A million things seemed to be happening all at once. Be it divine intervention or simply just divine, Wen didn’t care much. Theo was right in the middle of it, though. The instant those fateful letters had appeared in the midday sky two days ago, Wen realised she’d wasted nearly two years of her life in order to appease her deceased father. The Barge was his life’s work, but his business sense was truly rubbish. Why would he leave behind a perfectly fine village to start all over again somewhere new? He didn’t even have the health for it.
When he finally kicked the bucket, Wen was practically already out the door to search for him, to make him see sense. Since Ma died, he hadn’t been himself, but making such a stupid choice? He was practically forcing Wen, his only daughter, to start his own business again from scratch.
Arriving in Brook Town, Wen got to work. The mayor had already taken care of her Da’s funeral and was even about to repurpose the Barge! To the hells with him, if she wasn’t going to take the Barge down with her if she failed her Da. She claimed it, for a fee, of course, and from then on, it was hers. In name, if nothing else. It was truly the town’s, if not simply just Mayor Whittlebutt’s. She wasn’t allowed to run it well, she had now realised. The mayor had seen to the slow demise of the town by way of inadequacy, she knew this now.
She was an Ercheat-taught brewmaster’s apprentice, yet she wasn’t even allowed to brew! What sort of town didn’t want to take advantage of the generally rare Level Three skills of its villagers? One of the farmer families was the same, though that was harder to blame on the mayor as the land itself seemed to dislike the very idea of cultivating plants and crops. Who could’ve thought that the mayor was in cahoots with a freaking necromancer of all things?
Wen was sure of one thing, and that was that her town wouldn’t go down the same road. If anything, it would soar ever higher. She’d make sure it was adequate by the first year! To hell with the two-year immunity! It wasn’t needed for her town. Within a year, her tavern would be the grandest there was, acting like the town’s centre all by its lonesome! She’d have plenty of crops to brew, hopefully barrelfuls of fruit to juice and damn it if Theo wouldn’t also get to finally see his plants grow up!
He claimed they’d started sprouting after just a few days back in Brook Town. Probably just an eager exaggeration, but he had planted them with magic! If he got some more seeds, he’d do it, and they’d be fuckin’ delicious flavouring for her ales and ciders.
He was an oddball, which was saying something with Willam around. Still, he was kind and showed a genuine care for people. He’d never looked sideways at Willam and he’d never said anything bad about anyone. He’d helped out to the best of his ability and he seemed to genuinely care for Wen. She wasn’t always the easiest woman to get close to, she knew this. She was rash, borderline aggressive and definitely had her own thoughts about most things, but Theo didn’t even seem bothered by it. He didn’t judge.
And now he was lying there, barely alive by the looks of it. Wen figured he should consider himself lucky to be just that, considering the amount of divine magic that seemed to follow him around. If his tale was true about the temple of Arcana he’d simply stumbled upon and desecrated with his own blood, he had been touched by divine magic even then. Possibly even before that, considering he had somehow visited her. Now the light sleepers of the town spoke of Luni wreathing her divine moonlight around him in an explosion of blue light from the moon itself, then there was the arrow of light that pierced the very fabric of the universe itself. It had no doubt robbed Theo of everything he could muster.
His skin was deathly pale, his breathing ragged and short. His lips were oddly black instead of the blue she’d expected to see and his entire body was shivering. He seemed to be out of life-threatening danger, however, and was now soundly sleeping on the ground where she had just an hour earlier considered if he would consider courting her. The idea seemed stupid now, after everything. Her reasons for telling him about the band of Ho’suo were just to plant a simple idea in his mind, but had her words caused this? Surely Luni was relevant to all that had happened?
Even after the beam of light had settled, Theo muttered Arcana’s name in a deathly trance, then going on as if he was having a conversation. The words were barely audible and so poorly enunciated in his weak murmuring that there wasn’t much else to gain from it. After this, he had briefly woken, but quickly lost his fight against the night’s slumber.
The sun was rising and the builders were almost getting ready to work, only waiting as long as they were comfortable with so as not to wake anyone still sleeping. As far as Wen could tell, it was just Theo. She hadn’t seen Phoebe during the night, but both of her watchers had said she was alright.
Then, as suddenly as a glass breaking from a drunken push off the table, someone stood hanging over Theo. Wen was sure she hadn’t been looking away long, so the person must’ve just… appeared. They wore a ragged, grey cloak that covered their entire person, except judging by the slightly visible bare ankles and shoewear, it was a woman.
“Oy!” Wen yelled and started approaching the figure. The person stood up straight, but didn’t turn. They were small enough of stature to be a woman, in any case, smaller than Wen and slightly narrowed even despite the thick cloak. The barest gatherings of strands of a hazel lock appeared as their head shifted ever so slightly before bending back down and picking the weakened man up as if he weighed nothing. Even Wen could tell magic had been used in the area as it had a particular effect on the very air that Theo’s magic didn’t have.
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In another blink-and-you’ve-already-missed-it moment, the figure, Theo and all, was simply gone. Wen wasn’t stupid, though. They might be fast, but there was no way they could simply vanish like that. The brew-mistress turned, eyeing any and all directions with a scrutinous look. There!
