The following days they took precautions as to avoid further pursuit, to a point at least. Rhys did not want to slow down their pace, which left some of it to chance. Mostly because he wasn’t particularly worried. A few more stray assassins were not more than he would be willing to deal with. In the meantime, he kept teaching the newt. Beatrice was making fast progress, and he caved to her requests to share some specific tricks useful for self-preservation, going through a few options that he thought might fit the girl.
Firstly, since she had accomplished Deeds related to both death and observation, he was teaching her some spells that would use both. The latter was not bound to one of the five Changes like death would be - which reminded him he still had to educate her on what the five were when she reached far enough in her studies - and that meant some magics could benefit from both. Limited clairvoyance through her creations was an obvious choice. Not the sharing of senses like the girl had first wrongly assumed, as she yet lacked the skill to make eyes and other organs properly restart function. Then he taught her how to better sense other undead and people in the process of dying.
Some offensive uses were naturally also needed, which she was particularly eager about - even if the assassin had been a trick, it had shown her the lack of options in the area. There Rhys went with his original expectation of some kind of marrow curse, eventually setting on melting the bones. The hardest part of those spells was often actually locating which areas to target, and she was good at that. Of course, it would be a while before the newt could actually destroy someone’s bones, likely months of practice despite the affinity. Even longer before she could do so without direct touch and in a reasonable timeframe. But even at the fraction of its potential, just causing mild damage would still inflict debilitating pain in any living target, so it was already a decent disabling spell with great potential for growth. And there would always be more to teach, with Beatrice ever full of questions.
“You told me even grass has souls. I cannot feel anything no matter what I try.”
“What is a soul then, newt?” Rhys thus posed the question.
“The… sum of a person and what they have done in life,” Beatrice attempted a definition.
“Why do you restrain it to just a ‘person’?” he led ahead.
“Animals too, even if theirs are more meager,” she nodded. “And plants, supposedly. Does that just mean they are too weak for me to notice.”
“That is not the right way to think about it,” Rhys pivoted. “Do souls hold power as to be 'weak'?”
That gave the girl a pause at least as she thought about it, thinking back on what she had done with them. Due to her practice in necromancy, she had plenty of examples to examine in her mind to arrive at the right conclusion: “No, they have no power. It's all just... information?”
“A soul is a record," Rhys finally explained with a satisfied nod. "A carving onto the very world which describes the totality of something’s existence. You cannot see the souls of grass because it is fleeting. A brief and monotonous existence with very few senses to perceive anything and no mind for thought - there is thus very little to record.”
“So the longer and more complicated something is, the more information there is in the soul, and thus the bigger it becomes?” she asked, receiving an affirmative gesture from Rhys before continuing. “For animals there is more because they think a bit… and also move. Wait, does that mean that even a piece of rock would have a soul?"
“Usually, no,” the necromancer said. “There is no motion, no perception, nor any biological processes happening within mountains most of the time. If you were to dig to depths no being has ever so much as glimpsed, you might notice a slight hint of one before it vanished - because stone is not alive, which leads to the same problem as with the usual dead souls."
“They disappear,” Beatrice confidently stated.
“More accurately, they are overwritten,” Rhys corrected. “The world is not quite like a canvas where you need to paint directly over souls to cover them, though proximity still matters. In a city with thousands mingling as they go along their day, all information will be lost quickly. But if one were to hide in a lifeless collapsed cave, buried in the middle of nowhere, a soul can remain untouched for perhaps even centuries. Take Rod, for example: He had been dead for two decades by the time I found him under similar circumstances.”
“Then what prevents people from just having their souls naturally overwritten as they go about their day?” the girl obviously wanted to know. “And if it is a perfect record of everything, how come we forget things?”
“For the second, ‘forgetting’ means either accidentally overwriting your own soul or your brain not being able to correctly interpret the information,” he answered. “As for the first, that is the very foundation of life and the Change of Death. As long as something lives, the information cannot be painted over by anything else than the being itself.”
“And so when they die, it looks almost as if their souls slowly disappeared to somewhere,” she summarized. “And once that boundary is irreversibly crossed, necromancy can wield the Change to so easily preserve, alter, or just repurpose that suddenly fragile record, even twist it to just a semblance like when I would animate just bones.”
“That is the origin of necromancy. Though, it can also just as easily involve bringing the living closer to the Change of Death. The Change is, after all, willing to accommodate any wish as long as one wields enough knowledge and volume with great Deeds as a foundation to build miracles upon,” Rhys nodded. “Think on it by yourself for a while, then we can resume your practice.”
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“Will you really not ask again?” Beatrice changed the topic from her practice, around midday on the tenth day of their journey. After diligently learning for so long she tried for a different conversation.
“About what?” the necromancer raised an eyebrow.
“My Deed,” she stared at him. Apparently, two and a half days of stewing on it had changed her mind.
“I was thinking of bringing it up again before we parted ways at the capital,” Rhys shrugged. “Patience is one of my virtues. Though I am obviously happy to sate my curiosity on something so clearly very personal.”
“It’s difficult for me to talk about,” she slowly nodded. “But I have been thinking about it and decided that you of all people probably won’t judge me for it. It’s just that… it makes me think about the bad parts when I do.”
