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Description

The trip to visit the men had taken the better part of the day, by normal means, but the trip back by an angry, tricked demon took less than an hour.
The uneven terrain, thick forest, and pitch black and moonless night, made no difference to the inhuman foot speed, as Xander rushed back to the house. It didn't seem so much like a demon streaming through the night, more of a black wind that couldn't be stopped.
Back to the scene he hopes he doesn't come home to.
Back to the scene he morbidly expects.
Thunderclaps crashed by the time he had reached the area, heavy pouring rain by the time he reached the foot of the long incline, leading up to the home. A black, dreadful rain, heavy and cold and familiar.
Rain like what poured when the demon broke out in Rome.
Rain like what drenched the road he found a poor little girl named Miyuki on.
Ominous rain, a sign of some cosmic significance.
Xander's feet hardly sunk into the deep mud as he sprinted up the hill, and to the door.
The door he had entered so surely and comfortably for the past decade, the only door in his extended life he has considered home since Sin, all of it was now in dire jeopardy.
what would he find beyond this once beloved threshold?
As Xander's hand finally steeled to draw the panel door open, he half-noticed that it was the familiar onyx grip of the Demon, but paid it no mind, and entered the dark foyer.
All the lights he could see were doused, only the light flashing from the frequent lightning strikes outside, and their booming reports.
No life, no sounds, other than the weather and the quiet dripping and growling breaths of the demon in the dark, searching for what he hopes not to find.
Eventually, he leads his wet footprints upstairs to the top floor, almost heartened by the fact that he had found no signs of struggle, no evidence to suggest anything foul was afoot.
And yet even that glimmer of hope was shattered in it's frailty as the demon ascended to the top of the stair.
Miyuki's room was across from the stairs directly, the sliding door closed, the faint glow of a torch still lit inside.
"Miyuki?" Xander's unfamiliar voice called aloud.
No response. Dead silence save for the rain and the thunderclaps randomly rattling the sky. One such followed a flash of light through the opposite bedroom window, lighting the sliding door canvas and instantly revealing a dark splatter splashed onto the otherwise immaculate material.
Xander, shaken anew, approached the door and reached up to open it, but in a fit of ponderous rage, ripped the door down, frame and all.
The moment he dreaded had unfortunately arrived.

"Wait, I thought you said she was alive?" the listener asks.
"She breathes, her heart beats, in a physical sense, she lives." Xander states coldly.

The room was in tossed chaos, everything that had occurred, did so here. Including the murder of Miyuki and her husband.
Xander stood over the two lifeless bodies silently, feeling his higher emotions elevating from the scene.
Sword slashes, for sure, hasty and unplanned. Xander's eyes traced around the room, seeing the path of the disarray, where a flash occurred before his eyes. The world's veil lifted and it's hand was shown, back to it's negative colours, and the ghostly outlines of the fated two and their executioner.
The room, in some way, looked rebuilt and as he watched, two of the outlines began to struggle, before one eventually fell directly where the body of the husband currently lay. Xander approached the others while one backed, before being struck down herself, tumbling to Miyuki's resting place.
Xander approached the third outline as it stood still for a moment, as if contemplating what it had just done, and started to take shape as he got close.
The face took it's shape to that which he totally expected. Maki, the murderous bastard.
The veil came back and the world returned to 'normal'.
Xander looked about to the tossed room, then sighed, his head hanging a little.
It was true.
He pulled the poor, mutilated girl into the center of the floor, and cast his mind back to an ancient haunting, to a spell he's only ever used once.

"So, you brought her back to life, too?" the listener asks.
"It didn't go as planned. I tried to resurrect her, and biologically, I succeeded, but she wouldn't wake up..." Xander trails.

