Eli was underground, about 30 or 40 feet underground, with several broken bones and lots of skin missing, but he was alive and he would heal. In the moment he needed to stay underground until he healed, but if he didn't resurface his people would be in danger. He focused his mind and worked on focusing his healing so that he could move, fixing larger bones and tendons first. After about 30 minutes of sweaty focus he felt healed enough to move and started making his way up.
It took another 20 minutes to get himself out of the ground and he did not look like he had recovered much on the outside. He was missing a lot of skin and muscle while his face was partially collapsed and a part of his chest was caved in. Still, despite all this damage he stood in the middle of the crater and walked toward his group as if he wasn't hurt at all. Using his incredibly high will stat, he used the magic in his body to force it to move as if it was whole, it looked like a zombie was approaching them. He was walking so slow that by the time he got there his bones and face were healed enough so that he could talk.
"Everyone ok?" Eli asked.
"We got the wind knocked out of us but any other damage is healed," Tara said. "What was that?"
"That was me, or rather that was a bit over half of my magic supply detonating," Eli answered, he had a sheepish grin and hoped that they were not upset with him.
"So, you blew yourself up?" Stevens asked.
"In my defense, I did not know it was going to be that big of an explosion."
Bethany walked forward to him and slapped him in the face. "Don't scare me like that again," she said, then hugged him. There Tara did the same thing with a harder slap and a longer hug. As if not to feel left out, Audrey followed and did the same, but with her being much shorter than Eli, she motioned for him to bend down so she could slap him. Not wanting to go against the women of the group he did as she asked so she could slap him, she then hugged him and kissed him on the cheek.
"I'm sorry if I hurt you guys or made you worry, I'll explain but not here, let's go into the woods."
They all left the safe zone and walked through the middle of the crater then out of it towards the new tree line. Audrey and Stevens seemed to be able to feel the leftovers of the discordant magic that had cancelled other magic, Stevens had even picked up a rock and was talking to Cory about it. After entering the woods, Eli found a comfy spot on a tree root to sit down and urged the others to sit down as well. He took a few deep breaths as he wasn't sure how to explain his gut feeling about danger.
"I get these feelings that warn me of danger. You know how you can get an uneasy feeling, like something is off and you feel on edge or tense for no reason? Well I get that feeling but ten times more than before. I don't know where it comes from but it has saved me many times so when it comes, just as mysteriously a solution appears in my mind and I just kind of react, like a reflex. I can't be sure but I felt that you guys would be alright if I did what I did, so I did it." Eli explained.
"So you get a feeling and then decide to self-destruct?" Tara asked. "What if we were next to you, it would have killed all of us."
"I don't think it works like that, I think it all comes from my mind, so it wouldn't give me a reaction option unless it was something I could live with." Eli said.
Eli apologized again and they all seemed like it wasn't a big deal, but it was clear that Audrey had something she wanted to say to him in private. So, he sent her a message asking if she was ok. While waiting for a response he had them tell him everything that happened in the town. Stevens was giving him the full story so he would have plenty of time to message back and forth with Audrey. She responded with a message just saying they would talk later.
"Now that we are all up to speed, I need to tell you that you ruined my plans," Bethany said. "All of them."
"What plans?" Tara asked.
"I asked her to come up with some plans for our group for economics and trade," Eli said.
"And they were going well until your ass exploded in your pants," Bethany said. "You just made it all almost impossible."
"How so?" Audrey asked, clearly interested in learning about this.
"Who is going to want to trade or negotiate with a walking natural disaster?" Bethany asked in exasperation. "No one will think they can get a fair deal since if 'captain explody pants' decides he wants more he can just take it and they will have no recourse. There's a difference between knowing you are powerful, and seeing just how devastating you can be."
"Won't that mean we can get good trade deals, assuming we ever end up with something to trade?" Audrey asked
"Only if they think we care about how the rest of the world sees us. Otherwise they will only do the minimum and always be looking for a way out. So unless Ash here wants to run the world with an iron fist, we need to be able to negotiate on even ground, not standing at the top of a cliff holding a giant rock." Bethany said. She was getting very aggravated.
Bethany grabbed Eli's arm and told him that she needed to talk to him in private while dragging him away from everyone. After they had put a little distance between them, but staying where the others could see them, she slapped him again and began tearing into him.
"Do you have any idea how stupid that was?"
