“Speak up,” Remicra ordered.
"I'm sorry Remy. I can't help it," Cedez choked out, tears welling up in her crystalline blue eyes. "When night comes, I lose myself to the shadows. Everything I am just... slips away. I… I don't know what to do about it. I can't change what I am.”
Remicra's grip on Cedez's scruff softened. The foxgirl took this as an invitation and suddenly latched onto the dragoness, burying her face in Remicra's metal apron.
"Hey!" Remicra protested weakly as Cedez clung to her. "I didn't say you could..." But the foxgirl just pressed closer, her entire body shaking with more sobs.
With an exasperated sigh, Remicra awkwardly slid onto the sofa with the foxgirl in tow. In the next moment, Cedez curled into a tight ball against the dragoness's side, halfway on her lap, dark tail wrapped around Remicra's waist. The dragoness sighed and began petting the fox, sending Terri an annoyed glare which the Healer simply ignored.
Dave turned to Terri. "What exactly happens to Cedez at night?"
“From what I understand…” Terri leaned on a dark metal balcony railing. "When the Leviathan Nightingale appears, it calls to all Shadow fragments within the city. They are drawn to it, becoming part of its flock. This includes Cedez's consciousness - her memories, her experiences, all of what she is… becomes accessible to the other shards of Princess Nixlix."
"Like a shared network?" The ex-programmer asked. "All the fragments connecting to a central server?"
“Sure,” Terri shrugged, eyes sparkling with unnatural bright blue. “Like public Discord messages anyone else there can read.”
"And there's no way to block this connection?"
“If I knew of a way to simply block it with my Vitalix, I would have done so already,” Terri said, crossing her arms. “Her entire body is aligned to Shadow to an insane degree, every cell permeated with Shadowmancy. Essentially, she’s a fully converted dungeon Sentinel, a magic skill projecting itself into a completely hollowed-out shell of a person.”
At being called a dungeon Sentinel, Cedez curled harder into Remicra, trembling as if terrified of being struck down.
“A Sentinel?” Dave repeated, recalling the emaciated, undead, Void-filled adventurers from Whispering Depths.
“She’s… not alive enough for me to help her,” Terri explained. “Sorry. She might have been a person a decade or two ago, but it's far too late now.”
“Cedez isn't like the practically mindless Sentinels I killed in the Void dungeon though,” Dave said.
“Shandria isn’t exactly a dungeon,” Terri shrugged. “And Kells did something to this fox, attached some other stuff from the Abyss to her.”
“What?”
“I don’t know,” Terri shrugged. “I wasn’t there and Kells was insane at the time, puppeteered by his Vexirium.”
“Is Terri’s assessment of Cedez correct?” Dave turned to Murdoc.
The old Snailmancer stroked his beard with a sigh. "When Nightingale comes down from the ring of clouds, her body slowly dissolves into shadowy smoke, presumably drawn up into the Leviathan, yes. She’s smarter than a Dungeon sentinel because of her dress, it keeps her together.”
“Does she have memories of the other fragments?" Dave asked.
"Not usually," Murdoc shook his head. "She doesn't like talking about it. Though sometimes she has... impressions. Feelings of what the other fragments experienced the day before. She tries her best not to become like them, to be a good person. She doesn't always succeed and occasionally acts a tad mean spirited, but she hasn't hurt anyone at the cafe or broken any laws as far as I am aware.”
Dave pursed his lips, rolling the problem over in his head. He suddenly thought about the bottled shadow belonging to Cedez and Stellaris.
“Hang on,” he said. “What if we… don’t let her rejoin the other shadows?”
"What do you mean?" Murdoc asked, leaning forward in his chair.
"Well," Dave began, pacing the balcony as he thought aloud. "When I amplified Remicra's Metallomancy, I used a bottled shadow. This bottle sat in my bag overnight, didn’t rejoin the Leviathan. What if we did something similar with Cedez… bottled her up for the night?”
Cedez's ears perked up slightly at this, though she remained pressed against Remicra's side.
"A container?" Murdoc stroked his beard thoughtfully. “It could work… but what if she turns into a Shadowbeast, and simply slices a hole in it with a Shadow blade?”
Dave frowned and then he looked at the ward control bracelet on his wrist.
“Maybe… we could readjust the ward of the lighthouse to hold her?” he offered.
“She could slice through that too,” Terri said. “She gets much stronger when she changes fully. What if she calls Nightingale to aid her? There's no way that the ward would stop the Leviathan. That abomination could bring down the entire tower in a single swat.”
Dave shuddered as he remembered the burning silver and red eyes of the monstrous titan.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
He looked at Terri.
“What's your solution then?” He asked. “Why is Cedez so upset?”
“I can paralyze the Shadowmancy-filled shell,” Terri said, her voice turning colder. “Then, a Burnix Kitlix could be used to strike specific memories from the crystals.”
“What memories?” Dave blinked. Murdoc frowned.
“Her memory of you, me, Remicra, this lighthouse,” the elkgirl said. “This way, she won’t dream of you anymore. She could live in the snail with her… grandfather. She’ll be safe. You will be safe.”
“No! I.. I don't want to forget Remy or Dave,” Cedez trembled in Remicra's embrace. “I don't want to be alone, please…”
“She clearly doesn’t want this,” Dave expressed.
“David… please understand,” the elkgirl addressed the ex-programmer. “She is dangerous to you. As long as she remembers you and wants to spend time with you… she will bring you unending heaps of trouble.”
“And whose fault is that?” Dave asked.
“Cedez Astra is my mistake, yes,” Terri said with Lari’s voice, her eyes filling up with more blue. “Her obsession over you is my fault. However, if I have to choose between keeping her around as she is and protecting you… I will always choose you.”
