The erowist and Merigold moved through the scree fields with miraculous speed. Bounced, battered, and already bruised beyond belief, Merigold held on with her eyes squeezed shut. Her fingers, forearms, and shoulders screamed to be released from the tension of holding her on back of the rat, which still glowed an eerie green. Holding onto it was a bit like holding onto a hot pan, except that it only felt like ectoplasmic fur was burning her. There was not a single doubt in Merigold’s mind that the erowist had every intention of shaking her off, and was adhering absolutely to the letter of their agreement by not forcing the issue.

As it was, when the creature bucked to a screeching halt on the road leading back to Hakarth, she flew over its head and landed on her back, all the breath immediately leaving her lungs. It was only by the most fantastic luck that she did not smack her head into something and end up unconscious once again.

Upside down, Merigold quickly understood why the erowist had stopped so suddenly. Ilf leaned against the mountainside on the left side of the path, one hand extended in a manner that suggested she had created a low barrier specifically intended to trip the creature. Garret crouched low behind her, simultaneously holding someone up – it looked like Derek – and forming a massive ball of glacial ice in one palm. Ilda stood over him, stance wide and hands clasped around some sort of iron tub roughly the size of a sauce pot.

A part of her wanted to shout that they must have seen her on the erowist’s back, and surely they could have found a neater way of stopping it, but from their angle, it really was likely they had not seen her at all. Or they really had not cared, because an erowist was charging at them, and clearly they were not at their best.

Cold hands wrenched her up from the floor, and Merigold was relieved to see Alecia latched on to her shoulder.

“Thought you were dead,” the woman said gruffly, ascertaining that, in fact, Merigold was not dead simply by staring at her face for a second. Then Alecia turned away, and Merigold saw a massive circle of runes carved into the road begin to glow a very bright shade of gold. The erowist stood over it, morphing rapidly from a rat to some sort of raptor with wings that shot bolts towards the rock on either side of them.

“You must protect me,” it shouted. “So the contract says.”

Merigold forced herself to her feet, knowing the erowist was right. It was hard to say what the effects of failing to hold up her end of their deal would be, since it was not a normal Drafter’s contract. She had tried to write up reasonable clauses, but had ended up promising only that she would die if she went back on her word, and the erowist would have its core shattered.

Wishing there were any other way, she leapt onto Alecia’s back, grabbing hold of a fistful of her friend’s glossy black hair. Alecia shrieked, clawing at Merigold’s arm, cursed, and elbowed her hard in the face. Reeling, reasonably certain her nose would never be the same, Merigold let go and stumbled backward. Alecia must not have been alone, because someone else immediately pushed her to the ground, pinning her down.

Meanwhile, the erowist roared with rage, entirely trapped in Ilf’s psychic barrier. The barrier shrank quickly, and in a minute that felt like an eternity, Ilda sprang forward and snapped a lid over the iron pot when the barrier was no larger than the erowist’s core, which was roughly the size of a pinecone. Runes carved into the side of the pot gleamed an angry red as it shook, but Merigold suspected that would be the end of the erowist’s fight for freedom.

“What the Hell,” Alecia snarled once the danger had passed, kneeling to take a look at her handiwork. Her cold fingers yanked Merigold’s chin up, squishing her face in a way that was likely very unbecoming.

“Let me take a look,” Derek croaked, half-dragged into view by Derek. Merigold could feel his healing magic go to work almost immediately, as the stinging in her nose began to fade, and her ankle throbbed a little less than it had before.

“I’m sorry, Alecia,” Merigold coughed through the mucus in her throat. She wondered if her nose had actually been broken, however briefly.

“Explain yourself,” Ilf said, having directed everyone else in their vicinity to action. Nihil, who had been pinning Merigold down until that moment, let her go and went to help Ilda. “I saw what happened. Not only were you riding on the back of that thing, you then attacked one of your companions in the guild. That is an offense punishable with a life spent in prison.”

