“Can you believe this shit, Lio?” I asked my lóng after I finally returned to my Domain, with a few jumps to other places in between, just in case. “Mages are manipulating the nature of other people, perceptions of themselves and I bet there are those who can do it with minds as well, and people are still wondering why I am not blindly trusting everyone around.”

  He coiled around me as soon as he heard me appear. I paced around my soul core with irritation.

  “I went on a tangent and you don’t know what I am talking about, right?” I asked as I scratched his neck. “I am sorry, but I got angry. This woman almost raped me just because she likes it. People are abusing magic powers left and right,” I added, exhaling a long breath.

  “This, however, brings me to something that I learned today.” I turned Lio’s snout toward my face with my hands. “I think that you might be a warlock, buddy. Am I right?”

  He just stared at me, with no comprehension of what I was talking about.

  “Anansi?”

  [I am not sure, but it might be the case. He is bound to your soul.]

  “Yeah. That was my reasoning as well. Lio, was it possible for you to change into shadowlight before you were with me?” I asked.

  He shook his head and turned his scales bloody red.

  “Damn. I knew it. I am so sorry, my boy. I didn’t know…” I said as I let go of him. He drifted away just a few inches.

  “I asked you to do so many things. Could you refuse me at all?”

  His color changed to yellow, with slight hints of orange and red.

  “So… just sometimes.” I dropped onto the couch with all my weight, burying my face in my hands. “I hadn’t known, Liora. I really hadn’t. If I had, I would have been more clear that each task I have for you—you can refuse it, you know? It’s not an order. I am just asking, okay?”

  I looked at his snake-like frame. He was verdant and jade now, fully green. Even the shadowlight within his horns carried that color.

  “Good. Know that despite being bound to me, you are free. I want you to be my friend and companion, not a subject or a slave. If you feel like I am full of shit and ask too much of you, don’t do it. All I ask is that you tell me somehow, okay?”

  He floated closer and laid his whole body on my knees, uncoiling so that his little fox-like face was right at my nose.

  “So… you couldn’t change into shadowlight before, besides the moment we were bonding, right?”

  He nodded, staying green.

  “And you didn’t have the ability to change colors at will?” I asked.

  He responded in his usual negative tones.

  “Okay then. Those two come from me. From the bond, then. I wonder if you can do anything else, though.”

  He flared, turning green again, and began jumping around me, as if leaping across invisible platforms.

  [He can. He wants to show you something.] Anansi translated, while Liora purred like a cat.

  “Oh?” This was the kind of oh that wouldn’t take no for an answer. “Count me in—lead the way!” I clarified right after, and he darted through the ceiling outside. As soon as his movement stopped, I focused on his position within my aura and teleported directly to his location.

  I landed on one of the barren stretches of land that surrounded my one-story-high tower. Liora was to my left, but in front of me, instead of the usual plain earth, was a field of green grass dotted with flowers of various kinds. It stretched into the distance, slowly turning into a field of wild wheat.

  There were poppies, roses, tulips, butterfly weeds, yarrow, and blue sage—and none of it was real. Not a single flower petal or blade of grass. All of it was painted directly onto the ground itself, with a great deal of artistry and careful use of perspective that made it pop out from where I stood.

  “How did you do it, Lio?” I asked the lóng as I knelt to touch it. I couldn’t, for the life of me, understand what kind of paint he had used, nor how he had applied it. The painting was huge too—at least thirty by twenty yards.

  He darted around my face in response, pulling my attention back to him. Then, with a happy corkscrew through the air, he flew toward an unpainted stretch of land. He stopped there, grabbed his long tail with his front arms, and lowered its tuft to the ground.

  His body was fully material, but ribbons of shadowlight ran from his chest along his scaled torso and arms, all the way to the end of his tail. They glowed green. When he touched the ground, the light coalesced and with a clear, deliberate motion, he left the first line. Then the next. Then another.

  He painted with the ability of a lifelong master.

  Each stroke was delicate and intentional, and soon, another field of grass bloomed across my land.

