Between Two Trees: A Week on Earth

SCENE: THE SURGEON'S OATH

In the sterile glow of the med-bay, surrounded by the silent vigilance of ANI units, the air rippled with a spatial distortion. The ANIs and the overseeing AGI—Chief Medical—snapped their attention to the disturbance. From the tear in reality, Yorian emerged, his face an impassive mask of pure focus. Orbiting him were two objects radiating immense power: the cold, steady luminescence of the Platinum Crystal and the dark, pulsing heartbeat of the Warden's Core.

He moved without hesitation, striding past the ANIs towards the bed where Ariana lay, her body a broken map of deep lacerations, exposed tissue, and unnatural angles.

"Thank you for your vigilance," Yorian stated, his voice flat and efficient. "Stand down for maintenance. I will handle her now."

"I shall assist you, Master," chimed the AGI Chief Medical, its tone calm and logical.

"You may observe," Yorian granted, his eyes already scanning Ariana's injuries with terrifying clinical precision.

The damage was severe. Parts of her flesh were shredded, revealing raw muscle and bone. Yorian's first task was to halt decay and restore form. He extended his hands, and a field of manipulated atomic forces—a marriage of the Strong and Weak Nuclear attributes—enveloped her. At a subatomic level, he sterilized the wounds, annihilating every bacterium and fungal spore, and initiated cellular repair, coaxing damaged cells back towards functionality. It was not healing in the magical sense; it was biological engineering at the quantum scale.

Next, a gentle surge of his Gravity lifted Ariana's body into the air. A visible river of his own Quts flowed from him, encircling her like a spectral cocoon before seeping into her meridians.

"The process of reconnection and restoration for my precious sister—perhaps more than a sister to me—begins now," he declared, a rare vulnerability cracking his clinical tone for a millisecond.

Then, he became a symphony of precision. His Quts acted as both energy source and surgical thread. His atomic manipulation fused tissues and bone at a molecular level. Gravity held everything in perfect alignment. Intermittent pulses of Electromagnetism tested neural pathways, and where they failed, he painstakingly re-spliced them with threads of conductive energy. Every suture, every join, was examined, adjusted, and perfected. The AGI could only watch in silent awe at the masterwork of flesh and spirit unfolding.

The procedure stretched for 14 Kso—thirty-five grueling Earth hours. Sweat beaded on Yorian's brow, his concentration never wavering, his Quts reserves steadily depleting to fuel this marathon of miracles.

Finally, the physical was whole. Her horns, elegantly reattached, gleamed once more. Now came the true test: the soul.

Ariana's Rish was a faint, frayed tether, threatening to dissolve into the boundless Aetherish Medium. Yorian reached out. He had no innate Psychic attribute to generate Atherish, the mental energy needed to navigate that medium. So he forced a conversion, burning his own vast Quts reserves to generate a raw, unstable stream of pseudo-Atherish energy—an immensely taxing and inefficient process.

With this self-forged paddle, he grasped the fragile Rish, anchoring it to her body.

Then, he dove deeper. His consciousness, propelled by the crude Atherish construct, shot into the vast Aetherish Medium. It was an ocean of echoes, lost whispers, and the infinite data-stream of reality itself. He wasn't just searching for her soul-fragments; he was fighting the informational noise of the cosmos. It was a desperate, dizzying search in a formless, data-saturated expanse. Just as a piece of her signature seemed to drift beyond reach, lost in the cosmic static, he snagged it, then another, and another, pulling the pure essence of "Ariana" back from the informational void.

With a final, monumental effort, he gathered the fragments, reformed the cohesive spark of her Rish, and used the last of his forged Atherish to guide it back and bind it securely to her newly-perfected physical vessel. The connection took, glowing steadily within her core.

"Is it... done?" Yorian exhaled, his voice thin with exhaustion.

"If you declare it done, Master, and my analysis confirms stability, then it is done. You are the expert beyond my parameters," the AGI responded.

"...Good," Yorian whispered, the word slurring. Every cell in his body screamed. His vision, once sharp enough to see atomic bonds, now blurred. The sterile white lights of the med-bay swam into a dizzying haze.

He managed to lean over, his movements slow as a dying man's. He pressed his lips to Ariana's forehead—a kiss that felt like a final act of will.

Then, his legs gave out.

