---Maddy---

Once they finally let themselves be brought over and settled in, the group therapy session began.

Jess seemed immediately ready to apologize for not protecting them – and Maddy got it. Her tomboy friend was their guardian and while delving or fighting a nest, their tanks number one job was to keep them safe. It took a while to assure her that she hadn't needed to follow them in this case – Jess hadn't seen an easy way of looking down and then had decided Maddy would have been able to call up to her with magic if the coast was clear or they needed help.

It took a bit but ultimately wasn’t that big of a deal. Jess seemed satisfied with their answers. She really had been only mildly worried.

The real problem was Troy. Something had festered for a while uncaught and it was hard to untangle what he was thinking based on the erratic body movement and facial expressions.

He was also dealing with the same death penalty as her and it was manifesting in a different way. The transition wasn’t as traumatic but the majority of his stats were gone.

Finally he confessed.

"I've been growing stronger pretty consistently and I like both of you but…I'm starting to understand that I'm not needed." Troy spoke.

Okay, instantly half a dozen answers filled Maddy's head. It had taken a lot to get Troy to open up so instead of interrupting ,she let him continue.

"We all have roles right? Jess is the wall we can hide behind and attack from. Maddy is the…the healer and the communication expert and the debuffer and the short range attacker and medium range and wide range everything in between." Troy laughed slightly at that and then continued. He was the most articulate he had ever been all his frustrations pouring out in a stream.

"And then I'm the guy in the corner taking pea shots at stuff you both already have handled. Oh sure I help quite a bit but that's it. I help. I help us get through encounters faster. I'm positive you two could handle anything without me…if you stop deluding yourselves and think properly you realize I'm right. I’m…the extra." He paused and looked away.

"Hey! That's not true," Jess called out jumping up and twisting her head in a weird direction as she attempted to avoid looking at the floor.

"You don't have to lie to me." Troy snorted.

Maddy could see both where he was coming from and yet also why he was wrong. She knew she didn't want to let him go.

She knew the position he filled and he was underselling himself immensely. Besides a possessive twinge of hers that loathed to give up a team member she hadn't been up keeping properly…she knew what he would respond to.

"Let's ignore all you do currently and talk about what you can do to become better." Maddy started.

Jess spun towards her shocked. The beginning of an angry exclamation filled her face but Maddy was more interested in how Troy reacted.

He had turned towards her a pleading look crossing his face as soon as she spoke. He didn't want to quit the group. He wanted to know what he could do to help.

"What can you imagine doing that either of us can't do? What responsibilities do you want to officially take on to feel more needed," Maddy continued and, just as she finished, Troy responded – almost cutting her off with how fast he was.

"I don't know!" Troy blurted out in frustration.

Jess's angry look on the side died and she glanced quickly at Troy. She opened and closed her mouth as if trying to respond to him.

Maddy sat for a moment then nodded.

“Okay, let’s start from the beginning. Instead of all of us mostly knowing but not saying what our roles are, we start communicating better starting now. To start let’s take a step back and say what we are currently good and bad at as well as what we think each other are good and bad at.” Maddy began.

…

After some back and forth with her friends stumbling through their views, Maddy added her own strengths and weaknesses.

“I chose to split my attention and power. That hasn’t come without costs. To start Troy – how often can you make and shoot an arrow?”

He paused then started to answer “just a normal arrow? A [drill shot]? If I create it in the bow, or draw from a stash? If I need to solidify it, or leave it unstable?”

“Any arrow. How fast can you shoot something from scratch or from a ready position and how many times can you do that?” Maddy added.

“I…from rest, it depends on how easy my bow is to reach…maybe a few seconds? If my bow is in my hands and I’m just creating and releasing an arrow just a bit over a second? A few more seconds if I have to do anything fancy with it and I can shoot maybe a hundred arrows every few minutes?” He seemed to be asking her for confirmation on every single answer.

His answer was enough for her point.

“That’s enough. Okay, my pools have each raised with each skill point but the way I’m using them has also changed. If I use most of one of my pools, it takes 6-7 minutes to refill. If I drain it completely something taxes it differently and it takes over 10 minutes to refill despite only being a little bit more. I have 3 pools but technically only have 2 regenerations considering my combined pool draws from the other two.” Maddy paused and looked at both of them.

“I’ve been really bad at managing my mana – as I’ve gotten more mana I’ve started using more and when I use more my spells are much stronger but it doesn’t change the fact I’m using my entire pool at once.” Maddy had both of their attention.

