The day had been going so well… or mostly well. It had been going mostly well.
Me and Anna had a long, and somewhat relaxing picnic, at least once you got me breaking down out of the way.
And me falling asleep.
And the short embarrassing bit after that.
So we had about twenty minutes of ehh picnic that resulted in something I would call good, and the rest of it was relaxing.
I had fed Anna a tiny sandwich with cucumber and some kind of cheese less than an hour ago, and we had realized how late it was getting and had headed back.
And now we stood at the mouth of the forest, on the old road, and watched as the city burned.
I watched the flame and smoke and found myself looking as if drawn by instinct to the air, searching the barely lit sky for a dark object. For a terrible moment, I was there again, a few months and a few thousand years ago, on the roof of the building I had slept in for all my life while a dark shape, visible only in outline, rained death upon the valley.
But there was no dark spot in the sky, and there was no death from above. This was not the same.
Wooden structures, especially in cities, would often burn up, especially without firebreaks or inner walls. New-moarn didn’t even have outer walls, let alone inner walls and almost everything was wood with stone footing. All it took was a little bit of fire in the wrong place, and the relative dryness of the spring would turn it into a firestorm.
I watched it, watched astounded at the fire, at the death and destruction it would reap, and felt distanced from it. The part of my mind that remembered fires before the great fire, the last one. That reminded me of hauling water where mages couldn’t reach fast enough, the heat as people ferried buckets and axes, collapsed buildings, and wet homes to reach the people inside. The part that remember the shouts of [Fire Wardens] remembered what it was like to be called to action, sat back and waited.
I hadn’t been called to help, so there was nothing I could do.
It lasted only a moment before my thinking mind caught up to the knee-jerk reaction, and I felt the sink of all I knew now, how everyone that fell would leave their souls behind, about how there was no afterlife without my intervention. Without me, people would dive into burning buildings, choking on smoke, dive through fire and be lit aflame or charred to a crisp.
And I was immune to it. I could walk it off. I could walk into a burning building, scoop up others and carry them out with my body, smoking, boiling my blood and cooking me alive, and nothing poor would come of it. The only thing I needed to do was carry a wet cloth to protect the people I would carry.
There was something I could do to save lives and, furthermore, to save souls that gave me a need to act.
All I would need to do is betray my promise to Anna.
This brought me back to the moment, as my mind came up with an order of how to do the most good.
Because the best did not lie with me but with my companion, whom I would inevitably betray tonight. It lay in Anna, who held real magical power. Who could call a storm on accident, with a bit of mana and a conversation with the powers that be, powers that called her friend.
She was probably better for this than a cleric because of what I knew about the coming weather. There was bound to be a storm soon, which would only make it more potent. And so I turned to her and spoke up.
“Anna, can you call a storm?” I asked her quickly, my words sounding unnecessarily clipped even to me.
“I… I…” she said with obvious confusion in her voice, having either not put together my thoughts or not yet taken in the situation.
“Anna, can you call a storm?” I asked her, carefully taking hold of her shoulder and positioning myself between the flame and her to get her to focus on me. I forced as well as I could calm in my voice. I tried to speak calmly, to not get her to freeze.
Anna seemed to snap out of it then, focusing back on me and the moment and not whatever was running through her eyes.
“I… I can call a storm… but not as I am now. I will need preparation for a fire, preparation, and for something this big, positioning.”
“What about like last time? You called down a storm when you rescued me,” I pointed out, not distrusting her, but asking to make sure I could help.
Every fuck up here was people dying, people who could otherwise be alive. If I fucked up by getting in Annas way, or Anna was overestimating what she needed to do, people would die for it.
“Last time was a spring shower; it was only a brief downpour and nothing more. It cleared up in under an hour. That amount of rain won’t cut it. I need far more to even think about putting out a building. Saphine, I’m not talking about calling down a spring shower, but a proper torrential downpour here. I can try to work miracles all I want; they won’t amount to anything, not without preparation, and we need a bloody miracle to put it ooout-”
I didn’t even let her finish, scooping her up into my arms like she was a sack and starting to run like a mad woman toward the grove. Not stopping when she swatted me in annoyance, or when she shouted, and only barely halting in my footsteps when she shouted, “I need to know where to go; you can grab my staff and make it back without me.”
I nearly stumbled when she mentioned a staff, the item calling to mind the one she had mentioned using to alleviate her urges. I managed to stay on my feet and not tumble with her, but it was a close call.
