Krala coughed as her eyes opened again, her squared black pupils widening nearly to circles. She…she remembered.

The strongest thing she felt right now was the memory of her mother's warm hold, and that was enough to push away the numbness and cold that had creeped into her.

She could feel her body again, feel her mind think again and her sight steady, and she held onto that warmth, that embrace, with all her might and love because she knew that if she did not, it would fade away like an ember in a gust, and when that fire died, she would go to do the dark place.

But she could not go to the dark place. Not now, not yet, even if it meant that with the cold and numb gone, she could start feeling the hurt again. Hurt everywhere. On her one remaining arm and its pulped hand, her mangled foot, bruised chest, bruised everything, and broken ears.

She was broken everywhere, even more than before, but she…she was still strong, she knew it now, because mother never lied, and mother had never rejected her.

With a wheezing breath, she willed herself up with Sapia.

A purple aura wreathed her tiny, bleeding body and floated her up, jerking her down every so often as the aura flickered and her mind and mana struggled to keep up. She weakly raised her head up to look back up at that one and the shining warden.

"Oh…you are coming back," said the warden. "All this, for your dear friend? Boring, my dear, quite boring. It would have been far better to your taste for you to have tried running in fear with that broken body of yours.

I would dare to say that perhaps your taste has decayed too much for me to enjoy now, but we shall see soon."

The warden knew that the daemon could no longer hear, so he waved her towards him with eager gestures of his gold-tipped fingers. "For now, come, come! Witness as my love blooms once more!

And know this, my love, if your taste is unworthy of my palate, this too shall be your fate!"

Krala could not hear anything he said, but she knew he was saying something. Telling her she was broken, probably.

Worthless.

As she inched forwards, the shining man's light grew brighter and brighter, and with it, the memories of pain and hurt came, but this time, she did not look away, even when it was hard.

Because…because she knew now that she was not worthless. It did not matter what the shining man said, what anyone said.

All her life, she had doubted whether anyone had wanted her, but that was gone now.

She was strong, mother had said so. She could feel the power starting to swell through her body.

She had the power to change this situation in front of her. All she had to do was take the choice to fight.

But even knowing she had strength, power, she still wavered as she drew nearer and nearer to the shining man's uncaring form. That light, it reminded her of the hurt, how it had taken control from her and her body.

She still made her choice. To fight like she was meant to.

Now more than ever, she felt and valued those words from that one. Those words were enough to let her choose.

She squinted, bit her lip, held her breath because even a breath at this point took up too much energy, and kept moving forwards, always…forwards.

Still, she was so far away.

No, she was not far, she was just a few meters from the shining man, his light almost blinding her, but she was just so slow and so hurt.

She watched as the shining man slammed his hand into that one's back.

The shining man shuddered in joy before retrieving a blood-slicked arm with a large, beating heart resting atop his flat palm, raising the organ up to the sky and staring at it with utterly enthralled, distracted eyes.

Rising panic struck her. Was she…was she too late?

No. Calm. She remembered her mother's calm. She could still sense that one's life through the remnants of their thel tether.

She moved forward to the shining man' turned back as he lifted up his mask to take in blood trickling from the heart down his hands.

Go, she told herself.

Go.

Forwards.

The warden squeezed the enormous heart beating in his hand, letting a small stream of deeply red blood hit his wide open and eager mouth. The blood hit his tongue, and the moment it did so, his triumphant smile faded as he dropped the heart and doubled over.

"Such…such foul taste," cursed the warden as he spat the blood out in a steaming, heated little puddle. "This is not the taste of a night child…what…what is this?"

Until finally, Krala was there, right behind the shining's man's back, but…but she had no more strength. Her single arm dangled to the floor as did her legs. She had no strength to drive them up, not physical strength nor magical power.

She knew…she knew deep down that using this power was dangerous, that it would hurt anywhere she channeled it. But for once in her life, she was free to make her own choice about her body, and she had decided to fight.

She closed her eyes and channeled mother's magic to her head. Black wreaths of magical energy arced and crackled at her forehead, growing her horns out, and then, she struck into the shining man's back, closing her eyes tight so she did not see his burning light but instead felt the comfort of the dark.

__

The Collector registered severe damage to its physical body. Damage significant enough to hinder its processing capabilities here in this foreign hyperspace nexus.

The already blurry images of iridescent rainbow circular planes grew even fuzzier, wrapped up in visual static, and the Collector knew that it had to leave.

To the Collector's own consciousness, time had passed for but a mere second, but the sheer breadth of information needed to process this enormous density of information across the alien hyperspace nexus must have caused even one second to feel as long as a minute, perhaps longer, to its physical body.

In that single second that the Collector spent in this hyperspace nexus, however, though it had not managed to locate the Collective, it had still sent out a powerful signal.

A signal that would continue to travel across space until it reached the Collective, though in what amount of time this would occur, the Collector could not begin to calculate with the lack of given information.

This was all the Collector could do for now. Already, it had spent too much time initiating the signal.

Now, it was time to escape.

The Collector's psionic profile deactivated the first part of the Dawning Protocol that propelled it into the hyperspace nexus. The many white psionic tethers anchored to the Collector's consciousness pulled back like a spooling thread, drawing it into the Simulacra again.

The hyperspace nexus and its countless converging patterns of circular plans disappeared in warped, light-speckled darkness first.

Then the Simulacra's environment of white, tendril-like psionic roots reaching out to and connecting a simpler series of rainbow roots emerged again.

Closer now in connection to its physical body, the Collector could lay out a visual of its physical body through an out-of-body point of view in front of its consciousness.

Thus, it witnessed that the opposing humanoid had torn out the Collector's heart. The female daemon specimen was behind the humanoid, but the Collector calculated that at the combat capacity it had witnessed her before possessing and her current injuries, she possessed a 0% chance of affecting the humanoid in any way.

The Collector understood that without having made immediate contact with the Collective, its directive to survive and consume was still in place. It yet possessed the opportunity to grow stronger and devour worthy foes.

Thus, it prioritized its survival once more, calculating a means of escape from this predicament.

It possessed two more hearts, but the loss of the main heart, the main core, involved such a massive immediate loss of magical and physical combat capability that it immediately began searching for an exit point.

Psionic tethers wrapped around the Collector's consciousness extended outwards, latching onto various roots, and analyzed. Here in the smaller scale Simulacra, the Collector could analyze and make decisions in the order of a tenth of a second.

Analysis of the possible warp points indicated areas that generally corresponded to points near goblin settlements across four realms.

The Collector fine-tuned the analysis to filter out warp points that were near too many life forms by assessing how many psionic profile signatures clustered around each point.

One of these points was near an enormous point of psionic energy.

Likely a 'Warp Temple' as the female daemon specimen had described prior. The Collector filed the location of this area into its memory banks for it was entirely possible that utilizing the far greater psionic energy of this area would allow for easier analysis of the hyperspace nexus.

But for now, the Collector could not afford to go anywhere near this point, for it was utterly packed with life forms.

The Collector would have to immediately enter into a metamorphosis state to heal its wounds, and it required the least amount of interference possible.

The area it therefore chose to warp to was still within this realm, but a vast distance away towards the northern hemisphere.

Here, the density of life forms was drastically lower than in any of the other warp points.

Taking this into account, the Collector locked in its warp. Glowing white tendrils on one of the rainbow roots rushed forwards and latched onto the Collector, initiating the warp sequence.

As the warp began, the Collector noted something immensely curious: the disappearance of the powerful humanoid's presence.