Vacant Throne

“Again.”

Alyssa grit her teeth, but nodded. She raised her hands without a word of complaint. In a brief flash of black-white light, a brand new mostly human body sat on a wide sheet of flat metal. The base form came from Irulon. It was roughly her height, weight, and had definite familial resemblance, especially in the face. With Irulon’s body having been the dragon’s home for more than a year, it felt that a body most similar to hers would fit best. Though the dragon had said that it would be happy with anything, regardless of shape or size.

The body did not have Irulon’s tattoos, however. Instead, there were light scales, mostly on the cheeks, neck, arms, and legs. After discussing the complications involved with taloned hands and feet, they had opted to not make any further changes beyond the scales. The scales themselves were there more on Irulon’s request than the dragon’s. Apparently. With Irulon speaking for the dragon, it was hard to tell sometimes unless she explicitly said that one of them wanted something. But she felt that the dragon would like something that was a bit more draconic for its permanent body. Thanks to a brief tutorial session with Tenebrael, Alyssa had even managed to figure out how to get the scales to grow, though given their metallic nature, the dragon was likely going to have an unusual diet.

It was a strange creature. Humanoid but also lizard-like. Not lizard-man-like or salamander-like. It had hair, brownish black like Irulon, which natural lizard monsters didn’t seem to have. At least, none did that Alyssa had seen. The scales on its arms stopped around the back of the hands, leaving the fingers and palms as just a regular light-brown skin tone.

The body had one more obvious element to it. Paint. The ink that Irulon used to create spell cards was lining the body, over scales, contouring curves, and swirling around the eyes. The left side of its head had been shaved—or, more accurately, started empty when Alyssa created it—to facilitate a few more lines of paint. It was similar to the designs Izsha had been painted with before its ritual to resynchronize its soul. With Alyssa’s ability to just create things, she could skip the painting process and just create the body with paint already on the body. The paint would wash off with a little effort, but should stick around long enough to work for the ritual.

The paint was the most important thing at the moment. More important than most anything except the body actually managing to survive long enough for the ritual to finish. As such, Irulon strode forward, checking over every inch of the body as Alyssa took a step back. This was the twentieth such body that Alyssa had created in the past hour. They were all identical to one another. Irulon had already approved the design and the paint patters. She was just checking for consistency at this point.

“Again,” she said, taking a step back.

Alyssa moved forward. Again wasn’t a bad thing. It meant that Irulon hadn’t found any obvious errors.

Kneeling at the body, she quickly destroyed the it. A moment later, a new one was lying at the center of the ritual circle.

The circle itself wasn’t exactly a circle. It was more like… a Venn diagram. There wasn’t anything in the middle, but there were spots for both Irulon and the body in the two sides of the diagram. They were to lie flat on the ground, heads facing toward each other. Irulon wouldn’t actually be able to investigate the actual body that would be used for the ritual. Alyssa had to create it the second the ritual started.

“Again.”

Kasita let out a loud yawn as Alyssa destroyed and recreated the body. She, Brakkt, Fela, and all the draken were standing off to the side, sitting under a large umbrella that Alyssa had made for the spectators. The ritual would be happening today.

“Again.”

Probably.

Everyone was outside, patiently waiting near the top of the hill the cave was set into. The spectator area was a short bit off from the main ritual area, not a big distance. Close enough to hear Kasita without trouble, but far enough away that they wouldn’t be able to trip onto it should they get up and stretch their legs. An event which had happened several times over the past few hours.

As for the ritual area itself, it had been leveled out by Alyssa. The metal sheet ensured a smooth and unbroken surface for the actual pattern required for the ritual. It was a cloudy day, which was good for keeping the metal sheet cool enough to touch, but had Irulon slightly worried about a chance of rain. Said worry had vanished when Tenebrael showed up and told them that there would be nothing to worry about as far as the weather was concerned. A light breeze did occasionally kick up a bit of dust. Nothing that Irulon was worried about, however. As long as the main lines etched into the metal sheet were clear, dust wouldn’t interfere with the ritual at all.

