As the palace was cleaned up using their new self-made vacuum, Rory decided to take a break and check up on other matters. There was only so many Sigils of Muck he could Weave. Like with the Sigils of Dirty Water, he didn’t expect anyone to use them.

“How are things looking?” Rory asked when he had climbed the tower with the broken top and caught his breath.

Jerome nodded at him. “I haven’t seen anything yet. No monsters like those Revenants you mentioned, or anything else either.”

“That’s… strange.”

“Yeah. Kind of worrying, huh?”

“It is. But we’ve got the Wraiths patrolling the area outside now, wo we’ll get advance warning if anything big gets close.”

“Hopefully.”

Rory didn’t poke whether Jerome had issues trusting the Wraiths or not. He hadn’t seemed too troubled by the former Neophytes in their midst, so Rory hoped he didn’t have any biases he was struggling with.

“So, Mr Bolt Blaster,” Rory said. “You haven’t fired off any lightning, have you?”

Jerome grinned. “You’d have heard it if I had.”

“True, but I was away for a while.”

“Oh. Well, no, I haven’t had any reason to, and I’m glad for it.”

Rory nodded. “Well, if you need a break, you know you can always shout.”

“Or just use the Sigil of Calling?”

Rory laughed. “Figure of speech, but yes, that might be the preferred way, if I’m being honest.”

Jerome laughed too. “Yeah, just pulling your old leg, Rory.”

Once they quieted down and settled into a companionable silence, Rory summoned the courage he needed to ask his next question.

“How are you feeling?” Rory met Jerome’s confused eyes. “About Mikey, I mean.”

“Oh.”

Jerome looked away and didn’t answer for a while. Rory held back a sigh, wondering if he had made a mistake bringing it up. For all he knew, the loss of his best friend was still a livid wound on Jerome’s heart.

“I’m… working through things still.” Jerome’s voice was steady, but Rory thought it was forcefully calm. “I mean, I don’t think I’ll get over it. That’s just not something that happens, with things like this, I don’t think.”

He sounded confused as much as sad, and that made Rory’s heart quiver worse than the melancholy. Sadness he could deal with. Sadness was expected. But Jerome sounded like he had lost a vital part of his life so that things didn’t make sense anymore. It was a heart-breaking feeling.

“He used to really like this tower, didn’t he?” Rory asked.

Jerome smiled. “He did. Said it reminded him of this place he had once visited as a kid. He grew real fond of it.”

“Is that why you’re here all the time now?”

“I… I don’t know, honestly. Sometimes, it feels like he’s still here, you know.”

Rory blinked. Still here… “Well, if you ever want to talk about, you know, any of it, you know where to find me.”

“Thanks, man.” Jerome frowned at him. “You okay?”

“Oh yeah, I’m fine. I just found something I need to take care of. Security things. Sorry to leave abruptly.”

“No worries. Thanks for asking.”

Rory nodded, then turned away and got going. He was sorry for not being able to provide better support to Jerome, or anyone else who had lost friends and family. Rory wasn’t a therapist, but he figured, as the de facto leader of their group, it fell on him to somehow help them deal with their losses.

However, Jerome’s talk about Mikey still somehow being around them brought up a new idea. Evelyn had the Sigil of Resurrection. That was something they could use in a new way, now that they had the Sigils of Permanence and Transfer.

Rory found Evelyn up on the roof helping April with her garden. The sight made him pause for a second. Alyssa used to be April’s partner in crime when it came to gardening, and Rory was sure the two of them together would have had the gardens ready far earlier than what April had managed alone, which wasn’t bad by any means. But after the little talk about Mikey with Jerome, memories of Alyssa hit him hard.

“Rory!” Evelyn waved with a smile, possibly not seeing the twist on his face since they were still a bit distant. “What brings you here?”

Rory wondered what Evelyn had thought when things had gone crazy with the Thunderclaw’s attack. He smoothed his face and shoved aside the saddening thoughts as he approached them with his best attempt at a smile. “I just figured something out, and I need your help. You mind if I take her with me, April?”

“April’s not my babysitter, Rory,” Evelyn said. April laughed at that. “What’s going on?”

Rory explained his new idea about using her Sigil of Resurrection, along with the Sigil of Permanence. Of course, to do that, they first needed actual monstrous corpses and the like. They’d had a ton before the Safe Zone had been set up and they’d been under constant attacks from the monsters, but Rory had converted most of those corpses to Sigils.

“Do we need a corpse for resurrecting something, though?” Evelyn asked.

Rory considered. That was a good point. Just because they normally saw the souls of the dead rising from their lifeless corporeal forms didn’t mean they necessarily had to have the body to summon the soul. “Have you tried using the Sigil without them?”

“Wait, hold on.” April stepped forward with a frown on her face. “You can bring back the dead?”

Evelyn held up the back of her hand, where the Sigil of Resurrection glowed to life. It was surrounded by a silver circle, which meant that it hadn’t advanced in Tiers much. Evelyn hadn’t had much reason to use it, after all.

“Are you seriously thinking of bringing back dead monsters?” April asked. Her brows had only clouded up more, drawing down to make her frown dig deeper. “Why?”

“We need more guards,” Rory said. “More allies. More… forces on our side. You remember the Revenants and that gigantic monster we saw. Sure, we handled them pretty well thanks to the element of surprise, but I don’t think it’ll hurt us to be prepared even more.”

“We did fine even when we didn’t have any surprise on our side. The hill. Remember? We kicked all their butts with what we had already.”

“Why are you so opposed to this?”

