Three hours had passed since Zip’s unplanned cremation when Merigold found herself seated once more in the presence of Aron Hart. They were in close proximity to the lab, but not in the same room as before – this one appeared to be a space dedicated to the study of individual erowist. Like the main lab, it was well-stocked with tools; iron pokers, tongues, spoons, potholders, various kinds of devices likely used to take readings on Astral energy, temperature, and so forth were arranged neatly on brass hooks hanging from the walls. A plethora of iron pans in various sizes sat on a rack at the back of the space, directly beneath a chalkboard that had been hastily erased at some point in the past. A chest pressed against one wall was likely used for storage of additional wares. Four uncomfortable looking chairs provided a place for onlookers to perch, likely with brush and paper in hand and eyes narrowed at some interesting specimen.

Currently, the four chairs were filled.

This was because the two, Aron and Merigold, were not alone – they had been joined, of course, by Reese and Alecia. More surprisingly, they had been joined by Eros, the master of the Radvik Guild, their unit leader, Senior Ilf, a wild-eyed technician with perfectly straight hair tied in a tight knot on the top of his head who introduced himself as Jayce, and the master of the West Heather Combat Guild, Sheila Rockland. The West Heather Combat Guild, it seemed, had been the closest to the commerce district where the erowist first made its presence known, and thus naturally the first and only – given the relatively short duration of the incident – that had dispatched a unit that actually did official combat with the creature. Two people had died in their unit, a fact met by Eros and Ilf with terse nods and a slightly celebratory, “Better than expected, strictly speaking.”

Since there were only four chairs, Alecia and Reese had co-opted the chest, and sat side-by-side on it. Reese had her head on her hands, which were balanced on her knees, and was moving her dark eyes wonderingly between the guild members and Aron. Alecia leaned back with arms and legs crossed, looking slightly bored.

“Well then,” Aron suggested, moving along a conversation that had consisted so far of merely getting everyone present on the same page, “we have ourselves an erowist. A class four erowist, to be precise. As you well know, they are among the most dangerous we have encountered in Venerith, creatures capable of possessing and animating corpses and unleashing attacks of unprecedented power. Among the erowist, they also display incredible intellect. A group of just three of them razed a quarter of the city of Bertlith in the early moments of its destruction six years ago. They operated as a unit, systematically dismantling power and transportation systems that would have permitted more people to escape the onslaught.”

“More excellent news, isn’t that right, Sheila,” Eros interjected, tapping one foot impatiently on the lab floor. “Were the three of them destroyed?”

“Yes,” Aron said without pause. “And they were destroyed in the same way as any other erowist. Trapped in place by one or more psychics, core captured, and destroyed. These three women had the right idea when they made their plan to lure the erowist to the furnace and destroy it along with the bod it possessed.” She swept her arm through the room to encompass Merigold, Alecia, and Reese, and then stepped aside to allow everyone to get a good look at the iron pot sitting on the counter in front of her.

Unmoving, it appeared perfectly ordinary. There was a faint sheen to the runes etched into the iron, but nothing more to indicate its magical nature. Merigold knew it would be slightly cold to the touch, and slightly smooth. It was difficult to believe an erowist could be contained in something so uninteresting and so mundane.

“And yet, they didn’t destroy it,” Sheila said, bringing her hands together, “and now you tell us we can’t.”

“That’s correct. You all know very well how Drafter contracts function. At their most binding, they cause the death of any party that defies the terms of the contract they agreed to. Despite the restrictions in place to prevent such contracts in all but the most pressing circumstances, their use continues to abound in our society,” Aron said.

“With positive results,” Ilf muttered.

“Yes,” Aron admitted, if slightly reluctantly – it remained a long-standing point of debate among academics whether contracts that resulted in a noticeable number of deaths every year should be made illegal, even if they seemed to suppress crime – before glancing at Merigold and saying, “at any rate, if we were to destroy the erowist now, Merigold would probably die.”

“I would certainly die,” Merigold corrected.

“There are, as you pointed out Merigold, loopholes in many of these contracts. Ilf told me about the last one you wrote; you were required to attempt to defend the erowist from capture, but failing your attempt, no harm would befall you,” Eros said. “Couldn’t we go behind your back and avoid the contract?”

“If you truly managed to go behind my back, and I knew absolutely nothing about your plan,” Merigold said with, judging by the expressions of the people in the room, surprising calm, “that might work. But if I had any inkling, any suspicion, and didn’t act on it, it would be difficult to determine whether the terms of forfeiture would take effect.”

