For Selene, she discovered something was wrong as she was putting the sun away for the night. Ψ, her father’s rather creepy butler, collapsed to the floor without warning. He was still breathing, but the little moon angel could only see him as a corpse. His compound eyes, normally dull and lifeless, looked even more dead than before. Then Klika screamed.

Princess Klika knew something had gone horribly wrong when the world went silent. She stiffened, senses on hyper-alert. The electricity in the walls hummed, the wind blew, and cars on the street below honked. The cello in her arms - really her father’s old one - sang sweetly when the strings were plucked. None of that mattered to Klika, however.

Her favorite sounds, the endless thoughts of the hive, were going silent. It wasn’t like the time her father had silenced her connection to the collective - that had been sudden and painful. This, though, was far, far worse. Changeling were going silent one by one, with the most distant branches of the hive mind falling first. And when the cascading silence crashed against her, Klika was left with less than a dozen voices she could still reach.

She - they - screamed. They all screamed.

Sweetie Belle, of all individuals, was the second non-changeling to notice that something was amiss. Rarity had been patching up her crusader’s cape - again - when she suddenly screamed. Now, Sweetie was by no means dumb, and, despite their differences, was actually quite close to her elder sister, so she was quite aware of Rarity’s mannerisms. Dramatic Rarity, when given the slightest provocation, tended to scream “This is the. Worst. Possible. Thing!” in a shocked voice at the top of her lungs and then promptly faint.

This was not drama. The sound escaping Rarity’s lips, if it could even be called a scream, was an inequine shriek of absolute terror. Had she been listening closely, Sweetie would have heard that sound echoed one hundred and fifty-eight times in Ponyville. However, Sweetie was not listening carefully and, as Rarity’s head collapsed onto her workbench, she was not thinking carefully either.

Rarity, on the other hoof, was not thinking at all. Her Queen’s partner had just died. While that fact was, on its own, nothing to be concerned about - he would come back - it was the sensation Chrysalis had experienced over the link that had truly frightened her. First, Rex had died during Absolute Mimicry, not that Rarity knew what that was. Chrysalis, having never died in that state, did not know if he would survive.

However, that power was the lesser of two worries. There was dark magic surrounding the body of the late Alvarium Rex, obstructing his arrival. Scratch that; it was an understatement. There was the entire shadow realm blocking his way home, a place no changeling had ever been able to make contact with, and that they knew very little about.

Hyper, irrationally terrified beyond the level where she realistically should have been, Chrysalis’ scream was mirrored by all sixteen thousand changelings in her hive. And poor Sweetie Belle, unaware of her sister’s true nature, or a queen’s distress, could only try to shake her unconscious sister awake.

I was not scared of Death, uppercase Death. That infinitely wide Reaper's maw that seeks to devour all the dead in all the multiverse, I was fine with that. Lowercase death, the final cessation of my existence on the physical plane, that terrified me. What would become of my changelings? Would they even survive my final demise? I found my willpower boiling inside; I would do anything to ensure my survival.

I also found that I became more introspective when dangling above certain doom. I learned something new every day, it seemed. I began to climb, just like the last time I was in this ghastly place. On the first flex of my soul, I discovered something that Chrysalis had never mentioned in her lectures on absolute mimicry: my soul looks exactly like Victor’s. I could not see my soul’s v̬͉̗̫̊̏̓i̲̜̒̆ͅǹ̇e̲̙̞ͪͭͅs̬͚̜̖͙͍͇ͮͩ͒̚, though I could feel them just fine, and I looked like a not-black shilouette of flame. Strangely, I had gotten the impression that I was much smaller than I should have been, as if my old soul form was a giant seen from far away and this was small and close, but the feeling vanished as quickly as it had come. 'Well, it seems that Absolute Mimicry goes far deeper than we thought. Right, Chrysalis?'

When no response came, I hesitantly called out again, 'Chryssie?' There was no reply. I feared the worst, which only grew as I realized that I was deaf to the voices of my hive. My grip slackened, and I plummeted half the remaining distance to the Reaper before I caught myself. 'No! Please, gods no!'

I climbed. It was the only solid thing I had left at the moment, the climb. The climb represented progress, bringing me closer to my family. Something was horribly wrong, and climbing out of the Valley of the Reaper was the only shot I had at finding out that was wrong. So I climbed.

