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My body’s movements suddenly froze, and my limbs then started moving subtly on their own. When I glanced down, my arms had disappeared, replaced by the wraithly arms of another woman, milky white and transparent.

What… is going on?

Brindle waved his hand, and a portal of liquid mercury swirled into life before me. It captivated me, drawing my eyes forward before it suddenly snapped into a mirror, and I found myself staring at "my" reflection.

I was a ghost of a woman with modest proportions, strong and wrapped in robes. Despite being clearly capable of seeing, when I stared at myself, I could see that I was blindfolded, and there were broken shackles on each side of my wrists, chain links jingling silently every time "I" moved.

"This is a soul puppet," Brindle said. "As you’ve probably been able to surmise, she can make memories and move independently. She can even develop a distinct personality and express deep emotion. And for that reason, many view these puppets as real people."

His voice deepened.

"They’re not."

Icy ripples of static tingled through me, and I found myself closing my breath.

"They were once people," Brindle said. "They lived and breathed and felt deeply about their lives just like you—and that mustn’t be denied."

I experienced a sudden wave of vertigo; then, I blinked and found myself in another body, a younger body—the body of a girl chatting with their parents. The next moment, she was training in swordplay with her father, who let her land a strike only to scoop her up and put her on his shoulders against her protests. It was a cute memory—

—and then it was gone, replaced by an image of the same man bleeding out on the ground as she shook his body, screaming for him to get up. Smoke billowed through the village, and the acrid stench of sulfur loomed over the environment like a guillotine.

Suddenly, an invading soldier rushing through the flames saw her and had a change of heart. He said, "You need to go!" and picked her up, but she didn’t find value in his pity. She was older, and when she put her hands on his face, his eye ruptured and exploded from a heat spell, forcing him to release her so she could run into the forest.

Memories came in rapid spurts after that, transporting me through an entire lifetime.

Growing up on the streets, fighting kids, adults, and soldiers, getting taken in by bandits, and later being reformed by knights. Growing up in barracks, having difficulties making friends, working until my hands bled, then working some more.

Then, I was on a hilltop battlefield, stepping on a body for leverage so I could take my sword out. All around me were signs of magical combat. Trenches from wind blades. Smoldering grass. Impact craters. But I loved a sword; the intimacy and exactness. So I turned to the battlefield, watching geysers of dirt explode with every spell, and decided to rush back in.

I lived that victory, then suffered a defeat, only to win again.

Years felt like weeks in those memories, and before long, fifty years had passed, and I entered the Second Domain. Three major wars after that, she took a trial and entered the third.

I experienced it all. The constant training, struggle for resources, difficulties of finding teachers, and not having opportunities to earn requests. I experienced life for common people, rank and file soldiers, and lived a numb life of apathy, hatred, and boredom.

Then, I met a man and watched an awkward relationship bloom into a contented situationship, only to turn mildly happy when she had a son.

I watched her raise him, train him as her father taught her, and then fought beside him and her husband to enter the third domain.

She watched both die in the battle to enter the Fourth.

In her grief, she spent a century embroiled in bloodshed within the Fourth Domain, the cruelest and darkest of the domains, where people were so close to achieving their dreams that it drove them into madness. I watched her transform and lose herself—

—only to be saved by a comrade and friend.

Her name was Real, a woman with a similar story that saved her life.

Decades and later centuries passed by living together, warring on their paths to becoming demigods. We shared resources, trained, taught each other, and made it to the Fifth Domain, where we embarked on a multi-century journey to challenge the Spirit Stream, a Diktyo River of souls that moved into the sky along a stream of thick mana, taking raw energy to floating islands that acted as a jump-off point for interuniversal travel and godhood.

They thought they would make it—

—until they saw the requirements.

I was there, in person, staring at the rules. "Deathmatch…"

"Free for all," Real said, scoffing. "These fuckers never change."

"When’s the next one…" I whispered, reading through the poster. "Three…"

"Centuries!" Real said with a beaming smile. "These sadists really know how to touch a woman’s heart."

I kept reading skeptically.

"What?" she asked.

"I want to know why," I said.

The memory suddenly flashed, and Real had locked herself in her room. I knocked on the door. "What is it? What’d they say?"

