I woke up abruptly after my turbulent nightmare, jumping from laying down to sitting bolt upright within the blink of an eye. My head throbbed violently, my chest wracked with pain and my pulse rippled across my skin with every strained and weighted beat.

I could tell from the low light that it was around dawn; the amber hew of light stretched through my window and cast a faintly orange tint across all in its path. Outside I could hear birds chirping; the morning chorus was rare in a place as urban as this, but what little there was made it all the more magnificent. The faint smell of flowers persisted throughout the night, and it would seem to be from the same flowers I was hiding amongst during the night. I would have to investigate this anomaly at some point, perhaps a clue for how I find myself travelling to and from that vibrant place.

I took a deep breath and felt a sharp flare of pain from my chest, prompting me to inspect it. During previous violent encounters in the Iridescent Abyss, I remembered that I would remain wounded in the real world if I got hurt on the other side. Considering the Zhivaq warrior had viciously stabbed me during the night, one should readily appreciate that I was especially concerned about the possibility of a more severe wound manifesting in the real world.

I pulled my top down slightly to inspect my chest. I saw the edge of a large, roughly circular bruise stretching out from my left shoulder. It almost reached the middle of my chest. Considering the pain while inhaling on top of the sheer size of the bruise, my mind raced while worrying about whether or not I had experienced any internal damage or if the bruise was simply large and severe enough that it twinged while I breathed on its own.

Pulling the top back further, I found the rough location of the stab wound inflicted during the night. Thankfully, there was no incision or puncture present, but there was a bizarrely shaped marking in the bruise, where the bruise was slightly brighter than the surrounding area. Judging by the appearance of it, it looked like a burn?

I found this turn of events unsettling. It reminded me of the markings made upon my left arm and palm, which were seemingly burned or scared upon my skin during one of the first experiences within that place, where the obelisk, or Protasi wellspring as Kliviero called it, obliterated my arm. Still, such a thing had never crossed over to the real world unless it had somehow reached over from my nightmares like everything else, albeit in a way which I could not see.

Prompted by this thought, I quickly inspected my left arm and hand; thankfully, they remained unmarked by the cuneiform and runes in the nightmares or the mysterious burn upon my chest, but in the back of my mind, something about it wasn't quite right.

I didn't have time to worry about that possibility for now, though; while my schedule for the day was devoid of plans or tasks, I had a variety of things I wished to check out as soon as possible. My coat would need inspecting to check for any damage, my notebook would require investigation to see if my notes had carried over, and my pen would need to be examined for ink usage.

I was taking my, albeit small scale and highly inefficient, research of the Iridescent Abyss far more seriously now; what with my encounters with things from that place in the real world, it was abundantly clear that something was going on, what that "something" was though was entirely up to debate, however.

As much as I wanted to just lay back in bed and relax for the morning, let my mind process what had happened passively and deal with the matter with a focused psyche, I knew that I needed to deal with this while it was fresh in my memory. After some thought, I decided that my notebook should be my priority; if I could confirm the transfer of written notes from the other side, future investigation work would become significantly easier, and I could spend as much time as I wanted to study my findings here in relative safety.

I turned to get up from bed, only to see a familiar figure sitting in my chair, observing me silently while a short, seemingly playful laugh left her lips. But even upon my first glimpse of the visitor, I could tell that something was amiss...

The visitor from the night before was sitting cross-legged on my wheeled office chair, sitting a silent watch over me while I was waking up, heavens only know how long she was there for, and the longer I thought about that, the more it troubled me. A single hand reached up to twiddle with her flowing blonde hair while the other wrapped around an armrest, her velvet-like hair coiled about her arm and down the armrest with a seemingly prehensile grip.

Leaned up against the wall by her side was her seax-staff, a beautiful weapon just like those of the Quires I had seen in the Abyss. Its blade bore several short scratches along its edge, and a small piece of metal had been chipped out from just below its point.

