I feel the world twist around me, and I appear in that ever-present darkness once again.
Cold liquid reaches my knees. Painful groans and splashes echo all around me. Faora sits on her throne with a single glowing orb providing the only light in this place.
After all the planning, all the constructs, all the training, here I am, easily pulled into her Mind Palace. I can already feel a strain on my mind because of the effects of her thought acceleration.
Memories, either emphasized by me or by the setting itself, keep returning. Memories of those twenty three hours spent lying with my head buried in the dirt.
“Welcome back, Nathaniel,” Faora says from her throne, made of twisted bodies. “I don't know what you’re planning, but it won't work, and by the way! I noticed that you’ve improved your mental defenses a lot, and they’re really quite impressive now. But why would you let me take you here so easily? I don't understand. Are you sure it was a good idea? You know, your body’s kind of breaking right now. Well, it's not like it wasn't already. You've made some really interesting modifications, too.”
I don't answer, instead, I take a deep breath and force myself to step through the water.
When one of the bodies in the water reaches up to me, I shrug it away and continue walking.
More red drops fall into the dark water, blood flowing from my nose and lip. A few drops of blood stain my clothes; others simply deepen the existing redness.
“Nathaniel, are you angry? Why aren't you talking to me? I thought you missed me. You must have pulled a lot of strings to get to this floor so quickly, and using the Null King? Impressive, you actually got that guy to face Luan. Weslin usually is… well, more free-spirited than that.”
She giggles and swings her feet, tapping against her throne, striking the cheek of one of the faces that make it up. That face groans in pain, and Faora smiles more, putting her hand back on it. She buries her fingernails into the cheek of that face until she draws blood.
The next step I take is much more difficult, but I continue nevertheless. The bodies reaching towards me scratch me, tear at my clothes, and become stronger. The red water I walk through is incredibly cold, as if it's pulling all the heat and life right out of me.
“Nathaniel,” Faora says again, “I really, really want to break your pride. I thought maybe just leaving you behind, scared that I'd exit the tutorial before you could reach me, would’ve been nice, but you went and messed that all up. So should I instead, maybe return to the first floor and wait around there for your friends?”
She stops swinging her legs and smiles even more, looking directly at me with eyes wide open.
“Tell me, how is dear Sophie? Did I really break her? Did Izzy cry when you brought her back?”
I stumble slightly, and she bursts into laughter, still pounding on the throne of bodies she sits atop. With every strike, her fingernails draw more blood. She laughs even more as one of the bodies in the water knocks me down, and it takes great effort to get back up again. All around me, the groans continue to intensify.
Then she stops laughing, and the groans disappear as well.
“Why aren't you talking!” she screams. There is no echo at all, her voice simply disappears into the darkness. “What are you planning! Why aren’t you using that skill from the last time!? Why aren't you BREAKING!?”
The water around me explodes in motion, and I take another step.
They grab my leg, my arm. Teeth sink into me, tearing away at my flesh. A nail pierces one of my eyes, blinding it. Another rips off my ear.
My movement stops, and Faora stands up. She buries her hand in the pile of bodies that make up her throne and, in a geyser of flesh, pulls out a rib bone with a really sharp edge, holding it like a dagger.
“Why aren’t you talking!? Why are you even weaker than you were last time?!” she screams, taking a step from her throne, her face twisted in anger.
Before she can take another step, a pale blue spear pierces through her back and emerges from the front of her chest.
She lets out a loud scream, and the other bodies start to twitch. They let go of me, and I fall back into the cold water.
Just like Faora, who twists her head around in disbelief, I watch as a figure steps out from behind the throne.
It’s a young man with black hair, wearing simple, everyday clothes. One of his eyes is gray, the other brown, each encircled by a glowing golden ring that gives them an eerie look in the dim light. Blood flows from his nose, eyes, and ears, just as it does from mine, filling me with ringing waves of pain.
He has a calm expression and takes another step, lifting the spear he holds in one arm higher into the air, raising Faora along with it until her legs dangle there. Blood flows from her mouth and chest, and she continues to scream in pain.
“What have you done, you lowlife fuck! How dare you!” Then she stops for a moment and manages to control her twitching, and her eyes widen. “You… you maniac! Did you really split your mind like this? You… you tricked me!”
Faora starts clawing at the weapon, piercing her, attempting to break the spear. The other broken versions of herself start moving toward the man who stabbed her, but he remains unfazed and lifts her even higher.
While doing so, he looks at me, and I return his gaze.
I nod, and he nods back.
He swings his arm, and Faora's body slides off the spear, flying towards me. She crashes into me, sending us both rolling through the red water. We sink beneath the surface, and as she thrashes, I grab her, wrapping my hands around her neck and starting to choke her.
Red water fills her mouth, and she spits it out, but here, she's stronger than me. I can barely hold on as her thrashing breaks my bones, yet I refuse to let go.
"You maniac, how can someone like you exist! Splitting your mind like this only doubles the effects of my thought acceleration. There's no way your mind can endure more than mine. You're killing yourself, you fucker!"
"Two?" says the second voice in my mind, standing by the throne with a long, pale blue spear in hand.
