Elruin, taken aback for a moment by Cali's abruptness and, frankly, rudeness, finally got her opportunity to speak. "My name is Elruin." She maintained absolute politeness; she hadn't realized there was any another way to talk until now. "You can call me Ell?" She found it awkward, but not entirely unpleasant. "I'd like it if you heal me, please." She slipped back into the submissive position as the younger speaker right away.

"Sure thing." Cali dropped down so she was sitting on her heels, knees spread out to keep balance. Magical energy swelled up from within the strange girl, until it surged outward in a pattern more elegant and controlled than any Elruin had ever seen before. Not that Elruin had much to compare it to; her only experience with healing magic was Mother, who would have killed herself attempting to draw on even a fraction of this much power.

"And that'll do for ya!" Cali hopped back to her feet, confident that Elruin's injuries had been dealt with. To Elruin's surprise, she was right; it took Mother the better part of a minute to mend wounds far less severe than this one, and Cali did it in a matter of seconds.

"May I ask you to tell me if there's anything useful in Mork bodies?" Elruin paused for a moment. "Like, anything special that you can use or sell?"

Cali stopped to think for a moment. "No, not really. I mean a good tanner can make some use from the hide, but only 'cause it's so big. They'd rather have a deer or bear if they can afford to be picky. I guess they might be edible, but I've never been desperate enough to try. Besides, after being pumped full of enough necromancy to kill a giant coyote monster, I don't think anyone's hungry enough to take the chance. Or maybe the teeth could be used for cheap ivory, but it'd be some really cheap ivory."

"Ooh, I bet if you can find a taxidermist, you might get a few coin selling trophies. There are rich people with more money than hunting skills who'd pay to have a monster like this mounted on a wall. But then you'd have to drag this thing to a taxidermist and find a buyer, and I don't think they'd want this one, what with all the necromancy. Even that wouldn't be much; most wealthy collectors want the big game, like dragons, or at least a manticore or gryphon. Mork are basically the weakest thing out here that's still a threat to an adventurer. They're only dangerous 'cause they run in packs. Being honest, the only thing worth taking is the sarite, and even that's not all that good. But any sarite is worth keeping, right?"

Elruin knew nothing about sarite, and thus couldn't share an opinion. "Father had a sarite, but I've never had one."

Cali blinked for a moment. "You can't be serious. You came outside without any sarite? Like, none at all? How are you still alive?!" Elruin tried to say something about her dolly, but never got the chance before Cali interrupted her to continue ranting. "You'd have to be insane, or insanely powerful, to be out here without at least something to protect you! And I've gotten a look at you; you're pretty strong for your age, but you're nowhere near ready for the wilderness. Why are you out here? Where'd you come from?"

"I'm from the farm that way." Elruin pointed in the general direction of her home. "Brother and Sister locked me outside." Elruin used the grammatical structure to indicate her siblings were in charge of her, rather than referring to either her parents or to non-guardian elder siblings. "They made a mistake."

"Locked out? Mistake? You mean they took you outside the gates, then closed the gates, which if it's the farm I'm thinking of take three people to move, without checking to see if anyone was still outside?" Cali didn't bother to hide her disbelief in Elruin's lie. "So how long have you been out here without them opening the door for you?"

"Yesterday afternoon."

Cali brought her hands up to cradle her forehead. "Three above, four below, what is wrong with this world? Doesn't even know about sarite, and they send her out here to..." She gave herself time to take a slow, deep breath. "In that case, guess first thing's first, time for you to learn how sarite works."

Calenda pushed up the sleeve on her shirt, then extracted a more traditional looking dagger than Elruin's new toy from the sheath on her belt. "I guess you don't know that sarite has another name... well, lots of names, but the important one is heartstone. That's because it's found..." she traced the dagger along the Mork's neck, carving the hide away from the throat. "Right above and behind the heart."

The neck cavity carved open, she shoved her hand into the gullet. "Huh, drier than expected, guess that's the 'necromancy' thing at work. Now, ugh," she grunted as she forced her arm deeper. "You gotta be careful doing this... even lots of weak shards are attuned to dangerous elements; you don't want to hold a poison or fire shard unless you've got some sort of protection. And powerful sarite has a nasty habit of overwhelming weak people... it can get real ugly real fast."

"But!" She yanked her arm out, then held a dim gray crystal up to the light. "This is just a Mork. If it had sarite that powerful, we wouldn't be having this conversation. You would be dead, and I'd be running to the capital to find dragon slayers. But let's not dwell on hypotheticals." Her eyes began to glow green again, the song of her magic a discordant chaos to Elruin's ears.

"Well, I told you it wasn't going to be special, but this one's kinda disappointing even by Mork standards." Calenda twisted it around in the light, as if she might discover some hidden facet to the gem with time. "Boosted sense of smell, some nightvision, and a minor increase in the power of wind magic that doesn't do either of us much good. Oh well, it never hurts to keep a few junk shards to burn, instead of something valuable.

Calenda handed the shard over to Elruin. "Now, just focus on it for a moment, and let nature take its course. Can't believe a mage of your strength doesn't know how to do this, already."

