more of 7
back to chapter 7 pt 1
She awoke to voices and the sounds of not so distant conflict. Usagi struggled to rise, any effort at stealth forgotten in her confusion.
“Hey now, keep still miss,” a kind voice instructed as gentle hands firmly pressed her down. Images of war came into her mind, pictures of people fighting for their lives and souls. An image of a face behind a mask and emotions of regret, of a young boy with a grin and inspiring such pride, of trees and chaos and laughter and hate and a lifetime of experience passing from a man’s hand into her. Her mental defences roused sluggishly to stem the flood.
Usagi opened her eyes to see a concerned brown gaze set in a scarred face watching her anxiously. Behind her would-be nurse was a familiar bond youth. Both were wounded but the blood visible over the younger man’s orange clothing told Usagi that the blond, Uzumaki Naruto, should not have been standing under his own power. In fact, he should not even have been alive.
It was lucky for him that the very same elemental whose presence she was using to hide behind had been caged in him and was healing him. She remembered little from her time in his arms other than a sense of security and a promise from both boy and elemental that they would keep her safe. Thus far, they had kept their promise but ignorance had nearly seen her mortally wounded so, still reeling and uncertain, she ruthlessly used the contact of her would-be carer’s hand on her shoulder to plumb his mind for answers.
Umino Iruka didn’t notice a thing. When she withdrew from his mind a fraction of a second later, Usagi was as well informed as even the leaders in this battle. Though he was not highly ranked or powered, chance had placed Iruka in a position to see exactly how this clash, just one more in this war, had come about. The sheer number of sides and the shifting allegiances made Usagi’s head reel and she looked at her rescuer with respect.
Despite his youth, Naruto was one of the major game pieces in this conflict and he had risked a great deal to save her from this Orochimaru. To her faint amusement, he blushed under her regard.
“Thank you,” she told him sincerely only to see him flush even brighter.
At her side, Iruka stopped trying to push her back down and snorted as he supported her in a sitting position.
Naruto rubbed the back of his head in what was apparently a habitual nervous gesture but Usagi was more interested in the healing wounds the movement made his clothing reveal. Reflexively, she reached out, her magic already prepared to help heal him, even as she recalled the damage was already healing under the elemental’s power. Her silver magic mixed with the roiling red essence of the elemental and Naruto flinched as his wounds simply disappeared in a flash of silver fire.
“You were hurt,” she said lamely as she drew her hand back under their incredulous eyes.
Naruto’s smile was unsteady as he answered. “The fox was already taking care of it. You didn’t need to waste your charka.” He seemed to expect a specific response from her and she found the explanation in Iruka’s mind.
“You’re not a demon, Uzumaki Naruto, in fact neither you nor the Kyubi are demons.” She caught and held his eyes fiercely, determined that he would believe in her and himself. “I’ve known demons and neither of you come close.”
“But the Kyubi,” Iruka protested.
Usagi shook her head. “An elemental stirred from its rest by human wars and shaped by human emotions. A true demon could have been killed but would not have been stopped by sealing it within an infant.”
Iruka’s eyes were wide as they flitted from her to Naruto’s stomach, where that seal was. Naruto smiled as if she’d told him something he’d already learned by painful experience.
“You knew Naruto?!”
The blond gave Iruka a blinding but insincere grin. “Heh, the fox’s been a lot easier to get on with since we found her, Iruka-sensei. He actually explained some stuff rather than calling me a ‘puny flesh-bag’.”
Usagi tilted her head. “The Kyubi told you to help me?”
Naruto’s eyes opened as he rushed to explain with a much more genuine expression. “Eh? Eh! No! Rescuing princesses is part of every ninja’s duty!”
“So I’m a princess” Usagi asked, amused.
Naruto rubbed the back of his head again. “No, well, maybe, you look like one…” he laughed nervously.
Usagi giggled softly. “It’s the hair, isn’t it?”
Naruto nodded. “You have so much of it!”
Iruka groaned. Apparently Naruto had a history of hasty assumptions that had lead him into trouble.
“Well, my mother is a queen. I hope that will make you feel better.”
“Hah! See Iruka-sensei? She is a real princess!”
But that’s not why the Kyubi wanted you to help me.”
Naruto sobered instantly. “No, it’s not.”
