Despite the Goddesses stabilizing Alicia, Jack couldn't shake the growing wrongness he felt about the girl's situation. His anxiety had led to him not slowing down his support to her at all, in fact, he'd pushing his aura as hard as he could for the past hour and a half. He kept searching and listening for hints about what was wrong with her, with growing frustration, even mentally yelling at her.

When the boy's temper subsided, all that remained was worry, exhaustion and determination. He turned to look at the girl strapped to his back for a second, as if acknowledging her. I'll get an answer from you, he thought. One way or another.

Jack took a few sharp breaths as if he were preparing to jump off a cliff. The boy carefully pushed at their soul bond to reach deeper into Alicia's soul. The boy clenched his teeth, shuddering from the effort.

As the minutes passed, the Jack barely noticed made any progress. He kept pushing, trying to adapt to the spiritual malaise. His continuous attempts to advance the bond earned himself a hard check from reality, in the form of an accompanying physical strain. The boy felt sore in parts of his body he didn't even know he could work out. He sensed the muscles between his ribs heat up and turn brittle, his knuckles popped painfully with each movement of his hands and a slight dizziness accompanied every tilt of his head. Jack still didn't stop working on his bond or supporting Alicia.

The Goddesses noticed the added strain on the boy. Lisaseron moving towards him, leaving Syraviel to continue creating their escape route. Lisaseron immediately went to check Alicia first, fearing the girl's condition had progressed enough that it was impacting Jack. She took a single look and let out a sigh of relief. Her brow furrowed once more as she continued looking at the nearly slumped over Jack. Lisaseron waved Diana over, demonstrating for her to cross their arms and hold the pair up.

Jack could barely sit straight even with Diana and Lisaseron supporting him. His whole body felt cold but the boy himself was still covered in sweat. He supported Alicia with a single-minded relentlessness, giving her as much aura as he could and pushing their soul bond further while completely ignoring his ragged condition. He still couldn't feel any change in Alicia's condition since the Goddesses stabilized her but his alarm had only grown since then. He felt they were like cyclists on a tight rope- even though things seemed to be moving smoothly, disaster was only one slip away.

The Will To Resist Lvl 5 → The Will To Resist Lvl 6

Braced Soul Lvl 5 → Braced Soul Lvl 6

Soul Perception Lvl 10 → Soul Perception Lvl 11

Lisaseron wiped the boy's glistening brow, sending an impatient look over to the grass growing Syraviel. Syraviel held five fingers out to Lisaseron, who nodded grumpily.

'Why is Jack like this? Alicia isn't that bad, right?' Diana wrote on Lisaseron.

'I suspect she is. Jack has the beginning's of a true healer's instinct and the feedback of a Heartwoven bond. He is over-exerting himself to provide more support and something else, I cannot exactly tell, but I assume it relates to their soul bond. If he is this worried, we should be worried. With our current situation and strength, I would trust his take on Alicia's condition over mine or Shadow's.'

'They won't die, right?'

'Jack is still fine. Alicia will eventually recover with focused treatment from Jack and Shadow. But that will not happen in the forest ahead. While the aura of the Crucifix pines will mask our movement and magic, they are inherently, if only moderately, damaging to the soul. As before, we must still travel further afield.'

After what seemed like an age, Syraviel signaled she was ready.

'Come, Jack. We must continue on.' Lisaseron wrote on the boy.

The boy didn't respond. Diana shook Jack's shoulder. Jack slowly turned his head, mindfully keeping it as straight as possible.

'Go?' he mouthed.

He struggled back into a crawling position, his movements resembling a man fifty years older with arthritis and early onset dementia, as if he forgot how his limbs worked and what it was like to move them without pain.

Jack's hands and legs already shook just holding Alicia on his back. He moved one limb at a time, slowly heading towards the massive row of grass cover Syraviel created. Lisaseron and Diana struggled to reinforce the wobbling boy, managing to keep him from collapsing mid-crawl, but neither of them possessed the leverage or physicality to help Jack move much quicker.

The treeline wasn't far away but Jack's halting pace turned it into a two hour long slog, complete with several instances of him almost passing out and requiring the assistance of Diana and both Goddesses to get him up and moving again.

Pain Resistance Lvl 9 → Pain Resistance Lvl 10

Jack could barely see straight, each shadow blending into the next one in the depths of the night. But even though the boy couldn't sense any progress in his crawling, his soul bond was a different story. A sound like shearing metal and twisting tree trunks came from his soul bond with as much clarity and volume as if it were muffled by a a slab of drywall and three panes of glass.

The boy pushed the bond further but felt he'd reached the absolute farthest he could go for now. He let out a sigh, hoping it was enough.

“Nice ambiance you got here,” Jack thought. “Suits you.”

When he didn't get a response, he frowned.

“So what's the plan, sweetheart? You tired of fighting? You ready to roll over and die?”

The distorted sound pulsed in intensity, causing a slight prick of pain in his soul. He smiled.

“There she is. That's the Alicia I know, a screeching force of nature and spite. Alicia wouldn't let a little something like a broken soul bother her.”

Another softer pulse of sound reached him. Jack grimaced, a knot of anger swelling in his throat.

“So what if it's bad? So what if it's worse than bad? Why would I care about what you say the odds are? You're not my bookie. You think I'm reaching out because I care about your fucking feelings? I came here to fight for my life not yours. I asked if you wanted to fight, not if I thought you were going to live.”

Jack felt the crushing sound grow more violent and louder as if it were an approaching tornado. It would have to be enough, he thought. If she put in effort to communicate with him, they could figure out how bad things were, make a plan with the Goddesses and go from there.

