The next day, the party of magical creatures get back to town, staying out in the forest and hunting anything dangerous that they find coming too close. Now that there are four of them rather than just one, they do a lot better. Word of people getting hurt in the forest drops off immediately, as do the attacks on the town.
Rumors do start up, people saying they've spotted magical creatures in the forest. Of course, they all try not to be seen most of the time, but there's only so much they can do sharing the woods with so many people from town while also hunting for the most dangerous animals moving away from the deep, dark sections of the forest where they're supposed to stay.
I don't mind it too much, as long as the people are safe. Between that and slowly being able to sleep again, I start to feel a lot better. The days tick by one by one, still no whistle calling me to battle.
For the first time, my lessons with Claire turn away from reading and writing, at least sort of. She starts to teach me about animals. I was really excited about this topic when she first talked about it. That's dulled somewhat by my overall bad mood, but I'm still really glad to learn all about them.
Well, not so much all about them as the basics, descriptions of what they look like and what we use them for. And of course, how to write them down. We do the simple ones around town like cats and mice, as well as the stuff out in the forest like hobins. From there, we move onto livestock, which apparently refers to animals we raise ourselves, rather than them living out in the wild. Things like horses that I'm familiar with, as well as kuran, mofa, and elka, the three primary animals raised in Melphira.
Based on Claire's descriptions, kuran and elka are both basically work animals, sturdily built and able to carry heavy loads. But kuran are short, only about as tall as I am, while elka are huge and covered with big fluffy coats of fur.
Mofa though, those are kind of weird. I end up picturing something similar to Hilde, because she describes them as fluffy lizards. Apparently they're bigger than I am and grow thick coats of fur all over their scaly lizard bodies, which we cut off to use for most of our higher quality fabric. It's... kind of hard to imagine.
She covers lots of other animals too, stuff in the forest, others from out in the fields. Fish and birds and lizards. Based on everything she says, it actually makes me think that Chisa is either a kreni or a kestrel. They're both supposed to be kind of light brown with lighter white coloring on their chests and underneath their wings. Chisa's a bit darker brown though, so I'm not completely sure. When I ask about the differences between the two types of birds, Claire explains that kestrels are a good size to fit in a person's hand, while kreni are more likely to fit on an arm.
Well, unless there are any other birds that look similar, but with slightly darker coloring, I guess Chisa is a kreni. There isn't that much I can actually do with the information, but I'm still happy to know it. That just leaves the magical creatures, though that might be more difficult since they're supposed to live far off in the mountains away from people. Who knows if they've even been named?
Still, I manage to make it through my week's lessons, learning a whole lot more animal names, and the basics I need to know about them. Claire still needs to go over them a few times for me to remember them correctly, but at least I can focus on her lessons without ending up curled into a ball on the floor halfway through.
Despite the feeling of my invisible injuries getting closer to fully healed, my constant worry about the upcoming battle plagues me through the week. I make the mistake of letting my nerves get the better of me and test my mana again in the middle of the week, but it reduces me to a mess, sobbing and drooling on the floor. I'm not going to test it again until I'm healed. I can't do it.
But the battle is coming. Last time, it came eleven days early. When Shanaday arrives and there's still nothing, it has been fifty seven days. The twenty sixth of Sarel. Only three more until the end of the two month estimate. Is it not this week? Next week? Last time it was on Shanaday. Will they do something like that this time too or will it just come on a random day? The thirtieth again maybe?
No matter what day it falls on, I'm not ready. I've spent the last three weeks without access to my mana. No practice, no new discoveries, new abilities, options, nothing. I'm in no better condition than that last battle. In fact, I'm worse off because my mana well is practically empty.
I don't know what to do. I have no idea. It's absolutely terrifying.
In the end... Claire is right. I turn to Reena again.
When they come around with the divine totem at church, I draw up my courage, and address Reena for the first time in three weeks.
"We need to talk." I think to her as calmly as I can manage.
She agrees. For the first time in a long time, the touch of her mana on my barrier, the feel of her thoughts bumping into mine, doesn't hurt. The wounds are healed, the surface back to its usual smooth, kind of buzzing feel that it should have. I don't want to admit how relieved that makes me. Not to her, not now.
