“Chen-Thai will see to your training,” the grandmaster said, clapping his hands together to conclude the council of elders of the sect known as the Left Hand of God once Zhang had left. Henry blinked rapidly and stood in place as the others filed out. The grandmaster was first to leave to a door that led somewhere deeper into this highest floor of the tallest building. Henry did not move until Chen-Thai came up to him and motioned for them to leave through the elevator shaft they had entered from.
When they once again found themselves on the first floor, Henry winced when he saw a waterlogged corpse being lifted from the fountain he had kicked it into.
“Why?” he questioned internally, “Why does it bother me when I’ve done so much worse?”
He wasn’t sure, but shrugged it off.
“It was a necessary show of force that I can’t regret.”
Suddenly he remembered why he had even come here in the first place. With the body and small crowd that had formed to watch its removal from the red-tinted fountain behind them, Henry asked Chen-Thai where Amanda was.
“Ah, yes. I’m surprised it took you so long to ask.”
Henry winced again. Why had he waited? David wasn’t fundamentally a different person, so did he himself not care? But then why did he feel a pang of dread in thinking about what happened to her? Did he care about her as more than a tool after all?
No, it couldn’t be that, they had barely known each other at all. Was it regret at possibly hurting her? But when so many had already died by his hand why would he ever care about one more body?
“It’s too far to walk,” Chen-Thai said, interrupting Henry’s internal monologue and taking into flight as soon as the pair had left the building whose uppermost floor’s overhang really was made of gold. They arrived at a large, flat compound on the other edge of the city within about five minutes. It was well-maintained and the back contained a series of ponds and gardens alongside many flowerbeds of every vivid shade of the rainbow, but the building itself was a near-brutalist box made of large gray slabs of stone.
They entered wooden doors and were directed to a small room containing nothing but a single mattress sitting on a bamboo floor by a nurse dressed in a pink robe with white trim. Laying in it was a mummy whose face was obscured.
“That’s Amanda?” Henry questioned.
“Yes,” replied the nurse.
“...how is she doing?”
“She’s stable now, but the patient was poisoned and involved in a severe teleportation incident.”
“This is why teleportation isn’t practiced…” Chen-Thai said, clicking his tongue.
“The only thing that saved her is her extensive cultivation of Yaldabaoth’s energy,” the nurse continued, unbothered by Chen-Thai’s interruption.
“What little she had left stabilized the worst of her injuries, but she was nearly spent when she arrived. If she does wake up, it’s likely her personality will differ. Normally we don’t give elixirs to the injured except as a last resort, but I don’t think she would have made it otherwise.”
“Differ how?” Henry asked.
The nurse looked to Chen-Thai, who began to explain the effects of Yaldabaoth’s power on a body incapable of resisting it.
“Yaldabaoth’s power restores things, right? But it doesn’t restore them to their state prior to being injured or destroyed, it reverts parts of the world to their original state. Amnesia makes you forget the things you’ve done, and this is similar, but what you’ve done remains. It’s who you are that is damaged; the pieces of yourself that have been chipped away over years or decades are put back in place all at once together with the things that remain.”
“Only about 30% of those who take an elixir in a moment of crisis recover from the overwhelming strain on their body, and those who do have parts of themselves replaced with foreign material. Despite appearing to be the same as who they are and were, the new self isn’t made of what was once there. It’s been replaced with something stronger, and yet fundamentally of a different essence.”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“Those who have embraced and cultivated Yaldabaoth’s energy have a higher chance of survival due to their body being acclimated to it, but even they can’t perfectly restore what has been lost. It’s different for everyone, but if the person survives, as a general rule, they’ll become more driven, embracing Yaldabaoth’s will for the world by becoming the best version of themselves they always wanted to be.”
“So… if she wakes up there are no downsides?”
“If.”
“But still no, there’s a pretty major one: by becoming imbued with Yaldabaoth’s will in such a physical way… there are some compulsions that come along with it.”
“And what are you referring to?”
“You’ll just have to wait and see.”
“No. Tell me.”
Chen-Thai sighed, placing a hand on his forehead in exasperation.
“It’s an uncommon process. People don’t usually do it because of the risk and expense, but even those who do face obstacles when their new nobility, grace, and will to see nature preserved cause them to oppose even rather reasonable things like living in cities and defending one’s self from invaders. Anything that would scar the landscape becomes something they’ll attack, and by “scar” I mean change. Some have been known to attack well-diggers.”
Henry paused and began to contemplate the meaning of these words. If the process was undesirable because of the risk, expensive, and yielded personality changes that might cause one to oppose the very people with enough resources to invest in them and provide the elixir in the first place, why do it now? It would make sense for this place to try and create a bargaining chip with which to strengthen their alliance with him— to prevent Henry from making any foolish mistakes and possibly bolster rapport— but how did they know she was connected to him and why would Chen-Thai even tell him such a drawback? Henry shrugged, it didn’t seem like there was harm in asking, but Chen-Thai spoke before Henry’s open lips had a chance to emit any sound.
““Why?” I bet you’re thinking, right? Well this case is special. There isn’t just Yaldabaoth’s energy in her, there’s also the kind pouring off of you right now and destroying His divine protection even as we speak. It may stabilize the process, and at the time we thought it was worth a shot given her imminent death by way of its corroding influence being combined with a severe injury.”
“So in other words a research experiment,” Henry thought, but did not say aloud.
Only, there was one detail Chen-Thai was clearly leaving out. If indeed they could recognize the energy in her as being connected to his own energy, and they were aware of him being related to the Great Scourge, then it would have been obvious she was connected to him. Therefore, if they secured her and waited it was likely he would come to them. Was Chen-Thai out in the woods looking for him? Even with this suspicion it wasn’t clear if the information was actionable even if true. All that was known was that they had tried to save her, no matter the why.
What it meant to him was an entirely separate question.
When he thought about hurting her there was a pain in his chest. It had been minor when he first saw the mummy, but now it was all Henry could do to remain in the room with her here. He had done this. He had hurt her and it dredged up faint memories of something far worse. A faded sense of deja-vu flashed before Henry’s eyes, and yet he could think of no details despite all his efforts. Chen-Thai sat down in a wooden chair next to the bed,
“Please, take your time,” the nurse said, leaving the two men with the near-cadaver.
Henry did not sit, but continued to remain paralyzed in thought.
“All she wanted was a connection with someone who wouldn’t hurt her and leave her behind, and I did this to her.”
His stomach was tied in knots, and sweat began to dot his face’s every open pore.
“I’ve done this before… haven’t I.”
The room began to spin.
Faint memories returned to him in vignettes of little substance.
A 50 year-old woman with black hair just slightly graying lay in a hospital bed, two other children and a husband beside her.
The same woman in a park whose green trees bursted with life and color, many children playing happily in a jungle-gym nearby a softly trickling fountain, no others beside her.
Tears on his cheeks alone.
An argument with those who had once been beside the hospital bed, fingers pointing, arms raised, tears streaming down his sister’s cheeks, hot red anger flush on his father’s face, a brother’s expression of absolute bewilderment.
Years spent alone.
Had he abandoned his family out of an inability to confront his mom’s imminent passing? Did he leave before or after? What was the argument about? He couldn’t remember. He thought and tried and wished and internally screamed to himself to know more about what happened, but there was nothing else to be known. What had once been there had been lost, splattered gray across the canvas of a lightly-furnished room.
He felt nothing as he killed that village in the desert, nothing except a sense of hunger for more, and yet now something he should have felt long before killing himself or any others had finally arisen: a sense of regret.