Achievement unlocked! “Trial by Fire”
For a long moment, my vision couldn’t make sense of what was happening. Then I thought of opening my character sheet and the visual representation of my avatar made it very clear.
I hadn’t thought to turn off Embrace of Shadows before using Devour Essence, and now my body was literally on fire but still attracting shadows. The effect was extremely disorienting as my two auras went to war with each other. The bathroom walls were cast in madly flickering patterns of light and shadow, as though hundreds of people were making shadow puppets using a bonfire as a light source.
I mentally toggled off Embrace of Shadows just to make it easier to concentrate on what I was doing, and immediately the room calmed down. Now I was just on fire.
It looked like the fire wasn’t burning me or my clothes, though I was sure that if I’d been wearing a shirt it’d have found a way to go up in flames. I didn’t want to keep this going for long, as I didn’t want to damage the essence any more than necessary, so I started looking over my character sheet and skills trying to figure out what this was doing to me.
The main thing was the new boons, which were on a 30 second timer that I assumed would be refreshed on a cadence to match the ticks of maintaining Devour Essence. I quickly read their names but didn’t have time to examine them further - I was hoping I’d be able to pull information out of the logs.
The primary boon was called Touch of Flames, but I also had Fire Aura, Fire Resistance and Burning Strikes. At the same time, I noticed that my character sheet now had a listing for elemental resistances, of which I had an 75% fire resistance listed. I also now had a bane for water vulnerability, but it was only 25%.
I cut off the skill before the 30 second timers were up, and they expired a moment later, taking their effects with them. I checked around me to make sure I hadn’t left any scorch marks on the floor, then reactivated my shadows and started trying to figure out what I’d just done to myself.
Notably, I hadn’t gained any skills from this experience, though I had gotten an achievement. When I went to look at it though, it was a bit confusing.
> New Achievement
>
> Trial by Fire
>
> You have been touched by the primordial essence of fire and survived. This achievement satisfies one of the prerequisites for you or your descendants to become a Scion of Fire, and may help you qualify for various other evolutions, skills, and classes. Earn a species evolution to select Scion of Fire as a subspecies.
>
> Rewards:
> New Trait (“Marked by Fire”)
This was the first time I’d heard of traits, and that turned out to be for good reason. A new tab had appeared in my character sheet, and when I toggled it active, Marked by Fire was the only one I had listed.
It was much simpler than my skills and titles. There were no tiers or ranks, and there didn’t appear to be any way to interact with them at all. As far as I could tell this screen was purely informational. The mark itself simply granted me a +10% bonus to base fire resistance, which was pretty good considering that it didn’t seem to have any downsides.
It seemed I’d also satisfied some prerequisites for character options I didn’t have access to yet. Given that I planned to live a very long time and really push the limits for what my classes could do, I should probably try and take a bite out of each of the different elemental essences at some point, but I could wait on that. For now, I needed to run the last part of my experiment.
I reopened my Soul Forge interface and got to work on making a burning sword. Taking a bite out of the fire essence had produced some changes in the crafting recipe. The fire damage bonus on the sword had gone down by 5%, which was easily rectified by spending an additional progression point to boost it back to where it was before.
I thought about boosting it up higher, but there were diminishing returns on doing so. I also didn’t want to spend too much on this. The sword was too big for me to use in any practical manner, so I was probably going to end up selling it or crafting something else with it eventually.
This time instead of closing the interface I selected the “craft” option. There was a moment where nothing happened, and then I experienced the oddest sensation as the two very different concepts of the sword and the fire essence merged in my mind’s eye. There was a flash of light behind my eyes, followed by intense heat and pressure that seemed to come from everywhere at once.
Then just as suddenly as it had come, it was gone.
You have created “Gratuitous Violence of the Inferno” (Tier 4, Greatsword, Oversized, Ever-burning)
I was left with a mild headache that soon faded away into the background, and a newly empty slot in my soul-space where the fire essence had been. I wanted to make sure that I could re-forge the newly created item if I wanted, so I stuck it back in the crafting window and, in a fit of whimsy, added a single unused tampon as a second crafting material.
The result was way more interesting than I expected, adding the properties “Blood Drinking” and “Impaler” along with the very intriguingly named “Blade Launcher (Chained)” all at decent probabilities… The only problem was the cost, which started at a ridiculous 50 progression points.
I did some examination trying to figure out what was going on and eventually realized that the tampon was actually considered an exotic and otherworldly crafting ingredient, which made sense now that I thought about it.
I’d included the applicator in the crafting, and that’s where some of the properties were coming from. I wasn’t sure why it was so expensive though. In fact, everything I tried was more expensive than the initial crafting had been by a considerable amount, even the Ghoul’s spirit, which seemed like it might be the closest thing to an essence I had on me.
