Pacing back and forth in the tent, Megan was thinking of what to say to Jack. A cold numbness was filling her body, only for it to turn into white-hot rage when Jack stepped inside of the tent. She walked over and punched him in his face, only for her hand to sting from the pain. Annoyed, she continued hitting over and over again in his chest, till she got out of breath and leaned against him. Tears began to fall down her face, and she wept for nearly an hour she just wept leaning on Jack. 

When she got a handle on her feelings, she stepped back and asked "Is she really gone?"

Jack looked up at the roof of the tent for several long seconds then back down at her eyes. "My connection with her has been severed."

Her last hope crumbled and had to sit down on her cot to avoid falling to the floor. "Could there anyway you would be able to bring her back."

Shaking his head slowly, "That is not something I believe I am capable of at the moment. It is possible a god might be able to do it, but it's beyond me."

"Yet another thing you're useless at." Megan scowled and looked at her hands. "You know, she told me she felt like you were here brother."

"The Dream Goddess Kelsey said it was likely that I have been influencing the world as I have been dreaming before I awoke as a System. During one of my recent dreams, I saw a woman that looked remarkably like Alexia. Perhaps that woman was my sister and I influenced the world to lead to Alexia's birth."

"Have you been influencing us? Pushing us together?" Megan stared at Jack, and continued "I have never fallen so fast for someone before. When she was around, I didn't notice it but looking at it now..." Megan stopped. "With her gone, it feels like my chest has been carved open and my heart ripped out."

"I did not push you two together. At least not intentionally. I wish I could remember more, each time I dream more and more comes back to me. What I can tell you, is that Alexia was important to me, and a piece of me has died with her. I failed her and my other users with her death. This is my greatest failure as a System." Jack said and got on the floor before Megan bowing,"I ask for your forgiveness."

Staring down at him, a sneer crossed her face and that white hot anger emerged again. Megan rose her foot and placed her foot onto his head and forced it into the ground. "No. I won't forgive you. This is not something I will ever be able to forgive you for. In fact before you came in here I was thinking about leaving your contract."

"That is your decision to make." Jack said and continued,"I can only ask that you please give me a second chance."

Grinding her heel into his skull, she growled,"Did I tell you could speak?" She poured her strength into her commanding voice skill and said "Keep quiet. Your voice makes me want to puke."

"Do you know how much I hate you? What a pathetic coward, you fainted when we needed you the most. Alexia fought hard to save us, and all you did was sleep." Megan stomped hard on his head. "I hate that Erica whore, who attacked us, I only hope she is in a place of eternal suffering. That Luxurian, who was behind it all I want to torture her till she no longer exists."

Megan grew more aggrieved with each statement until she just burst out and said "But most of all, I hate myself. When she required my help, what use was I?" Gripping her hands in fists, she felt despair replace her anger, and she despondently said "I was little more than an ant standing before Erica. When I activated my succubus form, she still was just playing with me."

"Alexia was supposed to rely on me, not the other way around. She believed in me, not only did I fail her, I was the one who decided we should go with you." Hot tears flowed down, and she found her sight getting blurry again. "As much as you failed her, I was worse. How am I supposed to live my life knowing the only reason I am alive, is because the one I love sacrificed her own life to save mine?"

Collapsing on the cot, she curled into a ball and weeped, her chest struggled to deliver air into her lungs. Jack reached out and rubbed her back for a long while. Finally, she said "I want to destroy this Luxurian. Will you help me do that?"

"I will." Jack said.

"That is what I will do, until then I will stay your User. Following that, we will see. Now get out of here. I'm tired of looking at your face."

Standing Jack went to the door and he stopped and said "I won't fail my Users again. Whatever you choose to do with your life, I will be there for you." With that he stepped through the flaps of the tent.

A few minutes later, Riley came in with two bowls of steaming hot food. The large orc woman took a seat on the cot across from Megan and handed her one of the bowls. Taking it, she used the provided utensil to take a few bites but found the meal possessed no taste, and she struggled to get it down her throat.

Riley ate a little bit and then said "When I was in the Scarlet mercenaries, a man and a woman in the group got married. They were madly in love. One day the wife goes on a routine scouting mission and gets ambushed by a group of kobolds who killed her."

