Perumah had stayed atop Wild Chains to keep watch, yet still she failed. With her hitching a ride on his soul to enter The Mother, she'd also seen the gargantuan corpse of the supposedly living Primordial Child through Dei's eyes at the same moment he did.

'Why couldn't I see her intent?'

There had been no response from The Mother, no flicker of her emotions at Dei's approach. Not until the very moment she decided to act. Until that point, she was all but invisible to Perumah, as the monster was bereft of emotions entirely.

The Mother, in her humanoid shape, was a mere puppet without directives until she suddenly decided to attack Dei.

Now, Dei bled out and she was helpless to do anything about it. Her current form could interact with the world, but only to a limited degree. She didn't have the pure presence of soul Dei did that allowed his full avatar to appear.

Dei was currently reliant on Wild Chains, an extension of his main soul, to exist here while his full body sat outside. If he'd entered, it would have resulted in a possession, not an invasion, and Dei would likely have died as his Identity became assimilated into the grand mind of The Mother.

Even if it was a reflection though, Dei's body and soul were still one. If he perished here, there was no chance of healing from the backlash of a destroyed identity. His soul would simply collapse.

Even if she could do very little, that did not mean she could do nothing. Tapping into her Blood affinity, she spread the shadowy material her body was made of into Dei's throat, entering his lungs. There, she started to drink of the liquid that drowned him, buying him just a bit more time.

Her weak soul presence diminished the power of her Blood affinity, but it was enough. She found that he'd fallen into a hibernation-like state, slowing his bleeding and boosting the rate at which his wounds healed.

When the wounds in his lungs finally healed enough to keep the blood at bay, she sighed in relief as she saw he was stable, and decided to not clear the lungs out fully.

The spell Homeostasis became better at things it had experienced dealing with. This might not be the last time Dei had his lungs pierced, so it would be best if Homeostasis became accustomed to such a process. In Dei's hibernating state, it couldn't cough the blood out, so it had to rely on secondary methods of draining the lungs, methods which were currently quite slow, but getting faster.

When she was confident he would live without supervision, she stood up, glancing around. Wild Chains had its own consciousness, and made the executive decision to get as far away from their previous location as possible, which she agreed with, as she could only assume that's where The Mother- the true Mother- existed in this world, and it seemed the false Mother they dealt with now was some sort of guard to the original, so it would not stray far from her.

The natural soul defenses were still too pitiful to pose a real threat, but the avatar herself was more than dangerous.

Still, looking backwards, she could see the massive sinkhole The Mother's corpse was found in, and how it was still open to the air despite this supposedly being some point long before the battle that resulted in her death. Clearly, the sinkhole was not some new development.

At first, she was simply going to let Wild Chains get as far away as possible and wait out Dei's spell when she paused, looking down at her body.

It was… defined. Not solidly, but more. In particular, her right half had somehow gained color, taking on a very tanned, fleshy tone. The same skin color she'd seen on Vy'Vex, though still slightly translucent.

The resonance with her Blood affinity felt the same, no closer than before, but it was clear there was some sort of reaction in this particular layer of The Mother.

Turning her body, she saw the phenomena shift with her, leaving the surface layer to take on a tan human color.

'Whichever part of me is closer to that direction, become more flushed out…'

"Wild Chains, could you go that way for me?" she asked the Leviathan, conveying directions to it.

It nodded its head and turned a new direction, flying over the sand dunes.

* * *

The petrified people disappeared almost instantly. It seemed that only the area around The Mother still had those, and everywhere else was more sand. There were no oases, no cacti, no life in general. It was completely barren, except for the occasional Lunar Spawn.

'I don't think this is how a desert is supposed to be… but I don't know for sure.'

Very rarely, there'd be rocky outcroppings filled with open-air tunnels, but that was about it.

The more they flew in this direction though, the more defined her new body became. The deeper the flesh went into the shadow making her up.

* * *

Around seven or eight hours of flight later, there were finally signs of life. Roads made of a brown stone, suspiciously similar in coloration to the petrified people.

'Surely they do not use the statues to build things? I believe desecration of the dead is taboo in most cultures, but maybe it is simply a material that looks similar.'

She had, after all, seen rocky outcroppings of brown stone all across the desert, and not all of those could be petrified people. Some had to be natural stone.

On the roads, she sometimes saw wagon trains of blurred faceless people, or shifting images of camps on the side of the road. Everything was in a state of flux, showing that The Mother knew the terrain of the area, but the specifics of the people weren't quite as solid. The fact that she had even the general location of people down was still wildly impressive.

The roads eventually started to converge into camps, though she noticed there were no large settlements or buildings yet

* * *

Only half an hour of flight later, they finally arrived. They had yet to see even the smallest sign of a building thus far, yet now a city stretching from horizon to horizon appeared with little fanfare. Not only that, but the desert finally ended, giving way to open ocean.

