The crystal continued to crack. Parsae cried out in pain.

"Parsae never existed" Demadara narrowed her eyes. "She's a fairy tale. Now tell me who you really are or I'll send you where you belong."

The shadow continued to writhe and squirm, Timae was covering her ears from the high pitch shrieking.

"How can the world be this ungrateful!" The spirit was wailing her soul out. "Hundreds of years of service and now they told them I never even existed, oh Aeterna the moment I get my hands on your damn smug face I swear-"

She was let go. Her form relaxed and took the shape of a regularly sized woman, her eyes staring down at Demadara."You, let me go?"

Demadara ran her hand across her wrist and looked up at her with a sigh."You're either delusional, or you speak the truth. Regardless, you're going to help me. Timae."

She looked over her shoulder, saw Timae raise her hands to her chest, tails straightened and her ears perked up fully.

"Fill up the bags with as much gold as you can fit alright? The less we leave behind the better."

The fox woman raced off, leaving Demadara alone with the shadowy figure.

Parsae pointed down to the Heart at Demadara´s waist, her fingers shaking. "You, how in the name of, everything, did you get that." Her voice was little more than a whisper on the wind. "This thing is supposed to be laying in the lowest vaults of the imperial palace, why is it here?!"

"Yes yes, a slave girl holding the heart of a god, I've heard the mockery before." Demadara took a step back, her hand grasping the Heart more closely. "Look, I have a crazed mad dog on my trail and I need to use this thing to it´s full extend if I don't want to end up as her next dinner. Can you teach me?"

Parsae was just standing there, her form flickering at the slightest movement of the wind. "I can't. Aeterna kept me away from it every step she could, even giving it to the circle for research instead of me, ME!." She stomped her foot on the ground. "Two hundred years of service and she chose a group of my own students and a third-rate god over the great Parsae!"

Demadara was holding her head. "Can you, not talk about the, THE imperator so casually? Even a ghost should have respect before her memory."

"Memory?!" Parsae´s head tilted to far to the side that Demadara could imagine the snapping that would occur had she a corporeal neck.

She crossed her arms in front of her chest and rolled her eyes at the ghost. "So you really were imprisoned for that long. The Imperator ascended to her throne at the top of the pantheon two hundred years ago, after leaving humanity with her final gifts, the Great Ledger, the Histories, and the Truth Immaculate. Every child know that."

Parsae´s head continued to spin clockwise until it was back in place. Then she sat her ghostly form down on the stone slab and crossed her legs. "Interesting. Well, I can't help you. I could teach you a thousand and twenty different things you could be doing with that level of power, but that'd still just be like using the divine hammer of the Smith to create a butter knife."

Demadara turned around and looked at the sky, sighing. "So I'll still need to go to the Academies after all huh. That's where my master wanted to take it before," Again her hand grazed across the surface of the Heart. "I took it for myself."

"The determined type, aren't we, girl. Well, the academy is a great stop, they still have some things that are mine." A strong gust of wind filled the wagon, ripping through Parsae´s body.

"Oh dear, give me a moment. This existence is nowhere near as comfortable out in the wild."

Before Demadara´s widened eyes her ghostly form began to lose shape, turning into a cloud. It moved down to the body of the dead woman, entering it through her eyes and wide open mouth.

Slowly the body began to move. Abruptly at first, muscles twitching and giving out. Twice it struggled to get onto it´s feet before finding a shaky balance. The once dark brown eyes were now bright blue, the terrified expression one of disgust.

"Oh I hate, hate dead bodies. Sure, not needing to sleep or eat or other distracting nonsense is fine but needing to move every damn muscle consciously, oh it's not something you want to experience."

She staggered outside, followed by Demadara. Her dark mood immediately began to lighten as her eyes fell on the corpses around them. "Oh but hello there. So, girl, want to see a great trick?"

Parsae sat down next to one of the corpses of the guard, trailing her hand across the body. The mutterings that she spoke were unlike any Demadara had heard or read before. Her eyes narrowed. Was it even within the language of magic?

The sight of Parsae animating a corpse had been unsettling, but it was nothing compared to the horror she now saw. The body of the guard began to twist. Arms and legs bent upward to the sky, the legs cracking and bone showing out from the torn flesh as the entire body was curling into a ball. Every cut and orifice began to bleed, and the body started to compress.

