The droves of people making their way into Yomichi was a sad fraction of what the population used to be like. Where possibly a few thousand at best were making their way back to their homes in the hopes of finding them still intact, these were the lucky few who’d been able to escape. Less than half of Autay Wa’s previous population was all that remained. There were the tens of thousands who used to live in the inner Was that were still unaccounted for.

Jelvaic and Arjana were busy organizing things, like usual, so Emilie let herself drift through the marching crowds. Most people were silent as they looked at the trampled fields, ruined buildings, and piles of dead. Corpses were not something the people of Yume were used to dealing with. Akumu always reanimated them the instant they were dead and then buried them into the earth. Already, teams were being sent out in search of shovels to dig graves.

Out of curiosity, Emilie levitated one of the bodies and began towing it behind her. She was recognizable to most people now so no one gave her any trouble about it. They probably assumed she was doing this on Jelvaic’s orders. The thing was, she knew that some corpses were still reanimating in the city. She’d seen enough of the soldiers of the Tower of Light as undead, not to mention the farmer who’d been killed by the soldiers and then reanimated. So why was it only some of the dead were reanimating and not all of them?

An hour or so into the city, the body she was levitating abruptly reanimated. It grabbed the earth beneath it and towed itself into the ground like the other undead.

“Curious,” she said to herself.

There were a few dead bodies around here, but definitely fewer than near the entrance. Was that because fewer soldiers came this way and thus died here, or were more of them reanimated here? She levitated another corpse and continued walking.

This time, less than a few minutes passed before this one reanimated and this time, looking around, she didn’t see any corpses.

Emilie had a crude map of the city and she pulled it out now. Pressing her thumb to the paper, it glowed briefly before the light pulled together into a single point, marking where she was. She used a charcoal nub to mark the spot and then turned back to find another body. The next corpse reanimated at almost the exact same spot.

By now, she’d gathered a small following of interested people.

“I need all of you to find a wheelbarrow and meet me back here as quick as you can,” she told them.

If they were going to follow her anyway, she might as well use them. Jelvaic obviously didn’t need them or he would have put them to work. It took some time for them to come back, and she noticed a few hadn’t returned and figured they were the sort who just avoided work all around. No matter.

“All of you follow me.”

She lead them back to a pile of corpses and levitated a body into each wheelbarrow.

“Spread out, a few meters apart.”

They did so and then she took them back towards the point where the two previous bodies had reanimated. She had a dozen or so helpers with a body in a wheelbarrow so her line was decently long.

“Stop walking if the body reanimates,” she called out to them as they neared the point.

“Mine already did,” someone called out.

“Can you go back to where it happened?”

They turned around and began making their way back the way they’d come. Pretty soon, others were stopping as the corpse they were carrying reanimated. It wasn’t an exact line that they were left standing in, but it was close enough that Emilie’s suspicions began to be confirmed.

“If you have other responsibilities, you’re free to go at any time, but if you’re available I’d really appreciate your help with a few more tests,” she told them.

As expected, a few excused themselves but a surprising majority of them stayed.

“Right, we’ll be going back for more bodies and mapping out where they reanimate.”

She already had the most recent results marked on her map and with each additional trip they made, each time in a slightly different spot, the pattern began to emerge.

“It’s looking like a circle,” one of her helpers said as he peaked over her shoulder.

“It does, and we’re getting another spot over here starting to show up, like overlapping circles,” she pointed out the newest area they’d checked and the small bump in marks on her map where a new area of reanimation was beginning to crop up. “We should tell Jelvaic before they dig too many graves.”

“I can do that,” a young woman volunteered. She was beginning to look a bit sick from all the dead bodies and Emilie let her run off.

While the rest of Emilie’s helpers reset for another pass, she reached out to Ketty, muttering her words which were carried on the wind to their destination.

“What do the Sages know about how Akumu reanimates the dead?” she asked.

It was a fair bet that the Sages had looked into that mystery and if Ketty didn’t know the answer herself, she would know the people who could get the answer for her. The response was slow in coming and Emilie had to assume Ketty was busy with everything still going on with the Sages after their botched attempt at pretending to be heroes.

“I’m assuming this isn’t just academical,” Ketty’s voice was hurried. “Akumu uses runes. We never managed to decipher them. It’s some ancient language that magic can’t translate. Anyway, there’s runes all throughout the city, throughout the country, really, but most of the ones outside of Yomichi are buried. In the city they tend to be scattered about. On bricks, walls, cobbles, anything really. I believe someone tried to steal some of them once to see what would happen.”

“What did happen?”

