They decided to let their prisoner stew for the rest of the day to give him some time to let the reality of his situation really set in. Kila begged off from any further activities for the rest of the day and left them to their own devices. Len didn’t really feel up to anything too strenuous after the beating she’d taken the day before, so she told the trio to spend some time practicing throws on each other in the woods.
“Don’t bother with gathering anything today, just keep the gear safe and don’t break any bones. Can’t afford to pay for healing right now.”
“You gonna be okay, boss?” Curly asked.
“Eh, I’m fine. Hardly the worst beating I’ve had.”
That was a lie. Her everything ached and she just wanted to be alone. The Proving had been worse on a technical level, but she’d also received magical healing from it and woken in a more comfortable bed than had been provided by the inn they were staying at. This time, she had all the amenities of pre-electricity society weighing down on her and not nearly the cash to be blowing on more of that sweet magic to fix her problems. Bed rest was the best option and she was annoyed by that.
The real problem with finding herself stuck to bed rest was that she didn’t have anything to distract her from all of the, well… everything that had happened to her of late. She’d been so focused on getting through one task after another that she hadn’t really been able to think about it. That had been one of the things she’d been enjoying most about this whole montage scene of a week. Leadership wasn’t her thing, she’d never cared for the idea of being responsible for anyone but herself and yet she was now the only chance those three idiots had of not being dead in a few weeks. That was a lot of pressure.
Then there was Kila. A damn fine friend who was just willing to roll with the craziness that had fallen into her lap. How could one even begin to pay back the kind of debt that piles up just from having someone who has your back that willingly after such a short time? Len hadn’t ever had that in her old life. It was… nice.
What wasn’t nice was the realization that whatever happened next was likely to be a lot worse than what had come so far. This Grand Proving thing was gonna be a clusterfuck of epic proportions near as she could tell. That Mantra stuff might be an edge, but it wouldn’t be enough to win the day if she was facing a serious team. She couldn’t expect herself to be able to take on full teams by herself, and she hated the idea of risking her trio’s lives over this. She didn’t even know what would happen to them if they lost. She suspected it’d be execution, but that wasn’t a sure thing either. And if she did succeed?
Sure, there was some promise of better placement than she’d have gotten if she hadn’t made it into the next stage, but the whole thing was so vaguely defined that she suspected they mostly did whatever they wanted. Supposedly the Demon Lord would actually be present to observe the festivities, so that would be interesting at least. Not a lot was said about the Lord in most circles. It was just shrugged off whenever she asked and everyone just said that Adviser Grievous was taking care of the day to day dealings, while the Lord focused on more important matters (she’d have seen the name of Grievous as more of a red flag if not for the fact that her best friend’s last name was ‘Bloodsipper’ and she’d just decided to accept it as a quirk of the world).
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She wanted to dwell on things more, but even the shitty bed was comfortable enough to make keeping her eyes open for long stretches harder by the minute. Before long her mind had settled into the pleasant lull of half-sleep and not long after that she might as well have been dead to the world.
* * * * *
She woke up several hours later feeling surprisingly good. Not healed, of course, but not in nearly as much pain as she’d expected to be in. Maybe it was just the joys of having an elven body, or maybe people just healed faster in this world, but she actually felt like she could do something with her evening besides lie about in miserable self-contemplation. She waved at the innkeep as she stepped outside and just got to wandering.
The town didn’t actually have a name, it was just another outpost in the more extreme reaches of the Demon Lord’s territory, it provided necessities and shipped goods south to aid in the war effort. Len knew that was what Kila was doing with all the goods her team could gather: turning them into halfway viable tools for the machine, be it charcoal to heat the forges or stone blades to tip spears. Not glamorous work, but everything was currently being put to use in defense of the land.
The exact nature of the conflict wasn’t very clear to her. Her other self had been a lazy student and had missed most of the lectures, and it just seemed odd to ask what these two factions were called. One was the Demon Army and one was the Army of Light, that seemed like almost enough by itself. But none of the people she’d met here in the town were particularly ‘demonic’ by the standards that the entertainment industry had led her to expect. They were just people going about their daily lives. Sure, they were rather brusque examples of people, but not worse than anything she’d encountered before.
Most of the time Len was able to keep herself centered in this new world. It was bizarre and a little insane, but generally she could just focus on the here and now and ignore the rest. In this current headspace of hers, though, it was all just a bit too surreal and she had to really think about what was coming next. The Provings were really all about a single thing: earning rank within a military organization devoted to war with humans, dwarves, and other ‘Light’ races. There just wasn’t any getting around the fact that she was stepping into a major conflict and she didn’t understand the first thing ABOUT that conflict.
Knowledge was power, and she was coming to grips with the fact that she was woefully lacking in that department. She supposed she could ask Kila, but she was occupying way too much of that poor woman’s free time as it was. Moe or Curly might know something, but talking to them about it just felt wrong, she was supposed to be in a position of authority and have some general clue what she was doing, no sense further shattering that illusion. That basically left Craig to talk to on the matter. What a treat that was going to be.