I blinked in surprise as I regained the use of my body. I looked down at my hands and saw a small key in one of them with the letters Y and N hovering over it. Had all of that been real? Had I actually just watched one of Nia’s memories? And why had it skipped over some parts if it was a real memory?

I pressed Y before I could think myself into inaction.

//ARCHIVIST THANKS YOU FOR YOUR DONATION.

//YOUR ACCESS TO THE OSSUARY’S ARCHIVES WILL BE AVAILABLE EXTREMELY SOON.

//THE MEMORY OF YOUR OLD CORE WILL BE YOUR KEY.

The key in my hand faded away. So it had been real. I wondered if the memories were the difference between accepting the full version of Nia’s inheritance and the partial version of it, but there was no possible way to find out. The symbol on my interface split apart and drifted away, leaving a blank screen with each edge gleaming with blue and white. There was so much more to see, so much more to learn about Nia and the person she’d been.

And I had the key to all of it, or at least forty-three years worth. I tried swiping to the right and found myself staring at a screen that showed three different options enclosed in filigreed boxes. Option one, in the largest box, was ‘recorded knowledge’. The second option, and by far the smallest box, was ‘lessons’. And the final box, which was of a size somewhere between the other two, was labeled ‘key memories’.

‘Recorded knowledge’ and ‘key memories’ both interested me, but ‘lessons’ grabbed at me and dragged me in. It was by far the smallest box, which could mean absolutely nothing, but it could also mean that there were the fewest entries in the ‘lesson’ category. I pressed on it and felt my mind drawn to another section of Nia’s inheritance, where there were a dozen 3-D symbols on the screen. I thought I recognized one of them as a cluster of seven nodes, lazily spinning on its x-axis, and pressed on it.

The world around me bled away, leaving only a black and yellow armored figure who carried my blue and white hammer. Jun froze mid-swing and slowly looked around, gently placing my hammer on the ground and fumbling around in front of her for the slyk.

“This has to be The End, right? Nothing else could do something like this.” Jun sighed as she took a seat next to me. “And I was making good progress on the slyk too.”

I honestly didn’t know how to respond. Maybe this was The End amplifying what was left in Nia’s inheritance, but it also could’ve been something Nia created with her abundance of battery while she was alive.

Also, how the hell did it pull Jun into this? “I think it’s Nia’s inheritance. I just watched one of her memories, and now this happened. Did she ever tell you how to burn in nodes?”

Jun nodded. “A couple of days after she told you, apparently. I’ve been trying to find a way to get nodes without going out and killing core-bearing monsters ever since, but I haven’t had any luck.”

That made this a whole lot easier. “I opened a ‘lesson’ from her inheritance that had the same symbol on it that she used to burn in nodes. So maybe we’re about to see it again.”

The darkness blinked out of existence, and my armor stopped responding to me. I tried to lift my arms, but the metal shell around them completely hindered my attempts. Even trying to move into a slightly more comfortable position didn’t yield any results. I dismissed my armor, and for a split second it seemed like it would work; everything around me disappeared, leaving my skin slightly cool at the touch of wherever Nia’s inheritance had taken us. But then I tried to move, and I was still stuck in place.

“Well this sucks.” Jun grumbled from beside me. I uncomfortably wrenched my neck so I could see what was wrong and saw her stuck in the halfway point of shifting between kneeling and sitting cross-legged. “Can you tell the inheritance to let me sit down, please? It can lock me in place again right after.”

“I don’t think I have control over this.” I admitted. I called my interface, swiped down over a few paragraphs of Nia-written warnings, and found a small control panel at the bottom. There was a tiny square inside a larger square at the bottom with the words ‘student space’ written under it, and I mentally enlarged it until it filled the larger square in its entirety.

Jun fell to the ground with a surprised yelp, quickly composed herself, and nodded to me in thanks. “Looks like you are in control.”

“Apparently so.” I agreed. “Let’s see how this thing works.”

The rest of the control interface was fairly simple; symbols that I couldn’t make out shifted to the symbols for ‘rewind’, ‘pause’, ‘play’, ‘fast-forward’, and ‘stop’ if I focused on them for more than a second. A small bar between the symbols and the student space modifier designated how long the lesson had left to go, and aside from an arrow at the very top that hid the interface from me, there was nothing more to it.

“Sit comfortably just in case this freezes us again.” I said while I sat cross-legged on the empty floor. I looked over at Jun, who took a very similar sitting position, and waited for her to signal she was ready before pressing ‘play’.

I felt something come in to constrict me once more, but it wasn’t anywhere near as stifling as before. The darkness suddenly broke apart into an extremely bright scene; rolling hills of dirt as white as sun-bleached bone that went on further than I could see, refracting light from three diamond-shaped suns that were far too large in the deep black sky. I couldn’t imagine this being anywhere but a hazard.

“Do you recognize this place?” Jun whispered, looking around as if there was a teacher to reprimand us for talking during the lesson. “Is it one of the hazards you cleared in your old life?”

I shook my head. Nothing about this place was familiar. “It’s just as alien to me as it is to you.”

