After a few hours of observing spirits and connecting their abilities to Mona’s Qi, Noem found himself sitting on the edge of his bed as the sound of quiet snoring filtered through the house. He laced his fingers together and pushed–hard–to try and get the conflicting emotions under control. Little miss meteor pressed gently against his leg, and he offered her the smallest of fake smiles.

Just from those few hours, he confirmed that there was nothing left of the real Mona. None of her mannerisms, her personality, or her memories had survived whatever the goddess had done to get Keira into Mona’s body.

Which left Noem in a very precarious position. On one hand, he wanted to kill ‘Mona’. No sense denying it; she was the physical manifestation of his real sister’s death. She had also been specifically told to manipulate and trick him into giving up little miss meteor. On the other hand, though…

Even if the cadence was wrong, and she had none of the little ticks she used to have, it was still Mona’s voice. New Mona–no, Keira–seemed like a nice enough person. More than that, actually; she was beyond excited to learn absolutely anything Qi-related. She hung on Noem’s every word, tried everything he told her to–even the purposefully inserted traps to catch her in a lie–and was just… happy.

He looked up at the ceiling and swallowed hard. If the dream he saw was to be believed, Keira had died less than an hour before she woke up as Mona. Where was all the pain? All the sadness? Had her life before been so bad that she had absolutely no attachments to it?

Little miss meteor pressed even harder. Noem’s smile shrunk as it became genuine, and he grabbed the stone as he turned over and threw the covers over himself. He placed her on his bedside table and killed the lights in his contacts as his mind roared with possibilities. Eventually, as he drifted off to sleep, he settled on one.

Mona, as she currently is, is a mystery. One that he can only unravel if he keeps her by his side. And if she ever goes for little miss meteor…

She’s dead.

----------------------------------------

Roots and hard grass crunched under unfamiliar boots connected to equally unfamiliar bodies. And one familiar one. A small party of three people trekked through the underbrush, pushing aside branches and grumbling obscenities under their breaths as they grew ever closer to the hidden home of Noem the great.

Noem swiped aside the security footage and smirked. They’d been circling the area for three days now, and they hadn’t even gotten close to finding the entrance. The tallest one–a woman with light peach skin and straw-blonde hair–had rested her hand on the door without even knowing it. Her bond, a small rabbit-like creature made of heavily decorated porcelain and gold accents, walked silently alongside her and raised its head every now and again as if searching for something. It kicked up dust with every hop, then fanned it away with its strangely prehensile ears.

The second one looked to be hired muscle, but looks could be deceiving. He was a bald man of average height who looked like he’d been sunburned way more than one too many times, whose only truly defining features were the sapphire piercings that dotted his eyebrows and lower lip. They oozed with Qi that fell like cold raindrops, and his bond was a sort of amorphous grey slime that covered his right arm, shoulder, and a portion of his chest. Noem couldn’t make out an anchor through the slime, so the man had to have hidden it somewhere on his person.

Then there was the final woman. Her face was hidden under an anonymity hood, with a long braid of sparkling silver-white hair that emerged from nowhere and draped over her shoulder. A simple white clip with a dozen notches carved in it kept her braid from unraveling, and a distortion appeared on her shoulder that looked like a flash of electricity.

Noem flicked his interface and killed the live feed. He stretched without rising from his squat, which was precariously perched atop one of the largest rocks at the quarry. The downward spiral of excavation went on for so long, but beyond the first few ledges, it gained a sinister haze. As if something lurked in the depths.

Mona fidgeted restlessly from right next to him. “You’re sure they won’t find the door? Super-duper sure?”

Noem called for his bow and arrows and leaned slightly over the edge. “Sure as I can be. Unless they have a revelation and start backtracking, they won’t find us until they get some serious reinforcements. Speaking from experience, those aren’t cheap–so it would be a few more days after that until their contracts get finalized anyway.”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Mona raised an eyebrow. “How do you know that?”

“Because I’m constantly spying on them and I’ve sabotaged a lot of contracts. Now shush.” Noem tapped Mona on the forehead, which somehow had the intended effect. “I recognize the girl with the braid from when I went to the university. Either she had a real drastic change of heart since then, or she’s here because you activated that beacon for a split second.”

“I told you I was sorry.”

“And I told you that I should’ve warned you before you had a chance to fuck up. It’s a university beacon, and they’re encrypted beyond my skill level. Unless there’s some serious corruption going on behind the scenes, they don’t know exactly where it came from, just that it was somewhere around here.”

