"We both know that wasn't there a moment ago, and I really doubt you're as clueless to this as you're pretending. So how about some actual honesty here?" I asked. I wasn't annoyed with him exactly. He didn't seem to be hostile in any way, just that he had his own, annoying ways of doing things.

"The reality of the soul tends to be reflective of our perceptions of what should exist. Yes, I did prime you slightly for what I thought you had to do to get the ball rolling, but this door and what is beyond is a combination of your own soul's requirements and your subconscious influences," Otis replied.

"So am I about to walk in there and find some mirror of myself that I have to fight?" I asked, realizing the question had likely made it exactly that.

"Probably, though if it helps, I believe this part of the conquest of one's soul is similar for everyone," he answered.

Before walking through the door, I pulled up the path of the soul portion of my core architect class. It seemed that this little experience had ticked up my soul separations again, which I had expected it would. But that hadn't been what I was looking for.

-\Soulfire\Soul Burst {0/25 Levels} Allows the host to release a concentrated burst of soul energy. Further ranks in the skill allow for an increased chance of overwhelming the souls of those exposed to the burst, granting the host temporary and limited control over those affected. -\Soulfire\Soul Manipulation {0/50 Levels} Allows the host to adjust their soul's flow into the soul-core reaction. Further ranks allow for a greater adjustment. Potential soul separation can occur if infusion rates are not properly aligned.

Soul burst and soul manipulation were two skills I hadn't unlocked yet, both of which seemed like they may be useful if I were about to undergo some form of soul combat. The only thing that gave me pause was the question of how they would affect my own soul. If I used these against it, would there be a backlash against myself? For that matter, how well would my abilities even function without the active presence of Corey guiding my channeling?

I decided to hold off on any decisions until I saw what was on the other side of the door. The concept of conquest could have a lot of different meanings, and it was possible that I didn't have to fight anything. Knowing my luck, though, it meant I was about to fight some evil version of myself, hellbent on destroying everything I cared about.

That last thought brought out a loud laugh, causing Otis to give me a very strange look. "Sorry, just concerned about Ghostbusters' god rules being in play and how bad I screwed myself with my own thoughts," I said, laughing all the harder. This probably wasn't something I should find funny, but if a comedy movie from the eighties had any bearing on my soul realm, I felt I had every right to laugh.

"I'm not sure what that means," he replied.

"Yeah, didn't expect you to, don't worry about it." This time, instead of distracting myself again, I pushed the door open and walked inside.

Unlike the previous room, there were no walls in here. I was standing on a large circular platform that ended in a dark, black space all around it. While I wasn't willing to get near the edge to test just yet, I was pretty sure that I could just step off into that nothingness. What would happen if I did that? Would I just be lost forever? It was probably something I didn't want to test at the moment.

The door I had come in through was also gone. Somehow, I had walked through the door to the center of this platform, and now I was entirely alone in it. I had at least hoped Otis would be accompanying me this far, but it seemed I had to do this part alone.

"Hello, David," a voice said as I was contemplating just what to do next.

The figure standing in front of me looked just like me. Except it was dressed like I was being forced to some formal event I'd have hated. That gave pretty strong credence to the mirror version of myself theory. Why was the mirror version of myself just a better-dressed version of me? What the hell did that mean for how I saw myself?

"So why are you dressed like we are going to a formal dinner?" I asked, having no idea how this was supposed to work. "Also, I prefer Dave."

"Yes, that's part of the problem. I am you after all, and fully aware of what small changes you could have made to avoid some of those deep, long regrets you have. Why weren't you more willing to join Laura at her formal dinners? Hiding behind the excuse of hating a crowd won't work as well considering your new life, so then was it just the clothing?" the other me asked in return.

"Oh, good, a conversation where we lay out all my insecurities from my past. That's exactly what I wanted to do. I think I'd prefer it if we just fought instead. Can we do that?" I asked, mostly serious. These weren't topics I really cared to dredge out of my mind.

"We could, but that wouldn't be the best idea yet. Unlike you, I still maintain all of our current magical abilities," as he said this, he cycled through several small examples of spells.

