The pieces began to fall into place for Reshid.

Taking only the newest revenants wasn’t just cheaper for the human merchant prince, it was necessary. It provided Agatha with plenty of test subjects to develop new and useful revenants, and ensured that none of them would be much of a threat to the local garrison.

More importantly, they needed the help that this little training base offered. None of them could protect themselves from the ghouls.

These people had rescued them, in a way, and now were preparing to offer knowledge, protection, and power in return for service. If he, or any of them, didn’t agree, they would simply let them go free. Free, that is, into the ghoul-infested Deep Paths. It was the same old carrot-and-stick maneuver that every government used to conscript soldiers, but the stick was already built-in.

Reshid’s stomach roiled. Were they going to force him to fight? The thought made him furious. Irrationally, he realized, but that didn’t change the fact.

“I’m not going to fight your wars for you. Or anyone’s.” he hissed. He could smell smoke. Faces whose names he couldn’t remember swam in his mind’s eye. People he cared about, he knew. Family. Soldiers. Victims.

Agatha looked a little bit taken aback, “Oh, not to worry. You don’t need to fight. It’s fine! Cultivator revenants are useful in lots of different ways. We’ll find a good place for you. Don’t worry.”

She turned, gesturing for him to follow and led him out of the village toward the trees. Agatha peppered him with many of the same questions as he had gotten from Bartholomew earlier, probably to calm him down. It worked, and he answered them as best he could. Before long, they reached a massive conifer tree. To reach it, they had to push through thick undergrowth that reached even under the tree’s boughs, nearly to the trunk. Its trunk was easily as wide as Reshid was tall, and he could feel the essence radiating from it like a warm breeze and giving the air around it a greenish tinge that only he could see.

“You want me to draw the essence out?” Reshid asked.

Agatha gave him a reproachful look “What? No, of course not. Look at it!” She gestured at the tree. “It’s ancient, nearly supersaturated. You’re going to push it over the edge to get it to start crystal formation.”

That made sense. Useful essence crystals were always hard to come by. If Agatha could teach him how to make them… well, he didn’t really know what it would mean. But he was certain he could turn it to his advantage.

Still, he was skeptical, and he looked from the tree back to her. “So, what do I do? I just put essence in a tree, and I get crystals out?”

She huffed out a breath in a half-hearted chuckle. “Simple, maybe, but not easy. This tree had to stand there generating essence undisturbed for generations. There’s no telling if it would start forming a crystal today or in 10 years if we just left it to itself. With you, though, we don’t have to wait; you can just add more essence directly until the process starts. Then we come back a few weeks later and collect the prize.”

Curious, Reshid pulled out his crystal, drew out the essence, and pushed it into the tree. It was difficult, like trying to cram a cloak into a pack that didn’t quite have enough room in it. Worse, he could feel the essence moving around in the tree, flowing up from the ground toward the branches, and back down from the leaves in a continuous loop. Feeling around, he tried to push his own essence into one of these veins, following the same direction. A tiny bit of essence went in, and nearly half of that seemed to seep back out of the tree before the rest was absorbed into the flow.

This was going to be just great.

“Now what?”

Agatha had already turned, and was walking away.

“Keep going. You’ll be able to accelerate the process a lot, but it’s a big tree.”

Sighing, Reshid sat down in the shade and waited to recover enough of his concentration to try again. He looked around, already bored. Maybe there were some other interesting things around here to find?

–-----

When he arrived back at the stables for dinner, something was different. Hasan’s revenants weren’t all sitting together, as they usually did. Instead, one or two sat at each table, waiting for them.

Em already had her food, and was moving to sit at the same table as the day before. She settled down across from the waiting revenant. The revenant in question was the same fire elementalist that had removed his chains when they had arrived at the village. Reshid guessed that Hasan was assigning them as lieutenants over the new recruits. What would that mean for him, if he wasn’t going to be forced to fight?

The two struck up a conversation as Reshid hurried to grab a plate, remembering to thank Eiri and pay her cooking a compliment before making his way over to sit next to Em. Charlie had gotten there first, along with two other revenant recruits that Reshid hadn’t spoken to before. The revenant was talking animatedly, gesturing broadly as her hair sparked and flames flickered on her head. The heat caused an updraft that made her move in its own breeze, almost as if it had a mind of its own.

“An air elemental with your kind of expression is incredibly rare. Mostly they can influence the weather, move quickly, or blow air in one direction or another. The kind of narrow air stream you were making today is something I've never seen before. You could learn to fly, maybe—you should have heard Hasan earlier, he’s ecstatic!”

Em looked more than a little self conscious at the woman’s effusiveness. So, seeing Reshid arrive, she quickly took advantage of the opportunity to change the subject.

“Ah! Hi Reshid. Meet Idrin. She’s joining us to… help show us the ropes?” She said uncertainly. Idrin nodded casually.