The reason for the disparity became clear when I took the sword out of my soul-space to have a look at it. Turns out that the properties were a bit more literal than I was expecting. I summoned the sword into my hands, only to instantly regret it.
When it said Ever-Burning, it hadn’t made a distinction between the blade and the hilt. I cried out in pain as the skin on my hands began to blister and burn in the fraction of a second before I dropped the flaming blade. I was lucky in that I had water running in the sink, but it felt like I’d just wrapped my hands around a pot that had just come out of the oven.
I held my hands under the cool running water, cursing furiously as the sword continued to burn on the ground behind me. I stretched my neck and looked over my shoulder, trying to figure out how I was going to get this thing back in my inventory.
I was going to have to touch it for 7 seconds to put it back in my soul-space, and even momentary contact with it had blistered my hands, despite my new fire resistance. Just being close to it was becoming painfully uncomfortable. This was going to be bad.
I was still wracking my brain for options when Rhel walked into the bathroom and took in the scene. She looked at me, then looked at the burning sword on the floor, then looked back at me. “Damn, that’s actually a pretty cool sword. Maybe you have a sense of taste after all.”
She didn’t seem even slightly concerned about the situation as she walked in and stood over it, leaning down to get a better look. “Shit, this is an infernal captain’s sword. How’d you get the hilt burning? You know how hard it is to make Magma Fiend bones burn like that?”
She looked up at me, and I saw a gleam in her eyes that held more emotions than she’d had at any point in our conversations so far. I recognized that look, it was one that transcended worlds and species as easily as it transcended any one fandom or hobby. Rhel was a sword geek.
“Can I hold it?” She asked.
I blinked at her for a second, my burned hands still held under the water. “Uh, sure? Just don’t hurt yourself…”
Rhel reached down and tried to pick the sword up by the handle, showing no sign of discomfort from the heat. Despite that she was just barely able to lift it due to the weight of the huge blade. I watched as she tested its balance and even slid her hand along the blade almost lovingly.
When she grasped the hilt in both hands like she was going to use it, the flames covering the weapon roared and shot forward along the blade, creating a huge flaming aura that extended a full meter out from the weapon and the already hot room became suffocating.
“Hey, cut that out, would ya? It’s too hot in here already!” I yelled at the madly grinning devil girl.
She glanced at me, confused. Then she seemed to notice my sweat-soaked face and laid the sword back down on the ground with surprising care. “If you didn't want me to use it, you should have said so,” she said, back to being surly again.
“How do you even hold that thing while it’s on fire like that? I burned my hands on it the moment I finished crafting it.”
As I spoke, I splashed water on my face in an attempt to cool down. I could already tell I was going to feel like I’d spent too long near a campfire soon.
Rhel gave me an incredulous look and spoke slowly, as if to a child. “We’re in Crucible. You know, where devils live? I’m a devil if you hadn’t noticed. We’re pretty famously immune to fire and poisons. I have a regular appointment for a lava facial every month. Your sword is cool, but it’s not hot. Not by my standards at least.” She tucked away a loose strand of hair behind a horn, as if to draw attention to them.
I just rolled my eyes and tried to ignore the pain in my hands. “Listen, you’re the only devil I’ve ever met other than The Adversary, if he even counts. I don’t know what you can and can’t do. Right now, I’m trying to figure out how I’m getting this sword out of here without burning myself more.” I showed her my blistered hands. “I need to touch that thing for a few seconds to get it back into my inventory, but my hands practically melted the last time I touched it even for a second.”
I took a moment to review my status. My HP was fine, only down about 5%, but I had a nasty “Burned” bane effect.
> Burned
>
> Physical Bane (Tier 3)
>
> Duration: 24h
>
> You have been badly burned, causing constant pain. When you activate any skill or make an attack, you take damage equal to 2% of your maximum health (rounded up). Fire resistance applies to the damage caused by a burn.
Rhel looked at my hands with a mix of curiosity and disgust, “That’s pretty gross. Does all of your body melt like that?”
“Yeah, pretty much, or it’d just catch on fire and burn up,” I sighed.
“Well, we have some fire resistance potions you could buy.” She shrugged, losing interest.
I thought about that with distaste while looking around for something that might help. I tried splashing some water on the blade from the sink, but it just sizzled and evaporated without any real effect. Finally, my eyes landed on the light switch by the door, and I felt a glimmer of hope.
I ran over and hit the lights, wincing in pain as my burned hand hit the switch, plunging the room into darkness as the sword became the only source of light. There were no shadows touching the sword of course, it being the source of light, but I moved as close to the sword as I could stand, allowing Embrace of Shadows to deepen the darkness around me, fighting the fire light. Then I reached out with Hands of Night, desperately pressing darkness against the light.
