“Seriously, Ash, you’re making me worry,” Celes pointed out as she gave me a hand. “Did you think too hard about a dangerous kitten-shaped meme or something?”

“Not a meme. Just some stuff. Forbidden, ancient knowledge.”

“Something that would help us?” The geisha raised an eyebrow hopefully.

“Nope. It’s super-forbidden and absolutely useless to our current state of affairs. Now let us never speak of it again!” I declared, dusting myself off.

“Umm… I think there’s something wrong with that gardener-servitor…” Celes warned.

I turned my head back to Ludjfurkvv-Murr. The long-limbed phantom was slowly advancing towards me, its gangly fingers twitching, mouth open in a silent snarl. Ludj moved akin to a predator, ready to kill… an animal driven by something. I looked at the gold lantern in my hands.

Right.

“I know that look. He’s just like Mothy from the lake shrine. One of the binding commands is telling him to kill me… because I dismounted and damaged his lantern while not being his master.”

Celes gawked at the advancing, extremely-deadly looking phantom, then back at me then back at Ludj once again. “...Are you freaking kidding me?! Damn it, Ash! Why?!”

“I’m actually quite surprised that he’s been able to resist the lantern’s influence this long. I was expecting to be attacked much earlier.”

Celes gave me an exasperated look that said ‘what is wrong with this girl?’.

Ludj’s mouth filled with rows upon rows of razor-sharp, silver teeth opened up, about to swallow me whole.

“Knipz!” The geisha yelled, shielding me with her body. “Stop him!”

A ghostly ferret flashed into existence and slammed into the snarling form of Ludjfurkvv-Murr, shoving the much bigger phantom away before it could bite my neck off like an errant tree-branch.

“Ludj! You have to resist the lantern! It’s the only way you’ll be free!” I yelled.

Celes looked pale, nervous sweat was pouring down her face as she tried to hold back the gardener phantom with her little ferret. I realised that she couldn't protect me, that she would lose this battle. The gardener was old and powerful. Four hundred years ago some high-cultivator asshole had slain a poor alien from some absurdly distant world and bound him to a gold lamp for all eternity.

“Listen to me, Ludj! Fight the binding! Think about your home! Think about your family!” I bellowed. The enslaved alien snarled again. He was fighting the four-hundred-year old orders, but alas, the very power that manifested ghosts into existence had also bound them into servitude. The chains created and woven into the fabric of the world by Boundless Chorus were far too strong. The entire Gold city was part of a vast, uncaring System that was designed to create obedient weapons that ordered other weapons around.

Blue light radiated from my eyes as I continued to observe the life-threatening drama unfolding in front of me. From the very moment I yanked the lantern from the beam, I’ve been watching Ludj. I had dropped his lantern on purpose. It was all an act, a performance.

Through my life-threatening experience in the lake cavern, I knew that servitors protected their lanterns from tampering. I had no idea which rune was responsible for what command and I couldn't just smash the entire thing. I had dropped it right on its latch, to make it look like an accident so that the gardener wouldn't come at me too quickly. I was playing a very dangerous game and the stakes were high.

“I can’t hold him off, Ash!” Celes barked, her entire body trembling from the strain. Her servitor launched against Ludj with rapid, daring tackles, playing a dangerous game of hit and run before the powerful gardener struck back. One good whack from Ludj would trim Knipz, trim Celes, and me, of course, if this plan of mine went down like a chopped tree.

Celes continued, “If this is more of your pharmacist craziness, do something!”

I wanted to tell her that I WAS doing something. I was trying to see, trying to understand the damned runes within the lantern’s interior. A barely-discernible vector of Qi, woven from information and power, was pointing from the gardener to his prison.

I needed to know exactly how this genie and his lamp worked to break him free. Alas, Ludj wasn’t my genie to make wishes at. His master was probably long dead, consumed by the perpetual meat-grinder of the dungeons beneath the Gold city. I did have five wishes left. Five spheres of stolen power. My left hand was touching the beast cores beneath my geisha robe. The perfectly smooth crystallized Qi called for me to wield it, to unleash death stored within the little spheres to make myself stronger.

