The soccer—football—whatever game went on for hours. Theo was horrible at the game, finding himself at a loss for where he should stand. Belgar was a natural. He did all the impressive sports things, even if the alchemist didn’t know what they were called. Of course, the souls within the realm had been playing the game for almost a year. And they weren’t playing with standard rules.

Salire and Theo sat in a chair by the sidelines, watching the souls play their game. Benton joined them shortly after, panting and short of breath.

“It’s good for the soul,” Benton said, gasping for air. “I think.”

The barrels of [Greater Hallow the Soil] were aging near the stream. Theo had put off contacting Uharis and Sulvan for as long as he could, but the hours were passing quicker than he expected. He stood, feeling inspired by the selfless care of Glantheir.

“Be right back.” Theo vanished, warping himself to some distant place in Tero’gal. He stood by the sea, and was quick to tip his toes in the water. This time, he remembered to put his shoes into his inventory.

If connections made communication across dimensions simple, Theo would find contacting Uharis an effortless task. He stood in the water, watching as the waves lapped over his feet. Push and pull. Ebb and flow. Like the power of the realm itself, the waves pushed and pulled. The alchemist held onto whatever strands of power he could find. He imagined them as threads, and gathered them with his willpower. Those connections he held with so many people lit up in his mind, but he focused on the former members of the Cult of the Burning Eye.

The scene on the beach faded, replaced by a stretch of desolate nothing. Black stone underfoot, Theo stared at the disheveled forms of Uharis and Sulvan. They turned to regard him with hate and confusion.

“Do you know how difficult that spell was?” Uharis snapped.

“Feels pretty easy to me,” Theo said, looking around the black moon of Antalis.

“He’s not really here,” Sulvan muttered, his voice as gravely as ever.

Uharis sputtered, whipping his long white beard over his shoulder. “You’re a mockery! Of everything I studied. Every moment I spent pouring over musty books. Wasted!”

“Pull yourself together,” Sulvan muttered. “He’s here, isn’t he?”

“No hard feelings, right?” Theo asked. He didn’t want to seem arrogant. But he couldn’t keep the smile from spreading across his face. “Your foul god is dead. Mine isn’t.”

“Oh, laugh it up, you insufferable outworlder. Did you travel through space and time just to mock us?”

Theo looked around the surface of Antalis. He nodded to himself. Time was moving slower here than it should have. Instead of reaching out to project himself onto the moon, he had projected a bubble of his realm. Uharis and Sulvan were standing in that bubble.

“It would be more accurate to say that I bent time and space,” Theo said, nodding to himself more fervently. “That makes more sense.”

Uharis groaned, preparing to dispense another barrage of insults. Sulvan drove his fist into the wizard’s stomach, sending him doubling over.

“Forgive us, Master of Tero’gal,” Sulvan said, taking a knee. Uharis lost the contents of his stomach. “We’ll renounce our bond with the Burning Eye. In the most absolute of terms.”

“Not sure why I knew you would be the reasonable one, Sulvan.” Theo watched Uharis squirm on the ground. He would be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy it. “You wanted to purge the world of evil? How would you like to be a Paladin of Glantheir?”

Sulvan raised a single eyebrow. “Would he accept us? The Eye and the Healer were natural enemies.”

“I’m sure he’ll bind you in contracts until you can’t breathe.”

“I accept.”

“I don’t!” Uharis coughed from his prone position. “I won’t accept anything from you, bastard!”

Electricity tingled in the air. Uharis must have had another mage’s core in his chest, because he tossed a bolt of lightning. It passed harmlessly through Theo, arching off into the distance. The moment it left the bubble of influence, it froze in the air.

“Guess this is an extension of my realm. Which means my authority is absolute. Kneel.”

Uharis’s face slammed into the hard rock of the moon. He sputtered and gasped under the authority of the command. Sulvan didn’t even flinch, eyes locked on the alchemist.

“I pledge myself to the Elven God of Healing absolutely,” Sulvan said. “And I will atone for everything I have done. No matter the cost.”

Uharis tried to draw in breath, only wheezing in the process.

“I’ll tell the big man that you’re ready. If Uharis is prepared by the time Glantheir accepts you, he can come along. See ya soon.”

Theo felt a prickle of something crawl up his neck, then tingle the back of his skull. The sound of the beach returned in an instant, and he drew a deep breath of salty sea air in. Sweat had formed on his brow while he was gone. The alchemist dabbed it off, then warped space around himself once again. He appeared in the village of the spirits. They were still playing their game. Benton had a concerned look on his face.

“Not sure what that was,” the bear god said.

“Petty revenge,” Theo said, taking a seat alongside Benton and Salire. “Uharis Banetouched was an asshole. Sulvan Flametouched, on the other hand, was pretty nice about the situation.”

“Nasty people,” Salire said, shaking her head. “Where are they?”

“The moon. The dark one. Just hanging out with moon people, I guess.”

Benton frowned. “Are there people on the moon?”

“Thought I saw a city in the distance,” Theo said, recalling his memory of the surface with perfect clarity. “Or mountains.”

