My awareness returned slowly. At first, I was barely able to hear Lia and Luna’s voices, mainly Lia explaining what had happened while they likely made their escape from the fallback point, just in case more attacks were incoming. It was quite amusing to listen to them, despite the worry I could hear in their voices, I couldn’t help but relax a little. Sadly, while the ability to hear their voices was nice, the return of other senses was less pleasant, mainly because my body still felt as if I had been hit by a truck, only for said truck to hit reverse and roll over me a few times. However, while my body felt horrible and ached all over, my head was curiously clear. Something to consider at a later point, for now, I had other things to focus on, namely, the indignity of needing to be carried by my daughter.

Not that I could do a whole lot about that, not with the state my body was in and the fairly obvious need to hurry as there might be foes coming after us, but I didn’t want to dwell too much on it. So, in proud tradition of procrastinators everywhere, I decided to simply deal with my embarrassment later, push it aside and focus on something entirely different. In this case, my focus went to the spirit I had bound, wondering if it had suffered a similar backlash as I had or if it had only been I who suffered.

Focusing on the figurine still wrapped around my arm, I could immediately feel a strange sense of disconnect, making me wonder if the spirit was damaged in some way. Unable to do more than poke and prod the thing a few times without getting any discernible response, I tried to funnel a small amount of Ice Astral Power into it, simply to see what would happen. That had some effect, though I still didn’t get a real response; the spirit was simply absorbing the power, and that was it. I would have to take a closer look later, once I had managed to recover a little.

Opening my eyes, I raised my head a little, even that small action enough to send fresh needles of pain through my strained muscles, making me hiss softly. The noise must have been loud enough to catch my daughters’ attention, and both of them took notice, Luna looking over to me while Lia was glancing over her shoulder, meeting my eyes in the process. Well, trying to, with my chin mostly resting on her shoulder, the attempt was a little awkward.

“What happened?” I quietly asked, my eyes flickering around the area, though I couldn’t make out all that much, just shrubs, trees and forest, nothing to indicate where we were or where we might be going.

“You remember the ritual? And the metric tons of flaming shit raining down on us?” Lia asked, her voice tight and obviously worried.

“Yes, I remember you pulling me away and out, I remember getting on your back until I fell asleep, but that’s it,” I replied, causing Lia to sigh in obvious relief.

“We weren’t sure just how badly the backlash hit you. Luna looked you over, but because the damage was caused by your own magic running rampant, she couldn’t do anything to help. Your magic would fight the changes or something like that, it was a little over my head,” Lia admitted, giving Luna a questioning look in the process.

After nodding, well, after trying to nod, I simply let my chin rest on Lia’s shoulder again, my body falling limp like a noodle. That way, my aches hurt a lot less while I listened to Luna explain her findings, agreeing with her conclusions. It wasn’t that my body hurt due to torn muscles, even if it felt like that, it was all magical. The problem was that I had a lot of the Astral Power channelled to influence the weather crammed back into my body, only that the backflow hadn’t gone where it was supposed to be. Instead, it had flooded back into whatever metaphysical space it could find, regardless of any damage and pain it might cause. And because it was still my Astral Power, an elemental part of myself at a fundamental level, Luna couldn’t readily use her own magic to drive it out. Trying to do so would be akin to trying to push all my Astral Power out of my body, which would make me fight back instinctively. While unconscious, my reactions would all be guided by pure survival instinct, so there’d likely be blasts of freezing air and choking darkness, but even while awake and aware, I doubted I’d be able to let Luna work on this. It would be akin to rendering oneself unconscious by holding one's breath; at some point, primal instincts would take over regardless of the conscious will.

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But that didn’t mean I couldn’t try to solve the problem on my own. My Astral Power was mine to command, and I retained that link even after it was channelled out of my body. Why shouldn’t I be able to retain control over it when it was hashapharly shoved back into my body and wreaking havoc inside myself?

“Are we safe at the moment?” I asked the others, uncertain if something else had happened since Lia got us out.

“We should be reasonably safe,” Lia replied, her eyes scanning the forest around us. “I doubt that the creatures you described are great trackers, and even if they are, I used every trick I know to conceal my tracks. We should be safe until we use large-scale magic again, I’d think they noticed the ritual you attempted and decided to keep you from completing it using the most expedient means,” she explained, and I let out a soft sigh, agreeing with her conclusions.

It was unlikely that these creatures were specialised trackers, which would be needed to hunt down Lia while she was focused on concealing herself. I could do it, as Lia used a great deal of Darkness Magic to conceal herself, but I doubted many others could. Given what we had seen from these creatures, they weren’t focused on detection, with a possible exception that they were able to sense things a lot more clearly while their target was within the area they set on fire with their goop. But that was something we’d have to test at a later time, not something I needed to consider now.

“So, no pursuit?” I asked, feeling already tired from my brief time in the waking world.

“Nothing we could see,” Luna assured me, “Rest, mom, we’ve got you.”

With Luna’s kind words, I let my eyes fall shut again, my mind focusing inwards. Slowly, I started to scan my own body, feeling out the connections to the various bits and shards of Astral Power stuck within me. That felt like the best way to visualise the backlash, countless shards of Astral Power coalesced into splinters and driven into my body, turning me into a pincushion. Every time I moved, these splinters rubbed against other parts of myself, causing me the aching pain I was experiencing. Somewhere in the depths of my memory, I recalled that the soreness after a workout was caused by the crystallisation of lactic acid or something like that, so the image worked quite well and might even be accurate.

Not that I cared over the accuracy of my mental image overmuch, it didn’t really matter. As long as it worked and allowed me to visualise and perform the mental and magical operations I needed to accomplish, any image was fine. And just because an image might conform to reality didn’t mean it would work within the framework of my mind, as strange as that could be.

And with that cheery thought, I pushed away all distractions and started the labour, and dolorous, task of pulling out one splinter after the other, the shards piercing through my flesh under my magic guidance with little effort. At the end of the day, they weren’t really physical, but at the same time, my body wasn’t purely physical; it was both a physical entity and a magical one. Thus, while I wouldn’t bleed from the holes I needed to make to pull the splinters out, it didn’t mean I didn’t feel each and every splinter leave a trail of searingly hot pain, as if I had just stabbed a needle through my flesh.

With a groan, I pushed the first splinter towards the Astral River to make it disperse in the endless currents. There was no need to drop it and leave behind a trail of magical breadcrumbs for a potential enemy to find. It was bad enough that dispersing the splinters might leave something behind in the Astral River, but there was nothing I could realistically do about it. Unless I decided to carry the splinters with me, levitating them with my magic as they slowly dispersed naturally, though even that would leave some traces.

Just as the splinter was about to enter the Astral River, I felt a nudge from my arm, or rather, from the bound spirit coiled around it, as if a small dog had just nudged me with its nose. It seemed that the spirit had another way to get rid of the splinters.

With a small, tired grin on my face, I fed the spirit the first of far too many splinters stuck in my flesh.