The pair walked through the Leltialian countryside at a brisk pace. It had been three days since White had over for Andromeda, so White’s poorly understood field of mending had remained the whole time. Besides keeping their equipment and body’s in perfect shape, it had an apparent effect on their physical abilities. They could go at full speed with all their things for hours without rest. White herself never found the need to sleep at all, while Eli only needed to rest for an hour at most. White reasoned that exhaustion is just a form of damage, so her field mended it before it could build up.

As a result they went the same distance in a day that took them two before. Which meant they were coming up on the border between Leltial and Skysea Adalay. Despite having the energy to keep going, Eli had White wait and they made camp for the day. Instead of parking themselves in the brush for the umpteenth time, they happened upon a guard station that looked abandoned.

Eli and Andromeda found a few, but the majority of them were too worn down and rotten to sleep for the night. The few exceptions were in good shape and occupied for their intended purpose. This was the only one they found since White came out.

The station was in modestly good shape, but the majority of the work was being done by the field of mending White had around her. Within minutes the shack that made up the majority of the outpost was fully repaired.

Eli sat up a few chairs that were laying stacked against a wall next to a newly repaired table and they sat down. While White’s field had a small effect on their hunger, they still needed to eat about once a day. This was one of the few times he actually took the time out to try and set up the rations to be eaten, rather than just snacking on the way.

White was still standing in the doorway, curious as to why he was setting things up. He waved her over and she warily sat down in the chair opposite to him.

This was something Eli had been dealing with for days. White barely spoke, and when she did it was for practical reasons. Warnings, observations on the weather, and other things. In terms of actual conversation it was like talking to a brick wall with social issues.

Eli sat them down to try and get a better read on her, Andromeda, and the situation as a whole. His guild taught him a lesson very early, and that was to always look for intel where you can.

“What’s this about?” White asked. Her voice was colder than Andromeda’s. Less personal and almost monotonous. There was no real spirit behind her words.

“I just wanted to talk.” Eli said.

“We could talk while we travel, why stop here?” White said. Eli sat back in his chair and pulled out a piece of bread from one of the rations.

“We won’t get distracted by anything in here. I just want to know a few things and don’t want to risk getting jumped by bandits again.” Eli said. One trick he learned in dealing with her is that she won’t put up much of a fuss if you explain yourself. Even if the reasoning is flimsy.

“Fine.” White said. She reached for a red flask that contained a soup of some kind. The flask was enchanted to heat up when shaken so the soup was warm enough to eat within seconds.

“So, I heard a little bit about it a few days ago, but can you tell me more about you and Andromeda?” Eli said.

“Like what?” White said.

“Anything that comes to mind, I’ve heard a bit about mages. But I don’t think I’ve heard about them suddenly looking like Medea out of nowhere.” Eli said. White took a short sip of the soup and wiped her mouth.

“I don’t know, my first memories are of a woman named Rapture calling me sister. She was an Arch Mage as well, and she somehow made me. We just share memories, but we don’t know what I am, we only know that I am not the same as Andromeda. ” She said.

“You’ve said that a few times, but what does that mean exactly? I wouldn’t have assumed you were the same person just by looking at you, let alone how you act.” He said. This seemed to confuse her.

“What do you mean?” She said. This marked the first time she asked him a question since she first appeared.

“Well, I mean, you two act entirely differently. When Andromeda was around it always seemed like she was holding something back when she spoke. You just speak. No deeper thinking, you just say what you are thinking.” He said. This confused her further.

“Do I?” She asked. Eli internally groaned about how little she was expressing herself.

“Alright, let me try something. Do you know how you got these mage's clothes? They look ridiculously expensive.” Eli asked.

“Andromeda had them made for her by Headmaster Plact. She wanted them so if things went poorly we wouldn’t be left with nothing again.” White said. The words just flowed out of her mouth, she wasn’t thinking, she was just saying what was in her mind.

“That’s the difference.” Eli said.

“What?” White said. Eli could see for the first time that he had genuinely hit on something. She wasn’t confused, she was thinking.

“I asked Andromeda the same question a few days ago, she didn’t want to share.” Eli said. The gears started turning in White head, then she gasped and looked at Eli in shock.

“You did! But why?” She asked.

“You share memories, but it's not as if you have the same memories. There is Andromeda, You, and your shared memories. If you two were really the same then you would answer the questions the same way.” Eli said.

There wasn’t really a point in his prying, he didn’t have a goal in making her think about this at least, but it was something he wanted to understand.

…

Something that Eli wanted to understand. Eli shook his head to clear his thoughts. Though the fog in his mind had receded, it wasn’t gone.

“I guess that makes sense.” White said.

“I don’t know what kind of relationship you and Andromeda have. But if you two share memories like that then you’re partners. Don’t get hung up on who or what you are, just do what you can to support each other.” Eli said.

