Kearse walked around the outside of the road sanctuary to stretch his legs. The second day of the pilgrimage had gone much like the first, in that he did all of the driving while the women relaxed in the back of wagon. The short stop they had made for lunch hadn’t been any help, and he had been back in the seat before any good opportunities to voice his complaint could appear. Now, his muscles burned with blessed relief as has circulation began to return.

“I should have known they didn’t wanted a man for ‘protection’. They just wanted someone to do the heavy lifting.”

Haylen and Mayra had spent most of the ride discussing the hungover homunculus accompanying them, and the many things she had said the night before. Indigo had ended up needing a lot of alcohol to make it through that conversation. When they occasionally remembered to ask his thoughts, he gave his honest opinion, but otherwise kept quiet.

Kearse still wasn’t sure what to make of it all. It was just so… broad. There was so much to take in and Indigo hadn’t exactly done a great job of explaining things clearly. It probably didn’t help that she had started rambling once she got a bit of wine into her. She would start giving one answer, only to realize that it raised a dozen more questions, and then she would try to preemptively explain all of those, only to forget what the original topic had been.

Her world only had humans, there was no magic, and they had somehow found ways to surpass the Ancestors? Those were the main things he had gotten out of it.

When the liquor bottles had come out Indigo had lost any form of coherent dialogue. She had started ranting about lack of electrical nets that people could talk somehow through, started crying about all of the books she would never get to finish, and then complained about how Grammon’s entire existence was illogical.

“Also, ‘magic is bullshit.’ I think she stated that fact at least eight times.”

He had only half listened to most of what she had said. It was… easier that way, and pretty much all of it had been beyond his understanding. He was only a street sweeper. Indigo’s big reveal didn’t actually have any impact on his life, so there was no point in overthinking things. It didn’t even seem to have much of an impact on her own. It was just a secret that she wanted to get off her chest. Nothing more.

Indigo would have said it in a lot more words, but that’s what it boiled down to.

Sure, this explained a bit about her. She often used weird phrases or swore in languages that nobody else could understand. It also explained how she knew about so many different things or had a larger number of skills than anyone could be expected to learn in such a short time.

It should have been obvious, but Indigo had so many strange traits that it would have been impossible to pin down the exact reason.

“Who in their right mind would think, ‘This person’s a bit odd. They must be from another world!’? Nobody. That’s who.

But none of what Indigo had said made Kearse feel like she was a different person. She was still the same crazy girl he had pulled out of a necropolis alleyway. Indigo was still Indigo, and he’d leave it to Haylen and Mayra to fret over the minor details.

“She’s a binge drinking, music playing, zombie slaying two year old. If you started pulling insane ideas out of a hat, chances are that at least one would apply to her. That her soul is from another world probably isn’t even the strangest thing about her.”

It wasn’t even that far-fetched of an idea. Probably. He was certainly no mage, but everyone had heard a story or two about summoner mages that could pull fantastical creatures out of thin air. Some of those stories had even involved the summoner making a bargain for their soul. That Indigo’s had seemed like the exact opposite of those legends didn’t mean much.

She seemed pretty convinced that there was no going back to her old world. That was a detail Kearse had payed attention to, and he guessed that it was one of the more important ones. Indigo was here to stay. She was a foreigner trying to adapt to a new place.

“Dad was too young to even remember coming to Orlis, but I bet grandpa would know what to tell her. He’d probably find a way to phrase it as a joke too.”

Kearse missed his grandfather. The man had been worldly, even by imperial standards, but he was also grounded, and knew exactly what to say, and how to say, the exact thing that someone needed to hear.

What did Indigo need to hear?

Probably a simple, “Shut up.” Kearse could relate to the desire to be understood, but this seemed more than that. The girl had a strange compulsion for honesty, even beyond her curse to tell the truth. For some reason, she just couldn’t settle down unless people knew exactly what she was trying to say.

People were allowed to have secrets! He might not have had any, not really, but there were plenty of things he didn’t want to talk about, so he didn’t. It was that easy! But Indigo seemed to be constantly looking for excuses to talk about the things she shouldn’t be wanting to share.

“Maybe she just has different standards for what can and can’t be said. She’s got a lot of things that she definitely won’t tell people, but those are the Ancestor’s secrets, not hers.”

Kearse had nearly finished his fifth lap of the sanctuary when he stopped and looked down at a flash of color that caught his eye.

