~~~Lee~~~
Lee paced anxiously around the courtyard balcony, and Amy shared his anxiety as she moved in lockstep beside him, though probably for different reasons. How many times did he have to tell her he wouldn't ditch her again? At least, not unless he had to. It did neither of them any good if she died beside him...
He felt immeasurably better when Z reappeared outside his apartment, mostly because the alien was so calm, though he still moved faster than Lee could track with his eyes.
"All is well," Z said a heartbeat later, now standing directly in front of him and halfway around the building from where he'd appeared. Lee had told him to report the moment he returned...
Further confirmation of his words followed when Bradley appeared in the courtyard below. Alive and unharmed, but not nearly as calm as Z about the current situation. Bradley glanced up instantly in their direction, and Lee met his outwardly calm gaze, even if the man behind those eyes was anything but.
Lee had never expected Bradley to return to the shadows. Not after what happened last time. He wouldn't even have allowed him to go if Bradley hadn't come to him first and offered a deal, though perhaps offered wasn't the right term. He'd demanded the deal.
Bradley would go back and keep rebuilding Three on the other side, but Lee had to swear that Mar would never cross over. Ever.
He'd sworn on everything Bradley could think of, even going as far as giving Three a verbal order to never allow the woman through, even if he later ordered otherwise. Lee wasn't sure if that kind of order would hold up in the future, but he'd done it all the same, along with a caveat that Bradley could rescind the order if he ever changed his mind. Never say never and all that.
The entire thing felt a bit... controlling, but Mar had been right there going along with it, even agreeing that she wouldn't set foot inside Three while Bradley was on the other side.
Lee had taken the deal. He was sure Shadow Three could recover on its own, given enough time, but it would also be vastly quicker with Bradley's help. Especially since Bradley had come up with some new tricks to speed the process along.
Bradley jumped or flew out of the courtyard—Lee could never tell the difference—and Mar met him on the fort's walls. Most of Bradley's tension drained away, and together they vanished into the countryside beyond.
"Go back in and guard them," Lee ordered, and Z vanished on the spot. Lee resumed his pacing.
They'd been at this all day yesterday and today. He shouldn't be nervous. Things were good. Everyone was alive, relatively happy, and his soul wound was smaller than ever.
Even better was that the invasion had come right on schedule the day before, as in, literally the same instant that the victory buff had expired. Better still, it had only been a bunch of beasts that the defenders had no trouble wiping out, including the two D-grades that Bradley and Z handled easily.
It was strange to only see two D-grades, but even stranger was the victory message.
All remaining invaders have retreated.
Dungeon: [False Assault] successfully defended.
Victory.
Retreated. That was what Z had been trying to do before... well, before he lost. The problem here was that none of the beast's souls felt smart enough to retreat... that and the name of the dungeon. Z said those names weren't random. They had meaning, though not always one that was easily discernible.
Aside from that oddity, it was still a victory, and now they had another week of relative safety during which they could deal with other things instead of worrying about an invasion. Like, say, nightmares lurking in the shadows, which they were dealing with, and it was going well.
Z had handpicked people from the volunteers who were willing to cross over, those with classes that would make the least noise, as he put it, and then given them a crash course in shadow etiquette. Now they stood guard on the other side while Bradley rebuilt Three.
There were far fewer monsters for them to kill, and Z claimed it was because the new shadowy rune on Three was helping it blend in better. Still, Lee worried. Despite his words to Alejandro, he wasn't as okay as he wanted to be. He couldn't shake the fear that another C-grade might show up, never mind a B-grade... even if Z claimed the odds of that were slim to none. Especially without Three acting as a lure.
On the note of Three, his building on this side had fully recovered since the... incident. The rune once again covered the entire building, and it was slowly growing into the newer additions.
Lee knew some of the previous... shrinkage had resulted from Three trying to protect him, but it had still recovered faster than he expected. His best guess was that the original Three rune was a sort of baseline for the building. It was slow to grow beyond that but had little trouble refilling the original design.
That still left him with a mystery regarding the source. He hadn't added any, but the reappearing rune seemed to hold the same amount it always had... He wasn't even sure what happened when pieces of Three got destroyed, since the source was right there. Until it wasn't.
