I woke up slowly, my head throbbing and my vision blurry. I couldn’t quite remember what had happened… hadn’t I been training with that one martial arts teacher, Mikey or something? And I’d had a weird dream too, about some kind of post-apocalyptic high fantasy world and paladins…

It took me a while to realize that I wasn’t in my own bed, or in my room, or even in a hospital room. I was in a cot in a stone cell, a barred window leading outside the only source of light and the only way out a thick wooden door. It looked like it was around dawn, but… something was off about the light. I put a hand on one of the bars and felt my entire arm deaden, like it had fallen asleep but worse; I had to wrench my elbow back, and the feeling returned slowly.

“So, you’re awake?” asked a voice from the other side of the door. “You going to fly off the handle again, or can we talk calmly?”

I tried to respond, but my words came out slurred.

“Damnit, did she get infected…?”

“Nno, I’m… not zrombie,” I managed to say.

The voice on the other side of the door was quiet for a few moments before the door opened, revealing the nice Paladin lady and someone I didn’t recognize, they were wearing a white apron and a little hat. The man in the apron approached slowly, but I was still too dizzy to move; he opened one of my eyes a little wider and tutted to himself, a wave of something washing over my body.

“She’s concussed; I’m not surprised, she was taken out with a blow to the head instead of something cleaner. My magic can help her recover, but it will still be about a day before she’s fully healed,” he said. With another wave of that something- magic, he’d said- my head suddenly felt much clearer. I let out a sigh of relief, one hand pressing against my head to quiet the less-persistent throbbing.

The Paladin woman- Allison, I think? – shook her head and looked down at me, an unreadable expression in her eyes.

“What are we going to do with you?” she asked herself. “Your Soul Magic is so unstable that you’re almost as dangerous as the Infected, but your skills in martial combat, even if it’s mostly without a weapon, would be a great boon to our cause.”

“I- I don’t understand… what happened. It didn’t feel like losing control, it just felt… natural. As easy as breathing, and as sensible in the moment as anything else,” I said.

“It’s soul magic,” replied Allison. “It is a representation of who you are as a person, the struggles you go through, the path you have chosen to walk, and natural talent combined to create a powerful ability. For you to have that sort of berserker rage on a hair trigger implies that you repress a great deal of anger, and that you desire to lash out at the world. And the only way to change your soul magic is to change yourself. It will not be easy.”

“I think it’s going to be easier than having to deal with flying off the handle at the smallest of things again.”

Allison quirked an eyebrow and folded her arms at the ‘again’ but didn’t comment on it. “Unfortunately, the slow and safe option isn’t so safe for you. Or rather, it isn’t so safe for the rest of us. What would happen if you attacked someone when we weren’t there to intervene? So, we have two options: either you can meditate in this cell until you fix yourself… or we go Soul Diving.”

“And what, exactly, is soul diving?” I asked.

“To those who understand the nature of the mind and the soul, there is a ritual one can engage in. To send one mind into another, unraveling it layer by layer, piece by piece, to uncover what lies beneath and try to weave the whole into something stronger. If it goes wrong, it can leave you worse off than before… or your mind so shattered that it will never recover. I would suggest the meditation.”

I felt it again, that bubbling fire, but now that I could recognize it for what it was, I could push it back down again before replying. “You think that I haven’t tried that? That I haven’t tried fixing myself? That I haven’t tried therapy? I don’t want to live the rest of my life in a cell, and I don’t want to live the rest of my life having to watch myself and make sure I don’t turn into a monster at the drop of a hat!”

Allison’s eyes narrowed, but she gave a small nod. “Very well. I will prepare a ritual space with a mind healer; it should be ready by tomorrow. For now, rest and meditate.” Allison and the medic left the room at that, leaving me alone again.

I let out a loud, rough sigh at her last words, but I didn’t have anything better to do, so I figured I might as well. I focused on not focusing, emptying my mind of all thoughts and emotions by picturing myself sitting on a partially submerged rock in the middle of a river. The water rushed up and down my back and legs, each splash drawing out the tension within me and letting it flow away.