Hands of Night could act as an extension of my body, that meant I could pull things into my soul-space through it. Shadow hands didn’t burn, but it was very hard to force them into bright light, and the brighter it was the more difficult it was to hold the shadows together.
What followed was the longest minute of my life as my shadows formed and broke against the flames, only to be replaced by more shadows in an endless tide I threw at the sword in hopes of maintaining contact for long enough to pull it into my soul-space.
Several times the sword began to fade, only to pop back into existence as the flames pushed away the shadows and broke my contact with the blade. I narrowed my focus and drove a pinpoint of hardened shadow against the blade itself, holding my concentration on it with all my willpower.
Ironically the sword itself was providing me with endless fuel as it cast flickering shadows across the walls, and these flowed to me and into the thrust of my attack. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the light winked out and we stood in absolute darkness.
“That… was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen,” said Rhel, opening one of the stalls. “Now get out of here, I have to piss and you smell like burnt goblin.”
I was exhausted both physically and mentally. My whole body felt dried out and roasted, but Rhel’s words drove home a point that I couldn’t ignore - if I went back to jail in my current state it would raise too many questions. I needed to clean up first. “Sorry, I’ll be out of your hair in a second, I just need to wash up a bit.”
I flipped the lights on with a mental shrug, then dunked my whole head under the faucet, trying to wash the smell of fire out of my hair and off my skin. Thankfully, the sword hadn’t really produced much in the way of smoke, as it’d been on fire without actually burning anything. Even the floor where it’d been laying was unmarred by signs of fire, which I decided was probably a necessary feature of buildings in Crucible, all things considered. I was really the only thing that had burned in here.
I cleaned up as best I could with what little I had on hand to work with, including some hand soap of dubious provenance from a dispenser next to the sink. Then I arranged my titles, deactivated Embrace of Shadows, and exited the Exchange, dropping softly into bed in my cell. There was a slight creek from the frame as my weight settled into place.
After that, I was asleep in mere moments, my body unable to sustain my consciousness any longer.
***
Morning brought the memories of fitful dreams and a return of pain.
I managed to go through the motions and made it to the cafeteria where I got my food and took my seat with my team. I yawned as I sat between Lucus and Dawn and started eating. It took me a moment to realize everyone was staring at me.
“Wut?” I asked, my mouth half full of a slab of mystery meat.
Arven rubbed his temples. “Are you going to explain how you managed to get burned and level up twice from inside your cell last night?”
Oh right. They could see my basic info on the party screen. We’d never actually disbanded our party the other day, but I’d been tuning out their info for some time now as it wasn’t changing. In fact, it had been grayed out while I’d been in Crucible, probably because of the split timeline. I finished chewing, then swallowed before replying.
“Yeah, but not here, you know? I’ve got lots to talk about actually.”
Dawn looked me up and down but didn’t seem to see what she was looking for. “I don’t see any obvious burns, though you do look a little flushed. I can heal you when we get inside.”
I placed both my hands on the table, then flipped them over briefly, revealing my blistered palms. Nearly everyone winced, and I hid them again. “Thanks, I’d appreciate that. It hurts like hell.”
“Like what?” Lucus asked.
I waved him off and got back to eating. Arven sighed and addressed the group. “Listen up. I’ve been thinking about it and I’m going to tell the guards we’ll be staying in the dungeon tonight. We’ll be crossing the river today, and I don’t want to do that more than once in the same day. It will also let us push deeper if we want to. If anyone can think of a reason we shouldn’t do that, let me know.”
His eyes lingered on me, but I made no motion to interject, simply continuing to chow down on breakfast. I hadn’t known this was an option, but I was all for it.
“We all know what we signed up for Arven.” Savas told him. “I have a family to take care of, and being stuck in here a moment longer than necessary is doing them no favors. If you weren’t leading us deep, I’d be looking for a different group.”
With no objections on the table, we ate in silence until it was our turn to approach the armory. Arven told the guards at the door our plans, and they only seemed a little surprised. In response to this we were issued double rations of both food and water. Lucus made as if to carry mine, but I just shouldered both packs without any effort and waggled my ears at him when he looked confused.
We outfitted ourselves much like we had the previous day. I contemplated getting a larger crossbow with a heavier draw, but with my hands currently in their mangled state I couldn’t test their pull without going through agony. Instead, I settled on the same one I’d used last time, but hoped I’d be able to avoid needing the devil-foot lever to load it.
After some consideration, I also asked Lucus to bring along the heaviest crossbow they had, along with a few specialty bolts they had for it. The thing was basically an undersized ballista that was normally used to shoot a rope across a gap, providing a way to traverse normally impassable areas. I figured it’d be good to have it available.
