Ray showed no intention of leaving Ana’s side after they exited the baths, and Ana didn't mind. She’d gotten used to having the Huntress around, so if Ray didn't have anything better to do, she was welcome.
There were two things Ana needed to do. Two people she needed to talk to. And since only one of those rattled her nerves, she went to see the other first.
When they entered the front room of Touanne's combined shop, lab, clinic and home, Ana was surprised to see Tellak behind the counter. The pale, black-haired woman looked up from the book she’d been reading.
“Welcome back, Anastasia. Rayni. Do you need anything?”
“Not at the moment, no,” Ana answered. “How come you're still here? I thought all the combat Classers got drafted.”
Tellak looked much better. The grief that had been hanging thick and heavy around her was, if not gone, then at least attenuated to the point where Ana wasn't bothered by it. She looked like she was sleeping properly, too. Overall, she looked solid, calm and steady, the way Ana imagined that someone with a Class called Bulwark should look. So it was only thanks to her high Perception and perhaps her Connection that Ana noticed the slight downturn of Tellak’s mouth, and the undertone of displeasure in her voice.
“They were. Falk took nigh on all the combat Classers currently in the settlement who weren't unwell. Which, apparently, I am.”
Ana wasn't touching that. “How is Jancia doing?”
“Better, and worse. Her body is healthy from what Touanne tells me, and her wounds are healed. She wakes sometimes, for a minute or so. She’s confused and distraught when she does, not making much sense, but Touanne insists that’s a better sign than constant unconsciousness. At least she seems happy to see me.” Tellak smiled slightly, which turned into a sigh and a frown as she continued. “But those damn crystals, they keep growing. Inside and out. Touanne tried to remove one, and it nearly killed Jay. She just started slipping away. Touanne had to heal it back in place.”
“Damn, I’m sorry to hear that.” It wasn’t quite a lie. Ana had no attachment to Jancia, but her illness affected people who were or might become important to Ana. And her sickness, the crystals in her flesh, that was disturbing. “How’s Touanne taking it?”
“As you might expect, since you seem to know her well enough. She was heartbroken at first, feeling useless, all of that. She doesn't handle failure well, as you know.”
“So where is she now?” Ray asked. “I think Ana wanted to talk to her, right?”
“I did, yeah,” Ana said.
“In the lab,” Tellak said. “I’ve been forcing her to do some work that she can’t fail at. It seems to help. Come on, I’ll—”
The door to the back swung open. Touanne burst through, her eyes swollen and surrounded by dark rings, but excited. “Ana! Was that—? Ana, good! Tellak, too, I have to tell you! Oh, and hello, Rayni. Come, come, all of you!”
The chaotic roil of emotions coming off Touanne was an almost physical thing. Grief, excitement, self-loathing, and joy, so strong that Ana cringed, taking a half-step back, and Tellak twitched. “Touanne, please,” Tellak said, putting her hands gently but firmly on the Healer’s shoulders. “You're projecting like a complete novice. Breathe. Control yourself.”
“You don’t understand! I’ve found—”
Tellak shook Touanne once, lightly, and Touanne stared blankly for a moment before saying, “Sorry, yes, of course.” She closed her eyes, took a few deep, slow breaths, and the chaos around her settled until Ana could breathe easy again.
Rayni, who was unaffected, watched the whole scene with bemusement. “I didn’t know your Connection was so high,” she said to Ana once it was over. “Trying to become a mage?”
“Trying to see if I could, at least,” Ana said. “Tellak’s offered to test me for an affinity.”
They’d talked a lot over the last week, but Rayni still didn’t know about her boosted Attributes. Ana wanting to learn magic was the simplest explanation for why she’d have a high enough Connection to be affected by Touanne like that, and she did want to learn, so it was almost the truth.
Of course, there might not be any point in hiding anything from Rayni. The Huntress already knew that some of Ana’s Attributes overall were inexplicably high. Adding Connection to the pile now must have piqued her curiosity. But she seemed trustworthy and somewhat invested in Ana now. If Ray proved able to keep what she knew private, Ana decided, she could probably let her know the broad strokes of her Class.
That would make three people who knew, five if she told Tor and Omda. Which was more than zero. The only way to keep a secret was to never tell anyone, so at this point it was all about being selective with who to tell. Anyone she intended to work with closely needed to know, for the sake of trust and efficiency, and she needed to trust anyone she worked with anyway.
But she could deal with that in the future. For now, Touanne had something to tell them, something she was very excited about, and that deserved Ana’s full attention. Touanne was practically dragging them down the corridor, only taking a moment to peek into the room where Jancia was recovering — if that was the right word — before taking them into her alchemy lab.
