Chapter 594: Smoke, no mirrors
It took ages to get us all settled. We were going to have a reunion right now, no matter the conditions. It was just a little difficult to find a spot that could accommodate all of us, then we needed to run and let Raccoon and Titania know what was going on, and…
It took longer to dispose of the turtle’s body and work through the meeting logistics than it had to fight the monster in the first place! Iona made a small offering to her patron goddesses, kneeling down with the chunk of Arcanite she’d peeled off. The rest we dumped into the bay, the safest place to leave it for eight years. We had no way of easily separating the conjured material from the real. We didn’t have the Lantern of Truth, and while we could tell what was real and what was conjured - real Arcanite glowed when recharged with mana via a wizardry spell, conjured crystals were inert - separating them was practically impossible. The plan was to let the conjured material decay away, then sift through the remains to grab what was real. The five of us were huddled together near Fenrir’s old - he clearly wanted it to be his again - lair, the mighty wyvern keeping the weather off us with a flex of his skills. He was curled around us, providing another layer to help keep the wind off our backs.
Speaking of the turtle - no levels at all. None from Auri, none from a skill, nothing. It was pretty disappointing, but I supposed at the end of the day it was really Iona and Fenrir’s show. Auri hadn’t managed to burn anything substantial, I hadn’t needed to heal anyone in the fight and it wasn’t like I’d been casting gigantic spells all over the place. A little frustrating in many ways, but I got why.
Auri was in the middle, surrounded by hot water bottles that I kept [Teleporting] near her to warm up, then rotating them back to me. Iona glanced up at the sky before taking her helmet off, wiping the rain and sweat off her face.
Then there was Nina.
She was a frequent visitor, and I’d watched her grow up from a little kid to the woman she was now. If my eyes didn’t deceive me, she was physically older than Iona, which broke my heart a little. Hopefully she’d accept Immortality, and I wouldn’t need to start losing others, like so many other Immortals did.
People often spoke of the curse of Immortality, beyond the one White Dove bestowed. Not for Immortals born to it, but mortals who had managed to ride the System, who had reached out and seized it for themselves. Too often, it was whispered, they were damned to watch their loved ones grow older and die, generation after generation passing, mourning the whole way.
I was lucky enough to dodge that concern with my skill… but even without that, I felt it was a load of hogwash. It smacked of sour grapes.
We were all damned to watch the people we loved grow old and die. Either we went early, the first member of the group at the funeral, and had our lives cut short, or we went the distance, attended dozens of funerals, and had nearly nobody to attend our own.