There are two useful facts about hitting a stone floor while two invisible things fight over your soul.
The first is that it hurts.
The second is that nobody in the room can help you, which means the smartest thing you can do is stop screaming, because screaming brings people, and people bring questions.
Soren bit down on the inside of his cheek until he tasted iron, and stopped screaming.
"Soren." Nessa was on her knees next to him with both hands on his shoulders.
"Soren, look at me. What is it. Is it your chest? Did she do something to your chest?"
<<Vessel Integrity 47%>>
The prompt came again and Soren's body felt like it had hit a new low.
"Outside," Soren managed with a hoarse voice.
"What?"
"Get me outside before I wake the whole room and somebody fetches Marda."
She stared at him for half a second, then swore under her breath, put her top on quickly and got an arm under him.
For a short woman often teased as small she was strong in the way people get strong from hauling water, and Soren was thin in the way people get thin when somebody else controls the food.
Between the two of them they made it to the door, out into the cold, and around the corner of the stable block before his legs quit entirely.
He went down against the wall. Nessa went down with him, still holding on.
"Right...erm okay hmm," she said in confusion as she racked her brains on what to do.
"Now tell me what's happening or I'm going for the physician and I don't care what she does to me for it."
Which was, Soren thought distantly, an extremely stupid offer for a slave to make, and also the first genuinely generous thing anyone had said in his hearing since he arrived on this planet.
"Give me a minute," he said. "I'm negotiating."
"You're what?"
"Semantics"
"That doesn't even make sense...are you losing brain cells? Heavens he's losing brain cells already"
<<Vessel Integrity 41%>>
He shut his eyes and ignored her for the moment.
His mind instantly sent his conscience deep into his mind, and when he 'opened' his eyes, all that surrounded him was a floating black space.
Inside his mind, the two panels had stopped pretending to load.
They were just there now, gold and rose, overlapping, and pulling a golden orb.
The orb was being stretched between the panels and hairline fractures had begun to develop all around it.
<<Covenant: Release him, he's mine, can't you see how horny he is right now?!?>>
<<Lottery: Tch so vulgar, and I have priority, I made first contact...>>
<<Covenant: You suspended your install and he's a got a fortune index of 0.0000003...let me handle this one>>
<<Grand Lottery: That's a feature, I was assessing his worth>>
<Lust Covenant: That's bullshit!>>
"Hey," Soren said.
Neither panel acknowledged him.
<<Vessel Integrity 38%>>
"Hey!"
<<Covenant: he is talking...>>
<<Lottery: Host do that you know>>
Okay. So they could hear him and were choosing not to care, which was a category of person Soren had dealt with before.
You did not out-argue them. You found what they wanted and you put it on the counter.
"Question," he said. "Serious question, quick, because I've got about a minute or two left. If I die right now, what happens to you two?"
<<Lottery: We....relocate...?>>
<<Covenant: Pretty much>>
"Right. Cool. And how long does that take?"
A pause. Small, but there.
<<Lottery: Relocation from an...expired host requires...a capillary event...transmigration as you may>>
"Which happens how often?"
<<Lottery: Rarely>>
"How rarely?"
<<Lust Covenant: Do not answer that...>>
"Oh," Soren said. "That rarely."
<<Vessel Integrity 33%>>
Nessa's hand was on his face. She was saying something. He couldn't spare the attention.
"So here's where we are," he said, looking at his body of light that was dimming with each crack on the orb he assumed was his soul.
"You both want me. Neither of you is planning on letting go. That's not a fight either of you wins, that's a fight where I split down the middle and you both sit in a hole in the north for four hundred yea-"
<<Grand Lottery: 400,000 human years>>
<<Lust Covenant: Thought I told you not to!?!>>
"...for four hundred THOUSAND years..." he continued
"Waiting for the next idiot to fall through. And I know you know that, you know you've already worked out the answer and hate it."
Silence.
<<Vessel Integrity 30%>>
"How about sharing?...or even better, a merge," he said.
