Euryphel snapped his fingers. “We’re in a scenario.”

Ian nodded. “Let me know what you see.”

Euryphel’s eyes trailed unbidden to the golden arrow sunk into his hand, its shaft embedded near his middle finger. His eyes snapped back to the decemancer with morbid curiosity.

Ian smiled, and then it was over: the decemancer–no, necromancer–dropped to the ground with a thud. The bone floor immediately began to fall apart, sending everything into the dark waters below. Euryphel felt his stomach drop as he summoned a wind to stop his and Ian’s descent. He hoisted Ian onto his back and with a grunt of exertion flew up to the sleeping hammocks, dumping Ian’s dead body into the woven fabric.

Ian...don’t tell me you’re really dead, just like that, Euryphel thought, chewing his lip. Not only was it anticlimactic, but Euryphel found it unsettling to see the indomitable necromancer die so easily.

What’s a master of Death who dies in a single breath?

As he held his hand up to his eyes, he felt his eyes begin to water. It wasn’t real, but the reality was settling in: It very well might be in just a few days.

Just seeing Ian dead sent a shiver down the prince’s spine.

He waited until the end of the scenario time limit, then snapped back to the present. Ian was once again looking up to him with an expectant gaze, the trace of a determined smile on his lips.

Euryphel frowned and averted his eyes. “Whatever it was you were going to try...you didn’t come back.”

Ian appeared unfazed. “Oh. Let’s try again, then–I have a few ideas.”

“First, let’s go to the hammocks.”

Ian raised an eyebrow. “What do you have in mind?”

Euryphel snorted. “When you die, everything collapses.” He ran the back of his foot along the bone platform for emphasis. “It all goes into the water. I’d prefer not to carry you around: You’re heavier than you look.”

Ian chuckled. “Y’jeni, I’ve never felt so burdensome.” He hovered himself into the air and up to the hammock, landing on his back and folding both arms behind his head. The prince followed and sat down adjacent, his feet pressing into the fabric.

“Alright, are you prepared?” Euryphel asked.

“Ready.”

Euryphel snapped his fingers. “Scenario.”

This time Ian didn’t die immediately. Despite his initial carefree pose, as soon as Euryphel snapped his fingers, Ian sat up and craned his head forward. Eyes pressed into slits, he breathed in and out, his chest barely moving.

Suddenly the arrow winked out and Ian’s body slumped, but he didn’t completely fall over. His eyes opened and radiated harsh violet light. Moments later, his lips parted to reveal light shining from his throat.

I’ve never seen that before, Euryphel thought, holding up his hand. In people, the light always shines from the eyes.

Ian began to hover above the hammock with his legs still folded. He remained like that until the end of the scenario, though his fate arrow never returned.

“Nope,” the prince sighed. “What did you try that time?”

“You want to know?”

“...It was a bit odd.”

Ian smiled. “What do you think?”

“Did you try and make yourself into a...construct?”

Ian’s ears turned red. “Not exactly.”

The prince blinked. “Are you embarrassed?”

Ian chuckled. “Honestly, a little. It’s just...Y’jeni, practicing necromancy feels like I’m doing something wrong. When I’m around Soolemar or by myself, it’s easy to forget, but doing it in front of you or anyone else...”

“Ian, I trust that you wouldn’t use necromancy for the kinds of things you saw in the Infinity Loop. It’s just a tool like any other.”

Ian’s mouth curved downward. “The more I learn about it, the more I begin to understand why it’s banned.”

“...Really?”

“It’s true destruction,” Ian explained. “Energy cannot be created or destroyed...likewise, souls are recycled, borrowed and returned the same. Necromancy disrupts that natural process: It has the power to corrupt and obliterate.”

“I don’t see why that’s a problem. You’ve mentioned that souls are like aimless, floating balloons. They’re not intelligent–what does it matter if they’re destroyed?”

Ian nodded. “That’s what I thought, too.”

“So...?”

“I...destroyed someone’s soul,” Ian murmured. “One day his soul would have reverted and lost all memory until cycled again, so the transgression wasn’t in removing his memories or consciousness. There’s nothing I did to him that time wouldn’t.”

“I still don’t see the problem.”

“Me neither, originally!” Ian growled, pushing his head into the hammock. “It’s still something I’m trying to figure out. Right now all I have to operate on are vague feelings and it’s frustrating.”

Euryphel hummed. “You like to think about things analytically.”

“I try to.”

“I’m the same way, if you couldn’t tell,” the prince smiled. He stared down at the golden arrow biting his hand, its auxiliary tines wrapping his middle finger like a ring. “Unfortunately, some things evade reason and description.”

Ian exhaled. “We should keep going.”

The prince nodded. “Let’s.”

—

Ian gazed intently at the prince. “And...?”

“No.”

Ian groaned. “Damn. Starting to run out of ideas...”

Euryphel narrowed his eyes. “Really?”

Ian blinked. “Well, at the rate we’re going, I’ll run out eventually.”

“You still have some ideas, though, right?” Euryphel asked.

Ian snorted. “Yes.”

The prince gave him a smug smile. “Then don’t start worrying until we’ve exhausted all of them. Are you ready to go again?”

Ian nodded. “Let’s do it.”

An anticlimactic moment later, Euryphel’s complexion blanched.

“Eury?”

The prince’s eyes locked on Ian’s, his face expressionless. “Ian...”

Ian felt his heart beat in his chest. “Did it work?”

“It worked.”

“...We should try it again to make sure,” Ian replied.

