The world Kir woke up to was white.
And the mont he sat up, he realized exactly where he was.
"Why am I in my mindscape?" he asked out loud. The white void did not respond.
Looking down at himself, he realized both that he was extrely naked, and that sothing felt strange. Like his whole body was leaking sothing viscous. Yet nothing seed to be visually wrong with him.
He tried to think back on what he’d seen the last ti he visited his inner world, and instantly he found himself at the pool and cave that represented his source of mana and the well that stored it.
"Wasn’t there more here before?" He wondered but found he couldn’t quite rember. "I should talk to Kiryu."
He readied himself to dive through his well, but just before jumping he realized the water wasn’t moving. Reaching out to dip his tail in it, he found it frozen like clear ice, caught in a pattern of roiling wavelets.
"Kiryu?" he yelled at the pool. "Did you do this?"
There was no response.
Kir took a deep breath to forestall the sense of panic inside him. After three breaths he tried to sit and ditate his way out, only to find himself in the exact sa spot when he opened his eyes.
"Alright, don’t panic. What was I doing before winding up here?"
He’d had a wonderful ti with his and Kordia’s imdiate lovers, and then he’d prepared to evolve using the fulcrum he’d taken in Montmorency...
"Did sothing go wrong with the fulcrum?"
Thinking about his current state, his body felt... muddy, but not quite so. More like pressurized water, even though it acted as solid as he expected it to. He tried reaching into his dinsional storage but nothing happened. And when he tried to use magic, even more nothing.
After what felt like hours of trying to interact with his source and the well, he gave up. "Ugh, I wish I had my pipe," he thought out loud, then realized how unlike himself that thought was.
"Guess I’m finally addicted to smoking. Hope that makes you happy, Kiryu."
There was no response.
Without stimulus, he sat cross-legged and let his mind drift, imagining the feel of his kiseru in hand, the sll of the tobacco in it. The sensation of lighting it with a spark of magic-created fire, the smoke curling gently upward, and then the taste...
Suddenly he felt sothing in his hand, and looking down he saw his lit pipe.
"What the..." He turned it about, inspecting it. It felt real, and when he took an experintal puff, it acted completely as he expected.
"So that’s how you do it," Kir said, thinking about Kiryu’s mindscape, which was comprised of a futuristic house on a beach.
Keeping the kiseru in his mouth, he tried to think up sothing else. Clothing ca first.
Even in his own head, he didn’t quite feel comfortable walking around naked. In short order, he was dressed in his casual attire of pants with a small sheath for his tail, a tailored shirt, and a buttoned monster-leather vest.
As subjective hours passed, and then days, and then weeks, his mastery of creating new things in his environnt increased, and he was even able to add a day-night cycle- though he doubted it was accurate.
He even tried to recreate people, but found the practice too disturbing to want to keep up, after his simulacra of Kordia and Rain proved to be more like punchline-spouting dolls without any thoughts or the ability to hold a proper conversation without his concentrating on puppeteering them.
And all the while, he occasionally felt odd sensations and the occasional spike of pain. The only thing he could assu from that was that sothing must be happening to him on the outside, and was being transmitted within.
By the ti sothing finally changed without his control, Kir had created a near-replica of the new Academy grounds, with his childhood ho just outside the gates.
He was in his childhood ho pretending to be cooking a breakfast that would nevertheless appear on his plate in its perfect state. The mont he turned around, however, he found himself face-to-face with soone he didn’t know.
A bald person with strongly female features was dressed in a grey shirt and green pants. The shirt was open enough to show off what Kir realized was so sort of skin-tight bodysuit that looked like shimring scales.
"Hi. What’s on the nu?" the stranger asked.
"I didn’t make you..." Kir said, more to himself than the Stranger. He put down the pan and went to sit at the table, creating a second plate of biscuits in dragon at gravy with a dragon egg over easy to share between them.
"Don’t worry, you aren’t mad," she said, taking a sniff at her plate. "I am a bit curious why you are staying in your own mind though. I was like that, towards the end... actually I’m like that right now, hehe."
"Who are you?"
"I’m... I don’t know. But I know we’re the sa. We’re both tatrons."
Kir was shocked. But as soon as his thoughts settled he said, "I thought I was the only one."
The Stranger shrugged. "I think I... died... a long ti ago. I didn’t incorporate myself after because... I rember being tired. Wanting to just reject it all."
"What were you rejecting?"
"Everything. The world. My parents. Our siblings... My self."
"I think I’d rember if I had siblings."
"I don’t an by blood. I ant by, well, the fact we were all created by Them before it all fell apart."
"Who are you talking about?"
"My parents. The ones who made the world." The Stranger took her first bite. "Mmm! This is so good. What is it?"
"Biscuits in dragon at gravy," Kir answered.
"I rember making dragons. It was so cute, watching them fly and wrestle and-"
"Hold on, you made dragons?" He suddenly felt guilty for serving her dragon at and eggs. But if she wasn’t going to bring it up, he wouldn’t either.
"Of course. Can’t you? I an, it took a few centuries before I could even try but it was worth it in the end. I rember a lot of people being happy about it. Then my brother killed ."
"I’m not even thirty," Kir said.
"Oh. You’re just a baby then... Sorry I assud."
Kir snorted at being called a baby. "I’m a grown-ass man, thank you very much."
The Stranger giggled. "You sound like the brother I liked... the one who liked changing people."
"Changing... people? How many siblings did you have?"
"The were... eight of us. The brother I’m talking about was the one who liked giving people the bodies they wanted. I wish I could rember his na... I didn’t an to reject him too, but he didn’t save like he said he would... even though he supported ."
The more Kir spoke with the Stranger, the more he got the sense that sothing very terrible must have happened in the past. She described a massive city, torn into factions between three sets of siblings. A place that could only have been a dungeon so massive, it held vast swathes of worlds created by herself and her siblings.
It matched the description of only one place: the Duat, the Dungeon Labarynthian, the Mother Dungeon, beneath the city of Aaru.
And when she finally got around to describing her parents, Kir knew instantly who she ant.
"Luda and Aiko," Kir said as soon as she finished. "Your parents were Luda and Aiko, weren’t they?"
"Those nas sound... familiar. I think... there were a lot of mom around. She was always so prone to breaking, they made necklaces that recorded their experiences to pass on whenever she... died."
Kir flinched. He’d refreshed their plates with lunch, but had yet to touch his aurochs steak with mashed potatoes in brown gravy and vegetables. anwhile, the Stranger ate heartily.
But after she was halfway done, she yawned and stretched.
"I’m sorry, but I’m getting tired. Seeing ho again is making think and feel things I haven’t done in... forever."
"Wait! Where is ho? Would you like to sleep here?" Kir felt desperate not to lose the one bit of company he’d had in who knows how long.
"Ho is here. Haven. I told you about it. And no, I think I’ll return to what’s left of my body. It was nice eting you, little brother. I hope your evolving goes well. We should do this again soti."
With that, the Stranger disappeared without so much as a sound. One mont she was there and the next she was gone.
Kir slumped back in his seat and let out a frustrated puff of air before waving his al out of existence.
He hadn’t felt hungry at all since he got here, but eating made him feel more human.
With nothing else to do, he decided to try forcing himself to sleep. It never worked, but it was relaxing in a way that would let him think about what he would do the next ti they t.
If there would even be a next ti.
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