Page 102

It was a long night. I was frankly surprised by the sheer number of monsters that had tried to attack our wagons. The early morning was filled with adventurers cutting into the corpses of the monsters that had prowled too close through the night. The experience was eye-opening, when I had been told that monsters were more active at night I didn't think that it was to this extent. There were over a dozen monster corpses per wagon surrounding us. We were lucky that everything that had gotten close was relatively low leveled and small. None of them were like the large Stream stalker we had fought in the rain. One of the other adventurers told me that it's even more dangerous trying to travel at night, many monsters like to chase you if you're moving at night.

I watched over Torien's shoulder as she cut out another mana core from the last of the monster corpses. None of the monsters that attacked us were particularly valuable in meat or hides so she just cut into the bodies to retrieve the mana cores and set the rest aside. To feel like I was helping rather than just watching her, I dragged the bodies off to a large pyre the adventurers had set up for this purpose after she was done with each one. Only one of the monsters through the entire night had been valuable and it had been taken down by some of the adventurers on the other side of our wagon circle. Some kind of large electric deer. It was rather impressive looking if nothing else.

"Lilith look at this!" Torien held up a large yellow mana core. It was much larger than the others by a pretty significant degree.

"That's big." I unhelpfully pointed out.

Torien just laughed. "It is, but look! This yellow color means it's terra-aspected mana. This might be enough to charge Morrigan's staff!"

"That's great! We'll have to tell Morrigan, she'll probably be excited."

It was still quite early but everyone in our group was already awake, including my party. Tarklin wanted to get a really early start to put some distance between us and the cultists back in the city and I couldn't agree more. Putting some distance between myself and the Tamin adherents didn't seem like a bad idea either. From the way Corrine spoke, I seemed more connected to 'The Order of Lilith' than just my name. After hearing all that I was surprised she let me go at all even despite the situation. The more I thought about it the more I was sure I should do everything I could to avoid the Tamin Church further, not that it's been all that easy so far.

I finally came up to Bella, Morrigan, and Silva. They seemed to be in a good mood right now, it was nice to see after everything that happened yesterday. Even Bella looked like she was in good spirits again. I got there just in time to see someone I was surprised to see approaching our group. Fae was timidly coming over but as she got closer she kept glancing at Silva nervously.

I smiled at her. "Good morning Fae. Are you doing alright? We were worried about you."

She put on a forced smile. "Yes, good morning Lilith. I'm doing well... under the circumstances." She turned to Silva. "I'm... I'm glad you're okay Silva..."

Silva was caught off guard. "Thanks. I'm glad you're alright too, last night was crazy..." The air was awkward, neither of them knew what else to say.

Finally, Fae turned back to me. "That goes for all of you, I was worried when the five of you didn't leave town with us. It was a relief to hear you rejoined us after I had gone to sleep. Someone told me you had run into... some of the people attacking the city."

I nodded. "We weren't sure what was going on but we made it out okay. It was like a warzone between the Tamin church and the people in black. After we were... attacked, we were able to avoid them."

"Right..." There was an awkward air for a moment before she cleared her throat. "Would you be willing to have lunch with me later today? I hear we're skipping breakfast to put some distance between us and... whoever those people are."

I smiled. "Sure, I don't mind." I turned to my friends who all nodded, including Silva. "Should we find you at lunch?"

She smiled, she looked like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. "No need, I will come to find the five of you. Be safe during our travels." She nodded and left, returning to Tarklin before entering the carriage she spent most of her time in.

Silva scratched the back of her head. "What was that about? I thought she hated me..."

Morrigan smiled. "Perhaps it's not that simple."

"Oh! Mori! Look what we found from one of our kills this morning!" She pulled out the larger-than-average terra monster core.

Morrigan's eyes lit up. "A terra core! This might be enough to aspect my staff with Terra magic!" She turned and hugged her sister tight before turning to me. "Can I have this please? I think it'll work!"

I smiled. "Of course, will it take long to do?"

"No, it should be quick! Can we do it now?"

"Sure, what should we do?"

She handed me the core. "Hold this out and I'll draw the mana from it and move it to my staff." She turned to look at Mimi who was currently a necklace around Bella's neck. "Make sure you watch closely Mimi, it'll be good practice for your mana sight," she whispered.

I felt her acknowledgment through our bond. "She's watching. Are you ready?"

"Yes! Let's do this."

I held out the orb and watched as the terra-aspected mana slowly pulled from the stone and swirled around Morrigan. It didn't shoot straight into the staff as I had initially imagined, instead, it flowed around her, like it was orbiting her instead. Once all of the mana was drawn out of the stone a thin sliver branched off of the mana like a thin river and fed into Morrigan's clear glass staff. Morrigan's brows furrowed in concentration as the swirl of mana pooled into the staff, increasing in speed as she went. Before long the mana settled in the staff and the clear glass now looked like it had flakes of gold suspended in it. Once the mana had taken root in her staff, she released her control and it began to emanate terra magic.

Morrigan was nearly vibrating in excitement now. "I think it worked! Let me try it!"