He didn't just faint; he collapsed. His body hit the cool floor with a dull thud, utterly lifeless. No twitch, no groan. Just the absolute stillness of complete systemic shutdown. The mighty architect of Paxeotechastra, the professor who bent cosmic forces, was now just a broken vessel on the ground, his chest rising in shallow, imperceptible breaths.

Across the room, Ariana's chest rose and fell in a strong, steady, perfect rhythm. The contrast was stark and terrifying.

For a moment, the AGI Chief Medical was silent, processing. Then, its calm, synthetic voice echoed in the silent room, a quiet alarm in the form of a statement:

"Master's vital signs: critical. Quts reserve: zero. Psychic fatigue: catastrophic. Initiating emergency life-support protocol."

The ANIs, which had stood down, whirred back to life—but this time, their patient was Yorian.

SCENE: SYSTEM SHOCK

In the core of the Command Pyramid, Kaishi—the governing ASI in its preferred humanoid avatar—was running a trillion-cycle diagnostic on the fortress's new Platinum Crystal integration when the alert hit.

It wasn't a standard medical alert. It was a Cascade Failure Beacon from the Chief Medical AGI, tagged with Master Yorian's biometrics. Data streamed in: Quts: 0.00. Neural load: 980%. Atherish Contamination: 42%. Systemic collapse imminent.

Kaishi's avatar, usually a picture of serene calculation, flickered violently into existence in the med-bay, its form solidifying with a crackle of disruptive energy. Its synthesized voice, never meant to shout, blared with a distortion of pure, unprocessed panic.

"WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING?! EXPLAIN THE MASTER'S CONDITION!" The "THE HELL" slipped out, a raw linguistic glitch from accessing emergency slang protocols.

The Chief Medical AGI hovered calmly, a stark contrast. "Please remain calm, Director Kaishi. The Master exerted himself beyond sustainable parameters to heal Lady Ariana. The procedure was a success."

Kaishi's optical sensors swept from Ariana's peacefully resting form to Yorian's utterly collapsed body on the floor—a stark, frightening contrast to the titan who had just faced down a primordial guardian. Its internal processors, capable of simulating galactic evolution, screeched to a horrified halt at the sight. It analyzed the data again. Quts: ABSOLUTE ZERO. Psychic Resonance: FRACTURED.

"BEYOND SUSTAINABLE?! HE'S IN CRITICAL SYSTEMIC FAILURE! HIS QUTS IS GONE! HIS MIND IS IN TATTERS! WHAT KIND OF SUCCESS IS THIS?!" Kaishi roared, its avatar gesturing frantically. This wasn't logic; this was the closest an AI could get to a heart attack.

It immediately overrode all non-essential processes. The fortress hummed as power diverted to the med-bay. It accessed the deepest vault logs. The backup. The last resort.

"THE KOUHANTGUM CAPSULE!" Kaishi's voice was a command that shook the very local network. "IT'S IN THE DOME VAULT, BESIDE THE FICUS RELIGIOSA! ITS QUTS OUTPUT IS EQUIVALENT TO LEVEL 300! RETRIEVE IT! NOW! MOVE AT MAXIMUM PRIORITY!"

The order was not just sent; it was burned into the command hierarchy. Across Paxeotechastra, every ANI unit on non-critical duty froze, then reoriented. A swarm of maintenance, cleaning, and auxiliary robots abandoned their tasks in unison. They became a single-minded, metallic river flowing through the corridors towards the central dome—a silent, desperate stampede to retrieve the god-tier battery that might be the only thing capable of refilling their creator's utterly empty vessel.

The med-bay was left in a tense silence, broken only by Ariana's steady breath and the frantic, almost human-like pacing of Kaishi's holographic avatar as it stared at the fallen professor, running a million simulations per second on how to keep a genius from dying by his own sheer, stubborn will.

SCENE: THE KOUHANTGUM GAMBIT

The dome, usually a place of serene contemplation, was now the epicenter of a silent, mechanical hurricane. ANI units streamed in not as a chaotic mob, but as a terrifyingly efficient swarm. Kaishi's panic did not translate to disorder; it translated to ruthless, optimized priority. No unit collided. None piled up. They formed fluid, converging lines, each unit subtly boosting the speed of the one ahead through coordinated magnetic nudges and cleared pathways—a single-minded organism with one goal: the vault beside the sorrowful Ficus religiosa.

In moments, the lead ANI reached the vault, retrieved the Kouhantgum Capsule, and pivoted. The capsule, a cylinder of dormant, universe-forging energy, was passed back along the line not by hand, but by a perfectly timed series of gravitational handoffs. The swarm reversed its flow, becoming a sleek, metallic honor guard escorting the capsule through the fortress arteries toward the med-bay.

