There was time, but it didn’t work right.

Of all the things she’d had and experienced in her mortal existence, Acura had never thought much about her perception of the passage of time. She’d had a good sense for it, usually known how long she’d been out meditating or what time of day it was when she’d been on a trip underground, even for that one time she’d explored the caves on the coast for three days straight. Like with so many things, it was something you didn’t really notice until it no longer worked the way you expected it to.

Time did pass here, but it passed differently. She’d only recently become lucid enough to even be aware that she’d been in here for some time, yet it didn’t feel like it had been over a year. It felt like a moment or an eternity, or maybe both.

Of course, she wasn’t really in anywhere, it was more her own mind that had changed. She’d been told that before, but only now was she really starting to understand it. As she dragged the scattered, disorganized remnants of her consciousness together and fit them into a shape that resembled the one she’d been before, she both felt more like herself and yet realized just how much wasn’t the same.

So, when Mior visited her again, it felt like it had only been a moment since their last visit, and yet Acura knew better. Days? Weeks? She wasn’t certain. Surely not months, though. She was confident of that.

‘How are you?’ the spirit asked.

Acura tilted her head, or what passed for it. She was stuck in a weird halfway place between being a presence purely existing in qi and incarnating into a physical body, and her form was a roiling mess bleeding streamers of qi into the surroundings, which were also little more than just qi. The last time they’d talked, she’d resolved herself to the fact that Mior would be able to read her mind a lot better than she’d have preferred. In her current existence, she simply didn’t have anything approaching real defenses, and a mind in the process of reforming itself couldn’t obfuscate itself.

‘Well,’ she replied. ‘I think. I hope. You can tell better than me, I think. Well, I do think. Not much, and not well, maybe, but still. Well …’

‘I see,’ they interrupted gently. ‘You’re doing the thing again, Acura. Focus on my presence.’

She shrank back, condensing a little. ‘Sorry.’

‘It’s alright. Really. You’re doing very well.’

She hesitated. That was a new thing, too. She hadn’t been able to do hesitation until recently. It’s all coming back, isn’t it? But she managed to focus and direct her thoughts at the spirit for proper communication. ‘Why are you here, Mior?’

The spirit smiled. Once again, they’d chosen a very physical shape. ‘Essentially for the same reason as always. I wanted to check up on you, and I wanted to talk.’

‘You’re doing this because of Nari.’ That wasn’t a new realization, though she hadn’t expressed it before.

‘You’re quite focused on her, aren’t you?’ the spirit mused. ‘All things considered... Yes, Acura, you’re right. I care for Inaris. She’s family. And she loves you and wants to see you safe and happy. Simple, right? But I also want to see you here, you know. It’s probably a little too early to talk about the situation and the future … but you’ll end up being on our side, so to speak, so investing a little time and effort is more than worth it.’

Acura considered that for a short while. ‘And Rijoko? He doesn’t, really, but you actually care, don’t you?’

Mior laughed lightly. ‘You really are making great progress. Yes, I’m not Rijoko. I suppose I have enough human in me I can care like you do. I have empathy and I can form genuine connections with humans. Rijoko is still perfectly fine with this, though. He understands well enough that it’s best for him if your daughter is happy.’

Acura nodded slowly. That made sense. Suddenly, she felt glad that Mior was there and could support her like this.

She sent them that thought without putting it into so many words. It was a new aspect of communication in this form. People usually preferred verbal communication, because it was just more precise and easier to control. But she wasn’t quite sure how to articulate it, and she needed practice with this kind, too.

‘I’m honored,’ Mior replied. Despite their light, almost ironic tone, Acura felt like the spirit was being sincere. They paused for a few moments, then abruptly, what they sent became brighter, sharper. ‘I think it’s time you moved away from this spot. Look at your surroundings. Do you understand where we are?’

Acura hesitated, then followed his words and turned her attention to the world around her. She knew they had to be in some qi anomaly. Probably one claimed by the spirits, by Rojoko’s followers. The flows of qi wouldn’t fit otherwise. Now, though, she really focused on them. Maybe it was because of her own improved capability, but she understood the place in a way she hadn’t before. There was actual ground here, physical substance, though most of the place still seemed to be made of qi. She sensed other spirits some distance away, most of them very weak compared to herself or Mior. And she could feel the Moon. She wasn’t sure if he was actually here, but his essence lingered in the place. But more than that, she felt a little bit of it around her.

