Despite not wanting to offend Kuja, there was something that Cira was just dying to know, “Why did your people need to reforge souls, anyway? Did they… break their souls often?

“None that I have seen. Honestly, I would like to know how you managed it, but we did not need to reforge our souls.” Kuja shook her head, “We chose to. For power and longevity, if you would believe it.”

But that doesn’t make any sense. “Then how did they—” Cira clamped her mouth shut and nervously looked at Kuja.

“It is alright, child. You may as well know since you’ve already met them. We did not reforge our souls to fix them, but to improve upon them. Grasping for ever greater heights of power.” The old woman’s face fell into a distant frown, “Naturally, the body reflected these changes. Nothing noticeable at a glance, but our bodies were indeed far from those of our birth. Even now, it is difficult to call myself human. As for how they died… The moment Captain Cloud and his crew settled down and started colonizing our Island of Acher, everyone fell deathly ill.”

“But… you survived?” Cira instantly regretted saying that as the puzzle pieces fell together in her head.

“I did. This all happened when I was a young woman, not much older than yourself. It was my duty to manage relations with the settlement which existed before Hangman’s Cove. Some small trading post for travelling merchants. Because I alone dealt with the outside world, I was somewhat resistant to illness. The same could not be said for the rest of the Archaean people.” As her voice went quiet, Cira couldn’t hide her shock. “Indeed, child. It was I who brought death upon them, and it’s no one’s fault but my own that my people are extinct. I am far beyond the age to change that…”

Everyone was stock still, engrossed in her woeful tale. Cira caught Jimbo counting on his fingers and muttering, “Three hundred years…?”

This poor woman… She unwittingly brought a disease home and it killed literally everyone but her. She’s been living with this guilt for so long. Even though it’s obviously not her fault, it would be impossible not to feel that way after living in this empty husk for centuries. Is there… anything I can say here?

“Kuja, are you familiar with soul remediation?”

“Hm?” She was snapped out of her wallowing and looked at Cira quizzically, “I have not heard of this concept.”

Some of her crew recognized the term and gave her the same expression.

“It’s the process of reverting one’s soul to a previous state. In theory, one could keep doing it and retain their youth indefinitely.” Kuja looked at her in shock. “But in practice, there is a limit to how many times it can be done. If performed in excess the soul will stagnate, and its natural state may skew.”

From one perspective this could look like it resulted in the condition it was trying to prevent, but soul stagnation was something far more serious. It could not be remediated or undone. A one way ticket.

“Soul stagnation leads to loss of mental faculties,” Cira continued, “loss of willpower, and overall decreased agency over one’s body and mind. Of course, severe corporeal degradation as well.”

“O-okay…” Kuja was at least confused into a better mood, “Why are you telling me this?”

Cira’s foray into the archive back on Fount Salt taught her many new things about the soul, but it supplemented some things she’d picked up over the years quite nicely, too.

“Because there is an inverse condition known as Essence Volatility. It has similar symptoms, but the patient retains some twisted semblance of their will. Their entire being is driven by base instinct, increasingly so as the condition progresses. I can’t speak to repeatedly reforging one’s soul, but my father warned me against making reckless alterations for this very reason.” Cira had gone this far, but now she was really unsure about her idea, “If your people had the chance to continue this practice, I suspect you may have bore witness to a fate far worse than death.”

“So… my ancestors were all fools.” Kuja was despondent as she gazed out the window.

Cira waved her hands in defense. “No—I didn’t mean it like that!”

“I know, child. I know…” She placed a hand over Cira’s. “You don’t need to feel sorry for this old woman. I came to terms with the death of my people a very long time ago, but I appreciate you telling me this. It is a small comfort that they may have been spared a life such as you describe.”

When Cira didn’t have anything to say, the woman continued, “And for a moment I thought you were going to offer me youth.” She chuckled, “Moving on, you must be aware that attempting to reforge your soul while it bears that curse will be no simple feat.”

“It shouldn’t change things much,” Cira disagreed, “So long as we can avoid rekindling the axon, we shouldn’t see any issues.”

