Anastacia slowly nibbled on the bready snack given to her and sipped away at the cup of some type of homemade berry juice that was a bit too bitter for her tastes, all the while pretending like being intensely stared at and evaluated in complete silence didn’t bother her. Hasta had not said a word after telling her to sit, and more than ten minutes had already passed. So, it was needless to say that the meeting wasn’t quite going as the necromancer had hoped.

“So… How’s it going?” She tried to open up a conversation.

The elf didn’t seem to even consider answering the question and instead kept his single dark eye fixated on the necromancer and his fingers on the pommel of his sword. Despite the seemingly unwavering vigilance, it often appeared like his mind was on a journey of its own and he simply stared at the only thing there was to stare at, until his consciousness snapped back to the present and his stare focused once more.

“Not much of a talker, are you?” Anastacia kept trying. “You know, this kind of a lifestyle really speaks to me too. I’m not really a loner though, so I’d take a couple of friends along – must be hard to do everything alone, huh? Means you must be pretty resourceful to pull all of this off, and if I heard correctly, you’ve been here for a couple of years now. Winter here must have been rough…”

Suddenly Hasta swung his sheathed sword onto his lap and slowly pulled the weapon a third of the way out without taking his eye off the necromancer. “What are you?” He asked bluntly.

“I told you, I’m just Anastacia.” Answered Anastacia and took another bite.

“Human?” Hasta continued to inquire in a stern tone.

Anastacia frowned. “Last time I checked, yeah, but introducing myself wasn’t really why I-“

“What do the markings on your arm mean?” The elf interrupted her with his next question.

Anastacia ran her fingers across the pattern of burns that had spread from the core in her shoulder. “Nothing, they’re just a side-effect of something I’ve been working on recently. None of this really ma-“

Hasta once more interrupted her with the next quick question. “Are you affiliated with any of the three houses of Port Tyrannia, The Guild of Silence, Fleet-footed militia, The Temple College of Tar, The Children of the Tide, the patch makers’ monopoly or The Late Ones?” He went through a list of organizations he could have clearly remembered in his sleep and slowly pulled the sword out of its scabbard.

“I… I don’t know what any of those are.” Anastacia admitted, feeling like she should have probably known at least some of them, no matter how far away she was from Valor. Gilbert would have no doubt known them and likely had at some point at least mentioned some to her.

“Did you come here alone?” Hasta asked one more question that had a feeling of finality in it.

Absolutely certain that she would have been caught on a lie, she spun out a half-truth. “My current… employer accompanied me momentarily when I arrived here, but the two of us are the only ones who came and only I am to meet with you this time. Can I ask, what are you getting at?”

Hasta moved the scabbard back to the side and placed his hand of the bare blade. “The closest village from here is a day’s walk away and its residents have been paid to come to me with haste if anyone strange passes through. So, you didn’t pass through there. The direction you appeared to come from has nothing but untamed wilderness for hundreds of kilometers. Even the next closest settlement is over two days away. Yet, someone appears from the forest without shoes, completely ill-equipped, certainly not looking like they had traveled on foot for days.” He finally explained his thinking. “You do not have the looks of a local, not the looks of anywhere I’ve been to, not the looks of an assassin and not the looks of a mage – even if you are one. So no, simply saying you’re ‘Anastacia’ does not cut it. Explain who you are now or I’m forced to take action – this is your last warning.”

Anastacia didn’t really want to give out her identity, after all, she didn’t really know who this person was either. She also figured it was unlikely that the man could present much of a threat to her, especially in his, frankly, broken condition. “If you frame it like that, fair, but I am simply someone who was born with far too many fingers for her own good and an uncanny ability to find pies. So, here I am, sticking one in this pie as well. My job here is simply to make you aware that you’ve been taken notice of, in a good way, and to get sort of a general read on you. Your past isn’t for me to hear, what you’ve done before this is irrelevant to me and everyone involved, I just want to know what you’re like.”

From what little expression Anastacia could see on the man, she saw confusion, likely over her total disregard to what had been a threat on her life. Briefly taking his eye off the necromancer for the first time in a while, he stared at his scarred reflection on his blade and sank deep into his thoughts.

“If you have any more questions that aren’t specifically about my identity, I’m more than glad to answer some first. I’d just rather you not be able to track me either after I’m done here – surely you understand that? I’m not exactly the hard-to-find type.” Anastacia suggested to get the man out of his own head and hoped to dispel whatever false assumptions he had made about the reason she was there for.