The sound of crushed bodies was nothing new to Demadara, but seeing it this vividly made even her sick. Once the corpse had become a ball, it started to shrink, and shrink, the red of the blood becoming the only colour on the surface of the crystaline shape.

Finally, only a single, blood red crystal remained. Parsae picked it up and looked over her shoulder to Demadara.

"What, did they really hide this from you too? Girl, do you even know how my magic works?"

Demadara was sweating, she cursed herself under her breath. Why was she showing this much distress? "I know you make crystals from draining plants and sometimes animals, but."

"But what? Do you think that is how it started? Oh girl, the day I realised I didn't have to turn people into fuel and could use damn cows was the greatest day in my life, and don't get me started when we figured out about the plants."

Parsae ran her hands across the surface of the crystal. "Much, much weaker individually though. One of these can last for five or six standard crystals. Never did figure out why, ah well."

She opened her mouth wide and swallowed the gem. After closing her eyes, her body began to change. She grew taller, more slender, her corpse-like complexion turning into a true ghostly white, the same colour that she had chosen for her hair.

When Parsae opened her eyes, they were of a blood red.

"Much, much better. I pass now, yes? For an Ivory I mean."

"I guess you do. Just don't, come to close, I could never stand those dolls."

Demadara walked past Parsae, and towards the food wagon. The display of her new, partner, comrade, just what was she now anyways, it had not managed to kill her appetite.

"It much beats pretending to be alive, and once we reach civilisation I bet you will be quite happy for it. People tend not to cross someone rich or powerful enough to have an Ivory maidservant."

In front of the food wagon they found Timae. She had stuffed the two bags to the brim with golden bars, and was currently grilling some of the meat across a makeshift fire. Her tails bushed up and she let out a loud hiss upon seeing Parsae, it took for Demadara to sit down beside her for the fox woman to calm down.

"My lord, just what is this thing that you found? I understand that help can be hard to come by, but surely I could be of greater assistance than a shadow within a corpse."

Parsae chuckled and rested her hand on her unbeating heart. "Oh you wound me. I am Parsae, the, Parsae."

Timae looked at her without a change in expression, her tails curling up around Demadara´s waist. "I've never heard of you."

Parsae stumbled backwards, her eyes shot wide open. "What, do you MEAN you have never heard of me? I am Parsae! The mother of modern magic, every damn last trick the empire has come up with in the last four hundred years comes from me!"

The fox woman shrugged her shoulders and pulled the meat away from the fire, cutting it into neat little ribbons with her sharp nails. "No, never heard of you. My people avoided the empire where we can. Here, my lord."

She placed the cut meat onto a golden plate and handed it to Demadara, who did not need to be told twice. She devoured the portion, her senses blind to anything but finally having a proper meal.

Parsae watched them, her body trembling. "Fine, fine. You may have not heard of me, but you will know me, furball. That I promise you. Just, enjoy your damn food, I'll be industrious instead." She continued her work, converting and compressing the corpses into new blood crystals.

"She doesn't know anything specific about the heart." Demadara was now on her second serving, her hunger finally sated enough to let her think. "But if she knows only half of what she's saying she does, then she will be a great help. Our destination has stayed the same."

Timae took a few bites of a loaf of bread, holding it in her tail while she prepared another portion of meat for Demadara. "I understand, my lord. If we remain on a steady pace, we should reach greater Atal within the month."

"A month? Well surely you are kidding. On foot maybe, but why would we bother with that?"

Parsae appeared from behind the other side of the wagon, now holding a small bunch of blood crystals in her hands.

"Well, none of us can fly, and I am not accepting you grafting wings on us as an option." Demadara didn't look up from her meal, she didn't see Parsae´s dismissive wave, for the ghost´s own good.

"Oh dear, I tried that quite a few times. It looks fancy for a while, but the effort is absolutely not worth it on anything but war-bred specimen. No. We are in the Titan´s Plain, no? Unless the empire hunted them to extinction, there should still be plenty of Rocs about, no?"

Demadara almost choked on her food. "You, want us to fly, on one of those birds?"

Parsae was juggling the crystals with one hand, her head tilted to the side. "Of course. You're carrying the heart of a god with you, aren't you? Every beast, from a lowly taur to a titanic monster obeys strength before all else. And don't you have that in ample supply?