“Wait, seriously? You’re on board with this?” I asked as we began to walk towards Damien chained around the pedestal.

“Yeah. I don’t really think I’m going to be able to get you to budge on this and, frankly, I’m kinda sick of this forest. Plus, if you think this is the right decision, I should trust you. However, if this does blow up in our faces, and we survive of course, I reserve all rights to say, ‘I told you so,’ capiche?”

“Yeah. That’s fair, but let’s not think of the failure and instead get to work on success. What do we have to do?”

Viktor knelt down, slowly removing the chains from around Damien, allowing his body to come to a rest on the ground. Thankfully, the flowers were still spewing their pink cloud and keeping him asleep. “The first thing we need to do is cut off his essence supply.”

I gave him a confused look. “Couldn’t we just do that with those chains? What’s wrong with those?”

Viktor shook his head as the last of the chains dissolved in to glowing green-yellow essence. “These only suppress essence. Even with them on, you could reasonable still use magic. Considering how skilled he is, I don’t doubt that, somehow, he would be able to escape during our journey.”

“Okay, but he’d have to be awake for that right? Those flowers are keeping him asleep, aren’t they?”

Viktor stood up and turned back to face me. “The nelith flowers do increase a person’s fatigue, but they can only go so far. With how much of his essence was suppressed by those chains, we had, at most seventeen hours left of him being fully unconscious. After that, he’d be awake and able to use essence all the essence he has available. If I were able to make stronger chains or somehow introduce a sleep-inducing substance in to his bloodstream, none of this would be necessary, but I’m not really that good at making these kind of chains.”

I nodded. Suppressing essence was a new concept to me, but I could understand the surface-level concepts about it all. “Alright, then how are we going to actually completely cut off his essence supply?”

Viktor held out his hand, a seal on his palm quickly forming a needle made of pure construct magic. “Essentially magical acupuncture. We’ll place these needles in to his body at very specific spots. That will disrupt the flow of essence throughout his body and make it so that he is completely unable to use magic or even just utilize the many things that essence does for the body like healing. This will make it so the nelith flowers can technically keep him asleep forever.”

I gave him a skeptical glance. “I sense a ‘but…’ coming.”

He nodded. “There is. A big one. To be able to do this, you need to be able to see the exact flow of essence through a person’s body. This can only be done with an observer’s eye. I’m not sure if you’re able to do that, but if you can, I should be able to properly place the needles in to his body to seal off his essence.

I swallowed hard, looking at the unconscious figure then back to Viktor. “I can’t promise anything, but I will try my hardest.”

“That’s all I can ask of you,” he responded as he began to conjure more needles.

I flicked a finger over my right eye as I fixed my gaze on Damien’s body. I could easily see his aura and was even able to make sure that’s all I saw. I was then able to refine it done to just the masses of essence built up inside of his body. However, those weren’t going to provide us any help in this area. I needed to be able to see distinct pathways or I wouldn’t be able to help at all.

Instead of trying to focus on the flow of the essence in the body, I tried to see the shape of the paths that it took to actually flow throughout the body. I envisions the flows converting in to specific shapes, but without knowing what shapes they would take, just knowing that they would take them on.

To my surprise, it was actually working. As I worked to refine my focus, it was like putting on glasses. The fuzzy blurs of color that swayed and moved throughout the body condensed down in to more defined pathways. Once they had finally come in to focus completely, I was left with a very clean set of pathways connecting all throughout the body. There were still a few masses of pure essence, but they only seemed to be at very critical points in the body like the heart. Blood red essence coursed throughout the entire system.

“Can you see the pathways?” Viktor asked as he knelt down next to me, a large collection of needles on top of a piece of wood that he was holding.

“Yeah. I think so. How many needles do you have there?”

“Sixty-two.”

I almost fell over. “Sixty-two?! We have to put that many in?!”

“Correction: I have to put them in. You have to direct me. I never said this was a simple process. Are you ready to get started?”

I took a deep breath and collected myself, making sure my concentration was solid. I needed to be able to see, at any point, if something was going wrong. Then, a thought occurred to me. “Would it be easier if I were to suspend him in the air and just sort of… move him around as needed?”

Viktor thought for a moment. “Yeah. That’s a good idea. We should also probably take off his lab coat.”

The thought had also occurred to me. It was a little too loose and very bulky. Though, that did bring up another potential issue. “What about his jeans? I feel like those might be a little too thick.”

“Yeah, but we don’t actually need to completely take them off,” Viktor said as he removed the blood-stained lab coat and placed it on top of the pedestal. He then took out his black and blue dagger and quickly cut around Damien’s jeans about halfway up the thigh. I realized this was because there was a specific pocket of essence just around the knee. “There we go. Now, float him up.”

I chuckled, the phrasing of the request pretty amusing. “Aye aye,” I responded. I formed a seal on my hand and then used it to create a large pocket of dense air all around Damien. This way his body wouldn’t move and actually rotating his body would be a lot easier. I moved him about a foot off the ground, face up. He was still completely unconscious.

I got down on my knees next to him, Viktor taking he side opposite me. “I think we should start with the big one, the heart.” He hovered the first needle over his chest. “Am I over it?”

