Day 343, Winter 5
Loriette died today. It’s her own mongrel fault. I was hiding us from the Wolfine spirit with Speck and she threw the aspect off. It is uncomfortable for some, but she said she was strong enough for it. She wasn’t. Her Losirisian blood showed through. Tzoa thinks I killed her on purpose. She doesn’t know that Loriette was my ally. I refuse to grieve a cur, but I wish she’d returned some of the value I’d invested in her before dying. She was getting good with a sword. I hid her remains in the great hollow stump on the northeast edge of the Salt Iron Depths. I can’t use the sword, but I can trade its location for a little paint or cloth when the market comes through.
Maja flaring on the other side of the barracks pulled my attention away from the notes.
Adrian and Alexa were giving off the magical equivalent of raised voices coming from another room. I didn’t know what they were arguing about. I was happy to stay out of it. Adrian had been in a bad mood since I’d got back from fighting Mira the previous night. He’d professed outrage on my behalf. He’d wanted to run out and face her down that instant. Personally, I think he was just angry he’d missed a fight.
I hadn’t been in a position to run off then, and I was still recovering now. My maja was spent, and a night’s accumulation hadn’t done anything for me. I’d lost my sword after being disarmed by Sacrasmodi. And I still hadn’t finished my assignment. It was only stacking stones, but I hadn’t even started. Three days to go.
I tried to ignore the arguing and went back to the notes I’d taken from the Behr.
They were the work of a Potentiate called Aderyn. I wasn’t sure when he’d died, exactly. His journal was scattered across every paper, sometimes sharing space with unrelated topics, and he hadn’t made them regularly enough to notice a particular cut-off date.
The notes contained directions to information in the library. Useless now, after Antonyx’s reforms. There was speculation on how to acquire different aspects. He’d documented his experiments. There were even references to fields of unstructured magic I hadn’t read about before. There was an area of intent-based magic that came from having a close connection to the Fold. Significant actions in the mortal world left a wake in the Fold, and with practice a mage could read those ripples and infer details about distant events. He’d also included notes on a body-reinforcement technique for speed, spreading maja around the body in unintuitive ways to increase the mage’s reflexes.
I didn’t think I’d ever be very good at reading the subtleties of the Fold. It seemed too much like an art, which had always been a problem for me. No matter how many times Scribe Bevin had drilled me on the principles of aesthetics and the beauty of calligraphy, I’d never developed an eye for it. My father had tried to teach me animal tracking before he died, and it had been the same thing. He’d ended up throwing my hunting bow into the river. I liked clear lines and regular patterns, not ambiguous shapes pressed weakly into mud. My focus on precision had ended with me learning the Storm’s Gate canto, so I didn’t think I was in the wrong.
The reinforcement technique on the other hand seemed promising. Aderyn had copied passages on it from a library book verbatim, and I already knew how to move maja around my body. Provided I had any.
Something bit me while I was burying her body. A small red worm. The bite turned mottled, but I can’t feel any poison. I hate the thought of going to the infirmary. Sectus is a bastard I will not visit willingly. I gave Torvald a pouch of paint to check it. He thinks it might be a spirit trying to impose a contract on me. I have to ignore it and try not to think of the worm. The more power I give it, the more legitimate the bargain becomes.
I looked up from the note, trying to remember the fight with the Behr. It had been covered in dark writing shapes. Had this been the moment Aderyn was infected by the spirit that turned him into the Behr?
I felt the Adrian’s maja surge just outside the cell in the corridor, and the door swung open. It hit the rock I’d put there for privacy, then pushed the rest of the way open, scraping it across the stone floor.
I looked up and saw him standing in the doorway. He’d remade his staff after losing his last one in the swamp. This one was longer, made of dark hickory, with a bulge at one end where he’d used a natural knot to give it a weighted end. That part of the wood was shiny and blackened, and I wondered if he’d taken my idle story of my village’s cudsills to heart.
“You’re not going to take this lying down, are you?” he asked.
“Take what?” I asked.
“Those baby Reeves who beat you up.”
“I’m not taking it lying down.”
“Okay. What are you doing about it?”
I looked down at my bed, papers and drawings scattered around me and over me.
“I’m studying.”
“I’ve talked to Sal. She’s willing to fight,” Adrian said.
“Why did you do that.”
“Why wouldn’t I? We’re your friends. We can’t let them get away with kicking you around like that.”
