The garden’s atmosphere never really changed as the two sat and watched. Icy only came to struggle more with his own lack of comprehension, whilst Mala… Her reaction now appeared strange to him. Even more now that he vaguely grasped how the degree of tolerance varied between the group. And yet, she did not seem troubled by despair or anger, but rather lost in nostalgia.

“You were able to get her soul, right?”

Her words shook him out of the watchful stare, and he answered only after turning back to the beds of tulips, “Yes. Body and soul… Not that it even matters.” Even if it couldn’t objectively matter, the burden he would have inflicted on himself for allowing it to dissipate hurt far too much.

His frugal decisions alone led to this, just five or ten more seconds and they won. Just a slightly stronger array, and it required no work on his part! Just a bit more wealth, and she’d still be alive. The others lacked such a simple decision which changed everything so resolutely…

At least he took the right option and retrieved her soul and body.

“I know. I have no intention of creating a doll. But thank you, regardless. At least we can do it properly this time.”

They both understood the concept of life. Body, Mind, and Soul, three things required to consider anything ‘alive’, but Icy only collected two. Without a Mind palace, everyone’s ‘Mind’ disappeared slowly after death. Whether one wishes to call it consciousness, or other things, does not matter. The Mind is just as special, and without it, the pair accepted that only one future existed. She was–

“We can… I WILL bring her back. It’s not impossible… And it might just work because I have two.” He spoke assuredly, yet even with such a thing, the blank face told Mala everything she needed. Many wizards, many dragons too, would have lashed out at Icy here and now for such a suggestion.

But such thoughts came to her too, and more than once in her life. She pleaded, “Please don’t go that far. That necromancy was forbidden for a reason.”

Necromancy itself was mundane, albeit frowned upon as it required corpses. But the ‘undead’ it created, simply required a spoonful of substance from the river of souls. A reanimated corpse of this method possessed next to no ability for self-preservation or substantial thought process. Zombies never amounted to much… But what if necromancers grew displeased with the ‘inadequacy’ of results? What if even the most advanced and powerful undead failed to meet their demands?

What if they wished for truly alive ‘undead’?

“From two; one must lack. From two; become three.” Icy spoke it aloud, a passage with incredulous fame, that led to a whole branch of necromancy to become reviled across the eight worlds. “It can be done. Surely, out in the universe, some already have, right Nexus?”

[The magic you refer to, Complete Resurrection, is not taboo in the universe. However, it is still a questionable product. We can provide an alternate prospect though]

His eyes lightened with that confirmation, but surged with curiosity and hope. Shakily asking, “What alternative? Show it to her too.”

[At her peak, Raccelline may forcibly resurrect others weaker than herself. With a few conditions, which you meet]

Mala didn’t miss a beat as her eyes quivered at the message. A shaky voice asked, “How many years?”

[100 years according to prior examples, perhaps as high as 200 years as this zone lacks sufficient foundation]

She kept silent at the news, several deep breaths slowly returned her eyes to a stable appearance. And no longer did her half-crystal heart pound vigorously. It still brought about pains and fear, a realistic response over pure joy.

Even if she lived once more a century from now… The friends, family, and world she knew completely changed into something new. Mala stole no happiness from it, only a satisfactory relief accompanied by a sense of failure. But whilst Icy read the two messages, even how the Nexus chose to answer Mala’s question, nothing about her attitude exuded those new thoughts. He wrapped up messages with a peaceful comment. “Thank you for that.”

The Nexus’ message closed. It was strangely kind… He never really thought of it, but did the omnipresent thing always behave this well with him? Or was it mostly apathetic to his plights?

“Just what the hell are you?”

[We are us. Or perhaps the reply you expected contained the words ‘highly classified information’]

If not for the grim atmosphere, he’d have actually laughed at that. At least it lightened his mood and cleared his head, Mala now faced the vibrant tulips all around. In exchange for a relinquished pain, she chose another. And while her enamoured eyes refused to look away, her lips bled as she bit into them over and over. An easy thing to do if one ignored the pain.

“Why the tulips?”

“Sorry, what?” Mala’s focus broke, and with it, her train of thought. The question’s direction also left a bit of a vague answer, even if she absolutely knew what he meant.

“There are mindblooms and crystal fraisures over there, but you’re here. Stuck in these tulips.”

What an apt description. She hated them so much, and yet replied, “I grew up in a manor beside a field of them. They’re my favourite.”

“Favourite, yet you never spared a glance for them all these years. And every Remembrance day, the flowers you brought always lacked tulips… All of theirs did too, now that I think about it.” He didn’t buy it for a second.

The part related to her home couldn’t be verified, but for the rest, such a lie never worked on him. A small part of him always paid attention, and, while it failed to help, he now understood a couple different types of grief and their weights. Mala chuckled depressively once she heard the reasoning. A lot more observational than she gave him credit for; definitely a lot more human.

“There was a field of them, and they were my favourite. If you’d care…” Her voice wavered slightly, a first in all the time they’d known each other. He also noticed that her hands fidgeted, and tugged the fabric of a cream dress she wore. “Would you care to hear about something the five of us repress for all but one day of the year?” Even this time, her voice broke at the end of the sentence, from its usual firmness, revealing a vulnerable and tender self.

Naturally, a part of him wanted to know about the oddities of this group. But… It was already his fault that one of them fell apart, to ask Mala to recount something which hurt her just as much went against so many of the reasons he put in so much effort.

So he answered with a question, “Will it hurt you?”

