"Damn my leg," Drae replied with a wave of his hand and he cuddled up with her. "It won't kill me to heal like a normal human being," he commented as he lightly began brushing his fingers through her hair. "For now, you are simply a woman with the most devoted husband," Drae promised her. "And I will hunt tooth and claw to find that rope that I can use to tie you to me," he said softly. 

"For now, though, let us sleep. You need rest…" he insisted as he curled up with her.

Drae listened to the sound of Angela's breathing and he willed her to keep breathing, for her breathing to get stronger. 

“And I am a wife who is very devoted to her husband.” Angela reminded him gently as they laid together in the warm bed. She smiled at him and held him close. “Alright, I’ll rest. If that’s what the doctor requires.” Angela's voice was full of yawns as she closed her eyes and tried to sleep.

–

In the morning, Sapphire was in the library. She was looking up anything she could on the current situation or situations involving god wars. Her mother looked so sick and to be honest she got worried that her mother was going to send her away soon. Her blue eyes were tearing up as she rubbed her eyes. Before long she climbed some of the higher shelves in the back to look for things.

“There has to be something in these old books.” These were books that were normally off limits but due to the fate her mother had the shell had come down. She was able to reach in and started to pull several things out. “There has to be something!” She was determined as she put the old books onto the table.

She crossed her eyes and looked at all the books she had to pour through. She didn’t even know what the hell she was looking for. Her purple hair was tied up and she had on a light lilac dress. There had to be something in these books. Most of them were enchanted not to open and she realized without the help of someone skilled her mother had created quite the lock.

The library doors opened and closed and suddenly Drae appeared at the bottom of Sapphire's ladder. 
"Your mother would have a conniption if she caught you up there," the warlock commented from the bottom of the ladder with arms folded across his chest, as he looked sternly up at her with a steely gaze. "You know those are off limits." 

The stern look faded and it turned into a soft smile and he cocked his head to the side. "Besides, I think you are looking in the wrong place," he said and lifted a finger and motioned for his purple-haired adoptive daughter to come down the ladder and follow him. "We need deeper magics than what is in those tomes. Trust me, I went through them already. Had wonderful alchemic and divination research in them, but not what we are looking for," he said as he guided Sapphire to the furthest reaches of the library, back where even the light seemed to fail to reach. 

"We are looking for tomes on two topics here, love. One on the transmutation of a soul, and the second being anything on the planes, and travel in between," Drae explained to her. "Now, hop to it!"

Sapphire looked down at Drae and smiled at him. “Well… she’ll be fine right now. She’ll just have to have a conniption with me. She isn’t in the right health to even try to beat my ass today.” She was quite pleased when Drae said she was on the wrong path the entire time. “I was rather concerned when I wasn’t finding anything but that actually.” She climbed down and followed him. 

Tilting her head she went to grab a book she thought on it. “Are we going to move mom’s soul somewhere? I mean that seems like an awfully big thing to do to do a deity.” She tilted her head before starting to go through the dark bound books.

They were there for a long time before she stood up with a book. “Drae? Would binding a soul to a gem be effective?” She brought the book over. “I mean… it says based on the gem that it is made for more powerful souls… Could Lapis be it? I mean Arriese people worship for its spiritual power.” Her blue eyes were worried. “I just want to help Mom.”

"Not necessarily move it… I want to be sure that I can keep her soul from slipping into the Soul Stream if things go south. I'm not ready to let go of her just yet, and I sure as hell am not going to attempt to raise you kids on my own," Drae admitted. "It may not be possible, but I am going to make sure," he admitted as he climbed up the ladder of one the shelves. He pulled down a pile of tomes and set them down on the table.

Drae's hair steadily turned gray from the dust clouds that blew up with each new tome, and his finger tips were becoming black from old ink as he went through the books. So far he was having very little luck, but he had set aside a couple tomes to take a further look at. He looked up at Sapphire, who was equally dust smeared and took the book she proffered. 

