Moving a soul was tricky. That might've been the understatement of the century, but it wasn't untrue. Here's the thing: the giant metaphysical yarn balls I called 'souls' weren't just the intangible consciousness of a person. Each soul I've interacted with so far contained everything about the being in question. Memories, current thoughts, information about their bodies and metabolism, even the connections they had to other people. In many ways, it would've been more accurate to say that the soul was the actual person, while the body was just a representation within this Simulacrum thing where we currently lived. Maybe quite literally, if some of my early theories turned out to be true.

In fact, let's recap something: so far, I've discovered three 'layers' of the Simulacrum. The 'physical' layer was at the top, and it was the part with all the buildings and cars and chemicals and atoms and everything else that everyone interacted with all the time. Under that was the 'supernatural' layer, and it existed to break the rules of the top layer when it was called upon. For example, if someone wanted to cast a fireball, instead of creating an actual chemical reaction, the spell would cause the supernatural stratum to 'push' into the physical one and cause the phenomena by temporarily overwriting the rules of nature. By the way, this meant that all magic was technically reality-warping regardless of origin, but this was a purely academic distinction.

Finally, there was the bottom stratum. I called this layer the 'firmware', and it was the bedrock upon which the whole world was resting. As for why I'm musing about this right now… well, aside from buying some time to steel my nerves before the magical operation I was about to perform, it was because this was very relevant to the current situation. Simply put, a soul was technically in the supernatural stratum, and because of this, it could directly interact with magic and enchantments. However, in practical terms, it was much closer to being a part of the bottom stratum. This meant three things; it was much harder to interact with one, doing so could probably tell me a lot more about the underlying structure of the Simulacrum, but it didn't, because it was hard to interact with one. Also, redundancy is very redundant.

Seriously though, I've wanted to experiment with souls for a while now, but doing so always ran into two big roadblocks: I'd need a sapient guinea pig to experiment on, which was nine different flavors of unethical, and more importantly, messing with them was not only the most mentally exhausting thing I could do, but also incredibly dangerous to the subject, something that being mentally exhausted certainly didn't help. My analogy about it being like brain surgery wasn't just a joke: even the smallest accidental change could lead to all kinds of terrible results, with memory loss or impaired motor functions being but the more harmless ones.

That said, moving a soul from point A to B was, in my experience, a much simpler procedure. Well, at least as long as you had my Phantom Limbs. Speaking of which, I decided it was time I stopped stalling and got on with the procedure. The first step was fairly straightforward: I had to access Saahira's soul. That was something I could accomplish by plunging a Phantom Limb into her and finding her creamy center. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Doing so took only a few short moments, and before long my disembodied point of view was staring at the familiar sight of a giant yarn ball made of countless shining threads wound together. Speaking of which, I wondered if everyone's souls looked the same. So far I've only interacted with Emese's and Ichiko's (plus Cal's semi-soul, now that I thought about it), but they all looked more or less identical. But then again, I technically wasn't 'looking' at anything, because all of this was just a conceptual space my brain interpreted into audiovisual data, but thinking about this for too long always made my head hurt. So I didn't.

Anyhow, the arch-mage's soul was right in front of me (however little sense that made in a non-Euclidian space), and so I did the same thing as when I transplanted Ichiko. I carefully extending my Phantom Limb, which somehow felt both infinitely long and wide at the moment, and wrapping the whole ball in it. It was so simple and straightforward it was almost anticlimactic, but you won't hear me complain about it.

Now, the next step was…

…

Wait, what's the next step? I tried to recall the process from the last time, but to be honest, I was feeling a little unsure about the sequence of events. I did remember getting a little detached halfway through, probably because I was so pinpoint focused on getting everything done quickly and cleanly, but while I could recall my actions, I couldn't say the same about my exact reasons for doing them. Or exactly how I did some of them, though I had a couple of vague ideas.

I spent a while mulling over this, and I finally remembered a specific part I kind of skimmed over: with Ichiko, I stabbed Onikiri into the body of the Chimera because… um… I think it was so that they occupied the same space so that moving her would be… easier? I think that was it.

Now, that was a bit of a problem, because I couldn't exactly use the same method with Saahira and her proxy body. However, just as I was about to get nervous, I suddenly got a new idea: back then, I only had one Phantom Limb. Now I had two. Couldn't I use that to my advantage?

Thinking so, I tried my best to slowly retreat from the vicinity of the soul while also keeping it wrapped up, and after a few tries, I managed to very slowly back away until I was outside… except not. How should I put this…? In short, I was still inside the space between spaces and looking at the enclosed ball of strings, but at the same time, I was back in my body and looking Saahira's unconscious face. The whole experience was a little trippy, but it didn't feel too 'wrong'. I mean, technically whenever I was using Far Sight, I was at two places at once, and I had experience sharing my attention between multiple copies of myself during Dominance, so maybe those experiences already prepared me in advance.

