When Torill and I eventually decided to continue our night in Belua's realm, we intended to pick right back up where we left off. Belua had other ideas.

I opened my eyes to the sun, Torill was nowhere to be seen, and I felt Belua's Concepts pressing on me. Irritated at having been pulled away from my mate, I pushed back without thinking, and I stared defiantly at the goddess.

"Why'd you bring me out here?" My voice cracked as I spoke.

The goddess sighed, I heard her mutter something about teenagers.

"I wanted to get a better look at you. My senses are partially obscured in the room I built for you."

My lips peeled back slightly at her tone as she pointed out exactly who I owed for the room. It wasn't entirely rational, but I was feeling so annoyed. I opened my mouth to say something that I'm sure I would regret, when her aura crashed into me. I shrank several feet, and the nearly irrational need to rebel disappeared.

"None of that now." She said, her voice soothing and gentle despite the mild annoyance I felt through her aura. "I was worried, please tell me what happened?"

I looked down, feeling rather ashamed of myself. I raked the claws of my foot through the dirt as I answered. She must have overdone the aura a bit, because I had a little trouble talking.

"Can't." I said, with her Concepts bearing down on me, it was like thinking through mud.

"Why not? I promise I'm not mad."

"It's restricted." I managed to say, though my tongue twisted a little trying to pronounce the word. It came out more like "ee stick ted" but she seemed to understand me.

"Was it a System action?"

"No."

"Does it have to do with your species?"

"Uhh… sorta?" I was pretty sure Hash was testing my species' capabilities.

"Was it some sort of spontaneous Concept development?"

I shook my head.

"So it came from something?"

I nodded.

"And you can't tell me what. Does it have something to do with that other thing I can't hear?"

I nodded vigorously.

Belua sighed.

"Do you think something like that is going to happen again?"

I scratched the side of my head, it was strange to feel how short the fur was. Hash seemed a bit like an agent of chaos, something about him told me that even he probably couldn't reliably predict his behavior. I doubted he'd do the exact same thing again though. Maybe I had subconsciously parsed something about the mass of Concepts that the god had, despite the fact that I couldn't name a single Concept that I had sensed.

I absolutely knew better than to say what I thought. I had the odd premonition that he would do it again just to prove me wrong.

"Dunno."

"Is there anything you think you can tell me?"

I thought about it for a moment, and settled on trying to reassure her a little.

"It was scary, and I didn't like it! But I learned something special."

"What did you learn?"

The goddess looked like she was the one who got infected with curious . There was an unmistakable hunger in her eyes, so I tried to explain. Talking was still hard, long words felt like they were trying to choke me, so I gave up pretty quickly when I saw her eyes glaze over.

"Uh uh." I said instead, shaking my head sadly.

I wondered why a literal goddess wasn't allowed to know something that had been shared with me.

Hash spoke in my ear. "That little lady isn't on the admin track, she doesn't need to know. She'll figure it out on her own eventually, or she won't."

I blinked. I wasn't sure how I felt about what he just implied.

I heard a party horn go off in my ear.

"Randy convinced me to add you, it's why you're cleared for actual soul magic lessons. Figured I might as well since I've got you under observation anyway."

I wondered if I got a say in it.

"Kid, I'm going to be real fucking clear with you, so listen up, you'll be paying for this later. You don't like how things are done, you have good reasons for that. There is exactly one way to change the way things work, and I'm handing it to you on a damn platter. Do. Not. Push. Me. Now, I'm gonna go back to playing video games and eating junk food."

Something about the strain I heard in the fragment's voice, combined with how terribly deliberate the words sounded when he wasn't being caustic, told me that he had pushed through Concepts to say that.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Memories from just before my split rushed into my mind.

"Bah, worst case there we get another split soul, they come with some great advantages. I kinda wish I'd done it to myself, I'd be less bored. And think about what it would be like if you could have split at the start, before you started growing into a mass of Concepts, you'd almost be free."

Hash had sounded almost wistful when he said that. It made me feel almost sorry for the asshole.