Shortly thereafter, I noticed that her marbled ceramic mask was quite severely damaged; the part that covered her cheek and jaw below her right eye and past her nose was missing, a series of cracks and fissures radiated out from the edge. What's more, I noticed faint burn marks stretching from her right eye like eyeshadow and equally light marks around her exposed jaw, not too dissimilar to the burns on the Zhivaq cadavers. Had she been in a fight? And why was she burned like this?

Now that I had noticed the burn marks, I quickly picked up on several other oddities about her condition. Her hooded robes, specifically the hood itself and the collar around the right side of her head, were singed and frayed around the edges. What's more, some of the golden cuneiforms and texts appeared dull and matt around her hood and collar, as if something had drained it of its lustre entirely.

"My, my, somebody's been a very busy boy," She laughed while toying with her hair, a few strands unravelling from around her arm only to rebind themselves in a different braided pattern. "First, you come within meters of an Archivist, an impressive feat considering it didn't kill you. And then you find one of these," She turns around in the chair and reaches for something on my table, only to turn back, holding the very zab'erim shashka that I wielded in my nightmare. "I have to admit, young man; you're certainly a resourceful little human."

I have to admit, when she was further than a meter away from me, she wasn't quite so terrifying, but there was still this unnerving aura to her; the way she spoke, the way she acted, it was all so uncanny; the subtle movements and how every gesture and every motion was so precise as if it were mechanical. I didn't know exactly why this thing looked so human at the time, and even now, I still can't quite wrap my head around it, but even if she was human, she certainly wasn't human in a conventional sense.

"How did you get that?" I asked her, shifting around in bed so that I was sitting on one side. "That thing was right next to me, and I just woke up, so how did you..."

"I find it so peculiar that you've been to the Iridescent Abyss so many times now, and yet you are so perturbed by such mundane, routine, basic details." A dismissive sigh left the visitor before she unsheathed the blade. The cadmium green metal faintly glistened and glowed once it was released from its leather sheath. "I feel like I'm obliged to explain things such as this to you; we can't have something as efficient as you wasting their knowledge and time in inadequately understood principles, now can we?" She looked upon the blade and gently ran a pair of fingers along its flat, just like Kliviero had during the night, which prompted the sword to glimmer slightly more around her fingers.

Seeing her holding the sword made me slightly nervous; I knew that it was more than capable of causing considerable harm to whomever it was wielded against, and it was currently in possession of an individual whose motives were nebulous at best.

"You're extremely good at saying very little while speaking a lot, you know that?" I roll my eyes while taking a jab at the visitor while I crossed my arms, my eyes fixated on the blade while I ran through how best I could avoid it should she decide to turn it upon me.

"Well, some things are best left to be discovered rather than to be described." She looked back from the blade briefly while her eyes scanned me again. "After all, what's the point of an adventure when one knows the ending before they even begin preparations?" Judging by the slightly exposed lip, I think she was trying to smile, but it was hard to tell.

"A fair point, I suppose." I sigh and unfold my arms; it was good to see some sense and normality behind her cryptic rambling nonsense. "But surely you'd appreciate that, using your analogy, an adventure built upon poorly understood and constructed foundations is equally pointless, right?"

She stopped looking at the blade and appeared lost in thought for a short while. Perhaps my rationale had made her question her beliefs about the matter, or maybe she was constructing a rebuttal.

"Perhaps," She glanced back at me, then back to the sword. "Perhaps you're right, human." She muttered under her breath, I am unsure if I was supposed to hear that or not, but it was apparent that I was getting somewhere with figuring her out.

"So, why are you here?" I ask while shuffling around to make myself comfortable; I expected a winding, meandering answer with little sense to discern. "Just here to taunt me with the weapons, or have you got a motive to this visit other than 'because I feel like it'."

"You give me far too little credit, human," She snickered and shook her head dismissively. "Let us just say that the situation on the other side has changed a bit and that there are those much like myself who are unwilling to go through with such plans." She continued. "However, there are few who were able to disagree with the elders' change of heart in a way which didn't result in either immediate execution or Protasi flaying..."

"Is that why your mask is cracked?" I asked, cutting her off; the damage to her mask was pretty considerable, but I doubted its poor condition was related to what she was implying.

