After I’ve given Pyrias long enough to really take in my ashy dusty cloudy majesty, I reuse the Skill and restore my physical form, ahem, fully clothed.

(Yeah, I told you so,) Nyx says.

She’d previously made me spend travel time practicing moving clothes from my dimensional storage directly onto my body and vice versa to prevent more reactions like Nerin had. Also, to prevent her own embarrassment since I have a clone of her body, more or less.

Pyrias seems to be struggling to accept what I’ve told him, it’s sure to be heavy considering he knew Nyx from before all this began. He’s been cycling between starting to ask me things and trailing off mid-sentence, and silently looking at me or his folded hands.

I sigh. “Anyway, I didn’t have a name when I woke up, so Nyx gave me the name ‘Nemesis’. I can help you talk to each other if you want.”

(Please do.)

“She wants me to,” I say.

I spend the next half hour repeating Nyx, since she can hear Pyrias plenty well herself even if it’s through my ears… uh, hearing capabilities. Pretty sure True Sense doesn’t actually depend on any organs. Anyway, most of their topics aren’t particularly interesting to me so I tune most of their conversation out. How is the old gang this, don’t trust Erebus that, and then they finally get to a relevant topic.

“Do you know whether her workshop is still intact?” I ask.

Pyrias furrows his brow and rubs his thin beard with one hand. “Last time I was by looking for you was around six months ago, and it was still locked up tight from what I could see. We could go with you to check, if you want. I’m not sure you should be going anywhere alone, considering… everything…” he trails off.

“I am plenty strong. Besides, the one I’m worried about is Erebus herself, and I doubt ‘the whole gang’ would stand much of a chance against her either if she’s already reached her own godhood as I’ve been told,” I dismiss.

“You’re not worried about her cult?” he asks.

Oh.

(Idiot.)

“She just called me an idiot, so I’m assuming she thought this was something I knew,” I shrug. “If you want to tag along for a while, I guess that’s fine. I don’t know if we can even get in if it even is intact.”

“Yeah, her cult is dangerous. They leave well enough alone if people stay in groups, but there’s been whispers of them making people disappear. Maybe even sacrificing them to her,” the satyr says flatly. “Give me an hour, I’ll get a few people together.”

***

True to his word, not even an hour later Pyrias and three others of Nyx’s old gang are following me back into the streets of Gramr. I could probably follow them there since they all seem to know the way to her old workshop, but Nyx seems dead set on showing me how to get there. And so, I follow my intangible Assistant.

I could be traveling much faster in my incorporeal form if I didn’t have a posse clinging to me.

(At least humor them. Also, there are plenty of ways to slay or worse, trap an incorporeal ascendant. You aren’t invulnerable,) Nyx chides me.

Granted, she’s not wrong.

We finally reach a single story stone and runesteel structure that I’d assume was some kind of bomb shelter if I didn’t already know otherwise. Nyx immediately fires up her runic face mask overlay whatever thing –

(Rune Sight. One of the only Skills I have that isn’t locked out, remember?)

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Yeah, that. She spends a few minutes inspecting the wards around the door and along the wall, before saying, (It looks intact. Not sure how we’re going to get in though, it’s keyed to my mana signature.)

Wait. I have an idea… What would you do to open this door?

(I’d just put my hand on this sensor and channel some mana through it,) she says while pointing to a smooth obsidian surface to the side of it, (and it’ll just open. The action is deceptively simple for how complex the wards themselves are). I can tell she’s proud of her home.

And then I put my hand on the sensor.

(Don’t bother, it’s not going to… what?)

Nyx is absolutely dumbfounded as the door in front of us smoothly splits in half and glides open to the sides. I say nothing as I walk inside, and the others follow.

The inside is a large open space seemingly constructed mainly of the same materials as the rest of the building. As much as she apparently likes to party, this place seems almost all business. Well, other than how it seems to be empty of equipment…

(Storage items.)

