The sun came up.

Ed and Amelia still laid awake, watching each other, basking in each other’s presence.

Amelia, carefully stroking every part of her lover’s naked body, giving her the care she needed after their night together. One hand on her body, another hand playing with her hair, so long, so pretty.

Ed’s face rest against Amelia’s chest, keeping herself close to her main source of warmth, that soul core of limitless power.

In the heat of the moment, that moment that lasted longer than Amelia had first thought, she realized that she had never actually taken off her pants. With Ed so close for so long, she was far too hot to be comfortable. After their love was made, she finally slipped it off and got comfortable in just her underwear. Her bare legs finally able to nestle with her lover’s.

The two had cuddled for hours before they finally got over themselves and started to talk.

“I said I love you, didn’t I?” Ed asked.

“Yeah.”

“Good, because I didn’t want you thinking, you know, that I don’t anymore.”

“I get it,” Amelia said.

“I’m awful, aren’t I?”

Amelia held Ed tighter. “Not at all. I wouldn’t love you if you were.”

“Do you?”

“I do. I love you.”

“I love you.”

“I love you.”

“We should stop this before it gets too stupid,” Ed said.

“I agree. If we kept going we’d just fight over who loves who more.”

“A terrible time that would be.” Ed laughed. Then, she slid herself away from Amelia’s chest and up to eye level. Still cuddling, but with equal footing. Conversationally cuddling. “Can I ask you something stupid?”

“Always,” Amelia said.

“Have you been... seeing anyone?” Her face went red, redder than when they were actually having sex. “Not that it’s bad or anything. I mean, we talked about this a long time ago, anyway. We were apart so long that I understand, but it’s just that...” She trailed off.

Amelia shook her head.

“Really? No one serious, or even a little serious?”

“No one at all,” Amelia said. “Not a man, not a woman, not anyone else.”

“Wow...”

“I was too... focused on my mission.” Amelia’s way of saying she was too depressed, too lonely to even consider the possibility of involving herself with another while Ed was gone. “You?”

Ed chuckled. “Now I don’t feel so embarrassed when I say no too.”

“Now that, I am not surprised about. You’d forget to eat if your body didn’t tell you. You’re taking baths still, right?”

“I’m not THAT much of a slob, am I?” Ed asked with a whining tone.

“I’ll let this apartment speak for itself.”

Ed playfully slapped her across the chest. “I’ll have you know, it wasn’t just work that kept me away. A few women here and there caught my eye. I even went on a date once. Just trying to...”

“To get over me.”

“Yeah, and it failed miserably, because I’ve been miserable this whole time.”

And that was perfect timing for the conversation to take its natural turn. “Why did you even leave?” Amelia asked.

Ed turned her face away from Amelia’s and looked up to the ceiling. “I can’t answer that. I can’t tell you. I’d rather you hate me than tell the truth.”

“Is it that difficult to answer?”

“It’s about you. If you knew, it would ruin your life. Ruin my plan.”

“The hell are you talking about, Ed?”

“And I can’t BELIEVE you came to Fleettwixt after all I told you,” Ed snapped. “All those speeches, all that preparation, and you still came, like a fool.”

“I am no fool,” Amelia said coldly.

“Yeah, you are. Everything we worked to build all those years is in jeopardy because you’re here.”

Amelia pushed Ed away from her and sat up. “You’re starting to piss me off. I spent a YEAR by myself, wandering the continent like a sad sap, trying to figure out some way forward. I only came here because a golemancer attacked me. He recognized me from Newpool. Told me he knew you.”

“A golemancer... Who?” Ed sat up too.

“I don’t know, some human. Without him, I would never have even known you were still alive.”

“And you thought coming to Fleettwixt was the best idea?”

“You’re in danger! And you’re chastising me for coming to save you. Nagging me like you weren’t the one who abandoned me without a damn word.”

Ed scowled. “I had to protect you. Now YOU’RE the one in danger, all because you stepped right into the enemy’s lair.”

“I wasn’t going to last forever out there. I couldn’t just keep running and hiding like you always said. I’m not strong enough. Or maybe I’m too strong. I killed every mage enforcer I ever met. After a while, that starts adding up, and they send the elites out. I’m safer here than in the countryside.”