Bradley flew back into range, and he came back with tons of earth. Literally. He landed all of it in the courtyard, and then he and the compacted earth all vanished. It was a lot safer and easier to gather on this side of the light, even if, according to Z, that would have been a bad idea before Three's new shadow rune.
Normally the stone would be brighter than the rest and fade to match slowly, but as long as Three's rune spread into it, then it wouldn't matter.
While he paced, Lee tried to keep his mind busy by studying the magic ring he'd taken from Z's former... employer. He hadn't come close to cracking it yet, and Z was adamant that he never would, but Lee still tried. He'd also drawn out the enchantment for those who couldn't see past the surface, which left almost every enchanter that looked at it pissed off about how complicated it was. Almost every one. A few had been thrilled.
Jeremy was the foremost expert on space magic. Unfortunately, he wasn't an enchanter, and the enchantment looked like gibberish to him. He could feel the magic out better than anyone, but still hadn't made any significant progress in recreating the effect. To be fair, his skill, while space magic, leaned in a different direction.
Lee wanted to learn both magics. Jeremy's and the ring's. A portable storage would be fantastic, and figuring out a way to transport people and matter through space without Jeremy would be even better. He'd even had Gabriel helping him study in the hopes the kid would see something he missed.
It hadn't worked yet, but Lee had some half-formed ideas that he thought would work. At least once he figured out the missing pieces. He'd made a lot of progress with changing his runes by adjusting his soul's intent during the creation process, but he still needed an actual working rune to start with.
Gabriel was in the garage, where he wouldn't be affected by Lee's anxieties, and working on his own project. Lee didn't think reinventing the automobile was going to make much difference to their lives in this new world, but plenty of the runes he was creating along the way had potential applications far beyond that. Shock absorbers. Energy and momentum transfers. Applying directional forces...
The one area Lee thought it might show the most promise was if they created tanks. Or the magical equivalent. Which was probably what any cars would essentially need to be if they wanted to survive out there. It would be even better if they could man them with the less... combat-oriented people. Crafters were useful, but they had... a lot of them. Making super comfortable furniture was nice—as an example—but it wasn't exactly a priority.
Lee glanced up during the part of his pacing circuit that let him see Saira's tree. Or at least the top of it. It was growing back quickly but hadn't yet returned to its former glory. Not that he expected it to regrow in a single day... but come on. It was magic!
Saira was out there with her daughter, and Aasha was a bright little bundle of joy, wrapped in vines and swinging gently beside her mother. Injured people trickled through almost constantly, but Lee thought the number of injured was decreasing lately. Not only did they have potions for smaller injuries, but the number of other healers was increasing as well, and not only from this fort.
They'd lost some people to other forts, especially once word spread about how much easier their invasions tended to be, but they'd also gained more from others. Usually after a fort did poorly in an invasion despite the reduced danger, including one group who'd surrendered to the invaders...
Lee couldn't imagine ever taking that risk, but they'd been desperate.
It could have ended much worse. The aliens had only stripped them, literally, then claimed skill cores from everyone before leaving. It destroyed their fort status, including removing the sapient lair status from every structure, which was how they ended up here.
They'd been lucky.
Other forts hadn't fared nearly as well after surrendering. Or at least that was Alejandro's assumption when they found former forts abandoned or destroyed. There had been bodies left behind, but not enough to account for everyone who was there before. Z suspected the survivors had been taken as spoils and likely enslaved.
They had spread the word to every settlement, but that still didn't stop it from happening. Lee couldn't imagine gambling with his life like that, but he understood it. When you had to choose between certain death for you or your loved ones versus only potential death or enslavement, well, it wasn't as hard of a choice.
Lee swore he would never allow his people to be put in that situation, but... it still weighed on him. If he wanted to ensure their safety, he needed not only to be powerful but also to make them all powerful enough to stand on their own as well.
A daunting task, but one well on its way.
Saira sitting out there at D-grade was a fantastic step in the right direction, and it had been a group effort the likes of which Lee hadn't seen before. Nearly everyone had chipped in their cores yesterday, including hunters, crafters, and vendors. All of them came together to push the woman to the peak of E-grade, and then the D-grade core Z had supplied did the rest.
