“Did you hear?”
“Hear what?”
“That The Fusionist is actually half—”
The door to the warehouse in Thanesh where Larek and Nedira had made their home together closed on the murmurs of the crowd outside, and he felt himself being gently lowered onto his bed a few seconds later.
It seems as though the news has already spread throughout the city. I should’ve figured that the fact that I’m half-Gergasi wouldn’t stay a secret for long after it was discovered.
“Thank you. You can put my brother on this bed, as well,” Larek heard his betrothed say to the Volunteers that had helped to carry them inside, and as soon as they were gone, back out the door and to the crowd outside, he felt himself relax.
Or relax as much as he could, given his condition. If it was any consolation, Norde wasn’t any better, though he had something else the matter with him. Nedira’s brother had suffered from the effects of a mind-controlling bug for who knew how long before a Gergasi, Chinli, had come along and used her Dominion magic on him. The two forms of control warring over his mind had messed him up, and while he’d been conscious for a short time after he had both forms of influence banished from his head, he’d been unconscious ever since. Granted, it had only been approximately 12 hours since the southeastern Calamity had been closed, freeing all of the subservient Apertures in its territory while also ending the threat it posed with its expansion, but those hours felt like weeks to Larek in his current state.
“Don’t worry, everything will be alright,” Nedira told him softly as she sat next to him on the bed, gently brushing the hair out of his eyes as she smiled down at him. All he could do in response was grunt, and she continued as if he had urged her to explain. Strangely enough, she seemed to understand that his grunt actually was for her to explain. “All the people who now know your secret? That you’re half-Gergasi? It won’t change how they already see you.”
Larek wasn’t so sure of that. He’d seen how they had reacted back when Chinli had deliberately shared his lineage with all of the Volunteers that had come with him into the Calamity to search for the missing Mages and Martials, and while they hadn’t been outright hostile, he was sure it was only a matter of time. Their opinion would only be compounded by the fact that, at the time, they had just discovered around two thousand massacred bodies of Mages and Martials, all perpetrated by a full-blooded Gergasi; he wouldn’t be surprised if they associated all that death with him. He’d been the subject of so much hatred in his life that it seemed inevitable by this point.
“I see that you don’t believe me,” his betrothed said with a sad smile. “I know you’ve had more than your fair share of unfair prejudice against you in your life, and I don’t want to say that there aren’t those who will see you in a poorer light because of this secret coming out, but the vast majority will actually see this as a positive.”
He minutely shook his head, the most he really moved at the moment. It had been that way for hours, and he was beginning to worry that it might be permanent.
“Ah, you didn’t see how the Volunteers we brought with us to the Calamity reacted after you killed a Gergasi,” Nedira noted as she playfully booped him on the nose. “Sure, they might have been more than a bit unsure after Chinli revealed who you were, but after they felt themselves resist her Dominion magic and watched you fight and defeat one of the hated figures of legend that many of them had never actually seen before, almost every Volunteer was looking upon you with something approaching reverence. In fact, I think you should be even more worried about many of them idolizing you even more than before.”
Great. That’s just what I need. But if she’s correct, then I guess that beats them trying to kill me.
“Kimble, Verne, and the rest of the Volunteers from the expedition into the Calamity have already begun spreading the news that you killed one of the Gergasi; you just haven’t heard it yet. As the saying goes, bad news always travels the fastest, but your other actions will help to alleviate that ‘bad news’, which isn’t really bad news to begin with. Being half-Gergasi should be viewed not as a detriment, but as a benefit, and I believe that most people will recognize that.”
I sure hope she’s right. The last thing I need is an angry mob storming our home while I’m incapacitated.
As she held his hand for a short while before getting up to see to her unconscious brother, Larek kept replaying the fight with Chinli over in his mind. The incredibly quick way she moved, the sheer power of her physical attacks, and the variety of magical spells she slung out at him had been terrifying, and he knew for a fact that if he had mistimed his defenses for even a second, he wouldn’t have survived. He had thought he was strong going into the confrontation, but that had proven to be an illusion; he had only managed to “win” against her through the application of his newest ability to make clones of himself, and from tricking her into destroying a powerful Fusion at point-blank range.
And the result was that he had stressed his body and mind to the point where he couldn’t move nor speak, and even bringing up his Status was impossible. Just to keep himself alive through the battle had been hard enough, but victory was turning out to be nearly as bad as defeat, especially if his worries came true and he would never be able to move again.
Needless to say, he wasn’t feeling so good about everything right now, even though their expedition was technically a success. They had closed the Calamity, they had found Norde, and Larek had managed to kill the same Gergasi that had taken him away from his friends years ago – all of which, independently, could be considered a positive, but as there had been no change in his state since surviving the explosion, his personal outlook was pretty dismal and depressing.
