Nations of Rothel:

Dawn: The nation of Enryn, Savior of Flames. His Mark grants the ability to both produce and become near-impervious to fire. All potential additional conduits are related to this ability in some manner. Dawn's populace have a slight pyromaniac bent as a result.

It was only a few days before I realised the truth.

The pieces were all there, in hindsight. I simply had to put them together.

He didn’t move, unless I did it for him. He didn’t speak, unless I did it for him. He didn’t do anything, unless I first commanded it. He didn’t eat.

He didn’t even breathe.

I wrestled with my own thoughts. It wasn’t easy, accepting one’s failures. If only I could allow myself to bury my head in the sand, to drown out the whispers of doubt and worry that assailed me. All I had to do was ignore the evidence, tell myself that I had helped. It was tempting - but, in the end, I couldn’t do it.

I had to stop this insane charade. I couldn’t keep lying to myself.

He wasn’t alright. How could he be? Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t save him. Not entirely. After all, he was de - my train of thought stuttered to a stop. For a silent moment, I gathered myself.

Though I nearly couldn’t bear it, I pressed on and forced myself to reach the inevitable, terrible conclusion.

He was depressed.

A melancholic sigh brushed past my lips.

Life was exhausting, I knew. Still, they always said that one of the best things for depression was to get yourself out there. To exercise. To live life.

If he was too tired, I would do it for him until I was no longer required.

It was the least I could do.

The first order of business, I supposed, was gathering information. If I was to live his life for him, it was important to err as close as possible to the truth; perhaps a degree of familiarity would pull him from his fugue.

I split my attention as best I could, moving both bodies at once. It was strange, having to coordinate the man's journey while, at the same time, waiting for him to arrive. Despite that, the previous few days had given me the opportunity to become more proficient at multitasking. In the end, it came down to practice - though I was sure that there was at least some degree of power-wonkiness taking effect; the human brain just wasn’t naturally inclined to performing and assessing so many actions and sensations without the aid of habit and muscle memory.

And this, this certainly wasn’t muscle memory. If anything, it was like gaining a whole new set of muscles, yet having each be just similar enough to another that it generated more confusion than anything else. Regardless, I had worked to keep up a certain level of constant activity in order to practice.

While I had noticed that I could still order any of the Risen that had been touched by [Unity] in the same way that I could for a normal Risen, I still preferred to do as much as was humanly - did that term even apply, anymore? - possible, both for the purpose of honing my multitasking ability and because I could simply do most things better. The Risen were dutiful, yes, but I would never call them intelligent. Despite that, the ability was still somewhat useful for performing repeated or menial tasks that I would prefer to avoid.

My insistence on exercising my multitasking had led to an important discovery, at least. The day that I had saved the man, I identified a strange phenomenon. While walking through the forest in my Aryx form, I suddenly found myself disconnected from the creature. My mind was snapped back from its perch, like a rubber band that had surpassed its bounds. Confused and disoriented, I took a step in its direction with my main body. Like nothing had happened, the connection was reestablished.

The next moments had been a haze of experimentation. Using my innate knowledge of my natural power’s range along with the ties between the Risen and myself, I managed to estimate the range of control as around 5 miles from myself. Curiously, the Risen that I commanded near the Aryx were able to reach significantly further than others, reaching past the range of the Aryx itself by another 5 miles.

This gave me a theory; one that was, fortunately, resolved the very next day upon creating a new Unified Risen. This time, however, I chose to imbue a small and simple insect that possessed little in the way of senses. I knew that, should my guess be correct, it would be best to remove as much potential disorientation as possible.

In my new form, I was carried to the edge of the connection found while controlling the Aryx. After entrenching my insectile self at the edge of my discovered range, I managed to surpass the previous range limits that had chained my movements. In fact, I was able to move another 5 miles past the Unified insect’s location - confirming my previous theory.

From what I could tell, my various Risen were chained to a 5 mile radius around my main body. After passing that range, they would disconnect and fall dormant until I ensured the distance between us was within 5 miles once more. Whether it was through some quirk of carrying my awareness or some other esoteric phenomena, Risen that had been touched by [Unity] acted as relays that extended the connection - daisychaining Risen that had been affected by [Unity] allowed my Risen control range to reach further with each new Unified Risen that was added to the chain. It meant I was stuck in place, for a short while, but not forever.