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After the service, the packed church slowly empties. Mister Fredricson dumps me on the lawn, and I wait for Emily before heading back inside. Just looking at me, she gulps a little and follows along. I approach the plaque with Reena's symbol on it. Looking at the inscription, I can sort of read it better now.
I shake myself, taking a few deep breaths to calm down. I need to go into this with a clear head. Can't let my lingering feelings get in the way.
I touch the plate. I feel Reena come across the connection, touching to my barrier.
A sort of timid joy comes forward. She's glad that I'm healed. A smile starts to touch my lips before I force it away.
I ignore the comment and go right to the topic I want to talk about. "When is the next battle?" I have to know.
She pauses, answering sadly. One week from today. Next Shanaday. She doesn't say it directly, but her feelings reveal that she still doesn't want me to go.
I ignore her feelings and ask, "What should I do? How do I survive?"
Resignation. She doesn't know. She doesn't think it's possible, she has no idea how I even survived the first time.
"Great," I mutter at her sarcastically. I take a few breaths, then I ask her. "Are you going to explain yourself now?" She knows what I mean.
She doesn't. All she does is repeat what she said three weeks ago. It's a little unclear since she isn't using words this time, but it's definitely the same speech. She's bending the rules, supporting me, can't explain things. Blah blah blah. I send a glare her way, but for some reason, that makes her push out with her thoughts even more strongly. She repeats herself again. She isn't allowed to show or tell me certain things, but won't stop me from figuring them out on my own. And she knows that I can understand.
"Ugh," I grumble. She's just repeating herself at this point? Why? Why even bother? How is she supposed to change my mind if she won't tell me... anything... My thoughts trail off as something clicks. There's a flicker of approval from Reena, which is just kind of annoying coming at a time like this.
"I'll think about it." I pull my hand away. Then I drag Emily out of the church with me.
Once we reach the street outside, I start working to dig through my memories of that conversation with Reena. Now that my brain isn't half fried and working like sludge from the mana damage, it seems too obvious. That, and I'm not so blinded by rage that I'm at least willing to consider her words beyond them not being what I want them to be.
As soon as I do, I feel stupid. But before I run back to Reena apologizing for being an idiot, I have to see for myself. I have to make sure that I'm understanding things right. That I'm not just looking for any reason to explain away what she did to me, despite how awful and wrong it was. I have to be sure.
We quickly cut over to the clinic. I don't really want to talk to Beth now. I want to think about this more. Figure things out. But I go anyway. She needs to know that my wounds should be healed now. At least, I think they are. And she deserves to know I'm feeling better.
I do just that. I tell her how I feel, and how I have things with Reena that I want to think about, that I'm not up for a counseling session. Beth just nods and says that's fine, rubbing my head a little and sending us on our way.
On the walk home, I explain things to Emily in a quiet voice. "First off, the battle is next Shanaday. No idea how I'm supposed to survive, but... I don't know, I'll work on that." I know that realistically, that's the important part of the discussion, but right now all I can focus on is the other part. "I think I might understand what happened with Reena three weeks ago."
Her eyebrows furrow slightly. "What do you mean by that? What she did?"
"What she did, and what she said afterward. I feel like an idiot for not realizing it sooner." I have an idea of what I need to do, but no idea how to do it. I need... I need help. Who? Riko?
As long as I come pick her up, she thinks back at me.
"Lazy cat," I mutter.
"Hmm?" Emily quirks an eyebrow.
"Sorry, talking to someone else," I clarify. That just makes Emily giggle a little.
As we pass through the central plaza, Riko jumps out an open window and easily trots over to Main Street, just a bit ahead of us. As soon as we go past, she hops up into my arms. I catch her easily, letting her slide and shuffle a bit as she finds a comfortable way to lie in my arms. She makes me reposition them a few times until she's happy, then I return my attention to Emily.
She quirks an eyebrow, her face scrunching up as she thinks for a few moments. Then she points and says, "Riko."
