Chapter IV – Restricted Attunements
After Sera rushed up to her room, the rest of us sat down in the main living area.
Derek was reading a book when we arrived. “Huh, she’s in a hurry. Something happen?”
We explained the situation.
“I could punch Teft for her?” Derek offered, helpful as usual.
“No, Derek, I suspect that would only complicate things further.” I shook my head. “And she doesn’t blame him, anyway. She blames herself — probably mostly for dragging Patrick’s score down.”
“Aw, it’s not that big of a deal.” Patrick waved a hand dismissively. “We’ll just do better next week.”
“She won’t see it that way.”
Patrick shrugged. “She’s a great student, though. Always has been. Even if we get kicked out of this class, we can still graduate. It’s an elective.”
“Just graduating would never be good enough. And if she caused someone else to fail a class, I don’t think she’d ever forgive herself.”
Patrick laughed. “She did fine. You guys just did better.” He stretched his arm. “Mara, you’ve got a mean punch.”
“At least you had a shield to help with that. That lightning aura went right through me.” She shivered. “Maybe less of that for sparrin’ in the future?”
He blinked. “Oh, sure. Didn’t realize it would hurt that much.”
Derek leaned over. “New lesson, Patrick. Lightning hurts people. Considerably.”
Patrick scratched behind his head sheepishly. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Was a good trick, though. Almost had me.” Marissa grinned.
“Uh, thanks?” Patrick blushed a little. “Right, uh, back to Sera, though. Corin, you should go talk to her.”
I pointed at myself. “Me?”
“Uh, yeah? Obviously? You’re her brother.”
“Sure, but I also was on the team that just beat her.”
“All the more reason you should talk to her,” Derek offered. “If you’re right about how she thinks, seeing Patrick again will probably just make her feel worse.”
Maybe, or maybe it would help if Patrick told her he didn’t care. Eh.
Either way, I was overruled, so I stood up. “Fine, fine. I’ll go talk to her.”
I headed up to Sera’s room. The door was closed, so I knocked.
She didn’t answer, but I could hear her quietly sobbing inside. And coughing a little, too.
“Sera, it’s Corin. Can I come in?”
I knew she couldn’t verbally tell me to go away, so I was making things a little awkward. Eventually, she opened the door, still wiping her eyes.
I offered her a handkerchief, which she accepted and used to wipe her face and nose more effectively. Then she put on a stronger face, folded her arms, and stared at me expectantly.
“Can I come in?”
She stared a little harder. She wasn’t going to make this easy.
“Sorry, Sera. I’m no good at this. I’ve never been good with…emotional stuff in general.” I paused for a moment. “Not really sure what to say. You fought fine back there. Would have beaten us hard if you had your spells, and it’s not your fault you lost them. You saved our lives back in that tower. No question. We’d be dead if you hadn’t summoned Seiryu.”
Sera turned her head away, letting out a sigh.
“I mean it. And I know you’re suffering right now, but it’s not your fault, and we will find a way to fix this. It doesn’t sound easy, but I’ve already been doing some research, like I said earlier.”
That got her to turn her head back toward me, tilting her head up to meet my eyes. Then she twisted her lips, turned, and gestured for me to come into her room.
“Thanks.”
I came in and sat down on a chair next to her bed. “You want to hear about what I’ve found?”
Sera sat down on her bed, wiping her nose again.
“Okay. I’ll fill you in.”
I summarized everything the Researcher had told me about her situation.
“So, I’ll read the book about the mountain. If I think I can handle it, we’ll go ourselves. If it sounds too dangerous, I can ask Keras or Derek to handle it. If the flower doesn’t work, we can look into some of the other treatments she mentioned. Since my new attunement involves life mana, I might even be able to learn healing magic myself eventually and treat it directly. I’ll start looking into that.”
She listened patiently, but got up when I’d finished and grabbed a sheet of paper to write a reply.
Flower will take too long. We fight other teams in a week, and they won’t go easy on me like you did. I can’t keep dragging Patrick down, or whoever else they pair me with.
“I didn’t go easy on you.”
She tilted her head downward to glare at me.
“No, seriously. I was focusing my effort on figuring out how the runes worked. That not only helped me figure out the safe tiles for this time, but now I have a better idea of how they work in general. I can probably figure out the functions at a glance next week. Or for any other similar tests we take — I doubt they made that arena just for this.”
She wrote again.
Fine. If you really spent all that time on purpose, I won’t argue. But most enemies won’t give me that much time to maneuver before they start fighting, and I have no advantages right now. I can’t even use the sword Katashi gave me. Not that I know how to use it, anyway.
“Okay, so you need something quicker. That’s fine. I’ll dig into alternate options. But Patrick doesn’t blame you one bit — he said so earlier. You need to stop worrying about this. You’re injured, we’ll heal you. Plain and simple.”
She gave me a grudging nod, then hesitated before writing one final word.
Promise?
I didn’t like the idea of making promises without all the relevant information, but it seemed like an achievable goal.
And I needed one of those. Maybe more than she did.
“I can’t promise I’ll find a perfect solution. I don’t know enough about it yet, and it wouldn’t be fair to you to make a promise I don’t know if I can keep. But I’ll do more research, and from everything I’ve heard so far, it sounds like a solvable problem. And I promise I’ll try to help you solve it.”
Maybe it wasn’t the traditional platitude that she’d been looking for, but it was what I could offer her. And looking at her expression after that? I think it helped.
I hadn’t given her false hope. From the expression she gave me afterward, I’d given her something a little different.
Resolve.
We’d beat this together.
I even gave her a hug. It was easier to have physical contact without panicking if I initiated it.
So, now that the hard part is over, I just have the easy part of figuring out how to heal nearly incurable damage in a week.
I started with the most logical place I could think of, but that had some dangers of its own.
“I have questions.” I set the wineskin, filled with the last remnants of the water from the attunement font, down on the table in front of Professor Vellum.
Vellum didn’t look away from the apparatus she was working with — some kind of distilling tool. Maybe an elixir still? I’d seen one before, and this looked subtly different — it had a larger chamber on top, and the collection chamber was metal instead of glass — but it was potentially a variant design. “And I have answers for thee, if only ye answer me these questions three.”