“My sire spent centuries studying this phenomena, and guarding what he learned with draconic obsession. Even I, his most trusted scion and pupil was kept ignorant of most of the research, well until recently that is. As the former Count’s successor, I’ve taken ownership of his notes and more importantly the content of his mind. The information has been enlightening, to say the least, and I truly believe despite his exhaustive work, Count Archeon Gens Silva only scratched the surface of ‘soul hollows’ and their implications. Already I’ve started on several projects to not just revolutionize necromancy but fundamentally evolve the magical arts.”- From the private library of Countess Isabelle Gens Silva.

  On paper Natalie’s idea was simple, enter Cole’s mindscape, learn something useful, and then get out. However, as she carefully constructed the psychic bridge that would link their minds, Natalie started to have doubts. Cole’s history with this kind of magic was… messy, and just pulling him into her own mindscape a few weeks ago had torn open old wounds that took some effort to sew shut. Sure, Natalie managed to help Cole through that episode, but she’d been in her own mind then, which was as friendly territory as one could get. If Cole were to have a similar reaction except with her inside his mindscape… well, that didn’t seem like it would be fun for anyone involved.

  Not long ago this concern would have been enough to make Natalie discard her plan, but circumstances had changed for the worse. The Duchies knew about Cole and would be most certainly searching for ways to eliminate him. Bad as that was, Wolfgang held Isabelle captive, and he’d already proved himself capable of reverse-engineering her work. There was a distinct possibility Natalie’s great-uncle might find a way to truly kill or at least ruin Cole using whatever secrets he could pry from the former countess. Then, of course, Master Time’s message to Mina couldn’t be ignored. The Tenth God himself prognosticated doom if knowledge of creating immortal homunculi spread. All of this and more pushed Natalie forward, they needed answers, and entering Cole’s mindscape seemed the best way to get them.

  Still, there was a difference between being desperate and stupid; Natalie had some ideas on how to maybe do this safely; chief among them was the exceptionally sturdy psychic bridge she was currently working on. There were many ways to lay the foundation for a mental link and Natalie had done most of them with Cole already. Hells, for Natalie forming a basic connection with him, took practically no effort, all the components were there in bulk. But she wasn’t going to risk either of them on a flimsy string snapped into place by a moment’s eye contact; no, Natalie was going to take all these strands connecting her to Cole and weave them into a web that wouldn’t break.

  If Natalie was being honest, she’d been looking for a chance to form a link like this with Cole for some time now. Being able to communicate telepathically seemed a rather useful boon considering everything that the couple had gone through. However, Cole’s own issues and Natalie’s desire not to come off as the ultimate overbearing partner kept her quiet about the idea. But in the face of so many threats, drastic measures were needed, and better to iron out all the kinks now, or just discard the whole premise, instead of while fighting to survive in the rot lands.

  As the final threads fell into place, Natalie let her senses refocus on her surroundings. The couple sat in their tent, facing each other, both deep in their own preparations. While Natalie was done, she didn’t know about Cole’s. He sat eyes closed, legs crossed, taking deep steady breaths. There was an odd rhythm to his exhalation and according to him, he was trying a focusing technique he’d learned from a Priestess of Aunt Seeress but never got the chance to really use before. It was supposed to help with sword-stress but considering most of the time that manifested for Cole as night terrors he’d gotten little use from it so far.

  After maybe a minute or two more, Cole slowly opened his eyes and nodded. “I think I’m ready.”

  Swallowing pointlessly, Natalie returned his nod but before she could start the magic, Cole held up a hand and said. “Before we begin, I just…”

  Shaking his head as he trailed off, Cole went silent. Gently reaching out to cup his burned face, Natalie asked. “What is it?”

  Forcing himself to meet her eyes, Cole wrestled out his words. “Please, don’t look at me differently after this.”

  Natalie’s still heart spasmed and she let out a sigh; it hurt to see the so confident Cole wracked with such doubts. Having his nature exposed had cracked something within him, and old fears were bubbling free. Coming up a little on her knees so she could put her forehead against his, Natalie whispered. “I won’t, Cole, I promise.”

