Chapter 216 – Tomb

Gaius prepared breakfast for her, and then they set off, levitating to the old house. As they flew, they talked.

“I believe your theory is right,” her father said. “The Sixth Prophet spent a great deal of his time dealing with corruption in the Academies. There were also some high profile assassinations around that time. None of which were ever solved. But all of them arcanists.”

“But spell engines were invented anyways. Just a bit later.” Mirian remembered finding the correspondence of another Prophet deep in the Grand Sanctum. It had been a balm to her soul. She yearned for more of it. “What was he like?”

“Like Ibrahim, in a way. He had this outward confidence. But also a sorrow inside him. An exhaustion. It slipped through the mask. I only talked to him briefly, well before the Declaration Crisis. But it was clear, when we spoke, that it wasn’t the first time we had talked.”

“It must be so strange, from the other end. For someone to know you so well, and yet be a stranger to you.”

“It was. I found myself overthinking every path the conversation could take. Considering what I might have said to him previously. Afterward, it was a shock. The holy texts said the Prophets saw the future, not that they lived it. He never told me as much, but it was obvious from the way he talked.”

“How did you meet?”

“He came to me. Knew exactly where to find me, though I wasn’t an easy person to find. Back then, I was living in the shadows. Hmm. I suppose I did have another name back then. A pen name for when I wrote to the academies, and another identity I was using for my underground work as a necromancer.”

Gaius paused in thought. “Can’t remember those names anymore. Anyways, he needed me to construct an artifact for him. Mythril armor with advanced soul repositories, and defensive rune enchantments. I didn’t have quite the mastery of energy transfer at the time that I do now, but it still was a piece of formidable defense and utility. In exchange, he gave me a pile of gold, information on several historical texts, and some ruins in the central wastes. I was working in Mahatan at the time. It was only near the completion of the artifact that I began to understand what he was. Let’s land there. I want to recall it as best I can.”

They landed, and Mirian’s attention was completely on her father as he closed his eyes.

“It was so long ago… yet the strangeness of it helped me crystallize it. I took notes in a diary later. I remember saying, ‘It’s not a chthonic needle you have. I can’t understand the function.’ And he said, ‘You always do get curious.’ I still didn’t understand until later. There was… we talked about something else, but I can’t remember. But I do remember… I was working on several refinements I’d gotten wrong while he waited. And he got this distant look in his eyes, and he started rambling. He said, ‘The journey to the new world could be peaceful. It could be. But people have been wrapped about in great chains made of ideas. All of Enteria is shackled to cruel masters, instead of tied to each other. They demand the path to change must be one of destruction. If the old world is not first burned, the new one cannot emerge. It was not Carkavakom who saw that, but Eintocarst.’ He seemed so tired when he said it.”

Mirian felt dread building in her. “Another Prophet, come to the same conclusion as Ibrahim. And as you would, a century later.” Is war really so inevitable?

“Yes. He said something about needing to remove his needle eventually. Said, ‘Three have already returned.’ I became worried and told him he couldn’t have mine. Got ready to fight. But he didn’t want to fight. He said, ‘It doesn’t matter. We never could find the Mausoleum.’ In the moment, I was still confused.”

“Did he say where he looked? Why it was important?”

“No.”

“Did he believe the chthonic needles—does the Ominian need them? Or just the temporal ones?”

Gaius shook his head. “I don’t know. It was the last thing he said that stuck with me. I still dream of the conversation sometimes. He said, ‘There are a few who see the chains. Like Zomalator, they understand how to fight the hunger for the endless feast. Instead of consuming the stars, they will bind themselves in webs of companionship, as the Renewer did that gave the Ominian Their final hope. These, I will name companions. A pity you are not yet ready to join their ranks.’”

Her father paused. “In all my long life, I never felt a cut to my self-identity like those words. When he said it, his eyes flashed, and I felt a judgment being rendered against me. I think… I don’t know what he intended. I wonder sometimes if he meant for the cycle to be the last one at all. Perhaps he knew what his words would do to me. Perhaps it was just his musing. The ramblings of a man who needed to talk. But they changed me. It took a few decades, but it changed the path I was on. Eventually, his words brought me to the Naasqual lands. I never intended to fall in love with the land. But when I trace it back… when I interrogate my own soul, I think it was his words that inspired me to fight for them. Did he see that, I wonder? Or did the Ominian?”

