I…I wasn’t sure if Sylvia was still alive.

In the few freeze frames I’d been able to perceive before Nerexxa had taken me out, I thought I’d seen the Vampire tear a massive rent into the Mithril chassis of Sylvia’s abdomen. The gravity of that hadn’t dawned on me until now, when I was fully coherent and not being talked down to by a pair of Spirits.

But…in the dim light of this pit, I could see her now.

She didn’t look good.

The Sculpted woman was lying haphazardly strewn across the surface of a nearby boulder, looking to have fallen straight onto her back in the fall. Her sapphire eyes were open but appeared to be unseeing to my own, and I don’t think she was conscious. Like I’d thought, there was a massive gash inflicted on her, around where a stomach would be on a fleshy like me. If she’d had them, her guts would be spilling out. As it was, the torn and tortured surface of her metallic skin revealed the dark hollow inside of her, where joints and latticework were meant to protect structural integrity.

When designing and constructing my false arm, I’d learned about how both the Sculpted functioned and their enchantment matrix. So much was determined by their skin being whole. A cut or two wouldn’t kill them, but massive rents like the one Sylvia had could. Their matrix-bound soul couldn’t maintain cohesion without surface skin integrity.

The Sculpted enchantment matrix included a sleep function that mimicked that of organics, and I’d seen my partner sleep plenty of nights before. But this didn’t look like that gentle slumber I’d witnessed before.

No, she almost looked….

I took a deep breath, grit my teeth, and clamped down hard on the panic trying to overwhelm me.

Dead.

But it was hard to tell that sometimes with Sculpted, I told myself. I’d seen a few heavily injured Sculpted in the past, either in Honoka’s tent or with random Healers. When a Sculpted was too damaged to function normally, they almost…shut-down in an attempt to preserve their soul, before it could escape their marred frame.

They didn’t have the convenient tell of a heartbeat or breath to convey life. You had to examine them individually in order to determine if they were savable.

Unfortunately, I had my own wound-based problems to deal with. I’d isolated the pain to keep focusing, but that didn’t change the fact I had to get myself treated or I was in trouble. I was pinned here for now.

But I had another option, to tell if my friend and lover was still with me.

I shut my eyes and did my best to shut out the world around me. I ignored the oppressive nature of this cave, still tainted by the Aether of that ‘Godbound’ that Nerexxa had awoken. I ignored the faint tremors from the surface that rippled all the way down to us in this pit. I even ignored my own senses, slowly shutting them off with my core ring.

Until the only thing I could perceive was my Aetherial sense.

I breathed deep, focusing intensely on Sylvia’s direction.

In, and out.

In, and out.

A spark.

There!

I almost started weeping at the sensation of Aether coming from Sylvia’s direction. There wasn’t much, and what I could feel was struggling to maintain cohesion, but it was there. Sylvia was still alive, for now.

But that could change any minute.

It didn’t matter if I would hurt myself more doing this. I had to act now.

My eyes snapped open, and I snarled. I reached over my left shoulder, grasped the thick stalagmite piercing straight through my shoulder, and activated Sylvan Vigor at full power. The Skill struggled, as my Stamina was no doubt near exhausted from my battles, and I probably only had moments of usage out of it.

But I didn’t care.

I heaved, ignoring the fresh blood that the movement drew from my wounds.

The stone shattered, freeing me from the floor. But I didn’t remove it from my shoulder. Instead, I rolled myself to my front, and started dragging myself in Sylvia’s direction, as I didn’t have the strength to stand. Sylvan Vigor had faded almost immediately.

When I had reached her, weeping fresh blood from new cuts on my front caused by the jagged stone of the pit, I did my best to assess the damage. As far as I could tell, Sylvia had lost almost the entire surface area of her stomach. The jagged edges of the Mithril looked razor sharp. I…I needed something to patch this with. It would need to be mystically reactive, as well, or else it wouldn’t work to maintain the enchantment matrix that cradled her struggling soul.

And I only had one source of mystically reactive metal on me.

Whatever. It was ruined anyway.

