Cael shot upright and clutched his throat.

‘Wow, even your dreams are interesting.’

“You saw that too?”

‘Yes. What part of ‘no filter’ did you not get? Your dreams are like movies to me.’ Cael hugged Tar closer to his chest. ‘Horror movies, if that one was any indication. What was even going on?’

“The collar fell off. You know, we should probably get the collar ownership transferred to us before we go.”

‘That was a lot of blood to be just the collar.’

“Well, the collar is a part of my neck, so you can’t exactly just pull it off like that.”

Pull it off, like what happened in his nightmare. He was pretty sure Mercy had the ownership currently. She would definitely transfer the collar to him if he asked her to, and after that dream, Cael didn’t want to leave his ownership in someone else’s hands.

“What time is it?”

‘Do I look like I know what time it is?’

“It’s dark, I can’t see what you look like.” Cael did not want to dignify that with an answer, so he avoided answering. Tar seemed to know way more than he should, so how was he supposed to know Tar didn’t know the time?

‘Dark is what I look like.’

“Whatever. Do you think Mercy is still awake?” If Cael was remembering correctly she had ownership of him at the moment. Which was frankly a sickening way to phrase it.

‘I think she actually left to go somewhere.’

“Do you know where?”

‘She’s at the Church of Vera. Works there part-time, apparently. It makes sense though. She introduced herself as a Side of the Truth and just expected that to be enough explanation. You don’t get a role like that by being idle in an organization.’

“How did you figure all that out? Did you walk her out while I was asleep?”

‘No. You sleep like a corpse. She actually came by to tell us we could find her there if we needed anything. Unfortunately, I don’t know where the Church of Vera is. In theory, we could ask around, but I think it would be dangerous to leave without one of the Constabulary here to escort you. Additionally, nobody else is here. They all went to do their actual jobs, so Mercy was telling us where she was going so we wouldn’t be completely alone.'

That meant they were stuck there until someone came back and felt in the mood to walk around some more.

Tar flipped on the lights. It was more than a little annoying that he could do that.

Cael only managed to convince himself to get out of bed after a few more minutes and looked around the room.

If he really was leaving today, then he should probably clean up. He’d feel bad leaving a mess behind. It wasn’t much work for him anyway. The only real evidence he’d ever been there was a neatly folded pile of clothes on the floor by the bathroom door, and the messy bed he’d just vacated.

On the nightstand, there was also the flask Mercy had gifted him. In more proper light, Cael inspected it. The flask itself was made from some matte black metal that didn’t reflect light very well. On its surface, an artful rendition of an overflowing goblet was painted, overflowing with a deep red liquid that spilled down one side. The cap was a screw-on lid attached by a short chain to the neck of the bottle.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Cael set to work straightening the covers and fluffing the pillows when he realized he really had nothing better to do. It was a very basically colored bed, all things considered. White pillows, white blanket. Everything about it was white, even the frame was painted white.

Once he was finally satisfied, he made his way to the bathroom. He’d forgotten to brush his teeth the day before, and he was unhappy now. Having teeth again was really unfortunate. Cael had gotten so used to not having to worry about that.

“Where is their toothpaste?”

‘No toothbrush either.’

Only a bar of hand soap was present at the sink.

‘Maybe try the all-purpose cleaner in the shower?’ The bottle wasn’t even labeled with a product name, much less any safety warnings.

“You say it like it's a joke, but I really might.” Magic cleaning solutions were for convenience after all. “If it tastes like shit, I’m sending the whole flavor over the familiar link.”

‘Lucky me.’

“Oh god, don’t make this about luck. You probably just jinxed us.”

He rolled his eyes and left without drinking the magical equivalent of bleach. He doubted the Constabulary would have left it there if it could kill him, but then again, the shower he’d taken yesterday could likely have killed him if he hadn’t been more careful.

‘Hey. Where do you think you’re going?’ Tar caught him before he stepped back into the bedroom. The elemental watched him smugly from his perch on the sink countertop. ‘You owe me fifty push-ups.’

“You can’t be serious. I just woke up.”

‘Sorry, I don’t make the rules.’

“You literally did though.”

After a brief staring contest, Cael sighed and started doing push-ups.

‘Straighten your back.’

“You’re such a headache.”

‘The only thing that should be aching is your arms and chest. Maybe abs if you take any longer. We aren’t doing a plank here; hurry it up.’

Under the scathing eye of a ruthless taskmaster, the changeling met his quota and finally heaved himself back to his feet.

Cael grabbed the folded clothes on his way out and continued all the way into the living room, stopping briefly by the kitchen to throw the clothes into the trash. They really were beyond repair.

Done with what he’d come to do, Cael surveyed the area for anything else that could occupy his time.

There really was nobody home. If they were, the [Read] Skill would have allowed him to understand the television that had been left on.

As it were, the subtitles looked completely indecipherable. Like Korean but with more dots and a dozen different accent marks interspersed. He couldn’t even begin to describe the way it sounded. Well, that wasn’t entirely true, It was guttural at some points, but swung easily back to musical and even through a few impossible sounds. Cael did his best to mimic what sounded like an airplane crashing into gelatin.

An insult to the language, most likely.

It was fine though. Nobody was around to hear it, and if they had been, [Read] would have substituted his knowledge.

Seeing as that was a dead end— like the deadest of all ends unless he felt like trying to translate a whole language in the time it took somebody to return— Cael decided to finally finish connecting properly to the mana in his soul, something he’d been meaning to do for almost four days by this point.

He eyed the screen. That was a bit distracting for what he had to do. Cael returned to the guest room and settled into a lay down on the floor. No way was he messing up the bed he had just made.

Tar had no such reservations and settled onto the bed in a wispy ball of shadow. Whatever. It wasn’t like Tar weighed enough to really mess up the bed anyway.

Cael took a deep breath and did his best to turn his attention to himself. He imagined himself in his soul, and in a moment of inspiration, directed his mana to pull his awareness into the core of his being in a long stream of energy.

Around him, the world seemed to shatter and fall away, like slipping into a fragmented mirror.

“Oh. How interesting.” Tar said. What?

Cael opened his eyes. An incomprehensible mass of seething shadow stared him down. Despite there being no visible shift in its center, Cael could somehow tell the shadow was shifting constantly.

“Tar?”

“Obviously. Do you have any other shadow creatures in your soul that I should be aware of?”

Tar had no discernable features in Cael’s soulscape, but the changeling was still able to tell he was rolling his eyes at him.