“And here I was beginning to think I understood this whole phenomenon,” Cinna said after a long sigh.
“Don’t expect me to explain it to you after being dragged across the floor like a common criminal!” Javert shouted impotently. Lilia was beginning to find the many voices he spoke through a little funny, thought she wasn’t sure why.
“Why would I need you to explain it to me?” Lilia asked. Javert didn’t answer. “Actually, I think I might need you to explain that part to me…um, why you thought I would need to be told why you don’t have a soul crystal, that is.”
“Are you saying you’ve already figured it out?” Cinna questioned, looking surprised.
“Yes.”
“…are you going to tell me?”
“Oh! Yes, of course. See, not-dead seem to get back some of their…what do you call it? The way people know how to move their bodies?”
“I believe you’re referring to muscle memory.”
“Well, I haven’t been able to watch the whole process from beginning to end, but it seems like not-dead get their muscle memory back at some point. It’s very interesting, because normal undead don’t work that way. Familiars just have it and thralls don’t. They don’t have to—”
“The point, Lilia,” Cinna interrupted just as Lilia tried to explain how familiars retain their skills from when they were alive. She puffed her cheeks out in annoyance at being cut off. “This is neither the time nor the place for a lecture on the undead. Please skip to the relevant details.”
“Okay…” Lilia relented. “Mages probably work the same way. We can learn how to move our mana like it’s muscle memory. So a necromancer that’s created enough familiars can probably remember how to repair a soul conduit even as a lich, and if they do it to themselves, they get all their memories back!”
Cinna frowned, staring down at Javert.
“I believe you’ve mentioned soul conduits as how souls art attached to the body, but what does that have to do with memories?” Cinna asked.
“Did I not mention that…?” Lilia had told Cinna quite a lot about necromancy, but she couldn’t remember precisely what she had and hadn’t explained already. Somehow she must not have gotten around to telling her about this theory. After all, if Lilia had mentioned it, Cinna definitely would have remember, right? “Um, so, there’s two conduits. One is for mana and I think the other is for the mind.”
“What nonsense are you spouting!?” Javert demanded. Lilia tilted her head curiously, looking down at the lich pinned under Mr. Bearbones’ giant paw.
“You didn’t know? I thought it was obvious. I could explain, but…” Lilia looked at Cinna for permission, remembering the scolding she’d just gotten.
“Explain it to me later. There’s no telling what he could do with that information,” Cinna said. “Now, if I’m understanding correctly, you’re saying that he no longer has any need for a soul crystal.”
“Right! Having a soul crystal and a working mind conduit would be like…having two souls in one body. I don’t know what that’s like, but it would probably be bad. Like, well, having two minds, I guess. So he probably had to remove his so he could think properly,” Lilia explained.
“So we have no easy means of rendering him unconscious, and he can resist your attempt at severing his soul while he’s awake,” Cinna concluded. “Do you think you could do it? Sever his soul while he’s conscious and fighting back?”
“Of course she can’t! Do you have any idea what you’re proposing!? To attack a living soul is a task for the gods, not mortals!” Javert objected.
“Your credibility is severely lacking while face-down against the floor and pinned by a skeletal bear,” Cinna pointed out.
Lilia peered down at Javert, examining him closely with her soul sight. His soul was a vortex of mana much like Count Keller or the fire lich, but Javert had far greater control of his mana than either. Necromancers wielded mana far more directly than other mages from what Lilia had gathered so far. Others used it merely to fuel their spells, but necromancers alone needed to manipulate it directly in order to interact with souls.
Still, there was no way of restoring a soul conduit completely. Javert’s mind conduit had been patched, yes, but it remained damaged. His control of his own mana was probably reduced as well. That damaged conduit would be easier to sever, at which point Javert would have no control of his mana. So long as Lilia could overpower him for long enough to dig that deep inside his soul, she could end him.
“I can do it, but it would take all of my attention. I don’t think I can stop him from controlling his thralls while I’m doing it, and I’m a bit tired from dealing with Count Keller already as it is,” Lilia determined.
“She’s lying. It’s not possible!”
“What if we got him far away from his thralls first?” Cinna asked, ignoring the fallen necromancer’s objections.
“That might make things worse. He’ll be able to keep giving them orders no matter how far away he is, but I can only counter them from a certain distance. So they’ll just follow us and get closer while I’m distracted,” Lilia replied.
“…then we’ll just have to ensure we’re always moving. I injured my leg fighting that lich, anyway. Since Storrhamarr never had a chance to evacuate we should be able to find a carriage and some horses here. I’m sure the draugr have slaughtered the horses by now, but that shouldn’t be a problem. In fact, it might be for the best. Draugr might be able outrun living horses, but…undead horses are another matter,” Cinna declared, smirking as she looked down at the helpless Javert.
