I had lost track of how much time I spent analyzing the strange motes — it could have been minutes or it could have been years. Time behaved oddly when you were focused on the inside of your soul, even when trapped in that state as I was. It made me wonder where I’d find myself when I woke up. Had the battle ended, yet? Was my body still intact, or would I awake to the cold oblivion of my phylactery?

There was little point speculating. The motes had gained ground as they encroached on my soul, but I believed I finally had a way to neutralize the spell. It had proved to be a much more complex challenge than I had expected. Usually, when you wanted to destroy a spell, you had two options. The first was attacking its structure directly, causing it to grow unstable and collapse on its own. The second option consisted of creating a spell that represented the exact inverse of the original and juxtaposing the two, causing them to cancel each other out.

The first option was the most popular one by a landslide — the caster needed only to supply enough mana to overpower the spell. Their level of skill was irrelevant; an apprentice could destroy an Archmage’s spell given enough time. The downside, however, was that in the vast majority of cases, collapsing a spell was a powerfully exothermic process. In layman’s terms, the spell would explode — violently.

Given that the spell currently resided inside my soul, this option was completely off the table.

The second option was much more palatable. Normally, for a spell made of Soul, a counterspell would be a similar spell, crafted from the same Aspect, with the framework inverted and the opposite intent. That was why I had opted to capture and analyze one of the motes — I needed to fully understand its function if I wanted to create a counterspell for it.

Therein laid the problem. The spell that was currently invading my soul wasn’t made only out of Soul mana. If it had, my defenses would have shrugged it off entirely and it would have been a non-issue. The Origin mana enhancing it, however, made the matter of inverting the spell exponentially more complicated.

My first attempt at an inversion had been disastrous. I had attempted to invert only the Soul threads, under the assumption that the Origin was functionally inert and acted only as an amplifier. The resulting spell did not interact with the original at all, which was very interesting — it was commonly known that any two spells would interfere with each other when brought together. I filed this tidbit for later.

For the second attempt, I tried to invert both the Soul and the Origin, assuming that the Origin thread’s intent was along the line of ‘amplify.’ To my surprise, this attempt did, in fact, cancel the original — explosively so, unfortunately.

At that point, I had run out of conventional knowledge to fall back onto, so I began to experiment with different spell ratios and different Aspects. Varying the ratios gave me no results, but adding bits of different Aspects to the first kind of inversion seemed to allow the spell to interact with the original — and at that point, I knew I was on to something.

And after maybe dozens of attempts, I believed I had the right combination. A spell made of all Aspects in equal measure, all carrying the inverted intent and woven around a thread of Origin. Carefully, I overlaid the miniature counterspell on top of the mote — and the two disappeared, sucked back into the nothingness of Unreality.

I couldn’t help but grin inwardly as I looked at the swirling mists that were wearing away my defenses. They had more than doubled while I worked on the counterspell, but now that I had the solution, I merely needed to do it once more — except a thousand times bigger.

I drew six new threads and got to work.

I woke up to darkness and a feeling of great pressure on top of me.

I could tell I was still in my body, but I was completely immobilized. Had we lost the battle? Had my body been buried while I was gone?

No, not entirely. I quickly found that I could wiggle my fingers freely — there was no obstacle on either side. Further testing showed I could lift both by wrists, and soon I was able to touch the object that imprisoned me.

It had… fur?

Everything clicked together and I willed the stupid dead bear to move off of me. It obeyed instantly, and the light blinded me as my eyes struggled to adjust to the sun shining overhead. As soon as my sight returned, I was met with a gruesome sight.

Sarah sat on her haunches next to the unmoving body of a boy — I hadn’t seen him before, but he looked to be around her age. His shirt was soaked with blood, and torn at the chest — and through it, I could see a grisly wound against his dark skin. Sarah’s eyes were unfocused as she stared straight ahead, uncaring of the world around her.

A yell caught my attention, and I turned around to see Shiro walking towards us alongside a girl — another new face. Even from a distance, I could tell Shiro was in a bad shape. He was missing his right arm from well above the elbow, and from his tattered armor, it was evident the rest of him was in similar degrees of wounded. The girl next to him seemed unharmed, though the look on her face spoke of untold horrors. Her eyes held the same haunted expression I’d seen on Sarah, and I wondered how long had I been gone for things to progress to such a state.

Shiro and the girl passed by another slumped body on their way here, and the girl let out an anguished gasp as she gazed upon the corpse — another young man, judging by his size. Shiro turned around to bark something at the girl and she quickened her pace, making sure to look anywhere but the fallen boy. Her friend, perhaps?

I shook my head and turned back to Sarah in search of an explanation. “How long was I out?” I asked.

Startled, her head whipped around to face me as her eyes went wide. “Oh! You’re back!” she said, then furrowed her brow in concentration. “Like, five minutes?”