Looking down at the city from above, Perumah saw four ringed walls. The smallest ring, in the center, had incredibly nice, well polished marble buildings. The second ring contained more moderate, middle class houses, while also containing the shopping centers and communal buildings, such as a grand library she could make out from even here. The third ring took a drastic fall in quality, but it was much larger than the previous two, tens of miles wider than the other two, filled with shoddy brickwork and leaky thatched roofs. An army of people, all in poverty. The fourth ring was even larger than the third, though without being packed to the brim. It held farms and ranches of animals, clearly where they grew the products they needed to live.

Directing Wild Chains to land in one of the fields, she jumped off, glancing around at the shifting figures of people and animals, each in a half-state of existence.

'I wonder, how far could The Mother sense at this age? And how?'

Now that they weren't flying around, she finally did something she'd wanted to do the entire time. Walking in front of Wild Chains, she looked through its eyes to see her own face, the person she'd slowly been transforming into.

She was… a very tan skinned woman, with black hair and brown eyes. At some point, clothing had appeared on her in the shape of a rough burlap dress that stretched from her shoulders to her ankles.

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The terrible quality of clothing combined with the lack of footwear told Perumah that the original person this face belonged to must've been quite poor, yet… she did not look unhealthy. Her skin was smooth and supple, her body perfectly shapely, her hair silky and combed, intentionally set to fall over her shoulder.

She studied herself for a long while, unable to pinpoint the odd feeling or expression on the woman's face. She was… almost ethereal. Unreal. She was timelessly beautiful enough to transcend boundaries, even Perumah finding a slight allure to the face of a foreign species.

She turned away from Wild Chains, returning her vision to her own body to face the city, sure she'd find the woman there. The only question was where? She had to be somewhere in the third ring, the poor state of dress her only clue. Everything after that though? Perumah would have to plan as she went.

Walking back onto Wild Chains, they set off.

* * *

Perumah noticed there was a complete lack of soul defenses in this particular place. Either because it was far from the avatar of this layer or that this city was not a place of monsters in this time period.

She dropped down from Wild Chains, telling it to fly high just in case there were enemies around, but stay close enough to catch her and retreat if necessary. She wasn't as helpless anymore as she had been when they first arrived. With her body fleshed out, she noticed that her usual powers returned as well, leaving her much more dangerous.

She adjusted quickly to walking around in the new human body, relying on the stolen memories of those she'd devoured long ago, and was soon traveling side streets filled with blurred shades.

She tried touching a few, but they simply slipped through her fingers.

'If I were some gorgeous woman in poverty, where would I be?'

Her first thought was… a brothel, most likely. But those were well paid and dressed nicer. If Perumah reflected the woman's current state, she was wearing ratty, worn clothing.

If not there, and she was in the third ring, where? Poverty meant high levels of crime; crime meant rape and kidnapping for the beautiful. If Perumah were human, she would stick to well populated areas, away from alleys.

So she did just that. Making her way to the main road that spanned from the second ring, ran through the third, and made its way all the way to the fourth, she looked up and down it.

A sea of blurs, but something told her the woman would be solid. After all, why would Perumah mirror and be defined by a being whose existence was unsure?

Jumping up to a roof, she watched thousands pass by, scanning them all.

In the distance, closer to the fourth ring, Perumah just barely saw a solid figure walk from one side of the street to the other, and immediately took off. Running straight through the intangible people.

Rounding the corner hardly a few seconds later, she half expected the person to be gone, for the alley to be empty but… no, they were right here. They just weren't who Perumah was looking for.

Her brow scrunched as an elderly man hobbled his way further away from the crowd. This was… not the person she expected. Sure, he had the same skin color as the woman, but she was starting to think the skin color was present on everyone in the desert. They were, after all, in the desert. Dark skin was to be expected. That one fact could be a simple correlation.

Following him further into the side street, she called out "Excuse me."

As it should be, the man did not respond. His emotions, too, said he was oblivious to her presence, but she'd learned that could be deceiving. Reaching out, she lightly tapped his back with her finger… and it went right through. Waving her hand through his body, there was no reaction.

He was a simple memory.

But why was he so defined?

It took him fifteen minutes to reach his house, one of the nicer places in the neighborhood though still quite shoddy. He set the groceries he'd gotten from the market on the table, and hugged his wife.

She, too, was a defined being. Recorded in detail.

They spoke of something in a language she'd never heard, but that didn't stop her. She didn't technically know any languages, she read people's emotions and extrapolated meaning, and it was no different here.

What she found though was nothing noteworthy. They spoke of their days, the dinner they were soon to cook, the local news, or just general small talk.