“Why did you even have enforcers after you?” Ed asked accusingly. “Why were you fighting in the first place?”

“Because!” Amelia shouted. “I’m a hero. That’s what you told me to be. That’s the directive I gave myself. I saved people. I destroyed labor camps. Killed pirates. What was I supposed to do? Watch everyone around me suffer and die?”

“Yes! Because you’re not ready yet!” Ed lowered her voice. “I’m not ready yet. I’m sorry...”

Amelia brushed her right hand against Ed’s cheek, gazing at all those beautiful little freckles. “I can’t let you suffer, either. If my absence caused you this much pain, it’s my fault.”

“Oh, don’t be so self-sacrificing all the time. You can’t be my romantic martyr.”

“Likewise.”

Ed’s very brief smile faded. She hugged Amelia again and said, “There’s... There’s something big going on in Fleettwixt. I’m involved. The reason we’re here in this hidden apartment. They watch us.”

“You won’t tell me.”

“Not even a hint.”

“But you’re telling me it exists.”

“Only because I hope you’ll understand why I need you to leave the city. Before you’re killed. Or worse, captured.”

“I can’t, and won’t.”

“You will,” Ed said definitively.

“I can’t live without you,” Amelia said. “I mean that literally. I need you, because I think I’m dying.”

“Wha? What do you...”

Amelia pressed her chest tight against Ed’s. “Can’t you feel my core?”

“Yeah, it’s really warm.”

“Too warm. It’s burning me up,” Amelia said. “My systems are faulty. My modules malfunction all the time. My soul is having trouble processing everything. I leak mana sometimes, and I’ve almost died because of it. Half my Combat Module skills don’t even work anymore. Every time I absorb souls, my body is in pain for days at a time. I don’t know what’s wrong, because my Access Core won’t even register that anything is happening. I really, genuinely need you.”

The realization of everything Amelia just said sunk into Ed, and all those chastising things she said to her suddenly seemed to weigh down her heart. She frowned as if to say, I’m so sorry for everything I’ve done, for everything I’ve not done.

“You didn’t have anyone,” Ed said.

“No.”

“You suffered for what, two years, all by yourself? And I let you.”

“Ed...”

“Everything I told you to do, running and hiding and staying low, was just killing you more.”

“I couldn’t just go to a local golemancer for help, could I?”

“No, of course not. Plus, a golemancer can only help if they know the golem’s directives. And idiot me wrote most of your directives encrypted so nobody could even read it.

She let go of her hug and stood up to go to another part of the apartment.

“Ed?”

“I’m going to fix you.” She took a stack of books off a stool and placed them on the floor.

“With what? Do you have a workshop?”

Ed brought the stool over to the side of the bed, facing Amelia’s back. She put on her bloomers and Amelia’s unbuttoned blouse, then sat on the stool and hunched over. “I’m not a master golemancer for nothing. I don’t need equipment for this. Here’s your glove, by the way.” She set it on her shoulder.

“Thank you.” Amelia put the glove back on and felt instantly more secure. “A doctor, they call you now.”

“Yeah. Technically, I’m retired now. I teach one class a quarter at Barrier University.”

“Retired? Ed, you’re twenty-three.”

“Well, it’s true, really. I don’t work a real job anymore. I’m not with North Sunwell anymore except for...” She trailed off again, clearly for another thing she simply could not discuss.

Amelia suddenly froze in place. Found herself fully unable to move, just as pale red waves of mana began to flow around her.

Ed was viewing her soul. The totality of her being, controlled at the moment by the golemancer that made it happen.

“My Gods, Amelia.” Ed swore in Imduin and said, “What the hell have you been doing? How the hell are you still alive?”

Her eye widened at the words, but she did not respond, because while Ed worked, she most definitely did not like to be interrupted. She tended to go so deep into analysis mode that she practically lost the capacity to listen to the world around her.

“You said you have pains when you absorb a lot of energy, right? Did you ever consider that was because your soul is absolutely filled with energy already? You’re so far beyond capacity I can’t even believe it’s still holding together.”

