Leornal sat on the couch in Mason’s house with a glowing orb in his hands. Mana sight what it was, books of the ink and paper variety were a tad difficult for a New Marran to read, but transmitting information through mana stored in a crystal structure was effortless. In between pages of the story he was reading, he’d reach down to scoop a spoonful of the soup he had prepared into his mouth, and wonder where Mason had run off to.

The boy should have been back hours ago, but there were plenty of explanations for his disappearance that weren’t a cause for worry. The rest of the city might fear Mason, but Leornal had watched his desperate kamikaze fighting style and knew the real truth; he wasn’t a threat to anyone with a lick of training.

Anyways, if another hour passed he would probably raise the alarm. But for now, the soup was still warm, and his story was just getting good. One would think reading about warriors fighting in lands unknown would be less interesting when one was, in fact, a warrior themselves fighting in lands unknown. But he honestly just felt like he could relate better now. Besides, he’d been reading these stories for years and didn’t see any reason to stop.

Laughter drew his attention as the door opened. He nodded as Mason stumbled into the room, but his eyebrow raised when Faynel fell in after him with a peculiar look on her face. Was she laughing?

“You burn the bones of giant ancient monsters in order to get to the store on a daily basis? No, that’s too much. You have got to be fucking with me now,” Faynel laughed as she spoke, trying to picture how she would do such a thing. Was his whole race a bunch of necromancers?

“No, completely serious, but it’s not quite like that. Like I said, it’s oil. You Marrans have mana in your bones, but we just have an element called carbon, you know, in coal or diamonds? Well it turns into oil eventually, somehow. I’m not really an expert on it,” Mason too was grinning, too focused on Faynel to notice immediately that Leornal was watching them both.

And Leornal realized what was so odd about seeing Faynel like this. He’d seen her laugh before. They were friends, of a sort. But he’d never seen this. She was flirting. With a human. It was disconcerting, but he supposed Mason seemed more like her age than the rest of the band.

He cleared his throat and spoke up, “You two are still together, then?” His tone was accusatory.

Mason was surprised to see his home wasn’t empty, but Faynel looked outright embarrassed. “Turns out he held up during training much better than I expected,” she said.

“You weren’t supposed to train with him, if I remember correctly. You were supposed to show him around town, and I remember you demanding not be made to waste your whole day with him.”

Faynel blushed the purplish color of a Marran, but thankfully she stood between Mason and Leornal in a way that prevented the human from seeing it. “I was forbidden from sparring with him, not training him. We didn’t fight, I just taught him all of the skills you seemed to have been to busy being an asshole to teach him while you were trapped and fighting for your lives.”

“We lived,” Leornal shrugged as he dismissed her jab, “But tell me, was your training before or after the drinking? How could you have even been sure that the swill wouldn’t have killed him? You know nothing about his physiology.”

“After, obviously,” Faynel spat.

Mason jumped in then, “Wait, that stuff could have killed me?” Then he added, more to himself, “I probably should stop drinking everything people offer to me before using Analyze.”

While Mason stood confused and a little worried about his wellbeing, Faynel and Leornal stared each other down. Leornal seemed to enjoy the tension, but Faynel was looking increasingly embarrassed. Finally she caught a whiff of the food and decided to submit, “Wait, did you bring food?”

Leornal smiled broadly then, and Mason thought he looked vaguely like a predator. “A hearty stew, and loaves of some nut bread. I wasn’t sure how much humans ate, so I brought a lot.”

“I mean, I’m about your size, so I imagine I eat about as much as anyone else,” Mason said insecurely.

“We can survive for quite some time on a combination of mana or food. But you get all of your energy from the food and the stars, right?” Leornal asked with genuine curiosity.

“Yeah. I guess I keep forgetting that’s weird.”

They all sat down to eat and devoured their food greedily. Mason did eat a little more than the other two, but he also had had a pretty long day of training. His thoughts were a bit muddled from the drink he had with Faynel, but even still he could tell there was a change in the atmosphere from when he had been alone with her.

Faynel and Leornal didn’t seem unfriendly, but there was something between them that tugged at Mason’s brain. He dwelled on it between spoonfuls of soup, but a memory fell into place witha clunk and he realized. He choked down everything in his mouth before shouting with his drunken intelligence, “Oh right, you’re into her mom!”

Possibly surprisingly, Leornal laughed out loud at this, but Faynel looked petrified.

“How does he know that?” she said in an uncharacteristically high voice.

“High perception?” Mason suggested sheepishly.

“Leornal, have I told you I hate you? Couldn’t you do even a slightly good job of keeping that a secret?” she said plainly, ignoring Mason.

Leornal shrugged and put the rest of the bowl of soup to his mouth. He slurped it down and then responded calmly, “Your mother is a very respectable woman and free to see whomever she likes.”

Faynel groaned, and Mason wished he had chosen to still his tongue. At least he understood why these two were so weird around each other.

The first thing Mason noticed in the morning was the ground rushing up at him as he rolled off the couch and fell face-first on the floor. The second thing he noticed was that the pain in his face was minor compared to the throbbing ache in the back of his skull. His stomach burned, too, and he tried to remember… well, anything.