“That’s kind of you, but it’s not the first time I’ve been kicked around. My pride will survive it.”
“What about the magic spring? We could use that.”
“I don’t think it’s worth the risk,” I said. “I’m lucky there were only three of them. As soon as more people find it, it’s going to turn into an open war up there.”
Adrian stared at me for a few seconds, then looked away.
“Me and Sal already decided we’re going to go for it.”
“No,” I said. I rubbed my forehead, trying to stop the muscles from bunching in the way that led to the worst headaches.
“Yes. I want to have a go on this spring even if you don’t.”
“You just want to get into a fight.”
“And why shouldn’t we? They started it. If we let them get away with it, we’re going to get pushed around the whole time we’re here.”
“We shouldn’t because they’re stronger than us. They know more. They’re more powerful, And they’re willing to kill us.”
Adrian frowned. “You did alright with them. They can’t be that powerful.”
I hesitated. I had done alright. I’d survived long enough to run away, anyway. There were half a dozen times where if things had gone differently, I’d be maimed, or dead, or whatever Mira had wanted to do to me. At the time, I had thought that it’d have gone better if Adrian and Sal had been there. In the cold morning light of the next day I hadn’t really believed it.
I pictured Adrian facing Mira. He probably wouldn’t even catch her putting him in a dream. She wouldn’t have to lift a blade to kill him. If she actually tried to fight him with weapons from her spirit armory, then he might do well, until her friend intervened. Against Force, Spin, and whatever else he had, Adrian wouldn’t have any defense. They probably had magic they hadn’t displayed as well, and power they’d held in reserve. It was hard to imagine someone spending a year here and not picking up all I had and more. What did Adrian have? A nice stick. I’d put more money on Sal than him, but I had the feeling Sal would have the sense to back out when she realized what she was getting into.
“I’m going at noon, if you want to come,” he said.
I shook my head. The thought of me letting him go alone was as ridiculous as him winning against the three of them.
“Not noon,” I said. “I’ll come. But we should go later, at night.”
“They might not be there at night,” Adrian complained.
“That’s the idea.”
Adrian was giving me a petulant look. I’d been right. He really just did want the chance to fight some other students.
“If we go and there’s no one guarding the spring, we can bring the others up and get them some important accumulation time. It’ll help everyone.”
I watched the thought percolate across his face. Invoking the others had done it. He did have a sense of community, for all that he’d left the barracks to live alone in the woods. After a few seconds it won out over his death wish, or whatever was pushing him to fight.
“Fine. Tonight, after sunset.”
“At midnight,” I corrected him.
Adrian stared glumly for a few seconds, then a smile caught the corners of his mouth. I suddenly wondered if I was the one who’d been played.
He left, and I swept Aderyn’s notes aside, pulling out my own little collection of scrolls. I’d drawn out every cantogram I knew in charcoal, worried about forgetting them. I’d written down my insights on using them, as well as the things I’d seen in the Fold relics that I didn’t mind Adrian reading if he ever decided to search under my mattress.
I grabbed my tin cup that held the last of my ink. It was more gray than black, lately, and the strong maja smell it used to give off was now just a faintly prickling odor of dampness. It still worked for cantograms, but the storage capacity was down to almost nothing. If I diluted it any more, it probably wouldn’t work at all.
Picking up my brush I started inking the Storm’s Gate onto the palm of my left hand.
As if sensing the presence of a cantogram to drain, the tiny spider spirit Jason had brought me appeared at the cell’s window. It flickered across the wall, then down to where I was sitting on the bed. It hopped onto a sheet of paper describing Aderyn’s experience with a spirit of rage he’d escaped from in the swamp and just sat there.
“I don’t have anything for you, today,” I told it.
It didn’t react. I was tapped out, and the Winter Hearth cantos on the wall had drained naturally. With the weather getting warmer, Adrian hadn’t bothered to refill them. The only maja in the room was in the ink pot and the canto I was painting on my hand, but the spirit didn’t approach those.
“You’re looking a little more solid today,” I said.
The spirit didn’t respond.
“It must be all that maja you’ve been stealing.”
It wandered to the left slightly, then turned around in a circle, and went back to its original position. It seemed content to sit there while I read.
