Eventually, after an amount of time I didn’t really keep track of, Cass let go of me. We split apart. I was left leaning against the bed frame, sitting on the floor.

  There were more aspects of my growth to change, but as I looked at Cass, something in my vision sputtered. As I focused again, the [Budding Nova] of my talent reignited, and I saw it bloom within her.

  A star.

  I smiled faintly at that, too. Not that I needed to tell her, she could see it through my eyes. That was lovely, though. A future. Potential for growth, all on her own. With that, even just a single star, it meant Cass was her own person.

  Perhaps, some day, she could dig her own wellspring, make her own body. Not need me anymore. Then she’d have the freedom to choose to be with me. I had the responsibility to make sure she wanted to, then.

  Letting that thought linger for a moment, I eventually let it fade. I took a long breath in, then out, and focused on the inheritance Orvan had left me.

  Within my wellspring - however he’d gotten it there - sat a small puck of mana, a little bigger than an average coin. It was absolutely packed with mana, runes and enchantments. A tiny little masterwork, documenting an entire lifetime of experience and practice and success.

  Orvan had not left me magical items. He had not left me grand libraries, towers, or anything like that. What he had left me was techniques. Ideas and knowledge on how to forge oneself.

  How to make new talents appear from nothing. The most effective ways to manipute mana. Growing your wellspring faster, making it output more power. Turning it into a churning vortex to draw in more power, having it constantly course through you at all hours to get your meridians accustomed to vast power flowing through them.

  A whole library of brutal shaping exercises to practice fine control and raw output. It was a treasure trove of insights and knowledge, and philosophy, too. A structured guide to ascending from the very bottom rungs of the dder all the way to the top.

  And finally, beneath all that knowledge was the compressed mana. A token made to assist in breakthroughs. I was on the seventh step of the wellspring realm. My next increase would take me to a higher realm, beyond wellspring. The fifth step on a seven step journey to ascension.

  By now, I was genuinely unsure whether the divines were in the sixth or seventh realm. Orvan had been in the fifth, and I was rather sure that my master had been in that one, too. Well. Nothing to it but get there myself… and find out, no?

  Then I let out a long suffering sigh. I got up from the dent I left in someone else’s bedframe, and dragged myself back to my own. I sat down. “Hey, Cass. You ever felt what a bed is like?”

  “Not with my own skin, no.”

  I smiled, and patted the coverings next to me. “Well. This one’s kinda crap, but I’m not exactly using it right now, so…”

  In an instant, she threw herself onto the sheets. She had to shuffle a little until I’d pulled the bnket out from under her, and covered her with it. “Cozy?” I asked.

  “Yes, Bell.”

  “That’s good,” I nodded, smiling. Then there was a silence. I reached out, patting Cass’ head, fighting to keep the faint smile on my lips. It fought back just as hard.

  Of course, it was a losing fight, and eventually, my smile faded, and my face sunk into neutrality. Despite that, I remained seated on the bed with Cass, letting my hand rest on her head. Her eyes were closed. That didn’t exactly mean much, since she could see through my eyes still, but well. The gesture is what mattered.

  Staring at the wooden ceiling I found myself with a simple thought. I kinda really wanted to go home. Really, really… home.

  Then the door to the barracks opened and Matt walked in. Covered in blood.

  He was more filthy than I had ever seen him. Red stained his robes, his hair gummed up with it, too. He smelled of plums and iron. A few seconds passed before he turned to face me and for a second I shivered.

  There was a brief moment when Matt had that look he had during a fight, but it was even more intense, even sharper now. His killing intent had been sharpened into a bde. There was a fire in his eyes that told of steel and fshes of metal and brutal butchery-

  And like a fleeting springtime memory, all of that vanished. Matt’s eyes lightened and he threw me a smile. “Heya Fio. You’re up again, I’m gd to see that.”

  “Matt,” I nodded at him. “Chris filled me in. I’m… gd you’re around.”

  He grinned, more genuinely than his smile, and patted my shoulder. “Wouldn’t leave you alone. You need the company, and deserve it, too.”

  “Who’s all still on this side?” I asked, quietly.

  “Well, Chris, of course. They can’t exactly go to the other side, after all. Then, Reya. She considered going with Liam, but decided to stay here. In fact…” he paused and stepped aside to let the mute healer walk in from behind him.

