WIEDERGEBURT Act III: Chapter 41

When I woke up again, I was lying on a bed made of straw. I tried to sit up, but every nerve in my body felt like it had been ground up into mulch. There was an incredible ache in my muscles that made my body feel sluggish. Despite this, I still sat up, shunting aside the pain.

The cloaked woman was over by the table where she usually stood, working on some concoction. I knew it was alchemy, but I didn’t know what kind of pill she was refining this time.

Standing up and ignoring the pain in my body, I walked over to the table, my feet bare and my chest exposed. The cloaked woman either hadn’t noticed me or was ignoring me. She continued to grind up a blue monster core inside her mortar by using her pestle, her movements deft and precise. Once the core had been ground into a fine powder, she took a pinch of the monster core powder and sprinkled it into a flask filled bright green liquid, which shifted to a pale cyan after the monster core powder mixed in.

“I see you’re up,” the woman said. She did not stop working as she spoke, filling up a beaker about a quarter of the way, then bringing the water to a bowl with the fire element.

“I am. Did you carry me back here?” I asked.

“I did.” The woman grabbed another ingredient that I guessed was a root of some kind and began mashing it up with her pestle. “I found you collapsed several hundred meters outside this cave. There are many Demon Beasts out there who would have eaten you if they found you like that. You should be more careful.”

I felt a sense of gratitude well up inside of me, something I hadn’t felt in a long time.

To be honest, I did not care if I lived or died. In fact, I was fairly certain death was what I wanted, but I also had a goal. I was going to kill the Great Overlord of the Seventh Plain. Until this goal was complete, I couldn’t afford to die.

“Thank you,” I said sincerely.

“You do not have to thank me for something like that. I merely saved you because I wanted to.”

“Even so, you have my gratitude.”

The woman didn’t respond to my words as she continued working, grabbing the mortar filled with that root, which had been ground up completely, and scraping the paste into the beaker. She took a small rod and began stirring, causing the water to change into a muddy brown color. Then she grabbed some red-colored grass and dumped it into the beaker, letting the boiling water dissolve it.

I watched as the muddy water hissed and spat, steam rising from the surface as a fiery earthen smell filled the room.

“What are you making?” I asked.

“Spirit Cleansing Pill.”

The one word answer did nothing to satisfy me.

“And what is a Spirit Cleansing Pill?”

“It is a pill used to unclog someone’s Spiritual Pathways.” Pausing for just a moment, the young woman finally seemed to realize I wanted to know more and continued. “It travels through a Spiritualist’s Spiritual Pathways and breaks up the Spiritual Power that is clogging them. This is the first step toward curing Spiritual Poisoning.”

I’d heard of Spiritual Poisoning before; it was a rare sickness that happened when someone trained too hard or shoved more Spiritual Power through their Spiritual Pathways than they could safely handle. This resulted in the pathways becoming clogged by a Spiritualist’s own Spiritual Power. It was generally easy to heal, but I’d never had to deal with it before.

That was when it hit me.

“Wait. Are you saying I have Spiritual Poisoning?” I asked.

The cloaked woman checked on the cyan liquid, which had some steam wafting up through the flask’s opening. A light fragrance emitted from it. I could smell it from where I stood.

“Did you not notice the black bruise on your chest?” the woman asked as she smothered the fire, removed the flash, and poured the contents into a cauldron. “That’s a sign of Spiritual Poisoning.”

I looked down at my chest and saw what she was talking about. There was a massive black bruise with purple along the edges on my chest, right where my heart would be. The veins of my heart visibly pulsed, but they didn’t look like veins at the moment, or rather, they looked like veins that had poison running through them.

I reached out and placed my hand on my chest, hissing a little when an incredible pain shot through my body. I’d never felt something quite like this before. It didn’t hurt more than some of the injuries I had received, but it was an altogether different kind of pain.

“This is Spiritual Poisoning?”

The cloaked woman had grabbed the sides of the cauldron. A low groan erupted from her as arcs of fire erupted from within the cauldron. I looked inside to find the liquid bubbling as several popping sounds issued from it. Seconds passed as it slowly morphed, growing smoother and rounder as the liquid condensed, transforming into a cyan-colored pill.