Mind blank, he pushed himself up and looked around, only to regret that decision when a stray beam of sunlight struck him in the eyes, making the headache immediately worse. His willpower diminished, Mason covered his eyes with some sort of fabric that he had found from somewhere nearby, and he groaned as he laid back down on the ground.

The floor smelt like dust, and the vaguely oily scent of improperly cleaned blood. Panic coursed through his body- was it his? But the wound in his head didn’t feel like it was a bloody one. It ached like… like…

A hangover?

He swore, and sat back up with the cloth still over his eyes. His body was leaden and weak so his movements were slow, but he managed to pull himself to a sitting position against the couch, with his head mercifully free from the onslaught of sunlight.

What had he drunk to leave him feeling like this? In his relative youth, he had never had a hangover like this. His stomach not only burned, it sloshed with a greasy, queasy feeling. This was worse, somehow, than the mana poisoning. The thought amused him, but his own laughter caused his gut to ache so he stifled it as he bent over.

A hand brushed over his hair lightly, and even amidst the torrent of sensations he didn’t want to be feeling, he noticed the fingers tangling themselves up in his hair as they gently tipped his head back.

Mason knew he should resist, but it seemed like energy he didn’t have to expend. Words that he didn’t understand were said, and he was fairly certain he wasn’t the one to say them. He got the idea that he should open his mouth though, and he did. A cool liquid was poured down his throat. His mouth was clamped shut so he couldn’t puke it back up. He would have flailed, but lacked the energy.

Several moments passed and the cool sensation in his stomach cut through the queasiness slightly. If he didn’t feel stronger he at least felt less like he was weighed down with lead. Then, finally, last of all, the pain in his head dulled to a distracting ache. When he stopped struggling, his mouth was freed and he sucked down air like he had been near death.

There was laughter, he was sure of that now. Did it seem concerned? Better question: Had he been poisoned? Even better question: Who the hell was there?

He opened his eyes finally and despite not being in direct light, the room still seemed too bright. Looking toward the hand he saw dark skin, and he followed it up to a pair of bright, violet eyes that mesmerized him in his brain-dead state.

“Are you even listening to me?” asked the woman attached to the violet eyes. She looked amused, but the expression was only in her eyes. Her face seemed drawn into stoicism.

“What?” was all Mason could muster, though he had better thoughts somewhere in his mind.

“Well, you can talk. And your eyes work, even if they’re a bit wide and dumb looking.” She spoke to someone else then, “He’s not dead. I told you it wasn’t really poisonous. Just, you know, more potent than he was ready for. I’ll be more gentle with the human from now on.”

A more grizzled voice responded, one that seemed older, and familiar. “You better find a way to get him ready for training today. Torysen wants to watch the two of you spar, and I don’t think you want to admit to her that you gave him mana-infused liquor and nearly killed him. She’ll want that privilege for herself if anyone is to get it.”

Torysen. Leornal. Faynel. The drink.

It had been a good drink, if potent. He had felt it flood his body powerfully at first, but that was so common with all the soul, stamina, life, and mana stealing he had been up to recently that he hadn’t even really thought hard about it at the time. But then his brain had been addled, and he hadn’t thought about much.

And now that his mind was slowly ticking back into full function, he was beginning to remember a whole lot of things which he was unsure he wanted to come back. The Trials. Those creepy gremlins. The endless complexity of the runes and training. He looked back at Faynel again and grinned before he realized what he was doing. It had been quick. There was no way she would have noticed. He was sure.

Meanwhile Leornal and Faynel considered him carefully, before Leornal finally marched out of the door without a goodbye, leaving Faynel to tend to the poisoned human.

Mason let his mind continue to try and catch up as something pleasant flowed through his limbs, and only looked up again when Faynel tapped him on the head and handed him a warm mug of tea.

He began to sip it without hesitation, and Faynel sat on the couch next to him, looking down at his perch on the floor. “Well, did we learn anything from last night?” she asked with a vicious cheer.

Instinctively, Mason flipped to his status screen. Two levels in Mana Tolerance, one in both Mana Sight and Mana Manipulation. He told her.

“Not skills. I meant… Look, I’m sorry that the drink kind of almost killed you.” Mason couldn’t tell if she sounded sincere.

“Um, yeah. It’s okay, I guess. If I held a grudge against everything that almost killed me I’d be a typhoon of rage at this point,” Mason shrugged. The tea was good. Invigorating, really.

Faynel looked like she was struggling with something, but she kept silent for a minute. She looked at him, then cast her vision around the room.

“Did you stay here last night?” Mason asked.

“No!” she said with uncharacteristic vehemence. “I didn’t really want to draw attention to what was happening so I went home. Leornal watched over you. I just came back in the morning.”

He wasn’t really sure where he was going with the line of questioning, so he just shrugged it off. “Leornal said… we’re supposed to spar? In front of Torysen?”

Faynel still looked uncomfortable. “Yeah, if you can stand that long.”

It was as good a time as any to try. Mason set his mug next to him on the ground after a long sip, and tried to push himself to his feet. He was wobbly, dizzy, and plopped backwards onto the couch in mere seconds. The poorly constructed cushions compressed and made him lean a little into Faynel, but only for the brief moment before he leaned over and collapsed in the other direction.

“I need meat. Grease. Fireboar,” Mason groaned, salivating.