I still have no watch by which to gauge time, but the day-night cycles seem to last between twenty to thirty hours. I originally thought I’d be able to sleep well in the ascendant world, but something about this challenge has kept me jittery. As a result I doubt I’ve slept more than ten hours over the past two days, but it’s been worth it.

After leaving the salamanders, I quickly realized I needed to make radical changes to my approach. The first iteration of breathing fish suffocated to death, their primitive, salamander-inspired lungs alone insufficient. After hours of trial and error I began to shift away from turning fish into amphibian converts and more toward making them like lizards.

Most of yesterday I investigated making them more like birds, regulating their own body heat rather than relying on ambient heat in the environment. I specifically focused on the avian circulatory system rather than their adaptations for flight.

A soft breathing sound comes from my left, interrupting my introspection.

“Hello,” I murmur, grabbing for the little endothermic lizard-fish on my shoulder. Its eyes stare blankly off into the distance, incapable of focusing on me or conveying expression. It’s the kind of face that’s so ugly it’s almost cute. Its claws dig in and threaten to pull at my sweater’s stitching.

Jimmy is one of my successful experiments. He grew attached to me for unfathomable reasons and won’t leave me alone. Every so often he leaps away and dives into the water only to flail and drown, requiring prompt rescue. Looking at him, I’m not sure whether to laugh or sigh–is he an abomination or a miracle?

Thankfully my latest experiments are more promising: I’m feeling confident enough to approach Crystal.

“It has been two days since you addressed me directly,” Crystal says, rearing its head just above the water’s surface. As expected, it’s skimming my thoughts.

“I assume you’ve been observing my experiments. Do you still wish to proceed?”

“Yes.”

I nod slowly. “I’m going to put you out. Is that acceptable?”

“It is fine, consent is given.”

Okay. See you soon.

Crystal’s already blank expression somehow grows more absent and its body begins to sink downward. I bring the fish just below the surface with my practice, take in a deep breath, and begin to work on what two days ago I considered miraculous.

I first move to reshape the fish’s chest cavity slightly, pushing flesh out of the way and making room for lungs. Then, over the next hour, I painstakingly build the respiratory organs, layering epithelium and creating a complicated network of tiny vessels. My experience working with filaments of soul comes in handy, vessel formation requiring the same exacting focus and precision. I additionally take pieces of gill tissue and seed those into the lungs.

I take another deep breath when it’s finally time to place the lungs in their final location, supplanting the gills and connecting to the pulmonary artery. I need to do it quickly before the fish suffocates.

I carefully sever the vessels coming to and from the heart, then reattach them to the lungs. Blood gushes out like spilled ink. I pull the lungs back and cut the gills away, suspending them off to the side. I tilt Crystal’s mouth above the water’s surface and force it to breathe, pushing on its chest. The fish spits up water and takes a shallow breath.

My heart suddenly aches for Crystal’s loss, its incompleteness–it will always be partly fish, but without gills, it might as well not be.

There must be a way to keep both lungs and gills, a way to be improved without being diminished.

I raise Crystal from the water along with the severed gills, the red oxygenating organs stark against the shorn white flesh. I reattach them to the fish’s flayed sides like applying an adhesive sticker, flesh melding to flesh.

In the air, the pleated structure of the gills collapses, their many folds unable to capture oxygen without the buoyancy of water. As they are now they’re little more than a bizarre fashion accessory, unmoving, no vessels connected to them.

What if there was a way to choose whether to pass inhaled air or water through the lungs or gills, all while granting both oxygenating organs access to the pulmonary artery? It would need to be a conscious decision, some kind of muscle, something new that would need to be learned.

It’s something I can figure out later. Now that Crystal’s gills are successfully reattached, they won’t degrade, even if they’re not in use.

If needed, I could revert Crystal’s current state without serious problems. But that’s about to change: Going forward, I’ll be making near-irreversible changes to the fish’s anatomy, touching its skeleton and the nervous system. I won’t know how successful I am until Crystal wakes and tries to move.