I finally arrived, having marched towards my main body's location, scuffing the man's boot against the ground as I walked. The sound drew my eyes downward to see weathered leather, worn heavily by travel. My gaze roamed upwards, meeting a man worn by years of conflict, hardy and dangerous. Yet at the same time, I could see an olive-skinned youth covered in ragged cloth and a too-old gaze, staring at me expectantly.

I let out a long-held breath.

“You can do it, just talk to him!” a woman’s voice cheered.

“How about that weather, huh?” I asked.

I looked up at the clear sky, shrugging in response. Not only was I embarrassed by this charade, but I didn't know what to talk about.

...This was harder than I thought it would be.

I called for the man’s mount while my brain worked overtime to reduce the awkwardness of talking to myself. It soon fizzled out from the strain - some things just couldn’t be done. Hell, even talking to someone who actually responded properly might have been challenging. It had been a while.

The revived mount cantered over just in time to rescue me from my embarrassment. I thanked my unwitting savior with a nod, blissfully distracting myself with the contents of its packs.

The distraction was more effective than I had expected.

Inside the packs, I found water, a variety of foodstuffs, coins, a bedroll, a map, and - most importantly - a letter and a charcoal drawing that matched the boy whose body I had replaced.

Victor,

The bearer of this letter, by the name of Markus, has been hired to find you and bring you home. I don’t know what is going on, but your mother and father would be furious with me if you were hurt. I know that what happened with your mother was hard, and your father’s death following so quickly afterwards was a tragedy - but they wouldn’t want this.

More than anything, they wanted you to be safe. I feel the same.

Please come back to Dihaim.

Uncle Gil

My stomach plummeted, dropping into a morass of guilt that churned in time with my quickening heartbeat.

Nothing had changed. Still, something about the letter made things more real. It gave power to the loss. It gave it a name. Victor - someone’s son, someone’s nephew, someone’s charge. Now, no one’s.

I couldn’t really blame myself for this one, I knew. Nevertheless, guilt was an illogical thing. It lurked behind corners, hidden in shadows, pouncing at the faintest hint of incrimination. It was an old friend, just as it was one of my greatest enemies.

It was familiar.

That, perhaps, made things easier to swallow. I knew its tricks, the way it twisted my mind, the way it filtered my perception.

Easier to swallow did not mean easy. It choked and strangled, fighting the entire way down. It left its mark on me.

I let out a breath. Victor let out a breath - and he spilled away in a gust of air. He was gone, lost in some unknown gambit that had brought him to me. He wasn’t Markus, thoughtlessly drained away by my power. Victor was different. I had just been there to claim the pieces he left behind.

Knowing that didn’t make things much easier, though.

With an effort, I refocused my attention to other things. The letter had done more than disturb the ever-present guilt that sometimes felt to be the very core of my being. It gave me direction. Not a direction, perhaps, but direction nonetheless.

There was little worse than the pain of uncertain loss. Confirmed loss was terrible, a fact to which I could attest - but it was a constant pain, the agony of lost love and lost life. Though time did not fully heal all wounds, it helped you grow accustomed, just a little. Uncertain loss was far more insidious. It cared not for the balm that time provided. Each day the wound was torn anew - because to give up would be to kill them in your heart. So you could only wait, each day dying a little more inside in an attempt to keep hope alive. Each day knowing that it might be too late.

No, Victor’s death might not have been my personal failing, but that did not absolve me of my responsibility.

His family needed to know.

Fortunately, that aligned with my other goal. I had been planning to bring the man - Markus! - to more familiar places and people, anyway.

I took the worn map in hand, fully unfolding it. It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for. In fact, it didn’t even take long to find my own location. It wasn’t exactly subtle. Just south of Dihaim, the words jumped out at me.

Reaper’s Grave.

Any lingering suspicions that I had been reborn in some bizarre new world ended then and there. The crumpled city was familiar not because it was like Ancelas. It was familiar because it was Ancelas. It was my grave. It was my shame.

Much of the rest of the map was unfamiliar. The landmasses were the same, but the names were unrecognizable.

According to the map, Reaper’s Grave was surrounded by Foxwood Forest - a stretch of trees that spread west for hundreds of miles. That, certainly, was new. I couldn’t recall ever seeing a forest of that size, let alone one so close.

