"Do you have a mirror I could use?" I asked once the three of us, plus Raven, entered back into the common room. I looked around, and found that I could read the various signs, menus and inscriptions, and did a double-take at seeing what was written above the counter we'd emerged beside.

'N's Inbetween Place - Rest for the weary Traveller'

So that's where the napkin came from...

Indeed, I do. behind the counter, just put the bottles back when you're done. They are expensive." answered Octopus, gesturing toward it.

I nodded in thanks and made my way over. There was a spring in my step I hadn't noticed before, and I did a pirouette, before stacking the various bottles on the counter behind me. There were only a couple, all filled with various colors of liquid, and my mirror image was revealed.

Erci was right, I had changed. However, I was worried beyond my appearance - My mirror image's eyes were glassy, and yet she didn't move anything except them when I shifted in front of the mirror. Behind me, I caught the faint tones of Octopus and Tangles talking, but I didn't pay attention.

Ref was there, but also not - she obviously still occupied my reflection, but it was like she'd lost her spark or will to live.

I withdrew the mirror shard and looked down at it; the cloudiness hadn't cleared up. When I looked back up, I saw that Ref had an identical shard in her hands, and was staring at it unblinkingly. I knocked at the mirror, but she did not move.

"Hey, what are you doing over there…” started Octopus, but the words died in his mouth.

“Human. Get away from the mirror." said Tangles in a frigid tone.

"What's going on?" I turned around, only to see both of them staring past me at the mirror. Tangles had raised some of their tendrils, the ends of which glowed with a sickly purple, and Octopus gestured once more for me to join the two of them.

"I mean it. Move away."

I walked over to them, and Ref looked up, her eyes as glassy as before. She placed the mirror shard in her own jacket with deliberate, slow motions. Tangles raised a tendril, and the glow thickened.

"Wait! What are you doing?"

"Your image has been infested with a daemon! What the hell do you think I'm doing? Removing it!"

"Ref? A demon? What are you talking about?"

Tangles whipped around, not lowering the glowing appendages.

"Daemon. They're memetic manifestations. The only thing they care about is gaining more information!"

"Well this one doesn't! I met her on my world, and although she tricked me and took over my mirror image, all she's ever done is help me!"

"Human, they are evil! All they do is hollow out minds and then vanish!"

"Erci, Raven and I would not be here had she not guided us. She wouldn't harm me!"

Tangles was not convinced, and brought two of the glowing tendrils together, their light multiplying.

"Ska'an, old friend. Perhaps you should not be so rash." Said Octopus, pulling one of the tendrils away. The glow faded.

"I thought you'd have learned this lesson in Eberon, Neetu. You cannot trust daemons."

"But I can trust another Mind. Or do you not remember how I found you?"

"You are still as naive as back then."

"Perhaps. But it has not bitten me in the backside yet, has it?"

"Ugh… alright, fine. You win this round, Neetu. However, I vote for readying the teleport."

And Tangles (or Ska'an, don't think they'd like that name) lowered their appendages, and the glow faded completely.

"This is a bad idea. It will blow up in our faces, and this time, you will lose more than a tentacle." They said.

"Maybe I will, maybe I won't. You can't deny that this thing is useful, though." Said Neetu, cracking the metal tentacle through the air like a whip.

"Human," said Ska'an, addressing me, "how did you meet this monst- being occupying your image?"

"Hmm... I guess I found her as a box, a wooden crate, but the first time I met her was when she appeared in place of my own image in the mirror. She isn't always silent and… strange like that, though, I think something's wrong."

"Oh, you never know... it could be a clever ruse to-" Ska'an flinched when Neetu's metallic appendage cracked a few inches before their face.

"Something is definitely wrong, and not with you. My dear friend over here has had some bad experiences with daemons over the years." He interrupted.

"Do you know what it is?" I asked.

"No... hm. Perhaps... no, that can't be," Neetu glanced down toward my right hand, "but considering... human, where exactly did you get that Stone? No, wait... better yet, was the location you got it the same as the location your arm went Pale?"

"Yes.” How'd you know? I tried to ask, but Neetu was already engrossed in a conversation with Ska'an before I got out more than a 'yes'.

"Could it be like the Chamber of Lies, back in Grya-Sol?"

"The Paling would fit, but do you think..."

