Glade felt the golden light of Riya’s magic call to him from the blessed darkness of sleep, and for once, he didn’t want to answer. The visions he was immersed in while wrapped in the heavenly embrace of celestial magic brought him peace as he relived his greatest memories.

  “Is he going to be, ok?” he heard Kedryn ask in the lilting tones of elvish amidst a backdrop of picks and shovels striking rock. Glade was touched. There was real concern in the Kids voice.

  “For the last time, I don’t know!” Riya hissed, the girls exhausted panic drawing Glade further from his reverie. She sounded scared. And tired.

  “Do you think with enough exposure to celestial magic that he’ll be alright?” Kedryn asked.

  “It isn’t working!” She snapped; her usually cool voice strained to the point of breaking. “I’ve been at this for hours now with no change! I barely know what I’m doing as it is, let alone able to perform something as intricate as channel repair! I’ve never met anyone stupid enough to actually allow their mana channels to be torn open before, let alone learn how to heal them. I’m keeping his health up, but my abilities can’t do anything about the mana poisoning!”

  Glade tried opening his mouth to reassure the two he was going to be fine. Except, his body refused to cooperate.

  He would have panicked, but the golden light from Riya’s magic kept his mind clear and the pain at bay.

  Instead, Glade did the only thing he could. He opened his notifications to figure out what had happened and if there was a way to fix it.

  It was easy enough to see how the system had broken down their latest kills. The two lower leveled Gnolls were the ones Riya and Bragden had dispatched on their way up the tunnel. He didn’t fully understand why the experience was divided into their group of four, but he would ask Riya about it later. The others were broken down between those that had been killed with his pistol and those that had been killed within normal means.

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  A twinge of sadness pushed through the calming effects of Riya’s magic as Glade thought of his trusty side arm. It had given them the tactical advantage of superior weaponry and had saved their lives countless times. Hopefully, it was still salvageable, but he doubted it. Last he had seen the weapon, it had been bathed in the corrupting flames of abyssal magic.

  With that less than stellar reminder, Glade moved onto the next prompts.

  If Glade could sigh, he would. Knowledge like that would have been tremendously helpful to have known beforehand.

  Glade tried rolling his eyes but failed miserably as he was still paralyzed. The Eight, or whomever wrote these notifications, was really getting on his nerves. How was he supposed to read the warnings when they didn’t come until he was in the middle of a crisis?

  Glade’s gut began to churn as the implications of his actions began to set in.

  A blinking symbol flashed on the notification, which he selected.

  Glade stared at the notification as reality came crashing in on him.

  If he didn’t receive constant healing from Riya, he would be dead in little more than two hours.