"Yeah." I'm actually surprised she got it that fast. She flashes a big grin.
"I'm getting better at this," she comments. "So, what's she here for?"
"I have to figure out what Reena was talking about. If I'm right, she wasn't lying. And she was really bending the rules. If I'm wrong, then..." The betrayal. Trying to trick me into thinking it wasn't betrayal... I shake my head a little.
Please let me be right.
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We make it home, Riko hissing and twitching her nose a little at the entryway. Our house is another cat's territory already. I roll my eyes at her. "No other cat in this city could touch you, you're just being difficult," I prod her silently. Besides, I've never even seen the cat that supposedly lives here. I doubt it's suddenly going to appear now.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
We move quickly, rushing through the other kids and watching eyes all around, and head straight up to our room. Before I can get started, I have to... check myself. I mean, I can already feel that my barrier is better, but... Well, just thinking back on the last times I tried using mana makes me tremble a little. Now that the constant, formless, crippling, sleep-destroying, thought-shredding ache is gone, I really, really, really, really, really don't want to feel anything like that ever again.
So first, we head up to our room. The other girls are out, doing whatever they're doing. I set Riko on my bed, but she immediately relocates to Emily's lap when she sits down, pawing at her until she obediently starts to pet Riko with an amused smirk. I just roll my eyes at Riko again and pull my stuff from under my bed.
Looking down at my metal ingots, they've sat for three full weeks without use. Well, besides Chisa making mana for the magical creatures earlier today while we were all at church. But I haven't used them. Haven't dared touch my mana, apart from that horrible test.
Staring, I inhale a shaking breath. Emily catches it and turns to me with a worried look, reminding me that I really should warn her. So I let the breath go, then explain. "I... I think my-" I shake myself and drop my voice to a whisper since the halls are still full of activity. "I think my barrier is healed. I... should be able to use my mana again, but... well, I thought I should warn you, just in case." Emily just nods a few times, face stiff and nervous.
Trying to build up my confidence again, work myself up, I take a few more breaths. Then I reach inside and make a single cringing poke. Nothing happens. I poke my mana again. Nothing. No pain, sore aching awfulness. No sensations that don't really feel like anything my mind can even properly comprehend.
I release a shuddering sigh, then push some more mana around. Still fine. I step it up a few more times, moving more mana, larger chunks, faster. No problems. No pain.
Pure, incredible relief fills me as I flop down onto my bed. It doesn't hurt. It doesn't hurt.
"It doesn't hurt." I say it out loud. Make it real. I can use my mana again. I grab some ingots, convert different types. Everything works like it should. "Haha, it works," I laugh a little.
Three weeks of pain and worry and betrayal and sleep deprivation and self-hate and powerlessness. Now I have the one useful thing I can do again. Now I can actually try to do something.
There are still tons of problems. I have no idea how to solve them, not a single clue. But I can try. I'm not helpless.
I never want to be helpless again.
I sit back up, turning back to Emily and Riko. Time to get started on the first problem. Emily is watching me with an amused grin. Relief written in her eyes. I scoot over and give her a hug.
"Thanks for just, being there," I say. Of course I'm referring to the last three weeks of my terrible mood and constant pain. I wasn't really aware of how awful it must have been for her the whole time, but it must have been. Just watching, seeing me like that. She was helpless too.
Emily hugs me back, rubbing the back of my head with one hand as she responds, "What are friends for?" We break apart and smile at each other, before I turn my attention to Riko.
"Alright, you ready?" I ask the lounging cat.
"As ready as I'm going to be," she responds. It's just a small 'meow' out loud, drawing another amused look from Emily. "Just don't mess up," she tacks on.
"I'll try," I say, silently this time.
Despite my earlier determination, the clarity of knowing what I have to do, I hesitate. I grab some ingots and make more water and lightning mana, thinking it'll help. Also to delay. I don't really have any idea how to actually do what I'm about to attempt. What I need to do to be sure Reena wasn't lying.
