Two days had passed since the interrogation and the guild meeting to follow. It had been, despite everything, an unremarkable meeting, in which Eros stepped up the frequency of their patrols in the mines and along the mountainside and soundly warned everyone about the likelihood of encountering more powerful erowist. He had said little about what they had learned, and nothing at all about The Rift. Alecia seemed unsurprised. Merigold was slightly miffed; she did not like the feeling of being one of the only ones in the guild to know what was really happening beyond its brick walls. She knew, nonetheless, to keep her mouth shut. The only one they told was Garret, and he had vanished shortly thereafter to arrange for his two younger sisters, Lori and Aria, to vacation somewhere far away for as long as possible.
Thinking about her conversation with him, Merigold sighed. She stood just outside the impressive arches of the South Hakarth Academy campus. For all intents and purposes, it was an ordinary morning. Students trotted past her on the way to their classes, likely listening for the booming toll of the bell tower declaring the start of their day. A hint of humidity in the air suggested that spring was slowly giving way to the sweltering heat of summer, and that the mornings would soon move from pleasantly crisp to unpleasantly thick. Insects trilled from the massive acacia trees that dotted the campus, and tiny birds darted overhead, visiting nests high up in the eves of the campus buildings.
Although an ordinary morning for the students and staff around her, it was not an ordinary morning for Merigold. She had been summoned, again, by Aron Hart, but this time for the express purpose of working with the erowist. Eros and Sheila, it seemed, had convened with a number of guilds across Hakarth the day previous. They had collectively determined that if Merigold, as a necromancer, really could control the erowist, it would merit attempts to recruit and train other necromancers to the same. Merigold thought it was a horrendous idea, largely because she doubted most necromancers would write contracts expressive enough to prevent their death or dismemberment, and that of those around them. Many years of schooling had taught her it was not her place to voice such – apt though it may be – judgement.
Aron appeared in one of the arches and waved Merigold over, looking chipper in a mustard yellow sundress and headscarf.
“Good morning, Merigold,” the woman said, inviting Merigold to walk beside her down the cavernous school halls.
“Good morning,” Merigold replied mechanically.
“Are you nervous?”
“Not at all.”
“Of course not,” Aron said sincerely, “you seem very confident in your contracts.” They passed a gaggle of students collected around a bulletin board, and soon reached the door that seemed to be Aron’s destination.
“I am,” Merigold agreed. “In this instance, however, I’m not sure how much that will help us.”
“What do you mean?” Aron asked as she opened the door, and the two of them stepped into an impressively large chamber that must have been expressly cleaned out for their activities. There was no sign of the tables and chairs that might have dominated the space on an ordinary day. A few spheres of light bobbed unassumingly overhead, casting a warm glow against the buttressed columns of a room perhaps a hundred yards across. There was a single iron pot in the middle of it, which Ilf stood over, arms crossed and brows furrowed. Senior Ilf, as she had every time Merigold had seen her so far, wore her fitted cuirass, thick pants, and boots. She looked prepared for anything.
“I mean that I don’t know what you want me to have the erowist do. I’m assuming the guilds want to see if it can be used for combat, but the corpses necromancers usually use are better-suited to that purpose – although prone to decomposition and difficult to travel with, they can be fully controlled. I can demand things of the erowist, but the wording has to be very particular. It would be an unpredictable force.”
“I will take note of that,” Aron said, coming to a smooth stop in front of Ilf.
“Merigold,” Ilf said by way of greeting, meeting Merigold’s gaze.
“Senior Ilf,” Merigold said, putting her hand in her fist. Ilf echoed the gesture.
“Eros sent me here this morning to see the extent of your control of the erowist,” Ilf said.
“Before that,” Aron suggested, “I’d like to hear about a specific clause of your contract. What happens, Merigold, if you die?”
“So long as my death has nothing to do with the erowist, it will be forced to return to the Astral Plane, and unable to return here. If it violates the terms of the contract, either before or after my death, its core will be destroyed.”
“So, it dies, in effect,” Ilf said.
