---Em---

     I pace back and forth inside the mausoleum. The solemn stone walls mock me; they revel in my increasing anxiety. It's quickly becoming claustrophobic in here. There are seven of us crammed inside this already cramped chamber. Six marble coffins leans against the walls, three of them empty, three of them housing semi-decomposed strix corpses. The odour of decay alone is enough to suffocate a mammoth.

     "I need air," I announce to no one in particular. Ace, Liluye, Gail, and Martha are all asleep. Crawford and Melody seem to have zoned out, lost in thought. Whatever. There's a ladder on the wall opposite me that leads up to the roof. I climb up the ladder, pushing loose a couple of bricks in the ceiling so that I can make my way onto the rooftop.

     The air out here is sweltering. The lava continues to stream down the slope of the island, surrounding the mausoleum. We're stuck here until it stops flowing, and even then, we've got to wait for it to cool. According to Martha, that process could take weeks or even months. Our only hope is if one of those freak wind storms passes over the island, cooling the molten rock. I squint off into the distance, but the smoke is too thick for me to make out any recognizable cloud formations.

     What does it matter anyway? Eloise is out there somewhere, stranded just like we are. If Colby finds her, he'll tear open the nearest rip and shove her through. And, knowing our luck, we'll starve to death waiting out the eruption. Maybe we'll resort to cannibalism—I had a really close shave with becoming dinner one time when we got stranded out in zombie town hunting a draugr. Gail put an end to that. If she hadn't intervened, I'd have died long ago.

     And Comma. How many times has she saved my skin? I'm pathetic. Worse than pathetic—I'm a pathetic person who pretends to have his act together. Somehow, I ended up in charge of this group of survivors. But I'm the weakest of them all.

     Melody places a hand on my shoulder, startling me. I have no idea how long she's been up here. I certainly didn't hear her climbing up the ladder. Must've spaced out.

     "Maybe Comma was right," I say, for no particular reason. Melody's just another lost soul, drifting aimlessly through this chaotic multiverse. I've got no reason to unload all my worries on her. We barely know each other. And chances are we won't know each other for much longer.

     "Right about what?" Melody asks.

     "My soul," I say, fixated on the orange and yellow glow of the lava under the night sky. One of the great mysteries of the multiverse: how can something so beautiful be so lethal? "I'm useless without the piece of my soul that was taken from me. I used to be able to slay gods. Now?" I feel the lump where the side of Colby's boot collided with my head. "I really got my ass handed to me back there."

     Melody sighs, resting her head on my shoulder. Her blank stare represents our prospects for survival: there's nothing to see up ahead. "Believe it or not, I can relate."

     I gawk at her. "You literally carried two people—correction, one person and one half-cyborg—uphill for like a mile or something. At the same time. What are you, some sort of superhuman?"

     "Nope. Just a normal gal. Nothing special about me."

     "Fine. Don't tell me then."

     "I'm being honest," she says, sitting up straight. "What I did was nothing special. Not where I come from, anyway. Don't underestimate humankind. We all have the power to do incredible things. It's there, buried deep within our souls. Most people just never learn how to access that power. But some of us do." She reaches down at her hip and grabs her deactivated beam sword. "This is a weapon forged for us... soul plyers. In my village back home, we'd get one of these as a coming-of-age present. If you could channel your soul into the blade, it meant that you were reader to learn how to ply."

     My eyes widen as I recall the feeling of feeding my very essence into the blade and using that energy to slice through the strix that attacked us. A realization begins to dawn on me. "Were you... testing me?"

     She winks. "You caught me."

     "Why?"

     "The group I was with before. I thought that if I taught them how to soul ply, they'd be able to defend themselves better. But there's a catch. There's always a catch." She shakes her head. "When you ply, you're converting your own soul into energy and burning it off. It'll replenish itself by absorbing energy from the natural world, but at a much slower rate than you're burning it off. Plying requires a delicate balance. Not everybody can handle that balance."

