Treborn

"I'm not exactly sure, are you hurt?"

How he knew something occurred, Artemis wasn't sure, but his safety took precedence.

"I seem to be fine, mind explaining what the hell just happened?"

But Artemis didn't respond, she couldn't, there was something different about Fluffles and she couldn't put a finger to it.

If before, she knew he was there via her main 5 senses like sight and hearing, there was something that alerted her to his presence, even if she was blind and deaf.

"I can see you"

Visibly confused, Fluffles tried to think on what she said. Tilting his head, he took a long look at her, studying her features.

Seemingly unsatisfied, he opted for closing his eyes.

"That's trippy."

Wondering what he was referring to, Artemis closed her eyes as well.

"Trippy indeed!"

The darkness that usually permeated the back of her eyelids was now filled with the image of... her

She was looking at herself from where Fluffles had been before, she was looking at herself from his eyes.

"So, I won't be able to sleep anymore?"

"We can go to sleep at the same time idiot."

"Oh, right."

Still confused on what occurred to bring about this development, Artemis promptly interrogated Fluffles on his side of the story.

"Well, in case you were wondering. I was sleeping peacefully but it was strangely dark and uneventful. This changed abruptly, placing me in a void with a tree of mind-boggling proportions. I could see an orb of mostly green and blue rested on a singular small branch, while darkened orbs of much greater magnitude rested on branches of much larger sizes. It was beautiful and strangely humbling."

Thinking back, Artemis did notice tree designs on the door. But instead of orbs, she saw islands. How the two correlated and or differentiated, she couldn't tell, but she decided to share what she saw in her dream.

"I don't really understand what's going on, but I imagine this has to do with our training with Heldic, so naturally, to better understand our situation, we have to better understand Heldic, and keep experimenting."

Keep experimenting after they've already done something potentially irreversible?

"That sounds like a terrible idea, I love it."

Starting with fleshing out the ability to peer through each other's senses, they found that while sight and hearing were transferred over, touch was not.

Artemis was sure they both looked exceedingly stupid. They practiced navigating the forest through the eyes of the other, a fair distance apart with numerous amounts of communication, since they continuously ran into each other and objects.

It took several hours to accomplish the task smoothly and several days to successfully run without crashing.

Her favorite form of training was practicing hitting shots standing in one location and looking from a different angle, it was like nothing she's ever experienced.

Over the course of a week, Artemis progressed little in her knowledge of Heldic but expanded well upon what she already knew by testing the limits.

She worked diligently because with the absence of a seed, Artemis was certain she was lagging behind anyone who did have one. She had just turned 18 years old a month prior and still lacked any major attack potency. Although there wasn't much to be said, Artemis didn't know when everyone started their journey down the path of power.

For now, she laid in the grass of the same field she made a connection with Fluffles.

The canine seemed to be a movement prodigy. He was always several steps ahead of her in all of the exercises regarding spatial awareness and balance.

She tried to ask him where he got the experience from and that it wasn't fair, he was holding out on her.

"Who would ever have experienced peering through someone else's eyes Artemis, let's use our head please."

Was the only thing he would respond with.

Still, she made sure Fluffles knew he was cheating by having four legs and that he should try all of this with only two and see where he got.

Laying on her back, she stared at the clouds with pictures, ideas and hypothesis floating through her head.

Some things she immediately wrote off, others she made a mental note to try later, the rest, were about how the clouds above looked like funny rabbits.

From the corner of her eye, she could see Fluffles moving through a series of stretches. By what he told her, if he was tied to her in such a manner, he naturally had to follow her and should be ready for anything.

"If something happens to you, Az will wring my pelt out to dry on his branches."

Still, she teased him nonetheless for not being able to be without her, although he denied that even be close to the reason, she didn't care.

Artemis did give him a break from her teasing to do his stretches, it seemed like Fluffles was focused and it would be rude to interrupt him, she would get him later anyway.

While she couldn't go to sleep with him still awake, she could enjoy the show from his eyes and perhaps not be as bored.

As she closed her eyes, the usual view did not come about.

"Artemis, what the hell did you do this time?"