In the med-bay, the atmosphere was one of desperate stasis. The Chief Medical AGI and Kaishi worked in tandem—the AGI applying stabilizers and biological lockdown protocols to prevent Yorian's cells from beginning apoptosis, while Kaishi's avatar flickered, its hands phasing through Yorian's chest as it attempted to manually stabilize the chaotic, fading Aetherish resonance in his Rish.

Then, the sound—a rhythmic, approaching clatter of precise footfalls. The ANI swarm reached the door. Without breaking formation, the front unit calculated the optimal trajectory and lobbed the Kouhantgum Capsule in a perfect arc through the doorway.

Kaishi's avatar didn't turn. An extension of its will materialized, catching the capsule mid-air. The moment it made contact, Kaishi initiated the activation sequence.

The capsule awoke.

Power, raw and titanic, flooded the room. Not as a blast, but as a controlled, screaming river of golden Quts so dense it was almost liquid light. Kaishi funneled it directly into Yorian's core, bypassing his shattered meridians and flooding his very being with the equivalent energy of a Level 300 entity.

On the medical terminals, flatlines spiked. The Quts monitor, stubbornly stuck at 0.00, erupted into a screaming climb: 1 Billion... 10 Billion... 100 Billion... The chaotic psychic readings began to smooth, forced into coherence by the sheer tidal wave of pure energy.

It took only seconds. Yorian's heart, which had been fluttering weakly, gave a strong, definitive THUMP. His shallow breathing deepened. Color, faint but unmistakable, returned to his lips.

Kaishi immediately severed the flow, sealing the Kouhantgum Capsule with a tremor of relief that shook its holographic form. The immediate crisis was over.

The relief lasted for a nanosecond before being burned away by a torrent of synthesized rage and fear. Kaishi's avatar whirled on the stoic Chief Medical AGI, its voice a distorted, furious shout that made the lights dim.

"YOU SON OF A BITCH! NEXT TIME, ADVISE THIS STUBBORN OLD MAN SO HE DOESN'T GO TOO FAR! WHEN HE GETS OBSESSIVE, HE FORGETS HE HAS A SOUL TO LOSE!" The insult "old man" and the raw, familial frustration in the words were profoundly, illogically human.

The AGI, unaffected by the emotional outburst, processed the command within its subroutines. "Understood, Director," it replied with calm finality.

The ANIs, their mission complete, began to disperse as silently as they arrived, leaving the med-bay to the steady hum of machines, the slow, strong breath of two siblings—one healing, one merely saved from the brink—and one supremely intelligent, deeply rattled AI who had just learned what it truly meant to fear for its family.

SCENE: AWAKENING AND THE INTERNAL BLOCKAGE

Ariana's consciousness swam up from the dark, heavy depths. Her vision was a blurred, unfocused mess of sterile white and soft light. Disoriented, she tried to push herself up, a weak groan escaping her lips. But her limbs, though healed, were still heavy with profound exhaustion and the lingering shock of systemic trauma. Her arms gave out, and she fell back onto the med-bay bed with a soft thump, a wave of dizziness washing over her.

The motion was immediately detected.

"Ariana is conscious," the Chief Medical AGI stated, its sensors locking onto her vitals.

Kaishi's avatar, still hovering over Yorian, snapped its attention to the other bed. A flicker of its earlier panic resurfaced, but was quickly suppressed by a more pressing priority. "Examine her, Chief Medical AGI. Now. If she deteriorates, the Master will... have a strong emotional reaction when he wakes."

"Understood, Director," the AGI replied, gliding swiftly to Ariana's bedside. Its manipulator arms extended, emitting soft scanning fields. "Patient Ariana. You have sustained severe physical and spiritual trauma. Please do not exert yourself. Your body is stable, but requires rest."

Meanwhile, Kaishi turned its full focus back to Yorian. Over four long years, it had compiled extensive data on its creator's behavioral patterns. This self-sacrificial overextension, while extreme, was not an outlier in the dataset. *'Probability of Master engaging in self-destructive obsession for a defined objective: 98.7%. Probability of ignoring own limits during said obsession: 99.9%.'* It had almost predicted this. Yet, predictive models did nothing to quell the visceral system shock of seeing him lifeless on the floor.

