting it was unfamiliar and alma specific information prevented me from being caught in deceit.

    ¡°And who are your people?¡± He failed to answer my implicit question.

    ¡°The gam.¡± He nodded with recognition.

    ¡°The swamp pygmies of the Dark Moors.¡± I had never heard someone call us that. But context suggested he was right.

    ¡°You¡¯re familiar?¡± He shrugged in response.

    ¡°Only because I researched the Dark Moors before you arrived. The gam are not known outside of travel logs and the few guide books that technically exist. You have never been seen beyond the swamps.¡± That was unsurprising.

    The gam had only existed as long as I had. And traversing the Moors in a straight line was challenging. Finding a way out would be pure chance.

    ¡°Are all of you true immortals?¡± I decided to ignore the question.

    ¡°What is an unclean spirit? And how do you know I am one?¡± This time I asked directly.

    ¡°We know you¡¯re an unclean spirit, or a true immortal to be less colloquial, because you don¡¯t have any permanent tethers between your body and soul. There was plenty of abnormal stuff in there. But only one thing has an unbound soul.¡± I resisted the urge to smack myself. I forgot to anchor my soul.

    I had built a replica capable of fooling soul-analysis magic. I even added the links for maintaining and controlling my physical body.

    Stolen novel; please report.

    Yet somehow I did not make a single fixed connection. I did not even build the framework for them. My fake soul was holding onto my body because it recognized the target material and nothing else.

    ¡°Unclean spirits are any souls that can exist stably without a body of any kind. That is the only real requirement.¡± The priest continued.

    ¡°Souls die and break down when the connection to the body is gone. I¡¯m told it is a sort of self-destruct. Or something like system shock.¡± He leaned over and cupped his mouth with a hand.

    ¡°I think our animancers are just guessing so they can sound smart.¡± He confided in a whisper.

    It was plausible. The spark vanished once the last anchor point broke. You could mimic those anchors with a soul trapping spell. But it would still disappear once that spell ran out.

    I had always assumed the body was providing something a soul needed to retain a spark. Nith certainly could not return a spark without tethering the soul to a body or animus weaving first.

    It would make sense if the soul was designed to self-destruct upon the body''s death. The idea of damage from the tethers breaking fit as well. Yet that would not explain why the soul needed a body to be restored.

    ¡°You can completely destroy a true immortal¡¯s body or rip their soul out, but they will latch onto a corpse or unborn fetus or just create a new body from scratch. There are all sorts of ways.¡± I nodded along.

    ¡°Couldn¡¯t you attack the soul directly.¡± I was curious. And that method would do nothing to me.

    ¡°On paper, sure. Most documented immortals have abnormally resistant souls or their souls regenerate too fast. It may be related to how they survive dying in the first place.¡± Now that was intriguing.

    ¡°They¡¯re just people who survive dying?¡± I still avoided including myself when referring to unclean spirits. It would be strange to identify with an unfamiliar term so quickly.

    ¡°Sometimes. It¡¯s usually an accident or experiment gone inexplicably right. A necromancer goes messing with someone¡¯s soul or tries something on themselves and they somehow don¡¯t unravel when they die.¡± I had to admit my origin and properties contained some overlap.

    ¡°Sometimes it is a normal person with no clear cause. We recorded a farmer three hundred years back who kept walking and talking after bleeding out from a severed artery.¡± That would have seemed normal a year ago. But I now knew how little blood an alma could safely lose.

    ¡°Burning her didn¡¯t do any good. She just floated to another corpse. She could inhabit and heal any dead body. We still have no idea why.¡± Priest ?fron sounded a bit distant.

    ¡°What happened to her?¡± The answer might tell me something about the group theoretically holding me captive. I was also curious.

    ¡°We fabricated an identity and relocated her to somewhere her new body wouldn¡¯t be recognized. I¡¯m told she was understandably disenchanted with her kinfolk.¡± That brought us to the crux of the issue.

    ¡°Is that what you do, hide the undead from alma?¡± He laughed. It sounded sincere.

    ¡°That is most of it. Special Situations officially exists to ensure the peaceful operation of society against abnormal species or events.¡± He said the last part as if quoting from memory.

    ¡°It¡¯s mostly managing infrastructure to help undead citizens live comfortably and avoid detection. Smuggling away perfectly edible bodies, supplying illusion charms, putting employers in contact with those very willing to work night shifts.¡± I considered the image he was creating.

    ¡°Wouldn¡¯t it be easier to provide those things openly? Why pretend certain species don¡¯t live here?¡± It felt irrational for the alma to openly cohabitate with tige and qasko while pretending the others were not present.

    I had seen reptilian hybrids a few times and the occasional gam sized alma that was apparently a tige. There was clearly some willingness to tolerate non-alma.

    ¡°That is a simple question with a sociopolitical mess of an answer. How much do you know about the discord?¡± I raised my eyebrows.

    ¡°Should I know anything?¡± The bemusement in my tone was evident.

    The priest sighed. ¡°You genuinely don¡¯t know?¡± I laughed at that.

    ¡°How would I know I don¡¯t know if I don¡¯t know it?¡± That spiral of a sentence seemed to cheer him up.

    ¡°Yeah, yeah. Iznana can explain this stuff better. I¡¯d take you to the library, but I doubt it will be satisfying for me. Their office is closer anyway.¡± We had been turning down corridors with what I assumed was purpose.

    The tunnels curved and slanted without obvious cause. It was almost organic. Except the sizing was perfectly even and we never faced a challenging slope.

    We occasionally came across church employees. The ratio remained primarily undead with a few life animus souls mixed in.

    Most of them looked a little curious then continued past. I doubted my misidentification as something feared for still ambiguous reasons had disseminated.

    The door we stopped before was at the lowest point of a gradual slope. The floor inclined up as the tunnel went on.

    Priest ?fron pushed the door open without declaring our presence. The room beyond was finely furnished.

    Wood paneling hid the stone walls. My shoes sunk into thick carpet. And soft candle light contrasted with the harsh white enchantments that illuminated the corridors.

    Inbuilt bookshelves lined the walls. The only exception was a fireplace taking up one. The flames inside were a magical construct. Neither consuming the half burnt logs they pretended to rise from or emitting smoke up the likely fake chimney.

    A low table sat at the center of five padded chairs. They formed a semi-circle facing the hearth.

    An aged alma woman slumped in the furthest chair. Her pale pink skin was papery. The floral pattern on her long tunic melded into that of her chair.

    The bulk of my attention and suspicion was focused on the empty chairs. ¡°As a courtesy, I¡¯m warning you this whole place is going up if I stick to one of these.¡± Priest ?fron laughed off my threat and dropped into the chair second furthest from the woman.

    I took the last chair. It appeared to only have minor repair enchantments. I still remained cautious.

    The woman stayed motionless. Her animus was interesting. She had no soul. But she did have a rough framework in the place of a true soul.

    It was to a soul what a stick figure sketched in mud was to the gam it represented. But I was reminded of the spell Nith used to keep soulless bodies alive.

    I had not studied those spells well enough to be confident. Yet the concept felt the same.

    There was also a tether connecting the body to something elsewhere. All I knew was that thing was beyond my presence.

    Priest ?fron seemed to be waiting for something. If he was willing to wait with an alma¡¯s limited lifespan, the least I could do was be patient.

    The soul substitute inside her grew more active a few minutes later. The body stirred and lifted its head.

    Whatever was controlling it blinked a few times. ¡°?fron. You brought me a new visitor.¡± The voice was raspy. The puppet coughed.

    ¡°And this old thing needs better stasis magic. I feel like a piece of dried meat some little shit left as a bookmark.¡± The body rolled its neck to audible cracking.

    ¡°A new proxy is still in the queue. Better to enchant one from scratch than fix up this one.¡± The twisting and popping of joins progressed to the spine and arms.

    ¡°Fine. I¡¯m hoping the new one is not this geriatric. I want to at least have some nice tits in this thing. Or a working dick. Or eyes that don¡¯t need an enhancement spell every time I want to read anything.¡± The controller finished by vigorously shaking the frail body.

    ¡°Who¡¯s this? You need me to look up one of the weird vampire varieties again?¡± Whatever was behind the yellowed eyes inspected me.

    ¡°Not so mundane today. And hopefully much faster. This is Rekon, the unclean spirit I found this morning.¡± The controller raised the puppet¡¯s brows.

    ¡°Really? Someone is getting employee of the month.¡± Priest ?fron sighed.

    ¡°Unfortunately I¡¯m a council member. No superiors, no employee of the month. It is very unfair.¡± He shook his head in remorse.

    ¡°You poor thing. You¡¯ll have to settle for making it into the history books your church doesn¡¯t let anyone read.¡± They turned their attention to me.

    ¡°Hello Rekon. I¡¯m Iznana, the fine librarian of this humble organization. I assume ?fron has been trying to tempt and/or threaten you into his employ.¡± I laughed lightly.

    ¡°He is going to lengths to talk around that idea and avoid all clarity in my purpose here. But yes, he seems to be working towards it.¡± The priest had dodged my question about why I was here.

    ¡°That is a lot of self-control. Has he conveniently mentioned all the ways he has to indefinitely trap a true immortal in ominously vague ways yet? Or referenced The Hammer somehow?¡± The priest in question looked offended.

    ¡°I¡¯m not some unsophisticated brute. I act with the refinement and grace of the ruling class. I let those things be apparent by context.¡± The last sentence was added under his breath.

    ¡°Than can you please lower yourself to the peasantry and lay out your demands before whatever you want me to look up for you?¡± It was hard to tell if Iznana was really annoyed or simply enjoying poking him. I suspected some of both.

    ¡°Fine, fine.¡± Priest ?fron turned to face me.

    ¡°As the person no one can stop from making these decisions, I am formally requesting a mutual aid agreement, based on your potential influence in the undead community and our ability to facilitate an easier and safer stay in Rillan territories.¡± I parsed the request.

    ¡°I¡¯ll need to know what that influence is and how you would want me to use it. And what aid you are offering, of course.¡± I had no illusions that my assumed identity was solid.

    I lacked the knowledge and abilities to seamlessly integrate as an alma. And this entire debacle confirmed that.

    ¡°Where did you say you were from?¡± Iznana peered at me.

    ¡°He¡¯s from the Dark Moors, one of the swamp pygmies.¡± Priest ?fron answered for me.

    ¡°You¡¯re a gam?¡± They sounded surprised. ¡°We don¡¯t have much on you guys. I was reading a travel journal just last year from someone who managed to sleep with a gam. Is it true you spawn immediately after mating?¡±

    I waved a dismissive hand. ¡°If your partner ejaculates all the way inside, yes.¡± I confirmed.

    ¡°Really. What is that like?¡± The librarian was clearly more interested now.

    ¡°It¡¯s solidly the highpoint of the act. It all feels good, but not on the same level.¡± I ignored the priest¡¯s obvious irritation at the new tangent. He was likely annoyed at no longer being the most disruptive thing in the room.

    ¡°Incentive salience is a remarkable thing¡­¡± Iznana shook their puppet¡¯s head in amazement.

    ¡°Yes, yes. We all enjoy our respective versions of sex.¡± Priest ?fron cut back in.

    ¡°As you can imagine. He also lacks a full grasp of our culture and history.¡± I nodded affirmation.

    Bony hands clapped. ¡°You need a study plan. An introduction to alma history and culture.¡± They seemed immediately enthusiastic about the idea.