It is a voice I recognize so well, but at the same time, it sounds so unfamiliar.
Faora stops moving and stares in shock.
"There's a third, small piece that stayed in my body, and it’s already moving to kill you," he says.
Then, just like me, he looks at the top of the throne where a small figure sits, having been there the entire time without Faora noticing it at all.
A little girl with black hair and green eyes.
He extends a hand to her, and after a hesitation that feels endless, she takes it, gently placing her hand in his. Then, as he stops manifesting his mind into Faora's, they both disappear.
I grab Faora, and even as she starts to twist again, I force her head underwater. She thrashes and breaks free, kicking me off. But I crawl through the water after her and lock her in a chokehold from behind.
I can feel her trying to escape, but I know it's not that easy. Once her skill activates, there is a minimum amount of time it has to stay on for.
"Faora, don’t go. Stay here with me." I whisper into her ear, tasting blood and feeling every strain in my body.
Her struggles grow fiercer, and I cackle even as she rips off my arm and kicks me away again.
She disappears after that, choosing to face the backlash of forcefully canceling her skill.
The Mind Palace falls apart, and I disappear as well.
As the three parts of my mind combine back into one, I find myself outside. My body is already in front of Faora. Barely a second has passed in the external world. Even the black mana isn't fully compressed, and the [Empyrean Lance] hasn’t been created.
The side effects of everything that just happened hit me hard, but I ignore them and pull my entire focus into finishing what the third mind started, having a head start over Faora.
But of course, even Faora isn’t dumb enough not to know about this weakness. Automatic defenses rise up around her. Arcane items activate, and barriers envelop her.
As she is opening her eyes and they start to get into focus, my black mana clashes against mana based barriers and starts devouring them. I barely deflect the first automatic attack, which tears a massive, bloody gash down my side, then dodge the next.
My lance pierces through the barrier and stops just a hair away from her eyes, held there by her automatic defenses.
Her eyes snap open, and a powerful mental attack slams into me, but my mental defenses are back in place. Her attack weakens as it clashes against my mind labyrinth, both passives and my active defenses.
I change the shape of the black mana into a dagger. I grab it and continue to expand the blade while stabbing at her.
Then, even as I try to stop it, she teleports away.
I track her through the remains of her teleportation, and the countermeasures and traps in it crash against me. My eyes bleed as I take this information in and disrupt it before I teleport as well.
She is already high in the air, flying, and when I move to do it as well, I hear a voice.
(Stop. Defend your mind.)
I do exactly as instructed, raising my mental defenses to their limit. Pain surges through me, causing me to falter, but I manage to stop the attack Faora hurls at me.
Then, mana projectiles shoot from her and head my way, but I raise the black sword and block them all, continuing to clash against her mind.
(I will help.) The voice says again, and the mental attacks assaulting me weaken.
I hear Faora scream, and another barrage of attacks crashes against me, explosions, projectiles, nasty circles, but I block them all with a sword that devours all mana in reach and disrupts the rest.
Staring at her, I hold myself there, and the presence I was feeling comes closer. Luan appears, standing in the air beside her. There is no damage on his body at all, and the glowing lines on his forearms seem more lively than before.
Weslin joins me by my side. His wounds aren’t healing at all, and he has one of his eyes closed with blood seeping out. He's well-pummeled, but he’s still alive and determined.
Faora begins to speak, her voice rising with each word. “Kill him. Kill that maniac. Kill them both, Luan. Kill that creepy-eyed fuck! That guy cannot be allowed to live!”
Luan glances down at me, then at Faora. She, like me, shows clear signs of our mental clash: ruptured veins in her eyes, a bleeding nose. Even though I don't think I can kill her, I don't think she can kill me either, without going through a lot of trouble, and with Weslin there, we could finish her off.
That changes if Luan decides to join.
“I won’t,” Luan says simply. “If you want to go after them, do it yourself, Faora. I’ve already weakened Weslin, so it should be easier for you now. And the other guy? He’s just a third-year, so it should be a simple matter anyway.”
The thylarin leaves, simply walking away over the air.
After a moment of hesitation, Faora follows him, before she is left to face the two of us alone. She has a hateful expression as she stares at his back, but doesn't dare to say anything.
Only for a moment, she looks towards me and Weslin. I can see that she’s thinking of attacking us, trying to estimate whether she would be able to do it.
But I already know what she will do. Faora is weak. Her Pride is brittle. She doesn't push herself enough.
She leaves just as I thought she would, and I let it happen. I'm sure we'll meet before her tutorial ends, and that will be the last time we do.
Me and Weslin stay where we are, and he sighs in relief. He starts blabbering in excitement about his fight with Luan, but it all sounds only in the back of my head as the world around me starts turning black.
I keep myself up just a bit longer, in case Faora returns, but in the end, I'm unable to hold on to consciousness, and before I black out, I feel my body hit the ground.
Instead of the black darkness surrounding me, I find myself back in my mental space. A small, clearly Earth style room with a crib, older furniture, and an open window beyond which I notice snow falling outside.
That green-eyed, black-haired girl I saw sitting unnoticed on Faora's throne is there as well, now on the ground with her back resting against the wall.
Yet another intruder in my mind.