“What have you done to them?”

  “There’s no need for that anger, doctor. Your daughter is being well taken care of. As for the other… there is no saving her. Now, unless you wish for the girl to suffer the same fate, you’d best get started.”

  “For such an aged civilization, you’ve clearly not grown beyond the same petty and vile behavior of humanity on our home world, Empress.”

  “I am well aware of the price of my own actions. Rather, they’re quite the point. I won’t debate further, as I am resolved to my own fate. Just handle the work I put in front of you.”

  “Do you even hear yourself? ‘Resolved to your own fate’ while asking me to research methods of immortality? That’s obviously direct avoidance of your own fate.”

  “It isn’t for me. Are you familiar with the tale of your world’s Garden of Eden? I must say, I found myself quite enamored with the concept. Find the solution, doctor, and your family will have a home within my own Garden.”

  “So you’re playing god? I seem to recall that story ending poorly, too. You’re not very good at carrot and stick tactics for someone with such lofty goals.”

  “Do I need more elaborate tricks? After all, you’re going to do what I’ve asked. As to playing god, there are none. As ever, humans will manipulate humans. Who am I to care if I’m the best manipulator of the millennia? When all is said and done, this world will know peace unlike ever before. All it needs is a guardian against outside interference.”

  -A Conversation, Hidden Facility SER Uriel Point (Undated)

  Vilke:

  Returning to his senses, Vilke awoke to the worst headache in two lifetimes. Though, most people didn’t get two lifetimes worth of headaches to compare to. He would’ve chuckled at the stray thought, had things not been so dire when last he was aware.

  Having finally regained himself, the first thing he did was, smartly, nothing. He just laid there in a heap, buried partway under scrap metal, as he assessed his position. His finger was tangled into the trigger of his rifle. He very carefully wormed that problem apart before a muscle spasm caused him to shoot himself or something.

  His second concern was whether he’d lost any motor function or broken any bones. Thankfully, the only pain he had was in his head, though he couldn’t write that off, either. Any head injury that was severe enough to cause a person to lose consciousness was almost guaranteed to have left lasting trauma ranging from a concussion to something he really didn’t want to think about.

  Vilke was a soldier. He’d had concussions before. Or, technically his predecessor had experienced them. His memories weren’t separate personalities like Mari’s were. For him, it was as if the soldier and clone’s lives had both happened very recently, often intertwined in his sense of time. He was still trying to sort out the mental pretzel.

  Self-assessment aside, he had very little time to move. The fact that he’d been left alone meant that there was still danger to worry about. He’d been surprised to spot a bear right before he’d been knocked out, given that Sylpharia didn’t quite have the same fauna as Earth. Sure, they had canines and other similar enough animals, but they weren’t identical. Even the bear had been a little strange, thinking back on it. He could’ve sworn that it had a longer tail than any bear he’d ever seen.

  Vilke pushed himself into a sitting position and quickly did a weapon check on his rifle. The sight wasn’t obviously damaged, and neither was the barrel. The magazine was less than half full, so he made sure to switch that for a full one.

  Finally rising to his feet, he felt a head rush assault him and he swayed. It wasn’t a great sign, but he couldn’t rest.

  Glancing around, Vilke saw that all of the traps they’d set up had been torn into scrap. The one that had hit him was a bit bloody, which explained why the left side of his head felt a bit damp and sticky. Another trap was laying a few meters down the south path, and it was also bloody. It was not a good sign, since infected blood was consumed by Mari’s nanites. It meant that the blood had come from Kris, Relkur, or Anise—assuming the shrimp had red blood, if someone told him it was purple, he’d believe it.

  Vilke heard a loud cracking noise from somewhere to the south and east. Without Mari around, there was no way for him to avoid infection if an afflicted creature found him, and he didn’t want to gamble with those odds. He kept his steps light and made his way south.

  At worst, the stairwell in the corner there would allow him to retreat behind the barrier to have a defensible position.