I need to reach inside and mess with a soul myself. Like her hint. Her terrible hint. "I can't show you... I won't stop you if you find out... I know you can understand." The bits of her little speech come back to me. The whole thing was a stupid puzzle because, if my guess is right, she literally can't tell me about these things. More commands from Arcanas, maybe.
As I think about it more now, head clear and focused for the first time in weeks, and mana helping me along, more pieces slide into place.
The out of place triumphant feeling. Hiding her actions with dark mana. Those words she'd spoken. Carefully selected, repeated to me to make me see they meant more.
My best guess: the whole thing was a trick. Let's say she really isn't allowed to tell me or show me certain things. Like back when she first marked me and I figured out how to speak with my mind by watching her do it. She knew just trying to reach into my mana well and mess with my soul would be 'showing' me, so she had to hide it from me. Do it in a way I wouldn't be able to detect. That's where the dark mana came in.
But what if I noticed anyway? By accident? In a way that was definitely out of her control? Maybe I notice the dark mana due to the way mana clumps around it? But only when I'm not controlling it. Like, say, when I have a horrible injury that stops me from controlling my mana? Totally not her fault. Even if that's what she wanted all along. That would certainly explain the feeling of victory she gave off having what should have been the discovery of her betrayal. The more I think about it, the more obvious it all seems.
I don't even know how to feel about it exactly. On one hand, it means she was totally scheming behind my back. On the other, it proves that she's really, really, really bending the rules for me. Taking advantage of any opportunity she can find to accidentally let me discover new abilities I might not easily find otherwise. But what happened to not interfering? I mean, there's absolutely no way I would ever, ever, under any circumstances go around messing with people's souls if it wasn't for that one particular clue.
That one bit replays in my mind, clear enough despite the time that's passed. "I'm not changing anything important," she said. 'Yes, there are totally non-important parts in my soul, sure,' I'd thought at the time. But there was no guilt. Her reaction afterward felt like she knew she worded it poorly. Very poorly. But no guilt, like she wasn't lying.
So, what parts of the soul aren't important? Since I hardly know anything about them in the first place, I just thought that they were like... important. What made a person themselves. Which, alright, is true enough. I've converted enough animals into different forms and I looked at Emily's soul.
In fact... as I think about things, considering what we talked about, and souls, I get an odd feeling. I know how they work. But it's from those unnatural things I learned from changing those hobins. I can't think about it. Wait, Claire taught me just the right word for this, didn't she?
Alien.
That's it, those thoughts and feelings that just do not work in my brain. Like they're... incompatible with thought, or something. I discovered them by converting those mana wells in ways that felt wrong in some indescribable way. Watching the impossibilities that occurred showed me everything, filled my head with everything I need to know.
But I can't think about it, the whole thing is too strange for my mind. Is that why Reena started to get worried when I told her about it? Why would it worry her? Even if I can't actually comprehend all of it, I should at least manage to pull some hints out, right?
Let's see... What is a soul?
I let the alien impressions sit just out of reach while I consider the question. If I had to define a soul more specifically, more... 'physically' isn't the right word. In more certain terms that can actually be pointed out, rather than just a vague idea, then it would be this: The soul of a living thing is the mana in their mana well.
No.
I wince a little as the unknown understanding stabs out from the back of my mind. It reminds me of what I saw that day. Those hobins, those mana wells I violated. The souls I destroyed. They did not change with the wells, they changed with that single piece of mana embedded inside of the wells. As soon as I changed that piece, that's when the- I shudder a little, trying not to dwell on the specific memories of what happened, what I saw. I push them out of mind and just refer to them in general. Those changes that happened, they occurred as soon as I converted that specific bit of mana.
So that single piece is the soul.
No.
Another slight shudder as my undefinable feelings tell me I'm wrong again. Something wrong with my logic? I can't tell, things aren't lining up. I frown at myself, squint my eyes closed. Dig a little deeper. Let more of it in. The knowledge hurts. Too much, makes me feel sick. It's all there, it's just... I don't get it. Incompatible. Alien. An immense series of impossible nonsense sensations all spiraled together in the back of my mind to produce a feeling for what a soul is. I can't line it up with anything I've actually seen or experienced. The mana wells, mana inside them, the structure of the well, mana buried inside those structures... none of it is right. Not the same. I exhale slowly and push down the invisible throb of knowledge. The edge of nausea with it. After the last three weeks agony, it's almost easy. But I'm still missing something.
