Irwin felt his mind flicker… it was an odd sensation, not unlike when he'd first gained his soul clone or when it had evolved after turning the card and its adjacent siblings into a soulcard.

Images played through his mind constantly, scenes from the battle he'd just fought. They were faint and fuzzy, and each time they blinked, his mind seemed to do the same. His memories were just as fuzzy, and every time he remembered where he was, it left him just as fast.

He knew something was wrong… his soulforce had been fully drained while he was inside the soulforce-draining cloud. He remembered that much, but beyond that, things were in a jumble.

A distant pain throbbed as if waiting for him while he heard the very distant shouting of a familiar voice.

I won…

The single thought made his mind jolt as he pictured the feeling of Lasther's soulscape disappearing. Something had happened- the Guidar had been dodging him constantly, staying out of reach as he weakened, and then…

Irwin tried to focus, and after a few moments, a single image floated in front of him. He saw highly concentrated soulforce surrounding some beam as it burned through the soulforce-draining fog and intersected with Lasther.

Someone had helped him… shot the Guidar and caused him to crumble to the ground. It had been all he'd needed.

I need to do something…

The thought almost seemed foreign, and it took Irwin a few moments to realize it was his otherself… both of them were so entwined to be almost indistinguishable. As soon as he recognized this, both of his selves unwound slightly, and he felt his thoughts turn more fuzzy while the distant pain came closer.

Should he have one of his selves sleep? Or was the change a signal that he needed to keep himself together closer?

He hesitated, then pulled both of himself closer together. It made more sense.

Why can't I think straight?!

The thought came from his otherself again, and Irwin frowned. Why couldn't he think straight? Was it because of the soulforce draining? Wait… he'd thought that already.

With a massive force of will, he tried to focus on the soft and distant whispers, trying to make them audible.

It was a familiar voice. He knew that much. As he pulled on it, he slowly sensed it close in, but his mind turned fuzzy again. Wait… why was he doing this again?

He almost stopped.

Listen. Need to listen.

Irwin agreed with his otherself, and he focused again. His mind almost shut off, but then he heard the whisper turn audible.

'-id! Sna- out…. It!'

Irwin frowned. He knew that voice. It was…

Ambraz?!

'Use this!'

Irwin blinked as he felt something shoved his way- some intangible energy.

That's soulforce!

Groaning in pain, Irwin reached, not sure how, and it was like a jolt of lightning rippled through his mind, exploding away the fog and fuzziness. The next moment, the pale nothingness was gone, and he saw his soullake below him as he hung in the air above it.

"Kid! You need to push that bastard out!"

He looked to the side to see Ambraz hover there. The Ganvil was glowing with a blueish light that Irwin hadn't seen before but that he knew instinctively was soulforce.

"Who… what?" he grunted as he tried to lift his head but felt too drained, tired- empty.

"That!" Ambraz snapped, floating forward.

Irwin didn't want to raise his head, but he did.

In front of him hung a hazy, transparent red shape. The only constant thing was the two horns on its head, which were glowing with a blood-red light. A blueish barrier hung around it, seemingly keeping it in place.

"How?!" Irwin snapped as he recognized Lasther. "He should be dead!"

"He is dead," Ambraz growled. "This is some final goodbye present. It's some form of soulscape infection, and with your soulforce drained, there's nothing keeping it out but me."

Irwin growled as he looked around, ignoring the bone weariness and pain he felt. His soulscape looked like something had drained it, not a single mote of soulforce drifting anywhere.

"How… No. Why isn't my soulforce regenerating?" he asked.

"No idea! But you need to start it up right now! I can only hold on for a short while longer."

Irwin looked down at his house, wondering where Nisziz and Klatzi were. He couldn't sense them, but that might be because he couldn't sense anything.

He lifted his hand and tried to summon his soulstrum guitar, but nothing happened. Besides, what would that do… He needed soulforce! How could he…

His gaze drifted to his partially filled soullake. The solidified soulforce gleamed and pulsed with power.

"Yes," Ambraz grunted. "That might work."

Irwin focused on the lake, trying to pull some of the soulforce out, but he didn't even feel it.

"How?" he muttered, dropping down.

