Being surrounded by books and a gentle flickering light in the silence of a library was heavenly. I was provided with interesting Mhiir’im snacks, such as strange cheese-like pieces of something on cocktail sticks…dry salty bread-like stuff and some square shaped green fruit.
It was very fantasy-like… But the flavors were pretty normal, which was probably for the best, as I could effortlessly munch on whatever I was given.
I didn’t want to come off as rude by leaving stuff on the plate, especially with how nicely everyone was treating me.
I was munching on mystery-cheese while browsing through books on magic. Amelia sat on a comfy sofa-chair on the opposite side of the table, and seemed to be going through some sort of a historical book.
“What are you reading?” I asked her out of sheer curiosity, while I kept my voice down to not bother the other visitors.
“It’s a book on the various deities and religions of the world.” She nodded without breaking eye-contact with her book. She had this peculiar habit of sometimes not looking at people even when she was talking to them. I wasn’t really bothered by it, but it was a neat little quirk of hers. A fun Amelia fact, I guess.
“Are you trying to find information on your patron deity?” I asked while I turned a page.
“Indeed.” She furrowed her brow a bit.
“I’m guessing it’s not going really well?” I tilted my head.
“I’m coming up with nothing. Seems like nobody has ever heard of my Goddess, and no mention of her exists in any books either. It’s quite puzzling.” She huffed, then finally looking at me and smiling a bit.
“Hm… Well, maybe we can ask her sometime?” I blurted out without thinking.
“Bha…!! Wouldn’t that be quite blasphemous?! To bother a Goddess for such trivial matters?” I had to hush the paladin down a bit as she began to raise her voice. “Ah…! Forgive me!” She whispered.
“I don’t think she’d mind. She seemed pretty understanding. We just gotta get you to sleep and…figure out how to make contact with her.” I’m sure I was simplifying a pretty complex topic, but that was really all we could work with anyway. “I have some stuff I’d like to ask her too…”
“Well…” Amelia mumbled. “I’ll…just tell her it was your idea if she gets angry at me, I suppose…!”
“Ha!” I grinned at my devout friend. “Deal.”
“Geh… I was hoping you’d disagree with that…!” Groaned the knight.
“Too bad! Too late to go back on your words now!” I poked my tongue out at her.
“… Witches truly are monsters…” She was sulking.
“You’ve got only yourself to blame!” I teased.
We giggled quietly a bit, until Amelia pointed at my pile of books and asked about my goals with it.
“Have you made any progress into magic?” She started.
“A bit, yes!” I began beaming at her.
“Oh?”
“So!” As soon as I began, Amelia instantly adjusted on the sofa chair. It was as if she instinctively knew this would end up being a long session of me gushing about magic again. “Magic seems to be like…a form of energy!” I started.
“Mhm.” She nodded, like a mom listening to her child explaining to her about their favorite toy.
“Mana exists within all things living, and is also created inside living beings! It’s like energy particles! The particles are invisible to anyone but apparently monsters.” I went on. “There seem to be theories about monsters being able to sense and see mana, which I know for a fact to be true, since I can see it!” I beamed.
“Mhm! That’s very fascinating!” She kept nodding.
“And then! Magic is basically the ability to manipulate the flow of mana! Because everyone is born with magic, everyone can inherently use magic, however each body has a specific amount of…’mana conductivity’, which is why some people are more proficient with it, than others.”
“Makes sense!” The mom-act kept going. I slowly started to feel she might have been doing it deliberately to annoy me as revenge for my thoughts on her Goddess issue.
Joke’s on her, though!! I was more than glad to gush at someone about magic! I didn’t care who it was! It wasn’t a problem, if Amelia didn’t understand a thing about it because I just REALLY wanted to talk about magic with someone!
“Magic needs a catalyst to be cast!” I continued while ignoring Amelia’s mommy smile. “Like those pieces of wood and whatnot, there needs to be a catalyst for a spell to be cast through, for the mana to flow properly.” I kept blabbing on. “Fanael had a sword with mana circuits embedded in its blade! I bet that’s her catalyst! She guides mana through it in different manners to cause spells to come out!” I explained further. “By conducting mana through it in the reverse order, she can induce healing magic to radiate through her body!!”
“Oh…! That’s how it’s done? That’s actually interesting!” Amelia showed her true colors. She just indirectly admitted she didn’t care about my magic theory at all! I swore to myself that one day I’d have my revenge on her for not respecting magic.
We kept talking about magic and reading through the books late into the night. Sadly, Amelia couldn’t find a thing about her Goddess in the end. I still think my idea was good though, so one night I needed to make sure to try and see if I could hear the Goddess whispering within her.
For now, I decided to let Amelia off the hook, as she seemed tired from all the reading. I’m sure she was a bit out of her element spending so much time parsing through information like this.
It was pretty normal for us, who lived in the era of the internet, to go through a lot of information in short amounts of time. The real skill in my time was the ability to know what information was good and what was worthless nonsense.
