Perhaps it was her recent near death experience or the fact that everything on Ember felt like it was designed specifically to screw with her, but for a split second, Rayna actually believed Pycha's declaration. After all, she was a human in a Lerian body, she had been made Administrator while she was asleep, and apparently, every third person she met was a Lerian in disguise. What was one more revelation on top of her already growing list of secrets that she was supposed to be keeping?

Eventually her brain caught up to the situation and restored some semblance of order to her jumbled thoughts. Rayna couldn't be a Corvi; she already knew whose body she resided in. Not to mention, she absorbed Essence on a regular basis—something that would prove deadly for someone native to Ashen.

She was almost ready to explain all of this to Pycha in a manner much too calm for the current situation, but Corban's recovery was quicker than hers, and he was not nearly as diplomatic.

"That's the dumbest thing you've said so far," he said, balling his hands into fists. "You're just trying to distract us from the fact that you almost killed Rayna." He crossed his arms, his expression furious. "If you're trying to convince Rayna that you aren't a damn psychopath, you're doing a shitty job of it."

Rayna blinked, surprised by the strength of his response. She appreciated his support, but it seemed overblown at the moment. Perhaps the shock simply hadn't worn off yet. "Corban, stop." She shook her hand out, letting the energy disperse. She didn't see where it went, but Pycha's spells must have dealt with it because it didn't linger in the air. "This was an accident, albeit one brought on by recklessness." To Pycha, she said, "I'm not a Corvi, but I'm not strictly a Lerian, either. It's complicated. I'm a…" What was that phrase Shela used again? "…Soul-swapper?"

"Soul-switching?" Pycha frowned in confusion. "That only works between Lerians. You need a Core to switch souls."

"As we've already established," Corban said in an acerbic tone. "Rayna has a Core."

Pycha looked unconvinced. He grabbed a chair and sat down, seeming to age several decades in an instant. He rubbed his face, careful not to catch his finger on his empty eye socket. "If that isn't your body, then whose is it?" he demanded. "No Lerian would willingly switch bodies with a Corvi. It would mean death for both parties."

"Oh, for Pete's sake!" Corban snapped, throwing his hands up in frustration. "She's not a Corvi. We're Humans!" He gestured wildly between himself and Rayna. "Chosen, or whatever you call it in your stupid cave city. We were dragged here from our planet, Earth, by that incompetent Administrator—Your Administrator—against our will. You get it? We're not the bad guys here. We were kidnapped and we're getting nothing but bullshit from everyone we meet. If you really want to know whose body that is, take it up with that moron Cremble and leave the two of us alone."

Rayna raised an eyebrow at Corban, who was breathing hard like he'd just run a mile. "Did that make you feel any better?"

Corban huffed. "Maybe…"

Pycha watched them incredulously. "That was… a lot of information…"

"Try living it," Rayna said, her exhaustion showing in her voice. She grabbed a chair and sank into it with a heavy sigh.

Pycha shook his head. "Regardless, this is an abomination. You shouldn't exist, Rayna. No, you shouldn't be able to exist. This contradicts the laws of nature."

A muscle in Rayna's cheek twitched. Apparently she'd gone from genius to abomination in the span of three minutes. She wasn't sure if this was an improvement on her situation.

It's not, Phira confirmed. I find this man quite disagreeable.

You and me both.

Pycha rubbed his temples as Corban pulled up a chair next to Rayna. "You're currently in a Lerian body, but somehow you are resistant to Miasma—you would have to be, or your Core would eat through your flesh." He held up his arm, indicating the injury he'd sustained when messing with her Core. "Your whole body should look like this."

Rayna grimaced. "You don't have to sound so disappointed."

"I'm not disappointed," Pycha said. "Merely confused. You've more power in that Core than you ought. I'm an Eldar, Rayna, we're not easily affected by Miasma. It would take a lot of pure Miasma to cause such an injury."

"Well, Miasma has never really been an issue for me," Rayna said. "So maybe you're basing your assumptions on a faulty premise?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I'm not sensitive to either energy," Rayna said. "Energy just feels like energy… Miasma is black, and Essence is white, but they're basically the same thing…"

Pycha shook his head. "Another impossibility. The energies have opposite natures, Rayna. Regardless of which you are attuned to, you should be sensitive to one and be able to use the other."