"No, definitely not, the stone is disconnected for sure."

"But that would mean... infernal hells, if the stone is removed..."

"Exactly. Remember the Chamber? Remember what we saw? What they wanted?"

"You do not think... no, they would not..."

"We stopped them then, but what if they went under our noses?"

"But they obviously did not succeed, did they?"

"Obviously... but it would explain the scarring, especially along the axis of dreams."

"You think... Neetu, are you insane? Nobody has ever resisted its geas, it is nigh impossible! Especially for a Shackled!"

"It would explain the daemon's continual presence, and how it failed to hollow her..."

"A daemon, trapped somewhere it cannot escape from... it would use anything as a host."

"But it obviously didn't take her over, did it? Could it have been reversed?"

"If the channels were reversed, and the daemon did not notice... there would be a bleed-over effect."

"Information it could not simply absorb... it would become part of its personality."

"Exactly! Neetu, old friend... I think we have a mystery on our hands."

Both of them turned to the mirror, and Ska'an floated beside me.

"Human... I do not know how you did it, but I think you have given this daemon a conscience. They are knowledge-gatherers, gorging themselves on information. Normally, they would leave nothing behind except comatose husks... some of the more powerful ones can even steal information stored physically. The color of objects, for example. Their form. They leave nothing behind but ash. However you did it, this daemon has become more than that. Me and Neetu have some theories, but nothing we feel safe sharing just yet. It concerns our... occupation. Professional secrecy, you understand."

I tried to digest that. Ref, a ravenous beast? Well, it put much into perspective, the story she told me... obviously altered slightly, but still true... Did I even want such a thing living inside me? A... monster who could hollow me out and leave behind nothing but an empty husk? Wait, what was it they said...

"You said something earlier, something about 'reversed channels' - what did you mean?"

Ska'an was floating behind the counter I was sitting upon, occasionally firing a beam of light at the mirror, while Neetu had vanished somewhere else.

"Hm, how to describe it to a laybeing... Normally, a daemon attacks mentally, transmitted through some sort of vector. It enters through sensory input, and is then stored in short-term memory, where it assimilates all knowledge. It then proceeds to the rest of the brain, and its last action as the victim is usually to shout some sort of hazardous message, transmitting it to further victims."

"Alright, that makes sense - something similar happened to me."

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

"Yes, but you were different. Something in your mind, perhaps in your will, reversed the effect. The daemon still assimilated knowledge, but is was neither removed nor broken down like normal. It integrated into the daemon at a deeper level, and in essence gifted it a mind like your own. A normal daemon is nothing but a spreading parasite, breaking down all the knowledge they assimilate and eventually dying with their last victim, but yours was different. You turned it... good."

Ska'an shuddered with the last word.

"Excuse me. I do not like daemons. Bad memories."

At that moment, one of Ska'an's lights had a deeper effect. Instead of bouncing off the mirror as the rest did, it broke through, screwing up my perspective for a moment. The light splashed against Ref, but there was no discernible effect.

"Ah-ha! Human, can you find Neetu for me and tell him that I have found the resonant frequency? Those exact words. He should be somewhere in the back room."

"Will do. Thank you for explaining, Ska'an."

I swung my legs over the counter, failed to balance with one arm and stumbled for a second. Then, I made my way through the back door, and went in search of Neetu. I eventually found him a few doors further, digging through a room filled with scrap.

"Neetu, Ska'an tells me they've found 'the resonant frequency'."

"Excellent!" He clapped two tentacles together. "I am done here, anyways. Would you be so kind and sling this over your good shoulder?" He handed me a metal case with a strap attached, and I took it.

"Time to see what's wrong with your friend in the mirror, eh?"

"Yes, let's."

***

"The daemon has been damaged, presumably by the Worldstone. I can see no other way this would have happened."

"Ska'an, that doesn't make any sense - damaging a daemon requires more than brute force. You know this."

"Of course I know! I simply read what the circle provides. And the circle says it is damaged, and the damage says it was the Stone."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to imply..."

"It is fine."

They fell into an uneasy silence. We were once more standing before the mirror, Ref still motionless within. At some point, Ska'an had drawn three red circles on the glass, and we'd all positioned ourselves so Ref's head was inside one of them from our perspective. Inside the circle, I did not see my own reflected face looking back, but a loose collection of strands. Closer examination revealed those strands to be strings of black words lazily wafting in an unfelt breeze. The figure was humanoid enough, and in its head glowed two white eyes.

