Since the hours she’d help at any hospital had been reduced in the name of forcing the other healers to refine their skills, the reaction to any time she would show up had become more desperate as the others made clear just how much they enjoyed the break she provided, and usually, that was intense enough. Coming back after other work left her skipping shifts though? She knew she was going to be walking in on a whole other level of desperation as they made their way from Ben’s gate in the magic towers to that city’s wider gate network, passing through to the city she’d been planning on working in that day and getting its hospital within her sight before a voice in her head made her stop.
Huh, Anailia?
An answer that froze her. She may not have been as familiar with all of the dryads as well as Ben was, she hadn’t spent days doing work and renovations for them to earn their trust, but she was comfortable saying she got along well with a few of them and beyond her first visit, she’d been treated with nothing but kindness whenever she’d gone back. More than that though, it was Fontesh and Delair’s home. Hell, it was Sachel’s old home too, not just some meaningless place to her.
I understand. Thank you for letting me know, I’ll get there as fast as I can.
With the only problem being that she wasn’t alone, the child by her side looked at her curiously at what the holdup might be as she struggled to figure out what to do.
“Alright,” she finally settled. “Mora, sweety? An emergency came up, so I need you to go to the hospital and explain that I’m asking the staff to look after you there before I come back for you, okay?”
“What? What’s happening?”
“The dryads are just in a bit of trouble, so I just need to make sure they’ll be okay. You know some staff in there so I trust you on your own and I’ll be back as fast as I can, okay?”
“Wait, are Delair and Fontesh okay?” Mora asked, ignoring her request and making Thera wonder if it would have been better to lie. Besides herself and Ben, those two were probably the ones Mora spent the most time with, and the rest of the dryads couldn’t have been too far behind. It was plain that hearing that had rattled him, but she didn’t know what the right answer to give was.
“I’m going to do my best to make sure they are, and Ben’s already there,” she settled on. “So-”
“Let me come help too!”
… Wish I was slightly more convincing about getting him to stay.
She wasn’t even sure how he could help, but she didn’t just want to tell a child that, no matter how true it was. Anailia hadn’t even needed to say that the dryads were being attacked by a demon group; that much was obvious, but Mora was a pacifist. She had no intention of holding that against him either, but if he had no interest in fighting then there was little for him to do if he did come along.
Well, I guess there’s one option.
“Okay,” she gave in, not wanting to argue when time was of the essence. “In that case, the dryads should be escaping through their gate so you can stay with them on Stonewall’s side and treat anyone whose soul might be damaged, but that’s as far as you go, understand?”
“Yes.”
“Alright then.”
She didn’t think it was the best choice but at the very least it would be safer than taking him to the other side and was more comfortable than leaving him in a distant city without her there so with an agreement reached, Thera picked him up and flew back the way they’d come at top speeds, all to get home.
Not stopping until they reached Sachel’s house, Thera finally landed, setting Mora down and taking in what she could, seeing the street crowded with people.
While a few longtime citizens were there, be it Sachel’s neighbours having come out from the commotion or other adventurers and healers who’d managed to get word and rush over to help, the vast majority were of two groups. The dryads, spilling out into the streets with how many of them there were, looking beaten and bleeding from what they’d gone through, and the demidemons, both healers and warriors alike, no doubt there at the request of Ben’s god, with that devoted base doing everything they could.
She could see them, those with light and life magics working on the wounded while those who’d either taken on more combat focused roles like adventurers since moving there or even those who simply held useful skills from their old lives were running in and out of the house, bringing the injured back and going to search for more when they could, leaving Thera to do what she was able to as she forced an earth healing spell on the land, making the town itself help with the injuries she was seeing before turning to her charge.
“Mora, go around and see if anyone here has their soul injured and when you’re done, wait with whatever dryads you know. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Trusting him to listen, Thera ran off, rushing through the gate and left stunned with what she saw; the devastation worse than she’d expected. All around there were demon corpses and blood, with awakened dryads, demidemons, and what other adventurers Stonewall had fighting a hoard that still looked overwhelming, with a few guarding the house to make sure nothing made it through.