But unlike when I normally did this, the meditation changed on its own. Instead of feeling the cool stream, I felt the water twist and turn around me, hot steam and cold mist billowing around me. I tried to snap out of it, but whatever this was, it was no longer just meditation.

I felt myself splitting in two, as if everything I was and everything I could be could no longer remain itself. Anger and compassion, fear and hope, hot and cold, energy and exhaustion, all kept separate yet together by a layer of apathy and emptiness.

And then I was shaken awake by Allison, and I nearly bit her hand in the process.

As we made our way to the ritual room, I found myself clenched tight. Some part of me was terrified, and it took everything I had to not bolt then and there, even as I knew that this was the right thing to do, that it was necessary. Allison kept herself behind me though, forced me to keep going, and I hated her for it as much as I was thankful for it.

The ritual room itself was nothing special, just a somewhat larger room with a bed in the center, a half dozen other people arrayed around it; one of them I vaguely recognized as the doctor who had healed me. A metal chain was laying next to it, and Allison led me to the center, wrapping the chain around me gently but firmly, binding my arms and legs and laying me down on the bed, the chain still gripped in her hands. One of the six arranged in a circle began to stretch his fingers before flexing them in intricate patterns, then let out a shout. Glowing, shifting geometric patterns appeared on the floor, swirling and looping, folding in on each other; each line began to shrink, making its way towards myself and Allison, looping around the chains binding me. I watched as the glow began to make its way towards my head and my heart leapt into my throat.

Stolen novel; please report.

Allison had done this sort of thing before, to help people overcome crippling mental problems- sadly a common thing these days. Most minds were layered, with large problems spotting to the surface like a bone sticking out of a wound, or a rock sticking out of the soil. And in this space where thought became real, sometimes the metaphor was literal.

Allison was not looking at anything so obvious. There were, of course, problems aplenty, but that was the issue- there were so many problems, so many issues, and none of them fit together. There was no single issue to fix, no single traumatic memory to unfold. There was a multitude of them to the point that the ground beneath her feet was more rock than soil.

She took a deep breath to steady herself (for even if she wasn’t truly breathing here, staying calm and centered was important in this not-place), and began to dig. The layers unfolded, revealing the thoughts hidden underneath.

One layer down, and she spotted a great, heavy period of nothingness. A great time where nothing was felt and nothing happened, not because of boredom but deliberately. An all-smothering apathy trying to stem the tide of pain, and not able to fully hold it back anymore.

The next layer under, she saw confusing images- technologies she did not recognize, a society more intricate than the one she had been born into, but more than that, she understood the emotions behind them. She saw anxiety and depression, a need to grow up and live as oneself battling with a self-loathing so powerful it nearly sent her reeling. She saw the options available, the context behind them, and realized that Sophia’s people were suffering under harsh economic conditions. That the prosperity Sophia’s parents had found had not extended to their children, leaving behind uncertainty and fear. That, at least, Allison could fix; Sophia was not there anymore, she was now in this war-torn world, and the fears of belonging and prosperity were no longer concerns. The Paladins protected all they could, after all.

That bump smoothed down, Allison went down another layer. She witnessed Sophia’s school days, when she had felt isolated and alone, where she had been unable to succeed not because she wasn’t good enough, but because the system itself could not help her. Because people in a position to help either did not care or could not do enough. Because Sophia herself was broken, different in a way that made her unable to cope with what so many other children quietly bore.

That… was not so easy to solve. But Allison tried her hardest; she searched that era for feelings of belonging and safety, and she found good memories of family. Of a mother who tried her hardest because she knew what that suffering was like, of a distant father who gave as much love as he could when they were together despite his own failings, and she wove those memories together, allaying the pain with the comfort.

Allison went another layer down, and what she found was… concerning. It was fear and rage, but it came from nowhere and everywhere- an all-consuming anxiety and a need to lash out cut by fear of the self, of the harm Sophia could inflict upon others. She had been so small then… so desperate for friends and to excel, but something within her was broken and she could only lash out at the world. Suddenly the apathy made sense; it wasn’t just a response to trauma, it was a response to how Sophia feared herself and her abilities. She feared hurting the people she loved, and she feared losing control, and so she buried it underneath the trauma and the self-loathing and the emptiness.

