Ava stared at the thing Nemesis had dropped. It looked like a… well honestly, she wasn’t sure what it looked like. It was pink, and square, and had little flowers patterned all over it. She carefully picked it up.

It also looked broken.

When Nemesis had held it, before it had made that gods-awful screeching noise, it had been glowing. Now it was covered in cracks and was dark and dead.

The sound of swearing heralded Gora sticking her head out of her tent. She still looked half asleep.

“What was that racket?” Gora asked.

Ava held out the thing. “Nemesis had a thing that she was fiddling with. Then it made a noise and she dropped it. Now it’s broken.”

“Ugh, can it wait till later?” Gora asked wearily.

Ava nodded. “Yeah, go back to sleep. It doesn’t look dangerous.”

Gora nodded and put her head back inside, and before long the sound of her snoring could be heard again.

Nemesis was just staring at the pink thing in Ava’s hands, shock and dismay on her face.

Ava carefully sniffed the device. It was strange, the only magical emanation Ava could discern from it was a very faint sense of Conjoint Essence. It was the same one she had used earlier for the empathy spell, though, so it could just be the residue on her own fingers that she was picking up. With the equipment she had access to back at the Academy, she would have been able to tell more, even measure exact residue levels in the device, possibly even trace what the flows had been. But who expects to need advanced magical diagnostic equipment on a delve?

That didn’t mean she didn’t know a few tricks, though. She snapped off one of the partially broken sections, ignoring Nemesis’s cries of complaint. Then she touched the piece to the tip of her tongue while Nemesis pulled a face.

Faint impressions flooded her mind. Togetherness… cooperation… multitudes… numbers… yes, very likely Conjoint Essence, but could also be Aggregate or even a weird form of Frenetic. She would need her lab to be sure. The traces would be long gone by the time they reached Grailmane, though. Pity.

Then Nemesis started yammering angrily, pointing at the device and back at herself.

“Oh? You want it back?” Ava chuckled. “After you threw it at me?”

Nemesis huffed and crossed her arms in front of her, glaring at Ava.

“Fine. But someday you’re going to have to tell me…” Ava began. Her eyes widened.

There was a flash of tell-tale green inside the device, exposed when she’d broken off the piece. A tronic. That changed everything. If this was some kind of tronic-powered device like they had back home, it was potentially a lot more dangerous than she had first thought.

The magical effect it manifested could be anything from a changing the colour of your clothes to summoning a demon. With Conjoint Essence though, what could it do? That was all sociological and communication. Not that tronics always stayed true to the Essence that powered them.

She inserted two fingers into one of the larger cracks in the casing and carefully levered them apart until the whole thing broke open like an oyster.

There, nestled in its heart like the world’s most valuable pearl, was the solid, bright green of a beautiful looking Tronic. Every aspect of it was clearly defined, with no sign of rust or corrosion. The casing had protected it when it fell.

Ava was just about to touch her fingers to it and feed a bit of Essence into it to see if she could get an idea of what it could do, when Nemesis yanked the device out of her hands.

“I can’t believe you just broke my phone! I might have been able to fix it, still! Now look at it, it’s completely in pieces! What the hell is wrong with you?”

For a moment, Ava just stared in surprise at the half-spider, half-woman. Then she started laughing.

“I suppose that explains what this Tronic does. Is it two ways?” she asked, a smile on her face.

“Is what two ways?” Nemesis replied, before her eyes bulged. “I can understand you! Holy shit I can understand what you’re saying! You speak English!”

Ava blinked. “I… uh… don’t know what English is, but yes, I can understand you. Thanks to that, most likely” she said and pointed at the tronic that was still in Nemesis’ hand, pressed against her palm.

“Huh? You mean m…” Nemesis started, but instantly lapsed into her usual incomprehensible gibberish the moment the Tronic was no longer in direct contact with her skin.

“Well, that confirms that” Ava sighed wryly.

