As you had never done anything tectonic in the past, it was with an edge of resentful fury that you lifted the hilt high above your head. You drove the point of the bone-sheathed blade into the talc—obviously you never wanted it to have an edge of any kind, ever again—and using the sword as your focus, drove a killing lance of thanergy right into the planet’s heart.

The planet did not quake, or howl, or freeze, or writhe, skewered on your necromancy’s tines. You began the cascade outward, as you had been taught. A wide thanergetic scythe sheared out into the mantle, deeper into the minute thalergy of the rock, into the solid stone’s buried recollections of the day its ball of dust was formed. So much more difficult, on a planet of this character; that was why Mercymorn had chosen it, along with the hope that you would end up an ice corpse. The thanergy reaction had to be carefully wrought. Here the soul of the planet was in the striations of its sand and minerals: a soft woven network of miniature creatures, of bacteria, of thin, stretched-out skeins of life. You had not even understood what to look for, the first time. Now you felt it as you felt the sand scouring the outside of your suit.

You fell to a sitting position, and adopted the same posture as Mercymorn: feet flat on the sand as the wind howled, your spine a soft C-curve; this way when it was over you wouldn’t have a serious backache. You pressed your haz-shod shoe tips to the upright blade of the sword, and you felt the planet become aware that it was dying.

The cascade was perfect. Your cascades always were. The thanergy scoured through the soul like a lit taper touched to flimsy. The living flush of this rocky outcrop began to die in dizzying, concentric rings: flipping, the thanergy feeding on the thalergy as locusts fed on wheat. As the soul tore away, an extra thanergetic bloom fanned the fire of what you had already done. You were satisfied with the precision of your strike: you did not sit around anxiously, as you had done the first half a dozen times, but you closed your eyes, and you waded into the River even as the ghost of the planetoid started to rock itself free.

Teacher had described the bone or flesh magician’s transition to the River as like a sculptor being given a bowl of water and told, Build a statue, whereas the spirit magician was a swimmer given a block of marble and told, Do a lap. You loved God like a king, and you loved God like the promise of redemption, and you loved God like you weren’t even sure what, you had loved so seldom. But you hated his analogies with the depth and breadth of your soul.