“Reason shows reason can only bring pain - how wise to forget and be happy again!”

― Gene Wolfe, The Claw of the Conciliator

Mireille, Alea, and Alyssa shared the master bedroom, while Vanessa and Iseret wanted to use the study. Jill...had secured a few extra blankets and made a makeshift bedroll in the kitchen.

“I will stand watch.” Alyssa extricated herself from Mireille’s grasp.

“Mh.” Mireille patted the suddenly empty spot and frowned unwillingly but soon fell back to sleep. The past hours had been intense.

Alea was already sleeping in complete exhaustion.

She buttoned her coat and habitually gripped the small metal plaque that could be used to adjust the temperature and then sighed before halting the enchantment. She had been more and more indifferent to the cold, but now she did not even feel it anymore. Cyrus raised his head sleepily, but she waved him off, and he laid back down, fast asleep.

Softly closing the door to the bedroom, she walked down the stairs startling a surprisingly alert Jill.

“What are you doing?” The priestess asked her, still drowsy but wariness coloring her words.

“I’m going to get some air. Besides, I will watch for danger.”

“Are you sure you can be trusted with that?” Jill blurted out. A bit of red on her cheeks, seen in the light of the dying embers of the hearth, showed her embarrassment.

Snorting in amusement, Alyssa shrugged. “You might find out. But to be clear- If you do not harm us, we will not harm you. It’s that simple.” She nearly told about her experience with Christina, the kidnapping priestess of the adventuring group, but then reason prevailed.

“Is something the matter?”

“No. Just some unpleasant memories.”

The priestess slowly got up and leaned against the warm bricks surrounding the fireplace. “I don’t know. You will probably try to corrupt me. Make me renounce my faith for some demon or other.” She was mostly talking to herself by this time.

Alyssa gazed at her curiously.

Jill sighed. “Can you show me the symbol again?” She gestured toward Alyssa’s right hand.

Eyebrow raised, the white-haired girl obliged and raised her palm. “Should I come closer?”

“No. No, this is fine. I hate unclear, ambiguous things. I hate it when things don’t make sense. Are you blessed, cursed, both at once?”

“Both. I think it's right to say both.”

Emboldened by their conversation, Jill leaned a bit forward and looked at her face. “Why are you living like that? Would it not be better to have died saving your friends and the town without becoming an undead abomination?”

“I can’t say I like what happened to me but dying? I think that would be a whole lot worse. At least this way, I still have options, possibilities, a future. If I died, all would end. Perhaps I would be reborn, but then? I would be someone else, not me anymore.”

“But you would not sully your soul with...this.” The priestess gestured at her, and Alyssa realized that she had neglected to cover a wound that cut into her neck, exposing the dried-out muscles beneath the torn skin.

Grimacing, she pulled her coat close and glared at Jill. “I will fix this.” She bit out and then turned, walking quickly toward the door leading outside.

Jill pushed herself upright from her leaning position and blew a strand of hair from her face that had fallen before her left eye. Starting to say something, she stopped and then settled for a simple: “Take care.”

Alyssa turned and looked at her in surprise before smiling a bit. “Thanks. I will.”

Outside, the oak trees shook their branches in the stiffening breeze coming down from the north. The sun had well and truly risen, and the snow glinted in the pale light. Kicking at a snow drift, she walked along a path that was a mere indentation in the piled-up snow until she reached the well. Looking inside, she reflexively used the eyes of dusk, and the darkness shifted, revealing a deep shaft at the bottom of which ice glinted in the dim light.

“Mh. Perhaps if I let the bucket fall, it could break the ice…?” She mused.

‘It will most likely break the bucket.’ Asandria broke the silence.

“Don’t be so negative. I could always use a stone first.” Tapping her lips with her index finger, she looked around speculatively.

‘I have not heard you singing lately.’ The specter was nearly invisible in the glare of the snow.

“Nothing to inspire song around here, is there?” Alyssa gave up her pretense of looking for a stone.

Wandering between the trees, she looked at the city sprawling along a small river with the mountains rising up behind. “So peaceful.” She sighed. “With distance, you cannot see the undead, the soldiers, and the fear. You can only see the pure snow and the sun on the river. No wonder the gods stay so far away from us.”

In the afternoon, Mireille stirred and sleepily yawned before grabbing Alea, who startled awake at the touch and quickly got up.

“Let me sleep! It’s still lights out.” Mireille grumbled.

“Shouldn’t it be the other way around?” Alea shot back quickly, shrugging into her coat as the chamber was quite frigid with bad insulation.

“Mh! Don’t discriminate against Vanessa!” Mireille mumbled self-righteously. “Where is Alyssa?”

“I will look for her.”

“Mh.” The sound got softer and was soon replaced by steady, soft breathing.

Alea shook her head, tidied up her blindfold, and gathered Cecily on her shoulder before she walked downstairs. The old, well-worn steps and railing, smoothed by years of use, led into the living room where Jill sat before the fire feeding a splintered log into the flames and then stoking the languid embers with a fire-poker.

“Light shine on you.” Came the absentminded greeting from the priestess as Alea looked around, not finding Alyssa.

“Good day to you, too,” Alea replied primly. “Have you seen Alyssa?”

