After all this time, Amelia was ready for her first true upgrade in a long, long time.

After a night and a morning spent just inches away from each other, Amelia and Ed were now at their closest proximity yet—literally linked together via connecting golemancer equipment.

It was high-tech, a piece of hardware Amelia had never seen before, even at the golem dealership. Ed connected her head to some sort of helmet, completely blind to the outside world, and from that a series of wires connected to Amelia in various locations. One acted as a piece of glass in front of her false eye; another stuck delicately through the cracks in her right arm; and the main few attached directly to Amelia’s soul gem core, the large spherical device—her genuine, literal being—right in the center of her chest.

Normally, the risk to damaging her soul was so extraordinary that Amelia never even dared to open the dragonglass hatch and touch it. The sensation of being able to feel the pressure against her own soul was in and of itself an unpleasant one, and she avoided it at all costs.

But Ed was a master golemancer, likely the greatest to ever live. At twenty-three she had almost single-handedly revolutionized the field. Had published nearly a hundred papers proving, disproving, or discussing ideas about golemancy’s future paths. She created the first clay golem with a voice, the first golem under six inches in height, and, of course, the first golem in a human body. At least, the field in all its academia considered her the creator. In actuality, the achievement was much greater; she had siphoned off the power of an ancient soul core to create a half-dozen bodyless golems that existed for no other purpose than to help another golem function. Modular golemancy was a completely new concept that no other in the world had even dreamed of, and she did it essentially by accident.

But, of course, all of that was hidden. Amelia, or rather EG-1138, was considered a noble-yet-total failure, the first and only of Ed’s soon-to-be long and prosperous career. And, according to all records that ever existed, she was obliterated over five years ago. No one would ever know that Ed had created what was to become the beginning of a brand-new era across the world. Even Amelia was mostly unaware of the significance; she simply saw it all as herself.

That was all to say, Amelia would accept Ed’s strange advanced devices into her soul with open arms, because, when it came to matters of golems, she trusted her absolutely.

Even so, the state of Ed’s workshop did not inspire much confidence, that was for sure.

Like with the apartment, Ed’s penchant for creating a mess knew no bounds. Every part of the workshop was covered in junk, unlabeled, disorganized, unhygienic, and outright dangerous, like the open bag of blastpowder that had laid casually against the unused front door until Amelia tied it.

The worst thing of it all was that Amelia recognized this mess. It was eerily similar to the chaotic layout of Ed’s workshop back when they lived together on the farm. The piles of gear and scrap rock were laid out so haphazardly it could not have been anything but a coincidence, and yet... Somehow, Ed’s oft-repeated words of “There’s a method to my madness!” came to Amelia’s mind and made her truly wonder how much she was simply lying to herself, like everyone else, and how much truly was the work of unhinged brilliance (keyword unhinged).

Amelia was not allowed to move from atop the bench she laid on. It was not uncomfortable, with a pillow for her head and a cushion for her feet, but all of the wires connected to her still made her feel strange. She could not see Ed sitting on the chair across from her, but her scent remained in the air, and Amelia would have recognized that anywhere.

“I love you,” she muttered.

“I love you too, but what’s going on?” Ed asked.

“Nothing. I just wanted to say it.”

“Well, good. Because I’m about to give you two years worth of anniversary gifts in one sitting.” They never had an anniversary. Never could figure out what day counted. They settled on waiting until marriage to bother, but that day still had not yet come. At this rate, it likely never would.

Even still... Gifts were very nice.

“What is this device, exactly?” Amelia asked, hoping fruitlessly for an explanation.

“You’ll see.” That was her answer last time she asked, too. “Commencing in five. Four. Three. Two.”

Amelia heard a button click.

Then—

Her vision went black.

She was no longer in the workshop. Or anywhere, for that matter. The entire world had gone dark, except for her... Hands?

Two hands made of flesh?

Or... Wait. Two hands made of stone.

“Welcome to your soul,” Ed said, a disembodied voice in the cosmos around her.

“I’m confused.” She looked down again, and her hands were made of bright, flowing, purple energy.

“Pretty cool, isn’t it?”

Suddenly, Ed appeared beside her. However, she looked very different. Her skin was a luminescent gray, a pale silver, with eyes and hair to match. Her bushy eyebrows were even longer than usual.

“An explanation, please.”

“I told you, ‘Welcome to your soul.’ This is, essentially, a representation of the spiritual plane within you. And, to an extent, within me too.”

“My soul’s pretty black.”

“Silly.” Ed disappeared. Then from behind, Amelia felt two soft hands wrapping around her belly. A kiss against the back of her neck. “The world is only black because we haven’t done anything yet.”

“I’m too tired for sex.”

“Why do you always... I’m not that bad, am I?” Ed grumbled something Amelia could not make out, and then disappeared again. Her voice continued. “This place is the only way our souls can directly communicate. I can’t access your soul with my magic. But I can if we enter this plane together. In the mortal realm, we are both unconscious, sort of. Both of us could exit this place with no trouble, but we can’t sense anything out there. Just you and me endlessly.”