I did not know for how long I climbed; time worked strangely here, and the soul does not fatigue like the body. Some time ago – minutes, hours, days – I realized that what I first assumed was the living world above me was actually the shadow realm pulled close to the physical realm by powerful magic. My v̬͉̗̫̊̏̓i̲̜̒̆ͅǹ̇e̲̙̞ͪͭͅs̬͚̜̖͙͍͇ͮͩ͒̚ lead me through that dark place, and I wondered – grasping at straws, really – if that was why I had lost contact with all those that I loved.

When I finally reached the boundary between Death and that abstract plane, the surface rippled at my touch. I was hesitant; this might be my only home, but I was going blind into probably hostile, unexplored territory while unintentionally masquerading as someone who had connections at this place. I swallowed my fear, donned a personality mask to match the prince of darkness, and dove in as if I owned the place.

I found myself in a strange place, wrapped in yet another form, that of an inky black cloud-silhouette, well defined at the top, but fading into a wispy tendril below the waste. My body hovered gently above the ground, if you could call it that. The world around me looked like a blurry, shadowy photo negative of a city. Lights shone with darkness, the well-lit night sky was dotted with black stars, and the buildings were poorly defined monoliths. Sensation was not entirely physical, nor entirely spiritual, and from here I could see the soul-cores of the humans in the physical world, gleaming like moist, ripe fruit hanging in the moonlight.

The denizens of this ethereal zone were all manner of creatures big and small, moving in all sorts of ways. Some flowed, some walked, and others crawled, warped, slithered, or did something else. They also wet my appetite, despite their fearsome or disgusting disgusting appearances, because they contained so much of the energy that I so desperately craved, energy that I had expended on my climb. Unlike the humans, their souls pulsed and flowed like honey, rather than burn like a furnace, yet they looked terrifyingly delicious.

I had no idea what came over me. On Earth, I could easily ignore the temptation souls had presented ever since the first and only soul I had consumed. Here, it was very different. I could see souls without the crutch of magical vision, and I could see their mouthwatering soul cores without the obstruction of the flames of consciousness. The humans, I could still muster up the willpower to ignore. The lesser shades, they tempted me oh-so-badly. If I still had my physical body, I would have been shaking, barely in control of my own actions.

‘Speaking of body, where is mine?’ I thought. The last time I had died, I had simply climbed into my own corpse, even though it had already been moved at the time. Now, I was here and my nvisible v̬͉̗̫̊̏̓i̲̜̒̆ͅǹ̇e̲̙̞ͪͭͅs̬͚̜ͮͩ͒̚ had gone slack. Judging by the skyline outline, this was roughly where I had fallen to my death, but I couldn’t see my body.

Again, I was grasping at straws when I turned left and started walking - floating - down the street. It just felt like the right way to go. I had to do something. If I stopped moving, I would probably break down and panic with worry.

As I walked, memories bubbled up in my consciousness, mostly of Sally-Anne. I died thinking of her, so I suppose it is only fair that I kept thinking of her even in death. One particular memory that seemed relevant to my current situation happened late last year. Shortly after the incident that took part of Sal’s sight, she called me back to her lab. When I had tested on her portable affinity tester, which outputs the exponent of the power coefficient, I had scored a perfect five on the ‘Soul Magic’ category, the highest the device would measure.

She declared to me that leaving it at that was bad science. So we constructed a far more sensitive affinity tester with an absurdly high maximum value. I placed my hand on it and channeled magic into it.

We built a second one to double check the result.

We ran the numbers again to check for construction errors.

We built a third one, better than any that had been built in history.

That day, I decided I would wear a power limiter so that I did not sneeze someone’s soul out. Chrysalis, having never used soul magic, nor having had her affinities tested, found that she needed one too.

The three of us agreed to never speak of those numbers again.

This was before I found that I could eat - and enjoyed eating - souls.

There were several distinct categories of shadow creature in my mind. I had been categorizing them as I wandered. The lowest were the unawares, the creatures that did not acknowledge anything. Next were the lows, the weak, fragile beings that could be squashed by a human, but were self-aware and ran away from me. ‘Or would that be away from Victor?’ I mused. Above them were the mid range, creatures between humans and me in power. The highs could probably kill me without much of a fight, and the god-tier stood above them. Then there were the eldritch abominations, like the Darkness itself, which I was eternally grateful that I had not encountered.

What I did know was that Victor apparently had a lot of power here. They respected him, some even feared him. Beyond the apparent respect, this place augments him. I can feel it; thinking that I am him, this not-place - alive in its own right - bolsters me too. It is not by much, but it helps.

