Experiences

Jin

I stood still as if rooted to the ground for a couple moments. Thankfully, my mind seemed to catch up with me quickly.
“Hey wait up”, I ran a couple steps to catch up with Erinara, “What was that about?”
“I’m telling you to see the worth in yourself. You are more than your past”, she answered calmly.
“That’s not what I meant.”
She slightly turned her head away from me, remaining silent.
“Thank you”, I said.
“What for?”
“You gave insight to my situation I hadn’t considered yet. And advice as well. So, thank you.”
‘And I feel like you might have experienced something similar, all alone’, I added in thought.
Even through her shadow concealment, Erinara’s body visibly relaxed.
“I see. In that case, I’m glad.”

We moved onward in silence, always tailing the wisps of green light. Every now and then, the earlier interaction made its way into my mind, alongside the sensation of her touch. How could she convey such emotion without even uttering a single word? It felt like she completely saw through me, and realized that deep down, I was very worried about my place in the world. She didn’t seem to only understand, but empathize with me even. A part of my mind desperately wanted to ask her if she was okay, if something had happened to her in order to reach such an understanding, but I thought that this was not my place to investigate right now.

The day felt like it passed in a flash. We made camp near the shore of a lake, directly under the cover of massive light red trees with yellow leaves. Large vibrant green reeds grew at the lake’s shore, a stark contrast to the trees around us.
“Hey Erinara, is everything alright?”, I finally asked.
“Certainly, how are you faring? Was the journey exhausting?”, she replied, gesturing at the backpack I just dropped to the ground. It landed with a heavy thud.
“No need to worry about that. I could easily do double the weight”, I smiled.
Erinara set some dry wood we had gathered ablaze with a rune. 
“Say, we have some time to kill right? How about we fish for dinner?”, I suggested.
“That sounds like a wonderful idea”, Erinara sounded enthusiastic.
I was relieved to realize that she didn’t seem to be troubled at all. Maybe my instinct was wrong? I couldn’t fully shake the feeling though.

I found some nearby branches, fashioning them into crude fishing rods and spears.
Erinara was already waiting for me at a part of the lake’s shore that wasn’t blocked by the reeds. I approached her with the makeshift tools.
Gentle laughter floated through the air.
“Aren’t those just adorable”, she said, still laughing.
“Did you have something else in mind?”, I asked.
Erinara paused for a moment, before silently conjuring shadowy tendrils from her hand.
“Ah. Right”, I felt slightly embarrassed at forgetting her magic prowess.
“No, no. This is good. We might as well try it now that you’ve gone through the effort of preparing it”, despite her words, she was still chuckling softly, “Here, hand me one. How do I use it?”
I quickly demonstrated how to use the fishing rod. We sat at the lake’s shore for around an hour without so much as a single nibble, despite the high density in fish around the reeds.
I sighed.
“Let’s try something else. How about a contest? First to get ten fish. You use your tendrils and I’ll go after the fish myself. Just a minute please.”
I stood up and took off my plate armor piece by piece. Then I quickly bound the makeshift spears to my back using some of the surrounding reeds.
Erinara observed me without commenting until I was done.
“Ready?”, is all she said. I didn’t need to see her face to know she was smiling.
“Ready. Three. Two. One. Go!”, With that I launched myself into the lake’s cold water.
Erinara burst into laughter behind me once again: “Are you actually serious?”
I quickly impaled two fish on one spear each at the same time, using either of my hands to aim one spear respectively. Before drawing the next two spears from my back, I threw the ones in my hand toward a tree. They wedged themselves into its bark. I repeated the process with another two spears, bringing my count up to eight. Just as I was going to draw the final two spears, I heard a whistle behind me. Ten fish, all gripped by one shadowy tendril each, hung helplessly in the air.
“I really thought I was winning. Well done”, I congratulated her. Getting out of the water, I quickly gathered short sticks to impale her fish on before roasting them at the campfire. As each fish was impaled, the shadowy tendril surrounding it dissipated into nothingness.

As our catch of the day was cooking, Erinara sat down directly next to me.
“I didn’t realize it the other day, but it has been a long time since I slept under the open sky. Though the circumstances surrounding that have changed drastically”, she seemed lost in her thoughts.
“What do you mean?”, I asked.
“I never told you how free casting magic works, did I?”, she began.
I shook my head.
“Free casting requires the user to be very attuned to mana, to the point of understanding their own unique innate magical element. In my case, it is shadow magic. Instead of using components, or manipulating surrounding mana to activate an effect, free casting is bound to your natural magic type.”
I remained quiet, listening intently to her story.
“Free casting is the most recent of the discovered magic use types. The three executives are all masters of one specific magic type. The executive of tradition, Vorial predominantly uses component based magic, Lazzal is the executive of progress, her skills lie in casting runic magic, and combining them. And finally, there is Ebiron, the executive of change. His specialty is free casting using his natural element. It was a pure chance that my path collided with his, and that he took me in. At the time I was simply desperate for a different life and he enabled it for me. For a long while, I didn’t know if it was on a whim, or simply because my innate magic was similar to his. Ebiron had revealed his reason to me at a later date though. He said that within me he saw the potential for a great change, the likes of which nobody in the land of warlocks has ever seen before. Even though it didn’t end up being the reason directly, my innate magic is what gave me the confidence to even approach an executive in the first place. If it weren’t for that, I’d be spending my time in the outskirts of the city all by myself still, trying to get more magical prowess with the sole goal being survival.”
She chuckled slightly with a mixture of somber and clarity. “It appears both of our lives had very distinct turning points, doesn’t it.”
“It sounds like yours was not nearly as comfortable as mine”, I said.
She only shrugged in response.
“Who knows, really. My past is not what I am afraid of anymore.”

I decided on asking Erinara about her past when the time was right. While I still couldn’t tell if it was my place to ask, I felt like maybe it would help her if she could talk about it.