Arven saw my choice and nodded appreciatively. “I don’t normally go for those due to the high strength requirements to use them, and how hard they are to lug around, but you’re right - now’s the time to bring one if there ever was a time.”
With that we made our way to the dungeon entrance, recording our gear with the wizard on duty. Arven let them know we wouldn’t be back tonight, and the guards noted it down. Apparently just staying overnight was worth a small amount of credit against your sentence due to the increased danger. The credit was given to encourage groups to do exactly what we were planning, as the keep wasn’t the only distant location in the city worth looting.
When it came to be my turn to be checked in, I stopped them and asked something that’d been bothering me. “Hey, so I’m here on a warrant right? So, I can’t get time off my sentence? That how that works?”
The guard behind the counter nodded at me. “Yep. Having second thoughts about running with this group? All you need to do is make it to the end of the week alive. Same for your friend there. We’ve all been wondering how old Arven managed to talk you into joining his suicide party, and if you want to pick a different group or go in on your own you can.”
I shook my head. “No, I was just going to say, since we can’t get anything from it, can you give our overnight credit to someone else in the group?”
The guard’s eyes widened slightly, and he looked at the wizard for direction. The much younger wizard on duty today scratched his head and shrugged. “I don’t see why not; it’s tallied as a loot credit, and you get to decide amongst yourselves who gets the credit for loot.”
“Great!” I said, grinning. “Which of you is in here the longest?” I asked my new friends. Arven hesitantly stepped forward, but when I started to turn back to the counter he held up a hand to stop me.
“Hold up. Don’t give it to me. Give it to Savas or Dorian. I’m going to be in here a long time and something that little isn’t going to help me, but it might help them.”
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I shrugged and looked at Lucus. “Want to split it between them?”
“Seems fair,” he said.
The guards made notes on the arrangement then finished processing our entry into the dungeon. The rest of the process was uneventful, and soon enough we were descending the stairs into darkness not even my senses could penetrate.
Arven stopped us as soon as we were in the tunnels. “I know we need to talk but hold it until we make it to the guard station so we can be sure we’re secure. Tavi, do you want to take the lead this time?”
I started to agree but Dawn interjected. “Hold it. We’re not going anywhere until I cure those burns. Give me your hands.”
Arven stepped back and I held my hands up to Dawn, who took them gently and applied some sort of cleansing effect to them, finally freeing me from the pain I’d been dealing with for hours.
“Thanks Dawn, that’s way better,” I said, then turned to Arven. “Yeah, I’ll lead. Lucus stays right behind me in case I need to fall back quickly. I’ll duck past you. Arven, you take the rear?”
They both nodded, and I took a moment to pull the draw back on my crossbow, doing it one handed with my foot through the stirrup. “I’ll explain later, but I need to do this real quick too,” I told them, reaching over and putting my hand on the mini-ballista Lucus had slung over his shoulder and drawing it into my soul-space.
I’d already decided to stop hiding a lot of my abilities from them and this was one. Lucus had already seen this and simply raised an eyebrow, but I had to wave off questions and exclamations from the others as the weapon vanished.
“Later! Arven was right, let's get to shelter first.”
I took off at a jog, following my minimap the way we’d come the previous day. The others followed easily behind me. Dawn had her light spell going, which was actually kind of annoying since I wasn’t running Embrace of Shadows at the moment, and it was keeping me from being able to use Hands of Night. We dodged around the open holes in the ground leading to empty sky and managed to make it to the first guard post without any issues.
When we got there, I went down first. The door was far above my head, but with Dawn’s light still around the corner I was able to send a hand of night through the latch and unlock it from the inside. By the time the others had joined me, the door was open, and I was climbing inside.
We’d locked the door behind us when we’d left the previous day to keep monsters out, and Lucus had sealed the holes in the wall that he’d made by shoving the rare spawn through it. The wall wasn’t as strong as it had been, but it was now solid enough to keep things out, particularly the kinds of creepy crawlies that might get in through that sort of hole.
When the door clicked shut behind us and the latch was thrown into place, we all visibly relaxed. Everyone except Arven, at least. He immediately turned around to look at me and said a single word.
“Talk.”
We stood in the room where we'd fought the elite the previous day. The group spread out to look at me, even Lucus, though he stayed nearby. I felt very small in more than one way under the weight of all those eyes.
“Alright. This is going to take a bit, so I’m going to give you some highlights then fill in the details. First, I’ve spent the past two days in Crucible, and yes, I know we were here yesterday - time works differently in Crucible. Second, I’m a lot stronger than I was yesterday. While I was in Crucible I managed to discover a new class, get cursed by a god, successfully break that curse, discovered an exploit that warranted the personal attention of System and The Adversary, and managed to level up from resolving a personal crisis. I also bought some cool stuff for us to use.”
