Survivor: Definitely Not Minecraft

Gastard's visor was up, his face pale and still. The hard lines of his jaw had softened in unconsciousness. I jogged out of the field of clinging mist with Esmelda and laid her down beside Leto.

My son stood anxiously to one side, the fearlessness he had shown facing down a dragon replaced by fear as he saw what state his mother was in.

Esmelda didn't have any visible injuries, and her eyes fluttered as I set her down, but she was out of it. Running back to Gastard, I slipped my arms under his legs and back, shooting for a bridal carry, but I wasn't strong enough.

Including the plate armor, he was well over three hundred pounds. Two days ago, it would have been nothing for me to carry him. Even now, my attributes suggested I should have been strong enough, but fighting, working, and running for days straight had taken its toll. My lumbar twinged as I brought him up, and my legs gave out, forcing me into an awkward crouch.

I was going to have to drag him out of the poisoned region.

"Here." The boy, David, stood over me. I hadn’t heard him approach. "I've got it."

He was slender, and only a few inches taller than Leto. By all appearances, a normal child, aside from the zombie leathers and the fact that his irises were pure gold. Gastard was twice his size, but David lifted him out of my arms with barely an effort and walked calmly away, the remaining mist swirling around his bare feet.

"What did you do?" Leto demanded as David deposited Gastard beside Esmelda. "What's wrong with them?"

"Ender gas," David said. His gaze was distant. As a kaiju, his mental voice had seemed emotional and childish, but now that he was back in his natural body and speaking in the normal way, he sounded different. Detached, and less young.

"How can we help them?" I asked. We were all out of healing potions, and milk wasn't a solution. It had worked on Leto because he was my son, and even that had been a long shot.

"You can't," David said. "I'm sorry."

"But…" Leto's face scrunched as he knelt between Esmelda and Gastard. He touched his mother's hair, then the templar's helmet, too unsure of himself to do anything more. "They're going to be okay?"

"No," the shapeshifter looked past us toward Salenus, and his gaze traveled to take in the Atlans. Most had fled, but others were too injured to have done so and remained watching. Torgudai was standing at a safe distance, his cloak drawn over his shoulders. He looked haggard.

"What do you mean?" I said, trying to stay calm.

"What does the gas do?"

"It's like acid," he replied, "but for your soul."

"Fix it!" Leto jumped to his feet. "You did this! You can fix it!"

David's cheeks reddened, and he shook his head, looking down at his feet. "I'm not a healer. Umber could do it. The old Umber. He's bad now. I just break things."

Tears were shining in Leto's eyes, and he lashed out, thrusting his hands forward to shove the other boy. He might as well have tried to push over a stone wall, and practically bounced off.

"Don't," I mumbled. Attacking the overpowered child was not a good idea, even if he seemed to have accepted that we were not his enemies. But I didn’t intervene. I felt like I was watching a movie. My ears were ringing, and there was a lump of solid pain just below my throat. Losing Gastard would have been hard enough. He was a friend, and probably the most loyal person I had ever met. But I couldn't even think about that now.

If what David had said was accurate, Esmelda was going to die. The thought was met with silence in my mind.

I'd already lost her once. But even when we had separated, no matter how much I worried, I'd always believed that she was alive, or at least been able to tell myself that she was. What would happen if there was no way to reverse the damage? If the Ender gas, spirit acid, kept eating away at her soul until nothing was left? That was worse than killing her. It would mean that even Mizu couldn't bring her back.

I could figure out every aspect of my System, master the runes, and keep leveling until I was strong enough to rip a hole in reality. With the little information I had about how entities advanced, it seemed possible that a human could become something like a god if they took it far enough. This kid, though he wasn't really a kid, could obviously travel between worlds without using a physical portal. He could smash demons like bugs and attack souls directly, but he couldn't fix them.

No matter what I did, no matter what I became; if Esmelda died now, this way, there was nothing I could do about it.

David didn't retaliate for the shove. He shifted uncomfortably on his feet, still looking down, not saying a word. Leto backed away, looked between his mother and Gastard, and collapsed. I responded woodenly, moving to kneel beside him and wrap him in my arms. Leto pressed himself against my breastplate and sobbed. This was not the hug that I had wanted.

"She's alive," I said, as much to myself as to him. "She's still alive." I couldn't bring myself to say that things were going to be okay.

"They both are," David whispered, "for now."

"Is there nothing you can do? Is there no one who can help?" My back was to him, but I heard him kick the grass.

"I'm not supposed to."

My head twisted nearly all the way around. "I'll do anything. Give you an oath. Whatever essence I have left. I…don't know how this works. But if there's a price, I'll pay it. Just save them."

He bit his lower lip, still not looking at me. A mess of dark hair fell over his brows to shadow his golden eyes.

"David," I said, "it is David, right?" He nodded.

"You said you weren't supposed to. That means there is something you can do. I bet you do a lot of things you aren't supposed to do, don't you?" It was a solid guess. He was mentally a ten-year-old boy with the powers of a demi-god. Not a combination that would follow directions well. "Who would tell you not to help them?"

"The guardian," David said slowly, "this world's guardian. He said so before when I tried to fix things. This place is so dirty now, I don't like it. But I'm not supposed to help. Since I left, I'm supposed to stay out. He says it hurts the balance when I do stuff. That the shadow gets bigger when I try to make it go away."

