Sophie woke up the next day feeling absolutely terrible. It reminded her of the days in the past when she had woken up with a hangover, her mind fuzzy, her head pounding, and even her mouth dry and unpleasant tasting. She hadn’t felt that bad when she went to bed the night before, but she could only imagine that these must be side effects from having so much mana bread the previous day.

Elowen, too, seemed awfully subdued this morning. After a brief hello, she wandered off elsewhere in the shrine, leaving Sophie to go about her usual morning routine in much-needed silence. Sophie stumbled around the living space, getting water from the well outside and making some tea, before she finally sat down at the kitchen table with a pastry and a pile of books in front of her. She still had the books that Ryland had leant her the day when she and Acacia went to ask him about the festival. It felt oddly long ago, even though it had only been two days since.

Sophie hadn’t actually gotten a chance to look through all of the books, yet, but today she opened the book on shrines. Even with her headache, she managed to flip through the pages, scanning them for any mention of something like a shrine stone or a bound spirit, but she found nothing. It was very possible that she would need to read the book in more depth to be sure, but after a second cup of tea and another pastry, she was pretty confident that there was nothing in this book that would indicate that a shrine spirit should be attached to a stone or anything else for that matter.

She sat back in her chair, and when she looked up, she was surprised to find Elowen watching her. It wasn’t all that unusual for Elowen to watch Sophie as she went about her morning routine, but when she first sat down for breakfast this morning, Elowen hadn’t been in the room with her. Sophie had assumed she was investigating the Magewood or perhaps even the Dawnwood trees in the greenhouse. Elowen seemed to like to keep an eye on those. But now, here she was, watching Sophie.

“Can I help you?” Sophie asked, and Elowen shook her head.

Sophie waited a moment, sure that the spirit had something to say. And sure enough, after another minute or two in which Sophie finished her tea, Elowen finally spoke up.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“About not remembering?” Sophie took a wild guess.

Elowen nodded. “It was just – well, when you first arrived, you were so confused. I didn’t want to scare you anymore than you seemed already. And I honestly wasn’t sure you’d even believe me.”

Sophie supposed that was a fair point. In fact, if Elowen had been more upfront with the fact that she couldn’t remember anything, Sophie might have felt much more skeptical towards her from the beginning. Instead, Sophie mostly figured it out on her own. “It’s fine, Elowen,” Sophie reassured her. “We can’t do anything about it now – all we can do is try to figure out how to fix it.”

Elowen bit her lip and looked away. “Well I am sorry,” she repeated.

Sophie tried to give her a reassuring smile. Her headache was still lingering, but her mana reserves felt fine. In fact, she felt like she could probably take Calli up on her offer and go back to Caulis today to look at those artifacts.

There was so much to do – her primary goal of course was still fixing the mana issue with the shrine, but if she could learn purification… Well, as much as she really didn’t like the idea of it, it would open a lot of new avenues for her. For example – taking quests. Another thing she didn’t like the idea of. But perhaps it was something she should consider.

Even if Linden could do something to fix the shrine, surely he would want something in return. And Sophie was almost scared to actually count up her remaining coin to find out how much she had left. She had been going through it rather quickly after all, and although they still had the possibility of holding the festival, she had no way of knowing how much coin that would bring in.

She closed the book she was reading, deciding to leave thoughts about Elowen’s bond for another day. “If you’re sure you’re okay with it, I’d like to go back to the Adventurer’s Guild today.”

Elowen nodded, but she looked less than sure.

Sophie totally understood how she felt in that regard.

***

Sophie hadn’t gotten a chance to give any of the trees mana yesterday, but she decided to wait on that until after her trip to the Adventurer’s Guild, not sure what would be waiting for her there.

Now that she was back in the storage room, with Linden and Calli both watching her curiously, she was very glad she had saved her mana. Even just standing next to the table containing a few corrupted items bothered her. Her mana reacted badly to the corruption to put it lightly. She felt a sick churning sensation, almost as if she were in the middle of choppy waters, but the waters were within her.

“How should we do this?” she asked, staring down at the axe that Linden had picked up yesterday. The one that had scared Elowen completely senseless.

“Beats me,” Calli shrugged. “You’re the priestess.”

That wasn’t exactly helpful. Sophie cautiously reached her hand out, almost afraid to touch it.

“Are you sure you should be doing that?” Calli asked, peering down.

Sophie led out an explosive breath. “No, I’m not. I literally have no idea what I’m doing, okay? I haven’t been a priestess for that long, you know.”

Calli held her hands up in a defensive gesture. “Fine, fine, I get it. I’m just trying to help.”

