El ran his fingers through his hair.

Elrik watched this pointy eared version of himself, performing a gesture that felt so familiar.

He sighed and leaned back.

He was leaning back into his imaginary sofa - in a made up place - inside his mind.

"Explain that to me again. All of it"

"Allright", El spoke, "Let's try this again'"

"First - remember - I know exactly as much as you do. But I've been thinking about this for a while - working away at the back of your brain. So I have guesses. Theories"

"The best I can figure it - the magic or whatever you want to call it - in this world can change you. It can make you stronger or faster or better in some way. Don't ask me how it works. I don't know how it works. But - I think - I think - that for whatever reason, it made you - us - me smarter"

Elrik couldn't help the wry grin that broke out on his face, "I'm magically smarter? That sounds stupid"

El shrugged, "Shut up. So. This is my best working theory: We've been slowly getting smarter. Seeing, hearing, remembering, processing, deducing, learning - just everything. At some point, our brain started running whole other parallel threads that just did things like look out for trouble"

Elrik rubbed his eyes with both hands, "Even hearing it a second time, this is a lot to take in.. Any theories on how it works?"

El threw his hands up, “Not enough information and you know we can’t ask too many questions-“

“-Because we don’t yet know how this whole society works” Elrik finished

El dismissed him, "Don't interrupt. I don't have long. Okay. So… magic - and it’s making us smarter. Or something like that…

Well, I think the process - whatever is making us smarter - is still growing. At first it was just simple stuff - memory - problem solving. Then we learned whole new language by ear in three weeks."

"In the forest, I think, we kinda slowed time, at least for ourselves - and blocked an arrow in mid air and-"

"-And nearly gave ourselves an aneurysm" Elrik finished for him

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El nodded, "Then we picked up and mastered fighting with a spear in close to two weeks"

Elrik looked up, "That's.. Kinda impressive?"

El looked uncomfortable, "Yes.. but also scary. So far all of this has been threads - not processes. Little pieces of us - set to do simple things - like look for trouble or remember stuff. Now.. if this power is still growing.. and it seems to be.. well, I don't know when it stops"

Elrik gave a grim smile, “We're talking now. To each other. And we have distinct threads of consciousness. And at some point we're -"

"- just a crazy person with multiple personality disorder" El finished for him.

Then he leaned forward, steepling his fingers, "I - this version of me - of us - has been around for a while. At first I was just a.. train of thought? An idea? Now I think our brain created me as a kind of internal manager."

Elrik raised ann eyebrows, "My magically smart brain has an IT guy?"

El grinned, "Yeah”

For a minute they both sat there, taking in the thought.

Elrik spoke, "So.. do you exist? Are you real? Or are you just a dream I'm having, while my brain sorts itself out?"

El grinned, "Yes. All of the above. "

Elrik closed his eyes and breathed out. If he tried, if he just reached out - he could feel El across from him. A version of himself, in his own brain. They were, in a way, two trains of thought held in the same mind. They were his brain trying to reckon with itself.

El stared at his hands for a minute, before he spoke, "I won't be awake for much longer. Maybe giving myself a name was a mistake - because I’m starting think of myself as El now…

I'm a little afraid of what happens if we run too many personalities for too long…

So.. I'm going to sort out a few things. Look through a few memories of ours with fresh eyes - then put myself on ice"

Elrik understood El's fear - of course he did - it was literally something he was afraid of too.

El suddenly threw up his hands, "Oh - I completely buried the lead! I've been looking through my - I mean our memories.

Now that I understand the language - so much of stuff I've, I mean we’ve overheard makes more sense"

He continued, “Our memories have so many half heard conversations from the edge of our hearing that when you piece them together you can.. Well anyway, here’s what I’ve got”

El held up a hand, counting off on his fingers, “Agrisu, Yena - all of them - they were there for me. I was - I mean we were the job. I don’t know why, or for what, but they were out there, beyond the Yitka, to bring us back to Kalaghutta. I’ve gone back to everything we remember them arguing about on that first night.

Now that I understand what they were saying, that’s the only way anything they said that night makes any sense”

El counted off the second point, “which means that the mercenaries - the soldiers in dark leathers were-“

“- they were there for me” Elrik finished the thought.

El nodded, soberly, “I don’t know what brought us here from earth, but someone expected us. Someone sent a welcome party - they sent Agrisu and his people to fetch us back to Kalaghutta.”

Elrik nodded grimly back to himself “And someone else wanted to keep me away from that city."

"Whoever hired those mercenaries… Whoever got Agrisu and Senu and Yena and Sakka killed, they did it to keep me from getting to Kalaghutta”