It took a few minutes before they fully recovered, but once they did, Lilith, Julian, and Viktor were understandably confused by the new figure standing in front of them. Granted, I was pretty much as confused as they were right now. I still had no idea why I wasn’t the one in control of the body and where Jester had come from.

“So... Uh... Thank you?” Viktor said, cautiously eyeing up Jester.

“There’s no need to thank me, my dear boy. I’m always happy to kill some people,” Jester responded a bit too cheerfully.

Lilith gave him an inquisitive look. “So, are you saying that you weren’t trying to save us?”

“I wouldn’t exactly say that. I was told to save you three, but considering I didn’t care too much about that, I decided to do it in a way that would involve something I actually enjoy.”

“I suppose that does make sense, but it does beg a much bigger question.”

“And what would that be?”

“Who in Ser are you?!” she shouted.

He bowed slightly. “The name’s Jester!” He gave a little two finger salute.

Lilith rolled her eyes. “Do you have a real name?”

“Excuse you, bitch! This is my real name!” He retorted angrily.

“Hey! Don’t talk about her like that!” I shouted back.

“Oh shut up, green kitten,” He shot back.

Lilith’s ears seemed to perk up at this remark. “Green kitten? Are you talking about Avien? Where is he?”

Jester let out a slightly off-putting laugh that bordered on maniacal. “Hadn’t you guessed by the outfit?” He gestured to his clothing, a pink variation of my jacket sporting bright green trim. “I’m the little demon living inside of his head.”

Lilith looked confused by this and I shared that. “Sylak?”

Jester laughed again. “Haha! That’s a good one. No, I’m not the psychopath with the purple hair. Although, I suppose you could say both him and the green kitten are a part of me.”

That comment made me think. Jester had appeared because Sylak and I had made a deal. Sylak had accepted to allow me to use his power and let me stay in control of the body, but instead, Jester had appeared and was clearly capable of using both weather and lightning magic. But he had also said that he had existed for seventeen years, implying my whole life. How was it possible that I didn’t know about him? He did say he was trapped, but if he was trapped inside my mind, I should have at least seen him at some point.

I looked over to Sylak who was intently focused on the window of vision. “Have you ever seen him before?” I asked.

He just shook his head. That made things even more confusing. Sylak spent the majority of his time inside of here, so if he was trapped inside of here, Sylak was the one who definitely should have seen him at some point.

I saw something dawn on Lilith’s face as she continued to look at Jester. “Hold up... Avien said that his recent visions were involving the colors green and pink. Does that mean that he was having visions about you?”

Jester smiled. “Indeed it does. You’re quite the sharp one.”

“So, are you just another personality living inside of his head, like with Sylak?” she asked.

He paused to think for a moment. “I suppose that’s an apt comparison. Although, right now, I’m in control of the body and the two of them are in my mind. The green kitten can have his body back in a bit. I’d like to at least get some time to stretch my legs, so to speak.”

“I see. I suppose that makes about as much sense as the rest of the crap with Avien.”

I sighed. I did feel a little bad for all the things that I kept putting these people through. They were my friends, yes and they had chosen to stick with me, but I still wish that I was a bit simpler to deal with sometimes. I was pretty okay with Jester taking the reins for a bit though. I still hadn’t quite recovered from all that I’d done today and now that things had been resolved, I wasn’t needed much either.

However, they did need to head back to camp and somehow explain to them how their campers had died in a way that didn’t lead to our whole group getting killed.

“The green kitten says that we should be heading back to camp and that we need some way to explain how these assholes died,” he said, gesturing to the bodies.

As I looked at them, they had almost completely vanished and in their place were three glowing blue puffs of energy, like mini-fires. They were just like the one we had seen at the memorial in the city. These must have been the soul remnants of each of them. It was still strange to think that the people in this world actually left behind a significant part of them when they died.

Julian finally spoke up, having been silently listening from the corner. “The best thing to say to the members of the camp is that they died fighting the current reaper. They will still be mad at us, but at least we can come back at a later date.”

