Yuzu tensed in frantic panic as she looked side to side for something, anything to save her friend. An idea seized her as she thrust her hand into the bag at her waist, pulling out a teardrop shaped brooch made of multi-coloured gold. Inset into the center of the brooch was a brilliant emerald that glimmered with an intense vitality from the flames.

Taking the brooch's chain with both hands Yuzu ignored the flames and heat and threw the amulet around Char Char's neck. Her face and arms and hands came ablaze with pain as she embraced Char Char deeply.

It was an act of desperation and guilt, a final action that Yuzu fully expected to fail, sending both her and her friend to a painful and pitiful death.

But to Yuzu's surprise, she found that the flames were no longer biting her. Char Char's body cooled rapidly as the two girls slowly fell to their knees. Yuzu continued to hold Char Char tight, until she felt two arms on her back returning the hug.

Relief filled Yuzu, melting away the pain and fatigue for just a moment. A heavy sigh caught in her throat and she found herself holding back tears. Char Char also seemed to be going through a range of emotions as she trembled, her shoulders shaking gently.

"Are you… laughing?" Yuzu parted the embrace with a quizzical expression, placing her palms on her friend's shoulders as she held Char Char at arms length.

"No!" Char Char's face was lowered as she shook her head, but the next moment she looked up at Yuzu with a tearful smile, "I'm not laughing, you're laughing!"

"No I'm not!" Yuzu scowled at the childish remark, but seeing her friend giggle she found herself unable to hold back a smile of her own.

For a brief moment, these two were alone in their existence, taking relief in the simple fact that they had survived.

~

Yuzu woke to the brightness of the midday sun streaming in through an open window. Soft, silken curtains billowed with a quiet late summer, early autumn breeze. The woven straw pillow beneath her head was soft, but its texture was strange to her.

She pushed herself upright with a start as she realized she had no recollection of where she was, or how she came to arrive in this unfamiliar bed. Her eyes were drawn to a square mirror on the table across from her, where her reflection showed that she had been dressed in a pale off-white silk robe. Her hair was straight and combed recently. She looked… healthy?

Something felt wrong.

She brought her fingers to her cheeks, feeling the soft texture of her skin as her memories returned to her.

She remembered giggling with Char Char for a brief moment before the adrenaline wore off. Then came a flood of pain across the entire front of her body.

Yuzu quickly pulled back the sleeves of the robe, revealing unblemished skin, so different from the bright red, blistered skin covered in deep red cuts in her memory. For a moment she just stared at her arms, trying to make sense of the discrepancy.

"You fainted in the cavern. You've been asleep for three days." Firuzeh's voice interrupted Yuzu's reverie from the doorway, "How are you feeling?"

Yuzu frowned at the question, feeling something was off, though her mind was still muddy from slumber. Firuzeh was dressed in her usual elegant fashion of flowing silks, though the cut of the fabric was clearly Huan in nature. The Saboteur didn't carry any visible weapons on her, and Yuzu found herself thinking about all the intricate folds in the clothing where items could be hidden.

Firuzeh didn't press Yuzu for an answer, but entered the room and sat down next to the bed. She crossed her hands on her lap in a patient pose as she let Yuzu orient herself.

"Char Char—"

"She's well." Firuzeh said in a manner that eased Yuzu's worries, "She's been caring for you this whole time. Her and Naomi. They'll probably be back soon."

Hearing these words, Yuzu instinctively reached out with her spirit to read the fate tapestry, and at this moment she realized what was off. The tapestry was present, but it was weak and hard to focus on. The very act of activating her spirit sent waves of nausea through her head.

"Try not to exert yourself. Naomi's medicines were able to heal your wounds, but your other planar bodies are still injured. Your aetheric body was in particularly bad condition - any worse and you might have died from that."

My aetheric body… Those injuries would be backlash from trying to manipulate the fate thread of the Corrupted One… Yuzu surmised, recalling the immense pain and the injuries to her hands and arms during the battle. Now that she was out of the life and death situation, Yuzu realized that her ability to read and alter the tapestry had already been heavily compromised by the end of the fight.

She had never been injured in this way when manipulating the tapestry, but she had also never blatantly ignored the warnings from her spiritual intuition. The danger, then, of handling corrupted threads and entities far more powerful than her, was that she could be directly injured or even killed by her own actions.

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"Don't worry, you should recover in time." Firuzeh said gently, seeing the dizziness hit Yuzu, "Nature is an effective healer, but unfortunately it's not particularly fast. But the good news is with the medicines that they're collecting now, Naomi expects a full recovery in a few months."

Yuzu held back a scowl from the information, not taking it as good news at all. She tried reaching out to the threads again, and this time she really did scowl. In her current state she was effectively blind and handicapped, unable to impact the tapestry at all.

"My belongings." Yuzu said tersely, barely summoning the politeness to add, "Please."

"Here." Firuzeh said, reading the mood as she picked up Yuzu's waist bag and a bundle that contained the other items on her person. The heavy clink of coins was muffled from within the bundle as Firuzeh placed it on the bed next to Yuzu. "Char Char was the only one that handled your items. It seemed appropriate."

"Thank you." Yuzu said with a tone of finality.

"I'll leave you alone then. Ring the bell beside you if you need me, I'll be just downstairs." Firuzeh didn't stand on ceremony as she left the room, closing the door behind her.

