048.003

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Empyreal

Heightened Reality

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Alyssa lurched into a sitting position at the same time as she lurched into reality.

Soft grass beneath her. Starry night sky above her. With the pale grey moon hanging high over her, Alyssa knew that she was back. Really back. She could feel the chill of the night’s air on her skin and could hear the splashing of something making noise in the nearby lake. It should have been relaxing. Calming. After spending what felt like forever inside that empty place she had dubbed the adrift, reality was a comfort.

Should have been.

Alyssa’s body felt like it was on fire. Pinpricks of pain rankled over her skin. Her heart was beating a mile a minute, hammering against her chest so hard that a deep dread, a foreboding sense of impending doom would not leave her mind. She couldn’t ignore it. Her breathing turned ragged as she sucked in a breath, realizing that she did not know what to do. Paranoia gripped her.

She snapped her head left. Then to the right. There was no help to be found from any corner of her sight. Tenebrael wasn’t nearby. Neither was Kasita. Tenebrael, Alyssa could explain. It was night at the moment, but it had definitely been morning when she and Alyssa last saw each other. That meant that it had been at least one day. Possibly more. People had died during that time and Tenebrael had a duty to fulfill. It would have been impossible for her to have remained nearby without contracting the help of Iosefael or some other angel.

Kasita’s absence was far more concerning because Alyssa did know where the mimic was. If Kasita wasn’t back in her body now…

“Kasita.” The name felt like fire in her mouth. She was pretty sure that some of her saliva turned to steam when she opened her mouth. Yet, oddly enough, she might have calmed down just a little. Worrying about Kasita gave her something else to focus on. A distraction from the heat beneath her skin.

There was, unfortunately, no response. Kasita was probably still adrift. Before leaving, Alyssa had done her best to reiterate how she returned to her body, but whether or not Kasita would be able to repeat that feat remained to be seen. And she knew just where to watch. Alyssa knew where Kasita’s physical body was. There was a jeweled band around her wrist that hadn’t been there before. It wasn’t something Tenebrael had given her or something she forgot about… She knew it was Kasita.

Normal wristbands did not have souls, after all. And Alyssa could see that soul very clearly. Her eyes weren’t even closed and yet she could see better than ever before.

The longer she stared at Kasita’s soul, the more certain Alyssa got that something was wrong with it. What she felt was not something easily put to words. There was probably an Enochian character that could perfectly describe her exact state of mind at the moment, but she didn’t know what that was. Regardless, there was definitely something amiss. The soul was… disassociated. If that was the right word.

More than that, Alyssa was pretty certain that she knew how to fix the problem. She couldn’t explain how she knew, though she had some strong suspicions of why she knew. Reaching to it, Alyssa gently brushed her finger over the top of the wristband that was Kasita.

A spark went off and the soul snapped into its proper place.

The wristband flickered and dissolved.

Alyssa’s heart lurched once again. What little calm she had been able to regain vanished as paranoia settled in once more. A fear that she had done something irreversible to her best friend tore at her.

She could no longer see the soul. Looking around her, Alyssa still couldn’t see it. She could see far off souls. The souls of the people who lived in Teneville and Lyria and everywhere. Even Tenebrael was visible out there, harvesting the soul of an elderly man who enjoyed whittling wood in his spare time and gifting carvings to travelers that passed through his village. Alyssa blinked at that odd thought until she realized that his entire life was flashing before her eyes.

He was a kind old man, but he hadn’t always been that way. He had hurt a lot of people in his younger years. Mostly women. It got to the point where he actually got exiled from his old village. Too many enemies. Too many husbands hated him. Many villages he passed through apparently caught wind of who he was and forced him out as well. It wasn’t until he had been disfigured by a monster known as a cupid that he got a new perspective on his life, even coming to regret how he had acted and what he had done. The disfigurement helped him find a new life, completely separate from how he used to live, where he just tried to bring a smile to others’ faces.

Alyssa shuddered as she pulled out of the man’s life. All that history, all that rich life… It had given his soul potential.

Watching Tenebrael take that potential for herself felt… wrong. Alyssa found herself disgruntled as she watched the angel on the other side of the planet consume the soul. It wasn’t until she realized that she was grinding her teeth together that Alyssa stopped. Confusion replaced irritation as she wondered why she felt so annoyed with Tenebrael. It had to be the Throne. Was it… can it think for itself? A new fear piled on top of all the others, a fear that the Throne was influencing her in a very direct fashion. Alyssa couldn’t imagine any other reason she would get so frustrated with Tenebrael doing something that Alyssa already knew she did.

Shaking her head, Alyssa realized that she had more important things to worry about.

Kasita.

The mimic was not dead. Of that, Alyssa was now certain. A soul could not be destroyed. Not like that, anyway. Not with a simple touch, even with the Throne’s power. Even if she had destroyed it, a soul contained immense potential. All that potential would have had to have gone somewhere. Alyssa’s body, the house, the lake, maybe even the whole mountain would have been wiped out had the soul been violently destroyed.