Lilith and Viktor nodded. Jester simply shrugged. He clearly took a decent bit of pride in what he had done and was probably even a bit bummed out that he wouldn’t be receiving any credit. However, if the camp found out that we’d killed them, no matter what we told them about what the three apprentices had done to us, they would hate us for sure.

Lilith, Viktor, and Julian each grabbed one of the floating soul remnants. The four then made their way down the tunnel in silence. When they finally reached the gate back in to the camp, they raised one of the soul remnants up to it, causing it to slowly open up. They all swam inside and soon enough they were heading back towards the main building. Outside, there were dozens of campers who seemed to be eagerly awaiting the return of their friends. Their faces sunk the second they saw the soul remnants in the group’s hands.

“What happened to them?!” One girl shouted from the crowd.

“The... current reaper got to them...” Lilith replied solemnly.

“You people should be ashamed of yourselves! How dare you not protect them! Their death is on your hands!”

They lowered their heads to avoid the gazes of the crowd as they headed inside the building and made their way to Dale’s office. The knocked on the door and after a few seconds, a call came from inside. “Come in!”

Dale met them with a friendly expression that immediately disappeared at the sight of the soul remnants. “I...”

“We’re so sorry... We tried to save them, but...”

He stopped her. “No no. You did your best, I’m sure. At least the four of you.. Survived...” His voice trailed off as his eyes fell upon Jester. “I’m sorry, did you stop to change on the way back?”

Jester chuckled. “I suppose that’s one way to put it, but the real explanation would take far too much time, so let’s just not get in to that, shall we?”

Dale blinked a few times before shaking it off and returning to the three soul remnants. “I’ll make sure they receive proper memorials...” he said as he placed each of the remnants on his desk. “We’re very grateful for your help. I hope that the rest of your mission goes smoothly.”

They exited the office and from the other side of the door, I could faintly hear him crying. I wanted to make a joke about how things would certainly not go smoothly, but I restrained myself. It wasn’t right to joke about him after what he’d just been through.

“Anyway! Now that that boring crap is over, I need to go shopping!” Jester exclaimed and I almost slapped my face. He sure did know how to ruin a mood.

“Do you really think that now is the best time to be shopping?” Lilith asked.

Jester scoffed. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand the importance of fashion, but I am someone who doesn’t want to look like a troll. These boy’s sense of fashion is non-existent. Their wardrobes are utterly drab monstrosities and I try to hold myself to a better standard.”

Lilith seemed like she wanted to shout back, but then Julian cut in. “We don’t really have a super huge rush to meet with Pototangaros and on top of that, we haven’t had much down time since we got here, so some time to just relax and go shopping might be a good idea.”

I smiled. I hadn’t really expected Julian to be the one advocating for the group to take a break, but Lilith and Viktor just looked at him and shrugged. Now in agreement, the group headed out of the building, being met with more boos and angry comments before reaching the open city. They swam around for a bit before finally reaching what looked like a pretty large clothing store.

Jester excitedly rushed inside and began zooming around the store, finding tons of clothes. He grabbed everything from a pair of plain white shoes to a very fancy looking blue dress. I was a bit confused by some of it since it was female clothing, but I figured he had already proven to be weird enough as it was, so this was just another layer to it all.

Eventually, once he’d apparently acquired enough clothing, he found his way to the fitting rooms where he took the largest one. All in all, Jester had gotten around seventy different outfits. I had no idea how he would even pay for all of this.

“Julian can pay for it all. He has the money after all. I highly doubt it will even make a dent in his funds.”

I shrugged. I suppose he had a point, but it was still a bit weird and uncomfortable to rely on others for payment for things, even if they did happen to be extremely rich.

Jester quickly stripped down and looked in the mirror. His form was extremely similar to mine and Sylak’s except for some key differences. For starters, his skin tone seemed to be somewhat between my olive skin and Sylak’s ghostly white skin. On top of that was the hair. I’d seen the glimpse before, but now I had a full view to see that, primarily, Jester had extremely curly pink hair that fell to just around his neck. There were two streaks in it though. On the right, there was a very familiar purple streak and on the left was another very familiar green streak.

