“Take the bones of your friend!” The helmet shouted. It’s voice left a ringing in Flip’s ears, like he’d stuck his head inside a ringing church bell.

The command was not to Flip. The wizard already had his course of action planned out. Whatever divination magic let him see where he should move as he looked through the visor wasn’t painting a red ribbon path in the direction of Dovhran’s bones. It was Selian, still stunned and confused by the turn of events she had witnessed that the call went out to. Selian had stayed more or less in place by the pool of water as Flip had donned the helmet and kept the attention of the monster they now faced.

Helbrin, for his part, was not making things easy. For what had been a shambling mound of a corpse not minutes prior, the thin and gangly heretic was spry like a spring chicken and made impacts with the ground and walls like his claws were daggers. The raking of nail against stone and the smashing of barely formed feet in the gravel was loud and fast and constant. If he had been a changeling in life, Helbrin was closer to a demon in undeath. His skin twisting and grey, not the natural chrome-like tone of a changeling’s natural skin, it never seemed to settle fully into place; his skin and muscle beneath shifted uncomfortably with his movements, it was as if it had no desire to be what it was.

“He’s stepping back,” the helmet whispered. “Adjusting trajectory. Be ready to run and cast one last spell.”

“What spell?” Flip murmured as he followed the new path that appeared in his vision. “What spell, Construct?”

“My father’s spell. You saw it in the margins of his journal. You saw the notes in his copy of The Treatise of the Stars. The basis is there, you can finish it.”

Flip could barely endure what he was hearing. He was skirting around an incredibly agile undead monstrosity, a helmet on his head, and that helmet was telling him that he needed to complete the work on a spell while he continued to avoid dying. It was taking his whole focus to avoid sharp clawed strikes, though Velsaffe did seem distracted by Selian now.

With Dovhran’s skull in hand, the elf had begun to dart around the small room opposite from Flip. The arrangement made Flip feel very much like he was playing a child’s game, the object of which was to keep a ball away from the person in the middle. Every time Selian tried to step closer to the pile of bones on the floor that marked the last remains of Dovhran, Velsaffe lashed out at her and tried to pry the skull from her grip. Every time she did, Flip would dart around outside of the monster’s vision and attract attention as he swiveled to look and shift his focus away from the bones.

It was clear that Velsaffe anticipated something from the two. The call to retrieve the bones had been what moved his attention away from just Flip, but he was still quick enough to be a threat to both trespassers. Flip was not entirely sure what retrieving the bones would accomplish, but the distraction gave him a second every other moment to collect his thoughts.

There had been scrawlings of a spell in the margins of the books he’d perused in Gmid’s library. More so in the journal that had been siting open on the desk he’d sat down at. It had marked a shift in research from healing to a different more abstract magic. It was similar to banishing spells, but far more complex. Complex enough that Flip hadn’t even paid attention to it. But the helmet said it was possible. The helmet, the construct that called itself Gmid’s child, had read through his mind, assessed the wizard’s potential, and come to the conclusion that there was hope. The completion of a spell that could stop Velsaffe. Somehow.

As he continued his dance around the room, guided by the helmet, Flip began to mutter. Calculations, measurements, theory. He began to reassemble the spell from what he remembered and what the helmet whispered in his ear.

Selian could hear none of this. She heard only the smashing of feet on the ground and the blood pumping in her ears. Occasionally she ducked around a strike fast enough to hear the air whistle past the points of her ears. It felt like sprinting, but it was never in a straight line. She had a skull tucked under her arm and she was bobbing and weaving. Her focus was split between two objectives, retrieve the bones of her companion and stay on her feet. Both were going poorly.

After one particularly daring dive into the center of the room, Selian had grabbed another portion of remains from the pile of bones. This one a more odd object that she didn’t not have the time or energy to scrutinize. She only hoped it was enough. When Velsaffe let out a shrill scream and dove directly at her, clearing over ten of feet distance in a single leap, she held her arm out to cover her exposed face. The monster clawed her forearm, cutting gouges with its nails, and ripping the skull free from the crook of her elbow. In retaliation, before the pain of the wound really registered, the elf tossed her other spoils in the air, drew her bow and an arrow, let loose the shaft, and retrieved her tossed goods before they could hit the ground. The arrow had found it’s mark and the second piece of remains had returned to her capable hands unmarred. The pain began to seem through her body like a venom, but she was at a safe distance in mere moments.

Selian’s arrow hadn’t just found its mark. It had wounded a creature that had not felt a hint of real pain in over a hundred years—that had thought itself inoculated to real feeling by the suffering it had endured before and through its death. It dropped the trophy it had gathered with its first taste of blood, Dovhran’s skull, and began to writhe and wail in a horrifying mixture of pain and ecstasy. For all the horror that pain had brought Velsaffe,it brought back a reminder that he was more alive than he had been in a very long time. And so he writhed and wailed and chomped at the intruders that circled him, but he savored the feeling in his chest as the arrow that protruded from it became drenched in a silvery blood.

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“Pain… yes…” The hiss escaped the lips of the monster as it began to calm again, and the creature said nothing more.