  Taking a shuddering breath, Cole met her eyes. “Let’s start then.”

  Nodding, Natalie gently reached out to her bridge, feeling the interwoven strands that connected to Cole. Slowly, she eased herself along the bridge, moving between moments of connection like a sailor might rigging. So far the link was sturdy as steel, and Cole’s mind lay open and welcoming. Gliding along, Natalie moved a little faster, cloaking herself in memories of warm kisses and warmer moments. With the type of gentleness reserved for lovers and the wounded, Natalie slipped into Cole’s mindscape.

  As the world of the tent faded into darkness, Natalie prepared her tools. Metaphors and memories of all forms flowed around the Alukah, ready to help in every situation she could conceive. This was the heart of psychic magic, using the contents of one’s own mind to navigate another’s; a dangerous art for all involved but one Natalie had a knack for. Still, skill could only take one so far, and Natalie was dangerously lacking in experience; well, arcane experience that is. Natalie knew how people worked, and more specifically how Cole worked, that had to count for something. Besides, she’d listened to him describe his dreams many a time, Natalie knew what to expect.

  That being said, suddenly dropping out of darkness into an ashen thunderstorm wasn’t pleasant. One moment, Natalie was gently sinking into the umbric meniscus of Cole’s mindscape, next she’d passed through and was plummeting. Biting down an undignified shriek, Natalie cart-wheeled through clouds of burnt sienna trying not to inhale the coarse dust all around her. Somewhere distant thunder boomed and a bolt of pale lightning screamed across the sky. As afterimages faded from her mind’s eye, Natalie decided this was quite enough and pulled out her first tool.

  * Standing amid the Tenth Temple’s statue garden, watching a collection of corvids squabble over kitchen scraps, black wings fluttering. *

  The rustle of feathers cut through the roaring wind and Natalie’s descent started to stabilize. On instinct, she spread out her arms… all four of them. Blinking rapidly against the oncoming soot, Natalie forced her mind to recalibrate, she didn’t have four arms, but she did have two new limbs. Fluttering ebony appeared at the edges of Natalie’s vision, as she spread her wings and caught the storm winds in them. With a whoosh of imaginary air, Natalie shot upward, or at least fell slower, which felt close enough, and soon started to soar through the ash storm like a dire raven.

  Jaw clenched, Natalie focused on the memory of black birds and their elegant flight; imagining herself their equal in aerial expertise; which in a mindscape actually counted for something. There was no muscle strain or even much sensation from the dark wings that burst from her back, just a vague sense of presence and purpose. These wings weren’t bound to petty physics and performed far better than the last pair Natalie had grown.

  At that thought she started to rapidly lose altitude, feathers peeling off like autumn leaves. Cursing herself, Natalie refocused on the crows squabbling in the statue garden, forcing her disastrous ‘flight’ off Vindabon’s walls from memory. Things stabilized near instantly, but Natalie decided the quicker she left the skies the better.

  Soaring downward in gentle circles, Natalie passed through the worst of the dark clouds, silently praying she wouldn’t get struck by lightning. Soon she escaped the storm and was greeted with a sight of desolation. Stretching in every direction was a desert, one of ash and smoke, only interrupted by strange ruins half-buried in monumental midden heaps. On the horizon hung a ruddy moon that seethed with intangible infection. Baleful red light shone down from that silver-rimmed celestial body, casting long shadows and giving the whirling ash clouds a distinctly infernal hue.

  Staring out at this apocalyptic landscape, Natalie felt a strange mix of trepidation and elation. It was certainly everything Cole described and more, but she’d made it here without major issues. Angling her flight slightly downward, Natalie scanned the ash wastes for landmarks. Annoyingly her preternatural vision was limited inside the mindscape, as what she was doing wasn’t actually seeing. But again, Natalie had come prepared.

