The world was a blur.

Space split. Lightning flashed. Wind roared. Mist spread— mist? It drifted along the solid gray surface of the floor— floor? The ground was practically invisible, covered by flakes of snow— mist— snow— mist—

Static covered his eyes.

Snow feel from atop, covering the ground with icy white powder— flashing lightning— crimson flames— pale white snow—

More static.

He lightly poked the ground with his foot, but couldn't tell whether it was earth, wood, or plain concrete. The landscape around him was… odd. Glacial mountains dominated one half, while the remainder was covered in dense, grey fumes. The strange smell of burning rubber inflamed his nostrils.

Bright stars glinted in the clear, dark velvet of the night sky. Clouds— crackling thunder— no, it was all wrong. The sky was clear— big, puffy clouds— lots of thunder— beautiful starry night sky— thick grey fumes—

He clutched his head from the pain— pain?

Thunder rumbled overhead, and the ground shook. Lightning flashed before his eyes, but there was no sign of rain. Instead, there was fire— mist— snow—

What was going on?

Snowflakes continued to fall, with lightning and fire— fire from what?

He squinted. He knew this place. He'd been here before.

He had walked upon this ground.

A half-remembered dream.

Was that what this was? A dream? Yes, this was a dream. He was dreaming. But he'd dreamt of this before. When? He didn't remember. Yesterday? Today? Tomorrow, maybe?

It made no sense.

Everything was strange. Alien. Uncertain.

He couldn't understand. But he wanted to. He wanted to understand.

To feel.

To experience it all.

For he was ██████

Something around him stirred. His senses felt… muddled, like he was seeing double. No, more like everything he saw, felt, and heard was superimposed with an entirely different set of perceptions. One so very alien to him, and yet so very familiar.

For he was—

He was Mind. He was Body. He was Wind. He was Storm.

He was Lukas Aguilar.

He was Raikou.

Two different existences that clashed with each other. One had a divine Presence. The other devastated battlefields as the vehicle of a Divinity. One had a mind best attuned to the Body. The other had a consciousness so powerful it traversed beyond the pathetic boundaries of reality and reached out into the True Void where the Primordial-Born was kept sedated. Ignorant of her own existence.

New Omphalos Function Added!

Function — LIVING ANOMALY

Level — NA

DESCRIPTION

The user is a living anomaly, an enigmatic being that exists within a system while escaping its rules.

What was that?

“Something that is helping you help itself.”

He— Lukas— Yes, not the storm, but Lukas— wait, why was it feeling so easy to focus now? Well, whatever. He was Lukas— and he turned around. He had a mind that was his own, and a body that belonged to him, which turned right as he did, and found—

And found a little girl, possibly seven years of age— squinting at him. Between her short, clipped hair and her little green sweater with a large M woven into it, fitted with a matching skirt that flowed all the way down to her shiny black shoes— she looked like a primary school goer which— made absolutely zero sense.

Lukas blinked.

The girl, her little sweater, her ponytails, they were still there. Reality was still broken.

“Uh—” He began.

“You are Lukas Aguilar,” The girl sang. Her voice had a certain feel to it that oddly reminded him of Inanna. “You are from Earth. Your home planet was destroyed. You are an Anomaly. You are trying to find a way to get Inanna back.”

She paused and beamed at him. “There, exactly in order.”

Lukas blinked. Several times in cue. “Who—Uh—Who are you, and how do you know all that?”

The girl looked at him like he was dumb. “It’s obvious, dummy. You told me.”

“And… when did I tell you?”

“When we dreamt last,” The girl paused, before adding a — “I think, or…” She cupped her chin thoughtfully, “Was it the dream before that? Or the one before that? I don’t remember very well.”

She sighed, and poked him in the abdomen with a finger. “It’s your fault though. You tend to be very repetitive in your dreams.”

“Then this is…” Lukas looked around, “a dream?”

“Yes,” The girl replied, shaking her twin tails in excitement. She was a right darling. "You were dreaming, and I was dreaming, and then we started dreaming together. Just like before."

Lukas narrowed his eyes. What the hell was going on? “And since when have I been dreaming, erm, sharing dreams with you?”

The girl shrugged and lifted her hand. There was a ripe peach on it. Lukas wondered how it got there.

"Well, I think the first time it happened was while you were in that coma you put yourself into, while absorbing power from the World. You know, after all that business with the Crypt of Fiendish Worms— nasty place. Good on you for killing it. That's the one I most clearly remember—well, for some definitions of remember—but I think we might have had a few more over the time you spent with the unfamiliarly familiar girl. And then… this.”

"Uh-huh," Lukas said flatly. "And how and why are we sharing a dream?”

“Well, the How is obviously because of Resonance. Probably from you absorbing the Storm. I think I remember imprints about a feline. Long, thin tail of smoldering fire. Then there was Sleipnir’s breed, which is odd since I still don’t know what a Sleipnir is.”

“Odin’s horse,” Lukas answered, almost automatically. Remembering information was easier than ever.

