When Mason finally awoke his hand immediately moved to touch his side, but it got tangled on a mess of violet hair in the process. He blinked a few times to clear his way through the foggy half-consciousness of recovery sleep, and he realized that Faynel must have fallen asleep at his side. A smile grew on his face unwittingly, and he shoved that down. This wasn’t the time to be flattered.

Extricating his hand, he managed to pull his shirt up and feel at the place where he had been stabbed. The skin definitely felt different, right? Or had it always felt that way? Well, more things had happened to him than just a knife wound, he figured. The salve and mana mingling, for one. And presumably a health potion, unless he’d been unconscious for days.

He hadn’t, had he? A creaking outside the small bedroom sent Mason into high alert, and he reached for a knife before realizing he was in bed and unarmed. Almost naked, in fact. Who had…? He looked down at Faynel, forgetting for a moment that he had been afraid of the creaking noise, and decided to wake her.

She murmured something sleepily as he shook her, and sat up slowly, shaking and stretching to relieve the inevitable kinks in her back and neck from sleeping at an odd angle - she’d never meant to fall asleep at all. Mason smiled at her, but he couldn’t help feel like she looked awful. Her hair was in complete disarray, and he could see spittle on her face from her sleep.

“Good morning, sunshine,” he teased with a voice more hoarse than he had expected from himself.

“Sun...shine?” she asked with squinted eyes as she assessed her surroundings.

They stared awkwardly at each other for a moment, and then Mason’s brain caught up with him. “Oh! Um, sun. It’s the bright thing in the daytime that burns you. We humans wake up to it everyday. We call its light sunshine, when we’re happy.” His voice rasped, and he still felt exhausted, but his embarrassment drove the words out of him.

“Right, um.” She nodded.

“Thanks for saving me, too.”

“You’re welcome. You fought, well…”

“I rushed in like an idiot,” Mason admitted.

“You were very brave,” she offered.

“But you actually saved me.”

Leornal watched from the doorway, torn between wanting to walk away to let the young ones have their awkwardness, and wanting to break it up to spare them from it. He settled with clearing his throat.

They turned to look at him, and both shook themselves as they tried to mentally catch up with his presence. “Neither of you are going to training today. The old witch is expecting you both again,” he announced.

“Why are you here?” Mason asked suddenly.

“I couldn’t very well let our only human bleed out from a knife-fight in front of the daughter of a councilwoman’s daughter. I’m assigned to keep you safe, anyways.”

“Oh.” Mason looked down at his lap. “Thank you both. I um… seem to be the subject of everyone’s attention lately.”

It was Faynel and Leornal’s turn to share a look then. Leornal grunted, “You’re not that important.”

“Those thugs yesterday just wanted to stir up trouble,” Faynel added.

“They mentioned Shayjol though,” Mason whispered.

There was a moment of silence, and Faynel spoke again, “There’s a reason he was sent to work with his parents rather than the Roving Bands. The Trials took all sorts, and it’s fairly known that he doesn’t have the best of friends.”

“I thought he was my friend, though. We didn’t talk much after the hive, but…”

“Put him out of your mind for now,” Leornal interrupted. “What’s important is that you learn from the witch and from Torysen’s training. Whatever his thoughts on you are, there are plenty of people in this city who don’t think too highly of you. If Faynel hadn’t been with you last night, you would be dead, so focus.”

“You’re right,” Mason acknowledged. “I made a mistake. With all of this training and all of these fights I’ve technically come out of alright, I thought a few bullies were nothing to worry about. I won’t make that mistake again, Leornal.”

Leornal saw the fire in his eyes, and almost wanted to laugh. It was the same look that had gotten Faynel into the Roving Bands despite her mother’s protestation. And what sort of person blamed themselves for losing in a six on two fight?

What Leornal said though, was, “I expect that you won’t.” Then he turned and left the house.

Faynel meanwhile had stood up and brushed herself off, and even a few adjustments of her unruly hair had made a big difference. “I’m going to make you breakfast, Mason, and then we need to finish talking about my grandmother.”

Mason nodded, “Saving my life and making me breakfast? It’s almost like we’re friends.”

She scowled at him, but it quickly shifted to a small smile, “I guess if we have to be.”

“So,” Mason began to ask as they walked back through the city streets. It was daytime, which was comforting to the human, but he knew better than to assume that meant he was safe. Marrans didn’t need light to see. It was merely chance that it happened to be night when he got attacked. “Why weren’t those guys employed as like… guards or something? I mean, obviously, they were pretty shit people, but shouldn’t they be made to do something useful? Aren’t you guys under attack?”

Faynel almost frolicked through the streets. She wasn’t intimidated by the attack, but then again, she hadn’t almost bled out from a stab wound less than a day ago.

She turned back to him and looked thoughtful, “Not everyone takes to violence as naturally as you do.”

Mason blinked, “Well, thanks, I guess.”

“No, but really. There was a lot of fighting in the first days, but some people were good at it. My grandmother, for instance.”

“What, can she launch fireballs from her comfy room?” Mason laughed.

Faynel thought about it, “Well, yes. But she’s actually very mobile when that’s her focus. She did most of the protecting when we got here, while people trained and tried to cobble together some skills. And then we formed patrols and the defense teams, and most people just… went back to their normal lives, I guess. The council was pretty adamant about it.”

“So you were a natural then?” Mason inquired.

She shook her head and her tone was suddenly serious, “Not at first. Not like you.”

“What does that mean?”

