Chapter 347. Another Way (Patreon)

Ian recoiled, only keeping himself still by using his decemancy to control his body. Just who was this woman and where had the gruesome event transpired?

Ian wasn’t naïve–he knew that practitioners warred with each other on a small scale. Practitioner families like his own, the Dunais, often had a hand in such local conflicts. Politics and power went hand in hand with violence, and areas with little economic power too often served as the battleground.

He’d been lucky enough to grow up in a not terrible part of Jupiter, at least that’s what Mother had always said. Lucky enough that the mansion his ancestor had owned, the one eventually turned into apartments, wasn’t surrounded by bad actors.

But Ian knew quite intimately just how seedy things could be. Menocht Bay had a terrible underground, not that he’d seen much of it when he returned with Maria. Jupiter, too, had its gangs, though they were small scale and toothless. Even so, he’d used one of Jupiter’s gangs in the loop to bring all of Jupiter to the ground, sabotaging the generator that kept the entire city suspended on too-small legs above the lake.

He stilled his thoughts. His goal wasn’t to investigate the woman’s wrongdoings. He had a much greater purpose.

The woman’s thoughts weren’t overly agitated, so Ian concluded that only he had experienced the memory. It was probably for the best–he didn’t think that she would take kindly to him pulling up deep-rooted memories. It was something that Remorse practitioners could also do, but that was different–more deliberate and more difficult.

Ian experimented on his own for another hour before he left, taking a break from the interrogation room. He walked next door and sighed, stretching out so that his upper body draped on a square table, his cheek pressed flat to the surface.

He’d hoped that he would be able to figure something out on the fly, as he always seemed to, but it just wasn’t working.

He pulled out the transmission artifact, resting it right in front of his face. It looked so normal. Ironically so. Like a cheap piece of glossware you’d use as a costume prop.

He reached out a hand and cupped the artifact. Considering for a moment, he frowned and pulled a medical mask from his void storage ring.

“Eury,” he thought.

“You’re good to call him,” the Crowned Executor immediately replied via quantum channel. Ian’s lips curved into a smile at Euryphel’s efficiency. Ian hadn’t even needed to ask the question–his friend had looked ahead to find both query and answer.

Confident that he wouldn’t appear at a bad time, Ian pulled on the mask, then pressed the activation button and sent himself across the world.

He found himself in Yurusi Canyon. Soolemar was sitting in the temple-like building where once rested the souls of his necromancer contemporaries. Not in a chair or even on a cushion–he sat on the edge of the steep cliff that formed the rear edge of the open-air chamber, his right leg pumping back and forth in a steady rhythm. Next to him lay Divian, the hound’s silvery head planted on the ground. Both Soolemar and the dog were backlit orange by the harsh desert sun.

“Soolemar,” Ian called out.

The necromancer started, but his surprise wasn’t overmuch. He turned around, scratching Divian’s ears as the hound barked at Ian’s arrival. “Shh, Divi,” he murmured. “You know him.”

Ian didn’t blame the dog for failing to recognize him–as a projection, he didn’t have a physical presence. Consequently, without a scent, the hound struggled.

Ian ignored Divi for now, cutting to the heart of the issue. “I need your help with a technique.”

Soolemar raised an eyebrow. “Can you elaborate?”

“Is this area secure?”

“I would sense anyone nearby,” Soolemar asserted, raising one eyebrow, his eyes scrutinizing.

“Things have changed, Mar,” Ian said. He gave Soolemar a knowing look. He wasn’t confident saying more out loud–not when they were in the East. It didn’t matter that they were in Yurusi Canyon. If Ian was part of the eastern powers, he would send agents to track the movements of persons of interest. The identities of most Darkseers remained hidden, but Ian wasn’t so confident that Soolemar had evaded notice. Their enemies must have figured out by now that the Darkseers had a necromancer ally, one that could see disembodied souls.

When Ian had sought out a necromancer teacher, the first person he’d found was Soolemar. He wasn’t naïve enough to believe that the eastern Beginning practitioners hadn’t flagged Soolemar as a suspect, even if they had no proof of his involvement.

Adding to his unease, the East had methods to track someone like Soolemar–ones that relied predominantly on technology. Sure, Soolemar could detect vital signatures, but would he notice a discrete glosscam?

Soolemar nodded as understanding dawned on him. “Call me back in an hour.”

—

When Ian reactivated the transmission artifact, he found himself in Soolemar’s cave. Divian was in the middle of fetching a thrown bone, her tongue lolling out of her mouth as she bounded excitedly forward.

Soolemar turned from the loping hound as Ian called out a greeting. He broke out into a congenial grin. “I hope this place is secure enough for you.”

Ian smiled back. Given the extensive arrays covering the necromancer’s lair, he wasn’t overly concerned. This place had to be at least secure as a military establishment.

Soolemar crosses his arms. “Now, do tell–what technique is vexing the eminent Skai’aren?”

Ian was careful not to reveal too much. Enemy Remorse practitioners were an ever-present threat, so telling anyone more than they needed to know was a vulnerability the Darkseers didn’t need.

“I’m developing a technique to control someone by leveraging their soul, keeping all existing oaths and fate bindings active. It would need to be untraceable.”

“And I assume this would need to work from afar,” Soolemar stated, his expressionless visage revealing nothing of his thoughts. “You wouldn’t be in the room with said individual.”

Ian nodded.

Soolemar’s green eyes fixed on the ceiling and he sighed. “If you’re trying to compromise an agent of Sere, or someone influential in the East, there are other ways. Bribery and intimidation are ones I’ve leveraged extensively in the past.”

