I eventually managed to open up the strange bags around the me-sized pseudo-corpse. It–the bag–was green, of course, and had the same texture of camera film. Inside, however, was a misshapen homunculus of what had previously been a person.

  There were cybernetics attached, and I was oddly thankful for them being there. It left me with a chance to figure out what they must have once looked like. Everything else was beyond me; a central identifiable mass that stretched the entire length with disgusting growths and dark brown fur all over it. What must have previously been the head seemed to have melted into the body. Worse yet, like Onyo the body had six eyes, but each were hazy and lifeless. What once had to have been a brilliant sapphire iris now looked like muddied waters. .

  On its left side was a curled up and badly damaged wing. The membrane was gone, but on the inside of each finger was a long slit that went up and down the entire digit where it had to have previously attached. Calling it a cybernetic was a misnomer, it was closer to a prosthetic in make. ODIIN revealed such, as well as showing me how exactly the prosthetic connected to the mass.

  It was the only part of the core that was still remaining. I was starting to realize that when they were properly made, prosthetics and artificial enhancements expanded the confines of someone's manacore; Onyo and his friend lacked them, clearly, which left me stumped. Having a bigger core was good, right? What problems could a bigger core cause?

  Further inspection of the prosthetic revealed little other than ODIIN’s barely hidden contempt for the thing. Not that it could hate anything, none of the upgrades were alive and I was foolishly personifying the grafted eye for no reason. Stupid.

  I tried to use ODIIN to see if there were any other bits inside the mass, but either they were destroyed by whatever caused the problem in the first place or they never existed. I got up from my kneeling position, careful not to accidentally touch them with Entropy. Instead, I walked over to the terminal and brought up the screen, wanting to put them all on a table.

  I didn’t want to leave them on the ground.

  I found myself back into the safety of my dome. Stars lined the walls, and the color red was nowhere in sight. My friends, my people, wrapped their wings around themselves, with my mother and father holding themselves so tight I thought their ribs would cave. Trills went all around, but everyone was a respectful distance away from the entrance, giving me my space to rejuvenate.

  I felt my bones guide the healing, the fire travelling up and down my spine to heal each patch. I closed my eyes, trying to revel in the sensation of my species’ birthright. My left side ached, reminding me that our ability didn’t heal everything.

  Finally, after the patches in my fur stabilized, and the membrane of my rear-right wing sealed, I opened my eyes and my father spoke. “You have returned! It is a joyous day to see the success of one of our children.” He was talking to the village, not to me, I realized. Never had I seen this conversation from the perspective of the returned. There was still pride in his eyes, but tradition was taking over. “I welcome you home, and give you the pick of the land for where to stake your claim for the future.”

  I sucked in a breath, nodding–not allowed to speak yet–before walking through the crowd and leading them to the piece of real estate I had chosen dozens of orbital cycles prior. It was custom, and wherever I chose would be the place I stayed for the rest of my life.

  I didn’t realize I was walking fast until I heard the panting breaths of my parents behind me, the rest of the village having returned to their huts on the walk, leaving only those who are relevant. I didn’t turn to them, facing forward and continuing despite myself. The small plot came up quickly, a large spike jutting from the ground and curving in strange directions, the product of some battle between two stone-mages ages ago.

  It was far from the town proper, but it was my right. The land here was warped, and it would be perfect considering my path. I shivered, briefly overcome by the memory of what it did to me in the trial. I knew it would be something involving my… body, but no preparation could-

  “Leola? Is this it?” My mother spoke behind me, and finally I turned to face her, wanting nothing but to run and hug her but keeping myself contained. It would’ve been improper.

  “Yes, it is. This is where I want to stay.” There’s grain in my voice, like the rocks of my new home, a lack of use affecting my vocal chords and frying it like the engines of the ships that brought the interface. There was hope in it, however. This was my reward for completing the trial, for overcoming all that was thrown at me and winning. A home. One that could not be taken until my children earned their place like I did and I was dirt-food.

  My mother’s eyes were wet, and I nearly stumbled at the sight. I had only seen her shed tears once before, and it was when her own mother passed. My father laid a hand on her shoulder, and I turned my back to them, spreading each of my wings.

  The weight of metal still ruined a lot of my sense of balance, but it was a temporary sacrifice. Another evolution for my path, and I’d likely be able to grow a new one; I could shape my wings into something beautiful and beyond what everyone else has. I smiled at the thought. The pain could only affect me so much.

  “Will you… Does your path let you build? Or will you need your father to stay?” She clearly had collected herself, standing just a bit further and arranging her wings so that the two on her left wrapped around her chest, and the two on the right dropped down to the ground like one of the… capes I had seen wingless species wear.

  It didn’t compare to actual wings, of course, and they required strange machines to imitate flight, but it was similar in appearance to one of my own dropping their wings.

  “I…” I thought for a moment. I could use my path to build. It would be messy, but I could do it. “You both can head home. I have an idea, and should it fail, I’ll come to the nest to get assistance, yes?”

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  They bowed, before offering one last look. A moment passed, barely more than an instant, and then they left.

  The sound that left my mouth when the pseudo-corpse jumped at me was unbecoming of someone who got the ideals of masculinity drilled into him since birth.

  I quickly found the list of things I needed from the terminal, including the three tables of various sizes, expanding exponentially. I needed tools, the things to make the tools, and enough materials to actually do something with tools. Each time an item was “delivered” Onyo’s friend–Rhea, who thankfully skipped the issue of translation by revealing she could somehow speak English–would push a cart of whatever I ordered through the door.