This place and its people, they literally try to get into your head. Changelings have an innate defense, especially the royals, who can outsource part of their thought processes and are thus literally scatterbrained. That makes our minds very hard to read, but not impossible. And while I had a large amount of raw power for the mind arts, I am unskilled as my only training is a single crash-course and my innate defense. It would hold against a mid range shadow being, nothing more and not for long. So I kept moving, the feeling that I needed to go this way growing with the distance I had covered.

My seven-day minimum restriction on transformation clicked off. Though at first the restoration of my ability to change forms made me ecstatic, I was suddenly made aware that it had been over a week since my family had seen me. And while I was making progress towards my real body, I wondered what had become of it, considering that I do not know its conditions or whereabouts. I hoped that it was not rotten.

The only ray of hope I had was that I could hear some of my family again. Not all of them, and they could not hear me yet, but my ‘reception’ was improving with every step I took.

They were alive; that much I knew for sure. But were they in good condition? That was the million dollar question.

My only warning was the sound of flapping wings before it crashed down along side me. When the form arose from the smoky dust that its landing had kicked up, I involuntarily moved back in surprise. A bone dragon with a caustic, black miasma surrounding it looked down upon me. Of what little I knew of the shadow realm, I recognized it. This was Scythirraax, the dracolich manifestation of pestilence. Literally, that was the entirety of the information the black archives had on it verbatim. And it was staring right at me!

“Greetings, my Lord. I am glad to report that all is well in your realm...” It rumbles. The voice was more than sound, but also a spiritual projection of intent and meaning.

I nearly lost it. ‘This guy works for Victor! How the fuck did that happen?’ My outer thoughts, my mask’s shield of cognitive dissonance, remained cool and collected, as did my features. “I sense a ‘but’ there, don’t I?” I asked in a perfect imitation of Victor.

“Yes, Sire,” the dracolich replied. “You.”

“Me?” I questioned. “Why do you perceive ill of me when I perceive nothing amiss?”

If possible, Scythirraax would have grinned smugly. “Weeeeeaaaakkknnneeesss...” it hissed, advancing upon me as it did so. I stood my ground. “So lost and confused. Why, my Lord, whatever put you in this state?”

“Something precious to me has been lost,” I answered truthfully, though my artificial growl was fueled by a sample of Victor’s rage that I released into the not-air. “I intend to reclaim it.”

“Lost as in misplaced, or lost as in taken?” the dracolich asked, though from the tone of his voice, it sounded as if he thought he knew.

“Both!” I snapped; my own rage was real enough for my mask. “There are a few individuals who hold sole responsibility for my current situation!”

“Ah, I see. So it is the changelings who have struck this blow against you,” it mused. Scythirraax slunk closer, twisting so that it may pass around my body. Every sense in my body is telling me that it is about to rip me to shreds, but I hold my ground as Victor would have done. It is waiting for a show of weakness; I will deny it that satisfaction. “There is a reason we of this world do not make deals with the changelings.”

“Afraid that the worms wouldn’t uphold their end of the bargain?” I snorted haughtily.

“Ha!” It laughed a deep, horrid, gravel-like noise that seemed to grate at the mind and soul. “Of course not.” Its voice grew deeper, more serious when it said, “But that is not why we will have nothing to do with their kind. No, it is their royalty we avoid. There is a connection - we don’t know what, how, or why - between the two,” a sound like two opera singers swallowing a xylophone while in the middle of a duet - my official title in the changeling language - emanates from its bones, “and That-Which-Hungers. For our own sakes, I wish I knew more. It is a memory thief of unparalleled power, my Liege, and none are strong enough to even remember its name.”

I took a moment to digest that, even as the lich continued its incessant circling. Victor had alluded to that before, but it was connected to me? I did not even know what ‘That-Which-Hungers’ even was and from the looks of it, neither did the dracolich. “As fascinating as this may be, I grow tired of conversing. Time is of the essence, and I must recover what has been lost.” I prayed with the bottom of my heart that he would let me go.

“You never did say what it was that you lost? Was it your strength? Your magic seems so low today. Did you allow them to feed upon you?” It leaned in close as it spoke, bringing its fangs and putrid, festering breath right up to my face. The fumes begin to corrode my form, bringing me agony. I hide my pain, conjuring anger instead.

“Remove yourself from my presence, or I shall remove it for you. My possessions are none of your concern,” I retorted. Simultaneously, I flared my dwindling magic in an effort to bluff the bone dragon.