“Who is it that you serve then, ‘just Anastacia’?” Hasta posed a question, seemingly giving up on the idea that his threats of physical altercations would yield anything even if continued, perhaps speaking for his character as someone who prefers peaceful means, despite his looks – or maybe he simply wagered that he was outmatched should things come to that. “I know for a fact that this land is owned by none, even the borders are vague this far out – what claim does your master have over it?”

Thinking that it may not be for the best to immediately admit that there was a very tangible being behind everything, since he would obviously demand to immediately meet Sorbus and neither of them were prepared for that, Anastacia chose to be a bit vague in this answer as well. “Well, simply put, my… friend is responsible for it – and now, responsible of you, to a degree. You’ve lived here for a while now, but have you never stopped to wonder why there were never poor harvests in your little garden, never a streak of unsuccessful hunts, always plenty to forage? Sure, this place is nice, but is it that nice? Just as with all the other creatures and plants, my friend is the force behind making sure you have exactly as much as you need to comfortably live here. From what I’ve heard, you’ve certainly earned it by being as unintrusive as you possibly can.”

The answer caused the elf to nervously scan the dark treeline and the idea of someone else having been there for so long, completely unnoticed by him, clearly made him deeply uncomfortable. “Tell them I don’t need help. I can manage just fine on my own if they steer clear of me.” He gruffly responded but never stopped looking for movement in the darkness.

“I can see that… Even if you don’t need the help, that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve it.” Anastacia rebutted the fairly expected answer. “Don’t you think it would be more pleasant if there was someone else around anyway? Telling them your stories, chatting by the fire, all sorts of fun stuff…”

“Do I look like I came here to find company? Or pity?” Hasta scoffed at the idea.

“No, you look like you came here to die – or at least you look like that’s what you’re telling yourself.” The necromancer guessed bluntly. “You look like a ‘live by the sword, die by the sword’ kind of a guy, who got stabbed, burned, crushed and slashed too many times and living by the sword is becoming harder by the day. Maybe you tried living normally for a while but thought yourself to be a burden to others, so you came here to be out of the way.”

A pained and annoyed grimace gave Anastacia the confirmation to her guess as far as she was concerned. It was a frequent topic between some of the aging adventurers that the world had failed to kill off. They all were full of every manner of aches and pains, and wouldn’t shut up about not wanting to be a bother to their friends and leaving the city once they couldn’t manage quests anymore. Hasta was nowhere near old enough for such nonsense, but certainly carried enough scars to fit the bill in every other way.

“How close was I?” Smirked the necromancer. “Feel free to tell me, or not. You could think of this as a free chance to get a load off your chest by talking to someone who you will never meet again.”

“Have you ever seen combat?” Hasta suddenly asked with tone that trickled with suppressed anger. “War, I mean.”

“I’ve been known to fight a few things but wars are out of my particular set of skills.” Anastacia shrugged.

It was hard to tell if the answer disappointed or relieved the elf – or even both of those as it visibly wound him down somewhat as his self-control finally started to gain ground against the agitation caused by Anastacia’s appearance. “Figured as much. You give off airs of someone much more capable than you seem like, but everything you do and say betrays your utter naivety. I can smell mercenaries and their like from a day’s ride away.” He sighed tiredly and finally took a sip from his own cup.

“Whatever might you mean?” The necromancer coyly asked. While the line between an adventurer and a mercenary was blurry at times, she herself certainly thought herself as an adventurer rather than a hired goon. Someone with standards for what she did and didn’t do for pay.

“Your kind seeks conflict and violence for nothing but profit or excitement, and after the fact carry on with blood on your hands, pep in your step and glimmer in your eyes. Never lifting a blade with a purpose behind it, be it defiance, desperation or anything else. There’s a reprehensible stench that sort of callousness leaves behind. Not everyone has the nose for it, but after standing between a merc and a payday enough times and you’ll develop one.” Hasta explained as his stifled anger slowly turned into disdain towards the adventurer. “There’s also a brand of cockiness mixed with confidence that tells your sort apart from those that stand for something, something which makes you think you can just waltz up to people and expect them to go along with your whims.”

“I don’t really care for being lumped together with brigands and armies for hire, but this isn’t about me.” Anastacia frowned, she wanted to say more but was sure she’d just slip up and reveal herself as an adventurer if she allowed herself to get at all heated. “Is that how you ended up like this then? Living in the woods with a list of enemies longer than most people’s biographies? Just hiding from whoever might be after you.”