“So…I have 3 full cast spells every 20 something minutes. If you just look at my regeneration I can cast 3 spells per fight –“

Troy interrupted. “I’ve seen you cast several spells in the same fight?”

Maddy paused then nodded. “That’s usually because I can regain mana from deaths and start stockpiling it in my staff that’s all strictly death mana I can convert to life as needed. I also sometimes cast spells early using much weaker casts with less raw mana. The damage dealing spells I’ve been casting are also designed to hit everything in a fight at once instead of one by one. That weakens it quite a bit while making it more overall damage as long as there’s enough monsters being hit. All that doesn’t change the fact that – depending on the situation and events out of my control – I can only cast a few spells to your nearly endless supply. If there is a single hard to beat monster, or more appear after the fact, or a monster is able to resist my single attack…well then I’m hecking stuck. I’m good at cleaning up a single hoard. I’m good at supporting all your damage but that’s it.”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Troy seemed to have understood where she was going with this.

“You are currently our main damage dealer. You have the most consistent amount of damage and – when you do that thing where you charge up with light – you deal quite a bit more damage than either of us. I’m not trying to fill that role – I’m not trying to take over your job and I don’t even think I could with all the decisions I’ve made.” Maddy finished her rant. Near it almost shifted from an attempt to cheer Troy up to her admitting her faults. Dying…dying had brought to light just how weak she could be in certain situations. This was as much about her as it was her teammates.

“I think you are filling your role perfectly right now. As you grow stronger that position will become even stronger. You seem more keen on critiquing yourself right now that I don’t want to add anything to that but you also seem to respond better to us admitting you are human and have faults like the rest of us. Personally going forward you should get better at hiding behind Jess. If you were a melee damage dealer you would have to duck out behind her to attack but you have a great shield you can stay behind and attack from.” Maddy added.

“I need to get better at protecting you two. I need to always be with you without falling behind…or not falling in this case” Jess started to admit.

Both of her friends seemed tired but better than they had been.

…

The group spoke a bit more about their specific skills and how they might interact better.

Finally they finished the impromptu therapy session and each went their separate ways.

Their combined room had a main area and mostly private bedrooms. Mostly because while they were slightly built into the walls – the room was not a nicely shaped square design and more a lumpy mess – the only part separating them was a curtain that could be pulled out of the wall and rolled along.

Maddy pulled her curtain shut and then sat on the bed in silence. Pulling her bag towards her – she was so happy she hadn’t lost most of her cheap tools – she laid her charcoal pen and paper and similar beside her.

Maddy was exhausted – mentally she should probably take a nap before anything else and yet she knew she would feel better if she returned a bit of her kit to functionality first. As much as a clear mind would help her in her magic making having the bare minimum of magic would help her sleep.

She needed a mirror. Light…she could probably shape light into a mirror shape with enough effort but without a dedicated concept for that, the amount of effort would be huge. She didn’t have a rebound or reflection concept or anything just the innate concept of light. It would be even easier just to try and make an eye that could see her.

Besides. She could just ask for help and make her friends feel more relied upon than they had been.

“Hey, Troy? Can you make me a mirror?” Maddy called out then waited. A moment later he slipped into the curtain somewhat awkwardly and looked at her confused.

“I want to redo my tongue and need to see properly,” Maddy explained causing him to nod and then sit on the edge of her bed holding a sheet of reflective light in front of him a moment later.

It seemed he was back to the silent act. Should she comment on it? She’d ignored it because that seemed to be what he wanted but was that what he needed? Ignoring his feelings had literally just backfired.

Pulling out her charcoal pen then scooching forward on the bed Maddy opened her mouth and carefully began to draw.

This was…a crutch in some senses. She had started to rely on the ease of twisting spells with sound but it was also one of the strongest parts of her current kit as well as the easiest to remake.

Maddy was much better at her runes than she had been and the situation to reply was better than it had been before. Considering how much she used this she wanted to take her time.

Slowly Maddy brought the charcoal drawing utensils towards her mouth and began to channel mana into it lightly.

To start. the rune for sound carefully drawn as nicely as she could imagine directly in the center of her tongue. Next A group of meaningless lines spread out of it in all directions like a spider web. On each line she wrote the meaning for the line – Latch, Optional, Addition. Technically she could use her intent to push mana through the different sections without this part but adding it and making it explicit would make that shaping faster and easier. At the end of each line she added more runes – all her concepts and then all her pseudo ones just in case she wanted to add a concept to a spell on the fly. Application and orbs. Emotions, words, awake, transference, surrounding, collection, scythes.

