“I very much doubt that you can actually understand what love is,” I addressed the Astral infection.

“It is hard for me to truly experience something while being confined within this data simulation. Love… according to your own memories is a chemical cocktail. A set of evolutionary impulses meant to further procreation and ensure species survival. An equation completely missing in your previous life,” Sasha mulled, a hundred of her silver-blue eyes opening and closing. “You think about it often. That cardboard you, the fraction of yourself that you left here to entertain me talked to me for a while but it wasn’t enough… I ate him hoping to bring out the real you and here you are.”

“Are you planning to eat me too?” I asked. “Because I won’t allow that. Take another bite of me and I will erase you.”

“The best kind of a virus is the one that doesn’t kill its host, it’s the one that slowly propagates, gets to live on,” Sasha smirked at me.

Again she was speaking with my own words, spitting out my own thoughts about the nature of viruses.

“I’m not going to spread any further, Slava,” she added. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

I didn’t believe her words. I would have to dedicate more soul shards to Neurovista to monitor her.

“Although… that self-replicating obliterator,” Sasha pointed at the weapon hovering over my shoulder. “Plus that barrier shield around your mortal body. You, pretending to talk to me, feeding me inane bullshit for a year. That’s not very nice. It makes me feel like I’m a prisoner here. Makes me feel unappreciated.”

“I have no reason to appreciate you,” I said.

Her silver-blue eyes flashed with amusement. “Oh, but I think you do,” she purred. “You collect knowledge, tools and even people. You can't help but to analyze, to control. You’re like a dragon yourself, one with a very specific hoard.”

I squinted at the Astral Phantom. Her mouth rippled with far too many shimmering, semi-transparent, pale teeth.

“You want to investigate me, to research me, to dissect me,” Sasha sang, jumping off the rock. “Because you’re curious about what makes me tick. You want to understand me, so that you can weaponize me.”

I wanted to deny it, to argue, but she was right. I was a hoarder of patterns and a manipulator of systems. It was a drive that had consumed me since my childhood accident, since I saw the world through the lens of mathematics. It led me to become a Soviet virologist, a designer of death, a man haunted by the consequences of his own brilliance and foolishness. But it also led me to Skyisle, to Delta, to Kliss, to Leemy, to a second chance at life and a new purpose.

“Maybe you’re right,” I sighed. “But know that I’m in control here. I won’t let you run rampant. I’ll keep you contained. You’re my responsibility.”

She leaned closer, her form shifting, becoming less monstrous, more human. For a split second, she looked almost like a teenager that was wearing clothes that were too big for her frame, vulnerable and lost. Then, she smiled, her face rippling with a myriad of eyes. “We’ll see about that, Slava,” she whispered. “We’ll see.”

The scene shimmered and tore apart, the silver-blue eyes of Sasha winking away like stars that vanished with the sunrise. Positively charged magic filled my chest, rushed into my numb arms.

I gasped, my eyes snapping open. Kliss was holding me, the pulse of her dragon-heart keeping me warm and making me feel like I was sitting next to a very cosy fireplace. Delta stood beside us, her face etched with worry.

“Slava, you okay?” My twin asked. “The Lucid dream didn’t activate and I couldn’t get into wherever you were so we invaded your room and…”

“I’m fine,” I murmured, rubbing my temples. My head throbbed faintly, a dull echo of the mental strain caused by the acceleration of my mind and my conversation with my prisoner.

“Where were you?” Delta demanded.

“I was… talking to Sasha,” I confessed, meeting the worried gazes of my companions.

“The Hollow Mother?!” Delta's eyes widened in alarm. “You went into the infected part of your soul? Why, Slava? Why would you do that? It's dangerous!”

“I had to,” I said. “She corrupted my simulation, consumed the part of myself that I left behind to entertain her. I couldn’t ignore her anymore. Also, she’s not the Hollow Mother, just a fraction of her, a virus that I’m keeping contained, one that I can kill anytime.”

“So why don’t you kill her?” Kliss demanded.

