Mirchie stared at me, nibbling away at her exquisite dinner of vegetables. Her black, beady eyes were judging me, and I knew that since I was judging myself. I had locked the farmhouse and drawn the covers over the windows. A single lantern was all the illumination I could afford—I really had to get a better house.
But it didn’t do much to hide the skeleton on the floor. The specimen was nearly perfect, save for some cracks and chips in the bone. I waved my hand over it as they slowly repaired themselves.
I looked up as the rabbit took another bite of her lettuce. Her loud chewing was getting on my nerves, but as my familiar and apprentice, she had to watch. Yet she continued to stare, looking at the bones, and then at me.
“What, Mirch? You think this is a vast taboo as well—that it’s going a bit too far?”
Mirchie continued to stare at me.
“Look, if I don’t do this, I’m not going to be able to keep up with the demands.”
She took another bite of her lettuce.
“I know… I could ask… Father Farrow, the Marlows, or even… Addy… for help.”
She chewed slowly, a piece of green at the corner of her lip entering her voracious maw in repeated jackhammer chews.
“But if I keep doing that, what happens the next time? Pa could never manage his entire field.”
Her head went to a sliced carrot, sniffing it with her pink nose. Her tongue reached out to lap at the slice.
“And I can’t really afford farmhands… I’d need to keep them silent on what we’re growing.”
Her buck teeth pressed into the slice and brought it into her mouth. Her eyes returned to watch me, then dipped to look at the skeleton.
“I didn’t kill him… it! It was already dead.”
Mirchie’s head turned to the two glowing green vials on my dresser, holding the wolf and Night-Thing I hadn’t inspected yet.
“You shut up.”
Mirchie’s attention shifted back to her dinner, but I continued to watch her. I already knew she was going to be my familiar and foreman, but finally working on this skeleton really bothered me.
There were no ifs, technicalities, or edge cases I could lean into. The moment I crossed this boundary—this Rubicon—I would have committed Amaril’s greatest sin and Rhyvesta’s glory. Before this week even began, I wasn’t sure if souls existed, and now I had two trapped in a jar on my dresser.
And I was going to bring back the dead. Not in the miracle way reserved for true heroes I keep hearing about, but in the defiled stance.
To grow carrots.
Stop doing that.
I breathed in and closed my eyes.
Remember what Ma said. You have to commit, and stop excusing yourself. You failed at being a [Scholar], you failed at being a [Farm Girl]. Now, stop complaining about things you know you don’t care about.
My eyes opened. I looked down at the skeleton again. I knew I was right; it really wasn’t Rhyvesta or Amaril or anyone like that bothered me.
It was the chance for moving forward and taking my destiny in my own hands. I could have stayed behind at the Academy for the last few weeks and graduated, and then come back. I’d be in a position to do some actual scholarly work and pay off the debt slowly, assuming Agent Marigold didn’t begin her countdown until I returned.
But I also didn’t really care about this place.
I looked around this little hut and the land given to me. It was my pa’s and ma’s. I wanted to leave this world behind.
And now you have the chance too. Stop complaining and become that queen you’ve wanted to be. You’ve dined with vampires; when would you have done that before?
My hands came up to my cheeks and slapped them. The pain brought focus, and I looked at the other soul.
So, it followed the same rarity sorting. I appended the Mortis Agrariae, then looked at the choices. As much as I wanted to go Uncommon first, that wasn’t scientific. I finally stood up.
It was showtime.
The music of the world stopped, halting to a shrieking nothing. The air in the room popped, and I could see my breath form in the fog. Winter winds swirled around my hand, introducing the chill of the grave. Frost formed around my fingertips.
I had lost the cicadas of my youth.
I heard wind now, and the beating of hearts. I was changing into something new, something different. The howling dirge of both the Whistle and the Eulogy became one phantom wail.
Life and death were two points on the axis, and I could see it. Veins made of magic, like strings that danced on sticks. Joints created from heresy mixed with determination.
