Chapter 193: A Once-A-Year Relative
What a pain, Gwydion thought, another magic barrier easily deflecting Ducha’s great sword. His goddess had chosen him well, his personal shields were well matched against Ducha, who did not possess the swarm tactics that undeath priests were known for, and his targeted cleansing ability in his Divine Knowledge essence allowed him to specifically remove an affliction from himself, ignoring all cleanse restrictions. It was pricy for such a small cleanse, but few of Ducha’s attacks slipped through his defensive barriers and disabling runes.
The outworlder lay dead, body already helped further along the decomposition process than naturally possible, eroded by the endless hunger of the storm. A pang of pity echoed in his heart like a bell, but he shook the reverberations away. If all was as his goddess said, she would gain all that she had wanted.
Death was a small price to pay.
The familiar’s final words rang through his mind—it was true, that his goddess could be callous, from a human perspective. She was not human, but divine, and her mind was not the same as theirs. He could understand the familiar’s warning and tucked it away to be addressed later. It was advice well given.
It was time he stopped his procrastination and killed the undeath priest now that his goddess’ objective had been accomplished. They were a bit tricky to kill, undeath being antithetical to permanent death, but, well:
It was nothing a priest of Knowledge didn’t know how to do.
Where had once been a priest of undeath lay a pile of charred ash. Without the barrier, the soot was alternately ripped up by the wind and wet with rain, ash mixing with mud and grass. All things returned to earth: at least this way, the undead could serve a purpose.
How arrogant, that the Undeath priest could believe he could win a fight chosen by his goddess. She knows all. To her, his abilities were written on paper, as clear as any book. All Knowledge had to do was select his best nemesis. Gwydion was not a pious man, not as much as some of his fellows, but a practical one: In Knowledge lay victory.
He glanced at his final objective: the outworlder’s body. A quick barrier encased it and preserved it against further rot and magical dematerialization. A holographic wall materialized—a repository of blue, transparent boxes, rows upon rows of items he had stored away: Divine Knowledge—The Repository. He located an empty compartment and slid the body of the outworlder in for safekeeping.
All objectives complete, he powered up his skimmer, and drove back towards Kallid.
He had a priest to requisition.
*****
Nara was dead, back within her Astral Domain—her soul—untethered to physical reality by a body. For a few moments—or longer, time without a tether was indistinct, fuzzy and indeterminate—Nara panicked that even if she could return to Erras or Earth, she would return centuries past, both her old past and her new past entirely wiped away, living only in memory and Knowledge’s repositories.
A new adventure! A new life! The prospect has never sat so bitterly upon her tongue. A medicine she was unwilling to swallow.
But as the panic faded, she felt a familiar sense of grounding. A tug upon her soul, a link: old and familiar and changed all at once. A shoe that once fit, a few sizes too small. An old high school shirt, remembrances of juvenile fashion decisions that made her cringe.
No…she was not entirely untethered. A past—a path—existed.
When she meditated, she always felt that strand that led to somewhere far beyond her astral home. It was faint, weak, the suggestion of a connection, dreamlike in presence, faint as spider silk in the dark of night. She had theories for what it was—Raina had said she felt a connection to the astral from her, and Nara had wondered if that strand was the reverse—her connection to reality from the astral.
It was odd, perhaps, but Nara had thought she had her answer. There were other matters to pay mind to: fighting techniques, the mastery of her abilities, astral magic theory, her inventions, the plots of The Advent and Undeath, her philanthropy, and her relationship with her team.
Now, there was nothing else to pay mind to but that strand, and Nara found it was far easier to feel the silk between her fingers if there was nothing else to distract her from it. She felt the comforting presence of her familiars, gently pushing her towards her destination.
*****
Waking from death was an unpleasant sensation, but against the alternative, purgatory in her own soul, Nara could bear the unpleasantness.
Leaden eyelids weighed upon her face and forcing them open allowed stabbing light to pierce her eyes. They were there to protect her from the asshole light, she concluded, and squeezed them back shut. Somewhere, distant yet near, devices were beeping in alarm.
