"What the hell-"

Landar looked up from her soup as Cato rustled the papers again. A packet bearing the Inath Federation royal seals had arrived this morning and he had been poring over them since breakfast.

"What's hell?" she asked, deciding to tackle the easier question first.

"How can you not... oh right, no religion," Cato sighed and threw down the sheets he was comparing, "this is the summoning diagram present in the ritual the Queen Amarante used with her advisors to bring Morey here. Since the Hero and I come from the same world, I was hoping there would be a clue as to why I was brought here as well. The Queen finally managed to convince her court to send me a copy of the notes made by the court scholars. "

She considered the lopsided pentagon of symbols meticulously drawn onto the paper. The sheets below looked like charcoal rubbings of the actual runes. "So what's the problem?"

"It makes no sense whatsoever," Cato said, closing his eyes in frustration, "they say that the diagram doesn't require magic, they say that these runes perform the summoning itself when carved onto the stone in the Summoning Chamber in the ruins of the First Landing city. And they also say that they detect no magical signature as it was working as well! Is this even magical? But if its not magical, what else can bring someone across worlds!"

"They say the aura lights in the mountains bridge worlds too," Landar noted.

"But it's not the same thing! Ka reported that he did feel magic from the aura lights, that was precisely what alerted him to the danger! Besides, according to these notes, the runes aren't even charged the way you created the magic circle threads. They aren't affected by disruption magic, a test I specifically asked about, and seem to ignore magical shields or anything else in the supposed target area!"

"Well, the Summoning is one of those mysteries of the First," Landar shrugged, "its always been there and despite whatever the scholars say, no one really understands the magic that the First used. Even crysteel is something that we here haven't managed to understand completely. "

"Crysteel is different," Cato waved a hand, "it's a material, something that we can study. Didn't Omal already determine the proportion of magical and physical material in the sample? These runes are not the same thing, they shouldn't even work. They don't operate by the principles of magic we know and yet magic they must be. "

They sat there in the University cafeteria in silence for a time.

"Anyway, I sort of... well, made a breakthrough. Sort of," Landar said hesitantly.

He accepted the blatant changing of subject and put aside the stack of papers. "So?"

"The aura lights. I had Ka help me with attempting to recreate the magical effect. Before you yell about safety, I did this in the test bunkers with very low power. Not that it was dangerous at all. " Landar preempted his objection and smiled as Cato shut his mouth. "I didn't quite find what I was looking for. I had Ka tell me what the colours of the magic I was using was and tried to get close to what he saw. Instead, I got a... blackness instead of light. He said the magical colour was the same but the structure of the magic was still different. "

"A blackness, you say?" Cato narrowed his eyes. There was one magical effect he recalled before.

"Yes. It was sort of like a shadow, but in the air, like this," Landar said, holding up a hand. Above it, her magic converged to create a magical material and a small floating shadow appeared. While light still passed through the area, things behind the spherical zone appeared shaded and less bright. It was a familiar sight.

"That's the same thing as a tremor," he noted.

"Well, not quite," Landar took up her spoon and shoved it into the shadow. It disappeared for a moment before suddenly fading into existence on the other side. "I don't think tremors work that way. We do see the same shadow effect in isolated tremors, particularly the glass box experiment, but things eaten by the shadow don't return. Since this effect is related to the aura lights, I think something different is going on here. For example, take a look at this. "

She conjured a smaller ball of shadow, too small for the spoon and stuck the same spoon back in. The handle in her hand remained still, but the portion of the spoon in the darkness disappeared.

Not just disappeared, but it also faded out, going from perfectly normal and solid outside of the shade and disappearing like thin mist in the center. Like a transparent film losing its colour, the spoon got less and less opaque the further it was into the edge of the shadow until it was completely gone by the time it reached the dark bubble in the middle.

"There's more," Landar said, releasing the handle. It swung around, as if rotating around the invisible head of the spoon before dropping out of the area onto the table with a clack.

"That looks like the inertia increasing version of the movement functions of magic," Cato pointed out.

"Indeed. I don't think it's that simple though, the disappearing trick seems to indicate otherwise. "

They stared at the spoon for a moment.

"I think we need a balanced ruler-" "We should try overlapping disappeared objects-"

Cato looked at Landar only to find her meeting his eyes.

Omal watched his bosses discuss the newest magical thing on the other side of the cafeteria, occasionally sticking spoons, bowls and even pouring water on a little orb of darkness. Each thing they tried was followed by quick murmurs, gestures then a short silence before one or both suggested something new. The soup in front of them lay forgotten.

