The Adventurer’s Guild of Draemharrow was warm in the worst way. It was thick with body heat, stew smell, damp wool, old beer, leather, smoke, wet boots, and the constant noise of people, while the building itself matched the rest of Draemharrow. Black stone, heavy beams, iron fixtures, and a ceiling high enough to hang monster parts from if anyone felt the need to do it.
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A request board took up one wall, layered with notices, bounty slips, escort jobs, and monster warnings pinned over older postings no one had bothered to tear down cleanly. There was a row of long tables that cut through the middle of the hall where adventurers sat in mismatched groups, half eating, half arguing, and half pretending they were not listening to each other’s business.
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At the far end sat the counter where requests were taken, complaints were ignored, and lives got sorted into ranks and paperwork. Elias walked toward it and got looked at exactly how he expected to get looked at. Too small, too serious, and too out of place.
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A few of the nearby adventurers glanced his way and then right back to their mugs. One woman with a scarred chin paused mid-bite and frowned like she was trying to work out who had brought their kid brother in here. A pair of men near the board smirked to each other. Elias ignored all of them and kept moving until he stood at the front counter and had to stare up at it with quiet resentment. It really was offensive how tall everything had become.
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The receptionist looked down at him from behind a stack of ledgers. She was a woman in her late twenties or early thirties with ash-brown hair tied back in a practical bun, grey eyes, and the sort of face that had learned how to be patient without ever promising kindness. She wore the guild’s dark clerk uniform with silver trim and a pin at the collar marking her as staff as her name badge read Maelin Sorth.
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Maelin blinked once at Elias, then set her quill down, “Can I help you?”
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Elias climbed onto the bottom rung of the counter rail so he did not have to feel like a toddler speaking to the world’s least enthusiastic aunt, “Yes. I’m looking for work.”
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Maelin looked him over again. The new clothes, the wool cloak, the dirt still clinging to him in annoying places, the expression that probably did him no favors at all. Then she leaned one elbow on the counter and answered him in a tone halfway between polite and deeply unconvinced, “You’re looking for your parents.”
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“No, I’m not.”
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“Your guardian, then.”
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“I do not have one.”
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Maelin’s brows drew together slightly, “Then where are you staying?”
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“Working on it.”
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“That is not how that question normally gets answered.”
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Elias let out a quiet breath through his nose, “I need money. You’re the guild. I can work. Therefore, I am here.”
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One of the men at the nearest table snorted into his drink.
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Maelin did not laugh, which Elias appreciated more than he wanted to, but neither did she look impressed, “How old are you?”
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He hesitated. That question had become annoying with new speed, “I'm thirty-one.”
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“You started too high. No.”
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Elias narrowed his eyes, “No, as in no work?”
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“No, as in, absolutely not. You’re a child. Maybe what, ten?”
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“Yes. I’m aware of how I look but-”
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“The guild does not register unsponsored children for open requests.”
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“What about private ones?”
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“That would still be a no.”
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“What if I can fight?”
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Maelin gave him a long look, “Well that changes everything. Wait, it would still be no.”
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Elias felt irritation rising already, “You have not even asked whether I know magic.”
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That got a little more attention from her, but not enough, “Do you?”
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“Yes.”
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“Can you prove it?”
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Elias opened his mouth, then closed it. That was the trouble, wasn’t it. He had thrown up one barrier on the mountainside by accident, but did not even know what he could do yet, only that something in him had changed.
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Maelin watched his silence answer for him, “Even if you could,” she placed her hand to her temple, “The rule would still be the same. Anyone your age doing guild work would need a registered guardian, a sponsor, or placement in a supervised apprentice role.”
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“I have none of those.”
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“I noticed.”
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Elias folded his arms, “That seems inefficient.”
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“We here at the guild prefer not sending children out to die.”
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He leaned against the counter rail and looked up at her with a flat expression, “Adults do plenty of that on their own.”
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That got another sound from the nearby tables. A laugh this time.
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Maelin pinched the bridge of her nose briefly, “Listen. If you need help, the guild can point you toward the temple, the ward office, or the public shelter.”
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Elias’s lip twitched. Shelter. The word alone sounded damp. “I do not need a shelter,” he barked, “I need money. A job.”
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“And I am telling you no. Not here.”
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Before Elias could decide whether trying again would help or simply embarrass him in front of a room that already thought he was ridiculous, the doors to the guild banged open hard enough to rattle the hinges. A man stumbled in, breathless, half frozen, and desperate enough that the whole room shifted to look at him.
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He was narrow-shouldered and wind-burned, with a farmer’s rough hands, dark blond hair going grey at the temples, and a face pulled tight from too many sleepless nights. His coat was patched wool, his boots muddy, and his eyes had that awful frantic look people got when fear had been riding them longer than strength. He looked as if he had come in from the road at a run and not stopped to think once along the way.
