--- AYMIAE ---
Something was intriguing about how slowly thoughts moved. It was a bit like trying to think about something she couldn’t quite remember; it was as if her mind was drifting through nothingness and occasionally bumping against a fact she remembered.
Her name was Aymi.
The deepest parts of the seas were out of reach.
She’d once hidden her mistress’s favorite locket behind a cabinet after she’d broken it.
There were hundreds of memories, most of them were things she knew that she knew, but sometimes she would find one and pause for quite a while, trying to remember why that fact was so hard to think about.
Her brother was dead and had been for quite a while.
She was alone.
But…well Aymi wasn’t alone so that fact must be outdated. There were others here, in this place, she would occasionally meet one of them and see their own facts of the universe. It was like a vast desert of minds out there, occasionally she thought she could see little lights floating out that reminded her of what souls looked like from her time trying to learn necromancy.
The other minds could do more than she could, and that fact only bothered her more the longer it existed. She needed to do something, to act, but the facts of how to do so weren’t there, she knew how to move a body, but when she tried, all she got was a dim sense that there wasn’t a body to move. There was something, but she couldn’t quite understand the impressions it gave her yet.
She could also -vaguely- remember dying. Sitting inside a burning building and weakly petting the head of a tree wolf as he whimpered against the flames. She remembered feeling something, and then she was here.
The others around her had memories like that too, they readily shared them when she shared her own, but all of them were more strange than she’d expected. They remembered dying of old age or falling into a deep chasm. They remembered a moment of shock years before that, as something in their souls was ripped away forever. They remembered being traitors, they asked if she was a traitor.
She didn’t know.
They remembered having been here for an impossibly long time, but none of them knew exactly what number to give it.
Aymi was the first new soul in the mass since the last of the traitors had died, and she was the only one who wasn’t a traitor. She knew this somehow, from meeting their tendrils and seeing their memories. They were curious about her, but none of them yet remembered what hope was.
She bumped into another mind and found a memory from not long ago bubbling to the surface, the confusion and fear as she tried to understand what was happening with slow…deliberate thoughts.
The mind studied it, it examined the memory with thought. And then after a long moment, it spoke without language in the pure tongue of the land, ~What do you know of my brother, newcomer?~
Aymi took quite a while to process her words, her mind circling unhelpfully as it slowly came into focus. ~Brother?~ she managed to weakly send the concept of siblinghood.
~Turste, you came here with him.~
Aymi thought about that for a moment, slowly recalling the tree wolf again, she sent an image of the wolf, covered in mushrooms and screaming his insanity to the world. ~Tutste…~
The mind examined the memory with an intensity that Aymi hadn’t expected, peering at it. ~He was… a strange ferien?~
Aymi sent confusion, not knowing what that meant, ferien was…a concept cobbled with dog, wolf, and hunter, a concept that meant defender of the ash. Aymi wasn’t familiar with that, or the word the mind tried to attach to it.
The mind specified, ~It’s probably closer to a wolf… but Turste had an obsession with ferien. Could he turn into other things?~
Aymi thought about it again, remembering a bit of the conversation they’d had, ~Not… really.~ She tried to attach the concept of possessor entities to the words, but it didn’t work.
~Alright, what do you call yourself?~
Aymi thought for a moment, remembering vaguely stories of fey that could steal your soul if they knew your name. She figured that this mind seemed nice, so there couldn’t be any harm in it. By that point, she’d forgotten her name and had to dig it up again. She contemplated for a decent amount of time again whether it was a bad idea to share, before relenting. ~It’s Aymi.~
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
~Nice to meet you, Aymi, I’m Salven. Do you know who you are?~
~Yes.~
~Do you know how you got here?~
~No.~
~Were you sandfrost before this, or is this your first experience?~
Aymi paused at that, a realization finally dawning on her, ~Sandfrost! I wasn’t!~ She sent excitement, ~It worked!~
Salven sent alarm, ~You did this on purpose?!~
~I…think so, that is odd, isn’t it.~
--
Aymiae opened an eye, blinking at the world around her. White sands sprawled out from the area, but as she remembered the thousands of souls around her, she could pick out the sandfrost, the spores, and the way each thought led to new growth in them.
