"I'm not pulling out his corpse," Maram said, her feeling of revulsion clear as she took another step back from the makeshift operating table. The air around Nikola's body was thick with the sickly-sweet scent of decomposition, a smell that clung to the inside of her nostrils and made her stomach churn.
"What?" Nova asked, fully knowing what she said. The question was less about understanding and more about disbelief.
"I'm not touching that thing!" she insisted, a flicker of genuine disgust in her eyes as she gestured wildly at the source of the foul odor. The decaying flesh, the bloated limbs, and the deep, unsettling rot of Nikola's skin made the very air unclean.
"You have to!" Nova retorted, his patience coming to an end. They couldn't let a little rot get in the way now of all times.
"Look, I'll do a lot—I'll follow damn near every order—but this isn't one of them." She crossed her arms.
"I'll get you gloves, Maram," Sam said, sensing the tension and quickly running to a storage closet. It was a simple solution, but it cut through the standoff.
Bishie, interrupted, "Why can't you pull it out?" He looked at Nova with an expression that was part curiosity, part genuine confusion.
Nova glanced at Bishie, the boy's question reminding him of the complexities of their powers. "It's just not how it works."
"If you can copy her abilities, why can't you just make the portal and pull it out of storage?" Bishie pressed, his logic seemingly airtight.
"Because we don't share the same damn storage!" Nova expressed with a mix of exasperation and fatigue. "Her portal leads to her personal space, her dimensional locker. I can copy the ability to open a portal, but I can't access her private storage. She has to open her portal and pull it out herself."
"Here are the gloves!" Sam yelled, returning with a box of long, thick gloves, tossing a pair to Maram.
"Well then, will that do?" Nova asked, a bit bratty, as if to say, 'can we please just get on with this?'
Maram groaned uncomfortably, The latex was thick, and the length offered some small comfort. "I guess."
Reluctantly, Maram put on the gloves; pulling them up to her elbows, and climbed onto the table. The portal she opened shimmered with a soft, purple light above her, and with a grunt of effort, she reached in. She carefully pulled Nikola's body out, back first, so his face wouldn't be the first thing to greet them.
"This is so disgusting," she gagged, even though the cloak covered her nose—the smell still seeped through, a rank, metallic odor that made her eyes water.
"Power through it!" everyone shouted, standing a safe distance from the table, their vocals a mixture of encouragement and shared disgust.
When the corpse was finally out, it plopped onto the table with a heavy, wet thump. The sound, more than the sight, sent a wave of nausea through the group. Nikola's rotting body lay there, pus oozing from his pores like thick, yellowish dew. Bishie, holding a book with a frayed leather cover, said, "I almost forgot, I need sacrificing utensils."
"Sacrificing utensils?" Will asked, his hand instinctively going to his back, where his sharpened shield would normally be.
"Yeah… I should've mentioned that. This procedure is basically an offering. Instead of exchanging a soul for materialistic value, we exchange material value for the soul."
"So what exactly do we need?" Will asked again.
"Money," Nova said, the single word hanging in the air.
"That could work," Bishie agreed, nodding solemnly. "Gala already said you guys are 'super rich,' right?"
Gala, who had been quietly watching the proceedings, avoided Nova's gaze, a slight flush rising to her cheeks.
"Yeah… she did, didn't she?" Nova asked, annoyed. He let out a long, slow sigh. "Anyway, how much do you need? 2,000? 3,000?"
"One million nitche."
The number hit Nova like a gut check. Nova blinked once, then twice, the words not processing. "How much?"
"One million." Bishie's approach was calm, almost clinical, as he repeated the astronomical sum.
Nova inhaled sharply, a rasping sound in the shocked silence, and collapsed onto his hands and knees. The weight of the number felt heavier than any curse. "Oh my greats…" he groaned, his comment a miserable whisper.
Ruby, who hadn't fully grasped the gravity of the situation, questioned the sulking mage. "What? Can't we afford that?"
"We'll be left with 5,000 nitche!" Nova groaned, pressing the heels of one of his hands into his temple and the other hand slamming on the floor over and over again. The number was a punch to his financial gut.
"That's not so bad," Ourania stated, her pragmatism at odds with the collective despair. She had never been concerned with money before.
"No, it is. That means this month we have to split that between ten people for food and everything else." Nova looked up at her, his view one of utter defeat.
"So, 500 each. What are you so upset about?" Ourania seemed genuinely confused.
Ian fell to the floor as well, a hand over his eyes. "I just read Nova's mind. After our spending, we'll have 60 nitche left." The finality of the number settled over the group, a shared misery.
Bishie looked at the others falling onto the floor. "That's not important now. Can we hurry? His corpse smells terrible." The urgency in his input brought them back to the present, the nauseating stench a constant reminder of their task.
"The kid's right," Nova said, pulling himself up with a tired sigh. "So do I need to get the money here or just like send it to a god's bank account?" He said jokily, his attempt at humor falling flat on its face.
"Blood contract is easiest for money transfers, it'll manickally take it out." Bishie grabbed a piece of paper and wrote a short contract in runes, his hands moving with practiced ease, leaving a space for a signature. "Just prick your finger, smear the blood across it, and I can use it for this procedure."
Nova skimmed the contract, his brow furrowed. "You can read runes too?" Bishie asked. He had never seen someone handle the ancient language with such casual confidence.
