SARAH AVERY VASILIAS, GREAT HOUSE SCION, REBORN LVL 5

SKYLAND

Sarah and Kimi-Lim both collapsed in utter exhaustion. Sarah was hot, tired, and aching all over. Her arm… well, it didn’t hurt. It didn’t do anything. It was gone. Replaced by this…thing. She scowled, deciding for the thousandth time that now wasn’t the best time to think about that. She groaned as she knuckled a spot on her lower back, wishing—again—that Griffin was there: he gave such amazing back rubs. She just missed the touch of him, the smell… She shook her head before she could go too far down that path. The last few hours had been traumatizing enough.

Kimi-Lim had led Sarah out of the blasted wastelands where the manticore had laired. It was startling to go so abruptly from one environment to another with such a clear dividing line between them. On one side, barren rock and scrub with blistering oven-like heat; on the other, a lush and sopping rainforest thick with plants and animals. Before they braved the jungle, though, they’d decided to take a break. Kimi-Lim had dismissed Sunspot, feeling like the eidolon needed refreshment in its home dimension.

“You okay, Kimi-Lim?” Sarah asked, not sure how she felt, herself.

“I am, thanks to you,” the elf said, their soft voice sounding just as tired as Sarah felt. “That was an unexpectedly difficult fight. I think this place was made for you Imperial-types. I’m not used to fighting monsters like that.”

The place they’d finally stopped was a more-or-less level area that was mostly clear of tough brambles and broken rocks. There were a few large boulders scattered around that were hot as ovens, still holding the day’s heat. Sarah and Kimi-Lim had taken shelter under the one twisted, blue-barked tree that smelled like mesquite and had brilliant pink blossoms that smelled like honey. Kimi-Lim knew it as a namun tree. It was as much this startling and stark green jewel in the otherwise unbroken brown and grey wasteland that caused them to stop there as their tiredness. Sarah stared up at the brilliantly painted sunset sky through the stark branches of the namun tree, breathing in the sweet scent of the flowers.

Sarah took a deep breath and sighed, “I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to fighting monsters,” she said. “Isn’t there some kind of non-combat role that magical people can take? I mean, you can’t have a whole world where everyone just fights monsters.” She clasped her hands in her lap. Her right hand was unconsciously feeling at the odd metal and plastic that made up her new left forearm.

“Of course there are,” Kimi-Lim said, “but it’s already too late for that.”

“What do you mean?” Sarah said, a sinking feeling in her stomach. “I can’t just find a… I dunno, generator or battery, and pump Electrify into it and power a few homes? Or something?”

“Oh sure, there are people who do those kinds of jobs. Plenty of Reborn out there who aren’t combat specialists or who don’t join the Order of Ascension. But they’re not Scions of Imperial Houses.” Kimi-Lim shook their head and chuckled, their golden hair shimmering in the late afternoon sun. “I’ve never even been to the Empire, but we get Imperial strike forces out in the desert often enough. They’re usually on Order of Ascension missions, so that’s all right, but I’ve seen one or two Great House Scions, and none of them were ever stuck charging batteries.”

Sarah frowned, tapping at the armored exterior of her new arm. “But I don’t even know these people! How can they dictate what I can and can’t do?”

Kimi-Lim shrugged. “Imperial politics. Scions are rare, and they’re like trump cards for the weird government of the Empire. You’d think an empire would have an emperor and some governors or kings or something. The reality is far weirder.” Kimi-Lim shook their head incredulously, “I’ve been studying them at school for the past couple of years in my Advanced Politics course. The Houses function more like corporations or local governments. Maybe a little bit of both. They pay lip service to the throne while they bicker and vie for power amongst each other.”

“That sounds fucking awful,” Sarah said. “I don’t think I should go anywhere near that.”

“Oh?” Kimi-Lim said, intrigued, “I mean, yeah, I think so, too. But I’d been brought up to believe that humans were the biggest Imperium supporters in the world. It’s almost a joke and here you are, just casually pointing out what elves have been saying for millennia. It’s a little jarring.”

Sara created a little spike out of anima and used her Never Unarmed racial gift to bring it into reality. She used the tip to clean out some dust that had gotten crusted into the little creases on her new arm. She didn’t say anything for a while, just thinking about what Kimi-Lim had told her.

There’s so much about this world that I don’t know, Sarah thought. These Houses sound like trouble in all the worst ways. “So what’s outside of this Empire? It sounds like you don’t live there. Where do you live?”

