I can practically hear it —a sharp, grinding noise, metal running over stone. The scrape is a long rasp that peels off into a tinny ring. Floating, suspended as much by the metallic wings on my back fixed into the iron of my encroaching coffin as I am by the three blades digging into my body, the ring of the imaginary noise is more real to me than anything else.

Motes of light spin through the veins that make up the construct before me in my mind, a representation of my own body that grows ever more distinct with each circulation. How many times have I watched the lights race along the network now? A thousand? A million?

This is all that I am; this is what I have been reduced to. Every other action brings pain, and every plan I can conjure gone to nothing. My hand hovers on the pump of these magical energies, working the lever, putting pressure on one pathway, then another, then the last. From the bottomless well of my soul, the pathways leech energy, but they are incapable of holding it all. The power leaks through the walls, becoming useless vapor that bleeds out of my pores only to be absorbed by my container. Still, I keep the power moving, flowing like a river, trying to grind down boulders with its passing. I don't think this is what everyone was talking about when they recommended meditating to help my energy circulation.

Time passes, the constant circulation of energy drawing in my attention. How long has it been, trapped down here?

A vision comes to me unbidden, bubbling up out of the fissure between my concentration on repelling the ever-encroaching blades and the monotonous effort of circulating my energies. I see an army of crawling things, monstrous spiders crawling across the orchard, snatching workers from the trees and taking them up into their webs. My family runs from the tide and from the cloaked individuals at the head of it, fear in their eyes. They don't make it far, chased down in only a few moments.

I float above it all, I always do in these waking nightmares, looking down as the place I called home most of my life is ripped apart by a tide of monsters. The screams are faint things, taken away by the wind whistling around me. Tears fall from my face, not for the dead and dying, but for me. I can almost feel the wind rushing over my skin as if it is a real thing; it brings with it a rush of cold. How long has it been since I have felt anything other than the warm caress of my own blood while I float in a coffin full of it?

Just feeling something different sweeps away the horror of the scene. I've seen it a thousand times over already. My mind, the evil part of my soul that conjures these waking nightmares, blends reality and dark imagination. I see Dovik's cousin, that strong-willed girl, smirking at a suit of rusted armor. Then she is gone, her head flopping down to the snow, her body tumbling after it, and it is that gray-eyed man standing over her body instead of the living armor. He is in front of me in the next moment, running me through with his weapon, driving me into the snow as he straddles my limp body, dull eyes staring down. The pain comes, the sharp grind of my insides against the edge of the iron sword as my body seizes, my eyes never leaving his, as a smile tugs on his lips. Through the visceral pain, through the fear and the noise of monsters rending apart all my friends, I can't help but smile back at him. I feel the snow, the cold flecks of crystallized water, and that is enough for me. I can't help but laugh, and he laughs along with me.

I don't like what is happening to my mind.

Then the gray-eyed man dissolves, his skin melting away to show veins of alternating colors beneath. Everything fades, the world falling apart like a painting splashed with bleach. Then, there I am, floating in nothingness, staring up at the shifting outlines that pulse in front of me. They are me in a way, perhaps more me than even my body is anymore. What am I here? What makes…

Time flashes across my awareness, and the energies circulating through the network slow to a crawl as my attention is dragged away. It is almost time.

The ball of concentric and spinning shapes that make up my soul grows larger in my vision, becoming almost the size of a planet as I stare down at it. I could get lost in the revolutions for hours, have gotten lost in it for hours, and though the pattern to the turning remains a mystery, I have found certain predictable rotations.

The moment nears, and I prepare for it as the runes begin to come into alignment. I call upon what remains of my mana, pooling as much as I dare into my hand as the shapes meet in alignment. It is different than before, when I stumbled upon the phenomenon out in the world. The pathways of my native energies seep into the outermost layer of my soul now, sipping up the power generated like the hungry roots of a tree. When the lightning comes, two runes of different shapes moving into perfect alignment. The bolt of red energy races through the entirety of my soul. Unable to be contained, the power slams into the outermost shape, the many-sided sphere, and I only need to give my mental assent before it spirals into my mana pathways.

I follow it, the normally pallid blue of the channels taking on the color and texture of the strange energy. It rushes toward where I have already started to draw it, splitting apart as it takes different routes, joining together again as it nears my wrist. Like an unerring tide, it coalesces into the palm of my hand, a thousand, thousand magical capillaries rising to mesh and intermingle with my skin, giving exit to the magic, transforming into dragonfire.

My body shudders, the rending sensation of my flesh too painful to allow me to stay safe inside my mind. My eyes open inside a sea of red, in my right hand the sustaining skyfire, and now in my left a crackling flame of red formed from the affixes of strength and steel. The dragonfire roils, moving like something liquid. Spines of red, crystalline shards condense out of the blood around me, forming a spiralling helix around my hand holding onto the strange magic. The crystals begin to blur as they move rapidly, spinning the fluid around me into a whirlpool. My body is rocked by the shift, the blades already digging into me, cutting as I am pulled to the side.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

One of the spinning crystals cuts through my right wrist, just a shallow nick, but the constant flow of mana I have been feeding the skyfire dies in an instant. Less than a second passes before I feel myself choking, the mysterious power of the skyfire that has kept me breathing, kept me alive, even as I lie submerged in this prison. My lungs try to gasp for air that isn't there, the liquid already inside turning sour, lacking vital air.