"Not quite, if only it were that simple." She sighed, her off-hand reaching for her face and running along the ruined, broken edge of the mask. "This was a touch more complicated..."

"So no change then," I smirk while rolling my eyes.

"No, I guess not." She looked back to the desk, carefully sheathed the blade, and gently placed it back upon the desk. She appeared to force out a short smile, but it was pretty apparent that something was wrong. "No change at all..."

She took a long pause while observing the blade on my desk, and she seemed to be lost in thought while examining it, though if what Kliviero had told me in regards to the rarety of such things was true, then she might legitimately not know what it truly was.

"It's a remarkable weapon, isn't it?" She speaks up after a brief period of silence, swivelling around on the chair to face me. "And to see you dispatch that warrior with such ease was impressive, inspiring even."

"I wouldn't quite argue I performed that well," I shrugged. "I had no idea what I was doing..."

"Ah yes, but you didn't die, now did you?" She waved a hand at me while the other resumed toying with her hair, which continued its binding embrace of her arm and the armrest of the chair. "Can't have done that bad a job to survive the encounter while still possessing that thing, no?"

"Yeah, only for a giant stone bitch to literally come out of the walls to kill me." I sighed and shook my head. "All that effort went to waste, and there was nothing I could have done differently."

"For one, you most certainly didn't let the effort go to waste; you made some intriguing progress and most certainly made some amazing discoveries." She sat back in the chair while her glowing amber eyes pulled at the edges of my psyche. "As for the 'giant stone bitch' as you call her, she was supposed to be an exceedingly expensive piece of military equipment." She paused and looked away briefly. "Of course, something went wrong, it would seem, and she managed to break away from the order before she could be utilised as intended."

"Utilised as intended?" I stand up from the bed and pace towards the door leading out of my room. "You make it sound like a resource, a piece of material; from my experiences, it's certainly sentient, if not sapient," I argue, reaching the door and pulling my dressing gown off of a hook behind the door.

"Sapient?" She quickly rose to her feet, hair unwrapped around the chair and rebraiding itself into a braided, wrap-around ponytail. "Now that is very interesting, very interesting indeed. Perhaps her sentiophage device is working better than expected, but that can't be right." She tilted her head to the side in deep thought, reaching out with her left hand, which prompted the seax-staff to leap to her grasp. "It was the first trial of the device, if that's true, then..."

"Sentiophage?" I ask, stopping her murmurings dead while my bafflement regarding this thing grew by the minute; considering the 'phage' at the end, was she implying what I thought she was? "You mean to tell me that when your order made it, it was..."

"It was designed to collect remnants of Protasi stored within Protasi compatible organic material, whether that be vegetation or animalistic, yes. Although it was originally intended to be restricted to floral use," She cut me off and tried to explain. "The problem is that the very existence of Protasi energy within a living thing, be it flora or fauna, means that there is the presence of sentience in the given thing. Sentience which needs to be broken down and processed to release the energy. Now, of course, the order had done little in the ways of testing the thing so..."

The notion that this massive stonework juggernaut was designed originally to serve as nothing more than the Amethyite equivalent to a lawnmower was a comical concept at first glance. But, the more I thought about it, the more questions, especially about the morality of such a thing, begun to surface.

"Hold on, slow down a minute." I plea; I was struggling to keep up with all of this. "So, let me get this absolutely crystal clear." I walk back to my bed and sit on the far end. "Your people built this thing, and you somehow lost control of it. It pottered off into the wilderness, never to be seen again, all while having the ability to devour peoples minds." My voice started rising in tone. "Then, you act surprised that this thing with something that, by your own admission, is entirely untested and unpredictable, does something you didn't predict." The sheer act of speaking that aloud was enough to rouse a short chuckle from me as I trailed off. I was entirely in awe at the high and mighty Amethyites, as I had been lead to believe, falling for such an amateur mistake; how they didn't think something like this would fail or otherwise not go as planned was beyond me.

