What’s happened to her?

I’m conscious again and being summoned so she has to be fine, we had to have succeeded, right?

But then why am I still here? Shouldn’t I be dead?

Or at least changed?

I mean there’s nothing to absorb, no memories or foreign knowledge that I have to deal with.

This has never happened before, even when she summoned me to do some stargazing together, I still assimilated a sliver of her soul.

But if we had succeeded, why was I still alive, why was I still me? And why was she summoning me?

The oceans disappearing but my doubts certainly aren’t, hopefully my creator can shed some light on what exactly happened.

Upon manifesting at least the reason for my summoning becomes abundantly clear, we’re within some sort of cave system, a cave system which is collapsing.

Hurriedly I launch my tentacles upwards and start pushing against the roof of crumbling stone, why on earth was my creator in here?

What was she doing, how did this happen, how was I going to keep us safe?

I can’t keep holding this weight up forever, sooner or later either I’m going to break or this whole ceiling is going to utterly collapse and slip through my limbs.

Straining myself against the rock, I cast my gaze around the cavern we are in, I’m stretched incredibly thin trying to keep everything stable but thankfully I’m not alone.

There are another two summons working alongside me to keep everything stable, a trio of mages are also constructing pillars of ice to stabilise their section of this cavern.

So we should be alright, at least for now.

What annoys me most about this situation is the group of mages who aren’t doing anything to keep the roof from caving in on us all, dressed in those typical hoods and weird baubles that mages always tend to wear, they just gawk at everything that’s occurring.

Why weren’t they helping us? Surely they could use some magic spell or something like the trio were.

There’s also half a dozen guards or soldiers, one or the other and while I can sense danger from them that's mostly thanks to their weapons.

They didn’t have the strength nor arcane mastery necessary to help keep this cave ceiling from collapsing.

Then, of course, there’s my beautiful and perfect creator, standing tall and well, flinching.

But that’s okay, I mean she’s my creator so she gets a pass.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

The shape of this craven is almost exactly like a T, I’m at the top right side and had this whole cave in thing not been happening, I imagine there would be a door next to me instead of a bunch of rocks.

This was hardly a nature sort of cave system after all, no these were tunnels, poorly made clearly but still tunnels.

The summon holding up the left top is a leopard like creature, evidently more suited for speed than brute strength its struggling quite a lot.

Not even little bits of rubble but rather actual chunks of rock pour through all the gaps around it.

This summons somehow managed to wedge upside down, literally holding up its whole side with just its gut and will, pretty impressive.

I can’t get a proper look around the corner to spot exactly what it is the mages are doing or how the other summon is holding up its segment but I think it's going well.

I can feel the weight pressing down on me get lighter so they must be doing something right, or incredibly wrong…

I’m actually tearing myself apart by holding up this whole ceiling, my limbs simply can’t take it and are breaking apart, forcing me to use my passive mana to regenerate them.

So now I’m steadily getting hungrier and more miserable by the passing second.

At least I’m alive I guess? I mean that’s pretty awesome, I still have lots of stuff I want to do.

Like uh, not dying by being crushed to death.

“I’m so glad you’re still alive.” Coralet says happily, reaching out to pet me despite the fact I’m literally on the brink of collapsing myself.

I would say it was shocking how she kind of read my mind but she was probably just picking up on the emotions I was sending through our link.

“Yes, happy to be alive.” I say back with plenty of reciprocated joy.

“You-u can talk now?” She more or less says, there wasn’t really a lot of words, mostly just shock.

Shock which I’m likewise feeling, I can talk?

This changes everything, wait I wasted my first words on something so stupid?

There’s so many different things I wanted to say, I can’t think of any right now but surely there were better things than just saying happy to be alive.

“I suppose this changes quite a few things, uh if you want you can pick you’re own name? I just chose Phaeraxion because you couldn't pick one yourself.” She explains.

“No, I like the name, it’s a name you gave me. It’s my name.” I hopefully say kindly, it sounds more robotic through our link though which is a bit sad.

“Uh right okay, cool, cool. So how do you feel?” Coralet cautiously asks.

Any other time I would be jumping with joy to speak to her but right now I have to stay focused on keeping the rocks from slipping past me, it’s a tough task to do.

I have to keep track of key weak points and reinforce them with my appendages, sliding them in between the rock so I can more easily hold onto it all.

Which of course costs me a fair few of my limbs.

Still I can’t just ignore my creator so carefully I devote more and more of my attention to properly speaking.

Last time I spoke it came off harsher than I wanted it to, this time I’m going to be kind, gentle, nice.

“Could be better but can’t complain, especially now that you’re healthy. Mind explaining how that happened? Aren’t I meant to be permanently dead or something?”

Yep, that sounded pretty nice and cheerful, plus now I’ve shifted the conversation over to her, it's way easier to listen than it is to speak.

Already a few rocks have slipped through my attempts to keep the ceiling stable, I really can’t afford to be too distracted, I also can’t bring myself to ignore her though.