Gi came to groggily. His back rested on the the ground and bushes and vines surrounded him on all sides. The mottled white and black face of Yultir appeared directly in his vision.

"I wonder what memory appeared for you to make you wail and cry like that," Yultir snickered.

"A memory...?" Gi had trouble separating his mind from that of the vision. Hadn't that just been another vision from Danna? He remembered the vile anger that spewed from Danna's mouth and he shuddered.

Had she...?

"It seems to have left you confused. Why don't you look again?"

Richard lay in a dark room. A ceiling fan drifted lazily overhead and a piercing wail could be heard from another room in the house. Richard turned and shook the person sleeping next to him.

"Hmn?"

Gi tried to force his way out. This was just a vision between Danna and the dopey follower. This wasn't him. It wasn't a memory. He was Gi.

Then why did Richard feel so...?

"Why can't you just help me for once?," she spat. "You just take and you take and you take."

No, I don't like this. I don't want this. This isn't me. This isn't me. This isn't me. Danna's words cut through his every attempt at blocking them out.

"Stop being a useless partner."

Gi was screaming back with Richard. "You don't get to say I don't contribute." Their voices in Gi's mind were the same. His instinct to explain and defend himself was the same as Richard's. The pain that he felt from Danna's words was the same.

"All I ever seem to get is your mistakes."

Please, it's not me. It's not a memory. I'm not the follower.

Danna stormed out of the bedroom to go take care of Noah and Gi felt Richard's concern for the child. His child. No, Richard's child. Why was it...?

As Richard stomped around the room thinking up arguments for why he wasn't pathetic, all the reasons that Richard embodied the dopey follower sprang to his mind. The way he latched onto Danna from the very start. The way he'd needed her to step out from his father. The way that he'd depended on her day after day to make him feel like he was worthwhile.

Gi continued to follow along as Richard went to work and he found himself slipping back and forth into Richard's own consciousness and viewpoint, losing himself in the memory. Surely, it couldn't be real...

Charlie and Bastien stood talking in the breakroom over coffee. Gi knew these men. They were good friends that hung out outside of work. Bastien was an older French gentlemen who loved the outdoors and Charlie was a younger man who often went with him to hiking, kayaking, or golfing.

How do I know...

Richard arrived in his boss's office to see Denise. Her ruffled blouse and blue slacks seemed so detailed. The simple gold necklace that she often wore stood out in his mind.

...all these details?

"This shouldn't be a surprise, Richard."

He'd been able to feel what the dopey follower was feeling throughout every vision. How had he never noticed? Some of the visions didn't even have Danna in them. His coworkers stared as he left, feeling pity for the useless manager that had gotten fired.

Richard clenched his chest and leaned forward against the steering wheel and both Gi's and Richard's thoughts were perfectly in alignment.

It just hurts so much...

He popped a double handful of pills before deciding to go see his father. Not just The Father as Gi had known him, but his father. The man who'd raised him. Even as he thought back to his childhood, it wasn't just the visions that he remembered. They were there too as events like flushing his goldfish or the time his father backed him up at school stuck out.

But there were more.

His father teaching him to ride a bike with derision and mockery, but... he'd learned to ride. His father calling him stupid over Sunday dinner because he'd gotten a B on his latest chemistry test... but his grades had improved.

With the slightest shift of his wrist, Richard turned the car, heard the whine of his tires on the shoulder, and then after a cacophony of pain - nothing.

Gi's eyes shot open into the garden around him. Yultir's smirking face leaning over him. With a desperate surge of strength, he summoned the full might of [Archbishop] and released [Divine Ire] in every direction again.

Yultir laughed, but Gi kept firing and firing. He didn't want to go back into that memory. Not again. But nothing he did could stop it.

Richard lay in a dark room. A ceiling fan drifted lazily overhead and a piercing wail could be heard from another room in the house. Richard turned and shook the person sleeping next to him.