"When you're working with Protasi energy, especially the procurement, refining and distribution of it, things aren't quite as simple as they seem." She tried to reason with me, idly standing with her arms crossed over her staff, and a partial frown stretched across her face. "You have to remember, human, that we are talking about raw energy here, neural energy which is known for its ability to bend and buckle the laws of reality. You can't plan for every single possibility because the list of possible outcomes is ever-changing and ever-expanding."

"So, how did it get free?" I asked, motioning at her. "Surely you're not going to tell me that your people just built the thing and just released it into an area and called it a day, right?" I paused and saw her eyes lower to the floor, followed by a slow sigh. "Right?"

"I do not know what happened that day; it was long before my time." She weakly muttered. "All I know is that several Archivists were killed, a few dozen Quires were slain, and the entire project was terminated due to the inherent flaws and dangers with the thing. As for how it escaped captivity, nobody knew, and nobody bothered investigating; somebody else's problem, right?" Her eyes returned to watching me after breaking eye contact with the floor. "As long as it was out there hurting the enemies of the Amethyites, nobody cared."

"Yeah, and how'd that work out for you?" I asked, shrugging and laughing to myself at such an outrageous situation.

"Quite well, all things considered." She smiled, causing my jaw to drop. "It's disappearance caused a surge in development and research into much more advanced and, more importantly, safer means to harness the Protasi, as well as the development of brand new weapons and incantations." She stopped and gestured to the texts over her robe. "All of this, before the incident, we had no idea about the existence of textual warding techniques." She waved a hand up to her hood. "I'd be dead right now, damned to wander the void between worlds for the rest of eternity if it were not for that things disappearance."

"Well, silver linings, I suppose." I reasoned, calming down from my confused outburst. "At least your people learned something from that disaster."

"The order knows that the current supply of Protasi in the natural world is dwindling, and without a way to regenerate it conventionally or easily, we are left with nought but, shall we say, esoteric options." She tried to explain. "Either we adapted to the situation and found a new way to replenish the Protasi, or our way of living would become obsolete, and our people would suffer."

"I suppose it's not a bad idea on paper, growing plants to process into Protasi in a renewable and sustainable fashion rather than drawing it from the natural world." I rationalise while walking over to the window and briefly peaking outside. While looking out the window, I observed the traffic on the roads and noticed that, just like the other day, there appeared to be fewer vehicles on the road, less than usual, that is. "But a giant stone thing that can move like a person, why?"

"So that it could operate as more than just a Protasi harvester." She elaborated while also approaching the window. "The original plan, from what I've gathered, was that the order intended to act as a test-run of a new style of Sapio-form-construct, one which could partially self-propagate in the field and fabricate new copies when the need arises." She leaned against the wall by the window. Her eyes panned across the outside world with such intrigue and fixation, and it entirely surrendered her bewilderment of this world.

"And how exactly does it produce more copies of itself?" I ask, once again growing increasingly more concerned by this revelation.

"You've seen the Ashen Bees, right?" She asks, prompting a quick nod from myself. "Ashen Bees can perform a function similar to the construct. However, they can also produce vast quantities of Ashen Ceramic 'blanks' for the construct to switch between at will if needed, blanks which they store within their nests, effectively moulding the hive to the blank."

"Wonderful..." I tutted and shook my head dismissively again; the sheer scale of the rampant and belligerent oversight exhibited by the Amethyites was almost impressive in its magnitude. "So it can just hop from nest to nest with ease to travel quickly around what it perceives as its turf, right?"

"In theory, yes." She hesitated before answering. "It's not that simple, but you're not far off." She stepped back from the window, apparently having enough of the view outside. "Look, I need to go; if I'm away for much longer, the order will catch onto our little chats here and there, and we'll both suffer as a consequence." She glares at me for a moment. "And believe me, they already have plenty enough excuses to go after me, let alone a human who has been busy 'pottering around the abyss', as you'd say." She walked towards the middle of the room and nodded at me. "I'll talk to you later, human; keep doing what you're doing, and you might become useful to me."