I finished the Storm’s Gate, blowing it to dry the ink, then turned my hand. On the back I painted the Sky’s Appetite canto. All it did was absorb maja that was directed at it. It was meant to be used in conjunction with other cantograms, but I thought it might be useful for defense. The maja capacity of my thin ink was too low for it to absorb any intense magic. Force, Fire, or Wheel would overflow it as soon as it touched it, probably burning me in the process, but Thought and Dream were lighter touches. It might block one of Mira’s attempts to trick me.
The ink was too thin to paint on fingertips, so I used the last of it to paint a Spirit Siphon canto onto the back of one of Aderyn’s journal entries. I’d left my real spirit siphon up on the upper terrace, but the scroll might work as a last-ditch weapon against a spirit.
As I rolled the scroll up to put in my pouch, I caught sight of a name on the back that made me stop.
Mira.
I unrolled the scroll and actually read the journal entry.
Day 288, Fall 41
I fought with another student today, an Antorxian Potentiate named Mira. Dark hair, tan skin, lives on the fifth terrace in the tenth cabin from the south wall. She brought me low with Agony, then trapped me in a Dream of disease, though the dream was flawed. She doesn’t know what illness is really like. I lost the first bout, but later I managed to approach her under Speck. I got close enough to put my blade to her back, but just when I was poised to strike her spirit discovered me. He has the look of a Cortissian knight, and dwells within a binding bracelet she keeps on her left wrist. The spirit fought me off without Mira ever noticing. Between her aspects and her bound spirit, she is hard to approach. It would take overwhelming force from a physical opponent, which isn’t where my strength lies. For now she is best avoided.
Aderyn had kept notes on several of the other students, but this was the first time reading about one I knew. From the description, I was sure this was the same Mira I’d fought the previous day.
I hadn’t seen any sign of a bracelet, but knowing it was there, I wondered if we could disarm her of it.
~
Mira was there when we reached the spring. So was Jason.
Our barracks-mate was sitting across from her, both of them cross-legged with their eyes closed, accumulating. Seil was there with them, keeping watch, but Duran who’d been with her before was missing.
“Dorian. I can’t help but notice she’s sitting nicely with Jason,” Adrian said, watching them from his hiding spot next to me. “So I’ve got to ask, what did you do to piss her off?”
We were crouching between the trees on the edge of the wooded facing the spring. Sal and Adrian flanked me. Both had armed themselves as best they could, Adrian with his new staff, Sal with a shorter staff and a shepherd’s sling she’d been made from canvas. I’d seen her practicing with the sling, and I doubted she’d be able to hit Mira from any distance.
This late at night there was no moon, and there were too many clouds for there to be much starlight, but Mira’s group had lit a small campfire by the spring and they were sitting with their backs to it. We could see them clearly, but they probably wouldn’t be able to see us in the shadows.
I searched the scene for a minute, finally spotting my sword on the ground at Mira’s feet. I’d dropped it while running, and she’d taken it.
“Nothing,” I said. “She attacked me before I’d even seen her.”
“Then why is she perfectly fine with Jason?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
Privately, I had my suspicions. Mira was adept at using Thought aspect to manipulate people, and she looked like she was short one lackey.
Jason knew about the Thought aspect, I’d told the entire Sixth Day group, but knowing that it existed, even knowing that your opponent could use it, didn’t necessarily immunize someone to it. I’d gone into the fight with Mira knowing that Thought aspect was a possibility and even I had taken a few minutes to realize what she was doing.
I didn’t know how susceptible Jason was to it. He’d been raised as the son of a mayor. Maybe he was used to having his life dictated to him.
“Well, Jason’s a lot more polite than Dorian,” Sal chipped in. “Maybe he charmed her.”
“She didn’t seem very charmable to me,” I said.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“Who’s the other guy?” Adrian asked.
“That’s Seil. I didn’t see him use any external maja. I’m not sure he’s even a Potentiate. He might be an initiate, like us.”
“So, kind of a pushover?”
“It feels unkind to say so, but yes,” I said.
We watched them for another minute. If there was anyone else around, I couldn’t see them or sense them. There was no sign of Mira’s bound spirit, but I wasn’t optimistic enough to think I’d destroyed it with the low quality spirit siphon I’d thrown at its feet.
“I want you two to hang back,” Adrian said. “If she tries anything, it’ll be me against her and the other one. I can handle those odds.”
“She’s going to throw Thought, Dream, and Agony at you,” I said. “I don’t know how you’ll handle Dream.”