“It was the contract,” Merigold tried to explain hastily, tripping over her own words as she coughed and tried to catch her breath from the fall, simultaneously. “I made a contract with the erowits so that it would save me…I had—”

“A contract?” Ilf asked archly.

“You had to fight on the behalf of the erowits in the same way,” Alecia realized aloud. Merigold felt a stab of relief, but it only lasted a second.

“What are you talking about?” Ilf asked harshly.

“Her parents are Drafters,” Garret explained for Alecia, who still looked ready to break Merigold’s nose a second time. “Her dream was to be a Drafter.”

“So she wrote a contract,” Alecia finished for him, “with an erowits.”

“But how is that possible. I know Drafter contracts. The erowits would have had to agree to it somehow,” Derek observed calmly, examining Merigold’s broken finger. Unlike her nose, he made no move to fix it.

“Well, it turns out necromancers can talk to the erowits,” Merigold stated dryly.

Ilf was peering at her with a look of undisguised disbelief.

“I can prove it later,” Merigold said wearily, hoping there would be a later, and she would not simply be thrown into Hakarth’s prisons.

“Ilf, don’t be too hard on her,” Ilda had come to join them with Nihil. “It actually sounds reasonable. Gregory has said before that he can sometimes hear something when we visit the lab where they study the erowist…like they’re whispering at him, he says.”

“Whispering. Talking. Signing contracts. I don’t want to hear another word about what the erowist communicating with people. You,” she pointed at Garret, “help get Derek down the mountain once Merigold’s able to walk. Nihil, don’t let Merigold out of your sight. The rest of you, we’ll be watching the rear. It’s going to be a long slog back the way we came.”

Ilf stormed off to peer down the scree fields, and Merigold wondered if she was looking for Zip. Or possibly for Gregory or Adarak, neither of whom she had yet seen. When Ilda went to join her after a moment, Merigold became sure they were looking for the old man, at least.

“Adarak and Gregory went ahead,” Alecia said, noticing the direction of her stare, “because our communications with the city were cut off after the erowist’s attack. But Zip fell at the same time you did. We thought you were both dead.”

Merigold knew her friend was relieved to find her alive, but that knowledge still warred with the anger on her face when she pressed a hand to her angry scalp.

As Ilf had promised, they had a long walk back to the city. Merigold shuffled for most of it, trying not to put any extra weight on her ankle. Derek had made it vaguely functional, and reduced the swelling, but she could tell he had used up enough of his power that, for the day at least, he could do no more. Gregory and Adarak met them at the entrance to the city with three paramedics, who quickly took stock of the damage they had suffered. Ilda went to Gregory, talking softly. As she was carted away for treatment, Merigold was sure she saw tears on the blonde’s cheeks.

It did not cross Merigold’s mind whether she could have saved Zip. She did not wonder if it was her fault that he had been caught up in the erowist’s attack. She was too busy mulling over the mistakes in the contract she had written.

She was still mulling over them, hours later, when an unfamiliar woman with skin and eyes as dark as Alecia’s hair came to visit. She had the air of an academic about her, though it might have simply been the result of her pea-coat and thinly creased slacks, which were largely worn only by academics and Drafters. The woman introduced herself as Aron Hart, flashing one of the academy’s identification cards, and then placing her hand in her fist in greeting. Merigold returned the gesture out of instinctual politeness. Then she smoothed the sheets of her bed in the hospital, sighed, and asked why Aron had come.

“That should be obvious, Merigold. I heard you made a contract with an erowits. I heard, in fact, that you had a conversation with one of the erowits.”

“I can’t really be the first,” Merigold said.

“Probably not,” Aron admitted, “but you do seem to be the first to have survived the experience. That makes you special.”

Merigold regarded her with thinly veiled skepticism.

Aron smiled a dazzling smile. “Merigold,” she said, “I study erowists. I have for fifteen years. I’ve never heard them speak, squeak, or do anything other than try to violently attack anything that came within striking distance. I’m a lightbringer by nature, so my studies are limited to the daylight hours, but I’ve worked it out with the Radvik guild; they’re happy to lend you to me for the rest of the week.”

