…

…

"Galea, are you still there?"

"I'm still here, Mistress."

…

…

"I'm so tired."

"I know, Mistress, but you must stay awake."

…

"I know. How long has it been now? No, don't tell me."

"You are doing so good, Mistress. Just a little longer now, I'm sure."

…

"I think…I think I'm going to die here."

"You won't."

"It's so hard to stay awake."

"Pull away from it, Mistress, pull away from the pain."

…

"How?"

"Give up on the world, Mistress. You know where it is safe."

She is right. My body stirs, though the numbness spreading through my limbs makes the movement barely noticeable. My wings creak with every slight movement, their metal fibers so riven by newborn swords that they stick in place and hold me floating within my coffin without issue. Every creak of the straining metal scales attached to my back sends waves of distortion through the blood around me, my blood, born from the trickling wound in my leg, unable to close. My world of darkness is replaced by a sea of red whenever I open my eyes, the plume of flame in my hands still somehow delivering me air through the crimson and lighting my tomb.

But, as Galea recommends, I pull my attention back, move it far away and deeper into myself, to a place where pain does not exist on the physical level. I float in the void before my soul once more, mesmerized by the ever-shifting motion of the concentric shapes. Now that I know to look for it, I notice the bolts of lightning that happen on the rare occasions when the rune-inscribed faces align perfectly. There is a pattern to the motions I have come to learn after watching the movements for at least a day straight, but its rules still elude me.

That, however, is not the puzzle I have investigated for however long I have been stuck here. The soul and the cage housing it seem to shrink in my sight, moving away from me to become the wrong-sided heart to an outline of my body formed from three sets of wire-like pathways. I have found them all now: mana, healing, and finally stamina. Each of the vital energies that power my body and soul stands woefully drained, my life sustained by the simple power of my vastly oversized recovery attribute.

Still, it seems the extent to which I can take myself has neared its limit. My mana is so exhausted by my constant combat against the magic crushing in on me that I can see the individual motes moving through the pathways, flickering blue lights that appear mere seconds before being expended. The other pathways aren't much better. My healing energies have kept me sustained so far, but I can feel that reaching an end as well. My stamina is in an even worse shape; the sensation of being impaled is not enough to keep my body from wanting to collapse whenever I pay too much attention to it.

Something needs to change, and I know what it is.

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The pathways join together, I can see that now. Overlapping one another, I can see points where they should touch, should connect, but they don't. There is a malleability to them as well. Days spent on edge, my full concentration split between cycling the energies stored inside of them and fighting off deadly magic closing in on me has shown that. The pathways are more defined, the energy flowing through them easier and faster. Their definition stands out, and now I think I can see their fullness, or at least enough of it to try something.

Because, while the pathways show that energy should be flowing between them, only to be blocked at the points of connection, a similar thing is happening at where they move toward my soul. That my soul is the source of all their power is not a great surprise, but that the connection to it is imperfect is. As the pathways wind through my body, reaching for the housing surrounding my soul, they spread out like the digging roots of a tree, attaching to the soul cage in a way only a living thing can.

But the connection can be better, so much better. The soul cage is an artificial piece in this, a filigreed sphere of precious metal helping to pull the pathways toward their source of power. I think I can do better. No, I know that I can, and a part of me is certain that doing so is part of what a magician is meant to do when ascending to the third rank. That an individual would remake their body to be more in line with their souls has been something I have known for some time, but the last few days have shown me that connecting the soul with these pathways themselves must be a vital part of that.

My issue comes in the fact that I have not accrued enough power, enough reinforcement of my soul to make the leap to the third rank, not even close. I have heard what happens to magicians who have their soul cages damaged. Usually, they just die, but in cases where they survive, it is possible for the soul to flee back to the divine realm, leaving the magician crippled for life. To shatter my soul cage and try to connect the pathways before the proper time would not only be reckless, but practically suicidal.