He held down the bowl with the hook on his missing left hand while eating from his right. Adest sitting across from him grinned as she followed his eyes.

"Those two are so sweet, aren't they?"

He turned back and smiled, "it's amazing to watch them work together. No one is better than them at the Investigation Method. "

The battlemage looked at him dryly, "you know that's not what I meant. "

"And yes, they would make a good couple," Omal rolled his eyes, "if only they would just wise up and get together already. "

"That would be difficult when they just don't feel it," Adest replied. What feeling she was referring to was obvious from the way her eyes smouldered when she looked at him.

Omal grinned, "well then, shall we show them the difference?"

"Not like they would notice," Adest muttered as she smiled back, "we've practically done everything we can except locking them into an empty room together. "

"Nah, that's not going to work either, they'll just end up discussing lockpicks or something. "

The scarred alchemist held out his hooked limb and frowned before offering his whole off-hand. "Don't," she said softly, taking the cold steel and pulling him away from the cafeteria, "don't be ashamed, this hand is a badge of honour. You stood by Landar when she started this place, something I believe she still thanks you for. "

Omal sighed and gestured her out with a smile.

Amarante relaxed for a first time in a while when the carriage finally passed through the ceremonial gates of the Izalice, capital city of the Federation and seat of her power. The largest city in the known world sprawled before her as her window passed by the final crest of the hill. Built on the confluence of two rivers, the Danath and Fornath, the palace of smooth grey stone sat just north of the center of the city, right in the little triangle of the rivers' meeting point.

The difference in atmosphere was immediately obvious, both to the queen and her entourage. The escort party, Flowers of Arcia, and the coach and baggage men also relaxed as the familiar quiet murmurs of the capital washed over them.

Compared to the frenetic pace of Minmay, Izalice was a gentler town, reflecting their queen's own nature. Bright and cheery, even welcoming, the streets were open and the districts uncrowded. Small patches of green and fountains dotted the plazas, the symbols of the federation done in full detail of the small differences in culture between the countries. It gave a kind and diplomatic feeling to any visitors, a beautiful vision of cooperation, of what the world could be like.

Yet there was also an undercurrent of strength and order, influences of Vorril's own. Guards and patrols talked with the residents and merchants in their areas, public workers maintaining the city's image, all of that organization also gave a sense of responsibility.

It was a well ordered, well done city. Even the workshops and light factories that had been copied from Minmay ideas also conformed to the local aesthetic, hiding their riotous colours and garishness under a veneer of refinement.

"It is good to be back," she sighed in relief. Vorril looked up from the stack of general reports his people had given him in Ektal. Honestly, did this man ever relax?

"Our work never ends, managing the realm from afar in Ektal is so inefficient," he grumbled, not seriously of course. He did love the trip in reality. And his discussions about the tactics used in the little war between the local regions.

"Come now, it was a learning experience. And seeing the impact of the new developments on the culture was interesting. " And worrying too. The similarity with the ideas of the otherworlders and the First was unnerving, now that she compared Cato and Morey. The Hero was definitely more inspiring and useful than he thought.

"Does it worry you?"

Amarante hummed to herself, thinking the question over. The situation was complicated by the fact that none of the inventions were truly objectionable. Nothing she could put her finger on. Better medicines? How could anyone object to that? Better weapons? If they were aimed at the monsters, and a giant zombie army at the doorstep focused the human aggressiveness wonderfully, then how could it hurt?

But it was the overall culture and atmosphere of Minmay that got to her. The sense that anything could be achieved, that wonders could be made, if only one could understand the world and one could do good enough work.

It was the same sense of optimism that Amarante had seen in the recovered stories and texts of the First and the Tsar in the early days. Before the Great War.

Would it lead to their destruction, generations down the line? Would they trade the problem of monsters for one of a world destroying civil war?

For Amarante knew intimately how having weapons and a lack of outside enemies could make people greedy and all too willing to see differences with each other. Those were the foundation on which her father had started the Federation and she had completed his work, after all.

One pillar, the disarmament, was all but eroded less than ten years after the project was complete. Now she had to hope the Federation was close enough and strong enough in its traditions to hold them together when military ambitions became viable again.

She never noticed how the question died in the air and how Vorril sighed at her.

Kupo frowned as she put aside the pieces of glass. The makeshift microscope, a barely ten times magnification device, was something that had never been seen before. The potential to learn something new from seeing tiny structures was immense, so of course she had immediately turned it towards studying pieces of zombies.

