Major locations and factions directly in focus this week. The problem with writing a big series with an excess of plot threads is that some readers will say "Finally!" and others will say "I don't know or care about any of these things." Regardless, we have some long-running threads getting into position for their big payoff, and some other elements that are just seeds for future books.
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Chapter 30
After receiving new sublime materials, Theo was eager to soulcraft, but he restrained himself. For one, he needed to check in with his allies and avoid losing track of either the tournament or the war. For another, it was simply the expedient choice to keep pursuing new materials: he could finish soulcrafting his empty rooms in an emergency, if necessary, but if he faced a crisis without materials, it would be far too late to seek them out.
The most obvious method of acquiring more would be to contact the Splitblood Association, but when he had followed the procedures listed on the Orphic Cabal's slate, he had only received a message in response. Apparently they moved among the Nine Worlds and couldn't be contacted at all times, or so they told him. He had no choice but to set up a time to meet in the future and hope the world wasn't falling apart when the appointment came.
Thankfully, nothing had collapsed in his absence. Nauda had some grim new revelations about Slest, but he'd have to set those aside. It was finally time to travel with Senka and see if they couldn't unravel the next piece of her curse.
"Which one do you want to start with?" Theo asked Senka as they prepared to weirkey out of Norro Yorthin. "One of them is called the Bloodfire Pit and the other is supposedly the Fury Slipstream, whatever that means."
"I don't know much of anything about what's surrounding the rivers," Senka said with a shrug. "Where are the access points to each one? Which worlds, I mean."
"It seems... they're on Siata and Fithe, respectively. The Fithan one is at the bottom of the largest ocean, and I don't know enough about Siata to be sure where that location is. The Orphic Cabal didn't seem to have much information about what's currently surrounding the rivers."
"Okay, I had a lead on the Fury Slipstream before, but it wasn't on Fithe. Maybe this access point will be more workable."
Theo had exact coordinates from the Orphic Cabal, and knew that he was entering a neutral port of an undersea city called Estlinst, but he had no further information about his target. Since he didn't know exactly what he'd be facing, he tried to prepare for everything, including checking in with allies. With that done, there was nothing to do but weirkey across Fithe.
When Theo first arrived in a plaza of Estlinst, he thought that it was a relatively normal underwater city. Much larger than Laksloe or any of the others he'd visited, yes, but roughly similar: dark stone underneath a sublime glass dome, suspended in the lightless depths. It was so large that no one paid him much attention: he saw people from multiple other worlds arriving via weirkey, and more diversity in the crowds, so they must have gates within the city.
"Do we just fly?" Senka asked.
"Looks like plenty of Authorities are in the air," Theo said, gesturing up. "But fly where? We don't know where the Fury Slipstream is, other than near Estlinst."
"Yeah, but what are you going to do, talk to people? Bleh. Let's at least wander around for a few hours before we resort to something that awful."
Theo chuckled and lifted into the air, sticking to cantae instead of gravity, just in case he was under more scrutiny than he thought. No one seemed to particularly care about another Authority hovering above the city, and there was plenty of space within the dome, so he headed in a random direction to scope out the city.
When he analyzed the buildings below, they seemed to be largely restaurants, inns, and other institutions that catered to travelers. None of that was likely to be any use to him, so Theo sped up. He was surprised how fast the buildings at the edge of the city approached... except they didn't reach the edge of the dome.
"Wait..." Senka realized at the same time he did and slid to a halt in the air as they stared at the enormous edge in front of them.
The city streets were flat until they abruptly turned nearly ninety degrees and continued on a new surface. All the buildings on one side were oriented with one direction as down, yet just feet away over the edge, the buildings rose in a different direction. Theo saw people walking around normally on both sides, then searched in vain for anyone crossing over, but it seemed like there were gates and other barriers preventing citizens from passing between regions of the city.
"Is this a gravity thing?" Senka asked faintly.
"Probably," Theo said. "You're not going to say they had hundreds of these in your day?"
"No, this is new. We should fly over the side... but you first."
Both faces of the city were far from the curve of glass surrounding Estlinst, so there was nothing stopping Theo from flying over the edge. When he passed over the top of the last building, he entered a dead zone where he felt no gravity at all. Then not long after, as he passed over the next plane of the city, gravity reoriented itself. Someone else might have taken it for granted, but his sense for gravitational fields went haywire as he realized that none of the planes of the city were actually aligned with Fithe's planetary gravity.