"Soul binding? That sounds promising," he said as he began looking over the pages. "Lapis could work, but I am afraid it won't be strong enough for a deity," he said thoughtfully. "We'd need a very large, perfect stone…" He began thinking of the strange diamond-like metal that Angela had been vomiting, and wondered if maybe such a stone might work. 

Sapphire was ready to chuckle but what he said made her freeze. “Are you going to leave us if you can’t save her?” She was suddenly really sad. “I don’t want you to leave Drae.” She didn’t call him father or dad like Iva but he felt like that to her. She continued to look through the dusty tomes as she finally found a book that was worth its salt.

Thinking on the same thing as Drae was she hard at work thinking about it. “Do you have all the shards that Mom has thrown up? I think if we smelted them at a high enough temperature at the blacksmith’s that we could get it to work. The metal she’s been throwing up doesn’t look at enchanted as the one that encases Dalanesca.” It appeared that Sapphire had sneaked out to look at a chain once or twice since she found out about it.

“How large are we talking and can we get that much from Mom if that’s what we have to use?” Her blue eyes were stubborn as she put her hands on her hip. “What will it take to bind her. I don’t know how much longer Dalanesca will be stuck but… If Mom is worried about it, it might not be long.” She pulled more books down. “The metal she made has never been seen before. It might take a bit to figure out how to smelt it together.” She looked back worried for a moment. “Unless we can think of something else.”

Drae looked at Sapphire, and realized his words had carried a subtext of the possibility of his departure if Angela was lost. It was hardly his intention, he had simply meant he would not know what to do. He got up and moved over to Sapphire and pulled the girl into a tight hug. 
"No, Sapphire, I won't leave you. I can't. The idea and thought of losing your mother is a hard enough pill to swallow. But you and your siblings have become just as important to me as she is. I won't be like the other fathers who didn't stick around. I'll take care of all of you as best I can, because I would rather die than leave you," he said flatly as he embraced her reassuringly. His lips pressed firmly to the top of her soft lavender head. "Do you understand? I love you, Iva and Rohan far to much," he said. "I might be rotten at the job, but I won't abandon any of you ever." He released her and looked at the book she had grabbed and looked at it as she questioned.

"I collected as much as I could, and I think you are absolutely right. Nothing would be better suited than her own essence to bind her soul. It would certainly be less of a shock to the soul to be housed in something familiar," he said, but gave her a look that suggested he didn't approve of her sneaking out to get an eyeball on the chains. 

"If we can't smelt it, I think I know of an alchemical process that might work. I'll just need to iron out the details. As for binding her, leave that to me," Drae said as he collected up the books that looked promising. "While I am doing that, I want you to research planar travel and any information on the planes. Can you do that for me, Sapph?"

Things moved quickly after that point. Drae's days were spent either in his work room with the shards he had collected from Angela transmuting them into, surprisingly, a smaller more perfect shard. When it was done, Drae had created a perfect prism roughly seven inches in length and two inches wide. For a metal, it carried a strange blue hue, and was translucent, almost like glass. 

He had perfected it almost too late. The next thing he knew, Angela, weak, and skin almost as black as the night from necrosis, was evacuating the Gardens, and was shoving him with Rohan and Iva through a portal to safety in Moliira's realm. He had made preparations though, and marked into his hands and chest were the arcane sygils he would use and hopefully succeed in binding Angela's soul to him, and keep her from slipping away from them. 

He could feel the act as it began and he found a quiet spot and began chanting in hushed tones, the prism held tightly in his hands. Magic swirled around him, creating a miniature tornado. As the crystals began to fall from the sky, their was a flash inside the prism and Drae was knocked prone. 

When he awoke, he was inside the shrine again, and his head throbbed. The marks on his hands and over his heart burned and were a raw ugly red instead of the inky black they had been drawn in. He could feel a slight pressure in his mind. 