So Kasita was somewhere. Alyssa just had to find her.

With Tenebrael’s power, Alyssa had been able to see souls all over Nod. But beyond a certain distance around her, they all blurred together. Now, she was quite certain that she had successfully connected herself to the Throne. She could distinguish souls all across the planet. Brakkt and Irulon, the rest of her friends as well. They were there, off in Lyria. She dared not look deeper. It was one thing to have some random person’s life story flash through her head. She would never meet that guy and he would never know. But she did not want to risk looking into the history of her friends. Even if she kept it a secret to her dying day, it might change how she looked at them. She knew that Irulon had a point in her past where she had experimented on corpses to make the Toymaker series of spells. She didn’t need to know more than that. Brakkt, she liked just the way he was. He could share detailed stories of his past if and when he felt like it.

Turning away from Lyria, Alyssa realized something else. At first, it was just a glimmer in the night sky. Maybe a twinkling star. But there was something odd about it that made her focus.

It was then that Alyssa realized the true scope of the universe itself.

There were souls up there. Not in some kind of religious concept of heaven, but literally. She could see pockets of souls that had to be other planets. Maybe Earth was among them. Tenebrael had confirmed that Earth was in the same universe as Nod, after all. Unfortunately, while she could see clearly across the entirety of Nod, other planets were apparently too far. Or maybe they were just too small relative to her position. A few billion souls all concentrated on the point of a needle was too many for her. At least at the moment.

She had gotten better at using Tenebrael’s power over time. The same might be true now.

Since she could see so far, she should be able to find Kasita. Kasita wasn’t likely to be on another planet. Although, thinking about how Earth was in this universe reminded herself that Kasita might not be… Hadn’t that been Irulon’s theory? Kasita existed in a parallel universe mostly, only extending a portion of herself into this world which she built illusory constructs around.

From what Alyssa knew, from what she understood, even a parallel universe should still be connected to the Throne. The Throne was everything. Alyssa’s inability to see individual souls on other planets was a human limitation. Not a limitation of the Throne. But that limitation shouldn’t matter here. A parallel universe would be overlaid on top of this one. Kasita shouldn’t be far away. In fact, she should be right here, just… to the side?

With the Throne, anything should be possible. Unfortunately, Alyssa wasn’t quite sure where to go from there. It wasn’t like she could look up parallel universes on her phone. They were essentially just theories on Earth. This was something she would have to figure out for herself.

Or was it?

“Tenebrael,” Alyssa said aloud. More steam escaped from her mouth as she spoke.

On the opposite side of the planet, Tenebrael stopped moving. The crystalline components that made up her being stuttered for just the barest instant. The next instant, Tenebrael was gone.

Black feathers rained down around Alyssa. In the midst of them, Tenebrael hovered above the ground with a shocked expression on her face. Even after she saw Alyssa sitting in the grass, looking up at her, Tenebrael’s eyes widened further. “Please don’t do that again,” Tenebrael said, closing her eyes as she pressed a hand to her chest and breathed in. “It was… disconcerting. Like the Throne was summoning me for an audience.”

“Help me find Kasita.”

“Alyssa Meadows… are you… alright?”

“I’m fine. But Kasita—”

“You are not fine.” A concerned Tenebrael got down on her knees to make herself roughly level with Alyssa. She reached out, touching Alyssa on the shoulders. “Your body is tearing itself apart. It is a wonder that there aren’t pieces of you lying all over the place. I knew it. The Throne is too much. We should sever the connection.”

My body… Alyssa looked down. She was still wearing the dragon scale armor. Now that she was thinking about it… it felt like a sauna underneath. Removing the outer layer, she found her undershirt completely and thoroughly soaked. So full of sweat that it wouldn’t be able to hold any more moisture if it tried. No longer trapped, that moisture apparently decided it would rather be steam at the moment.

She was losing water at an alarming rate. More than that, a human body shouldn’t be hot enough to turn water to steam. Her heart shouldn’t be pounding that hard. Her insides shouldn’t feel like they were drying up…

Tenebrael was right.

But Alyssa knew the human body. She knew variations of the human body. She had even started investigating the dragon armor just before the battle in the hopes of giving Companion a set of it for herself.

If something was wrong with her body, all she had to do was fix it.

For just a moment, she considered something dangerous. Kasita was the one to have brought it up when she expressed her fears that Alyssa might just up and disappear. Nobody could see Tenebrael, which Alyssa was pretty sure was because Tenebrael didn’t have a real body. Alyssa still didn’t know why she could see Tenebrael, but that didn’t really matter at the moment. The point was, if her body was the problem, wouldn’t getting rid of it solve that problem?

The more rational part of her overheated brain quickly shut down that idea. If she didn’t have a body, she wouldn’t be able to be with Brakkt or ride Izsha. Living like a normal person would be impossible, even if she figured out a way to let them see her, it just wouldn’t be the same.

No. There had to be another solution.

