--- FORA ---
I squinted at the air as a faintly familiar rune started rippling to my magesight, I had a pretty good idea who it was before it even solidified into the golden glow of the double triangle, the rune that represented both spatial magics and time magics.
The fact that they were the same was a constant source of annoyance for the part of me that was Eliax, why would they do so when time magics and dimensionalism couldn’t co-exist? Every evidence I’d ever seen said that they would always be opposites, like the void and the between, like nothing and something, like order and chaos.
I tapped my chin in thought as my clone materialized, and paused in confusion as I noticed an unfamiliar man beside her, he was strange, his complexion pale and white, almost glowing in the dim tunnel, his eyes a pure red that blinked quickly as they examined the area with clear disorientation.
I sighed at my clone’s antics, feeling myself bleed into more Eliax than Fari, but my clone—from her bearing—seemed to be the opposite at the moment, “Who’s this guy?”
She grinned, patting him on the shoulder as he started to look slightly queasy from the teleport, “This is Netun, a friend of a friend!”
“Which friend?”
“Apparently Turste is alive!”
“Sparking tree wolf…”
“My thoughts exactly.”
The strange albino lifted his head, blinking at me slowly and then looking back at my clone, “Geneseri?” He pointed between us.
My clone grinned, and then dismissed herself, as was apparently her habit whenever someone needed to be told important information and I was there to do it instead. Her clothing and belongings thumped to the floor, leaving me to stare dimly at them with tired eyes. I sighed as her memories flooded into me. “That was my clone.”
Netun stared at the pile of clothing, “She didn’t tell me she was a clone.”
I picked up the dimensional bag and started rifling through it, “They never do unless there’s literally no other option.” I frowned at the copious amounts of recording crystals and pages. Right… there’d been some kind of a ransacking she’d just come from. I sighed again, this time at them—I was definitely more Eliax at the moment—and put them back inside.
I was at a disadvantage until I absorbed the memories now, but my clone would never do that if it would put me in actual danger, so this Netun fellow must be trustworthy. At least, as trustworthy as could be expected when what constituted actual danger was more ‘anything that will kill me dead’ rather than ‘anything that might kill me dead.’
Netun massaged his temples for a moment, “I’ll admit I’m fairly disoriented, I arrived here rather abruptly, and I left most of my mass back in Vethemelnexintelali and it wasn’t a pleasant experience.”
I blinked at his ability to say the name of the capital, only historians or weird scholarly people did that. And yet I got the sense from my clone's memories that in the two hours she’d known Netun, they’d bonded far closer than should have been possible. “I’m disoriented too.” I paused for a moment, tapping my chin absently as some things slowly started to fall into place.
“Perhaps a break then?”
I nodded, sitting down on a chair carved from stone and gesturing for him to do the same. He seemed grateful for it, and drew himself into a meditative stance as the minutes ticked by. Eventually he opened his eyes and seemed to relax visibly, probably ready for conversation then.
I had one thought tumbling about in my head that refused to leave, an observation my clone hadn’t made because of our presently differing perspectives. “Sparks…” I muttered, “Does this mean soul siblings are a real thing?” I didn’t like thinking about soul connections, but soul siblings were a lot less strong a bond than other ones.
“Soul siblings?” Netun asked, “That was the lost sage’s idea of a different kind of soulmate, correct?”
I nodded in confirmation, “Except unlike soulmates it’s a kind of bond that people with soulsight can’t see since it wouldn’t be purely magical in nature.” I remembered the crimson line I’d seen so long ago, the one that had bound me to another soul way back in my first life.
He seemed thoughtful as he replied, “That idea did intrigue me when I first heard of it, but I feel like it’s just a label for something regular. People meet strangers and automatically understand them all the time.”
“And yet the soul is a complicated thing,” I interjected, “Believe me I can see them. For all we know you’d be able to find those bonds somewhere inside it if we could figure out where to look. It’s just that the soulmate bond is so much stronger and more potent.”
“That’s a point there, I suppose that we don’t know.”