"Aria?" Emily suddenly asks, getting me to open my eyes and focus on the real world around me again.
"Yeah?"
"You alright? Aren't you going to do... whatever, now?" She gestures vaguely since she's not sure what I'm up to.
"Uhh, sort of. I kind of ran into an issue I can't work out. How do I explain..." After some thinking, I go over what I've been working on. How if I want to understand what Reena said, I have to mess around with souls myself and figure out more specifics about them than my own vague thoughts that don't seem to line up with what Reena was talking about. Don't match my own perfect, incomprehensibly alien understanding of them either. I don't mention that last part though, I still don't know what to make of it.
"Huh... So you're just going to... test it? How?"
"Well, that's sort of what I'm trying to figure out. After what Reena said, I kind of realized I don't actually have a good idea what a soul is." I stop, my thoughts cutting off as Riko's ears flick, picking it up earlier than me. Heavy footsteps thumping down the hall. Mister Fredricson. Just hearing his footsteps fills me with choking dread, made worse by the lightning mana. I fight to push it away, tell myself that I'm not helpless anymore. He can't hurt me now.
Only physically.
It's only a few more moments before Emily picks it up too, all suddenly waiting in strained silence for him to pass.
But he doesn't. He comes right to our door and slams it open. We both sit very still, no idea what this is about. Kids crowd the hallway behind him.
"What is that?" he demands, pointing at Riko.
It's a stupid question. Before I think better of it, I give a stupid answer. "A cat." That draws a glare that makes me shrink away a little more.
"What is it doing in this house?"
Obviously I can't tell him what Riko is actually here for. "We were petting it," I reply lamely, doing a mental check to make sure I refer to her as 'it' in front of her. And it's not a lie, not exactly. At least Emily was petting her.
That just makes him blink at us before his anger ignites again. "You are not allowed to keep pets!" He shouts at us. I cringe down, ducking my head. But even as I do, my mind works through his words.
Riko? A pet? The idea doesn't even make sense. It takes me a couple moments huddled down to remind myself that she is a cat and normal people do keep cats as pets. "Right. Pet. No. Umm," I mumble to myself, then shake my head and work out my response before looking back up at him. I try to keep my voice from shaking when I reply. And tell myself he can't hurt me. "It's not a pet. We just picked it up to pet it some." When his glare doesn't lift at all, I give her a tap on the side and mentally tell her to get out of here so he doesn't beat us. I never, ever want to go through that again.
But why is he so against pets? And why didn't he mention that when I moved in? My mind races through questions while Riko lazily rises from Emily's lap and trots to the end of the bed, where she hops over to the windowsill. And from there, leaps out the window. I spend a moment, one half shocked, one half... not. I myself am, but the part of me that follows her as she easily jumps across to a second story window of another building, already knows that for a cat like her, this is no big deal. Another easy cat-jump gets her to the ground.
While she's doing that, I turn back to Mister Fredricson. He stares out, after the cat that just leapt from the third story window. I hesitate. I don't know if interrupting his shock will disarm him or just make him more angry at us. I glance to Emily for help.
"So!" she starts, to grab his attention away from the window. "I guess that's... that."
"I-I didn't know we couldn't keep pets," I add in before he can yell at her or something. "I'll make sure not to do that." I keep nodding as I speak, just trying to make him less angry so he- He can't hurt me, I tell myself again.
With a loud snort, he tears back out of our room, slamming the door behind him. It takes a few long, silent moments for the tension to ease.
"I'm sorry, Aria," Emily apologizes, "I had no idea he had a problem with pets."
"No, it's fine." I let out a shaking breath. "You didn't know." Why would that even be her fault? "We can just go somewhere else. North Gate?" I ask, referring to the comfy and private sitting spot outside the gate.
"Yeah, sure." Then she grins a bit. "But lunch first," she reminds me.