“You don’t have a mentor?” Linden asked, and at least he looked honestly curious.

Sophie shook her head. “Nope. I suppose you don’t know the story, but I sort of stumbled into this job. I’m, uh, not even from around here.”

Linden nodded, as if that made sense. “Well, it might help if you have some of these,” he held up his hands to show a pair of leather gloves. “They guard against corruption.”

“I believe my own clothes are tailored to do that as well. But gloves would be useful,” she conceded.

Sophie thought back to the gloves she’d been using for gardening. They had felt like they were Tailored, too. Perhaps that’s what they were supposed to be used for. Unfortunately, she hadn’t thought to bring them with her. But Calli had her covered. The other woman stepped aside for a moment and came back holding up a pair.

“Here you go,” she offered. “Try these.”

Sophie slipped on the gloves, feeling the familiar warmth of Tailored material against her skin. Ever since she gained Mana Sense, she was starting to almost feel something extra about Tailored items when she put them on. If this were a video game, she imagined that she would be able to see each item stats, and she held up her gloved hands looking at them intently, wondering if something like that was possible in this world as well.

“Dumb question, but can you like – I don’t know – tell the stats of these things? Like how do I know if gloves or pants or whatever have protection against corruption?”

“You mean you can’t tell, when you look at an item? Or at the very least when you touch one?” Calli asked.

Sophie shook her head. “Not exactly… I feel something though. As if maybe I’m about to know… It sounds silly trying to explain it.”

“It sounds like you’re on the verge of an Understanding,” Linden explained. “If you’re new to your class, you’ll probably have a lot of things to learn, still. If you keep exploring that feeling, you may find something coming to you.”

Sophie glanced back down at the gloves on her hands and tried reaching out to them with her mana. She hadn’t actually tried doing that before – not with something that wasn’t already designed to hold mana, like a mana lamp. Or something that contained inherent mana like the Magewood. “What should I be looking for?”

Linden shrugged. “It differs depending on the items. You should gain a sense of what they’re good for the more you try working with an item.”

Sophie turned her hands over again, focusing intently but nothing specific came to her. She sighed. She felt like she was just wasting her mana. “I still can’t tell,” she admitted.

“It’s okay,” Linden encouraged her. “It would have been shocking to get it on the first try.”

Sophie nodded in understanding, but still felt a bit annoyed at herself. She would have to practice when she got back. She had her own Tailored clothes and gloves that she could work with after all.

But today she was here to learn purification. She turned her attention back to the corrupted weapon in front of her. With the gloves on, she reached her hand out and touched it. The mana in the axe felt somehow muted now, but it still felt oily and wrong, even through the gloves. She was afraid to even try reaching out to it with her own mana. What was she supposed to do with that?

After a few moments of carefully prodding along the edges of the strange mana with her own, she gave up, cold sweat already gathering along her spine. “Um, is this safe?” she asked.

Linden shrugged. “Honestly, I have no idea. I don’t usually work with mana directly like that. It’s a shame you don’t have a mentor.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “Well, we don’t have any local priests or priestesses, but you could try talking to Sterling. He’s an unspecialized and may have some recommendations. It’s the closest thing you’ll get to a priestess around here, I’m afraid.”

Sterling? Sophie thought back to the unspecialized mage who had visited her before. She wondered if it was the same person.

“I can run and see if he’s free today,” Calli offered. “He’s not out on any quests that I know of. He usually sticks pretty close to town since he’s the only mana specialist we have. Well, at least until you level up a bit.”

She winked at Sophie when she said the last part, but Sophie couldn’t help but feel a little bit of pressure behind the words. “Um, sure?” Sophie replied. She didn’t really know how she felt about all of this mentor business, but she was a little afraid to make any sort of connection to the corrupted mana with her own. What if it was catching?

“Thank you,” she added. “That would be helpful, I think.”

Calli hurried off to go find the mana mage, and Sophie stayed behind with Linden, continuing to hesitantly investigate the axe along with a few other artifacts Linden had found. She could occasionally tell that some of them had less corruption than other pieces, but even with the gloves on, she had no idea what to do to purify any of them, and she remained too terrified of the risk to even try.

She wished she had the forethought to at least ask Elowen what might work. But Elowen had been so upset…

Well, Sophie didn’t want to push her about the issue, but now she realized that she needed at least a little bit of information to go on.

She sighed as she moved down the table to another artifact – this one what appeared to be a small locket – something so fragile and harmless looking, but somehow even more corrupted than the axe. How could that be?

Sophie simply had no idea how any of this was supposed to work, and Linden was unfortunately no help at all. Hopefully Sterling would be able to give her a better idea of what to do.