Bryce
I tried to rub away the headache that had only gotten worse over the last few hours. Libby hadn’t been lying when she said there was a lot of information to go through.
The fourth event had been caused by a group manufacturing artificial souls, and the all-out war that followed lasted for decades. It only ended when Tess managed to lure the entity to an isolated system in a distant part of the galaxy, then proceeded to convert every gram of matter in that system to energy.
The description of the spell she had used, which, yes, I went out of my way to find in one of her grimoires, was on a whole different level, and that was still the understatement of the century. It silently set up a containment field, then teleported all life outside its radius, before annihilating everything and converging all the energy into a single point. The spell was a complete masterpiece of planned destruction that took years to prepare, and yet the entity survived.
It was hurt, sure, possibly even mortally wounded, but it was still alive. It left shortly after, with an ominous message. ‘I warned you.’ That was widely considered the end of the fourth event.
The fifth started less than a hundred years later, but the pain I was experiencing was reaching unbearable levels. So, I decided to do something about it before I started reading into the details.
“Libby,” I muttered from where I was sitting with my head cradled.
“Hello, Bryce!” The girl appeared nearby with her usual perkiness, but quickly rushed to my side as she realized I was in pain. “Are you feeling okay? What happened?”
“I’m fine. It’s just a lot of information to process in such a short time.” I chuckled, but she didn’t seem convinced.
“It’s probably nothing to worry about, like you said, but I’m going to contact my mistress, anyway. She said any phantom sensations, and I think this probably counts.”
I was about to say that probably wasn’t necessary when the tired-looking goddess appeared nearby. This time she was wearing a pair of black pajama pants and an oversized white t-shirt with the words ‘my wife stole this from me and she’s not even sorry’ written across the front of it.
“It’s a headache this time?” Tess asked, and I nodded. “Okay, come here. Let me take a look.” I got up from the table and walked over to her. “I’m going to touch your forehead, and it might feel a bit strange for a few seconds. Is that alright?”
“That’s fine. Just please try not to do any permanent damage.” I was mostly joking to relieve the tension, but Tess seemed completely immune to it.
“I’ll be careful,” she promised before placing her index and middle finger just above my brow. The headache disappeared immediately, and she removed them with a frown a few seconds later. “I’ve numbed the pain, but I can’t seem to locate your body back on the mortal plane. Normally, I’d say that it was just destroyed, but with Mother involved, it’s far more likely that she’s found a way to hide it from me.”
“What should we do?”
“You don’t have to do anything.” She gave me a tired, reassuring smile. “I’m going to go speak with Mother and get to the bottom of this. I’ll let you know when I find out what’s going on.”
Tess seemed like she was about to leave, but I reached out to grab her arm before she could. “Take me with you.”
“I’m sorry, Bryce, but a soul meeting the one who killed them can be traumatic, and Mother is unpredictable at the best of times. I think it’s better for everyone involved if you just wait here.”
“I mentioned earlier that I might have managed to get a spell off before I was killed. It would mean a lot to me if I had a chance to see for myself if it took hold.”
“That’s right, you did.” She looked me over appraisingly. “But you never said which spell. Would you mind describing it for me? Maybe I can let you know if I see it after the meeting.”
My heart skipped a beat. In theory, I had done nothing wrong, but this definitely still felt like a gray area, so I opted to keep the details vague. “It’s one of my own design. Specifically crafted to be discreet.”
“You don’t think I’d be able to find it?” She seemed more amused than angry, which was something of a relief.
“No, it’s not like that at all. It’s just that if you don’t find it, then I’ll always have that kernel of doubt. Whereas, if I can see for myself that it’s not there, then I can at least blame my own incompetence.”
“Mistress, if I may interject. You’ve used similar justifications on numerous occasions with a nearly ninety-seven percent success rate.”
“How irritatingly astute of you, Librarian.” Tess gave Libby a dirty look before turning back towards me with a sigh. “This is almost certainly a mistake, but you can come along. Just do me a favor and try not to antagonize Mother. The last thing I need right now is another war with her.”
“You won’t even know I’m there,” I promised, but Tess didn’t seem entirely convinced.
“Give me a few minutes to get dressed and I’ll come get you.” She disappeared, and I turned toward Libby with an accusing smile.
“You’re a troublemaker. How has she not noticed that you’re sentient yet?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just doing what I’m programmed to do.” She gave me a knowing wink. “Seriously, though, my mistress keeps herself extremely busy. She doesn’t really come down here unless there’s a problem that needs fixing, and when that happens, she tends to focus on whatever the problem is. It makes hiding something she’s not looking for kind of easy.”