  Once he reached the last south intersection, however…

  To the East, he spotted Relkur kneeling next to Kris, who was sitting against some metal racks, and the former appeared to be working on some bandages for the latter. Mari and Anise were both nowhere to be found, but as he jogged over, he saw the yawning hole in the floor.

  “Sitrep?” Vilke found himself asking before he could stop the old habit.

  Relkur looked up at him like he was an idiot, and—yeah, he felt it.

  “What happened?” He tried again.

  “Tyke knocked her ‘Lizabear’ friend through the floor. What did you think happened?” Relkur sounded testy, and frankly, it was pretty obvious what had happened.

  “If it’s on sublevel four, then they have a bit more room to move. How hurt is it?”

  “Not even a little, last I saw.”

  A groggy, slightly unfocused voice cut in, “Vilke, help Mari for me.”

  He was glad he’d chosen to keep his head tilted to hide the blood running past his left ear. It meant Kris trusted him to help, rather than fussing over his injuries.

  He turned, “Got it. Stay safe.” He set his rifle down and pulled the spare handgun before taking off down the corridor towards the stairs. Maybe Mari was crazy enough to jump through a hole in the floor to fall four or five meters down into a hostile situation, but he wasn’t going to try to emulate her brand of insanity. Especially not with a probable concussion.

  Vilke couldn’t help how his mind rushed with thoughts of Mari and Marielle both.

  “If you two don’t get hitched soon, you might regret it.” Major Marielle Smith once teased him. “Brienne won’t wait forever. And, between you and me, if this whole thing goes to shit, you’re only getting her on a ship if she’s your wife.”

  The best damn advice he had ever received in his older life. And for him, living and carrying the memories of that life, it meant that Brienne was still out there. Somewhere. If he could find her before either of them aged too much, he could still make good on their wedding vows.

  Mari was more than just a friend or a commanding officer. He owed her his two separate lives, and owed her for the continued hope of having the love of his life be waiting for him.

  The stairs practically vanished from beneath his feet as he leapt over the streaked blood of some creature that had been drawn to them by the sounds of their fight. The trails thankfully didn’t continue to sublevel four.

  He shouted a brief report to Karin and the rest of the group that waited there. “This position is pointless now. A big one collapsed into the floor behind you somewhere! Head down below the barrier, I have a plan.”

  He didn’t wait to talk or check if they heeded his warning. Instead, he darted past them and tried to find his way east.

  Except they’d barricaded all the side paths they’d encountered along the way.

  When he found the most promising candidate, he stopped in front of the metal structure and examined it. It was made from some hardened metal and left no gaps around the edges for anything to squeeze by. Worse, it was incredibly heavy.

  “Here’s hoping she allowed me to have her protein packs with some kinda foresight.” Vilke grumbled as he got on one side of the barricade and heaved on it with all his might.

  It actually shifted slightly, but only vertically.

  Somehow, it felt like something about the design of the underside had made the metal hard to slide out of position.

  He tugged the partial magazine out of his vest pocket and dropped it at his feet before hauling the barricade upwards again. Then, Vilke nudged the magazine into the gap he’d created, smiling at the shim he’d improvised.

  Then, he stopped to take a few shuddering breaths from the exertion.

  “You’re kidding me. If I get through this and save her ass, I might just call us even for all those life debts.”

  His impromptu break over, he got on the other side, then hauled the surface back, pivoting on the shim to make a gap just wide enough for him to fit through.

  By his count, he’d burnt about ten minutes since the sound of the floor cracking open. That was an eternity in combat situations. People died in the blink of an eye, sometimes by the dozens.

  Squeezing past the gap, he finally heard it.

  The sounds of battle were still raging, and he made out the distinct sound of Mari’s Remera roaring somewhere.

  A right and left turn brought him to a long hallway that had been utterly decimated. The ceiling had been shattered and covered the floor in chunks of stone and metal. Several of the doors to offices and labs had been bent out of shape.

  On the floor near the rubble of the ceiling was a gory chunk of shredded flesh that was entirely devoid of blood, looking like a decayed husk. Something had managed to hurt the behemoth, at least.