Nova waited. "No, I just remember when I met you, I thought you were a useless dud."
"And this made you change your mind?" Bishie asked, his hope for a compliment evident in his expectant stance.
"Yeah, about the dud part." Nova teased, a small, wry smile finally breaking through his exhaustion.
"Oh, okay." Bishie placed the contract on Nikola's corpse. The paper immediately soaked up the fluids, becoming a dark, mottled mess of paper and grime. The sheer grossness of it made everyone cringe.
Gross, they all thought in unison, a silent agreement on the unpleasantness of the entire situation.
Next, Bishie called Maram to take out the heart and brain, mostly to avoid touching them himself (and she still had the gloves on). With a grimace, she used her gloved hands to carefully extract the organs.
Nova, with a swift movement of his hand, summoned a portal and pulled out the jar and a change of clothes for Nikola, placing the jar on a clean section of the table.
With the heart and brain secured, she steadied the jar on the table, twisted off the top, and poured out the contents before sprinting away, her face still covered by her cloak.
"I'm taking these off," she said, her utterance muffled, tossing the gloves into the trash can with a violent, final flourish. "Someone else can do the dirty work."
"No worries—that's all I needed." Bishie continued, unaffected by her histrionics. "Does this table mean anything to anyone? Like, Is it expensive?"
"I think it's technically an heirloom," Nova said, looking at the ornate mahogany wood.
"So, somewhat irreplaceable?" Bishie asked, his hand tracing one of the carvings.
"Yeah," Wisdom said, her declaration palpable with a mix of protectiveness and a new sense of dread. "What are you planning with my table?" She tried to approach Bishie, but a quick word from Nova to Ian seemed to calm her down, Ian's aura of calm settling over her agitation.
"Perfect. Does anyone have a sharp piece of metal?" Bishie asked.
Nova opened a portal and tossed him a pocket knife and a small, smooth stone.
"Thank you." Bishie carefully chiseled runes outlining Nikola's body into the table. The knife scraped against the wood with a low, grating sound, leaving shallow, yet permanent lines in the heirloom. The focus on his face was absolute as he worked, each stroke deliberate and precise. When finished, he placed a hand on the starting rune, his eyes closed, focusing a brilliant, golden energy into the intricate lines. "Alright, I'm done," he said, grabbing a chair to observe Nikola's body.
"That's it?" Gala asked, her wish brimming with disappointment. She had expected something far more dramatic, a show of power.
"I said I'm done. Now it's up to the great power to heed my call—or so the book says."
Just then, the starting rune began to glow teal, the light trailing around the body in the order Bishie had chiseled it, a mesmerizing dance of energy. Once they were fully illuminated, the contract dissolved into a fine, ethereal dust, particles zipping into Nikola's body. The twine doll in Nova's hand disintegrated with a final shimmer. "Well, that's a good sign," Nova said, the warmth of the magic on his fingers.
Nikola's body began to glow and slowly rise, a foot above the table, a hushed reverence filling the room. Then, with a sudden, violent motion, it flopped violently back onto the table. "Pretty sure his soul tripped into his body," Nova said, hiding a laugh, the tension momentarily broken by the clumsy revival.
The runes and Nikola's body stopped glowing. Nikola's hand twitched, then he began to convulse and scream as if freshly murdered. The sound was horrifying, a guttural, pain-filled shriek that made the group take a collective step back. With a gasp, Nikola yelled, "MY CHEST!" He tore open his blood-soaked shirt and analyzed his chest pressing against the cavity. His eyes were wide with a desperate, frantic terror. "Thank Jenti, I'm not dead." After catching his breath, he finally noticed the gathered crowd, his chest heaving. "Hey, you guys," he greeted, scanning faces until he spotted Bishie, the small figure responsible for his resurrection. "Who's the kid, and what's his deal? Looks like he's seen the living dead."
Stunned sheet of silence filled the room until Nova tore it. "Umm, take a close look at yourself." Confused, Nikola looked down at his hands, arms, and legs—everything was intact, but his skin was as gray as ash, a pale, lifeless color that contrasted sharply with his still-beating heart. "Ah, I see," Nikola said, his assertion flat with newfound understanding. He turned to Nova for clothes. There was an awkward exchange, no words spoken, a shared understanding of what had just transpired. Nikola took the clothes and went to the dorms to change and shower.
"Nova, I'm so sorry—" Bishie began, his face a mask of remorse.
"Bishie, I'm not mad. But shut up," Nova said sternly, his tone cutting off any further apology.
Nikola returned after 30 minutes, his hair damp and messy, dressed in a long dark-gray coat, white shirt, striped vest, dark blue pants, shiny black boots, and white gloves. "You clean up well," Nova said
"Yeah, well, enough," Nikola replied, sitting and silently inspecting his arms, his fingers tracing the veins beneath his new, ashen skin.
"Alright, let's start this meeting." Everyone returned to the newly cleaned table, the air now filled with the clean scent of the library and the lingering unease of what they had just witnessed. The eleven sat around it: Nikola still staring at his skin, Wisdom reading, Nova taking attendance, Ruby and Will playing games, Maram and Ourania discussing classmates, Ian chatting with Sam, Gala daydreaming, and Bishie contemplating his actions. The library was silent for the first time in hours.
"Okay. This meeting has three items: the S.O.G. coming for an examination, Nikola's revival, and what to do with Bishie."