Sophia turned her attention to the fragments of a sword Xin'ri scattered in front of her. They didn't quite look like a complete sword, not really; instead, it looked like a couple of pieces were missing. The breaks didn't quite match up with each other.

At the same time, the broken sword was clearly a single item. The glow stretched from one piece to the next in a thin thread that bound them together. Sophia didn't remember it being as clear on the one they'd stolen in Izel, but that was probably because that one glowed fiercely with all the power it had stolen; this one also glowed, but she had to look for it.

That left the real question: could she do what she'd promised Xin'ri that she would?

No, wait, that wasn't the real question. She definitely could break the enchantment on the sword. There were several ways to do that. The real question was if she could tell whether or not Mo'ra was in the sword. It wasn't her specialty and it wasn't something she'd ever trained in, but she did have a couple of options.

The first was to dig through her homework and see if she'd ever done a soulsight inscription or ritual. She didn't think she had, but it was possible. She'd tried all sorts of spells while she was growing up, but she didn't think she'd done anything that worked on the spirits of the dead.

Well, no, that wasn't true. She'd learned one that she could still remember, a ritual that could send a lingering spirit on to the River of Souls. It didn't give her any control of the process and it certainly wasn't intended for this circumstance; it wouldn't even deal with a proper ghost. That wasn't the point.

All it did was open a path for unattached souls, which meant it worked in the time between death and when the soul found something to animate. She'd never used it, but it was supposed to be quite useful if you were dealing with certain types of necromancer or in an area with heavily undeath-tainted mana. It wasn't necessary in dungeons, because dungeon "undead" weren't really undead. They were closer to monsters with the right flavor-text, unless the dungeon let them out. That wasn't allowed to happen on Earth.

It wouldn't be useful here. If Mo'ra's soul was still around, it would be tied to the sword.

There might be something better in her notes, though, something she was forgetting. It was an option, but it wouldn't be fast; she had a lot of notes and no real idea where to start. She pushed that to the bottom of her list; she'd look if her other ideas didn't work.

Her second option was the original idea she'd had, the only other option she had right now. She could do something with her Pierce the Veil Grand Spell, then follow it up with Death's Embrace.

Sophia wasn't certain she'd really learn anything with Pierce the Veil, but Death's Embrace would probably work. She hadn't tried destroying an enchantment with it, but that wasn't that different from killing a construct. It might work even if Mo'ra's soul or spirit wasn't there. Not that Sophia was entirely certain what the difference between soul and spirit even was, or if they were two words for the same thing.

Sophia pushed that aside. It wasn't the important thing here; the important thing was two-fold. She needed a way to determine if Mo'ra was there and she needed a way to send her on her way if she was. She liked Death's Embrace for the second part, but the first part was still a problem.

Sophia's eyes flicked to Dav as a third option occurred to her. She wasn't a telepath, but Dav was. If there was enough of Mo'ra left to talk to, he could talk to her. More than that, he could let Xin'ri talk to her. That could be dangerous, but it might be a better outcome than anything else Sophia could do. It was worth a try. "Dav? Can you link to the broken sword? Mindlink, I mean?"

"The Ability is Psychic Mesh," Dav corrected her, "and are you sure it's a good idea? I can't control what happens in the Mesh, other than connecting and disconnecting people. If she's connected to the Broken Lord somehow, it could be bad."

"I don't think she is," Sophia answered with a frown. "If she were, someone would be looking for the sword, but Xin'ri's had it for years. On top of that, she was able to touch it without getting the Broken Lord's attention."

Sophia vividly remembered what happened when she accidentally touched the sword in Izel. The damn thing announced her presence with a serious light show. From what the Wanderer said, that was because she was Hallowed and the sword reacted to that, similarly to how it reacted when the Broken Lord used it to give someone a Hallow.

Wait, was Xin'ri Hallowed? Sophia knew Ci'an was, based on what the Wanderer said in his messages after they destroyed the Broken Temple of Izel's Broken Sword, but she didn't know if Xin'ri was or not. It had never come up. She knew Xin'ri was a follower of the Tower of Kestii, like Ci'an, but she didn't know if Xin'ri was Hallowed or not; she'd just assumed that she was because so many of the people around her were. Maybe she wasn't and that was why she could safely touch Mo'ra's sword.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

There was only one way to find out if Mo'ra's sword would do the same thing. If it did, the consequences could be severe; Sophia did not need a light show that told the Broken Lord's followers in Mazehold that there was someone here they needed to find. She couldn't be certain exactly how that worked, but she didn't want to find out the hard way that the Broken Lord could talk to the Blade or something. She hadn't forgotten that the Hilt could track his sword; the Blade could probably do the same thing. "I need to set up an isolation inscription, don't I?"

