Bjorn woke up in a void, a dark blankness that somehow felt familiar, but he couldn’t tell how he knew this place. His body had reverted to how it had been when he first hatched from his egg. He was tiny in comparison to what he’d been a moment ago. He felt dizzy, like he lacked depth perception now that he only had one head again. He’d never thought he would find it weird to only have one pair of eyes. He wasn’t on the ground, he was floating? Levitating? He also didn’t know if there was a ground. He couldn’t help but wonder if he was dead.

“Failsafe? You there, buddy?” Bjorn asked.

There was no response, then a booming voice vibrated him to the core.

“There is only us here, my son,” the voice said. “Do not fear.”

From the void massive eyes opened a great distance away. Their amber light shone like a dying star. Then even more eyes appeared, each one shown like the thousands of stars in the sky. Then a pair fell from the heavens until a massive head much like his own appeared. The creature was a hydra; well no, as soon as Bjorn saw her, he knew at an instinctive level this was not just any Hydra. This was The Lernaean Hydra. This was the Queen of a Thousand Heads.

“I have finally found you. I have finally found my sweet little baby,” the Queen said. Her voice echoed a thousand times over all at once. “Mama is coming to gather you from that wretched Lower World. Look at what they have done to you.” The eyes of the queen looked all around him, worry etched across her draconic face. “I shall poison that reality for stealing you from me.” She bared her teeth as she said the words.

“No!” Bjorn yelled, then stopped. His voice startled him. Why could he speak all of a sudden? “Do not destroy my world.”

The Queen looked amused. “Your world? Young one, that is not your world, you are mine. You are from somewhere far greater.”

Bjorn braced himself, he was not afraid of a True. “I am from there, that is my-”

“Ah, you mean from your previous life?” the Queen asked. “Bjorn or Isin, it matters not where souls come from and I know better than most that Reincarnation has a funny sense of humor. All that matters is that you are returned to where you belong. You are no nephilim, no King of Chains, you are not the Sunderer of the Angelic Throng. You are Aki’al Hashemi, Son of P̵̫̗͗o̸̖͛̂i̴͔͐s̷͍̈o̵̯̗̓ǹ̸̘̌!”

Bjorn was speechless for a moment as he processed what P̵̫̗͗o̸̖͛̂i̴͔͐s̷͍̈o̵̯̗̓ǹ̸̘̌ said. She already knew who he was and that he was reincarnated. King of Chains? Sunderer of the Angelic Throng? He had no idea what she was talking about. He needed to know more. What had he done to the Angels?

“You know who I was?” Bjorn asked.

“I would be a bad mother if I did not know my own son. There are no secrets that are not laid bare before the Queen of a Thousand Heads,” P̵̫̗͗o̸̖͛̂i̴͔͐s̷͍̈o̵̯̗̓ǹ̸̘̌ stated proudly. “You are far from me and you have been reaching out into the Higher Planes so desperately. I felt your cries, Aki’al, but I could not pull you to me. Now I see why. Your core yearns for home, you are displaced thrice over. Taken from me, deprived of the power of your birth realm, born in a lower world, forced you to use mana and alter your core, and your memories damaged what remained.”

“What do you mean, you tried to pull me to you?” Bjorn asked.

P̵̫̗͗o̸̖͛̂i̴͔͐s̷͍̈o̵̯̗̓ǹ̸̘̌ watched him closely as she spoke. “When you connected to the Infernal Planes through that tramp who stole you from me it was the first time I heard your cry.”

Bjorn thought back; she was referencing the moment Tanisha first exposed herself to the maya. He was knocked out for days because of that, and when he woke up he was driven into a blood frenzy.

“That nearly killed me when it happened,” Bjorn stated.

“I was hasty. I heard my child’s voice from across the cosmos and I wanted you back. I missed so much already. Your hatching, first step, and first words!” P̵̫̗͗o̸̖͛̂i̴͔͐s̷͍̈o̵̯̗̓ǹ̸̘̌ growled as her anger rose. “The maya is deadly to you. I see that now. Your core needs a connection to the Chorus so Aether can cleanse your body. I will give you that connection.”

“You’ll become a patron so that I’ll have aether?” Bjorn asked.

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“Patron? That is the term of demons and lesser beings. You are hydra, you do not need a patron,” P̵̫̗͗o̸̖͛̂i̴͔͐s̷͍̈o̵̯̗̓ǹ̸̘̌ stated. “You need a guide, not a leash.”

“Why are you so willing to help me when you know I’m not really your child?” Bjorn asked, although he didn’t know what to expect. “You apparently know who I was before I became this, shouldn’t that mean something?”

