Lexie and Cecilia stared at each other for what felt like an eternity of silence. The woman seemed to be waiting for some kind of special response from Lexie, especially as the tears started rolling down her cheeks.

"I don't remember who that is," Lexie said, which made the woman cry harder, as she brought her hand over her mouth.

"That's okay," she said, obviously trying to control her emotions. "I mean, I knew you wouldn't remember me. I haven't seen you in a long time after all, and your mother…oh my God, Lexie, I'm so sorry about your mother, it's all my fault, everything's my fault…"

Lexie didn't know or care what Cecilia Horan was going on about. She was more interested in the mechanical tiger.

"No." Cecilia suddenly shook her head. "No more crying. I'll fix it. I'll make it right."

"Okay," Lexie said blankly, and at that point, Cecilia noticed something: the fact that Lexie was bleeding from her abdomen, where the Tiger had stabbed her. Cecilia gasped and reached out to touch the blood.

"Oh, Lexie, I'm so sorry. I didn't know it was you. Let me fix it."

"No need. It will heal soon."

"No. That's a really bad cut. You must be in shock not to feel it. I have a few points saved up. Here, let me just..." She backed up and presumably opened up her system screen, going through her inventory to see what she could use.

Lexie could tolerate the pain for some time, but since the wound bothered the other woman so much, she simply activated her skin stitching card and stitched the skin back together. "Done."

"Oh." Cecilia was surprised. "How did you do that?"

"Magic," Lexie responded.

Cecilia released a bark of surprised laughter, though Lexie did not say anything funny.

"Excuse me," Ryn spoke up. "Human."

"Cecilia."

"Of course, Cecilia. I am Ryn-Byul-Fo, and this is my companion, Zu-Lo-Ya. We are both Fae trapped in this dungeon."

"Yeah, I figured. I've been trapped here too for…system only knows how long. It must have been years considering you're already all grown up, but it's still less time than I would have guessed, given that–"

"We want to get to that mountain," Lexie pointed to the mountain in the distance. "But it moves farther away the closer we get?"

"Oh, right. Yeah, I'm trying to head there too," she said. "That's the solution to this level, right? To reach the highest point?"

"We think so."

"Okay, well, as far as I can tell, I think going toward the mountain is moving in the wrong direction."

Lexie and Ryn shared a look.

"I think the trick with this level has to do with reflections. You know, like with a glass. I think the mountain is a mirage, a reflection of where we're supposed to go. So we need to be moving in the opposite direction."

"How do you know this?" Lexie asked.

"I had the same problem that you had. The closer I got, the further away it moved. So common sense dictated that I should check what happened when I moved away from it. I made Tiger move in opposite directions for some time, and he brought back video evidence that confirmed what I thought. The farther away we move, the closer it gets."

"Ah." Ryn nodded. "Exactly like a piolah."

"I don't know what that is, but probably."

"But I don't understand," Lexie said. "If it's a reflection, and you move farther away from it, shouldn't the reflection get smaller instead?"

Cecilia shrugged. "I don't know for sure how any of this works yet. It's only a theory. But when I tried to go too far in the opposite direction, I got attacked by others."

"There are others on this level?"

Cecilia nodded. "Yes. Far more than on the other levels. It's strange. So I've simply remained here to avoid it while I waited for a human ally. I've been gathering enough food and resources in the meantime."

Lexie wondered why they didn't encounter more of these 'others' on their way here. She'd only killed about half a dozen minor monstrous creatures. Surely, those weren't the ones Cecilia was bothered about.

Ryn, on the other hand, had a different question. She stared at Cecilia like she was a specimen in a petri dish. "This is quite fascinating. I've never seen a human who completed so many levels in a dungeon. You must be very strong."

"Not really," Cecilia replied a tad bashfully. "More like clever. And I've had some time to practice. I had a lot of tools coming in here, including a gadget that allows me to grow human-like food even on a foreign planet."

"You mean a photosynthesizer?" Lexie said automatically.

"Yes. Do you have one too?"

Lexie opened her inventory and materialized the necklace in her hand.

"Where did you get it from?"

"It was a gift," she said, remembering her eleventh birthday in Indigo. A sense of despair hit her out of nowhere. "From…Aiden."

"You call your father by his first name," Cecilia said. "That's interesting."

Lexie nodded, although she didn't like hearing that Aiden was her father.