  She, too, was covered in blood. Despite the grizzly state she was in, she carelessly rolled her eyes at Matt, as if calling him out for having made her wait outside for so long. Chris, who had left to work on their shells while I was checking my Gift, was called in to use some water and rinse the blood off her.

  Still dripping wet, she flopped onto her sheets, closing her eyes, and breathing slowly.

  Finally, Matt continued. “Me as well, of course. And you. That’s all.”

  I nodded, silently.

  “Marie is on the other side,” he expined, more to keep talking so I had something to focus on. “She should have gotten some texts about the whole situation and be on her way to help by now. Emilia and Liam, of course, who went back to deal with stuff. And then there’s Eric. I think they told him by now. No way to really know.”

  He shrugged slightly, ying his sword on his shoulder. He hadn’t sheathed or drawn it. I just hadn’t noticed it in his hand until now. How strange.

  “What’s our next move?” I asked, quietly.

  Matt smirked. “What? I’m not your boss, Fio,” he said, casually. “I know what I’ll do. I’ll catch two hours or so of sleep… then I’ll go out there and fight some more. In fact, I’m in quite a mind to go hunting for some gateway holders. Catch,” he said.

  A moment ter, a sphere of white impacted me and sunk into my flesh, and I felt my fragments tick up by just one. It reminded me to check my system tab for my gateway, too.

  [Gateway:

  Strength: 46

  Fragments: 50

  Figments: 6]

  Four points. Four measly points of strength, that was what separated me from Ann. I would take hold of them. My fragments had exceeded fifty with Matt’s test gift, and I felt the change. A threshold being crossed.

  Something about my gateway had changed profoundly, and it was simply no longer the same as before. It was more solidly established in the astral, with a stronger connection. I could now bring twenty-five people into my transference network, but I didn’t even know where to get that many people from.

  Perhaps Saith? Something to consider. I breathed out through my nose, enjoying the new sensation.

  Then, I tried to feel how this power worked, and realized I saw an additional depth to reflective surfaces. Reaching out, I noticed I no longer would just step through reflections, but could now step into them.

  I had lost the dependency on a physical body entirely, now being able to exist solely inside a mirror. And, if I walked in that other world, I could step back out through another mirror. A mirror dimension? Was that my new power?

  How neat.

  Still, I focused on that one number I still needed to increase. “Four more,” I said, looking up at my friends. At Reya, Chris and Matt. “Four more bits of power, and I’ll go to the other side again.”

  Matt nodded. “Cool. Give me two hours to crash, and I’ll get ‘em for you.”

  “Not if I do so first,” Chris said, stretching their shell. “I feel rather ready to take the field.”

  “Damn staggered times,” Matt frowned, but nodded anyway. “Where’s Iryel, anyway?”

  “Administrative work,” Cass supplied, eyes still closed. “An archmage died. A new one has to be decided to take his pce, and there aren’t exactly any stelr candidates. This is also a rge loss for the divines, so they are scrambling to anoint new champions.”

  Reya’s hands flitted through a few half hearted sigils. None of us knew sign nguage-

  “She’s saying that the damn divines are making us clean up while they’re distracted again,” Chris transted. I looked at the triz-adu. When did they have time to learn sign nguage?

  Noticing my stare, they smiled that unsettling smile. “Triz-adu are quite adept at picking up new things. It comes with the switching of shells.”

  “Right,” I nodded along. I felt the apathy slowly reach into my heart again and grimaced. “Hey, Matt?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Wake me in two hours. I think I wanna fight, too.”

  My eyes were already closed but I swear I could see a wolfish grin on his face. “Right, let’s fuck them up, right? Won’t even know what hit ‘em.”

  “Sure, yea. Let’s… let’s do that.”

  - - - - - -

  Annabelle Bellefmme stumbled out of a mirror, and instantly fell to her knees and threw up. Horrid bile burned its way up her throat and emptied itself all over the abandoned, cracked tiles. The mirror behind her promptly shattered, showering her in broken gss, and leaving a few tiny cuts.

  Then she doubled over again, clutching at her heart. It was beating so fast it hurt. Everything hurt. Her heart burned, her chest burned, her lungs burned, she felt like her entire being was lit up. A thousand ants crawling over every inch of her skin.

  It was like being stabbed and set of fire and having one's heart broken all at once - and it took her a few minutes of steady breathing until her racing heart calmed down.

  When she tried to, for the first time since waking up, take a deep breath, her lungs were filled with acrid, horrible air and she unched into a coughing fit. What the fuck was wrong with the air…? It was barely breathable. Full of horrid smog, smelling of long burnt fires and soot.

