At some point I must have finally drunk too much for my tiny body to handle because I found myself waking up in a room I’d never seen before. I was in a large bed, and I was completely naked.
After a moment of panic, I realized that I was quite alone. I hadn’t done anything too stupid while drunk, thank the gods. Given where I was, and the way things had been going the previous night, I more than half expected to be waking up in Javril’s arms.
I found my clothing neatly piled on a nearby chair and I started pulling things on. I felt so weird right now. The previous night had been crazy, and I remembered far too much of it for comfort. Something was deeply wrong with me, and my subconscious, or perhaps the ghost of Tavi, was screaming at me to stop averting my eyes from the problems.
I caught a flash of motion from the corner of my vision and looked over to see an actual free-standing floor length mirror. It was funny, I’d seen two of these now in Jira but none in Astra, which I guess made sense as you could just use your character sheet. This might be an artifact from before System.
I turned and looked at myself in it. This was me now. I had to get used to that. My hair was a mess, and some of it was stuck in my mouth - I hadn’t even noticed, but I pulled it out now. I needed a brush.
I was still mostly naked, having only thrown on a shirt. Wait… Why did I have a shirt? I took the thing back off and looked at it. It wasn’t mine, obviously, so Bea must have found one to give me. I hadn’t thought to tell her about my problem with shirts.
Taking off my shirt left me standing completely nude in front of the mirror, and this time I didn’t shy away. I’d seen most of this before of course, it was hard not to. I’d always tried not to stare though. I felt dirty just being in this position.
I evaluated myself on both a physical and emotional level. I knew all the reasons why I felt the way I did. There was dysphoria from having previously been male. There was my discomfort with being in someone else's body. I was also experiencing a completely different type of discomfort over the change in my sexual preferences, both because I wasn’t attracted to people I thought I should be, and because I was attracted to people I thought I shouldn’t be.
Looking back at it, the previous night when I’d created the persona of Nyx I had done so with the intention of separating myself even further from all this by using that personality as a shield. She would be someone that could accept all these feelings and not be weirded out by them, but it wouldn’t be me doing it. It would just be the character. I was desperately trying to protect myself by dissociating my feelings and behaviors.
I couldn’t continue like this. I hadn’t realized it, but I was on the verge of a breakdown. I’d been doing too good a job of bottling things up and now they were on the verge of spilling over. How had it only been two days… or was it three now? It felt like an eternity. I thought about what Tavi had said the previous night. Was that really her? Could I just talk to her like that any time I wanted?
I was still standing in front of the mirror. Just how crazy was I really, I wondered?
Time to find out.
The girl in the mirror blinked, then rolled her eyes at me. “Wow, you’re really falling apart, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Yeah, I think I am. I could use some help here,” I told her.
“Fine, let’s start at the beginning. You think the beginning is that you’re guilty you killed me, but you’re wrong. The real beginning is that you don’t think I’m real.”
I hesitated. “Do you mean the fairly obvious dissociative episode I’m having right now, or you as in the person I killed?”
“The first one. Gods you’re a nerd. You’re in a world with fucking magic and you insist on framing everything in terms of your old life. Do you even realize that the name of this place isn’t Jira? That’s just what you hear when people mention it because it makes sense to you. The translation effect isn’t perfect. It picks up some words based on feelings and that word evokes dread, anger, and a little fear in your mind. That’s just what you hear because of some stupid trauma from your old life.”
“Wait. How do you know that? If you were really Tavi, I mean. Tavi doesn’t know what Jira is, she couldn’t possibly know the context for that.”
“Use that nerd brain of yours. I’ve been living in your head for days now. You used that skill The Adversary gave you; you know what it’s like to do that, and you were in my head for less than a minute. I’ve been in yours for days. You think you figured out my whole relationship with Lucus and Ryke in 30 seconds? Imagine what I’ve figured out about you in 48 hours. Perspective’s a bitch.”
I reeled back from the mirror. That couldn’t possibly be true, could it?
“You don’t have a soul!” I practically shouted at the girl in the mirror, unsure if it was an accusation or a question.