To start with, Alyssa needed to reconstitute her body. All that water loss to sweat would dehydrate her. But that was a simple matter. She had created so many bodies and experimented with them so much that it was barely worth a thought. The bigger issue was her temperature. She couldn’t literally be boiling her sweat with nothing more than her own body heat. She was pretty sure her brain would have cooked and died instantly if she were that hot. Which meant that there was probably some magic shenanigans going on.

Temperature control was simple, even if figuring out the root cause of her irregular temperature was not. For the time being, Alyssa forced her body to cool down. It felt like ice flowing through her veins, but she could feel it working. She was feeling better already.

“That won’t last. You won’t be able to keep that up forever.”

“Then what should I do?” Alyssa said slowly, more focused on examining the changes she had made to her body and looking for any problems. At least her breath wasn’t exploding into a gust of steam the moment it left her mouth. That was a good sign. “Should I just let the likes of Bastiel walk all over me? Shrug my shoulders and accept that I have no real control over anything?”

“Alyssa…”

“Fuck that. I just need time. Time to acclimate. Time to figure out what I need to do to my body to get it feeling normal. Time to figure out how to properly use the Throne’s power. It is already so much more than what I had access to through you. No offense. But it barely took a thought to change my body. Even as little as I did would have required heavy concentration and focus before. This isn’t optimal. I can still feel my heart pounding. But it will buy me time…

“And in the meantime, I need your help.”

The concern on Tenebrael’s face only intensified as Alyssa spoke. For a long moment, she didn’t say anything in response. Alyssa waited, staring at the angel in the eyes, not breaking contact until Tenebrael sighed. “If it makes you feel better… What do you need?”

“There was something wrong with Kasita’s soul. It was still in adrift when I got back. I’m positive that I fixed it, but I think I also spooked her enough that she fully retreated into her real body’s world. The parallel world? Or whatever it is where mimics go while they are mimicking things. Take me there.”

“You fixed her soul? How? What did you do?”

“I…” Alyssa hadn’t really thought about it at the time. Possibly because her brain was overheating. But thinking back… what had she done? “I did what felt right,” was all she could say.

“If that is the case, we should find your companion quickly.”

“Did I do something wrong?”

“You can’t even tell me what you did.”

Tenebrael, with surprising haste, wrapped her arms and wings around Alyssa, drawing her into a tight hug. Normally, she did something like this a little slower, savoring the moment, if Alyssa had to put it to words. But this time, she barely got her wings around Alyssa before the familiar feel of teleportation occurred.

The place they teleported to felt different from anything else Alyssa had ever experienced. In fact, it almost had a sense of the adrift. Everything around her was muted somehow. The colors, the sound, even the taste of the air. Objectively, if Alyssa looked around, she would have to describe it as being identical to the place she had left. The lake near her house was there along with the forest and the hills. As far as she could tell, it was all exactly the same. Except the house was missing. That was the only difference.

The souls of all the people in the regular world had vanished from Alyssa’s senses. There were a few here, but probably not more than a thousand. Across the entire planet. There was no sign of Fela or Brakkt. None of the people she knew were here. Or… Almost none. Something drew Alyssa’s attention to a far off location. A familiar presence. It wasn’t Kasita, but it was something she recognized the moment she looked a little deeper into its soul.

The gaunt. The same one she had met so long ago. It took a moment to understand why it was here.

Irulon had said something along the lines of gaunts drawing prey into their own hunting ground for later consumption. That hunting ground had to be this parallel world. It was far off, so as long as it couldn’t move faster than it could in reality, Alyssa shouldn’t have to worry about it.

Still, she would keep it in her peripheral vision. Just in case. It didn’t seem like a very good hunting ground if its victims could just run away, after all.

Much closer around, Kasita should have been somewhere. After all, she had just been at this lake in the regular world. Unless the locations didn’t match up exactly. That… actually made more sense. Kasita in her normal body wouldn’t have been able to travel fast enough to match a portal or even a draken. Unless she had a mount to ride in this place, she should have been confined to a fairly limited speed.

So where was she?

“Kasita!” Alyssa called out, not sure what she was hoping for. If she couldn’t detect Kasita’s soul, then…

A shimmer in the corner of her eye made Alyssa turn. In the grass, she found a discarded wristband. It was only there for a moment. A human body quickly replaced it. One roughly matching Alyssa in appearance. As she watched, a soul filled in, coming through… something. A hole in the world? It was definitely Kasita. Both the body and the soul matched with what Alyssa knew. But where had it been?

Kasita, lying flat on the grass, slowly opened her eyes. “You came for me!” she said, voice soft. “And Tenebrael too.”

Alyssa didn’t have a response. She was too shocked, staring at her sister.

“Ufu~” Kasita giggled as she slowly sat up, turning to fully face Alyssa. “Surprised?” She pointed a finger at her own eyes. “Now we match!”

An illusion? No. Definitely not. While Kasita would be capable of such a thing, Alyssa could feel the divine magic in those glowing white eyes. They were real. She had connected to something. Tenebrael? Or the Throne itself.

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