The first night.

3. The first night

As I reach the camp I collapse on the ground with all the weapons.

“Hey Melissa, are you alright?” Alice asks worriedly.

“Yeah, I am fine, I’m just exhausted and aching. Just let me rest for a while.”

As I say that Luna starts handing out orders.

“Get me a sharp knife so I can cut the meat off this bear, then start forming seats from the tree we smashed earlier and put up the tents. I will light the fire and start cutting the beast; Alice show the way to the pond after you’re done, so we can wash up from the fight.”

I lay on the ground and watch as Luna starts the fire with her magic and is handed a knife from my backpack.

“Oi, why are you taking my knife and how did you even know I had a knife with me?”

“You think I wouldn’t know what my childhood friend would bring on the journey she talked about every single day? Besides no one else brought a knife this big so we have to use it.” Alice explains.

Did I really talk that much about it? Wait a minute did Luna say that the beast is a bear?

Luna starts to open the beasts belly with the knife.

“Luna did you say that the beast is a bear?”

“Yes, it was mentioned in the book that I haven’t had the time to tell you wholly. I can continue now if you can listen as you work?”

Luna cuts the belly open and gets covered in blood that surges from the cut.

“The beasts that inhabit these woods are bears, wolves, owls, eagles, trolls, giants, orcs and goblins. There are other animals and beast, but these are the ones that you need to watch out for the most, bears are big, strong and resilient as you know now, wolves are smaller but a lot faster and they move in packs, they will also try to hunt you, so they are more dangerous than bears. Owls are the assassins of the night and incredibly smart so if you let your guard down at night they might kill you, but they are small and weak so in a fight they will be easily defeated. Eagles just like owls fly but they hunt in the day, they are generous in size, they have sharp claws and flying makes them a fearsome opponent, they can also grab you in to the air and fly you high up and drop you to the ground.”

Luna talks while cutting various kinds of pieces of meat from the bears stomach. Others are putting up tents and making seats from the wood.

I wonder if Ryan is listening to this somewhere.

“Rest are humanoid, but they are still beasts so do not think twice about killing them because they will kill you without hesitation. Trolls are good at hiding and setting up traps, but other than that they are weak compared to everything else. Giants are huge, about double the size of these trees and they have immense strength but they are slow and rare. Orcs are smarter than normal beasts and have great strength, they also move in small groups, so they are extremely dangerous even more so if they have equipment. Goblins are as smart as orcs, but they are smaller and weaker, however they are usually in large groups. That is about all the dangerous beings in the area according to this book but keep in mind that it is an old book and creatures can move, even though it’s rare for magical beasts to go into a nonmagical place it’s not impossible.”

Luna goes to her backpack and takes out a cauldron and a metal thing that helps support it over the fire.

“I’ll stay here and start cooking the meat, you guys go wash yourselves in the pond and when you come back take over the meat cooking and I’ll go with Melissa to wash up, remember to have at least one person guarding while you wash up.”

After they leave Luna puts the meat, water and some vegetables in the cauldron that is supported by the tripod over the fire then she turns toward me.

“Melissa, we need to have a talk about that healing magic.”

“Why so serious suddenly?”

“Because it is a serious matter and I need you to understand that.”

“All right, what about my healing magic?”

“One of the magical books is about myths and powers of the gods and in it was mentioned that healing magic is used by goddesses and that there has been no known mortal in this world to that date that has had the ability to heal with magic.”

“So, it is rare to be able to use healing magic?”

“You might be the only one in this world that can use healing magic so yes, it is kind of rare.”

“All right I get it, but why can I use it then?”

“I have some guesses, but I can’t be sure until I’m able to do some experiments on you and that won’t happen until I can learn more about magic and how it works.”

“What are your guesses on why I can use it?”

“Anomaly, that means that something weird happened with your body that mixed up your magic, that could mean that you couldn’t use any other magic but even if you can it still doesn’t guarantee that it is not an anomaly. Another would be that you have some gods blood in your veins, which would enable you to use godly magic. Well the rest are weird and unlikely, so I will omit them for now.”

“Didn’t know healing magic was so freaky.”

“Yes, and that is why I needed to talk to you. When we get a to a populated area, you must keep your healing magic a secret no matter what, even if you see a person dying and you could save him.”

“But if I can save a person then I would.”