“No, I have your soul. There’s a difference. You have my body; I have your soul. For what it’s worth I think your original spirit might be in that rock stuck in our forehead. I think it’s what’s anchoring you to my body. It might be why we can have two species and two active classes, but that’s not important right now. I want you to really think about this, what is a soul? What is a spirit? Think through what you’ve been told. Go sit in that rock of yours for a bit, you think better in there.”
I did what she said. I didn’t feel like I had a choice in the matter.
Withdrawing into my soul gem was unusually difficult, and I realized I hadn’t done this fully in quite a while. I’d gotten used to thinking with Tavi’s brain even while maintaining separation between our identities.
Once I had done so however, the cool and crystalline nature of my thoughts in this place reassured me. Here I couldn’t be deceived by emotions, wishful thinking, or even convenient self-deception. I should have done this sooner, but of course I’d been trying to hide things from myself and that was hard to do here where everything was as clear as crystal.
I immediately identified several issues I needed to address, but first I turned my thoughts towards the questions Tavi had raised. These were worth considering.
I had been told that a soul was the concept of a thing. Individuals each had their own soul, but animals and even non-living things could and did have souls. Their souls were just bigger than a single individual. I could infer from this that a soul could have more than one body so long as they shared a base concept, but I didn’t yet see what Tavi’s point was.
Individuals had their own souls because they were conceptually different from others. Unless two people were conceptually the same, they couldn’t share a soul. It worked much like my soul-space storage did.
That thought struck me as not quite right, and I looked at it again. That wasn’t exactly what my soul-space did anymore was it? Now it would allow similar things in the same slot, but even before then it had allowed me to hold multiple different things inside it, including an entire fragment of reality itself, something I’d been told was not unlike a soul.
A ripple ran through the cold halls of stone that were my mind at the moment. There was something here, something I’d missed. I pulled up the achievement I’d gotten when I’d acquired the reality seed. Looking at it, I began to wonder if I truly was crazy. Was I actually strapped to a bed somewhere in a hospital on Earth, possibly in a coma and living out a fever dream?
The connections I was seeing were not possible. Not reasonable. If I believed this it meant that The Adversary, Valera, and possibly System himself were in a conspiracy together for reasons I couldn’t understand.
I knew The Adversary had been dropping hints during character creation. He obviously liked me, but I hadn’t been able to figure out why he’d sent me to Valera. Had the three of them planned this from the beginning? Why? What would have happened if they hadn’t?
Even here I found that I could feel trepidation, if not fear. I had already taken a step back from my body, and now I took another step back, for the first time intentionally stepping away from whatever made me myself entirely.
For the third time I felt something that wasn’t truly my eyes pull back from a hole in the fabric of nothing. A hole which floated in a darkness so vast that if I moved away from this point somehow, I’d never be able to find my way back. Distance was a lie here, size was meaningless, I was everywhere and nowhere and none of it mattered.
All of it mattered.
In the darkness I considered myself. What was I, to be as I was? I discovered that I already knew. I had always known, and always would know.
In the darkness a Cheshire cat grin appeared, and it soundlessly spoke a single word that was the darkness. Sound could not convey its meaning. Words could not define it. Language could not contain it. My mind could not comprehend it. Yet I understood it perfectly, for it was me.
I found myself standing in front of the mirror again. At some point, I had apparently activated Embrace of Shadows, and darkness had flooded the room like a river of night. All I could see, even with my darkvision, was the grin of the girl in the mirror.
I didn’t remember turning the skill on, and as soon as I noticed the shadows began to slink away like they’d done something wrong until we stood there, draped in a cloak of night. Her grinning at me. Me grinning at her.
“Consumed,” I said to myself.
“They said I ate the seed. Breakfast Greebil called it. I consumed it. What else was consumed? What happens when you consume something? It becomes a part of you, doesn’t it? I've even been referring to it as eating… ‘What is your name?’ he asked me, ‘the name written upon your soul.’ Why would he ask that? Shouldn’t he know? How did the others answer I wonder? Were they just looking for the right one? The right answer? They said it consumed a soul, coming here, but what could consume a soul?”
The room suddenly filled with darkness so vast and deep that it exuded physical force. The mirror shattered, but somehow the other girl still stood there, grinning back at me. Then I blinked, and it was like it had never happened.