“Souls are…” I frowned, a sense of deja voo suddenly bubbling out of the memories I’d absorbed from the clone. “Sparks, that’s the seventh time we’ve started debating something about the soul, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“I think that’s a new record or something, how did you say you first heard of me again?”
Netun smiled slightly, “I actually was looking for you the day of that fire, you and Turste.”
I didn’t like that memory much, but I was certainly glad I still had it, “Right, my clone asked you that, you killed Sir Yanovel and his lackeys.”
His gaze turned darker, “They were the scum of the earth. I’m sure that Justice herself was cheering me on.”
“Justice?” I prodded.
He brightened again, and I got the sense that he didn’t often switch gears so quickly, he didn’t seem to mind the change in topic though. “Justice! I haven’t found her true name anywhere, but the goddess of Justice is definitely the one I’m worshiping!”
“Huh, so you go around and smite evil doers for… a dead religion.”
“No, I joined a dead religion so that I could properly smite evil doers. Someone once pointed out to me that my own moral code isn’t perfect enough, I need a higher one. And so I found it!”
“I wonder how many other mostly dead religions are just waiting for someone like you to find them.”
“According to my research, thousands! Though… most of them are probably not dead, they’re just practiced in other lands, like the goddess of prosperity, or the god of protection, or… some even probably worship Aeinar itself.”
I shuddered, remembering the battlefield of ash, the void had had a presence about it, an impossible desire for everything, for experience, for emotion. I hated that feeling more than the sight of blood in the sand. “I’m sure anyone who worships the void deserves to live there for eternity.” such irony, to be speaking of soul bonds one moment and the void the next. I supposed I was destined to think about Aneles today.
“It certainly would be an unconventional religion.”
“The kind that should be lost forever.” I stubbornly insisted.
“I’m inclined to agree with you there.”
There was a long silence as I contemplated Aeinar. It was nothing, a nothingness that was somehow substantial. And yet… It was also everything, it was an everything that ate and ate and ate. Something like that… But it was so alien that I doubted I’d ever know for sure, there was no way that anyone could ever truly understand it without going mad; the other gods made so much more sense.
I felt my gaze move to the ground, where my clone had been. The thought again hit me, were we separate people? At all? Sometimes I felt like I was more… Eliax or more Fari than otherwise, but that was still technically me. Right? I picked it up from the ground and set my clone’s dimensional bag on the table, taking things out one by one and examining them. “Do you know why the Mis-born Dragon keeps making people disappear?”
Netun shook his head slowly, “I did once know, but they took that memory from me rather thoroughly. I believe that I barely escaped their clutches. If I hadn’t been able to draw extra strength from the between realm… well I’d likely have been captured.”
I nodded slowly, understanding that part. I had a suspicion that it was also their way of getting rid of people who were likely to change the world too much from Giums ideals. Kureia… she’d definitely known something though, Niun too. “They’ve almost captured my clones at least a million times by now, so far they’ve always just dispersed before the Mis-born Dragon could get anything out of them. Do you think it would help if I let them catch one so we could learn more about their base?” The extremely Fari-like question surprised me.
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Netun opened his mouth and closed it a few times, “Maybe…? It’s a risk though, and you really should think about something like that for longer than a few minutes.”
The stories about heroic sacrifices were always the most interesting, though Netun was right, I probably shouldn’t base decisions off that. I felt the Fari in me bleed away again. “I was planning on sleeping on it, deciding in a few days would be best.”
He nodded, and another silence descended on us. I frowned at the ceiling for a moment before popping my back and getting up, “Alright, I’ll be back in a minute.”
At Netun’s nod, I started the short ritual, muttering the activation phrase under my breath. “Places beyond, places between, thoughts of worlds, thoughts of dreams… Give me your secrets.”
I blinked at the silvery blue crystal surrounding me, and at the new objects I vaguely remembered my clone adding to the room. She’d prioritized the Gatestone memory, so I already knew about that, but when my eyes locked on the wardstone, I felt a dim sense of accomplishment from her memories. I’d done that, I’d found a wardstone.
