My shout for Gwen echoed into the encroaching blankness that soon overwhelmed not just my vision, but my consciousness as well.
I wasn't asleep, nor did I feel awake.
I could still see, I realized, as the sensation of opening my eyes flooded over me.
A sea of infinity reached out all around. Yet, it also felt contained somehow.
Contained infinity? That was a bit of a contradiction, yeah? Right?
Was I high?
No, I sorta wish, but that wasn't it.
I shook my head, realizing all at once that I still had one. I could even feel my hair spilling over and onto my shoulders.
Strange. I could have sworn I was disembodied not a moment prior.
Without thinking too much, I tested my arms, trying to confirm that I could still move them.
I could, but when I brought my hands up to my face... they were wrong.
They weren't deformed, or corrupted, or disturbing even. They were just blank; it was a different sort of blank than that was all around me, though; they had form and even some resemblance of shape, but they shone with an abject white--one that was an absence of defined lines.
My vision focused in on my strange whitened fingers, as void of detail as they were.
I couldn't tell you how long I stared. Time seemed disconnected in this place of disjointed contradictions, this not-reality; my flow of perception wasn't correct, I didn't think, but it wasn't strictly broken--it was still moving, at least by the most lenient of interpretations.
When my eyes did shift, however, and the fuzzy world behind my fingers became clear once more, I was met with an expanding scope of awareness I hadn't expected.
Suddenly I could see all around me, but not through my eyes--though it still felt like I was observing the world as naturally as could be, despite now gazing in every direction at once. It was a sensation not too dissimilar to splitting my attention between both my and Gwen's senses of vision, but not committing to either one entirely.
I could see myself, even feel myself gazing at my own hands. I realized now that what I was looking at wasn't really me, rather it was more like a glowing silhouette of myself. Much like my hands, the figure had all the shape of what I looked like but lacked the fine details.
I appeared to be spinning, I observed, my body locked in a near fetal position. I could still feel my body, though, and I felt like I was stationary.
No, I realized, I wasn't spinning. There was an energy around me that was though; it was a spherical aura of sorts that was moving.
Upon noticing this, my awareness expanding further, zooming out but never fully leaving my body either.
From where my mental awareness now looked on at the strange, glowing silhouette of myself, surrounded in the equally as foreign orb of power, I soon became aware that said orb was all that separated me from a flickering mass of shifting power--of fire I realized.
It was a familiar fire.
Was... was this my inner world?
This huge flame that surrounded myself was familiar. Though I had only recently felt that my inner fire and soulcore were somewhat separate.
But the fire, it seemed almost... crude? Bright and powerful, yes, but flecked with all manners of conflicting colors. Colors that seemed to fight and try to out-burn one another.
White fire would spark on the edges of my soulflame, only to then drain the entirety of my fire down as if consuming it. Blue flames would then erupt and fight the white flames off, but they would never quite manage to eradicate what I figured was the representation of my frostfire. All the while, the core of my inner blaze remained a bright red.
The power was all clearly mine though--I sensed no sentient or malignant touch--and I felt that it was all trying to reach a point of harmony, but it was sloppy. As if all the powers I'd absorbed and worked for had never been truly and properly integrated into a proper whole.
Is this what my inner world looked like? This unbalanced and unchecked mess ? I felt a bit of embarrassment wash over me.
Could I fix it, though? It was my soulcore, right? I should have some say in how it worked.
Trying to see if this were true, I reached out to the blazing inferno that surrounded my inner self, calling to it.
I felt the heat of it and the cold of it, along with a certain flowing life that seemed to underpin it all.
[Evolution initiated. May fate and your own will bless you, young Caliban.]
My inner world shook and, without warning, the chaos became a maelstrom.
The frostfire inherent to my soulflame, previously sporadic but at least under control, erupted and quickly started to consume the rest of my inner fire.
I felt the winter chill of the frostfire, the seeming hunger for heat it exhibited.
Bit by bit, the blue and red fire of my soulflame was consumed, until.
No! I mentally shouted.
A pulse of intent echoed physically out from the cradled silhouette at the core of my fire.
This was not evolution! This was just more imbalance!
