I blinked several times as it took time for my dying body to grow used to the light emitted by the surrounding Mage Lights. I tried to get up from the chair I was laying on, but my arms proved too weak for even such a menial task.
With a sweep of soul mana, I became aware of the sorry state my body was in. Multiple busted blood vessels, a handful of broken bones, and uncountable ligaments tethered off. The fact that I didn’t feel pain was no longer attributable to adrenaline, my nervous system was so damaged I had difficulty feeling, pain included.
I looked at the room I was in, but my eyes were too blurry to discern images, and I was only able to see blobs of colors. As I began using my soul mana pool to regenerate my near-dead body to a previous healthy state, I used Soul Sight to substitute my lacking senses.
As the spell took hold, I was able to see two figures in the office. One sat on the ground, flowing great quantities of soul mana, conjuring spells of considerable complexity. The other lay motionless on the ground. Yet I detected something coming from it.
Life.
I consciously helped the automatic spells healing my body, manually sewing together snapped muscle ligaments, patching up regions that had lost skin, and overall, making my body able to sustain life. Even then, I was unable to regenerate my scorched arm.
I took a deep breath, air filling my lungs.
I was suddenly shaken by a rabid coughing fit.
“Oh! You scared me.” Alatea, my mentor and experienced healer, snapped away from her concentrated state as she talked to me.
“Ye…” I coughed once more, phlegm and blood coming out of my mouth. “I also scarred myself. I was too focused on smaller scale damage that I didn’t notice my lungs had a hole in them.”
I had talked too much in a short span and my mouth was dry and I felt like I hadn’t drunk anything for many days. This was technically true, because the last time I drank something, it was at least two days ago. Maybe even more since I fell unconscious.
“Do you need medical assistance?” She didn’t bother looking away from her patient, still healing her whilst maintaining a conversation.
“No…” I cleaned my lips with the sleeve of my tunic. “Keep healing Marissa. I’ll survive. I had worse.”
“I doubt so.” The healer told, pulsing a wave of soul mana as she scanned my body. “Your body is extremely worn. I don’t even know how you are alive, your heart is pumping blood at such low speeds that you wouldn’t get any oxygen across your body.”
“Would you believe me if I told you that I had died?” I told her with a chuckle.
Alatea stopped healing Marissa and looked me dead in the eyes. A common practice when mystics wanted to get information out of someone.
“Please, that won’t work,” I said with a lethargic cadence. “Just focus on healing her, anything you want to know I will tell you once she has woken up.”
She continued looking me in the eyes for a few more seconds, before giving in. “Alright.” And with such a brief answer, Alatea went back to work.
Her pathetic attack took a lot of me, my soul shaking as if it was ill. I was taken away by the world of dreams once more.
**********
I was used to pain. I told myself to escape the obvious reality that this wasn’t healthy. I floated on my soulspace, manually healing my body to a sustainable state. One’s soulspace was normally a white void, yet mine was populated with sprouts of arcane corruption. They tainted the landscape, but in a way, they made it more alive. I guess the overdecoration trend of the ellari had finally struck deep in my soul.
My soul was shattered. I noticed that when I went back to the River of the Damned. There were small rifts everywhere, making my soul appear like a fractured glass panel. But that wasn’t the most worrying part. No.
The thing that truly worried me and ground my gears alike was the fact that my soul was bisected.
A few days ago, I had put my arm inside a leyline, a blood vessel that carried the lifeblood of the world. Whilst only a part of my body had entered the leyline on the physical plane, that wasn’t the same for my soul. The spiritual plane worked far differently than the physical one, and in that instant, I had submerged my full soul in the most primal and raw form of mana, resulting in my soul being split.
I was unaware of the damage in my soul. I had created spells that took pieces of my soul and used them as fuel for magic instead of mana, but that was controlled and measured damage. My soul minefield was the prime example of that. Because my soul was far bigger than my corporeal self, it didn’t affect me in any significant manner.
But now the chunk I had lost was bigger than any before it. And while my astral self was still far bigger than my corporeal one, that wasn’t the problem. No, the proportion of the lost soul compared to my whole didn’t matter, but its intrinsic size.
The chunk I had lost was approximately the size of an adult soul.
Where did that massive portion of my own being end up? Well, the culprit was none other than the mana-capacitator artifact that the crazy hemomancer had used to blow up the leyline.
For some impossible reason, the black orb had absorbed the fraction of my soul that I had lost during the recovery of the object in question from the leyline. My best theory here is that the artifact absorbed any type of mana, and because souls were (in a very incorrect and loose definition) mainly soul mana, my soul piece ended up trapped inside it.
And that’s why I was currently seeing two soulspaces on my soul. It was trippy. It was like having eyes on the nape. I was at two places simultaneously. And I didn’t know if that was good or bad.