“Have you accidentally kill half of your family with an out of contrel spell?” Rhys asked in perfect deadpan.
“What? No!” she immediately shot back, startled by even the suggestion.
“Well, that was my guess,” he admitted with slight cheer. “Killing usually doesn’t amount to much of a Deed individually, but under some circumstances it can. Children with no proper concept of death sowing it unwittingly among their loved ones is a somewhat common backstory for mages inclined towards necromancy.”
“No, absolutely not!” Beatrice rejected it twice more, looking frightened at just the idea. But that meant she had lost the fear of sharing her story, so Rhys took it as a victory. “I was actually young when it happened. So much so that I had no hand in it.”
“Now you have me even more curious,” Rhys nodded and gestured for her to continue.
“My mother was murdered just before I was born,” she said, suppressing an instinctive shudder. “At the very end of her pregnancy, by an arrow piercing the heart. Normally I should have died too, but my teacher - well, future teacher - had convinced my father to let him try and save his daughter since I was so close to due. He managed to cut the dying child out of the womb in time, allowing it to barely survive despite the… damage.”
“And I presume a story like that would spread,” Rhys nodded. Especially among nobility, maybe even further. Twice so if the mother’s death involved assassins, as it sounded. Thrice or more extra, depending on how high in birth she actually was.
“The… others took to calling me a corpse,” she sighed wearily. “It didn’t help I was so feeble and pale in youth, often sickly enough to look the part. I got better eventually but the rumors and scornful whispers never left.”
“Well, if I can offer a silver lining, said rumors are almost certainly making the Deed greater,” Rhys tried to not let her indulge in remembrance. He knew well how lonely similar stories tended to be.
“That works?” she asked, first surprised, then thoughtful. “Deeds become more powerful if people hear about them? Should I just spread false rumors about my amazing magical skill to instantly become an exceptional mage?”
“Firstly, the Deed any folk tales stem from must have actually happened or been at least be close enough,” Rhys elaborated. “And secondly, if you go out of your way to spread them, the effect will be worse. The original Deed will mix with a new one related to conspiracy or something alongside those lines, and unless the two are compatible, both will end up diminished.”
“These are rather convoluted rules,” Beatrice sighed.
“Not rules, observations,” he shrugged. “Coincidences at the core of how our world works - just cataloged.”
“Or laws set down by the gods,” she refuted. “Actually, I have always wondered, are the Three real?”
“In a way, though the details are… complex. I know none built any deliberate rules at least, leaving things to chance. They…” the necromancer begun, then cut himself off. “That is for another time. You have plenty of practice left to do today while we march.”
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It was late in the 11th day that Rod spotted something rather worrying. The ground was just walking across the Hillsides - an accurately named area - which both Rhys and Beatrice agreed couldn’t be more than two days’ march away from the capital. The knight was miming intensely towards the ground, still unwilling to speak in front of the girl - probably out of sheer stubbornness than for a good reason. It took a minute of increasingly frustrated gestures to get his meaning.
“Ah, tracks,” the necromancer finally identified. A lot of them, actually, when he knew that was something to look out for. As if a full stampede had barged through. Or a lot of people, at least hundreds. Since there should be no towns in their immediate vicinity, that was rather strange. “We should perhaps look for a more hidden place to camp and do so without fire.”
It took them almost an hour, but eventually they found a cave within the face of a half collapsed large hill. After Rhys determined that it probably wouldn’t collapse on them, they set down to camp. All of them were still watching out for whatever had caused that trail as the group settled down for a cold dinner right around dusk, so they spotted their worries manifesting quite fast.
The trouble became apparent about an hour later when in the night’s mostly-moonless darkness, light began to sprout. Dozens upon dozens, each near the ground and often moving. Strong enough to be visible from a distance, though not blinding. Torches.
Beatrice was quickly woken up as Rhys helped her properly animate a fresh-ish bird carcass she had been practicing on throughout the day. The avian wouldn’t fly as well as in life, but still well enough to do some scouting, as both necromancers used the same spell to see through its eyes.
It became quickly apparent that it was an army that had come, even if the lot of them had spread out in a strange formation. Grouped into squads of half dozens with small gaps between each, a second similar line lagging a good distance behind - not a battle formation. They were professional soldiers too, since each wore the same unfamiliar heraldry, conscripts wouldn’t have such nice equipment. Additionally, a good quarter of the groups had someone carrying a metal box of sorts that was difficult to identify from a distance.
They were also completely surrounding the trio in a precise encirclement. The hints quickly connected into obvious conclusions. The soldiers were so spread out because they were intending to capture - or at least eliminate - a small group rather than fight a real battle. The boxes were likely some kind of compass, potentially pointing towards Beatrice, which would be rather ironic for a faction that actively hunted mages. Also, strange that the assassins had not been equipped with any. Either way, it would explain how they had been so neatly entrapped.
“Those are foreign troops,” Beatrice moreover identified, paling. And also adding another piece to the puzzle - namely, that it was becoming a proper mess.
“That is rather close to your capital, I would think,” Rhys sighed. "Especially to look for one girl."