The thirteen rune pattern on the floor, the bracing of the alchemical spell, the lines, and finally the sacrifice.
The black blood spilled to honour the gods whose power he drafted from.
And as the spell took hold, Miyuki's limp, damaged body jolted and shook, but did nothing more.
Xander waited long moments for her to awaken from her state.
Awaken like his wife had.
But nothing.
"Miyuki..." Xander stated, watching the limp form remain motionless.
Xander's onyx hands shook gently as he gently grazed her hair, before slowly standing, and turning towards the door. Maki would die for this treachery.
Ax Xander descended the stair, he saw the form of Nomad's ghost waiting for him, leaning against the pillar in the middle of the room, smiling wickedly.
"I know that aura, it's unmistakable. Something dark on the mind, Alexander?" Nomad asked.
"Where is he?" Xander asked in a low growl.
"What makes you think -I- know?" Nomad asked, pointing to himself.
"You know what this second sight is, you know how I can track where he went." Xander stated strongly.
"So you're starting to see imprints, it's farther along than I thought. Imprints are past events, usually cosmically disrupting ones, such as one's untimely death." Nomad explained.
"I saw it happen as if I were there..." Xander nearly whispered.
"It's a strange enough phenomenon in the world, but it happens. The past cannot be let go, so it repeats endlessly." Nomad explained.
"Show me where he went." Xander stated solidly.
"You mean to kill him?" Nomad asked.
"Not immediately." Xander responded.
Nomad smiled his same sly, wicked smile. "In that case..." his hand extends to his side, and a shape flashes, starting to form in the middle of the room, roughly the same size and shape as Maki, trailing through the room in a slow walk, before pushing the door open, in the imprint, and leaving. Xander follows intently, staring at the form as he walks. Nomad's ghost disperses as he passes, with a dark, low laugh.

"I followed the ghost that Nomad revealed to me to the same docks I had arrived on those years ago..."

The dock looked almost exactly the same as it did when he had first arrived, even cast in night as it was now. There was a large ship docked there, which the ghost approached before fading into nothing.
The nearly abandoned dock was much quieter than when he had shown up there the first time, which was good as Xander was still in the demon's skin. A hulking monster doesn't exactly blend into a human crowd very easily, but Xander couldn't care less about that at this point.
He stared at the ship as it rocked gently in the moving water, before walking up the planks to the ship's deck. Was he here? Or had he left already?
Descending into the hold of the large cargo ship revealed dozens of items, covered in various cloths to prevent damage from water and dust, but pulling the cloths away revealed items of old. Furniture, paintings, boxes filled with matching paper notes, bags and bags of heavy gold coins, all with the familiar signature of Saurius. These were all the Menama house's belongings. As he looked about, he could recognize all the pieces in their original places in the home. Not only had the bastard killed the entire family systematically, he had looted their household.
Xander growls quietly, before finding what he could perceive as the middle of the ship's lower deck, his claw coming to his palm and freeing his demonic ink, drawing an intricate symbol on the floor, before heading to the deck and drawing another on the stem, the stern, and both side handrails.
A sound approaching. The gallop and whinnies of horses. A fast ride. Xander sneers and descends the planks back to the dock, to see four riders approaching, one of which is Maki, who has a rather discontent look on his face. They dismount the horses and immediately set to work on pulling the moorings to the ship, before the demon Xander stepped out from the shadow of the ship and into the bright moonlight.
"You killed them... All of them..." Xander stated in a low growl.
"What is that thing!?" The adjoining men nearly yelled in unison, seeing the demon.
"Hold your ground!" Maki yells back to them, seemingly unphased by his appearance. "So... I knew you were a demon, but this is rather unexpected."
"... How -dare- you say that to me, having done what you have." Xander spit at Maki.
"You've taken lives demon, probably countless more than I, you cannot deny that." Maki states, trying to keep his composure. "We do what we have to."
"That we do." Xander stated, before turning his back to Maki, and placing his bloody onyx palm onto the ship.
A rumbling sound gently shook the air low, but continually getting louder with time. The water started to churn, the trees swayed in a wind that seemed to be coming from everywhere centering on the area.
Maki and his men looked about, seeing the changes in the weather, uttering various things as it continued.
The water now started to splash up against the high sides of the ship, higher and higher as the wind came in pulses, the rumbling too grew louder and louder with each occurrence, before creaks and groans came from the ship at the center of it all, it's swaying had stopped long ago.
With a loud crack, splinters of wood shot out from the sidings, before coming back against the deck with loud clatters. More cracking, thunder-like cracks, firing off with each pulse. The masts snapped and fell as if they weighed tons, water still continued to unnaturally climb up the deck. Xander's hand came off the ship, but the event still occurred.
Louder creaks, more snaps and the men watched as the ship seemed to start picking itself up out of the water, but cracks were forming all across the underside of it. The wind pushing in from every direction grew worse and worse, picking up dust and debris, anything loose in the area shot against the side of the ship, as the hull buckled, the ship slowly being crushed into a spherical shape.
A heavy gust even sent the men accompanying Maki tumbling, screaming for their lives before they too were pulled into the well of gravity and wind, disappearing into the depths of the smaller and smaller crushed ship. It was now reduced to a sphere of still cracking and snapping debris, starting to spin faster and faster as Maki watched, sunken to the ground to keep from ending up like his company, and the Demon Xander watched, his bloody palm slowly curling into a fist.
Everything stopped at that moment, the wind had stopped, the water had stopped turning, everything was dead silent, before Xander let his fist go and turned, the crushed ball of wood, iron, gold and blood falling into the water, and sinking near instantly out of sight.
Maki was still clinging to the ground, panting, his face aghast from the proceedings.

