Armela didn't like my question much.

  Having just suffered through my last open-ended inquiry, she spun out of my embrace and then punched me squarely in the stomach as hard as she could through the water. The force of it was enough to lift me up and out of the pool and send me spiraling several meters through the air to land with a definitive thud near the fence line. I called out to her from where I lay.

  "Are you sure you don't just have a problem with questions in general? I think you just have a problem with questions."

  She snapped back almost immediately.

  "No! I've got a problem with your questions! You know the kind of questions I like? ‘Where is this?’ Or ‘Who are you?’ Or, ‘Why are you doing this?’ I like those kinds of questions because they have simple fucking answers! You, on the other hand, seem to ask nothing but complicated, existential, annoying fucking questions! ‘Ahhh, what do you see when you look at this leeeaafffff…’ Fuck off!”

  I’d clearly stepped onto something of a landmine.

  “If I gave two shits about half the idiotic topics you waste your time thinking about, I'd have gone to a fucking college instead of becoming a mercenary. There's more to learn from life at the end of a fucking sword than there will ever be with your nose snugly wedged between some dusty old parchment. You son of a bitch, how many times will I need to tell you not to fuck with me! I swear you're just doing it to get a reaction out of me now, is that it? Do you want me to beat you? Go ahead then, you prick! Test me!”

  She was massively overreacting. While I could understand her being moderately frustrated by yet another hard-to-answer question, I hardly believed it would warrant the seething hostility she was now directing towards me. So either she hated those kinds of questions far more than anything else in her life, or something else was at play here.

  "Armela… are you alright?"

  She didn't hesitate, almost blurting out her response.

  “No! I mean yes, I am! Arrgghh I don't fucking know anymore. I'm not used to any of this shit. I remember every single small little detail as if it only happened a moment ago. This complicated shit with Rel, the village, assassins, that… fucking pig… I feel like my brain should burst. I just want things to be simple; I want things to be normal. I want to know where I'm going and who I'm hunting. I want the assurance of a heavy sword in my grip and the thrum of battle coursing through my veins. I want a warm bed at night; I want you to make love to me; I want to share good food with you. I fear what I am now… and what's in store for me.”

  She picked at something floating across the surface of the steaming water.

  “When you tell me that things are only going to get stranger… I worry, Vita! And then you ask me these stupid, asinine questions that no one can answer, and it's just… it's too much for me. I'm not apologizing because I fucking told you to stop, and you didn't, but I will admit you probably didn't deserve that. Just… try to be a little more empathetic to me, yeah?”

  I was stunned. Clearly I'd been wrong about how well she'd been adapting to the situation; not only that, but I'd utterly failed to communicate with her effectively regarding her trauma or her place in my life. I'd been treating her like a follower, some… accomplice to my goals rather than an actual partner. She'd taken the time to pull me aside and give me a space in which I could vent my concerns, but I hadn't once made myself available to her like that.

  I'd just simply chalked her chipper attitude up to being incredibly adaptable. But the more I thought about that, the more I recognized it was something we all did to varying degrees. Disassociate from the events, compartmentalize the pain, and face the world with a smile and a nod. It didn't just erase the pain, or the memory of it. And I'd given her a perfect memory of it.

  “I'm sorry, Armela. Truly. I haven't been considering your feelings at all, and I've no excuse for it. Regardless of the circumstance you are still my mate; your concerns shouldn't be ignored or brushed off. Confusing you with unnecessarily vague questions wasn’t my intention; I just can't help myself. I'll do better from now on. And as for your worries, I won't coddle you from the truth; things are going to get even stranger. But that isn't necessarily a bad thing, not for you, and not for the people of the world.”

  I rose from the dirt, sweeping debris from my body as I walked back to the edge of the pool.

  “I never want you to believe that I won't be looking out for your well-being; it's one of my highest priorities; so if it ever comes to the point that you question where my concerns lie, please tell me. I will rectify them immediately. You’ve done so much for me and I appreciate that, and believe me, I know how damn lucky I am to have found a mate as amazing as you. I don't want to seem ungrateful for that. Thank you for being honest with me.”

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  Armela was silent for a long moment before she softly answered.

  "You're welcome, you dick. Now are you getting back in, or are you just going to hover around the edge of the pool like a hunk of lead?"

  I smiled warmly and slid back into the calm water. This was likely as close to being forgiven as I'd get, so it was best to just take it and learn from this. I needed to treat Armela with more respect and understanding. She'd been through a lot in the last week, and continuing to push her like I had been would only cause larger fractures between us. I slid through the water towards her as she continued to back away from me. I cocked my head at her, and she simply kept backing away, a wry smile on her face.

  So it was a chase, then. I picked up my pace, and she accelerated to account for it. By the time she reached the edge of the pool, we were both practically hydroplaning across the surface. Armela laughed joyously as she impacted the edge and then shot out to the side and away. A second later I landed where she had been and pivoted to follow, only to be met by a suddenly oncoming Armela. She'd reversed course and slammed into me before I could get going, carrying us both up and out of the pool. We rolled twice until we came to rest, with her pinning me to the ground.

  She hungrily sought my lips, and I gave in to her lustful approach. It seemed like I stood corrected; this was likely as close as she would come to saying she forgave me. Several hours later, we both stepped through a rift into our room at the inn, where she all but stumbled to bed and immediately passed out. I gave the inn a quick sweep under infrared and spotted both Trekka and Rumi asleep in their rooms. A third person I recognized from the meeting earlier sat behind the concierge's desk in the lobby.

