"Why are they both looking at us, Dave?" Cecile asked as we stepped foot on their platform.

"They are part of you, and we have to solve exactly what they expect from either of you before we can move to the next stage. For me, that involved hitting myself. For Rabyn, it was peace. I'm not actually sure what Chip did," I explained, scratching the little guy behind his ear as I said his name.

"Something weird is happening inside of us. Cecile, do you feel that?" Elicec asked, alarmed.

"Yeah, not really sure I understand what's going on. But it's kind of like our souls are vibrating," Cecile replied.

I activated soul detection and started looking at both of them again. They weren't wrong. All of the pathways that led to the connection between their souls were humming with energy. It was rapidly shifting colors, too, like a fire that had been fed different materials.

The soul reflections both just stood and watched the brothers, each from one side of the platform, as this happened. There was something different going on here, and while I wasn't entirely sure what the cause was. I had a feeling we could use it to our benefit.

"Guys, focus on that feeling. I've changed my mind on Cecile going first. From what it looks like inside of you, your soul energy is collecting away from your own cores towards your shared central core. While this is happening, it's forcing the soul knot to reveal itself. I'm going to kill both of them at the same time." I could already feel the exhaustion at the back of my mind just from making the plan.

"What do we need to do?" Elicec asked, his voice now releasing bits of soul energy into the air.

"That's a good question. I don't fully know why this is so different. Possibly something to do with your unique physiology," I said, as I stepped toward them, internally debating how I was going to do this.

I couldn't pull a representation up like I had with Rabyn. Not with the soul reflections the way they were, at least. Wait, hadn't they unlocked a special class that involved their souls?

"What was the name of your species class again?" I asked.

"Soul of the Twinoge. Oh, the soul unite. Dave, after we put the levels into Path of the Twin Soul, all it did was unlock a second path called Path of Twinoge Paragon. It requires us to unite our souls three times, but we've never known what that meant," Elicec answered. He had the same look of understanding I was suddenly getting.

"Both of you stand in the direct center of the platform, get that line exactly between you two as best you can. Keep your head on the side with the reflection that represents you," I ordered, as I moved toward where Chip was standing instead.

He had the right idea of it. We needed to stay out of the way of what I thought was about to happen. It would also likely be my best shot at killing both of the soul knots at once. I just had to hope I had time in the immediate aftermath to do it.

As the Twinoges took their position, the souls on either side of them walked into their bodies. From my vantage point, with soul detection still active, I could see exactly what was happening. The giant ball of soul energy inside them erupted even larger. It poured out of their body from every channel they had. I knew from experience how badly this was going to hurt when it was done.

They had just ignited their souls, and I guessed also united them at the same time. In doing so all of the soul energy that was protecting the nascent jesters had been pushed aside. I could easily see the soul knots with simple soul detection now.

Worryingly, each of the knots had grown much bigger than what was in Rabyn. I didn't know if it was in response to curing him or if some other factor had been at play. Either way, I was glad I had chosen Cecile as my next patient.

Chip, seeming to understand what we had to do leaped onto the brothers' back and started channeling his own mana. It helped to contain the flow of energy out of them while I stepped up to do my part. I placed my hands directly over the spots where both of the knots were and started infusing my own energy back into them.

I didn't have time for the same grace that had been used on Rabyn's soul knots. There was no careful untying here. With all of their soul energy safely moved to that central node between them, I took that opportunity and tore the knots loose. Cauterizing the ends of the channels as I pulled them away.

Both of the former knots tried to attack me as I ripped them from the Twinoges' joint body. Again, Corey was there to force their attack back out of my body. The pain and loss of energy needed to do it were even worse than before. I had known it would be, but it was going beyond the doubling up I had expected.

In their larger size, these creatures were much stronger than the other one. They were wrestling against my mind and my channels now. I placed a soul-reinforced shield around my own body. It only worked to partially dampen their attacks.

I flared my fire mana orb, trying to incinerate them in my hands, and I failed. Somehow, they ate the energy as it came at them. Dammit, had I made a mistake in trying to cure them both at once? Had I even had a choice?

"Chip, I need help," I barely managed to gasp out the words as I continued the fight against their intrusion. At the same time, I saw a message window pop up and felt Apollyon's presence working in my mind.

I didn't have time to read it, but I assumed the contents had to do with what Apollyon was trying to do. But I already knew the problem. The core's efforts were weaker than in the past. They were in a different world, one my soul wasn't currently in.