Lexie had been avoiding thinking about that. She'd been avoiding thinking about him in general, but he'd shown up enough in her dreams that she now had to address him by his name and try to control the visceral reaction she had to him.

Maybe trying not to think about it was the wrong thing to do, because all her suppressed thoughts were coming out in her dreams anyway.

Maybe the way to fix it and finally overcome that loss and sadness was to think about it and feel the things she was forcing herself not to feel, even if she didn't understand them.

She didn't want to, but maybe she had to.

After all, the thoughts wouldn't kill her. No one ever died from feeling things.

And ultimately, she needed to confront and overcome those things to become what she needed to become. Her true self.

Rigid control wasn't conducive to being a powerful Eldritch. So she had to let go.

With a lot of effort, she decided to release the reins even just a little on her emotions. The chaos within instantly increased.

"Is the photosynthesizer how you've been eating?" Cecilia asked her. "Also, this is a very old model. It's a wonder it works well enough to keep you alive for however long you've been here."

"She does not eat," Ryn said helpfully. "She only very reluctantly drinks my tea."

"What do you mean she doesn't eat?"

"I'm Eldritch," Lexie revealed.

That had Cece blinking.

"What?"

Lexie deliberately looked down at the blood now staining Cecilia's hands. It was too dark to really make out the color, but Cece fumbled in her inventory, materialized a torch, and flashed it onto her hands, showing that the stain was black, and not red.

A loud gasp ripped through the night.

"Oh my God," she said. "You're not Lexie Sparrowfoot."

"I am," Lexie said.

"She is," Ryn concurred. "Her soul says so."

"I don't…" Cecilia shook her head. "I don't understand. How are you Lexie, and an Eldritch?"

"Naem made me Eldritch," Lexie said, after a brief thought. "He changed my soul…it was the only way to keep me alive."

Lexie suddenly remembered who this woman was.

Aiden had told her about Cecilia Horan a while ago. She was the one who had helped him retrieve Lexie Evan's soul to fortify Lexie Sparrowfoot's. She was the reason Lexie was a combination of both.

And now, in a way, Lexie was neither.

How ironic, she thought, and there was a little tickle of humor in her brain. Even though her soul registered as it, she'd never really felt like Lexie Sparrowfoot, and in the last year, she'd stopped feeling like Lexie Evans, too.

It took becoming Eldritch to finally feel like herself.

Stolen story; please report.

Nevertheless, there was still a part of her that felt like an imposter.

"You mean Naem… as in the Eldritch Lord?" Cecilia ventured.

"You've heard of him."

"Yes. Your mother told me about him once and..." She pursed her lips and thought about it. "I'm guessing it was Aiden who asked him to do it, right? To save your life?"

"I suppose," Lexie said.

"So now you're Eldritch."

"Yes."

Cecilia exhaled raspily. "And Aiden? Where is he? Did he die? I knew he would come looking for your mother, but–"

"He's not dead," Lexie said sharply because she didn't want to think about that man with his teas and snickerdoodles being dead. "He's simply not here."

"He's back in the human world?"

"Yes."

"Then he must be going crazy with grief after losing you and your mother." Cecilia shook her head. "Lexie, I have to get you out of here."

"That's what I'm trying to do. I want to get to the Other."

"The– no, I mean, you have to get back to Earth."

Lexie shook her head. "I don't want to go to Earth. There's nothing for me there."

"Of course there is. Your father's there."

Lexie shook her head. "Human Lexie is gone. Only Eldritch Lexie is here, and Eldritch Lexie has no father."

Sure, she'd been spawned by Naem, which would make Naem her father in a human context, but that wasn't how Eldritch operated. Eldritch did not feel paternal toward their spawn, and the only link between them was often the powers they shared. According to Ryn, the Eldritch spawn could be used to control the parent, and vice versa, but she didn't get into how.

But Naem would not be her father, in the way Aiden was to the child in her dreams.

And Lexie did not feel for Naem what the child had felt for her parents.

Now that she let herself think about it, she slowly uncovered that soft emotion, hidden beneath all the grief.

Longing.

A part of her yearned to be like that child again. To find happiness rather than just light, to be as carefree as the child had been in the dreams, playing with the people she loved.

She wanted to eat bread and cookies again.

She wanted to float in a bubble above her father's head.

But that wasn't for her anymore. She'd lost it forever.

She was an Eldritch, and Eldritch did not get to laugh in kitchens.