Nedira puttered around their home for a few hours before turning in for the night, as it had been a while since either of them had gotten any sleep. No one came to visit them from outside, leaving them in a world all of their own for now, for which Larek was grateful; he couldn’t stand not being able to speak with anyone, and while Nedira seemed to somewhat understand what he was trying to say with his random grunts, he couldn’t rely on her to translate them forever.
He needed to get better, but he wasn’t sure if anything but time would do it – if it ever did. No, don’t think like that. I’ve got to stay positive; at least, that’s what Nedira told me.
He stared up at the ceiling of their home for hours that night, unable to sleep despite being bone-tired throughout his entire body, but even sleep wasn’t a blessing once he finally passed out. Visions of the massacre of Mages and Martials that Chinli had propagated, along with his own fight with her, gave him nightmares, and as a result, his sleep was largely restless.
The days seemed to turn into a blur after that, as it was all more of the same with no apparent change in his condition. Nedira stayed near his side almost every hour of the day, though she left him with Kevara every once in a while, his Fusion-crafting assistant more than happy to look after both him and Norde, who also had yet to wake up.
Finally, after what he estimated to be approximately 6 days after he arrived, Larek suddenly woke up in the middle of the night after struggling to get to sleep. He groaned at the abrupt interruption of his rest, bringing his hands up to rub his temples to massage the headache that accompanied his interrupted sleep—
—my hands! I moved them!
It turned out to be more than that, as slowly removed the sheet that was covering him and gingerly swung his legs over the side of his bed. He felt a little unsteady at first as he sat there on the edge of the mattress, but after a minute or so of simply sitting there, he began to feel better by the second. Finally standing up, he wobbled for a moment as his weight stabilized on his feet, but that quickly faded as he felt the strength he was used to coming back to him.
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“Larek!” he abruptly heard from behind him, and a body flung itself into him, hugging him around his upper waist. Twisting his head around, he found Nedira plastered to his side, and he smiled down at her; it was only when he noticed just how far down she was that he realized she was much shorter than normal.
Or he was simply taller.
“Thank you for taking care of me,” Larek told her softly, his voice a little hoarse from disuse. He hugged her back for a few more minutes before they parted, only for her to drag him back down to the side of the bed where she could more easily talk to him.
“I had a feeling that, given enough time, you would be just fine, but I have to admit that I was beginning to worry once a few days had passed,” she said, tears in her eyes as she stared at him, her hand on his arm possessively, as if she was afraid something would happen if she let him go. “I’m glad to see that my faith was well-placed and that you’re back.”
Larek nodded. He was certainly back on his feet, but whether or not he was “fine” was another matter. For days, he had been essentially trapped in his non-functioning body, unable to do anything but observe the world around him; he couldn’t even do anything to investigate his body and what had happened to it, as his internal senses had basically shut down. Now, though, he felt as if he was finally well enough to take a look.
Holding her as she abruptly snuggled up against him, the Fusionist mentally dove into his body and internal pattern for the first time since just after the battle with Chinli.
The first thing he noticed was that his body, despite being locked down for nearly a week, was in fairly good shape. He wasn’t exactly in the best shape right now, as he was still feeling a bit weak, but his body was rapidly restoring itself to the level it had been before the fight, and he suspected that once he got some good food in his belly – as he’d been fed nothing but liquids during his convalescence – he would be back to normal in a few hours.
Unfortunately, his internal pattern was a different story. In short, it was a mess. He wasn’t precisely sure how it had looked just after the fight with Chinli, but even after a week of repairing itself, it didn’t look good. It was torn in various places, practically shredded in others, and thin enough that it took him a few minutes to actually look at it all, as there were portions of it that he thought that it was gone completely before he caught sight of it. It was the worst damage and stress that he’d ever done to it, and he knew that he was lucky to be alive.
Thankfully, even as he investigated every part of it, he could see that it was repairing itself, if a bit slowly. With all that he’d learned about Aetheric Force over the last month or so, he thought that he might be able to find a way to apply it toward helping it heal a bit faster; but for now it was so delicate that he was worried that anything he tried to do to it would only make it fall apart. It had literally been holding itself together by a few threads, and any disturbance to it before it had a chance to recover at least a little bit might push it too far.
Extracting his focus away from his internal pattern, he told Neidra, “I’m not completely well yet, but I’m getting there. I just need some time.”
She nodded into his side, before pulling away and looking up at him. “You’ve got some time, but things are happening out there in the wider world that we’re going to need to address as soon as possible.”
The Naturalist had been a bit sparse on information while he had been essentially paralyzed in his bed, as if she hadn’t wanted to worry him while he couldn’t do anything about it. Now that he was able to move around and interact with her, she must’ve thought he was ready for it.
“Like what?”
