ALL NOVEL Loop 254 - Memories
“Ethel, can you hear me at all?” Ethel could hear the small voice, but it sounded terribly distant, and she was having trouble putting the sounds to a source.
“I think so, but I’m afraid I’m not sure who you are, or now that I think about it, who exactly I am. Is Ethel my name? Where am I?” She asked. All she could currently see was a deep blackness. She tried lifting her hand in front of her face. It looked distorted, almost as though she was seeing it through a dirty window.
“It’s Mr. Oakbert, Oaky, and yes, you are Ethel. We aren’t anywhere exactly. This is your core. I’m trying to hold it together. You did a lot of damage to yourself recently. Do you remember that?” The mana spirit asked.
Events flashed across Ethel’s vision. She saw herself arguing with a strange bird. “Gus, I appreciate the concern, but I don’t have time to argue the point. Reverse the root network’s energy into me. It may pain me to say this, but Cal is more important than all of us.”
“Okay, boss, this is going to hurt,” the bird, no, Gus, said back to her.
“What happened after that?” She asked into the empty space.
“You died, try as you might. You are still very much human and not nearly yet able to channel all of my stored energies at once, let alone all of your own,” Oakbert answered distantly.
“Then how am I here? Wait, no, I remember, there should just be a new loop. I should be waking up in bed if I die. Why aren’t I?” More of her memories were returning to her brain. She saw herself meeting Cal and Bug for the first time, that amazing talking dog who had convinced her of so much.
“Because this is a different kind of death, and I’m not going to let that happen, but I need you to keep remembering, pull yourself back together. Right now your friends are risking their own existence to hold the realm we built together. I don’t know if they can do it, but if they somehow manage, you have to wake up to continue the job,” Oakbert answered, his voice becoming less distant.
Her memories started flooding in, the loops, the animals, Pluto, and Cal being snatched away, all of it at once. Following it was a vision of Onelder’s last moment. He had saved her realm and paid the ultimate price to do it.
“Dammit, Okay, I see it all now. How do I wake up? The idiots need me,” She asked, the fiery anger returning to her voice.
“Do you see this?” A small green pebble appeared in her view as Oakbert asked the question.
“Yes,” she replied.
“Good, grab it; it’s a tiny concentrated bit of your mana. It’s taken a great effort, but I have managed to put enough together to restart your core if you can get it there,” Oakbert Explained.
“Understood,” Ethel grabbed it firmly in her hand and crushed it hard in her closed fist, forcing the energy backward down her mana channels into her core. She felt something ignite inside; she realized Oaky hadn’t been fully truthful with her. “Tricky little spirit, this was mostly your energy.”
“Yes, it was, but you would never have taken so much if I hadn’t tricked you. I’ll be fine, I promise, but now you need to wake up,” Oakbert said.
“You better be,” she said as her eyes snapped open. Her first sight was of a giant tree man asleep on the floor next to her bed. Poor Frank, she hadn’t meant to worry him so. “Frank, wake up and help me get out of this bed. We need to see what has happened.”