A place where final truth does lie 

You'll hear the sordid silent cry.

What must death's last breath be

But first gasp that's truly free.

From one woman who did condone,

the words hued from granite throne

A figure black, it's danger prone

For when we rest, we rest alone

                    - Anonymous bathroom stall writing, but probably plagiarized from somewhere else.

  Allani wept, for there were no more tasks to conquer. More like she wept from the sheer boredom of working another day in the morgue. While not so glamorous, she had grown used to the silent halls filled with drudge work. The average day was filled with more paperwork than actual medicine, which was probably for the best.

  You see, the medical scene in Nuastra was pretty boring even on the most exciting days. And that was for the decently leveled healers and savvy tech adepts. Allani, a 23-Year-Old  pathologist, had always seemed like she would be great. At one point, due to her mana reserves, people thought she would be sage level before she turned 30, but mana and hard work don't equal skill. After failing to impress a mentor for the third time, she transitioned to the morgue to be a pathologist. Pathology, a once well-regarded specialty in the hospital, had for centuries been relegated to a dumping ground for the unimpressive and unimportant healer aspirants due to its easily cast spells and low tech requirements. 

"Are we going to get out of here sometime today, or are you going to stay back again? It's like watching somebody beat a dead horse." Allani's friend Sasha questioned in an exasperated tone. Sasha Sidiri had been her best friend since starting her hospital rotation. Sasha was a pretty darn good techno adept who started servicing the machines at the hospital within three weeks of Alleni's arrival. While not anchored to the morgue, she always made it a point to come and see her at least once a day.

  Alleni wished for a moment she hadn't been born with any mana so she could have become a tech artificer or techno adept. You can only really be one or the other, because magic doesn't play well with technology, and technology really has nothing to do with magic. Countless times people had tried to fuse the two, but for the most part they stubbornly refused to mix like oil and water. Some say it's because the god of magic and the god of technology hate each other, but seeing as gods don't talk to us mere mortals, we'll never know. The only thing we'll know for sure with the gods is that a) they don't care b) anyone that says they do really only cares about your money.

"Yeah, sorry Sasha. I'm going to stick around and try a couple more. I'll catch up with you at home." Alleni stated with a tired yet defeated poise. She hugged her friend as she departed, leaving her alone in the morgue.

  Now alone, Alleni walked up to one of the recently deceased that she had already processed during the day. The body would have to be cremated before she went home, but she would try out a couple more spells to see if one caught. As she pondered on the source of her frustrations, she pulled out a copy of her family's book of spells. Each mage only had an affinity for certain spell types, and there was no easy way to tell what spells would work for which casters until they tried. She had been ecstatic when she managed to use Diagnose, a healer subspell, on her 18th birthday, but success since then was few and far between.

  She had tried every spell, including those from other disciplines, that were publicly available. For a long time, many societies have recorded all known spells, and she had gotten access to a great deal of them when she went to the healers academy, but none seemed to work. So now she was relegated to the diagnostic aspect of healing without being able to do anything about it. Thus, the morgue. Thus, her life sucked.

  She looked at the old book, a paper book if you can believe it, and thought of her family. The Lurie family had tossed her out after she failed to find a mentor twice. It hadn't been mean or cruel but hurt all the same. Much like a parent saying, ' I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed'. She understood she was an embarrassment to them, and for their and her own good, she had to stay out of their limelight. She's just glad they still supported her financially; she had heard of the other old families doing worse to their disappointments.

  She took a deep breath and recentered herself. A little positivity! Atlantis wasn't raised in a day after all! She thumbed through the tome past all of the fully formulated spells. She'd already gone through those, and they all had been duds. She went on to the notable notes section towards the back where the spellcrafters of her family had taken notes.

    She looked at the dead man who came in earlier today. She cast a diagnosis, "Diagnozo".  The spell showed he had died of natural causes at the ripe old age of 180. Why was she casting at a corpse? Because every spell needed a valid target.  While destruction mages could use a dummy, and magic artificers needed an object, she had only ever had resonance with organisms, either alive or dead. It had actually been an exciting month where she got to work with an assortment of animals. Hoping she was a veterinarian, she had tried casting every available spell, but eventually she gave it up after a particularly embarrassing incident with a donkey and a bucket of honeycomb.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  She continued reading until she reached some entries by Liliana Lurie. An ancient battle mage, she had apparently been testing the boundaries on the known limits of magic. The basic limits were pretty simple: you can't turn back time, you can't resurrect the dead, you can't kill a god, and you can't make someone fall in love. She had always thought the last one of falling in love was more waxing poetic than an actual rule, but apparently love is something quantifiable at higher levels of magic.

  A passage stood out by itself with the following 𐎱𐎨𐎽𐎤 𐎠𐎭𐎣 𐎽𐎯𐎤𐎠𐎪      rishet-imin? For enemies? No effect.

  There were similar short notes where a line or two from an ancient book would have a short translation, hoping it was a spell from context. Most of the time it wasn't, but some of the best spells had been found on accident this way. One time a group of mages was translating a tome, thinking it was notes from the first Sage, only to later find out it was an ancient cookbook. That same group using that book created the accelerated growth spell, essentially ending starvation. Apparently they thought the spell meant 'amplify carrot.'

  Well, what's the worst that could happen? Alleni braced herself, tried to connect her mana to the deceased man, and spoke "rishet-imin". With a lurch within her soul, she felt something almost connect. Her blood ran cold and her breath froze.

  That had almost worked. The third spell she'd be able to cast, and it was right at her fingertips. No translation was perfect, so she'd have to try different pronunciations and wordings.

