The Scorchlands weren't just a desert. Wulf didn't know what to expect, but a vast expanse of endless red and gray wasn't it. The ground was a perfectly flat expanse of cracked, dry hexagons and pentagons of gray clay. Each was about the size of the Wraith's foot, with a few feet of a gap between them, and trenches deep enough that he couldn't see the bottom. It didn't help that mist the colour of dried blood swirled in the cracks, making it even more difficult to see.

Arid wind blew across the land, carrying ash and other particles in it. They pattered against Wraith's visor like snowflakes.

In the distance, dunes of ash rose like mountains, and the only sign of life was a spindly construct that reminded him of a spider. It had four legs, barely thicker than an aspen trunk, and a body made of wood. He couldn't make out any other details with the distance and the blowing dust.

"Any idea how we're actually going to find the demons?" Irmond asked with a cough. "It's awful out here, and I can barely see anything."

"Did Umoch tell you anything more?" Kalee asked. "Any ideas where we should start looking, anything?"

"All he said was that, 'They travel the length of the Rimegorge, snaking through it. At the gorge's end, you will find your target,'" Wulf told them.

"They?" Seith questioned.

"The Cords. He was doing something mystical." Wulf grimaced. "It's the best shot we have. We need to find this Rimegorge."

They walked for a few days, trekking into the Scorchlands, hunting for any villages or signs of life. There was nothing except a giant scorpion, which they circled around, keeping their distance from.

In the evenings, they stopped to camp. Though the winds were strong up at the top of Wraith's shoulder, there was less dust. Wulf considered making a fire inside the cockpit, but it didn't have the best ventilation, and they didn't need to fill it with campfire smoke.

On the first night, Wulf and Kalee presented the two spirits to Irmond and Seith. They'd reacted exactly as Wulf expected. Surprise, denial, saying they couldn't take it, it was too strong and not worth people like them.

Wulf just shook his head and said, "I need the best crew I can get. I need to look after you guys, too."

On the second night, Kalee had withdrawn two of the cages from her staff, leaving the two wedge-shaped structures on Wraith's shoulder. "They are getting incredibly warm trying to contain the spirits," she said. "I cannot hold them for much longer—we must use them now, if we're going to use them at all."

The cages' main structure was metal, and it was burning hot to the touch. The clay tiles inside were responsible, with their runes working hard to keep a Orichalcum-tier spirit contained in a tiny little vortex, and some of the runes were starting to glow orange and melt.

Irmond and Seith spent a few hours on the second night trying to bond with the spirits the same way Wulf and Kalee had. The creatures were stubborn, though, and they smashed themselves against their cages trying to destroy Irmond and Seith. The two talked to the beasts, tried to negotiate, tried everything. Appeal to the spirits' willingness to feel something.

But it didn't work.

"Why'd it work for you?" Irmond asked, panting. "I tried saying the exact same thing as you, even."

"It's not about that," Wulf said. "It's about feeling it, and understanding it, and knowing that it's true."

"But how can 'oh, I promise you'll feel what I feel if you bond with me' be true or false? Well, I mean, it would be true, if the spirit did choose to bond with me."

"But they don't think like us. You're trying to use your elf's mind to rationalize something that doesn't have a mind."

Irmond sighed. "Alright, yeah."

"It can feel if you're not being honest. It can feel that…well, you don't really know what you're doing."

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"Thanks."

"Irmond, from what I understand, no one forms a Spiritmark at your age. They're always older."

"But you did."

"Yeah, but I have years more experience than I should. I have enough memories of a past life to know what I want, to know what the spirit wants and how I should deal with it. How I can convince it to join me, and how best to share my emotions with it, give it a taste of what I want, the clarity of purpose it can expect. You don't have enough experience." Wulf leaned back on a ridge on Wraith's shoulder. "We expected this to happen. You won't get a Spiritmark, but that's what we should expect."

"Should I wait?" Irmond asked.

"Do you want to wait sixty years?"

"...No."

