Chapter 12
Reactions to a Fallen Goddess
~<(0)>~
Lyrei entered the town with disinterest. The remains of the wall had cooled into the sheet of rock underfoot, slippery with the rain that was still falling all around. She noticed none of this, her footing sure and solid. As she walked past ruined structures, some still burning from within despite the storm, she extinguished them with a thought. Her shield loomed before her, and she dismantled it, with a wave of her hand, the whole thing collapsing into naught but hexagons that shrunk before winking out. The town beyond the shield lay empty of people, save for a few that unfortunately hadn’t made it. She didn’t mourn their loss… she didn’t feel anything in the wake of defeating the Chimeric Abomination.
The town had fared far better beyond her shield, the only damage apparently from the fight before she had briefly lost consciousness. The citizens had wisely evacuated here too, likely heading out the gates on the far side. She decided that the gates were her destination and started walking again. The buildings she passed gave her little pinpricks of memories, perhaps from the period her apparent amnesia was blocking.
She reached the gates and shoved them open with a wave of force from her hands, stepping out onto the road on the far side, surrounded by a section of untouched plant life and then sheer devastation. She could see the townspeople a ways down the road, looking as though they had been moving as fast as possible to escape the town, only starting to turn back as they realized the Abomination was dead. She started towards them when, with a rush of air and thump of something impacting the ground, a gryphon landed on the road before her.
An elf dismounted from the beast and looked shocked, before calling out, sounding unsure, “L-Lady Araphine?”
Her eyes narrowed. He knew her. Not that this was surprising, she was quite well known after all. It was more the fact that he looked familiar. She pored through her memories, and then it hit her. “The Incompetent head of the Leyline Management Team. What a Lovely surprise indeed.” She spat the word Lovely like it left a bad taste in her mouth. “Of course it is me, you fool. What in Catastrophe brought you to this corner of the world?” her eyes narrowed, “Don’t tell me they actually threw you into one of the teams responsible for taking out that Abomination… I didn’t know you’d managed to do that badly of a job keeping the Leylines stable. You certainly don’t have the skill to be a part of the teams based on ability alone.” She waved behind herself with a flourish, “Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, you’re rather too late, as is the rest of the task force. It’s dead. I KILLED it. ALONE.”
The other elf shuddered at her words, a reaction she was quite used to getting from anyone who had the misfortune of dealing with her. “I… I saw, Lady Araphine. That was… beyond words.” He looked terrified as though he might become her next target at any moment. “I… wasn’t sent here to fight the Chimeric Abomination. In fact, we didn’t even know of its presence until we arrived here. We were sent out here to locate an energy surge believed to be from an anomalous, powerful slime.”
We. The choice of words implied, if not directly confirming he had a group with him, somewhere presumably nearby. “You saw an Omega class threat… and saw ME fighting it, ALONE, and you did NOTHING to help?!” she shouted at him, seeing him try to shrink into his traveling clothes.
He shuddered and tried to regain his wits, chewing on his tongue as he worked up the courage to respond. “We were ordered to stand down by the Elven Lord himself. The slime was considered to be our top priority. Besides, what chance would we have against the Abomination, even if we fought alongside you?” He realized his mistake the moment the words slipped out.
“A GREATER CHANCE THAN YOU WOULD HAVE IF I SLEW YOU HERE FOR SHEER INCOMPETENCE!!” she was seething now, but her words dropped to a deceptively calm, steady tone, though they maintained just as much of their bite, “Were it not for me, that Abomination would have continued carving through the landscape, leaving behind a wake of fire and total destruction. Thousands would be dead. Need I remind you that the longer an Abomination exists in the world, the greater the damage it does on a global scale? How Fucking Important could this slime have been that your priority was to track it instead of assisting in the annihilation of a Chimeric Abomination?”