“If I start walking in circles, throw a rock at me or something,” Adrian said. He grabbed his staff and rose to his feet.
He started moving forward through the trees before I could voice any more objections. As he approached the treeline I thought I felt the touch of the strange maja he’d shown in the swamp, a sensation that was close to a sound, like the drumming of rain against stone walls. He’d never explained what that was, despite his promise to.
“So we’re his backup,” Sal said, watching Adrian get closer and closer to the spring. “We rush out and take them by surprise, or something?”
“I don’t think he put any thought into it,” I said. “He just wants the chance to fight them on his own.”
Adrian reached the edge of the trees. I didn’t know if he made a noise, or pulled on his maja, or if Mira was so deep in the Fold that she could just passively sense him, but something tipped her off.
She opened her eyes and rose casually to her feet. She looked around, finally spotting Adrian standing between two trees at the edge of the clearing by the wall.
I was too far away to feel any movement in her maja, but I would have been surprised if she wasn’t trying something.
Adrian walked towards her slowly. Seil was moving around to stand behind him, a threat no matter how little magic he could use. Adrian said something to Jason, and Jason got to his feet.
I scraped my core for the dregs of my maja and pushed it into a burst of Thought, staring it out towards Adrian.
I felt the spell fly out and knew it had landed, but Adrian didn’t raise his hand.
“Should we go in?” Sal asked.
At that moment, Mira threw out her hand, gesturing at Adrian with her fingers bent into claws. Adrian swayed, then dropped to his knees. I could hear his groan of pain even from a hundred feet away.
“Yes,” I said.
Sal was already moving, stomping through the undergrowth towards them.
I hung back, then set off on a curved path that might let me get to the spring without being seen.
I was useless as I was. All I had was my bare hands, and I wasn’t much use in a fist fight, but if I could get into the maja coming from the vent I’d have everything I needed.
When we were halfway there Adrian got to his feet. Pushing through the pain, he rushed Mira, swinging his staff at her legs.
Mira looked shocked. She broke off her spell to dodge and Adrian punished her for it, knocking her feet out from under her and sending her falling to the ground. Mira waved a hand, and Adrian staggered back. He started swinging the staff around wildly, batting at the air like he was fighting off an invisible horde.
I crouched, pulled what maja I still could together, and sent another beam of Thought at him.
I felt it when my message fizzled out. I didn’t even have enough maja left for a full sentence.
I stumbled, catching myself on a tree. I was completely tapped out.
Out by the fissure, Mira had summoned a spirit sword — not a Reeve’s feather blade, but a long, two-handed cleaver. If it hadn’t been mostly insubstantial I doubted she’d even have been able to lift it.
Just as Adrian was shaking off the Dream, Seil came up behind him and hit him on the back of the head. I couldn’t see what kind of weapon Siel was using, it might even have been just a rock, but I could see the back of Adrian’s scalp was painted red after it.
Sal reached the group. She threw a jet of red fire at Seil, then followed it up with a spray of molten droplets at Mira. Fire aspect was spectacular in action. I could see why a student might suffer a burn to learn it.
Mira managed to dodge back out of the way of the flames, sweeping her cleaver at them, as if the insubstantial weapon could deflect them. For all I knew, it could. Seil was less lucky. The jet of fire caught on his clothes and he panicked. He fell to the ground, scrambling backwards across the earth as he slapped at his burning robe.
With Mira’s attention broken, Adrian recovered quickly. He climbed to his feet, joining up with Sal, standing across from Mira.
All through the hostilities, Jason had stood by the sidelines. He hadn’t joined in, one way or the other.
I continued working my way around, keeping out of sight. I managed to get into an angle where Mira couldn’t see me, on the opposite side of her to where Mira and Adrian stood.
This was going better than I thought. Potentiate or not, Mira didn’t have the raw force of Duran, and the aspects she did know where more subtle. Agony, Dream, and Thought might be effective, but only if they could be sustained. Between the three of us, we should be able to keep her too occupied to focus on any one of us.
I reached the circle of firelight, a few yards behind Mira. I stood, breathing heavily, staring at Adrian and Sal.
“You’re hyenas, then, only challenging the lion as a pack,” Mira was saying. “Weaklings, on your own.”
I felt the prickle of maja on my skin. The tingling smell of sour vinegar washed out of the fissure. I let my eyes close halfway and drew it in.
