With all the stress that had risen as a result of matters involving the flame, the three girls had found it very difficult to relax and collect their thoughts. With having a clear mind while augmented being challenging at the best of times, Riyxia believed that this opportunity was vital for attaining any further success.

Riyxia picked up a rock and tossed it skipping across the river. At the bottom of the river valley, seated beside the river itself.. this was actually a place she had never bothered visiting before. Technically, getting down here was exceptionally dangerous, as it was almost impossible to climb out and there was always a risk of beasts around here. Her own augmentation made neither of those problems mean anything at all. Even so, there wasn’t anywhere she had felt weaker, and that was exactly why she had come here. She might have felt this same way while wading through the ocean towards the fire mountain, but her flame was already weak at that time, so she hadn’t noticed. Their coastal camp was the closest comparison.. no, even there, the fire mountain itself radiated enough through the sand that it was too difficult to notice without actually getting into the water. She remembered her early augmentations, fighting underwater beasts in the cold, and the feelings that had left behind. It was when she was still new to the whole ordeal, so she hadn’t understood anything at all.

Sure, a little water actually didn’t do anything to her at all, that’s why it was difficult to figure out. She even drank water frequently, just like any other person, there was always water in her system. However, her body contained that water, keeping it where it was needed. Her body kept her safe from the water, but it knew the water was a threat. None of this water was an actual danger, she could even dive right into the river and her flame would be no worse. However, that was only because her body shielded her from the river. Walking the side of the river as a spectre, the feeling was still similar. She couldn’t even get wet, though it seemed her spectre had a tendency of not wanting to sink in the water.. possibly due to water being thicker than air. Dipping a spectral foot into the water was somehow very uncomfortable, even though the water did absolutely nothing to her.

Watching Sryine come to terms with the greatest of her fears.. this made sense. They were of the flame, it was a part of them, that was what they had been forced to realize, but being of the flame they also had to understand.. the flame feared Celesi waters. The natural order of things in Celese was that elements of the world stood in an order among each other. It was even in the book Riyxia herself had carefully picked out for Sryine, for her birthday.. to help with adjusting to Sryine's newly awakened gift. Light and Dark, Sky and Stone, Fire and Ice, Water and Wood. According to said book, putting all the elements in harmony was said to generate life, but most of them outright hated another, and some consumed the others, such was why life was such a fragile thing. This was itself the part that had stood out the most to her in deciding to pick this book for Sryine, but also why she simply couldn't forget such lessons for herself right now either.

People, being of life, had a delicate balance of all of the elements, which automatically raised a concern in how being of the flame sustained that balance. However, she was not a creature made from fire, she simply contained it within her. Her body meanwhile had adjusted to such a flame, resisting it to keep it in a state of balance. This made sense, people classically demand more elemental water over any other element, but it's not like they are a creature of pure water, they can still even drown. Earlier that day, she had even learned that she isn’t quite as impervious to fire as expected, regular fire actually still burned her. Using a regular plain fire to produce a simple breakfast while in a sleepy state and feeling rushed in hunger.. it really wasn’t a memory she wanted to look back upon. Anyway.. the only flame she was actually adjusted to was herself, her fire, or mostly the astral flame. It was only a different sort of fire, but it was still a fire, just as there were many kinds of liquids, trees, stones… She had come here prepared, carrying a tiny vial of her own blood, along with an offered sample of blood from Ayzherie in another vial. She set a drop of the second into the river, which quickly spread into the water and disappeared. Then she took a drop from the first vial and did the same. A small burst erupted, followed by a series of smoke, a very obvious different reaction. It was exactly as she had predicted, water and fire did not get along. Research had always believed that blood was a construct of the body that was mostly water elemental, that the body had a strong water affinity as a result.. even if it sustained a balance. That’s how her body was now of affinity fire, her blood may still flow like a liquid, but it wasn’t water anymore. It’s form matched only to sustain its balance, but the affinity had changed. Astral fire was still fire, it still struggled with water. Celese also had the same balance required to sustain life, its flame was rivaled by its waters. Without a flame that could rival the flame of Celese, its waters held an advantage. Technically, that implied that even a Celesi flame could not compete with Celesi water. Liyuzhe had tapped into the Celesi flame, it was the most she could do. It was a frightening concept, but if they fought with Celesi water, they would have a strong advantage.