"So what did you do to him?" the listener asks.
"... nothing that he didn't deserve... but nothing I'm proud of enough to repeat." Xander states, sighing quietly.
"And what about after that?" he asks.
"... After that, I headed home, back to take care of Miyuki as best I could..." Xander starts.

The demon Xander stayed stooped over the bed he had placed Miyuki's limp, breathing body into, staring, watching her, still hoping that she might just wake up, that the word of the Demon might be wrong. But no such luck.
A heavy sigh.
"If you're thinking that you did something wrong..." Nomad's voice casted from across the room. Xander turns and see's Nomad's ghost just outside the boundary of the circle, looking down at it. "... your spell is perfect."
"Then why didn't it work?" Xander asked.
"There are other forces at work on souls than simply yours, Alexander. Just because you're calling the soul back to the body by giving it life, doesn't mean that the soul will return. In this case, the soul has left completely." Nomad explains.
"Left?" Xander asked, then looked down to poor Miyuki's still breathing body.
"Left, judged, crossed over, it's semantics. The soul has left the body, creating the situation you see now." Nomad stated, "But you should be aware that this unfortunate turn of events has created a unique circumstance that I feel obliged to inform you of, as per our original agreement. My knowledge, of course, is your knowledge."
"What are you trying to say?" Xander asked after sighing, as if being teased by something.
"What if I told you that it would still be possible to save your wife, after all?" Nomad asked bluntly.
"... I would say that it's a cruel joke, Nomad." Xander spit.
"I jest not. It is very much possible at this point." Nomad responded.
"What are you talking about? Why couldn't you have brought this up sooner?" Xander asked.
"The situation required for this to even be remotely possible are astronomical, which is why I'm mentioning it to you now." Nomad stated.
"... ... I can save her?" Xander asked, his demeanor softening.
"If you're willing to do what is necessary, then yes." Nomad reiterated.
"How do I save my wife, if her body is gone?" Xander asked, hopeful for the first time in decades.
"That is the easy part, you already have a replacement." Nomad explained.
"A replacement... Miyuki?" Xander asked, looking down to the lifeless, live body.
"The operation works on a set of rather strict principles, one must know exactly where the soul resides in it's afterlife, must able to contact said spirit, coax it back, and must be placed into a replacement body of similar size and age and structure. The host body must also still be alive when this happens, or the soul will return to a dead shell, and nothing will happen." Nomad explained, as if reading from a book that he's read a dozen times.
"Transmuting a soul into a living body?" Xander asked. "That's alchemy, isn't it?"
"Alchemy is using the structure of one thing to create something else entirely. Making gold from lead. This is merely... swapping." Nomad explained.
Xander stared, expecting him to continue.
"...There exists a certain relic, known as the Iris. It has the innate ability to sever the ties between the body and soul, allowing the two to be separated while keeping both intact. Quite a feat." Nomad put out.
"Why does something like that exist?" Xander asked.
"It was created for that purpose, alone." Nomad responded.
"But why?" Xander asked, standing.
"Because in order for a demon to possess a body without the same time and gamble as I did, one must -buy- a body." Nomad explained. "And no soul can possess a dead one."
"It's..." Xander starts.
"It's in the Underworld. And one has to offer almost everything they have, just to use it-- and many do, case-in-point with Perecles, my former associate, with the girl in the Caravan. Life is a luxury, Alexander. One you humans take so much for granted. Getting out of Underworld, even for as limited a lifetime as you humans know... it's incomparable." Nomad smiled, for once. "And for as long as I've been here, it's been quite a treat in my existence."
"No soul can possess a dead body, what about this?" Xander looked back at Miyuki.
"She's not dead, that's why I mentioned it to you. The odds of having an empty living body and the ability to do what needs be done are insurmountable." Nomad reiterated.
"So... I'd have to descend into Underworld, to retrieve this... Iris--" Xander started
"--If you can. It's in the possession of one known as the Judge, and he's not the generous type." Nomad interjected.
"Descend into the Underworld and steal the Iris from The Judge." Xander explained to himself.
"Not just from him. From every demon who wants escape from there, as well." Nomad said. "That instrument has existed for a millenia in their time, they very well wouldn't just give it up."
"Oh, that makes it easier..." Xander sarcastically spit, and then sighed as this is dangled in front of him.
"...-I- would help you, of course. Together we could succeed." Nomad caste.
"Why would you help me with this?" Xander asked.
"You forget, Alexander. I no longer associate myself with those carnivorous fools. They hand out their magic and secrets without a moment's thought of what they're worth, and already I've spent more time in this realm than all of them combined. This offence would only -perfect- my own brand of punishment on them." Nomad spit. "So this time, our goals are similar."
Xander looks down at Miyuki again. "Her age is almost precise, her body is in top shape, she's already grown quite attached to you, so all the variables are there. All -you- need to do is go through with it." Nomad coaxed. "Never in the next thousand years could the stars line up for a chance like this again."
"There's been quite enough blood spilt for my revenge. I made peace with what happened long ago." Xander lied to himself.
"So you say, yet you still ask the particulars of my offering." Nomad showed.
"You tempt me. You don't expect a response?" Xander asked, irritated.
"If you made peace with what happened, you would have cast it off as impossible. Yet you asked every detail, so now if you truly wanted to, you could go through with it... There's simply one piece of information left that you need..." Nomad lead.
"...How to get to it." Xander finished.
"And it just so happens that I, being of that particular lineage, know -exactly- where you can." Nomad said, walking to look Xander in the eyes. "What say you?"

