My guts twist up inside my abdomen when I slow my perception of time to try and sense the ‘shift’ of space and time that warps me from this place and into another. Yet, for all my education, experiences that I’ve earned and experiences that I’ve stolen, none of it makes sense to me.

One moment I’m with Red and Adler in the command room of our fancy new ship, and the next I’m in a strange new place.

Somewhere dark this time.

There’s not a single pinprick of light in the world around me, not a single spark of warmth. Vii is with me, though I only know it for the Skill that tells me as such. I float nearer to her, while Arduelle summons a light to betray the darkness.

A bright white orb comes to life at the old dungeon’s fingertips, cutting away the shadows that would cling to this world. Magic wars against magic, the shadows at war with the light, but it lasts only a few moments before the light wins out.

Yet, I can see little more for the change.

The room is smaller than I was expecting, spherical in shape and largely made up of rough white stone. It’s not the perfectly smooth stone that you’d usually want to build out of, rather it’s run through with tiny tunnels as if worm-ridden.

“Rick, it’s time for our meeting,” Arduelle says, expressing impatience with subtle inflection. She waits patiently for the reply, knowing that no one would dare disrespect her so much as to ignore her.

Vii floats close to me as we wait for this Rick character to find the guts to speak.

A distant whisper flows through the stone, a tremble in the air so very slight that I’d usually not hear it at all if I couldn’t feel the mass of mana driving it. If ever I forgot, this would be a moment to remember that a dungeon exists as a being beyond our scale.

Mana flows in curated currents as the dungeon itself reshapes its mana form to create the words that we hear.

“You intrude upon me again? I already gave you permission to do what you want with the outer caverns,” Rick says, his whispers the grumble of an old man pulled from his bed early in the morning.

“I’m introducing you to my apprentice,” Arduelle says. “If she’s harmed because of you, I will tear you apart, stone by stone.”

“I’m not going to mess with your toy,” he grumbles. “Now, leave me to rest.”

“You’re just going to lie here until it’s your turn to be made into dust, aren’t you?” Arduelle says. “Fine, it’s not my business anyway.”

She turns to Vii and I, her expression harder than I’ve ever seen before. There are genuine emotions hidden beneath the surface, but I have the experience to know that I have no chance of actually reading her. Not when she’s so much more powerful and advanced than I am.

If she wants to keep something a secret, then I’ll never hear a whisper of it.

“Feel free to take what you want from this dungeon, hell forge some nice heavy pickaxes and hack up Rick himself. It seems like he doesn’t mind if he dies or not,” she says, clearly intending for him to overhear.

I harden my expression and keep myself from fiddling awkwardly with my shirt. There’s no reason to show her how awkward she’s making things.

We hang around for a few moments longer, but Rick doesn’t seem interested in responding to Arduelle’s prodding.

“Are we done here, then?” I ask, looking about the room. If I were to guess, Rick has gone back to sleep. I half expect to see some empty liquor bottles scattered about the place, but I’m not sure there’s any alcohol alternative potent enough to get a dungeon to pass out.

“I’ll take you back,” she says, reaching out for me.

“Wait!” I shout. “Take us to Eshya.”

“Fine,” Arduelle says, shaking her head and placing a hand on my shoulder to take us away.

Without even a loading screen we’re dumped onto our bed, Arduelle nowhere to be seen. Nel leaps to her feet and even Eshya is shaken awake by our sudden arrival. Looking around the room as if looking for threats.

Her hand reaches down for a sword that isn’t there, and even as she looks at Vii and I she doesn’t seem to calm down. She continues scanning the room before returning her gaze to us.

“Who are you?” Eshya asks, leaning away from us. She holds a hand to her head, as her confusion takes over, crawling back to the headboard, shivering.

“Eshya, it’s okay. Everything’s okay,” I say.

It’s not.

It’s not okay.

The thoughts that I can feel in her mind are a swirling mess that I can’t fully attach to. To make everything worse, I’m sure that there’s something else in there interfering with her thoughts.

“Eshya?”

“Kyra?” She asks, the words strangely cold on her lips.

“You remember me?” I ask.

“Vii,” she says, looking at her. “Nel. Give me a moment.”

She closes her eyes and draws herself back, wrapping both arms around her legs and closing herself off from us. The thoughts I can feel from her don’t make any sense, it’s like she’s talking to herself in her own mind, or reading off of a cheat sheet.

“Okay,” she says, adapting quickly. It brings a smile to my lips to know that she’s still the same person she’s ever been. “What happened to me?”

