--- Galanys ---

Finding their way back to the surface had been easier than Galanys had feared. All the exits to the surface were sealed from the other side, to prevent monsters from escaping, but luckily they had a security expert with them. Balron managed to open the doors after only two hours of work.

It might have gone even faster if Dov had not spent the entire time questioning him about what he was doing and why. It also hadn't helped that he repeatedly fell into 'lecturer mode' and dropped his work to explain everything in great detail. She supposed one could not be a professor for almost two centuries and then drop those habits within a week.

She was more surprised that Dov had cared so much. She clearly wanted to be out of the Realms Below as soon as possible, so why the holdup? But Dov explained that she was a follower of Brytius, and learning a new and useful skill like this was more important to her than losing another hour.

Atrog had not been happy with this. Any delay increased the chances of being attacked by the creatures of the Realms Below, he said.

He might have a point there, she thought, except that they had all proven that they could handle themselves just fine. She really needed to think of a way to remove that stick from Atrog's ass at some point. On the other hand, she supposed that having at least one person in the group who could be relied upon to be professional was a good thing.

Unfortunately, when they finally reached the surface they quickly realized that their location was less than great. They had come out on the other side of Greenwatch, and would have to take the long way around the city to get back to Northpass. Combine that with the fact that the miasma extended a good bit beyond the city area, and that there were mountains in the way, and they were looking at several days worth of travel.

It was a real pity that they had to leave her carriage behind back in Greenwatch. It contained all of her belongings except for her clothing and a small backpack she carried with her. Fortunately, the pay for this mission combined with the small fortune Dov had offered for the rescue of her and her siblings would more than make up for it.

The streets were poorly maintained. Her flawless memory told her that House Binbeck was in charge of logistical issues, such as maintaining the streets. Unfortunately that house had died out during the Cataclysm. Now there was nobody who saw it as their responsibility to repair the streets. It was the disadvantage of the way their nobility worked, since there no longer was a central government to oversee things. Several of the larger houses had formed an Interim Council to address issues like these, but they weren't as effective as people would have liked.

In areas as remote as these, there was even a danger of monsters and bandits. Before the Cataclysm, this would have been unthinkable. The military had systematically eliminated all monsters within the country at the time, and the standards of living in Oruk had been far too great for anyone to turn to banditry.

Theoretically the military would hunt the bandits and restore order, but they were busy earning money as mercenaries instead. There was precedent for it: Before the Great War, most of Oruk's military was deployed as mercenaries all over the world. They earned money, ensured that the soldiers gained experience, and established an international reputation that Oruk was not to be messed with. Since the country's geographical location made it very defensible, they only needed to keep a small fraction of their military strength at home at any given time. Nowadays this was not a good idea, since Oruk now suffered enough problems at home that having more troops around for peacekeeping would be useful. Unfortunately, there was nobody left who could actually order the military to do so if the generals decided otherwise.

The Interim Council tried to ensure that these problems did not become too great, but it was not a real government and nobody on it actually saw it as their responsibility to fix the parts of the country that fell outside of their domain. They did a good job managing the larger cities, because that is where they lived themselves, but they did not make a concerted effort to restore the rest of the country.

She was not happy with it, but she understood humanoid psychology well enough to know that this was not an easy problem to fix. It was too systemic.

It was already beginning to get dark when they reached the surface. The exit was located in the middle of the woods, in a building constructed specifically to garrison troops to patrol this entrance to the Realms Below. It was a lonely barracks in the middle of a quiet forest, but the view of the burning capital in the distance somewhat ruined the otherwise peaceful atmosphere.

After sealing the entrance behind them, they chose to take the opportunity to rest in the barracks, before moving out early the next morning.

Dov decided to use the remaining few hours before dark constructively, by teaching the rest of them more about her telepathy.

Telepaths were rare, but Atrog and Balron already knew most of what she said. Good schools like those in Northpass apparently taught people how to detect telepathy, as a security measure to prevent infiltration. Atrog and Balron, being who they are, naturally had both studied the topic in depth. Atrog had studied it simply because it was part of a comprehensive curriculum. Balron went on a short rant about how important it was to be able to catch telepathic spies, and complained how even the chief of the guards thought that his countermeasures were excessive and horribly confusing. He had designed it to be confusing on purpose, to make infiltrators easier to catch.