Description

The trip to visit the men had taken the better part of the day, by normal means, but the trip back by an angry, tricked demon took less than an hour.
The uneven terrain, thick forest, and pitch black and moonless night, made no difference to the inhuman foot speed, as Xander rushed back to the house. It didn't seem so much like a demon streaming through the night, more of a black wind that couldn't be stopped.
Back to the scene he hopes he doesn't come home to.
Back to the scene he morbidly expects.
Thunderclaps crashed by the time he had reached the area, heavy pouring rain by the time he reached the foot of the long incline, leading up to the home. A black, dreadful rain, heavy and cold and familiar.
Rain like what poured when the demon broke out in Rome.
Rain like what drenched the road he found a poor little girl named Miyuki on.
Ominous rain, a sign of some cosmic significance.
Xander's feet hardly sunk into the deep mud as he sprinted up the hill, and to the door.
The door he had entered so surely and comfortably for the past decade, the only door in his extended life he has considered home since Sin, all of it was now in dire jeopardy.
what would he find beyond this once beloved threshold?
As Xander's hand finally steeled to draw the panel door open, he half-noticed that it was the familiar onyx grip of the Demon, but paid it no mind, and entered the dark foyer.
All the lights he could see were doused, only the light flashing from the frequent lightning strikes outside, and their booming reports.
No life, no sounds, other than the weather and the quiet dripping and growling breaths of the demon in the dark, searching for what he hopes not to find.
Eventually, he leads his wet footprints upstairs to the top floor, almost heartened by the fact that he had found no signs of struggle, no evidence to suggest anything foul was afoot.
And yet even that glimmer of hope was shattered in it's frailty as the demon ascended to the top of the stair.
Miyuki's room was across from the stairs directly, the sliding door closed, the faint glow of a torch still lit inside.
"Miyuki?" Xander's unfamiliar voice called aloud.
No response. Dead silence save for the rain and the thunderclaps randomly rattling the sky. One such followed a flash of light through the opposite bedroom window, lighting the sliding door canvas and instantly revealing a dark splatter splashed onto the otherwise immaculate material.
Xander, shaken anew, approached the door and reached up to open it, but in a fit of ponderous rage, ripped the door down, frame and all.
The moment he dreaded had unfortunately arrived.

