Suffice it to say, the conversation didn’t get much better from there. It rapidly deteriorated into a mental shouting match, eventually resulting in Nyx sobbing quietly on the edge of my vision where she usually hides.

Despite all the unexpected knowledge and understanding showing up unannounced in my mind, I am still completely unequipped to handle this.

Humans are so damned confusing.

Another awkward seven hours of pretending I don’t see my Assistant later, Izahne yawns and stretches before promptly flopping back down on the bed, this time halfway covering me.

“Get up or I’ll leave you here,” I flatly say as I gently slide her off me and rise from the bed. She grumbles and eventually acquiesces, once again failing to don her outdoor attire – a set of leather armor she finds much easier to move in now that her class lacks the brute strength to carry full plate effectively. I sigh and turn my back once again as she groggily shrieks and frantically both tries and fails to catch it before it hits the ground.

Some things never change.

In the common room, Pearl and Abaris are staying out of Omorth’s way by occupying sitting furniture, while the large eldra busies himself concocting yet another variation on his razorvine fruit and trail ration medley.

Which gives me an idea.

I pick up a piece of a spare ration square, this one seeming to be some kind of preserved meat. Holding my hand over one of the wooden slabs they use as an eating surface, I focus my will on the piece of meat and carefully activate The Ravages of Time, reversed as I did for the garden trowel. Omorth notices what I’m doing and pauses his stirring, staring fixatedly at the process of restoring the meat.

When it’s done I offer it to him, complete with the wooden slab. He takes it with a dumbfounded nod and promptly starts cutting it up with a short metal blade before dropping it in the pot with the rest.

My death knight finally joins us after working through her litany of straps and whatnot that retain the leather plates against her body. The two of us join the other two not cooking to quietly sit staring nigh unblinkingly straight ahead. Which is easy when you don’t have to blink, but I assume Izahne is just waking slowly.

“Today will be an exciting day,” Abaris offers, his hands tented almost religiously. I can definitely tell he’s elated for whatever we’re going to find.

Pearl flatly returns a “Yeah”, clearly still more than half asleep. At least she left her bed.

“Mm,” is Izahne’s contribution.

And of course, I say nothing. I don’t really see the point of being drawn into another never-ending conversation about how something is going to be interesting or exciting or scary when we don’t have any idea whatsoever about what we’re going to see, so why bother?

Whatever.

Omorth finishes his task and calls the others, and the sounds of their consumption are much louder and more varied than usual. Needless to say, they’re enjoying my contribution there at least.

After their mortal needs are met, we gather outside the house portal which I promptly dissolve with the key and then promptly start for the city gates.

I can tell from here that the gates are hanging disquietingly ajar. It sure doesn’t make the ruin feel any more comforting.

But that massive wave of mana is still unexpected and concerning.

“What is unexpected and concerning?” Abaris says out of nowhere.

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“Huh. Did I say that out loud?” I ask.

Pearl nods to confirm it.

“I see,” I reply. “I was referring to the massive wave of mana rolling upwards from the city, it’s hard to miss. I’m surprised you haven’t commented on it.”

Abaris stops walking and stares at me, before saying a handful of words I don’t bother paying attention to. What looks almost like a misty blue pair of glasses hovers in front of his face for a moment before his eyes shoot open.

“What in the hells is this!?” he bleats.

Good, so it’s not just me.

I just shrug back and keep walking.

***

The city gates are every bit as hanging vacant as they’d looked from a distance. A large number of rusted sets of armor lay scattered around it, a testament to what was probably an impossible battle – they were facing some version of me, after all. We step over the abandoned effects and enter the city proper.

The deserted streets that greet us are lined with similarly deserted buildings, all single-story and haphazardly built in a way that’s noticeable even after hundreds or thousands of years. It makes it clear that the outer edge of the city nearest the walls aren’t too different from the settlement in the sewers of the hive, where the people that other people want to forget exist struggle to continue existing.

“It’s empty like the rest,” my death knight comments.

I nod. “Considering the number of my kin that have been here and for how long, I’m not surprised.”

We take some time to look through the more intact buildings, but what we find is a bit different from what we saw in Darkwell. Where in the small town things were left as though they died by surprise, the living spaces here show signs of being hastily gathered.

Abaris seems to have noticed the same thing and says, “They most likely had warning and tried to take shelter somewhere else.”

“That makes sense,” I reply.

Well. Guess that means there isn’t much reason for us to keep checking houses for anything useful, but we keep doing it anyway.

I’m pretty sure it’s just because my party is looking for money, since being an adventurer is expensive but not as expensive as attending the academy. I apparently was enrolled with some kind of special scholarship thing the headmaster arranged.

Speaking of master... he’s been really quiet lately. Maybe he’s just letting me work, since what I’ve been doing could technically be considered some kind of ‘fixing the plane’.

…

But not as quiet as Nyx. I still have no idea what to do about her.

I guess I may as well get some kind of help, I doubt this is going to fix itself.

“So, there’s something wrong with Nyx, and I don’t know how to fix it,” I say unprompted, breaking my party’s somber silence.

“What kind of wrong?” Pearl asks, returning the locked box she’s been fiddling with to the otherwise empty dresser. I guess people back then still used the same kind of furniture.

“First, she stopped making fun of me or calling me an idiot.”

The healer tilts her head. “Isn’t that a good thing?”

I sigh. “Not for her. She seems to really enjoy it, but now she just hides around the edge of my vision and doesn’t say anything. I could probably ask her something since I know she’s got a compulsion to help me, but somehow it feels like asking her directly would make it worse.”

“Hmm,” she replies, stopping to think for a moment. “Usually the best way to help fix something like this is to talk about the problem and figure out what’s wrong from that.”

“I sure know one thing that didn’t help, last night I thought maybe I broke her with all the times she made fun of me and I told her to shut up, maybe since I started getting these god things one of those times did something to her? So I was going to see if I could undo what I’d done, and she got really mad and said I was the same as her sister.”

Pearl’s eyes widen. “Oh. Yeah, don’t do that, not to a person. Nobody likes to feel like they’re not even themselves anymore. That’s existentially terrifying, you know?”

“Not really. I have no idea who I used to be, and I know I was changed into this... but this is all I’ve ever known. In a way, shouldn’t I be glad that bitch goddess messed with my soul? I wouldn’t exist now otherwise, at least not as I am.”

“And how do you think Nyx feels about that?”

Huh.

That’s a really good question.

“I already know she feels betrayed in the worst way. If I understand it right, Nyx was ready for her apotheosis and was looking forward to joining her sister in the dark pantheon, but then instead of performing the ritual for her, Erebus ripped up her soul and smashed her together with me.”

“And that’s horrifying. She is probably dealing with a lot of trauma. She trusted her sister, didn’t she?”

“Unquestioningly.”

The healer is silent for a moment, long enough that I hear my Assistant quietly sigh.

“Does she trust you, or did she in the past?”

I run through recent memory, and come up empty. “I don’t think so. All I’ve done is take from her. I’m running the ship, since I look like her I’ve taken her place in some ways, I reclaimed her workshop, I became whatever kind of god or not-god I am now. I’m pretty sure I have everything she wanted and worked for, and all I had to do to get here is have the right soul and then get soul butchered.”

Now that I think of it, that’s probably what’s going on here.

And I’m no closer to finding a solution.