Quinn flopped heavily onto her bed. What just happened? She spent several minutes wondering about various things as she tried to piece together what was happening in this strange town. Between mysterious cults and hidden fae, it was a lot to take in.

One thing was sure though; the sooner she left Mauershein, the better. There was just too much here that she didn’t want to get caught up in. It was far better for Quinn to leave so she could grow her strength. Maybe when she had a better grasp on magic, she could return to investigate the weird circumstances of the walled city. As things stood now though, she would only die a dog’s death messing in things above her pay grade.

She didn’t allow herself to wallow in curiosity for too much longer. A more pressing issue made itself known when she tried to clean herself up; she couldn’t control her mana. Try as she might, the weighty substance just wouldn’t listen to her domineering orders and sat exactly where it was in her heart. She tugged, she pulled, she yanked and yet it didn’t even twitch past the athyrn walls that confined it.

Quinn changed up her methodology and approached the athyrn rather than her mana. It was obvious it held the most power in the current… negotiation. She gently requested it to move, to disperse into her surroundings and leave her mana - and by extension her heart - alone. It, like the mana before, refused to budge an inch. If the rage-inducing substance had eyes, she could envision a look of boredom cast her way.

She tried everything she could but was ultimately forced to stop by a rather unfortunate incident. Her strong concentration caused blood to pour out of her nose. After that, she took a break in trying to figure her mana out.

While in the downtime between efforts, she flipped through A Traveler’s Handbook: Monsters to read more. She mostly just looked at the artful drawings on each page. She skimmed through the info about the beasties, of course, but was mainly in it for the pictures. That was until, after several back and forths with her mana, she stumbled across a rather significant page; the badgius.

The badgius were an interesting critter. The ink drawing on the page revealed a rather large bipedal badger. It had the familiar stripes of white and black fur and was surprisingly wearing clothing, though it was barely better than a tribal wrap. The badgius depicted held a long wooden spear in between its clawed paws. It had an opposable thumb that was faintly reminiscent of her own, though it was noticeably shorter and ended in a long claw. The creature bulged with muscles and its forearms were larger than a watermelon.

She nearly puked upon seeing the creature. Not because it was repulsive or hideous, but because it was obviously a sapient creature. Or at least sentient. And she had eaten it off a skewer. It wasn’t cannibalism, but it felt so… wrong to have eaten a sapient creature. It was like eating an elf or a dwarf, if they even existed in this horrible world she had found herself tossed into.

Quinn forced the rising acid down and continued to read on about the badgius. It was a nocturnal hunter known for living in tribal communities, much like prehistoric humanity. They tended to sleep during the day in massive subterranean villages. They were excellent diggers and excelled in trapping. Badgius were often attacked on sight since they were quite the savage creatures. They showed no regard for humanity and would attack, so it was generally better to attack first.

A question arose in the back of her mind as she read on about the bipedal badgers; could she kill one? She had killed things in the past, of course, but this was different. This was a creature not too far off from a human... as long as you ignore its physique… and intelligence… and culture? Either way, could she in good consciousness kill a sapient being? The obvious answer was no, but she didn’t think she could kill a zombie either.

But the guilt would be a whole other thing. Would she be just fine after killing a badgius, or would the guilt eat away at her psyche? As if she didn’t already suffer enough guilt… She hadn’t even seen one, and yet her mind automatically dredged up images of nightmarish scenes of badgius corpses strewn across a battlefield.

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By the time she had collected her thoughts, it was just a few hours from nightfall. Or at least she assumed it was since she couldn’t cast Compass. Quinn was quite bored in her room. She had been reading the past few days and was starting to get sick of it. She loved to read, but long stints of time only reading were quite draining. That wasn’t even including the mentally destroying attempts to slosh her mana around. She needed something new to refresh her mind.

Quinn packed up her things, preferring to keep them on her rather than leave them in her room considering how many times it had been broken into over the past week. She strapped her weapons to the right places and slung her pack over her shoulders. Her feet carried her around the place until she arrived in front of Atamai and Willa’s room.

Her knuckles wrapped on the door as a faint thudding sound resonated from the worn wood. Nobody answered. She tried again, but still, nobody came to the door. Maybe they were out? It would only make sense that the two weren’t crammed into their room, waiting for her every beck and call…

So where to next? Quinn came to an unfortunate decision as she left the hallway and approached another door. This one opened up as soon as she knocked on it.

A flash of pink-red hair showed in the dim light of the room as Mikeal stood there in worn sleepwear. “Quinn! I wasn’t expecting you to stop by… Is there… something you need?”

“Umm… A-are you busy?” She asked.

Mikeal shook his head. “I'm never too busy for you, my lady.”

Quinn stepped back and hiked her thumb out towards the city. “Then do y-you want to eat something?”

Yes, her great and brilliant plan to clear her mind of her troubles was to go get food. As for why she wanted to go with someone? Simple, if Quinn went by herself she would be stuck in her previous mental processes and issues, which would defeat the purpose of clearing her head. Back when she worked at the lab, she would always get someone to go with her to eat. Other people made excellent mental distractions.

“I’m flattered, my lady. Let me grab my stuff.” Mikeal disappeared into the darkness of his room, leaving Quinn standing in the flickering lantern light of the hallways. He returned shortly later dressed in the three-piece suit she had come to grown accustomed to. She wouldn't even be surprised if he whipped out a pocket watch and cane at this point. It would fit in rather well with his charming attire.

They ended up eating at a small shop just down the road. It was a relatively small place that served about what she was beginning to expect from Mauershein. The food was alright for its price, but nothing amazing. That wasn’t to say it was a bad experience. She had a rather good time with the music-obsessed mage. He even said quite a few intelligent things that made her deeply think about her current situation.

Quinn had thought this repeatedly over the past few weeks, but Mikeal really wasn’t all that bad of company once you looked past his flirty way of speaking. After so long, she even realized he wasn’t even trying to woo her. It was purely just how he spoke. She suspected it was more out of habit than anything.

Regardless, the trip was quite helpful. When she returned to her room she had several ideas on how she might fix her mana woes. First and foremost, she had noticed that mana hadn’t built up in her body at all since it had been locked up. She felt light as a feather, which was quite weird considering how she usually felt.

After intensive focus on the little details, she found that mana was still appearing in her body. It was just being whisked away so fast she hardly even felt it. The bits of mana were sucked into her blood veins and pulled all the way to her heart where they were deposited.

It was quite interesting. Due to the walls of Athyrn, her mana had no choice but to compress itself inside the small space of her heart. Her mana was forced to become more and more dense. Overall, assuming she ever regained access, she felt the whole athyrn around her heart thing was actually quite beneficial. Mana density, after all, was a requirement to breach the higher levels of magic.

After watching for a while, Quinn decided to mix things up. Instead of forcing her mana into a doomed siege against the walls of athyrn, she focused it into small strings that entered her veins. It took all of her concentration to keep the ropes of mana thin enough to fit the blood tubes. Slowly, ever so slowly, she eased a tiny bit of her mana out into her vein.

It was immediately pulled from her tentative grasp and thrown into a part of her body. The chunk of mana was then grabbed by another vein and deposited into her heart. She tried several more times, getting slightly further out of her heart and into her arteries before the mana inevitably lost control. She needed just a bit more control to keep her mana tame, and she was rapidly gaining it thanks to the forced exercises with her heart.