There was the absence of pain in her final moments, but her entire body felt weak and trembling, cold despite the cloth that covered her. Her extremities twitched, more instinct than any conscious action, fighting against the somnolent state that claimed her body. She felt nauseous, and her head light, seemingly like it was a balloon flying away and an anchor pulled under.
“Nara,” a voice said…Chrome said.
“Nara!” he said again, more insistently. What was he so worried about?
“Nara! YOU NEED TO BREATHE!”
Her pulse stuttered—and it had been so long since she had a pulse—and that itself shocked her lungs into a lagged startup process, Chrome’s voice the doctor’s slap that started a babe’s breaths.
A nurse rushed in at some point, checking the vitals on the machines and looking her over, although Nara hadn’t the wherewithal to communicate with her, processing too many things at once with far worse sensors than she was used to.
Her throat felt so, so dry, and her lips cracked and dry like a desiccated desert. Focusing, Nara could see the Guide notifications in her minds’ eye (they had never needed to be physically visually seen). There were far too many for a post-death previously comatose patient to read, and the realities of having a physical body that needed upkeep and maintenance was screaming demands into her mental faculties.
Dehydrated. Malnourished. Muscular degeneration. Yes, yes, yes, yes. She understood. She could fucking feel it, thanks.
Surprisingly, she still had her aura sense, although it was diminished, reduced to iron rank. This scenario echoed unnervingly of her hallucinations (woke up in a hospital, seeing her family, yet having magic…a portal to walk through). She determinedly pushed the sensation back. This wasn’t a hallucination. Just…waking from a very, very long soul-trip. Around the Cosmos in 180 Days.
“Hello? Can you hear me?” A kind voice asked—the nurse at her bedside.
Nara coughed, throat working against the dryness. She managed to croak out an affirmative noise. It was enough for the nurse. She adjusted the bed she laid on into a sitting configuration and helped Nara sip the cup of water. Even such a simple task left her arms strained and exhausted, and Nara already missed the robust strength and stamina she possessed just moments ago. She fought back the initial stab of frustration and focused on calming breaths.
The next few hours were a long sequence of examinations Nara had little active participation in, although she could hardly contribute: heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate and oxygen levels; pupil, motor, and reflex responses. The most she contributed during the verbal questionnaire, simple questions such as:
“What is your name?”
Well, that was a bit complicated. Maybe not so simple after all. She hated to trip up here and have to do more intensive therapy than they already thought she needed. She peeked at her guide, wondering if it’d save her.
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-You are occupying the vessel [Nora Ambrose: Human].
-You may occupy vessels that you are attuned to. Only one vessel may serve as your [Prime Vessel], from which you may progress your essence abilities. If all vessels are destroyed, you may construct a [Prime Avatar]. Time to completion: 271 years.
-The vessel [Nora Ambrose: Human] is incompatible with the entity [Nara Edea: Outworlder]. Maximum attributes are reduced until the incompatibility is resolved.
-The vessel [Nora Ambrose] is normal rank. You have fulfilled the requirements to rank up to iron.
<ul>
<li>Initiate rank up? [Yes / No]</li>
</ul>
-You have not fulfilled the requirements to rank up to bronze rank. Requirements:
<ul>
<li>Progress to bronze rank [Fulfilled].</li>
<li>Rank up to iron rank [Unfulfilled].</li>
</ul>
-As your [Prime Vessel], ranking up will convert the vessel of [Nora Ambrose: Human] into [Nara Edea: Outworlder].
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“I’m…Nora,” she croaked. She’d have said something cheekier, but just didn’t have the energy for it. She had taken rather a long time to answer, but that hadn’t bothered the nurse. Or maybe it had. She eyed the nurse suspiciously as she jotted something on her checklist. Ugh, checklists and their mind games.
“Do you know where you are right now?”
Shit. The difficult questions just kept coming! Relentless!
