Zyneth narrows his eyes at my reaction. “What’s going on?”

“We were—” I struggle to pull my mind away from the rest of the predator. It’s resisting only enough to be irritating. “I was—”

“That already explains quite a bit,” Zyneth remarks. “Did it take over? Are you alright?”

“Ah…” I finish mentally batting the predator away, struggling to gather my thoughts as our minds split apart. All the predator’s extra senses—smell, taste, its softer touch, its abstract vision—fall away as the last filaments of its mind snap away from me, and I’m left alone with my thoughts.

I’m a little disoriented. I’ve never been merged with the predator for that long before. With it giving me mental space, I suddenly feel… empty. Or maybe, exposed. I don’t know how to describe it. Like I’d been wrapped in a blanket that’s now been ripped away.

I don’t like that.

“Sorry,” I say, realizing I’ve been quiet for too long and never answered his question. “I’m okay. Just processing everything. What time is it?”

“Morning, supposedly. I can never tell from the lighting in here.” Zyneth hesitantly crosses the room and crouches down beside me—but not too close. I wonder if he’s giving me space, or the predator. “So what happened?”

My first instinct is to lie. Brush it off like I was just practicing some void magic. I hate making him worry, and telling him the predator and I are now splitting time would definitely do that. But Zyneth’s too perceptive for half-baked falsehoods, and I’m supposed to be working on my communication. I inwardly grimace and steel myself.

“The predator and I came to an agreement,” I blurt out. There. I said it. No going back now. “I still don’t really trust it, but I also can’t stop it, so we tried to find a compromise that we could both tolerate.” Each word feels a little easier to say than the last. In fact, now that I’ve gotten started, the rest starts to spill out of me. “Since our power is split fifty-fifty, we decided to share our time that way too. I call the shots during the day, and it takes control at night. It agreed to guard the ship while we’re on shift, so we went out into the water to search for prey, but since there was nothing around, I convinced it to try some of our new spells instead. Then we kind of got distracted with that and managed to pick up new bits of glass, but our spell ran out so we took more with us to the Prismatic while waited to recover our mana, and we spent the rest of the night meticulously Attuning all the bits of glass in this pile of sand and practicing moving it like our void.” I lean back, planting my hands on my knees. This is where non-glass people would probably take a breath. “Whew! Being honest is terrifying. And relieving!”

Zyneth is staring at me, eyebrows raised. “Wow. That’s quite the admission.”

“That felt good, actually,” I say. “Maybe I should confess stuff more often.”

“Yes, that would be preferable,” Zyneth agrees. His initial surprise, or shock, or whatever it was I did to him, seems to be wearing off. “I suppose now I’m the one processing. The predator was in control the whole night?”

“Sort of,” I say. “When we’re… cooperating… it’s more like both of us are simultaneously in control. Sometimes I can feel the separation between us, like we’re two people fighting for the reins. And then other times there’s no separation at all. Especially when both of us want the same thing. Then it becomes almost like… we’re one creature.” The thought disturbs me as I think about it. Recalling the experience of being fused with the predator is unsettling in hindsight, largely because of how unaware I was of all these things while it was happening. “It felt so natural. Like being of one mind is the way it’s always been. It takes something we disagree on to create a dissonance within us, and then I regain some self awareness again.” The implications of this are chilling. “But what if—what if one of these nights—”

Zyneth puts a light hand on mine, and I jump. “You’re rambling,” he says softly.

“Sorry,” I say, a little shaken. “It’s just… I don’t want it to make me hurt anyone again.” There’s a line of pale-red on Zyneth’s hand—a still-healing scar from the fight with the predator. The one health potion we had on this ship was only able to close the wounds, but the marks of that battle—and his limp when he walks—remain. I hope it all heals in time. If I did lasting damage…

“You think it might try to attack me again?” Zyneth wonders, trying to surmise my thoughts from my silence. “It hasn’t attempted anything in the last few days.”

“No,” I say, “I don’t think it will try to hurt you. At least, not unless the rest of it comes back. The bits of the predator that have been with me the longest seem to be… learning, I guess. Maybe I’m rubbing off on it a little. It’s definitely more coherent now than our first encounter. It understands that you’re an ally, and even if it doesn’t really understand anything deeper than that, it knows you’re more valuable to us alive than dead. And that’s why I had to agree to do this, you see? I need to influence it more. I need to make sure that when we reach land, it can exercise as much restraint with other people as it does with you. And spending more time talking with it, working with it—I can’t think of a better way to try to impart morals.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“You’re probably right,” Zyneth says. “You know more about how that creature works than me. I’ve also witnessed your influence on it grow across the months it’s been with you. But that’s also why it scares you, isn’t it?” he asks. “You’re worried the influence goes both ways.”

