Prologue: Joanna (Part 8)

She woke up two days later, sprawled on the bathroom floor, too weak to move. Gilgamesh was squatting by her head, squatting and smiling as it looked down at her. "What have you done to me?!" she demanded!

"Nothing," the gentlemanly voice responded.

"What you mean is, what have you done to yourself?"

She spent two more days on the floor, fading in and out of consciousness, struggling to hold on to her sanity against the maddening whispers of the forbidden grimoire. Her body was being stretched and reformed by the monster cores and monster blood. Everything ached and she was in deep pain.

On the fifth day, she finally had the strength to get up.

She donned her holo-watch and scanned for the nearest private clinic. She chanced upon one called Mwarubaini Clinic. Crawling out of the building and hailing an ambulance, but only after feebly sealing her lab, bedroom, and house. She collapsed on the apartment steps, only partially regaining consciousness when she was being hauled into the ambulance.

She was out cold for three weeks.

She was in a coma, while the healers and druids worked hard to rectify the manna and chi imbalance within her. They struggled with her hyperactive and unbalanced manna and chi cycles. The doctors said it appeared to be due to consumption of monster cores and magical crystals, they believed she'd attempted a botched ritual to try to break through.

The doctors agreed that she was lucky to be alive, they couldn't explain it other than there was an additional influence working to modulate the energy within her system. Despite the extreme energy fluxes in her body, and the stresses it would have put on her body, whoever or whatever it was was able to direct the energy and chi through her meridians, vessels and organs. They couldn't even accurately determine every change occurring within her because the imaging artefacts and tools met interference.

She'd not stirred since they'd put her in the ward bed.