“I—”

“Not now, honey,” she interrupted before Amelia could say more than a word. “This is important. I don’t know where you’ve gotten all those souls. Or maybe I do, but this is spectacular.”

Amelia’s HUD began to shift around wildly, altering in real time based on Ed’s modifications.

“It’s not your soul that’s the problem, actually, Amelia. The you that’s you? It’s beyond fine, besides the over-capacity energy, which to be fair is a little dangerous.” With that, Ed entered into lecture mode. “It’d have been real bad if it was your soul, because I don’t have access to it. No one does. Whatever golemancer made you, they did it hundreds, maybe thousands of years before I was even born. Luckily, or maybe unluckily, the issues come from those modules.

“I like to say, all I did was turn you on. And I guess that’s true in one sense, but in the non-romantic one, it’s mostly false. Your soul reactivated from the moment I fed soul energy into it. But it wouldn’t do anything but sit there on the table, glowing purple. There was no way to even interface with it.

“So, my ingenious plan was to create more golems that would talk to you, interface with you. That’s the modules. You’re alive, inhabiting that body, because your Access Core and Scan Module and all of your other systems, separate entities embedded in your soul, are able to move you around in a way no golemancer ever could. That’s my big secret, but I guess you knew that already. I’m mostly just rambling to myself while I scroll through all your directives to see everything that’s... wrong... Huh. That’s pretty bad.

“Wow, every single module is broken. All of them. You want to know why your system kept having mana leaks? Because I hadn’t disabled the Morph Module well enough the last time we did maintenance. You never even got to use it, and it still sometimes turned itself on and drained out your energy, and the Access Core didn’t even notice because it was broken too.

“Your diagnostics are just... I can’t believe I designed it this way. It’s so BAD. Once you passed a hundred percent soul capacity, something in the directives broke and it went back down to twenty. And that was a permanent break, too. So, every time it says fifteen percent, you’re actually at ninety-five. If it says fifty percent, you’re at a hundred and thirty. Ridiculous.”

Amelia thought back to her very first day in Fleettwixt. She fought off some Fourland thugs, but due to a mana leak, her body began shutting down, her systems attempting to automatically go into power-saving mode. She fell as low as three percent, with her legs going numb and her right hand falling off... All of that, and she actually had eighty-three percent soul capacity. She almost died, all because of an error spun out of control.

“Looks like you’ve been using your Boost Module way too much lately, too,” Amelia continued. “It hasn’t broken yet, but if it does, your body will outright shut down until it repairs itself. Have you been in that many fights, really? ...That’s a real question, sorry. You can answer. I’m done looking at your directives.” The pale red aura vanished.

“I’ve fought many people,” Amelia said.

“People strong enough to require overclocking yourself? That often?”

“I’m on a path for revenge,” she explained. “I came here a few months ago, at the height of winter, looking for you, or trying to help you find me.”

“You sure got my attention.”

“And, piece by piece, I took down the entire Fourland Growth Corporation. I brutalized smugglers. Murdered drug dealers. Obliterated combat golems. Destroyed that entire facility on Floor 5 of the dungeon.”

“Brash, irresponsible, and stupid, is what I call it,” Ed said. “But I understand. You did something very good... even if you were seconds away from capture.”

“What do you mean?”

“I had a couple golems embedded in Fourland’s security in that building,” Ed said. “I saw you and that curly-haired woman jumping out of the window just before the iron golems swarmed you. Castien showed up just after. In your current state, if you met that man, he would crush you under his heel.”

The exact person she and Korath were aiming to capture extremely soon. “If I’m fixed?”

“I still don’t think you’d stand a chance. You’re really lucky I distracted him.”

“Ed, why were you at that meeting?”

Her girlfriend was fully silent for a minute.

“Ed?”

“I’ve done a lot of terrible things to you, honey. Abandoning you without a note. Trying to break your heart to get you to leave. I said some mean things earlier, and I’m sorry. I don’t know why you’ve stuck with me this far, and I know you won’t if you ever find out the truth about... you know.”

“Try me.”

