Nexxali moved to one of the carved sections depicting the Leviathan's death throes, running her fingers along the relief. Her claws traced the outline of what looked like a wound in the cosmic serpent's side stopping at a glowing gash that wept golden blood in stylized streams.

  "There has to be quality medical shit somewhere nearby," she muttered. "The Arch-Keepers don't just manage resurrections. They often handle extreme injuries, perform rituals. They'd need..." Her fingers found a seam in the carving. "Ah. Here we go."

  The wall section depressed with a soft click. A hidden compartment slid open, revealing shelves lined with vials, and crystalline containers of various sizes. Each glowed with an internal light of amber, crimson, violet and green aurora-like internal flickers.

  "This," she said, uncorking the vial with her teeth, "is a Phoenix Tear elixir. One of the most powerful Vitality potions in the Frontenachii arsenal. Costs an arm and a leg. Prads definitely cannot afford."

  She moved to Shady's corpse, turned the Wendigo slightly and poured the golden liquid over the crater where the railgun bullet had obliterated the back of her skull.

  The effect was immediate.

  Muscle tissue bubbled up from the edges of the wound, weaving itself together in threads of crimson and silver. I watched as Shady's skull reconstructed itself from the inside out. Bone matter crystallized from nothing, latticing together like time-lapse footage of coral growth. The silver stars in her fur and black, iridescent-edged feathers pulsed brighter with each layer of regeneration, as if her entire body was contributing magical energy to the healing process.

  The flesh came next, red strands kneading itself, then dark and furred skin, spreading across the exposed bone like moss claiming a rock. One of her antlers, which had been cracked by the railgun impact, sprouted fresh growth at the base. New bone pushed through damaged tissue, branching upward in fractal patterns that mimicked their original structure.

  "Holy shit," I breathed. “Phoenix Tears are way too effective.”

  "Is also Wendigo regeneration," Nexxali said. "Is quite powerful. But it needs a functioning brain to trigger. Without neural activity to direct the healing response, a Wendigo corpse is just a corpse. The Phoenix Tear gives the body enough of a magic kickstart to reactivate her natural abilities."

  Shady's eyes snapped open.

  Silver pupils contracted to pinpricks, then dilated fully, then contracted again as her consciousness struggled to reboot. Her jaw worked silently, mouth opening and closing like she was trying to remember how speech worked.

  "Shades?" I leaned over her. "You in there?"

  Her eyes focused on me. Recognition flickered.

  "Ashy?" The word came out slurred, half-formed. "Why... ceiling made of whale ribs?"

  "We are inside the Incarnation temple," Nexxali clarified. "How do you feel, babe?"

  "Like someone shot me in the head." Shady wobbled and tried to sit up. I caught her shoulders. "Oh wait. Someone did shoot me in the head."

  "You had it coming, bad girl," Nexxali laughed. Shady swatted her half-heartedly with her tail.

  “Bleh." Shady rubbed her regenerated skull, fingers probing the newly formed bone structure. "Uuuuugh. Major migraine."

  She pushed herself upright, using my gun unit frame for support. The diamondust dress refracted dancing light across the obsidian floor as she moved. "Where's Auntie Evely?"

  "Chilling in her bath," Nexxali reported. "She thinks you're peacefully dead and staying that way for twenty hours while your soul ferments in this sarcophagus I just broke."

  "The Keeper?"

  "Dead." Nexxali gestured to Morrígan's corpse sprawled nearby. "And those two guards. We fully committed to treason now. No takebacks."

  Shady's silver eyes jumped to the bodies, then to the shattered crystal sarcophagus, then back to me. "Right. So we're doing this. The thing."

  "The thing," I confirmed.

  Nexxali ransacked more potions from the shelves. She discovered a ceremonial, skull-shaped basket and filled it with the healing potions to the brim.

  "Alright," Shady said, flexing her claws and staring at her right wrist where the Lazarus bracelet sat. "Let's get this nightmare parade started."

  "You ready to—” I began.

  "Chew my hand off one hundred and thirteen times?" She grinned. "Yeah, Ashy. I'm ready. Besides, Nexy's got the good healing juice to speed things along. I'll be fine. It will be worth it." Her silver eyes met mine with absolute conviction. "Every single time. Because this is how we save everyone. The Slayer's Sword will be ours to wield."