His blood ran cold as he realized the question she was going to ask even before she asked it. “W-well… Lady Araphine…” he shook and sweated, feeling utterly pathetic and insignificant compared to the sheer force of nature before him. He would have cowered in terror had he been closer to the Abomination, but that would have been nothing compared to the presence of she who slew it. “I-I… the slime… it killed…. You.”
Lyrei faltered. Killed her? While such a thing was certainly possible, the Abomination could have certainly ended her if she had been careless or even just particularly unlucky, the fact was that she didn’t feel particularly dead. “Explain.” It was not a suggestion.
Her terrifying presence broken, the Expedition Leader felt bolstered, if only a little. “In the Central Leyline Convergence Reserve greater caverns, you encountered an anomalous slime that we believe consumed the gelled thaumic energy in the main reservoir and engaged it in battle. You… fell beneath it, and it pulled you into its body, and when you tried to teleport to escape, well… you took it with you. We had your staff and were tracking it via an object bond but… it stopped working after a short time. We were unable to locate you or the slime after that, and you were presumed dead.”
He didn’t finish the explanation, but he didn’t need to. He was saying that somehow, she was that slime, with her memories and form. It made absolutely no sense, nowhere had anything like this ever happened in the past. However, inconsistencies since she woke up started to make a little more sense. A vast store of magical energy, greater than anything she had ever possessed, that she could tap and channel through her body, only limited by her mind’s ability to calculate spell formulae. Staggering wounds that apparently just flowed back together with a rainbow shimmer despite her not using magic to heal them. Her inability to split her mind and apparent lack of an object bond to her own staff.
“Tell me then, what do you think I am?” she sent the question back with the beginnings of renewed vigour.
He didn’t even need to answer, not really. He had been acting like he was seeing a ghost, and also waking from a nightmare into one that existed in reality. “T-to be honest, Lady Araphine, though I do not know what happened to you, there is no shred of doubt in my mind that it is indeed your mind inside that body.”
“Then what do you intend to do?” She practically dared him to make a mistake.
“M-my… Our orders… we are to bring the slime, you, back with us for study.” Dissection, intrusive scans, torment for her very soul. “I-if we could prove that it’s you inside-“
“Finish that sentence and I WILL kill you.” He wisely clapped his mouth shut, wincing in pain as he bit his tongue. “Here is what is going to happen. You are going to return to your little useless team, and you are going to return to our great incompetent Lord, and you will tell him the following: You will leave this town alone. You will leave the Chimeric Abomination on the other side of the town alone. As far as you are concerned, the townsfolk killed the monster and have laid claim to all of its various remains. You will not return to this town with any sort of military force, as your presence ALONE here violates the border laws to allied nations have established. You will consider these townspeople under my protection until I have told you otherwise. You will Not attempt to harm any of these townspeople to draw me out, because if you do, I will come to the capitol and I will find you, ALL of you, and I do not know when I will stop killing.” Her eyes flashed with power, and he cowed beneath her gaze.
“O-of course Lady Araphine. I’ll return to the team right away and return to inform our Lord.” He practically ran back to his gryphon, unsteadily trying to mount his means of escape from the most terrifying woman Elvenkind had ever known.
“Oh, and one more thing.” He looked up, fear written across his features, “Tell him to stop trying to find me. I don’t know what happened… but ask him if any good has EVER come from trying to find me.”
He nodded with far too much enthusiasm, and spurred his mount on, flying off into the sky. She didn’t care to watch him… he could have died for all she cared at the moment; it made no difference to her. She started down the road ahead of her, unsure of where to go, but needing to walk.
“Lyrei, are you leaving?” the question came from one of the townsfolk. She looked eerily familiar, the feeling prickling at the back of her mind as though if she thought hard enough on it, it would all come into clarity. It wouldn’t… she had tried.
“I intend to. The longer I remain here, the more I am worried that you will gain unwanted attention due to my presence.” In truth, she didn’t exactly care much about that right at that moment. It felt like she should, but she really just wanted to get away; Solitude was her solace.