“The runes were replaced the next day and the stolen ones lost their magic after a week or so.”

“And the thief?”

“As far as I know, nothing happened to him. Now then, unless there’s anything else, I have things I need to attend to.”

“That’s all, thank you.”

The connection ended about the same time the new batch of undead were rising and she marked the places on her map. Again, it wasn’t a hard line of where they’d reanimate, but it was a definite gradient, which made sense if Akumu was using runes. Their power would wane the farther away you were, hence the need for overlapping areas for the runes. It was a mind boggling number of runes Akumu must have buried throughout the country but all that would really require was time and resources, and Akumu had almost an infinite amount of both.

“Emilie,” Jelvaic’s voice broke her out of her thoughts and she looked up from her map.

Jelvaic was driving a wagon towards her with several more following behind. They were all loaded up with the dead, though a number of the corpses were beginning to get up.

“You’re runner found us just in time,” Jelvaic smiled though there was a hint of disgust, probably from the smell. “I was about to have one of the trampled fields turned into a mass grave. This’ll save us a few days of work. Any idea why it’s like this? You’re runner said you were taking notes.”

“There’s runes,” she explained, being careful to leave out anything to do with the Sages of the Mercurial Robe. “The farther away you are from one, the less likely the corpses are to reanimate. The city used to be full of them but I’d guess the Tower of Light was destroying them as they went.”

“Any way we can replace them?”

“That would be a question for Zeter, or perhaps Ketty Pordis. I’d trust her, at least, as far as the Sages are concerned.”

Jelvaic clearly didn’t like the idea of involving the Sages and did nothing to hide that fact.

“I’ll go to the Sages only if there’s no other recourse. For now, we can just mark the areas where the dead will still rise. I’ll set up some more teams to continue the work you’ve started. Keep at it, and share your findings with me when your finished. I’m hoping this isn’t a wide spread problem.”

Even with the additional help, it took Emilie and the teams she was assigned a couple of days to finish mapping out Autay Wa. To everyone’s relief, the majority of the Wa was still covered by the runes. It was, unsurprisingly, the main paths of the Tower of Light that had their runes missing. It took another day of searching to find one of the functioning runes, on the wall of Kokyo Toshokan.

“So, can you duplicate it?” Emilie asked after showing it to Zeter.

He studied it closely, tracing what he saw onto a piece of parchment.

“Scribing runes is more than just copying the shapes,” he explained. “You have to understand it, know what it says or its meaning. Then you have to channel magic into it that’s attuned to that meaning.”

“Ketty says no one’s been able to translate these, with or without magic.”

Zeter frowned more deeply.

“That complicates things,” he said, “but it doesn’t mean it’s hopeless. I’ll just need to experiment with it and see if I can guess the right meanings for the runes.”

“Doesn’t sound very likely to work, is it? Wouldn’t someone have already done that by now if they could?”

“Who’s to say someone hasn’t? But what good would that do them? All they could do is replicate Akumu’s runes, not alter them. So if someone from Shinrai or something were to copy them and put them in Shinrai, they’d have undead that would defend Akumu and his lands, not Shinrai.”

“I see.”

“I’ll have Kasyn help me with this. He might have some insights into it thanks to his connection with Akumu.”

“You really believe Akumu’s a god?” Emilie scoffed.

“No, but Kasyn clearly gets some sort of power through his belief. It might be that his magic is already attuned to Akumu and could make these runes work far more easily than I could on my own.”

“Like using an elemental stone to cast elemental magic.”

“Exactly.”

“I’ll leave you to it then,” Emilie said with relief. “I’ve got some brewing I need to see to.”

“More stuff for Ketty?” Zeter asked, sounding almost casual in his tone.

“Everyone needs potions right now,” she dodged the question, not sure how much Zeter knew about Sages Brew. The last thing she needed was for him to get addicted.

He nodded and let the subject die.

“I’ll let you know if I make any progress on this,” he told her. “Oh, and Jelvaic wants to see us this evening. I’m betting he’s going to ask us to go inspect Ichiba Wa.”

“It’s the next logical step,” Emilie admitted.

“Yeah, but have you seen its gates?”

“Worse than the main gates were?”

“Completely gone. Vaporized or something. At least the guardian is still there so we won’t need to track him down.”

“Alright, well then I need to hurry up if I’m going to get any potions made before we have to go running around again.”

With that she turned and left Zeter to continue studying the runes. Not wanting to spend the next hour walking back to her new home and workshop, she downed a vial of quickened steps. She became a blur of motion as she sped down the road faster than any horse could have taken her and she was home before the potion wore off fully. Her fire was started the first series of ingredients were powdered by the time she returned to normal speed.