“Selly can check, I don’t know about your staff, unless you're making a joke about the one in the back of your top drawer,”
“I can do what?” Selly asked loudly in confusion while Anna shouted in some embarrassment and horror, “Not that one,” each nearly shouting into one of my ears.
I could feel my heart beating and annoyance burbling, thoughtless thoughts roiling through my head before being quashed under the tooth and maw of knowing better than to voice pointless anger.
“Selly first, Anna second,” I told them, “Selly, you can fly… And we can not! The only way for us to know where Anna will need to cast her spell is to climb a tall bloody tree and waste time getting back. If Anna says she needs to know where the fire is, we need to know, and you’re the best one for the job.”
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“Yeh, I know I can fly, as can Annas bloody birds, which would delight in nipping me from the air as fast as I can say, ‘unprotected in the air.’ I could also be useful in getting you there faster.”
“Anna, could you get a bird to check for you,” I asked her. Selly might be terse right now, but she was being straight with me, I could be sure about it.
“Not at night with a fire that big, if it was dawn maybe, but not dusk, not for all the worms in the world,” she told me.
Well, that nixed that quickly.
“Selly… we need you to fly,” I told her, looking down at her tiny form on my shoulder.
She hesitated, flinching before looking at the sky, eyes darting as if to check the wide open sky above new-mourn already choking in smoke as the sun began to set over the mountains behind us, the light replaced by the flicker of firelight.
I could see her, hesitant and fearful in a way that I rarely saw in her. It took her a few moments of silence to open her tiny forward mouth.
“I could refuse you,” she told me quietly.
“You could. I can’t force you to do anything, but if you don’t, we’re going to have to find that out on our own,” I told her.
The rest didn’t need to be said to Selly.
She was smart enough to know that people’s lives were on the line, that people were going to die, and more would die the longer this went on. Selly could tell that, she knew that, and the sprites had always been a group that had more honour in their hearts than sense.
“What changed?” She asked simply, “What's the difference? You stopped me before and sent me away. What changed is that you’re willing to risk me getting snipped from the air?”
I didn’t want to think, I wanted to move, I wanted to act, but I answered her regardless.
“I don’t want people to die. You were more likely to die down there, and it would have been for one life. No offence, Selly, but there’s a city full of people down there. The fact that I don’t want you to get hurt doesn’t matter. You can say no, but if I tried to stop you, I would be grandstanding on corpses; it would go against everything I want to be as a person to stop you from saving more lives than you put on the line.”
I expected her to make a comment on honour, on how I was willing to throw away what I had done because there were more people on the line, but she didn’t.
She looked up at me, and said only, “So long as you don’t stray from that, you will destroy yourself,” and fluttered quickly up into the air until she was a speck against the light of the city. And just like that, she was gone.
She left as we were nearing the edge again, crossing across the clearing to the location that I knew would bring us up to Annas Grove, up into the friendly, somewhat sharp feeling sensation of nature's attention.
It was a great departure from what it had felt like earlier, pointed disapproval, though it wasn’t pointed at me or Anna, it was focused on something else.
I rushed up the last bit of hill, inside the clearing proper, and over to the porch, letting Anna down before quickly swinging the door open. I was about to zip in when I pulled back. I didn’t know where her staff was or what else she might need.
So I did the second best thing, I got out of her hair.
“Here we are, how long do you need, and can I help?”
“Now you ask,” she huffed, though in a way that told me that she was more annoyed at my actions than disapproving or angry with them.
“I’m sorry for putting you second,” I tell her, leaning in to rest my head on hers, “but Selly is Selly. She’s huffier, puffier, and will get you one of the things you need.”
“I’m well aware, Saphine,” she told me.
“Your unending generosity matches only your beauty,” I continued, knowing that I probably should have led with that, but it was too late.
“Flattery will get you everywhere,” Anna told me dryly, “I’ll need four minutes; you can't help; try breathing instead, your not doing enough of that, and I could feel your heart trying to explode out of your chest.”
It couldn’t be all that bad. I mean, my heart was beating quickly, sure, but it wasn’t that bad. I checked my breath, deepening my shallow breathing and checking my pulse while Anna got to doing whatever she was doing.
It was going fast, really fast. Slowly paying attention, I could hear my heart thundering in my chest like I was about to die.
What the hell is going on with my heart? What the hell is going on with me?