Yuzu barely was able to wait for the door to close before she pulled her waist bag onto her lap and flipped open the cover. She pulled out a small bundle of cloth tucked into the corner of the bag and unrolled it, revealing a small white porcelain jar. The cork made a light popping sound as she pulled it open, revealing the clear, fragrant liquid that filled just over half of the small container.

Yuzu wasted no time as she downed the entire vial, ignoring the voice of Argus in her head that had warned her not to drink more than a third of the vial at a time. The clear, alcohol-like liquid ran down her throat so smoothly that she barely could feel that she had swallowed anything at all. A refreshing coolness spread from her throat throughout her body.

She closed her eyes, consciously directing the medicine to several meridians in her body where the aetheric body was most connected to. This knowledge and technique was something that she learned from Somm, during her time in Fuha.

Unlike the healing methods of Nature which were focused on balance, the Life Domain was pure unfettered vitality. There was no question that it was just fundamentally far more potent. In the past, those energies would have spread randomly through her body and wreaked havoc, which was the reason for Argus' warning. However, Yuzu's past experience with the porcelain vial had helped her understand its qualities and nature.

Golden threads sparkled in the depths of her eyes as she successfully digested the potent energy of Life. As her spirituality recovered she was able to drive the medicine even more effectively, directing the rampant energies of Life to the places that most needed it.

Within minutes, she found herself surrounded once more by a vibrant and glittering tapestry of fate. The final bits of Life medicine were absorbed into her body as she let out a sigh of relief.

The tapestry around Ika village was calm and gentle. It was a small village, its borders well within Yuzu's limits. She spent a few minutes taking in the current status of the surrounding lands. Yuzu was once again in the Chief's house, her room on the second floor looking down across the village.

Yuzu found Kai's string just outside her window on the ground floor, though she was unable to read exactly what he was doing on his Chaos-natured string. And Firuzeh was downstairs with Chief Kagami. Out of curiosity she scooched over to the side of the bed near the windowsill and leaned out. There Kai was, dressed in his usual vest without a shirt. He was at a table with a few tools and some metal rods, seemingly putting together a new chain.

Yuzu leaned against the windowsill, looking idly over the village. She had an amazing view. The chief's house was built on a ledge on the side of the mountain, looking down at the winding paths and scattered homes that were built up on the mountains that made up two sides of a valley. A river dotted with bridges flowed through the center of the village to an cluster of mountains and jungle in the distance.

Across the village the corrupted energies had all been cleansed, the villagers were lively and going about their daily lives. There were even a few merchants in town — Yuzu saw Naomi's white string with them, and peeking in on it she saw that the priest was indeed buying medicine.

She sent specifically for medicine for me. Yuzu realized with just a bit of surprise. The priest had been so reluctant to help her previously, but had she had a change of heart?

As for Char Char… she wasn't in sight. Was she outside the city limits? Firuzeh mentioned that she was collecting medicine…

Satisfied, Yuzu stopped surveying the village for the time being. She wrapped up the porcelain vial in its cloth and placed it snugly back in her bag.

"The spiritual energies in Huan are stronger than Fuha, but they're not compatible with Life Domain… It might take a while for the vial to replenish itself…" Yuzu thought quietly.

Thinking about it, the fact that the medicine self-replenished by absorbing spirituality from the air really was amazing. It really was an incredibly valuable artifact that Argus had given her, so long ago.

Speaking of Argus… The astrolabe that Pix had handed her in Ying Zhen, Yuzu spotted it in her bag when she opened it to retrieve the porcelain vial. But she couldn't recollect having seen it in there before. It was not a small object, as wide as her hand and just as tall. Did it just mysteriously appear in there?

Furthermore, Yuzu hadn't remembered seeing the Chaos sarira either, but she had found it at exactly the right moment in the battle.

It must have been Pix, playing her tricks. Yuzu concluded. Without her 'gift' we would have all died, but that gift also nearly killed Char Char. I doubt she would have planned for me to use the Sun God's amulet to save Char Char… Would she really have let Char Char die?

Pix was there in the battle watching, I'm sure of it, but she didn't interfere at all… I really don't know what to make of her… I'll have to ask Argus about her…

Yuzu had already spent a good amount of time looking for Pix, but as always, looking for a missing string in the tapestry was an exercise in futility.

Hopefully she was only delivering the astrolabe from Argus, and this isn't another one of her 'gifts'. Yuzu thought as she decided to use the time she had to check it out.

Just as she was about to turn around a pair of hands suddenly wrapped around her eyes as a voice yelled out, "Boo!"

Yuzu let out a single high pitched scream, and a moment after she found herself smacking Char Char with the closest thing to her - the bundle of cloth with her other items. Coins and crystals clattered onto the bed and ground as she beat her friend in a mix of anger and embarrassment.

"Ahahaha!" Char Char let out a hearty belly laugh as she gave Yuzu a hug, "I thought you were just acting like you didn't see me, but I've never seen you scream like that before!"

"I didn't scream." Yuzu's face flushed red as she shoved Char Char away, scowling, "What are you even doing sneaking up like that!"

Yuzu was about to continue to berate her friend when her eyes widened in shock.

Char Char had no fate string!

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