I float in a haze. It’s black. I’m disoriented. I can’t feel my body. No smell or sound.

It’s not totally unpleasant.

“What happened here?” asks a female voice from the darkness. I can’t tell what direction. It sounds far away and familiar, but I can’t place it. I drift for a while, mind slowly spinning and disconnected.

“Is he dangerous? Why is he like that?” asks the same voice from far away. Or maybe it’s not far away, just soft.

“He’s always dangerous,” says a male voice, slightly closer, and this one I recognize.

Taiwo.

“But from the looks of this, he probably saved the whole planet. I have no idea how he’s still alive,” Taiwo adds.

I'm interested in what they have to say and my mind gravitates to Taiwo’s voice. I try to focus on it. Instead, I spin and drift again and lose the voices.

They seem far away, muffled.

A second, or a week, or maybe year later I hear them again.

“Should we call him?” the female voice asks. It could be Dhromea.

I lose focus and my mind drifts again for a bit. I feel like I can hear echoes of wind through trees and waves on the beach. Am I making that up?

Maybe some birds are calling far, far in the distance?

Suddenly I’m still drifting, I’m still disconnected, but I’m on high alert. Paranoid. Scrambling to hide, to get away. To push myself deeper in the darkness where I can’t be found.

“You call on me with disturbing frequency,” says a deep voice that penetrates through the haze and causes all my instincts to flee, to fight, to submit, to defy. I am a jumble and not in control of my own thoughts.

Tenebris.

“Apologies, my Lord. We thought you should see this. You would want to see this.”

A pause. My high strung state drifts from a 19 out of 10 to an 18. I’m in a daze but hyper aware. I somehow cling on to discover what the next words will be, if I can catch them.

“As ever, Taiwo, you serve me well.”

Relief. Fear. Floating. Wind through the trees and rain dripping to a forest floor.

“What’s happened to him?” asks Taiwo. I think he sounds concerned. Or uncaring. Near? Or far?

Some time passes. I drift.

“Is that what I think it is?” asks Taiwo. A pause. “Do you have everything in the Universe?”

A deep chuckle from Tenebris. Uplifting. Threatening. I try to move, to escape. I’m disconnected. How do I move when I’m floating in the void?

The female, I’m more sure it’s Dhromea, says something. I’m too far away to catch it. Floating.

“A unique set of circumstances. Truly unique and exceptional,” says Tenebris. My soul shakes but it feels solid. Stronger. Powerful.

“What is happening to him? Will he live? Should he live… like that?” Taiwo asks.

I float far above in the darkness. Or nearby. Both. Here, and there, and nowhere.

A swirling question of betrayal from Taiwo does not touch me, though it grasps at me to bring me down from the clouds. Smoke from a fire that blows away in a hurricane.

“Dhromea, bring Q’harrdoc,” instructs Tenebris.

“Of course, my Lord,” she replies. Her voice is stronger, firmer. Closer.

I push against the haze. I try to remember what’s happened to me. To take some control. The disconnection I feel dials down for a second and stabilizes, but then I’m sent spinning and drifting again. Happy. Pain free. Content. Worried. Rage.

“By the Gods, Tenebris!” A new voice says. Odd. Alien. Angry. Curious.

“What can you do?” Tenebris asks. “He has been bathed in more Mana than I could survive. Is there a way forward?”

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“Bring Uutaalin and Biliskton,” replies the voice. Certain. Questing. Determined. “Bring Q’yuhiloog and Talgok. Use the code word if you must.”

“My Lord,” Dhromea says. Then nothing. I spin slowly in the darkness.

I fight this time, harder. Determined to be me. To be in my own body. Something is happening. I try with everything, my very being straining, but then… I am a helium balloon released into the air on a lazy summer day, warm and free. Floating again, far from the ground.

“Tenebris…” says Taiwo. His voice drifts away. I strain to hear it but there is only silence.

New voices. Hushed. Excited. Shocked. Doubtful. Their words escape me.

“His SMI has… Evolved. I did not think it was possible. He is… something unique. I don’t know what. This needs study!” A voice declares it and I fight to regain my senses. I claw and claw and pull and the darkness wavers. Faint lights and smells are in the distance. The ground under me is a thousand miles away, but there. I fight. I will not be caged!

“There will be no study,” says Tenebris with finality. “You will siphon the excess Mana if you can and repair his Mana pathways to the extent you are able. Provide his Evolved SMI with an integration solution and guardrails if you are able. You will do this to the best of your ability. When you leave, you will not remember what you’ve seen.”