Perumah noticed something odd though. When they spoke a name, their words became garbled. Like the name no longer existed, and the meaning was stricken from the memory. Perhaps of people whose lives hadn't been recorded?

Nonetheless, she had no other leads, so she listened to them for a long time. It'd been morning when they arrived and the desert seemed to have long days, so she still had a good amount of daylight left, but it wouldn't last. She couldn't just keep wandering around, hoping to stumble upon her target.

Her patience proved itself slightly over forty five minutes later, when the woman spoke a name, and it wasn't gibberish.

"Zyz'Ti"

Perumah heard the word, and sensed the emotion behind it. This elderly lady felt Zyz'Ti was a sweet girl who helped them frequently, and was supposedly quite beautiful.

'My target.'

Quickly pilfering the old woman's memories, her theory was confirmed when she got the general idea of a face similar to her current one and, luckily, a schedule.

Zyz'Ti would occasionally stop by the old lady's home to drop off some sort of burnable plant before heading in a certain direction, supposedly home. Nothing else was known about Zyz'Ti, as the woman evaded conversation or familiarization frequently.

Stepping out of the house, Perumah was about to head off into the direction her target went frequently when something on her arm caught her eye. Looking down, she saw her right hand and the burlap clothing on her chest were dyed red.

Blood red.

Leaping up into the air, she got Wild Chains to scoop her up as she blasted a wide-area mental attack, hoping to repel any attackers yet getting no response. Glancing around, she saw nobody. Another assessment of herself showed that she wasn't hurt at all, blood was simply appearing on her skin.

'No, on Zyz'Ti's skin. Is the woman dying? No… she isn't hurt. This isn't her blood. Was she caught in something?'

Still on top of Wild Chains, she briefly checked on Dei, seeing that his state was unchanged and would likely be out for another day or two until his lungs cleared. Then, she sent her mount flying low over the city, scanning the minds of everyone she could touch.

Most of the illusory minds only existed on a surface level, their thoughts slipping away before she could get something tangible. Now that she had a name to track her target with, she could easily search for the specific query of Zyz'Ti.

At first, she followed the directions of the elderly couple, finding another person who knew the name, looking through their memories, and getting pointed in yet another direction.

Zyz'Ti was an elusive girl. She never said more than a few words to any one person, but it seemed everyone had a high opinion of her personality and especially her beauty. The men were enamored, and the women couldn't even find it in themselves to be jealous, simply appreciating such a work of art.

Hardly a minute later, Perumah noticed the blood stopped spreading. Then, it began to disappear.

Fifteen seconds after that, she was completely clean again. Burlap sack returned to the original state of slightly worn and a bit dirty, but not overall in terrible condition.

Narrowing her eyes, Perumah could do nothing but follow the trail that led her in a random pattern around the city. By this point, she would've had to have been an idiot to not realize Zyz'Ti was intentionally vague about herself. Still, she kept to a schedule, and eventually Perumah found herself sitting next to a man stacking some buckets outside the front of his house, excitedly waiting for Zyz'Ti to appear, which she always did on this day of the week, at this time of the day, to help him carry water from the communal well to his house to help take care of his ailing mother.

When the moment arrived, Perumah narrowed her eyes as Zyz'Ti… actually showed up. Not a hair out of place, not a worry in the world.

She held a light smile with a playful look in her eyes. Perumah felt almost scandalized to realize that, despite them sharing a face, Zyz'Ti was somehow just prettier. She carried herself well in the burlap clothing, ran her fingers through her hair while talking to the innocent man, and just leaned deeply into what made so many fall for her.

Perumah's suspicions that the woman would somehow see her were proven wrong when she didn't respond to the presence of herself. It wasn't a mere act either, as Perumah tested by carefully running her fingers through Zyz'Ti's back, letting it phase through with no response.

Yet still, Perumah simply could not believe the woman wasn't really here. She'd expected the world to turn itself upside down, for some primal ancient power to show itself. For something to happen when they finally met. Yet here she stood, watching Zyz'Ti talk about the weather while carrying an empty wooden bucket to a fountain.

She was somehow even tempted to lower her guard, to just assume Zyz'Ti was a regular human at this point in her life. Yet the desire was passing, and entirely based on emotion. She knew better. She didn't forget about the blood that'd been reflected from Zyz'Ti onto her own body only minutes prior to her arriving in front of the current boy.

More than that, she'd quickly tried reading into Zyz'Ti's emotions… only to hit a brick wall. Not because she felt nothing, nor because she was protected. No, Zyz'Ti felt emotion, but to a limited, untranslatable degree. Zyz'Ti felt but a single thing at any given moment. One emotion, more intense than all the rest combined should be.

Hunger.

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