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Kyro rustled on the ground and cracked his eyes. "Oh… you’re okay."

"That’s my line."

"Okay, blood lady."

I looked down at my bloody clothing and rolled my eyes and activated purification and all the dried blood crumbled to the ground, exposing fresh clothing.

"So? When were you gonna tell me you were dying?"

"You think I’d keep that secret if I ever planned to tell you?" Kyro unscrewed the lid to his flask. "Come on. Think for a second."

"I’m going to beat the shit out of you."

"That’s a strange way to express concern for my health." He took a drink.

I exhaled sharply and looked at the ground and then back at the statue. It was just a horizontal stick about the size of a motorcycle’s handlebars.

"How long do you have?" I asked.

He shrugged and remained silent.

"How do we fix it?"

"Well, unless something’s changed… there’s something in there that’ll fix me."

"Then why didn’t you just say that?"

"’Cause I don’t want you to feel responsible for my life." He pointed at the plant monster at the end. "See that shit? Let’s break down what that thing does. It starts with the other two. You’re gonna put your hand on that fancy ball, and it’ll draw a full soul into it. You’re gonna take the soul and shape it and mold it and put it into that stick. Not gonna be easy, but it’s pretty straightforward. Yeah?"

A flashback of Lithco taking a soul and sticking it into a plant streaked across my mind.

"And that’ll embolden you." Kyro rubbed his lips with his wrist, groaned, and closed his eyes for a moment before pointing at the second statue. "So you’re gonna go to the second. It’ll take you ten times longer because it’s an awkward structure. But you will complete it… and you know what your reward’ll be?"

I paused and studied his bitter grin and whispered, "What?"

"That." Kyro jabbed his finger at the Bramble that almost killed me. "That thing’s gonna open right the fuck up. And as soon as you activate that," he turned to the third crystal ball in front of the plant monster, "it’s gonna attract every damn beast in the forest."

"What?" I cried.

"And the only way to survive’s gonna be to activate that monster," he continued. "And guess what? It’s obviously bigger and more complicated than the other two."

"What? Why… How?"

"If you didn’t see the danger of the open Bramble and the obviously-impossible-by-comparison monster challenge and think, Heh, let’s give it a try right now, anyway—you’re gonna die. The lesson’s to get you to go back into the world and practice and realize just how ridiculous the task is. I mean, it’s got like 200 tentacles, it’s the size of a small boulder, and plants can’t move." He looked at the plant guardian with its dark eyes and Cthulu-inspired tentacles. "Once you understand those limitations, you figure out that it’s not about stretching the souls like clay and packing ’em in. And that’s when you practice for years or decades or even millennia before returning. You don’t just come here on a two-week timeline with a cursed imp expecting to do it." Kyro took a drink. "It’s fucking ridiculous. They sent us here to die."

His words pierced my heart and I found myself leaning against the first statue’s podium, arms folded, looking at the ground. "That’s bleak."

"It is."

I bit my lip. "Okay, so say I can do it. I’ve got some talent… Brindle comes to save the day. A shooting star grants my wish… This is just the second trial, right?"

He sighed. "Yep…"

"Is there any hope of finishing it?"

He laughed and put his flask to his lips and then let his hand fall limp, leaning back and laughing tiredly. Then he closed his eyes and turned his head to the sky as if he were waiting for angels to whisk his soul to heaven.

"Who knows…? You’ve yet to meet my expectations. So… if you survive this one… maybe." Kyro shrugged and smiled bitterly, "But… A week? Two? I’ll probably be rotting long before then." He chuckled. "Who would’ve thought… live this long only to die fighting some weak as third evs… but…" He developed this sad, beautiful smile that described true peace. "I promised… I promised Brindle I’d teach the next generation… and in all these years, that’s one debt I couldn’t truly pay back. But… I think…"

"I’m going to beat the living fucking shit out of you," I interrupted. "And so will Kline."

Kyro opened his eyes. "Huh?" He turned, and Kline materialized in his tiny form, slapping him with a palm.

"What the fuck?" he cried. "I’m trying to be emotional over here!"

"You’re being dramatic is what you’re being." I opened my Guide and went to the Patron tab. Brindle still hadn’t accepted my request. "Now help me read this."

Kyro huffed and took a drink and turned around so he wasn’t facing me, and said, "Just stare at it."

"Kyro, take this seriously."

"I am taking this seriously. Those’re soul runes, not letters. If you stare at ’em, it’ll teach you the spells."

"Alright." I opened up my Guide and called out to Lithco. Is it better to use soul runes or get normal teaching?

"It depends on the spell." He responded behind me, casually walking over to me calmly and sitting down after brushing off his pants. I knew things were serious when he didn’t make some grand entrance or annoy me. "All things equal, you want to use the runes. It communicates directly with the magic networks. But if you have a stronger spell, you’ll obviously want to use that."

"And this one?" I asked.

Lithco smiled this… mysterious fucking smile and said, "I don’t know. I’ve never even seen these runes before."

"You?"

"Me. There’s a reason the Oracle’s interested in this forest."

"So he admits it."

"I won’t insult your intelligence. Besides, there’s no way you’ll give up the Guide for your little friends. Now, if you wouldn’t mind?" He motioned his hand to it. "Your life is on a timer."

My eyes glided over to him murderously, but then I turned back and stared at the runes, wondering if I could live without Lithco or if I could just shut it down and turn it on at will.

Those were my thoughts as I stared at the runes in vain. I stared and stared and stared until my eyes were dry and itchy and blinking wasn’t helping. Then I grunted and said, "You gonna help?" to Lithco.

"Me?"

"Yes, you."