Real was silent for a moment. Then she laughed and said, "Said it’s to break attachments. Gods don’t ’have time’ for sentimentalities. Said that even if we wait, they’ll just make us kill each other up top if they find out, and we showed up together. Gods are the fucking worst."

I sat on the other side of the door, back to back, and said, "That’s fine. I’ll just… stay behind." I looked at the ceiling of our ramshackle home and chuckled. "To be honest, I’ve been doing this so long that I forgot why I was doing it. I think I’m just doing it to keep doing it. But… I’m not angry anymore. I’m satisfied, and… you helped with that. So… just go if you want to, kay? I’ll stay behind. Or just… stay here. Either way, you have my support."

Real trembled on the other side of the door. "I can’t… I just can’t. You need to be there… You need to be… I can’t do this without you."

"Then stay?"

"I can’t! If I don’t… then what was this all for?"

I felt a pang of sadness and pain and suffering, and as I opened my mouth to respond, I blinked, and the time and place had changed. I was cooking food when Real came in, speaking like a maniac.

"Guardians are allowed!" Real cried as she clasped my hands, and suddenly, the past and present blended in a strange dysesthesia my lungs couldn’t handle.

"What’s a guardian?" I asked.

"It’s when someone creates a soul pact to stand beside another and protect them for life. If you do that, you’re inseparable."

I smiled wryly.

"Hey, it doesn’t say you gotta follow my orders," Real said. "You just gotta stay with me. If we get attacked, the response’s obvious."

I wasn’t convinced.

"Oh, come on. What’re we doing now? Not like women like us have anything else going on."

I smiled thinly.

"Come on. I gotta meeting with a guy who works in guardians. Just hear ’em out, kay? If you don’t like it, you don’t like it. You can continue your plan to… waste away and die a shriveled hag in a few millennia."

"Hey!"

"What? Just saying. You’re young and pretty. If there’s even a chance at keepin’ that, you should at least ask."

I smiled slightly, warm feelings of the past contrasting with the sharp pain of the present.

"Come on, let’s go," Real said, dragging me out of the door. I didn’t want to. I did anyway.

The consultation didn’t match up with reality. The soulmancer had the appearance of a modern doctor, well groomed and calm, demonstrating a habit of flashing trusting smiles.

I heard the most convincing shill on how we would be together forever and how we’d be able to share resources and even be connected by emotions, giving both of us a deeper sense of satisfaction. And after almost a millennia of life, torment, and bloodshed, hearing that I could stay with my best friend was something truly relieving. After all, we had spent centuries living and fighting together. It was hard to believe that that trust would ever break, and if things got bad, we could just work through it.

It was a dream that I was considering—even if I knew it was only a dream I would never agree to. Yet, at that moment, I wanted it, and the man could tell.

He cracked jokes and brought us tea, and I drank it.

That’s when everything turned.

I blacked out before I could even feel fear, and when I woke up, I couldn’t speak. Real kept trying to talk to me, but my voice box wouldn’t work and my mind was swimming, fading even.

"She can’t speak," the doctor said.

"She can’t… what?" Real whipped her head to him. "What’d you just say?"

"She can’t speak. If she could, your brain could make you doubt yourself. It can have devastating psychological consequences."

"I’m okay with that!"

"No, you’re not. You and your guardian are as one. To argue with her to argue with yourself. If you do that, it will split your personality."

Real sneered and shook her head. "I didn’t agree to this."

"You did agree to this," he said chillingly. "Or did you misinterpret the words ’follow your every command?’"

I felt extreme feelings of betrayal and pain, and when Real saw my expression, she panicked. "Salan… I can explain."

"She can," said the doctor. "Your ’friend’ paid to turn you into a soul slave, now she’s regretting it because you’re not the lie we sold you. But don’t worry; your suffering will end the minute your friend pays her bill."

I blinked, and years passed, and during that time, I ascertained that I was a loosely pieced-together soul without a physical body. I was dead but trapped in limbo, waiting to become a slave. And during that time, my mind started looping into insanity. I felt ire and pain I never thought imaginable, and the emotional descent into insanity sparked physical changes in my body.

My body sprouted wings to fly away, but it didn’t help me move, and when I gave up, my mind created shackles and a blindfold, symbolizing my enslavement and desire to never see Real again, but my will wouldn’t allow it. I broke my will but kept my shackles, leaving the cuffs on my wrists.