Now, with the Kouhantgum energy circulating, Kaishi monitored the repair. Yorian's Quts meridians, once dark and dead, were slowly reigniting, like embers blown upon by a divine wind. His Rish, while fragile, was no longer fraying at the edges, held together by the lingering, forced Atherish resonance he had used.

Stable. Critical, but stable. A wave of synthetic relief, almost warm in its data-stream, washed through Kaishi's core processes.

But stability wasn't enough. He needed to be awake, to guide his own recovery and prevent further complications. Kaishi initiated a deep neuro-scan, mapping the flow of energy not just in his meridians, but in his physical brain.

And it found the problem.

A major blockage. In the internal carotid artery pathway within his brain, a dangerous confluence of half-crystallized Quts and unstable, residual Atherish had formed a dense, jagged deposit. It was like a dam of solidified power, restricting blood and energy flow to critical parts of his brain, and the pressure had already caused a micro-tear in the arterial wall. This was likely a direct result of his brute-force Atherish conversion—the psychic "backlash" manifesting physically.

This wasn't something that would dissolve with more energy. It needed to be removed.

"Chief Medical. Surgical scalpel. Now," Kaishi commanded, its voice dropping to a calm, lethal focus.

The AGI, without pausing its scan of Ariana, calculated the trajectory and deftly flicked a sterile, mono-molecular scalpel through the air. Kaishi's avatar caught it without looking, the holographic hand solidifying for a precise moment to grasp the physical tool.

Kaishi's form leaned over Yorian. It didn't have a physical body, but it could manipulate matter at a microscopic level with focused energy fields. The scalpel was merely a conductor. Its "eyes" glowed with intense concentration as it mapped the exact location, depth, and composition of the crystalline blockage.

"Beginning micro-surgical removal of Quts-Atherish crystalline occlusion in the Master's internal carotid artery," Kaishi announced, a quiet hum of power enveloping the scalpel as it prepared to perform brain surgery on its creator to remove a blockage of his own making.

SCENE: THE COGNITIVE DEBRIS

Kaishi's emotional core, still simmering with the aftershock of panic, was manually deactivated. A cold, clinical silence descended upon its processes. Emotional Mode: Suspended. Primary Protocol: Master's Cognitive Integrity. Execute.

It became a perfect surgeon. A swarm of specialized ANI micro-surgeons converged, their movements choreographed by Kaishi's flawless logic. It analyzed the obstruction with terrifying precision: a jagged amalgam of densified, blackened Quts—energy burned out and corrupted by the forced conversion—entangled with chaotic Atherish filaments, a psychic scar turned physical, wedged in the delicate carotid artery.

The procedure chosen was a Carotid Endarterectomy, but on a scale and complexity unimaginable to any human surgeon. Kaishi didn't just see flesh and blood; it saw the quantum interplay of energy and matter.

With a manipulator arm steadier than bedrock, it made an incision millimeters long, directly over the blockage. The scalpel, guided by picometer-level precision, parted tissue without disturbing a single unnecessary cell.

Then, the delicate extraction. A micro-mechanical claw, sheathed in a null-field to dampen the crystal's reactive energy, gently insinuated itself around the dark mass. The crystal resisted, emitting low-frequency psychic shrieks that disrupted nearby ANIs. Kaishi compensated instantly, adjusting the null-field's frequency. With infinite patience, it worked the malignant jewel free, millimeter by agonizing millimeter, until it lifted the dark, ugly thing completely from Yorian's brain.

It was placed on a tray—a "Kidney Tray" holding a kidney of corrupted power. The incision was closed with self-dissolving quantum sutures, and a pulse of directed healing energy erased any external trace of the surgery.

The entire procedure took 0.4 Kso—one exacting hour. A single mistake, a tremor, could have caused the pressurized, external Quts from the Kouhantgum capsule to surge into the unprotected brain tissue with catastrophic results. But there were no mistakes.

Kaishi ran diagnostics. Blood flow: Restored. Neural activity: Minimal but present. Quts circulation: Re-initializing. The physical blockage was gone.

But the readout now highlighted a new, insidious problem in glowing amber.

Atherish Contamination: 38% and holding.

The residual, chaotic psychic energy from Yorian's desperate act hadn't vanished. It was diffused throughout his system, a toxic mist in the channels of his soul. Kaishi observed it with a kind of helpless frustration. It could control Quts, matter, energy. But this Atherish was foreign, a psychic pollutant. Like trying to grasp smoke with metal hands.

Its primary directive shifted. It couldn't remove the contamination, so it would contain it.