She could see both Sachel and Ralia fighting too, tearing through demons while getting a few of the remaining villagers out to safety, but as she examined it all, one thing caught her eye and made her stomach drop. A leg on the ground, not too far from the gate.
No-
With all of her work as a healer, seeing a missing limb was nothing new to her and with the village having been attacked, she didn’t doubt that injuries could have gotten that bad but the problem was the fact she recognized it, from the shoe it wore to the bit of pants that had come off with, along with the flesh beneath. It was Ben’s leg, with the rest of him nowhere to be seen.
All at once, everything else ceased to matter. She had seen the response in the village, she knew it was being handled, and with that fact clear, that meant she could focus on what mattered to her, feeling how bind connected the two of them and let it guide her as she shot off towards him, following the skill beyond the village and deep into the woods, only causing more panic to set in.
How far out could he be?
The fact that he’d somehow gotten so far from his leg in the first place was horrifying enough after she’d left the village and ended up in the woods but as she dodged and flew around to try and get even a little closer, she got her answer.
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It only took a minute to reach the end of their shared link, finding portals opened around a cowering group, pouring out demons, but that was only acknowledged in the back of her mind, her eyes focused on what she’d arrived just in time to see. Ben, standing there and confidently fighting off the monsters trapping them one second before falling the next, his head looking like it had disintegrated as his body collapsed to the ground.
The forest shook for miles around them, the earthquake shocking friend and foe alike, while her dark mana poured out along with her earth, not in the form of charm but instead a level of fear that drove most of the demons to flee in terror and whatever had opened those portals to close them, even as someone within the protected group kept fighting, using earth magic to impale with spikes and shoot off bullets on what few of those beasts remained, but Thera saw none of it. Her eyes were entirely glued to Ben, locked on as she made her way over to him, her legs shaking in a way that had nothing to do with what her uncontrolled power was doing to the land around them until all too soon she was at his side.
Her knees gave out and she hit the ground, not able to process what she was seeing. His body, limp as blood poured out of the clean cut along his neck, the truth of it undeniable.
“Ben…” the name came weakly from her lips as she took his hand, still warm but lacking any pulse. Someone who thought of themselves as a craftsman instead of a warrior despite all he’d done, Thera had watched him survive everything thrown at him no matter how insane and yet, while the worry it left her never went away, a certain feeling had come with every time he’d conquered whatever impossible odds he’d face. A feeling that he’d keep succeeding in it. This was Ben after all, a man who found a solution to every problem, a man who’d talk back to the gods themselves and demand they see him as an equal. Someone who had survived impossible odds again and again and again, and someone who had reached levels of power unheard of to both mortals and the divine alike.
But then, reaching those levels of power means that this doesn’t actually matter, does it? She tried to tell herself as tears rolled down her cheeks. This just means his soul’s going to ascend to godhood. He’s not gone, he’s just… he won’t be down here with me anymore.
She tried to tell herself that was fine. The fact that death was going to separate them eventually had been a forgone conclusion since the day they first met, the fact that he’d gone and achieved godhood of all things meant that she’d never actually have to lose him, it just meant that they’d be apart.
She tried telling herself all of that and more, tried convincing herself that such a thing was acceptable. Having someone who she could love who would in some ways always be able to be with her was more than she’d ever dreamed of when she’d first understood just what her heritage and lifespan meant, but no matter what she tried to make herself believe, she couldn’t. That wasn’t good enough.
She didn’t want Ben to die in any way before her. She wanted him by her side, making stupid, silly, or downright insane things. She wanted to keep waking up to the smell of him cooking breakfast, and she wanted to keep making dinners together with him in the evening. She wanted to talk about their days and raise Mora with him and keep teasing him about raising Delair too. She wanted to feel him hold her when they were alone, and she wanted to hear him tell her he loved her as they went to sleep for the night.
But now all of that was gone. She couldn’t even make herself look at the fatal wound; there was no point, there was no hope. Even when he’d lost his heart, the scale hadn’t nearly been the same. After all, without a brain-
Ben thinks with his soul.
