Anna wasn't quite certain of how Christina planned on doing what she claimed.

Then again, the finer points of soul magic were still a mystery to Anna. If her colleague claimed contact could be initiated without grafting the boy onto them, then it could probably be done. In her words, "If the priestesses of the Dryad can accomplish this, we should be able to do it better."

Whatever that meant.

If anything, the strangest part lay in how simple it all sounded when presented. They would contact the boy's spirit by reaching through the electric maelstrom of his mind, something that should not be possible, yet somehow was.

If this works, then it shows the lie in most of what we've ever been taught at Hoarfrost. The soul was the mirror in which the flesh reflected, that was the core ideology at the centre of spiritual research. What Christina was about to prove was that the two were not quite separated. One could reach out and touch the mirror it seemed.

That would explain how they remained coherent. Their minds and, for Bianca at least, some of their afflictions had survived unmolested after death and soul capture. Anna had wondered intensely at this, and most explanations had not satisfied her.

It made no sense for their souls to hold on to the knowledge of their lives. What was it ingrained on? Illum held power, yes, and they were constructs of illum, but how did they retain memories, scars, preferences, and even ills?

Anna understood how the mind resided in the flesh. She did not understand how it resided in the soul.

"You plumb such depths, Cytra," she said as she readied her strength for what was to come. "How long have you spent studying this to reach your insight?"

They were sitting on the slope of Tallah's mountain, watching the rolling storm sweeping across the scenery. Their host's mind was cooling, bathed in a mixture of feel-goods that were washing away the fatigue of their desperate escape.

Anna welcomed the imaginary rain.

Besides her, Christina sighed in pleasure before answering, "Aren't we all slaves to our obsessions? I have very good reasons for learning what I did."

Outside, Tallah was finishing her conversation with the boy and getting him ready for what was to happen. They could've done this at any other time, but now was better than later. The decimation they'd caused when fleeing the Cauldron, together with the dragon's attack, had likely bought them a few bells of peace. Anna felt far from rejuvenated after the short rest they'd been afforded, so she welcomed the small distraction. It would take days for her store of illum to get back to where it had been prior to the fight.

An ache sat in her core, as if she'd spread herself too far and too wide, almost to a point of fissure. Had Christina experienced something similar after that first hybrid casting? It wasn't unpleasant, but there was a change happening within, something she hadn't felt since her first bleeding and her first illum contact. Bianca accused the same and they'd decided on exploring the change together when time permitted and they were more recovered.

Anna wasn't certain of the wisdom of what they were about to do. Neither she, nor Christina, nor Tallah herself were at their peak capacity, and they had no idea of what waited inside the boy's mindscape. How much power would Christina need to expend for contact alone? Or what would happen if the thing in the boy fought back?

What of the dwarf and that one's strange presence?

"Never took you for a worrier," Christina said. "It's wafting off you."

"I feel we're going on a fool's journey," she said, not deigning to hide her concerns. "We don't know enough of what we're about to attempt, and I worry of what it might cost us."

"It may cost us our lives," Christina said, then grinned when Anna answered with a black glare. "Oh don't be so serious. You look like the hen when you pout."

"That is not the insult you would think it is," Anna retorted. Silestra was far from a chore on the eye, scars and all. "What follows? Explain it to me."

Christina allowed her manifestation to shift, for a heartbeat, into the shape of lightning, like a crude outline of herself. She regained coherence nearly immediately, but winced as if hurt.

"Ah, this will be a pain," she complained. "I will process us into illum, so our intrusion will be less apparent. Then I will rely on you to achieve blood contact. Tallah's to Vergil's. You know how much power there's in the blood, enough that I don't need to explain it. From there, I will attempt to coax our way into the boy's mindscape. If we can manage this, we will have achieved something quite unique in our day and age, what only the Dryad manages."

But not unique in the days of Grefe's dwellers, was the unsaid part. Anna understood. While this wasn't something Tallah and Christina had found in the books, their imagination was piqued since the whole railgun experiment. Now, they wanted to see how much farther they could push their appliance of illum.

A bit too far, a bit too fast, in Anna's opinion, but she held her tongue. At least the subject was interesting for her, so the whole endeavour wouldn't be a complete waste of their time even if it didn't work.

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"And once we make contact, as you say, what then?" she asked.

"We will have a look at the entity in the boy. If it's tied to his soul, then it will have some reflection in the mind. Else the dwarf wouldn't have managed to subdue it."

Anna's nose scrunched up at that. There we a lot of assumptions in that statement. Christina's confidence bordered on foolishness rather than any kind of sane scholarly proof. All they knew of the dwarf was that it had taken residence in the boy's chip, and from there had managed to oust the other invader. It could just as well be a parasite that would spread to Tallah using the two of them as a vector.

Diseases could find wonderful ways of crossing what were once considered impregnable barriers, such as jumping species entirely.

Parasites were even more adaptable.

And here they were willingly touching blood with what could very well be some unknown, alien form of rabies.

