"Sorry."

He shrugs. "It's just a word," he says, unconvincingly.

She sighs and hugs him.

Hugs.

"He's going to die horribly," she says reassuringly.

"That only solves half the problem."

"I know."

"...I'm trying to invent resurrection but... I don't think I can actually do it, I just don't think there's any reason not to try..."

Nod nod. "Can I help?"

"After we kill him, maybe. Harder to work on it before."

"Yeah."

Savaross returns at the end of the week, in a worse mood than usual.

If only they had a way to find out what that was about.

On the positive side, he doesn't try to interrogate anyone about it, and it makes him pay less attention to other things including more ordinary sorts of misbehavior.

Useful.

Very.

Time passes. Ikera gets good but not quite good enough, yet, at bypassing the wards on Savaross' power sinks. She masters the pain spell.

Sairu turns eighteen.

He tries very hard to act like he has an outlet for all this grief and rage and frustration. It... mostly works.

He's not allowed to kill her; Savaross isn't suspicious that the outlet isn't absolute.

That works.

Ikera practices the ripping. She practices and she practices and she practices, every waking moment she won't get caught.

She shaves her time down, ever so slowly, until...

finally...

she gets it to integrate smoothly to the nigh-instant action of air-ripping.