Hearing Yura’s explanation, Elise nodded in understanding. And that didn’t mean she simply understood the elf’s feelings about caves. She could tell that Yura was taking her time to explain such things out of a perhaps unconscious desire to stall, because the next part of the story would be painful.

Regardless, Yura wanted to tell the other girl everything, so she went back to the main point.

+0+

The elf had been staying there for five days when something very unusual happened: She received a visitor.

“Helloooo! Are you there?” A feminine voice shouted from outside the cave.

Yura was surprised, but she decided to go see whatever it was that person wanted. Maybe it was a merchant with a special request of some sort, but she wouldn’t know unless she checked.

To her surprise, the person calling her turned out to be another elf girl who was around the same age as her and introduced herself as Aura.

“My group is going on missions nearby, but I have a lot of downtime, so I came here because I heard about another young elf mage living here.” Aura explained.

“So you’re also a mage? What’s your specialty? Ah, and my name is Yura, sorry.”

‘I guess she’s part of an adventuring party or something?’ Yura thought to herself. She thought of asking about it, but decided against it, fearing that might lead to being asked about her own situation in return. Talking about magic was a safer subject.

“I’m a fire expert. Do you mind if I…?”

“Go ahead.” Yura replied. Aura was being fairly polite in her interactions, such as not invading Yura’s space and asking permission before casting a potentially dangerous fire spell, so she was feeling pretty positive towards the other girl.

Aura’s spell was a simple and weak fireball that she subsequently shaped into an arrow, showing some respectable magical control, even though the arrow wasn’t perfect. Yura praised her accordingly, but the other girl sighed and confessed that her magical control declined dramatically when using large amounts of power, and that her training wasn’t helping a lot with that issue.

Yura commiserated with Aura, saying that her issue was losing precision and efficiency very fast when trying to multi-task in her earth magic, and then showed the other girl some of what she could do, which led to Aura becoming more comfortable and showing some of her stronger fire magic…

In the end, the duo got into a lively discussion about magic and the ways they had been taught it, spell formation, power efficiency and all sorts of other minutia that wouldn’t sound very interesting to most people, but they had an absolute blast to the point where they only noticed how much time had passed when the day started getting dark.

“Err… It’s been fun, but I think I should go back now.” Aura said regretfully.

“… Can we talk again another day?” Yura asked.

“Sure! I don’t think there will be anything for me to do for the group tomorrow, so I can come here after breakfast.”

“Okay. Then I’ll be waiting.” Yura said.

+0+

Once more the girl had to pause for a bit due to her emotions, so Elise took that chance to think about what had happened.

‘The branch responsible for destroying Yura’s village should have been a different one from Loran’s, otherwise Aura would be more wary of an elf who was likely a survivor from there.’ She thought ‘Unless she already knows about it and this is all just a setup for Yura, but I don’t think that’s the case. They wouldn’t need to go through all that trouble for dealing with a single mage with no notable combat skills as far as they knew.’

She already had her suspicions about the way the story would end, so it was with a heavy heart that she kept listening to Yura.

+0+

As promised, Aura came back on the following day and the two resumed their lively discussion. Yura had prepared some extra food, so the two girls could have a meal together once the hunger hit before continuing their talks. Just like before, the two girls got quite into their conversation, but this time Aura had to leave earlier, saying that she had work to do with her group.

“And you’re not gonna be able to come here tomorrow?” Yura guessed based on Aura’s expression.

“Yeah… I think it should be two or three days before I’m free again. Sorry.”

“It’s alright. It will give me time to focus on my own work. Just be safe, okay?” Yura asked.

From the way Aura talked about her magic and the issues she had, Yura could tell that whatever work the other girl did involved fighting, so she could not help but worry.

“Of course. I have a pretty strong boss, so you don’t need to worry too much.” Was the reply “Then I’ll come to see you once I’m back. Bye.”

“Bye.”

And so they parted. Yura went back to her usual ‘mining work’ as promised, but she could not help but worry about her new friend, despite the reassurances. Still, her fears did not come to pass, as three days later Aura showed up as promised.

Thus began a sort of routine. Aura and Yura would spend one or two days together, and then the former would go out to do work with her group for two or three days, while the latter used that time to do her own stuff. The time Yura spent in that place quickly surpassed the usual two weeks, as she had finally found something to make her stay.