I immediately tried the same and found I couldn't access any of my own mana orbs. My class orb still seemed to function, but that was it. All of my usual tactics for fighting were gone. I barely knew how to throw an actual punch. I had relied on the cores and my own shields to avoid the need. And the few times I had done so had been under the influence of berserker magic, which I also couldn't access.

Great, so that meant a nice deep dive into what made me me, it looked like. I sighed at the thought of all the dumb things in my life laid bare. But if this is what I had to do, it was what I had to do.

"Since you're me, you know the real answers here. It isn't the crowd, it's not the clothing, it's the idea of what those people represent," I replied, shaking my head as I considered just what I meant by that.

"The idea that you needed to be like them? That there was this whole world that you had to change to participate in. And you couldn't even do that for the woman you claimed to love?" they asked again, pushing the topic harder.

"We both know that's a lie. I loved Laura. Some of those feelings are even still here. There is some nugget of truth in the idea that I didn't want to be like them, but I don't think Laura ever expected me to. That wasn't the reason our marriage fell apart, and you know that," I retorted.

"Ah, yes, the marriage that you couldn't be bothered to fight for because you were so sad you just had to run away from everything. You spent years hiding away, avoiding everyone you claimed to care for."

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"So we're back to the idea that I can't handle groups of people? Or is this a dig at my depression? The second is probably the fairest thing you've said so far. The fact that I ran away to Alaska like I did is still the biggest mistake I've made in my life. But I can't change any of that. These are all series of events that made the world we live in the way it is now. If I hadn't run away to Alaska, would my kids even be alive now? Would I?" I asked back, realizing just what course of events had been set in motion by my flight.

"Are they really better off? Your grandson has been taken by monsters from another world, and you kids are in a desperate chase to save him. And yet, here you are again, still hiding away in your own home," the voice countered.

"Okay, so this really is just an attempt to goad me. I almost left everything behind to chase after him. I was nearly willing to let everything I've built burn in an effort to find him. What's the real goal with these questions? Because this isn't actually getting at the core of anything new. There's no deep emotional scars you're tearing open here." Was this building for something else?

This talk so far seemed pointless. These were things I thought about often. None of these were thoughts deeply buried in my past. They were realities of my life that I had finally started to put behind me.

"Where's your brother Dave?" the voice asked suddenly.

"I don't have a brother. I'm an only child." At least I thought I was. Wait, was I?

A small snippet of a half-remembered memory ran through my head. My parents were arguing about something. I couldn't have been older than five at the time. The fight had been about my dad briefly losing sight of me, I thought. Dammit, there was something else there, wasn't there?

"That covers the past and the present. What kind of future revelation would you like? Do you want to discuss just what happens when this empire of yours starts to matter on the Spiral stage? Or maybe something smaller, like how to handle the eventual need to give all of the people on Earth cores of their own. Or perhaps even smaller. Do you want to discuss those feelings that are growing for Elody?"

I had heard the voice perfectly, but I was still stuck on the idea of a brother. The fight would suggest that something happened to him when they weren't watching. Kidnapped maybe? Or just lost somewhere? Birth records would likely exist, but that would probably be hard to get in the current state of the world. Was he even alive?

Pushing those new thoughts away for a later focus, I grabbed onto the new questions. I couldn't let myself get lost in its words. I had a feeling that was the real danger here. Did that mean I needed to find a way to shut it up somehow?

"Okay, let's assume I have a brother. There's no way I can deal with any of that from here. That makes it a pointless topic, and again, just there to goad me. And yes, I'm aware of my own growing feelings. I'll handle those as I see fit. Now I think the better question is, why are you trying to rile up my emotions here? What's your goal there?" I took several steps toward it as I asked.

"Perhaps I've decided you don't deserve the body you wear? You have all these memories just burning to be addressed, and you refuse to do anything about them. Why not let me take it? I could accomplish so much more." It didn't sound as much like me as it had moments ago. There was a hint of menace in its words.

I was thinking about this all wrong. As much as I had said I needed to ignore what it was asking me, I wasn't doing that at all. In fact, I had entirely written off a course of action just because it had claimed how useless it would be. I hadn't even really tried either, having only given up at a simple attempt at channeling.

Taking another several steps forward, I thought I finally understood what I had to do. I raised my right arm and took a swing at the face that looked so much like my own. My knuckles cracked at the impact. I may have been much stronger than a normal person, but it seemed my soul's form held that same strength.