Elruin concentrated on the crystal in her hand, and the energy it represented. The process was slow at first, but it didn't take long at all before the sarite's spirit joined into her own, creating a new spirit that was neither her, nor the sarite, but something new. Despite Cali's words, Elruin's sense of sight didn't change at all, but a thousand new sensations hit her nose. The dead Mork, the stink of the sweat, mud, blood and spittle which coated her own skin, the soft aroma of Cali who, despite how long she must have been traveling smelled like she just got out of a bath. Elruin even had a good idea where the squirrels were hiding, if she needed to find one.

The new information was confusing for a moment, but Elruin's mind and deeper essence remained untouched by the transformative nature of the sarite. Still, if more powerful sarite had a stronger effect, she understood why more powerful sarite would be dangerous.

"There you go." Cali clapped her hands together. "Some people buy armor and weapons that make direct use of sarite, but most make do with wrapping it with cloth. I hear there are even crazies who stitch it inside themselves. But there's no need for any of that; long as it's in contact with your body and isn't conflicting with incompatible magic, it'll work fine. Oh, right, and there are limits to how much sarite a person's body can tolerate at once. Depends on the strength of sarite and the user, but I think it'll be a while before you gotta worry about that."

"Thank you." Elruin clasped her hands together over her heart, as was the formal position to show gratitude.

"As I walk." Calenda's smile faded a moment after. "Now, let's go talk to your family about how careless they were to misplace a sister."

Healed of her injuries, Elruin had no difficulty keeping up with Calenda on the trail. Soon, the walls of her home came into view, a bastion of stone that she had never questioned or appreciated until the experiences of the last sixteen or so hours. How fragile life on the farm was, hiding behind the walls while there were monsters like Morks and worse crawling about outside.

"And that's one lost lamb returned to the flock." Cali stood looking at the wall. "Though the wolves bit off more than they could chew with this one. Go on, Ell, let your family know you're back after they misplaced you all night." She sniffed the air. "Smells like they were having themselves a barbecue last night, and now I'm curious what they were cooking."

Elruin stood before the gate, and pulled the rope which held the bell to alert those inside. It wasn't long before the voice of a man, one of the farmhands, shouted through the door. "Who is it!"

"Elruin!" The luckiest little necromancer shouted back. "I'm back!"

"But... Carob said..." The man seemed hesitant, whether because of the gender taboo or having expected Elruin wouldn't make it make past the night. "Please forgive me, I must go find Kasa."

"Not one of your brothers, I take it." Cali kept a position leaning against the wall, in a blind spot where she'd only be seen if someone climbed up to peak over the wall, or used some form of magic.

"No."

Several minutes later, a girl's voice, Kasa, shouted through the gate. "Elruin? You're not supposed to be back for days. I told you, you have to go to the city."

Cali rolled her eyes, but held her tongue. She caught Elruin's poor attempt at a lie, and in her opinion the girl's elder sister wasn't much better.

"But I don't have to! There were monster dogs called morks and they were scary and bit me and broke my dolly and it's safe now! You can let me inside."

"I don't believe you!" Kasa shouted back through the gate. "Be a good girl and go to the city like you were told!"

"Okay, I've seen enough of this bullshit!" Cali stepped away from her position on the wall, into view of the small holes though the gate. "I am Casenda na Andara! In the name of both the Ecrosian Third Order and the Imperial Scouts, I command you to open this gate!"

"But I-" Kasa tried to fish for some lie, some excuse to keep the gate closed, but Cali wasn't interested in hearing it.

Calenda dipped deeper into her pool than Elruin realized she could, into perhaps the strongest upspring of power the nature mage could draw upon. A burst of disruptive earth-oriented magic carrying the weight of the most powerful spell Elruin had ever seen in her young life, slammed into the gate. Wood popped, debris fell from the stone, and a combination of orange and blue light warred against one another on the magical plane. The spell used was, in many ways, like Elruin's own Apoplectic bolt, but stronger and relying on earth instead of death energy. The punch which joined it was for show, nothing more.

"You left your sister out here to die! I can smell burning human flesh in there! And I am out of patience!" Calenda used magic to amplify her voice, making her sound more like a giant than a person. "If you don't open this gate right now, I will bring this entire farm down around your ears! See how you like the night without a wall to protect you!"

Elruin doubted she could accomplish her threat; the magic of the barrier still held strong, and Cali couldn't have much more than two, maybe three more attacks like that one before she has expended her reserves. On the balance, it looked like her siblings were in no danger from Calenda.

Moments later, Cali began to glow with power as she drew upon a spell which... did nothing but make her glow with power. Elruin was no expert on magic, but it didn't look like it had any real effect on the world, all it did was trick people by making the caster look scary. It was also a trick that Elruin was pretty sure she could imitate with a little practice.

"Okay!" Kasa shouted out the gate. "We'll open the gate!"

"Good choice." Cali looked back at Elruin and smirked.

They had to wait a minute while the people inside the farm removed the brace and slid the gate sideways to let them through. Kasa and Carob stood at the gate, but neither could quite meet Elruin's eyes.