My memories and very being shake when he utters the words. I drift and float in a parallel dimension. I can feel things happening to me. Many things. Disconnected things. Things I do not understand. Cannot comprehend. A voice speaks into my mind but I cannot grasp it, cannot make sense of it.

“It is done, Lord Tenebris. We agree it will take time. He may be broken. He may be something we’ve never seen before. Will you change your mind and allow us our memories at least, to study? To learn?”

“No.” The voice is harder than iron. As certain as time advancing.

A pause. A long pause.

I reach for my mind and try to pull it in. Try to wake. Try to be myself. Try to catch raindrops with chopsticks. It seems possible, but it eludes me.

“What do you wish us to do, my Lord?” asks Taiwo from far away.

“Bring him to my Academy,” Tenebris answers. “Invite his relation, the one who wears my armor also. They may train, and rest. The young one needs protection and we owe Bronwic that much. If he regains himself, he may one day surpass even me.”

Dread. Fear. Curiosity. Determination. Hope.

“Are you not… threatened, my Lord? Are you sure this is the path to take?” asks Taiwo.

My mind races with emotions that flow through me without registering. I spin again, warm and safe. Cold and empty. Grasping and reaching.

Tenebris laughs. My soul laughs with him, resonating, though I can’t understand why.

“Does the dragon fear the butterfly?” asks Tenebris. “He is potential. Vast potential, but only potential. Perhaps an ally now, perhaps an enemy one day. Perhaps not. Perhaps something we’ve never seen before. Even I cannot tell. You are to keep me updated, Taiwo. But I do not wish to be bothered with this matter again. If he somehow recovers and wins the KCT, we will speak again.”

“Understood, my Lord,” says Taiwo. Deference, respect, fear, worship. I sense them and feel the same. Taiwo and I are merely leaves on his wind, drifting and swirling and moving where he demands. No. We are more. Are we more?

The voices move away, and this time I can tell they are actually moving away from me rather than my mind wandering uncontrolled away from them. I am starting to come back to myself, but I am not yet there.

Floating. Spinning. Stabilizing. Strengthening.

Silence for a time, though I know someone is near. Watching, waiting. Protecting? Examining?

The first thing that comes to me is my sense of my body. The burning has cooled, but I feel… different. I’m not sure how yet. I feel that I’m sitting, reclined, on something. It’s solid, comfortable. I focus on it. Slowly, I open my eyes and look around. I’m sitting in one of Taiwo’s chairs, still facing the chamber where the Mana sphere was.

“Welcome back,” says Taiwo with a charismatic smile, not that he has any other kind of smiles. He seems genuinely happy I am awake… or is it just an act? What did he say when I was lost and drifting? It flows away from me like water through my fingers. Still, it’s Taiwo. He’s been there for me so many times. I manage a grin.

“We were afraid to move you,” he adds. “It wasn’t particularly clear why you’re still alive, so we decided to change as little as possible. The ambient Mana here is still very high. Uncomfortably high.”

“We?” I ask, testing. I can feel the ambient Mana in a different way than I used to, but put that aside. First, to understand Taiwo and his position on this. On me.

“Dhromea brought me here and we asked Tenebris to join us. He did, along with some others who helped. Exactly what they did is beyond me.”

My memories are vague but it seems to add up. I relax a little bit, letting go of some tension I am holding. Only a portion, but some. Eventually you have to trust someone, right? Or face the alternative. Solitude in all things.

“What happened?” I ask. “Why was I so out of it?”

Taiwo pauses for a couple seconds as if pondering what to say.

“Well… that’s a bit of a mystery to me too. I was hoping you could fill us in. What we do know is when we found you, your body was highly saturated with Mana, just like this chamber. Tenebris had a hypothesis that Researchers were conducting an experiment in concentrating Mana at this facility using a Mana Sink. A good activity on a post-Influx world if you don’t want to wait for eons to test your Mana absorption techniques. It seems like the experiment may have gone wrong, though, and taken over the complex. A bit of a chain reaction or reinforcing loop. Unchecked, it might have caused a lot of damage. How much, nobody really knows. Perhaps catastrophic? The whole chamber is cleared out now and it’s just the containment runes on the walls left. If there was anything else - any technology or magical artifacts - they’re gone now.”

I sit up a bit and look around, contemplating. My brain is starting to work again and I can move, like I’ve woken up from the deepest sleep of my life.

“I have a lot of notifications,” I tell Taiwo. They are blinking furiously in the corner of my vision, calling desperately for my attention. I flick my eyes away from them and back to my friend. Friend? Yes, friend.

He shrugs, happy with whatever I decide.

I decide to open them, and see if they can help us with this mystery. Surely I might get a Level or two out of this trial too. I feel like maybe I deserve it.