She sighed as she let him go, looking toward the still-unconscious form of Norde nearby. “Well, let’s see. I guess I should at least tell you what’s been going on since you’ve been… unavailable,” she began. “First, all of the Apertures inside the former Calamity had essentially been closed for the first few days after we took down the Calamity, which gave Kimble and the Volunteers enough time to strategize on keeping them culled in the future so that this doesn’t happen again. Dozens of teams have been assigned throughout the area to cover a swathe of Apertures, and with the help of their staves and new abilities – thanks to your Gradual Aetheric Purification Array – they have been instrumental in keeping monster numbers down and the land around them relatively safe.
“Because of this, there have been thousands of people slowly spreading throughout the region with the intent to reestablish towns and even cities that had been abandoned, using them as hubs to grow more food, take advantage of the local natural resources, and be a stopping point for the Transport crews to visit while they’re in the area. These efforts are still in the early stages yet, of course, but over time they will be invaluable to keeping the land safe for even more people to move back to the area.
“Which brings us to our first problem,” she continued. “We already had a bit of an issue with the surrounding towns and cities run by different Factions, as they didn’t care for us trying to barge in and take over—their words, not ours. Unfortunately for them, the fall of the Calamity did nothing to stop the spread of the mind-controlling bugs that plagued us at the start, and we’re beginning to see dozens of places becoming overwhelmed – and yet, the leadership vehemently opposes any help from us. A few, uh, inquisitive Volunteers have snuck into a few towns to investigate why this may be. While they haven’t found anything definitive, the general consensus is that the SIC is involved somehow. It could be that they’re still angry about what they tried to do to Thanesh and the people here, and rightfully so, but I have a feeling that they might be onto something.
“We already knew that the SIC was going to be more of a problem sooner or later, and while that doesn’t necessarily mean they are going to try and strike at us again anytime soon, they still have an enormous amount of influence with those not under Volunteer control. In fact, that influence has led to a few attacks on our people as they approached to help, though fortunately there weren’t any casualties. If left unchecked, however, either the SIC will convince them to strike at us for real, or they will be mind-controlled by bugs who will inevitably attack us anyway. Kimble and the other Volunteers in leadership positions are thinking about adopting a wait-and-see position, where it might be better to let those people be taken over by the bugs first before we swoop in to save them, but there are risks to this, of course.
“First and foremost, there is the risk that the spread of these bugs will grow out of our control. They seem to be able to replicate rather quickly, as we’ve seen around the Calamity border, but now it seems as though they aren’t limited to securing that border anymore. As such, they could spread throughout the entire Kingdom and potentially even further than that in a matter of months. Are we looking to send out Volunteers everywhere around the world? Because that might be the only way to eventually stop them, when everyone has one of your Fusions in their heads to eliminate them completely. Unless you can start pumping out thousands of them a day for the next few months or years, I don’t believe you’ll be able to keep up.
“More than that, the interruption in the efforts against the monsters and Apertures covering the land, even for a few days or a week, could set back all the efforts we’ve made to contain them. Sure, we have this section of the Kingdom marginally organized and will only become better over time, but the same can’t be said for everywhere else. Rumors have it that the territory for the former northwestern Calamity is still struggling to keep up with the changes, though it’s thought that they will eventually get it all together and handle the mess we inadvertently left them. But any major interruption risks another Calamity forming as Apertures are neglected while most of the people tasked with keeping them culled are controlled by creepy mind-bugs.
“And then, of course, there are the Gergasi.”
Larek felt more than a little whiplash at all the problems being heaped upon him. “Gergasi? What do you mean?”
She stared at him. “You killed one of them, Larek. While I can’t claim to know much about them other than what I’ve heard as a rumor, I highly doubt that they’ll just let that kind of thing go. Whether or not they know you did it is something we can’t be sure of, but I’m sure they’ll send someone to find out eventually. We have to be ready for such an eventuality, and better prepared, to boot; you barely survived the last fight with one, but what if they send two Gergasi? Or three?”
Larek had thought the same thing, and he realized she was right. However, as it was right now, he was basically useless until his internal pattern healed again; after that, he – as well as everyone else – had to get stronger. None of them might ever be able to go toe-to-toe with a Gergasi, but they also had numbers on their side; that had to count for something.
“That’s… a lot to think about,” he eventually said to her, as he wasn’t sure how to respond. With one problem completed, it seems like there are ten more popping up in its place. Nedira might think he had the answers, but he was still struggling to recover from his ordeal. With a yawn, he realized he needed a decent sleep before he could make any important decisions, or even decide if he was the one to make them; since it was still in the middle of the night, it didn’t take much coaxing for Nedira to join him.
As he lay there, closing his eyes and yet unable to fall asleep right away with all of what he’d been told on his mind, he decided to see if his Status was finally working. At first, nothing happened, but with some flickers and stuttering, he finally got a response… though, he wasn’t sure if it was good fortune or not that everything seemed to be operating again, as he was suddenly bombarded with notifications.