Nanatsu no Maken ga Shihai suru - Volume 8 - Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

Rivermoore: A Minister’s Duty

“…There they go.”

As Rivermoore’s concert let fly the opening salvo, the exit from the kingdom to the third layer was defended by several upperclassmen—and Guy’s squad. Lesedi’s orders prioritized survival rates, and that meant keeping a solid team posted there. Even if the undead swarmed them, they should be able to hold out until help could arrive.

“I hope they’re okay,” Katie whimpered, pacing back and forth. “Urgh, I wish we could be there…”

“Relax,” Guy said, putting his hands on her shoulders. “Our skills are more suited to defense, and we don’t know how the assault will go. Securing a retreat path is a vital role.”

“Unh, sorry,” Marco said, hanging his head. “I too slow…”

“This is not your fault, Marco! Thanks for using that big body of yours to keep us all safe! You’ve been a huge, huge help!”

Katie quickly put her arms around his big leg. Having the troll with them might diminish their mobility, but few things could match his defense. Marco guarding this location meant the front lines could focus on the battle at hand.

“…Win this thing, Oliver,” Pete whispered, eyes on the expanse before him. He did not ask his friend to stay safe. On that front, mages simply kept the faith.

“Progressio.”

Khiirgi’s chant activated the pre-prepped magic circle, and dark-red growths—somewhere between vines and trunks—reached up from the ground, lifting her body skyward. Oliver momentarily feared these were some beast’s tentacles, but on closer examination, they were clearly rooted in the soil.

“Uh, are those plants?” Yuri asked incredulously.

“The soil here, though…”

It was difficult to believe. The magic particles here were agreeable to the undead but offered no boon to anything vegetative. Guy’s tool plants would not grow, and Oliver had yet to see a single weed growing anywhere in the kingdom.

But the answer to his query came from Lesedi’s bountiful knowledge and experience. As she bounded up the vines after Khiirgi, she yelled, “Undead plants?! You clearly love nothing more than defiling elf sorcery, Alp!”

“Haaa-ha! I’m bucking against repression! This has no place in nature, so back home it was forbidden, profane!”

Khiirgi rode the vines higher, cackling, as still more came after Lesedi, as if they had minds of their own. But Lesedi’s pursuit was relentless, dodging, parrying, or using them as footholds to propel herself after her quarry.

“But I can’t dismiss those stipulations out of hand, either. These unnatural acts do turn the elementals against me, and that makes things rather difficult for an elf mage. Yet, I can’t help but feel that is also a curse, binding the elf race to that moldy naturism. Are you with me there?”

“Nope. Don’t give a shit about your home life!” Lesedi snapped, hurling lightning.

Khiirgi canceled it with the oppositional element, still monologuing.

“Even when I was at home, I was always wondering. Elves have an inherent aptitude for magic, far greater than humans. We lag behind on reproduction and environmental adaptability, but our long lives more than make up for it. So when the ancient wars were fought over domination of this world, why did we lose to you?”

“Bad strategies. Inadequate supply lines.”

“Haaa-ha! That’s what I love about you! But I have another theory. It was not a matter of preparedness—it was their attitudes that were lacking. Elves could not match humanity’s pursuit of sorcery, lacked the arrogance to trod roughshod over every principle and doctrine. They hesitated to even take a step in that direction! No wonder that fallen god loved them more than humans.”

Her speech was taking on a solemn vibe, yet Lesedi was still slicing her way through the onslaught of vines.

“Even the word Alp was once used by the ordinaries in one corner of the Union to describe elves in general. They believed we were child-snatching monsters. Was that the result of human propaganda? Or was that based on actual historical events? I don’t know the truth, nor do I care, but I loved the idea of an evil elf. As we are now, that notion is more a blessing than an insult.”

The fully grown vines had Khiirgi suspended at their apex. She had her hands folded before her chest, like an actor on a stage.

“I am an outcast elf. Drawn to the immoral, beguiled by my desires, I was driven from my home and washed up at Kimberly. My parents lay together, two virtuous elves—yet the product was the devil you see before you. If there is any meaning to that, I’d call it a sign. A reminder that our species is trapped in a dead end, in need of guidance to the next evolution.”

Her lips twisted. Her sorcery had begun in isolation back home, her path discovered during her wanderings in the world of man.

“Immorality and the profane are my calling! I am an Alp! Khiirgi ‘Avarice’ Albschuch!”

Khiirgi’s undead plants were still growing. New vines cropped up, pushing her and Lesedi higher and higher until the ground beneath was like a veritable tír forest.

“Hrm. They grow as fast as we mow them,” noted Nanao.

“Our damage can’t keep up with their speed. At this rate—”

Before Oliver could finish, a blade shot out of a vine’s shadow, aimed at his back. He spotted it, dodged, and fired a lightning spell to counter, but to no avail. It fled to a different shadow right after the attack. In the last battle, it had used the bone birds above, but now it was using Khiirgi’s forest.

“The quantity of shadows is only increasing, and its advantage with them,” said Oliver.

“Should we head up, too? I’m pretty good at that stuff,” Yuri offered.

“No, ascending could let the zahhak target Ms. Ingwe. We’ve gotta take it out at ground level.”

Bearing both the situation and their role in this fight in mind, Oliver looked at his companions. When he could find no way to proceed, Nanao’s and Yuri’s instincts often prevailed.

“This is our second battle with this foe. What are your observations?”

“Um, well, doesn’t seem like it can stay in the shadows all that long. Ten seconds max?”

“And the traversal between the shadows is hardly swift. No more than walking across the surface at least.”

Even as they fought, both had been carefully analyzing their foe. Watching the shadows around him, Oliver nodded.

“Agreed. And I’ll add that there seems to be a minimum size requirement on the shadows it passes through. It uses its own shadow to retreat but must use existing shadows to emerge. Which gives us a lead. Clypeus!”

Inspiration struck, and Oliver cast a blockade spell, creating a wall not far behind them. As yet, it served no purpose, but that was the plan. Just like Nanao’s fight with the dragoon. If their foe could not be beaten in one move, then multiple steps would do.

“Lock a location, find the moment, drive it there. Follow my lead.”

“Gladly!”

“On it!”

“Hfff!”

The instant he was in one-step, one-spell range, Albright swung his blade down from on high. Ames thrust forward, aiming for his wrist, but he’d predicted that and shifted his swing to strike her athame. The force behind the blow nearly unbalanced her, and a backslash from below came close—

“Hahhh—!”

A blow designed to overpower her guard, but she put her left hand to the blade itself to block it and absorbed the momentum, launching herself backward. Albright grunted and abandoned his pursuit. She’d used his strength to right herself, the resulting posture a marked improvement.

“Hmm, you’ve got some moves,” said Albright. “Shrewd use of your shrewish frame.”

“Worn out already? Then let’s take it down a notch,” Ames replied, striking a mid-stance.

Albright snorted. “Your taunts miss their mark. Why should I close in?” With that haughty remark, he raised his athame high in an intimidating stance. “Scamper on in—I’ll be here to crush you. Ideal way to handle rodents.”

“Hardly, as I shall not scamper.”

Returning snark for snark, Ames moved out, her blade searching for a chance to slash the tomcat’s throat.

“You ’ave yet to amuse. Try a little ’arder, eh?”

“You did not just say that, you li’l prick!”

“Our boss works us like frickin’ dogs!”

Ames’s teammates were relentlessly swapping places, and Rossi was weathering the storm, looking underwhelmed. He was clearly getting under their skin, but what did he care?

“I suppose it’s better than your league match. Fine, I’ll play a round.”

Rossi abruptly leaned forward. They assumed it was his patented roll and leaped back—but Rossi maintained that unbalanced lean. Yet, this was no lunge, either—he slid along the ground, passing between the girls before they could react and tapping their backs with his knuckles.

“Wha…?”

“H-how did he…?!”

“Koutz fencers prance upon land or cloud. I am getting the ’ang of it, no?”

He turned, smirking. The Ames duo came after him again—but theirs was not the only battle raging here. Albright faced one, Rossi two—which meant the remaining three were on Andrews. Although in practice, he was facing more than twice that number.

“…Between the corporeal and shadow splinters, eight sure is a crowd,” said Andrews.

“No point holding back here,” commented one Mistral splinter.

“We’ll make it quick!” said another.

From the get-go, they were going all out with the splinters and transformations. Mistral had assumed the fight would hinge on buying time to make the splinters, but to his surprise, Andrews had hung back, watching him work.

Now Andrews glanced around the eight approaching figures—

“Impetus.”

“Whoa?!”

“Yikes!”

The gust hit not from the fore but from behind, pushing hard against the Mistrals. Andrews’s eyes caught how they moved.

“I see. Impetus!”

Before they could even try to dodge, a blade of wind sliced the two corporeal splinters in half. Andrews backed off a step, dodging the counterspells, and glanced over the six remaining foes.

“At this range, shadows won’t fool anyone. The corporeals might—but while three of you recovered your footing by adjusting your center of gravity, the splinters righted themselves a beat too late. You should have matched them.”

“…Not likely.”

“And leave ourselves exposed?”

It was easier to distinguish splinters from the real thing on impulsive movements than calculated ones. Andrews had taken advantage of that and left Mistral gnashing his teeth.

“Since you don’t want anyone spotting the differences, you have a bad habit of holding off on spell usage till the last second. You had the numbers advantage, yet you let me make the first move. If you’ve had time to make proper preparations like your previous match, that would be one thing, but—on a chance encounter like this, it’s obvious your tricks aren’t fully meshing with magic combat.”

“Damn, hit us where it hurts.”

“You’re tearing us a new one!”

With fewer splinters, they changed formations. A momentary shift in focus—and a lightning bolt hit them from the side. They tried to leap back but couldn’t fully dodge.

“Gah…!”

“You’re a serious man, Mistral,” Andrews intoned. “You’re paying me too much attention.”

Left arm numbed from the bolt, Mistral swore, glaring at the source. Rossi grinned back, having fired a spell between the Ames duo. The two girls quickly backed off, regrouping with Mistral.

“Sorry! Couldn’t pin him down!”

“Rossi pisses me the hell off…!”

“Don’t worry,” Mistral assured them. “I messed up first.”

He gritted the teeth Ames’s slap had loosened. And he had been too focused on Andrews’s advice to watch his surroundings. Lots to work on, but he’d have to beat himself up in the postmortem after.

“You don’t get to the finals for nothing, huh? But we’ve had more than our fair share of screwups!”

Mistral raised his athame, whipping up his team’s spirits all the while. His teammates and Ames’s put their heads in the game.

Watching them all from the back, Tim ground his teeth. With his casting hand down, he couldn’t even heal himself. He had a pouch full of poison, and the virulence of it was eating away at him.

“…No poison on hand I can use against kids without a wand. Goddamn. I came prepped for the big guy, and it bit me in the ass.”

“Awooooooooo!”

Fay let loose a howl before shooting forward and tackling one of Bowles’s teammates. With both legs phased to werewolf form, his speed was fully bestial charge. Spencer barely blocked the blow, but he was nonetheless steadily forced back.

“…Ngh…! You’re really going for it, Mr. Willock! I ain’t into being on the receiving end of this violence!”

“Funny—I’m the same.”

Fay flashed a grin, pressing his animalistic advantage. It looked like a one-sided fight, but from behind, Stacy could tell Spencer was handling things well—he was half pretending to be on the ropes, making it look like he was barely blocking, trying to bait Fay into a swing too large.

“…Huh. So you can move,” Stacy said. “You should have done that in the match.”

“We meant to!” Bowles wailed. He swung his athame, and Stacy batted it aside into a counterthrust. Their duel was playing out at one-step, one-spell range, with Chela watching over it from a distance.

“…I see. A pair of aces, with you as the commander. That’s your team’s true style.”

“An honor to be noticed and recognized,” Rodney Quark said with a sigh. He was facing Chela at casting range. “If you hear anyone dissing our previous match, maybe drop a word? They’re better than that would suffice. At this rate, our marriage prospects are slim…”

In the league match, Andrews had spotted his hiding place and taken him out early, giving him no chance to show off.

