“We need to think this through, it’s not possible to just stand up and leave without a trace. We need supplies, a mode of transportation. A replacement is needed for me in the hospital. Harian… What do you need to do before leaving?”

Harian chuckled, and coughed slightly. He turned his head towards two women. “I’m leaving with you? We’ve just met. What makes you think that I’d throw my life away?”

“Because you are dying, soldier.” Auria said softly. “I hear it in your breathing, the soft rasp and gargle of something in your lungs and bronchi, something that should not be there. I see it in your movements, in the occasional jolts of pain when your joints resist to move as you would want them to move. I feel it all, with the… with this.” She waved the metallic arm slightly.

“That’s interesting, if it is true.’ Naira muttered admiringly towards the projector. Harian deeply inhaled. “She’s right. The breathing, the pain. I’m… dying, you said? You feel it in… that?” Harian pointed towards the projector. It was turned towards him, its five fingers spread widely, the circular palm glowing with a soft, blue light. It watched him, or perhaps Auria watched him through it.

“I do. I feel everything that is wrong with your body. I know what ails you, where exactly your joints hurt, what kind of cancerous growth festers in your lungs, and where exactly… And I also…” She fell silent, her eyes closed. Only the projector moved in the room, observing Harian from different angles, as if searching for something.

“You also what, medic?” Harian asked impatiently after a few minutes of complete silence.

“I… I’m not sure. Having this attached to my body feels like having a new sense… or senses, plural. I think I can do… something with it.”

“Burning down my workshop?” Naira muttered and Harian chuckled in response. Auria shook her head. “No. I feel like I could remove the cancer from his lungs. With this. With the projector.”

Harian now laughed out loudly. “We’ve seen what that thing can do in your surgical suite. Do not come anywhere…” He stopped in the middle of the sentence, his laughter turned into rasping and coughing. His face, voice and thoughts turned serious. “You’ve said that I’m dying. How long do I have left?”

Auria threw her arms to the side. “Half a year? A full year? It varies, patient to patient. But from my experience… The longer you can fight the cancer, the longer you will suffer. In the end, death will become a sweet release for you.”

“Is that the thing talking, or the medic?” Naira asked with a bitter voice.

Auria looked her dead in the eyes. “It’s me talking.”

“Are you yourself? Or is the thing controlling you?”

“Spoken like a true friend. Do you doubt me? Really? After all these years? Well then, friend, hear me out. Enough with all the cold bullshit towards me.” Auria stepped closer to Naira, and mere inches divided their eyes. “You act like a friend, trying to keep me from pain-numbing narcotics, bringing me to your silly circle of broken people, and I am thankful for everything you do, truly. But, at the same time, you despise me. You wish me dead for saving your life. You wallow and cry, unworthy of surviving the miscarriage, when the acid-bleached bones of your husband lie in the graveyard. Well then, Naira, let your rage and despair out. Do what the Whispers could not do.” The projector hovered closely in front of Naira’s right eye, obstructing half of Auria’s face. Whether it was the soft blue light from the metallic arm, or the play of shadows from a few lanterns burning inside the workshop, Naira saw her friend’s face… changed. Older, ruined by shadowy veins creeping towards her eye, her skin not only pale but ivory white.

“Either pull the trigger on your toy that you press against my belly, or finally fucking admit that your disdain towards me is unjustified, just as your doubts.” Naira did not realize that she held the Basilisk until Auria mentioned it. For a second, she was tempted to pull the trigger. A wave of guilt washed over her, droplets of sweat ran down her forehead and she realized that she could not bear the dark, rageful eyes of her friend. Instead of pulling the trigger of Basilisk, she shook her head and whispered an apology.

“I’m sorry, Auria.”

Auria nodded, coldly accepting the apology. “Do you know why I think that I could heal him?” She held her recently burnt and broken arm high, turning it around, twisting the joints. “It’s healed. Because I wanted it to heal. I focused my will towards the projector and I wished for my arm to heal. Look what happened right now in front of your eyes.”

Naira examined now completely healed arm and nodded quickly, her usual cold mask gone from her face.

“Do it, medic. Please.” Harian said and when Auria turned towards him, he was kneeling before her. “I do not fear a warrior’s death, but dying while coughing out chunks of my own lungs… that terrifies me. Heal me, Auria, and I will follow you to the end of the world.”

As soon as Auria shifted her focus from Naira, the guilt vanished as quickly as it overcame her. Naira realized that somehow, probably with the use of that metal arm, Auria had to alter her perception. Additionally, Naira felt a soft warmth radiating from her gloves. They were doing… something. The projector spoke, and her gauntlets wanted to answer.

Something in the projector spoke to Auria when she slept. Perhaps something will speak to me also, through the gauntlets. A slight constriction of her gauntlets answered her thoughts as if in agreement, yet she was unsure whether it had really happened, or if it was just her imagination.

***

Auria felt as if desert wind had dried up her insides. Burning sensation ran through her body, emanating from where the projector had embedded itself in her back. She felt tingling in her fingers as she realized that they were becoming numb. Her mouth went dry, her eyes started to hurt, tears completely gone from them. Is this the price for using projectors? she thought to herself.

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“I will try, but I can’t now. It’s… tiring, using the projector.”

“Tiring how?” Naira asked.

“I feel… dried up. I feel… hungry. Drained. I need to… to feed.” She whispered the last word, realizing too late that it sounded perhaps too similar to what the young historian said before he tried to kill her.

“You need what?” Harian asked her.

“To eat.” Auria said with a weak voice. “But first, I need to cover the projector arm somehow. Naira, do you have…” Her vision spun around and she lost her balance, but Naira caught her before she hit the ground.

***

“Feed…”

Auria looked around, but other than deep, oily darkness, there was nothing.