Staring at the food that was growing cold in her bowl, Megan asked "What did the husband do?"

"When he found out, he quit the mercenaries, and for several months he hunted down every kobold in the region. It tore his body up, and he had to retire from doing any more work."

"Not sure what you are attempting to say. Are you telling me to take revenge? I'm already planning to kill this Luxurian."

"That is your choice, but that is not the end of the story. A few years later, I was passing through a town and found he had settled down as a baker. He had a new wife and a baby on the way. The point of the story is that while your grief is strong now, towering over your other emotions, you just know that even the clouds cannot obscure the sun forever."

"Easy for you to say. Would you be saying that if Telvin was the one who passed away?" Megan glared at Riley.

The Orc woman looked down in thought and said "That is hard to say. I would be devastated of course, but I cannot claim to have as close a relationship with him as you had with Alexia."

Placing the bowl of food down next to her, Megan said "The grief is oppressive, but it's the guilt that is crushing me. Why did I manage to survive, and she did not. I was the one who failed, so I should have been the one to pay the price not her."

Riley picked up the bowl and handed it back to her. "To keep living you must eat. There is only one party guilty here, and that is Luxurian and her servants, not you. Take your time to grieve, but do not forget to keep living. That is what Alexia will want for you to do."

Megan took the bowl and managed to eat it, though she felt ill afterwards. She laid back on the cot, and Riley took Megan's hand and held it for a while, and Megan found herself staring up at the roof of the tent, wondering how she would keep going and slowly fell asleep. 

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

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Glancing at her guest, Kara could see Skydia's tail wagging as she looked at the oven. Kara asked "Do you think it's done?"

"Yeah, I can smell it."

Pulling open the oven door, she pulled out the sandwiches and saw they were cooked perfectly. Shutting the oven off she placed the sandwiches on some plates and followed Skydia outside. Placing one of the plates next to Skydia at the outside table, she pulled a pair of drinks from the cooling storage she had made near the table. Glancing in she noted that they were out of the bottles, when Jack came back she would have to ask him to bring more.

Pouring the drink into a bowl for Skydia, she sat down and said "So how is it going getting packs to join?"

"Hard. I've made some success with some Dire Wolves. But so far it seems like most of the wolves have forgotten what it means to follow the old ways."

"Have you tried werewolves?"

"No, I would think they would worship a moon god."

"Do you know Jack has a contract with a moon god? You might be able to get him to share some werewolves with you. The moon god Armin seems like a nice kid."

"I will ask him then." Skydia wagged her tail as she munched down the sandwich, then asked "So what happened over there?" 

Following her gaze, Kara saw that she was pointing at a couple of trees that had been toppled. "Well a bit ago, before you arrived this whole space started to shake. I haven't had time to fix up everything."

"Is this space collapsing?"

"Nah, it felt like Jack was just exerting some power. It should be alright."

As they were speaking the space nearby ripped open, and Eramis came in looking seriously pissed. Kara frowned and wondered what Jack had done to piss her off this time. She thought things had gotten better between the two. "Hey Eramis, how is it going?"

Eramis walked over and seemingly disregarded her question and asked "Is he here?"

"Last I checked..." Kara was about to say when Jack's orb floated out of the cottage. "Oh he has just returned."

"What the fuck do you think you were doing? You think the world is just yours to play with?" Eramis said, pinching Jack's orb.

"I did what I had to do. If you were paying attention to the world, maybe I wouldn't have to keep fixing your oversights." Jack said, annoyed.

Confused, Kara asked "What exactly did you do Jack?"

Eramis went over to the globe of the world that was in front of the cottage for Kara and Sara to use to look at the world. "Look at this!" Manipulating the globe, Eramis zoomed into an area in a mountain range. Well what had been a mountain range. In the middle of them was a field of molten rock, and the map seemed to glitch over several parts.

Some parts of the field looked so hot, that it looked like the lava itself was boiling. Flames reached up into the sky in several places and looked inhospitable to all life. Except she saw fire elementals dancing on top of the lava. Every so often something massive emerged from beneath the glowing liquid and swallowed the fire elemental whole.

Stunned, Kara looked at Jack and said "What the shit Jack, how the hell did you accomplish this?"

"I was lent some power from Maya, my lover. How did you know that it was me who did that?" Jack asked Eramis.

