I came back to consciousness in bed. My head was fuzzy, my body hurt, and I felt…off. Not like I had before at the Unity building. Less urgent. Like I’d wrenched my neck and every movement twinged, except in this case my neck was my soul. I groaned quietly as I sat up, and was immediately flooded with anxiety and relief.

Not MY anxiety and relief mind. Callie was in my head, her terror that I’d seriously and permanently injured myself like a jagged piece of glass in my mental eye. I couldn’t think through the worry. As soon as she noticed that, she retracted the emotions, clamping down on the bond, and I sent a wave of love and comfort on the heels of her retreating panic.

“You’re up.” Said my best friend’s voice in relief. “Good. You’ve been out for hours. We had no clue how to check what was wrong, and since everyone who might have been able to tell us isn’t here, we were kind of stuck. Bethy seemed to have an idea what was going on though, and told us you would recover.”

The vampire looked worried. “I said I was pretty sure. It seems a little like soul strain. But also recursion? You can get past both of those though. How do you feel?”

“Like someone just kicked my soul in the throat with steel toed boots on.” I groaned. “But I am recovering. I’ll check with Zeke and mom about this, but I don’t think I can stay in Callie’s head to talk to them.”

The darkness in the room shifted, and I blinked in surprise as the shadow sculpted forms of my wife, mother, and uncle manifested in front of us. “You won’t have to.” Said Callie bluntly. “I’ll handle the load for this conversation. Just let me work through your eyes, and relax, ok? Sasha came up with this workaround.”

My mother’s shadow form smiled worriedly at me. “How is your head, sweetheart? Are your thoughts muddled? Do you feel angry?”

“Not especially.” I shrugged. “Confused and a little exasperated with myself. I take it I did something stupid.”

“No stupider than usual.” Said Zeke helpfully. “You just happened to run afoul of consequences this time. Apparently even your stupid luck isn’t endless. You very nearly killed yourself. Or turned yourself into a lunatic. Which would have meant one of US would have had to kill you, so same thing.”

My blood went cold. “So…Bethy was right? That was recursion? Why did it hit me like that?”

Zeke rolled his eyes. “See, this is why I despair for your future. You have all the information at your fingertips, but you don’t put it together. Fine then, lets take it from the top. What did you do in your fight?”

I shrugged. “I made a technique. But like…not exactly. Sort of a mashup of techniques that I used to claim…ownership…of an area.” I groaned. “I made a Domain.”

“Nope, because if you had you would be dead.” Corrected my uncle.

I flinched. “What? I know making a Domain early is bad, but it’s not IMPOSSIBLE. Bethy has one.”

“Bethy has a Domain based on an established legend. A Domain her father carries the weight of for her.” He corrected me. “That’s perfectly feasible, if a bad idea for long term growth. Your Domain wasn’t like that, was it?”

I ran back over my thought process. It hadn’t been. I’d even noted it while it was happening. How Mephistopheles and Belial didn’t fit together. That had been part of why I had CHOSEN Mephistopheles. Zeke had implied a while ago that tapping into an established legend could help me later on. But I’d also learned that no one of consequence formed a Domain with a premade legend.

Mephistopheles was my solution to that. Introducing a disparate element meant that I was the originator of the legend of Solomon, at least the one about ME. Since the disparate thread meant I wasn’t forming a Domain using the legend of the Ars Goetia… I paused. “What happens when you try to form a Domain of your own too early.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“A Path is a connection between the soul and the stats. Or more accurately, between the soul and belief of others. It allows you to leverage one with the other.” My mother said patiently. “The reason Domains are formed on either a stable and realized story, or on a Saga, is because that foundation keeps that belief from affecting your soul directly.” She waited for me to work through that on my own.

“So…I tried to form a Domain without a condensed Path in the form of a Chronicle or Saga and the weight fell on my soul directly, exposing it to contamination from my legend? Like…hyper concentrated recursion?” I sounded out the process in my head.

She shook her head. “No. You would be dead. Or insane. Like your uncle said. There IS a way to form something like a Domain at a lower rank. It’s called a Pseudo Domain. A Chronicle would have been enough to handle that weight, but you don’t have one. You formed a Pseudo Domain before forming your Chronicle.”

“Even that should have killed you.” Said Zeke bluntly. “But your bond let Callie leech off some of the damage, and then her influence let you shake off the recursion. Thank your wife kid, because she saved your absurdly lucky little neck.”

I smiled adoringly at the shadow construct of Callie, who was staring at me in helpless grief. It took a second to tap the bond and feel what she was feeling, and less than a hundredth that time to cross the room and put my arms around her. “This is not your fault.” I said sternly as I pulled back, holding her by the shoulders.

