Chapter 108: The Usual

Since they had not gotten here by a portal, Laius and Chelsea’s portal cooldowns were unused. Chelsea conjured her portal, the wooden vines bursting from the ground and entwining to form a large archway decorated with jeweled flowers.

Redell opened the clear lid of the capsule, rousing Nara from her slumber. It was brief, but it was the first restful one she had had in a long time.

When Nara saw that portal, she started to sob uncontrollably. This was another hallucination. Another addictive as milk tea, sweet and delicious dream of her rescue. She shut her eyes to block the sight of her friend’s face. If it was all fake, she’d rather not see it. The disappointment would crunch the shattered pieces of her heart into fine grains of transparent sand.

Redell’s brow furrowed, surprised. “Hey, what’s the matter? Why are you crying?”

It wasn’t tears of relief. What concerned Redell is that they were tears of anguish. She shouldn’t feel any pain.

“I won’t go through that portal,” Nara said. She rolled over and faced away from him.

Redell looked towards the other abductees for an explanation. “What is she reacting like this?”

“The Advent they have spent the last three weeks trying to have her enter a portal,” Jiro said.

“The one in the center of the facility?”

“We don’t know where it leads. They’ve said it leads to their home world, but whether that is the truth…” Jiro glanced at Nara, his own exhaustion plain on his face. “They killed her friend over it. Aliyah. I hardly expected to survive either.”

“I didn’t find her body,” Laius said.

“She has it,” said Jiro.

“She has her body? How?” He glanced at her wrists. He could sense the suppression collars that completely suppressed her auras and abilities. It was an unusual design, but the Advent was from another world. They methods of crafting suppression collars differed.

“She shook off the suppression somehow. Just for a moment.”

The abductees were escorted off the skimmer, and they took Laius’ portal back to Sanshi. The church of Liberty would have a method to release the suppression collars. Zinnia went with them; she would organize what came next.

“I’ll take the skimmer back to Sanshi,” Redell said. “I’ll meet you all there.”

“Are you heading to the church of the healer?” Chelsea asked.

Redell reviewed his original diagnostics of Nara mentally. “Her condition is more complex than just releasing the suppression on her.”

“I’m going to stay here,” Amara said. “Juuuust In case anyone wants to entertain me by exiting that portal.”

“You do that,” Chelsea said, rolling her eyes.

“I’m hoping a diamond ranker comes through.”

“No, you’re not,” Chelsea said firmly. “No, you’re not, Amara!”

*****

Nara awoke.

Her surroundings were different than the usual sandstone resort architecture of The Advent base. The walls were a clean white, tranquil and sun-glazed, and matched the smooth tile floor.

Her fingers went to her wrists, feeling for the slight ridge of her shackles. She didn’t find them. She had new diamond shaped scars on her wrists. “That’s been done before too,” she muttered.

Awakening with no suppression shackles in the church of the healer. She didn’t know what the inside of the church looked like—she had only seen it from the outside—but this must be what her mind had conjured for it. She sat up, and turned to face the source of sunlight, a large arch window beside her bed. The Advent facility had no windows, only realistic projections.

Even if it was a hallucination, Nara wanted to enjoy this one without pain. The gardens outside with a small lake was inviting, and Nara missed the sensation of nature on her skin. Once she had sank herself in the lake, aside from her dreams, she only felt water on skin and whatever annoyingly creative pain and hallucinations the toxin of the nightmare bug created for her. Those sensations and memories throbbed in the back of her mind like a malignant tumor, threatening to send her into recidivism. She froze, taking centering breaths to steady against the waves that threatening to overwhelm the dingy of her mind.

Once she had righted herself, she slipped off of the bed. She was wearing simple cotton-adjacent clothing, appropriate for a patient. It reminded her of what she wore when she awoke in the retreat for the first time. She wandered down the halls, aimless and appreciative in her pain-free consciousness. She would ask for directions from the Healer priests with their modest brown robes, soft in both their words and in their footsteps; otherwise, they all left her alone, which she thought was odd for a dream about waking up in a hospital. Usually in her hallucinations, they’d be friendly and try to convince her to walk through a portal at some point. Their tactics were evolving, her mind adapting to itself, in a frustrating cycle of using her own acclimations against herself.

They directed her outside toward the nature she sought.

She laid down on the bank of the lake and dipped her feet into the water to feel its coolness upon her skin, closing her eyes to bask in the sun, and the simplicity of it all. No fake families, or odd worlds, or desperate situations (the fate of the world) in which to grab a dear comrade’s hand to be pulled into a portal. At least this hallucination was peaceful, so far.