  * Staring down at a map of Zaubervold beside Cole inside the Silly Goat. Marking out places of interest and plotting a route. *

  A strip of desolation beneath Natalie seemed to ripple and then come into better focus. It wasn’t the entire desert but it was enough. Blurry lumps resolved into snaking dunes and crumbling heaps became haunting edifices, while… while patches of pale ash were revealed to be corpses. Letting out a nervous breath, Natalie glanced out across the wastes past her little piece of clarity and saw countless more of those white splotches against the endless dark grey. Cole seemed to think the corpses represented his various deaths, but that couldn’t be right, right?

  Weaving across the sky, looking for anything else of importance, something stuck out to Natalie. From her literal bird’s eye view, she could see the crests of ash dunes, broken structures of myriad styles… and the patterns they made. It was vague at first but the more Natalie looked the more she became convinced the wasteland’s configuration wasn’t truly haphazard. The ruins seemed almost equidistant from each other while no possible wind could explain how the ash ridges and troughs formed. A snaking dune ridge would go from one ruin until it met another of its kind at an odd angle where three more crests would break off, each curving in disparate directions. Something about the sight felt oddly familiar to Natalie, her artist’s brain recognizing a style but not being able to place it.

  Then like the lightning scorching the clouds overhead, realization struck the young Alukah and an oath escaped her lips. “Oh shit.”

  She’d seen this looping intricate pattern before in a much less complex configuration; when Isabelle worked magic. Eyes wide, staring across the desert, Natalie saw the truth. Etched into the very core of Cole’s being was a spell; or perhaps more accurately the very core of Cole’s being was a spell. Scattered pieces fit together like a stained glass window and Natalie struggled not to cut herself on the quickly growing image. Cole didn’t have a soul, his intrinsic magic was in truth a complex arcane construct that jagging fed on the scraps of other people’s souls and used them to regenerate from any physical or metaphysical injury. More than that, this artificial soul resisted all attempts to destroy it, recovering from damage that would outright kill many kinds of Beyonders. In fact, Cole’s ‘soul’ didn’t just survive the impossible but came out stronger, with his aetheric lattice evolving in startling ways to reflect its recently consumed soul hollows.

  All of this pointed in a singular direction as to Cole’s true nature. He was a sapient curse, but more than that a possible hypostatic noumenonian carved into the Beyond at a low aeonic level. A metaphysical pseudo-constant that would reconstruct itself if presented with the right materials, even making improvements when blasted down to its foundations. Cole existed as a…a…a…

  Pulling out of that rapidly spiraling thought chain, Natalie hissed. “What the fuck?”

  Her stream of consciousness had been suddenly filled with large amounts of what had to be hyper-complex arcane theory. Stuff so intricate and beyond Natalie’s limited education it might as well be gibberish. Utterly stunned and barely able to hang onto the basic summation of what she’d been thinking a moment ago, Natalie found herself repeating the basic thesis. “Cole is a thinking curse.”

  Blinking rapidly, trying to regain some semblance of control, Natalie realized she’d lost a lot of altitude and was going to have to land soon. As she looked for a suitable spot, the young Alukah tried to understand what had happened. She’d obviously reacted to something in Cole’s mindscape but the question was what? Analyzing the string of thoughts she’d nearly been tied up in, Natalie came to the simplest conclusion. Her mind was picking up some kind of psychic ‘bleed’ from Cole, a subconscious flow of information related to his true nature that had been otherwise inaccessible.

  The more Natalie thought on this, the more it made disturbing sense, Cole always seemed to have a bizarrely large amount of arcane knowledge for someone without magical talent and he’d said Isabelle stuffed as much pertinent information as possible into him during his creation. Maybe… maybe buried under all that trivia was some grimoire of homunculus creation encoded into his very soul? Of course, if that was the solution, why hadn’t anyone found it during Cole’s tortuous stay in the Voivode’s larder? An answer to that question came as quickly as the question itself; all of those leeches forced their way into Cole’s mind and brutalized him in myriad ways. Natalie had entered consensually and using a link built on shared connections. It was simple but somewhat brilliant, only someone Cole trusted could find his secrets.

