“Great! Well, Aarris and I really need a good vacation after all that. Before we head out, though, why don’t we talk about your rewards?”

That grabbed my attention. I hadn’t really been expecting anything. By the looks of it, Aarris hadn’t been expecting this turn either.

“I do not understand. They did not save us. In fact, they were working to help the person who wished to do the opposite of save you. What’s more, we likely would have been fine even if-”

“Ari, babe, read the room.” Hex tilted her head upwards at her colossal companion. In turn, Aarris looked about, her lips curled downwards as she thought. After a few beats, the light that made up her head seemed to brighten.

“Ah! We are being kind and making them feel good. Yes. A good idea.” She nodded forcefully. “They were hopelessly out of their league and have likely suffered large amounts of mental trauma. In addition, they have had their heads magically messed with and were just bled dry. I concur. It is a good act of charity. It is also some level of penance. I feel it is partially our responsibility for not stopping him.”

Both Hex and I winced, although I sensed it was for different reasons.

I mean. Kind of harsh. Not… not really wrong? But kind of harsh. If nothing else, her words resonated with some of my own thoughts on the matter, though I was doing my best not to dwell on that.

In this case, I was glad that no one else was up to hear her, though.

Hex was fast to move things along. “Well. Let’s get to it, then, shall we? Tess first.”

The fact that this day was ending with me getting some kind of pity reward from a pair of gods was more than a bit surreal, but that kind of described my life these days. In the end, it was kind of a “Sure, why not?” type thing.

She studied me before quickly coming to a decision. “Dibs! I call Tess’s gift.” Before I could even process that, she waved her hands, and two crystals appeared in the air in front of her. The first was a pleasant translucent purple, and while I didn’t know what it was, it looked like the type of thing that could conceivably make a good gift.

The second, however, was dark and susserating with purple specks floating within and smoke billowing off of it. It was not the sort of thing I thought I wanted. I opened my mouth at the same time as I started to focus on it with God’s Eye, but the two crystals suddenly shot towards me. They made a beeline for my spatial pouch, both of them disappearing within its folds faster than I could intercept.

“Wha-”

“I will take this one, then. He appears to be dead.” Aarris pointed down towards the charred form of Rock, and I felt my words die on my tongue. As much as I wanted to know what my “gift” was, some things were more important.

“Um. Is that… Fixable? Can you fix death?” Perhaps it was a lack of imagination — by this point, I should have internalized the fact that we were in a world with magic — but the idea that Rock’s death might not be permanent wasn’t something I’d even considered.

“Under normal circumstances, no. True resurrection is largely a myth. In this case, however, it is only his body which has died. His soul, which would generally dissipate, however, is trapped in the ritual.”

Right. Ephesis had said something about the ritual consuming every part of someone. Not that I’d actually known that souls were real, but of course they were. We were in a world with literal gods, after all.

Aarris held her hand above one of the rings in the spell diagram. She then brought her hand closer to her face, intently staring at… nothing.

“Ah. I have forgotten that you do not possess soul sight. Here. Let me create an analogous illusion for you.” A wispy orb flickered into existence in her palm, looking, for lack of a better term, off. It seemed vaguely wilted, in a way, with cracks running through it and a few spots of red speckled across its surface.

Having just learned that souls existed, I did not count myself as an expert. Still, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that Rock’s soul wasn’t doing too well.

“I will now repair him,” she intoned. Perhaps forgetting that I had very human corneas that I enjoyed, Aarris let loose the equivalent of a flashbang without warning.

I cursed, and Aarriss offered me a muffled apology and a healing spell to fix me up.

When my sight returned to me, the soul looked entirely different. Gone were the cracks and the wilting.

Still a little red though. Wonder if that’s just the default state?

Aarriss stared at it long and hard, squinting. “Hmm. It is probably fine.” With that raving review, she tossed the soul back into the husk of Rock’s body and began channeling mana to him.

As if a snake, shedding his skin, Rock’s body practically molted, with scales of blackened flesh cracking off and falling all around him. It didn’t end there, either. When at last he was covered in healthy skin once more, it was changed: Thin lines of radiance ran through him, as if he were a cracked pottery piece wrapped around a golden sun.

It reminded me of Hartha, in a way. Her newly blackened veins gave her an entirely different look, but the overall effect was somewhat similar if inverted.

“Odd. I did not expect the light mana to affect his soul and body so deeply.” She shrugged. “So be it. He lives.”

And he did! Admittedly, he was bald. And, well, naked. But unmistakably, his chest started to rise and fall. I wasn’t sure how he’d feel about the lines on his skin, but if anything, it would be a good story to tell at parties.

