He stood right in front of a familiar building, a place that had briefly felt like a second home. He could not help but feel a strange sense of calm as he arrived. The tavern was new again, as if it had been completely renovated. New windows, a new door, and street lamps that shone with some kind of magical light, likely powered by Fate Essence technology. It was lively from within. He could hear yells, people drinking, laughing, roaring over lost bets. He could feel the warm, boisterous atmosphere from outside.
He had missed it.
"Lucid, I am not too fond of this place. I suggest we say our greetings and go back to Karmen instead," Alice's voice murmured within him, a note of distaste clear in her tone.
"Huh? Who are you to decide that?" Lucid asked, his internal voice skeptical.
"Crowded, noisy areas are unfit for us. We deserve our time and peace in solitude."
"What if I like rowdy places?"
"Well, I do not."
"Too bad. My body, my choice," Lucid replied, a hint of stubbornness in his thought.
"Lucid, I have contributed a lot. I deserve at least some common courtesy and respect," Alice pleaded, sounding genuinely frustrated. He could practically feel her pout. It was unbecoming of her usual formal, practiced grace as a Divine Maiden to act this way. It made him muse and chuckle inside, enjoying the moment.
Before Alice could finish her protest, a tall, broad man twice Lucid's size came bursting through the tavern door as if he had been thrown by some enraged beast. The man's limbs flailed uncontrollably, his trajectory headed straight for Lucid. As Lucid looked up, not registering what Alice was saying or the human projectile hurtling toward him, he was caught completely off guard.
The impact resounded with a solid thud. The man's considerable weight crashed down on Lucid, a collision that should have pulverized his bones to powder. Luckily, whether by chance or because of the latent resilience granted by his bond with Alice, his bones did not break. He resisted the crushing weight, though it absolutely hurt.
"Ouch!" he yelled out, his voice quickly muffled by the man's body and the cloud of dust kicked up from the ground.
The tavern door shot open in the next instant.
"Leave and never come back!" a woman's voice yelled out, cutting through the noise of the groaning man and the settling dust.
Lucid struggled to shove the man off him. Then he remembered he could channel Fate Essence to make the job much easier. His hands were enveloped in a faint green light, the same familiar light that had stitched his wounds and healed him. It had other uses. Lucid pushed the man off with a single, powerful shove of his left arm. What was odd about this particular ability was that it was not a listed trait or a formal attribute. He could use it even before he had encountered the Sentrum rift. The Chain of Heart had an attribute of "Weak Regeneration," but this felt different. It felt more like an instinctive, passive ability than an activated trait. More often than not, it activated on its own, either subconsciously or seemingly at random. Perhaps it was because of Alice's constant, supportive presence.
It was a neat ability, he thought. But as he stood up, brushing the dust from his long-sleeved white shirt and black pants, the fine clothes Karmen had given him, he felt a bit upset. They had already started to resemble the rags he usually wore.
"Cursed to forever wear ragged clothing," he thought bitterly, half to himself and half to Alice.
Alice chuckled, her voice ever gentle.
As he looked up, he saw a woman standing in the doorway. She had long, curly hair falling down her back, fair soft skin, and two small horns protruding just above her hairline, curling backwards. Her ears resembled those of a cow or a gentle bovine. She was tall, with elegant curves outlined by her simple dress and apron. She seemed gentle and inviting, but her previous violent act contrasted sharply with her appearance as she glared at the man still twitching and groaning on the ground.
'Scary as always,' he thought.
"Oh, Traveler Lucid!" a voice shot out from the doorway.
He was lifted up slightly as two arms wrapped around him from behind in a crushing hug. They were gentle at first.
At first they were. Then they turned into two crushing forces against his back, grinding the air out of his lungs.
Lucid was practically screaming internally, but he could only manage pained gurgles at that point.
"I was so scared! What happened? I returned and the tavern was ruined! But I did not care about that!" Rebecca, the innkeeper, cried into his shoulder, her voice a mixture of relief and anguish. "Please," he managed faint sounds of gurgles mixed with strained coughs. He was getting ground into minced meat. Was she always this strong? He wondered.
"Alice... help," he thought desperately.
"I *could* help you, Lucid. However, how I use my Fate Essence is my choice," she replied, sounding oddly proud of herself.
The woman, the innkeeper Rebecca, continued, "I was only worried about you! I talked to the guards, and they told me you were fine, but I did not buy it! I waited for you for a week!"
"I hated myself. Someone got hurt because of my impulsiveness!" She was sobbing and yelling now, crying into the back of his shirt.