The figure was dashing around the lake already! Damn, if they weren’t quick. Wen shouted for help, rousing her fellow villagers who saw her pointing arm in the lake’s direction. It was too late to do anything. There was no one in the village that could catch up. To strengthen this notion, in case there was any doubt, the kidnapper then blinked away again, easily gaining a hundred metres in an instant and was soon cresting and subsequently vanishing behind a gentle slope.
Theo’s entire body ached. His vision, even as he slowly opened his eyes in the unfamiliar brightness of the sun’s rays, was blurry and unwilling to focus. His head felt like it had been unattached, shaken and stirred to all hells, then reattached slightly wrong. His body screamed in a chorus of pain, his muscles too weak to even move.
What he did manage to do was check on his stats to see the damage of what he could only hope was the previous night, because it certainly wasn’t night any more and he hoped he hadn’t been out of it longer than a few hours.
Health: 59% | Mana: 0/56 | Stamina: 10%
Surely there seemed to be nothing wrong with him due to any loss of health or stamina at least, and he was happy to see his mana having regenerated. He quickly, almost by reflex at this point, checked on his Boon, finding it gone. In its place were a slew of System messages he couldn’t bother to read right now. He was only slightly worried when he realised he could see the System completely fine, yet his eyes could barely see the nearby green and brown. There was a person there, Wen most likely as Theo thought he recognised her assets when placed so close to him. He only needed to shift his head slightly to face them directly. He couldn’t though.
“Shh,” said a comforting voice as he groaned in the attempt. A soft, warm hand slid tenderly across his cheek and then assisted in lightly prying his mouth open. Her other arm wrapped around the back of his neck to pull him into a higher position, resting his banging head on the softness of her pillows. A pop sounded, though not from him, and with another gentle whisper, Theo was told to drink.
There was a luscious pink liquid held in front of him, which she eased into his mouth by way of a clear container that felt like glass. Without much control of his body as a whole, the cold liquid swirled into his mouth but found little access to a drain. The glass was removed from his sore lips and the hand that had pried his jaw open now forced it closed again, her touch still soft as she assisted him. With a tilt of his head, the liquid found its intended passage and on its way down it forced his body to involuntarily swallow, further increasing its flow down.
This triggered the body’s reflexive defenses that tried forcing the intruding liquid back up, but he was held firm and the liquid was offered no return channel. Theo could hear his throat disagreeing with a pained scrrr, but the liquid was then gone. A pleasing warmth started radiating from his stomach, spreading outwards into his organs and bones like light through paper walls.
“Drink it all,” said the woman, the voice a bit softer than Wen’s. It was possible it was just the swelling of his brain that was unable to tune every tone that his ears heard. He didn’t know of anyone else that would treat him so familiarly.
The brightly pink liquid returned in front of him, and he found he could voluntarily open his mouth to accept it now. It tasted sweet, yet had a bit of a sour aftertaste as it once more went down his throat. This time, he could swallow it himself, easing the process quite a bit. The liquid still filled his mouth too fast, and he had to shake his head to stop the pour for a bit until he could clear it all away.
“Last of it, now,” the voice promised warmly as the last of the mending liquid went into him. All over his body he felt some sort of heat radiating through it, centering on his stomach where the pink contents now were. It was almost like he could sense the internal warmth clashing against hers, which was acting as an external force pushing its way in rather than out.
His vision slowly cleared, allowing him to see he was in a forest rather than back in town. A grey coat or cloak of some kind hung on a broken branch from an old, gnarly tree. His head was still gently placed in the caring embrace of Wen’s bosom, yet Theo slowly reached the consensus that something was amiss.
The smell was different, actually a bit more alluring than the smell of a dusty cellar and spilled wine. It smelled of roses rather than aged grapes, with only a slight thorn of sweat and dirt coming through. Another clue was the cloak. Theo knew for a fact that Wen didn’t bring a cloak like that with her, if she even had one hidden in the Barge somewhere. Then there was the gentle hum of her voice as she embraced Theo like a mother would her sick child as she waited until whatever he had been drinking finished working its way into his very bones and muscles. He didn’t recognise the melody, but why would he? He’d barely heard a musical note since arriving here.
Her embrace grew firmer and more forced the better Theo started feeling. His body tried lifting itself up to sit more comfortably, yet the woman’s grip grew more insistent the more he resisted. He was too weak to get out, but it wasn’t like he actually wanted to. He was deeply comfortable and only wanted to know how she was, because it was clear to him now that it wasn’t her.
He coughed as he tried using his throat for anything other than breathing, separating his lips to speak. He dry-heaved as his throat reconfigured itself to expel air rather than take in liquid. “Thank you,” he managed to expel feebly and with minimal use of his vocal chords.
“Shh,” the woman sounded, pressing him ever so slightly more against herself. “You’re safe with me.” Her voice was like a kind, mellow wind into his ear.
“Who…?” Theo tried asking, finding himself unprepared. His throat was grating the air passing through his voice band and outputted only a guttural squeal.
“Really, hush. Let the potion work.”
It seemed he would have to wait until the kind woman had finished nursing him back to health. But then, after what seemed like a while to his tired mind, she spoke again; “I’m Grace.”