“Interesting.” I said to my reflection.
“You get it now?” she asked.
“I think so. I didn’t kill you, did I? I ate you. You’re a part of me now, and together we’re more than either of us was before.”
“Except also we’re not.”
“Except also we’re not,” I confirmed. “That would be impossible.”
“You going to be ok after this?”
“I suspect not, but I’ll work on it.”
“I’ll help.”
“I know.”
Suddenly it was just me in the mirror, and I found myself pondering what had just happened from within my stone sanctuary. I had obviously suffered a psychotic break. It was also very obviously entirely real. I had no doubt about it. Of course, that’s how psychotic episodes worked, but too many things made sense now that I had only been peripherally aware of before.
For some reason, the gods had been dropping me hints since the beginning, and System was either in on it or somehow oblivious to it. Maybe The Adversary had messed with him when fixing the bug that caused him to freeze while announcing me?
Whatever the case, Valera and The Adversary had clearly been looking for someone capable of holding another soul within their soul, and I’d been that person. I’d declared it by naming myself Infinity. Doing so had either changed me, or revealed me, and I wasn’t sure which.
Whatever the case was, I had consumed Tavi’s soul. Something that was apparently a requirement for being brought to this world. Valera had been very clear on this point, but I now knew I’d gotten away with a technicality.
At the time I’d taken it to mean destroyed, or used up, but that wasn’t the only meaning of the word. Later Greebil made a big deal about eating the Reality Seed. I now strongly suspected that Greebil’s “master” hadn’t been present that day because The Adversary had ordered him not to be.
For some reason, The Adversary had wanted me to eat that seed. Why remained a mystery, but the very fact that I could had certainly been known to at least him and Valera before I did it. Was it even really a coincidence that Tavi had a relic of Valera in her possession when she was killed? Had the plan gone that far?
At some point I would be requiring them to answer these questions, but for now it could wait. I was satisfied that whatever they were planning, I was their instrument and not their target. I could live with that for now.
I directed my focus inwards again. I needed to figure out how I wanted to proceed. The primary thing that had changed was that I now knew Tavi’s soul was part of my own. I had absorbed it; her concept had become part of my own. Together we were something different, both more and less, yet equal to what we had been before, but that didn’t really change my situation as a whole.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
I knew that now if I wanted to, I could easily slip into something like the persona of Nyx that I’d created the night before. This time though, it wouldn’t be an act. It would be switching from part of me being dominant at a time, to all of me being dominant. Who I was right now was just a facet of the gem. Though I’d created the persona of Nyx as a mask, I’d unknowingly or perhaps unconsciously come close to the truth. Still, it had been a flawed creation, a subset rather than the whole.
The question now was, did I want to do that? It wasn’t a matter of losing my identity or being worried about the implications of what I was doing. No, it was much simpler than that. I simply wasn’t sure if there was a reason to stop being as I was now.
Within the stone my mind was sharp and unconcerned with the frailties of the flesh. This too was me, and it was a version of me that was perhaps truest to who and what I really was. The previous day I’d realized that existing this way wasn’t truly being alive, it was more like being an AI in a computer. Was that such a bad thing though?
I thought about this for a long time, continuing to stand there, looking into the mirror. Tavi didn’t speak to me this time, and I realized that she probably never would again, not unless something went badly wrong.
Even if I stayed in the stone forever, I had acknowledged that she was a part of me, that I was her in a fundamental way. It was just as much Tavi in this stone as anyone else. Thinking there was a difference between us had been a lie I told myself in an effort to stay sane.
So much for that.
Tavi had wanted to live, had enjoyed every moment of life with a passion that simply couldn’t be felt within the stone. That was what decided it for me. Back on earth I’d sometimes daydreamed of digital immortality, and now I had it in a way, but if it wasn’t really living then wasn't it just a different form of undeath? Tavi wanted to live, and that meant so did I.
I finally let my psyche drop out of the stone and back into my body, and it was my body now, just as it was my stone. I was Infinity, and I had room inside me for both the people I had been, as well as the person I was now.
