The body’s design had finally been finalized. Irulon has sketched out an almost disturbingly detailed image of what the dragon wanted from a whole variety of angles. And it wasn’t just the outside that Irulon had drawn. Alyssa had a skeleton drawn out. Another series of sketches laid musculature over the top. Irulon had even gone all out in drawing circulatory and nervous systems. Understanding that Alyssa needed accurate information to create things, she had gone all out in the sketches.

Of course, the most detailed of the drawings were the ones of it whole.

It was a female body. Alyssa was honestly not sure whether or not the dragon was female. Or had been female. Technically, it was just a spooky ghost at the moment, possessing Irulon’s body. At this point, she was somewhat afraid to ask. Would it be rude? Irulon only ever referred to it as ‘my companion’, ‘the dragon’, or simply ‘it’. It could just be that the dragon was used to Irulon’s body and, not caring, had chosen for familiarity.

In keeping with the familiarity theory, the new body was roughly the same size as Irulon. Not quite as tall as Alyssa was. The face had almost the same sharp and pointed features that Irulon had along with her straight brown hair. The similarities ended there. Irulon was not a twig, but she definitely didn’t have the same muscles that Alyssa had. Her biceps were far less defined and her core was almost nonexistent. Being able to have a completely designer body, the dragon had opted to go for more of Alyssa’s style of musculature than Irulon’s.

Though the dragon wouldn’t really look like either of them. Mostly because of the scales. The titanium scales were really the only inhuman element of the new body, but they were quite a large and obvious element. They didn’t cover the entire body. The arms and legs were scaled, but the hands and feet were not. Both were much more human than some of Alyssa’s earlier experiments. The hands were slightly clawed, but only at the fingertips. Aside from the limbs, the scales were mostly around the shoulders and back, with some extending about halfway up the neck. Unfortunately for the dragon, the face just had too much intricacies to cover in hard scales and still be workable. Same with most of the torso. Perhaps if Alyssa had more time to experiment, she could find out a solution or find a monster with a similar scale pattern to examine thoroughly, but the fact was that they were running out of time.

Not completely. Technically, they could have months or maybe even years yet. Tenebrael herself wasn’t even one hundred percent positive that the tangled souls would have a negative overall impact. But Irulon and the dragon both wanted to separate sooner rather than later to avoid any potential complications.

In Alyssa’s private opinion, she had to wonder whether or not the dragon was getting excited about having a body of its own. According to Irulon, it was quite happy with the current situation. But having its own body had to be enticing.

Alyssa, Irulon, and the dragon all wondered about the possibility of alterations after a soul was inhabiting the body. That would let Alyssa learn more and make more interesting alterations. Maybe even give the dragon wings. Or other people. Alyssa felt fairly comfortable in her own skin. There wasn’t much she thought she would change about herself. But maybe Irulon, because of having a dragon inside her for so long, would like some scales.

Probably not, but it was amusing to consider.

Unfortunately for scaled Irulon, modifying bodies seemed… difficult. She had yet to make it work on any of their experimental creations. Alyssa had no doubt that Tenebrael would be able to modify a person’s physical body. But she had extreme doubts whether she would be able to modify a person’s physical body. The rules she was bound to would probably stop her before she even thought about it.

Glancing at her phone, Alyssa decided that it was about time her break came to an end. Though it wasn’t really a break. Just a brief time when she swapped from creating bodies to studying the sketches. She folded up Irulon’s notebook as she headed up the path to their cave hideout. Four of her last five creations were perfect in Irulon’s examinations. Unfortunately, Alyssa wanted ten of ten perfect before they actually began.

Halfway up the hill, she had to stop. A moving light off in the distance caught her eye, backgrounded by the rings of the planet. It took her a moment of squinting to realize exactly what she was looking at. It helped that it was getting closer.

A thousand boiling eyes stared back at her.

A Kindness.

The Astral Authority.

Just one. Not a giant swarm of them. Alyssa knew they were in the area. Brakkt had sent her a Message about spotting one a few days back. There probably wouldn’t even be more than the one nearby.