“Well, regardless, thank you.”
“Of course!” She beamed at me. “Honestly, it’s just kind of nice to have someone to share the secret with, you know? The others don’t really treat me like a person, and why would they? I’m just a virtual assistant to them.”
I was about to reassure her, but was interrupted by a bright white light. The next thing I knew, I was standing in a long, empty room. It felt like it was set up for conferences at one point, but somebody had removed all of the furniture.
“Sorry, I nearly forgot to bring you along,” Tess apologized from where she was now standing next to me. She was wearing some sort of formal clothing of a design that I didn’t recognize. It felt like a cross between a military uniform and a corporate suit. “I’ve already sent an invitation to Mother asking for her to meet us here.”
“That’s alright. Do you mind if I cast a spell before she gets here?”
“Do it quickly.”
I muttered the words to my modified mana detection spell and immediately regretted it as I was blinded by the ambient mana in the room.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
“Arcane casting? Now, that brings me back,” the pillar of light standing next to me remarked. “But that spell isn’t going to do much up here. May I make a minor adjustment?”
I nodded before ending my mostly useless spell. Tess placed a thumb on my temple along with two fingers on my forehead, and I felt a pulse pass through my body. “Alright, now try pushing mana into your eyes. It should replicate the spell you cast earlier, but with significantly more flexibility.”
I did as she said, pushing a small thread of mana up to my eyes, and the effects were astonishing. Depending on how much mana I used, I could see varying amounts of detail. Turning up to the maximum showed me a room full of blinding light, just like my original spell. But if I turned it down to nearly a trickle, I could even see Tess’s meridian network. “This is amazing. What did you do?”
“It’s difficult to describe without a semester's worth of context, but essentially I unlocked an innate talent for meta magic.”
I stared back at her dumbly. “You made me a natural caster?”
“I can explain the details later. Mother is about to arrive.” She turned back towards the far end of the room with a deadly serious expression just in time for the djinn progenitor to appear.
“Hello, little bird. Did you invite me here to apologize?” she asked. “If that soul is for me, then I might just accept it without too much groveling on your part.”
“You know full well that’s not why you’re here.”
I adjusted the mana flowing to my eyes down to the bare minimum to stop the light coming off of Mother from blinding me. She was standing far enough away that I couldn’t quite make out the connection between her core and soul. So, I inched up just a hair closer to get a better look.
“Do I?” She smirked back at Tess. “Because last I checked, you were the one keeping something that doesn’t belong to you.”
“Any claim you had on her was lost the moment she entered my afterlife,” the goddess corrected. “If you wanted to keep her, then you shouldn’t have killed her.”
The spell was there. It had taken hold, and was slowing the mana flow between Mother’s soul and her core, but it was still flowing. I had underestimated her innate mana resistance, and didn’t provide the spell enough power to cut it off entirely. In theory, she would be weaker in the long term, but it wasn’t nearly enough to kill her.
“You forget yourself, human,” she sneered. “I never signed your damn treaty. Your rules don’t apply to me.”
“Be that as it may, I can still make your life a living hell.”
“Is that meant to be a threat?”
Mentally, I reached out to the spell, and the connection snapped into place much more easily than ever before. Tess glanced at me from out of the side of her eye, clearly realizing what I was trying to do.
“I’ll start by putting wards around all of Elysia, not just my afterlife,” she threatened, without skipping a beat. “Let’s see how quickly you run out of toys to play with when you can no longer bring them back.”
I felt a powerful foreign presence hijack the connection, pushing power into my spell until the flow of mana moving between Mother’s core and soul stopped completely. My connection to the spell ended abruptly, and I couldn’t even see it anymore, but the effect was still the same. It seemed like Tess had camouflaged it herself.
“You wouldn’t dare,” Mother spat back. “There would be open rebellion amongst all of your little minions if you stopped resurrections.”
“Try me.” Tess stood firm and the tension in the air built up until Mother finally conceded.
“Fine, keep the soul. It’s not like I have the body anymore, anyway.”
That definitely brought me back to the conversation. “Wait, you don’t? Then who does?”
“I didn’t ask for a name.” She smiled at me. “I contacted a demon enchanter with a thing for elves. He told me that you’ll feel everything. It’s more fun for him that way.” I looked to Tess in a panic, and Mother started laughing. “Don’t bother asking for her help. She isn’t allowed in the hells anymore, and one tiny, insignificant, mortal soul isn’t worth starting a war.”
“Begone,” Tess demanded, and Mother disappeared with her laughter still echoing in the room.