  It hadn't occurred to me that Rumi would have someone on night shift, but they obviously couldn't be up all night and day seeing to the needs of the inn alone. I'd have to greet this person properly before they departed after their shift, as this inn would soon become very familiar to me. I set an alarm to wake before dawn came and nestled myself into the bed next to Armela and gathered her up in my arms like a body pillow.

  It wasn't long before I entered the domain of my soul once more; stepping across the echoing void towards the door I knew was there. Somehow it seemed to be both incredibly far off and directly in front of me at the same time. The distance I traveled with each step seemed to shift and flex as though I were walking across the tops of waves; this caused me to approach it more cautiously than I would have otherwise.

  I wondered idly if my experience here would be different every time I stepped into this space. Before long my forehead gently thumped into the solid wood of the door, causing me to rock back slightly; if I'd been asked, I'd have said there were probably another 5 kilometers between myself and the portal to Nia'cyl's room. I softly knocked on it, waiting patiently for some sign of life on the other side, but when none came, I reached for the small knob and allowed myself entry.

  The room was just how I'd last seen it; books and scrolls and loose pieces of paper cluttered every available surface. Ink pots and feather quills lay scattered about the space haphazardly. Small potted ferns hung from the ceiling in the corners, and soft amber lights glowed at regular intervals around the perimeter of her walls. There was a window on one wall, but the only thing on the other side of it was star-speckled space.

  I crept through the narrow aisle that had been carved through stacks of books, careful not to bump anything and set the entire mountain of them tumbling down. I slowly made my way towards the small writing desk that was tucked up against the wall to my right. With all the sundry papers and half-clean dishes strewn across it, I couldn't imagine any writing actually got done there. The chair, too, had stacks of rolled scrolls, loose parchment, and a teetering tower of books upon which rested a half-eaten apple.

  I plucked the apple from atop the books and wondered if there was any place to discard it. With that thought, the apple disappeared from my hand with an audible pop. So my thoughts had some level of control in this space, or at least could alter the state of things to some degree. I wondered if attempting the same thing with one of the scrolls would cause the destruction of a memory Nia'Cyl had; I didn't want to risk such a thing, as there was no telling the damage that could do, both to her and myself. Instead, I set about trying to organize the surface of the desk, shuffling pages, re-rolling scrolls, closing books, and destroying more unfinished food and dishes.

  After about 2 hours, I could see some parts of the desk once again. A nicely lacquered oak desktop shone back at me from between the towering yellowing parchment. Taking a break, I looked around at the rest of the room again; there wasn't a single shelf. The walls were almost entirely unadorned save for the odd linen wall-hanging; further to that, there were no drawers to speak of beyond the ones in the desk I was sitting at. Small alchemical drawers were stacked along the back of the desk, 15 across and 5 high. Each was labeled with various elements and ingredients; from iron filings to newt tails. The drawers under the desk on either side of the leg-well were filled with nothing but mounds of scribbled notes. Page after page after page until there was no more space for paper.

  Space… My mind picked at a thread of wonder. This space clearly wasn’t physical, evidenced by the disappearing food items and non-Euclidean geometry outside the door. So how was I here? If my soul had traveled here, what was my soul composed of? Information was being exchanged between me and this space. My body was still snugly wrapped around Armela in our inn room. It’s not like my physical self dissolved when I traveled to Nia’cyl’s room, so what was I interacting with?

  I looked down at the sigil on the back of my hand and noted that the wisp of smoke Nia’cyl had added to the design glowed dully in the amber light of her room. As if it had been activated. Was it… transmitting? Receiving? I scanned it but could only detect faint traces of infrared light being emitted as heat from the glow. The mystery of this soul business and the crystals was driving me mad. They were linked; I knew that much, but how?! What was the mechanism of their function?

  I was growing frustrated that I couldn’t perceive it. I knew there was something there; all the evidence said there was, so what was it? It felt as though I were pressed up against a shop window. I could see through it, but couldn’t interact with it. Then it occurred to me. I was interacting with a separate dimension. A portion of my existence had entered a higher dimension. This soul room, the Fae Kingdoms, the weaving of The Endless Song, they were all dimensions.

  Like humans moved through four different dimensions, I’d entered a fifth. But how? How was the mark on the back of my hand responsible for this? I looked up from it, prompted by the sense of being watched. Then, I noticed Nia'cyl sitting in her chair across from the bed; she was sipping more tea while gazing at me. I hadn't noticed her enter the room, which unnerved me.

  "What, pray tell, are you doing?"

  I looked back at the semi-organized desk.

  "Honestly, I'm not really too sure. I just felt like… I needed to clean it? No, that's not right. I felt like it needed to be cleaned, and I was here, so I did it."

  An amused smirk crept across her incredibly red lips.

  "Would that not be the task of the owner? Did you not think, perhaps, that you should ask for permission? What if one of those apples had been a cherished memory? Perhaps from a passionate tryst I'd not wanted to forget? But consent to such things aside, what is it you had hoped to gain from rummaging through the detritus of my soul, Vita? Clearly you found it quite cluttered, but what did you stand to achieve by sorting it? My thanks? Some nebulous reward? Or did you perhaps see a mess and, recognizing that it did not please you, choose to make irreversible changes to it simply because you desired to?"

  For the second time in as many hours, I felt chastised. Though in this situation I didn't feel as though my actions had been wrong; in fact, I felt rather offended that she would try to paint what I did in a poor light. Obviously, the argument she was putting forth was right. I'd barged in and started displacing her things without asking, but… that didn't feel right. Somewhere in my own soul I knew that what I'd done was the proper thing, and that feeling was tied somehow to the bond we shared.