Somehow I knew it was wrong, even more wrong than the lack of harmony from before.
My mind rebelled at what I was seeing; my soulflame responded and an eruption of red flame expanded out from my soulcore to meet and stall the encroach of the frostfire.
But it quickly proved to not be enough.
The heat was being sucked and drained from whatever flame I created to fight the frostfire, almost as quickly as I could summon it.
I needed more power.
I did the only thing I knew how to do: I reached for the sensation of expending mana to fuel my fire.
And, to my surprise, my soulcore responded again.
Another pulse of intent echoed from the core of the flame and, as I'd grown accustomed to when reaching for more power, the flames fighting the frostfire burned brightly from a red to a bright blue.
Stark, frigid white fire clashed against the vibrant azure flames.
Still, though, there was no harmony to be found. The forces of my normal flames and frostfire, with the aid of my will and mana, were evenly matched now but their fighting created just yet more discord.
Even worse... the power each of the flames consumed was slowly, but surely, shrinking my soulfire in its totality.
What would happen when there was no more mana to fuel the fire? Would the frostfire take over? Would my evolution fail entirely? Or would the flame that quite possibly represented a part of my spirit itself... simply burn out?
But what could I do?
Why was the frostfire even trying to subsume the rest of the flames? Wasn't it also a part of my own power? Just what had the System done to nudge the sloppily balanced equilibrium of my soulcore over the edge and into chaos?
I reached for the frostfire with the intent to tame it.
I felt the cold of the flame pour through my disembodied mana channels. It was another odd sensation; I could still feel my body, even now as my awareness was split between so many sensations and focuses.
As I spread my consciousness through my frostfire, I could sense its nature even more strongly. It simply wanted mana?
What? But I thought it had wanted heat?
Unless? Were mana and temperature connected somehow?
As if responding to my thoughts, and approving of my new understanding, the frostfire of my soulflame flickered.
I could feel my connection to the strange white flame growing and, yet, as I split my focus between it and my blue mana-fed fire, I couldn't quite reach as deeply into its nature as I needed to.
I was at an impasse. And yet, just maybe I wasn't.
Perhaps releasing my hold on the blue, superheated mana-fire was not a death sentence. At least, not if I could master and understand my frostfire before it could consume everything else around it.
Taking a leap of faith, I let go of my hold on everything but the frostfire. With the full intent to truly master it, I dove fully into its icy nature.
However, as my awareness pushed past the surface of what it was, the sensation of icy cold became something different altogether.
The frostfire began to feel more and more like any other fire.
No... it was like any other fire in fact. Actually, at its core, it seemed even hotter than my other flames, which perhaps explained why it had been able to so quickly almost take over my soulflame once the System had nudged it into rebellion.
The frostfire wasn't ice based at all, I began to understand, as I almost listened to its touch explaining its nature to my consciousness.
It was simply a hungrier flame. As my mind explored the nature of the frostfire, I realized that it truly did just hunger for mana and not strictly heat. The mana--my mind probed as I tried to put together just what the frostfire was trying to tell me--the frostfire wanted the mana inherent in temperature and matter itself.
Wait? Did frostfire just freeze things because it absorbed the mana underlying the nature of heat and not because it was cold?
Did mana underlie all laws of the universe then, or was it just temperature that it fueled?
And what did that mean... if either were true?
I retracted my mind from the frostfire and reached back into the azure flame that barely flickered around my soul silhouette since I'd removed my awareness from it.
I'd never tried to understand my fire magic. I'd just assumed it was simply fire, and it was I guess, but now I was starting to realize that it was something much more also.
Where frostfire hungered to extract and consume mana, my blue and red flames explained to me that they hungered to spread mana, to impart the energy of their heat into whatever they touched until it all burnt up.
They were two sides of the same coin... but weren't my azure flames just a result of me learning to infuse my fire with greater concentrations of mana after I'd absorbed the nature of the Western Ruler?
If that were true then why couldn't I do the same with my frostfire to supercharge it? Mana was mana and both flames hungered to either absorb or spread it. Both needed it to accomplish their goals.
