194 - Compromise (Patreon)

On the way back into the home, Arielle realized that Elric and the Wesleys had moved their conversation to somewhere other than the dining hall. Wulfric thought they might be in the study, and so he led Arielle there. However, on the way up the central staircase, they heard his name called. 

“Wulfric.”

They both turned around, spotting his mother walking from the opposite side of the adjacent hallway, followed by an attendant. 

“I was looking for you,” she said, stopping in front of them as her eyes travelled to Arielle. “How are you doing, my dear?”

“Fine,” Ari responded. The woman looked pretty and put together as always, with her curly dark hair cascading down her back and her blue eyes, much like Wulfric's, sparkling. However, there was a darkness underneath them that she hadn't managed to cover with powder. Arielle imagined that she was also having trouble dealing with the demon attack. “How are you doing?”

The woman swallowed thickly. “As well as can be expected. Wulfric, may I pull you away from your guest and speak to you for a moment?”

“Sure,” Wulfric said to Arielle. “You know where my father’s study is, don’t you? It's next to the balcony where he usually has tea with guests.”

Ari nodded. “I can find my way there.”

“Okay. I’ll talk to you later. I assume you’ll be staying with your cousin in the meantime, so I’ll send my letters there.”

That wasn’t true, but there was no other address she could give him. “Okay.”

She watched for a second as Wulfric went off with his mother, and then she went upstairs to meet Elric. 

Luckily, he and Lord Wesley were concluding their conversation when Arielle arrived. They were walking out of his study, and when Lord Wesley saw Arielle, his expression changed. 

It was hard to articulate exactly the emotions she read on his face. She didn’t want to use her emotion-reading spell on him, but he definitely looked at her differently than before. 

“Thank you for your help again, Lord Wesley,” Elric said. “I truly appreciate it.”

“I’m sure you do.” Though he responded to Elric, his eyes remained on Arielle. “No need to thank me. I’m grateful that you trusted me with this secret, and I’m still quite sure this is just about the best bet I ever placed.”

“Thank you.” Arielle bowed to him, and he just kept staring until Elric put his hands on her shoulders and steered her away. 

The next stop after the Wesleys was Camhanach castle. Ari wanted to see if Riorke was okay, and Elric wanted to confirm that Lord Camhanach would keep the secret of what he knew. Camhanach had said he would, but Elric wanted them to have another discussion now that everything had settled down. 

They arrived through the official entrance this time, a giant stone arch with a gate of tall metallic bars that sizzled with heat.  Three watchmen stood on a tower next to it, and Elric had to state his name and purpose, which they relayed to the Lord, before the drawbridge was lowered. 

As they walked in, Arielle got to take in what she had only seen before from the sky, this time from the ground. The gruelling training was still ongoing, men dragging themselves across moats in full armor, running underneath the scorching sun, hiking to climb the concentric walls guarding the central castle.

Each wall had a gate that opened for Arielle and Elric, triggered by the guard who led them in. Ari felt bad for the trainees and felt somewhat like she was cheating by going through it the easy way.  

She kept an eye out for Riorke on the grounds, but unless he was one of the ones covered in full armor, she did not spot him. They were also walking too fast for her to take everything in, not to mention the unbearable heat that made it hard to think. 

“How do they live like this?” Arielle murmured. "Seems torturous." 

The guard leading them chuckled. “It’s a necessity. If we didn’t torture ourselves routinely, we would get soft.”

"I  see. So such torture is necessary to build physical strength and battle readiness.” 

"I suppose you could say that."

Arielle gulped. She hoped that Vittoria didn't have anything like this planned for her. She did say that she would build Arielle's physical aptitude, along with her magical skills, and she had expressed admiration for the Camhanach's training before. But she probably wouldn't put Arielle through anything like this.

Right?

She gave Elric a questioning look, and he smirked but said nothing in response. 

Eventually, at the fifth gate, they reached a juncture where they were led the rest of the way in by another man, this time, a man that Arielle recognized. He was the one who had been in the war room prior to Arielle sneaking in there, and he’d been the one who also defended Riorke against General Artis Pissguzzler.

As they walked in, he kept glancing at Arielle, and she was increasingly paranoid that he sensed something about her being the one who broke into Camhanach castle with Vittoria. 

“So you’re the one," he said. 

Arielle’s heart immediately started racing. “The one what?” Did he recognize her? Or had Camhanach already broken his promise and told his men what she’d done?

“The one that has the council in an uproar,” the man continued. “We've been hearing about it all morning. At the last assembly meeting, they said there was going to be an induction soon, and one of the new masters being sworn in still an apprentice.”

