.
Dilorè’s fine-tuned nose had surprised me some, but I should have been anticipating this from Ceria. The senses of beast-kin tend to mirror their animal kingdom archetypes, and cats have a better sense of smell than the average dog and almost as good as some hounds bred for good noses, like beagles and basset hounds.
Needless to say, I wasn’t really sure what I was going to tell her, when she did finally get me alone somewhere. I foresaw an uncomfortable conversation, to say the least.
With everyone else around, naturally Ceria didn’t pursue the subject, but she was giving me secret little smirks from time to time.
This was a town full of miners and adventurers, since adventuring goes hand-in-hand with mining, so as long as Dilorè covered herself with her traveling cloak– actually a clever use of raiment– we stood out no more than any other party as we headed out to eat. The nearest eatery was naturally the inn, but the others didn’t want to have lunch at the place they ate dinner and breakfast. We wound up at a typical tavern with long tables, benches and servers in low-cut dirndls.
There weren’t many customers, so we secured a table for ourselves. As expected, Ceria and Melione book-ended me. It was incredibly well coordinated. They fell in automatically, with Ceria ahead of me and Melione behind, ending up on my left and right sides. But I suspect it wasn’t actually planned. It seemed to be something they had done without thinking.
As is typical of such places, there wasn’t much variety offered. You ask for lunch and they bring what they’re serving. In this case, it was something like a pancake but made of shredded potatoes, pan-roasted and served with sausages to one side. The drinks were steins of weak ale.
Naturally, we couldn’t discuss the mission here, and I was a little miffed at Allia for giving up the warehouse before we could use it for a meeting, but I knew from her current state that she was suffering pneuma exhaustion from the [Divination] ritual. In the interest of clearing the Arelian quest to verify the Berado mine and get it out of the way so we could pursue our real mission, she had over-reached with her inquiry. Right now, she just wanted to refuel and recover.
Actually, she looked profoundly disappointed, so I suspect she also didn’t want to talk about it. She probably thought she’d hit one of the two possible bad results of a divination, the one where the answer was simply too cryptic to be useful.
The other bad result is, of course, when the diviner overreaches and fails to remain conscious to hear the answer.
So I put aside those matters, and turned to Melione to ask a question that had been on my mind since I learned how to cast [Soothe].
I asked her, “You showed me two new Healing spells the other day. Before that, I had only heard of the three basic spells. Do you know any others?”
“Grandmother taught me seven Healing spells, My Lady,” Melione answered. “And I’ve heard of two others, but I’ve also heard they are probably just legends.”
I counted in my mind and stated, “I know of five. What are the other two you know?”
“[Strengthen] and [Sustain], My Lady,” she stated. “They add to the target’s physical strength and mental fortitude.”
“Mental what?” I asked.
“Their ability to fend off mental attacks, Lady,” Ceria said from the other side. “In Light Magic we have a spell for that, too. You use them in fights against demonic foes that can attack mentally.”
“Attacks that are wasted on fairies,” Dilorè commented. “We are basically immune from such things, so you probably never think about it.”
She turned to Ceria. “If you don’t mind, I should like to learn that Light spell. If I’m to fight alongside mortals, I might need it to support you.”
I frowned as I thought about certain things in the past, then told both my companions, “I want to learn it, too. Both the Light and Healing spells.”
Dilorè nodded, apparently considering it a good idea, but I doubt she knew my reason. The ‘Fate magic’ curse hadn’t been rearing its head lately, but I believed that was only because I was moving around and not giving it a chance to kick in. It occurred to me that I might at least be able to cast this magic on specific individuals to release them from the effect. It was hard to say whether that was the case, until I knew more about how it worked.
“Why don’t I recall you ever using these other spells?” I asked Melione.
She smiled and confessed, “I’ve always been worried about wasting my magic and running out during fights. I’m scared that I will run out of it, and then someone will die because I couldn’t heal them.”
“But it’s different now, right?” Ryuu stated. “Your healing has become a lot stronger, lately.”
Yeah, naturally, he was thinking the same thing as I was. I mean, strengthening the target? Adding to mental resistance? Those are basic status buffs, right? And [Restoration] is a buff for Stamina, as best as I can tell. In a party, her role shouldn’t be just healing, but ‘support magic’, in the RPG sense.
She pursed her lips, with her brows bunching up. “I don’t have the knowledge to know when to use it, though.”
“Naturally not,” Allia declared. “Ryuu, she isn’t a consecrated priestess, so we shouldn’t ask her to do things only a priestess has the resources and training to do. Those spells are things only available on the rare occasions that temples allow priestesses to go into battle. Melly may be an amazing healer, but she would wear herself out attempting to do battle support on top of healing wounds.”
Personally, I suspected that with me backing her up, she did have the capacity to do it, but I didn’t mention it.
He frowned. “Why would being a priestess matter?”
“You would have to ask the gods that,” Allia answered, with a wry smile. “Just understand that only a pure maiden can become one, and only priestesses have that level of Healing magic.”
Since the subject had suddenly turned to matters of purity and the like, I was blushing and wanting to steer this conversation elsewhere.
