After taking a moment to realize she was now alone, Helianna decided to take the time and enjoy it. During the caravan trip home, she had discovered a few things about herself. First of all, she found being with people incredibly, tiring and valued her time to herself much more than she did while at The Academy. The Academy had too many forced social interactions and had somehow felt more isolating than being out here practically on her own.
Now, she enjoyed being by herself. And she had unintentionally discovered a great way to do it on the caravan. She liked to people-watch. Not having to interact with anybody, but seeing them having fun, goofing off, making idiots of themselves, and even just general talking. It didn’t matter. It was enjoyable to watch them pass the time.
Upon the realization that she enjoyed that, she immediately made a hard rule for herself. Staying hidden would be fine as it prevented people from talking to her, but she would always only watch people that were in a public space and when there were plenty of others around. She would never, ever start spying on people’s private lives for her own enjoyment and she didn’t want to feel like a voyeur or predator. She may have become an assassin that enjoyed the shadows, but there were lines that she wouldn’t cross.
She started moving between the temporary shelters, watching and listening to those around her, and pulling out all her tricks to prevent people from noticing her. Before she could start analyzing the people however, her thought process completely froze, her body moving on autopilot. Seeing the people around her, the families… the parents… the fathers.
She felt something building in her gut and it only took a moment’s thought to realize it was her own emotions threatening to bubble back to the surface and take control. She slammed the emotions back down with everything she could, not daring to let them run amok in her mind. She couldn’t afford to let her emotions take her. All they did was hinder her. They were not productive, only serving to make emotional and bad decisions that would only put herself in more danger. Some emotions were useful. But the emotions that threatened to come to the surface now were useless, and she made certain they remained in the recesses of her mind where they couldn’t ruin her life.
Confident she was back in control, she put her attention back on the people around her, and she was now in a completely different part of the sub-village that had been made out of temporary shelters. Now that she was paying attention, she could feel the tension in the air. The people were quiet, quieter than they should be. Almost as if they were afraid that being too loud would get them into trouble. That certainly didn’t stop them from talking however. The area was constantly filled with quiet chatter, forcing her to strain her ears to hear the conversations.
The results of her eavesdropping were about what she expected. Everywhere she went, people were quietly whispering about the upcoming decisions for the remains of the town. Should they stay or should they go? She paid close attention, curious to see what the general consensus was and was sorely let down. While certainly not everyone, a vast majority of those that she could hear seemed to be planning on staying. Regardless of how much that helped her mother, that seemed like a bad idea. Who knows what The Academy would do or whether it would try to get information out of them?
She was still eavesdropping and having to be increasingly careful due to how uneasy people were when Sylas walked into the middle of the area designated for shelters. She didn’t notice him at first as there was a shelter between the two of them, but was quickly made aware of his presence.
“Damnit, Helianna!” Sylas cursed loudly. “I know you’re around here somewhere! Stop sneaking around.”
Rolling her eyes, she slowly moved out from around the shelter and stepped towards him, instinctively taking advantage of the people around her to blend in. From Sylas’ perspective, it seemed as if she had simply melted out of a group of people, coming from practically nowhere.
“Seriously, Helianna?”
“What?” she looked around, annoyed that Sylas had called her out. “Why did you have to yell that out?”
“Easiest way to find you. Besides, you’ll like what I have to say.” Helianna gave him an annoyed look, waiting for him to continue. “I’ll go.”
“Good. We’ll leave, hopefully tomorrow morning. My mother is procuring funds for us.”
“Really?” he scoffed. “You extorting your mother now? And how much is that going to be? A few cop-”
“More than we have now,” Helianna interrupted. “Which is nothing.” Pursing his lips and looking away briefly, Sylas didn’t respond.
“See you tomorrow then, I guess,” Sylas calmly stated and turned away, heading to his own shelter. Helianna sighed and looked around. They had gained a little bit of an audience and now that Sylas had made them aware that she liked to sneak around, there was little chance of her being able to continue. With dusk soon arriving, she decided to call it a night and went to the shelter she was provided, the same one as her mother.
She had some time to herself as her mother was still gone, so she decided to experiment with her magic. Unfortunately, being a temporary shelter meant there was very little to imbue her magic with. She had been told that she had supposedly experimented with her magic, with the others around to attest to it, but that was right in the period where she didn’t have any memory because of her death. She wasn’t sure how successful she had been, but wanted to give it an effort now.
She sat down and started meditating, trying to get a solid grasp on the magic inside of her. Compared to the first time she had done this, it happened quickly, almost as if the magic was eager to respond. Unbeknownst to Helianna, she went through the exact same process as she had before she died, initially struggling to imbue her magic into her pillow. She was eventually successful however, and opened her eyes to see the pillow moving as if alive.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“This is so weird,” Helianna muttered to herself. “How much control do you have?” she asked, not expecting an answer as a terrible idea formed in her mind.
