On the tenth day of Autumn of the second year of the New Reign, Wilson died.
Maxwell was not expecting it, inasmuch as one could not expect death in a world designed to kill. He hadn't even really noticed the cry of the enraged tallbird echoing not too far from where his puppets were chopping trees. Wilson was too seasoned a survivor to be troubled by such daft creatures. He hadn't given it any thought, going on with his day like a fool, as if he himself shouldn't have known better, as if he didn't know perfectly well how severely punishable overconfidence was, in the Constant.
He had worried, too late, when Wilson hadn't showed up in the camp by sunset. He had headed out to look for him, lantern and duelists at hand, when Charlie fed his fears and doubts with floral scents and cryptic whispers, too late. He had found Wilson in the mining area, prone on the rugged soil, a bunch of gold nuggets scattered all around him, the yolk of a broken tallbird egg disgustingly mixed with his own spilled blood, a huge gash running through his messy hair and burrowing deeply into his head. Too late.
They had no amulets. No statues. No touch stones. Nothing.
Maxwell couldn't do anything for the entire night. He spent it right there, kneeling beside the corpse, as lifeless as his own puppets. He couldn't fathom how or why Wilson had met his demise so unexpectedly, so stupidly, after all he'd been through. Maxwell couldn't fathom how he himself could have forgotten so easily of the fragility of a human life, especially of Wilson's, which he had seen shattered countless times. It was simply unacceptable. He turned over the body, grimacing at the rivulets of dried blood streaking his face. He shook him, he called him. He cupped his cheeks - cold, so very cold - and ran his hands through his hair - blood, so much blood. In a way, that was already an acknowledgement of the gravity of the situation. He wouldn't have dared, had there been a single spark of life left in Wilson. He wouldn't have dared to voice or show the depth of those murky feelings he himself hesitated to name, he wouldn't have dared to toy with their hard-earned camaraderie or to risk Wilson's liberal trust or respect. Maxwell thought himself above regret: it was a pointless, cheap feeling, that had no place in the heart of a man who always acted according to his real desires, a feeling fitting for the insecure, the feeble, the foolish, and he hadn't been such in a long while. It spoke volumes that now, of all times, he found himself regretting not having unravelled those complex emotions while he still had the time.
He did not cry. He hadn't done that in a long time either, he wasn't even sure he still could. At dawn, he lifted Wilson's corpse - stiff, so stiff - and slowly carried him - it - back to the base. He lay it down beside the cold fire pit. He did not bury it. He wanted it to be there, when he'd come back. It was morbid, and evidently messed up, he could clearly see as much, but he couldn't find it in himself to care. He kept staring at it for another minute, or an hour, then left, duelists in tow.
It was a very productive day. He slew the tallbird, which gave him no satisfaction whatsoever. He harvested berries and traps, chopped trees, even mined rocks, all by himself. He usually deemed manual labor unnecessarily draining and uncomfortable, but he welcomed it with open arms, that day. The repetitive motions and the little pains in his creaky back and on his delicate palms did wonders to distract him from the pointlessness of it all. He wondered if this was the reason why Wilson usually didn't mind that kind of work, he imagined how his little disbelieving laugh would sound seeing him grinding away at boulders so keenly.
When Maxwell returned to the camp, Wilson's body was already gone. Mostly. Only the skeleton remained, his flesh and clothes whisked away by the peculiar magic decay of the Constant. Wilson had once tried to observe the phenomenon as it happened, sitting before Maxwell's newly-shed mortal vessel for an entire night; he had missed it anyway, as Maxwell's corpse had spoiled literally in the blink of an eye. Maxwell had offered to watch over Wilson's body the next time he died, just to have an excuse to spend an entire day in the camp doing nothing. He had just remembered that. It looked like he had managed to fail a corpse. It was a new low for him.
Maxwell was unreasonably furious about the change. He should have expected it, but that didn't make it any better. He shouldn't care about it, because what was even the point of keeping a corpse around, but that didn't make it any better either. Eventually, when he was done screaming at the sky and at Charlie and at Them and at any and every sentient entity that might be listening, he resolved to bury the skeleton. Bones were easier to handle than pale skin, rigid limbs, familiar features. It almost didn't hurt to see the rough crack ruining the perfect smoothness of the skull. Almost. He gathered the remains and dug a grave, again by himself, not too far from the camp. He dropped the bones messily into it, not bothering to reassemble them correctly. There was a limit to self-serving sentimentalism, and he had crossed it by miles. He didn't mark the grave. He wasn't going to forget where it was anyway, and there weren't many other people who could pay a visit. He cleaned his hands from the dirt, noticing a few blisters starting to pop up here and there, and turned to walk back to their - his - camp.
Then, he saw it.