“That does sound urgent,” Chela replied, wincing. “If you can down us here, I promise we’ll spread the unvarnished truth. Will that do?”

“Splendidly, Ms. McFarlane. I’m so glad we could come to an agreement.”

They abandoned conversation and went back to their spell duel.

Some distance away, the three supervisors were glaring one another down. Team Bowles was overseen by a seventh-year from the old council camp: Elise Cuvier.

“I expected as much, but your sister really doesn’t attack,” she said to Gwyn. “Is there a constraint upon her, or are you just playing it close to the chest? Which is it, Sherwood siblings?”

“If it was the first, we’d hardly answer. And if it was the second, the answer will only come out if you back us into a corner. Either way, you’re wasting your breath, Cuvier.”

“So unsporting, Spellstrings. The melodies you play are far more eloquent.”

Cuvier’s wand wavered, and the first syllable of a spell crossed her tongue. Gwyn’s response had already begun. That syllable narrowed down her spell selection, and with decisiveness matched by few even in the upper forms, he could often get a counterspell off first, but—

“Frigus!”

—as he focused on the enemy before him, a fireball descended from overhead. Shannon spotted it and canceled it with the oppositional element, but the foe behind that surprise attack was far above. A trio of brooms wheeled in the sky. Gwyn frowned.

“Spells from that height? And accurate despite the brooms’ speed, too… Team Liebert?”

“Pretty cool, huh? They caught my eye in that last match. All three are fine, but Ms. Asmus in particular will be an excellent pawn. Let my promising juniors get a taste of victory’s nectar.”

“Not happening,” Gwyn said, dead serious. “We’re too busy looking after our own little brother.”

Cuvier smirked and aimed her wand.

Team Horn and the zahhak were still battling in the shadow of the undead plants. They chiseled away at each other’s nerves, exchanging breathless blows, and at last Oliver spied the moment he’d been waiting for.

“Time to seal the deal, Nanao!”

“Gladly!”

Nanao braced her katana at the hip. On the breath before her chant, Oliver and Yuri leaped together.

“Gladio Ferrum!”

A doublecant severing spell shot beneath the boys’ feet, slicing through the trees around like reaping wheat. Their base undone, the unnatural trees began to topple, but since the cuts matched the angle, the direction of that fall was preordained. All three members of Team Horn were soon out of the landing zone, but the zahhak had no need. It simply ducked into its shadow, waiting for the collapse to complete.

“It dove! Fortis Flamma!”

“Fortis Flamma!”

Oliver’s and Yuri’s flames ignited all the fallen trees. Ordinarily, fresh timber didn’t make good kindling, but the reversed attributes meant the undead plants went up with a sinister dark-red flame. But what mattered here was not the burning lumber—but that those roiling flames coated the entire area.

“…Fire’s blocked every escape route,” said Oliver. “Only one place it can go. Only one shadow a yard across it can reach within ten seconds.”

The fallen trees were covered in flames, and the zahhak could not escape that way. The wavering flames disrupted the remaining shadows, making Shadow Crawl itself difficult. Under those limited conditions, the zahhak had few choices, and the time limit on the crawl itself meant it could not stop to think.

The zahhak found a shadow within that ten-second range and popped its face out to take a breath. In that one defenseless moment, all three athames bore down.

“Yes, there. Tonitrus!”

“Tonitrus!”

“Tonitrus!”

Three bolts all struck home, and the zahhak fell over. They hit it with another round to be sure, but it didn’t budge. Certain the beast was felled, Oliver let out a sigh of relief.

The groundwork had paid off, leading their way to victory. Reduce the zahhak’s options with the burning trees and lead it to an exit of their own devising. The final shadow it emerged from was beneath the wall Oliver had made with that blockade spell. Their foe assumed it had chosen that spot itself, but they had led it there.

“Yuri, grab the bone fragment. Ms. Ingwe! Ours is down! Expect cover fire from below!”

The fight was still raging up above. Lesedi was almost dancing through the air.

“What, already?” Khiirgi gasped. “That was a pretty powerful creature!”

“And they’re the top of their year. Four against one. Wanna beg Rivermoore for more backup?!”

“No, no, I have my own.”

Even as she spoke, two more students swooped in on brooms. Seeing Albright and Andrews, Lesedi clenched her jaw.

“Team Andrews? They got through our side, then!”

“I’ve got good kids on my side, too. Haaa-ha! Four-on-three. More fun to come!”

Khiirgi let out a cry of glee, but Lesedi’s voice grew quiet.

“…I’ve been meaning to tell you something, Khiirgi.”

“Mm?”

“You’re a powerful mage. One of the top ten fighters in the seventh year. On combat alone, I can still match you, but on the total magic package—you’ve got me beat.”

“My, my! Where’s this coming from? You’re making me blush. Not often you shower me with compliments.”

The elf put her hands on her cheeks, looking bashful.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Lesedi said. “My point is: You’ve got a fatal flaw that pulls the rug out from under all your raw talent.”

Khiirgi blinked and looked at the juniors around her.

“Oh? My, my, my.”

Andrews and Albright grinned. The disguises covering their faces fell away, and the true faces beneath emerged—Mistral’s teammates.

“On to us already? Here’s a message from our leader.”

““Payback’s a bitch—and so are you.””

Both fired staggered spells, the first of which Khiirgi canceled with the oppositional element. The second, she dodged with a leap from an undead tree leaf, easily moving herself out of harm’s way. But this was mate in five. To avoid the third spell Lesedi fired at her feet, the elf was forced into a Sky Walk.

“This is what avarice gets you.”

Lesedi kicked off the undead plant herself, Sky Walking in close. Khiirgi waited till the last second, then double feinted into a second Sky Walked sidestep. Lesedi’s kick caught only empty air—or appeared to, but her sole trod firmly on the void. Khiirgi winced, realizing her mistake. She’d already used both Sky Walk steps—but Lesedi had one remaining.

“Get it yet? Your flaw’s quite simple. Nobody fucking likes you.”

She had her quarry right where she wanted her, and the Hard Knocker went into a spin kick. Khiirgi had no other choice but to use her left arm as a shield, yet Lesedi’s kick went through that bone and shattered against the Alp’s ribs.

“Success,” Mistral muttered upon receiving word from his companions. Andrews and Rossi were still fighting them—but at that, they paused.

“Then our fight is done. Thanks for playing along.”

“Ooh, caught that lady unawares, eh? Wish I ’ad been there.”

Rossi’s spirits immediately soared. He was outright whistling.

“She disgraced me first.” Mistral scowled. “And I’m none too pleased about having the opportunity handed to me. Aren’t you old-council camp?” he asked Andrews.

“Our families are. But our priority now has to be victory in the combat league. If we’re dragged any deeper into the election back fighting, it’ll effect our performance.”

Andrews was clearly highly annoyed to have been brought here at all. His frown deepened.

“And on a personal basis, I’m against this approach. President Godfrey demonstrated his character in the senior league prelim. That may have allowed Mr. Rivermoore to catch him off guard, but his choices at the start of the match also ensured minimal student casualties. The old council is merely reaping the benefits—and that’s a pathetic way to win an election. How can they inspire any kind of following like that?”

Perhaps in his first year—before Richard Andrews met Oliver and Nanao—this would not have occurred to him. But he knew better now. He knew both victory and defeat could be achieved the right way and the wrong way.

“The old council needs to prove themselves. Show us who they are and how they’ll lead Kimberly in the future. The best way to do that is to go up against President Godfrey in peak condition and win. If they did that, no one would complain.”

“Exactly. Who wants these dull cowards ’olding sway over our lives, eh?” Rossi chimed in.

Then Andrews glanced up, receiving a message via the mana frequency from his flying familiars.

“Ms. Khiirgi sounded the retreat. We’ll have to invent an excuse. We’re done, Albright.”

“One minute. Haven’t yet crushed this shrew.”

“Not so fast,” said Ames. “I have a wild beast to dispatch.”

“Go, go, Jaz!”

“The Jazinator!”

Albright and Ames were completely ignoring the spirit of things, entirely absorbed in their duel. Tim glanced at that—as Mistral healed his hand—and laughed.

“Least you’re having fun. That’s how Kimberly kids should be,” said Mistral. “Still, pull out for now, Ames. I’ll ref your fight with him later. You can go at it all you like once you’re back on campus.”

This proved enough to make both sheathe their blades. Watching them reluctantly back down, Tim thought: If that’s all it takes to stop them, this generation’s a lot better behaved than mine.

“Tch!”

“Eeeeek…!”

“KYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

Team Liebert had been circling on their brooms, dropping spells on the teams below—but now a griffin was hot on their heels. No one on their team was really a skilled flier, and they were ill-equipped to handle a beast built for aerial combat. Chela glanced up at that and smiled.

“…I see Lyla’s here. Isn’t Katie so nice?”

The perfect reinforcement. Katie’s team might have been tasked with securing the escape route, but she’d also been poised to send her griffin out as needed. The ideal foil to Team Liebert’s long-range-spell bombardment.

“…Without support from above, we’re sunk…”

“Not yet…!”

And with their backup gone, Team Bowles would have to handle things on their own. Fay’s charge and Stacy’s and Chela’s spells weren’t making that easy. Their formation was a classic one vanguard, two rearguard, but since the two casters didn’t hesitate to land spells dangerously close to Fay himself, his headlong charges never left him exposed. The strategy hinged on how tough his werewolf form was and the rock-solid trust that lay between them.

Team Bowles was being pushed back but grimly hanging on—and then hands clapped down upon their shoulders.

“Good effort. If the situation allowed it, I’d love to let you finish things…,” Elise Cuvier said. She’d cut off her fight with the Sherwoods and regrouped with her juniors. “But I’m afraid that’s not an option. It’s time to retreat, children.”

“Whuh?”

“We’re still good to go!”

“I know you are, but this one dumbass dropped the ball elsewhere.” Cuvier sighed. “There’s no use pressing for results now. It’s time we backed off and regrouped.”

Bowles and Howell swore, and Chela lowered her athame.

“Then it stands as a tie,” she said. “Perhaps not quite what we agreed on, but I shall share word of this anyway and tell people the true Team Bowles was formidable.”

“…I love you, Ms. McFarlane…,” Rodney whispered.

Their nerve-racking spell exchange had clearly worn him out. His team hopped on their brooms and flew away. Elsewhere, Team Liebert had also turned and fled.

Only when they were well and truly gone did Stacy lower her blade…

…and a new voice echoed over the momentary calm.

“Awww…I’m too late?”

They spun around and saw three figures riding on broomback. They came in for a landing some twenty yards away. Chela narrowed her eyes, appraising the new arrivals.

“…And who might you be?”

“Hiii, Ms. McFarlane! I don’t think we’ve, like, talked much before?”

The girl in the center stepped forward. The axis of her stride was unsteady, rocking back and forth. Each line she spoke rose in pitch at the end. Those traits rang a bell.

“You’re in the finals, aren’t you?” Stacy said. “Team Valois, I believe? Your friends have bailed already, but are you still game?”

“I wiiish! But we’re under orders and stuff. So I’m just saying hello! We’ll see each other in the finals, yeahhh?”

Ursule Valois let her head flop sideways, big, round eyes locked on Stacy. Chela and Fay both grew uneasy and stepped in front, hiding Stacy behind them.

“You’re so, like, tight-knit,” Valois said. “That’s why I despise you guys. You and Team Horn and Team Andrews! Just watching you all makes me want to barf.”

“Huh?”

“…?”

This one-sided revulsion just baffled them. Valois’s eyes bore down on them, revealing no emotion. Her voice was equally flat.

“It’s nothing personal, y’know? And I don’t care about belc or dragrium, but, like, if I don’t win, that’d kind of…suck? So I’m just gonna trounce you all. Let Team Horn know, yeah? Okaaay, we’re done here.”

She spun on her heel, hopped on her broom, and flew away with her teammates in tow.

“…What’s her problem?” Stacy said. “She came all the way here just to say that?”

“Perhaps she was issuing a challenge before the finals. Her team remains an enigma,” Chela replied, not having gleaned much from this brief interaction.

