No Longer Invisible

The forest had thinned out enough by midday that the light was different. Less filtered, more direct, hitting the path in actual patches rather than just suggesting itself through the canopy. I walked slowly. The creature fight had left its marks, a bruised knee, the slash on my side that was healing but still reminded me it existed every time I moved wrong.

But there was something different in how I was moving. Steadier. I noticed it without being able to fully explain it. Like something had settled that had been rattling loose before.

I practiced while I walked because it was the only way I could think of to use the time. Fire first, the reliable one. A spark along my fingertips, then a proper flame, then holding it steady while I kept moving. It flickered when my attention drifted but came back when I reached for it.

"Again,"

I said to myself.

I held the image of a torch, steady and warm, not the burst from the fight but something you could actually use to see by. The fire steadied. I held it for a full minute before letting it go.

Water next. I imagined the pond, still and clear. A bead of moisture formed above my palm and trembled and fell before I could do anything with it. Better than yesterday. Not good enough yet.

I tried earth and the ground under my foot rumbled and a small clod of soil shot upward about ten centimeters and I nearly tripped over nothing.

"Noted,"

I said. "That one needs work."

By late afternoon the trees gave way to open ground and I could see the city again, its walls catching the low sun. A proper road had formed somewhere along the way, the dirt packed and worn with use.

And then I saw someone on it.

A lone figure walking the trail toward the city. I dropped behind a bush before I had decided to, the body making the call. I watched him through the leaves. Mid-thirties, lean, a short sword at his hip and a satchel over his shoulder. Dusty boots. A scar on his right cheek that had been there long enough to be part of his face. He walked like someone who had been walking long distances for a while now and had made his peace with it.

My heart was going. First person I had seen close up since waking in this world.

I stood and stepped out onto the path and raised both hands because his went to the sword immediately.

"I am not looking for trouble,"

I said.

He stared at me. His hand stayed near the hilt.

"Can you understand me?"

He said something back. A language I didn't know, the vowels in the wrong places, the consonants shaped differently from anything I had heard before.

I had tried something like this before. Not fire or water. More like asking the mana to do a different kind of work. Understanding rather than force. I closed my eyes and reached for it, imagined a thread of meaning between us, and felt a soft blue feeling in my palm.

"Try again,"

I said.

He blinked. Then, slowly, words that were broken but recognizable:

"You speak not right. But can hear... pieces."

"Good enough,"

I said. I was more relieved than I probably showed.

He was evaluating me. Not the sword-evaluation from the first second but something slower and less physical. His eyes moved over the cloak, the staff, my face, my hands.

"You are not from here,"

he said carefully. "Where is your village? Your crest?"

"I don't have either. I just woke up here a few days ago."

His hand hadn't fully left his hip. He looked at me the way you look at something that doesn't fit any category you have.

"I am looking for a way into that city,"

I said. "Is it safe?"

He didn't answer immediately. His eyes went to the sky briefly and then back to me. There was something in his expression that wasn't quite fear and was definitely not comfortable.

He took one step back.

"You shouldn't go alone,"

he said. "The city doesn't trust strangers with strong mana."

"I haven't done anything."

"Because you feel like a storm,"

he said.

Then he walked past me and continued down the road. Not running. Just done with the conversation and not willing to extend it.

I watched him go until he was a small shape on the road.

That was the first real conversation I had had since waking up here. If you could call it that. A broken-signal exchange with a man who had backed away from me like I was something to be careful around.

You feel like a storm. What should I do with that sentence?

I looked at my hands. Nothing visible. No glow, no heat. Just my hands, scraped up, a few small cuts from the undergrowth. Nothing that explained why a stranger on a road would take a step back before walking away.

But I had felt the adventurers on the ridge from fifty meters through whatever they were using to hide themselves. The girl's staff had pulsed when she was near me. The large one had sniffed the air and looked directly at where I was crouching before I had made a sound.

Whatever I was putting out, I wasn't putting it out on purpose and I didn't know how to stop.

I thought about what that meant for walking into a city full of people.

I closed my eyes and tried again to press the hum inward. Hold it. Contain it. It resisted in the way it always did, it resisted when I try to hold it in a shape it doesn't naturally take. But I held it anyway, or held it as much as I could, and started walking toward the city gates.

If I was going to get in there without causing a problem I was going to have to learn to carry this more quietly than I currently was. I didn't know how long that would take.

I started practicing.