"Gee, thanks." I sigh, crossing my arms and shaking my head while a frown troubles my brow. "I'll miss you too." I snarkily reply, prompting a short snicker from her while, just like the previous night, energy slowly gathered and flickered to her side in a swirling display of mysticism. A swirling show of witchcraft that appeared to be going well until something went horrifically wrong.

It happened so fast that I could barely comprehend what just unfolded before me. Suddenly a violent emission of amber light illuminated the room, followed immediately by the sound of an almighty crack of thunder. It was as if the sun itself had manifested within the confines of my bedroom, the very brightness momentarily blinded me, and my skin tingled from the sheer heat it brought with it.

To this day, I struggle to describe just what precisely I was witnessing; there are simply not the right words in the English lexicon to adequately describe the horrors I was seeing with living, mortal eyes. The best one can do in such a situation is merely to tell what they had witnessed to the best of their ability.

The room was filled with sounds that I could only equate to a malfunctioning substation or a violent, ceaseless short-circuit. The air smelt strongly of burning fabric, and it tasted like carbon.

My eyes were still trying to process such a violent pulse of luminance when I heard it, an almightly scream, one of pure, undiluted agony and unrestrained terror. And that's when I saw it, or rather, her.

I saw her standing, arms spread wide, her seax-staff laying upon the floor, thrown clear from her reach. The burgundy robe appeared to writhe and contort while ripples and waves of amber energy flowed through them. When such waves reached the myriad of golden text which littered her robe, the glittering gold was violently torn from reality, burning the metallic texts to a matt, dull black.

What little I could see of her face was faring equally poorly; amber rays and arcs of energy leapt from her eye and mouth while her face appeared to flicker and shift. It was as if she was violently vomiting a continuous stream of lightning.

For a few moments between flickers, her face contorted entirely; what was once ossified, exposed bone was now flesh and blood. What little I could see reminded me of the figure I caught glimpses of in the reflective pool several nights ago, the one who vanished after I reached out, but that couldn't be correct, right?

The rays and arcs of energy grew stronger while her body twitched and tensed up from the uncontrolled surge of energy coursing through her every fibre. The involuntary movements of her body were getting stronger by the second, so much that I thought that the unnatural twitching itself would shatter her limbs and fold her upon herself.

Eventually, either by excessive pain or the amber energy consuming what was left of her strength, she collapsed to her knees. Her breathing was loud and panicked while she tried to grasp at her head and chest, only for her fingertips to begin suddenly bellowing thick columns of smoke and ash. Was she disintegrating?

Before I could even come to terms with the reality of the situation, or the possibility that I might be in serious trouble here, a large arc of amber energy leapt from her body and connected with my left arm. By the time I had consciously acknowledged this fact, the arc had pulled my arm forward, palm presented towards her and fingers spread, my hand twisted into mimicking a grasping claw.

The pain in my arm was beyond adequate description, so much so that I am entirely convinced that the amber energy was the only thing keeping me standing throughout this horrific situation. It felt as if every single square centimetre of my arm was being flayed and rubbed with salt.

Moments felt like hours as the pain intensified when suddenly, as quickly as the arc had manifested itself, it flashed one final time and retreated into the visitor's body, sending forth one last violent twitch as she collapsed to the floor and fell silent. The fragmentary smoke returned to her smouldering fingers, embers and burns subsiding as it returned.

I, somehow, remained standing throughout what the hell had just happened. My arm, which was only moments prior incandescent with agony, had utterly stopped hurting. The carbon smell and taste had gone without a trace, and the sound of arcing electricity had fallen silent; all I could hear now were pained, heavy, deep breaths.

What the hell had just happened, and why was I still alive?

I remained still while I observed the state of my bedroom; arc burns covered the carpet, the walls and even a few upon the ceiling. The light had been blown out entirely, a few pieces of the bulb filament were scattered across the room. I hadn't even noticed the damage this ordeal had causing to my flat, but I knew that the next house inspection would be a complicated conversation. But there were more pressing matters to deal with right now; the most important thing that needed my urgent attention was the visitor's condition, who remained prone in a crumpled pile.