Movement in his soulscape had always been incredibly easy, but now it felt like trying to lift a castle. It took a while to reach the liquid soulforce, and on a hunch, Irwin reached out.

Energy! It poured through his finger in a tidal wave. So much that his soulscape body seized up, and a strangled scream was forced from between his lips.

A beam of red and golden energy rippled from his mouth while more burst from his eyes. It moved two dozen feet before it began dissipating in clouds of steam. The clouds whooshed away like water-turned-gas when a superheated sword was doused. Within moments, the density was beyond anything it had been before, and Irwin felt a growing sense of danger.

He yanked his finger back, and the pure soulforce stopped coursing through him, leaving him feeling raw and strained.

Irwin breathed raggedly as he tried to comprehend what he'd just felt. It had been pure soulforce, and although he felt like enough had passed through him to create a dozen heartcards, his lake showed no change, as if what he'd taken had been inconsequential.

"Good… job… A hand here?"

Irwin groaned as he flew up, something made much easier with the large amount of soulforce rippling through his soulscape.

He reached Ambraz, who was tottering in the air, dipping down as his body still glowed a pale blue. Irwin quickly grabbed him and focused on the red shape hovering before him. Waves of his soulforce were wrapping around it, and he now sensed something: a dissonant, horrible amalgamation of soulforce wrapped around a tiny frozen seed of... what? He didn't know, but his instincts screamed at him to crush it. It felt unnatural, more even than The Addled, like something that didn't belong here or anywhere else.

"Destroy it?" he asked, almost rhetorically.

"Yes," Ambraz grunted. "It has no use for us, no knowledge we can get from it."

Irwin was already moving after he said yes, wrapping his soulforce tighter around it and squeezing. The bundle started to shake and shiver, the resonance within growing increasingly horrible.

I can't let it explode in here!

Irwin shot forward, ignoring the pain that moving so fast caused him while dragging the bundle to the edge of his soulscape.

The barrier was thin and crystal clear, and for a moment, he stared out of it worriedly. Then, the horrifying resonance of soulforce beside him made him hurriedly slam the soulforce-wrapped bundle against the barrier while squeezing and forcing it out. He kept it wrapped within his own soulforce, and as it passed through his barrier, Irwin -for the first time- felt what lay beyond it.

A chaotic roiling mass of primordial soulforce, so dense that he felt the little soulforce that he'd pushed through become compressed within moments- almost turning liquid.

Wrapped within his own soulforce, the dissonant soulforce around the tiny shard began cracking, the resonance turning faster and faster until he could barely hear it before a single high whine and nothing.

Naked now, the tiny cold shard of wrongness within touched his soulforce as it was compressed around it, and-

---

Irwin blinked, trying to understand what had just happened. He looked around his soulscape. He was floating a few dozen feet from the barrier while dense clouds of soulforce floated high above him, almost as if rain was going to come to his soulscape.

Something about that seemed strange, but he shoved it away as he shot toward the barrier, staring through. It was already turning thicker, trickles of fog forming on its surface. He found no sign of the tiny seed or of his soulforce, just the always-present clouds of primal soulforce.

"What… happened?" he muttered, only then realizing he was missing something. He'd been holding Ambraz before, and now his hands were empty. He looked around and down, spotting Ambraz not too far away.

The Ganvil had crashed into the ground, leaving a deep crater in this empty, rocky section of his soulscape.

There was no answer, and Irwin shot down, worried about what was happening.

He landed beside Ambraz, placing his hand on his friend. There was no response.

"Ambraz! Ambraz?!"

--

Ambraz struggled as he examined the image that was trying to disintegrate in his mind. All of his prodigious skill at manipulating soulforce was brought to bear to hold the resonance that created the image together and clear it up- change it to something he could understand.

He knew there was no option of failure because the kid had been blown unconscious instantly. Not that he blamed him. It had been an overwhelming horror of alien resonances and sounds, like a song from a place so distant and horrible that reality denied its existence.

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Which was probably what had happened.

Guidar aren't normal, he thought.

He continued working on the soulforce resonance, which showed a fuzzy, frozen image of a storm, not unlike the soulforce storm raging across the Portal Gallery. Still, he knew it was different- massively so, but he just couldn't see it yet. The soulforce resonance was wrong, as if whatever had caused it to resonate in the first place had done so in a manner that shouldn't be possible, and now the normal order of things was reasserting itself, wiping away the resonance.