If Nara had to guess (and she did), this was inexplicably Earth. She had theorized that her original body was comatose, and this situation had confirmed as much, judging by achy limbs and weak muscles. An infant could grip tighter than she could right now.
“The planet Earth,” she said, confident of her answer. Easy-peasy. She didn’t even need to look at her Guide.
The nurse gave her a look. “And what other planet would there be?”
Aiyah, more difficult questions! The nurse probably didn’t want the truth.
“Is…that a question I need to… answer?” she joked, getting a bit winded towards the last part of her sentence. Her aura was already working on repairing her, and Nara could still use the iron rank of all of her abilities. Technically even bronze 0, as it was possible to rank a single ability up to bronze 0 before absorbing all essences, although depending on the ability, bronze rank was burdensome to use in her current malnourished, atrophied state. Let alone using a special attack, trying to jump would probably shatter her knees.
She’d probably recover far too fast, no matter what she did. Coma recovery took months just for inpatient rehabilitation. Nara didn’t think she could bear to wait even that long.
“No,” the nurse said, her expression still odd. “This is Saint Helene Long-Term Care Hospital in Helsing?r.” She glanced at her information sheet. “You were moved here when you had fallen into a coma during Christmas. Do you remember that?”
“Yeah. Went to sleep…then.” She weakly waved her hand to gesture to herself, which barely lifted off the bed.
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The nurse’s eyes crinkled with her reassuring smile. “That’s very good. You seem to have no obviously severe neurological symptoms, but we’ll have to run some more tests. You may find difficulty in working complex tasks, it’s nothing to worry about.”
“Oh…kay.” Nara internally cursed. She’d have to wait to rank up until after the tests. She didn’t want no ‘miraculous’ recoveries making the media.
“Don’t worry. You’ll be alright. Your family is on their way,” the nurse smiled, delivering more complicated good news.
*****
Of all the ways a Monday could start, Oskar did not think it would begin with his stepsibling waking up from a year and a half long coma. He had barely shown up for a few hours at work, and then he was leaving, his wife, Eva, companionably joined him on the way. He had a feeling the rest of his week would diverge from the norm. Not that he much minded, and he appreciated the reprieve from normalcy; The company was running well and didn’t need his micromanaging.
“Just. How was I the closest one?” he groused.
“Well, let me think,” she said with false sincerity. “Your father is in America with her mother, her sister lives in Boston, and her father also lives in America. What did you expect? You can hardly leave her there until someone flies over!”
“I know that.”
“Don’t be such a stranger,” Eva chided.
He sighed, his grip tightening and loosening on the steering wheel with his uncertainty. “It’s just, I don’t know her that well. I’ve maybe met her…6 times? Once each year at Christmas. She probably doesn’t even remember me.”
“Don’t say that. Of course she remembers you!”
There was an even strong possibility that she did not, especially after her coma.
“And I wouldn’t blame her! Once a year, Eva. We may as well be strangers. She probably doesn’t want to see a stranger at her bedside.”
“Look at it this way: this is an opportunity to get to know your stepsibling! She’s going to be going through a difficult time with rehabilitation, and the rest of her family can’t stay here for months while she recovers.”
“I wouldn’t have just…left her alone,” Oskar said, a little ashamed. He wasn’t the most personable of people, well enough at what management of the company required of him, but between him and his wife, Eva was the sweet and sociable one.
She smiled at him. “I know you wouldn’t have. Now chin up, I’m sure she’ll be happy just to have a familiar face.”
“Nora,” Oskar greeted his stepsibling, once he had finally made it to the long-term care facility. “Do you remember me? …How are you feeling?”
She looked weak and emaciated, loose skinned from muscles that had faded. She was propped up, her bed leaning at an angle, with the hospital sheet pulled up to her waist.
She cleared her throat to wake up her vocal chords, still weak from her long coma. “As well as a previously comatose patient could feel,” she croaked. “Do you have any idea if they can…reduce the length of my impatient stay?”
