Miina Malina
&
Rudolf Sagramore
Miina’s recovery had been more or less immediate, at least by comparison to what anyone else was expecting: a good night’s sleep, staying well away from any white mages, and focusing it on herself. She wasn’t about to bleed out in battle and the miscellaneous bruises, cuts, scrapes, and other forms of exertion more magical than physical were things that she wanted to address
personally.
It could be called meditative, if the mystrel had ever heard of the word before, taking the long route of focusing the aetherial energies exactly where they needed to go and addressing every complaint individually…
She just knew that it was a good way to avoid any permanent marks, coaxing everything slowly and specifically back to how it should be – and, if need be, burning away anything that had started to heal
wrong. A shame, really, that she didn’t have the time or familiarity with anyone else’s body to heal it to the same degree.
Well, if she liked them enough to offer it.
On the second day, the red mage was back to her usual level of activity: slipping around Brightlam to find what hadn’t been used, consumed, or destroyed by the victory and immediate aftermath.
And now it was time for her to get some answers, while Rudolf was pinned in place to ask questions.
Slipping in was easy enough, the dedicated healers had done what they could and now it was just a matter of rest (and they weren’t
that attentive, either). It was a pretty roomy bed, more than enough room for one half-dressed girl to sit herself cross-legged on the end, bottle in hand, and study the superficial damage.
She would get to the magical examination in a minute. If he didn’t wake up.
“Not who I expected at my bedside...”Preternaturally quick, as though he’d either been roused by the unfamiliar weight at the foot of the cushion or forewarned, the swordsman had cracked one coppery eye open and broken the silence.
Barely, at that. His voice was raw and weak, closer to a rasp than the usual neutral, careful, but clear tone he always spoke up with before. Looking at him, it wasn’t hard to guess why. He was clearly a mess.
While the healers of Brightlam, captained by a frantic Neve, were sure to keep the lot of them stabilized in the aftermath… they had a mountain of the wounded, dying, and dead to attend to. Rudolf had quite pointedly waved them off once he’d been half-mummified in medicinal bandages, urging all who’d listen to spare their aether for those less toughened for war. He had all but collapsed afterwards— this was the first time he’d been returned to the world of the living in over a day, at least.
He rose, slowly, gingerly. The shift of his frame revealed some of what lied beneath that heavy wrap job.
Angry red scarring spiraled out from his skin, following the tracks left by the blackflame in the battle with the Weapon. It shone as though smooth, in the way skin never ought to— bruised an ugly purple at the core, the blaze had left bands of mottled red all about his upper half, most concentrated around the arms, and face. His left eye seemed to have fresh blood spilling from it at a glance, before a closer look revealed the streaks of crimson to be more of that blaze-riddled skin. There wasn’t a doubt about it— even if it had been mundane flame that had caused all this, he was due for some scarring, worse than the patchwork of meager cuts Valon had left him with. At least those had sealed.
Granted, it had been more fire that had gotten that job done.
His breath was short, labored. He hadn’t shattered a full set of ribs like Esben, in fairness, but if the inky smoke that had leaked out from his lungs during the fight were any indication, each passage of air probably stung on the inside. If he had his way, it’d be another day and a half before he spoke, to make things an even three of rest. His skin, naturally, was pale.
But despite it all, and despite the fact that he couldn’t very well
run the way every other time he’d been woken up ahead of schedule had seen him want to, that burnished gold gaze held, as he let the cheesy leer of his joke fall from his face.
“Good to see you’re in one piece. Usually pretty live and let live, though. Only time you came and sought me out before was trailing Zeke.”A brow rose, stained white over a field of red.
“Is it to that that I owe the pleasure this time? I remember we ran across that cell heading towards the crystal.”He clearly had different guesses at the forefront, but there was a spot of hope behind the reedy words.
Miina gave a languid blink, eyes running over the lingering damage. She could even taste it now, the still-lingering bitterness of darkness and desecration. Not something that could be ascribed to Ultima, even with Valheim’s corruption, which meant it could only have come from within. That smoke, that
shield…
The fire. The strange fire that must have fed back and done as much damage to Rudolf as everything else, if not more, given the scarring and his current state.
“Mmm… but
Shield is white m-magic,” the redhead muttered, not yet answering and leaning perilously forwards. Definitely right.
“You aren’t a m-mage, so
why do you have so much b-b-black magic?” Despite the phrasing, her tone was more curious than accusatory, “Smoke. F-Fire.