"Okay, we can explain," Carob said. To Elruin's surprise, he took the same passive tone he used when talking to Mother or Father, instead of the more commanding tone she'd have expected.

"I don't think you can." Calenda walked past him, into the safety of the farm with Elruin following behind. Calenda showed no interest in following the rules of polite society with Elruin's family. "But, go ahead and try. I love listening to people try to justify sororicide and what appears to be some sort of corpse-burning ritual. Nothing I'd rather do with my time. Oh, and before you make me add injury to the insults? Truthsaying. Easy spell for a nature mage. Every time you lie to me, I break one of your fingers, in accordance with Imperial law. Now do you think you can explain?"

Elruin's elder siblings shared a glance. "It is an easy spell," Kasa admitted. "Almost anyone with Creation affinity and enough magical power can learn it."

Carob took a slow breath. "Let's start with the burning bodies. They were dead when we started."

"That's a good start." Cali looked up at the young man, but kept enough distance that he couldn't easily reach her. "Now, tell me who killed them."

"Nobody!" Carob insisted. "They were killed by a monster. It looked like a human skeleton. No matter what we tried, it just kept attacking and killing until somehow Elruin made it stop fighting. Kasa said it was undead, and we had to burn the bodies to prevent the taint from spreading."

Cali thought about it for a second. "Looks like a corpse, mindless killing machine, easily controlled by necromancers. It's either the undead or elaborate illusion magic. Burning's a bad idea, though." She looked at Kasa. "Your read it in a book, right?"

"Yes?" Kasa hesitated, but answered. "All my books say fire works."

"We need to burn books that spread that lie, along with their authors." Cali shook her head. "Burning is only guaranteed to work if the fire gets so hot that even the bones turn to ash. Worse, it does nothing to stop the taint that raised the dead in the first place, and it can spread the taint in the smoke of the fire. Don't worry, I believe you didn't know that. You strike me as someone who's a lot more clever than smart. How fortunate for you that ignorance is not a crime. And that none of the bodies were tainted."

Kasa wanted to say many things in retort, but she knew better than to question an Imperial officer. To her face, at any rate.

"Since that's settled, let's move on to sending little Ell out into the woods to die. Do you know what the punishment for child murder is?"

"She's a monster!" Kasa shouted. "She has these freaky powers, kills rats by pointing at them. She was never right in the head! And then there's that horrible song she sings, it made the monster obey her! I bet she even created it!"

Carob put his hand on Kasa's shoulder, to encourage her to settle down.

Cali blinked. "Wait... are you saying she just does these things. Like, nobody showed her how? She didn't have a teacher? You're telling me she learned to Reveal as a wild talent?"

"I don't know what a wild talent is, but I guess so," Carob said. "She's always been... off... stronger than other children, even as an infant she rarely cried and never got sick, and as she got older, she..."

"How old is she? When was she born?"

"She turned twelve three and a half months ago. The winter solstice."

"If there was ever a time for a wild talent necromancer to be born, that would be it." Calenda ran her hand over her face. "So we have a twelve year old who's learned to Reveal without any help, and your plan was to just, what, send her into the wild so that something would kill her so you wouldn't have to deal with her anymore?"

Carob kept his eyes on focused on the ground. "We couldn't think of any other way."

"Any other way? I thought of two in four seconds." Cali stepped closer to Carob. "First, you could have tried being a decent human being and not murdering your family. It's amazing how often people use that one. Or, maybe, and I'm just throwing this out there... you could have sent her to any academy in the nation."

"But we can't afford-"

"Three above, Four below, and not a one of them could outwit a turnip!" Cali's shouting interrupted Kasa. "They don't charge anything to teach a mage like her. They pay you so they can have them. I'm a natural talent, two mage parents, trained since I was four years old, get called a credit to my bloodline every upper-class party I get dragged to. I'm considered a prodigy, and I didn't find my Revelation until I was almost two years older than Ell. They pay sums fit for kings to recruit mages like her, yet here you are, literally treating her like dog food. How did you not know this? I know you have Reclaimers come through here, did not a one of them notice Elruin's potential?"

Nobody in the group spoke for a moment, until Cali sighed and continued. "Let me guess, you made her hide in the barn because you didn't want them to know about your child necromancer, even though they're the only people who'd be able to help her. Of course you'd be that stupid."

Calenda stopped, taking some slow breaths to calm herself. "Okay, now that that's out of the way, you're both under arrest. You'll be taken to Engewal, and either sold as slave labor or executed by this time next week. That's for the judge to decide."

Kasa gasped, and turned into her brother's arms. He stood tall, a miserable attempt to act brave and intimidate the ranting redheaded mage. "Why?"

"Official charge being the attempted murder of a child," Calenda snapped. "Enough people die of monster attacks without people like you. Unofficially, it's because I don't want people as dumb as the two of you to breed. I know, I'm contradicting myself, I'm complicated like that."

She switched back to a smile. "Hey, Ell, wanna come stay at my place for a day or two? It's not much, but there's a warm bed, it doesn't smell like cow dung and burning corpses, and nobody's going to try to feed you to wild animals."