I don’t reply. It’s uncanny how he can zero in on the crux of the issue like that.

“For what it’s worth, I’ve seen no evidence of that thus far.” Zyneth crooks a reassuring smile. “If you were behaving more animalistic, I would be the first to let you know.”

I laugh weakly. “I know, it’s an irrational fear.”

“Well I wouldn’t go that far,” Zyneth says. “It actually sounds like quite the rational fear.”

“Thanks,” I say dryly. “How reassuring.”

“But fear is normal,” Zyneth says. “Moving forward in spite of it is bravery.”

I let the words sit with me for a moment. I don’t think I’m brave. In fact, I’ve done a lot of selfish things these last few months as a way to flee and deny my greatest fears. And they all caught up to me anyway. Right now, I think I’m just in damage-control mode.

“Ugh.” I grab my core from atop the pile of sand and use my sleeve to brush some of the grit away. “Alright. That’s enough feelings for one day. Now you know my deepest darkest fears. But that’s not something I can do anything about. Either the predator will take over, or it won’t. I’ll either get it wrestled under control by the time we get to land, or… I don’t know, I guess I’ll become a pirate and spend the rest of my days at sea, so as not to endanger anyone else.”

Zyneth raises an amused eyebrow at that suggestion.

I place my core back in my chest, like the glass heart it’s become, and use a Chain spell to magically glue it in place. “But before all that, we need to get out of here alive,” I continue. “And that is something we can do something about.”

The lost souls are a whole different existential crisis I need to unpack, but focusing on the here and now is more manageable, and having something that I’m capable of managing is reassuring. I need to take things one step at a time.

Zyneth has the good grace not to push the heart-to-heart any further, which is a relief. “What have you got in mind?”

I explain to him how I was able to slowly shift the submarine around from the outside of the ship, using glass and void to nudge it in different directions.

“With you directing from inside the ship, I might be able to help move us in the right direction,” I say. “Assuming we know which direction is the right one. And by we, I mean you.”

“I’m still trying to work all that out,” Zyneth admits. “But it’s a good idea. And it seems your range is big enough that you can keep your core inside the Prismatic now, so you’re at no real risk should any sea creatures appear.”

I’d just be risking my Attuned glass and void. Losing the glass would be inconvenient, but the void might be more of a problem. Since the predator’s essence (or whatever) is mixed up in the void, it seems like it physically can’t go beyond my magic’s range, and trying to hurts the both of us.

But that shouldn’t be an issue unless the predator gets cocky and tries to attack some giant sea serpent or something.

On second thought, that’s exactly the kind of thing it might do.

We’ll need to talk about responsible prey-hunting later.

“I’ll also be more effective if I can Attune more glass and void,” I say. “The further we get from Emrox, the less likely we’ll come upon more free-floating clumps of null arcana, but the predator and I will keep a lookout with our Elemental Dowsing when we patrol the Prismatic. For glass, I can pick pieces out of the sand, but they’re microscopic, and it’s kind of tedious. I’m thinking a different approach might work better.”

“Oh?” Zyneth says. “Is that why you’ve turned the cargo bay into your own personal beach?”

I rub my hands together excitedly. “Yesterday you mentioned how fragile my glass is and that you’ve found tougher stuff elsewhere. You thought it might have to do with how the glass is forged.”

Zyneth tips his head, perplexed. “Yes, I remember. In the artificing work I’ve done with metal, heat-treating is often used to make the forged weapons stronger. Although I’ve not worked with glass as an artificing material before, so I’m not certain how different that would be.”

“Heat, yes!” I point at him. “I’d thought of that, too. And maybe different materials. That’s also something you do in metalwork, right? You add other stuff to the blade to make it stronger.”

“Yes, depending on the alloy, it can have varying effects,” Zyneth agrees. “You’re saying you want to try mixing other materials in with your glass?”

“Not exactly,” I say. “I mean, that’s a good idea, too. But I can’t do that with a Sculpt spell: it would just form glass around the other material. I think I’d need to heat my glass up high enough to mix something in with it—and that would have to be heated, too. But first.” I gesture to the pile of sand in front of me. “I’ve got the materials to make new glass right here.”

Zyneth’s eyes light up at the idea. “Yes, of course. Very intriguing. I’m not really certain on the specifics of how one converts sand into glass, however—apart from a high amount of heat.”

“That’s about as much as I know, too,” I admit. “But I’ve got sand. You’ve got heat. What do you say?” I spread my hands. “Want to experiment?”