The hospital smelled faintly of mint and antiseptic. Not unpleasant, just aggressively clean. Light streamed through tall glass walls, diffused by hanging vines that had been coaxed to grow indoors by the Virid staff. The result was oddly peaceful for a hospital that had handled Rift exposure cases all week.
They followed the signs to Recovery Wing C, then Rift Trauma Care, then Observation, until they found the correctly numbered door.
“My favorite alchemists!” Lani decided immediately, excitedly motioning them in.
Considering the only other alchemist Lani met was Zhou, not a high bar to beat.
She spread her wings in greeting, feathers puffed and glossy again. The room was bright and cluttered with recovery charms, half-eaten fruit cups, and several Minny plushies carrying well wishes. A hospital robe and too many IV lines dangling from the sleeves did little to dampen her energy. Lani eagerly took their gifts as they settled in the room.
“How’re you holding up?” Nico asked as pleasantry.
“Oh my gosh! I can’t take this from you!” Lani exclaimed over the question, pulling out a limited edition festival Minny keychain from the gift bag.
Nico laughed, “Don’t worry, we got you your own.” He pulled his keychain out of his inventory to reassure her.
Lani was already shaking the plush, wings fluttering in delight. “You guys did the festival route together? That’s so cute!”
Nico could feel the trajectory of this conversation forming, but there wasn’t any reflection to bail him out this time.
“Yeah it was a nice walk,” Kai said, flipping through the patient monitoring readouts on the wall. It was unclear if that violated patient privacy.
“I bet you looked adorable together,” she said, hugging Minny between her wings. “You two are even matching.” Lani’s eyes flicked between the two of them, glowing with unholy matchmaking energy.
“Thanks, we did look adorable,” Kai replied as he returned the readouts, fully aware of what chaos he was sowing.
Nico, for the first time, took assessment of the outfit Kai had thrown at him this morning; he had been avoiding mirrors all day. They were, in fact, matching. He couldn’t get himself to look back at Lani, whose brain he could sense was firing on all cylinders.
Kai was tapping on his phone now, not acknowledging the glare Nico was giving him. After locking the screen with a click, he asked, “Are you recovering all right?”
Lani nodded quickly, mouth full of roasted rice cakes from the gift bag. “Yup! They said my mana levels are stabilizing. I don’t even get dizzy anymore.”
“That’s good,” Nico said. Then, after a pause, “How’s adjusting back to reality?”
Her feathers lifted at first, a reflexive show of confidence, but as she sat in thought, they began to flatten again. The brightness that usually filled her voice hesitated at the edges.
“…To be honest, it can be overwhelming,” she admitted while looking downward, avoiding their eyes. “Everything feels louder than I remember. Even the sunlight feels like it’s not what I remember.” She turned her head toward the window. “Yesterday, I watched the sunset and…” Her hands twisted the blanket around her waist. “I thought maybe it wouldn’t come back. Then that made me think of how…uhm. How after trying to get out all year…” She looked at the fox sheepishly before diverting her gaze. “It’s not—uhm no. I’m really happy you got me out,” she amended herself.
“It’s okay, you can say it,” Nico assured. “We’ll listen.”
Lani nodded shyly and fiddled with her blanket a bit more before she could continue.
“But then when the sun came back out again,” she held something back within her breaths. Her voice shrank, “It made me think about how I have to come back now, too. I missed so much school and I’m scared— uhm. I don’t know. I’m just so behind…”
As she trailed off, Kai made sure a silence didn’t settle. “Take as much time as you need,” he spoke. “The guild will take care of you. At the moment to get you readjusted, and in the future when you’re ready to study again.”
Lani’s eyes lit back up with a sparkle as Kai mentioned the guild. She nodded enthusiastically and turned to Nico, seeking affirmation from him too.
He gave her a soft smile. “Yeah, focus on resting for now. You’ve been through a lot. I’m glad you made it back safely.”
Lani nodded back shyly to this. Her feathers flushed a faint pink as she shifted her wings restlessly and turned her gaze back to the window.
***
On their way out, Kai bumped Nico’s shoulder with his own. “Don’t play with a girl’s heart like that.”
Nico frowned, feeling a slight sense of injustice, and snapped back, “Only you would comfort someone by telling them to study.”