Over the course of the next hour I told them nearly everything. I had decided that I owed these people the truth, and as much of my help as I could manage. I'd gotten them involved with some deep shit under false pretenses and that didn't sit right with me. I didn’t go into details on a lot of things, but I tried to give them an idea of what I could do now, including demonstrating my new shadow abilities.
That one got some raised eyebrows, but it was nothing compared to when I took the Bastion of the Dwarven Lords out of my soul-space and let it hover in the middle of the room.
“This is for you,” I told Lucus. “Not only are you our tank, but I suspect this will work well with your species skills.”
After I described what it was, the group spent a few minutes trying to move it from where I’d left it. “Tavi, this is incredible…” Lucus told me after I’d broken my bond with the shield so he could bond it. He was waving around the shield easily now, a schoolboy grin plastered on his normally serious face.
Arven had followed my story with interest, but the sight of the shield had caused him to furrow his brow and cast a grim expression on his face. “You know, if we turned that shield in as loot that we found in here, we’d likely all be walking out of here by the end of the week. As much as I appreciate you trying to help us, the single best thing you do for us would be to just let the three of us not here on warrants turn that in as found loot.”
That sobered everyone up a bit, and I was forced to agree with Arven’s position. I’d basically walked in here with a get out of jail free card for all of them and waved it in their face. My intentions had been good, but it was unintentionally cruel. At the same time, I thought I saw how to frame this in a way that would raise morale.
“I see your point. I bought this to help keep us alive and help find better loot in the dungeon, but I get where you are coming from. This wasn’t free for me, I had to spend a king’s fortune to buy it, but I bought it for Lucus so it’s his to do with as he pleases.”
Lucus sat and thought for a moment before chiming in. “I came here to protect Tavi, and that’s all I really care about at the moment. I’m starting to realize she may not have needed my help, but it's too late to take it back now. If I give this shield up, Tavi and I will still be stuck here until the end of our warrants, so I’m not willing to relinquish it until the end of our time here. After that, well, I’m a thief not a soldier. I doubt I could even sell this, and I don’t think I’ll have nearly so much use for it on the outside.”
I nodded in agreement. “So how about this, we’re all walking out of here at the end of our warrant, one way or another. We’ll proceed with the original plan and try to find as much treasure as we can, then when our time is up, we’ll pool everything we found, including the shield, and figure out what we want to keep and what we need to turn in to buy each of your freedom. Anything we decide to keep I’ll smuggle out in my soul-space and hopefully we can all walk away richer than we came in.”
Dorian had been leaning against the wall, but now he stepped forward with one of his blinding smiles. “You’re telling me I can work for my own enrichment for once? Count me in, friends.”
Savas and Dawn both nodded as well. “That’s more than fair,” said Dawn, approaching and placing a hand on my head affectionately. “I’m obligated to assist you regardless but knowing that I will soon be free again lifts my heart. Perhaps this was how The Adversary planned to free me all along.”
“If I never have to see this grim waste pit ever again it will be too soon, but I never expected to have a chance to walk out of here with loot in my pockets, and I do have a family to feed. I’m in as well,” Savas said.
Arven looked from face to face, then looked hard at me for several moments. Finally, he relaxed, and smiled for the first time since I’d known him. It was small and tight, like he’d almost forgotten how.
“Alright then, consider us hired mercenaries. We should finish this quest as well, not only will we be able to keep the rewards, but the failure condition makes me worried.” He shook his head and raised a shaking hand to eye level and stared at it. “It’s been so long since I’ve had a hope of freedom.” He clenched his hand into a fist and squeezed, the mirth leaving his face. “Listen up everyone, we can’t let it get to us. We still have to live through the next six days, and we have work to do. I don’t want any of you dying on me now. Understood?”
There was a general round of assent, but the mood in the room had improved considerably. I wasn’t too worried about actually needing to give up the shield when we were done here. It seemed likely that if I needed to, I could buy all our freedom with a single scarab token, which I was willing to do in return for allies who felt like they owed me their freedom. Even if that ended up not being required, I thought that just putting the offer out there was enough to inspire feelings of gratitude.
I could be a real manipulative little shit sometimes… the part of me that had been Tavi thought it was gross that I could even think like this. She wouldn’t have even thought twice about it. People she liked had a problem, and she had a solution. That was all there was to it, no consideration required. I still felt that, but I also couldn’t help but see it from other angles too. It hurt a little to realize that.
On the other hand, there was something else I needed to do now that might balance the karmic scales a bit. “If you guys don’t mind, I need to talk to Lucus for a minute on something personal, then I’ll be ready to go.” I said.