“It’s over,” I said, letting the breath out. I had all the maja I needed, so long as I stood here.
Mira didn’t jump, but she did spin around to look at me.
“You again, the cur,” she said.
She moved slowly backwards, putting herself in a position where she could see all three of us at once.
“Potentiate or not, you can’t beat all three of us,” I said to her.
She cocked her head, giving me a skeptical expression, then she threw out both hands.
The surge in her maja happened too quickly to anticipate. My vision went black. My body was curling down into a ball against my will. There was hot fluid in my throat.
It took a second to fully comprehend that I was in pain, that my skin was on fire, that all my bones were broken, and that a colony of ants were making their home in my veins. I could hear a high-pitched inhuman noise, merging with two others in a chorus. Our cries. My fingers curled in front of me. I tried dragging them against the dirt, desperate for any sensation other than the pain, but nothing else could get through.
In the corner of my vision I saw Adrian stand up. He dusted himself down, and stepped towards Mira. The drumming sensation coming from was loud, now. Not rain on roofs or hail on shutters, but arrows thudding against wooden shields. A never-ending volley.
Mira looked horrified that Adrian was moving. She stepped back and held her cleaver ready. Even distracted, she kept the flow of Agony maja coming. I fell onto my side, grasping out at the grass. I could see Sal was in the same position. Her hand stretched out towards me, and I tried to reach for her. Our fingers touched, both seeking something, but it didn’t make any difference to what we felt.
Above us, Adrian and Mira fought. Through the haze I saw Adrian’s staff deflect Mira’s cleaver, then he pressed the attack, swinging to hook her legs. She retaliated by calling out her spirit, Sacrasmodi. The insubstantial knight formed behind Adrian, going after him with a tasseled spear.
Adrian spun his staff, knocking the knight back, then made a thrust towards Mira which she dodged. Seil apparently thought this was his moment and ran in, grabbing my sword off the ground and trying to stab Adrian in the back with it. Adrian heard it coming and twisted, knocking the other man to the ground.
Jason at least didn’t join in on Mira’s side. He was watching almost dispassionately, occasionally moving as if he wanted to help, but never actually committing.
Now it was three against one in the opposite direction, Mira, Seil, and Sacrasmodi against Adrian, and Adrian couldn’t even use any aspects.
I rolled on my back, trying to lift my arm between me and Mira. I was surprised I could make my arm move at all, with my bones shattered like this. I raised my hand and turned the back of it to face her, putting the Sky’s Appetite canto between her and myself.
When my hand reached the level of my head, blocking off my vision of Mira, the pain finally subsided.
I felt like I was holding the back of my mind to a hot pan, but that was nothing compared to the Agony. The pain from Mira’s aspect was gone, but the memory of it was sharp enough that it was almost pain in its own right.
I got to my knees, spitting on the ground, making sure to keep my hand blocking my sight of Mira. My eyes ached from trying to roll up into my head, and my muscles were sore from tensing. I’d thrown up, and there were tears on my cheeks. I let myself get a glimpse of Mira through my fingers, then I pointed the palm of my free hand at her.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Maja flooded my core. I could only hold on to most of it for a second, but for that second I might as well have been accumulating for the last year.
I opened my eyes. I held my left hand out while I maintained the block with my right. Before my breath could escape I took hold of the maja from the spring and fed it to the Storm’s Gate canto.
A luminous cable of light flashed out of my palm. It struck the rockslide to Mira’s left with a sound like snapping stone.
The spell gave her enough of a scare that she dropped the flow of Pain aspect. In the corner of my eye I saw Sal roll onto her front. She wiped her eyes, then got to her feet.
The ink marking the cantogram on my palm had been obliterated by the passing energy, but I had one more. I turned my right hand around to point the palm at her.
“No. Leave her to me, now,” Adrian said.
I looked over at Sal. She looked furious, and I wasn’t sure she would hold back, but she focused on Seil and Sacrasmodi, mixing fire with hits from her staff to get their attention off Adrian.
Seil ran as soon as he saw the fire again, disappearing into the trees. Sacrasmodi stayed and fought her, but while she couldn’t block his weapons, the fire she threw ate through large pieces of the spirit’s immaterial body like acid.
Adrian and Mira fought. She seemed to have abandoned all aspect use, focusing on fighting him with her cleaver. It might have gone better for her if she’d had a physical weapon. The fight between them ended with Adrian hooking the knot of his staff around Mira’s neck and throwing her against a rock. Her head hit the stone, and she slumped to the ground.