“A narrow path, through the burning branches,” Mirian muttered.

Gaius got a dazed look as he reminisced. “Yes. Yes, he said that too. I can’t remember when… the order gets mixed up sometimes. It was a long time ago. Then, he went north, and there was that bloody little heresy.” His gaze came back into focus. “I doubt the Sixth Prophet was responsible for the outcome of the Unification War, as Ibrahim seems to think. If he thought he had stopped the creation of spell engines, then how would he have predicted what happened nine years after that? He was human, after all.”

Mirian’s mind went back to the dervish. “Are you familiar with soul alignments?”

Her father looked confused. “You might be using a different term for a phenomenon I am familiar with.”

She explained what Jei had told her, and her experience in the frostlands and the First City, and how it had changed her soul. “Ibrahim must have discovered one as well. I saw him using two dervish forms at once. That’s not supposed to be possible, but then again, neither is directly absorbing ambient mana or being able to incorporate soul fragments.”

“Soul ascension,” Gaius said. “I’m not familiar with Sun Shuen, but I found a heretical text discussing the First Prophet in such terms, and at least some of the Triarchs seem to have done something similar. The dervishes were secretive about most of their techniques, but there are legends in the second millennium of such arts. I’d have to get out a reference book to remember the names. As best I can tell, the location itself doesn’t guarantee anything. You could send a hundred people to that place in the frostlands, and it may be that none of them gain anything. For me, I achieved the same ascension you did in the First City when I first stood in the center of Mayat Shadr.”

“Interesting. Are there… kinds of ascension that are known and documented?”

“Only as much as I’ve told you, unless they’re hiding in archives I haven’t yet visited. Another thing: the old Persaman texts seem to imply that ascended dervishes and ascended arcanists must follow different paths. I do believe you could learn what Ibrahim has learned, but by aligning your soul in that direction, you would lose the two ascensions you have now.” He paused. “Probably. Since the phenomenon is not easily replicable, it’s difficult to study. But what I know of soul-flow theory backs that up.”

Both of them became lost in thought. They resumed levitating shortly after that, the wind a welcome relief from the heat of the desert. Mirian watched the rocks and sands pass beneath them. Succulents nestled in the cracks and shadows where they grew out of thin soil. Here and there was a cactus. She briefly remembered after a rainstorm, the desert blooming. It felt so good to just be able to remember.

She at last broke the silence. “Did you only ascend the once?”

“No,” her father said. “Twice. The second one was recent.” He was silent. “Soul ascensions are never a sure thing. But I have reason to believe that you might find the path I did. After all, we share a connection.”

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Mirian knew where he had done it then.

A half-hour later, they arrived. She recognized her childhood home instantly. It was as she remembered, only, the fields and gardens were barren and the courtyard ponds that had once held jeweled lotuses were dry. They landed in the courtyard. She began to walk around, hand drifting over pieces of dusty furniture. Mirian—no—she was Naluri here—found it strange. The house seemed so small now. She found the hallway quickly enough. She knelt in that spot where she had, so many years ago.

“Necromantic revival isn’t the same as resurrection,” her father said, kneeling beside her. “As soon as the soul is broken and begins dissolution, the memories begin to dissolve with it. In a few hours, there are no memories left. The body without the soul retains some memories. If necromantically refined soul energy is carefully bound to the body, some semblance of memory and instinct remains. If the resonance of the new soul matches the resonance of what the creature is like in life, the simulacrum most closely approximates the behavior.”

“The mummy soldiers.” She smiled. “Meu. Yes, he never was quite the same. I still loved playing with him.”

He nodded. “That’s all to say, I knew it was hopeless when I tried to bring her back. But I did try. Not as something I could control, but her true soul, as it was.” Gaius let his hand gently touch the place where Leyun’s corpse had once lain. There was silence in the house. Only the sound of Naluri’s breath, and the distant wind. “I’ve had many brushes with death. Only twice in my long life have I nearly destroyed myself spellcasting. The first time was when I killed Solvir and his band of archmages. And the second was right here, in this spot.”

“There was a third,” Naluri said. “When you realize the leyline crisis will cause Divir to fall, you try to stop it. Before I remembered, I watched that. In the ruins of Mayat Shadr, you tried to do the impossible.”

“Did I?” He smiled softly. “Well, that’s good to know.”