It was a sign of what they could accomplish when working together, and it gave him hope for their future.
Alejandro would probably get there next, and Lee expected the upgrades to accelerate from there. They were getting D-grade cores from every invasion now, and it was only a matter of time until more D-grades appeared in the lairs here. Like the one Z had found.
Lee brushed a hand over the red-leaved vines that carpeted almost every inch of Three as he walked. It was beautiful... and the only areas clear of the vines were the courtyard floor and other places people might walk.
Outside, he saw Saira glance his way and then felt a trickle of healing energy flow into him from the vines. It was soothing and helped dampen his nervous energy, but unfortunately, it also drew Saira away from her tree.
He knew she was at least as fast as Bradley now, but she still strolled casually inside, probably because Aasha, now in her arms, was still E-grade.
Lee tried to control his nerves before she arrived, but he failed miserably. If anything, they got worse, though at least he was nervous about something other than the shadows now...
Saira didn't bother with the stairs but ascended smoothly to his third-floor balcony amid a web of crimson vines and with a gleaming smile on her face. "Hello, Lee."
"Um," Lee glanced down to meet Aasha's wide eyes staring back at him. She looked... curious? Though that could change at any moment. "Sorry, I'm just a little nervous right now. Maybe she shouldn't..."
"Nonsense," Saira said, sidling closer and pushing the vine-wrapped baby into his arms before Lee could stop her. "Hold Aasha for a moment, would you?"
"Wait... what!? No!" Lee's protests fell on deaf ears, and then it was too late. He stared down at the baby in his arms with something close to pure terror running through his veins. He'd never held a baby before! What if he dropped her!?
Aasha stared back silently, then gurgled softly and started sucking on her fingers...
"Saira, you..."
Rax came flying over the roof of Three and landed smoothly beside Saira, courtesy of another vine, all without dropping the small potted plant he was carrying. He wasn't even the least bit surprised... "Mistress?"
"I thought we might enlist Lee's assistance on this one. I'm sure you know he has a particular knack with mana."
"Y-yes, Mistress!" So Rax didn't mind getting hauled through the sky, but panicked as soon as she mentioned working with him? Typical.
Lee sighed and tried to ignore the baby still staring at him. "What am I looking for?"
Saira touched one of the plant's leaves. "What mana can you see in here?"
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"Well, it's green." Lee grinned at the flat look she gave him, then looked closer. "Obviously, it has plenty of what I think of as plant mana, the green stuff, but it also has traces of other stuff... still green, but different. Is that... healing mana?"
"Likely. Can you see where it's coming from?"
"I can..." It was strange. Lee hadn't done a lot of deep dives on plant life, despite being surrounded by it in the form of Saira's tree and vines. He couldn't not see the mana, but a lot of the smaller minutiae tended to get lost in the background noise. It had to, or he'd probably go insane from the information overload. Though maybe that would change at higher grades...
"It's starting in the stalk around..." Lee realized he didn't have a hand free to point, and he didn't want to risk removing one from around Aasha. "It starts just below the lowest offshoot and thickens up each stem before congregating in the leaves."
"Okay. So what changes if I do this?" Saira sent a microscopic thread of her mana into the plant's root—or rather, into the seed it was still sprouting from. Her trickle of mana changed everything, but only slightly.
"Less healing mana overall, and it's not appearing until nearer to the leaves."
"Mistress," Rax chimed in finally. "I was thinking a touch of fire mana might provide enough spark. What if we spliced in a..."
Lee knew what Saira was doing. She was trying to distract him from his worry, and it worked. Between the baby in his arms, whom he expected at any moment to cry but never did, and her mother, whose gaze Lee felt lingering often and repeatedly, he found himself thoroughly distracted.
Saira and Rax both could detect the healing mana, but they lacked the precision Lee had, so he actually got to help. Ideas went back and forth. Time passed, and Lee lost himself in what they were doing. Bradley came and went a few more times, and Gabriel brought a handful of rune questions to him while they worked. Z even checked in a few times, but Lee never got to worry for long.