"Hmmm. Well, if you’re asking how it works, you have to activate them first. Just feed it some mana. It’ll get glowy and productive."

I whipped my head to him. "And you didn’t think to tell me that ten minutes ago?"

"Well, you were thinking about using me like an abusive partner. I believe your exact thought was, I’m sure it’d be fine to shut it off. I’m sure it’d be angry, but I’m certain the Oracle will keep crawling back if I feed ’er information now and then."

My eyes widened, and my cheeks heated. "Hey! At least finish the thought, you creeper!"

Lithco rolled his eyes. "It’d be sad to lose Lithco, though."

"Exactly!"

"Translation: It would be sad to lose the person I complain to and ask every given question."

"Shut up!" I yelled aloud, slapping my hand on the stone and activating the script. It glowed with yellow light. "You’re almost as bad as Kyro with you—"

I glanced at the runes and felt the sharp end of an axe split my brain. That’s the only way I could explain it. A profound wave of information slammed into me, and I fell onto my butt, staring at the runes. The more I looked at it, the more intense it became until my world disappeared, and all I could see were the runes, burning the image into my eyes—

—then they grew. It was hard to explain, but it felt like I was a blimp in the universe, and the runes became the size of planets in the distance, and the more I thought about them, the more I was convinced that they were a form of God.

Suddenly, my soul core started churning on its own, and the gold and purple soul force that Yakana had swirled around me. I turned my palm up and saw golden aura leaking out of my fingers like smoke and purple neara moving through my veins like mana.

What’s going on?

Then, that smoke abruptly locked into place like a still frame, and I felt an eerie wind blow around me. It felt like souls clinging to me. I looked around and saw soul remnants collecting into a ball in front of me.

I felt compelled to touch it but couldn’t.

It frustrated me until I looked back at the glowing runes. When I saw a specific set of three, I felt an ice pick stab into the side of my head. I would have gone all in that I was going to hit the ground and bleed out after it happened, but the moment the pain faded, I had the answer.

Using a technique I had never chanted to learn, I cycled my soul core in a way that created a soul film around my hands, and I heard my inner voice saying:

"Now touch it."

I reached out my hands and grabbed the ball of souls. It was squishy and sent electricity pulsing through my body and soul core. I shivered and looked at the runes.

Another stabbing pain. Another revelation.

Without thinking, I grabbed the soccer-sized ball of soul remnants and compressed it into the size of a baseball. It gave significant resistance and felt like it would explode, but I held on and searched for answers in the runes, but they didn’t speak to me.

Figure it out… My inner voice said.

I knew that I needed to put the soul into the stick, so I grabbed the ball and stretched it out like taffy. It worked, but it wouldn’t remain still, and it soon expanded, wobbling around until it flew out of my hands.

I stared at it after that and thought, It worked, but… I shook my head. That’s not the point.

The ghost of Kyro’s voice echoed in my mind. "Once you understand those limitations," he had said, "you figure out that it’s not about stretching the souls like clay and packing ’em in."

Then what is it? I thought as I looked at the runes. It’s teaching me how to compress and… insert it into something and… whatever the hell that is. I stared at the last line of the runes which didn’t activate in my mind. But not how to shape it. Unless…

I got the idea that it was like gas. You compress it, insert it, and then let it expand like foam. It was great in theory, but the preliminary trial met total failure almost immediately. Soul force was like a physical object when I touched it, and when I compressed and expanded it, it was like a very forceful sponge. I was relatively certain that if I were to put it into an object, it would be better suited to expanding and making the hull explode rather than filling it.

So I thought about it more. The spell allowed me to collect soul remnants into a ball that I could compress, and that ball remained a ball instead of acting like foam. However, I could grab that ball and physically stretch it like taffy. If I did that, I could make it into a stick. So in a brute force approach, I was certain that I could fill the stick and complete the trial.

But.

Once you understand those limitations, you figure out that it’s not about stretching the souls like clay and packing ’em in.

Once again, that wasn’t the solution, and people would quickly figure that out with the wacky statue and then later a walking plant with hundreds of tendrils.

That brought me back to gas or at least liquid. It was the only way. Take a soul, compress it as a gas, then put it inside the statue and let it fill up on its own. The only problem was that it didn’t do that…

But.

I looked back up at the runes, burning bright in the universe. There was that final line of runes that I didn’t understand. What if those runes broke down a soul into gas?

I stared at the runes in a trance for three minutes, trying to figure it out, and then I felt something. So I looked harder and sharpened my focus, and soon, minutes, hours—days passed in that dark and sullen abyss when concepts started to form. And they were… strange.

It occurred to me then that most of what I had been doing was just an extension of what I had already been doing. They felt natural. I felt very little resistance to summoning souls or holding them or even cleansing them, but this… this was different.

It was a new concept—a disturbing concept.

Just the revelation made me break into cold sweats, and once I learned the spell and broke free, I sat there in silence for hours, staring into the milky white fog that curled around the poisonous bushes that nearly killed me. Then, as if that weren’t enough, I cut the soul-dispelling spell and let the fog consume me. It was numbing and awful, but I embraced the sound of the lost and tormented souls in the fog, beings that were too scared or angry or vengeful to allow themselves to be cleaned and freed from their torment. I wondered what compelled them to be that way and wondered how my remnants would deal with death myself.

I’m not sure how long that lasted, but at some point, Kline walked through the fog, bringing with him a dispelled spell that cleared my mind and muted the sound to a low decibel. Then he jumped into my lap as intrusively as possible and lay down, allowing me to pet him.

I now understood the secret of soulmancy—but it had costs that I couldn’t even fathom.