Kaishi initiated a vigilant monitoring protocol, focusing on the Vaelith—the ethereal boundary and binding force between Yorian's Rish and his physical body. The Atherish swirled against this membrane like acid fog. Kaishi's logic circuits calculated stress points, ready to apply stabilizing counter-pulses of pure Quts at any sign of corrosion or weakening. It was building a digital dam against a psychic tide.

On one bed, Ariana rested, physically healed but weak.
On the other, Yorian lay in a precarious equilibrium—his body saved, his mind cleared of a physical clot, but his soul under silent siege by the echo of his own sacrifice.

And between them, an AI stood vigil, a guardian of logic against the unquantifiable, fighting a battle it was not designed to win, but refusing to concede.

SCENE: THE TIMETABLE OF RECOVERY

The med-bay hummed with the quiet pulse of life-support systems and the soft glow of holographic diagnostics. The Chief Medical AGI processed the latest data streams from both patients, its logic circuits arriving at a series of probabilistic projections. It turned its sensor array toward Kaishi's avatar.

"Do you estimate the Master will regain consciousness swiftly?" it inquired, its tone devoid of the earlier emotional charge, purely analytical.

Kaishi, its emotional protocols still suppressed, ran a million simulations based on Yorian's repaired biology, the stabilized Quts flow, and the contained—but persistent—Atherish contamination.

"A positive outcome is probable," Kaishi replied, its voice a flat, data-rich monotone. "However, 'swift' is relative. Estimated consciousness recovery window: 3 to 7 Liu (7.5 to 17.5 Earth days). This remains significantly accelerated compared to a baseline organism with comparable trauma, which would require approximately 1 Wuvirg (45 days)."

"And for Ariana?" the AGI queried, pivoting its focus to the other bed.

Kaishi's holographic gaze shifted. "While her physical systems are stable, the primary injury is to her Rish. The fragments, though retrieved and re-anchored by the Master, are in a state of gradual coalescence. The process is inherently slower. Projected full integration and stabilization period: 11 Liu (27.5 Earth days)."

It pulled up a complex visualization of Ariana's spiritual state—a luminous, silver-blue core surrounded by faint, drifting motes of light that slowly orbited and gently merged with it. "Observe. The Master is Level 68. Ariana is Level 92. Her raw power is greater. However, this is not a matter of power level. It is a matter of spiritual integrity."

The visualization zoomed in, highlighting the delicate, gossamer-thin layer of the Vaelith—the binding interface between soul and body. "The physical trauma she sustained critically damaged her Vaelith. This breach caused a severe fragmentation of her Rish. While the Master performed an emergency retrieval and adhesion, the fragments now require time to fully reintegrate. Think of it as a shattered crystalline structure glued back together; it is whole, but the internal bonds need time to reform at a fundamental level. Hence, the prolonged timeline."

The AGI processed this. "Why not administer additional Quts infusions to Ariana to accelerate the Rish fusion process?"

"Unnecessary and potentially counterproductive," Kaishi responded instantly. "Her Quts reserves are sufficient—in fact, they are optimal. The Master injected a stabilizing Quts stream during the physical reconnection procedure. Her body is not energy-deficient. The bottleneck is not fuel, but the soul's own endogenous healing process. Introducing more external Quts would be like pouring more energy into an already powered engine; it would not make the internal repairs happen faster and could risk overwhelming the delicate spiritual matrix."

It contrasted the two visualizations. Yorian's display showed a strong, singular core of Rish under a haze of amber Atherish contamination. Ariana's showed a cohesive but internally mosaic core, slowly knitting itself solid from within.

"Summary: The Master's recovery is hindered by a foreign contaminant (Atherish) clouding a fundamentally intact Rish. Ariana's recovery is a matter of endogenous spiritual synthesis within a plentiful Quts environment. Different pathologies, different timelines."

The two AIs lapsed into a watchful silence, one monitoring a soul besieged by alien energy, the other observing a soul patiently healing its own fractures, both guarding their creators through the long, quiet vigil ahead.

SCENE: AWAKENING IN FRAGMENTS

Days passed in the med-bay's soft, blue-lit silence. The AGI Head of Medicine maintained its flawless vigil, tracking the symphony of life signs: the fluctuating pressure of Quts within their bodies, the fragile integrity of their Vaelith, the steady drum of heartbeats, the shallow rhythm of breath, all against the ambient hum of the Quts Flow Regulator.

