There wasn’t just one internal monologue, but two. Not just one train of thought, or point of focus. It was as if he had the mental faculties of two people at once, as if… As if his mind’s metaphorical spindle could spin two threads at once. He could discern his two inner monologues easily; one was in his own voice, the other in Koschei’s, yet both were his own thoughts. A third, silent presence was also felt; his Primordial Self.

It was bizarre, yet exhilarating all the same.

And his sight, it felt… Weird. He felt himself processing the shape-lines of everything, unconsciously building mental maps of Zel’s anatomy by the way she moved, down to tendon and muscle placements. The dimness of the longhouse’s basements was all but gone to him, and if he tried, he could hone in on the streams of errant ice-monads constantly flowing through the air and ground and walls. These eyes could see the unseen world, but he deigned not try to peer past the curtain just yet, lest he blind himself like the subjects of so many cautionary tales.

It took him only a few short minutes to drift into a deep sleep, his desire for unconsciousness enforced by the Primordial Self’s uncompromising hand, yet even in that brief time, his thoughts ran rampage, fed by the sights he had surrounded himself with before he had closed his eyes: armor segments and prototype belts.

“Koschei’s Key is empty; it yearns to fulfill its purpose. It would be best to fill it again. Form a reservoir of power to draw upon, refine it over time. Our affinity is fire, is it not?”

“It would be good for constructs, but is casting from gems not hazardous without specialized tools and training? Unless… The Key acts as both a storage medium and catalyst, just as the legendary Eye of Fiery Judgment.”

“Such warnings are aimed at mortals who lack the means to manipulate and refine essentia without taking it unto their own bodies. We fall into none of those groups. We are that which they seek to imitate. The Key does indeed act as a perfect storage medium; were it otherwise, it could not hold a living soul for seven centuries.”

“So be it. A sufficient power source will be required for the armor.”

“A core of solid Ignis to provide the bulk of energy with the Key acting as a ballast for the whole system? We’ve already conceived of the basic design - integrating the Key will not be difficult. The main issue will be the suit itself; a flexible undersuit will be ideal.”

“Chitinous plating where solid plates cannot work?”

“Of course. We can use Teutobochus for raw material to entirely bypass the painstaking work of making a permanent construct from pure essentia and reclaimed organic matter. The amount of mass required will not impact its integrity.”

“Constantly powering a servitor-construct of that size so that it may follow in our stead would be extremely straining.”

“The meagre staying-power of its previous incarnation was entirely to blame on the rushed circumstances of its creation.”

“...I recall now. The Itrian scroll did mention that a fully fledged shrine-maiden would typically have one or two permanent servitors and a cadre of temporary, specialized ones sealed away in storage-talismans.

“This reborn Midnight Wolf will be no more a strain upon its creator than a golem; a permanent baseline level of performance that we may further enhance by channeling power to the construct. We shan’t need storage-talismans, though…”

“...It would be a good idea to look into them nonetheless, especially for other constructs that I won’t want to have around constantly, or if I need to go to a place where a giant flaming bone-beast would cause an uproar.”

“With the inevitable design changes and surpassing of its original form in mind, it may well warrant a new name.”

“The darkest night brings the brightest dawn. Dawnwolf?”

“Another Knights of Rebellion lyric. How fitting.”

Jorfr didn’t expect the ancestors to talk back.

They never had.

Even now, as he knelt upon the ice before a wall lined by the frozen visages of his family’s numberless honored dead and pored over sagas of old for feats to reprise, they didn’t speak back. Even those without bodies to recover were represented by true-to-life wooden statues, furnished in clothing and weapons as if the real person had been buried. It was a place well away from the city limits, carved into the ice, well over two hours by a fast razorflayer-pulled sled.

He saw some of them, in his half-entranced state. Their spectral forms. Not ghosts; the imprints of their lives upon the world, shaped by their deeds in life. His limited expertise in the arts of ancestor-summoning, abandoned by his clan long ago for a forgotten reason, only permitted him to glimpse faded visions of the most recent and brightest-burning of his ancestors, like Wide-wuth. Even as he prayed for their blessings in the coming battle, they stood impassive and silent.

He’d barely been able to delve into the study of ancestor-summoning before his self-imposed exile, enough to turn a handful of tales to a usable form, all of which he had mastered by the time of his return to Borea. The promise of assistance by way of an attribute-reader had been a hollow one; the distinctly Ikesian device couldn’t make sense of his spiritual muscle memory and couldn’t properly interact with it, as it had been seeded in him by the Rite of Becoming, the most fundamental Borean coming-of-age ritual. At least it could estimate his attributes properly.

It was no bother.

Jorfr pored over tales of his greatest forebears, moving through the burial hall in turn.

A gust of ice-cold air blasted through. The tome in his hand was flipped shut. An all-too-familiar voice carried on the wind, calling him to the other side of the burial hall

“Come to me, Jorfr.”

“...Grandfather?” he uttered, already moving to investigate, though he half-expected it to be some cruel illusion of the ritual herbs he’d consumed to induce his trance.

There, his grandfather awaited; not an imprint, but a manifested spirit formed from icy fog, standing cross-armed before his own burial alcove.

“I knew you would come back, and my, how you have grown since I last saw you. Let me tell you one last tale; a tale of Lost Hyperborea, and of the forgotten hero who led our people’s escape from its sinking shores.”

Hours passed.