While I approached her, she tried to lift herself to her knees, collapsing back to the floor with a pained grunt, her breathing irregular, heavy and slow. While I was not suffering from any adverse effects from whatever the hell had just happened, it was abundantly clear that she had not come off quite so lucky.

The incident had virtually ruined her robes; severe blackened burns covered a good two-thirds of what I could observe, and the 'textual wardings' as she called them were entirely burnt out; I could find not a single slight flickering of gold upon what remained. Several large burnt-out holes covered her robes, revealing what was actually bronze riveted mail covering her chest, arms and legs. I could make out some kind of padded jacket and more of her ossified plate through the loops. Her hair appeared undamaged, somehow, but the once neat braids had deteriorated to a messy sprawl.

"Easy now, I'm here, "I kneeled by her side and placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "It's okay; everything is going to be alright." I gently rolled her over to inspect her for any wounds; I reasoned if she were injured, it would most likely be to her front due to the lack of apparent injuries on her back.

Her front was in equally poor condition to her back; her robes remained equally burnt and broken all around. Her mask had numerous additional cracks, several segments coming free from the mere act of rolling her over. But the condition of her face was where things got weirder still.

Her face had somehow not only not been utterly destroyed by the energy violently erupting from it, but it had partially regenerated, it would seem. Though her cheeks were still absent, what parts of her face I could see had regained their skin, ashen pale and almost sickly looking skin but skin all the same. It bore burns identical to those upon the bodies of the Zhivaq, albeit not quite so dramatic.

Her eyes still burned with violent amber flames, if only a bit stronger than they did before. Laying there, she glared at me, sharply breathing and shuddering slightly from the pain, her eyes struggled to fixate on anything before twitching and wandering off target. Perhaps the pain was disorientating her?

"By the void, oh by the void." She growled while clutching at her forehead, causing her to grasp her head and shook it violently while trying to sit up. "How, what, where am I?" She asked while trying to look around.

"It's alright, you're still here, remember?" I tried to explain to her while wrapping an arm around her back to support her. In truth, I didn't know what to say to the poor thing other than reaffirm that they were still in the real world and that they were still among the living.

"Wait, that, no, that can't be right." She tries to sit up a bit more but topples back onto my arm. I manage to catch her and prop her back up again. "I-I'm trapped here." She yelped while she started to go into a panic. "I-I can't go back. I can't go back!"

"It's alright, it's okay," I try to reassure her, I could see her eyes dancing around the room, and her breath was getting faster. "You don't want the silly human to have coped with being in an alien place better than you, now do you?"

"I hate you, so much human." She snarled and hissed at me, but the act was enough to send jolts of pain through her once again. "If the order finds us here, p-please don't tell anyone about this." Her shame and embarrassment at the situation she found herself in was palpable, which made me wonder about why she was even here in the first place; there's no way any of this was approved by her superiors, right?

"Hold on, let's try and get you somewhere a bit more comfortable." I carefully try to haul her to the side of my bed where I could prop her up more comfortably.

"Wait," She paused for a moment, resuming once I had hauled her over to the side of my bed. Her eyes darted around the room while I tried to prop her up against the bed. While I backed away to grab one of my pillows, she locked eyes with me. "How in the unholy name of the void are you still alive?" She tried to pull herself up to her feet, only managing to kneel partially before collapsing again. "I just burned out within arms reach of you. Why isn't your room saturated with human blood?" She asked while glaring at me as I wedged a pillow behind her head, though I couldn't tell if this was a look of bewilderment or fear at this point. "And how am I not dead either, for that matter?"

"You think I know?" I snapped back, still shaken by what I had just witnessed. "I mean, I feel like my head and my left arm is burning, but other than that I..."

"Show me your arm, right now!" She growled through gritted teeth, clearly wracked by pain. Before I could react, she shot an arm out and grasped my arm, holding me by the wrist while her eyes narrowed and fixated on me.