And if both flames were just opposite ends of a spectrum of imparting or absorbing mana, and thus temperature, were they really any different fundamentally at all? Or were they just extreme polar ends of the same concept of mana and temperature manipulation funneled through the lense and capabilities of fire magic?
My head was starting to hurt, but I could feel the realization just barely settling within my mind and... as if on cue, the various flames within my soul began to mix and intertwine.
The colors tried their best to fuse then. Blue flames flared with sparks of red, finally overtaking fully the stark white of the frostfire and yet I felt it wasn't just consuming it this time, but rather peacefully incorporating its nature into a greater whole.
Despite this success, however, a wave of crashing vertigo washed over me.
The colors of the fire in my inner blaze were mixing, yes, but the flames were still dying off overall. They had yet to reach a balance, the act of balance costing more energy than my soulflame had, I realized.
I'd figured out how to mix the flames; it was as simple as understanding them and, yet, my soulflame still lacked the fuel to properly reach a harmonized state. It was still going to go out, I realized.
I needed more energy... I needed...
My consciousness suddenly expanded yet again.
My semi-disembodied mind was yanked yet further out until I could barely see and feel the silhouette of my inner self.
It was from my new vantage point that I could see just how weak my soulflame had become as it tried to successfully mix its component parts into something greater.
However, I could also now see various other orbiting bodies spinning around the flame. They were almost like stars, creating an almost miniature galaxy hung in an infinite expanse.
Some of the orbs of light flared and flickered like fire themselves and yet others had numerous other hues and natures.
Two of these rotating bodies, in particular, seemed to be struggling against the gravitational pull of my soulflame. They waivered and shook, as if trying not to be pulled within the weakening inferno.
My eyes settled on the brightest and most violent of the two.
Suddenly, I felt the star too focus back on me, as if it was also alive. Emotions surged through my chest. Memories touched my mind. Images of my past battles flashed before my eyes.
I saw Gwen and I slaying enemy after enemy, but the memories did not stop there. They reached past further into the past until the panther was no longer by my side, all the way back to the first moments that I'd begun my new life on Caliban.
A face suddenly filled my mind's eye. It was unwelcome, ugly, snarled, and ferocious.
I felt it then. The terror, rage, and fury I'd experienced when the first Skulker I'd ever encountered had tried to devour me.
The survival instinct I'd felt back then entered me as my mind was ripped back to experiencing my inner world. I was filled with a newfound sense of determination and hope to find an answer when it came to stabilizing my soulflame.
The star, the violent orb of memories and defiance, it was my [Raging Sorcery] perk. I could feel it. And it wanted to help.
Stolen story; please report.
I reached out with my mind towards the perk. Somehow, I also felt the silhouette that represented me reach out towards the star that represented the perk from within the fire and energy it was contained within.
There was resistance at first. I realized on some instinctive level that said resistance in fact came from me and not the perk itself.
I didn't want to lose [Raging Sorcery]. Especially now that I realized that it was almost a sentient thing. It had been with me from the beginning, the first power that had risen up from within myself to save me.
As I struggled with my thoughts, the blazing star of a perk flashed, and I felt another wave of determination fill me... and something else too: a sense of acceptance that wasn't from me.
[Raging Sorcery] wanted this, I realized. It wanted to merge with my soulflame--to return to it, perhaps. The resistance it was putting up was not in fact real or from it, but rather a result of my own hesitation and lack of knowledge.
I released a mental sigh as I accepted the perk's will and allowed my hold on its existence to loosen.
The star, or the perk rather, then flowed peacefully into the fire of my soul.
Many other stars circled the blaze that surrounded the me-shaped silhouette. These were many more perks and abilities, I could sense intuitively, but only one more struggled as [Raging Sorcery] had.
It wasn't as bright as the rare ranked perk had been, but as I reached for it, I realized that it was even hotter in its small concentration.
[Incinerator I] touched upon my mind's awareness like a rush of unquenchable magma. It was everything I knew about using flames to destroy, to consume, to incinerate. It was, simply put, my experiences with combative flame sorcery distilled into a perk.
A part of me feared allowing such pure, refined violence to enter into my soulflame proper.
