Organizing

She drowsily got up from the stone floor that had been her bed with some mild discomfort. I really should get myself some proper bedding soon. She mused to herself, slightly annoyed at the lack of luxuries.

"Don't I know it, I don't even have a body and I get uncomfortable just looking at it" My new mind companion said.

"Morning to you too Vit'nas" she was, slightly surprised how nice it felt to have someone to talk to that wasn't an ancient monster taking up residence in her mind, not that she minded having it around of course. Though it's kind of sad my best company is a copy of myself...

"Yeah it bothered me too at first, but from what Nib told me I'm not a clone, not exactly. Bit vague on specifics but you could probably ask it about that, it does like preaching a lot." Vit'nas said, causing her to raise her eyebrow.

"Nib? Since when did you get close enough to start with nicknames?" She asked her, not hiding her curiosity. Not that I think I could hide it even if I wanted to.

"We talked a bit when you were out cold, apparently splinters don't really 'sleep', but it's full name was pretty long, so I shortened it. feel free to call me Vit too if you'd like" she responded candidly.

"I might take you up on that, Vit. Speaking of Nib, where is it? Normally it'd have jumped in to explain either the clone or sleep thing already" she asked her.

"Nib went back into folding, apparently helps you stabilize, I tried it for a bit too and it feels similar to dreaming, but it's pretty hard to maintain, pretty sure my stability should have gone up a bit by now" Vit explained, a slight frustration apparent in her voice.

"Well we should probably look at that" she said as she walked over to her sigil to examine Vit's progress.

[name: - ]

[first archetype: primal beast]

[mana: 23/24 (58 allocated) (24 divine gifts)]

Arcane mana: 9/10 (18 allocated) (4 divine gift) Primal mana 0/0 (4 allocated) (4 divine gift) Earth mana: 4/4 (13 allocated) (4 divine gift) Poison mana: 5/5 (19 allocated) (4 divine gift) Nature mana: 4/4 (0 allocated) (4 divine gift) Life mana: 0/0 (4 allocated) (4 divine gift)

[stats] (8 allocated) (22 divine gifts)

Strength 12 (+4) Dexterity 4 (+2) Agility 8 (+3) Vitality 7 (+6) Toughness 7 (+4) Intelligence 3 (+1) Wisdom 4 (+2)

[skills] (21 allocated)

anger (low) 2 primal field (mid) primal alchemist (mid) condense brew (mid) crystallize brew (mid) beastly instincts 2 (mid) stone strength organs 2 (mid) fear resistance 2 (low) poisonous breath 1 (low) refine poison (low)

[perks]

primal inheritance (high)

[splintermind] (inherited) (mind 43/58) (power 33) --- Inherited

Host: designation Host - mind 16 - power 20 - resonance 75% - stability 62% Nib'thulum: designation guest-Splinter - mind 19 - power 8 - resonance 25% - stability 51% Vit'nas: designation origin-Splinter - mind 8 - power 5 - resonance 50% - stability 31%

[poisons]

weak endothermic poison (gas) 3 poison mana weak poison (gas) 2 poison mana weak hallucinetic poison (gas) 2 poison mana

[available skills]

pain resistance (low) (18 mana) inner body experience (mid) (12 arcana mana)

"Well I don't know how much you improved, seeing as I didn't see your stats yesterday, but Nib is doing well for itself." She pointed out to Vit.

"Probably not much, Folding is still pretty hard" Vit said ashamedly.

"Don't beat yourself up over it" She said as she overlooked her new available skill.

[inner body experience: you are capable of visualising all mana in your body, allowing for greater precision and inspection.]

[allocate 12 arcane mana?]

"That sounds pretty useful, would be handy in figuring out how to assign skills to me at least," Vit said.

"True, but arcana mana is also a recourse I'm not too willing to spend much of, not only can I increase stats with it but it's also my primary fuel for [primal alchemy]." she pointed out, at which Vit gave a mental nod. Weird how that works, mental nods, who would've thought. She thought, slightly amused.

"We'll have to wait for Nib in the meantime I guess, any plans to kill some time?" Vit asked.

"I'll try poking his shard, maybe wake him up, or Unfold I guess." She said as she extended a tether of mana towards Nib's gate, softly knocking on it.

And much to her relief it actually worked.

"I see you've managed to reach me in my folded state, congratulations may be in order, but I suspect you have need of me instead?" Nib asked, sounding a bit groggy. I knew it was sleeping!

"Host wanted to know how to assign me skills, since it's the entire reason for my existence at all," Vit said before she had the chance to say anything, a faint feeling of helplessness bleeding over their link.

"That can be arranged. Simply drag a thread of appropriately typed mana, poison in this case, from the skill location towards Vit'nas' Splinter. Finding the skill location will be similar to how you found the [splintermind] one." Nib explained.

She nodded and grasped a strand of poison mana, slowly tracing it from the special organ in her lungs towards Vit's gate in her mind, quickly repeating the process for the subskill as well.

When she finished a warmth started radiating from her chest. "I think I got it, thanks Host, I'll start refining some poison" Vit'nas said with obvious excitement to be able to do something, which she couldn't really blame her for.