“A little to the left,” I said. He moved about an inch to the left and was directly over the center of the essence collected around the heart. “Perfect.”

His hand descended, the needle quickly piercing through the skin and entering the mass of essence. The movement of the essence slowed a little bit around the entire body. “One down… Sixty-one to go. Next, I need you to tell me exactly where each of the eight pathways going out from the main segment in the heart are.”

I focused in closer on the mass of essence in the heart and began directing him to each of them. They were all extremely small and basically the same size as the needle, so everything needed to be very exact.

Once all of the parts going out of the heart were suppressed, the flow of essence in the body slowed a lot more, the heart being completely motionless now. We moved up to the eyes since they were the a little harder than the heart. The actual points of essence were only a little bit wider than the pathways connecting to them. We didn’t have as much trouble with positioning though, having gotten the hang out it from the heart. The flow of essence in his body continued to slow.

Next, we moved on to the stomach, which was fairly simple, but was a necessary connection to sever. After this, we really only had to do two body parts since the two arms and legs were completely identical. The big issue with them were the fingers and toes. Each finger and toe had its own pathway going through it and they were much thinner than the ones in the rest of the body. They each connected to a mass directly in the center of the hand. There was another one near the elbow which acted somewhat as a gate for the entire arm. There was also a point that needed to be severed around the shoulder where the two pathways that came off the heart converged. The placement for that needle was a lot more precise than any of the other points and took a few tries to get it right.

Eventually, we got both of the arms done and it was just time to move on to the legs. In reality, the legs were identical in structure to the arms, but they did still pose a bit of challenge. However, even with that, they were done quickly. With all of the needles in place, the flow of essence throughout Damien’s body had completely stopped now.

Viktor looked over to me and smiled, letting out a sigh of relief. “That was stressful, but you were a great guide. Thanks for the help.”

“Of course. Now that were done though, we’re going to need to be able to transport his around.”

“Yeah, I have that covered. Although, first. I need to finish something.” He formed another seal and I watched as the ends of the needles that were jutting out of his body disappeared. The puncture wounds still remained, so Viktor rubbed some healing elixir on them. With that, Damien looked perfectly normal. Now we just had to transport him out of here.

“What are you going to do with him?”

Viktor smirked as he formed a seal just underneath the levitating body of Damien. A wooden box quickly began to take shape around him, wood twisting around his body until he was completely covered. The lid of the box was sealed with several coils of sturdy-looking vines. “This will keep him safe from most things. I placed some restraints inside the box to keep him firmly in place. On top of that, there are sled treads on the bottom so that we can drag him along with us,” he said as he picked up some reins made of the same vines as the ones holding together the box.

“Sounds good. Want me to drag it along?” I asked.

“Sure. This was your call anyway. Now, let’s head out. We’ve got a long way.” With that, he began walking off.

I quickly hopped over the box, which I was beginning to realize looked like a coffin, and grabbed on to the vines, dragging the box behind me as I followed Viktor in to the forest. I wanted to thank him for all his help, but the issue was already quite touchy, so I decided to leave it alone.

We didn’t talk much as we began our journey towards Malfuim, at last, but that was okay. We had spent a lot of time together recently, so this little break was probably for the best. He’d also been a little less talkative after his talk with Jester. I still had no idea what they had said to him.

“It was just a friendly little warning about you. Nothing sinister,” she added from inside my head.

“She definitely threatened him a little,” Sylak added.

“Shut up, you angsty wannabe wolf!”

“I. Am not. A wolf,” they responded.

“Can you stop fighting inside of my head? I don’t need to hear any of this.”

“Whatever. Have fun with your dead body dragging,” Jester fought, her voice fading out.

I decided to just focus on the task at hand, eventually deciding to just sit on the box as I made it hover a feet behind Viktor. We continued on for a while, the middle of the day eventually creeping up on us. The trees around us began to get greener and I saw Viktor looking around at them, a soft smile adorned on his face. They were a much needed change from the dreary, almost-grey color of the trees in the section of the forest where we’d been. It made things feel a lot more alive.

“I’m getting hungry and I see there’s a town up ahead. Wanna stop in for lunch?” Viktor called back.

I smiled at the suggestion of food. “Absolutely. I’m starving!”

Sure enough, a minute later, we were at the edge of a somewhat small town. There were maybe ten houses total and a few other buildings of various service. They all looked fairly normal, sporting wood exterior of various shades. Most of the rooves had prominent figures on each edge of the upper parts. There was a simple dirt pathway leading in between the buildings with some nice lush grass on the sides.

We made our way through the town, eventually coming upon a nice, small diner. We made our way inside, leaving the box on the side of the building. Viktor placed some form of enchantment on it to keep it from being stolen as well as a piece of wood over Damien to dissuade anyone who might try to take a peek.

We then headed inside the diner and found a nice seat in the corner. A tall woman came over to the table. She had deep brown skin, similar to Viktor and curly brown hair. It was tied back in a neat bun. She had on a plain white shirt with a green apron over it. She smiled and looked at me. “Now, what can I get for you… Viktor?” She said as she turned to Viktor.

He looked up from his menu, his jaw dropping. “Samantha?”