“Reincarnator or not you are my blood, my baby, and mine alone.” P̵̫̗͗o̸̖͛̂i̴͔͐s̷͍̈o̵̯̗̓ǹ̸̘̌ paused for a second. “Well, your father’s too, but he is not here right now. He’s off winning the war. I will not have my child die on some rock on some Lower World. It will take many years before I can reach you, but your cries echoed out for many to hear. Our enemies will come for you. Many will seek to consume you or use you against me.”

Bjorn suddenly grew in size and continued growing until he was the size he’d been before coming to this strange place. Three heads now looked around the area as he was placed on what he assumed was the ground. A second head from P̵̫̗͗o̸̖͛̂i̴͔͐s̷͍̈o̵̯̗̓ǹ̸̘̌ drew closer until it was as close as the first. The only lights in this void came from her eyes so it was difficult to make out the distance, but from the size of her heads it was apparent P̵̫̗͗o̸̖͛̂i̴͔͐s̷͍̈o̵̯̗̓ǹ̸̘̌ was larger than a mountain.

P̵̫̗͗o̸̖͛̂i̴͔͐s̷͍̈o̵̯̗̓ǹ̸̘̌ continued, “I will show you the way and guide your broken tether to the Chorus. I will seal away your connection to the maya until your body is ready for it. This will reduce your level and size, but your Aether will return to you.” Her second head opened its mouth and power washed out. A rainbow of aetheric symbols, golden and platinum in coloration, surrounded him and branded themselves onto the underside of Bjorn’s middle neck. “This will hurt a little, but please bare it, Aki’al.”

Bjorn vomited black abyssal maya, which came out as a molten tar from his core. His body shuddered as more and more exited him even faster. Then it stopped all at once; his body shrunk down until he was half the size he’d been before. His scales glimmered with aetheric symbols, which chained across him in patterns of equations and geometric shapes. He felt his core shift and something in him awakened. It reached out and spilled from his mouth in the form of a metallic silver liquid. It slowly encased him by following the patterns etched across his body.

“Until I arrive in the Lower Worlds, protect yourself well. I will destroy those who dare slight me,” P̵̫̗͗o̸̖͛̂i̴͔͐s̷͍̈o̵̯̗̓ǹ̸̘̌ said from her first head. “As a mother I enjoy it when my children learn life lessons and grow, but I will warn you now, do be careful about those you open your soul to. Things like to latch on to reincarnators and claim to help; some friends are not what they seem.”

Bjorn reawoke to find that no time had passed since he’d blacked out. He was still standing atop the roof, the flames having spred and the gate having been destroyed. The problem was that he was getting smaller with each passing moment. His scales glowed with the aetheric power coated in shining silver. In mere moments he was a quarter the size he’d been with Infernal Scale Armor, down to Tanisha’s shoulders in height. He was so small now that the possibility of using him as a mount vanished.

“Bjorn, what's going on?” Failsafe wailed. “What did you do?”

“Later. Focus now. We have to go,” Bjorn said.

“Bjorn?” Tanisha said, shocked. “Uh, okay, Jo-Tyr, we have to run.”

Joha looked back only for a second. His eyes widened, then he shook himself and deflected an arrow with Tyr’s sword.

“We still need to follow the plan and pull these people away from the gate,” Joha said, then pointed to the distance. “There it is, let's go.”

“Bjorn, can you run?” Tanisha asked as he pulled away the saddle, which was now too big.

Bjorn nodded and followed behind the pair, finding his smaller frame was faster than his larger one. He still needed to get used to the change in size again. After so long in the larger body he’d forgotten how agile he actually was. The escape was not clean, but the plan seemed to have worked. Those who weren’t injured in the assault were giving chase. There was no sign of the Hands, which was concerning but nothing they could do anything about at the moment.

The Knight Commander, not letting them go so easily, shot more and more of his powerful arrows. Each arrow blazed through the air with the force of a cannon as wind and heat swirled around the air constructs. Sir Harald wasn’t heartless; he never let an arrow hit a building directly. Most of them sailed past Bjorn and Tanisha into the wall of the city, which was unaffected by the attack, or they were redirected upward into the sky.

If Tanisha and Bjorn had been alone they would’ve been dead several times over, but Joha was always there in the nick of time to push or pull them out of the way. Joha could have deflected them, but Tyr wouldn’t have been able to, so he had to avoid them to keep up the disguise.

At one of the buildings they jumped through a window. Inside Svan was waiting for them; he was surprised at the large change in plan.

“You were supposed to meet me out back,” Svan said.

“Bjorn shrunk, he can fit in the building now,” Joha stated without hesitation.

Svan looked at the three-headed creature. “That’s unexpected, but will make this easier. Follow me.”

The building was a textile shop, one of several businesses owned by the Isi family. The second floor was the apartment of the shopkeeper. They’d unfortunately been killed in the raid on the Isi estate, and soon the shop would be annexed by the city.

Before the group could run out of the room, the Knight Commander jumped through the window with his bow drawn. He landed with speed and grace, letting the arrow loose as soon as he locked onto his target.