The concept for Crystal’s new form started as a spark several hours ago. I began moving away from more conventional anatomy and into the realm of extended possibility, considering the use of prosthetics. Because fish don’t have the limbs of a salamander but little nubs connected to draping fins, I have to extrapolate. My first intuition was to substitute reptilian legs, leading to fairly successful experimental outcomes like little Jimmy.

But if we’re talking about a fish of Crystal’s size–that of a large shark–then the reptilian limbs require non trivial modifications to bones and musculature to be viable. Why not find a simpler path?

Legs more powerful than flesh form around the four nubs of Crystal’s fins, created from articulated fish bones and covered in scales I trawled from the lake’s bottom. Still-intact fins drape over them like artistic veils, translucent enough that I can see four soul gems socketed just below each fin nub, smoldering with dark energy.

I sigh to myself as I consider the next task: restructuring Crystal’s entire skeleton. The skeleton of a fish is suited for life in the water, where the pull of gravity fails to exert its full power. On land, Crystal will collapse.

Luckily I have extensive experience working with terrestrial skeletal constructs, so I have a good intuition for the kinds of modifications I need to make for the fish’s locomotion to be viable.

I reinforce its spine and thicken the rib cage, bones expanding inch by inch to cradle organs shifting carefully into new alignments. One of the biggest changes is giving the fish a proper set of shoulders and a fully-developed pelvis, without which it won’t be able to properly control its legs. One of the last changes is to its scales, removing the slimy, protective film that will only dry out on land.

By the time I finish working, my hands are shaking with anticipation. Crystal turned out far better than I could have hoped, at least to my sensibilities. I have no idea what the fish will think about its new form.

I levitate Crystal down from open air onto a grassy patch of shore, trying my best to make sure it’ll wake on a comfortable spot.

Crystal opens its eyes with a start. Foreign muscles surround them and give Crystal the ability to move its eyes in new, terrestrial ways, but the fish will need to practice. Its first instinct is to start flopping, slamming its streamer-like tail into the earth.

Breathe, I think, trying my best to convey a sense of calm. I place a hand on the thrashing fish’s nose.

Its gills flub pitifully, the fish breathing in air but failing to hold it in the lungs.

Breathe as I do. I demonstrate by taking in one deep, controlled breath, filling my lungs and then exhaling.

The fish stops its labored movements, then tries to suck in a breath. It breathes in deeply but ends up coughing at the end, almost as though it tried to swallow air down its esophagus.

I never thought I’d see a fish cough before today.

“I feel so strange,” Crystal notes while trying to suck in another breath. “I cannot move.”

“You will,” I murmur, rubbing its nose again in encouragement. “There’s much to learn, but you have eternity to learn them.”

—

“I am glad I look nothing like that one,” Crystal says while inclining its head toward Jimmy. “Thank you for experimenting first before granting my rash request.”

I give Jimmy a little rub behind the head, just in front of his dorsal fin. “You’re going to hurt his feelings.” He may be a nervous fellow, clutching onto me with a vice grip and breathing like he’s just sprinted a mile, but he’s growing on me.

Crystal reclines like a sphinx, its front legs splayed in front while its back legs are held at its sides. It still can’t walk very well, but can adjust its legs enough to get comfortable on the ground. While Crystal’s body has kept its familiar, koi fish pattern, the cat-like prosthetic limbs shimmer with purple and blue hues.

“Are you ready to try again?” I ask.

“Ready.” The fish looks downward, then hesitantly shuffles one leg out to the side, nearly falling over as a result.

I raise an eyebrow. “Can you right yourself?”

Crystal doesn’t respond, but pushes down on the sideways leg, forcing itself up. I can tell the fish is doing so at a bad angle, so the motion requires more strength than usual, but the Death prosthetics are more than up to the challenge. In fact, Crystal nearly overcompensates and falls over onto its opposite side.

Next Crystal starts putting more weight on its back legs, jerking one up, then the other, until the fish is finally standing shakily on four legs. We’ve gotten this far before; the difficulty is actually taking a few steps.