Nemesis cocked her head, looking at her with a puzzled expression on her face.

“No, you need to press it against your skin…” Ava tried, hesitating from moving closer as she realized that would mean physical contact. “No dammit… Goraaaa? Can you come help me, please?”

“Ok, now can I ask a question?”

“Sure.”

“What the fuck happened to everything!? And why do you keep forcing me to attack you!?”

Rita had finally figured out how to make it work. Somehow, if she pressed the flat of the circuit board from her phone against her skin, she and the weird people could understand each other. She had no idea how that worked, but that particular question was simply going to have to get in line behind the millions of others that were more important.

She’d tied her impromptu translator to her arm with a sock. No way she was going to risk dropping it again.

PJ looked around in confusion. Right, that was another question for the pile, everybody’s names.

“I don’t quite understand what you mean?” she replied.

“This! Everything’s fucked up! Look!” Rita said as she pointed out the window at the ruins around them. Then she pointed at Demon. “And you! Whenever I see you its like something makes me go berserk!”

Demon shrugged. “I’ve been coming here for years. It’s always looked like this. And it’s not me. All Nightmare Spawn get incredibly aggressive when confronted with an outsider. Any outsider.”

“Nightmare… what?”

“A Nightmare Spawn. That’s what you are. Or what we call your kind, anyway” PJ explained. “Creatures spawned in the Nightmare Tree Domain, or the Nightmare for short. We were actually hoping you could tell us why your kind attack us on sight.”

Nightmare? Nightmare Tree Domain? What? None of it made sense, but Rita didn’t even know where to start asking questions. As for the attacks… now that she mentioned it, both the masked teens and the big snake thing had lost all interest in her the moment they spotted the group. But then why was she driven cuckoo twice but this time it was Alice who went off the deep end?

And if this place had looked like this for years… how much time had passed since she’d gone to bed?

“Erm… what year is this?” she asked tentatively, putting all the Nightmare business aside for now.

“Year? It’s the 312th year after the founding of Grailmane. What’s that in the northern calendar, Gora?” PJ replied. So, Demon’s real name was Gora?

Gora snorted. “Do I look l care what year a Shine-Noser thinks it is?”

A what? Never mind, another question for the pile. Bottom-ish.

“Okay, so to clarify, it’s not the year 2020?” Rita asked again, almost dreading the response.

“What? Oh, no, it’s somewhere in the five thousand years since their god ascended or whatever” PJ replied.

Rita groaned loudly, sinking into a heap next to the fire.

Three thousand years. Somehow, she’d been… asleep? Gone? For three thousand years. Fuck.

“I’m Ava, by the way. And this is Gora” PJ said, gesturing at the demonic woman as they both sat down nearby.

“Oh! Right, I’m Rita. Pleased to meet you” she replied, holding out her hand to shake.

Ava and Gora both just looked at her hand.

“Er… don’t take it personally, but I don’t do physical contact” Ava stated.

“And I still don’t trust you” Gora added flatly.

Rita dropped her hand. “Oh. Alright then.”

Wonderful. So much for being friendly. An awkward silence lingered for a few moments, before it was broken by the clanking sound of Knight coming out of his tent. Somehow, he was still wearing his full metal armour. He’d either managed to put it on without making a sound in a tiny tent, or he’d slept in it. Rita wasn’t sure which was crazier.

“What is going on?” he asked warily as he saw everyone sitting around the fire. “I heard a voice I didn’t recognize.”

“Ah. Samual, this is Rita. Rita, Samual. Turns out she had a Tronic that allows her to talk to us” Ava explained.

“A tronic?” Rita and Samual both asked in unison. “That’s convenient.” Samual added.

“Yes. It was in her backpack, but she didn’t know how it worked or something” Gora said to Samual, before turning back to Rita. “You don’t know what a tronic is?”

“Do you mean an ‘electronic’?” she asked.