Scythirraax did not buy it, instead choosing to say, “Oh, but I do think it is my business, my Lord, because...” It lunged with little warning from its emotions, claws swiping out at me. They grazed the surface of my form at the same instant I teleported away. Black bone fragments clattered to the ground at my feet, dripping a tar-like substance which pooled with a blood-like substance that oozed out of my own abdominal wound, which would scar my very soul. “...I will be KING!” It roared.

A wave of pestilence erupted from the dragon’s cavernous mouth. I dodged with another teleport. Bending space and time was easier here, as I had no body to move, but I wouldn’t last long. Had I not had Victor’s soul-form defending my own, I would have died already from the corrosive wound. Knowing that I could not win with how I was now, I made a choice.

In a single instant, faster than my attacker could react, two things happened in rapid succession. First, a lock on my magic opened, modifying my energy’s properties to their full potential., though it cost me a small ball of magic that was launched out of my back. And secondly, a thousand v̯̹̠͟i̠̲̪͟n̸͈̞̹e͇͝s̭̘̠ errupted from my back, still hidden by the Absolute Mimicry technique.

“IS THAT IT?” the dragon roared. “ARE YOU JUST GOING TO RUN AND DIE? HOW DID A WEAKLING LIKE YOU BECOME THE KING OF THIS WORLD? I SHOULD BE KING! I ALWAYS SHOULD HAVE BEEN KING!”

My v̯̹̠͟i̠̲̪͟n̸͈̞̹e͇͝s̭̘̠ shot forwards, intent on entrappning the lich. As they flew, they lit up with my unrestrained soul magic. For the first time, a part of the real me was seen by Scythirraax.

In the shadow realm, the physical and the abstract unite in mind-boggling ways. The soul is just as real and tangible as the body. Magic to heal one repairs the other, both can be defended by the same spell, and bone can be smashed as easily as an existence.

In my case, I chose a spell to reinforce the soul, designed for those ponies who summon creatures. I used my most powerful affinity, in a realm that augments said affinity, to enhance a million soul-cutting thorns on a thousand prehensile, extendable, parasitic ropes. They were half way there when it could have seen them. They were inches away when he finally reacted, just starting to pull away. My v̯̹̠͟i̠̲̪͟n̸͈̞̹e͇͝s̭̘̠, they were already burrowing into its bones before Scythirraax could even make a sound, and the moment they had touched, I committed every detail about his essence to memory, just as I had done with Victor.

The gargantuan bone dragon, seventy five feet and six inches from snout to tail-tip when my vines first touched it, had already started shrinking. As I fed on its mind-bogglingly delicious power, I kept half for myself and used the other half to reinforce my hold on it. The once mighty dracolich had been reduced to a third of its former size before I finally ceased feeding.

“How-” was all it managed before I forced its mouth shut, causing it to bite the lump of rotten meat it called a tongue.

“I want to catch gods,” I answered honestly. “You are no god. Nor are you a king. You are my pawn, my puppet -” I yanked his head down to me so that he could see me heal my abdomen with his magic and so that I could whisper in his ear, “- and, if circumstances were more in my favor...” I trailed off, deciding not to say what I was going to say. “If the circumstances were more in my favor, you’d be dead right now. As it is, I need you alive, puppet.”

Exactly like a manipulator with his marionette, I pulled its strings, making the diminished Scythirraax kneel before me. My vaporus form drifted above his caustic body, careful to keep myself magically isolated from his corrosive bones and rotting flesh.

“Skillful Achievement with a Living Soul,” I announced as I made the dracolich flare its leathery wings. So what if I borrowed the name of the technique from an anime? I had a dragon to ride, a bone to pick, and a body to raise from the dead. A mighty flap later, the two of us were airborne.

“Finally. You fly too slowly, puppet.” The dracolich whimpered from within my grasp. It had shrunk further in the time I had ridden it, I having been unable to resist snacking. “What was that, puppet? You wish to speak? I shall allow it this once.” With that, I relaxed my grip on its muzzle.

“My Lord, how have you done this to me? This isn’t possible!” Scythirraax’s voice sounded strained as it desperately tried to mask the pain it was suffering.

“Nothing is impossible.” At that, I twisted myself through the boundary between the physical and the immaterial. Once again in my home world, I found myself in a sterile room next to a bed. My corpse, still warped by Absolute Mimicry, lay atop it, its chest burst open as if it had been impaled. However, there were other markings on its body, seams of wounds made and sewn post-mortem. ‘So, it seems that I was experimented upon after all. Great...’