She held his eyes, eyes which were so very similar to her own. “Why?”
“He said you were scared and tired. That you were being hunted.” He moved so that he was crouching right next to her, his face earnestly close to her own. “He said that you were using his chakra to hide from what was hunting you.”
She nodded and touched one of his marked cheeks affectionately. “My enemy is stronger than I am and if she catches me, she will devour my soul and then go on to destroy all I care about.”
“So you want to protect your precious people?”
She smiled sadly. “That’s all I have ever really wanted.”
“Why don’t you give up, then?” he asked her seriously. “Then maybe she’ll leave them alone.” He wasn’t telling her that she should give up, she knew, he was testing her resolve.
“Because I can’t protect them if I’m dead,” she told him, “And beings like that don’t just stop hurting people once they have one victim.”
“You have to make them stop,” he finished for her and she nodded. He hesitated a moment and then whispered, “The fox says you’re not human, that you’re a servant of a god.”
Iruka gasped and she nodded. “I serve a goddess called Selene. A long time ago, an army, led by a witch who worshipped evil attacked, and almost destroyed a world. It’s my job to protect that world until it has grown strong enough again to protect itself. The enemy that chases me destroys worlds and I was supposed to just lad her back to the prison she escaped from but the wards, the seals, that would have locked her in failed and I had to flee. So now she chases me, hoping I’ll lead her back to the world I protect.”
“The fox wants to know the enemy’s name.”
Usagi only breathed the answer. “Galaxia.”
She felt the Kyubi’s elemental strength rise again, seemingly harsh and violent but, where it touched her, it was gentle. Naruto grinned at her, a real smile, not the farce he’d displayed previously. “The fox and I agree. We’ll help you!”
“Naruto!” Iruka protested, justly concerned about the battle raging.
Naruto shook his finger in the elder man’s face. “Uh uh, Iruka-sensei, it’s a ninja’s job to help the princess, remember?”
“Naru-”
“Besides,” and his deadly serious tone silenced Iruka cold. “By helping her, I’m helping Konoha. You seee, she just needs me to be me, Konoha’s number one loudest ninja. That’s all. And the noise that Kyubi and I make will hide her until she’s rested enough. But, for the first time ever, the fox is actually going to help us and not just by giving me chakra.”
Iruka’s mouth worked soundlessly as he thought about what his once-student had just told him. Usagi imagined that the thought of all the considerable power possessed by the oldest and strongest of this world’s elemtals working freely for them rather than against was a little awe-inspiring. “But, Naruto, you can’t-”
“With the fox’s help, yes I can.”
Usagi admired the young ninja’s determination. Bound in common purpose as it was to the elemental’s he would be a force to be reckoned with. Still, although only Naruto possessed a soul, two powers with two minds could mix unpredictably. That Naruto was accustomed to working with the Kyubi and its power would help but Usagi was doubtful if either of the two very strong-willed minds could put their own desires aside to truly combine their power. If they could, the effect would be almost as if they had a soulbond augmenting their combined strength into something much greater.
Then again, given that Usagi did not know the nature of the wards that bound the elemental Kyubi within Naruto, it was perhaps best that such a merging did not take place. With only a mind and not a soul, Kyubi’s presence was a wild card in the equation. Usagi could not predict the consequences of a true gestalt between the two. Perhaps they would be unaffected afterwards but perhaps not. If Kyubi’s mind and power became bound to Naruto’s soul, they might combine with Naruto to forge a new being or, perhaps, they might simply overwrite the young ninja.
Strong-willed as Naruto was, he was mortal. Kyubi was a force of nature.
She smiled gratefully at the young man and leaned forward to kiss his lips softly. “Thank you,” she murmured into them.
Iruka’s laugh was short and worried but Naruto’s face, turned a new degree of shocking red, was a sight to behold. “Naruto, you have to be careful!”
“I know, I know!” Naruto assured them, shaking off both shock and embarrassment. “Ol’ snakeface is dangerous. His ninja are dangerous. And the bastard isn’t likely to come back easily!”
“Sasuke may be a lost cause,” Iruka cautioned and Naruto shook his head stubbroenly.
“I promised Sakura-chan that I’d bring him back and I will!” He stood and stepped back from Usagi and Iruka. “I’ll stop the bad guy, rescue the bastard and protect the princess. Count on it!”