Any idiot could post whatever they wanted online, and there were always people who agreed with even the stupidest opinions, which gave even outlandish gossip a sense of validity from time to time.
Either way, going through a bunch of information wasn’t anything too new for me, and it was maybe even a bit therapeutic.
Amelia had gone back to the castle to sleep, so I was left by myself in the reading area. It wasn’t fully quiet, though, since there was a night guard who walked around the library occasionally. He was really nice, and we had tea together on one of my reading breaks.
Magic was a really interesting subject to study. I didn’t understand a lot about some of the more theoretical parts on the structure of mana and such, but there was extensive scientific study done into the subject.
From what I read; my fire spell was some kind of destruction magic? Apparently, witches were commonly very proficient with it, but I couldn’t help but think I was most likely not. Could I really have some kinda magical affinity towards destruction magic, when my powers boiled down to me being a glorified lighter? It was a bit difficult to believe…
I also found out that only monsters can cast curses. I don’t know the specifics of what this meant in action, but I suppose the petrification spell the goblin cast on Fanael must have been a type of curse.
Similarly, only the non-monster races could cast white magic. What exactly ‘non-monster races’ entailed was beyond me, however.
There was so much information in the books, that it was very difficult to really know what would have been a good starting point into trying to understand this world.
I did my best to simply focus on the studying of magic for now though, as it was at least a subject I had some experience with.
Sadly…testing things out was proving to be a difficult task. The magic sigils I saw on the books were entirely different from anything I remembered.
They look a lot prettier than the ones I was used to drawing, but whenever I tried to replicate one on paper, somehow it wouldn’t conduct any mana at all.
Was there a fundamental difference in how magic worked for monsters?
As I was analyzing another work on the science of magic in hopes of finding answers, I was jolted to attention by a quiet cough.
“Ahem.” The library owner was there. What was he doing here at this hour?
“W-whoa…! You scared me!” I sighed of relief as I saw it was him. “Why are you here all of a sudden?”
“It pains to admit my own hypocrisy, but I actually have been here the whole time.” He looked a bit tired, but also a tad excited. He was holding something behind his back, but it was too dark to see what it was.
“What?! Why?! Sleep is important!” I sassed at him, throwing his own words at him, despite the fact, that he seemed to acknowledge the issue.
“Indeed, it is…!” He laughed tiredly, “I simply…wanted to see if I could find even a little something to pay for everything you did for me, and my family.” He sighed a bit solemnly. “Losing a single night of sleep is not a big sacrifice to make, and while I do not know if it’ll be of any meaning to you, I did actually find something in the deepest reaches of our archives…” He pulled out a pitch-black leather-bound book.
“You could have just waited until tomorrow…!” I laughed a little, but my laughter was short-lived as I saw the book. It looked ragged and worn by time, but also unexpectedly sinister due to its dark stained colors.
“It’s quite a find…” He opened the book, browsing through a few pages. “It has no meaning to me whatsoever, for it is in a language I do not recognize.” He walked over and handed me the book. I gingerly accepted it and opened it to browse it.
The book had a skin-like texture to the cover, and it had a few unpleasant feeling hairs sticking out of the surface here and there. It was dried up, and a bit cracked all over. There was nothing on the cover, nor the backside of it. No title or the name of the owner. Upon opening it, the paper was really coarse and bumpy, as if handmade. The first few pages were blank, but something about simply touching the paper felt…somehow familiar.
“Seeing you made a memory bubble up from somewhere far, far away…” The man began speaking. “I believe it was our late queen, Fanael’s mother, who gave me this book a long time ago.” He smiled big as he reminisced. “She was a wild adventurer just like her daughter, and while the adventuring did end up in her demise, I feel she lived exactly the way she wanted, which I, personally, believe is what life is all about.” The man looked a bit solemn as he spoke of the queen.
“I…see.” I nodded a bit. “I didn’t know that’s what happened to her. Is that why the king is a bit…”
“Overprotective? To a lunatic degree? It is indeed. He simply doesn’t want to lose another one of those he loves the most.” He chuckled a bit, even though the subject matter wasn’t all that humorous. “Even if it does sometimes lead him into making monstrously bad decisions.”
“What ended up happening to him?” I mused out loud.
“Got jailed for crimes against his nation by his own daughter.”
“Hm.” I nodded. I didn’t really feel all too bad about the news. Even if his lunacy came from a place of love, he definitely needed to be held responsible for his atrocities.
A silence fell over the room for a moment. All I could think of at the moment, was that the people in this world were ridiculously strong, not just physically, but also mentally. Being surrounded by constant tragedy can’t be good for the mind, but somehow, they still stayed so firm, even against the wildest adversity.
It was admirable.