At first, the hallucinations had been only semi-real: sensations of sound and absence of feeling, Chrome arguing with her, Aliyah crying over her pain, Encio convincing her of Sezan’s eventual rescue. The hallucinations grew in complexity and strength until she lost all sense of reality and time; a reflection of the growing population of nightmare beetles within her body.

This was no doubt another hallucination. She took a deep breath anyway, taking in the fresh scent of dirt, grass, herbs, and flowers. The herbal earthiness flowed through her body life a comforting herbal tea. She had liked chamomile in particular, back on Earth.

The architecture wasn’t quite what she expected of a church; it was humbler, a fusion between a neighborhood church, white marble Athenian architecture, and a clinic. Upon second inspection, the church felt less sterile and cleaner. It didn’t give off the atmosphere of Earth hospitals, instead warm and inviting; a place of rest and healing.

She felt something else; sanctity. The land she lied upon was holy, whatever that meant. It felt that way, although she had not the words to explain the origin of the sensation. It just was.

With a thought, her Guide ability flickered on before her. The list was long with notifications. This too, had been in her hallucinations. She wondered what messages she would find this time.

She scrolled through absentmindedly, only half reading. Whatever they said, may or may not be real, so it didn’t matter whether she read them at all. She had nothing better to do.

-------

-Racial Ability [Soul Sanctuary] has been transfigured into [Soul Legion].

Racial Ability: [Soul Legion]

Language adaptation. Essence, awakening stone, and skill book absorption. Immunity to identification and tracking. Resistance to dimension-restriction effects. This is a legacy effect of [Free Spirit].

Transfigured from [Soul Sanctuary] by [Blessing of Legion].

A portion of all familiars are kept within your soul even when familiars are not subsumed. This allows you to use effects and abilities granted by familiars as if they are subsumed and telepathically communicate with them from any distance. When familiars are subsumed, their subsumed effects are increased.

Your body is considered your territory. Your territory is hostile to enemies and hostile entities that trespass within it, damaging them in the process. Your subsumed familiars may attack foreign entities within your territory. The attacks and damage of your familiars when attacking foreign entities is based off of their characteristics. You can control the strength of this effect or disable it. This effect applies to any object or territory connected to your soul. This effect shares your ability to ignore rank disparity.

-----

“Hm. That’s new,” she mumbled. “I haven’t seen that description before.”

She had seen many variations of Soul Legion generated for her by her dreams. All were different, none consistent.

If this was the church of the healer, Nara should seek a priest to resurrect Aliyah. She was remiss to do so; she was afraid she would remove Aliyah’s body from her inventory to the possession of The Adventists.

If that happened, would she ever see Aliyah revived?

Her body shot up straight. She gazed at her wrists.

Her abilities worked in this dream. But what if this wasn’t a dream? Couldn’t she see Aliyah in her Astral Domain?

She kept back the hope bubbling from within like a pot of boiling noodles turned up too high. These same events had happened before, with these same realizations. This means nothing; keep yourself together.

She couldn’t keep herself from trying. Every time, she tried. This was a trick she’d fall for, every single time.

Nara closed her eyes and let the dimensional membrane slip past her.

*****

This time was different. She felt that it was. There was an intrinsic certainty that this was her soul. This was her Astral Domain. The hallucinations before had never captured that aspect, as real as they were.

The hope burst forth, whistling like a kettle, burning hot.

Nara walked towards the familiar lakeside pavilion she so adored. The abundant nature, the flowering trees on the far shore that reflected upon the surface of the glassy lake. She knew where Aliyah was. She didn’t need to walk there; she could just appear there. She appreciated moving however, after spending days still in mind and body at the bottom of a lake.

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She approached the gazebo where Aliyah was enjoying breakfast.

“Aliyah,” Nara said, her wonder and emotion think like honey. This felt like a dream, more so than any other, even as her soul told her otherwise. The happiest, most pleasant dream that she did not want to wake from.

This was her soul, her Astral Domain; Nara could not mistake this. This was reality…sort of. It was her reality. This meant that she had escaped the influence of the nightmare beetle. She looked down at her wrists once more. The suppression shackles were really gone. Then, that must have been the real church of the Healer. Redell, Amara, and the others did rescue them. Aliyah had hope of resurrection.

She was so relieved she fell to her knees. This cry, this time, was a cry of relief. She let out ugly sobbing wails; all her pent up emotions, her stress, her anxiety, her uncertainty, her blind resolution.

