Teyva swam in a sea of darkness, her mind swept up by the current. She tried to rise to the surface, but something held her back— a tendril of will wrapped around her waist, holding fast against her attempts to swim upward. She wondered for a moment if she would drown here, disappearing into the blackness just as she had appeared during her transmigration. She reached out to her surroundings, trying to feel something, sense something. Tiny little bubbles of light rested near her; motes of life that clung close to her body. She smelled burning wood— a cloud of flavorful smoke that billowed over her nose. She heard popping and crackling, birdsong, the hum and drone of insects in the air. Wind. She heard the wind.

Where was she?

Teyva tried again to rise, to surface, to bring herself out of the darkness. Was she back home on Earth? Was she still in Orum? She tried to open her eyes and instead of seeing the world around her, she found herself in a dark expanse. A faint lavender glow breached through what looked like clouds in the distance. She looked down and found that her feet rested on nothing, but she was not falling. Was she floating? She stared at her hands, then quickly inspected her abdomen, remembering the end of the fight. Nothing. She touched the spot and looked up again, something flashing in her periphery. It was a notification window.

I leveled up! The access to new information was thrilling, to say the least. She scanned the strange new world around her for threats. Nothing. She slowly pulled up her stats and gave them a once-over. Small arrows appeared next to each of her attributes.

Most noticeable were the newly unlocked Health, Mana, and Stamina readouts. Having a specific idea of how much health and mana she had left would be a game changer, she’d be able to figure out exactly how many times she could cast spells, for one thing. She glanced to her level and experience. It looked like the [New Progenitor] title had relieved some of the punishing growth decrease caused by [Corpse of the Ancient Queen]. She did a little mental math. Based on how much experience she had now and the growth percentage; if she had been given credit for every one of the hunters they had been worth about thirty-three to thirty-four experience. It also looked like she’d gained some attribute experience as well.

She moved her focus to the arrows next to her attributes and paused, closing the window and pulling up her abilities.

Hard. Numbers. Finally. Teyva sighed with relief. This she could work with. She immediately went to work parsing through each bit of information and their implications. There was a lot to digest, and it took a while, but brought her quite a bit closer to explaining her current situation. Had she survived the fight? On one hand, she was floating in this strange purple world. But on the other, she had used [Chill Touch] on that man in the tomb for a while. She had the opportunity to gain plenty of stacks of [Hungering Cold]. That could have accounted for… a lot of healing. More than enough to theoretically bring her back to full health.

She thought more on [Chill Touch]— specifically, the [Chilling Weakness] debuff. It wasn’t perfect. It wouldn’t always apply the debuff. But theoretically, it stacked infinitely. as long as she was in physical contact with an enemy for long enough. Their strength and willpower would drain to one, or zero, or lower. What would that look like? An enemy, unable to lift a finger, both too weak and too tired to fight back, and unable to cast spells due to a mana pool with no mana capacity? And [Chill Touch] would just keep on rotting away her target. Unless an enemy could heal more damage than she could dish out over time, it was just a matter of when, not if, she won a fight. Otherwise, they would be stuck in her grasp until she let go. But she would need to hold on for long enough to stack enough instances of [Chilling Weakness] on her target. The trick would be disabling their ability to fight back while they still could.

She wrinkled her nose, reminded of the man whose face she had rotted away. It was a very personal way to execute someone. She focused on the rest of her status sheet to get her mind off of that fact.

She paused. Why on earth is [Simple Shift] so expensive to cast? What’s the point of it if it doesn’t even give attribute points? Is it good for some other reason? She made a note to experiment with it when she had a chance.

She didn’t need to wonder why the Mockeries had so much trouble in small numbers against the larger men. They were tiny and had such little health. Their strength was definitely in their numbers. She could already summon enough Mockeries to kill a man a dozen times over.

That said, it became obvious that focusing on Influence and Willpower had been a good choice if she wanted to keep working as a caster like this. It might be nice to get more health. Not dying was always nice. Her thoughts hovered over the endurance attribute even as a small part of her screamed to go all-in on Influence and Willpower.

She mulled it over a bit longer before committing. Four points for Willpower and Two for Influence. After doing that, she checked over her abilities again. The max damage for her [Chill Touch] increased to 12 and her Mockeries' maximum bite damage increased to a whopping 10. The mana cost didn’t change all that much, [Chill Touch] going up by just a little bit.

Satisfied with her changes she closed her character sheet. Another prompt appeared.

She gave a mental affirmative and felt the binding wrapped around her body give way. A sudden rush of sensation hit her like a freight train; her body racing to the surface of the dark, cloudy pool from earlier. One moment she was swaddled in an endless void, the next she felt her lungs fill with air and her body contract amidst a bed of soft… something. She gripped at the strangeness beneath her, tearing at it as her muscles tensed through the awakening. She pulled, tearing clumps of— she looked. Grass. She was holding grass. She opened both palms and eyed the green blades with astonishment. She raised them to her face and sniffed. Grass. Real grass.

She looked up; the sounds of the forest assailed her. Birdsong, the wind, the hum of insects, the world filled with life around her. She caught the scent of burning wood and turned to see a startled-looking Azrael sitting next to a small campfire. She looked down at herself; frantically looking for the wound in her abdomen again. Gone. So it was true. She looked back up at Azrael who had turned back to the fire and sipped at something inside of a metal mug, she lowered it and smiled; “You’re awake.”

“Looks like it,” Teyva said, breathlessly. She cast her gaze upward and took in the blue of the sky. It was so beautiful. She felt a tear run down her cheek. She wiped it soundlessly, pulling her knees up to her chest and taking a deep breath of the fresh air outside.

“Your wound is gone. I watched it close before my eyes in the cave,” Azrael said gruffly.

“Yeah... I thought I had died, to be honest.” Teyva said.

Teyva looked behind and around her.

“I’ve been down there for such long time. Fresh air is nice,” Teyva said.

“I bet,” Azrael said quietly; “It’s good that you are free.”

The two sat for a few minutes in silence. Eventually, Azrael spoke up. “I don’t think you’ll want to stay here. The other humans here know that a party was sent after me, and they know what direction I left from. There will be more, if only to search for the missing men. But then they’ll find you. And many more men than you fought today will come after you, regardless of your innocence.”

Teyva sighed.

“You and your surviving mimics will put up a fight, but not for long,” Azrael said.

Azrael turned to Teyva and blinked. What had happened to the other Mockeries? Had they survived the fight? She looked down and around only to find a half dozen gold coins clinging to her left arm, unmoving. She blinked a few times and reached toward one; running her finger along the rim of the coin. It trembled and six little eyes opened; squinting at her in post-sleep delirium. Its eyes shot open and it let out a chittering sound, sprouting legs and climbing down her arm and to her palm where it let out an eerie sound somewhere between a squawk and a hiss.

Teyva's heart melted as the other Mockeries woke and reacted much the same way as the first.

“Oh, my little heroes! Protecting us while I slept?” She cooed, before glancing up at Azrael.

“Thank you,” Teyva said.

“I owed you for bringing the humans into your path,” She grunted, sipping at her mug again, she glanced Teyva’s way. “Hungry? Plenty of soup here.”

Teyva got unsteadily to her feet, brushing herself off, and made her way to the campfire.