Interlude — The Highland Wilds
Jarrel glanced over at their tent where, last he checked, Ria was reading from that old tome she had brought along. He poked at the burning branches in the already ash-filled fire pit.
The journey had been going well enough that he had let his guard down. For the first few weeks, Ria had a difficult time adjusting to the weight of the backpack and the difficulty of the terrain and was barely able to put in any effort to her combat and survival training. However, each time they managed to find a place of power, she was able to make substantial gains—to the extent that they began intentionally seeking them out even though the risk of encountering a dangerously powerful monster was higher.
She had been doing well enough of late that with her magic, he thought she’d be fine to take care of washing her clothes while he worked on butchering a deer they had happened upon. He should’ve known better. He had been around long enough to know that when complacency sets in, that’s when the disasters happen.
Rale was watching out for Danny now; the least he could do was take proper care of Rale and Arisette’s daughter. And scars weren’t something a girl should have.
On top of that, while they were dealing with her injuries, something had run off with the deer he was butchering…
He let out a sigh. At least the worst of the scars would be in a place her clothes would hide. That the entire stock of healing potions was used up to stop the bleeding and knit the girl’s flesh enough he could stitch the rest, it meant they wouldn’t have any should one of them slip and fall during a climb or crossing a stream. Though they did still have the bone-mending potions left, thankfully.
Ria assured him they would be fine because she was going to use this time to learn basic healing magic. He doubted that learning any magic was easy to the extent she would achieve it any time soon, but she had surprised him already with her progress.
Honestly, even with the determined effort Ria was putting in every day of their journey, the girl’s progress was nothing short of unbelievable. She was surely recklessly overdoing things, but he was reluctant to discourage her from the one activity that seemed to help her cope with her grief the most.
He hoped the bandits’ information about Arisette’s fate and the fate of the women and children from their village was false. But the way it answered many of the lingering questions about the conscription made too much sense to be coincidental.
“Jarrel! I did… it…”
Dammit. There she goes.
Dropping the stick, he ducked under the flap and into the tent. The lingering smell of blood reminded him again of his failure, and his heart tightened with worry at the sight of the girl, unconscious as expected.
A quick check of her pulse and breathing showed each steady. Her forehead was cool enough. He breathed out a sigh of relief, and pulled the open grimoire away from where it would be susceptible to drool. Something that had already happened on a few occasions, much to Ria’s dismay. While such incidents would normally be amusing, they were also a sign of how hard the girl was pushing herself to improve.
For whatever she had been up to, Ria had already folded back the wolf furs being used as bedding, so Jarrel took the opportunity to move the bloodstained bandages out of the way and check for infection in the girl’s wounds.
“She really did do it…,” he muttered.
The gashes weren’t fully healed, but the improvement was enough that he could remove the stitches on some of them, particularly Ria’s arms. The deeper gashes on her stomach would have to wait a little longer, but at this rate, the scarring might be minimal. The burns were almost entirely healed with only a faint redness in places.
Shaking his head in wonder again at the girl’s excessive natural talent, he took out his knife and got to work on the stitch removal. This was a task best done while she was exhausted and asleep anyway, as the occasional whimpers confirmed.
If Rale’s daughter really could become a healer, that would bode well for her future. Life as a healer was stressful, but she would be more likely to be well-received by his home village. This childish fascination she had with witches was going to be a problem though, particularly with the residents of a village close to barbarian lands.
He’d prefer to keep her hidden longer, but quickly getting her sponsored by a noble House would be important in order to protect her from accusations of having performed a dark pact. Her talent would be a double-edged sword in that respect, making her more suspicious to the locals but also more desirable to the noble Houses.
There was another option, but he was loathe to see Ria involved with them until it became necessary. Arisette had always wanted her children to be able to choose their own futures, and while he still could, he would do his best to arrange an alternate path that would give the girl the best chance of that.
Satisfied that the remaining stitches were still needed, Jarrel repositioned the bandages and covered Ria with the wolf fur bedding.