Shield, somehow. It’s all… dark, b-but not corrupted, like the B-B-Blight.”
“It’s
definitely black, b-but…” ears flicked, a tail swished, “
More than elemental. Purer.”
She wasn’t sure how it compared to actually trying to darken an area; that was something Miina had never thought to do. Blinding people was all well and good, but it was
obvious. Why do that when you could cloak yourself with white magic and disappear from view? It was much better for infiltration.
He leaned back, reflexively, as her curiosity mounted.
“Well, the Shield was a Materia. I had a materia for that one.”Seeming uncertain, a grimace began to spread across his face. Never minding his comprehensive suite of injury, he seemed just as uncomfortable with
where this was going as
how. But, in fairness, she had warned him already that questions were on the way.
And he’d known damn well they were gonna be something like these. It stood to reason that as Miina’s skill and understanding in the arcane grew, over the course of their time on this quest and the growing
need for improved magical capacity they would always face, that she’d eventually catch up in sensitivity to those that had sniffed out the shadow overlaid onto him before. Having encountered and habitually dissected so much magic of either school… what she lacked in specialization, she was clearly making up for in intuition and synthesis.
“... You’re correct, though. I’m not blighted the way Arton was. For a while, I was scared I might be.” He seemed to arrive at a solution in time. On the other end of the scale, throughout Drana Asnaeu any attempts to conceal the flame within had been shoved, forcefully, out the picture. Even now, his body likely
brimmed with the fundamental, ancient essence that captured the little Mystrel’s attention, in a way that defied pretense.
“As I’m lead to understand it, if Blight is corruption, what I carry is decomposition. Put another way, deconstruction— returning the definite to Fundamental Obscura, the Tenebrescence that came before Etro’s light gave the world form, rather than outright Essential Death.”His uncomfortable grimace shifted, closer to a wary scowl. In a way, a metaphor for the difference being expressed— uncertainty against opposition.
“Before we go further, I need to ask you what you’re looking to know and why. If you can feel what’s going on inside my body, then you can certainly feel why Eve held a bolt of lightning to my head the last time I had this talk. Messing with it lightly is how I got to this state you see me in now.” “C-C-Can’t you use simpler words?” Miina muttered, fingers tapping against the bottle, “I’ve n-never
learned any of this. Zeke j-just taught me some spells, and I c-c-copy what I see.”
Sometimes that was easier – Izayoi explaining exactly what she had done to create a brief hurricane, or trying to work out how you could cast an actual
water spell with the purest manifestation of its aether it was possible to see – but it mostly meant getting a glimpse here or there and trying to work it out in reverse. It was getting easier with practice, a much more constant awareness of aether, but…
“Sorry, I’m piecing a general shape of this together from old esoterica. I’m almost as lost as you on some of it.”It didn’t prepare her for some weird religious description of what the difference was. She only knew that the Blight felt
very wrong, like something that didn’t fit, and this… it wasn’t in the right context. It shouldn’t
be here. But there was something about it that still fit into the whole. You couldn’t have creation without destruction, she couldn’t heal an injury without a trace if the flaws weren’t removed in their entirety.
“All truths conjoined… I’ve heard that somewhere…” Rudolf mumbled thoughtfully.
“Nigredo… Albedo… Rubedo.” Much like her, the words came in at the very tip of the tongue, softly muttered thoughts more than statements to the other.
“No Citrinitas?… hmm, she’d just said that out loud. Thinking too much.
He scowled, missing something, but Miina was quick to get the both of them back on track.
“I c-c-can’t master magic without
understanding, this is part of black m-magic, and…” more tapping, “I’m n-not that careless. I don’t use things I can’t
control.”
Or steer somehow. Like large amounts of thunder in a giant water snake.
Something Rudolf apparently couldn’t do, having let everything run wild through his body. Or been overwhelmed, but the distinction didn’t matter to the end. Enough that, yes,
Libra made for some interesting observations.
“H-How did the healers not m-make you explode?” Healing magic and whatever was propping up most of his body’s structure should have reacted badly. And Rudolf was not, despite carrying this, a mage of amazing finesse. Otherwise he
wouldn’t have this damage to start with, as far as Miina was concerned.
“Okay, one thing at a time…” Rudolf muttered, more to steel his own mind than to hope for her to slow down.
“I told them to shove off and save their white magic for people that weren’t bred for war.” he replied, his expression quirking oddly as he
felt Libra pass over him in a way he never had before now.
