The next several weeks passed in a flurry of activity. The Combat Guilds of Hakarth came together to send increasingly numerous survey units out into the mountains; most took circuitous routes towards The Rift, encountering erowist in smaller and smaller numbers. The weather warmed, and the hours between sunrise and sunset ever more protracted. More travelers and merchant carts began to disappear while traveling the mountain passes, and so travel shifted sharply towards the trains, which whistled through the streets of the city at all hours of day and night. The first signs of stress began to appear in the great city, largely in the form of Combat Guild members, who would normally have been hired to protect the endeavors of merchants and travelers; they loitered around the city when they were not on patrol, devoid of their most lucrative jobs.

Aron Hart had called together a team from across the universities of Hakarth for no lesser purpose than to determine how to close The Rift. They had managed to recruit only two more necromancers from the mines, in part because the mining guilds called foul on the loss of personnel that were not easily replaced – the city had gotten involved shortly after Jayce’s unexpected departure – and in part because necromancers were rare. There were perhaps several dozen of them living in Hakarth, among which only a handful had lived to a respectable enough age to be considered masters of their craft. Thereafter, Aron and her team had collected a small cohort of Drafters to school their four necromancers in the writing of contracts, and thus bind and interrogate a number of their captive erowist. The results were not neither staggering nor reassuring, but they were consistent enough for the new team to make public the existence and location of The Rift with reasonable certainty.

Thus, the imminent calamity facing Hakarth had become a subject of extensive conversation. Merigold heard it wherever she went, whether she rode the trains to the guild to go out on patrol, or out to the commerce district to meet with her friends and her sister, or to the crematorium, to complete her licensure and select her first official corpse.

Merigold sighed.

She stood in a showroom in a different crematorium than the one where she had captured the erowist. Nonetheless, it was similar. The walls were plastered brick decorated with painted tiles in muted colors that she supposed were meant to be reassuring. Ivy climbed through gaps in the lattice overhead, and the air was perfumed by a number of cream and lavender flowers with heads as big around as her fist. Slick wooden benches were arrayed around the center of the space, unlikely to be comfortable, but certain to inspire a sense of respect for the losses of those who passed through the room.

There was a small man in front of her, paunchy and thick-nosed, with small, drooping eyes that made him look perpetually sad. Merigold did not have the impression he was particularly sad as he walked her up and down a line of corpses, airily directing her towards their finer points.

“This one was mostly healthy, very little damage,” he said in a monotonous voice, “lung damage, but that won’t be a problem. Very nice joints, some scarring around the tibia, good cranial circumference. Look at the dentition. Yes, I see you have an eye for these things. Can’t fool you. Had dental work done that would ruin the bite, but still a nice strong jaw. And this one, a bit old, weak tendons, bones a little brittle…not good for heavy work, but a fine fellow for a survey team. Might fool a bandit into thinking they’ve found an easy target. This one…”

“Gods,” she muttered under her breath. Garret had come with her, and she could feel the discomfort practically radiating off of him as he listened to the man drone on about the various qualities of the corpses. When she glanced back in his direction, it was to find that a faint sheen of sweat colored Garret’s forehead. Noticing her attention, he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, shook it out, and blotted at his face.

“How will you ever choose, Meri,” he said bravely. “so many….so many options.”

“Do you mind if we…take some time to look by ourselves?” Merigold asked, drawing the attention of the presumed owner of the crematorium.

He stopped midsentence, waved his hands as if flustered, and excused himself with an apology, “of course, of course. Listen to me prattling on about this and that. Have at it.” Merigold watched him leave the room, knowing he would be within listening distance in case she had any questions or had made her selectin.

“This is morbid, Meri. So morbid,” Garret said once they were free of the owner’s scrutiny, sucking in a breath through his teeth.

“It really is,” she agreed dryly. “And necromancers have to do this all the time.” She could hear him swallow as she moved a little closer to one of the corpses, wrinkling her nose. It was perfectly preserved, as the owner had promised. There was no scent from it at all, as if it had been magically expunged of odors.

“You have to take these things home, and…keep them in your home,” Garret choked.

“We don’t have cold storage of a sufficient size at home,” Merigold said. “I’ll have to move out.” It was uncommon for children to move from their family home until they married, but there were certainly instances where it was necessary. Awakening as a necromancer and being forced to store numerous corpses in one’s home seemed like such an instance to Merigold.

“How will you manage to work with these when you faint at the sight of blood?” Garret asked after a few moments of watching her silently move down the line.

