The gold-plated mimic watched Tanryn sulk as she turned the pages of a worn fantasy novel. The mimic had no concept of sulking or novels, of course, but the entity piloting it did. Though the mimic had no eyes—they stood out somewhat obviously on what was supposed to be a gold bar—it watched through soulsight as Tanryn's eyes drooped closed, the whirlwind of emotions from her friends' departure settling into a deep, slow slumber.

Then it was time.

The mimic stood up, sprouting delicate clockwork legs, and began scuttling across the wall.

The slowstone that the walls were forged from was all but impervious to physical damage, which was how the late Lord Tanryn's vaults had survived the Plane of Elemental Falsehood's attempts to synchronize with realspace over the decades. As such, the mimic couldn't just tunnel through the walls like it had done to the rest of the surrounding area, but there was a reason why the mimic had been coerced into shedding most of its body mass. With a tick-tick-tick of impossible clockwork and bones that had never known biology, the gold-plated mimic flattened itself to the thickness of a hair, slipping underneath the crack between solid oak and slowstone, then reconstituting itself on the other side of the door.

Curious mimics, powered by soul fragments of varying strength, turned towards the tiny golden creature as it rebuilt its body, hungry to tear out and consume the soul shard that kept the mimic alive. But the matrix of magic and memory that someone had wrapped around its soul activated, and all at once, the curiosity in every mimic within a ten-foot radius dropped to zero, the ambling predators returning to their eternal patrol of the oil-stained halls. Satisfied that it was in no physical danger, the golden mimic dug through the flimsy plastic walls, crawling into its painstakingly-dug network of tunnels.

The spiraling, web-like tunnel network wove in and out of twisted halls and slippery staircases until it breached the surface, the gold-plated mimic shaking itself free of cotton-ball snow beneath an angry lamplight sky. Orienting itself by the painted stars on the ceiling of reality, the golden mimic dug back down into the cardboard stone and began tunneling. It was mostly safe to travel out in the open; the reflection of the Silent Peaks into the Plane of Elemental Falsehood had few inherent hazards, other than the mimics.

Still, the golden mimic had a critical mission, and it would harbor no needless risks.

Twenty-eight hours of tireless digging later, the golden mimic's soul fragment was ragged and fading. It would need to feed soon, if it wanted to survive. Thankfully, as it dug out of the ground and reached a tiny, stable rift, a kindly, waiting face had a fresh meal waiting in the palm of their hand.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"I thank you for your service, little one," Odin murmured, teasing the soul fragment into the golden mimic's body. The golden mimic waved one leg in gratitude.

Then, as it had been taught to do, it unfolded like a flower, exposing its soul to Odin.

Soulspace entities were, in theory, capable of sustaining themselves indefinitely by consuming the new memories they produced, but Odin had strictly forbidden the golden mimic from burning any of its new memories for fuel. The fruit of the golden mimic's patience was plucked all at once, Odin scraping the fresh memories off the surface of the mimic's soul and absorbing them. They closed their eyes as their ancient mind effortlessly assimilated the soul fragments, sifting through them until they found the data they needed.

One of the reasons attunement was so easy to come by yet so tricky to research was because it was impossible to predict when an attunement would occur. Odin had watched the souls of growing witches for their entire lives, waiting for an attunement to form, but there was only so much time they could spend in each day, and the data points they gathered were few and far between. Even when the Order of Valhalla took root, and their resources skyrocketed, it was still nearly impossible to glean anything useful from the fistful of lucky coincidences that had led to Odin observing an attunement being formed in real time.

Unless you had someone who knew exactly how attunements were formed, and deliberately went through the steps to create one.

Odin watched through the golden mimic's eyes as the gallium insecurity in Cienne's body swelled and boiled—then, as his mother's soul fragment burned away, how that insecurity was drained from his soul by lances of diamond catharsis. How Cienne stood, attunement fresh in his mind, and used what was left of his insecurity as a needle to pierce the bubble Odin had trapped him in.

Odin stopped the memory, rewound it to the beginning, and replayed it.

"How counterintuitive," Odin murmured. "In order to gain attunement to an emotion, you must first rid yourself of it to the greatest degree you can."

Then their eyes snapped open. The humble office they used instead of a throne room was warded with the strongest spells they knew, but they'd made some exceptions for spells routing through the Plane of Empathy. Concentrating on the endless ocean of empathy-thread that roiled in their soul, they sent out a message to the team they'd sent across thoughtspace to track down and capture Cienne.

"Cienne clawed his way out of the box," Odin sent to the hunt-and-capture team. "Plan A was a success. No need to capture the child."

After a heartbeat's delay, Odin sensed the other end of the empathic link jiggle in acknowledgement. The witch of empathy Odin had sent with the team was nowhere near as skilled as Odin, but instantaneous transdimensional communication still did wonders for logistics.

Odin steepled their fingers in thought. Through another rift, a crow poked her head into Odin's office—the Silent City's forces must have been on the move already, sweeping into the Redlands to uproot their organization and unmake everything they had tried to accomplish.

Somewhere in Odin's soul, a tiny, anticipatory flame sparked.

"Then let the games begin," murmured Odin, and a hundred empathic links flared to life at once.