Amara waited in the corridor for probably longer than she’d have liked to admit to. Still, she needed to know if anything had happened to him after the Remover visited her. She could only handle so many cryptic threats to her friends in one night. Add to that Akamori’s near manic look after the Remover left. Something was wrong, and she needed to know what.

Akamori shuffled out of his bedroom looking like he’d lost a 10 round wrestling match with his pillow. His eyes were puffy from lack of sleep and he wore an annoyed expression that threatened danger to anyone who spoke to him before he’d had a chance to get to the magic food printer thingy to get some coffee. He passed Amara in the corridor, who avoided eye contact with him but fell in behind him.

“You look like you’ve had better nights.”

He grunted, holding up a finger. It was Akamori-sign language for “no coffee, no talky.”

They rounded the bend and entered the small mess hall. He shuffled right up to the device and bumped his head against the terminal. Amazingly, the device printed coffee. That meant Akamori must have taught the device this manner of input meant a request for coffee. Impressive considering it typically ran on a verbal request. How he’d managed this was anyone’s guess.

“Look, I wanted to talk to you about last night.” She started.

He grunted again, holding up another finger to stop her, and then pointed at the divine brown fluid in the mug. He shuffled around her and slowly slumped down at a bench, careful not to spill his drink. Amara eyed the printer for a moment. She should eat, but her mind was buzzing as memories that didn’t belong to her slowly integrated themselves into her consciousness. It was also giving her a headache, and as much as she wanted to indulge, she just didn’t have the stomach.

“Maybe later…” she whispered and followed Akamori. She sat and waited patiently for him to work his way halfway down the mug before trying to interrupt him. She tried to speak and coughed from a dry throat. She cast a woeful glance towards the food printer thingy, but she’d decided.

“Aka… I wanted to talk about last night.” She finally looked up at him. Her maetrayopts blazed with iridescent, shimmering colors.

He grunted again. His eyes danced about behind his eyelids, and visible magic writhed around him to her visual ability. It looked like a warding spell, but very specific. She suspected this was the handiwork of her visitor. The Remover . If he’d placed a spell this complicated on Akamori, she suspected he’d done so to the others as well. She tried to puzzle out just what all portions of the spell there were. She noted memory blocks, but there were also a few pieces of the spell that functioned like keys. Set to activate yet other portions of the spell. Like triggers.

Triggers fired bullets. Amara’s blood ran cold as Akamori finally looked up to meet her eyes. “You look like someone just walked on your grave,” Akamori grumbled. He was holding his mug out to her. Amara forced a mask on, smiling lightly and pushing it back to him while shaking her head.

“No thanks, you look like you need it more than me.”

Another grunt, followed by another sip. His eyebrow wrinkled after a moment as his mind started to catch up to current events.

“What was it you needed to talk about?”

Amara frowned and shook her head. “It’s nothing. I was just over thinking something.”

He shrugged. As he did so, the field of active magic around him relaxed. Amara studied it further. Did the spell have an awareness? That made it even more dangerous to be around her friends if it did. She had to get away from them, so she wasn’t a threat. Figure out what the Remover did, and undo it somehow.

He must be punished. Tampering with us and our friends cannot be allowed to go unresolved! She shook her head. The thought had come on so suddenly and naturally. It felt like hers, yet it was so distinctly different she wasn’t so sure at first. What was that?

I am you. We are Nemesis. We are being restored. Made whole again. For lifetimes, we have existed as opposites of the same whole. Soon we’ll be complete again. Free to resume the great work.

She glanced up at Akamori hoping for some kind of queue that something unnatural was happening. A concerned look, a quizzical stare. A joke even? But he just continued to drink his coffee quietly.

“I’m going to go get my stuff packed. We’re due for some leave when we get back to Eryn. Places to go,” Amara said cheerily as she stood up trying to fight off the sensation of panic that was slowly rippling throughout her body. She was watching, but she wasn’t moving. It was like someone else was in control.

That is correct and incorrect. Technically, you are still in control. Just not that you that you are typically accustomed to thinking of yourself as.

“This is you?” she hissed as she made her way back to her quarters.

Yes. You are endangering your friends by risking bringing up anything to do with the Remover.

“Where are you taking me?”

Away. You’ve wasted too much time moving in your companions’ shadows. It’s time for Nemesis to return. We must remand justice. The time is now.

“You know, I knew Akamori had been wrestling with his own ghosts lately. I didn’t expect it to quite be like this.”

His path is his to walk alone. Now you must walk on your own.

“And where will that be taking us?”

Clear of your comrades for their own safety. To walk the future, you must know the past. There is more to you than simply being a Hoshun priestess. Have you ever not wondered why you could control Maetrayopts? Why the gift was given to you at all?

“I’d assumed Anazi’s daughter gifted it on Hidros?”

No Amara of Hoshun. You’ve always possessed them. For true sight is a requirement of Nemesis.

“Let me guess, so I can see where justice is required?” Amara said wryly.

Yes . The voice replied matter-of-factly and sucked the wind out of Amara’s sarcasm.

“It’s less funny when you just agree with me,” Amara said with a sigh as her body marched into her bedroom and began packing a go bag. Clothes, a few books, a notebook and a map of a system near Brotherhood space, close to Hoshun. So they were going back across the sector. Towards home.

