“This place is really creepy.” Harian muttered. As they passed the steel bars of cell gates, the psychological effect of monotonous color all around him started to take its toll. Everything was blending together into the pale walls, all the wooden chairs were colored pale beige, all the simple furniture ranging from tables to simple wardrobes, the floor, the carpet, even the steel bars of cell doors were painted the same color.

“They are not here for comfort.” Auria spoke silently. “But I agree. I hate this place.”

“So you’ve been here before?” Soldier asked her curiously, and Auria nodded. “Most of the medics were, during the training. I had to choose a victim to be infected with a disease, and then treat him accordingly. It was supposed to be a lesson in the value of human life, to better understand what power do medics really have over the suffering and choosing whom to let live, and whom to let die.”

“How old were you?”

Auria turned her gaze towards Harian. “Fifteen.”

Naira shuddered. She knew Auria already back then, considered her a sister already, and she vividly remembered all the tears and breakdowns that Auria had from those macabre lessons.

“I didn’t realize how hard this might be for you.” Naira whispered softly. Auria shrugged. “It is, and I expect to break down in tears after this whole thing will be behind us. But we are here, and I see the logic of what I am about to do.”

“This might be the perfect subject for your… needs.” A brown haired woman of Harian’s age showed them a cell with a young man sleeping on an uncomfortable bed. They couldn’t see much of him, his body covered with beige blanked and his face hidden behind a flock of oily, long black hair. “He has been sold to us as a child rapist, a slave driver and a murderer.”

“A slave driver? He’s from Ladrurg then?” Harian asked. The man shifted his gaze as he heard the voices and a darker, sun-tanned skin answered Harian’s question. “Far from your southern home, swine.” Harian growled towards the man. A spit from the black haired man was the only answer he got.

Auria felt throbbing pulsating from the projector. Connected with her mind, it seemed that the projector knew what was coming and it expected to be fed soon. It started to unravel itself from the coiled position inside of Auria’s backpack.

The dark haired woman watched Auria intently. “Can I stay and watch, please? For research purposes of course.” As the projector uncoiled itself and spread to its full length and scratched the ceiling above Auria’s head, the woman continued. “I don’t think that this will be an ordinary experience.”

“Stay. Open the cell. Lock it behind me.” Auria said with a voice that sounded like two pieces of metal scraping against one another. The woman hurried to obey. As soon as Auria walked through the door, the black haired man lunged at her, quick as a hunting cat. Instinct kicked Harian and - to his surprise - Naira and both of them aimed their weaponry at the black haired man, ready to kill him before he hurt Auria.

There was no need for that. Five fingers of the projector squeezed the man’s neck and held him in the air. The man’s arms, legs and long hair were flailing as he struggled in the metallic grip, but to no avail. Auria walked, unencumbered by the man’s weight, and pressed him against the further wall, squeezing the throat, choking the life out of the slaver. With each passing second, the man seemed older, more fragile, drier. Color ran out of his skin, leaving but a pale paper-thin shell spread against the bones underneath. His mouth froze open in a silent shout of pain, his eyes devoid of color, dried up like plums underneath the hot summer sun.

It ended as quickly as it began and after a few seconds, Auria was standing in the cell with a corpse hanging off her metallic arm. She was breathing heavily, her eyes closed. A rush of warmth and energy filled every inch of her body, and she never felt more alive. Her mind was clear and strong, not a trace of pain left in her head and body. A tingling sensation spread across her whole skin, concentrating itself in places she usually associated with sexual pleasure, bringing her to an edge of climactic release.

“Are you alright, Auria?” Naira asked softly. She nodded. “I’ve never felt more alive. This… This was thrilling.”

“And was it successful?” Harian asked. “Can you safely connect your mind with a projector?”

After a brief hesitation, Auria nodded. “There is silence, but my mind is connected to it. It feels different. It’s not violent, there are no screaming voices. I feel it’s… mind. It has a sort of mind, can you believe that?” Auria laughed. “A mind of a machine. How… curious.” She turned towards the three people waiting outside the room. She saw them, felt them differently. “This thing… is stronger than I’ve anticipated. It is full of energy now, where before it was just an empty husk.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“So there are no voices? It doesn’t try to control you?” Naira asked with relief. Auria shook her head. “No. No such thing. I feel like that behavior was something of a last resort, a desperate cry for help, to prevent it from starvation. Something like when a wild animal gets into a frenzy from hunger.” Auria turned her head towards the woman that accompanied them. “Thank you for this opportunity, Klaire. I am indebted to you.”

Klaire nodded appreciatively. “I’m planning on taking up on your offer, Auria.”