Having come to a stop, I suddenly felt out of breath and leaned against the doorframe. I watched Anna scurry into the study, I paid attention to the here and now, stood still against the doorframe and took deep breaths.
I was trying to figure out what the hell was going on after calming down a bit, trying to figure out if it was my instinct or some strange part of my mind when Anna walked up with a sack and shook me.
“What's wrong?” I asked her, my attention slipping onto her, the feeling like waking up even though I had not fallen asleep.
“The staff slid out of reach,” she told me, “I… Uh… Can’t reach it.”
She looked at me like I must have when I was a child, telling my mom I’d, ‘thred up,’ a semi-blank-eyed stare with no remaining expression, though hers was tinged with a little worry.
“So you need someone with muscles to hoist your staff? Got it,” I told her, walking in while Anna nearly choked on her own spit.
I quickly got to the door and looked in at the unassuming cabinet, walking over and looking behind it to see a stick.
It was an old thing, old wood with swirling, curly sigildry like the lines beneath the bark of an old tree across its whole length. My [Crude Foci Carver] skill shouting that this was similar to what I could make, just a few thousand times more impressive.
I tried reaching in, but my arm was too short. Cursing my arms, I grabbed the cabinet and pushed it, wiggling it in a see-saw motion until there was enough room to reach in and grab it.
It was a long length of some pale wood, sun-bleached by ages. Whatever it was, it was older than Anna, older than her mother or grandparent. It was hardwood, and that was about as much as I could tell. It was an old, hefty stick.
I was a bit dissatisfied with the lack of cool gemstones or anything overtly magical, but I took it out carefully, and as I made my way back to Anna, I cast [Inspect], weaving the simple spell into existence before letting the ball of light it produced spin out into the staff, a blue pane of magic popping into existence before me.
Guardian Greencallers Staff
Description: A staff wielded by the guardian green mage of New-Moarn, inscribed to aid in the calling of storms and the enrichment of land.
Carved by the [Cleric of Nature] Simerland after the first great fire of 375. The staff has five inscriptions to aid in calling storms to put out fires and water fields, as well as to improve soil for crops.
Inscriptions:
[Storm Caller]: A passive inscription. While the Staff is empowered, naturally corrects and improves the efficiency of casting storm spells by 25%
[Call Storm]: An inscribed spell. While the staff is empowered, allows the spellcaster to cast the spell [Call Storm] through the staff.
[Touch of Life]: A passive inscription. While the Staff is empowered, naturally corrects and improves the efficiency of casting life-based spells by 25%
[Renew Soil]: An inscribed spell. While the staff is empowered, allows the spellcaster to cast the spell [Renew Soil] through the staff.
[Grand Earthing]: While one end of the staff is placed against the ground and the staff is empowered, the inscription naturally protects the spellcaster against miscasting spells. The effects of a backlash are diminished by catching 50% of the mana of a miscast spell and harmlessly shunting it into the earth before it can return to the caster.
I wanted to whistle, but instead, I reached Anna and passed it over to her. I almost forgot that I had a shovel, but it clinked against me and I remembered its presence on my back.
Two spells, two skill-like spells to boost them and an inscription to stop the backlash of casting a powerful spell.
I suppose I know how Anna does the fertility treatments. If she has to do a ritual to cast one of these, I suppose she needs to do that for calling a storm, too. I suppose it’s a good thing that one of these is bouncing around. A staff literally made to fight a fire is a good thing, though I have to wonder where the deal with the guardian part fits in. It sounds like… a title.
Did Anna have a title I didn’t know about? It was a cool title if so.
I wonder why she never brought it up.
More attentive this time, though not by much I asked Anna after focusing back on the conversation, “Are you ready to go?”
She looked more worried. Had I missed something?
“That’s what I asked you,” Anna pointed out, “Saphine… Are you ok?”
Was I ok? I felt off, but I didn’t know what the deal with it was. It had set in after we had come into the clearing and seen the blaze.
“I… I think so?”
“You think so? Do not know so? Saphine, what is going on with you?”
“I… Well, I would love to tell you… But I have no idea; I’m kind of just in and out. Maybe I’m tired, or maybe it’s something new, I don’t know.”
She stared at me in horror and took my hand, keeping her digits firmly over mine. Her hand kept me there as we left the cabin and made our way quickly back through the stand of trees and out into the clearing to find Selly, and I did my best to stay in the moment, as my heart picked up again.