Everything that was made is unmade and everything tangible becomes so very illusionary.

The sea embraces me with its cold hearted, contempt filled love and I embrace it in return, sinking faster than a rock beneath its still waves.

Then reality shifts and coils and once again the process to bring me back to the physical plane begins.

It’s not overly fast but it’s certainly not slow, so I’m assuming that I’m going to be sent into combat again.

Is this really safe?

She’s been summoning me an awful lot lately and already is suffering greatly because of it.

I hope that there’s been at least a week's worth of time transpiring between when she last summoned me and now.

Because as much as I love being alive and not just a blob with no sense of time or ability to do anything, I hate to think of what all this is doing to her.

I want to believe this will be the final battle and that I won’t be summoned again for a few months but I doubt it.

Battle after battle, fight after fight, it’s just unending and each time I’m summoned my creator grows weaker.

I’ve lost track of how many people I’ve killed, I never really bothered to count.

It just didn’t matter to me, one hundred deaths or five hundred, I would and still will kill any number of soldiers for my creator.

But that’s all I’ve done, that’s all it seems I’m capable of doing and honestly what’s the point?

The more I strive to prove my value and by extension hers, the more we get thrown around from conflict to conflict.

Yes, I might be eliminating the threats to my creator but it’s not like I’m fixing the root cause of the problem, this war isn’t slowing down and no matter what I do it doesn’t seem to change anything, except for putting us in more danger in the future.

She used to just help supply wagon caravans with water and stay relatively safe in the rear but now she’s constantly being put in danger.

I can try and protect her all I want but fundamentally I’m the reason she’s in danger.

But what choice do I have?

All I can really do is hope that this will be the last time I get summoned for a long time, at least a period of a couple of months.

The summoning completes before I can get over my self doubting thoughts and start focusing on planning out what to do.

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Warping into reality, despite my concern for my creator, the first thing I actually notice is just how loud it is, the sound of tens of thousands of war cries sounding out all at once is deafening.

Quickly I ignore it, casting the scale of this conflict to the corner of my mind and focusing on my creator instead.

She still stands tall but it’s with a slight hunch and her presence now emits weakness alongside her majesty.

And sharp echoes of pain carry over from her and to me from our link.

She’s hurt, she’s frail, she’s weak and it’s all because of me.

Even when this all began, she still could have survived without me, it was night and she was hiding with a group of allies.

Now under my protection and watchful eye, she’s slowly gotten worse and worse.

Carefully, I push these cruel and treacherous thoughts down, she’s still perfect and I don’t want her to think otherwise.

Slowly, I broach a singe worded question, “Why?”

Breaking out of her exhausted idle state, she replies, “They ended up retreating because we had reinforcements coming. We couldn’t pursue them right away because they left a small amount of troops behind to continue the siege, so it would have been very costly to break out. We were going to just recuperate but this is a key moment to wipe out an entire army's worth of soldiers so instead we joined forces to hunt them down. They’ve left a few forces behind to slow us down but now we have them cornered. The thing is they’re just more prepared for this battle than we are. They’ve had more rest than us and have some potions to help boost themselves with. We don’t have that, we’re tired and the only real advantage we have is sheer numbers. So you and the other summons will be our frontline and help wear them down so that the fight is more equal.”

She continues to speak but after that initial explanation she runs out of energy and begins to slur and mess up her words, so I can’t really understand her properly.

I already feel bad about making her speak so much, clearly, it takes her a fair bit of effort to use the link and she doesn’t have much if any energy to spare.

So gently I shush her, transmitting feelings of contentment and understanding through the link.

I don’t bother with any words since that would make her have to spend some time figuring out what I mean and contextualising it.

Evidently my attempt at comforting her works as some relief starts flooding into the link alongside her pain and fatigue.

Still, she keeps talking but all I can make out is, “Thank you Phaeraxion.” Before she collapses.

Almost instantaneously I grab hold of her, then gently lower her to the ground.

I hate the thought of leaving her here in this vulnerable state but I have been given my orders.

Or have I?

She never specifically said to go fight immediately, she only said that I and the other summons were meant to be in the frontline.

I mean I could go fight over there in another couple of minutes once she’s better, no need to go right away.

There was never any timeframe that was given.

My primary duty is keeping her safe first and foremost but then again the only tenant I haven’t failed yet is going against her will.

And while her cohort looks rather weak, we are in the centre rear formation so there’s very little risk of attackers breaking through to get at her.

But still, I can’t just leave her here, I doubt the orders she gave me were what her actual will was as well.

And on a battlefield of this scale, there’s very little I alone can accomplish.

Yep, I’ve convinced myself enough, I’ll stay by her side for a little while longer before taking part in this conflict.