“I won’t let that stand. My inn was behind that shield you erected, and I’m sure it’s still standing. I insist that you stay at least one more night. I don’t rightly understand everything you and that other elf talked about, but I gather that the giant monster was likely something that wouldn’t have even noticed our tiny town, and you risked yourself to defend us from it. I don’t really care if you are a slime, or an elf, or whatever you are… you saved this town and most of the people in it, and while I can’t exactly speak for all of us, I think I’d be lying if I said we are all incredibly grateful for your actions.”
Of course they had heard the conversation, it wasn’t like the two of them had been terribly quiet. She wasn’t entirely sure what to make of this woman’s words, but she didn’t seem to be alone in the sentiment, the great majority of the townsfolk that had gathered nodding their heads along with what she said. “I need some time alone.” She wasn’t sure why she was dealing with these humans. She had fulfilled that strange compulsion to help them, but she didn’t really need to stick around, did she? “I will be back by nightfall. I appreciate your hospitality, Miss.”
The response was a great big smile from the innkeeper, and then the townsfolk started to move by her. Several of them looked like they wanted to shake her hand or thank her directly for what she’d done, but this died under the onslaught of her withering glare.
~<(0)>~
Lyrei had wandered a ways down the road, where the devastating effects of the battle became less noticeable, and wandered into the trees. Her fury broke, and she shook, not quite crying, but wracked with emotion that she couldn’t quite explain. She had killed a Chimeric Abomination singlehandedly. This more than anything else proved to her just how much things were different… how they were wrong. Would she have even truly imagined doing something the last time she had fought a Chimeric Abomination? She shouldn’t have had the power for millennia, and yet she was considered the most powerful mage in the world. She was so far above any known living elf in power that it was absurd. And yet, she was so far below the strange natural phenomenon that was the Chimeric Abomination.
She picked a diagnostic spell, focusing it on herself and casting it. Her body was normal save for an unidentified mass where her brain should have been. She summoned an icy blade and sliced her palm open, wincing at the pain, watching as blood leaked from the wound. Then she thought about something she would need to heal the gash, and it flowed back together, with even the blood fading into the surface of her skin. What WAS she? Why was her body like this?
She probed at her mind, trying to find some trace of an answer. Or barring that, some trace of her auxiliary minds. She didn’t find them, but she did find something that hadn’t been there before, at least not in this form. It was something that evaded her comprehension, yet it seemed sealed off, protected from the rest of her mind. These were her memories… they had to be. She wondered if she had sealed them away consciously, or if it was some sort of trauma response. In the end it didn’t really matter to her. She wanted full control of her own mind back to hopefully make proper sense of everything.
Lyrei set up some magical safeguards, a way to reseal this portion of her mind it he situation required it, as well as protections against mental influence. She took a deep breath, trying to steady her nerves. She was not ready for this, nor would she ever really be ready for it. But if she didn’t do it, what then? Would she live the rest of her life with a part of her not under her control, or even her knowledge. Such a thought was unacceptable to her, and so, safeguards in place, she cracked the seal.
~<(0)>~
Ophelia floated in an empty void, dormant to the point she may as well have been dead. Her last thoughts were of the realization she would be hit by the Chimeric Abomination, determination fading away to dawning horror at the very last moment. Time was meaningless to her, and so it could have been seconds or millennia since she had gone dormant, when she woke up it made no difference to her. She looked out through eyes of a body strangely not her own, despite being the only body she had ever known. “(Lyrei?)” she called out into the foreign space of her own mind.
“{You know my name, how curious. You can understand me like this?}” the voice of her mother came to her as she expected, though it was different somehow.
She was confused at the question more than anything, “(Of course I can, Mother. What happened? The last thing that I remember was fighting that Chimeric Abomination, and then it hit me with one of its limbs and then… nothingness.)”