“Given how quickly Neve, Isolde, and now you’ve all figured out that there’s a shade sitting in next to my soul, I’m sure they’ve got their suspicions— but us saving the nation, plus the word of Neve and Zacharias, seem like they’re pulling some weight in my direction.”With some effort, he propped himself up on the less-damaged elbow until he was fully seated upright. Trying to lean away as the Red Mage’s intrigue brought her closer was starting to be a pain in the neck, quite literally.
“And I had much less scaffolding holding me together on the interior all the times before now. Funny thing, actually—” reaching over, he tapped at a peak beneath the bedsheet, the crest of his knee joint.
“Last time that stuff got healed over? Also you. Out in the desert, after fighting Izayoi’s mentor. Remember?”Here they were again, a month older and practically completely different people.
“We d-d-didn’t have another healer,” Miina pointed out, finally opening the bottle she had brought along. Fruity, definitely a strong hint of plum, and still nearly buried under the scent of alcohol.
“We didn’t. And I apologized for dumping so much work on you.” Well, at least that explained why he hadn’t exploded. It was a pretty bad lie, all things considered; better to have everyone not trust him than have been killed by an over-enthusiastic hero worshipper. Probably. Maybe. Would the fancy religious lot have burned him alive for sacrilege? The mystrel hoped they would have given chance to smuggle Rudolf out before that.
“How is t-that holding you t-t-together…?” It was black magic.
Constructive purposes were anathema to it, especially something that he had described just minutes ago as
deconstruction. Shielding – she could see it being repurposed to that, have the shield eat the attack back just as much. Like a pineapple. Don’t just absorb it.
Propping the inside of your body together
with black magic… hm, well, if it was an entity entirely made of that, the contradiction was kind of inherent to its being. And if he had one of those in him, maybe it
could put itself in there. Not a good long-term fix, Rudolf was still… well, a person. Not a black magic entity. It’d probably turn his insides to goop or cause some horrible disease.
Rudolf’s mouth opened. His jaw worked. The pause hung in the air.
“D-D-Don’t answer,” she took a swig of the drink. Hmm, the discount from being a hero of the day… nicer than what she’d normally be willing to pay for. And without having to sneak out with it, too, “I don’t think you kn-know. Like that rubingdo stuff.”
Which was another thing she wanted to know. Rubies were red, but she didn’t see how pretty rocks came into it.
“Myaaaa… c-could this shade explain some day?”
“I’m sure,” the emblazoned swordsman groaned.
“It’s been hinting at half of these concepts in the back of my head ever since Leviathan— but Isolde and her Dispelja right after spooked him away from ever piping up with this many white mages around unless we’re in a life or death situation. Almost have my thoughts to myself for a change. If I were to guess, outside of whatever’s become intertwined with my own natural living aether and what’s holding me together? I’m flameless and explain-less.”An inconvenient reality, but the one they were stuck with for a good long while. He couldn’t read Miina’s mind, and thus had no way of divining those concerns regarding burnings at the stake, but it sounded like whatever spirit had given him access to these abilities had a vested interest in
neither of them dying.
He certainly couldn’t object, in most instances, even if
straight answers were at a premium.
“...Lunaris.” he said, after puzzling over something for a while.
“We can get answers in Lunaris. Earl Cadmon’s libraries are expansive, and the ruins are the site of a lot of archaeological digs and ongoing study. They’re some of the oldest in Edren… and where I cut the deal that made me this way. There won’t be so many of Etro’s devout around to scare his lips sealed, either, so we can curate our research with some real direction if I grill him right.”He scoffed. That was
an idea, but not one he could totally trust. As he’d just relayed, so much more casually than he had with Galahad, he’d believed he could go digging around down there and find what he wanted
once already. No guarantee he’d get away with any less this go around. Not without great care.
“Much better than simple inference and word association. That’s basically all that Nigredo, Albedo, and Rubedo stuff is, when you get down to it. Guesswork. But a guess I’m holding onto, until I get a clearer picture.”“Well, w-w-word association is all spells
are”, Miina pointed out, “It’s n-n-not like the power c-comes from the word. It’s just a specific p-pattern, a specific aether manipulation, and you t-tie it to a single word. I think? It’s how I’ve d-done it.”
“Really,” he blinked, before nodding along, no doubt folding that insight away somewhere.