Ambraz continued, unrelenting in his actions, ignoring the time as it passed.

Finally, after a long time, he changed the last of the soulforce resonance to something that didn't feel like it would disappear if he let go. Now, two images hung side-by-side- one, a faint, fuzzy, and wrong image that represented the original and his copy, made by regular means. Holding both was skirting the edges of what he could do without irreversibly damaging himself, but Ambraz held them for a few more seconds, double-checking everything.

Finally, he muttered, releasing his hold on the wrong resonance.

It cracked and dissipated instantly, leaving only a lingering whine behind that was fading. Ambraz waited until it was gone before scanning his mind for any remnants, relieved to find none.

Fine, now to see what this is, he thought as he focused on the frozen soulforce resonance before him.

As he let it play, he saw an enormous soulforce storm rage through a vast stretch of nothingness. It had to be in the nothingness beyond worlds or in some empty area of the chaotic space beyond the Portal Gallery because he saw nothing beyond the storm—just vast stretches of darkness. The viewpoint was moving, sometimes looking around in quick, rapid bursts of movement.

Was he seeing it through the eyes of something flying toward the storm?

It took a few seconds for the being to close in on the storm, and as it did, an enormous portal appeared, hanging within the center of the storm. Although it was round instead of the angular exit portal ones, Ambraz still recognized it for what it was. An enormous exit portal, surrounded by a storm that covered thousands of miles all around it- with lightning crackling around its edges.

"That's… what is that?" Ambraz muttered as a distant memory tried to surface. Something Brazardian had told him long ago about the types of portals.

It took him a few moments to recall what it was, and as he did, he frowned at the portal. Then, he focused on what he was seeing.

The being was hesitating and slowed down slightly.

He was pretty sure by now that he was watching a memory, probably from Lasther, though what that monster had been doing out in the middle of nowhere, he didn't know. Neither did he understand why the stream of images had exploded out when the tiny seed of coldness had exploded. Had he been wrong? Had that been the core of the Guidar somehow?

Lasther, or whoever it was, turned around, and Ambraz let out a hiss of fear as he froze the resonance, causing the image to stop.

A swarm of beings with red hair, horns, and glowing yellow eyes flew far behind Lasther. They stretched as far as Lasther could see, a wall of beings chasing after him, the distant ones like tiny ants. Some others were ahead of the mass like Lasther was, but those were only a few thousand.

Ambraz shivered before letting the image continue playing out.

Lasther must not have liked what he saw, as he spun back to the giant portal and shot forward again, speeding along as fast as he had initially. Now, there were a few others before him, and Ambraz watched as they continued to fly forward.

The sense of a long time passing came before the first of the Guidar reached the portal and disappeared within. As they did, the portal shrank, and Ambraz swallowed.

Portals didn't shrink when someone went through it…

By the time Lasther reached it, the portal had shrunk to a tenth of its size as thousands of others had passed through. The storm around it was rapidly abating, and as it did, Ambraz saw something odd around the edges. Two types of lightning crackling against each other as if fighting for dominance.

Lasther, if that was who he was, reached the portal, and there was no hesitation as he shot into it.

The image changed into a kaleidoscope of colors that turned into long bands, shooting into infinity. Another sense of time passing came, but far more than the first one. Ambraz felt it was thousands upon thousands of years, even though the image blurred within a few seconds before stopping. It was now frozen in a single, final image: a familiar soulforce-filled space with a long, winding section of the Portal Gallery moving around.

"So… they came from somewhere else?" Ambraz muttered as he replayed the image another time. He stopped at a few points, trying to memorize what he saw, knowing that if he stopped focusing, the resonance would dissipate and, with it, the memory.

Finally, what felt like hours later, his mind painfully stretched, Ambraz released the resonance, feeling it ripple away into nothingness.

Time to tell the kid, Ambraz thought, as he focused on what had been happening around it.

--

"Ambraz?!" Irwin said as he sensed the Ganvil move beside him.