“The… axon?” Kuja looked at her funny and stopped thumbing through the book.

“You may know it as the root.” Curses often began within or attached to the aura, which made some marginally easier to deal with if they were caught early enough. Not this one though. Cira’s was placed directly on the soul. Regardless, the initial spot in which the curse is laid is known as the origin, or seed. Once a curse’s roots reach the soul proper, however, it becomes near impossible to lift. “You could say my curse is long-since rootbound. We shouldn’t see any activity.”

“Essence propagation.” Kuja turned the book to Cira and pointed out a passage, “’As the soul reforms, it will experience a lifetime of regrowth until corporea and aetherea have balanced to a present state.’ It sounds to me like your curse will return to seed and grow again within your soul as we reforge it. Without the device referred to as a ‘soul thresher’, we may not have any choice but to let this occur unregulated.”

Cira scrutinized the text with a furrowed brow. I see… I guess when I think about it like that, the soul thresher must separate the components of my soul so that when I reforge them, everything goes back together right. But were the Archaeans really doing this without one? It sounds really important.

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“I fear we may not be able to pull this off without turning you into some kind of inert soup. Or something else entirely, for that matter… Unless we get our hands on a soul thresher.” Kuja continued, “but if we go that far, we need to construct an essence loom.”

The device in question was described as a tall cylindrical vessel made of mana crystal and enchanted mithril wire. From the sketch, Cira could only imagine that this was the object she would wake up inside once everything was said and done.

“You said the Cairn of Spirit has one device that does all that?” Cira asked.

“The Cairn is comprised of only three pieces. You go from the incipient vessel to the emulsifier, then finally the forge of rebirth. I believe the forge handles the tasks of both the thresher and the loom, but without the wisdom of my ancestors, all I can say is it receives mana to activate.” It wouldn’t be the first time Cira saw wisdom passed down verbally disappear overnight, and she reckoned it wouldn’t be the last, “Like this, there is no way of knowing if we can stop your curse from taking precedence once your soul reforms. I admit I do not recognize a curse of this nature, but I can tell it is more insidious than any I’ve ever seen. Is there… any more you can tell me about it?”

“Well for one, I suspect you’re better off not looking at it,” Cira pursed her lips. “Are you familiar with… primordial curses?”

Cira jolted at the sound of a teacup shattering as it fell from Kuja’s hand, “Ch-child… That can’t be. H-how?!”

Everyone always reacts like that. Cira let out a long sigh, “It was placed on me by my—no… that can’t be right.” Why would I think that? There’s no way Dad did it. That would have been akin to killing himself with curses.

There was a heavy presence—much larger than me or any other. it felt… so familiar, yet so malicious. Not unlike this stain on my soul. Still. Just who was that? It can’t have been my father.

Countless malformed faces flashed through her mind again like a revolving lantern—pale and twisted, overflowing with maggots. Faces she knew well, and some that stung like needles in her heart to recall. After a few moments of this she felt a cold hand on hers and gasped. “Oh…” It was Kuja with a worried look on her face and Cira realized she had broken into a cold sweat. Her heart raced faster than she could count.

“It’s okay if you cannot remember. There is no need to strain yourself.” There was something motherly about Kuja’s expression and the way she spoke, which further baffled Cira as she didn’t think she knew what that looked like. Did I used to have a mother? I’ve heard most do. So, what happened to her? Faces of the dead flashed through her mind again and Cira shook her head before she had a chance to remember anything else. “Let’s just focus on what we need to gather for now. We won’t be reforging anything tonight.”

“Right…” Cira leaned back and tried to steady her hands. “So, if we can get by with only two additional artifacts, what do we need? I’m locked out of the treasury until my aura reforms, so we’ll have to scrounge whatever materials we need from the forge—and possibly Jimbo’s pocket.”

“Treasury…? Forge?” Kuja had no idea what she was talking about.

“The hardest part will be producing the mana crystal. I don’t think I can manage that. Even enchanting will be difficult for me as I am now.”