The suggestion that he was a coward like that clearly bothered the elf, but he didn’t let it get to him. “My enemies likely don’t even know my name, they are the types that see nothing but numbers and maps of men and areas they rule, individuals such as me hardly come across their greedy little minds. My presence or absence does nothing to alter their goals, after all, I’m just a soldier – admittedly, a skilled one, but not the kind that sways the fate of battles.” He revealed a fragment of his past, likely because he figured he knew enough about Anastacia to discount her as a direct threat already, or maybe just because he felt like both of them had gotten a good enough read on one another to forgo complete secrecy.

“Then why all this? I’m still sitting at the edge of your yard and you did have a meltdown over the mere idea that I might be involved with them.” The necromancer pointed out and started to rock back and forth with her chair. “If no one is supposed to come after you, why are you so nervous about it? Being careful is one thing, but that was something else.”

“I… “ Hasta uttered before realizing he didn’t really have a sensible answer ready. “Look… It’s just hard to turn off that part of your head sometimes, okay? I know no one is here to get me, I know… Sometimes it’s just… then there’s the nightmares. Every night I’m back there again, and the snaps of twigs, rustling in the bushes, footsteps… Then I felt the medallion again, just like in the nightmares…” He started to mutter mostly to himself and tightly grasped onto something hanging from his wrist as his heart started to race once more and his breathing became shallow.

“Hasta!” Anastacia yelled and smacked her hands together hard enough for it to hurt, but it at least seemed to successfully bring the elf back to his senses – though his first instinct was still to almost draw his sword again.

His face pale and covered in sweat, Hasta slowly levered himself up form the rock. Fighting through the pain, he limped into his hovel and came back with a refilled cup and a small rag to wipe his face with. It was starting to get hard for Anastacia to watch him go about in such apparent agony.

“Is there anything you can do about the pain?” The necromancer worried once the elf had gotten back to his seat.

“It’s mostly manageable, today’s just a bad pain day… I usually pick some herbs and have an apprentice alchemist from the town work them into something that’s not poisonous and dulls the worst of it. The past few weeks just haven’t been great so I’ve already ran out, but still need to work on a few things to get the money for the next batch.” Hasta explained and tried his best to massage his leg with his fist without drawing attention to it.

Anastacia regretted not taking along any money, as she would have gladly handed some over, but she was also fairly sure Hasta would have been far too stubborn to accept any kind of aid anyway. She did, however, make a mental note about telling Sorbus to look into growing some more herbal remedies that could maybe help with both the pain and the very overstrung nerves.

To hopefully distract the elf from the pain, she inquired about something else that had caught her attention. “You said something about a medallion, I think. Care to expand on that? Didn’t seem like something you cherish.”

Again, no doubt pondering if there was a hidden purpose to the question, Hasta took a while to say anything. After much deliberation, he lifted up his left arm and revealed a silvery medallion dangling from his wrist. Anastacia stood no chance of seeing any details of it from so far away, but did notice that it was weirdly tightly wrapped around the arm for a piece of jewelry. It almost looked uncomfortable to wear. “This thing? It’s just a cheap silver trinket with a faded enchantment. It tightens when there’s a shift in the arcane energies nearby, so the wearer knows when there’s a mage nearby. Every patrol had at least two people with them.”

“Sounds handy.” Nodded the necromancer. “But are you sure that you should be carrying it around if it reminds you of something unpleasant?”

“They didn’t do much good anyway.” Hasta sighed and flipped the medallion into his hand to read the faded inscription on it against the light from the setting sun. “Turns out that if there’s a mage with the will, intent and caliber to vaporize you and the hundred people with you, they don’t really care if you know they’re nearby. However, spend a couple of years in the forests, trying to weed out a network of spellsword spies that keep ambushing you every chance they get, and it’ll become hard to sleep without one.”

Finally feeling like she was getting somewhere with the man, Anastacia pressed on, to matters that were slightly more relevant to what she was trying to find out. “Oh? You’ve spent time in the woods before then, is that where you learned to live like this? Foraging and such.”

“Most of it. We were already pretty far away from any camps and getting supplies without them being taken in an ambush was basically impossible. So, we started living like our enemies did, not like they had much of a supply route either. Some of the guys with us knew a thing or two, some we learned from the occasional prisoners we managed to take. ‘Take care of the woods and the woods will take care of you’ was always the gist of it, so that’s what I’ve been trying to do.” Hasta explained with an unamused frown as he recalled some past events. “The fewer of us there were left, the easier it got. Alone it’s almost easy at this point.”

