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Mistwoven Healer
Chapter Twenty-Six: Final Push

Chapter Twenty-Six: Final Push

Even with Lucas’s support, the effort of will required just to place one foot in front of the other seems to keep growing. My thoughts grow more and more sluggish, and even though I keep watching my surroundings, I’d forgotten what exactly I’m looking for. All I know is that I have to keep going. Celeste and I had placed all of our combined willpower in trying to keep moving and keep awake.

Only vaguely, I understand that something might be wrong with me. I feel as if the paralysis should have faded by now, but it seems to be getting worse instead of better. My head feels as if someone is stabbing it with an ice pick, and my vision keeps blurring in and out of focus. I barely remember what I was supposed to be doing; all I understand is that I have to keep moving.

The rain is everywhere, getting in my mouth and nose, freezing me to the bone. I’m barely conscious of time passing as we move, only aware of the starts and stops as the others decide which way is the correct way to go. I wipe at my nose, trying to clear away the liquid, and am startled when my hand comes away bloody.

Finally, inevitably, my foot bumps into a small bit of rubble in the road, and I start to fall. Lucas, who had been the only one keeping me upright thus far, is the only reason I don’t slam down onto the wet asphalt.

Lucas looks down at me from his constant vigilance, “Are you alright, Miss Serena?”

I blink, realizing after a moment that he’s talking to me, even as I keep putting one foot in front of the other. I offer him a weak nod, “Y-Yeah… I just… Need to keep going.” He was sweet to ask, but I can’t divert focus from walking, or I’ll surely fall.

Lucas seems to be contemplating something, but before he can say anything, my feet finally give out. My mind and spirit are still willing, but my body can no longer keep up. Lucas curses, forced to readjust his hold on me even as I momentarily black out.

The next thing I know, Lucas is laying me out gently onto the asphalt as he calls out to the others. “Miss Baylee, she can’t keep going! I think something’s seriously wrong!”

I open my mouth to say something, to argue that I can keep going, but I can’t seem to get enough oxygen. The rain pounds down on me as I desperately gasp for breath, my breathing becoming shallow and erratic. All I can taste or smell is the metallic scent of blood.

Looking up, I see my team surrounding me, everyone looking concerned. Above me, Baylee takes charge as per usual.

“Serena carries medical supplies in her backpack. Get it off of her and see if it has anything that can help. It’s possible she has brain damage from that gazer,” Baylee orders.

Brain damage? Oh… That doesn’t sound good. In fact, that’s supposed to be really bad. Most brain damage is… What was I thinking about? My thoughts are interrupted as I’m jostled by Akari removing my backpack.

“From the looks of things,” Claire says, kneeling down beside me and gripping my hand. “I’d say she definitely suffered some kind of damage. It was a D-Rank attack on an E-Rank sentinel. There’s no way her shield effectively blocked the assault.”

Claire meets my eyes, looking scared. “Come on, Little Blue, we can’t finish this without you.”

“We won’t have to,” Akari says, sounding determined. “I found this injector in her pack; label says it contains some kind of regenerative serum. Liora says it could help.”

My eyes go wide as I see the injector, and I want to shake my head. That’s supposed to be saved for an emergency! I open my mouth to say as much but end up in a coughing fit instead. For some reason, this only makes my friends look even more deeply concerned, and Claire squeezes my hand tightly.

“Give it to her, Akari. I won’t allow any more casualties,” Baylee says, her voice stern and full of authority. Briefly, I wonder how she intends to prevent them.

Before I can muster any kind of protest, I feel a sharp pinprick in the side of my neck. Almost immediately, a sensation of blessed warmth flows into my body, reaching out to every extremity and specifically gathering in my head. My desperate, gasping breaths calm, and my trembling body begins to still. I blink, confused, as things slowly start coming back to me. The gazer, the mind flayer, the dead soldiers.

I gasp, blinking rapidly as I suddenly understand our current situation again. It’s as if my mind had been filled with cotton for the last few minutes or… maybe hours. How long had it been since the gazer attack? I don’t remember. Everything between now and then seems to just be gone from my memory.

“W-What?” I manage, trying to remember what had happened, trying to put together the pieces of my mind. “What happened?”

I try to sit up, but immediately, Akari is there with a hand on my shoulder, holding me down; both she and Claire lean over me, peering into my eyes.

“You in there, Little Blue?” Claire asks hesitantly.

