Charles collapsed as the rush of adrenaline left him shaky. “You all couldn’t have shown up at a better time if you tried.”

Charlotte nodded weakly. “Yeah, he just kept coming back time and again. I hate to say this, but if the other cities are going to be like this, we might be out of our depth here. There is no way we can fight things like him back-to-back at each place.”

“Don’t worry, it’s not. Dantanian merely placed a few of the harder and more driven fallen gods at the places he felt you would be likely to visit first,” Balor informed them while holding his neck.

“Who’s this?” Kira demanded somewhat rudely.

“This is Balor. He is the one who waylaid us, kind of…” Kate began before fully explaining everything that had happened to them.

When his history with the Tuatha Dé Danann was revealed, Kira only barely managed to hold back her glare. Meanwhile, Charlotte was soaking up the history lesson and comparing it to what she knew from the myths and legends.

“Well, I guess I don’t mind bringing you along to meet Brigit, the next time we head out that way if you want? I doubt their reception would be the most pleasant though.” Charles offered, after assessing that he meant them no harm.

Balor shook his head. “I have my own method of travel, similar to the little shadow-controller here.”

“Well, I’ll tell you this then. The last time we spoke with Brigit, they hadn’t spotted any Fomorians. If they do come back, they might not be the same as what you remember.” Charles counseled him, as he tended to his neck. “Would you like me to replace your missing eye as well, or just fix your neck?”

“Both, if you can. They are cursed wounds. There is no shame or loss of honor in saying you can’t fix wounds such as these.” The big man said.

The rest of the party left them in peace to begin the process of looting the bodies. The rest of the system may have been down, but that function still remained. Only now you had to carry everything that dropped, including the coins.

“Save Ahriman’s glaives for me, please!” Charles called out before turning his full attention to the behemoth before him. “Now, don’t move.”

His healing magic went to work, first examining the wounds before he even tried to start healing him. As always, he had more than enough mana to do what he wanted. At this point, the problem was his body, not his energy. After that fight, he was tired, and everything ached.

All he wanted to do was lie down and take a nap, except he knew they didn’t have time for that. There were more towns in need of their help. So many places that it was daunting.

Charles felt at the wound with his senses and saw how the curse had become one with the surrounding flesh. Under normal circumstances, he would be able to remove the curse and fix it without a problem. Right now, he needed to come up with a different solution.

“Charlotte, come here!” He called out. “Balor, this is going to hurt. I’m not in the best shape because of the fight with Ahriman, but it will still work.” He grinned wryly. “Though, I’ll leave it up to you as to whether or not you want me to heal your eye as well after this. Normally, it wouldn’t be this much of a production.”

“What’s up?” His sister asked, running over.

“I need one of your daggers.”

“Wait-“ Balor protested, seeing her toss it to him without question.

Charles used his cleaning spell on it and sliced open the large Famorian’s neck in one clean movement. “The problem with the curse is that it was linked to that section of your skin and neck muscle. Now, if we erase everything there,” He began cutting away a portion of Balor’s neck, healing him as he went, so he wouldn’t bleed out.

“The curse will still gradually come back. However, doing it this way will give me a little more time to deal with it instead of working against something fully integrated.” Even as he spoke, he could see the first trickles of the curse beginning to manifest itself again in the new skin.

The quick and judicious use of the ‘Purification’ spell was enough to eliminate those tendrils. He hadn’t had many chances to use the spell since getting it months before and was always impressed by how effective it was.

Nearly a minute after he had cut out a chunk of Balor’s throat, he was healed and ready to go. If with slightly more mental trauma than before.

“Is that how you would need to do my eye as well?” Balor demanded, taking several steps back from him.

Charles concentrated on himself and felt to see if he would be capable of overcharging the purifying spell. The answer was no, not in his current state. It was simply too much to ask for his body at the moment.

“Right now, yea, any other time and it would be a lot simpler, not to mention quicker.”

Balor took another step back and put a hand to his neck. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll just wait until later then. A man can get by with just one eye if he needs to. I’ve had lots of practice, after all. This injury isn’t nearly as grievous as my neck was.”

“If you’re sure.” Charles agreed with a shrug.

“I am!” Balor said instantly, taking yet another step back from him. “I appreciate the healing, but I should get going. I wouldn’t want Dantanian to see me around you or anything.” With that, a shroud of pure darkness engulfed him and he was gone.

“Did he seem a little jumpy there at the end? Like he couldn’t wait to get away from you.” Charlotte wondered.

Charles handed her back the dagger after cleaning it. “Yeah, you think it had anything to do with how I healed him?”

“Gee, I don’t know, maybe a little. Who would want to be healed in that way? Did you even remember to deaden his pain receptors first?”

Charles scratched the back of his head sheepishly. He knew he had been forgetting something.

“Ugh, you are a bad, bad man.” His sister lightly chided him.

He shrugged, feeling a little bad despite himself. “He’s the one who delayed Alli and the others. He only has himself to blame. Besides, I still healed him, didn’t I?”

“Sometimes, healing can be scarier than torture.” Charlotte sheathed the blade and stretched with a light groan. “Where to now? I’m not sure if we have enough energy to help more of these places as it is.”

“I think… that we were trying to save everyone again. We were trying to do too much.” He looked towards the town Kira had helped save. “I think that this town would have been fine if Ahriman hadn’t been here. It would have been a struggle, but they would have made it. We need to trust that will be true for the rest, that they were prepared. It’s the towns being attacked by the fallen gods that we need to worry about.”

Charles went to loot Ahriman’s corpse and found that all but one of the glaives disappeared when he looted the original body. At the same time, all the other corpses that hadn’t exploded vanished. It was slightly disappointing but was in line with what he had been expecting.

Everyone trickled over to him over the course of the next few minutes as they finished dragging the bodies of the monsters from their sections over to Kira. A makeshift bag held all the coins she had collected and little else. She was leaving everything else that was left for the town to do with as they pleased. The meat would keep them fed for a while, if nothing else.

“So,” She said, joining them at last. “Are we moving onto the next town?”

“No, I think we’re going back up to the station,” Charles said. “Unless Sierra says there is a need for us to stay down here.”

The blonde woman smiled as her eyes misted over, and she lost her sight. “No, there are other fallen gods at some of the nearby towns, but they won’t attack them unless we… you appear.”

“Sounds like going back up is definitely the right choice then.” He concentrated on the ‘Zero Door’ spell and opened a doorway home to the space station.

Everyone crowded through and they communally slumped tiredly onto the floor of the observatory.

“Is anyone injured?” Charles called out, wearily watching the screen that showed the Earth below.

“Just some bruising, and no, you can’t heal them. We saw how you healed Balor. You and your healing hands aren’t allowed near me or Beth!” Kate called, only half joking.

A loud meowing-growl came from beside her.

“Or Inara.”

They chuckled and confirmed that they had all managed to get away without any serious injuries.

“How do we know which town to go to next? There are so many of them now,” Kira muttered, coming up beside him.

“I don’t know. It might be better if we didn’t go to any of them. Sierra said the fallen gods at those nearby towns wouldn’t attack unless I appeared. That could be true for all of them as well.”

“Maybe,” She agreed somewhat doubtfully. “What about the towns inside the fallen god kingdoms? Do you think that applies to them as well?”

“I doubt it, but they also have other fallen gods who can now fight with the people if it becomes a problem.” Charles countered. “Ugh, I wish I knew how things were going with mom. If only we knew what his plan is, then we could have a chance of disrupting it.”

A doorway opened up behind him as he finished talking and his mother walked through.

“Did someone call for me?” Cassy asked cheerfully.