XIV — Trance

The night felt like it lasted for very long. Perhaps it was the breeze, or maybe the snow that fell gently ever since the early stages of the night. As midnight turned the night sky into a canvas of deep ocean blue, snow steadily precipitated down on the ground, contributing to what the blizzard had already done several hours ago.

It was cold outside.

However, two beating hearts stood erratic and frantic about something that ended up being connected events, and they both were sprinting towards someone whom one had been searching for this whole time.

“Follow the Lanterns Big Bro Sam! The more they light,” a voice cried out, panting as she ran through the roads. “The stronger the magic!”

Sam nodded. He had no choice. In a normal situation, he’d have let her stay inside while he figured something out, but there was no plan, and there was no time. There was only a ticking clock that seemed to tick in their minds relentlessly.

“I felt some strong surges, Big Bro Sam,” she continued, still panting from running so much. “M- My body told me someone’s in danger…”

Sam nodded once again. He already knew that.

It was Ellen.

The lanterns intensified in strength in the areas they had gone through. Following the intensity of the glow of each lantern, Sam quickly checked how much brighter one would be to the previous ones they had encountered. He’d overloaded his senses, or perhaps they were muddled with panic and stress.

He was a young girl, Kat, who was running alongside him. She had felt the negative mana Vexia had surged during her standoff with Sam and she had expended it when she kissed Ellen and hexed her. The leakage from the expense triggered something within Kat, and she had hurried outside, after which she met Sam.

The lanterns that they saw buzzed with intensified light mana, the vessels themselves tightening together so that the mana wouldn’t expand and the whole lantern wouldn’t explode.

Alongside them were both Sam and Kat, people who tried not to explode; Kat eventually collapsed to one knee. Not unusual for a child, they aren’t always full of energy, but Kat had immense mana inside of her and it was precisely this mana overflow that made her hot and feverish, her strength slowly leaving her. Sam quickly helped her up and walked toward a snow covered body. Kat recognized the green hair anywhere and, still struggling from mana overflow, unraveled the face covered with snow.

Ellen.

Kat’s face welled with tears as she called for Sam.

“Big Bro Sam, please, save her…”

Her frantic pleas and heavy panting have somehow made her sentences clearer, not that it didn’t have any effect on Sam. What did have an effect is how intense Kat’s pleas were; she cared a lot for her and would do whatever it took for her. He carried Ellen carefully, and with Kat holding on to his sleeve, they eventually made it out of the road and towards the room Ellen had nursed Sam and recently Roger as well.

Roger had been drawing in the room. It was a quaint little place he stayed in occasionally to help out nurses or to sit and do something less intense than what he normally would do. His shock was silent, but it reverberated through the tent, when Sam brought an unconscious Ellen; Kat followed behind him. Sam gently placed Ellen on one of the beds, incredibly worried that he may have been too late as he had been frantically searching.

He wasn’t the only one concerned.

“Oi…” Roger stared at Ellen’s unconscious body. She looked like she was locked in a trance, eyebrows furrowed as if she’d been experiencing a horrible nightmare, and Roger wanted an explanation from Sam. “What the hell happened to her…?”

Sam couldn’t reply. Kat stayed silent, her hands trembling. Having set his canvas and quill down, Roger’s mind was set ablaze, his heart echoing the fury, as he grabbed Sam by the clothes. He, too, was trembling like Kat. But unlike Kat, he was seething but he was angry out of confusion, just as Sam had seen with Vexia during the last moments he had encountered her.

“Oi, archer! I’m talkin’ to ya! What the hell happened?!”

Sam could not reply. His face was unreadable to Roger, and this only made Roger more agitated.

“Answer me, goddammit!”

“Roger…!”

“Stay out of this, Kat!”

Kat flinched. She had seen Roger angry, and she’d even seen Roger flare up in his anger. It should have been like any other outburst Roger had.

But it wasn’t.

Roger was genuinely confused, and he was angry about his confusion. The fact Sam had no answer, even if Roger believed he had no answer, it still wouldn’t quench the blazing anger that he had in his soul. As soon as he saw Kat flinch, he softened his grip, still holding on to Sam’s clothes. However as both Sam and Kat have noticed, Roger started trembling, pondering over what he had just done. Roger himself became more irate, albeit silently, in confusion if he should vilify the man who brought his Senpai back to be treated.

“I,” Roger started. He was still shaking, but Sam himself was too weary to even attempt to help. Roger realized this and softened his grip a bit further, tears welling up under his eyes. “I don’t understand…”

He quickly remembered how he had saved Ellen, something he heard from Ellen herself. There was no way he could have been the one who hurt her. Roger eventually released his grip, slowly walked down to the other free bed to sit, and he placed his hands on his face, trying to stop himself from crying especially in front of Kat and an entranced Ellen. He felt like an idiot.

Kat saw him and wanted to help, but her Big Sis Ellen needed more attention.

She moved toward where Ellen had been laid, herself still expressing in her face that she’s locked in that terrible, faux beautiful nightmare. Kat wanted to save her from there.

“O Great Mother,” she started, moving her hands from her chest to lay it on top of Ellen.

“Guide this little soul,” she continued, and as she did, her aura reflected that of what Sam had heard of the Great Mother, nature’s divine blessings sprinkled down from the palms of this small girl.

“Redeem the lost one, who had partaken in your guidance.”

Sam couldn’t believe what he saw. Roger looked from his red-rimmed eyes up, and his eyes widened more as he saw Kat chanting an age-old spell, one that he thought would have been more dangerous than the Eternal One Sole he had done.

But Roger had known all his life. Kat was the chosen one.

She needn’t prove that she carried something much stronger than anything they could even think of.

Sam recognized this within Vexia.

Except where Vexia had accumulated negative energy from mana that sought to control others or sow chaos, Sam found Kat and nature’s blessing to be more healing.

He found it to be more soothing.

He didn’t see the threads of nature’s blessing going through from Kat towards Ellen, but he felt the kid’s determination as she closed her eyes, concentrating like he had been trying to, for the years he had been training.

Steady, she remained.

Breathe she did, in little, patient husks.

She had learned by her age and by her time, something that Sam had struggled with after becoming alone within the slums, and still by himself as he tread the imperial capital when he was marked a hero.

Heroism felt like a far cry to him, yet here he was, experiencing something like that. Himself and Roger became witnesses to Kat’s intensifying spell casting, and as she pleaded more with nature, the fruits of her labor started to form. Ellen slowly and gradually stabilized, the negative mana still threatening to fight back, but the power of the blessing and Kat’s own resolve to save her managed to eradicate the last of the mana locking Ellen in a deep trance.

And then, Kat fell backwards.

She tumbled back to a sitting position. Roger stood quickly to help her up, and from his view as he knelt down to help her, he found her crying tears. He was alarmed but as soon as he and even Sam saw her face, she was smiling. She wasn’t crying out of sorrow, she was crying since she felt relief from having saved Ellen, who laid down in peaceful sighs, now in deep sleep.

“E- Everything is fine Big Bros,” Kat said, laughing. “Big Sis Ellen didn’t give up when…”

Kat turned to Ellen’s face. She stood up, her hair’s slightly disheveled but was otherwise fine, then she placed her hands towards her chest.

“When I called for her to come back.”