Emelie felt her body physically recoil at the implication. "You want me to perform the exact form of necromancy that would ensure my execution! Did you consider that that's the true trap of this place?"

In the darkness, she could feel the corpse's eye sockets, following her every move accusingly, as they approached the chamber with its forgotten body.

Sarge said nothing.

"There's a way of doing it without summoning a spirit from beyond the veil," he said finally. "You could use me instead. Then you won't have broken the moral code you seem so shockingly insistent on clinging to: you won't have pierced through the veil, or pulled a spirit through."

"Sarge, I'm exhausted, and you want me to shunt your spirit into that body? Maybe I can talk to the fire mage, and explain that I'm not that kind of necromancer."

"You don't talk to a man with a sword drawn, it doesn't work like that," Sarge said, irritated. "I'm not going to watch while he runs you through with a blade and drops your body into the canal. Emelie please, just resurrect me."

She said nothing, her mind running over alternatives, frantically trying to find a solution to the problem.

"Once I'm in the body, it'll be two against one," he said. "And he might have some information on what's going on."

"It's still forbidden," Emelie said plaintively.

"Your options are to sit here, and hope the threat passes, giving him ample time to send for backup and alert more fire mages he's found something, or we go to him, take him by surprise, and get some answers."

"The book is stuck on-"

"Damn the book, Emelie, I'll show you how to do it myself."

Emelie bristled at that. She looked between Sarge's spirit and the dead body on the floor.

"What do I need to do?" she asked quietly.

"Reach down our dead fellow's shirt and see if he's got a talisman on him - it's a metal runic pendant with sigils carved into it."

Emelie looked down at the body. She couldn't believe she was doing this. She felt her heart begin a tired sort of gallop. The two failed summonings had already put a drain on her. She wondered how much stamina one needed to summon a spirit into a body, and what toll that would exact upon her.

She knelt down by the body, and frisked the neckline of their shirt, her fingers seeking and finding a cold, thin chain. She pulled it out of the shirt carefully, unwilling to disturb the body. The chain wasn't particularly clean. At the end of the chain was the talisman. With a grimace, she pulled it free and looped it over her head. The chain felt bitingly cold against the back of her neck.

She held the talisman out in her hand, and Sarge inspected it. It was metal, shaped a bit like an anvil, and covered in black sigils. She recognized a few from the Necrotic Guide: sigils of protection and binding.

"What's the ritual?" she asked.

"It's a simple one," Sarge said. "I need you to hold the talisman in your dominant hand, and point to the body with the other. There's a short chant, but your intent is more important. You need to envisage the spirit - me in this case- being sewn back into the body. You'll barely need to use the veil, as I'm already on this side of it."

"No salt circles for protection?" she asked. "No blessed water?"

"We used to raise armies like this all the time," Sarge said. "It'll come naturally to you, I promise. You just have to want it, and imagine the stitches tying us together."

She refrained from mentioning that all the necromancers that had done this 'all the time' had since died, horribly.

Sarge coached her through the pronunciation of three long, monotonous phrases. She wrote them down so she wouldn't forget them, her hand shaking. Then, Emelie pointed, and uttered the undead, forgotten language of necromancers. She repeated the chant, and watched in curious horror as Sarge began to meld in with the body on the ground. The energy of the ritual sapped her body. She staggered sideways and found herself sliding down the wall, alongside the corpse. Her vision dimmed momentarily. Things moved in the shadows at the edge of her vision.

She sat, frozen with exhaustion, as the corpse beside her turned its head towards her, and gave her a mangled smile. It stood with a creak and a crackle.

"Nice work recruit," came the deep, wrecked voice from the body's mouth. Its eyes blazed blue with hoarfrost.

What have I done? Emelie thought. Her hands trembled as she stood up. She had done this. Crossed the line into abomination, forfeit her life in any hearing or investigation pertaining to necromancy. She tilted sideways, and let out a horrified groan as the body Sarge inhabited caught her, keeping her from falling over entirely.

"Don't give up on me yet," came the voice, dark and grating. She recognized it as Sarge, but the fact that he was piloting a mummified corpse around made her skin crawl. He reached in and tugged the sword free from his chest, and swung it experimentally. "Let's go get some answers out of the fire mage."

Emelie watched him as he twisted and stretched. The ancient body complied, though it creaked like an old ship. He drifted a hand next to the lantern, and let out a disappointed sigh, "No nerves left," he said, sounding disappointed. "I won't be able to feel the sunlight on my skin."

Emelie thought he was rather getting ahead of himself. She felt like she'd been run over by a carriage. "Give me a moment."

"Do you have anything left to eat? You'll feel much better after having something."