Kai waved it off with an eye roll as he scrolled through places to eat on his phone.
Nico tilted his head, somewhat surprised, and reconsidered his own remark. Kai’s offer had been generous, genuinely so, and hearing it had reassured him almost as much as it had reassured Lani. Maybe it was more accurate to say that Kai was the only one who could promise something like that and actually deliver.
Even though they shared the same rank, the gap between them surfaced in moments like this. Kai’s words carried a weight that settled immediately, the kind people accepted without question. It was a bold promise, one Nico would never feel comfortable making without first looping in several layers of admin and approval. There was a good chance Kai had arranged it by the time Lani was admitted, but an equally decent chance he had declared it on the spot and would now figure out how to make it true.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
The shape of Kai’s authority was different from his own. Nico built authority one experience at a time: leading teams, making definitive calls, overseeing the development of skills. Those same experiences were little more than checkboxes on Kai’s list of accomplishments.
He had inherited power the moment he was born a Vuong. Nico had watched him throw it around since they were kids, as he still did now. Watching Kai test the limits of how far that power could stretch always irritated him for reasons Nico never quite pinned down, even when Kai’s use of it trended toward lawful good. Regardless of how Nico felt about it, that authority wasn’t something he envied. It regularly kept Kai up at night. Nico knew, because he was awake then too.
“We’re going to this skewers place,” Kai said, turning his phone toward him with a quick flip through the review photos.
“Sure.”
***
The shrine sat atop a hill overlooking the Virid quarter in full jasmine bloom. From there, the lights below glowed like a field of fireflies.
Overhead, foxfire wisps drifted, their cheerful glow bending and swaying with the night breeze that smelled faintly of wine. Or maybe it wasn’t the foxfire that swayed. Maybe it was just them, after a long night of drinks and festivity.
Kai leaned against the railing with a skewered grilled squid held between his teeth. He wore a festival coat dyed in cool undertones, patterned with blue hydrangea.
Nico sat beside him with one knee drawn up, watching a small sparkler burn itself away between two fingers. Each hiss of fire bit off a little more of the wire. His linen coat carried warm undertones, marigold stitched along the hem, the same one he’d worn on that day of the festival. Neither of them mentioned how they’d gotten their festival gear.
“You make any wishes?” Kai asked as an afterthought between bites.
Nico hummed, “Mn…” Then shook his ears, as if the gesture could dislodge a thought, or person, from his head.
Kai’s ears tilted sideways. “You’re supposed to tell me. That’s how conversations work.”
“You can start with your wish, then.” Nico fed the last bit of the sparkler into a waiting foxfire. It happily crackled with bursts of gold.
“World peace,” Kai declared boldly.
“One dollar,” Nico stated just as boldly.
They laughed at their blatant lies. The foxfire drifted lazily toward Kai and ate the empty skewer stick, sparks winking out in tiny gold pops as it did.
“You ever celebrate summer like this when you were a kid?” Nico asked, eyes on the festival lights below.
“You were literally there with me.”
“I meant before that.”
“Yeah, I had to.” Kai’s tone came with a trace of bitterness.
Nico waggled his ears in a small, wordless prod for more.
Kai sighed. “My dad made the festival, so of course he made me dance as a shrine kid.”
“Show me the dance,” Nico said with conviction.
Kai got up, stretched his arms above his head, and exhaled like he was preparing for something elaborate. Nico watched intently as Kai lowered both of his arms, middle fingers raised, inches away from his face.
“I don’t think I’m familiar with this tradition,” Nico said flatly, smacking the fingers away.
Kai dropped back to the floor, activating lycanthropy mid-fall with easy muscle memory. “You’re insulting the dance of—”
|| Skill Activated || [ Lycanthropy ]
“Your dad,” Nico interrupted, already activating his own lycanthropy. His tail flopped against the floorboards.
“Actually, you’re free to insult it then.” Kai yawned, ears stretching back.
“No, I’m scared of your dad.” Nico shot the suggestion down immediately.
“Ugh, he’s only the Sage who brought alchemic prosperity to Lumere a century or two ago. What’s there to be scared of?” Kai said facetiously, rolling over onto his back with theatrical suffering. Nico rolled over too, in a slow and unhurried movement, to not upset his stomach.