“Lari,” David said, his voice trembling ever so slightly.
“David,” Lari's voice spoke from Terri's lips. “Listen to me. You have to slow down, stop before you crash. You can't save everyone. I can see that you like Cedez. I know that you want to save this long dead girl who has a bit of me in her, but you cannot. The probability of outcome is set against you here.”
“You're certain?” David walked to Terri and stared at the glacier-blue eyes, searching for his friend in their depths.
"I watched her shake your hand this morning via my Maidenlyne’s Vitalix. The amplification Cedez offers is going to fragment you. Her handshake ‘empowerment’ might not put you into a coma, but it's inevitably pushing your skill right over the edge, bringing more Shadows to attack you. Without her dreaming of you, she can live a normal life, unburdened by my mistake, unbound from the programming your previous iteration wrote into her soul.”
"And what about her dreams?" Dave challenged. “What about her feelings?”
"Echoes of echoes," Lari replied. "Fragments of my care for you, fused with Princess Nixlix's shadow. They're not real, David. They're making her yearn for something she can never truly have.”
"Why is she drawn to Remicra then?” Dave asked. “Is that really just programming the other me wrote?"
“When Kells carved up the princess of Shandria, he was already one foot in the abyss. At that time he was already nothing like you and more of a typhoon of barely contained myriads of personalities within a patchwork of corpse flesh,” Lari shrugged Terri’s shoulders. “It’s possible that in his madness, he simply wrote something like… ‘desire for dragons’ into the modified soul shard.”
“God damn it, Lari!” David snarled. “This isn't like one of our DnD games! Cedez isn't an NPC I can simply leave behind. Does it matter if she's technically dead? She's clearly a person! If anything, you are just as dead as she is! Cedez and Murdoc agreed to help us here in Shandria! I owe them both, damn it! Without their help, Remicra would remain a slave and…”
“Your safety is more important than the freedom of a blacksmith sla—" Lari’s echo began.
"More important than what?" Dave cut her off with a snarl. "More important than helping people who need it? More important than fighting against the system that treats people like property? That's not the Lari I knew. My Lari would find a way to save as many people as possible! She was a paramedic who dedicated the remainder of her brief life to save everyone around her, including me!”
“I am still trying to save you!” Saint Saria declared, Terri's hands grabbing his. “I've seen you lose yourself too many times, David. If you succumb to Vexirium, your skill will do terrible things! You will lay waste to half of Shandria, kill everyone in your way! Kells lost all of his friends and supporters on the day when he declared himself Supreme Sovereign!”
“Kells was insane for a long time,” Murdoc pointed out. “And if you keep tormenting my granddaughter by saying that you are going to erase her memories, I will have you removed from our home by force.”
“I get what you're saying, but the odds are clearly against you, ghost,” Remicra commented with an underlying growl. “Lay off my little fox. You can't take on all of us.”
“Your fox?!” Lari-Terri sputtered. “You… you barely know her! You barely know David! It’s only been…”
“I understand fear,” Remicra snarled, her figure painted with red waves. “I understand pain and loneliness. I think I understand what the fox is now.”
“You clearly don't get it! We have to protect Da—” Lari began.
“No,” Remicra shook her head. “Give it up. Don't you see it in Dave’s eyes? Read the room. You already lost. Give it up. Your memory cutting plan is stupid. We will figure something else out.”
Terri’s blue-green eyes looked across the balcony, taking in the unified opposition. A transparent tentacle cracked with dancing lightning above Murdoc. Remicra held onto Cedez, and Dave stood firmly between Terri and the others.
"I..." Lari's voice faltered. The blue light in Terri's eyes flickered. "I can't... I can't watch it happen again. I can’t lose you, David."
"Then help me stay me," Dave said firmly. "But not by hurting my friends. Not by erasing their memories. That's not protection - that's control. If you’re my Lari and not just a ghost of her ground to a singular purpose over the passing centuries… then you’d understand. Let go of Terri, Cantigeist!”
The blue light in Terri's eyes flickered and faded, the fractal gears in her head dimming and slowing their spin.
Terri blinked, her natural green eyes refocusing on Dave’s angry face. "Saint Saria’s last wish... She's just really overprotective of you. Maybe because she's been fighting this battle for so long… she’s become over-focused on a single goal. She was created to be your guiding light, not a fire that burns your friends. I'll keep her down until this problem is sorted out. I'm sorry.”
Terri turned and quickly slipped down the spiral stairwell. A single blue eye in the otherwise dark foxball opened and watched her disappear below.
“You do like me!” The eye turned to look up at Remicra.
“I tolerate you,” the dragoness repeated. Then she paused, mulling it over. “For a dungeon Sentinel… you're surprisingly tolerable. If you were a free person, it would be a different story. But, you are like me… bound and broken.”
“Thank you for defending me, Remy,” Cedez murmured, unfurling and embracing Remicra. “Thank you for understanding me.”
The dragoness hugged her back, her figure painted in violet tones.
"So," Dave said, sitting down next to the hugging pair. "About that bottling idea..."
"The problem is that Nightingale's call is incredibly strong," Cedez said, finally pulling away from Remicra slightly. "Even if you put me in a magisteel case behind a ward, I'm not sure I could resist it and summon the other Shadows to attack the container. The Leviathan’s song vibrates through every part of me, utterly changing, reshaping what I am.”
“What if it's not a mundane container or a permeable Ward?” Dave contemplated, recalling the specialized magic wielded by Voidmancer Zolish Yaslor. “What if we use… Void magic to completely separate you from Shandria, seal you off in a dimensional bubble?”