We got some curious looks, but they didn’t say anything as I took Lucus deeper into the guard house. I stopped in one of the rooms that had an arrow slit and looked out onto the empty sky for a moment before turning to address him.
“I’ve been trying to think of a way to talk to you about this for a while now. It’s going to be hard, and it’s going to hurt you, which is the last thing I want. I also need you to understand that I didn’t buy you that shield by way of apology, or to try and make you like me - I know those things are impossible.”
Lucus shook his head, confused. “Tavi, what are you talking about? Apologize for what? Of course I like you, you’re my best friend.” He reached out with one hand and affectionately messed up my hair.
I made no move to stop him, letting the part of me that was Tavi enjoy what might be our last moment as friends. He noticed my somber mood and became more serious, though he clearly still didn’t understand why.
When I’d had my revelation over my new identity, I’d realized a lot of things. Among them was that my feigned memory loss was more accurate than I had believed. When I’d stopped deceiving myself, I’d found that I could easily remember Tavi’s life, and why wouldn’t I be able to? I still had her brain, where all her physical memories were stored. I still had her spirit, where all her experiences were recorded.
There had never been anything keeping me from seeing her memories than my own stubborn refusal to look at them. I’d been doing it to try and protect myself, to keep our identities separate, and to try and stay sane… but now that I’d accepted them my feelings for her family had also deepened, and that meant I couldn’t keep what had happened to her a secret any longer. They deserved the truth.
I sighed. “That’s the thing… I’m not Tavi, not in the way you understand. I haven’t been Tavi since you picked me up out of that broken building the other day.”
He shook his head, obviously trying to make sense of what I was saying. “What do you mean you aren’t Tavi? Is this about losing your memory? You’re still Tavi even if you don’t remember us right now.”
“I wish it were just that, but no,” I trailed off, unable to look at him or continue for the moment. I let myself slide down the wall until I was in a seated position. Then I untied my headband and let it rest beside me, looking up at him with the gemstone in my forehead fully revealed.
“When I say that I’m not Tavi, it’s because I’m literally not Tavi.” I pointed at my soul gem. “This is me. Well, kind of. It’s hard to explain. Tavi… The real Tavi… I’m so sorry, but she died when the gemstone that had my soul in it hit her. I died too, sort of, it’s weird. I used to be a human, but one from a world called Earth. The gods of your world scooped a bunch of us up and brought us here for some reason, and from what I understand every one of us that came over killed one person in this world in the process.”
Lucus just stared at me, clearly confused. “I don’t understand. Are you saying you’re some sort of spirit possessing Tavi’s body?”
“Sort of… but it’s more complicated than that because Tavi is in here too. She’s just part of me now, and neither of us are really what we used to be anymore.”
I sighed and continued. “The world I come from doesn’t have magic, we didn’t know souls or spirits existed, and probably half the population doesn’t think gods are real. Since I got here, I’ve been trying to figure out what happened to me, and from what I can tell I sort of absorbed her in the process of getting this body. I can think like her, I can talk like her, but I’m not her. I’m something more like the sum of both our souls, but by definition, that makes me not the person you knew.”
Lucus started pacing back and forth as I explained, and I gave him a moment to process everything I’d just unloaded on him. I’d been trying to figure out how to even verbalize everything I’d been experiencing recently, but I still only barely understood it myself. How were you supposed to explain to someone that they person they knew had been merged with a stranger?
He suddenly stopped and looked at me. “This…” he gesticulated randomly in my direction. “This cannot be right. It doesn’t make any sense. Maybe you misunderstood what the gods said? You lost your memories, sure, and had new ones implanted from that stone, but that doesn’t mean you died or lost your soul or whatever. You’ve been through a lot recently I know, but you’ve said The Adversary is involved, he’s likely subtly manipulating you to this conclusion.”
“Lucus, listen. I know you want to believe that because it’s less painful, but it’s not true. I’m very certain that I am not Tavi. Part of the reason I’m so sure about it is that what’s left of her is part of me now. I see the world through her eyes in more than one way, and it’s taken me a while to get used to that because it’s such an alien way of thinking compared to what I was used to. I’ve leveled up twice just from resolving conflicts between our personalities.
“Over time the lines between us will probably blur even more, but it still won’t be Tavi that comes out of that process any more than it will be the version of me that lived on Earth. Both of those people are dead, and the remnants of who we were are trying to figure out who we’ll become.”
That seemed to reach him, and he stopped pacing to look at me. I could see tears in the corners of his eyes. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked. “Why not just keep on pretending?”
“On Earth, we have technology that you would think was magic. When I got here, I thought I was playing a very advanced game - like an incredibly complex illusion that my people use for entertainment. The gods intentionally led us to believe this was the case, I think to make it easier for us to adapt. That meant that for the first day I knew you, I didn’t think you were real. I didn’t think any of this was real. I didn’t find out until that first night in jail, and then I was an emotional wreck for a while.” I explained.
