Clash of Misunderstandings

The path out of the deep forest had been narrowing for the last hour. Leaf litter thick on the ground. I had been trying to walk quietly and not fully succeeding. The cloak rustled. The makeshift boots I had put together from bark and vine were better than nothing but not much better than that.

The slope had been easing downward for a while. I could smell the change in air that meant open ground ahead, grass instead of undergrowth, the particular quality of light that comes through the last of the trees before you reach the edge.

I was thinking about what to say when I reached the gate. Whether the language bridge would hold well enough. Whether the suppression was holding. Whether walking in alone was actually the plan I wanted to commit to.

Then I heard it.

"Found him."

I knew that voice. Not from any conversation. From the feeling of it, the particular resonance of someone who was very close and had been very quiet for a long time before deciding to step into action.

I had about half a second before Grun came out of the trees to my right.

He was bigger up close than he had looked from behind the boulder. He landed in front of me with a sound that went through the ground and his axe was already in his hand. Up close the ears weren't just shapes anymore, they moved, flicking toward every sound including my own breathing, and his eyes were a dark amber that tracked me like something he was deciding how to categorize. I put both palms up immediately.

"Wait,"

I said.

Cerin came from the left. Sword drawn and level, eyes that had already done their assessment and reached a conclusion I didn't want to be the subject of. His face was unremarkable in the way that competent people's faces often are, nothing about him asking to be noticed, which somehow made him more unsettling than Grun.

"No words. He might be casting."

"I am not,"

I said. My voice came out steadier than I expected.

Elira was behind and above, on a small ridge to the side, staff already up with something gathering in it. She was the only one whose expression I could read as something other than armed decision. There was conflict in it. 

Up close I could actually take her in properly. Long brown hair, brown eyes, a face that was genuinely pretty in a way that felt almost out of place given the staff in her hands and the robes that marked her as a mage, layered and dark, the kind of clothing that looked built for function over anything else. She looked younger than the role suggested, soft-featured in a way that hadn't caught up yet to whatever the other two had already gone through.

They had positioned well. I was in the middle with exits covered. That was obviously planned.

"I don't want to fight,"

I said. I was trying to use the language bridge carefully, shaping each word before it came out. My tongue still caught on the syllables in the wrong places.

"No danger. I am not attacking."

Grun made a sound in his throat that I didn't need translation for.

"That is what dangerous ones always say,"

he said.

He lunged.

Not a full committed lunge. More like a test. He wanted to see how I moved.

I stepped back and pulled the mana up into my legs and pushed sideways, fast enough to clear the sweep of the axe by a comfortable margin. Then I pulled a current of air together between us, not a blast, just a firm pressure, enough to push him back a step without throwing him.

"I don't want this,"

I said.

Cerin came next. His sword caught the light as he slashed low. I dropped and slid and pulled the wind under me to move around the blade's arc. Then I pushed a ring of water up from the moisture in the air around his boots. Not to trap. Just to slow. To buy some seconds.

Elira still hadn't casted.

I want to be clear about something. I was scared. My heart was definitely going fast enough that I could feel it in my jaw. But there was something underneath the fear that was more useful than the fear, something that had come online in the last few days of surviving alone in this forest. A kind of steadiness. It wasn' calmness, nor was it confidence, it felt more like instinct, something that took over when my thoughts became too much to sort through.

Fire would be too dangerous. I didn't trust my control over it in close range.

Lightning was still too unpredictable. I had the evidence of the burned clearing for that.

But wind and water moved the way I asked them to now. They responded to the shape I had in my head rather than just the urgency behind it. I kept them gentle. Kept them nonlethal. That was deliberate.

Grun came again, faster. I caught the angle early and turned the wind under him slightly, enough to redirect his momentum without dropping him. He stumbled and caught himself and looked at me with an expression that was harder to read than the first one. Frustration, yes. But also something else.

"Why you attack?"

I said, which came out backwards from what I meant, but I kept going.

"I am lost. I don't know where I am. I have no home here."

I fumbled the last sentence. The translation bridge was holding but it was approximate and the approximation showed.

Cerin's sword dipped. Just slightly. It was the first movement any of them had made that wasn't only offensive.

"His accent,"

he said quietly, to Elira.

"He used comprehension magic,"

she said. "Not a trained version. But he used it."

"Which means he is aware of how magic works here. Which means he isn't entirely lost."

"Or it means he learned fast. Which is its own kind of problem."

I looked at each of them in turn. Grun first, because he was the most likely to move again. Then Cerin. Then Elira, who had still not fired.

"I was scared,"

I said. Slow and careful. "The explosion in the clearing. I was practicing. I lost control of it. I didn't know anyone was close."

I paused and tried to find the next words.

"I don't want to die. I just want to live. I am not a threat. Please believe me."

The last sentence came out cleaner than the others. The spell was improving as I used it.

Silence.

The wind moved through the clearing. Somewhere above us a bird came back to a branch.

Elira lowered her staff. Not all the way. Just enough.

"We don't need to fight,"

she said. To the others, not to me, but I caught the meaning.

"He has had two openings and hasn't used either,"

Cerin said. His sword didn't go away but the edge of his stance changed.

Grun hadn't lowered his axe. He looked at me with the steady expression of someone who was unconvinced and was deciding whether it mattered or not.

I let out a breath I had been holding for what felt longer than made sense.

"City,"

I said. "Daruma. You go there?"

They all looked at me.

"You know Daruma?"

Elira said.

I nodded.

"I want to go. I am not a beast. I am not trying to hurt anyone."

Grun made a sound and finally, slowly, took one step back. Not lowering his weapon. Just not advancing with it.

Cerin looked at him. Then at me. Then at Elira.

"We bring him back,"

he said. "We talk to the guildmaster."

I understood enough of that to know what it meant. I was being taken back to the city. With them. Not as a prisoner exactly but not freely either.

I thought about the guildmaster. About the elimination clause Cerin had put in his own jacket.

Someone was going to decide if I was worth keeping alive, and if I wanted to better my chances of survival I needed to speak in a language I had been speaking for two days using magic, I didn't fully understand yet.

Right.

I fell into step beside Elira, because she seemed like the right person to be near right now, and we walked toward the tree line.

The tension didn't go away. But the fight had not happened, and that was something.

---

Cerin's POV

I walked slightly ahead of the group with my sword re-sheathed but still within reach of it. The boy was between Elira and myself. Grun was behind, which was where I wanted him to be. Grun's judgment was sound but his patience was short and the boy kept doing things that tested it.

The thing that bothered me wasn't the magic that the boy had used. I had seen strong mana signatures before. I have also encountered unstable casters, wild talents, people who had come to their abilities through difficult paths and had the control to show for it.

The thing that bothered me was the fight.

Specifically: the boy had fought to not hurt us. That wasn't the instinct of a dangerous person. Dangerous people, when cornered, don't think twice about killing to survive. They wouldn't think about nonlethal ways to go about it. Even though the boy had exits, he hadn't taken them. He had instead fought three trained adventurers to a standstill with wind and water and hadn't lost composure once.

And then he said, “I was scared.” Not as an excuse. Just as a fact.

I have done this job for fourteen years. I definitely had a good sense for when someone was performing something and when they were not.

The elimination clause was still in my jacket.

For some reason, I found myself thinking about Elira's expression when the guildmaster had brought it up.

I kept walking beside her, letting the silence stay where it was.