Her eyes weren’t very effective yet, but she could still see the moon up above and it’s calming light, just like Netun described it. Aymi looked down at herself and examined the figure woven out of mushrooms and streams of fungus. She didn’t look exactly like her old self, but she’d managed to use her soul as a template at least, so she suspected she was mostly the same height and build.
None of the others could do this sadly, a result of their nature as traitors, but they’d helped her so much once she’d started talking to them. Hesitantly Aymi got to her feet, instinctively reinforcing the legs since she hadn’t made them quite as sturdy as what was needed. The body was really really fragile at the moment, she didn’t have much of a model and had no idea yet how to make the internal systems work effectively.
This wasn’t the first time she’d stood up, but it was the first time she’d had something resembling eyes. She’d managed ears a while ago, and the sense of taste was trivially easy since she already had something like it with her mushrooms.
Aymi flexed a hand and decided she’d fudged the construction again. She kept trying to give it four fingers like a tuvei, but her template apparently wanted five. As a result of the conflicting ideals, the joints were always in the wrong places and some lengths were distinctly off. This version probably wouldn’t be able to hold things or achieve any level of manual dexterity.
There was a man sitting on the ground in front of her, watching her curiously. He was taller than she’d expected, with a beefy build that defied all reason for a tuvei. He looked a bit too much like a human, but his stark white hair, skin of exactly that same shade, and almost red eyes told all she needed to know.
Netun, the traitor who’d overcome his nature. “That’s good, your ears are still working, right?”
Aymi thought for a moment before remembering how to nod, she opened her mouth and found the words coming out as a slur, “The…handsss are…” She blinked slowly and shook her head before simply holding them up for him to see the mismatched joints and wrong proportions.
He tilted his head, “You’re fighting the template.”
“It wantsss… five.”
“Well, maybe your hands would be better with five fingers then.”
Aymi squinted at them and thought about it for a second before conceding his point. She’d just have to figure out how to use five. She thought for a moment, “Thank…thank you.”
“Nonsense descendant, I’m certain you will repay us with knowledge a hundredfold when you go out into the world with this.”
Aymi nodded, remembering the promise she’d made to the souls in the sand. I will help the world, I will seek only the future where that world is preserved, I will serve the people, and I will avenge needless destruction. “Still…thank you.”
--
It took quite a while for Aymi to feel comfortable that she would be mistaken for a regular person if anyone saw her body, every time the sun rose it would kill the body she made until she finally obtained enough presence of mind to start burying it properly under the sands. Throughout the whole thing, Netun didn’t even comment on her diminished intellect, though she could tell it was frustrating for him. He would simply nod and explain how he did something. She didn’t have to do it the same way as him after all, even though she could tell that Netun hoped she would do it his way.
It was a long and arduous process, but she even figured out how to make something that looked quite a bit like clothing. Netun said that was a must-have since their bodies were fragile by nature and would often require replacing without access to things like fabric or armor.
The only thing she couldn’t change was the stark white color of the entire body, it wasn’t completely out of line for a tuvei, but the template decided to look quite a bit more human than she’d expected, even more so than Netun’s. The ears were still pointed, but they weren’t large enough to be a tuvei. There were still antennae, which were exactly the right shape to use as spore collectors so she could communicate with the others, but the template wanted them smaller. At least with this, she could simply ignore the template since it was a size problem and not a construction issue.
When she found a pool of water one night and examined her reflection, she couldn’t help but admit that she now looked distinctly like some of those halfbreeds she had occasionally seen in her travels.
I’m going out tonight, Aymi finally decided. She pushed some spores out with her resolve.
One of the souls nearby sent a confirmation. Beside Aymi, a small box was pushed out of the sand by the mushrooms growing there. When she’d asked about money, the souls had admitted to having quite a large stash from people who’d died in the desert over the years.
Aymi picked up the box, her fingers still felt clumsy, but that was from lack of practice now, not lack of ability -that extra finger was really throwing her off too. She opened the box and counted the coins inside, deciding it was at least enough to get some real clothing that would help protect this body from the sun.
Netun nodded to her and stayed where he was, watching the moon above in a way that told of hope with a twinge of regret.