Azrael had lost all measure of time, flying joyously through the air, detached from his body and his worries until he suddenly found himself back in his body with both his cheeks burning hot. Ignis was right beside him, removing his hands. “Did you hit me?”

“I tried some more gentle method first, but you weren’t responding.” He had let the child lose himself on purpose. Possession came with its fair share of danger, but the two major ones were disconnection, and reverse possession. The former was what the young apprentice had experienced by putting too much of himself inside the spirit. The second was a likely consequence of the first, and occurred when a spirit commandeered an emptied body. “You’ve been gone for almost an hour, what were you thinking leaving your body for so long, it could have died!”

“It wasn’t that long… was it?” It was hard to deny that the sun had moved quite a lot compared to what he remembered.

“I let you do as you wanted since it was only your second first time, but you managed to do even worse than with your first. You didn’t anchor yourself to your body, you literally left it alone to die or worse, get possessed. Do you have a death wish or something?”

“Er… I… What?” Azrael’s mind was a mess after spending so much time outside his body, however the word of his master conjured a sense of dread: he’d almost died – or more precisely, left alone, he’d have died for sure.

“Take your time to gather your thought and think about what you’ve done wrong.” To deliberately let the learner, make all the mistakes then throw them into his face, was cruel at best. However, many generations had proved that words of caution could only go so far; a bit of pain on the other hand would etch the danger into the apprentice’s mind.

“So, what did you do wrong?” Asked the master again.

“I left my body empty… and I didn’t put… a… ward?” Hazarded Azrael who hadn’t regained all his faculties yet.

“Is that all? Is that really all?”

“How long… did you say I… was gone?” Speaking was arduous, so was remembering things.

“About one hour, your body went into a coma, and your breath was becoming weaker and weaker.”

“Why… didn’t you wake me?”

“I tried to call you, I prodded you, don’t you remember?”

“Maybe?” It felt distant, but there might have been something like that, something that tried to force him back into his body against his will.

“I want you to order your familiar to possess one of the corpses we dug out.”

“No!” Now that he was back in his body, he was afraid to try again, afraid to die.

“You don’t need to possess it yourself, not right now, but you’ll have to do it again eventually. You know that, right?”

“Right.” The order came out instinctually, the moment of confusion after a possession was the best time to learn the techniques to control a familiar, yet another reason to push the child through this whole ordeal.

“Ask it to run around the cemetery, then do a handstand.”

The corpse only managed a few steps of a shambling walk before falling down the ground. It wasn’t surprising, a spirit was a shadow of its former self, barely a mass of desire holding to a few knowledges and desire of its past life; a familiar was a shadow of that shadow.

The corpse got up, then fell again, and again… it’d continue until the child didn’t’ rescinded his order, or it got it right.

‘How long did I have this one?’ Ignis remembered the name and circumstances of all his acquisitions, but not the dates. ‘It was one of my first mission alone, a piece of trash haunted by his victims. As soon as I exorcised them, he tried to stab me under the guise of a hug.’

It wasn’t uncommon for his client to try to kill him, a lot of them were terrible people who wouldn’t want the knowledge of their crimes to spread. Other, were fearful of what others would do if they learned of their dealing with the force of evil. The most common type was people wanting their money back; after all, it wasn’t a crime to kill thief and necromancers, right?

‘That was fast.’ Thought Ignis as the corpse finished the first length of the cemetery. It was natural for the bond to be strengthened in this state, but he was a natural doing in minutes or hours what took others days.

“I want you to possess your familiar again, but take proper precaution this time.”

“I… can’t.” Whispered Azrael, still confused and afraid.

“Didn’t you come to me to learn how to dispel this curse? Didn’t you bond with Thracian for that purpose? To free your country from the curses and evil spirit that plagues it. Well, there is no shame in giving up, give me that damn ghost and I’ll seal your power.”

“I’m not… giving up! Thracian’s mine, I won’t let you take him away. I need him to save my home!” Ignis only reasons for coming here were Thracian and the fear of what he could do without supervision. If he yielded, his home and the whole country would eventually get devoured by the curse.

“Then show me.”

The young apprentice sent his will into the corpse, and brought it to face the necromancer. “See, I can do it. I won’t let you go until we’ve dealt with that damn curse. And don’t even think about taking Thracian from me or sealing my power, I won’t let you.”

Ignis answered gravely. “I won’t.” Then chuckling. “You do remember there’s no such thing as sealing someone’s power, right?”

The voice of Thracian resounded for the first time in a long while, some rare respect in his voice. “Nicely played, brat. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“You bastard. You manipulated me?! Did you think it was funny?” Screamed Azrael, his confusion finally blown away by his anger.

“My master did more or less the same. You can think of it as a rite of passage.

“That’s awful, distasteful…” It was followed by a long litany of words in ful and ing.

To this, Ignis simply answered. “Rites of passage often are. I mean, did you ever hear of scarification and tongue piercing?”

“What are you two talking about, a battle scare is proof of being a man.” Assured Thracian.

“See? That’s what I mean.” Pointed out Ignis.

“Those are nothing alike.” Countered Azrael.

And the discussion went for a long time…