“An elec-tronic? Never heard of that one” Ava said. “What does it do?”

“No, I mean this” Rita said and flipped the tip of the sock over, revealing the flash of green of her cellphone’s circuit board underneath.

“That’s a tronic” Samual stated as he sat down next to the others, his weapon on his lap. He still seemed tense, like a wound spring. Rita surreptitiously shifted a little bit further from him.

“Yes. A good one too” Ava added. “Mint condition, based on the quick inspection I gave it.”

Gora’s eyebrows raised and she gave out a long whistle. “Mint? Damn, that would have been worth a pretty penny back in Grailmane.”

That was the second time she’d heard that name. Was it a city? A country? Nevermind, later. Another question for the pile.

“Can you please just tell me what ‘tronics’ are and why this one is allowing me to understand you?” Rita asked.

“Right, sorry Rita” Ava chuckled. “It’s common knowledge back where we’re from. Tronics are those green things. Often, but not always, they trigger some kind of magical effect when you run the right magical Essence through them. They’re usually incredibly efficient as well, with almost no energy bleed. The exact effect they trigger is also random between tronics, but consistent within a single one. You never know what you’re going to get when you find one, but if you get a good one…”

Whaaat? Electronics made magic? Like they were some kind of… magic wands? That was… incredibly cool actually.

“They’re also only found here. In the Nightmare. Specifically, the City Zone” Gora added. “Well, here or any other Nightmare with a similar type of zone.”

Again with the Nightmare stuff. And what was a ‘city zone’? Did she mean the ruins? More questions for the pile.

“Yes. They come in different grades, depending on how scratched, corroded or damaged they are. The better their grade, the more potentially powerful the effect and the more efficient it is in Essence. That one you have is ‘Mint’, I think. It’s the highest grade there is” Ava said, pointing at Rita’s arm.

Rita protectively cupped the circuit board under her sock. “So… this is valuable?”

Gora nodded. “Very. I’d be careful with that. If folks know you’re carrying around a mint tronic, some will probably try to steal it just on the off chance that it’s something good.”

That was what she’d been afraid of. And there were three scary people who already knew she had one.

“So… do I have to worry about you guys stealing it?” Rita asked carefully.

This elicited a round of chuckles.

“If we wanted it, you’d be dead” Samual said with a grin.

Gora waved her away. “Nah. An unknown mint tronic is potentially worth a fortune, depending on what it does. But since we already know this one just translates speech, it’s a bit of a bust as far as tronics go.”

The ability to translate perfectly between two languages ‘was a bit of a bust’? Just how strong could these things be?

“I’m curious though, what Essence are you feeding into it?” Ava asked.

“Er… what?”

“Essence. What Essence. Magical energy? Come on, Rita, you have to be fueling it with something” Ava insisted. “Tronics only work when powered.”

“I don’t…” Rita started, then remembered the way her cellphone’s battery had magically started charging earlier.

“Wait, it has a battery. Maybe it’s running off that?” she asked, fishing out the remains of her phone and pointing out the slim lithium ion battery. “It magically started charging when I took it out of my pack.”

Ava shook her head. “No, I don’t know what that is, but that’s not it, unless that thing stores Magical Essence. Here, it looks like this” she said and fished out half a vial of a glowing blue fluid. It was thick and viscous, slowly oozing around the inside of the glass.

“Can I… can I take a closer look?” Rita asked, reaching out for it.

Ava glanced over at Gora, who nodded, before handing over the small vial.

Rita carefully turned it over in her hands. The colour looked familiar… where had she seen it before? Oh! Right! It was the same colour as the stuff she’d thrown up in the sink. For some reason the idea to just pop the bottle open and down the contents passed through her head. It made her feel… hungry.

“Oh… yeah, I think I recognize this. After I… er… bit a corpse… I threw up stuff that looked like this” she said, handing the bottle back to Ava. The strange urge to drink it was bothering her. Maybe it just looked too much like a cocktail. God, she could go with a shot of something strong right now.