"Whoa." Senka threw herself over the side, relying on momentum alone to curve her back toward the ground on the other side. "What's the shape of this thing, anyway?"
"I haven't seen an edge of a dome yet, so it's probably a sphere." At first Theo thought that Estlinst was a cube suspended in a glass bubble, but his gravitational senses could detect what his eyes couldn't: each plane of the city was actually a pentagon, not a square. That suggested a dodecahedron, and from what he could sense, all sides were occupied.
"Trippy, but we keep searching," Senka said as she caught up to him and they returned to flying. "How do you think this is done, though? Giant gravitational sublime material in the center of the city?"
"What else could it be?" Theo shrugged. "I suppose there could be some sort of armament, but if that failed, it would be disastrous."
"So you wanna steal it?"
He had to admit that the thought had occurred to him, but of course he wasn't going to do something like that. With a city of this size, he would be dooming at least a million people, plus there was no guarantee that the sublime material would be useful to him. Still, he made a mental note to himself that he would need to return to Estlinst and talk to the city leaders about how they pulled this off.
As they moved around the exterior of the city, Theo flew within sight of another edge, this one closer to parallel to his path, so he analyzed it more carefully. There was little traffic over the edge, and he could understand why: close to the dodecahedron, the change in gravity would be extremely abrupt. He did spot a few buildings that crossed over, and felt masses moving within them... seemed like the people of the city understood gravity well enough to harness the differential between sides.
Despite the fact that his inner ear thought gravity was down, now that Theo was aware of the city's nature, he was conscious of his real position. They were roughly on the side of the sphere, heading toward the bottom. Strangely, even though the waters below should be darker if anything, they seemed to be getting somewhat lighter.
"Still nothing." Senka folded her arms as she kept pace beside him. "What do you think are the chances that the Fury Slipstream is just invisible out there and we'll have no choice but to ask about it?"
"No hints so far," Theo answered with a shrug.
"Could your Ichili senses pick it out, do you think?"
"I don't sense anything particularly large outside the city." He tried to extend his senses further, but still didn't pick up any major sources of mass. "This feels like a dead zone. We're not all that far from the ocean floor, but otherwise there's nothing."
"Well, let's keep going just in case we... stumble..."
Senka fell silent as they passed over another edge and got their answer in vibrant color.
Beneath the sphere of Estlinst, the ocean floor lay illuminated. Most of it was uneven rock, but Theo barely spared a thought for that, because it was washed out by the source of light: a river blazed through the depths. It coursed beneath the city, glowing like lava, except that it seemed to be composed of thousands of threads of light.
This could only be the Fury Slipstream.
Even Senka didn't have any snark to offer there, and they silently floated downward to get a better look. As he passed the nearest plane of the city - flying "up" from the buildings - Theo saw that the inhabitants didn't seem to be looking down to the Fury Slipstream much. It might be just part of their daily routine, but it still left him astonished.
As they got closer to the glass, his wonder only grew. The river was wider than the city itself, and only distance prevented it from completely overwhelming Estlinst. He could also hear a rumbling sound, like a waterfall but higher-pitched, and realized that it was the strands of the Slipstream burning through the water. With his gravitational senses he didn't detect any mass in the current, just enough energy to torch him in an instant.
"So... I think we're not going down there," Senka said.
"Yeah, sorry." Theo just kept staring at the current of light that was burning into his retinas. "We might be able to buy or figure out a method to swim out there, but that much power would incinerate us."
"Probably not me, but you, definitely."
"You don't sound upset."
"Because this is just a matter of power." Senka grinned over at him, her teeth flickering in the coruscating light. "If you get to aeon-class, I bet you can head in there, no problem. But that means we know exactly where one of the rivers is, and it doesn't seem to be moving. We just need to get a bit stronger and then come back."
"Glad you're so optimistic about it." Theo reluctantly pulled his gaze away and looked back to the city, a glimmering marble in the depths. "Think we should stick around? They probably have an aeon-class soulcrafter here, I just don't know how likely we are to recruit them."
"Sounds like more trouble than it's worth. Let's just check out the other one."
So Theo reluctantly picked up his weirkey to depart, but he knew that one day he would return to Estlinst and the current of raw power flowing across the bottom of the world.
~
Even though it hadn't taken long to visit the Fury Slipstream, Theo still felt as though he'd been on a journey. But he promised that he'd help Senka as best he could, so they followed the Orphic Cabal's instructions and went to find the Bloodfire Pit.
