PftA Book 5 - Chapter 5 - Soul-Healing and Regrets

The whimpering alerted me to Bell’s return to consciousness before Lisa got the chance.

“Hey, Bell,” I said softly when I reached the edge of the formation. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I should be dead,” she said through labored breaths. She was still lying curled in the fetal position on the small mat I’d placed under her. “Fuck. Can you just knock me back out for a while?”

“I’d rather not,” I said apologetically. “I can give you something more comfortable to lay on if you want,” I offered.

Only then did she seem to notice where she was.

“It’s not going to make any difference. I feel like I got hit by a semi. It’s like the worst migraine mixed with a toothache while having all of my bones broken.”

I could sympathize with her pain, though I’d spent this part of the healing process in a timeless void while traveling to the past. By the time my damaged bit of soul had made the return trip, the damage had dropped to a dull ache.

“Are you hungry? It’s been a while since I took you out of [Stasis].”

“Not even a little,” Bell replied, looking a little sick. “The thought of eating makes me nauseous.”

She groaned, holding her stomach with one hand and her head with the other as she shifted to a seated position.

“Seriously. I know you warned me, but I didn’t expect it to be like this,” my sister-in-law said from within the still-active soul-healing formation. “That initial pain… I can’t even describe how horrible it was.”

“Trust me, I know.”

The dark-haired woman glanced at me and winced. “I guess you would. How long has it been? Where is the Soul Healer, anyway?”

“Yeah, about that…”

I quickly explained what had happened after she activated the other formation. The notifications were sitting unread in her interface, so a lot of what I told her was easily verified once she bothered to check.

Based on her expression, she likely had a few extra notifications mixed in, but I didn’t dig.

“I agree with Anya. It’s probably better that nobody knows about the soul damage,” Bell commented when she was finished going through everything. “It’s already going to be bad enough that I haven’t checked in with my assigned city. I still can’t believe I caused a war.”

“You didn’t cause anything,” I said. “The Collective was just looking for an opportunity. From what Anya said, they’ve been preparing for years.”

“You might say I didn’t cause it, but we both know that if I hadn’t used the formation, the war wouldn’t have started,” Bell replied solemnly. “How many people have died because of my grief? How many people are now grieving the loss of their own husbands because I couldn’t let mine go?”

“You can’t think that way,” I said softly before deactivating the formation and stepping inside.

“Why not? It’s true, isn’t it?” she asked as I wrapped my arms around her.

Tears of pain and guilt ran down Bell’s face as she leaned into me, dampening my shirt. I wished I could offer more than platitudes to comfort her, but I couldn’t.

The truth was, we were both somewhat guilty. Our intentions didn’t really matter much in the grand scheme of things. An old saying about the road to hell flashed through my mind.

And no matter what I said, we both knew that we were at least somewhat responsible. I wasn’t going to lie and claim that we were free from responsibility in the matter.

“Ugh, you really should just put me out of my misery already,” Bell groaned. “Why’d I have to be the one left behind, huh? Do you think the me in the other timeline is happy? Actually…”

Bell pulled away and met my watery eyes with her own.

“The way the first notification read… did we… fail? Was all of this for nothing?” she asked. Her lip quivered as she spoke.

“It seems that way,” I said, looking away. I was unwilling to lie to my sister-in-law about something so important, no matter how much I wanted to. “The realm did something weird right after the formation activated. I don’t think any new timelines were created.”

“So…what happened to that piece of my soul that was supposed to go back in time?” Bell asked with a pained grimace. It was clear the pain was increasing now that the formation’s numbing effect wasn’t active.

After giving her one last squeeze, I stepped out of the formation and reactivated it.

Sitting just outside the formation’s boundary, I said, “I have no idea. Souls don’t always follow normal magical rules.”

Bell’s pained expression lessened slightly with the influx of healing Soul magic, and she grew thoughtful as she shifted back into a supine position.

“Maybe that part of me will get to go on some grand adventure, just like the stories that Justin used to write. Wouldn’t that be ironic?”

I watched as fatigue gradually overtook the shorter woman. It didn’t take long for her to fall into an exhausted slumber. She seemed to be in less pain than before, which I took as a positive sign.

Not wanting to disturb her, I returned to my examination of the recovered escape artifacts I’d found on the dead invaders. There was little left to learn from the items since I already had a good idea of their range, but I still hadn’t decided where to start my search.

I had to admit, I was a little excited to really push Space Magic Mastery for the first time.

Sure, I’d tested it out in the decades since I received it as a trial reward in the dungeon, but there was a limit to how much I could push the skill when I was basically repeating the same things over and over.

Now that I could use it in a whole different way, I was hopeful the skill would really show its worth.