Sacrasmodi stopped fighting immediately after she went down. He stood back in a ready pose, the slitted helmet turned to look at the fallen Potentiate. His spiritual body was a ruin after suffering under Sal’s fire, but he didn’t show it in his stance. Seil was gone, and probably wouldn’t come back without Mira to help him.
I hurried over to Mira’s downed form. I watched her for a second. She was still breathing, but I didn’t think she was about to leap up and cast us down with magic again.
“Sal, can you check her wrist? She should have a bracelet,” I said.
Sal came over to her and pulled up Mira’s sleeve. Halfway up her arm, just above the elbow, there was a solid silver band. Sal grabbed it and pulled it down until she could slip it off her wrist. She stood up, turning it to look at in the light.
I turned around and looked for Sacrasmodi, but he’d vanished.
Sal apparently wasn’t done with Mira. The girl had a pouch hanging inside her robe, which Sal took, and a loose-leafed book in a hand-sewed inside pocket of her robe. Sal tossed me the book and I caught it, looking it over. I couldn’t find a title or author. I slipped it under my arm to look at later.
I spent a minute looking around before I found my sword. It wasn’t undamaged, but none of the damage was new. I put it back in my scabbard and turned to look at the trees.
It took a while for the thought to coalesce, but I’d been wrong earlier. Mira really could have killed us all, even alone, even with all three of us working together and the spring making up for my lack of maja. She’d struck without warning, casting us down with one working of Pain aspect. If Adrian hadn’t been able to fight through it, this would have ended differently.
I looked around, surveying the clearing around the landslide. Jason was looking at Mira with a look of pained sympathy in his eyes, like he’d just watched someone fall out of a tree. Sal was doing some healer’s checks on Mira, opening the girl’s eyes, then checking her breathing and pulse. She was working with strange tenderness for all that Mira had just caused us the worst agony of our lives. Adrian was standing off to the side, eyes closed. His lips were moving. The strange drumming sensation was gone.
As I stared at him he opened his eyes, catching me looking. He smiled at me.
I looked behind him into the woods.
“Seil,” I shouted. There wasn’t any reply. “Come out. If you don’t attack us, we won’t attack you.”
There was rustling, and the third member of Mira’s group stepped out from behind a tree much closer than I’d expected.
“Mira’s been manipulating you,” I said. He’d heard this before, but this time Mira wasn’t around to plant words in his head. “If you want to get away from her, now’s your chance.”
Seil looked at Mira for a long time. He shook his head.
“Then do you want to take her to the infirmary?” I asked.
He nodded. He moved out of the trees, over to where Mira was sitting. I wasn’t sure how he was planning to move her alone, but it turned out that he didn’t need help. He crouched down, put Mira’s head and arms over his shoulder, then stood up, lifting her as if she was no heavier than a bag of oats.
He tried to keep his eyes on us as he walked back to the trees, almost tripping in the process, and eventually he turned around and started fast-walking away. It seemed like more loyalty than she deserved.
“Are you all right, Jason?” I asked, turning to him.
Jason’s head jerked up at me. He looked surprised and anxious. I half expected him to bolt.
“Yes. I’m fine, they didn’t hurt me.”
“Why not?” Sal asked pointedly.
“I’d come across some information in the library, and the girl there was willing to let me share their fire for it.”
“What information?” I asked.
He looked around at us awkwardly. “The knowledge of how to learn the Blade aspect.”
“How do you learn it?” Sal asked.
Jason hesitated for a second before answering. “Drive a knife through paper, silk, and tin, one thousand times each. I’m sorry I didn’t share it before. I didn’t think it would help any of us.”
“We are a bit short on tin,” Adrian admitted.
I was privately horrified at the thought of wasting that much paper. Paper wasn’t cheap.
“I’m going to go fetch the others,” Adrian said.
Tom, Terese, and Olan hadn’t participated in the fight. None of them felt like they had anything to bring. They would have been our version of Seil, running around with clubs and not much else, but they could still take advantage of the spring.
I turned from the trees and went to sit by the fissure. We’d only have a limited amount of time before word got out and we had more than just Mira for competition, and I’d spent everything I had to get here.
With the campfire crackling near me, I closed my eyes and breathed.