The severed head of the hunter hit the floor with a dull thud.

For the first time in a long time, the Wisp felt a deep rush of relief. The hunter was dead, the besiegers destroyed, and the fortress relatively intact. Not too bad for a day's work.

It immediately ran into diagnostics as it rested, repairing the code where it could and plugging the mana leaks when it couldn’t. Repair was always a kind of distressing project in that vein, coming face to face with the permanent damage taken to its coding. The weakness of its bindings was necessary as to pack everything in so tightly of course, but that fact still impressed upon the duo the need to stay out of direct combat. It wasn’t built for it after all.

The whole process was done in a sort of daze, and the Wisp couldn’t really tell how long it actually took, only looking up when it was satisfied it wasn’t going to collapse from propulsion. When it did so, it found the room relatively intact and silent, only the gargled sputtering of the damaged engine creeping along. Of the mass of stone foxes which had littered the halls before the battle only under a dozen remained now in a crowd behind the engine, but that any survived at all impressed the Wisp given how they had thrown themselves into the melee as they had.

[What’s going on over there?] Hazel asked, referring to the crowd near the circle.

The Wisp didn’t respond, instead lifting itself up with a huft and drifting towards the commotion with a growing sense of alarm.

The Wisp floated around the engine.

Numi and the wolf lay on the ground in the middle of the thaumaturgic circle surrounded by the surviving foxes. Though the ground was stained red and the air infused with burnt iron, the wolf itself looked better than the Wisp would’ve expected, if a little hairless. Only a few faint burn scars covered its saggy skin to permanently mark its flaming flight, a development that would’ve amazed the Wisp under other circumstances.

Its account of the wolf was only an inconsequential concern though, in comparison to the groaning mess that was Numi. She was pale, far paler than normal, and looked to be unconscious despite the prodding of the canines around, which gave the Wisp a brief flash of panic that she might be dead.

The Wisp immediately shot forward like a cannon, coming to a stop right next to its first inhabitant’s head, scattering the crowd. Flinging itself into a scanning spell code, the Wisp fervently examined the child and compared her to the baseline templates to look for inconsistencies.

It found a lot. Excess mana coursed through her veins in what the Wisp was sure was a sure sign of acute mana poisoning, but while that was distressing, what else the Wisp found confused it more. Numi was remarkably different from the baseline on account of the tail and double ears of course, but even discarding the exterior differences countless small details seemed to be wrong or moved, like leaves after a storm. Blood veins ran strange paths, old vestigial organs were missing, and several major organs seemed to be located in, if the Wisp was honest, more efficient locations. It was disquieting, and more than a little confusing for the Wisp.

The Wisp abandoned the template and turned to baser forms of inspection- feeling for a pulse, checking the breathing, and other such low magic methods. It didn’t dare just dump mana as it had when it had first discovered Numi due to a fear of making it worse. After all, you couldn’t with magic something you didn’t understand in the mundane fashion, and while the Wisp had plenty of data on closing external wounds everything else got incredibly dangerous incredibly fast.

The Wisp had just confirmed that she was breathing when it was interrupted by a pulse of alarm from Hazel.

[Report.]

[Somethings wrong with the soul frame.” Hazel said quickly. “Backlash did something weird.]

The Wisp activated its soul sight, and the blazing candles of live sprung up around him. Looking past his own conjoined soul with a quickly suppressed pang of revulsion, the Wisp quickly spun at the sight ahead of him.

It wasn’t just Numi- everything in front of him seemed to be lightsworn. The flame of the old wolf, of Numi, the Wisp, and the engine all connected together with small tendrils of light crisscrossing the space between them all. The air was awash with flowing rivers of their soul’s mana making bizarre connections between them all. Even the foxes were connected, though first to Numi. It looked much like a tangled spider web in its construction, and the Wisp could feel a massive headache developing above him.

[What happened?] Hazel asked in awe. [This is…]

[Numi is bound to the engine.] The Wisp said. [And so is that wolf.]

The soul is a complicated thing to understand, so much so that even the Wisp wasn’t coded to deal with all its complexities. Soul mana was unlike other forms of magic, and soul magic worked completely differently to the spellcoding that normal thaumaturges dabbled in. But a connection was an easy enough thing for anyone to understand, and according to some of the Wisp’s templates even indicated a slight merging of the individuals.

[Doesn’t that mean…] Hazel pulsed. [They can control the engine? Like us?]

[Affirmative.]