It hurt to write that last word. Maddy felt the loss of her focus deeply. It was kind of stupid – after all she didn’t need that particular scythe at the end of the day. It was a bulky focus that had originally just been picked up off the ground.

But she had liked that scythe in a sentimental sort of way. It had been with her through a lot by this point – she had used it so much her magic had permanently warped it towards herself. All her spells had grown in it, using the scythe instead of something random made her spells more efficient. Follow her wishes more closely. Made them stronger.

Its loss was more than just an inconvenience, it represented days and days and days of continuous effort that had been wiped away.

Feeling the mana on her tongue and making sure none of the ‘ink’ had run too much due to her saliva Maddy took a deep breath and ignited the lines in an intense burst of death mana. A dump of all her mana, a flicker of separating it into life and death sections and causing them to flicker and cancel out.

Tastebuds died and flesh curdled – intense life healed the lines microseconds later. Slowly the runes became a scar and yet it was more than just an inkless tattoo the mana and intent she had for this warped everything slightly. Charcoal bled into the working and instead of being rejected when it healed the carbon bound to her tongue slightly darkening it. Mana wasn’t just consumed it lingered and was almost deposited along the runes before disappearing.

“Okay, you can put that away” Maddy spoke blinking slight tears away and examining the result carefully. It seemed to have worked.

Troy dropped the mirror, then jumped slightly as he realized how close he was to her.

Carefully moving as if to leave Maddy reached out and stopped him by holding his arm.

Making sure to hold it incredibly lightly – so he didn’t feel trapped and would only stay due to politeness – Maddy asked her question.

“Why are you non-verbal?”

Troy paused a flash of emotions flickering across his face.

He didn’t want to answer, he was afraid? He was…embarrassed?

Finally, Troy responded. Instead of a simple explanation he gave her an entire story.

“I used to talk a lot when I was a kid. You know how kids are – constantly speaking their mind. Back then we had a culture of ribbing each other and roasting friends and classmates or making jokes at each others expense. I was good at it! Or…more accurately I was bad at it in the right way. I think my brains broken – I think of things to say nearly instantly but it takes a long time to consider what I’m actually saying and decide if it’s a good idea to say it. Back then I’d blurt it out right away. Made me really good at comebacks but a lot of the time I’d go too far. Like…someone would say I’m stupid and I’d say at least my mother doesn’t have a drinking problem. That sort of thing you know? Zero to a hundred?” Troy paused for a second as if asking if she’d done the same. After a incredibly short pause Troy continued.

“It wasn’t just my so called roasts being too savage for grade school I started to realize it was everything. I was blurting out my first thoughts to things without actually thinking things through and I lost basically all my friends and got a shitty reputation and then I moved in grade 5 and it started happening again. It wasn’t just comebacks, it was me interjecting into random conversations and bringing up stuff I thought was funny or interesting and…and well I’d go to sit down at lunch and everyone would silently get up and leave and that hurt. So…so I started consciously thinking things through before I said them. I started considering the company I was in and the context and… That helped but it also meant now I’d have a mentally vetted comeback like a minute or two after the perfect time to say it. I’d want to respond to something people had mentioned near the start of the conversation and it's no longer good. I also spent so little time thinking about what to say and not actually speaking that I’ve gotten bad at it. So now there a combination of me not wanting to say anything in case I say the wrong thing and not wanting to say anything because I’m bad at words now and I’m afraid if I do say something it's going to sound stupid. I stopped being actively hated by people but I haven't had real friends since early highschool. Its been years and you two are the first real friends I've had since then and I'm afraid of saying something wrong and fucking this all up and breaking what feels like a fragile relationship because I suck.” Troy finished.

Maddy sat for a second. That…that wasn’t quite what she was expecting and that…that made her feel off. She thought she could guess someone’s circumstances well – and if she couldn’t it was because she didn’t have enough time to create a mental picture of them or enough interactions to feel them out.

Troy was really easy to deal with and yet he had been sitting on such a huge backstory she hadn’t guessed and–.

…and it made her feel like she wasn’t as good with people as she thought she was. But maybe that was fine? No it felt wrong. Just because Troy had a brand of anxiety that stemmed in a direction she hadn’t dealt with before shouldn’t make him some enigma.

Jess popped through the curtain to come up behind Troy.

Without saying anything she hugged him from behind – the illusion of privacy broken by the flimsy curtain.

The three sat like this in silence for a while.

Today…today had been a lot.