Tosono blinked rapidly as the memory drew to a close, frowning. It felt like the beginning of something, like there would be more to come.

  She’d called herself Teisel, just like the city. Tosono remembered old legends and stories about the founders of the ancient cities, but he hadn’t actually understood that they had been real people.

  Interesting.

  Tosono hummed to himself, it had to have been at least seven hundred years since the memory had taken place, and Teisel hadn’t really… seemed like someone who would one day accomplish great things and save her people.

  Admittedly, part of that instinctive dismissal was the fact that—as far as Tosono could tell—she wasn’t a twin. Tosono always found himself underestimating people without that particular trait. There were too many pairs of twins who’d changed the world entirely. They were blessed by Rendai and Atharian.

  Yet, Teisel probably hadn’t changed it exactly. She’d just been there.

  Tosono glanced at the others, thoughtful. They were all blinking at each other, their faces filled with confusion and concern.

  “You all saw that too, right?” Fora asked, tilting her head at the others. She muttered something under her breath about mental sheilds as everyone confirmed it in turn.

  Reiav nodded, her eyes daunted. “That was… Oh Prosperity above!! The memories of Teisel herself are here?!”

  Fora blinked at her slowly, “So… we already knew that Teisel was a person?” Tosono examined her again, trying to figure out what exactly the strange girl knew and what she didn’t. He’d assumed that it was common knowledge that the floating cities were named after people—even if he hadn’t quite taken the legend seriously.

  Reiav looked at Fora like she was an idiot, “All the floating cities are named after the suiki who originally founded them. We have records about Teisel’s life in some of our libraries. Nothing nearly this complete though!” Her eyes were shining. She was a scholar then? Tosono realized. That would be an interesting combination with Ruirel once they were a real couple.

  Eloi, similarly, seemed excited at the historical prospects of the memory, “I think she was inside the suiki’s ancient ship!”

  Fora blinked at him dimly, “They had an ancient ship?”

  Tosono massaged his temples and sighed, “...Of course they did? How do you think they got here?”

  Fora shrugged, “I think it’s pretty clear by now that I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Reiav gave Fora a curious look, apparently over her earlier views, “The suiki are from the stars. They travelled here centuries ago though…” She paused, tilting her head with a frown. “Through the dream realm.”

  Fora seemed surprised, but Tosono couldn’t rightly tell if it was the information itself. “Wait, you guys knew that? No one really acts like they know that…”

  Pleseln grunted, “You clearly knew, so it can’t have been all that weird for us to know.”

  “I was under the impression that someone had wiped everyone's memory of that fact,” Fora admitted quietly after a moment. Tosono furrowed his brow, deciding that—yes—Fora knew almost all of this already, and—yes—she was taking her admission completely seriously.

  Eloi seemed confused, perhaps a bit worried too, “And why were you under that impression?”

  “Does it matter?” Fora shrugged, “That’s just how it works on my world, it was a stupid assumption.”

  Tosono opened his mouth slightly and closed it again. Another world… that would explain some things, but wasn’t that supposed to be impossible? Yet, she really did believe that. It was baffling. She seemed to actually think that she was from another world.

  But aren’t you starting to think that too?

  The others battered her with questions that this revelation, but besides making occasionally sarcastic comments, Fora refused to answer them.

  --

  “WHAT THE RUSTS IS THAT!” Pleseln screamed, waving her sword through the incorporeal mist of the demonic… thing.

  “YOU CAN’T HURT IT!” Fora screamed back, one of the demon’s strikes seemed to just… phase through her.

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  The nightmare retreated slightly in confusion, apparently annoyed that its attack was doing nothing. Pleseln held her arm gingerly, screaming something in a more obscure language that Tosono didn’t quite catch.

  Tosono, with the immense aid of Reiav had erected a shield with his spectral wings and the nightmare creature was having trouble getting through it. Pleseln had started using her own wings as weapons; the idea of shaping force spells with such accuracy was beyond Tosono, he could only make them taper to a point about half the time, but Pleseln seemed proficient in making them sharp.

  Fora was separated from the group though, and the nightmare was unwilling to completely leave when it still saw her as easy prey. She summoned something that looked a lot like a spectral wing, but it seemed significantly weaker than it should have been. The demonic nightmare didn’t seem to care about the presence of a shield though. It rushed at her, shrieking with an unholy cadence and pitch.

