The group descend the recently formed crevice, gliding down atop Aleph as the heat begins to recede, turning from absurdly deadly to just very deadly. Lyly sits upon her perch, impatiently jittering with the occasional glance downward. Dyly sits by Goldy and Fluffy, keeping them from falling. While they descend the heat begins to increase again, prompting Aleph to redirect and fly to the nearest stable nook on the wall. As they land, they settle the downed pair against the wall and gather.

"How are they doing?" Dyly asks, checking their temperature... for some reason. "Goldy seems fine. Just exhausted." Said monkey wearily raises his arm with a strained grin, before allowing his body to go limp again. "Fluffy on the other hand is tricky. I can't look at his body to see what's wrong because of how dense his Aether is. A safe bet though, is heat stroke. We need to get him somewhere cool as soon as possible, and all our supplies have been burned away, so we need to find water as well. Either of you have ideas?" Lyly skitters up, waving her pedipalps impatiently. "We should just go down! Waiting here does nothing for us." Aleph squints at the spider. "Hey! I'll admit I'm a little on edge because I've been waiting centuries for this. But I'm not being completely callous! We can't help them by staying still."

Aleph nods, turning to Dyly. "How about you? Any ideas?" "I know less about this place than you. The only person who knows more is out of commission so I'm with Lyla on this one. We should just hurry and hope we find a way down." "Centre... Two floors... down..." Fluffy strains, prying his uncooperative body from the ground. "There is-" "Idiot! You should know your own body better than this! Why didn't you tell us?! We could have retreated!" "I thought I would... be fine..." "You thought wrong! And you're half-dead because of it!" "I... You're right..." "Good. Now go back to sleep before I make you." "I-" "I'm not bluffing." Aleph raises a threatening tail his way, prompting him to comply with a nod.

"It's settled then, we get through the next two floors as fast as we can, aiming for a way down in the centre. Hop on, let's g-" The thought is halted by the pitch black figure behind her. A large feline silhouette which defies any attempt at depth perception as it appears to stare at the group with its eyeless face. I couldn't sense it coming... No soul either... A machine? With an anchor? Is that even possible? The creature scampers away, climbing upward to join several others as they pull at the rock, causing it to extrude outward. "What was that?" "No clue. And no time. They're not a threat at least, so let's hurry."

Hoisting the patients to her back, she dives into the crevasse, the steadily solidifying walls giving way to smooth obsidian as they pass through the opening to the next layer. Near the centre... Aleph scours the terrain as she glides, searching for anything resembling an exit. The outer walls of this layer, smaller than any other before it, glow a vibrant red, oozing with enough heat to make the air dance. A tempest of boiling air brushes past the group, Aleph's insulative cloak of Aether barely able to keep them from warming up within the furnace of an environment.

Finding nothing from the skies, she dives down to a low glide and begins scouring the terrain with her Aether, shortly finding the way down plugged by magma dripping from above. Landing atop the growing pile of basalt, she spreads Aether into the earth, gripping it tightly before sending a shock-wave through the Aether, and by proxy the earth. Allowing herself to slide down with the crumbling and powderising stone she falls through the sheer drop, coming out at another much cooler layer. Granted, it's still much too hot for anything barring extremophiles to survive without Mana, but at least the walls aren't melting.

Aleph doesn't stick around to see the sights though, opting to instead glide straight down to one of the series of tunnels scattered below her. Threading the needle, she swoops into a random tunnel, sliding to a stop down a wall before taking off into a sprint through the winding tunnel. Heat steadily gives way, turning from inhospitable, to deadly, to tropical until Aleph halts her stride. The tunnel wanes into a small cavern, tiny holes dotting the walls. Aleph spreads her Aether, squeezing it through the holes to map out the area for any alternate routes. "We've hit a dead end. I can't tell if this place is tolerable enough, but at least it's colder than what I was able to insulate for us."