Anastacia couldn’t help but to wonder if the forest he was speaking of also had a nature spirit lurking in it. One who also found it worth rewarding when the mortals bumbling about the place actually didn’t destroy it for once. “That might be true in a more literal sense than you can even imagine – and again, I’m happy to tell you that you’ve been doing a good job.” She chuckled and kept probing. “So, what about the times you weren’t being bombarded by mages or chasing spies or whatever? Is there a family or anything like that? Relatives, good friends?”

“Family died when I was twelve, picked up the sword then and haven’t let go of it. War has a tendency to give you plenty of good friends but then take them away if you’ve the ‘luck’ to not go with them. More or less sums up my life so far, in more detail than I should be giving.” The elf answered the question that caused him to raise his remaining unburned brow. “Exactly how is this relevant to anything?”

“Look, I left my book of friends back home, so I don’t happen to have a form about your likes, dislikes and other stuff for you to fill. This is the sort of thing I came here to figure out but you’re being very difficult about everything.” The necromancer snarked and rolled her eyes. “Unless you think your favorite food is important military intel?”

The poor elf just seemed bemused by what was going on, it was clear he still didn’t trust Anastacia at all. He may have figured that she wasn’t an enemy agent or an assassin, but may well have been a random lunatic that somehow strayed into his encampment. Without saying a word, Hasta took a glance at the darkening sky and stood up once more to limp over to a pile of firewood he had gathered earlier. Trying his best to act like he wasn’t in a massive amount of pain as he picked up only a couple of logs and a bit of kindling before having to return to the small firepit he had assembled. Tossing them in and leaning against the rocks, he pretended to position them for a while as he almost certainly rested his body and gathered strength for the next trip.

When the elf got back up and took a single hasty step, Anastacia reached her limit. “Nope. I’m not watching this anymore!” She declared to give him a heads up before getting up from the chair and heading towards the firewood. “You’re going to sit on your rock while I do this.”

As expected, Hasta immediately took out his sword and pointed it at the necromancer. “Not a step closer!” He commanded panickily as his heart started to race again. “If you don’t back off, I will kill you!”

Anastacia considered freezing him then and there, but had no idea if necromancy and its effects would cause even more pain when the elf would undoubtedly fight it. “No, you won’t.” She stated assuringly but kept her defenses up as she had to pass within the sword’s reach of Hasta. She picked up as much wood as she conveniently could and full of entirely faked confidence, headed to the firepit. As she had very much hoped, Hasta still had enough sense in him to back away as she approached, though he still kept the sword pointed at her the entire time – even as he finally sat back down, until the shaky hand gave out under the weapon’s weight.

After arranging some of the logs and kindling like Gilbert had taught her dozens of times and piling the rest between Hasta and the firepit for convenience’s sake, Anastacia took a couple of steps away from her target and hoisted her arm in preparation of throwing a hopefully contained amount of fire at the pit. Just as she was about to cast her magics, she stopped herself and turned to look at the elf – specifically the burnt half of his face. “Better not.” She muttered to herself and started to look for alternatives that wouldn’t trigger a panic attack for the person she was trying to help. With no tools for fire making in sight, she turned to Hasta. “Do you have something I can get this going with?”

Still madly gripping his sword but its tip stuck in the dirt, the elf didn’t even look at the person he had perceived as a threat anymore, instead he stared at the handle of the weapon and the aching wrist that had failed him. The words hadn’t even begun to reach him as he spaced out in a startled haze, as if it for the first time hit him that he was no longer able to effectively defend himself at all. While he had understood that his condition was bad enough to warrant retiring, it must have been a rude awakening to the fact that he no longer could do the one thing he seemed to define himself with.

Without thinking, the necromancer instinctively rushed over to see if she could help, but as soon as her fingertips touched Hasta, he swung his free hand at her. The back of his hand made contact with the side of Anastacia’s face but she was just barely quick enough to backstep the hit to avoid being more than mildly tapped. The edge of the metal prosthetic left a small mark behind but nothing severe enough for Anastacia to even register that she had been hit until a bit later when she was sure that’s all there was to it and that she wouldn’t need to dodge a sword swing next. The elf’s sword did actually nudge, but he himself stopped it before the necromancer even could intervene. With horror, anger and everything in between flashing on his face in only a moment, Hasta opened his mouth but couldn’t say a word before whatever lucid moment he had faded and his gaze glassed over once more.