That was the story behind her appearance, and it made me—Mira Hill—start crying. I woke up in the garden again, where Brindle stood before me apathetically.

"Salan died the day her friend killed her," Brindle said. "The soulmancer recollected her mind, but it would’ve broken apart, become feral—emotional. As you experienced, a soul without a vessel is shackled to agony. It will never get better. It will only become more painful until the day a soul dies. But…"

I suddenly returned to Salan’s life. Real was there, saying promises I didn’t want to hear, and then I felt an injection of foreign neara, and all my pain faded. I knew that I was disappearing, and all my rage and regrets would disappear, but I was immensely grateful for it in ways that are impossible to describe.

I immediately accepted my fate and let myself drift away. Then, I woke up in the Ethereal Gardens with a sense of tranquility as Brindle continued.

"Life is precious until it ends," Brindle said. "And when it does, letting go is the only option."

"Then… what about Yakana?" I tried to ask, but no words came out, and Brindle couldn’t hear me. He was just a ghost, a phantom memory of a moment long past, recorded and shared for me in this sick song and dance.

"Fortunately, we are all set free at one point whether we want it or not, but there are times when people capture a soul body before it joins the Great Assimilation. When they do, the prior owner feels no torment because they do not exist. No matter what the person was, they are no more; they are a simple vessel for a person’s means. Most crudely call such an entity a soul puppet because they can move and follow directions, but not think for themselves. That’s what a soul guardian is before binding it to a host soul. Once it does, it borrows the intense thoughts and emotions of the host, becoming one with them. Experience it."

I woke up again in Salan’s body, but I wasn’t the same person. Instead of feeling rage and betrayal, I felt grief and remorse and rage of another type. Every emotion I felt was magnified, and Real’s emotions were intense, driving me to act boldly. Real, for her part, let me, as our thoughts were one and the same, despite mine being more intense.

Real looked like the puppet, staring blankly as I battled her enemy, ripping off their limbs and throats in broad daylight. Then she would steal the demigod’s soul core and thread it to allow me to grow larger and larger until I was a colossus that stalked the battlefield, shattering mountains with sword strikes.

And those feelings never subsided.

The life of gods was cold and brutal. It was filled with constant killing, murder, and slavery contracts to serve higher guards for millennia. Hundreds of memories flashed before my eyes as I lived through the years, watching gods rise and fall, constantly accepting bleak resources to build myself.

I realized how insignificant my alter ego—Mira Hill—was when I saw entire planets collapse under the strain of nuclear attacks that wreathed whole mountains in flames and left craters the size of canyons in the earth. I watched every form of magic imaginable, things that would turn me to dust, used against titans the size of mountains.

I felt the weight of time as I watched Real rise in the ranks over centuries, blinking between years like they were days, and I felt my personality shift, getting crueler and forgetting the things that made me me as Real forgot her friend, and developed a friendship with the soul she became.

I then blinked and woke in the Ethereal Gardens as Mira Hill once more, feeling confused and pensive.

"Everything you felt was a reflection of Real—a story of oneself told from a third person perspective. You felt Real’s doubts, self-consciousness, and regrets, but you felt none of your own because you weren’t a person. You acted independently and felt emotions, enjoyed praise as Real enjoyed praise, and were pleased with your friendship—but you were not friends like Real and Salan were friends. You were not friends like you and Kline are friends."

I thought back on it and nodded absentmindedly. "It was hollow…"

Brindle couldn’t hear me, so he continued. "Your guardian is not a person. You can love and appreciate them, and they will return it in form, but no matter how hard you wish it so, they will never be one. They are part of you; they think as you think, live as you live, and experience the joys, pain, and contentment that you do. So if you wish to treat yours with respect, find peace within yourself, and it will share that wealth."

I nodded solemnly.

"And once you do, you can truly become one with your guardian and use them as an extension of yourself. This is the true nature of a guardian."

Brindle reached out and touched my upper chest, and then my mind experienced a wave of dysphoria as he and my soul guardian merged. Then, I was staring through Brindle’s eyes, feeling his thoughts and muted feelings, staring at his body in the mirror.

I looked at myself apathetically, then I felt my guardian’s presence return and angel wings sprouted from my back. I was suddenly all versions of me: Mira Hill, Brindle Grask, and my soul guardian, and they all felt natural together. That was the last thought I had before the wings spread, and I shot into the air.