Truth be told, I think that the artifact catching my soul was one of the best things that could happen to me. Because a soul of that size, no matter if it lacked any ego behind it, was destined to generate life.
I wasn’t an expert on the field of mysticism as a whole, mainly focusing myself on psychimancy, but a loose soul like that would’ve either created life out of nowhere, like a golem of some sort or became an apparition, like a ghost or a poltergeist.
So, yes. Having my soul trapped had saved the world from one more abomination.
And it did have more positives. I could now spy on the draconid palace. Well, more or less. Unlike my body, the artifact didn’t possess any sensory organs, it was a ball of metal. So, my only way of perceiving the outside world was Soul Sight. And the Soul Sight spell could only see well… souls.
I transferred my consciousness to the orb, finding myself in a maelstrom of arcane mana.
Right… I had forgotten that the artifact had absorbed the output of a damned leyline. This second soulspace was made of pure violet, unlike my white and violet main soulspace. In fact, there was so much arcane mana, that I could see ‘mana storms’ happening around me. Violent storms composed of arcane-based lighting thrashed along the spiritual plane. I couldn’t begin to quantify how much mana the artifact had stored.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
I concentrated on myself and ignored the lightning storms, as they weren’t truly real. Just a metaphysical representation of the incommensurable quantities of mana. It took a bit of effort, as this soulspace was far more damaged than my real one, and then even more concentration to penetrate my Soul Sight through the storms, but in the end, I had managed to see through the artifact.
Soul Sight could only show souls, yes, but that gave me a lot of information. I could see the souls of the emperor and the princess on top of me, meaning they had stored the black orb of death underground.
I could also detect that the draconids had heeded my warnings as no one had tampered with the artifact. A very sensible choice as even I couldn’t understand its inner workings.
As I detected a brief pulse of soul mana coming from the true soulspace I went back. Three souls were currently in the room, and they were linked to bodies. That put a smile on my astral self. I never doubted Alatea could do the impossible, as I had just done so a few hours ago when I went to the afterlife and back.
Without any more delay, I woke up.
**********
I opened my now-healed eyes to behold a marvelous sight. Alatea was standing up, giving a healing infusion to a person sitting in a pillowed chair. Marissa.
I almost cried. I could feel my eyes becoming watery. But instead of shedding tears, I just smiled. I looked at the two girls, but only Alatea noticed me.
“She’s a bit groggy,” Alatea explained as she forcefully fed Marissa the infusion. “Her body is fully healed, but she has lost a lot of blood and needs to recover it. Besides that, her soul needs to remember how it feels to be alive.”
I listened to my mentor’s words and slowly nodded. I knew what coming from the dead did to one’s soul and body. And possibly mind, but we had to see that yet. We were no longer experts in our field but chartering a new one.
“Is she conscious?” I asked as I noticed Marissa’s open eyes looked up to the ceiling in an unfocused gaze.
“I can’t really tell. Her brain is working, and she’s thinking right now.” It was obvious Kirielle was her best friend. She could analyze the brain of a patient without even being a mentalist or having noticeable Mind affinity. “But if I had to diagnose her, I would rather lean on the fact that she’s dreaming.”
“Whilst awake?” I asked.
“Daydreaming is a thing, Edrie,” Alatea told in a condescending tone. Then let out a small chuckle. “No, but really. I guess she’s in an opposite state of somnambulism. Instead of moving while asleep, she’s… staying still while awake? Weird analogy, forget what I’ve said.”
“I get what you are trying to say?” I said half-convinced. “When will she become truly conscious?”
“When she notices that she’s alive instead of dead, but I can’t give an estimation of how much time it will take. You see, this is the first time I had to resurrect someone.”
“I’m sorry about that.” I apologized.
“Don’t be.” Alatea looked at me with saddened eyes. “I don’t know how any of this happened, but I cannot even begin to imagine the tribulations you have had to go through.”
I didn’t know what to say, I stood there on my chair in silence. Alatea sighed and brought me an infusion, different from the one she had given to Marissa. It had a light blue tinge, and it smelled like peace and tranquility.
“Stillsand Chrysanthemum. It makes the mind slow its thoughts and alleviates musculature strain.” Alatea explained with recited practice. She was used to telling everyone she gave one of her infusions the particular effects it had.
“Where do you even get these plants?” I asked as I downed the cup of tea. As always, it was to die for.
“Edrie, we are literally in a greenhouse.” She responded with a deadbeat tone.
“Yeah, I know,” I added with the same lethargic voice. “But how can this plentiful and diverse flora grow in a single place?”
“That’s the charm of the naturalist’s floramancy. They can make any flower bloom no matter their original ecosystems. And even if the climate is too drastic from the one the plants are used to, we also count on a handful of pyromancers, aquamancers, cryomancers, and geomancers that can control everything up to the most minute of details, from the humidity to the soil nutrients!”
