“What in Tenebrael’s name is that?” Volta asked, clamping a bit of her clothes around her mouth and nose.

Alyssa knew from experience that doing so wouldn’t help. The stench that hung around was too powerful. Still, if it made Volta feel better, it wasn’t like it was hurting anything. She hadn’t really wanted to bring them to the cave, but it was much closer than Illuna. It had preserved food and water, which both Volta and Red needed. Really, Red should have eaten something before they had set off.

Alyssa just hadn’t thought about it critically enough, but Red had walked for basically a full day without food or water. Red hadn’t asked for anything on arrival, so Alyssa hadn’t thought about the implications. The real reason she hadn’t asked for a meal was, according to Volta, because Red was a cursed sword. Cursed swords tended to have a hard time identifying exactly what was wrong with their host bodies. They weren’t human, but the human body still had human needs. Red especially had a hard time. Effectively being Volta’s retainer, Red had a fairly easy life with regular meals. The host body hadn’t experienced many periods of starvation or thirst to understand what those sensations were.

Volta hadn’t been given any food or water either, but she hadn’t trudged across a desert for a day. She needed sustenance regardless…

Hence the detour to the caves and all the wonderful stench that hung around them.

“It’s hundreds of rotting corpses,” Fela said before Alyssa could decide on anything more diplomatic to say.

As Alyssa shot a glare at the hellhound, she got a glare from Volta.

“I may not be human,” she started slowly, “but I do have a vested interest in human affairs as Illuna’s court arcanist. So I do hope that these bodies are from more brigands and people who act against the interests of Illuna.”

“They aren’t.” Alyssa realized just how denying that might sound. “I mean, they aren’t people from Illuna either. Or anywhere else. They’re not people—”

“Most of them are monsters.”

“You are not helping, Fela.” Alyssa fired off another glare before trying to explain fully. “The same power that let me fix up Red also lets me create things,” she said, demonstrating as they rode along by holding out her hand and letting a dozen glass marbles fall from her fingertips. “Irulon and I are running experiments out here that involve bodies. None of them are real people—they never had a soul, never thought a single thought—they’re just lumps of meat and bone. Meat and bone that, unfortunately, rots. But I think I can fix that now.”

Tenebrael had showed her how. It was simple to unmake something. Easier than creation, that was for sure. She could go around to all their stores of bodies and just… delete them from existence. The smell would probably clear out fairly quickly. Though it might cling to the inside of the cave… like cigarette smoke inside a used car that never seemed to go away no matter how many air fresheners she bought.

Then again, the whole reason they were out at the cave instead of in Illuna was because of the expected smell and not wanting people discovering dozens of dead bodies. If she could just delete them after they were done examining them, was there really a reason to stick around at the cave? She would have to discuss that with Irulon.

Now was as good a time as any, she supposed. The draken stopped just outside the metal door occupying the cave entrance. Given Volta’s short stature—she still had yet to create a body for herself—Alyssa helped the doppelganger off Izsha after getting off herself. Volta accepted the gesture, though she didn’t look too happy at the moment. If she was still suspicious about Alyssa’s explanation, she could just wait a few minutes and Alyssa would demonstrate it for her.

Red hopped down from Musca’s back, stumbling slightly as she did so. It was strange to see her stumble at all, given how gracefully she had torn apart a few dozen people. She kept looking down at her leg as well. The brand new skin was nice and clean compared to the rest of her, and there was a gap lacking that metallic structure that lined most of the rest of the right side of her body.

Alyssa was pretty sure that both Red’s legs were the same length. Red claimed to have feeling in her toes and she could wiggle them just fine, so Alyssa was hoping that it was just something psychosomatic. Or that metallic growth, which should grow back according to Volta.

Still, she had to ask… “Everything alright?”

Red looked up from her leg, tilted her head from one side to the other, and nodded. “Yes.” And that was it. No elaboration or further commentary.

Shrugging, Alyssa pushed open the metal door. Suppressing a grimace at the fresh wave of stench coming from inside, she called out. “Irulon, guests.”