I lose control of the newest flame, letting it snuff out as my right hand tries to grasp my own throat. The sudden rush of panic disturbs the hard-fought stalemate with the encroaching blades, and I feel them swell in toward me, creeping in with their deadly points. The instant the chaotic red flame is banished, I call the blue skyfire back to me. The relief comes in a rush, and I throw my will back against the descending blades, pushing back the dark release just a moment longer. How just being in the proximity of the skyfire allows my lungs to function when I should be drowning, I don't understand, but I hold onto that, my sole lifeline in the dark.

Hours must pass as I regain my control. I list, closing my eyes, immersing myself in the dark as my mind calms. I don't feel tired anymore, not that I can remember, but the end of my rope is in sight, and it's fraying.

My mind moves back, my attention returning to my inner world. I don't catch anything wrong, not at first, but it only takes a moment for the errors in the pathways to stand out. I know them so intimately now, each of the winding lines that outline my form, and the channels cutting through my right hand are damaged. Somehow, that fire burned my mana pathways without even breaking the skin. Another hour passes as I ponder the lines, the broken connections, waiting for them to fix themselves, hoping that surely my incredible resilience will handle this too. It doesn't; the channels remain broken.

Despair, that petty emotion, doesn't come now as I stare at the wound. Instead, I feel a swell of interest. Something has changed inside my prison, a new puzzle to look at. I never consider if I can fix it, merely setting to the task to make my attempt.

Forcing mana through the broken channels yields a painful feedback, as if I am pressing my fingers to a fire, but pain is a dull motivator for me now; its absence would be scarier than finding any more. The mana pours out of the ends of the channels, evaporating as it leaves my body, but I notice a change in the pathways. They seem almost to grow as the mana spews forth, as if the essence of magical power solidifies at the broken ends to become part of the channel. No, that is exactly what is happening.

Time passes on, and even my pain tolerance is tried again and again as I force the mana to flow into the wound. I have to stop six times, feeling tears welling in my eyes despite having nowhere to go, gathering my will time and time again to press forward. The mana channels grow, but I notice at once that their pattern is undirected, not at all what it should be. Slowing, I seize an even tighter control of my magic, forcing each minuscule mote to drip toward the wound, finding that I can even bend the channels somewhat to direct the trickling flow. The pathway grows like a tree branch, reaching out to the severed end opposite it, rising slowly toward the light.

It connects, the two halves joining once again, and relief floods me as motes of mana begin to move through the join, every pass solidifying and smoothing the scar left on the pathways. The time I spend on the single connection pales in comparison to what is required to make the other sixteen joints. By the time I arrive at the final spot, I remember how exhaustion feels. Even my inner vision has become numb, strained, and the rational part of my mind begs me to wait, to reconsider. So near to completion, so near to finally accomplishing something, I press on. The final lines grow together, joining, and once again allowing my mana to circulate freely. Hundreds of tiny fractures remain, but the circuit is once again complete; I am whole.

THRESHOLD FOR SOUL REINFORCEMENT REACHED!

Galea appears in my inner eye, the message displayed between her claws.

"Well done, Mistress," she congratulates.

I can't help but agree. Healing myself in this way was something that I don't think I could have accomplished not so long ago. "Thank you. Put my free points into recovery."

"I will do so," she says.

Another window flashes into being between her claws.

THRESHOLD REACHED! 1800 RECOVERY!!

Galea smiles at me, reading the message she holds. "You did it!" she cheers. "You…"

Her voice trails off, and I become vaguely aware that she continues to speak. I feel my body, feel it still floating in the viscera outside my soul space, but I feel something else as well. My awareness splits once more, some vestigial part of me reaching out in a third direction I wasn't aware existed. No, not reaching out, dragged away.

The world itself slams into me. My bare feet collide with stone, the force of my fall hard enough to drive me to my knees. I catch myself with my hands and feel plush carpet move between my fingers. The sensation is almost all-encompassing, as if the hands I stare down at have never touched anything before. I realize, they haven't, have they? The skin covering my fingers is a pale gold, with small lines of gently swaying crimson moving just beneath the surface. I am aware of my mental avatar floating in my soul space; I am aware of my body floating inside the iron coffin, but this third branch of awareness has opened up. It feels just as real as the world, the sensations itching from within my very soul as I run my glittering fingers over the rug.

Then comes sound. The rustle of the torchlight about the room draws my attention up. I am not alone here. A chamber that appears to be made of bronze pillars rising so high overhead that they disappear into the sky opens up around me, the ground littered with cushions and pillows of vibrant purples and maroons. The cushions themselves are littered with naked elven men and women, each more beautiful than the last, all ignoring me as they joke and caress one another. I would surely be left a blushing mess if I weren't so confused, if something in the back of my mind was nagging at me with mostly forgotten recollections.

There is a sound ahead, and my attention turns to follow the plush carpet stretching out before me, leading to a throne of glass and rainbow. A man sits there, thankfully clothed, his slender hand propped under his chin, his eyes made of the brightest sapphire. As his attention settles on me, the faint whispers of recollection in my mind solidify.

My legs are too weak to rise, so I sit back on my heels, staring at the elven man as he considers me, humming to himself. A shuddering breath comes to me, words spilling out unbidden.

"Exeter."

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