“If you had a choice to kill one person to save ten would you do it?”

“Depends on the situation and the people.”

“Killing a random person, you never met before to save our group and your family.”

“I would kill him.”

“So, the situation is the same when you see a dying person and saving him would reveal your magic.”

“How is that the same? None of us would die from that.”

“If you reveal a power that only gods have, power hungry people would go to any lengths to either get that power or erase it and it wouldn’t stop with only us, they would eradicate the whole dwarf kingdom. Well that is just the worst-case scenario, but we cannot be too safe with this matter.”

“Fine I probably won’t save them then.”

“I swear sometimes your personality is a pain honestly. Guess that’s all I can ask of you for now.”

Luna turns back and continues cooking. I don’t really understand why healing magic is so nonexistent, wouldn’t the world be a better place if you could heal the injured and the sick? If goddesses could give healing magic to people, why wouldn’t they? I lay there on the ground thinking the matter back and forth until the others return.

“Get up Melissa its already dark so the sooner we get things done the sooner we can go to sleep.”

“Yeah, yeah I’m getting up.”

I get up from the ground, every part of my body still hurting but now considerably less. How convenient it is to have healing magic, I’ll have to ask Luna on the way why it is nonexistent. We start walking toward the pond.

“Luna, wouldn’t it be better if people could use healing magic? People that are sick or injured could be healed and people wouldn’t have to fear that much.”

“I knew you would ask this, are you sure you want to hear this?”

“Yes.”

“Mainly it would be used for war. People would much rather go to war if they know that injuries and loss of limb could be healed. Healing magic would get more people killed that it would save them. Also, they would most likely charge large sums of money for that healing so the poor and sick wouldn’t even get saved. I am not saying that healing magic isn’t good in its own but people would use it for their own good and abuse it as much as they can.”

“Should I stop using healing magic then?”

“That is your choice to make but if there was a person you could save with your magic would you be able to leave him alone? I know that it is a bad idea to encourage you to use healing magic but there is no reason to give up on something good even if there is a possibility that it could be used for bad. Just make sure to use it wisely, that’s all I’m asking you.”

“Yeah, thanks I feel much better now, I will do my best with my powers.”

“And even if someone would try to use you, we are still all here for you and would fight them off to the best of our abilities.”

We keep walking toward the pond, but I cannot get over the last sentence Luna said. If I were to screw up and expose my healing magic not only will they be put to danger, but they would still help me until the end. I can’t let them sacrifice themselves for my mistakes. We reach the pond while I was thinking.

“You can go in first, you are injured after all.”

“Luna do you know anyway to get better with magic?”

“Do you mean with other magic than healing or with healing magic?”

I didn’t even think about learning other magics than healing. That would help me fight monsters and I wouldn’t have to use healing magic to protect people around me.

“Both.”

“Well in general I think using magic as much as you can will help you with your magic usage and with that magic. For example, if you heal for a certain period of time and you sleep for a night, then the next day you can heal for a bit longer than yesterday and for other magic you can use them a bit more too than yesterday, but the improvement is smaller than for the magic you used. Also, a good body condition will help with your magic usage because magic comes from within our bodies.”

“So just using magic will make me better at it?”

“It will increase the amount you can use but it rarely gets you better at it, what I found out was that it is knowledge that you require to get better with magic. It was the same with my fire magic, when I tried to get better by using it more and more it came out as a small fire from my finger tips and only effect it had was that I could keep the fire coming longer but I couldn’t do anything else with it, but when I thought what would be a good way to use it in a fight and I imagined the best shape for it, it came out as a ball when I used enough power with a mental image of a fireball.”

“This sounds quite difficult.”

“This is still the easy part, when you have to start adding various parts of the magic together to create a one whole, that’s when it gets difficult. For example.”

Luna puts her hands up and a fireball forms in the air, then another one and another one, one by one fireballs formed in the air until there is seven of them in the air. They start to go around one of the fireballs and then they start to merge with each other creating a huge fireball, suddenly it dissipates.

“That’s the extend of my knowledge at this point of time, and I can’t do anything else magic wise, but I think I could if had more magic power; like putting fireballs in a line would create a fire lance or something like that but it is only a theory for now.”

“That was amazing as it is.”

“It is still in a stage where it takes too time to form so it isn’t combat ready.”

“So just using my healing magic will get me more power and imagining innovative ways to use it will make me better at it.”