There, growing from a narrow crack at the base of the wooden wall was an iridescent blue flower that resembled a rose

“Holy first!”

Kearse blinked, looked away, covered his eyes, and pinched himself to make sure that he wasn’t dreaming, but each time that he turned back to the flower, it was still there.

“Mayra?” he shouted. “Mayra, can you come out here for a moment?”

There was no response.

“Damn. Alright. Calm down Kearse. Everything’s fine. The flower’s not going anywhere.”

“Hey! Can someone come out here? I’m outside by the back wall!”

Finally he heard a noise from inside the sanctuary, followed shortly after by Indigo walking around the corner. She still looked a bit groggy, but more aware than she had been that morning.

“The other two are off taking a piss,” Indigo commented, waving her hand in an indistinct direction. “You need help with something?”

Kearse felt the urge to smack her. So he did. Right to the back of the head. He had been raised with the idea that it was wrong to strike a woman, but after fighting alongside them in the military, the sentiment seemed a little old fashioned. Even if he hadn’t, Indigo would have been a large exception to the rule.

A reflexive, “Ow,” was her only response, and Kearse felt a little less guilty. He didn’t want to hurt her, but Indigo could be a real idiot sometimes, and he needed her to pay attention.

“Shut up and look at this,” he said, pulling her by the horn down towards the flower.

Indigo smacked lightly at his hand, but stopped when she became instantly distracted by what he wanted her to see.

“A flower?” she asked.

Kearse nodded.

“It’s amazing, right?”

“Yes? It’s pretty. And it’s definitely magical, but I don’t know what kind of magic it is. We should probably ask Mayra about it.”

“I know that! That’s why I was calling for her in the first place! Don’t you know what this is?”

Kearse pointed at the flower as if the answer was self-evident. Indigo stared at the plant and blinked slowly while she thought.

“No? You seem to know what it is though. I may have heard of it, but unless you tell me, I’ve got no idea what I’m looking at. I can tell you’re excited, but please, skip the theatrics. I’m tired, my head is full of fuck, and while the worst of my hangover is gone, I’m still far from fully functional. So… the flower. What is it?”

Kearse sighed. Leave it to Indigo to take the wind out of his sails.

“It’s… it’s a mana flower,” he said, having lost some of his previous excitement.

“Ah, yes. A mana flower. A flower of mana. Truly a magical plant. The magic that blooms. And uh… it’s very blue-ish?”

“You have no idea what this is, do you.”

“None at all. Never even heard of it. I think I just said that.”

“It’s a mana flower!”

“Yah, and you just said that too. I still don’t know what it is.”

Kearse wanted to smack her again, but held himself back.

“How do you not know what this is? You saw Mayra drinking it back in Peninsula! All of the mages were practically inhaling these things.”

Indigo looked at him in that annoying way that made him feel like the stupid one of the two.

“How do you drink a flower? And I’m pretty sure I didn’t see any of the mages snorting anything. Wait, do you mean that tea she likes? Also, you still haven’t told me why this is such a big deal.”

“Mana flowers are rare. Incredibly rare. The mages make tea from it because it helps them resist the necropolis’ drain on their mana.”

Indigo’s eyes went wide, and Kearse felt better for having gotten an actual reaction out of her.

Mana flowers were indeed rare. Maybe not incredibly rare, but they were still difficult for anyone to get their hands on. They couldn’t be grown in captivity, sprouting seemingly at random in the wild. Anyone who did find one either used it for themselves, or gifted it to a friend that could.

They were rarely ever sold, and when they were, it was usually to the mages guild. Even with the amount of treasure Kearse had brought back from the Peninsula, buying one would have been a major purchase. He knew. He had checked.

“Oh! Well that is pretty cool. So… you want to give Mayra the fancy flower? But we’re not even close to a necropolis, right? Would she even need it? Or does she just like the taste?”

“No, I’m not giving it to Mayra! I’m going to drink this one.”

Indigo shrugged and held out her hands, at even more of a loss than when she had started.

“Look, Kearse, I’m sorry if this comes off as offensive, but use your fucking words! Why is this such a big deal?!”

“Because if I make this into tea and drink it, I’ll be able to touch my mana!”

Now it was Indigo’s turn to deliver a smack to the upside of Kearse’s head.

“Well why didn’t you say so in the first place?! That’s important, right?! Why didn’t you just go and grab Mayra?”

