Lucas decided to take the next day off, insofar as one could in the Order. There was a task he'd been stalling on for a little while now, and he felt there was no better time to work on his heart and mind. Spiritually speaking.

  Of course, avoiding any duties wasn't so easy in the current state of affairs. He still had to involve himself in a few tasks members of the Order were expected to fulfil if they had nothing better to do. In the interest of not attracting attention to himselft, he carried out a few chores alongside Valerie and Florence without complaint when they were assigned. It was mostly a morning of carrying things around when someone spotted them “idling”.

  After lunch, his comrades insisted on a small exercise routine, uninterested in any claims of taking it easy. His argument that he was going to be doing something quite strenuous that afternoon fell on deaf ears. So they did some runs, lifted weights, sparred a bit in one of the training rooms. Comparing Florence and Valerie to the New Dawn men he’d faced once again struck him dumb. They were on a completely different level.

  How long would he last in a serious fight to the death against either of them? Probably seconds. The thought was humbling, but at the same time reassuring. Most people wouldn’t survive the opening exchange. Yesterday’s violence had proved that.

  Yesterday’s violence. His mind kept going back to it. His memory had never been his finest feature, but it seemed the Great Star was determined to ensure he could recall that sight of his blade plunging through a man’s neck in near-perfect clarity. The man’s face was shadowed, but Lucas had still seen the whites of his eyes. They’d been wide enough to form a pale ring around his irises, as if utterly shocked that ambushing a group of elite combatants maybe wasn’t a bright idea.

  To be fair, he supposed they’d been expecting to face mere highly-trained combatants. They weren’t prepared for Valerie or Florence. Lucas was more the level they’d anticipated, and he couldn’t help wondering what would have happened to five skycloaks equal to him.

  He didn’t have to feel bad about those men. Not in the abstract. They’d come to kill, and they’d died for it. They’d probably had family and friends, sure, but so did most members of the Order.

  The waste of it all still weighed on him, though. He tried to shake it off as the three of them headed down the grand staircase, making their way to their basement training room for the first time in almost a week. Maybe it was just his imagination playing tricks on him, but the descent felt like it took longer than usual. It was probably nerves, on his part.

  It had been a little while since he’d messed with his mana system in any meaningful way. For the most part, he was practically finished. Throughout the majority of his body, there were very few unfinished channels left. His system was comparable to a fully grown adult’s, now.

  Except for two crucial areas. By far the most complex and numerous areas in the whole circulatory network that comprised his soul.

  The heart and the mind.

  Mapping out his other organs had been deeply uncomfortable experiences. They were vastly more complex than, say, his arms or legs, but they were incomparable to the heart and brain. The really worrying part of it was the unprecedented nature of his situation. As far as Valerie knew, none of the others had needed to map out their mana network like this, forcing mana through immature channels to rapidly grow them to their maximum potential. They’d arrived fully formed.

  And that wasn’t even mentioning whatever bullshit was going on with him absorbing the souls of enemies he killed. Which only he could see. Two more had filled him after the battle against the New Dawn thugs. It had been near overwhelming before Jam intervened, siphoning off the majority of the energy for its own ends, whatever the hell those were.

  In a regular-born Aerthian, the mana system developed over time, growing with the body. Growth wasn’t uniformly consistent, since people obviously lived different lives and accumulated different experiences. No two people were biologically identical, and the same was true of their souls, too.

  Never before had anyone been forced to do what Lucas was doing. Never. Valerie hadn’t heard of it, and neither had anyone she’d discreetly asked. No record mentioned anything like it. It was yet another oddity among many that were coming to define Lucas’ existence. Mysteries upon mysteries.

  He was truly treading new ground.

  The one silver lining was they were fairly sure he was doing the right thing. Unprecedented as it was, they knew enough about mana systems and such to be able to guess that having the soul misaligned with the body would’ve spelled bad things. They weren’t sure what form that would have taken, but there were definitely cases of the soul being attacked in some way warping the body and mind of a sentient being.

  Valerie herself was living proof of that.

  Seeing as Lucas didn’t want to revert to the body of his child self, or whatever the fuck it would have done to him, he was happy enough he’d stumbled across this solution.

  As they finally reached the basement training room, though, he really wished he didn’t need to do this at all.

  “This is gonna be awful,” he said with a grimace. Still, he entered the room first, moving right to the centre and dropping into a cross-legged position, taking up breathing exercises. He’d stripped down to the blue under-uniform of the order, his white armour stowed away in his cloak’s weird quasi-network. It was too uncomfortable to be sitting around in for however long this shit took, and he was going to be in plenty of discomfort as it was.

  “I imagine it will be disagreeable,” Valerie agreed. “But it shouldn’t do you physical harm, as long as you’re careful.”

  “I’m still not quite sure I understand what the situation is, here,” Florence admitted, watching him. “I’ve never heard of anything like this.”

