After the defeat of Ivicka. Exact time and location unknown.

……....TPWM……....

When Folthka woke it was with a start, a chill running up her spine with such a force it sent her entire body into spasms.

If she'd been thinking clearly, that she could feel a chill would have left her puzzled. It'd been decades since the last time she'd been cold, back when she was only a low Copper-Rank user.

However, Folthka wasn't thinking clearly. In truth, she was having a hard time stringing a single question together.

"What happened?"

The words filled her head as she tried to remember where she was. Her last clear memory was the cold snap of one of her own control collars being locked in place from behind followed by a familiar voice commanding her to sleep. After that there had been voices. And pain. A heat unlike any she'd ever experienced. But it was all hazy.

The darkness… Folthka realized she'd opened her eyes at some point, but the darkness hadn't faded. When she attempted to call on her magic to pierce the darkness, not so much as a single mote answered her call.

Which is when Foltka realized the chill in her spine had nothing to do with the cold fluid she floated within.

Bereft of her System-enhanced eyesight, Folthka groped about blindly, trying to make sense of her situation. The first thing she discovered was that the fluid surrounding her only came up to her shoulders. There wasn't enough room for her to drown, the sides of her containment close enough to hold her upright. If that wasn't enough, the harness that held her back firmly in place certainly was. There didn't seem to be any release for the harness, so she started feeling out the edge of her container, seeking something, anything that might provide her escape.

It only took her a moment to pull her hand back, cursing at an unexpected twinge when her hand crossed over a jagged edge. Touching the end of her finger gingerly, her hand came away with a sticky wet substance.

"Did I just cut myself? By brushing against something? What's my health?" Folthka wondered to herself.

Folthka could feel her panic rising, her breath going out of control as she realized her interface was completely missing.

She tried to fight it down, but her inner strength had diminished. She felt as though she were a cub again. Her soft cries echoed around her as she struggled to bring herself under control.

"It would seem this one is sad," An unsettlingly sweet cub-like voice said from the darkness. Folthka was finally able to stop crying, her fear causing the cursed tears to freeze in place.

As Folthka was struggling with this new wave of unwelcome emotion, another voice spoke, sharp and hissing with pronounced clicking. "It's also afraid. Perhaps it suspects it's fate."

"Unlikely. It has only demonstrated marginal imagination. It is unlikely it even knows where it is."

"I…" Folthka stopped at the sound of her voice. It sounded cub-like. "I can hear you!" she screamed defiantly at the darkness. To her shock, the shrill pitch at the end reminded Folthka of her daughter Celthi when she had night terrors.

"It speaks," The hissing voice observed. A second later a wave of blinding light washed over her.

"Unimportant. Are the reagents ready?"

"Nearly. Our new supplier is less reliable. They claim the war has-"

"Irrelevant. You indulge these beings in their need for gossip far too often X-23." Folthka was almost able to make out a pair of dark grey splotches as her vision cleared. The shorter one didn't even come up to her waist while the taller one might reach her chin.

"Yes, Overseer," the tall shape grumbled with several angry sounding clicks.

The smaller shape gained definition as it moved closer to Folthka. It was as if, with each step, another layer of thin gauze was stripped away. Finally, as it drew close, Folthka saw she was suspended within a tank. However, unlike the sealed tanks she used in her trials, this one was open at the top, the edges broken away. With a final step, the shape pressed a dull brown hand up against the glass, allowing Folthka to see it clearly.

She wished she hadn't.

A howl broke free of her lips as the small doll-monster stared up at her.

Her dread spiked even higher when Folthka recognized this particular doll. The braided mane of fiery orange and tawny brown fur could have been any of a thousand 'Jethico the Just' dolls given to cubs as part of the winter Wilved Festival.

"And if her captor was a doll that meant…" Folthka didn't understand how, but it seemed she'd ended up in the hands of Aethop's Daughters.

Even as Folthka tried to calm herself, to think of some way to escape, the doll thrummed her fingers on the glass. Folthka's feeble efforts and calming herself were shattered. She flailed about, straining against her harness to escape, but her Silver-rank strength had been stolen from her. She'd lost her partner to these monsters a decade ago, and seeing one so casually inspecting her tore her resolve to pieces.

She'd taken her children, leaving her partner Beltha to fend them off as she ran like a coward.

