My body was only slightly successful in its attempt to fight the treant. What I mean by that was that it was surviving. Not sure how much more successful I could be in that situation.

  My soul and mind, for their part, were sitting in some inner space and they may as well have been sipping on green-leaf tea and discussing the weather for how efficient they were at figuring out how to get back in control of my body. And for the purposes of this being a coherent conversation, we’ll call them according to their names: Soul and Mind. Though they have different names not known to any man under the sun.

  “This,” Mind said, “Is going to be a problem.”

  He was referring, of course, to the fight between Body and the treant. Ah, yes, I’ll be calling my body ‘Body’ as well. No point in adding the possessive before every time I refer to it.

  Body was… having difficulties. Sure, he was surviving, as I said earlier, but he was only doing so in the barest sense of the word. Dodging punches by the skin of the hairs on his teeth, dealing damage—in only the most meagre sense of the word—to the treant whenever he got the chance.

  Soul sighed. “Yes. Yes it is. Body’s quite deficient in his mental faculties, isn’t he.”

  “I would think he would be. That’s my job and, seeing as he doesn’t have me, all he has is Mr. Instinct, who is a terrible judge of just about everything. Do you know how many times I have to punch him in the face in order to stop him from making Body punch someone else? Of course you do. You run this whole show. Could you maybe kick some common sense into Instinct so he won’t be so irritating in the future? It would be glorious to have a break even from that single part of my job.” Mind made a petulant posture, as much as a semi-physical being without an actual body could be thought to do.

  Soul just laughed. He laughed long and hard until metaphysical tears began streaming down his immaterial face. “You think you have a hard job? Sir, let me tell you about mine. Not only do I have to wrangle you and Body both, but I have to keep every single attribute and sub-attribute in line as well as you two, at the same time. We’re talking Instinct as well as Attitude, Motion, Emotion, Dopamine, Inspiration, Knowledge, Energy, Stress, etc, etc, etc. So don’t you presume to lecture me on the difficulty of your own task. I know everything going on in my own person all at the same time.”

  “Yeah, yeah. You don’t have to be so smug about it.” Mind grumbled. He most certainly was not envious of Soul’s task, no matter how competent he thought Soul to be at some times.

  Shaking his head, Soul marveled at how incoherent Mind’s thoughts were at times like this. Well, if that didn’t show the reason for Wisdom’s existence, he didn’t know what did. Checking in on how Body was doing, Soul’s worry increased a small amount. Body had taken a blow to the shoulder and was now unable to dodge as efficiently, which seemed odd, but Body was a carefully balanced machine. Take any part away and he wouldn’t be able to perform as well as usual.

  But what worried Soul was not the fact that Body’s humerus and shoulder joint were snapped in twain, which was considerably better than the injury would have been two levels ago. No. What worried him was the fact that the injury would lead to more injuries which would eventually snowball into head trauma, which would kill Mind, and eventually death.

  Now, Soul knew he was safe from all of this. He wouldn’t die with the rest of them. But he quite liked Body and Mind. Plus, it was kind of his responsibility to keep them all alive. That meant directing all of the attributes and sub-attributes, which he couldn’t do from in here.

  “Can we get back on track,” he said, “We need to find a way out of here, and fast. Body’s going to get himself killed really quick if he only has Instinct to help him out.”

  Mind nodded. He knew the consequences of that, if not fully. He knew he would be destroyed, but not what that felt like. Only Soul knew that, and it wasn’t something he would be sharing with Mind any time soon. If he did, Mind would veritably implode with the stress of holding the whole concept of pure nothingness in its thoughts. Like a vacuum, the same principles applied here.

  Soul felt Mind extending a mental arm out and touching the edge of their cage. Mind felt around for a little bit, poking and prodding at various different points in the darkness. He could see what Mind was going for, but he also knew it was unlikely to work. Instead, what they needed to focus on was circumventing the curse, instead of powering through it or finding a weakness in it.

  This was a divinely-based curse, after all. Weak points would be few and far between. Mind didn’t know that, though, so Soul let him be.