"I think you don't worry enough of what we're about to do," Anna said with a sigh. "But I know better than to try and stop this foolishness."

"What you mean to say," Christina said with an evil twist to her grin, "is that you're too curious of this working to put up any real objection. I'm sure you have several."

Anna sniffed and did not dignify this with a reply. Instead, she checked her store of illum and was satisfied with her recovery. If she were yanked out of contact by some emergency, she could respond with deadly force within the heartbeat. It would have to be sufficient.

Christina flashed several more times between her physical and energy states, settling ultimately on an in-between. "Right, then, let's see what we can manage."

Tallah and Vergil were sat opposite one another on the hill. They'd both eaten some rations at Silestra's insistence, drank water, and now waited. Tallah had cut a gash across her palm and the boy's, and they now held each other's hand, the blood in full contact. Anna reached out and tasted the boy's on instinct, proving there was nothing new or inherently wrong with him.

Then Christina pushed and Anna found herself dragged away from Tallah, swept up in the thump-thump torrent of blood. From Tallah's slow heartbeat to the boy's rabbit-like one, she focused on drawing together the two life essences to allow for passage. Christina held on to her as they both crossed the threshold.

The transition was almost immediate.

"Well, this was unexpected," Christina said as their perspective lurched and they dropped in a wholly new mindscape. "Kinda makes you wish you'd imagined yourself wearing some boots, right?"

They were in a dark, narrow corridor, lit from above by some kind of light strips embedded in the ceiling. The floor underfoot was a metal grate, cold to the touch, rough and oddly sticky as Anna took the first steps in this new space. The whole place was unpleasantly cold, the chill permeating the air. And it buzzed, the sound a low drone that seemed to emanate from the lights above.

"Well, I would call this a cautious success," Christina said. She still maintained her outlined shape, cycling power constantly. "We are connected. Such a storm this one's mind is. I wish I could show it to you. Oh, I wish I could read it."

Anna felt no ill effect from the sudden shift. Her power hadn't been demanded, and she maintained the connection easily between the two. She held tight to a tendril of Tallah's blood, fashioning it as a lifeline to follow back if need be.

"Now… where do we find the boy?" Without waiting for Christina's answer, Anna took off down the corridor, bare feet slapping against the cold floor. She shut herself off from stimuli, unsure if it would be wise to allow her mindscape to interact quite so closely with the boy's.

"That seems as good a direction as any." Christina floated next to her, having apparently reached the same conclusion. She let out a soft white glow and showed the metal corridor in all its dreary detail. Not that there was much to see aside from grey walls, snaking tubes and vines, and neglect. A dungeon would've been just as cheerful.

"By comparison, Tallah's mindscape is quite lovely," she commented as the tunnel turned.

An open door shone a square of light ahead.

A glimpse inside revealed a space barely larger than a privy. It was the same length as the cot that occupied one of the walls, with what looked like some kind of washing space nestled at the far end. Between cot and the other wall there was barely any space at all, enough for someone to pass sideways towards the wash basin.

The detritus of someone living in the cell littered the space. Discarded food on a metal platter, some bunched clothes, wet stains on the walls. Plenty to suggest someone living in there, but not living well.

Christina let out a soft coo of affection as she took in the sight. "If this is how he perceived his living conditions from before, then it's little wonder he was so happy with his bed at the Meadow."

"I've no idea what you're talking about, but I've kept subjects in larger cages than this," Anna said.

She made a mental note to show a modicum of kindness to the boy in the future, if the opportunity presented itself. She expected this wouldn't be the worst thing they'd learn of him.

"This seems silly," she said, looking down the corridor at upcoming intersections. "Are we searching for him in his own head? Or is this some protection to waste our time?"

"We are guests, Anna. Well, intruders, if you'd like to be technical. He knows where everything is. We don't. It's why we sometimes have trouble finding Tallah in her own mind while we share it. We will need to find our way to his central mindscape and work our way out from there." She rubbed her hands, the motion sending sparks grounding into the tunnel walls. "Oh, this is so much fun."

It took them what felt like an entire day searching the labyrinthine maze of corridors and rooms. Each sight that met them was all the stranger for how ordinary it seemed. A room was full of plants grown in glass cages, maintained by unknowable machinery that breathed and hissed and clanged. Another was a kind of hospital, pristine, filled with shining metal instruments arrayed on neat trays. Anna cooed over the display, reaching to pick up some of the scalpels. Christina swatted her hand away.

"Don't touch anything before we find the boy."

"Else what?" Anna demanded.

"I have no idea. Want to test and see?" Christina grinned ear to ear, studying a kind of crystal window on a wall. It was showing what looked like bones within an arm, in black and white. "I've never done this before. It feels alien, but also familiar. It's like diving into the trap, don't you feel?"

Anna stared forlorn at the surgical instruments, then walked away. "It does a little, yes. But not like the trap itself, but the surrounding area, where it's already done its work." And that set her teeth on edge.

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