“Do it. Destroy everyone that stands in your way.” A foreign, transient thought manifested in my mind. What the hell? Where did that come from? Oh.

The beast cores were whispering, singing to me.

“Obey. Kill. Devour. Utilize. Grow strong. Become death,” the little spheres sang not in voices but in patterns of impossible alien mathematics.

Never!

Theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was among those who observed the Trinity test in New Mexico, where the first atomic bomb was successfully detonated on July 16, 1945. He later remarked that it brought to mind words from the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

I knew what I had to do. I would create and improve, not destroy. I pulled power from one of the beast cores and hugged Celes. The misfortunate geisha really was my friend. She was fighting an unwinnable battle with the far larger servitor just to protect me. She had trust in me. She believed that I would pull another trick out of my hat and I wouldn't want to disappoint her.

Since Celes and I met I have been observing her, tracking the vector of Qi that connected her mind to her little spirit.

I made my wish, stated my desire as clearly as possible and pushed power from one of the cores into the connection between Celes and Knipz, reinforcing it, making it stronger. In seconds, I reached both ends of the vector at the same time. The fractal, multidimensional connections I had forged within my brain earlier allowed me to perceive multiple things at once.

I had given myself a knack, gained an aberrant talent, stolen the eyes of god.

“Hang on just for a few moments longer,” I whispered to Celes.

She nodded shakily as Knipz dodged what could’ve been a fight-ending blow. Rushing, whooping air gusted past us from a missed swing from Ludj the gardener.

I peered into the neural network within the brain of my kitsune friend, and as specific parts of it lit up for me, I understood exactly how the connection between Master and Servitor worked. It wasn’t some chakra called Saha that controlled servitors, it was the human brain that did all of the work. Saha was simply the visible expression, a side effect that had nothing to do with the actual biology of it all! It was akin to Cherenkov’s radiation in a nuclear reactor and while Cherenkov’s radiation was pretty it wasn’t what made the reactor work.

Motivated by my latest discovery, I worked diligently to strengthen my new friend's spiritual connection. I reinforced, realigned and improved parts of the Qi fractals that tethered kitsune's brain to her phantom ferret. At the same time, I poured power from the core into Knipz, making him a lot stronger.

The little ferret spirit blossomed, grew in size, silver flames igniting in its mane. Guided by Celes he pushed Ludj away from us. The beast core in my fingers dimmed, turned into an empty, dead shell… and then there were only four left.

“I… I can see through the eyes of my servitor!” Celes exhaled. “It’s like Knipz and I are… one!”

I smiled. It worked. I wasn’t done yet, however. I reached for another core, mentally grabbing at the non-Euclidean information vector between the lantern and the gardener.

As my kitsune friend held Ludj at bay, I burned through the power of another beast core to understand exactly which runes within the lantern were binding him into servitude. It was a slow, agonizingly painful process. I was pushing my mind to its very limits of processing power to understand something that was entirely alien to me. The heinous magical device wasn’t like the human brain, I had no frame of reference to work with, no prior understanding of it.

“Ash! Ash! You need to stop whatever it is you’re doing!” Celes shook me. “You’re bleeding from your eyes and mouth!”

"I can do this. I can free him," my mouth slurred. She was right. I was tasting iron on my tongue.

I needed more time. I needed more power. One by one I was dismantling, taking apart the laws that governed obedience of servitors to lanterns. The 5th sphere felt dead in my fingers. I automatically reached for another.

"No!" Celes yelled, pulling my hand away.

"I'm not done, yet," I gargled, my brain drowning in volatile, gigaplex algorithms that were wholly incompatible with the linear universe I existed in.

"Ash! You have to stop! He's not trying to kill you anymore!" Celes beseeched, her voice sounding strangely distant.

I blinked red tears out of my eyes. Ludj was calmly standing in front of us.

"Well, that's nice," my mouth whispered as I folded into extremely painful oblivion.