“You… bit a corpse?” Gora asked slowly.

Rita almost blurted out Alice’s name, but something made her hesitate. Perhaps she didn’t want these strange people to think she was insane. Or perhaps she didn’t fully trust them either.

“I was hungry, okay? There wasn’t anything else to eat.” It seemed like the safest lie.

“So, you tried eating Nightmare Spawn…? Never mind, for you it’s probably fine since you’re one of them. For us normal folk, it’s a recipe for madness. Something about their flesh fucks up your mind” Gora said. Then she pointed over to one of the cabinets. “I think there’s still some jerky left if you’re still hungry.”

Rita smiled and availed herself of the opportunity to get some food. Not that she was particularly hungry.

Now that she thought about it… she’d spent quite a lot of time running with four times the normal amount of legs. She should have been starving, yet she felt fine. The only reason she was even eating was because intellectually she knew she was going to need the energy. Why wasn’t she hungry?

“You say you threw up Essence?” Ava asked when she sat down with a strip of dried meat in each hand.

“I don’t know. It was blue and glowy and freaked me out” Rita replied between bites. Strange. It looked like beef jerky but tasted like chicken.

“It’s possible that you’re a natural converter” Ava suggested. “Something to Conjoint. Not sure what, though.”

Rita just stared at her blankly.

Ava sighed and started to explain. Rita did her best to follow but the jerky was pretty good, and the explanation was a bit technical at times.

As far as she could understand it basically went like this. Essence came in different types, pretty much all of them weird and abstract in their ‘flavour’. Forget good and evil, this stuff was downright strange, like Contrast Essence or similar kinds.

Different magic needed different Essences. Which was also why they were in demand among spellcasters of all types. Different creatures and monsters naturally produced various kinds of essences according to their nature. Humans normally had a very boring kind that didn’t do much, but some rare individuals were born with the ability to naturally convert certain types into another.

“I myself am a natural Mortalis converter” Ava explained. “I can convert Quietus Essence into Mortalis Essence. Basically, death into undeath.” She held up another small vial, this one filled with a pitch-black goo.

“Undeath?” Rita asked, wide-eyed.

“Not exactly undeath. More like…” Ava blew out a breath. “Like to do with the end. Either ending things or continuing on past the end? Like, the concept that all things must come to a close? Does that make sense?”

“It is a rather plebian mutation, to be perfectly honest” the cat said, sauntering casually out from behind Gora’s back. “Common among necromancers and those of their ilk.”

“WHY CAN THE CAT TALK?” Rita immediately demanded, pointing her finger at the offending feline. It was a question that had been at the very top of her list. She’d just forgotten about it.

“I say, ‘the cat’ has a name, if you do not mind” he said, sitting down next to Rita, eyes half closed and tail flicking from side to side. “Zaxier Avenze Corollis the First, pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“He can talk because of magic, why else?” Ava said, rolling her eyes. “The attitude is all him, though.”

“Er… hello… I’m Rita…” Rita gingerly held out her hand towards the cat. To her surprise, he extended a paw and gently gripped her fingers with his claws before shaking.

It was ridiculously adorable.

“Then it is a pleasure to meet you, my lady Rita” Zaxier replied, nodding his head and releasing her hand. He was like a little gentleman!

“She found a tronic in her backpack…”

“… that turned out to be a translator. Yes, I heard” the cat said, yawning. “I was only half-asleep. No need to repeat anything on my behalf.”

She thought back to her own cat. He’d had similar grey-ish fur, but his had been a bit darker. Not quite black, but a dark grey with white paws. The thought brought on a momentary feeling of melancholy as she realized how much she missed him. Even though the little shit peed on her laundry when she forgot to feed him.

“I have a question too” Gora interrupted her thoughts.

Rita looked up.

“If you weren’t trying to hurt us… why did you drop a Giant Headworm on our heads?”