“So pause a moment,” Aron said. She waved her arms a little to get everyone’s attention, and gestured again at the inert iron pot containing the erowist. “There’s really no point in this conversation, because there’s no point in destroying this creature. Trapped and bound by Merigold’s contract, it is very little risk to anyone. And Merigold tells me she wrote some very interesting clauses into her contract this time, which the erowist had to accept to preserve its own existence.”

“Explain, Merigold,” Eros said, leaning back as if to suggest that whatever she said next had better be good. Merigold straightened the hem of her dress, smoothing the dirty fabric as if that could somehow make her more presentable.

“The erowist must serve me in any capacity I ask. It is required to disclose to me any information that could help me in my ventures, and especially information that pertains to the physical and emotional well-being of myself, or those I express that I care about. Additionally, it must disclose any information relevant to maintaining Hakarth, and all of Venerith, in a state expressly unchanged by the erowist. Any question I ask directly must be answered, in full and truthfully, such that…to paraphrase, there can be no reasonable doubt that the erowist acted in a manner consistent with everything I’ve said so far.”

“You mean, we can interrogate that monster,” Ilf said, eyes glittering dangerously.

“And if that’s the case, we can ask what the erowist are planning,” Sheila said with a meaningful look between Ilf and Eros.

“Exactly,” Aron agreed. “Why destroy this erowist when it could provide us with all the answers we never had about Bertlith.”

“More importantly, it can tell us whether Hakarth is going to be destroyed,” Alecia said, wrinkling her nose distastefully. “We need to know whether there is another monster coming here like the one that destroyed Bertlith.”

“On that front, I can attest to the fact that there probably is,” Aron said pointedly. “Everything we and survey teams have observed in the past few months suggests the same pattern of events that led up to the attack on Bertlith. The appearance of a class four erowist occurred mere days before the attack last time…this time might be different, since there was only one, and it didn’t seem intent on destroying the city.”

“No. You said it just came to kill the necromancer, Merigold here. Is she unique, somehow?” Sheila asked suspiciously.

“I must ask the same,” Eros agreed. “We know she can speak to these monsters, and even contract with them. Since the Drafter contracts burn up when they are created, she could very well be lying to us about the terms of the contract, and protecting this erowist for some reason.”

“Seriously?” Reese asked angrily, starting to stand only to be pulled back down onto the chest by Alecia, who shook her head.

“It would be very serious if such a thing were true,” Sheila said with a sharp look towards Reese.

“Luckily, Merigold is not special at all,” Aron said calmingly. She gestured at the technician, Jayce, who had been utterly silent until that moment.

“I’m also a necromancer,” Jayce said a bit coldly, looking around the room as if he suspected that he would be thrust out of it soon enough. “Aron came to the mines yesterday, East Mine 11, and said to me that there was a place for a necromancer in her lab.”

His lips had set in a hard, thin line. Everything about him, Merigold thought, was rigid, like a child brought in from one of the poor districts to a rich house and told to behave themselves. Clearly, he expected that his stint in academia would not last long. Merigold was not so sure. Aron did not seem the type to bring him in only to throw him out again, whatever the reason.

“I hardly believed it was possible that I could hear the erowist, but Aron said I would be able to. And I can,” Jayce added after a short pause.

“In theory, all necromancers can talk to the erowist. It’s a very unique ability, and one that seems to explain why they are so often the first to be killed in erowist attacks on the mines.”

“The erowist are silencing them,” Sheila said reasonably.

“Or trying to,” Merigold said.

“Interestingly, the necromancers have another ability that makes them invaluable to all of you – one that Merigold made use of to stop this particular erowist,” Aron explained, casting Merigold an intrigued look. “They can use their circles to sever the erowist’s control over a body they have possessed. Against class four erowist, that is indispensable.”

“You’re saying we need to invite more necromancers to the combat guilds,” Ilf said, sounding slightly incredulous.

“And more Illuminators,” Alecia interjected, drawing most of the gazes in the room. “I was the one who paralyzed that monster long enough for Merigold to stop it. A psychic couldn’t have done the task because they would have had to lower their barrier and the erowist would have escaped. Or killed Merigold.” She smiled challengingly.

“Until now, Illuminators and necromancers have, indeed, been overlooked,” Eros said. “We tended to assume they would require too much time to do their work in battle. Ilf tells me you have proven otherwise.”

“They might make sense for escort missions and units expecting to make camp in the mountains, anyway,” Ilf argued. “Not sure they would carry their weight in a unit that actually saw more combat.”