Taking several deep breaths, the woman reached in and grabbed the pill, which she handed to me.

“Hold this,” she said before grabbing a wash bin and filling it with water from a tub in the corner.

I studied the pill intensely, wondering if this was the Spiritual Cleansing Pill she had talked about. Then I glanced at the woman as she came back and used the water to wash the cauldron. I was surprised to see that she had a very nice towel that she used to clean the cauldron with. It was made from a fine fabric and was something I expected to see in the homes of the wealthy, not in a cave. She probably got it from Nevaria, or so I assumed.

“What are you making now?” I asked.

“Spiritual Reinforcement Pill.” The woman paused again as if that was all the answer she’d give, but then she started talking as if she realized I wanted to know more. “It’s the pill needed for the third step in healing your Spiritual Poisoning. It reinforces your Spiritual Pathways after they have been unclogged, which helps prevent this from happening again.”

“I understand. Thank you for telling me.”

The hood covering her head shifted as though she was nodding. She grabbed the beaker and poured the burning red liquid into the cauldron. It didn’t fill up a lot of the cauldron, not even a fourth, but that didn’t stop her from grabbing each side of and channeling her Spiritual Power through it.

I remained silent as flames began appearing inside of the cauldron. It was fascinating to watch as the liquid bubbled before condensing into a small pill form. However, while I was watching, the woman who was doing the refining groaned as if she was in pain, and I suddenly found myself looking at her. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. She wasn’t shaking or giving any indication that she was hurt, but that groan certainly made it seem like she was experiencing something unpleasant.

After refining the first Spiritual Reinforcement Pill, the woman refined ten more.

“This should be enough to heal your Spiritual Pathways completely since your Spiritual Poisoning is still at a fairly early stage.” She turned to me. “Take the Spiritual Cleansing Pill and lay down on the bed.”

I did as I was asked. The pill broke in my mouth and all of the healing liquid gushed forth, traveling down my throat and entering my body. Almost immediately, I could feel something inside of my Spiritual Pathways. It felt like another power was traveling through it and opening my pathways. It didn’t hurt, but it left me with a weird tingling sensation that was centered around my chest.

After taking the Spiritual Cleansing Pill, I moved over to the bed, climbed on, and laid on my back. The cloaked woman came over to me. I couldn’t see anything beyond that hood, but I had a feeling she was intently staring at my chest. When I looked down, I could see that several glowing blue lines had appeared like veins.

“I am about to begin.” She raised her gloved hands and began removing one glove. “This might be painful for you, but I would like to ask that you bare with it.”

“I’m sure I can do that,” I said as I watched her hand suddenly appear. It took me a second to realize she had removed her glove, though, and not because I hadn’t seen her do it. Her hand was completely black, an ebony so dark it reminded me of a starless night sky. What’s more, the blackness was pulsating just like my chest.

“I’m beginning,” she said before I could comment on her hand.

She placed her hand on my chest and began moving, tracing the blue lines of my Spiritual Pathways as she poured Spiritual Power into my body, and I released a scream so loud that it reverberated throughout the cavern as the most intense pain I’d ever felt struck me.

***

I was a bit sore when my consciousness returned. After traveling deep into the Morkdypt Ravine, discovering the slaves and that strange object, getting discovered by the Sekbeists, being chased, and then fighting against a dragoness, I had been pretty exhausted. It was honestly a miracle I had lasted as long as I had the other day.

Opening my eyes, I expected to find myself resting against the wall of a burrow I’d carved out of a tree. What I found instead was a pair of eyes peering into my face. The face of the dragoness I had fought the other day was so close our noses were almost touching. We both blinked several times, but then, as if she’d just realized I was awake, the dragoness reeled back with a surprised squeal and landed on her butt.

I almost laughed. Almost.

“Hello,” I said to the girl, who stared at me in shock, her eyes wide. “Are you okay? How do you feel?”

The dragoness tilted her head as she stared at me like she couldn’t understand what I was trying to say. She also scooted backward to put some distance between us. It seemed she was quite the nervous dragon.

