“Screw this shitty world with three different axes and a baseball bat!” The unnatural pain still shot through my leg as I lay on my bed, my fingers twitching as they were grabbing the blanket. As my face was deeply buried within the pillow, my sounds were muffled, but I was sure Mary and Hannah could understand them very well.
“Lucinda, you need to calm down.” Hannah said as she slowly unwrapped the bandage around my foot. Luckily, the liquid mana burnt my flesh away, and so, no blood was seeping out of the wound.
“Just hack it off!” I said rolling around the bed as she finished ripping off the last layer of bandage which was glued to what was left of my foot.
“That would hurt even more.” She said, wincing as she saw my mutilated foot.
“There is a fucking ceiling to pain. So please, do me the favou-“ I screamed loudly as Hannah spilt alcohol over the open wound. Why did I teach her how to treat infected wounds? If she would have just chopped off my foot and burnt the stump, I would be incredibly happy.
But no … Hannah rather doctored around my foot. At least the sun was slowly setting at this point already, which was also the sole reason I even allowed her to help me. I kept trashing around considerably, threw all the pillows I had at Hannah while Mary held me down.
At last, the sunshine left this part of the world and with it, my abilities returned instantly. The pain vanished within seconds as my body dealt with the foreign molecules and my foot started to heal.
“Ahh, fuck. That’s the kind of pain I absolutely hate.” I said as I eyed my completely healed skin shortly afterwards.
“What do you mean?” Mary asked, probably wondering if there were any masochistic tendencies within me. Surely, there were not … probably.
“Mana … where is it stored?” I muttered as I laid flat on my back again.
“Hmm, there are several theories. I think it was either the heart, the brain, the liver, or the soul.” Mary said, presenting the current state of research on Solaris.
“Wrong, wrong, and wrong. It is the soul. And guess what happens if it is overflowing with mana.” I said and closed my eyes.
“Didn´t you say the soul is incredibly fragile but also can regenerate a few days ago?” Hannah asked, making me quite proud. I mean, she listened to all the bullshit I uttered, and I was pretty sure I used that as a curse against a snail on one of my favourite plants in the garden.
“Precisely. When souls leave purgatory, they are stripped of everything linking them to their former lives. That is considerably easier when souls are fragile in the first place, but it also means they need to regenerate their open wounds themselves.” On the flip side, if the soul becomes to sturdy during its lifetime, there is no other option but to imprison it indefinitely. And apparently, being a mass murderer qualified for that.
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“… the souls are half destroyed, and then pierce themselves together when they get in contact with too much mana?”
“Yeah, but they apparently fail to do so correctly without the help of the gods … which ultimately resulted in that fish. The soul changes, the body changes with it. And in rare cases, it works. The fish you saw earlier probably had a lifespan of around two days … while Sirius and his gang had one far longer than that of a human.” I explained unhappily.
“And you? What about you?” Mary asked, worry apparent in her eyes. I mean, the mana indeed reached my soul, but I couldn’t feel my soul breaking apart. It was like the mana refused to penetrate my soul and rather diffused into the surroundings slowly.
“I´m not like the other girls.” I claimed, but as I noticed their lack of understanding, I knew I had to elaborate a bit further. “…okay, my soul is different from yours.”
“What do you mean by that?” Hannah asked. Well, other souls feared me for example, but that wasn’t what she was asking about.
“… hmm, I think I told that snail I would rip out its arms in purgatory, didn´t I? All souls are ultimately that of a human once they enter purgatory, which simplifies processing them considerably. But I … I had always sharp teeth and red eyes, even when I was a soul.” I said slowly and nodded in the satisfaction that I lost neither of them.
“So you don’t even know the difference completely?” Mary asked swiftly.
“Nah, I can only speculate at this point.” I said and stood up slowly while testing my foot which worked fine.
“Okay, and all of that … what does it mean for us?” Mary asked slowly.
“Hmm? Nothing. The system the gods set up will continue, the souls arriving on this world will be fitted to their race and purgatory will be like always.” I answered, even though I knew she was asking for something else entirely.
“For us … for this world? What does it mean if new races keep popping up?” Mary asked yet again, and this time, I had no other choice but to tell her the truth.
“Well … let´s say I don’t mind a few genocides.” I said while trying to look as harmless as vampirically possible. There would be war. The werewolves were a rarity, but if they managed to spread undetected, we would be in trouble. They were stronger than humans, could hide among them, and aged slower. It would only be a matter of time until the new races displaced the old ones like I had read so often about.
Well, that was under the assumption humans could be changed easily. We had yet to see any proof that it wasn’t a one in million chance Sirius had in surviving a mana overflow of his soul. Eventually, though, there would be a new one. Until then though, I was sure to have humanity already in my grasp.