“Oh.” Arielle was flooded with relief. “Yes, that’s me.”

“Incredible," he said. "I suppose I should have bowed to you as well, shouldn't I?"

"I'm not a Master yet," she said. "But when I become one, it is customary. I don't prefer it, though."

"Don't you?"

She shook her head. 

That man raised an eyebrow. "You must be some sort of magical genius, aren't you?”

“Yes," she responded. 

The man laughed. "Well, at least you don't feign humility. That's refreshing." He sighed. "It must be nice. I always wanted to be more of a mage, casting spells instead of sweating my arse off in armor digging up my crack. But it just wasn’t in the cards for me." 

Elric coughed, and Arielle blinked at the vivid image he painted, but he kept going. 

"That's that Camhanach blood, you know, even though I’m only a distant cousin. We're cursed when it comes to magic, but we make up for it by being strong and fearless. We're one of the best warrior clans in the world even without having strong mages."

"Mossbornes are similar," Arielle said. "No magic, so they have to be really strong."

"Exactly. I've never met a Mossborne but hope to face one in battle one day."

Arielle almost blurted out that she was a Mossborne, but recalled that she was supposed to pretend to be adopted. 

“Lord Camhanach was a great fighter,” she said instead. “He managed to hold his own against a really powerful demon.”

“Yeah, I heard. Our Lord certainly is brave. We don’t get many demonic invasions in this part of our world. The occasional troll and other lesser inconveniences, but mostly it's humans we have to deal with. But don’t be fooled, they can be every bit as vicious and bloodthirsty as the beasties.” As he talked, Arielle noticed that his eyes were no longer on her. 

They had approached the door to the castle, and to the left lay the sparring field where a few of the fighters had stopped to watch someone who drew their wand. 

He had his back turned to her,  but he circled and she realized it was Artis. 

And behind him was Riorke. 

They were about to fight. Again. 

“What’s happening?” Arielle said, urgently. “Shouldn’t he be resting?”

“He was injured pretty badly when I last saw him,” Elric said, "He’s in no state to participate in any brutal training."

“I agree,” the man said. "In fact that's what I and all his other sparring partners told him. And since we told him no, I guess he decided to pick a fight with Piss– I mean, General Artis instead.”

“General Artis should know better,” Elric said and immediately started towards the field. 

Arielle followed him. 

 As they approached, the spectators turned their attention from Riorke and Pissguzzler to Arielle and Elric. 

They bowed one by one, in recognition of Elric's position. 

Riorke saw Arielle before Artis did. The tight look on his face eased, giving way to confusion. “Arielle?"

“Hey,” she said, and her voice seemed to echo in the silence despite the open air and the small crowd. 

"What's going on?" Elric asked Artis. 

“I would like to know myself,” the new voice was Lord Camhanach. He'd emerged from the doors of the castle, with a stern look on his face as he approached them, his cape billowing about him. “What is the meaning of this, Artis?”

General Artis, despite being faced with the combined censure of the Lord and the Archmage, appeared nonplussed. “The boy came to me and said he wanted to learn.”

“He’s not supposed to be sparring.”

“Yes, but since it’s the first favor he’s ever asked me, knowing how much he had to swallow his pride to do it, how could I deny him?”

“Favor?” Surprise colored the tone of the man who led them in. "You asked him for a favor, Rory?"

"Yes. He asked me to teach him how to do a proper energy pulse. Didn't you, Rory?” 

All eyes turned to Riorke. 

Riorke’s face was red, jaw clenched. It was obvious how much he hated the position he was in.

"Yes," he said. "I did."

Artis gave Lord Camhanach a smug look. 

Arielle counted the seconds as everyone seemed stunned into silence. Lord Camhanach in particular looked completely bewildered. "But...if you wanted to learn magical spells, you could have asked me? Or James, the tutor?"

“I tried your spells,” Riorke responded. “When the demons attacked, I tried to use [Aerial Shove] to get them off Lacey. The first time I got backlash. It knocked me out for a few seconds." He swallowed and looked down at his hands. "By the time I woke up, Lacey was already..."

Arielle’s heart caught. She suddenly remembered that Lacey was among the names that hadn't been confirmed alive. She'd never even thought to ask about him. 

She was a terrible friend. 

“Dead?” she asked now, quiet and reluctant to voice her fear. “Is Lacey dead?”

Riorke flinched and shook his head. 

Lord Camahanch said, “He’s not dead. He's unconscious and in a very bad state. The healer said that, at best, he won’t be able to use one of his legs after he wakes up." 