Taking her pistol from her holster, Alyssa raised it, aimed, and fired without a word. A beam of black-white light fired, curving slightly to account for her poor aim at this range. A husk of eyes spiraled down to the ground, leaving a trail of black smoke in its wake. Alyssa didn’t bother hiking out to inspect the corpse. If it wasn’t dead, it would probably continue to try to observe her. She would just shoot it down again.

Figuring out a bit more about Tenebrael’s power was handy, to say the least. Not having to speak a request to Tenebrael before obliterating a pesky Kindness was nice. Nicer still was the fact that their cave had a door.

A large sheet of solid metal covered up the entire entrance to the cave. It was broken only by a smooth metal door. Alyssa flipped the latch and immediately grimaced. It wasn’t an air-tight door, but it did help some. Or, more accurately, it helped restrict airflow, making the inside far more stagnant than it had been a few days before. For that reason alone, Alyssa was considering tearing it out.

But they shouldn’t actually need to be here for all that much longer. Now that the body had been finalized, Irulon was spending a great deal of time adapting the ritual she had created to the body’s dimensions. Once she was done and once Alyssa was happy with her work, they could leave. Maybe even blowing this place up in their wake just to spare anyone else from stumbling across it.

Wondering how difficult it would be to make a gas mask, Alyssa trudged into the cave, breathing from her mouth only. Today’s task was a simple one. Practice making the same body over and over again. Some might find it boring. With all the concentrating that she had to do, it was almost more meditative. A peaceful endeavor.

At least, it should have been. Just as she sat down in her room, ready to try again, she heard something. A repeated banging. Metal against metal. It took Alyssa a long moment to figure out just what it was. At first, she thought it was Irulon doing something. But Irulon didn’t want to disturb Alyssa’s meditative work any more than she wanted to be disturbed herself.

The door.

Someone was knocking at the door. That had to be it. With wary steps, Alyssa headed back down the cave to the entrance. Her spell cards were in her hand. She wasn’t positive that she needed them anymore. Not while connected to Tenebrael. But she actually had no idea how Spectral Chains worked in the slightest which meant that she wouldn’t be able to replicate the effect using Tenebrael’s power. For most beings, mortals especially, steel chains would probably work. Still, there was the possibility that Tenebrael’s power would vanish at an inopportune moment. It probably wouldn’t, but Alyssa wasn’t willing to take the chance by throwing away her spell cards.

On her way, she passed Irulon coming out of her wing of the cave system.

“Brakkt?” Alyssa asked with a raised eyebrow.

“He didn’t send me a Message,” Irulon said, falling in step alongside Alyssa. “And he probably would have just walked in.”

The same was true for Fela and Kasita. The door had a latch, but it didn’t really have a lock. Aside from those three and the draken, no one else really knew about their secret laboratory.

Bright light highlighted the edges of the door. Unfortunately, Alyssa hadn’t thought to put a window in it.

“Who is there?” Alyssa called out.

The knocking stopped. There was a long pause that made Alyssa more nervous than anything. Someone she knew would have answered right away. This was clearly no one she knew.

And she was standing an obvious position. Alyssa had learned from the Taker that obvious positions were easy to hit, even if the actual target wasn’t visible. Regular people using Annihilator didn’t have quite the power that Alyssa did, but she would still die if someone like Lumen aimed that spell in her direction. Even with the door in the way. It would melt almost instantly.

Alyssa slammed her shoulder into the door, hoping to surprise any would-be assailants on the other side. Spectral Chains were already forming in the air before she even saw a target for them.

She hadn’t been inside the cave nearly long enough for her eyes to adjust to the dim, potion-lit chambers. Even still, she found herself blinking a few times before her eyes focused on the person standing in front of the door.

“Red?” Alyssa said as the chains wrapped around Volta’s cursed sword companion. Even after recognizing who it was, she still didn’t undo the chains. The cursed sword made her nervous. “What are you doing here? How do you even know about this place?”

Red didn’t answer right away. With a look on the human puppet’s face somewhere between amused and vapid, she looked down and tugged slightly on the chains. Not enough to count as an escape attempt. Just enough to give a little test. Without looking back up to Alyssa, she giggled. “Knew you were in the area. Just had to follow the smell.”