Those things were so rare that I was almost more likely to find a dimensionalist with operational magesight these days. A wardstone could be used to keep hundreds of spells running indefinitely. With a wardstone, you could set up magical defenses around a home without having to recast the spell every week or even recharge it. And the spells would be active that whole time.
Aymi’s illusions had followed a similar principle, a spell having been cast a long time ago and usable by anyone, except you had to charge them, they were easy to nullify since they didn’t fight back, and since they weren’t active they were harder to differentiate from regular objects. I really missed her illusions anyway, but if they’d been connected to a wardstone they would have been a million times more powerful.
The problem was that I had no idea what to use it for, I could make a permanent portal from one end of the world to the other, I could use it to fly forever—though that would require taking the unwieldy rock everywhere with me. I could use it to power a secret hideout like the one Netun was in at the moment.
There were so many possibilities.
Far far too many.
I set the wardstone back where I’d had it, pursuing a few other important things before exiting my little piece of the between.
I would have to think about that and hope that I didn’t waste it on something stupid. Thankfully wardstones were something you could recycle, so it wasn’t terribly bad if it started its life with me as a battery for something stupid.
--
I squinted at the list of coded messages we’d found in Kolen’s financial records. Flipping through three entire pages. This guy had put codes into literally every expenditure, even down to the forged tax documentation. His dedication was remarkable.
Unless of course he’d just lied about all the numbers, which admittedly would have been much easier as long as they ‘kind of’ fit with the real ones. I was pretty sure that most people wouldn’t care if they noticed something wrong there.
“This.” I said, “It still makes no sense. I’m even looking at different combinations of the words and they still aren’t adding up. Like... What does ‘Deception’s nemesis’ even mean?”
“Don’t forget this one, ‘A different mind than our own.’ That could refer to a Go’lir maybe? Or some other kind of spirit?” He paused, frowning for some reason.
“Maybe deception’s nemesis means someone that deceptions don’t work on, like someone with truthsight?”
“Isn’t truthsight just a really weird name for a reverse prophecy ability?”
“Uhh… I stopped paying attention to the definitions after it became clear I’ll never be able to learn them. Sparking time magic…”
Netun looked thoughtful, “Maybe Kolen had a prophecy ability, that could be where he got all these weirdly poetic phrases.”
“I think we should just stop wasting our time with them.” I finally admitted, “We need to send in one of my clones, we can keep thinking about it after they’ve captured her.”
Netun frowned but eventually nodded, “Alright, how are we going to do this?”
I smiled, standing up to cast Geneseri. “We’re simply going to send her to the small island off the west coast called Engere, which as far as I can tell is the Mis-born Dragon’s base of operations.”
“You’re very impulsive when it comes to taking the next step…”
--
Fora stood next to me, nodding as she took the tracking crystal. I had the other half, which I would be leaving in our between realm base and checking up on regularly.
My clone gazed at it dubiously before opening her mouth and placing it inside. She didn’t need to eat as a clone, which was honestly a relief, but she could swallow things, they just… wouldn’t come back out.
Fora hesitantly swallowed the fairly large crystal, but it was simply odd as it went down, not uncomfortable or painful as she’d halfway expected.
After a moment of disorientation, Fora nodded to me.
I teleported away and my clone followed my example, the base fading away into a patch of endless plains, and then another… and another. The teleportation chain had seven stops before she finally sat down on a stretch of dark sand that was the coast of Engere, waiting for the Mis-born Dragon to find her.
--
The communication stone vibrated again, finally falling off the table and landing square in the dirt. I ignored it. Netun looked like he was trying to physically restrain himself from picking it up, but after a moment it stopped entirely. “What was that?”
I ignored his question, finally having found the map of Melor. I handed him a charcoal pencil as I rolled it out on the empty table. “Here, drop this on the map, we’ll make a new base wherever it lands.”
Netun glanced at the fallen communication stone again before shaking his head with what looked like exasperation. He took the pencil, frowning down at the map. After a moment he dropped the tool, tip first.
We both squinted at the spot the mark had fallen.
Oh.
Oh dear.
“Uhh… could you drop that again maybe?”