“So, the Holy Afterplace.”

“It would only be a paradise if I had a workshop,” Ed said.

“And if I had a kitchen to cook for you,” Amelia said.

“So basically... the farm?”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

Ed smiled in a way that suggested very little happiness.

But she shook it off a moment later and continued. “The soul plane will be the easiest way for me to upgrade your systems without just shutting you into power-saving mode and working on each module separately. The whole process should go pretty quickly.”

“What’s wrong with power-saving mode?”

“It’d be lonely.”

It was an honest answer, and one Amelia agreed wholeheartedly with.

“Let’s pull up your Access Core then first,” Ed’s voice said.

A flash of light to end the darkness—

And suddenly, all around Amelia was swirls of red and yellow that all came together into one humanoid form.

Around the room was no longer black, but a scene from her memories. The farm, sometime in mid-spring.

The being in front of her, faceless and featureless, did not feature in Amelia’s memories. Instead, it was actually here with Amelia. A second observer.

Ed then appeared beside it in the blink of an eye, only she was no longer in her gray-sheen form; instead, Ed’s skin was a vibrant tan, with red hair shorter than Amelia had ever seen it. Bright green eyes, small, rounded ears. Wide shoulders and a boxy, muscular frame, with no curves to speak of—a full human.

She said nothing, but kept a certain curiosity about it.

“This faceless figure is your Access Core,” Ed said with a shockingly deep voice.

“Nice to meet you in-person, Amelia,” the Access Core said. “I’ve never had a body before. Excitement meter rising.”

“You look... Yeah.” Amelia decided not to humor her HUD.

“All your modules have shape and form here in the soul plane,” Ed explained. “I said it was just us, but actually there’s seven of us in here. Or, ten, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

“I’d rather not meet them all.”

“Well, that’s tough. You’ve got to.”

“I’m the only module with a communication relay,” the Access Core said. “I speak only with text, but I hope I am useful.”

“You know what? Why’s it called the Access Core?” Amelia asked.

“What do you mean?” Ed’s round-eared head turned to the side.

“The other modules are called modules. But this one is called a core, even though it’s not my core. My soul is my core.”

“Well, silly, that’s because it’s the module that links all the others together. Not YOUR core, but theirs.” Ed coughed and then added, “Plus, I sort of named it that when I still thought I could activate you directly. The Access Core was supposed to be you, before I discovered that you were already you.”

“So the HUD came first.”

“Uh, yeah. By a couple months. Why?”

“I don’t know. I feel less special now.”

“...Are you just teasing me?” Ed asked.

“Maybe.”

“No teasing in the soul plane! We’re wasting time. Everything happens more slowly here, so one second here is like ten in the mortal realm. Every second we spend is... Oh, you get it.”

Ed’s form suddenly transformed back into the sparkling gray elf from before.

“First off,” Ed said, “I’m making the HUD more personable. I’m sure you’ve loved chatting with your Access Core until now, but it’s about to get even better. I think my old attempt maybe... had too much of me in it. So I’m giving it some directives I designed last year to help it adapt to your personality.”

“Giving me an extra friend.”

“Ain’t I great?”

The Access Core clasped its hands together and beamed. “I’ve always wanted to be more personable!”

“You already are,” Ed said. “It’s all in there.”

“Hooray!”

Amelia glared at Ed with all her might, but she simply ignored it.

“There’ve been a lot more advances in the capture field since we left Newpool, too,” Ed continued. “Not by me. Other golemancers have devised a way to increase a golem’s memory bank tenfold, and I’m giving that to you. Now you can store, what, about a thousand snapshots? I guess I’ll have to pose for you sometime so you can fill it up.”

Her fingers snapped and suddenly the farm around them turned into a view—Amelia’s viewpoint—of the messy workshop.

“Also, this is a brand-new technology. I haven’t even written a paper on it yet, so don’t go telling people. But... Now it’s not just snapshots you can capture. It’s the moving images around you. Memories, with sound and color alike. See this around us? If you wanted, you could capture all of it right this moment. A permanent recorded memory.”

“What? That’s incredible.”

“Yeah, but it also doesn’t quite work, and these memories take up much more of your memory banks than a photo. So, use it carefully, okay?”

“Of course.”

“And I’ll do my best,” the Access Core said, just before vanishing into thin air.

Amelia looked at Ed, with her shimmering elven body that was outright beautiful. They had gone this long without discussing it, and Amelia’s curiosity had finally got the better of her.

With her new snapshot memory banks, she could—

Snap.

Up where the field of Amelia’s vision once was, there was a still image... Still of the workshop. No Ed to be found.

Ed raised an eyebrow. “Amelia, did you just try to take a snapshot of me in the soul plane?”

“Yes.”

“Did you really think that through?”

“No.”