The other big difference was the fact that his eyes were completely green. Even when Sylak took over, he still retained the base traits of the eyes, but Jester’s eyes were both completely normal. They were a piercing green and what I imagined my eyes would look like if I didn’t have the cursed and observer’s eyes.

He began trying on various outfits, not even touching the female clothing. I began impatiently tapping my foot, getting a little bored. Then, I remembered I didn’t have to stand. I closed my eyes for a moment and concentrated. When I opened them, I fell backwards directly in to my green recliner. I sat there, continuing to watch, almost falling asleep. 

Then, I was snapped awake by Jester exclaiming. “Now! For the other half!” 

I then watched as he stripped down and began to glow pink. His body began to ripple and everything began shifting around. His waist curved in, his hips expanded, and his chest bubbled outwards. On top of that, his eyelashes lengthened and his face softened and rounded. He didn’t look like a completely different person, but he did look female, in every sense of the word. Eyeing him over, I found that he or maybe she was completely female. 

“Um...” 

She chuckled. “Try not to drool too much, my little green kitten. 

The simple thought that I might be attracted to what was technically my own body was enough to snap me out of my trance. “That’s… not what I’m concerned about right now…” I replied.

She smiled. “I imagine, if that’s not what’s on your mind, you’re probably wondering how I even did this. Especially certain aspects.”

“Ugh! Can you stop trying to make me think about that?! I just want to know how it’s even possible for your body to change like that.”

She sighed, beginning to try on some clothes. “The same way the purple kitten’s hair is the way it is. Or his eyes. Or his mouth. I don’t entirely know why we have this ability, but for some reason, because of this eye you have and the weird link between your minds and body, you can actually change your body. It does have its limits of course. You can’t create anything new. For instance, I was able to use the matter I removed from my waist and add it to my hips.”

I was in shock. I had no idea what to say, I just had so many questions racing through my mind. “Why would I do this? Well, because I’m female, sort of… Maybe it’s because of the two of you and how different you are, but I’m not always the same gender. I believe the term they came up with in your world, green kitten, was gender fluid.”

I nodded. I had never really thought about that stuff. I had always been pretty happy with my gender and all that, so it was strange that something that was created from my mind was like this. “So, should I call you they or something?”

Jester slipped herself in to a purple dress with frills all the way around. “Do whatever you want. I don’t really care.”

“Alright. I’ll uh... keep that in mind…”

She rolled her eyes, tossing the clothes back on to the hangers, now done with them all. “You really don’t have to worry about it. I’m still the same crazy pink thing living in your head.”

I sat back in my chair. I was still extremely confused. I had always been very confident in both my sexuality and gender and now I had a thing living in my head that wasn’t at all what I was.

Jester grabbed her clothes and exited the fitting room to be met by the extremely confused faces of Viktor, Julian, and Lilith. Jeter just rolled her eyes. “I’m not explaining it again, so just deal with it.”

She walked over to the counter and they followed. She turned to Julian. “I expect you’ll be able to cover this all, correct?”

He sighed and threw some chips on the counter. “Keep the change.”

I didn’t know how much money he gave the cashier, but they seemed very happy as they walked away. Jester stopped. “Hold up!”

She formed a pink seal in the air, forming a small rift that she promptly tossed all the clothes she just bought in to. “Alright, let’s go!”

I took one more look around the store and incidentally, I spotted something. “Wait!”

Jester froze. “What is it?”

I pointed to a shelf. “Look!”

She turned to the shelf I was pointing to. Sitting on it was a bright pink tiny top hat. “Oh! It’s the hat!” She rushed over to the shelf and grabbed the hat. Knowing it was already covered by whatever tip Julian left the cashier, she walked out with it. She created another rift and reached inside, pulling out a strip of green cloth which she promptly wrapped around the base of the hat. “Hey, Julian! Can you make me a little gold clip that will fit on here?” she said, motioning to the bottom of the hat. He shrugged, creating a seal and creating a clip which he threw to Jester. She used some wind to sew the clip to the hat before promptly placing in on her head. “Perfect!”