Flick.

“Because you said she was taking a piss!”

Whack.

“A gentlemen shouldn’t say piss!”

Thunk.

“You said it first!”

The two traded friendly blows as they walked back into the fortified building.

* * *

Like Kearse, everyone was focused on the small pot of water being brought to a simmer on the open hearth in the center of the room.

Indigo and Haylen were silent, but Mayra was talking, trying to prepare him for what was soon to come.

“Honestly Kearse, you should have just told me you couldn’t touch your mana. I still had half of my allotment when we left the necropolis. I could have shared some with you back then.”

The mage’s tone was lecturing, but not unkind.

“You barely knew me at the time. You wouldn’t have shared it, and you would have been right not to. Back then, I was just a soldier you had known for a few days. Nobody would share a mana flower with someone they just met.”

Mayra hesitated, but still felt a need to defend herself.

“Well… alright. I probably wouldn’t have. But I still would have felt bad about refusing you. I’ve still got some now, and I definitely would have given you a cup at this point!”

“You do?”

“Yes! The guild took most of it back, but they let me keep a few doses.”

Kearse paused, not quite sure of how to act in this moment when two people realized that there had been a misunderstanding.

“It doesn’t matter. Not anymore,” he said. “You didn’t know I couldn’t touch my mana, and I didn’t know you had some extra flowers. But it doesn’t matter. I’ve got my own flower now.”

Haylen was treating this seriously. She had found her mana early in her life, perhaps because of her fae heritage, but was still able to appreciate how important this was for Kearse. The half-elf, as far as he knew, couldn’t use any magic. No like Mayra or Indigo could, at least. If it had a subtler effect on her life, she either hadn’t said, or hadn’t noticed.

Indigo seemed to have regained some of her usual energy, and was practically bouncing in her seat. Maybe it was because she was an innately magical being, but she had apparently never had trouble touching her mana. According to her, she had managed it on only her second try. The homunculus seemed more interested in the process of brewing the tea than she was with what would come after.

But Mayra understood. She had spent the better part of her childhood reaching for the magical energies within her. She knew how Kearse felt. She knew that that the cup of tea she was preparing was more than a just a cup of tea. This was a cup of magic.

Soon, she would hand him something that had taken her years to obtain. She would be fully within her rights to feel jealous, but instead she acted honored. Kearse had seen her throwing fire, ice, and lightning at the undead of the necropolis, but now more than ever, she was a mage in her element. She was about to share her blessing with someone who could appreciate her craft.

Kearse had no intention of becoming a mage. He was a street sweeper who knew a little about using a spear. He could be content with that. A mage? Him? No, that wasn’t his path. But being able to touch your mana was something that people the world over dreamed about. Once he had drunk the tea, he would no longer be a simple street sweeper. He would be a street sweeper that could touch his mana. And yes, there was a difference.

A farmer with mana could tell you exactly how many apples they had on their trees. They just knew which of the crops needed tending, and which were growing well. A baker with mana might have an instinctive knowledge of when the bread was ready, or when the temperature of their oven had reached that perfect level of heat. There wasn’t anyone in the world who couldn’t improve their lives with magic.

And the tools! Pots and pans that could heat themselves without fire. Boxes that kept produce cool even in the middle of summer. Lights that didn’t need oil. The benefits were endless! Indigo could at least understand that point. Without magic, her life in the necropolis would have been much more difficult.

Kearse stared at the kettle, hardly hearing the advice that Mayra was trying to give him. The seconds dragged on like hours while he waited.

“How long does this usually take?” he asked.

“Not long,” Mayra answered, “Your flower was fresh, so that makes things easier. But I’m used to drinking the dried petals, so I can’t tell exactly how strong it will end up being.”

“Will it be enough?”

“Oh, definitely. No need to worry about that. If anything, it will be stronger than what I’m used to.”

Kearse fidgeted, and shuffled about on the floor. He was proud of his family for making it as far as they had without magic. As loath as he was to admit it, mostly because he respected Mayra, he was slightly distrustful of magic and mages in general. They did things that nobody else could even dream of. But who would turn down an opportunity like this?

He loved the clock that he had taken from the “mall” in the necropolis because it represented all of the pride he took in being a working class individual. There was no magic to it. As long as someone wound the gears and springs, it would do its job.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

The clock didn’t need magic. Kearse didn’t think he did either.