“Oh,” The girl tilted her head, “What is an Odin?”

“Norse God of—” Lukas paused, “never mind. I get it. The kirin. I didn’t realize it had associations with Nordic myths, though… considering everything, it isn’t very surprising. Those creatures had to come from somewhere.” He crossed his arms, “How can you know what Sleipnir looks like but know about it? And on that record, what the hell is resonance?”

She shrugged. “No clue. You mentioned it to me during one of our shared dreams. That’s how I know.”

Ah right. Of course. He had absolutely forgotten how chatty he was in his dreams. Probably because he didn’t know he was having these dreams to begin with.

“Well,” The child replied with no trace of humor in her tone, “It is entirely possible that this dream-sharing is a completely unrelated superpower you might have had. But I think it's silly to think that I’d have any cool powers. That’s more of your thing.”

“My… thing?”

The girl gave him an almost mischievous look. “Anomaly. Pammachon warrior. Budding Psionicist. Manacrafter. Spiritist and now, semi-divine. Have I left anything out?”

Lukas coughed, feeling embarrassed. “That’s… one way to describe it, I guess. I have never quite thought of it that way.”

“Actually, you were the one to describe it like that in one of our shared dreams. And then you coaxed me into letting you see Me, which is always a bad idea.”

Something told Lukas he wouldn’t want to hear the answer to his next question.

But as they say, curiosity killed the cat.

“And why is that?”

“Because you always lose your mind after that, and wake up, repeating those annoying lines again and again.”

“Uh… what do you really look like? I am assuming this is just an illusion?”

She shrugged. “No clue. You haven’t coaxed me into that. Not yet. I don’t really know what I look like, but I guess it’s… big? I mean, it has to be, right?”

Lukas ruffled his hair. What sort of being was he dealing with here? For all her talk of him having shared information in previous dreams, it could simply be psionics on her part. As in, Inanna had been able to read his every thought with little effort. Even the new Bind with Araf allowed the Ifrit access to his thoughts within reasonable limits. But dream-sharing? It looked like a futuristic technology merged with mystical power.

“Uh. don’t take this the wrong way,” He tried, “but who are you again?”

The girl beamed. “They call me Mikuzume. I call myself Inari.”

The names struck a chord within him. Like they meant something, but he couldn’t really remember it. Well, he’d try that later. “Who is this… They?”

“My guardians. Back in Aerie, though….” She paused, cupping her chin with one palm as she reconsidered, “I suppose I am still in Aerie. My body is, that is. That should count for something, right?”

“Aerie.” He mused over that name as the girl pulled him by his sleeve, making him sit on a bench that hadn’t been there a second ago. “Yes. It’s so strange. I remember everything I see or interact within my dreams, but I never remember anything about myself. It’s most vexing! They call me Mikuzume. I call myself Inari, and I live in this place called—”

“Aerie,” Lukas finished. “You’re saying you're trapped there somehow?”

“Wouldn’t have a clue.”

“How long have you been there?”

“Always.”

“Why?”

She shook her head. “It probably doesn’t matter. I don’t remember. And even if I do, you won’t.”

“And why is that?”

The girl— Mikuzume, Inari, whatever— pointed upwards at the sky. Lukas followed her gesture and nearly pissed in his pants as a bolt of lightning fell from the tornadic sky and blew a smoking crater the size of a house in the ground a yard away.

“What—” Lukas swallowed, “the hell was that?”

MIkumzume laughed. “That my dear stranger, were you finally waking up.”

Lukas’s eyes shot open, as he gasped loudly and stared up from his bed. But given how his life had progressed so far, it wasn’t a surprise that the first thing he registered was undoubtedly—

Pain. And a shit ton of it.

He tried to take a breath, and a searing burst of agony radiated out from his chest. He held off on the next breath for as long as he could, but eventually, Lukas couldn’t put it off anymore, and again fire spread across his chest. He repeated that cycle for several moments, his entire reality consumed by the simple struggle to breathe and to avoid the pain. He was on the losing side of things, and if the pain didn’t exactly lessen, it did, eventually, become more bearable.

And meanwhile, all he could do was wonder about that strange dream he had experienced. Something about him sitting on a bench during a thunderstorm, having peaches? It made no sense. He took a moment to think back over the odd dream and wonder if it had any significance, but the details were already fading.

It probably wasn’t important anyway. Lukas thought and looked up.

And stared.

And kept on staring.

He wasn’t in bed. He was in a— in a coffin. An open coffin, of sorts. He could feel rock and earth beneath him, and roots crawling all over his body and above him. Lukas was sure he could hear droplets of water trickling down somewhere, and there was this dim feeling of lightheadedness and nausea permeating him. And finally, there were strange root-like things that were digging—

Digging—

Lukas’s eyes bulged into saucers.

— They were digging into him.

What the hell kind of hell is this?

“Ah,” He heard Zuken Banksi’s voice, “You’re finally awake. It’s about time.”

Oh. Lukas realized. That kind.