Netun gave me a flat look, pointing at the dark mark that was less than a day's journey on foot from Reiaran. “Didn’t you say that if we pick somewhere your clone is less likely to think of then we’re safer? They’re going to interrogate her.”
I shifted in my seat, still staring at that spot on the map, “Whenever I go back to Reiaran something terrible happens…”
“I understand that you died in a fire there once, and several other things happened, but Reiaran is the closest civilized area to the island of Engere, wouldn’t it be smart to investigate the spot for Mis-born Dragon lackeys?”
I finally tore my eyes away from the dot that represented so much of my history, “I already know the Mis-born Dragon is there. Practically every noble house that has an estate in Reiaran is almost completely corrupted. Everyone except House Seneset and… well and Hivren.”
Netun frowned, “Hivren, he’s the Shelex, right?”
“Yes. His sister is the head of house at the moment. He’s in Reiaran because he had an obsession with my first life.”
Netun nodded slowly, “and he’s in charge of the new Ayfel, the building that burned down with you and Turste in it.”
I paused, I didn’t like it when people forgot about the person who’d really paid the price. “Yes, and Aymiae, she was… she was there too.”
Netun tilted his head slightly, a far off look appearing in his eyes for a moment. “Sorry, what were we saying?”
I was happy to change the topic, “Right, so I already know that Reiaran is corrupted, that just means we should go somewhere else.”
“Oh, no we’re definitely going there now.”
“Sparking shifter thing.”
“That’s still a widely inaccurate description.”
“You really don’t look like a mushroom. That isn’t helping your case.”
--
We abandoned the base a bit later than I’d intended. Mostly because Netun kept distracting me. I was still counting how many debates we’d had about souls, and I was almost pleased to note that it was steadily approaching the twenty mark.
I’d eventually conceded though that a base near Reiaran would be the best, it wasn’t too far from our starting point, there was a city right there for resupplies, and I was intimately familiar with the whole area. If we ended up getting chased around somehow, I’d be able to teleport almost anywhere in the vicinity.
I was getting far too good at hollowing out random sections of earth. Even my soul affinity couldn’t compete with the sheer amount of earth element that I ended up shaping.
Netun was surprisingly helpful with the hollowing out part, he could… uh eat?... most kinds of dirt, and he’d somehow managed to make an air circulation system just by growing some of his fungus up through the ceiling and to the air.
I suspected it was acting like a set of lungs somehow, pulling the air in and then pushing it out, but I was perfectly capable of ignoring how creepy that was. I definitely didn’t lay awake the first night listening to it and wondering if the thoughts it provoked were in any way similar to what it felt like to be eaten.
Now that I thought about it, I wouldn’t be surprised if I got eaten at one point in the future… that would be… sparks that would be rough to recover from. Drowning too, what if my body decided to rebirth itself right in the middle of the ocean?
I shuddered lightly at the thought. Which didn’t help the sleeplessness.
--
My clone tried to smile, she really tried.
But she knew what was coming as they found her, she knew what was coming as she surrendered, she knew what was coming as they hastily set up anti-dimensionalism barriers and called in their superiors… who called in their superiors… who called in their superiors.
Wela was there before Fora knew it, the leader of the society, the Mis-born Dragon herself. She looked human on the outside, her hair was a dull brown with streaks of white telling of old age, which would never plague a dragon. There was nothing on the outside that might betray the soul inside.
But Fora could see the soul inside. It was a bright fiery orange, shedding light on everything around it. The rune that represented her magic was unfamiliar, but it was similar to the one I remembered in Xien. It was bright and powerful and it had an impossible amount of detail, to the point where if the clone looked at it too long her head started to hurt.
When Wela appeared, the clone knew that she didn’t have a chance to smile any longer.
Fora had been completely on board with this idea before, but that was when she was still part of her original self. Now though? Now she was having second and third thoughts, even some fourth ones. She knew though that she definitely didn’t want to be tortured, Fora didn’t want to be unable to dismiss herself just because I’d turned that option off.
But her body grew limp as a wip of electricity flashed out of Wela’s hands.
The world went dark.