The mask I’d been hiding behind finally cracked and fell away, and a new person looked back at me from the mirror.
Congratulations, you have received enough XP to become a Level 13 Goblin!
Congratulations, you have received enough XP to become a Level 9 Valerian!
That series of notifications startled me out of my own thoughts. Had I just leveled up twice from resolving a personal conflict? That was kind of cool.
Embrace of Shadows was still on, and my cloak of night was still the only thing I was wearing. I found that it suited me. I particularly liked how it cast me in grayscale. I threw back the hood and had a look, without the cloak’s hood I could see my eyes again, but I was still monochrome. My natural eye color was brown, but I found myself wanting just a splash of color in all the shades of gray, so I changed my irises to red.
As soon as I’d done it, I couldn’t figure out how I’d done it. It just happened. One moment I was looking at nearly black irises, the next they were so red they practically glowed. I dropped Embrace of Shadows, and my eyes were back to their normal brown. I activated the skill again, and the red eyes returned with it.
“Interesting.” I said to my reflection.
I very intentionally decided to not think about this further. I had some suspicions, but it seemed unwise to pursue them right at that moment.
It might be dangerous.
A knock at the door interrupted my musings, and I answered it to find a young satyr woman. She jumped when she saw me, raising a hand to her mouth in surprise. “Oh! Sorry. I’m Wynidi. Miss Bea said to let you know breakfast is ready if you’d like to join us…”
Her look made it clear that she thought I’d be eating her for breakfast, if anything.
I joined her in the hallway, giving her my least threatening grin. “Lead the way!”
Only after we started walking did I recall that I’d never actually gotten dressed. I had my cloak of shadows, but that was it. Being the only clothed person around a bunch of naked people was probably the more awkward option anyway, I decided. Plus, it no longer bothered me like it once would have.
Something else caught my attention as I followed the girl, and I found myself chuckling in a way that must have been very creepy to the poor satyr. She looked over her shoulder nervously and sped up ever so slightly.
She led me into a dining hall. Around two-dozen satyrs of all shapes and sizes were seated at the tables, passing trays of food and drink around. I took a moment to look around, locating Javril and a few other handsome young men. Veralis, the girl who’d shown me the dwarven shield on my first day was here too, and I only now realized why she’d been picked to be on the show floor that day.
I grinned. It would seem I was still attracted to the men, but I no longer felt nothing when looking at the women. It was odd, like my original preferences had returned but weren’t at full strength. Maybe there was a physical component to it in addition to the psychological and spiritual one? Or maybe it was just because I was used to Tavi’s at this point.
I’d need to examine it later, but I already knew why they’d gone missing previously. I’d been fighting myself on a conceptual level, and Tavi’s sexuality was so much stronger than my original one that it had overwhelmed me. They hadn’t been able to exist side by side until I had, for lack of a better word, finished digesting her.
It had been an obvious symptom of a process that had been taking place on every level of our identity. The strongest aspects of our identities had clashed wherever they conflicted, with the strongest aspects overwhelming weaker ones. Our merger wasn’t perfect, not yet at least, but I’d stopped fighting myself. I could accept the inherent contradictions and allow them all to be true.
Wynidi brought me over to Bea and Sam, who were seated next to each other at the head of one of the tables. A spot was open across from them and I slid into it.
“Ah, auditor Nyx. I’m glad you could join us.” Sam gave me a rueful smile as he addressed me.
Bea elbowed him in the side. “How are you feeling dear? You look like you slept well?”
“I feel great thanks. I owe you big time for all your help, Bea. You really helped me work out some issues last night.”
“We all need a shoulder to cry on sometimes. I’m happy to help.”
We ate breakfast and chatted, and I felt at peace for the first time in days. That is, until it suddenly occurred to me that I’d spent an entire night here when I was supposed to be in jail. For a panicked moment I worried that they were going to think I’d escaped my cell, and my group would go back into the dungeon without me.
Thankfully, Bea quickly dispelled that notion. “Don’t ask me how it works, but Crucible doesn’t have the same timeline as other places. No matter how long you stay here, when you leave, you’ll be right back at the time and place you came from. If a day passes for you on the outside, a day will pass for you in here too, but it doesn’t work that way the other way around.”
