Chapter 96 Shining Star

  Meditation hadn’t been a struggle for Lenna since she was in the single digits. She had never been a very rambunctious child but she had been a very driven individual since she was a young adult. Meditation was a struggle at the moment. She could do it, she was doing it, but Isaac wasn’t making it very easy. She was healed enough that they could just take turns meditating to help themselves heal but she really didn’t want to have to slow down her mate’s healing.

  Isaac never would’ve said it, but Lenna could tell, he was healing at a minimum of ten times her rate as long as he was meditating. When he wasn’t, he was healing at about half of hers. The stillness of mind and body that came naturally to Lenna, even while she was entirely conscious, helped her passively in a way that Isaac would likely never be able to achieve. Lenna knew that and she was also aware that he had taken more quantitative damage than she had and thus he would need longer to heal, especially if he was prevented from meditating. In addition to Lenna’s harder time meditating, there was one other problem.

  Thud. Lenna’s eyes opened and she sighed. She knew exactly what had caused the sound and she looked up to see the healer checking on Isaac. There was something deeper in Isaac’s meditation, he was sure of it, Lenna was sure that he would just continue to pass out and land on his face. “Try to catch him next time, please, sir healer. This will happen again.” Lenna told the only other person in the warehouse with her and her husband.

  Food had been brought to them, courtesy of the vigilante group who were sending the Adventurers’ Guild the bill, at around dinner time the night before. It was now dawn and Isaac had been meditating since just after Lady Jikan had left. The healer brought Lenna a warm bowl of soup from the previous evening once he was done making sure that Isaac wasn’t hurt more than a busted nose. “I will.” The healer assured her.

  “Thank you.” Lenna replied to both his assurance and the soup. “Healer, you worship El’Gra, don’t you?”

  The healer paused for a moment and then nodded. “I do, servant of Lua.” He said and sat down a comfortable distance away from her. “You have questions.”

  Lenna nodded. “I do.” She agreed. “Why are you helping me, a Fallen? Why are you working with human vigilantes in a predominantly human country? What is your name?”

  The healer raised an eyebrow in question. “I expected you to ask why I didn’t ask Our Shining Star to heal your and your mate’s Soul Integrity Degradation.” He replied. “I am sure that you are aware that something like that is doable at noon.”

  “I didn’t ask because I know what it would do to you. Neither of us died our final deaths here, so I will not hold it against you.” Lenna told him. She was aware that performing a miracle, like the one that he had referenced, would have caused him to have extreme Soul Integrity Degradation himself. It might not have been as bad as Isaac’s but it would probably have been as bad as Lenna’s herself.

  Lenna saw a smile in the other elf’s eyes as they started to faintly glow golden. There was a hint of sunlight in the sky but the sun was still quite far from its highest point. “You are so much like her.” The healer spoke. His voice was smoother, slightly higher, and had taken on an almost fatherly tone.

  Lenna bowed deeply. “Thank you for the praise, Shining Star Over All.” She replied. Her head shot back up as she heard the healer groan in pain. She saw him start rubbing his chest with his palm as if it would help lessen the impact of having the head of the light elven pantheon using him as a puppet. ‘That was entirely unnecessary. Even if he was watching, there was no reason to put that poor healer through that.’ Lenna thought to herself, she wouldn’t dare say it out loud in front of the cleric and god in question.

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  “I am helping you because it is his will.” The healer told Lenna. “As is everything else that I do. I am one of his many hands and it is our duty to carry out his direction.” The healer shook his head. “I do not know why I am here, but I know what I must do. I cannot tell you your final fate for I do not know it, the same goes for your mate. Finally, I would prefer not to speak my name aloud.”

  Lenna was silent for a moment as she processed every answer to all of her unspoken questions. The questions had barely had time to form in her mind before the healer had answered them. “I understand.” She spoke after a moment of getting her thoughts in order.

  The healer raised his hand to forestall her momentarily. “I did not say that I would not speak it, just that I prefer not to. Please, do not tell anyone my name until my duties in this city have concluded.” He requested. Lenna nodded in agreement so he continued: “I am Mierlen Daw’Twi.”

