“Raaaaaaoh.”

  “Don’t rush me! I’m almost ready,” Lilia retorted as she felt Cyclops bat her leg with a paw. “I think I’ve finally got enough control to erase the second layer of spells before the first can regenerate.”

  Slowly and carefully, Lilia pulled mana from her soul conduit and formed a hollow orb around the thrall she’d been working to wrest control of. She could tell her conduit had changed after weeks of practice. More mana flowed through it now than ever before and it came at a faster pace as well. At this point Lilia felt that she was more limited by her control over mana than by her access to it.

  “Alright, that should be enough. Now I just need to tighten it up and spin it,” Lilia muttered. Her orb of mana rotated at her command, quickly smoothing out the surface of the thrall’s soul. The moment she stopped the spells she’d erased began to reform, but she’d expected that. Lilia clamped down harder to slow the regeneration. “That’s one. Now for the second layer…

  “I think I can do it now, but it’s not going to be easy. I’ll have to make a second sphere inside the thrall’s soul without releasing the first,” Lilia explained to her familiars as she worked. Talking it out helped, so she’d been doing it more often. “Ngh. Yeah, that’s hard. Just a little more…there!”

  The moment Lilia completed the second sphere she started spinning it.

  “I…urgh…I didn’t think it would resist this much. It’s like the soul itself is fighting back. But it’s…not fighting…hard enough!” Lilia shouted to psych herself up. Sweat ran down her forehead and into her eyes, blinding her, but Lilia didn’t need her eyes for this. She pulled even harder and the inner sphere began to speed up. “Wait. Is the outer layer slowing down?”

  As the inner layer of spells vanished into smooth, formless soul, the outer layer stopped regenerating altogether. But now that the second layer was erased, Lilia saw a third under that one.

  “Aha! I get it! Every layer has a spell that rebuilds the one above it! And that means…” To test her theory, Lilia released her outer orb of mana. She felt the strain of controlling so much mana at once dissipate along with the orb. Sure enough, the outer layer of spells didn’t reform. “How many layers even are there…? Maybe if I can figure out which spells are doing this I can just erase them from the inside out next time. Just need to thread my mana between the spells like what mom does when she’s sewing.”

  Lilia examined the third layer of spells carefully while continuing to hold the second at bay. Once she felt confident she’d committed it to memory, Lilia eased up on the second layer and allowed it to partially reform. Not enough to repair the first layer, but enough that Lilia could vaguely make out the form of the spells that made it up.

  “I have no idea what any of these do…but I only see one that’s on both layers. It’s not entirely the same, but the beginning and end are. I wonder if the middle tells it what spells to recreate?” Now having some idea of what to target, Lilia completely erased the second layer again and formed a tendril of mana. She’d already figured out how to push her own mana through a spinning orb of the same, so slipping a thin tendril through was nearly effortless.

  “Time to find out if I’m right, guys! Just gotta scrub this one spell away…done!” Instantly Lilia could tell the second layer had stopped regenerating. She had to keep scrubbing away at the repairing spell in the third layer to keep that from regenerating, but it continually erasing a single spell was a lot easier than doing it for a whole layer. “Knew it. Every layer only has one repair spell. How am I going to find the next one, though? Can I feel it out?”

  With no better ideas, Lilia started injecting mana through the gap in the third layer she’d already made. At this “depth” it became harder than ever to move mana through the soul, so Lilia felt thankful that she’d already reduced the total amount she needed to control by so much. Holding her eyes shut to focus on her mana sense, Lilia blanketed the fourth layer in her mana just like she’d done with the outer two.

  This time she didn’t even try to spin the orb. The thrall’s soul was resisting her intrusion so strongly that she suspected she couldn’t even if she wanted to. But she could push against the spells and get a feel for them. Erase small segments of each one and see what happened. Most simply grew back, but soon Lilia identified one that felt familiar and retracted all of her mana to a spot above that one.

  “Hah! I guess Master was right to think I could figure it out after all!” Lilia cheered when she scraped away the fourth layer’s repair spill; the third immediately stopped trying to reform in turn and she easily smoothed it away without even using a full orb. “Something is still fighting me though, so there’s gotta be at least one more layer. Hopefully not more than that.”

  “Raaoh?” Cyclops growled. Lilia decided that was a question.

  “Well, I had a hard time dealing with the last one. I think one more is my limit. Anything harder to worm my mana into is probably more than I can handle,” Lilia explained while gathering another tendril of mana. Reaching out, she cast it towards the empty space where a spell used to be.

  As her mana sank deeper into the thrall’s soul, Lilia immediately felt a resistance greater than any she’d felt before. Even worse than the time she’d fallen into a tar pit. If she hadn’t found Mr. Bearbones at the bottom before her head sank below the surface—well, it wasn’t important right now. The point was that rather than merely being difficult to force mana through, this newest layer seemed to be actively pushing her mana back.

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  “Good thing I figured out how to stall the repair spells without a full sphere…” Lilia said tightly. She grit her teeth. It seemed clear now that her last strategy wouldn’t work this time. The resistance was too great. If she tried to spread her mana out so thinly she wouldn’t be able to keep it from being forced out. “Don’t worry guys, I’m not giving up now!”

  Fortunately the spells wrapped around the core of the thrall’s soul were few in number. Each layer had been smaller than the last. Maybe the idea had been to prevent anyone from doing exactly what Lilia was attempting; as an intruder grew closer to the final layer they would be worn down even as any manipulation became harder and harder.

  “But the problem with that is I don’t need to check as many spells to find what I’m looking for anyway,” Lilia explained to her familiars, forgetting to tell them how she’d gotten there.