This one was in the opposite sort of location: it existed on Siata, so far from any civilization that the region didn't even have a name. When Theo arrived at the coordinates, he immediately stretched out his gravitational senses, but he didn't feel anything at all: no plants, no cities, barely even one of Siata's violent mud storms in the distance.
He should have used his eyes first, because they revealed more: he stood at the edge of an unusual border. Siata was split in between regions of light and darkness, the former pastel gardens of peace and the latter nothing but dirt and rain. In most places, the barrier between the two was absolute, operating on some different physics... but not here.
Instead, he and Senka floated beside a border that seemed to melt. Siata was still divided between light and darkness, yet the latter cast a shadow into the bright hills, and colors bled into the darkness like paint. Instead of a circle within the darkness, the line seemed to extend into the distance as far as Theo could see. It might have begun to curve - he wasn't sure - and it seemed like the disturbance between sides grew more regular until it was a clean divide in the distance.
"Wrong way." Senka grabbed his head and tried to physically twist it, though she wasn't strong enough to move him.
"Ah." When Theo turned around, he saw that the disturbance grew worse in the other direction, the two sides bleeding into one another more and more until the result looked nothing like Siata. "You know anything about this?"
"This one actually sounds familiar," Senka said as they began to fly along the border. "I heard there were disruptions on Siata, but I think they were in a different place, because when I checked before there was nothing. Maybe it's a natural phenomenon that moves around, like the Chasm of Lamentations did."
It was difficult to know what "natural" meant on a world like Siata, but the environment became more easily navigable as they moved along the line. Instead of simple light or darkness in the sky, the messy border instead illuminated what looked like clouds overhead. They were still dark on one side and pastel on the other, but as the distorted region grew, the world seemed more like any other.
At least until they reached what could only be the Bloodfire Pit and came to a wordless halt. Whoever had named the ancient rivers hadn't reached far for this one.
The melted paint look tore open into a gaping wound in the earth, a pit wide enough to have swallowed the city of Norro Yorthin. Ground on both sides seemed to melt into it, forming an ugly mix of light and dark that took on a reddish tone. It looked very much like blood, and it definitely seemed to be on fire. As if that wasn't enough, the sky overhead was a twisted nightmare, like some malevolent spirit had reached in and contorted the clouds into a mask of pain.
"This doesn't seem so bad!" Senka said cheerfully. "Our clothes will get messy, but I don't think it's deadly to anyone at Authority or higher."
"Just stay alert," Theo said as they descended. "I doubt this place is protected solely by being in the middle of nowhere."
The closer they flew, the more the sheer scope of the Bloodfire Pit was made clear to him. There were rivers and waterfalls covering the sides of the pit, a truly chaotic mix of burning liquid. And despite the chaos, there were numerous stretches of land, from paths through the rivers to towering cliffs to muddy openings into caverns. Up close the sound was surreal, a mixture of waterfall and inferno. Theo hesitantly touched down and found the strip of ground steadier than he expected.
"Think we should just throw ourselves into the center?" Senka asked. "Seems like all this is circling a drain."
"There's no guarantee that's our goal," Theo pointed out. "Besides, we still haven't gotten a good enough look to be sure-"
As if to prove his point, a monster burst from a bloodfire pool, charging directly at them. It appeared to be a torso on four legs with no head, until suddenly its body opened in an enormous mouth, yawning in order to snap up Senka.
Theo launched a torsion bolt directly into that jaw, and the bolt tore through what should have been brain or essential organs. Yet it didn't stop, snapping at Senka even as its jaws swung wildly. She flew backward in a panic and Theo launched a second torsion bolt right through the center of its mass.
The second brought the creature down onto its front legs, and the third finally made it stop moving. They hovered over the body warily, and Theo realized they were thinking the same thing: they weren't sure exactly what this creature was. It didn't have the twisted artificiality of a demon, yet he hadn't sensed any soulhome or other signs of a sublime beast.
"Any idea what this is?" he asked.
"Not a clue." Senka shrugged. "It's like a sublime beast, but not, so... a not-beast?"
"What, are you channeling Krikree now?"
"Bah, don't be ridiculous. Though we should bring her here, so that she can scout all of these caverns and things. I'm not looking forward to searching such a massive area, especially if the center isn't the goal. I still think we should try-"
She cut off as sounds broke through the burning liquid around them. Not-beasts exploded from all sides, opening jaws yet making no sounds. Theo instinctively began opening portals in front of the nearest, transporting them directly into the others rushing toward them. When the not-beasts collided, they tore into one another mindlessly, but it wasn't enough to stop the tide.