Maybe that was why she kept having the dreams against her own will, dreams where she was that person again, dreams that made the tiny human part of her happy at least for a while.

"Oh," Cecilia said quietly, and she stared at Lexie with an expression Lexie recognized.

It was pity. Pity that Lexie wasn't a human again. Pity that Lexie was Eldritch.

Lexie squeezed her hands into fists. She didn't want her pity. Being Eldritch was excellent. She had power beyond her wildest imagination and access to truths of life. She could make the natural chaos into her superpower. She could fight and destroy anything.

She had light.

"That's not true," Ryn said, to cut through the silence. "Lexie is not completely Eldritch. She still has human tendencies. I'm not a good soul weaver, but I detect her essence while weaving her body, and her essence isn't entirely Eldritch. She's a strange hybrid. I have never encountered her type before."

Lexie frowned at Ryn. She didn't know why Ryn was telling this stranger her business. She also didn't know why she was talking to Cecilia in the first place, unless the woman could help them pass the level.

Cecilia now turned her attention toward Little Fae, and Lexie almost wanted to step in front of her protectively.

"Aww, poor thing," Cecilia said. "She's so young.'

"She doesn't talk," Lexie told Cecilia.

"She communicates occasionally," Ryn countered. "You just don't understand her. And you never bother to learn, no matter how many times I try to teach you–"'

"She doesn't talk human," Lexie reiterated, cutting her off. "She only stares at me while I sleep."

Cecilia smiled warmly at Little Fae, who made a chittering sound.

"It's nice to meet you, too." She turned back to Lexie. "Why do you want to go to the Other?"

"To kill Naem."

That alarmed the older woman. "Why do you want to kill him? And I thought Eldritch couldn't be killed, only denatured?"

"She uses the terms interchangeably," Ryn explained.

"Why do you want to kill him?" Cecilia repeated.

Lexie opened her mouth and closed it. She didn't actually remember too well why she wanted to kill Naem. Or rather, she remembered that she'd wanted to kill him because of her anger at his betrayal, but that anger had been morphed away in all her transformations.

Now, all she knew was that she wanted to kill Naem, but there was no clear reason why.

"Because I want to," she responded, and she turned her attention back to the tiger. "Did you build that?"

"Yes," she said.

"How?"

"With engineering and a bit of alchemy."

"You can use alchemy."

"That's a complicated answer. But yes and no. I'm more of an Engineer than anything, and I used to work as the ISTS Lead Engineer before I ended up here. I was learning alchemy but…I'm not the best at it, and my teacher, well, he was insane." She released a breath. "I came here because I needed to fix what I broke, and I needed to put everything right again. But I think I might have just made everything worse, and now I don't even know how to get out. But I'll find an exit. I've come close a few times, but–" She sighed. "Anyway, Lexie, I'll get you out of here, but you shouldn't try to kill Naem. He's an Eldritch Lord."

"So am I."

"No, you're not," Ryn countered.

Lexie glared at Ryn. "Technically, I am."

"The V'Sala told me that you have not passed your Lordship trial, and you have no disciples. So technically you're not."

Lexie glared fiercely, but Ryn remained standing with her self-righteous posture.

"Whatever you are," Cecilia said. "I don't think you're a match for Lord Naem. He's been an Eldritch for a very, very long time. I don't think you'll be able to kill him."

"We'll see about that," Lexie said.

"The priority for now is to get to the mountain," Ryn said. "We are making Lexie stronger by passing the levels so that she can gain points and train her cards. So the next time she meets Yasycht, she can use his power to get us out of here."

"Who's Yasycht?"

"He is the door," Lexie answered. "He's closed every other door in this place except for him."

"Oh," Cecilia nodded. "That makes sense. That's why everything is wonky."

"How so?"

"The way this dungeon used to work, if you solve a level, the door appears to let you out. You can either choose to go through the door and leave, or you can ignore it and keep going for something better. Then it stopped doing that."

Ryn and Lexie shared another look as Ryn said, "We find that in most of the levels, there is always a locked door, or some kind of blocked off entrance. We believe that is the door that keeps Yasycht in the beyond. Someone might have tampered with one of the doors somehow, and that was what let Yasycht take over the dungeon."

"I think I know who," Cecilia said.

"Who?"

"John." She spat the word out with such bitterness that it felt personal.

Lexie didn't know a John, so she said nothing.