“It took me some time to figure out what I needed to do, and some time to stop treating this like a game, but once I had time to think about it, I realized I owed you the truth. Also, I had to work through what was happening to me. I was really messed up for a little while there. At one point I was literally talking to myself with Tavi on one side and the Traveler on the other. I still haven’t figured it all out, but realizing that our souls had combined, that I’d somehow absorbed her into me, made things a lot clearer.”
“You can speak with her?” he asked, sounding hopeful.
I shook my head. “I can sort of emulate her. Say the things she would have said, even think the way she would have thought, and now that I’ve had some time I can even remember as much of her life as she could. That doesn’t change anything though, it’s still me running the show. When I was going through an identity crisis earlier, I sort of projected her identity outside of myself so we could talk, but it was always just me talking to myself.”
Lucus took that in silently, taking a while before responding. When he did, his voice was tightly controlled. “I believe I understand. Still, I would like to speak with her, if you don’t mind.”
I wasn’t sure that this was a healthy request, but I couldn’t deny it. I didn’t have the right to deny it. I closed my eyes briefly and shifted the focus of my soul entirely into the bundle of feelings and memories that I thought of as Tavi.
Then I got up, walked over to where Lucus was sitting, and kicked him.
“Ow! What the fuck!?”
I kicked him again.
“Tavi, stop! What are you doing?” Lucus said, scrambling to his feet.
“Kicking some sense into you, what’s it look like I’m doing?” I growled.
He looked at me strangely. “Tavi? Is that really you?”
I tried to kick him again but he put a hand on my head like a grownup holding a toddler at range. Immediately snapped off a bite in the direction of his arm, which he yanked back fast enough that I knew he’d been expecting it.
“No, it’s not really me you big idiot. I told you I’m dead!” I paused for a moment, playing that back in my head. “Well, you know what I mean.”
“No, I mean, I didn’t see it before because I didn’t know to look for it, but you really are like two different people in the same body, aren’t you?” he said.
I crossed my arms across my chest and looked up at him, considering him with narrowed eyes. “Nah. I know how you’re thinking of it and that’s not right. You’re thinking we’re separate people still, but that’s wrong. Neither of us survived the process that combined us, instead there’s a new person who’s still figuring out exactly who and what they are. What you’re seeing now is just that same person filtered through Tavi’s personality and instincts. It’s fake.”
“You say that, but if you have her personality doesn’t that make you her? When you’re like this at least?”
I flattened my ears against my head in anger. “Do you really think that’s all she was? No, I can think like her, I can figure out what was important to her, but I have to work at it. When I do this…” I motioned down at my body. “It’s not Tavi taking control, it’s just me adopting more of her way of thinking than I normally do, and I’m pretty sure I can only do that right now because her mind and spirit haven’t had enough time to get used to how I think.”
I forcibly calmed myself down a bit. “I’m sorry, but this is just an echo of her, and I’m pretty sure it will fade in time.”
Lucus sat back down on what passed for a floor around here. He looked at me with sad purple eyes, and I had to look away. I walked back over to where I’d been sitting and grabbed my headband off the ground, re-tying it and fixing my hair. I let him take his time with his thoughts.
When he eventually did speak again, he used the clipped words of someone trying not to cry. “Why? Why tell me? I never would have guessed.”
“I told you already. When I realized this wasn’t a game, and that you and Tavi and the others are all real people, I couldn’t keep pretending to be her. You deserve a chance to grieve for her, and to make your own decisions going forward. You came here thinking you were protecting her… I know you loved her… I’m not a perfect person but I try to be a good one, and using your affection for her to manipulate you into helping me? That’s a line I won’t cross.”
“That exchange we had yesterday…?”
I winced. “That’s one of the things that made me realize I needed to tell you. I… I inherited a lot of her feelings toward you, and that’s been its own struggle to deal with, but I realized that continuing to act like her around you was cruel, and it would never get any better, just worse.”
He slowly nodded, then wiped his face with one arm. “You said you had some of her memories, right? Could you tell me… did she love me?”
I hesitated for a long moment, not sure how to respond to that. “She was very attracted to you, she liked you a lot, looked up to you even, but she didn’t love you. She didn’t understand that you loved her. She barely understood what love is, but the way you were acting towards her was confusing her and she was trying to figure it out.
“I think you were right to turn down her advances, for what it’s worth. She’d have lost interest eventually if you didn’t but turning her down just made her more interested. Maybe one day it would have turned into love, but I can’t say… I don’t think it was very likely.”
Lucus rested his head in his hands and massaged his temples. “That’s about what I thought.”