“Either or,” Salire laughed. “Just an entire civilization living on the moon or mountains. No big deal.”

The group had a good laugh. While it was fun watching the people play soccer, their time in the realm was drawing to a close. Theo bid farewell to the spirits and Benton before grabbing Salire’s arm. They fell through the fabric of reality, landing on the Bridge before heading back to the mortal realm.

“Got a message for you,” Theo said, waiting for the shadows to pool. Uz’Xulven stepped out of the darkness in time, and he relayed his message to her. Sulvan was ready to work for Glantheir, while Uharis wasn’t. The alchemist left the Bridge without feeling the slightest guilt. It wasn’t his problem to make people do the right thing.

After what felt like the journey of a lifetime, Theo felt his feet hit mortal ground. Salire maintained a constant look of overwhelmed awe. The alchemist felt Tresk’s intentions before she appeared from the shadows. She burst forth, hands on her hips.

“Why do I feel lighter and more joyful? Anyone got a puppy I could hug?”

“No puppies here,” Salire said, laughing nervously. “We met Glantheir and… and Theo went to the moon.”

“Aw man. Did I miss the moon landing?”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Yeah. Don’t worry, it sucked.” Theo found a chair for Salire to sit on, and forced her to rest. This wasn’t something that potions could fix. She needed time to process what she saw.

Tresk concentrated for only a moment, and Theo felt her brush her senses against his. She was searching his memory for what had happened, rather than asking for a retelling of the day’s events.

“Looks like the old elf god unblocked your chi,” Tresk said. She nodded, whipping an imaginary beard to the side. “How honorable. When do we cultivate?”

“What are you talking about?” Theo asked with a scoff.

“I feel unburdened by the past. Suddenly, I have a need to ascend.”

Theo chuckled, watching as the little marshling performed her interpretation of martial arts moves. She was pretty good, even if she was just making stuff up. After a while she got tired and sat down on the ground. The alchemist felt her fall back into her thoughts, replaying different things in her mind. Whatever Glantheir had done was a boon beyond anything he could imagine. Tresk was right. There was a lightness to his thoughts that he could have never imagined before.

On Theo’s mental checklist of things that needed to be done, there were too many items. Throk’s new method of collecting power was big. He was also on the heels of airship technology, which would be interesting. That left an item for the alchemist to accomplish. Warding against unwanted magical attacks. He also needed to plan for the celebration in Rivers and Daub, but that mostly fell to the administration. Xol’sa’s [Intelligence of the Soul] potion was brewing with Tero’gal, and would be ready soon enough.

“Research time,” Theo said, gathering a few things. “You staying here, Salire?”

Salire nodded weakly. “I just need some time.”

Theo scratched his chin for a moment, then nodded. “Coming, Tresk?”

“Yeah. Let’s go experiment with junk!”

As Theo exited the building, he stopped on the streets of Broken Tusk. “Rowan?”

The half-ogre man emerged from nowhere. “Yes?”

“Give Salire something to do. An emergency that requires alchemy. She needs a distraction.”

“Certainly,” Rowan said, vanishing yet again.

Theo headed north, toward Ziz’s quarry. The areas north of the town proper offered the most silence. His stroll was interrupted when Tresk grabbed at his coat, climbing up him like a tree until she perched herself on his shoulders.

“Onward, mighty steed!”

Tresk was lighter than Theo had expected, so he simply moved forward. It didn’t hurt that her balance was insane.

“I should make you a [Dexterity of the Soul] potion,” Theo said. “Although I’m unsure what it’ll do.”

“Yeah. Give me the fancy potions. I’ll drink them all.”

Ziz and the boys were carving stones at their quarry. They offered hearty greetings and barrels full of mead. Theo and Tresk declined, finding a comfortable spot where they could observe the town below and work on their problem. They started by sharing their thoughts on the whole Glantheir thing. Both agreed that he was the patron that suited the ex-members of the Burning Eye the best.

“What better way to reform people than to force them to be good!”

Theo was at a point where he could take any property he knew from alchemy, and translate that to a ward. Even with the ability that helped feed wards for longer, he would need to constantly reapply them for an airship to operate. Tresk helped him go over his list of properties, and they were both disappointed when they found the solution.

“Feels like you put Mage’s Bane in everything,” Tresk grumbled.

The first property on the Mage’s Bane flower was [Resist Magic]. Theo had never distilled the flower into essence to extract that property, always preferring to ferment the flower as a modifier instead.

“Let’s see,” Theo said, writing a poem in Toru’aun’s flowery script. “I’m not happy using the [Detect Attack] trigger for the wards.”

Tresk nodded, plucking a piece of grass from the ground. She wedged it between her two thumbs and attempted to blow. No sound came out, despite her intentions.

“What do you think about a trigger that works by activating when magical interference happens?”

Tresk leaned back, tossing her blade of grass to the side. “I like it.”

Theo paused before writing anything else. “Shouldn’t you be in the dungeon?”