However, the image was damaged, as Ska'an had said. There was a blazing green scar running up the humanoid's arm, growing upwards into the head and sideways into the heart. The scar was made of green letters shifting too quickly to be made out.

"I have no idea how to fix this."

"Me neither."

So there was that. These two were much more knowledgeable than me, scarily so, but even they did not know how to fix Ref. What was I supposed to-

"Neetu, remember Tel-Algan? We raided their generator, and Reynol got dusted by a discharge. Remember what we did?"

"Ska'an, you're a genius."

"Thank you - we have to act fast. Reya!"

The reedy being appeared from the back door a few moments later.

"What? I'm busy!"

Neetu bent himself around the corner.

"Reya, I need you to wake up the long one. Human, what's his name?"

"Erci."

"Reya, wake this Erci, and bring him down here."

Reya vanished into the back door once more.

"By the way, human, what is your name?" asked Ska'an, their gaze never moving away from the mirror.

"It's Amelia, but you can call me Amy. The bird is Raven."

Said bird cracked open one eye from atop the nearby shelf - then closed it again.

***

Some time later, Erci joined us, and I immediately noticed something - he had changed also. His movements were more fluid, graceful, and his skin had regained some of the splendor it had in the fey realm. He beamed at me.

"Amy, you would not believe how good I'm feeling! It's like I'm two centuries younger!"

"The Illusion hides us from ourselves, too. You three, join me by the table." Neetu did not waste time. The four of us settled around one of the round tables.

"I would have waited for a while still, The Illusion may be broken, but you should rest afterward."

"What's this about?" asked Erci.

"Amelia's daemon, the being you know as Ref, is damaged, presumably by the Stone in your possession. We possibly know a way to heal her, based on a similar injury I treated in the past. A... friend of mine was caught in an energy discharge, and was on the brink of death. Nothing we did had any effect. Eventually, Ska'an and I realized that his mind had become slightly disassociated from his body, making the physical healing meaningless, and we did something drastic."

"What'd you do?" I asked, sliding forward in my chair.

"You see this device right here?" he gestured toward the side of his head, where a small metallic square sat. Some wires extended outward along his skin. "This is called a Lexicon Device. It allows me to connect to a sort of universal network with a lot of functions, basically everyone has one of these things. It can store information, calculate, provide mental translations, all that good stuff. It's a neural interface as well. When Reynol, my comrade, was injured, we siphoned the disassociated parts of his mind into his Lexicon Device's local storage and then re-routed the neural interface to maintain a two-sided link at all times, and he was saved. I propose something similar. We would isolate the damaged parts of your daemon into your own Lexicon Device, in essence shielding them from the influence of the Stone and allowing them to regenerate, while altering the daemon herself to withstand the Stone's power."

"You can do that? Alter her, I mean?"

"With your permission, of course. All we need to do is connect the Lexicon and isolate her fragmented parts, then you need to stop her from attacking the Stone's influence."

"How do I do that?"

"You would need to accept it into yourself. You're fighting it, even now - which is good! If you hadn't fought it, the initial onslaught would have burned out your nervous system. However, you've gained the Stone's allegiance. Remember how it defended you during your Freeing? It would not destroy you now. It respects your willpower. This acceptance would bleed into the daemon as well, making it immune to the Stone."

"Are you saying this thing has intelligence?"

"More like... an awareness, perhaps. I cannot say how simple or complex, but I do know that it is incredibly powerful. Has to be. Objects like it often develop some form of sentience."

"And sapience, does it have that as well?"

"Unlikely. Even if the stone has been in use since the dawn of your world, sapience requires true effort toward that goal from the beginning. You'd have to talk to it like an equal from creation on, involve it in discussions and conversations, and it would eventually respond. It's likely that the Stone's emergent consciousness has already crystallized in its final form, one best suited to its original purpose."

"Then what are we waiting for? Let's do this."

"Excellent. I managed to dig up a few Lexicons from my personal storage, they're in this case. Choose the one which speaks to you and let me know."