Without the ability to judge the creatures' approximate strength, Theo found himself unsettled. If they took so many bolts of his cantae to kill, their teeth could probably harm him if they got close enough. They weren't extraordinarily fast, but they were closing in from all sides and their twitching movements were hard to track.
"I think we should run," Senka told him nervously. "I'll blast if I can, but I think this is just the beginning of the escalation. We can't make it like this."
"Fine, we regroup." Theo cast an inverse gravitational field and they fell into the twisted sky... and the enemy followed.
Even though they had been running on hoofed legs up to that point, the not-beasts pursued him into the air, great wings exploding from their hindquarters. It shouldn't have been enough to fly, but they were troublingly fast, and whatever flight method they used, it was unaffected by new gravitational fields.
And it got worse: all across the Bloodfire Pit, not-beasts were rising into the air to target him, and they varied in strength more than he had seen up to that point. Each one twisted as it flew, some of them growing legs like Arbaians, others branches like Aathali, and still others had human-like torsos bursting from their cores.
Unless he could out-speed them in the air, Theo didn't see any way to escape this. He gripped a weirkey in each hand, struggling to fight through the distortions, but if anything it was getting worse. The molting clouds overhead twisted unlike when he'd entered and something seemed to be spawning from them, mouths within mouths, endless jaws opening to swallow him...
Theo realized that he recognized those mouths just as they widened to engulf him.
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Chapter 31
Chitinous flesh shot from above, forming bladed limbs in unholy combinations, but they passed Theo by. Instead they skewered the nearest not-beasts, clearing him space. Theo flew upward, toward the jaws, and felt the world opening. Not exactly a gate, but its twisted cousin and his only way out, so he plunged in.
His mind recoiled as reality began to fracture, but Theo had experienced this before: when the House of the Lost had pulled him from Fithe. His flesh began to throb unnaturally, and this time he felt as though he could master it, as the lostflesh pulsed within him. When he emerged in an incomprehensible eldritch realm, his eyes adjusted to the shattered mirror of reality around him. He checked that Senka was safe and she seemed to be floating unconscious.
"It has been a quantity of time," the eldritch being said. The words still impacted his mind like a hot iron into flesh, but after so much other linguistic work, Theo felt like he could handle it better. "We are uncertain whether it would seem long or short to linear beings. It is both to us."
This time he wasn't surrounded by members of the House of the Lost, there was only their leader. Every time he looked toward it, he saw both shadowy robes and a planet-sized mass of writhing tentacles and jaws. His mind adjusted even further, and he had come far enough to tell that this nameless being was an aeon-class soulcrafter.
"You know," Theo said wryly, "I think I understand you a little, because it feels like both to me too."
"Variables are many, and it was not at all certain that we would meet again," the head of the House of the Lost told him. "Nonetheless... perhaps this is for the best."
"Why are you here?" Theo asked. "Does the Bloodfire Pit have something you need?"
"The pit, and the power that it accesses, are not relevant to us. However, the distortion created by it makes this place more agreeable to us. Strange that you would come here, but it speaks to the fact that you have always been more compatible with us than others of your kind."
As much as he wanted to ask about that, they might throw him out again, so Theo went for the most important question. "Last time we spoke, you said you were going to kill Vistgil directly. If you can make yourself think linearly, what happened since then?"
"We have engaged in a fractured war, unsuccessfully. It is supremely frustrating, and some of our brethren have ceased to be. This Vistgil is capable of understanding both time and space as we do, and deploys traps in both that can affect even us. He could be destroyed as any other being of your kind, in theory, but it does not appear possible in practice."
"Then is it possible that we could work together? We're-"
"We can feel the hope in your mind, and it is false." The eldritch being surged violently, its planet-self churning in a way that made Theo queasy. "As we can manifest here, our numbers are limited, and our strength insufficient to turn the war."
"That doesn't mean we can't work together." Theo was getting a handle on the way this space twisted his brain, at least well enough to come up with a different strategy. "Last time, you said that the war on Fithe was trivial. But if you've seen that attacking Vistgil directly is ineffective, what about indirectly? You know that he's working through this war, yes?"
"It has been observed."
"We don't need you to form the House of the Lost again or fight en masse, we have plenty of soulcrafters."
"You have always been obnoxiously numerous." Though its words held a sort of visceral repulsion, the voice seemed a little more engaged now, so Theo pounced.
