Red Faith drummed his fingers on the violet elixir for a moment, and she was sure he was considering trying to inject it by force. Finally, he spun around and seized the arm of a complex steel frame, which he extended until it was in front of her face.
The steel arm carried a scripted purple lens, and he fixed a blank dream tablet to the side opposite her. “Focus on the moment you first separated from your Blood Shadow. As much as is possible for you without the assistance of my elixir, relive that moment vividly.”
That was easy enough, since the memory tended to stick in her mind. She was lying in a basement that shook with a battle overhead. Outside, Akura Malice fought the Bleeding Phoenix. Dust fell from the ceiling as the building trembled, and Mercy was off to one side, desperately fighting a tide of bloodspawn.
A tide that Yerin was sure she’d soon join. Her Blood Shadow, the parasite that had infested her as a girl, was struggling to take over. To heed the song of the Phoenix and break free. It was taking all of her mind and spirit, all of her willpower, to restrain it.
Lindon leaned over her, his face soft with concern. He told her to fight. Told her he wouldn’t leave her. Then, with his Remnant arm, he reached into her spirit.
…but Yerin had another memory overlaying that one. She existed only faintly, a spirit locked in darkness, trapped in a small area. She heard a song that promised freedom and fought to reach it, to feed, to satisfy the hunger that was all she’d ever known.
Then a hand of even greater hunger seized her and pulled her free. She felt his spirit and his firm will as she emerged into the light, and felt the fear of her host body.
Ruby’s memories. Her birth.
Dream aura streamed from Yerin’s mind, through the lens, and into the tablet. The flow cut off as Red Faith removed the lens.
He clicked his tongue. “Memories this obscured will be of minimal use in research. We will finish the process, but if there are any inconsistencies or pertinent details missing, we will repeat this step. It would be far more efficient to accept my clarity elixir, and then we could assuredly complete the transfer in one—”
“How efficient is it to talk instead of work, would you say?”
Red Faith stared at her, and she had to glare back so she didn’t shiver. His eyes weren’t filled with hatred or anger at her defiance. They were cold fish’s eyes, just watching her as he calculated.
After a few more seconds, he swung the lens back into place. He didn’t even trade out the dream tablet; maybe this one still had room.
“When did you begin practicing my techniques for a humanoid Blood Shadow? What was your motivation for doing so, and what was your experience using them?”
“You want me to focus on one thing, or six?”
“Those are prompts meant to focus you on the next stage of the Shadow’s development. If you have a strong memory associated with the initial training of the Blood Shadow or use of my techniques, that is the recollection to focus on.”
Yerin remembered Eithan giving her Red Faith’s tablet, making her choose, and her first time hearing the Sage’s voice in her mind.
When the memory was finished and Red Faith reviewed it, his pink eyes widened. “Eithan Arelius was the one to procure these techniques for you? And in your opinion, it was he that encouraged you to practice my methods?”
Yerin guessed she could understand it, but she hated how popular Eithan was now that he had left the world behind. “Just about shoved them down my throat.”
A rictus grin spread across Red Faith’s face. “As expected…as expected. The eyes of heaven can truly discern value. We walk the steps of the future together.”
The Sage took her through the pain of having her life aura shaved away by Meira, and of fighting side-by-side with a humanoid Blood Shadow for the first time. It was strange, now that she was assessing her memories from both perspectives.
She remembered eyeing the Shadow, afraid that it would devour her from the inside out.
She remembered eyeing her host body, afraid that it would devour her from the outside in.
As they proceeded, the Sage complained less and less. He muttered about clarifying levels of existence and developing identity, but whenever Yerin came back to herself, he insisted she move on to the next memory. Whatever he wasn’t satisfied about with the clarity, he seemed to be growing excited.
There was one set of memories she tried to suppress. Ruby’s growing awareness of Lindon was too embarrassing to share because it mirrored her own. Now, Yerin knew for sure that the Blood Shadow’s initial attachment to him came from Yerin’s own thoughts, her own attention, her own dreams and feelings.