“Then, I guess I may as well run you through the broad picture. Maybe you’d get something out of the framework that a meathead like me can’t.”He held both hands up. His left heavily burned, bearing the brunt of the rebound from the blackened Shields. His right, save a few healing scrapes from Valon, still mostly bearing his pale skin— the bulk of his blackflame being channeled through that odd greatsword of his. He began with the left, trying to concentrate and muster some blackflame to demonstrate— but to no avail.
He sighed, and resorted to just words.
“These are old terms, belonging to the hermetic traditions of Edreni protoculture— the city-states that came before the Kingdom unified.” he began, perhaps able to credit that brief back and forth with Galahad for dredging the old studies of history back to the fore.
“Alchemy, in other words. The alchemical process, to create a magnum opus. Typically a philosopher’s stone— but importantly, it’s traditionally broken into four stages. Three of which have almost direct counterparts in magic today.”Burned hand.
“The Black Mages, reviled and feared for their destructive capabilities all across the continent, tending towards fire, ice, and thunder to attack something. This is aligned with the first step of the Opus— Nigredo, sometimes called melanosis. Where the material is returned to its pure components, cooked, cleansed, and calcinized down to a uniform black matter. The prima materia, formless and full of potential to become. They beget chaos.”The unburnt hand now, waving across.
“Then the White Mages, those that heal, purify, reinforce that which we hold holy and good and are protectors of that structure, bolstering the Mothercrystal’s creation— like with Shield, for instance. Evokes the next step, Albedo, or leucosis. The impurities are washed away; light, clarity, and form are restored. Definition begets order, structure. What is and is not is separated.”Slowly, he brought them together, interlacing his fingers before pointedly glancing up at Miina, and the shock of red that crowned her. He recognized the clothes from the ensemble she’d had on when they went out shopping for hats, he was pretty sure.
“Finally, rarest of all, only achieved a few times per generation… The final step of the opus. Rubedo— iosis. The reddening, the sign of the work’s completion, the synthesis and integration of insight and experience— all that can be gleaned from the process, to reunite the purified, separated components of the matter, and transcend. The principle of coincidentia oppositorum is vital. Forming a unity of opposites. Fittingly, Red Mages like you wield both the black and the white… and you’re grilling me for truth. Libra, and all.”He coughed, realizing how long he’d rambled and let his unwoken voice scratch the insides of his dry throat. His visual metaphor fell apart, for the sake of politely covering his mouth.
“Like I said, a lot of guesswork and word association behind this theory. Reference to outdated and esoteric schools of thought more than anything, maybe just because my reference points are so primordial. It’s definitely not perfect… but there are parallels, if you get it in your head to look for them.”“S-S-Seems…” the cat took another swig of her fruit liquor, shrugging, “I d-d-don’t know. Not without that l-library. Or talking to Mr. Shade. I still d-d-don’t get why red magic is so… uncommon. Mages should b-b-be able to do both. When it’s m-materia, people don’t have that p-problem, look at Izayoi… s-same idea, j-just direct aether c-control…”
She tapped the bottle irritably. Well, Rudolf was currently an exception. If he tried to control white magic… not good.
He shrugged too, mirroring her. It was a shame he couldn’t take a swig himself— but clearing his throat told him he’d better not.
“To be fair, all mages are rare— white magic just seems so prevalent here because this is where many of them congregate, both for study and for the faith. But most of us only have our personal stocks of aether to work with.”A wry, self-effacing twist of the expression crossed his face, as he looked off to the side for a moment.
“And many of us don’t have much of it. Or much talent, either… Honestly, just between us? I can’t even really manage her lightning redirection technique without some help from the inside…”Anyone who looked at the sequence of events with a fair eye would note that just a week ago, Rudolf hadn’t even known the
Raijingeki was
possible— but, as always, the boy was rarely ever fair.
“D-Didn’t mean mages, I know th-that’s uncommon, it’s…” Miina’s eyes drifted to her free hand, thinking about what he had said. Redirecting lightning. She could
direct it, if she created it – the sparks playing around her fingers were proof enough there – but taking control of something else? Maybe with a proper focus for it, otherwise she’d just fall into the counter.
She snuffed the sparks out, clenching them into just a tingle in her fist, “I mean… I d-don’t
think the talent is restricted? B-Black mages aren’t that b-because they
can’t touch white magic, so… or is it m-materia that’s different?”