[Then as well..] Hazel signaled towards the unconscious wolf. [This thing can control the fortress?]

[It means we cannot kill it, at risk of the engine collapsing.] The Wisp flickered. [The same reason I wasn’t able to purge you at the start.]

[By the light…]

[Is that the Wisp?]

A new distant voice reverberated across the Wisp’s mind, and Hazel only barely stopped the Wisp from launching an immediate attack. After a tense second, the Wisp lowered its prepared pulse and simply renewed the shields around its soul frame.

[Identify yourself, intruder.] The Wisp responded.

The voice sounded surprised when it came back. [I.. I’m Chip. Can you hear this?]

[What are you?] Hazel asked.

[I’m one of Numi’s protectors.] Chip responded. [But only her and the other golems should be able to receive this…]

The Wisp looked around to find all of the surviving foxes staring at it, a surprisingly humanlike confusion on their faces. Soon, a horde of voices began to telepath into the conversation.

[Tha Wisp can hear us?]

[Did he bind to her as well?]

[Ho oh? How interesting!]

[A new threat?]

[What a cruel joke...]

The Wisp sparked its core flames, expanding in a burst of crackles, and the crowd silenced itself.

[Quiet down.] It commanded. [Chip, which one are you?]

After a second the fox with one ear stood up and bowed its head.

[Identify the others for me.] The Wisp said. [We have quite a bit to discuss.]

The Wisp glanced again at the tangled soul web in front of him with a massive flicker. Yep, this was going to be a huge headache indeed.

…

[With all due respect, Great Wisp, mana poisoning is considered survivable in this day and age.]

The burials of his brothers and sisters were quick by necessity, but that didn’t diminish the sorrow of the attendants, and none could match Chip’s when they laid Wiggles to rest.

Wiggles had always been like a father to Chip, guiding him through the complicated business of watching over Numi. The captain had been a steady post among the loud personalities the master tended to create, even if he had been a little grumpy at times, and he had attempted to train Chip to be a fitting commander if he ever passed.

So it hadn’t surprised him when the others came to him as their new captain, quiet as it had happened. The fall of so many of their fellow golems had only provided him with a larger conviction to see Numi returned to Kicno and the master safely.

What the captain hadn’t prepared him for however, was dealing with the Wisp.

[Impossible.] The Wisp replied, stone-faced as ever. [The mana flows typically collapse within a week, rendering the subject vulnerable to magic corruption. The templates imply death as a preferable outcome. If I hurry the engine might even be salvaged.]

Despite the four of them occupying it, the room behind the engine still managed to feel spacious. The other foxes had been assigned to watching Numi and the wolf in case either woke up, so only Chip and the eldest of the surviving golems had came to speak with the Wisp.

[Mr. Wisp…]

[If I may, captain.] Barth interrupted.

Chip hesitated internally. If Wiggles had taught him anything, it was that letting Bartholomew speak was a tiring affair, if an often necessary one. [Go ahead. But keep it short.]

[I always try.] Bartholomew cleared his throat. [Great and magnamious wisp of the all-to-forgotten legends, told and spread by the ancestors of our mighty kingdom, I do bid you pay rapt attention to the advancements and peculiarities of the modern human of the Boscan Kingdom. Upon your inspection in the thaumaturgic hall earlier did your great eminence notice the assuredly strange and efficient biologies of her form? Did you, by any chance, come into contact with the signalling structures most effectively grown into the hands and feet of our Numi?]

Chip caught a flicker in the flames of the Wisp, a sign he was coming to know signalled irritation.

[Affirmative.] It eventually said. [Numi is sufficiently deviant from baseline human templates. Is this common?]

[In recent years, I would hazard to communicate a ‘yes’.] Bartholomew replied. [Numi’s generation is of a special sort among our master’s kind of course, mutated by the storm such as they are. In older generations however this level of mana signalling is still not unheard of. Though lacking the more advanced signalling glands and the more fox-like protrusions, the development of more advanced mana channeling has historically increased through recorded history. In the far remote age in which you were created, I am sure this level of poisoning was considered uniquely deadly, but in our time is survivable at a rate of 92%, given treatment within a fortnight.]

[Two weeks?] The flames of the Wisp’s core began to spin and converge into a sphere. [Inconceivable. Just how far back would your legends place me?]

[That, oh great Wisp, is a question of continuing debate and study among the scholars of our advanced historical institutions.] Bartholomew began. [By all accounts these stories are impossible to place, though if we were to err on the side of the great philosopher Veot I would postulate your creators as at the very least 600 years old, and in all probability more than 700.]

