"Well, I think we've got a solid idea," Caeden told her. "You good with it?"

Hekate nodded. "Yeah, sure. I'm not much of a planner anyway. But I'm sure I can pull off my part of it." It wasn't that complicated, honestly. Then again, they knew next to nothing about the assassin, so Hekate wasn't sure what she was expecting. "If you're confident, then so am I."

"Great! Then I think we should get out of here. It's time to get back on track." Caeden levered himself to his feet, Physical Enhancement coursing through his ravaged leg. The large mass of muscle removed from his limb's lower section meant that he couldn't walk unassisted. But Physical Enhancement was all about improving his physical capabilities, so he stood just fine. Though Hekate wondered how long he could keep that up. They needed to get back to civilization. One that didn't actively hate them.

"Actually, I need to check on something real quick before we go." Hekate stopped him. "But you can load up first."

Hekate had something she considered to be a unique advantage. Her Soul shroud gave her the ability to manipulate her own soul. Previously, this had been useless. After all, her soul couldn't directly interact with the physical world. Now, it was a critical, overwhelming advantage. Normally, a shrouded could only use one splinter at a time. After seeing it in practice, Hekate understood why.

Inside the soul, there were many parts and pieces that acted much like the structures in a living cell. Each had its own function that kept the soul alive and working. Hekate didn't have an unshrouded form comparison, but she assumed a few of those parts were what set shrouded apart. For example, there were pieces that extended out of a soul and let shrouds attach. Caeden had two such pieces.

She was going to go out on a limb, and guess that was why he had two shrouds. Most people were likely born with none of these parts, and most shrouded were born with one. Another piece they had was something her Soul shroud called a Ki Gate. It took Ki into the soul from the soul plain and funneled it into the shroud.

Now, a splinter was when a shroud sprouted a new section off of the main part to form a second section. Hekate had watched this process happen, though in a unique manner, when her shroud evolved. Her Soul shroud disappeared to make way for Necromancy, only for the new shroud to grow Soul back.

The reason why shrouded could only use one domain at a time was because they only had one Ki Gate. When they switched domains, the Gate redirected its flow to the appropriate splinter. At that point, the other shroud had no Ki flow, so it couldn't be used. It seemed the constant flow was a crucial part in a shroud's ability to manifest. So even though the reserve of domain-infused Ki might be full, it couldn't be used because the Ki Gate was redirected. A major inconvenience.

Hekate knew Lily had spent long hours training herself to switch from Cloud to Ice as fast as possible. Hekate guessed that mostly involved training her Ki Gate to respond quickly, like flexing a muscle. Doing it over and over made the Ki Gate's reflex quicker. Hekate was too lazy to do something that mind-numbingly tedious, so she cheated.

Hekate used Soul and copied her Ki Gate. She just made another one. It wasn't even that hard. Now, both her domains were hooked up, and she could use them at the same time. Normally, she might have been more cautious about messing around in her own soul, but she had known it was possible and safe because of the other soul she had gone digging around in earlier that day.

Caeden's soul naturally had two Ki Gates. One for each of his shrouds. So, seeing that, Hekate had thought, 'why not me too?' And so she did it. So it was simple for her to create a Passenger Brute for Caeden to get on while still maintaining her Death Knight.

That was another development. After the battle, she had released her hold on the Summon Undead Army spell and sent all the summons back to wherever they came from. She had waved off the spear and sword Death Knights and got a flaming eye roll in return. Apparently, they weren't too impressed with the work she had them doing.

She had been about to send off the axe knight that she had summoned first when he waved her off. Before she could begin to ask what he wanted, the knight started running his axe along the dirt while leaving glowing flame trials behind. Eventually, he stopped, tapping the but of his axe into the sand twice as if to signal he was done.

What was left appeared to be a series of symbols that Hekate thought looked vaguely familiar. Out of curiosity, she tapped into Necromancy and took a deeper look. Immediately, she made the connection. These were Mana symbols like those that had formed during her summonings. More than that, her shroud told showed her what these symbols meant. As she had seen before, these were a natural part of Mana. Every spell she made would create symbols like this.

