It takes a while for Mirzayael to stop laughing.

  My cheeks burn fiercely the whole time, but it’s all I can do to wait until she’s done, wiping the tears from her eyes. On the bright side, I suppose, that’s the most I’ve ever seen her laugh.

  “Fyre, you can’t mean to tell me you don’t know how babies are made,” she says, still chuckling. She gestures for me to follow as we talk, and we begin our trek back to the palace.

  At least this way I won’t have to maintain eye contact the entire conversation. “I suspect the mechanics might be significantly different from what I’m accustomed to in my world.”

  “Well, what do you want to know?” Mirzayael asks.

  Her amusement is still dancing through my thoughts. I take a moment to ensure that our minds are quarantined from anything Ollie might accidentally overhear. “This feels like something we should be discussing in private,” I say, glancing around self-consciously. As usual, however, the streets are largely empty.

  “What, are you afraid someone might discover your lack of knowledge about procreation?” Mirzayael teases.

  My blush deepens. “I am quite familiar with intercourse, thank you. I did have a child back on my world, after all.”

  Mirzayael’s smile fades, looking down at me. “You didn’t tell me that.”

  I blink. “I didn’t?” I suppose not. Caroline is a beautiful memory as much as she is a painful one. This world has been an opportunity for me to start over in more ways than one. “Right. Well. I suppose that is a subject we could discuss later. What I really mean is, are you sure it’s appropriate to talk about such things in public?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?” she asks.

  I fidget, picking at a loose feather on my wrist. “Well, where I’m from, it’s a rather private matter. But I’m beginning to gather you don’t have the same social stigmas attached.”

  “It sounds as though we don’t,” Mirzayael agrees. “The birth of a soul is the most natural thing. Why would it be stigmatized?”

  “That is a complex topic of conversation,” I admit. “But I’m glad to hear it’s different here.”

  Mirzayael tips her head. “What is it exactly that you want to know? You had a kid yourself, so…”

  “Well.” I know this topic of conversation isn’t embarrassing for Mirzayael, but it’s still exceptionally uncomfortable for me. “On my world, we didn’t have magic. Souls were a concept some believed in, but there was nothing concrete—nothing observable. Our method of procreation involved, um, the physical compatibility of a set of organs…”

  “Sex,” Mirzayael says bluntly.

  “Right.” I briefly consider having the Dungeon Core open a hole up beneath my feet so the ground can swallow me whole. “Sex. Yes.”

  “Obviously, we have that, too,” Mirzayael says. “Though it’s rather limited, isn’t it? Different species can’t procreate via sex, and even if the partners are the same species, most of the same gender and many of differing genders still won’t be able to conceive a child via sex for one reason or another. It’s a rather outdated form of procreation. I’d say most partners engage in it recreationally rather than with the intention of conceiving.”

  I cannot express how deeply unbearable this entire conversation is for me. But I’m already this far in, so I might as well see it to the end.

  “Where I’m from, that’s the only way to conceive,” I say. Well, not accounting for modern technological advancements, though bringing that up now would only muddy the waters.

  Mirzayael appears surprised. “No magical conception? But what about those who could not conceive biologically?”

  “Then they weren’t able to conceive at all,” I say. “Adoption was an option for some.”

  Mirzayael’s face falls. “How sad.”

  “We didn’t have magic on my world,” I remind her. “This magical conception you mentioned. I am assuming that is how many here are conceived?”

  “It is,” she says. “Not only many, but most. I’d say less than one in ten children are born biologically. Depending on the species, birth can be an intense physical strain on the parent. Soul gestation is more controlled and safe. The trade off is that it has the potential to take longer.”

  We’re finally veering out of death-by-mortification territory. “How does soul gestation work?” I ask.

  Mirzayael casually shrugs. “It’s not a complicated process. The partners in question donate their mana to a shared pool to start the process. When enough magic has accumulated, it coalesces into a proto-soul. From there, the parents must continuously feed more magic into it. If it is too little, the proto-soul will shrink and eventually disperse. The more magic the parents have to offer, the faster the soul can form and grow. A truly powerful mage could make one on their own. For those with less magic, it can help to pair up with more individuals so each parent would need to contribute less mana overall. And once enough magic has accumulated, the proto-soul becomes a true soul. And after the soul is nurtured for long enough, its body will form around it.”

  I frown at that. “Spontaneously?”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Mirzayael shakes her head. “It can take as long for the soul to form its body as it did for the proto-soul to become a gestating soul. Perhaps as fast as one month, or as long as several years, depending on how much mana the parents are able to donate. It’s very magic intensive. But separate from parental mana donation rates, different species also form faster or slower than others. It’s at that time the parents will start to know what species the child will be.”

  My mind is whirling with more questions. “They don’t know the species of their child until that point?”

  “It could be the species of any of the parents who donated magic,” Mirzayael says. “Some say that whichever parent donated the most magic is most likely to pass on their species to the child, but this claim is often debated. However, it is usually true that physical traits of parents who donate magic often show up in their children. Certain coat patterns; relative heights, and so on.”

  I wish I remembered more about genetics than how to make a Punnett square, because magical phenotypes sound like a fascinating subject unto itself.

  “You said some species are faster or slower to form than others,” I say, backtracking. “Is this related to the size of the species the soul ends up becoming?”

