Ch. 2.13 | Fleshspawn
PoV: Sanya
Sanya picked at the lunch in front of her with a frown. Mai and the others had already finished theirs. Mai currently stuffed her face into the Fleshweaving grimoire, her staff out, occasionally looking at its end at the Fleshweaving mana orbs that Sanya could not see. Mai did not make them visible, and Sanya could only sense the mana in a vaguest sense if she focused. So she opted to ignore it.
Fazl had taken the thief to the dungeons. The guild hall was still closed to everyone except the staff and Aisha's inner circle. Mai sat at Sanya's side, facing right. Esmat and Zahira sat across from them, facing towards the quest board.
She could not deny that she was unsettled by what had happened to herself earlier. How had Mai kicking her triggered the backlash from Sanya's magic? Why hadn't anyone else experienced it yet? Were Esmat or Zahira lying? What if it was partially because of Cosmic Summoning?
What if Sanya was cursed? What if it wasn't magic backlash at all?
Footsteps sounded from the foyer, then entered the main room.
The others looked up and greeted as Aisha returned from her outing with Nadiyya and Lania. Sanya did not bother to look, her food was apparently the most fascinating thing in the room.
“Aisha,” Zahira said. “Do we have orders? Esmat and I?”
Aisha paused, then snorted. “Yeah, rest. Esmat almost got murdered.”
“We're both fine. Should we return to Glorestra?”
“Not unless you two suddenly became experts in diplomacy.”
“We all know diplomacy won't work with Zulfaqar, unless it includes ceding all territory to him and becoming his peons.”
Aisha sighed. “I'm not negotiating this.”
“Can we go with Sanya and Mai to the red portal?” Zahira asked.
Aisha responded with a scowl and a frown before speaking. “You two will be on standby . . .”
“Are Lania and Nadiyya coming with us?” Mai said.
“I need Nadiyya here and close, always. She's our intel. I don't think I should bring Lania close to that place.”
“Only the two of us, then?”
“The two of you are more than enough to handle the world.”
“You have that much faith in us?”
“Mostly.”
“‘Mostly,’” Mai echoed. She turned and tossed her arms around Sanya. “It's a date!”
“Entering an uncharted portal and turning monsters into pulp isn't exactly my idea of a date,” Sanya said flatly, wincing as a jolt of pain shot through her body from Mai's arms.
Why was Sanya so fragile? Even Mai's hugs were hurting her now.
“Get in there, explore it, then close it off?” Sanya reiterated, trying to pry Mai's arms off of her.
Mai pouted. “Why?”
“It hurts.”
“Yes. Look inside first. Check it out. Then cast [Terminate Portal]. If that doesn't work. Go back in and find the node,” Aisha decided.
Sanya nodded in acknowledgement. “Head out first thing tomorrow?”
“Sure.”
“Hugging hurts now?” Mai poked Sanya in the shoulder. “Or are we just drifting apart?”
“It actually hurts.”
Maybe it was time Sanya invested in a magical shield? Celestial Summoning had some options, although they had a costly upkeep. Spatial magic probably had some sort of shield too, if she could figure out the spell. That crazy librarian disappearing with the Spatial grimoire! Hmph.
“[Pocket Repository],” Sanya cast. She retrieved her staff and the Celestial Summoning grimoire from it. She heightened her awareness of mana so that she could see her spells and such better. Both Celestial and Spatial, in case she wanted to try making some sort of Spatial shield spell.
“Are you going to eat?” Mai noticed Sanya’s plate.
“Are you my mother?” Sanya snapped. She wasn't hungry. She didn't even feel like eating if she was.
Pain creased Mai’s expression for an instant before it went playful. “I can be your mommy.”
Sanya shook her head.
“Eating is good for you.”
“Really?”
Zahira groaned. “You guys never stop bickering. You're literally a married couple. Engage already. Or get an entire world away from each other. Please.”
Sanya looked up at Zahira and glared at her.
That was when she noticed the warping of Spatial mana around Esmat. Sanya gaped.
“What is it?” Zahira asked. She turned towards Esmat.
“Esmat. You're consuming the Spatial mana out of the atmosphere,” Sanya noticed.
The Spatial mana got pulled towards them and sucked inward.
“Are you stupid?” Zahira asked.
Sanya blinked. “Um, yeah, why?”
“Everyone with innate magic does that. You do it too. It's connected to how it's easy to use your mana's basic ability.”
Mai giggled.
“Oh.” Okay, now Sanya felt dumb. “What about everyone else, the ones who have to learn it?”
“It's conscious,” Zahira shrugged, then Spatial mana began to draw into her too.