Stacy nodded and put it out of her mind, poking her servant’s back. “Fay, you holding up?”

“Just getting nice and toasty,” he said, as if he never got tired.

Shannon headed toward them, and Gwyn called out, “Rivermoore’s undead are gathering. Keep your wits about you—the real fight has just begun.”

“…Hnggg…!”

The kick Khiirgi had soaked sent her flying downward in a diagonal line but she managed to snag a branch of an undead plant with one hand—only to be hit with spells from Oliver’s team below.

“Progressio!”

Cornered, a spell echoed from her lips, and the dead trees around her reached out, wrapping her in a sphere. An emergency escape at a high mana cost. The enhanced branches fended off follow-up blows, but within, Khiirgi was coughing up blood.

“Blegh…! Hurts every time you kick my guts in. I had an arm in between to soften it, but my ribs are still pulped!”

“I was trying to snap your spine. You want more?”

Lesedi landed on the sphere, stomping it. Khiirgi wiped the blood from her lips with a smirk.

“…Let’s not. I mean, I’d love to keep going, but Leo would be furious. He might already have it in for me,” she said. “Whatever! I managed a minimal delay, at least. Can’t exactly bring everyone here for a full-on brawl. The rest is in Rivermoore’s hands—I’ll have to go home and let our adorable Percy chew my ear off.”

“Glad to hear it. Mow this lawn first.”

At that demand, Khiirgi shrugged and mouthed a chant. The magic circle fertilizing the undead plants lost power, and the vegetation quickly withered away. They had always been an entirely unnatural growth and could not survive long outside their highly specialized environment. When the collapse reached her, Khiirgi slipped out of the sphere and sped away on a broom.

Watching her go from below, Oliver asked, “…You sure we should let her?”

“No telling what’ll pop out if she’s in real trouble. And for once, she actually controlled herself. When she’s being really vicious, it’s far worse than this,” Lesedi replied with a snort.

This was only a taste of the elf’s true strength—a thought that went right past shudder into cringe.

Then a voice called Oliver’s name.

“Noll!”

“Is everyone okay?”

His cousins and Team Cornwallis. They came in for a landing, and Mistral’s teammates joined them and Oliver’s squad. Lesedi quickly took control.

“More teams should be joining us shortly, but they’ll have undead on their heels. Stick to the plan. We’ll be splitting into offensive and defensive teams, but first, let’s rework the squads a bit.”

With that, she turned directly to Gwyn and Shannon.

“Sherwoods, I want you with Team Horn on the invasion crew. Wish I could go myself, but Khiirgi wore me out, and I’d better not fight Rivermoore like this. If you’ve got fuel left, take over.”

“Can do.” Gwyn nodded.

“Hee-hee-hee! We get to be together, Noll!”

Shannon happily put her arms around Oliver from behind. With them on board, Lesedi turned to the others.

“Then I’ll take over supervision on Team Cornwallis. You’ll be with me on defenses. I’m expecting good things.”

“Hmph. I assumed I’d be on invasion.”

“Stace, let’s not fight this one,” Chela urged. Stacy had her arms crossed, but her half sister had figured out the logic behind the assignments. “I doubt they’ll be putting any other third-years on that team.”

Lesedi nodded heavily. “McFarlane’s ahead of me, but yeah, the invasion team’ll be the three members of Team Horn, plus three upperclassmen. Soon as Tim gets here, I’ll be having him join you to complete the squad. From here on out, one upperclassman won’t be enough to mind three of you.”

Balancing offense against defense, accounting for the situation at hand. If all other squads were here, maybe she’d have chosen differently, but the old council’s disruptions would have most of them arriving too late. Since this plan hinged on speed, late arrivals would have to get put on defense.

Then Tim flew in with Mistral and Team Ames in tow.

“Sorry! Screwed up and got bogged down!”

“You’re the last member,” Lesedi spat. “Spare me the excuses—make it up inside.”

With that, the invasion team was complete. They took a good look at one another, and Lesedi made the call.

“Our mission lies on your shoulders. We’ll keep your escape route open—go get Godfrey’s bone back!”

All six nodded. Nanao’s entire body was positively aglow with ardor—and Yuri’s eyes shone with a gleam every bit as bright.

“…They’re in.”

Naturally, Rivermoore was well aware of their movements. He’d been sharing his familiar’s eyes, but he cut that loose and strode away.

“You’re going out yourself, Cyrus?” the coffin called.

“The Sherwood siblings and the Toxic Gasser. Can’t leave them to the ghouls. At least Hard Knocker’s staying out…”

His voice sounded grim. He’d fought them all before and understood just how tough they could be. As did they—this was a fight between people who knew each other’s bag of tricks all too well. That would not make things easy.

“We’ll begin as soon as I’ve taken care of them. Be ready.”

“Okay…and good luck.”

Rivermoore rarely looked this tense, and Fau solemnly watched him go. She knew this would make or break things but felt no anxiety. He’d promised to return, and she could not imagine him breaking that vow.

They were headed belowground, so the first thing they had to do was secure an entry point. Since this was Rivermoore’s domain, he could open a door with a single spell, but uninvited guests would need to force their way in. They’d laid out a magic circle and were watching the center bore its way down.

“…Shannon,” Oliver said. “One thing before we go farther.”

“? What is it, Noll?”

Shannon smiled at him, and he pulled a bone fragment out of his pocket, laying it on her palm. It was the fragment Yuri had been holding on to.

“We recovered this from the zahhak. I’d like to see the memories in it, if we can.”

“Do we need to?” Tim said. “We’re at his workshop! More clues won’t do shit for—”

“I’m in! I wanna see!”

“Then so shall I!”

Yuri’s and Nanao’s voices drowned out Tim’s doubts, and that made Gwyn chuckle.

“If they insist, let’s take a look. Shannon, keep it quick.”

“Mm. Okay.”

Shannon held up the bone in her hand, closing her eyes. Silently, everyone placed their wands on hers.

He’d been in the workshop all morning, organizing a huge mound of bones. After a solid two hours of labor, something started bugging him.

“…?”

It was too quiet. She hadn’t said a word this whole time. They’d talked a bit when he awoke that morning, but since then, his talkative friend had been laying low—and once that dawned on him, Rivermoore got up and moved over to her coffin.

“…Hey, what’s with the silent treatment? You finally learn how to play dead?”

He rapped the coffin with his knuckles. Still no answer. He snorted, assuming she was just in a bad mood. He wondered why but decided he’d better work out first if she was angry or depressed. He leaned closer—

“Someone’s pulling my arm, a ray of light, dark, cold, cold, cold, I don’t want to be here anymore, I don’t care if it’s fire, I need light, give me back my shape, a form, a form, the smell of soil, the feel of the wind, I can’t remember anything—”

“ !”

This torrent of words proved his notion had been terribly optimistic. He put both hands on the coffin, his face up against it.

“Fau, I’m right here!” he called, desperation in his tone. “Hear my voice! Don’t let those thoughts drown you!”

The endless loop went still, and a feeble voice came back to him.

“Ah…ah…oh. C-Cyrus? W-was…was I…?”

“Yes, that’s right. Talk to me, not yourself.”

Grabbing the tail of sanity as it floated toward him, Rivermoore pulled as hard as he could, bringing her back to his side. Her voice quivered with confusion and fear, but her words had meaning once more.

“I—I had…a really scary dream. You were gone. I kept calling you, but you never answered. I waited, but you didn’t come back. Th-that was a dream, right? This is real?”

“I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere, and I won’t leave you. No matter what.”

His vow came in a low, steady tone, and he repeated it again and again. Each time he said it, she was a little more like herself.

“Heh…heh-heh. I didn’t know you could be this nice, Cyrus. Are you sure you’re not a dream?”

“I could make it a nightmare. What if I painted your coffin pink?”

“Augh! That’s it—this is real! I remember now! I’m a piggyback ghost riding you around. No point in going all groggy! I got work to do!”

She spoke with her usual cheer again and was back to mouthing off. But the chill in the pit of Rivermoore’s belly remained. Until he’d pulled her back, she had very much been a step away from succumbing to the darkness permanently.

The relentless flow of time was like a spear prodding at his back. He’d always tackled his duty with urgency, but now he needed a huge leap forward, one that would make his prior efforts seem like a snail’s pace.

He knew what to do. He made what preparations he could and went to see for himself—see what mages usually first encountered on their two hundredth birthday. For better or for worse, anyone who delved to the fourth layer of Kimberly’s labyrinth earned that privilege.

“…Plans have changed. I don’t have thirty years,” Rivermoore said, athame in hand, facing a pitch-black shadow.

Every instinct in his body told him this was a terrible idea, but he forced those thoughts away, aiming his wand at the thing that had slain his great-grandfather.

“Show me how high this wall is. Congreganta!”

His memories grew fuzzy from there. How had he fought? How had he escaped? Rivermoore himself was unsure. The next thing he knew, he was lying in a heap in the marsh on the third layer, in the throes of a crushing depression.

“Cyrus! Cyrus, are you okay?!”

When he dragged his aching bones back to his workshop, the coffin greeted him with a fretful cry. The channel between their ethers meant she already knew what had happened.

“…Relax. If this was fatal, I’d have died on the way here.”

Rivermoore crumpled to the floor. He looked like he’d been through the wringer, but there were few external injuries. It wasn’t his body that hurt—these wounds were in his ether. A state you’d never wind up in fighting a beast or another mage.

“Don’t be insane! Even the dead’s hearts can stop, you know! Why would you go fight one of those things?! You knew you stood no chance the second you first laid eyes on one!”

She sounded ready to cry. Catching his breath and enduring the pain from his ether, Rivermoore answered, “…The day of the old man’s two-century passage. You remember what he asked me?”

“…? The thing about getting further? Of course I remember. You were so confident…”

“Yeah. Naturally, I meant it at the time. But thinking back, that answer was rehearsed. I said I could surpass him, but how much did I really believe that?”

“ ”

“Part of me knew he couldn’t come back alive that night. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, but necromancers are ill-equipped to ward off death’s embrace. Our skills are little more than a systemic list of tricks to skirt the rules of the world and keep the dead moving. No matter how much you advance the art of necromancy, it does you no good against death itself. I believe that’s why, despite the long history of the Rivermoores, we’ve produced no long-lived mages.”

“It’s not like you to be this gloomy, Cyrus,” the coffin’s voice echoed, consciously choosing to remain upbeat. “One little loss got you down? Then let me promise you this. You’re just depressed. One thing went wrong, and you’re letting it get under your skin. Sleep on it, and you’ll be right—”

“I can’t afford to waste a night!”

His voice erupted over hers. Fau gasped. No matter how bad a mood he’d been in, no matter how many frustrations he’d faced, he’d never once let his emotions lash out like this before.

“Fau, give me your best guess. How long do you have?”

“ !”

“Every coffin but yours has gone bad. I’m sure Great-Grandpa knew it. Our duty would run out in my time,” he told her. “Determining the means to banish that thing is the one way I have of surpassing the old man. But fighting one made it all too clear. It’s not enough—neither my talent nor the time I have left.”

Fau couldn’t find the words to argue that conclusion. How could she? She was the one putting this time limit on him. But she’d read something else between his words.

“…Cyrus,” she began. “Were you hoping to do more than your mission? Hoping to bring me back for good? Has that always been—?”

She heard his teeth grind. He knew he lacked the power, but still that wish smoldered within him.

“It’s just not right. Why won’t this world let that happen?”

The memory ended, leaving them blinking.

“…See?” Tim groused. “Just a bunch of shit we were better off not knowing.”

“I thought it was very educational!” Yuri exclaimed. “It all makes sense now!”

Before them, the magic circle had finished its task. A hole bored ten feet through the center of the ground, a cavity yawning beneath.

“Ready, Noll?” Gwyn asked.

“Yeah. Let’s do this, Brother.”

Tim swept past them both, jumping in first. The others soon followed. They fell through darkness for a solid five seconds, then used a deceleration spell to land softly.

They glanced around and found themselves on a staircase descending still farther into the depths. The walls were covered in countless bones, human and magic beast, lit by the flickering glow of candles, their empty eye sockets staring back at the intruders.