Aliyah ran from her seat, holding Nara tight as she cried with her.

“It’s okay now,” Aliyah soothed. “Everything will be fine.”

“I can revive you,” Nara sobbed. “Redell can revive you!”

Her tears and snot was un ugly painting by snails gone wild, yet Aliyah found it endearing.

“There, there, there,” Aliyah said, rubbing Nara’s back.

Once Nara calmed, the two sat at the table along with her other familiars.

“You don’t seem confused about your situation,” Nara said.

“You’ve spoken to me already, with an avatar.”

Nara paused because she realized she knew. The moment she stepped inside, her memories of this location rejoined with her main consciousness. She never had to experience that sensation because she never had anyone beside herself inside her Astral Domain before, so there had never been a reason to manifest an avatar.

“Hm…I know. Wow, that’s really weird.”

She had tried to annihilate her soul once again against the torture of the nightmare beetles, but she had failed. She hadn’t enough time, but she had also been unable to make any progress on that endeavor in the slightest. She was glad she hadn’t succeeded in retrospect.

The astral filled in the gaps of her soul like glue, holding her together, if the glue was actually unbreakable adamantine bonds. That was what her Astral Domain was, a melding of soul and astral that created a new, stronger alloy.

She should consider this a lesson to herself. She hoped she’d never be abducted again for any reason, but in the future, she should wait. This time, she had the motivation to persevere for Aliyah, and she stopped trying to self-destruct. But the next time, if she had no external motivation, could she keep herself together? What if she died too early, and her friends found her dead body?

The thought made Nara wince. If a teammate was in her position, she would be devastated to find that they had died before their rescue. That they had been too late. She needed to have a backbone—the will to live—not just for herself, but for her team. She lived life as part of the flow, when life was good, all was pleasant, and she enjoyed the lazy river. When the river waters roughed, she too easily let herself drown.

It was an aspect of herself Nara wanted to change.

“You’re here now, Nara, does that mean you’ve managed to escape?”

“Amara and the others came to our rescue. I was at the church of the healer just now. They must have removed the nightmare beetles.”

“I’ll be leaving here soon then.” Aliyah gazed at the realm around her. The beautiful, fantastic scenery that reflected Nara. The abundant greenery and flowers with pleasant smells of citrus, herbs, cypress, and jasmine. The music inherent in the realm, each teacup tossed in the lake a pleasant note, the whispers of the wind, the shaking leaves of gentle percussion. The brilliant sunrises and sunsets, and the night sky that lit up with galaxies and nebulas, unaffected by light pollution or smog.

More importantly, Aliyah wanted to study the realm. She wanted to know what was possible here, and what wasn’t. She was alive, yet not. A living soul animating a dead body.

“Why didn’t you revive my body?” Aliyah asked, “My body is still dead. I assume in this realm, you could have?”

“I could have,” Nara admitted. “But it wouldn’t have stuck once you left. I can’t revive you in the way that Redell can—permanently.”

“But you could have revived me here.”

“Yes. That’d also trap you here if you wanted to leave,” Nara said.

“But why didn’t you? It’s not as if I needed the option to leave anyway. I wasn’t going to move on to the realm of the Reaper when my friend had me safely tucked away inside her soul and was…suffering so that I may live.”

Nara looked away, a cross between discomfort and embarrassment. “I didn’t want to have to kill you to take you out of my inventory.”

“I don’t really mind. I’ve already died once. Dying twice isn’t a big difference.”

Aliyah was perhaps a bit too blasé about this whole ‘death’ thing. Resurrection was so infrequently available that Nara didn’t think it changed the cultural attitude towards death.

“You know, dying once usually is a big deal by itself. This guy made a whole religion on it in my world. Died once and came back to life 3 days later.”

“I think I will break that record,” Aliyah mused, her eyes sparkling with playful curiosity, “Could I start a religion in your world?”

“You don’t want to. You can make this holy book, tell others how to behave, and everyone will ignore it.”

“Sounds delightful.”

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it. If The Advent tried to use their ‘wonderous tricks of magic and technology’ my world will probably try to take it apart. Part of the world will believe it was God, another part will say ‘no, it is our God’, another part will take it to a lab and dissect it, and another part will turn off the TV.”

“What is a TV?”

“If you want to know, you’ll know.”

Somehow, she had a feeling that she did now know what a TV was.

“Marvelous,” Aliyah breathed, eyes as sparkling as her tone. “How fascinating.”

“Which part?”