“Yeah. It’s kinda crowded, though.”

Turning back to his work on the paper, Theo came up with an approach. He came up with the [Detect Adverse Magic] trigger, which should only deploy the ward when it senses damaging magical energies affecting the thing it was bound to. Simple enough, as long as it worked. The problem was that the alchemist didn’t fully understand the way latent magic would interfere with the artifice hover engines. He warded a nearby rock to inspect the effect.

[Deflect Magic]

[Advanced Ward]

Creates a reactive barrier that impedes all foreign magical energy from entering the bubble.

Trigger:

Detect Adverse Magic

Duration:

5 days.

“That might do it,” Theo said. “Not sure how we can test it, though.”

Tresk shrugged. “Maybe we should take it to Gronro. Give it a real test.”

Theo scratched his chin, unsure if that was good enough. “I think we need to take the entire engine up there. Think your dad will let us borrow it?”

“Why not? For science!”

Theo’s eyes lingered on the fading light of the day. Shafts of foggy sunlight shot over the western horizon, stabbing over the swamp like the constant reminders they were. Time was what the alchemist needed most and had the least of. Even with the Dreamwalk and Tero’gal, he felt behind himself. But since Glantheir had poked his forehead, the march of time seemed less important. He sat on his rock, watching as the evening sun dimmed into twilight. Tresk lingered nearby, sensing the stillness and drinking it in with him.

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

Theo leaned over the walls of Gronro-Dir. Below was the imagined version of the undead taint. Within the Dreamwalk, he hoped to prove his new ward. Fortunately, Tresk had made a trip to the northern town when the undead were still assaulting it. She had a good enough mental impression of the place to replicate the taint of undeath.

“It sure does stink,” Tresk said, leaning over the wall’s edge. “Did it stink this much when I went there?”

“Perhaps you’re adding extra stink to set the mood,” Alex said.

Field of corpses, in various stages of decomposition, had a way of stinking a place up. With a thought, Theo purged the concept of smell from the Dreamwalk, bringing everyone great relief.

“First stage of testing,” the alchemist said, smiling to himself. There was no better place to test their theories. He created a mana siphon from nowhere. The black box glittered, already interacting with the latent necromantic power in the air. “A low-level power condenser.”

“It’s getting all shiny,” Tresk said, leaning in to inspect the siphon.

Sections of the artifice were sizzling from the raw power in the air. Whatever material the device was made out of reacted poorly. No one was surprised when it exploded, sending shards of itself peppering the area.

“That would have been deadly,” Theo said, picking a large chunk of metal from his skull.

Tresk laid prone on the ground, her tongue sticking out. “Bleh. You’ve killed me.”

“Me too!” Alex put in.

Despite his companions’ behavior, Theo made mental notes of the reaction. From observation, he determined that the influences in the air weren’t just unrefined power. There was refined mana there, turning the churn of influences into a deadly magical mix. It was shocking that any magical devices worked in this area, let alone powerful ones.

“How have Throk’s sprayers been operating out here?”

“Dunno,” Tresk said, imagining one. The sprayer stood near the wall, squirting essence down below.

Theo could feel the reason more than see it. Throk’s sprayer was the simplest artifice that could be created. It had minimal parts and drew almost no power. The sprayers could run for weeks without succumbing to the withering power of undeath. The alchemist tried a few more artifices he had seen, finding the breaking point to be somewhere between the sprayer and the siphon. A hover engine, even at a high altitude, would most certainly be affected.

“That’s our baseline,” Theo said, imagining Throk’s engine. “Now we figure out if this power affects inactive machines.”

Tresk busied herself by summoning other things. She brought in various magical things, starting with items. Normal items weren’t affected by the power. Only things that actively drew power suffered from the necromantic energy. That included devices that pulled power from motes, or Throk’s new fake coins. Interestingly, powerful potions reacted negatively. That was more concerning than anything else.

“Engine has no response when it’s inactive,” Theo said, summoning a coin to fall into his hand. “But when we activate it…”

A moment after inserting the coin, the engine tore itself apart. It exploded in a ball of green flames, decimating most of the wall. The Dreamwalk was stretched to its limits to simulate the response, almost buckling under the pressure.

“Well, we have all our gooses in a row. Heh,” Tresk giggled to herself. “Main event?”

“Time for the main event.”

Theo repaired the damage to the wall, resetting the scene. He summoned a new engine to test, then knelt to chant his spell. The moment he began to chant, he felt the power of undeath swirling around him. It felt like an attack on his cores. The energy welled in the surrounding air, then rushed in. The alchemist only just managed to finish the spell before he was overwhelmed.

“That’s not good.”

Theo took a steadying breath. “No casting in the undead zone. Got it.”

The moment he put a coin into the engine, the prismatic barrier sprung up. The surrounding power assaulted the ward, smashing against the side. Mana sparks fell to the ground, sizzling on the wet stone. But for all the flashing lights, the engine hummed, hovering just above the wall.

“And now the boring part,” Theo said, finding a seat. “We wait to see how long it lasts.”