"Wait, I thought you said she was alive?" the listener asks.
"She breathes, her heart beats, in a physical sense, she lives." Xander states coldly.

The room was in tossed chaos, everything that had occurred, did so here. Including the murder of Miyuki and her husband.
Xander stood over the two lifeless bodies silently, feeling his higher emotions elevating from the scene.
Sword slashes, for sure, hasty and unplanned. Xander's eyes traced around the room, seeing the path of the disarray, where a flash occurred before his eyes. The world's veil lifted and it's hand was shown, back to it's negative colours, and the ghostly outlines of the fated two and their executioner.
The room, in some way, looked rebuilt and as he watched, two of the outlines began to struggle, before one eventually fell directly where the body of the husband currently lay. Xander approached the others while one backed, before being struck down herself, tumbling to Miyuki's resting place.
Xander approached the third outline as it stood still for a moment, as if contemplating what it had just done, and started to take shape as he got close.
The face took it's shape to that which he totally expected. Maki, the murderous bastard.
The veil came back and the world returned to 'normal'.
Xander looked about to the tossed room, then sighed, his head hanging a little.
It was true.
He pulled the poor, mutilated girl into the center of the floor, and cast his mind back to an ancient haunting, to a spell he's only ever used once.

"So, you brought her back to life, too?" the listener asks.
"It didn't go as planned. I tried to resurrect her, and biologically, I succeeded, but she wouldn't wake up..." Xander trails.

The thirteen rune pattern on the floor, the bracing of the alchemical spell, the lines, and finally the sacrifice.
The black blood spilled to honour the gods whose power he drafted from.
And as the spell took hold, Miyuki's limp, damaged body jolted and shook, but did nothing more.
Xander waited long moments for her to awaken from her state.
Awaken like his wife had.
But nothing.
"Miyuki..." Xander stated, watching the limp form remain motionless.
Xander's onyx hands shook gently as he gently grazed her hair, before slowly standing, and turning towards the door. Maki would die for this treachery.
Ax Xander descended the stair, he saw the form of Nomad's ghost waiting for him, leaning against the pillar in the middle of the room, smiling wickedly.
"I know that aura, it's unmistakable. Something dark on the mind, Alexander?" Nomad asked.
"Where is he?" Xander asked in a low growl.
"What makes you think -I- know?" Nomad asked, pointing to himself.
"You know what this second sight is, you know how I can track where he went." Xander stated strongly.
"So you're starting to see imprints, it's farther along than I thought. Imprints are past events, usually cosmically disrupting ones, such as one's untimely death." Nomad explained.
"I saw it happen as if I were there..." Xander nearly whispered.
"It's a strange enough phenomenon in the world, but it happens. The past cannot be let go, so it repeats endlessly." Nomad explained.
"Show me where he went." Xander stated solidly.
"You mean to kill him?" Nomad asked.
"Not immediately." Xander responded.
Nomad smiled his same sly, wicked smile. "In that case..." his hand extends to his side, and a shape flashes, starting to form in the middle of the room, roughly the same size and shape as Maki, trailing through the room in a slow walk, before pushing the door open, in the imprint, and leaving. Xander follows intently, staring at the form as he walks. Nomad's ghost disperses as he passes, with a dark, low laugh.

"I followed the ghost that Nomad revealed to me to the same docks I had arrived on those years ago..."