  “Not like I understand it either,” Lucas said with a shrug. “I arrived with a soul too small for my body, apparently. That’s all I know.”

  “But how is that even possible?” Florence said. She seemed to ask this same question every time the topic came up.

  Lucas could only shrug. He closed his eyes and started feeling at his mana, entering a meditative state as he tried to lose himself in the flow. It was moving naturally now, without his guidance. His soul felt so much greater than when he’d first glimpsed it. Heavier, more substantial. It suffused him almost entirely these days, to the point where it felt like it was simply a golden silhouette overlaying his body rather than a dense network of channels.

  “It’s almost certainly a major clue as to why Lucas did not arrive at the time of the summoning with the other four Heroes,” Valerie said. “Studying the array itself is an ongoing process, but I’m relatively confident the Grand Order did not plan for this to happen. Combine that with the mana absorption ability Lucas has described, one has to suspect outside interference.”

  “The Demon Lord himself, maybe?” Lucas murmured. There was something soothing about watching his mana, and he clung to that feeling. He needed any source of calm he could find.

  “A possibility,” Valerie said. “But one would have to wonder why he wouldn’t sabotage the summoning far more severely, if he was capable of interfering with it at all.”

  “His motivations have ever been an enigma,” Florence said.

  “Enigmatic or not, his goal is clearly to corrupt and/or annihilate all life on Aerth. His actions display that. Without the Great Heroes, one could make the argument he would have achieved that aim decades ago. Lady Claire alone is an enormous obstacle to him. If he could interfere with the summoning, I’m sure he would have prevented it entirely.”

  Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Arrogance, perhaps? Some records claim he declared himself the Demon Lord, after all, rather than the name being assigned to him. That sounds like the action of a conceited individual. If this is all some immense ego-trip to him, perhaps he interfered to show that he could. Or maybe he tried, but he overestimated himself or underestimated the power of Aerthian magic, and he failed to achieve his aims, only preventing the summoning of one Hero, and only temporarily at that.”

  “One-hundred years stretches the spirit of the term temporarily, I feel,” Valerie said drily. “But you’re delving into baseless speculation anyway. We don’t know what happened with the summoning yet. It could be that the Grand Order really did miscalculate, somehow.”

  “Lady Claire studied it herself, didn’t she?”

  “Extensively.”

  “And then, at some point, decided Pentaburgh had to be quarantined, from what you told me about your experiences there.”

  Valerie was quiet at that. Lucas cracked an eye open, and found them standing on either side of the door, staring at each other.

  “What did she discover that made her believe she needed to not only abandon the city,” Florence continued, “but go to such great lengths to make it look like enemy action that an entire branch of magic is now considered quite taboo?”

  “A good question,” Valerie said. She slowly tore her gaze away from her comrade and looked at Lucas. “There must have been a very good reason.”

  They fell quiet after that, dipping into private contemplation. Lucas didn’t break the silence. Partially because he’d been about to politely tell them to shut up so he could concentrate anyway, but mostly because he couldn’t be dealing with heavy topics like that when he was about to go rummaging around in his souls equivalent of the mind. That didn’t seem like a good time to be distracted.

  Here goes nothing.

  Since the heart seemed more problematic for monstercat-related reasons, Lucas decided to tackle his head first. The channels up there were a mass of tangles that, if he spiritually squinted and tilted his head a bit, maybe kind of resembled a brain considerably smaller than his own. He’d pretty much mapped everything out, but hadn’t yet dared to open the channels there. Some part of him had wanted to make sure a magical expert was on hand to watch and make sure he was getting it right. But they were at least somewhat growing out on their own. That suggested it shouldn’t be a problem, and Valerie wouldn’t let him work with true mana enhancementuntil his soul was fully grown in every part of his body.

  After yesterday’s events, he wanted every advantage. It was a strange reaction, but outclassing his opponents like that had only made him want to ensure no one could outclass him in the same way. The feeling was nonsensical. But it was there, and it was spurring him on.

  So, carefully, tentatively, he started to slow the mana in his head alone, seeking out the tiny entrances to new channels that miniscully disrupted the flow. He winced as the familiar ache split seeped deep into his brain. There was a big difference between feeling that of pain in his arm compared to his head, it turned out.

  It was far more alarming, for one thing. His heartbeat immediately sped up and kept accelerating until it was at a dead sprint. A cold sweat broke out on his skin. The ache had nothing to do with physical pain. It was soul deep. He’d never truly damaged himself through this method, but anxiety still gnawed at his gut. How could it not? You could make an argument that the brain was the most important part of the body: it was you. Break the wrong thing in there, and a fundamental part of him potentially died.

  And yet, he kept pouring mana through the channels, utilising skill picked up from experience and enhanced by the Great Star. He’d done this literally thousands of times. There was probably no one on Aerth better at opening magical channels in the mana system than him.

