Chapter 72: Reconciliation and Mission Statements

I spend over an hour all by my lonesome. Vigilantly watching Kaylin as she mutters and moans in her hopefully short sleep- I don't need another comatose ally.

I sacrificed some clothes to wrap up her bleeding arms and staunched the wound with water and what's left of the gin the Matron gifted us. For now, that's really all I can do.

I've got no experience with the alchemy of this world and I certainly don't want to go about messing things up in Kaylin's body as any one of these colourful liquids could be some poison or laxative.

For the moment, long after my mana has regenerated enough to summon Anselm three times over, I choose not to. 

Ironic given it's my wish to bring him back to life that spurred me on, that pulled me out of that mind invasion.

It'd be awfully awkward to deal with. 

Having a conversation about what we said to each other, what I did to him. That's another deal too. I only subtly knew that I had such an ability.

As Spirit Summon levelled and grew in power and efficiency, I could feel it changing, upgrading and become a better…perhaps more sinister version of itself.

It's just like it was with Animate Animal, long ago, I actively attempted to groom the skill, trying to farm experience points on it until I got the ability to see veritably 'possess' the empty shell of the animal I animated.

Except, this feels different.

Even on the Spell List, after browsing through all the details given about the rather straight spell. There's no such talk of an upgrade allowing you to control and inflict pain on the summoned spirit.

What I did to Anselm…was intuitive.

With my Proficiency growing with every little battle and hard-won triumph, I've been gaining a better understanding of how magic works in this world, understanding what is necessary to manipulate it. 

And that's what I did.

I can't face him right now, not alone, not without someone to look away to. Kaylin.

However crude or insensitive it is to say, my mind possessed falling out with Anselm brought my attention to something. 

Spirit Summon happens to be my most used spell and therefore the spell with the highest level and just like Animate Animal it too can be upgraded.

Not to take full control of a lingering soul like Anselm and deal out torture, but rather a series of rather powerful features that may as well be entirely different spells.

One of them can be tried out immediately too.

Getting my mana ready, I prepare myself for the first time since Ioina, to summon a spirit that isn't Anselm.

"Summon Spirit, Healing Dire." Perhaps because of my patron god Lotar, the spirit I summon must be a dire, a type of wolf.

My mana is taken from my body and pumped into the ground below my feet before spreading outwards and then quickly coalescing into a huge lumpy ball of white light that begins to jerk, twist and form into the shape of a wolf until the light settles and dims out.

In a moment I have a white-furred wolf sitting at my feet, licking it's paws without much mind to the fact that it was just summoned out of thin air. Or was it? It's a spirit so it has to come from somewhere right?

I clear my head from distracting thoughts and pay attention to the rather obvious effect the wolf has begun to have on me. My HP is capped at the moment but a serene feeling seems to have fallen over me.

Now I only feel at peace and calmer than ever, my thoughts flowing quickly and my feelings and reservations about summoning Anselm are made clear to be ridiculous.

It's amazing.

Casting another glob of mana into the air with the intent of having Anselm catch it if he's lingering, and if he still wants to be around me. So far, I've not felt his presence so clearly.

However, letting the ball into the air I begin to feel him at last. He's here. In but another moment Anselm is physical. He floats just a few feet above my head with a small frown on his lips and his arms folded.

"I'm sorry." The first words out of my mouth, the right ones too, "I didn't mean any of what I said."

"But you thought it. Being drunk on mind magic doesn't excuse the words you utter, there's truth to every bit isn't there?"

Gulping I pet the wolf as a distraction, it kneads its head into my palm.

"Yes. I thought it once. I thought it in that moment." I purse my lips and face him again, "You want to be brought back, you want to live again?"

"Of course, I do! I don't want to be stuck living life through you, Asher!"

Fair enough. Breathing in I let go of the wolf and give Anselm my hand, "Then let that be our third goal."

"Our third? What's our first and second?" he looks more puzzled than angry now. I suppose he's had his own fit within his mind.

"Our first is to build a nation, a place where we're safe, where we are secure and happy to live." I begin, reminding him of the plans we made, or perhaps they're just the plans I made and he went along with.

"Our second is to find out who you are, who Anselm, Squire to Archibald of Riveden was and reconcile that with who he is now. And third…to bring him back to life."

He looks down at me, entirely sceptical of my words, I can see it plain as day on his face, his expressions. I've spent so many months looking and speaking with this person it's become as easy as blinking to tell what he's thinking.

Because of that, I give answers to his arguments before he can make them.

"I know you don't trust me, and perhaps, I really don't deserve your trust. From the first moment we met all I wanted to do was use you, like I did many people before." 

Forcing down the lump that so wisely chose this moment to form in my throat I continue, nervous and anxious for my words to reach him, "But you're not like anyone else, you're my friend, my companion, the only person I've trusted in years. You deserve the same from me and I'm sorry I couldn't give you that at the very beginning."

He scoffs, looking away from me and drifting off to Kaylin, checking up on her, "And you believe promising me a new life, a real life, like you did before is the best way to start anew?"

"You said it yourself! You don't have the power to bring me back, you had me trailing along behind you all that time like a fool and I had to figure it out, call you out, before you owned up to your lies."

Shaking his head bitterly he says, "You can't give me what I want. One day you'll die and you'll just be like me, a soul stuck between realms," chuckling wryly he adds, "Or perhaps you'll deny me that company as well, and drift into the embrace of Anera like all souls are meant to."

The truth is bitter tasting. His words stung so much that even the tranquility the wolf pulls over me is shrouded.

"Anselm, back then I had no idea what I was capable of," It's the truth, I was a lost man, killed in a firefight and thrown into a new body with a new will to live and a constant desperation to never fall the way I did. 

I clench my fists, pumping them in the air, "But now, you can see it yourself Anselm, I grow stronger with each fight, with each battle I survive and walk away from, with each learning moment I grow stronger."

"…What I did to you, taking control like that, hurting you. I didn't know I could do that. This wolf even, I didn't know I could summon it, it heals." Pleadingly, I look to him, "Give me another chance, give me this life and I'll bring you back, Anselm, I promise." 

He regards me silently for a moment, his eyes bouncing around frantically in their sockets and his fists clenching and unclenching at his side. A difficult decision.

Finally, he huffs and says, "If that wolf heals then don't you think you should be healing Kaylin with it?"

Oh!

"Right! You're right."

As I frantically try to get the wolf to follow me to where Kaylin lay, petting, calling and even reaching out with mana. I let out a sigh of relief and feel a hole in my chest, an anxiety relieved at last.

I've got my entire life in this world to grow strong, to grow more versed in the ways of Necromancy, to become a being that actively defies death and reaps life. 

What's one more reason to become stronger? I won't mess this up. Not this life.