Then, with a yell, the forest around them was filled with indentical, orange-clad figures that, in one great roar, flowed off to the encroaching battle, In its wake,m the Kyubi’s presence rose to flood the area.
Iruka shuddered next to her and she patted the hand still supporting her. “He’s just keeping his promise. He did say he’d be loud.”
Iruka snorted, despite himself. “It’s his ninja way.”
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In the time since Naruto left them, Iruka had helped her move further from the noise of of battle. His reasons were simple. “Kyubi’s power is far reaching and ninja battles are unpredictable. This one has already lasted hours and moved across the forest. It would be best for us to get further away in case the flow of battle changes in our direction.”
Usagi couldn’t argue with his logic nor his insistence on carrying her and allowed him to take her where he would. She could hardly complain when he brought her to a makeshift camp filled with injured men and women, some being tended to by healers and some who were plainly beyond help.
She stumbled when Iruka put her down, his steadying hands preventing a fall but her physical weakness was not the cause. The waves of pain, anger and despaire coming from these people attacked her mental defences even as their enemy had threatened her physically. The experience was beyond unpleasant and she was grateful when Iruka lead her away from the greater portion of the injured. The psychic assault did not stop but distance did diminish it.
Iruka led her to a group of grim faces, all of whom were watching their progression suspiciously. A blond women, one of only two women in the group, spoke first. “Who have you brought here, Iruka?”
She was olde han she appeared, Usagi sensed, Much a Usagi herself was, this women hid her true appearance beneath illusions. However, where Usagi’s was a layered disguise conceieved for necessity, this woman’s was a single casting created for vanity alone. A vanity that was becoming less important in the woman’s list of priorities, something that was visible in the almost threadbare state of the illusion to Usagi’s knowing eyes.
She was the leader of these people, Usagi suddenly realised. From what she lhad learned from Iruka’s mind, this was the fifth Hokage, Tsunade.
Suddenly Ussagi felt a great well of sorrow for Naruto. It seemed that, for all Iruka’s turst and liking for him, he still had gone beyond Naruto’s will to someone with more authority. Usagi did not fear the possible repercussions to her own situation. No longer off guard, there was little these mortals could do to her that she could not escape. So long as Naruto and the Kuybi kept their promise, she could go anywhere within the radius of their influence and remain hidden. Insteaed, her regrets were for Naruto.
He could never be the hokage he wished to be, she saw. His heart was too open and did not close out the enemy or those not of his village. For all that he loved this Konoha, he would not be able to protect them to the exclusion of all else. Even if they did offer him the position and, from thie she doubted they would, he would find himself unhappy with the duties they imposed on him. He would be a poor hokage.
He would have been a brilliant Star.
Iruka hesitated, bowing at her side. “Hokage-sama, this is...” he trailed offer, apparently realisting that she had never told them her name..
She decided to rescue him. “I am Usagi,” she informed them all.
Tsunade regarded her coolly. “And why are you here?”
Iruka interrupted what was looking to become a hostile interrogation hastily. “Naruto said that the Kyubi would help us if we protected her.”
“What?!” One of the men behind Tsunade burst out as the others shifted uneasily. “The demon knows her?”
“What has that brat gotten us into?” another demanded angrily. Their emotions became angrier and more fearful and resentful. Usagi could practically see them thinking of her as some demon consort of the great nine-tailed fox. She thought it best to stop their imaginations before they got too carried away.
“It doesn’t know me. The Kyubi just knows of my kind.”
“And what’s-”
“TheKyubi told Naruto she is a devine servant,” Iruka broke in softly.
That did make the group hesistate.
“A divine servant?” Tsunade repeated with disbelief.
Usagi shrugged. “I don’t keep track of mortal mythology and beliefs. I’d go with how the elemental describes me. Kyubi certainly knows more about your society than I do.”
“Mortal? Elemental?” A young man with a spiky ponytail echoed.
“Elemental as in an elemental force of nature with a personality.” Usagi shrugged again. “It’s unfortunate for you that the Kyubi’s personality was shaped by the emotional excesses of war. No wonder it was enraged when it roused. However, despite being madder than a badger with a hangover...”
Two of the ninja behind Tsunade looked at each other in confusion, mouthing, “Badger?”