April’s mouth opened in a silent gasp. “Don’t you get how… wrong this is? Those creatures are dead and gone. You don’t have the right—no one has the right—to bring them back from whatever afterlife they’ve gone to and force them to do your bidding.”

A part of Rory could see what she was referring to, and it wasn’t that he disagreed. After all, he knew he’d be pissed if he was dragged back to do something stressful if he had thought he was done with it.

But then, she was working on assumptions here.

“I know it sounds like we’re dragging the dead back to life,” Rory said. “But I don’t think that’s what’s really happening. We’re not summoning the dead. It’s more like we’re recreating an image in their likeness.”

He tried to explain their first encounter with the souls at the bank, where the lich had refused to die no matter what they’d done. It made him wonder if that creature really was dead or not.

“So, you see, I don’t think it’s their real souls,” Rory said. He turned to Evelyn for support. “What happened when you summoned your family, Evelyn? Were they who you thought they were or more like the hollow apparitions the lich summoned?”

Evelyn blinked. Rory understood it was either a sensitive question, or the memory of her family was hard for Evelyn to bear. He felt like apologizing for bringing it up. But then, they needed to figure out if his idea would actually work or not.

“They were… certainly stranger than I thought they would be,” she finally said, trying to control the tinge of sadness seeping out. “I didn’t really get to say goodbye. Not verbally, at least. But they seemed to recognize me even in their limited way, so I’d assume there is some connection.”

“Interesting.”

April shook her head. “I just… do what you want to. I just don’t want to be a part of it. Not like you need me, of course, but…”

She sighed and walked away, back towards her gardens. Her reaction bothered Rory. He understood her point of view, that it wasn’t right to call back the dead and make them do his bidding, but at the same time, if his theory proved right, he wasn’t really bringing anyone back.

Evelyn was keeping her face carefully neutral. “Do you know how we can try it out?”

“Let’s go downstairs,” Rory said. “We might be able to use the areas they died instead of their corpses, if I’m thinking right.”

Evelyn didn’t look too sure about that, but she followed all the same. Some of the others threw curious glances at them, but Rory didn’t want to elaborate on anything until he was certain his idea could stand on its own two feet. All he had done was take Trish to the column that held the Sigil of Transfer and obtained the Sigil of Permanence from her. At the same time, he had initiated a new quest from Leo that would basically reward him if he was able to summon several not-souls.

They headed to near one of the walls, where he recalled having placed a Frozen Lightning trap. It had worked too, from what he recalled, which meant a monster had died there..

“The Sigil needs me to focus on something to resurrect,” Evelyn said. “So, without a corpse…”

“Can you focus on the area itself?” Rory asked. “Maybe the spot where the monster died?”

“Hmm, let me see.”

Rory held up his hand. “Before you go ahead, make sure you add this.”

He handed her the Sigil of Permanence, which she took in afterwards. Nodding, Evelyn turned her focus back to the spot of the trap.

She held out her hand, the Sigil of Resurrection glowing on it. Dark purple light bled out in wisps that fell to the ground, disappearing into the soil as though it wasn’t there. Evelyn poured a lot of that dark energy form her hand, but nothing seemed to happen. Rory was beginning to think his theory didn’t hold much merit when something poked out of the soil.

Evelyn and Rory both gasped and stepped back. The monster climbing out of the ground was clearly an ethereal version of an Emberteeth, complete with a flaming maw and fiery spikes on its back.

“Well, we got our giant, flaming hamster,” Evelyn said, smiling.

Rory laughed, slightly unbelieving that it had worked. “We did! Can you… direct it or talk with it or something?”

“Well, I can try.”

Evelyn considered for a moment, then pointed her hand at the ghostly monster. It seemed to stiffen a bit as though readying itself to receive an order. Evelyn roller her hand sideways. Rory stared at her, then at the Emberteeth. The monster was still for a moment before plopping onto its side, continuing to turn over the ground until it was back on its feet a moment later, but about eight feet from its original position.

“Great, now it knows how to roll over,” Rory said. “Do you know how long it’s going to stick around?”

“Twenty-eight hours. Which isn’t exactly permanent.”

Rory snorted. “Yes, it’s a bit of a misnomer. But I guess Sigil of Temporary But Longer doesn’t have the same ring to it.”

Evelyn laughed. “That’s true.”

Now that they had proof of the fact that Evelyn could both summon and control the creatures that had died nearby, they got busy. Rory guided her to more areas where he recalled seeing his traps get activated. Evelyn continued to use her Sigil and summon more ghostly monsters.

By the time evening was setting in and it was nearly time for food—and was also getting spooky with the monstrous phantoms around them—they had a large army prepared. Several Emberteeth and Thundershells flooded the area, some Rockbacks, Detonetals, and Dreadraptors interspersed among them.

“Are we having them guard the palace?” Evelyn asked.

“That’s what I intended,” Rory said.

“How much can you specify what exactly they should do?” Dez asked. They had gathered a sizable crowd with their ghostly antics. Nearly everyone had come out to see the new development, though not everyone looked pleased. “Can you give each of them individual tasks? I’m just thinking some of them will be better at some things than others.”

“That’s true.” Evelyn considered for a moment, her eyes glazing over as she focused on her Sigil. “It doesn’t say much, but it hadn’t before and all I did was give them the instructions I needed to. Maybe I can do that again, tedious as that might be.”

Rory let them figure it out. His part of the job was done. He could trust Dez, Evelyn, and the others to handle their new asset as well as they could. For him, it was time to call it for the day and get some rest for his weary, old bones.