"So you aren't supposed to be here at all?" That suggested there was an entire body of law surrounding the interactions of Discord and Harmony, where and how gods could interfere. It checked a lot of boxes with the heavenly bureaucracy idea. My existence as a hero was wrapped up in some kind of training program the System had never been kind enough to define. But David had already been bending the rules, whatever they were.

What was one more?

"You came here," I said, "and you changed things. Is it worse for you to help fix what you did than to do it in the first place? Whoever's in charge, the guardian, you can let them blame me. Hold me responsible. Let me take the punishment if there is one."

David made a low, throaty sound, unsure. His mouth flattened. "You can't though. You aren't big enough. It has to be me."

"Please," Leto said, his voice trembling and soft against my chestplate. "Please."

David heard him and shook his head again, but it wasn't a denial. He seemed to debate within himself.

“You don't know what I'm talking about. I can't heal them, but I can make them new."

"What happens if you don't do it? Is there any chance they will survive on their own?"

He closed his eyes, but he didn't have to think about it for long. "No. They're almost gone."

I wasn’t focusing on my aetheric sense, but I knew what he was talking about. Esmelda’s aura felt even smaller and less distinct than it usually did, and I couldn’t feel Gastard at all. David’s presence was not as overwhelming as it had been when he was the Great Eagle, but it was still immense, more powerful, and solid than any demon’s.

"Then do it.”

He didn't move, but his aura did. It washed over me, a spiritual river that had just been undammed, and I had an odd sense of compression from the weight even though the effect was entirely non-physical. But I wasn't the target.

There was no light, no sound. David wasn't casting a spell. To Leto, it must have seemed like nothing was happening. In between sobs, he continued to beg for David's help.

Esmelda took a sharp breath. The immaterial river had split, with one stream pouring into her, and the other into Gastard.

I could say it now. Even if I didn't know that it was true, the knot in my chest was loosening, and I could believe.

"It's going to be okay."

Leto looked up, desperate for a reason to hope. "How?"

"He's using his magic to help us."

I couldn't be any more specific than that, because whatever David was doing was beyond the limits of my understanding of the System. It felt like he was shoving essence into both of them, replacing what they had lost with a portion of his immense spirit, but that was too simple an explanation.

He'd said he couldn't heal them, but what did it mean to make someone new?

Had I already lost them both? Was I condemning them to a half-life? Nothing about David or what I knew of his power-set suggested this was necromancy. They weren't dead yet. Change was better than death, but it wouldn't be without consequences.

The exchange went on and on, but its ending was abrupt. David's power receded and diminished. Either he was merely exhausted, or he had given up a piece of himself to make this work.

Esmelda jerked up with a gasp, her eyes wide. She looked around in confusion that bordered on panic, but when her gaze settled on me, there was a spark of recognition, and she calmed.

"Are you both okay?"

Leto scrambled out of my arms and practically on top of his mother.

Esmelda smiled, still disoriented, and embraced him. Gastard was still. I turned to face David.

"What about him? Did it work?"

"It worked," the boy said. "They've already noticed. He'll wake up when they're done talking to him."

"Who?"

"The Guardian, and maybe Mizu. She's going to be mad at me."

"Thank you." What else could I say?

"You're welcome." He shrugged. "I was being dumb. The pebbleheart is sleeping. So I guess I can go now."

"Wait," I stood up. "Can you explain what you did?"

"It'll explain itself. Harmony sees them now." He turned toward the sun. "I need to go before she yells at me."

"Who? Mizu?" I stepped forward, reaching for him against my better judgment. The mysteries of the System, of the worlds beyond this one, everything I should have been told and hadn't been. He had to have the answers. Before my hand could touch him, the pressure returned, curling back my fingers. His aura slammed into me again, freezing me in place.

"You should get clean." David's tone was casual, like he was telling a friend to try a favorite restaurant. "I messed up with Umber. I don't want it to happen again. If you're not better before you get bigger, I'll destroy you."

A fire burst to life beneath his skin, shining through so brightly I had to look away. A moment later, the Great Eagle rose from the ground, its wingbeats stirring up dust and shredded grass, dispersing the last tendrils of the deadly purplish fog. The pressure diminished as he flew toward the sun.

Esmelda yelped, and I spun, but she wasn't under attack. She was gripping her right hand.

"What's wrong?" Leto had been through too much for one day. His eyes were still red, and his nose was running.

"I don't know," she said. "It stings."

I knelt beside her and took her hand in mine. A symbol was being inscribed on her skin. It looked like henna ink, but I knew it wasn't. The mark that was forming would be permanent, irreparable. It differed from my elder sign, though done in the same style; an abstract sigil vaguely suggestive of a target with an arrow sticking through it.

"What's happening?" Esmelda still had the demeanor of someone who had recently awoken from a serious nap, but there was definitely a note of concern in her voice.

"It's the System," I said. This wasn’t what I had expected when David had said he would make them new, but there were worse things than Esmelda getting a class assignment. "The goddess. This is your blessing."

She touched the symbol tentatively. I knew from experience that it would be tender. It responded to the brush of her fingertips, and a blue screen appeared floating above her hand.

"Oh," Leto said.

"Oh." Esmelda agreed.

Ding.