"I think by this point, we've already established that Rayna is impossible," Corban said with considerably less acid in his tone than earlier. "If you want to keep talking, maybe we can come up with a more useful topic of discussion, like how quickly you can get us off this rock."

"Rayna, can you do me a favor?" Pycha said, barely acknowledging that Corban had spoken.

"Depends on the favor," Rayna said carefully.

"There's no danger in it," Pycha assured her. "I just want you to hold up your palms and press some energy into the air, first from your Core, then from your Mana pool."

Rayna considered saying no, but she didn't see any reason to refuse. It wasn't an extreme request, though she wondered why he needed to see that. She raised her palms face up as instructed and pressed Miasma into the air. The two little balls of energy floated above her palm, glowing black in a way that somehow still lit up her dark skin. Then she pushed out some of her Mana.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"No, not at the same time!" Pycha said quickly, his eyes wide. "That'll make them… explode?"

Rayna shook her head. "If they were going to explode, wouldn't they have done so when my Core was first put into this body?"

Pycha frowned thoughtfully at the swirling balls of white and black energy. "Not necessarily. The energy in your core should be inert. Ready to be used in magic or healing. Once outside of the body, the energy returns to its natural state."

"If it's inert, why should a Miasmic Core in a Lerian body be a problem?" Corban asked.

Pycha stood and moved closer to better examine the energy. "Sensitivity to energy is not a reaction between the energies, it's a reaction to the energy itself. May I?"

Rayna combined the energy balls into one and held the larger orb out for Pycha to examine. He raised his good hand, hesitating a moment before slowly pushing it into the energy. He stood there for a long moment, turning his hand back and forth.

"You've neutralized it," he said, looking up at her face, a disturbing mixture of hope and wonder in his expression. "The Essence and Miasma are no longer reacting. You're not an abomination, you're a miracle!"

"All right, that's my limit." Rayna let the energy disperse.

Pycha blinked, backing away in surprise. "What? Was it something I said?"

"It's everything you said," Rayna said, standing up. "The labels you keep trying to put on me are starting to get on my nerves. I'm not an abomination, a genius, or a miracle. I'm a person who's tired of this and needs to get back to work. You're interfering with that and putting everyone in jeopardy because you won't take no for an answer."

Corban stood as well, nodding his approval to Rayna's statement. "We need to leave. Amon is probably freaking out and I don't want him causing beef between Humans and Lord Myre just because we got delayed. Maybe we should call him…"

Rayna grimaced, unable to keep the guilt off of her face.

"What's wrong?" Corban asked.

"I… may have lost the card…" Rayna said.

"You what?!" Corban snapped.

Rayna flinched. "It was in my hands when I went to Ashen and I must have dropped it when I hit the water…"

Corban frowned. "Water? What are you talking about?"

"It's how I ended up in the tunnels in the first place," Rayna explained. "There's no island on the other side. I almost drowned before I managed to get back."

"You can build a portal to Ashen?" Pycha asked, his hope returning.

"They only work for me," Rayna said quickly before he could come up with another scheme for how to use her for his people's benefit. "Anyway, the card is somewhere at the bottom of the ocean. I doubt I could find it even if I went back."

Corban groaned. "Rayna, that was a prototype! We're going to have to start over from scratch!"

"Not from scratch," Rayna argued. "You already made it once. Amon will remember the steps you took to build it; this isn't that much of a setback."

"It is if it means we can't talk to Amon," Corban said. "How are we supposed to tell him we're delayed if goat-man over there tries to keep us longer."

"I have a name," Pycha said, offended by Corban's nickname for him.

"And I'm pretty sure you don't know mine," Corban countered.

"I'm sorry, okay," Rayna said. "It's been a really long day."

"Perhaps I could help you recreate the device," Pycha suggested. "I have extensive knowledge of runes, both Essence and Miasmic."

