Weakness

Dug and the rest quickly turned their mounts around and rushed towards Gerald.

The sudden shouts and screams of pain came out of nowhere and they thought they were under attack. However, as they tried to calm him down and see what was wrong, they were confused.

Gerald didn't have any visible wounds or bruises, and he also seemed to be calming down rapidly.

But, a while later when his situation seemed to have stabilized, his expression remained... odd. A blank stare adorned Gerald's face as his lifeless eyes now pierced into the distance.

He still had a pulse and was breathing normally, he was just completely unresponsive. Light, movement, sound, even pain... he reacted to none of it. It was as if his mind shut down all of a sudden, leaving him in an uncanny state between consciousness and unconsciousness.

***

Gerald was dead.

Or at least, that's how he felt. His mind was currently a bloody mess.

When his Soul touched the orb, his mind suddenly experienced so much pain that he thought he was really going to die. Nothing he ever felt before came even close, and he even felt what could only be described as his Soul leaving his body.

What only lasted a second in reality felt like endless centuries to him. And now he was trapped in his own mind, unable to leave, buried deep beneath the surface, where the origin of his life was stored.

He was currently staring at the black mist, completely speechless. His Soul… It… It was split apart. Straight down the middle, nearly bisecting his Soul was a crack, edges burning and crumbling off into dust, like a tall building after a fire.

A third of it was gone. A third of his Soul simply evaporated, disappeared, gone in the blink of an eye. It was simply wiped from existence in that split second.

He could not believe it. Months of battles, thousands of mortal Souls, simply gone just like that. What kind of insanity did those orbs contain?! It came like a bolt of lightning that could kill hundreds in a blink of an eye, and tried to do… something.

Despite experiencing it, he had no clue what happened. It was too fast, too painful.

The only thing he knew, was that that thing, whatever it was, tried to somehow merge with him. And he permitted it. Without a second thought. What insanity!

A trout trying to swallow a whale, that's what that was. And now he was staring at the result of his recklessness, the decaying remnants of his Soul. Split nearly in half…

He didn't know why, but he felt that if he let the two pieces separate, he would die. Why did he feel so? Would it really happen? He didn't know, but he didn't plan on finding out. It was time for action!

He gathered his wits and quickly began reshaping the mist. The burning and decaying parts didn't seem to be planning of stopping any time soon, so he had to buy himself some time.

He shifted the smoldering parts towards the outside layer where they could burn off the corrupted parts of his Soul first. It hurt so much! Every movement was accompanied by excruciating pain, but he knew he was doing the right thing.

Isolate the damage, and preserve the healthy parts, that was his mission.

After what felt like an eternity, his core was repaired, and the crack closed. His Soul shrunk down quite a bit already, and then the decay made it even smaller. The only good thing was that at least half of the corrupted pieces burned off during the entire process, and his situation seemed to be stabilizing.

Whatever energy or what have you was left inside him was now nearly completely gone.

He did have some strange visions during this time, but they were just momentary pictures, mostly unclear and unrecognizable. But as quickly as they came, they were gone just the same. He didn't even remember anything about them, he just knew they happened.

"So many questions…"

He was completely exhausted. It was so long since he felt himself being so weak.

Sometime later, he felt himself dying, the feeling not coming from the Soul, but from the body. It was serious! He had to awaken!

***

Gerald slowly opened his eyes and was immediately blinded by bright light. Slowly, over painfully long minutes, he became accustomed to it and could distinguish some shapes.

His eyes were blurry at first, and he was thirsty. So thirsty and dehydrated that he even struggled to breathe. With but a thought, he quickly summoned water from his Ring… only for it to fall on the ground.

"Huh?" He quietly murmured. His Telekinesis didn't work for some reason, and he had no energy to even speak. His throat was parched, and his body felt like it was made out of lead.

He could not move a muscle.

Feeling the rhythmic movement of his body up and down, he realized something was under him, moving. But he had no energy to lift his body and look. He just remained like that, motionless, for who knows how long.

Slowly he felt his body waking up, and he could wiggle his fingers.

Weirdly, there was no magic he could use. It was completely blocked inside his body. It was not the first time he experienced it, but it made him extremely nervous nonetheless.

It seemed that the damage to his Soul was much more severe than he thought. It was becoming dangerous.

He once again gathered the little bit of focus that his mind was currently capable of, and this time summoned a bit of water directly into his mouth.

Despite quite a bit of it spilling out, it felt so nice drinking a sip of cool water on such a hot day. It was barely enough to moisten his throat but felt so heavenly.

He waited some more time as the energy was gradually returning to his limbs, all while slowly drinking sips of water every few minutes. He felt so tired all the while, and only his stubbornness kept him awake.

It was towards the evening, when the air cooled down, and the sun was low on the horizon, that he finally gathered enough strength to lift himself up. It was a monumental task. Just moving slightly required him to use all his willpower, as if he spent the last month motionless in a coma.

"Ugh…" He groaned.

He was currently on some sort of improvised bed on top of the Earth Dragon. Looking around, he noticed the rest of the gang riding their own mounts, and they didn't yet seem to have noticed him waking up yet.

The men all looked tired and exhausted from constant travel under the hot sun, and the small shade made of white cloth under which they sat didn't seem to help much to brighten their mood.

A while later they stopped and began setting the camp for the night.

The cold of the night helped in giving Gerald a bit more strength as he didn't feel like his entire being was being cooked in an oven anymore. One of the warriors noticed him sitting upright, and quickly notified the boss.

"Gerald!" Dug came running, clearly relieved to see him awake. "Oh, thank the gods, we nearly thought you were dead!"