“Feed…”

The voice resonated everywhere around her. No, not one voice… she realized. Voices. Two, ten, twenty, a hundred.

“Feed… FEED… Feed…”

She kept spinning around, trying to see at least something other than pure darkness.

“Feed. FEED.”

It materialized in front of her - a figure, unknown, unnamed, with an ever shifting face, resembling nobody she knew, until…

The faces stopped shifting, and the young historian stared at her from blackness. He opened his mouth, and an inhuman scream came out, tearing her insides apart, piercing her ears, cutting her skin.

“FEED US. FEED ME. FEED MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…”

***

She woke up, disoriented, unsure of where she was until she saw a familiar face.

“How long was…” She coughed, for her tongue was still incredibly dry. Naira offered her water, and she drank the whole pitcher at once.

“A few minutes. I have sent Harian for some food.”

“Your cold voice is back. That’s… great.” Auria said, slightly annoyed.

“Yes. After you’ve shifted your attention away from me, the guilt I’ve felt is gone. But I agree with you, Auria. You are right. And I truly am sorry for my behavior.”

Auria groaned, as a sharp pain ran pulsed through her whole body.

“This thing… Are we alone here, Naira? Is the soldier gone?”

Naira nodded. “Completely alone.”

Auria sat up. “I’m… terrified. I have felt what’s inside of him, every part of the cancer. I have also felt the aching of his joints, and what causes it. I feel the same with you. I feel how ravaged your insides are after the miscarriage…”

“Stop. I don’t want to know. I’ll bring you more water.” Naira took a few steps, but a soft voice from her friend stopped her.

“Wait, don’t go, please.”

She let out a deep sigh, and sat down next to Auria. “Be calm, Auria. Everything is going to be alright.”

“I know. I just don't want to be alone with… with the voices.”

“Do you hear them right now?”

“No, but I feel their… hunger. They want me to feed them something. Not food, but… I’m not sure what yet.” Auria laid her head softly against Naira’s shoulder. “Healing myself with the projector took a lot more from me than I would have anticipated. Both mentally and physically.”

Naira raised her eyebrows. “Mentally?”

“I have to admit that the anger with which I lashed against you was not me alone. I think the projector might have had some effect on my mind. I… might need your help.”

“You have it.”

“Thank you… just let me know when I start to act strangely. My body needs to adapt to new senses and a new limb, just as my mind does. I wonder which will take longer to adapt.”

They sat silently for a while, and Harian finally brought some food - a baked bread, still hot from the oven, a wedge of ripe cheese along with fresh apples and pears, and a bottle of wine. Auria thanked him with a nod and a smile. They all ate, silent, lost in their own thoughts.

“Do you believe in souls?” Auria asked them in between chewing. Naira said a resolute “No.”, but Harian stopped chewing and asked a question of his own.

“What do you mean by souls?”

“What happens to us when we die?”

“Rot, decomposition, food for plants and animals.” Naira states as an obvious matter of fact. Harian nodded approvingly, but Auria asked another question.

“Alright then, if I die tomorrow, I’m gone, my memories are gone, everything that makes up my mind is gone. So why do I remember?”

Naira did not understand her. “Why do you remember what?”

“Anything. If everything will be gone when I die, so will my memories be gone. So why do I have them? If I die tomorrow, the memories will disappear, and I will not remember, uh, remembering them. But I still remember them. So, if I die now, my memories can’t just disappear. They must go… somewhere. Because I still remember them.”

Harian chuckled. “What the hell, medic? That’s what you mean by soul? A transcendent, non-existing yet existing book of memories?”

“Maybe.”

Naira rolled her eyes. “This is a question for a priest, a philosopher or a drunkard. The better question is, why do you ask this? I know that you do not believe this spiritual nonsense, so why ask this?”

“What if - and don't laugh immediately after I say this - what if the voices that talk to me through the projector are… What if they are dead people?”

They did not laugh. They stopped mid chew, their bodies tensed up. “What?” Harian asked, disbelieving.

“I saw your friend. The young historian. Lakar. The entity that spoke to me while I was passed out… The faces were constantly changing, and so were the voices. Until they stopped changing, and Lakar was there, standing in front of me.”

“Calm down, Auria. Think rationally. Your mind gave a form to something inside of that… thing. Something that speaks to you. It might not be human at all, did you think of that?”

“I did but… there was another face. A man. He bumped into me on my way here. In my mind, a quick thought flickered about him dying off of an internal rot. At that moment, I felt the projector warm up slightly… Just a little bit. But what if my thoughts actually gave him some disease? And what if he died, and his soul - or his mind or whatever - what if…”

“Stop, Auria. Healing yourself has drained you. You have collapsed mere moments ago, dehydrated and tired. By this logic, don’t you think that killing someone would also drain you?”

Harian coughed. “She said… I remember her saying something regarding the metal arm. That it doesn’t want to burn, but to spread… something. To spread disease, perhaps? Maybe it wasn’t made for healing, but for… killing. In a very sick way.”

Whether it was the effect of events of past days, or just a general tiredness of her body and mind, Auria saw some logic in Harian’s words. But the idea of killing someone with just a bare thought… That seemed rather impossible. Then again, healing a broken and burnt hand with a thought channeled through a metallic arm attached to her spine was just a hair short of complete madness.

“We have to find an answer to this. We must leave for Bashen as soon as possible.”

“May I propose something?” Naira asked. “Do not leave the wisest place in the known world for a ruined land behind a strange wall. Not before you ask around the Citadel. Comb through the archives, consult historians, mechanics, and only after you have extinguished all the possible options in here, leave.”

Auria nodded with a smile. “Alright. Whom do you suggest I visit first?”