  He focused on the composition of the darkness. It was a complex weave of very advanced concepts, far beyond what a mere level nine should be capable of, but dumbed down to their level. That meant it was possible to heal it, thank God for that. It also meant it had certain holes usually filled by fine-tuned knowledge which upped the quality and level. That knowledge and material had been removed to de-level it, which meant Soul only had to find a gap in the weave to fit his influence through. That couldn’t be too hard, but he needed Mind for that job, as well.

  While Soul was in charge of Mind’s processes, there was a reason Mind existed. Mind did his job far more efficiently than Soul could, which was impressive as Soul was very good at every job he presided over.

  “Hey, Mind,” he called, still musing over his findings.

  “Yeah?” He heard the response.

  “Look for gaps in the weave, not for weak points. But don’t try to reach out. Let me do that.”

  Soul heard the metaphorical forehead slap he had predicted would happen, then waited for a report. It was quite a while in coming. Apparently, the weave was far tighter than he had thought. That wasn’t completely surprising, but it assured him as to the competence of the moon goddess. She knew her stuff, he had to give it to her.

  In the meantime, he took notes on the skill put into the weave. When they got a class, he would prefer to have as thorough a foundation as possible.

  Stolen story; please report.

  “Here, I think I found something,” came Mind’s reply, nearly three minutes later. His voice held the musing quality of someone who wasn’t quite certain of the answer to a test question, but was fairly confident of their ability to use process of elimination.

  It really was a miracle Body had survived this long.

  Soul drifted over to where Mind was ‘standing.’ Mind was pointing to a stretch of the infinite blackness so small, Soul could barely make it out at all. Maybe their survival wasn’t quite so much of a miracle. Maybe Mind really was competent in his job.

  Who was he kidding? The guy was an idiot.

  “May I use your sight for a moment?” Soul asked. He didn’t technically have to ask, but it was courteous, and there was no reason not to unless need was dire. And, given with how Body was faring on the outside, need wouldn’t become dire for at least a few minutes yet.

  Mind didn’t even stop to consider the question before answering. “Of course,” he said, “What are we looking for in particular?”

  “A gap in the weave large enough to fit a large part of me through. If you can’t find a gap large enough, I’d settle for a small part. The point is, I need to be able to reach through. That’s the only way I can do anything about this curse at all.”

  Mind scanned the wall of blackness. It was unsettling, really. The darkness somehow had a material quality to it even though they were so far away from the material plane. It looked rough and patchy, extending into a disorienting infinity that seemed to dance and weave in the corners of your vision like shadows at half-moon.

  He could see the weave clearly, though its inner workings were a mystery to him. He supposed that made more sense to Soul, being the bank of every last scrap of knowledge they had ever gained and experience they had ever had. Sure, Mind was some of those things, but not fully. His data base was patchy and full of altered memories and lies. Soul’s memory was pure, perfect, and undamaged.

  Looking for a hole big enough for Soul to use turned out to be a bigger challenge than he had thought. The holes were obvious, some of them being as large as a copper coin—or the size of a ring finger—but very few came bigger than that. One was big enough for a pair of fingers; he noted that one for later.

  Then he noticed something out of the corner of his eye. It vanished when he looked at it, like a butterfly on the wind or a ripple against the rocks, but he was certain it had been there. He looked away again, and there it was. Back in his peripheral vision.

  It was the most glaring hole he had seen yet, big enough to fit a large orange through with room to spare. He walked up to it and reached out, intending to touch and make certain it was truly there.

  “Stop!” Soul cried, rushing over. “Don’t touch anything. Let me figure out if it’s safe or not first.”

  “But I can barely even see it,” Mind complained, “How am I supposed to know it’s really there if I can’t touch it and feel for myself.”

  “You let me handle that. Are you ready? Got everything important sealed behind locked doors?”

  Mind nodded. That was the unpleasant part of allowing Soul to use his sight. Soul had a disruptive effect on everything inside of him, often causing it to disperse or scatter like dust. It had happened before. There were still memories Mind had yet to piece back together after the last time Soul had done it and he had forgotten to protect everything.