However, what do I have to lose? Despite what Galea tells me, despite how much her encouragement has kept me sane, kept me alive, my hope for rescue is all but spent. No one is coming for me, if there is even someone left to come. I don't know who those people were who condemned me to this slow death, but I know that they are our enemies. I can't even summon the hate for them any longer. I'm so tired.

I hover before the slowly turning orb of my soul, watching as it spins inside its housing. If I fail, if my concentration falters for even a second, I will die. If breaking the soul cage knocks me unconscious, I will die. Even if nothing goes wrong, I might die anyway, there is no guarantee that success will mean anything else. All I know for certain is that I will fail at some point, and that I need to escape before that happens. If connecting my pathways to my soul directly is the way to get the power I need to start fighting back, then that is my hope. I am willing to risk my life on hope if it will allow me to escape this nightmare.

There is no ceremony or time to anticipate what it is I do. I am too tired for that. My mind reaches out, my consciousness delving into the three pathways standing before me, filling them with my awareness and will. Beyond the expanse of my soul, I feel the blades pressing in grow a fraction, a new addition over the past days pressing deeper into my back, cutting just past my spine, poking my stomach. The pain of the blades' advance sends a new shock through my mind, my brain screaming at me to stop whatever it is I am doing, to put all my focus into stopping what is killing me. Days of constant mental combat, straining with every fiber of my being against encroaching death, have hardened my will into tempered steel. I press on without faltering a step.

It is remarkably simple to shatter the soul cage, the right intention and whisper of power to the right spot unravels it as if these objects are made to be unravelled. A pulse ripples through the press of blood around me as the soul cage disintegrates in the realm of my internal perception, the blades grow another fraction of an inch, and a new lance of pain shakes through me, my body spasming against my commands. My soul, the beautiful marvel of concentric shapes, blinks in the same instant, shuddering in my internal realm, its light fading. Everything I have, all the accumulated strength of will I have built up, turns, moving away from the battle of magics for a brief instant, all my mental faculties devoted solely to slamming the roots of my energy pathways into my rapidly disappearing soul.

What happens next comes to me only afterward. My entire awareness turns white as death stabs down toward me. My will returns, pressing back against the blades reaching in at me, halting their advance. The swords strain and groan, trying desperately to be born, to fulfill their grim purpose, but I refuse to let them. Then, it comes, a rush of power so fast and hard that I almost lose my grip on the struggle.

Energy rushes through me, flowing like an ocean trying to run backward into a small tributary. It is so much that I can't even contain all of it, losing most of the initial rush through my pores, the power of my soul pouring out into the bath of my own blood around me, being absorbed by the crimson. Then, the energies calm, and I float inside my soul realm once more. All three pathways glow with power, the energy rushing through them slowly relaxing to the point that smoky power stops billowing out and being lost to the world around me.

My soul, those brilliant shapes, still remain, turning in front of my eyes, but now the outermost piece sits stationary, held in place by the roots of the three pathways spreading across its surface. The spinning within my soul seems almost to generate energy from its rotation, pushing the power into the pathways directly now, the flow far too much for the pathways to handle.

I risk my attention turning back to my body. My tiredness is banished, but the state of my body is worse than ever. The blade that had only managed to stab halfway through my back before now protrudes an inch from my stomach. Three more of the weapons have finally reached me as well, digging shallowly into my skin just far enough to cut. If I took my attention away from the press of blades for a split second longer, I would be dead now.

Galea floats in front of me, hovering in my soul realms, a smile on her face.

"It worked," I say to her. "It actually worked."

"That isn't all," Galea says, her claws moving apart to allow a window to appear between them.

THRESHOLD FOR SOUL REINFORCEMENT REACHED!

Scoffing at the sign in this disconnected space is a strange sensation. Arabella told me that some were able to reinforce their soul through simple meditation. It's just too bad that it took me being trapped in a death trap for days on end and risking my life to accomplish what those geniuses can. No, use getting hung up on that, though.

"Allocate all my free points into Recovery," I tell Galea before turning my attention back to the pathways. They needed to be strengthened, and not by a little if I wanted to be able to handle all the power my soul was capable of delivering to them. "We have a lot more work to do."

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