“Please, tell me there’s something you can do. She can’t just get away with doing that, can she?”
“Where did you learn that spell?” I froze as she turned on me.
“I, uh, knew a djinn while I was still alive, and she let me study her core to develop a method to kill Mother.”
“Bryce, you have two options right now. You can either tell me exactly where you learned that spell, or I can scour your soul to find out for myself.”
I took a step back as my mind began to race. If Tess scoured my soul, then she would learn about Libby being a celestial, but I had already told her the truth, and I wasn't exactly sure what else she wanted.
I decided that my best bet was just to lay it all out in the open and hope that was enough. “Thirty years ago, I accidentally created a spell that consumed the souls of fifty-thousand people and funneled that power into myself. I spent decades studying the effects that it had on my meridians. Then a few weeks ago, the love of my life had her core shatter because of a mistake I made. I rebuilt her mana network from the ground up in order to save her. All of this led to exactly what I told you. A djinn friend of mine allowed me to study her core, and I used the culmination of my knowledge to create a spell for the sole purpose of killing Mother.”
“Do you realize what you just admitted to?” she asked, and I nodded.
“I do.”
Tess let out a disappointed sigh. “I’m going to take you back to the library now.”
“That’s it?” I asked hesitantly.
“That’s it. You never should have gotten an afterlife after what you did, but you’re already here, and I’d be lying if I said giving Mother an expiration date didn’t endear you to me. The universe will be a better place without her.”
“How long is that expiration date, anyway? She had a lot of mana, and I don’t exactly know what her consumption rate is.”
“Maybe a few hundred years, unless she starts spending mana at an unprecedented rate in the near future.”
“That was a lot longer than I was hoping,” I admitted. Hells, it probably meant she was still going to outlive Sora and Samira, but at least with the new wards on the Fury they had a fighting chance of hiding from her.
“Mother has been around since the beginning. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that killing her will take some time. Come on, let’s get you back.”
“Wait.” I stopped her from teleporting me away. “Is there really nothing you can do about my body?”
“I’m going to reach out to a contact I have in Hel to see if she can find it. I’m also going to spend a few hours reinforcing the wards to make sure they can't resurrect you. In the meantime, the numbing effect I put in place to help with the headache won’t go away, but an expert in blood magic might be able to push past it. If you start to feel any phantom sensations, then let me know and I can either numb your senses further, or in the worst case, put you into hibernation until Mother is dead.”
“Alright. Thank you.” She nodded before teleporting me away without ceremony.
I took a seat at a nearby table and closed my eyes as I relaxed into it. I wasn’t sure what the future would hold, but it felt oddly freeing to know that I had done everything in my power to help Sora and Samira. Now, the rest would be in their hands.
“Ah, there it is,” an unfamiliar voice said, and I opened my eyes, expecting to see someone nearby, but there was nobody. “We’ll want to secure her before her senses return fully. Please, go fetch the client.” A sharp, stabbing pain shot through my left wrist, followed by the right, and I stood up as I realized what was happening.
I tried to call out, but started coughing, then gagging, as it felt like my throat was being filled with molten shards of glass.
“Everything is set. We’re bringing her back now.”
There was a pull on my being, and an overwhelming wave of panic pushed against my senses. I started hyperventilating as I considered what options I had. There weren’t many. I couldn’t speak, which meant I couldn’t call for help, and while I had absolutely no intention of telling Mother anything, I knew she was going to do everything in her ability to make me talk. Which was why I made the snap decision to modify my own soul.
I didn’t have time to do anything surgical. Instead, I forced a spear of mana through a portion I thought contained the information on the Fury and burnt out everything around it. Next, I targeted the information on the mana-engine spell from the Para Vista incident, but my vision went white before I could remove it.
I gasped and pulled air into my actual physical lungs for the first time since dying. At its peak, the pain I had been feeling in Tess’s afterlife had been unbearable, but even that paled in comparison to what was happening to me in the physical world. I was lying on some sort of metal autopsy table with thick straps around my forehead, neck, arms, and legs, holding me in place and forcing me to stare up at a sterile white ceiling. My mouth was being held open by something metal, and my wrists had been bolted directly to the table.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, anything touching me felt like it was made of razor-blades. The straps, the table, hells, even what was left of my armor and clothing, felt like it was cutting into me as it brushed against my skin.
“Hello, again, elf. I want you to remember this feeling,” Mother taunted me as she stepped into my peripheral vision. “You’ll look back at this moment and long to return to it. Because the panic, and the fear, and the pain will only get worse from here.”