Merigold did not observe aloud that the Radvik guild might be interested in lending her to Aron for the rest of her natural life. She simply tucked a fly-away curl behind her ear and glanced at the desk beside her bed, where she had earlier neatly removed and arranged the things in her bag. Most of the contents were intact, despite her fall. Then again, with the exception of a splintered brush, most of what she had carried would be difficult to break.

Wordlessly, Aron followed her gaze. Then she gestured towards the door. “Would you care to join me? The nurse said your discharge is complete.”

“It is,” Merigold agreed. She stood stiffly, and swapped her hospital gown for tight-fitting leggings and a gray sweater that climbed cozily to her chin. While Aron waited, she dug a tin full of pins from her bag and pinned her wayward curls in place. Then she collected her things and the two of them left the building, wending their way towards the Academy.

It was, Merigold had often thought, absolutely ingenious that the hospitals in Hakarth were all in close proximity to the academies. Not only did it make things simple for the Organics, who spent entire semesters studying the healing of the human body within the pristine halls of the hospital, but also meant that the various engineering and research labs that huddled around the academies had easy access to medical care. This, as it turned out, was necessary. Although the Combat Guilds and the mines were responsible for most of the deaths in Hakarth, research in the city contributed a substantial percentage of accidental injuries and fatalities. Steam, even when properly harnessed, was dangerous, and the engineers often worked with massive machines liable to flatten one’s extremities, and the lab with chemicals that could melt skin from bone.

The lab Aron guided Merigold to, however, was not of the kind where chemists toyed with dangerous chemicals in the never-ending pursuit of progress. It consisted of a series of rooms lined by archives of old scrolls, books, and paperwork, and by shelves that housed hundreds of rune-etched cast iron pots. If there had been any smell of cookery whatsoever, Merigold thought it might have looked like some sort of industrial kitchen. There were counters spaced evenly throughout the center of the space, interspersed with carefully leveled pits of clay smoothed clean. She knew what they were, of course. The technicians could use the clay to etch the circles and runes required to contain the erowist they studied, carefully personalizing the circles for each new arrival. Tools of all kinds – tongs, forks, various sharp instruments, pots, lids, and towels hung from the ceiling, along with massive mirrored metal cones used to focus the lighbringers light on their work.

Aron led Merigold to the single bench currently occupied by something – it looked like the cast iron pot Ilda had trapped the erowist in. It could have been another, similar pot, but this one appeared substantially dirtier than the rest.

“Here we are. This is the lab fifteen B, in case you ever get lost on your way here. On the right here,” Aron gestured to the shelves on the right half of the room,” we have empty pots. On the left, we have those which are occupied. Don’t mix them up, please.”

Since each of the pots on the left side of the room seemed to be appended with a series of red and gold labels, Merigold doubted she would have much trouble telling them apart. When she turned round the bench with Aron, she saw that a series of red and yellow labels had been added to the pot on the bench as well.

“This is the one your unit of the Radvik Guild brought in,” Aron said, noting the direction of Merigold’s attention. “Before I put any ideas into your mind, I’d like to observe your interaction with the erowist. Afterward, we can talk at length.”

Again, Merigold cast her a skeptical look.

“My contract had a multitude of flaws,” she said calmly. “If you release the erowist now, it will kill us both. I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“No worries,” Aron said, airily grabbing a cast iron spike the length of her forearm from the ceiling and deftly going to work etching a circle in the pit of clay nearest the bench. “I have quite a lot of experience with this. From Senior Ilf’s description, what you brought in is likely a class three erowist. Haha. That look…no, we only use those designations in the lab. You won’t find them in textbooks. Class three are the thugs of the erowist world; very dangerous to humans, very excitable, medium-sized. Class five are the deity-class erowist like the one that wiped Bertlith off the map six years ago. Class one are basically pests, mostly responsible for killing, um…well, each other.”

Merigold was watching in silence, eyeing the shape of the circle and the arrangement of the runes Aron placed in the clay. They were all focused on containment, stabilization of the Astral Plane within the circle, and draining the power of the erowist.

