As soon as they left the storage room, Sophie felt the terrible drain on her mana lessen somewhat, and she lost her grip on Elowen’s hand. She glanced back and noticed Elowen was starting to blink in and out of focus as if she were trying to control herself or move the bond back on her own.

Calli led them through the back hallway up a side staircase to her personal apartment above the Adventurer’s Guild. Instead of art, like Acacia’s apartment, Calli’s walls were covered in strange weapons and artifacts, just like the one Linden had wanted to show them downstairs.

Sophie paused in the doorway, ready for a repeat experience of Elowen’s panic, but it never came. Elowen floated into the apartment, closer to her usual unmanifested state than before, and Calli waved Sophie in saying, “Sorry about all of this – none of them are corrupted, so they should be fine.”

Sophie felt nearly dizzy with relief to finally sit down and get her bearings, so she found her way to a couch. “Can you use any of these?”

“Not really…” Calli frowned, but Acacia interrupted her.

“She totally can. She could have been a warrior!”

Calli shot her a look and then shrugged. “It’s fine, Caci. I’m happy as a clerk.”

But her tone didn’t quite match her words. Sophie wondered what that was about, but her mind felt too scattered to make heads or tails of the conversation. Instead she took a moment to ground herself again and really focus on Elowen’s bond, and she was surprised to find that it easily slid off of her and back onto the garden stone. She felt absolutely exhausted, however, and even though she had taken a few more bites of the mana bread on the way upstairs, her mana was nearly completely drained.

After the bond was moved back to the garden stone, Elowen had faded back into her completely translucent state, and Sophie was left with three pairs of eyes staring at her curiously and one very embarrassed shrine spirit.

“What happened?” several people asked at once, including Sophie, who asked the question to Elowen.

Elowen shook her head, unwilling or unable to explain, and Sophie sighed, giving up on getting answers out of her at the moment.

“Elowen’s still recovering,” Sophie explained to the others. “But I’m honestly not sure what happened. She somehow managed to move her bond over to me, instead of the stone that I brought with me.”

“Her bond?” Calli asked, as Acacia busied herself with Calli’s fridge – obviously intent on making food for everyone. Linden had sprawled on another couch nearby and had lifted some object off of Calli’s wall, inspecting it as if he did this all the time.

Sophie nodded and then glanced over to Elowen, who was hovering near her on the couch but refusing to meet her gaze. “Yeah – the bond that usually keeps her tied to the shrine stone. I’ve been working on moving it to other things, so she can come with me, even though she can’t manifest yet.”

Three sets of eyes now stared at her in varying degrees of confusion, and Sophie suddenly felt like she was missing out on some important detail. “What?” she asked. “Am I… not supposed to do that?”

She glanced over at Acacia, who had paused in the middle of getting out a cutting board, and the other woman looked puzzled.

Linden cleared his throat, setting the artifact he had been holding down on a table next to him. “Shrine stone? Are you saying Caulis’s spirit is bound to something in the shrine? And you… unbound her, and –” He shook his head as if not understanding.

But Sophie was the one who didn’t understand. “Of course! Isn’t that how it’s done everywhere?”

Acacia and Calli looked at each other uncertainly, but Linden shook his head more firmly this time. “Not that I have ever heard of, and I’ve visited other shrines. I know it’s possible to bind a shrine spirit, but… You have that kind of ability? Aren’t you a fairly new shrine priestess?”

Sophie felt a cold chill run down her spine. “I am. But it’s not like I’m the one who bound her there in the first place. I just moved the bond….” She glanced back to Elowen, as she trailed off, looking for any sort of explanation, but the spirit shook her head and started crying anew.

“I don’t remember! I don’t remember anything, okay? I don’t know why I’m bound. I don’t remember if I was ever bound before. I thought it had always been like this…”

Sophie continued to stare at Elowen, unsure what to make of this. “You mean…” she started, but she closed her mouth suddenly, the sheer horror of the situation hitting her. Elowen glanced away and sniffed.

“The bond… It could be what’s preventing her from fading,” Acacia said thoughtfully. “That might be why she’s been able to survive for so long.”

“I still don’t understand,” Sophie said. Or perhaps she was unwilling to accept the reality of the situation. “So shrine spirits really aren’t usually bound to anything – not at all?”

“Of course not!” Linden replied, staring at her as if she had completely lost her mind. “Why would they be? That would be horrible, wouldn’t it? Trapped in the same place, unable to leave, unable to move on –”

Just as Elowen had been.

***

Sophie didn’t get many more answers out of Linden or the others. It seemed like no one else had any answers for what could have happened to bind Elowen to the stone, and why there was even such a thing as the shrine stone in the first place. She found out that Mana Binding was not a common skill, and in fact, was not looked upon favorably by any of the others. Binding a mana spirit to anything after all, was as good as a prison.

Sophie wondered about her own abilities… It’s not like she had learned Mana Binding. When she had been working with the bond before, she seemed only to have learned how to move it around to different things, not necessarily how to bind or unbind it. Something bound must be able to be broken right? That would be useful, if she could learn un-binding. But if the bond was what was preventing Elowen from fading…

Well, the whole situation was quite tricky.

At least Linden offered to stop by the shrine to see if he could figure out anything new about the mana problem there and take a look at the stone while he was at it.

Before Sophie and Elowen left to go back, however, Calli just had to get the last word in. She pushed for Sophie to come back to the Adventurer’s Guild as soon as she felt up to it to look at the corrupted artifacts Linden had found.