“Kyubi has no soul, thus it’s not intrinsically good or evil, thus it’s not a demon,” Usagi finished, ignoring the exchange.
“The demon destroyed half our forces. Hokages help us if it had been evil!”
She sneered at the old man who’d made the remark. “If the Kyubi had been evil it would not have just gone on a rampage, it would’ve made you hurt first. Like the enemy you have now. He’s made you doubt your allies and question what you trust most. He’s done everything he can to take what you value and twist it beyond recognition. Your enemy enjoys causing you pain.”
“So did the Kyubi,” Iruka informed her quietly.
“It was shaped of human rage and then left to fester in a human child whom was then treated abhorrently. Don’t expect and elemental to calm down in those circumstances. Still, for all its power and its reach, which is, believe me, vaster than I think you realise, it attacked only what was in front of it. It did not reach out and flatten your village and it could have and long before it was trapped in that child. It could have torn the land itself asunder from coast to coast and yet I don’t see your forests submerged.
“Your rivers weren’t turned to blood,the wildlife around you did not become nightmares and the trees themselves did not walk to fight you. Aren’t you lucky it wasn’t a real demon?”
“It came directly at our village!”
“If a wasp built its nest in the walls of your home, I imagine you’d destroy the nest and poison the wasp before it could sting you.”
“You’re comparing us to insects?!” Some of the ninja looked outraged, others thoughtful. Usagi suspected this was not a new thought to some.
She shrugged again and met Tsunade’s eyes directly. “To a being like the Kyubi? What else would you call small, stinging creatures with fleeting lives building nests in his den?”
“You sympathise with him,” Tsunade said as her advisors stirred with agitation.
“I understand it,” Usagi corrected, “But I am not here to defend its actions. I merely wish to hid within the maelstrom of its presence until I know what I will do next against my own foe.”
Eyes sharpened. “You think to draw your enemy here? To have Naruto and Kyubi fight him?” Tsunade’s voice was angry and reproving.
Usagi regarded her with exasperation. “No.” These people did jump to conclusions as much as Iruka believed Naruto ever did. “I came here to hide. Here, in this cacophony of power released by Kybui, with your energy fields torn and tangled, Galaxia will not find me. Indeed, she will not even think to look for such an environment is not one I find innately soothing. Truthfully, this is anything but a restful setting. However, respite is respite. Here, I need no worry that I draw a dire fate down upon the world around me. I need not so stringently suppress my power and presence such that she cannot sense me. I need no wear my nerves thin in concern for how I can remain another step ahead of her. At this moment, in this place, with only basic regard for caution, I am safe.”
“She will not follow you here?” the young many with the ponytail demanded.
“No. Your Kyubi’s presence is too similar to her own. So long as I do not intentionally draw her notice, she will search elsewhere.”
The youth nodded. “And you do not intend to use Naruto and his tenant to fight her?”
“As terrible as the elemental seems to you, she is a thousand times worse and more. She would pause long enough, and only long enough, to smile before swatting it aside. Were she not hunting me, she would play with it, doing all she could to cause it pain. She is true evil, you see. Evil such that even the Stars, those you call gods, pause in her presence.”
“And as only a servant, you are not her match,” he stated.
She smiled in resignation. “No.”
“So you wish to hide amongst us mere mortals, to have us risk adding a god to our enemies?”
“”You are at no more risk than any other world.”
“Only so long as this Galaxia does not realise you are here,” he persisted. “What do you offer us in return for this risk?”
She almost laughed at the temerity of the mortal, mortals considering non disagreed with him. Not even the hokage, supporter and friend of Naruto, Iruka’s touch told her, spoke against such blatant opportunism. While these people were not bad or even inherently greedy, for the most part, neither did they possess young Naruto’s generosity of spirit.
“You think to make me fight for you? To defeat your enemies with a snap of my fingers?” And she snapped them in demonstration. Several ninja stepped back and, at her side, Iruka flinched. Seh could feel his emotions warring within him. His duty to his village battled his loyalty to Naruto. Her ire died before it fully roused and she sighed wearily.
“No.” An old memory came to her and she smiled bitterly. “I will not kill where I can heal.” She caught and held Tsunade’s gaze. “Will that be enough for you, that I heal your people, even those at death’s own door?” Merely so they could be sent back out and wounded anew but she could not dwell on that. “Healing at the hands of one who heals worlds as payment for my existence in your camp.”