Night had fallen well before they made it back. Another reason to bring Volta and Red to the cave instead of trying to take them all the way back to Illuna. But Irulon barely slept most nights, so Alyssa wasn’t too worried about disturbing her sleep. Not that she would have worried about waking her up even if Alyssa was expecting her to be asleep. The princess was the heaviest sleeper she had ever met.

Sure enough, it didn’t take long before Irulon showed herself. Her hands were covered in blood up to her elbows, indicating that she had just been deep inside a body. Alyssa had been gone for a while, so it must have been an older one. She gave a slight wave, resulting in flecks of blood flying from her fingertips to smash against the wall.

Alyssa pressed her hand to her face. “I’ve asked you before if you would please stop wandering around without washing your hands first.”

“The water is mostly blood at this point, I think. I was testing to ensure that the blood could carry air around properly.”

Volta blinked, looking a little confused. “Blood carrying air?”

“Apparently it is a fairly important facet of blood. Who knew?”

Alyssa sighed. She didn’t bother to correct Irulon—just as Alyssa had been researching bodies, so too had Irulon. With the princess being far more adept at the medical examiner role, Alyssa felt it was important to offer her some more modern information on the human body. Including information on blood and it carrying oxygen and carbon dioxide. She knew those terms. She even understood what they meant. As such, Alyssa could only assume that she was deliberately simplifying for Volta’s sake.

Which was somewhat strange. Alyssa wouldn’t have thought that Irulon would have cared. So perhaps she wasn’t simplifying for Volta. Elements were undiscovered here, so maybe she was just lumping in components of air together as air.

It didn’t really matter. As long as it worked. Irulon could peruse her phone later for more modern knowledge if she wanted.

Unfortunately, the water being too dirty to use meant that Alyssa had a job to do. “I’ll take care of it,” she said. Water was actually fairly easy to create. Quite a simple compound considering its job of sustaining life. Much easier to create than living tissue. They had been just dumping the dirty buckets down a small ravine in the back of the cave, but now they might have a better solution.

“Hold up your hands,” Alyssa said, walking right up to Irulon.

The princess raised an eyebrow, but did as requested. Alyssa ran her own hands from Irulon’s elbows to her fingertips. The red liquid simply vanished as she moved, leaving Irulon’s arms bare but clean. Even underneath her fingernails.

“You learned a new tick and decided to experiment on me?” Irulon said, tone flat as she looked over her clean hands.

“No, I’m… Okay maybe yes, but not really. I was only affecting the blood on you. Not you.”

“Hm.”

“I… hope, anyway. I didn’t accidentally delete all the blood in your arms, did I?” It didn’t look like it. Alyssa wasn’t exactly sure what someone would look like if the blood just up and vanished from their limbs, but she didn’t imagine it would look pretty. The skin and muscles would probably shrivel up. And Irulon would probably have a heart attack or a stroke because of the sudden empty vessels.

Irulon looked fine as she examined her own body with those black and white eyes. “I feel like I still need to wash my hands,” she said, rubbing her fingers together. “Feels strange, but on my skin, not in my skin.”

“Well that’s good. I think. Are there any bodies you want to keep?”

“Don’t think so. In fact, I need a new one to—”

“Hold that thought. I’m cleaning this place out. Right now.”

“Right now? Can’t you create a body first so that I can get back to work?”

That would probably explain why Irulon had come out to greet their guests. Or, more accurately, she hadn’t come out to greet their guests—she hadn’t even said a word of greeting to Volta, now that Alyssa was thinking about it—but had come out to tell Alyssa to get things moving again. Sadly for poor Irulon, she would have to wait. “Now,” Alyssa said, voice firm and brokering no room for argument. “This place reeks and I finally have a way to make it better. So entertain our guests. They need food and drinking water. I’ll be done in a bit.”

Without waiting for a response, Alyssa practically ran past Irulon and headed directly for the chamber that the princess had been using. It was by far the worst of all the interior rooms. She could clean out their graveyard later.

