Magni woke up feeling like a bit of dried meat ration that had been chewed upon for at least the half hour needed to make the stuff edible. Slowly memories of what happened previously ebbed into his head… and he came to the conclusion that yeah, that was pretty accurate of an analogy to what happened to him. Vaguely he felt some shifting pressure on the arm that was sliced open and he wearily opened some of his eyes to investigate. Crouching over his arm was a very shocked Cobalt who looked to be in the middle of changing some bandages. He tried to sit up but instantly felt a wave of vertigo knock him back down.

“Are you feeling any better? Don’t move too much, you lost a lot of blood and we certainly did not have enough fluids to refill them all! Not to mention ho-” The girl began to ramble, certainly far from the terrifying image she had last he remembered her.

“How long was I out?” He asked weakly.

“Two days roundabouts. Do not worry about holding us back too much, the cart was good enough as a makeshift stretcher. Now what did I say about not moving too much, roachhead?!” She huffed.

“Two days… bomb me, am I turning into John?” He tried to joke, though the pain in his chest made it hard to even attempt to laugh.

“I lost control… I’m truly deeply sorry. I should have been better, but I suppose in the end I really am…” Cobalt admitted guiltily, trailing off into something inaudible even to enhanced ears.

“I can’t say I am free of responsibility, after all I did goad you into this,” Magni admitted, as much to himself as to Cobalt. “And I should have called it quits halfway, but me and my kracking pride I suppose.”

Cobalt sat there in silence for a moment, seemingly deep in thought. “When I volunteered for this task I was so excited, it was a chance to prove myself, to not sit around useless and looking pretty all day. I wanted to show that I could be as capable, as mature, as proper as a real Core Disciple is. In the end it was also my pride that got us in this stupid situation.”

Magni tried to sit back up once again only to immediately regret his decision, vision swirling between various modes of light in at least 6 of his eyes he slumped back down again. “Pride kindled the fires of the fall, in every speck of ash one who thought himself immortal.”

Cobalt raised an eyebrow. “You read the full Atomos Manu’el? I didn’t take you for the high literature type… no offense…”

“What gave it away?” He painfully laughed. “To be honest I wasn’t, but when the dumbass with the iron arm knocked me on my ass for a week I needed something to do. And I suppose I also wanted to prove myself, I guess, show that I could be as good as all the rest of you snobs.”

“Perhaps I misjudged you,” Cobalt hesitantly spoke up. “When I first met you I had a hard time believing someone that uncle Aurelium entrusted as an heir would associate with such a… brash idiot… but it seems like I have no right to judge.”

“How’s it feel to set foot out of your tower, princess?” He smirked.

“Shut up before I tear these bandages out.”

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To say John was relieved when Magni finally shambled to his feet midway into the second day would be like calling a thunderstorm wet. Accurate certainly, but utterly lacking in scope and description. In fact, he was fighting the urge to give him a hug by periodically zapping himself with electricity. He knew that now they were different, none of them had been mortals for quite some time, but he couldn’t help but associate this degree of injury with crippling or worse!

The hypocrisy in his thoughts briefly registered before he pushed it back down with a more violent than usual zap. His fingers reflexively flexed with the shock.

“Hey John… excuse me if I can’t come up with something witty right now… I feel and smell like I was run over by a cart of Dox shit!” He heard Magni say.

“Unfortunately our best medicine is made out of spit, at least we didn’t make you drink it!” John shot back, letting a smile crawl onto his face.

“Ugh, if you did I would hope I choked to death on it!” Magni snorted before making some awfully painful sounding coughs.

“Keep pushing yourself like that and you will choke to death! I thought you said you weren’t ready to get up yet!” A new voice made itself known as Cobalt stomped over with her arms crossed. John froze momentarily when he noticed her approach, to put it lightly their relationship had been… strained… these past two days, and the last thing he wanted was for Magni to-

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“I got better!” Magni insisted somewhat petulantly as Cobalt practically crawled over him to check his injuries, shockingly not even making a single snide comment.

John blinked, and rubbed his eyes so hard he felt his metal knuckles bruised the right side of his face. “How long have you been awake?”

“Two hours or so,” Magni responded.

“And you two are… OK with each other?”

“Mostly,” Both Cobalt and Magni responded at once.

Now John had new concerns that Magni may have hit his head in the fight. He didn’t want the two to get right back to bickering straight away, but wasn’t this… too easy?

“We simply agreed we were both idiots and found some common ground to make a truce.” Cobalt replied, indicating either John had said his thoughts out loud or she had a mutation for reading minds.

“What she said, yeah," Magni chimed in. “And for the record I did hit my head but that has nothing to do with it!”

John made a silent prayer for the Spirits to kill him now.

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Cobalt never developed the mutations needed for basic psychic techniques, but she didn’t need to read minds to have a good guess of what people were really thinking. Such comes with the territory of being in a position above nearly anyone else from birth. You either learn quickly how to parse the real thoughts others bandy beneath their outward masks, or you become a blathering idiot useless in politics and most likely life also. And so she was more than acutely aware of just how much has changed in such a short time.