"Splendid, now that we finished that I will give the both of you some recommended tasks. Vit'nas, I recommend you start experimenting with the poisons, as well as refining them. Keep in mind you will play a support role, your skill usage should reflect that. Try to ration the stored poison in small controlled bursts for now." Nib said as Vit gave it a mental nod. "For you child, I recommend tweaking your Construct to your liking. Try saying what you would like to do in clear instructions out loud while you visualize it within your mind. Focus on assigning skill categories at least." it continued.

"Okay, I can try that" she replied, though she was a bit hesitant about her ability to do it."

"I will return in a few hours, by then I will gauge your progress and train you for combat" Nib said before she could feel him Folding again.

She could feel Vit doing things with her body, but pressed on and started on settling her Construct.

"Construct, please hide the name function" she said while visualizing the name tab disappearing. She quickly checked the sigil and noticed it was gone, success!

Over the next few hours she had reworked a lot of her system, her name, was of course still hidden.

The second change she implemented was changing the formatting of divine gifts to be less obtrusive, going to a simple plus mark instead, similar to how they displayed in her stats. She also decided to add a total mana section, to help with anticipating new archetypes.

[mana: 23/24 (58 allocated) (+24) - 82 total mana]

Arcane mana: 9/10 (18 allocated) (+4) Primal mana 0/0 (4 allocated) (+4) Earth mana: 4/4 (13 allocated) (+4) Poison mana: 2/5 (19 allocated) (+4) Nature mana: 4/4 (0 allocated) (+4) Life mana: 0/0 (4 allocated) (+4)

After that she added categories to each of her skills, one for a mana type, one for the skill's effect type, and a second optional one to sort them further.

[skills] (21 allocated)

anger (low) 2 - arcane [berserker] primal field (mid) - primal [offense, field] primal alchemist (mid) - primal [crafting, enhancement] condense brew (mid) - poison [transmuter] crystallize brew (mid) - earth [transmuter] beastly instincts 2 (mid) - primal [sense] stone strength organs 2 (mid) - earth [mutation, resistance] fear resistance 2 (low) - arcane [mind, resistance] poisonous breath 1 (low) [F] - poison [mutation, offense] {Vit'nas} refine poison (low) - poison [mutation, enhancement] {Vit'nas}

She also added a small tag for skills assigned to Splinters and foundational skills, but if she was being honest she was unsure how well her Construct could assign them in the future. She also added the system to both perks and available skills.

[perks]

primal inheritance (high) - inherited [mind]

[available skills]

pain resistance (low) (18 mana) - arcane [mind, resistance] inner body experience (mid) (12 arcana mana) - arcane [mind, mana]

She left both poisons and the splintermind tabs alone. Lastly made it so her construct would show a minimized version of all segments when activating her sigil, which could be opened up by thinking about it. She had tried adding a function that would tell her what changed since last time but she didn't manage to get that part to work.

She decided to take it easy for a bit once she'd finished, she wanted to eat some meat but the occasional clouds of poison she breathed out made the option far less appealing that it should have been. But the both of them made it through the next few hours until Nib'thulum woke up again.

"I see both of you have made splendid progress, very commendable" it said, apparently honest about the compliment. Pretty sure that's a first. She mused to herself, waiting for Nib to continue.

"Next up we will try a combat exercise, but before we do I suggest we strategize. Our Host is no longer fighting alone, so she will have to keep that in mind." Nib said, before continuing with a basic plan. "We will base our strategy around Vit'nas in this case, see in which way she believes she can bolster Host."

Vit'nas took a deep mental breath. "If I were Host I would likely be using the [weak poison], but I doubt it'd do too much good in a support role, it takes too long to do anything significant, and Host already has a lot of firepower. So I opted to used [weak hallucinetic ] poison instead, since it will confuse our opponent, which should make it easier to deal with for host." She said, clearly proud of the solution she'd come to.

"Sounds effective enough, how will you spread the poisonous gas to your foe, you don't have the mana to fill an entire area." Nib retorted sharply, she felt a bit bad for Vit honestly.

"Maybe lure it into attacking, and while Host deflects it's attack I breathe as much poison as I can on it?" Vit said, obviously uncertain if it was a good idea.

"I don't have any defensive skills, not sure how that'd work out here" she pointed out. I wouldn't mind being a bit nicer about it if it weren't a plan actively putting me in dangers, hells putting all of us in danger.

"Maybe Host could make a weapon to temporarily stick in place, a spear or something, to counter attack while it rushes her, like she does with the hatchets" Vit suggested hopefully.

"Doable, I believe Host has the tools to carve one out of my bone?" Nib said casually. She wasn't sure of using the bones of a friend for a weapon, it didn't feel right to her.

She quickly squashed the feeling, Nib was okay with it and it'd improve their chances in the future, so she decided to go with it.

"Next up would be Host, you will be responsible for the physical aspect of combat, using [anger] if it triggers, and if it does you're responsible for managing the side effects, you don't have the ability to create Captive-Splinters to offset the price yet. I myself will attempt to keep you informed about your opponents, are we clear?" Nib told them.

Both of them nodded and started on crafting the spear, they had a lot of training left to do after all.