Dyly drags the two wounded off Aleph's back to lay them against the wall while Lyly hops off to face the dragon. "Don't mind me, I just have seven hundred years of celebration to get out of my system over that way." She calmly states, skittering off to a corner while everyone else politely ignores the ensuing squeals and unholy cries of joy. "Do you think it's cold enough for him to recover? He still doesn't look too good." Dyly asks, poking the elf like a child with roadkill. "I've had heatstroke a few times before, granted I was a different species each time. He needs to cool down a lot more than this to heal. Do you know any cooling techniques?" "I can fan him really fast."

Aleph shakes her head, moving to sit by the group. "That only works if the air is cooler than your body. In this case the air is the source of most of the heat here, so it would only warm them more. I think I have another method, but I'll have to mess with my memories to access it." "That sounds unpleasant..." The demon tilts her head, her eyes fluttering with intrigue. "Not really. But it comes with risk. If I remember my true name something bad will happen, so I have to be really finicky with it." "What happens?" Dyly leans forward, entranced by the thickening of the plot. "I forgot." The disappointment in her eyes denies measurement, rejects quantisation, fails to be bounded by the mere mortal limits of disappointment. "Maybe I'll remember after some fiddling though."

I need to focus. The world vanishes, nothing left but five souls within a blank void, steadily fading one by one until left with a single violet soul. I am an osa. Sphere. Perfect. The soul is a perfect sphere, without blemish, and scattered everywhere. Pieces orbit the broken orb, the kernel in the centre refusing their proximity. One at a time, a piece is drawn close, barely touching its place in the sphere before being returned to orbit. My favourite frequency of light? I already remember that... The ending of my favourite Anime? What's Anime again? The Spanish Inquisition? Wasn't expecting that... No... Look somewhere else... fragment of the absolute... Not that... What about... No, that memory is too big... Is it even finite? My best friend... Right, I should hurry. My name is- No! I'm close though... I am... Right! That's the one!

Through the eyes of a curious demon

I wonder what crazy power she'll show off. A freeze beam? Summon a portal to an ice dimension? Maybe she's just looking for the name of an Ahvi'salThe first one? Ugh... Since when does just thinking that feel creepy? What about- The cavern flashes violet for a brief moment, pulling Diala from her thoughts. Her eyes turn to meet the dragon's, staring back quizzically. "Uh... Did it work?" "Did what work?" Did she mess with the wrong memories? "You were trying to cool the room down." "Was I? Oh yea! I changed something about the nitrogen here." "Changed what?" "Don't know!"

Diala squints her eyes, regarding the dragon with suspicion. "Do you remember my name?" "Nope! I assume I should though." No wonder she didn't default to this... Wait... Is it... "This isn't permanent is it? Have you just forgotten everything?" "Nope. I started in this world with less and have been steadily remembering more over time. I expect I'll remember things faster this time." Diala sighs, relieving tension she didn't realise she had. "Well I'm... Most people just call me Diala. Nice to meet you again?" "Likewise? Mind if I call you Didi?" "Uh, sure. Why not?" Does she just pick these randomly?

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"Say, I've noticed... You're not speaking the same language as before." "Am I? I'm speaking chromatic infernal. Just like you. What was I speaking before?" How does a dragon even learn a light-based language? Or, wait... Reincarnation. Was she a demon in a past life? Also what language was she speaking? Translation makes this stuff hard... "I'm not sure. Same as her I think." She points over to the manic spider, still going wild with celebration in her now thread-coated corner of the cavern. "Aoan? Makes sense. That's my preferred language." Aoan! I have no idea what that is... Pretty sure I have family who speak it though.

"Still though... Is she okay? She has a strange soul, and that's coming from me." Diala turns to face the manic spider, now wound and bundled in her own threads but still too excited to care. "She's fine. How did you say that last word in bold though? And why does that make sense to me?" "Demonic translation is a funny thing. It uses a mixture of direct meaning, context, and intent to derive meaning. This means you can do s0m3 pr3tty w31rd st0ff." Huh... So that's how Dad always does it.