I cleared my throat. “Leaving that aside, I wouldn’t mind learning those other healing spells. I’m not a priestess either, but I have a feeling I could match the output of one.”
Ryuu scowled. “I would rather have you back on the front line. You’ve always been our all-arounder. Graham blocked, I attacked, you reinforced each of us as needed. If we just had you back for that, we’d be as good as before.”
I was still uncomfortable hearing actual recognition from him, so these words threw me for a moment. Before I had recovered though, Allia responded in my place.
“You’re forgetting that my daughters and I are here now, Ryuu,” she declared. “Bruna and Graham both defend, you’re not yet my equal on attack, and Ceria is together with Arken and Melly on the back line. We didn’t bring you any assistance for Brigitte, but I understand she is quite a formidable scout. Ladies Tia and Dilorè are better off working as an independent team.”
I shook my head. “My Lady, Mr. Kowa is not wrong about needing to assign roles for all of us. If we are all in a fight together…”
Allia interrupted, “If that opportunity comes, you two will be in the air, covering, ranging or flanking. You have completely different mobility than us. Surely you aren’t thinking of staying on the ground?”
With a blink, I realized I had been thinking exactly that way. For six months, I — or rather, the old Tiana– had stayed on the ground ninety five percent of the time, thanks to the armor design she had badly botched up thanks to her dislike of exposure. A simple hole in the back big enough for her wings might have allowed her to use it while flying and avoid her death, but she had forced her armor to be designed without it. Before that, while serving in the military and the squires, she had worn leather armor that also lacked a wing window. So she had fought largely as a foot soldier.
I actually didn’t have any experience working with this team, or any ground force, as a flyer.
Dilorè had been staying quiet, listening to this conversation with deep interest in her sparkling eyes. I’m sure, in the back of her head, she was taking copious notes. But since she had just been included in the discussion, she spoke for herself.
“If the question is whether we can mesh as a fighting team, then I think Lady Tia is thinking correctly. We may well work better as independent groups as you say, but a situation may come when that is not possible. We should agree ahead of time how we will fight together.”
Allia scowled, but nodded. “True.”
My cousin turned to me while raising an eyebrow. “Where do we fit, in that case?”
“And,” Talene added, “Why am I somehow invisible in this whole conversation?”
Brigitte, who had also been silent this whole time, turned in surprise to the woman sitting next to her. “Why would you be involved? You won’t be there with us!”
“I most certainly will be there with you!” she retorted. “Didn’t I say that Master Miröen expects me to help you?!”
We were all looking at her in surprise. It had been unanimously misunderstood that she was staying behind in Lisrau.
Brigitte answered, “But, you’re some kind of professor, right? A ‘sage’ or something?”
Uncle Arken began chuckling. “I apologize, Your Wisdom. Given my experiences with Matthias, at least I should have realized it and explained about sages to them.”
He turned to Brigitte and said, “The old gentleman that we stayed with in Dausindiu is also a sage. I met him when he, I and Lady Tia’s mother accepted a quest together to subjugate a dragon on the Eastern Continent. I think it has been about fifty years since then.”
Although several members of this group had also been together on a dragon subjugation, this drew stares from them anyhow. It was certainly the first time I was hearing about it.
He smiled at my surprise and explained, “Your mother was using the name ‘Altaia’ back then. She has a habit of leaving her accomplishments behind along with her aliases, so I’m sure she never told you about this.”
“And that Matthias actually helped?” Allia asked. “I know he has an excellent reputation as a scholar but…”
“In his youth, his reputation was as a devastating battle maniac,” Arken answered with a wry grin. “Although he had become a sage by the time I met him, he was still a one-man army. He didn’t ‘help’, he was the front line. Altaia did support, and I was the naive rookie who those two dragged in to scout for them. Matthias delivered the final blows while Altaia kept the beast pinned with her magic. My only contribution in that fight was as the bait to lure the creature out in the first place.”
“So, your point is that being a sage doesn’t mean one can’t fight,” Ryuu concluded.
“No,” Talene said with slight laughter in her voice. “His point is that combat strength is one of the prerequisites for becoming a sage. One must possess knowledge, magical prowess and martial training, all three at a master’s level, or the one you lack will be your downfall.”
We got back to the matter at hand and settled on having me on the front line and Talene and Dilorè in back by the time we left the restaurant. I thought we would go from there back to the inn and perhaps a discussion about the divination what to do with it, but that was interrupted by a distinctive chiming sound.
Allia looked confused, but I moved close and told her in a low voice, “That’s the talking stone.”
She frowned, looked around, then walked quickly to the alley between two nearby buildings while fishing for it in her belt-wallet. Understanding that she didn’t want to be seen by passers-by, I told everyone, “Let’s make a screen for her.”
After we had formed a wall, she sent Wind magic into the stone and stared at it. Realizing that she didn’t know what to do next, I grabbed it from her and held it like a cellphone. “Hello?”
“My Lady!” came a familiar voice. “This is Sidis. You’ve reached Lisrau already?”
Dilorè and I frowned our concern at each other, “I have. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, thank you. It’s not about that, My Lady. The Lord of Greenwater is asking for you!”
I rubbed my forehead as if feeling a headache coming on. Except what I was feeling was yet another round trip coming on.