“Our hokage is the foremost medic-nin in the elemental lands. You think you can do what she cannot?” the old man with the sneer demanded.
Usagi did not bother to look at him as she answered, instead her gaze locked with Tsunade’s as, finally, she saw the qualities in her that made Naruto treasure her so. As one healer to another, Usagi replied, “With more than a thousand of your years of experience behind me, I think I have a few tricks you don’t know.”
Tsunade’s eyes, her spirit, were truly alive for the first time since Usagi had met her. Usagi saw her desire to help her people, he need to save lives and her imperative to learn more so that she could do both. “Will you teach others?” It did not matter that the woman was unsure if she believed Usagi’s story. For her, the possibility was worth the risk.
Usagi smiled. “If they can learn.”
Usagi found she did not resent paying her way as much as she had anticipated.
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The group of men and women were silent as they watched the last of the combatants join them where they all lounged. The silence was not so much due to the previous conversation, which had certainly been awkwardly concluded but because of the way the grand melee had finished. It was not due to Zoisite’s skill, though that had improved admirably since their last free for all. In the end, the last two standing had become one when Jupiter had simply given up and let Zoisite’s last strike hit home, undefended.
Jupiter had been thrown to the ground with no small amount of force. Enough force to break the illusions that made her appear as a sailor scout rather than an average young woman. Enough force to break the cosmetic illusions and reveal the haggard face that was the truth of Lita Kino. Her considerable beauty was all but destroyed by internal forces and kept hidden from prying friends.
Zoisite was silent and somber as he waited for her to recover when he should have jubilant at his victory. It was a hollow victory as the young man had to know that the woman he had fought with and then against that morning had been unable to invest herself fully in the exercise. If she was defeated now, it was by her own will, not his. He offered a solicitous hand to help her to her feet. It took her far too long to see it and then accept it.
“Well done,” she offered genuinely, for she was anything but a sore loser, but it was an empty congratulation without her old smile and dull eyes instead of bright green.
“Lita...” Zoisite started but could not finish. What was there to say? What could any of them say to her now that they could see what she was becoming? If it had been someone else, Lita would not have known either.
“It’s ok, Zack,” she assured him without the farce of a smile. It was not okay, but there was nothing that could be done for her now. Even pretending was starting to hurt. She’d used to much energy it the mock fight and had none left to play the part of the happy young woman. She’d simply become too tired.
Mina started to rise when the two of them reached the others and Lita tried to ignore the fear in her expression. Of all of them, Mina was the one she had never expected to fool but she had kept her at bay. No longer, it seemed. Zack helped her find a spot to sit and the others watched with expressions of varying concern. She should have known better to let it go this far. It would have been far easier to deal with the matter earlier but she had not wanted them to draw it out as she knew they would. There was nothing that could be done however that would not stop the reincarnates from trying.
“I’m dying,” she informed them bluntly, pre-empting any of the awkward questions and tactfully worded demands that she knew were about to start.
Amy shook her head. “No, if there was anything physically wrong with you, I would have found it no matter how hard you tried to hide it. You’ve been tired but that’s not enough to kill you...”
“Not on its own,” Lita agreed wearily, “But that’s not all that’s wrong with me. It’s just a symptom really.”
“Symptom?” Amy repeated, alarmed. Her computer had appeared and was no doubt scanning Lita furiously. Lita could actually see some of the energy frequencies it was using to do so, though she’d never told Amy so and she could interfere with them if she desired. At that moment, she could no longer muster the energy to do so and the results that were scrolling across the screen were making Amy’s expression tenser and tenser.
“Symptom,” Lita confirmed. She looked at Mina. “You’ve probably sensed something. Empathy is the one sense that can’t be blinded in this regard.”
Mina bit her lip. “Your soulmate?”
“In my last life, I was soulbound,” Lita agreed. “And, as time goes by, the consequences of the breaking of that bond grow stronger.”
“Stronger?” Mina questioned, alarmed. “But it wasn’t in this lifetime, it doesn’t work like that!”
“It shouldn’t but it is anyway,” Lita told her. “Since there’s nothing that can be done about it, I didn’t want to worry you.”
“Well you did anyway!” Raye retorted tartly.