  “You might be better than me, Liora. And you are much faster than me, that’s one hundred percent sure.” He jumped up and down, happily.

  “Is there a limit to how much you can paint at a time?” I asked, and he responded with positive colors. “Can you show me somehow? Would you like to share that with me at all? I don’t want to force you into anything.”

  [He conveys a message of being at peace. He doesn’t mind when you ask him to do things, Alexa.]

  “Okay then. Let’s assume a hypothetical situation,” I started, scratching my head and shifting from one leg to the other. “We are attacked, and I need a quick painting of fire somewhere on the ground and ask you to do it. Can you show me—by flying over your painting of the field—how big you can make it before you have to stop?”

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  Liora rushed away from me, turned into pure shadowlight, and made a circle above his creation. The trail of light stayed in the air for a few seconds, giving me a general idea.

  “That’s great! Around three yards in diameter. That’s a lot of paint you can produce, my boy. How long do you have to wait, then, for your reserves to fill up?”

  My head bobbed up in surprise as he launched into the sky, painted a small circle around the Moon hanging above with his shadowlight trail, and came back down to me in just a few seconds.

  “A circle in the sky? A moon?” He nodded and flared green. “You need to wait about a day?” I asked, unsure whether he meant the cycle of day and night or the moon’s cycle. He confirmed the former, which made me smile from ear to ear.

  “Good. I mean—great. I could certainly use another pair of hands to paint for me when I am otherwise occupied, or fighting for my life.”

  He jumped onto my shoulders, slithering from one to the other, snuggling against my skin. At one point, he brushed me with his forehead, and I was sure he would impale me with his horns, but they turned intangible, while the rest of his body remained completely physical.

  He was a very smart dragon.

  “There is a very difficult thing looming ahead of me, Lio.”

  My words made him stop. He jumped into the air in front of me and sat down, looking back at me.

  “I am going into the heart of the enemy’s base of operations. Into the house of their god. Hell—into the body of their god. I am going to try and retrieve a…” I paused, searching for the right word. “A friend from that place. I intended to go there alone, to minimize the danger to others. I know you are bound to me, and if I die, you’d die as well or get stuck here, depending on whether my Domain can exist without me or not. But I am asking you: will you follow me into that place? Will you lend me a helping hand in there?”

  I expected an immediate reaction of some sort. A color change, a nod, a stir. Something negative or positive. But all he did was sit in front of me, for what seemed like an eternity.

  When those eons of seconds ended, he stood up on all four paws, hissed in a strange tone, and changed his scales into the color of the grass he had just painted.

  “Are you sure? Did you think it through?”

  A nod in response.

  “This ability of yours to paint could come in clutch. Can you do it on your own skin?” I asked, thinking of the possibility that he might repaint the eye on his forehead after making himself completely intangible.

  He curled up, catching his tail, showing me that his mobility would be restricted.

  [I passed your eye suggestion.] Anansi informed me.

  Then, suddenly, Liora froze for a second, and something completely magical happened.

  His scale color changed but unlike his previous hue adjustments, this one was deliberate, very localized and intricate. His skin turned turquoise at first, a canvas upon which milky white dots the size of sclera appeared in various places. Smaller dots followed inside them—brown mixed with green—and then even smaller ones, entirely black, forming pupils. And to top it off a visible white break, going through all of those. Clear indicator of the eyes of the Shattered.

  Within seconds, not only did his forehead bear one, but his entire body was covered in them, scattered in different places.

  “Another thing that should have been obvious to me,” I told Lio as I petted him behind the horns, “but I’m not thinking like a camouflaging animal, I’m thinking like a human. This isn’t art, though, is it? Just a function of your body.”

  I paused. “I talked with my friends at Uni about this recently. A flower, despite being beautiful, isn’t art. It lacks intent.”

  Liora shook his head, negating what I’d just said.

  My more creative mind immediately suggested the reason, while the rest of my thoughts lingered on the disappointment that my Domain might prevent me from infusing those eyes on my dragonling’s skin.

