Erik felt like shit. This whole situation was shit. It was just…shitty. When the universe gives you a middle finger the moment you were born and insists on throwing every possible catastrophe at you, it makes sure you hold certain priorities. Erik had almost died five times while he was being born. And if that wasn’t the absolute most accurate moment to capture his entire life experience, he didn’t know what was.

First, he had both a heart and brain aneurysm, simultaneously. Next, his head was stuck in the birth canal at an awkward angle, one that threatened to snap his little baby neck. To make things worse, his umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck not once, not twice, but four times. Finally, his lungs were filled with amniotic fluid, and he almost drowned.

By some miracle, while he was still being born, Erik manifested his shroud and performed four different surgeries on himself simultaneously. He was fully aware that his own life was both absurd and impossible. The first story he ever remembered being told was the one of his own ridiculous survival.

So, Erik grew up with two constants. A deep, deep appreciation for the beauty of the world and everything in it. And the constant threat of losing it in the dumbest possible way. You’d never hear him complain, and he certainly wasn’t ungrateful, but it could be a bit of a bummer.

Of course, his bad luck made a lot of things about life difficult. Everything, really. But finding friends was at the top of that list. No one else in his city had a shroud, which made them all a little…squishy. Erik could get burned, stabbed, blown up, covered in tar, splattered in acid, break bones, and shrug it off. Other kids, not so much. They’d get caught up in something that happened to him, and suddenly they weren’t allowed to come over anymore.

That’s not to say anyone really blamed him. It was so blatantly obvious that things just happened around him with none of his input that only the dumbest and meanest of his neighbors actually had a problem with him. No, everyone was nice! He did his best to help out as much as possible, make up for all the messes that happened when he was around. And everyone appreciated it. There was a lot he could do with a shroud that others simply couldn’t.

But everyone kept their distance. Even his family. They loved him, but there was no question that being around him was dangerous. It wore on his parents, and Erik knew his brother came to hate him for how much special treatment he got. And Erik couldn’t exactly fault him. While he did not choose this life, it was certainly pretty distracting to live around him! So Travis was overshadowed. The shroudless, normal-luck-having younger brother.

And everyone else learned to avoid contact with him. Again, not their fault and totally fair. Things tended to explode when he was around. Or burn. Or freeze. Just generally rapidly and randomly change their existing state of matter. It was dangerous. Besides, Erik didn’t need friends. He needed to survive. Every day was a challenge, and dragging other people into the mess was a recipe for disaster.

Until Erik met Caeden. And Lily. And Cat. Now he had friends. Friends who ignored his bad luck and weirdly happy attitude or the random bouts of uncontrolled laughter. Or all the times he choked for no reason, even when eating soft foods. Or drinking. Just generally, putting food in his mouth was a guarantee that he would choke at least once. Which, if he was honest, he could acknowledge that it was awful table manners. Plus, Caeden said he snored really loud, so that must be frustrating.

But they put up with him. Respected him. He wasn’t expecting that. Honestly, Erik had been following his overly sensitive, carefully refined defensive sense when he met Caeden. Something about the guy bled safety and power. Erik could feel that he was safer around his dark-skinned roommate. Even back when they first met. In that ancient structure, Caeden had pulled through in a way that Erik never would have expected. It was then that he knew he’d be doing his best to follow Caeden wherever he went.

Because it was safer.

Genuinely, he didn’t really view it as a friendship. He didn’t know what that was or what it meant. At the time, he just knew that surviving the Academy would be easier with Caeden around. It was instinctive. And his instincts proved correct. Despite all the drama and major events that rolled around Caeden, Erik knew of only one instance where he was in more danger than if Erik had never met him.

That moment was in the depths of Black Reach. At that time, Erik had truly started to understand and appreciate the friendship that had formed between not just him and Caeden, but Lily and Cat as well. It felt good, having people around that weren't’ constantly afraid of the consequences of his presence. All of it was new and amazing to him. He didn’t know how to deal with it. Because of that mixed-up feeling, when Caeden asked him to hold that tunnel on his own, Erik agreed. He knew it was a bad choice. He was putting himself in more danger.

For the first time in his life, Erik deliberately chose the less safe option. Because Caeden asked him to. He ignored the warnings screaming at him from his aura senses and picked the dangerous path. For his friends. And that choice was enough to literally elevate his soul and form his Incarnation. Because he sacrificed his safety. For them.

So, Erik found out that he needed friends. Which was super inconvenient. Erik had no idea how to have friends. He knew how to interact with people. He wasn’t socially illiterate. But actual friends that he trusted and relied on who also relied on him? Whole new deal.

And he messed up. Back when they were facing off in the tournament against other factions, he lost his cool and ended up throwing out Caeden and Lily’s plans. Then, when they were stuck underneath Black Reach fighting hordes of monsters, he failed again. He lost, losing control of his tunnel and dooming everyone to die. The only reason that didn’t happen is because he attained his Incarnation, and Sauma happened to be incredibly powerful. He couldn’t live up to Caeden’s trust in that moment.

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And that all led up to his most recent failure. He couldn’t even keep his shit together long enough to help in the final push to retake the Academy. Instead, Caeden had to send him outside the suppression field. Because he became a liability. Because anything he could have done at that point would have hurt more than it helped. Even then, Caeden gave him one task. One. Fence in the revolutionaries with Sauma’s webs. Only to have a bunch of machine-men punch a hole through it like it wasn't there.