Auria shifted the focus of her projector towards Harian. Again, she felt the cancerous growth inside of him but now she had enough energy to actually heal him. She walked closer, the projector stretched towards the soldier. “What are you doing, Auria?” He asked as he took a few steps back.

“I’m going to heal your cancer.” She murmured, her eyes closed, focusing.

“Wait, now? You…” Harian coughed violently, his body bent forwards in a wild spasm. Coughing wasn’t stopping and soon, bloody droplets and phlegm accompanied each cough. After a while, coughing stopped and Harian, now on his knees and hands, stood up slowly and breathed deeply. “Was that it?” He wheezed, and Auria nodded. “I had to… remove it from your body somehow. How do you feel?”

“Me?” Harian chuckled. “I’m perfect. How about you, did it tire you out? Any voices, confusion, anything out of the ordinary?”

Auria shook her head. “It was rather easy,but to be honest, it would be much easier to spread that cancer inside of you. This thing is much more powerful than you can imagine. All this power for one life of an evil person…” Auria smiled brightly, her eyes skipping between her companions. “I feel like I can heal the world.”

“Be careful, Auria.” Naira said calmly, opening the cell door for her friend.

“Always.”

***

Iarvahr waited until night fell and clouds hid the moon. He hid the three tendrils and gleaming armor beneath a heavy brown cloak and with an adorned hood, he crept towards the guardsmen stables. A horse with great endurance was necessary to the next step of his path. Two tendrils, as intertwined with his mind as with his body, showed him his next destination - a cave where he slit the throat of his beloved. The third tendril, still not fed with the life force of a living person, stayed dormant.

The communication with powered up tendrils was rather easy. He sent a thought towards them, and they answered with a thought that came up his mind as if it was his own. That’s why he knew that what he was doing was right, and that there really was a way of bringing Leonie back. A word reconfigurator sprang up in his mind when he asked the projectors how to bring her back, and even though he wasn’t entirely sure of what exactly to do, he knew where to go. That was a promising start.

He left Suranihr at Auria’s home. He knew that she would be able to take care of him, although he was very saddened by all the broken bones and torn organs that he had caused. He did the best he could to ease Suranihr’s pain and to help with wounds as much as he could, but…

He hurried. The vision of his beloved back in his arms drove him forward more than anything ever did in his life. He would give anything, do anything to bring her back, and nothing, not Suranihr, not Auria, not even the whole fucking army of Glaeria would stop him from bringing his beloved back to life.

A single stableboy tended to horses when Iarvahr entered the large wooden building. Boy turned towards him and, without hesitation, cried for help. No one not wearing the citadel guard uniform was supposed to be here, and Iarvahr was obviously an intruder.

Iarvahr focused his second powered up projector towards the boy and realized that although at least fifteen regular steps divided them, he needed to take only one step. The projector pulled him towards the stable boy and Iarvahr hit him with a bone-shattering force, leaving the boy on the ground, broken and begging for help. Iarvahr helped him end the pain quickly by draining him with a third, yet dormant tendril. The rush was even stronger than the first two combined and Iarvahr realized that the pleasure of feeding oneself with the life force of another being was incomparable to anything he ever experienced.

His mind cleared after a few seconds and a horrible realization of what he had done hit him with the force of a steam hammer. But there was no time to dally, and projectors showing him the way drove him forward. He muttered a quick apology to the boy, mounted a white horse he chose for himself and trailed into the darkness.

***

Auria found Suranihr lying in her bed as if she herself put him there. His body was in a desolate state and she was very surprised that he still lived. It spoke very much of his resilience toward injuries.

She did not hesitate, and healed most of his major wounds using her new powers. This however took more energy than she anticipated, as she had to rebuild torn organs and broken bones almost from the scratch.

He woke up for a moment, speaking a single word, ‘Iarvahr’, and Auria realized that she recognized the handiwork of her father. He taught her how to properly bandage the injured, what to do to try and stabilize internal injuries and broken bones, and Suranihr’s current state spoke very clearly of her father’s involvement. But where was he? Did Suranihr try to call her father for help, or did he try to point towards the person that caused all these injuries?

Out of respect to the wounded, Harian left the room and stayed behind the closed door of the adjacent rental room, as the price for a room was very acceptable in this establishment. Naira was already sleeping in her own bed, and Auria sat in the cushioned chair with a lit pipe, smoking more out of habit than for the necessity of it.

She needed to know what happened to Suranihr, but at the moment, all she could do was to wait. After a moment of deciding on how to pass time, she took the journal she got from Triarch and tried to look at it through the projector. To her surprise, the language became familiar to her as if she spoke it from her birth. Without hesitation, she started to read.