Broken Lands

Sophia could, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to just say that. It would be a difficult spell, made worse by the fact that she couldn’t see the spellforms; trying to dump most of her mana into a single spell would not be a good idea right now. It would probably mostly work, but “probably mostly” wasn’t good enough when you were dealing with that kind of power.

Even if she could do it properly, Arryn was talking about a fairly uncontrolled spell; while that was far easier to put extra mana into, the odds were good the mana would be wasted. She could make something she wouldn’t want to be in the middle of, but she’d probably also survive it if she made it large. “It depends on what you mean by powerful and wide area?”

Arryn chuckled. “Yeah, that’s a war mage answer, all right. When you register with the Registry, tell them you’re a siege mage. They’ll want a demonstration, but it’ll be worth it. It’ll get you jobs you wouldn’t have a chance to get into, otherwise. It’ll get both of you hired, maybe all three of you; a swordsman and a support mage with the ability to knock people off balance is a good team to defend a siege mage.”

Sophia wasn’t sure what to say to that. Why was someone she’d only just met telling her how to deal with the Registry? It didn’t seem like something he should care about. She understood it from Aymini and Vramt at this point; they were watching out for Revina and probably felt a sort of friendly interest in Sophia and Dav as well, under the circumstances. Arryn, however, was just a merchant with no relationship to Sophia or Dav. Wasn’t he?

Arryn shifted gears smoothly and turned his attention to Dav. “You are a swordsman, aren’t you?”

“Yes and no?” Dav sounded almost as puzzled as Sophia felt just then. “I mean, I know how to fight with a sword, but I’m a summoner.”

“A summoner who can fight?” Arryn sounded a little surprised. “That’s an unusual combination, Vocations usually emphasize your existing capabilities. What do you summon? The only fighting summoner I’ve ever known summoned the aspects of creatures he’d killed; he could temporarily have the speed of a lightning rabbit and the sturdiness of an earth bear. It took him a lot of practice to manage it.”

A smile flashed across Arryn’s face and he chuckled at the memory. “I still remember the first time he tried. The good part was that running into walls and falling on his face didn’t hurt. The funny part was that he did all that and more. Repeatedly.”

Vramt smiled as well. “I can just see Carlson doing that. By the time I met him, he always did his initial testing in a reserved training room. He’d never say why.”

Sophia glanced between the two old men. “You two have known each other for a while.”

Arryn nodded. “We have. I was the Registry Master in Hailport; Vramt led-”

“I wasn’t the leader,” Vramt objected. “That was just for the paperwork. Sivas was the real leader.”

“No, he wasn’t,” Aymini disagreed. “You and everyone else let him think he was, but you were always the planner and any time you disagreed, everyone followed you. Including Sivas!”

“You always say that,” Vramt countered, “But-”

“But Sivas needed to think he was the leader so he could pick up girls at the Registry’s bar by claiming to be the team lead for Stonefist. He had to actually believe it, too.” Aymini shrugged. “I know he started the team and talked you into getting a Vocation with him, but by the time I joined Stonefist you were definitely the leader.”

Sophia ignored the ongoing byplay between Aymini and Vramt. She was pretty sure they had a similar setup in Fallen Kestii, where Aymini was the outside face but Vramt actually made many of the decisions. She didn’t really care any more than she cared that they argued like an old married couple even though they weren’t. At least, she didn’t think they were; she’d never tried to find out if they actually slept together.

“That’s why you know them,” Sophia challenged Arryn. “Is that why you’re trying to help, too? Why you’re telling me what to tell the Registrar?”

Arryn sighed. He looked even older for a moment, then took a deep breath and seemed to recover. “After the defeat of the catkin, I wanted to rebuild Hailport. I wasn’t going to be able to do that as the Registry Master, so I resigned and took a Profession. When I found out these two,” Arryn waved a hand at the still arguing couple, “were setting up a village in the middle of nowhere, I figured I owed them enough to set up a link. Since then, well, I visit a few times a year; most of the time, the trip barely pays for itself, but that’s enough. I hear they’ve picked up a few other traders as well.”

Sophia raised an eyebrow, but internally she nodded to herself. That matched what she’d heard from Aymini; Aymini had expected that Arryn would be the next merchant to come through but she wasn’t certain. That meant there were others.

“As for why I’m helping you, well, it should be obvious why I’m helping Revina.” Arryn paused for a moment as if waiting for Sophia and Dav to nod. “For the two of you … why not? Aymini often isn’t taken seriously because she’s so short and Vramt prefers not to deal with people, but they’re both decent judges of who can and can’t fight. They wouldn’t have had you two take Revina into a Nest unless they were as confident as you can be that you’d get her out safely. That makes you both a friend of theirs and a good investment as a merchant. It costs me essentially nothing to help; why wouldn’t I?”