Magni was always well… himself… he never made his distaste for her subtle after all, but John was different. The boy always looked to her with an undercurrent of awe in the few interactions they did have, right from when she saw him gathered in the Grand Hall for the initiation ceremony. It was a look that wasn’t uncommon certainly, and she took it for granted that he was the type obsessed with status and station; after all you needed some measure of ambition to glue some Relic to your arm and position yourself to become the inheritor of a cultivator right? But for the past few days they had been actually traveling together she had the feeling her initial judgment was a bit off: sure there was that ambition there, but even as he saw more and more of her imperfect side as Magni ground down her nerves into nothing, there was a core of genuine respect which seemed unsinkable. The awe quickly faded away into nothing after the first night, but she had to admit she didn’t quite realize what was there until it was gone.

Where that respect once was she could feel hints of uncertainty and fear leaking through his gaze. Admirably he did not let his emotions take control of him and prevent them from working together, something she had altogether failed, but that didn’t change the fact that it was there.

And that didn’t change the fact that it kind of hurt.

And how ridiculous was that? She hardly knew the guy, though he looked sort of familiar and Uncle Aurelium spoke about him often; she barely actually made any attempts to interact with him until recently. Still, perhaps somewhat from the guilt still eating herself up, perhaps some misplaced sense of damaged pride or a genuine desperate attempt to make an honest to Spirits friendship that doesn’t immediately set ablaze, she found herself desperate to make it right.

“Soooo, want to join me in catching dinner tonight?” She found herself asking.

“What?” John asked incredulously.

“Magni is recovered enough to watch the camp while we go and our rations are running low, so I thought we should supplement it with some hunting,." She elaborated.

“I still think that I shou-” John began to speak.

“It’ll be fine, trust her, I’m not made out of chalk!” Magni interjected, leaning on a nearby tent pole as he slowly made his fifth attempt to drink his medicine without gagging.

“Look, I understand, I just don’t want to because… well…” John trailed off.

“Alright I understand, I get it, I really do. Fine, I’ll go by myself,.” She replied, to her shame, failing to hide her disappointment as much as she wanted.

She vaguely heard the sounds of quick jabbing and whispers before John made a deep sigh. “Fine. I’ll go.”

“Great! I think there are some nice and easy game around these parts, just Jackalopes and Gore Boars!” She declared with excitement, grabbing John’s arm and dragging him behind her like a stuffed doll.

“Easy ga- AAAH!” John screamed as he was thrown off his feet and taken into the wilds.

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In the wild Jackalopes proved quite slippery, when not cornered in an arena the little spirit beasts would hop into their burrows faster than even the enhanced tracking of an average cultivator would allow. Really they didn’t even really need to hunt anymore, as within the first hour or so Cobalt somehow killed four of them. Two things kept John from giving up on the hunt entirely: firstly his pride, second the need to find an excuse to avoid contact with Cobalt.

He knew it wasn’t quite fair, but it was hard to look the girl in the eye after what had happened. And she certainly seemed to have noticed something was wrong, as with every moment he let down his guard she would attempt to make conversation with him. Perhaps she was simply trying to apologize in her own roundabout way, perhaps she really was, as Magni suspected, completely unaware of the social norms of the common folk; either way it was starting to grind on his nerves. So he made an excuse about having to stay quiet to catch the Jackalopes, and by some miracle it worked! So long as he kept moving, the only indication she was even present was the eternal sensation of being watched from behind.

There was a flash of movement and he dove to catch the creature, only to trip and slide down the hill when the beast buried itself deep into the Earth again. His strengthened body didn’t so much as get a bruise, but he certainly felt his pride burn to ash more than it already had.

“Don’t worry, iI’m sure you will get it next time!” Cobalt enthusiastically encouraged.

He groaned through a mouthful of dirt before he tried to get up only to pause in the middle of his action when his ears picked up on something odd in the wind. Cobalt similarly seemed to have heard it, suddenly shooting up straight, twisting her head around like an owl in the direction of the sound.

“It sounds like people nearby, a lot of them,” He noted, bringing himself fully to his feet.

“I estimate maybe a group of nearly a hundred or so perhaps half a mile south, it’s like a whole town, but the nearest civilization is many dozens of miles away… something is off. I never heard of a merchant caravan this big around here before, especially when there is a Mauler about!” Cobalt responded, drawing an uncanny amount of information with her heightened senses.

“Anything else?” He asked.

“They seem to be in trouble, there are not nearly enough Dox or Mustard Horse sounds for this many people, I think it’s a stranded caravan… but of this size?” Cobalt replied.

“We need to investigate. You are stronger and better at hiding, but I can be faster at least for a short burst if we need to run, so I think we should go together,” He said, swallowing his animosity for the moment. He wanted to help these people… but he had no idea if they were lost merchants or a roaming band of bandits.

“What are you waiting for? Let’s go!” Cobalt called out, already moving into a blur.

John was not far behind.