But he wanted it.

And he was about to get it.

Mayra added the soft petals of the mana flower to the water when the kettle began to steam. She wouldn’t make any mistakes in the tea’s preparation, but even if she did, this would still bring him closer to his mana than anything else in his life could have readied him for.

“How many doses does this make?” Indigo asked. “Will there be enough left over that I can try a sip?”

Kearse wanted to punch her again, but he could understand her curiosity.

“Hells no you aren’t getting a sip. Until I start puking rainbows, this flower is mine. I found it. You don’t get any.”

Mayra saved him by “accidentally” giving the homunculus a swift kick to the rear.

“You be quiet,” she said. “This is for Kearse. If there’s any left over, I’m sure he’ll be happy to share, but until then, no. Hands to yourself.”

The cup Mayra finally poured his tea into was a simple one, a wooden mug made more for holding beer than any finer drinks, but it felt appropriate. Kearse was a simple man after all. What it held though was anything but simple.

The tea was blue in color, but seemed to dance between shades of green and purple at the same time. The smell was fresh, like the air after a thunderstorm, but also contained some of that artificially clean scent he associated with soap and healer’s clinics. The taste was… smooth? From everything else, he had expected it to have a unique and complex flavor, but there wasn’t anything beyond the taste of hot water in his mouth.

Kearse was about to question if it was supposed to be like that, but then his world skipped a beat.

* * *

When he woke up again, night had fallen.

Haylen and Mayra were in the middle of their dinner, and Indigo was leaning against the single room’s wall, trying not to fall asleep while it was still early. Her earlier excitement had used up all the energy she could muster.

“Did it work?” Kearse asked, drawing their attention.

He felt… the same. Shouldn’t there be more? He had been aware enough to tell that something had happened. Time wasn’t meant to move in bursts like that. What had happened? The tea, obviously, but shouldn’t he be feeling different? There was a whole new layer to the world for him to interact with! Shouldn’t the ethereal now be his physical?

Haylen and Mayra looked up at his question, put down their plates, and sidled over to sit next to him. Indigo opened one eye and glanced his way, but didn’t move from where she was resting.

“How do you feel?” Mayra asked.

“The same? Shouldn’t I feel different?”

She nodded her head side to side in a vague response.

“It’s different for everyone. You were out for about two hours, so it probably worked. No, it definitely worked, but we still need to check.”

“For me,” said Haylen, “It felt like I was deeper. Or bigger. Denser. Like there was more inside my body than there had been before. Do you feel anything like that? Anything different?”

“I’d use the word ‘expanded’ to describe myself,” Mayra continued, “but my own experience was similar to Haylen’s. Also, we both touched our mana the normal way, so we had a better idea of what we were looking for.”

The two continued to fuss over him until Indigo interjected.

“If he feels normal, he feels normal. Just give him something magic to test himself with.”

The two looked back at the girl before looking to each other.

“I don’t have anything like that. Do you? We could probably use Indigo’s frying pan, but it’s still hot from dinner, so it might be hard to tell.”

Mayra shook her head.

“I have a few scrolls, but without a mage’s education his mana alone wouldn’t be enough to activate them.

“I’ve got some matches,” Indigo said, raising her hand. “That’s what I used the first time I touched my mana.”

A hazy darkness formed around her hands. Kearse recognized it as her reaching into her storage space, but was disappointed that he didn’t see anything new. The magic looked the same as it always had.

She pulled out a few boxes, each small enough to fit in the palm of her hand, and began to sort through them.

“Do you think it’ll take that many to find out if it worked?”

Indigo looked up from the stacks she had made of the containers.

“Hm? Oh. No. Not all of these work by magic. Some are alchemical, but I don’t remember which are which, so I grabbed them all at once. Not all of the Ancestors were mages, or could even touch their mana, so they needed both kinds. I haven’t needed them for a while myself, but they’re useful, so I kept them around.”

Kearse grabbed at the small packet she offered him, and immediately pulled out one of the thin sticks. He stared at it, already feeling competitive with the tiny piece of wood.

“Alright. What do I do with it?”

Indigo hmmed, hawed, and uhhed for a bit before answering.

“The first time I got one to light, I think I imagined myself and the match being the same thing. I put myself into it, and willed it to make fire.”

Before Kearse could try, Mayra took the opportunity to interject.