  Soul looked through Mind’s eye and saw what he saw. He saw the gaping recess in reality and nearly bailed right then and there. This was going to be a massive problem.

  “What?” Mind asked, “What is it?” He could feel Soul’s mood and knew enough to be worried even if he couldn’t see. Soul had the use of his eye at the moment.

  After examining the recess a little longer, Soul spoke. His voice was low and steady, confident even if he knew something was off. “That hole you found? It doesn’t technically exist. Well, that’s a bit of a misnomer. It’s in an in-between state. It’s halfway between existence and nonexistence. Which is a fascinating concept to think about, but I only have time to give you the basics. What we’re going to have to do is force it over to this side of the barrier. That’ll be tricky—and fairly exact—but it should be doable. The problem is, I need to both be able to see what I’m doing and use both sets of ‘hands’ for this task. Do you know what that means?”

  Mind nodded slowly, taking a deep breath to calm himself. “It means you’ll need full control of at least half of my faculties.”

  “And do you know what that means?”

  “It means we need to decide what to sacrifice, memories or motor control. And given we’re doing this all to survive, I’d say we go with memories.”

  Soul nodded somberly. “Yes, it means we need to sacrifice some memories. I think some of the old ones should go. Nothing about our parents, nor about school and the dungeon. However, they’re going to need to be important. A sacrifice isn’t a sacrifice if it has no weight behind it. Let’s go with her.”

  Mind sucked in a sharp breath. “Soul, no. We’ve talked about this already. Besides, Body will be furious with us. Not to mention Love and Pain. They’ll have a fit. I won’t be able to get them working for months if not years. Maybe even for decades. Pain might work for Body in a pinch, but not for me. Love will go curl up in that dark room and lock the door. I won’t be able to access him for ages.”

  Closing his eyes and bowing his head, Soul sighed. “I know, Mind, but it needs to be done. I can’t imagine taking the memories of anything else out of our head and still having enough strength to do this, let alone any personality left. Even now, we’ll lose a lot that we gained from that experience.”

  “What about forgetting sports?”

  “Not powerful enough.”

  “Our parents?”

  “There wouldn’t be enough of us left after losing them.”

  “Surely there’s got to be something else,” Mind begged, “Anything. Anything at all that’s not her.”

  Soul looked at Mind, which was strange as he was still using Mind’s eye, but it was a different kind of look than that. It wasn’t the kind of look you noticed, it was the kind you felt. And Mind felt Soul’s look. It was a look of shame, of fear, of pain, of doubt, but most of all it was a look of sorrow. Soul did not want to sacrifice her memory, not for the world and every last breath it had in it. Not for the rushes down by the river, not for the songs of birds in the sky, not for the sun itself and the light it gave. But he had to. To keep them alive. So he would.

  Mind bowed his head as well, then slowly reeled back every memory he had. Every success, every failure, every joy, every sorrow, every pithy thought that had ever entered and stayed beyond a minute.

  All except for her, the girl he would not name lest the very act of naming despoil her memory.

  Except it was gone.

  Soul reached up with both his and Mind’s hands and touched the recess in the weave. The blackness rippled, solidifying even as it tried to pull away from him. He refused to let it. He pulled in both directions, causing the darkness to stretch, then crack, then finally tear, causing the hole to finally take shape in reality. Well, reality in a relative sense of the word.

  He released Mind, all but the eye, and stepped forward to put his arm through the hole and into the dim light of the material plane beyond. Then he released Mind entirely.

  “I’m holding the hole open with my arm,” Soul said with a wan smile, “You’ll need to reach through me if you want to put your arm out as well to interact with Body.”

  “Are there any consequences to this action?”

  Soul shook his head. “None.”

  Mind did as instructed, putting his arm through the hole and overlapping with Soul’s arm. This allowed him even greater control than before.

  “Well,” Soul said, “At least we’ll survive.”

  “At least we’ll survive.” Mind echoed.

  But was it really worth the price, both of them thought, of the piece of ourselves we just lost?