Euryphel shook his head. “I already repeated the scenario ten times. It works.”

Ian felt lightheaded. “Should I try it for real, then?”

“I just tested it another five times and you’re still good.”

So much for already repeating it ten times, Ian mused. Why was I worried in the first place?

“Then for the record, let me explain what I’m doing. Is the glossY still powered?” Residences typically had ambient energy arrays that powered basic glossware like stoves, dishwashers and glossYs. While Euryphel and Ian both possessed portable energy radiators, they wouldn’t produce energy forever.

Euryphel held up the fat glossY. “It’s on. Do you need me to record your actions with a glosscam as well?”

Ian nodded. “If I ascend, I want to leave something behind for others to learn from. If there’s really a way to resuscitate people considered irreversibly dead...the world deserves to know, necromancy or not. It won’t be particularly useful without being able to see how I shape vitality and the ethereal, but it’s better than nothing.”

The prince’s void storage was a bracelet on his left wrist. He only needed to remove it and activate it to create a portal the size of his fist draping down from his pinched fingers. He stuck in an arm and fished around for a few seconds before withdrawing an auxiliary glosscam. “The armored glossY couldn’t carry a cam along with everything else, but this will work.”

Euryphel moved the cam around before locking eyes with Ian and giving him a sharp nod.

Ian took in a deep breath and tried not to think too hard about what he was going to do. It was easy to do something when he knew he was in a scenario, less so when it was real life.

“You just did it five more times without realizing you were in a scenario and you did fine,” Euryphel encouraged.

Ian’s lips quirked into a smile. “Alright, I’m starting.”

He focused his attention inward and began to narrate. “I begin by isolating my soul within my ethereal body. It should feel like the immaterial equivalent of a solid suspended in liquid. In my case, the soul is a collection of torn pieces scattered throughout my body like refuse.” Ian chuckled. “Perhaps that matters, though I expect it doesn’t.” After all, he’d been able to bring back Zilverna’s intact soul.

Ian breathed in deeply and began to circulate ethereal essence around his body, nestling each shard of his soul in swirling energy. He closed his eyes.

“The challenge of doing this on myself is that I need to bring myself back from beyond the mortal coil.

“Originally I thought to set a process in motion before my death that would bring me back. I sought to turn myself into a kind of temporary construct, but this was a complete failure.

“I tried numerous other methods, experimenting with finding some way to force myself to come back. In the end, the solution was simple.” Or so I assume, Ian thought, his heart thumping. I’m speaking as though I’ve done this before, but this is my first time.

“I didn’t need to find a way to pull myself back. All I needed was an open doorway.”

Ian didn’t create a proper array around each of his soul splinters, but he took inspiration from Soolemar’s blood array back in Yurusi Desert. If Soolemar found a way to usher in souls back from wherever they were, Ian figured he could do the same.

Ian had learned from Zilverna and Judith the importance of providing the soul scaffolding to latch on to when rejoining the host body. According to Euryphel’s most-recent scenarios, doing so played a critical role in bringing himself back as well.

“First, I spin ethereal essence into wispy threads. I tether these strands to rigid material surrounding the body’s vasculature. I form a tight weave to slow dissociation after my death.”

Ian felt a chill go down his spine as he spoke of his impending but impermanent demise, but continued onward.

“Unfortunately, that alone won’t be enough.” At least according to what Euryphel told him about past attempts. “I fill in the web of threads to create something like a nest. It’s uncomfortable to twist and hold parts of my ethereal body like I’m describing, especially for each piece of my soul...but it’s necessary.”

Ian took in another deep breath as he encompassed the last shreds of soul in woven ethereal essence.

“This nesting is the metaphorical doorway,” Ian explained. “A path back. And this next part is the most critical.” Ian lifted one eyelid to look at Euryphel. “At the moment of death, where lies your strength? It’s a hypothetical question, but one that you need to answer for yourself. If you’re resuscitating someone else, you might need to tease this truth out of them, but...I digress.”

Euryphel watched with rapt attention, his hands tightening around the glosscam.

Ian had thought about the answer to this question after Zilverna’s death. He’d found the young practitioner drifting in a sea of fear and uncertainty, his soul a tangled ravine biding no trespassers. Ian had seen fragments of Zilverna’s life, flashes of interactions and aspirations, but only began to process them after entering the rift.

He’d come to recognize a messy thread winding its way through Zilverna’s life, a thread of being second best. The son of the eminent Eldemari, Zilverna was talented, but not brilliant. In many ways, Ian was exactly what Zilverna wanted to be: someone respected for talent alone rather than familial connections.

Ian wasn’t entirely sure how he’d managed to bring Zilverna back, but he took inspiration from the moment of the Sezakuin scion’s resurrection.

“As for myself...for my entire life I worried about disappointing others and living a meaningless life. Before and after the loop, I was afraid of stepping out of bounds. I wanted to live quietly, but that’s not so much a desire as a limitation. What I really desire is to pursue mastery of my craft, disregarding the judgment of others and measuring my worth in terms of my own progress.”

“Sounds like a lonely existence,” Euryphel murmured.

Ian smiled. “Freedom need not be lonely.” He closed his one open eye and inhaled. “Before entering true death, think of the answer to the previous question. When you have it in your mind...kill yourself in a flood of Death energy, severing the soul’s connection to your body.”

He took in final breath, then said, “At the moment of death, my strength is in mastery.”

Ian killed himself with a shallow sigh. His body fell limp into the fabric of the hammock, face serene.