Steady and Focus activated as Noem took a deep breath and readied his bow. The anchored spirit a few dozen meters away had to be somewhat blind if it hadn’t sensed him, and if it wasn’t going to move, it had to be dealt with. He nocked an arrow and pulled the string back as far as he could comfortably handle, aimed at the snake-fox’s stony head, and let fly its demise.

Its eye socket exploded in a spray of rubble. Noem held his breath as it staggered around, then flopped dead on the ground. The spirit inside of it emerged instantly; a long cylinder of smoky Qi with two pinpricks of obsidian black for eyes. It squirmed free of the body it had been inhabiting, shook itself off with haughty annoyance, and slithered away without looking back.

“That’s that.” Noem dismissed his weapon and jumped down from the stone. “Push your Qi into your legs, bend your knees, and jump down.”

Mona thumped to the ground with a much greater impact than Noem’s. “I know. You don’t have to keep lecturing me just because I broke my ankle one time.”

That one time was less than forty-eight hours ago. And she’d broken both of her wrists not forty-eight hours before that. Five days of training, and all of them had been cut short by debilitating injuries. Noem pulled his lips into an aggressively neutral line, hummed through his nose, and turned away.

He walked all the way over to the empty body without another word. Mona argued incessantly the entire time, but she simply reiterated the exact same point over and over until Noem tapped her on the forehead and gestured down at the body.

She held a hand to her head and pouted. Noem ignored her.

“You don’t know anything about removing anchors. Try it anyway.”

“But I don’t–” Mona began, then stopped herself. She glared at Noem as she bent down and brushed her hands over the stony body that had housed a spirit not two minutes ago. “It’s rock.”

Noem nodded. “Very astute.”

Mona sighed and rolled her eyes. “I can’t break rock with my bare hands.”

“So use Qi.”

“I… right. I forgot I can do that.” Mona said and held out one finger. “Poke.”

Qi flowed over her finger in a thick layer, then solidified into tangible armor. She pressed it to the stone, then reactivated the skill once again. The Qi lunged forward and took her hand with it, breaking through the stone that had been weakened by being a part of a spirit’s unbonded anchor. She shot Noem a beaming grin of pride, then turned right back and continued to reactivate Poke until there was a web of cracks all the way down the spirit’s body and a fist-sized hole in its chest.

Small chunks of glittering stone showed through the rubble. Mona grinned excitedly and ripped through the stone with all of her fingers covered in Qi, which she seemed to have unconsciously done. Noem smiled to himself with conflicted pride, and didn’t bother blanking his face when Mona turned to him with a metal wire threaded through with smoke-coloured beads.

“Is this the anchor?” She asked with a frown. “I don’t know much about anything, but it feels so much weaker than your cube.”

Noem nodded and pinched the wire between his fingers, then stowed it away. “It’s the anchor, and yeah, it’s a lot weaker. Good on you for not damaging it at all.”

“Thanks. So… about the anchor you’re making for me…” Mona brushed off her hands and stared right through Noem’s eyes.

“It’s gonna happen. Sooner or later.” Noem waved away Mona’s intensity and began moving towards the quarry. “Probably sooner, but not until we know what you’re going to try to bond with.”

Noem glanced back and watched Mona squirm. She was holding back her knowledge, but over the days of him giving exactly the same excuse, she’d gotten much more frustrated. But not with him; with herself. With the fact that she knew exactly what was down there, but couldn’t say why or how she knew.

“Today’s just a scouting outing. As long as we catch a glimpse of the thing you want to bond, I can start working on your anchor as soon as we get back.” Noem eventually said after a few minutes of walking in silence.

Mona’s step gained a few levels of pep at the news. She skipped ahead with Qi-empowered steps and turned around to bear her teeth in a wide smile, then ran even further ahead to the edge of the quarry. She’d been taking Noem’s lessons about casually using her Qi to heart. In just a few short days, she’d already passed through to the second realm. Not a monumental milestone, but it showed that she didn’t have any adverse symptoms from being basically dead for so long.

Noem joined her at the edge of the quarry with a nod, then bent down and summoned a pair of binoculars from his inventory. And another for Mona. She accepted them with a nod of thanks, then eagerly pressed them to her eyes. He followed suit and scanned the quarry, and eventually tapped Mona on the shoulder before he gestured at the far side.

“See that one tunnel over there? The one with a slight orange glow inside of it?”

Mona looked around for a second, then nodded. “I do.”

“That’s where we’re headed.” Noem cracked his knuckles and dismissed his binoculars. Mona strung her pair around her neck instead. She nodded to him to signal that she was ready a second later.

Noem nodded right back and activated Resilient, Steady, and Nimble. “Remember to bend your knees.”