Pain.

A single odious word. A single word I had painstakingly made familiar with these last days. They say the wicked had no rest, but it was more like no rest for the damned in my case.

Having been brutally overwhelmed by a leyline had taken a toll on my body, and then dying multiple times to only then die again by traveling to the afterlife, had eroded my corporeal vessel beyond sensible limits.

“Urgh...” I grunted as I rolled out of my bed and fell to the ground.

The pain was non-existent as I had overloaded most of my recently restored neurons by trying to block Saphar’s wacky fire magic. I was more bothered by the fact that I had gone to sleep dressed, and my clothes were full of sweat.

Well, what remained of my clothes.

Between leyline burns, blood and ice attacks, supersonic speeds, and fire explosions, my tunic was in a worse state than me. Funny how the Saphar family hadn’t protested about my looks.

Jokes aside, what worried me most was my physical mana pool.

Sure, my body was in a comatose-like state, and I was basically controlling it as if it was a very elaborate puppet, but the magical aspect of my body was in an even more dire state.

Ellari were half-magical beings. We weren’t pure beings of magic like the elementals but had our nice tricks related to elemental affinity. Physical mana pools presented in ellari bodies as little crystals, just like manites, that stored and refined our mana. Besides elementals, we were the only race with physical mana pools as our main source of power.

As a superb affinity user, my crystals were incredibly sensitive and difficult to form. A prospect I was familiar with as I had to meditate double the time to keep up with my peers.

Now, it’s easy to imagine what would happen if you, for some reason, got hit by the unmatched power of a fucking planet.

Every single crystal on my left arm was obliterated. Probably, that was the reason why I couldn’t just regenerate the burns on my left arm. Because I was incapable of reforming my mana pool in such a low amount of time.

I leaned my back on the side of the bed and looked at my left arm. I tried flowing arcane mana across it, and whilst I succeeded, it was painful and took more time than it should.

“Damn.” I sighed and gritted my teeth in pain. A sensation that was also present in my cognitive and spiritual self.

I unleashed a sweep of soul mana as I usually did to calm myself, but to also mitigate my suffering. Soul mana had no difficulty crossing my body, as it mostly affected the spiritual plane and the effect on the corporeal was more of a byproduct.

“All right, all right.” I took a deep breath. “Let’s recap here. I’m barely alive, my body is in the constant tipping point between life and death, and I have lost around twenty percent of my physical mana pool at best.”

I couldn’t help myself as I began to chuckle.

“Truth be told, things could have gone a lot worse.” Sluggishly, I stood up. “I could have died, I could have killed the imperial family and therefore unable to resurrect Marissa, and even committed goddamned genocide.”

I gathered my hair in a ponytail as a twisted smile formed on my face.

“Fuck, things have ended up going surprisingly smoothly. Besides all the death, the threats, and the near-genocides by both parties.”

I wanted to cry.

I didn’t.

Maybe I should. That would have appeared more humane, but maybe I was just a monster.

Without opening my mouth once more, I picked up a clean tunic from my closet and went to the academy’s bathhouse. I needed a relaxing bath, and the waters of the bathhouse were controlled by expert aquamancers and floramancers, so they had medicinal properties. Maybe it would help undo or mitigate, the damage to my body.

And also, I had to get a new bandage for my arm.

**********

After taking a hot, relaxing bath, I felt my mind at ease. The water wasn’t influenced by mentalists or mystics, so I don’t know how they managed to affect my metaphysical self.

Or maybe it just was the rest I deserved.

Anyways, having my mind cleared, I managed to establish my next objective. I needed a check on my body, but I didn’t know if the healers on the healing ward could help me with that. And if they could, they would ask A LOT of questions.

The only healers I knew of were Alatea and Kirielle, but both specialized in the metaphysical self, soul and mind respectively.

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And besides, my problem wasn’t exactly with my body, but with my magic. The only expert on magic I knew of was an old acquaintance back in Thal’mer.

Thal’mer bazaar was a sight to behold as always. The streets were overflowing with people even on a workday, and the colorful awnings set up on the roofs of houses not only blocked the shining sun but also gave the space a welcoming and warm aura. The houses' walls of white stone refracted part of the violet light, giving a mystical tinge to the setting.

The people, the decorations, the energy…

In all the foreign places and new hostilities, Thal’mer was home.

Perhaps because I had recently become more in touch with my soul after having faced my death many times in a short span, but I was able to discern the nearby souls with uncanny clarity.

Mystic’s Dominion incorporated an upgraded Soul Sight variant, so I wasn’t unfamiliar with the act of reading the souls around me. But today I felt more open-eyed than normal. Seeing uncountable dead at the River of the Damned made this pitiful low number of souls countable.

One thousand, two-hundred and sixty-two, to be exact.

I shouldn’t have been able to process such amounts of information or to even count to that amount in this low window of time, yet it was like second nature to me.

These thousand people were distributed along a one-hundred-meter radius. I couldn’t tell if that was a high concentration of people or not. Some were in their own houses, others passed by, and others attended their stalls in the bazaar. Reading surface thoughts allowed me to differentiate who was who and who did what.