  Vilke headed for the bend in the corridor ahead, but paused.

  He’d nearly missed it, thanks to the sound of machinery in the room to his left, but there was movement. He raised his gun, stepping forward quietly, only to spot Anise. The poor kid’s black hair was a mess, and she clearly had gotten some dirt and chemicals on her clothes, staining them in a few spots, but as far as he could tell…

  “Are you tying your boots?” He asked, his voice incredulous.

  “Hey, big guy. Yeah, had to reattach my leg. I think I made the Lizabear angry.”

  Vilke wasn’t sure he wanted to respond to that, let alone how to.

  “Mari?” He inquired instead.

  “She got it to chase her when I was hurt. Thank goodness it can’t see well. Otherwise, it might’ve noticed I wasn’t dead. He got me good.” She scratched the back of her head with a sheepish expression, as if embarrassed by a minor blunder. The girl was annoyingly nonchalant after losing a leg. Worse for his sanity, he could visualize her desire to say ‘it got better’ when explaining what had happened in the future.

  “Does this happen to you often?” He really didn’t want to ask, but his dumb mouth just didn’t obey.

  “I mean, sure. The Overseer is a real monster in simulated fights. I lost limbs plenty of times while sparring. Most other things can’t actually hurt me, but the mana is so thin here, I can’t benefit from all my levels.”

  “I doubt I’m the only one who has a lot of questions for you. For now, we should go help Mari finish this.”

  “Yeah, totally. She seemed pretty pissed off, last I heard.” The false cheer in her voice was certainly concerning.

  Vilke offered her a hand, then pulled her to her feet, where she stomped with the repaired leg a few times.

  “Thanks. Good to go.”

  “Right… I have a plan that should work a bit better.”

  “I’m all ears, as they say.”

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Marielle:

  Mari and Marielle warred against one another for the first time since their memories had merged into the same body, yet as separate people. Normally, they worked together to get the best of Marielle’s experience and determination with Mari’s youth and personal connections across Elitheen. That had subtly shifted when Anise had turned up, and with each word, the tension had grown.

  So, when the monster fell to the floor below, Mari had wanted to take a few moments to check on Kris.

  Marielle hadn’t let that stand. Kris had help immediately present. Anise didn’t, and Marielle wasn’t about to let her daughter risk death without anyone there to assist.

  There was no doubt in her mind that Anise was her daughter. There was no mistaking the shade of green in her eyes. Anise had eyes that matched Marielle’s original blue and Sylvia’s pretty green.

  Mari’s somewhat frail mind caved under the pressure Marielle exerted, and the older personality briefly apologized for the intrusion as she turned the bear’s blood into a copy of the medical kit Alynne had carried and then dropped it at Relkur’s feet.

  The next instant, she was dropping down the hole to the lower floor with her Remera holstered.

  She caught the edge of the hole with her free hand, then kicked with her legs to throw herself clear of the worst of the rubble of the collapse. Then she drew her Remera before her feet had even hit the ground.

  What she arrived to find was the shower of gore from Anise rending the behemoth’s arm apart at the bicep. In one moment, the girl’s fangs had flashed longer and deadlier than before, and then her face twisted in disgust before her petite hands hooked flesh and ripped.

  Marielle briefly wondered if she was even needed, but the monster barely even slowed despite the injury.

  She pivoted on her right leg and darted that direction, trying to get an angle where Anise wasn’t in the line of fire. The monster made that difficult as it swung its limp right arm like a flailing club and thrashed about with its claws outstretched. Anise, for her part, danced around it gently, as if careless of the wrath bearing down on her.

  Marielle was a little proud. Still, they were moving too fast to risk a gunshot.

  She was forced to the ground as the tail whipped through the air in her direction, and the lower position gave her a fair enough angle.

  Thankfully, Kris’ designed magic weapon didn’t ricochet. It created a perfectly linear path from the barrel to the endpoint, and then formed a gravitational focus at the endpoint, sucking everything towards that focus. It was well thought out, reinforcing how brilliant Kris was, even in Marielle’s opinion.