The older reincarnates remained quiet, watching the original four scouts struggle with the revelation within their own, established group dynamics. Lita was grateful for that. It was more than enough that she would have to deal with her three oldest friends without negotiating the minefields that were the other reincarnates.
“Who said we couldn’t do anything about it!” Mina demanded, “We could still do something but if you’d told us earlier we could’ve done it earlier!”
“There’s no cure for a broken soulbond, Mina, you know that!” Lita insisted quietly.
“You don’t know that!” Mina snapped back. “Amy, tell her that she doesn’t know that! None of us has the full lowdown on soulbonds in this lifetime. And you’ve got reincarnation in the mix to consider. You don’t know what can be done!”
“Lita, Mina’s right. We can research it. There has to be something...”
Lita huffed, too tired to laugh even darkly. “Humans no longer form soul bonds. There’s nothing to use as a reference for research. There’s no information but what’s in our memories and mine tell me that once a bond is broken, death follows sooner or later. In my case, it’s later, thousands of years later but that’s reincarnation for you.”
“Memories?” Michelle interrupted. “You remember back then, before the Fall?”
Lita turned, grateful to speak of something other than her incipient death. “Fragments only,” she admitted. “But more and more as time goes by. I’m changing into what I was, becoming more of that and less of what I am now. I think that might be why it’s affecting me so strongly. Mina is right, it shouldn’t be but it’s more logical if I’m regressing. Whatever I once was remembers the bond and finds the lack more jarring that the human I was in this lifetime.”
“You’re becoming less human?” Nick exclaimed. Lita wondered if it was her humanity, or lack thereof, or her dying from a soul wound that was taking him aback so. She regretted he lack of charity towards him as soon as she thought it, but, regardless, hoped it would kill the crush he harboured towards her.
Amy glared at him. “It’s affecting some of us more than others. The ability to do magic is a regression in human development. For most of us, subtle alterations to facilitate our arcane abilities is as far as our physical forms go to differ from the norm. Some of us have a few further changes, Raye’s ability to handle fire, for example, is not solely due to her magic but a soul-memory that has been imposed on her current physical incarnation. Some part of her, unconsciously remembers certain traits and has changed her new form to fit. A couple of us, Darien and Lita, primarily, have gone further.”
They were all looking at the small woman, dumbstruck and Lita smiled wryly. Once she’d noticed the changes in herself, she had looked for them in the others. “I can’t have been the only one to see that, at some time while he was in America, Darien’s ear became pointed.”
The startled looks moved back to her and Amy nodded at her. “Indeed, Darien is less than half human by my estimate.”
“And half what?” Kian demanded.
The ice mage shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t exactly have an exhaustive database with which to compare.”
“Fae,” Lita guessed, “And I’m or I was, a dryad.”
“Fae?” Amy inquired curiously, “How do you know?”
“I don’t, it’s just a guess,” Lita replied. “But the ears, his behaviour... not quite like the stories of elves, and I mean the fair folk of Irish legend and not Santa’s helpers by the way, but perhaps the reality that they were once based off?”
“That is not unlikely,” Amy agreed. “I’ll do some research, we may need it if Darien starts suffering they way you are.”
“What?” Lita was not the only one to react to her statement with surprise and shock.
“Mina, you did say that Darien had found and lost his soulmate, it’s likely that, sooner or later, he’ll decline much the way Lita is doing.”
“It’s been years and Darien hasn’t been weakening!” Jyp protested.
“Years? Soulmate?” Alex questioned, “Are you talking about Serena?”
“Darien met his soulmate?” Raye choked, “Why isn’t she with him then?”
“Quiet!” Kian barked and, reluctantly, they all settled. Kian addressed Amy, “Are you sure that it will affect Darien the same way as it is Lita? As Jyp has said, it has been years since they parted.”
Lita looked at the two in shock at the revelation. It took only a glance to realise that Alex, Michelle and the other two men also knew of the events he was skipping over. “It’s been years for me,” she reminded them before Amy could answer. “If the bond has been made and then broken then it will kill him. It’s simply a matter of how slowly.”
“Given how he’s been acting though, I’d be more inclined to believe it’s been initiated but not completed,” Mina added thoughtfully. “He’s bothered by it, and then some, but it’s not currently draining him.”
Lita nodded. “Then it’ll fester until he wishes for death.”
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