Mel was awake before anyone else. She stayed snug in her bedroll, meditating. Having bought another petrified branch with her Battle Points, the meditation went a little further.

Unfortunately, it didn’t last long.

When Mel heard a noise, her hypervigilance took over. At first she expected it was the magic ritual perimeter going off, but realized it was something far more mundane.

Unsure what to do, Mel watched another Magi have a nightmare that darkened her features with pain.

Gwen woke up, panting, out of breath. She stared at the wall as if she could see demons before she covered her face in her hands.

“Nightmares?” Mel asked.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” Gwen answered quickly. She took some time to calm down. “I’ve been having weird nightmares ever since the uplift. Can’t remember the events before the uplift, which…I suppose you don’t either. It’s clear you don’t remember us.”

Mel froze. She knew, somehow, that this was coming. Sooner or later, it would be impossible to hide that she didn’t know them.

Did I miss an inside joke or something? Mel couldn’t think of anything in particular that would have made it obvious. Then again, Gwen seemed oddly familiar with her. Maybe she really did forget her?

She tried to play it off with an awkward laugh followed by an even more awkward, “Whaaaat? Noooo.” Mel sighed, dropping the poor charade. “That obvious, huh?”

Gwen nodded. She seemed more sad than angry.

Mel didn’t know what to say. “If it helps, I woke up in a sarcophagus and nearly suffocated the first few seconds of the Convocation. Maybe I have some sorta brain damage.”

She laughed it off, purely because the only other option was that she really did have brain damage.

Brain dablage, she thought to herself with a derisive snort.

“You…what?” Gwen stared at her, concern plainly writ on her face. “And here I thought you might have gone native.”

That was a common Magi term for losing who you really were while living another life.

“There is that too,” Mel said. She clearly didn’t agree though.

The memories that were coming back made it clear she wasn’t a normal person. Aside from the knowledge of her studies as a Magi at Brookmoors Academy, she also had years of memories of being Mira, the gold elf from Aldim.

Maybe Hal knows what’s going on, Mel thought to herself. Though now she worried that he might not know her since she’s a short blonde girl instead of a willowy, tall elf with tanned skin.

“We all appeared together,” Gwen said, looking at her hands. For once, she avoided any eye contact with Mel.

“Clearly not all of us.”

“No. We thought you got separated somehow. Something…went wrong with the invocation.”

Mel had no idea what she was talking about, but she understood that an invocation going wrong wasn’t exactly unexpected. Most Magi magic was experimental at best, and students were the most likely to ignore proper protocol in a bid to expand their learning or gain a bit more power.

When you regularly crossed realms of reality to live another life on a Worldshard with rules and magical laws alien to your own, it wasn’t that odd to try out experimental spells.

“W-well, we’ll find you a healer. So long as you’re okay with that.” Gwen took a deep breath. “In the meantime, regardless of what you remember, I’m still your friend, Mel. We’ve always had each other’s backs, and I don’t plan on changing that.”

Mel was all too aware that if Gwen was lying, she had no way of confirming that. However, the way Gwen and Thomas acted around her suggested that they were genuine. Gwen alone might have been suspicious, but the both of them together made her feel as if they had once been friends.

Besides, Gwen would have to be a master manipulator to pull some of that off.

If I can get those memories back, maybe I’ll figure out how I got here.

“I would like that,” Mel said with a faint smile. “I…oddly feel like I want to apologize for not knowing you, but–” Mel shrugged, unable to put her feelings into words.

“It’s okay. It’s not your fault.” Despite what she said earlier, Gwen went over and squeezed Mel into a hug.

Mel grumbled, but didn’t fight too much. At least, not until Gwen lifted her off the ground and began to sway back and forth like she was some sort of lost family pet.

She twisted around, looking at Gwen. “We bang?”

Her eyes went wide, cheeks turning very red. “What?”

That got her to put Mel down without much fuss.

Mel looked her up and down thoughtfully. “I’m not hearing a ‘no’ which seems like the easiest thing in the world to say.”

“Oh look at that, there’s a monster outside.” Gwen quickly wandered out of the camp.

Mel watched her go. “What about Thomas?!” she yelled at her back.

Gwen began to sprint.

Cupping her hands to the sides of her mouth, she added, “You can’t run from your feelings!”

Mel thought she heard, “Watch me!” but she wasn’t sure.

She looked around the campsite. “I really…saw that going differently in my head.”

“The two of you weren’t romantic,” Thomas said, appearing beside her and fully dressed. His clothes looked as if they had just been freshly laundered.

Because, of course they would.

Mel looked skeptically at him. “Do you make it a habit of sneaking around people?”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“Not intentionally, no,” Thomas admitted. “I’m beginning to think that aspects help to shape us.” He looked her up and down, his golden curls catching the first rays of sunlight as they slanted down from the high walls into their camp. “So, you really don’t have any memories of us?”

Mel shook her head.

His reaction was nothing like Gwen’s. His smile almost looked relieved. “Then we’ll just have to make new ones, won’t we?” He looked over Mel’s shoulder at the exit to the camp. “You really spooked her good.”

“It’s a gift.”

“Some things never change,” Thomas said, shaking his head. “You want something to eat? I’m pretty sure Gwen wouldn’t mind. She set some things to cook while we slept. Since you don’t know, she’s really very talented. That nose of hers helps, of course, but even without it, she’d be a skilled cook.”

Mel took the offered bowl of spiced porridge topped with fruit. They ate together in relative silence. Only the sound of Thomas turning the pages of his book disturbed the comfortable quiet.

She would have expected the silence to bother her, but there was something soft and velvety about it instead of cold and isolating. It was like being tucked away in a warm library, the scent of beeswax, mahogany, and old books lingering in the air while cold rain lashed against the mullioned windows.