  Marielle tugged the trigger on it, and watched in fascination as the monster somehow reacted to the weapon, not to the point where the gravity drew a chunk of its shoulder in.

  It rounded on her with fury, and she used its own momentum as a propulsion as she kicked off its leg and slid away while tugging back the magic trigger again.

  Anise tried to seize the opportunity, but the behemoth was intelligent enough to have hidden the fact that it could use its tail as a weapon, and once that was revealed, it made no effort to continue to hide it. The tail swished through the air where Anise tried to approach, and when she ducked low, it quickly flattened the flexible limb into the ground and captured her with a sudden wheeze of lost breath.

  Marielle felt a rush of concern, and then the feeble sensation of Mari’s attempt to support her emotionally in the back of their mind.

  Why don’t you go work on meditation while I handle this? That would be more productive. She knew it was a little rude, but she didn’t need any help. Her emotions were perfectly restrained already.

  The behemoth didn’t have the positioning to injure Anise further, and it seemed fully aware, since it withdrew the appendage before Anise could try to retaliate. Instead, it hopped backwards, almost comically, as it tried to land directly on the girl with its powerful hind legs.

  Marielle didn’t see what exactly happened, since she was busy getting back on her feet and trying to get a plan together.

  Only, instead of seeing that Anise had dodged somehow, she found that her daughter had grabbed its tail and clung to it, using the appendage to escape being jumped on.

  Marielle almost smiled, but winced as the tail slammed into the wall, cracking the stone and completely destroying a doorway into an office. Then it slammed downwards, aiming to flatten Anise. That didn’t come to be, however. The girl had released her grip when she’d hit the wall, and the behemoth seemed almost gleeful as it turned in an instant, catching her in its remaining claw. That was when it threw Anise into another doorway, leapt after her, and then gripped her by the left leg.

  Marielle panicked as Anise was thrown again, seemingly unconscious.

  She tried to get a shot into it, but all of her attempts were in vain. It just didn’t care.

  The behemoth grabbed Anise by the leg again, where she’d landed just inside a more secure fabrication center. The girl was clearly awake again, because she tried to shove the door shut in the creature’s face.

  Instead, it pulled her along, trapping her leg in the half-closed door.

  And then, it tore, claws digging in, using the door to pin the leg in place as flesh ripped and bones broke.

  Marielle felt the world fall away as her vision centered to a single point. The sight of the bleeding stump of a leg in the doorway. The monster that casually tossed the limb through without a second thought for its victim.

  White-hot rage flooded her. After everything they’d been through. After barely meeting her daughter for the first time. Even as a fragment of herself, she knew the grief of the person she was not. Though just a memory, she was not willing to let such an act go unpunished.

  Marielle had few weapons. Her gun. Kris’ gun. Her sword.

  She drew the sword in place of Kris’ weapon, then channeled all of her anger into the blade. It was no normal weapon. There was a reason she had preferred it despite its age. It was the weapon of a cultivator, passed down from another Dynast Soul in their previous incarnation.

  The blade met her channeled energy the way a lake meets a breaking dam.

  It grew warm in her grip as the monster surged towards her next.

  “You won’t live to regret the fathomless abyss you’ve angered this day!” Marielle roared her intentions as she stepped backwards—and covered five meters in that single step.

  The Remera roared once in her hand as she baited the creature in her direction.

  The filthy creature returned her challenge with a charge.

  Marielle gracefully ducked low, stepping beneath its lunging claw, using the limp left arm as a gap, then drew her blade from its shoulder to hindquarters in a single fluid motion. The momentum of its charge became all the force involved as her blade became a peerless cutting tool that the beast dragged itself across—a nigh unstoppable force meeting her razor’s edge and finding itself split open along the fine instrument.

  Yet, no blood spilled. Red haze emerged from the long slash, and Marielle delivered an irrefutable mental command to the tiny machines.

  Consume.

  Her order inflicted itself on the world without question, ignoring all the normal requirements Mari was restrained by to communicate with the nanites.

  The red haze entered her body, and her qi surged with the rising corruption essence.