The pain began to buck and writhe, taking on a life of its own- and Allison was not sure what to do. There was nothing she could take to ‘fix’ it, nothing she could weave into this pain to make it stop, it was simply the baseline of Sophia’s existence. Even through the layers and dullness, Allison could still see where it spread through Sophia’s life, simply directed inwards instead of outwards. And that was why her Soul Magic was so volatile; pain and hatred were more a part of her than nearly anything else, pain and hatred that she tried so hard to suppress.

No, that was it- it had taken on a life of its own. It was still part of this body and this mind, but it was rejecting the suppression. It was almost as if…

Allison dove upwards once more, seeing the layers one by one and them all together, and witnessed as Sophia’s soul began to twist and separate, her attempts at fixing the other woman’s mental problems serving only as small bridges between the two increasingly distant halves.

She watched as the two halves took form. She watched as the two parts figured out what they were and took slow, stumbling steps. She was not needed here anymore, not truly, but she felt as if Sophia deserved someone to witness the people she was becoming. One resembled a great bird made of flame, burning and dying and burning and dying in a cycle, growing larger and stronger with each burst; the other was a serpent made of water, freezing and melting and freezing and melting, and with each cycle it grew larger and stronger. As the two began to stabilize, Allison sighed in relief… before they began to fight once more, singing fire and ringing ice lashing out at one another.

Allison intervened, summoning the binding chains to hold them down. “Stop! Stop fighting! You no longer need to fight, you are both freed from one another!” she cried.

“It hurts! It hurts! I’ll keep attacking until it stops!” cried the phoenix.

“Be quiet! I just want to stop hurting people!” cried the wyrm.

The two struggled against their bonds, and Allison could see them harming themselves in their struggles. But these two new souls… they needed something far more than words.

Allison wrapped her arms around them both, radiating both fiery empathy and soothing compassion. “I am sorry that you had to come into existence like this,” she said. “I am sorry that you two conflict so much. But you do not need to fight; you are allowed to coexist, you are allowed to be your own selves. You are no longer straining against one another; you are free.” And with those last words, Allison released the chains binding their souls, and the two began to calm. Flames began to lick at ice, and water began to lap at flame, but neither were attacking, merely exploring the new boundaries between the two.

The two who were once Sophia began to coalesce, the elements that made them up shrinking back to reveal two women. They both resembled Sophia, twin sisters in every way but one… and perhaps that one detail didn’t truly matter, Allison thought to herself.

The two gave wan smiles, still so similar after all that, and Allison backed out of this mindspace. Her work here, what little she needed to do, was done.

As Sophia and Sophia began to wake up, they (‘since when were we a we and a they?’, they thought) shrugged off the chains- which had loosened sometime while they had been unconscious- and stood up.

Or at least they tried to. The mental separation was making it difficult to control their overall body, and flashes of frustration were felt from both, making heat and cold emit from their extremities. Cold, knowing that she had hurt Heat for so long out of fear, backed off, letting the other woman take control of their newly-shared body. Their temperature rose, a gentle warmth radiating outwards.

Heat stood up, her legs less wobbly now, and helped Paladin Allison rise to her feet. “Thanks for your help,” she said. “I think we were on a fast track to burning ourselves into cinders, and you helped keep us steady.”

A little snake made of water emerged from their shoulder, its details simple and crude, gently coiling itself around their body’s neck. “I think we would have figured it out for ourselves eventually,” said Cold. “But this ritual smoothed out the process, and you were there to make it easier. Thank you.”

The people gathered around the two were smiling, but most of them looked fairly exhausted- and the light streaming through the window had gone from midmorning to late afternoon. Heat gave a small grin, and the two sisters and Allison piled outside. After all, with two new souls, that meant new Soul Magic, and Heat and Cold were both eager to test theirs out.