Over the next few minutes, Vance explained to his friends what had happened to him over the last short while. He didn't leave out any details, though he was a bit distracted while he told his story. He found that he was rather sweaty and, after using that piece of information to rule out one interpretation of Mariah's observation, discovered that there was a little more fire mana than was normal in the surrounding space. There wasn't enough to cause alarm, but it was noticeable to someone with Vance's particular sensitivity.

Looking inward, he discovered that his fire core seemed to be behaving normally for the moment, but he had his suspicions that perhaps that wasn't the case while he'd been sleeping. Either way, he felt fine, and so concentrated more on his story. He would investigate further later. He noticeably cooled down over course of his tale.

"Nicholas and I ran back here, which sucked. Then, Nathaniel and the others came back. I haven't had all the details yet, but I think they killed the demons. Since then, I've sort of just been here." Vance gestured to the comfortable armchair which he was currently sharing with Mariah. There wasn't a whole lot of room to move with the two of them in situ. Of course, he had no complaints.

"So you fought it? Like fire and lightning, battled a demon? That's incredible! Stupid, but incredible!" Thomas was struggling to contain himself. Vance hadn't thought that Thomas was into battle magic or combat, but he couldn't exactly blame him for being a little excited.

"Well, it wasn't on purpose. I'd pick almost anything over fighting one of those things."

"Agreed. Sounds pretty bad. I'm glad you're alright." Brad piped up.

"That might be the longest sentence I've ever heard you put together." Vance jabbed.

"Good to see the demon didn't eat your crappy sense of humour." James draped himself on the arm of the chair awkwardly and nudged Vance playfully. He got him right on a sore spot. Vance winced and pulled his arm away. "Nope, but they did cut me up pretty good. By the way, Niall is upstairs, you should visit. I think he's probably still out, but Nicholas is with him, last I heard."

James did just that with immediacy. In the meantime, Vance fielded a litany of questions and generally enjoyed the presence of his friends. It was a truly healing thing just to speak with them after an ordeal like this, it gave him his sense of normalcy back and assured him that it was over.

"What did I miss? I could do with some normal things to think about." Vance asked, hopeful.

"Well, Brad came back from out of town. They went over to Nosem?" Mariah lost confidence towards the end, and her statement turned into a question.

"Nossum." Bradley provided.

"Nossum!" She echoed.

"Where's Nossum?" Vance asked, overjoyed to have found a subject other than demons. Additionally, and this was something of a bonus, Mariah had taken it upon herself to help Vance treat his wounds. He didn't think any of them were individually too severe, but he did have dozens of tiny ones. As it turned out, she was pretty good at this sort of thing.

"It's a little way to the east. There's a big mine there if I'm not mistaken. Quite the large village, could probably get away with calling it a town, right?"

"Yeah. Dad just bought it." Brad confirmed.

"The mine?" Mariah asked, absentmindedly, like it wasn't a big deal.

"Nossum." Brad corrected.

"Oh." Mariah and Thomas said at the same time.

The room was quiet for a minute before Vance started giggling uncontrollably. He was sure this was a deeply political and frankly very important development, but at the moment, he just found the juxtaposition of all of this too funny. He wasn't sure if he'd had a perspective shift at some point, but things like ownership of land, money and the sorts just seemed so much less important now. After he'd finished laughing at himself, he took a deep, calm breath. Vance excused himself for a few minutes, cleaned himself up and came back having suppressed his laughing fit.

The rest of the afternoon was largely uneventful. After asking some questions, Vance discovered that he'd actually only been gone for the majority of the day. It had felt longer than that, but he supposed it didn't really matter. They spent the night in the living room, using the various furniture in the room to construct makeshift sleeping arrangements, closely emulating their preferred layout when camping out in the woods. Vance was the first to drift off to sleep that night, still in the armchair with Mariah.

In the morning, Vance awoke to the sounds of Malcolm quietly going about his morning routine. He felt rested, comfortable and sort of full. It was a sensation that, without his introspection skills, may have simply gone unnoticed, but it was a sensation similar to having just eaten the perfect amount of food. Full, but not to the point of feeling sick. Vance was surprised to learn that his wood mana core was full to the brim.

If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Mana cores don't tend to fill themselves, they usually require at least a little input from the Arcanist. His fire core was an oddity, but he couldn't explain why this was happening. Then, he noticed the warmth of the sunlight on his skin.

He started on a train of thought and landed on the fact that most trees and plants need sunlight to grow. Vance began to hope that his budding theory wasn't correct. If it was, and his friends found out, he'd never live it down. He cast his senses inside himself and watched. Nothing seemed to be happening at the moment, so Vance expended a little of his wood mana, causing a nearby potted plant to grow by an inch.

