The Soul Vault, Troug, 13th.

Olea Munroe

It was a matter of several minutes before Merry calmed enough, her body slowly reaching a level of stability that allowed her to stand without crushing her weight against me. Her emerald-green hair cascading like a thick curtain of willow branches to hide her form as I looked down at her, a feat only possible as she was bowed low with her heavy emotions.

It was a few more minutes before I interrupted the heavy silence with any form of speech. I was honestly unsure of how to respond to a declaration as bold as being about to die. I was quite frankly even more thankful now for the freezing of time within this space; maybe there was hope.

“Why do you think you are about to die?” I cautiously asked, still holding her barely trembling form in an awkward hug.

It took another long minute before Merry stood straighter and backed away, running an arm over her eyes and then under her nose to wipe away the various signs of her crying.

It was a little gross to see the snot pulling away from her nose in a sting attached to her finger, but I thought it would be bad form to judge in her current state of mind.

I had been a lot more uncivilized in the past few weeks.

“Before I came here…” she started before hiccupping and shaking with another sob, she was a wreck.

“Take your time, we do have time here.” Was all the comfort I could offer her for the moment. I wanted to know what was going on, but I knew better than to force anyone in to working their trauma, especially as it seemed that she was still in the situation that was causing all this drama.

She looked around the place again, still shedding those puffy-eyed tears; it pained me to see her so hurt after seeing her so lively only an hour ago.

What could have happened?

“Does time really not move while we are here?” she asked, stifling another sob with her sleeve. She was dressed in a very colorful floral dress with just the right combination of vibrant colors to add a contrast to her long green hair and blue-green eyes. I wondered if her eyes changed colors the way mine did, or if they were just blue and I was catching some reflection of her hair in those distraught windows of the soul; like a forest reflecting on a stained-glass window of some secluded monastery.

I shook the thoughts away; we were discussing important matters, and I had no time for my usual lack of focus.

“As far as we can tell, yes.” I said, “It does move in here, with us, but out there everything has stopped. Kind of like a river in the sea with a storm… Okay, I cannot remember exactly but we should be good.”

Confusion clouded her face for a moment as she thought about it, at least the distraction served to help her find her emotional balance; I was better she was a science-nerd or some other scholarly type of person. They loved weird explanations for unexplained things.

“Well, I think I am dying, or dead already. I do not know, maybe?” I came in here the moment it all happened, “I cannot believe I left her there like that, but I was so scared and shocked.”

“Left who and where?” I asked. I needed to keep the conversation going so she did not focus too much on any single thing.

“Abby, I left her there. She was looking down at my face when I came here. We were walking near the guild hall when it happened.” The color drained from her already pale face as she seemed to recall something, “By the gods, she was still holding my hand standing there!”

I stepped forward to catch the girl in case she fell. I was beginning to think it might be too late to help her even if I escaped right this instant.

“Okay back up a second, holding your hand and looking down at you seems hard to do while in the street and walking.” I started, now more confused as I tried to assemble the scene in my head. “Could you tell me what happened leading up to this, did someone drop a piano on you?”

I knew the attempt at levity was uncalled for, and quite likely to pass over the head of anyone not from earth but my brain does not always follow the normal schema for these types of conversations.

I was totally the wrong person for this kind of talk.

“I think, I think someone cut my head off. I can remember seeing Abby holding my hand standing beside my body even as it crumpled and looking down at where my head landed in the street.” Merry dropped to her knees faster than I could get my arms under her, “I have no idea what to do now, I cannot die yet, we barely had any time together. It is not fair!”

Oh no.

I knelt in front of Merry looking at the space her eyes would occupy if she looked up again, I remembered reading somewhere that it was a good tactic to help people gain stability when shock began to ebb from a person’s body.

I had no idea if it would work, but I had nothing else to do, instead I said, “Abby is important then?”

I was starting to think that I could at least help her accept the current situation more easily. There was a certain thing particular about us that could help her cope, or at least ease her worry somewhat.

That is, if she had the same skills as I did. Soul skills were supposed to be unique to each person, but I was thinking that ours were more intrinsically linked than that.

I was counting on one or two specifically, and with the small hint slipped to me by Help-chan long ago I believed it was not quite as bleak as Merry thought it was and I sure as hell hoped I was right.

“Merry, Merry listen to me. I have a question for you.” I whispered to her still kneeling form, she was starting to sob again, and I could not have her breaking down and losing control of the skill; it would be too late to help her help herself by then.

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I will admit to thinking of an old rhyme as I repeated her name, something from the depths of my childhood, but I quickly dismissed it. I could focus when the situation called for it, though I would probably be using it when we met outside someday.

It took a while but Merry eventually looked up and met my eyes. None of this could work unless there was still a person there willing and able to listen, and hope. I was thankful for her nature as an individual who could be distracted with mental exercise because I was only going from a vague sense of things and a hope that it would all pan out as I thought it would.

“There we go.” I said, trying for a supportive if generic form communication.

She did another one of those hiccup-sob-slobber things that were common among anyone who has had an exceptionally long cry, it was so very full of guilt, grief, and loss.

“You had a question.” She stated more than asked as she straightened herself up a bit assuming some vague cross-legged sitting position. Her eyes were still somewhat puffy and red, but I could see her mentally shoving the pain aside for a change in topic. Brave, bold, or stubborn; whichever it was I could work with it.

“Do you have the other Soul Skills, most importantly Soul Link and Soul Vessel?” If she had those skills, it would solidify my vague suspicions regarding the use of the latter skill, if she had the first it could help alleviate her stress about her impending death if only a by a little. I was sure dying would hurt a lot.