Sanya turned to her grimoire and flipped through it, looking for some sort of protection spell. There was one that was more offensive than not, creating projectiles around her that would attack nearby threats if provoked.
This was not what she was looking for. She did not want to accidentally turn Mai into little happy shreds when she hugged Sanya. She wanted something that would make her physically tougher or something, a shield on her body. Sanya continued flipping through pages.
It turns out, Cosmic Summoning was very much a “destroy stuff first and worry about staying alive later” kind of class.
Sanya sighed, she would have to live with pain and torture every time she was hugged. Truly a most unfortunate development.
Mai muttered something that sounded like a spell. Then she squealed in a mix of both delight and disgust.
Sanya snapped up from out of her grimoire. Zahira and Esmat looked up, too.
“What on Heliux's forsaken hellscape is that?” Zahira asked.
That curse was ironic, considering the tempest was gone. Their world was, arguably, no longer the forsaken hellscape it was for a hundred and seventy long years. It was neither forsaken nor a hellscape any longer.
Well, maybe not. Sanya was still pretty sure Heliux was gone, if they even existed before. As for it being a hellscape? The world was still a mess with the portals and everything else, like the warlord Zulfaqar. So, whatever.
Sanya gaped, dropping her staff in shock. It hit the table, then leaned back and onto the seat. Its balance contested until it fell further, onto the floor.
Little beady eyes of red snapped towards Sanya.
She swallowed.
The thing tilted its head at her, curious, vigilant.
It was a tiny thing of naked flesh and muscle. No taller than the length between a wrist and the end of one's middle finger—Mai’s right one excluded. It was humanoid—with long, bisegmented legs and arms. It even had toes and fingers. Its neck held up its head, which looked like the head of a wrinkly old man who long went bald on all fronts.
In fact, its whole body looked like some tan, wrinkly and folded sack, just barely keeping in flesh and guts and muscle.
In spite of that, “cute” could almost be used to describe it. Merely, almost.
“Mai? . . .”
She turned towards Sanya and grinned.
“It's a Fleshspawn! Or uhhh, a homun . . . homunculus? Yeah, that!”
“What does that mean?” Zahira asked.
Mai shrugged.
“What does it do, exactly?” Sanya asked. “And . . . where does its flesh and stuff come from? Not you, I hope?”
“It's a little minion!” Mai exclaimed. “It, uh, apparently it can also pop to use as a Fleshweaving resource? . . . Like, for healing?”
“Can't you heal with mana? How is this helpful?”
“For when I'm not there, I guess. Or unconscious. I just have to figure out how to order it . . .”
The Fleshspawn was now poking at the crumbs of Mai's plate. It bent down and licked at it, then stood back up. It took a hand and ran it along the plate, and then shoved it into its mouth. It turned out that the Fleshspawn did not come with manners.
“That's so gross,” Zahira noted.
“It needs to eat?” Sanya said.
Mai groaned.
“Are you okay?”
“I'm starving.”
“You just a—oh,” Sanya realized. “Fleshweaving backlash is using your own flesh?”
Mai nodded.
“How many of those can you make?” Aisha jumped in. She had been observing and silent for some time.
“I don't know,” Mai's stomach growled. “And I rather not find out.” She pushed herself up from her seat and headed up to the counter, leaving her staff at the table.
The tiny spawn made noises of protest as Mai walked away. It walked up to the edge of the table and reached out a short hand.
This thing was going to be annoying and clingy, wasn't it?
Sanya was tempted to “pop” it, whatever Mai had meant with that. Instead, she bent down and retrieved her staff from the floor.
“Rusul!” Mai greeted the man behind the counter. “May I get a maqluba? . . . Ooh, with burek too!?”
“Yeah, we can do that, it'll take some time though.”
“Mmmmm. What do you have made right now?”
Rusul listed off a bunch of foods. Mai picked some out and thanked him. He went to the back for a minute, and then came back holding plates and bowls.
She promptly returned to her seat with the food in her hands.
The Fleshspawn bounded over to her and gave her left arm a little hug once she set it on the table.
“Is that like hugging yourself?” Sanya asked.
Mai paused, then shook her head in less denial and more of the question being asked.
“Alright, whatever this is over, I'm going to open the floor back up for the afternoon,” Aisha announced, heading towards the foyer.
“Wait!” Mai said. “Can't you wait until I'm done eating?” Yeah, Sanya wanted to wait until they could be done and gone too. The last thing she wanted to do was interact with other adventurers. The group here was enough, including Nadiyya and Lania, she guessed. What were they doing now, anyway? Surely they'd be back from checking out the house by now.
Hopefully Nadiyya wasn't dead or drained by Lania. Nadiyya was nice, sort-of, maybe.