As he made his way forward, he felt a new pressure on his soul- different from the growing maelstrom stirring within Alicia- as if a part of his soul was being pulled while another part was being pinned down.

Jack moved quicker, hoping the soul pressure would decrease but instead it grew. One of the boy's arms gave out under him and he landed on his chest with a groan.

“Little bit further, Jack. We're almost there,” Syraviel said.

“W-we're talking now?” Jack panted.

“Of course we can. We're not the only ones talking.” Syraviel said. “Even if the golems could pick up the barest traces of our speech at this range through the tree cover, they wouldn't think much of it.”

The boy shook his head, dazed. He wondered who was talking. He listened more closely as he plodded forward, hearing an undercurrent of whispers blending into the cool night breeze. Goosebumps raised over his arms.

“What is... this place, haunted?” Jack asked.

“Perhaps. Crucifix Pines are cultivated by imbuing fragments of well tormented souls into mature pines touched with dreadrot,” Lisaseron said. “Would you consider that haunted?”

Jack shook his head, blearily.

“Crazy... What the fuck... is wrong.. with these people? Invading... torturing souls...”

“Quite a lot,”Lisaseron said. “The Unceasing are a group of rotten lowlifes characterized by hunger for power, dominance and cruelty. ”

“They're a rotten bunch eternal class individuals with legions of mass produced, enslaved or similarly sinister soldiers. They band together for protection against being hunted down but their actual motivations are usually quite scattered and selfish. They're really just a bunch of villainous outcasts because nobody wants a depraved villain in their backyard.”

“Nobody but the Unceasing Conqueror.” Lisaseron said. “To be a rotten king, you must either bewitch the good and gracious or rule over those as rotten as yourself.”

Jack nodded, feeling as if his head was filled with foam. After a few seconds, he managed to process the words Lisaseron said.

“Jeez...” he panted. “What a... bunch of-”

Jack's mouth kept moving, with sound coming out but he had no idea what he'd just said- the buzzing in his ears was too loud. His vision went blurry for a second. Exhaustion swept over the boy, with the sound of shattering rock and glass was the last thing he heard.

**

“Hey!” Alicia thought to Jack. “What the hell are you doing?”

Alicia felt her support from Jack's aura cut off. She swore under her breath when all she could feel was a tangle of garbled, fever dream sensation coming from him. She couldn't believe the boy had the audacity to talk to her like he did and then stop supporting her. She was relying on his regeneration to support her new idea.

As she been fighting, she'd noticed that her blades held up against the powerful greatsword better than the walls of her Innate. However, she'd only just realized that she could collect the sword shards littering the ground to form a protective screen over the holes in her soul. Even though her Innate now looked like an awkward hybridization of medieval and guerrilla battlefield with the countless swords and holes full of sharp metal shards, it had given her a way forward. Just like her aura, the greatsword enjoyed targeting the holes and weaknesses in her soul, so anything she could do to shore up her weaknesses helped.

Her supply of swords dwindled to a couple dozen. The girl bit her lip.

“Wake up!” she thought. “Seriously! You didn't come to this world to be a deadbeat just like on Earth, right?”

Alicia groaned as he remained unresponsive. The soul damage and our soul-bond must be affecting my mind too much, she thought. She didn't know what had possessed her to think of Jack as reliable, even if he'd been better lately. For her to be counting on him like she had been, she could feel she was on a slippery slope, especially with his comforting aura and the bond turning anger to arousal.

She smiled. Rather than think of Jack's disappearance as a failure, this was a chance to increase the distance between them. Her smile quickly fell as the girl looked at the nearly barren sword racks in her Innate. She finished putting the few broken sword shards remaining in the holes in her Innate with her swordswoman between her exchanges with the giant greatsword, looking around her tattered soul with a sigh.

“I didn't want to try this yet. But it seems like it's all I've got left.”

She changed her swordswoman's stance into a serene middle guard, her aura accumulating painfully over her swordswoman and herself.

“I've never been afraid of a swordfight in my life,” Alicia said. “So what, if you've got special destructive powers? You don't think I've just been sitting here without learning a thing, do you? You may be better than me, but you're not even close to perfect.”

*Brushes spiky hair to the side. "Kept you waiting, huh?"

Will try to make the Wednesday chapter up sometime in early march. This coming Wednesday's chapter might also be delayed to Thursday, but I think I can make it this time.

 I've been trying to fit my writing in past midnight most days, but there are a lot of pivotal points coming fast that require more creative input than I can muster at those hours, so I've been dragging ass. Lots of stuff going on, sorry! If you want to know about it or listen to me vent, you can read below. 

Personal Update: It's been an absolute dumpster fire at work. This is the third time I've done this event with this organization and we've improved each time so I expected it to be better this go-around. I cannot tell you how absolutely naive that thinking was. Any semblance of order or cohesion has been thrown out the window this time. The completely erratic schedule has been ruining my workflow and not helping is the fact that just during the weekdays I've been last minute tasked three times for random things by people who aren't even in the same department as me. It's ridiculous. Also, overtime has been strictly enforced more than before, with people leaving at normal hours being called out by the big lady herself. Even  yesterday, I worked nearly a full day. And today, I was called in to transport, rearrange, and re-inventory over 250 items  that were misplaced because of someone else's clerical error. Thank goodness I'm out of this place come the end of the month.

/end rant

As always, let me know if you see any errors or inconsistencies. If you have any ideas or adjustments you'd like to see, feel free to share and get my creative juices going! Thanks for your support!