“That’s what it sounds like,” Aron agreed, nodding with a bit of enthusiasm. “Do you have any idea how eager the erowist is to return to the Astral Plane?”
“She means, do you think it’ll be hoping you drop dead,” Ilf said with a flick of hand at the iron pot.
Merigold considered. When she answered, it was with only a small hesitation. “I don’t believe the erowist will be enthusiastic about returning to the Astral Plane and being unable to leave, but it certainly desires to be free of my control. If you’re asking whether the creature would defend my life, I would say not by its own decision.”
“But you think it would defend your life?” Ilf clarified.
“Yes. I added several clauses in the section regarding the terms of its servitude which preclude it allowing me to die needlessly when its intervention was possible,” Merigold said.
“Handy,” Ilf muttered.
“Well then, shall we get started?” Aron asked. “I’ll be taking copious notes. If things get out of hand, Merigold, Ilf and I will help you recapture the erowist.”
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“Assuming you’re still alive,” Ilf said.
“I see. And what are we doing during this exercise?” Merigold asked. Ilf smiled, and gestured to the door through which they had entered. It was opening again, as if on cue, and Merigold suppressed a sigh at the sight of Eros standing there, watching them.
“Nicer than our training hall,” he commented, coming to stand beside Ilf with an expectant look at Merigold. “You remember our test, Merigold. Today, you have another chance to pass it, and with the help of an erowist no less. If you do, I’ll be promoting you into apprenticeship with the Radvik guild.”
“Thank you for this opportunity,” Merigold said with a bit of a strained smile.
Eros looked like he was suppressing laughter as Ilf and Aron walked to opposite sides of the room, ready to intervene. Eros strode several paces away, turned, and called three spheres of fire into being. All eyes were on Merigold as she walked to the iron pot at the center of the room, and lifted the lid.
As it had before, the erowist immediately billowed out in a cloud of lightning and formed the hazy shape of a four-eyed humanoid. It seemed to be calmer than it had been before, pulsing in shades of neon green and violet.
“You again,” it muttered. Merigold smiled.
“Me again, Ughvac. Today, I need your help with something.”
If erowist were capable of eye rolls, she imagined that Ughvac’s would, in that moment, have rivaled Reese’s, and Reese had was capable of very impressive eye rolls. Conversing, however, was not a part of their test. Once it was clear that the erowist had no intention of immediately setting upon and killing her, Eros let loose his spheres. Just as they had during her initial test, the balls of fire whizzed around the large chamber, smashing into the brick walls and leaving a trail of black soot marks in their path. One of the spheres blasted towards the erowist, who seemed utterly unconcerned. Merigold understood why when it appeared a fireball-sized hole appeared in the erowist’s body; the fireball passed through, never touching the creature.
She was not so lucky. Merigold felt a fireball smack into the side of her head while she stared at the erowist, and made an unseemly sound as she was sent flying sideways onto the hard floor of the chamber. Rubbing soot away from her bruised cheek, she glared at the erowist.
“You should pay attention,” it informed her, dematerializing a part of its body around another flaming sphere. Merigold pushed herself hastily out of the way as one slammed into the spot where she had been seconds before, leaving behind a tiny puddle of molten fire that sparked and fizzled. It left behind a thin sheen of ash.
“You have to defend me,” she barked at the erowist, which emulated a very human folding of its arms across its incorporeal chest.
“I must defend you from danger, of which I sense none, vermin.”
“I’m not vermin,” she hissed. “Protect me from these fireballs!”
Merigold wondered if it was her imagination that she heard a resigned sigh when the erowist suddenly appeared in front of her, deflecting a flaming sphere before it could slam into her chest.
“You, you disgusting sack of flesh, are vermin,” it quipped. “only vermin would use destruction to imprison and interrogate a higher level being.”
“Higher level my ass,” Merigold snorted, covering her face with her arms as the erowist deflected the flaming sphere yet again. “You killed two people, and you would have killed more if I hadn’t imprisoned you.”
“The only way to get the Astral energy out of your kind is to rip them open.”