Yet... I also instinctively knew to do otherwise would be to fail in evolving myself and my perks.
I had to accept [Incinerator]. It wasn't a foreign thing, it was a part of me. It was a part of what I'd become, what I'd done. To keep it separate was to refuse to dwell on what I'd learned, and what I'd committed to being.
With this revelation, the silhouette at the center of my soul reached for the perk's star and, with another mental exhalation of acceptance, [Incinerator] flowed into my soulflame just as the previous perk had.
To my relief, I could feel that [Potent Flames] had already integrated itself into the greater whole of my soulflame, much as [Pure Flames] and [Frigid Flames] had.
[Potent Flames] was a simple perk and one that had by its nature joined with my inner fire upon me gaining it, even before I'd arrived in my inner world, as it represented my understanding of Fire-Manipulation itself which was already an integral part of my inner world's manifested form.
Or something like that. It at least saved me the work of integrating it.
As the last star, the last perk, joined my soulfire, the various colored flames within it finally finished mixing and, with a burst of energy, flared out into vibrant new life.
Blue, white, and red became... a gorgeous verdant purple. A purple that was the color of mana itself.
[Evolution successful! Pure Flames [Rare Unique], Potent Flames [Uncommon], Frigid Flames [Rare Unique], Raging Sorcery [Rare Unique], and Incinerator I [Common] have merged to become a part of a greater whole.]
[You have gained the Arcane Fire [Epic] perk! Mana lives in every soul and also in every seemingly unliving stone. It is the something behind the curtain that enforces universal law, the birthing force that speeds and slows atoms even. Your fire has become more than flame, it has tapped into primal energy itself. Feed this arcane flame your knowledge and it shall consume all with your intent. Flame based spells now ignore fire-resistances; you may drain mana from fundamental forces to fuel your fire spells and expand the breadth of your abilities, only limited by your understanding of these forces and Fire-Manipulation level respectively.]
An epic perk? That sounded really powerful; though the description seemed somewhat more high concept than the lower rarity counterparts that had formed it had.
I felt tired and yet couldn't suppress a feeling of achievement from welling up in my chest as well. I didn't think the System would make me sacrifice so many perks if the reward wasn't supposed to be worth it.
Yet, even as I felt this satisfaction, my world thundered yet more. A number of the multicolored stars surrounding my restored inner flame began to wobble and lose control of their orbit.
Was this a result of the second evolution I'd initiated?
Just as I had this thought, the first of the wobbling orbiting orbs of power broke completely from its spin.
A wave of sudden, instinctive terror washed through me as I watched the star-like accumulation of experience hurdle towards the unknown void that stretched into the nothingness beyond my soulcore's dominion.
Not knowing what to do, and feeling that if I lost ahold of the star that I would lose whatever power it represented forever, the silhouette nestled within my soulflame reached its hand out towards the perk and my will followed with the gesture.
My mind touched the star and my heart thundered. It suddenly felt like I was having a heart attack, as if every limit I had was being pushed.
This was [Overclocked I]. Its nature was all too clear. It was almost similar to my [Raging Sorcery] in its fierceness. I could feel the sheer determination to become something greater screaming out from within the sphere's light.
I harnessed that determination, letting it run through my mana channels as I used that same power to pull the perk's star back towards my inner solar system, even as my newly restored soulflame itself shrunk a bit from the mental effort.
I was beginning to understand how the whole evolution thing worked, or at least I thought I was.
However, if the strain of pulling just [Overclocked I] back into orbit was any indication, then my understanding was not going to make things any easier to actually pull of.
Three other perk stars were wobbling, each blaring with their own light, and threatening to try to escape their orbits just as [Overclocked I] had.
Not wanting to wait for them to force me to haul them back, I reached out to grab one of them preemptively.
My soulflame flickered as my mind grabbed for the brightest of all of the wobbling perk stars.
[Spelldancer II] hit me with a surge of flowing energy that, rather than shocking me, served to center my mind just as [Overclocked I] tried to take advantage of my split focus and slip away from me.
I felt my soul strain as I pulled both of the perks further towards my inner flame.