With that cryptic message, Neetu set down a polished metal box, and went to rejoin Ska'an at the mirror. I opened the box, finding a bunch of smaller compartments, all with numbers on them.

Shrugging, I reached for the first one, only to be rebuffed as a feeling of revulsion spread across my hand.

"Not that one, alright."

Erci pulled his own hand back, one fingernail singed.

"You know, this reminds me of choosing a wand."

Both of them looked at me with vacant eyes, Raven’s beak was frosted over, and I deflated because all my friends were uncultured swines.

On the next one, the effect was not as pronounced, but I still felt a cold spread across the knuckles I held above the box. I idly wondered if the Worldstone was complicating things, but then realized that whichever Lexicon chose me would need to be ok with the Stone as well.

The three of us tested a variety of compartments, eventually finding one each, and the set of three smaller boxes easily slid out of the larger one.

Raven was the first to find hers, and popped open the matchbox-sized rectangle using her beak, revealing a tiny metallic chip about the size of her eye.

Erci found his not long after that, a sleek, white piece of metal with a set of circles on the side.

I found mine last - a small, silvery square with a couple of nodules extending in all four directions. The center was decorated with lines, and there was lettering along those in an incredibly small script.

"Neetu! We found ours!"

He limbered over, setting down a strange tool on the counter, and met us in the center of the room.

"You found ones that agree with all three of you? Splendid. Keep them in their cases for now. You will need to attune them to you or they won't work."

"Ok, and how do we do that?"

"Simply join me on the carpet. Do your cultures practise meditation? If so, assume the position you're most comfortable with."

I sat down in the pose my mum had always done while in her morning meditation, cross-legged but with both feet above the legs, and laid my lone hand in my lap.

Erci assumed some sort of position, kneeling on the ground with his head down, both hands on his legs.

Raven was just sitting there, holding her head high.

"I'm going to place each of your open cases in front of you now. I need you to concentrate on them, and then 'cast out' a thought at it. Doesn't matter what. If it is reflected back into your mind, I need you to pick up the device, keep concentrating on it, and then place it against your temple. At that point, everything will go by itself."

"I'm having a bad feeling about this, Master Neetu. This will hurt, won't it?" Asked Erci, his head rising to meet Neetu's gaze.

"Not at all. It'll feel a little strange, but it won't hurt."

"If you can prevent pain, why did the Freeing hurt so much?" I asked, puzzled by the torture we had to experience earlier.

"Because it wasn't a physical pain, for one - it was mental. Also, it wasn't your pain technically speaking, but the Illusion's doing. It channeled that pain into your mind in a last ditch effort to prevent destruction."

I shivered.

"It is a fiendish piece of work. Obviously self-learning, and ingrained from the beginning of a world. Nobody knows where it comes from, but all Shackled Minds have it. That's what you were, by the way. Now that you've been freed, you're Free Minds." Neetu explained.

"Indeed? Shall we begin, already?" asked Erci impatiently.

"Yes." Said Neetu, placing down the three cases, and I focused on my little square of metal.

It was small, and silver... gleaming slightly in the candlelight from above.

I focused on it, its design, shape and material, taking it all in. An image formed in my mind, and I kept feeding it detail until I was satisfied.

I took that image, and sort of... pushed at it, directing it outward at the little chip.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Erci picking up his, slowly, deliberately.

The image left my mind, its detail dulling quickly, until... it came back. My eyes looked through the chip, thoughts focused on the image in my mind, which had strengthened again.

Slowly, I picked it up between two knuckles, unable to use fingers because of the Stone. One edge touched the orb, and the small lines on it lit up in the same green light.

Dammit.

The chip did not seem to explode, it just hummed happily, so I shrugged slightly and placed it against my temple.

It seemed to stick, so I dropped my hand, now concentrating on the feel of the surprisingly warm piece of metal on my temple.

Then, it wriggled a little.

I began to feel incredibly strange, and shivered - it felt like when you try to touch the inside of your nose with a q-tip, or accidentally poke your eye while trying to insert contact lenses.

I suddenly realized what it was doing - there was something inside of my head. Physically. moving around.

It didn't hurt, and even though I wanted to pull at it, I didn't dare move a muscle. The brain is a fragile organ.

Then, it stopped, and I heard a noise.

Ding!

Connection Successful.

Proceed to Initialisation?