Dippy begins to grip my shoulders, likely to shake me in excitement at my response of well-being, but thankfully Miza stops him. Just because I’m not dying at the moment doesn’t mean a jostling won’t open up wounds or perforate organs with my own floating, splintered bone shards. Miza once again headbutts Dippy gently, resting her forehead on his. It seems to be a more common method of expression and affection for kobolds than it is for us. I wonder if it’s because of the shape of their semi-draconic faces, and lack of lips. Is that their version of a kiss? I wonder how that sort of affection is viewed in and out of romantic relationships. Miza said Timbik was her mate. Dippy could very well be her brother, I don’t have any idea.
Oh no, my staff. It was inside a rock, stone, crag elemental golem thingy. Ugh, that was nearly my entire source of. Wait. It’s in my hand. What? I could swear it wasn’t, only a moment ago. Neither Dippy nor Miza are looking this way. Scrap is, well, apparently cataloging scrap in the corner. None of them are going to be able to tell me whether the staff appeared suddenly, or maybe just rolled into my palm from somewhere nearby.
I guess my brain is still addled. It’s not like I have the ability to teleport objects. Well, not here on Rayileklia anyway. Even back home, my range of reclaiming objects that I owned, that I expelled from my inventory was at most one or two dozen meters. Plus, they teleported to my inventory, not straight to my hand. Yeah, I’m probably just confused. Yet again, Rayileklia doing a number on my brainpan.
Still. I now know what one of the spells in the staff does, one I couldn’t figure out on Can’Z’aas, that I didn’t know how to use before. I can either conjure, or animate elementals. That sounds amazing. But it doesn’t necessarily mean I can control them. I’m fairly certain that the spell binds them to me in some way, but I’m not willing to risk dying and getting these nice kobolds killed to sate my curiosity. Even just one of those rock monsters is deadly beyond belief. But, but it has the potential to call along all elemental lines. It, it could bring back Sylphie, in some fashion. My eyes well with tears.
I got her killed. My hubris, my need to be a hero, my need to save the ungrateful MCF beavers got her killed. Sylphie was so amazingly kind, a wind spirit who we’d only just met. She gave her life to help us flee the flooded tunnel complex. Somehow she generated oxygen for us for hours while rescuing beavers and leading them to secret tunnels that led to the river and the surface. Did she have a soul? Is it somewhere out there in the multiverse? What about the censer that first summoned her? Mata used it to do something, then melted it, preventing me from being able to undo whatever he’d done.
Did Mat resurrect Sylphie as a vengeful spirit? I should have asked him, at any point while we were working together to generate the pumice and porous lava constructions to be used in the Shield of Lacrimosa Trifecta. I’ll never get the chance now. We’ll never see Mataalii again, if he’s even still alive. He was going to swim across the mildly acidified surface of a sea, towards lands with unknown dangers that people never return from. My brother. You hated me so much that you killed our mother and our hound to get to me. The grace of the phoenix is the only reason she’s still with us. Lao and Lucky both. We gave up the most precious gifts in the world to counteract your hatred. I heave a sobbed sigh, my breath shudders as I try not to weep aloud. My tears cascade regardless.
So many memories swirl and fight for the forefront position in my mind. They demand my attention, yank at the controls of my trains of thought. It almost feels as if it’s just too crowded inside my head sometimes. I need to recover. I need to get on with my quest, before my head just decides it’s too full, and explodes. Or before my lack of two more dragon hearts, or my own lack of vitality catches up with me and kills me. Hell on handrails you’re in bad shape Reggie Shellcracker. I know! Right? It’s almost as if you’ve just had your brains bashed in, after a very violent and bloody life that you’d already skirted death too many times during. Oh yeah, just almost. Pft. Having fun talking to yourself buddy? Kinda, yeah. Hah. Get it together Reggie. Right, right right right. You, me, I’m not even future Reggie sending messages or personality ghosts or memory fragments back or anything. This is just plain old brain damage manifesting in ways to try to cope with the insanity of my life.
Hm, I wonder if that’s offensive. I mean, I literally suffered blunt trauma to my brain. And, I mean, calling my life insane, if people knew everything? Who wouldn’t think it was some form of bizarre, crazy, or insane? What was it Lao said? No, who said it. Destiny seems to swirl around me? Guiding me to some fate they know not? Lao spoke about the loom of fate, claiming that I alone sat at its weave. She sat me on a pedestal, and I cracked under that pressure, I fell hard into depression. I may have been being influenced by mana sickness emotionally as well. I certainly was influenced physically. I would projectile-bleed spontaneously upon using too much magic for too long. Light and energy would fire forth from me, lacerating my tissue and muscles. I mean, they still do, even here on Rayileklia. Worse, on this planet, I seem to trigger the mana corruption effects with even the mildest calling of my Can’Z’aasian powers. None of us know the full extent of the consequences of my experimenting with limitless mana manipulation along Lord Agni’s back.