Lucid, by this point, was on the verge of losing consciousness.
Rebecca noticed he had gone limp and quickly released him, realizing her own strength. Worried, she still held his shoulders, making sure he could stand.
He could barely stand.
"Please, Lucid, come in. I will close up for today," she said gently, her voice now soft with concern.
What followed was a sight unfit for polite company but utterly intriguing. The gentle-looking innkeeper proceeded to bodily restle several large, disgruntled men out of her tavern, clearing the place with startling efficiency. Lucid was too dazed to watch properly as he slumped into a chair by the hearth, feeling as if he had drunk one too many ales, even though he did not drink. Alice, on the other hand, watched the whole ordeal from within Lucid. She was as intrigued as she had been on his first day here. This woman never lost her work ethic, no matter what happened.
A green glow enveloped Lucid. He felt much better almost instantly, perking up and straightening his back against the chair.
'That is right. The golden shine,' he thought, grateful for the passive healing.
It was quiet now. The creak of floorboards carried toward him. Rebecca approached, carrying two steaming mugs. She placed them down on the table in front of him with the practiced grace of a seasoned server.
Lucid opened his mouth, a bit reluctant. "Oh, thank you, but I do not drink."
"I, I, I am aware. It is herbal tea," she said, her voice stammering slightly as she sat down across from him.
"She is stammered by everything that dares to interact with her," Alice observed from within.
"She has probably been worried sick about us," Lucid thought back.
"I suppose you mean yourself?" Alice asked, a teasing lilt in her mental voice.
Lucid opened his mouth internally to retort, but he could not think of a response.
As Rebecca drank her tea, she set the mug down and managed a faint, weary sigh.
"What a long day," she murmured.
Lucid looked at the steaming mug in front of him. It was the same one he had been given weeks ago, with the breakfast she had served him. He remembered, at first, spitting it out hating the taste. He had done it a second time as Karmen, he liked it.
He drank it now.
It tasted… nice. It had a strange, mint aftertaste which felt refreshing.
"I like it."
"I am pleased, Lucid." Alice's voice spoke from within him. "That is considerate of you, Lucid. The farmers and the labour that went into that tea are finally shown respect."
"Oh, really…" he mused softly.
She continued, "So, Lucid, what happened? You are dressed really well. Did a group of thugs extort you? Have you been captured by a noble? Tell me, and I will inform the guards." She sounded genuinely worried.
Hearing all that, he could only manage a dismissive, shaky smile. What could he possibly say? *A man breaks in while I am working behind your counter, vandalizes everything seeking 'justice,' I search for him, meet the governor's son, and we go on a journey through a psychic rift where I have to solve his family's problems by reliving their deaths multiple times.* That sounded more like a terrible lie than the truth.
"I, I met this musician named Jake Rosenberg," he started, choosing a thread of reality to follow.
"He was on a grand tour for the festival. It was fun. He happened to hire me for a super secret mission while he performed his spectacles."
The half-truths, or half-lies, grew more elaborate and more vague, some outright contradicting others as he tried to stitch a coherent story together.
"And then, we, no, I mean, I met the governor! He rewarded me with triple my earnings for resolving a conflict within Tyriana caused by some individuals that are super bad, called The Chapeau."
Her face grew confused, and the confusion slowly turned into a stern, disbelieving glare.
"Lucid," Alice tried to interrupt, sensing the brewing storm.
"But that is not all of it! Then we—" Lucid was cut off.
"Traveler Lucid," Rebecca said, her voice low and menacing. "I suggest you tell me the truth." She sounded like she was one wrong word away from throwing him out the door just like the man twice his size.
So, taking a deep breath, he told her everything that had actually happened. Well, most of it. He spoke of the man in black, of meeting Karmen, of being guided to a cave, of the rift. He kept the details of the cycles and Alice to himself, framing it as a strange, magical trial he and Karmen had to navigate together. It sounded unbelievable, but as she asked sharp, probing questions, he found he could answer them instantly, without searching for a lie. The consistency of the bizarre tale seemed to give it a strange credibility.
But something he said made her freeze. Her eyes opened slightly wider, her lips parting.
"Repeat what you had just said," she whispered.
"Oh, I met a terrible butler and a maid. Gerald and Jane, I think. One accused me of being indecent," he said, recalling the awkward night where he had requested 20 fresh bed sheets.
"Jane," she said under her breath, the color draining from her face.
"Lucid," she said, her voice suddenly hollow. "That is my sister's name. How do you know that name?"
She looked at him, her eyes wide with a pain so sharp it seemed to cut the air between them.
"She died three years ago."