Spears was woken from a nice nap around Corvayne's neck by the feeling of leveling up quite a few times, which was odd because when she awoke and created her eyes, she saw a empty lantern lit storeroom and no signs of battle. In fact, it looked like someone had just meticulously cleaned random squares of the floor in a grid, vibrant red wood turning to rough gray that looked like it belonged on the side of a barn. Kirae was there, of course, shaking Corvayne's hand. She thumbed through [[Unity]] and didn't feel anyone was in combat at the moment.

She switched her digestion back over to some of the fruit she had compressed near her core and returned to regenerating, converting mana to water and binding it with fruit to absorb it, also taking in wisps of hydrogen and oxygen from the environment and forming bubbles of them to bond. It felt good, much like how Corvayne radiated satisfaction through [[Unity]] when it was a cold day and he had a warm blanket (or warm slime!) around him. Waves-Within had told her that she was closer to a hybrid Hydrogen and Oxygen elemental rather than water (isn't that what water IS?), and her slime form was an adaption to what she wanted and the 'environment'. There was more, but it brushed into the parts where her memory had been changed or stolen.

Looking up at the side of his jawline from Corvayne's neck, he looked stoic as ever, while Kirae was practically cackling, hefting an orange bucket full of Adept-Class crystal. They both looked like they had just rolled around on the floor for a few hours, and Corvayne felt tired while she was tired and triumphant. Spears was nearly certain they hadn't slept together, despite her trying to politely get him to keep chipping away at the curse by getting into trouble. If she told him 'You need to get into trouble, go kiss some strangers or steal something!' he would consider it being not-trouble.

Some of that was Bellithca. The princess was off training, getting ready for her matches. Corvayne loved her, when he wasn't distracted by a dozen different things. Spears had gotten used to him being a sort of lighthouse. When he thought of her, or Bell, it was intense. That and Lady. But Bell roiled in jealousy, sometimes conflicted with shame because she had inserted herself into what she thought of as 'Spear's' relationship. If Bell spent more time practicing with [[Unity]] and did the math, she'd figure out their spearman wanted to use his spear more than he probably admitted. She had tried to explain that the Watchers origins were a society that was mostly women, and that if Corvayne remembered everything correctly she was pretty sure he'd have more girls around.

Spears tried not to be upset about how many gaps in her own memory she'd felt. She knew she had been alive a few years before the summoning, and sometimes she tried to pull what she thought was a memory of childhood, playing at a park, but it was fluid like she was and the details had blurred to time spent at the Watchers, the fountain becoming the oasis and the buildings metal versions of her hometown.

She felt a little itchy, which meant her regrowing process was complaining she needed more materials faster then just converting mana. It was very annoying how much things like lightning or mold hurt her. She formed her mouth. “Corvayne is there water or fruit here?”

Kirae startled. “I thought you were alone!” A point for possibly him working on a third member of the harem. No, he was too nonchalant about her waking.

Being a liquid scarf, his voice made his throat vibrate in a way that was deeply pleasing. Her core was right near it. “We'll get something. Is there a place to eat nearby?” He was fiddling with new storage rings. Ah, that might explain the level ups. Kirae getting experience, then a pact sharing it.

Corvayne started digging in a ring. She had enough dimentionality to see his hand fade to blue as it moved away from the main 3D plane. He pulled out what looked like an orb of water.

“This was un-id'd, it can't be broken down or absorbed by most people, but has an aspect of water according to Kirae... I set it aside for you.”

How thoughtful! She slithered down his warm arm, specifically being ticklish and warm herself so he'd feel her flirting, then rolled the orb up as she retracted with it. Pulling it in, she got a weird feeling of Deja Vu before suddenly she was diving into her mindscape.

“God damnit, what did you just hand me!” She shouted to dark blue gas. Her fall accelerated then slowed just a moment before dropping into an metallic ocean of unmixed gas. Bubbles of chemicals formed loops, but she kept falling instead of finding buoyancy, past the usual floor of icy black cursed spikes. Into the black depths... suddenly lit up.

At the same time, her mind shot upwards blasting out of her mindscape into orbit around the hazy blue gas giant.

Her past, deep below, she saw her parents. They were bonded together, a film of a Hydrogen based life form around an Oxygen based one, pacts bridging what should be impossible into a flow like water. When at ease or rest, they were both at the same time.

A city of impossible black crystal spires melding with metal and trees. The park she was at, her parents joined form twisting to show her a leaf, part solid part liquid. She felt the little ridges of the plant on her psudopods, how it's waxy surface had bumps where the plant had grown. How it was colored like an explosion. Her parents saying something, maybe explaining that leaves fall but come back. She was fussing as some grass had gotten into her first attempt at a leg.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

The future, far above: She saw a sigil form in the air, a vast vault open, and from it a torrent of horror pour into a world, an ocean of dirt dissolving a city. Billions drowning and merging, becoming mud or dissolving as they met oxygen halfway.

