Devilla
The next few days seemed to go by at a crawl, yet looking back it was as if they had passed in the blink of an eye. Traveling by day and dealing with tower politics by night, we managed to collect the healberries we'd officially been there to find while also comforting Araina and assuring her she wasn't in danger of losing her job. Mellany, meanwhile, was promised a special position - it came with a hefty salary, and would show that the ban I'd placed upon her bloodline had been lifted, but had no actual authority or responsibilities whatsoever. Members of her family would be able to take government jobs again. It was a decision that might blow up in my face once Sylvanna vacated her position, but we'd cross that bridge when we came to it.
Speaking of Sylvanna, I'd made a point of gathering up all the petrified bits of inedible flesh the cockatrice had left as stone, and was making...
some
progress with learning to depetrify them. In theory, all I had to do was to quarantine a bit of the holy magic within my body, shape it into the same form as the cockatrice's wild magic imprint, and then run my arcane magic through the thing. Hardly a difficult task, in
theory
, what with my perfect recall allowing me to recall the imprint's exact configuration. In
practice
, however, the slightest deviation could result in a wide range of results. A problem, considering I had absolutely no experience with directly manipulating holy magic.
While I had
technically
succeeded once, the other twenty or so times I'd tried had varied rather dramatically in their results. I'd done everything from temporarily reducing the stone's weight to outright liquefying it. One memorable attempt had even resulted in a stone claw jumping about in my hand like a living thing, only to break apart under the stress of its own movements. A further complication was that every attempt took a rather significant chunk of arcane magic, enough where even my reserves would risk running empty if I wasn't careful.
"Everything okay, Eena?" Lucy asked from beside me, no doubt noting the morose look upon my face.
"It's nothing," I assured her, only to be met with a frown. "Nothing
serious,
at least. I'm merely ruminating on my failure to consistently replicate the cockatrice's depetrification ability."
"If it's making you upset then it sounds pretty serious to me," Lucy replied, one hand moving towards her hips. The other probably would have joined it, had it not been occupied with holding my own. "You shouldn't downplay problems just because they're
yours."
"...I suppose I do have a bad habit of doing so," I conceded with a frown of my own. "But, really, for all the effort I've put into the matter, it's still nothing more than a contingency plan. With any luck, the church will have replied to your missive with the necessary spell and I can cease experimenting."
Even though I said that, I would likely continue to practice with my holy magic regardless. Manipulating it internally didn't seem to do anything to my magic supply, and the thought of being able to duplicate wild magic at will was a rather tempting one.
"I hope so, too, but I bet that doesn't make it any less frustrating to fail," Lucy rightly pointed out. "You've been trying really hard to do it, too! To the point where you've sort of been ignoring everything while we walk..."
That was true. If not for Lucy's hand to guide me I likely would have been crashing into trees throughout the entire journey. As it was, I was fairly sure there'd been a few close calls.
"Why don't you stop for a while?" Lucy suggested after a moment. "We're almost back to the city and the inn should probably have the church's response by now! Plus..." She hesitated a moment before glancing towards Feyra who was riding a few steps behind us. "I was sort of hoping you could talk to Feyra a little before the adventure ends? I think there's something on her mind..."
I resisted the urge to glance back at Feyra, not wanting her to know she'd become the topic of our conversation. Of course, Lucy's prior glance may have made it a moot point, but I wasn't going to make things worse.
Feyra had been treating me oddly enough as it was. Where once she'd regularly complained about me, now she looked at me with eyes full of uncertainty, and every time I met her gaze she'd hurriedly look away from me. It was perhaps better than the animosity she'd shown previously, but not by much.
"Are you sure that you wouldn't be the better choice to talk to her?" I asked Lucy. "I could give you two some alone time, perhaps make up some excuse about checking in on Bailey?" The horned wolf girl had returned to the tower, now that we were so close to civilization, and I was admittedly a touch concerned about how she was handling the shift back to enclosed spaces. She'd lived her entire life running free, after all, at least up until she'd met me.
"You should probably do that later, anyway," Lucy said, "but maybe talk to Feyra first? I don't really know what's bothering her, but she keeps glancing at you whenever you're looking the other way. I think there's something she wants to say!"
"Something to say, hmm?" I wondered what it could be. An apology for her earliest behavior was probably too much to ask for, but at the same time I didn't foresee her adding any new complaints... At the very least, the looks I'd noticed hadn't held any animosity within them. "I suppose it wouldn't hurt."
At least, not
physically.
Emotionally, I was much less sure about, but even then the smile Lucy gave me in response to my reply was surely worth a little pain... Even if Lucy herself would never agree with that.
"Why don't you go ahead for a bit?" I suggested, reluctantly releasing her hand. Her fingers lingered for a moment afterward, as if she too were disinclined to disengage. "I'll be back soon enough."
"I know," Lucy said, yet the nod she gave me had a certain resoluteness about it - as if she were preparing to send me off to a long war, rather than simply relinquishing my company for a few minutes. "I just really like holding your hand..."
"Yes, well... there will be plenty of opportunities for that later," I murmured, embarrassment coloring my cheeks as I looked away from her. "Just wait a moment, alright?"
She nodded again, this time turning her gaze back to the road and pushing herself to walk a little faster, even as I slowed my own steps. Before I knew it, Feyra and I were side by side. Much to the former's shock, if her wide eyes were anything to go by.
"H-hey... Eena..."
"You seem nervous," I remarked, looking her up and down. Physically, she seemed fine, if a little disheveled, but emotionally... well, as I'd stated, the way she practically flinched when my eyes met her made her seem rather skittish. "I thought you were over your fear of me, what with the way you've been complaining about my every action."
"Yeah, well... I guess it's more like I got overloaded to the point of not caring, anymore," Feyra admitted, citing a reason I was surprisingly familiar with. It was much the same as what Abigail said, back when she stopped hiding her snarky side.
"Am I really that overwhelming?" I questioned, frowning.
"No. Yes! Maybe?" She shook her head. "I don't know. You're nothing like how I thought you'd be... Though I guess that makes sense, if you're... y'know... just a person, not the incarnation of all evil, like I thought... A... sorta... strangely nice person, who puts up with my crap when she could turn me into a smear on the ground the instant it stopped amusing her"
"It was
never
amusing," I remarked, my frown deepening a little. Feyra seemed to shrink back in response to it - though, considering her height of five foot nine, combined with her current position upon a horse, no amount of mundane shrinkage was going to keep me from having to look up at her. "But it
was
understandable... At least to some degree. And I suppose I somewhat appreciated your concern for Lucy, at least, no matter how misplaced."
