Aaron nearly froze.
He recovered quickly, but the empress’s words had landed like a hand on his shoulder in a dark room — sudden and completely unexpected. His eyes drifted to her on instinct. She was sitting with the sa unhurried grace as before, the easy smile still resting on her lips, her tea cradled in both hands as the hammock swayed beneath her.
She looked calm. Playful, even.
The words, though, hadn’t felt playful at all.
"Empress," he said carefully, "this is Alyssa. She’s from the venom tribe, but — she’s more of a companion to than anything else. She saved my life."
"Aw." The empress turned her face toward him, head tilting slightly. "So it’s not a gift for ?"
The smile that accompanied the question did sothing entirely inconvenient to his heartbeat. For a mont he forgot what he’d just said, forgot the small motionless figure in his palm, forgot most things in general. She was breathtaking in the most uncomplicated and inconvenient way possible — the kind of beauty that didn’t ask for your attention, it simply took it.
But she was waiting for an answer. He cleared his throat into his free hand.
"I am afraid so, m’lady."
"Aw, don’t be afraid, human child." She consoled him gently, her voice soft and unhurried, the hammock still rocking beneath her at its own quiet pace.
Aaron opened his mouth, then closed it.
He hadn’t ant it literally. ’I am afraid so’ was just an expression — a polite way of confirming an unfortunate no. It wasn’t supposed to prompt reassurance. He stood there for a brief mont, genuinely unsure how to address the misunderstanding without making it more awkward than it already was.
But Alyssa couldn’t wait for him to untangle a figure of speech. He let it go.
"What happened to her?" he asked, and then, because the empress had heard everything else just fine from much greater distances, he simply looked at Alyssa and waited.
"That mushfolk child is dead," the empress replied, with the sa tone one might use to comnt on the weather, "because her body wasn’t able to tolerate the spatial shift."
The words landed cleanly and without ceremony.
Aaron’s expression cracked.
The guilt arrived before the sadness did — imdiate and specific, pointing its finger directly at him. Alyssa would have been fine. She had been fine, right up until he’d slipped her into his pocket and she’d been pulled through a spatial shift her small body had no business surviving. He’d made that choice. He’d been the one to put her there.
"Is there..." He exhaled quietly. "Is there any way she can be revived, empress?"
The empress smiled — not unkindly — and gestured toward the empty hammock chair across from her. He accepted the invitation without thinking about it, settling down and letting the chair take his weight as he cradled Alyssa in his palm. Almost without realising it, he began brushing her mushroom-like hair back gently, his thumb grazing the edge of the large, round cap that sat on top of her head.
"Mushfolks are special creatures," the empress began, taking a asured sip of her tea, "born from soul and earth together. In theory they never truly die — they simply return to their origin and re-erge in a different form eventually." She paused. "But that’s not what you want, is it."
It wasn’t a question.
"No," he said quietly.
"Hmm~" She tilted her head, and the smile shifted into sothing a little more entertained. "I could tell you how. But why should I?"
The guilt and grief fighting for space in his chest made a little room for sothing sharper and more practical. His eyes settled on her bandana.
"What would the empress like in return?"
"Knowledge for knowledge?" She laughed softly — a low, lodic sound, like the lightest brush of bells across still air. "Fair trade?"
He considered that for exactly as long as it took to appear thoughtful. "The trade seems fair, though I’m not certain my knowledge is worth anything to you, empress. I’m just a young man who was thrown into this place to upgrade his class."
On the outside, his tone was careful and modest.
On the inside: ’There is absolutely no way my knowledge is worth more than a primordial’s. This is an incredible deal.’
"No ordinary man simply walks into my realm, human child," she said, with the easy certainty of soone stating a fact about the sky. "I am curious, so I’ll ask first." She settled back slightly, resting her cheek in her palm. "What year is it, and how many races exist in your world — Solaris, was it?"
"Yes, Solaris." Aaron jumped on the question before she could add to it or change her mind. "Currently it’s the year 2404, though I can’t be certain what year it’ll be when I return — ti may have moved differently. As for the number of races, I don’t know the exact count, but there are nine continents in Solaris. Eight of them are said to house different races, and the ninth sits at the centre — a shared land between all of them."
"The hexperint design," the empress murmured, as if the words were ant only for herself.
Aaron caught them anyway, but he filed the phrase away for later rather than reaching for it now. She was already continuing.
"Don’t worry about ti," she said, with a small nod in his direction. "Ti here moves faster than it does outside. You won’t lose as much as you think."
The knot that had been sitting quietly in the middle of his chest for so ti loosened considerably. Claire and Eva’s predictions hadn’t been wrong. The ti compression was real, and it was working in his favour.
"I’m glad to hear that," he said, and ant it more than he let on.
He looked down at Alyssa, still motionless against his palm. "For my question — I’d like to know how to save her. Please."
"A deal is a deal." The empress sipped her tea calmly. "I’ll give you the thod plainly: subrge her body in the tea for ten minutes."
Before he could ask where to find more tea, or what kind, or any of the several follow-up questions already forming — she snapped her fingers.
The space beside him shuddered once, a brief tremor, and then a tal bucket appeared on the floor next to the chair. It was a normal size, practical looking, and roughly three-quarters filled with the sa greenish tea they’d been drinking since he sat down.
Aaron stared at it.
’This is the resurrection thod.’
He wasn’t going to question it. He understood very clearly where he stood in the hierarchy of this conversation — not on the level of a beggar, not even close. A primordial being was humouring him, and he would accept that with every gram of gratitude he had.
As a famous man once said: beggars can’t be choosers.
So without ceremony, Aaron leaned forward and lowered Alyssa gently into the bucket, small and still, and the mont her body touched the surface the tea bubbled furiously — not overflowing, not rising, just churning and reacting internally like sothing was happening below the surface that had very strong opinions about it.
"Mushfolk bodies grow through nourishnt and nutrients," the empress offered, unprompted, watching him with what appeared to be mild amusent. "And here is sothing interesting — the soul of a mushfolk remains inside their body after death. It only separates once the body has fully decomposed past the point of no return." She let that sit for a mont. "So. What does that tell you?"
Aaron thought about it. Not for long.
"That if the body is healed and nourished properly before it reaches that point... the soul is already there. She could co back."
The empress dipped her head in a slow, approving nod. "Correct." The smile returned, warm and unhurried. "And what did I tell you the tea was made of?"
He replayed it. Nourishing leaves.
"...Nourishing leaves." He looked up at her, and sothing in his chest loosened entirely — the guilt not gone, but quieter now, stepped back from the front of things. "Thank you, empress. Genuinely."
The relief ca out of him like a breath he’d been holding since the mont he’d opened that pocket in the bathroom and found her still. A weight he hadn’t fully acknowledged until now lifted off him with surprising completeness.
The empress waved her free hand, easy and unbothered. "It’s no trouble." She let a mont of quiet settle before continuing, and when she did her tone carried the sa casualness as everything else she said — which made the questions land harder, not softer.
"Now it’s my turn again." She tilted her head, the smile still there but her attention clearly sharper than it had been a mont ago.
"What is the na of your class? And why does your soul appear strange when I look at it with my spiritual vision?"
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