Unlike most mage-healers he had witnessed during his travels, the kind of healing Ria had apparently succeeded with was the kind that drained the body’s reserves. She would need food and would be hungry when she awoke.
There was still some of the grillot the girl mostly cooked with her fire magic, burning herself in the process, but grillot meat didn’t make for particularly good eating even if they were somewhat energy rich—as all monsters were to some extent. He could hunt something, but even with the wards Ria had drawn around the campsite, he was hesitant to leave her alone, particularly when she would be defenseless.
Maybe between the grillot meat, some of the remaining foraged roots, and their dwindling supplies from Shadewood, he could make a decent enough stew.
When he went back out of the tent, Ranger made a huffing whuffle and Jarrel could have sworn the dog rolled its eyes at him. Stopping short, Jarrel couldn’t help groaning at himself for having overreacted. The dog was bound to the girl. If something dangerous had happened, the dog would hardly be warming himself by the fire, unconcerned. Though ‘unconcerned’ was a fair sight removed from how depressed the dog had been after failing to stop Ria from getting attacked.
Maybe it was Rella dying in childbirth together with their daughter that made him so worried when it came to the girl. He had felt so helpless then as his wife had become weaker and weaker.
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No. He would trust in the dog and Ria’s magic. As long as he stayed close enough to hear Ranger barking, he should be able to return in time should a monster or predator take interest.
Since the bonding, Ranger seemed able to understand and follow Ria’s instructions, so he told the farm dog to stay and guard Ria and to bark if anything dangerous approached.
Ranger sat up with a comically serious expression and barked out what sounded like an acknowledgment. Not wanting to think too much about it, Jarrel belted on his swords, shouldered his quiver, and grabbed his bow, careful not to disturb the lines drawn in the dirt as he left.
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Jarrel groaned to see Ria sitting up with her staff across her lap when he brought her the bowl of stew.
“Moving around is going to reopen your wounds.” It wasn’t the first time he had said it over the last few days.
She gave him a smile and took the bowl, careful not to lean forward when she reached. “Thanks for removing the stitches, and for the meal. I feel like I’m starving!”
“I bet,” he snorted.
After filling a bowl for himself, he took up a seat on his own bedroll opposite Ria. He had already given Ranger his bowl first as a reward for standing sentry while Jarrel had hunted.
Between a good-sized pheasant and successful foraging, he had scrounged up enough healthy and flavorful ingredients to hide the disagreeable fishy flavor of the three-day-old grillot meat.
The sound of a stiff wind blowing against the opening at the top of the tent where the long branches supporting the waxed fabric leaned together signaled the colder evening that would be setting in. The nights would likely continue to cool with the earlier change in seasons that was usual for the highlands. The cold would make the foraging less plentiful, but at least, the persistent insects would soon no longer be a problem.
Normally, he would have the fire inside the tent to make the most of the heat and to keep biting insects away while they slept, but with Ria’s heatstone and the insect repelling ward drawn under the tent, there was no need to risk it. Magic did make traversing the wilds a much less terrible experience.
“So, how reliably can you use that new magic?” Jarrel asked once Ria started slowing down from shoveling the food into her mouth as quickly as possible.
“Figuring out nature energy’s transformation was the hardest part, but encouraging a body to heal is different from directing a plant how to grow, so that part was hard too!” the girl enthusiastically reported, proud of her accomplishment. She pointed at a tuft of grass that seemed larger than he remembered.
“Okay…”
Taking his response as a prompt, Ria continued her explanation, “I thought it would be the same as how I can speed up my body’s healing by filling the injured places with energy, but it’s different! Er… well, that works too, but it’s much slower and takes a lot more energy.”
She took a deep breath to explain more then grimaced and twisted slightly side-to-side but her enthusiasm quickly overcame her discomfort. “Well, see, Luventi used these really difficult words to basically say that our bodies are made of lots of little parts that do different things, but most of those parts can make copies of themselves and some can make different parts, and these new parts replace the old damaged parts which then die and fall away, so it’s a bit scary and complicated.”