“…Catacombs,” Gwyn growled, clutching his athame. “A graveyard beneath the kingdom of the dead—sounds bizarre.”

“Looks almost like a museum,” Oliver said. “And an oddly quiet one. Doesn’t feel horrifying.”

The visuals were certainly striking, but he sensed no loathing or rage from the cadavers around. They had the same aimless emptiness as the undead above, although these had been properly placated and were resting quietly. Oliver was intruding upon their rest, and it made him wish to leave them undisturbed.

“Doesn’t change what we’re here to do. C’mon.”

Tim led the way down the stairs. The Sherwoods smoothly took the rear, with Oliver, Nanao, and Yuri in between. For a while, the only sound was their footsteps.

After a minute’s descent, they reached a set of doors, and rather sturdy-looking ones. Tim raised his blade to burst through—but before he could utter a spell, the doors opened on their own.

“Magnus Fragor!”

Open or not, Tim still fired a doublecant burst spell through. Flames and smoke belched out. Brushing those aside with a gust spell, the Toxic Gasser threw himself inside, the others on his heels.

“Mind your postures, grave robbers. Do you not know any visitation etiquette?”

Inside was a vast hall, with multiple ascending staircases as wide as the one they’d come down, placed side by side. The warlock’s voice rang out from the top of the stairs, at the far end of the hall. Cyrus Rivermoore.

“Here already, Rivermoore? No undead welcome?”

“Wish I could have offered one, but I didn’t want you spilling poison all over my workshop. So I decided to handle you here.”

All six braced themselves, but the warlock snorted.

“I hate to ruin the enthusiasm, but this isn’t a fight. You’ve come this far, so you have two choices.”

The walls behind him began to tremble, and something vast and white burst through the stones: a jaw lined with teeth each as big as a man, twin horns like steeples, and sockets like pits into the bowels of hell. A sight so sinister, Oliver’s skin broke out in goose bumps.

“…Is that…?!”

“A behemoth skull,” Gwyn said. “He dug it up on the second layer a while back.”

“That took me a while,” Rivermoore said. “But it’s the holy body of a divine beast. The soul’s clinging stubbornly to it. Couldn’t handle it as materials or a familiar, so I had to make it guard the place. Didn’t think I’d ever need to use it.”

The giant jaws yawned open, a sea of smog swirling within. Oliver gulped.

“You know what will happen here,” Rivermoore continued. “It’ll breathe on you. Being undead reversed the element, but it still has the power of the age of divinity. Do any of you know how to stop that?”

That breath could easily fill this room. There was no way to dodge, and even if all six joined forces to block it, it would tear through them like tissue paper. Tim swore. Aboveground, he would have had options, but down here, they were out of luck.

“Like I said: choices. Make yours. You can all die here, or you can drop your wands and surrender. And to be clear—retreat is not in the cards. If you take one step up those stairs, the breath will follow you. Your deaths will be all the worse.”

“You son of a—”

“Tim!”

Gwyn stepped in, stifling the Toxic Gasser’s rage. Tim gritted his teeth. It took him a long moment, but at last he hung his head.

“…I ain’t dumb enough to miss when I’m beat. Fine! We’re done. Out!”

Defeated, he dropped his athame. Rivermoore’s brows twitched.

“How obedient. I thought you’d squirm a lot longer.”

“Bitch, I’ve got kids with me. Can’t go buck wild like I used to.”

Tim flopped down on the floor, legs crossed, glaring up at their foe.

“If you’ll allow me some sour grapes—you’re a damn good student, Rivermoore. You’re still watching my every move, and you’ve got the high ground and the wind at your back, perfect poison foils. You come at us with these unique techniques, but you’ve got the fundamentals down, too.”

“I don’t have time for this. All wands on the floor, white or metal.”

Rivermoore clearly didn’t believe Tim had actually surrendered. He wasn’t letting his guard down until everyone was disarmed and unconscious—and well aware of that, Tim kept talking.

“That’s why I already ended it. Or did you think I couldn’t predict all this?”

That was when Rivermoore spotted several tiny creatures wriggling on the wall behind him.

“ !”

“““““Impetus!”””””

Before the warlock could react, the scorpions ruptured the cysts on their backs—and the squad below kicked up a gale away from Rivermoore. They’d been downwind from the get-go—this accelerated the existing wind flow, and the mist of scorpion poison threated to envelop the warlock above.

“Tch—!”

Escaping that forced him to leap to the fore. Tim snatched his athame, bounding to his feet and racing up the stairs with his team on his heels. Rivermoore dispatched the mist with a spell, but the gap between them was gone—he was now at the center of the stairs, surrounded.

“Yo, you sure you should be all the way down here?” Tim taunted. “Don’t this mean your precious divine beast breath’ll hit you, too?”

Avoiding the mist had put Rivermoore in range of the undead behemoth—and an attack here would take them all out together.

The scorpions were—of course—Tim’s familiars. He’d expected a trap that took advantage of the close quarters and sent them around ahead of time before they came rushing in. He’d fired a burst spell through the open door to cover their advance, letting the scorpions scuttle around the outside walls and across the ceiling before the smoke cleared, sneaking up behind Rivermoore. There was a concealment effect on the familiars to keep them from being spotted on the way, but even then, Tim’s performance had kept Rivermoore’s attention on him.

With six athames pointed his way, Rivermoore sighed.

“…You just don’t appreciate how nice I was being. You that desperate to turn this into a death match, rabid dog?”

“Damn straight. Was I unclear? I came here to kill your ass dead.”

There was a vicious gleam in Tim’s eyes—and every bone displayed on the walls sprang to life. Oliver gulped.

“Suit yourself, Toxic Gasser,” the warlock said, grinning. “I’m all out of magnanimity. You and your poor juniors will rot away right here.”

“Ha-ha! Bring it!”

Tim sounded downright delighted. As they stood poised to begin their dance of death—they heard a hiss. Something at the far end of the room was melting.

“ ?!”

“Whoa, Mr. Linton, your poison’s awesome! Even a sturdy door like that goes down in nothing flat!”

That tone didn’t fit the scene. Yuri had gone off on his own and was standing below the behemoth’s skull, where Rivermoore had first appeared. The door before him had collapsed in a puff of smoke, revealing the passage beyond.

“…Mr. Rivermoore,” Oliver said. “You’re a powerful foe. Especially on your home ground.”

He was picking his words carefully. The battle hung in the balance, and Yuri had slipped out ahead—and those two factors offered them a third choice.

“But our goal here is not to defeat you. All we care about is recovering President Godfrey’s bone. You know perfectly well we have no reason to stay and fight.”

As he spoke, Yuri stepped through the door, waving back at them from the far side.

Rivermoore frowned. “…You believe you’ll get anywhere groping around in the dark? My workshop is hardly that small. Can you find what you seek?”

“That, I don’t know. But we’re in a hurry, so our search will be rather reckless. Who knows what damage we’ll do on the way. What if something that matters got hurt?”

Oliver let that line hang. The more a mage pursued singular magecraft, the more they stood to lose if their workshop got raided. Especially when preparing for a major ritual. It would be impossible to put that out of mind and focus on the fight at hand. That was why Lesedi had told them ahead of time—their target was not Rivermoore but what lay behind him.

“…Is that a threat?”

“No. I’m proposing a deal.”

Refusing to wither in the face of the warlock’s glower, Oliver got down to brass tacks. This was likely the sole route to ending this mess in any positive light.

“We’ll be taking back President Godfrey’s bone. But—after you’ve achieved your goal. We can wait until your ritual is complete. Our goals need not be opposed; both can be achieved to our mutual satisfaction. Correct?”

“Ha?!” Tim snarled, glaring at him.

“This meat has a mouth on him,” Rivermoore growled. “You speak like you’ve deduced my intentions.”

“You’re resurrecting a coffin discovered here. And salvaging necromancy lost to time.”

That certainly made Rivermoore waver.

“That’s not a deduction. We know. We gathered the bone fragments from your undead, and my sister read your memories from them. Allow me to apologize for intruding on your past uninvited.”

“…The Sherwood girl? Quite a stunt you had hidden up your sleeve.”

He gave Shannon some side-eye, but then Yuri called out from the rear passage.

“Oliver! Let me say the rest. I’ve figured some things out after seeing the undead here. Mind playing along and seeing if I’m right, Mr. Rivermoore?”

“…I’m curious. Do go on,” Rivermoore said, his back still mostly turned toward Yuri.

“The core of your magic is etheric bonding.”

“ !”

“The undead, by their nature, do not grow. You might get them to re-create what they knew in life, but once dead, they fundamentally can’t learn new things. Yet, the undead you wield are full of surprises. Skelebeasts that reassemble themselves into new forms, wyverns fused with the dragoon riding them, zahhaks that bust out totally different skills in the middle of the fight—no way they could do any of that while alive. This whole time, I’ve been trying to figure out how you can even do that.”

Yuri spoke eloquently, his voice rising and falling—almost like a song. Oliver could tell from listening: He was having fun. All peril forgotten, simply digging into the secrets of the Case of the Stolen Bones.

“And my answer: You’ve been joining etheric bodies. Stitching different ethers together, manufacturing new undead. Ether is closer to a being’s true nature than the flesh ever will be, so if you can connect them up, alterations to the container are the easy part. To you, bones with ether affixed to them are like glue-covered wood.”

“……”

“The key here is that it’s bonding, not fusion. Pure speculation, but I bet if they meld into each other, it doesn’t work. They’ll lose their individuality, like the restless hordes do. The essence lies in connecting the undead to these etheric outlines, preserving the nature they had in life. That’s why you put so much effort into managing the undead. To preserve the contours of their being, to prevent them forgetting who they were—that’s why you re-created the fallen kingdom here.”

Yuri broke off, swinging his athame in a circle. He wasn’t casting any magic, so Oliver took this as a gesture born of heightened enthusiasm. Unspooling this mystery had him at peak excitement.

“Back to the point. Resurrecting this ghost requires a flesh equivalent to what she had in life. Naturally, there’s no hope that her body would have survived the last thousand years. You have to make a new one from scratch, but obviously this can’t be some slapdash puppet. If you need her to reproduce ancient necromancy, post-resurrection, she has to be capable of acting like a mage.”

Yuri wasn’t hesitating to break down the sorcery of a mage far beyond his capabilities. Oliver remembered the phrase “curiosity killed the cat” and shuddered. Even if Yuri had come here without a single ally, he would have done the exact same thing.

“That’s why you’ve been stealing students’ bones. Carefully, painstakingly selected mage bones assembled into flesh worthy of the one you wish to revive. And the last piece you needed was President Godfrey’s bone. Which means—you’re poised to attempt the resurrection ritual that’s been the focus of your entire life.”

Yuri brought things to a rousing close, and Rivermoore folded his arms.

“…Loath as I am to admit it, you’re right on the money,” he said. “But why the optimistic belief that Purgatory’s bone will survive the ritual intact? Usage incurs degradation. At the least, alteration.”

“But we have evidence to the contrary. The fragments of your bones we recovered from those undead have not been altered. Since Ms. Shannon could read the memories from them, that much is clear.”

Yuri had clearly anticipated this question. Every scrap of information they’d acquired on the way in was a clue leading him to the solution.

“You’re using ether as glue to hold the container’s flesh together. With the resurrection, the techniques involved will be on a much higher level, but the principle is the same. It’s easy enough to imagine that your bone fragments in those undead were that link and played a core role—if they survive intact, then there’s no reason to assume President Godfrey’s bone will be damaged, especially since it’s just one of many. They’re bound together, but not fused—and that suggests the process is reversible. Right, Oliver?”

Rattled by the pop quiz, Oliver thought for a second, then said, “I’m with Yuri. And I’d add that when we defeated the wyvern rider, we saw a portion of the creature still moving, severed from the whole. I assume that’s because it was no longer in contact with your bone, and thus the connection to the ether was severed. That also suggests your etheric bonding is reversible.”

Rivermoore’s frown was deepening, and Oliver took that as a sign to press his advantage.