That didn’t stop Irulon from going around with a broom every so often, sweeping away dust that Alyssa was fairly certain was completely imaginary. Alyssa couldn’t blame her for being a little paranoid, but at the same time, wished she had created a roof and walls over the ritual platform just to keep at least that one aspect from being a factor.

“Again.”

What were they up to now? Thirty? It couldn’t be forty. At least not if they only included today’s conjurations. Alyssa had practiced and practiced over the past few days. Irulon had inspected all of them as well… a bit more thoroughly at that. Even with Alyssa cleaning up everything by destroying it all, there had still been quite a mess between cleaning sessions. At this point, Alyssa had created the body so many times that it was second nature. She barely had to think about it anymore.

Which was the goal of all the practice, she supposed.

“Alright.”

Alyssa knelt down, destroyed the body, and started creating a fresh one anew. She got the entire torso done in a few seconds before her brain caught up to what Irulon had said. Stopping abruptly got a bit of blood all over the metal plate, but a quick wave of her hand took care of that. “Alright?” Alyssa asked, looking up to Irulon for confirmation that she had heard what she thought she had heard.

“Alright,” Irulon said again. “That’s enough. I think we’re as ready as we’ll ever be.”

“Oh… Alright.” Alyssa slowly took a step back, suddenly feeling butterflies swarming through her stomach at the thought of the tests being over. She hadn’t been complaining, but she would be lying if she didn’t admit to growing a little impatient. Now, however, she felt like she hadn’t practiced nearly enough. Was she doing it correctly? Were the insides right or had she become too complacent? Maybe they needed to do a few more dissections.

Irulon clearly disagreed. She slipped out of her loose dress as Alyssa sat there worrying, folding it up on the ground at the edge of the metal plate. Her body, much like all the ones that Alyssa had produced, was covered in lines of paint. She had put on some kind of foundation-like makeup to hide the tattoos on her face, worried that they might interfere with the rest of the lines. She had also had to shave down the left side of her head to paint lines over one ear. Apparently the rest of her hair wouldn’t matter to the ritual.

Brakkt stepped forward as his sister laid down on the left side of the Venn diagram—her head toward the middle. In his hands, he held a long sheet of paper detailing words to say. Much like Izsha’s ritual, this one apparently required someone to audibly speak a bunch of nonsense. Nonsense that had been explained to Alyssa as precursors to spell activation phrases, except far less precise. Alyssa had offered to speak it all, but Irulon rejected that outright.

Something about Alyssa’s unnatural interactions with certain magics being a concern.

Which suited Alyssa just fine. While Tenebrael floated overhead and had said that she would fend off any Astral Authority that might be drawn to the ritual, Alyssa much preferred to take things into her own hands. Once the body was created, she could step back and keep an eye out.

As long as she created it correctly.

When she started biting her lip, Alyssa felt a warmth flood into her from behind. A calming, soothing warmth. Turning slightly, she found Tenebrael practically draped over her shoulders. The angel wasn’t heavy—she clearly didn’t even have her feet touching the ground, meaning gravity held no sway over her—but the divine warmth was a pressure all on its own.

“You worry too much. Everything will be just fine. Just create the body like you’ve been doing. If it needs any tweaks, I shouldn’t have a problem with adjusting the body as you create it. It is, after all, an empty body with no soul. Which means I shouldn’t have any issues with helping. For the first part of the ritual, anyway. Not that I am expecting it to need tweaks. You’ve been working hard on this. Take pride in your accomplishments, little reaper.”

Alyssa had been feeling a little better for most of that encouraging speech. Right up until the end. She shot the angel a dark glare and got a light chuckle in return.

“Ready,” Irulon called out after a moment of situating herself.

“Ready as well,” Brakkt said, not taking his eyes off the paper. Irulon had given it to him the day before, expecting him to memorize it. Alyssa had heard him practicing later in the evening and had recited it without error—she knew that for a fact as she had memorized it as well. The way he was staring at it now made her wonder if it was just as nerve-wracking for him as it was for her.

