PART I - ALL MY RANGERS ARE IMPORTANT
Callie’s head was aching, as was her entire body, and it was quite dark. She couldn’t focus well, but heard muffled voices that she strained to make sense of.
“She won’t leave. It's easy just to work around her, at least.”
“What about him?”
“He won’t leave either. He’s less-easy to work around.”
“What’s the prognosis?”
“Same as an hour ago, she should be fine. The Shaman saved her and I got to her in time. If it had been much longer, it would have been a lot worse. She should wake up soon.”
“Keep me informed.”
“Of course, Commandant.”
Prognosis? Did they mean her? If that was the Commandant asking, the other person speaking might be Tasi, maybe? Did this mean Callie had been injured? How?
Like a broom trying to sweep away dust and cobwebs, Callie tried to clear her head. What had happened? The last thing Callie remembered was Loki running off with her red bow. No, that couldn’t be it. What happened before that? Layers! That was it. Layers. She had put multiple spells on to an arrow and then basically carpet-bombed the shooting range. Could that be the problem?
Attempting to open her eyes, Callie groaned as her headache became even worse. She tried to put her right hand to her forehead, but it wouldn't move for some reason, and she quickly switched to her left. There was a damp cloth over her eyes and half her face, and she started to remove it.
“Little One?” the voice asked in a whisper. “You’re awake?”
“I … I think so. Where am I?”
“Medical. They brought you in a few hours ago.”
“What happened?” A hand touched her own, preventing removing the cloth.
“No no! Keep that in place or you’ll just make your headache worse. Let me get the light lowered a bit.” There was the sound of someone moving something around, whatever it was scraping against the floor. “I’ll get that cloth for you. Keep your eyes closed.”
Callie nodded as she forced her eyes shut. The wet rag was removed, and even the dim light leaking in around her eyelids was enough to turn the headache up several notches. She groaned again, covering her eyes with her free hand. “What happened?” she managed to croak out.
“Mana exhaustion. Really bad,” the voice said, who Callie now recognized was indeed Master Healer Tasi. The Fairy lightly slapped Callie shoulder in a friendly, teasing fashion. “That was a stupid thing to do!”
“I didn’t think it would use that much mana.”
“Well, you were wrong, and it didn’t help that you had just used a mana potion. We had to wait several minutes before we were able to pour a Rejuvenation down your throat, which just made it harder. Please, don’t ever do that again!”
Callie had slowly lowered her hand, her eyes adjusting to the light. “Damn. I’m sorry.”
“It’s a good thing you found all that Black Lotus, you fool-of-a-Gnome,” Tasi said with a comforting laugh as she once again lightly slapped Callie’s shoulder. “I’ve given you a half-dozen Rejuvenation potions throughout the morning to make sure you didn’t completely turn your brain to goo.” Firmer this time, Tasi added, “I mean it, don’t ever do that again. Understood?”
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Nodding her head in confirmation just made her headache worse, and Callie groaned once again. “Yeah, this sucks. I’ll be a lot more careful.”
“Alright,” Tasi said, sounding relieved. “I’ll get you something for your headache. Just lie still and rest. So you know, you’re stripped down to your underwear as your clothing was covered in mud, but one of your housemates brought fresh clothes for when you leave.”
Callie struggled to open her eyes as Tasi walked off. She finally managed to open them enough to see. Immediately she saw why she couldn’t move her right arm. Pixyl was curled up against it, clasped tightly around her bicep and sound asleep, wedged into the gap with the outside wall of the heavy tent. Had she been there since Callie was brought in?
“You’re awake?” said a yawning male voice in the dim light. Callie raised her head and peered, reluctant to turn her Darkvision on with how sensitive her head was right now. Struggling, she finally made out the silhouette of a Fox-like head and instinctively she pulled the blanket tighter to her chin.
“Trainer Reynard? What are you doing here?” How long had he been there?
“How are you feeling?”
“Uh … not great. My head is killing me.”
“I’m not surprised. You started seizing after you collapsed, and we knew it was going to be bad. You really overdid it, there. Tasi had to put you under a Sleep spell to get you to stop moving enough to treat you. You’re lucky we have experts in treating mana exhaustion here.”
Head beginning to swim slightly, Callie returned to looking at the ceiling. “I don’t remember anything. At least nothing after shooting that four-layer arrow. I really did think I had enough mana left for it.”
Reynard chuffed in amusement. “Not even in the slightest. I will say, though, the effect was … spectacular.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Logistics and the Geomancers are going to have a lot of fun putting things back together, especially on their day off. They don’t usually get to do that for the Rangers.”
Callie frowned, thinking back again to when she assembled that final layered spell. “I need to spend some more time to work the math out, but the extra mana usage increased fast the more effects I layered on one shot. Two were fairly easy. Three was doable. Four? Well, it was obvious what happened there. I can’t even imagine trying five.”
“The … math?” Reynard asked, puzzled.
“Yeah. From the description, it noted that mana costs increase with each additional effect, so there’s got to be some … rule … that governs that additional requirement. If I can figure that out, I’ll know when and how many I can safely layer together.”
All week long Callie had been attempting to put some kind of numerical values on mana utilization by each of her skills. It wasn’t perfect, but if she pictured mana as a pool of points that slowly replenished, and then subtracted appropriate points based on low, medium and high mana skills and perks, she could now estimate fairly accurately when she’d start to feel the effects of running low on mana. With the layering ability, in her gut she suspected there was a multiplying-formula of some kind affecting that point usage. Maybe it squared the base mana of each element or the total? That would make it ramp up pretty quickly.
Of course, that usage was totally skewed by the new Bronze skills she hadn’t really practiced very much, like Rain of Arrows. With the poor casting efficiency she had with it right now, that would have exploded the entire formula. She’d have to be extra careful if she did layering with any of her new skills, at least until she practiced them enough to fully reduce their costs.
Reynard shook his head, once again letting off a quiet chuckle. “Math you say? You Gnomes and your Tinkering. You are all quite strange, as a people that is, you know that, right?”
“Yeah, I know,” Callie grinned back. “It’s part of my charm.” Callie then realized that, in a way, it was quite literally part of her Charm.
“I suppose it is, at that. You should know, you have Thorn all excited about new tactics for your skills, so he’ll be quite pleased to know you are awake and your brain hasn’t turned to mush.”
“You don’t say?”
Reynard grinned. “Just don’t forget you still have your basic Ranger skills you need to master, too, but I’m sure we can do some experimenting, within reason.”
A thought occurred to Callie, and she wondered out loud, “By the way, how long have you been sitting there? And for that matter, why are you sitting there?”
The Foxkin coughed lightly into his paw, seeming to fumble for words. Finally he arrived at an evasive, “I’m sure the rest of your friends will be glad to know you’re awake and feeling better. I’ll be sure to pass the word.”
“Please, I’d like to know. I mean, you don’t even like me.”
Reynard had started to rise, intent on leaving, but he paused. “All my Rangers are important to me, Recruit Callie.” He carefully patted her blanket-covered foot, affection evident in his touch. “Feel better Recruit, and I shall see you tomorrow. Congratulations on reaching Bronze Tier.”
As he turned to leave, Callie grinned widely. “Sir, did … did you just call me a Ranger?” she asked with a taunting inflection.
Trainer Reynard looked back one last time, smiling for just the briefest of moments. “Yes, I believe I did.”