The vision disappeared, and Lith managed to stood up again, while healing his damaged fingers. He discovered that tears were still streaming from his eyes. He hadn’t cried in years, and the feeling linked to the act was bittersweet.
They were mostly tears of pain, but at the end of the vision, they had turned to joy from his third life. When he saw the dryads standing a few meters from him, Lith finally remembered where he was.
"Is it supposed to hurt so much?" In another moment, rage and doubt would have filled his voice. But he was still shaken from the experience. He was questioning all of his life choices, including what to do next.
"No, it’s not." The blond dryad was genuinely worried.
"It was meant to show you the past, to help you understand the future. It shouldn’t have been so painful."
Because Lith had her heart, she had felt an echo of his anguish.
- "Humans are the real monsters. How could a kid endure so much pain?" – She thought
Somehow Lith knew instinctively in what direction he needed to go. A feeling of uneasiness was growing inside him with every second, like when he received the phone call from the hospital the day Carl died.
It wasn’t too late yet, but the clock was ticking. He had to get there as fast as he could. Yet that development was too odd to be true, so he needed answers before taking any rash decision.
"Are you sure this will help me with my soul?" As the memories were fading, Lith was returning to his old self.
"As I said before, no. But it’s likely. Any soul’s priority should be the desire to be mended, to be whole again." The blond dryad said while shaking her head.
"What else could it be?" Lith had never grow fond of riddles.
"It could mean meeting the love of your life, the person that will become your best friend." She shrugged. "The only thing that I know for certain is that you will find someone or something related to what your soul craves the most."
"I’ll be honest, all this talk about souls and destiny sounds fake like a flying pig, but a deal is a deal." Lith gave back the yellow lotus to the dryad, before darting away faster than a bullet.
As soon they were alone, the blond dryad demeanour changed like heaven and earth had switched places, looking at her sister with eyes full of annoyance.
"First you let a newborn Abomination best you in combat and use you to leech the world energy, turning your turf into a dump. Then you need my help to handle a human child. You’ve sunk low, dear Lyta." She said with a sneer.
"That bastard took me by surprise." Lyta pouted. "Don’t act so smug, you and I know that in my place you wouldn’t have fared any better. As for the human, that’s no child, it’s a monster. He didn’t bat an eye even after seeing me naked.
Thank the gods it’s not an academy student. I would die of embarrassment if we ever meet again. What about you? You yielded without even attempting to fight, to the point of giving your heart to him. That was beyond stupid, dear Ryssa.
What if he decided to keep you as a slave? What if he demanded me to hand mine too before freeing me? How could you take the risk of turning us both into wh*res?"
Her voice was full of contempt, looking down on her sister.
"Because I asked her to do so." Scarlett appeared from thin air towering over the nagging dryad.
"The reason why I let that Abomination live, is to teach you that being confident is one thing, being conceited is another. You can’t expect me to cover for all your mistakes, Lyta. Do your job properly, or I will find someone else to do it." It roared.
"As for the boy, is just a pet project of mine. He is not human, but not an Abomination either. I needed to see how he behaved when given absolute power. Unlike you, I don’t let unknown flowers grow in my garden."
- "Also, I wanted to check if that dryad mumbo jumbo about souls could actually fix him. Otherwise he would have never accepted any help, he is too paranoid. This way he believes to have earned it." – The last part the Scorpicore kept to itself.
It would have been too rude telling its minions that not even the Lord of the forest believed about their so-called spiritual powers.
Meanwhile, Lith was following the instructions contained in the vision, looking for a particular clearing in the forest, about ten kilometres (6,2 miles) from the academy’s gates. As he closed in, his worries and anxieties faded away.
- "Are you alright?" Solus asked.
"Not really. Do you know what was the most disturbing thing about that spell? It made me realize that I may have grown as a hunter and a mage. But as a person, I remained stale.
I’m still so scared of being hurt, that it takes me years to realize the good faith of someone. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that suddenly I believe that this world is full of wonderful people, only that I regret having lost so much.
Think about my father, Raaz. I spent so much time treating him as a menace, that when I started enjoying his company, it was too late. It’s the same reason I never managed to have a healthy relationship back on Earth.
To really connect with someone, you need to let yourself be vulnerable, to be sincere and open. But I always failed at that. I expected something to go wrong, for the other person to betray my trust, to the point of barely giving any.
And here I am, doing the same thing, over and over. I don’t do favours, I cut deals. I don’t ask for help, I just wait for people to be indebted to me and then I collect it. The worst thing is that even if I wanted to change, I would not know where to start."
"That’s because you are forgetting another of your flaws: you obsess with perfection instead of just trying to improve. If you really want to change, start with that. Take things a little at the time." –
Lith was now above the clearing, watching the same scene of the vision replay in front of his eyes.
Six rough looking individuals, probably hunters, had just cornered a young Byk (AN: bear type magical beast).