The table was empty, though it was still damp from recent use. Four bodies were lying in a bit of a depression in a corner of the chamber. There weren’t really corners in the cave, but it was a close enough word. The depression helped keep blood from running everywhere in the room, a massive problem given that most had their chests and stomachs torn open. Irulon made at least marginal attempts at keeping the walkways clear. It was a good spot to store the bodies until they got around to dragging them outside. Since Irulon would never drag them out on her own, the bodies often stuck around a lot longer than would have been wise.

She started with the table, running her hands over the top of it. Destroying things was much easier than creating them, but as she had learned while experimenting with Red, it helped a lot to still think about what it was that she was destroying just like she did when she created something. It helped to only destroy what she wanted to destroy. In this case, that was the blood, bile, and other bodily fluids. But not the table.

The table could probably use a complete replacement too. Maybe a nice metal slab instead of the porous wood. The wood table had already been present in the cave from whenever it had been occupied by the people who had dug the well.

Deciding to just go ahead and do it, Alyssa collapsed the table in on itself, destroying it as it fell into her hands. She would worry about making a table later on.

For the time being, she just went around, destroying everything that looked like it might contribute to the smell of the place. The depression in the floor got a bit deeper as she decided to take off a layer of the rock. It was surprisingly smooth rock, but probably still porous and thus had to be dealt with. Now that she thought about it, she could probably make a big metal freezer-like container for body storage that wouldn’t have the porous problem. When they had first started out here, she hadn’t been good enough at creation, so she hadn’t thought about it much then. Now it didn’t matter.

From there, she moved on to her chamber. It wasn’t as big of a mess, but Alyssa had performed a few autopsies on her own when she made things that she couldn’t figure out how or why they came out like they were. Generally bodies that she had thought Irulon wouldn’t be that interested in. It too got a thorough cleaning.

Maybe it was just her imagination, but she felt like the air was already far clearer than it had been. She considered trying to just delete the air itself, maybe recreating it as she went, but decided against messing with something that she needed to survive. Accidentally deleting a whole room’s worth of air and suddenly having her blood boil from the pressure difference before the entire atmosphere came and slammed into her didn’t exactly sound like a pleasant experience. Even if it wouldn’t be lethal.

By the time Alyssa finished with cleaning out the two chambers and the other few rooms that she and Irulon frequented, the air was much clearer smelling. Not perfect. Not by half. But halfway there was such a marked improvement that she actually felt like she could breathe through her nose once again.

Mostly. A few rooms were still bad. Irulon’s in particular. But it was clean enough that Alyssa didn’t feel bad about taking a break to find out where the others had gotten to while she had been busy.

Alyssa and Irulon did not eat inside the cave. The smell wasn’t… pleasant enough to facilitate eating. Outside, up on the top of the cave’s hill where the wind would often remove the smell of the area almost completely. Since she hadn’t seen them while cleaning, she headed outside, figuring that they must have been up there.

Sure enough, everyone was seated around a few weathered logs that Alyssa and Irulon had set up as a little campsite. The fire was going in the middle. It wasn’t a big bonfire, but it worked to stave off the dark and the cold. The draken weren’t seated next to it, but rather off to the side a bit. Fela, Volta, and Irulon were all seated, however. Alyssa was a bit surprised that Irulon hadn’t found some excuse to run off. Even if she wouldn’t have a body to work with until Alyssa made her a new one, there was surely some research that she would rather be doing at the moment. There was still a lot to be done before any rituals would take place. Or so she said, anyway.

There weren’t really enough seats. It was normally just Irulon, Alyssa, and Fela. Red was on the ground—not that she seemed to mind, she was still just staring at her leg like it was the most fascinating thing in the world—but that still didn’t leave enough seats. So Alyssa pointed a hand and simply conjured one. Or… actualized a miracle? Whatever the terminology was, Alyssa moved up and took a seat on the new little metal stool.

She would have made a matching log, but she had focused almost all of her research on human biology. Creating plants tended to end up poorly. Those leaking balls of gunk she had created when first trying out the power of creation happened nearly every time she tried, even now. She was pretty sure that they were supposed to be some kind of plant matter, but she had no idea what she was doing wrong with them.