So sleepy…

It made him freeze and a feeling of elation hit him. Had he really done it? The crystal lay on the bed table beside him and carried and inner glow that pulsed softly, just like a heart beat. 

Sapphire hugged the man that had become her father figure. She snuggled into him and looked up at him with happy eyes. At least when the world was crashing down she would have a father. Drae was good to every single one of them no matter their age or if they were older than they were. She worked tirelessly until she was evacuated early on. 

–

Foxglove on the other hand was head of the temple for now. She was the more tomboyish version of her mother as she gave orders and tried to help where she could. However, she didn’t have the powers her mother did. All she had to go on was the single sentence that had been delivered to her just after her mother’s death.

When she had finally settled down there was commotion that the lord of the house had been injured again. She moved quickly as she went through the crowds and found the room that Drae was in. It was the pulse that first stopped her. The sudden cling to want the crystal. Her fingers itched but she stopped herself. “So how many time are you going to hurt yourself?” Her voice was concerned as she offered a smile to him.

“I heard something the moment mother died… Dart and I rushed back here as soon as I heard it. I don’t know if it was her or not but it told me to come home. I honestly didn’t think I would be able to make it back but here we are… So..” She pointed to the crystal and tilted her head. “What is that? Or is it a secret?”

"Hurting myself was far from my intention, Fox," Drae said with a wince as he sat up and rubbed the sizeable lump that had formed on the back of his skull from the spell's recoil. He hadn't anticipated it, but he was confident. He grinned at Angela's avatar, happy to see her. She was a dead ringer for Angela, and he was confident that if Foxglove was still intact then he had been successful, and Angela's energies had not been lost. 

"If it was an urge for you to come home, I would put gold on it being her calling you back because of what happened," the warlock said as he inspected the marks on his hands with satisfaction. He noticed that Foxglove had seen the crystal, and he had an inkling that she could feel its pull. Her asking what it was was indeed a confirmation of this thought, and he grinned wider. 

"Well, if I did things right, and I suspect I did… that would be Angela's soul," he answered as he picked up the prism, which was pleasantly warm to the touch and offered it to Foxglove to hold. If he was going to let anyone touch it, it would be her since she was connected to Angela as much as Angela was connected to the Earth and Life itself. 

"I couldn't risk her being pulled into the Soul Stream. Not just yet," he said softly. "I didn't want to lose her… and I didn't want the regret of her actions to destroy Dalanesca. Maybe this way, there is a chance for them to make up," he explained. 

Foxglove came over with a gemstone flask. She popped it open and offered him some. “This flask should heal you right up but don’t drink a lot. Mom said it was poisonous if you had more than your fill of the stuff.” She knew that her younger siblings would need Drae.

Tilting her head at the crystal she nodded. “Well, at least you don’t need to find a huge mansion for all of the children to live in.” She offered a laugh. “I don’t know how you would describe getting a house for more than a hundred children to live in at a time.” She was teasing him now as she took the crystal. Her fingers ran over it and suddenly it burned her hand and she threw it. It had to be the aura that kept her alive.

“Sorry!” She said as she watched the gem hit the floor. “I can’t touch it for too long.” Her skin was red from where she had pet the stone. “That is a selfish desire.” She was teasing him again. It was something her mother would have said. “Either way… what’s your plans for it? I mean it’s powerful but I’m not sure what to do since her body was destroyed into millions of crystals.” She crossed her arms.

“I mean maybe we can just give the gem to Dalanesca and have her figure it out… Unless Dalanesca is truly still upset with Mother. In which case… we shouldn’t tell Dalanesca about this.” She circled the gem before Drae could pick it up. “Iva’s been oddly cheerful as well… Do you think she saw this outcome? She’s been really quiet about it as if it was important she kept her mouth shut.” Maybe Iva being afraid of the dark was the visions of her mother being killed by hellfire. The Avatar moved and hugged Drae. “I’m just glad you are fine. I didn’t know what to do when  I heard that Thyme and you were hurt.”