Oh. Well, if you’re just storing all your equipment all the time, why do you even bother having this big of a workshop?

(A proper runesmith needs room to work, especially with larger projects. Do you even wonder how golems are made?) she asks.

Fine. Where are these storage items then?

(I took them off in my private rooms before the ritual. If they’re anywhere here, they’re still there.)

While we talk, Pyrias and the others have been looking around the room and chattering among themselves. I haven’t been paying much attention to them, since I’m not convinced they’re going to be of any help here. Instead, I follow Nyx’s lead to another obsidian surface next to a door in the back of the room, which opens to show a… wait, didn’t you say your workshop was in an interstitial?

(Yeah, you didn’t notice, did you?)

Notice what?

(There’s no teleporter. I spent years perfecting seamless transitions like that. You can walk right in the front door, but it’s simple to cut it off from the inside. For security and privacy, of course. If it’s disconnected, the outside just sees a runesteel wall.)

That’s… actually pretty impressive.

(For once you recognize it,) she says.

I’ve recognized it before. Just because I don’t respond doesn’t mean I don’t recognize it. Fine, you’re brilliant or whatever.

I ignore Nyx’s glowing smile – she really does like being acknowledged, doesn’t she? – and pass through the door in the back, entering a cylindrical elevator shaft with a glowing runesteel platform in the center. The others follow, and once we’re all situated the elevator starts moving all by itself, stopping a floor below at what was probably a receiving room, considering the shredded remains of two sofas and an armchair. The door in the back of the room is also torn from its hinges.

“Why would she destroy this and leave the wards intact?” I ask aloud.

“Spite?” answers one of my hangers-on. I haven’t bothered to learn their names.

“Sending a message of some kind?” says another.

Pyrias’ expression has noticeably darkened. Actually, now that I look, so have the others. Nyx looks more of disbelief. I can’t help but feel indifferent, although I’m at least a little irritated considering some of this could have been useful. I’m sure leather furniture is worth something to someone.

I move to the back of the wrecked room and pass through the permanently open door to find myself in a large open room not too unlike the upper floor. To one side is a kitchen and a dining table with seating for ten, and to the other is a large seating area complete with a faux fireplace, clearly intended for relaxation. This almost looks like a family room.

(It was, once. They weren’t my family, not really, but it was still a good experience.

Too bad everything in here is destroyed too. There are a handful of other doors leading off – one clearly labeled the toilet, another the bath, another a storage room. The others look to be bedrooms, seven in total including the master suite. Just how wealthy was Nyx?

She sighs. (I was on top of the world, as they say. Money, resources, power… If I didn’t have it myself, I had connections to someone who did and was willing to share or trade.)

Was your sister jealous?

(I doubt it,) she says with a sad laugh. (She’s a god. Even has her own cult.)

That’s true.

I enter the master suite and am greeted by the same level of destruction as the previous rooms. After digging around for a while, with the unasked-for help of the others, I sigh and give up the search. Whatever Nyx had left in this room was long gone.

We spend the afternoon combing through the other bedrooms and finally reach the last place – a secured storage room she’d used for potentially dangerous experiments, so she could observe them with an extra layer of protection. The door opened as smoothly as the others via the obsidian panel.

A large ritual circle was carved around the circumference of the room. I have no idea how to read the runic language, so I leave Nyx to her own investigation, and instead look around for anything else of value. The circle has a number of scratches in it as though from large claws, and there are a few shreds of burned and stained fabric that was once white. I recognize it from the outfit my lure originally wore, robes.

(The wards are all broken. After whatever she did to us, she must have had to force her way out.)

My hangers-on stayed in the larger room while we inspect the ritual.

I was hoping I’d find my own remains here, or anything I could use to hint at who I used to be. Even some clothing we could try to leech a mana signature from, anything. I guess either there wasn’t anything left at all after the ritual, or Erebus looted me completely.

Huh.