“Unless it was with the erowist,” Sheila suggested. Ilf half-nodded, as if reluctant to commit to such a stance.

“Well then,” Eros said, slapping his hands together with a malicious glint in his eye, “shall we get down to this interrogation?”

Nodding, Aron plucked a set of tongs from the brass hooks on the wall, and handed them to Merigold. “Time to start making some decisions, Merigold, about your future,” she whispered as she leaned a little closer to pick up the pot herself. Merigold watched Aron as she then went to place the pot carefully in the clay circle she had clearly prepared for it earlier in the day. When it was situated, she stepped back and gestured for Merigold to remove the lid.

For a moment, Merigold stood in front of the pot, balancing the tongs in her hand. Her hesitation was not because of the erowist, but because of what Aron had said. Her gaze crept to Alecia, who had joined the rest of the room in looking towards the iron pot at nearly its center.

Merigold slid the lid off the pot.

Immediately, the erowist billowed out in an angry cloud of bright gold lightning. Unlike the erowist she had first captured, which had largely remained in a hazy, cloudy state, this one immediately transformed itself into a humanoid shape. Arcs of power still curled from its hazy form, but it had a head that it clearly turned to regard them all, narrowing not two, but four eyes that shone with a bright fuchsia light.

“I see we’re not alone, Merigold Lee,” it said after a moment. She noticed that its head turned towards Jayce after a moment, and lingered there before it returned those four eerie eyes to her.

“How did you learn my name?” she asked. “The other erowist knew as well, even though I never said anything.”

Unmoving, the creature answered, “It is written in your essence.”

“Then can we know your name?” she asked, with a glance at Aron, and another at Jayce, who watched the erowist with sharply narrowed eyes.

“Ughvac.”

“The rune,” Jayce said aloud, drawing curious glances from around the room. Merigold nodded.

“Ughvac, representing the cycle of the new moon for the orbital body Tigeris, used in cyclical spells,” she said to the room, and also to herself. “Now we know who we’re speaking to. So,” she looked towards the various guild members, “what now?”

Aron stepped into suggest a system by which Jayce translated the erowist’s responses, Merigold asked the questions directed at her by the guild members or the room at large, and Alecia – who seemed eager to take up the task – recorded the conversation and what came of it. Aron herself opted to monitor the circle around the iron pot lest the erowist should break free unexpectedly. Despite faith that her contract was unbreakable, Merigold determined it would be better to let Aron do as she wished; the dark expressions shared by everyone in the room when they peered distastefully at the erowist suggested no assurances from her would put them at ease.

Eros and Sheila took the helm of the interrogation with practiced ease. Reese was soon put to drawing diagrams of Hakarth and the surrounding mountains on the chalkboard so that they could be referenced in conversation with Ughvac, who unsurprisingly had no concept of the geography they shared.

When two hours later, Merigold was instructed to replace the lid on the pot and step back, and Aron carefully lifted it with potholders to place it back on the counter, they had learned more than they could have dreamed.

“So,” Aron summarized wearily, “there is a tear in the Astral Plane, and the erowist are coming out into our world through it. The lower-class creatures were simply opportunists, but the high-class ones are scouts.”

“Scouts for a monster that is likely what you referred to as a deity-class erowist, like the one which destroyed Bertlith,” Eros said.

“And we are merely a feast,” Sheila added. “A feast for these monsters who must otherwise hunt each other. Everything in our city – the trains, the furnaces, the great steam engines at the heart of Hakarth – are nothing more, to them, then an elaborate spread welcoming them to the table.”

“In other words, we’re in deep shit,” Alecia muttered. She had stood and come to stand beside Merigold, putting down her brush and notebook on the counter next to the pot. There was an exhaustion clear in her expression that Merigold thought they all must share. Jayce certainly did. Listening to the erowist for so long a time had put them all on edge.

“We have a chance,” Aron added. “They won’t attack until the rift is sufficiently large that the more powerful erowist can escape the Astral Plane. We could close it.” No one knew how to do that, precisely, and yet no one in the room dared contest Aron’s observation. It did, in fact, seem like their only hope.

All of their eyes turned, after a moment, to the chalkboard where Reese hovered, rolling a piece of chalk between her dusty fingers. There was a reasonable depiction of Hakarth on the board. Its mountains rolled off into the distant plains where other large cities had once been. Bertlith lay far to the south, a large cross through it – Reese’s contribution to the conversation. In the east, closer than any of them would have liked, was another cross, this time labeled.

The Rift.