There was a moment of senselessness as the darkness settled around Bjorn. Then his perception twisted violently and he was spat back into existence. His body manifested as energy first, unstable and half imagined. All sensation collapsed inward as flesh and blood reasserted themselves. He felt his core resettle into place, nerves reconnecting in frantic succession as his form rebuilt itself piece by piece.
It happened both instantaneously and as if stretched across an endless moment. There was a crack of Rift energy that thinned the void and scarred the land. Then there was nothing at all. Bjorn opened his eyes and the sensations of the world began to return to him slowly, as though reality itself was being cautious.
Scent came first. His tongues flicked into the air, tasting nature charred with industry. Beneath the sharp bitterness of ash and forge smoke was the faint undercurrent of a wounded ecosystem still struggling to exist. Then came texture. The ground beneath him was hard stone, warm and rough against his scales. After that came pressure, the weight of a small body pressed tightly against his chest, trembling.
Sight came last, and it struck him the hardest. His parallel minds flooded with information all at once, like a dam finally breaking. Evening had fallen, the world settling into that uneasy calm that came just before night. Smoke stained the sky, drifting in from distant cities. The land around them was shattered, torn apart by whatever force had delivered them here. A massive crater marked the impact, its edges ripped raw, erasing what little nature had managed to survive in this place.
The body pressed against him was Anasuya. She was shivering, her species' equivalent of crying. His hearing had not yet fully returned, so he could not hear her, but he lifted his head and gently nuzzled her. She leaned into him immediately, clinging with feverish affection.
Tanisha and Aurelius lay not far away. Both were breathing. Both were unconscious. As Bjorn's thoughts finally caught up to what he was seeing, panic spiked when he realized they were completely naked. One of his heads snapped down to the base of his middle neck and he exhaled in relief when he saw that his Angel Core was still there. A short distance away, Tanisha's angel core staff was embedded halfway into the ground, standing upright like a flagpole.
Relief washed through him. Losing those would have been catastrophic, as they contained parts of their souls. Isin tearing Nuriel's angel core from her body had put her out of commission for at least a week, and she had access to proper healing facilities. Bjorn did not know what would happen if Tanisha's soul were damaged in the same way, and the thought made his chest tighten.
Aurelius's sword lay nearby as well, though only the unusual blue crystal blade remained. The sheath, handle, and crossguard were gone. Bjorn found that strange, but he had never known the full story behind the weapon. Maybe it was a sign that their belongings were not lost forever, only scattered.
"Are you okay daddy?" Anasuya hissed still shivering. "Please say something."
"I am fine, young one. You saved us. Thank you." Bjorn hissed back.
"That was scary." Anasuya said.
"It is alright, you did good we are safe now." hissed softly. "I am not going anywhere you dad is tough, right?"
"Right." She said. "But daddy gets beaten by stairs sometimes."
"I do not!" He then thought about it and laughed. "Okay, Little One. I get it I will be careful."
While one of his minds focused on calming Anasuya, Bjorn's tail gently wrapped around Tanisha and lifted her from the ground, moving her behind him. He wanted to make sure she would not wake up directly exposed to Aurelius. When his tail loosened, Tanisha suddenly grabbed it and held on with surprising strength. Bjorn froze for a moment, then simply let her be. She was breathing, she was alive, and that was what mattered.
"Failsafe, Isin? You their guys?" Bjorn said mentally.
"I am, but that really sucked." Failsafe said.
"Do you know what happened?" Bjorn asked.
"I have some ideas." Failsafe said.
"What about you Isin… Isin?" Bjorn asked but there was no response. "Oh, previous me with anger issues?"
"I don't think uh… he is in here anymore." Failsafe said. "I'll do a couple of checks on our body give me a moment."
"Hmm. I did gain the personality after being exposed to massive amounts of energy. Maybe whatever happened fixed the problem?" Bjorn said.
Bjorn sat in silence for a moment as replayed the experience in his mind. Was the avatar still after them? Did it go into the Force Isles in search of them? Could the Force Isles defend against something like an Avatar? It was powerful sure but so were the angels and humans overcame them.
"So we definitely entered the Rift." Failsafe started. "I don't have any memories of anything inside the Rift itself but we are supercharged with energy from the other side. I think it is Creation or Primana or whatever we are deciding to call it. Also Ana definitely is the only reason we were able to exit the Rift. I think we would have survived it but you don't have the means to exit it."
"I figured as much." Bjorn said as he gave Anasuya a long glance. "Her kind do live in the Infernal Planes. I doubt it is a stable place and events like this are probably common. That and she eats raw magic in the shape of plants. I am not complaining but how did these two survive?"