He'd been sitting beside it for a few minutes, trying to determine what to do. His body felt faint and distant, and a few careful attempts to split and move into it had proven useless. It felt as if it was unconscious, but usually, as long as either of his selves was awake, he could move into the body freely. Now, it almost felt as if something was resisting him. The thing was, it didn't feel like a strong resistance, and he thought he could probably force it away with some effort. He just didn't know if he should. What if his body was damaged or harmed, and he made things worse?

"Ugh, not too loud," Ambraz grunted.

"What happened?" Irwin asked softly. "That cold seed exploded or something, and after that, I don't recall anything."

"Yeah, you still have a lot to learn about controlling soulforce resonances," Ambraz grunted. "I'm not completely sure, but I think that was the core of Lasther, or atleast… some part of him."

"So it wasn't some soulforce infection?" Irwin asked, remembering what Ambraz had told him before.

"Yes and no… Well, both," Ambraz said, flitting to his shoulder. "I think it was part of Lasther, and if you hadn't been empty of soulforce, it would have infected you. Ugh, but only if it had managed to perforate your near immunity to soulforce infections, which I guess couldn't have happened, and…"

Ambraz grunted, and Irwin could hear the Ganvil's annoyance.

"Whatever! If it had somehow managed to infect you, it would definitely have meant nothing good for you. Anyway, enough about these hypothetical things. I need to tell you something."

Irwin looked at Ambraz, who sounded serious. He listened as Ambraz told him about the memory fragment, and the more he heard, the more confused he became.

"So they came from somewhere else, through some portal I've never heard about?" he finally asked. "What kind of portal was it?"

"Without more information, it's hard to say for sure, but Brazardian told me about a similar portal long ago. It hung in some distant section of the Portal Gallery, outside of the barrier. I would have to ask him if he knows more, but what I recall is that the portal appeared suddenly and without warning. It was the only recorded type of its portal, and it was miles across when it appeared and shrank over the course of a few years before vanishing."

"Did anything come out?" Irwin asked.

"No idea," Ambraz asked. "It's a miracle I even recall this much, as it was back when I wasn't even rank one."

Irwin thought about it for a moment before deciding it wasn't something they could or should deal with now. Instead, there was something more problematic.

"My body is either unconscious or asleep," he said. "I can't move into it as usual, and I'm not sure I should force it… can you see what is going on?"

Ambraz was quiet. Then he began cursing.

"Ambraz?" Irwin asked.

"Kid, you need to force yourself to wake up! And fast! Greldo needs help!"

Irwin focused on his body, and this time, he ignored the resistance he felt- pushing through it with a shove.

Pain flooded his being, originating from his head and back, while screaming, and the clatter of blades came from nearby.

"- fool! You should have accepted my offer! Now, you will both die!"

Irwin frowned at the scream, and he tried to sense the surrounding soulforce. His headache grew instantly, and he quickly stopped. Instead, he groaned and slowly pulled himself up on his hand.

"Irwin! Finally!"

Greldo's annoyed and angry shout made Irwin look up. He was lying in a large area of thumb-sized stones and gravel, with larger debris from buildings further out. Greldo stood a few steps ahead of him, then vanished or reappeared a few feet to the side as a long blade pierced the spot where he'd just been standing. The rapier was held by a man with a long leather jacket who wielded two thin, slightly curved swords. A bit behind them and to the side, vines sprouted from the ground, just missing two tiny, pale, white-haired figures with creepy smiles and dead eyes. Elder Sigora was swaying on her feet a few steps away, only standing because she was holding on to a few long vines that hovered beside her.

"Irwin!"

"Right," Irwin grunted.

He pushed himself up and swayed on his feet as he rose to his full height. He towered over everything and anything around him. A tiny part of him realized that from the nearest building's size, he could determine that he was far bigger than he had even feared. The people who had been fighting nearby barely reached his knee, and as he stared down at them, the two white-haired figures began backing up.

"Well… that's a shame," the leather-coat-wearing man said, his voice sounding smooth. "I guess asking to cooperate is a bit too late now?"

"You ugly, nasty-" Greldo sputtered before snarling at the man as he wanted to take a bite out of him. "You almost took my eye out!"

Irwin took a deep breath, and as his lungs expanded, he felt the pain from his back rapidly fade away. He could sense the flesh knitting back together, and strength rushed into his body. At the same time, his head was a wracking, painful mess, which he knew must come from his soulscape.

