Necromancy. They had not expected that, but it could be nothing else. Irwyn would never again miss the rotten stench which gave it away. And when they were on the same note, Jonathan quickly confirmed the exact details. Calling the events just a disaster was almost a euphemism. Because no one wanted to say out loud exactly what had happened - not months after the fact, when most had managed to put it out of their mid.

  When a person came into contact with the blue fire, the inferno would swallow them with annatural haste, covering the whole body. Then turn them as they still screamed. In moments a victim would become a carrier instead, pursuing any other person nearby and vying to spread the devastation. With just a touch, it would afflict another, almost like a disease. It also had a similar tendency to multiply – particularly dangerous since it had first spread against confused and unprepared civilians in a concentrated area. The only saving grace was perhaps that the undead victims were unmistakable and crumbled to ash in mere minutes. That meant that no subterfuge could be applied to lay down traps for months into the future.

  The blue fire did not only burn people though. The flames would incinerate even concrete with some difficulty and could not be extinguished before they went out on their own. Of course not, the flames were likely pure magic and thus did not require oxygen. Neither did they really spread naturally though – while they burned through any material the victims touched it was more as decomposition than as fuel. The source of said magic was also obvious.

  “It almost certainly burns the Souls of the turned as fuel,” Elizabeth concluded, not leaving the chemist hanging. Perhaps it was because the man had merely glanced at the wart on her nose and did not let his gaze linger nor tongue loose. It was quickly becoming a taboo to even acknowledge with a look.

  “Wouldn’t that be… excruciatingly painful?” Jonathan paled a bit at the thought. “Not that being burned alive sounds any more pleasant.”

  “Not overtly so,” Elizabeth shook her head. “About as bad as being stabbed through the heart, I expect. A flicker of agony and then the quick numbing of death... maybe a bit of immolation in this case. But it would take mere moments before the affected become undead and thus no longer people, merely hollow shells engulfed in the Betrayer’s hate. Undefended mortal Souls are fragile.”

  “Being stabbed still hurts,” Alice pointed out. “And probably only Irwyn would enjoy a ‘bit of immolation’.”

  “But why blue rather than white?” Irwyn half distracted. Soul was white, Flame was red, how did they combine in that way? It was a real question.

  “Why does that matter?” Jonathan did not understand.

  “To identify the specific prismatic element,” Elizabeth said, face fully serious. “Blue flames… it is likely to be one dedicated solely to necromancy, and thus not widely known. If it needs to burn victims’ souls before raising them, it might draw on the idea that things burn a different color than their usual pigment. Colors of magic can be loose at times, especially when diverging from the nine. Do you have more details to add?”

  “It was a damn nightmare from what I hear,” Jonathan sighed. “So many people died before anyone even realized what was going on. It’s a miracle the army was quick enough to quarantine the Mall before it could spread, otherwise it would have been so much worse.”

  “From your ealier description, it sounded like barely zombies, the very least of the Rot,” Elizabeth frowned. “Slow and unintelligent, barely even coordinating with those near them. Or is that incorrect?”

  “They are also uncaring about bullets, not stopping even if their bodies are broken,” the chemist explained. “You cannot really approach either. The only way is to fill the kneecaps with enough holes they stop being able to walk or use explosive munitions – which were in short supply in the middle of the city on such a short notice.”

  “Ah,” Elizabeth had a realization. “I understand. It is not that the undead were so fearsome, merely that you were unprepared. This was your nation's first time dealing with undead in a long time.”

  “Our soldiers did what they could against all odds,” the chemist did not like that. “Many laid down their lives to prevent the spread.”

  “Do not take that as an insult,” Irwyn appeased. “I would not begrudge you saying that I do not understand chemistry. It is just that the Republic is clearly lacking the experience that comes from repeated exposure to the Rot.”

  “And your nation does not?” Jonathan caught the implication, mellowing out.

  “I am a daughter of House Blackburg,” Elizabeth said with a hint of Pride. “The majority of my ancestors have wagered their lives battling the Rot. I am no inquisitor but much has been taught to me. Neither will I shirk my duty here where I might make a difference. Alice?”

