Ezra let the sadness and grief wash over him, and he rocked a bit on his feet. “Any ideas?”
“A fading is needed here,” Saemund replied heavily. Then he rolled his shoulders, wiped at his eyes, and tried to smile. “I never thought I’d say such a thing.”
Fading, for fae, was a form of death—according to commonly accepted theory—but Ezra thought differently. He thought fading was a way of returning the inherent life magics that made fae what they were to the earth, but without the body dying—a true conversion of matter into energy that was then absorbed by the world, the soul set free from physical constraints. Some fae did die while trying to fade, especially the younger species; fading without death was something seen more commonly in the Elder species. It was not death, not in the traditional sense of the word—but a conversion of matter into energy that was absorbed into the natural energy fields of the living world.
“Can that be something forced on another soul? A process we can stimulate?” Ezra asked.
“No, lad. But…”
“But?” Ezra gently prodded.
Saemund took a deep breath. “If the soul was awake and aware, it is something that they could do. It is a choice that any fae can make for themselves. If they chose to fade, the skull would cease to exist. The magic cycle would stop. No explosion.”
“That may be the best option,” Ezra said softly, but he grimaced at the implications. “That might be a horror to experience, if the soul is awakened. A consciousness trapped in such a way....I can’t imagine.”
“Unless you want to force the issue with a nuclear bomb, that’s our option.” Saemund sighed roughly. “Unless we can miraculously heal them and restore their body, that’s our only option.”
Ezra looked at the reliquary and shook his head slowly. “For all the death magics pouring out of it, I have no notion of how to convert energy to matter to rebuild a body from next to nothing. I can heal a mortal wound in someone dying, but I can’t restore a fully missing body. Such a healing is beyond even a necromancer. That’s surely in the purview of the gods.”
To resurrect someone from death, that was an ability of the divine. The skull was as close to literal death as he’d ever seen the living get—and while the death magics could heal mortal wounds, illnesses, and injuries that normally killed someone, it repaired what already existed; it could not spin flesh from nothing.
As far as he knew, at least.
“The gods I know aren’t the type to heal,” Saemund said casually, making Ezra glance his way in some alarm.
Practitioners knew that gods were real. Faith took a back seat to knowledge—worship was a careful endeavor when youknewthere was someone listening, and they were just as likely to answer prayers literally as they were to ignore them entirely. Hecate was fond of Her necromancers, and Ezra was very careful of any erstwhile wishes he might send out into the universe. She might be listening. And goddess forbid, She might answer.
He knew that from experience.
Knowing gods were real made living a religious life a bit of a dangerous existence—depending on the pantheon, the deities were either capricious and malicious, or far too involved in their worshippers’ lives for Ezra’s personal comfort. And at no point would he ever casually mention that heknewsome gods. He lacked the audacity to even send a prayer to one directly, having done it once and the result, while favorable, was a hair-raising experience he had no desire to repeat.
Saemund noticed his alarm and shook his head once, patting Ezra on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, lad. I won’t get theminvolved, at least not yet. The ones I know prefer we exhaust our options before asking for help. And none of them are healers or the type to resurrect. The one who used to be able to do such works hasn’t been seen on this mortal plane for eons, so asking Her isn’t an option. So don’t worry, I won’t be asking any gods to help, at least not yet.”
“That’s…good? Yeah, that’s good. Don’t do that.” Having a deity directly involved in the situation left him terrified on an existential level. Ezra looked back at the reliquary and sighed heavily. “I guess we need to wake up the soul, tell it the truth, and then hope they fade on their own?”
Saemund nodded, grim-faced. “Yes.”
“What a nightmare,” Ezra said, hunching his shoulders and shaking his head. “How the hell do we do that?”
“I’m not sure, not yet,” Saemund said carefully. “I need to think about it.”
Ezra
They didn’t lingerat the hanger. Ezra and Saemund left after Saemund took one last look with his senses, deeply affected by the state the nearly-deceased Elder fae was trapped in. Ezra wanted to offer comfort but he had no idea what to do or say—frustrated by his limitations, Ezra knew enough to offer silence if he had nothing helpful to say.
Grendel was waiting for him as they stepped out of the old hangar.
Saemund glanced at the human and headed for the SUV, leaving Ezra to talk to her alone.
She grimaced, reading his expression. “That bad, huh?”
“We’ve got some options, but no idea how we’re gonna implement them. Not yet.”
“I need you to sort this out sooner rather than later, Redmayne,” Grendel said firmly. “Keeping a lid on this artifact is difficult, and the on-staff practitioners are chomping at the bit to get their hands on it for study. Too many people know about the skull, or were there when we dragged you and the skull out of the woods.”
“It’s too dangerous for study,” Ezra warned.
“I know,” she replied. “Work faster, before my people break ranks and go over my head, or complain to the wrong person. This much power is enough to outweigh good sense.”