“Can you not understand the human tongue?” I asked.

The dragoness said nothing and didn’t nod or shake her head, leading me to believe that she had no idea what I was saying.

Considering she had a human form, I could at least judge her to be a girl in her teenage years. Dragons are born with a dragon form and don’t gain a human form until they reach sixteen years of age, which meant this girl was at least that old, though I had the feeling she was a bit older than that—eighteen or nineteen at the very least.

Once I realized she couldn’t understand me, I cleared my throat and began channeling Spiritual Power through esophagus.

Then I screeched.

Dragons communicated with each other through sonic vibrations in the air. By changing the pitch, timbre, and intensity of your voice, it was possible to create sound waves that could be interpreted by Dragons. Screeching and roaring was the easiest way to do this because it didn’t require the use of vowels or pronunciation.

Of course, most Dragons learned the human tongue at some point in their lives. The fact that this girl didn’t meant she’d likely been held in captivity before her parents could begin teaching her.

The dragoness’s eyes widened as I began screeching to her, and when I finished, she quickly screeched back a reply.

Interpreting a Dragon’s screeching was hard. I wasn’t a Dragon, so I didn’t have the ability to naturally quantify sound waves like they could. Instead, I channeled water into my ears and used it to help me listen. Sound traveled much more easily through water, which made it easier for me to hear and interpret.

It took me awhile to correctly translate the noises coming to me, but once I managed to translate her screeching, I began screeching back. I asked her questions. Who was she? What was she doing here? How did she get here? Where were her parents? They were basic questions, but the dragoness had problems answering them, or rather, she got very emotional while answering.

With tears leaking from her eyes, the girl told me that she had been living peacefully in a large village with her parents and other dragons, but around the time she gained her human form, her village was attacked by Sekbeists (she called them scary green men). Many of her bretheren were killed. Even her father was killed while trying to protect her and her mother. To make matters worse, she and her mother somehow got separated.

Her story got even more incoherent after that. She remembered being captured by the Sekbeist, but all she could remember after that was incredibly pain and then being forced to do labor in the Morkdypt Ravine. They would have her mine ore, kill Demon Beasts, and force her to endure whatever experiments their leader came up with. Her body shook uncontrollably as she told me all this. The trauma from what happened seemed to be so great she couldn’t stop.

From everything she said, I could only guess at what she had been through. It seemed the Sekbeists had wanted her family for some reason. Once they had acquired her, she was used in painful experiments, then had that collar placed on her, which allowed one of the Sekbeists to control her actions. That Sekbeists had been the one who sent her after me. They had probably done so under the assumption that a Dragon, which was well-known for possessing extraordinary strength and power, would be able to catch up and hold me off long enough for them to come and either kill or capture me and Herleif.

Too bad that didn’t work out as they had hoped.

After listening to everything she had to say, I asked what her name was… but unfortunately, her name was not something that could be pronounced in the human tongue as it was just a series of shrieks and screeches.

I cupped a hand to my chin and thought about what I should call her. Using Dragon speak was hard on the throat, even with the water element to heal it. I wanted to teach her the human tongue and give her a name that I could say.

First, I suppose I should tell her my own name.

“Eryk.” I pointed to myself. The girl looked at me curiously, so I repeated myself. “Eryk.”

“Ee… ra… eek?” she said in a very soft voice that I thought was almost ear-meltingly sweet. It was nothing like when she screeched. I’d even go so far as to say her voice was like a lilting melody, a gentle sound that soothed the ears of any who heard it. That I was the first made me feel more special than it probably should have felt.

“Close enough for now.” When the girl just looked at me in confusion, I smiled and pointed at her. “Siv.”

“Seev?”

The girl incorrectly pronounced the name I had come up with for her. I was pretty sure she just couldn’t form human words correctly because she’d never done so before. She was used to screeching, so talking like this was hard for her.

“Siv.”

I nodded, then I screeched, asking her if it was okay for me to call her that. She furrowed her brow for a moment. When it cleared up, she gave me a tentative nod and screeched back with her assent.

