"That's why you keep clinging to me, hugging me?!" Remicra's voice cracked. "You are… trying to realign me to your Shadow?! Is that it? Everything was just... preparation?!"

[The fox shell's feelings are irrelevant distractions. Mere echoes of dead meat. You will be a superior vessel.]

"Cedez…" Dave gritted his teeth as Healy finally managed to repair his electricity-fried nerves.

[The Cedez you know never existed,] the Shadow cut him off. [Just a dream-pattern. Nothing more.]

"Cedez still exists," Dave rose from the ground, fighting through the electroshock-paralysis. "Remember the farmhouse? I promised to find your parents, Cedez. Stop running away.”

The Shadow-beast hesitated, multiple blue eyes blinking rapidly. [Farmhouse... irrelevant. Dead meat memories,] she projected, but there was uncertainty in her thoughts.

“If Cedez is just a ghost like my Lari in the book,” Dave said. “Then you’ve got unfinished business to take care of. What’s your unfinished business, what do you wish for the most?”

The multi-core, Thundersnarg-shaped Shadowbeast blinked a myriad of eyes, massive, looming black wings trembling ever so slightly over the man and dragoness.

[I wish...] The Shadow's thoughts wavered. [I wish... NO! DECEPTION! TRICKERY!] Lightning crackled between her antlers. [YOU CANNOT TRICK ME WITH DEAD MEAT MEMORIES!]

"Not memories," Dave insisted, standing his ground. "Wishes. Dreams. Hope. That's what drives you, isn't it? Not just hunger for cores or need for a new shell. I know that you dream of something more!"

[Dreams are weakness! Irrelevant! I am Shadow! I serve Mother! I...] Her form shifted, the elongated head briefly taking on a more foxlike shape. [You are just meat… shell for my essence… so that I can better serve the hive.]

"As if! You serve yourself," Remicra snarled back. "That's why you keep making jokes, keep trying to make us laugh. Deep down, you want to be more!"

The elongated Shadow-head came down, hovering between Dave and Remicra, silver-blue eyes staring at both of them.

"You're Cedez," Dave said firmly. "Our friend. The girl who dreams of dragons, just like me. The one who helped free Remicra, who trusted me enough to let me try to bottle her Shadow."

"You're more than just a shadow," Remicra added from the other side. "You're... my first real friend since I lost my family. The annoying pest who won't leave me alone, who keeps trying to make me smile even when I want to cry, pushing me past my limits! The one who saved up tips for months just to buy me this damn fine hammer."

[Protect... valuable host shells...] The looming shadow seemed to deflate, fold into itself, shrinking. [Friendship–nonexistent variable. Mother…]

“What is Mother?” Dave asked. “Do you even agree with what Mother wants? Or do your individual wishes stand in direct opposition to the hive?”

[Mother wants the hive to thrive and multiply. For the Shadow to spread further out. I… I want… I want…]

The mind of the Shadowbeast became filled with static, images entwined with images. The face of a man stitched from a patchwork of flesh.

[I want revenge against the man who killed me. Necromancer Kells. David Horovits Walter. You. You are the source of my problems. You made me. You broke me into a hundred pieces. You bound this little shard with your wishes, wove a piece of the happy future that… didn’t exist into my desires.]

“That wasn’t me,” Dave said.

[Liar! You shine just like him from within, sound just like him! You did this to me!] The Shadow's thoughts crashed into Dave's mind like waves of static. [You broke me into fragments! You bound me with your wishes, rewrote what I was. You gave me... hope.]

The last word seemed to cause the shadow physical pain, her form writhing and twisting.

[I wish to carve you apart. I cannot. Not permitted. Annoying.]

"I'm not Kells," Dave said firmly. "I'm not him, damn it, Cedez! I don't want to unmake or rewrite anyone."

[Yet here you stand, shining with souls you've consumed,] the Shadow replied, a jagged smile stretching across her elongated face. [Just like him. Growing stronger by devouring the dead, wearing a shawl of stars made from bits and pieces of what I was once.]

"Fine, I eat souls, yes. But I didn’t come after them. They keep attacking me, trying to murder me! I’m not Kells, I'm trying to stay me," Dave answered. "I'm fighting against the madness, against losing myself. And you know what helps? Real friends. You and Remicra… Terri, Dumpich and Leon. Murdoc and Hyrei. Connections between people who care about each other. You are my light in the Abyss. You… Cedez.”

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"Real friends?" The Shadow beast laughed, speaking with a tongue now. [What do you know of real friendships? You who wear the dead like a cloak? Who absorbs souls to grow stronger?]

"I know enough to see that you care about us," Dave replied. "Even now, transformed, you still haven't actually hurt either of us too badly. You're holding back."

The beast's form wavered, briefly taking on a more foxlike appearance.

"What's wrong?" Remicra asked, also advancing. "Can't bring yourself to hurt your besties? Show us what you really are. Not what Her Divine Shadow wants you to be, not what Necromancer Kells made you into!"

"Show us Cedez, the girl born in Shandria," Dave added. "A fox with dreams and wishes."