“Is the hospital uncomfortable?” Oskar looked around. She had a small private room, nothing luxurious, but not lacking either. Saint Helene Long-Term Care Hospital was also obviously known for their long-term care, for creating a companionable and friendly environment as their patients recovered. The room even had a nice view of the ?resund Strait, stretching wide and sparkling in the late morning sun. Around the hospital was a garden for strolling; the cherry blossoms and lilacs had begun flowering, and the perimeter oaks and lindens provided ample shade and privacy. A better view than most homes.
Eva subtly nudged him with her elbow. “Maybe she doesn’t like hospitals,” she whispered. “Don’t be so dismissive.”
He awkwardly added at Eva’s prodding. “I’ll see what we can do. Recovery takes time. This is only the first day.”
“…yeah.”
He cleared his throat awkwardly. “I don’t think you’ve met. This is Eva, my wife.”
“Hi Nara, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you!” Eva greeted, companionable and kind. She gave a cute wave so that Nora wouldn’t have to try to reach over and shake her hand.
“You…too. Where has he been…hiding you?” She said, her tone as teasing as she could manage with their disuse.
Eva giggled. “Oh, you know, sequestered away in that big house you visit once of year.”
Nora tried to arch an eyebrow. “Only to…disappear…during Christmas? Avoiding the weirder… side of the family, are you?”
She laughed, aghast, “Avoid you? Never!” She whispered conspiratorially, “Like it or not, my family has to deal with me once a year. I put them through the paces.”
“As you…should. No one should take you…for granted.”
“Wow!” Eva fanned herself, “Oskar, she’s got moves! I’m going to swoon. Catch me!”
Oskar rolled his eyes, but Eva threats were never just threats. He tilted back, and he caught her with a dashing sweep. Eva tilted her head back, staring deep into his eyes, and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
Oskar couldn’t see, too busy staring into his wife’s eyes, but he could almost sense the cheery eyeroll from Nora.
*****
Over the next few days, Oskar and Eva alternated visiting Nora. Eva worked as a public relations manager, and her work could be done mostly from her laptop and phone. Oskar less so, but the day-to-day decision making of Str?m Packaging Solutions were not so desperate that Oskar could not take a step back to establish a new routine with Nora.
“Why are you so desperate to leave the hospital?” Oskar asked.
Nora looked up. She had seemed distracted, before he knocked on her room and answered, almost as if he had interrupted a conversation, yet he heard no speaking or words. Perhaps a coma did strange things to the mind, but there was nothing…directly off about Nora. Just a pervasive sense that she wanted to be somewhere else. Impatient for your own recovery, maybe.
Her expression was a bit mysterious. In just a few days, her voice had recovered surprisingly well, no longer needed a breath between just a few syllables. “I’ll tell you once I leave.”
Oskar sighed. He knew he wasn’t that close to Nora, but he was trying to work with her. “I’ve talked with your doctors. Normally, the bare minimum is 4 weeks, and that’d involve detailing a plan for home care. Nora, Eva and I can’t both be there to take care of your recovery, although your mother and my father will be showing up soon.” He felt a little cruel, but also felt she was being equally unreasonable. Here was a perfectly good hospital that specialized in this sort of care. Certainly, he and Eva should not change their lives for her for the extreme duration until full recovery.
The slight smile on her face was somewhat bitter and sly, and not something Oskar understood given the circumstances. “I get it. You’ve both been very supportive to someone you barely known. A once-a-year relative. But I can promise, you won’t need to take care of me once I can leave.” Something within her eyes was unwavering, and Oskar felt as if she were the CEO and he was being evaluated, although not unkindly. How a thin, formerly comatose woman could exude such strength confounded Oskar, and he found himself unable to look away from the command of her gaze.
“I don’t see how that’s possible,” he said skeptically. It all seemed like wishful thinking.
She crossed her arms. “The hospital can hardly keep me here against my will.” She paused, her fingers drumming against her bicep as she considered Oskar. “This—well, I can see why it seems like I’m being unreasonable. I know you don’t know me that well, but I’ve never wanted to be anyone’s burden. Well, come here.”