The weight of Chip on my shoulder did more, though. His energies infused into my body and buoyed my own attempts to kill these things. There was a dramatic slowdown in the draining of my soul and core energies thanks to his abilities. Would it be enough?

Burning even more of my core energies, I again tried to destroy the creatures in my hand that were, in their own desperation, trying to get into me. I had no idea what would happen if they managed that. Considering the existence of this whole place and my connection to the others, I didn't want to risk that happening. So again I pushed harder.

It wasn't enough, even with Chip's added strength. There was just no way I could put enough mana into both of these monsters before they got into me. I wasn't willing to give up, but I had no idea what else to do.

As I racked my brain for any way out of this, two figures appeared in front of me. They grabbed one of the soul knot creatures a piece, and with the force of all our mana, I finally felt the things turning to dust in our hands.

I stumbled forward as my channeling ended, my head swimming from the drain. I felt more than I saw the two figures catch me, and help me back to my feet. Chip stayed perched on my shoulder through the whole thing, which was enough to keep me standing again.

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

In front of me were Cecile and Elicec as two separate people. They looked exactly like their soul halves had before we started. Was this something Twinoges could normally do?

"You two look a bit different," I coughed out the words.

"Yeah, this is a really weird feeling. How do you live like this?" Cecile asked.

Despite his words, he had a smile on his face. Though it was entirely possible that it was just from the destruction of the soul knots. His brother, in a rare moment, shared the same smile.

I gulped several breaths of air into my lungs before I could respond. "We can't ever do two of those at once again."

"Good thing only Connie is left. But yeah, next time, probably best if you don't do this alone," Elicec replied.

"Yeah. I hadn't been planning on having to kill both of yours at once, but shit happens, I suppose. So what happens to you two when we leave here?" I asked.

"We were kind of hoping you knew," Elicec answered.

"Not a clue. I take it your people can't do this?" It had to be part of their strange species-based class then. Did that mean they could find a way to use it outside of the soul realm?

"Not that we know of," Cecile replied. "But probably enough talk, Dave. You look bad. Let's get you back to the house, and we can deal with what happens then."

"Good idea." I was feeling woozier by the minute, and most of the way back to the soul anchor, I had to lean on Cecile for support.

Once I returned to my bedroom, I was very glad to find my body already in my bed. My hopes of even making it to the table for whatever Rabyn was preparing were gone for the moment. I'd need some rest before I could get back up.

Seconds after my own return, the Twinoges stood up. They were no longer split between their two forms, at least I didn't think they were. Both sets of eyes looked to be full of life. But I didn't have the energy for a telemetry scan even if I wanted to.

"Okay, that feels a lot more normal again. What a strange experience," Elicec said, as he stretched his arms over his head.

"Do you think we will…" Cecile started to say as the door opened.

Gorpila

Gorpila had been keeping herself as busy as she could since the jester invasion. One of her only friends was hunting across the multiverse for her lost child, and Gorpila had done nothing. Her younger sister had done more than she had. Her older brother had nearly died.

And what had she done to help? Somewhere deep inside herself, she knew the answer for the truth it was, no matter how hard it was to swallow. There had been nothing she could do. Monsters had attacked her new home, and she had been helpless.

She would not be helpless again. She would learn everything she could from Rabyn. She would go to as many classes as she could. She would do these dungeon delves with Glorp. Too much had been put upon Glorp in keeping their family safe, and she would take more of that for herself.

"What comes after we infuse the mana?" she asked as she carefully rolled out the pastry she and Rabyn had spent the last hour working on. He had explained they were refining his previous work on a new recipe that should help stimulate soul energy regeneration.

That was something entirely new to her. She had only just started to learn regular mana-enhanced cooking. The idea of treating the soul itself with food wasn't something she had even known was possible. But if Rabyn said it was, she was sure that it was.

She was proud to be working under the Orc. Everyone who sampled his food considered it the work of a culinary genius, and one day she hoped to match him. She also hoped to match Elody in her knowledge base and be able to fight as well as Mel. She had a lot of goals, and she would not fall short of any of them.

"I attempt to put a small bit of my soul energy directly into each of them. So far, I've managed not to destroy one out of ten. So today's goal is to bring that up to one out of five," Rabyn answered.

