Chapter 31 - Levy a Fare

The air in the cottage is charged with unspoken emotions. Clovis is pacing in front of her workbench.

“Given the circumstances, our lessons must be accelerated.” she begins, getting straight to business. “We need to determine your true aptitude, quickly. The foundational exercises are no longer sufficient.”

She stops pacing and turns to me, her crimson eyes intense and analytical. “I’ve taken some time to think and unfortunately I think it would be best if we refocus our efforts on incantation magic instead.”

My stomach plummets. 

“What?” The question escapes me as a choked whisper.

Clovis looks visibly torn, her usual confidence fractured. She won’t meet my eyes, instead focusing on a point somewhere over my shoulder. “Shikara… the village is on high alert. We have to assume another attack is possible. My pri- our priority has to be practical skills.”

She finally forces herself to look at me, and I can see the immense weight of responsibility pressing down on her. “Healing magic is just easier to learn and cast via an incantation. To cast healing magic with visualisation requires an immense amount of practice and anatomical knowledge, let alone a state of absolute calm which is almost impossible to maintain during a crisis.”

I think back to that strange, pulling sensation on my face as if my very identity was being siphoned away to fuel the spell. It wasn’t just exhausting; it was emptying. It was familiar.

“No.” The word is out before I can stop it, quiet, but firm. “I… I can’t.”

A flicker of impatience crosses Clovis’s features. “You can’t? Or you won’t? You’ve already proven yourself capable of adept incantations, you have a natural talent even if you were too hasty.”

“I don’t like how it makes me feel!” I say, the explanation sounding weak and childish even to my own ears.

The stress, the grief, the crushing weight of being the sole person responsible for holding back the tide of death all erupts in a surge of raw, unfiltered anger. Clovis’s face flushes, and her hands clench into tight fists at her sides.

“How it feels?!” she snaps, her voice cracking like a whip. “You’re worried about how it feels? Maris and Anya are dead! Hakota and a dozen others nearly joined them! Do you think I enjoy how that feels?”

The words lash at my mind, each one striking a chord of shame and guilt deep within me. She takes a step closer, her crimson eyes blazing with a righteous fury that makes me shrink back.

“We all need to make personal sacrifices for the safety of others!” she says, her voice rising in volume and intensity. “I am exhausted. I haven't slept. I have spent every waking moment since the attack keeping people from dying, and you are telling me you don’t want to help because it feels unpleasant?”

The accusation, the sheer force of her desperation, breaks down the last of my composure. Tears begin to stream down my face. My breath hitches in my throat, coming out in ragged, choked sobs.

“That’s not it!” I cry, the words torn from me. “I want to help! I want to care about the people here, I really do, but…”

I struggle to articulate the fear, the deep, primal terror that her proposal has unearthed. “I’ve only just been welcomed by a few people. Elara, Hakota, Orville… you.” I inhale as a sobbing breath overtakes my words.

“For the first time in so long, I don’t feel like a complete ghost. The magic… the emotional toll… I-it just takes me back to a time when I was so empty I couldn't feel anything at all. It felt like I was becoming that person again, and it terrifies me.”

My confession is affixed to the suffocating silence of the room. 

The hard lines of her expression soften, as an empathetic sorrow fills her eyes. She sees not a petulant student, but a genuinely frightened soul.

The anger drains from Clovis’s face as quickly as it appeared, replaced by a dawning, horrified understanding. 

She takes a slow, deliberate step back, giving me space. Her voice, when she speaks again, is laced with regret that feels as raw as my own pain. “Shikara… I…” She falters, for once at a loss for the precise, clinical words she prefers. “I see.”

She is more sympathetic, but I can see the resolve hasn't entirely left her. The reality of her situation after all is unchanged. “The emotional cost is real.” she concedes.

“It is the price of helping others. But the threat is also real. I cannot face it alone. I am still adamant that we need to change our focus to incantation magic. I… need you.”

Her plea is more devastating than her anger. I can’t give her the answer she needs, not yet. The conflict inside me is a raging storm. I feel trapped between my own terrifying past and this village’s terrifying future.

“I just… I just need some air,” I stammer, stumbling toward the door, desperate to escape the suffocating intensity of the cottage and the impossible choice it contains.

The cool air outside is a balm on my hot cheeks, but it does little to quiet the turmoil in my mind.

I walk without purpose, my feet carrying me toward the southern palisade where the sounds of hammers and saws create a bleak, rhythmic pulse for the village’s fear. Men, women and children working together in desperate urgency, to reinforce the stone walls with wood.

I watch them, and I feel a profound sense of detachment. I am not one of them. I am a stranger who washed up on their shores. And now, at the first true test, I am failing them. Failing myself.

‘The pain isn’t gone. It’s merely quiet. Be strong enough to bear it when it comes.’ The words of my other self, my will, rear their head in my memory. 

Is this it? Is this the moment she warned me about? The choice to willingly embrace pain for the sake of others?

I look at the determined faces of the villagers. They are afraid, but they are not hiding. They are fighting. And what am I doing? Cowering from the phantom of my past.

Clovis is right. It’s a sacrifice. It will hurt. But it will only be for a short while. 

I begin to think a bit more rationally as my mind clears. I will have to learn incantation magic eventually anyway, I may as well make myself useful now rather than later. 

My feet, now with a renewed sense of purpose, turn me back toward the cottage. I push the door open without knocking. Clovis is sitting on her cot with her head in her hands, a picture of exhaustion and defeat.

She looks up as I enter, her expression wary, expecting another argument.

I take a deep breath. “Okay.”

The word is small, but it lands like a monumental decision. “I’ll do it. I do care, Clovis. I’m sorry.”

Clovis stands up, and I can see the cracks of a young woman pushed to her absolute limit.

“No, Shikara, I’m the one who should be sorry,” she says. I can see she’s also been crying. “I pushed you too hard. I let my own fear and stress get the better of me.”

She looks down at her hands, which are trembling slightly. “The truth is, I have a lot on my plate at the moment. Being the only one real healer… it’s a heavy burden. I shouldn’t have put that on you.”

In that moment of shared vulnerability, the last vestiges of tension between us dissolve. We are not just student and teacher anymore. We are two people, bound by circumstance, facing a terrifying future together.