Chapter 3

It took me five minutes to get myself oriented. It was a weird experience though, suddenly appearing in the middle of what looked like a meteor crater with bits of blood and gore just smeared around. The sickly sweet scent of blood was overpowering. Good thing my sense of smell was so weak.

Beside me was a person, though they were more dead than alive. For one thing, their whole body was burnt raw. For another, only their torso was left. Their limbs seemed to crumble as soon as I tried to touch them. Oops.

Surprisingly, though, the person wasn't completely dead. I'll be honest, when what I thought was a corpse groaned, I felt my soul leave my body and fly away. 

Looking around and not seeing anything else of note, I sat at arm's length from the not-dead body, prodding it with a stick to see if they would wake up.

At first, I was just thinking about putting them out of their misery, but considering that I had no clue where I was it would be great to have someone that could tell me. Mysterious, glowing text floats into existence in front of my face and I blink in surprise.

[progenitor mana identified. Do you wish to heal [Mira Dotterweich]?]

…

Progenitor? So this person was… my ancestor? I furrowed my brow in confusion. No, that didn't sound right. Well, I would figure out my relationship with this Mira, the not-actually-dead person, after I healed her.

Unsure how to actually accept the floating text's prompt which was at the moment completely covering my vision, I willed my acceptance towards the text. That seemed to do the trick. It was a strange feeling getting my mana transferred out of my body. Like getting your most treasured possession stolen and then watching as it gets trampled into a puddle of mud.

Regardless of the lost, hollow feeling inside of me, Mira began to heal. I watched in fascination as her arms healed. The bones slowly grew out of the burnt stump, veins spiraling up like vines, and then muscles grew out of the bone and connected together like strands of rope. Finally, the skin covered all the innards, obscuring the rest of the process. I was pretty sure that wasn't how bodies actually healed, but who was I to judge? If it worked it worked.

I sat down, my back to the walls of the crater, settling in for the long wait for the human to wake up.

…

Ok, it really wasn't that long of a wait.

About 5 minutes later, Mira woke up. I watched her cautiously as she yawned, stretching her arms over her head like she'd just had a much-needed nap before she suddenly froze.

I was barely able to stifle my laugh, but a knife wedging itself inches from my head was more than enough incentive for me to stop.

Mira opened her mouth, and a stream of gibberish came out of her mouth. I tilted my head in confusion. I was having trouble understanding what she was saying exactly, although there were a few words I was able to understand.

"Uh, can you say that again?" I asked.

She raised an eyebrow at me and, I, not exactly knowing what to do, raised one right back. That made her grin.

"Hello," Mira said, speaking with a slight accent. "Who are you?"

"I'm…" Now that I thought about it, I couldn't remember a single thing about… well anything. "I don't know."

Mira frowned at that. "What's a kid like you doing here? This isn't exactly a place for small children."

I was a child? I looked up at Mira, suddenly noticing that I was standing up and she was sitting down. And we were looking at each other eye to eye.

Huh. That also didn't seem right.

After a moment I just shrugged. "I told you, I really don't know."

Mira stood up to her full height, and I looked up at her. Having someone else looming over me was quite concerning, and I tensed up a bit as Mira reached out a hand.

When nothing happened, I looked up at Mira to see her motherly smile. A brief flash of pain cut through me like a hot knife through butter, but it disappeared just as quickly as it came leaving me confused. Instinctually, I reached up and she grasped my hand in hers.

"Let's get out of here."

Mira reached up to a headset, saying something in that other language I didn't understand, before heading off into a side tunnel, gently pulling me along.