Which left Erik, as he thought of it, feeling like shit. He wanted to help. He wanted to become someone his friends could depend on. The same way he could trust them to have his back, he wanted to have theirs. For the first time since he was young, Erik felt like something needed to change.

He had been content with his life. Sure, he almost died constantly, and he wasn’t exactly the smartest guy around; but he was on the path to being a doctor, helping people instead of hurting them. He figured he could do it with his shroud from a distance. That way, the patients didn’t get caught up in any explosions.

He never wanted to be a fighter. He was good at it because he never got scared, and his reaction times were amazing. Both really helped in a fight. Erik understood that, as a shrouded, he would have to join the military, so he wasn’t against learning. But it wasn’t something that spoke to him in the same way medicine did. So, he never really gave it his all. Well, he did like martial arts, but more as an exercise in self-control. Not as a weapon.

That alone was coming back to bite him. All his friends had completely outstripped him at this point. He knew that Lily and Caeden were better fighters than him; they had been from basically the start of school. But now Cat had her new shroud, and he couldn’t come close to standing up to her.

And that should have been fine. Fighting was honestly a bad way of surviving. Running was much more effective almost every time. And Erik was a survival machine. He should have been fine with the bare minimum level of competence. Enough to get good scores at the Academy and secure a less dangerous post in the military that he could coast through until his decade of service was up, and he could go back to medicine.

But Erik didn’t think that was all he wanted anymore. He wasn’t abandoning that dream. He still wanted to be a doctor. It just so happened that he wanted other things too. Things like actually helping his friends. Instead of goofing around and being dead weight. And so he had a problem. He didn’t know what to do. He knew what he wanted, but not how to get it.

Luckily, he knew where to get good advice.

Pushing on Stitch, Erik forced his sigil to appear, hovering in front of his chest. A pure white human heart, constantly being cut and sewn back together, appeared in front of him. Thick bands of snowy, cloth-like shroud flowed out of him and into the sigil. It glowed before the shape began to warp and expand until his Incarnation took shape.

Sauma was a pure white arachne woman. She had the upper body of an unnaturally pale, but heart-stoppingly beautiful human woman and the lower half of a massive snow-white spider. She was also a part of Erik, so despite her beauty and his own inclinations, he felt nothing but an almost brotherly affection for her. Because of her nature as an Incarnation, they could speak without his needing to manifest her like this, but he always found that awkward.

“Yes, Master. What can I do for you?” Sauma smiled, gazing at him with her pure golden orbs. Her eyes contained neither an iris nor sclera. She had to crouch on her eight legs to fit in his and Caeden’s small bedroom. Her combined spider and human halves made her significantly taller than a typical human, nearly eleven feet if she stood normally. His roommate was currently off working on his ethersmithing, so Erik had the space to himself for a while.

“I need your advice, Sauma,” Erik admitted.

“I will do my very best to advise you, though I know nothing that you do not. I fear I won’t be much help.” Despite her words, Sauma smiled comfortingly.

“I…I don’t know what to do, Sauma. I want to…to change. The way I am now, I’m no help to everyone. Heck, I’m getting all nervous sitting here without my aura. That’s messed up!” Erik shouted, the frustration boiling over. “Every time my defensive sense is gone, or I get hurt too much, I lose my shit, and I stop thinking. I just…I can’t be like this anymore. Everything was fine when I was just looking out for myself, and everyone else kept their distance. But now I have people who put their trust in me, and I can’t keep freaking out whenever things go wrong. It’s no good. But I don’t know what to do! What should I do?”

Erik felt his insides heave and turn. He felt sick to his stomach. All these thoughts kept turning over and over in his head, and the more he thought about it, the worse he felt. Erik had never felt like a failure before. It was awful.

Sauma listened to him vent his feelings in silence, listening attentively without interrupting, which Erik appreciated. He wasn’t sure he could deal with it if she had told him he was being pathetic. He knew he was. Erik didn’t appreciate this feeling, this weakness. It tore at him in a way he wasn’t ready to defend against. Instead of responding immediately, Sauma lapsed into thoughtful silence.

When She finally spoke, it was with concern and kindness. “Erik, I’m sure I don’t have an answer for you. I know nothing more about this than you do, and I don’t think I’m the one who can help. But I know what you can do.”

“What?” Erik clung to her words, wanting any kind of solution. Anything to get rid of this unfamiliar, icky feeling.

“You can talk to your friends.”

The words hit him like a ton of bricks, except emotionally. Somehow, it had more of an impact than the real thing, and he should know. He’d been hit by a ton of bricks before.

“You know that Caeden and Lily are much smarter than you. They also care for you. I think seeking their insight would help, even if they don’t have a solution to your problem.” Saum took a deep breath before continuing. “Erik, I’m your Incarnation, so know that I say this with the utmost care. I think something in you is broken. You’ve lived an unimaginably hard life. I know you’ve come to accept that, made peace with such strange and unfair circumstances. I think that acceptance let you survive, but it also broke something in you. I think now’s the time to try and fix it.”

Erik stared at her for a long, long time. The last thing he wanted was to talk to his friends about this shitty feeling. It was humiliating. He couldn’t hold it together, and now he was going to dump that on his friends? They were so busy. It wouldn’t be fair to them.

Then, Erik remembered when Caeden and Lily had their fight over Caeden’s unwillingness to act. Caeden had talked to him then, told Erik his feelings, and confided in him. Maybe that’s what friends did? He was new to all this, but that felt right.

Maybe a talk with a friend was exactly what he needed.