It was not quite dawn when Merigold woke to the sound of something tapping on the glass windowpanes of the guild hall. She rolled over, staring blankly into the unfamiliar space where she had slept for two, maybe three hours. It was one of the upper floor rooms of the guild hall.

There was no light but for that which filtered in through the glass window. By that wan glow, she could make out a narrow, cramped room that was substantially longer than wide. Brass pipes wound through the walls; due to the destruction of the steamworks on the south side of Hakarth, none of them hummed with the familiar sound of moving steam. There were perhaps fifteen people laid out as she was, on fibrous cotton sheets that smelled of dust and were irreparably stained, but likely clean. With the trains in the south part of the city either destroyed or limited in service because of the upended tracks, the Radvik guild had made clear that all those who had turned out for the fight with the erowist were to remain in the guild hall. There, they could be called upon quickly if the need arose, and get at least some small rest before the activities of the day to come.

There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that, now that another of the class-four erowist had shown itself in the city center, worse things were bound to come through The Rift. If they did not close it soon, Hakarth would end up like Bertlith…utterly destroyed.

At the moment, the snores and sighs of the sleeping filled the space. There was nothing else. Merigold glanced at Alecia and at Garret, who had sprawled out on the floor with his sheets forgotten in a rumbled heap. She strained her ears against the night hush.

And again, she heard the tapping.

Merigold stood up, raked back her hair in the ever-present ribbon tied around her wrist, and adjusted the barrette she had never removed earlier in the evening. She wore different clothes now than she had upon her arrival – thick cotton that would chafe beneath her cuirasse, but there was nothing to be done about it; at least there would be no doubt that she was a part of the Radvik guild, because she was definitely wearing the guild colors.

Picking her way to a window, Merigold peered down into the street. There was a figure there, carrying something bulky. Seeing her appear in the window, the figure bounced up and down, waving emphatically. Merigold half-smiled despite the fatigue that weighed on her joints, grabbed her bag, and quietly slipped from the room. Once downstairs, she walked swiftly through the empty hallway of the guild hall and into the foyer, unbolting the front door. As she had expected, Reese stood just outside, rocking back and forth on her heels.

“Did you plan to leave me out there all night?” Reese demanded, pushing into the foyer and setting the large box she carried on the hard floor. Then she rubbed her hands together, heating them with her breathe while Merigold bolted the door shut again. The guild had impressive brass bolts as thick around as her arm. Merigold assume the door would fail before they did.

“I thought I was going to have to lug this thing home,” Reese continued. When Merigold turned to face her, she was surprised to feel her sister’s arms around her shoulders. “Gods, Merigold, I’m so glad you’re alive. We were all horrified when we heard what happened at the depot.”

“But you didn’t show my message to mother or father?” Merigold clarified as she returned her sister’s embrace. Upon their arrival at the guild, a courier service had been dispatched to alert the families of those who were injured. Thankfully, no one from the Radvik guild had been killed, though Derek had been carted, pale and sweating, to a hospital and Merigold was not sure what his condition might be. Merigold had paid to have a message delivered to Reese as well, with a very specific set of instructions.

“Like I would show them a message begging me to sneak out of the house at four in the morning to bring you something,” Reese said with an exaggerated roll of her eyes. It was difficult to see in the darkness, but Merigold could hear it in her voice. “Now what is this, anyway.”

“One of my projects,” Merigold said, gesturing Reese to follow her and hefting the box as they headed down the hallway. Merigold had seen a small office space there earlier in the evening, with a few desks, paper, cabinets, and a small bookcase. Notably, there were also small lanterns inscribed with tiny circles of runes that would light them for hours before they had to be charged by an Illuminator. In some ways, they were less useful than her wind-up flashlight, but they were incredibly cheap by comparison.

“And by one of your projects, you mean…?” Reese trailed off.

“The body of a cat,” Merigold stated factually, pushing some paperwork aside with the box as she slid it onto one of the desks.

“Ugh, gross, Meri,” Reese moaned. “You made me carry a dead cat all the way here?”

Closing the door of the office and collecting one of the lanterns, Merigold cast her a small smile.

“I’m a necromancer, Reese. What did you think I would have you bring?”

“Books maybe.”