Kalee interjected. "I can hold these spirits one more day, but by tomorrow evening, we need to use them."

"There is no shame in absorbing it the normal way," Wulf said, looking at both Irmond and Seith this time. "They're Orichalcum-tier spirits. By absorbing them, you'll still be more powerful than most people at your stage."

"How…how exactly does the spirit make us more powerful?" Seith asked. "I mean, it's just blending our cores together, right?"

Kalee crossed her arms. "The higher we climb, the more the slight details matter. You don't just improve your strength through your Marks, but how your Marks are channelled. Think of your Marks like rune-lines imprinted on your core. They aren't noticeable at first, and they aren't exactly the same as runes, but when you apply the right pushes of power, they still fire in a similar way—or are always active."

"If I understand right," Wulf added, "you're using the spirit's material to shore them up, improving their function. It doesn't happen right away—that's why we have to compress our cores throughout the stage. The stronger the spirit we took in, the stronger our Marks will become as we compress our cores."

"So it's a compounding effect," Irmond said. "Why's a Spiritmark stronger, then?"

"Instead of just providing arcane material, it gives you an aspect to latch onto," Kalee said. "In this department, I'm not more educated than you—I've just listened to our lectures in Advancement class."

"It allows you to refine your aspect better and gives you a choice during your class evolution," Wulf added.

~ ~ ~

The next evening, they tried again. This time, Kalee left the cages out on Wraith's shoulder, and said, "I can't take them back inside my storage unless they're empty, and have had some time to cool down."

Irmond and Seith tried again to form their Spiritmarks, but it didn't work. When all three moons had risen into the cloudy sky, Irmond finally said, "Alright, I'll settle for less."

"Don't think of it as settling," Wulf said. "You're making the best choice you can, given your circumstances."

"Right, yeah." Irmond stepped inside the cage one last time. Instead of trying to negotiate with the spirit, he used the strategy Dr. Konstant had told them about.

Hold out your hand, imagine a void within yourself, concentrate on your deepest desire, and use that as an anchor to tug the arcane material of the spirit into your body, leaving only its elemental wisps behind. A spirit aligned to your aspect would work better.

Within seconds, the white-blue vortex of the wind spirit disintegrated. Wulf couldn't see the arcane material of the spirit rushing into Irmond, but he could feel it as a slight tingle in his perception. The colour of the spirit faded, whisking away into the atmosphere, and unlike with Wulf's advancement, the spirit left behind four shrivelled glass cores.

They weren't anywhere near as strong as the Storm Sovereign's core, though. They should have been, but then again, Irmond had taken apart the spirit's material, and that probably damaged the cores. The spirit being in captivity for hundreds of years couldn't have helped, either.

When he picked them up and assessed them with the Field, they were barely silver. "Best I can do is bash them up and use them in the base of a potion," he said.

Soon after, Seith did the same, finally accepting her spirit, but not forming a spiritmark.

"That…was a lot of effort," she muttered.

"But now we're all Golds," Wulf said. "And—look. I think there's a settlement on the horizon." He pointed to a band of lights glittering in the distant dust. "We can ask them where to find the Rimegorge."

~ ~ ~

The next day, Wulf walked Wraith over to the band of lights. It wasn't a permanent settlement, but rather, a walking conglomerate of spider-cities with hundreds of legs all together. Buildings clung to its sides or stacked up on top of it, made of cobbled-together wood, with tarp roofs and vast expanses of netting to catch the moisture in the air and turn it to water.

Irmond flew down to the city for a few minutes and disappeared into the streets. When he returned, he had directions to the Rimegorge.

For the rest of the day, Wulf followed his directions, and they arrived by sunset.

The Rimegorge was an enormous gash in the earth. Nothing about it seemed natural. It wasn't a winding, twisting riverbed or canyon, but a perfectly straight gash with steep, terraformed edges. It was nearly a mile deep, too, with no sign of life, water, or civilization on its perfectly flat bottom.

"Almost there," he said. "Now it's just a straight line."

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