When Bea said the word “Crucible” it hung in my ears for a moment, and I realized that what my mind had once translated as Jira had changed. I was now understanding it the way Tavi had always understood it.
This was The Adversary’s Crucible, the place where he forged his devils in trials of fire and pain before sending them out into the worlds to do his bidding. It wasn’t Hell. It wasn’t a place of punishment. It was a place built to purify and strengthen.
I was so caught up in this realization that I nearly missed the rest of what Bea had said. “Wait, what? So, if I stay here a week then go back, it will still be the day I left in Astra, but what happens if I immediately come back here?”
“You’ll arrive at the moment you left and will continue to do so until your timeline catches up with ours,” she said. “Time will only pass again here when you have been away for more time than you spent.”
“How does that even work?” I asked, genuinely baffled and becoming more confused the longer I thought about it. “I’ve seen other Travelers here. How is that even possible if time is effectively paused on Astra while we’re here?”
My mind was spinning with possibilities here. This was, in a weird way, a form of time travel. It would be very difficult to make use of it, but I could see certain ways it might be done unless there were protections in place to prevent it.
Bea shrugged. “Like I said, I don’t understand it, but we’re used to dealing with it.”
Sam chimed in. “Note that most visitors to the Exchange are not allowed to rest here. We made an exception on your behalf, but please don’t expect this treatment all the time. We can’t afford for it to get around that we’re allowing non-residents to stay in our personal quarters.”
He patted his wife’s hand affectionately. “Bea insisted that you needed it though, and when she explained why I was forced to agree. Please feel free to stay the remainder of the day if you don’t wish to throw off your normal sleep cycle. The Lord Adversary did invite you back here after all, he can hardly complain if we don’t kick out his guest.”
I felt tears in my eyes as he spoke. “I don’t deserve you two,” I told them. “Thank you, I really appreciate it… I’ll try not to cause you any trouble.”
Sam grinned. “That said, I will insist on the normal deposit if you wish to visit the showroom.”
I laughed at that and told him I’d probably take him up on it. I did want to see what he was offering today, and I had money burning a hole in my soul-space.
“You know, I’ve been wondering. Do you guys ever buy items? Where does your collection come from?”
Sam raised an eyebrow. “We’ve been curating our collection for longer than you’ve been alive. Most of it comes from older, more established worlds, as they tend to have more established crafters and stronger fighters. Selling them to less established worlds can be quite profitable if the residents can afford them. We do buy things occasionally, but usually only from specific contacts we have within each world, whom we’ve worked out deals with in advance.”
I was curious about these other worlds. If I had things straight, these were worlds without System, and yet they apparently had strong magic and warriors, and could craft items that System could categorize. How did that work exactly? What had System changed, and why didn’t Earth seem to have any of whatever everyone else had?
Reluctantly, I put those questions aside for the moment. I was curious about all of that, but I had more pressing questions I wanted answered while Sam was in a charitable mood.
“Would you be willing to buy from me if I find something interesting?” I asked.
Sam coughed politely. “Infinity, I don’t doubt you’ll have access to some of the best gear on Astra soon enough… but that world is quite young in the grand scheme of things, and that means random loot will by far be the most prevalent. The world simply has too few high-level crafters and not enough access to rare materials. You’d need to get quite lucky in order to find something I might be interested in featuring in our showroom, I think.”
Bea elbowed him again. “Ouch!” He rubbed his side. “I mean yes, of course, if you do get lucky and find something interesting, I’d be happy to take a look at it and offer you a fair price for it. I just don’t think it’s very likely.”
I pulled my headband out of storage, equipping it in the process. “I just got this thing out of a loot box. I’m not interested in selling it but, just so I know how to value things, is this something you’d be interested in? If so, what would you value it at?”
Sam’s eyes went distant for a moment as he inspected it.
“Huh, not bad. From a loot box you say? I would likely not be interested in this item normally, but I’m fairly certain we have the other half of the pair in storage. Sometimes we’ll keep set items in storage in hopes we can acquire the full set and sell them together. I will say though, even with both parts of this set, I would likely only price it at a single scarab token and would consider even that a stretch. For that reason, I would not be willing to give you a scarab token for it unless it was part of a multi-item deal, but I would be willing to buy it for gold.”