“I made you go to Rajak.” She said quietly. “I knew there was a trap waiting there. We both did. It was common sense. But I guilted you into going anyway, and you almost died. I wanted to confirm my brother was safe, even if I don’t care about my father and Annie, and I completely ignored your safety to do it.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh get over yourself.” She blinked at me. “What? You think I wasn’t going to hit Rajak anyway? The biggest concentration of E-rankers on the planet? That was the endgame no matter what. We NEED those E-rankers for the assault on Wintervale. We can’t get the cold storage without them.”

“But I-” She tried to interrupt, glowering at me.

“Was worried about your family.” I interrupted. “I get it. And they’re MY family too now. Eric is an innocent. A little kid with no sins on his head that needed help. A BLOOD relative of my wife. Annie pisses you off, but she’s the mother of your half sibling, and hate him or not, your dad is still your dad. Just because he’s a toxic biohazard dumpster fire of a person doesn’t mean you want to know he died if you could have stopped it.”

She swallowed hard, eyes misting with tears. “I don’t know what I would have done if something happened to you.” She whispered. “Especially if it was my fault.”

“Well good thing it didn’t.” I said with a shrug. “I’m far too lucky and stupid to die. It’s the perfect combination of traits to ensure I make it to my next disaster. You’re stuck with me until I accidentally fail my way into godhood, I’m afraid.”

She burst into a fit of nearly psychotic giggles. “That description does NOT help me feel better.”

“I think I kind of knew what I was doing.” I said slowly. “Not consciously. But the Pseudo Domain I made was a VERY small part of the whole. I made the first circle of hell, and that’s only a ninth of the entire realm. Hell, maybe even less. This is MY hell after all. A brand new Domain based on my own legend. Maybe it has even more parts. Thirteen sounds good.”

My fatewalker Path might have been pushing me just far enough off course to prevent me from dying or going crazy. “All I know is that I was fucked. I didn’t have the power to take on that Domain. It was a god level Domain seed, and my normal tricks and techniques weren’t working. I was going to die if I didn’t pull out all the stops.”

“You’re not the first Ascendant to do something stupid and dangerous to survive.” My mom admitted. “But you need to stop. Don’t use that technique again. The next time you might not be so lucky. At least hold off until you form your Chronicle. That small measure of protection should be enough to make it at least survivable.”

I hesitated, only to be interrupted by a shadowy hand upside the back of my head. “Your response to that request should be ‘yes mother’ you absolute dipshit.” Spat Callie. “If you die and leave me a widow, or worse, force me to fucking KILL your rabid corpse, I am going to SUMMON you from the dead and seal your soul into a pair of fucking boots, in which I will walk through every sewer in the universe one by one until you apologize properly.”

I put my hands up in surrender. “I got it.” I said placatingly. “No Limbo. No pseudo domains. I still have another few forms to create anyway. I’ll patch any deficiencies with those until I form my Chronicle.”

“Which you shouldn’t try to do until D-rank.” My mother cut in. “It won’t be as strong if you do it before the watershed. Not to mention you should complete and perfect all nine forms before you condense your Skill. Don’t rush. Which I know is an alien concept to you, but you’re FAR ahead of where you should be. Take your time.”

Callie nodded approvingly. “What she said. Except with more threats. And maybe a joke or two.” She pulled me against her. “I can’t lose you. Not ever. And especially not now after we just committed to spending our lives together. I demand you become a god and live forever so I never have to see you die.”

“That’s the plan.” I said with a laugh. “But you better keep up. I’ll never let you live it down if I beat you to divinity.”

She snorted, burying her head in my chest, and we sat there for a minute or two, just holding each other, feeling the love and support that only the bond could give us. Finally, she stepped back, letting out a long breath.

“I’ll be coming back planetside before you move out. Which will NOT be soon.” She said firmly. “A week at least, and I want regular checkups with Jessie and exposure to Benny. You need to be in top form for this. Until then, I’ll stay here on overwatch. I want to make sure we have up to the minute information, or something close to it, for our final push.”

I nodded sadly. The shadow was nice, but I missed Callie. Sleeping without her next to me made me feel off balance. I was so used to her being by my side. I could function, but it didn’t feel right. I needed her back.

She took my hands, squeezing them tightly. “I know.” She said softly. “Me too. But I’ll be back with you soon. We’ll kick the shit out of Travis, break the Labyrinth, and then have our godsdamned RECEPTION because we STILL haven’t gotten to eat that fucking cake. I stashed it in my ring before we left. Shadow teleportation comes in handy at last.”

I laughed, enjoying the way her face lit up at the thought of finally getting to celebrate our wedding. Plus she was right, I really wanted to try some of that fucking cake. Just one more sin Travis needed to answer for. And he was going to be paying with interest.