“She was here in the middle of the night and talked about going out for a walk.”

“In this weather?”

“She did not seem to mind. Or care.” Jill made a face as if she was eating a lemon.

Alea sighed and walked up to the single large table sitting in pride of place before the hearth. “Do we have some tea?”

“I remember seeing a tin in the kitchen.” Jill stood up and patted the dirt from her hands. “I will go and see what's available.”

The still blindingly white attire seemed quite out of place in the homely surroundings but the enchantments- or blessings, perhaps?- cast on her double-layered tunic seemed to repel everything dirty and unclean. Even Jill herself seemed nearly untouched by her adventures so far, safe for dark rings around her eyes and tired lines around her mouth.

“I will help you.” Alea followed into the kitchen. The room was small but tidy, and everything was arranged in an orderly fashion on and in cupboards and shelves with a large stove in between.

Jill, meanwhile, had opened a tin box and was sniffing the contents. “Seems to be a bit musty but should be alright.”

“Can you accept something that is not perfect?” Alea asked curiously.

“Don’t mistake physical for spiritual purity. We strive for both, but the latter is much more important than the former. Cleanliness is godliness, but it would not help one whit if you forgot your soul and mind in the process.” The answer came in a somewhat perfunctory tone, as if she had said the same sentence dozens of times.

Alea blushed and quieted down, a bit alarmed at her own forwardness, but somehow she liked the brash priestess.

Jill turned. “Herbal tea good with you? Didn’t find any other so far.” Waiting for Alea to give a quick nod, she turned and grabbed a kettle before walking back into the living room.

Alea stood there, a bit lost in thought, as Jill turned back and called. “Are you coming?”

“Yes!” Alea trotted after her.

Outside in the snow, Alyssa was lying on her back. She had gazed at the city and then the grey-blue winter sky, and before she knew it, she had simply laid back down in the snow, looking up at some pale, fluffy clouds high above. The snow had not been uncomfortable in any way, and without melting at the contact with her cold flesh, it had not even wet her clothes.

Sinking deeper over the hours, she had tried to feel along the many threads binding the undead to her jewel. There was Calmund, the wight with his skeletal riders closing in on her position. There were the remnants of the undead formed in Volstedt that she had forced to rise but fewer than a day ago- The temple detachment had been busy, it seemed. And last, there was the undead surrounding the cemetery that she had ‘liberated’ from the cultists.

It should be around two or three hundred, all told.

She did not feel burdened or strained. Should she? She wondered.

“Asandria?”

‘Yes?’

“Do undead not normally drain mana from the caster?”

‘A bit.' She paused, 'Why don’t you animate a rock or a tree, a cloud?’

“Because that would be silly?”

‘Because a rock was never alive in the sense that we know. A rock never moves on its own. A body did both. We simply remind it of what it had. It wants to move and act. And void magic is sometimes abundant, especially on a battlefield, so its use to awaken the dead to fight once more is well established. You could certainly raise an elemental spirit, but that is a completely different kind of thing.’

“What has that got to do with the undead not straining me as much?”

‘Now you are being facetious. The act of raising a corpse is simply an awakening, a remembrance. The cost is naturally much lower than forcing something to do what it was never going to do on its own, not now, not ever.’

“Mh. Can my flesh not remember how it looked like before?”

‘That might be possible, but I’m unsure how that would work. I only healed the living in the past.’

Humming a song to herself, Alyssa looked up at the sky.

Lieseleta looked at the sky and frowned. “It might snow again.”

Jera, her knight, quickly stepped closer. “Your Highness, please close the window. It’s very cold outside. You might catch something.”

“As if my aunt would not simply click her fingers and cure me. And what is that with ‘your Highness’? We are not in public. You should simply call me by my name.”

“I find that you do not listen when I do.” Jera deadpanned.

Brief amusement flashed across Lieseletas features, and she brushed back her golden locks shimmering as if made of pure liquid metal.

The two were walking along a stone corridor facing one of the countless courtyards dotting the palace proper. Lieseleta gave the window a small shove and watched as the dwarven-made frame clicked softly into the locking mechanism.

“We need to get some more of the stout folk to work for us. Even those new machines are not half as good as a dwarfen smith.”

“What are you going to do with the rebels on both fronts?” Jera asked quietly.

“Crush the Nordmarks and bring the coast to heel. Now that we have the support of the nobles, it should not take long.” Lieseleta’s eyes flashed with blue energy, and a sudden breeze swept some dust into the air.

“You should not overdo it with the elemental tonics,” Jera said worriedly.

“If I don’t strengthen myself, the next assassination might succeed. And with more magical power, it might not even come to that. The older nobles still respect force of magic the most. Did you know that we had attunement rooms for all the major elements? And that they are so well made as to be nearly without limiting effects on the other magical arts?”

“No?”

As they walked down the corridor, the darkness behind them deepened. A maid that came out of a room to the side glimpsed a tall, robed figure with smoky tendrils leading from its back far into endless darkness. Pale eyes turned to regard her as she crumbled into a faint.

“Did you hear something?”

“No, your majesty, I didn’t.”

“Don’t you dare ‘your majesty’ me!”

They did not see the darkness following them, and they did not feel the lifeless air left in its wake.