Two more stars remained out of my grasp and, yet, even with drawing upon both of my grasped perk stars' power, I knew that I was at my limit.
I could only hold two separate perks hostage at a time it seemed.
Even as I thought this, however, what I figured was [Acrobat] and [Agile Blade] were also already about to break lose from their orbits for real.
I had to think quick and come up with a solution of some kind.
I racked my mind, siphoning just a bit of [Overclocked]'s powers to speed my thoughts.
[Spelldancer II] meanwhile, continued to flow around my mind's touch, reaching out to me almost.
Curious, I reached back to touch the perk's probing presence.
More memories flowed, this time elegantly and not forcefully, into my mind. They were memories of pushing my limits to harness the power of magic within my own body.
As these images flashed before my sight, I felt [Overclocked] flicker somewhat. It was responding to my memories of using it along with [Spelldancer II].
There was a bond there.
How did I not see it before?
The System had said the two perks had Synergy. Perhaps all I'd ever had to do was recognize that connection and integrate the perks into one another by highlighting it.
Touching upon both of the perks, I flooded back the emotions and memories they had each shared with me, but focused in on the memories and sensations that featured the use of both of the perks working in tandem.
Slowly, but surely, the perks began to drift around one another. A rotation was established, a mini-orbit based on mutual understanding.
I felt the strain of holding the two separately abate.
Feeling that it was the next most similar of the three perks, I mentally grabbed [Acrobat] and forced it closer to the rotating stars I'd already bound together.
[Acrobat] was new, fresh and altogether untested. It gave me no memories when I touched upon it, rather it merely pulsed with a feeling of ease that flowed throughout the mana channels of my phantom body.
Still, the energies the perk gave off were very similar in nature to the grace that [Spelldancer II] exuded and it was easy enough to lean into that sensation of sameness.
[Acrobat] to my surprise, rotated easily into a mini-orbit around the much larger orb that represented [Spelldancer II].
I could feel my soulfire dimming further, however. It turned out that the strain of mentally holding together so many perks and moving them about my inner world was incredibly straining over time.
I needed to finish this up.
At the center of my weakening soulfire, the arm of my featureless silhouette sluggishly lifted to grasp for [Agile Blade].
The perk didn't really resist me either. In fact it seemed to flow calmly towards the other perks, much as [Acrobat] had done.
The only issue was that, despite exuding a similar energy to [Spelldancer II], when I tried to integrate [Agile Blade] into the existing orbit of perks I'd established I found that it refused to synchronize.
Was that because it was a weapon-based perk and the others were not?
I felt my soulfire flicker again. I could really tell I couldn't keep this up for much longer now. I needed to stabilize whatever it was that I was trying to do and quick.
I started to wonder if people usually tried to combine so many perks at once. It was certainly feeling like something that was a little much. One or two would've been doable, but... I may have been reaching to try to evolve so many abilities.
It was too late to turn back, however. Like always, it was do or die. I'd live with my mistakes or go down with them.
I smiled mentally even through the spiritual strain I was experiencing. I'd never gone down yet though.
Making sure to keep a hold on the perks I was trying to combine, I expanded my consciousness across my inner world yet again.
With a yet again expanded viewpoint, I took in the sight of the many other starlike bodies surrounding my soulfire. The largest of them, which I could sense represented skills, seemed to dwarf the perks I'd accumulated in their size.
A few in particular, to include my [Acrobatics] skill seemed truly massive in comparison.
For a moment I considered attempting to force my assembled perks to orbit around [Acrobatics]. Maybe I could siphon its power off to merge them if I could get them close enough to the skill's star?
I quickly gave up on this idea, however, as my soulfire flickered and I realized that I was struggling just to hold the perks I'd assembled together. I wasn't sure I could move them around at all anymore.
So, if I couldn't use the power of my skills, what other options did I have?
I couldn't move any more perks over to the others either, that much was for sure.
But what about spells?
Actually, where were my spells?
My mind swept my inner world, searching. But even with my viewpoint pulled out as far as possible, I didn't sense a single star formation representing any of my spells.
Why was that?
Did they not exist within my soulcore?
And if not, what would happen if I tried to cast one within it?