“That is a very good question, and I have no answer,” Merigold admitted. “At least the blood doesn’t really flow in a corpse anymore, so as long as I can avoid cutting into them, I’ll be fine.”

“Oh yes, of course, why didn’t I think of that,” Garret said with a touch of humor.

Merigold paused. She had reached the end of the line of human corpses, and come to animals. There were a few birds, which she nearly immediately wrote off; it would take her ages to learn how to fly them, and it would be difficult to paint runes or circles over feathers. Among the decrepit corpses of a few snakes was one decent one, a rattlesnake that appeared to have its venom glands intact. A little farther along there was also a cat, its pearly fur the color of snow and expression frozen in haughty regard. Merigold stared at it for a long time, deep in consideration, before she waved over the owner of the crematorium.

“The cat, and that snake,” she said, without preamble.

“Why animals?” Garret asked as they stepped back out into the afternoon sunshine, both relieved to be a little farther from the pall of death. The snake and cat would be delivered to her home, carefully packed in small boxes spelled with circles that would keep them frozen for months if need be. Since they were small, they would be inconspicuous…and portable.

“I have to carry them with me,” Merigold explained. “It takes too much energy to keep them active all the time, and besides, animals are more economical.”

“And less human,” Garret observed, to which Merigold sniffed meaningfully.

Neither of them spoke for a while, after that. They ambled through the sweet-smelling streets of one of the residential districts on the south side of the city, enjoying the flowering fruit-trees that lined boulevards and side-streets, the ornate iron trellises thick with greenery that delimited townhouses, and the swell of birdsong from thorny acacias that hung out over the train stops that dotted their chosen route. Eventually, they could hear, and then see, the banks of the Gilda through the houses. Garret and Merigold strolled towards the sparkling river waters, eyes following a strand of thick clouds through the skies above Hakarth.

“How many days do you think before we try to close The Rift, Garret?” Merigold asked softly, breaking the spell of peace between them. Garret shrugged awkwardly – whenever he shrugged his massive shoulders, it somehow felt awkward.

“The Academies will set the date, assuming the erowist don’t come pouring out on their own. They’ve been collecting all the survey data…”

“And hoarding it,” Merigold said a bit disdainfully. Garret chuckled.

“They’re studying it, Meri. No one has ever closed a Rift like this before. No one may have even known such a Rift existed. We need a plan of action,” Garret explained.

Again, the silence fell. Insects buzzed in the tall grasses at the river’s edge. A cyclist squealed past them, copper rims flashing in the sun. In the distance, they heard the train bellow as it came into a nearby station. All the sounds of Hakarth seemed to gather along the river banks, carried downstream by the Gilda. Perhaps somewhere in the distance, they fell off with the water into a hissing falls, straight down into the ravine known as the Cloud Abyss. The Rift was not far from that ravine.

“When the time comes, Garret, I have a favor to ask you,” Merigold said cautiously.

“Me and not Alecia or Reese?” Garret asked. Merigold was silent for a moment, contemplating her answer.

In the end, she settled for, “I haven’t asked Alecia yet, but I plan to. I’ll need you both.”

“Alright, Meri. What’s this favor.”

“I want you to help me steal the erowist I contracted from the lab.”

Garret seemed surprised. She could see the gears turning in his mind as his brows furrowed and his eyes sought out something in her expression that might or might not be there.

“You have to steal it?” he asked.

“I have to remove it from the protections currently in place. I have a plan, but I don’t think the guilds or the Academy will trust me with it,” she replied.

“Why don’t we wait,” he suggested reasonably, “wait and hear what method the Academies come up with to seal The Rift.”

“We will,” she said, seeing his shoulders noticeably relax. “I’m just preparing myself, Garret, because I have a feeling the necromancers are going to bright on the front lines this time.”

“I find that very unlikely,” he said. “Unless some monstrous erowist comes bursting out of The Rift, there’s a chance we can seal it without any more real fighting at all.”

Merigold did not bother to disagree with him. Garret had not been there when the erowist recounted what lay beyond The Rift; many more of its kind, hungry for the Astral energies that had escaped their plane of existence and were now focused in the people of Venerith. It was possible, but unlikely, that she was the only one in Hakarth who woke every morning with the expectation that another creature like Ughvac would attack the city, and quite possibly not alone.

“Don’t worry, Meri,” he said, his gaze swept away with one of the colorful canoes on the Gilda. Merigold shook her head.

“Maybe worry a little more,” she suggested.