Light and Dark, Sky and Stone, Fire and Frost, Water and Wood. In each of those cases, the former was a type of energy, and the later was its counter. Light was an energy that was consumed by darkness, creating shadows. Sky even stood for a variety of storm-like energies, such as wind and lightning, that each stood countered by rock and metal. Fire was an energy, it was her energy, a warmth that stood eternally against the cold. Water also counted as an energy, the standard energy that empowered ordinary people, with plants being a healthy mitigation to deal with too much of that same energy. Not that some tree leaves prevent drowning, some tasks are too much for a little plant, which is also why they couldn’t actually rely on a bit of cold to deal with their own flames. In each case, the energy styled elements were actually things Sryine could easily produce with her gift. With the exception of darkness, she strongly suspected Vwyx could shape any of the counter elements, though she hadn’t actually seen Vwyx do any ice sculpting. Actually, the gravitational forces Vwyx had been weaving together.. such dark forces might actually count.. as well as explain why Vwyx found such a style comfortable. It was actually interesting how her friends had a gift so completely counter to each other in this way. .. and in balance, there is life.. and her own talents resided in that balance. She giggled at the thought, like the world was telling her they made an awesome team. She didn’t need such logic to understand how valuable her friends really were.

Still, all of this logic held a massive importance to their current situation. She still needed to figure out how to mitigate the threat of the flame, and this discovery gave her another advantage. In addition to using Vwyx’s crafted creations, she would need to consult with Sryine to figure out how to properly apply water to their process. Just as Vwyx had never actually done ice sculpting, Sryine had yet to actually conjure some seriously augmented water. Sryine had tried to create ice.. and had found it incredibly difficult as a result of how the frost element worked. To make ice with energy, you would have to work with its water element and then try to strip its fire element, so that any ambient frost element could take over. She had made this attempt without even invoking any water elemental gift, and then worked fire backwards.. an element that was of her own nature. The fact that anything at all happened was because she had a slight knack for working with water and a serious ability when it came to fire. Having figured that out, Riyxia would have to work with Sryine in the future to develop her aquatic ability.. to form it into something that could protect others from the flame.

Another thing she attempted while at the river was to at least discover if she could possess water for herself. That ended in a very complete failure, considering water itself had no real shape to work with. It was effectively about as smart as trying to possess a gust of wind or a ray of light. This also implied that her ability to possess things was closer in nature to Vwyx’s ability than Sryine’s. Metal weapons were effectively of the stone element, something she’d had a lot of experience with. Possessing plants was an idea, but technically a person’s physical tissue, the effective meat of a person.. actually counted as a careful mixture of wood and water, with most of its physical substance thus appealing to the wood element. Such a vessel was capable of holding an essence, for plants, animals, people.. actually even herself. In this, most wood element substances had the problem of being too receptive to having an essence, as well as the problem of often already having an essence. Possessing anything of the wood element would feel far too keenly like real necromancy, raising zombies and the like. Possessing something of the frost element might also be an option for her, but this required in most cases a careful fusion of frost and water, to yield ice. Being of the flame, sitting inside something mostly made of the two elements that actually hate her just seemed.. intimidating. In theory, she could maybe also house herself inside a gravitational construct, appealing to a form of darkness, but it probably wouldn’t exactly be very stable.

Thinking about it in this way, she wondered if her actual gift was itself more like Sryine’s than Vwyx’s. When she revises a person’s ability, unless she’s actually healing them.. they don’t really physically change as a result. It was more that she was shaping the energies of which a person.. or creature.. was made up from. When making a person more durable, you would think that the easiest way to accomplish that would be to change the material of their skin or something, but that actually never changes. In the same process of elements, just as Sryine had tried to create ice by reversing flame, Riyxia was probably adjusting the energies of a person to influence their own abilities. The only thing this then did not explain was why she was also capable of healing physical injuries.

This concern had never dawned on her before, because adjusting a person’s abilities was far too like adjusting their health.. from a simple perspective. When actual elemental logic was applied, that ability stopped making sense. Instead, it started seeming more like another ability of her spectre, her measures of life and death of another’s essence. When considered that her healing could also be reversed, it really was measures of life and death.. just of another form. According to their research, her spectre was capable of its own actions, leaving her body, doing its own thing, but a tiny fragment of it always remained in her body. Her spectre was also her own essence, just like the other girls had their state of two essence forms within them, which explained why they had two gifts. If a tiny fragment of her essence was within her, it made sense that it was providing a tiny fragment of a second gift. Her actual essence, the essence she used as a spectre, had a strong attachment to things like life and death. Knowing this, it was safe to assume that her healing was actually a result of her second essence.

This knowledge was especially interesting to her as her position of successor. Her ability to change the energies of another person, that would have been her predecessor's gift, Khyzae’s gift. This healing, that was her own thing. Coming to such a realization was especially refreshing for her, considering one of her greatest objectives in her journey was to uncover the distinctions between herself and Khyzae. With everything else they had learned along the way, she actually had a really good feeling where she stood in everything, and this last piece just gave the entire thing a feeling of being whole. She was herself, and that involved having Khyzae being a part of who she was, but she had another part that was uniquely her own. Mostly, she herself wasn’t actually an Ersatz, most of what was left for her from Khyzae was the Ersatz, she herself was a spectre, eternally bound possessing the self-same Ersatz.