I walked over and tentatively put a hand on his shoulder. Sitting down hunched over like he was, he was still nearly as tall as me. “I’m sorry. I won’t continue her teasing anymore either. Not intentionally at least. I won’t blame you if you want to get as far away from me as possible as soon as possible, but while we’re stuck together, if there's anything I can do to make things more bearable for you just let me know.”
I felt him nod more than I saw it. His face was now pressed against his crossed arms, and both were resting on his bent knees. I couldn’t see his expression. “Can you give me a few minutes to myself, please?” His voice was muffled and stilted.
“Of course,” I told him, then made my way back along through the guardhouse to find the others.
Savas was the first to notice my approach. “There you are. We were getting worried about you.”
The rest of the group had taken the time to organize our gear. There was a pile off to one side that looked like most of the extra supplies we’d brought. I intuited what they wanted and immediately walked over and started pulling supplies into my soul-space. I had a lot more room now that conceptually linked items could be stored together, and all the supplies were able to be stored in a single slot.
Arven watched me do this, then asked, “Where’s Lucus?”
I nodded towards the way I’d come. “He’s over there still, he needs a few minutes. I had to give him some bad news.”
“Damn,” Dorian said, looking at Dawn. “You win I guess.”
Dawn just gave him a small smile. “I told you so.”
I looked at them both, confused. “Am I missing something here?”
Dawn turned to me. “Our friend here bet me you two had snuck off to make love before we risked our lives, but I told him it was far more likely you were breaking up with him.”
She walked over and knelt to give me a quick hug. “I’m sorry dear, it must have been hard to let him down like that, but it’s probably for the best. Now he can move on and find someone that does love him.”
Arven grunted. “You could have waited for a better time. Now he’s going to be all mopey and distracted.”
The funny thing was, I had sort of broken up with him. They weren’t wrong. It was just so much more complicated than that.
“How did you know?” I asked Dawn.
She shrugged. “Intuition, and after our little talk yesterday, I figured you’d either decide you could fall in love with him or break it off with him entirely for both your benefits. When I saw that shield, well, it seemed like maybe you were trying to soften the blow for him by giving him such a valuable present to take his mind off things. Do you think the two of you will stay friends, or is he the type that handles rejection poorly?”
I hesitated. “I think we’ll stay friends. I hope we will at least.”
I wasn’t sure about this. I knew that every time Lucus looked at me he was going to see the face of his dead friend and crush. That was not something you could just get over.
“Well, if he handles it well maybe the two of you will end up between the sheets after all.” Dawn said with a wink. “Just without all the extra emotional baggage.”
That would have made me blush furiously the last time I was in this room, but I was a little more used to the idea now… so, I only blushed a little, almost reflexively. Dorian waggled his eyebrows at me and said, “If he’s not up to it and you’re feeling frisky, you know where to find me.”
Dawn gave him a light slap on the shoulder. “Don’t make it any more awkward for the poor boy than it’s already going to be.”
I didn’t comment other than to roll my eyes in a very human way. I now knew I’d been a bit mistaken about how Astran’s in general viewed this sort of thing. Goblins were an extreme due to their short lifespans, but with universal automatic birth control built into every culture, Astran’s in general had never had to deal with things like unwanted pregnancies or the problems that came from it. It had given them a much more relaxed view of sex than most Travelers were going to be used to.
Merging with Tavi hadn’t removed my hangups about this stuff, it had just added on Tavi’s interpretation of them. I was going to have to get used to holding onto a lot of contradictory opinions about things until I could solidify some opinions of my own that didn’t come from one of my original selves. What was right for me wasn’t necessarily right for either of them. As much as I tended to think of myself as the guy who’d lived on Earth, I knew that every argument I’d laid out to Lucus about not being Tavi applied just as much to my other half.
I took a moment to organize my own inventory while they continued to bicker good-naturedly amongst themselves. I pulled out the mini-ballista and with Arven’s help managed to get it drawn and loaded, then I re-stored the whole thing, ammo and all, back in my soul-space.
I also showed them some of the other items I had in storage that we could potentially add to the loot pool. I told them about the burning sword, though I didn’t make the mistake of pulling it back out. I was not going through that again.
Nobody had any more of an idea of what the Pet Rock was than I did, but Dorian offered to use the Blank Class Scroll to make a scroll of his class, which was apparently fairly hard to get in this region. That might turn it into something more valuable we could hand in.
I’d mentioned my own class and how I didn’t want to pass it on to anyone in the foreseeable future, but I put it out there as an option if we ended up needing it. Giving a book on being a shadow thief to the authorities might be the best way to keep it out of anyone’s hands after all.
Thankfully, these weren’t decisions we had to make right now. After all, who knew what else we’d find before we were done.