“One day, the queen returned after one of her adventures with that book. She said they found it in a strange ritual chamber they dug into from underground. You’d be surprised over how many different creatures like to hide their precious items underground!” The librarian seemed happy to remember the queen. “Nobody at the time was able to decipher any of the text, but the queen did say it looked like a witch might have lived there, which is why you reminded me of it.”
“…” I turned to look at the book and kept browsing. As soon as I began seeing the mysterious letters, my eyes shot wide open.
“I thought, that maybe the issue wasn’t in us being unable to decipher the text, but in the fact that we are fundamentally incapable of it, for we are incompatible with it in the first place…” He pondered as he saw my reaction. “A text only certain kinds of creatures can read… It’s an interesting concept.”
I bet the librarian could see my sheer excitement over his find, as my eyes darted from page to another while I kept turning them. The book was full of spell sigils I was familiar with.
It was a book for a witch. I couldn’t…read it in the traditional sense, but I honestly didn’t know if it was meant to be read in that sense to begin with. It seemed to be more like a memo, than a book.
Each page had a vast array of sigils drawn onto it with a slightly messy ink. It felt more like…maybe the previous owner was using it to practice and memorize the symbols and how they were drawn.
Almost like when you need to practice how to write letters in elementary school.
“It’s incredible…!” I nodded with joy.
“I know this may be a bit presumptuous of me, but may I ask what it is about?” He laughed a bit sheepishly. “What is a librarian, who doesn’t know what their books are about?”
“Uhuh…! Yeah. It’s um…” I pondered on how to explain it. “I’m not exactly sure, but my guess is, that it’s a practice book. The owner probably used it to try to memorize the sigils through repetition.” I explained. “These symbols are the language of witches. Each symbol has a meaning similar to words.” I explained. “I don’t know exactly how they work due to a nasty case of amnesia, but these are the core element in how witches cast spells.”
“Fascinating!!” He clapped his hands together. “No wonder some sigils were drawn so many times in different ways on each page.” He crossed his arms. “One thing I am curious about, however. See, on a few pages there are sigils drawn on top of each other, even though there is still space for more practice.” He guided me to a page, which did indeed showcase what he was explaining.
There were a few pages towards the latter half of the book, where two different symbols were layered over each other a bit crudely, and they made for a pretty ugly mess.
Maybe the owner simply got bored and started doodling random stuff?
“That’s true… Admittedly, I don’t have any clue to what it could mean, if it even means anything…!” Despite not understanding the book very well, I still was beyond excited to go over it in detail.
“Well! I’ll leave you to it then! Please do keep me up to date on any findings! I should truly head to bed, I’m sure I won’t hear the end of this from my wife…!” He scratched the back of his head and got up.
“Ah! Um…!!” I looked at him a bit hastily.
“Yes?” He turned around with the usual smile.
“Thank you…” I nodded, hugging the book with my one arm tightly. “Please tell your wife, the flowers she kept bringing me every day were wonderful…!”
He simply nodded and walked into the darkness with a warm smile on his face. I was going through an alien feeling… I don’t think I had ever felt this welcome anywhere in my life before. Somehow, in the past, I never felt like I belonged because of my physical and probably mental shortcomings.
But here, people were really kind and helpful. They went through an incredible ordeal, and yet they still had so much kindness left to spare. I was a monster, a witch! And yet, nobody looked at me weirdly, and nobody treated me poorly…
It was… actually really nice.
Kinda weird! But nice.
Although all the warm fuzzies aside, I had a peculiar witch-book to study! At last!
I browsed through the booklet in the silence of the library curiously. There were a lot of the sigils in on the pages I already knew. It was missing a couple I was familiar with, but it also had some sigils I didn’t recognize at all.
And yet, despite having no memory of ever seeing them, I could somehow read them.
“Dream, Words and Echo” I voiced to myself quietly as I saw the new symbols.
I could also read the Mhiir’im language too… Or maybe there was just a universal language in this world in general?
…No, that wasn’t possible.
I couldn’t understand ‘highlander’, the language of noble humans… Another mystery to add on top of the pile, I guess…
The messy sigil scribbles on the latter pages were still an enigma to me. I was unable to figure out why the owner of the book specifically drew this one sigil combination over and over again.
It honestly was like among the worst ways to combine the sigils…! They looked like an ugly mess because the symbols didn’t fit together at all.
I dunno what the owner was thinking, when some of the sigils even had these sharp spikes to them, and the others had little indents on them to make them LOOK like they’d fit together, and yet the owner didn’t try to make…
Wait.
Now that I looked closely…there were three different types of sigils…
Sigils, that had spikes on them… Fire, Water, Lightning, Sky and Earth.
Sigils, that had little crevices on them: Solid, Faint, Clear, and Reflection
And then…sigils that had both spikes and crevices: Dream, Heart, Echo, and Words.
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I…never noticed this before, and somehow, categorizing the words like this made them almost seem like there was some sort of logic behind it all.