“Ah, that’s…” I hesitate to continue, the images that come to mind are enough to make me shudder. I don’t want to talk about it but…

“You were injured,” Nel says, sitting by her side and resting a hand out, near enough to reach without getting too far into her space. “It was bad enough that your entire mind had to be regenerated from parts. It’s possible that the support device was similarly damaged as well.”

“So my head was…” she pales, her hands reaching up to her face. “I was healed? I deserve healing…? No, this isn’t… this isn’t the Unified States. I’m a rebel?”

“Eshya?”

“Sorry, sorry. This must be hard on you.” Eshya says, resting back onto the bed and regathering her composure. All the tenseness that had taken her over before is as if a dream when she turns a smile my way.

“It’s harder on you,” I say, Vii nodding while clinging to my side. Her eyes are watering as she looks at Eshya, who smirks at us and waves us closer.

Vii is faster, leaping on her and wrapping her up in a ball of feathers. Eshya laughs joyously at the affection even with her confusion, it’s not quite the same response as she’d have before the incident, but it’s still her.

I crawl up beside the pair, pushing my hand into hers and leaning on her side just to feel the warmth of her skin and the faint beating of her heart. Improved senses are good for more than just battlefield reconnaissance.

“There was an incident a while ago,” Eshya says. “Something happened to my skills and my head. It messed with me, I can’t… wait… the fight with Gale! That asshole! Please tell me he’s dead.”

“Sort of, but not really,” I admit. “He’s a high-ranking welfare officer now. Which means he’s suffering, at least.”

Life as a high-ranking welfare officer is as good as death. Working like a robot to act out a set of rules without any free thought of your own. I’d rather just have a lobotomy.

“Well, I’m sure you’re curious. After that fight, I was worried about my mind. What would have happened if it had done any more damage than it did, so I started to record my memories into a Skill. Good news, it worked.” She laughs, but it’s not nearly so relieved for the supposed good news that she’s giving us.

“What’s wrong?” Vii asks, sitting on her lap and staring into her eyes. “There’s something wrong, I’ve heard of healing for things like this and there’s always a few months or years before the person is better again. That’s with proper well-developed Skills and healing, not whatever you cooked up while you were swinging your sword around. What’s wrong?”

“Well, not wrong exactly…” Eshya says, looking into the distance. “I mean, let’s just get on with life, right? It’s fine, really.”

“Eshya?” Nel asks. “You aren’t fine. We’ll deal with this together. Now stop coming up with silly ideas and tell us what’s wrong so we can make a plan to fix it.”

“Right…” Eshya grumbles staring between us, but she looks away again so quickly. My heart pounds out a nervous beat as I wait for the next words out of her mouth.

“I have all the memories, and it’ll take a while to get through them. It’s like they’re stuck a little and I need to force them out,” That’s not the issue, she pauses for a moment before finally speaking again. “I don’t quite feel like they’re my memories…”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Well, you’re all very cute and beautiful, and probably wonderful people but… it feels like you’re strangers.”

I don’t know what to say.

I don’t even know what to feel.

My heart crushes down in my chest, and sweat forms on my brow but I can’t find any words to force through my mouth.

“Oh, that’s all,” Vii says, slumping down onto Eshya with a relieved smile on her lips. She even laughs.

She laughs.

Nel turns to me in confusion, but I haven’t got any answers for her.

“Come on, you guys don’t think you can get Eshya to fall in love all over again?” Vii asks, sitting back with a smile so wide that it almost feels predatory. “She’s a big softy, give her a little attention and she’ll be clinging to us like nothing’s changed.”

“That’s…” That’s not how I remember Eshya being. She’s affectionate for sure, and she’s passionate. She has a good heart and she’s loyal to a point, but I wouldn’t describe her quite like that.

“I’ll bet she’s already feeling all fluttery right now,” Vii says, pointing a clawed finger at Eshya’s chest. “There are butterflies stirring all around inside, isn’t there? Isn’t there?”

“I mean, they are more down here,” Eshya says, moving Vii’s finger down to her belly. “I guess I am kind of simple.”

It takes a few moments for my heart to catch up to my mind and for her words to fully sink in. Eshya is still Eshya.

She’s still who she was, and she has all of her memories, even if they’re a little constipated at the moment. Everything is still fine, just a little different to what it was.

“Well, you’re going to have to hold onto that simplicity of yours for a few hours,” I say, pretending to be fine. “We have a feast to attend to and our people need to know that we care about them, because we do.”

“Simplicity? Our people?”

“I’m telling you to keep your panties dry until we’re done with our responsibilities,” I tell her straight. “There’ll be plenty of time during the feasting to get reacquainted with one another properly, and after… we’ll see where it goes.”

