When we finally manage to rouse Abaris, he immediately starts holding his head and moaning. Also, it was definitely not because I poked him with Will Surge until he finally woke up. Absolutely, I didn’t do that at all.

(Asshole.)

Hey, what, it worked, shut up. Anyway.

Izahne is starting to prop him up when I instead scoop the mage off the floor with some feelers and deposit him onto an unnecessarily overpadded chair.

And he still says nothing.

“So,” I say, “nightwalker. What is it?”

Abaris coughs and then winces before quietly answering, “Extinct.”

My paladin turns to me and inhales like she’s going to say something and then stops.

“Obviously not, there’s one right there,” I say as I point at her.

“Yes, but they died out thousands of years ago. How? How did this happen?”

I shrug. “No idea, if I was around then I don’t remember it.”

“No!” he says a bit too loud and cringes. “No, I mean. Izzy. How? How did she evolve? Into this?”

“We’ve been over this,” I sigh. “I stole her from Themis, and when it happened she turned into that.”

He just stares at me for a moment.

“Ok,” I say, “so she told me about the whole Agent thing, right? I didn’t know that before.”

“Yes, go on.”

“So Izahne said I got enraged when I found out she belonged to someone else, and then it felt like something broke and I started saying a bunch of stuff, and then I was talking to some god while looking at the Record. No, don’t faint again! It’s not the first time I saw it.”

The obounis just, sits there and holds his head and breathes for a while. I’m not really sure if he’s overreacting again or if it’s that unexplainable headache of his. Maybe he hit his head when he fell.

Nyx sighs, because of course she does.

I’m finally losing my extensive patience when something occurs to me.

“Hey, do Ascendants get global System messages?”

“Oh.” Abaris leans a little harder into his hands. “Oh no. That was you?”

“What was me?”

My Assistant levels an accusatory glare at me and says, (The global message, obviously! You just asked about it!)

“Oh, the global message? The one about a Mantle, right?”

“Yes, Nemesis,” he says, “the global message about the Mantle of Envy, Hunger... alright, yes, that is unquestionably you. So let me clarify this, please.”

“Okay,” I reply.

“First: you ‘stole’ Izzy from Themis. How?”

I shrug. “I’m not really sure, I just had this idea to use whatever moon goddess’ soul that I supposedly subsumed to do something, maybe kill Themis – “

“DON’T JOKE ABOUT KILLING GODS!” he interrupts.

I wave a hand dismissively. “I wasn’t joking. Anyway apparently ‘my patron’ decided I needed to... hey, I just realized I actually remembered what they said this time! Is that important? Eh, whatever. They decided they were gonna use whatever my Class lets them do to make me do a thing and say some stuff, which was apparently the Rite of Apotheosis? And one part of it was taking Izahne as my Agent. So I stole her from Themis, and I’m pretty sure Themis is pissed about it because I have a title about being their ‘sworn foe’ and Izahne got some stuff like that too. Oh and she has a different Class now too, if it’s like the one Ananke offered me then I guess I probably gave her that.”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Is... I-is...” Abaris stammers.

“Is what?”

He lifts his head enough to lock eyes with my paladin. “Is this accurate?”

“I witnessed it,” she answers. “I don’t know what role my Class fills, so we’ll have to explore it. I at least don’t think it’s a tank role, because after the change I had trouble handling my shield, so I stored it.”

“Hmmm,” the mage ponders, “could it be related to the holy symbol?”

Izahne’s eyes widen. “The title.”

Abaris nods. “What is the title?”

“Betrayer of Themis,” I say. “I have Sworn Foe of Themis.”

He stands up as though he never had a headache. I guess some things are more important than pain?

“Then we will experiment.”

“Ooh, what are we going to try? Skills? Combining Skills? I like combining Skills,” I say.

And he ignores me.

(He’s learning,) Nyx interjects.

I very creatively and ironically ignore her back.

“What we’re going to do,” he says, “is to have Izzy remove her shield from her dimensional storage, and then – while it is being held by someone else, she is going to touch the symbol on it.”

“Oh. Well, that too. That can work.”

“Alright,” my paladin answers and then deposits her shield on the table where they always eat. I reach a couple feelers to lift it since that’s how Abaris suggested it, and –

“What, Ow! That hurt! What the hells was that?” I snarl.

Abaris chuckles while Nyx outright laughs in my face.

Okay, sure. I should have anticipated that.

“Ha, so, I sure can’t touch it. Your turn,” I gesture toward my paladin.

She gingerly reaches toward the face of the shiny metal plate and recoils much the same, complete with a puff of ashes.

And down a finger.

“Woah woah, hold on,” I say as she backs away holding her injured hand. “Let’s stay calm. If you’re mine, which you are, then I should be able to do something here. Or you can. Hmmm...”

I loop her in a few feelers and pull her towards me, then put an arm around her other shoulder. I take her injured hand in mind and give it a look.

“Humans usually bleed, right?” I ask.

(Obviously. Idiot.)

“You’re not bleeding.” I rub the stump of her wound, causing her to wince and pull at it. “And it looks like the rest of you is made of ash, or was turned to ash where... Okay! I have an idea!”

Abaris just continues looking horrified.

“So, when I lose limbs or something, I just pull the ash in and reform whatever came off. Try doing that.”

Truthfully though, that wasn’t my only idea. I focus on our bond, and press my will through it the same way I do vitality.

The onlooking mage stares absolutely mesmerized as the ash that had settled near the table swirls into the air and compresses onto Izahne’s hand wound, restoring her missing digit. When it’s almost completely healed I notice that there isn’t quite enough ash to do the job, so I loosen and add some of my own.

She looks at her hand for a moment, flexing her new finger. “How did...?”

“Dunno,” I say with a shrug. “I’m gonna say ‘god things’, I don’t have to explain it.”

She exhales a sigh, and it produces a small cloud of ash.

Huh.

“You’re more like me now, I think.”

“I am,” she answers.

I nod. Well, that answers that. Although... I can’t help but feel like I’m forgetting something...

Oh right!

“So Abaris,” I begin, “you said nightwalkers are extinct. That implies there’s records of nightwalkers existing. So, what exactly are they, whatever we know?”

“I suppose the closest example I can offer from a modern context would be vampires, but they’re not quite the same,” he replies. “They were once found occasionally scattered around the planes, but it seems that at some point they died out. As I understand it, they were one of many races that once gathered on the Plane of Shadows.”

“Wait, hold on,” I interrupt. “Do you mean ‘the Shadowed Plane’?”

He furrows his brow. “I suppose? Not many records remain of it, just that the... oh.”

“Were they possibly the goddess of the moon’s favored people?” I ask.

He seems to have dived into thought for a moment, so I let him think.

“I see,” he finally says. “That is very possible. And that would imply, possibly, that your having subsumed the goddess may be related to the disappearance of the nightwalkers as a race...”

“Maybe. I probably ate them all. Anyway, uhh. I know I’m undead. Or, was I guess? I don’t know if I’m alive now. But what about her?” I ask.

The mage waves his fingers for a moment, saying words that don’t seem to be following grammar –

(You’re one to talk,) Nyx jabs.

And I ignore her again.

Finally, Abaris says, “Detect Undead.” His eyes briefly glow a sickly white, and he looks around the room.

“You are both undead.”

I guess that answers that. “Okay. What did those words mean? They didn’t sound like much of a sentence or whatever.”

The mage freezes. “You... say that again, please?”

I sigh. “The things you said before you used that Skill or whatever. Something like ‘light wave echo infernal reflect’? What were you trying to say?”

(You have Spellspeech,) Nyx says in disbelief. (Without a Skill.)