She turned away from him and kept walking, but he kept pace. Her posture told him that she was trying to decide how much to share, so he kept quiet.

“I was fast, and graceful, but I didn’t know a spell rune or source magic. I had been training in mana arts only back on Marra. When I got here, it was hell. The city might be large, but our population was actually even larger back then. A lot of people didn’t survive the first days. I almost didn’t survive.”

It was hard picking up the pieces of the past. Mason knew what he had been through, and had seen glimmers of Mowrytal’s and Geralt’s experiences as well, but his people weren’t even supposed to be in The Trials yet, he knew. His first days had been- well, not easy, but gentle in their own way. He hadn’t fought anything too dangerous, and by the time he had, he was surrounded by capable fighters.

The look on Faynel’s face was hollow. Her eyes were looking backward to the past, and her lips were drawn tight. Mason almost wanted to touch her and say it was okay.

But she continued, “I didn’t want to fight at all at first. I just ran. I dodged. I fled. But eventually I was cornered, and I had a knife, and apparently I was good with it because I survived. And I kept surviving.” She was regaining a little of her normal demeanor, “And now I want to make sure that’s not an issue I run into again. Like last night, those boys that attacked you. I tried not to hurt them, I really did.”

Faynel stopped again, “But I know I would have killed them if I didn’t think you could be saved.”

Mason stopped too, and he met her eyes, “I won’t put you in that situation again.”

The stare lasted several seconds, and then she nodded, and began walking swiftly down the path again. It seemed as good a time as any to bring up an old subject. “But you still fear your grandmother?”

“That’s…”

“Different? But of course. That’s why you drugged me and seduced me and never bothered to ask me about my opinion. Are you sure violence doesn’t come naturally to you?” There was hostility in his voice.

She looked abashed at first, but she recovered quickly, “You haven’t seen what she’s capable of.”

“Does it matter? Are you willing to submit to her just because she’s more powerful than you?”

Now she moved toward him, angry. “Aren’t you the one who gave a rousing speech about making sacrifices for power? These are The Trials, you said, and we need to be willing to make hard choices, right?”

He locked his face into a glare to rival her own, “You’re right. And I don’t regret what I’ve done. But did you make a hard choice to survive or did you blindly follow someone because you fear them?”

“Grandmother Sorynel I want to train under you,” Faynel announced as the two of them burst back into the messy room.

“Well,” the old woman responded uncertainly, “I’m glad to hear that dear but I believe that was already settled. What of young Mason? I heard you were injured last night.”

Mason shrugged, deferring his role in this as Faynel walked into the center of the room.

“Look at me!” the girl almost shouted, “I’m not going to obey you just because of your position as the protector of this city. What we did to Mason was unfair. He deserved a say in the process before that point, and I don’t like that I was dragged into your dirty work,” she spoke clearly, but Mason didn’t miss the faint tremors in her hands. He hadn’t necessarily needed her to speak up about him specifically, but he was glad to see her standing her ground. And on a personal level, he was pleased to see she cared.

“Well, that is your right, Faynel,” the grandmother said, sounding every bit her age, “But I don’t recall forcing you into any part of it, and you were the one who knew him personally,” Sorynel spoke as if this really weren’t any concern of hers. “If you didn’t believe it was the right way to go about things you should have spoken up. And having now met the boy, I think he would have gone along with the plot readily, anyhow.”

That stalled Faynel in her place, “You’re not angry?”

Sorynel’s confusion seemed genuine, “Why would I be?”

Faynel looked back and Mason and he just shrugged that off too. This was between them.

“Because… well, you’re in charge? And I was… questioning your… authority?” Faynel stammered out, looking more ready to run than even before.

“Your mother fears me, Faynel, because I gave her almighty hell when I discovered she had taken on spell runes while she was young. We were at odds for a great many years. But have I ever once raised my voice with you?”

“Well, no…”

“And have I ever insisted you do anything, besides learn from my experience?”

“Mother, she always…”

The old woman smiled, and burst into a raucous laughter. “Mason, I will have you know you ruined a perfectly fine game for me.”

He shrugged again, “I was stabbed last night. I guess I’m not in the mood for games. You seem like an impressive woman, and I want to learn from you, but I’ve already got two very angry spirits inside of me that I’m unsure of what to do with. I don’t really need another powerful person trying to assert their will over me.”

Mason took a deep breath, and walked a little closer to the center of the room, taking a seat on a cushion. He already felt haggard again from being in her presence, but he knew better than to let his weakness show.

“What the hell do you mean a game?” Faynel asked suddenly, walking up closer to her grandmother.

“Do you think I didn’t know that you would do everything I asked?” the old woman asked with one eye cocked, “This whole city acts the same, and I’m not going to go out of my way to dissuade anyone of that fact. A great deal of power comes from the assumption of power, rather than its practice. It took me a long time to realize that’s what set me apart from so many others,” she eyed Mason as she mused now, and he returned her stare with heavy-lidded eyes.

Faynel looked between the two, baffled that somehow Mason had managed to find a position of respect in relation to this powerful figure that she had practically been raised to fear. “That’s so messed up!”

“Is it really any different than you coming in and tricking me into a ritual? You used my trust and respect against me, and she used fear against you. It seems fair to me,” Mason said.

“Enough. Mason, you’ll forgive the girl for what she did in my name. We all make mistakes, and anyways, you’ve touched her mana so you know who she is. But I need an answer. Will you learn from me what knowledge I can pass on?”

With a confidence that disguised how completely exhausted he was, Mason responded, “Of course. I just wanted to hear you ask.”