"Having been around your dumbass, I recognized the scent of your power when I went to see what the hell happened. There was another smell I didn't recognize, so that must be this Maya's power you said. Who is Maya?"

"You would know her as the Great One."

"What!?" Kara said. Memories of the past ran over her. It was hazy, but she recalled when a crystal goddess descended to the field as she was fighting Sara and a blast of power sealed her away. "Has she returned?"

"No. Not that I am aware of, Maya was the one who created this space for me. She left me here while I was gradually developing into a System. When she left, she placed a bit of her power here to help protect the world and me. Unfortunately, I had to use the rest of it to make sure a dangerous being called Luxurian did not recover her power."

Taking a deep breath Eramis looked like she was collecting her thoughts. "How long in the past did she do this?"

"Not sure, but it was definitely before the Kingdom Sevaris came to power."

Skydia interrupted and asked "Who is Luxurian?"

"An archmage from the Kingdom of Sevaris who became a magical entity and sought world domination."

For the next several minutes Jack told them what had happened down on the surface. Eramis looked in thought and then said "I had my suspicions. Too many odd things have been happening in the world. In addition it sounds like these Archmages may have had something to do with the war of the gods. If it took the Great Ones power to seal her away, I wouldn't think I could have defeated her had she gotten her full power. So I guess I do owe you thanks."

"I did it mainly to help protect my Users." Jack said then frowned. "Alexia, my first User sacrificed her life to save the others. Is there any way I could bring her back?" He looked at Kara.

Sinking into thought, Kara said gravely, "That depends on a multitude of factors. It's not impossible..."

"But?"

"It depends chiefly on the path her soul took when she died. There are four path's a soul can take after they die. First they could become a ghost, second some gods have formed places for their followers to go to, a heaven or hell. Third is reincarnation, and finally the most common is for them to go into the great void. What happens to them I don't know."

"So I could bring her back if I find her soul?"

Eramis shook her head. "Not that easy. I have seen it done, but usually the god has to prepare for ages before the person dies. The most straightforward method I have seen is shortcut reincarnation. It's where they find a suitable vessel that recently died and trade souls and fix the body. The negative side is the body has the potential of rejecting the soul and the soul being damaged."

"There is another option of remaking them into an undead servant which is what I routinely did to my followers." Kara said. My other half could possibly build her a new body. 

"The hard part is handling the soul. They are both more fragile then you think and sturdier at the same time. They are hard to handle, often slipping away into the void if your not careful."

"Is there a way I can find her soul?"

Eramis scratched her head and said "I will call in a favor and get another god to look for her soul. But there is no guarantee of finding it. I'm not sure any soul could have withstood that assault you just did."

Then Eramis sighed and said "I'm going to have to think of an explanation of what happened. Don't tell any other god what happened."

"Kelsey already knows. Libra might suspect, as his servant was there, but went insane."

"Don't worry, I'll talk with her and get her on the same page. If the other gods find out that you did this, I don't know if I can keep you safe."

"What do you mean?"

"You're already an unknown variable, and if you hold that kind of power it makes you dangerous. One of the factions might take you out just to be safe. So keep quiet, and I'll think of an explanation. I can use a bit of the truth, say that this Luxurian messed up getting her power back and self detonated it."

"Thank you Eramis."

"It's alright, I need to get going, I'm sure the other gods are freaking out, I can't let them find me here." Eramis said and ripped a hole in space and stepped through.

Kara reached down and picked up Jack and hugged him close. "You need to be more careful. Losing you would suck."

"I know."

"So this is Jack?" Skydia asked.

"I am, and you must be Skydia."

"Indeed, I thank you for having your Users help call me back to the world."

"I need no thanks, for it is them who decided to do it."

"All the same I would like to sign a contract with you."

"Much appreciated. It would help me protect my users, so nothing like what happened occurs again." Jack said.

Sydia went still for a moment then let out a howl. "How interesting. This will support me to gather more followers for my packs."

Jack nodded and then said "I would like to chat some more with you, but I have some things I need to plan for tomorrow. If you would excuse me ladies." Jacks orb floated away.

Kara yelled after him "Don't forget to get more drinks, we are almost out."

Skydia followed him as he went and then said "I don't know why, but I got the strangest urge to jump on him and bite him?"