“I-I… I remember the gazer attack and then… nothing. It’s like a completely blank spot in my memory. What happened?” I ask, my voice trembling.

Claire shakes her head sadly, “Gazer got you good. We thought you’d recover on your own, like Baylee and I did. But no such luck. Had a quick encounter with a few more volcora wolves, but we managed. Then you just collapsed.”

I nod, fuzzy memories coming back to me, “You gave me the injection. That’s the only one I have; it’s supposed to be for emergencies. You should have saved it!”

“You were dying, Serena. It was an emergency,” Akari says in a tone that says she would brook no argument on the subject.

Before I can say anything further, Baylee, who had been leaning over us with Haruto, speaks up. “How are you feeling now, Serena? Feel up to walking?”

Akari turns a glare up on Baylee, “She needs to take it easy. That injection does not work instantly. It regenerates over time. She is still recovering.”

Baylee closes her eyes as if trying not to yell. For some reason, I get the feeling that the two of them have been arguing, but I don’t remember any of it. “Akari, I understand that. But if we don’t get to the mind flayer before our mana toxicity levels reach 90%, we either die or have to call off this mission.”

Akari looks like she wants to snarl at Baylee. “I don’t care. I would rather call off this whole thing than let Serena die when we could have helped her,” she says, her voice low and clipped.

“I think I’m okay to walk,” I say, trying to cut off the argument before it gets going. The last thing we need is to turn on each other.

I try to sit up, and, this time, Akari lets me. Claire offers me a hand, and I take it, getting dragged up to my feet. I still feel shaky, but that feeling is receding. My headache had also started lessening considerably. Akari and Baylee both give me assessing looks.

“Serena,” Baylee starts, “I was serious when I asked if you are okay to keep moving. If you say no, we will shelter in one of these buildings until you are. Mana toxicity be damned, I will not lose a teammate.”

“I’m shaky, but okay,” I report. “I might not be much use in a fight for a few more minutes, but I can walk.”

Akari and Baylee once more trade glares, but finally, both of them seem to accept my statement.

“Right then, we keep moving,” Baylee says. “We should reach the mind flayer soon.”

“Wait, before we do, there is one thing I can do to help,” I say before moving over to Akari and gently taking her hand. One thing I do remember after the gazer fight is getting my first new ability. I can’t wait to try it out.

Hands of the Healer activates as if it were made perfectly for me, more natural than my dominion art. As it does, Akari’s body shifts before my eyes. Well, shifts is the wrong word. It’s almost as if another layer of reality had been revealed, one that had always been there, completely invisible but for one element. The same layer where her life force burns steady and strong.

Akari looks to me like a human-shaped network of shining points connected by lines of power. It looks like her body was made out of brightly shining violet constellations, with the space in between filled by swirling violet nebulae. Her entire body glows violet to my eyes, but different shades of violet. All the shades are almost exactly the same, yet completely different, each unique in its own way.

At the center of it all, where I imagine Akari’s soul gem is, her life force that I could always see still burns strong. All the points in the rest of her body connect to it by lines of light, and pulses of power emanate out from her life force to the other points of light. Looking at the pulses, it almost seems like a heartbeat, and I’d be willing to bet anything that those pulses line up perfectly with Akari’s actual heartbeat.

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For a moment, I stare at it in wonder, awed by the majesty of life. I don’t understand how Akari could have ever believed herself to be cursed. Nothing this beautiful could ever be wrong. Until, that is, I find something off.

As if intruding on the perfection, gouges of deep red stain certain areas. Almost immediately, I know that these are the places where Akari had been hurt. There are small red splotches all over her body, most of them on the surface level, but I see a deep red stain in her left leg. Interesting, a bone that never healed right?

Instinctively, I begin to inject my power into Akari through the connection formed by our joined hands. My power looks like an azure stream, moving through the violet and strengthening the points where it passes. Slowly, carefully, I guide the power over and through the spots where I noticed the red pushing in on Akari’s natural violet.

The red is washed away wherever my power passes, and each time it happens, I feel a tugging sensation in my chest. Ah, so this is how I can use my power to heal her, to push out the red stains and make her body perfect once more.

So, that’s what I do. With a flex of my will, I up the amount of healing magic that I’m pushing into her. A sapphire tide of power washes out of me and into Akari, pushing out the red wherever it exists. Surprisingly, it isn’t the claw wounds she’d taken from the volcora that take the most out of me, but the old injury in her left leg. That injury almost seems to fight me before giving in and correcting itself.

