Soul looked at Mind. He had withdrawn his hand from the opening they had found in the wall of nothingness, and he was shaking all over. Soul knew why this was the case, of course. He was afraid. Mind had just purposefully removed his arm. He had chosen to cede control of Body to Instinct instead of being forced to, and now he was wondering whether or not it was the right choice.

  It was, but Soul wouldn’t tell him that. Mind had to come to that conclusion by himself. He had made a decision he wasn’t quite certain about and he needed to sturdy his own foundations before Soul would offer comfort.

  The decision had been a dangerous one. Instinct was powerful, incredibly so. And every time it was let off the leash it would only grow stronger. This was the danger of the power they wielded in the madness. It offered great strength in return for the growing chance that Felix might lose himself.

  Mind was afraid of that possibility, and for good reason too. If Felix ever lost himself—Soul said Felix while meaning all aspects of the person currently called by that name, including himself—there would be no returning to complete sentience. The man that had been called Felix would be no more, replaced entirely by the beast. A powerful beast with completely untapped potential to grow, but a beast nonetheless.

  Soul sighed. He thought about the trials and actions they would take in the future. They would be hard—true tests of character and strength that would leave echoing marks long after they had passed. Mind knew this, but Soul was the only one who truly knew how perilous those tasks would be, and how deep the scars they left would run.

  It was not something to dwell on.

  He returned his attention to what was going on around him. There was a unique sensation tickling his hand that he had felt only a few times before. Consciousness wanted to speak with him.

  The difference between Mind and Consciousness was, at first observation, minuscule. However, the difference widened the closer an inspection you gave.

  Consciousness was just that—consciousness. He was the awareness at the edge of vision, the commander of the senses, the embodiment of Felix’s perception of the world beyond. Soul would give him a physical description, but words fell short of the truth. He was constantly changing, looking green and alive with the breath of leaves at one moment, then gray and raging with the might of the storm-tossed sea the next. Every aspect—or attribute—of Felix was humanoid in shape, reflecting the soul and the body, but Consciousness pushed the boundaries of that definition with every motion. He was graceful and stiff, broad and thin, young and old, all at the same time while still managing to seem more one than other at any given moment. It was mesmerizing.

  Mind, on the other hand, was different. He was Consciousness’ direct overseer, but he looked nothing like his subordinate and had a much larger job to boot. Mind was second only to Soul in the hierarchy of, you guessed it, the soul. But he digressed. Mind was the spitting image of Body in all but a few ways. He had the same skin, the same hair, the same proportions. The only differences were that Mind’s “body” was stitched together like Frankenstein’s monster. Except… not. The seams were nearly invisible, healed over like decades-old scars. They were also completely unlike the monster in that the parts they held together were put back exactly where they needed to go, not jumbled about in a disconcerting fashion like children’s toys shoved in a box.

  He was also giving off light. Not the same light that Body did when Mind was active, that small shine too dim to be made out by anything other than highly specialized instruments. Mind glowed with a radiance akin to the rising sun. This was the life in the eyes, the sign of intelligence, the root of the saying “devoid of inner light” when referring to death.

  This light dimmed every time he spoke with Soul. And while it brightened right back up afterward, that didn’t change the fact that speaking with Soul drained a kind of fundamental energy from him.

  For an aspect like Consciousness to want to speak with Soul directly, something drastic must have happened. Speaking with Soul was not easy for any of the lesser aspects, let alone one of the sub-aspects—though Consciousness wasn’t that far down on the ladder. Mind could only do it because one, he was trapped in this room with Soul; and two, he answered to Soul directly.

  Not to mention that Consciousness was outside the prison, which would make it exponentially more difficult to commune with him. Unless, of course, there was some sort of link between them that crossed the barrier. Soul looked down at his arm sticking out through the rend in metaphysical space. He sighed. This was going to be a rough one for Consciousness.

  See, when Soul meant it was hard speaking with him for any of the aspects not directly under his command, he meant it was hard being in his presence at all. But actually touching him in order to make contact? Yeah, he shuddered to think what Consciousness would be going through.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  But fine, he would talk.

  Soul felt it when Consciousness made contact. It was a unique feeling, like waking up from a nap well rested and refreshed. Except there was a strange other feeling that intruded as well. Consciousness, Soul remembered, was inactive at the moment. That meant he shouldn’t technically be able to interact with anything or anyone. So how was he doing this? It must have something to do with their current, unique brand of madness. Soul shook his head and focused on keeping himself from overwhelming Consciousness and causing, well, problems.

  “You wanted to talk?” he asked.

  Consciousness’ voice came back a little wispy from the strain, “Yeah. Got a sec?”