"I…"
"No, you shut up and listen to me dammit!" She yelled, Eli's shoulders fell and he sat down to take her verbal lashes.
"You ruined my plans, made it impossible to find more servant level followers, and made essentially every faction of people out there see you as a threat. But the worst of it is that you made my role almost impossible!" She yelled as she slapped him again. "How am I supposed to prove my value now? How do I show you that I'm good to have around? How do I separate myself from Tara or any other woman out there who will literally murder each other for a chance to be yours?" She had tears in her eyes now as she stopped yelling and grabbed both sides of his face to force him to face her and look her in the eyes. "How do I get my reward? How do I get my chance to love you and have you love me?" She kissed him, putting all her tangled and tense emotions all into her mouth and shoving them down his throat. Then, standing up straight, she walked away into the forest to be alone.
Tara walked over and silently caressed his cheek for a few seconds, she could feel him, his roiling emotions. He was more emotionally chaotic than she had ever seen, so much guilt, self pity, and doubt. It was all mixed with anger at himself, a fierce hot fury that made her start to cry. This was a real intense emotional event that broke his seal on his emotions and he was crying in rage. Tears were running down his face in streams and his eyes were glowing purple and grey with specks of white moving inside them.
Tara didn't move as he stood, the air around him vibrating and crackling with purple and black lighting arcing off his body. Several of these were hitting Tara and causing her skin to burn and bleed, but still she stayed still, keeping her hands on his face. As the power built, Tara screamed for the others to stay back. Then she used all of her strength to force him to look at her, the power coming off of him was cracking the ground and the lighting arcs were tearing trees in half, but she stayed and stared. Then she said to him, "Control it… for me."
Eli's power was breathing with him expanding and contracting, he drew his magic back in like a breath and after several breaths it all stopped, then Tara and Eli both passed out. The others came rushing over, Audrey was concerned, checking on Eli with her magic sense, diving head first into his soul. Stevens and Cody checked on Tara, who was breathing and healing well enough so they just made her comfortable. While having her hands on Eli's chest and her eyes closed, she started breathing heavily, almost hyperventilating. Audrey laid her head on his chest and just before passing out said, "There's something wrong."
The piece of her soul Audrey had sent into Eli was larger than she had meant it to be. She felt ok though, even a little invited to be here, especially since before his soul really didn't want her in here. She found Eli, but it wasn't him in the form she knew him, it was him as a 12 year old, it seems Eli is trapped in the memory of when his emotions were sealed. It felt, to her, like motherly love and worry wrapping around him over and over, layer after layer.
The part that scared Audrey the most was the lingering magic from his mother, it was wild, untamed, and spectacularly powerful. How did someone have magic that long ago, twelve or thirteen years before the system. She had thought that the heart node couldn't be opened before the system because the system made it possible, but now she thought that that wasn't true. His mother's magic wasn't guided by the system like theirs was either, it was wild and self created with no system assistance, with a heavy emphasis on chaos. Maybe that's why Eli's Chaos node is so powerful.
It took a few attempts but she finally located where Eli's consciousness was located. She wrapped herself around it and sent warm and encouraging feelings to him as strong and loud as she could manage. This wasn't working so she tried to mimic Tara's magic feel, but that made it worse, it felt like it was ashamed to face her, or it knew it was a fake. Finally she tried to mimic the wild feeling of his mother's magic, it took her a minute to get it right but when she finally got close enough and sent that to him, they woke up.
Both of them sat up in a panic and the others jumped back, the sun was out again and Tara was awake and well, but his magic burns on her left scars, or at least they weren't healing well. Bethany was still not back and now the monster horde would start at midnight which was about 15 or 16 hours from now.
"Tara, you didn't heal?" Eli asked.
"I'm healed, but your magic, when you were like that, I can feel it still inside me."
"Are you ok? Does it hurt?" he asked.
"Not really, it feels… powerful." She said that last word with a smile and one small purple arc of magic crawled across her body and down her arm.
"Ok well, if it's still there after the monster horde then me and Audrey should try and remove it." Eli said while standing up.
"If we find that it's harmful, then you can remove it, but I want to keep it if I can." Tara explained.
"It's raw emotional magic," Audrey said. "It will affect your personality and left in you long enough, your soul permanently. At least that's my best guess, I'll know more as time passes."
"We can discuss that after the monster horde, let's get ready." Tara said changing the subject.
"Ok, if you need rest, get it now, as the event gets closer it will get harder to sleep." Eli said.