The dock looked almost exactly the same as it did when he had first arrived, even cast in night as it was now. There was a large ship docked there, which the ghost approached before fading into nothing.
The nearly abandoned dock was much quieter than when he had shown up there the first time, which was good as Xander was still in the demon's skin. A hulking monster doesn't exactly blend into a human crowd very easily, but Xander couldn't care less about that at this point.
He stared at the ship as it rocked gently in the moving water, before walking up the planks to the ship's deck. Was he here? Or had he left already?
Descending into the hold of the large cargo ship revealed dozens of items, covered in various cloths to prevent damage from water and dust, but pulling the cloths away revealed items of old. Furniture, paintings, boxes filled with matching paper notes, bags and bags of heavy gold coins, all with the familiar signature of Saurius. These were all the Menama house's belongings. As he looked about, he could recognize all the pieces in their original places in the home. Not only had the bastard killed the entire family systematically, he had looted their household.
Xander growls quietly, before finding what he could perceive as the middle of the ship's lower deck, his claw coming to his palm and freeing his demonic ink, drawing an intricate symbol on the floor, before heading to the deck and drawing another on the stem, the stern, and both side handrails.
A sound approaching. The gallop and whinnies of horses. A fast ride. Xander sneers and descends the planks back to the dock, to see four riders approaching, one of which is Maki, who has a rather discontent look on his face. They dismount the horses and immediately set to work on pulling the moorings to the ship, before the demon Xander stepped out from the shadow of the ship and into the bright moonlight.
"You killed them... All of them..." Xander stated in a low growl.
"What is that thing!?" The adjoining men nearly yelled in unison, seeing the demon.
"Hold your ground!" Maki yells back to them, seemingly unphased by his appearance. "So... I knew you were a demon, but this is rather unexpected."
"... How -dare- you say that to me, having done what you have." Xander spit at Maki.
"You've taken lives demon, probably countless more than I, you cannot deny that." Maki states, trying to keep his composure. "We do what we have to."
"That we do." Xander stated, before turning his back to Maki, and placing his bloody onyx palm onto the ship.
A rumbling sound gently shook the air low, but continually getting louder with time. The water started to churn, the trees swayed in a wind that seemed to be coming from everywhere centering on the area.
Maki and his men looked about, seeing the changes in the weather, uttering various things as it continued.
The water now started to splash up against the high sides of the ship, higher and higher as the wind came in pulses, the rumbling too grew louder and louder with each occurrence, before creaks and groans came from the ship at the center of it all, it's swaying had stopped long ago.
With a loud crack, splinters of wood shot out from the sidings, before coming back against the deck with loud clatters. More cracking, thunder-like cracks, firing off with each pulse. The masts snapped and fell as if they weighed tons, water still continued to unnaturally climb up the deck. Xander's hand came off the ship, but the event still occurred.
Louder creaks, more snaps and the men watched as the ship seemed to start picking itself up out of the water, but cracks were forming all across the underside of it. The wind pushing in from every direction grew worse and worse, picking up dust and debris, anything loose in the area shot against the side of the ship, as the hull buckled, the ship slowly being crushed into a spherical shape.
A heavy gust even sent the men accompanying Maki tumbling, screaming for their lives before they too were pulled into the well of gravity and wind, disappearing into the depths of the smaller and smaller crushed ship. It was now reduced to a sphere of still cracking and snapping debris, starting to spin faster and faster as Maki watched, sunken to the ground to keep from ending up like his company, and the Demon Xander watched, his bloody palm slowly curling into a fist.
Everything stopped at that moment, the wind had stopped, the water had stopped turning, everything was dead silent, before Xander let his fist go and turned, the crushed ball of wood, iron, gold and blood falling into the water, and sinking near instantly out of sight.
Maki was still clinging to the ground, panting, his face aghast from the proceedings.

"So what did you do to him?" the listener asks.
"... nothing that he didn't deserve... but nothing I'm proud of enough to repeat." Xander states, sighing quietly.
"And what about after that?" he asks.
"... After that, I headed home, back to take care of Miyuki as best I could..." Xander starts.

