Chapter 62: Vulnerabilities

The sun had not even risen, the pre-dawn light barely reaching Miro through the gaps in the walls of the barn he was sleeping in, when Hima blew in like an icy gust.

“Why are you still sleep, Barn Boy?” she demanded, regarding his makeshift bed in a pile of hay.

“‘Barn Boy’?” he asked groggily, surprised how comforted it made him feel to be woken up by her, even if it was mid-dream. “I’m not sure how I feel about ‘Barn Boy’.”

“You’ll survive.”

“But my ego might not.”

He couldn’t see her face, etched as she was as a black silhouette against the blue light streaming through the open door of the barn, but he thought he knew the icewinder well enough by that point to imagine it pretty clearly.

“Your mana charge is full.” Hima didn’t ask this, she stated it, and she was right – just the mention of it called up the bloated dark blue bar. He was struggling to come up with an excuse or apology, whichever came to mind first, but she saved him the effort. “Come on, let’s go – we’ll get some exercises in before the others are ready.”

Picking strands of hay from his hair, Miro shuffled out of the barn into a nippy Lowlands morning, and found that for the first time since they arrived in this land, it was raining. Or rather, it wasn’t so much rain but something heavier than mist – a light moisture on the air that settled as dampness on anything it touched. Miro looked up into the sky that would produce such a miserable form of precipitation. “What a morning to be awake early,” he mumbled.

“Better than the alternative,” Hima said. “You can sleep when you’re dead.”

The two points of Intellect were enough to prevent Miro from saying anything further, considering how close to permanent sleep Hima had been recently. There was a slight twinge of guilt at his own grousing, but that dissipated soon enough.

On the way to training, they walked by Nydra and Peteri. The swordswoman was wearing most of her armour already, only her undershirt and hair getting damp in this rain, while the archer, sharp as ever no matter the time of day, was carrying several bags of supplies towards the barn where their horses slept.

“Why aren’t you ready yet?” Hima chided as she passed, “I thought I said we’re riding today?”

Miro saw Peteri give a small smile and then keep walking, while Nydra had worked her way into the rest of her armour. “I’d hoped it was said in jest,” Nydra said with a shrug as she looked down at a clasp she was working on.

“Is it my long history of joking around that made you think that?” Hima asked, but Miro thought that he caught a tone of appreciation hiding behind the barb.

Nydra levelled Hima was a serious look. “Are you sure you couldn’t use more time to rest?”

Although Miro could see that Nydra’s concern for Hima was genuine, he also sensed that the swordswoman was dying to get on the road and continue the mission entrusted to her by her beloved monarch.

“I’m tired of resting, if we stayed here one more day I was going to start growing into that bed.”

“Fair enough. You two do what you need to do, and we’ll be ready to get going by then.”

Hima seemed eager to get away from the conversation, and pulled her hood over her head.

As they walked towards the same spot they had trained the previous day, Hima summoned ice discs out of the ground ahead of her with one hand, and then with the other launched ice bolts that shattered them. Although it was an impressive spectacle, it was odd to witness as Miro realized that he had never seen her intentionally practice her powers before.

“Is everything alright?” he asked as he followed slightly behind her.

“Yes, fine. Just something’s …” she trailed off, letting one target reach so high up that Miro had lost sight of it, until she fired another ice bolt into the general direction where it had disappeared and a few moments later that part of the sky erupted in a shower of blue sparks.

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This continued all the way until they reached their training ground, and Miro wondered exactly how much mana the icewinder was able to accumulate after all her years of training. As the last of the snowflake remnants of her powers fluttered to the ground, Hima still had not summoned any targets for Miro, and was not even facing him, instead looking off to the eastern horizon and the shadows of the Deep Scar Mountains.

“What’s eating you?” Miro asked and Hima turned around abruptly, as if startled to find him there.

“Do we really need to talk about this?” she asked.

“Do I need to talk? You’ve met me, right? Or did your encounter with that black stuff affect your memory?” He meant it as a joke but found that it only hardened the lines on her face. In response, he wiped the smile off his own face. “Look, I’m not stupid. 2 Intellect points notwithstanding, I can use the word ‘notwithstanding’ in a sentence. And I also know that you find my talking tiresome. But if you’re serious about doing this whole ‘friendship’ thing, you need to embrace the talking part a bit more. It’s what friends do.”

