In a few hours the group returned to Rimzadria Estate. Remicra stepped into an old fountain and rinsed herself off, finally taking off her magisteel helmet.

Dave simply sat on the ledge of the fountain and dipped his aching feet into it. He idly noted that even though Rimzadria stood empty and forsaken for thirty years the shimmering runes that powered the water elemental remained active, running the fountain and keeping it clean.

Dave recalled as he, or more precisely young archmage Alaster, was running through the park towards the same fountain almost a century ago while cracking jokes with Telarossa.

He could almost feel, see images of two kids running atop the now overgrown ledge, jumping into the water and splashing at each other. The nostalgia belonging to Alaster Rim made Dave's heart ache as if he was actually there himself, long ago.

“You look sullen,” the dragoness commented as she pulled magisteel plates off herself and rinsed them in the water.

“Just remembering things about this place as Alaster,” Dave said. “Rimzadria’s seen better days. This garden was less of an overgrown mess."

He saw as Telarossa turned and kissed the boy in the fountain and blushed. Alaster Rim had never married because he loved his maid far too much. He tried to change, to uplift the city so that highborns could marry lowborns, but failed to do so.

“The odds had not been stacked in my favor,” the ghost of the old archmage commented from the ring on Dave’s finger. “But you still have a chance, my protege. Take it and wield this city as Lord Rim, fix what I could not. Make that girl the Sovereign and rule, uplift the city at her side."

Dave’s eyes trailed off to Cedez.

The foxgirl finished chatting with Svenn and sauntered over to where Dave sat. She joined him on the ledge, momentarily leaning her head onto his shoulder.

Remicra let out a deep rumble. She grabbed Dave by his hand and pulled him into the fountain. Cedez rolled her eyes.

“Ermm?” Dave blinked as the dragoness shoved him into the water.

“You smell like a hogbeast,” Remicra commented as she kept Dave under the pouring water for a few seconds.

Emerging from the small waterfall and sputtering, Dave shot Remicra an indignant glance. She merely smirked at his reaction.

"Alright, alright," Dave conceded, scrubbing at his hair as the sun-warmed water dripped down his face. "No need to drown me.”

"Just making sure you're clean," she replied, giving him a playful shove.

The shove sent Dave stumbling back, water sloshing around him. He glanced up at Remicra from the water, who was watching him with an unreadable expression.

Cedez watched from the ledge, leaning forward like a curious spectator.

Remicra moved closer to Dave, her steps causing ripples to spread out across the water's surface. She was now directly above him, her gold-violet eyes locked onto his.

"Dave," she said, her voice softer than he had ever heard it, a ripple of red and orange dancing over her scales.

"Yes?" Dave responded.

"I wanted to thank you," Remicra murmured, her red-tinted scales gleaming in the light of the evening.

"For?"

"For freeing me..." Her tail flicked through the water, sending sparkling drops flying around.

"Remicra, it was nothing," Dave said. "Like I said before, you're my friend and I don't abandon my friends."

"I was hostile and cold to you, acted with indifference when we met," she retorted, her voice barely above a whisper. "And yet, you risked your life for me, Dave... again and again and I haven't done anything for you in return because I have nothing to offer you."

"That’s not true. You helped me make Bakelite armors," Dave pointed out. "You gave me a place to sleep."

Before Dave could respond, Remicra took a deep breath and continued, "I want… I want to offer you the key to my soul-forge."

"What?" Dave blinked.

"The soul-forge," Remicra began, her scales turning a deeper shade of red as she continued to speak, "it is...it is a deeply rooted custom of the dragonkin from my long-gone village of Starisle, and it's considered very sacred. It's not something that’s ever been shared with others outside our kin, especially not humans. It’s a custom, carried from parent to child for countless generations. I haven’t told you this… but dragonkin weren’t born on Arxtruria, you see. We came to this place, were pulled from a world... a place from old legends... a world that had stars sprinkled across the heavens.”

She took a deep breath, her chest rising and falling. She watched Dave's face, trying to gauge his reaction.

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"When a dragonkin shares their soul-forge, it is the ultimate bond of trust and respect. An equivalent to an absolute promise, which also encompasses friendship. The soul-forge isn't merely about a romantic bond, it's a connection of souls that transcends the physical plane."

She paused, looking down at the water. The reflection of the setting sun made her red-tinted scales look like they were on fire. "The gate to a soul-forge is a metaphysical path… It's like a door to our true selves.”

Remicra looked back at Dave. "To offer you my soul-gate… it means I trust you completely. I respect you. I acknowledge you as someone who is very important in my life, as someone I am willing to connect with at a deeper level than ever before."

Dave nodded.

She sighed, her gaze drifting back to the water. "It's also very… personal. It's an intimate thing, sharing one's soul-gate. It's akin to… metaphorically letting you see the deepest parts of me. Not just my physical self, but my skills, thoughts, my emotions… my soul. I’m offering you my hand, my true self… forevermore. A promise, a pact to be at your side, no matter what comes.”

Her tail flicked again, scattering more water droplets that sparkled in the fading sunlight. "So, I'm asking you, Dave… will you accept the star-key to my soul?"

“Yes,” Dave said simply.

“The pact is thus forged,” Remicra whisper-sung as she leaned closer to Dave, gold-violet spirals dancing in her eyes.

Dave's heart skipped a beat. This felt like a significant offer, one that carried immense weight and meaning. His mind raced, still trying to catch onto what Remicra had just said.