  I had to make the tables myself, which was irritating as the fabricator could only print so much. Which resulted in a strangely bending table that you could take apart by staring at it too long. It worked to hold up the girth of the first corpse, and the other two were simple enough to get situated.

  The thing didn’t jump at me until I went to remove its mechanical arm. It jolted, and I realized that all six of its eyes were staring right at my face, into my soul with something that was close to rage or hatred. I couldn’t place it, but it chilled me all the same.

  After seemingly waking it up, I saw its eyes glaze over once again, and it attempted to use some kind of ability to… fix itself? The fur and skin that covered it shifted like a cocoon but whatever it tried to do clearly failed. Nothing changed, at least not until I saw tears stream out of each of its six eyes.

  I nearly wanted to punch myself for forgetting that these people were only pseudo-corpses. This wasn’t how I would normally act, right? The path had to have been getting into my head to make me so… callous.

  I took the pause, not sure how to comfort someone when their entire body is basically a giant burrito, and instead remembered what I was doing before the conversation with 04. “Settings,” I said, and sure enough, I got to see a new interface screen.

  [ Settings:

  Features are restricted because you’re still going through your trial. Once you’re out, the Society will assist with what settings to enable and which to disable.

  For most, this would be completely void, but as a reward for developing the command for your native tongue, you get access to translation controls, as Skill_Path_04 observed you lamenting in particular.

  Do you wish to enable simplified translations? Y/N ]

  I sighed in relief, quickly uttering a ‘yes.’ I was expecting some kind of immediate change, but the screen simply disappeared and I was left alone once again.

  I was reminded of how ‘alone’ I was when the pseudo-corpse shook again, trying to move and just gestating awkwardly. It seemed to realize something, utilizing its mechanical wing and pointing at me. I stared, a bit surprised it was able to do so, but I suppose since it was connected to its core, as long as the core itself was intact it would still be capable of movement. Did that imply that if my chest was burnt to cinders, but there was still a strip of flesh connecting my core to either of my arms I would still be able to move them?

  It poked me in the chest, and I stopped staring again, instead standing up from my place on the floor and walking over to it. They clearly couldn’t move their neck, so I tried to keep it to where I was still in sight of as many of their eyes as possible. Which was strangely difficult, because even though they clearly had six eyes, whether because their head was messed up or because evolution was stupid, they all faced-forward like an apex predator.

  It seemed redundant, but they weren’t in a place to object to anything, so I didn’t raise the point.

  “Uhm- hello? Right, you can’t speak.” I kneeled in front of their face, watching blue pupils–a strong almost indigo color–follow me to the floor. “I’m Jona. I’m here to fix you up!” I tried my best to smile, but it faltered significantly after I saw more tears pool out of their eyes. I debated whether or not to wake up either of the other two, but put that thought on the back burner until I got done with the first one.

  I didn’t want all three watching and judging me while I worked.

  I grew my own bone to construct my home. A small incision at the top of my thigh, and careful manipulation of my path let me build a line of marrow between my femur and the open air to start making basic shapes for construction. Each one had to be absolutely infinitesimal, but I could make them unreasonably dense to counteract this, and slowly a pile of my bone started to amass around the stone spike in the clearing.

  I had to stop when I heard someone approach behind me. Two pairs of my eyes blinked, with the third squinting as she approached. I subconsciously placed myself between the plot and the woman, but that anxiety quickly faded once I realized how small she was.

  She didn’t even come up to my waist, but she was clearly old. There wasn’t a speck of brown or copper in her coat, and she walked hunched over, contributing to her small silhouette further. I smirked slightly as I noticed the front two pairs of her eyes glazed over completely, the back pair clearly suffering from multiple cataracts.

  Normally, someone this old would be able to slap me aside like nothing, but with how blind she was, if she thought about fighting I would at least have a chance. That meant it would be fun. I would ache, but stamina was important in a fight, especially against an opponent you could not see. She at least didn’t seem to be itching for a fight, a concerned look on her snout that fluttered side to side as if trying to search for something despite her visual impairment.

  She would find nothing, obviously, and instead called out, “Hello? Leola, are you here?” She knew my name, which made me consider whether or not she wanted a fight. “Hatchling? I have a task for you.”

  I scowled a bit at the nickname, but quickly wiped it off my face. She wasn’t trying to fight yet, which meant I had to follow customs. I couldn’t deny her a task without due cause, and she was being amicable enough. It still clawed at me that something was wrong.

  I walked, her head turning to me at the sound, a gray snout staring down my own. “Yes? What can I offer you, eldest?” I could play the nicknames just as well as she could. If she picked up on the insult, she didn’t show it.

  “I need you to go back into the plains, hatchling. My own daughter’s hatchling hasn’t returned from his choosing, and it would be best if the most recent to return went to find him.”

  “Has my father approved this task, yes?” If the old bat didn’t go through the chain of command it meant I wouldn’t have to do anything and could get back to working on my house.

  “He did. He’s been gone for nearly five orbital rotations now, and we need someone to make sure he isn’t dead. I have his loadstone, if you need it?” She held up a piece of dark grey stone, tossing it in my direction before turning. “Return with him quickly, yes? Enjoy your first task, Leola. Let the winds lead you.”

  The woman put zero effort into the traditional goodbye, simply waving a digit and heading on her way. I didn’t want to leave the dome so quickly after having gotten back, but it was my duty to fulfill any tasks I was given. I had chosen, and I had to prove my choice was the right one. Hopefully, I would be able to prove it soon enough.