I had to admit porridge was growing on me. The mixture of fruit and grains that acted as a dietary staple at the outpost was not very enjoyable.

But the party that came to retrieve Rekon and his compatriots had the alma equivalent of hunters or trappers. They mostly caught a species of ground squirrel that lived in burrows on the open plains.

The meat and savory plants were added to the pot of softened grains. The heat of the fire rendered it all into a rich sludge I greatly preferred to the sugary goop at the outpost.

I might have copied the alma sense of taste incorrectly. It seemed I still favored meat over sweet plants.

Alma referred to the preference as a sweet-tooth. Or more accurately the lack of a sweet-tooth.

I scraped the bottom of my bowl. The enchantment I put on the wood actively prevented the grease from sticking to the bowl. And the one on the spoon gathered everything left.

Co’arn was retelling the story of how he lost his arm to those around our fire. It was by extension the story of how Rekon’s entire expedition nearly died.

I knew several of them were hearing it for the third or fourth time. But tales of alma managing to nearly die to expected hazards in the Moors were very popular.

“The tree flung Hoaf up in the sky. Twenty feet! And the gods’ damned weed snapped her out of the air.” The collective alma hung in suspense. It was as if Hoaf was not sitting by a neighboring fire in clear view.

“The unholy creature loomed above us. Towering ten alma high!” I was pretty sure a gorn flower could not grow ten gam high, let alone ten alma.

“It swelled with maleficence. Bigger and bigger.” Half the circle was tense with anticipation. The other half had acclimatized to the story’s twist.

“And then… it burst!” Gasps stroked Co’arn’s need for attention.

“A stench like the Disentor’s rotting asshole bubbled from its torn gullet and Hoaf ripped her way free!” Violent gestures mimed the feat of tearing oneself from a gargantuan plant.

It was a drastic exaggeration of the more drawn out and desperate story I originally heard. Hoaf had supposedly used a blade enhanced by her magical talent to slash at the carnivorous flora’s insides.

She only barely survived and was cut out by her comrades once her attackers killed the creature. But Co’arn told it as if she simply flexed and the plant exploded before her might.

“And there, in the creature’s wretched bial, were the bones of my own arm…” I noticed a few bemused smiles. Yet most of the alma were wholly absorbed in the retelling.

The caravan’s sole priest looked vaguely disapproving. It was more likely to be the profanity than the dramatization.

I let the voices and crackling pops of the fire wash over me. Meditation was an approach rather than a specific act.

The bodies coming and going from the fire pit faded. All I saw was the living souls within them.

Nith thought of souls as having two states. A living soul had a spark, while a dead soul was the animus structures that remained once the spark was gone.

The soul-mage had memories of using that structure to restore the spark. And I was attempting to copy the process from those memories.

I initially tried using already dead animals. It was easy to find or kill small insects. But that had proven harder to understand than I expected.

Nith was taught to revive souls by studying living rodents for long periods. He was then required to kill them and use his understanding of those individuals to revive them.

The people who raised him moved on to larger and more complex creatures once he could raise mice. And eventually he needed to kill and revive his failed peers.

The methodology was increasingly revolting the more I dug into it. But it gave insight.

Watching intact souls was how he learned to recognize the vibration that would restart a dead one. I was going to try doing the same.

A tendril of essence reached through the earth I sat on. I plucked the soul from a large ant moving through tunnels below.

It was surprisingly easy to detach the points its tiny soul connected to its flesh. Nith knew them all as second nature. And now so did I.

The spark rapidly vanished. I quickly set about modifying the animus prism around the point its spark had rested.

Nith did it by cutting and grafting the parts. Yet I did not entirely understand why.

He was taught to redistribute the existing pieces of a soul to modify it. The way to improve the results was to use the material more efficiently and cause less damage.

But it was seemingly simple to make new soul organelle myself and replace the old ones. The result did not damage other organelle.

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My way looked better to me. However the end product was the same every time.

I grasped the entire soul and manipulated it in the way I thought should match its original source. The structure trembled.

Something fuzzed in and out for a moment. A shadow of the spark. Then it was gone.

My further attempts with the soul failed completely. It continued to deteriorate until I finally gave up and moved to studying another ant.

I doubted my method was flawed. Nith remembered a similar experience when learning. I simply needed a better sense for how to match the spark’s frequency.

“You have been silent this evening.” A voice drew me from the sacrifice of insects to my proficiency.

Darkness had fallen in full. The fire was a bed of embers. A lone figure sat close to the coals.

