Blood drips onto the meadow below me dyeing the flowers a deep crimson red, at this point, I can’t tell where it’s coming from. The breeze is that perfect warm at the tail end of summer right before it gets all cold and rainy. For what’s happening I am surprisingly calm, my vision is blurry but I can see the people around me panicking but too afraid to get any closer. I don’t blame them ultimately this is all my fault I was the one who wanted to push further.
Something inside is swelling and the pain has dropped me to my knees sweat dripping from my forehead as I try to stay conscious till the very end. Time has almost slowed to a stop now whether it’s from my dying brain or what killed me I don’t know. I’d be more amazed if it wasn’t prolonging my end.
I can spot a few faces among the onlookers, friends, colleagues, an acquaintance or two.
Arvi. Oh, Arvi my dear please don’t blame yourself for this. I know you’ll try but Anna is so close to adulthood and I couldn’t bear to see her if you lost that hearty smile of yours. I’m smiling despite the pain my teeth are red, blood has pooled around me to the point that my knees have sunk into the mud.
All around me, colors dance and for a brief second, I understand everything wrong with magic. How wasteful spells are, the delicate nature of the waves around us, the Scar and its border so close glows like the sun.
If only I had the time to write it all down.
“I love you.”
I whisper, but I know that he heard it.
A wave of crimson mist is all that remains of Hilda BlackArrow, her death taking less than four seconds from the casting of her MagnumOpus.
—{}{}{}{}{}—
Arvi.
Sweat covers every inch of my body. Again I have the same nightmare every night for the second week in a row forced to watch my love die so horribly. It takes me longer than I want to dress but today’s a day of rest and celebration so no one’s going to complain if I sleep in a little.
Tomorrow is the day Anna and Xavier will depart this backward village and enter one of the most advanced cities to attend the largest school in the world. But first, we’re going to party harder than we’ve ever partied before. Breakfast is hearty but small, we need all the room we can get for today. My daily routine is the same despite the festivities, as the pseudo chief of the village I can’t afford to relax when it comes to my job, not for even a day.
I start with the wall as it’s the easiest to reach from my house, because its tall pointed top is only good for scaring birds I have to check on the spell embedded inside the structure. The mana is wound like a rope and threaded into the logs themselves becoming akin to the bracing on a crossbow. As soon as something disturbs the circuit of mana it’s sent flying all at once.
The next step of the day is to check on the wards placed around the village. These wards act as a repellent to most monsters and only something of extreme danger would dare come closer, normally such a thing would be expensive for a tiny village like ours. Unless said village was founded by a grand mage and nurtured to give her children the safest possible environment. Maintenance on the wards is simple as it only requires me to occasionally reapply the circuit if it gets damaged by weather or a passing animal.
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Normally this would be the end of my day leaving me to help with the more tedious chores of village life or tending to the farm. With so many people already drunk it falls upon my shoulders to do the few tasks abandoned by the party. Chopping wood, checking the water stones for purity, scaring off any animals, and tending to the horses.
I’d get Xavier to handle the wood and horses but he adamantly refuses to go near the horses even if I try to force him, and today is to celebrate him and Anna so it doesn’t feel right forcing him to work. Oliver doesn’t seem to agree and already has him loading the cart I plan on taking into town. We can’t exactly have our only cart taken all the way across the country so I need to go and charter a wagon for them to take instead, Oliver is just mooching off the free ride.
—{}{}{}{}{}—
Xavier.
Yet again I find myself loading a cart for Oliver and I'm left scratching my head as to how he convinced me to do so. Yes, he did help me immensely with that metal flower, and yes he is the one who made my sword but I’ve more than repaid by now! Stretching the limits on the word debt too, seeing as how I had to stab myself and it wasn’t guaranteed that I’d survive the process. Ah well, fuck it, I don’t have anything better to do today and at least it’s not Arvi making me do something. The giant bastard has to have an exercise fetish.
Speaking of Mr muscles, he’s talking to Oliver no doubt chewing him out for making me work when half of the party is meant for me. Nope, they're laughing and Oliver keeps glancing at me like I’m going to run, if he keeps doing that I’ll be running at him.
“So he got you again?”
Arvi’s holding a sealed crate in each hand, the sealed ones are always ingots, too heavy for me to lift.
“Yeah, but I don’t mind.
Just wish he’d stop teasing me about it.”
“He’s worried about you, you know, that flower was more likely to kill you than anything. He just wants to make sure you don’t drop dead all of a sudden from some mistake he made.”
“Is that why he never helps?”
“No, he’s just a lazy bastard.”
We share a laugh as the last of the cargo is loaded and at last, I can rest.
“How bad is my condition, really?”
“It’s, I don’t think you know the word yet, not there but still working. Something like that?
You're quite the oddity, to make as much progress physically as you have, would normally be impossible without mana.
Have you ever wondered how heavy those crates are?”
“Yeah, but we don’t have a scale so I can’t exactly check, fifty pounds?”
“Didn’t quite catch that last bit, anyway, they weigh the same thing they’ve weighed for the last twenty years, they are exactly as heavy as Oliver.
He’s quite the master at his craft, can tell weight just by holding something.”
There’s no way in hell, he’s twice my size I couldn’t lift that much before I got all fucked up in the desert.
“Xavier! You coming with me or not?”
Arvi shouts at me from atop the wagon, he and Oliver having long ago left me to my stunned silence. I board the cart from the back and we begin our slow start away from the village. Out of curiosity, I wedge a finger under a crate full of metal ingots, straining a bit the side lifts.
Something is definitely wrong with me.