Chapter 93 This Has Been Awful.

  Isaac felt like he couldn’t breathe. He needed air but there wasn’t any to be had. He gasped and was brought back to consciousness.

  Lady Jikan jerked slightly in surprise as Isaac abruptly jolted and gasped as if he was suffocating. She knew that her magic was affecting a small area around him to make sure that he would always have easy access to clean air. She had specifically added an air attribute effect that caused the air around the person affected by the spell to be purified and breathable at all times. She had done such a good job when she had first made it that those under the effect of her magic were immune to all non-magical airborne poisons. She honestly had no idea why he would jolt awake gasping for breath. Then again, she had been messing with his passage through time quite a bit.

  Something that she had learned was that Isaac actually didn’t regenerate mana any faster while he was asleep, at least not technically. There were a few magics that he was always passively powering while he was awake so once he had fallen asleep, and all of those processes ceased, he needed less incoming mana. “Are you alright?” Lady Jikan asked him.

  Isaac quickly locked eyes with her. He was barely taking in enough mana to fuel the constant leak that was still pouring out of him. He nodded slightly to keep from causing himself too much pain. “Think so.” He replied and then swallowed dryly. “You’re pushing it.” He told her. He really felt like he was balancing across a tightrope, only Lady Jikan was the one balancing for him, and he had no say in the matter.

  Ori nodded. “Yes. It is the fastest way.” She reminded him.

  “How’s Lenna?” Isaac asked her. His ‘everything’ hurt but he could handle his own pain for a little while longer. He would be able to focus a lot better if Lenna was able to function on her own again. That constant distraction was not helping and no matter how hard he tried not to think about it, she would always come back to the forefront of his mind.

  “Same as before, just a little less injured.” Ori told him. “Why did you wake up gasping?”

  “Felt like… I couldn’t breathe.” He told her. “Feel fine now.”

  Ori’s eyes glowed a soft indigo as she scrutinized his very soul. A moment later, her eyes widened slightly. “I see.” She thought aloud.

  “Ominous.” Isaac commented. Apparently he was feeling good enough to get at least a little of his chattiness back.

  “I think you’ve been trying to level up for the past… twenty four hours, from your perspective, give or take an hour or so.” Ori explained. “Your injury had been preventing your level up from happening but something, or someone, seems to have gotten impatient. Go back to sleep, once you are asleep again, I’ll return you to normal time so you can level up and then we will go back to granting you a speedy recovery.”

  Isaac nodded slightly. He wanted to ask her who she thought was messing with his soul. He wanted to know who the person that he couldn’t hear the name of was. He wanted to tell her that her pun was awful. But instead of doing any of those things, he kept his mouth shut and tried to sleep.

  —

  “Yes. It is as you suspect.” Ori heard in her mind. The voice was familiar but not one that she had heard in quite some time.

  “How is that even possible?” Ori wondered.

  “That is beyond me.” The voice replied.

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  Ori sighed. “Halya, I really need to know what I am dealing with.” She told the patron goddess of humanity.

  “You must ask a Divinity. No god will be able to answer your question.” Halya replied. “I will not step on their toes. I only arrived because I was called upon. I have never been one to put my fingers in someone else’s garden.”

  Ori sighed again and nodded. “I will try someone else, but I doubt I’ll get an answer. The ancients are fickle beings.”

  “Fickle beings that can hear you.” A new voice cut in. She sounded young and the power that carried her voice felt far more primal and foreign, for it carried no mana, but was simply raw divine power.

  “I apologize for any offence. I only meant to speak the truth as I have seen it.” Ori replied with a slight bow.

  “My other half and I hadn’t bothered to think every minor detail through, this is on us.” Rei spoke with an obvious frown in her voice. “In order to give him, a human, the power of a dragon of darkness, we attuned him more fully with ^^^ and ****. We had never believed that one of ****’s fragments would have taken such a liking to him.”