The sigils that had spikes on them were like… substances or elements. Sigils that had crevices were adjectives or…like described a specific state of something.
The last group I couldn’t really find a specific rule for, so let’s just call them the ‘Abstract’ category for now.
“What if…” I spoke to myself, causing the night guard to peek his head from behind a bookshelf.
“All good here?” He was quite an energetic bearded man for such a night owl.
“Y-yeah!” I laughed shakily. “Sorry! I’m just…discovering incredible secrets about magic, so I couldn’t stay quiet!”
“Hah! Carry on!” He laughed and marched onward along the library.
What if…the owner of the book was maybe using the sigils wrong? Could be they had been told by someone to combine the sigils, but they didn’t understand what it really meant?
What if combining sigils…was more like…attaching them to each other instead?
Without a moment to spare, I pulled out a piece of paper, and began scribbling on it. I was pretty good at drawing sigils, if I say so myself, and all the practice from my past life was paying off.
Wondering why this world had the same magic sigils as that one was a thought I’d mull over later, for wow it was time to cast spells!
The sigils of ‘water’ and ‘solid’ fit each other perfectly. Shakily, I channeled mana into the paper, and to my immense surprise, a very thin layer of frost began forming over the parchment I drew the word combination on.
My eyes went wide, and I would have surely stood up and screamed in joy, if not for the fact I was missing a leg, and I was in the library!
I MADE ICE!!! IT’S SOLID WATER!!! IT MADE SENSE!!
I rolled around with excitement on my sofa. This was surely the greatest magical discovery of the century!!
… Well… admittedly, maybe…freezing a piece of paper wasn’t the most impressive thing, but it was DEFINITELY UP THERE! IN MY OPINION, AT LEAST!
Now…there was another mystery, though. According to multiple books I read, monsters are capable of casting magic without a catalyst. That goblin bastard threw lightning at me like it was nothing too!
How would that even work, and if witches could cast magic without a catalyst, why was the owner of the book drawing the sigils here in the first place?
The amount of repetition on the pages was weird too. What value was there to learning to draw very clean-looking symbols?
In my experience, even pretty hastily drawn stuff, like the one I carved into my arm when I fought the wolf, still did the trick.
Was the quality of the sigil drawn somehow relevant? Or was the owner of the book simply keen on keeping their handwriting pretty?
“Ya sure are a hard worker, Miss Witch!” The night guard jolted me out of my thoughts. “Care for some tea?” He had a tray with a couple of cups on it.
“Honestly…! I’d really welcome it.” I sighed; a bit exasperated by the situation.
“What’s getting ya so down? You’ve been groaning and sighing for the last hour over here.” He chuckled and began sipping some tea after sitting down on the sofa-chair Amelia sat on earlier.
The tea was warm and sweet, and it helped me calm down a bit from all the theory crafting. “I’m kind of stuck trying to figure out something related to magic…” I spoke into the cup.
“Ohoo! I’ve heard witches are really good with magic. It’s gotta be a pretty big deal to get ya stumped like this!”
“Well… I kind of lost my memories a while ago, so I don’t know how to…witch properly.” I mumbled, blushing a bit from having to admit I knew barely anything about magic.
“Hahahaha!!” The man laughed at me! Guhhh… It certainly didn’t help me feel any more confident about my current state. “Well! Ain’t ya in a pickle! What are ya trying to figure out? I don’t mind listening! I don’t know the darnedest bit about magic, though!”
“Mmmg… What’s the point if you don’t even understand anything about it?” I grumbled, sulking a bit.
“Hoho!” He chuckled more. “Well, sometimes, when I get stuck with some kinda bad thoughts, I like to talk about them to my friends. I kinda feel saying things out loud makes them easier to sort of…deal with?” He…did have a point.
“But you’re not even interested in the subject…!” I huffed more, still a bit sulky over the laughter.
“Maybe! But I’d like to help in any way I can. Could be saying things out loud might make you realize something that went by you before.” He crossed his big, burly arms and nodded, as if in approval of his own words.
“W-why are you so interested in helping me?” I perked up a bit. It’s not like I specifically saved his wife or something again…right?
“Mmmmh… Do you mind me telling a bit of a story?” His demeanor darkened a bit.
“Well… I don’t think I’ll get anywhere from mulling over this magic stuff, so go ahead.” I shrugged.
“I ain’t a Mhiir’im.” He began. “Our people…the ones ya surface dwellers call ‘dwarves’ are divided into three core tribes. The Mhiir’im, Haark and Nonfel.”
“What’s the difference between each tribe?” I admittedly got my curiosity piqued a bit. More knowledge about the world is always welcome.
“Well! I figured this might be interesting to you! Physically, we’re all pretty similar, but we each got a few small quirks! Haark people have big toes, Mhiir-im women have really fancy hair colors and the Nonfels have big ears!” He grinned as he spoke. I couldn’t help but peek under the table to look at his feet, but to my dismay, he had shoes on, so it wasn’t easy to figure if he was a Haark.