    ¡°I would also like to know why me being an unclean spirit matters so much to the undead here.¡± I reminded.

    ¡°That¡¯s easy. It is because they¡¯ll either be terrified of you or falling over themselves to worship you. A true immortal is the next best thing to a god of the Evolution Pantheon walking amongst them.¡± Iznana appeared to find my ignorance amusing.

    ¡°An unclean spirit is seen as the purest form of undeath. The final goal of necromancy, a being incapable of death. It is the core promise of the dark gods.¡± The priest elaborated.

    ¡°Whenever one shows up and word gets around cultists and undead supremacists start coming out of the woodwork. A big part of the agreement is keeping otherwise harmless disinants from forming a new cult around you.¡± I frowned at his words.

    ¡°Are there no other unclean spirits in Rillan?¡± I was not the first they encountered. And the only defining quality was an immunity to death.

    ¡°We have documented five first-hand since Special Situations was founded, until now. None of them are still living in Rillan.¡± Priest ?fron explained.

    ¡°Or they are better at remaining discreet than you are at identifying them.¡± The priest waved a dismissive hand at the idea.

    ¡°They have no social or political effect either way. They¡¯re not my problem if they are not making problems for me.¡± It was a reasonable approach.

    ¡°You have put yourself in an awkward position for us. Your assumed identity is full of holes and easy to see through, but also too high profile to push under the rug.¡± He paused. ¡°What did happen to the real Rekon anyway?¡±

    I shrugged. ¡°He was injured and in a convenient time and place, so I killed him and animated his body. Then I switched with it once I could mimic his form well enough.¡± The librarian covered the puppet¡¯s mouth with its hand. Laughter leaked out.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry. I¡¯ve gotten too used to new recruits trying to paint themselves as the victims in their tragic backstories. The ones where they killed a dozen people to sasiate their thirst or the like. It was funny how casually you admitted to a killing of convenience.¡±I looked at them quizzically.

    ¡°He is the only person I¡¯ve killed since leaving the Moors.¡± That felt reasonable. Alma clearly killed other sapients when needed.

    ¡°So you didn¡¯t kill the courier¡­¡± It sounded as if the priest was talking to himself.

    ¡°No, I didn¡¯t.¡± I confirmed anyway.

    Ane was alive and running off into the wilderness last my recording spells saw them. The talis cave was a pit of ve on a thick layer of egg shells now.

    The data from those spells had given more inside into the conversion process than the memories of Nith or his freed slaves. I still wanted to observe it with my presence directly.

    ¡°We¡¯re not worried about what you have done. Especially outside Rillan territory.¡± The priest dismissed the concern.

    ¡°You will need to refrain from unprovoked killing here. Along with similar disruptive actions. We can provide for anomalous dietary needs or ritual behaviors.¡± He added.

    ¡°I enjoy food, especially flesh and blood. But it is not a necessity.¡± I refrained from mentioning egg laying.

    It probably qualified as a needed ritual behavior. If I was inferring the meaning behind that phrase correctly. But destroying my eggs completely negated any repercussions that could qualify it as a disruptive action.

    I was still planning to experiment with ve on alma and other sapients. The potential discoveries and power I gained from converting alma was too substantial to ignore.

    But I was not going to tell them that.

 Chapter 19, Outbreak (18+)

    Six fingered hands clutched once pristine sheets. A gray slime now stained the fabric. Uneven breaths were broken by choked whimpers.

    Sar? was used to loss of composure from their patients. It was normally uncontainable pain. But they knew this was something entirely different.

    The egg began to emerge. Sar? focused on what the diagnostic magic showed.

    It was far from the first time they observed this process. The last three days gave a concerning abundance of opportunities.

    ¡°Anything?¡± Alve asked as the egg settled on the sheets. The force-mage avoided looking at the new genitalia between the patient¡¯s parted legs.

    ¡°Nothing we didn¡¯t know an hour ago.¡± Sar? picked up the egg and dropped it in a basket already full of glossy orbs.

    They had grown used to the clear fluid that initially coated the eggs. It was entirely steril.

    That applied to everything in the bodies of the infected. There were no pathogens, harmful or benign. Even normally vital symbiotic organisms were gone.

    Kes let his fingers and toes relax. The smith¡¯s knees pulled back together. He sat up on the cot.

    ¡°That should be the last part. I will need to perform a few final tests, and you¡¯ll be free to go.¡± Kes nodded tensely at Sar?¡¯s words.

    ¡°Do whatever you need.¡± The once heavy set smith sounded higher and carried the familiar musical tone to his voice. He was still proportionately wider than the other patients. But more slender than most alma.

    Sar? suspected they would be dropping the masculine prefix when referring to Kes. The healer knew personally how inapplicable it felt. Habit was all that kept it in their mind this long.

    The spells required no contact or action from their patient. Kes was soon stepping through the flap leading to the improvised bathing tent.

    They would need to remove the waste material covering their skin and acquire clean clothes. Sar? remembered doing the same before a system was in place.

    ¡°There is no parasite to remove. Not by the time I get to them.¡± The acolyte of Nala dried their hands on a cloth.

    ¡°It merges perfectly. I could cut it off, but I don¡¯t think it would matter.¡± The idea caused their own tail to twitch under their robe. It instinctively felt like mutilation.

    Alve sighed. ¡°That is not good.¡± He sat on the stool beside his impromptu work table.

    The journey-mage was both the most holistically trained and combat capable mage in the outpost. That made him an obvious choice to assist Sar? in seeking a solution.

    The fact he was also the only one who could open and close the quarantine zone and best guard for the compromised workers inside remained unspoken. Compromised workers that included Sar? themselves.

    ¡°Every cell changes completely. I don¡¯t recognize half the enzymes. And all the organs restructure. Most just disappear.¡± They were beginning to realize how beyond their skills this was.

    They were essentially a new organism. One that defied basic biology.

    Sar? felt like they were the same person. Or rather they felt as if they should feel that way. But they could tell clinically they were not.

    There were new instincts the acolyte never had as an alma. Instincts that became easy to identify when Sar? dwelled on them.

    Their sexual desires had always been exclusive to the male anatomy. Interest in the same sex mattered little in the heavily settled east of Rojin.

    Only the rural Western Rojin was outside Habe¡¯s influence and had strong stigmas against such acts and relationships. The senior acolyte grew up culturally and geographically removed from that bias.

    Yet nothing about the female form held interest outside the performance of their duties. That had changed.

    They noticed the elevated awareness of their female coworkers a few hours after their transformation. It was especially pronounced when they saw or thought about the genitalia of women or the other infected.

    Their hindbrain willingly provided an idea how their new tail could be used. And the flush of heat and sensitivity near the end backed it up.

    It was not some overwhelming compulsion. They could ignore it and act professionally the same way they did around males they objectively found attractive. Yet it was clearly there when they ruminated on it.

    The egg laying was similar. Sar? had only done it four times since the first. Each time was so they could magically analyze what happened inside their body.

    But not everyone was so clinical. And the difference between how transformed victims responded to the sight and the reactions of alma onlookers suggested a fundamental shift.

    It may have been caused by knowing what the process felt like. All the infected had lain an egg after their physical changes were over. And they knew it was far from painful.

    Sar? suspected there was more to it. The adjustment was too consistent and immediate. It felt natural. As mundane as eating or drinking.

    ¡°How is it on your end?¡± Sar? looked to the crude fiber bracelets forming two piles on the table. The finished pile was much smaller.

    ¡°Slow. Too slow.¡± Alve was clearly frustrated.

    ¡°They want me to make more than a hundred defensive charms while most of my energy is going into the barrier over the pit and around the quarantine.¡± The pit was the now unfinished latreen that started this crisis.

    The excavation unexpectedly broke into a chamber containing the parasites. Those parasites caused instant panic in the workers and escaped before the barrier was erected. Not without one attaching to Sar? and anyone with the misfortune to be in the area.

    ¡°These won¡¯t last more than a few days or uses. Whichever comes first. The initial batch will be failing before I¡¯ve equipped everyone.¡± Alve leaned back. Sar? assumed he had run out of magic again.

    ¡°The manager is buying time. He needs it contained until we get help.¡± The nature of that help was a sword hanging over them.

    Sar? knew the truth behind the mysterious outbreak. It was not a curse or curable pathogen. They spent the last few days proving that. Despite hoping to do the opposite.

    The healer had not told anyone. But they were not alma anymore. They were something else. Changed down to the most fundamental level. Even their magic felt different.

    Alve knew it too. Yet neither of them dared say it out loud. Not when that meant acknowledging that the help would be capture or extermination.

    The force mage had good odds of being released after the authorities confirmed he was untainted. The chance of everyone being killed as a precaution was small. That did not apply to Sar?.

    ¡°Have they learned anything from the body?¡± Alve was now their primary source of news from outside the quarantine.

    ¡°Nothing useful. It is too decomposed to determine much physically. They¡¯ll probably give up and let you examine it soon.¡± The degraded corpse was found in the uncovered cavity.

    The only other things discovered were the parasites and numerous shards now thought to be egg shells. Sar? suspected the eggs they produced would eventually be more of those parasites.

    It lacked clothing or any other items. And festering underground had made it difficult for anyone at the outpost to identify.

    ¡°Everyone knows he is the right height. And his tent was directly over the pit. I could match the remains easily.¡± The lack of physical evidence had not prevented the dots from being put together.

    ¡°What would the timeline be? We all know his behavior was consistent since he arrived. Was he replaced after, or did he smuggle the corpse into camp.¡± The frustration in Alve¡¯s voice was obvious.

    Rekon was their best lead. The alma had been under scrutiny since shortly after he awoke without memories. Yet suspicion was all they had. Nothing about the available evidence made a clear course of events.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know. Maybe it would make sense if we knew what he really was.¡± Sar? started taking the soiled sheets off the cot. Kes left the same enzyme slurry that everyone did.

    ¡°They told me how dangerous it would be here. But I never really got it before. You can lose everything by the dark gods¡¯ whims.¡± A long silence passed.

    Sar? bundled the cloth and turned. The sight of Alve slumped on the table took a second to sink in.

    They dropped the sheets. The healer was casting diagnostic spells by his side a moment later. Alve¡¯s abrupt and unnatural position could not be good.

    Nothing seemed wrong. He was deeply asleep. Too deeply.

    The body took time to move through the stages of rest. It was a dangerous sign that he had reached such an inactive state so quickly.

    Sar? tried to understand the cause. It was risky to magically wake anyone up without knowing why they lost consciousness.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

    The tent flap opened. They glanced at it. Then their attention snapped back.

    ¡°Ginger, go tell one of the guards that Alve passed out.¡± The red haired woman waved dismissively in response.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry. He is perfectly safe. Ginger-42947L is harmless. It flips a little switch in the brain until its out if the bloodstream.¡± Ginger pointed at her head to demonstrate where the supposed switch was.

    The implications slowly dawned. ¡°You did this?¡± Sar? felt numb for a moment. Then burning anger took over. ¡°Why the fuck?¡±

    The research student raised her eyebrows. ¡°Because we will need him to escape.¡± Sar? blinked.

    ¡°What?¡± Ginger ignored the question.

    She strolled over to the healer and unconscious mage. An orange hand dipped into the satchel at her side and pulled out a faintly glowing glass cylinder.