  The nightmare was composed of black mist, similar to the creatures from before but less physical. Regardless, it was certainly something, and it was certainly trying to kill them. It didn’t help that it was shaped almost exactly like a juevei, which had already achieved in giving most of them horrifying flashbacks of the numarous destructions the creatures were capable of.

  Fora, on the other hand, seemed to have no such preconceptions.

  It circled her slowly, which was unfortunate because she didn’t seem to be able to move her strange spectral wing. So she held her ground, her eyes tracking from place to place. Tosono might have gone to help distract the thing if he had been alone, but with Eloi and Reiav sharing the shield, he didn’t dare remove his presence lest it collapse.

  Besides, part of Tosono wanted to see how Fora would handle this on her own. She certainly wasn’t acting like she was in any danger, even with the juevei-like monster stalking around her…

  Pleseln—apparently not as afraid as she’d momentarily seemed—yelled something obscene and rushed at the monster again. Which was stupid—but that was practically something Tosono expected at this point. Pleseln wouldn’t be willing to force Fora to face such a creature alone. She’d likely faced juevei herself before.

  However, it gave Fora enough time to deliberately dismiss her shield and fall to her knees. Tosono thought he saw a piece of chalk in her hands a moment later, before his attention was taken by Pleseln again as she did some sort of strange manuver and somehow ended up on the thing’s back. Stars that woman was insane.

  “PLESELN GET IT OVER HERE!”

  Pleseln glanced at Fora, Tosono following her gaze. Everyone blinked in surprise and confusion at the circle of glowing air, before Pleseln gritted her teeth and stabbed her heels into the creature’s sides.

  From there, it took some… finagling… but they managed to trick the nightmare into going through the circle. Fora made a cutting motion once it rushed through the area, and suddenly all was silent. The glowing circle of air was gone. The monster was gone.

  Tosono found himself staring with incomprehension at the empty space, his mouth working up and down as Reiav dissolved her part of the shield.

  “What a rush!” Pleseln said, sheathing her sword and grinning.

  Sparks, Tosono would never understand warriors. He was trembling from carried over fear, despite not even having been in any danger, he distinctly remembered a creature that had looked quite a lot like that one tearing appart his brother as he stood back watching…

  “Let’s never do that again.” Fora decided.

  Pleseln shook her head, mystified.

  Tosono was nearby a moment later, staring at the space where the creature had disappeared with a somewhat haunted look—his mind still circling about the past, “What was that thing?” he found himself asking quietly.

  “Some kind of demonic nightmare creature, no idea what though.”

  Tosono stood there for several moments, still watching the spot. He’d rather not think about the monster at the moment… “No, what did it go through? I saw you do something to the ground and suddenly there was a weird light.”

  Fora followed his gaze to the empty space. “I made a dimensional gate,” she said slowly, “and sent it back to the surface of Teisel.” She glanced back at him, smiling hesitantly.

  She apparently knew exactly how unfeasible that sounded.

  Reiav frowned slightly, “I’m sorry but I’m getting more and more incredulous about things like this. How do you know all of this? You say you’re from another world but how did you get here? How do we know that we can trust you?” It was that last one I think that was hitting her the hardest. People don’t know how to exist when they can’t trust something about you, and I’m an expert in people not trusting me.

  Eloi backed away from the annoyed Reiav, apparently unwilling to get involved if this turned into an argument, which was understandable.

  Fora stared at her for a long moment. Tosono could only guess really as to what might be going through her head. Was she thinking up a lie? Was she preparing her next betrayal? Was she about to just turn around and walk away, refusing again to answer the pointed questions? Tosono found that any trust he had in her would dissolve if she did that.

  “I could tell you everything, but that would just lead to more questions, wouldn’t it? Would it help if I tell you I’m a lot older than I look? Would it help if I tell you that I’m a… servant of the god of balance?”

  Reiav nodded immediately though. “Yes, it would help.” No hesitation. No confusion. That was certainly odd.

  Tosono focused back on what Fora had claimed. A servant of a god? Tosono thought it over. It was certainly possible, though he knew a lot more about Rendai and Atharian than he knew about the god of balance. He remembered an old story once, a pair of twins born in the eye of the storm between worlds…

  Was Fora some kind of an avatar of the god of balance?

  “I don’t know if you can trust me,” Fora finally said, apparently just as taken off-guard by Reiav’s suddenly easy acceptance as Tosono had been, “You’ll have to figure that out for yourself, but I am on your side, either way.”