Galanys had not been so lucky with her education, and Rania was Rania. It was pretty much a coin toss whether she knew everything or nothing about the topic. Galanys half suspected that it had been Rania who was responsible for their victory over the Elder One, although she had not figured out the details. She didn't want to ask. The nightmares they had all experienced were still fresh in her mind, and she would not want to force anyone to relive them. She herself could never forget what she experienced there, her eidetic memory be damned.

Dov explained to the group how to establish a group-wide telepathic link. This allowed for private communication between them. Galanys could not resist thinking about all the possibilities this opened up for them. The ability to say one thing while thinking another enabled so many ways to mess with people, it made her smile in anticipation. Dov also clarified that reading somebody's surface thoughts without their cooperation was possible but very difficult, and that it was noticeable for her target. They all practiced communicating through the telepathic link until it was time to go to sleep.

When they woke up the next morning, Galanys was very surprised to see how Dov had changed overnight.

Instead of a dragon, Dov was now a humanoid with very strong draconic features, such as a head crest, a tail, and vestigial wings. She would have looked like a dragonborn to someone who had never seen one. Dov had also dropped the harness she had used in her draconic form, and put on some clothes fit for a humanoid. She wore chain mail of high quality, designed for adventuring.

"I thought you said your transformations are slow?" Galanys asked.

"They normally are." Dov responded in a horribly raspy voice. Galanys winced.

"*Sorry. Back to telepathy it is. Looks like the larynx isn't back to normal, yet.*" Dov added telepathically. "*I had a lot of fat and energy saved up, and I burned through most of it over the night. Mind Warpers taste gross, but are surprisingly nutritious. Speeding up the transformation wasn't pleasant, but I want to go back to feeling humanoid again as soon as possible. Being a dragon is vastly overrated. I expect I will be back to normal in a few days.*"

"*I didn't know you had a 'normal'.*" Galanys replied telepathically. The others still sometimes had trouble doing so, but it turned out that her eidetic memory helped with that too, just like it made spellcasting vastly easier. "*Didn't you say you were all about growth, and never stagnating and staying the same?*"

"*I did. But every change I make can come with unpredictable drawbacks. So usually I just try making a change and see what happens. If the benefits outweigh the costs, I add it to my baseline genetic makeup. If they don't, then I revert the change. But down there I was forced to make a lot of changes with horribly unpleasant drawbacks, because otherwise I would have died. I actually noticed a drop in my intelligence while I was in that form.*"

"*Now that I have reverted most of those changes, I can finally start feeling like myself again.*"

Galanys was about to comment, but was interrupted in her train of thought when Rania loudly cleared her throat and said "Can I have everyone's attention please?"

She waited until everyone present had stopped what they were doing and was looking her way before she continued.

"We have a very important topic to discuss." She began solemnly.

"Since we have now almost finished our first real mission, it is time for us to come up with an awesome name for our group. It's very important. All of the famous groups of adventurers have great and memorable names, so we need one too."

Galanys noticed Atrog standing behind Rania with the most pained facial expression. She used Dov's telepathic link to send him a private communication "*Oh don't look like that. How embarrassing can it possibly be? And yes, I'm aware that I just tempted fate by using this exact phrase. Let's test the 'Tonos' hypothesis. If Rania is correct, then her suggestions will be absolutely horrible now.*"

Unsurprisingly, this made Atrog's expression look even worse. He even closed his eyes and put his hands in his face. She had to suppress a laugh at that. She knew that he was not serious, and this was just friendly teasing between them. To her surprise, she even noticed a faint sense of amusement from him through the telepathic link.

"I think the best way is to name ourselves after a cool thing we have done." Rania continued. "So far, that was slaying the basilisk, defeating the Middle-aged One, and saving Dov and her siblings."

Galanys could not help but smile at the name. Rania had recently explained her reasoning for calling the Mind Warper a 'Middle-aged One', and the party had found it quite amusing.

"I think we should not pick the Mind Warper." Galanys said. "Beating up a 'Middle-aged One' does not sound very heroic and I have given up on trying to convince you that they are called Elder Ones."

"Are you sure?" Rania asked. "I had a really cool idea for that. We could call ourselves 'Brain Bane'. It sounds cool, and it has an added alliterative appeal."

"That name makes it sound like talking to us makes you go insane." Atrog replied. "Which, to be fair, I can not entirely rule out, but I'm still not in favor of it."

"I'm not good with names, but I agree that this one could be easily misinterpreted." Balron added.

"That's fair." Rania responded. "How about the basilisk then? Can anyone think of cool name ideas? We could maybe name ourselves after how we killed it, since that was super cool and I don't think anyone else did the same thing. Pebble suggested we could be the 'snake chokers'."