Obviously, they weren’t spending their time together just talking. While they did do a lot of that, the duo would also play and explore together. Their playing was mostly started by Aura, and rather than normal games, the two used their magic to play in several different ways, like manipulating small bubbles via magic and trying to ‘tag’ each other with said bubbles.

Meanwhile, the explorations were mostly started by Yura and consisted of the earth mage bringing the other girl around to pretty or interesting places she found in her underground expeditions. Though, even with those things, the two still spent quite a lot of time just talking to each other.

“It’s pretty interesting how similar our names are.” Aura said one day, apropos of nothing.

“Really? I guess so.” Yura replied without missing a beat. She had gotten used to the other girl’s sudden subject changes “In my hometown, almost all girls had names ending in ‘ra’ because of tradition, so I never thought it was strange, but I suppose that’s not the case everywhere.”

“Oh, that’s funny. And no, there were no rules like that for names where I’m from, so it’s definitely an interesting coincidence. But speaking of that, was there a tradition for male names too?”

“Yeah, their names mostly all ended in ‘no’.”

And from there it became a conversation about naming conventions in different cultures. That was just one example of how their talks tended to go. And as one might be able to tell from that exchange, the two had gotten close enough for Yura to open up regarding her origins.

She had told Aura about being an orphan (which happened to also be the case for the other girl) and about her town being destroyed on a separate incident, but she didn’t tell her about the Inishie being responsible. That wasn’t due to a lack of trust, but because she knew that said knowledge could be dangerous, as had been made clear by the people she asked.

And Aura had told Yura about her origins as well. The girl’s story was in some ways even rougher than Yura’s.

She was an orphan in a community that basically did not care at all about them, so she ended up joining a gang and learning magic in order to defend herself and get food. But then her gang tried to rob someone much stronger and got mostly annihilated, with Aura only surviving by luck. And then she tried to steal food from a small camp and got caught by the owner of the camp, Loran, who had been traveling back to base after a mission.

Aura was deeply thankful to Loran, who decided not to punish her for the attempt, but instead gave her food and recruited the young girl into his group, having noticed her talent with fire magic. He had rescued her when she was at her lowest point, which she could never forget. That also meant she took the group’s rules seriously, including not giving Yura any actual information about them. She apologized for that, but Yura didn’t really mind it too much.

Things went on like that between the two girls for almost a month, but eventually it had to end, and the beginning of the end was one day when Yura noticed that Aura seemed to have her mind somewhere else while they were playing.

“Did something happen?” She asked her friend.

“Ah! Err…” Aura looked like she really didn’t know what to say, but after a few moments she sighed and spoke “The work our group had to do around here is over, so we’ll be leaving in two days.”

Those words hit Yura like a lightning bolt. She had already known deep down that something like that would eventually happen, but it still didn’t prepare her for hearing those words. She opened her mouth and tried to speak but nothing came out, so she closed it again, took a deep breath and tried again:

“Can I join you?” Yura asked. Those were words she had imagined herself saying before, an idea that had been on her mind for a while. And she knew that this was her only chance of saying them.

“Eh? Really?” Aura was quite surprised “Are you sure? It’s dangerous.”

“I know. But I don’t… I can’t… Be alone again…” Those words couldn’t fully express the depth of Yura’s feelings, but she couldn’t find any better ones.

And Aura seemed to understand her nonetheless “I see… I can’t recruit members on my own, but I can ask the boss to come and check a new prospective member.”

Yura let out a sigh of deep relief. She had a chance. But then her relief turned into worry “What if he rejects me?” She asked.

“I think he wouldn’t turn down such a talented earth mage, but…” Aura thought “Our group fights a lot, so it would help for you to have a little bit of combat skill.” She closed her eyes for a few moments before suddenly snapping them open “Ah, I know! I can teach you a few basic principles about how to fight with magic. That should raise your chances.”

And so Aura spent the rest of the day teaching Yura about battle magic. That included explaining what sorts of attacks were most effective in ‘disabling’ opponents as well as helping her create a few basic offensive spells. The fire mage left late at night, saying that she would try to bring Loran on the next day.

+0+

Once she reached that point in the story, Yura’s expression became completely blank, causing Elise to wince in sympathy. She could already tell the way that story was going to end.

Still, everything had already happened, so the only thing she could do was listening to the end.