“I am a Haark!! Wanna see my feet?!” He began pulling his shoes off.
“No! No! I’m good! I believe you!” He seemed almost disappointed over not getting to show his gigantic toes to me.
“Ahhum! Well, anyway, like I said. Physically we’re pretty similar, but you should be able to tell us apart, since every different tribe is good at different kindsa magic!” He crossed his arms. I did indeed adjust my posture a bit as soon as magic was mentioned.
“You mean each tribe is good with a different domain of magic?”
“Yah! That’s the word! Domain! Mhiir’im are good with the destructive kind… We’re good with the self-improvement sort, and then those damn Nonfel bastards are good with the kind that messes with yer mind!”
I couldn’t help but chuckle over his obvious distaste toward the Nonfel. “That’s pretty interesting! I’ll be able to tell you all apart when I figure out how to…sort of read mana better.” I leaned back against the soft sofa.
“Yah! And my story kinda has got a lot to do with that too. See, our folks, we worship nature. It’s a real big deal to us. I dunno if a witch really gets the concept of a religion, but ya know, we kinda deem the nature a sacred thing. We believe our powers are a blessing from nature itself.”
“Mmm! I do understand what religion is, even if I don’t have a particular one, I have dedicated myself to.” I reassured him.
“Well, that makes my story a lot easier to explain!” He clapped his big hands contently. “See, I was originally kinda just visiting here in Subtherma for work. We use the railway system to traverse around in the underground! Have ya seen it?”
“I have! The steam engine was really impressive!”
“Ya know what a steam engine is?! Ya are some weird witch!” He laughed heartily.
“I’ve spent a lot of my life reading.” I smiled. It’s not like I was lying…even if the reading didn’t happen in this world.
“Well, that’s a hella good thing!” He grinned at me toothily and took another sip of tea, although maybe a gulp was a more appropriate term. He was a rather aggressive tea drinker. “So… I came here from my home kingdom of Inaria, which is about a couple hour train ride away from here.” The Haarken man had a gruffly voice, but there was an air of friendliness to it.
“Uhuh!” I nodded. Somehow, I felt a bit less stressed out from listening to him, even if the mysteries of magic…and my worries over my future still weighed upon me.
“We had a most beautiful kingdom built within and under the roots of a big tree that reached all the way underground with its roots.” He smiled, but simply from his wording, I grew a bit wary. “It was our tree of worship! The Tree of Origin.”
“H…had…?”
“Yah…” He sighed and had to actually take a moment. It was easy enough to see the frustration and anger brewing inside. “Ya know those three golden bastards you killed with Princess Fanael?”
“Yeah.” Suddenly, something clicked within me. A kingdom that worships trees… Something you get to with the train. “The amulet…!” I gasped.
“Yah… I heard from the royal family, that they found the royal insignia of our beloved king in the chambers ya had been in…” He shook his head. An expression of such deep sadness marred his face, and it was a bit difficult to look at him. “They got us… They got us first.” He punched his thigh a bit in frustration.
I now understood why the goblin was so keen on hiding the amulet from the king… It must have been evidence of the fact, that Inaria had already been destroyed. “I’m sorry…”
“Mmm… We got our folks totally fooled by those golden loonies, and about everyone outside of the ones visiting other kingdoms were wiped. Those people single-handedly almost got our entire tribe extinct…and if not for ya and yer friend…we’d prolly have gotten wiped already.” He looked directly at me.
“…” I honestly didn’t know what to even say. Dawn was slowly breaking, and the blue light shone through the windows, mixing with the orange flicker of the lamp I had on the table.
“If I can admit something hella creepy, I actually followed ya on the streets. It’s really my first day working at the library. I was yer average miner before the golden folks came over.” He suddenly confessed. “I begged the librarian to let me be a night guard, as soon as I heard ya talk about spending the night here, even though I ain’t got the slightest clue on what the hell these books are even about.” He chuckled.
“W-why?”
“’Cause I don’t want someone who did something so good for us to be in any kindsa danger. Ya know, they don’t even got a night guard here normally.” He laughed gruffly and stroked his beard. “Books ain’t really something us underground folk consider worth stealing! Betterment of knowledge is a thing that benefits everyone, so ain’t no Haark or even a damn Nonfel gonna steal no books.” He nodded confidently.
“I wanted to guard here…just to guard ya, from…prolly nothing really. I’ve just lost…a lot of things I thought were good things…so, I dunno if this makes any sense, but I’ve gotten a bit scared of losing more good things in life.” He tapped his knees with his hands a bit. “I’ve gotten a bit paranoid or something…” He exhaled heavily after exposing his heart in such a manner.
Every so often, the positive outlook of the people here made it possible to momentarily forget, that they just went through what essentially boiled down to mass genocide.