“I don’t understand. Is it broken?"

Camhanach kept his eyes on his son as he spoke. "He was bitten by a demon. The poison slowly travelled up his body and was only stopped because he managed to use a tourniquet before he passed out. His leg was too poisoned to salvage, so they had to cut most of it off. The second one was damaged but not as badly, and might be salvageable although scared from the bite."

"It wasn't just a bite," Riorke said darkly. "It tried to kill him and it would have succeeded if I hadn't woken up."

"But you did," Lord Camhanach said. "And you actually managed to tackle the demon to get him off your friend. That was incredibly brave of you, Riorke and it saved Lacey’s life."

"I don't care about being brave!" He glared. "I care about the fact that my best friend is fighting for his life because of me. I couldn't stop it from happening. And then after I tackled the demon, it took me somewhere else, and we got separated. If not for Master Dorine, I would have died too."

Silence ensued, a depressing one that felt like clouds had gathered over them, even though the sun was still as bright and hot as ever. 

Arielle didn’t know what to say. It sounded horrific to listen to, although she knew that people often lost limbs in battle. Chief Fenwick had lost an arm to a mossgiant and he had a prosthetic one now. It wasn’t very useful although he’d once used it to stab a bogworm in the eye. He said that ascendant medical technology was far better than he could afford so maybe, there was hope for Lacey. Maybe they could get him a prosthetic leg that worked just as well as his old leg. 

"It’s being regrown from the knee down,” Lord Camhanach said. "But the problem with regrowing limbs is that often the same sensation doesn't return, or it doesn’t establish the same mind-muscle connection. Given how bad the poisoning was, the new leg might not even give him much mobility. He will likely have to use walking aids for the rest of his life and might have to leave the academy, at least temporarily, to focus on his healing." 

"If he survives," Riorke said darkly.

"Riorke–"

“It's my fault," Riorke said. “He came to the ball because of me. I was the one who said we should hide in that room. I was the one who–who–" Riorke's voice broke and he put his hand up to his face and whispered, "Shit.”

Arielle stood and watched as, for the second time today, a friend of hers cried. 

Riorke's was different from Lyra's. While Lyra's sobs had been noisy and sniffly, his was quiet, filled with stuttered breaths, and choking sounds. 

He put his other hand up to cover the rest of his face, as though to hide what he was doing. A gasp escaped him at some point, but when his father took a step towards him, he took a step back. 

Arielle had never seen Riorke cry before, and so she didn't quite know what to do. 

Neither did anyone else from the look of it, because no one else made a move toward him. 

Eventually, Riorke exhaled, wiped his face, and said in as flat a voice as he could manage. “I need to learn magic. At least one powerful spell that I can use in case something like that happens again."

"Ah, Rory..." His father’s face also looked shaken. Clearly, seeing his son like this moved him nearly to tears too. 

“Come,” he said finally. “Let’s talk.”

Riorke shook his head. “I don’t want to talk. I want to train. I want to learn that spell.”

“You don’t have to do this right now.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Riorke.”

“The only way I’m leaving here is after I learn that spell.”

“You’re not going to learn it overnight,” Artis warned. 

“Then I won’t rest overnight either.”

“Rory, you’re not being reasonable,” said the man who led them in.

However, Riorke did not move. His face was squeezed in the type of stubbornness that suggested they might have to drag him to his room to get him to comply. 

“Maybe I can help.”

Arielle spoke before she really thought about it, and her interjection had everyone turning toward her. 

“Arielle?” Elric inquired, and for a second, she floundered. 

She’d said it because she didn’t want another argument between Riorke and his father and she didn’t want to see him in pain anymore. Also, she just realized that she'd never tested Riorke’s cores. The reason why the Camhanachs were so bad at magic was a mystery, but perhaps it was a mystery she could help with. Maybe it was even something similar to Lyra's problem. 

She would have never asked before, because Riorke was obviously resistant to learning any magic as a form of personal protest.  

But now that he was willing…

Maybe she could help. 

She walked forward. 

"Can I touch your hand?" Arielle asked. 

At first she wasn’t sure Riorke heard her. He was still  trying very hard to collect himself, and when he noticed her, he asked, "What are you doing here?"

"I came to see how you were doing,” she said.

“I’m fine.”

“Obviously not.” She held out her arm. “Give me your hand.”

He grunted roughly before he slowly extended his hand toward her.

Arielle held it, closed her eyes, activating [Sensate] [Orion] and aura reading to sense his cores. She found it within seconds.  