= = =

Examining celestial bodies for hidden spaces was a tedious task, even when they were uninhabited.

Because it was easier to do a detailed search from close range, I spent a lot of time floating above uninhabited worlds, scanning for anything that stood out.

Unfortunately, that meant that I couldn’t take advantage of time dilation during my search, which meant the enemy was able to conduct a lot more attacks while I was stuck combing through the dens of Space-affinitied beasts and natural spatial anomalies.

Space Magic Mastery did most of the heavy lifting during my endeavor, and after several weeks of careful scrutiny, I finally came across something promising.

Strangely, it was not a hidden space but an open gathering of enemy forces, protected from observation only by a few lackluster obscuring formations.

It was almost like they weren’t even trying to hide, which made sense, given the location. Honestly, I would have probably overlooked their presence had I not happened to observe a group of several hundred rushing through a hastily cast Portal.

After all, Domination was one of the three battle worlds where the Collective had an established presence, so seeing them there wasn’t a surprise.

However, I was under the impression that the Tier Eight world had been largely abandoned after the Alliance stopped sending troops to fight in the ongoing war there.

Basically, the Council had determined that there was insufficient benefit to maintaining the high-tier war when the Alliance already struggled to field enough adventurers to keep the Tier Eight and above rifts properly cleared.

The last time I’d scanned the desolate world, there was only a token presence of Collective fighters and none from the Alliance. Even now, the number of enemies wasn’t anything too alarming. Only the fact that they were rushing through a portal looking ready to fight raised alarms.

I immediately sent a message to Councilor Lance since he was supposed to be my point of contact.

[Me: I think I’ve found one of the enemy’s bases. Collective fighters are staging on Domination and rushing into portals. It’s at the very edge of the [Escape] artifacts’ range from Aegeas.]

I didn’t point out that the planet was too far for such artifacts to work from some of the other locations that were attacked. I was sure Councilor Lance and Anya were already well aware of that fact since I’d been keeping them up to date on my findings.

[Councilor Lance: Noted. Keep searching. I doubt that is the only location.]

Since I always kept Stealth active while searching, I didn’t worry too much about being noticed. Arcane Stealth spells were potentially the strongest such spells since they incorporated aspects of every mana type.

They took a lot of mana to maintain, especially with my crappy affinity for the element. But being able to take regular breaks inside my demesne made consistently using the spell somewhat manageable.

Another six weeks passed as I carefully combed through every uninhabited celestial body within range of the escape talismans used on Aegeas.

Since I had already discovered a potential recall location for the invaders escaping Aegeas, I shifted my focus to uninhabited worlds, moons, and asteroids further abroad.

I hadn’t written off the possibility that the enemies might be sheltering on inhabited worlds, but after discussing things with Councilor Lance, I decided to focus on uninhabited locations first.

After nearly half a year, I finally completed my initial sweep. During that time, several dozen cities had been attacked, some more than once.

The list included the city to which Bell was assigned. Thankfully, she’d recovered enough to be present as part of the defense. Had she missed it, covering for her absence would have been much harder.

“You should start with the demi homeworlds,” Anya said when I met with her and her husband to submit my report. She didn’t explain why because such explanations were largely unnecessary.

Having studied the maps, I knew that both Morkin and Davrim fell within recall range of several attack locations. Those too far away were close enough to Domination that the invaders could have feasibly escaped there.

There was also no need to mention that both worlds were home to several demi races – races that were prominent within the Collective.

Many believed that Morkin and Davrim were originally part of the Collective. But it had been thousands of years since they joined the Alliance, so any original loyalties should have long since been washed away by time.

Others suspected demis of being enemy agents all along, which caused a surge of anti-demi sentiment throughout the Alliance.

It had gotten so bad that all but a few demis had been asked to return to their homeworlds, regardless of what tier they’d reached.

Though it was certainly unfair to those who’d remained steadfastly loyal to the Alliance, I understood why the request was made. Too many innocent demis had been attacked out of confusion or fear.

At least sending them to their original worlds would prevent any misunderstandings during active conflicts since the only demis that should be present during a fight would be enemies.

Of course, that didn’t take into account the attacks on the demi homeworlds, of which there were several. If anything, the Collective was more aggressive with their attacks on Davrim and Morkin than they were with the rest of the Alliance.

I was glad that Kaylee had relocated to Earth for the duration of the war.

“Any particular reason?” I asked I asked the Fate Mage.

Anya’s lips tightened. I noticed she’d gained a couple of levels since I last saw her. It was a feat, given her tier.

“Nothing I feel comfortable mentioning,” she said. “Just be careful and keep yourself hidden. The locals are feeling understandably hostile toward non-demi races right now.”