I reached over and thumbed the release switch at the base of my prosthetic. It popped, but the crushed nature of the limb meant I had to wrench it off of the socket with as much force as I was able to muster. Once my damaged prosthetic was free, I placed it on Sylvia’s surface, doing my best to bridge the gap between the edges of the tear.

And fell into my Aetherial Melding trance once more.

You see, I had a theory, and that theory was the only reason I thought this could work. Normally, for metals like Mithril and mystically enhanced gold, you would need a forge in order to melt it down and shape it. But…this wasn’t any normal metal. This was metal that had been in close proximity to my soul for an extended length of time.

It had been directly linked to me.

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My understanding of Aetherial theory told me that I should be able to manipulate it. Not to the extent that I could make repairs and make it functional.

But enough that I could melt it down.

I focused, trying to direct as much Aether as I possibly could to the limb. The gold and Mithril of the limb didn’t react immediately to the flow of Aether I was directing into from the surroundings, causing a mote of doubt and panic to fill my rings.

But…gradually…

I felt the metal under my hand start to soften. There was only one problem now.

It was going too slow. This close to Sylvia, I could feel her start to slip away, the matrix of her soul starting to fray at the edges from the effort of clinging to my lover.

I wasn’t going to let that happen.

If the process was going too slow, I was just going to have to speed it up. There was only one way I knew how to do that.

I reached for the Aether inherent to my own soul and fumblingly shoved it down into the stream I was using to shape the broken limb. The process sped up immensely, a visible rainbow glow so similar in shade to that of The Scintillant Blade beginning to suffuse the metal of my false arm.

There was another problem, however. I only had so much strength left in me after all I’d been through over the last twenty-four hours.

All that I had left was the vital energy of my own being, flowing down into my lover.

I was burning the candle of my own life, in order to save Sylvia’s.

I had to hurry, or we would both die. I rapidly began to meld the combined liquid gold and Mithril around the rent in Sylvia’s abdomen, feeling my strength leave me every second I continued. I didn’t bother making it look pretty, so the patch was very rough in appearance. But it was working.

God, it was working.

It was as I was smoothing over the last of the gold and Mithril patch that something blindsided me. It wasn’t a problem with Sylvia, as I was already starting to feel her soul stabilize.

It was a problem with me.

I…had never considered the inherent drain of Aether and Stamina that it must take to maintain Ringed Mind. It was so miniscule that it didn’t matter, as my soul naturally replenished the energy required just by existing. However…now that I was draining it of Aether to save the life of another, and at the same time demanding the focus my mental Skill imparted for the task?

It was too much.

I felt something pop in my own head, and my middle ring vanish at the same time. It was gone, and I could no longer control my emotional state. As panic and fear and anger and desperation rolled over me like an ocean, I slowly blinked one eye and then the other.

My vision began to darken, and I toppled over to land on top of Sylvia.

As my consciousness began to fade once more, I felt a curious mix of satisfaction and regret.

Satisfaction, because I had managed to save Sylvia.

Regret…because I hadn’t been able to save another.

Just on the edge of my Aetherial sense, I felt it as the wounded, unconscious, bleeding form of Crook…

Lost its battle.

As my eyes closed, and the world fell away, I thought I heard something.

Odddly stumbling and shuffling steps approaching as if from a distance.

……………………………………….

I didn’t wake up. Instead, I found myself in another place.

This time, it wasn’t the strangely murky place that I had spoken to the serpent and the moon in. No, I recognized where I was.

It was my soul.

Only…diminished.

The crystalline tree that I’d seen before was cracked and splintered, with a number of different branches only hanging on by strangely sinuous fragments. The previous rainbow glow of healthy Aether was almost entirely gone, and now it only possessed a dim gleam that originated from the core. Those branches that weren’t nearly shattered instead were drooping, bereft of their previously razor sharp leaves. They lay in piles at the foot of the tree, while all through the structure, it was streaked through with rivers of what looked to be blood.

Ah…

That…didn’t seem good…

I was shocked out of my inspection by the sound of an oddly familiar voice. “In normal times, I’m sure this is quite the striking reflection,” It mused. “But now, not so much.”