She held the staff out in front of her and I could see Morrigan take control of some of the ambient mana and convert it to terra magic. The mana raced into the ground and a small pillar of brown stone-like hardened dirt rose out of the ground in a flash, creating a wall a little bit taller than herself. Morrigan gasped in wonder before patting the stone wall experimentally. Curious I pushed against the wall she had created myself. Despite its look, it was totally solid. Something more akin to concrete from my estimation, though not as cool and smooth.

She quickly turned to me. "Lilith! This changes everything! This opens up so many options!"

I looked around, noticing the odd placement of a stone wall out in the middle of a field. I turned back to Morrigan. "Can you uh... put the wall back? I don't know if it's a good idea to leave a random wall in the middle of nowhere. Especially this close to town."

"Right! Of course! Hold on, let me try." Some of the surrounding mana once again turned to terra magic, though this time Morrigan's control of it looked weaker. She managed to work it in the wall but rather than sink it back into the ground it instead began to soften and fall into a pile of dirt, conveniently filling a hole that opened beneath it.

Morrigan wiped the sweat from her brow. "Wow, okay. That was harder than I thought. It seems I'm not as used to working with terra magic as I thought and there are some limitations to the amount of ambient mana I can convert at a time. It's not like there's a hard limit but I can only grab and control so much mana around me. It'll take practice but I think I can get better at it and even now I could probably build structures given a little time!" She grabbed her sister and pulled her into a group hug with me. "Thank you thank you! I'm so glad you two found this for me!"

Torien looked a bit awkward, clearly not used to this level of public affection, even from her sister. But I could see how happy she was to see Morrigan so excited. I squeezed the two girls, taking advantage of the opportunity to give the twins a big group hug.

Torien patted my shoulder. "Okay okay! That's enough, everyone's staring at us!" Despite the large blush on her face, Torien seemed quite happy. That didn't stop her from pushing the two of us off of her though.

"That's all very impressive and all, but it's time we got going." I turned to see Tarklin standing next to where the wall had been, gently testing the ground with his foot. "We're aiming to get back on the road in less than half a bell. Get to your positions. Lilith, do you think you're up to ride Nikka again today?"

"Sure." I nodded.

"Great! Oh! Before I forget, I talked to one of the merchants and he agreed to bleach and dye your armor the next time we stop for the night. Don't worry about paying for it, I worked out a deal with him. Give me the two brigandines and I'll have them colored blue for you."

"Blue?" I asked.

He nodded. "That was the color I was able to work out with the merchant. I assumed you wouldn't want something ugly like yellow and apparently he has enough surplus blue that I was able to make a deal with him, even if blue is normally quite expensive."

"Sure that sounds good to me." I quickly glanced at Silva who just nodded. "Are you sure you're willing to pay for it?"

He smiled. "Not a problem, consider it a bonus for taking the uuna shifts. You don't realize it but taking the number of shifts you have has really saved the company a lot of trouble. Nikka seems to like you quite a bit as well, that doesn't always happen so I like to reward it where I can. It means you have a good heart."

"Sounds a bit cheesy," I say with a grin.

He laughs. "Perhaps it does, but it doesn't change how I feel about it. Alright everyone, get to your positions. We need to get moving. We're going to be moving through the late Baron's territory today and we might need extra time to find a suitable place to stay the night with everything going on right now."

He waved and started heading for a different group of people he had to talk to before we left. Tarklin really was a busy man.

I turned to my party. "Alright, who wants to go with who today?"

"Can I go with Morrigan today? I want to talk to her about some things..." Bella said nervously.

"Of course, Morrigan?" I turned to her.

"I'd be happy to. Beware though Bella, you'll have to listen to me gabbing on about all the new things I can do with terra magic!" Morrigan looked quite enthusiastic right now.

Bella smiled. "Not a problem. Maybe you can help me with my nature magic too? We can't really practice while moving but your input might help me out."

"Sure! That sounds fun!"

I look over at the other two, Torien and Silva. "That means you two are going to ride together again. I hope you don't mind."

Silva looked over at Torien. "Sounds good to me. I like hanging out with her, she's really interesting to talk to."

For the briefest moment I thought I saw Torien blush at the compliment but rather than acknowledge it she just quickly moved on. "No problem Lilith. Will you be okay riding today? You didn't get any sleep last night."

I patted her on the shoulder. "No problem! I feel great thanks to you. Hopefully you can get some sleep on the trip."

She laughed. "Yeah, I don't know about that. I'd be too scared of falling off!"

The five of us laughed and we started to split up. Before I walked off Bella handed me Mimi's necklace, Mimi seemed to prefer being near me during the day. I took the necklace and put it on. It felt a tiny bit heavier than it should but the weight was comfortable. It was pretty amazing Mimi could shift to such a small form at all. I felt gratitude and confidence flow through our bond, Mimi seemed to enjoy sharing her emotions more than her words. It felt quite intimate and it made me feel closer to the Mimic, despite her having to hide all the time.

I checked Nikka's straps, patted her gently on the neck, and climbed up. As challenging as yesterday was, today doesn't seem like it'll give us a break either. Time to get moving.