Chapter 348. Death and End (Patreon)

Ian returned to the woman bound in the interrogation chamber with a fresh perspective, a new insight, and Maria serving as his regalia. A green apple rested in one hand.

The captive woman’s cold visage was unyielding as Ian approached. Defiant.

He understood that there were circumstances that shaped people into monsters. He didn’t understand what upbringing the woman–whose name he still intentionally refused to learn–had endured, but he figured it must have been brutal. Children didn’t naturally grow up wanting to commit arson and murder kids–at least not those without certain cognitive abnormalities.

As far as Ian could tell, the woman wasn’t a psychopath. In the one vision he’d seen through her soul, she’d felt a flicker of something when she’d killed the girl hiding under the bed. If remorse was like a fire, Ian could still see its dying embers in the woman. She hadn’t always been so numb.

It doesn’t matter, he thought, gazing at the woman contemplatively. What I’ve seen of her depravity is only the tip of the iceberg, if what Euryphel said is true.

Ian froze the woman with his practice as he’d done before. He sensed a trickle of fear with his Remorse, but she quickly stamped it out. He came in close. This time, he knocked her unconscious.

He unzipped her body along the line of her sternum, stopping just above her navel. The halves of her ribcage split cleanly, like puzzle pieces, pulling her chest a few inches ajar. Ian closed his eyes and breathed.

I’ve never seen you cut open someone’s body for soul work before, Maria observed.

Ian held up the apple, then pinched a soul free from its center using his ethereal body. I normally can’t justify opening someone up to play with their soul, he said, but in this case–for this delicate work–I think it will be helpful.

He had already fed the ember crown with disembodied souls; this last soul put it over the limit, activating its signature ability–embodied soul sight.

Ian shuddered as the woman’s body came alive in a new way. With her torso butterflied, he had an exquisitely bizarre view of her soul as it entwined with her blood vessels. It was a beautiful light blue green, like a clear, tropical ocean. Unlike previous souls Ian had seen that appeared organic and arboreal, her soul was smooth, with synthetic, thin tubes that wrapped around the vessels. It was an unexpectedly beautiful soul for such an inwardly hideous person.

In all fairness, Ian hadn’t seen many embodied souls. He didn’t like the fact that the ember crown required a tithe of disembodied souls to activate soul sight. While he recognized that perma-killing a handful of souls at a time wasn’t impactful–the Infinity Loop gradually destroyed millions of souls–it still left a sour taste in his mouth.

He’d spoken about his misgivings to Maria before, so she sensed when his thoughts took a dark turn.

They’re empty, Ian, she mentally reminded him.

I know, he said simply.

Then what’s bothering you?

He paused, his gaze fixating on the gently swaying tubes of his experimental subject’s soul. He reached out his hand and caressed the woman’s exposed vena cava, the largest vein leading to the heart. He’d butterflied her in such a way that her heart was fully exposed. Only through absolute mastery of decemancy was he able to keep her body functioning and safe from foreign contaminants. He couldn’t individually control a single cell, but he could control all cells and dead matter–which included viruses–within a tiny volume. He did so all around the woman’s exposed insides, creating an invisible protective membrane.

The woman’s embodied soul clung to her flesh. By exposing her heart and vessels, Ian forced the soul to retreat, like a creature of shadow spurned by a bright light. As he stroked the woman’s heart, he also stroked her soul where it nestled within. It was a convergence of his senses–enhanced necromantic soul sight, decemantic vital perception, and his mundane sight and sense of touch. The thump of each heartbeat and the nauseating smell of a cut-open body added further complexity.

Souls are a bit of an enigma, Ian said, not quite answering Maria’s question. We think of them as important. They nestle within the body, inextricably tied to us. Without a soul, the body is a nonfunctional shell. But we all know that actual thought happens in the brain. He moved his finger to the unnamed woman’s scalp. It vexes me. Are we in symbiosis with the soul, or has it parasitized us, preventing us from living without it after countless millennia of evolution?

He paused, collecting his thoughts. As if it could be evolution, when we’re discussing a phenomenon occurring across species and even worlds. He swallowed. Besides, what does embodiment even mean when a soul can be transplanted into a mannequin to become a lich? What is so special about our bodies that a disembodied soul–an insensate, spherical sack–molds into a person? And finally… what does it mean to truly destroy a disembodied soul? Clearly, on a massive scale, destroying disembodied souls is a practical disaster for humanity, but is it inherently bad to destroy a soul that is empty?

You’re concerned about whether a soul has intrinsic value, Maria observed.

What’s your opinion? Ian asked.

I’ll answer your question with a question, she retorted. Ian sensed a cheeky grin over their bond. What’s my value to you?

Ian snorted. Hilarious.

Oh really? I’m funny?

He rolled his eyes. Your soul is priceless, of course. Who but me on this world could even appreciate it? Soolemar doesn’t count–he’s far too old for you.

Maria’s silent laughter rocked his mind. That’s funny, coming from you.

It almost sounds like you’re calling yourself old, Ian mused, tapping his lip theatrically.

Alright, that’s enough chatter, Maria said, suddenly channeling a serious persona. Back to your experiment.

Ian was thankful that Maria had distracted him from his misgivings. They weren’t helpful­–it wasn’t like he was going to stop using disembodied souls for his experiments.

He re-focused on the woman’s separated torso, his lips pressing into a thin line. He returned his fingers to the chasm between the woman’s ribs, his fingers settling on the moist exterior of her heart. As he touched its surface, he just barely caressed the entrenched soul. He couldn’t grasp it without using tendrils of his ethereal body, but there was something sublime about feeling the soul in a tactile manner.