Alyssa opened her mouth, about to ask if cursed swords had enhanced senses. She stopped when she realized that she honestly had no idea how far away someone would have to be to detect this place. It wasn’t just the corpses inside the cave either. There was a whole mass grave fulled with rotting bodies.

Perhaps it would be wise to fill the grave with water and weigh down the bodies. That should reduce the odor coming from there. With Tenebrael’s power, it was something she could do as well.

But that was something to discuss with Irulon—who had taken to leaning up against the cave wall just out of sight—later on. For the time being… “You still didn’t answer why you are here. Where’s Volta? Did something happen?”

“Mhgm… So many questions,” she grumbled under her breath with a grimace set on her face. The cursed sword tried to lift her non-sword hand. The chains were still firmly in place.

Irulon sighed. Quietly, she said, “I’ve got work to do. You can handle this.”

“Gee, thanks,” Alyssa grumbled as Irulon started back further into the cave. She had work to be doing too. Sure, it was just more practice, but this was the dragon’s body and it deserved a little more practice. But Irulon didn’t care about her thoughts. After shooting a glare over her shoulder that she was positive Irulon noticed despite the other woman’s back being turned, Alyssa refocused on the cursed sword. “Red?” she tried again, voice far more firm. “Why are you here?”

A shudder wracked the cursed sword’s body. Her eyes snapped up, glaring at Alyssa with obvious hostility. If not for the chains, Alyssa was sure she would have been attacked. As it was, the cursed sword barely moved. Whatever anger—or eagerness—overtook the sword for the moment died off with a heavy breath. “I protect Volta,” the sword ground out as if each word stung the insides of her lips. “I… didn’t protect Volta.”

Alyssa instantly tensed, looking around for any sign of trouble. “What happened?” she asked, feeling that the cursed sword needed additional prompting.

“They… knew,” Red bit out. “They were ready. Separated me,” she said, eyes turning to the sword in her hand. “Couldn’t cut. Couldn’t slice. Reunited. Sliced. Cut. Couldn’t find Volta.”

“Volta is missing.”

“Missing,” Red said, bobbing her head.

Frowning, pressing her lips together, Alyssa asked just one question. “Who did it?”

“Humans.”

“Did they say who they were? Were there icons or emblems on their clothing? Did they have any unique colors on their outfits or horses? What kinds of weapons did they use?”

She should have continued to limit her questions. With every one, Red’s grimace intensified as if being physically pained by having to think about them. All until Alyssa asked the final questions. At that, Red perked up with a lopsided grin.

“Swords,” she said. “Bad swords. Not like me. They weren’t sharp. Couldn’t cut me. I cut them. Destroyed them. And their hosts. But some were already gone. Volta too.”

Hosts, Alyssa thought, wondering if there actually had been another cursed sword among them or if all swords had hosts in the mind of a cursed sword. But that wasn’t really relevant at the moment. Volta was missing. Kidnapped, it sounded like. And not by regular highwaymen and brigands that attacked travelers out in the Plains of the Dead. They wouldn’t have been prepared for Red. She supposed that it was possible that they had disarmed Red without knowing what she was, but it sounded more like Red’s sword had been specifically targeted.

If only Red were a little more articulate.

There were a lot of reasons to want to go after Volta, the fact that she was a monster aside. Volta was a public figure, likely quite wealthy on her own. She was a trusted adviser to Martin and the rest of Illuna’s nobility. She was a moderately powerful arcanist. Or played one. Alyssa hadn’t ever asked what rank Volta claimed to be, but suspected at least four. Possibly five. Besides all that, Volta had been a proponent of the monsters integrating and allying with Illuna.

Something like that was sure to piss some people off. Yora, for instance, probably wasn’t too happy with that.

And if people did know that Volta was a monster, there were a whole slew of other reasons why they might want to capture or kill her.

Alyssa had a flood of questions she wanted to ask, including all the ones she had just asked that Red had decided to ignore in favor of talking about swords. But she narrowed it down. “Did they know Volta was not human?”

The answer could inform the actual amount of danger that Volta was in. If they didn’t know and one of the kidnappers tried slicing Volta’s throat, Alyssa imagined that it would be possible for the body double to ‘die’ while the hidden real body just stood by and watched only to escape later unnoticed. If they did know…

Unfortunately, Red shook her head. “Don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not.”