Galanys had to clutch her stomach to prevent herself from falling over in laughter.

"I veto that idea." She said while holding back tears, to the amused agreement of everyone else present. "People are going to think it's a sexual reference, Rania."

"Hm? How is that a sexual reference?" The elf responded. She then looked at Pebble and said "Oh, so that's why you suggested it, Pebble! Haha. Very funny."

"Nevermind that then. My last idea was to name us after rescuing Dov and her siblings. That was really cool, but unfortunately I can't think of a good name. 'The dragon-princess-adventurer-quest-giver-rescuers' doesn't really roll off the tongue. More importantly, since Dov will be joining us it would be pretty weird if we name ourselves after rescuing one of our own members."

"*I will?*" Dov responded in confusion.

Galanys and the others looked just as confused. Where had Rania gotten that idea from?

"Why not?" Rania responded. "You are a really cool adventurer with a great backstory, uhm, I mean with interesting life experiences. I don't think that the crossover story is done yet. So obviously you should join us on our adventures! It will be great!"

"*Huh. I haven't really thought about what I will do when I'm back in civilization. But I did come to Oruk to adventure and grow stronger, and it will be several weeks before my siblings have recovered far enough to continue adventuring again.*" She transmitted while pointing at the large rucksack in which they had stored the corpses of Morgan and Alexis. Galanys was already looking forwards to seeing the faces of the guards in Northpass, should they decide to inspect their luggage.

"*I am grateful that you rescued me, and you all seem both competent and nice. If you will have me, I would be glad to join up with you at least until my siblings have recovered.*"

"I vote yes!" Galanys said immediately. As a student of humanoid psychology, she would not miss talking to a member of an entirely new species for anything. That she was fun to talk to was icing on the cake.

Atrog nodded. "I agree as well. We will need to conduct proper training to ensure that we can fight well as a team, but given who raised you and what you already experienced, I have no doubt that you will prove to be a competent adventurer."

"Welcome aboard." Balron added with a broad smile.

"Pebble and Aranea agree, too!" Rania said. "Then we all agree. That's great!"

"*Thank you. I won't let you down.*" Dov transmitted the thought along with the warm feeling of being accepted. Galanys found it fascinating how Dov could communicate emotions through her telepathic link.

"*I have some thoughts about the group name, too.*" Dov added. "*Even if I'm going to be part of the team, and even though I would very much prefer to have been the rescuer rather than the rescuee on my first adventure, I think that rescuing me and my siblings is a very good source for a name. We are royalty. A group name is ultimately an advertisement to find well-paying clients, and very few things will impress rich people more than being able to say that you have already worked for and saved the lives of royalty.*"

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Galanys thought for a bit, then said "I have got something: Nun'okan'drutek. Or Nundru for something short."

"What?" Atrog responded.

"Wait, is that draconic?" Balron asked, furrowing his brows in concentration.

"That's brilliant!" Dov said, and explained to the others "It's a phrase in draconic that basically means 'people who saved royalty'. Draconic is normally full of exaggeration, so they use the word 'drutek' to mean 'no really, that's not a metaphor'."

The others looked at her skeptically.

"Nundru is a short word that is easily recognizable because nobody else uses it. That's all that matters for everyday talks. But the full phrase is going to be very convincing to posh and rich people. Trust me, I know the type. They will love this. It will make it much easier to get rich clients."

Even though House Mardok had standardized the world language in Common, there were a few rare exceptions. As Denissa Mardok was by far the most powerful and influential being on the planet, nobles all over Hyd normally detested speaking in any other language than Common, and looked down on people with strong accents. A strong grasp of Common was important for one's social standing on the international scene. But the language called draconic was really more a work of art than an actual language. Words had many different meanings. This made it difficult to communicate in draconic, but made for great poetry. It had been invented by the ancient dragon Omrass, and Denissa Mardok had approved of it. Therefore, knowing how to read and compose poetry in draconic was now considered a sign of high culture.

Galanys basked in Dov's adoration. Studying all those books about high society had finally turned out to be useful after all. She honestly found the nobility and their practices to be incredibly pretentious and boring, but studying it had still been fascinating to her, because she wanted to understand what makes these people tick. Fortunately, the way Dov talked about it hinted pretty strongly that she held a similar opinion. She might be royalty, but her parents had earned that title the hard way. She knew that adventurers who become powerful often refused to act like normal nobility on purpose, just to drive home the point that they were different.