  Was the air always this horrible?

  Ann looked at the floor she kneeled on. Cracked tile. The walls of the building she found herself in were old and chipped, run down and broken. She- she knew where she was. She’d been here before, when she…

  A splitting headache took root in her head, and she retched again, curling into a ball on the filthy floor. The hurt came crashing back in, waves upon waves of unfamiliar emotions. Broken bits of feeling, of hurt. She remembered, she forgot, she-

  She forgot.

  One breath, she remembered it all, and the next, all those memories were ripped out of her head, as if by a brutal hand. Now, they had been gone before. Who took them? Fshes of white passed in front of her eyes when she tried to recall that.

  Who was she? Ann? That was- that was what they had called her. The ones she remembered.

  There was so little. How had she lived like this?! Disgust rolled in her stomach as more feelings assaulted her.

  Ann remembered just about three or four days of her life. Bright, vivid, gorgeous memories. Of stepping out of that mirror in this stinking, disgusting, broken down hovel. Of pulling a phone out of her pocket, fiddling with unfamiliar buttons. Of finding a message, from those people.

  The people she remembered.

  There were seven of them. Reya and Eric. Liam and Emilia. Matt and Marie. And then… Fio.

  She remembered them. For the four days of her life, those people had been her entire world.

  She smmed her hand into the decaying tile, cracking it further, shards of gss digging painfully into her fists. Waves of emotions crashed into her again, unfamiliar, sourceless emotions flooded her.

  Three days. That was how long she had apparently known these people, yet they were all so familiar. Like years spent with them, just out of reach, just at her fingertips - and when she went digging for it there was nothing. Bnk space, white fshes in her eyes and searing pain in her head.

  Ann curled up into a ball, next to shards of gss and stomach bile and sobbed. She sobbed and sobbed for hours. She remembered it all so clearly. The ugh, the smiles, the hugs, and the fear. She was afraid of her secret getting out and now she didn’t even remember the secret!

  Instead she was back, all alone, in this broken, disgusting hovel. She screamed in rage and pain and frustration and fear. With desperation as her whole world slipped away from her, sliding like sand through the gaps in her fingers. She screamed until her throat was hoarse from the smog.

  No one heard.

  The floor was cold and uncaring. The st vestiges of winter were long gone, but in a pace like this? The cold stuck around ruthlessly. It dug into her open wounds, red dripping onto the cold tile.

  And eventually, Ann’s tears ran dry. She was drained of everything. All that was left was a horrid desire, a vast emptiness begging to be filled. She dug her fingernails into the floor, pushing herself up, mirror dust trickling from her clothes.

  Behind her, the mirror had broken. The gss exploded away, leaving shards of it lodged in the frame, and a wooden backdrop. She touched her fingertips against that wood, ran it over the edges of the gss, cutting them and letting more crimson drizzle down the gss, covering her miserable visage.

  Then she smashed a hole into the wood, too.

  Ann screamed again. Of loss and misery and all the things she knew she loved that were now gone.

  She screamed because she was alone, because she was lost and because she knew there was something she once had. Everything in the world she cared about suddenly gone except for those three days, so much care for these people she could hardly remember.

  And Fio. Her girlfriend. She had come here to date her, come into this disgusting pce of horrid stench and creeping cold to meet her beloved. She remembered their days together, her smell, her warmth, all the love she felt at her sight. The way she got lost in her eyes, how she loved pying with her hair, how she ughed, how she smiled-

  Then, stinging white hot pain behind her eyelids.

  Ann’s knees buckled and she fell to the floor again, scraping her jeans open on the gss. Misery. There should have been a hundred more memories, of kisses, of touch, and of love, and yet she was robbed of them. Who the fuck took them?

  Her feeling roiled, fear and despair and rage all into one big ball of loss and hurt. She wanted more. She wanted it all back. Ann cwed at the wooden backside of the mirror until her fingertips began bleeding more. She smeared streaks of red against the wood.

  “Come on,” she whispered. “Come on. Please. Give it back. Give it back! Give it back!!”

  Feebly, she cwed at the wood, until eventually, surrounded by bile and dirt and broken dreams and shattered memories, she fell asleep. On an uncaring, cold floor.

  It was, without a doubt, the worst day of her life. Ann held that thought brutally in her mind.

  Because this one was the worst, tomorrow would be better.

  Then, darkness repced white pain, and the world faded briefly.