Eshya splutters, her cheeks turning bright Red as her eyes drift off to distant scenes, no doubt dirty memories. I snort back a laugh, but Nel looks just as concerned as before.

I’m not without the same worries, but seeing that our battle elf is still the same person she was, even if a little lost

It’s enough.

It’s as Vii said to me a while ago.

We’ll fall in love, argue and have our issues, we’ll struggle and fight, then fall in love all over again. This is just a chance to get to know her once more. She isn’t gone, and she isn’t going anywhere on us.

“I thought it would be a little more romantic…” Eshya says scratching at her cheek, still staring off into the distance.

“Romantic?” I ask, thinking for a moment. “Should I go and rip the heads off of a bunch of rose people, and deliver them to you in a bouquet?”

“Kyra, technically you’d be ripping off their genitals, not their heads. Though for some species that is the same thing.” Nel corrects me, keeping a calm disposition throughout.

Eshya giggles at the conversation, falling on her side as she loses breath. I mean, I didn’t think it was quite that funny, but if it makes her happy, then I’m happy too.

After she’s had some time to recover herself, I get back to business.

“Let’s get dressed, Red and Adler will be bringing shiploads of people down with some food that we’ve put together. Nel, can you get us prepared for a city-wide feast, and a few shiploads of trauma patients?”

“I know a few people I can pass that on to,” she says, nodding and leaving only after pausing a few times to check on Eshya.

“Oi, Eshya, enough fantasising, there’s work to be done.”

“I’m sick, I don’t get any time to recover?” She asks, still blushing bright as she sits up in bed.

“You’re healthy enough to whine, then you’re healthy enough to escort Nel. You wouldn’t want her getting molested by some mugger while you’re laid up in bed, would you?”

She leaps up, nodding seriously as she meets eyes with Nel, quickly adjusting her clothes before tentatively strapping her sword back onto her hip. She carries herself with a naive eagerness that seems a little strange to see from her.

“It could’ve been worse,” Vii says when she’s gone. “I’ve heard stories. People who wake up completely different, like they’ve been swapped with another soul or something…”

“What can we do?”

“For Eshya?” Vii smiles, sinking into the bed, “We just have to be there for her while she remembers everything. She’s still the same person. I can feel it.”

“What if it happens again. We fight a lot of people.”

“We can help her make the Skill a bit better, set up backups in case the support device itself is damaged, and better than anything else, adapt. Grow to the point where our brains are meaningless flesh and our mana forms hold onto our memories and feelings.”

“Let’s put together a plan. It’s a bit much to achieve in one night, but one step at a time… I want us immortal, Vii. This was much too close.”

She nods firmly, staring through the wall towards Eshya as she stumbles trying to flirt with Nel who is a little too receptive to it. I’m sure they’ll be fine but I’ll keep an eye on them just in case something happens.

I can’t afford any mistakes, not in this.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Stats and Skills

~Mana Form:

Current mana density: 60,892 / 60,892 units

Current mana volume: 30,271 / 30,271 shards

Mana volume at crystallisation density (Max. mana volume):

Kyra: 30,271 shards

Kyra’s armour: 20,777 shards

Kyra’s throne: 1,109,298 shards

~Forms

Mana Canon

-Annihilation Heart (Adapted)

-Blood Fuel (Adapted)

-Bone Magic Storage (Adapted)

-Nail Shifters (Adapted)

Dancer

-Flash Nerves (Adapted)

-Quick Perception Mind (Adapted)

-Burst Reflex Muscles (Adapted)

-Layered Space Muscles (Adapted)

Turtle

-Rebinding Tissue (Adapted)

-Catalyst Sweat Glands (Adapted)

-Repulsive Skin (Adapted)

-Prehensile hair (Adapted)

-Fatty Tissue Blood Storage (Adapted)

Investigator

-Wide eyes (Adapted)

-Wide ears (Adapted)

-Sharp nose (Adapted)

Misc.

-Clean bowels (Adapted)

-Mana Drive (Adapted)

~Favourited Skills:

Magic:

-Annihilation Magic (Customised)

-Fire Magic (Functional)

-Space magic (Broken)

-Force magic (Functional)

-Ice magic (Broken)

-Wind magic (Broken)

Movement:

-Hand-to-hand casting (Functional)

-Mana surge movement (Functional)

-Stealth (Functional)

Senses:

-Eyes of an Empire (Customised)

-Combat Awareness (Functional)

-Watchmen (Functional)

-Hidden bug (Mastered)

-De-tagging (Mastered)

-Anti-stealth sight (Mastered)

Special:

-Spirit Transformation (Broken)

-Conformity (Broken)

-Training mana form (Functional)