I never realized there was another tribe, that met a much worse end than Subtherma. I still had no clue on what the motives of the golden people were… At this moment, however, I also knew it’d be extremely tactless of me to start acting like a detective and begin questioning a grieving man about the murder of his loved ones.
“Well… I don’t think it’s creepy.” I managed to blurt out, but it was definitely the wrong thing to focus on in a situation like this…
“Haha…” The man chuckled a bit, although quietly.
“I do…understand the desire to not let go of things, when you’ve lost a lot in life.” I sighed sharply. “I understand it…very well.”
“Got something weighing on yer heart?” He grinned a bit weakly. “I told ya about my misery, so why don’t ya share me yer’s?”
“W-weren’t we supposed to talk about magic…?” I huffed.
“Magic schmagic! Ya clearly got something to talk about, so forget about magic for a second!” He finally laughed at me. Maybe my magic obsession was somehow amusing to him, or might be it was just my lacking social skills.
“Well…” I didn’t really know if I wanted to talk about this to a total stranger…but then again, I kind of really had been bottling up my emotions for a good while now.
“Go ahead! If ya ain’t speaking in five minutes, I’ll go get something to lubricate that tongue of yers! If ya know what I mean!” He made a sipping gesture.
“F-fine…fine… I’ll talk.” I groaned. Admittedly, the Mhiir’im beer wasn’t particularly tasty, so I had no interest in having a drinking contest. “I…have an issue with people abandoning me.” After wavering on the subject a bit, I finally told the man about my past with friends, and my problems with making meaningful, lasting connections… “I just made friends with Amelia…” I continued explaining my fears over losing Amelia, or becoming a burden to her.
The bearded tea-gulper looked a bit stunned over my litany of issues. He just stared at me, seemingly trying to parse through all the information he had been provided with, and he ended up giving an answer I was…honestly sub-consciously expecting…
But it was the answer I also kind of didn’t want to hear.
“Well. Don’t this just sound like…ya gotta speak to Amelia about yer concerns?”
I was left in silence because I knew I’d have to talk to her about it. It’s not like it was some sort of incredible revelation… but there was one issue.
“I’m scared of what she’ll say…or how she’ll react to it. I’m afraid she’ll go away if I open up about my concerns. I don’t want to be a burden…”
“Ya gotta MAN UP!” The man slapped his hand on the table, causing me to yelp a bit.
“B-but I’m a woman…!” I whimpered.
“THAT AIN’T GOT NOTHING TO DO WITH IT!” He suddenly stood up and began pointing at me. “A WOMAN CAN MAN THE HELL UP TOO! Ya got problems, they’re just gonna grow bigger the more ya look away from ‘em!” He roared. Luckily, the library was still empty, so he wasn’t really being a bother.
“What’s this about manning up?” Amelia’s voice suddenly pierced our conversation.
“A-Amelia?!” I squealed.
The dwarf suddenly walked over to the knight in an almost sassy march. “YA! Human paladin! Ya got a real dumb companion here! Tell her to man up!”
“H-huuhhh…?” The poor knight seemed completely out of her element. “U-uh…!” She turned to me. “Y-Yverna…! You should…” She looked at the dwarf for confirmation again, who in turn whispered something to her, which caused her eyes to shoot open. “You should! Um! Man up!” She staggered.
“YOU TOO!?” I howled, as the dwarf slapped Amelia on the thighs and pointed her to sit next to me.
“I’m gonna go walk around again.” He murmured.
“W-what about the magic…?!” I whimpered softly.
“YOU GOT SOME MORE IMPORTANT ISSUES TO LOOK AT! Stop running away from yer problems with dumb distractions!”
I was left in an absurdly difficult silence, with Amelia sitting there just as awkwardly as I was. I guess the Haarken guy did have a point…
Maybe I was just using magic studies as an excuse to run away from the real issue of confronting Amelia about my thoughts…
I hated how much of a point he had…and I hated how I didn’t even notice I was just avoiding the hard-hitting topics by running away.
Having spent a large portion of my past just trying to distract myself from my problems seemed to chase me in here as well, and I seemingly had gotten a bit too good at running away from reality, to the point where I didn’t even notice when I was doing it myself.
I took a long, sharp breath and turned to Amelia. “Hey… Can we talk?”
…
Amelia was carrying me. She did mention she wanted to check up on me every now and then, which is why she just suddenly appeared in the library, but apparently, she had suddenly gotten something she wanted to show me, so we were on our way to see it together. The town was quiet because it was maybe four or three in the morning.
“So, what did you want to talk about.” She spoke softly as we slowly traversed through the misty streets.
“It’s about…” I didn’t really know how to even start this conversation. “I don’t…know how to say this…but um…”
“Take your time.” She was as gentle as always, but somehow it made me feel even worse. I didn’t want to lose this warmth and yet, here I was risking it all with this conversation.
“I…” I gulped. Why was talking suddenly so hard? I felt like my throat was swelling up. “I’m scared…” I struggled to speak further.