“Are we going back to Hoshun?”

Her body paused. For a moment, it almost felt like her own. But she was sure if she tried to seize it now, it’d just be torn free of her forever. So she let the moment lapse.

No. What happened there is done. And you avenged the fallen admirably.

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Privately, Amara felt like they’d both done enough and not enough at the same time. She had conflicting emotions on the matter, but she’d eased Akamori’s conscious on the matter a few times. Perhaps she needed to ease up on herself, too.

It is wise to not become too engrossed in vendettas. While justice is necessary, revenge can often lead to self destruction. It is a precarious path and one we’ve fallen from several times.

“Oh. Great. Fallen sounds like failed.”

Put reductively, yes.

“Care to share why? Or how, at least?”

That will come. In time. For now, we need to put distance between yourself and your allies. We can’t risk their elimination at the hands of the Remover before we are ready to face him.

Amara’s back rippled with a chill. Genuine concern and fear coiled around her stomach tightly. Nemesis was legitimately afraid of him. It gave her cause for concern. She zipped the pack up and wove open a void pocket attached to her armor and tossed it inside. The action was smooth and mechanical, but it felt so alien not being the one directing her body.

“Well, if the idea is to get away, running as far as possible from the fight makes the most sense.”

Not an option. We are needed elsewhere. Just not here. To completely unlock your true self, you must first face it.

She made her way into the armory, opened the capsule that held her spell armor, and wove the mind rune that turned it translucent. She waved a hand through the shimmering outline of the armor. Both halves amused, and Amara found that interesting. She’d been thinking of Nemesis as someone else completely. Like a foreign presence. Maybe they weren’t too dissimilar after all.

We aren’t. I’m the divine portion of you that was separated before your previous death and sealed away.

Amara donned her spell armor and sighed in relief as it hardened into the protective shell around her. It was the same old musty set she’d been given when they were first picked up on Hoshun. She wore scout armor, so it was lighter defensively, and allowed for more mobility, but it was protection all the same. It also provided immense utility. Most of all, she’d come to think of it as her second skin.

“Sealed away in what?”

For a long moment, the silence made her uncomfortable.

I was sealed in a teapot.

Temporarily, Nemesis lost control of Amara’s body as she did a spit take and burst out laughing. The helmet of her armor hissed shut over her head quickly as she cast an invisibility spell and a privacy ward before floating to the ceiling. This needed explaining.

“You’re going to have to take this one from the top.”

We don’t have time for this.

“No, your dignity doesn’t have time for this. I have oodles.”

Again, another long silence, but Amara was significantly more comfortable this time.

I was torn free of you and sealed within a teapot. The being who did so had… a warped sense of humor. She said that when she returned; she wanted to slowly drink of your divinity and enjoy the victory. Unfortunately, her arrogance was her undoing.

“Yikes. So I’m guessing the reason you’re so worked up about having this training montage is to prep for said evil witch?”

What is a training montage?

“I’ve been spending too much time around Akamori and Sirsir. Anyway. Think of it like training I guess? Lots of it?”

Then yes. We must have a training montage.

Amara snickered again mentally. Nemesis pouted again.

I do not see what is so amusing about our situation.

“Nothing. It’s nothing. Promise.”

Your friends are bad influences.

“Maybe. Maybe not. So who sprang you from the teapot?”

Her subordinate. The Remover of Obstacles.

Amara if Amara were still in control of her body, she’d have paused and blinked a few times in sudden confusion.

“But why?”

That is what concerns me. Even more confounding still is that he reunited us. Our bond of nascent, but will grow stronger the more we retread old ground. Our first stop is in what you call Brotherhood space. There is a temple there, in it is a bow. We must retrieve the bow.

“What’s special about it?”

It contains a shard of your soul and memories. And you will be one step closer to being able to defeat both the Remover, and Ominek and Sauridius.

A commotion was gathering near the ramp. The Theferis must has reached Eryn. Soon the new Arch Priest would be boarding along with teams of Emerald Knights to begin cleansing portions of the ship of the black corruption that festered within it. Amara felt a shift in control as she regained her body.

An escape now would be unwise. We must see how the situation develops and then act when it best suits us.

“That sounds manipulative.”

It is tactical.

She saw her friends gathering and let the helmet recline into the armor, and dropped her wards. She shimmered back into existence behind them as though she was always there. Eventually Akamori happened to notice and half jumped out of his skin.

“Gah! Jeez. Warn a guy You’re back there, why don’t ya? Almost gave me a heart attack.”

She smiled faintly. “Sorry. What’s all the fuss about?”

“The cleaning squad is showing up. We’re heading to go meet them.” Sirsir said.

“Oh boy. More stuffy elves. I can’t wait.” Amara said, fighting the eyeroll.

“You might get to see your primal friend?” Akamori said.

“Luffa? You think she’d be there?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. She was kind of Erlaut’s personal assistant. Anything is possible, right?”

Amara brightened up finally. She could tell Luffa what was going on. If anyone understood secrets, it was her friend. She’d confide in Luffa about what was going on. Then, when she was ready, she’d tell the others. There was a part of herself though that disliked keeping secrets from her friends, but she was worried what they’d think. Akamori might understand. Maybe. But what if he got mad at her? Or jealous?

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