“My home is gone,” Kimi-Lim said, their face closing off and their back going rigid. “It’s now a ruin where monsters feed on the still-lingering tensa from the dead.” She shuddered, “When I went there last, I saw undead there.”

“Undead?” Sarah asked, startled. “Like… zombies? Skeletons?”

Kimi-Lim closed their eyes and nodded. “Among others, yes.”

“Oh, God, I’m sorry,” Sarah said.

The elf’s face relaxed, and the rigidity that had entered their posture melted a bit. “It’s not your fault. I’m just… The wound is fresh for me. And it… well, it was Imperials that did it.” Their voice got a little harsh at the end, like from tears or rage—or both—held in sharp check. They took a shaky breath, then another, and finally a much smoother third deep breath. “I hadn’t been back for years. Not since I’d done my Sun Day back when I became a Light Mage—when I first attained Stone rank. I was at the Academy away on the Jeweled Beaches, studying for my Integration Architect specialization, and I was coming home so my parents could meet my…” they trailed off.

“And the Empire did that?” Sarah said, aghast. “Holy… they sound like the Empire from Star Wars. Or any other fantasy world where ‘empire’ is shorthand for the bad guys.”

Kimi-Lim blew out a breath that ended in a raspberry. “Pretty much! They’re the worst.” They laughed a little shakily. “I seriously considered letting you go when I first caught you by your foot, running from forest giants.”

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Sarah didn’t respond. What can you say to something like that? She thought. Kimi-Lim looked up at Sarah, yellow eyes luminous in the fading light. “I’m glad I didn’t,” the elf said. “Even if I would never have even gotten into that mess if it weren’t to help you get your Prize.”

“I still don’t know if it was worth it,” Sarah said, glaring down at the cybernetic arm. “It’s like something knew I’d get my arm cut off by that thing. I got a power that made my loss of an arm just a… momentary inconvenience.”

She formed an ethereal blue crystal spike with her Never Unarmed ability and examined it critically for a moment. Then she stabbed the crystalline spike into the forearm of her cybernetic arm. Plastic crunched and a couple of sparks popped. She pulled the spike out and a thin trickle of acrid black smoke arose from the hole. Sarah never flinched throughout the entire process. The Power Arm repaired itself in seconds.

“It’s objectively better than my original arm, except I’ll never be able to feel it.”

Kimi-Lim nodded, “That’s how these Tutorial Realms work though. They’re powerful magic. Incredibly complex spell algorithms go into making these places ideal training zones. They’re isolated, completely cut off from the rest of the world—you don’t even see the real night sky or stars here.” They pointed up to the stars starting to come out as the last of the sunlight faded away. “Those are fake. And pretty much everything in here is just really complex tensa constructs. And the System is constantly monitoring you. These Tutorial Zones are so rich in treasure and stuff for those with the right connections—”

“Or those who can break in,” Sarah cut in, smiling. Kimi-Lim flashed a bright smile.

“—Or those who can break in—because The System is monitoring everything you do here. It’s run by one of its enslaved AI spirits—a subsystem—and that subsystem automatically updates all of the System’s databases about you as a Reborn and all your displayed grafts. It’s a level of monitoring that’s unheard of, especially for those Imperial Houses, even though they’re the only ones who can afford it.” Kimi-Lim laughed softly and stood, stretching their arms over their head and leaning to the left and right, groaning softly as things popped and their muscles protested.

“So this AI is watching us—”

“It’s watching you,” Kimi-Lim interrupted.

“As in, it’s watching me and not you?” Sarah asked.

Kimi-Lim nodded, then bent at the waist and touched their toes, then deepened the stretch by grabbing the back of their calves and hugging themselves almost in half. They straightened after a few seconds and said, “I slipped in here with a few layered spells that I feed with this battery.” They pulled a midnight-blue sphere about the size of a mandarin orange from a pouch at their belt. It glowed softly in the twilight. “I’ll be able to keep the effect going for another three or four days, then I’ll need to be out of here before the System knows I’m here.”

“Is it a bad thing for the System to know?” Sarah asked, feeling her face heat up as Kimi-Lim looked at her incredulously. “Look, pretend I’m from another fucking world for five minutes and not a prejudiced human from your Empire. You’ve been doing pretty well with that for the most part.” She immediately regretted her outburst and winced. “Sorry! I hate that about myself. I just spout off without thinking sometimes.”

