The journey back out of the ruins is uneventful, if mildly anxiety inducing for Jin. She keeps glancing back downwards for any sign of escaping active mana.
It’s possible to remove all the mana from the battery, of course, but the process is difficult and time intensive to do safely if you hadn’t already pre-established an outlet. Ultimately, not a great option when you have an indefinite countdown on what is, essentially, a lethal dose of radiation poisoning.
It’s not until they’re back on the surface that Sage lets herself start asking more questions.
“Whew! Thanks for waiting for me at the top of the stairs by the way! You looked super anxious so I really appreciate it!” Somehow she’s less worn out than Jin is, despite not taking a magical way up. How the hell…
Jin let herself sit down on a bed of clovers, her legs finally giving out on her. “Yeah, sure.” Fuckin inproperly shielded active mana…
Sage stretches her legs and thinks about how to ask her question for a moment. “So what was that thing? I mean, you said it was a battery. So it… Um, has ‘active mana’? I don’t really know what that means. How is ‘active mana’ different from… Uh..? Not-active mana?”
Jin lets out a breath that only slightly shakes. The danger has passed, but she’s not over how her first visit to dwarven ruins resulted in an evacuation, all because ancient mages lacked proper battery safety procedures. Ridiculous.
“Batteries store mana. Ambient mana, the kind mages naturally have access to, dissipates quickly. Active mana has directives to achieve, and it generally desires to follow those directives, rather than dissipate. Batteries keep mana as active and for as long as possible for later use.”
Sage nods while looking thoughtful. “That makes sense... Why does ambient mana dissipate?”
“…I don’t know.”
“Huh?”
Jin’s voice takes on a lecturing tone. “I don’t know why humans seem to produce it, either. Other complex species of the past could do the same, but sentient beings tend to not want other sentient beings with access to magical prowess. So unfortunately, we eradicated our hints to that answer before we could use them.”
“There’s theories, of course. Not that any have enough of a basis to be widely accepted. There’s a lot of magic that people just don’t know.”
Jin smiles ruefully and chuckles. “You know, I was excited to live in the era I did. I thought myself so fortunate to be witnessing an ‘age of information’, as it were. Maybe soon, I thought, mages, or even I might begin to truly discover the deeper secrets of magic. Where does it come from? Where does it go?”
Jin looks up at the pale ring slightly glowing against the blue background of the sky. Her frown isn’t tinged with annoyance, like it so often is. She feels… sad.
“…Maybe we did discover them.”
Sage feels the uncertainty and loss that settled itself like a mantle over Jin’s shoulders. She sits down beside the other girl, and leans sideways to press her arm against the cleric’s.
“I wonder what all is true between your memories of the past and the world of the present.”
Jin rolls her eyes towards Sage and raises a skeptical eyebrow. ”Really now? Finding yourself doubting the church?” Part of her feels a little smug at the idea, bizarrely.
Sage shrugs. “Oh, I was kinda talking about the dwarves, but. The people in the church are just people. They might lie about things sometimes, or exaggerate them, or tell stories that sound right but turn out to be wrong.”
She’s quiet for a moment and Jin doesn’t interrupt. “I guess I always knew that. But that doesn’t change their core message, yeah? It’s people that matter. The Gods want what’s best for us, and understand more than we can. And that they want to do what’s best without taking away our free will. That’s the core. The rest doesn’t matter as much.”
Jin is baffled. “That… is an exceedingly well thought out theological opinion for someone who grew up as intellectually isolated as you.”
It’s Sage’s turn to give Jin a baffled look, followed by a laugh and a smile, “I know people, Jin! I know who and what matters to me. You must think real highly of education, huh?”
Jin frowns, and remembers the priest's words. Sage is… very kind. I’m worried people will take advantage of her. Is the priest underestimating Sage, or is Sage overestimating herself..?
Sage keeps talking. “Besides, Rosie talks about it a lot. She doesn’t think the church is right, she believes what Momma used to, and the village healer Camon still believes.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah! It’s uh, well I don’t really know if they’ve named it, but Mirriam always called it spiritism or something. But it’s ah, it’s from the south? It’s more about um, spiritual health, and the like. All about the self, and interconnectivity with others! Its message really resonated with Rosie! It’s… not like the church at all, really. Librarian Mirriam hates it though, and Priest Herrick is always trying to talk to Rosie to change her mind! Haha, I dunno if he’ll ever succeed there. Rosie is real stubborn.”
