"You're awake. Finally."

I was floating in my inner world. It'd been a while since I had been here. There was someone else there as well, though.

It wasn't Celistar.

"How is it that you're here?" I said, sitting up. So far, nothing that had occurred inside my Soul had been harmful, but I still kept myself on guard in case this new 'visitor' was an exception to the rule.

"I'm not sure myself," the voice said. "I definitely had no intention of doing so when I started. I was just trying to reach out to someone, anyone." The timber and pitch had no substance to them. It was less words and more thoughts my brain was translating to such.

The shape slumped, and a strong sense of sadness pervaded the space. "I've been trapped here for a long time. This was the first successful attempt I've had in communicating… with anyone, really."

"Where is 'here'?" I asked, that curious part of me twitching its ears and widening its pupils.

"I wish I knew. I've been here as long as I can remember. I think it's underground. I had a fairly normal - if mundane - life prior, but one day I woke up here. I have no idea how I was captured and brought here.

"I've spent years working on this attempt, so I'm glad it was a success. I cast my net wide, and it was drawn this way, as iron to its lodestone."

I looked around my Soul Space, and could kind of see something similar to the Moonweave up above. It had the same ethereal beauty, and after a few moments staring at it and wondering how it got there, it occurred to me…

That was likely how they'd reached out to me.

I'd have to let Celistar know, as the 'draw' that this person described potentially referred to her actions bringing that phenomenon closer.

Now I doubted she'd intended to give me a mystery guest in my Soul Space, and I was actively avoiding thinking of the knock-on concerns surrounding someone just inviting themselves in here.

That said, I had a lot of power here, to the point where merely thinking warm thoughts about Celistar while she was present had been cause for fear for the Ancient One. Her newest visitor had considerably less presence than even a relatively powerless (at the time) Celistar. So, no real cause for concern…

Right?

While I'd gotten lost in my thoughts, my interlocutor hadn't so much, a pair of dots in the center of their head aimed at me in such a way that I could only assume them to be eyes. The effect was a little freaky, what my mind imagined a haunting specter to look like. I was starting to understand why some people found my eyes' 'Flashlight Mode' [all rights reserved!] to be so disconcerting.

The 'eyes' flickered and wavered for a second.

"Can you help me?" They asked. There was definitely a lot of weight behind the question; this was not someone who liked asking for help. I knew a lot of people like that.

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I was a people like that.

"I have no idea," I said, before adding, "And I'm not trying to be obtuse! I really don't know how to find you, much less what kind of situation you are in nor how to assist."

"That is very fair," replied my guest, and my opinion of them went up a few notches. Someone in the situation they described would naturally be pretty desperate for assistance, so taking into consideration the situation of the individual they were posing the question to was an impressive display self-control.

"This is, all-in-all, pretty new to me," they said after a few tens of seconds passed in silence. "But I think if I do this, I can…"

There was a sound that echoed through the space like the tolling of a very heavy bell, a deep thrum that seemed to shake my soul more than be heard. The colors of the Moonweave exploded outwards, swallowing up the sky.

When the thrum hit the shadowy silhouette, it shuddered and wiggled like a reflection in water.

"Oh, that's…" the man began, before the thoughts cut off. Then their figure faded away to nothing, dispersing into a fine mist at the end.

The brightness above me faded to a point at which it was barely perceptible, but still there. Everything I'd created in the space was wobbling still, as though the noise had hit its resonant frequency, and I felt a headache brewing.

Then I woke up.

It was jarring hitting reality like a ton of bricks, with no sleep to mediate the transition.

I looked up to see Celistar looking down at me with no small amount of concern.

"Well, that hurt," I slurred through numbed lips, feeling a little as though someone had hooked a fishhook to the inside of my sternum and yanked on that sucker.

"Benefactor!" the Moon Fairy exclaimed. She was close, really close, and I realized she was essentially hovering just over my face. Not with wings or anything, just leaning over me. Looked like an awkward position to maintain, and it was probably a good thing I couldn't sit up or when I did so I would have brained her with the impermeable object I called a forehead.

"What happened?" she continued when I didn't respond.

Slowly the conversation I'd just had trickled back into my brain, which was odd because you'd think it'd have already been there. Ah well, not every day you take a surprise visitor 'head on', and apparently they'd been applied directly. Probably normal to be a bit out of sorts.

"I had someone drop into my Soul Space for a visit," I said, and her eyes went wide with alarm. Even Viktor had an expression of vague concern, and that was saying something. I couldn't see István in my immediate field of view.

"Are they still present?" She asked, looking around. I followed her gaze somewhat as she searched the area, realizing from the obvious cues that it was just after sunrise, with the sky still having a few hues of the Moonweave present.

Moonweave… My brain thought, and then all the sudden finished reassembling itself.

"Ah ah!" I exclaimed, still not quite articulate. "The Moonweave… They used it to descend. Used the Motes you brought down and followed them. Or something." I held an arm up towards the sky, my whole body feeling oddly heavy.

The Ancient one raised her arm in a flash as if to banish the rest of the color from the sky, and I grabbed (well, pawed at) her wrist.

"No, it's fine," I told her, finally regaining a better use of my voice. "I don't think they meant harm. Apparently, they are trapped somewhere, and this was the only way they could think of to call for help?"

There was a bit of a question at the end, as the exact details seemed to escape me the longer I was awake. Usually, these experiences inside my own Soul were more or less seared into my memory, but this one felt like a dream from before I had any power… finicky and hard to pin down once I awoke.

I sat up, and the world gave a vertigo-inducing spin. It wasn't fun, but at least it was over quickly.

Well, kind of. There remained a bit of gravity misplaced, leading the direction we'd been traveling.

Massaging the area, I felt the other effects of my mysterious encounter fade away as I regained what I could consider to be a 'normal' amount of control over my body. I rolled to my feet and realized that no, it hadn't all disappeared.

I felt a distinct but very slight pull, right in the center of my chest. It wasn't very definite, but it was very there.

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