“Naturally, there’s an element of risk. Our analysis is partly speculative, and it’s possible the bone will be damaged for reasons even you can’t anticipate. Even so—balanced against the losses both sides will incur if this fight continues, I’d say those risks are well worth taking. Wouldn’t you, Mr. Rivermoore?”

Pressed for a commitment, Rivermoore’s silence was weighty. His eyes left Oliver and turned to Tim, who still looked ready for murder.

“…Lesedi intentionally sent the Toxic Gasser in here to force me to the negotiating table. She always did have a knack for plays that could easily go very wrong but somehow don’t.”

Oliver privately agreed. Without Tim Linton’s volatile nature, these talks would never have begun. Not just because his poison had opened the hole in the wall—but because his very presence here could well wreck the entire workshop, and Rivermoore could hardly overlook that. Lesedi’s plan had hinged on taking his life’s work hostage.

The next silence was even longer. His expression showed no dramatic changes, but there were clear signs of turmoil and strife. At long last, those faded away, and the warlock lowered his wand.

“………………Fine. It is hardly what I intended, but I shall upgrade you from grave robbers to guests. In appreciation of your ‘solution.’”

Despite Rivermoore’s words, he looked ready to rip Yuri’s head off. Yet, Yuri just grinned back, looking proud of himself. Rivermoore snorted and turned toward him.

“But you will mind your manners. This is a tomb. Respect the dead within.”

Meanwhile, the turns at the front line had ripple effects on the defenses above.

“Hmm.”

Lesedi’s foot pulverized another ghoul, and she ground to a halt. A ripple of confusion ran through the crowd. The relentless army of undead attackers was now standing stock-still, like so many scarecrows.

“The fight’s gone out of them. The invasion crew either beat Rivermoore or closed a deal. Either way, good for us.”

“Do we join them?” Chela asked, eyeing the entrance.

Lesedi considered it, then shook her head.

“…No—if they’ve brokered a deal with him, rushing in could upend it. Be on standby, ready for anything.”

She took a canteen from her satchel and quaffed the water within. All that fighting had her body overheated, and she needed to cool down.

“Looks like we’re in the endgame,” she whispered. “Unless something else flips the board.”

They’d pulled off a delicate negotiation by the skin of their teeth, but that didn’t mean the conflicts were over. Tim Linton had a lot of disgruntled griping left in him.

“…Yo, over here. The hell’s going on? Nobody told me a damn thing about this.”

“Sorry, Mr. Linton. Ms. Ingwe’s orders,” Oliver replied. “Said you’d be more intimidating if you had no clue a deal was in the cards—”

“I’ll give her that. I was hell-bent on killing this son of a bitch. Now I gotta take all that fury and stifle it somehow. Just look at this poison I wasted!”

Tim jammed his elbow into Oliver’s side, and Shannon put her arms on her cousin’s shoulders, trying to pull him away from the needling.

“Enough goofing off,” Gwyn said, at his limit. “No matter how we got here, we’re now witnesses to the rite. Let’s not disturb the minister’s focus.”

He jerked his chin at Rivermoore’s back. They took any number of branches and moved through a door at the end of a passage into a reception room, with a coffee table set between two couches. Rivermoore waved a wand, and the crystal lamps filled the room with a warm glow.

“Sit where you please,” he intoned. “I’ve never invited anyone living, so I can’t vouch for the comfort.”

“Some hospitality you got there,” Tim spat. “At least offer tea.”

“I never said I wasn’t.”

Tim flopped down on the couch. A door at the back opened as if in response to his snark, and a skeleton in butler clothes came in. It had a tray in both hands with six steaming cups of tea. As its guests gaped, it set them down at even intervals on the table.

“I’ve got a few checks to run before I start the ritual,” Rivermoore said, not even turning to face them. “How long are you waiting for?”

“Max twenty-six hours. Given the run back to campus, Godfrey’s recovery, and enough time to prep for the finals…we can’t really go longer.”

“That’ll do.”

Rivermoore vanished through a door in back. If this was going to be a while, Oliver would rather sit—except he wasn’t entirely comfortable kicking back in the warlock’s lair. But Nanao and Yuri didn’t even hesitate. Worse, they reached for the tea.

“…Mm. Most excellent.”

“?! You drank that, Nanao?!” Oliver said.

“Indeed. I sensed no ill intent.”

“Mr. Butler, sir, can I get another? All that talking left me parched!”

Yuri sure had a lot of nerve, but the bone butler bowed and poured more tea from the pot. Oliver couldn’t believe his eyes.

“Settle down, Horn,” Tim said, holding his own cup out for more. “If there was poison in it, I’d know. I’ll handle the whole vigilance thing, so you just unwind a bit. This had to have taken a lot outta you.”

He was clearly speaking from experience. Yet, Oliver still hesitated. Only when Shannon pulled his arm did he finally sit down. The butler brought out cookies—to Nanao’s and Yuri’s evident delight.

Upon depositing his guests in the parlor, Rivermoore headed to the back of his workshop. He moved right to the waiting coffin and gingerly explained the situation.

“…Not how I planned it, but they weren’t taking no for an answer.”

“Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! This is a real turnup! I love it! The more the merrier! You’ve told me lots about your school friends, so I can’t wait to see them!”

She sounded every bit as pleased as he wasn’t. Having expected that, Rivermoore snorted and rapped his knuckles on the coffin.

“Final tuning on your flesh is done. The rest is down to focus. Prepare yourself.”

“I’m ready as I’ll ever be. I sure had enough time.”

Her confident response was the push he needed. Rivermoore nodded and seated himself at the center of the magic circle next to the coffin. He took several long, deep breaths, quieting down the adrenaline of the fight, clearing his mind—so that his heart would not waver no matter what lay ahead.

Two hours after their arrival in the parlor, Oliver’s lap had somehow become a pillow for both Nanao and Yuri.

“…Mmmph… See…they’re tasty, Oliver…”

“……”

Yuri had gone down first and was talking in his sleep. Oliver heaved yet another sigh. He’d moved to this couch on the grounds that his sister’s embrace would never end otherwise, only to wind up with these two all over him—and now he was trapped between them.

“Oliver, if I may venture a question…”

As he watched Shannon nod off on the couch across from him, a voice drifted from his lap. Nanao’s eyes had opened, and she was looking up at him.

“Your discussion with Rivermoore was, from the start, based on the assumption that the bone would be returned.”

“It was. We can’t be entirely sure the bones won’t be harmed in the process, but weighed against the risk of fighting—”

“That’s the point that escaped me. Before any considerations of degradation, we are discussing the return of a departed soul from the afterlife. What is now a heap of bones will be granted flesh anew. And once that has happened, I cannot imagine asking for the bones’ return.”

Nanao folded her arms as she spoke—and Oliver at last spotted the source of her confusion.

“Okay, let’s wind it back a bit. I see why you’re lost now. My argument was based on a pretext you are unaware of. Let me get you up to speed.”

He took a moment to martial his thoughts, to consider his approach. She’d been at Kimberly two years and change, yet there were still occasional discrepancies between Nanao’s knowledge and those of your typical mage. Especially in areas unaffected by practical concerns. He was filling these gaps in when he stumbled across them—he rather enjoyed it, really.

“First, our world does not allow the dead to resurrect. This is not a concern of law or theory but the fundamental world order—one that invokes the frenetic principle. It violates the rules our ‘god’ made. This is something that no mage can escape as long as they are acting within this world.”

“I had imagined as much. Yet, that is what Mr. Rivermoore aspires to.”

“I’m getting to that. Second, Mr. Rivermoore’s ultimate goal is the revitalization of ancient necromancy. Strictly speaking, this resurrection is simply a means to that end. When mages attempt a resurrection, that is nearly always the intent. What matters is not the return to life but what you stand to gain from it. Bear that in mind.”

On his lap, Nanao nodded. Seeing that, he decided not to rush through this. They had plenty of time on their hands.

“Imagine an ancient scroll, exposed to the elements and badly deteriorated. You wish to unfurl it and read the contents, but touching it at all could make it crumble to dust. So you take every caution, utilize all means available to you, and attempt to decipher it. Mr. Rivermoore is doing this not with a scroll but with a human being,” Oliver explained. “Resurrection is an extreme means of doing so, but in terms of our example, it’s akin to transferring the entire contents of the scroll to a new piece of paper. Making a copy—in this case, moving the soul to a new body. And that counts as the resurrection the world forbids.”

He paused there. To ensure she fully understood, he would have to dig a little deeper.

“Incidentally, there are other phenomena that might appear to violate this rule. Possession is an infamous example. In that case, a ghost will take over flesh that is not their own, but it’s less a new host than something they’ve wrapped themselves around.”

“Wrapped?”

“It’s tough to explain, but…to put in terms you’d understand, let’s go with horses. Horses are the flesh, and the rider is the soul. Only the horse’s real rider—the genuine soul—can move that horse. A rider can dismount from their horse, but not climb onto another. Ghosts are riders who have lost their horse. Despite this, they want a new horse more than anything else—so they cling to a horse’s torso or legs, trying to bend it to their will. That is how possession functions. Since that’s just an analogy, there are several practical differences, but essentially, possession is an extremely unnatural and ineffective means of control.”

“Mm, I’m with you so far.”

“Since possession is so ineffective, it’s not counted as resurrection and doesn’t violate the world order. Necromancers take advantage of that, giving the dead temporary hosts and turning them into familiars. But in that form, only a portion of the soul’s true power is available. They have no growth potential or creativity, and it’s difficult to maintain high-level thought. You can make it so they perform basic tasks like the undead here, but if you need to bring someone back as a mage, that simply won’t do. Most magic can only be performed if the caster is currently alive.”

Nanao closed her eyes, murmuring thoughtfully. Oliver went over things once more in review.

“Let me summarize. Rivermoore wants to revive ancient necromancy, but to do that, he has to fully resurrect an ancient mage. Unfortunately, the rules of our world forbid that. You with me there?”

“I believe my understanding suffices.”

“Then let’s get to the real point. If you must violate the world order and perform a resurrection, there are theoretically two primary approaches. One is to head to a different world and perform the resurrection there. What is not permitted in our world may be allowed in a world governed by a different god. But this is a pie-in-the-sky idea—one purely theoretical.”

“Oh? Whatever for?”

“None of the tírs that mages are capable of reaching allow resurrection the way we’d want it. Compare it to the laws of nations—theft is illegal in Yamatsu and equally here in Yelgland. Same difference. There are any number of other practical concerns—but for now, assume resurrection in a tír is impossible.”

Nanao nodded. There was plenty more to discuss about tír themselves, but that was a tangent best left unexplored here. He’d have to fill her in some other time.

“Which means Mr. Rivermoore has only one path remaining. Namely, he must create his own world in which to attempt the resurrection.”

“…You mean…”

Nanao looked tense. Knowing exactly what she’d pictured, Oliver nodded.

“You’ve been to one: the sights we witnessed during Ophelia’s incident. The Grand Aria—that technique allows a mage to deploy a domain that operates under different rules, turning infringement legitimate. Resurrection included. If the Aria is designed to allow that from the get-go, then nothing there can prevent the resurrection. Out of all possibilities, that is the one place Mr. Rivermoore’s purpose can be fulfilled.”

If the world did not allow it, then make your own world. That was perhaps the highest expression of a mage’s craft and every bit as difficult as it sounded. Not something that could ever be achieved in a single generation.

“…Even if a mage of exceptional talent prepares very, very carefully, it’s nigh impossible to keep the Aria under control. Just as we saw with Ophelia, if you surpass your limit, you’ll be consumed by the spell. Which means anyone resurrected within will survive only until that limit is reached.”

Nanao’s eyes filled with understanding and a deep sadness. She knew the harsh truth, and Oliver consoled her, stroking her hair.

“Mr. Rivermoore’s manner made it clear. We’re about to see both the resurrection of a mage—and her funeral. We’ll stand in silent vigil until the task is done. And when all the dust settles, we’ll pluck one bone from the remains and take it home.”

A good eleven hours after they were brought in, Rivermoore finally called for them. The bone butler led the group down silent corridors to the ritual chamber, where a coffin was placed at the center and a magic circle covered the entire floor around it. The space itself was considerably larger than any previous rooms. Oliver could tell this was the undead kingdom’s throne room.