“Everything. How magic responds to your intent. The extent of power and control you have here. I’m not sure what you can and cannot do. I’d love to explore it.”

“Well, let’s not have you stay here for too long, yeah?”

Aliyah made a face Nara didn’t like, no, not at all.

“Aliyah…you are going to be revived. You can come back here when I’m bronze rank and I have a portal.”

“Are you sure resurrection can’t wait? Perchance I can convince you to wait a few more days? A month?”

“No! I mean yes! I’m sure! You don’t have a choice; you’re leaving!”

*****

Nara appeared back on the banks of the church of the healer. She had a feeling the god let her in. If this was his Spirit Domain, and it was similar to her Astral Domain; then he had.

“Thank you,” she said to him.

The god appeared with his characteristic brown robe. He was old man who radiated peace and calm, like a medicinal sage—more European than eastern fantasy, although his features were local-ish. He pointed towards a building.

“I told Redell to wait for you there. He’s ready for you.”

She looked up at the god.

“As I thought, I’m bad at holding grudges.”

“Letting go of your grudges is healthy,” Healer grinned. “And you need a bit of healthy.”

“Yeah. I’m going to need some major therapy. I don’t think I can ever go through a portal that’s not my own, assuming I can go through my own even. That’s fine, I don’t need another portal. I have awesome dimension hopping powers.”

“Is that a healthy way to approach that trauma?”

“You tell me. You’re the god of healing. Supposedly. I’m not really sure what a god is. Still.”

He chuckled and vanished.

Nara sprinted across the temple grounds, aware that it was improper, and she drew mildly disapproving gazes from the clergy who went about their business quietly and calmly to avoid making a ruckus in a place of healing.

At least, she told herself, she wasn’t teleporting.

She approached a small building, like a detached house. It had a glass dome, where light shone in. Beautiful flowers in springtime colors were planted around the building. It resembled a greenhouse, in both appearance and function. There were even plants growing inside, of the medicinal variety, and they perfumed the air with their bitter and herbal scents. The temple grounds were abundant in herbs, and alchemist priests harvested them for their potions. Nara could appreciate Healer’s sense of interior decoration. She liked plants too.

Redell was waiting beside a bed set up in the interior of the detached greenhouse. It wasn’t quite a marble slab, but it gave Nara the vibe of an altar. Together with him was Sen, Encio, Eufemia, and John.

She stood still for a moment upon seeing their faces, struggling to keep her emotions together. Her aura was fluctuating wildly; it was not under control at all. After it had been suppressed for so long, it felt like an untrained excitable pitbull pulling on the leash of an equally inexperienced owner.

“Let’s hurry it up and revive Aliyah?” Eufemia said. “Breakdown later, miracle magic first?”

“Yup. Yeah. Good idea,” Nara said, sniffing her nose loudly and ruining the sacrosanct ambience of the holy greenhouse herb garden. She rubbed snot on her sleeve. Damn psychosomatic snot-reactions.

Nara started forward, face burning partly in embarrassment and partly with happiness. She placed Aliyah’s body on the bed-altar. There was a ritual circle drawn around the altar—resurrection magic, no doubt. She spied some gold spirit coins in one of the ritual bowls; Ten, if she managed to count from her angle. It was quite the expensive ritual. Probably loose change to the church, and she was more than willing to flip them a diamond coin for the trouble. She had to find some way to spend them.

“She’s in good condition,” Redell observed. “Her soul still lingers. I’m surprised, it’s been some time. Usually, resurrection would be impossible after this long.”

“Good condition if we ignore that she’s dead,” Nara said.

“It’s a good condition to me,” Redell said matter-of-factly. “Just dead, and not dead in a bucket as slop. The state of some bodies that I’ve seen…”

“She’s not resting in pieces, that’s for sure.” That drew a chuckle from Redell, who always had appreciated puns. The atmosphere of nervous hope lightened with his laugh, and his aura brushed across all of them reassuringly.

Redell activated the ritual; He had been the one to draw it. The circle shone with gold and rainbow light. The iridescent aurora of resurrection magic threatened to make a believer out of her. If it wasn’t for Nara’s annoyance with religion in general, she may have been converted right then and there.

Seeing is believing.

She felt the incredible magic of the ritual circle, awash with power that filled the room and spilled past the windows into the garden, and soaked Aliyah’s body with the power of life. Aliyah’s neck was repaired—her only injury—and vessel of her body was made to be re-inhabitable by her soul.