Little slices of flesh so thinly cut that they were transparent, plus droplets of blood for humans and freshly risen zombies, were collected from both living and dead humans, new and old zombies and even bits of animals and plants. All of that collection was preserved under colourless wax and sterilized. A first attempt at a biological collection that would have any healer salivating to study.

And she couldn't see any differences.

The reinstated Pastora healer rolled out the crick in her shoulders and sighed. Well, she couldn't expect to just look at something as complicated as a human body and immediately understand it. She needed more tools, better tools.

Besides, her task was a bit too broad. Working in conjunction with Landar, who was so busy with fingers in every project that she never had as much time as Kupo wanted, she was given the task of understanding zombies. How the bodies were animated, how their 'biology' worked, how they managed to display rudimentary organization and apparent intelligence. Whether the zombies were sentient at all. How and why they developed new abilities.

It wasn't unfair to say that Kupo was told to understand their enemy and left to her own devices. This was a project for a full team but apart from the visiting Pastora healers volunteering their time, no one else was helping her.

She thumbed through the folders of notes and decided to switch tracks to the problem of zombie intelligence.

The issue was that zombies clearly displayed some level of instinctual behaviour, like walking and clawing. They also demonstrated pack behaviour, signaling each other through magic. In fact, all their senses were a form of magic detection of one sort or other. Landar and herself had found out early on that zombies treated magical disruption fields like a solid wall.

The problem was that there was no brain. Landar had crafted a magical equivalent of needles, highly precise and overpowered magical disruption that literally put a hole through any lifeforce. It had proven to work as a painless and instant execution method when applied to the head, for humans. Zombies just seemed to ignore the hit, apart from slowing down a little from the disruption to their magic.

That meant whatever was inside the head wasn't an actual brain controlling the body. Afterwards, Kupo had decided to do a more obvious test and decapitated a zombie, the headless body continued to display the usual zombie behaviours.

So where did the zombies keep their intelligence? Zombified hands and arms did drag themselves towards any living thing nearby, if slowly. Was it simply imbued into their magic?

Kupo looked at the microscope again. What she really needed was a microscope for magic. To see what was different in zombie and human lifeforce.

She scribbled down her musings, perhaps she should talk to Bashal. His attempt to collect samples of every type of material in the world might have something that could act like a lens for the magic sense. It was a long shot but if Kupo could just get her hands on something useful, she would surely gain more understanding about lifeforce.

And then there was her files on the current vaccine and antibiotic trials. Vaccines looked unsure to Kupo, she didn't think having diseases with a magical lifeforce would mean the body's immune system worked the same way. Antibiotics were experimentally proven in her germ dishes and so it was just a matter of finding that one variant that didn't poison the patient as well. Doable but a massive amount of work with Kalny's young organic chemistry branch. One more collaborator to talk to.

Honestly, when Kupo was asked to be a regional leader in a permanent posting, she had imagined running a large clinic and leading other healers. Which she did have to do. But all this... this academics! How much work was Cato going to dump on her?! The number of investigation notes and files he insisted she take was filling most of a small room already.

She spent more time in her day writing notes, ideas and observations down than actually healing anyone.

Healing work, zombie biology and behavioural research, vaccine and antibiotic trials... oh and her lifeforce research with Landar. Kupo had already turned down another offer of a research line into Ems and demihumans. How Landar managed her even crazier workload was beyond Kupo. She just wanted to heal people!

Pastora didn't have enough competent healers willing to move back who could act as research assistants. Trainees ate time in the clinic and no one wanted to trust them with potentially life affecting lab work until proven. And alchemists or scholars from the University didn't have the proper medical background.

Kupo sighed and lay down her cheek onto her desk. She knew that in the long run, this work would heal more people than any amount of time she spent in the clinic.

And whining wasn't going to help. Best get back to it.

Kupo picked up her fountain pen.

The atmosphere hung over the valley like a dark cloud, blotting out every inch of calm. For weeks, the zombies had been milling around the northern entrance, gathering in numbers unseen.

Iffa was just a run of the mill swordswoman, until their party had been handed legacy bowguns and told to train. Now, they went out into the valley by order of the Fort Commander Erin, to dig holes for the Minmay engineers behind them to lay mines.

Every day, shipments of mines, fireshells and new weapons arrived. More parties join the defence, new trenches were dug, traps were laid, large rocks perched on the valley walls to roll down later.

And each day the zombies delayed their attack, the tension in the camp ratcheted just a little higher. They could feel the pressure building, as if the zombies' magic was pressing down on them, even if that was impossible from this distance. The hammer would fall eventually, it was up to the defenders to be ready for the zombies when the attack finally came.

