Lumia

The horrific events of the morning came in the form of a nightmare while Lumia slept. The sound of people screaming, the sight of the Sigumanju slaughtering farmers out in the fields, the moment she saw that Hunter was about to be killed. That was when she woke up.

She lifted her head off the table she had been sleeping on in a jolt, nearly knocking over a few bottles of potion in the process. She was sitting on the bedside chair in Hunter’s room. Fire lamps hung from the walls, and the darkness outside the window showed that night had already fallen. She had been waiting for Hunter to wake up. She must have fallen asleep herself in the process.

She turned, and found him lying on the bed. He was shirtless, his eyes were closed, and his chest rose and fell with every breath. There were bite marks around the left side of his torso, deep gashes from when one of the Widow Makers had bitten down on his shoulder and tossed him aside. She had tried her best to heal him again, but the scars were still there.

She was just glad she was able to get to him in time to stop his internal bleeding. Any later, and it would have been too late.

The cavalry arriving at the very last minute was nothing short of a miracle. Without their intervention, Lumia was certain they would all have died — Hunter, herself, the people hiding in the barns, all of them.

Although she recognized this fact, she also knew there most likely wouldn’t have been anyone left alive in the farmlands if it wasn’t for the swift response of the vanguard that rode with Hunter. Every man and woman who had made up the initial twenty-man rider company sacrificed themselves so the farmers hiding in the barns could go home. She would forever pray for their souls to find everlasting peace.

Lumia continued to observe Hunter as he slept. She suddenly remembered the first time she saw him. A few farmers from the fields had brought him into the temple. He was severely injured and bleeding profusely. Even back then, there were bite marks all over his left arm and elbow.

She could tell he had been in a fight with a Widow Maker and had narrowly escaped with his life, and the life of the little girl he brought with him. She was able to heal him, but it had taken a lot of mana and concentration on her part.

She almost lost focus a few times during the healing process, but she managed to stay calm and keep herself grounded during the critical part of the treatment. The last time she had lost concentration and failed to harness her magic, someone very important to her died as a result. It broke her, and she nearly took her own life because of it. She was just glad she was able to pull through for Hunter’s sake.

Speaking of, she was all but certain now that Hunter was not a normal human being.

After surviving and fending off an ambush by a Widow Maker at his cabin, and after killing one of the creatures during the attack on the farmlands all by himself, it was clear he was some kind of professional monster slayer.

He had also taken on two of the monstrous nightmares on his own, injuring both of the creatures and buying precious time for the cavalry to arrive. If he hadn't gravely wounded them, Lumia doubted the vanguard that came soon after would have been able to drive the beasts away.

Also, the way he had summoned his weapon during the fight, it was almost as if he had simply said what he wanted, and it appeared. That wasn’t a kind of magic Lumia had ever seen before. She was going to ask him about it when he woke up.

She got up from the chair and headed for the front door. She needed to check on the little girl before getting to bed herself. She opened the door and stole one last glance at Hunter over her shoulder. He looked peaceful as he slept. His dirty blond hair was cropped short, and he had a pointy nose she thought was kind of cute.

Despite his monstrous frame and stature, his strength, intelligence, and tactical thinking under pressure, all of which she had observed firsthand during the battle at the farmlands, Hunter was, at the end of the day, just like any other man. He was human. At least, that was what she thought.

She smiled to herself before stepping out and closing the door behind her.

***

When she opened the door to the little girl’s room, she was shocked to find her still awake. She had been sitting on the side of her bed, playing with something in her hands. When she turned and spotted Lumia, however, the girl immediately came running toward her. Lumia lowered herself to her knees in order to be at eye level with the girl while she spoke.

“He’s still sleeping, but he’s fine,” Lumia said to the little girl to ease her worries, holding her gently by the shoulders. “He’s a little banged up, but he will make a full recovery.” She had simply anticipated what the girl wanted to know, given how concerned she had been for Hunter when they first arrived at the temple.

The girl constantly kept coming to check up on him, so much so that Lumia started to think they must have been related somehow. But when she asked, the little girl shook her head and confirmed she wasn’t his daughter or his little sister.

“What do you have there?”

Lumia looked down at the little girl’s hands where she was still holding what she had been playing with. The girl opened her palms, and Lumia saw it was a bangle.

She recognized the bangle as the same one the little girl usually wore around her right leg, just above her ankle. It was a magical sealing bracelet, an enchanted item used to significantly dampen the magical affinity of an individual.

It wasn’t surprising to learn that most children were born with some level of magical abilities — being able to control water from thin air, being able to shoot forth fire from wands, and so on.

Those children were sent to specialized institutes at an early age to help hone their skills, and when they graduated, they were deployed to different parts of the globe, places where their powers would prove most useful to the development of the people. It was how Lumia herself had ended up serving here, at the stoney temples of Southern Dumaria, as a healer, far from home, after graduating from the institute of magic and training several years ago.

However, what was definitely surprising wasn’t even the fact that the girl was wearing a magical sealing bracelet to begin with, but that she had multiple, three of them to be exact. Two on her ankles and one around her neck.

The bracelets were painted a sky-blue color to throw off any suspicion they might be enchanted, making them look like regular bangles, and thus concealing their true function.

But Lumia could tell what they really were. She could tell from the moment she first saw the girl when she came into the temple.

Whoever had done this to her — whether it was her parents or someone else — they were going out of their way to hide the little girl’s magical abilities. She couldn’t tell why. She didn’t know if Hunter already knew about this, but it was clear what was happening.

The little girl potentially possessed very powerful magic, and whoever had put these on her didn’t want the rest of the world to find out. But one of them was starting to lose its power and wear off, the one above her right ankle. That’s why she was even able to play with it in the first place. Otherwise, she shouldn’t have been able to remove it from the spot on her leg.

“It’s pretty,” Lumia said to the little girl, staring up at her and smiling. “But you should get some sleep now. It’s late.”

She tucked the girl in for the night, then headed for the front door. On her way out, she spotted a bowl of water in the corner of the room on a table. Inside was the girl’s silver-blue water lizard, fast asleep at the bottom. She had heard about the little critters before, and how hard it was to find them. The small creature had made the girl into sort of a celebrity in town, as other than the royal family who had a water lizard of their own, nobody else had one.

She stepped out of the room and closed the door behind her. She briefly considered checking up on Hunter again, but she recognized she was just being silly. She went to her room and took off her gown. She took a shower, got dressed for bed, and lay down on her mattress a minute later. She was exhausted, and she needed to get some sleep.

Tomorrow was going to be a very busy day for her. There was going to be an emergency town meeting to discuss the recent Sigumanju attack. Having the creatures nesting just in the outskirts of the surrounding area was problem enough, but now they were starting to move closer to hunt and attack the people.

The town was no longer safe.

They were no longer safe.