It was a sort of chicken-and-egg situation. A spell created these symbols; she didn't need to know them to form a spell. But conversely, reading these symbols would let her recreate the spell they originated from. It was an odd aspect of this new energy she held.

Using her aura, Hekate read the symbols and immediately understood what the axe knight was asking. The symbols formed two spells. One was a specific summoning ritual that would let Hekate call this specific Death Knight back to her, eliminating the random draw aspect of her normal summoning spell.

But that was the second spell. The way the knight was looking at her and nervously tapping his fingers together while cradling his massive axe was telling enough. The special summoning was an alternative to what he really wanted. A sort of 'if you don't pick the first option, please call me again' situation. No, the first spell was entirely different.

It was a spell called Bind Familiar, and it was also tied to the axe knight. Apparently, he didn't want to leave at all. Instead, he wanted to form a permanent bond with her, one much stronger than the current summons bond. In fact, this seemed to be the Mana equivalent of what Caeden had with his hatchling and what Lily had with Snowball and Sky.

She hadn't given him an answer as of yet. Hekate had never really wanted a bonded. Well, that might not be true. When she was very little, she had wanted a bonded pet very much. But shrouded could only bind monsters related to their domain, and no one understood what exactly Soul was. So her hopes had died out. After that, she simply ignored the idea, even after seeing how much Lily loved her bonded.

It felt weird to suddenly have that option just casually offered to her. So she nodded to the knight and told him she'd think about it. She hadn't unsummoned him just yet. She wasn't sure she would. Right now, Hekate didn't know what she wanted. No one ever told her how hard it could be to suddenly get everything you wanted. It was overwhelming and left her feeling like she shouldn't reach for more because she would lose it all.

Instead, Hekate focused on her current objective. That was why she was now standing in front of the bisected corpse of the dragon Caeden had fought. Despite her recent power improvement, Hekate couldn't help but think it was damn impressive that Caeden had managed to split the giant thing in half. The dragon was so large that she could have walked down its throat by barely ducking her head. His claws were longer than her arm. And Caeden had split that in half.

Now, Hekate was hoping to fix it. She knew what necromancy meant. The summoning she had performed was merely the best she could do in the moment. All she could manage in such a short time frame was an adaptation of her Soul mnemonics.

But that was never the main use of her new domain. Resurrecting the dead into unlife was necromancy's bread and butter. And she currently had a prime target to test and practice on. Hekate had no expectations of learning how to create her own undead right this second. As much as it was the natural use of her shroud, Necromancy was a brand new domain for her. She hadn't even had it for a day.

Which all led back to the actual reason why Hekate was standing in front of this corpse. She wasn't going to try and animate it right now. No, she wanted to take her time and really work on perfecting that process, especially since this was the only fresh dragon corpse she was likely to ever get. If she fucked up the resurrection process, she'd be wasting something of incomprehensible value.

Instead, Hekate was trying to figure out a way to carry the giant thing. Her Brutes wouldn't cut it. Nor did she feel like taking the time to develop a summoning from scratch for something that could carry the corpse. No, she was aiming for something much simpler.

Hekate had opened five portals at this point. Nine, if you included the ones that took the summons back. One for the axe knight, one for the undead army, and three for the Nightmares. She had sent the horses and army back, so that made up the other four. The only summon remaining was the axe knight.

Since she needed somewhere to put the giant corpse, Hekate figured she should just make a portal for her personal use. Why not? She just needed it to lead to nowhere. A place that nothing else was. Then she could use that to hold whatever she wanted. Simple, right?

Well, at first, it looked easy. With the assistance of her shroud, Hekate rapidly picked apart one of her summoning spells to single out the part that made a portal. That took less than a minute. But finding somewhere to open the portal to was a problem. Some brief work with her shroud revealed a way to essentially dial in different dimensional coordinates. It just involved changing a specific part of the pattern used to make a portal.

A few minutes of opening small, palm-sized portals to different places was disheartening. It turned out that reality was actually full of stuff. Every portal she opened ended up leading to some other reality. Worse, doing this was bending what her necromantic Mana could do over backward and beating on it. She couldn't make any of those portals big or sustain them for more than a moment. None of the places she reached out to resonated with her Mana, and it destabilized the portal.