He eventually found himself in the courtyard outside Jamaal's while Saira ordered dinner for them. There were more people around too, and Bradley had already recreated the communal dining tables throughout the courtyard. It was also getting dark...
He had definitely gotten distracted.
Lee glanced down at the bundle in his arms, like he had so many times before, and froze. She was asleep. After staring at him for hours, she was finally asleep! Her eyes were closed, and her soul was a peaceful rhythm of incredibly simple yet pleasant dreams.
Saira appeared beside him while he stood frozen in place, and she leaned closer with a beautiful smile adorning her face as she watched Aasha sleep. "Wonderful, isn't she?"
"What do I do!?" Lee whispered frantically, still not daring to move, terrified that his anxiety alone might wake her up. "You should take her!"
Saira chuckled but only patted his arm uselessly! "Relax, Lee. You are doing very well."
Amy was smirking and sharing a look with Saira when Lee looked up. They were in on it together! Maria was no better when she passed through. The madwoman only grinned and pinched his cheek while he was helpless to defend himself!
Lee finally took a few careful steps and eased himself down ever so gently into a chair. It helped him relax a little, but then the food came out and Jamaal had to fuss over the baby too before finally leaving them to eat. Except Lee had no free hands...
"Let me help you," Saira said and picked up his burrito. She held it up to his mouth, a serious expression on her face, as if she were going to feed him. Lee felt his face heating... and then Amy chuckled.
Saira's own serious expression broke into a grin as she put his burrito down. "I'm only kidding."
Instead, she finally took Aasha back into her own arms, and the girl stirred, opening her eyes and making happy little gurgling noises. She also had a new sensation in her soul that Lee didn't recognize until Saira lifted one side of her shirt and exposed a breast. It was hunger, but so much simpler than he was used to.
Aasha immediately latched on, and Saira looked up with a beaming smile. "Thank you, Lee. You were wonderful today."
Lee glanced away awkwardly... and found Amy smirking at him again. He tried to ignore her and forced himself to look back at Saira. It was a perfectly natural thing. It had simply... taken him by surprise. It also sparked another thought. "Don't babies usually eat and sleep a lot more?" He'd also expected more poop... "I mean, she's only two days old."
"Oh, yes." Saira looked past Lee, a wistful smile on her face, to where he could see Mar and Bradley taking a quiet moment to themselves behind a pillar. "Mar indeed had a voracious appetite... as well as extremely healthy lungs." Her eyes held a twinkle when they came back to Lee. "This is quite different, but I can't say I mind." She was smiling, but there was something wistful in her soul as she watched her older daughter.
"So how was it?" Amy asked, leaning in toward Lee and still grinning. "Feeling the baby fever yet? I gotta say, you took to it pretty naturally."
"It was..." Lee thought about it and, after a moment's hesitation, answered honestly, "It was nice. Also terrifying. What if I had dropped her!? Plus... I can't believe she never cried!"
"Nah." Amy waved a hand dismissively before taking a bite of her own dinner. "Mommy dearest was watching you like a hawk the whole time," she said with her mouth full. "Besides, Aasha's an E-grade." She glanced back at Saira. "I know F-grade babies have low stats, but I never asked about E-grades."
"Two across the board," Saira said, her expression softer than Lee had ever seen as she ran the back of a finger over Aasha's chubby, suckling cheek. "It was one when she was born."
"Huh," Amy said. "That's the same as F-grade. Shouldn't she be higher?"
"Maybe it's just a higher cap?" Lee mused after swallowing his own bite of a perfect breakfast burrito. "Though I'm pretty sure Aasha already has a higher mana density than Anita... and she's only a point away from evolving to E-grade. Gabriel's mana density is higher, but I'm betting that's only from the liquid mana."
It had been a few days of workouts since the participating children had capped their attributes, and Z said it could take days to weeks more before they advanced to E-grade. Plus, it was more likely at this point that they would evolve from the mana pressure than from any working out. A process that could be accelerated by using special enchanted rooms that no one on earth had access to.
Still, it didn't hurt to keep the workouts going since Martin was basically teaching them to fight, and that was something almost everyone needed to learn.