Having few other options and going purely off of my gut and what felt right, I reached within my phantom chest, summoning forth the spell that I was most familiar with.
My inner fire flickered, and died down a bit more, as an orb emerged from it. An orb that, unlike all of the others, was tethered to my soulfire by a stream of flaming power.
[Raging Blade] floated from my inner fire, seeming to hover freely and without a care.
The perk star that represented [Agile Blade] seemed to hum with excitement as the spell orb approached it.
Were they compatible?
I willed [Raging Blade] to approach [Agile Blade] and, as I did so, a stream of power began to reach from [Raging Blade] to connect with the perk orb.
As the two orbs connected, [Agile Blade] began to glow with a forceful power. It was power that seemed almost ready to jump from it.
Curious, and running out of time, I tried to force [Agile Blade]'s newfound energy to connect it into an orbit with [Spelldancer II].
To my surprise, the power [Agile Blade] was draining from [Raging Blade] leaped from the former and connected to [Spelldancer II] easily. That same energy then spread from [Spelldancer II] and began to flow through [Acrobat] and [Overclocked] as well.
I could feel the perks pulling close to one-another, as if the influence of my soulfire's energy was so close to essentially arc welding them together, but it wasn't quite enough.
My inner flame didn't have much left to give, but I needed more power.
Maybe if I could just siphon off more energy with another spell?
What did I have that might be compatible with the perks at hand?
The answer seemed to come easily enough.
I pulled at my soulcore, summoning another spell.
A moment later, [Mana Flicker] emerged from my inner fire as a flickering mass. It too was connected by a stream of purple fire to my soulflame.
With the last of my mental energy, and as I felt my concentration finally about to lapse into nothing, I forced [Mana Flicker] to connect its mana-stream to [Spelldancer II] as well.
My soulcore's outer fire then flared in what felt like an attempt at triumph and rightness, just as it was on its last legs.
However, nothing happened and the flicker of light quickly fluttered out. The purple flames of my soulcore seemed to die off, barely existing anymore at all. Likewise, the streams running along my spell orbs weakened.
In response to this weakening, the connections formed between my perks began to strain. It almost appeared as if it was ready to break apart... and, if it did, I realized that I wouldn't be able to hold any of the perks together with the strength I had remaining. I'd lose them all to the void outside my soulcore, if my soulfire didn't just die out entirely first.
I scrambled for ideas, for anything that I could do.
I remembered that I had fed the [Raging Sorcery] and [Incinerator] to my inner fire to sustain it before and to finalize the evolution of the other perks I'd evolved earlier.
But I didn't have the strength to move any more perks, it was why I'd summoned spells to strengthen the bond between the Agility based perks I was trying to fuse.
Maybe that was it: I had more spells.
I reached deep within myself, feeling the strength within me slowly growing cold and dying, I reached for the first spell that came to my call.
I felt the power of [Accelerate Adrenaline] flow into my soulfire and, just like that, it was gone. The System soon furnished a notification to confirm this:
[Accelerate Adrenaline has been removed from your spell list.]
A sense of loss entered my heart, but only until I saw what happened next:
My inner flame pulsed with new life as I watched the energy of my consumed spell flow throughout the soulfire... and straight into [Raging Blade] and [Mana Flicker] via the connected lines of mana that flowed into them from my spiritual flame. [Overclocked] in particular seemed to grow a bit in both size, and brightness, when the energy reached it.
Was the consumed spell being added to the energy of the to-be-combined perk? What effect would that have on the final product?
Realizing that it still wouldn't be enough, however, I dug back into myself and released another spell into my soulflame, once more watching it flow out and eventually into [Overclocked].
[Accelerate Metabolism has been removed from your spell list.]
And then one final spell was sacrificed.
[Accelerate Healing has been removed from your spell list.]
Then, it was as if a long-awaited circuit had finally been completed.
Purple fire leapt, cycling through [Spelldancer II], [Acrobat], [Agile Blade] and [Overclocked] in a rapid loop.
My mental strength faltered, just as the perks were all pulled together, merging into a orb greater than any of the others had been.