It didn't return my punch. Instead, a look of absolute astonishment showed across its face. It really hadn't expected me to hit it, which was a fair expectation. Socking it in the face ran counter to how I normally handled these things. Sure, I had started fighting more and more, but that was almost always against monsters, rarely against someone trying to talk to me.

Had this been some test to tell me that I need to get more aggressive in how I deal with things? Or had it just been as simple as Otis had said? I needed to defeat my soul, and to do that, I had to do something I wouldn't normally do. I wasn't sure the answer fully mattered, as I wasn't sure anything in this place had any sort of tangible connections to the normal world.

My soul self vanished and behind me the sound of clapping pulled me from these thoughts. "Well, you did it. I wasn't sure you would for a minute there. Had that thing kept talking much longer, it might have been too strong for your punches to affect," Otis said, his claps growing louder.

He and Chip had both appeared in the room with me. The first room was still nowhere in sight. "What the hell was that exactly?" I asked.

"Elements of your own soul, empowered by the things that live in the soul realms. It's part of why I said we will need to seal these areas off for your own safety. I didn't exactly know how this would play out, but I had a feeling, and I didn't want to accidentally influence it for the worst," Otis answered.

"So now what then? How do I start developing this place more so I can work on the soul knot issue?" He never had said how long this would all take, either.

"That I really don't know. It's incredibly hard to see a realm once it's been properly secured without permission, and finding them before they get to that point is like finding a needle in all of space and time. What do you see now if you look out beyond the space we are in?" Otis asked, gesturing to the blackness that surrounded us.

I spun my head around, looking everywhere, and it seemed something had changed. There was a second platform attached to this first one by a small walkway. It was just barely visible against the blackness as a slightly lighter shadow. Was it safe to cross?

"There's another platform out there, but it's nearly as dark as the area around us," I answered.

"I suspect that is part of your soul connections. Possibly the path to someone you share that soul chat of yours with. It's likely a journey you will have to make alone, but before you go, we need to find a way to tether you here to your soul's core." Otis walked to the exact center of the platform as he spoke,

"I don't know what any of that means. This is all brand new to me." I hadn't even had a chance to test my own soul anchor before this mess had happened. How was I expected to know what a soul tether was?

"All it means at the core is something or someone you are tied to in some way. Their presence here should allow you to move yourself back to this area, as long as something out there isn't strong enough to suppress it," Otis answered.

The only thing I had with me that I had any ties to was Chip. Could he act as my tether somehow? I was pretty attached to the guy. He was one of my first companions and had happily stuck with me ever since.

"Hey Chip, can you try charging this area with your mana like you would me?" I asked the pumakey, not sure he even understood the request. He was smart, but I didn't think he had reached a level of awakened mana beast smart yet.

Despite my worry, he seemed to understand as what looked like strands of mana began pouring from him into the ground beneath his feet.

"Quick, Chip, join me in the center as you do that. It will work better from here, I think," Otis ordered the pumakey with a smile, his voice friendly despite the command.

He ran to where Otis was standing, leaving a mana trail in his wake. Assuming that was what mana looked like in a soul realm at least. Every drop gleamed like an early sunrise, leaving a small trail of light as he moved across the floor. Once Chip reached the center of the platform, the whole of it exploded in light.

I could feel the warmth all around me. It reminded me of my bed. It had become a nice, comfortable place waiting for me when I needed it. Along with that transformation came a change to the pathway I had seen earlier. It was no longer shrouded in darkness. It was a glowing rainbow of colors leading to another platform like the one we stood on.

In the center of that platform was a ghostly outline of Corey's manifested form.

Pumakeys rarely become awakened mana beasts. The reason behind it isn't fully understood, as with their natural mana-enhancing abilities, it would seem they should have one of the easier times doing so. But despite that, the number of awakened pumakeys in the Spiral can be counted on a single hand.

I believe the reason behind this is their removal from their homeworld makes it harder for them to develop their own natural abilities, and this stunts them on their own mana beast paths. It is just another sad facet of the illegal trade of these amazing creatures. Hopefully, I can locate enough of them in their natural environment, long enough to find an answer to this mystery.

Mana Beast Awakenings by Ceril Roph Horned-Trunk

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