She put that in her ever-growing list of strange things about this dungeon.

Lexie then said, "Before we move any further, we should scout and make sure that what you're saying is accurate."

Cecilia nodded as Lexie summoned the V'Sala.

Cece screamed when she saw him. She jumped back as her tiger was about to attack, but Lexie stopped it with a force field.

The V'Sala looked bored and annoyed. "Yes, Princess?"

She cloned the V'Sala without answering and used her cards to connect them so that they would each share their vision with the main V'Sala.

Then she directed them. "You go in that direction, you go in that direction, and you go in that direction. You over there." She pointed at the main V'Sala. "You'll stand here with us and tell them what you see. Make sure you uncover any traps or any creatures there. And check how far each person is from the mountain."

The V'Sala bowed and set off to do just that.

"The V'Sala might get attention," Cecilia said. "What will we do if we lead one of the monsters to us?"

Lexie smiled with her newly rediscovered humor. "I would not worry so much about that if I were you."

***

"Dewie, seriously," Xena said. "Do you still not get it?"

"I'm trying," Dewie snapped, losing his patience. "It's not like I'm not trying, Xena."

Xena gave an exasperated sigh and said, "You're right. I'm sorry. I'm just impatient."

"Me too."

"Okay, maybe it's time to take a break," said Journeyman, who was overseeing this exercise in a practice room.

Vacek and Jerry were observing from the back.

Vacek had given the two students as much protection as he could afford. He knew putting them on this mission might bring Vulcan's attention to them, but either the other man was too busy for this, or he still hadn't found his way into the school.

Nevertheless, Vacek wasn't taking any chances. He wouldn't be letting them off campus or without their detail until Dewie's powers of deduction got better.

He knew that Xena could help Dewie translate his powers, but it wasn't as easy as putting them together to work it out.

The boy's powers were extremely passive, and he was bad at processing them. Xena's powers were like a light switch. They were either on or off, and there was no in between.

Instead of feeding it to Dewie slowly, she would blast it at him, and it would sometimes make his vision disappear completely.

After weeks of practice, they were still struggling to make concrete predictions using his visions.

But Dewie was doing well regardless. He could now mostly tell which one of his premonitions was the worst and which were just mildly bad. His perception had gotten better in that regard, and he had a notebook where he wrote everything down and studied it from time to time.

There was still the limitation of his having to actually be in the area to see the vision, but they would work on that with time. Once he could translate all his visions, he would be truly an asset to the association.

After the session, Jerry stepped out to answer a call, and Dewie walked over to talk to Vacek.

"Hey, Mr. Vacek?"

"Just Dominic is fine," he told the boy, to put him at ease.

Dewie still couldn't meet his gaze. "Um... I wanted to tell you something. I have this girl in my dorm. Her name's Ava. I see a dragon tail wrapped around her all the time, and it's definitely at least a medium bad thing. Can you tell her about it? I tried to tell her, but she blew me off. I feel like she would listen better if it came from you."

Vacek smiled. "Of course, I will."

Dewie looked relieved.

After Dewie walked away, Vacek made sure their security protocol was uncompromised, and he went back to his thoughts.

Amongst the most troubling ones was Aiden Sparrowfoot.

He'd been having Aiden watched for weeks now, and nothing unusual had come up. Aiden was living with a mundane boy who had once fought in the AFC. The boy was friends with Lexie, which is probably why Aiden let him stay.

Perhaps that was part of how he'd processed his grief.

Vacek knew Aiden was probably still talking to his Eldritch contact, to try to find a way to retrieve Lexie. Soon enough, he might attempt the same thing he did with his wife.

According to the spies, Aiden had locked himself in his house for months, but now he was finally out and about again. He still looked like hell, but it was to be expected. He was a grieving father.

He was also a ticking time bomb.

Vacek had to find Lexie quickly, before the man did something they would all regret.

At the first sign that Aiden was going to flip, he would have his spies capture and take him in.

But so far, they'd confirmed that Aiden wasn't up to anything, and he only went to the clinic and school.

The mundane boy also only went to the typical place a boy his age would go to. He also went to the library a lot. Nothing was out of the ordinary.

Nevertheless, Vacek would certainly be going down again soon to check it out himself.

Maybe tonight, he thought.

At least until Jerry came running at him, panic in his eyes.

"What is it?"

"It's the Alchemist," he said. "He's missing."

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.