She rifled through her bag, and devoured the remaining squashed cheese, chicken and lettuce sandwich. Her mouth watered, almost painfully, as she tore through the bread.

Sarge disappeared into the kitchen room, and reappeared holding the desiccated rat.

"A distraction," he said in explanation, throwing it up and catching it.

"How do you want to do the interrogation?" she asked, trying to put steel into her voice.

"You open the door, and I'll do the rest."

She nodded, numbly.

The dead creature Sarge inhabited followed her back up the stairs. Emelie shivered at the sound of his boots on the stairs behind her.

She used the periscope to confirm the fire mage's location, then mimed counting down from three, and pulled the lever to open the door.

The door slid sideways with a groan. As it opened, Sarge tossed the rat he was holding straight at the mage's chest. The mage caught it, and let out a horrified gasp. Then, Sarge lurched through the opening the door had created, wielding the sword. It plunged deeply into the fire marge's chest.

Emelie held back a scream. She saw the fire mage's spirit depart across the veil. Sarge grabbed the body to prevent it from toppling into the canal. He dragged the bleeding body into the alcove, and began to haul it back downstairs.

"What have you done?" she cried after him. "Why did you kill him? We were going to interrogate him together."

"We can still interrogate him," Sarge said grimly. "Now there's no risk of him firebombing us while we do so."

The seed of dread in her stomach bloomed.

"What do you mean we can still interrogate him. He's gone. I saw him pass through the veil."

"You're a necromancer, Emelie. Necromance."

"I'm on the verge of passing out as it is."

"This needs to happen now."

"I don't know if I can do it."

"You'll do it, alright, or we're likely to end up dead. He saw you Emelie. The last thing he saw before he died was you holding that lantern. We can't let an enemy necromancer get to him first."

Emelie shuddered as the temperature dropped once more. "Alright, once more, Sarge. But then I'm done."

He gave a terrible laugh. "Of course you're not done. You're on the hook until we find out what happened to your Quinn, and then you'll want to do something heroic like rescue him. You'll need my help for that too."

Infuriation blasted over the dead horror lodged in her chest. Why did he have to be right, about this of all things? She felt well and truly stuck with him. She trailed after him as he dragged the fire mage's corpse into the ritual room.

"I don't like this," Emelie muttered. "He was only doing his job, and you killed him without question, without hesitation."

"Where's the salt?" Sarge asked. "Time to see what this body's capable of."

"Can you feel it? The veil, I mean."

He paused. "I feel nothing, and a pressing ache to discard this coil and be a spirit again. I'm fighting that, of course. That's because we skipped the binding step of the ritual."

"That seems important," Emelie said pointedly.

He shrugged. "It takes a lot of energy to perform properly."

She recalled a passage from the Necrotic Guide: "Is it for binding your spirit into the body, or for binding your will to mine?"

"A bit of both," Sarge said, nonchalantly. "As it is, I'm enjoying my free will."

She looked down at the fire mage's body, crumpled on the floor with his limbs splayed at unnatural angles. "What do we use as his symbol?"

"Fingers work nicely," Sarge said, "but if you're squeamish about that, check if he's got anything around his neck, or in his pockets."

Emelie riled through his pockets, finding a wallet and a small log book in his pocket. She thumbed through it. It seemed to measure the times of his shifts. At the back was a half-written sonnet. The wallet held a thick parchment square, identifying him as Julian Hargrove, Inspector Fire Mage.

"Any of those should work," Sarge said, approvingly.

She placed them all at the center of the circle. The world looked grey to Emelie as she took up position in the concentric circles of salt. She peeled open the necrotic guide, and read from the ritual clumsily, the chant as thick as treacle on her tongue. "Julian Hargrove, we entreat you. Julian, we command you. Julian, we summon you."

Goosebumps ran down her arms. The veil descended upon her with ease, filling the room with opalescent fog as her breath began to come out as white mist. Again, a white orb formed at the center of the circle. Whispers bounced around the room. But there was no torrential rain this time. She felt the veil shift slightly, as something answered her call from the other side, and pressed up against the veil's edge. A high pitched ringing sounded in her ears. A blurred face began to take shape, rising out of the misty orb.

"What's going on? Where am I?" he said. He looked frantic. His eyes skittered between Emelie and the looming body of Sarge, before settling on the sight of his own body, slumped over in a growing pool of blood.

"Oh gods, I'm dead?" he groaned. "Don't let it be true." He screwed his eyes shut, as if trying to wake from a nightmare.

Emelie felt her heartbeat rushing in her ears, as blackness encroached across her vision. "Sarge-" she said, reaching out for him, as she collapsed. The darkness consumed her.