"I have no idea what any of that means, but you both seem pretty excited about it." Atrog said. "I'm in favor."

"Same here." Added Balron. "I know a little bit of draconic, but if I tried to construct a fancy phrase from it, the nobles would probably laugh me out of the room. But if you two are certain, the name sounds good to me."

"I think you just made that up." Said Rania. "It doesn't sound like a real word to me. But you say that it's related to dragons and saving princesses, so I'm cool with it. Pebble also thinks it's good, and Aranea is abstaining from the vote because she is very busy eating flies right now."

"I think that means we are decided then." She continued, before shouting the last part: "From now on, we will be known as Team Nundru!"

"Also, you will have to write down the full name for me, because there is no way I will remember that." She added more quietly afterwards.

Soon after deciding on the name, they packed up their things and started the long walk back to Northpass.

The trip was luckily uneventful, and they found a safe place to make camp in the evening.

They decided to use the time to read through some of the documents they recovered from the research facility.

As Galanys had already memorized several of them by skimming them back in the facility, she did her reading without any paper in front of her, by recalling the images in her head.

"Galanys, what are you doing?" Dov asked. Her larynx had become more humanoid during the day, and she was now able to speak normally again. Her draconic features had also become much less pronounced. "Why are you just sitting there without anything to read?"

"Oh, I'm reading things in my head. I have an eidetic memory." She replied. "Have I not mentioned that before?"

"I think we never mentioned this." Atrog added. "Things like these are why it's a good idea to have team building exercises, Dov. It's very important to understand the capabilities of your party members."

"What do you mean, she has an eidetic memory?" Dov asked incredulously. "You mean it's just really good, right? Not actually perfect."

"It's good enough that the difference is academic." Galanys replied. "I don't remember the last time I forgot anything. I looked over a couple of documents back in the House Erundir facility, and now I'm replaying them in my head to parse the content from the images. Perfect memory unfortunately does not mean perfect reading comprehension."

"That's amazing!" Dov exclaimed. "I want to be able to do that, too. Can I have your genes?"

Galanys blinked in confusion for a few seconds, then said with a smile "At least buy me dinner first."

Dov had to laugh at that. "Haha, nice one. Sorry, I could have phrased that much better. What I mean is, I can copy genes from any genetic material. A bit of spit will do fine. I really do want to have that ability, it sounds amazing."

"Also, independently of that," Dov continued, "I would totally like to ask you out for dinner, if that wasn't just a joke."

After seeing Galanys' shocked expression, she smiled and added "Surprised? My parents are in an open relationship and my grandfather is literally called 'the Hedonist'. Did you expect me to be subtle when I see someone cute?"

Galanys had not expected that reaction, but it was definitely not unwelcome. Dov was nice, and by now she actually looked quite beautiful.

Galanys was not exactly shy herself, so without wasting another word she moved towards the other woman, and the two of them embraced and kissed each other.

The kiss lasted quite a bit longer than she had expected. "*Looks like you really want to make sure you get those genes.*" she thought at Dov with amusement.

In the background, she could just barely make out Rania arguing with Atrog and Balron.

Apparently, this wasn't how a romance arc was supposed to go. There was supposed to be subtle flirtation, and a constant question of "will they or won't they", followed by a romantic moment at a much later and plot relevant part of the story. According to Rania, this was all wrong because there was no suspense, and it was much too fast. She even tried to argue that they should at least break up at a later point, so that they could then get back together after that, for "extra character development".

Galanys could tell through the telepathic link that Rania held no ill will towards her whatsoever, she just seemed to be surprised and confused. Meanwhile, the feelings of annoyance and despair that she felt from Atrog and Balron as they tried to argue with the elf were endlessly amusing.

Dov was a very good kisser though, so she quickly banished these distractions from her mind. She found to her surprise that Dov's telepathic link could also transmit the feeling of her own kiss, which led to a strange feedback loop of emotions.

After what felt like a far too short time, the two of them separated. They were still in the middle of the wilderness and had work to do, so this wasn't the time for fun.

Fortunately, Atrog and Balron didn't mind. They were happy for them, and even Rania apologized for her earlier comments. Atrog had pointed out to her that convoluted romances in stories were usually much less happy than romances where people just clicked immediately. That gave Rania pause, and she agreed that she would prefer it if Galanys and Dov were happy, even if it didn’t make for a good story. Galanys found it weirdly endearing.

She continued her work on reading the documents they recovered, only occasionally stealing glances at her new psychic dragon princess adventurer girlfriend. Gods damn it, she thought. Rania had infected her.