“I told you we have to leave here in just a few hours. How would books help me? Hold this. No, not like that. It’s sharp.”

“What is this?”

“A scalpel.”

“Don’t tell me you’re going to…ew, oh, ah….it doesn’t smell as much as I thought it would. Oh, don’t touch it. Gods, Meri. That’s disgusting.”

A brief silence stretched between them as Merigold set the stiff body of the cat on the table, and reached for the scalpel she had handed to Reese. She met no resistance as she took it, cutting a methodical slit just below the cat’s ribcage. From her bag, she withdrew the Ughvac’s core, which had apparently conveniently slipped Ilf’s mind…Merigold did not think it was convenience, and she was grateful their unit leader did not seem inclined to try to take it when it was so clearly in good hands. Reese made a retching sound as Merigold shoved it into the space she had created, using the butt end of the scalpel to avoid touching anything with her fingers. When she tried to hand the scalpel back to Reese, her sister threw up both hands and stepped away.

“Uhuh, sis. Let’s burn that thing, or just throw it away,” Reese said.

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Merigold set the scalpel on the table.

“Help me find a needle and thread,” she suggested, heading for the cabinets. Reese opted to search the desk on the other side of the room, pulling out each drawer with a sharp yank that Merigold hoped was not as loud upstairs as it was in the office.

Several minutes of fruitful searching turned up thread in three different colors, and a small leather case of needles. Merigold picked a particularly thick one, and went to work carefully sewing up her incision while Reese went to sit on another desk and balance a book from the bookshelf on one knee, studiously ignoring everything happening around her. Pleasantly, the dead cat did, indeed, not bleed, and Merigold was impressed to find that she was only marginally disgusted by her work. Within half an hour, she had her brushes and ink out, and was wrapping up the finishing touches on the runes surrounding the cat’s eyes. Reese drifted back over, perhaps sensing that the more disgusting tasks Merigold had set for herself were done.

“That looks like eyeliner,” Reese remarked dryly.

“This is a part of how I plan to control the erowist,” Merigold explained.

“By giving it eyeliner?”

“Runes…one for each of the thirty-five vertebrae in this particular cat, for the eyes, the nose, each whisker, the muscle groups in the ears, tail, legs, toes, and around the spine and hips, several for the pelvis…”

“I always thought anatomy would only be useful for Organics.”

“That must be why we all have to learn the skills to use any kind of magic,” Merigold observed.

“Because we might turn out to be necromancers and need to draw runes and circles on nearly every inch of a corpse?” Reese said with a hint of sarcasm. Merigold fixed her with a look, sighing through her teeth.

“Maybe, Reese, you won’t be a Drafter. Maybe you’ll be something else.”

“Well, I sure hope so.”

“Even if it turns out you’re a necromancer, like me?”

Reese fell silent, watching as Merigold capped her vial of ink and painstakingly cleaned her brush; there was no telling if she would need it in a few hours, and a stiff, unmanageable brush could mean the difference between life and death for her.

“Meri…”

“You were right to say that I wanted a boring life as a Drafter, Reese. I wanted to be safe. I wanted to think that what happened to Bertlith could never happen to Hakarth. I’m tired, and I really want to go home and sleep in my bed, rather than thinking about hiking through the mountains with…this…to somehow be instrumental in a plan to close The Rift.”

“The Rift through which monsters are probably spewing at this moment,” Reese said.

“Yes, that Rift.”

Reese swallowed, looking at the dead cat. “I wish I could be there with you, Meri,” she said after a moment.

“I know,” Merigold said bluntly, “but you can’t, and that’s okay, because you’re a part of the boring life I wanted. You, mother, and father. I’ve realized I actually do like the meticulousness, the rules that necromancy follows. And if I can help the Radvik Guild destroy The Rift because I’m a necromancer, then I can reclaim my boring, predictable life. I might do what Aron Hart suggested, and go to work with her at the Academy.”

Reese was nodding, watching as Merigold carefully laid a hand on the dead cat’s head.

“Are you ready to see what a necromancer does, Reese?” Merigold asked, meeting her sister’s gaze.

“Let’s do it,” Reese agreed.

Merigold turned her eyes to the cat, ready for anything, and said the one command she had written in her contract with the erowist.

“Arise.”