The blacksmith girl smiled. There were sparks of tears in her eyes. Time stretched on as the garden around them grew darker, the sun slowly sinking behind Nihilim.

From the ledge, Cedez let out a huff of impatience. "Oh, for the love of... Remicra, if you take any longer to kiss him, I'll come over and…" she called out, her tone teasing.

Remicra shot Cedez a glare before turning back to Dave. She took a step closer, her heart pounding in her chest. And then, without another word, she leaned in and kissed him.

Time seemed to stop. The world around them faded into a blur as Dave closed his eyes, his mind filled with the sensation.

And then, something inexplicable happened, like a door opening that he didn’t know existed.

The world around him froze, the splashing fountain, the setting sun and Cedez fading away as he opened an eye he didn't know he had. Myriads of galactic constellations blossomed all around him, a hundred brilliant threads wrapped around him in an embrace.

Dave saw Remicra’s soul and then somehow he also saw his own soul.

Their spiritual patterns looked like the celestial dance between two colliding fireworks or perhaps galaxy spirals, numerous stars perpetually intertwining, circling around and flowing through one another in a bewilderingly complex cosmic ballet.

Within this celestial landscape, Remicra looked like a radiant assemblage of shimmering violet stars circling a white something, while Dave’s soul was akin to a colossal fusion of blue, green and brown nebulae forming a supercluster of interconnected energy. A thousand stars spun all around him, the biggest two of them brilliant green and dark gray-blue.

As he peered at the impossible, vast, nearly incomprehensible sight, trying to understand it better, he suddenly looked into elsewhere…

-

He saw himself wearing a black and white snowboarding jacket, standing on a vast precipice of an infinite city covered in skyscraper ruins holding the gloved hand of a girl in a dark blue coat, a captain's cap with glittering purple lenses of a grimy gas mask concealing her face.

~

He saw himself wearing a dark gray uniform with a GUPS logo and a bracelet with a letter [G] on it, kissing a girl with pink eyes and violet hair as fireworks blossomed behind them across a vast ocean encroaching upon an endless desert.

~

He saw himself wearing a frayed sweater, sitting in an old, rusted up, orange car, staring at a girl with brown hair and brown eyes who was telling him how she wanted to explore Chernobyl with a pneumatic exo-suit she designed herself.

~

He saw himself as a scrawny teen looking up at a white-haired girl standing atop a tree-house made up entirely from highway signs, her hands expertly holding a pink nail gun.

“Don’t judge me, it’s a work in progress, okay?” The girl noticed his silence and waved an arm that carried a large Stop sign.

~

He saw himself as a geisha, dressed in black and gold robes, smiling at a teenage girl who's hands and feet covered in black tape. The strange, silver-blue-haired girl was ripping a gold lantern from the rooftop of a Chinese-looking, opulent temple. With a yelp, she fell down as the metal chain snapped. A long, ghostly, alien creature woven from silver sparks stared down at both of them.

~

Dave saw himself as a slug-like creature bowing before a gargantuan, pulsating sphere woven from infinite flickering, impossible colors. The spherical megastructure forged from pure light had one hundred and seven ring-like threads fluttering around it. One hundred and seven eyes peered at him and in all direction across the infinite divide, violet lightning dancing between them, constantly reforming the corpse planet he inhabited.

He was desperate, undefined, but a shard of life that was praying to the inverted singularity and making a wish upon it again and again and again for countless millennia.

The sphere of light focused at him with hundreds of eyes, noticing that he looked directly at it. In a moment that lasted eternity... it judged him, evaluated him fully.

~

An invisible rubber band snapped, sending him careening backwards across the infinite divide of everything everywhere. Dave sputtered with a choking gasp as Remicra let go of him.

“Was the kiss that bad?” She asked, frowning at his shocked face.

“N-no,” Dave choked. “I… I saw… your soul. I saw... us."

“My soul?” The dragoness blinked. “The pact is just an idea, a metaphor… how could you…”

“He’s a Phantomancer, you dummy,” Cedez commented from the fountain ledge. “Obviously, he can actually see souls.”

“Right, that… makes sense, I suppose,” Remicra muttered, blushing further.

“That’s not all,” Dave shook his head. “I didn’t just see your soul… I saw… you and me… as someone else.”

“Someone else?” Remicra raised an eyebrow.

“Other people… and things,” Dave said.

“Things?”

“You were... these other girls across on completely different worlds and then... you were an Angel made from a hundred eyes and a hundred entwined rings,” Dave exhaled, rubbing his face. “A goddess, an engine of light, inhabiting a dead world and I was an echo of dying machine life with a human soul trapped inside it, making a wish on you.”

"What kind of a wish?" Cedez asked.

"To be human," Dave said. "To have purpose."

“That sounds… concerning,” Remicra said. “You sure you didn’t swallow some stripe-worm blood?”

“I don’t think so,” Dave muttered. “It’s like I was actually there with you, elsewhere… but you didn’t look like yourself and I didn’t look like myself at all. I had other names too… Thomas, Paul, Martin, Charles… Celes… Damn… It all felt so real, like I was there.”

Was he really a freaking geisha in some distant beyond, on some other world?

“You two are precious,” Cedez commented, which earned her a glare from Remicra.

“You know, I expected this sort of magical bullshit from you,” Dave commented at Cedez. “Not Remy!”

“Magical bullshit is what happens when you level up,” Cedez shrugged. “You’re just becoming more. Get used to it, bud!”