“…Before we begin, I want to make one thing clear,” Rivermoore said.

He stood before the coffin, speaking softly. No signs of the heightened emotions he’d displayed in their earlier battle. His mana itself was tranquil, yet brimming over the edge. His focus was clearly honed—and it made everyone present instinctively straighten up.

“During the ritual, no matter what happens, you are not to intervene. You are witnesses only. In return, I can guarantee your safety.”

“Naturally, none of us is foolish enough to meddle with a ritual we can’t possibly understand,” Gwyn said. “I swear we will remain seated even if you perish before our very eyes.”

Rivermoore nodded once and turned to the coffin. Neither side belabored the point. They could easily disrupt the ritual if they wanted, but in that case, Rivermoore would destroy Godfrey’s bone. If either wished to achieve their ends, they would have to keep their hands to themselves.

The moment was upon them. White wand in hand, Rivermoore slowly turned around.

“Hahhhhhh…”

One last deep breath, and before their watchful eyes—his chant began.

Omnes suas calvarias ad eandem partem vertentes ceciderunt.

Corpses on the ground, their gazes aligned.

A shiver ran down each spine. Oliver felt an urge to flee rising up within and did his very best to force it to subside. He’d been too preoccupied to observe the last Aria, but this time was different.

Hi ipsi pedes quibus feriebant terram hae ipsae manus quibus serpebant ad punctum temporis mortis eorum.

Their feet had tramped earth, their hands had clawed the dirt—until the end arrived.

Yuri’s cheeks were flushed red. Nanao’s lips screwed up tight. Even without prior knowledge, any mage knew on instinct alone—this here was the summit of Rivermoore’s sorcery.

Ossa dissipata clamant se ipsos etiam egere et feriendi et serpendi.

Your weathered bones cry out for further tramping, further clawing.

Dum voces vestrae sonant nemo vestrum mortuos est.

As long as those voices cry for more, none of you are truly dead.

Rivermoore’s wand pointed at the ceiling, and something began encroaching on their surroundings from below. Innumerable black threads, winding around one another as they ascended. The air above their heads was dyed a uniform shade.

Tectum sericis nigreas novum caelum hoc ipsum non ad vos ascendendum sed ad abscondendum et tergendum est.

A veil of black silk, a canopy betwixt you and heaven, obscures your path to ascension.

Sub caelo nigro nullus mortuos sed est vivens sine sanguine et carne.

Beneath that inky sky, there are no dead, only living souls lacking flesh.

As the canopy closed above, all colors, all sense of distance were lost. The world was shrouded in darkness. Shannon clenched Oliver’s hand.

Dulce dormitatione vetita morte iucunda deposita ergo electa est vita doloris.

Death is rejecting the temptation of slumber, abandoning peace and tranquility; we choose the suffering that is life.

The invocation droned on. The total darkness was broken by warm lights, emerging one after another.

Neque sanguis neque os neque caro sed ipsa voluntas est signum vivendi.

Life lies not in the flow of blood or the flesh itself but in the will alone.

A world born, its range beyond spatial magic, the mage’s will manifest, a new order imposed by one man. Infringement made legitimate.

Sub hoc nullum sepulcrum est. Dum animas vestras tu reveritis vivitote in aeternum.

There are no graves here. You shall live until your very soul has frayed to nothing.

“Mundus sine morte—Paradise Lost!”

No moon or stars. Yet, the night sky above was aglow with a dim light.

Countless undead wavered indistinctly, passing back and forth overhead. Perhaps they were no longer undead. In this domain, the loss of flesh no longer signified death. If they had the will to choose suffering, then their beings remained on this side of the line.

“…Whoa…”

Oliver was left stunned. Every single thing in sight had been repainted, now far more pastoral than he’d imagined. At the end of his gaze, Rivermoore was wiping the sweat from his brow.

“Don’t confuse me with a mad genius like Salvadori. My great-grandfather developed this Aria. I merely inherited it.”

With that self-deprecation, Rivermoore turned his eyes from the view above back to his coffin. A Grand Aria was the peak of any mage’s labors, but today it was merely setting the scene. His true designs lay on what was to come.

“I’m popping the lid, Fau. Patentibus!”

Rivermoore swung his wand wide. The sound of countless locks opening echoed—and then the lid slid aside. Outside air rushed into a bed sealed off for a thousand years.

“Spiritus animae resuscitatio!”

And the spirit within—left alone, it would likely soon disperse, but Rivermoore swiftly led it to the flesh nearby: the body of a young girl, assembled from bones gathered over the years. He could feel a new interior taking over that host.

There was a long silence. The body remained at Rivermoore’s feet, not moving.

“Hmm—”

“C’mon, you can’t blow it here!” Tim called.

Unable to directly observe the movements of the soul, all they could see was the shimmer in the air—but their concerns proved unfounded. Rivermoore waved his wand a third time.

“She needs a wake-up call. Tonitrus!”

A bolt from the tip of his wand struck the body in the chest, forcing the heart to start beating, the blood to rush through the body once more. The pale face regained its color.

“Owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!”

Her eyes snapped open, and a howl escaped her throat—from silence to full throttle, but Rivermoore just stood and watched. She rolled around at his feet for several seconds, clearly in agony; then she got her hands on the ground and stopped. A few more seconds passed, and her head went up—tears in her eyes.

“…Why?! Cyrus, why lightning?! All this time I’ve waited, and you give me the worst awakening possible!”

“Don’t blame me. You took too long to kick-start your heart.”

“There are other ways to resuscitate people! At least try some healing first! And whoa, your voice! That’s what it sounds like in person?! Do it again! Let me hear it one more time!”

The girl scrambled, running over to him. She stretched way up to reach his face, poking his cheeks with her fingers like a baby does with their parents’ faces. She was delighting in the capacity for touch.

“…You look so old, Cyrus. Aren’t you twenty-two? What happened?”

“Dealing with the dead takes its toll on you. You’re more or less what I assumed. I know you’re excited, but how’s the body working for you?”

Letting her touch all she wanted, Rivermoore started checking her over. His question made her gasp and look at herself. She hopped up and down a few times.

“…It’s incredible! What? How—? This might be better than when I was alive!”

“Good,” he said, nodding. “Well worth the time I spent on component selection.”

She tried reaching for his face again, but then she remembered he was not alone. She spun around to face the others, beaming at them.

“You’re Cyrus’s school chums, right? Nice to meet you! I’m Fau. I’m an old-timey mage who stubbornly refused to pass on. Thanks for attending my second coming!”

“…Sorry,” Tim said. “I get that she’s saying hi, but no clue what language that is.”

To the group’s ears, it was a stream of unfamiliar sounds. As the other five members blinked, Gwyn put his chin on one hand, listening close. It was rare he expressed this keen an interest.

“The language of the ancients,” he noted. “In hindsight, not surprising. How would an undead learn Yelglish? We understood her in the memories because it was filtered through Rivermoore’s perceptions.”

“So I have to interpret?” Rivermoore said. “You’ve just woken up, and you’re already a handful.”

Fau and the others could communicate only through him. The next few moments were all regular chatter; the two had almost forgotten why they were here. With her ever-changing expressions and good cheer—she certainly acted the age she appeared to be. And that made this even harder for Oliver. She was too young for the burden she bore.

“My mind and senses are working fine,” she noted. “So what about mana?”

Fau drew the wand at her hip and held it aloft. A flame appeared at the tip, and she began to dance—the choreography distinctive, to say the least. As she moved, the wand’s tip kept changing colors, and each time it looped, the pace of her steps quickened.

“…!”

“Oh-ho! Such elegance.”

Oliver’s eyes went wide while Nanao let out a cry of delight. Attribute shifting at a high tempo was a magical warm-up Oliver himself employed, but when Fau switched elements, the transitions were nigh invisible. That alone proved she was a deft hand at mana manipulation, but what really boggled the mind was how smoothly the mana flowed through her entire body. Attribute shifts inevitably sent ripples through you, but Fau’s were barely noticeable. Training your flesh for mana use alone wouldn’t do that. This control lay deeper, likely within the ether itself.

Once she’d danced her fill, Fau came to a graceful stop and spun to face Rivermoore.

“Mm, all good. Then let’s get started, Cyrus. I hate to rush, but…”

Rivermoore nodded. “Right. Come on in.”

He turned away, heading to a little hut on a hill inside the Grand Aria. The witnesses, gathering that the necromancy instruction would take place there, silently watched them go. Fau followed Rivermoore, turning back once to wave. Oliver couldn’t help but grin. She was so easy to like, it was hard to believe she hailed from a millennium ago.

“Nn—!”

But Rivermoore stopped in his tracks just outside the hut. Fau looked up in surprise, only to sense the same thing a moment later. They both spun around, staring back the way they’d come—and soon everyone knew what was wrong.

“Something’s coming,” Yuri whispered, staring up at the void. A crack appeared in empty space.

“…That’s…not good…”

As the world crumbled, a pale bone arm thrust through, clad in black rags. Fau winced, and Rivermoore turned pale. Both knew all too well what this was—and what it meant for them.

“…The Aria seal was incomplete. They’ve caught our scent.”

With no legs to stand upon, a black cloth hovered in the air, only the arms and a scythe emerging. The blade itself reflected no light, existing solely to end lives. All here knew the bearer. Innumerable songs, poems, and children’s tales told of its grim visage. Rules established by the fallen god brought an end to all life in kind.

The second law of the frenetic principles: No one lives forever.

“A reaper…!”

The name crossed Oliver’s lips like a shudder. As he stood rooted to the spot, Rivermoore and Fau drew their wands.

“Resuscitatio!”

In answer to their chant, twelve figures rose from the ground. Ancient mages of all genders and ages. Zahhaks Rivermoore had long made use of, reborn as the living here within the Grand Aria. The passage of time may have worn away their personalities, but the spell correctly rebound their flesh and souls, allowing them the use of spells and dramatically heightening their combat potential. The last card Rivermoore had up his sleeve.

A hitherto unseen skelebeast rose up from the feet of one ancient. Another deployed a shadow, from which emerged a massive bulk. Still a third was surrounded by a swirling vortex of curse energy. No time for analysis—every attack was launched directly at their quarry.

And like so much wheat, all were mown down by a single swing of the reaper’s scythe.

“ !”

Thus began the promenade of death. The skelebeasts were pulverized, and the reaper’s ire turned to the ancients themselves. The first put out a bone beast to shield itself—and the swing cut through both as one. A second dove into its shadow, attempting to flee, but the scythe sliced through shadow and diver. The spectacle was overwhelming, and Oliver’s every bone rattled. The ancients threw all their long-lost secrets at it as one, and it was not even a contest.

“Gah…!”

Rivermoore clenched his teeth. Within the Aria, loss of flesh held little meaning, but the reaper’s blows sliced directly to the ether itself—and with that damage, resurrection was not possible, even here. Less than a minute after the fight began, his final hand of cards had been reduced to half their number.

And still the reaper rampaged, bearing a message from the world on death’s inevitability. “…No use,” Tim muttered, watching Rivermoore and Fau struggling in vain. “Given that only one reaper showed up, the Aria greatly diminished their power…but necromancers just don’t have what it takes to fight a reaper.”

“ ”

Even as he spoke, Nanao unconsciously reached for the blade at her hip, unable to bear it. But Tim clapped a hand on her shoulder, his grip firmer than ever before.

“Don’t even think about helping them. This thing’s only after the resurrected girl—and Rivermoore, because he’s protecting her. As long as we don’t stick our noses in, the reaper won’t bother us.”

“Hrm.”

“This is why Rivermoore made us swear not to intervene. This ain’t a matter of logic anyway. You can feel it on your skin!”

Tim raised his hand, showing it to the third-years. Oliver gulped. Tim Linton, the Toxic Gasser himself, the Watch’s crazed berserker, a mage who’d faced down death countless times—and his hand was shaking.

“Even if the president was with us in peak condition, I wouldn’t wanna fight that thing. Two-hundred-year-old mages are absolute monsters, but eighty percent of them fall when they first face the reaper. That’s how powerful this curse is. You don’t stand a chance against a thing like that, not with underclassmen in tow.”