The Shadow's form fluctuated wildly, stretching and contracting. Multiple beast cores pulsed within her chest, like planets trapped in the orbit of her being.

"I..." A voice emerged from her throat, almost human. "I don't... remember who I was. Can't... remember before the shadows. Only the dream of you both, skewering me, driving me mad."

"Then make new memories," Dave hugged the flickering shadow. "Starting now. Let's go find your parents!”

“Together,” Remicra hugged Cedez from the other side.

The shadow-beast's form began to shrink and condense between Dave and Remicra's embrace. The beast cores dimmed and emerged from her chest, piling into her arms. The Thundersnarg antlers burned away, melting into jagged, crystalline edges. The crystal shards came together, reforming into Shady sitting atop of her head and looking confused, blinking seven blue eyes at Dave and Remicra.

Cedez's foxgirl form solidified, still wrapped in dark flames that gradually faded away. She was trembling and naked, her ears flat against her head.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, trembling. "I'm so sorry. I lost control. I was just so tired and hungry… I fell asleep during the day, became something between myself and the Shadow, fused with Shady… lost myself to the desire to hunt.”

“Are the cores helping?” Dave asked.

“I…” Cedez looked at the cores in her hands. “Yes. They’re… warm.”

One of the cores fell from her hands, rolling on the ground.

“Ugh, why can’t I hold all of these cores,” Cedez shook her head.

Remicra had let go of her and pulled a slightly torn up dark outfit from the bag, pulling it on Cedez who let go of the cores, dropping them all over the ground.

“Let's put them into Shady,” Dave suggested, picking up one of the cores she dropped. “The extradimensional space should become saturated with higher Aetheric density if the cores are kept inside. They should make things better at night so that you’re not starved for magic during the day.”

“Do I look like a Space mage?” She squinted at him. “I don’t know how to Baglix Shady.”

“Dave does though,” Remicra said.

"Yeah," Dave nodded, putting everything into Intelligence and letting Voidmancer Zolish’s knowledge of Dimensional magic flow to the surface of his mind.

He put his hand on the Noxlix Kitlix. "Shady, ring form."

The dark Kitlix shifted into a circular shape, glowing blue eyes blinking around its circumference. Dave took Shady down from the foxgirl’s head as the ring solidified.

“Open sesame,” he ordered, letting the fragments of Zolish guide the process. The dimensional gateway ignited into existence inside the circle-Kitlix. Dave extracted a single spark of the soul of the Thundersnarg and dropped the core he was holding into the extradimensional space.

Cedez dressed quickly with Remicra’s help. She bent down and grabbed one of the cores, rolling it in her hands. She rubbed the core on her face, exhaling.

“Ughh… that’s nice,” her eyes rolled to the back of her head. “That’s the stuff.”

Dave shoved the rest of the cores into the ring and then walked over to the remnants of the Thundersnargs. He began picking up bloody shreds and bisected legs, slipping them into the dimensional gate.

“Aww, so thoughtful,” Cedez cooed. “Leaving me snacks for the night!”

“Was that… was any of that true?” Remicra asked.

“What was true?” Cedez blinked at the dragoness.

"The part about you needing a new host body," Remicra said, her scales flickering between orange and blue. "About me being... compatible."

Cedez's ears drooped. "I... I don't know. When I'm in shadow form, everything gets mixed up. The hunger, the hive-mind directives from Nightingale, whatever in the Abyss Kells did, my own wishes... it all blends together into this confusing, conflicting mess. But I do know that I care about you both. That part is real."

"How can you be sure?" Remicra pressed.

"Because it hurts," Cedez replied softly. "When I think about losing either of you, it hurts in a way that has nothing to do with shadows or cores or whatever else I am. The shadow part of me wants to consume, to serve the hive. But the me that's talking to you now? I just want my friends.”

"And the part about your current body decaying?" Dave asked.

“I… do need your help with that,” Cedez confessed. “As a Shadow I can’t die to a sword, but as Cedez I’m… decaying, melting away into the Shadow, forgetting what I am. These purified mana gems help, but they are a rather poor solution. I need something better to preserve what I am.”

“Something… more complex, perhaps… like a Phylactery?” Dave dug into his pouch and pulled out Lari’s journal. “I’ve been putting off studying this book, terrified of what I might find inside… but with both of you at my side, I might be okay to read whatever Lari wrote in here centuries ago.”

"A phylactery..." Cedez's ears perked up. "Yes! That could maybe work! My current form is held together by purified mana crystals and fragments of a core, but a properly made phylactery could anchor my consciousness more permanently, maybe even help me stay myself as a Shadowbeastie!"

"Maybe we should wait until we're somewhere safer before researching potentially dangerous magical books," Remicra suggested, eyeing the book and the swaying grasslands warily. "More Thundersnargs could show up."

"Right," Dave nodded, slipping the book back into his bag. “Lets pack as much Thundersnarg meat as we can into the extradimensional space for Cedez. I… I think I got enough herbs to fulfill the conditions of the Quest.”