Jin nods slowly. Perhaps she’s being too dismissive of theology in general. Just because she grew up entirely detached from the concept, doesn’t mean others haven’t, or that their opinions are even particularly unreasonable. Sage’s certainly aren’t—not that she plans on believing any of it of course. Just… Maybe she shouldn’t dismiss ideas stemming from religiosity quite as quickly.
Mostly, she should give Sage more credit. The girl has proven to be surprisingly sharp, despite her lack of education and apparent blind faith.
“Sage… You know, Priest Herrick actually admitted to me that ‘delusional clerics’ was a lie told by the church to manage mages.”
Sage tilts her head, “Oh? Huh…”
The two sit in silence for several moments. Jin isn’t really sure what kind of reaction she expected from Sage, but…
“—Yeah, that makes sense actually!”
Is… Sage excited?
Sage nods while thinking quickly, then keeps going. “Yeah! Magic is all weird and stuff. And um… Well you definitely don’t follow the church. Why would other clerics? Wow! That makes a lot of sense! It would be so easy for like, one powerful cleric who doesn’t like the church to go and convince people that they’re a God! That’s scary! I don’t want that to happen to people! What could that person do to their followers? The church is good, so it makes sense that they don’t want other people to be at the whims of a random powerful and potentially not good person. They could make one of those scary blood cult things!”
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“…They’re blatantly lying and manipulating you.”
“Um... Ok? So did Momma when I was a kid. The Gods are kinda like that, yeah? Everyone’s parents.”
Jin opens her mouth to argue and finds she has no idea how to respond to that. How can someone be… ok with being lied to? Regularly?? She shakes her head. “What the hell, Sage…” Maybe the priest was right after all.
Sage stands and brushes herself off, looking wholly unconcerned by Jin’s concern. “I trust and believe because that’s only done good things for my family. I have faith that the Gods will act on what’s best for everyone. I think, you could stand to have a little more faith in people.” She offers a hand out to Jin with a smile. Jin frowns, but takes it, letting Sage haul her to her feet.
She brushes herself off as well. “Honestly? I think you could stand the opposite.”
Sage thinks about that for a moment, then smiles. “Nope! No can do! Come on, the ruins were fun! If a little spooky, but Papa is coming back tonight, and I wanna be there if he comes back early!”
Oh right, Sage did mention her father a lot. Should she have noticed that absence..?
“And! He’s bringing traders! He’s supposed to be, anyway. Rock Orchard can be hard to find sometimes! He goes out to well known points in the roads and escorts merchants a bunch. We put signs up but people still get lost! Much easier to meet ‘em partway to make sure they get here in good time. One time there was this merchant coming here from the north who got all the way to the ruined city to the south, and then instead of turning around he kept going. He said it was because—”
The two start returning to the village while Sage talks about different traders that showed up before. Jin tunes out most of the chatty girl’s monologue, but some interesting characters pop up in her stories.
Jin found herself listening to the entirety of one story about a particularly mysterious merchant who shows up at the village randomly, with a wildly different stock every time. Always with something interesting, though, even when nobody ends up buying anything. Apparently, Sage got most of her childhood books from this man as he passed through with heaping stacks of literature. Stories of exploration and adventure, with heavy handed themes of friendship and perseverance. He always seems to show up when the village is getting desperate with a cart full of something that can help. The church still has full stores of candles from when he showed up with a cart full of them when they were about to run out, recently. Most interestingly is when the pass to the north was snowed in before the village could get an important medicine shipment, and this merchant just so happened to have been making an unrelated medicine shipment northwards and was also snowed in.
The idea was entertaining enough that Jin spent most of the trip back thinking about a mage contenting themselves with being a really good, really eccentric merchant.
—
The day is growing late, but they still make it to the village well before sunset. It’s not until they’re within sight of it that Jin realizes Sage took that one silvery-blue ingot from her and brought it with them. She doesn’t remember when the curly haired girl did that, but at least it’s something. Plus the handful of, albeit broken, enchanted rings.
Jin can see a few people milling about the church plaza before they even enter the village. Some of whom are wearing distinctly different clothing from most of the villagers.
Sage’s steps have an extra bounce to them as she says, “Oh look! I think those are traders in the plaza! Papa must have made it back already! He was originally supposed to make it just before sunset I think, but lucky them huh!”
Jin grins sideways at Sage, but is far less interested in village visitors. “You mentioned that the feast was originally going to be today..?”