Useful. “When were you attacked? How long ago did this happen?” Alyssa asked. She immediately frowned at having asked two questions, even if they were the same question phrased in different ways.

Surprisingly, Red didn’t seem to mind this time. “One night passed. Was walking the entire time, heading here. Don’t know where Volta is. I want to cut. To slice.” Red twitched a bit as she spoke before calming. “Don’t know where to cut and slice. Needed help. Here is closer than the Oasis. Volta trusted you. So show me. Bring me to Volta so I can cut and slice and stab and rend and—”

“Okay.” Alyssa let the chains fall. She was a little nervous about the way Red acted when she got agitated, but she couldn’t just keep the chains up permanently. It made it much too difficult to move around for one. When Alyssa inevitably called for Izsha, she couldn’t just keelhaul the cursed sword around either. “Stay here for just a minute. I’ll be back soon. Then we’ll find Volta.”

Half turning—Alyssa did not want to expose her back to the cursed sword even if Red seemed to be following orders—she headed back further into the cave. Away from the entrance, her shuffle turned to a hasty powerwalk. Arriving in Irulon’s chambers, Alyssa didn’t even bat an eye at Irulon holding an eye in her hand, examining it under a glass lens.

“Might be taking the day off,” Alyssa said. “It seems as if Volta has been kidnapped.”

“Sounds like something I’ll be leaving to you. Good luck. Try not to be gone for too long.”

“Yeah. I know. Not optimal timing for this.”

“It’s fine. Assuming your progress continues at the same pace, you’ll be ready with only a little more practice.”

“Still, I feel bad.”

“Nonsense. My issue still has plenty of time left. Being captured by subversive entities is less temporally forgiving.”

“I don’t suppose you might have ideas on how to rapidly locate a kidnapped individual? I was planning on having Izsha or Fela follow the trail like we did for Oxart, but anything to speed up the process would be welcome. Once I get close enough, I can probably just look for them,” Alyssa said, tapping her temple. Since she had reconnected with Tenebrael, she could close her eyes and concentrate a bit to observe souls. It didn’t really have a range, so theoretically, she could find them right now. But beyond a certain point, the lights all blurred together like one giant star field.

Closing her eyes now, she could see the warring souls in Irulon, Red, and Izsha, Musca, Dasca, and Fela off in the distance. They had taken to hunting in the hilly area around the cave. Mostly, it was an excuse to not have their sensitive noses nearby.

Opening her eyes, she found Irulon considering the question, having set the eyeball down on the table. “Your solution would work adequately enough, though you’ll likely have to follow the monster’s tracks back to where the kidnapping took place to pick up Volta’s trail. Depending on which way the abductors fled, that may require inefficient backtracking… Hm. Tenebrael can find you no matter where you are, correct?”

“That… would probably be accurate.” Angels were not omniscient, but Tenebrael did pop up around her an awful lot. The idea that she appeared in all sorts of random locations before actually finding Alyssa was amusing to imagine. But it probably was not accurate. “I’m not sure how I would use that ability though. A lot of using Tenebrael’s magic comes from understanding. And I don’t understand how she finds me.”

It probably had to do with the soul sight. Irulon stood out with her twin souls, but she was really the only one. Human souls all looked roughly the same to Alyssa and monsters, while slightly different, weren’t different enough that she could simply look around the entire world and pinpoint Volta. To Tenebrael, someone who had years and years of experience, it was probably a simple matter to differentiate souls. Alyssa had seen Volta’s soul before, but not for quite some time. She couldn’t recall its exact feel.

“I suppose I could lend you yet another Accelero spell. They are tedious to draw. I would appreciate if you would not go through them so quickly.”

“I appreciate your help,” Alyssa said, watching as Irulon wiped her hands on the rough tunic she had taken to wearing during her work in the cave. When her fingers were mostly clean, she handed over the spell card.

Alyssa accepted it and immediately headed out, sending off a quick Message to Kasita, just to see if the Yora intelligencer had any information on what had happened. She then sent a second Message to Fela, asking for the hellhound to return with all haste, along with the draken.

Once they arrived, she would be heading out to find a kidnapped doppelganger.