Chương 223: Arrival

Twenty minutes after we began to rest, Anise's {Phoenix's Last Stand} ended. Immediately afterward, her stats dropped two grades. Her ability to control flames and conjure fire dropped to almost nothing. She also suffered a huge amount of backlash. She screamed in pain once the backlash started, and then fell unconscious. I had prepared for that. The moment Anise collapsed, I threw every speck of alteration essence I had into another renewal while Felix soothed her parents.

Felix's excuse was that Anise had overextended herself during the battle - which was accurate, if misleading. After my healing, Anise still looked like she was in pain. I got worried and spent a few minutes verifying that she still had a pulse and a heartbeat. She did. After a few minutes of gut-wrenching anxiety, I started to relax. Anise's condition wasn't getting any worse. She would live. She was still missing half of her arm, and wasn't waking up anytime soon, but I could fix everything later.

<Anise is going to live. We got out of the pocket dimension, > I said, so that Sallia would know her death wasn't in vain. <Glad… to hear it… > said Sallia sleepily. <If you guys died anyway... I would've been... pissed. Good job. > After that, Sallia fell asleep. We finished setting up camp, and then I got to work. I spent the next several hours getting myself and Anise back into some sort of fighting shape.

The first thing I did was fix my ribs up, so that I didn't bleed out after my ribs punctured my lungs or something. After that, I started healing Anise's mind to handle the backlash of {Phoenix's Last Stand}. Once Anise started sleep-kicking and tossing around, I felt good enough for now. The next thing I focused on was my eyes. Being forced to use my absorption abilities to mimic eyesight was a small but annoying resource drain. Finally, I regrew Anise's arm.

A few of the muscles and nerves connecting everything together were still fragile. I didn't have enough essence to fix everything perfectly. But as long as we were careful, our bodies were back in working condition. It took another eighteen hours before Anise woke up again. She said that she felt tired, but thanked me for the healing. After testing her rebuilt fingers, she said that they were a bit stiff, but usable. After that, she returned to sleep. Finally, after twenty-four hours, Anise woke up again.

This time, she didn't fall unconscious immediately. Which meant that it was time to figure out where the heck we were. Old Mo and I spent a few hours scouting around to try to lock down our position. Old Mo was the only one understood geography, while I came to handle threats. After spending some time analyzing our surroundings, Old Mo grinned.

"We got lucky. We exited the pocket dimension closer to our destination than we started. I was worried that we would teleport to the other side of the continent or something, but we're next to Damilius," he said.

"We have three days of walking before we reach our destination, and we should be safe for the rest of the journey." Then, his face turned into a little bit more of a grimace.

"Sorry about what happened to…"

"Sallia?" I asked. I felt a tug of pain in my chest. Even though I could still talk to her, Sallia being dead still hurt. I nodded.

"This is the first time one of us has died without the rest of us dying shortly afterwards. I just… I don't know. She can't earn any Achievement for the rest of this life, and she's going to be stuck in the void for years. I can still talk to her, but it's not the same. She can't live her own life anymore. It might be years before she can swing a sword again. A part of me wonders if there's something I could have done differently..." I shook my head.

"You're still in contact with her?" asked Old Mo. He seemed very surprised by that statement. I nodded.

"Yeah, we can still talk to her. After we die, we kind of… float around and wait for the rest of the group. And our friendship bracelets let us keep talking. But she's still not alive anymore. She can't do anything on her own until we return." This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Old Mo sighed, and then ruffled my hair.

"I'm glad you can still talk to her, at least. Even if she isn't here, you can still keep her updated on what you three are up to. It's not the same, but I'm sure she's glad that you survived. And you did everything you could to keep her alive. I saw what state you and Anise were in when you rejoined the group. You don't get that hurt without fighting for your life. Don't blame yourself for her death." Then, he reached down and hugged me.