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“Please,” he said before he was even fully at the desk, “Please, tell me somebody’s been sent this time.”
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Maelin straightened at once, “Mister Vaelor... Tomas,” Maelin corrected softly, as he stepped around Elias without meaning to push him aside but doing it anyway, “We sent word. I told you that.”
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“And I’ve come back twice,” Tomas snapped, voice fraying as much as rising, “Twice, and she’s worse. Fever won’t break. She can hardly drink now. You said a healer had been called from Orlienne’s route three days ago.”
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“We did call for one.”
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“Then where are they?”
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No one at the nearby tables laughed now. Even the drinkers knew that tone.
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Maelin lowered her voice, trying to keep the man from cracking all the way in the middle of the hall, “There’s still no arrival notice. Roads are slower this far north. You know that.”
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“My daughter is only twelve,” Tomas braced both hands on the counter. His knuckles had gone white, “She is my child and she is burning up in our house while you tell me roads are slow!”
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Maelin held the line because it was clearly a line she had been forced to hold before, “We do have healing potions in stock.”
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Tomas looked up sharply. Hope moved across his face so fast it almost made Elias look away.’Then Maelin continued, “But… not at a price your account can cover.”
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Tomas stared at her as if the words themselves had struck him, “How much?”
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“You already know.”
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“Say it.”
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Maelin hesitated, then did. Elias did not hear the exact number from where he stood, but he saw enough in Tomas’s face to know it may as well have been the price of buying the mountain itself.
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The man laughed once. A bad sound. Not humor. Just disbelief as he was too tired to become angry properly, “I don’t have that. No one here would!”
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“I know.”
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“Then… then lend it!”
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“That is not something this branch can authorize.”
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“Then what good is the guild?”
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A few heads turned at that, but no one challenged him. There was too much raw hurt in it.
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Maelin took the blow and answered him anyway, “We sent for aid. That is what we could do.”
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“What we could do,” Tomas repeated, then pushed back from the counter so sharply Elias thought for a second the man might break it, “My girl is dying in my house and this place can only tell me what it could do. You have the damn potions!”
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His breath shook. He looked around the hall as if somebody, anybody, should object to this. Some did look ashamed. Most looked away.
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Maelin’s face softened, though it did not help, “Tomas, I am sorry.”
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He let out a sharp breath through his nose, wiped at one eye with the heel of his hand in the rough quick way men did when they had no intention of being seen crying, and turned for the door.
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“Sorry won’t help her,” he said, storming out as the doors shut behind him with a hard wooden thud.
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For a moment, the guild returned to it's noise, but only halfway, like the room itself did not know whether it was allowed to go back to normal so fast. Elias looked toward the counter. Maelin had already lowered her gaze to the ledger again, but the motion was too quick, too practiced. He recognized that sort of expression. The face people made when helplessness had to be filed like paperwork.
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He furrowed his brow in disbelief. Why did no one just make a healing potion?
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The answer came to him almost immediately, because he was not stupid. Cost. Skill. Ingredients. Time. Most people in a city branch did not know how. Most who did, charged for it. And good healing potions were expensive precisely because they worked on almost everything worth panicking over. Fever, infection, internal weakness, poison if caught early enough, wasting sickness, all of it. That was why people bought the damn things instead of praying over hot water and pretending.
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Even Elias had made them before. Rarely. Not because it was impossible, but because the final herb was a nuisance to find and he had usually been too busy surviving to go crawling through a wet forest for plants. The herb did half the work on its own. A magic-fed little thing that soaked up ambient power in the wild and held it well enough to bind the rest of the brew together. There should have been some in the woods outside Draemharrow. Cold climate, damp earth, moss-heavy stone. If he remembered right, it liked shade and old runoff.
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He could make one. The thought pounded at him and refused to leave. Elias stood there with the guild noise around him and watched Tomas’ absence at the door. Nobody else moved. Nobody else said, “I’ll go.”
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Maybe they could not. Maybe they had reasons. Maybe Maelin was already doing what rules allowed and the rest of them had their own obligations. But none of that changed the ugly feeling sitting in Elias’ chest now.
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A twelve-year-old girl was sick. There was something he could do. If he walked away from that because he was tired, hungry, annoyed, or newly ten years old, then what exactly had all that mountain nonsense been for?
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Elias looked down at his own small hands. He could still hear Kheledryn’s voice from hours ago, “Opportunity.”
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Maelin had gone back to writing. Elias climbed down from the counter rail without another word.
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“Where are you going?” she asked automatically, not even really looking at him.
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“To be disappointed elsewhere,” Elias muttered. That got no answer, which was probably for the best.
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He stepped back into the evening square and stood there thinking hard. The cold air helped. So did the fact that he was already annoyed enough to be moving. He knew what he needed. A vial, clean water, and the herb. Elias also needed to get outside the walls again without anybody deciding a child wandering off alone was a problem.