“Showing off?”

“A little,” Alyssa admitted. Having whatever she wanted at her fingertips was certainly a useful ability to have. Though it wasn’t quite everything. She still was a little wary about making food. Plant matter, including things like bread and dough, had the aforementioned problem of turning into leaking gunk. As for meat… she honestly wasn’t sure what the difference was between a slice of cow and a slice of human. Biologically speaking. She honestly wasn’t sure that there was a difference. If she conjured up a cubic foot of muscle, marbled with fat, it would never have been part of anything. A scientist could probably look deep into the DNA or something, but she didn’t need to learn much of DNA while creating whole bodies. The miracle filled a lot of gaps in her knowledge. That was one of them.

Presumably. A body she created surely had DNA, but… she couldn’t be sure.

And as for meat… A block of human muscle probably wouldn’t be terrible to eat, but there still was that disquieting sensation deep in her mind that wouldn’t be able to calm down if she actually tried. At the same time, there was a disturbing portion of her mind that wanted to at least try something like that, if only for the experience. After all, a human leg created by her would be completely ethically sound to eat.

Clamping down on that before her train of thought took her to an even stranger place, Alyssa looked over to Volta. “Did she actually get you some food or shall I go fetch some?”

“No. No need. The salted jerky was good. I imagine that we’ll be spending the night here before heading back to Illuna early in the morning. We will be fine until then.”

“If you need anything more, we have a fair stock.” All preserved food. Nothing fresh. But edible and sating enough. Since Volta didn’t ask for anything, Alyssa went on to ask about a topic she was quite glad to have encountered Volta for. “How is Lueta?”

“That depends on who you’re asking. Physically, she is healthy and hale. Emotionally? I don’t think she likes the oasis much at all. She just doesn’t fit in. Literally. She is too big. Which results in her having to sit around outside, curled up. Not too many of the monsters there like to leave the Oasis’ safety. Even for just a few steps outside. I don’t think she has had much in the way of companionship or conversation.”

“Martin is still planning on relocating the monster camp, right?”

“Before I left on this trip, he had sent surveyors out, making sure the area we had suggested on our maps had fertile land. Enough to grow crops of their own. They should be returning soon, if they aren’t already back. Fezzik went with them.”

“Ah. That sounds like good news. It’s not like… in view of Illuna’s walls or anything, is it?”

“No, no. A good few hours of a ride out. Casual speed. If you push horses hard, they could probably get there quicker. Martin is planning on speaking with his son about constructing some watch posts along the road to better facilitate an expedient response if there is an emergency.”

“That’s… good. Right? I mean, Lueta will be able to move back with her old community once they have a place to stay… right? Will the human guards have objections to a giant snake?”

“Certainly,” Volta said with a nod. “But I will try to have a hand in picking the guards closest to their new home. Ones who are more… tolerant of our kind.”

“Illuna seems fairly accepting as it is.”

Alyssa’s statement was marked by a derisive snort from Irulon, though the princess didn’t choose to elaborate.

Volta glanced to her and shrugged. “There is growing dissent. People trying to drum up support for throwing them out or, potentially, attacking them. It is one of the reasons that Martin and his advisers want the monsters relocated as soon as possible. I believe you said it in your meeting with him? Out of sight, out of mind?”

“Something like that.” Maybe she could sneak in a quick meeting with Martin while she was in the city with Volta… Though probably not.

Alyssa and Irulon were getting close. The princess wouldn’t want more delays now. Especially not after Alyssa had effectively taken a whole day off.

And frankly, Alyssa didn’t want to delay much more either.

Closing her eyes as if merely to rest them, Alyssa chanced a spectral glance toward Irulon, watching as the twin souls warred within her. The conflict between the souls was getting more intense by the day, as if the souls could sense their impending separation and wanted to get a last few hits in.

No. Martin could take care of the monsters himself. That was his job.

Helping Irulon was Alyssa’s job. As soon as she finished escorting Volta and Red to Illuna, she would come right back. No getting sidetracked with Martin or monsters.