  A particularly large and intact ruin came into sight and Natalie set course for it. Roughly drum-shaped the structure stuck out of the ash and offered what she hoped would be a commanding view of the surrounding wastes. Swooping down, Natalie headed for the broken tower and planned to land on its top. Coming closer to the ruin, Natalie’s eyes widened as she realized she’d made a miscalculation. Perspective was a tricky thing inside a mindscape and she’d underestimated how big the structure was, and importantly how close she was to it.

  The smooth black stone of the drum tower’s top grew rapidly with every second as Natalie tried to lose speed. Her efforts put startling force on her wings, pulling feathers free and Natalie realized she was leaving a trail of dark pinions behind her. A slow but steady surge of panic started to well up inside of her as the town-sized ruin filled Natalie’s vision. Memories of the riot and jumping off Vindabon’s walls flashed unbidden through her mind and with them, the conjured wings dissolved in a puff of black down.

  Swearing enough to make Barnabas proud, Natalie tried to re-manifest her wings but had no luck. Her mind just wouldn’t focus, it was too filled with images of becoming a gory splatter once again. Now seconds away from impact, Natalie let desperation combine with instinct; she couldn’t stop thinking of becoming a puddle, so turn that to her advantage.

  * A pool of blood lies on cold stone, slowly congealing with every passing second. *

  Natalie struck with a splash, hitting the ruin’s top and exploding into a shower of red. Slowly the disparate droplets found each other, forming into a large puddle, and that puddle into a Natalie. Rising up from the already fading pool, Natalie took a few uneasy steps forward, checking herself for any damage. Reasonably certain she was intact, Natalie looked around her surroundings. To her utter consternation, things had changed from when she’d been falling. The tower was now much smaller, matching Natalie’s initial assessment before her panicked descent. Deciding not to think too hard about this, or how much she really needed to deal with her fear of heights, Natalie headed for the tower’s edge.

  Staring out at the wasteland that surrounded her, the young Alukah sucked in a breath and readied herself for the next step. She’d arrived safely, now it was time to bring Cole into his own mindscape. Flexing her psyche, Natalie considered the options before her. This would be complicated, and her best bet would be to combine a few different methods, and by extension, memories. Eyes shut, Natalie reached without and within trying to craft the right narrative for this occasion.

  * Cole lay on their bed his breath becoming shallower as he slipped into restful sleep.*

  * Descending an old stone staircase, heading deeper below ground, following a guide and their bobbing lantern *

  * Standing amid a frozen wilderness, isolated from everything but each other. *

  These vignettes flowed together, forming a portal of parallels that a mind might slip through. As the linkage between these concepts settled and they reached a more stable configuration, Natalie did two things simultaneously. First, she reached out to her crafted bridge, slipping imaginary fingers into a metaphysical weave; ready to pull herself free from Cole’s mindscape if things went bad. Second, she let her lover’s name flow from her lips three times, calling him to the portal she’d crafted.

  Stolen story; please report.

  “Cole. Cole! COLE!!”

  The shadows across the mindscape rippled and danced, as the maimed moon wobbled in the sky like a frying egg yolk. A vague sensation of pressure weighed down on Natalie and she felt her constructed portal start to warp and bow as it struggled to accommodate a new presence. Working quickly, Natalie reached out to what was coming and helped ease a mind into itself. As the moment of uncertainty passed, the Alukah let her senses extend, feeling Cole’s arrival through her woven memories.

  The weight Natalie felt steadily lessened, eventually turning into its opposite, leaving her with an airy, almost lightheadedness. As this strange expansion pushed at her mind, Natalie heard the crunch of boots on snowy stone somewhere behind her. Turning and shielding her face from the imaginary winter gale that stirred the tower top, she found a cloaked figure standing a few meters away, staring at the malformed moon on the horizon.

  Slowly pulling his attention from that eerie sight, Cole the Homunculus looked at her with bewilderment. “You did it.”

  Allowing herself to smile, Natalie approached him, taking his hand. “I did.”