What he wanted was sleep.

Instead, he swayed his arms around, noticing he wore no armor or clothing. Looking down, he saw he was as naked as the day he was born, and he had to resist the temptation to cover himself. It would do little good as he'd been running around naked the entire previous fight.

"So, I'm going to have to squish you to death?" he asked, raising an eyebrow at the leather jacket-wearing man.

"No, no! No need for that much violence," the man said.

"He stabbed you in the back a dozen times while I tried to stop him," Greldo snapped.

Irwin glared at the man, who took a few steps back.

"Well, you can't blame me! You are somewhat intimidating, and with my bad choice of allies, the alternative was waiting for my death," he said, taking another step back. "

What… is wrong with this guy? Irwin thought, blinking at the man in surprise at his odd response.

"Captain Timorlay Hardy is a pathetic, evil, self-centered piece of shit," Elder Sigora rumbled as if answering his thought. She came stumbling closer to him; a lot of her leaves burned dark, and a deep cut across her left hip, while thick greenish tree sap was staining her long-sleeved shirt.

Irwin glanced at her, then back at where the two pale, white-haired figures had been. They were gone, no sign of where they had left. He didn't even see any soulforce ripples.

"Sadly, he is also the last living Captain of the Currant Hunters, and it would be better if he lived to control the rest of that filthy rat pack, lest they scurry around and cause even more harm," Elder Sigora rumbled as she leaned into her vines, looking ready to keel over.

Greldo hissed, and Irwin knew that if he could have, he would have ended Captain Hardy there and then.

"Exactly! It's best if someone keeps the rats in line," Hard said as he nodded vigorously and began backing up.

Sigora cleared her throat. "That said, I think it wouldn't be a bad idea that you pay for your transgressions," she said. "Otherwise, I might have to put you on the Viridian blacklist."

Irwin had no idea what that was, but from Captain Hardy's rapidly paling face, it wasn't a list he wanted to be on.

"How could I forget!" he said. "I'll make sure to send you some cards as soon-"

"Now, now, Captain Hardy," Elder Sigora said, her eyes narrowing. "You wouldn't want to give us the idea that you are weaseling your way out of this, right? Why not just show your private collection so these two young men can take their pound?"

A flash of rage burned across Captain Hardy's face so fast Irwin barely noticed. Then, it was replaced by a sickening smile.

"Yes, of course… but perhaps the two gentlemen can tell me what they would like… so I don't have to bring everything out?"

Irwin was about to tell him to do it so he could take all of the cards, but Elder Sigora was faster.

"Let's begin with all your shadow cards, size-altering cards, and-"

"And emotive cards," Irwin said.

"-emotive cards and vegetation cards," Elder Sigora said, without even stumbling.

"And anything that deals with summoning utility items," Greldo snapped.

Captain Hardy's face turned even uglier, but three books appeared in his hand.

"And Hardy… if I'm not impressed, I am going to have words with you," Elder Sigora said.

"Dear lady, how would I know what impresses you?" Hardy asked, his voice cracking.

"That is just up to you," Sigora said, her eyes narrowing dangerously.

Hardy swallowed, and a moment later, another thinner booklet appeared on the stack in his hands. He looked at them, then at Irwin and the others, seemingly hesitating.

Greldo vanished and reappeared before the captain, taking the four books.

"One more thing," Greldo snapped as he took a step back. "If I see you again, I'm going to hunt you."

Captain Hardy rolled his eyes, then sighed and laughed.

"Don't worry. I'll be leaving soon," he said. "And before you ask, no, I'll have nothing to do with those Guidars ever again."

Irwin was surprised that he knew about the name, but when Greldo didn't show a reaction, he just watched as the man began backing up until he was on the edge of the square before turning to a swath of blurriness and vanishing.

"Was that smart?" he asked, looking down at Elder Sigora.

"There is no way we could have captured him, even if we wanted to. But don't worry," she said. "He will have a massive bounty on his head before he leaves. That's likely why he will be leaving."

Irwin nodded, though he wondered if it wasn't smarter to see if they could catch up to the backstabbing captain.

I'll talk with Greldo about it later, he decided.

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