"This is your chance to get ahead of Vistgil. You know he's manipulating the entire war and he's confident he'll win. But we're going to put up more of a fight than they expect, and in the end Plutalgion will have to act himself. He'd never expect an opponent like you... if you could fight Vistgil back at the Chasm, you can fight Plutalgion, right?"
The being did not respond, though the churning of the planet-entity began to slow. Its humanoid aspect, or perhaps illusion, seemed to glimmer a little stronger, and Theo had the intense sensation of a cloak shifting closer to him. A vast hood bent near, almost like pondering, yet as it loomed closer it could also have been swallowing him.
"We could do battle with that entity, yes," the being said eventually. "But... this word in your mind, 'aeon-class'... Plutalgion has allies who could harm us, and we do not have others who could balance them."
"I'm not asking you to come in and win the war for us," Theo said, trying not to sound desperate. "Wait for them to attack, overconfident that no one can stand in their way. Then you can strike and wipe out one of Vistgil's tools. Even taking down a single one of the aeon-class enemies would make this war so much closer to winnable."
"You think you can recruit others of sufficient potency?"
"We don't have an aeon-class army yet, but I'm trying. Are you familiar with the organizations at that level?"
"Some of my kind even consulted with them, in our effort to destroy Vistgil." The hood pulled back, dissolving into incomprehensible mists. "Ineffective. Many organizations are contaminated by Vistgil. The Eternal Spectrum is useless, immortals obsessed with the ephemeral pleasures of mortality. The Demonstalkers declared us the enemy and slew our representative. The Orphic Cabal considered us... yes, a cognitohazard."
Theo blinked, not having expected a word like that from this being. He felt as though it had been plucked straight from his brain, which it hadn't done without pain before. Either his mind was leaking out in this surreal space or the two of them were on the same wavelength in a way they hadn't been before.
"Strange that you are the one to understand us," the being continued. "Less powerful at this moment in time, but as time stretches forward, you will gain substance. Provided that you can pass through the linear dead ends that lie ahead of this point in time."
"Then can we work together?" Theo asked. "Will you take a hand in the Fithan war?"
"Only if the opportunity presents itself. However... we wish to do more. It is very difficult to know what would be helpful to your kind and what would be agonizing."
"Here's a simple one: you could help me through the Bloodfire Pit. I saw you can kill the beasts around it, so I just need to push through to the cor-"
"Regrettably impossible." When the twisted being interrupted him, its voice tore through Theo's mind, but honestly it was less irritating than some of the times he'd been interrupted. "These spaces are intricately tangled with the topography of the Nine Worlds and cannot be easily navigated. This one in particular... some of the others explored it, and determined that, even with overwhelming power, it would take great amounts of time to navigate."
"Are you sure?" Theo asked. "We're so different from you, what's difficult to one could be-"
The response was a flood of information hammered directly into Theo's brain, making him thrash and clutch his head. Dozens of images jabbed into his mind like shards of glass, giving him a fractured vision of the depths of the pit as it had been explored. What he had seen was only the top layer, and he couldn't figure out how the rest was connected.
What he realized was that it was vast: the Bloodfire Pit wasn't lethal like the Chasm of Lamentations, or a labyrinth like the Archive of Misery, but it spread through endless levels filled with not-beasts. He realized that the conclusion was correct; if the House of the Lost couldn't explore this place in a short period of time, Theo couldn't either. He had no choice but to leave this one for later.
That said, he still had a potential new ally, and he had to take advantage of that. "What about sublime materials?" Theo suggested. "Last time you gave me a piece of twisted flesh that I was able to soulcraft without any trouble."
"Because you were only a Ruler, and we stand far beyond that. The gulf between us now is not so large, and we cannot create something so simply. As one ascends, the differences between your kind and ours only increase... no, no, we do not think you could survive it."
"Try me." Theo realized that he was baiting an eldritch abomination, but he had to at least consider the risk. "I'm looking for ethereal materials, ones that affect spirit or soul. Something from the House of the Lost could be perfect for that."
"Incorrect. So many of the traits you perceive as ethereal are corporeal to us, and you walk a delicate line. However..." The being paused, though it was impossible to tell if it was thinking. "At your current tier, we cannot produce materials that would be useful to you. The only way to generate something of sufficient strength would be to inject it on a both physical and soulhome level. It would most likely kill you, but there is a chance that your artificial being would survive. Would you like us to try?"
"Uh, let's talk this out first," Theo said. "What exactly are you planning to inject into me?"