My symphony was changing—it was changed.
The lantern that illuminated the body flickered out, and Mirchie screeched in alarm. My red hair floated around me, going up and up and up. Strands of my pride and joy seemed to fade, becoming as white as the snow about.
But I could feel more. I felt the heartbeat of magic pulsing in my hand, and when I looked away from the skeleton, I saw her gaze. It was wrong like a snake luring a mouse. It was right like a mother watching her babe walk.
It was like me.
The bones below me rose, piece by piece, to the sky. The assembled skeleton was shorter than I, and its polished skull stared forward, ever obedient.
I immediately knew what I had to do, like how to breathe or move my hand. My hand grasped for a bone dagger that flew to my palm, and I sliced my other hand. Black, cold, rotting blood dripped out like ichor, and I raised it to the bony jaw.
Drip. Drip.
Blood pooled into the skeleton’s mouth, and it awaited more. Like this, it’d be just a tool of magic, no better than my bone hoe. I beckoned for the wolf jar and it came to me.
My mouth opened, and words flowed out.
“Iz’ik a-thro, Maz’lik kas…”
(By the will of the Dead Mother…)
“Omash avas, Kiya La-kin…”
(You will rise again…)
“Unoth, asiv Rhyvest!”
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(And obey!)
“Come forth to my side… Rattlejack!”
The green soul of the wolf poured out of the vial and was consumed by the skeleton. The green aura absorbed into the white bone, and its hollow eye sockets came to life with burning emerald witchfire. It cracked its jaws, and its skeletal form looked at me.
My head felt hollow and windy after that, and I wanted to collapse.
Gravespeech. Darktongue. That was the language I was speaking, and knowledge of it appeared in my head. Words, swears, concepts, ideas—all filtered into my thoughts like they were always there.
And it made my tongue taste like ash and maggots.
I shook that sensation away and looked at Rattlejack. I used [Inspect] on the skeleton.
Health: 100%
Anima: 100%
But I inherently knew something more. Like Ophelia and Elias, these things required blight. Without being a blight or a blighted source, it would naturally drain away—the Anima used to empower it was also used to sustain it.
But on blight, it would naturally regenerate. When my symphony changed, some type of understanding came with it. And I knew I had to record it.
I opened my grimoire and began to write.
Underneath Animus I could fix my knowledge.
Simple (No Soul) → Common (Basic) → Uncommon (Advanced) → Rare (???) → Masterwork (???)
I also finally had an answer to my INFERENCE:
Sapient beings had a higher quality of Animus. What does the average human start at? What about the Fae?
I wrote down a new FACT.
Sapient beings began at Uncommon.
Then, finally, to blight.
Blight is a source of leeching life to sustain something else.
Two new facts emerged in my head.
Anima can only be leeched if the source has Anima. Leeching from an area might sustain the ground, but if there’s no wildlife or populace, it will not produce Anima.
Undead creatures prefer existing on blight; otherwise, they will naturally degrade.
I closed my eyes. A whisper pushed into my ear. Cold, soft, hungry.
For an area to sustain undead life, it must be, at a minimum, 5% blighted.
Five percent was doable, but…
Rattlejack’s body shook at the lack of commands, its bones—well—rattling. It brought me out of my academic reverie and back to the situation at hand.
“Let’s go, Rattlejack. Mirchie. Follow me,” I said, opening my door and walking right outside.
Mirchie hopped on Rattlejack’s shoulder, and Rattlejack awkwardly shambled behind me. The bones clinked and clanked, but slowly, it seemed to understand how to move.
I handed Rattlejack my bone scythe and pointed to the fields. “Clear my fields of weeds,” I commanded.
I purposely wanted my command to be vague, to see how well it could follow instructions. Its bones rattled again, and it moved to the fields. Mirchie hopped off and jumped on my lap.
“And where do you think you’re going, my little [Foreman]? You have to watch the skeleton and make sure it does things right.”
