“Where am I? I don’t” The Core began to say, but had to stop when it heard its voice. It had a voice? Why did it have such a thing and why did it feel so familiar? It had to grasp at its own throat before likewise realizing it had such a thing as well. It had hands, arms, a head, and… a body. It could feel the rush of blood in its eyes, the swelling of its pupils as it stared into the light coming from above. It felt pain and had to close its eyelids when it got too powerful. Yet it could feel. It could feel so much more than it ever had. What was this feeling? Was this how every living being had felt? It had felt so constrained within its crystalline body but was this the reason behind it? Had it always yearned to have its nerves set on fire as everything hit it at once?

It… it also didn’t stop hitting it. The sensations, while pleasant at the start, did not stop giving out a headache. It became more than just a dull pain, the Core starting to bundle a little together, the muscles constricting at the sensory overload. And that pain from muscles spasming just made it worse, creating a never-ending feedback-loop of negativity. The Core began to scream out of instinct, never realizing its body could make such a sound, to begin with. Yet it was purely instinctual, a byproduct of the new organs, lungs, and whatever else was inside it. They all pressured it to scream. And so it did.

“Are you okay?” The Voice sounded worried.

The screams were neverending. Each time its lungs emptied, they would fill up in an instant and it would start the process once again. Its throat got hoarse but that only changed the tone, not stopping the Core in the least. Pieces of red fell out of its mouth and it could feel gurgling within but that hardly mattered, the desire to scream only becoming more prominent each second passing. It was a nightmare. The Entity had desired it before yet could only look with fear upon what its dreams had caused. It didn’t want this. It hated this. It wanted to go back.

And so it did. The body, the sensations, and the pain all disappeared in an instant, replaced by a dark void. The river the Core had gazed at had disappeared as well, all light having been snuffed out. With its mind back on track, it tried to reconnect to its Mana, to return to the state it had been in before. Yet… it found nothing. The Energy wouldn’t respond. Nothing could be felt.

“I am sorry about this,” the voice from before said. “I thought you would be able to handle it now. I was wrong. Please forgive me.”

The voice could be recognized now. When the Entity wasn’t forced through the vortex of perpetual information, it found itself visualising the image of Sarah. That was who had been talking the entire time. Even throughout the pain, the Core had still heard her. Yet each shot she had made had only made it worse. Even when she didn’t intend for it, the pain had been magnified with each of her syllables.

What could be said? How could it speak? The Core did not understand where it was or how it all worked. It had looked upon the river for just a moment before being swallowed up by it all. It had… the pieces began to fit together once again.

“I am inside my mind again,” the Core had to say. Even without sight, it could still imagine the face before it. “Am I not?”

“You are,” the girl, Sarah, answered. Her voice sounded more worried than before. “You have been here for longer than you should. You are starting to break down. You need to get out.”

The Core could feel itself being slowly pulled away yet the sensation was rejected instantly. With a tight grasp, it held on with pure [Will]. It was not going to return before it had the answer it desired.

“Sarah,” the Core began, having to pause to refocus its grasp on its mental plane. It felt itself slipping away, even when it was trying its hardest. “Who am I?”

There was no answer at the start, yet the emotion came back in full response. There was nothing to get through, it all so jumbled up that the Core couldn't understand. Even a hundred years wouldn’t be able to tell a tale long enough to explain what the Entity was getting sent. It was awful.

“I can’t tell you. You’ll break,” Sarah answered. She wasn’t happy, she wasn’t angry, and she wasn’t sad. Yet she was all three at once as well. It didn’t make sense. “You have to go. You have to leave now.”

The pressure felt, the push outside of the Core’s mental space, was magnified then, increased to a point where the slight slipping was an extreme understatement. No matter what the Entity did, it wouldn’t have been able to stay for more than a few seconds more. Not that it didn’t try its damnedest to do just that, though.

“Sarah. Please. I need to know,” the Core pleaded, not able to hold on much longer. “Just tell me anything.”

“I have waited too long to ruin it now. Please understand,” Sarah answered before one final pull made the Core lose all control of the situation. Like a vortex of gravity, nothing was allowed to stay where it had been. Yet… that small bit of information was more than the Core had ever wished, had ever expected. It had known nothing before yet that small bit of words ere more than enough to satiate it.

Yet it also hurt. She had waited too long. Just what did it mean? Every answer that the Entity’s mind provided was blacked out, each of the strikes being more painful than the last. The pressure was too intense. There was no room to think, no room to take willing action. The only thing the Core could do was to just let go of its hold and let itself flow outside of its mental space. What happened in the next moments were unknown, the Core too filled with pain to know. Yet when it opened itself up again, it could see.