  Her breath grew ragged and her hands began to shake. Making any kind of progress right now felt like trying to push a plow through cold dirt. Even examining the spells had become taxing. Sweat now soaked Lilia’s clothing. It dripped down her chin and from her fingers.

  Cyclops started licking it up from the floor, but Lilia didn’t have the attention to spare to scold him. Mr. Bearbones tried to copy Cyclops, too, forgetting once again he didn’t have a tongue.

  “Just a little more…gotta believe it’s not the last one I check. My luck…can’t be that bad,” Lilia insisted to herself. “One…more…spell…there it is!”

  Drawing on every last bit of energy in her body, Lilia dragged her mana over the fifth layer’s repair spell. Everything else faded into the background. She even dropped to her knees, having lost the strength to stand. Erasing even a fraction of this spell felt like an hour’s work, but it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds.

  Despite her best efforts, Lilia could feel her control fading. She hadn’t been remotely prepared for the difficulty of scrubbing a spell off of a soul while actively being pushed out of it.

  “No…no…no! I can’t give up here! I’m so close!” Lilia croaked out. She didn’t notice the dryness of her throat or the hoarseness of her voice. All she could think about was that mass of mana buried inside the thrall’s soul. She’d managed to clear away at least a sixth of it. A fifth. A quarter. A third.

  Lilia realized she’d lost control when her head slammed into something soft and furry. It rumbled and vibrated against her forehead. Cyclops had broken her fall.

  “I’m…okay. Thanks,” Lilia managed. She tried to push herself up. Her arms were too limp to even move. Instead she lay there for several minutes trying to catch her breath until she finally felt up to speaking again. “Actually, can someone roll me over?”

  A bony skull wedged itself between Lilia’s stomach and the floor. Before her exhausted mind could process that, the world spun. Lilia landed heavily on her back, the impact forcing the breath from her lungs. She suspected she’d rolled more than once before landing, but she couldn’t remember the experience clearly enough to know for sure.

  Now that she lay on her back, though, Lilia could focus her mana sense upwards. Once she worked up the courage, anyway. She expected to find that she needed to start from scratch yet again; the spells binding Master’s thrall had had more than enough time to reform by now.

  When Lilia looked towards the soul, though, she found something else entirely.

  “Ha…hahaha…hahahahahahaha!” Lilia cackled madly, throwing an arm over her eyes to hide the tears welling up in her eyes.

  The soul only had five layers. Erasing a third of the innermost repair spell had sufficed to stop it from working. A gaping hole in the fourth layer, still unrepaired, stood as testament to Lilia’s success.

  For a good long while, Lilia lay on the basement floor and laughed like a madwoman. Her efforts hadn’t gone to waste. Weeks of using that thrall’s soul for practice had borne fruit. She’d passed Master’s first lesson at long last. Now it would only be a matter of time before he returned to let her out.

  “Wait a minute,” Lilia said suddenly, her crazed laughter finally ceasing. “I’ve been trying to break through Master’s spells for so long that I forgot he told me to take control of the thrall. I still can’t see his connection to his thrall, though, so one of the remaining spells must be protecting it.”

  After all the effort she’d put into destroying all four repair spells, though, Lilia felt hungry enough to eat her dad’s ox. She took a small break to wolf down three meals’ worth of food and guzzled down a liter of water before finally returning to make one final push.

  “Let’s see…first I should get this part out of the way,” Lilia said to herself as she erased the fourth layer of spellwork. Once she’d finished with that, Lilia prodded at the final layer. She could still feel it pushing back against her, but the resistance seemed weaker than before. “Ugh…there must have been something in the fourth layer making it harder to mess with the fifth. Guess I got a little too clever when I only punched a hole in it.”

  That just meant finishing the job would be much easier, though. This time Lilia managed to erase the rest of the fourth repair spell without much difficulty. Soon she had moved onto the others. Then, at long last, Lilia finally had a clear look at the soul’s core.

  “Oof. Yeah, that’s definitely not the right soul for that body. I think I could probably trace it back to its original body, but…for now I should just try giving it some orders.” Curiously enough, she still didn’t see the thread that should have connected the thrall to Master. She chalked that up to him having found another way to solve the problem of supplying it with mana. Since she’d probably erased that too, Lilia formed a connection with the thrall’s soul much like she’d done with her own.

  “Alright, big guy. Raise your left arm.” Nothing happened. “Okay, maybe I have to think it really hard?” Still nothing. “Hm. Master did say thralls don’t know how to move their own bodies. So weird that anyone would make one of these instead of just finding the right soul. What do you guys think? Would Master still count it as a pass if I just send this soul back to the afterlife and reel in the right one?”

  Cardinal nodded repeatedly in the time it took Mr. Bearbones to make one very slow nod. Cyclops seemed to be too busy licking himself to answer the question, but that’s how cats were.

  “Close enough. Here we go!” Lilia cut the patched soul conduit tying the incompatible soul to the thrall’s body and waited for it to drift away. With it gone, she quickly located the remnants of the original animal’s soul conduit. Looking even more closely, she found a thin, nearly imperceptible thread leading off towards whichever afterlife took animals in. Like a fisherwoman, Lilia pulled on that thread, carefully using her own mana to reinforce it and prevent it from snapping.

  It took a few minutes, but she soon dragged the animal’s soul back to its body. It took only a moment more to reconnect it. Unlike the previous soul, this one could be connected to both points on the body, granting it a limited intelligence like her other familiars.

  “It might be cheating, but eh, so were those repair spells. I’m counting this one as a success!”