    Ginger held the item up. ¡°If I don¡¯t disarm this in the next two minutes, or if it is removed from the grounds of C5 or broken, everyone in a quarter mile will vaporize. So please don¡¯t knock me out before that.¡± The supposed bomb had metal caps on both ends. Unfamiliar symbols marked the dials on each cap.

    ¡°You¡¯re mad.¡± Sar? had no idea what the device was. But the unnerving glint in her eyes made them reluctant to doubt the psychotic mage.

    ¡°I prefer inspired and driven. But I can be mad if it helps.¡± Ginger returned the bomb to her bag and pulled out a large jar. The ceramic vessel must have taken up most of the space inside.

    ¡°We both know you are going to be killed in a week. Fortnight at the most.¡± The student set the jar on the table.

    ¡°That or dissected by talentless hacks with no vision.¡± It sounded as if she found the lack of vision the most offensive part of that prospect.

    ¡°Do you want everyone affected to die horribly? Knowing the kingdom, the rest of us will be silenced to cover their asses.¡± She lifted Alve¡¯s limp hand and slid a bracelet off.

    ¡°No, but we can¡¯t just leave.¡± Sar? did not disagree. They simply knew the manager could not let them escape.

    ¡°Of course we can. All we need is to get through the barrier and run while everyone is distracted.¡± Ginger hooked her arms under Alve¡¯s own.

    She hoisted him off the chair and lay the mage face down on the tent floor. Sar? almost stopped her. But the student was right. And there was the bomb to consider. ¡°Why did you drug him?¡±

    Ginger pulled up his robes and tugged his pantaloons down a few inches. ¡°Because he¡¯ll need to take down the barrier around the quarantine.¡± The acolyte frowned.

    ¡°He won¡¯t do that. It would make him an enemy of the state.¡± Ginger picked up the jar and turned it upside down.

    ¡°Yes, they will.¡± She deftly rested the edge against his crena. Sar? only realized what the orange woman meant as she pulled off the top and pressed the opening flush with Alve¡¯s lower back.

    ¡°You¡­¡± The healer trailed off. Ginger held the jar for a few moments. Then she pulled it away.

    A small tail flopped limply to the side. As limp as all the mage¡¯s other limbs. Sar? silently kneeled and started stripping the unconscious mage.

    Ginger nodded in understanding. She did not help. Instead she sat on the ground and took out the bomb.

    Adjusting the four dials caused the slowly increasing glow to dim. ¡°That was close. I did not want to become loose atoms today.¡± Sar? looked over at her.

    ¡°It was actually a bomb?¡± They had been hoping the unhinged mage was bluffing.

    ¡°Of course, it wouldn¡¯t be much of a deterrent otherwise.¡± Sar? could have argued that the possibility was enough deterrent. They decided to focus on getting arms through sleeves.

    ¡°Take the front.¡± Ginger nodded and helped lift Alve onto the still bare cot.

    ¡°How long will it take? I need to leave before the antidote runs out.¡± Sar? gave the mage a side-glance.

    ¡°Between a few hours to half a day. That was the range for everyone else.¡± Ginger nodded.

    She retrieved a metallic cylinder slightly smaller than the bomb. Unscrewing the top let her slide out a wooden rod.

    The item was only four inches long and the width of Sar?¡¯s pinky finger. A divot had been carved part way through at the center.

    ¡°Break it when he is ready to take down the barrier.¡± Ginger handed the crude messaging item to Sar?.

    ¡°How did you get through the barrier?¡± The red haired mage ignored them.

    Ginger strolled to the tent flap with the same casual ease she entered. ¡°Remember to get everyone out during the distraction. I¡¯ll see you on the plains.¡± She stepped outside without giving any hint what that distraction was.

    Sar? was left waiting. They watched gray gradually overtake Alve.

    ¡°Fuck it.¡± They undid their robe. It was tossed on the table along with their underwear. Their mind felt less turmoltuous after the eighth egg.

    The acolyte of Nala dressed as Alve¡¯s skin began to dissolve. The force mage stirred as the final stages rebuilt their body.

    They opened obsidian eyes. ¡°Sar?¡­?¡± Alve brought a hand to scrape the sludge out of their vision.

    ¡°I¡¯m here.¡± They placed a gentle hand on Alve¡¯s forehead. ¡°Don¡¯t get up. It¡¯s not over.¡± The downward pressure was just enough to suggest they stay prone.

    ¡°Did you knock me out?¡± The question did not sound accusatory. As if they were simply curious.

    ¡°No. Ginger did. She is trying to get us out of here. She threatened me with an explosive, if you can believe it.¡± Alve inhaled, choked and spat slime and teeth to the side.

    ¡°I can.¡± They lay back down.

    ¡°I thought you might attack me. Although I didn¡¯t expect this. I wouldn¡¯t have blamed you. I think I was hoping you would. So I wouldn¡¯t have to live with the choice, you know.¡± Sar? stroked their scalp. Hair and goo came away.

    ¡°Thank you. I¡¯m sorry this happened.¡± The mage laughed. It was clear not all the residue had left there airway.

    ¡°Don¡¯t be. It¡¯s not your fault. It¡¯s not really Ginger¡¯s either.¡± Sar? took their hand. A few minutes later the grip tightened.

    ¡°I think it¡¯s starting.¡± Alve sounded uncertain.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry. It won¡¯t hurt.¡± Sar? remembered the growing impulse that Alve was experiencing.

    They watched the mage part their legs. It was an instinct the healer knew well.

    Small gasps and the clenching of their hand on Sar?¡¯s let the acolyte track what Alve was feeling. Soon the egg crowned and their body shuddered.

    The journey mage relaxed. Then sat up to inspect the egg and tail tucked between their legs. ¡°Not hurting was an understatement.¡± They commented.

    ¡°I didn¡¯t feel like getting into exactly what it¡¯s like. But now you know.¡± Sar? laughed.

    ¡°I guess I do.¡± They repositioned and stood.

    ¡°Ginger is going to make a distraction when you are ready to deactivate the barrier.¡± Alve shook their head..

    ¡°I bet she is.¡± They started moving their hands and muttering arcane components.

    The slime pealed away from the top of their head down. A ring of goo was left around there feet.

    Sar? had always found Alve attractive. But their leaner and more angular gray form stirred something the healer had no time to examine.

    ¡°That felt different¡­¡± They looked pensive.

    ¡°Like your magic is trying to do what you want before you make it.¡± Sar? added.

    Alve nodded slowly. ¡°Maybe? It was as if I had to hold it back. Like the spell had its own will.¡± They sounded apprehensive.

    ¡°It has been making things easier. My spells do what I want, even if I slip up.¡± The change was strange at first. But the spells Sar? made now were faster and more effective.

    They held the messaging rod out to Alve. ¡°We are supposed to break this when you are ready.¡± They inspected the carved wood.

    ¡°I am ready now. Except for my clothes. We are going to want a distraction before I walk outside like this.¡± Alve turned to the pile Sar? left their pants and robe in.

    The force mage dressed quickly. The looser garments requiring their belt to be tied far tighter. They did not comment on the eggs Sar? left in the middle of the floor.

    They shook out their hands. Then nodded. Sar? snapped the rod in half. There was a long moment where nothing happened. That moment continued.

    ¡°Do you think it sta¡­¡± Sar? was cut off as the world went white.

    No. It was not white. It was a color. One that shown so brightly they could see it through their eyelids. But Sar? had never seen that color before.

    Everything was vibrating. Or was Sar? vibrating. They could feel their teeth shaking.

    It all spun. But there was nothing to spin. Only Sar? themselves.

    The healer realized they were lying on the floor. They must have fallen during the complete sensory overload.

    Sitting up revealed an unchanged medical tent. There was no sign of the destruction Sar? half expected.

    ¡°What was that?¡± Alve pulled themselves back to their feet.

    ¡°I guess it was the distraction?¡± Sar? did not know what to think. It had certainly been distracting. But would that be enough to let them escape with all the infected?

    ¡°Let¡¯s go.¡± Alve left the tent without another word. Sar? followed.

    The few thousand square feet within the barrier were crowded by confused infected. There were originally tents, bedrolls and food for everyone.

    But the problem had expanded beyond what the small patch of contained land could support. Now the patients were limited to a blanket and a couple feet of ground to call their own.

    Alve cut through the milling gray figures. The enchantments on their person let them push past even those larger and heavier.

    Sar? followed in their wake. The force mage was already casting when they reached the invisible line no one could step past.

    The evenly spaced guards outside the barrier had collapsed where they stood. They twitched and jolted periodically. It reminded the acolyte of the thrashing that could accompany fever dreams.

    ¡°What did she do?¡± Sar? muttered. The infected had recovered from Ginger¡¯s distraction quickly. Or at least quicker than the alma. But it was impossible to know how much longer the effects would last.

    The senior acolyte turned back to the crowd. Most looked confused. Yet they spotted several that had inferred what was happening. Those people were already gathering the few belongings they still had.

    ¡°Everyone! There is no cure. Alve¡¯s dropping the wall. If you don¡¯t want to face execution, run for the wilds when it comes down.¡± The yelled instructions carried over anxious questions.

    Most looked surprised or uncertain. It was obvious the extent and implications of their transfiguration was not clear to everyone.

    Alve violently slashed their hand through the air. ¡°Go!¡± They broke into a run.

    Sar? started after them. They did not know how many followed. There was no time to convince the apprehensive.

    It was immediately apparent they should have left their robes behind. The long flowing garments were poorly suited to speed.

    Alve headed directly away from the central fortress. The outbreak started on the edge of the outpost, where Rekon¡¯s followers were camped. The commotion behind suggested some of their patients had heeded the healer¡¯s advice.

    Packed earth became grass beneath their feet. Alve headed towards the tree cover.

    Sar? slowed enough to look back. Gray people in ill fitting clothes were spreading out from the outpost. Many chose a random direction or stuck with a handful of others. But a little less than half were close behind.

    They returned to running and not tripping on their robes. The manager would try to track them down. More so once support from Rojin arrived.

    Yet the unclaimed lands were vast. A couple dozen gray tailed and black eyed fugitives could be swallowed entirely.

 Chapter 20, In The Beginning

    ¡°Before creation, there was the Creator.¡± A white ring of light hung within featureless blackness.

    ¡°It was flawless and unbound. All that could be known and could be done was already within it. Except the one thing it could not experience, limitation. It rejected the limitation of the limitless.¡± The ring flashed. Its light obscured the darkness entirely.

    ¡°The Creator fractured itself. It divided the infinite into the finite.¡± The light gathered into several dozen alma shaped figures of white radiance against the black background.

    ¡°The gods were born. Each containing a part of the Creator and its design.¡± The white figures spread out. The lines of radiance running from them fractured into prismatic colors.

    ¡°They built the world to that design.¡± The multicolored lines twisted together in the space between them and resolved into the image of a planet.

    I had always known that the world was a sphere hanging amongst other celestial bodies. But I had never encountered that information before. I assumed it was one of the pieces of knowledge I inherited from G?ri The.

    ¡°The gods looked upon their work and knew it to be perfect in its imperfection.¡± The figures encircling the planet began to dissolve into strands of white and vanish into the world below.

    ¡°Each god acknowledged their duty fulfilled and descended to walk among their creations. But one remained.¡± The last few disappeared. Only a single radiant outline stayed.

    ¡°Sheth looked upon the work and saw the final gift of the Creator. Within all things dwelled a path back to the Creator, an escape from the finite.¡± The faint outline of a frown was created by a few black lines on the white figure¡¯s face.