It was time for a change of plans, as the initial things she had come to learn suddenly seemed completely inconsequential. If Sorbus really wished to help the elf who had started squatting on her land, there were more important ways to do so than whatever they had planned. Anastacia waved at the fox hiding in the bushes and called them over. Sorbus hesitantly popped out of the cover of the underbrush, appearing as a glowing green pair of eyes against the dark forest background. They reluctantly meandered back and forth in the distance for a while before the repeated calls finally convinced them that approaching was a good idea, even in their usual form. Lacking even the most basic knowledge on how this kind of meetings usually went, they didn’t really have any idea what had been going on, why the necromancer had been made to sit so far away or why the sword was involved at all, but it had all seemed very strange to say the least.

“What, what, what?!” They exclaimed worriedly as they finally arrived to the scene, still desperately trying to hide behind some of the taller unkempt weeds by the edge of the more trampled and cared for area of the clearing. “This isn’t how the plan is supposed to go!”

“The plan is screwed and I decided on a new approach. Your intel was a bit lacking by the way.” Anastacia said keeping an eye on the elf the whole time.

“What’s he doing?” Sorbus asked and pointed their paw at the crestfallen ex-soldier.

Anastacia shrugged. “Probably having a flashback or something, how should I know – not having a good time regardless.” She made her best guess based on the occasional rapid movement of Hasta’s eyes and incoherent mumbles. “Anyway, do you know what herbs he has been gathering regularly? Or any other plant that might help with pain.”

“Yes! Well, no. I don’t know anything about what they do, but there’s one I’ve seen him look for all the time.” The fox nodded excitedly.

“Can you get me some of that?” The necromancer requested and got to work as the fox darted off across the glade, to find one of the plants they themselves had hidden around the area.

Staying out of the reach of the sword, Anastacia snuck around Hasta and entered the tiny cabin he had built for himself. inside was pretty much exactly what she had figured was in there: a bed that took almost a third of the entire living space, a crude self-made table – which the chair given to her usually accompanied, some kind of a storage closet and a tiny cast iron stove – just barely large enough to be cooked on top of but no doubt capable of keeping the hut warm in the winter. Some cooking related herbs Anastacia recognized from the inn’s kitchen hung from the ceiling around the stove, a half-full bag of flour was tucked under the table, a lantern with a wonky self-made candle inside it dangled from a hook on the wall by the bed and a few other odds and ends were placed around the tiny room. Though everything was neatly arranged, at least compared to her own room, the place still felt cluttered to Anastacia. The only thing that gave some relief from the cramped mood was a window that had seemingly been scavenged from some other building and wasn’t originally a part of the wall or built by Hasta. In a modest hurry, she grabbed an adorably small copper pot off the stove and left to fill it from the lake the hut was build next to.

By the time she got back, Sorbus had already returned with a couple of new plants sprouted from atop their head. Instead of looking for the necromancer, the fox had stopped right next to the elf, with their gaze transfixed on his troubled face. It must have been the first time they were so close to one another without a window between them. Hasta didn’t seem to be aware of the spriggan, which may have been for the better at the time.

“He’s a good person, I think, just not in a good place. In case you’re wondering.” The necromancer said quietly as Sorbus noticed her and the two moved a bit further away.

“What do you mean?! Is there something wrong with this place that I don’t know about?!” Sorbus immediately panicked. “Please, tell me how to fix it! I’ll do it right now!”

“I mean in his head. It’s something that probably can’t be fixed, not entirely anyway, but I do still think you can help. We need to regroup and rethink our approach back at the grove.” Anastacia reckoned while placing the pot of water on the ground in a spot with as little grass as possible. She plucked the plants Sorbus had grown on their head and tried to figure out what it even was. She could hear Gilbert and Emilia scolding her all the way from Valor as she failed to identify the somewhat mint-like herb that had small white blossoms on it and no real scent to it, even after she muddled about half of it inside the pot with her fingers. Touching the tip of her tongue afterwards did result in a slight numbing sensation and a mildly bitter taste, which to the adventurer trying to be an amateur alchemist seemed like it at least did something.

Placing a finger against the side of the pot and her other hand on the ground, she began to use ice magic to freeze the soil by storing the energy in it into the pot and the water in it, quickly bringing it to boil without the need for a fire. Obviously, she had no real idea what she was doing with the herb, but making a tea out of things seemed like it could be a way to make something happen. Hasta had mentioned the herb being somewhat poisonous before, so Anastacia hoped that the poisonous parts would stick in the plant itself and she could fish them out with a stick, while the helpful things would be more likely to transfer into the water. After offending both professional alchemists and teamakers alike, she poured the steamy, greenish yellow broth into the cup that had been given to her and took a small sip. A few moments later, she convinced herself that the mild ache on her cheek was now even milder and figured that it must have been a success since she wasn’t dead yet, or even feeling particularly poisoned.