“They’re waiting for you Alyssa.”

Tenebrael’s voice was soft, barely a whisper. Mostly just warm breath tickling her ear. Tickling enough that Alyssa involuntarily swatted a hand over her shoulder as if she were trying to flick away a fly. Her hand smacked straight into Tenebrael’s face. The angel slowly drifted back, though she didn’t look too put-off by the sudden battery. Her smile was as serene as always.

Quickly, Alyssa stepped over to the right side of the Venn diagram, outside the lines but close enough to work her miracle. “I’m ready too,” she said.

“Brother,” Irulon said. “If you mess this up, I will have Alyssa keep my soul out of Tenebrael’s embrace long enough for me to ridicule you into unrecoverable shame.”

Alyssa had no idea how Irulon intended to communicate her ridicules as a soul, but Brakkt looked to be taking the threat seriously. He nodded his head twice.

“Begin,” Irulon said.

“Determination, ranger, maiden, blackro…”

Alyssa tuned him out. The words were less important than the rhythm they created, but even that didn’t matter to Alyssa. She had her own job to do.

Just as she had done a thousand times over the last few days, Alyssa created a body. Bone, meat, skin, and scales. Paint wrapped itself around the body and immediately started glowing. As soon as the body settled into the right side of the Venn diagram, head toward the center, Alyssa shot a quick glance to Tenebrael. She got the most reassuring nod of her life in return. Letting out a relieved sigh, Alyssa turned her eyes to the ritual as a whole.

Everything was glowing now. Not just the paint on the dragon’s new body. Irulon’s matched, though it was mirrored on her body. Even the etchings in the ritual circle itself looked like someone had poured glowstick juice down the cracks. If glowsticks glowed Tenebrael’s eerie black-white color. Even though it was the middle of the day, the strange glow just made everything look like an old black and white television show. It drowned out all the natural colors.

As Brakkt kept chanting, things started happening. A wispy glow surrounded Irulon. Closing her eyes, Alyssa watched as the war between the two souls came to a stop. Not willingly. They were still trying to throw metaphorical punches at each other. But the ritual tore them apart into two very distinct entities. Opening her eyes again, Alyssa watched what no one else would be able to see as one of the two souls funneled through the twisting lines of the ritual circle.

Alyssa didn’t know if there was a reason that it didn’t go straight from Irulon to the new body, but she was starting to get a little nervous. Brain damage would set in after only a few minutes. The body wouldn’t last much longer after that. Not in any kind of usable state, anyway. Irulon had surely accounted for that. Unless something was going wrong.

Irulon did not look like she was comfortable at the moment. Her eyes were scrunched shut and her teeth were clenched in a tight grimace. She kept herself still, but it looked like a fight.

The visible soul, the one that had been outside Irulon’s body, made it over to the right side of the Venn diagram. In it doing so, she noticed something. Most of it was in one large mass. Which was fairly standard for souls. They normally stayed together in a big clump within someone’s body. But this free-floating soul had something akin to a tail. The winding pathway it took from Irulon’s body to the right side of the ritual circle was clear to see. It left a trail.

No other soul Alyssa had seen had done something like that, whether inside a body or out. When Alyssa had used the scythe to remove people’s souls, the souls had come out as one big piece. Even after moving her hands through them or otherwise moving them, that hadn’t changed.

Closing her eyes to check again, Alyssa had to frown. It was hard to tell exactly where one soul ended and the other started, but she was confident that Irulon’s soul was at least partially outside her body. The bulk was all in one piece, but a thin trail of it stretched out, connecting with what Alyssa assumed to be the dragon’s soul.

As Alyssa watched, the dragon’s soul finished navigating the maze of the ritual circle. After hovering over the body for just a moment, it plunged into the flesh.

Alyssa snapped her eyes open to watch reality once again. Brakkt’s chanting stopped two words later. The greyscale of the landscape started to return to normal as the ritual faded.

