Amir stared. They all did, watching the sheer devastation that sea of thorns had caused. The scale was unimaginable.

“Truly, deja vu,” Rose was the first to recover, staring at the retreating bear-folk.

“That is why we call her Death,” Gobsmack chuckled darkly, tiredly falling down. He had many wounds. Too many to count. Twice or thrice what could be survived, really. Green poured from them.

“What did you call me then?” Rose asked.

“Danceblade,” he replied. He was losing blood so quickly, lying on the ground.

“And you?” Amir had to ask.

“Once, they call me Cleavesteel,” the hob answered, “I thought not again. Never again. But today, I was. Maybe for best. Cleavesteel not belong in peace. Never did.”

“You Gobsmack,” Pebblethrow told him firmly, not hiding her watering eyes.

“Am Gobsmack,” he laughed weakly, then got into a coughing fit, more and more green blood left his body every second, yet the pour was slowing down. Not because the wounds were closing. “Who smack sense to stupid little gobs now?”

“You, always you,” one of the other gobs said.

Gobsmack smiled, straining to turn his head slightly… then completely crumbled to the ground like a puppet with strings cut. It was the first time Amir had seen goblins weep. Some came to their knees and pounded the ground.

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Amir did not know what to say, so he closed his eyes and lowered his head in respect. Gramma Rose stared at them in mute silence. She did not interrupt their grief, nor even tried to.

Instead, she was focused with all the tension left in her body on one simple fact: Their tears were also salty water. Nothing more. Nothing less.

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The ‘clean up’ was still ongoing a few weeks later. People had died, if not as many as could have. There would be consequences, shifts in politics, and such things. Amir decided keeping up with them would be too difficult, therefore he decided to only check in on it all after everything was concluded.

“Here, your food,” Pebblethrow said, placing the plate on his table. Wearing an apron no one would mistake her for a street urchin anymore. After all, she wasn’t.

“Thank you, dear Bringbread,” he chuckled.

“Shut,” she rolled her eyes in mild annoyance, then left him be.

A few tables over Gramma Rose was chuckling over something with Holly and Lady Hawthorne. It was good she could laugh given her left sleeve remained empty. After the battle it was beyond saving and had to be amputated… though he wondered whether the Grand Magus might not be cooking up a scheme on how to regrow it. Not that it would be his business, he was busy enough with his own work.

That thought brought his eyes down to his notes. His progress had become quicker. Even though he was forbidden from using that word, the experience had not left him. It had nestled itself in his mind and according to Holly would never leave. As a side effect though, he had developed something of a sixth sense for some aspects of magic - he was still mapping out exactly which.

That though, together with a short letter from Holly saying his project had potential had led to his budged not only being restored, but increased. He was not confident it would be enough to truly finish it by graduation without the shortcut but that no longer truly worried him. The spell was no longer the sum of his ambition. It was the first step.

‘More than can be mastered in a lifespan,’ the Grand Magus had said. But Amir still had plenty of his to spend. And new thoughts had wormed into his mind. For one: If elves were just naturally immortal… how hard could extending a lifespan be?