This was patently obvious, and all the more convincing since it came from Tim’s lips. As a grim silence settled, Gwyn added his two cents.

“I’m afraid Tim’s right. Even if they go down, we’ve still got a shot at recovering Godfrey’s bone. And that’s our best bet.”

The only real option left to them here: watch the reaper mercilessly cut Fau down, then pluck the bone from her corpse and beat a hasty retreat. They had no idea if Godfrey’s ether would remain intact, but they’d just have to cross their fingers.

“………”

Putting a tight lid on his emotions, Oliver ordered himself to remain still. This was for the best. No matter the outcome, they could not afford to lose anyone on this team. Rivermoore had been their enemy not long before, and Fau was on his side. No matter how you looked at it, this was not worth risking all six of their lives.

“Gah…!”

“Cyrus, step back!”

A blow from the reaper had damaged Rivermoore’s ether, and his face contorted in pain. Fau stepped forward to guard him, but Rivermoore himself pushed her back, adamant.

His heart frozen, Oliver realized: By the tenets of all mages, the Scavenger’s actions were in error. Unable to fend off the reaper himself, Rivermoore’s ritual had already failed. There was no point in fighting. If you considered the future ahead of him, then the right choice here would be to let the reaper claim Fau. All Rivermoore was doing was putting his own life at risk for nothing—and he likely knew it.

“…Honestly. You would do that,” Fau said with a laugh.

She’d already turned her wand to her own chest. Ah—Oliver felt a sigh echo through his heart. He knew only too well how she felt and what had led her to that choice. He’d have done the same himself in her shoes.

A short breath followed. Then a spell echoed across the night sky.

“…Huh?”

Her wand braced, Fau gaped, forgetting what she’d been poised to do.

Before her, the reaper had stopped. A bolt of lightning had come in from the side just as it was about to attack Rivermoore again. Its scythe held high, the agent of death’s very being momentarily fluttered like a candle in the wind.

Fau and Rivermoore both turned to see who’d done the deed. Sparks still fading around his athame, well out ahead of the observer’s post, a boy stood—doing the most foolish thing possible.

“Noll…”

“Hah?! The hell are you doing?!”

Shannon’s eyes were on her little brother’s back, and Tim’s face turned another color.

Rivermoore had never dreamed of this intrusion; he glared at Oliver like a wounded beast.

“…What’s the meaning of this, third-year? I told you not—”

“It’s not for you!” Oliver roared, the words ripping out of his throat. He was all too aware how inexcusable this act was. This was not for Rivermoore, and deep down he knew it was not for Fau, either.

He had no compulsion to overturn the principle of human death. That would be a rebellion against the design of life itself and was entirely separate from his own heart’s desire. And yet—the sight unfolding before him was not acceptable. Snipping this girl’s life by the same standards applied to mages at the end of an already extraordinarily long life—the pigheaded nature of that rule filled him with such fury, he felt positively dizzy.

Glaring at the reaper, Oliver asked: Where is the sin in this resurrection?

This girl had endured eons in a lightless casket, solely for the purpose of passing on her knowledge to the future. Time she should have spent out in the sun had been whiled away, buried in darkness. She had waited there, grappling with the terror of her very self withering away. All for a fleeting resolution that might never come to pass. The significance of her birth entirely depending on it.

To her way of life, he felt equal parts sympathy and respect. But those were not what moved his hand.

When the man who brought her back was in danger, Fau had not hesitated to end her own life, well aware that doing so would invalidate all the time she had endured within that coffin.

Rivermoore had fought a reaper twice. Once now and once some time before. The first time, he’d hoped to grant her new life; the second, to ensure the life she had was not in vain.

Oliver wished only to guard those urges. Even if that was stupid, even if that was the wrong choice, he had to do it. He fought to protect not the ritual, not the secrets of ancient necromancy, but their hearts. The kindness of a boy and girl, unbroken by the harsh toll of time’s passage.

Hear me, Grim Reaper. I do not ask you to leave this place, only to bide your time.

“…Complete your duty, Cyrus Rivermoore! Though the world may not approve! That’s what we mages do!”

A shout from his very soul, directed at a mage far more powerful than Oliver. Rivermoore stood as if struck by lightning—and then two figures joined Oliver.

“Pray, what is the plan?” Nanao asked, drawing her katana.

“Uh, how do we fight reapers again?” Yuri asked, his head cocked askew. “I mean, they don’t die.”

Oliver forced aside the urge to apologize, deeming that best not said here.

“Nanao, Leik—”

“Only one way to handle these things. Hit ’em with effective elements, continuously canceling the phenomenon. Never get hit; their swings strike only ether.”

Gwyn and Shannon flanked the trio. Oliver’s expression momentarily crumpled.

“Brother, Sister…”

“We know…what you want to do, Noll.” Shannon raised her white wand.

“Doesn’t matter what we’re up against. If your heart desires it—then we are here with you.” Gwyn shouldered his viola, and the sole remaining upperclassman pushed his way between Oliver and Nanao.

“You’re all a bunch of idiots. Lesedi and her dumbass schemes… She really blew it this time.”

“Mr. Linton—!” Oliver gaped at him.

Tim drew the athame at his hip and cast Oliver a sidelong glare. “And here I thought you were less crazy than we were. Boy, was I ever wrong. You’ve gone and jumped right into madness here.”

The Toxic Gasser clicked his tongue. Thorough preparations, situational advantage, fighting only foes you knew you could beat—Lesedi had talked her mouth off going over those principles, and they were the ironclad rules of the Campus Watch. But all the older members knew—they’d broken every one of those rules countless times in their day.

Their foes had never once seemed beatable. Opponents they had to fight, enemies they had to beat—those had never arrived at their convenience. If they had time to calculate their odds, they’d be better off casting another spell. If they had someone worth protecting, then they’d wade into the fray with that alone in mind. And the crucible of those gambles was their source of pride.

This was no different. In other words: It was merely Watch tradition.

“Fine! I’m in. Didn’t know what else to do with these vials anyway. But lemme just say this—if any of you dies here, I’m kicking your ass myself.”

His very mana laced with bloodlust, the Toxic Gasser bared his fangs. The reaper recovered from its stunned state and began moving.

“Twenty minutes, Rivermoore!” Gwyn yelled. “We’ll keep the reaper at bay till then! Can you make the most of it?”

The warlock clenched his jaw, then grabbed Fau’s hand and turned to go. No time to hesitate. He had a purpose to fulfill.

“…I owe you!” he called.

Those were words he’d not used once since his start at Kimberly. Running by his side, the corner of her eye on the six fighters behind them, Fau smiled.

“See, Cyrus? You have lots of friends!”

That provoked the dourest expression human flesh was capable of making. But before anyone caught a glimpse of it, Rivermoore and Fau dove into the hut on the hill.

Yuri made sure they were in, then said, “I think I solved another mystery, Oliver.”

“?”

“The Case of the Kindhearted Friend. I’ve always wondered: Why do you worry so much about other people? It’d be so much easier if you just let them be, no matter who was risking their neck or where.”

This left Oliver rather rattled, to say the least. But Yuri spoke with conviction.

“I finally figured out why. You value the heart most of all.”

Oliver staggered as if shot through the chest. But Nanao tugged at his sleeve.

“I knew that much already,” she said.

“No time to flirt! It’s here!” Tim roared, vial in hand.

They braced for battle—and the reaper swung its scythe.

Inside the hut, Rivermoore put a seal on the door that would hardly last long, then caught his breath, glancing around. There was a big, round worktable at the room’s center; a dozen varieties of powdered magingredients in little dishes; and a row of mummified fetal corpses. All were children who had perished in the womb—and like Carmen had heard, he’d acquired these from mages’ homes. He breathed easily. Everything they needed was here.

“…No time, so let’s skip ahead.”

“You got it,” Fau said, nodding. “Overlap your space with mine.”

She moved to the worktable, raised her white wand, and went still. Rivermoore joined her, using spatial magic to merge his perceptions with hers. Ears and eyes alone would not suffice here.

“…Hahhhhhh…”

Eyes closed, she let out a long breath—and something the eyes could not detect rose up from the fetal cadavers. Fau wound that around her wand like so much taffy, then cast a spell that made the amorphous thing separate into layers of disparate density, arcing before Fau like a rainbow. Imperceptible to the naked eye, Rivermoore could only perceive it within his personal space.

“…!”

“Soak in the feel of it. You’re pretty good at etheric bonding but still at a patchwork level. To reach the next stage, you’ll need to make finer divisions in the ether, applying clear measurements to it. Like cutting wood in regulation lengths. It’s a lot easier to work with than the whole log, and there’s so much more you can make from it.”

As she spoke, Fau’s wand kept moving. Like peeling bark, the rainbow’s layers came apart from the outside in, lining up in the air. Rivermoore was blown away. He, too, had been working on ways to split and classify ether, but the most he’d achieved was three layers. Meanwhile, the rainbow Fau was peeling apart was divided into seventeen. That alone showed the sheer discrepancy in their respective necromancy.

“Naturally, this is easier said than done. Etheric research lags behind research on the flesh for the simple reason that it is that much harder to observe. As a rule, you can neither see nor touch an etheric body. Even ghosts who flicker like a candle in the wind—what you’re actually seeing is the air, dust, and magic particles moving as the ether passes by.”

Each word Fau said, each move she made—Rivermoore was heightening all his senses, trying not to miss a thing. This was what she’d been born to do.

“Almost the only exception is here, within a mage’s spatial magic. In that space, what we perceive lies outside the five senses, and some people are able to directly perceive and manipulate the ether there. Problem is, that’s highly dependent on the individual’s background and impossible to make universal. Anything that takes place in a mage’s personal space is inherently subjective. You can tell someone an apple is red, but no words can truly define what being red entails. Same logic.”

Even with the spaces overlapped, facing the same subject, what Fau and Rivermoore sensed was not alike. Sensations within personal spaces were far more disparate than those experienced via the eyes and ears, organs of similar construction. At best, that was a nursery that could raise a mage of singular sensibilities, but at worst, it could create an impassible information-processing incompatibility. Since these sensations were yours and yours alone, there was no way to communicate them to others.

“Since we are both mages, we’ve got ways and means of sharing experience vicariously. But it’s ultimately still a game of whispers. The information exchanged is fundamentally altered by the senses of the recipient, and the more people it passes through, the more significant the alteration becomes. This is hardly specific to necromancy; it’s the reason mages create heirs with similar sensibilities, allowing them to pass down their techniques with minimal deterioration. But that simply elevates a personal skill to a family heirloom. Great if you want it kept secret, but useless for making things widely accessible.”

As Fau talked, the powders on the table before her wafted upward, mingling with some of the etheric layers. Once she’d used the full amount of all twelve components, Fau began merging the layers back together again. The disassembly and alteration phases complete, she was now demonstrating how to reassemble.

“Given the aforementioned issues, we ancient mages spent a long time seeking one thing: an etheric body all could see and touch in the same way. Only with that manifest could a measure of objectivity be applied to etheric manipulation; only then could necromancy go from being a household craft to an academic discipline. And we achieved just that—shortly before the collapse.”

Rivermoore swallowed hard, and Fau raised her wand, quite literally bestowing life upon her creation.

“Spiritus animae resuscitatio!”

Wind and light in tow, her mana swirled. And within, a new creation let out its birthing cry.

Mere mortals up against death incarnate—Oliver was learning just what that meant with every fiber of his being.

First, he could discern no consistencies in its movements. The reaper just slid through the air above the ground, no feet to have footwork, the existence of footholds irrelevant. Yet, neither did it follow the principles of flighted creatures like brooms or wyverns; no experience with them applied here.

“Tonitrus!”

When it appeared to slow, he took aim, firing a lightning bolt at what he assumed to be its back. But the next instant proved all his expectations wrong. The reaper’s body scattered like mist.

“ ?!”

The black particles flew higher. No one was sure how to respond. The particles quickly spread out, turning into a large black cloud.

Gaping up at this, Yuri muttered, “Oh, it’s gonna fall.”