‘Good,’ Mior sent, obviously observing what she was doing closely. ‘Ordinarily, I would have let you discover this at your own pace, but events are accelerating. You need to let go of your attempts at physicality, Acura. At the moment, you’re stuck between states, and that’s just not going to work. Your mind is as much qi as anything else now; you’re not contained by anything physical. Embrace it, and you’ll have a much easier time with your own mind.’

Acura stared at the spirit. Silence dragged on for a while, but she thought. She didn’t want to do what they suggested, but she trusted Mior, and there was really no reason not to try. She knew that those in the white stage could, like powerful spirits, incarnate into physical forms, though they weren’t limited to them.

Slowly, she let go of herself, of the parts she’d been trying to hold together. Only now did she realize what a strain it had formed. Her mind was still there, and she kept the qi that really mattered. But the physical construct she’d half-consciously cobbled together dissolved. Acura shuddered, but she drew her mind together with an attractive force made purely of willpower, making herself stay and grow.

She still didn’t know how long it took. But at some point, there she was, a consciousness loosely contained, still anchored to her place, but not expressed in any physical structure. She still sensed Mior, who was watching over her, and the rest of her surroundings.

‘Very good,’ the spirit congratulated her. ‘Truly, well done! How do you feel, Acura?’

She considered that for a moment. ‘I think I’m better,’ she finally replied. ‘Thank you, Mior.’ She really did feel better, like she was able to think more clearly. She still knew she’d changed, though she couldn’t quite put her (no longer existent) finger on how, but this had clearly been a success.

‘You’re welcome!’ Mior smiled. They were still incarnate, which actually helped her sense the spirit.

Acura spent a bit of time trying to get used to her new state of existence. She had a better sense of time now, but still wasn’t sure if it took a few seconds or a few minutes. She wanted to try to create a new physical body from here now, but she hesitated. Rushing things seemed like a bad idea, and she really didn’t want anything to go wrong. She still felt vulnerable, even knowing that there was nothing she could do about that. At least in the short term. So she contented herself with trying out a few math and logic problems, recalling memories, and interpreting sensations from her surroundings. That part would probably be easier if there was a little more variety in them.

Finally, she focused her attention back on the spirit. Something they’d said niggled at her, and upon focusing on it for a moment, it snapped into place. ‘Why did you help me do this now?’ she asked. ‘It sounded like you wanted to wait and let me flail around on my own. Did something happen?’

Mior’s mind was hard to read, but she still sensed the sober intensity dominating their thoughts now, probably because they let her. ‘In a manner of speaking. I would have preferred to let you set the pace, since I didn’t think there was any hurry. But since you’re doing so well, giving you a few tips doesn’t hurt. Things have happened, and I feel that even more important events may be coming, which I wanted you to see.’

Acura wanted to frown in response, but of course she couldn’t. ‘What events?’

The spirit cocked their head to the side. ‘It might be better to show you a few things. Come on, let’s go for a stroll.’

Moving without having a physical body, she discovered, was more involved than she thought. Partly that might be because it was hard to pin down specific borders of where her location ended or began. Changing it required an act of will. With a few false starts, she managed to figure it out, at least well enough to keep pace with Mior as the spirit moved off through the qi anomaly.

If nothing else, she was starting to understand more about how those worked. Strong spirits and ascended cultivators could move among and around them, and since qi permeated everything, their borders were in many ways just as diffuse as a presence’s. Mior took what was presumably the easy path, gently guiding her along. She still had a hard time parsing exactly where they were going, or what route they took. She’d just have to trust them. Not that there’s anything new about that. Mior could have harmed me a lot already if they'd wanted to.

But after a while, the spirit slowed. They’d loosened their incarnation a little, though they hadn’t discorporated themselves entirely. But Acura could sense some of their presence in the qi around it as much as in the cloudy, amorphous figure turning to her now. She’d seen the spirit like that before, several times, and the one time Rijoko had visited her, he’d done something similar. She only recalled that visit vaguely, but she knew he was extending his protection over her. In any case, no other spirits had even approached her and Mior so far.