“That’s right,” she said. “Even if mana is something that everyone has, and even if many people can learn to feel it or brush up against it, touching it takes time. The tea is a shortcut, but you still need to be aware of what it is that you’re doing. It’s like flexing a muscle you never knew you had.”

Mayra went on to explain a basic meditation process.

“Start with the toes. One by one, relax every muscle in your body until you reach your head. You should feel something, both mental and physical, moving inside of you as you do. Once that energy reaches your head, keep doing the same thing and send it out of your arm and into the match. Then, relax the match, just as you’ve been doing with the rest of your body.”

Indigo was nodding her head as she listened to the mage. Mayra had probably dumbed down the steps for Kearse’s sake, but the homunculus hadn’t heard anything she disagreed with.

“Sounds about right. I kinda wish someone had been around to tell me that when I first got started with magic. I may have lit the match pretty easily the first time, but it took a while before I was able to do that on a regular basis. I’m sure the miasma didn’t help, but still. If that tea does everything you guys say it does, then I think you’ve got this.”

The homunculus grinned.

“Anyone want to wager on how long it takes him to light the match? I’ll bet a gold… no. A bottle… no. Aside from the books, I’ll bet any one thing from my storage that Kearse manages to light the match within thirty minutes. And that’s including the time he spends meditating.”

Haylen looked a little annoyed at how irreverent Indigo was being, and Kearse was mildly thankful for the glare she shot the homunculus’ way.

Mayra just seemed disappointed.

“As much as I would like to claim one of your mana crystals as my own, that’s not a bet I’d be willing to make.

Kearse frowned, suddenly realizing that everyone had high expectations of him. Before he had drunk the tea, he had had high expectations of himself too, but now he wasn’t so sure.

“Everyone be quiet and let me do this.” he shouted. “I need to focus, and I can’t do that with all of you talking.”

He curled his legs up underneath himself and, match in hand, placed his arms in his lap, and closed his eyes. That was how people were supposed to sit when they meditated, right?

He took Mayra’s advice, and started by relaxing his toes. Then the soles of his feet. Then his heels, ankles, and on up through is calves. Even by the time he reached his thighs, he thought he could feel the energy that everyone had been talking about.

Moving into his torso took some time, and he had to readjust as the feeling from each leg combined into one at his hips. By the time he reached his back and chest, he realized that he was no longer consciously relaxing each muscle group, but that the feeling was like a wave that sucked the tension from his body as it passed.

When it came to his head, he wasn’t sure what it was meant to relax, but he let the feeling sit there for a moment while he enjoyed the sensation it gave him.

Then came the moment of truth. Almost regretfully, he sent the energy back down, and focused it into his arm, his hand, and then the match itself.

He thought of fire, and a small candle whose flickering light was enough to light a room. He felt the match, not grasped between his fingers, but as the match being grasped in those fingers.

He didn’t realize that anything had happened until the heat of a flame begin to burn at his skin.

Kearse swore, and his trance was broken as he tossed the match away from himself.

He had done it! He had lit it!

He had done magic!

The street sweeper was tackled to the ground as both the paladin and the noble mage embraced him with a hug. Mayra had tears in her eyes, and Kearse had to fight not to cry himself alongside her.

He had done it!

Indigo was clapping, with a smirk on her face.

“I thought I was doing well for managing it on my second try,” she said, pretending to sound angry, “but it looks like you just beat my record. So well done. Also fuck you, but mostly well done.”

Kearse laughed. He laughed hard enough that his tears finally broke free.

This past month had been amazing. Full of horror, but amazing. Every time he thought he had reached the pinnacle of his life, something happened to prove him wrong.

“So, what do I do next?” he asked once the women had released him from a round of hugs.

Haylen looked around confused.

Mayra seemed even more so.

“Next?”

“Now you practice,” Indigo answered. “Do you want to be a mage like Mayra, or… not? Either way, practice. Touch it. Push it. Pull it. Twist it. Bop it. Poke it. Poke other things with it. Doesn’t matter what the verb is. If you haven’t done it with mana, try it and see what happens. The more you get to know how your mana works, the better you’ll be when you want to actually use it.”

That seemed logical enough.

“So… what would you recommend?”

Indigo was contemplative as she mulled over her response. Then she smiled, and raised her hands victoriously.

“Hey girls, good news!” she shouted. “Looks like Kearse is doing the cooking now!”