A truth that struck her like lightning. How much did Ben really need his brain in the first place, and for that matter, what was death? She thought she knew it when she saw it; working at hospitals had brought in enough patients that were too late to save, even for her, and she thought she knew what it looked like. Injuries too great to repair, bodies too beaten and broken to ever be whole again, but none of that was what defined true death in that world. The only thing that did was the passage of the soul.
So, was Ben’s soul still there? It was impossible to say for sure; she didn’t have the sight for such things, yet all at once, what she’d seen when she got there, a detail she’d dismissed reared its head. Earth magic slaughtered the few remaining demons around them, yet none there should have had the level of skill to pull it off to the extent she’d witnessed. Plant mages might have been able to use a bit of the affinity but even an awakened one shouldn’t have been able to do it on that scale if they’d been born with the low version of the magic and as far as she knew, none of the sirens there had that power either, meaning only one thing. She’d made a mistake.
Material manipulation.
She didn’t know if she was right and she didn’t have time to try to verify it. If she was then all that meant was that Ben’s soul had yet to ascend and she was willing to bet every drop of mana in her on that as she forced down the earth magic rampaging around her to instead focus it all on one place.
What even was death anyway? Even if the brain and heart were both destroyed, that didn’t mean every cell in the body immediately shut down. How long might a body be able to cling onto enough life to still hold tight the soul within? Even if she had a chance, she didn’t know how much longer she’d have it for and she’d already wasted enough time in distress and despair instead of trying to save him so with the magic she’d been refining for years, she put it all towards bringing him back.
Stimulating the totality of his body with her power and feeling it fight against her, that was an immediately good sign. Without a soul, it wouldn’t be resisting her, even if it was rejecting her to an extent akin to before he’d become a demigod. But that was a minor issue. His body had always rejected her and any other power applied to it, it was what made him so good to practice on and she held back no mana when it came to forcing it to stick while at the same time beginning to work on the other part that mattered. She had to regrow his head.
She’d regrown limbs for others plenty of times by then, how hard could it be? Sure, those limbs had never included structures like a brain, but it wasn’t like she hadn’t had to heal other parts of a face either. Regrowing eyes was always a challenge when it came up but it could be done, all she was doing was upping the difficulty just a little more as she cannibalized his body to take what she needed, using the death aspects of life to make it bend to her will even without a heartbeat as his already injured leg was consumed in the name or raw materials, shrinking down to give what she needed to rebuild the rest.
If she succeeded, then that was something she could try to fix later. First, everything she was had to go into that. Esophagus, vertebrae, muscle, veins, skin, all of it slowly crawled up from the cut as she went, regrowing the damaged portion of neck to start building his jaw and continued from there as fresh teeth pushed out of gums until she was creating the cartilage for his ears and nose, going higher to make eyes and finish off the skull and scalp from there, leaving only what it was meant to contain left.
She’d never regrown a patient’s true brain before; she wasn’t sure if anyone ever had, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have experience. She’d treated the species and hybrids that filled the world, complex biologies the system had helped produce that never could have come about naturally, fixing damaged sub-brains and nerve clusters that some people had, and more than that, she’d not only grown brains from scratch before, she’d grown Ben’s brain. With every homunculus he’d had her build, could there have been anyone on the planet more equipped to treat him in particular? She was his healer, and with all of that experience, she put it into action.
Viewing the progress not with her eyes but instead her mana examination and life sense, brain tissue was created and lobes defined, building up to a greater whole until it was done, needing only one final push before she could know if she succeeded or not. With one last jolt of life mana, she awakened those newly formed neurons and restarted his heart, praying with everything she had that it would be enough.
Notifications were barely noticed, and a flash of mana great enough to see back in the distance was ignored. None of that compared to Ben’s touch as one hand squeezed hers and the other reached up to wipe away her tears while he opened his eyes and smiled, complete sincerity in his voice.
“My hero.”
Success that only made the tears come harder. Against the odds, she’d done and had made sure that Ben would be with her for at least a little longer.