Then, to his amazement and horror, he observed as his body dragged in tiny portions of light mana from where his skin, or more accurately, his mana membrane made contact with the sunlight. The mana was drawn in and held in tiny, imperceptible transference shells. Vance found it difficult to concentrate on the light mana, but he could at the very least identify the moment that it shifted.

Somehow, his body was now converting the light into wood mana and storing it in his wood core. Overall, the process was inefficient but quite fast and matched the timing of his breathing.

Vance decided to keep this bit of information to himself for the moment, the jokes could wait. He had already been planning on finding some more information about different cores before this whole affair, and he'd rather know if this is normal before telling everyone and their mothers about it. For now, he'd treat it as another blessing. Luckily, the amount of light mana was so insignificantly small in scale that he simply didn't notice it unless he tried.

It raised the question to Vance on whether this meant that technically, he was capable of performing a light shift. If his body could automatically do it one way, why not in reverse? Having no idea where to start, he filed that away under things to investigate later.

Carefully, Vance extracted himself from the armchair and did his best not to wake the others. He went out into the garden to stretch his legs and visit the outhouse. On his way back, he ran into Nathaniel. He hadn't noticed the man on the way out.

"Good morning, Nathaniel."

"Hey, Vance. How're you holding up?"

"Alright, thanks."

Vance made his way over and sat next to Nathaniel, who had perched upon a small stone bench that overlooked a patch of well-cared-for flowers.

"What about you?" Vance asked after a moment.

"Better, now. Much better. With the threat of that demon looming over my head for all this time, I've been at my wit's end. Now, it's easier to breathe, you know?"

"Yeah, I understand you perfectly."

The two sat in silence for a minute, enjoying the fresh air. Vance ran his hand over some of the plants that hung nearby, they were wet, so it had probably rained during the night.

"It might sound a bit weird, but thanks. Without you, I don't think we'd have found them before it was too late."

"Just dumb luck, really. Thanks for saving me."

"You saved yourself, we just brought you home." Nathaniel sounded proud.

"Well, thanks for saving the other two, then."

"Clever idea, putting up that signal. You finished your wood core, then?"

Vance just nodded, then gestured towards the stems of one of the nearby flowers.

"If I'm not mistaken..." Vance said out loud. He sent out a little stream of wood mana towards the flower, where he shaped and changed the mana he'd summoned to match the mana he could already sense inside of the little thing. He fed it inwards and it began to grow, little by little.

"Well, isn't that something?" Nathaniel perked up a little at the display of magic. Vance had learned by now that this sort of thing spoke to Nathaniel more than words.

"It's not just trees, as it turns out. I think, like other mana types, wood mana is perhaps not quite the correct name."

"What would you suggest?"

"Nature?"

"Does it work on animals, too? They're a part of nature. It's too vague." Nathaniel challenged.

"Good point."

Like this, the two had a pleasant conversation about the theory behind the unnamable nature of certain types of mana. It was another welcome distraction that both were more than happy to participate in. Vance could sense the tension falling off of Nathaniel as they got into the subject, similar to how his friends were able to distract him yesterday.

At some point, Nathaniel switched back to their previous topic, almost at random. He spoke through long breaths, his sentences slower and more methodical than usual.

"You know, I think it's been nearly twelve years since I've gone toe to toe with a demon."

Vance didn't say anything, but he turned to face him, hoping he'd continue.

"I was really hoping to never come across one again. But, I'm glad that we found it. You know, it was trying to reassemble Vesiliant. Yes, it was summoning other demons, but not purposefully. The bones it had gathered were the ones stolen from my vault, which I've reclaimed. Like you, there were other demons closer than the other portions of vesiliant, so it summoned them first. Eventually, it would have gathered a swarm of them, and, if it was successful..."

"Would have brought Vesiliant back?"

"Precisely. I figured that I owe you a more accurate explanation than before, considering."

Vance couldn't disagree with that, he'd fought the damn thing, it only seemed fair.

"What exactly is Vesiliant? What would've happened?"

"A Greater demon. You can think of them as regular demons but stronger and way, way smarter. The good news is that typically, they can't stick around for very long. Wherever they come from, they're usually forced back there not long after they're summoned. The bad news is that while they're here, wherever they go, people die en masse. Vesiliant is a special case. He stuck around."

Nathaniel spoke of greater demons, and this one in particular, with such sorrow. There was none of the usual anger, just sadness. Vance had more questions, but they could wait. It seemed that right now, Nathaniel just wanted to say his piece, and move on. Vance would respect that, though he did try to identify what emotion it was he was picking up from Nathaniel. After a moment, he figured it out.

Regret.

Not long afterwards, Maddison came outside tailed by Malcolm, both of them carried trays of food and drinks out into the garden and sat with Nathaniel and Vance, who both put on smiles and greeted their new company with glee that required no force. Their ordeal was terrible, they both knew that, but they both knew that they didn't and wouldn't face it alone, and that was enough.