A Jaded Life

Chapter 1357

After checking in on Luna and her bunny, my next stop was at Jademoon Tower. Two of my students, Waylon and Landry, had already left the tower, leaving Richard and Trenton to continue their studies. It wasn’t that much of a surprise, especially regarding Waylon, the Warlock. Studying magic, while never useless, wouldn’t really help him to grow his power, simply because his power was drawn from the symbiote I had made him. If he wanted to get more powerful, he had to ask me for stronger spells and better ways to mould the power he was drawing from me. Landry, on the other hand, had started to combine his Wind Magic with archery in a manner quite similar to the way Adra had fought on Mundus. His current magical understanding was sufficient to enhance his meagre martial abilities, meaning his best bet was to train said martial abilities.

But visiting my students wasn’t really why I had made the jump. Instead, I wanted to check if anything Lia or I had ever written mentioned Revenants. Given my prodigious memory, that was fairly unlikely, but I also had some other books stored in my towers. Sure, those books were largely about myths and legends, or just straight-up modern fiction, not that the difference was all that large, but they might contain some useful idea. After all, the system seemed to recycle some aspects of fiction, or maybe it used similar names and verbiage to that of known fiction, because those words were already part of our language.

Sadly, while there were references to creatures called ‘Revenant’ in the books from before the Change, they weren’t terribly consistent. The only thing they all seemed to agree on was that Revenants were undead. Given that the obvious fact was, well, obvious, I couldn’t help but be slightly annoyed. Otherwise, the various literary Revenants varied fairly widely, with some being simply risen dead, while others were a lot more fascinating and dangerous. One depiction described them as the ultimate weapon of a Necromancer, a brave soul dragged back into the realm of the living and forced to obey the Necromancer's command, unable to die until the command was completed or the Necromancer died. Another described them as somewhat similar to ghosts, kept in our realm by their own will. They wouldn’t truly die until they managed to fulfil their desire. More often than not, said desire was to avenge their own death, which was uncomfortably close to the Revenant I had inadvertently created.

It would be interesting to test if the book was close to the system’s version of the Revenant, especially given that there wasn’t all that much left of Joshua when he died. The experiments I had subjected him to before that last, failed, experiment had destroyed his entire mind, to the point that I doubted he had been able to speak at the end, let alone remember his own name. And yet, the Revenant seemed to be focused on me, but whether that was because I had been the one to kill the original body, because my magic had infused it at the time of death or because I simply was the closest, I had no idea. If I wanted to know, I would have to start experimenting, something I was only willing to do with a fair amount of preparation. The Revenant one was dangerous enough on its own. I had no interest in finding out that they could be even worse.

Once my research was done, and I had given another lesson to Richard and Trenton, I paid Maggie’s community a visit. There was a lot of work to be done here, and I had neglected my part of it a bit. Maybe even more than a bit, I had been away more than expected, and not just because of the Revenant.

Because of that, my meeting with Maggie was a little tense. She wasn’t all that happy about my prolonged absence, though she also acknowledged that Luna and I had done more than anyone else, allowing them to adjust to the massive influx of people. They had sufficient food and shelter, though, as always, there could be more. More food, better lodgings, the restoration of creature comforts lost in the change, life could always be just a little better. And some people looked in my direction, hoping I would provide that better life, especially after Waylon and Landry had visited, telling of Jademoon Tower and its incredible comfort.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

The biggest issue, as I should have expected, was the lack of therapy. The sheer number of people who had trouble with the lingering experience of Sunna’s wards was massive, though it wasn’t as bad as it originally had been. As it turned out, Jess hadn’t just created a connection between the Mother, my divine aspect, and herself. She had, somehow, managed to learn, or maybe gain access to, a few Mind Magic spells. Nothing drastic, just things to ease anxiety, facilitate trauma recovery and generally allow people to grow mentally, not just past their bad experiences but also beyond their previous selves.

It was, as far as I could understand from Maggie’s description, a fairly interesting take on the concepts inherent to the Mother and curiously one I had never identified all that strongly with. It all focused on the idea that the Mother should be there when life managed to break you, to help the ‘child’ heal from the wounds inflicted on them by the challenges they had to face. The only way I had come into contact with that aspect was the way I had taken Luna in. But even with her, I hadn’t really mothered her, at least not sufficiently. If I had, would she have been forced to mature as quickly as she had? Would Lady Hecate have stepped in to help her adjust mentally to her increase in physical maturity, or would that have been my job?

However, there was one thing I didn’t understand. If the Mother were an aspect of me, how could she bestow spells I didn’t already know? Sure, I was fairly certain that the things Jess was doing were modelled after the work I had done to help people before, including her, but there was a fairly large difference between the simple, direct and somewhat instinctive way I had used Mind Magic to help them and completed and finished spells, like those Jess was supposedly using. One was entirely reliant on the person doing the healing, on their understanding, compassion and wisdom. The other was a lot easier, only requiring the correct spell, and that spell could apparently even be bestowed by the Mother?

It made little sense, but then, I had a feeling that would continue to be a regular occurrence with this, if only because I doubted I’d ever understand the Gods. Hel, there might be a reason why the Mother had split off from the rest of me; some sort of divine allergy bad enough to split off the divine aspect, leaving only my mortal self.

Regardless, I realised that these spells, however they had come to be, sounded rather fascinating. Interesting enough to make me track down Jess, which was surprisingly simple. Once I began looking for her, I only had to expand my magical senses and look for strong, familiar concentrations of power. Doing so allowed me to home in on the Mother’s presence. Given that some aspects of that presence were mirrored from my own, it was passingly familiar, allowing me to find Jess with ease.

In hindsight, I realised I didn’t even need to resort to magical trickery; I could have just gone to the hospital. While I had done the vast majority of the work to complete it, the people of Maggie’s community, especially those who had come from the Blessed City, had taken my work and run with it.

By now, the hospital wasn’t just the utilitarian shell I had created. They had taken my work and completed it, filled in the numerous small and large gaps, turning a cold, lifeless environment into something more, something welcoming and soothing.

Curiously, they had also managed to sanctify the place to the Mother. It was a fairly obvious benediction to enshrine a Goddess of Motherhood in a hospital that would primarily be a maternity ward and children’s hospital, at least for some time.

Jess was sitting in her office, hunched over her desk. Before her, she had a few pieces of paper, and when I entered, she let out a growl of annoyance.

“What do you want?” she snarled out, her voice sounding incredibly tired beneath the annoyance. “Didn’t I ask to be left alone for once?”

“Good afternoon,” I greeted her, my voice calm and placid, in contrast to hers.

“Mother?” Her head snapped up, her eyes going wide. “No, Jade,” she corrected herself.

“Thank the Mother that you are here,” she let out a sigh, one hand going up to her head, “Please, I really need your help,” she pleaded, looking at me imploringly.