“You’ve been studying under me for the past two weeks,” Soolemar stated. “I’m not ignorant that you’re running out of time before your ascension.”

Ian looked up from the mannequin before him, its surface no longer covered in inefficient threads of Death energy. “I’ve learned a lot, but I’m not exactly confident that I’ve learned anything that will help me against the descendant.”

Soolemar smiled. “You really think you’re going to have trouble?”

Ian frowned. “Achemiss said I’m going to fail my ascension.”

Soolemar’s jaw dropped. “Is that why he reached out to you?”

“Yes. He decided I needed an intervention and gave me soul sight, then pointed me in your direction.”

Soolemar’s eyes narrow. “Messing with someone’s soul won’t end well. It’ll also put you at high risk, especially considering the state of your own soul.”

“That’s exactly what he wants: to kill Ascendant Ari, permanently. He said decapitating her will be sufficient to get the job done, but doing so is far harder than it sounds. I deduced that the path to success involved necromancy.”

“...Well this changes things a bit.”

“Does it? I’ve been learning how to manipulate souls. I already have ideas for ways I can weaponize my ethereal body to incapacitate her, allowing me the opportunity to strike her down with decemancy.”

From what Euryphel has already told me, I found a way to attack someone’s soul back when I was first trying to attract Soolemar’s attention. If I could do it then, I’m sure I can do it even better now. Ian just hadn’t had a reason or desire to practice on a live subject.

“I’ve never attacked an ascendant’s soul before,” Soolemar remarked. “I’ve sensed the souls of those who have returned, however, and they’re stronger than any mundane soul you’ve seen before.”

“Strong in what way?”

“They’d resist your intrusion, far more than the pitiful resistance offered by a typical embodied soul.”

Ian considered for a moment. “If they’re stronger than mundane souls, what about atypical souls? What about a soul that belongs to someone like...you?”

“I think the only worthy comparison would be my own soul,” Soolemar replied, his brow furrowing. “It’s harder to create than destroy, defend than attack: The hundreds of years I’ve spent developing my defensive techniques are out of your reach for now, but I could try developing something offensive that you could pick up quickly. While I’ve made preparations to engage returned ascendants, I’ve never needed to put them to use, so everything is untested.”

“That sounds better than what I was planning,” Ian murmured. He hadn’t considered that ascendent souls would be particularly resilient.

Soolemar sighed. “Even if you surprise her with an attack on her soul, she won’t go down easily. There’s no way forward other than killing her?”

Ian shook his head. “She’s coming to kill me and she’ll do it with satisfaction because I’m a ‘false ascendant,’ whatever that means. Only one of us is leaving alive.”

Soolemar’s lips curled in distaste. “This is a culling rather than a trial. We’d better get today’s lesson started now if you’re hoping to have a fighting chance.”

“Nice vote of confidence, there,” Ian replied, trying to inject a bit of levity into the conversation.

The corners of Soolemar’s lips quirked upward. “Ian, do I need to spell it out for you?”

Ian had no idea where Soolemar’s mind was going. “What?”

“You’re attempting something that’s never done before, something that I’d consider impossible; but for what it’s worth, I believe in you.”

Ian felt his cheeks warm. “Thanks.”

Soolemar smirked, then clapped his hands together. “Are you ready to start?”

Ian blinked. Knowing Soolemar, anything could happen next. “I guess?”

Before Ian could say anything else, he felt the center of his chest begin to throb. The pain doubled with each passing moment until he felt as though an agonizing migraine had migrated to his chest.

He clenched his jaw and focused inward, feeling for his ethereal body. It was difficult to do so beneath all the pain. Manipulating ethereal essence was like trying to pull a part of yourself away using a needle, but instead of pulling thread, it pulled a wispy substance with the viscosity of taffy.

The more Ian practiced, the larger the metaphorical needle became. While it was bigger than it had any right to be after only a week, it barely felt sufficient to do anything more than snake forward and penetrate defenseless souls.

“Life is a game of trade-offs,” Soolemar murmured. “Your soul’s tattered state means my attacks will be more effective and thus more painful. However, it also means that your soul is more dissociated, allowing it to integrate more strongly with your ethereal body.”

Ian could barely speak past the pain. “So what, I’m exchanging defense for offense?”

“Essentially. Now if your descendant were a necromancer, you’d have no chance at all; but she’s not...right?”

“She’s not, thankfully,” Ian replied, his eyes squeezed shut from the pain, beads of sweat forming on his forehead.

Soolemar nodded. “Then in this specific case, you’re in a better position since you won’t have to worry about defense at all.”

Ian could barely process Soolemar’s words. “Sure.”

“The point right now isn’t for you to rebuff me, Ian,” Soolemar said lightly. “Stop trying to resist. The goal is to understand what I’m doing to you.”

“It’s a bit difficult, though I’m trying.”

“Sorry about the pain, but you’re the unfortunate type that learns best through experience. Think of the sensations you felt from the woman’s corpse the other day,” Soolemar instructed. “Those were a disorienting jumble. Think of how you sorted through and made sense of her demise.”

It honestly felt like just brute-forcing things at times, going over the same burst of sensation and breaking them down to parse out a coherent interpretation. I feel like that’s not the point of this exercise.

“Did you notice anything about how the tangle of memories was structured?”

“Like a spiral,” Ian muttered. “Or a wrung mop. Why?”

“It might help to think of unwinding the metaphorical spiral, then. But instead of doing so in the context of a bare soul, think of doing it around you.”