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The vial proved easiest. There was always glass in a town, and there was always more glass thrown away by people with enough coin to be wasteful than by those who needed it. Elias circled behind a row of market stalls near a refuse cart until he found what he was looking for in a heap of broken crockery, damp straw, and discarded wrapping. A small glass vial, cloudy but intact and whole.
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“Good enough,” he muttered, pocketing it quickly when a butcher’s boy passed too close.
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At the public well he rinsed it out three times, then a fourth because whatever had been in it before smelled like sour herbs. The water stung his fingers with cold, but the glass came clean enough.
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Then Elias turned toward the gate. That part was less simple as he had only been brought into Draemharrow a few hours ago. A strange child walking out alone in fading light was exactly the sort of thing guards noticed. So Elias did not walk toward the main road, instead he cut through the lower lanes, slipping between stacked firewood, laundry lines, back sheds, and narrow little alleys where black stone buildings pressed too close together.
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Being small helped. That was new. Elias fit into spaces he would have cursed at before. Got beneath a wagon axle with room to spare. Ducking behind barrels took no effort at all. He squeezed between a tannery fence and a wall so narrow he would have laughed at the absurdity of it if he had not been busy trying not to smell the tannery. By the time he reached the outer rise near one of the smaller livestock gates, Elias had begun noticing the advantages with the same reluctant irritation he gave all useful things.This body was easier to hide. Fast too, when he wanted it to be.
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The side gate had two bored guards, one sitting on a crate eating from a paper wrap and the other standing with all the enthusiasm of a winter fence post. Elias crouched behind a stacked timber rack and watched them for a count of thirty. One yawned. The other turned to spit off the wall and say something about dice.
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Elias slipped low along the stone, darted behind a feed cart, slid through the shadow of the half-open gate while both men were looking the wrong way, and found himself outside before either noticed.
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He stopped on the far side and grinned despite himself, “Well,” he said quietly, tugging the cloak tighter around his shoulders, “That was almost too easy.”
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The woods outside Draemharrow were not the sort that welcomed people. There were tall dark pines, cold earth, and moss over root and stone. Evening light slanted through the branches in weak strips as the forest thickened beyond the treeline. Elias stepped in anyway.
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He knew roughly what he was looking for. The herb had no proper common name anybody agreed on, which was common for useful plants and stupid people. Some called it emberleaf because of what it did in the mixture. Others called it red-bloom root, which was inaccurate because the part people wanted was not the root at all. Elias had heard one alchemist in Selvyre call it lumen mosscap, which sounded like a fungus and irritated him just on principle.
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He knew where it liked to grow, and that mattered more than the name. In wet shade and thick moss, under older stones with enough age to gather ambient magic. Usually under the lip of something heavy where runoff fed the ground and direct sun could not weed it out.
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Elias began the tedious search. At first it felt ridiculous… A former thirty-one-year-old adventurer, dragon-blessed or dragon-cursed, depending on how you look at it, crawling around in a darkening forest for medicinal weeds while wrapped in a child’s cloak. Yet the longer Elias looked, the more the task drove him. Find herb. Make potion. Help girl.
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He lifted stones where he could. Checked mossy roots. Scraped aside damp leaves. Once he found the wrong plant and almost pocketed it before remembering it merely numbed the tongue and made cheap brewers think they were clever.
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“Not you,” he muttered, tossing it aside.
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The forest deepened around him. Birdsong had thinned. The cold was more frigid with less open wind and more the chill of dusk settling in. Elias came to a low outcropping of rock where moss climbed thick over one side and dark water had worn a groove down the other.
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He stopped. There!
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A broad stone sat half-sunk at the base, its top soft with moss and its underside ringed by damp earth. Elias crouched, dug his fingers under one edge, and shoved with a grunt as the stone rolled enough.
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Beneath it, in the cool wet dark, nestled a cluster of low red-veined leaves no bigger than his hand, their stems faintly luminous where the roots threaded into black soil. Even before he touched them, he felt it. The little pulse of stored magic.
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“There you are,” Elias smiled, as he plucked the herb carefully, shook off clinging dirt, and held it up to the fading light with satisfaction.
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Then the next problem hit Elias as he remembered he needed other things. Basic things… water and fire. He stared at the plant in one hand and the glass vial in the other.
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“I might not have thought this through…”
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Under other circumstances Elias would have used a proper burner or at the very least a campfire. There was that well back in town. But the magic will be less potent the longer the process takes.
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Elias had to do something. It was at that moment he remembered his conjured barrier. Magic produces elements of course! He had seen plenty of sorcerers, priests, hedge mages, and guild casters with more ego than sense do basic conjuring.