Now that she had a name, I felt like it was time for us to get moving. I wasn’t sure where we were. What’s more, I didn’t know if the Sekbeists were still searching for us. Assuming they were was the safest bet. That meant if we wanted to avoid being captured, we needed to leave now and make our way back to Neveria. I also needed to meet up with Herleif again. I was sure the man would be waiting either near the edge of this forest or perhaps making his way to the Pteranodon Valley, which would be a lot safer.

I stood up and offered my hand to Siv, who looked at it for several seconds before she reached out. She placed her hand in mine. Then she pulled it back as though she’d been shocked. I blinked several times, not sure what I should do as she stared at my hand like it was something she’d never seen before, but then, finally, she reached out again and didn’t remove her hand this time.

Her hands were small and dainty. I was surprised by how soft they were. Covering the tops of her hand were some scales grafted into her skin. They were harder than diamonds and very smooth, contrasting with her soft peach skin, which was covered in dirt. She probably hadn’t taken a bath in a long time.

We left the burrow and began wandering through the forest of massive trees. I used Spiritual Perception to avoid Demon Beasts, which helped us move more quickly. However, after several days of walking, I soon realized that there was a problem.

I had no idea which way I was going.

It was something I should have realized sooner, but I was completely unfamiliar with this forest. It was worse because there were no recognizable landmarks for me to orient myself with. All the trees looked the same, with only minor variations in size. Also, because the trees were so big and numerous, I couldn’t see anything beyond them.

“Siv,” I said suddenly.

The dragoness looked at me, so I pointed up. She seemed to understand.

Coming up behind me, Siv wrapped her arms around my chest and pressed herself against my back. Her two small breasts were easily felt even through the fabric of her clothes. With a flap of her wings, she lifted us into the air and began ascending higher and higher. The branches grew a lot thicker as we reached the canopy, but I created several water blades to cut off the branches so we could pass through much more easily, and we eventually broke through the canopy.

The air from this high up was incredibly brisk. The tops of the trees were covered in snow. That alone told me how tall these trees were.

As we hovered there, I looked around and immediately spotted the large stretch of forest that had been demolished when the Morkdypt Ravine had formed. It was like a giant scar marking the forest. I turned my attention behind me and soon found Mount Himmellyn far in the distance. The only reason I could even see it was because it was such a huge landmark.

“Okay. I know where we are now. Let’s go back down.”

I tapped Siv’s hands, which she interpreted as my desire to travel back down, and she slowly descended back into the forest.

Our journey continued, but now I had changed directions. When we were walking before, we had been going in the opposite direction we needed to, so now we were traveling in the direction of Mount Himmellyn.

It soon began growing dark. While this forest only allowed sparse amounts of sunlight reaching the bottom, it was still enough that I could tell day from night. The temperature also plummeted. Siv shivered as the coldness began seeping into her body. Like Lamia, Dragons were a reptilian race and therefore cold-blooded.

“I think we should stop here for the night,” I said.

Siv still didn’t know the human tongue, which I planned on trying to teach her during our travels, but she at least recognized that I wanted to stop. She stood beside me and hugged herself as she shivered.

Realizing she might get sick if this continued (I actually didn’t know if Dragons could get sick), I got to work, kneeling so I could press my hands against the forest floor. I activated my affinity with the earth element. Feeling the denseness of the earth flow through my hands, I manipulated the ground with my Spiritual Power and will, causing a massive dome to rise from the surface. I made sure it was large, with an entrance that we could walk through, and even created a chimney so we could start a fire without choking on the smoke. It looked like the mud igloos some primitive human tribes living near the Rotfang Forest used.

After heading inside with Siv, I used the earth element again to create a fire pit made of mud and stone, then gathered branches and leaves, which I piled up inside of the pit.

Since I didn’t have a fire affinity yet, I needed to start a fire manually. Fortunately, I had some flint and cotton in my storage ring.

Siv was crouched down beside me. Her eyes were wide with curiosity as I summoned the basalt rocks, an iron filing knife, and carbonized cotton from the storage ring. Her eyes remained locked on the ring for a second, but when the Runes stopped glowing, she turned her attention to the objects I had summoned and watched.