“Well, it’s clear we need mithril. That alone may prove impossible to find here on Acher—I mean Lost Cloud—unless you steal it from Wick’s treasury. Is that what you meant?”

Cira got a huge grin on her face, “Ohoho, while that sounds like a brilliant way to spend a day, I meant my own treasury. It is sealed in such a way that I can’t access it without my own aura, and I refuse to curse the door. Likewise, I have some materials or other around my forge. Worst case we might be able to find some weapons to melt down around the house.”

“Oh… I see?” The old woman started looking through the book again, “For one, I think you should avoid cursing anything for a while. You only have so much soul… Let’s just make a list for now. The rest, we will figure out tomorrow.”

They spent a few hours studying the soul reforging process and planning out how to build the two artifacts they needed. Long since having tuned out the crew, they had evidently retired to sparring downstairs as their swords clattered together. It was a little annoying, but that noise also fell into the background before long. Cira was actually having fun, as she probably learned more this evening than she had in years.

It was remarkable the way Kuja was able to parse the dense text. She was familiar with souls, but many things in the book were new to her as well. Just her background allowed her to tear through the book while learning just as much as Cira was.

Maybe she really is three hundred years old…

“Hey, look at this!” Cira was startled out of focus and snapped herself around to see Jimbo in the doorway with a glowing cube in his hand. “I did it!”

Cira looked at him in a daze for a moment and blinked a few times. “So, you did… How’s your sight?”

“I can see Rocky downstairs!” He was really excited about that, “I bet I could even shoot people through walls now!”

Cira squinted her eyes at him, “Have you finished Volume One of the Sorcerer’s Compendium?”

“Uh… No.” He replied sheepishly, “Can’t I cast a spell now though?”

“I’m not certain you’re ready.” Cira crossed her arms and deliberated for a moment, “Finish that book and get back to me.”

Jimbo was mildly dejected when he turned around to head back downstairs and Cira stopped him, “Oh, leave all the mithril in your pocket, and send Rocky up here.”

“Um, here you go.” He tossed the pouch onto the table—it looked a little light. “I’ll finish that book by morning. Just you watch!”

And he was gone. Cira poured the pouch onto the table and there were three pale blue coins and a few small nuggets. Most she had either spent or ordered Jimbo to spend. Aside from that, Cira shoved the gemstones and deep green adamantine pebbles back inside.

“Y-you… you were just having the boy hang onto all this?” Kuja was stupefied, “Do you have any idea what this is worth?”

“Vaguely.” Cira admitted, “But I find far more value in them today as materials. Wouldn’t you agree? There’s no way of telling how far this mithril will go until we turn it into wire though.”

Now Kuja chuckled, having the mage earlier, “And you think that novice can pull off such a feat?”

“H-hey,” Rocky stood in the doorway and paused when both sets of eyes fell onto him, “Jimbo said you… needed something?”

“Come. Sit.” Cira waved him on, “I need you to first meld this mithril together, then spin a single wire out of it. This thickness is what we require.”

Cira held up a thin steel wire that was kept inside the book for just this situation.

“That’s really thin… Can’t it be a little thicker?” Cira’s gaze intensified, “Er, I mean I’ve never molded mithril before. It may not be so simple.”

“Mithril’s easy,” She assured him, “It practically sucks up mana faster than you can dish it out.”

“That’s the problem!” The mage threw his hands up in frustration and just to be sure, Cira turned to Kuja. She also offered a curious expression, so Cira gave the guy the benefit of the doubt. “Just do your best for now. We probably don’t have enough mithril here anyway.”

The day had worn thin and there was still no sign of their pursuers investigating this side of the island. Moonlight trickled into the window and Cira found herself struggling to keep her eyes open. The two had already made a decent list of materials and nothing more could be done until they had a chance to see what they were missing.

“Ah, there’s something I forgot.” Cira said, “I don’t see it anywhere in this book, but I think I need another soul to supplant onto my own for this to work.”

Kuja looked at her aghast, “Whatever would make you think that?”

“Let’s see. How do I put this?” There really was no other way to put it. “A strangely knowledgeable spider told me so.”