I looked up at Belua as I felt her hand pat the top of my head.

"It's okay, I can tell you tried. Do you want to go back to your room, or stay out here and play for the night?"

Belua's Concepts urged me to choose to play, but I wanted to be with Torill. I might have made a different choice if I wasn't dreading the three days.

Belua wasted no time, I blinked and found myself standing outside the door to my little cabin. I had to jump and stretch to work the latch, but I managed to let myself in. The minute I stepped inside the Concepts of Belua's realm evaporated away, and I returned to my normal self.

I shook out my fur, I didn't like being a demihuman child very much, being a demihuman adult barely felt tolerable anymore. I sure did appreciate hands and the ability to speak though, and it was also the only form that really fit in around people.

It would probably have disturbed Angela to come to the realization that my contract, my friends at the Adventurer's guild, and most importantly, Torill, were the only reasons I had any desire to fit in at all anymore. Demihuman form was convenient, but compared to my true form it was small and weak. Compared to my squirrel form it was slow and clumsy. My sky terror form could fly, so that made it automatically superior.

I heard the sound of a brush on canvas, and headed to the art room. I remembered why I was still grateful for my demihuman form though, as I walked behind Torill and wrapped my arms around her, careful to wait till she had taken the brush off the canvas. She leaned into me.

"Is everything okay? Belua sent me a message that she had you with her."

"Everything is fine now." I said with a deep pur, then I sighed. "She was just worried, she wanted to know what happened, and I couldn't tell her. I've grown more resistant to her realm's Concepts again. I think I just found out that I would have been a little shit as a teenager."

Torill giggled.

"Say, how come you don't seem resistant? You've got more Concepts than me."

"Oh, I probably am, but my resistance doesn't keep changing unlike some people. So she just has the realm hit me a bit harder."

"Ah, yeah, I guess that makes sense."

"Yeah, so do you want to paint, or do something else for the rest of the night?"

I looked at the painting I'd been working on the last time we were in the realm. Then I looked down at Torill. Painting was nice, relaxing, I liked it, but it wasn't even a choice. I could definitely still paint for the next three days.

"Something else."

The two of us had a very nice time doing other things until our eyes opened in the real world.

Torill quickly excused herself, and wandered off into the forest to take care of her morning needs. I stretched, exited the tent, shifted, and saw to mine. When my hunt was finished, and my hunger was reduced to a dull pang, I flew high over the stone forest, high enough to be above the giant tree's aura.

Looking through the stone canopy, I caught glimpses of a very damp forest. It wasn't quite as wet as I'd hoped, but my tunnels were working. The trees were all getting quite thoroughly overwatered. I didn't think that flooding the forest alone would be enough to hurt the stone trees, I was counting on the fact that it would make them more susceptible to other things.

I flew down to the river and made adjustments to the setup there, increasing the flow as much as my stone pipe would allow.

Then I caught a large flightless bird that was silly enough to be out in the open, and carried it to camp.

Torill looked up from her morning cup of tea, and sighed when I dropped the bird at her feet.

"I suppose you want me to clean that huh? What would you do without me?"

"Eat the bird." I said with a mental grin, she certainly didn't have to clean the carcass for my enjoyment. I'd grown to truly appreciate the flavors of raw food. Well cooked food was still better, but not by as much as you would think. Camp cooked food was hit or miss, though I wasn't about to tell Torill that.

"Well thanks for breakfast then. How did things look?"

"It's going well, I think I want to give it most of the day before I get started though. I want to make sure the tree is full to bursting with water. So we still have some time."

"Good, because I want to explain what's going to happen with the spirit."

"You already said that it wanted your feelings for me." I lowered my head, I wasn't sure how I was going to take it.

"I didn't tell you the full story. It will also borrow the lion's share of my memories of you, and take over the connection between us in the spirit realm. It will definitely have an impact on how you view me as well."

I blinked. I knew how living things were all connected through the web of life. Some of those connections were stronger than others, but I hadn't even considered that they were more than an indication of a connection. I definitely hadn't considered that those connections could be transferred.