I couldn’t help myself but chuckle at Alatea’s interest in botany. She was usually composed and reserved. Not unlike my father, but the man tended to lean more toward stoicism, whilst pragmatism was a word that suited more the healer.
“What are you laughing at?” Alatea scoffed at me.
“Well,” I chuckled once more, “it would seem you still have energy after spending this much time awake. By the way, for how long I have slept?”
“Around five hours?” She said with uncertainty. Then she stood up and poured a cup of tea for herself. “I didn’t pay much attention to the passage of time whilst I was treating her, but I would say the sun still has to come up.”
“That may be the most recharging five hours of sleep I had.” I stretched my arms as to gloat my rest. Damn, that infusion did really help with muscle pains. “I wouldn’t have expected to be this rested with only five hours after everything my body had to tolerate.”
“That’s probably adrenaline talking,” Alatea spoke after taking a long sip of her cup. “You have too much adrenaline stored, and your body hasn’t got enough time to filtrate it. You should drink a lot of water and go to the bathroom. And also stop healing yourself this much.”
“These spells are keeping me alive, Alatea.”
“And also killing you.” The healer diagnosed. “You are putting your body under a heavy strain by forcing it to regenerate through magic means. You should go to sleep once more and let your natural regeneration run its course.”
“I’m not going to argue healthcare with the medic.” This is why I promptly casted Force Unconsciousness on myself and slipped back into the dreaming world.
**********
“Are you truly alright?” I asked the now fully conscious Marisa.
“For the third time, I am!” Considering the impetus of her voice, I would have to agree. But she had just come back from the land of the dead, and I couldn’t take her words for granted.
“She’s fine, Edrie.” Alatea joined her. “You are in a far worse state than her. Whilst you were sleeping, I took a look at your arm and I haven’t seen any damage like it before. Those burns transcend the physical world, they are both in your body and your soul.”
I sighed. I know what she was talking about. Of course, I noticed the void in my soul, I just ignored it. No matter how much healing magic I poured onto my left arm, the skin refused to grow back. If I wanted to heal the damage on my body, first I would need to repair my soul.
“I’m working on it,” I told the healer. “For now, pass me a bandage. I think it won’t do me any good to show a burned arm around.”
“And it could get infected.” Alatea added as she passed me a roll of bandages.
Such trivial physical ailments were inconsequential to us, spiritual healers, who could regrow limbs in extreme situations. Alatea knew it, even more so than I, yet I think she just spoke by reflex there.
I tried to put the bandage on, but with one arm and my nervous system scarred, I ended up dropping the roll on the ground.
“Can I get a bit of help?” Marissa got up in response. “Not you. I think you won’t fare much better with the bandage than I.”
“I already told you that I am alright!” She pouted. “Don’t you see that I’m well and alive?”
“Yes, and I also have seen you die.” I quickly realized I shouldn’t have said that. I was too tired to think straight, even after sleeping for Lady knows how many hours. “Just let the healer work.”
Alatea stayed silent on the exchange, rolling the bandage around my left arm without saying anything. She didn’t wet the cloth with any cream, oils, or whatever healers used to help the skin grow back. Most surely because she knew it would be useless.
I didn’t even feel pain as she brushed the bandage over my scorched flesh. Alatea was wrong here. Adrenaline was no longer doing its work, it was the lack of pain receptors that avoided me from feeling pain.
Once she covered my whole arm, hand included, Alatea took a step back and sat down in front of me. She looked me dead in the eyes, yet she didn’t use any soul magic to influence me.
“Answers, now.” Her tone was dead serious. She wouldn’t expect any other outcome or unrelated words to leave my mouth.
“What are you talking about?” A lost Marissa pondered.
“I promised to tell her everything that led to this situation.” I told Marissa to put her into context.
“I also want to know what happened with the hemomancer that…” killed me. I could feel the words that Marissa didn’t say from my Mystic’s Dominion as I scanned her.
Her face was solemn and riddled with pain. Even if she was actuating as normal, I could clearly tell it was nothing but an act. What I couldn’t tell was what truly was going through her mind. Marissa had died after all, and you couldn’t just cope with that.
Even I, the expert in dying in this room, still felt the aftermath.
“Alright then.” I clapped, calling for their attention, but to also dissipate the thoughts running across Marissa's head.
I looked at the recently resurrected person, who curiously was the one in the best shape here. Then I looked at the prodigious healer, she had copious bags under her eyes. When I had been sleeping, she had done the impossible and brought back a person from the dead.
“Let me tell you a story.” I began. “Not about my mission to the afterlife or the fight against the hemomancer. No, something much older.” I casted True Recall at full power. “A story spanning centuries and two worlds. This is my untold story.”