“A perfect gift,” Hex noted. “Not something I could have done. Gimme a good mind over a soul any day of the week. Never got the feel for ‘em.”

Before the two had a chance to move on, a horrible thought crossed my mind. “All that soul stuff… Is Ephesis not dead yet? What happened to his soul?” He was, after all, sucked into the ritual just like Rock was.

Aarris frowned before holding her hand above the ritual once more. This time, I could see as a number of glowing, tattered scraps collected into her hand.

“It was collected by the ritual, but I am afraid that I damaged his soul quite badly through the connection. Perhaps with time it could be repaired, but…”

She crushed her hand into a fist, smothering the iridescent scraps.

“It is time for this child to rest now…” When she opened her hand, nothing visible remained.

A tension escaped me that I didn’t even know I was holding. Ephesis wouldn’t be turning into some weird fantasy ghost or getting an escape-death-free card with some esoteric resurrection spell. Truly well and gone.

And good riddance.

“Moving on!” Hex shouted. She turned to where Jason lay in the crater his body had formed. “Anything you want, fella?”

A voice called out from the crater. “You have any cool rocks?”

What? “Jason! How long have you been awake?”

He pulled himself from the ground and casually shrugged. “Like, a minute or two. Seemed like you were all having a moment.”

I gaped at the man while Aarris and Hex looked to one another. They seemed to be having some sort of mental conversation, only bothering to vocalize bits and pieces.

“We could do something like that, right?” Hex called out.

“I believe so,” Aarris agreed. “It is not my area of expertise. I am under the impression that the system will assist us if we count it as a blessing, however. I have not used up any of my boons in a long time.”

Without explaining themselves, the two approached one another before joining hands. A small pouch appeared between them, and a stream of mana started flowing from their hands into the pouch.

When at last the process was done, the bag looked… well, pretty normal actually.

Hex lobbed the pouch over to Jason while also walking over to the pile of obsidian that Rock and Jason had used to attack Ephesis earlier. She chose a piece seemingly at random, and another flash of mana escaped her hands. The rock appeared to drink her mana greedily, somehow darkening even past its already stygian black.

For her part, what looked like a small nugget of gold materialized in front of Aarris. She repeated a similar process to Hex’s, channeling mana into it. Both of them then extended the rocks to Jason, who accepted them with a goofy grin. Without hesitating, he threw them into his new pouch.

Too curious not to look, I focused on the bag.

Pouch That Holds Divine Rocks

This pouch stores rocks which are filled with a spark of divinity. Each rock comes with its own unique bonus. Collect them all for fun rewards!

So. Jason had just gotten… a rock collection?

Well, something to keep him busy, I guess. Where is he going to find other rocks blessed by gods though? Seemed like a weirdly specific thing to find lying around, but perhaps he’d surprise me. He certainly had done so before.

“Thank you! I love it! You two and I are friends now.” He gave a solid head nod to each and then started smiling like he’d won the lottery.

Hex and Aarris, however, were starting to look a bit worse for wear. Hex certainly hid it better than her companion, but the signs were clear.

I hadn’t really considered it, but for all that the two were supposed to be gods, they had been trapped and sapped of their power. Even if they’d only given gifts to three of us, they must have been running on empty.

Likely ready to be done with it all, the two wearily turned their gazes over to Cal and Hartha. Once again, they seemed to hold a half-spoken, half mental conversation.

“That one does light magic.” Aarris gestured over to Cal.

“The other one filled herself up with my mana.” She pointed to where Hartha lay, the black veins in her body standing out prominently.

Then, seeming to come to some sort of conclusion, they nodded at one another.

“Could be fun,” Hex admitted. She turned my way this time. “So. We’re just gonna take them. Don’t worry too much. We’ll bring them back eventually. Probably.”

No sooner did she say that than all four of them simply disappeared, leaving only me, Rock, and Jason left.

What-

As quickly as she’d vanished, Hexaura suddenly reappeared. “Oh! I forgot! I undid the stasis spell on the kexids. Say hi to them for me! And tell them I’m on vacation! Have fun!”

With that, she blinked out once again.

I stood there for a time, not comprehending what had just happened.

Sorry. What am I going to tell the shadows and Elphaea about Hartha? Hell, what am I supposed to tell the king about his daughter?

Jason, always happy to stand in comfortable silence, simply left me there to bask in my incredulity.

I stayed like that for some time, in fact. I might have kept on like that for a good while more, too, if not for a commotion that snapped me out of it.

A flurry of curses erupted, rapidly expanding my knowledge of this world’s swear words. As it died down, the words were replaced with a trio of simple questions.

“What just happened, why am I glowing, and for the love of all that’s good in the world, why am I naked?”