"Calm it," the doll commanded, her child-like voice strangely firm.

A low grumble that could generously be referred to as an affirmation sounded out from the larger figure as it stepped forward into the light. Instead of the doll-like features of the first, this creature was as alien to Folthka as the Outlanders who invaded her home. If anything, she would have compared it to a methis beetle that stood on only four legs.

It's forelimbs ended in bladed cleavers. She was certain a single swing could slice a Vhethen herdbeast in half. As one of the blades approached Folthka's tube, it split open, revealing a cluster of tendrils that grasped a small valve. With a painful screech, the valve turned. Folthka felt pressure against her back.

Her thoughts calmed as she focused on the sensation of the strange fluid on her back. The part of her mind that screamed that the liquid wasn't important, the part that knew she was in danger and needed to escape?

Well, it found itself locked away, the metaphorical key destroyed.

The rest of Folthka focused on the warmth spreading from the centre of her back, marvelling at how soothing, how wonderful it felt. As though she were being wrapped in a cocoon of peace.

She barely registered the words as Stitches spoke. "Much better. Why was she awake?"

"It happens sometimes. The occasional prospect regains consciousness once their mana has been fully drained." Folthka couldn't tell if the voices were getting farther away, but it seemed like they were getting quieter.

Why is the room spinning?

"As long as it doesn't affect the Weaving."

"It will not, Overseer."

Folthka wasn't able to understand their response, her focus was on her own body and the incredibly fluffy feeling infusing her being.

Then she lost consciousness.

……....TPWM……....

This time when Folthka awoke, there was no chill.

In fact, she was tucked into a comfortable bed. A familiar bed.

It took her several minutes as her mind tried to understand what had happened before she realized where she knew the bed from. It was her daughter's old bed when they'd lived in Wilved.

While her daughter's bed had seemed small when they'd lived there, now Folthka found it expansive. That the room and bed seemed to remain the same size, indicated it was Folthka who had changed. Had she shrunk?

When she pushed herself out of the bed, she discovered her fur was lustrous, as though she'd spent a day at Satha's salon back in Aethire.

Folthka's inspection of the changes to her body were interrupted by a scuffing noise from beneath the door.

A moment later a furry face popped into view, pushing the door open. It was an uncomfortably familiar face yet the features weren't quite right. It had the right general colouring to be her lost partner Beltha. The dark black star over one eye especially stood out. But her proportions were wrong. As were other little details, such as the fur. Much like her own, the doll who stood before her was far too lustrous to be mistaken for a living k'tharn.

"Hello my love," the doll said.

But not in words. There was no sickly-sweet cublike voice. Instead, her mind was filled with the familiar voice she'd last heard two months before Qern was born.

Despite her terror, something else flickered inside Folthka. A feeling she'd almost forgotten.

But she hadn't survived three centuries, hundreds of mana-storms and losing her first two children only to surrender to it now.

"Who are you?" Folthka tried to respond, but the sound that emerged from her throat was only a soft rustling. Like the discarded wrappings for meat-bites crinkling underfoot.

"You can no longer speak as a mortal, my love," the thing that resembled Beltha informed her as it padded it's way across the room until it was standing directly before her.

Folthka tried to ask again, who the doll was, her voice again producing the same useless sound.

"Try to send your words to me as though you were sending a message through the System."

Folthka tried to focus on her interface, but it remained absent. She didn't understand how she was supposed to message this… thing… if she wasn't able to access her messages.

But then. It hadn't said she needed to use the System's messaging. It said to send the message in the same way.

Folthka thought her message was very clear. "Who are you? What have you done to me?"

"Oh, my love. You know who I am. It's your dearest, Beltha. And all I've done is keep the others from using you as a soldier."

"No. You can't be Beltha. I saw her die when she was only copper-rank. There's no surviving that."

"You're right. In a way I didn't. But I'm still her."

"Prove it."

"Do you remember the night we decided to have Kallim?"

"Of course."

"Well, I was understandably nervous about the idea of having a male. But you reassured me. You told me that no matter what gender our child was, we'd love them either way."

"Anyone could deduce that."

"But not anyone would know that I spit Blue Treshire juice in your fur when you told me you'd already chosen his name."

"Beltha? How is this possible?"

Beltha caressed Folthka's face softly as she said, "In time, my love. But first, I have an important question... How is Kallim?"