Sophia turned towards Dav in surprise. He was often blunt, but wasn't that a bit much?

"Ohhh. That's sad." Weirdly, Mo'ra sounded like she only barely cared. "Then … what am I supposed to do? I can't see and I'm not sure I can move. I'm not feeling anything."

Mo'ra paused for a moment, then sounded puzzled. "I think I should be more upset about that? What's going on? Why do I miss feeling good but not quite know what that means?"

"You died." Dav didn't seem to be pulling his punches at all.

Maybe that was the right choice; Mo'ra had reacted surprisingly well to it so far. It made Sophia wonder if Dav was being informed by the Abilities he had that shared knowledge across the Mesh; they were called Understanding, not Knowledge, after all. None of them fully understood how those Abilities worked; it was just that sometimes you seemed to know something about how others in the Mesh felt or were trying to tell you they felt, even without words.

"You killed yourself and put yourself into a sword with missing pieces," Dav continued without waiting for Mo'ra's answer. "Maybe that's not what you meant to do, but I think it's exactly what the Broken Lord wanted you to do. My guess is that he needs a spirit attached to his symbol if he wants to use you to store and distribute Wisps. Do you still have a Sphere?"

Sophia heard Xin'ri gasp, but Mo'ra's friend didn't say anything.

"Sphere?" Mo'ra sounded surprised, but her mind-voice shifted back to puzzlement as she continued. "No, when I try to look at my Status, all it says is unbonded. It doesn't tell me what that means or where my Sphere went. What does unbonded mean? Wait, you said I'm a sword? Is it like attuned?"

Dav frowned. "Probably. Why aren't you bothered by being a sword?"

"This is a dream," Mo'ra answered easily. "I know you won't believe me, dreams never do, but there's no reason to be upset in a dream. That just makes them a nightmare. No, I have to learn what the Broken Lord wants me to learn from this dream, then use it when I wake up. That's what a Shattered Dream-Smith does."

"That was your Hallow?" Xin'ri choked out. "Shattered Dream-Smith? You never said what it was, just that it was an upgrade to your old smithing Sphere."

"Yup! It's great!" Mo'ra sounded almost bouncy. "No more listening to the old smiths who never even made it to the second upgrade lecturing me about all the things I did wrong that they never explained in the first place! Sleep, learn, and make what I was shown, that's all I had to do. If I made what the dreams showed me, it always fetched a good price, too, and quickly! The Broken Lord rewarded me well for equipping his people."

"Who bought them?" Xin'ri's mental voice sounded strained, almost like she was suppressing tears. Sophia glanced towards her and saw that she wasn't; a tear ran down her cheek as Sophia watched.

"The temple of course!" Mo'ra exclaimed. "I always give them the first chance at anything I make, and the Armorer is always happy to buy from me. He always pays some of it in ingots, too, so I don't have to find my materials! It's so much more convenient!"

"And how much did he take off the sale price for the convenience?" Xin'ri's words were soft and didn't echo across the psychic mesh.

Sophia glanced back and forth between the two former friends. Something felt off about the way Mo'ra was acting. It was easy enough to explain by her belief that this was all a dream, but it made Sophia wonder just how long she'd believe that and what would happen once she realized it was all real.

Was she even able to realize it was all real? The sword that was her body was broken, and dreams had their own logic. Was she damaged enough that she couldn't tell?

In some ways, that was horrifying. In others, it made all too much sense. It would certainly be a lot easier for the Broken Lord to get his Broken Swords to cooperate if they thought it was simply a passing dream that was teaching them something to use in the real world.

It would also make their time serving as a Wisp repository less unpleasant, since they wouldn't be horrified by their situation; it was just a dream, after all. Sophia wasn't willing to give the Broken Lord credit for that; doing something horrifying to another and making them not hate it at the same time was still horrifying.

"So what am I supposed to learn?" Mo'ra continued, not having heard Xin'ri's mutter. "It can't be a smithing technique, can't smith without a body! So it has to be something about the integrity of a sword, maybe the heart of a sword? That's why I'm a sword, right?"

"What's the last thing you remember before you woke up here?" Dav asked.

"The good feeling stopped," Mo'ra repeated.

"No, before that." Dav immediately requested, like he'd expected Mo'ra's repetition. Knowing him, he probably did.

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"Uhh," Mo'ra temporized. "I remember I had finished attaching the handle to the blade; all that was left was the breaking and the final quench. I heated the blade so it would do what I wanted, deform a bit before it shattered, then I carefully notched the blade like one that had been used and hammered the breaking-spike into the weak places in the blade. I think I used three? Yeah, three places. The splits weren't quite as clean as I wanted, not as clean as a snap, but I'm not strong enough to snap a steel blade."

Sophia looked down at the bits of broken sword where she'd laid them out when they started. She supposed that did probably explain most of the breaks; it might be in six pieces instead of four, but the extras looked like they were from the cracks propagating in more than one direction, especially down the center of the sword. That part of the sword was thinner, so it was probably a weak area.