Kearse’s heart sank as he realized what Indigo meant. She had an entire set of pots and pans that worked as well through magic as they did through the heat of a campfire. Now he was about to be placed in charge of both cooking and driving them around, on top of all the other little things he did whenever they set up camp or stopped for a break.

“No.”

“No?” they asked, almost as one.”

“No. No a hundred times over. I’m not doing the cooking.”

“No? Indigo asked, in that same mock offended attitude she used so often. “Cooking is a woman’s job, and you’re too good for it?”

He glared at her.

“Fuck you, Indigo.”

“Fuck you, Indigo”

Haylen and Mayra seemed taken aback, but Indigo knew what was what, and was struggling to hide her laughter.

“I’ll do the cooking when one of you does the driving. Six, or even eight hours of driving a day on top of the cooking? No. I’m not doing that. If you want me to do the cooking, one of you has to do the driving, because I’m not doing both. I don’t know about Indigo or Mayra, but Haylen, you’ve been in the militia longer than I ever was. At least you should know how to drive a wagon.”

Indigo was biting at her lip, failing to hide how much she enjoyed a minor drama that wasn’t centered around her. Mayra wasn’t looking at anyone. She probably knew how to ride a horse, but hadn’t seemed to be in much of a hurry to add to her skillset. Haylen had no excuse.

“How did this go from magic to job sharing?” Kearse wondered.

“Alright. He’s right,” Haylen said with a sigh. “I’ll do the driving tomorrow, and Kearse can practice his mana with Indigo’s cookware.”

Indigo interjected in an obvious attempt to add fuel to the fire.

“But we’ll be reaching Mayra’s place tomorrow, right? Won’t that mean he’s only doing lunch and breakfast? And we’ll be there for a few days, right? I don’t think he’ll get much practice that way.”

Kearse glared at Indigo, who pretended to ignore him, but Mayra ended up being the savior of the moment.

“You’re right,” the mage commented in full seriousness. “Now’s an important time for his development. Just being in charge of the meals wouldn’t be enough.”

He winced, feeling betrayed, but she went on.

“Tasks aside, we need something for him to do with his mana on a more consistent basis. Indigo, you have some spare mana crystals, don’t you? He could probably fill a few of the small ones easily enough. Could you lend a few to him? At this stage, they’d be of more benefit than trying to use any magical tools. Right now he needs to become more familiar with moving his mana rather than using it.”

Indigo was surprised that her role in the conversation had become anything other than mildly antagonistic, but at least treated the idea seriously.

“Well… uh. I guess. I suppose it would be better to start with some of the smaller crystals so that it would be easier for him to see how much he’s putting in… Actually…”

Indigo looked as if she had just had an idea that was absolutely wonderful, but terrible for anyone else involved.

“Actually…” she continued. “What if I gave him one of my guns?”

She had phrased it like it was only a vague idea, but everyone’s speechlessness seemed to only convince her that it was a good idea. Nobody knew how to respond. Indigo wanted to entrust a gun, something she had clearly stated was one of the Ancestor’s secrets, to Kearse. Kearse? Him?

“What?” Kearse asked, stupefied.

“What?” Haylen and Mayra asked in unison.

“No, hear me out,” Indigo said, trying to interrupt the silence. “Okay. Mayra, I like you as a person and respect you as a mage, but you still don’t seem to understand how dangerous some of the Ancestor’s relics are, and Kearse would be the best example to help make my point.”

The girl turned to Kearse and tried to make a few calming and reaffirming gestures.

“Kearse,” she said, at least not leaving his opinion on the wayside, “I don’t expect anything bad to happen to you.”

Coming from her, that was neither calming, nor reaffirming.

“How is this not a bad idea?!” he shouted.

“What I expect to see,” she continued, deciding to ignore his input, “is Kearse doing this easily.”

“Where did this show of confidence come from?! You’ve trusted nobody with this stuff, and now you’re handing me something that I’ve seen you blasting the cursed apart with?”

“Kearse,” she went on, “is someone that we can all trust.”

The homunculus looked around, and to nobody’s shock but his own, received not a single word of denial.

“Mayra, Kearse is someone that has only today touched his mana. What I want to demonstrate by giving him one of my guns, is to show you and everyone else just how deadly he can become.”

“I don’t want to be deadly! I want to be an over-glorified street sweeper!”

“I’ll lend him one, only the pistol, and then you and all of the mages will see just how scary a person can be when they have the Ancestor’s technologies in their hands.”