First on her list was more Sages Brew. The fools were running through it like there was no tomorrow, though thankfully Ketty had been able to stem the spread of it and no new addicts were needing to be supplied. As the first batch was being bottled and corked, someone knocked on the door to her workshop.

“Come in,” she called out.

To her surprise, Ketty Pordis and Armand entered. The boy looked a bit pale and twitchy and Emilie knew at once what this visit was about.

“Is Jelvaic letting the Sages into the city now?” Emilie cocked her eyebrow at the pair of them.

“I am allowed to come and do business with you but nothing else,” she stated with clear frustration. “Both he and Nyla have made it clear that if I attempt to do anything else I will be set upon by the city’s defenses.”

That wasn’t a light threat as they knew all too well. Besides being annoyed, though, Ketty didn’t seem too put out by it. She took a few minutes to peruse the workshop and examine some of the potions Emilie had for sale. Armand was less opaque and he kept tugging at Ketty’s sleeve and nodding towards the vials Emilie was filling. To a trained eye, most potions could be recognized by sight and it was clear Armand knew what Emilie was bottling. When it seemed like Armand was about to explode, Ketty finally approached Emilie.

“Young Armand has used up his supply of the Brew and needs some more it seems.”

Emilie had been thinking about the issue of people using their Sages Brew up faster and faster and had come to a decision regarding it.

“I’ll have more for sale in two days,” she said.

“No!” Armand cried out at once. “I can’t wait that long! I’ll die!”

Both Emilie and Ketty looked at him with weary eyes.

“You won’t die,” both women assured him.

“I’m only going to sell Sages Brew once every nine days from now on. You can buy up to seven vials of it, but I’m only making enough for twenty seven people.”

“That’s not enough,” Armand protested. “I need at least one a day.”

“I’ll be slowly reducing the amount I make, weaning everyone off of it,” Emilie went on. “It’s turning respectable Sages into fiends and I won’t be responsible for it.”

“You’ll have more than one of those so-called fiends beating down your door,” Ketty warned.

“Yes well, now that I’m back inside the city, security will be less of an issue for me. And if my workshop still gets broken into, you can tell them all that I’ll stop making Sages Brew altogether. Oh, and I’ve told Nyla about Sages Brew and what to look out for so anyone trying to sneak into the city will need more than a disk of absolution to be successful.”

Ketty smiled wickedly with approval.

“That’ll show the fools and perhaps teach a few of them why such things are a bad idea, right Armand?”

The boy looked like he was going to be sick. His hands were shaking terribly and sweat was beading along his brow.

“I just need a little to take the edge off,” he pleaded. “You’ve got it right there, you can give me that, can’t you? I’ll never make it two more days. I’ve seen what happens to people when they go so long without it.”

“I was the first person to try Sages Brew,” Emilie told Armand. “I know exactly what you’re going through and I know for a fact that you’ll survive a couple more days.”

Something in his expression shifted, moving from pain into rage and the gem on his forehead flashed. Instantly he screamed and put his hands to his forehead before collapsing, unconscious.

Emilie was in shock but Ketty seemed to have been expecting this. She caught him before he hit the floor and soon had him levitating in the air beside her.

“Care to explain any of that?” Emilie asked.

“The boy has a temper,” Ketty shrugged. “The gem keeps him in check if he looses control. A gift from his parents, though he doesn’t see it that way.”

“I see.”

That was quite the severe punishment in Emilie’s opinion, but that also made her wonder just how bad his temper had to be in order for his parents to take such actions. As a young boy he shouldn’t be all that powerful, magically speaking, unless his power wasn’t based on his studies, but rather something more innate.

“He’s…not entirely human, is he,” Emilie realized and spoke out loud before she could catch herself.

“A fact his parents would be grateful if you didn’t spread around,” Ketty warned. “I’m training him to control his outbursts, and he’s lucky he inherited his mothers looks, rather than his fathers, or this would all be that much more difficult.”

Emilie had only met a few half-humans. Arjana was probably the most obvious one, though calling them all half-humans wasn’t exactly right since the effects could travel down the family line for a number of generations. Usually, the effects were just physical, giving them claws, or sharp teeth, or some other trait. But sometimes the children got more than that. Sometimes they got some of the magical power that was innate to their non-human parent. Pair that with an education from the Sages of the Mercurial Robe and you had the makings for a powerful mage indeed.

“Just these, then,” Ketty said, placing down a few potions.

She paid for them and left with Armand, still unconscious, in tow.