The documents were mostly boring and incomprehensible technical details, but a few things stood out. Whatever they were doing there, it was not just biomancy research. This particular facility had only been part of a larger operation. Finally, after hours of reading, the documents mentioned a name they could follow up on: Transcendence Laboratories.

She had no idea what that was, but Balron did: "Transcendence Laboratories did research on Applied Theology, which is about developing a deeper understanding of the gods and the rules that bind them. I studied some of their research papers back in my youth, actually. Understanding the gods well enough to influence them even a little bit would obviously be incredibly useful. It's one of those high-risk, high-impact research areas that only large countries can afford, like Oruk before the Cataclysm.”

“I soon gave up trying to reproduce any of their research on my own. It's simply infeasible. To my knowledge, they never actually produced any practical results back then, and it would take an entire team of experts to get anything useful out of it. We don't really do research on that scale anymore, nowadays."

Unlike the belief of a priest or a paladin, or a simple follower of a god, Applied Theology was a very technical science about the systematic study of the divine. It was the equivalent of applying psychology to gods instead of humanoids. The field was not very well developed and had never made any contributions that got more than a raised eyebrow from a priest.

"I see several possibilities." He continued. "Possibility one, Transcendence Laboratories did produce something useful, but it never became public. Whoever our mystery villain is might have uncovered that. Possibility two, our mystery villain somehow has enough manpower in experts that they can make meaningful progress on their own. I find that highly unlikely, there simply aren't that many experts in Applied Theology alive today. Possibility three, they don't have that many experts, but they have decided to throw safety regulations out of the window in their research".

Balron's disgust at possibility three had been almost palpable as he said it. Applied Theology was as difficult to study as the Law of Adversity. Moreover, it was not just difficult but also dangerous, as the gods did not like to be manipulated. Many researchers and the people funding them had met unfortunate ends throughout history.

The group got into a brief discussion on which of these possibilities was the most likely, but in the end they agreed that they simply did not know enough. Hopefully their employers would be able to make more of this information.

She got a little bit unnerved when Rania mentioned that she was annoyed because the spirits were taking bets on what was going on, and Pebble was participating. She refused to answer her question about what exactly spirits would be betting on, and only said that she was happy that Pebble had so much more faith in them than the other spirits.

By now it was getting dark, so the party decided to rest. Galanys and Dov went to sleep as normal, but she was already looking forward to their promised date when they were back in Northpass.

The next morning, Dov's transformation was virtually complete. She looked like a human now, with only faint traces of dragonborn features remaining.

Those were intentional, Dov explained. She had hoped to keep some of the more useful draconic features, like heat vision. That hadn't worked out yet, but she was still experimenting.

"Oh damn. I knew I forgot something." Dov suddenly said. "Where did I put my rucksack yesterday?"

"You mean the one with your dead siblings in it?" Atrog replied. "It's right over there. But how did you forget that? You normally don't let it leave your sight for more than a minute, and didn't you get Galanys' genes yesterday specifically to improve your memory?"

"Yeah, funny thing about that," Dov said while touching her neck in embarrassment. "It turns out that integrating that ability was actually remarkably easy. Just a small but precise adjustment to some neurotransmitters. So I stayed up all night to get that done as quickly as possible. The only problem is that the change doesn't work well together with my existing neural structure."

"Pretend for a minute that I grew up in a village and didn't get an extensive education in neuroscience from one of the topmost biomancers on the planet." Galanys replied.

"Right. It's like this: I can make the change to any part of my brain I want. I have almost perfect recall for everything I experienced since I made that change. But I also lose access to all of my older memories in that brain region. It will probably take a few months for my brain to adjust so that I can access my old memories again as well."

"That sounds like quite the conundrum." Balron said. "You have to choose between a long term benefit, but only at a great immediate cost."

"Exactly." Dov replied. "That is why there's really no choice at all. This is not for show, you know?" She indicated her pendant with the symbol of Brytius.

"I want to keep improving myself in all things. So naturally I went ahead and made the change to basically every part of my brain that I can afford to change. I made sure to move all the really important memories to separate areas before that, so that I don't forget them. It's a useful little spell that is part of my physiology. I normally use it to make sure that new organs grow in the right place and don't compete with existing organs. Organisms didn't really evolve to be able to add new organs on the fly without problems, so Xilly had to give us the ability to do that using magic."