‘Are you back in the realm of the living, little rock, or are you just going to force me to go outside for the third time today?’ the Queen drawled on from the side, clearly not interested in anything at all. The Ant was sprawled out on the ground, lazing around on the floor. Around her, a few other ants were doing the same, though a few were curled up slightly. It was… quite the peculiar thing to see when waking up, yet the Core chose not to question it too hard.

Feeling around again, it seemed that it was… leaking a lot of energy out. Where exactly that energy was coming from, it wasn’t exactly sure. The Natural Mana-Regeneration had no chance of keeping that up yet it was barely hitting its Mana-Containers. There was a chance that it was… taking from the physical matter that made up the Core? There was no way to tell, though the ENtity felt it best to clog up the hole. No leakage was good, and the amount of Energy lost was quite worrying. Such amounts could easily make it lose days of progress.

‘Oh?’ the Queen said, tilting her head towards the spot that the Corre was looking out from. It had centred itself to a single point when wanting to look out into the wild, making it seem as if it existed at that location more than anywhere else. ‘You stopped pretty quickly that time. That must mean something.’

‘How long did it take before?’ the Core questioned, getting itself up to speed on any physical updates in the rooms that it controlled. The Mana-Panels set up seemed perfectly able to keep in the Energy which had been supplied to the room. Even more surprising, however, was the fact that the [Blood-Moss] from further inside the Main-Domain had started to slowly grow towards the new room. A few patches had even started to pop up in different places, though the Core suspected that to be due to the [Infested Giant-Ants] floundering about. They were never good at not dumping their skin on surfaces, after all, and only the slightest part was needed before it would grow into a massive monstrosity.

The Queen was quite quick to realize something was different than the other times, that being seen from the fact that she jumped up to stand the moment that the Core started asking questions. She sent out surprise and more than a little bit of happiness. The ENtity saw the latter reaction as a positive thing overall.

‘Oh, thank the Primordials. You are finally back,’ the Queen said, going around to kick her children awake as well. It seemed that some were rather deep in their sleep. Which was peculiar since the Core had never actually seen them sleep before. Did the creatures usually do that? ‘I thought it would be another week before you finally decided to get out of that hole you called your inner mind.’

So she knew that the Core was trapped. That was good. Having somebody on the outside be knowledgeable about the situation at hand could prove worthwhile the next time something like it happened. The Entity was more than sure that it needed to ask a few questions. But first, it needed answers to the questions already asked.

‘You didn’t answer me about how long it had taken before. I do want to know,’ the Core stated. With how much Mana it had put out before, it was good to get an estimate to figure out how much had been lost. If it numbered in the tens of thousands, it would likely have to figure out where the energy came from, to begin with. If it was taken from its physical shell as it feared, it would have to figure out how to replenish that. Having a weaker structure overall was not a good thing in the long run. Especially not when it expected further weakening down the line.

‘Oh, of course. It was just a bit surprising to see you finally able to speak again. It has been a very long week for me,’ the Queen stated, sounding quite tired. ‘The first outburst when you first saw the river was about twenty minutes, plus-minus five minutes. The second one, however, was very close to a full thirty. I had to get the children to help me defend that one since there were too many to get through alone at that time. And, by the way, please hurry up and get them treated right. I believe some might not survive the next few hours without it.’

What? Oh… the Core had been too distracted with the non-sentient Materials that it had utterly forgotten to look deeper into the living creatures. Having focused on it after that fact, it could see that a lot of the creatures had puncture wounds on their stomach and legs. While those alone might not have proved to damage them too much, the after-effects were not the greatest. The Core had an idea at that point, sending out a [Appraisal] to get a better look at just what it was.

Infected Puncture-Wound

A wound created with unsanitary tools

While the description was rather lacking, it allowed the Core to realise the truth. They had been attacked by a rather larger mass of smaller creatures. Immediately sending out [Healing] to each creature, it made sure that all signs of the wounds were gone. It was best to leave no chance at it growing further.

‘So I have been asleep for a week?’ the Core asked, doing its best to listen to the Queen talk and at the same time make sure the other ants were healthy. Some had started to suffer from Mana-Deprivation which was quite the peculiar thing to have since they were all inside of the Core’s Domain. Had it rejected them earlier?

‘Just about, yes. Each day has been quite annoying,’ the Queen stated, just needing to start to complain instantly. How joyful. ‘But, we got through it easily enough. The beasts from outside might have gotten close to killing a few of us, but they all got through it in the end.’

‘Well, you’re all healed up now, so you do need to tell me a bit more about these beasts,’ the Core answered, to which the Queen sent out a questioning tone.

‘I don’t seem to see that you have done that. While the wounds have been cleared, you still need to [Purify] our insides.’

…

‘You do know how to do that, right?’

It seemed a lesson was in session.