At first he thought he was simply going insane. It was a very reasonable hypothesis, all things considered, but that wasn't something insanity had ever done to him or to Wilson, as far as he was aware. Right above the freshly disturbed ground, floating, there was a ghost. It looked very much like any other generic ghost, but also it didn't. Its wispy body was a barely visible mass of white vapours, thinner than fog or smoke. It had no clear shape or features, save for two exceedingly noticeable ones. The very tip of its outline was not round and undefined like the rest of it: curious spikes of mist rose from it, messy and twisted and awkwardly bent like a painfully familiar, utterly ridiculous hairdo. And then, there were its eyes. Bright and sharp and alive, somehow, more alive than Maxwell himself felt. Staring at him, through him, with a reproachful scowl that betrayed too many hints of concern.
Maxwell called his name. He responded. Vaguely, unintelligibly, almost inaudibly, with a deformed, subdued tone that sounded more like a faraway rumble, but somehow with the discernible cadence and pitch of the scientist's quirky voice. Maxwell outstretched his hand to touch the apparition. Predictably, it went straight through it. The ghost approached Maxwell in return, enveloping him within his unsubstantial body. Maxwell didn't feel a thing, not a change in temperature or thickness or flow in the air around him, it was perfectly immaterial, but it didn't matter. Right then, right there, Maxwell almost felt like crying. Not quite, but closer than he thought he could. Wilson was still there, still tethered to that wretched world, somehow. Not all was lost. He wasn't going to question it. He was-
He was definitely going to question it, he chided himself. It might be temporary, it might be a trick. He was definitely going to question it.
He made his way back to the camp, the ghost quietly following him. He had a quick meal, stoked the fire, stored his supplies. Then, he sat down and considered the problem, Codex open and floating at one side of him, black tongues of darkness already erupting from the fluttering pages, Shadow Manipulator whirring and glowing at the other, ready for the conjuring.
First things first. How had this happened? Why did Wilson still exist? Was it the grave? Did proper burial anchor souls under Charlie's reign? It seemed a bit of a stretch. Death had already swung its sickle by the time one got buried, the soul should have already been severed by then. No, it was something deeper, something unrelated to his will or actions. Something had changed in the inner workings of the world itself, something unfathomable for him at the moment, and he could only thank the stars for it.
Second, and most important: what could he do about it? Wilson's spirit might not be permanently tied to the world, it very likely wasn't. He didn't have the means to craft a resurrection item, nor he was sure how he could collect the necessary materials in a reasonably brief time. And time was of the essence, instinct told him. Or fear. Both were reliable enough, at the moment. He studied his book, reading and perusing and re-checking any possible meaning and interpretation of the obscure bits of knowledge the tome offered him. He poured his mind into his machine, squeezing every drop of inspiration and creativity from his own brain and soul, trying different combinations of spells and incantations and even shadow magic with his mind's eye, but nothing seemed to do the trick. He could not find an answer. Not there, at least.
A different approach was needed, maybe. If something had shifted in the very nature of the Constant, maybe the solution should be found there as well. No advanced shadow magic or science, something uncomplicated, something simple. How to grasp the concept, though?
He smoked, and pondered, and smoked some more. Wilson hummed lowly at him. Maxwell could have sworn he was telling him to go to sleep. He did not, for he just had a small idea. It was worth a shot, he decided. He grabbed his lantern and headed out in the dark, ignoring the ghost's more insistent nagging. He was slightly flourescent, Maxwell noticed, probably enough to keep Charlie away, if need be. That might be particularly useful, if anything went wrong.
There was a small circle of red roses near the camp. They were fragrant, and gorgeous, and utterly harmless, and Maxwell had never stood within a fifty meters radius from them, for any reason. Wilson had checked the circle once, he had even stepped into it, the blundering idiot. He had not been stricken down by lightning, or sucked into the earth by shadow limbs, or swarmed by hounds, as Maxwell had rightfully expected. Nevertheless, Maxwell himself obviously did not care to go anywhere near it. But drastic circumstances required drastic measures, he supposed. Lantern clutched in his hand, Maxwell crossed the floral threshold. When nothing happened, he sat on the ground, and waited.
No one greeted him, nothing attacked him. The smell of the roses, already naturally strong in the night, was positively overpowering there, almost intoxicating. It made it somewhat difficult to breathe. It wormed its way into his nostrils and burnt down his throat, it seemed to invade his very brain. And, incredibly, it carried an intuition with it. Yes, there was another way. A new way. A very simple one at that, brilliant in its straightforwardness, positively visceral. His extensive knowledge of the arcane arts had made him forget the basics, it seemed. How very embarassing.
He stood up, brushed off the dirt from his trousers, and stepped out of the circle. Wilson had remained perfectly silent the whole time, he didn't react even when Maxwell unpinned the rose from his own jacket and lay it right at the center of the circle. He followed Maxwell back to the camp, and hovered over him as he finally slept.