Meanwhile, the spell orbs representing [Raging Blade] and [Mana Flicker] remained and connected the combined and newly created perk orb to my inner flame. The two spells, however, seemed stained with a purple aura of flame that they had not been possessed of prior.
[Congratulations! Due to being used as a conduit for the power of your Arcane Fire [Epic], Raging Blade [Rare Unique] has become Arcane Flametongue [Heroic] and Mana Flicker [Rare Unique] has become Fire-Flicker [Heroic].]
[Evolution successful! Stabilized by the power of Arcane Fire [Epic] and your compatible spells, Acrobat [Uncommon], Spelldancer II [Rare], Overclocked [Uncommon], and Agile Blade [Uncommon] have merged to become a part of a greater whole.]
[You have gained the Arcane Fencer [Heroic] perk! More than spell and more than sword. Light of foot and reinforced by arcane incantation. You walk the path of the Arcane Fencer. You may expend mana to greatly increase all aspects of your physical and mental capabilities to include reaction time, the healing process, and hormonal balances. Mana efficiency of body augmentation, Fire-Flicker, and Arcane Flametongue increases with Spell-Control.]
My body, though I wasn't really in it, felt as if it was faltering.
I was happy to see the System had rewarded my efforts with yet more powerful seeming skills.
But still, I was more worried about Gwen and what was going on outside my body.
Was I just laying there? Was I even going to wake up in one piece? Probably not if Gwen hadn't managed to get a handle on the Gatekeepers, even as injured as they were.
I needed to get back in the driver seat of my body.
I reached for my physical form, trying my best to pull myself back into the closest thing I'd felt to it since entering my inner world: the silhouette at the core of it all.
At my will, my consciousness zoomed back in on the featureless body hovering within my inner flame.
I was just about to slam back into it, when I noticed something entirely odd that gave me pause
Why... why were the blank body's pupil-less eyes glowing green? It was a clean emerald color that looked almost familiar, but that didn't seem to ripple with any magic that, unlike everything else in my inner world, felt native to me.
What was going on?
I strained my will, surprised that I was even forced to do so, and slammed my awareness fully back into the silhouette.
Then, I opened my eyes to the light.
----------------------------------------
I awoke completely disoriented and bathed in sensations that were either entirely new or entirely off.
I was standing, my body reforming from purple flames and with a sensation that felt altogether similar to how [Mana Flicker] had felt, but also less solid in every way.
My arm was outstretching and I felt a flame-conjured sword within it, but it wasn't my sword.
My eyes glanced to the weapon, just in time to see the head of one of the Gatekeeper's flying away from the sharpened edge of a flame-made rapier that seemed almost German in design.
My arm was still holding up in the killing blow's stance. How had I cut through the metal of the monster so easily?
How had I done so at all if I'd been busy in my soulcore?
Gwen thundered next to me appearing from out of a bolt of lightning. "What was that!"
"Gwen?" I asked in shock, stumbling forward a bit as I did so.
"I felt something else over our bond. Not malignant, but wrong... not as it should be. As if you weren't there, but were there?" the panther telepathically slammed the question into my mind.
"I don't--you can tell I'm back?" I stuttered aloud.
Gwen eyed me carefully. "Yes."
I lowered my sword as the Gatekeeper's body fell dead at my feet, Gwen having apparently finished off the other one.
What the hell had happened? Had my body gone on autopilot, or? And what was the something else Gwen had sensed. Did it have something to do with the green glow I'd seen covering the eyes of the silhouette of my body in my soulcore?
"Something weirder than usual is going--" I started to say, when a series of violent screeches filled the sky.
The tower above us shook and, from endless carved alcoves on its surface, dozens of flying automatons flooded into the skies to glide over the silvered rings.
Gwen's eyes caught instantly onto the sources of the shrieks as she prowled protectively to my side.
I took a deep breath. "Fuck."
And, as if heaps of new flying enemies wasn't enough of a worry, the System was all too happy to further remind me of how weird things were getting as we continued in our adventure, and how many unanswered questions I still had:
[Congratulations! You have slain Hooded Gatekeeper (x2).]
[Converting creatures to loot orbs impeded by unknown elements. Please apply manual assistance.]