An Uneasy Peace

I woke up to warmth and the smell of something herbal burning, like medicine but not any medicine I recognized. My head throbbed in the specific way it does when you slept too long and too hard after something went badly wrong.

For a moment I didn't remember. Then it came back.

The beast. The fire ring. Water that missed and then didn't. Wind in uneven edges. Lightning tearing out of me all at once.

My hands twitched against the blanket.

The ceiling above me was wood, slanted, patched in places with old cloth. Sunlight coming through narrow gaps in the slats. I was on a bedroll, a coarse blanket pulled to my chest. Someone had taken off my shirt and wrapped clean cloth around my ribs and one shoulder. My arms felt like they belonged to someone else. Heavy in a way that was not quite pain and was not quite normal.

I turned my head slowly.

Grun was against the far wall with a bandage across his chest, asleep or close to it, breathing in the deep measured way of someone who was hurt but stable. Cerin sat near him sharpening a blade across his lap, his right shoulder in a sling. The movements were slower than usual.

Elira was at a small fire pit, kneeling, stirring something in a clay pot. Her long coat was gone. Plain tunic, hair in a loose braid, a bruise along one side of her face. She glanced over at me without surprise.

"You're awake."

I tried to answer and my throat was so dry the word came out wrong. I swallowed and tried again.

"Where is this?"

"Old ranger outpost. Edge of the forest. We dragged you here after."

I tried to sit up. My arms went partway and then stopped cooperating. Elira reached over and pushed me gently back down.

"Don't. You tore something when you cast the last spell. And your mana was nearly empty."

"I didn't know that could happen."

Cerin hadn't looked up from the blade but I saw his eyes move.

"You passed out right after the fight,"

Elira said. "I put a barrier up while we moved you. You slept through the night and most of this morning."

I put my hand to my side. The bandages were tight and clean and smelled like whatever she had been burning.

"You healed me?"

"Basic spells and potions. You will be sore for a while."

Grun shifted against the wall and opened one eye.

"He is up?"

"Yeah,"

Elira said, without turning.

Cerin spoke without preamble.

"That spell. The lightning."

His voice was careful. I had already noticed he was a person who chose his words before using them.

I didn't say anything.

Grun sat up with difficulty, one broad hand rubbing the back of his neck.

"That was not beginner magic."

"I know,"

I said. "I didn't know what it would attract. I was practicing. I lost control of the spell and the explosion happened before I could stop it."

I looked at him.

"I did not mean to bring that thing down on us."

They exchanged a look. It kinda looked like the conversation had already happened without me.

"We have seen mana-eaters before,"

Elira said, stirring the pot. "Nothing like that one."

"And none that fixed on a single person like that,"

Cerin said. "Like it was hunting something specific."

I looked down at my hands under the blanket.

Silence.

Then Grun exhaled heavily.

"Well. Whatever the case. You saved us."

I looked at him.

He had a grin on his face that was too tired to be full-sized but was real.

"Not something I expected to say to someone I tried to kill three days ago."

It surprised a short laugh out of me. It hurt my ribs and I did not care.

Elira handed me a clay bowl of soup. It was hot and it smelled like something real and I took it with both hands and held it for a second before drinking. The warmth went all the way down.

"Thank you,"

I said.

She nodded. She was watching me in the same way she had been since the forest, that careful observational quality. Not unkind. More like someone trying to figure something out.

Cerin was watching me too, differently. Not the threat-assessment look from the first fight. Something more considered.

"You are not from here,"

he said finally.

"No."

"That much is obvious,"

Elira said. "Your mana signature is unlike anything the guild has on record. I have been trying to map it for three days and I keep running out of room on the page."

I drank more soup.

"The guild?"

"We reported the initial encounter,"

Cerin said. "After what happened with the beast we updated the report. The threat classification has been pulled."

"That is good?"

"It means they want to meet you instead of deal with you,"

Elira said.

Grun grunted.

"Which is better. Probably."

I finished the soup slowly. The warmth helped more than I expected, not just the body warmth but the fact of sitting with people who had not left. I looked at each of them.

Grun with his bandages and his tired grin. Cerin with his sling and his careful eyes. Elira who had healed me and was now watching me like she was still working out what I was.

"What happens now?"

"We rest today,"

Grun said. "Then we go back to Daruma."

"You will come with us,"

Elira said. Her tone was not a question but it was not a threat either.

"The city is not gentle,"

Cerin said. "But if you want to understand where you are, and maybe find a way back to wherever you came from, it is your best option."

I looked at the empty bowl in my hands.

I thought about the notebook on my desk at home. The one line in it. I thought about it every day and I had not stopped.

"Okay,"

I said.

That night

The fire was low. Yuu was asleep under the blanket, breathing steadily. He had been out for maybe an hour.

Elira sat with her knees pulled up, a faint glow at her fingertips as she adjusted the mana seal on the wall. Cerin was cleaning his gear with the quiet concentration he always brought to tasks that did not require speech. Grun had a flask.

"I don't like it,"

Grun said. Low, not trying to carry.

"He is not a threat,"

Elira said, without looking up from the seal.

"Not on purpose. But that is almost the more worrying version."

Cerin turned a piece of his armor over in his hands.

"He fought us to a standstill with wind and water and did not escalate. Then he stayed when he could have run. Then he stopped something that was nearly killing us. That is not the behavior of  danger."

"It is the behavior of someone who does not know what he is yet,"

Grun said. "Which is different. What happens the next time something comes at him and he is not thinking clearly? What happens when there are civilians nearby and not just us?"

No one answered immediately.

Elira looked at Yuu's sleeping shape.

"He looked exhausted when he woke up. Like he has been carrying something heavy for a long time and he is not sure he is allowed to put it down."

Cerin said nothing for a moment.

"The guild will make the call. We bring him in, we give them everything we have, and we let them decide."

"And if they decide wrong?"

Cerin looked at the fire.

"Then we deal with that when it comes."

Grun took a drink from his flask and said nothing else.

Elira adjusted the seal one more time and let the glow fade. Outside the outpost the forest was quiet in the way it gets late at night, everything pulled inward.

She thought about what Grun had said. Not on purpose. She thought about the way Yuu had looked at them over his soup bowl, like he was trying to memorize something he was not sure he would get to keep.

She did not say any of that.

She just watched the seal hold and let the night pass.