Science was a harsh, unforgiving mistress, Maxwell mused as he made his way to the closest spider nest the following morning, the taciturn ghost still doggedly stalking him. He honestly could not see nor share the enthusiasm Wilson felt for such a rigid discipline, with its unbendable rules, its strict laws, its steely principles. 'A life for a life' would have been a perfectly fair, egalitarian, balanced solution to his current predicament, if approached scientifically. It would have been a rather costly and dissatisfying one nonetheless, presumably for both parties involved. Luckily, magic was a much more versatile and indulgent art. It dealt with the intrinsic value of quality, rather than nitpicking on the pedantic details of quantity. Magic could turn a life into acceptable currency for something much greater than a single mortal's negligible and fleeting existence, or it could come at a much higher price than said mortal could even conceive. That specific brand of spell was especially lenient when it came to its requirements, uncharacteristically so. 'A heart for a life' sounded like an exceptionally good bargain given the circumstances, and Maxwell even felt willing to deal with any unexpected charges he might incur.
Placing a few traps and luring a bunch of dim-witted spiders to them was but a matter of minutes. He immediately strided back to the camp, fresh carcasses hoisted on his shoulder, and he splayed one on Wilson's dented workbench. He accomplished his task on the very first attempt. He may not have the dissection skills or experience Wilson liked to boast about, but he had created the damn things. He knew exactly where every organ was, he could trace all the branches and paths of each major and minor vessel with his eyes closed. Carving the heart out of the wretched creature was like a child's play, and just as smelly and messy. He prepared a few glands too, for later. He placed the organ in a large bowl, neatly arranged on a thin bed of grass, then he carefully cleaned the knife. He made a very shallow cut on the back of his own arm and directed few drops of blood onto the heart, as a test. As he expected, it reacted. The organ visibly absorbed the blood, very much like a sponge. Good. That was promising.
Sadly, it wasn't going to be that simple. A heart would work, even a monstrous one, but some human additive was absolutely required. Blood was the most obvious and practical choice, and it was fair to assume that a considerable amount of it would be needed. It may take hours to complete the process few drops at a time, and it may not even be ultimately effective. Pain was, without a doubt, another mandatory quality the sacrifice demanded. Maxwell loathed pain, more so than anyone, but there was no alternative. Squeezing a mere scratch wouldn't serve the purpose.
He drew a deep breath, and steadied himself. He rubbed some antiseptic on the inner side of his left arm, from the farthest third of his forearm to his palm, more as an excuse to buy himself an extra minute of respite than out of any real concern for infections. Then, without thinking, he swiftly slit his wrist.
It hurt. No surprise there. Wilson flickered beside him, his faint humming gaining a clearly inquisitive edge. Maxwell didn't pay him any attention. He carefully aligned his wrist to the rim of the bowl, so that the blood could flow neatly inside it. He watched the warm fluid trickle down slowly, staining and soaking the grass and gradually creating a small pool around the base of the heart. The red puddle only grew so much, until the heart seemed to incorporate blood as quickly as Maxwell provided it.
Maxwell genuinely couldn't tell how long it lasted. It felt like hours to him, though it surely couldn't have been that long. The pain was constant and tiresome, he even had to prod and stretch the hems of the cut to hinder the clotting, making the whole procedure even longer and more disagreeable. Eventually he started feeling light-headed and weak, but interrupting the process halfway through would be an egregious waste of time, resources and effort. Wilson was getting restless as well. Maxwell half-heartedly hushed him as the ghost's buzz became more urgent and alarmed, his volatile form uselessly phasing through Maxwell more than once. At one point he even started possessing the lighter objects scattered on the table, making them shake and glow and hop around with small jerks. Silly little man. He was learning quickly, as always. He did not try to possess Maxwell though, nor the bowl or its contents. Maybe he just couldn't.
Finally, the heart changed. After taking in an undefined amount of blood, it suddenly shifted. It engorged and morphed, assuming a decidedly human size and build, and it even started beating, slowly at first, but quickly gaining vigour. Maxwell's vision was getting spotty, and his breathing heavier and louder by the second, but at last he was done. He shakily grabbed the pulsing organ from the bowl. It was warm, vital, bloody, and simply holding it made Maxwell's head spin harder. He gulped, too dazed to properly register the importance of the moment, and instinctively handed it to Wilson, pushing it in his ethereal body.
There was a flash. A blinding burst of light that incapacitated Maxwell for some long moments, tempting his brain to just shut off completely then and there. Then, then, there were feelings. There was Wilson's voice, his real, human voice, shrill and annoying and scolding and horrified, drilling perfectly understandable words in Maxwell's ears, words he admittedly did not especially care about. It was most irritating, and simply marvelous. There were his hands, shaking Maxwell's shoulders, cupping his cheeks, pressing unyieldingly on the open wound, sternly bringing him back to his sore senses. There was him, his whole presence, intact and overwhelming and nervous. With what little lucidity Maxwell had left, he threw his free arm around Wilson's body - warm, pliant, alive - and held onto it as if his own life depended on it. As a matter of fact, that might have been the case in that exact moment, but that wasn't really the point. Maxwell held onto him, buried his face in the crook of his neck, drew the deepest breath he had ever drawn, and cried.