“With every meeting, comes an eventual parting.” - Old folk saying.

“Are you… certain you’re fine, ma’am?” asked the guard leader to Aideen.

The guard had seen Aideen take the brunt of the flame lance explosion to the point that it charred the entirety of her upper body, the sort of burns people are not supposed to survive, and also saw how she just regenerated the burnt flesh within moments, leaving herself back in perfect shape other than her clothes, which was charred beyond recovery by the conflagration.

In fact, the guard leader thought that the sight of Aideen’s flesh regrowing under the push of her healing magic, the way the charred pieces of flesh just sloughed off like so much dirt, was a rather traumatic sight to witness. He wasn’t sure if the sight wouldn’t be haunting his sleep for the next few weeks, despite his age and all the things he had seen in his centuries of life.

“I’ve been through worse, but thank you for the concern,” replied Aideen with a smile. She had shrugged on a fresh tunic by then, and was looking around for signs of Celia. While Aideen had been partially covered from the conflagration by the greater Cragmite’s body, Celia had not been that lucky and had taken the blast more directly. Not that it mattered that much since she was unliving. “Aha, found her. Would you mind giving us a bit of privacy?”

“Certainly, ma’am. I will be back at the caravan if you need me,” said the guard leader as he gave her a polite and respectful salute before he turned his mount back towards the caravan and moved away.

Celia’s charred form – she was much worse off as she took a far more direct blast compared to Aideen – had been flung quite a distance away and into a pile of Cragmite corpses. Her body was far too damaged for her to move herself, while the Cragmite carcasses kept her mostly hidden, which was why it took Aideen a while to locate her.

Now that she found Celia, Aideen quickly extracted her charred body from beneath the carcasses and set her healing magic to work. The results were immediate, as newly created muscle fibers formed underneath the charred surface, eventually pushing the burnt parts away, making them slough off Celia’s body in large chunks. The freshly regrown muscle then regrew fresh skin to cover it. Despite their newly created nature, the new skin had Celia’s original tanned skintone, and her hair also regrew to its previous length.

“*Gasp* That- That felt horrible!” Celia complained as she “woke” up and sat with a jolt. Aideen could sympathize with the feeling, as she had had to regrow her own body several times in her life. The experience was an extremely unpleasant one to say the least, since it involved a lot of nerve endings being exposed to the air for brief periods of time. The regrowth of muscle and skin also always made her feel like her whole body itched and that ants crawled all over her, with her unable to scratch away the itch.

“I know, been there, done that,” said Aideen with a sympathetic smile. She then brought out a fresh pair of pants and a tunic from Celia’s storage artifact – the storage was originally hers after all, so she could still access it with ease even after she gave it to Celia – and handed them to the naked girl. “Put these on first, unless you feel like giving the boys at the caravan a show.”

“What? Oh-” said Celia as she realized that she was completely naked at the moment. Her clothes had not survived the conflagration at all. With a slightly embarrassed blush on her face, she quickly wore the clothes and tightened it around her waist with a piece of rope as a belt. As for her weapon, Aideen had already retrieved it off the greater Cragmite’s carcass and stored it back inside Celia’s storage artifact.

“I just realized one thing…” mentioned Celia as they walked back towards the caravan, side by side. “What are these storages made out of? That blast should have destroyed most storages I’ve seen in my life, as far as I could tell.”

“Oh, I had the storages I use made extra-sturdy just to be safe for cases like these,” replied Aideen with a shrug. Celia’s query was understandable, as a storage artifact was exactly as durable as the material it was made out of. The majority were made out of metals, with silver, gold, or platinum quite commonly used for those belonging to rich people. Aideen’s ones were made out of something entirely different, though. “The one I lent to you is one of my spares. It’s crafted out of high purity Adamant Steel.”

“Adamant Steel? Are those even usable for storage artifacts?” asked Celia with some incredulity. Out of the more precious metals, Adamant’s rather magic-repellent property was well known, alongside its weight and near-indestructibility.

“It’s far harder to use them to make storage artifacts, yeah. It’s doable if you have some really good enchanters and smiths though,” replied Aideen rather nonchalantly. She conveniently left out that the price for such a storage artifact would have been driven drastically higher due to the expertise needed to make one. “For that matter, my own main storage artifact is made entirely out of pure Adamant like my weapon, so it’s practically indestructible.”

“Huh. I guess there’s always something new to learn everyday,” admitted Celia. The topic never really came up during the years they lived with the Orcs in the prairie, because their lives were relatively peaceful there, and had not involved violence to the point that Aideen needed to reconstruct their bodies like today. “Good to know, I guess.”

Neither of them really noticed the awed look that the guards and merchants of the caravan gave them as they walked the way back. The guards who helped escort them to the greater Cragmite had seen how Aideen so nonchalantly recovered herself from what should have been a fatal injury, and a few also saw how Celia was charred and flung away by the blast.

That both women now walked nonchalantly back to the caravan like nothing ever happened was enough to awe them.