“To me!” Shannon called.

The others rushed to her side, forming a tight circle, and raised their wands overhead.

““““““Impetus!””””””

Together, they deployed a barrier of wind just as the rain of death began. The drops dissolved the ground around them. The barrier was hardly immune to this, and only with all six pouring mana into it was it able to withstand the corrosion. Oliver gulped. If they’d been hit while separated, not all of them could have lasted it out.

“Do not assume a reaper has a set form! Death is everywhere and can be anything!”

Oliver chiseled his brother’s warning into his heart. The rainfall ceased, and the mist rose up from the ground, gathering in the air above—and coalescing into a giant sphere. When it shot toward them, they scattered in all directions.

“Ah, it’s gonna burst!” Yuri yelped.

“ !”

Everyone took another leap backward, and an instant later, the sphere imploded. Using wind to deflect the particles that flew his way, Oliver felt a chill run down his spine. If they’d gone from the first dodge to a counterattack, that could have ended poorly. But more importantly—

“Leik, can you read its movements?!”

“Yep! Seems like I know what it’s about to do. I can hear it way clearer than those undead!”

Yuri appeared confident, and that itself was astonishing, but then Oliver realized—this was because they were fighting an avatar of death. The undead had been under a mage’s control, while the reapers were a part of the natural order. He’d known Yuri’s powers worked better with natural objects, and this foe fell right in line with that.

“Excellent!” Nanao cried, slashing aside reaper spray. “Then we shall follow your command!”

With that, she charged straight ahead. The fight so far had told her instinctively that they needed a front line. If they all feared incurable attacks and kept their distance, the reaper would simply shift shapes and come for them. But if, instead, they closed in, it would likely stick to its initial form and swing that scythe. Both options were a threat, but keeping it locked to a single form was preferable to the unknown.

“Ah, crap! Back off, Nanao!”

“Mm!”

As she neared its range, Yuri caught its next move and called her off. As they watched, the reaper grew highly condensed, exuding an uncanny pull. It was less a black sphere than a hole dug into space itself.

Feeling himself being dragged toward it, Oliver yelled, “Wind? No—this is curse energy gravitation! It’s sucking us in!”

Spotting the nature of the attack, Oliver followed that with a pull spell at Nanao’s back. She’d been closest to the reaper, and this dragged her to him just before the gravitational pull grew fatal. Each fought off the pull in their own way, standing their ground. From the moment of their birth, all creatures were equally affected by death’s curse. The reaper was tugging the strings of that connection to drag them in.

“I’ve been waiting for this!”

But some mages could turn this to an advantage. Tim grinned viciously, and several things flew out from under his skirt. Winged insect familiars, the sacs on the abdomens filled with magical brews. Rather than fight the gravity, they flew right into the reaper’s side, bursting. The fluid released was all inhaled as well, and the reaper’s entire body warped. Steam shot out, and it started boiling in midair.

“A deluge of elixir! Suck on that!” the Toxic Gasser crowed.

Made by means only he knew, this was extremely concentrated and would prove highly poisonous if any human ingested it. Since the root concoction enhanced life functions, this same brew provoked a virulent reaction in a manifestation of death. He’d brought this along to handle undead threats.

Watching the reaper fade out in a puff of volatile white smoke, Nanao gave an astonished yelp.

“Is it defeated?” she asked.

“Don’t be stupid,” Tim spat. “If it were that easy, I wouldn’t have been losing my damn mind.”

True to his word, a familiar black form seeped back into view in the empty air a short distance away.

“You can put out a fire, but it ain’t dead. You can scatter a breeze, but the wind won’t die. No matter how many times you push it back, death ain’t ever really gone. No matter how we fight this thing, we can’t win—we’re creatures with a finite life span, and that’s what we get.”

“Then we will just prolong our lives with all our might,” Gwyn said and began playing his viola.

Surprised, Tim blinked. “A consolation concert? Does that work on reapers?”

“It’s arguably the primary purpose. Death originated as a primal curse placed upon us by our god. Offering up the sounds of music is an ancient means of placating and distancing it.”

And the proof lay before them. The reaper was re-forming as they watched, but the speed of that manifestation grew markedly slower the moment the performance began.

“Still…,” Gwyn said, playing on. “We’ve already incurred its wrath. The best I can do is delay the inevitable.”

“That’s more than enough, Brother,” Oliver said, blotting his brow with one sleeve. “It gives us time to recover.”

Even a handful of seconds was worth a thousand gold.

Bathed in orange light, it bobbed in the air, vaguely humanoid. Rivermoore watched it with bated breath—as did Fau, its creator.

“…That’s not…”

“Right, not a ghost,” Fau said. “The etheric bodies I took from the unborn babies’ ghosts formed the base, and I merged those with other ether and matter, reconstructing them into a man-made being. An astral life.”

Fau let that name hang in the air. The astral life hovering above the workbench floated over to Rivermoore. Then it draped itself across his neck and shoulders, like a scarf with a mind of its own.

“It likes you already.” Fau grinned. “Maybe because some of my own ether is mixed in?”

“……”

The astral life was staring intently up at Rivermoore, and he back at it. It showed no fear or caution—in that sense, it felt like a human infant.

“There’s two fundamental differences from ghosts,” Fau began. “First, like I said, anyone can see and touch it. The movements of the etheric body have been shrouded in mystery and subjective perception, but anyone can make observations with this little one.”

Fau reached up and tickled the astral on the neck. It seemed to enjoy that. Clinging to Rivermoore, the astral life’s lights fluctuated.

“And the second difference—unlike ghosts, this one’s mind won’t fade away, won’t give way to hatred. Quite the opposite—it will learn and grow. It’s as stable as our own etheric bodies, despite the lack of flesh. The components of its body are both material and etheric, those qualities combined. It is a complete life-form.”

“…So not immortal.”

“Right. Astrals can be lost by any number of means, and its soul is human, taken from one of these unborn babies. It has the same two-hundred-year limit we do.”

Fau smiled sadly, then turned to Rivermoore.

“I know this child will be an invaluable research subject for you and all the mages of this generation. But if possible, I hope you’ll look after it. As if it was our child.”

“That’s not something to joke about. But if it’s going to serve my research for any length of time, I’ll have to take good care of its mental health, too. No need to worry about that.”

His tone was resolutely curt yet as earnest as Rivermoore was capable of being. He nodded, and the tension drained out of Fau’s body.

“Okay. Then…then my work really is done.”

Rivermoore’s silence was weighty. He tried offering some words of comfort, but his throat was frozen and would not move. If he voiced agreement, if he thanked her—then it would all be over.

And she knew that. So she cut to the chase in his place.

“Sorry, Cyrus,” Fau said. “Can I leave the last task to you?”

“Hyahhhhhhh!”

A bold step forward ducking under the scythe’s swing, and with a roar, Nanao swung her blade up. All six mages battled the reaper in a state of extreme tension; release was a luxury they could not afford.

“Hahhh, hahhh… I—I can tell what it’ll do, but…my body can’t keep up!” Yuri gasped, stepping in as Nanao stepped out and pulling the reaper’s attention to him.

Making full use of Yuri’s predictive talents, he, Nanao, Oliver, and Tim were trading turns in the front line, minimizing the reaper’s shape-shifting—that alone had kept them going this long. There had been several close calls, but Gwyn’s and Shannon’s precision assists had pulled them through.

“…Ngh…!”

But Oliver could feel their limit coming up fast. This style was especially taking a toll on Yuri, and Oliver swore to pull him out before it was too late, shouldering that risk himself.

“Hrm?!”

Yet, Nanao felt the threat on her very skin and spun around. All five others followed her gaze, spotting the same sight. Another black stain seeping into this space. The same threat they’d barely been handling before.

“…You’re kidding! Now there’s two?!”

Tim scowled. Reaper appearances had strict rules. When a mage reached two hundred, one reaper would appear each night. Every fifty years they lived, that number went up by one. Fau’s circumstances were unusual, but if her age included all the years spent in the coffin before her resurrection, then it stood to reason there’d be more than one. Even if that wasn’t the case, should other mages step in to help, the reaper quantity increased proportionally.

They’d had to deal with only one reaper because Rivermoore’s Grand Aria had kept them at bay, but they had always known a second might make it through. Yet, knowing it was possible had not stopped them from hoping it wouldn’t. And now that it had, they were at the end of the line.

“Ah—!”

Between his fatigue and the distraction of the second reaper, Yuri’s step was a moment too late. The first reaper’s scythe swung his way, and he knew too well he couldn’t dodge or defend in time.

“Yuri!”

Oliver lunged toward him. He’d been right there watching, and only he could get there in time. He shoved Yuri out of the scythe’s path, but that just made the reaper target him. The backswing was mercilessly coming his way.

“Sorry I’m late.”

The blade stopped an inch from his throat. A girl’s voice echoed across the land of death.

Six mages and two reapers all turned toward her. The hut on the hill—and Fau standing outside, the warlock a step behind.

“Thanks, Cyrus’s school chums. Honestly, I didn’t think we’d get this much time. I speak for all the Parsu people, in honor of your strength and spirit.”

She plucked the corners of her skirt and curtsied. Both reapers shot toward her as one. The others were little more than an impediment; Fau alone had been their true target. She smiled at their approach.

“You two are so mad at me. Given your task, you would be. But don’t worry. I’ll make no more trouble.”

Fau spread her arms wide, accepting the fate she had so long denied.

“I’ve done my part. The long struggles of the dead end here.”

And with those words, Rivermoore’s athame pierced her heart from behind.

The group gasped, watching over her. Fau’s heart beat its last. The reapers bearing down stopped halfway up the hill—and as if the fight had never existed at all, they vanished without a trace. They no longer had any reason to be there.

“Ah—!”

For the first time, Fau saw the view around her. So preoccupied with her task and the urgency of it, she’d never even looked. Only now did she realize—they stood on an island, floating in the sea at night.

“Oh,” she said. “This is a beach!”

The blade in her heart was retracted. Fau crumpled into Rivermoore’s arms, and the astral life squirmed around them both, like a child fussing over its parents.

In Rivermoore’s embrace, she used the last strength in her dying arms to point.

“Cyrus, over there. Take me there.”

“Mm.”

Rivermoore nodded, and a bone serpent rose up from his feet, carrying them both on its back across the ground past the crowd of witnesses, down the gentle slope to the little strip of sand at the water’s edge. No moon hung above but there was a mystic glow, striking enough to evoke a little sigh from Fau.

“Wow, you’ve even got shells! Hee-hee. Gently lapping waves… How lovely.”

“You made me take enough walks on the shore.”

Cradling the girl, he stepped onto the sand, his voice wistful. Nothing he could do would bring her back for good. He could never take her to the real ocean’s edge. And when that sank in, he’d made his choice. To at least show her the sea here.

Time passed quietly. There was only the lapping of the surf. Fau’s lids slowly drifted shut.

“Thank you, Cyrus,” she whispered. “You kept…your word…”

With the last breath she was allowed, she voiced her thanks—and passed away.

The world crumbled. The night sky shattered like glass, swallowed by the sea. Soon it reached the island the others stood upon. Ripples of white light covered their eyes, causing them to squint—and before they knew it, they were back in that cold stone room. Still sitting where they’d been when the ritual began. The man had his back to them, cradling a heap of bones.

“Mr. Rivermoore…,” Oliver said.

“Take it.”

He tossed something over his shoulder. Oliver caught it and looked down to find a human bone. Rivermoore had made adjustments to it for the ritual, but Oliver knew it was Godfrey’s sternum.

“If you’ve got that, the doctor can patch him up. I won’t forget the debt you’re owed. So—it’s time you all left.”

Rivermoore never turned their way.

His goal achieved, Tim urged his juniors toward the door. As the others turned to go, Oliver took a step after them, then—

“If—!”

He stopped, calling out. Words failed him. But his mind caught a scrap of a memory, and he spoke as a witness to what had transpired here.

“…If she smiled at the end, then you have nothing to regret.”

Oliver’s voice never wavered. And with that, he left the grave behind. Rivermoore said not a word, letting it all wash over him.

END