He sent tiny ethereal threads into the heart, hooking the cerulean soul tubes and pulling forward several into his hand.

He pulled the hand back and the tubes stretched without resistance, thinning. On a whim, he braided them together as he pulled.

He suddenly found himself assailed by another memory, this one of the woman as a child. It was short and fragmented, revealing a humble cottage and a lush garden. Ian forced himself to leave it early.

Ian’s Beginning affinity allowed him to take away much from Soolemar’s deceptively simple demonstration. The first takeaway was the stringiness of souls. Ian could pull them out like taffy and they’d keep stretching. The second was that a disembodied soul could be draped into an embodied soul and become entangled. Ian hadn’t quite understood the value of doing that when watching Soolemar’s demonstration, but it became apparent now. He needed a way to avoid direct contact with the embodied soul to stymie the flow of distracting memories.

He retrieved another soul-infused apple from his void storage; he’d prepared a few. With his off hand–the one not holding onto the soul filament–he pulled a green soul free and experimented with dragging it close to the embodied soul.

There was a strong repulsive force. Ian’s brow furrowed as he carefully pinched the soul’s surface, creating a small furrow. He picked at it, pulling a small thread free from the surface. He draped the thread over the embodied soul filament. This time, it flowed freely, snagging on the blue tube.

Ian couldn’t tear his eyes away as the disembodied soul thread seemed to meld into the tube. It looked like a green crack on the tube’s smooth exterior. An imperfection, and a potential point of weakness, but Ian didn’t think that would matter for his plans.

He maneuvered the disembodied soul around the blue filament, wrapping it in a spiral along its length to ensure a more solid connection. Then, he let go of the blue, grasping the green with both hands.

The connection persisted. Ian pulled on the green soul and the blue-green filament stretched even thinner. No visions assailed him. Ian eventually walked out of the interrogation chamber and into the hall, the filament trailing behind him, cutting through the wall. Physical obstacles were no impediment.

Why does this tether remind me of an End arrow? Maria thought, her mental voice filled with equal parts awe and apprehension.

Ian recognized her question as rhetorical. End arrows were of the ethereal. They were colored and stretched–theoretically­–infinitely between two people. The power of an End practitioner determined, in part, how far away two people could be before the connection was no longer visible with fatesight.

Ian didn’t fully understand what the similarity meant. They had known–or at least suspected–that End and Death were more closely related than other affinities, due to their shared manipulation of Ethereal energy. However, they had always seemed to operate on different frequencies, so to speak. But now, as Ian contorted the soul filament into a thin line of color, the difference between them began to break down.

A sobering thought crossed his mind: If he could emulate fate arrows with necromancy, could he also create pseudo oaths?

His mind buzzed, enraptured by the possibility. He’d set out to find a soul jacking method, but he’d perhaps uncovered something far more significant. A hint into the greater mysteries of the fabric of reality and a versatile, unexplored avenue.

Ian had better than average understanding of oath mechanics courtesy of working with both Maria and Euryphel, but he didn’t think it would be of particular help at this juncture. Ian was performing necromancy. He needed to find his own way, his own technique.

As Ian threw himself into the challenge, the woman’s heart beat quietly, her lungs slowly rising. It was a macabre operating room.

I’m lucky to have you. The thought bubbled up in Ian’s mind unbidden. I never thought I’d find someone who wouldn’t shy away from this side of me–from my practice.

It’s easier when I’m transformed into your regalia, Maria said. Without Cayeun Suncloud’s artifact strengthening my humanity, I feel less. Her mental thoughts darkened. As you well know, that’s sometimes for the best.

Ian did know. He worked to shed the mantle of humanity when it impeded him from doing what needed to be done for the greater good of his world. Conversely, Maria worked to pick up the mantle of humanity, regaining what she’d lost in undeath.

He considered how he controlled necromantic constructs–the inhuman, the unliving. The souls that were embodied in objects and given meaning while utterly lacking any semblance of humanity. He invested his souls with careful thoughts, powered by fervent emotions, to produce desired actions. It was painstaking. He had to effectively teach a soul what it meant to do anything, which was completely different from decemancy, where constructs all had an intuitive understanding of his will.

He cocked his head, a realization dawning on him.

If I’m working with a soul that is embodied, it shouldn’t be a blank slate. It should understand a concept like sitting or talking.

That would be, at a bare minimum, convenient.

And what if I take it a step further? I could never give a normal necromantic construct a complicated command and expect it to act out my wishes. But what about an embodied soul?

His mind suddenly flew back to the Infinity Loop and the Dark practitioner who had been turned into a ghastly necromantic puppet. Her soul had been transferred directly to its new shell, like how Ian had transferred Maria’s soul into the lich mannequin. Something had been lost during the Dark practitioner’s transfer. She had become a dead creature, beholden to the necromancer’s authority… but she had also retained a will. And when Ian had captured her, she had assisted him, understanding his desires.

Ian considered Maria and their lich bond, something greater in strength than any oath. It was a bond that would exist until Ian’s soul was extinguished or Maria’s phylactery broke. It demanded absolute obedience, the lich forced to serve its creator.

That, he thought, is the key. A lich that is not a lich, a necromantic construct that is alive and whole. It was a perversion of his craft, but Ian didn’t see why that was a reason to stop. If Eternity had taught him anything, it was that there was no limit to what he could accomplish. Ascendant energy’s purpose was to grease the wheels of impossibility, even for profane experiments, like the sorts Achemiss and Ancient Ash conducted.

The will of Eternity demanded that its chosen transcended limits.