Anastacia returned the emptied pot where she had taken it from and searched the cottage for a striker and a piece of flint, which turned out to be hidden in a small tin by the stove. With them, she was finally able to light the fire outside and light up the secluded nook of the world she had been taken to. She had by then figured that surprising Hasta was generally a bad idea, so she sat down, placed the cup by the firepit and prepared for a lengthy wait until the elf would wake up on his own.

“Is there anything else I can do?” Sorbus asked and warily approached the fire, as if it could jump at them at any moment and turn their wooden body into ash.

“Not right now, I think. Though if you want to stay here, you might as well at this point.” Anastacia said and yawned. The unexpected action had taken a toll on her after such a weird day.

Sorbus put some thought into the matter. “Noooo… I want to look like a person when he sees me. Beautiful and handsome!” They eventually decided. “With hands to do stuff with.”

“We’ll see what we can do with that once we get back to the grove.” Anastacia agreed. She honestly didn’t think it mattered too much anymore, Hasta was far too preoccupied for any of their original plans and would be against anyone trying to help him, be it a little wooden fox or a person. However, she had to admit that this was the more interesting direction.

The spriggan took one more close look at the elf, now that they had the chance, and retreated back into the darkness where they had been waiting. Anastacia only got a few minutes for herself before Hasta slowly lifted his disoriented gaze and returned to the present, exhausted and startled. The sword, which had never left his grip nudged again slightly when he saw the necromancer in the light of the fire, but again he managed to stop himself at the last moment. He must have understood that regardless of her goals, if Anastacia would have been a threat, he would have met his end by now and was willing to accept the shorter distance between them.

With a broken and apologetic frown, he tried to say something to the necromancer but no words seemed to fit and nothing coherent was said for a few more moments. Suddenly he seemed to notice something as the look in his eye became sharp once more. “What is that scent? Do you know where its coming from?” He inquired, almost demanding an answer while sniffing the air.

“Do you mean this- let’s call it… drink?” Anastacia asked and offered the cup of barely above lukewarm potentially poisonous extract to hasta. “I made it from this herb. I’m no alchemist but you could try if that does anything.” She explained and showed the rest of what Sorbus had brought.

Hasta hesitated to reach out, but managed to momentarily swallow what little pride he had left and take the cup. After taking a whiff and a small sip, he shook his head. “It’s not this. There’s this… odd and pleasant earthy scent that sometimes appears out of nowhere. Not quite flowers, not quite grass. Wind doesn’t carry it and nothing here smells like it.”

Anastacia knew exactly what he was talking about. Having spent some time in the grove, her senses had mostly dulled to it, but when brought attention to, she could pick up Sorbus’ earthy aroma. Not as flowery as Xamilieres, but more akin to a mix of flowers and freshly dug soil. Certainly not an unpleasant one, but the necromancer had her own, biased preferences. “Hmm… What do you think of it?”

“I… I like it. I have no idea where it’s coming from, but it brings good luck on hunts and makes my garden almost grow right before my eyes.” The elf said and stared into the cup before bravely taking another sip.

The necromancer chuckled. “Interesting… But, it is time that I end this meeting.” She decided and stood up to stretch her back. “Get a good night’s rest. I’m leaving a bit of that herb for you, so if that drink helps at all and doesn’t poison you, try boiling it.”

Hasta didn’t answer, but Anastacia thought she could see a hint of gratitude in his look.

“Here’s how this is going to go now:” She continued. “Within a day or two, I’ll be back and I’ll be bringing along the friend I’ve come here to help. They’ll likely be sticking around a lot more to help, whenever their duties so allow, so get used to that idea while waiting. Don’t try anything stupid like running away.”

Visibly disagreeing with the idea of receiving help from anyone, but shakily holding his sword while paralyzed by pain and trauma, he was past arguing about it. The weird girl before him also had an inexplicable aura of authority he couldn’t really explain, far from regal or mighty, but everything she decreed at least seemed like a matter of fate and couldn’t be denied so lightly.

“Good!” Anastacia said and clapped her hands before marching off into the darkness, further adding to the suspicion that she wasn’t a human by seemingly choosing a direction that had nothing but untamed forest for hundreds of kilometers.