“That’s a very Dad way of putting it.” Sophia clamped a hand over her mouth right after she realized what she’d said. She felt her cheeks flush as she realized she’d compared Arryn to her father.

Fortunately, Arryn didn’t ask what she meant. He turned to Dav instead. “So, what sort of summons do you have? They’re not like Carlson’s, I hope? He made good use of them, but it wasn’t easy.”

Dav frowned. “I’m not entirely certain. My initial selection was between several beacons; the one I picked is a healing beacon.”

“That’s too bad.” Arryn leaned back in his chair. “I can see why that might be offered to someone combat-capable, but it’s not a great choice. You’ll need to decide if you want to buy several Abilities to support it or if you want to unbind it and pick something else. Shield recovers on its own and making the Shield restoration abilities function well requires centering your build around it. It can be very good, but it takes a lot longer to get going than almost any other setup.”

Dav tilted his head and his frown deepened. “Not shield restoration. Healing. It doesn’t improve how quickly my shield recovers at all, as far as I can tell, but it did help Sophia’s twisted ankle.”

Arryn seemed to pause for a moment before he sat up straight. “Real healing? Do you have to direct it, or is it passive? How does it know what to heal? Does it cause any Warp or heal towards a particular element? No, wait, you know what? Summon it here. Please.”

Sophia leaned back with a grin. This should be interesting.

Dav snorted softly and shook his head. A disbelieving smile formed on his face as he summoned the healing beacon. Once again, it looked different from the previous times. This time, it was some sort of craggy green stone twisted into an hourglass shape with spikes around the top of the upper disk and a green glasslike lens that glowed softly floating above it. Oddly, the light the lens gave off was more yellow than green, even though the lens itself was definitely green.

Arryn’s expression was priceless. Even Aymini and Vramt, who had both seen Dav’s healing beacons before, seemed a little shocked by this one.

After his moment of shock was past, Arryn held his hand above the glowing green stone and concentrated. He sat like that for several minutes; either his hand didn’t get tired or he was willing to force a tired hand to stay in place for some reason.

After the first minute, Sophia leaned back in her chair and relished the warm comfort of the healing beacon. She wasn’t injured, exactly, but she had pushed herself during the fight with the snake and then had it land on her. There were probably some bruises and the like that she hadn’t noticed yet and there would definitely be stiffness in the morning without the healing beacon’s help. With it, she thought she had a good chance to escape the consequences of the fight.

A glance at Dav told Sophia that he was doing the same thing. He might not have had a snake land on him, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t pushed himself to his limits. His rampage after the snake died wouldn’t have helped.

He was really attractive when he let himself relax. Sophia was beginning to think that she should say something. It seemed like they’d be spending a lot of time together in the near future and she liked that. She wanted to get to know him better, but after spending more than a week with him most of the time, she knew they worked together on a good level. They just … clicked, like they’d known each other for months instead of days.

She also didn’t feel responsible for him anymore. He’d really come into his own when they landed here; she could no longer see the confused newbie being escorted through his first dungeon. She wondered if he’d ever actually been that confused newbie or if she’d just projected it because a Tier One dungeon escort was always for a confused newbie and he’d felt weak. Of course he felt weak; he was Tier Zero at the time. That didn’t mean he was confused.

“You can put it away now, if you want. Or you can leave it out if you prefer; it’s safe enough.” Arryn pulled his hand back from the beacon and shook his head slightly at Dav. “First, true healing is extremely unusual at low Levels and it almost always comes with a drawback of some sort. Yours does; in fact, it has two. First, you don’t guide the healing. That means that if there’s something in a wound, it will try to heal around it. Always clean your wounds before summoning your beacon if they’re more than scratches. It can heal scars, but that will take a lot longer.”

“We’ve been doing that,” Sophia stated. “I wasn’t sure it was necessary but I figured it didn’t hurt.”

Arryn nodded at Sophia. “Good. Many groups don’t, even without an actual healer. There’s a reason sterilization oils exist; use them.”

Sterilization oils? Sophia definitely needed to talk to Aymina now. That definitely sounded like something an alchemist would make, and while Sophia still had quite a bit of disinfectant, more wouldn’t hurt.

Arryn raised his eyebrows at Dav and waited for him to nod. “The second downside is related to the first. There isn’t really any such thing as undirected healing; something is directing it. Most of the time, that means the healing source provides healing energy to your body to be used however it wants; that’s how healing potions work. They’re good when you need healing but are dangerous to overuse. Your healing beacon doesn’t work that way. It knows what you two should be and tries to heal you into that shape. The problem is that it doesn’t know other people; it’s guessing based on you two. That will be fine for most things, but there’s no way to know what it would do for an injury it didn’t understand. Aymini’s ears, for example; it might or might not be able to figure out how to heal them.”