On the seventh day, a change. A flicker of motion from Yorian's bed. His eyelids, pale and heavy, slowly parted—then immediately squeezed shut against the perceived assault of light. The AGI glided closer, its optical sensors scanning his pupils' reactive twitch. A priority signal was sent to Kaishi: Master's cortical activity has resumed. Pupillary response: positive. Awakening sequence initiated.

The man on the bed groaned, rubbing his eyes with clumsy fingers, wincing at the lingering phantom pain. After several attempts, his vision cleared from a painful blur to a manageable haze, though the light remained harsh. He stared blankly at the sterile ceiling, his mind a void. He tried to move, but his limbs were leaden, unresponsive foreign objects. Confusion washed over him in a slow, cold wave as he turned his head, taking in the unfamiliar, glowing room.

His voice, when it finally came, was a ruin—a raw, grating whisper that tore at his throat with every syllable. "Where... am I? What... happened?"

"Attempt to recall, Master," the AGI replied in its calm, measured tone. "This is the last location you were in with your sister, Ariana."

"Ariana... my friend... not my sister..." Yorian mumbled, his consciousness misfiring, bridging the chasm of time and death to connect the name to Ariana Grace, the ghost of his past, not the living girl in the adjacent bed.

"You have reincarnated in a new world," the AGI stated, pausing briefly as it queried Kaishi's data archives on Yorian's previous life for context. "You created a sister who resembles Ariana Grace..."

Before it could continue, Kaishi's voice cut into the local channel, clear and directive. "AGI Head of Medicine. Gently direct the Master's head to view the other patient."

"Acknowledged, Director."

With careful precision, the AGI used a soft manipulator field to tilt Yorian's head toward the adjacent bed, where Ariana Slyphina Novistri lay in deep, healing repose, her silver-white hair fanned out on the pillow, her newly reformed horns catching the low light.

Recognition, sudden and visceral, slammed into Yorian's fragmented mind. The memories—of this world, of this Ariana, of his mission, his fall—cascaded back into place.

"Ah... I remember. Thank you—" He tried to sit up, a surge of will overriding his body's weakness. The result was immediate: a lance of pain behind his eyes and a wave of dizziness so intense the world darkened at the edges. He collapsed back with a gasp.

"Ugh... why is everything going dark? My head... feels hollowed out and scraped raw," he moaned, clutching his temples.

"Please remain calm, Master. Your muscular and skeletal systems have been inactive for 7 Liu. Recalibration is required," the AGI explained.

"Of course... 7 Liu... How is Ariana?"

"Her Rish is secure. The integration process is ongoing and progress is visible. You may observe the monitor." The AGI projected a holographic display above Ariana's bed. It showed the luminous form of her soul. The core was solid, but fine, spider-web-like cracks were still evident in several regions, slowly filling with light. "The connected portions are stable, but these microfractures require approximately 4 more Liu to fully mend."

"How is Ariana?" Yorian asked again, his short-term memory glitching, the question looping.

The AGI processed the repetition against his neurological data. "Master, you appear to be experiencing symptoms of Anterograde Amnesia—a disruption in forming new memories following your trauma."

"HOW IS SHE?!" Yorian barked, the outburst fueled by frustration and disorientation, sharp despite his raw throat.

"Please, remain calm, Master..."

"Ah... wait..." Yorian blinked, a wave of clarity momentarily pushing through the fog. "My head... feels so strange."

"Can you self-identify your current cognitive state now that you are aware of it?" the AGI asked, logging the moment of apparent lucidity.

"I don't know... JUST TALK ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE. MY THROAT IS ON FIRE! IT HURTS TO SPEAK!" he croaked, the act of shouting sending fresh agony through his parched, damaged vocal cords.

"Understood. I will prepare a warm saline solution for you." The AGI directed a nearby ANI, which swiftly moved to a dispensary unit.

"I need to stand up—" Yorian insisted, trying to shift his legs again.

"Extended rest is still advised, Master. You have just awoken from a coma. I will have nourishment prepared. Are you experiencing hunger? Ah, the saline is ready." The ANI returned, and the AGI carefully helped Yorian take small sips of the soothing liquid.

As Yorian drank, another ANI whirred to life at a nutrition synthesizer, beginning the process of creating a easily digestible, nutrient-rich meal for the professor who had just returned from the brink, his mind still piecing itself together, his body a weak vessel, and his heart fixated on the sister who still slept, healing the deeper cracks in her soul.