The true nature of communicating with a dead person's residual spiritual energy was, in essence, using that residual spiritual energy — something inherently and intimately tied to the deceased's memories — as a divination medium to divine directly for whichever memories she wanted to access. At least, that was how it worked with Mirror Necromancy.
This was also why the longer someone had been dead, the less information necromancy could retrieve. As time passed, the residual spiritual energy dispersed further and its connection to the deceased's living memories weakened — which naturally produced weaker divination results.
It was why necromancy was ideally performed within fifteen minutes of death. Beyond that threshold, retrievable information dropped off sharply. After an hour, only superficial information could be obtained. Past a month, the probability of a successful necromancy fell to near zero. All of these thresholds, of course, assumed the residual spiritual energy was dissipating naturally over time.
If the residual spiritual energy had been processed by someone with the means to do so — such as a Witch — there would, naturally, be nothing left to retrieve.
It was worth noting that this form of necromancy — which was fundamentally divination — differed from the more general concept of necromancy, in which one directly communicated with a spirit aloud. Though it was classified as necromancy. General necromancy could also interact with the spiritual energy of living beings or with naturally occurring spiritual entities in the world — but with the exception of Extraordinaries of specific pathways, all others required a necromantic ritual and a petition to a deity for assistance before they could successfully communicate with either of those two types.
Witches were no exception. The necromantic spell they commanded could only contact the dead — at least at the Sequence 7 stage.
For her current situation — no materials, no deity to appeal to — Mirror Necromancy was sufficient.
She condensed another ice mirror, spread her spiritual energy into it, and then, following the Witch potion's guidance, traced within the ice a series of symbols and magical markers, each carrying a specific occult meaning.
After placing the symbols for closure, circulation, and the switch at their correct positions, and connecting them into a unified whole with their corresponding magical markers, she felt it — the spiritual energy within the mirror, previously dissipating slowly, had coalesced. It was now cycling continuously, which dramatically slowed the rate of dissipation while also maintaining a pure internal environment suited for necromancy.
Beyond protecting the interior from outside interference, this kind of cycle could also prevent intelligent spiritual entities from escaping — whether they attempted to leave the mirror entirely or flee further into the Mirror Realm within. The abundant spiritual energy within the cycle also slowed the dissolution of any captured entity. A Witch could therefore use this kind of mirror to capture and cultivate ghosts or vengeful spirits, directing them as needed. This was, in fact, the basis for the "magic mirror" of folk legend.
"At its core, it's a talisman. Just a specialized one, made to serve as a casting medium."
Looking at the magic mirror she'd completed in a single attempt, she reflected on it.
Any complex spell, however elaborate, could be broken down into three fundamental steps: concentrate spiritual energy; trace the corresponding symbols; release the spell using the appropriate casting material. The symbol-tracing step could also be replaced by vocalizing a spell aloud.
This mirror was the casting material that Mirror Necromancy required.
She aimed the mirror at the body and moved close, then concentrated her spiritual energy again and said:
"Imprison!"
This was the Witch's Mirror Spirit Binding — designed to capture and hold spiritual entities. It could naturally also be used to absorb a deceased person's residual spiritual energy for necromantic use.
As the word left her lips, she sensed with her heightened inspiration the switch symbol on the mirror suddenly brighten — and the mirror emit a phantom pulling force. Once she perceived this Assassin's residual spiritual energy being drawn into the mirror, she cut off her own spiritual energy supply to the spell, and the switch symbol dimmed back to normal.
Throughout this process she had not activated Aura Vision — relying entirely on her heightened inspiration to judge whether anything had entered the mirror.
Extraordinaries with higher inspiration could directly sense things ordinary people couldn't, even without Aura Vision — she could already feel, from time to time, a gaze landing on her and then quickly withdrawing. This was part of why many Extraordinaries with strong inspiration were reluctant to open Aura Vision, even though mastering it wasn't particularly difficult for them.
Aura Vision only made the invisible more directly perceptible — it didn't mean that without it, nothing could be sensed at all. There were certainly some things that could only be seen through Aura Vision — but that wasn't necessarily a good thing. Such things often implied danger, which was precisely why inspiration instinctively avoided their existence.
As an aside: the spiritual entities that had only glanced her way were almost certainly natural spiritual entities of the kind her current inspiration could detect — not wandering ghosts.
(Spiritual entities that form as a result of biological death — even those not formed from human death — inevitably retain a longing for the living and a residual sense of resentment. Without the development of true intelligence, they cannot suppress the instinctual pull toward the spiritual energy of living things and will advance without restraint.)
She placed her hand over the mirror and spoke the Ancient Hermes word for "commune." Then she began to recite mentally:
"Your reason for hunting me."
After the seventh repetition, the mirror's surface shimmered like disturbed water, and a scene began to surface from the darkness of the glass:
The Assassin was kneeling on one knee, like a knight before a king, and with urgency and joy in his voice said:
"I will not disappoint your expectations."
The vision ended there. It showed nothing of who the Assassin was kneeling before, and offered no further explanation.
Of course, the mirror only produced the image — the voice and emotional tone were delivered to her through the divination results as fed back by the spiritual energy she'd spread into the mirror.
Was this interfered with? She wasn't certain. Ordinarily, she should at least have gotten a glimpse of the other person's face — unless the Assassin had genuinely had zero relevant information.
She asked a follow-up about the Assassin's potion formula and materials — all of it sourced through entirely ordinary channels, just like the big idiot once had been.
Finally, after one more question about this Assassin's personal background, she sensed with her inspiration that the residual spiritual energy inside the mirror had fully dispersed.
Both communication and divination accelerated the dispersal of a deceased's residual spiritual energy — unavoidably so, unless the residual energy had, under suitable conditions, been transformed into a vengeful spirit, which no longer required a physical body to exist. But even under favorable conditions, that transformation took time — certainly longer than fifteen minutes — making necromancy by that point far less meaningful.
Even with a Witch's spell to accelerate the formation of a vengeful spirit, it wasn't much faster — and how much information would survive the conversion was an unknown.
"But what if I first preserved the residual spiritual energy using the method for cultivating vengeful spirits? Would that work better?"
She decided to test it with the remaining Assassin's residual spiritual energy, and use the experiment to see whether that approach could extend things beyond the fifteen-minute threshold.
After absorbing the scarred man's spiritual energy into the mirror by the same process and completing necromancy, she found, unsurprisingly, that the man had indeed survived the church's pursuit only because someone had helped him — and from that person he'd received a potion formula that allowed him to advance from Sequence 9 "Hunter" to Sequence 8 "Provocateur."
The scarred man had come to kill her today because he'd received information from that same person. The mirror that had been tracking her position was also something he'd obtained from them.
"So it is that insufferable woman!"
While she couldn't be absolutely certain from the necromancy that the person who'd saved the scarred man and the person who'd leaked her whereabouts to him were the same individual, it didn't really matter at this point. She drew a mental equal sign between them.
After extracting the Hunter and Provocateur potion formulas, the scarred man's spiritual energy fully dispersed. She was left with a quietly puzzled thought:
"Why hasn't that insufferable woman shown up yet? Afraid I'll do something rash?"
Author's Note (this chapter): "But what if I first preserved the residual spiritual energy using the method for cultivating vengeful spirits? Would that work better?"
叒叕是我 Sequence 6 — Death Conductor. 😂