“I don’t want to be scary! I want to make it through this pilgrimage alive and then go back to cleaning roads!”

But no one paid much attention to his thoughts, and Mayra nodded as if Kearse had already given his agreement. How was this supposed to teach him about using his mana?! Hadn’t they already agreed that the crystals alone would be enough?

Indigo wasted no time and pulled the thing she called a pistol out of her storage space. He hadn’t seen it since the night they left Peninsula, but he hadn’t really wanted to either. The homunculus then began to lecture him as if he had already agreed to everything.

“Rule number one,” she began. “Always assume your gun is loaded and ready to kill! Rule number two, never point your gun at anything that you don’t want to kill. Number three, don’t even touch the trigger unless you want to kill something.”

Kearse was having trouble processing how all of this had happened so fast. A few minutes ago they were telling him the best ways to touch his mana, but now they already saw no problem giving him a dangerous and magical weapon?!

Was he really the only sane one in the group?

“Rule number four!” Indigo shouted, regaining his attention. “Always be aware of your target, and what is behind your target! Rule number five, never let anyone touch your gun unless they are trustworthy and understand the rules, are we clear?!”

He carefully took the gun, holster and all, in the hopes that it would make her stop yelling at him. It wouldn’t suddenly explode, would it? That was how it worked, right? Kearse was suddenly trying very hard to not touch his mana for fear of accidentally setting it off.

The thing was fucking dangerous. He knew that. He wasn’t to use it unless there was danger. That made perfect sense. Don’t trust anyone with your weapon. Of course not!

“Point, click, boom.” Indigo told him.

“Why do I feel like I’ve just been handed a death sentence?” Kearse wondered.

* * * * *

“Do you think this is a good idea?” Mayra asked Haylen. “I trust Indigo with it, but that’s mostly because it’s one of the least scary things she could use against someone.”

“I just wanted to not have to drive the wagon every day! Why is she giving me this thing?” Kearse shouted.

Haylen glanced at him for only the briefest of seconds before looking back to the mage.

“I trust him with it if Indigo does. She wouldn’t give him something that dangerous if she didn’t trust him with it,” the half-elf responded.

“I don’t want to be dangerous!” Kearse shouted, still being ignored.

“Hmm. I suppose you’re right. I suppose the possibility of danger is the point she’s trying to make, yes? And we can trust Kearse with that responsibility, can’t we?”

“I just wanted to do something other than drive the wagons.”

Mayra felt like she was playing a bit of a cruel joke on the man, but her curiosity overrode any kindness she might have. She really wanted to see how Indigo’s experiment turned out. And the girl wouldn’t give anything that dangerous to someone unprepared to use it, right?

Indigo found the whole situation amusing, Haylen seemed to respect Kearse too much, and Mayra found it all too intriguing. There was no getting out of it for him.

“Kearse, relax,” she told him. “You just need to focus on charging a few mana crystals, and us girls will promise to learn how to steer the wagon.”

“I’m not learning to drive a wagon!” Indigo interrupted.

The homunculus had been just a bit too obstinate today. She had seen Kearse hit the girl a few times, and she was tempted to do so herself. A rough day or not, there were some times that a person needed to be a team player.

“What?” Indigo asked, clearly seeing the lack of empathy coming her way. “I didn’t pay for a wagon and…what? A mule team? Those are mules, right? I didn’t pay for a wagon and mule team just so that I’d have to be the one driving them. Do they even have names?”

Mayra winced a bit when Kearse delivered a solid blow to the back of the girl’s head, but felt a little bit more validated when Haylen chose to do so as well. Mayra gave her own weaker one, just to show solidarity, and was relieved that that Indigo didn’t seem to take offense to it.

“Okay! Okay! I’ll drive the mule-things! But what do I call them? They’ve got names, right? Kearse, you bought them, so what are they called?”

Kearse had his face held in his hands, but muttered out anyway, “I’m sure they had names before I bought them, but I expected you to come up with… with some stupid names anyway. So I never asked.”

Mayra and Haylen looked between Indigo and Kearse. This conversation had gone way of topic, they both recognized that, but neither were in any position to start steering it back on track. This was supposed to be about Kearse, his newly touched mana, and how he would train it, but heavens forbid anyone tell him or Indigo that.

“Stupid names?”