  Vaguely stupified, Cole managed to shut his mouth that had been hanging open and ask. “Were there any complications?”

  Natalie shook her head. “None I couldn’t handle easily, what about you?”

  Again Cole’s vision went to the moon. “It was… different than I expected, much more…”

  He trailed off and then seemed to remember himself. “Gentle, you were gentle.”

  Torn between preening at the compliment and wincing at why this was Cole’s reaction, Natalie decided to refocus. “Well, I think I’ve figured something out already, but I want your opinion.”

  So to the best of her ability, Natalie conveyed her discovery. While she’d not kept the erratic insight or verbosity that seized her mid-flight Natalie still managed to get the key details across. Cole listened silently his tattered face unmoving as he consumed all that was said. As Natalie finished her account, he moved past her and looked out at the wastes of his mindscape, heavy silence following in his wake.

  Eventually, Cole spoke, his voice bow-string tight. “How did she do it? How did she make me?”

  Turning to look at Natalie, Cole raised his hands as frustrated confusion poured from him. “I’m not even a person, I’m a jagging spell so complex it thinks it’s one! How is that possible? What sort of magic would be required to even attempt this? Why am I-”

  He paused mid-rant, his mind clearly catching on something; before Natalie could ask what, Cole ran to the tower’s edge and started to climb down its side. Hurrying after her partner, Natalie called out. “What are you doing?”

  Instead of answering, Cole reached the ashlands and kept running. Cursing wildly, Natalie leaped after him, landing in a plume of soot and quickly catching up to the Homunculus. She found Cole kneeling next to one of the most uncanny things she’d ever seen. A quartet of half-buried corpses, all identical to her lover. Without words, the original started pulling one of his doppelgangers free from the ground. Once the body was mostly disinterred Cole grabbed one of the copy’s arms, set his boot on its chest, and pulled.

  Bone, cartilage, and ligaments snapped and the limb came free in a bloodless shower of soot. Holding up his own severed arm, Cole watched as it started to dissolve. Skin sloughed away into clotted ash and exposed muscle became grey powder. As the process sped up, Cole batted at the arm, dusting away ash and revealing what lay beneath. Three different incomplete arms had been grafted together, forming a patchwork limb. As the incompatible parts started to fall away from each other, no longer held in place by ash, Cole dropped the arm with a sound of disgust.

  No sooner had the severed parts hit the ground than snakes of soot coiled around them, making a plaster cast that was already congealing into a copy. As tendrils of ash pulled the reforming limb back to the body Cole ripped it from, he pointed at the sight and hissed. “When it dissolved, what did it look like?”

  Struggling to process all this, Natalie blinked and thought about the disturbing sight. After a moment what Cole was getting at became painfully obvious, she’d seen dead flesh turn to ash on many many occasions. “It looked like when a vampire is wounded.”

  Slumping down, Cole stared at his corpse and then the ash around them. “I think Isabelle lied to me about what I was supposed to be.”

  Meeting Natalie’s gaze, his expression haunted, Cole rasped. “I love her but she’s a greedy perfectionist, and would never settle for simple improvement if something more was in reach. I’ve thought I was an artificial, augmented human, which I guess I technically am; but that wouldn’t be enough for Isabelle. ”

  Looking across the surrounding wastes before returning his gaze to the corpse in front of him, Cole whispered. “Blood is magically potent but soul-stuff is a far better fuel source. The vampire curse can evolve with time and effort, my curse just needs calamity to grow. Death is only delayed for the unliving, for me, death is a delay. Instead of being sculpted by boons from the Beyond, my abilities come from myself and… and those who die around me. Banes don’t hold true sway over me, just stargent and its ability to negate magic.”

  Cole had fallen to his knees. “Why make a better human if Isabelle could make a better vampire?”

  Approaching Cole, feeling her dull shock distantly, Natalie bent down and ran her fingers through the ash. A parallel she’d not even considered suddenly clicked into place and she muttered “This isn’t just your mindscape, it’s your cistern.”