  “Typically, yes,” Mirzayael acknowledges. “Dracid, arachnoid, and harpies all conceive eggs. Felis, humans, and dwarves have live births. Eggs are smaller, so these bodies tend to form around the souls much more quickly, though they require additional time and attention even after the soul gestation is complete; the eggs still need to develop and hatch. Meanwhile, felis, human, and dwarf infants will take longer for their bodies to form, but when they do, their births are complete.”

  “So it takes more magic for felis, human, and dwarves souls to form bodies,” I surmise. “Are these species innately more magical than the others?”

  “No,” Mirzayael says. “It’s actually more likely to be the reverse.”

  “Then this sounds like a case of conservation of energy,” I muse. “The magic is being converted into matter. The more matter the final product has, the more magic is required as an input.”

  Mirzayael shrugs. “I suppose so.”

  This concept is fascinating, especially in how simultaneously different and familiar this is to scientific principles I’m already familiar with.

  It’s almost how the Core’s Inventory works, to a degree. It costs magic to break things down and build things up. But what goes into the Inventory isn’t converted to pure magic: it’s more like the object is temporarily moved somewhere else, and for a small magical fee can be retrieved again. None of this contradicts my own understanding of conservation of mass and energy.

  It also potentially provides an answer to a question I’ve long wondered about: Where did my body come from?

  It’s doubtful that my soul came to inhabit an already living (or even recently deceased) body, given the remote location in which I appeared. Which means my body must have spontaneously formed when my soul coalesced in this world. I arrived in a fully adult body, however, rather than as a child (or, god forbid, inside an egg). I can only imagine how much magic it must have taken for this body to have formed.

  “Intriguing,” I mutter. “Do you think…” I trail off, unsure if I should even voice the spontaneous thought.

  “Might as well ask it,” Mirzayael says. “It will only eat you up if you don’t.”

  She really has come to know me well, hasn’t she?

  “You said that traits of the child can be inherited by the parents who donated magic to the new soul,” I start.

  “Yes.” She raises a questioning eyebrow.

  I’m back to fidgeting again, thinking back on the room full of bones. “Well, there’s been certain similarities drawn between my appearance and Fyreneth. Do you suppose… given the location where I was found… potentially some of her physical remains were incorporated into my manifestation?”

  Mirzayael stares at me.

  “That was probably a silly speculation,” I hurriedly say.

  “Perhaps.” Mirzayael’s look turns thoughtful. “Perhaps not. I don’t know. I’ve never heard of such a thing happening… but you weren’t the only one to appear in such a way. And Ollie’s body would have required far more matter or magic than yours, so it’s not impossible. I wonder… Perhaps there were dragon bones buried where Ollie appeared. It’s been a long time since anyone has seen a living ice dragon.”

  “Then you really think it’s possible?” I run a hand down my feathered arm. “This body might have used Fyreneth as a sort of… template?”

  Mirzayael shakes her head. “I’m beginning to learn that anything’s possible with you. Though if this does have something to do with your manifestation here, it leads to the question: Who or what donated the magic that formed your new body?”

  I’d been wondering the same thing. I have faint memories of something that transpired between Earth and this world. What was it? There was a fight of some sort. There were other presences there in the dark. Had those been more souls, like me and Ollie? I try to approximate how many I had sensed, but everything had been so abstract, and so much time has passed, that the details of the memory have faded. There’s not enough there for me to take anything useful.

  I can only shake my head at Mirzayael’s question. “That’s something I may never learn the answer to.” I brighten. “But this has been a fascinating subject to learn about. It gives me hope for Ollie’s future.”

  Mirzayael blinks. “Ollie? What does he have to do with this?”

  “Well, perhaps this is preemptive of me,” I say. “He’s still a child. When he’s an adult, maybe he won’t even be interested in starting a family. But trying to imagine what his future might look like has always made me a bit somber. It seems other dragons in this world are animalistic, while Ollie is intelligent. Couple that with his inability to speak, and I was concerned he was doomed to a life of solitude.”

  “Solitude?” Mirzayael repeats. “He has us to speak to.”

  “He does,” I agree. “Though you, me, and the Dungeon Core… that feels a bit restrictive, don’t you think?”

  Mirzayael sighs wistfully.

  I raise a bemused eyebrow.

  “I was just thinking how nice it would be if I only ever had to speak to three people,” she says.

  I chuckle, playfully elbowing her.

  “But there might be other ways for him to achieve speech so he’s not only reliant on your telepathy,” Mirzayael considers. “Depending on how flexible his talons are, there’s always Common Signs. And I’m sure there are fields of magic that might be able to help. I’m not sure anyone within Fyreneth’s Fortress expertise in either of those areas, but if we speak to outsiders about the issue…”

  “What’s this?” I tease. “You suggesting we talk to outsiders?”

  “Yes,” Mirzayael deadpans. “You’ve made me intolerably soft.”

  I smile. “It’s a good idea. I’ll look into it when we have the opportunity.”

  Both of us pause then as a small white spider made of silk scuttles down the hallway toward us. Mirzayael stoops to the ground, extending her hand. The construct scurries up onto her palm.

  “Land in sight,” the spider says in Torim’s voice when Mirzayael taps a rune on its back. “The harpies are reporting a coastline. North by north-east. We’ll be upon it by the end of the day.”

  Mirzayael lowers the messenger spider, looking at me. “Well. It seems that opportunity has arrived.”

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