There was a large pause from her mother, but eventually she spoke, “{I do not know why you call me mother, but we will get to that topic in time I imagine. You say that you were fighting the Chimeric Abomination. Was this beside me as my companion? I cannot remember anything from the first half of that fight. I had imagined this portion of my mind was sealing off memories somehow, but instead it houses you.}”
Now Ophelia was even more confused. “(I was fighting, and you were preparing spells for me. We were readying a massive ritual spell in the clouds. Wait, did we have to escape from the Abomination? What happened?)”
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~<(0)>~
Lyrei balked at the information the mysterious presence within her head was suggesting. It, or as she was leaning, she, was suggesting that she had been fighting the Abomination alone, with Lyrei feeding her spells. However, that sounded almost exactly like… how her auxiliary minds used to work. She wasn’t an auxiliary mind though, nor did this mysterious presence seem to be one. “{What you are suggesting sounds insane, though I have long since been able to split my mind into multiple portions to be able to prepare spells for the primary portion of me to cast. However, I have been completely unable to do so since I woke up in the middle of battle with the Chimeric Abomination earlier today. I have what seems to be a chunk of my life missing from my memory from before I woke up, aside from little fragments that I have been picking up her and there. My body heals mortal wounds with barely a thought, flesh flowing back into place before sealing without even a scar. I have something in place of a brain, and yet it seems to affect nothing that I have been able to discern.}” She waved her hand and created a mirrored surface before her, looking into her own shimmering blue eyes. She spoke again, but not mentally, “If you were to ask me if I thought this body was mine, I would have said yes at any time before today, for thousands of years. And yet today, right now, I cannot say with confidence that this body is mine! Less than an hour ago I encountered an elf who, while he may be an incompetent idiot, is hardly daft, and yet he told me that he saw me die. He called me a slime, which is of course absurd. And YET, it isn’t, is it?” She was shouting into the stillness of the forest grove. “I Killed a Chimeric Abomination singlehandedly, which should be IMPOSSIBLE, and yet its body is on the other side of the town from here, still coated in ice! I have Power that I never would have dreamed of Possessing, but everything is Wrong. My body may look like an elf, but it doesn’t behave like an elf when you really examine it. This isn’t my body, is it?”
The voice inside her head was quiet for a subjective eternity while Lyrei’s heart hammered inside of her, emotions running wild. “(You truly have no memory of any of it, do you? This… isn’t your body, no. It is mine. In that cavern, I believe your memories describe it as the Central Leyline Convergence Reserve, a lesser minded version of myself absorbed you, and one of your fragmented minds slipped by my assimilation. I was given Elven level intelligence that day, and by a single fragment of your whole mind surviving, you were able to talk to me. You saved me from the weight of my new consciousness. You taught me how to take your form, and how to communicate with other sentient beings, such as the humans in Fairpost. Then the Chimeric Abomination approached, and we decided to fight it. During that battle I got close to the Abomination, and in a moment of carelessness it hit me. You had warned me that it might have some sort of adverse effects on my form as a whole, and it seems it caused my mind to shut down to protect itself. Somehow this allowed you to awaken and take control of my body, but without any of the memories you have made since you became a part of my body, perhaps due to my mind being in a state of dormancy.)”
She didn’t want to accept the words this voice was telling her, yet they carried an eerie melody of truth to them. Was she truly dead? Was her entire existence just a slime recreating her based on the memories it had absorbed? If that were the case, then why was she in control now, where, ever since she had woken up mid battle, the true owner of her body had been completely dormant? She hadn’t been feeling any of the prickling memories since she had set up her safeguards. She supposed it made sense if they truly were somehow a part of the mind of her… host. “What will happen if I drop the safeguards I have set up currently? Will you take over? Will I return to being the person you have apparently come to know since that day? Will you take control of your body again?” Will you destroy me for having hijacked your body? She left that unsaid… but she knew that under normal circumstances she would have done so. These were not normal circumstances, however, and this was not her body. She couldn’t go back to her body.
“(I hope that if you lower your safeguards your memories will be returned to you and everything will make more sense. I don’t know what will happen beyond that, or who will have control of this body, as I do not fully understand the reason why you were able to take control in the first place.)”
