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Yes. This was a better state of mind to be in. No fear. No turmoil. Just collected and confident.

Confident? She was confident?

Somehow, that realization surprised her. But she was. After all her training. Meditating. Studying. Learning about the nature of mutation. Obviously, she still had a long way to go, but...

Yes. She could handle it. She knew she could. Like a test that she’d spent too long preparing for. It used to scare her but not anymore. Now she just wanted to get it over and done with. To move on with her life already.

It was just a matter of deciding what to do with it.

She had ideas. She’d had them for a while now.

Perhaps she could do something about the obstruction in her vision. But the eyes were quite delicate, and oddly enough, she’d grown accustomed to it by now. It didn’t feel terribly urgent.

Madly, she was considering trying to modify her own brain. She knew she shouldn’t. Gohvis had already told her that it was the single-most difficult thing to conduct a successful mutation on, because any mistakes would be exceptionally punishing.

But it was still tempting because the rewards were, perhaps, proportional to that risk.

And of course, internal mutations were simply more appealing to her generally. She very much wanted to keep her outward appearance the same. These claws and horns were already bad enough. She dreaded the thought of making a change that couldn’t be concealed with gloves or a mask.

But no. She was being shallow and silly. Childish. The brain was too dangerous to even countenance at this point.

No, it wasn’t. She’d done it before. Quite easily, in fact.

She paused.

These thoughts. These feelings. Not hers, she realized.

And yet, she also... understood that they were. Even if they hadn’t originated with her, who else did they now belong to if not her?

Memories.

Memories of mutation. Long study. Not unlike what she’d been doing in these recent months.

There was no reason to be fearful, they told her. Gohvis was a liar. The brain wasn’t the most difficult at all.

The soul was.

He just didn’t want her pursuing that avenue of power and potentially disrupting his study. That was where their precious “link” resided, after all.

Emiliana had to stop and breathe as she processed those thoughts. Where were they coming from? How did she know these things? Why did they feel so compelling?