Sanya noticed that one plate of food had been set aside, and the Fleshspawn was gobbling happily.
“Uh, sure. We can wait another twenty minutes,” Aisha said.
“Thanks!”
Fazl floated on over to the office spaces in the back-right. Esmat and Zahira left to do whatever until they were called upon again. Tabassum came back and reported to Aisha. Rim had given up her copy of the Fleshweaving grimoire to the scribes, who were working diligently to get it copied within some time frame. Basic spells and theory were prioritized and made into notes of loose sheets. Something, something, none of this really mattered to Sanya.
Speaking of grimories and copying, while Aisha had originally made copies back when the librarian had handed them out, Aisha nor anyone else had ever asked for the Cosmic Summoning grimoire in Sanya's possession. She thought something so powerful would demand copies, yet, no. As far as she knew, she remained the sole Cosmic Summoner in the entirety of the old tempest area. She did not know what magic was like for the civilizations beyond. Also, there could be more tomes about mage types like Cosmic Summoning elsewhere, in other caves or long-lost spaces like the old Diuskel monastery that became the academy.
Rusul had disappeared into the kitchens. Aisha was still in the foyer.
Mai finished her food and smirked at Sanya. “You want to go home and have some fun?”
Sanya scowled at her. She knew what “fun” meant in this case.
“You'll say ‘yes’ or ‘sure’ one of these days!”
Aisha snorted from the foyer. Mai was so loud.
“I just want to read until tomorrow.”
Mai gasped. “No sleep?”
Sanya glared at Mai again. “You know what I mean.”
“I'll be your book, opening myself up to you and letting you take in my contents.”
“That—”
“—was enticing?” Mai tried.
“—was terrible.”
Mai sighed. “It doesn't kill a girl to try.”
Sanya closed her book and deposited it into her [Pocket Repository]. Her staff followed, and she dissolved the tear in reality.
Was that a piercing cold coming from her stomach? . . . From [Pocket Repository]? Ugh . . . It was like someone had tossed her lower torso into an ice cellar.
“Mai,” Sanya rubbed her forehead.
Three months.
Three. Whole. Months. It was time to elaborate a bit more on her position. To smoothen things out. To say some of the unsaid things.
“Yes?”
Sanya took a breath. “I'm sorry. I'm really not interested. Not at all. I don't think I will be, either.” Sanya winced.
Mai frowned, voice laced with a hint of sadness. “Oh. You could have said that earlier. Do you . . . not like me?”
“I like you. A lot. It's just that . . .” Sanya trailed off. How did she say this?
“You don't wanna bonk?”
Sanya almost snorted. Okay, that was a way to word it. “No. Sorry. I hope you'll understand. So, if you're looking for . . . sex from me, in any form, then you'll be disappointed.”
“Ah,” Mai went silent, taking her time to process that. “May I still flirt with you?”
Had Mai caught on? Sanya did feel complex about Mai's flirting. It was hard to receive it when Sanya was not interested in the suggestions behind Mai's words. “If you want. Just don't expect anything from me for it.”
Mai nodded.
Should Sanya tell Mai? Of course she should. It's been three months.
“. . . The reason is—”
“I know the reason,” Mai cut in.
Sanya blinked. “You do?”
“. . . Yeah.”
“Should I be concerned?” When had Mai gotten the time to look down there?
“I'm not that much of a creep!” Mai exclaimed. “It's just. Spending three months with you . . . it kind of was apparent something was up.”
“Mmhmm. Sure.”
“Hmph. Anyway, yeah, no form at all?”
“No.”
“Aww. I kinda don't get it. But whatever, it's fine.”
“Is it? We can break up if you want . . . not that we're together with the label, but, we've totally been together.”
“Is that what you want?”
Was it? . . . Sometimes it felt like the two of them weren't compatible. Or that, Sanya was not compatible with anyone. She knew she wasn't the best person to be around. She also could not—or rather, did not want to—give Mai some of the things she wanted.
“No. It's just that, this may be, deriving you of what you want from a relationship.”
Mai opened her mouth, then paused. “It . . . It is.”
“So how do we fix that?”
“I . . . I don't know. Not now.”
Sanya nodded. She stood and collected her plate from earlier, to bring over to the counter.
“Set that down,” Mai said, getting up.
Sanya emptied her hands.
“Can we hug? Um. Can we snuggle later? . . . Unless it hurts.”
“I'm fine with a little bit of snuggling—and we can try the hug again.” Embracing Mai was worth the pain. Probably.
“Yay!”
Mai jumped into an embrace with Sanya. The hug didn't hurt this time.