Mirchie squeaked angrily at me, but sat at the edge of the fields. Her beady eyes stared solemnly at the skeleton moving around. It swung its scythe at the weeds, collecting the plant fibers to store. It seemed Common was enough for my needs. I smiled, and went to work on the other end.
The common carrots and blood carrots I had from the other day were done growing, but to go with Jasmine’s plan, I had to produce a lot of Masterwork.
To do that, I needed to achieve 500% soil quality. Sure, I could buy Masterwork seeds from the farmers’ market, but those were not only expensive, if they were planted in soil that couldn’t sustain them naturally, they weren’t able to produce seeds. And just buying a Masterwork carrot was out; seed makers only functioned on crops you yourself produced.
Which meant two routes.
I could do this with proper composting, and start adding compost and sustainment to my ledger. I’d have to buy Masterwork compost for 8,712 squares’ worth of fields, which would be…
…or I could blight up to 500% of the local area.
So either spend thousands of gold on manure every month, or naturally sustain everything. That choice was fairly easy.
The issue was, I didn’t know enough areas. At 100% consumption, I’d only need five places to leech from, but it’d be obvious since the other areas would basically be dead. At 5%, I’d need one hundred places. I knew about three—four, if I was being generous and included the long road to Flowers-by-the-River.
How about fifty at 10%, and leave Oakheart Town at 5% for Elias? That’d work, and I could…
…Dare I make a plan to have Lord Elias himself escort me around? My heart fluttered at that thought, offering my hand to the Lord to show me the land. My eyes closed, dreaming of that sensation of being wrapped in his strong arms, and his cold, inviting scent that smelled of oak.
I could feel his cloak around my body, and I could smell the remnants of roast beef and blood. He’d be a powerful ally, and I’d love to be wrapped around his arms.
Yet, when my daydream turned to resting my head upon his shoulder, my vision shifted immediately. A stray thought came to me, of Addy and me sitting on a bale of hay, my head resting on his shoulder. Six-year-old Addy promised six-year-old me that he’d show me the world around me.
My heart didn’t flutter at that memory, but it warmed. There was the scent of hay, sweat, and just… trust. Elias wouldn’t bite me because of [Blighted Blood]. Addy wouldn’t hurt me at all.
…And if I just took what Melissa advised and just said—“Hey, Addy, I want to explore. Would you be willing to escort me around without being too overbearing?”—he would.
But then I’d be taking him from Melissa. I spat on the ground.
You really had to grow up without me, huh? Well, to be fair, I was going to get your help to bli—
Addy is going to hate me.
That thought alone twisted my core. Not once in his life had he ever hated me. I might have been angry at him, but the boy was as constant as the sun and rain.
I glanced up, and the skeleton was still working away. Mirchie chirped at me. The skeleton had already cleared over 100 tiles’ worth of weeds, and it had only been…
…an hour.
I didn’t realize I had been fantasizing that long and doing nothing, and went back to picking my crops.
I ended up with nine common carrots and eighteen blood carrots. I’d sell the common blood carrots to Maddy at normal price—5 gold a pop—for 90 gold. The nine remaining would go into the seed makers Jasmine made for me.
But then came the issue of soil. I’d need it to reach 200% for Uncommon, 300% for Rare, and then 500% for Masterwork.
Do I pick Addy, or do I ask Elias?
I put that thought out of my mind and instead turned toward the skeleton.
At 500 tiles, it finally stopped. Five hundred tiles of work at 100% Anima meant that each tile cost it one-fifth of a charge. To fully do my fields, I’d need… about 20 mL of blood.
I sighed, not getting out of making a blight then.
My stomach growled angrily, but right now I had to deal with Rattlejack. I walked toward it and spilled more blood. It rose up.
“Nine times nine equals eighty-one,” I muttered to myself. “Mirchie, have Rattlejack clear up eighty-one tiles for me to be prepared for the next harvest. I’m going to talk this out with Madeleine.”
Who should Ashley ask for help?