"She said she wanted to talk to the real me,” I sighed.

“And… what did you talk about?” Delta pressed.

“Love,” I said, the word heavy on my tongue. “Humanity. Viruses. Hoarding.”

Delta squinted at me.

“She said she was studying me,” I continued, “figuring out how humanity works.”

“Sounds just like the Hollow Mother,” Delta frowned.

“You haven’t really answered my question,” Kliss said sternly. “She sounds like a threat, so why haven’t you carved her apart like your Vow?”

“Sectus-anima goes right through her and... I can’t kill her without hurting myself,” I admitted. “The infection is too deep, too high level. I do have a self-replicating spell that I can use, but if I activate it, it might consume her and all of me. Honestly, I’m not sure whether it would even stop.”

“You’ve made a self-replicating spell?” The dragon girl asked.

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“Yeah,” I nodded. “It’s something based on computers from my world… A zip bomb, also known as a decompression bomb, a type of malicious software attack that involves creating an archive file that uses compression to pack a large amount of data into a very small file. When this compressed file is decompressed, it can expand to an enormous size, more zip files unfolding from the original. The zip bomb was designed to overload the system by consuming disk space or memory. Basically, I’ve created a spell that unfolds into more spells... to overload the magical aether itself.”

Kliss simply stared at me.

“It’s an ultimate kill switch that I can dangle above Sasha,” I said. “The problem is that… it could theoretically keep going way longer than I want it to, catastrophically overload the barrier between the Physical and the Astral and tear all of Skyisle asunder.”

“So… you’ve made a spell that won’t ever stop?” Kliss demanded.

“It will probably stop,” I replied. “I just don’t know… when it will stop, since I don’t understand the Astral Ocean fully. Without actually activating the spell I’ve no idea how devastating it is. It’s sort of like how the scientists working on the first atomic bomb weren’t sure if the bomb could start a chain reaction that might set the Earth’s atmosphere on fire. Before the first nuclear test, they had to do tons of calculations and experiments. I’m still working on that.”

“What’s your plan then?” Kliss asked.

“Quarantine,” I said, meeting her eyes. “Sasha’s an information pattern, a virus. I understand viruses. I’m going to figure out how she works, how she replicates, how she manipulates souls. I’ll find a way to neutralize her... without destroying myself or Skyisle in the process.”

“Quar-a-ntine?” Kliss repeated.

“She’s behind a magic firewall, isolated in the infected portion of my soul bound to my body, locked up in a high-security prison made from numerous shield-wards,” I explained.

“And you think that’ll hold her?” Kliss asked.

“I have to believe it will,” I said. “Otherwise, the consequences could be dire. Not just for me, but for Skyisle, for everyone I care about.”

“Let me in there and I’ll cut her up,” Delta offered.

“No,” I shook my head. “She’s too clever, too dangerous.”

“The hell is she gonna do?” Delta demanded.

“Spread to you,” I said.

“I’m already an Astral Phantom,” Delta pointed out. "What, she gonna make me more of a ghoul or something?"

“Your infection is different from mine,” I said. “It’s much less active, isn’t building a neural network within you.”

“You’re letting her build a neural network?! How could she even…?” My twin sputtered, her face suddenly pale. “She’s a freakin’ virus! Not some kind of maths-nerd from the USSR!”

“Viruses are nature’s most efficient killing machines,” I said. “They replicate, they mutate, they evolve. They adapt to their environment, find ways to survive and thrive. Sasha’s adapted to my soul, learned my language, adapted to my patterns of thought. She can build a neural network within my soul because she’s learned… fractal mathematics.”

Kliss’ eyes widened in alarm. “Could she use them against you? Against us? Against Skyisle?”

“She could,” I confirmed the dragon girl’s fears. “Unfortunately, containment is my only option. Without further orders from the Hollow Mother, Sasha seems to be obsessively focused on a single job–investigating me.”

“Why did you permit her to start building something like that inside you to begin with?” Delta demanded.

