Kimi sat on a rock high in Montañas del Dragón, a mountain range in the Eastern continent. Far below she could see a small village. According to her ghost, it contained one of the keys to their salvation.

I told you to stop calling me a ghost, her ghost said to her. Well, perhaps it was more like he thought it at her. She wasn’t sure how Morgan communicated with her, and when he tried to explain her brain got all fuzzy and she starting trying to take a nap. Hopefully because it was so boring, rather than a side effect from her spectral hitchhiker.

“You know I can hear what you’re thinking, right?” Morgan said. Kimi decided that worrying about the technicalities of saying something versus thinking it was beneath her attention. As for her ghost.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Kimi said. “I got the gist of it, but I’m going to keep calling you a ghost. I’ll reconsider if you can come up with a better word to describe a five hundred year old guy trapped in a body made out of malhahons.”

Morgan remained silent for a moment, then said, “Oh, fine, we have more important things to worry about. You do remember what we’re doing here, right?”

“Uh, give me a minute.” Kimi was having trouble keeping track of everything going on. One of those side effects. She had to constantly revisit everything that happened since last night.

Nanji— no, the Colonel—had taken Kimi to see her commanding officer, Major General Saburou. He was the head of the Seitojin Special Forces, supposedly the Left Hand of the Emperor himself. He would make an odd pick for a Left Hand, but the Imperial family had a lot of privileges over the noble houses. Or at least that’s what the gossip said at the academy.

“Do we have time for trivia?” Morgan said.

“Hey, you stop melting my brain and I’ll stop having to patch it back together,” Kimi said.

“I told you, it’s not my fault, my—“

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Betrayed by your acolytes, cursed to wither and rot for four hundred years, the only way to escape is to hitchhike in someone else’s body. Except oops, turns out it’s contagious.”

“You knew that when you agreed to help.”

“I didn’t say I cared,” Kimi said. “Now do you mind, I really do need to put my head straight. I’ll stick to the highlights. Not like the little stuff will matter soon anyway.”

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Kimi sensed Morgan wanted to say something, but he managed to bite his tongue. Now where was she?

The General decided the episode with Kira proved her particularly suited for a special mission. Their hated enemy had for too long monopolized the great Malhahonic Spirit. Why the city state of Duroterra was our chief opponent rather than something more pressing like starvation, overcrowding, and metafauna was a mystery to Kimi.

In any case, she was chosen to infiltrate the Black Temple and extend an offer of freedom to the captured god. And if that chance of freedom was refused, then Kimi was to deny their enemy the continued benefit of his power.

The adventure leading to Kimi’s encounter with Morgan was probably worth the telling, but she didn’t have time to think it over, and besides, there was no one to share it with anyway.

What matters is that it went well, up until Kimi slipped into final chamber of the elaborate prison at the heart of the Black Temple. She wasn’t sure what to expect, but it definitely wasn’t a dark room with a lab coat floating in it.

“Hello friend,” Morgan had said, back when he was still saying things rather than thinking them. “It’s so rare for me to see a new face, how can I help you?”

It took Kimi a minute to realize the voice came from the floating lab coat. She supposed, once her eyes adjusted to the dark, it looked like the lab coat was being worn by a man in a black suit. Perhaps another agent made it in before she had.

“Hi. I’m looking for…. I mean, I was told to go to the room with the god in it.”

“Oh, is that so.”

“Yes. I’ll be going there, now.” Kimi didn’t see anywhere else to go but the exit, but she also didn’t see how there could be an even better protected area than the room she was in.

“It seems like this wasn’t what you were expecting,” the lab coat said. “Pretty sure a god isn’t supposed to look like this? Then I have good news for you. I’m no god, though I suppose I am who you are looking for.”

Morgan introduced himself. And then launched into one of his speeches that made her brain all fuzzy. The gist was he used to be the leader of the Black Temple, but when their interests diverged the Arteficers struck him with an arte that trapped him in a half formed state.

When he finished, she asked, “Why did they keep your around?”

“They wanted to dance at two weddings,” Morgan said. “I invented artes, and they couldn’t give up access to my experience.”

“So, they lock you up, and you spend the next four hundred years working for them?”

“Not quite,” Morgan said. He didn’t have a proper face to smile with, but sounded quite pleased. “I might have set up a few things here and there.”

“And that’s what we’re here to get,” Kimi said, back in the present.

“No, this is the other one, that Alvina made,” Morgan said, but back in the thinking way again. “We’re going to use this one to get the one that I designed. Then we’ll be able to—“

Kimi missed it when her ghost could only say things to her.

“Can we please focus on this right here, and worry about all that other nonsense later. And make names for things, while we’re at it.”

“Yes, we’ll get right to it, but first we have a complication.”

“It’s no big deal,” Kimi said. “We can wait them out.”

Kimi sensed one of those Morgan speeches brewing, but he restrained himself at a sharp glare from her. Instead he said, “I… don’t see the point of waiting. I know a few tricks we can use to speed things up.”