I slid into my body, sighing in relief as I did so. My dead heart fluttered once, twice, and then beat strongly. Flames and pain assaulted my body, but it could not compare to the elation life brought me. The sound came rushing back, and I could hear my hive once more. <<I am ALIVE!>> Their cheers brought me to tears.

The doors to the room I was in burst open, and I could see a figure rush in with a fire extinguisher. The cool spray did nothing against my faux-phoenix fires, which burned violently as they restored my flesh to its pristine former glory. However, magic alone was not enough to heal me; I needed nutrients. ‘You’ll do.’

The man found himself dragged towards the flames and consumed not by fire, but by teeth. After being suddenly drained of life energy, the man found his arm elbow deep down my throat before my magic severed the limb and allowed me to swallow it whole. Magically aided digestion had my stomach emptied rapidly, ready for the next chunk of human flesh.

Body assaulted body, my mind assaulted his. Such a method would leave him a babbling wreck, but he did not seem to have too many life options at the moment. I dove in.

A few minutes later, there was not a trace of my actions left in the room. Not a drop of blood spilled nor corpse nor clothes. Even his soul found its way down my gullet; it was going to be eaten anyway, so why not by me? I also had the information on VICTOR DIVINCI’s secret research base; I had his pet dracolich tied up within a special, if hastily made, pocket dimension; and I had used Victor’s own magic to escape the anti-teleportation wards.

One slight twist of my wonderful, just-like-new body later, I was home free. Fourteen days trapped in the world of shadows and the Valley of Death, and now I was alive!

My hands covered her eyes as I pressed up against Sal's back. I nipped at her ear with my teeth, the way she so loved. "Guess who," I whispered huskily in her ear.

She whirled around in my grip, my hands lowering as she did to make the embrace into a full hug. "Rex! I missed-" She cut off abruptly and squeaked in a way that would have been adorable if it was not of fear. "You- you're not Rex! Let go of me! Let go!"

"Sal, I-" I started before also cutting off, but for a different reason. I understood. Most people recognize others by face and voice. Changelings use both by traditionally staying with a standard for both. Sally-Anne, because of her accident, could not recognize faces, could not see the eyes that only I wear, and as such, she used magical signatures and link position for identification. She also did not know of Absolute Mimicry.

In the time it took me to understand that, Sally-Anne had taken a step back. "Who are you?"

"Sal, it's me, Rex. I'm just using an advanced transformation technique.” Alternating between the link and spoken word to ensure that her mind connected the two together, I said, “All” <<it>> “does” <<is>> “mask” <<my>> “magic” <<with>> “another’s.” <<I’m still the same man on the inside, Sal. I still love you, and I pray that you still find it within you to love me. My sweet Sal, do->> My thoughts were interrupted by as passionate kiss.

When our lips parted, she whispered, “Only Rex calls me his sweet Sal. Come here!” Our lips met once more as she dragged me towards her for a tight embrace.

One of the changelings in Sal’s lab, I did not notice or care who, shouted, “Get a room, love birds!”

The kiss broke. “Sal, I thought-”

“That I didn’t love you anymore, right?” I nodded in agreement. “Wrong. I do love you. Whether it is true or false, I still don’t know, but I am happy with you. Let’s keep it that way, ok?”

“Thank you, Sally-Anne! Thank you! But, why?”

“I talked with Taruke. He said...” The memory played in my mind.

Flashback

“Nothing of who we were or where we’ve been really matters, not really,” Taruke replied to Sally-Anne’s question. He set down his coffee, the ninth cup this afternoon alone. It was day three of what would become known as the great silence, and the elder changeling had already taken to drinking copious amounts of coffee so that he could stay awake, listening for the signs of his king’s return. Rex’s return was happening, if slowly, so he was not panicking like some of the others. He had faith. “The question is who are we now, where are we standing, and where are we going.”

“I think I understand,” Sally-Anne replied.

“I talked to Dr. Jeremiah once, shortly after he joined our great hive. You see, when Lord Rex first transformed my mind, I found that I couldn’t recall much of anything from before that moment, and what I could recall seemed disconnected, as if they weren’t my own memories. In a way, I guess they weren’t. I, Taruke, was born that day, and Clark Oswin died. Dr. Jeremiah told me that my case reminded him a lot of a dissociative disorder.

