With my eye now clean, I take a quick glance around to make sure there are no new threats that need dealing with, and then I turn my attention back to the pack.

They’re still busy trying to deal with the mages and their protectors, in fact it actually looks like they haven’t made any progress at all.

I mean it’s a good thing they’re so much more cautious around these humans since otherwise they likely would already have killed them all but it also means I probably wasted time fighting these hybrids when I could have instead bypassed them.

But there’s no point in adopting a more passive approach now, not when she’s so close and could be in critical danger.

Carefully I pick up a few more rocks, there’s no need to throw them though, the hordes numbers are thin enough now for me to charge through, at least hopefully they are.

Gathering myself I back up a few feet and then I begin to hurl myself forward, digging into the clumpy sand and throwing myself forwards.

I push aside all my thoughts, such as how much blood has to have been split to make the sand feel like soil and just focus on moving as fast as I can.

I don’t even notice when I get bitten and clawed at, I just keep on running until I can feel her presence.

Slowing down, I turn around to confront any pursuers but the hybrids that had been chasing me are already backing off and going back after the mages.

Turning around in a full circle, I look out in all directions but everyone and everything seems to be preoccupied with their own personal battles.

Truly this entire charade has devolved into an utter mess, there are no neat rows, no leaders, just blood thirsty men and women fighting each other and equally blood thirsty beasts.

But presently that’s a good thing for me, so I’m not complaining.

It almost feels like the link itself is pulling me forward, urging me onwards and naturally I follow it, taking the last few steps necessary to reach my creator, my purpose, my own personal god.

Looking downwards, I’m greeted with a grisly sight, it’s a literal mound of corpses.

No, not just corpses, there are injured in there as well, crying, dying soldiers.

And there’s also my creator, caked in blood and lying unmoving in the pile of bodies.

All that’s sticking out is her arm but our link is so powerful that’s all I need to recognise her.

Gently grabbing her arm I simultaneously pull and dig her out of the mound.

Plopping her carefully onto the ground I lean over her to see if she’s hurt.

Well she’s not missing any limbs or dealing with any visible wounds, she looks so pale and weak, almost like she’s poisoned.

I have a hard enough time processing her desires and ideals when she’s awake and talking to me, let alone now that she’s asleep but she feels faint.

She feels like a drying well, like a basket of fruit with only a single apple left in it, a lone leaf on a branch.

But I don’t know if this is all truly coming from her because somehow there’s a feedback loop and I feel the exact same way, like an incorrectly knit scarf.

The general shape and purpose are there but it’s all off and imperfect.

I just don’t know how, is it the colouring or were the wrong materials used?

I can accept me being wrong but how is it that she’s also like this?

Is what I’m feeling an illusion? Have I been caught in some trap?

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Is she dying or am I?

At this moment, it feels like only she exists, not me, not anything else, just her.

Her and her quiet breathing, faltering heartbeat, bloodless face, clenched fists.

It’s like I’m on the brink of being able to see, as though all this time I’ve been blind.

I feel incomplete, weak, wrong.

But so does she.

I have to fix this, she’s perfect and invulnerable, she isn’t a mountain that slowly gets eroded by the natural elements, she is the ocean, unchanging and filled with life.

I only know one way to try and change this but it only half succeeded last time and doing it will kill me.

Pausing briefly, I feel the weight of what I’m about to do sink in.

We’re on an active battlefield and I’ve just pulled her out of a corpse pile, she’s gotten miraculously lucky without me so far but if I disappear will she be able to survive?

Yet when I look around I don’t see anything, there’s no fighting soldiers, screaming monsters, just nothing.

I can’t even see this nothingness, it’s the same sort of stuff that was in the nightmare realm during my first desummoning, or was it the second?

There’s just me and her, no not even me, I can’t even see myself, there’s just her.

And even if there wasn’t, what I can realistically do?

This war is so far beyond me at this point, there’s nothing I can do, the time of individuality has come and gone and now what matters is collectivism because no matter how strong I am, I can't beat an army, not these ones.

I can’t protect her properly, I can’t keep her safe, it doesn’t matter how hard I try she will almost certainly die in this conflict because even despite paying it little to no attention it’s clear the Empire is losing greatly.

And even if we miraculously survive and win she’ll probably die shortly after in the state she’s in.

But right here and right now I can do something, I can save her life! Though at the cost of my own.

Which is a more than worthwhile trade I believe.

Wrapping my appendages around her more tightly so that way she gets the maximum amount of mana I start to carefully gather the excess mana I have and channel it through my limbs and into her.

Unlike the last time I did this, there’s no resistance this time, everything goes unnaturally well.

I still lose control over my mana but by then it’s already been absorbed by her.

And slowly bit by bit, the feelings I get are fading, I’m filling up the empty well, replacing the fruit in the basket, watering the tree.

But even when she feels healthy again, I don’t stop, I can’t stop.

I’m like a water pouch that’s been ripped, there’s no stopping what’s happening and I don’t think she’s just taking my mana.

I can feel something else being absorbed as well and I think that something else is me.

It’s not my form that’s being assimilated however, my false flesh remains unharmed.

No, what’s being absorbed is the purest form of my sense of self, it’s the ball that I am each time I visit that nightmare realm, it’s my soul.

She’s taking my soul, or would it be that she is reclaiming her own?

It doesn’t hurt though, if anything it feels right, through the feedback loop I can feel myself also getting better.

But I wonder what if there isn’t any feedback loop?

What if these feelings I’m getting are from the convergence of our souls rather than from each of us being the same individually?

Everything’s beginning to become fuzzy, I can still see fine but it’s just fuzzy.

The closest thing that’s happened to me which is similar would be regenerating, that weird sensation when I regain feeling and control over a newly spouted limb.

But that’s clearly not happening right now.

I know I’m losing tendrils and tentacles, I know that I am starting to dissolve and dissipate but despite that, I can still only see her.

It’s like what’s transpiring is happening to a different me.

My physical form is dying but I’m not entirely sure that I’m in the physical realm right now, at least not fully.

I've already run out of mana and I’m running low on things to turn into mana but I still can’t stop feeding her, I don’t think my mana’s even what matters currently.

I feel small, my soul is shrinking, becoming one with hers and patching the gaps that were created.

What’s going to happen to me when this is all over?

Will this permanently kill me?

Am I going to die a true death?

More importantly though, what’s going to happen to her?

Even as my consciousness begins to fade I hope that she will be fine, that she will be safe.

Because that’s all that matters, that’s all that ever mattered.