  Lenna nodded again, this time in thanks. “I do not know if that name should carry weight or not. But I thank you for humoring me.” Lenna told him. “Healer, one last thing, what does your god think of my mate?”

  Mierlen hesitated for a moment. He wasn’t sure if that was even something that he was allowed to share. A moment later he wavered in his seated position as the entire world became nothing but blinding gold, again, and he was left with an answer to her question: “He is too young. Ask again in a century or two.” Mierlen conveyed.

  Lenna brightened and bowed. “Thank you. Both of you. You have relieved a great stress from my heart.” Mierlen didn’t know it, but he had just conveyed to Lenna that her plan of sharing their strands of fate was going to work. The thought of Isaac gaining a longer lifespan in a different way hadn’t even crossed her mind.

  —

  And the evening and the morning was the third day. It was once again dark out and Isaac had just awoken from another meditation session that ended with his unconsciousness. He was absolutely positive that there was something all the way at the bottom of the well of darkness that rested beneath the realm of awareness that revealed itself to him at the far point of his meditation. There was something, maybe even someone, there at the end of it all. It was still outside of his reach, however, and he had no idea how far he had to go until he got there. Maybe there was a trick to it, maybe he had to reach a certain level threshold, maybe he would never make it and it would forever just be just barely out of his reach. He had no idea. What mattered was that it was night, it was nearly a full moon, and he and Lenna were both back in operating condition. They had work to do, but before that, they had a third party member to revive.

  The healer had left before Isaac had awoken from his second forced nap of the day so there was no one to witness Shamesh’s revival. Isaac retrieved the modified skull of the once great Shamsha and grabbed it with both hands. He turned it so the empty eye sockets of the skull stared straight into his own eyes. Isaac started feeding Shamesh some mana. It wasn’t a lot, nowhere near what he would’ve liked, but Shamesh just needed some healing… right?

  A minute went by and Isaac could do nothing but stare into the empty eye sockets. The mana was going somewhere, he had no idea where, but it was doing something. Isaac increased the amount of power that was going to Shamesh until he felt an ache in his core again. He was only at the volume of mana that Lenna burned keeping a Gate of Flames active. The reminder that he was still very far from being fully healed was almost as painful as the thought that Shamesh might not come back.

  Another minute went by and then suddenly… the cracks on the skull started burning away. New bone was left in their wake. A first vertebrae formed and then a second and a third. The collarbones and ribs soon followed suit. It took eleven full minutes to regenerate the entire bone body but Shamesh still lacked the orbs of death flames in his eyes.

  “Come on, come on buddy.” Isaac whispered to his physical shadow. “We need you now more than ever.”

  Isaac felt a lance of pain as a tiny amount of his recent healing was undone and another tiny amount of his Soul Integrity seemed to break off and latch onto Shamesh. Two tiny balls of death flames flickered into being. Shamesh had been laid on his back in front of Isaac, as his body had started to form, so the sudden slight jerk of the bone body animating was accompanied by a scratching sound of bone on hardwood. Shamesh’s head turned slightly so the eyes could truly stare back into the mage’s own. ‘Scary.’ Isaac felt and heard the word resonate inside of him.

  The word and feeling that Shamesh had sent into Isaac’s core slammed into him like a hammer in the ribs. Isaac coughed and doubled over in pain from the blow. Lenna was there by his side in a second but not before his very soul was assaulted by another impact, this time of Shamesh’s worry for his master. “Stop. Talking.” Isaac ordered his physical shadow through gritted teeth.

  “Shamesh, only use magic to speak, his soul is too damaged for you to talk to him like you usually do.” Lenna explained. The shock of Lenna explaining something without the need for any inference was so shocking to Isaac and Shamesh that they both just froze and looked at her for a moment. “What?” Lenna questioned them both before she saw right through them. “Oh shut up, both of you. Formal Innerworld Standard uses a lot of inference in its speech. I can explain things clearly.” She defended herself and then shook her head. “Whatever, at least I know you two are fine enough to joke around.”