  Cole nodded. “Your soul stores blood, mine stores pieces of other souls.” gesturing at his dead copy he added. “Pieces that pile up in this private hell, granting me a new life for every patchwork copy they form.”

  Looking out at the surrounding wasteland, Natalie stared at the hundreds of corpses scattered in every direction as realization set in. These scraps were soul hollows, the echos left in the Aether by the death and release of a soul. If Cole was absorbing these hollows and had been doing it his entire life then… then how many were inside him? The strange gravity his essence held, the type animals found so distressing, wasn’t powerful, but it was constant.

  Natalie tried to speak, her words coming out thick and heavy. “Cole… how many people do you think die at the Tenth Temple every day?”

  For a moment Cole looked confused but then he understood it. “Dozens, maybe hundreds. Do you think…?”

  Trying to do some mental math, Natalie couldn’t begin to guess what the range of Cole’s curse was but even if it was just a dozen meters; he passed that close to the temple hospice ward at least once a day while in Vindabon. Then there was no telling how long soul hollows lasted, it could be minutes or days, either way, he’d be absorbing at least a few of these echos as just part of his daily schedule. But as the more Natalie thought about it, the Tenth Temple seemed only part of a much larger equation. For half a decade Cole had wandered between tragedies, hunting the undead and freeing their souls. Then before that, he’d spent nearly a year in the larder of one of the most dangerous vampires on the planet. How much death must have clung to the Voivode’s dungeons? Was it enough to simply sustain Cole during his repeated executions, or did it actually grow his stockpile?

  Quickly dropping any notion of calculating the numbers involved, Natalie just stared out across the wasteland, thinking of the thousands of white specks she’d seen from overhead. Her cistern was large enough to hold an ocean of blood but barely contained a puddle. By contrast, Cole’s wasteland seemed without limit and already home to an army of patchwork souls.

  As the sheer magnitude of this discovery sunk into both of them, Natalie muttered. “How could this go undetected? I’m no Magi but shouldn’t your soul be like a dragon’s and just light up the Aether?”

  Getting to his feet, Cole rubbed at his drawn face. “I don’t know… maybe this place is hidden by something, or it’s not quite what we assumed.”

  Pointing into the distances, he added. “I’d like to go deeper into the wastes. There are other… phenomena I’ve encountered here, and I’d like to learn more about them.”

  The statement held an implicit question. Would Natalie be willing to continue this unnerving trek, or should they leave? Despite her many, many reservations, Natalie nodded. “Let’s go.”

  They walked for what felt like an hour and a heartbeat, leaving the ruined tower far behind and following the crest of one ash dune. Cole didn’t seem to have a set destination in mind, and even if he did Natalie doubted it would do them much good. Perspective inside the mindscape, curse, or whatever the Hells this place was, was mercurial at best, nonsensical at worst. Crumbling structures would stay just on the horizon unchanging in size or distance; while the location and quantity of copy corpses never stayed the same. Natalie would blink and nearly trip over a waxy-eyed husk that most certainly hadn’t been sticking out of the ash a moment before. Even after the fifth or sixth time it still elicited a startled shriek from her; one just didn’t adapt to such things.

  Eventually, Cole spotted something and changed direction, gesturing as he did. “Do you see that as well?”

  Craning her neck to try and match her partner’s perspective, Natalie caught sight of what he had. In the valley between two large dunes was a pile of mottled white and red half-buried in grey ash. Sucking in a breath between her teeth, Natalie asked. “More corpses?”

  Cole nodded and headed towards the husks. Grimly wondering what new horror was awaiting them, Natalie followed and soon got a better look at the corpse pile. Before, they’d encountered mostly isolated bodies, with a few exceptions in the form of clusters no larger than five. The new pile broke this trend, being at least double that size; or at least that's what Natalie assumed, it was harder to tell considering the corpses’ condition. All were sporting mortal wounds and messy ones at that.

  Crouching down by his own murdered copies, Cole examined the body. The sight was somehow both surreal and familiar; seeming almost like an artistic statement or crude parody. If Cole considered the absurdity of any of this he paid it no heed, simply continuing his mortuary methodology, uncaring it was now himself being prodded.