“Mhm.” Amelia simply nodded, and we stopped on a bench in a small park.
“W-weren’t we gonna go…somewhere?” I felt almost relieved for the distraction.
“No, I can tell whatever you wish to say is important, so let’s talk here. We can go see my thing later.” She let me sit next to her. “Please go on.”
I really wished the distraction lasted a little bit longer, but sadly, my throat started closing up again. I could tell I was close to crying, even if my eyes felt weirdly dry and irritated. “I’m scared of…you going away from me.” I managed to finally gasp out.
“Where would I go…?” Amelia whispered at me.
“Our adventures… I didn’t expect them to get this dangerous…” My speech was probably about impossible to hear with how quiet I was, and yet somehow Amelia was fully on track. “I’m afraid you’ll die…and leave me all alone… or…we’ll try to go on some lunatic adventure…which will lead to us both getting hurt.”
“…!” Amelia seemed a bit shocked, but a pained expression spread on her face as soon as she started to realize what I was talking about. I couldn’t help but get a bit worried she’d respond poorly, so I began backtracking.
“I-I do think your sense of justice…is cool and I do think it’s nice to be appreciated by the people we helped… but… I’m scared someday this sense of justice will…lead to bad things happening to you…”
“W-what the hell do you mean ME!?” The paladin suddenly began raising her voice. She was already in tears. “YOUR BODY IS RUINED!! YOU HAD TO SACRIFICE SO MUCH MORE BECAUSE OF MY RIDICULOUS ARROGANCE! WHY ARE YOU WORRIED ABOUT MY WELLBEING?!”
I was definitely blindsided by her side of viewing it. I suppose she really did feel guilty over what happened to me. “I’m just…!” I staggered, being yelled at made it even harder to speak. “The thing I want to see the least in this world…is to see someone close to me get hurt… I don’t mind if I get hurt, I can manage it, but I’d rather die than be left all by myself…again.” I continued mumbling quietly.
Amelia shook her head in distaste, and she seemed like she was about to start yelling, but then she reeled her head back a bit, seemingly taking a second to cool down a bit. “But…” She sobbed. “I’m the same… I’ve been feeling incredibly guilty for the last two weeks, because of everything that happened to you when I’m still fine. I even got a patron deity… Everything went perfectly for me, and yet you only lost things.” Her voice was shaking, and she was gritting her teeth as she spoke. It was as if there were a visceral hatred towards herself seeping out from in-between them.
I wanted to start talking right away…but I instead took a moment to breathe. I tried to put myself in her shoes… If she’d be the one who was crippled, I’d be feeling most likely just as guilty, if not even worse, over it.
“I’m…so sorry…! So incredibly sorry…!” She cried. “I won’t ever let you suffer through something so dangerous alone…” She turned to look at me, but it was so incredibly difficult to look at her. My eyes kept stinging, and I felt like crying, but nothing came out.
I chuckled weakly, sighing a bit. “Alone…? So, you still wanna keep doing dangerous stuff…?” I teased her a bit because I really needed to lighten the mood a tad.
She slapped her hands over her mouth and stared at me wide-eyed. “S-sorry…”
“No… Please don’t misunderstand me.” I figured I should just explain everything I had in my head in detail. “I have…abandonment issues.” I began, and before my paladin friend managed to ask what it meant, I explained. “Basically, I can’t mentally deal with being abandoned. Or being left alone by someone I’ve entrusted a lot about myself to. I can’t recover well from it…”
“…” Amelia nodded quietly, wiping her eyes.
“I have memories of a past life…” I started, causing a puzzled expression to grow on the paladin’s face. “I won’t go into a lot of detail…but essentially, I’ve spent about twenty-five years stuck in a hospital. I had some friends, but the friendships never lasted, because of the burden I was tagged along with.”
I told Amelia about my past life, while omitting the details of the differences between our worlds. I told her about Bee, I told her about my parents, I told her about the doctors. I told her everything.
“I don’t want to be alone…” I began sobbing dryly. No tears flowed, but I couldn’t control my breathing anymore. “I don’t want to be left alone! It’s the last thing I want! I don’t care if my body turns to dust, if I can die by the side of someone I care for!” I screamed in the middle of my sobbing. “I can’t… I don’t want it…ever again!!”
“T-then don’t!!” Amelia grabbed my shoulders. “I’ll be here!! I’ve been abandoned by everything I loved… I know how you feel, but please don’t sacrifice yourself for that!! I don’t want to see you go either!! I’d have long since killed myself if not for you, for you’re the only reason I’m even alive!” She was a mess of tears, her hands grasped onto me a bit harder by the second, almost as if she were afraid I’d disappear somewhere if she let go. “Let’s keep going together! We’ll keep each other safe!”
“But I’m nothing but a…lump of meat now…!” I sobbed more, punching down the park chair with frustration.