He couldn’t take the credit for the advice, it was something he was taught very early on when he started working at the guild. Everyone was part of a team, so it was just as important to know where you stood in the team dynamic as it was to be effective by yourself.

“I… I think I’ll do that.” White said.

Then her expression changed, she looked like she was deep in thought. Her eyes went wide and she looked at Eli with an incredulous expression.

“I heard her!” White said.

-----

They spent the better part of the next hour making out sparse conversation with Andromeda through White. From Andromeda’s perspective she suddenly blacked out and woke up sitting in a chair in their shared headspace. White clarified that she was sitting in a chair before waking up on the ground days before.

It seemed that time was flowing differently in the headspace once Andromeda found herself there. To her only a few hours passed since she woke up there, while it had been days for them outside.

Eventually White fell silent because the internal conversation between her and Andromeda was moving too quickly to keep Eli up to date. But every few minutes she would give him the gist.

Andromeda claimed to keep seeing moving figures in the headspace. When she first woke up it was only a few barely visible shadows off in the middle distance of the void, but as time went on the shadows got closer and braver. She hadn’t come to blows with any of them yet, but she was worried she might.

To potentially buy herself some time, she went to great lengths to imagine a sun in the void above. It seemed to delay the approach of the shadows, but it didn’t give her much confidence.

All the while, Eli was hearing this and felt an uncomfortable fall over him. It was like a headache without the ache, his head just seemed heavy and dense. He tried to listen to what White was saying, but after a while the words started going weird on him.

He could tell that something was…

Something was…

Wrong.

Then it all came back to him.

Eli stood suddenly and pushed his way out of the guard post. He could feel the pull of whatever was in his head get weaker and less pressing.

He could hear White step out of the guard post behind him, he could hear her speak but couldn’t parse the words.

“Stay back!” He said. The effort of forming words made his head resound like a bell. But the farther he got away from White the less the feeling pressed against him. He sat there for what felt like hours. The rain passed in and out while he struggled to keep a hold on his sanity.

The worst part was that it wasn’t painful, it wasn’t even unpleasant. It was like there was a veil of warmth wrapped around him, begging him to just lay down and rest. But he knew deep down in his bones that it wasn’t natural.

He remembered the feeling from before. It was a whisper of sweet nothings, it was a careless and caring voice that promised him the world to follow its orders. Eventually the feeling grew weak enough that he tried to stand up, but having gotten out of range of White’s restorative field he lost the extra vitality he had. Just moving was an exercise in will.

Eli summoned the strength to get to his feet. He glanced back at the guard post and didn’t see White. Though his body was weak he walked back to the shack, waiting to feel the faint tingling feeling that accompanied White’s field to overcome him again. But it never did.

He made it back to the door and knocked, he heard someone yelp inside followed by a frantics scramble.

When the door opened, he didn’t see the piercing red eyes of White, he saw the glowing blue eyes of Andromeda. Despite not having the form of White anymore Andromeda went pale and put his arm over her shoulder.

If he looked half as bad as he felt then he must have looked like a mess. She clamored about him trying to see if he was hurt, but the only thing physically wrong with him was his filthy clothes and the shivering. He was soaked to the bone. Andromeda made short work of the wetness by using purification to remove the dirt and refuse.

Then she sat him down at the cot that was newly set up in the corner. Eli tried to tell her he was fine, but she refused to listen and insisted he sit down.

He laid there for hours, apparently much more exhausted than he believed. Andromeda occasionally brought him food when she heard his stomach rumble.

Finally, when he had recovered enough strength to sit back up by himself, he pointed a question at Andromeda.

-----

“What happened?” Eli said.

Andromeda remembered things happening very quickly.

In the middle of a conversation with White she was suddenly attacked by one of the shadows. It took on a form vaguely similar to a wolf, but because they were in her mental space she imagined blocked the shadow beast from getting to her with an invisible wall.

More shadow beasts surrounded her until she was boxed in on all sides, the beasts snarled at the invisible wall and tried their hardest to get to her. She tried countless times to imagine them away, and while they would explode into dark clouds of smoke, they would reform in time.

Suddenly, one of the beasts began to shake and spasm. The rest of them followed shortly after and they all started to dissolve into a inky black puddle of shadows on the ground.

From the inky blackness formed a new figure made from the liquid darkness. Once it stopped forming it stood two heads taller than her and twice as wide.

She tried to dispel the figure using her imagination. But it was unaffected, it reached an inky black hand toward her through the invisible. Then she blinked and found herself in the shack. A few minutes later she heard from White that she managed to get a hold of the creature and that it was under control.

White couldn’t explain how she swapped them back, the only words she could apply to it were: “When it felt right.”

She relayed all this to Eli. When he heard the description of the dark creature in her mind, he felt fear grip his heart.

The whisper in his heart gripped him.