Trak and the rest of his people joined them for dinner after that, and while Trak had to nudge a few who hesitated, most of them settled in without too much awkwardness toward Lee. Rax brought a few of them into his discussions with Saira, and after listening to them all day, Lee could almost follow along.
He got halfway through his second burrito before something changed, and not for the better. Amy noticed too, and she was staring at him when he looked her way. "Excuse me," Lee said to the others as he stood up. "I just need to... step out for a minute."
It was hard to hide anything with his broadcasting soul, but he hoped to escape before he subjected the entire courtyard to the anger leaking through from Stanley. It felt bad this time... and then it got worse.
RAGE
His hand on the back of his chair spasmed, and Lee crushed the stone into dust beneath his grip. He tried to run but only saw red. Something had pissed Stanley off beyond forgiveness. Something was about to die, and it would die screaming!
The next thing he knew, he was inside Jamaal's apartment, the man staring at him in shock as the door slammed shut behind Lee, cutting him off from the courtyard.
"Sorry..." Lee started, then fell to his knees and clutched at his chest. Something was wrong. This wasn't the usual anger he felt from Stanley lately. It had started that way, but it was twisting into something else. Something cold and hard. Something... wrong.
"What is happening!?" Saira demanded from behind him, and her voice sent a chill through Lee.
No... He turned his head and felt his heart sink when he saw the woman in the room with him, her baby still in her arms and staring at him with wide eyes. "Get..."
He wanted to tell her to run, but he never got the chance. Something inside him twisted beyond where it ever should have gone, and Lee screamed. He screamed in pain but also in fear because he could feel Stanley receding. His brother wasn't dying; he barely even felt angry anymore. But he was slipping away.
"It's your soul!" Amy screamed, and Lee barely heard her over the roaring in his head. But he did hear. He heard, and he sank inside himself without another word.
It wasn't usually easy to find his soul, not like the times Stanley or the skeleton dragged him in, but he found it quick this time. It almost pulled him in...
Lee saw the problem the moment he laid eyes on their soul. Well, not eyes. His mind's eye? Whatever it was, he saw it, and he knew it was wrong. Even more so once he slipped inside the dark orb.
It was the crack, not the wound he'd sealed, but the crack, and the little pug who had stood over that glowing crack every other time was now curled into a ball atop it. Asleep.
Or so he thought...
Caffeine cracked his eyes open and looked at Lee with a worried expression, even if that was kind of how his face always looked... though he had a good reason to be worried now.
Because the crack was... changing.
It wasn't growing wider or spreading, but it was becoming... more substantial? More defined. Where before it had been a small crack, Lee could see now that it had never been small. Or even a crack.
No, it was closer to a seam, a spot where two pieces of their soul were stitched together. Where they had stitched it together—he and Stanley. They had done this.
Looking at it now, Lee could almost remember the screaming. He could almost feel the agony they'd felt. He could almost hear the echoes of their despair... as they did what had to be done. He didn't know what that was, and looking at the straining seams now, he wasn't sure he wanted to know.
Two pieces, but still his and Stanley's soul. He couldn't define one side as different from the other. Their soul was their soul. It wasn't half and half. It was one whole, but the whole was... coming undone. It wasn’t quite tearing at the seams... and none of that mattered now anyway, because Stanley wasn't actually messing with the crack. The flexing was only a side effect of something else.
Stanley was changing their entire soul.
Their soul, at least what he could see of it, was a constantly shifting field of... well, everything that they were. Lee was sure that if he knew where to look, he could find any part of them in here. Their hopes. Their dreams. Their fears. Everything.
Only, something was changing it. Bits of their soul were crystallizing into something else... something unchanging. Inflexible. Something... cold. Something... angry, and Lee couldn't do anything to stop it. He didn't even know where to start!
It wasn't a single point. There wasn't an origin for him to contain or restrict, even if he knew how. It was everywhere. An infinite number of infinitesimal points spread out through their entire being... all of them growing slowly, all of them changing his brother and him... No, that wasn’t it. They weren’t both changing. Not directly. Stanley was changing, and he would drag Lee along because they were too tightly connected for it to be any other way.