[That is… unexpectedly long.] The Wisp admitted. [You mentioned ‘Numi’s generation’ being affected by the storm earlier. How long has it raged?]

[We’re going on the 15th year now.] Chip replied. [Though none of us remember Boscus before it hit.]

[That doesn’t connect.] The Wisp replied. [Why was I only activated now then? How has civilization survived that long?]

[Why, they brought up summoners from down south to shield and provide for the cities.] Chip explained. [While the storms aren’t as bad farther east and are nonexistent outside of Boscus, they still don’t have to worry about all the farmland being destroyed with them around.]

[Along with the development of interior cultivation beforehand, yes.] Bartholomew said with an eye roll. [Though that would still be an… indelicate explanation of Boscu’s continued subsistence. As for why you were activated now? That answer is deceptively simple.]

[The Hafel.] Whitepaw said.

[That hunter didn’t look like it could threaten an actual battlemage.]

[That.] Whitepaw thrust her head towards the hunter’s corpse. [Was not Hafel. The Hafel are civilized, by some definitions. That was a monster.]

Chip hadn’t heard much about the Hafel before they’d come to Boscus, only far off tales of brutality and murder. Even leading up to their departure from Kicno information on them had been hard to come by with their master keeping his mouth shut. None of them even knew the reason for their departure, how far the Hafel had gotten, or even whether they were wandering the storms of Boscus at all. As far as they’d known Kicno was still completely safe.

[We’re getting off topic. We…] Chip indicated the three golems. [Need to get Numi back to Kicno for treatment.]

[We don’t even know if we’re near Kicno.] Whitepaw pointed out.

[Then I’m sure anywhere with a mage would do. But the golems and I need to leave soon.]

[Negative.] The Wisp objected. [If she dies its the fortress that’ll pay for it. And if I was activated then the local populace will need a refuge.]

Chip grimaced. This was the roadblock he was dreading coming into contact with.

[Mr. Wisp, surely you understand…]

[We’ll come with you.] The voice coming from the Wisp changed suddenly, becoming ever more cheery than it had been a second before, so much so that it almost sounded like a different person.

Everyone went quiet as they processed that. Chip simply blinked at the ball of flames.

[You… you can leave?] Chip asked after a second. [Aren’t you linked to the engine?]

[So is Numi, and yet you were discussing leaving with her just a second ago.]

[Well…]

[We will need to gather a population in any case, and more than anything else...] An uncharacteristic chuckle came from the Wisp. [I’m curious.]

[But what about the…]

[Wolf?] The cheery voice asked. [We’ll have to take him with us, but I have a plan for that.]

…

An empty white greeted Numi’s eyes when she opened them, like the sheets of a well lit bed. In the distance, slow swirls of light gray smoke curled into the distance. The sky was a bright and unnatural blue, the light coming off of it hurting her eyes so much that she had to blink and squint. Despite that, she felt like she was laying somewhere soft, with some invisible blanket of fur on top of her.

Numi sat up, and the view changed with her. The ground didn’t look as it felt- it looked hard and rigid, as if the color of a pillow was laid over a rocky path. In the distance, those strange plumes of smoke continued to billow. In the sky, a massive blue star burned overhead, many times larger than even the largest star in the cold season.

‘It must be a dream.’ was the first thought that came to her.

“Hello?” Her voice sounded wrong, as if she wasn’t actually in the wide field of white but in some small box. It sounded constrained.

She attempted to get up, but all of a sudden the floor seemed to move. Numi slipped as she fell, and the floor of white seemed to move with her, until it didn’t. She slammed into a hard stone-like ground with a loud shout, a thump, and a sore arm.

After a second she reached behind her, feeling the soft touch of an invisible bed. Her hand stopped.

[Are you all right?] One of the foxes popped into her mind, alarm attached to the message. [Why’d ya just jump off your bed like that?]

Numi didn’t respond, instead throwing her head around to look for anything recognizable. Her hands danced on the floor around her, finding the common objects that had lain around her room. She felt the edge of her bed, the dresser, and even the face of the stone golem who stood beside her, but didn’t see them, only the distant plain of white and smoke greeting her eyes.

“I can’t see.” She said, dumbfounded.

[I’m sorry?]

“I can’t see.” Numi struggled to control her breathing. “Why can’t I see?”