Story of Kings

Chapter 24

Amelia let out a yawn, one of the few ways there was to roughly know how much time had passed. It was different from soul to soul, but time often passed differently when one was within their, or another's, sanctuary. In Kane's, time seemed to pass much faster within, allowing her to get hours of work done in a fraction of the time on the outside. However, her physical body was still outside so while she may mentally be exhausted her physical exhaustion was only just starting. Still being connected, her body was sending signals to her consciousness within Kane's sanctuary, prompting her to yawn, feel various aches and pains, know when someone was moving or otherwise touching her, or know when she had to use the restroom. She was most thankful she didn't have to use the restroom, there was no way to go without wetting herself in the real world.

"You know, it would be a great help if you were conscious and could help me with this," Amelia said to Kane's unconscious form, sitting right in front of him with a small pile of soul shards. "No one would know your soul better than you."

In the past, those who were still conscious were able to share what they were feeling as Amelia healed their soul, allowing her to know where to direct her efforts and with injuries like this, they helped her to know what soul shards were meant to be joined together and how well she fused them back together. Without them, as amazing as her ability to heal a soul was, it did not grant her the ability to enter a person's core, she couldn't see their memories or communicate with them while they were fully unconscious. That meant she was stuck trying to figure Kane's soul out like a giant puzzle, a really giant puzzle, and her magic offered only a little help in knowing what soul shards she needed. While she was channeling her healing magic through a soul shard, the ones that had fractured off from it lit up, resonating with the link that was still between them. That allowed her to collect the right pieces in the right order to heal them together, but from there it was still up to her to figure out how they were supposed to be positioned together so they would layer correctly atop one another.

Currently, Amelia was shifting different soul shards around the core of his power; she didn't understand how he was alive without it but she had identified that it was beginning to break apart and as such was what was causing his condition in the first place, though the wound wasn't delivered by any angel, there was no impression of divinity. By its familiar feel, Amelia's best guess was that Kane's soul had been ripped open some time ago via a very precise power. What ancient foe had he faced that could have caused this? What had Zuan faced, had it been the same foe? Amelia shook herself free from the thoughts, she needed to concentrate on the injury itself, not its potential cause. Still, with how Kane had been channeling power out there tonight, how he hadn't blown up and taken a few city blocks with him was beyond her. Maybe more, she had never before worked with an insanely large power source like what his core was. With his soul as wounded as it was, using any amount of power without absolute and perfect control should result in a catastrophic failure. Evidence of power usage was there, yet he was still alive, when at the very least he should have faded away.

Amelia let out a sigh of relief as a shard she had been working for a while finally matched to a section of Kane's core. When she had found it, the core of his power had been slightly smaller than her forearm, an absurdly large size for someone's core to their power, but now that Amelia had been working on it, matching pieces into their correct place and using her healing magic to reconnect them, it had grown larger. A soul will naturally heal on its own if it gets cracked or chipped, though damage as intense as Kane's required direct intervention. Amelia was impressed, she could tell Kane had made efforts to repair his own soul, she could see where he had adapted himself to slide fragments of his soul in and out, depending on if he wanted to channel his - darkness? Amelia didn't know what Kane's power was, it had remarkable similarities to an angel's divinity as if whatever his race was, it was a counterpart to angels... though demons were supposed to be the angels' counterpart. She had even heard of ancient demon-kings that were capable of matching god-kings. Amelia shuddered, she prayed she never had to see one, it was pushing her just to try to heal Kane.