  She stole the energy the nanites used for fueling themselves, turning it into a force her own body could circulate and channel.

  Mari’s emotions roiled in the back of Marielle’s mind, filling their bond with revulsion.

  Welcome to body cultivation. I don’t prefer corruption and destruction essences, but it will help to punish this filth.

  Marielle’s eyes burned with the yin energy, honed to its most disastrous intent.

  And she kept going.

  With a step, she pulled the trigger on her Remera again, drawing the limping monster towards her. Somehow, it knew she wouldn’t let it get away, so it didn’t run. It chased.

  With every cry of her gun, she danced a bit further along the corridor, keeping it following her as she drove the raw, untamed energy into the sword and poured her anger into the darkness that ate at the very air around her.

  Another shot, another step, another moment of focus on her effort to erase the thing that had injured her daughter. It was all-consuming and dangerous. Not only to her enemy, but also to herself. Mari’s body certainly wasn’t ready to embrace so much power, let alone so much destruction-aligned energy.

  And Marielle found that she didn’t care in that moment.

  The world shuddered as she danced through desperate claws and teeth, finally releasing a small flicker of energy as she swung with her blade, separating the tail from the creature in a single twitch of her wrist.

  The monster finally made its pain known, hissing and writhing as the energy unmade parts of it.

  And still, Marielle wasn’t done. More and more, she honed the energy.

  Please stop. This can’t go on! Mari’s plea barely reached her, and she was dimly aware that the pleas were few of the many that she’d been ignoring.

  No. This is for Kris as much as it is for Anise.

  Anise:

  She wasn’t sure what she expected from the sounds of hissing and claws on stone around the next few corners, but she certainly wasn’t ready for Mari channeling the purest corruption into a slender sword and preparing to cut a rift into reality that would utterly annihilate a good chunk of the underground hallway.

  Anise had never tried, and it wasn’t really in her wheelhouse, but she had a feeling that even Eternity Labs’ sturdy exterior walls would fail to stand up to such potent energy.

  More incredibly, Mari was a cultivator. Anise had read about them, and even themed her classes off them, but Mari didn’t have levels or a class. And the untamed qi she was seeing? Anise had no idea how anyone had gathered that much raw mana to even do what she was about to see. Certainly not with how little mana was present in the air around them.

  Perhaps more desperately, that much power would probably kill Mari in the process. Anise had no idea how the sword was standing up to it, either.

  The world seemed to slow to a crawl as Mari severed the tail of the beast, and the mana tore at the laws of nature. One of the most dangerous aspects of mana that hadn’t been guided into a specific set of parameters was how it just defiled reality in its wake.

  So, when the next strike from the sword bent time and space, Anise wasn’t surprised.

  All of the mana within the blade had been forced to bow to sheer force of will.

  Cultivators shaped mana with their minds, typically converting it into a positive energy that reinforced their minds, bodies and souls. But if a person skipped a few steps, they could force that same mana into pure power. Power that simply ruined everything it touched. Mana, being chaotic by nature, was destructive. But it lacked impetus beyond the passive drive to expand and replicate.

  What Mari did was apply raw emotion and willpower to the chaotic energy.

  Up became down as the laws of gravity buckled along the blade’s path.

  The imperceptible slash of the sword echoed through causality, and simply imposed a singular concept on the target.

  Erasure.

  Anise shuddered as the monster burst like a grenade, then its guts froze mid-air, blackened, and collapsed into dust.

  Then, Mari’s haunted eyes met her own, and Anise knew. The only thing that could’ve compelled the woman to do something so hazardous was seeing Anise herself being grievously injured by the monster just minutes before.

  “Mom.” She whispered a word that made everything she’d heard from her first mother make sense. The ‘special person’ that her mom had seen in her blue eyes. And Anise knew that the emotions writ across Mari’s features were grief and loss after having seen her daughter get torn apart by a monster. The depth of that emotion was enough to, even briefly, diminish Anise’s boundless cheer.

  Hope flickered into those red eyes, followed by a bit of panicked realization.