  “Yes?” Alice1 asked. She had been listening intently once the discussion of undead was brought up but did not have anything more to introduce into the conversation.

  “The other one,” Elizabeth smiled, and looked around, finding their new neighbor nowhere in the laboratory. Neither was their sneak for that matter.

  Finding them was not actually hard though. Waylan and Alice (the other one) had left the little laboratory at some point, instead retreating into the living room. They had cleared a sofa and were throwing paper balls at each other while sitting at opposite ends.

  “Are you nerds done yet?” the thief exclaimed with a wide grin.

  “Nerds,” Alice echoed.

  “Nerds,” Alice joined in.

  “You were with them,” Waylan squinted.

  “What does that word even mean?” Irwyn questioned. Waylan smirked instead of answering. Dreadfully, he must have just learned a new slur of sorts.

  “While amusing, things have some urgency now,” Elizabeth interrupted the exchange, looking at the girl still in a military uniform, “You should have a way to contact some kind of superior, correct?”

  “Did you figure something out?” the girl looked both surprised and excited.

  “That I am duty bound to be more closely involved,” she said. “The sooner this is relayed, the better.”

  “Yeah, we have a telegram in the basement,” AliceB nodded, standing up to lead the way further downstairs. On their way she got a shortened version of the prior discussion, to which Waylan also finally paid due attention.

  “I thought there were radios?” Elizabeth questioned. The airship certainly had one.

  “No one has figured out how to make those without metal yet,” Jonathan said somewhat ruefully. He was following their group along. “Only the most important places can afford to have one.”

  The word ‘basement’ was a bit of a misnomer anyhow, given it was two floors deep, each at least as large as those above. The level they were headed to had several rooms and Alice did not hesitate to guide them into one.

  “There is… Light coursing under the floor?” Irwyn realized as they neared their destination.

  Two dozen thin beams of natural light shone uninterrupted beneath the concrete floor. He had not noticed them before when on the surface but with no immediate sunlight as a distraction and closer proximity finally took note of it. The room itself was barely spacious enough for all six of them to squeeze in. There was also a complicated looking wooden box which the Federation’s group quickly began to inspect.

  “How else would a telegram work?” Spylice hinted at Irwyn’s earlier question.

  “Usually through wire and electricity,” Alice said.

  “That seems like an extremely uneconomic use of metal,” Jonathan pointed out. Everyone else was trying to figure what they were looking at.

  This unfamiliar ‘telegram’ had to be the wooden contraption in front of them. On the wall there was also postered a sheet of paper sealed in plastic foil on which an alphabet of some sort had been written. Irwyn began to interpret it but Alice (the original) was faster.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “You code every letter of the alphabet into a sequence of short or long pauses,” she deduced. “Just like regular telegraph. Except you send them by interrupting a stream of light! How do you transfer it reliably though?”

  “Glass cables,” Jonathan said. “Well, mostly glass. There are light sources at the beginning and end of every cable. The machine lets you intercept or receive them.”

  “Yeah, you just have to push down the board after getting connected,” the other local said, positioning to demonstrate. There were in total 9 pairs of ‘boards’ - planks of wood sticking out of the box - present, each marked with numbers one to eight, with the leftmost duo merely having a letter ‘c’ instead. Alice reached for that one and started pushing it down at deliberate intervals. This, indeed, interrupted the flow of light below every time from going in one direction. With his fast mind and the translation sheet quite literally on the wall before him, Irwyn managed to interpret what was being sent.

  Reqcon. - the message started with a codeword - mil3. 4. 43. pas. 5116.

  Whatever that meant. Irwyn had no frame of reference. ‘Mil’ could be ‘millitary’ from context? The numbers meant nothing to him. When that was delivered, the front board was lifted and the paired one behind it was pushed down instead. The reply was thankfully comprehensible. The way it was shown was interesting as well: The received message was reflected onto a glass pane at the very front of the box which distinctly flashed to relay the message in the same code.

  C. Standby.

  “Alright, we should be through to my boss soon,” their self-appointed telegrapher said. “You will need to dictate to me what you want to say.”

