Chapter 28: A sea of souls

Parkers mind whirled in a cosmic soup of information. All at once she'd been shown a lifetimes worth of knowledge. More than that, a thousand lifetimes of thoughts and dreams, many of them being Harvels. And, like anyone who has ever expected a sip and gotten a chug, she choked. Parkers brain began to cough profusely.

The stream of information skipped uncontrollably, flashes of thoughts and memories becoming more disjointed with each moment. She saw cities fall to ruin and mountains move along as millennia passed. A sea of souls unfathomably deep and a creature in waiting below it's glassy surface. And, somewhere near it's menacing shore, a large and infinitely kind soul staring towards the stars above.

Parker held on to that moment. Pushed down and fought the next bout of coughs as best she could. She felt like she'd seen a few souls like this before. Seen them in the eyes of children who had taken care of their sick parents, and the nurses who had kept her mother alive in her final days. In Aldons eyes, at times. Souls too kind to give up and let the fire burn without being fought.

Her minds diaphragm gave out. The next mental cough sent a pulse through every last nerve inside of her body, and some she could swear were not. Her eyes opened now, they locked with Harvels. A thousand thoughts came to their conclusion.

'We need to go down. Before it takes that kind soul.' Parker thought, just as time finally regained the ground it had lost to her mind. Her brain had gotten over its hiccups and was now riding the figurative teacups. With it's newfound confidence it had persuaded her stomach to come with it.