As I strolled down the bazaar, I noticed why I was suddenly capable of such feats of strength. It was about Thal’mer. My home district was one with the lowest concentration of mages on Ferilyn, whether I like it or not, they were more susceptible to mind and soul magic.

In my case, that meant that I was able to detect them at long distances without any real interference. Mages emitted mana just by existing, common ellari still emitted mana thanks to our peculiar physiology, but the quantities were far lower.

I wondered how far my Soul Sight could arrive if I found myself in a desert devoid of surrounding mana, no interferences, or mages. How far could I see through the spiritual plane?

I sighed as I reached my destination. This hypothesis would have to wait.

I looked at the golden and silver twelve-pointed stars. How did I always end up in this store was beyond me. Anyways, the bell on top of the door greeted me.

“Greetings.” Novela saluted me with her characteristic impassive attitude. “Are you looking for something specific?” I couldn’t take her seriously with the comically large hat resting on her head.

“Yes,” I said as I approached the counter. “For you.”

“Excuse you?” Novela tilted her head to the side in confusion. Or so I guessed, her visage was more dead than alive.

“Oh, sorry. That sounded really weird, didn’t it?” I chuckled. “Hello there, Novela.”

Novela’s brows lifted in disconcert. “Do I know you?”

“I do not condemn you for not recognizing me. Too many years have passed. More than six by now?” I made True Recall remind me. “It’s me, Edrie Nightfallen.”

“Edrie?” I could feel her brain reboot, searching for her memories. “It has been a long time indeed. What are you doing here?”

“I needed to test a thing after recent events, and I thought you might be able to help me,” I explained. “Before doing so, can you keep it secret?”

“Another secret? You are pushing your luck, child.” I could tell she wasn’t impressed, so I pushed into that emotion.

“Yes, something that will shatter your deadpanned expression,” I added with a smug.

“I’ll like seeing you try that.” The shopkeeper maintained her emotionless face.

“Can you bring your best elemental affinity detector here? I don’t care if I must pay to use it, I can pay for it.” I pointed at my purse with my bandaged hand. Novela’s expression didn’t bulge.

“Alright. Give me a moment.”

She went toward the back shop, but I swear I heard a groan once she had disappeared from my sight. The city may have been covered by a giant dome and I may have come back from the dead, but Novela’s laziness never changed.

As I waited for her to come back, I looked around her shop. I still couldn’t recognize the concoctions and potions she had laying around (a tag would have helped very much) I wasn’t that good with alchemy. Perhaps Monica could have recognized it, she was the best of us in every magical field that didn’t involve direct conjuration.

Things that I could now recognize, unlike when I was younger, were the plentiful enchanted items. My knowledge of the runic language had grown a lot, especially as of late, so decrypting the inscriptions proved quite a menial task. There were some lighters in the shape of magic wands, orbs that floated and were engraved with Mage Light cantrips, and a torus that appeared to be a fan that used Wind and Ice elements to work.

Before I’d even noticed, Novela came back from the back shop, now without her needlessly big witch hat but with an artifact in her hands, nonetheless. A big stone bracelet, more akin to a choker for its radius, which levitated on top of a golden square platform overflowing with runic inscriptions. Twelve small crystal daggers orbited around the bracelet in a slow but coordinated dance.

The daggers were similar to manites, but I could tell they were different altogether. Glass was a good mana conductor, even if it wasn’t normally used in crafting because of its fragility.

“Put your arm through here, please.” I did what she said, leaving my right, unburned arm through the stone bracelet. “Now a minute for the precision test.”

The machine began emitting colors from all its parts. The runes inscribed on the white stone shone, as well as the gold platform. The daggers stopped their previous movements, locking into place.

A myriad of colors flashed in and out of existence, only to be replaced by other colors. I saw the multiple colors of the elemental affinities flash in quick succession. The crystal daggers shone brightly, and one of them, far more intensely than the rest.

Moments later, the lights dimmed.

Now only two colors were displayed, violet and white. Though one shone brighter than the other.

“As I feared, the recent events have altered my elemental affinity,” I said looking at the powerful lights.

Whilst I was practically emotionless as I already expected this result, Novela was colorful with her facial expressions. Her jaw fell to the ground in surprise after looking at the bright colors. To be totally and utterly honest, I was dying inside of laughter as I saw Novela’s masquerade dissipate.

“Edrie?” Novela asked in confusion.

“Yes?” I said with a smug.

“How the fuck.” She stood there, midsentence, her eyes locked on the machine, unable to believe what was before her.

“Yes?” I reiterated, my smile growing bigger.

“How the fuck…” She suddenly grabbed me by the collar of my tunic.

Alright, I didn’t expect that. Novela’s eyes were eclipsed by the light of the artifact, but I still could see some pink confusion and desperation there. Hmm… I was beginning to worry myself. Then Novela ended her statement.

Her grip on the cloth became stronger. “How the fuck did your Arcane affinity lower!”

“What?”