"Anyway, because of this I don't really remember much about anyone or anything right now." Dov continued. "For example, I no longer remembered any of your faces when I first saw you this morning, but I did remember what race and sex each of you are, so it was obvious to recognize you from that. Since I have now seen you with my new memory structure in place, I have perfect recall of your faces now. It was a bit disorienting, but now I can recognize you better than yesterday. Progress!"

"Does that mean you don't remember what we talked about yesterday?" Galanys asked in concern.

"I do remember that I promised to take you on a date." Dov replied with a smile. "I don't recall the details of the conversation we had, but my past self left me enough notes that I remember the important bits. Like that you are a good kisser." She winked at her.

Galanys did not know how to feel about that. But then again, being unusual was part of the reason she had been attracted to Dov in the first place, so she supposed she could hardly complain about this now. In a way, it was even flattering to know that Dov had lost so much, but this memory was one she had decided to keep.

"I am not completely sure if I compartmentalized my memories correctly." Dov continued. "It's possible that I may have forgotten things that are obvious to everyone else. So please bear with me. It's only a temporary condition for a few months, and it will be so worth it to gain an eidetic memory."

"I'm also making gradual changes to my speech center. Obviously I can't just do that all at once, or else I will lose the ability to speak. I'm trying to keep the changes minimal, but I may still end up forgetting some words, grammatical rules, or potatoes."

"That was a joke." She added after a few seconds.

"Well, I'm glad to see you are happy enough with your self-inflicted brain damage that you can joke about it." Atrog replied. "It's not my place to tell you what you can and can't do to your own brain, although truth be told I'm actually very concerned. So let me just ask directly: In what ways will this impact your ability to work with us as a team?"

"Not at all, I believe." Dov replied. "I use almost exclusively muscle memory to fight. Since my magic is the result of sorcerous bloodlines and not studying as a wizard, I cast instinctually and don't need to remember any formulas to do so. The change only affected declarative memories, not procedural memories."

Atrog hesitated for a bit, then said "I have no idea what that last part means, but I trust that your parents would have warned you against it if what you are doing now was dangerous."

"Yes. Probably." Dov replied awkwardly. "I mean, knowledge of my parents is mostly declarative in nature. So I can't actually remember their faces or anything we did together. I'm guessing they must be responsible people, because I don't see how Xilly could have succeeded at creating us otherwise."

"What?" Galanys exclaimed. "You can't remember your own parents? That's horrible! Why would you do that to yourself?"

She had gone almost her whole life with perfect memory of everything she had ever done. The thought of losing her memories of an important life experience felt terrible to her, even though she knew that this happened to other people all the time. But the idea of forgetting your own parents went far beyond that. She was terrified of what Dov had done to herself.

"Oh relax." Dov replied. "It's only temporary, and I made sure to make a copy of all the really important stuff, like their names and a description of their personality. It's pretty weird, to be honest. They feel like strangers to me now, because I no longer have any memories of first-hand experiences with them. But it will only be a couple of months until the memories return. When that happens, it will be better than before, because those memories will then use the new memory structure and stay with me forever."

"I don't think this is such a big deal, Galanys." Rania added. "It's only you who has really good memory. Normal people like me forget things all the time. I don't remember my parents or my siblings either. When I learned that you have a great memory I actually talked to someone at the university because I wanted to know more. He explained that it was perfectly normal for people to forget childhood experiences as they get older. So it isn't weird when you don't remember your parents."

"Rania, that is only true for unimportant childhood memories." Balron replied. "I'm over two hundred years old, and my parents have been dead for over a century, but I still remember their faces even now. Forgetting your parents is not normal."

Rania looked confused for a few seconds, then replied "Maybe it's because I'm stupid then? Being stupid means you forget things more easily. That could be it."

"You are not stupid, Rania." Atrog replied. "You just think very differently because you talk to spirits so much. There is something strange going on here. I think we should try to find out what that is. I would like to go with you to an expert when we are back in Northpass. There are ways to access repressed memories."

"But I don't think I need to!" Rania replied defensively. "I'm a Perfectly Normal Elf and this is a normal thing that happens to normal people. I asked about it!"

Galanys was very worried for her friend. Fortunately, she thought of a trick that might help convince her: "Rania, it sounds like you have an important secret in your backstory. People in stories who have amnesia often have secret backstories, don't they? Maybe that's happening here, too."

Rania looked at her in shock for several long moments, her eyes wide.

Then she smiled widely and said "I've changed my mind. I want to go talk to the expert and uncover my Secret Origin Story!"

Atrog shot Galanys a grateful look, but she still had a bad feeling in her stomach.