"Reshet-imin" "Rishet- imin" "Reeces-Im in" "Reshet-imim" "Risha-Imin"

"Rishi-imin"

  She felt the mana connect and began streaming towards the deceased man. A lot of mana. A lot of mana. Over twenty times what it takes to identify. She felt it lock in and took in a breath.

  The deceased man rotated his head towards her, and his eyes popped open.

"H e l l o. Caster."

  Alleni did the sensible thing. She screamed her head off while pinwheeling out of her chair onto the floor. As her butt impacted the floor, she had her first intelligent thought. That intelligent thought was mostly the word 'What!' or 'What?' repeated over and over again. She had seen dead bodies move before. A little-known fact is that well after death, bodies can twitch. Simple stray electrical impulses from the brain can trigger sporadic body movement. It doesn't mean intelligence. It definitely doesn't mean the ability to speak. Her heart was racing at a thousand beats per minute as she tried to calm herself mid-scramble towards the wall.

  Her emotions were all over the place. She had succeeded! Also, what? This shouldn't be possible. It's one of the base rules of magic. You can't bring back the dead. Not even the gods could do it. Once someone dies, their soul passes on. End of story. Nobody knows for sure what happens, but all that's left is an empty husk. It's one of the reasons why bodies are always burned. All a body is is waste. Is she going to get in trouble for this? Is this even legal?

"What is happening?" She finally voiced it out loud.

"You returned me." Came a voice from the tabletop. She could no longer see the deceased man, but she knew it had to be him. She pushed herself up to a standing position against the wall. The corpse came back into view, and it was still staring at her. Its eyes were filled with a dark blue light.

"Is this possible? What are you? Are you alive?"

" It   is  possible. I am    human. I am   not."

Not human! Oh boy, she could be in trouble. Demons were purported to have existed thousands of years ago. Up until the collapse. Is this some sort of demon?

"What do you want?"

" To answer    questions.  Five questions   received. Five answers   given."

Alleni opened her mouth to speak again, but paused. When she thought back on it, she might be getting jumbled answers to jumbled questions. Five questions, in fact. What did she ask again? Oh! He didn't say, 'It's possible I'm human, I'm not.' He said, 'It's possible. I'm human. I'm not.' She needed to calm down and test this... Whatever this is.

"The spell makes you answer questions, correct?"

" Correct."

"Can you harm me or anyone else?"

" No."

"How long does this last?"

" 10   questions."

   Her heart was still beating out of its rib cage. It seemed like she should be safe. And if she was counting correctly, she had two more questions left.

"What are the winning lottery numbers for tomorrow night?"

" I    don't know."

  Now that was an interesting answer. Apparently, whatever knowledge I can gain is limited to what the man knows. So no winning the lottery or locations of esoteric ruins. Only the questions he would know. I could spend the last question trying to find out something juicy. However, there's one question I need answered above all.

" How do I know you're telling the truth?"

"You      don't."  He said as the lights dimmed from his eyes.

  The morgue felt still again. The silence somehow felt different. The blood still pumping through my veins didn't slow as the trepidation eased away. Disregarding the ominous last statement of the deceased man, both of her arms pumped above her head as she exclaimed,

"Yes!"

She had done it. Whatever it was.

--------------------

  She had placed the man in the incinerator. Not to get rid of evidence, of course; it was just standard procedure. Yeah... standard procedure. A final diagnosis on the man showed exactly the same information, with the addition of an innocuous asterisk next to his status of deceased. She had tried the spell once more, and it had failed. It was possibly a hard limit of one recall per person. She'd have to test it out tomorrow. 

  As she drove home, the bone-deep weariness after a long day couldn't hold back her excitement. She couldn't wait to tell Sarah! She couldn't wait to tell her family! Not a failure. Then she paused.

  This information could be dangerous. She had never heard of anything like this before and didn't even know if it was legal. Could you do it on somebody who didn't have a body? If she did need a body, did it have to be in a certain condition? A certain time since being deceased? And the biggest burning question. Should she tell anyone?

  She can probably tell Sasha. Even if it wasn't legal or, as the septoms would say, moral, she would have her back. They were well into the help hide the body stage of friendship. Now that Alleni thought about it, that expression was a little bit too close for comfort. Sasha, for all of her quirks, was a really good tech adept. She definitely skewed more towards the cyberspace side of things, but she'd be able to help research this at least.

  Should she tell her family? Maybe not for now. The new spell, even if the septons didn't outright decry her as some sort of demon spawn, would bring controversy. With her two younger sisters reaching marrying age, she probably shouldn't rock the boat too much. What to do?

  The question churned in her mind for the rest of the drive home. The lights of Nuastria passed by her window. She was definitely getting home from work later than most, but well before the bars closed, so traffic was still a constant slog. She passed half a dozen building-wide advertisements featuring different candidates for the upcoming election. She used to care more, back when she was still in 'polite society' if only because her family dabbled. Her family had held a seat on the Nuastra council for several generations. Not that it was a hereditary job, but good luck getting elected if you're not related to somebody important.

  She kept a close eye on the Golden Dawn members loitering around in front of her building. As far as gang members go, they weren't too bad. For the most part, most of their members just joined to get access to magical manuscripts and tech-related guides shared open-source style. But like all good things, someone has to ruin it. As time went on, they slid farther and farther down a slippery slope. Now they're indistinguishable from any other crime syndicat

e.

As she steeled herself to march inside her apartment, she resolved that she had to tell Sasha.

----

à suivre