  As he finished flipping over one of the bodies, Cole nodded and gestured to the rather horrific damage to the ravaged corpse’s lower back. “These are all deaths I’ve suffered; this one was from the Solstice Ball.”

  Moving to another husk, this one with a missing forearm and bad frostbite, Cole pointed. “The fight with Dietrich outside Vindabon.”

  Pulling a pair of seemingly unharmed bodies off the pile, Cole pointed at their necks. “When Isabelle drained me.”

  Cautiously approaching him, Natalie pointed at one of the more brutalized bodies, its burns and blood-stained ears told its identity. “The riot and the holy arrow.”

  Nodding, Cole went to that corpse and without any hesitation started pulling it apart. Looking away from the grisly sight, trying not to hear the primeval noises coming from Cole’s bare-handed butchery, Natalie asked. “What are you doing?”

  After a few final wet snaps, Cole held up the burned corpse's head and started picking off the rapidly disintegrating simulacrum of his own face to reveal what lay beneath. Glad she wasn’t capable of vomiting anymore, Natalie forced herself to watch as another layer of grotesque impossibility joined this mess. Where Cole knocked away his own crumbling features, an animal’s snout and fanged mouth became visible. Soon enough, Cole held up a werewolf’s head, bits of ash still clinging to its grey fur.

  Gingerly placing the lupine body part back on the ground, Cole muttered. “I think we know where my enhanced sense of smell came from.”

  Slowly pacing around the corpses, eyes fixed on them, the Homunculus added. “These are all the deaths I suffered when we first came to Vindabon.”

  Looking off into the distance, Cole mused. “I bet we could find the ones from Glockmire, somewhere nearby.”

  That got a twitch from Natalie, she really didn’t want to see the corpse she was responsible for. If Cole noticed her discomfort he said nothing, instead his mind was clearly on the enigma before him. “Why are these here? If I’m spending soul-stuff to resurrect then why would the… used copies be still present? Shouldn’t there just be the empty husks, not the wounded ones?”

  Natalie had no answers, but she did have plenty of her own questions. “I can spend the blood in my cistern to empower myself… could you do something similar?”

  Rubbing his eyes with one hand, Cole shrugged. “Considering Isabelle was trying to make a better vampire, it would be a big oversight if I couldn’t. Or maybe the curse has limits and this is one of them?”

  Joining Cole in his pacing, Natalie did her best not to look at the corpses, she had too many bad memories associated with such sights. Then in a fit of rather impressive irony, the very act of pacing while looking away dredged up recollections of her time in the Glockmire dungeons. But sickening trauma aside, those memories came with possible insight. She remembered how Cole had reanimated inside the larder and tore Scapino apart with his bare hands, even shrugging off being impaled by the startled Ashborn. At the time this physical feat hadn’t even registered with Natalie; too much was happening to even give it much thought.

  Now, this very old puzzle piece joined with the rest and Natalie said. “I think you can, you just don’t know how to. There have been times when you’ve resurrected unusually fast or otherwise done strange things after reanimating. Maybe that’s been you tapping into this power unconsciously?”

  Cole had stopped by the one-armed corpse left over from the clash with Dietrich and looked at his own forearm and its comparative lack of scars. “You might be right”

  Hesitating, he then added. “But even if I could learn to draw power from my curse, should I?”

  Gesturing at the blasted wastes surrounding them, Cole continued. “This… this is something fundamentally wrong, I’m fundamentally wrong. Tapping into whatever blasphemous wellspring Isabelle built me from seems like a bad idea.”

  Natalie raised an eyebrow and then just gestured at herself. A little chagrined Cole nodded. “Right, fair point.”

  Coming over to him, Natalie took Cole’s hand and said. “Well, now I think you need to figure out why exactly your resurrection is different sometimes.”

