“Well,” said Mizuki. “Like I said, it’s my grandfather’s garden. He wasn’t able to take it to Kiromo with him.”
Hannah looked at the two of them. “I think it’s always better, when you get an apology, to make it clear you accept it.”
Mizuki rolled her eyes, then looked at Verity. “Verity, I fully and earnestly accept your apology.” She looked back at Hannah. “Better?”
“Much better,” replied Hannah, beaming at her. They both looked a bit happier too.
“If I do end up coming around,” said Verity.
“Coming around?” asked Mizuki.
“Well, this is the obvious place for us to meet, if we’re in a party,” said Verity. She shifted. “I didn’t mean to presume.”
“I kind of thought that you’d end up staying here more than just the one night,” said Mizuki, shrugging. “If you wanted to.”
“Oh,” said Verity, eyes widening slightly. “Well, that’s kind.”
“You can think on it,” said Mizuki. “No rush.”
“Well, if I did end up coming around here, would you mind if I,” she looked around the garden, “did something with this? Rescued a few plants, watered a few others, pruned out the worst of the weeds and the dead stems, things like that?”
“No, not at all,” said Mizuki. She looked at the garden. “If I had known how and had the time, I might not have let it get like this. But it’s pretty clear that I haven’t put in any effort here.” She clapped her hands. “We were supposed to be doing some magic, weren’t we?”
Verity burst into song almost immediately, picking up her lute from where she’d laid it and strumming a melody about a beautiful garden that she must have made up on the spot. The effects seemed largely emotional to Hannah, lightening whatever scraps of bad mood remained, but Mizuki was looking all around, so perhaps it was layered.
“Okay,” said Mizuki as Verity played on. “Now, this is the stuff. If I just gather it up and hold it…” She picked up a stick from the ground and threw it as hard as she could, and Hannah was mildly surprised to see it zip off into the woods. “Bam.”
“Some kind of… force?” asked Hannah.
Mizuki nodded. “It’s always opposite from what the base magic was, and there are different axes to work from, but mental or emotional stuff has physical as its opposite. Telekinesis is the most obvious application.”
“But you were holding it?” asked Hannah.
“Yeah, because it’s easier that way,” said Mizuki. “But if we’re in a dungeon, I’m not going to be tossing things at the monsters, and I think it will take some time and effort to build up the concentration in the aether, so… I don’t know how useful it is in practice, especially since most fights are short.”
“Ready for the interference?” asked Hannah. Verity was still singing, and while she could go on for quite some time, as demonstrated in the dungeon and during her regular sets at the Fig and Gristle, Hannah didn’t want to tax her too much.
“Ready,” said Mizuki.
Again, Hannah cut her hand and healed it, quick and simple work that Mizuki turned away from. Once it was done though, Mizuki was looking into the air and trying to make something of what she saw there.
Hannah had been taught a bit about sorcs in the seminary. The analogy had been a pond, which seemed to be a common view of it. The sorc, at her base, dealt in the ripples in the pond, the stuff left in the aether by other casters, or magical phenomena, or what have you. If there were two sources of magic, powerful enough to make ripples, those ripples would hit each other, and the sorc could do something more. It was probably one of those helpful but horrible analogies that Mizuki would explain was dead wrong, but Hannah found it enlightening.
Mizuki had two fingers extended with her right hand, and with her left, she leaned down to pick up a rock. She was muttering under her breath, and with a slight grunt, she tossed the rock into the air. She took the two fingers, which had been drawing a circle in the air, and pointed them at the rock. With a terrifying thunderclap, the rock exploded, sending bits of sharp debris crashing to the ground and leaving an afterimage of a bolt of lightning in Hannah’s eyes.
Verity’s song stopped at once. “Ouch,” she said, voice mild.
“Sorry!” yelped Mizuki. “I thought it would be, I don’t know.”
“Here,” said Hannah, stepping toward Verity. “You’ve got a small cut.” She healed Verity before Verity even noticed. It was probably from a bit of rock tumbling in just the wrong way so that it got her in the cheek.
“Seems good though,” said Verity.
“I’m so sorry. We’re lucky Hannah is here,” said Mizuki. She’d come forward to look at Verity’s cheek, and there was a nervous motion to her. “I have a new rule, which is that I don’t practice without Hannah.” She picked a bit of rock from Verity’s hair.
“Is that what you were trying to do?” asked Verity.
“It was supposed to be explosive lightning,” said Mizuki.
“Well it was, in a way,” nodded Hannah. “Just needs to be a bit more… directed.”
“Less splashback,” said Verity. She touched her cheek where the healing had been done.
“I’ll be more careful,” said Mizuki. “I’m so, so sorry, I really didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Verity smiled. “I fully and earnestly accept your apology. Besides, if Alfric is going to take so much punishment for us, then I should be able to take a little scratch.”
“You’re really okay?” asked Mizuki.
“Fine,” said Verity. She looked at Hannah. “Like new. Thank you, by the way.”
“We all have our roles,” said Hannah. “Before the day is through, if it’s all right with both of you, I’ll have a bit of a look at your bodies, though with the power of Garos, not anything to do with my eyes.” That was the kind of assurance that Mizuki seemed to need, and Verity very much didn’t. “Mostly so that if I need to heal either of you, if Alfric doesn’t do enough, I won’t have to be figurin’ things out while we’re in the thick of it.”
Mizuki looked down at her hands. “I’m already pretty symmetrical,” she said.
“Well,” said Hannah, “you are, in the broad strokes, but things don’t always lie the same on both sides. Blood vessels are one of them, and important, because we’d like to keep your blood in you.”
“Hmm,” said Mizuki, tapping her lip. “I am a fan of my own blood.”
“And there are asymmetries of the guts, the liver, and the heart, and a cleric of Garos is forbidden from touching the brain except in dire circumstances where it’s that or death,” said Hannah. Mizuki blanched. “Just so you know,” she said, holding up a hand. “As a matter of, well, precaution.”
“Seems reasonable,” said Verity. “I would hate to be blindsided by some strangeness of Garos—no offense—while we’re in the middle of the next dungeon, if it turns out that one is also more difficult than fighting three raccoons.”
“We’ll have helms for it,” said Hannah. “Less to worry about, especially when it comes to the head.”
“Well,” said Mizuki, stretching her fingers out. “Does anyone want to go again and see what magic we can make together?”
“Of course,” said Verity. “I’m going to have to learn to hold through the blasts. There’s no use for a bard who drops a song at the crucial moments.”
“I’ll call them out, so you can prepare yourself,” said Mizuki.
Verity nodded. “Very well, shall we go again? With some actual targets this time, please, and some warning about what kind of calamity you’re going to cause.”