Neither of the two bodies on the ritual circle moved. Neither, as far as she could tell, were even breathing. They were still connected with that tendril of souls. A quick check with her soul sight showed the main bulk of soul in each body very active and not at all like she had seen in people close to death.

But they weren’t breathing.

Tenebrael hovered overhead, watching. She didn’t look worried. But Alyssa hardly trusted her to do anything even if things were taking a disastrous turn.

Brakkt took a step forward, uncertain. He had clearly recognized that something was wrong as well.

Alyssa dashed ahead of him with no hesitation in her steps. She hadn’t planned for this. Not exactly. But she had prepared. A hundred and fifty videos, most of which she had watched multiple times, meant that she didn’t need to waste any time with worries or fears.

Mentally apologizing to the dragon for her priority, Alyssa knelt down next to Irulon. She had a pulse, which was good. It didn’t even feel weak. But the breathing… Up close, she was all the more confident that Irulon was not breathing. Pointing at the dragon’s body, Alyssa called out to Brakkt. “Breathe for her!” He hadn’t watched as many videos as Alyssa had, but the mechanics were simple. He would understand. Without watching to make sure, Alyssa leaned over and started breathing for Irulon.

Movies, television, and the like always made CPR out to be some glamorous affair. Something akin to kissing. Reality was not. Kissing didn’t tend to involve vomit, copious amounts of snot, or even air, for that matter. And it wasn’t just air. It was hot, used air. Alyssa wasn’t doing the full CPR routine, of which rescue breathing was apparently only a thing if someone was a trained professional. Because Irulon had respiratory arrest but not cardiac arrest, she skipped the chest compressions completely and breathed while keeping watch as Irulon’s chest expanded with the intake and contracted naturally as the air escaped.

Four breaths.

Five breaths.

Six breaths.

Not far away, Brakkt had started on the dragon after watching Alyssa do it a few times. He seemed a lot more hesitant and uncertain, but he was doing it.

Irulon gasped at about ten breaths in. She gasped completely on her own, eyes snapping open. At the exact same time, the dragon gasped as well. The dragon planted a hand on Brakkt’s chest and shoved. Alyssa didn’t think that she had made the body that much stronger than a human, but Brakkt still ended up off the metal plate and in the dirt.

Alyssa admitted to being worried for a moment that the dragon might not be as friendly as she was supposed to be, but the dragon didn’t continue her assault. Her arm dropped to her side as she just focused on breathing for herself. Given that Brakkt didn’t seem too shaken up about it, Alyssa felt content to relax.

Both of them were breathing. Both had their eyes open—Irulon with violet eyes and the dragon with black and white eyes, despite Alyssa having made the body with perfectly normal human eyes.

“Irulon?” Alyssa said, looking down. The souls were still tethered together by that thin strip between the two of them. She couldn’t help but notice, looking between them, that their breathing had synced up. It was a bit… disconcerting. “Are you alright?”

“Fascinating.” “Fascinating.”

Both spoke at the same time. Both raised their right hands, holding them above their heads. They both wiggled their fingers in sync with each other and moved their hands at the same time to look from their fingernails to their palms. Alyssa shuddered, remembering the time that Irulon had created fractal clones of herself.

“Hm.” “Hm.”

“Is this going to be a thing now?”

“Thing?” Only Irulon said, much to Alyssa’s relief.

“Ask about our souls,” the dragon said. “Are they still in conflict with each other?”

“You can ask yourself. You have your own mouth.”

“Hm.” The dragon blinked twice, letting her hand fall down to her face where she started pressing and massaging her lips. “So I do.”

“Your souls look fine,” Alyssa said as she closed her eyes. “And by that, I mean they are not tearing pieces off from each other. Rather, they seem to be interacting with each other, sharing bits of themselves like they do with anyone. Except for one thing. Your souls are… connected. Just a thin little string tying you two together.”

Irulon took a deep breath, closing her own eyes in the process.

“It worked,” the dragon said, trying to sit up before deciding that it would be too much effort at the moment.

“Thank you for putting up with my selfish request.”

