Astral Flow

Chapter 46

Lily sighed as she woke up, her mind feeling hazy and body light, however it was the best she'd felt in years.

Even in a Fulldive game she'd been unable to fully escape the lingering sensation of pain, it always haunted her in some regard, though she'd always power through.

Now though? She didn't feel anything, no haunting symptoms from the real world, no stinging sensation running through her lungs or numbness in her limbs.

All she felt was the sun washing against her skin as it pooled in from the window.

Slowly she sat up, confused as she looked at her hand, then the rest of the room to confirm this wasn't a dream.

Then she noticed it, the stranger was missing, nowhere to be seen after supposedly being stuck together.

Had he lied about that for one creepy reason or another?

"You know I can hear your thoughts, right?" the stranger speaks up from a place that she couldn't hear, it was as if he was whispering in both her ears at the same time.

"You can what?!" Lily practically shouts, springing out of her bed in surprise, expecting the stranger to have been there... but there was no one there.

"I can hear your thoughts because we're connected." he speaks again, now irritating her slightly with his matter of fact tone.

"What does that even mean?! You didn't finish explaining that last night!" she huffs as she stands up and takes a seat on the bed once more.

"It means that thanks to this place I'm stuck in a non corporeal form, and you're the person I'm stuck to." with a snap he appears in front of her in a wave of light blue particles. "I can appear before you like this and interact with the world around me, but you're the only one who can see me, hear me and physically interact with me."

"...You're joking, right?" Lily asks, now even more worried.

"I'm afraid not, you noticed how no one even acknowledged me yesterday, right?" He asks, now sitting on the ground.

Lily hadn't actually noticed that, she was too caught up in all the things going on around here, but he wasn't wrong.

Not a single person acted as if he was there, not even Night questioned why there was a strange man in her room last night.

"That's true..." she replies a bit meekly, now starting to see he wasn't lying. "Well, do you know how to fix this?"

"Unfortunately not, I've only ever been in your position before, never once have I been the one to be a spirit tied to someone else." He sighs a little. "Thankfully though I can warn you about what can and likely will happen during our time together."

"Well, that's good at least, so what can I expect?" She hesitantly responds, a bit worried about the side effects.

"For starters you'll begin gaining advantages from my soul, body and magic." He takes a deep breath and points at her head. "I can already see it taking effect, your magic is passing through at a much faster rate letting your body heal old wounds that have lingered with you for a while now." He then lowers his hand, pointing at her heart. "It has also allowed our link to bolster further, the longer it persists the more magic, memories and abilities of mine you will begin to gain."

"Wait wait wait, your memories?!" Lily panics a bit, trying to process the ramifications of that. "But would that overwrite my own experiences? Would it change my personality?! Would I even still be me?!"

"Easy there, just calm down... you won't lose yourself, not so long as you navigate this slowly and carefully." He stops, thinking for a moment. "It'll be like a melding of colors if anything, like slowly adding tinges of red to blue. So long as we keep the stream slow and steady you have no chance of being overwhelmed."