    ¡°Sheth knew death to be the Creator¡¯s will. All things would end with time and mend the fractured infinity.¡± A speck of blackness appeared in the center of the white figure.

    ¡°Even the gods would return once their creations came to an end. Sheth saw their own end, and in their limitation they knew fear of the limitless.¡± The speck spread out like cracks in the seamless white. The brightness was consumed. The figure was left only visible by a corona of light outlining its shape.

    ¡°Sheth rejected the Creator¡¯s will and dissented from its design.¡± Faint white lines showed a twisted smile spreading across the dark figure¡¯s face. It stretched out its arms.

    ¡°Sheth sought to destroy the path to the Creator.¡± Strands of darkness outlined in light spread from its body and wove into the world spinning below.

    ¡°The Dissenter created undeath to defy the Creator.¡± The image shifted.

    The lines reformed into a stylized drawing of an elderly alma lying in bed. Younger alma stood beside him.

    The sadness on the caricatures of alma was apparent. The dying alma closed his eyes and the woman holding his hand slowly relaxed her grip.

    A strand of darkness spiraled from somewhere above and wove into the dead alma. The mourners seemed unaware of the shadowy miasma that began rising from the body.

    The elderly alma opened his eyes. His hand tightened around that of the crying woman.

    There was a moment of joy on the surrounding faces. Then the revived alma pulled her towards him and bit down on her throat.

    Yellow blood sprayed and she flew away with exaggerated force. A moment later the shadows rose from her body. She stood and attacked the other alma.

    ¡°But the Dissenter was unable to truly end death.¡± The image changed to the bloody and violent alma bound to a wooden post surrounded by bundles of sticks.

    One of the alma from the previous scene threw a lit torch onto the pyre. Flame rose and the tied alma thrashed madly.

    ¡°Sheth could only delay the return.¡± The undead alma burned to blackened outlines. And the shadows that rose from them burned away along with their bodies.

    ¡°They turned to the gods for aid.¡± Now an androgynous alma stood in a palace of white stone. Before them sat a semicircle of equally genderless alma on ornate thrones.

    ¡°Sheth promised a world without death, a kingdom that would last forever where the gods could rule at their side.¡± The standing alma smiled as they spoke. Grand gestures projecting a mad ferver.

    There was still no sound outside the narration. But the seated alma frowned at whatever was being said.

    ¡°The gods denounced the Dissenter for their violation of the Creator¡¯s will.¡± The central figure stood. Their face was twisted in rage.

    ¡°Sheth was banished. But their words planted a seed.¡± The central figure yelled silently at their petitioner. Behind them a flicker of darkness appeared superimposed over the chests of a few seated figures.

    ¡°Those seeds fed on fear and sprouted into tretchury.¡± The smiling petitioner turned and walked out of the scene. The smile never faded.

    ¡°The traitors joined Sheth in his works and the dark gods were born.¡± The flickers grew into auras of shadow around them.

    ¡°They hid in the dark places of the world. And together they achieved what Sheth could not alone.¡± The art style returned to white and black contrast. Black figures outlined in light surrounded a single larger figure.

    A ball of swirling white rested between their hands. The figure smiled down at the ball as the dark shape of a curled up alma formed within.

    ¡°Sheth learned to destroy a soul¡¯s connection to the Creator. They made the first unclean spirit.¡± The more detailed and colorful art returned.

    ¡°The gods could no longer allow the Dissenter to act freely.¡± A chaotic battle showed gruesomely drawn animate corpses fighting an army of alma.

    ¡°A thousand legions of the unclean waged war with the world. And the gods battled at our side.¡± The androgynous alma from the white stone palace fought in the air above the armies.

    They now wore more exaggerated and distinctive clothing. Many used odd weapons. I spotted a green and brown one throwing bread they pulled from a large basket.

    A loaf hit another flying figure dead center. They were sent crashing into a mountainside. There was no visible damage. But they vomited out blue blood for some reason.

    The image moved from fight to fight for a few moments. Then it focused on seven flying alma fighting a single combatant.

    The lone alma was the petitioner turned away by the alma of the palace. Shadows surrounded them. The same penumbra rose from many of the flying alma.

    Ganging up on the petitioner was barely enough to hold them off. They dodged, deflected or outright ignored the attacks of their seven opponents.

    ¡°The dark gods could not be killed.¡± A jagged crack formed in the space behind the solo fighter.

    ¡°So the gods imprisoned them.¡± The crack pulled open to reveal darkness behind. All seven enemies landed different attacks at that moment.

    The shadowy alma was forced back. They fell into the void beyond the crack in space. And the entire battlefield froze.

    The alma inside the crack shifted to the crube black and white style. The change spread out to the paused battle. Everything became a sharp contrast of light and dark.

    All the animate corpses and shadow wreathed alma began to disolve into black specks and swirl away. It was like a powerful suction was drawing them towards the dark emptiness within the crack in space.

    The last disappeared beyond and the crack closed. The colorful art style returned. ¡°Sheth and their army were locked away in Nis¡¯elma, outside the world. They could no longer¡­¡±

    Iznana closed the ornately ingraved book. The narration was cut off. And the accompanying illusion hanging in the air above snapped out of existence.

    ¡°That is the abridged story of the Divine Discord. It is also nearly three millennia out of date. But the contemporary versions are dramatized and all based on this.¡± The librarian leaned their puppet back.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

    I scratched my chin in contemplation. ¡°Why did symbols appear next to the gods¡¯ faces when their expression changed strongly?¡± Iznana waved off the question.

    ¡°That is just the animation of the time. The art of crafting illusion stories was very popular back then. This one borrows heavily from trends in Nalhe''ad, back when the church was on neutral terms.¡± They gestured at the yellow-bronze cover of the enchanted book.

    ¡°It was tricky updating the language pack to dub it into contemporary Rojin. But they just don¡¯t make animated books like this anymore.¡± I had no idea if they were correct.

    This was the first enchantment I had seen capable of displaying moving drawings and projecting sound to go along with them. It was a simple but useful spell.

    ¡°I see why calling myself Sheth was so awkward.¡± Priest ?fron smirked at that.

    ¡°You wouldn¡¯t be our only associate using a dark god¡¯s name. But naming yourself after the god of undeath and immortality would be questioned. A lot.¡± I did not bother to correct him about the naming yourself part.

    ¡°Is it specifically the undead not being intended by the Creator that makes alma hate us so much?¡± I deliberately included myself in the undead. There was no telling how they would fit the gam and I into their cosmology.

    ¡°That, and a lot of less polished undead are genuinely dangerous or disruptive to alma life. Necromancers are usually assholes like that.¡± The librarian stretched the puppets wrinkled face into a wide grin.

    My knowledge of Nith and his creations supported their words. Mages that used unlife animus that way would provide a valid basis to hate it.

    ¡°Than why don¡¯t you kill or drive out all the undead in your boarders?¡± The priest grimaced and Iznana laughed.

    ¡°Oh, they tried. They got their asses kicked.¡± Priest ?fron waved the librarian off and turned to me.

    ¡°It was attempted about eight hundred years ago. The cost in life and resources, on both sides and civilian, was deemed to be too great. A truce was called, and Special Situations was formed to maintain the illusion that the church won.¡± Iznana clearly found this funnier than the priest.

    ¡°Some undead are very hard to identify. The church spent over a century pouring resources into killing a population hidden amongst their own people. One that responded to being exterminated by forcibly converting more alma.¡± They explained.

    ¡°Yes, it was an issue of gorilla warfare combined with an incentive to propagate as fast as possible. Neither side could win, and everyone was losing.¡± Priest ?fron agreed.

    ¡°Now we spend far less helping the undead go unnoticed in exchange for obeying our laws. As adjusted for each species¡¯ needs, of course.¡± The priest paused. It seemed like he was considering something.

    ¡°Well, we also spend a lot of resources hunting down followers of the dark gods. But we limit that to the active and hostile ones.¡± That caught my interest.

    ¡°Are there dark gods with churches in Rillan?¡± My impression had been that the Church of the Creator directly forbade their worship. Yet I had thought the same about working with the undead.

    ¡°Officially, the worship of all dark gods is forbidden. In practice there are only a few with cults active enough to pose a threat.¡± That implied there were lone worshippers and small groups they did not care about.

    ¡°Not to mention Cov¡¯ah and Jaquun.¡± Iznana pointed out.

    ¡°Who are Cov¡¯ah and Jaquun?¡± I needed to get Priest ?fron to list all the alma¡¯s gods at once. There kept being more I had never heard of.

    ¡°Cov¡¯ah advocates that her worshippers seek undeath for themselves and help others achieve undeath if they wish. So she is technically a dark god. Except she forbids her followers from making undead against the subject¡¯s will. We are on good terms with her church, and a number of our staff worship her.¡± That did explain why Cov¡¯ah would not be at odds with Special Situations.

    ¡°Jaquun is similar. He doesn¡¯t outright forbid unwilling conversion. But his teachings center around passiveism and free will. His followers rarely cause any problems. A lot of undead worship him as part of a whole seeking the perfect self thing.¡± The priest leaned back with a sigh.

    ¡°This will all be in your lessons. Iznana?¡± He turned to the animated proxy.

    ¡°Hold your horses. I¡¯m working on it. History, politics, religion and our current operating procedure. Am I adding anything else.¡± I assumed their true body or another puppet was collecting the books.

    ¡°I would be interested in anything on general animus weaving and on healing or revival magic specifically.¡± Both of them looked at me askance.

    ¡°I can do that¡­ but why?¡± The librarian seemed curious and a bit worried.

    ¡°My people don¡¯t know how to restore the dead to life. I left the Moors specifically to learn that.¡± They collectively relaxed.

    ¡°Only a handful of mages in the country can resurrect someone fully dead. It is usually limited to 30-year-mages with a healing focus. Or master-mages with exceptional talent that dedicated their career to achieving revival magic.¡± I internalize the priests words and privately raised my opinion of Nith¡¯s competence.

    ¡°That is fine. I was planning to enroll in one of your arcane schools for the rest of my plausible lifespan as an alma.¡± Iznana frowned.

    ¡°Were you intending to apply for a government service scholarship? They usually won¡¯t grant one to those middle aged or beyond. The risk of you dying before performing the required years of service is too high.¡± I shook my head.

    ¡°No. If maximum tuition and the amount of kaithsh I can reliably make as an unskilled worker match what I¡¯ve been told, I can easily pay for my education by working during the hours an alma sleeps.¡± I had asked Alve, Ginger and most of the caravan about this at length.

    ¡°I have spent decades on a single project before. I only require an hour of meditation every one to two days, as opposed to the 10 to 12 hours of downtime alma need. I also don¡¯t require food or shelter, so I wouldn¡¯t need to pay for either.¡± I had focused on perfecting essence patterns for a decade or two plenty of times.

    My biggest problem was preventing myself from getting absorbed in a task longer than I intended. The gam believed I was dead when I created the original version of my shapeshifting pattern.

    ¡°I suppose not eating or sleeping and living on the street would fix the inflated cost of education pretty cleanly.¡± Priest ?fron pondered.

    ¡°That probably would have worked, actually. Your existing abilities would let you test out of or spend minimal time on early courses. And you could make well above minimum wage even as an unlicensed mage.¡± The librarian added.