I didn't dwell on this for long, as I quickly used my other Phantom Limb to enter into the enchantment on the other body on the bed, and an unusually short time later, I was inside the now-familiar framework designed for housing the mirror soul. I've already modified it a little, so by my reckoning, it was ready to accommodate a real soul. Still, it never hurt to be careful, so I double-checked everything. I mean, I've got a contract saying I wouldn't be held responsible even if Saahira died or became a cripple due to the transfer, but I wanted to avoid such an outcome by all means.

Once I checked everything, I mentally prepared myself, and… checked everything again. Then for the third time. After the fifth time, I was almost confident enough to Phase it over, but I figured checking one more time could never hurt, so I did it three more times. And then one last time. For luck or something.

Then, at last, once I was sick of even just looking at the arrays anymore, I steeled my nerves and, without any further ado, I… checked everything again.

…

Nah, I'm kidding. I Phased Saahira's soul over. For real. It was… a fairly unceremonious affair, especially after all that build-up. In a moment, the empty place inside the framework was filled up by a multicolored ball of light-filaments, and once it appeared, the entire enchantment came to life at once. So far so good.

I watched as the various arrays connected together, and the soul settled in with remarkable ease. If I had a lung at the moment, I would've probably let out a relieved sigh… except it would've been too early to do so.

All of a sudden, the space itself around me shook with something that my brain interpreted as the deafening noise of enormous rusty slabs of metal sliding on each other. It was so overwhelming that for a moment I even forgot to think, but once I belatedly gathered my wits, I rushed in to figure out what went wrong. My Phantom Limbs lashed out like two feelers, touching every part of the enchantment to find the error, but no matter how hard I looked, I couldn't find any mistakes. That meant…

"Shit, the soul…" I muttered, sending waves rippling across the very space around me. I ignored the phenomenon and focused my attention on the ball of yarn at the center of it all, and to my immediate alarm I found it… well, crumbling was not the right word. You'd think unraveling would work because of my analogy, but that wasn't quite it either. Whatever was happening though, it definitely wasn't a good thing. Worse yet, I had no idea what the problem was!

"Shit! Think, Leo! Think! How did you do this the last time?!"

My words sent even more ripples across my vision, but I was too frantic to really care. I needed to find out the problem before the soul in front of me completely disintegrated, and I had to do it fast. I needed to remember how I did it. I needed to focus. Focus.

…

And so Leonard Dunning did so. In retrospect, it wasn't so hard. All it required was looking at the problem from another angle. A different perspective, if you will. Once he did so, Leonard quickly understood what the problem was. The ************ of the *********** ********* in front of him was losing its coherence due to the physical body no longer matching the parameters recorded in it, creating an incorrigible incompatibility.

Leonard couldn't help but chuckle. Certainly, it would be incorrigible for the ********* ****, but for him it was… On second thought, didn't he already have a term for them? 'Submerged Ones', was it? A crude facsimile, just like they are, so it will certainly do.

Leonard's minds might have wandered, yet his ********************* moved with confident, lazy movements as they indifferently dug into the ************. With each motion they cleaved, they tore, and they dug out everything unnecessary before discarding the pieces. There was no need for him to care about the refuse; it would soon dissolve and return to the shapeless dream of the stillborn sun. Such things were of no concern to him at the moment.

As he thought of that, Leonard's movements gradually slowed down until they came to a halt. The process was still incomplete, and every second was precious beyond belief. Leaving the task unattended for any amount of time would have been remarkably negligent, so he did the responsible thing and stopped it. It was that simple. Now that he was no longer beholden to the inconvenience of linear time and cause and effect, he pondered for a while.

He had an indistinct yet inescapable sense of loss. It was as if he misplaced something important. Was it an item? Or maybe a memory? Could it be one of his minds? He did feel like he was supposed to have more of those, but wasn't entirely sure. It was hard to count minds to begin with, and he wasn't certain he could do it at all at the moment. That was somewhat disconcerting in and of itself.

He also wondered why he was so concerned with the ************ in front of him. It was an awfully small one, so it couldn't be that important. There really was no reason to be so worked up about it, but he still felt obligated to do so. Maybe it was just his nature. Seeing things crumble apart made him feel… it was an emotion. Not quite sadness. Closer to sympathy. A feeling of kinship. Maybe if he had all his minds, he could recognize the feeling, but they remained staunchly misplaced. It was quite vexing, but at least that emotion was still clear to him.

If it was truly his nature that compelled him, it would certainly illuminate many things. It would also explain why he wanted to cease bloody pussyfooting around and get back to work.