She tilted her head at the curveball reply, but for some reason, still formed a smile. “Of course, it will, you insensitive prick.” Icy took his turn at a moment of stunned silence, the two practically repeated such a thing over and over every few sentences this whole conversation. But even then, her eyes still fell back to the tulips. “We all started avoiding them after she died. Buried amongst a field of blooming tulips, she always wanted her grave to be with more flowers than you can count. Icy, do you know how it feels to lose someone you love unconditionally, without the time for even the briefest farewell?”

The air stilled, neither of them took a single breath. He silenced himself, and without end, tried to think of anything to say, but only a single scene replayed itself in his mind. One in which he lost the first source of compassion in this world. To behave like the two possibly compared seemed petty, even if Mala disagreed, so he sat in silence.

“Korridan wouldn’t be able to sit here, he loved her all the same, but, well, you’ve already seen that he’s not as confident as he appears. The other three… weren’t hurt as much, but they all hated themselves for letting it happen. And Rebecca, she changed a lot because of it. And now I can’t help but think, if we stopped that change, then she might not have taken that final risk.”

“How did she change?”

“No rogue fights like her, especially not one who uses stealth to her degree. Before it happened, she used that safe route. But afterwards, the injuries no longer bothered her.”

So many questions came to mind, but he knew that he couldn’t ask them. Not now, perhaps not ever, but that was fine too.

Not every stone must be overturned, nor every life taken.

The pain and fault remained, they hurt without end, but they also grew far more manageable when compared to the soul-crushing weight which Mala refused to loosen. He considered it some apathy hidden deep within finally coming to light, but further thought left it grey, maybe he just rejected her way.

A new question escaped Icy’s lips, unrelated to her own trauma, as he asked, “Where’d the others go?”

“They spend most their time wandering the capital. She can’t stand being in a palace. Not that any of us are allowed to go that far out. This is a Great sage’s subworld, but you probably guessed that by now... It’s all a huge mess. We got here just to keep her safe, and now every one of them knows her location.” Mala’s point directed at the eternals that they hid from in the first place.

Icy stepped off the uncomfortable bench and looked up at her, but at the same time knew that if he stayed to talk, the suffocating pressure only grew without end. He looked towards the other flower beds with assortments galore and just needed to look away from the tulips for now. Ideally, she stopped too, but such irreplaceable longing already grasped her. And just the sight alone explained why they never mentioned anything like this, but more importantly, he finally knew why the group who clearly loved one another always rejected those ideas.

Was it right? Certainly to some degree, if you burn your hands from fire once, then all logic explained that a second dip made no sense.

Icy took a turn around, one final question he wished to have answered. Just one of potentially hundreds, but he hardly withstood this sight. “What was her name?”

“Anna… Sorry, it was Annabelle Tyndrift, the sixth member of our party,” She answered and regained a touch of her normal, sharper voice, but only for the brief apology over nothing. Icy’s body turned back round as he nodded, and her soft voice still made its way over in such silence, “It really isn’t your fault either. So don’t ever consider the ‘Ifs’, because if you do, it can be hard to ever get out.”

He didn’t know what to say, if anything. But his mind agreed on one thing, whether he clung to a lost past or charged ahead to escape, neither of the two actually worked. Perhaps Jaren stood a chance to undo the chains.

Before long, even the breaths from behind turned faint, and he lost himself in the gardens, to the best of his mind’s ability. He purposely evaded the tulips for several reasons, but largely as Mala sat alone in the garden lost in repressed memories. Tears dripped onto her dress yet left no stains, no lasting effects. If she wished, her body would stop the depressed act immediately.

They just fell. Only fell, never at journey’s end.

Nothing he thought or considered helped the situation, and while a rather extreme idea formed, the backlash or danger it imposed left him hesitant. In the end, he could only walk around and think of other matters to himself… Somehow alone in shared misery.

To add insult to injury, what frustrated Icy most about all of this, about the discovery of their group and her death, was that it all only happened because of that single demon elf and his ‘beloved pets’. Their group never sought him out, and they sufficiently aided everyone by bringing such a group to light. Only a tiny fraction of chimaeras still remained when they finally left Fragheim back then, and yet he pushed and pushed.

For revenge? Of course not! They saw his eyes!

Eyes with desire. And what more could such a monstrous elf crave? A bloodline like no other… Raccelline’s existence created a sight which exceeded anything ever seen.

A somewhat funny reality as well, since the Nexus acknowledged her bloodline and knew its powers, but a fairy tale dragon of ice cream was what they sought. What that meant for his limit, or the incredible aspirations placed upon him by the Nexus, only it possibly knew. For so many years it existed, helped others grow, pushed for magical developments, and even granted a factor of equality for many.

But never once had anyone discovered its goal. Why it did all these things, and why it prioritised data to such a degree. In fact, given how the Nexus occasionally talked of the universe, he validated that it existed long before its appearance on the eight worlds. In a spontaneous thought process, he mumbled out, “How old are you anyway?”

And while he expected a relatively small time scale in the 100,000s of years or something about classified information, instead came a real reply.

[The Nexus is at 34,377,890,412 years since first activation]

34 Billion years. The knowledge built up by a thing of this age simply couldn’t be comprehended, nor the way it sought out more in an endless endeavour. Yet it somehow retained some level of personality and sense of self?

And… That number seemed familiar.

He definitely saw it once in a book before, in one of the many in his inherited memories. The first 5 digits absolutely reminded him of something. After some thought of what possibly matched such an age, Icy reached a conclusion. “The Nexus was born at the same time as the universe?”

[No, that’s incorrect]

“But the numbers definitely line up? I’ll check to make sure.” A possibility that he misremembered also existed, in which case the Nexus came about as a primordial creation that was simply brought into existence by random chance. And as he moved through dozens of astronomical texts to find the right one, another message fragmented his already rapid thoughts.

[No, this universe is 34,377,890,407 years old. We were activated 5 years prior]