Giving up, Hekate called in backup.

"So, the problem is not necessarily making the portal; it's connecting it to a place you can guarantee won't be interfered with that also somewhat connects to your Necromancy." Caeden summed up. They were both sitting in the comfy soulstuff seats on the back of her Passenger Brute.

"Yup." Hekate nodded. Caeden probably had a better chance than her of coming up with a solution. She could freely admit that he and Lily were a lot smarter than her. She had tried to brute force the problem and gotten nowhere. Time to call in the big guns. Or the big brains in this situation.

"Hmm." Caeden hummed, looking around as he contemplated. Staring at the floor, his expression shifted. "Hey Cat, where are souls from?"

"Well, they exist on a plane of reality adjacent to ours." She explained, wondering where he was going with this. "It's not a physical place per se."

"But you can make souls, right? Souls with physical substance, even. That's what your specters are." he kept staring at the floor.

Hekate wasn't sure if that was even a question, but she answered anyway. "Yeah. It's not like souls can't have physical substance. They just exist in a place where the rules are different."

"Ok," Caeden nodded. "Maybe I'm off base with this, but what if you just made a soul and treated it like a storage container on the soul plane? By the way, is there a better name than the soul plane? That's bland as hell."

Hekate ignored him as she had caught on to what he was saying. Immediately, she put the idea into action. Once Caeden brought it up, she felt stupid for not thinking of it herself, which was a normal reaction to Caeden and Lily's ideas. Hekate made a new soul and attached it to her own through a tether. Next, she wanted to change the internal structure of the new, empty soul. She needed a way to store physical objects in something that wasn't physical.

It wasn't impossible. As Caeden said, her specters were an example of a soul turned physical. So she started with that concept as a base. Once she had a sort of protective lining inside the new soul, she started trying to link a portal to it. That got complicated.

Her two domains started to mix and interact as she formed something that was part mnemonic and part spell. Part Ki and part Mana. A need for an intermediary element appeared. Because of the way the soul plane worked, a portal in the same fashion as the other ones was insufficient. She needed something that was both material and immaterial.

Since that seemed an impossible ask, Hekate was about to ask Caeden or scrap the whole idea. Then she looked down at her own shadow on the Passenger Brute's back. A shadow was kinda material and immaterial, wasn't it? It was just the absence of light, but it was also more than that.

On the off chance, Hekate tried to use her shadow as the link between her new soul storage and the Starry Sea's reality. It snapped into place, and her shadow filled with Mana and Ki, darkening into the same black abyss all her portals showed. Flexing the new spell/mnemonic, Hekate watched as her shadow expanded, no longer a reflection of her own form.

"Well, I guess it worked," Caeden commented, looking at the eerily black shadow.

"Pretty much." Hekate nodded. "Well, give me a second, and we'll get moving."

Jumping off the Brute, Hekate let her Dread Cloak expand and grip the air, slowing her fall. From there, she expanded her new Shadow Storage until the dragon corpse slipped into its new home. While she was at it, she had the other Brute that had been hiding out during the last few battles come over and dump all of its cargo of dragon bones, scales, and ether into the extradimensional container as well.

"Alright, let's go." Hekate jumped back up, assisted by her cloak once more. She summoned back a Nightmare for the axe knight, as she still wasn't ready to make that decision.

Then they were off.

{}

It was less than a day later that they reached their destination. Giant pillars of sandstone jutted out of the desert as far as the eye could see, spanning hundreds of feet into the air. Somewhere among these stone monoliths was the ancient structure that Caeden needed to visit.

"Well, we're here."

"Yup."

"Are you ready?"

"Yup."

"So you figured it out?"

"Cae, swear to all the unshrouded gods, I will slap you if you keep asking me that." Hekate threatened. He had been bugging her about whether or not she would be able to handle her part of the plan for hours now. Ever since they first caught sight of the rock formations on the horizon.

"Ok, ok. Just making sure." Caeden raised his hands in supplication.

"Yeah, well, stop." She shot back.

"My bad, my bad. I guess we should get started then." He smiled. "Time to turn the tables."