A bastion of knowledge, safety, and inclusion, hidden away from an uncaring world.

The imagery was so real that, for a moment, Mel thought it might have been a memory. She could practically feel the rumble of thunder roll through the air.

They sat in companionable silence for a while until Mel finally set her bowl down and asked, “What are you reading?”

“A book about ritual spells.” He gingerly flipped the page.

He reads slower than me. And I was never a good student. At least not with homework and studying.

“Can’t you just absorb the knowledge? I had a ritual spell scroll that I only had to unfurl to learn.”

“I did that a few times, but I believe that’s a mistake.” Thomas looked up from his book and smiled. “You see, once you use a tome or scroll, it goes away. However, the item itself contains all the information you might otherwise want to learn. The system merely guides it into your head.”

“Then why are you reading it?”

“It’s all well and good to have the information downloaded to your brain,” Thomas explained, “but the truth is that there is so much more value you can squeeze out of learning the intricacies the system glosses over in order to help you learn the spell.”

Mel was beginning to understand. “It’s the difference between learning how to do something and why.”

“Precisely. You can learn how to do something simple like…cutting a tomato into slices. You use the ‘slice’ command, and you still get wonderfully cut tomatoes, but that’s all you get. If you understand the deeper mechanics of how to slice something, then you can cut potatoes, meat, anything. And when it comes to adapting, you can use that knowledge as a basis to dice and chop as well, since it’s merely a slight alteration on the ‘slice’ command you already know.”

“You’re a bit of a nerd, aren’t you?”

“Aren’t we all?” Thomas said with a laugh. “The difference is, I’m just better at it.”

Mel grinned to herself. Nothing wrong with a confident nerd.

Eventually, Gwen returned carrying a bundle of mixed glowing rocks and herbs. She didn’t say anything to disturb the quiet, though Thomas did look with interest at the materials that were placed on top of a crate.

The viking sat down to eat, then prepared something new to cook on the fire before stepping outside again.

Mel got up to follow her.

Gwen turned around once they were out of the narrow slot canyon, looking curiously at Mel.

“I’m not much of one for studying,” Mel explained. “How can I help?”

“Me neither,” she admitted. “I was going to harvest meat from my recent kill. You could join me. Otherwise, we could use more of everything, or choose between training and starting a hunt over–”

A cold flash of light drew Mel’s attention away from Gwen as she talked. She didn’t mean to tune her out, but the familiar pale streamers of light pulled at her attention.

Without thinking of what she was doing, Mel put a hand on her [Ghostflame Lantern] and turned it on.

As she thought, the white flame within danced and changed colors until it settled on a pale flame edged in darkness. It blew constantly toward the north, along the sheer stone wall to the left. In the direction of those pale streamers she had seen.

Mel pointed. “What’s in that direction?”

Gwen looked over. “Not sure yet. There’s a barrier that takes more mana than Thomas and I had.”

“What kind of barrier?” Mel felt she could have used more time to unwind after all the fighting and death, but she didn’t have the luxury of time. It was enough that she had plenty of food and a surprising amount of comfort, thanks to Gwen and Thomas.

The presence of a barrier was not unlike a lock to Mel. The moment she saw one, she immediately wanted to see what was inside. You didn’t lock something–and a barrier was just a magical lock–unless you wanted to protect something valuable.

That, or you wanted to keep something inside.

In either case, Mel’s thirst for proper adventure instead of wholesale slaughter drove her on. This was what she lived for. What her life might have been here if she had her memories, or if the Bloodtide hadn’t broken her friends.

What could have been if Sabrina and the others had wanted to learn more about this world and get stronger together…

“Nothing too complex,” Gwen said thoughtfully. “Its makeup resembles the aurora between the plateaus, but instead it’s impassable until you meet the requirements. Like my chain, or certain tomes.”

“Show me?”

Gwen inclined her head and led the way, her chain softly rattling on her back. She stopped briefly along the way to put an animal carcass into her inventory.

Mel looked at it, then Gwen. “You must have some serious storage space to fit that in there.”

Gwen nodded. “It’s something we’ve discovered. Generic inventory is the smallest, while the more specific an inventory is with what items can be placed inside, the larger it is.”

The amber hills rolled along the wall of pale natural stone until they dipped into a low valley where a series of crumbling gravestones dotted the hillside. A rusted fence cordoned off the area, with a small mausoleum perched at the center at its lowest point.

Inches in front of the rusted fence, Mel saw the barrier. Her ghostflame blew heavily toward the mausoleum. It didn’t take a genius to realize that there was a serious amount of necromantic energies about the place.

Mel could feel the chill in the air from here despite the barrier.

“See?” Gwen said. She hardly seemed interested, as if she’d seen plenty of these barriers before and hadn’t found a way inside. “We’re not sure whether it needs High Copper mana, or just enough competitors.”

Mel followed the subtle flicker of the ghostflame, moving around the edge of the graveyard as she did until it pointed straight at the mausoleum.

Unsurprisingly, that was also at the entrance to the ancient graveyard. An arch of weathered stone stood before her, its gates firmly shut and locked with more than a simple padlock.

You already have the key, Mel realized, raising the lantern.

A subtle push of mana and the pale flame flowed out of the lantern toward the gate. The barrier flashed to stop it, but instead of extinguishing the stream of fire, the barrier burst into pale flame.

Mel and Gwen had to shield their eyes from the pale brilliance as the ghostflame burned away the barrier. When the fires died, the barrier was gone, and the gate was open.

“You could probably see that flash of light for miles,” Mel grumbled. The last ember of the barrier’s flames floated through the air and landed in her lantern.

Some of the rust and age of the lantern vanished, as if it was repaired by the ember of the barrier.

“Yeah, but we’re here first.” Gwen grinned hungrily.