I tried not to make a mess as I buried my head into his arm for a few minutes and cried. Sallia being dead hurt. A few minutes after I regained my composure, we returned to camp. I noticed a tension between Sallia's parents and Anise's parents that hadn't been there before. Or, perhaps more accurately, it hadn't been on display when Old Mo and I left. Now that I'd had some time to decompress, I realized that Sallia's parents had been on edge ever since Sallia died. <What's going on? > I asked Felix.

<It boils down to the fact that Sallia is dead, > said Felix, after a few moments. <Sallia's mother started making snide comments, and Anise's mother responded in turn. Things devolved from there. The snide comments weren't about anything substantial in and of themselves. But after everyone nearly died, tempers ran high once Old Mo wasn't around to tamp down on it> said Felix. I winced. I could see why Sallia's parents felt upset. Anise, Sallia and I had fought together, and only Sallia had died.

It might not be rational to take that out on Anise's parents… but I felt that Sallia's parents could be forgiven. They had just lost their kid. They were hurting, and it was normal for them to lash out. <I feel bad about it too, > said Sallia, taking me off guard when she spoke again. She sounded a lot more awake than the last time I had spoken with her. <My parents had flaws, but they were decent parents. I won't get to see them anymore. And it must hurt to bury your kid, > said Sallia.

She sounded a bit bummed out about it. I wished I could give her a hug, but she didn't have a physical body for me to hug anymore. <Do you have any last wishes you want to convey to your parents? > I asked. <I could pretend that they were your last words during the battle. Things were rather chaotic after you died, so it would make sense that we couldn't convey your last wishes until now. Do you have anything you want to say? > <Just... tell them that I appreciated being their daughter, > said Sallia.

<I only got to spend six years with them, and for three and a half of those years, I was barely conscious. But I still loved getting to know them. > <Will do, > I said. I walked over to Sallia's parents, who no longer looked snippy and frustrated. Now they just looked numb.

"Umm... Sallia's parents," I said, trying not to sound awkward.

"What do you want?" asked Sallia's father. He didn't sound angry, or even upset anymore. He sounded like there was nothing left to look forward to.

"I know that it doesn't replace Sallia actually being here... but she said that she wanted to thank you for being her parents," I said. I felt awful as I said it. Was this what we had left behind in our last two lives? Had someone else had to break this news to our parents both times we had died? I felt nauseous at that thought. I didn't want to leave behind groups of grieving people every time we died. It felt... bad. Sallia's father looked like he didn't know how to feel for a moment. Then, he sighed.

"Miria... I'm sorry too. Both of us haven't behaved very well during parts of this journey. I know that life must have been hard for you and Felix, considering your mother's... issues," he said, glancing at my mother's dazed expression.

"I just... I wanted Sallia to be safe. And now she's..." he swallowed heavily, as if trying to banish a sob.

"I'm sure you did everything you could to keep her alive." I nodded, and a moment later, Sallia's father awkwardly patted me on the shoulder a few times.

"Run along. We'll be ready to leave by the time everyone else packs up." I hesitated, and then left Sallia's parents to their grieving. I didn't think intruding in their space right now was the best idea. We took half an hour to pack up our tents, before we started moving again. It took us about four hours to make our way out of the ruined mountains. There was one moment when I felt the ground shift beneath us, and I thought we were about to get caught in a landslide.

Right as I was getting my umbrella ready, the ground stabilized. We were very cautious about moving through that area afterwards. Luckily, we didn't encounter any other incidents before we exited the area. The next few days of travel were uneventful. We didn't run into any groups of soldiers, and since we had plenty of food and water, we avoided the only town we came across. We avoided everything that seemed dangerous. Finally, three days later, we came across a natural chokepoint.

In front of us lay a massive river with only a single bridge across it. It hugged the mountains on one side, and the ocean on the other side. On the other side of the bridge was a small fort, manned by several hundred soldiers. When we saw it, Old Mo grinned, and informed us that this was the border of Damilius. At long last, we had arrived at our new home.