    ¡°The church can fund your education as long as you are working for ?fron, and I can train you in animancy. No official school will teach soul magic directly.¡± Priest ?fron glared at the librarian.

    ¡°Don¡¯t offer hundreds of thousands of kaithsh and forbidden knowledge that threatens the world as we know it without asking me.¡± He turned back to me.

    ¡°We will fund your education as long as you are working for us, and Iznana will train you in animancy.¡± He continued.

    ¡°Let¡¯s catch you up first. I¡¯m adding basic economics. I think you¡¯ll enjoy that. Or at least abuse it.¡± The librarian seemed to be talking to themselves as much as me.

    ¡°Will the illiteracy matter?¡± Priest ?fron asked.

    ¡°I¡¯m not illiterate. I know the alma alphabet and majority of spelling rules.¡± Iznana returned their focus to us.

    ¡°The speed you showed and how you described it means you are only technically literate. Alma normally read automatically once they have learned. Most never fully learn phonetic reading.¡± I had not considered my limited use of written words important. But it clearly bothered the librarian.

    ¡°There is a common developmental deviation that can make alma have trouble automating the process. But children usually manage it with enough effort. The fact you never progressed beyond manual reading makes me think it is a weakness of your species.¡± I shrugged.

    I had traded for lessons on the alma alphabet and how it was used from an expedition¡¯s scribe over half a century ago. My attempts to master it probably equated to a few years of work by now.

    It ultimately felt like a useless skill. The gam used lorekeepers to preserve information. And I could encode information in spellwork if needed.

    ¡°Literacy is a mark of status. Menial workers don¡¯t need it. But nobles, artisans and anyone who works with bureaucracy or significant wealth is expected to read and write well.¡± Iznana waved off the priest¡¯s concern.

    ¡°It¡¯s not actually a logistical problem. I¡¯m just fascinated by an undead weakness related to the reflexive processing of symbol patterns.¡± An animus weaving came through the link connecting the puppet to wherever Iznana was controlling it.

    It looked like a part of the enchantment inside the puppet received the compressed spell and unfolded it. The spell was then effectively cast at the puppet¡¯s location.

    ¡°There have been plenty of nobles who couldn¡¯t read fast enough to keep up with their duties and had the money to pay mages to do something about it.¡± The spell hung without a target to trigger on.

    ¡°I have several spells that recognize letters and construct words phonetically from them. Most have irregular spellings coded in, at least for the common words.¡± I inspected the moderately complex spell.

    ¡°If you set it up to provide telepathic output and give a convincing performance of reading the text, only particularly nosy mages will notice the difference.¡± I could probably do better than that.

    The same rough design would be easy to translate to an essence pattern. Alma mages would be unable to detect an essence version of the spell.

    ¡°I should be able to cast this.¡± I released a bit of essence and created a copy of the spell.

    It was entirely nonfunctional. But it let me see the structure more clearly and adapt that structure.

    There was a long moment where I completely ignored the other two. ¡°Are you trying to do that now?¡±

    I responded to the priest by picking up the first book Iznana gave me. It was supposedly the same story as the animated book. They had quickly retrieved the enchanted version after I tried to read the first paragraph.

    ¡°In the beginning, all was the Creator.¡± A deep masculine voice emanated from the air above the book.

    It continued to narrate the story written within. After a few more sentences I paused the spell. The room was left in silence.

    ¡°Was that the first time you saw that spell?¡± The priest finally asked.

    ¡°Yes, but it is composed of the same pattern recognition and audio output structures most alma magic uses. The criteria for identifying a letter is really simple, so the data on word reference and tone adjustment was all I had to memorize to copy it.¡± There was really nothing novel in the spell. It was just a clever way to use common structures.

    ¡°The reading problem is definitely an innate weakness of some kind.¡± The librarian murmured.

    ¡°We may need to make certain adjustments to your education. A master-mage that doesn¡¯t know arcane basics will be extremely suspicious.¡± Priest ?fron was also talking to himself.

    I leaned back and fiddled with the spell. The priest came out of his reflection first.

    ¡°If it comes down to it, Iznana can teach you the general education stuff, and I¡¯ll figure out something to get you a master-mage equivalency or the like. Enough to start you at a level where you stand out less.¡± That sounded like it would save time.

    I wanted to understand the foundations of alma magic. But spending the same amount of time on it as a complete novice would be wasteful.

 Chapter 21, Do The Same

    Bellimha, The Nameless walked through the outpost¡¯s mess hall. Bodies twitched and jerked where they fell.

    He stepped over the form of a laborer he planned to interview for promotion the next day. She had shown a solid grasp of team dynamics and would be better used in management.

    Bellimha rarely remembered the names of mortals. The information had no meaning. And he could see such things in the minds of those around him.

    A distortion in space caught his attention. He looked in a direction that did not exist and saw a spidery creature looming over the fallen alma.

    The Nameless bent space and stepped out of phase. The tables holding half eaten meals disappeared to his mortal senses. Not that his mortal senses mattered.

    The yellow creature lurking out of phase had an ovoid trunk held aloft by eight arms far longer than its small central body. W-shaped pupils inspected Bellimha from its evenly spaced eyes.

    ¡°I see you did not bother to match local species.¡± He sighed. This was going to be tedious.

    ¡°I was in Sinnard before all this. It wasn¡¯t worth changing.¡± Nala¡¯s voice emerged from the frilled nostrils above their eyes. It was closer to the notes of a flute than alma speech.

    ¡°Fine. Why are you here?¡± Bellimha did not care what they did. But there was a bare minimum of courtesy that the younger god was owed.

    ¡°One of my blessings was destroyed a few days back. I¡¯ve been watching sense.¡± The Nameless had not noticed Nala until now. But they were distracted and not actively interested in who might be loitering in normally unused dimensions.

    ¡°Destroyed? What was it?¡± The kid could mean a wide range of things by blessing. The term was colloquial. It roughly meant something a god gave a mortal or younger god.

    ¡°I gave a worshiper named Sar? the ability to heal without components. It was a minor soul modification.¡± Bellimha stroked his chin.

    They assumed Sar? was the name of the acolyte that worked as outpost C5¡¯s healer for the last four years. It sounded vaguely right.

    ¡°It was linked back to you, giving feedback of some kind?¡± He had a suspicion.

    ¡°I received basic information about her physical condition, memories, thoughts and psyche.¡± Bellimha would not call that a minor soul modification. Not that he was one to talk.

    ¡°You haven¡¯t looked at them directly, have you?¡± It was baffling to think Nala had traveled here only to stay outside standard space.

    The Nameless could easily have inspected the souls of everyone within a dozen miles while out of phase. But he had at least fifty millennia on Nala.

    ¡°I¡¯ve been watching the undead outbreak from here. I can scry easily enough.¡± And that confirmed they did not look directly. Or even with a worthwhile analysis spell.

    ¡°If you had gone over or used soul inspection, you would know they aren¡¯t undead. Or any animus type I¡¯ve seen.¡± Bellimha wrapped Nala in spellweaving and shifted them both back to the mess hall. He ignored their brief attempt to resist the forceful teleportation.

    They settled to the ground. Each of their four fingered hands found purchase on the floor, a table or a bench.

    ¡°Please don¡¯t translocate me without permission. It is almost as unpleasant as the name thing.¡± The Nameless ignored the younger god¡¯s whining.

    ¡°Your blessing disappeared because your acolyte no longer has a soul.¡± Nala twisted their nostrils in confusion. Then they noticed.

    ¡°They don¡¯t have souls¡­¡± They trailed off.

    Both gods could see the soul as easily as the body. And it was obvious that the seemingly still living bodies had none.

    ¡°Is it a shroud?¡± Nala sounded uncertain. An emotion adjacent to fear tinged their voice. The discomfort felt when seeing something that was fundamentally wrong.

    ¡°It would be one powerful enough to completely hide from me. Obscuring animus structures entirely is much harder than disguising them as different structures. And I¡¯ve had months to see through it.¡± He crouched and pulled up a sleeve on the woman by his feet.

    ¡°This has been happening for months?¡± The gray patch on her hand continued past the wrist. Similar spots leeched the color from small areas on most of the visible alma.

    ¡°I thought so.¡± He stood and looked back to Nala.

    ¡°A man arrived one day. A whole group arrived with him, but they didn¡¯t matter. This man had no mind. And one day he had no soul either.¡± The Nameless remembered Rekon.

    He only forgot the names of those who were neither peers or threats. The shiver that passed through his soul when looking at that empty thing told him the alma shaped creature was at least one of those.

    ¡°I made arrangements within my position in the Rojin Kingdom. Otherwise I adhered to the first law of The Path.¡± Nala¡¯s nostrils twitched again.

    ¡°What is that?¡± Bellimha scoffed at the youth¡¯s na?vet¨¦.

    ¡°Guide your younger, for they need it most. Fear your elder, for they may do the same.¡± The Nameless recited the proverb far older than himself. Nala shivered.

    ¡°That is grim.¡± Bellimha shrugged.

    ¡°That is life. All you can do is follow your own whims and weather the whims of those older and stronger than you.¡± He ignored Nala¡¯s obvious discomfort at his words.

    ¡°You think he was an elder god?¡± Nala changed the subject.

    ¡°I hope he was an elder. That is the only explanation for a shroud so advanced it appears like complete absence to us.¡± Bellimha began walking a circle around the room.

    ¡°As opposed to an ancient?¡± Nala watched him inspect the delirious alma.

    ¡°No, ancient is just a way of saying an elder so old that they don¡¯t bother with any of us anymore. They are still just old and powerful. Still part of our world.¡± The gray was spreading at different rates on different alma. But all of them were turning.

    ¡°Do you know what a Traveler is?¡± He stopped by a shorter than average man who was entirely gray now.

    ¡°Not beyond the literal meaning. But I assume you mean something else.¡± The gray alma¡¯s face glistened with what looked like sweat. Bellimha knew better.

    ¡°I¡¯ve never seen one. Not knowingly. They might not exist.¡± He wove an illusion around Nala and himself.

    It was not as thurrow as standing adjacent to the space. But it would hide them from anyone who became unexpectedly lucid.

    ¡°And what are they?¡± Nala did not bother to complain about the disguise.

    ¡°I¡¯m not even sure the elders know. An ancient once told me the Travelers are things that come from outside our world. Bringing some of the rules from wherever they come from with them. Rules that let them go beyond what our world allows.¡± The Nameless did not bother to explain how he ended up speaking with an ancient.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

    ¡°They claimed to have talked with a Traveler. But that is a second-hand story from someone I can only describe as insane.¡± Bellimha remembered the chaotic prison realm he spent centuries surviving in. All because he stole an item the mad ancient wanted another thief to find first.

    ¡°Do you really think that is what these are? Or whoever made them.¡± The Nameless looked down at the empty people at his feet.

    ¡°I have no idea. But they are more sophisticated than anything Evolution made during the war. Or ever. That or they really aren¡¯t undead.¡± He nudged an arm. His boot came away sticky.

    ¡°Was the Ginger girl involved? She infected everyone here.¡± Bellimha considered the question.

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure. All the previous conversions were from these.¡± He stretched out his hand palm up.

    Space fractured and reformed to reveal a gray serpent floating in a glass sphere. It immediately started thrashing impotently.

    ¡°You doubtless saw these connect to people.¡± The skin of the creature clearly matched that of his unconscious employees.