  Dance is a function of the body and yet it can be art. Singing, too. I had been too hasty, too close-minded in my assumption. Changing color to hide is one thing, but this isn’t a natural reflex alone—you did it intentionally.

  He nodded in response.

  That realization was enough.

  I reached out to all the eyes he had created and let them become mine.

  My vision expanded in every direction from his point in space.

  “Fantastic,” I marveled at the discovery. “This ability of yours might be even better than painting with your tail, my friend.”

  He answered my excitement with a quick circle around me—a dance of his own, a ray of sunshine escaping the bounds of gravity.

  “Can you turn into shadowlight form?” I asked.

  He obeyed instantly, keeping the colors—and my authority—within them. My vision blurred as his corporeality refined itself, but after a moment, it stabilized once more.

  “This is it, Lio! We hit the motherlode with this one. If you could keep at least the eye above your own set so I can see through it whenever we’re together, that would be splendid. Can you do that for me?”

  His uneyed part of the body shimmered in a beautiful shade of jade.

  With this new discovery, I could use Liora’s abilities to a great advantage, perhaps even turn him into a deadlier weapon than he already was.

  “Lio, you know the thing I painted on the fingers and forearms of my suit? The laser and the reactor it’s connected to. Can you change your colors to look like that?” I asked.

  He began adjusting his hues. I had to admit, his memory was extraordinary, but all the lines and square shapes required to reproduce my weapon proved too much for him to match using color alone. After a few minutes of trying, he gave up and stopped in front of me, hanging in the air. All his whiskers drooped downward, his eyes half open.

  He was sad, and he didn’t need to say a single word for me to know it.

  “Don’t worry, my little warlock. We’ll think of something simpler in time, something you’ll be able to use, okay?” I said gently. “But I do have a task for you. Whenever we’re together, observe me. Watch what I paint and create, what I use, and think about whether it would be useful for us if you could put it on your skin, and whether it’s even possible for you, alright?”

  He nodded in response, his whiskers straightening to the sides.

  “This is not how I expected this night to unfold, guys,” I addressed both of my companions. “To be honest, I’m feeling under the weather. My plan is not something I can confidently say will work. I don’t even think it has a fifty percent chance of success.”

  [Why are you going on with it?]

  “I’m not sure, Anansi,” I answered, slowly and gently lowering myself into a sitting position, my hands behind me for support. I looked up toward the night sky. “My instincts and everything I’ve been taught are at odds with how I feel about it. Penrose would cut his losses, and I think I would abandon Jason to his fate as well, if I were still just myself.”

  [You think?]

  “Yes. It’s not clear where my previous values end and the new ones start. It’s as if I remember myself through two interlinked sets of feelings now. I tell everybody…” I started answering, then my voice grew heavier. “I told Malik that I’m not a hero, that I don’t do heroics, but I obviously have done them. I rushed after Jason, even though I wasn’t really that connected to him. It’s like I’m saying one thing, something my brain remembers I was supposed to be and behave like, but my body and my feelings make me act differently. All thanks to the crystal in the building behind me.”

  [How does that make you feel?]

  “I should feel manipulated, right? Like with what Joan are doing, or Nat—but I don’t. It’s still me, and it feels like me. Every decision I make is based on two separate sets of experiences, and both feel like mine. The only difference is that one of them I remember, and the other I don’t.”

  [And the one you don’t—the one I was part of once—that one would go after Jason, right?]

  “Yes. Without question. That’s why I’m going to do it as well. Even if it’s deadly risky.”

  [I am sorry that you are forced to do this, by your soul core.]

  I laughed softly and released the hands that steadied me, letting myself sink fully to the ground. I folded my palms over my heart and spoke into the stillness.

  “In that way, I am not so different from Liora. He is bound to me. I may ask, and he may refuse, yet he still walks the paths my whims lay before him. And I am bound to my other self, whether I desire it or not. She asks… and I follow.”