“So, the book, your book, Ana,” Touanne said as soon as they were all in the room, showing the black book in question lying open on her desk, surrounded by papers covered in neat, dense writing. “I’ve been studying it, to take my mind off things and perhaps learn what the point was of whatever ritual brought you here. And I did! Find something, I mean. The script is odd, as you know, but I found it in a linguistic reference that I borrowed from Captain Pirta. An old script that hasn't been used for centuries. The language is an equally old dialect of Elven Common, if you believe it! No progress on the runes yet—”
“Touanne!” Ana snapped, and the Healer’s enthusiastic monologue stopped in an instant. “That’s great. And the book is part of why I’m here. But I doubt that being able to read it is why you’re so worked up, right?”
“Oh. Right. Right! I only just started translating, and it’s slow going, but I’m finding explicit mentions of crystals taking root in living flesh. The ritual and the crystals infecting Jay, they're connected! That's what I wanted to tell you! I’m almost certain that the people who brought you here are responsible for Jay’s affliction!”
“All right, so that's… good?” Ana wasn't sure herself. “They’re dead, so whatever they were doing they’re not doing it anymore. Though it might have been useful to be able to ask them about the disease, or whatever it is.”
“You know for sure that they’re dead?” Tellak asked, and Ana silently cursed herself. Tellak didn't know the details around how Ana got here. More importantly, Ana hadn't wanted her to know, not until she herself knew if she shared some responsibility for the creatures that had attacked Tellak and her friends.
“Yeah,” she said. It was too late now, and she didn't want to lie in front of Touanne and Rayni, who knew the truth. Well, she hadn't told Rayni that she’d left the bodies in the forest, but the Huntress could probably guess that much.
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Tellak fixed her with a look that seemed to bore into her soul. It wasn’t like when she’d talked to Falk, where she’d felt an urge to tell him the truth and volunteer anything that felt helpful. No, with Tellak it felt like the woman simply saw through her, stripping away her masks and pretenses to see the truth beneath them.
Ana didn't like it, but neither could she do anything about it. So she met Tellak’s eyes, and stayed silent.
“All right,” Tellak said after the longest second in Ana’s life, not counting when time stopped in her Summary. “But do you know that they were acting alone? There may be others out there.”
That was a fair point. Ana didn’t actually know that. She’d made a weak assumption, but it hadn’t mattered too much since the only reason she might have wanted to find any accomplices would be to see if whatever brought her here could be reversed. But the idea hadn’t really occurred to her. If she got back to Earth she’d need a whole new identity. Probably some plastic surgery, too, just in case. She’d have the internet and all that, lots of creature comforts, but overall she didn’t care all that much. Besides, she doubted that she’d get to take her new Attributes and everything with her, and she was already getting used to how much more she was, even out of combat. Going from boosted Attributes while she was fighting back to her new normal was bad enough. How bland and oppressive would the world be without her basic Class and Multiplier bonuses?
No, she’d rather make a new life here, in this weird, magical place. But Tellak was waiting for an answer, wasn’t she?
“I don’t know,” she answered Tellak honestly. “They may not have been acting alone. There may be a whole cult of weirdos out there, for all I know. I didn’t see any others, but they were pretty lightly packed to be spending any length of time in the wild. I just thought they’d come from here.”
“We would know by now if that was the case,” Tellak objected. “Everyone missing is accounted for.” A wave of grief washed off her for just a moment before it vanished as suddenly as it had come. “Sorry. Anything that reminds me of Med…”
“Yeah, understandable,” Ana said, swallowing hard. So close to Tellak, the grief had made her guts churn. For a split second she’d wanted to scream, break things, cry and throw up all at once. “But, if these guys are connected to whatever’s happening to Jancia, and she got like that after one of those weird creatures you talked about scratched her, or whatever—” Ana looked at Tellak, who nodded. “—then what are we thinking? They made the creatures? Or at least turned them into whatever they are?”
“Possibly,” Touanne agreed.
“So if there’s more of these Summoners, like the one that brought me and Nic here, they could be making more of those creatures for all we know. Weren’t Falk and his expedition following a bunch of creatures south? What if it’s the same things that got Jancia?”
“I don’t think we need to worry,” Tellak said. “Falk has over three dozen combat Classers with him, with levels from the teens to the high twenties and experience to match. If they can’t handle these creatures, no one in this splinter can.”
Ana just stared at Tellak for a moment, then muttered, “Fuckin’ hell, don’t have to jinx it like that, do you?” She wasn’t superstitious. Not normally. But this place had literal magic and goddesses that talked to you, and she didn’t like the idea of tempting fate. For all Ana knew Fate was a person here, and on the off chance that they were bored there was no reason to go around giving them any ideas!
Touanne cleared her throat lightly beside them. “Well, that was what I wanted to tell you. I will keep translating, and hopefully I’ll find something that helps. Oh, and this batch of antitoxin is done. Would you take it to the front?”
“Sure,” Tellak said, with just the tiniest smile. “Come on, you two. Grab some vials.”
Ana and Ray did as they’d been asked, and the three of them left Touanne to her work. “If you wish,” Tellak said to Ana as they were racking the vials behind the counter, ”we can do the aptitude test now.”