    ¡°Ginger somehow created a potent soul attack from one. Or rather one of the eggs these things hatch from.¡± The arcane crafter was the only staff member Bellimha knew by name.

    He had millennia of practice spotting those who would eventually step onto The Path. She would be a peer or die horribly, whichever came first.

    ¡°So the eggs do hatch into those things.¡± The Nameless resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Nala likely lacked direct confirmation of where the symbiotic creatures came from. But there was so much circumstantial evidence that it made no difference.

    ¡°Yes, the man I told you about left a chamber full of them under his tent. I waited for the rest to hatch before ordering an outhouse constructed on the spot.¡± There was a moment of silence.

    ¡°You did this on purpose¡­¡± Nala sounded baffled and increasingly angry.

    ¡°I performed an experiment that left me plausible deniability. If an elder is propagating a new species, my curiosity will have little effect on the outcome.¡± The sphere vanished with a silenced crack of collapsing air.

    ¡°The soul attack broke my shroud and shattered every mortal soul on site.¡± Bellimha noticed one of the prone figures stirring to consciousness.

    She was the furthest along. Her skin already turned gelatinous and anatomy within shifting visibly.

    ¡°Whe¡­¡± The unformed word was cut off as she choked on the shed material in her own throat. She curled into a fetal ball and trembled. The sensory feedback of transfiguration could be overwhelming to those unfamiliar.

    ¡°Was it a godkiller spell?¡± Nala sounded worried. Which was amusing more than anything.

    ¡°All soul attacks are godkillers. It¡¯s a question of how resilient the god is. But more accurately no. My shroud was as fragile as the alma it mimicked. Even a demigod would barely notice what she did.¡± There were numerous methods for a mortal mage to damage souls.

    A soul attack became a godkiller when it was potent enough to kill a god. A splinter in the finger and a lance through the chest were the same thing. The only difference was scale.

    ¡°I¡¯m more worried about the fact it shattered all their souls. Yet they are turning.¡± A handful of other employees were beginning to wake. The responses to awakening mid-transformation were similar.

    ¡°There are species with innate shrouds. It is theoretically possible to make one that could fool us. If terrifying in implications.¡± Nala whistled in realization.

    ¡°The elder would have needed to fake their souls shattering.¡± Bellimha sighed.

    ¡°It¡¯s possible. But that way lies global doubt.¡± The Nameless turned away from the former alma moaning in distress.

    He started back to his office. Nala followed. Their legs compressed as they entered the hallway. Hands pressed against the floor, walls and ceiling equally to suspend their body in the center of the corridor.

    Nala broke the silence after a few minutes. ¡°Ginger must have been familiar with these creatures. Otherwise she wouldn¡¯t know how to do this.¡± Bellimha considered it.

    ¡°I couldn¡¯t find evidence, but maybe. She was hiding it from me if so.¡± That would mean she obscured her true thoughts and memories from him.

    He had seen the chaotic brilliance of her mind many times. It felt more plausible that the red haired alma had devised a viable area of effect soul weapon from an unknown species in a few days of study. The alternative was mental defenses on the level of a god.

    ¡°I¡¯m more curious if she knew this would be the outcome.¡± He stepped around a slimy gray staff member who was cautiously standing.

    Their altered build was apparent under the film of goo. And he spotted the tail lifting their ill fitting tunic.

    ¡°You think she was trying to kill them?¡± Bellimha waved a dismissive hand.

    ¡°It is most likely. I had no chance to read her intentions or knowledge before she fled. I don¡¯t know how she would test the results before using the device.¡± That was the rational conclusion. But the Nameless was not as certain as he presented.

    ¡°Unless she was working with the architect of this whole thing. Or is that architect.¡± Bellimha did not respond.

    The door to his office came into view. He would simply open it. But the transfigured staff member that nervously ducked around the corner stopped him.

    They moved with a lightness that was not natural for alma. Yet a sense of agitation came through in their motions.

    Black eyes glanced around the hallway. They then started stripping with some urgency.

    They slid to the floor with their back propped against the wall. Legs pulled apart and the egg soon rolled onto the floor.

    Bellimha sighed when the second egg joined it. He did not care how this species went about performing its bodily functions. But there was no telling how long this would take.

    The Nameless could have put an illusion over the door to hide its opening. He simply did not feel like it.

    His body slid into phase and he stepped through the wall. He then returned to standard space in his office. Nala followed a moment later.

    ¡°Are you letting the alma deal with this themselves? We could erase this place and the ones that escaped.¡± Nala suggested.

    ¡°And why would we do that?¡± The proposal made Bellimha skeptical that the junior god had been paying attention. They certainly had not thought through the implications if they had.

    ¡°To maintain peace and order? Let the alma develop freely and flourish under our guidance?¡± Bellimha dropped behind their desk as Nala spouted nonsense.

    ¡°I think you are acting under a misconception.¡± He surveyed the undisturbed workspace.

    ¡°I am still free because I did not side with Evolution or Preservation. I didn¡¯t side with Evolution because Sheth was an idealistic demagogue with more passion than plans. That does not mean I agree with Preservation or their ideals of non-interference that always involve lots of interference.¡± Bellimha conjured a molecular replica of the enzyme residue. He spread it on the floor and several strategic surfaces.

    ¡°And will you stop me?¡± Nala eyed the blatantly purposeful false evidence.

    ¡°Yes, I will.¡± He did not bother to make the threat specific. It did not have to be.

    He would likely drop them somewhere in the void of space. Far enough that they would take a few decades to get back. Or just erase their memories of this entire event.

    ¡°Than what will you do?¡± The Nameless stood and walked over to a large smear of slime on the floor.

    ¡°I¡¯m going to do my job as a loyal servant of the crown.¡± His flesh flowed and reformed. ¡°And ensure the kingdom handles this with grace and pragmatism.¡± They resolved into an appropriately modified version of their alma guise.

    The expected sludge coated their facsimile. They stripped off their uniform and dumped it on the floor.

    A few eggs teleported in and some arcane fudging of the evidence left a clear story for how they got there. Bellimha continued to the door and pushed it open.

    The startled employee yelped and tried to stand. They immediately realized the issue with that plan.

    ¡°Name and position.¡± The Nameless ordered without giving them time to finish.

    ¡°Uh¡­ Tosk, assistant clerk.¡± The last egg crowned and joined those already on the flagstones. Tosk clambered to their feet.

    ¡°I¡¯m your site manager, in case that wasn¡¯t clear. Gather everyone in the practice yard and send any department heads to my office.¡± It took a moment for the administrative underling to process the task.

    ¡°Yes, manager.¡± Tosk ran off to relay the instructions. That left Bellimha with only a few significant problems to overcome.

    These creatures seemed immune to all mind magic. The Nameless would have to remember and track their names and other information they normally plucked from the mind of others.

    It was also a matter of time before someone realized they did not know the site managers name. Pointing it out would reveal that no one did.

    That could be solved by implanting the right memories in certain royal officials. It would require assuming greater status and abilities in the kingdom¡¯s executive branch. But that could work for them.

    Bellimha noticed a flicker of something right before Tosk rounded the corner. They still had no soul. Yet the Nameless swore they sensed a presence within the clerk.

    It was gone before they could focus on it. A memory of a sensation neither physical or arcane left behind. They would need to address that. Whatever it was.

 Chapter 22, Transcendence

    The first assignment Iznana gave me was to see Stormsgate directly. Unless handing me two dozen books to read counted.

    I had seen the city from golem back when arriving. But that did not let me experience it up close. I had not really seen any alma settlement that way since the outpost.

    We stopped at public houses for single nights or supply stores for a few hours. And I had little time to explore before we moved on.

    They insisted I walk the city as an ordinary alma. And it proved good advice.

    Wandering the streets and perusing shops gave me a better sense for food, clothing and enchantments. I also understood how common the undead really were.

    They usually looked like normal alma. And those with odd features were not outside plausible deniability. But their appearance had no effect on my awareness of their souls.

    One in twenty to thirty alma I saw used unlife animus. Some had bodies physically identical to an alma. Others were using illusions to change their outward appearance.

    Those ones had a variety of shapes behind the light constructs covering them. A few were corpse-like. Yet others had skin tones or bone structures alma could not. And some did not seem organic at all.

    I had spotted two undead with a strange second layer to their souls during the last week. It was a thin non-functional shell that covered all the parts I now knew soul analysis spells interacted with.

    It was similar to the false outer soul I noticed on the outpost¡¯s manager. But he had life animus in both the shell and his true soul.

    The undead used unlife animus. Yet it somehow transformed to life animus when feeding the shell.

    There was also the difference in total animus. The manager had many times more than I had seen from any other alma. And his shell looked like a soul barely above average.

    I could probably create as much or more animus if I converted most of the essence I now controlled. That still did not tell me why he was such an outlier.

    Priest ?fron was outwardly supportive of me exploring. The only problem being his insistence on monitoring me the whole time.

    He did not say I would be followed. But their had been half a dozen souls tracking me since I stepped out of the grand temple.

    Three changed their physical appearance and demeanor frequently. Three seemed invisible and intangible. And one of that second group had something like a shell that I suspected hid their soul from animus detection entirely.

    None of it helped. Their distinctive souls were obvious no matter how well hidden they otherwise were.

    The third day I decided to ditch my stockers in a public restroom. Becoming an amorphous mass of flesh and slithering down the pipes was quite effective.

    I swam through the sewers and came up in another store¡¯s bathroom a few blocks away. Dissolving my soul and creating a new one when I took on alma form again might have been unnecessary.

    It worked. None of my followers tracked me down. Not until I did the same thing in reverse and returned to Special Situations.

    Priest ?fron did not mention the trackers or my maneuver. But Iznana seemed amused at his expense.

    I took a bite of the folded meat pie in my hand. My legs absently kicked in the air behind me.

    The idea to rent a room in one of the middling inns occured on the fourth day. The soft bed I was lounging belly down on told me it was a good choice.

    Some of the kaithsh came from the stipend I was already receiving from Special Situations. The coins were small enough to fit through public plumbing.

    Another portion was telekinetically lifted from the sediment on the bottom of a couple canals. It was surprising how much coinage was under the water.

    The rest of it was involuntarily donated when I wandered through a derelict part of the city in the form of a diminutive alma. I still did not know if the four alma were trying to sexually assault or simply rob me. They had not clarified.

    I learned two things from the experience. It was true alma needed oxygen. Just filtering the gas out of the air around their head quickly made them delirious. The second thing was that alma tasted pretty good.

    I based my current form on my natural appearance. Altering the anatomy to match an alma female left me unrecognizable as myself or Rekon.

    A soul floated before me. It was taken from one of the alma I engulfed as a writhing amalgam of flesh and teeth two days before. Preserving their souls was easy enough.

    I carefully broke several components. The spark vanished. They were repaired an instant later. Then the spark of consciousness flickered back into existence.

    I smiled. It took months of practice. But I could revive a soul. And not just simple ones.

    The soul died and revived a few more times. It was easier every time I did it.

    I had already cut off its ability to feel pain or distress. Nith was entirely capable of doing the same. He simply enjoyed feeling his subjects¡¯ reactions.

    My newest essence pattern fed a treatise on natural irregular animus prisms into my mind. Stripping the reading spell down and letting it give output to me directly allowed me to speed up the process.

    I could handle ten to twenty thousand words a second before I started losing details. It was far easier to track than the quadrillions of molecules I was constantly aware of.