"Your current floor consists of euclidean space, divided into nine chambers. Three dedicated to singularity, three to corporeality, three to ethereality. You seek to establish a fusion, a rather complex one for a being such as yourself. But currently you maintain an empty Corporeal Chamber: rather than modify a portion of your body, we would add one, which would be paralleled within your soulhome."
The answer was so much more technical than Theo had expected, he found himself considering what sounded at first like insanity. He got the impression that this being actually understood his blueprint, just from having seen it from the outside.
When Theo inquired and they discussed it further, he confirmed it: this being actually understood what he intended to do, creating a cube that fused Immortality Conduit, Corporeal Floor, and Ethereal Floor. It wasn't simply that the head of the House of the Lost saw things from a different perspective, this being understood the design of the blueprint.
That was what made the decision in the end: whatever else it was, this being was a good soulcrafter. It might be an abomination from an incomprehensible world, but Theo could relate to it more than some people.
"Alright, I'm willing to try it," Theo eventually said, glad that no one was around to argue. "But I can't imagine it would be an easy process."
"No," it said. "You will likely require some time to recover."
"But we're agreed on the Fithan war?"
"Yes. We will observe and await the proper moment."
"Then is there anything else we should talk about?" Theo looked around the world of fragmentary mirrors, as if that would make him remember anything except his growing headache. "I know you don't like talking to us, and I can't come back here all the time."
The being did not answer, simply observing him with destructive intensity. Well, he'd probably been pushing its willingness to converse with linear beings with a conversation this long. Or perhaps it was stretching itself to communicate as much as he was and it was growing weary.
"There's one thing," Theo said as it occurred to him. "There's someone like me calling himself Raythe Darkblade, do you know him?"
"It is difficult for us to differentiate between all of your kind."
"The important part is that he's being used by Vistgil, I'm pretty sure of it. I'm afraid that we're missing something, or that Vistgil is secretly in disguise right beside him or something."
"No," the being said with a hint of eldritch wrath. "Our war against Vistgil has not been successful, but it has not been so ineffectual as that. His resources are taxed, and he cannot act at will on Fithe. This is why the linear war has progressed so slowly."
"Huh." Theo added that to his mental model of everything as he reconsidered. "But didn't you say that his plans for people from my world ended at Dominion?"
"That is the usual pattern. There are exceptions. You are not wrong to be cautious at this time."
Perhaps there were other questions that he should have asked, but Theo's mind was eroding from the long conversation. If he wanted to have enough willpower to endure what was coming next, perhaps he'd better do it now, before he began to lose his grip on himself. Assuming that he hadn't already slipped so far that he was making a mistake.
"I want to try the injection you suggested," Theo said with more confidence than he felt. "If that's the only option left for helping my soulcrafting, I'm willing to endure it."
"Then you will survive, or you will not."
The head of the House of the Lost didn't say anything else, didn't offer any advice or suggestions, it just plunged a tentacle deep into Theo's gut. His entire body lit up in pain, and all his instincts screamed to fight back. There might still be a gulf between them, but he was a Stronghold now, he could have resisted.
Instead, he let the abomination reach into his body and twist something deep within. At the same time, he felt a spiritual tentacle pierce his soulhome, and that part was actually less violent than the physical, even though it should have been a violation of his soul. A great mass was expelled into his soulhome, emanating twisted cantae, and it resonated with the twisted piece of his gut.
Without warning, Theo was back on Siata. He didn't have any time to get his bearings before he vomited a stream of twisted matter.
"What the..." Senka flinched first, then winced at his vomit, then moved closer in concern. "I just lost a lot of time, I think. Did the same happen to you? Uh... what's wrong with you?"
Now that he wasn't being assaulted by a world he wasn't built to understand, Theo was recovering rapidly. His stomach still hurt, but he didn't think that it was a dangerous pain. When he checked his soulhome, he saw that a mass of twisted flesh had been deposited in his soulhome: it was repulsive and unnatural, but it was placed directly in the center of his unused Corporeal chamber.
"I'm fine." Theo smiled strangely as he realized how true it was. "I had a conversation with the head of the House of the Lost, you remember them? A lot of things have changed."
"Like what?"
He went on to explain, about what the House of the Lost had been doing, their plans for the future, and what they'd done to Theo's soulhome. At the very beginning Senka joked, then she fell silent. As he explained more and more of the details, her eyes widened and the shock appeared to build up within her. When he was finally done, she was silent for a heartbeat and then finally exploded.
"What the sporping sporp?" What followed was the longest stream of gibberish Theo had ever heard from Senka's mouth. Compared to everything he'd just endured, it was practically a lullaby.