"Hmn?"

Unable to fight it anymore, Gi fell into the memory. Danna's anger and disgust tore at all the beliefs Gi had held since he'd been born as a slime. His boss's casual indifference enforced that he didn't matter. The pity of his coworkers damned him as useless.

By the time Richard reached the certain stretch of highway, Gi's hand joined Richard's to turn the wheel. Anything to end it.

But it didn't end.

Every time he crashed, he woke up back in the garden. Every attack he fired or demands he made of Yultir didn't stop it. Every time, he found himself back in that dark room with a ceiling fan, spinning overhead.

Countless times he experienced that vision. In the beginning, he just wished the for the crash. For it to be over. As time went on, Danna's disgust seeped deep into his soul and he looked for any anchor in the storm of self doubt and emotions.

Every iteration he clung harder and harder to one thought.

His father always knew what to do.

That thought provided him a firm foundation to stand on. He was his father's son. He'd inherited that strong will. He just had to use it.

It wasn't Richard's fault. Danna had volunteered to take care of Noah at night. That was her supporting the family. His was earning money.

It wasn't Richard's fault. His boss had been making too many demands and shifting the priorities too much. He never listened when Richard expressed his concerns so, of course, he couldn't manage something doomed to fail.

It wasn't his fault. The only mistake he'd made was not being more dominant. If he'd have gone above his boss's head, it would be him being fired not Richard. If he'd put his foot down with Danna, he could have gotten her to see reason.

Yes, he was his father's son and The Father didn't stand for anything less than obedience. No, The Father required everyone to obey.

And he would be his father's son.

Gi's eyes shot open. The roof of a cave loomed overhead, stalactites pointed down at him. Yultir's voice echoed through the cavern, but it was far away and Gi couldn't make out what was being said. The faintest shimmer of a garden surrounded him with immaculate bushes and paths, but it was obviously not real.

You've realized an aspect of your fate!

Your Quicksilver Body and Heart of Crossroads have connected through your Blood of Nobility.

Combined Aspect: Liquid Light

1 Heart Orb awarded. Current Heart Orbs: 1.

Subconsciously, Gi floated into the air as he came to terms with the changes to himself. Light dripped from him like water, sparkling in a bright sunlight. Each drop evaporated as it fell, wrapping him in its Aether and keeping him aloft.

[Merfolk's Blessing] had evolved into [Unstoppable Nobility]. Neither sea nor air would bar him from his dominion anymore. From how he felt, it wasn't the only change, but there was something more important that demanded his attention.

The misty scene around him had shifted into his memory. As removed as he was, he let it wash over him and the feelings felt... weak. He had been Richard. That was the truth and he understood that now.

Now? He was Gi and he would quash the weakness of his past self. Richard hadn't been up to the task of inheriting The Father's legacy but Gi could.

He sent Aether towards [Celerity], but it too felt different. He turned to light as normal, but he no longer needed to move in a straight line as he warped forward. In an instant, he rounded the entrance to a cave and found Yultir. A summon appeared beside him at the end of his teleport. It was a part of his upgraded [Celerity] now called [King's Guard], but Gi ignored it.

Yultir had his eyes closed and was breathing deeply as he churned his Aether to maintain the illusion on Gi. He didn't even realize that it had been broken. The old Gi who was obsessed with not being weak might have killed Yultir while he was distracted. The new Gi knew better.

Strength had to be exercised.

"Are you enjoying yourself, Gi?" Yultir mumbled, expecting him to be both deep in the cavern and in his illusion. "This can only end one way. You see that now, don't you?"

Gi summoned all of his [Archbishop]s. Four of them grabbed a limb while the fifth snatched Yultir by the neck. The goblin's eyes popped open in surprise. To him, a floating gleaming otter had just appeared before him.

"You made a mistake," Gi said. His voice was calm. He wasn't just in control. He was control. This was his dominion.