A woman in black armor with vibrant orange accents appeared in front of us. It was unmistakably Nia, but she looked far bulkier than I remembered. If the Nia I knew had armor like a stealth bomber, then this one had the armor of a 747 painted black. She glared at us and cocked her head to the side, as if asking an unsaid question, then nodded to herself and cleared her throat.

“Hello, future recruits of the Staura. I am General Persephonia Persephonia, and today will be your first introduction to a phenomenon that I am dubbing ‘node burn-in’. After clearing many hazards along with the man behind this camera, I have found a way to massively increase the dead space within our cores that everyone eventually finds themselves with.”

Nia flourished her hand, and black scales knit themselves together in her upturned palm. The shape I’d pressed on was created in less than three seconds, but the Nia I knew would’ve done it in a heartbeat. This one was powerful, yes, but nowhere near the Nia who’d created a massive mech suit and a centipede kaiju.

I tuned out as Nia explained exactly what she had to me. This younger Nia rambled on for far longer, and was much less sure of the words she spoke, so much so that I barely believed what she’d claimed to have discovered. Five minutes went by, and she’d barely described what she meant by ‘burn in’. Another ten, and she still hadn’t explained why she’d made the star of nodes that still twirled in her hand.

Jun leaned on one arm and blew out a bored breath. “Nia really got better at teaching, didn’t she? It took her ten minutes to explain and show me how this works, and I don’t think this Nia’s going to be done for at least another half-hour. Do you have any other lessons we could watch instead of this one?”

We did, but something about this lesson bugged me. Nia had addressed us as Staura recruits, which meant she’d intended to share this with almost everyone. But when she told me, she’d made it seem like a secret that I couldn’t share with a single soul other than Jun.

“Don’t you think this is strange?” I asked, gesturing at Nia’s lesson for emphasis. “Nia told me about this in absolute secrecy, but it looks like this was made to be broadcast far and wide. Something’s off, but I don’t know what it is.”

“Huh, now that you mention it…” Jun trailed off, leaning in for a better look at Nia. She then craned her neck to look behind her, and stifled a gasp at what she saw. “Uh, Seb, is that one of Addia’s chosen? What was his name… Ino-something?”

I whipped around and saw the man I’d killed, and the man who had spared my life. Inopsy. What the fuck was he doing here with Nia? Did that mean he knew how to burn in nodes? Was he the reason Nia didn’t tell anyone her secret, or was he just trying to help her out? He didn’t seem overly keen on fighting Nia compared to Leffrasia or the of Addia’s forces, and could him being here with her be the reason why?

His voice piping up from behind the camera, younger and full of hope but undeniably his, only brought up more questions. “Percy, uh, I feel five heat distortions coming this way. Maybe you can hurry it up? Before those massive bone-white scythehands come and kill me again?”

“We can re-record this part later, so let’s stop for the moment. We’ll pick it back up tomorrow before we clear this hazard.” Nia said, stepping towards and reaching out to us before the scene instantly shifted. The bone-white hills were still the same, but now we were in an oasis with pink-tinted water and skeletal trees. “Thank you, Inopsy. Now, to pick up where I left off, burning in a node is a process that can take anywhere from six hours to eight days of constant use. If I use a low-draw function, it will take days for the nodes to emit enough radiation to fundamentally alter my core. But thanks to my specific core, I can force battery into functions that are not meant for a variable load.”

“Are you really sure you want to say that, Percy? Your core isn’t general knowledge like mine is, and people will try to take you back if they find out what you can do.” Inopsy warned with what felt like genuine care and worry in his voice.

“I’m sure, Inopsy, but thank you for your worry. Place a reminder here for me to edit this portion of the video out before I send it to the Grand Matria, please.” Nia said, and a text box appeared before me. It simply said ‘edit from the moment Inopsy speaks to when I say Grand Matria Please’, and disappeared before Nia spoke again.

She cleared her throat and settled back into the pose she’d been in before Inopsy spoke. “I apologize for the interruption; we had a moment of technical difficulties. As of now, you are probably wondering just how far this ‘burn in’ could elevate us Staura in the all-world’s political landscape. Whatever you imagine, I say double it. This can increase our greatest warriors’ stats by hundreds, and nobody will ever challenge the Staura again. None of you will have to fight in a war where our best are enough! Nobody will die pointlessly before they get a chance to be something!”

“Percy? Are you alright?” Inopsy asked worriedly as Nia fell to the ground, clutching her chest as she took in wracking breaths. “Abyss below, are you having another panic attack? We need to get out of here now!”

Nia sobbed in pain as Inopsy jumped into frame, and everything froze. The bar on the control interface had reached its end, so this was where Nia’s lesson ended. It felt woefully incomplete compared to what she’d confided in Jun and I while she was alive, but the in-betweens were far more important than the actual lesson here.

Jun was the first to speak. “So Nia knew Inopsy from a long time ago. You weren’t there when Addia and Endra’s chosen first started talking, but there was a strange sort of tension between Inopsy and the huge one. I couldn’t tell if they were going to start killing each other or make love on top of the table.”

I snorted at that image and shook my head. “The Inopsy I met was a little… out there. I think he still cared about Nia, but something in his head wasn’t the same as the one we just saw. Something must’ve happened to him when he became one of Addia’s chosen, and if I had to guess, that’s what drove a wedge between him and Nia.”