Chapter 8: The importance of decay and rot
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They walked through the dungeon silently. Each of them were lost in their own thoughts. The day had given them plenty to think about and it wasn't even lunchtime yet. 

"What makes a boy? What makes a girl? Does it even matter? I'm me. Ugh, I don't get it." Zephyra thought blithely to herself. 

Karen walked around in a daze, "I just need to think about Princess Love. Yup. Nothing else matters right now. No need to question anything else. No need to fight with Ted. No need to think about consequences. Just pure, unadulterated hand holding between two fictional characters…"

Ted mostly made a few prayers to the gods. At least, they shouldn't think he was gross. He might even be able to convince them to change Zephyra's mind. He was silent in his prayers, thank the gods, or else he would have truly been seen as gross.

 Otherwise, he was uncharacteristically quiet.

As for Phil, he mostly went over the previous battle in his head. He recognized a few flaws in his stance and their teamwork. And, he desperately came up with a few plans to cover their shortcomings. He was particularly careful planning around a certain party member whose role began with necro- and ended with a -mancer. 

"They're dangerous. Zephyra could kill us. Then, resurrect us. Kill us again."

His conscience played the devil's advocate. "But, Zephyra saved Ted. I don't know how she did it. But, she can heal. She'll keep us safe. She's our friend."

"We just met her. We know nothing. Necromancy is forbidden by the church. It'll get us killed. It's dangerous."

The mental battle waged and he found himself asking, "Zephyra, how did you heal us?"

"Huh?" Zephyra looked up, a bit dazed and shaken from her thoughts. "Oh. I drain out necrotic energy from the body."

"And, that heals us?" Phil asked, still a bit confused.

"Well, kinda?" Zephyra answered. "Um, hold on a moment, I explain things better with my glasses."

"Your… glasses." Phil asked in disbelief. He knew that glasses existed. He just didn't understand how they could help anyone think better.

Zephyra pulled out a delicate pair of horn rimmed glasses and placed them over her eyes. Ted tried to drool inconspicuously. "Glasses look great on her."

"Well, every living thing has positive life mana and negative necrotic mana. Which is why we grow, age and die."

Karen noticed that it looked as if Zephyra was reading something off of her glasses.

Phil nodded in understanding, "I'm with you so far."

"Well, when I remove and drain the necrotic energy, it'll leave behind the positive life energy. Which causes a lot of physical regeneration."

Ted jumped into the conversation excitedly,"Wait. If we drained our necrotic mana doesn't that mean that we could live forever?"

"I-i don't know about forever. But, a lot longer at least."

"Oh, then you should definitely drain all of my necrotic mana." He grinned like a lion. "Make me into an immortal, Zeph! I'd love to live forever."

"No. Denied" Zephyra immediately shot him down. "Also, my name is Zephyra. Not Zeph."

"What? Why?" He asked crestfallen. "I'd make a great immortal.

"They don't want a pain in the ass for the rest of eternity." Karen grumbled underneath her breath. 

"Well… why do you think necrotic mana exists?" Zephyra asked instead. 

"The church has said that it's because humanity has fallen from the grace of Terras." Phil answered immediately. He still remembered the lessons that the priest had taught after his mother had  forcefully brought him to the temple for their lessons.

 "It has brought death, destruction and evil into the world. As well as opening up Terras to attack from other world's."

Zephyra gave him a blank look and sighed. "Um, let me rephrase. What do you think would happen, if we were filled with life energy and nothing decayed?"

"Uh, we would live forever?" Ted replied.

"No. Karen?"

"The church would hunt us down?" Karen ventured.

"Probably true. But, not what I'm trying to say. Phil?"

"World peace." He muttered sarcastically.

Zephyra sighed again. "It's like Daddy said. They really don't know anything."

"The energy wouldn't be regulated and we'd slowly turn into horrible living cancerous lumps." She supplied the answer. They wouldn't have guessed it. 

Ted swallowed hard, "I-I'm not going to turn into a cancerous person, am I?"

"No. You're safe. I balanced out the necrotic energy after you had regenerated." Zephyra quickly calmed him, and she placed her glasses back into her satchel. "The necrotic energy would've balanced out naturally anyway. It's just a really bad idea to drain all of the necrotic energy from your body over a long period of time."

"Oh." Ted didn't have much to say after that revelation and went back to sulking. 

"Even if the positive energy wouldn't hurt you, necrotic energy is incredibly dangerous and difficult to control. I have to be really careful to not let it touch anything. Or, it'll cause it to wither and decay." Zephyra stared ahead quietly and whispered. "But, it's the only way that I can heal and help people."

Phil quietly thought to himself. "See? Dangerous."

Not long after their little chat, they arrived at the daunting twin doors to the boss room.

"Tah-dah!", Ted announced joylessly. His voice completely deadpanned. "The boss room, hurray."

"Alright. We should get ready to go in." Zephyra stated. She addressed Phil and announced. "I'm not going to be giving instructions this time. And will only step in, if I must. We aren't in any life threatening danger. I need to see how you fought without me."

Ted and Karen could've sworn that they heard a pin drop at the entrance to the dungeon.

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