With wide eyes and bated breaths, they saw Aliyah suck in her first breath, like she was reconnecting her body to the lifeforce of the world. Nara hadn’t realized how reassuring the rise and fall of regular breathing was, and how weird it was that she didn’t do it anymore herself. By silver rank, none of them would have to breathe.

“She’ll wake in a little while,” Redell said after performing a cursory check of her condition. “Resurrection isn’t easy on the soul.”

*****

The five plus newly revived Aliyah sat around a table, enjoying a lunch provided to them by the clergy.

“I was impressed with the decoration,” Nara said, poking her fork into some sort of gruel. “But the food leaves me wanting.”

She pushed the plate away, and pulled out a platter of spiced meat, rich spicy sauce, stir fried rice with diced vegetables.

“You still have hot food in there?”

“It doesn’t change in my inventory.”

“Ugh, feels weird to see you eat it after it’s been there for a few weeks. I know it’s fine in my mind, but it still feels disgusting,” said Eufemia, her face scrunched in disgust. She looked at Nara’s food distrustfully, like it’d move to bite at her.

She dug in.

“It’s been awhile since I’ve had food. Other than teatime with you, Aliyah.”

“I don’t think that counts. I was dead. Did I even technically eat?”

“Did you?”

“You’re supposed to tell me,” said Aliyah with humor.

“What are you talking about?” demanded Eufemia.

“When Nara put me in her inventory to keep my body safe,” Aliyah explained. “I ended up in her Astral Domain. It was quite the experience: Dead yet not dead, and in my friend’s soul,” she sighed. “Shame I’ll have to wait until bronze rank to go there again. I just need to be patient for now.”

“Doesn’t mean I’ll let you in.”

“You wouldn’t!” she gasped, affronted.

“Alright, all of you slow down,” John said. “How about you explain what happened?”

“How about you explained how you found us?” Nara said, changing the topic.

“You don’t want to talk about it,” Sen observed.

“Is it that obvious?”

“I can read your aura right now,” Eufemia said. “That’s saying something. Normally I can’t.”

Her aura was wild and untamed, like a wounded animal that once again found its family. Wanting rest, but still on edge. Fresh scars and changes were evident. Exuberant joy in her friend’s revival as well as lost hopes; a loss in her naiveté with magic.

“It’s still sort of…fresh. How long was I asleep for?”

“Another week,” Encio said. “The healers kept you asleep while they figured out how to completely remove that infestation and the suppression shackles without killing you.”

“Hm, the nightmare beetles.”

Nara rubbed her wrists.

“They said that the shackles were simultaneously providing the healing energy to keep you alive and regulating the infestation—they let me learn the theory,” John explained. “Fire combined with life energy regulated the amount of nightmare beetles at an equilibrium.”

“I guess a week is pretty short all things considered,” Nara conceded, “For figuring out how to remove a bug infestation genetically engineered by an alien magic civilization obsessed with interdimensional ‘peace’ through any means possible.”

“While you were asleep, the Magic Society has been studying the gate in that compound,” Encio said, “It doesn’t quite lead to another world.”

“Not quite?”

“It leads to another facility. Dimensional travel isn’t nearly so easy nor cheap.”

“They can’t maintain a portal indefinitely,” Aliyah said. “Especially not to another world and past a dimensional boundary. The portal they maintained in our facility leveraged the quick ambient mana recovery rate of astral spaces to maintain it’s connection.”

“Does that mean the other researchers were found in the new facility?”

Encio shook his head, “The facility had alarms which notified the connected base of forceful intrusion. The Adventists had cleared out along with any other researchers with a dimensional movement ritual.”

The consent requirement of portals was an extension of the consent requirement for entering certain types of dimensional spaces, such as those with inventories capable of doing so. Most dimensional travel didn’t need consent; John had his body annihilated and his soul sucked through an inter-astral bridge as a byproduct of summoning magic—he had no say.

“How’d you find us then?”

“It was mostly the work of Amara and Lawrence.”

“Lawrence?”

“He copied astral magic books that explained enough theory for the two of them to create a ritual to detect astral spaces in a short range. After that, it was a matter of using the ritual to search.”

“I’ll have to go and thank Lawrence. I’ll get him some tea or something.”

“I think he’d rather have more time to copy the books.”

“He can drink tea and copy books simultaneously,” Nara dismissed. “So, what now?”

The team cast glances at each other.

“You rest. See a trauma healer,” Sen said. “After Redell approves, we go back to the usual. The issue of The Advent is beyond the scope of iron rankers.”

“Monsters still need slaying,” John said, chipper. “You know. The usual.”

“The usual? That sounds nice.”