“Essentially yes, there could be other ways I don’t know to improve magic and it might be different for healing magic and other magics but that’s all I know.”

“Thank you, it was helpful, I will try to improve upon my magic; learn new magics and train my body.”

“It is good that you are motivated. It won’t get any easier than it was today, it is great if you improve a lot so it will be easier to survive here.”

We switch, and Luna washes up. We head to the camp and it has gotten so dark that without Lunas fire magic we couldn’t see anything. I keep healing myself the entire trip and when we reach the camp I get exhausted from overusing my magic.

“Melissa are you all right?” Asks Alice worriedly.

“I just used too much magic. I should be fine after sleeping.”

“How is the food? Can we start eating already?”

“I think so Luna.” Answers Marie quietly.

“Let us start eating then. How is Martin by the way? He took a bit of a beating with the bear.”

“He hurts all over and I think some of the bones could be broken but he insists that it is nothing.”

“After we are done eating, Melissa and Martin will go to sleep immediately and they will have the last shift, so they can rest through the night, also Melissa can heal him when they have the shift together. I can take the middle of the night shift with Ryan, Alice and Marie you take the first shift. Remember to take care of your equipment when you have your shift and keep cooking the meat, there is so much that we can’t cook it all but if we cook the entire night we will have meat for a while.”

After that we start eating while discussing all that happened today. It is an enjoyable meal filled with laughter and tasty food. Then I go to sleep in the tent; I am so tired that I fall asleep immediately.

“Melissa, Melissa.”

I hear a distant voice calling my name. I also feel someone shaking me and it wakes me up.

“I woke up already Martin, you can stop shaking me.”

My body feels sore, but it is easier to move now, I get up in silence not to wake up Alice. I leave the tent to see the light of the fireplace and Martin sitting down next to it.

“Good morning.” I say quietly with a smile.

“Morning.”

“You look sleepy.”

“Because I am.”

“Do you think we can go to sleep after our shift is over?”

“No idea. Do you know how long our shift is?”

“No idea, maybe until everyone wakes up?”

“I guess.”

“How is the food?”

“It is still raw, I think they switched it to new ingredients before waking us up.”

“All right, should I start healing you now?”

“Please do.”

We sit there quietly while I heal him slowly.

“Look up Melissa.”

“Up?”

I look up and see a beautiful black sky with lots of small yellow dots and few different colored ones, there is also one big round hazy yellow circle in the sky that looks beautiful.

“What is that? why is it so pretty? What happened to the blue sky with white things up there?”

“No idea. It is beautiful though.”

“I wonder how it would look without these branches in the way.”

“Even grander I would assume.”

We continue to watch the sky in silence while I heal him.

“I want to get stronger.” Martin says suddenly.

“Yeah, me too. I think we should be strong enough so people behind us can be safe from harm.”

“Do you think I can learn magic?”

“Yes, I do, I am going to learn various kinds of magics too.”

“What should I do to learn magic?”

“Whenever I use magic I feel a power go through my body into my hands. Try moving the power inside you, that should help; at this point you might not feel anything but as we move to a place that is richer with mana you should begin to feel it. The more you use magic the more you can use it and training your body also helps.”’

“So, training my body and mental exercise.”

“For now, at least, also ask Luna for advice she is more knowledgeable than me in this matter.”

“Thank you, that’s enough of healing, I am all right now. I need to start training too.”

“Training while injured isn’t going to help you, we have a long day tomorrow and we need you to be in decent shape.”

“I am fine Melissa. Thank you for your concern.”

He starts doing push-ups near the fire. How stubborn, well I am no better as I start healing myself again. After eighty push-ups, he switches to sit-ups.

“The food should be ready now. Could you handle it?” Martin says while breathing heavily.

“Yeah, sure.”

I take the cooked meat and put it with the others and drop in a new patch of raw meat in the cauldron.

“We should check our equipment and clean them.”

“That has already been done. I’m guessing it was Alice and Marie who did it for us.”

“That’s considerate.”

“Well we were in a battle and got injured badly. I’m sure they wanted to let us relax a bit.”

“Might as well train myself then too.”

We keep doing physical improvement for the rest of the night and I keep healing until I feel weakened from overusing magic. The sun starts to rise, and it marks the beginning of a new day.

Chapter two. Chapter four.