“Oh! Yeah definitely. We normally hold them on Saturday evenings—that’s why the merchant people were supposed to come today! But um, with you showing up I guess Priest Herrick thought it would be best to move it to yesterday, so… Well, that’s why Momma wanted to cook a bunch today. I feel kinda bad they missed yesterday’s feast though. Maybe most of the villagers will bring their dinner to the plaza anyway? It happens!”
“Mm.”
Sage makes a beeline for the church plaza, so Jin figures she may as well follow.
Once they reach the top of the path Jin dismisses her chair. Sage spots the person she was straining on her tiptoes for and darts into the crowd. “Papa!”
A large bear-like man with Sage’s dark red hair and facefull of freckles spots Sage moments before she tackles him and grins with a smile bright enough to fill a room. “Hey Pumpkin!”
He twirls her into a spinning hug in the way Sage hugged Basil when they first came to the village.
Something about the scene makes her feel… Something? Uncomfortable, she turns towards the small group of people in red and blue toned clothes.
They stand loosely clustered together talking to some of the villagers. One man is manning a stall towards the back of the plaza in front of four red and blue colored tents. He’s discussing various cuts of cloth with a small cluster of people. Her eyes slide past and land on the large table.
It’s nowhere close to being as stacked full of food as it was last night, but still more than enough for the number of people gathered in the plaza. Additionally, the large table has chairs gathered around it unlike yesterday. A few people are sitting for their conversations.
Sage is pulling her dad over to Jin, so she tears her eyes away from the food and towards the large man.
His sleeves are rolled up part way to reveal huge muscular arms. Holy shit, what does this man do all day? Throw logs? The lumberjack vibes certainly point to that idea.
“—and we just got back from the ruins! Um… Yeah! Anyway, Papa, this is Jin. Jin, this is Papa! Oh sorry, I mean his name is Cypress but he goes by Cy.” Sage beems at the two of them and takes a half step back from the two.
Cy grins down at his daughter, then fixes Jin with a look that has a particularly unfriendly undercurrent to it, despite the smile still on his face. “Hello, Cleric Jin. Sage said you two have spent the past couple days together.” He has a questioning, analytical look in his eyes, and says the last line with a hardness in his voice that doesn’t say you’ve done something wrong, but heavily implies it.
Jin shrugs. “Yeah, I guess so. Sage wanted to show me around the village.”
She feels herself prickling at the look Sage’s father is giving her. It reminds her of how people used to look at her in the academy—a look she never exactly responded well towards. A look of judgment.
He stares at her like that for several moments, then she breaks eye contact to shoot a quick look at Sage. “Well, it was… Nice to meet you Cy.”
She’s about to walk off towards the banquet table, but he stops her by holding out a hand in a clear handshake offer. “And you, Cleric Jin!”
She—She recognizes that look. It’s so oddly specific that she’s surprised she parsed it, but she recognizes that exact look from the one time she went to an outer city pub. It’s the look a man gives someone who’s hand he’s about to crush during a handshake in a show of strength. It feels exceedingly unpleasant when only half your fingers have rings on them.
Sage seems confused, and looks more carefully at Jin and Cy. She looks like she’s about to say something, so quickly Jin begins her act.
She looks from Cy’s face down to his hand again, then slowly, almost sadly, shakes her head. She has since learned that complete utter-fucking-bullshit tends to be the best way to avoid these situations. “My apologies, but I’m afraid I could not do that to your wife. To clasp hands is a sign of great intimacy amongst casters like myself. Rather, we typically bow to each other.” Jin bows to cement her point, and then steps away towards Sage before Cy can respond. She sweeps up both of Sage’s hands in her own and holds them up between them. “I will be at the banquet table.” She releases Sage’s hands quickly and steps away towards the table. The freckles on her face were highlighted by a lot of red—a reaction Jin is not equipped to handle right now.
Behind her she can hear Sage complaining quietly to her father about something with an odd squeak to her voice. Ah shit, that bit had a lot more implications than she planned for… And she used Sage as an actor in it. Fucking shit, that was just disrespectful to her father huh? Maybe the forces of the universe will have her moving paths away from Sage after all.
Oh? Oh ho-ho, the mead lady is here! Two nights of mead in a row huh? Priest Herrick is standing in front of the church with her.
Jin makes a beeline for the blonde woman with her wonderful wonderful barrels of mead.
What a delectable way to forget yourself.