“To your credit, human babies take months to learn how to walk.”

“I do not need months to learn something so trivial,” Crystal replies. It lifts one of its front legs up by a few inches, shifts it slightly forward, and slams it back into the earth, stamping a clawed imprint into the soil.

“You’re treating your legs like stilts,” I observe, frowning. It’s not unheard of for people to use prosthetics made from Death energy. Most injuries can be healed if someone has enough money to hire a team of Life practitioners. The difficulty comes when a limb is damaged beyond repair; perhaps dissolved in acid or minced by machinery. In those cases, prosthetics like those I made for Crystal may be the chosen solution...but as I understand, those are even more expensive than the services of Life practitioners. Unless I count General Hor’well’s eye, I’ve never seen someone with a complex decemantic prosthetic in person.

“They do not move as I want,” the fish mentally grumbles, eyeing its forelegs with distaste.

“They will, with time.” I do know enough about decemantic prosthetics to recognize the necessity of constantly working the new limbs, integrating them into the body so that they become near-natural extensions. “You’ve waited a long time for this, Crystal. Don’t grow discouraged so soon.”

—

“That’s a whole five seconds faster,” I grin. Crystal trots up next to me from the mile-long dirt running strip I created.

“Excellent.”

“I think you’re finally ready to go off on your own. You’ve done it: You’re a walking–running–fish.”

Crystal has been working on lowering its eyelids to better convey emotion. As it inclines its head down to be level with mine, its eyes narrow in an expression of solemn gratitude. “You achieved the impossible, and for that, I give all my thanks.”

“It wasn’t as impossible as I originally thought,” I admit.

“Eternity filled the gaps,” the fish observes.

“I’m not sure it needed to,” I quip.

The fish gives me an appraising look. “Perhaps. I have no way to know.”

“What are you doing next? You have the world to explore.”

“What are you doing next?” the fish counters. “You have considered many possibilities, and yet I am unsure which path you plan to walk.”

Unsurprisingly, my indecision hasn’t gone unnoticed. “Well, I’m somewhat confident the ascendant who was after me lost the trail. That’s good.”

“Do you still intend to find Achemiss?”

I sigh. “It’s...complicated. I think he’s my best chance at finding a way to get some kind of message through to Euryphel. Really, aside from Messeras, Holiday, and Maria...he’s the only person I know here, and the only one with the power to help me. He also owes me a favor for killing Ari.”

“But you worry.” Crystal brushes against me, its drape-like pectoral fins like silk against my bare hands.

“He wants the end of my world; why would he help me if he suspects my intentions? Y’jeni, he already knows I was willing to make a devil’s bargain to save the Selejan continent from shattering. It’s not a big leap to assume I’d be invested in preserving the homeworld.”

“You have also considered finding Ari’s people on your own terms in pursuit of answers.”

The idea has been slowly worming its way into my thoughts, but I don’t know how they’ll receive the man who killed one of their own. I’m torn in two diametrically opposed directions, unsure which path leads to success.

“But how to even step on the path? How to find Achemiss or his enemies?” Crystal asks.

“That’s the question of the moment.” I’m lost, without a map or any means to determine where anything is in Eternity.

“I have learned some things from travelers,” the fish adds. “There is a far-off city where eternals such as yourself congregate. If you brought me along, I could repay my debt with service, help you to find your way.”

Having a telepathic fish with Remorse-like powers by my side could be extremely useful. I had already been thinking of asking for Crystal’s company, but hadn’t forced the issue, knowing the fish would sense my intentions. But I know Crystal is prone to making rash decisions–such as asking a random stranger to help it live on land.

“You spoke of freedom, of wanting to move on your own, explore the world. But now you consider binding yourself to me?”

“It is a common way of seeing the wider world. A necessary sacrifice for those who cannot pierce the veil.”

I nod. “I’m not going to hold you captive: If you want to leave, I won’t stop you. But if you’re willing, I’d be happy to travel together.”

Crystal still has the expressionless face of a fish and can’t smile, but it blinks and bows its head. “I am willing.”