Hot desert air washed over Angel. As uncomfortable as it was, he was thankful for the departure of the stale, dank innards of the buried god. He grimaced as the jagged wounds on his chest started to stitch themselves together. A broken rib bone shifted within him, eliciting a gasp of pain.

“Are you okay?” Vanessa asked, peering down at him.

“Fine,” Angel said through gritted teeth. “Help me up.”

“You need to lie down,” Vanessa said, shaking her head. “You’ll make the wound worse.”

“The wound will heal,” Angel snapped, his fingers scrabbling on the hard seat of the chopper. “I want to see the buried god.”

Vanessa pressed her lips together. She shook her head and gently looped her arms underneath Angel’s, slowly pulling the Seeker into a seated position. He repressed a curse and let his head flop to the side so he could look out the window.

The buried god was moving. The beast’s massive eyes had finally lit, two burning red beacons tearing through the desert like new suns. Pulses of energy rippled through its body, sending mold and rotted parts crashing to the desert floor beneath it.

“Where are we headed?” Lilian asked, peering over at Silver’s dashboard. “Is there enough power to get us away from this thing?”

“Not even slightly,” Silver replied. “We’ll make it a short way past the city at best, and that monstrosity is probably visible from leagues away. I don’t know about you, but as long as I can see it, I feel like it can see me.”

“How did it even get reactivated?” Vanessa asked. “Did that man manage to get the relic in your arm, Angel?”

“No,” Angel said. “Someone paid for my life, probably offered up their own Relic. I don’t know why. The man’s name was Reave, and he was part of some movement. The Reawakening. They were trying to bring back Old World magic as well.”

Angel’s head felt feverish. Sweat trickled down his forehead and the chopper swam in his vision. Vanessa put the back of her palm on his forehead and cursed. “You’re as hot as the desert.”

“How are you still alive, anyways?” Silver asked. “Hole that big and with the damage you’ve taken, you should be dead. You’re what, level thirty or something? There’s no way you’ve got enough magical energy in your body to survive that.”

“Took a page out of your book,” Angel said, a weak grin tugging at his lips.

Silver paused. He turned away from the controls to look back at Angel. The former bandit captain examined the Seeker for a moment. “You ate a core, did you?”

Angel nodded.

“Ah. That’ll be your body acclimating to the changes, then,” Silver said. “There are a few mild side effects from it. Better than getting stabbed and bleeding out, I suppose.”

“Like what?” Vanessa asked, sending a nervous glance back at the buried god behind them.

“Extreme fevers, vomiting, diarrhea, severe pain, and sometimes death,” Silver replied with a small shrug, turning back to the controls. He angled the chopper downwards towards a large swathe of the Barren that many of the other skyships had already landed on. “If anything starts coming out of either of his ends, point it out of the ship. I don’t want to deal with it.”

“Death?” Angel asked. His tongue felt thick and his eyelids were heavy.

“Only sometimes,” Silver said, shrugging. “You’ll live. Well, unless you die. Then you won’t.”

Angel opened his mouth to swear at Silver, but all that came out was an unintelligible groan. The copper ceiling of the chopper swam overhead and Angel blinked as the world went out of focus. His ears started to ring and the voices of his companions warped and twisted beyond recognition. Then, with an undignified groan, Angel passed out.

He would have liked the luxury of dim flashes of the following events, but everything that followed was a complete blank. From Vanessa’s recount, he spent the next week in a small coma.

Once the chopper landed, the buried god apparently had no interest in them. The great beast lumbered off, each step shaking the earth like it was coming apart at its very core. Large swathes of the city crumbled and fell from the earthquakes, and Reave had killed nearly two hundred innocent people in the few days that he’d had them.

The Magistrate of the town was amongst the casualties. The man never emerged from his room after the original signal telling everyone to retreat into the ‘bunker’ in the desert was sent out. Upon returning to the town, the Magistrate was found dead, slumped against his bed with his throat slit.

With Reave and his communication blocking technology gone, the remaining townsfolk were able to send out a call for aid through their telegraph. It took nearly three days for a small barge to arrive bearing both soldiers and supplies from Steam Fortress.