“I woke up confused, with little memory of who I was, other than the name I had given myself and my Lord’s shared memories.”

Sally-Anne inquired, “His memories?”

Taruke nodded. “Yes, he had his whole education shared, among other things, for the hatchlings. I learned to play the cello from him through those memories.”

“Wait, those are his?” Her eyes went wide. “I always assumed...”

“That those were from some other changeling? They were not.” Taruke smiled, but his eye twitched from the coffee. “Unlike most changelings, our King has shared a large portion of his life, and yet he never uses his birth identity.

“Anyway, there I was, tiny, confused, and afraid, and I see this giant of a man standing over me, eyes glowing with an unearthly light, and radiating such power into my very soul. Every fiber of my being told me that this was the most powerful being I would ever know, and that I should serve him. It was almost a religious experience, like those people who claim to have seen god, but far, far more powerful.”

Sally-Anne turned pensive. “But wasn’t that exactly what he wanted you to feel?”

“No. He told me later that he overdid it, not that I mind. And when I compare myself from before, during, and now, I find myself just as loyal, if not more so, because on a whole, my life has improved since he came and made me. Clark had no purpose; I do,” Taruke declared. “I am happy.”

Sally-Anne sipped her own coffee and set her mug down on Taruke’s countertops. “And you think that I should be happy too?”

“There is no doubt that everyone should be happy, I think. My question is, when did you first start loving him?”

She thought for a moment before delivering her reply. “It was just after my hospitalization, after the anti-changeling group killed Ted and Shimmer, and after Ian died.” Sally-Anne scratched the back of her head as she thought. “Rex was helping me deal with the grief I was feeling... I think we started out just using each other as bounce-back friends with benefits, but...”

“It blossomed into something more,” Taruke finished. Sal nodded. “I believe Rex told me that it was Selene who finally got you together as a couple.”

“Oh, it was simpler than even that. She asked if we were, and we said yes. But...”

Again, Taruke finished her sentence for her. “That was when you fear he made you feel that you love him, against your will. Did you have feelings for Lord Rex before that?”

“I think so, yeah. It was just a crush. I have a power-play fetish,” she admitted matter-of-factly, knowing that the man across from her would not judge her. “I dreamed of being rutted by my boss, or of alien creatures and mind control and such. But there is a fine line between role-play and make-believe, and having a boyfriend that is all of the above. For all I know, he’s been raping me by making it impossible for me to not consent.”

The almost empty mug shattered in Taruke’s hand. “He is not like that. He would not encourage us to kill rapists if he was one himself. He wouldn’t even let us be having this conversation if he was that kind of person. You would be his sex-slave if he was like that.”

“But last April-”

Taruke interrupted, “Did he explain what he wanted and why? Did he give you the open door speech? Did he ask your consent? Did he ask with every successive egg if you wanted to continue?”

She thought, then said, “Yes to all.”

“And what did you say?”

“That I’d do it.”

“And were you hurt from the event? Hurt by Rex in any way?"

“No.”

Taruke smiled. “So everything is fine in the end. Lord Rex cares enough about you to at least ask for your consent, and you are happy with him. Maybe he did change you, maybe he did not; there is no way to know for sure if what he says is the truth. If you think that he truly loves you, trust him.” He paused. “Sally-Anne, do you trust me?”

“Yes, I do,” she replied. “Are you saying I shouldn’t?”

The elder changeling shook his head. “No, I’m not saying anything, because I don’t know what to say. I just find it odd. Our king says to never trust a changeling, and yet we place incredible faith in one another. Maybe deep down, that just means that, even for the most monstrous of us, we’re all still human.

“I... Sally-Ann, thank you for showing me this memory. Wait...” I nearly panicked for an instant before I remembered what I was looking for. I held out my hand behind my back and materialized the little black box that meant so much to me. “Now, I’m in a bit of a hurry to deal with a particular problem, but this is far too important to wait. For the time that I was trapped, I thought of little beside you. I had meant for this to happen sooner, but... things happened and, yeah...”

Finishing lamely, I knelt down and held out the box. Opening it, I revealed to Sal an engagement ring made of solid diamond, which was illuminated from within by magic embedded inside the crystalline carbon. “I know that I have nothing to prove my innocence in your eyes beyond my love for you, but Sally-Anne Beatrice Jones, would you marry me?"

Author's Notes:

*Ding* Have a chapter!

A rough start, another cliffy ending... fun!