Rabyn

He was going to have to talk to Glorp about Gorpila. She was overworking herself, and he was worried this had been going on since the jester attack. While he thought he understood the root cause of it, that didn't make him remotely qualified to help her with it.

Hopefully, her brother would know what to do. He considered that it might also be past time to talk to Pryte about finding some experts in the mental health of children. The kids of this city had gone through a lot, and he knew from experience just what that could do to you as a kid.

At the moment, though, the best he could do was keep her involved and learning. Overworked or not, he strongly believed distractions were a good way to keep oneself sane in an insane world. The look on her face as he told her the current failure rate he had with this new recipe almost made him laugh out loud. But he knew it was because she wasn't used to seeing him fail at a new creation.

This was his first big new one since the founding of the city. He was sure it wasn't truly original. There had to be a faction out there with more soul mages that were trying something like this, but he didn't have access to any of their notes, so, for the effort required, it may as well have been all his invention. He was just glad nothing was exploding anymore.

Somehow, the eggs had caused that. He still wasn't sure what it was that made eggs and soul energy violently combust like that, but as soon as he had started preparing these pastries without them, that had vanished. Despite that, he still had Gorpila take a couple of steps backwards as he infused each of them.

"Hah!" he exclaimed, enthusiastic joy flooding him. Somehow, he managed to make all of them without a single backlash. He was getting better at this. But could he have gotten better that quickly? No, something had to have been different here.

He had let Gorpila infuse the mana! It had to be that. Did soul energy react less violently if it was someone else's core mana in the dough? It seemed likely, but that begged the question of why the egg caused a reaction. There was a lot more he was going to have to experiment with.

"They all look perfect!" Gorpila added in her excitement.

"Yep, I think we just figured out a new recipe. I'm not entirely sure why, but it will require two of us to make these every time. Now let's get these wrapped up and over to Dave. I'll grab the drinks while you prep these," Rabyn said, smiling as he left the room.

After gathering what they needed Rabyn led them both to Dave's bedroom, and hearing how exhausted the voices sounded on the otherside of the door, he was glad he had hurried. Dave sounded worse than after he had destroyed Rabyn's own soul knot.

"Alright, I want each of you to eat one of these," Rabyn said as he pushed the door open.

Chip leaped from the bed onto the Gorpila's shoulder as she followed Rabyn into the room. Despite how the other three sounded, Chip was still chirping away with his usual energy. The giggle Rabyn heard from the girl made him glad he had brought her along. Maybe she wasn't in as bad of shape as he had worried.

Chip

Chip could sense Rabyn and Gorpila once they entered the workshop. That had been something new to him as well. He used to only be able to sense people's core energy when he was touching them, or they were very drained, but now he could tell their unique signatures whenever they got close.

He had no idea why. He didn't even fully understand why he understood any of this now. Stranger was the fact that he kind of understood the weird symbols that popped up in front of his face every so often. He didn't entirely know what each meant yet, but he could tell what the person who sent them wanted, usually.

He leaped from the bed onto Gorpila as soon as she came into the room. He liked her. He liked all of Glorp's family. They had been nice to him from the moment they first met. That was why he made sure to charge her core back up as best he could.

While he did that, he watched Rabyn pull up some donut-looking items and pass them out to Dave and the brothers. As they ate them, their own energies started to look healthier too. Chip considered stealing one to see what it tasted like, but decided it was probably better that Dave ate as many as he could first. He had worked hard today and needed it way more than Chip did after all.

Dave

"This is impressive, Rabyn. It doesn't make me feel perfect, but I no longer feel ready to collapse at any moment. Thank you," I said after quickly finishing off three of them. Gorpila and Rabyn both looked proud of their work, and rightly so.

"Good. Alright, I think it's best we all let Dave get some rest now. You two are going to need some as well. And based on that story, when it's time for Connie, I think it's best you don't do that alone," Rabyn replied.

"Yeah, already made that decision. Since you are likely going to be busy cooking, I'll bring these two and Ivan along." I had already decided that after the first bite of food had made my brain work almost properly again. It was too dangerous to risk this again without help.

I have left the majority of my diaries with my former student, but not all of them. This last one I cannot risk leaving behind, as it's the only true clue as to where my destination is. Once I find Otis, I believe he will be able to guide me further. I am not sure even he has been in the old Spiral, but I believe if anyone knows who has, it will be him.

Personal Diary of Thykle

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