Ray gave Ana a look, nodding in the general direction of the jeweler’s shop where Mestendi worked. Right. There was someone else Ana needed to talk to. A conversation she had no idea how to handle and which she shouldn't put off for another minute.
“Sounds great!” Ana smiled, inwardly cursing herself. She couldn't understand her own reluctance! “Should I just sit down or…?”
“You can remain standing. This will take some time, but if you have any aptitude for the Craft of Earth you will endure.”
“I’ll leave you two to it,” Ray said, shooting Ana another look, equal parts amused and disappointed. “Dinner at Petra’s?”
“Yeah, Ray. See you there,” Ana said. Then, as Ray left, Ana said to Tellak, “What if someone needs to buy something?”
“Then I will help them. And if you can’t handle a little distraction like that, no aptitude in all the worlds will help you.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “Take off your boots.”
“Why?” Ana asked while doing as she’d been told.
“To make it easier. It removes some layers between you and the earth. Might make a difference for a beginner like you. If you don’t succeed now we can take some time later and try outside, ideally with your feet on some bedrock. And if that doesn't work we’ll go out to the edge of the forest and try there. But let's try this first.”
“So, how do we do this? Touanne just had me sit and… feel, I guess. She sent mana at me and I tried to feel it.”
Tellak nodded. “Understandable. She tested you for a Life aptitude, yes? And the best source for Life-aligned mana is a living being, especially a strong Life mage such as her. But we will be testing for Earth, and while I will be channeling some Earth-aligned mana at you, it will only be to show you what to look for, so to speak. You will need to feel for the naturally Earth-aligned mana beneath your feet. To that purpose, I want you to take a strong stance, one that feels very stable, if that makes sense to you. One that gives you the best contact with the ground.”
A strong, stable stance, huh? Ana thought. Different teachers had favored different stances as the most stable, but Ana went with the one she was most comfortable with. The one that she tried to incorporate in everything she did. If she or the person she was protecting was attacked, it could come suddenly, from nowhere, and the most important thing was for her to stay on her feet, and be able to react effectively.
Her favorite stance was feet below the shoulders, knees slightly bent, and toes pointing slightly out. Weight toward the outside of her feet — unless she was in heels. A basic ready stance. Prepared for anything.
Strong. Stable.
Tellak gave her an appreciative look, walking a half circle around her and then giving her shoulder a light shove. “Good. Very good! Most people have to be taught this stuff, so this should save us a lot of time!”
Every one of Ana’s teachers had agreed that martial arts were good for things other than just fighting. She hadn’t expected learning magic to be one of them, but gift horses and all that.
“Now what?” Ana said, settling in. Her judo teacher had always told her to try to feel like she had roots like a mountain, and that seemed almost presciently fitting for the current situation.
“Now I will draw some mana from the earth, and I will channel it toward you. I understand that you managed to feel Touanne’s Life-aligned mana before, so try to do the same thing you did then. Just be prepared for there to be less of it than before. I am not as strong as Touanne, nor is Earth-aligned mana as well suited to channeling into other living things as Life-aligned. Are you ready?”
“Yeah.”
“Hold out your hands, please. Palms facing me.”
Ana did as she’d been asked and almost laughed. When she closed her eyes she could almost convince herself that she was back in some dojo, what with the bare feet and the way she was standing. She forced her attention back to the palms of her hands, but the thought remained with her.
Maybe the mystics back home were onto something with their talk about ki and qi and prana and all.
“I’ll begin,” Tellak said.
At first there was nothing. All Ana felt was the faint warmth of Tellak’s hands, almost touching her own. Then, slowly, she became aware of a presence. Not the warmth that she’d felt from Touanne’s Life mana, but similar in a way that Ana didn’t have words for. It was more like a push, like their hands were magnets gently repelling each other. “I feel it,” she whispered.
“Good. Tell me which hand, to be sure.”
The feeling vanished, then returned on her left hand.
“Left,” Ana said and then, when it shifted to the other hand, “Right. And now both, again.”
“Good. That’s very promising. You’re feeling the push?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s only the surface. To feel the naturally Earth-aligned mana, you need to go deeper. Feel the flavor and texture, if that makes sense. That’s how I think of it, but it may be different for you.”
It took time, Ana couldn’t tell how long, but yes, she felt something. Many things, in fact, more like ideas than actual sensations. Sunbaked stone, wet forest loam in late spring, deep, dark places and the ancient, enduring strength of stone. Stillness and peace, but with an undercurrent of danger, the potential for sudden, cataclysmic destruction.
It was comforting. Touanne and her Life mana had been comforting, too, but not like this. Touanne had given her a feeling of support, even love, that she could allow herself to be weak because someone was there for her. But this, the sense of the earth, was internal. It was the comfort of confidence, of knowing that whatever happened, she would endure. And somehow she felt all of this through the palms of her hands.
It was weird, unexpected, and altogether wonderful.
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