Without hesitation, I grabbed my sleeve and pulled it up to my elbow; my eyes widened when I saw what had happened to it. My arm, which might I add up until this point was seemingly perfectly fine, was now covered in glowing cuneiform runes and texts which burned a dull amber. While I could not remember the exact layout from my dreams, the text appeared identical to what little I remembered, down to the swirling pattern on my palm.

"Okay, that explains a lot." The visitor murmured under her breath, letting go of my arm and glancing down at the burns covering her robes and gauntlets. "Yeah, it all makes sense now, right?" Was she talking to herself?

"No, no, it really doesn't," I exclaim while rubbing at my arm furiously, perhaps some maddened attempt to remove the burning icons from my skin, an entirely futile effort.

"Shortsighted human." She laughed between pained growls, flickers, and gentle streaks of smoke wafted away from the burns which covered her now dull robe. "I was entering a Protasi burnout and would have died, one of the burnout flares arced to you, causing the burnout to spread between us, which, somehow, not only didn't kill you but also ended up being absorbed by you." She climbed up onto the bed and managed to sit on it with the wall holding her up. "Which means only one thing, somehow you managed to do something which allows you to contain, and possibly use, Protasi. Can you remember anything which could have caused that?" She asked while my mind raced back to the night with the wellspring, how it obliterated my arm in thousands of pieces and reassembled it, how it scared me with pages of texts.

"Well, there was one of these wellspring things I found on like the fifth night. I approached it, placed my hand against some hand-shaped segment of it, it broke my arm into dust, and I woke up here." I tried to explain.

"So you touched a wellspring and didn't immediately vanish from reality?" She asked, only to follow up with a short snort and a faint, forced smile. "Interesting. Perhaps you are useful after all."

"She says to the person who, technically, just saved her life." I snap back and pat her on the shoulder, a short chuckle leaving my lips.

"Heh, that is true." She rolled her eyes and groaned, blatantly displeased with the situation. "That is true, but what do we do now; I have never been in this world for longer than a few minutes. I don't know much about this place."

"Well, why don't we let you catch your bearings and regain your strength for a bit first?" I ask while standing up. "I need to check my notebook, see if any of my notes carried over from the other side," I explained. It was probably entirely pointless to check considering the visitor being stranded here, the shashka appearing here as well, but I had to check for the sake of completeness.

I walk over to my end table and briefly search for my notebook, finding it exactly where I had left it before I went to sleep. Retrieving the book, I hesitate to flick through the pages; I was anxious to see just what exactly was written within, whether my notes existed outside of the Iridescent Abyss or not. I sat in my chair and opened the notebook. To my amazement, my notes were entirely intact; every pen stroke and every word was noted down in perfect condition.

"Good to see that your notes are intact, human." The visitor spoke up while she remained propped up again the bed. "I took the liberty to read through them before you woke up, very methodical."

"How long were you in here, watching me sleep?" I asked while swivelling the chair to see her; I wasn't sure I was entirely comfortable with her admission.

"I don't know; I can't read the flow of time in this place." She sighed and looked away. "But if it helps, the weird writhing ball of fire high in the sky wasn't here when I arrived."

"So, a few hours at the very least?" I tried to discern.

"Hours?" She asked, her head tilting to the side.

"Never mind." I sighed and resumed reading the transdimensional notes I had taken. "I'm sure you'll understand how time flows over here in due time."

"I guess I will." She responded while making another attempt to stand back up, she managed to climb to her feet, but she was visibly unsteady. "So, what do we do now? It's not like I can just wish my way back."

I closed the notebook, stood up from the chair and looked through my window. I was lost in thought for a few moments, observing a reality I was slowly drifting away from on a seemingly hourly basis. I had no idea how long she would be stuck on this side or if I would even be able to visit the other side in my nightmares while she was here.

Worse yet, what would happen if something from the Iridescent Abyss decided to come to check in on her, or rather hunt down a potential loose end? What's to say there wasn't one out there at this very moment?

All I knew was that, for the foreseeable future, or until the visitor was no longer stuck here with me, things had gotten infinitely more complicated.