He stared at her, confused at this sudden shift in conversation.
She clicked her tongue. “Come over, I won’t bite.”
Oskar took the few steps to her bed from his chair, trying not to think of the sort of old-persons-smell she had from her year and a half long degradation.
“Palms out.”
“Just—what—”
“Don’t be contrary just do it.” She really had a lot of attitude for someone he barely knew, but he rolled his eyes and complied.
Then, out of nowhere, she placed something impossible in his hands. If he hadn’t been so surprised by the mystery object, he would have wondered where it came from in the first place.
She had placed a cube within his hands, around 15 centimeters to a side. The shape of a cube wasn’t the impossibility, rather, it was what laid within it. Or on it. Oskar could not even begin to describe it.
The first face towards him displayed a vista, rolling hills of green, like the windows XP background, rather ordinary. His palm shifted, and he caught sight of another expanse, wheat stalks but of burgundy, rippling like a wave in some unseen breeze. It was—it was moving, the scene. When his eyes darted back to the top of the cube, it had changed once again, no longer the familiar hills of green, but a slightly curving ocean of blue, shimmering with shards of white in the sun. His fingers brushed over the cubes, but he felt no sensation of glass, nor felt the unnatural light of LEDs on his eyes. In fact, his thumb brushing the expanse of water almost felt wet, and he could scent salt and ocean within the air. He pulled his thumb away, but there was nothing there.
“What,” was all he could croak out, his brain stuttering to a halt.
“At the risk of sounding insane and needing institutionalization,” Nora said casually, far too casually for her next statement. “It’s magic.” She peered up at him, those brown eyes looking far more experienced than a woman of 25. “You wouldn’t happen to know of any secret magic societies on Earth?”
“No...” They wouldn’t be very secret if he could find out about them!
“Also, I don’t know if any of you have noticed, but I’ve been speaking Danish this whole time. I don’t actually know Danish.”
He stared at her. He hadn’t noticed. Umulig, none of them had noticed!
“Gods, Oskar, I’m so fucking bored in here. If I can leave, I can heal myself. I mean, I could heal myself in the bathroom, and leave on my own two feet, but I don’t need that sort of attention. You get me, right?”
“That would be…uncomfortable,” he said faintly. His mind still rebelled against the revelation of magic—she’s insane, something whispered, there’s no such thing as magic. But another part was vibrating with excitement. He had met his wife Eva playing D&D. He had roleplayed. He had ‘played pretend’.
What if, something else whispered, a shiver running down his back, feather light. What if it were real? Oskar was cynical man—to see was the believe. And here, this…cube. That was seeing. Still, 30 years of normalcy and common fucking sense fought a desperate battle in his mind.
“And then well—I don’t know, I’d be on the run? Or maybe the secret magic organization would track me down. I would rather find out about them before they find out about me. There’s, well. There’s something going on. It’s a long story. Not all comas are what they seem to be.”
He held up a hand to save the vestiges of his mental sanity. “Could you hold off on the conspiracies and allow me a bit of time to readjust my entire worldview?”
“Sorry about that. Take your time,” she said pleasantly.
She waited for a beat.
“Is it stilled called a conspiracy if it’s true? I mean, I’m proof.”
Oskar groaned.
*****
Nara managed to negotiate down the hospital to three weeks, and during the meantime she communicated with Sage playing messenger to her team back on Erras. She could almost hear Encio’s smirk and “Enjoy your vacation,” as if recovering from a coma the long way and trying to avoid starting an international shitshow over the existence of magic was in any way relaxing.