"You mean like the one you used back in Izel?" It was clear Dav was thinking along the same lines Sophia was. "Probably a good idea."

"What is an isolation inscription?"

The words pulled Sophia's attention over to Sweetfire. She'd completely forgotten he was there, even though he'd sort of triggered Xin'ri's confession.

Well, there was no reason to hide it. They'd already said way too much; if Sweetfire wanted to get them in trouble, he had all the ammunition he needed. "It's what it sounds like, a runic inscription that isolates an area from other magical influences or detection. They can do a lot of different things, but I only have one; it's a general purpose one that separates the inside from the outside and makes it so that there's no path from one side to the other unless the circle is broken; they're just not connected. It means people can't find where something is even if they know to look for it."

There were a lot of possible options for an inscription like that. Sophia knew they existed, but she couldn't use them. She didn't have the examples she needed and she was not anywhere close to a master of runes. If she tried to change the pattern, she'd just mess it up. The best she could manage was to scale it down, since she didn't need as much space if it was only her and Dav inside with the sword. There wasn't enough space in the common room for the scale she'd used the first time.

"Sounds useful for a thief," Sweetfire observed. Sophia flushed, but Sweetfire continued, "Or for preserving things until everything is ready to use them. Is that what your isolation bags are for? Do you know how to make them?"

Sophia shook her head. "They're common, back home. I don't know how they're made."

"Figures," Sweetfire muttered. "Probably not something I can manage; the best I've ever managed is burning away impurities. It works, but I always lose part of the original material as well. Too bad."

He shook his head slightly, then raised his volume back to a normal speaking level. "I do need to talk to all of you, but I think you'll want to deal with this first. For now, remember not to mention the Wanderer anywhere in public. Anywhere."

Sophia nodded twice. She knew better than that already; Los'en warned her enough. He was convinced that the reason there weren't any known Hallowed for any Patron other than the Broken Lord was that the Broken Lord had them all killed. Sophia wasn't certain that was true, but it was definitely true that the Hilt was willing to order assassinations and had done so before. That was clear from the diary of the assassin he sent after Los'en.

She was just plain bad at it, though. She knew she shouldn't say anything in front of Sweetfire, but at the same time she just didn't think about it. "I'll try."

Sweetfire sighed, then nodded. "So, tell me about this isolation inscription. How does it work?"

"It's a runescript. I haven't seen anything like them here in the Broken Lands," Sophia admitted. "They're sort of like enchantments, but not really. An enchantment uses stuff that resonates with the magic it holds, a runescript describes it and uses that instead. It's still all about the type of mana, but it's two different ways to do the same thing."

"You can enchant without special components?" Sweetfire sounded doubtful.

"It still requires special stuff," Sophia answered with a headshake. "It's just different special stuff. You need a substrate powerful enough to support the enchantment; that's not much of a requirement for the isolation runscript, but it would be a problem if I wanted to make it really small. Well, I do still have infused paper; it would work. I'm pretty sure."

Sophia bit her lip and frowned. The air and the stone she wrote on were enough for the first one, but she was compressing it here. Was that still going to be enough? The space was noticeably smaller. Well, it was noticeably smaller if she didn't remove the furniture. Come to think of it, she also needed to remove the plush carpeting. This really wasn't a good place for it at all.

"That's, uh, that's a problem. I can't really draw on carpet and there isn't a large enough clear floor in this house. Um, do you know somewhere we could use?" Sophia looked up at Sweetfire hopefully. "I can't start immediately anyway, I need to get my hands on some more mana-infused paint. Well, any paint with mana-carrying crystals will work; if it's a bit low on mana I can add my own. I'll have to do that at the end anyway."

"Space is not something I'm short on," Sweetfire admitted. "But you're going to have to explain it as you go. You know that, right?"

Sophia nodded. She was happy to explain as much as she understood. "I may not be able to tell you everything. I can make the runescript and I understand most of the lower-level components, but I couldn't have created this on my own."

"I'll keep that in mind." Sweetfire smiled at Sophia.

"I think I can help you draw it this time," Dav offered. "It's just painting the pattern, right?"

Sophia nodded, then pulled a couple of isolation bags out of her pack and carefully tucked the sword away without touching it. The last thing she wanted to do was repeat her mistake. "Let's go tell Xin'ri the plan. Isolation runescript, then I look at it with spirit sight, then you try to see if there's a mind there. We'll make a decision based on that but I'll probably use Death's Embrace."

"You can use the Cord of Spirit Ice, too, if that will help." Dav tapped the rope of ribbons tied around his left arm.

Sophia nodded. "It might. I'd like to have Xin'ri there, just in case. I'm not sure if your Psychic Mesh will work if we're not all in the isolation runescript."

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