“If he’s 300 years old, then you’re still a kid to him at 34. You can still be a shrine boy," Nico rationalized.
“He’d be so happy to hear you suggest that,” Kai smiled warmly, “No wonder sages like you so much.”
The shrine lit up briefly with sparks, puffs of smoke and steam as many barks were exchanged.
“Hey, maybe that sage would even make you his familiar,” Kai mused, brushing off a patch of singed fur.
“…That’s weird coming from you.”
Nico was quickly sobering up as he shook water from his fur. Lycans—Lumeans in particular, Vuongs in extra particular—had historically tense relations with Arcanite Sages. Not for no reason; centuries of oppression perpetuated by the Forged Nation would do that.
“I’m not saying I agree with it,” Kai rolled his eyes, failing to sober up. “Just that I can see you agreeing with it.”
“… I feel like you’re insulting me.”
Actually, it felt like Kai was trying to get him banished from Lumere.
“No, you’re just like that.” The wolf said as he rolled lazily across the floorboards with some unknown purpose. “I’m being factual.”
“That’s not what that word means. You’re drunk off the moon.”
“Duh.” The wolf, still focused and half-sprawled, ignored Nico’s correction. “The moment you see him deal with mana backlash, you’ll be offering to be his familiar.”
“….”
“Even with familiars, my dad still experiences backlash sometimes,” Kai muttered, his voice losing its playful edge. “And even with the burden shared, it’s brutal.”
“…Is it that bad?”
The wolf gave up trying to keep his head off the ground but continued, staring up at the moon, enamored. “You’re gonna hate it when you see it.”
“You’re so sure I’m going to see it,” Nico said as he looked over to Kai, who was too busy staring at the foxfire drifting near the moon to meet his eyes.
“Duh,” the wolf huffed a short laugh. “He has no familiars because he’s insane, not because he doesn’t need them.”
Nico’s ears flicked. He pushed himself onto his feet and stumbled out, feeling his way to the shrine’s edge. Kai’s drunken complaints about Sages were nothing new, but Nico being the subject of those complaints was.
Stargazing was preferable to arguing. The night was clear, easy for spotting stars and making shapes out of nothing. As he waved his paw, connecting one constellation to another, the image of purple mana lacing through his arm reemerged. He flexed his claws as Zhou’s resigned sigh from that night surfaced. Healing uses up a lot of mana.
Actually, a lot of moments came to mind. Zhou managed his mana usage far more carefully than any Sage should have needed to. As vessels of core mana, Sages were supposed to have vastly enhanced reserves. It was strange that he rationed it so carefully. Well, it was obvious why now.
Satisfied with the number of constellations he’d mapped, Nico turned back toward the shrine and nudged the heap of fur on the floor.
“I’m awake,” Kai said, eyes still closed.
“Then get your ass back to the hotel.”
The wolf flipped upright, half-awake, and made a lazy grab in front of him, pulling a ringlet out of his inventory. The fox immediately snatched the portalling device away from the drowsy paw.
“Noh. Sohber hup hon yohr whalk bahck (No. Sober up on your walk back),” Nico said, his words muffled by the ringlet between his teeth.
“…”
The wolf quietly straightened into a perfectly postured sit with his ears tall. He set one paw delicately on the fox's snout, just above the ringlet, and looked at him with wide, pure eyes.
“Duhde… dohn’t behg, (Dude… don’t beg),” Nico muttered, almost tripping over the words.
But Kai double-downed. He gently exchanged the paw he had placed on Nico’s snout with his other paw, eyes glistening with sincerity. The fox’s ears twitched as he physically cringed.
He’s so good at it.
It was a Lycan thing—begging to ease tension in an endearing and often cute manner. Like puppy eyes, but worse. It was cute when kids did it, but from peers or someone older, it physically hurt him to watch. Nico wasn’t a fan of it and always gave in just to make it stop. Which meant, unfortunately, begging from all demographics worked on him every time.
The sight of the wolf begging was unbearable. He had to relent to preserve his friend’s dignity. With a sigh, Nico injected mana into the ringlet and the portal to the hotel whirled open in front of them. The moment it activated, Kai smacked him in the face.