Amongst them was a doctor, who apparently assisted in nursing Angel back to health. He never got to meet the man, as both the soldiers and the doctor had vanished by the time he woke back up.

Angel sat on a rooftop, his legs swinging over the edge as he looked over the heavily damaged city. Vanessa and Silver sat behind him. The girl was fiddling with her scribe again, and Silver simply watched Angel with a placid expression.

“And he just left?” Angel asked. “I don’t even remember what he looked like.”

“That’s probably for the best,” Vanessa said. “He was pretty interested in your arm, but we wouldn’t let him look at it closely.”

“Thank you,” Angel said, running his hand along his stomach. There was a thin scar in the location where Reave had stabbed him. Even with the improved regenerative abilities from the core, his body had been unable to completely heal itself from the brutal wound.

He slid his eyepiece down and examined himself for the first time since waking up.

Name: Angel

Level: 64 [12%]

Status: Mostly Healthy

Information accuracy: 100%

Strength: 12

Intelligence: 23

Nimbleness: 26 [+6]

Toughness: 65 [+60]

Comparative Rating [Adjusted]: Threat

Weak point(s): Heart, Neck, Arteries… (100/100)

Element(s): Steel, Star Fragment

Magicore: None (68% Attunement)

Features: [1/3]

He’d nearly doubled his level. Silver was right – there was a lot of power that came from eating the core, but it just felt… wrong. The promise of magical strength was tempting, but Angel hadn’t survived this long as a Seeker by ignoring his premonitions.

“Silver, are there any other side effects I should know about from eating that core?”

“You lived,” Silver said. “Stop complaining. And the only side effects are the ones I already stated. They’ll happen every time you eat a core.”

“Every time?” Vanessa asked, her eyes widening. “And you do this often?”

“Can’t get far without taking some risks,” Silver replied with a shrug. “The stronger you are, the less effect eating cores has and the lower the chances of complications. Eat them enough and your body will get used to them. It’s barely an inconvenience now.”

“And I bet they barely help at all either,” Angel said. “Wait – let me guess. Your body also gets used to using cores, doesn’t it?”

Silver’s brow lowered and he let out a sigh, giving Angel a single nod.

“So when you kill monsters…”

“It isn’t nearly as effective,” Silver admitted. “Monster cores work just as well, though. It’s a different method.”

“Sure,” Angel said. “But I supposed it saved my life, so thank you. I’ll just think twice before trying it again.”

Silver shrugged in response. Angel ran a hand along his chin, where a beard was starting to grow out. It had been a while since he’d had a chance to shave.

“Vanessa, what do you know of the Reawakening? Have you ever read about them?”

“A little,” Vanessa said, pressing her lips together in thought. “Not much, though. I wasn’t all that interested in cults. I know they wanted to bring back Old World magic, and their members are considered highly dangerous. They’ve killed magistrates before.”

“And now they’ve done that again,” Angel said, frowning. “Something tells me they haven’t gotten any buried gods awakened before, though.”

“Not that I read about,” Vanessa said.

“You have to wonder, if they got this one active, do you think they got the others as well?” Silver asked. “We couldn’t have been unlucky enough to stumble across the only members of the Reawakening in the desert.”

“We’ll find out soon enough,” Angel said. “My job is just to get Vanessa to Molten Ridges. After we do that, I can worry about doing something to oppose them.”

“I thought you wanted to bring Old World magic back?” Silver asked.

“I do,” Angel replied. “But not like that. The innocent shouldn’t have to die for my goals. The Reawakening is wrong, and there’s no reason to bring the buried gods back. The legends say they were weapons of war, not creation. That’s what nearly destroyed magic in the first place – and that’s one thing that should have remained in the past.”

“Are you going to try to stop them?” Vanessa asked.

“You saw what happened when I fought Reave. I can’t stop them on my own, but I can try to find enough Old World magic to arm people against them,” Angel said with a scoff. He brushed his pants off and rose to his feet. “Don’t forget that you’re still in danger. The Magistrate of Salt Lake hasn’t given up his search for you, so we need to keep moving.”