Abruptly, Aron returned the iron stake to its hook on the ceiling and picked up the pot, setting it in the center of the circle. She pulled down a set of tongs.

“Ready?” she asked, as if she did not really intend to wait for an answer. Merigold gestured for the woman to continue. Aron did so, knocking the lid off the pot without ceremony. There was no visible change to the circle or its runes, but Merigold knew they had already taken effect. Their effectiveness was made obvious by the angry blast of crimson lightning that shot out of the pot as the erowist from before rattled around the cylindrical enclosure created by the circle.

“How are you ALIVE,” it was screeching so loudly that Merigold almost put her hands over her ears to drown out the sound. “YOU DID NOT HOLD UP YOUR END OF THE DEAL!”

“I did, in fact, hold up my end of the deal,” Merigold said, coming to peer in at the erowist as miniature bolts of lightning shot in every direction. Any one of those would, if it touched either her or Aron, kill them almost immediately. “I tried to protect you, and all I got out of it was a broken nose. I’m not all that strong.”

“DISGUSTING, DESPICABLE SACK OF FLESH!” the erowist continued. It cursed ever more elaborately for several minutes, and both Merigold and Aron watched – Aron with a look of rapt fascination and faint horror that explained her occasional query as to what the erowist was saying – as the creature slowly calmed. The bolts of lightning began to retract, and the crimson at its core faded slowly through every hue of orange and gold to that eerie neon green. Then it bobbed like it had done above the scree fields when they first met, and Merigold had the impression it was watching her and Aron for any signs of weakness whatsoever.

"So it’s angry,” Aron summarized, leaning a little closer to her handiwork. “It really is communicating with us.”

“I’d say so,” Merigold observed dryly.

“And did you create an utterly oral contract, or…” Aron looked at her expectantly.

“No. It could read runes,” Merigold said. “I wrote the contract out down, and we only sealed it orally.”

“Fascinating,” Aron said, eyes shining. “Alright, I’d like you to do it again.”

“Excuse me?” Merigold asked coldly.

“Write up another contract,” the other woman said, as if such a thing were incredibly simple.

“I will never make another deal with you,” the erowist informed Merigold, fizzling like a hot spark from the metal wheels of the trains of Hakarth.

“It says it won’t take another of my deals, even if I do draw up another contract,” Merigold translated. Aron nodded, steepling her hands under her chin. She did not seem even slightly put out.

“Well, that is…I would say excellent, but I suppose it isn’t really. Not altogether, anyway. I’m intrigued to realize that it recognizes the danger of forming another contract with you. So the erowist can learn from their experiences.”

“I’m guessing this one has killed necromancers before, since it targeted me specifically,” Merigold said. Aron cast her an expression of sheer curiosity.

“It told you that it targeted you?”

“Yes,” Merigold replied.

“That could change how we handle security in the mines. If the erowist are targeting necromancers…it could explain why they are so often killed while the earth elementals escape when there are attacks…well, let’s ask it a question. A pointed question. Why do the erowists come here from the Astral Plane to begin with?”

Merigold blinked surprise. She did not need to repeat the question since the erowist seemed to understand well enough. It had grown agitated, bouncing around its enclosure again. She wondered if that meant it would not answer, but it seemed she was wrong.

“To take back the energy inside of you, of course. You flesh sacks are like little, condensed blobs of Astral energy. Delicious. Merigold Lee, I’m going to enjoy sucking the energy from your corpse.”

She must have paled while she translated what it said, because Aron put a reassuring hand on her elbow and grabbed the tongs. Without ceremony, she closed the lid and the erowist vanished, again trapped. Pulling out a set of oven mitts and exclaiming something about how hot the iron in their pots could get when the erowist were agitated, she carried the pot over to one of the shelves and set it down carefully. Then Aron started towards the door of the lab, flashing that super bright smile in Merigold’s direction once more.

“I promised you a conversation, Merigold. Let’s talk about the erowist.”