I tilted my head. “So little?” I said. It had felt more like years to me, but I couldn’t complain. “What happened?” I asked, my eyes darting to the fallen boy.

She followed my gaze back to the corpse and let out a weary sigh. “Oh god, what didn’t happen. So, first of all, you fainted, but you probably already knew that,” she said glancing at me. I nodded in confirmation and she continued. “So Shiro and me, we didn’t know if you were dead or just, like, unconscious, so we were talking about moving you out of the open, when suddenly bam!” She clapped a fist against her palm for emphasis. “Arrows everywhere, and then another dude pops up right next to you all assassin-like,” she said, waving her fists around as if she’d been holding a pair of daggers, “so I had Winnie shield you, and then Winnie was on fucking fire, and well, uh. Shit happened.”

My brow had been slowly lifting itself up into my hairline as she summarized her tale. “You don’t say.”

“And that’s just, like, barely half of it. There was another guy too,” she said, pointing at her victim on the ground. “Not sure what he was supposed to be doing, but I just heard him screaming when his buddy fell, so I just, like,” she said, making a stabbing motion with her sword. “But yeah. Shit happened.”

“And the girl?” I asked.

“What girl?” she said, tilting her head quizzically.

I motioned over my shoulder where Shiro and the newcomer were still making their way up the hill. Sarah stepped next to me to get a better look and her eyes went wide.

“Oh, crap, that must be the archer!” she said and then furrowed her brow. “I’m surprised Shiro didn’t kill her outright.”

“So these attackers came out of nowhere?” I asked.

“Pretty much. I’m reasonably sure they’re the missing Heroes, too, by the way,” she said offhandedly.

My attention was caught by the sounds of battle coming from the other direction. Turning around, I surveyed the state of the battlefield, frowning as I took in the damage the Legion had suffered in my absence.

My minions had held to the best of their ability, but even the vigor of undeath couldn’t have made up for the number differential. Without me to replenish their number or to direct the battle, in the few minutes I’d been gone I had lost more than a third of my forces, and the rest looked to be dwindling fast.

It would be just a matter of time before the enemies broke through the Legion’s defensive line and brought the fight straight to me, and I did not like the odds of facing such an army in a direct confrontation. The battle was lost, as far as I was concerned, since my token effort at defending had resulted in almost dying a true death. All that remained was a hasty retreat.

“Let’s grab the bodies, first, and then we’re leaving,” I said.

“We’re giving up?” Sarah asked, surprise evident on her face.

“Does this look like a fight we can win?”

She blinked twice. “I suppose not,” she said, and went to strap the body of the boy — the mage? — to her bear, and then we began walking towards Shiro and the girl.

As we approached, I was able to get a clearer picture of the archer. Unlike the others, she didn’t have the same gangly look of youth — but either way, she couldn’t have been older than twenty. Her hair was cut short, almost boyishly, and messy enough that it was clear it had been the work of a dagger.

She seemed to be trembling as she walked, though I couldn’t tell the reason. She was staring intently at the ground, only lifting her head once she realized she had company. Her muscles clenched when she finally noticed me, and her eyes turned bloodshot.

“Are you—” alright, I meant to ask, but I never got to finish the sentence as the girl's eyes glazed over and she was overtaken by whatever she’d been struggling against. The gods’ mind control in action I assumed.

She dashed forward with a burst so fast I couldn’t even follow, drawing a dagger from her sleeve with a swift motion. She was upon me before I could even blink, and I was already preparing myself to return to the phylactery when Sarah parried the blade with a deft hand, disarming the archer and then turning her blade around to impale the girl on her sword,

The archer let out a wheeze as she crumbled to the ground. “I’m… sorry,” she whispered, and moments later I felt her soul detach from the body.

Shiro caught up shortly after, sprinting the rest of the way up the hill. “Damn, she said she surrendered — I didn’t think she’d…” he said, his voice petering off as he watched the girl.

“Not her fault, I think,” I said softly. “It didn’t look like she was in control of her actions.”

Shiro’s face fell, lips tightening into a line. “The haze. Fucking gods,” he growled, visage turning dark. “You’ll bring them back, right? They’re just like us… they don’t deserve this.

Sarah’s gaze grew sharp and she fixed me with her eyes as she waited for the answer.

“Yes, I’ll bring them back,” I said with a sigh. “If they agree, that is. After this mess, I’m not so sure they’ll be eager to return.”

“They will,” Sarah said curtly, her voice brokering no argument. “I was in their shoes before — being dead is…” she said with a shudder, “it’s horrible. They’ll say yes, I can guarantee it.”

“Very well, then,” I said, taking a last glance at the battlefield — the Legion was already down to half its members. “But not here. Get them tied to your mount, and we’ll see about this when we’re back home.”

“Back to Ravenrock, then?” she asked, a tinge of hopefulness in her voice.

“Back to Ravenrock,” I said, and bid my army farewell.