“Something’s changed,” the helmet murmured in a quiet and contemplative tone. “You must focus on the spell. You must bind him tight, back to the terminal plane where he went after death. Once you banish him there he will not be able to return.”

“Bind him how? With blood? He’s bled, and so has Selian, but she’s took far away. And I haven’t bled, but I won’t survive a single clawed swipe from him.”

“I see the spell you mean, but it is weak and he has overcome it before. You must bind him with something stronger. The strongest thing you can.”

Flip took the chance to stop moving for a moment. It seemed that everyone had stopped moving. Contemplation had become the strategy of the minute. Selian pondered the odd object she held in her hands, and how to retrieve more of the bones that Velsaffe stood hunched over. Velsaffe himself seemed to be assessing his enemies. And Flip, Flip thought hard on the most powerful thing in magic he knew of.

Blood held great power, it bound families together and its spilling moved armies. Agreements had a more technical and robust power to them, being mutually decided they bound indefinitely until one end failed through choice. Magic, wonder, and beauty held sway of the heart and soul and mind; they were potent for certain folk, but Flip doubted that Velsaffe was one such creature. Change was a powerful force that could bind in ritual, as all things had a tendency to change; the universality of it made it a potent uniting and binding force. But that brought Flip to the core of binding forces in general. Sympathy. The force that bound all things in relation to each other, the force that was built over time and with love. It pulled in every direction and tethered to everyone and everything.

It was fitting then, that the iron chains of the order that Velsaffe once led would bind him back to the fate he had escaped. Death, too, was sympathetic. It was the basis of all connection. It was the understanding that I am me, and you are you, and we are we.

“I need a moment to incant.” Flip whispered. “I can bind us all.”

“One last lunge, elf!” The helmet roared.

Selian growled like a wild animal in response, emboldened by the helmet’s voice. It was almost as though it had spoken some kind of magic that filled her with courage and clarity. Her wounds felt lighter, her mind grew focused, and her feet sprang to the call of her will. The elf dove for Velsaffe’s feet, headlong, and when the beast lunged down to strike at her the rest of her momentum spun her feet over her head in an arc that hammered down on his lowered head. With a crunch, something loosened in Velsaffe’s neck and he stumbled back as he attempted to reattach what was surely a dislodged skull. Meanwhile, Selian’s hands were already pushing her torso off the ground and scooping up as many of Dovhran’s bones as she could.

That moment of staggered confusion among the two, the elf and the undead monster, was enough for Flip.

The wizard closed his eyes and recalled what he had seen as Theihdow, the vampire, had overtaken a spell of Flip’s to heal both him and Selian. How the power that had flown from the vampire to the elf had made visible the very chain of sympathy that their mutual pain had been rooted in. He pictured each chain that was invisibly anchored to his very being, each powerful connection to an outside thing that held him aloft in the world. There were so few, but they were thick metal chains that were pulled taut and felt light when pulled. And with that vision, came the sight of the chamber around him. With his eyes still closed, Flip saw the chains that anchored to Selian Farwysher, simple and lined with cuts; one slack chain drooped to the bones in her arms, another slightly firmer but tougher chain connected her to Flip. And Helfrin Velsaffe, as he staggered about the room and righted his stolen body, held but three visible chains. Though it seemed that countless chains hung off him, only three remained connected. One thin one that drooped down into the earth, one thicker one that hung almost like a noose and trailed into the sky… and one twisted black metal chain that ran right through Flip and kept on going.

As Flip opened his eyes, the chains remained visible. All four creatures in the room paused, stunned by the revelation of their connections. And while the rest stood idly, Flip began his incantation.

Where ere we go and roam,

near to country town

or far from home,

the chains that join us—

all heart, and hearth, and stone;

that tie the ages taut

and never leave us alone—

hold us fast to family,

blood, and bone.

As the simple but powerfully spoken incantation reverberated throughout the small domed cavern, the revealed chains began to glow. Flip felt the draw of each force that was bound to him, the pull of every connection. And as though guided by a sense he could not identify, he grabbed hold of one. The most powerful one. The chain of marbled alloy that felt warm to the touch and filled him with a sense of comfort that he knew perfectly. As his hand touched it he locked eyes with Selian. The elf seemed terrified for a moment as she felt the same pull, as if she were about to be quartered by wild beasts, but as her eyes met those of the wizard she grabbed hold of the chain that stretched out between them.

The light from the chains, varied and twinkling from every facet of the metal, each chain glowing a distinct color, grew. Slowly at first, but the speed increased as time went on. In a matter of a dozen seconds or so, the room was blindingly bright and painful to witness. Flip lost sight of Velsaffe, of Selian, even of his own hands. The light in the room consumed all else, as if it were burning through the space. And just as Flip began to feel the burden of exercising the last of his magic, he felt a pull. A force beyond his sight pulled on the chain he had wrapped his hand around and still felt. The force was powerful but gentle, and it seemed peaceful as it dragged Flip forward. And as Flip was dragged through the bright void, he felt another tether tug behind him as though he was dragging another object along behind him. With that dragging sensation came a dull pain as though someone had pierced his navel with a harpoon and he had run off while pulling them in his wake. His free hand found that other chain and held it fast.

The pain subsided, and the world went dark.