  “Or you could write the message beforehand like a sane person,” Jonathan shook his head in almost exacerbation. “So that you don’t change your mind in the middle of a sentence and pretranslate it. Realizing you spelled a letter wrong in the middle of it is hard to take back.”

  A new message was delivered to them a few seconds later. Projected on the screen it slowly spelled out: Con7. With that, Alice were quickly put leftmost boards back into their original position. Afterwards, she predictably moved the front one marked as ‘7’ to communicate further. She was not saying out loud the exact words but neither was she hiding her hand movements. Irwyn could have inferred the words even without feeling the light coursing beneath.

  Sir. new. info. blue. flame. from. foreigner.

  It was a very economical way of writing, which only made sense. Spelling words letter by letter took a very long time compared to speech for example. Everything that could be cut out without losing meaning naturally would be just to make the woefully slow process more efficient.

  C. Elab.

  The relaying of everything took a while, given the process was glacial. The back and forth of switching the boards took up even more time. This was not helped by the other side asking them to ‘staby’ - shortened standby - then leaving for several minutes before the next message several times. But ultimately, they did arrange a meeting of some kind with an unspecified ‘higher ranked’ person to discuss their possible involvement in the investigation.

  Someone would come to pick them up in the morning. Given it was only around noon they were not exactly being treated with the urgency Elizabeth thought was warranted. Irwyn could kind of see why they were being accommodated with some hesitation given they had downplayed their power at first but suddenly wanted to be involved with what seemed to be one of the nation's most grave mysteries. Alice (theirs) also suggested the army needed time to decide who and how should actually meet them.

  “Is there anywhere to eat around here?” Waylan eventually asked, which led to the five of them going to a nearby ‘dining hall’ - Jonathan excused himself, returning to the lab. Not a restaurant, apparently, but rather a subsidized kitchen with cheap meals, which was convenient given they did not exactly have much in the local - paper - currency. And given how scarce metal seemed, Irwyn doubted that paying with gold would go down without an uproar.

  The food was not too bad since it was part of accomodations for the government workers from the large office building nearby. Since they were technically somewhat entangled with the military they were allowed to partake. Not that anyone actually checked - just Alice’s uniform seemed good enough proof to let their whole group enter. Inevitably, talks were had. Some more personal.

  “So, what do you actually do?” Alice the first asked her doppelganger (did that word even apply?). “Clearly military, but what exactly?”

  “I am in training to become a special agent,” she replied with clear pride, though the Federation group lacked the context to understand what that really meant. “Because of my Honing, I was accepted as a candidate despite being a foreigner. Originally, I was aiming just for a regular soldier-into-officer but I performed so well in the sorting camp that I got convinced to try this. Since I made it through the physicals already, I am getting proper tutoring in the city now to catch up on education.”

  Meanwhile, their group retold their somewhat redacted stories. Elizabeth was still hesitant to put to words exactly how mighty her family was despite invoking the name a few times and Alice did not like to speak of her home for obvious reasons. Still, the meal was mostly pleasant and they were given a short tour of the neighborhood. As dusk neared though, Irwyn had other things on his mind, and Elizabeth definitely noticed.

  “Time of day doesn’t really matter for Flame,” she answered a question he had not even needed to ask out loud. “But be aware that you are attempting something possibly unprecedented. Even if you have an idea, you might not succeed in just one night or attempt.”

  “I would like to try and see,” Irwyn nodded. A Concept, so tantalizingly close. The urgent need for it resurfaced suddenly since they would likely be hunting of unknown necromancers in the near future.

  “Then I will guard you as you have guarded me,” she nodded.

  When they returned to the apartment building they gathered in one of their two appartments, their neighbor returning to her own lodgings. Alice the magical decided she wanted to stick around and see exactly what Irwyn would try to do. Waylan naturally had little interest and would instead snoop around the building itself before going to sleep.