The cat’s eyes suddenly filled with the eerie light of the erowist. A shiver passed through its stiff body. Its fur, previously sleek and flat, fluffed out for an instant, and then flattened again, as some ghastly semblance of life eked into the corpse. It did not breathe, but it did blink. Its heart would never beat, but its lips did draw back, in a distinctly cat-like manner, as it sneezed.

And then it rolled onto its stomach and stood on unsteady legs, peering around the room. There was something jarringly feline about it, and something alien at the same time. It turned to look at her and Reese. Suddenly, despite itself, and sucked in a shivering breath and loosed a stilted hiss.

“Speak freely,” Merigold prompted.

“What did you do?” the creature slurred.

“It speaks?” Reese asked incredulously, drawing the blank-eyed glare of the cat, whose ears turned naturally towards her.

It was interesting to observe where instinct and muscle memory warred with the intentions of the erowist inhabiting the cat’s body. Merigold had known, to some extent, that such a war would occur – it was written in her dusty old tomes on necromancy. In fact, she was quickly coming to realize how right her predecessors had been in suggesting that the surest path to becoming a successful necromancer as learning how to harness instinct and flesh to control Astral Energies. When those long-dead authors had written such things, Merigold doubted they had intended for instinct and flesh to be used to control the erowist.

“I thought it would be helpful if someone besides me could hear it,” Merigold said dryly, grasping hold of the cat’s paw to flex its stiff joints. If Ughvac had, for a moment, intended to bite her, the erowist was stopped by a muttered word that made the runes around its jaw and neck gleam brightly in the dark room.

“What is this?” the creature repeated, twitching as she inspected one of its ears as well.

“I’ve tied you to this body, the same way you tied yourself to poor old Zip,” Merigold informed Ughvac.

“Zombie Zip,” Reese interjected, clearly trying to look somber, but failing.

“I now have much more control than I used to,” Merigold continued as if she had not been interrupted. “You and I share control of this body, meaning that if you do something that goes against my wishes but not against the terms of our contract, I can physically stop you.”

There was a brief silence. The erowist, released from her scrutiny, lifted one shapely paw and flexed its digits, sheathing and unsheathing needle-like claws. Its tail twitched with agitation.

“And what do you think you will accomplish with this newfound control?” the creature asked. “I am already forced to defend you. Will you now also force me to do battle?”

Merigold nodded slowly. “Of course.” The cat bared its teeth.

“So this was your plan, Merigold? But how will it really help? The guilds have all sorts of Elementals and Psychics to fight whatever you find near The Rift…so from everything I’ve heard, you shouldn’t be using your magic to do battle, but to actually seal the route to the Astral Plane,” Reese asked, coming a little closer to peer curiously at the cat. It had sat down to lick its paws, but then stopped, looking disgusted with itself.

“In order to seal anything, we’re going to have to be close to The Rift. Very close. We’ll be relying on psychometers to see The Rift, because necromancers can’t see magic. And we’ll be relying on psychics to close The Rift, because while I can move threads of the Astral Plane, I can’t pinch together the way they do. If any one piece of the puzzle is lost, we’ll fail…”

“And die,” Reese supplied for her, “but how does the erowist sealed in this cat help with that?”

“It can do all of the above.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ughvac,” Merigold demanded, drawing another slant-eyed stare from the cat, “you can manipulate the Astral Plane like a psychic and also like a necromancer. You can see it as well, can’t you.”

“I can,” the creature confirmed, going very stiff.

“Ah,” Reese made a sound of realization.

“You get it? Ughvac can do the work of a psychic, or a psychometer, or even a necromancer. And look – here, the ears, the soft tissues of the mouth – the decomposition of this corpse has stopped completely, and even very slightly reversed. I noticed it with Zip as well – the body looked too good, despite being near-destroyed, for the amount of time it had been missing. That means Ughvac can travel with us like this, using very little of my energy or power, for an indefinite period of time.”

“Gods, Merigold. This thing is a monster.”

The cat’s eyes narrowed.

“It wouldn’t have worked with a lower-class erowist,” Merigold said, packing up her remaining tools while Reese and Ughvac glared at each other. They were still glaring at each other fifteen minutes later, when the distant clock of the Academy declared the five o’clock hour.