She could probably destroy the presence in her head. She had apparently destroyed her body and eaten her mind, so what was stopping her from simply resealing that part of her mind up, or simply purging it entirely?
She had called Lyrei Mother.
According to this presence’s words, she had unwittingly given her the ability to think far beyond whatever level she was at previously. Had she rejoiced when she discovered that the being who gave her this gift hadn’t died? She saw Lyrei as a mother figure, and called her such. And from the sounds of things it was Lyrei who had given her this form, rather than something that had been stripped from her mind.
She couldn’t destroy her, just as much as she hadn’t attempted to destroy Lyrei. Tears fell onto the ground as emotion once again coursed through her body. She knew what she had to do. “Whatever may come to pass, so be it. I’ll lower my safeguards.”
~<(0)>~
Lyrei found herself laying on the ground, though she didn’t remember getting there. She opened her eyes and brushed the dirt off her clothes. “(You are awake, Mother. Do you feel right again?)” The voice sounded familiar, but difficult to place, as though she was used to hearing it in a different setting. The realization flashed into her mind suddenly. “Ophelia? How are you inside of me? Wait, how am I in control? Is this… your body?” inside her the slime laughed before responding, “(I think it will take a little for your memories to settle properly. I think I can safely say that you are back to normal, however. To answer your questions until then, Yes this is my body. No, I’m not entirely sure why you are in control either. During the fight with the Chimeric Abomination, I got hit by it directly and the wild magic disrupted my mind enough that it went dormant. And while I was unconscious, the core part of your mind woke up and defeated the Abomination singlehandedly.)”
Lyrei shook her head a bit to clear some of the fog that was plaguing it. “We defeated the Abomination? That… sounds about right. Wait, you say I did it? Alone? I didn’t know I had it in me. Wait, where are we?”
“(From conversing with your core self a little bit ago she seemed to imply that we are on the far side of the town from the remains of the Abomination, some ways down the road. Would you like to return to Fairpost? I imagine the Townspeople will be quite happy to see us again. We should collect our supplies too, assuming they didn’t get destroyed in the battle.)”
Lyrei nodded thoughtfully, “I suppose that is a good idea. I think I had promised the Innkeeper I’d return by nightfall. It’s all still so fuzzy though.
The walk back to the town was simple, aside from a small level of confusion on which direction to go. As they went, more and more memories returned to Lyrei, seeming to settle in her consciousness like snowfall. How terrified she had been, all alone and not understanding what was going on. She had killed one of the most powerful entities that occurred on the planet, and yet she had been scared to death of finding out she wasn’t real, and of dying. Now those feelings seemed simple compared to everything else that was going on. “You know, I am glad that I met you, Ophelia. I have come to terms with my own mortality and whatever may come, and I have been tempered as an individual because of it.”
“(What makes you say that Mother? I of course am glad to have met you as well, or I would not exist as I do today.)”
“She… I… contemplated destroying you before I let myself assimilate my memories again. The idea that I was naught but a construct built by your mind was terrifying, as was the knowledge that you had, in most senses of the term, killed me. Destroying you seemed like the logical thing to do, for a time.”
“(Why didn’t you then?)” the question wasn’t accusatory, but very curious in nature.
“The knowledge that your reaction to finding out I was alive wasn’t to destroy me. Beyond that, that you see me as your mother.”
Ophelia’s response was filled with amusement. “(You know, when I first discovered the concept of death, the idea terrified me. I don’t think I could have even comprehended such a type of mind death like that. Now though, I do not worry about your attempting to destroy me, obviously. But I also do not worry about other types of death either. The fact I have gotten the opportunity to spend as much time as I have, both with you and learning all I have about the world, it makes me content with how I have spent my life. It was certainly better than absorbing slime in the Central Leyline Convergence Reserve for the rest of my life.)”