“DON’T BE ONE!!” She screamed and suddenly lifted me up, beginning to carry me.
“W-what are you doing?! Amelia?!” I shouted, as she began running with me in her arms at full speed. “Amelia?!” She didn’t respond at all, and I had no idea what she had in mind.
I was rapidly carried through the town, until something resembling a small factory of some kind came in sight. Fanael was standing in front of it, looking a bit confused.
“What in the world took you so… oh…” She smiled a bit apologetically as soon as she saw the state Amelia and I were in. “I suppose I’ll not intrude on whatever happened…but you’re here, so, I guess that’s all that matters.” She turned to me. “Yverna. I have something for you.”
I was just a mess of confusion now.
What were these two on about? I couldn’t even word anything anymore due to the storm of emotions I was experiencing, so I just shook my head as I got carried into the factory.
We walked into a back room, where a long wooden box rested on top of a messy table full of various kinds of expensive looking tools. There were tiny hammers…some kind of…things with sharp edges…and that’s about the gist of what I could understand at the moment.
I just stared at the box confused, while the crying Amelia lowered me down on a soft chair sitting in front of the table.
“Please open it…!” She sobbed quietly. “You are not a burden…! Please understand…!”
I looked at both Fanael and Amelia. They both nodded in total silence. I reached out and slowly pulled the lid open. There was a…really dark, item inside. I think it was made of metal. The arm had strange see-through vein-like patterns on its surface, not to mention an incredible number of mana-circuits. “W-what is this…?”
Fanael snapped her fingers, and a couple Mhiir’im men rushed into the room. They grabbed the strange object, which when lifted out of the box and extended looked like an arm. They pulled back the sleeve of my shirt carefully, exposing the bandaged stump left of my arm. “It’s our thank you for everything you’ve done. I’d never be able to live without guilt knowing someone else sacrificed so much to save us, who are essentially complete strangers to you.”
The men unwrapped the bandages around my missing arm, and I slowly began to realize what was happening. My breathing started growing erratic, and my vision went blurry. They somehow attached the black arm to the stub, and the see-through metal wrapped around it, forming an airtight seal. “Is…this…?” I managed to barely speak, as tears began rolling down my cheeks.
I could feel my arm.
I could feel it.
I could feel it!
I could feel it!!
My arm! It was there…! I could feel my arm…!! My crystal-clear tears, fell on the metallic sheen of the dark arm, as I shakily touched the table. I could feel its surface… I looked at Amelia and Fanael. Amelia was crying, but also smiling at me. All I could do was sob, and keep feeling the table. Even Fanael seemed like she was close to crying.
“It’s…an arm…!” I cried. “I can…move it…!”
“We only have this prototype made so far… Working with these materials is very time-consuming, but we will also manufacture a leg and the missing finger for you.” Fanael spoke softly. “We’ll need to detach it for now, but once we get the real deal on you, it’ll feel even more natural! I promise!” The princess grinned a bit.
“Y-you mean… I’ll be able to walk again…?” It felt as if my tear ducts, which had kept all of my emotions bottled up for so long, were finally opened. It all flowed out at once, big dollops of tears dripping onto my new metallic palm as I let the Mhiir’im men detach the arm from my shoulder.
“Yes…!” Now Fanael began sobbing a bit too.
Amelia stood up and rushed to me, toppling the chair over and ending with us both crying out loud on the floor. All those emotions, all the fear, all the stress, all the uncertainty, were finally being let go.
It all turned into those perfectly clear tears, now trailing down my cheeks, as I cried from the depths of my soul. Fanael eventually joined our group hug and sobbed a bit too.
“Thank you…” I whispered quietly.
I don’t think I had ever cried out of joy in my life. It was always out of frustration or sadness, anger or hate, so I had never cried for…a good thing. It felt…wonderful, and I felt almost like my body was being cleansed by it.
An incredible wave of relief washed over me, and I felt like my head was a couple of kilograms lighter all of a sudden. I could keep going on adventures with Amelia. I would be able to walk, and do things with my hands.
I could live…a proper life, without being tied to a bed for good.
I was wrong…
image [https://i.imgur.com/lISLaUh.png]
I was so incredibly wrong in thinking…that this wasn’t worth it.
For the first time in a very long time… I really felt like I had done something right in life. I did lose an arm and a leg literally, but I could replace them with metal and magic, simply because I had people out there, who cared for me.
I wasn’t alone, and I didn’t have to figure out the solution to everything by myself anymore…
We cried for a long time.
Eventually, Amelia carried me out, with Fanael walking beside us. Dawn had broken, and the town was alive again.
I don’t know why…
But somehow, the light shining down from the ceiling didn’t feel so blue anymore…
“Hey… Amelia.”
“What is it, Yverna?”
“If I don’t remember wrong, I think I owe you a dinner…” I mumbled and sniffled a bit.
“Why, you do indeed!” She laughed, and with that, we decided to head out to have something to eat.