Carefully, trying to avoid scraping his knuckles on the ground, Nathanial withdrew his hands, set Solomon's head down, and rose. His whole body ached from remaining in one position for so long; he moved slowly, lips compressing to withhold the sparks of pain. It seemed somehow cowardly now to show such trivial pain, with one of his former brothers still in agony on the floor.

He seized the thought and gave it due attention even as he moved away from Solomon and Siren both. And yet his gaze returned.

Solomon had seen his soul. A light, he said. A light in the middle of a place which, according to Solomon's own words, shrieked with the agony of the Necromancers who had come before. Quite suddenly Nathanial wondered--where did that light he'd seen come from?

"Both," he said at last. "He looked at me, and yet his eyes seemed to track something around me as well. As a man would track debris in the water and the swell of the waves around it."

It was like that. The comparison only came because they thought of the lifestream as a current to begin with, but it was accurate. Nathanial folded his hands in front of him, hiding their tremble in his robes, and turned toward his superior, trying to pretend that things hadn't just changed in a way he never could have imagined. Instead he clung to the one authority he had left.

"What are your orders, High Priest?"