Through the eyes of an elated spider

"Fuck yeaaaa! Best day ever! Who cares if it's actually midnight right now?! Today is the day where divine beast Lyla takes her biggest step to becoming an actual divine beast Lyla! Hell yea! Is it getting cold? Who cares?! I've been waiting seven hundred years for this! Okay, maybe two of those hundreds I spent completely ignoring this place... And another three or so half-assing it... But still! It's cold! I mean, it's great! Why is it so cold?" Lyla takes a moment away from her screaming to regain some semblance of her surroundings. Why is the ground covered in mist? Wasn't this place a furnace or something?

Lyla skitters her way to the dragon and the demon, hopping atop a rock to exit the growing mist on the ground. "What's going on? Why is there mist?" "Oh! It's working!" "What's working?" "I forgot exactly." Are you fucking serious? "But I seem to have made diatomic nitrogen in this room require more energy to form a bond. Once the ambient radiation has dissipated it should get pretty cold." A blank stare is all Lyla can be bothered with in the face of that nonsense. "I don't speak rocket science. Simplify." A blank stare is all the dragon can be bothered with in the face of this nonsense. "I make air go cold." "Ah, that makes sense now. Why not just start with that?" "..." "Fuehehe."

"So... Is that mist mostly just nitrogen?" The demon interjects. "Most air is mostly nitrogen here. But yea, the mist has a higher concentration. Why?" "Won't they suffocate?" She points to the two patients, cloaked under the growing mist. "Shit." Hoisting them on her back again, the dragon shifts to the cave edge, resting with them above the mist. "Hey Lyly. What time is it?" "Basically midnight." "This is going to be a long night..."

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Record 1

Hypothesis: An awakened soul will remain awakened indefinitely if emplaced in an ordinarily unsuitable vessel.

Method: Acquire twelve awakened souls to be emplaced into the developing embryos within the eggs of a basilisk from the earthen boundary layer. Souls will be acquired from terminal patients from the silent wool clan of the haven layers.

Control 1: A batch of twelve untampered basilisk eggs, to be acquired from the same nest as the primary group during the same season.

Control 2: A batch of twelve eggs to be manually emplaced with unawakened souls, to be acquired from the same nest as the primary group during the same season.

This will be difficult, and will test the limits of La's medical abilities. We can not afford any imprecision, so Aether will be used for all operations in this first experiment.

Record 7

The souls have been emplaced. All from control group 1 have taken their souls without issue. Three from the primary group have died. It is unknown whether this is from complications in emplacing awakened souls or in a technical failing during the procedure. Autopsy has ruled out natural causes. See addendum 7A.

Record 28

All control group eggs have hatched now. Only three primary group eggs have hatched. Two more have died leaving one still incubating. It is unlikely it will survive.

Record 33

Both surviving primary group subjects, seven and nine, have shown regained sapience, granted the lack of viable communication methods has made it difficult to converse. Subject seven is believed to be the individual Makho, though nine has proven indiscernible.

Record 79

Subject nine has died. Makho is in great distress because of this. It is still unclear which soul subject nine emplaced with. Regardless, the burial rights have been performed, and their names all etched upon the reverence pillar.

Record 93

The control group are no longer deemed necessary, and have been released to their natural habitat. All control subjects survived, ruling out natural causes as the cause of the other subjects' deaths. Makho has expressed concerns about his mental well-being.

Record 234

Makho has completely lost all semblance of a sentient organism. Communication has proven impossible, and his behaviour has become akin to that of a wild basilisk, albeit a particularly aggressive one. He will be sent to the earthen boundary to live with the other basilisk, and his name is to be etched upon the reverence pillar.

Record 235 - Post Mortem

The experiment proved a partial success. We were able to infuse at least one soul into an unsuitable vessel, though it seems the mind of the basilisk eventually imprinted onto the soul, reverse to what ordinarily happens. Whether this symptom is caused by the use of a basilisk as the vessel or simply a consequence of applying an aged soul to a young vessel is unknown.

The next experiment will make use of a soul that has been recently awakened. We will also be using an earth drake as the vessel, due to their comparable constitution to that of a basilisk and their much tamer temperament.

Addendum 235C

Makho has died. It is imperative to remind all who have worked on this experiment that this is not the fault of the individual who slew him. By this time, Makho as he was once known was no more.

-Extract from the Progenitor's notes