Around 50 miles north of Reaper’s Grave, skirting the eastern edge of Foxwood Forest, lay Dihaim.

That...might take a few days.

Stuck in place until I had gained enough Unified Risen to extend my connection, I could only wait. I soon discovered that waiting was a special sort of hell.

Only one thing saved me from the otherwise-endless tedium.

Blood dripped lazily from a massive wound in my chest, splitting me open and pulling me apart. I winced, more at the visuals I was being subjected to than at any terrible sense of pain. The pain was there, but it felt removed to a certain extent, dissociated somehow - the sensation lying somewhere in that middle ground between experiencing pain yourself and hearing about it from someone else.

This wasn’t enough to endanger Markus’ body, not anymore. The process of raising him from the dead had changed him. I had a slight awareness of a small solid core that nestled within my/our brain, and I knew that it had become the single true vulnerability of the body. After having noticed it, I could feel the same sensation within my Aryx-self's body - and knew that the same was likely present within all of the other Risen as well.

In general, I decided to take that as a positive. No longer was there danger of bleeding out or losing function from a number of wounds. Nothing mattered beyond remaining intact enough for movement and protecting my core.

It was for that reason that I was staring at my guts as they spilled out from my eviscerated abdomen with little concern.

As morbid as it was, the wound served multiple purposes - the main of which was to both test and utilize the powers that I had recently discovered Markus held. Similarly to Victor, he possessed a Mark from Neladrie. However, he held two differently filled conduits.

The first was [Swap], which allowed me to switch places four times per day with the Risen that were directly connected to Markus. That was the sticking point, unfortunately. Though we were connected, I was unable to teleport to a Risen that had not been created by acting through Markus. That lowered the potential of the ability considerably, as the life force within the body was miniscule compared to what I was normally able to work with. Regardless, I was still able to raise small creatures that could serve as teleport anchors. Another drawback was that I was only able to carry things with me that extended a couple of inches away from my skin - ruining my plan of easily transporting groups of Risen in the blink of an eye. I had to settle for a different option instead.

Still, I knew that it was an extremely useful ability, and I was grateful to have it.

With my experimentation finally over, I placed a hand on my wounded abdomen, the other resting upon a silent Risen. My insides itched, roiling and shifting, twisting and writhing like warring insects. A moment later, I activated the second of my conduits, [Woundshift], and willed the wound to knit closed.

Faster than I had expected, the gaping laceration sealed itself shut, and an identical wound appeared on the Risen beside me. Unlike [Swap], which required the use of a Risen that was created by the owner of the conduit, [Woundshift] did not appear to hold such qualms; any Risen was fair game as far as the ability was concerned.

It had been a difficult decision, but I had eventually tested the ability on a living creature as well, just to be sure. I was relieved to see that the ability did not transfer wounds to anything but Risen, though non-Risen could still have their wounds transferred away from themselves in order to provide healing. I wasn’t sure I would have been happy to find the experiment had been successful.

The rest of my time had been split between gathering both a larger number and greater variety of Risen, exploring the city, and preparing to fortify the edges of my range. While my power’s range of lethality decreased ever so slightly with each Risen I created, I knew that not only was the change miniscule, but the Risen’s destruction would send the vast majority of the donated life right back to myself - forcing my power’s range back to near the same level. Due to that, I needed to ensure that my Risen would not be destroyed. The easiest way to do that, in my opinion, was sheer numbers - a horde of such quantity that challenging it would be unthinkable.

The increased number of Risen would also help to guard the edges of my kill range, preventing others from heedlessly wandering inside. Though it was possible that forming a perimeter around my range could alert wary individuals that something was going on in the area, I preferred that over allowing someone to accidentally step within it and suffer. Thus my Risen horde grew ever larger, giving me a small outlet for my dangerous overabundance of life. It was fortunate, I realized, that they did not need to eat, otherwise their numbers might pose a threat to the nearby wildlife - more than they already did, anyway.

After a long week of waiting, it was finally time. I readied my packs, waving goodbye to my main body and setting my mount in the correct direction. A Unified Crow sat upon my shoulder, which would hopefully serve to keep me on track.

I was off to Dihaim.