“Yes, they were some of my first skills, have you used them as well?” she said as her eyes unfocused, and it appeared that she was reading through a mental checklist.

“Good, good. I have a small inkling that you will not really die when you leave.” I began.

I explained as she listened. I told her of my thoughts on death for us, I explained my feelings about the vessel and linking skills. I shared with her the small amount of information I had gathered since arriving here, all the subtle hints I received about circumventing death at least partially. I was also fairly sure we would die if we all expired at the same time, but I believed that so long as we were not all dead that we would get a chance to return, though in what form and how long that could take I was still unsure of.

Merry, to her credit followed along the entire time I was shooting out my theories without uttering a word. I could see her own hope rekindling and her mood lightening ever so slightly. She may not be entirely sold on the idea; but she had hope again.

Hope was a tricky mistress, always elusive and easily lost but once you found her, she could be the greatest ally one could have. It was just so much easier to allow hate, apathy, and fear to grow that sometimes you lost her altogether.

As her mood shifted to one with a brighter perspective, I broached the other topic.

“How do you feel about your Abby, do you trust her?” I asked, “Could you trust her with all your secrets, and could you trust her to be able to stand up to the danger that I am rather sure is going to follow us down a very long rabbit hole?”

Merry opened her mouth to speak and then stopped, mouth still poised to utter some word or another. It formed a perfectly adorable little O with her mouth.

I was tempted to interject with something akin to saying ahh like they do at the doctor.

She must have caught the slight uplift of my mouth as I hid a giggle as she closed her mouth before nodding to me.

“I do. I could trust her with my heart, mind, and soul.” she said resolutely.

The space we were in seemed to shudder as if struck with the weight of her words, the vague nothingness beyond the room resonating with some hidden power and meaning. I had zero clues about that particular response though.

“Okay, you are going to need to take a big leap of faith then.” I started, breaking the odd air of suspense that hung heavy after her proclamation. “I recommend you use Soul Link the moment you exit here, that will allow you to find her after whatever happens is done happening and you can get back. That is also assuming that your town does not have a priest that can just resurrect you somehow.”

Even as I spoke the words my mind was already checking the system to see if such a spell even existed, and yep, it was there.

Resurrection: Prerequisites – Revitalize – Heal.

And because I was even more curious, I checked the requirements for those spells.

Revitalize: Prerequisites – Holy Word – Cure Sickness.

Heal: Prerequisites – Cure Wounds – Cure Blindness – Remove Poison – Vigor.

And it seemed as if clerics had quite a long path of skills to follow.

“I doubt the town priest has that spell, though I cannot say that I would resent him for surprising me with it.” Merry smirked a bit as she finished speaking, it reminded me of the first time we met here. Hours before when her world was still a bit brighter.

“Now, I know you are probably a bit frightened still, and I do not envy the situation you are returning to, but we cannot stay in here forever.” I delivered the truth of our situation as politically as I could, knowing that with all the things we had already discussed that she was as ready for what was to come as we could get her. Anything now would be a delaying step, something that would merely increase the hold on her by all those negative possibilities.

“Yeah, I get it.” She stated simply, “It is past the time that I should face the music.”

She jumped to her feet then, catching me off guard as she wrapped me up in a hug with a whispered thank you in the ear. Then she made it doubly awkward by pulling back from the hug just enough to kiss me full on the lips before she left the space.

Weird but not unpleasant behavior; I was putting that up there on the pre-death, stress-relief delirium.

I slipped from the space between and then used my own skill.

Shared Senses.

I was immediately hit with the pain, a burning thing at the base of her neck and my other senses adjusted and aligned with Merry.

She had not been kidding.

I was currently looking up through her eyes and hearing the shouts and cries of the onlookers as a rugged man was putting away his bloodied sword and shouting orders to the guards around him.

They were holding back the large crowd of people that had been present.

Above me I could see Merry’s body falling to the ground, only slowed by the arms of a person I assumed to be Abby.

The girl had the brightest red hair with emerald-green eyes. She looked to be in her early twenties, with all the proper proportions. I could tell at a glance that she was most likely a caster type as she only wore a dagger on her hip, and she lacked that air of potential violence I had seen in so many fighters at the guild.

Right now, her face was an ugly mask of shock and fear as she stared at me, or rather the head that I was looking out at the world from. She held her gaze on Merry’s severed head even as she followed the body to the ground from twenty feet away.

I was thinking that Merry was lucky that her head had stopped rolling when it did so she could witness that at least her lover was safe, though it must be quite awful to be able to see the life leaving the eyes of your lover while you held the rest of them in your arms.

This was a mess. I had no idea why I had bothered to be here except that I felt a need to see the end for Merry if we were wrong. I would at least remember the face of the bastard who had committed such a heinous act. I focused again on the man, searing his visage into my memory for later use, he would not be getting away with this; he and whoever had sent him.

I could sense the world slowing and growing cold through Merry’s senses as the blood drained from her brain and gradually ceased its functions when the world lit up with true fire and brimstone.

A pillar of fire erupted from the sky even as a gust of wind knocked Abby away from the body of her fallen love. It was a tornado of blue and orange flame nearly ten feet in width that fell into the street, swirling and spinning as it approached.

I had no time to consider that I was only a passenger as I felt the pain of the fire engulf the headless body and then descend upon the soon-to-be lifeless head of one Merry Christmas Clarkson.

I found myself back in my cell, covered in sweat and hyperventilating even as the notifications struck my mind, I was not even given the chance to ignore them as the words flashed across my retinas.

Your Soul has been damaged.

Triumvir Skill Soul Vault Engaged: Capacity Reached.

And then I passed into the void of unconsciousness once again.