“I can’t tell you yet. Maybe not ever. Because if you know, you’ll change your actions. You’ll do what you do best. And in the process you’ll tip them off. I’ve been working on a plan for a year, and if you learned about it, I think you’d ruin it by accident.”

“I’m stronger than you think.”

“Well, yeah, of course you are. I just saw your soul; never in my life have I seen so much power just completely untapped.” Ed said this with the voice of a bragging parent. “But, no. You couldn’t, because I know you. You wouldn’t understand. You’d hate me too much to even try.”

“So if you won’t tell me... Will you at least answer this?”

“What?”

“If I destroy the North Sunwell Company,” Amelia said, “if I bring down the entire colonial enterprise and leave not a single brick remaining, will that fix your problems? Will that solve everything?”

“...”

Ed said nothing, and soon it became clear that she would not respond at all.

“Well then, Ed, just know that I love you no matter what.”

From behind, she wrapped her arms around Amelia’s neck and cried. “Please don’t enter this world. I hate it. I want to leave and go back to the farm and just...”

“Run away again?”

“Yeah... Please...”

“But we can’t,” Amelia said. “I want to too. But every time I think about it, I remember all those months I spent wandering Sunwell, aimless, while the whole continent suffered. We promised to save everyone, and the time we spent hiding away didn’t save a single soul. Not even each other.”

“Mature words from Bluewood.”

“Thanks.”

“And I agree with it. I can’t run away. You, however...”

“Let’s just end that for now,” Amelia suggested.

“Good idea.” Ed got off the stool and laid down on Amelia’s lap. “I’m glad your decryption directive worked, or this whole thing would never have worked.”

“You took a real gamble.”

“But it worked. Please destroy all the messages you ever get from me, by the way. If anyone manages to decipher the code, it’ll ruin a lot more than just our little chats.”

“Is that what they call making love now? ‘Little chats?’”

“Perhaps.” She adjusted her head on her lap, getting a little bit more snug. “So, about us.”

“Us? What’s there to discuss?”

“Well, obviously, we can’t be together—”

“What do you mean, ‘obviously?’” Amelia interrupted. “Of course we can.”

“Absolutely not,” Ed said. “Do you see how much work it took just for us to end up here? I had to send an arrow through your window, send a message in code, and invite you to a secret apartment. And this apartment will have to go away once the building actually opens to the public, mind you.”

“I’ll just live here until then, and after that we can figure it out.”

“No. No, no... The risk is massive just with us spending time together. If I hadn’t already taken today off, I imagine they’d be sending enforcers out to look for me already.” Ed sighed. “This isn’t negotiable. I’m sorry. We can’t be together until...”

Amelia leaned down and kissed her on the lips. Ed returned it and added some unexpected tongue along with it.

“Uh, not right now,” Amelia said.

“Oh, sorry. That was an accident,” Ed said, an obvious lie. “But even if we can’t be together, at least I can help you with your system malfunctions.”

“You didn’t fix them already?”

“They were a lot bigger than I realized! ...I do need a workshop, okay?”

“Ha, I knew it.”

“Luckily, I have one right next door.” Ed got up, and Amelia followed, putting on her custom bra (possibly the most financially valuable thing she owned) and rearranging a few items on Ed’s desk that had been bothering her the entire time she laid in bed.

They came to a large cardboard box filled with junk electric devices, which Ed pushed aside with her foot, revealing a latch.

“It’s on the second floor,” she said. “Just in case there’s anyone tracking me, though, I make sure only to access it from here. I can explain away this apartment if I just pretend to be some weird eccentric. I sure can’t explain away the other one.

“You’ve really thought things through.”

“I always take things too far,” Ed said, “in exactly the way you want.”

“That’s not how the line goes.”

“So, do you want to have the upgrade of a lifetime? Or do you just want to stand there in your underwear all day?”

“How about both?” Amelia asked.

Ed rolled her eyes and opened the hatch. “Let’s get to the workshop.” Then, suddenly, her stomach rumbled loudly. “Actually, let me grab a protein bar or two first. I forgot about... Yeah.” She began rummaging through disorganized drawers in the kitchenette, looking for a quick meal, and Amelia shook her head. Some things really did never change.

---