“I wouldn’t know.” Hima said this not in the surly way he would have expected, but in a way that revealed to Miro a kind of vault that until now was safely hidden away within her.

“Well I’m just guessing here, too. Because even though being raised at the Akademiya was tough for you in ways you probably don’t want to share with me, I wasn’t exactly awash in comrades in my childhood either. The only ones I had to talk to were a bunch of sheep, and Bondook, and the former were far better conversationalists. But hey, maybe for the first time in my life I’m ready to be more ears than mouth.”

Something turned behind Hima’s eyes – a slow process that seemed almost painful to the icewinder, and after a few moments of this, Miro had steadied himself to be rebuffed.

“I’m fine,” Hima said slowly and stiffly. “But ever since I woke up, I’ve had this feeling of … I don’t know. It’s not a debuff …” Miro was relieved for her, though did not particularly enjoy hearing the revulsion in her voice as she said the word. “But I can sense there being something buried in my magic that wasn’t there before, some kind of … vulnerability.” Then, for a moment, she permitted a tiny quiver to enter her voice. “I don’t like being vulnerable.”

“Don’t think anyone particularly enjoys it,” Miro said, though by the look on Hima’s face he judged that there was something deeper going on there. “You’ve seen too many debuffs in your time at the Akademiya, haven’t you?”

Hima nodded, her eyes widening slightly, a far off look in them. “I don’t want to end up like that,” she said hoarsely.

“It’s not so bad,” Miro said, swallowing that feeling again at the way she talked about debuffs. “All you need to do is travel somewhere that might not exist to find someone who might be a myth, to brave great peril and nearly drown before going on a disorienting journey into the hidden recesses of your mind and your past before coming out the other side and letting go of something you weren’t quite ready to.”

That at least got a weak smile out of her. “Is that all?” she asked.

“Oh yeah, I hear any idiot could do it,” and before she let her thoughts drift away again he added, “Now come on then, how am I getting humiliated today?”

After a standard practice session during which Hima pushed Miro by keeping success just out of his reach, they returned to the farmhouse, where their horses were ready for the day’s ride.

Olbav and Daimir stood dutifully outside their house, which, for better or worse, had served as their little band’s home for the last few days.

“You sure you won’t stay another day?” Olbav asked.

“You might need to get your strength back,” her husband said, his creased face pinched in a worried grimace directed at Hima.

“Thank you, but, I’m sure I’ll be alright,” Hima said with a respectful nod.

“Of course you will be,” Olbav said, “You are a strong one.”

“I appreciate that,” Hima answered, the words not coming easily, “I’ve been feeling anything but.”

“Oh nonsense,” Daimir admonished, “You’re the strongest person Olbav and I have ever seen.”

The words seemed to have their intended effect, since in the next few seconds of Hima’s awkwardness, Daimir approach the icewinder and locked her into a hug, his wife joining them in a moment.

“We don’t get many visitors here anymore,” Daimir said, “Take care of yourself.”

At first, Miro thought that Hima would be too stunned to move, but then she slowly raised her hand and gave each of the old folks a pat on the back, the bewildered look on her face slowly melting into something different, a transformation she cut short by breaking out of the embrace and wishing both of them farewell.

The rest of them contended with mere handshakes, but Miro also almost fell apart when Olbav looked him in the eye and, gracing him with one of the warmest smiles he’d ever seen, said, “You did right by her, lad.”

Having said their goodbyes, Hima initially approached the horse with the shiny caramel-coloured coat but Miro stopped her. “Oh no, we only ride Winterbug here,” he said, gesturing to the horse that he very much now saw as his own.

“Winterbug?” Hima asked skeptically.

“Yes, Winterbug. You can name the others if you want, but Winterbug is Winterbug and she is mine.”

With a satisfied smile, Miro patted the horse on the rump and tried to hop onto her back. A few moments of awkward grunting and trying to fling his leg higher than it wanted to go, he capitulated.

“Maybe a point into Dexterity the next time I level up?” he suggested as Hima rolled her eyes and helped him atop the horse.

Now firmly on their steeds, their group waved one last farewell at their hosts.

“Please, remember us, Nydra Heliks,” Olbav said as they pulled away, and the swordswoman replied, “Of course.”

Their horses took a few strides when Hima pulled up beside Nydra.

“Nydra, you know they don’t just want us to remember them fondly, right?”

“I know what they meant, Hima. I know.” Nydra said, her gaze turning to the barren fields, and the black stream that ran through them.