Erik was bored. With a capital ‘B’. He was so bored he was borderline about to fall asleep. At first, he’d been doing great! A constant stream of injured people coming in was more than enough to keep him entertained. Plus, he was finally doing exactly what he’d always wanted, being an actual doctor.

Sure, using his shroud was kinda cheating as far as he was concerned. He could do more than his parents could ever dream to accomplish without an ounce of the training and dedication that made them professionals. But, he could do more than they ever dreamed. Today alone, Erik had saved dozens of lives that his parents, for all their training and skill and experience, would have had to let go.

Taking that into account, and the volume of people flowing in, Erik was pretty glad he had his shrouds. Both of them, because the Binding barrier he’d had over their heads had been tested more than once. In fact, he’d had to Incarnate Binding after a while. A barrier of that size and strength was more than he could sustain indefinitely. Luckily, Laekna could do basically the same thing and she could keep it up forever.

Of course, that left Erik with only Healing on hand in case they were attacked, but he’d have plenty of warning before the arena was breached. Lakena’s barrier would stop most things and at least slow down the rest. But Erik wasn’t really thinking about any of that. He was bored.

Once the fighting outside got more intense, the injured stopped coming. That rapidly killed the backlog of patients waiting on him, so he ended up with a bunch of healthy people, his least favorite kind of people. Especially some of the shrouded, who had started to get annoying.

“...That’s all I’m saying.”

Erik could hear the whispers. But more than that, the danger they represented rippled along his aura, sounding like a bug flying in his ear. If he’d thought about it at all, the answer would have been obvious, but Erik didn’t think about other people that much, especially when they weren’t injured.

He was in a confined space with a bunch of scared, angry people. In the case of the shrouded, they were also people that were unused to being scared and angry. And worse, the suppression field was also making them feel vulnerable.

Erik didn’t really understand that emotion very well. After all, he could feel how much danger everyone was constantly in, every moment of every day. Whether you were shrouded or not, people can just randomly die, with little rhyme or reason. The idea of feeling an acute sense of danger was kinda a constant in his life, so people that only felt it occasionally seemed weird to him. Even if that group of people was made up of basically everyone else.

So, vulnerable people who are used to being powerful, not a good group to be stuck with. And so, the whispering started.

“...They can use their aura…”

“...Why are they keeping us here?...”

“...We don’t know what’s going on, only what they’ve told us…”

And on and on it went. None of this had happened when Caeden was there. Honestly, everyone seemed scared of Caeden, and Erik didn’t blame them. Ever since he’d gotten that new shroud, Erik had felt Caeden’s presence as a constant beacon of danger in his senses. It felt like standing in front of Damon Vestigious, Cat’s spooky grandpa.

Of course, none of that danger was directed at him. He and Caeden were buds. But that didn’t stop him from feeling the constant danger Caeden radiated into the world around him. And apparently other people, as blind as they normally were to the danger around them, could feel it too.

But Caeden had left to go deal with whatever crap their friends were getting into and left him behind. Erik didn’t have nearly the same threatening presence that Caeden did, so people started talking. Considering that they couldn’t see what was going on outside, the only real thing anyone had to talk about was the people that saved them.

“...They’re so young…”

That was the first thing to come up. And it kept coming up, never really with anything good behind it. It wasn’t ‘they’re so young, good for them’ or ‘they’re so young, I’m glad they stepped up’. No, it was more like ‘they’re so young, who are they to tell us what to do’?

Erik didn’t get annoyed at much. Terrible luck and almost dying constantly put life in perspective, and most things that annoyed other people felt a little petty and silly to him. Who cares if someone cuts you in line or talks too loud? It wouldn’t kill you, and the problem usually only lasted for a few minutes anyway. But all this whispering, that annoyed him.

Who were these people? When the Revolution started reducing the Tournament to a fine paste, they hadn’t been able to do a damn thing, so who were they to decide that Erik and his friends were ‘too young’ to handle the situation.

That didn’t account for the fact that all of them, and Caeden especially, were a lot older than they looked. They’d spent a long time in the Blade Forge increasing their Invasion Pressure and learning their shrouds inside and out. Of course, no one here knew about that, but it was still annoying to hear people that were most likely younger than him talking shit.

That alone would have eventually gotten under his nerves. Eventually. The larger part of Erik was still just bored and waiting for something to happen. But then the whispering started to turn from grumbling about how young they were to decidedly angrier questions about how they managed to do what they had.

Again, it was obvious with a little hindsight, but Erik wasn’t looking for it. The quiet conversations evolved from discussions about why they were listening to kids to off handed conspiracy theories centered around Erik and his friends. After all, no one their age should be as strong as they were, so they must be in league with the airships that attacked the city, using some forbidden technique.

It wasn’t long before some people were saying with absolute certainty that Erik was a monster in human skin that had masterminded the entire attack to capture them so he could eat their souls. That and other similarly wild ideas started running rampant.

Erik found the thought that he was the mastermind kinda funny, considering he couldn’t plan his breakfast, let alone a massive assault. Now, if they had been talking about Caeden, their words might have had a ring of truth to them. But that was the thing, nothing they said made sense if you considered it for more than half a second. And if Erik thought their ideas were stupid, he was scared to think how dumb they actually were.

Erik almost wished he could ignore it all. Not that he could. The threat the whispers represented was a blazing sign to his aura senses, and he couldn’t ignore that anymore than he could a blade to his throat. It just wasn’t in him. That being said, he wasn’t about to do anything about it either.