+0+

Aura returned late on the following day, just as promised, and together with her were three other people who didn’t really look like a unified group. All of them were wearing very different clothing, including the elf herself. Aura’s own attire was as usual, rustic handmade clothing similar to what one would see on most communities that didn’t employ industrial processes for creating their vestments.

Two of the others were elves like Aura, but of a different tribe based on their skin color, which was darker than her or even Yura’s, almost black even. Besides that commonality, the two were completely different, one being a man who wore traveling robes while the other was a woman wearing casual factory-made clothes.

Finally, there was the last one, the only human in the group. He was a man who also wore factory-made clothing, only his style was far more formal. That man was also in the center of the group, making it obvious that he was the leader.

The group came into her cave, and after some quick introductions, Loran asked her:

“You are Yura, the one who wishes to join our group, right?”

“Yes.” She replied.

“Then show me what you can do.”

And so she did. She showed them the spells Aura had helped her with, of course, but she mostly showed them the abilities she had polished for herself, her movement magic and barriers. They all seemed surprised by the speed at which she was able to tunnel through the ground (except Aura, who already knew about it), and Loran actually tested one of her thicker earth barriers with a small energy sphere that easily broke through it, but apparently it had still held up well enough to get called “decent”.

In the end she got called up to stand in front of the four while Loran judged her efforts. He did not ask the opinion of the others, making it clear that the decision was entirely his own.

“Your application… I shall accept it.” Yura let out the breath she’d been holding. She had succeeded. But then he continued speaking “You will now be part of the Inishie.”

It felt as if time had stopped. Yura’s mind went blank, but then several things began to connect together. Even though she tried to doubt her own ears, everything made far too much sense for it to be denied.

“Ini… Shie…” She spoke slowly, her tone akin to the calm before the storm.

Yura could see that Aura was looking at her in concern, apparently having noticed that something was wrong.

That was the last straw.

“AAAAARRRRRGHHHHH!!” Yura did not scream, she howled.

Anger, shame and a deep sense of betrayal were all mixed together within her, and those uncontrollable emotions caused her magic power to go into a frenzy. The ground began to tremble, and then huge spikes began to erupt out of the ground all over.

Aura and Loran managed to use their skills to protect themselves against that unexpected attack, but the other two weren’t able to. Their torsos were torn open by the earth spikes.

It was the first time Yura had ever killed someone.

The extreme earth manipulation ended up being too much, causing a cave-in. Then Yura ran. She dug down and rushed through the underground as if trying to outrun her own feelings. She went on and on until she could go no longer, her body falling to the ground as the exhaustion and the recoil from the uncontrolled magic use caught up to her.

Yura’s body burned. She felt like she was dying, but she could not accept that fate. She could not resign herself to die after something like that, so she fought against that feeling. She fought and fought until it finally passed, and the girl managed to force herself to sit up after some struggle.

Now Yura had a goal, something she wanted to accomplish. She would be against the Inishie until the day either she died, or they did.

That was her oath.

+0+

“But I couldn’t allow something like that to happen again. I went across the whole continent, trying to find some way to never again be fooled by a member of the Inishie.” Yura explained “Eventually, I was directed to someone who was known as the ‘witch of vengeance’, who made enchantments that allowed those seeking revenge to track down their targets.”

“I see. So you had one of those made, but your target is ‘all of the Inishie’.” Elise replied.

“Yes. After that I spent over a year fighting against the Inishie wherever I found them, and that’s the way things went until we met.” The elf finished her story.

Yet, Elise could tell that there was still something she wanted to say but simply couldn’t bring herself to, but the contractor understood why she had told that story and so decided to give her a hand.

“About our temporary contract, I am willing to make it permanent if you want.” She did not beat around the bush.

Yura emitted a sound of surprise and looked down in embarrassment, but then nodded.

“But before I do that, I want to ask something: Is there some sort of wish or goal you have that you would like me to help achieve? Please tell me.” Elise asked.

Yura looked at her in surprise, her thoughts going a million miles an hour. She wanted to ask for help in destroying the Inishie, so she opened her mouth to say that:

“I want a family…” But that’s what came out instead. Yura put her hand to her mouth, looking astonished that it would betray her like that, then Elise put a hand (the left one, obviously) on her head.

“That’s no problem.” The girl said “Once you become my partner in truth, you’ll also be my little sister, part of the family. Now and forever.”

Yura’s eyes watered, she nodded again and then spoke “Yes!”

With that, Elise received her third partner and thus her third little sister.