“Why would I do that?” Sophie asked, not liking the idea especially after what had happened with Elowen.

“Because it can help you learn purification!” Calli insisted. “It’s the perfect chance. We can’t purify them. We just have to keep them in storage until we can beg a priest or priestess from Sentus or one of the other shrines to stop by.”

Sophie frowned, not sure how thrilled she was about working with corrupted artifacts. Could she really learn how to purify them just by studying them? Somehow she wasn’t quite sure about that, and Elowen seemed too sad to offer any advice one way or the other. “I’ll think about it,” she said, and Calli rolled her eyes, obviously annoyed at the reply.

Sophie said her goodbyes to Calli and Linden, but Acacia followed her and Elowen out to head back to the bakery. She walked as far as the city gates with them, keeping a close eye on Sophie the entire time. “Are you sure you don’t want help back?”

Sophie shook her head. “We can manage,” she insisted. “Thank you, though.”

Acacia seemed reluctant to leave, and Sophie couldn’t blame her, but Elowen seemed much calmer now.

And besides, they didn’t walk the path alone after all.

As Sophie left Acacia at the gates and turned toward the shrine path, she thought she caught a glimmer of something in the corner of her eye, but before she could turn toward it, she felt a familiar burst of air dart past her cheek and then the little wyvern swooped back around, forcing Sophie to stop in her tracks.

Elowen gasped in surprise, taking a step back, as if the creature might run into her as well, but Sophie merely laughed and held out her arm for the little thing to land on. Elowen watched curiously as the wyvern preened for a moment, fluttering its leathery wings happily. It met Sophie’s eyes directly, as if it wanted to ask her a question.

“I’m truly not mad at you,” Sophie said, and the creature blinked at her a few more times. It hopped up her arm slightly, as if trying to get her attention, and then swooped its head down to pull at her dress.

“Hey!” she complained. “What’s that about?”

Elowen began to giggle, the sound almost startling in comparison to her earlier mood. “I think it wants more mana bread,” she said, and then Sophie remembered the chunk she had stuffed into her pocket earlier, after they had made it upstairs to Calli’s apartment.

“Oh!” Sophie reached into her pocket to pull out the piece that was left. “This?”

The wyvern immediately grabbed it from her hands, zipping off onto a tree branch happily with its treat. Sophie watched with no small amount of amusement, although she had been hoping to save some of that for herself. She couldn’t quite justify asking Acacia for more of it now that she had the Magewort, but she also detested the taste of that awful tea.

Oh well.

Sophie began walking back as the wyvern continued to devour her precious mana bread in a tree far above them. Elowen floated alongside her at a fairly sedate pace, watching the creature with curious eyes. They lost sight of it eventually, but only a few moments later – perhaps after it had finally finished – it caught up to them, following them through the trees for a few paces before it landed on Sophie again.

This time, instead of pestering her for more treats, though, Sophie felt the warm tingle of mana seeping into her arm, and Elowen laughed out loud in surprise. It was nice to hear her laugh, especially after the experience at the Adventurer’s Guild. And Sophie realized, now, what corruption felt like. The little wyvern’s mana definitely didn’t feel like that at all, and she felt silly for even worrying about it in the first place.

“Thank you,” she told it, and it preened a bit more before zipping back into the tree tops to continue following them. What a strange creature. But helpful in its own way.

It also made her think of that strange mana impression she had seen in Caulis. In fact, she had almost thought she had seen one again just earlier – but either way, that hadn’t felt like corruption either. It felt like something, but not corruption.

When they finally made it back, Sophie felt a little more refreshed thanks to the wyvern, and she used its boost of mana to swap Elowen’s bond back over to the shrine stone. Then she all but collapsed onto her little folding mattress. Elowen hovered around her contritely the entire time, wringing her hands together and apologizing.

“What happened?“ Sophie asked Elowen again, now that they were alone.

Elowen shook her head. “I don’t know.“

“You seemed afraid,” Sophie gently prompted her. “Was it the corruption? The axe?”

Elowen shook her head again, but then she buried her face in her hands. “Maybe – the corruption.”

Sophie chewed on her lip in thought. It didn’t exactly make sense for a shrine spirit to be afraid of corruption, did it? Elowen had talked about it before fairly impartially, as if it was something to be wary of, but something that Sophie’s class would give her some amount of protection from. But then again, a lot of things about Elowen weren’t adding up suddenly.

Sophie thought back to Calli’s offer to work on learning purification. She didn’t really want to, if she was totally honest with herself. And besides, she had no real idea how she would go about it. In the past, when she had to learn something new, she had always relied on Elowen’s help, but now she wouldn’t be able to do that. Not with the way Elowen had reacted to the corruption.

But then again, Elowen’s reaction was what made her feel like she really should put some effort into trying to learn it. If they ever encountered something corrupted, she would want to be able to do something about it. She didn’t want to feel helpless like she had earlier.

And maybe, just maybe, learning more about corruption would help her with one of the puzzle pieces surrounding Elowen.

“Would it be okay if I went back tomorrow? To work with the artifacts?”

Elowen nodded slowly and sniffed. “I guess. Just… Be careful, Sophie.”

“I will,” Sophie reassured her. Even though she didn’t have a great track record in that regard… she would have to do her best.

But until then… “Let’s read some of those books you borrowed.”