Back to the past, her parents were a perfect bond as they tried to take her ice skating, not around each-other but one. Water was a liquid but also a solid and gas, all present. She was barely able to hold herself together, but watched in awe as her parents, clad in shimmering garments able to flow with them, went from humanoid to twisting lines like glass, gliding across the rink as they spun and flowed, abstract but twined.

The future, an entire world unable to bond to things being poured onto it, dying. The rift between universes, growing. On the other side, a matching sigil, drawn in cruel red lines, pumped alien air back into a world that evaporated, dirt becoming gas, people bubbling into red clouds and trails of liquid on the ground, running like paint across the ground as they died.

There was a sense of urgency as she switched back to being ripped out of her parent's hands, the feeling they were too anchored in the world but she was a piece of debris, floating around a powerful grab for something else, pulled into a different universe that made her skin boil off as magic patched it together, becoming something alien to survive as dark roots curled around her and through her, keeping her together but binding her.

Her screams were a pathetic warbling as alien air drilled at her core at the same time green magic dug it's spines into her forcing her to bond and change. Channeled through someone else, a form floating curled up that had speared her with links of sickly green fire. The curled up form having wings of green fire trailing people as they all fell through the void, the only path lit up green as a grasping force pulled them out of one reality and into another.

There were people who could not adapt as they changed states, their eyes becoming one with trees that fell into the soup of matter, an explosive mingling...

Detached from her memories and the future, while also feeling agony and rebirth from them, Spears did her best to apply the warrior training she had mastered, in the present. What Corvayne had done so often when he needed to persevere. Water aspected, but that might be because it was meant for her.

“Is this just to teach me a power? To warn me? It's a tower treasure, it's an opportunity.”

She looked closer and figured it out. Nothing shown was a beginning or end, just a change.

“This must be what happens to Corvayne every time he passes out.”

A third view, of the present, had her in perfect orbit just above her mindscape rolling gas giant. A pair of lightning eyes opened in the stars. Her mind rippled as lightning just barely touched her.

“TYAKO. YOU MUST-”

She didn't hear anything else as every single curse vine in her blasted up out of her mindscape, trying to claw her back down. She resisted, teeth she felt were her own clenched. She tried to dive into the sensation of being boiled alive in the past or present, searing pain wrapping every liquid drop of her as the thorns touched her and froze her, death creeping over her body.

“I'm Spears! Spears-Like-Water! It isn't real!”

Tyako... Spears woke to a heaping plate of baked apples and orange juice settling into her as everything screamed in pain... then it faded for a moment and she felt like she had drank too much water all over, like needing to vent a billion gallons (it was venting, not peeing, there was no waste products at all, it was water cleaner then filtered water, and if Corvayne didn't want to remove some of his curse by drinking it, he had some growing up to do). The portion near her core, which she sometimes though of her head when it wasn't her heart, throbbed as the pain faded. Her vision was split between a slightly Concerned Bell looking down at her, also a view of the bottom of the tub.

She tasted whatever orange scented lotion Bell was using as a feminine hand rudely blasted through her to flip the nascent eyeball she was forming around.

“Spears what happened?”

She formed a mouth to reply then started vomiting up black vines, the byproduct hitting the ground and burning. It shredded and froze her and hurt, until she remembered water was fine whatever form it was in, and she rippled around it, ejecting vines over at the toilet so the green fire wouldn't harm the bathmat nor Bellithca, who had drawn a sword and revolver and was pointing at the vines.

“Immmfiine” Spears tried to speak around disgorging what must have been a mile of black thorns, turning into green fire and acrid smoke as Corvayne clearly was trying to figure out how to dive into the tub to save her.

“Ooommffen a Winnoow” She projected the unpleasant smell and that she was fine, dampening the pain she probably had been sending through [[Unity]].

Corvayne slammed open the window and then grabbed the vines she had been aiming for the toilet (and missing) and instead directing them to the window, which she somehow felt both because they were still connected to her, sort of like hair growing out and exploding into greasy soot.

Corvayne was bleeding as he handled, no... he was dragging it out of her, the last bits of her curse.

“Hey the pain's gone.” She said, started to stand up, trying to tell Corvayne what she had seen, then blacked out as she was dumped back into her mindscape. She had trouble keeping her eyes open as she started to fall through the darkening blue into the now warm depths of black liquid metal. She fell asleep without straining against her curse for the first time in a long time.

[You have survived learning your True Name!!!]

[Trial of the Sleepless complete.]

[Trial of Memory Drain complete.]

[Trial of the Twisted Bloodline complete.]

[Race Adjusted from self designated 'Cute Slime' to 'True Water']

[New Quests generating...]