John was the next most excited about this new development, and Nara promised to send him to Earth as soon as humanly—well—possible. As soon as outworldly possible. He understood the regrettable situation of recovering from a year plus coma. Even in Erras, there were situations where healers had to induce comas. Generally, induced comas in Erras were intended to buy time until a cure or resolution could be found to a condition. Nara’s nightmare beetles were one such example, where she had been put into an extended, unreactive sleep until the Healer priest could figure out to remove all of them and their bugs plus the shackles without overwhelming her system and killing her. Thankfully, the shackles had provided part of the answer—the nightmare beetles were vulnerable to heat and light, needing the lowered body temperature induced by their hallucinogenic poisons to propagate. Without a brain to fry, raising Nara’s body temperature had been a viable, although not entirely reproducible, option to removing the infestation. After a few heat treatments, Nara had been as good as new.
She finally started the arduous task of reading a bajillion Guide notifications. Firstly:
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-You have entered a mana barren environment. Mana, health, and stamina regeneration has been reduced by 80%. Consume a spirit coin of your rank or 10 of the rank below once every 8 hours to regain normal regeneration.
-Due to your connection to the astral, mana, stamina, and health regeneration is unaffected.
-Ritual magic cannot be sustained by ambient magic. Mana lamps or other external mana gathering means can be used to sustain ritual magic.
-Spells have reduced effect or require increased cast times.
-Due to your connection to the astral, your spells are unaffected.
-Mana density is below the threshold required for mana manifestations.
-------
That was perhaps the most important information, aside from her need to rank up, which itched in her skin like phantom bugs crawling up and down her body. Her soul of an outworlder did not match the vessel of a human, and the dissonance made itself known in every moment. The expansion of her lungs, the beating of her heart, and the sweat upon her skin felt like manual labor, an alien ‘playing human’. She had never felt more like she was putting on an act just from automatic, formerly natural, body processes. (She felt like a Skinwalker).
Other than obediently letting the nurses and physios put her through the paces—her main physio, Askel, was enduringly supportive despite Nara’s general nonchalance about the whole thing, but she put on another act of trying hard so that it’d be easier to get released without suspicion or more hassle.
It helped that Nara could use abilities to Bronze 0 without issue. Technically. The sort of aerial dancing she’d done effortlessly would probably result in breaking an ankle or popping a kneecap with her normal body. If she had to fight, she just had to remember to fight like she was made of porcelain...maybe stick to her recoilless guns. Regardless, it was Refresh’s conversion that sped up her healing, and Nara had to hold back so as not end up on a surgical table in some government experimental lab. Refresh healed her, and Boon Conversion cleansed her.
A 3 weeklong recovery with little else to do did give her time for some more thinking, and extensive debates with Chrome and Sage (and Thanatos contributing whatever he could.) The events on the forefront of her mind, of course, were the machinations of Knowledge.
After the events that ended her life, she could understand the rage that Ducha felt towards the goddess. Even if Nara would ‘live’ through the death and obtain the dimensional coordinates of Earth in the process, she had sent Nara to her death with her priest, saying nothing of what was expected to happen.
Her nails dug into her palms: too trusting indeed. What she should have done was bring her own ally. Presumably, only a single silver ranker was allowed to the meeting. Nara, unfortunately, did not know many silver rankers (Egil, one of Theodore’s dads, was silver; some of Sen’s and Encio’s relatives; and Eufemia’s father was a core silver, but he could hardly be expected to fight. Mona and a few other instructors in Sanshi.) She would have trusted an Adventure Society assigned silver over the Knowledge priest, although that certainly was hindsight. She had up until then, no reason to distrust any priest or any god. Certainly not to the extent that they’d intentionally get her killed.
What mattered to her was not that she had died, but that she had not been told and given the opportunity to decide for herself. If she had a death to give, it should have been hers to decide when to use it.
She could imagine Knowledge’s arguments, because she could easily imagine her own as Knowledge’s advocate. We all got what we wanted. If I had told you, would you have gone through with it? This was the most effective path. You had agreed to the deal. If you definitively knew you could die, you would have died too early—when you had been abducted for the first time. You would not have known the most optimal way or time to die. This helps everybody.
You benefitted from this.
She tucked her head between her knees and sighed, now a more natural action than one reproduced by magic.
And she’d understand, dammit.
But she would not be Knowledge’s unquestioning pawn a second time.