“I can have Directions find some horses!” Lilia volunteered. Cyclops yowled loudly. “Cyclops will help, too! I think he’s mad that he hasn’t gotten to hunt anything lately. I’m not sure he understands that we’re looking for dead horses, though.”
“Excellent. Let’s start heading for the edge of the city while they’re doing that. Fortunately we should be able to walk right out now,” Cinna suggested.
Lilia followed the slightly-limping Cinna out of the hole in the tower to find an even larger one in the castle wall. They had to pick their way over the ruins of the wall itself to get out, but going through the draugr-infested halls would have taken much more time. It sounded like the fighting had largely subsided now, but that just meant the draugr were probably standing over the bodies of their foes throughout the castle.
One thing that Storrhamarr definitely didn’t lack was stables. Directions found a stable by the time Lilia and Cinna made it past the wall. Several, in fact. Lilia considered telling Cyclops the job had already been completed, but she decided in the end to let him have his fun. It wasn’t about finding the stable so much as the search itself for him.
“Looks like this was a warehouse belonging to a trading firm,” Cinna observed once they arrived at the building the stable was attached to. She peered inside. “As I thought. The horses are all dead. Could you revive some has familiars? Two should be enough.”
“Should only take a moment since I won’t even need to find the—hey! That was rude!” Lilia chided, turning on the necromancer currently in Mr. Bearbones’ jaws.
“Did he do something?” Cinna asked, confused.
“He let the horses’ souls go! Now I’ll need to pull their souls back myself!” Lilia complained. Javert didn’t answer; there were no longer any draugr close enough for him to speak through. He just hung limply, resigned to being carried around.
Cinna sighed, rubbing her forehead. “I don’t know why I didn’t see that coming. Will it be an issue?”
“No, it’s just annoying,” Lilia replied, kicking Javert in the head a few times as revenge. She knew he couldn’t feel it but it still felt satisfying for her. “Stop that. I’ll only need a minute or two for each horse anyway.”
Javert’s head suddenly shot up to stare at Lilia. She had no idea what emotion he wanted to convey since nothing remained of his face but charred bone, but based on something she’d heard from Master, she could guess.
“What? Making familiars is easy. I just need to trace the original soul and reel it back. You don’t believe me? I don’t know what to tell you. Just watch, I guess,” Lilia said with a shrug, turning back to the stable.
The smell of blood hit Lilia’s nose before she even entered the building, but that didn’t bother her much. She’d grown used to that years ago. Walking down the line of stalls, she looked into each one as she decided which horses to take. Most had been killed by having their throats slit, but a couple had been struck over the head with something blunt or shot with arrows instead.
How the horses had died didn’t have any effect on the difficulty of Lilia’s job, but some ways of killing were messier than others. She skipped over the ones that had died slowly enough that they had time to trash around and damage their own legs and chose to pass over the ones with damaged skulls because the injuries were too obvious.
In the end, Lilia settled on one who had seemingly sunk to its knees without a fight when its throat was cut and another that had taken an arrow to the heart and slumped over. Since their legs weren’t injured she wouldn’t have to expend as much mana to keep them on their feet.
“Okay, now where’s your soul gone…” Lilia muttered, standing over the first of the horses, a dun-colored stallion with a black mane. Wisps of mana still clung to its skeleton from where its soul had clung just minutes ago. She followed those faint traces with a thread made of her own mana.
Even Lilia didn’t fully understand what she did next. Souls didn’t go somewhere physically distant after death, exactly, but they vanished all the same. According to the priests they went to some form of afterlife. Usually the ones governed by the god they were most aligned to. What did that mean in a post-god world, though? Where even were those afterlives, and how did animal souls know where to go?
Lilia didn’t know the answers to those questions, but she didn’t need to. Her mana followed the trail left behind by the horse’s soul to somewhere else, and then she pulled it back. Animal souls were simple. They understood being alive and being dead, and instinctively they usually preferred life. So Lilia didn’t have to convince the horse or rely on some sort of lingering desires to coax it back. It senses it had an opportunity to return and did so without question.
This part didn’t take much effort, so Lilia continued to send out pulses of mana countermanding Javert’s orders even as she used her own mana to bind the horse’s soul to its mortal form and repair both soul conduits. In moments the horse was opening its eyes, then testing its ability to stand. Lilia peeked under the stall, then opened the door and escorted the resurrected horse back to Cinna and Javert.
“Here’s the first one!” Lilia announced. Cinna looked the horse over and grimaced.
“I’ll go find a bucket and water…is what I’d like to say, but we hardly have time for that now. Go ahead and get started on the next one while I get this horse harnessed,” Cinna said as she placed a hand on the horses neck and guided it to the carriages.
Lilia nodded and walked back into the barn.
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Javert is having an experience here lmao.