‘Okay,’ she said. She actually used the English word; she’d always had a verbally expressive mind and often thought in words anyway, and Mior was good enough to parse the meaning out of any thought-speech. ‘Where exactly are we now, and why did you bring me with you?’

‘We’re not anywhere important. This is really just a little spot nowhere in particular.’

‘And why are we here, Mior?’

The spirit took a step closer, and managed to look like they’d tucked their hands into their pockets without actually having any clothes. ‘We didn’t need to go here in particular, but it works. What I want to show you is actually not there, exactly. But we can see the effects of what someone else is doing. It’s getting harder to look into the Zarian Dominion. Like gazing through a piece of half-molten glass. Someone is twisting things out of alignment.’

‘Jideia.’ Acura fixed her attention on the spirit. ‘Is that a side effect, or is he just trying to hide whatever he’s getting up to?’

Mior spread their hands. ‘Who knows? I’m inclined to think the latter. He’s not using enough power to meaningfully shift the nature of all the qi in such a wide area. The other Greater Spirits would never stand for that even if he was stupid enough to try it. But still …’

Mior gestured, and it took a moment for Acura to sense what the spirit was actually doing. The qi around them swirled, condensed, and yet faded. Dimly, she sensed that it had something to do with the nature of the place. They were at a point where paths crossed. Or something like that. But she didn’t have much attention to spare for that, and instead focused on what the spirit was showing her.

Acura would have sucked in a sharp breath if she could have. She recognized the building whose wavy shadow suddenly appeared in front of them, although it had clearly undergone extensive renovations. It hadn’t sported that many statues or quite this much gold leaf in the pictures she’d seen. Still, this was definitely the temple of the Storm in Saria, one of the oldest cities in the Dominion and its current official capital. At the edge of the picture, she saw barricades and even what might be smoke rising, but that paled in comparison to the dark clouds gathered overhead. They loomed far down, seemingly almost in touching distance from the temple’s roof, although that had to be an illusion.

‘No lesser mortal has entered that temple in at least the last day,’ Mior commented. ‘There have been a lot of priests and even quite a few temple knights, though. And now, not too long ago … well, you can feel it yourself.’

Acura shot the spirit an irritated thought and focused more closely on what she saw. There was indeed something odd about it, beyond the obvious. She concentrated on the qi the impression carried, clearly an imprint of the real thing. It was a chaotic swirl, and yet … she sensed something she’d never really sensed personally before, but it was still unmistakable.

‘Son of a - Is that Jideia himself?’

Mior sighed. ‘Yep. As far as I can tell, his grubby little fingers are all over that place. I don’t think he’s incarnated in person there, but who knows …’

They stared at it in silence for a moment, while Acura tried to parse what this meant. It was hard, not just because she still found her mind a little sluggish and thinking exhausting.

Then, suddenly, the feel of it changed again. Mior’s imprint shuddered, then contracted a little. The sensation intensified to the point that Acura couldn’t possibly have missed it.

‘Well, I suppose that answers that question,’ Mior commented, their mental voice tight and controlled to keep out emotional undertones.

Acura stilled for a moment, then suddenly compacted her qi presence. She was aware this might not be a good idea, but in that moment, she didn’t care. She tried it, and it worked. In the span of a few seconds that lasted far too long, she condensed her form into a humanoid shape. It felt oddly stifling, as if she was cramming herself into a container a size too small, and yet freeing. A moment later, she exerted her will again, and turned the rough collection of qi into something far more real.

Acura opened her eyes, gazing around. She chuckled, listening to her voice echo through the weird space in between. She flexed her fingers, then patted her face. Everything appeared just like it should be.

‘Feeling better?’ Mior asked drily. ‘That was very well done, again.’

‘Thank you.’ Acura sighed, belatedly wondering about the lack of air in this place, before she pushed that thought aside. ‘I think we have bigger problems right now, though.’

Mior shifted to look again at the picture they’d created, which was shuddering and dissolving into the ambient qi. ‘That we do,’ the spirit said quietly. ‘I think Inaris has it worse than us, though.’

Acura grimaced, suppressing the stab of guilt she felt at that. She’d have time to sort that out later. But she knew Mior was right, and wishing she was there to take on these challenges instead of her daughter couldn’t make it so.