“You’re called your sword Snowflake! That thing was made by Weland Velun, of all people, and you named it Snowflake?! Really?”

“What?! Naming swords is stupid in the first place! You want some bad names? Fine! Skin, Bones, Chicken, and Nugget! That’s the names of our mules!

“Which ones are which?!”

“I don’t know! I’ll tell you in the morning when I see them! So make sure you hitch them up in an order that fits their naming conventions, Driver!”

“You’re the one that insisted on getting a wagon! You paid for it! Learn to drive it!”

“Yah! And I made it clear that I didn’t care what you bought! The main reason I paid for them in the first place was so that I wouldn’t have to drive them!”

“Drive them? You said you were fine with goats!”

“I was exaggerating! Just because I can’t lie doesn’t mean I can’t exaggerate! Apparently! I fucking hate goats!”

“What’s wrong with goats?!”

“They’re loud obnoxious smelly assholes, that’s what’s wrong with them! I don’t even want to look at a goat unless it’s being served up on a plate!”

“Will everyone be quiet?!” Mayra yelled, and her voice filled the room. “Skin, Bones, Chicken, and Nugget. I don’t think anyone but the two of you cares! The damn mules couldn’t care less if they tried! Kearse, you can decide which is which. Indigo, you shut up.”

Haylen looked away, not wanting any part of how things had been going. Indigo and Kearse at least had the decency to look slightly ashamed, but Indigo was trying to look like she was still the victim.

“Kearse,” she said again, “Starting tomorrow, you’ll begin learning to charge the mana crystals for that gun. Indigo, you won’t complain to Kearse about not wanting to drive the wagon.”

“Oh come on! You don’t hear me complaining about being everyone’s personal storage locker! Any time someone want’s something, it’s, ‘Oh, Indigo, can you hand me this?’ or, ‘Indigo, can you grab that thing for me?’ I’m not saying that I don’t appreciate Kearse driving for us, because I do, but don’t look at me like I do nothing when I’m the one carrying everyone’s stuff for them!”

“Well maybe if you shared your mana crystals, my own storage space would be a bit bigger, wouldn’t it?”

Mayra had finally reached the point of anger.

Halen was scooting away from the hearth, content to let the others wear themselves out and clearly happy that she wasn’t the focus of anyone’s frustration. Kearse, meanwhile, simply seamed glad that he was no longer the only one annoyed by Indigo today.

Indigo now actually seemed offended though.

“Because you never asked! I didn’t even know you had a storage space!”

“Of course I have a storage space! I’m a mage! It’s just not big enough to be worth mentioning! Just like Kearse didn’t want to ask me about the tea, I didn’t want to ask you about it! I know your crystals take you a long time to refill, and I didn’t want to feel like I was stealing all of your hard work!”

“Okay, you wanted to be polite! So why are we yelling?!”

“I don’t know!”

A bit of peace fell upon the four. Haylen had been the only one of the group who had originally prepared to make the pilgrimage on her own. The rest of them had chosen to come for their own reasons. If anyone could be considered exempt from their squabble, it was her.

“Everyone who thinks they’ve gone too far, say ‘Ay,’” Kearse suggested, raising his own hand.

Mayra and Indigo raised their own, neither really wanting to meet anyone else’s eye.

“Right,” Kearse continued. “I’ll start charging some of those mana crystals, while hoping that I never have to use that gun thing.”

“And I,” Mayra went on, “will learn to drive the wagon, and won’t expect Kearse to do all of the work. And I’ll ask if I need help with something.”

“I’ll try not to get annoyed at everyone else for what they didn’t know,” Indigo said, for her part. “And I won’t try to avoid responsibilities that should have been mine from the beginning.”

“And I’ll drive the wagon now and then.”

Haylen’s last little addition felt more like adding salt to the wounds of everyone else’s little pettiness, but Mayra took it for the attempt at unity that it was.

“Is this pilgrimage going to go smoothly if we’re already arguing about stupid crap?” Indigo asked, seeming slightly ashamed for once.

Haylen, as their unspoken leader, had the answer.

“Now that we’ve gotten it out of the way, I think we’ll be fine. This is a bit different from traveling with the expedition, but I’ve seen worse arguments between squad mates. We’ll adjust.”

Mayra nodded. Two years was a long time, and this probably wouldn’t be their last little squabble, but they’d make it through it together. Unless Kearse accidentally shot someone, but how likely would that be?