***** PoV: Arthur “Necrosbane” Boateng *****

When I put us to sleep in the core, the gestalt finally turned off and left me mostly alone in my own head. Victrina is still there, its not like she can go anywhere else at the moment, but she wasn’t directly connected to my thoughts anymore. Growing up, I’d always heard stories of what its like to be a part of a gestalt like that from Mama and Papa, but since I’d never met the right person growing up, I figured that it wasn’t meant to be. Which is fine, not everyone gets to find someone they can be that close to, there’s plenty to enjoy in life without that kind of relationship. It didn’t stop me from wanting one, but once I’d passed my 30th birthday, I’d more or less given up on finding someone as I was past the age where most dragons find someone, if they’re going to.

Now that I get to experience it for myself, all I can say is thank you God. I’m enjoying working with someone who gets along with me on such a fundamental level. It’s a bit annoying that I cannot yet explain to her the full situation, especially the relationship aspects, but hopefully she’ll have enough of a mana pool after the second part of our nap.

Before my thoughts could wander further, Victrina somehow managed to snuggle up to me mentally without removing the degree of seperation, which I had not been expecting. Almost as if she was snuggling up to the other side of this wall that was suddenly between us. Shrugging to my self, I returned the favor, snuggling up to my side of the divide before letting sleep finally take my dragon and human bloodlines.

{Now that we’ve successfully fallen asleep in the core, let’s talk!}

[Wait, how are we talking if we’re asleep?]

{Elementals don’t sleep, they don’t have any sort of traditional biology, so they don’t need to sleep or eat. That’s a large part of how I managed to stay awake for two months straight, the other part being I have a spell that lets me recover as if I actually got some sleep. Mostly. Honestly, if I wasn’t so critical to the war effort, I would not have tried to push it anywhere near that far. I’m not sure how much further I could have pushed it before it didn’t work anymore.}

[So what you’re saying is I will never be able to fall completely asleep again? Because that sounds awful!]

{Not exactly. Elementals operate on several different time scales depending on what is happening, sometimes simultaneously. They default to paying attention to days, weeks or months rather than seconds, minutes or hours. At the slower timescales, things are chill enough that you might as well be asleep most of the time. It’s rather interesting watching how my elemental self interacts with the rest of me. Past experience says it’s already been something like three hours since we went to sleep.}

[Huh. Is that why things feel a bit… floaty or something? That’s not quite the right word, but that’s all I can think of at the moment.]

{Yup, that’s why. We tend to respond to things that our elemental self notices in one of two ways. Usually, we make small changes that achieve our goals quietly, but sometimes we just decide the only acceptable response is over the top aggression. The trick is figuring out how to decipher your elemental intuition to determine if this is the appropriate response, and whether it is your fire or your life side that is objecting to something, or if it is both. Sometimes they object to the same thing for entirely different reasons, and you have to figure out how to reconcile their different desires.}

[Sounds like this bloodline thing means you end up with an entire circus in your head, and you have to figure out how to get all the performers to work together like a ringmaster or something]

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

{You’re not far wrong, actually. The importance of taking care of your mental health has never been greater. The next question is how do we get the fire mana we need?}

[If we take over the vine network as we drain it dry, can we just set the entire forest on fire? Normally I’d be against such a thing, but the pocket dimension will cease to exist after the challenge is over, even if the monsters will be reused for other challenges. And we can’t be identified if the hunters can’t get over here to find us!]

{It also means that we get to keep sleeping, so no complaints from me!}

[Now what?]

{I guess we just lay here and enjoy our nap for a while?}

[Sounds like a plan! Today has been… interesting. I could use a break.]

*****

Several days later, the sleeping trick had stopped working when the core burned up in the fire, dumping us on the ground. After the fire had burned out, we woke up buried in werewolves and wolfweres, with Huntmaster Skeeraga sleeping on our snout. Fortunately, it happened gradually enough that it was a gentle transition and didn't wake us up.

Waking up buried in a pile of fluff was not what I expected, especially since it happened recently enough that my elemental self hadn’t noticed before we woke up.

“Wait, what’s going on?” I demanded, wiggling a little bit to try and wake everybody up gently.

“Good morning sleepyhead!” replied the Huntmaster, “I knew you needed a bunch of fire and life mana plus a nap, but I didn’t expect you to drain a large chunk of the forest and then burn it down! Fortunately for you, the Coverian System doesn’t care as it’s going to have to reset everything anyway. Once everything cooled down enough and we were able to reach you, you looked so comfy taking your nap we decided to join you.”

Good news Arthur! I was able to save the entire fleet you were a part of. Now that you’ve completed this challenge, I’ll drop you on the bridge of Spaghetti, since that’s the easiest target to hit for reasons that aren’t worth explaining. You’ll have to explain what’s going on as best you can, then I’ll step in and explain the bits you can’t, as well as what is happening next. Victrina, you’ll be able to rendezvou with your people at the Grand Conclave afterwards.

At this point, Victrina finished waking up and the gestalt resumed helping us share space again. {Good morning Victrina!}

[Good morning! Is it always that hard to wake up? I caught your conversation with the Huntmaster and the notification, but it was like they were happening at twice the speed they should have and I couldn’t make it slow down.]

{Yeah, it’ll probably take a couple of sleep cycles to adjust to the new transition from sleep to awake. As much as I’d like to offer some tips on how to make that easier, I’ve been living with it for so long I don’t remember what it’s like to wake up without that complication.}

[Fair enough. Was not expecting the dogpile though!]

{Neither was I!}

“Alright, everybody up! We need to get moving!” I called, wiggling a bit harder to help wake everyone up. While I could have been more vigorous, prior experience tells me that’s a good way to give people broken bones, and I’d rather not.

[Wait, why is the ship called Spaghetti? Isn’t that a kind of noodle or something?]

{Because his main weapon rips things apart in a way that looks vaguely like spaghetti. He was built by the Shihoth Nor as a warship, and in his first battle made some mistakes that overloaded his inertial compensators, the devices that shelter the inside of the ship from the acceleration required to move a ship across the vast distances of space in a reasonable time frame. At the last possible second, he had an epiphany and managed to make the fallout from this failure happen inside the enemy ship instead of inside his own ship. When nobody else could make heads or tails of what he had done to make that happen, they decided to name him after the pattern it created. When he and the rest of his flotilla were traded to Terra in return for services rendered, they translated his name to Spaghetti because that was the funniest yet most terrifying way they could translate it.}

[Does the mess at least serve good spaghetti?]

{Yes they do. My only complaint is it doesn’t come in draconic portion sizes, but that’s to be expected.}

“Well, it’s been an interesting experience getting to meet you.” said Skeeraga, interupting our internal discussion. “Hopefully I’ll be better prepared to provide you with a proper challenge when next we meet! Safe travels, and may the Lord be with you!”

“And you as well, Huntmaster.” we replied, returning his bow before the familiar non-euclidian yank of teleportaion took us away.