Fort Yang had a garrison of more than seven thousand now, plus almost as much in merchants, alchemists and blacksmiths and other supporting jobs. All of that supported by the military budget of the country. Perhaps half the fighting force of Ektal was concentrated into this valley two kilometers across.

For all the supposed uselessness of the wall, the stone barrier was being extended and heavily enchanted. With how huge it was, the two storey wall was stretched to cover the valley from end to end. Now, construction was starting on a one storey high wooden palisade in front, in between the stone wall and the raised earthern berm that used to be the final line of defence, containing covered dugouts for the magic projectile throwers that had replaced the hastily constructed catapults of the first attack.

With three layers of trenches and mines beyond it, Fort Yang was nigh impenetrable to any human force attacking from the north. The cost in lives to take the fort by force was just too prohibitive.

Not that zombies cared about that.

Iffa looked out over her trench at the barren landscape beyond the trenches. The sheer walls of the valley might still be green and lush but the bottom looked like the Little Sands. Nothing but dirt and rocks, with a covering of quick growing grass.

"I wish the zombies would just hurry up and attack! All this waiting is killing me!"

The familiar voice of her teammate and sister in arms, Bella, popped up next to her. The small archer had a tendency to appear unexpectedly, like a weed as their party leader often compared her to.

"Hey! Make some noise! You know it's rude to walk up behind someone silently," she chided her friend. Whistling or talking softly was fast becoming a trend here at Fort Yang. The veterans of the first attacks sometimes reacted badly to anything they thought was a zombie.

"And don't say that," Iffa continued, "a zombie attack means people are going to die. "

"But if they attack earlier, that means there will be less zombies?" Bella lilted it into a question, "Isn't it better to fight less zombies now than to fight more later?"

"And there'll be more defenses. The longer the peace the better, I'd say. "

A bugle cut through their conversation, it had been retreading points both of them had debated over and over. And the bugle was calling for all non-patrolling soldiers to muster immediately. With a shared glance, they set off to the gathering grounds.

The commander Erin was already there in all her armour. Her party arrayed behind her, with a messenger bearing the Ektal royal crest among them.

"... the state of affairs, the zombies gather forces faster than we do. The addition of animal bodies to their force is swelling their ranks beyond anything we have seen. If we do not attack now, we risk being overrun when they finally decide to attack. To overcome our disadvantages, we have created a plan, but this will take coordination and cooperation from all of you. The battle plan and your positions will be distributed over the next day and drills will start immediately. "

Iffa met Bella's gaze. "Did that sound to you like we are taking the offensive?" she asked blankly.

Bella nodded mutely.

That was not what either of them had expected and she wagered, what almost no one else in the garrison had expected either.

Cato,

Morey here. The war goes well, Illastein is almost free. The last loyalists are holed up and under siege in an old underground fort near the western sea. Rather than engage them in costly tunnel fighting, I have elected to simply surround and starve them out. We estimate they will run out of food in four months time.

The fort was built by the Tsar, probably to protect what appears to be a major research facility buried in the sands. We have since recovered the buildings and I am sending you the artifacts recovered. Most of them are in pieces, you might get something out of them but I doubt it. Two however are relatively intact, only that their function is unknown since the magic has long since disenchanted. A long crystalline rod of unknown but magical material and strange circular platform found at the bottom of the central shaft.

The main treasure however, is what scraps of surviving records in cabinets and record rooms. Most are ledgers, day to day journals and requisition forms that are mostly untranslatable. I did recover part of one file that has heavy ramifications for understanding the Great War. I have the originals being sent by an overland wagon, while this copy proceeds more quickly via sea.

Record of Humanity (human-plural-global category?) Ascension (transformation, greatest potential) Project

... change in lifeforce not known to have deleterious effect... applicable to live subjects... funding sufficient to begin research...

... fairness, desired method to spread changes through population without individual lab time...

... no logical reason for protests of Conservation (preserve-proper noun), no reason to halt research. Their threats are the feeble protests of those who are afraid to improve themselves. They may have the numbers but we have the quality, if they wish to fight, the staff will support the...

... in materials and time is within projection. Lifeshaping can be completed in less than six months, the granted abilities will allow volunteers to... spread of new abilities subject only to population...

Our goal is now in sight. ... can be free of the material world.

This is the culmination (end-apex) of all our efforts. Our bodies will not need ... Our forms will not be limited. ... that fall can be ...

We will achieve our ... will become immortal (death-negative).

We must succeed. We cannot allow interference.

I feel that further elaboration is unnecessary. I shall leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Morey