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Elias just didn't have magic before, but he knew enough of the shape of spellwork to at least try now. Focus. Intent. Release. Most magic users made it look elegant, but Elias just needed it to work.
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He crouched by the groove in the rock where clear runoff had gathered in a shallow natural basin. He held the vial out in one hand and concentrated on it like a man attempting to remember how to breathe.
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Water. Nothing happened. Elias frowned, “Wonderful.”
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He tried again, this time thinking less about the idea of water and more about the feel of it. Weight. Movement. Even the sound of it. The way Kheledryn’s power had rushed under his skin on the mountain when the barrier came up. Something stirred.
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A shiver ran down Elias’ arm. Pale blue light danced around his fingers, thin and cool. Then a stream of water gathered out of the air across his hands, in the motion of a trembling ribbon, and then spilled straight into the vial.
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Elias stared as the light vanished. The vial was half full. He looked at it, and then looked at his hand, then back at the vial, “I… did not hate that. That was actually pretty cool.”
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His heart started beating faster in a completely different way than fear. He set the herb into the vial, used a flat stone to crush the leaves, scraping them into the glass, and watched the water cloud red-green around the fragments. Good. That part looked familiar enough.
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Now for heat. This one worried Elias more. He held the vial carefully between both hands and focused again, trying to picture warmth instead of burning. He needed controlled heat. A steady rise. Not an explosion that turned the first useful thing he had done all day into steam and embarrassment.
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A spark of blue flickered over his knuckles. Then another. He nearly dropped the vial on instinct, “No, no. Smaller.”
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The next attempt came easier. Heat spread from his palm in a thin wavering blue glow, more ember than flame. The liquid in the vial trembled. Bubbles climbed. The crushed herb began dissolving, the magic in it catching and blooming through the mixture.
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Elias adjusted the heat by feel. Too much and it would burn out. Too little and it would stay muddy. His tongue pressed against his teeth with such serious concentration. Then the liquid finally turned.
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It was a very clear red. Not blood-dark, but proper healing red, bright and clean with a faint inner glow. Elias blinked at it. Then he shook the vial once, twice, watching the light move through it.
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A laugh burst out of him before he could stop it. Elias had done it. He had done it with mountain nonsense, an old memory, and pure stubbornness.
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“I did it,” Elias proclaimed to the trees, then louder because no one was there to judge him properly, “I actually did it!”
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Elias stood up too fast and nearly slipped on wet moss, recovered, then laughed again in disbelief, turning the vial carefully in the last of the evening light.
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Magic! He really could do magic. Not the accidental barrier from before. Real magic. Water gathered from the air. Fire from his own hand. A healing potion in his grip and no alchemist standing nearby to tell him he was holding it wrong.
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For one foolish bright moment, Elias felt good. Not relieved. Not merely less miserable. Good. Then he tucked the vial away inside the folds of his shirt and cloak because he still had enough sense to protect the only useful thing in his possession.
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He turned back toward Draemharrow, and heard a branch crack. Elias stopped. The sound had come from his left. Not loud. Not careless. Slow. Then another. Something was moving through the trees.
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Not a deer. Not a man. Too quick for one. Too heavy for the other. Elias turned carefully, eyes narrowing against the deepening dark between trunks. At first he saw nothing. Then it stepped where the fading light could touch it. A frostfang.
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The creature stood low and long like the frost blighted heap barely recognizable as a wolf like it's ancestors. It’s coat was a mottled grey-white thick enough for mountain cold, but broken along the spine and shoulders by bony ridges pushing up under the fur like buried blades. Its head was too broad, jaws too deep, and its front fangs curved slightly outward, pale and slick in the dim. One eye was milky with old damage. The other shone a cold yellow as it fixed on him. Frostfangs hunted the outer woods in winter lean season, smart enough to stalk, vicious enough to keep going after being wounded, and mean enough to enjoy testing small prey before the kill.
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Elias knew them too well. Which brought to light one unpleasant fact about himself. He had no sword. No weapon at all, besides the magic he barely figured out the basics of.
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The frostfang took one slow step forward, claws sinking softly into the moss. Elias’ good mood was instantly gone as the vial pressed against his chest under the cloak. He knew he could not run fast enough. That he could not fight this thing bare-handed. Maybe he had magic. Maybe.
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Another branch snapped as the frostfang lowered it’s head stepping closer. Elias stared at it as his pulse began pounding in his ears. The forest had gone too quiet around them with every tree suddenly feeling farther away than before.
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“Oh, come on,” Elias said under his breath, holding out his hand in the creature’s direction as it crept closer still.
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Elias swallowed once, feeling the new strange heat of magic somewhere inside him, but had none of the confidence needed to trust it yet. Nothing was happening. Then the frostfang bared all its teeth, darting forward. Elias had time for one sharp miserable thought. This was how it all actually ended.
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