“Uh-huh,” Jarrel said, pretending he understood the worrying things she was saying so she would get to the important part.
“Yeah, so, that meant I needed the magic to talk to the little parts and get them to do the whole making new parts thing and to help them do it faster, but it has to be done in layers so the inside parts heal before the outside parts. And you don’t want to fill the inside with outside parts either, you see?”
“Ah, that does sound like it would be bad.”
“Right? That’s why I practiced on the smaller cuts first, but I got a bit carried away at my success and kept going until… I used up all my energy without realizing…” Ria trailed off in embarrassment before letting out an indignant huff. “Even though I really wanted to show you that I can do healing magic now, too.”
“Should I expect that we will be able to resume our trip in a few days then?” Jarrel prompted. “Staying in one place for too long is asking for trouble, and your ward probably won’t last much longer, right?”
“Ah, um, those stopped working days ago… so, I’ve been drawing new ones on the side of the tent…” Ria looked away while laughing nervously and grimaced again.
Jarrel pinched the bridge of his nose to keep from telling her off. She should have told him instead of hiding it. But it’s not as if she could have redrawn the one outside without aggravating her wounds, and he did keep telling her not to move around.
“I think I’ll have enough energy to finish healing myself by tomorrow morning,” Ria quickly offered.
She was definitely rushing it. “Let’s see how you feel in the morning. If you’re feeling well enough, perhaps we should spend the day fishing and replenish our supplies before continuing on.”
“Okay,” Ria readily agreed and returned to her meditation after setting the empty bowl aside.
She was probably trying to conserve supplies by not asking for a second serving, but he would try to get another bowl of stew into her before turning in for the night. The next mountain ridge they had to climb would be more of a challenge than the previous. These last few days, he had observed the weather patterns over the peaks and decided the dip that they would aim for. The white top peaks to either side suggested how cold it would be. At least, there wouldn’t be any risk of rain to cause sudden rivers or landslides to wash them away.
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Since the girl-who-brought-the-tasty-soup did the glowing thing that let her talk without talking, Ranger found himself thinking about a lot of things—things that previously just were. But now he strangely understood what the two-legs were saying, and that brought more questions.
The current discussion was about the tall rocks that reached to the sky, and he raised his head to look up at the tops lost in fluffy white.
“That you are noticing ice energy in the air is worrisome,” the two-leg—er, human— named Jarrel was saying. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Ice Dragons lived on the peaks. Crossing where we will be so easily visible from above seems risky.”
“The food from Shadewood is almost gone. If we turn back now when it’s already this cold…”
Understanding the two-legs wasn’t the only change brought by the glowing thing—the magic. The ground felt different, and he was stronger and faster when he was touching it.
His duty had also changed.
For as long as he remembered his duty had been to protect the hens and the farm, and he had done that well. His new duty wasn’t that different. He was still protecting. But protecting was more fun now. Protecting now meant exploring and hunting, with new places to guard when they stopped before the sky darkened.
But… though he steadfastly protected the farm, he failed to protect the humans that lived at the farm. He didn’t realize that other humans could be a danger, and he lost his family.
Now he had a new family, and he already failed to protect her once.
The humans finished their talk-fight and decided to continue up the tall rocks that reached the sky—mountains.
The days of travel grew colder and food harder to find until there was no food at all. His human—Ria—began making soup with the green needles and bark of trees so they could have something, but tree water was not food.
The wind was so cold, cold enough that he couldn’t feel his nose when he was outside the warm cloth house.
It was as the ground was no longer going up but down that Ranger saw the claw-scratching on a tree, and when he dug in the fluffy white near the tree, he smelled the scent of something large and dangerous.
The scent was like the large four-legs they had hunted sometimes, but different.
When he warned Ria, she and the big human with the long claws, Jarrel, argued before coming to a decision, asking if he could find the dangerous four-leg.
He had to keep looking for trees and digging in the snow to find more of the scent. The scent led to a cave.
A cave that smelled of those magic places his human liked so much.