“No, you’re right,” Kimi-Lim said, “It’s easy to forget. Otherworlders are rare, but they’re not unheard of. Portals linking Nolm to other worlds are too powerful to be opened by anyone but Amethyst rank Reborn, at least on purpose. I suppose someone might get summoned here accidentally if there were some sufficiently advanced dimensional spellweaving gone awry—maybe that’s how other Otherworlders have gotten here.”

“So having mysterious and super-powerful wizards who apologize for destroying the world before performing major surgery on you and then shoving you through a portal to another world isn’t an everyday occurrence?” Sarah said acidly. She winced and shook her head. “Sorry. Forget I said that. Um…It’s getting a little late to travel. Do you think this is a good spot to camp?”

“It’s as good a place as any. For your first question: no,” Kimi-Lim said. “I’ve never heard that one.”

They’d put the battery back in their pouch and brought out a tent from their Inventory. It was still tightly packed, but it just appeared in the elf’s hands. Even though Sarah had an Inventory of her own, it was still bizarre to see things just pop into existence in peoples' hands.

“Here, help me set this up while you tell me about your home. What was it called?”

Sarah shrugged and got up, helping Kimi-Lim unpack the tent. “Earth. The planet was called Earth, and I lived in a place called New Hampshire.”

She had to laugh at the utter mundanity of what they were doing. Kimi-Lim’s tent could have come out of a North Face catalog; the material felt like a nylon-adjacent fabric, and the flexible rods felt like they were made of plexiglass. “Aren’t there magical tents that pop up and construct themselves?”

“Of course there are. I just don’t have one; they’re expensive, and I’ve been saving up for… other things.” They handed Sarah a flexible rod and stake, “Here, hold this.”

It took just a few minutes between them: clearly, Kimi-Lim was well used to putting the tent up on their own, so it went quickly with Sarah to lend a hand. As they worked, Sarah talked about Earth.

She talked about her apartment in Bernouse with Griffin; it was difficult at first. The words got stuck at odd times and she had to clear her throat to get the next ones out, but eventually, they came easier and easier until they were a flood. Soon enough, they had constructed the tent and were seated at a fire that Kimi-Lim had built. They relaxed in a couple of plastic folding chairs that had been produced from the elf’s Inventory and Sarah was still talking.

She talked like that for hours. It was like Kimi-Lim’s invitation had been lancing a boil that had been festering for years and her words just had to get out. She talked about Chinese food and video games; the Internet and movies; that time she went to Disney World with her parents and got lost for four hours in the Animal Kingdom.

Eventually, sometime in the middle of the night, Sarah’s voice cracked and she cleared her throat, realizing that she hadn’t had a drink in hours. Kimi-Lim handed her a small steaming cup of tea. Sarah hadn’t noticed the elf making it, but it felt good on her sore throat: sweet and spicy at the same time.

“I know your pain—somewhat,” Kimi-Lim said, their voice quiet and considering. “My home was also destroyed—also by Imperials like your August Vasilias. They’re always overreaching and grasping. Greedy. They think the entire universe is theirs, that no one is greater than they.”

“Manifest destiny,” Sarah said bitterly, “that’s what they called it on Earth.”

“That sounds appropriately Imperial,” Kimi-Lim agreed. “That kind of thinking infects their entire society. They use their Reborn as elite shock troops for their Houses, all in the name of advancement to become powerful enough to go to their eternal war afterlife thing.”

“You’ve banged the advancement drum at me yourself,” Sarah pointed out. “What makes their advancement any different from yours?”

Kimi-Lim opened their mouth to respond, then stopped, thinking for a long moment. Eventually, they said, “The easy answer is ‘everything’, but I think that’s just a lot of cultural bias. Hearing about Earth, there’s a lot that’s familiar and a lot that’s weird. Like your global telecommunications network. That seems like an open invitation for spycraft on a global scale! Were your people okay with being constantly monitored?” They shook their head, holding up a hand, “Never mind, that’s not the point. The point is that Reborn get these grafts from ethershards and regardless of your reason, once you have that power unless you want die quickly, you need to get stronger.

“The Imperials use their power to expand and figure out new ways to exploit and take from those weaker than them, which at this point is pretty much everyone. I was training to use my power—my gifts—to protect my people. Now, I’ll have to settle with using it to get vengeance for them.”

“Well, I’m going to find Griffin first. From there… we’ll, uh, figure that out together.” She glanced down at her arm. “If he’ll even recognize me.”