Setting the carbonized cotton on the ground, I took the basalt rock and iron filing knife, then began striking the knife to create sparks. Siv squealed in surprise. I ignored her, however, and continued creating sparks until one of them struck the cotton and lit it on fire. Then I set the cotton against the branches, leaves, and twigs in the firepit and gently blew on it to fan the flames. It wasn’t long before a roaring bonfire started up.

The heat from the bonfire warmed my body. Siv’s reaction was even more pronounced. Her pale skin gained a bit of color as she moved closer to the fire, so close she almost burned herself and had to move back. An embarrassed blush spread across her cheeks as she glanced at me, but I just smiled as I summoned several thick slabs of already cooked meat.

A thick scent filled the air and caused my stomach to rumble, though again, my reaction was nothing compared to Siv, who began drooling when the smell of cooked meat reached her. The meat was lightly seasoned chicken breast. I gave a slab to Siv, who bit into her chicken breast, gave a delighted squeal as the juices flowed into her mouth, and devoured it with gusto. I was barely able to finish even a third of my food before she was staring at me with a look that all but said, “I’m still hungry.”

Being a Dragon, I suppose it was only natural that Siv was a big eater, but I didn’t really realize how much of an eater she was until after she devoured ten whole chicken breasts and still wanted more. She ate even more than Lin did!

I had to shake my head at her. While I had brought plenty of food, it was based on the assumption that the only people eating it were me and Herleif. Even together, the two of us did not eat nearly as much as this girl did. We’d run out of food before long if I didn’t portion how much we ate per day, and while I could probably catch something, I didn’t want to take the time since we still didn’t know if the Sekbeists were following us or not.

Siv’s shoulders drooped and her tail, which had been thumping against the ground as though anticipating the juicy meat she would eat, dropped when I told her this. It was funny to see. I guess all reptilian-based races had emotional tails. It was very easy to know what Lin was thinking by looking at her tail, and it seemed this dragoness was no different.

As the night wore on, Siv curled up and fell asleep. She shivered a little as the fire began to fade.

I stood up and wandered outside, gathered wood and branches to keep the fire going, then returned to the mud igloo. Just as I entered, a loud screech echoed around the igloo. I was so startled I nearly dropped my firewood as I stared at Siv. She was thrashing in her sleep. If I had to guess, she was having a nightmare.

Throwing my firewood on the ground, I raced over to Siv and scooped the girl into my arms as I sat down. She continued to scream and thrash. Her nails had become claws as she lost control of her transformation, and an intense pain seared my face as she cut into my flesh. I healed it with the water element and hugged her tight.

Sadly, I forgot about her tail.

“Hgn!”

I grunted as her tail slammed into my back like it was trying to protect the person it was attached to. Doing my best to withstand the pain, I channeled more of the water element into my back, healing the damage as it came. It hurt. A Dragon’s tail was very strong, able to smash boulders apart like they were made of clay. Her tail broke my spine in that same manner, and even though I healed it right away, the pain still remained.

Siv eventually settled down, her screeching turning into soft whimpers before even those went still. Her legs relaxed as she gripped my clothes with her now clawless hands. I ran a hand through her hair and whispered soothing words that she wouldn’t understand. I don’t know if they had any effect, but Siv pressed her face against my chest as if seeking comfort.

I took a deep breath, held it, and then released it. As I sat there with a sleeping dragon girl in my lap, clinging to me like I was a lifeline, I felt an intense sympathy well up inside of me.

It was clear this girl had suffered a lot. She’d been held captive by the Sekbeists, experimented on, and forced into becoming a slave. I couldn’t even imagine how much she must have suffered. What’s more, her father was dead and the fate of her mother was unknown. She’d been on her own ever since the Sekbeists captured her. Having once been alone for many years myself, I understood how terrible such an experience was.

As I closed my eyes and let out an exhausted sigh, I promised myself that I would look after this girl for however long she needed me to. I wouldn’t let someone who’d gone through so much pain and suffering deal with this on their own.