“Challenge is what makes us better. This would have been far less entertaining if we had taken an easier route.”

Alyssa scowled. She knew that they wanted to do something to keep their minds together, but she hadn’t been told that their souls would still be connected. “So this string thing is intentional?”

“I can scarcely say what it might look like to you,” Irulon said, mimicking the dragon’s attempt at sitting up but actually succeeding after putting a little extra effort into it. “But I would assume that everything has gone according to plan.”

“And it isn’t going to cause any lasting problems?” Alyssa asked, this time looking up to Tenebrael.

Irulon answered first. “If it does, it was designed to be simple to sever. A ritualistic pair of scissors, if the thread analogy is accurate, and we will be two fully distinct entities.”

“Lonely.”

Alyssa didn’t respond to either, she was too busy looking up to figure out Tenebrael’s reaction to all this. So far, she had kept up a simple smile. But her eyes had shifted. They were narrowed as if in just the slightest bit of confusion. After a moment, she floated down, right between the two, and started looking at the narrow thread of soul. She brushed her fingers over it, which went unnoticed by both Irulon and the dragon. After a moment, she shrugged.

“This is the first time I have ever seen something like this,” Tenebrael admitted. Turning her head from Irulon to the dragon, she shrugged again. “But their souls seem stable now.”

Crossing her arms with a frown, Alyssa eventually copied Tenebrael’s shrugs. “The resident soul expert hasn’t a clue what’s going on. She thinks you’re fine, though.”

“If they’re fine,” Kasita’s mirth-filled voice called out, “does that mean we can introduce ourselves?”

“I am aware of your identities, Spymaster Kasita.”

Alyssa narrowed her eyes at the dragon for just a moment before throwing a glance at Kasita. Her smile had widened to the point where her head was in danger of popping off. And with Kasita, it was literally possible for her head to come off.

“Well of course you know who we are. It is hard to miss such a great spymaster as myself. And I’m sure you’re aware of Fela, the Legendary Warrior, and Brakkt… ufu~ You’re intimately familiar with him, I noticed.”

This time, Alyssa had to roll her eyes. Kasita had clearly seen far too many movies over the last few days.

“Apologies, brother of Irulon, but you were making it difficult to breathe on my own.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled. He opened his mouth to say something more.

Kasita cut him off. “But! We don’t know your name, or any fanciful titles I’m sure a dragon must possess.”

Arms at her side, the dragon tilted her head enough to look at Kasita. “Sorry to disappoint. I have no name. Had no name. There was no use for such a thing as a dragon. Irulon simply referred to me as her companion. Though I suppose it would be inconvenient to continue without an identifier. Companion will do.”

Kasita’s smile slipped. “Companion?”

“Yes, Kasita?”

“No, I mean… You want to name yourself ‘Companion’?”

“It is my name. I have decided this.”

“But…”

“Something wrong?”

“I guess not?”

“Hm.” The dragon, Companion apparently, turned her head away from Kasita. As she did so, the barest hint of a smile tugged at the furthest corner of her lips. It was at an angle that only Alyssa and Tenebrael could see. Kasita should have been able to see it too given her ability to sense everything around herself, but she was too busy frowning at herself, clearly having expected something a little more grandiose from a dragon.

Before Alyssa could contemplate that little smile any further, Irulon looked over. “Alyssa,” she said. “Bring me the staff. There is work—”

“Oh no,” Alyssa interrupted. “No you don’t. No more research. No experiments. You just finished a ritual with who knows what consequences. You are going to rest. You are going to relax. Both of you,” she added with a look to the dragon.

Irulon narrowed her eyes. For a moment, she held that glare. Slowly, her already narrowed eyes closed all the way. Irulon slumped forward, going limp as she did so.

Alyssa tensed. Brakkt was at her side in an instant. The dragon, Companion, had her eyes closed as well. Both were still breathing. Irulon’s pulse felt steady. Hoping that this was just fatigue from the ritual, Alyssa decided to get them inside to a bed where they both could sleep for as long as they needed.