The voice was missing an undertone in it from when I’d last heard the sound. But…I think I recognized the owner.

Turning to face the speaker slowly, I blinked at who I found. That…wasn’t who I was expecting.

The speaker was a dark-skinned man of considerable height, nearly matching Leopold in sheer verticality. He was older, looking to nearly be on par with Grey’s apparent age of nearly sixty, with a completely shaven, shiny head. On his square jaw, he had a short beard whitened from age. And from his wizened features peered a pair of knowing amethyst eyes, ringed with laugh lines and watching me patiently.

But it was what he was wearing that really tipped me off as to who this was.

Draped over his broad form was an impeccably maintained black silk robe, with a crimson cape thrown over his shoulders.

I tilted my head at him. “Tlazo…?” I asked hesitantly.

The tall man bowed at the waist theatrically to me, one hand over his heart. “In the flesh,” He said mischievously, before winking. “Well, when I had flesh, at any rate.”

“Oh,” I said lamely. It was…hard to focus. I was having trouble understanding what was going on. I couldn’t fully parse why a Lich was standing with me in my soul, suddenly alive again. “How…are you here?”

Tlazo must have realized how addled I was, as his expression softened. “Because some of my assistants found you and your companions, and brought you to my lab,” He said kindly. “I’ve spent some time repairing your…somewhat mangled forms as best as I was able. Some I was too late for, such as that large woman-”

I felt a flash of pain at the sudden reminder of Crook’s death.

Another I had failed.

“-others, I could, such as that Dusk woman, the dwarf yet again, and the young girl,” Tlazo continued, before peering at me curiously. “And you appeared to have somehow saved Greycton’s daughter before losing consciousness, so well done you. But…I don't quite understand what's going on and why so many of you are down here, and you’re who I chose to ask. I’m speaking to you from outside of your soul, using a Spell to peer inward. So. What, exactly, is happening on the surface?”

Ah…

As if I was in a dream, I haltingly started explaining to the Lich everything that had happened.

From the last stand of the Nocturne Division, to the machinations of Nerexxa and her ritual…

To what Elys and Nehustan had told me about the Godbound she had awoken.

At the first mention of the Vampire, Tlazo’s expression had grown irritated, but when I spoke of the woken Calamity?

He started swearing loudly. “Son of a bitch. That’s what she was after?!” He threw up his hands in disgust. “If I had known she was going to wake a damned Calamity, I would have stopped her!”

“What?” I asked him, my bafflement lending me more coherence. “You…knew about Nerexxa?”

Tlazo spared me a glance in his frustration. “Yes, yes, I knew about the Vampire. I warned you before you left, didn’t I? There was more going on behind the scenes than you knew. She approached me some time ago, and tried to get me to work with her. But, she didn’t raise much of a stink when I turned her down. I’m suddenly regretting not turning her to ash.”

I wanted to shout at the apathetic old Lich, but it…didn’t matter anymore. I can’t even imagine how many lives could have been saved if he had just killed Nerexxa when he had the chance. Even the War might not have happened, if he had just done his damned job.

I knew what to do, though.

“You’re going to deal with her for us,” I told him directly, taking an almost aggressive step toward Tlazo. “To atone for your carelessness.”

The Lich gave me a sharp glance at that. “Watch yourself, boy,” He said warningly. “The only reason I’ve helped you so far is because of your connection to an old colleague. You, however, are not that man. What makes you think I’ll acquiesce to your demands, and not flee the coming storm?”

I smiled sharply at him. “Because Elys is calling in her debt,” I said vindictively, enjoying the shock that erupted on Tlazo's falsely fleshed face. “You’re going to kill Nerexxa to atone for your sin of inaction.”

Oddly, I saw a strangely silver mist blow through the void in the center of my soul at my words. The branches of my damaged tree creaked ominously in the wind, while it caressed my body almost soothingly. Tlazo, however, shivered as the mist brushed his form.

He scowled and threw up his hands in defeat. “Fine. Fine!” He almost shouted. “I should have known you would have connections to that interfering old biddy, with how Greycton has taken you under his wing.”

“I’ll slay your damned Vampire, boy.”