"Can you plug it into the System network?" Corban asked pointedly. "We need Amon for this. Where is the Keeper?"

Pycha didn't answer.

"How about the Keeper's simulacrum stone?" Rayna tried. "If you have it and the base, I can get the hub operational again."

"You can't go yet," Pycha said. "Your ability, it needs to be studied. If we can determine how you did this, you could—"

"Save everyone on Ember?" Rayna finished for him, barely resisting the urge to roll her eyes. "Has it ever occurred to any of you that you could save yourselves? You're not the first Lerian I've met and every single one of you is looking for someone else to fix your problems."

"This is different," Pycha insisted. "You could fix the energy crisis. You could allow Lerians and Corvi to coexist."

"No, I can't," Rayna said firmly, shutting this down before he got too invested. "About the extent of my ability right now is helping to fix your System, and even that is a stretch. I'll bring hubs back online, close boundary cracks where I can and play Ronari's stupid games, but I will not become a lab rat or some messiah; you can forget it."

Rayna headed for the door.

Pycha didn't try to stop her, but he followed her out of the room. "Where are you going?"

Corban caught up with Rayna, eyeing Pycha with thinly veiled dislike.

"I'm going to see if I can get the teleporter online without the Keeper," Rayna said.

"I'm sorry. I came off too strongly at first," Pycha said. "I was hasty—desperate even—but I need this Rayna. I promise, it will only be a couple of months, a year at the very most; I will send you on your way then without complaint."

"The System doesn't have a year," Rayna said, turning on him. "It almost imploded a month ago."

She came to the hub searching for a Keeper, but from what she could tell, the Keeper was long since dead. Either that, or Pycha had hidden them away where Rayna would never find them. It was a dead end that wasn't worth pursuing.

"Two weeks!" Pycha said desperately. "Just give me two weeks to figure out how you did it. Please, Rayna, my people don't have Cores like you do. They have no way to heal from energy exposure."

"They can build their own Cores," Rayna said. "You don't need me for that."

A muscle in Pycha's cheek twitched and he turned away.

The cogs turned slowly in Rayna's mind. There were no A'lerians in Eeren. No one even tried to evolve besides Pycha. He told Rayna that no one could reach the same heights as her as well.

Kunder and Larsha's discussion about light and dark magic…

"They're Corvi," Rayna said. "Everyone in Eeren is a Corvi pretending to be a Lerian."

"Not pretending," Pycha said defensively. "They believe themselves to be Lerians."

Corban frowned. "And you haven't enlightened them because…?"

"They're better off not knowing," Pycha said. "They have an… altered view… of what Lerians are. Some have Lerian blood in them as well. They don't need to know what their long-dead ancestors lost and what they can never reclaim."

"Hang on, how is that even possible?" Corban asked. "Corvi are shape-shifters, right? They should have realized something was off the first time a baby popped out as the wrong species."

Pycha shook his head. "Corvi are not using a spell or runes to merely look like another creature, they are physically mimicking the traits of another race. When a baby is born, it will match the form of the mother, which is why historically, Corvi gave birth in their natural forms. However, the Lerian traits they have taken on are the only thing protecting them from the Essence in the air, so they never transformed back."

Rayna couldn't help but feel sorry for the man and for his people. It was a terrible situation all around, but she stood by what she said. She wasn't qualified to be the savior of Ember. She couldn't even find Emma. Hell, she couldn't even find the hubs at the moment.

"I'm sorry," Rayna said. "There's nothing I can do for you." She turned around and pushed her way into the teleport room.

Rayna stopped in the entryway, her eyes widening.

The teleporter room didn't look any different from the one in Amon's hub, except that nothing in the room was active. The bottom of the teleporter was open, wires and metal parts strewn across the floor. Some of the parts looked damaged, with black scorch marks tarnishing their surfaces. Try as she might, Rayna couldn't feel even a hint of magic emanating from anything in the room.

"The teleporter hasn't worked since the Cataclysm," Pycha said gravely. "I had hoped to convince you to stay before you realized why I couldn't let you leave. I'm sorry Rayna, truly, but as far as I am aware, there's no way to leave this island."

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