What's happening, Stanley? Lee sat helplessly beside the once again sleeping Caffeine and stroked the pug's head as he struggled to come up with a solution. There wasn’t a rune for this! It wasn’t an outside force trying to get in. It was Stanley.
He still hadn't figured out how to help when everything got worse. The cold spots turned icy and started spreading at an alarming rate.
Lee knew Stanley was angry, but he didn't know why, not until he reached out and touched a patch of frozen wrath.
Then he saw what Stanley saw, and he understood. Then he understood all too well.
He didn't know the boy in Stanley's eyes, but Stanley did. The face was a stranger's face, but it also wasn't. His name was Zeke—a wonderful boy with a soul as pure and true as an angel. Not perfect. Not innocent. But the flaws only served to magnify the light that shone from within.
Lee knew him, and he knew the others surrounding him. Stanley knew them, and now Lee did too. Most importantly, Lee understood who they were.
They were Stanley's family. Which meant they were Lee's family.
Now all of them were going to die. The monsters had killed their family.
It was heartbreaking. A tragedy. One which Stanley was rightfully furious about. He was more than furious. It was a fury that Lee had never wished to know, but one he'd come close to more than once. It lurked in the darkest places of his heart, where his worst fears dwelled. It was the fury of a man with nothing left to lose. A fury that could drive a man to do terrible things—great but terrible things.
Stanley was wrath personified as he turned his power against the one responsible for taking his family from him, and he wasn't content with mere revenge. He wanted to undo what had been done.
It was impossible, but Stanley didn't care, and Lee agreed with him. Lee wanted his family back, too, and he would break the world if that was what it took.
Lee couldn't stop his twin, and he didn't want to, but he also knew something was wrong with Stanley. He wanted Stanley to do what needed to be done, but he didn't want his brother to lose himself along the way. Because it felt like he was...
Stanley drove his will against the monster, and Lee stood at his side while their soul turned to ice. He reached out to Stanley, adding his own resolve to the fight. Finish it, Stanley. Then come back to me.
He felt the power raging through his brother in a torrent to rival even the storm of his mana well. Enough power that it scorched him on the other side of the world. Enough power that their soul shook and threatened to rip itself apart.
Caffeine was there too, awake again and adding his own resolve to holding them together. It was almost enough. The seams in their soul held, but the wound in their soul proved itself a weak link.
It was okay. Lee had known it would break first, and he was ready when it did.
He reached out and touched the still-healing scar of their last encounter with these monsters. He'd patched it as best he could back then, but he wasn't that man anymore. He had grown stronger. He had learned more about his power. Most of all, he had learned more about himself and, through himself, Stanley.
In that moment, Lee knew who they were, and he knew what they were meant to do. Both of them had found their way here along different paths, but here and now, they were together. Aligned as one in their purpose.
Lee poured what he knew into a new rune, a rune not from his library but one from his soul. Their soul. This is who we are, Stanley. Two of us in one, and we are... unbroken.
The rune settled into place like it had always been there, like it was always meant to be there, and then it was over. Or it should have been...
Instead, things got a little weird.
It was only an instant. A touch of fear came through Stanley's rage. Caffeine growled... a voice said something... and then the rage returned, colder than ever.
There was also a touch of relief mixed with regret, but it quickly vanished beneath the icy rage. Stanley was still out for blood...
He'd succeeded, but it wasn't enough, and Lee could see now that it would never be enough. Stanley had done the impossible, but he'd traded away something precious to do it. He'd saved his family, but that fact barely registered in him anymore. He was truly slipping away now...
Lee wouldn't let it happen. He couldn't! He held as tightly as he could to the part of himself that was Stanley, and he poured out all the warmth and love in his heart. Stay with me, Stanley! Come back! You won! Now you have to let go of the...
Caffeine woofed behind him, and blinding pain drove Lee screaming out of their soul, back into reality.
The pain was worth it because Stanley stopped slipping away. He wasn't back, but he wasn't leaving either. He was... asleep? Still in pain, but asleep, and best of all, Lee knew he wasn't alone. He had Caffeine. He would always have Caffeine, but now he had something more. Now he had a family.
That realization was the reason that despite everything, Lee was smiling when he opened his eyes on the real world.