  Letting his fingers intertwine with hers, Cole gestured at the stormy sky and then the wounded moon. “Before when I’ve been here, some of these copies were woken up by lightning strikes and headed in that thing’s direction.”

  Staring up at the moon, Natalie tried to make out details on the eerie celestial sphere. Mottled red, pulsing like an infected wound, the moon was backlit by a silver halo, deep cracks lining its surface. Pointing up at it, Natalie said. “Well according to my lessons, light sources in mindscapes usually represent consciousness, but, I don’t know if any of those ideas are fully applicable here.”

  Seeing Cole’s look of concern, Natalie bit at her cheek. “Things aren’t adding up. This place isn’t like any mindscape I’ve seen or heard about. It’s got elements of one sure, but it also has similarities to a vampire’s cistern and other features that defy easy classification. We’d need a better mind mage and probably an expert on souls to understand all of this and… well we’re missing ours.”

  A heavy silence passed between the two and Natalie grimaced; bringing up Isabelle wasn’t the most tactful thing to do. Cole broke the pall over their discussion, his words heavy with bitterness. “That is if she’d even tell us anything.”

  Natalie winced, Cole had a point, and a painful one at that. Hanging his head, and letting out a sigh, the Homunculus said. “From all I’ve seen and learned, my existence is an anomaly of anomalies. I doubt many scholars outside of Isabelle could even start to unravel all this. And among those that might try, I seeking help from any of them seems a terrible idea.”

  Hesitatingly, Natalie said. “Well, I think at least one of her peers likes you, and he’s been… polite to us.”

  Cole shook his head. “You can’t see what Lupa really is, and I am thankful for that. The less that creature knows about me the better for the entire continent.”

  Deciding not to point out they were traveling with one of the Lych’s apprentices, and the time for such concerns might have already passed, Natalie stood in silence. Part of her was wondering if she could tap into that strange font of knowledge she’d encountered earlier and if that was even a good idea. The experience had been discombobulating and there was no guarantee Natalie could decipher anything more useful a second time.

  Shaking his head, Cole muttered. “Every answer I get breeds a dozen more questions, each more worrying than the last.”

  Gently squeezing Natalie’s hand, the Homunculus said. “Let’s leave this place before we drown in enigmas.”

  Making a noise of agreement, Natalie reached out with her mind to the bridge she’d woven between them and then paused. “Before we go, there is something I wanted to ask of you.”

  Cole raised an eyebrow and Natalie fidgeted slightly. “The link I made between us, I could leave it intact once we’re done here. We’d be able to communicate through it and enter each other’s mindscapes more easily in the future. I understand if you’d just want me to cut the bridge, but… well I figured I’d ask.”

  A deep frown crossed Cole’s face and Natalie could see the debate raging behind his eyes. After a few moments of thought, he said. “Can you get rid of it for now? I’ll think about it but… but I’m sorry-”

  Natalie cut him off. “No, no, it’s okay, I just wanted to ask.”

  That small, tentative smile Natalie had learned to love flitted across Cole’s face and it crushed the little bit of disappointment she’d felt. Shutting his eyes, the Homunculus whispered. “Thank you for understanding.”

  As much as Natalie wanted to be psychically connected to Cole; she wasn’t going to push this. Her lover might be able to heal from any injury, physical, mental, or spiritual, but they all still left scars.

  Shutting her eyes, Natalie called upon her tools, crafting Cole a path out of his inner world while she reached out for the bridge between them.

  *The feeling of floating up in warm bath water, ready to crest the surface*

  *How Cole stretched and yawned when he awoke from a good night's sleep *

  *Gently pushing Cole onto their bed after a busy day, laughter on both their lips *

  A deep relaxed exhale left Cole as he started to fade out of his mindscape, half-heard words coming with it. “Thank you.”

  Smiling, Natalie hoisted her mind up and into the bridge, feeling the ashlands fade away around her. She’d need to teach Cole how to access and leave his own mindscape soon enough. It wasn’t a tricky skill but anything to do with psychic magic got him incredibly antsy. Still, he was making big strides, and she was as well, the only question was would they be enough?

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