Chapter 117: Death
The beating of a heart. The tingling fear of the thoughts clouding the mind. The dread and the uncertainty. The sole question of existence rippling through the Spiritum’s tides.
Valens heard them well in his mind as the dimensions unfolded before his eyes. Through the souls of these people taken by the fog, he witnessed their emotions as if his own. He saw mothers wailing for their lost children. Heard the fathers weeping for their loss. Little children stared senselessly around them, too shocked to even think of the things that had just happened.
And as Valens felt the living in their waking terror, he also heard the songs being cut short across the square. Hundreds dead, their frequencies slowly vanishing, their presences drawing back from the material world, souls disintegrating into the endless Spiritum like the rotten leaves of a broken tree.
He tried to reach them, but it was like grabbing air trying to stop them from passing off. Gone, they already were. Their songs would never return.
The discipline he was taught throughout his life kept his mind in control. The battlefield was just that, a place where some people died and some others survived. He ought to focus on the survivors. Make sure they remained alive, even if it was to live with a ghost of their past.
It was possible. Memories could break a man, but at least mending them would remain a possibility. The true work, though, would belong to them. Valens was just a Healer.
Right.
Just a Healer.
People rose from where they had been cast like a flock of mindless sheep. Bloody fingers got patched with waves of lifemana pouring into them. Valens didn’t have to touch them at all. The Hexsurge bent the dimensions and bound them to his core, where their rhythms resonated with his soul.
In the Spiritum, everyone was whole. Physical touch was not necessary.
He could even feel Nomad’s unique frequencies, the twisted rhythm of his being making little sense. Lenora’s presence shimmered like the stub of a candle bearing a winter storm, slowly dissipating as sharp winds hacked at her. The Captain was staring agape at him from below, stooping under the pressure with Mas and the disciples beside him. Garran had already passed out. Dain was trying hard to keep his mind from slipping.
Unlike the others, the true members of the Golden Church had lingering motes of sacred presence mixed into their souls. The more Valens peered into their beings, the more those motes reacted to his probes and forced their souls to their knees. It was as though something in Valens stirred a deep unease in them.