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I get so caught up in my own head. I have millions and millions of years of logs, possibly billions, from all the time I spent in alternate timelines, railing against fate. I don’t even have the logs from the actual timelines, or my tests in the temple of time from those runs, thank spoot. Just the logs from my own years spent trying every possible way to prevent the destruction of our world in the temple of time. I finally understood the only way to stop it, was to not be a player in the game, to take myself off the board. If TQ created that test, they’re pretty sadistic. I should have let them delete the logs for me though. I reacted with mistrust. Someone who basically says they’re about to wipe your memories, after you’d just given up and let yourself die to save your world, I mean. Who wouldn’t be a bit mistrusting?
Still, poor TQ. Apparently a conglomeration of souls, people I’d failed to save across dozens of timelines, maybe thousands, millions of timelines. Well, not their souls so much as their specific desires, desires that revolved around my successes somehow. Defeating the serpent that slew Staff Ninja, setting into motion events that would save the Nagas who weren’t in the Black Fangs. Probably more, since they said I’d accomplished so many of their wills, that we, were among their best friends, for all that we had done for all of them over the years of so many timelines.
Oh, right, the logs. Maybe if I dig into my Can’Z’aasian powers hard enough, I can execute a log wipe. That would free up a lot of space, right? My head just feels too heavy. But, without being able to see my logs, would I be able to only delete the subdirectory containing my samey-samey endless timelines logs? Or could I screw up and delete everything? Would I retain my actual memories of the events if the logs get deleted? Are my memories stored in neurons, or in the digital interface that makes up a magical part of our world? Ugh, crap. I can’t risk experimenting. My gods, if, if I lost, if I, I, if I lost all those memories. My family. My inner circle, the SAP. Sylphie, Har, Sal, Atamai, Iakopo, Taito, Tenith Grayl, Elder Tolkenstein. I’d have no context for any of them.
How would I feel about only having my Rayileklian memories? How would I feel about Teuila from those memories? Well, I mean, honestly Te has been pretty awesome to me, all our lives, and even moreso here. But what if even on Rayileklia I’m not storing memories in neurons, but in logs that are getting over-filled? If I accidentally delete all my logs entirely? Who would I become? Would I become that blood-rage entity of wraith that struggles to free itself from me from time-to-time? Usually in dire circumstances at that. Would I become catatonic, unable to know, experience, learn? Would I start anew, as humans are supposed to? Ugh, my head is aching beyond just the pulping it took.
How long have I been lost in thought? It has only been moments!? Does my accelerated thinkspace work again? Could we reform our bonds now that I’ve experienced enough brain trauma? Or am I just getting excited over nothing, and it’s normal to space out for a few seconds, thinking about a ton. It’s probably the latter. It’s just so hard to judge what’s normal when using my life as a sample. Alright, come on Reggie, get the heck out of your own head. Seriously, it’s a freakin’ dangerous place to get lost in. Right, right right right. Alright, let’s see what we can do.
I clasp the staff, working as few muscles as possible, due to how numerous the amount of non-functioning muscles are right now. I have it extend only partway, to more of a wand, so that I’m not forced to drop it. I conjure the ghostly translucent hand from the staff, and use it to help myself to a seated position, slowly. It’s not capable of carrying a great deal of weight. I’m fairly light, but even still, it certainly couldn’t pick me up off the ground. I’m having it shove me at an angle, there, I’m seated. Huff, that was an effort.
My right forearm spasms and twitches, causing me an undesired grimace of pain. Spasms happened more and more after I became mana-corrupted. I wonder if any neurological examination of my endochrine system could help prevent those, or if I’d need a mystical cure, like going back in time to prevent myself from experimenting on Lord Agni’s back. Actually. How would I have gotten out of there without fighting as much as I did? I was mostly dead, exhausted, incapable of swimming back up through the lava I had swam down through.
Dippy, Miza, and Scrap all gasp. Probably because they realize I’m upright, maybe because I’m wielding a glowing staff. I try to smile in each of their directions, vaguely. My danger wraps silent sonar senses tell me where they are, but moving my head and neck is difficult at best. All three approach me with arms outstretched.
Miza speaksfirst, “No no, you musting must knotting, must not, musn’t mustn’t up, no up, up, getting up, mustn’t getting up Red Gee. Don’t get up. You must rest. Please. Tay Oo Ee Lah would never forgive, never forgive we wouldn’t, we wouldn’t forgive, no forgiveness for us, if, if we let you perish. Please, please rest. We want you to live. Also, Tay Oo Ee Lah is scary.”
I accidentally crack up with laughter for a moment as Miza concludes. Huff, if only I could control my facial muscles more than intermittently right now. I want to flash her a smile and express my gratitude. I was hoping to speed my recovery along by getting my blood flowing, but that might have been the exact thing to avoid. I feel woozy, light-headed, and begin to pass out once more as the six hands of the three kobolds lay me back down. I try to shrink and sheathe my staff, but I think I only imagine the attempt, because my muscles feel weaker than ever, completely unresponsive. My already swollen-shut eyelids droop more heavily into a pinch. My heavy, labored breathing slows to a crawl after one last bloody cough. I cave in and let unconsciousness take me once more.