  Hum? Oh, I guess that the Keeper could see the future then? I contemplated, following Shady out of the corpse-preservation room into the main hall. Her diamondust dress swayed as she gripped the doorframe, muscular legs wrapped in half-folded hexasuit tights framed further by diamondust stockings.

  Nexxali was ready with the first Phoenix Tear potion, the golden liquid sloshing in its crystalline vial. "On your mark, Princess."

  Shady took a breath, pulling the sparkly fabric up to expose her arm. Then another. Her jaw opened wide, skull-face features distorting as she positioned her right wrist between massive canines.

  Crunch.

  The sound of Shady's teeth cleaving through her own wrist was somehow worse than I'd imagined. Not a clean snap, a grinding, splintering noise as bone gave way under pressure designed to tear through prey. Blood sprayed across the diamondust dress and white stockings, turning the sparking material ruby-crimson.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  "Fuck!" Shady's voice came out muffled around her own severed hand. She spat it onto the floor where it landed with a wet thwack, the Lazarus bracelet sitting around the wrist. “Ahh sheeeeet, that really fucking hurt.”

  Blood pumped from the stump in rhythmic spurts, each pulse sending more dark fluid spreading across the floor. Shady clutched the wound against her chest, silver eyes blazing with pain.

  Nexxali uncorked the Phoenix Tear vial and poured it directly over the injury. The golden liquid hissed where it met blood, steam rising as the healing magic engaged with Wendigo regeneration. A new arm rapidly bloomed in place of the lost one.

  I grabbed the severed hand. It was warm and twitched slightly, blood pouring from the uneven cut. I moved toward the center of the temple where the Incarnation Well waited.

  The Well itself was built into the floor, a circular depression about six feet in diameter. The rim was carved from Leviathan bone, covered in runes that pulsed with the same golden light as the veins in the walls. Inside, the blood gleamed like molten metal, translucent and also still and reflecting the starry ceiling overhead.

  "Bottoms up," I muttered, dropping Shady's hand into the Well.

  The Leviathan blood accepted the offering with a sigh-like eerie sound. The severed hand sank slowly, the Lazarus bracelet catching the golden light as it descended. For a moment, nothing happened.

  Then the bracelet ignited and blood began to move.

  It swirled around the severed hand in lazy spirals, flickering otherworldly light intensifying with each rotation. The Lazarus bracelet flashed—once, twice, a dozen times in rapid succession. Each pulse sent ripples across the blood's surface, geometric patterns spreading outward like fractals.

  The hand came apart at a molecular level, breaking down into its constituent elements which the blood absorbed with greedy acceptance. The bracelet remained solid, glowing brighter as it sank deeper, pulling more blood toward itself in a miniature whirlpool.

  "Here it comes," Nexxali murmured beside me.

  The bracelet spiraled lazily through the blood, trailing luminescent, gold threads like a spider descending into amber. The liquid responded to its presence, gathering around the artifact in concentric rings that pulsed with increasing intensity.

  Then the bracelet began to construct a new Shady from the medium of the Leviathan blood.

  I'd seen 3D printers work. Watched them lay down plastic filament layer by layer, gradually building objects from the bottom up. This was nothing like that.

  The Leviathan blood didn't build—it remembered and… bloomed.

  Nerves manifested first, then bones crystallized, branching and splitting like lightning frozen mid-strike. Shady's neural then skeletal structure grew from the divine liquid as if it had always been there, just waiting for permission to exist. The skull formed in segments that fused seamlessly, antler bases sprouting from the crown in spiraling geometries.

  The bracelet moved in winding spirals, manifesting things in passes.

  Muscle tissue followed, weaving itself between bones in crimson threads that thickened into proper mass. Organs bloomed inside the ribcage: heart, lungs, stomach, all the biological machinery required to sustain a Wendigo body.

  Fur spread across the developing form like time-lapse footage of mold claiming bread. Black as void at the extremities, gradually transitioning to the gray-black of Shady's natural coloring. The silver stars dotting her pelt ignited one by one, each point of light winking into existence until her entire body glittered with pretty freckle-constellations.