    That comparison was not entirely fair. The part of my mind that tracked the composition of my body and anything in close proximity was not the part that handled thinking like a person.

    They were both me and not truly separate. But making sense of an author¡¯s words and processing that information into my own knowledge was a person skill.

    Iznana was appalled when they realized I could absorb the thicker tomes in around ten seconds. Less if I scanned them and received the output later.

    It somehow made the fact I took five minutes to read a hundred words even more frustrating for them. I thought it made physical reading even less useful.

    Over two hundred separate books were waiting in the pattern. I started with five times that. Hopefully there would be more waiting at Special Situations.

    I shoved the rest of the pie in my mouth. The meat-filled bread was a popular street food. It was easy to eat with your hands and could be reheated as sales demanded.

    The history of hand held foods in Rojin and cultural shift towards fast food after Rillan separated from the kingdom was easily accessible in my mind. I knew every regulation that prevented the spread of foodborne illness and what outbreak motivated it.

    I was starting to understand why Iznana held books in such high regard. The format was flawed at best. But collecting so much information in a stable form was amazing.

    I rolled off the bed and to my feet. The room was small. Yet large enough to pace comfortably.

    My hand dug through one of the bags on the table. I pulled out a fist sized red brown loaf.

    I continued walking and tore a bite out of the savory blood bread. The alma had a surprising variety of cuisines that were actually good. It made all the porridge I ate in the outpost feel like a waste.

    The four alma souls broke and reassembled in different ways as I ruminated. Things were going well. Better than I could hope in most ways.

    I was scheduled to meet with the Rillan empress in the morning. That would be the first obligation to the church. Although it was something I would have needed to do in my identity as Rekon either way.

    Priest ?fron had been obtuse about the purpose of the meeting. It was officially to award Rekon and his mentally scarred followers for their service to the empire.A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

    I inferred there was more to it. Something I would be obligated to address. Which the priest had his own plans for.

    I intended to play along. Provided I would get further access to the knowledge of Special Situations. Not that I expected that knowledge to help my current problem.

    I was confronting a wall. One that I had suspected since before I left the Moors.

    The nature of the spark of consciousness was debated at length. Iznana was surprisingly willing to share works on theoretical animancy.

    It seemed like they were trying to test how fast I could learn. An experiment I was entirely approving of.

    But I quickly realized the alma barely knew the spark existed. Only a few authors talked about it in terms of first hand analysis. And they mostly determined what it did.

    It was the source of animus. It was in all souls. Everyone had only one. The energy it emitted had to be filtered into a usable form by the prism. Reviving someone meant bringing it back.

    I could revive alma now. It would require me repairing their bodies as well. Or altering the prism to produce unlife animus.

    And that did not fix my problem. Gam had no souls to repair. The essence spiral and cultivated patterns it fueled would dissipate as soon as the will was gone.

    The consciousness that possessed that will still remained inside me. But the dead gam slept. And I did not know how to awaken them.

    It made me think of the alma¡¯s idea of a Creator. I had no primary evidence for or against its existence or the story of their gods. The nature of myth and legend suggested the truth was more complicated even if the rough idea was accurate.

    The creature in the Divine Discord seemed like a ruthless monster. It had made conscious beings capable of acting on their own.

    Sheth and the other dark gods changing things proved they were independent from the entity that made them. That meant they were essentially offspring.

    I flopped onto the bed. My gaze on the enchanted light stones embedded in the ceiling.

    Maybe I was being hypocritical. I killed creatures for practicality. That did not bother me. Not when I was simply changing when and how they died.

    As opposed to giving them the innate ability to die in the first place. Making for the sole purpose of destruction. Letting my offspring die. Allowing myself to die bit by bit.

    I paused. Were the gam part of me? I felt like they were. I had always felt it. But what did that really mean?

    My attention turned inward. The cosmos of specks filled my void.

    The void came before everything. It was me more than the collection of particles and energy I claimed as my own and walked around in.

    I had not been able to revive the gam in my void. But I was not the same before.

    My tightly packed essence network relaxed. I let it stretch beyond my body.

    Essence threads filled the room. Then they engulfed the building.

    Soon my essence spiral encompassed the collection of higher end shops around. Then the neighborhood. Then the city.

    I faintly felt the outline of the hills bordering the valley Stormsgate rested in. The feedback was vague. Nothing I could use to get details.

    I stopped when my essence was at the density it had when I left the Moors. I then pulled it all back.

    Some essence was left in the city. But the losses would replenish in minutes.

    I had a level of power I doubted any gam had approached. Yet what was that power?

    The quantity of essence I controlled was a byproduct of the true change. My will. My influence over the reality outside myself.

    I stretched my hand to the ceiling. Fingers splayed as if preparing to catch a ball.

    My will pushed against the edge of my body. I slowly moved past the skin and claimed the air beyond.

    Essence bled off my cultivation as my influence shifted to a new target. A sphere of air above my hand became as much me as my own body.

    I saw all that it was. And I saw what it could be. My will regected reality as it was and substituted what I demanded it become.

    A smooth weight dropped into my hand. I turned it to inspect the shiny orb.

    It was about two inches in diameter and solid gold. The purity was not perfect. I based the molecular composition on that found in the crown coins that represented one hundred and forty four kaithsh.

    The coins had traces of other metals and elements. But they were mostly gold. A metal alma attributed high value to.

    It was not magic. I had used no essence. All I did was force a tiny piece of the world to replace its reality with my own reality.

    I lost four fifths of my essence in the process. But only because I could not control it while focused on creating the sphere of metal.

    Pulling it back in brought me close enough to where I was before. The rest would dissipate over time.

    Essence was a tool I used to collect and extend my influence. A trick for stabilizing it as something usable outside my current focus. But it was all the same in the end. All me.

    I pondered my void. Was I thinking about this wrong?

    Awakening created my void. Or left it as an empty space. And before that it was filled by the figments of my unformed mind.

    I had been much like the sleeping gam within me. Trapped in myself. No will to let me go beyond that.

    Gam needed will to exist. They could not be restored because they had no will in their dreaming state.

    I had always tried to connect them to the world to wake them up. But I had been awoken and willed myself into the world.

    Did I have to wake them up first? Was having a conscious will needed to connect them again?

    I could not make them lucid before. But I was different now.

    The dreaming minds glittered throughout me. I reached out to them.

    Memories and experience flowed through my awareness. The texture of moss, rage at a petty slight, the tingle of a lover¡¯s touch and hard smoothness of a stone licked simply to know what it was like.

    The person part of me was swept away. But the rest of me reached further. My essence spiral began to unravel.

    I held many thousands of lifes. Connected to and part of them all. And pulled them together.

    The sparks resisted my desire. They were as they had always been. Changing was beyond those innate limits.

    I rejected those limits. Within myself I was all. Reality was me and I was reality. Any restrictions had to be part of me as well.

    The connections shifted from my consciousness to those I held. Sleeping minds touched and overlapped.

    Something shifted and the links began forming on their own. The cosmos of separate consciousness became a web of nodes all aware of each other.

    An amorphous impression started forming between them. There was no physical space within me. But the illusion of one took shape.

    I opened my eyes. The mattress was soft below. The weight of the gold ball pressed on my stomach.

    My cultivation was gone. The essence forming it was thick in the air. Yet it had all left my control.

    I sat up. The heavy orb rolled off me.

    My flesh should have been dying. I refused to allow it.

    The chaotic collective dream within me solidified. I watched the disparate memories and perspectives overlap and reinforce each other.

    What else did a reality need? A common agreement of what was real and what was not seemed good enough to make a world real.

    I slid off the bed. My heart beat. Blood pumped. I lived. I willed it so.

    My hand clenched before me. Bone and tendon moving because I demanded it do so.

    It was all different. Something changed when I restructured my void. Restructured myself.

    A layer of removal between me and the world I infringed upon was gone. That unnoticed barrier had let me forget I was not part of this.

    There was a mounting pressure. One forcing down on my will. Pushing back my influence.

    I turned to the side. My body stayed where it was. An abyss of absence stretched out to eternity.

    It was nothing like my void. The place inside me was not an independent existence. But the abyss was real. Yet it had neither time, space nor substance.

    A will mirroring my own looked back at me. I knew it. I had known it since I first appeared in G?ri The¡¯s workshop.

    It had always pressed down on me like the weight of the atmosphere pressed down on my body. Constant and forgotten.

    I only noticed the opposing force when I pushed against the limits of my ability. Holding too much essence. Pushing my presence too far. Creating the golden ball from nothing.

    It reached out now. Crushing will like I had never experienced pressed down. I tried to resist. To impose my existence over the truth that I did not. That I had never existed in its eyes.

    My body would have collapsed to the floorboards. But time was no longer passing. We fought in the gap between two moments.

    The will crushed me down to a point of presence. Yet it could not force me out entirely.

    I remained anchored to the world by the body I inhabited. By the essence in the air. The gam in the Moors and former alma beyond. By everything my influence touched.

    It was very slowly losing ground. I was weaker. But it could not win completely. And I would resist until I won out.

    The force abruptly pulled away. I felt it move around my body without suppressing me directly.

    Reality bent and broke in a way reminiscent of my own power over it. Except this was far stronger and outside my control.

    Space collapsed around me. And I was in the abyss.

    No body. No form. Only me.

 Chapter 23, Rehatch (End of Book 1)

    Nith floated. The rhythm of his heart filled his awareness. It slowed and stopped. Unlife overtook life.

    The journey-mage emerged from a basin of amethyst. He stepped onto the worn stone of the temple chamber.

    Unlife rich fluid steadily dripped from the body hanging over the pool. Barbed cords of interlocked bone burrowed through her flesh and held the greater vampire in place.

    She regenerated. And the unlife parasites tore her open again.

    Nith twisted his bleached hand into a command gesture. The parasitic cords bent and stretched.

    He inspected the ruined face. A single yellow eye watched him. The other was shredded by a bone cord emerging through the socket. It twisted into the rope of parasites connecting to the arched ceiling.

    Her lips twitched up at the corner. Nith returned the smile. A gesture. And the cords ripped outwards. Flesh and fractured bone fell, the unlife within gone.

    The master-mage watched through the eyes of birds and rodents. The dead animals tracked three living warriors.

    Nith lay further up the narrow canyon. Walls worn by water and wind twisted to hide him from the mage-hunters.

    His milky ichor seeped out of the cavities torn open in his left leg and side. The curses granted by the god of his pursuers lingered and slowed any attempt to heal.

    The hostile magic ate at his animus. There was little time remaining.

    The largest hunter held the war-axe that carried the potent blessing. Behind followed the smaller form of their healer.

    A tige held up the rear. His metallic silver hair and crystalline green eyes confirmed the mage was not simply a short alma.

    All three remained alert. They knew the necromancer would be most dangerous cornered on the edge of destruction.

    The warrior slid into sight. Her eyes focused on the broken soul-mage.

    She lept forward. The world slowed as the cursed axe fell. A pale hand raised in desperation.

    Flame burst forth. It engulfed the mage-hunter in unnatural hues.

    The weapon sunk into Nith¡¯s shoulder. But its wielder stumbled back as her soul burned.

    The healer tried to cast something on the burning woman. But the spellwork ignited and his soul caught in turn.

    Lightning arched over the burning alma and reached for Nith. Yet the guiding animus never made it.

    The tige joined his allies. The three souls burned away as Nith laughed in manic relief.