… Huh. 'Bloody pussyfooting'. Where did that come from? Somewhere from the inside, but it wasn't exactly one of his minds. Whatever it was, the urge was clear and to the point, so Leonard soon allowed the flow of time to resume its bothersome course in its single, unalterable direction. With it, the movements of his ********************* also resumed, and as they continued their work, the ************ he was operating on finally started to reach its desired state. It still needed some references, so he reached out towards the false surface to collect them, without paying too much attention to such a simple task.

Once everything was in the right place, Leonard placed the ************ into the receptacle carved into the illusionary **************** of the ******. It fit well, but it didn't mean it couldn't do better. It was but a trivial task to adjust the ********** and the ************ so that the ******** and the *** could be perfectly synchronized with the **********************. Quite self-explanatory.

Satisfied with his work, or at least as satisfied as one can be with such a minor, inconsequential task, Leonard shifted himself back into the manifestation sitting on the chair inside the thoroughly rearranged hotel room. His complexion was unusually pale, and even though his eyes were open, they were vacant to the point they appeared glazed over. He took a deep breath as he forced his vision to return to his head, then he took another breath, long and deep, followed by another, and then he… I took a breath. And then I immediately jumped to my feet with a roar.

"What the bloody hell was that?!"

In retrospect, jumping up like that probably wasn't the best idea, as I was immediately assaulted by the worst vertigo I ever experience in my life, followed by my legs giving out and my butt subsequently touching down on the seat again, in the same position where I began.

"{What? What happened?}" Cal asked in a mixture of equal parts confusion and concern, but it took me a while to answer them, as I was currently being assaulted by the second-worst headache I've ever experienced in my life.

"The weirdest goddamn experience ever," I hissed out through my clenched teeth. It took me a while to realize, but my right hand was gripping the sword's handle so hard my fingers were turning white. I didn't even think my injured hand could grasp like that, but more alarmingly, I had a hard time making it stop. Not that I tried for long, as I had more important things to worry about.

For the moment, I put what just happened aside. I felt that it was both incredibly significant and really, really disturbing, but I first had to make sure that moving the arch-mage's soul was a success. I took a couple of measured breaths to center myself, and once I felt composed enough, I gingerly reached out towards the body sitting next to me. First I put my hand in front of her face, and… no airflow. Just to be safe, I tried to read a pulse on her wrist, but while her skin was still warm, I couldn't sense anything more.

"{Is she dead?}" Cal inquired with a sound that sounded surprisingly squeamish considering it was a freaking sword we were talking about, but I wasn't going to cast that in their teeth.

"Deader than a Norwegian Blue."

"{… I… don't follow.}"

I glanced at the sword in my hand, and a short sigh later told them, "Remind me to teach you about Monty Python one of these days."

"{Is that a kind of snake?}"

I didn't respond to their inquiry, but instead focused on the girl under the blanket. I was a little hesitant at first, but I slowly extended my hand and touched her cheek. I planned to give her a light slap to try and see if she was alive, but to my relief (and momentary surprise), I didn't have to do anything of the sort, as the moment my fingertips made contact, her eyes popped open and she gasped in surprise.

"Saahira?" I asked a touch more timidly than I intended as I retracted my hand, and after blinking a few times, the girl on the bed glanced at me.

"Yes? What happe—?" She got that far before she noticed the lifeless body on the chair next to mine, and her eyes opened wide as saucers. "Oh my gosh! Did we succeed!?"

"By the sound of it, I'd say we did," I told her a tad morosely. "Also, I'm having a bit of a headache, so please don't shout."

She completely ignored my request as she sat up with a loud, "Oh my gosh! OH MY GOSH! I can't believe this!" Doing so naturally also made the bed sheet fall off her torso, making me blink in surprise. However, before I could say anything, the girl on the bed completely threw off the sheets and jumped to her feet. "This is totally wicked! I feel so great! And my body is, like, totally amazing! So light! And I can totally feel the carpet under my feet now!"

To demonstrate, she began to walk around in circles in front of me. I would've asked if she had a problem with her sense of touch beforehand, but before anything else, I had to point out the elephant in the room.

"I'm happy that you're happy, but could you please put on some clothes first?"

"Why? Am I, like, distracting you?" Saying so, she struck a pose and sent me a coquettish smirk, and after overcoming my first surprise and reminding myself that there was an old lady inside that body, I let out a long, exasperated sigh.

"Great. Just what I needed. Another exhibitionist in my life."

"{Wasn't she an arch-mage?}" Cal butted in, audibly baffled by my comment. "{Or is she also managing an art gallery? Is it some form of false identity?}"

I glanced between the still posing naked girl and the still confused sword, and ultimately told the latter, "I can tell you're going to get along with Ichiko," before closing my eyes to massage them. As for whether she would also get along with Saahira… Considering how I just entangled her with us, I had a feeling that was something I'd find out one of these days as well, and I wasn't necessarily looking forward to it.