“Gods,” Merigold said, “Ughvac, don’t talk to me anymore unless I ask you to. That’s a command.”
“…”
Deflecting another fireball, the erowist pulsed a few shades closer to gold. Tiny bolts of electricity forked from its body, trailing across the hard floor beneath them and leaving singe marks to rival those of Eros’s fireballs. Thanks to the erowist’s intervention, she had time to think. If she simply commanded the creature to attack Eros, it would try to kill him; she would need to be much more specific than that.
“Can you consume the fireballs? They’re made of Astral energy, right?” she asked, keeping her eyes trained on Eros in case he came up with any new tricks. For the moment, he seemed content with sending his fireballs flying around the room.
“…”
“You can answer the question, Ughvac.”
“How kind of you, vermin. I can answer the question. Yes, I can consume it. It will be unpleasant.”
“Indigestion?”
The erowist turned its head around one hundred and eighty degrees to fix her with those four flickering eyes. Merigold shrank back despite herself.
“Go back in the pot, Ughvac,” she said softly, “right now. That’s a command.”
The erowist did not argue. It dissipated into a cloud of energy and shot towards the iron pot, vanishing inside. Merigold ducked a flaming sphere as she raced towards the lid and closed it. Perhaps she should not have been surprised that, the moment she did so, the inexplicable sound of Eros’s fireballs arcing through the air was abruptly silenced. Merigold cowered over the pot, looking up and around; the three flaming spheres hung at various intervals around the room, smoldering in silence. A faint smoke trailed up from them, swirling around the glowing orbs along the celing.
“Why did you put it away?” Eros demanded, coming to stand in front of her and peer down his somewhat prominent nose. Merigold met his gaze.
“I couldn’t think of a way to have the erowist attack without hurting you,” she said.
“You could have attacked, Merigold, while that creature defended you from the fireballs,” he said, snapping his fingers. The flaming spheres vanished in tiny plumes of smoke. Merigold exhaled through her teeth in frustration, looking away. Eros looked disappointed. The others – Aron and Ilf – were slowly approaching across the hard floor, coming to stand over Merigold as well. She stood so as not to remain awkwardly on the floor between them.
“It’s clear she can control the creature, and keep a somewhat cool head,” Eros suggested, “but I don’t believe the erowist will be suitable tools for battle.”
“Maybe purely for defense,” Aron suggested.
“If they’ll defend only the necromancers, it won’t be much help,” Ilf noted.
“I could have it defend other people,” Merigold defended. Eros gestured at the open air, as if this were a reasonable suggestion. He looked at Ilf.
“If so, it might help, but it would take significant work to get everyone in the unit used to an erowist flitting around our ranks ‘defending’ us. I don’t think we have time for this,” Ilf said flatly.
“I heard you ask if it could consume Eros’s fireballs,” Aron interjected, “what was the response, Merigold?”
“It could, but it would be unpleasant,” she repeated the erowist’s earlier explanation.
“Unpleasant or not, if the erowist could consume any attacks based on Astral energy leveled in our direction, it could be a game-changer,” Eros noted.
“But it might also have unexpected side-effects, like strengthening the erowist, for example,” Aron said. “Or harming them and thus affecting the contracted necromancers. Let me revisit this with Jayce in the lab.”
“Meanwhile, we’ll make our plans under the assumption we don’t have the help of the erowist,” Ilf said. Eros and Aron seemed to agree.
“We’ll see you on patrol this evening,” Ilf said as she and Eros passed Merigold on their way out of the chamber.
Merigold remained with Aron, staring down at the iron pot. Aron seemed to think she needed some form of consolation, and placed a hand on her shoulder.
“You’ve already done a great deal for us, Merigold. We know about The Rift because you, and we know where it’s located. Whatever the guilds might desire, it was always a longshot that the erowist could be used in battle.”
Merigold had no real response. She let Aron do the talking as they headed out to the now silent halls of the school. It had warmed up since they went indoors. The intensity of the birdsong had decreased as the sun rose higher in the sky.
How many more days, Merigold wondered, would Hakarth be so peaceful?