Just like anything else she had possessed, Ersatz were just shells, forms she adopted, like the doll Vwyx made for her. These Ersatz just were the best shell for her spectre, life-like in almost every way, and that has allowed her a place to actually live a life herself. In that way, she was bound to this Ersatz, she was bound to Khyzae. She was alive because what remained of Khyzae could reside within this Ersatz, and just like the other flames.. she was capable of taking a shell alongside such a lost essence. Because of Khyzae, she was alive. This body she held, this was Khyzae’s, just like the bodies of Sryine and Vwyx had hosted those original people. If Khyzae had been transferred to the Ersatz somehow without the flame, she would be just the Ersatz, sleeping like anyone else every night, no spectre to speak for. In many ways, a normal person, especially if her memories had been preserved too. This is exactly then why Sryine and Vwyx still remain Sryine and Vwyx, that’s not exactly the person inside them, but that is the person standing there. In that same logic then, her Ersatz really could be thought of as still being Khyzae, but she really was actually her spectre. That was exactly where Khyzae ended, and Riyxia began.

In the end, it really was the lack of memories that remained the biggest distinction for her. Riyxia had no memories to work with of Khyzae’s life, only the notes that Khyzae had left behind. However, the longer she formed her own memories in place of this lack of memories, the more she felt willing to accept Khyzae as a part of her. Just like Khyzae, Riyxia too now wanted to reach the stars, it remained a dream that had passed down to her. There was a subtle feeling of Khyzae in everything she did, it was feeling wrong to deny having nothing to do with Khyzae. She really truthfully was Khyzaxliehriyxia, both Khyzae and Riyxia as one person. Liyuzhe has devoted so much effort to Khyzae, and so Riyxia was starting to feel responsible for the state Liyuzhe had been left in.

Liyuzhe.. Fhyernx.. Ieqyisa.. they had all once been a team with Khyzae, even if she no longer had such memories. It wasn’t even a question of ‘what would Khyzae have done in this situation?’ No, that wasn’t being honest. Instead, she should ask herself what she should do in this situation, the answer would probably be really close. If Liyuzhe was going to fall for a serious mistake, a mistake she knew better.. a mistake she had already made before.. she had to stop them. Not just to save the world, not just to save the city, not just to save the village, not even just to save many of the select innocents that would be affected that she might care about. All of that mattered to her, certainly, but what mattered as well was that she hoped to save all three of them from her own mistake. It had taken a second life to give her the opportunity to correct such a mistake, but she certainly had to find a way.

If Riyxia had retained any of Khyzae’s memories, she would have been aware that such had been the plan all along. Khyzae had not just died, she had carefully calculated the style of her death to allow her the opportunity to return, as impossible as that might have seemed to anyone. It was that moment of calculation of life and death that had drawn Riyxia’s essence to Khyzae in the first place, a death that might not have been so unlike her own original end, in another world. But essences carry feelings, not memories, so none of them actually knew the tale of their lives in another world, she didn’t even have memories of her previous life in this world. This chance at life again was a second chance for both sides of her, even if it was almost just a form of borrowed time. An Ersatz was not actually an authentic living creature, after all, such a body wasn’t even capable of reproducing. This is why she was the only one not aging either; she would keep her appearance her entire life, only to die when the parts of her construction finally failed on her permanently. In death, Khyzae would be lost forever, but Riyxia would then face a similar fate. The two parts of her were bound that completely, for death leaves nothing but the essence, and an essence has no memories. Without her Ersatz, Riyxia would again lose the memories of her life, and return to face death once again.

For now, Riyxia felt it was time to head back and present her findings to the others. They still had to figure out several particulars in what they plan to do going forward, and she expected the others would have probably made unexpected discoveries of their own with this opportunity. A huge concern that remained an immediate problem was how much everyone remained afraid of them. Her discovery involving water was a huge step towards resolving such worries, even if it just countered fear with fear. Somehow turning their bedroom into a pool with beds would do wonders for reducing any threat of fires, but she doubted any of them would be capable of sleeping in such a setting. If required, this spot by the river wasn’t actually that bad. Most of the people avoided it because they feared the beasts, but the beasts actually had a rough time working with the cliff too, this location was generally scary for anyone. The edges bordering between such extreme factors, it was seeming all too perfect of a place for her. A haunting shadow below the cliffs, beside a waterflow.. their natural enemy. To find comfort in such despair itself seemed broken. However, by this point, she was well aware just how strange she actually was, and that was something she had completely come to terms with. All that mattered was to find an efficient way to make the most of her circumstances, so that she could help the people that mattered to her.

Riyxia pounced swiftly up the cliff with little effort, dusting herself off once back at the top. She wasn’t exactly certain where the other two might have been, but was generally certain that she would run into both of them right as she returned.