Chapter 31: Mother’s Love

Truthfully, Miro wasn’t entirely sure why he’d asked about the eastern road. On the surface, it was because he was excited that he managed to connect the earlier conversation with Shurik with an actual place in the world; up until then being almost entirely passive about the course of their journey. But then he was also imagining what they could possibly find down that road; soldiers that had sworn their allegiance to this northern King, a successor to the last northern usurper who many years ago as a final parting shot against the Kingdom had taken away Miro’s mother from him. He saw his mother lying dead and forgotten on the ground until Miro’s screams finally made anyone notice her, a fallen peasant among the wounded nobility. There was also the possibility of those northern soldiers meeting their end by sword, arrow, ice javelin, and far less likely, fireball. All those things existed in his head, jostling for his attention, but whether and which one of them truly made a difference? Miro couldn’t say.

“I’d just heard in town that some of the usurper’s army was active in those parts,” he explained.

“Active?” Nydra took a few steps towards Miro. “What do you mean by ‘active’?”

Miro shrugged. “All I heard was something about bothering the villages that lay to the east. Thought it might be something you’d want to check out.”

Nydra turned to look in the direction of where the eastwardly road led.

“We were told not to engage,” Peteri reminded her.

“And I’m not planning to. But it may be helpful to explore these rumours. It might give us an insight into their forces and what we might encounter as we get closer to the northlands.” She looked at Peteri. “You don’t agree.”

“I don’t disagree.”

“Then it’s settled, we’ll detour through the eastern townships. Thank you, Miro, for letting me know.”

Why did this feel like a deception? He did not misstate his motivation for bringing it up in the first place, and in the end what did it matter anyway? Nydra wanted to confirm this for herself and for her own reasons. That Miro now planned, debuff or not, to concentrate on growing his experience, and that in his estimation a group effort against a squadron of soldiers working for the people who’d once killed his parents was the best way to accomplish that, was entirely Miro’s business.

He felt a new kind of rush when they stepped onto the road heading east – a satisfying gulp of the ability to mold his own destiny. He thought that his experience bar was growing just a little bit more quickly walking in this particular direction, though if it was, it wasn’t by so much that he could tell for sure. The road here was rocky and just wide enough for a cart which would have had a rough time.

Hima slowed her pace until she almost stopped and then resumed walking alongside Miro.

“I think I may know a little about how your debuff came to be.” She gave him a sideways glance that was mostly concealed by the side of her hood.

“I thought you didn’t know anything about my debuff?” he said, trying not to sound annoyed.

“Maybe not about your debuff specifically, but I do happen to know a thing or two in general.” She looked ahead again, where a couple of lines of smoke on the horizon indicated a village nestled somewhere in a rocky pass. “The prevailing understanding of how magic works is that there is a great well of it locked deep underneath our world and is in a constant process of seeping onto the surface. In mages, for reasons no one yet understands, this concentration is higher, and it allows them to use their powers, to tap into mana, and to have those powers grow. But in truth, this magical element exists in every living thing. In fact, it is thought to be the very thing that enables life itself.”

“So how does the Magus fit into all of this?”

“Unknown. It is believed that this magical essence comprises various elements, and the concentration of the elements is what determines a mage’s manifested power. But how the Magus is able to wield multiple elements, and how they are able to unlock them is still a mystery. That is not why I’m telling you this, however.”

“Then what is it?”

“What I’m trying to say is that every living thing has magic, and is therefore able to use that magic, no matter how small or fleeting that use might be. The only problem is, without having magic strong enough to be able to tap into mana, that use usually proves fatal, as the wielder’s life force is expended instead.”

Miro had begun to understand where Hima was going with this but was not yet sure if he wanted to hear it.

“In the moment of the explosion that killed your parents, your mother used whatever magic she had in her in order to protect you. She likely had no idea that she was using it, but her – the feelings she had for you ended up protecting you. Maybe even at the cost of her own life.” She let her voice go soft in the end, and he could see from the corner of his eye that she stole another glance at him. It was his turn though to stare straight ahead at a road that seemed to reject all sense of gravity and now felt like a great pit he was falling into.

“How does –” he found his throat dry, “How does that explain my debuff?”

“All magic has cost. Most of the time it’s in mana but if there’s an attempt to use magic out of scope – either beyond a mage’s ability or from a different skill tree, another price must be paid. I’ve seen a few debuffs that can be traced to trying to use magic out of scope. It’s not quite the same as what happened with you and your mother, but perhaps this is the cost you have to bear for the powerful protection spell that she would have cast over you.”

Miro thought back on Peteri’s words – that he should be focusing on his mother’s path instead of his father’s. The old archer couldn’t have known the full implication of what he said – how Miro’s mother saved the one person most dear to her, even though she was hampered by the greatest debuff imaginable.

They all had their debuffs. The ones the others had just didn’t come as angry yellow words that hung before their eyes. Hima had her abandonment as a baby, while the other two he was sure had something that he would learn about in time. All Miro could do was make the best of what he got, which meant, much to his chagrin, being a less difficult student.

“Listen, Hima, about before … I shouldn’t have … you know, been so …” What was even the point of having 4 Charisma and 2 Intellect points when he felt like both were at 0 and he might as well have been the rat he’d roasted the night before? “What I’m trying to say is that, maybe I wasn’t entirely …” His fidgeting hands ended up cracking his fingers joints so loud even Nydra briefly turned back to see what it was.

“As much as it brings me no small amount of joy to listen to you go through the labour of birthing these sentences,” Hima interrupted, “I can assure you whatever it is that you’re intending to say, it’s not necessary. We don’t need to be friends.” She looked at him when she said it, and he couldn’t see in her eyes the chill that he’d come to expect. “But we can work together, as well as through that debuff of yours.”

From within her cloak, she extended to him a hand which he gladly shook. Some naïve part of him thought he would get an actual apology for being nearly suffocated to death in an icy sarcophagus, but he supposed that this was as good an outcome as he could have expected.

~~~