"How does that work?"

Torill sighed. "The same way Concepts work, just on a much smaller scale. The power of thought. Specifically a couple's thoughts of each other. It's why it can sometimes feel almost physically painful when the connection breaks."

My ears flicked back, I didn't like the idea that something like that could be taken over.

"So I'll…"

"Feel a sense of connection with the spirit and none with me? Yeah. It'll be a little confusing if you think about it too hard, but I think it's the spirit's way of being nice to you. It won't hurt nearly as much when I barely know who you are that way."

I took in what she said, and started channeling life mana. Focusing on seeing and feeling my connections. I instantly shifted to demihuman so I could hug Torill with tears in my eyes. The connection between us was not nearly as one sided as I had feared.

There were lots of other connections too, one of them was far, far stronger than my connection with Torill. That one seemed to shoot far off into space. I received a feeling of immense distance between us when I touched it mentally. It didn't take much investigation to come to the conclusion that it was Angela.

There were also connections of varying strengths pointing in the direction of Brightwood. Obviously the other adventurers. There was also my connection to the goddess, it was strong, and hooked directly to the mark on my forehead.

There was one very one-sided connection to someone nowhere near Brightwood. Upon inspection, I felt how it was built mostly out of my gratitude for help they had given. The other half was mostly pity, concern and some interest that felt just a little bit greedy. It took me a minute to register that it was Hoyt, and he was a bit closer than I'd thought.

In addition to those, I was, of course, connected to the mana around me, though that connection was strange. It felt both ephemeral and stronger than any connection other than the one I had with Angela. Touching it drew more of that type of mana towards me. I wondered if that was what the System was helping me do when I called the mana.

The last set of connections were weak, they connected me to every living thing that could currently perceive me. As well as some of the non-living things that I'd been using, like the tent. Those connections broke like spider webs when I touched them, then formed anew after a few moments.

Torill was petting my mane, and telling me it was okay. It occurred to me that she had entirely the wrong idea about why I was crying. I sent my feelings and an idea of what I was seeing using our connection. The moment I did that I had an epiphany about how mind speech worked. Spirit beasts somehow naturally tapped into the Conceptual connections to communicate.

It made me wonder if I even needed to channel life to feel connections now that I knew what to look for. I switched my core to pure mana so I could check, and found that I could feel them, but distance was a large factor. I couldn't, for instance, send a message to Angela despite the unquestionable intensity of our connection.

Torill kept petting me. "You can be so strange sometimes. I'm glad you're happy. But I think I'm going to make you sad. I think I should make the deal with the spirit now. It may take a little while for you to get used to the spirit. It will have to touch you in a way that may be uncomfortable if it's going to protect you from something like that aura."

I sighed, let go of Torill, and backed away. I wanted to tell her I didn't need it, but I knew that I could change how far my aura spread by putting more mana into it. It was definitely not outside the possibility that the tree would be able to do so as well. I did not want to be in the aura when I wasn't channeling earth, and that went double for letting it have its way with me when it was angry.

"Okay, let's go in the tent. This is bound to be a disorienting one."

We both laid down, I noticed that Torill had several sheets of paper held in her hands, she clutched them to her chest as she closed her eyes.

I could feel the presence when it entered the tent, it was several orders of magnitude stronger than any other spirit I'd sensed. It felt strange and alien, even to my rather odd set of standards. I felt it when it moved into Torill, and took its price. It wasn't instant, it took an hour or so. It wasn't until the very end that its presence took on a different quality to me.

I was a little happy to find that the connection transfer didn't make me care for it the same way I had cared for Torill. But it felt very comforting and familiar when it moved over to me.

"Hello lucky cousin." I heard a powerful voice echo in my head. As the being wound through my body, seemingly inspecting every detail of me. I could have stopped it, I could have eaten the thing when it entered my aura. But the connection between us stopped me, I couldn't even conceive of hurting it.

"I have been curious about you." The voice purred at me, and I instinctively relaxed.