    The child struggled to draw breath. His body grew numb. The weight on his chest fading. The points of piercing pain going last.

    Nith felt nothing. Only the presence of the boy atop him remained. Not the boy. The soul within.

    The apprentice-mage reached out and touched what he never could before. He tore it free.

    Warmth and agony flooded back in. It passed quickly.

    His sight focused. An ornately robed figure stood above. Her yellow eyes watched the boy pinned below the twitching and soulless body of his opponent.

    A tiny smile tugged up the corners of her mouth. Nith saw her smile as his creations ripped her apart from the inside.

    She turned away from the victory and the dead child. Nith turned away from the scraps of viscera that remained of the closest thing he had to a mother.

    He pushed the heavy body off. A crude shiv fell from the boy¡¯s hand. And the master-necromancer laughed as three of the church¡¯s best assassins crumbled away.

    The stab wounds were gone. Healed by Azual¡¯s potent flesh-shaping. But she was dead. Nith killed her after his apotheosis.

    He looked down to his hands. Cuts and grime could not hide his navy blue skin. They were too small. Still delicate. Still weak.

    This was wrong. It had already happened. Long ago.

    Nith remembered it all. They had touched the soul as an apprentice. They achieved undeath as a journey-mage. And first burned a soul as a master-mage.

    Black eyes. A twisted grin of satisfaction on dark gray lips. Their soul unravelling.

    And they died as a master-mage. They were dead. Than what was this?

    Nith looked down at their hands. They were no longer small and blue. Nor were they elegant and as white as bleached bone.

    Gray skin darkened slightly towards the palms and inner wrists. Black fingernails reflected like volcanic glass.

    Nith floated in a maelstrom of images and impressions. The glimpses never resolved. But Nith remained solid.

    They looked up to the chaos. And they saw beyond. An immense presence watched them from outside.

    Nith was at the center of everything they were. And for the first time they could remember, they felt small.

    Eyes of the absence between spaces held a will older and vaster than Nith could comprehend. It reached out with a formless limb of something Nith could only perceive by what it displaced.

    They crashed awake, conscious with shock and immediacy. Nith was tightly curled. A barrier pressed down from all sides.

    Muscles flexed by instinct. An elbow broke through and Nith shoved their arm free. Attempting to stand was enough to fracture the rest.

    The necromancer blinked the blurry film out of their eyes. Wobbly legs stood on bare earth.

    They looked up at the sprawling gnarled tree overhead. No. It was a bush. They were simply short enough to stand under the canopy of the shrub.

    Nith had looked through the senses of small animals before. Rodents and birds made the best spies for a skilled soul-mage with time to craft them.

    This was the first time they experienced such a diminutive perspective with their own body. They inspected that body.

    A slight build reminiscent of a spindly child. The coloration was hidden by a sticky black fluid. Yet the tail made it easy to connect the shape to the rebels that attacked their army.

    Nith started searching for the control mechanism. It was made challenging by the foreign nature of their soul.

    A dense cloud filled them. Threads of the same energy flowed in a continuous circle within the cloud.

    They recognized the energy as the invisible animus that fueled the rogue servants. But it was far clearer now. They could even sense it defused in the air around them.

    Nith had to assume this was their soul. In whatever form they now existed. The question of how they were alive at all was a privilege for after they ensured their freedom.

    Some of the structures looked reminiscent of soul organelle they knew. The details were different. But the macroscopic mechanisms were there.

    It was concerningly easy to intuit the parallels. Nith realized they were not clinically deducing those parallels.If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.

    There was an instinct that let them feel the purpose and principles behind what they saw. And their reason was only extrapulating from it.

    That was bad. Helpful. But still bad. The underpinnings of their mind had been tampered with.

    Nith knew the damage a soul-mage could do by altering salience and the subconscious. The conscious mind was a city built on the bedrock of the instinct. Change the foundation, and everything above it would shift.

    That could bring it all crashing down. But a true master could calculate and control the changes. Ensuring the conscious mind resolved into something new and purposeful.

    Finding no control mechanism was little consolation. The intended effects were likely already intrinsic to them.

    That left nothing to do about it. They were essentially a new individual created from what they had been.

    Nith inspected the thin fragments of shell they had emerged from. They could have inferred what it was even without the two unhatched eggs a pace away.

    The material of the unhatched eggs was identical. And the size would have fit their curled up form perfectly.

    The argument that reversing the changes would essentially be killing themselves to recreate the previous Nith was easy to make. That ease told them a lot.

    They would not have preferred to be anothers creation if they were still their previous self. Nith did not feel concerned about their subconscious being altered. Acceptance of the change and a positive view towards their current state had to be part of the alteration.

    It was a relief to realize they still despised the idea of anyone else actively controlling them. And serving any master beyond their own momentary self interest was anathema.

    That hopefully meant the changes to instincts focused on ecological behavior and not subservience. A mage this skilled would have no need to hide their influence. They could make Nith completely loyal and unable to conceive of rebellion.

    They broke off a piece of shell in their hand. It was too fragile to be a decent tool or weapon.

    Weapons and manual tools were not Nith¡¯s preferred approach. But the unfamiliar nature of their soul made arcane methods risky.

    They reached out to the animus in their environment. The bush and nearby plants were immediately obvious.

    Worms in the soil. A burrow of ground squirrels. Songbirds in the tall grass. It was as easy to sense as before.

    Nith pulled it in. Not hard enough to be noticed. That would wait until they knew how perilous their position was.

    Threads of the strange animus brought life animus back to the necromancer. But the leeched power would not merge.

    Of course it would not. They had no compatible prism to convert the life animus.

    The secondary prism Nith created during their apotheosis was what let them make life animus into unlife. It could then be merged with their soul safely.

    The necromancer was less and less certain the stuff they used now was animus. It broke so many rules that the term felt inapplicable.

    Whatever mechanism translated their soul structure failed to carry over the prism. Or did it?

    Nith stopped trying to assimilate the life animus. They instead focused on making unlife animus. The conversion went smoothly.

    The literal function carried over. But the practical use was gone.

    A tiny soul flame ignited above their palm. The animus was still usable. It just had to be manipulated externally to their soul.

    Nith tentatively pulled at the ambient power that matched that within them. They expected their soul to reach out and collect it. Instead the energy flowed towards them.

    It sank into their channels without a need to integrate. The cloud of denser power did the same. And the cycle within sped up.

    Nith watched with distrust. Animus did not respond to control without channels guiding it.

    Their manipulation of external animus was still performed by a soul organelle interacting with the animus. An organelle made of channels.

    Nith crept away from the eggs. The grass grew tall next to the bush. It looked disturbed. As if something had walked through it recently.

    They stayed under the cover of the shrubbery. More of the loose power was drawn into their soul as they went.

    The mage tried to follow the threads and their effects. It did not make sense.

    There was no source. No spark of consciousness marking Nith as a living thing. The power simply moved in a long convoluted loop with strands pulling off to maintain their body.

    Were they going to unravel if they stopped collecting it? No. The total quantity was increasing. They simply could not tell where from.

    Nith ducked under a branch. It took them a moment to realize they would need to crouch to stay under the canopy.

    They looked back. The bushes were not growing shorter. They had increased in height.

    Pulling leafy branches to the side let them see over the grass. It was only by a few inches. But they were taller than the ground cover.

    Adding that much material to their body in minutes would take power. A lot of power. Restructuring air or other ambient matter was costly. Creating mass from nothing took even more animus.

    They inspected their body. It looked more solid. Less like a child and more like a teenager. Would they reach adulthood soon?

    The tail was no longer the most obvious parallel with the rebels. They had the same build. Wider hips than shoulders and no sign of nipples or breasts.

    Nith did not have a strong opinion about the extra limb or the feminine genitalia between their legs. It was significant for what it said about how they returned to life.

    Was it purposeful? They remembered the gaze of a being older than the stars and greater than the vastness between.

    Glassy black nails bit into soft palms. Ichor dripped from their clemched fists.

    Nith hated those eyes. The sense of insignificance before them. The knowledge that all they were was a grain of sand on the edge of that ocean. An ocean that could sweep them away with less than a whim.

    It made them want to kill something. Butcher an army. Raze a city. Reap a world. Stand atop a mountain of skulls so high that thing could no longer deny the mage¡¯s power. No longer render them impotent by its very existence.

    Nith was distracted by four souls on the edge of their awareness. They had extended their reach in anger. But the discovery washed away the burst of rage.

    Souls might not have been right. They were dense spirals of the same power Nith now wielded. Which was what the mage was using as a soul.

    Nith entered the grass. Voices carried to them as they grew closer.

    ¡°I don¡¯t think anyone is doubting you. It is just hard to explain.¡± The speaker sounded close to an alma. Yet the phonemes were all slightly wrong.

    Nith had heard Rojin spoken by many species. Not all had the same anatomy an alma used. But they had never heard the light almost musical tones of this creature.

    ¡°I don¡¯t care if we explain it. I¡¯m alive again. And I want to know how the battle ended.¡± The second voice was a higher pitch. Otherwise it resembled the first.

    ¡°Din killed the bastard. Ripped the head off and crushed his pasty face. Everyone stopped fighting after that.¡± The first responded.

    ¡°We still couldn¡¯t move. But we stopped attacking.¡± A third voice added.

    ¡°Freeing you guys was the easiest and the longest part.¡± The first speaker cut back in.

    ¡°And we appreciate it. Fuck the mage.¡± The last voice was a little deeper. The other three echoed the words together. Fuck the mage.

    Nith grasped the souls and ripped them out. The mage might have been missing a lot of the details. But they could infer what the creatures were talking about.

    The networks of energy immediately began dispersing. Nith had no idea where to start preventing it or restoring the consciousness. The principals were too different.

    The soul-mage straightened and strode to the collapsed bodies. The reaped power entered their spiral and it swelled in density.

    Nith noticed a percentage of the energy disappearing into their flesh. They grew taller with each step.

    The cleared space was obviously an established path. It wound off into the shrublands in both directions.

    Four cadavers lay crumpled where they fell. They were the same species as the rogue servants. The same species Nith was now.

    The rags they wore were little better than those on the necromancer¡¯s army. They might be the same rags.

    Nith inspected the corpses with a frown. They were dissolving. And quickly.

    The flesh was already blotchy when they stepped onto the path. It was rapidly becoming a dark goo that dripped off the glossy bones.

    Nith had seen something like it before. Skilled alchemists could create bodies in tandem with a necromancer. Ones with flesh optimal for unlife animus.

    The drawback was such flesh broke down in the absence of animus. It would deteriorate into the same elements it was created from as soon as the undead died.

    That did not matter if you planned for the creation to survive for a while. But it made reusing the costly bodies impossible.

    Nith studied the four. Three were of roughly adult height. But one of them was far smaller.

    Their brief glimpse of the intact body before it melted revealed a child. Or something that resembled a child.

    It looked a lot like Nith had shortly after hatching. Taller than they hatched. But not matured yet.

    Nith reevaluated themselves. They were as tall as these escaped servants had been. And anatomically an adult again.

    The new opening between their legs and flushed folds protecting it emphasized that. They were more aware of it and the passage linking it to their core.

    An odd pressure was becoming harder to ignore. Nith had not performed bodily functions in many years. It was hard to place the need they were experiencing.

    They would have to learn their own nature again. Then they could turn to reclaiming their mastery. And finally the conquest that waited beyond.