Lyrei laughed out loud at that, “And though my earlier selves would not have admitted it, I am glad that I have a life outside of the walls of the Capitol, always pushing the boundaries of research. Though I’ll admit, with everything I’m learning here, I could consider this to be furthering my research still. I mean, you are a completely unique creature in this world, and that is fascinating. I’d have given my right arm to be knee deep in exotic research like this, and now I have it. I just… didn’t expect the price to be my entire body, or ‘knee deep’ to be quite so literal.”
“(That was a terrible joke, and you know I still feel bad about what happened, so know that I am laughing in protest.)” The mental voice of Ophelia deadpanned, before bursting into giggles. “(I suppose I am glad that I can help the Great Lyrei Araphine with her research.)”
“You know, it used to be that I yearned to hear that from everyone. I worked for millennia to be the best in the world, and because of that my name carries a lot of weight to it, at least to those in the know. For as long as I can remember, the Elven Empire has treated me as though I am more a natural disaster than a citizen, unwilling to tell me what to do, paving the way for whatever path I decide to move in, metaphorically of course, and staying out of my way.” She sighed and leaned against a nearby tree, reaching her hand out in front, spreading her fingers to partially block the light of the sun. “Now, I almost hate the way I was treated. It seems so pointless. I did it to myself though. I was always a bit of a prodigy, until I simply surpassed anyone alive. I alienated everyone around me, and then managed to alienate an entire country. I used the common knowledge of my nature to my advantage many times, even earlier today when I used it to utterly terrify the elf in charge of the Leyline Management team.” Lyrei moved on from her tree, continuing down the road, now able to see Fairpost in the distance. “I think I’m just happy to be known as Lyrei Araphine. Not Lady Araphine the Mage, or the Great Researcher Araphine, or anything like that. Just my name. Mother has a nice ring to it as well. I don’t know though, my only child ended up being a slime and ate me, so I’m not sure I’m cut out for this whole ‘mother’ business.”
“(Well, it isn’t as though I have any experience with it. You haven’t killed me yet, so that’s something. Admirable even.)”
~<(0)>~
The Town looked worse for wear, but was still standing, which matched to Lyrei’s earlier memories nicely. There was a great deal of activity on both sides of the open gates, with people working to clear away rubble and take undamaged supplies out to be inventoried. As she got closer, some people turned to look at her, though their gazes rarely lingered for too long. As she entered the city, Lyrei saw more of the extent of the damage, damaged roofs and walls, injured townsfolk being treated in order of the severity of said injury. And the dead; People were covering them with blankets, grouping them all together. It pained her heart that she hadn’t been able to protect them all from the Abomination. But she knew that even if she won, she might not be able to save them all. It was acceptable collateral damage, and yet… she still felt pain for the fact she had failed those lying under the blankets. It wasn’t their fault that a global scale threat decided to tear through their town. If it weren’t for her, almost all of them would surely be dead.
As she worked her way toward the inn she had stayed at, she could see a clear delineation where structures had been on one side of her shield versus the other. Entire buildings were scorched, upper floors simply gone or severely damaged. Some had burnt to the foundation while the battle had raged on. Some buildings had been halfway through the shield, and one side was practically pristine, while the other sagged and heaved from the fire and subsequent rains. She dipped back to the less damaged side of town and slipped into the inn. Immediately, the innkeeper, who had been prepping food for the nearly full dining room rushed over and gave her a big hug.
Lyrei stiffened at the sudden show of affection, and after a few long moments, the woman let go, a little embarrassment showing on her rosy cheeks. “Sorry Miss Araphine. It’s been an emotional day and I’m just happy to see you came back like you promised. Are you hungry? I’ll get you some food from the next batch. Free of charge, and I don’t just mean for you; Everyone is getting free food and, aside from your room, the others are stacked wall to wall with sleeping spots for those that lost their home. I’m doing what I can to help out folks, we have to take care of each other after all. You just go sit down at that table over there.” She pointed to an empty table near the edge of the room, and Lyrei hardly had a moment to even answer before the Innkeeper rushed back to the big pot of stew she was cooking on the stove. Lyrei thought about it for a short while, though she quickly came to the realization that she wouldn’t complain in the slightest about getting to eat food properly again, for the first time since the caverns.