  “We’ve got all the time you could ask for. Mind doesn’t seem very coherent at the moment, so there’s nobody who wants to watch what’s going on out there. This conversation will be over by the time Body opens his eyes.”

  “Well, about nobody wanting to watch what’s going on… can I? Do you have the strength to help me from in there?”

  Soul tilted his head sideways slightly, thinking. “I do. It would wear me out faster than normal, but I could do that for you. Why, though? Why would you want to know what’s going on? You have some inkling of how horrible it is. What benefit could you gain from watching the brutality that’s about to happen?”

  He said this, knowing full well why Consciousness was asking. However, as the soul, he functioned basically as commander in chief. While he indirectly controlled each and every aspect of the man known as Felix, he preferred not to take direct command. It was tiring, and it hurt. He also knew everything that happened in his domain, but he preferred to let the aspects do their jobs than to do them himself.

  So, he let Consciousness explain rather than just intuiting his answer. “I know a little of what’s going on. Mind knows more, but I have seen the aftermath of it all. I’ve seen the fear in the eyes of others, I’ve felt the blood, I’ve smelled the death. But what I don’t know is the full extent of Body’s, and by extension Instinct’s, actions. I believe I need to know what’s going on in order to fully understand and properly use this weaponized state we have.”

  “I could just tell you,” Soul countered. “It would be quicker and less costly for us as a whole.”

  Consciousness sighed. “I know that. But if you were to just tell me what all happens when I leave the pilot’s seat, I won’t really understand it. I couldn’t use it to its full potential when the situation arises. So far, I’ve been relying on Mind to determine when to abdicate, but he hasn’t always been in the most stable of conditions and Instinct is very much unhelpful in this matter. I need to be able to make decisions on my own if Mind is ever put out of commission. That’s my job.”

  Yeah, that sounded about right. The problem was, how would Consciousness take back control after the deed was done? He wasn’t nearly powerful enough to do that on his own. Instinct was orders of magnitude beyond where Consciousness was. He was even verging on the same level as Mind, if Mind were to put actual effort in instead of whining and cowering in a corner every time Instinct came around. Still, it was better that Consciousness make an informed decision rather than a reckless, hopeful endeavor based on his faith in Instinct’s perceived yet nonexistent morality.

  Instinct didn’t provide the morality. Not even Soul did that. Something else did, someone else that Soul hadn’t informed Mind about yet. Instinct just provided an… interesting vehicle for said morality. But he was broken at the moment, so it fell to Mind to provide the vehicle. Mind wasn’t good at that. He was inconsistent.

  Soul looked back at mind, who had sunk to a seated position and was now nodding off to sleep from the stress. Yeah, he was out of the fight for a good long while.

  “Fine,” he said. “But you’re gonna have to be a little patient. I haven’t exercised this authority in decades. I’ll be a little rusty at it.”

  Consciousness nodded enthusiastically, unconsciously—ironically enough—tapping his right foot in anticipation. He was a mix of excited and nervous for this procedure, and fair enough. The aspect had no idea what he might find on the other side of that blank screen that was his view of the outside.

  Soul knew, however, and he was concerned what this would do to the young Consciousness. Nothing that happened out there during these periods was pretty. Especially not what was about to happen in the next few seconds of actual time.

  Relative time was a bit tricky to gauge. But because Soul was the one doing it, he could tell that the relative to actual ratio was something along the lines of a hundred thousand to one. In other words, one second in the outside world was equivalent to just over a day in relative time.

  The interesting part of the fight wouldn’t happen for days yet, which was plenty of time for Soul to remember how to take over part of Mind’s job.

  Which… was turning out to be harder than he remembered. Sure, if he wanted too, he could tap directly into Mind’s, well, memories, but that would just tire him out unnecessarily.

  Soul reached out with his senses, trying to get a feel for the outside. It was like trying to grab the handle of a large frying pan that had grease smeared all over it. He had his hand sticking out, which was the only thing that allowed him to interact with body and the rest in the first place, but that didn’t make it much easier—it just made it possible.

  But finally, after about half an hour of relative time—about 0.000005 hours, or eighteen milliseconds of real world time to be precise—he managed to stop the outside from slipping between his metaphorical fingers. It was a bit like trying to catch a melting popsickle in his hand, but it worked for the most part. He was now able to transmit what was happening to Consciousness outside the barrier. He just hoped Consciousness wouldn’t take it too badly.

  He instructed Consciousness to connect to him like he would Mind on any given day, and as he felt the link slide into place, kinda like the old satellite systems in days of yore, he turned on the stream to the fight between the man who was called Felix and Dalia, the Moonkissed Ritualist.

  It was time to watch Instinct’s handiwork.