“That’s right. Hasan wants us to help you ‘integrate into our community.’ It’s important that you understand who we are, apart from that we’re working with the pinkies to keep out the ghouls. I mean, you guys are still new down here. We know first hand that getting up from dying has a way of scrambling your brains. You’re probably still pretty confused. It’s about time you got an orientation! Anyway, there aren’t that many revenants out there—we have to stick together!”

Hmm. At least she had a better-sounding pitch than Agatha. Reshid felt himself relax slightly. Idrin’s friendly and unassuming attitude struck a chord, something he hadn’t realized had been missing. She seemed so… normal. He smiled at her as he sat down.

“Great! So, what did you mean about Em’s “expression?” Is she more powerful than normal air revenants?”

What Reshid didn’t ask, of course, was what that meant for him. Bartholomew had called him extraordinarily weak for a cultivation revenant.

Idrin shook her head.

“No, no. That’s not how it works. Your abilities are expressed according to what you are, or what your purpose is, or something. It’s kind of philosophical, but every one of us is unique. The essence you attune has its own purpose. For example, fire burns things. Not a big surprise there. But, you also have your own essence, and your own unique idea of what fire is for. That matters, too. When you attune your essence, you’re mixing it into your own. A blacksmith turned revenant has a different kind of relationship to fire than a librarian might. You’re balancing your own soul against that of your element. Everyone gets different results. I’m not very good at the theory, but power isn’t a big deal in my experience. You’ll catch up, but there’s a ceiling of sorts. You can overdraw more essence into yourself to get more powerful, but it’s not a good idea to do too much of that. Revenants that go too far sort of lose more of themselves. They become more like their essence and less like people… Anyway, we get a little stronger as we get older, but it's almost too slow to matter. It would take a hundred years or more before you'd really notice a difference. As far as we can tell, we’re all about the same here.”

A wiry man sitting next to Charlie shuddered. “Wait, so overdrawing essence can make you into a monster? Like the ghouls?”

“No, not like that, really. A stone elementalist that tries to get too powerful will just become more like a stone. You know, standing still, lying around, rolling downhill when pushed, and being very, very solid. He becomes an elemental. Not inherently threatening, if you ask me. Ghouls have the opposite problem. They take essence from other people, and usually overdraw it as well. Their element is humans, you might say. The problem with that is that people aren’t as simple as, for example, fire. Now, this is important."

Idrin was sitting up straight now, her expression serious and making eye contact with each of them to make sure they were paying attention.

"A few months of consuming essence from different humans is more than enough to drive almost anyone insane. Worse if they're draining revenants that have other essences mixed in. Most ghouls don't really have a choice, they don't know what they're doing and just attune whatever essence they can sense first. Some revenants attune to particular animals, which works better, but it still messes with their minds if you ask me.” As she said this, she glanced meaningfully toward another table, where a revenant with ram’s horns was talking to another group of newcomers.

The man caught them looking and glared in their direction. His eyes were too far apart, and he had square pupils like a goat. Idrin smiled at him and made a rude gesture. He responded in kind, but then pointedly turned back to his own group of revenants, which appeared to include two other animal revenants—one with feathers growing from his head, and another with a long, bushy tail that twitched every few seconds.

Reshid returned his attention to Idrin, who was now animatedly describing how different types of revenants competed with each other. Naturally, her position was that purely elemental essences were the safest and most practical option. Beast revenants swore by the bodily enhancement that their essences offered, while those with more complex or abstract essences believed that their ability to specialize narrowly helped them to maximize the use of their power while minimizing any impact on their personalities.

Reshid was glad to finally have a willing source of information and absorbed the information greedily. The others were much the same, asking questions about their own attunements, the village, and what the future would hold for them.

The village, it turned out, was just the uppermost of hundreds of revenant towns and cities, though Idrin didn't know very much about those—she hadn't traveled very far herself. As a small and relatively isolated settlement, it was vulnerable to ghouls, which kept showing up in greater numbers. That was why Hasan had agreed to an alliance with the Free Cities. Martial support and guidance in exchange for open trade. Frederik, a low-ranking merchant prince from Duskhaven, might think he controlled the revenants, but their position in the Deep Paths was tenuous, based on fragile supply lines maintained by Hasan and the other revenants.

Reshid understood the problem that the humans faced. Not many would risk the wrath of a god to go where the living were forbidden. Even the brave or desperate usually had other, less dangerous options. After all, the dark places under the earth weren’t kind to surface dwellers—even if they could escape the notice of the Pantheon’s priests.

After an hour or so of intense chatter, most of Hasan’s other revenants grew tired of babysitting the new recruits and the groups broke apart. Idrin didn’t seem to mind, though, answering all questions with patience and inexhaustible enthusiasm. When they finally turned in for the night, Reshid felt hopeful for the first time that he could remember.

There was more to the future here than war and monsters. There was politics at work, sure, but there were also good people and new possibilities. Maybe there could be life after death, if he could avoid becoming a pawn for someone else's ambitions. There was an entire world in the Deep Paths, and he was going to see it.