“I didn’t even know about it until today,” I said. “She showed off, allowed my Infoscopes to examine what she'd built.”

Delta and Kliss exchanged a worried glance. The realization that an intelligent, malevolent entity lurked within my soul, a shadow that mirrored my own brilliance and potentially twisted it towards unknown means, was a terrifying prospect.

“What can we do to help?” Kliss asked, her voice soft.

“There’s not much you can do right now,” I sighed. “Sasha is my problem to deal with. You… can stay close to me, keep me warm. The positively-charged magic radiating from your heart slows down Sasha, disrupting whatever she’s building.”

My words hung in the air. Delta looked like she wanted to argue, to offer a solution, but ultimately, she had nothing.

Kliss’ hand tightened around mine, her warmth a comforting anchor in the stormy sea of my thoughts. “We’ll figure this out,” she whispered. “I’m not going to let you go if that’s what it takes.”

“I know we will,” I said, forcing a smile.

Deep down, I couldn’t shake the gnawing sense of unease. Sasha was a ticking time bomb within my soul, a shadow that threatened to consume everything I had worked so hard to build… but then again I was juggling a whole bunch of ticking bombs such as the Imperial Inquisitor and Giovashi. Sasha was just another problem in my pile of problems.

Kliss, ever the vigilant knight, didn’t argue further. She simply wrapped herself around me, her warmth radiating through me.

Delta, unable to bear being disconnected from the magic of the dragon heart, dragged a small couch into my bedroom and curled up next to Kliss.

“Slava,” Kliss whispered after a few minutes of silence interrupted only by the pitter-patter of raindrops on the dark, circular windows.

“Mmm?” I asked, tearing my attention away from the seemingly endless list of contingencies I was mentally composing. Time was of the essence and my mind simply couldn’t stop extrapolating every possible future scenario. My min-maxed Intelligence stat powering my Neurovista skill, was a double-edged sword, sometimes making me over-obsess over minute details.

“How are you holding up?” She asked.

I didn’t reply right away as my attention suddenly became entirely captivated by her eyes. The dragon girl’s irises, framed from within by diamond-shaped pupils, flickered with embers of magic moving in a spiral pattern. Peering deeper, I noted that each of her lenses were full of crystalline micro-structures just like her hair.

“I’m fine,” I replied.

Each iris I examined reminded me of radiolarian structures. Unlike mundane diatoms, the anatomy of the dragon girl’s eyes constantly rearranged itself ever so slightly, casting unique positively-charged hexagrams into the Astral, akin to an ever-changing pair of snowflakes.

An entire kaleidoscope of gold, emerald, and orange auroras danced within each. Even though I had designed her new eyes myself, they held an impossible depth, an ever-shifting tapestry of prismatic refraction made possible by the solid-liquid crystals within. I became lost in the sudden contemplation of the four-dimensional formula for the ever-changing refractive index of each facet. It gave me ideas that gave birth to more plans. Because of her unique biology, Kliss was immune to many types of human-cast magic and that meant...

“...Yes?” Kliss blinked.

“Just getting lost in the refractive index of your eyes,” I murmured in reply.

“Pfff. Good try at a compliment,” Delta snorted from the couch. "Maybe there’s hope for you yet."

Kliss blushed, her freckled face rushing with radial patterns of shade of crimson that rivaled her ruby-violet hair.

“What?” I asked.

“I’m just… really glad I’m here.” She smiled. “With you and Delta. Like I can finally be myself, even if that self is… so wildly different from all of my expectations. Even if I have no idea what a refr-a-ctive index is.”

I opened my mouth to begin explaining but then I saw Delta’s death-glare and decided that it wasn’t worth it.

“This couch isn’t conducive to falling asleep, so make with the dream-sim please,” she ordered imperiously. “You can calculate all the indexes you want in there while I eat chocolate potatoes.”

With a nod, I pulled Delta and Kliss into my Neurovista-generated dream world, the wide boulevards of Moscow etching themselves into existence all around us.