     "So they..."

     "They burned out." She looks me right in the eyes. "Once you learn how to ply, you can do things you never would've thought yourself capable of. It's easy to get so high off your own power that you wind up pushing yourself too far."

     I swallow. "If I learn how to ply... could I beat Colby?"

     "Yes."

     That gets me on my feet. "Teach me."

     "It's not that simple. Soul plying takes years to master."

     I roll my eyes. "Yeah, I've seen enough movies to know there's got to be some sort of short cut. So spill it."

     Melody sighs. "I can activate your powers by transferring some of my soul over to you."

     "How does that work?"

     She stands up and stretches. "I'll have to stab you through the heart with my beam sword."

     "Of course."

     "It'll hurt—a lot. Both of us."

     "And you'd be willing to do that for me?"

     "I've got my fingers crossed that the part of my soul I pass on to you is the part with all the guilt and self-loathing."

     "Fair enough."

     She gets up close to me, and it's probably—almost certainly—in my head, but I can practically feel our auras pulling us together. Like some sort of metaphysical magnetism. Maybe it's those heterochromatic eyes. Everything sort of drops away as we're drifting closer...

     Until she pushes me away. "What are you doing?"

     Should've seen this one coming. Honestly, I'm not sure myself. I've still got unresolved feelings for Olivia. And Comma, whatever that was about. And Gail. That last one's not really my fault. Bits of coding that didn't get properly wiped. "I don't know. I just thought..."

     "You thought that I'd want to hook up because we might not live to see tomorrow?" She smirks, crossing her arms. "That's not me. Tell you what. If we make it to paradise, you can try and win me over the old-fashioned way."

     Her grin is contagious. "That's a big if."

     "Well let's see if we can't do something about that." Her beam sword roars to life. The energy blade hovers close to my skin, and I can already feel its sting. I wince—maybe this isn't such a good idea. "You ready?" she asks.

     "No."

     She nods. "Good. Me neither."

     And then she plunges the blade through my chest.

---She of the Many Shadows---

     The taste of freedom should be as sweet as the blood trickling out of a newborn's neck, and yet it is tainted. Each gust of wind against the skin of my vessel is like a flaming thorn to my soul. The very essence of this world is a poison that seeps through my pores and corrupts my being. Here, my powers wane.

     The air, it reeks of terrestrial. The lava tickles my bare feet as I tread uphill. I'm suffocating. This world is not vast enough to contain me; I shall have to break free of this wretched prison and seek more suitable accommodations. But first, I must dispose of this vessel.

     I arrive at the foot of the volcano and bend down to sip from the fountain of lava that surrounds me. It tastes bitter on my tongue; this world is cheap and putrid, as I suspected. The reek is stronger here. Someone approaches.

     She joins me amid the sea of bubbling molten rock. The smoke forms a dome around us. I recognize this one. She assumes the form of a woman, but with the wings and talons of a bird of prey. This lowly wretch is servant to the vilest of my oppressors. Her name escapes me; it is trivial. The fear in her eyes is unmistakable.

     "I want you to leave," says the pathetic harpy, folding her wings behind her back. She is clothed, like a human, and her violet hair dangles in braids. Physical manifestations of her enslavement. "You are not welcome here."

     I feel an irresistible urge to tilt my head to the side—a bodily tic of my vessel, presumably. "This is your world, is it not?"

     "It is," says the harpy, brandishing her talons. And again, she repeats, "You are not welcome here."

     "Would you cast me out?"

     The harpy snarls. "Your presence here will be the undoing of us all. The spectre of death has already set its gaze on my sister, Eloise. But I don't see why I should die with her, nor you."

     "Foolish child," I say, approaching the harpy. "You need not worry about spectres. I will be your undoing."

Author's Note:

Looks like Em's about to get a power-up, assuming he can survive it. Meanwhile, Strix confronts She of the Many Shadows. With any luck, they'll wipe each other out (though I suppose that wouldn't bode well for Jewel).

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