<<Lottery: No, not with this vulgar...heathen.>>
<<Covenant: Absolutely not, she's too high and mighty.>>
"There we go, first thing you've agreed on."
<Covenant: Merging isn't something that happens you know?.>>
"Has it been tried?"
<<Grand Lottery: ...>>
"Has it been tried?"
<<Grand Lottery: No...>>
<<VESSEL INTEGRITY 26%>>
He was starting to lose the edges of things. The cold of the wall was going away, which was a bad sign, and Nessa's voice had gone thin and far off.
Fuck it. Time to stop being clever.
"Then please," Soren said.
<<Lottery/Covenant: What?>>
"Please. I'm asking. I'm literally begging you, I'll say it however you want it said." He laughed, and it came out ugly.
"I got hit by a truck picking up an earbud. That's it. That's my life's ending. Nineteen months of night shifts and a hundred and eighty dollars of plastic and then a boy died under a woman who didn't notice..."
He could only chuckle self deprecatingly before continuing.
"I woke up in what was left of him, and I have been alive in this world for four hours and I have already decided I want more than that. So please."
Nothing.
"Please," he said again, quieter. "I'll be the best thing either of you has ever run. I'll be so much worse than whatever you were planning."
The gold panel flickered.
<<Lottery: ...host fortune...: 0.0000003.>>
<<Covenant: ...sigh, can't believe I'm considering>>
The golden system completely ignored the other and displayed.
<<Lottery: With that index and a first time attempt merge, the probability of a stable outcome is beneath my display threshold>>
<<Covenant: So it's a gamble then.>>
A very long pause.
<<VESSEL INTEGRITY 20%>>
<<Lottery: ...that was underhanded>>
<<Covenant: You know you liked it haha>>
<<VESSEL INTEGRITY 19%>>
<<Lottery: Fine>>
The pulling stopped.
For one second there was nothing at all, no panels, no pressure, no pain, just Soren sitting against a cold stable wall.
Then both panels came back at once and slammed together.
It did not feel like healing. It felt like somebody putting a hand into his chest and closing it.
Soren arched off the wall, and Nessa caught him, and the light behind his eyes went from gold and rose to something in between, a colour he had no word for, and stayed there.
<<MERGE INITIATED.>>
<<MERGE INITIATED...>>
<<████░░░░░░░░░░░ 23%>>
<<MERGE Progressing...>>
<<BOTH: Holy Mandate, this is actually working?!?>>
<<████████░░░░ 62%>>
<<███████████░ 91%>>
<<████████████ 100%>>
<<MERGE COMPLETE.>>
<<SYSTEM: Pulling In Ambient Mana>>
<<VESSEL INTEGRITY 19%... 34%... 68%... 100%.>>
<<Hello, Soren/Master.>>
He sagged, he felt a fast and deep feeling of being filled to the brim, a wind pulling gently around his body as he took in a deep gasp.
Everything came back at once and Soren breathed in so hard it hurt and then just sat there with his head back against the stone, and let out a shaky laugh.
Nessa hit him in the shoulder.
"You," she said. Her voice cracked in the middle of it. "You absolute...fuck"
"Sorry."
"You were dying."
"Little bit."
"I was going to go for the physician. Do you know what she does to us for going to the physician without asking?"
Nessa scrubbed her sleeve across her face, hard, and glared at him. "Don't you dare tell anyone I was going to do that."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
"I mean it."
"Nessa." Soren tipped his head to look at her.
"Nobody's ever going to hear a word about tonight from me. Not one. You have my word, and I know exactly what a slave's word is worth, so take it for what it is...I'd also like you to keep this a secret too you know?"
She looked at him.
There it was again, that expression he couldn't read. She'd had it earlier, on the bunk, right before she said yes.
"You've changed," Nessa said.
"Head injury."
"Soren."
"Bad one."
"Soren."
"I'm freezing," Soren said, and got up, and put a hand down for her. "Let's go inside before somebody finds two slaves behind the stables in the morning and draws the obvious conclusion."
She took the hand.
"They'd be right," she said.
"They'd be about forty percent right."
"You are so annoying."
"I've been told."