--- AYMIAE ---

She parted ways with Netun. He wanted to check on some leads in Yera, and she had that meet up with Harrel happening soon. So they’d gotten some long distance communication crystals that could vibrate into specific patterns, Aymi had used them before so it was just a matter of teaching Netun.

They both agreed that she would meet him in Yera after tracking down Harrel… and then finding Raan so she could retrieve those spare keys to her bunker… and then she had to deal with the society of the Mis-born Dragon again… There was a lot on her plate, but Netun going to Yera would alleviate the stress of not knowing what the Whisper had been doing for the last three years, and it would help her get back into contact with some people there.

So she agreed entirely with the idea of separating, but Aymi hadn’t really… been alone since before the fire. She’d always had an alanerea checking on her, or Netun to bounce ideas off, or for the past couple of weeks she’d had the Shelex.

But now, unless she wanted to lose a few days to talk to one of the souls in the sand, Aymi was alone.

--

Aymiae remembered feeling more and more tired as the weeks passed by, She trudged on through the desert, making little progress as she passed the dunes, she’d already asked the alanerea for assistance seven times by now, she was running out of energy, she was running out of magic, she was running low on vitamins and all that.

But every time they gave her more nutrients, it seemed to only drain away faster. They were happy to help, really, but Aymi felt bad asking them when they were already limited to the ancient organic matter that was found in the sands.

Netun didn’t have any ideas, or he hadn’t figured out how to communicate them over the limited buzzing of the crystal, so she’d stopped bothering him. She was just… tired, that's all. She told herself that she was just consuming too much energy. She cut off more of her mass from the whole, feeling a little better when she shrank to a more manageable size, but that only lasted a few days before she was back to misery and hunger. She ate decaying matter, she ate her own withering mushrooms, she went to a city and tried some human food again.

But none of it lasted.

Aymi remembered laying in the sand one morning, as the sun was just starting to hint at the possibility of rising. She remembered thinking that it might help if she just killed this body and made a new one, but…would she even have enough strength for that? Would she even be able to make one? Was she dying somehow?

She stared up at the stars as they slowly began to wink out. She contemplated her options again and again.

That was when a gruff looking man peered over her with a frown. He was dusty, and he wore one of those masks that filtered out the sandfrost to help protect the lungs. He spoke something terse in a language she didn’t recognize, kicked her once in the ribs, and then started rifling through her pockets when she didn’t react or even blink.

He thought she was dead or something. Was she dead?

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. The words of her promise danced in the back of her mind as the man wrenched the illusion chain from her neck, cooing over the delicate construction.

“How many other starving people have you robbed as they lay dying in the desert?” She whispered, turning her head to look at him. Was that a justification though? Was she about to do something that would only make the world darker?

She examined the man, who’d practically jumped out of his skin a moment earlier. Right, my illusion dropped. She slowly and ponderously rose into a crouch, the man fell onto his backside as she rose upward and edged away from her, yelling something, waving a strange symbol at her as if trying to keep a demon away.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Aymi couldn’t find it in herself to care what he thought she must be, because this was the perfect person to try out the very last option she could think of. She needed energy. The human body had a lot of energy, magical energy, vitality, even blood was energy.

She launched herself at him almost by pure instinct, sinking her fingers into his arms and pushing her mana at him and then pulling. She grew sandfrost out from her fingers and into him, pulling nutrients straight from his blood.

She found a reservoir of energy there, a connection to magic itself.

The man went limp as Aymi sucked his affinities dry, taking a decent amount of blood with them. She released him after a moment, a sudden horrible terror pulling up into her bones.

What had she… what had she just done.

She remembered prodding at him and feeling a distinct, overwhelming relief as she felt a steady pulse remaining. Perhaps that would… yeah that would teach him not to rob people suffering in the desert. This was… this was fine. She examined the five holes where her fingers had been and shuddered. It wouldn’t kill him. Somehow she was sure of that.

She stood up and glanced around, finding the man’s steed hitched to a cart. The cart had a covering so she dragged him over and placed him inside to help prevent his demise when the sun rose. She took her illusion chain from his limp fingers and drew it once more over her head, still feeling sick.

Aymiae walked off a ways and sent tendrils out into the ground. She parted the sand and dropped her body into the resulting indentation just as the sun began to rise, intent on interrogating the Alanerea for any possible information.

--

After that Aymi lost energy slower, but if she took more than a month or two without stealing anyone’s energy, she started spiraling again, it once even got to the point where she started losing control of her form entirely. She gave up after that.

It wasn’t terribly difficult to not kill the person, and it wasn’t even that hard to just take a piece of their magic instead of eating their whole affinities, usually if she was discrete about it, they wouldn’t even know something had happened.

But that didn’t stop her from feeling terrible about it every time.

That didn’t stop her from giving herself tear ducts just so she could cry.

Which… meant she needed more water. But sparks, things weren’t supposed to be like this.

At least you aren’t a possessor entity, that would be so much worse. A part of her brain whispered. That’s what she’d expected to become honestly, if that idea with Turste had worked. She’d expected to either die or to be kept somewhat alive while Turste held the wheel.

She’d expected it to be Aeinar’s own torture but she’d had so many things she regretted. She’d had so many things she needed to tell people, so many unfinished dreams, so many people she’d still needed to help… and Turste was the only path towards that.

But now she was here and it wasn’t anything like she’d expected. Turste was just different from the others but apparently so was she. But it was a good kind of different. Now though, Aymi wasn’t sure if her kind of different was better or worse than Turste’s.

She had no idea in the moments how long it took her to get from Aubinere to Melor, but by the time she arrived at the waypost Harrel had said to send word through, it was the year seven hundred and seventy five.

A whole year since she’d left Aubinere.

Aymi suspected that this would grow to be a common occurrence for her, losing a couple of years here and there since sandfrost greatly preferred a different timetable entirely from humanity.

But she’d still made Harrel wait a whole year in one city.

The rest of the way to the capital, Aymiae didn’t dismiss a single body, refusing to lose any amount of time, refusing to make Harrel wait any longer in a city than he had to. She knew how much he hated cities.

Aymi was having a bad day, a bad week, a bad year, but a few months later, she finally approached the gates of the capital city, the moon far above, her illusion immaculate, her energy full from eating some magic the other day. And she knew that there was very little that would stop her from telling Harrel exactly what she’d been avoiding for as long as she’d know him.

The only thing she could think of that might stop her was Harrel himself.