“Materia’s supposed to be a compression of ambient aether that’s structured to produce a spell when activated.” Rudolf rattled off, mostly just getting the boilerplate sales pitch from the South out of the way. Nobody in their party could reasonably be expected to
not know the basic idea behind it at this point.
“How they synthesize and mass produce that stuff… I have no clue. Ditto on how that structure allows for repeated casting— I know that the fundamental aether in there holding each stone together can be freed and fed into the output, somehow. That’s why the Shields for Ultima were stronger than the time I used it for Famfrit, and why I don’t have it around now. Maybe that’s related to how it recharges, like they’re both tied to that ‘compressed ambient energy of the world’ thing?”He almost wanted to offer her more of the old and dead language to be annoying. This would be the perfect time to throw in
Anima Mundi and guess at a conflation haphazardly, but he was already playing too cavalier a game with the alchemy metaphor. That was incomplete enough already without adding more concepts that needed at least a millennium of filtering through history to arrive back in modern times.
He shook his head, warding away the rabbit hole for now.
“...Maybe it’s a philosophical difference. I’m not sure how much of it came through the word salad, but even in alchemical thought there was a lot of philosophy that crept in. It almost became just as much about the self as it was craft, that the alchemist was expected to undergo some sort of divine transformation of the soul, alongside whatever he was trying to create. That’s pretty high-concept for this, but maybe similar lines might explain it. Tendencies within people’s selves emerge in how they manipulate the world whether they’re more ordered or chaotic, destructive or protective. I dunno.”“Huh,” Miina thought about this. Shouldn’t she be a black mage, then? Something seemed to be missing in that picture. Materia, though… everyone always said they were spells but…
Reaching around inside her shirt, the mystrel produced an unassuming looking example
thoroughly bundled up by a long cord. “Wh-What about Materia th-that aren’t spells? I’ve never cast
th-this… I don’t even know where m-m-my brother got it.”
… or what it did, for sure. He’d just said ‘it would help’.
When she’d produced the unfamiliar stone from somewhere close to the collar, an embarrassingly large part of Rudolf had thought about asking
“oh wow is that another Shield Materia am I lucky do I get to not have to explain that I destroyed a Shield Materia to the Earl of most of western Edren because I’m lucky”, or something of a similar nature.
That hopeful look was replaced by blank puzzlement.
“They make those? That’s news to me.”“S-S-Someone must. Zeke s-said it was… experience? S-Something like that. Doesn’t
do anything, j-j-just feels… warm.”
“Experience.” he blandly repeated.
Experience.
“If spells are just associations, then… maybe there’s a way that builds them? Experience is the association between action and memory.” he offered. A total, blind shot in the dark, enough that it made the esoterism allegory earlier in their talk appear so well-structured it could survive doctorate review. He threw his hands up in quick defeat, plaintive in his lack of confidence.
“I have nothing for warm. Could be ‘fond memories’, for all I know. I thought they just made pocket spells.”“… maybe someone in S-Skael will know,” she pronounced after having a moment to think on that, sliding the materia back into its usual spot. For now… hmm, she wasn’t going to be getting any more answers today, so… Miina
could just go finish her drink. And then take a nap.
Or–
“W-Want me to heal you m-more? I can probably d-do it.”
A sigh. Whether it was relief, disappointment that they’d not gotten very far, or just the same pile of exhaustion that had knocked most of them out for the full day and change thus far, it was tough to say.
“I’d appreciate it. Sorry to always do this to you, again.”He wasn’t sure how well all that had piled up in the last three days
would heal on its own. Felt like there was always something new— and with how many of their number that they’d already lost in the jungle, he doubted he was finished with his time in the line of fire. Out of everyone left, it was, incredibly, probably
him that was best equipped for the thick of a melee, and all the ways being there tried to kill you.
But with any luck, “burning from the inside out” wouldn’t be one of them.
“I’ll be honest. My insides have seen better days. Probably best we clear the scaffolding first.” he mused, before inclining his head.
“Please, just what you’re comfortable with.”“I w-w-wouldn’t still b-be around if I minded healing,” Miina pointed out. It wasn’t like she had a burning
reason to stick with anyone, and she was well equipped to just disappear into the night if it came to it.
She’d been planning to start with the weird black magic supports anyway; those couldn’t be healthy. But how to get rid of them? If she didn’t care about Rudolf’s survival, she would just hit him with a
dispel, let the light magic do its work, and see if she could toss some heals in afterwards. No way to reasonably balance the two spells at the same time, after all.
