The last day. After a month of fighting and watching people die, it was almost over, at least as over as it was going to get. She’d still be fighting for the next year, the legions that had gotten through the gates and beyond their combat forces would be sure of that, and then there’d still be the third wave to worry about after with all of the horrors it would bring, but those were both future problems. After dealing with that day and whatever last dregs would get through before the gate closed, it would be relatively peaceful in comparison to the hell the last weeks had been.

A hell she wasn’t ready to escape though. Since it’d begun she’d been too busy to think, any downtime was going to change that, forcing herself to confront things she wasn’t prepared to handle. No, it would be better to avoid that for as long as possible, even if that meant working herself to death in hospitals across the world if it would keep her from thinking about what she’d lost.

But not then. Then the gate was still open and she had targets to unleash her aggression on, with demons continuing to die en masse to her power as she continued the trend of gathering and swallowing them in the earth below while the hours passed.

And like that, before she’d noticed, the gate had finally closed, a cheer among the forces signaling it as if that was really the end; as if they weren’t going to have to keep going from there. Even then they still had to fight, to kill the last ones that made it through, but to the people who’d been serving in each place for that hellish month it had felt like a release, telling them they’d be close to rest, at least in comparison to what they’d gone through.

For Thera though, despite having no reason to think otherwise her eyes couldn’t help but subconsciously scan the final crowd of monsters, hoping for someone to show up despite the lack of anything telling her he’d made it through, getting nothing in the end as she renewed her slaughter for what little comfort it would bring.

Once that field was as empty as it was going to get with nothing left but corpses from the ones that couldn’t get away in time, it was back to the hospital for her from there where her next battle began, fighting off death itself for the thousands that were pouring in across hours of time, the building being flooded with people as Thera kept her various spells up to help ease the burden on others as she and the other healers, along with various life and light spirits, worked constantly to save all of the lives they could.

Healing wounds, reattaching or regrowing limbs depending on the availability of the original flesh, and pulling people back from the edge of death, Thera couldn’t count how many people she’d saved since she first started working there but it was never going to be enough. There was always going to be more to do and things were going to be staying that way for a long time to come. The work wasn’t going to end but that suited her fine. It was a distraction when she needed it and as the problem slowly spread out, more and more it would become something for the healers of the cities and towns and villages not on the gate network to handle as their adventurers or even just regular citizens were forced to deal with whatever came their way.

That’s just life from here on out.

It was everyone's problem, regardless of how ready anyone was, everyone was going to have to deal with it. All she could do was keep working, only stopping when she felt a sudden change, something subtle that she didn’t immediately understand until it hit her all at once. She was feeling the effects of bind again.

She almost cried in relief then and there, holding it back out of some small consideration for the patients and how bad it would look for their healer to have a breakdown while treating them. Ben was alive, and from the feeling of her skill, somewhere upwards.

At least to her, that implied he had to still be off-world, he hadn’t randomly appeared on a different floor of the hospital, but that didn’t matter. Either because he had the skill deactivated for some reason or because he had been at a distance too far for it and was now somehow closer, it told her that she wasn’t deluding herself and left her with a burst of energy that shook off the month of misery, letting her comfortably get back to work again as more time passed, until once more getting a change. The direction the skill pointed her to had moved, and significantly too.Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

There were a few options that pointed to. She knew the demons had some sort of gate network of their own, Ben could have gone from one planet to another and she was just feeling the warp, but there was another option. He could have been back on-world.

Instantly she was moving, having finished up the person she was working on and telling the hospital’s director that she had to go and would be back later before running off to the gate, not noticing that the spirits around her had reacted too. She couldn’t, she had tunnel vision as she went through the gate network, trying to feel which one picked at her skill the most while she ran through the crowds filling it and finding an area she was more than familiar with as she ran through to Anailia, with her skill directed her to her family home.

It was somewhere she could absolutely see Ben going to for any number of reasons and in her eagerness to get there even a second faster lifted herself from the ground with her power and flew through the air, letting raw mana shoot her there as she barely registered the strange sight of the new structure beside the building, instead focusing on the feeling of her skill as it led her to the ground, letting her see a very bloody Ben resting in her aunt’s arms.

“Ben!” She practically screamed, letting herself drop from the sky as she scrambled over to him as he fought past any pain he was under to just slightly lift himself up and give her a smile.

“Sorry I’m a little late.”

She wanted nothing more than to grab him tight but stopped herself to instead give what help she could, looking at him through her mana examination and finding his body to be an absolute mess with injuries she couldn’t imagine where possible to gain under normal circumstances and a brain being held together by her aunt’s magic alone. His body was practically being reconstructed by Lux and Thera did everything she could to help, keeping quiet till he was in a more manageable state until finally comfortable enough that he wouldn’t die to speak up.

“What happened?”

“Ah, it’s a long story,” He groaned. “Are we waiting for the last couple to show up before I tell it?”

“The last couple?”

It was only when he said it that she realized it wasn’t just the three of them there. She’d been so focused on him that she hadn’t noticed something equally significant in the form of seven of the world’s great spirits.

Wait, seven?

The world had eight, even if it was unusual for them to all be gathered in one place like that; it did happen from time to time, but that wasn’t what had her questioning herself. No, the issue was that when she looked around, every fiber of her being told her one was a great spirit despite the fact she didn’t recognize them, with the rest of her gathered family waiting in silence for an explanation, all of them seeming to be grappling with whatever was there with them.

It was only once the last two arrived, both her aunt Vividus and her uncle Nox, the great death spirit, both looking unnaturally shocked, that they got any sort of answer as Ben spoke up.

“Okay, so long story short, while I was busy being kept as a trophy by one of the demon gods I found this guy’s… I don’t actually know their name. We were in a bit of a rush, I didn’t ask, sorry.”

“They don't have a name,” Her father explained, his eyes still locked on the one Ben had found. “We never used them on our old world, we didn’t need to. We only picked ones for ourselves after getting more involved with mortals for convenience, but… Wait, Ben? What do you mean by kept as a trophy?”

“Uh, first off, did any of you know I was kidnapped and dragged through the gate?”

Abrus’s expression was enough of an answer but Thera spoke for him.

“I don’t know if anyone really knows that happened to you. I mean, I knew and a few others saw but I think anyone else who witnessed it probably assumed you were dead all things considered and there hasn’t been time to report casualties. And on that topic, Vividus, stop staring at whoever that is and help Ben already!”

Even if she didn’t like her aunt, she was more than willing to take advantage of her when she was right there and Ben’s injuries managed to be bad enough that even her efforts combined with Lux’s weren’t making a fast enough difference to satisfy her and the great life spirit didn’t argue, acting strangely obedient as she knelt down to help heal him which more than anything else drove home the significance of whatever Ben had done to get her in that state, the answer coming as he spoke next.

“Okay, so a lot happened but for starters, Thera, meet your newly discovered family member, the great space spirit.”