PreExpedition : Preparations for Resurrection (Red pov)

I sit there waiting when I feel the familiar ripple that announces Stardream's return. I open my eyes and look around, ten or so individuals, all of them in one way or another beings of great power, surround me. They look at me and each other curiously. Stardream unsurprisingly, is the only one not looking around but instead walking towards me, all 10 copies of her, before she merges back together into one. "Finally!" she exclaimes, "I'm back in one piece after being scattered around the cosmos."

"I thought you were supposed to be the calm older sibling, the one to guide him in the world where he will be reborn," I poke fun at her behavior.

"It's not like he will know about this anytime soon as long as no one says anything." she retorts before getting back into her preferred persona.

"Regardless, you found them all right? This plan of yours is hot air without those fragments." I remind her.

"Of course, right here!" She snaps her figures and 10 lights fly towards us. Those lights upon closer inspection appear to be glass fragments. "Though, I have to ask. Are you sure you want to do this? You're already free you know."

"it's because I'm finally free and no longer who I once used to be I want this even more than you do. I want to experience what's it like to have a family and someone who loves you for who you are. With this, everything that we desire and have worked towards can finally begin." The ritual isn't hard for a being of my caliber. The only difficulty came in restoring the soul core to be one cohesive whole again after having shattered.

I gather the fragments together injecting my own soul energy to stitch them together, and it worked. "At long last, it is done," I said holding a small illusory pearl in my hand, his soul core.

"Red… the core," I hear Stardream's voice shaking.

"What's… wrong?!" I look at the core to see it start cracking. "No no no no no no…" I inject more soul into the core trying to stabilize it.

"Here!" Stardream throws me a green cube, her core matrix, and to my surprise it stabilizes the core around itself. She sighs in relief. "I was worried we would fail after coming this far."

"We did fail." I say my voice faint where she could barely hear. "The fact that the soul core needs your core matrix to hold itself together is a failure."

"Then we just need to find another way to remove the dependency. We can do that later," she looks at the core before continuing, "for now let's proceed as we planned. We still need to form a proper soul around the core then throw it in the reincarnation cycle."

"We can't, I've exhausted all the soul energy and essence I had," I tell her. I am barely holding myself together as is, on top of have to scramble to stabilize the core expending the bit of essence I had since soul energy wasn't enough. "We will need a host soul to implant the core into. However there is a problem here too…"

"Compatibility between the soul and core without causing damage to either." Stardream finishes with a frown. While the two of us were trying to think of a solution one the others, a doctor judging by his attire, came forward with a suggestion of his own.

"Why not try using a piece of soul from each of us. Seeing as those fragments were the roots of our own souls there wouldn't be a problem with capability between the core and resulting soul."

"That would mean allowing the core to devour and aggregate the souls of everyone here." Stardream immediately shot the idea down.

"That didn't seem to affect you much. Can't you just apply a sort of stasis to everyone's consciousness till we can be properly separated?" The demon monarch spoke next, followed by the librarian.

"Besides we already died and your friend there seems to be on the final stretch herself so, what difference will waiting a little bit longer make?"

They make good points and I can see Stardream thinks so as well but isn't confident in replicating what happened her with modifications.

"You handle ensuring everyone doesn't get devoured and can awaken later. I'll focus on making the resulting soul stable enough to pass reincarnation without issue." I finally decide to go ahead with the idea. Stardream, seeing I have decided, nods and begins construction of the soul by attaching everyone's soul by their respective fragments to the soul core, including hers and mine. The core at this point, while reassembled isn't whole but, is barely holding itself together stably. That is until the first soul is fused to its piece. The doctor, the emperor, the sage, the tyrant, the dragon, the librarian, the assassin, the shapeshifter, the inspector, the mechanic, the system, and me. One by one a connection is formed between the soul and everyone in the chamber.

As the connection between the soul core and myself is forming I'm able to feel the condition of the soul and I find that there is no proper identity or ego trying to form like should be occurring normally.

"Just FYI Stardream, while this method will work the resulting soul will have a very serious problem. The lack of a few vital components necessary to be anything but a mindless puppet. Unfortunately, we will have to make do and hope we can address the problem immediately upon resurrection."

"I know. Fortunately, my primary matrix has the copies of his memory stored on it. It also has his old quest program. It is one of the few programs he made with the intent of have it run independent of me, along with the GEMS."

"I hope they truly function as you describe."

"They will and… Done. All up to you now Red."

"Right." I begin awakening the soul and shrouding it in energy to prevent being altered by the cycle. It wasn't hard to do and I finish it in a few minutes. It tries to enter reincarnation upon awakening, causing the rest of us to fall unconscious one by one. As my vision fades I can't tell if that's someone's voice faintly hear or some another sound.