"Then, huh." Mo'ra paused as if she was surprised by her own memory. "I remember … the blade was hot, it needed to be tempered for all that it was once before, for all that the heat I'd just added was not enough to require it on any other blade. So I did as the Broken Lord taught me while lost in his bliss; I opened my neck to temper the pieces in my heart's blood. Why did I do that?"

"The Broken Lord told you to," Dav answered, before he turned to Xin'ri and spoke out loud. "That's what you found, your friend dead next to the blade she ended her life with. And then you took that blade?"

Dav sounded slightly horrified. Sophia felt the same; when she heard Xin'ri say her friend killed herself making the broken blade, she'd assumed something like overwork, not active suicide using the sword she'd just made.

Xin'ri shook her head. Tears streamed down her face. "I didn't. I took the one she made, not the one she killed herself with. I couldn't touch that. I just couldn't. I don't know why I took the one she made, either. I think … I think I wanted something of hers and I didn't want the Temple that drove her to kill herself to get her work. And it would have gone to them, it was a broken blade, made that way. I cleaned the pieces and put them in my item space and then never looked at them again until you told me she might be there. She's waited in the dark this whole time and I never knew to look."

"She slept," Sophia tried to offer comfortingly. "That's what she said, right? Darkness and then we were there, in her dream?"

Xin'ri shook her head, then wiped her eyes. It didn't stop more tears from falling. "I hope you're right."

"She is," Dav said confidently, before he turned back to face the shards of sword on the floor. "Mo'ra, you asked what you are supposed to do next. What do you want to do?"

Mora answered with a feeling of uncertainty, rather than words.

"You can sleep forever," Dav offered, "We will destroy the sword you made and send you onwards, painlessly and peacefully, if that is what you want."

"No." It was barely even words, but Mo'ra's answer was clear.

"Then we can return you to where you were, in the darkness. You will last there until Xin'ri dies; I do not know what will happen after that." Dav was clearly leading up to something; Sophia was certain he hadn't said that intending Mo'ra to accept. Sophia wouldn't have accepted that offer; simply existing in darkness all the time sounded awful.

"I don't want that." This time, Mo'ra's words were clearer, more confident. "Is that the task here? Am I supposed to decide what I want without the distraction of my body? Are you testing me?"

Sophia sighed. No one was testing Mo'ra, but she didn't seem to be able to comprehend that. Sophia didn't think that telling her that would help, either; she wouldn't believe it.

Sophia snuck a glance at Xin'ri. She was the reason they were worrying about Mo'ra. Sophia was pretty sure that the right answer was the one Dav initially proposed: destroy the broken sword and send Mo'ra on to whatever came next. It wasn't like Mo'ra was really alive anymore. At the same time, it was clear that Dav wasn't willing to just do that to Xin'ri any more than Sophia was.

Or maybe he really thought that there was another option? Sophia guessed that it probably was safe, after all, if "bonding" was what was required for the Broken Lord to use the sword as a Wisp repository. Sophia just wasn't sure what the point of bonding Mo'ra would be. It wasn't like they needed more Wisp storage.

"Then all we can do is try attuning you and see if that takes care of your unbonded status," Dav told Mo'ra. "Xin'ri, do you want to try?"

Mo'ra didn't object this time, but she also didn't enthusiastically accept.

"I can bond," an unexpected voice interrupted. Sophia recognized it immediately as Cliff. The dungeon core didn't speak often, and when he did it was because something caught his attention. "She is made for it and could bond herself if she knew how. She does not know and is turning everyone away."

"Who was that?" Xin'ri looked around as though she expected someone else to be in the room with them.

Sophia sighed. "Cliff. You remember the monsters I can summon? I know I told you they're actually Cliff's. He just doesn't talk much."

"Oh, right." Xin'ri sounded a bit surprised, almost like she hadn't quite believed Cliff existed. Sophia supposed she couldn't blame the other woman for that. "Then … Mo'ra will be like one of those monsters if Cliff binds her?"

Cliff snorted. "Better to bind her to you or another. Then she will be something I can copy. She will take on something of your Sphere."

"Is that why the Broken Lord can use her to grant Hallows? Or maybe why he can steal and grant Wisps, but only through a Broken Sword?" Sophia had assumed the sword was just a repository and something to get his attention and the actions were because he was a Patron, but now that she thought about it, the Wanderer had only given them Wisps through the other sword once he and the Transcendent took it over. That was also how he'd given them their first upgrade; everything else, even the second upgrade, was handled through the Guide's normal methods.

"I remember Xin'ri," Mo'ra said quietly. "We are friends. Aren't we?"

"Yes, Mo'ra. We are," Xin'ri answered.

That seemed to settle everything. Cliff would bind Mo'ra to Xin'ri and they'd see what happened from there.

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