Interesting.

Riorke had a similar problem to Lyra in that his Calor core was vastly more developed than the others. However, his Calor wasn't as developed as Lyra's Vitae, and the rest of his cores were even less developed than hers before they disappeared. It was to be expected, since he rarely ever cast spells. He also didn’t have as strong a connection to Calor as Lyra did to Vitae. 

But another thing she noticed was that his cores were duller in color than any other cores she'd ever seen. 

Ari didn't really know what that meant, but it was probably linked to the problem at hand, seeing as how everything else was relatively normal. 

Perhaps the dullness meant that they weren’t used much, or that it was harder for Riorke to form a connection with essences. 

However, Arielle recalled that the first spell Riorke had practiced on the day they'd met in spell-casting class had been explosive. He was supposed to perform a [Quick Switch], essentially switching around two objects; however, he'd caused the wall ornaments to explode instead. 

The connection wasn't the problem. For him to turn [Quick Switch] into an explosive spell, rather than a failure to bring the proper essences in, he'd simply added more Calor than necessary. Arielle had seen it happen herself. 

So maybe it wasn't so much that he didn't connect with the other essences, but he had trouble 'feeling' the connection, and using it to guide his spell-casting. That would explain even after knowing the spell form, he could make a mistake like that, and get it right sometimes and wrong other times, despite the spell being in his Grimoire. 

Professor Valeria had mentioned that she thought Riorke's problem was with his focus. She thought he often got distracted in the middle of the spellcasting and added too much Calor sometimes, since that was his strongest core. She thought it was a problem of effort and felt that he needed to meditate more to work on his core-essence connection for the other cores. 

Arielle understood why she would think that, considering there didn't seem to be anything physically wrong with Riorke's cores upon testing. They were underdeveloped, but they didn't seem obviously defective; that is, if you couldn't see it.

However, if the dull color really referred to sensitivity, then was it a problem of not enough effort and focus? Or was it too much effort and focus?

Like a blind man cast at sea, Riorke grabbed for whatever was around him without thought, because he couldn't tell what he was supposed to actually get.

They assumed that he didn't train much because he didn't want to learn spells. But his cores were not those of someone who didn't train much. Particularly, his core connection with Calor was strong for how underdeveloped the core was, and it was slightly brighter than the rest, which would point to the fact that he'd actually worked hard on meditation with that. He'd mentioned that he wanted to be an essence-bound Knight, like Graham, whose physical attributes were tied to Calor orbs surrounding his body, increasing his speed, strength, perception, and explosive force. Perhaps because of that, core stabilization might be the only class, apart from combat casting, that he took seriously, although he focused more on Calor than his other cores, because that was the only thing he could actually kind of feel. 

As such, Calor was likely the easiest thing for him to draw into a spell, and his frantic hyperfocus on casting the spell, he would pull it everything he could feel, and use more Calor than he intended to, causing explosions.

Figuring out the problem wasn’t complicated. 

The fix, however, might be.

None of his cores were developed enough to suitably counterbalance Calor.

Probably he'd already been told that he needed to develop his other cores by Professors Valeria and Llywyd, and while that would be the ideal fix, he didn't currently have the stability for Massa, nor the confidence for Vacu. It would also be ten times harder to build his cores if he couldn’t fix his sensitivity issue. He would essentially work more than anyone else to get the same connection and he was starting from behind.

Arielle remained silent, although she heard some murmuring around her. She didn’t let go of Riorke’s hand despite the discomfort and waited as her brain worked, and worked. 

There had to be something more she could tell him, something she could do for him. 

She’d given Lyra an unconventional solution to her complicated problem, by turning her weakness into a strength. Riorke’s wasn’t nearly as complicated. 

Maybe she could find something, a midway compromise between an ideal solution and where Riorke was at right now. 

It hit her suddenly, and her eyes popped open. 

Turning weakness into strength.

If he could easily pull too much Calor into a spell, accidentally creating something explosive out of something mundane, then what if he could do it intentionally?

Particularly if the essences were drawn closer to his body in spell form, then it would be easier for him to feel it, wouldn't it?

They could at least try.

“Arielle?” Elric asked as she let go of Riorke’s arm. 

“What just happened?” Riorke asked. “What did you do?”

Arielle stared at him. 

"How do you feel about spells that turn your body into a weapon?"

Riorke raised his eyebrow. "What?"

It was hard to explain what she meant, but luckily there was an open demonstration area. 

"I’m not sure it will work," she said. "But there’s something we should try. Come, I'll show you."