The pain suddenly abated. Ian groaned and exhaled, clutching at his chest.

Soolemar scratched Divian between the ears and gave Ian a sharp nod. “Time for a break. Ruminate on some of the insights that came to mind and see if you can make sense of them before we start up again.”

Soolemar gave Divian a pat on the rump and the silvery hound sauntered forward to Ian, giving him a lick on the hand. Ian ran his fingers through the dog’s short hair as he considered the state of his own soul.

“The first lesson you taught me was how to touch a soul, and from there we focused on how to give souls commands. But how do people control souls directly?”

Soolemar sat down on a small wooden chair he’d manifested earlier with his storage ring. “A soul isn’t physical like you and I. Souls are typically spheres to our soul sight, but what does it really mean for a soul to even have an appearance?”

“...I’m not following.”

“The soul isn’t physical: You don’t see it with your eyes, it just looks like it has a physical form. It’s an invention of our own minds to help us understand.”

“If we both see them as spheres, there must be a reason.”

Soolemar nodded. “Yes. But before we consider the sphere, let’s consider the circle.”

Ian chewed his lip. “I’ve actually been thinking of the soul in terms of trigonometry, using an axis of time as reference.”

The necromancer’s eyes lit up. “Yes, exactly. One of the interesting aspects of souls is that they grow inward, like trees growing in reverse. In fact, at the very center of a soul is a hollow kernel.”

“And if the soul is continuously pushing inward as time progresses, it’ll grow more compressed...is that what leads to its spherical structure?”

“That’s one explanation. I’ve been investigating why souls look like something more coherent than crunched spirals; to most people with soul sight they look like sacs of water.”

“Do they grow more compressed the older they are, then?” Ian wondered. He could imagine a soul growing increasingly dense over time.

“They do, though only while embodied. Once a soul is disembodied, it sheds the layers of acquired meaning until there’s little left.”

This conversation was interesting, but Ian felt that they were going off on a tangent. His soul wasn’t shaped like a sphere; how did this apply to him?

“But my soul is shaped like a popped balloon.”

Soolemar gave him a blank look. “Yes, it is. That’s the corruption of the Infinity Loop at work. And yet, your soul is still perfectly functional in its present form.” Soolemar looked at Ian expectantly, as though hoping he’d figure something out just because he had a track record of jumping to valid conclusions.

“But...it’s not like my soul is just the wrong shape. It’s literally broken into different pieces.” Ian could even feel them with the soul sense he’d been developing. “When trying to defend against your assault, I can’t find a way to coordinate them. And with respect to replicating your attack, I’m only able to do so using a single shard of soul at a time. I’m never going to defeat Descendant Ari with such a splintered offense.”

“You won’t be able to pull the pieces of your soul together,” Soolemar mused, a hand cradling his jaw. “I haven’t worked with a necromancer with a soul like yours before. But I’m confident the shape of the soul is unimportant. You’re going to have to keep thinking and iterating on a method to use your soul’s full power.” The necromancer smiled. “I’ll be honest, though–if everything you’ve done with me thus far has been powered by a single fragment of your soul, I’m excited to see what might happen when you use all of it.”

—

When Ian got back it was late in the evening, but the SPU was running several hours earlier. Eury should be finishing up dinner; I should be able to contact him.

“Eury, is now a good time to talk?” Ian asked.

“Hi. Yes, one moment. Alright. How are you?”

“Fine.”

“Ian, I swear that I always need to drag information out of you. What did you do today?”

“I took a walk.”

“That’s it?”

“Well, I spent the rest of the day in Soolemar’s cave. Packed a sandwich for lunch. Soolemar brought dinner.”

“That sounds boring and productive,” the prince replied.

“I’m making progress, but Ari could come next week and I wouldn’t be ready. What have you been doing today?”

“Well, I’ve been stuck in the palace. Our barrier is still holding strong around Zukal’iss.”

From everything Ian had been reading the past week, that was about the only thing still holding strong for the SPU. Ian wasn’t provided any official documents on the war status, but news articles painted a grim picture.

“Eury, when we last talked you acted like everything was going to plan...is that really true?”

The prince was silent for a few seconds. “So long as the capital holds until the descendant’s arrival, we’ll have a path to victory.”

“But Eury...I heard that you lost territory in Godora. Moreover, the Eldemari has increased her foothold in the upper SPU. She must have over a few million people hostage at this point.”

Eury told him not to worry when he mentioned the Eldemari’s intrusion into the SPU, but ever since that attack they’d been losing ground. Moreover, the Eldemari’s people didn’t typically kill the people they captured, but rather added them to the ever-expanding collection of hostages. With every passing day she gained more leverage to force the SPU’s capitulation.

“We’re managing. Don’t worry about us, just focus on finding a way to defeat Ari.”

Ian snorted in exasperation. How could he not worry when it sounded like the SPU was teetering on the brink of collapse?

“Should I come back?”

“Absolutely not. As soon as the Eldemari knows where you are she’s going to come for you and try to ensnare you with her practice. That’s what would really spell game-over.”

While Ian recognized the validity of the prince’s words, he couldn’t quell his concern. Euryphel was around his age but was overseeing a massive war campaign against a foe with superior manpower and experience.

“You are sleeping, right?”

“A few hours a night.”

“Good. It’s important. I’m going to go to bed, but know that all my well-wishes are behind you. Best of luck, Eury. I believe in you.”

“Thanks, Ian. Good night.”