  It took Ori a moment to realize who Rei was talking about. It was a primordial name, a true name of a true divinity, and that was why Ori couldn’t hear it. She was a mortal with some of the powers of a god and not even truly a god after all, who was she to be able to hear the true name of one that existed before existence as she knew it. “One of the fragments of Mana has taken a personal liking to him? I did not think that there was any real sentience remaining in the fragments of Father Mannen, and I have not noticed any unusual connection between him and Mother Gia. I thought that she had total control over the fragments of her mate.” Ori was mostly thinking out loud, she did that a lot with the centuries worth of time that she had spent alone, but she was also looking for either Rei or Halya to correct any misconceptions that she might’ve had.

  “You are not entirely incorrect.” Rei replied. “But I will not explain the nuance of our peer’s power and relationships. The only reason I even reached out was to tell you to continue as you have and act as though nothing is amiss. **** will not interfere with you, even if you work against the will of one of the fragments, so no one really knows what their plan is. Just continue as you have been, and don’t think too deeply about it.” Ori got the feeling Rei was about to leave her prayer to Halya, that had started the entire conversation, but then the deity stopped. Ori got the feeling of Rei looking back over her shoulder. “One last thing, tell your boyfriend that his bubble is annoying. Not enough for me to smite him, but enough that he shouldn’t expect me to do any favors for him when he eventually arrives in our office.”

  Ori swallowed. Klein’s plan was stepping on some toes of some beings that she really wished it wouldn’t. She would tell him of course, no one was dumb enough not to follow through with an order from someone like Rei, but everyone knew that it didn’t matter. Klein would continue with his plan until the divinities smited him or it worked. Most of the old demigods were like that. There was simply too much on the line.

  Isaac stirred again and Ori’s attention snapped back to him. ‘This boy is proving to be more trouble than I would’ve liked. He better ascend so he can pay us back for this.’ She grumbled internally. “Lenna is fine, neither of you are healed enough yet, go back to sleep.” She ordered Isaac. He nodded almost imperceptibly and then started drifting back off to sleep almost immediately. ‘I swear, I have never met someone so unconsciously impatient.’

  —

  “Rise and shine.” Lenna heard and slowly tried to open her eyes. The daylight was utterly blinding until a black parasol opened up above her head. She hadn’t recognized the voice right away but as soon as she had seen the face, Lenna realized that a lot had happened since the last time she was truly conscious. But all of that could wait, Lenna was famished and she really needed to pee.

  A few agonizing minutes later, Lenna was sitting with her back against the wall and a bowl of warm soup in her hands. Ori was sitting next to her, holding the parasol to help blunt the sunlight, and had just finished explaining what had happened since Lenna had nearly died from Isaac meditating and throwing off the flow of mana in the local area.

  “Thank you.” Lenna told the older woman earnestly. “For helping us, and for holding the parasol.”

  Ori nodded. “You're welcome. Now, I promised your husband that he would not be the only one to receive a tongue lashing and, if I am being honest, you probably deserve it more.” Ori told her with total seriousness.

  Lenna winced. She may not have made the objectively right decision in the moment, but she did have her reasons, well, her reason. She sat through ten full minutes of Ori’s scolding without talking back or arguing. She knew that every one of Ori’s points were valid and accurate. The old demigoddess was absolutely brimming with intelligence and wisdom after all. Lenna’s attention only left her soup and Ori when she saw Isaac start to stir awake.

  Ori stopped as she noticed the same thing. She gestured downwards towards Isaac and his time soon realigned with the rest of the world. “Now, Lady V’Nova, I know that you’ve been sitting on an excuse since we began. I assume that you’ve been waiting for your husband to wake up before you speak it aloud.” Ori questioned Lenna with raised eyebrows.

  Lenna nodded and her eyes, through the near blinding beams of sunlight that streaked in through the missing roof tiles, caught Isaac’s beaming smile. “I couldn’t lose you.” Lenna confessed. “I couldn’t risk the twin divinities whisking you away to another world, just like when they brought you here. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if they had. I do not know if they would have or not, but I didn’t have the time to ask. I needed you back immediately, no matter the cost.”

  Isaac struggled to sit up through obviously excruciating pain. It took him a moment but he eventually did it. “I understand. But please, just get a cleric next time.” He chided her. “This has been awful.”