  Time passed. The ache persisted, expanding as he opened more and more channels. He started to feel light-headed. A wave of dizziness passed over him but quickly passed. Tracing the outlines of his brain, mana flowed into newly opened pathways. It was like his skull was inflating, but somehow it wasn’t painful. After a while, the ache actually felt kind of nice.

  He slipped into a quas- zen state. A trance. Images danced on the back of his eyelids, hazy and indistinct like dreams forgotten upon waking. He heard faint, muffled sounds. Phantom sensations prickled his skin.

  And then something settled. The ache faded as the channels in his mind reached equilibrium, widened as far as they would go. His soul locked into place throughout his head, solidifying into the shape it was always meant to take. The form it would have taken if his life had followed the correct course.

  Lucas opened his eyes and blinked a few times to adjust to the faint light. Quite to his disappointment, nothing had particularly changed about the world. That was natural. Nothing had really changed aside from him, and that was all internal anyway.

  “How long has it been?” he asked. His voice came out as a croak, raw.

  “About two hours,” Valerie said. She and Florence were watching him, standing sentinel by the door. Neither had moved.

  Lucas nodded. He wasn’t done.

  Drawing a deep breath, Lucas delved back into his mana. Fixing up the mind area of his soul had been far easier than expected, but perhaps he’d just been too pessimistic about it in the first place. The next stage, however, seemed far likelier to be problematic. Or, at the very least, weird.

  Jam was still at attention, awake and aware at the nexus of Lucas’ soul, the spot known as the soulheart for its proximity to the physical organ. What Jam was wary of, Lucas still didn’t know. He didn’t have a good way of asking, and the monstercat wasn’t inclined to tell, if it even knew itself. It did as asked, still. His pyromancy was still available to him, and Jam didn’t have to do anything to act as a source for his lunamancy, dim as it was.

  Alright, buddy, Lucas thought. Work with me here.

  The problem with the heart, above and beyond the brain, was that it was new ground even to Lucas. Though he’d become an expert in opening up his mana channels, he wasn’t sure how much that knowledge would apply when said channels were partially inhabited by an eldritch abomination he’d inadvertently bonded himself to. The creature was thoroughly tangled up in there, and he had no idea if he could get it out. Or if he even wanted to. Whatever it was, he was beyond certain at this point it meant him no harm. It had been with him since the moment he found himself in this world, and he believed that was significant, somehow.

  Lucas started moving his mana once more, slowing it around his heart, seeking out those tiny areas were other pathways branched off the channels he’d once thought of as the main system.

  And in many of these spaces, he found Jam’s mana network waiting. The pathways there weren’t just his alone.

  The creature reacted to the intrusion of foreign mana like a cat that had been woken up from a nap. Its very soul flinched. Lucas liked to imagine it would’ve let out an angry meow, if it was manifested in reality at that moment.

  It watched as his mana quested into the immature channels, widening them. But it didn’t retreat. Lucas knew the creature had already spent some time copying the technique for itself, opening many of its own channels, but it had lost interest in the practise, mercurial as a true feline.

  Once it understood what he was doing, it was more than happy to accept Lucas’ mana, drinking of his energy. Lucas watched in fascination as it started moving his mana through their shared channels, helping the process along. Their mana started to mix together, somehow, intermingling, and when it made it back to the main channels where Lucas’ pure mana flowed, that mixture spread, flowing through the rest of his network.

  There had already been a strong connection between them, and Lucas felt it start to broaden. The point where Lucas ended and Jam began started to blur.

  That probably should have been cause for alarm, but instinct told him it was alright. This was just a continuation. A natural evolution of their understanding. The next step in their soul bond. Jam’s mana system was clearer in his mind than it ever had been before, and he was sure the creature understood him too. Their consciousness was aligned.

  A lot of things started to make sense, but also didn’t. Contradictory senses mixed. One part of his soul told him he had two arms and two legs, while another part told him he had as many arms and legs as he needed for any given task. One side had two eyes to see through, two ears to hear through, a nose to smell, a tongue to taste, and so on. The other side said those were unnecessary. Mere pretences. True comprehension of the universe came through will and will alone.

  That couldn’t be right. Lucas had tapped into Jam’s enhanced physical senses before, gaining better vision, hearing.

  Of course it was right. Why did he assume those improvements were borne from eyes and ears? Physical organs were too limited. Too few. The natural order of things was useful in certain circumstances, but sometimes more was needed.

  This was all horribly confusing, but there was at least one thing Lucas could wrap his head around, even if he didn’t understand the mechanics of it. Jam’s senses were obviously fucking weird, way beyond anything Lucas could hope to make heads or tails of any time soon even with whatever soulbond ritual bullshit they’d just enacted.

  But he understood what it felt like to be in the presence of a demon.

  And Jamie’s senses, somehow, were designed for detecting just that.

  Lucas opened his eyes. Valerie and Florence were watching him still.

  “I think someone in the Order might be possessed by a demon,” he murmured.