---

Cerin, Elira, Grun

The guild hall at night had a specific quality that Elira had never fully gotten used to in two years of being based out of Daruma. The noise was the same every evening, dice and laughter and the smell of the fire, but there was something underneath it that she noticed more when something had happened on a job. The way the ordinary noise felt thinner when you were carrying something heavier than usual.

They had come back from the mission two days early. She had spent both of those days thinking about the shape of the mana she had felt in the Serivien forest and filling three pages of her notebook with sketches and notations that she wasn't quite sure added up to anything useful yet.

The aide had met them at the briefing hall door before they had reached it.

"You're back earlier than expected."

"Mission is done,"

Cerin said. "But there is something else."

"Something possibly urgent,"

Elira added.

The aide looked at Grun, who had been quiet since they crossed the gate. He had a stillness when he was taking something seriously that was different from his usual loud presence. She had learned to read the difference.

"Come with me,"

the aide said.

The guildmaster's room was lit by a single lantern. He was at his desk and he looked up when they came in with the expression of someone who had been waiting specifically for them.

"Cerin. Elira. Grun. Sit down."

"You've already heard something,"

Elira said.

"I've heard enough to want yours. Start from when you first felt it."

Cerin stepped forward and described it plainly, the way he described everything. The location, the quality of the mana signature, the fact that it was human in shape but nothing like any human aura he had encountered. The lack of structure. The leaking. The way Grun had smelled it before any of them had registered it through normal channels.

"We saw him,"

Elira said. "Briefly. He was watching us from behind a boulder. Young. Alone. He didn't move toward us."

"Which is why we pulled back,"

Cerin said. "Engaging an unknown with that kind of output before we understood what we were dealing with seemed like bad odds."

The guildmaster looked at Grun.

"Your read?"

Grun was quiet for a moment. He didn't usually take time before answering.

"I've tracked wild mana before. Runaway apprentices. Corrupted beasts. Unstable relics. None of it felt like this. It was more like someone who had never used magic in their life and then woke up with all of it at once. No shape to it. No channels. Just open, in every direction."

A pause.

"Like a door somebody left ajar."

The guildmaster let that sit for a moment. Then he pulled a scroll from the side of his desk and unrolled it on the surface between them.

"You are the third party to report something in the last two days. A patrol scout felt a surge near the eastern perimeter the morning after you did. A traveler came through the gate this evening and told the duty guard about an encounter on the road."

Elira straightened.

"He spoke to someone?"

"Tried to. The traveler said the mana was suppressed when he made contact. Partially, not completely. But the traveler was unsettled enough to report it."

"He is learning,"

Elira said. She hadn't meant it to come out with the tone it did, somewhere between observation and concern.

The guildmaster looked at her.

"Yes. Which is why this is now your next official assignment."

He slid the scroll across the desk toward Cerin.

Cerin read it without picking it up. His expression didn't change but Elira had known him long enough to see the slight shift around his eyes.

"Recon and evaluation. Identify the target. If cooperative and sentient, observe. If the target poses a threat to civilians or loses control..."

He looked up.

"Neutralize by any means necessary."

"An elimination clause,"

Cerin said.

"I will not risk this city,"

the guildmaster said. It wasn't a statement that had room in it for the conversation to go differently. "Daruma stands because we act before things reach the gate. This thing is close to walking past our gate."

Grun took the scroll from the desk and tucked it under his arm.

"We move at first light,"

he said.

Cerin nodded.

Elira did not.

Outside the briefing room she stopped walking. Cerin noticed and waited.

"He wasn't hostile,"

she said.

"No."

"He was hiding from us. He saw three armed people and he hid."

"I know."

"That isn't what dangerous things do. Dangerous things do not hide."

Cerin looked at her for a moment.

"Scared things also hide,"

he said. "And scared things with that kind of output are dangerous whether they mean to be or not."

Elira pressed her lips together.

"We do the recon properly. We find out what he is before anyone makes any decisions."

"And the elimination clause?"

Cerin reached over and took the scroll from under Grun's arm. He looked at it once and put it in his own jacket.

"We do the recon properly,"

he said again.

Grun watched this and made a sound that wasn't agreement and not disagreement. They walked back out into the noise of the guild hall.

Elira glanced over her shoulder once as they went, back toward the briefing room, thinking about the shape of the mana she had sketched in her notebook. The way it moved without discipline, without any of the structure years of training produced. Raw and open and entirely without intention.

Like someone who didn't know what they were carrying.