Normally, when confronted with a threat, Erik’s response was to neutralize it or put himself in a position to ignore it. That whole plan wasn’t very effective once actual people got involved. People made everything murky and complicated in a way that stopped simple solutions. Erik couldn’t just go killing people because they were spreading so weird rumors. Well, he could. Easily, in fact. No one here was anywhere near strong enough to stop him. But it was probably a bad idea and Caeden and Lily wouldn’t be happy with him.

So, murder was off the table. That left a more nuanced approach, which was not Erik’s specialty. He was the living embodiment of a hammer, despite having a deft hand with a scalpel. Instead of coming up with some half-assed plan that probably wouldn’t work anyway, Erik decided to wait and hope the problem went away on its own.

This also turned out to be not a good idea.

“Hey, I’m talking to you!”

Erik sighed. This guy was the first one to work up the courage to confront him. Something that seemed really dumb to Erik, since this was one of the guys that had spent the last half hour telling everyone around him that Erik was the messenger of a dark god sent to scour all life from the Starry Seas. If Erik was in his shoes, he’d leave the dark god’s servant alone.

Actually that was a lie. If Erik was in this guy’s shoes and believed what he believed, he would have punched himself in the face already, but Erik wasn’t very smart. At least he was smart enough to understand when he had bad ideas, and antagonizing the representative of some primeval power seemed really fucking dumb.

Looking the man up and down, Erik tried his best to figure out who he was. “Missing left leg, major damage to a lung, kidney, and minor damage to the heart. Death to major organ damage within three minutes of arrival if left untreated.”

“W-What? Are you threatening me?!” The man recoiled at Erik’s words.

“No, I’m listing off the damage I healed. I don’t really remember what your name is, but I do remember what I fixed. Your shroud was doing its best to keep you going, and any unshrouded would have died almost instantly. But there is a limit to how much regeneration it could offer and it was losing out to the cardiac damage. Your brain wasn’t getting enough blood because your heart couldn’t beat hard enough. Plus, you’d lost a shit ton of blood, so that wasn’t helping. It took a lot of healing to get you going again.” Erik explained as the man slowly grew paler with every word.

“Uh,” He looked around at his former supporters, who were looking slightly shell shocked.

“So, what did you want?” Erik prompted when the Mr. Major Organ Failure stopped talking.

“Oh, uh.” Mr. MOF wouldn’t meet his eyes anymore and was shuffling his feet. “We wanted to know why you’re keeping us in here.”

“Because there’s a giant battle going on outside and none of you are in any shape to fight?” Erik almost asked, wondering what was hard to understand about that.

“But you can use your shroud just fine!” Some of Mr. MOF’s fire came back.

“Yup,” Erik nodded.

“Well, why?! None of us can!” He gestured to the other behind him.

“My friend made a way to get around the suppression field.” Erik explained, waving his arm band that let him use his aura freely.

“Well, then give us all one!”

“Can’t.” Erik shrugged.

“Why not?!”

“Two reasons.” Erik lifted two fingers. “One, I can’t make them, my friend does. And two, why should I? I don’t know you and I don’t owe you anything.”

Caeden might have some weird guilt issues going on and Lily definitely had a savior complex, but Erik had never felt even slightly responsible for other people. He was a doctor not because he wanted to save lives, but because he enjoyed the work. As far as he was concerned, they’d done more than enough to keep these people safe. Handing them a suppression field bracelet would just give the more rowdy an opportunity to screw things up.

Erik wasn’t just basing that off his intuition either. Every time he thought about giving any of these shrouded a bracelet, his defensive sense spiked hard. If his aura was reading it as a danger, Erik didn’t think it was a good idea. Plus, it wasn’t hard to imagine how that would play out. Most shrouded would take a mile if you gave them an inch. If Erik didn’t have such an explicit advantage over them they’d inevitably want to pick a fight if only to feel more in control.

“As long as our shrouds are suppressed, we’re in danger!” Another shrouded decided to jump in.

“Hmm,” Erik looked them over. “Sucking chest wound with a collapsed lung and a piece of stone lodged in your thoracic aorta. Death to massive internal hemorrhage within twenty minutes of arrival.”

“Yeah, you are in danger. But you’d still be in danger if you had your aura back anyway.” Erik sighed. “And all of this is a pointless conversation because I can’t give you your auras back. I told you, I don’t make these.” He jangled the bracelet at them.

“Well then get the guy who can make them! Maybe he’ll see reason.” Miss Internal Hemorrhage huffed.

“Nahh, he’s busy fighting and doesn’t have time to deal with your petty crap.” Erik firmly rejected that idea. He wasn’t about to bug Caeden in the middle of a fight over this crowd of ungrateful jackasses.

A sudden sensation like someone stabbing his temple instantly refocused Erik’s attention. His defensive aura sense had spiked harder than he’d ever felt the entire battle. Someone with real firepower was focusing on the arena specifically.

“And apparently I don’t have time to deal with this anymore either.” Erik smiled. “Everyone sit still and be quiet, I’m going to step outside for a minute.”

He left without waiting for anyone to respond. Erik was actually glad someone had decided to pick a fight with him. All those idiots was not the relief to his boredom he’d been looking for. He just had to hope that whatever or whoever was headed his way could give him a decent challenge.

He had a lot of pent up tension to release.