“I guess you’re curious about... You know, this.” She gestured down to her body. “The soul realm doesn’t show us how we are, or how we’d like to be. It likes to show fragments. Shards of us. And I guess this is what I would look like if my father had married another elf. And the other view...” The human with short hair and broad shoulders. “If my mother had married another human. Put them together and you get me. We halfli—er, mixed race fellows have a strange time in here. Just look at you.”

Amelia looked down at herself again and found her entire body made of stone and rock. Brown and gray.

“I don’t like it.”

“It’s weird, too. Your soul core has nothing to do with the type of rock your body attracts. It has even less to do with the human side. And yet, when we’re in here, that’s what it shows.

Amelia concentrated and willed herself into a full-human appearance.

“Nice hair.”

Amelia reached up and felt it... Wow. Thick, dark locks down to her shoulders. Eyebrows. Peach fuzz on her cheeks! Scars remained littered over her face, but the rock was gone. All flesh.

“I do like this,” Amelia said.

“I’m sorry you can’t have it out there,” Ed said, still in full-human form. “If I can ever figure out a way, I’ll do it.”

“No need. I’m fine as-is.”

“Well, you say that now...” Ed sighed. “We’re losing daylight here. Let’s keep upgrading you. You have so much soul energy excess I don’t even know what to do with it all, but I guess we’ll find a way. Next up... Combat Module.”

Before them appeared not a humanoid figure, but a fist floating in air.

“That’s it?”

“The Access Core was special. The others won’t be so friendly.”

“I’m not displeased.”

“I knew you’d say that.” Ed waved her hands around and visions of Amelia fighting appeared in the air. “Right now, your active Combat Module skills are... [Throwing Hands], a projectile move; [Slice], which turns your arm into a sharp blade; [Mana Burst], which dispels excess energy in powerful bursts—and somehow you haven’t used enough to get rid of your soul overflow; [Shock Pummel], which sends a shockwave of kinesis into whatever you punch; and [Harmonic Ring], which unleashes that shockwave all around you intsead. A fairly nice line-up, if I do say so myself.”

“I’d like more. But I don’t know how to make them.”

“Yeah, it’s tough. One of the toughest parts of golemancy, really, which is why so many golems only have a few skills. It’s great you’ve got a lot.” Ed looked at Amelia as if expecting a compliment to pad her overconfidence. Amelia did not give one. “If I could ever teach you golemancy, maybe you could create your own. But for now, I’ll have to use one I stole.”

“Stole?”

“Yeah. I had a colleague back at North Sunwell, a human named Barbara Gawain. She retired a while back, but I found one of her plans she never implemented! It’s called [Rock Grenade], and it’s great.”

“I like the name.”

Ed reached over to Amelia and pulled out a chunk of her arm. Despite Amelia being in human form, it felt exactly like a stone being pulled loose, and when Ed held it out, it was certainly just a piece of sediment.

“The skill works like this. Step one, take off part of your body. Yeah, I know. A normal rock works, too, but imagine you’re somewhere with no rocks, like here.” She tossed it up and down. “Step two, charge it up with a certain mana essence, the one the skill provides. A little bit like [Harmonic Ring], but in a much smaller space, so it’s turbo-charged. Step three, throw it or drop it, and then let it activate a few seconds later.”

Ed threw the rock as far away as she could—a weak throw, but Ed was never prized for her athleticism—and after a few moments, it exploded.

Instantly, the missing chunk of Amelia’s arm reappeared.

“If we were in the mortal realm, that would have taken out my whole work bench. Pretty cool for such a tiny rock.”

“Wouldn’t this attack ruin me over time? I’m destroying myself over time.”

“Uh, Amelia, you’re a golem. You automatically collect sediment around you to fill your shape.”

“Oh, right.”

“As long as you don’t do something crazy, like blow up your whole damn arm or something, you’ll be fine.” She hesitated before adding, “[Rock Grenade] is actually based on a much more common attack, the suicide bomb. Shell golems will combust and blow up everything around them. Technically, you could do it too, but... Please, don’t. Even if your soul gem survives, your flesh sure won’t.”

“I wasn’t planning on it.” Amelia folded her arms. “I don’t know why you think I’d ever...”

“You’re the self-sacrificing hero type, Amelia. All I ask is that you don’t sacrifice yourself. Ever. For any reason. Promise me, and don’t break that promise like you usually do.”

Ed sure was one to talk, Amelia thought. “Alright. I promise. And I won’t break it.”

“Good, then our next—” Ed’s stomach grumbled. “Again? Didn’t I just eat?”

“If things move more slowly in here, then how long has it been out there?”

“Ah, dammit. You’re right.”

Time for a quick lunch break.

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New update schedule: Mondays and Thursday evenings, EST. We're less than halfway throughy the story so far, so it's gonna be a long journey yet.

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Today's shoutout: Katalepsis, my newest novel obsession. I am pretty sure I recommended it already, but I must stress to you how wonderful this book actually is. You may be turned off by the "horror" genre like I was, but get through that first story arc and I can guarantee you'll be beyond hooked. The romance parts are also impeccable. I'll write a full review for it sometime.