Finally, I allow my power to disperse as I evaluate Akari’s network of lights. No longer seeing anything that looks unnatural, I release Akari’s hand, and the lights vanish from my sight. Now, all I can see is her burning core of violet life force, looking steadier than before.

I smile, even as a wave of weakness washes over me. I must be starting to push up against my mana toxicity threshold quite closely now, but it feels good to leave something behind better than I’d found it. “How do you feel?” I ask my friend.

Akari just stares at me for a long time, then looks down at her left leg in wonder. “I-I…” Her eyes start to tear up, “I don’t know how to ever thank you for what you just did. I feel better than I have since I was a little girl. I… the pain is gone.”

I smile even brighter, my own eyes misting as I move in and give her a quick, tight hug. “No thanks are ever needed. You know that.”

Akari watches me for a long moment, thoughts whirring behind her eyes. Finally, she simply closes her eyes and gives me a deep bow. When she comes up, she looks resolved. About what, I’m not sure, but she certainly looks fierce in her resolution.

Baylee watches us with a hint of confusion, as do the others. “You healed her, I take it?”

I nod and smile, “I got my healing ability after the gazer attack!” I exclaim happily. “If anyone is hurt, just let me know, and I’ll see what I can do.”

No one offers up that they’d been hurt; however, all of them look appreciative. Especially our three soldiers who don’t have barriers to protect them.

“Good work, Serena,” Baylee says with a quiet smile of her own, then she turns back to the road. “We’ve got a ways left to travel, everyone; let’s get moving.”

Scene Break [https://i.imgur.com/7K6DY8V.png]

We travel for another thirty minutes through the eerily quiet city. I had never realized just how loud Shinara was until now — until I could stand in a city and have all of that taken away. Instead of smelling exhaust, I smell clean air. Instead of hearing trams making their way along the tracks, all I can hear is the soft pattering of the rain that had lightened its downpour somewhat while we traveled. The only thing interspersing this is the occasional crack of thunder and distant flash of lightning.

Perhaps in some other environment, those smells and sounds would be comforting. Who doesn’t like the sound of a rainstorm? To me, though, the absence of traffic noise and the hum of machines feels like a lack of life. Those are the sounds and smells of humanity. This city, this false representation of my home, is dead. There are no people; there is no life. No trams, no talking or laughter, no Shinara. Empty. This is what the Volcora want our planet to be. Empty and quiet. Nothing to hear but the occasional rainstorm.

Another thing I’d noticed in our trek is the absence of plant life in this false city. You don’t really realize how many trees and bushes are planted along streets and in parks until you find a city without those things. Just another thing to add to the creepiness of this place, I suppose. A shell of civilization with the humanity removed.

My time for contemplation comes to an end as Claire breaks the silence. “We’ve got another volcora incoming from the east,” she says, sounding exhausted yet still determined. “Big ape-like thing.”

Claire pauses for a moment, likely getting information from her familiar. “Looks like it’s C Rank!” she exclaims, her eyes going wide and some of that exhaustion vanishing. “Coming in hot, too!”

Baylee grimaces and shakes her head; she likely has her eye on the same thing I do.

Mana Toxicity Level: 83%

We aren’t going to be able to get much further. I’m low on mana from healing Akari, and using any more will make my mana toxicity rise all the faster. I can already tell that, as soon as I release my assault state, I’ll be in for the mother of all periods of weakness. If it gets to 90%, I won’t have a choice, as simply staying in my assault state will start to kill me.

Starting in on a big fight now, when we need everything we have to take on the mind flayer, would be suicide. If we don’t get a choice, though, we will have to do the best with what we have. Three soldiers and a team of E-Rank Sentinels against a C-Rank volcora. I suppose those odds have to be possible if we are going to confront a B Rank mind flayer and win.

“Guys,” Claire says, wearing a confused expression. “Blaze says that it looks like the volcora is running away from something. Apparently, it’s injured.”

Baylee and I lock eyes for just a moment, and she makes the call. “Everyone into that building there, quick as you can!” she orders, pointing to a small dilapidated shop. “If there’s any luck in this cursed place, it will just run right past us.”

No one needs to be told twice, all of us summoning the remnants of our strength to run for the shop. The shop looks to have been a donut shop before it was destroyed. Or maybe it was created destroyed? Anyway, the front window had been blown out, which allows us all to easily vault inside the shop and get off the street.