“We can’t trust that,” Ian thought. “Even if we arrange a binding oath… those can be broken, and the East has powerful End practitioners at their disposal.”

Soolemar gave him a funny look. “You have Maria, don’t you?”

“She’s a peak End practitioner, but still,” Ian said, frowning.

“She can use ascendant energy, however, and the enemy’s practitioners cannot.”

Ian shook his head. “There’s a greater problem. Other End practitioners would see the oath, even if they couldn’t break it. That’s why we thought controlling someone through necromancy would be a better idea. Even if the enemy has necromancers at hand, they still wouldn’t notice anything amiss unless they actively invaded the person’s soul.”

“What you want to do might be achievable with ascendant energy blurring the bounds of possibility, but I’ve never done anything like it before and won’t be any help to you.”

Ian frowned. “That’s unfortunate, but I’d be open to any recommendations.”

“I do have one, but it’s probably not what you were expecting,” he said, bending down to grab Divian’s fetched bone. He stood up and lobbed it toward the opposite end of the cavern. “What you’re trying to do with necromancy is unorthodox–not what it’s intended for. Using End is a far more natural choice. What do you think will be easier–developing a method to hide a single oath, or developing one to control someone’s actions using their soul as a conduit?”

Soolemar had an excellent point. Ian realized that his low affinity Beginning had somewhat led him astray, locking onto the challenge of soul hijacking without fully considering alternatives.

“A follow-up question for you,” Ian began, his eyes narrowed in thought. Once he accepted Soolemar’s idea as a possibility, new ideas bloomed. He needed to prune the metaphorical garden to find something that would work. “Have you ever used necromancy–and your control over the ethereal body–to influence oaths? Aside from killing people to sever fate, obviously.”

Soolemar laughed. “A much more interesting–and feasible–question than the one you came with.” He manipulated a ring on his finger and a wooden mannequin manifested, hovering a foot off the ground. It was marked by intricate inscriptions along the lateral lines of its body, thin ribbons of power that snaked over otherwise unmarked wood. Ian knew that a soul lay within, even if he couldn’t see it.

“The domain of the ethereal is normally invisible. Only End practitioners and the subset of Death practitioners who can see souls have the privilege. And what they see isn’t the same.” He cocked his head. “You’ve used Maria’s fatesight before. Have you seen her End avatar?”

“A few times,” Ian murmured. “With my artifact, I can wield her End affinity and inherit her fatesight. But I haven’t had the chance to personal break any oaths in Eternity. It’s viewed as a less useful skill when death is reversible.” If Ian wanted to break an oath, he’d just kill the person. The only people he couldn’t just kill were mortals, and breaking oaths on them was almost inconceivable, given their unimportance as far as most ascendants were concerned.

“Well, I’ve never had that experience, but I’ve seen memories of what it’s like to use an End avatar. I’ve seen how they manipulate the metaphorical chains that bind and constrict fate arrows. Long ago, it was an area of personal interest to me,” Soolemar confessed. “I wanted to better quantify Death’s ability to subvert fate.”

“Better quantify?”

“You already said it, Ian–kill someone, and their fate is severed. And as you’ve proven, you can use necromancy to wipe someone’s fate without truly killing them. What is it about dying that severs fate, however?” He ran his hand along the shoulders of the mannequin.

“Detachment,” Ian replied. “Specifically, separating the soul from a living body.”

Soolemar averted his gaze to the edge of the cavern where Divian gnawed on the tossed bone. The cavern was dark, almost unlit–neither necromancer minded. The elder then spoke. “The shedding of the mortal shell unspools the soul’s coil.”

Ian had seen as much in his experiments before ascending. He had to prevent the soul’s degradation when it unrooted from the body. If he could do that, it could be re-introduced to the body.

Resurrection.

“But severing fate isn’t the intent,” Ian said. “We just want to hide an oath while keeping it active.”

Soolemar stared at the puppet, then back at Ian. “I can’t give you a proper demonstration when you’re here as a projection. But chew on this.” He pulled out a circle of wood from his ring. He drew out a single, pink disembodied soul from its center.

That’s a smart way to store souls, Ian thought. Better than his method of randomly tethering them to objects.

Soolemar pinched the pink orb to keep it in place, almost like holding onto the butt of a large balloon. He raked his other hand across its surface, peeling clear ribbons off so that they dangled from the soul at odd angles. He repeated the process several times until coils of soul draped over the mannequin, almost like a jellyfish’s tendrils.

The action was so deceptively simple, Ian could almost forget its difficulty. Souls could certainly be destroyed–Ian had seen their corruption many times over, and had even seen Soolemar casually slurp up a soul. Ian had cannibalized disembodied souls to repair his own tattered ethereal body.

But this was a very particular form of soul mutilation. Soul membranes were infinitesimally thin, almost nonexistent, and Soolemar had just peeled one with practiced ease.

Then, Soolemar pulled the soul away. Its hanging tendrils remained stuck on the mannequin where they’d fallen through the wood–and, Ian figured, into the soul within. The tendrils had gotten stuck.

Soolemar walked further away, Divian’s wagging tail thrumming against his knees, and still the tendrils stretched, unbroken, but ever thinner.

Soolemar’s cool, green gaze met Ian’s. “Since I’m limited by what I can demonstrate when you’re a projection, I hope this will at least give you some ideas.”

“I’ll let you know if I figure something out.”

The old necromancer smiled. “Good.”

Ian deactivated the transmission artifact, a matching smile playing on his lips.