“Contemplating life.” I gave Jarimy a sheepish smile.

“A hard task for anyone. Harder for a man without a past.” The russet skinned priest revealed no subtext to the comment.

“Can’t say how much a past would help, but I make due.” I paused. “Can I ask you a question?”

The priest smiled lightly. “You just did.” I gave the appropriate skoff. It was a joke that appeared to transcend culture.

“I wanted to ask about the gods.” A faint bemusement raised his brows.

“That is literally my purpose in being here. What were you wondering?” I considered how to ask my question.

“What are the gods? Are they some species that the church works with? Or the leaders of the church?” I had tried and failed to infer a clear answer to this.

The way alma talked about gods made it apparent they had influence and status. But the knowledge seemed to intrinsic for alma to explain it clearly. At least not without me resorting to such a direct question.

Surprise gave way to a stifled laugh. “I’ve never heard someone describe the gods like that.” I decided not to take the amusement in his voice personally.

“You are strictly right.” He continued. “A god is the ultimate authority in their church. Everything a church does is directly by the instructions of its god. Or what we can interpret from them, at least.” That certainly matched how Saræ talked about Nala.

It also matched the nebulous concept I had pieced together from the few former alma that came to me upon death. Not that I made much progress that way.

“Calling the gods a species makes some sense. But not the way mortals like you and me are.” I purposefully did not correct his beliefs about my mortality.

“We live and return to the Creator with time. But the gods were created first, before anything else. And they shaped the world by the Creator’s direction.” This was not the first reference to someone called the Creator I had heard. But it was the most direct.

“Who is the Creator.” I interrupted. Jarimy seemed less surprised this time.

“The Creator is who I serve. Everything and everyone, the gods to us, is part of the Creator. We are born into individual lives and become one again once those lives end.” There was a shift in the priest’s tone. The words sounded smooth and practiced.

“What do you mean by becoming one?” The phrase was odd. It had the ring of a concept the priest expected his audience to already understand on some level.

“It is to become what we were before, the Creator.” The explanation was simple. It was also barely helpful.

“The purpose in all of this…” His hand gestured to the darkened camp and rolling plains beyond. “Is to be lived. To be experienced as only a finite life can. We experience what the Creator cannot, limitation. The perspective of a single life. And we bring that back once that life is over.”

I pondered the idea. An entity that divided itself into pieces that did not know they were part of it only for those pieces to return to it upon death. It had eerie familiarity.

“And that is what happens to alma when we die? We add our experience and perspective to this Creator.” Jarimy gave an encouraging smile.

“All that is created. Gods, alma, tige.” He tapped the earth by his side. “Even the dirt, rocks and clouds in the sky. It is all part of the Creator and will be again. Not that I know what a cloud experiences. I suppose that is how I’m limited.” He chuckled at his own quip.

“And what about people who don’t die.” I had never met another creature that could not die. Not with any confidence. My curiosity was subsequently personal.

His mouth drew into a hard line. “You are speaking of the unclean.” I was not familiar with the term, but nodded.

“The unclean are just a myth. One for theurges and campfire tales.” He said unclean as if the word itself was dirty. Which I supposed it arguably was.

“If the Dark Gods succeeded in severing a soul from the Creator, it would mark the end of the world.” I frowned at that.

“Why would that end the world?” I was missing the connection.

“The world is a mechanism. A mechanism of the Creator’s design. And death is part of that mechanism.” His voice grew solemn.

“The Dark Gods create undead to resist death. But none are exempt in the end. To lose the capacity to die, a soul would need to be cut off from the Creator. From life and death.” The last flames had long since died out. Only faint embers and starlight lit the priest.

“Present in the world. But separate from it. The natural order would tear itself apart against an unclean spirit. Like a dagger driven into a gear box. The laws of the world would come apart.” The darkness hid his eyes. But my presence allowed me to perceive them on me.

The piercing gaze softened after a moment. “But we don’t need to worry about all that. The Dark Gods are banished, and my fellows work hard to ensure their cultists don’t get up to anything that dangerous.”

I returned the shift in tone with a smile I doubted he could see. “That’s a relief. I am pretty invested in the world.” I paused. “I keep my stuff here.”

He laughed. “A common feeling.” Jarimy slapped his knees and stood. “I would be happy to expound upon the holy and unholy all night. But the living need sleep, and I am no exception.” My presence let me see the smirk that accompanied his words.

“I’d be happy to answer any more theological questions in the morning.” I stood in response.

“I expect I’ll have a few.” It was true. Although I was uncertain how many I would ask directly.