  So, Irwyn got started on his first idea, creating a sharp dagger of Flame. He would not burn… but could he be cut? After trying a few times, the answer was a resounding ‘no’. To his own surprise, Irwyn realized that besides just the regular immolation his elements could inflict, they refused to directly harm him in any way. That would be a problem in that case. If he were to carve impossible shapes like the Concept he had envisioned in his mind, he would need precise, downright instinctual, control of the tool used. That meant it had to be one of his elements, forged into a blade or close enough. That created a bit of a paradox.

  “Then simply change the intent behind it,” after a while, Elizabeth thought of a possible solution. “You should not be trying to harm yourself with the element. If you are changing yourself instead why would that need to be stopped by your immunity?”

  Irwyn wasn't sure that would work and it required complicated mental gymnastics... but he had not better ideas, so he put his mind to the task. If it was viable, it would only work if Irwyn genuinely convinced himself that carving his flesh was not in any way harmful. That was not an easy mindset to get into despite all his mental alacrity. The girls stayed quiet as he focused on it. There was much struggle in that process but eventually he did manage the feat after what felt like a hundred failures.

  A cut was made on his leg. A small incision. The pain of it immediately broke the fragile state of mind Irwyn had to maintain to make it in the first place, resulting in another barrage of failures right afterwards. He had barely convinced himself it was not harm before experiencing cutting himself. His intentional self-delusion was forced to meet with reality and ended disproven. That was fine. All his doubt had vanished by then, replaced by determinination. Because he saw a cocrete step that could be taken towards finally carving a Concept and did not hesitate to walk the path to it. Even though it was unpleasant to say mildly.

  Elizabeth at least provided healing in the form of a gray balm that made the wound quite literally disappear in seconds. Convenient, even if Irwyn healed faster than most people - best to be rid of such distractions right away. He still needed to wipe away the blood that had been shed but that was simple enough. “Is that temporary or a proper graft?” Irwyn asked.

  “Proper,” Elizabeth confirmed, leaving the bottle to him. Irwyn would doubtlessly need it, repeatedly. “This balm only works for very thin and shallow cuts but the healing is permanent for anyone.”

  So, Irwyn continued making a somewhat glacial progress. The state of mind needed to make self-harm seem not harmful remained rather elusive and easily shattered whenever Irwyn felt the bite of stinging pain that accompanied every little dent. But he was improving. Slowly, yes, but practice was clearly creating results.

  “It’s been three hours,” Elizabeth said after one such successful cut and subsequent shattering of focus. “I don’t think you will make it there tonight.”

  “Yes, I need to be able to do this naturally,” he nodded. When he was carving a Concept, it would consume all of his attention. Even Elizabeth had struggled to form it properly, so he could not afford to spare any extra focus for the tool that he would be using. That meant Irwyn would have to practice until the specific mindset came as easily as a thought and never faltered. A tall mountain to climb, but one in front of him.

  “You should sleep,” she reminded. “You scarcely got any last night.”

  “I should,” he acknowledged.

  “It is a very unhealthy habit to skip out on slumber repeatedly,” she immediately caught on his lack of a promise. “Your body is still mortal. If you skim on it now, it will actually only delay your advancement in the long run.”

  “I don’t think I will be able to,” Irwyn admitted. He was making progress. That it was so slow only ignited the metaphorical heat in him.

  “Then drink this,” she retrieved a potion of some kind. Irwyn quickly read the label as Dream’s beckoning. A sleeping medication of some kind. “It’s not healthy to rely on them, but once a while is fine. Especially tonight might be worthwhile.”

  “Alright,” he acceded with a sigh.

  “You are not planning on not actually drinking the potion and only telling me you did, are you?” she caught him before the plan had even fully formulated in his head.

  “Of course not,” Irwyn pointedly did not hesitate.

  “Good,” she nodded. “Then you will not need the balm anymore.”

  “Maybe a few more hours,” he tried to insist.

  “Irwyn.”

  “I cannot be that far away from making this work.”

  “There will be more problems to figure out in all likelyhood,” she reminded him. “This is just the first step, don’t burn yourself out.”

  “Fine,” he sighed, surrendering. He closed the balm bottle and returned it, pocketing the potion. “I will try to sleep. What other choice do I have?”

  “I would hope so,” she nodded, then smiled. “Tea before slumber?”

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