She reached back out to the pillow and withdrew the magic with ease, only feeling partially in control. Hesitantly, she reached out and touched the flimsy wooden walls, trying to imbue her magic into the building. She immediately felt a massive resistance, reminded of how it would feel to be simply trying to push the entire shelter down herself. It wasn’t completely solid, but felt too strong for her to do on her own. Curious how much her intent mattered, she then singled out the singular wooden board in her mind, trying to push her magic into it by itself.
The process was quick, and with much less resistance. She opened her eyes and stepped back, seeing the tail end of her magic entering the board. After a few seconds, she heard some creaking from the wood. It had clearly worked, but movement was either impossible or too difficult for whatever her magic wanted to do. She reached her hand out once more, but didn’t pull the magic back yet.
“I don’t know if you can understand me. I don’t know if you can even hear me. But if you can, humor me. We don’t… I don’t know what we can do with this. I’m simply experimenting and the better we both know what we can do, the better. You’re my magic, right? Or something to that effect. Well, if that’s true then you die the second I do. This could help me… us survive.”
She felt insane. She was talking to the wooden board of a temporary shelter, trying to communicate with her own magic as if it was sentient. She had to investigate every avenue though, and if it truly was sentient… then she couldn’t afford to antagonize it. It lived inside her after all. She pulled the magic from the board, unsure if it could understand her better outside her body or not, if it even could. Realizing that, she went through her spiel once more, trying to talk to the magic inside her and continuing to feel insane.
She put her hand out to the wall again and pushed, trying to imbue her magic into the whole house. This time, she felt the magic itself rush forward, as if a battering ram smashing against a gate. Her magic was clearly held back, but she could feel trace amounts leaking out into the house and dissipating. Both her and her magic kept up the pressure and an aching feeling arose in Helianna. It wasn’t physical, and it felt almost like it was the connection to her magic that was aching, a strange sensation that she tried to ignore. There was a sudden rush as her magic all left her in an instant, imbuing itself into the building and she nearly collapsed from the headrush that ensued.
In the headrush, she missed the golden glow that had briefly appeared as her magic suffused the building. Regardless, she could feel her magic in the rudimentary building, but nothing was visibly different once the process was done. The flap that served as a door suddenly rustled as if moved by a breeze, although she felt no air come in. Even knowing it was her magic, she couldn’t stop a shiver from creeping up her spine. She heard creaking once more, louder this time, and followed by a sudden snap. She saw a wooden plank fall to the ground at her side, leaving a hole in her wall. She looked around uneasily before walking toward the hole in the wall and touching the plank. Instantly, she could tell. The wood didn’t have any of her magic in it. It was no longer a part of the building and that was where the magic was housed.
Happy to have her thoughts on intent confirmed, she lifted the wood up, struggling to put it back in place from inside. After a few moments, she gave up and turned to the door to see her mom standing in the doorway.
“What’s going on here?” she asked.
“Give me a minute,” Helianna quickly responded and brushed past her mother. She walked around to the hole from the outside and pushed the wood back into place as best as she could. It didn’t fit perfectly as it had been forcibly ripped out of the house and upon investigation, none of her magic flooded back in. She walked back to the front and the door flap fluttered aside before she walked. Her mother looked at Helianna with her eyes wide.
“What in Alsur’s name?” Jana muttered.
Deciding she was done with the experiments for now, Helianna put her hand on the wall to accept the magic back in. It rushed into her easily and she immediately noticed something different, although it took a moment to figure out what it was. There was less magic coming back than she had sent into the house. It was probably only half the size it had started, at best, and she concluded that all that movement that had been done must have required it. She opened her eyes and turned to her mother.
“Sorry. I was… experimenting.”
“Ah… any developments?” Helianna opened her mouth to respond, but her mother held up her hand. “Wait! I don’t want to know. I don’t want to be able to hurt you if The Academy gets their hands on me.”
“Oh.” There was silence for several moments before Helianna broke it. “Could you tell me what happened the last time I experimented? You were there, right? Well, I don’t remember it cause of my death.” Her mother looked at her for a few moments, a little weirded out by Helianna’s casual reference of her own death.
“Yeah, although here.” Her mother handed Helianna her purse. “There’s plenty of money in there. Several denominations of course.” Helianna opened it and looked inside, seeing a much larger amount of cash inside than she expected.
“How much is this?!”
“Two gold’s worth.”
“Two gold? How do you have that much that you’re able to casually give me? You need to keep some for yourself, especially given what you’re planning.”
“I have. Remember the metal system isn’t as strong here in Wulvinia. I’ve still got plenty. Don’t worry. And I split it up. There’s a hundred ninety-five silvers and five hundred coppers.” Helianna looked at her mother in a different light.
“How do you have so much that you can throw this much away casually?” Her mother chuckled.
“Your father used to work as a mercenary, remember? It’s a pretty lucrative business compared to cooking.”
“I thought all of that went to his equipment.”
“Well… it typically did. But when he decided to stop so he could stay in Ash Hill with me, he decided to finish on a high note. He made a lot of money on his last job and then he didn’t need to use it for his equipment anymore.”
“Ah… still surprising to me.”
“You were young when you left. There was no need to ever talk about money with you. Now. You wanted to hear about your last experimentation with your magic?”