She waited at the table for the Innkeeper to bring bowls full of hearty, steaming stew to everyone, and she ate, savouring the taste almost as much as Ophelia had when she had eaten it for the first time. She ate the contents of the bowl, and when the Innkeeper came around and asked if she wanted seconds, she said yes. As she ate, the people started to trickle out, either up to the rooms above or presumably to their own abodes. Soon, it was just her and the Innkeeper, and the friendly woman came around the counter and sat across from her.
“I don’t rightly know if I made it clear earlier, but Fairpost’ll be in your debt for… well, as long as there’s a Fairpost. As I said earlier, it don’t matter if you’re an elf, or a slime, or whatever you are. You’ve been nice enough to me and everyone that’s talked to you, save for that elf fella who landed outside of town earlier. He seemed like he rightly deserved it though, so I don’t blame you. Are you still planning to leave tomorrow, Miss Araphine?”
Lyrei pondered over everything that had been said, before nodding at the question she’d been asked. “I am. As I said earlier, I’m worried about drawing further unwanted attention to the town. The Elven Empire is not something to be trifled with, though neither am I. I do hope that the threats I made to him are effective, though if they aren’t I fully intend to keep to my threats. I won’t get too much into the weeds with details, but what attacked today was something called a Chimeric Abomination, and they are a threat to the entire world. I have fought them in the past, though I have been a small part of a large army of people working to defeat them. The fact that I took one out alone will likely make my threats carry far more weight than they might have otherwise. The people of this town, you included, have been far more important to me than you’ll ever know, and I don’t intend to let anything else harm you if I can help it.”
It wasn’t clear if the woman believed her or not, though considering the events of today she figured the evidence was leaning heavily towards the truth she told, at least in any ways that mattered. “Well, in that case I hope that you have safe travels and that you’ll remember the people of Fairpost kindly. We certainly won’t forget you. Hells, I wouldn’t be surprised if we put up a statue commemorating you. Well, I won’t take up any more of your time Miss Araphine. There’s no check out time, just give me your key when you’re leaving. I best be getting to bed. Have a good night.” With that, she wandered off to the door that presumably led to her living space. Lyrei followed her example shortly thereafter, heading up to her Inn room.
“(Thank you for saving them, Mother.)”
The words startled Lyrei out of her own thoughts, and she responded, “{What else was I going to do?}”
“(You could have teleported away, especially after I went dormant. You could have just left and made it someone else’s problem.)” Ophelia answered.
“{I had a strange feeling that I should help them, probably leaking fragments from your dormant state. I think the fact that I had clearly been trying to fight it before waking up helped to spur me onward.}”
“(Regardless, thank you.)” She paused and changed the topic, “(What are we going to do tonight?)”
“{Well, considering that you were essentially unconscious for an indeterminate amount of time without losing this form, I think it’s safe to attempt to enter a state of sleep. I haven’t actually been able to sleep for a while and… I know it is something rather foreign to you, but it is something I miss. Somewhat ironic I spent many a sleepless night researching, and now that sleep is what I miss. Are you okay with us sleeping tonight? It should put you into the same state. We can figure out how to deal with our new situation tomorrow, while we’re on the road, as I’d rather not have any possible mishaps in the Inn.}”
“(I don’t have any objections. If it is anything like the dormant state I was in earlier, it was not painful, simply a void I slipped into and did not think.)” A feeling of love and affection came from the mental presence of Ophelia, “(Goodnight mother.)”
Lyrei was already juggling a couple of spells mentally, something that would put her to sleep. She would have to work with Ophelia to tweak the template of the elven form to allow for this kind of thing more naturally, but for now this would do. Spells set up properly, she cast them with a short delay, and responded. “Goodnight Ophelia,” she murmured before drifting off into a deep, dreamless sleep.