The inside of the shop is just as destroyed as the outside. Chairs and tables are overturned, booths are cracked and broken, and the counter is a disaster area. Not to mention that the bits of broken window had scattered across the interior, leaving tiny bits of razor-sharp glass to litter the floor and crunch under our boots.

Everyone stays silent, unable to even shift our feet in fear that the noise might draw the volcora’s attention. And so, it’s like that, that we wait. Everyone is crouched and watching Claire as she makes hand signals, trying and somewhat succeeding in conveying the location of the volcora that her familiar, Blaze, had spotted.

It’s easy to hear the thundering footsteps of the volcora as it approaches, my imagination trying to fill in what an ape-like volcora might look like. Somehow, hiding from a volcora that’s nearby is almost worse than going in to fight it. At least we have the option to fight it if we need to. Not a good option; it is C-Rank after all, but still.

Luckily, hearing the volcora’s footsteps leads me to believe that it isn’t interested in us at all. Like Claire had said, its feet pound down the street right past us like it’s running away from something. Something that, evidently, had caught up.

I’m unable to repress a surprised squeak of panic as a thunderous explosion rocks the building. My eyes go wide with panic. What could have done that! Do volcora hunt each other?

We all look to Claire, hoping for an explanation, but she just looks baffled. Hesitantly, she pokes her head over the edge of the window seal to peek outside. Her eyes only get wider. “Guys, look!” she whispers insistently.

Shrugging, I poke my own head above the window seal. What I see almost makes me want to cry. A glorious sentinel stands, shining bow in hand and two brilliant pink wings on her back. Audrey looks around, her eyes lucid and calm. Beside her is a cloud of swirling nebula energy where I imagine the volcora used to be.

I instantly recognize Audrey’s dominion art. It had been the whole reason she’d gotten her name. This has to be her! Surely nothing could fake that! Not to mention that her life force looks clean again! The darkness that had infected it having been pushed away.

I want to weep; everything’s going to be okay now! I should have known that a mind flayer couldn’t keep a hold on her. She’s freaking Stardust Angel! She’s practically invincible!

“Stay hidden,” Baylee hisses. “We don’t know if she’s still-”

“Audrey!” I call, hopping up from my hiding place and vaulting out the window.

Behind me, I think I hear a muttered, “Stars damn it, Serena.” Before the others follow me out.

Audrey turns to me, and unlike the edifice of rage she’d been when we’d last spoke, she looks calm and clear-headed. She smiles warmly, “Stars, rookie, I’ve been looking everywhere for you! What the hell do you think you’re doing this close to the mind flayer?!” Audrey calls, jogging over.

I blink, “We… we thought you were going to die. There were all these volcora coming for you, and… Well, someone had to stop the space from breaking down. We didn’t think we could get reinforcements here in time and…” I trail off, not sure what else to say.

Audrey’s smile gets wider and turns warmer. “You did the right thing. You couldn’t have known if any of us survived after we were separated. Still, going after a B-Rank mind flayer in your first incursion zone? You’re mad kid. How were you planning on handling it when it switched its mental influence onto you?”

“We uh… kind of hoped that it would be too busy using it on you and the other mentors?” I say sheepishly as the rest of my team gathers around.

Audrey lets out a shuttering breath, “Thank the stars that I found you before you tried that. It would have killed you all in under a minute. Here, all of you, take one of these,” Audrey says, extending a hand that shimmers with swirling light before clearing to leave eight blue pills resting in her palm.

Baylee steps up, looking at Audrey carefully. “I’m sorry to say this, ma’am, but how do we know you are in control of yourself?”

“You are wise to ask. The simple answer is, if I wanted to hurt you, I wouldn’t need to use any kind of underhanded tactics to do so. I am a peak B-Rank sentinel; there would be nothing you could do. These are clarity pills, not any kind of poison. It will greatly increase your mental resistance to the kinds of attacks a mind flayer uses. You’ll need it for the fight,” Audrey explains.

“I’m sorry to interject, ma’am,” Haruto starts, “but the fight? Are you not intending to deal with the mind flayer yourself?”

Audrey sighs, “I am currently sitting at 89% mana toxicity. I’m planning to shift back to my rest state until the mind flayer fight. Then, I will have maybe a few minutes worth of fighting to soften it up for you before I have to retreat. You all will have to do the rest and finish off the mind flayer. So, take the pills and get ready for a fight. We’re going there now, and we’re going to finish this.”