Yultir squirmed against his summons, but Strength hadn't been a focus for the goblin and even with a smaller fraction of his Strength, his summons held the goblin easily. Gi noticed that a stronger percentage of his stats were transferred to [Archibishop] after he'd realized his Blood, but it was a passing thought.

"No, please!," Yultir pled as the reality of his situation had been laid clear to him. "We- we can serve you!"

Gi floated forward and grabbed the Yultir by the chin and relished the look of fear that was painted there. He was in control as he always should have been.

"It is the fate of some to serve. Yours has always been to die."

Several Squads of the Illusor Clan rounded the corner, various illusions breaking harmlessly against his Unique Heart and realized Blood. The stones from their slings did even less than the illusions and both Gi and his summons ignored them, but an audience would be good for this.

With a thought, each of his summons pulled. Yultir's skin and meat stretched and he started to scream, struggling ineffectually and flinging barely formed illusions at him. The Illusion Goblins started to scream and beg for mercy, but it was far too late.

With one final pull, each of his summons ripped Yultir apart and his lifeless torso fell to the ground followed shortly after by his separated head and limbs. When Gi turned his sights on the rest of them, they fled in horror, but it didn't matter.

Yultir was right. There was only one way this was going to end.

****

Tiria sprinted up Igna, pushing through the rain with the other Elites and every still living and healthy member of the clan. Her [Waterborne Weapon] was stronger with the abundance of wild Water Aether in the air and she intended to use every ounce of her power to assist her Progenitor.

"It's been an hour. If he was in trouble, we already fucked up," Kumo said.

Samba snapped. "Shut. Up."

Tiria didn't have time to bicker. The head of their clan was in danger and she wasn't going to stop for something as petty as a spat between two of the Elites.

Their group rounded the final corner of the Bazaar that opened up into the Illusor Clan's estate and Tiria stopped at the sight.

Where she'd expected to see a vast sprawling estate as had been described. There was only rubble and small black and white mottled bodies everywhere. A sparkling golden light with a smaller set of six lights shone like a constellation of stars above the ruined estate and fear clawed at Tiria heart as she wondered what hidden skill their enemies had.

It wasn't the Illusor clan though.

"It's... him," the twins said in disbelief.

Their Progenitor hovered in the air, the rivets of silver fur that had covered him not even an hour ago were now a rich gold. It looked like shining water dripped from him that sparkled even against the backdrop of the rain.

His left arm was still tucked inside his simple grey robe, but even the old scars he had from the Child Stage seemed to shine like a light was behind them. The summons from his domain which used to be white were now the same golden color of the various rivers on Gi's own fur. Their bodies seemed to shimmer like the surface of the lake during the dry season.

"What happened to him?" Samba asked under his breath.

Gi's eyes suddenly snapped to a part of the rubble and seven globes of light exploded out of the sky and crashed down into the rubble sending shards of the building rocketing through the night sky in a huge explosion.

Tiria flinched backward from the sudden light and Kumo slapped a brick out of the air with her [Phantom Strikes] domain that was headed towards them. The attack must have alerted Gi to their presence because his eyes darted over to them and his palm raised up to attack.

"It's us!" Tiria yelled out, but Gi must have already realized that they weren't goblins as he floated down to them. His tail shifted as he floated like he was simply treading water in the air.

"How did the clan fare?" Gi asked.

"We lived. Only a handful of casualties. Poe's webbing made it difficult for them to fight back."

Gi nodded. "And Elizabeth?"

"Her and her Elites left after we defeated the last of the trolls. We weren't able to take them down."

"Something we will remedy." He glanced back towards the estate. "The Encampment Crystal needs to be dug out. Get some people on it."

"What will you do?" Tiria felt stupid asking that question, but the otter before her seemed different than the one she'd first met when she came here or the one that had been there after the Dungeon. He was calm and in command and completely alien to her.

"I'm going to talk to Elizabeth."