But that was probably fatal even before considering the whole “burning from within with contradictory magics” part. So she needed something else.
If she could hijack the black magic, then manipulating it out of the way would make room for healing… very much how she’d addressed her own injuries, just on a more survival-oriented scale. That… would probably not be possible, though. It’d be like trying to hijack part of an Eidolon directly, just
much weaker; she didn’t have the power for that. It could be a last resort.
So… what she needed was something that was black magic, and
kind of like a dispel. If it was elemental, she could have just opposed it with the stronger element, but this was its own thing.
“Hmm…”
“What’s up?” Rudolf asked.
“You healed my knee joint without too much issue in Osprey. I’ve got the same sort of stabbing feeling through my torso now as I did back then. Is it different now?”“I w-wasn’t worried about stopping your heart or s-s-something then. Or p-paying attention, s-so I just healed through the b-b-backlash. I c-could collapse your ribs, or… hmm… I really need a b-black magic dispel, b-but that’s white magic…”
“That bad?” his brows rose.
“That’s scary. I didn’t even feel much backlash then, but I know what a heart attack feels like now…”She was the one that could ‘look’ inside, as it was— so he basically had to take her word for it. It didn’t
sound too beyond the pale that what might have once been benign “just heal the sword guy” fare was suddenly beyond the pale. Not to him. Not…
Well, if he had nothing left to call up…He gave a brief grimace, gr
No. He had to trust Miina on this. He didn’t want to risk what she was saying was on the table.
“I-It’s not like a b-barrier spell, the wh-white magic wouldn’t absorb the b-black. It’d j-just… explode. M-Magically, not literally… mostly. In your ch-chest. Don’t stitch v-vital parts together with black magic unless you c-can think of how to
heal with it,” Miina explained, looking down at her bottle (and hands).
It was a strange thought, that dispel was
white magic. When it came down to it, her conception of what it did was very much… destroy whatever spells were lingering in the area. Destruction. Black, not white. But it was really an imposition of the normal world, reinstating what
should be there…
But still targeted entirely on magic. She
could work with that. Even… hm, wasn’t that similar to silence? It wasn’t
her spell; she had never used it once. Barely even remembered it; it wasn’t like a wandering mystrel tended to encounter other mages. But Zeke had been a fan when he wanted her to pay attention and stop playing with whatever new magic she had learned.
Another swig of the bottle. Right, so black magic
could interfere with casting, and it should therefore be able to do a dispel too, if you knew enough. Not
efficiently; you didn’t have the help of working
with the world to get rid of the strange aether effects. But it should be doable.
So, if she focused her efforts on
destroying the structure, not restoring the world to its unmagicked state… there was a pattern there, she was sure…
Only one supporting strand was gone, but at least it didn’t have a huge magical backlash. And leaning forward with her other hand too, directing the healing… no time for things to slide back. This was going to take a while. But it seemed to be working.
“C-Can you feel that?”
He gave a brief grimace, gritting his teeth before a deep, deep breath. As he exhaled, there was a shift behind his eyes, settling himself again at steel.
“Yeah. It pulls away, so it stings for a second, but… I can tell it’s healing. It always tingles and feels kinda cold when everything knits back together— like salve.”He gave her a thumbs up, and an
almost shaky smile, right at the edge of what he’d allow of himself.
“Nice work. Seems like you figured out how to keep me from blowing up pretty quick. Lucky me.”Ironic.
“Mmm… w-w-well, we’re going to b-be here all day, might as w-well see if you can feel the aether m-moving,” Miina offered a half shrug and moved onto the next spot. If she knew what meditation
was, meditative would have been an appropriate description for the entire procedure, on her end. Except for taking breaks to take a drink.
One day wouldn’t be enough for a full recovery, but compared to how Rudolf had started…
By the time she was done, he was well on the road to recovery, in relative terms. Many parts of him still ached, and the burns on his skin needed to be left mostly untouched— but tough as he and all Sagramori, bloodline or adopted, were?
He would be on his feet by the next day. A fair silver lining, by anyone’s measure. He still would have been wise to avoid anything terribly strenuous…
But the new questions their talk had arisen, and afternoon full of concerted focus towards following aethereal flow within himself, meant he had his share of things to occupy his mind while his body licked the rest of its’ wounds. One among them, a lasting impression.
They needed to know as much as they could, before they left Lunaris and made their way to the frigid south.
All of them did.