The demon Xander stayed stooped over the bed he had placed Miyuki's limp, breathing body into, staring, watching her, still hoping that she might just wake up, that the word of the Demon might be wrong. But no such luck.
A heavy sigh.
"If you're thinking that you did something wrong..." Nomad's voice casted from across the room. Xander turns and see's Nomad's ghost just outside the boundary of the circle, looking down at it. "... your spell is perfect."
"Then why didn't it work?" Xander asked.
"There are other forces at work on souls than simply yours, Alexander. Just because you're calling the soul back to the body by giving it life, doesn't mean that the soul will return. In this case, the soul has left completely." Nomad explains.
"Left?" Xander asked, then looked down to poor Miyuki's still breathing body.
"Left, judged, crossed over, it's semantics. The soul has left the body, creating the situation you see now." Nomad stated, "But you should be aware that this unfortunate turn of events has created a unique circumstance that I feel obliged to inform you of, as per our original agreement. My knowledge, of course, is your knowledge."
"What are you trying to say?" Xander asked after sighing, as if being teased by something.
"What if I told you that it would still be possible to save your wife, after all?" Nomad asked bluntly.
"... I would say that it's a cruel joke, Nomad." Xander spit.
"I jest not. It is very much possible at this point." Nomad responded.
"What are you talking about? Why couldn't you have brought this up sooner?" Xander asked.
"The situation required for this to even be remotely possible are astronomical, which is why I'm mentioning it to you now." Nomad stated.
"... ... I can save her?" Xander asked, his demeanor softening.
"If you're willing to do what is necessary, then yes." Nomad reiterated.
"How do I save my wife, if her body is gone?" Xander asked, hopeful for the first time in decades.
"That is the easy part, you already have a replacement." Nomad explained.
"A replacement... Miyuki?" Xander asked, looking down to the lifeless, live body.
"The operation works on a set of rather strict principles, one must know exactly where the soul resides in it's afterlife, must able to contact said spirit, coax it back, and must be placed into a replacement body of similar size and age and structure. The host body must also still be alive when this happens, or the soul will return to a dead shell, and nothing will happen." Nomad explained, as if reading from a book that he's read a dozen times.
"Transmuting a soul into a living body?" Xander asked. "That's alchemy, isn't it?"
"Alchemy is using the structure of one thing to create something else entirely. Making gold from lead. This is merely... swapping." Nomad explained.
Xander stared, expecting him to continue.
"...There exists a certain relic, known as the Iris. It has the innate ability to sever the ties between the body and soul, allowing the two to be separated while keeping both intact. Quite a feat." Nomad put out.
"Why does something like that exist?" Xander asked.
"It was created for that purpose, alone." Nomad responded.
"But why?" Xander asked, standing.
"Because in order for a demon to possess a body without the same time and gamble as I did, one must -buy- a body." Nomad explained. "And no soul can possess a dead one."
"It's..." Xander starts.
"It's in the Underworld. And one has to offer almost everything they have, just to use it-- and many do, case-in-point with Perecles, my former associate, with the girl in the Caravan. Life is a luxury, Alexander. One you humans take so much for granted. Getting out of Underworld, even for as limited a lifetime as you humans know... it's incomparable." Nomad smiled, for once. "And for as long as I've been here, it's been quite a treat in my existence."
"No soul can possess a dead body, what about this?" Xander looked back at Miyuki.
"She's not dead, that's why I mentioned it to you. The odds of having an empty living body and the ability to do what needs be done are insurmountable." Nomad reiterated.
"So... I'd have to descend into Underworld, to retrieve this... Iris--" Xander started
"--If you can. It's in the possession of one known as the Judge, and he's not the generous type." Nomad interjected.
"Descend into the Underworld and steal the Iris from The Judge." Xander explained to himself.
"Not just from him. From every demon who wants escape from there, as well." Nomad said. "That instrument has existed for a millenia in their time, they very well wouldn't just give it up."
"Oh, that makes it easier..." Xander sarcastically spit, and then sighed as this is dangled in front of him.
"...-I- would help you, of course. Together we could succeed." Nomad caste.
"Why would you help me with this?" Xander asked.
"You forget, Alexander. I no longer associate myself with those carnivorous fools. They hand out their magic and secrets without a moment's thought of what they're worth, and already I've spent more time in this realm than all of them combined. This offence would only -perfect- my own brand of punishment on them." Nomad spit. "So this time, our goals are similar."
Xander looks down at Miyuki again. "Her age is almost precise, her body is in top shape, she's already grown quite attached to you, so all the variables are there. All -you- need to do is go through with it." Nomad coaxed. "Never in the next thousand years could the stars line up for a chance like this again."
"There's been quite enough blood spilt for my revenge. I made peace with what happened long ago." Xander lied to himself.
"So you say, yet you still ask the particulars of my offering." Nomad showed.
"You tempt me. You don't expect a response?" Xander asked, irritated.
"If you made peace with what happened, you would have cast it off as impossible. Yet you asked every detail, so now if you truly wanted to, you could go through with it... There's simply one piece of information left that you need..." Nomad lead.
"...How to get to it." Xander finished.
"And it just so happens that I, being of that particular lineage, know -exactly- where you can." Nomad said, walking to look Xander in the eyes. "What say you?"