  The antlers extended upward, branching into their full magnificent spread. Feathers blossomed around her mane and tail.

  The new Shady's eyes snapped open underwater.

  Silver pupils dilated wide in the blood, unfocused and wild. Her arms flailed weakly, more reflex than conscious movement. Bubbles escaped from her mouth as she tried to breathe liquid instead of air, her body not yet understanding it was alive.

  "Got her," Shady-Prime leaned over the Well's edge and plunged both arms into the blood.

  She grabbed her flailing doppelganger under the armpits and hauled her upward. The Leviathan blood rained from the copy like mercury, silver strands stretching and breaking as she was yanked from the Well.

  The liquid streamed from her naked form, pattering against the obsidian floor in heavy drops, dancing around in the mosaic and then drop by rolling drop, running back into the well.

  The naked copy gasped, coughed, and vomited a lungful of reflective fluid across the temple floor. Her entire body shuddered, ribs heaving as she transitioned from drowning to breathing.

  She collapsed against Shady-Prime, twitching.

  "Easy," Shady murmured. "You're okay. Just breathe. In and out. There you go."

  The Shady-copy's silver eyes focused slowly, sliding from Shady-Prime's face to mine to Nexxali standing nearby with another Phoenix Tear vial ready. Her skull features scrunched in confusion.

  "Am I..." Her voice came out hoarse. "Am I the Empress of Earth?"

  "You are the lovely Empress of Earth, yes," Nexxali voiced with Riffweld. "And right now, you need to freeze. Don't move. Don't speak. Just... stand there and be still. Relax your arms. Ignore the pain."

  The copy's body locked up mid-shiver. She remained exactly where she was, naked and dripping, silver eyes staring straight ahead like a statue.

  Shady grabbed the copy's left wrist wrapped by the Lazarus bracelet, lifted it to her mouth, and bit down.

  The crunch was no less nauseating the second time. Shady-Prime's jaw worked once again through flesh and bone, massive canines designed for exactly this kind of brutal violence even if evolution had never intended it to be self-directed.

  The copy didn't scream. Couldn't scream. Nexxali's Riffweld command held her paralyzed even as the original chewed her hand off at the wrist. Her silver eyes widened, pupils wobbling.

  “Here you go," Shady-Prime passed the arm to me, wincing and spitting violet-red Wendigo blood.

  Nexxali moved in immediately with another Phoenix Tear vial, pouring it over the copy's stump. The wound fixed itself with the same disturbing reverse-time effect, tissue bubbling and weaving itself back together into a new arm.

  I carried the new hand to the Well.

  The Leviathan blood accepted the offering.

  The hand sank into reflective and somehow transparent blood. The bracelet flashed. The construction began again.

  The assembly line of Shadies was on.

  Each resurrection took approximately three minutes.

  Six hours.

  It took us six bloody hours to create one hundred and thirteen Shady clones. Thankfully, Shady and Nexxali were tough creatures and I was a tireless gun unit.

  Nobody interrupted our gruesome ritual that left the temple floor soaked in Wendigo blood.

  Dark crimson pooled in the carved depressions of the mosaic, filling the spaces between dying figures and reborn ones until the entire resurrection cycle depicted on the floor became a literal representation of itself. The golden veins in the walls pulsed brighter, as if the ship itself was trying to process the sheer volume of magical energy we'd just dumped into its sanctum.

  One hundred and thirteen naked Shadies stood scattered across the Incarnation Temple.

  They were all identical. Same height, same antlers, same silver-starred fur, same skull-face features. Their expressions, on the other hand, varied wildly. Some rubbed their wrists where phantom pain from amputation still lingered. Others simply stood there, silver eyes unfocused, trying to reconcile the fragmented soul-shard consciousness with the physical reality of having a body.

  A few had wandered toward the pillars, reaching out to paw at the carved reliefs of the Leviathan and Slayer.

  One Shady-copy sat cross-legged on the floor, staring at her own clawed hands like she'd never seen hands before. Another had discovered her tail and was chasing it in a circle, giggling.