“Ordinarily, you shouldn’t be able to just touch something like that to open it. It’s supposed to be set up so that only someone like me or perhaps a specified individual can activate it. Mages do that kind of thing as a security measure, to ensure that their secrets are only read by the right people.”
“So wouldn’t that mean that Ern specified me, then?”
“But if that were the case, I fail to see why you had to almost die in the process. The amount of magic that was drained out of you at the moment the sphere activated simply wasn’t normal, and Ern wasn’t stupid—she would have known. It looks much more like when you—the host—started dying, the sphere went into panic mode. It tried to return some of the magical energy. The split ended up being nine-to-one because Reinald was nearby, but if he wasn’t, you’d have died immediately.”
The result was Black Bird. Six felt the same energy from the bird as he did the symbols that had made a home of my and Reinald’s bodies. That Black Bird was so friendly with Reinald only seemed to prove the point.
“But what I really want to know is why Ern set it to activate with you, and not me,” mused Six. “Do you have any ideas? Any at all?”
“I don’t know if it’ll help, but...”
I explained my odd dreamlike experiences. If the text Ern left had a will, then perhaps the two were connected.
“I did feel a slight waver of magical energy while you were asleep,” said Six. “Which would indicate that there is something.”
“Something is there, I just can’t communicate with it...”
I tried to explain the situation as best I could—the girl who looked like Ern, the garden, the books. Six rested his elbows on the table and stared into space.
“My best guess is that the girl you’ve seen isn’t Ern, but just a creation. And while there have been stories about the soul transferring upon death to a new body, they’re the stuff of fairy tales. I can’t imagine Ern finding a way to continue living, only to try and kill her best friend.”
Wait a second... Did he just say what I think he said...?
“And why do you think the girl in your head is trying to learn or study something?” asked Six, interrupting my thoughts.
“I, well... I don’t really know. I mean, I’m not entirely certain that she is, but when I see her she’s always reading. That, and it’s the sense I get from her.”
“I see. Well, given that you’re her host, it’s possible that you’re picking up on something subconsciously too.”
Six was rather quick to accept everything I’d told him. I had expected him to offer up a slightly different opinion, or perhaps some skepticism.
“I have a feeling that, given a little more time, we’ll be able to communicate with her,” stated Six.
“Yes, and I’m on board with the idea, but as I said earlier, is this drowsiness going to be an ongoing thing? If it’s only going to get stronger when I’m around Reinald, it’s going to cause all sorts of trouble.”
“Yes, and she’ll be expected at the palace in the coming days,” added Reinald.
“How am I supposed to go to the palace if I might just fall asleep where I stand?”
“I don’t know what you expect me to do about it,” said Six. “It’s nested inside of you, and I don’t know the system...wait, I mean the language it’s using. So look, perhaps when you’re around Reinald, you can just keep pinching your thigh or something? A little constant pain to keep your eyes open?”
“What do you mean you don’t understand?” I asked. “Ern used a language you don’t understand?”
“It might be something she did to make sure that nobody read what she’d left. Now, if I knew where the letters and words originated, then maybe I could begin to decipher them, but to cut a long story short, I can’t do what I can’t do.”
When I rolled my sleeves up as far as I could, the letters slithered at a faster pace. It was like watching ink on the surface of water. Still, even as the words swirled in and out of focus, occasionally I caught the whole form of one or two of them.
“It looks to me like a mix of several languages,” remarked Six. “I wonder if she used them to make a language all of her own.”
“You can tell that just by looking at it?”
“Back when she was a student, that’s how she sometimes passed the time—by making up languages. I’d have to imagine she got pretty good at it if she kept it up.”
My guess was that Six had asked Ern about “Japanese” back when we were both living in Falkrum. I vaguely remembered weaseling my way out of that one, but Six still remembered it clearly.
“Yes, Ern was very talented when it came to that kind of thing,” I said.
“Mages keep records as a matter of course, and it’s not uncommon for them to devise their own ciphers to ensure their discoveries aren’t stolen. Still, most of them only go as far as changing the order of the alphabet. I’ve never seen anything like this before—Ern is using symbols from entirely different languages here. It’s extremely complex.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond. The words that sometimes drifted to my skin and made themselves visible were kanji characters, English, and other languages from my former world. But they did not remain for long, and the vast majority were languages I simply couldn’t read.
Six stared at it all for a time before making an observation.
“There’s more...shape to them now,” he uttered. “Before it was more complex, which means it must be activating in some way. It must require magical energy, which is why you feel so lethargic all the time—your body is craving rest and the chance to recover.”
“So my minor sluggishness is because I’m only processing a small portion,” said Reinald, connecting the dots.
“And it’s going to stay this way until the analysis is done,” I added.
I felt as though that was what the girl had mentioned, but I wasn’t entirely sure. But as long as my hunch was right, once the girl had completed her analysis, things would return to normal.
“In which case we’d best keep some distance between us, Sir Reinald,” I said.
“What?” uttered Six in disbelief. “You must be joking. You have to stay together. As often as possible!”
“But you just explained all the ways it hinders my functions,” I said.