"Aurelius and Tanisha both use exotic energy, that is my only guess. Fuyumi would be dead if she came along." Failsafe said."
"Is she alive?" Bjorn asked himself. "If the Avatar was after them it could very well be destroying the Force Isles as we speak."
"Uh… yeah she is alive." Failsafe said definitively.
"Huh how do you know for sure?" Bjorn questioned.
"She is now listed as a follower of yours in your Follower Ascension Panel." Failsafe paused. "There is a lot of stuff I need to examine in here… wait. Why is there maya in our body?"
"Oh! Yeah I undid the seal on our maya while in the Rift." Bjorn said as he cleared his throats. "I thought I was going to die so I thought, might as well. Eh… how bad is it?"
"You fu一fun-loving person." Failsafe said in a self correcting manner. "I thought we decided to hold off on reintroducing maya. What happened to that?"
"Things changed," Bjorn said. " Speaking of any other changes I should be aware of right now? Because so far it sounds like we got away and everyone is okay. Which I just want to make sure that is what is going on because I was expecting a kick in the teeth. Or, you know, death."
"We lost Isin, but other than that everything seems fine."
"Me and Isin are the same person so that isn't really a loss. He wanted to be part of the past so let him be buried in Helmforað."
"That is harsh." Failsafe said.
"You think I should mourn myself? Not going to happen. We are the same person operating from different perspectives. Useful but not necessary right now." Bjorn said.
"I will keep looking us over. So, I might not be responsive for a little while." Failsafe said. "I guess this means you will be alone up here for once. Try not to miss me."
"I will try." Bjorn said with a roll of all ten of his eyes.
Alone again Bjorn opened his menus and looked at two distinct messages. Both were disturbing. His minde went back to the thing he saw clawing into his core. The thing that was connected to the Reincarnation Failsafe magic. The true form of the creature that called itself Failsafe. It was a violation so profane that Bjorn had to swallow back bile.
That made the two messages he received so concerning. So deliberate. So wrong.
Iota Familiar Blood Pact
Primana Cost: -300
+ [
You have undergone a profound Familiar evolution through abnormal means, mutating the bond in a manner beyond typical Iota Familiar progression. As participants in a Blood Pact, any compulsions normally imposed by a Familiar Contract are nullified. You are no longer bound to act under the constraints of a contract.
(I) Your bond grants magical energy regulation. While within five hundred feet of your Bloodkin, magical energy and regeneration are shared. As long as one of you retains magical energy, both may utilize it.
(II) You have communed with your Bloodkin, allowing you to serve as a conduit for her magic. From any distance, she may channel spells through you as a breath attack.
(III) Having shed blood for each other, you now shed magic. While within ten feet of your Bloodkin, your auras intertwine, passively granting +15 Health Regeneration to both.
(IV) The bond extends to life itself: both you and your Bloodkin gain an additional twenty years to your lifespans.
+ Error: Eyes of the Queen
You are being extremely reckless. You disregarded my orders and nearly got yourself killed! I am a very disappointed, young one. Your pet, Tanisha, is not a good influence. I expect an apology once I come to get you! The Avatar of the Great Serpent is still after you but you have a more immediate threat now. The thing inside you is digging into your core. You must purge it before you reach level 100. Soon it will know how to read your soul and even these messages can not be hidden from it when that happens. I suspect it may have already grown suspicious.
Bjorn didn't know which message was telling the truth. One urged him to reach level 100 as fast as possible with an urgency bordering on panic. The other warned that leveling further would be catastrophic unless the parasite was removed first.
At first, he wanted to believe the Error. His mother's voice was sharp, furious, unmistakably hers or at least what he would imagine she would be like. But if Failsafe could now read the messages between him and her… then it could alter even those.
The formatting gnawed at him. The message attached to the Iota Familiar Blood Pact was different then the one Poison had used in the past. Her messages were subtle. No overt markers. No brackets or special identifiers. His mother had altered the menus directly.
But what if Failsafe only realized that after the Rift?
They had both been exposed to the power in the Rift. That alone could have changed and twisted them in ways he didn't understand.
It was dangerous to seem out of the ordinary so he kept his tone with the construct normal. They were speaking politely. However he knew that they were both probing to see what the other already knew.
A low grunt snapped him back to the present. Aurelius was finally waking up. He blinked in disbelief, then rolled from his side onto his back, staring at the sky like it might vanish.
"Bjorn?" Aurelius croaked, his voice dry and raw. "We aren't dead?"
"No," Bjorn said. "Anasuya saved us."
Aurelius let out a breath and pushed himself upright.
"Good girl." He paused, frowned, then glanced down at himself. "…Uh. Why am I naked?"