“Good to know, thanks. I don’t suppose the half you have in storage will be on sale at any point?”
“I’ll have it brought out of storage, but it will likely be a few weeks. If you wish to purchase it, we will need to come to some sort of arrangement as its value alone is too low for me to sell for a scarab. Still, knowing that the other half has been located will make it worth having on hand should you decide to sell yours.”
I sorted through my inventory, listing out a few of the other items I had in case anything caught his attention, but the only things he seemed to think were worth mentioning were the obvious ones.
“That item upgrade script I would buy off you for two scarab tokens.” he said, sounding very casual. Bea immediately elbowed him again, and he rubbed his side, looking frustrated.
“Fine, three scarab tokens. Yes dear, I know it’s worth more, but we do have to make a profit on it when we sell it. Such a thing is only worth that much to someone who already has a very high tier item, we’ll likely need to keep it in stock for some time until we can actually sell it, and The Lord Adversary may choose to requisition it. He’ll be displeased if he finds out I paid more than three for it.”
Bea rolled her eyes but didn’t protest further. I idly played with one of my ears as I considered the offer. “I’m going to pass for now, but I may take you up on that in the future. I want to see if I get something worth using it on first.”
Sam didn’t seem disappointed. “Well, you know where to find me if you decide to sell it.” He paused for a moment, then asked, “I am curious, where did you find a soul gem, and one with such a strange spirit in it at that?”
I blinked, frozen as I tried to figure out what he meant. “Uh, huh?” I asked, trying to buy time. I didn’t think I’d mentioned the exact mechanism of my possession of Tavi’s body to Bea, so this was completely out of left field. Maybe she’d figured it out by what I’d said while acting as Tavi?
Sam cut off my racing thoughts by clarifying. “The Nightstalker ghoul spirit. Is it a type of undead that is animated through soul gems? I haven’t heard of it before.”
I breathed in relief as I understood what he was talking about. I’d mentioned the spirit on its own without even thinking about it, but he must have assumed it was in a soul gem. That made me wonder if Valerian soul gems were different from normal ones, or if they were all the same items. Did I count as an undead?
“I got it from a dungeon mob,” I told him, truthfully. Then I hesitated, obviously The Adversary knew about my soul-space skill, so there was probably no use hiding it from Sam. “It’s not in a soul gem though, I’ve got a soul-space storage system and it’s just kind of hanging out in there. I have a title that lets me store the souls, err… spirits of stuff I kill.”
Bea’s eyebrows shot up. “And here I was assuming it just sounded intimidating.”
“That is an interesting title to be sure. I wonder what would happen if you took the spirit out of your soul-space? Have you tried it?” Sam asked.
“I haven’t. I’ve just been assuming it’d go wherever spirits without a body go. I just got a new skill though and I bet I could use it to put the spirit into a soul gem if I found one. It’s a crafting skill that uses my soul-space. I was thinking about trying to shove the spirit into that greatsword I mentioned and see if it made a sentient weapon or something. I’m not really sure how it works yet.”
Now Sam very seemed interested, “What’s this crafting skill that works on a soul-space?” He asked.
I didn’t see any harm in it, so I told them about Soul Forge and how it was supposed to work. Both seemed fascinated by the idea.
“Infinity, what you’re describing is how the gods make things. Unrestricted conceptual crafting… this is almost unheard of. How did you get access to this?” Bea asked.
“I used a skill upgrade script on my soul-space skill, then evolved it.” I shrugged. “It does seem good, but I’m expecting it to be expensive.”
Sam leaned forward. “Have you tried it at all yet?”
“Nope, just got it last night.”
“Let me know when you do… I would be very interested in seeing the results.”
I nodded to him, then I pulled out a scarab token and handed it to him. “Speaking of which, how about we take a look at your inventory. Maybe I’ll see something I’d like to use it on.”
Sam wiped his mouth with a napkin and stood, giving a small bow. “It would be my pleasure madam, but might I suggest we both get into uniform before we get down to business.”