  Then Mari turned, seemingly untouched by the unraveling reality behind her. The woman’s sword flicked straight upwards in front of her as she straightened, then exerted her will on the world. By her own standards, Anise didn’t think it felt particularly dense, but it had a weight of more than just refined cultivation strength.

  It felt like a low tier cultivator was trying to move a mountain just because they truly, intensely believed that they could.

  And with fascination, she felt the mana ripple and distort, losing the chaotic form it had taken to be channeled into rigid structures and the concept of refined steel. Then it gathered and was guided into the blade she held, telling the story behind how such a blade survived being touched by destruction itself.

  Anise blinked. She was several centuries old, sure. The blade radiated an agelessly imperious nature that spoke of thousands of years in the hands of people who could shape mana with far more experience than she had. She shivered involuntarily as a first realm cultivator repaired reality by forcing mana to bend to their will.

  And then said cultivator collapsed.

  Reality took hold of them again, and Anise surged forward. “Mom!”

  She was there before Mari hit the ground, catching her in one arm and the loose revolver in her other. The last stupid thing she needed was for the gun to go off when it hit the ground and injure or kill someone.

  “She said she’s sorry she made you worry.” Mari’s tired words and expression didn’t match the emotion Anise had seen before, and she frowned in confusion.

  “You… You’re not her, are you?” Anise’s faint response tugged a small smile onto Mari’s lips.

  “I’m a bit tired, and Marielle—your mother—is out completely. She feels incredibly weak. Um, to explain, we have split personalities. She’s the memories I inherited from your mother, while I’m just a clone made from her genes.” Mari’s explanation was fleeting, but it was enough to paint a rough idea for Anise.

  “I guess we’ll need to catch up on a lot of things, won’t we?”

  Vilke stepped up beside them with an abashed expression. “Major, you’ve done it again. The moment I have a solid plan, you just handle everything yourself, leaving me feeling like an idiot.”

  “You had a plan? What was it? I’ll pester her about it whenever she wakes up.” Mari’s weak voice broke under a few rasping laughs, and she sounded like her whole body ached, which was probably fairly accurate. Raw mana—sometimes referred to as destruction qi—was not a form anyone wanted to channel through their body, even with a decent medium like an ancient sword refined by masters.

  “My plan was to bait the behemoth—ahem, Lizabear—towards the barrier in the stairwell, and then have Anise keep it from running away.”

  “That’s actually a really great plan. Try—” Mari groaned in pain before attempting again, “try not to be late next time, yeah?”

  Vilke chuckled, and Anise glanced up at the singular vertical cut from the floor to the ceiling that had remained from the attack that had erased the Lizabear.

  “That was super impressive mana channeling. I’ve always had the System to help me, but converting that much raw mana into targeted annihilation is absolutely incredible with how low the mana density is here. And then to convert it into reinforcing essence for an immortal’s sword? The mental focus required for all of that is just unbelievable for your realm and tier!” Anise practically gushed her honest feelings of amazement. “I’d love to learn how to do that. Although, I’m pretty sure it should’ve killed you.”

  Mari stared up at her blankly. “That was mana?”

  “Yeah, obviously! This is basic stuff. Mana takes many forms. Kris’ weapon relies on the mana infused into solid substances, right? I can make talismans using mana-infused liquid inks. Some mediums are better for certain types of magic. How did you not know that?”

  “I never really cared about how something worked, just that it did. Marielle is the same way. She’s aware of how to do something, so she does it, but without the underpinning mechanics.”

  Anise’s gaze was drawn up to Vilke as he buried his face in his palm.

  “That’s really, ultra foolish.” Anise replied, exasperated. “Knowing how something works can really help ya to improve or come up with new ideas. Is my mother an idiot or something?”

  “I—” Mari came up short, finally gathering her strength enough to move to sit against the wall. “Honestly, I think some of Marielle’s mentors were really bad at teaching.”

  “I’d say so, from the sound of things. Bad news is, we aren’t even done yet. Still have those idiots on the floors above to handle.”

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