Absolute Mana Dominion: All My Talents Are SSS

Chapter 37: 37 - Old Habits

They went east, deeper into the trees, where Absolute Mana Sense had been picking up movement all morning.

Adrien found what he was after inside twenty minutes. Wolves. Four of them working a slope below him, and the sight of them put a knot in his stomach before he had worked out why.

He knew this kind. Grey, thin through the flank, heads too long and too heavy at the jaw. He had killed a dozen of them in a field below his own wall a few weeks ago and one of them had been carrying a sword in its mouth.

”Those aren’t forest wolves,” Amelia said quietly beside him. ”They don’t live this low.”

He put an [Ice Wall] up across the slope to cut the ground and started throwing. The first [Frost Lance] hit the lead animal below the shoulder, and Adrien watched it go straight through and come out the other side and keep going into the earth beyond it.

’That’s the difference, then.’

At One Star that same lance had put a wolf down and made him throw a second one to finish it. Now it went through the body and left a hole he could have put his fist in.

Two more came round the end of the wall. He took the first with a lance through the neck and put a wedge under the second, and it went over on the ice and did not get back up in time.

And the trees behind him started moving. Three more came out of the undergrowth at his back, with a fourth behind them, and Adrien understood in the space of one breath that he had counted four animals in a hunting group that was considerably larger than four.

He got a wall up in the wrong place, threw two lances that went where he wanted them and one that did not, and one of them got past all of it and hit him across the ribs on its way through.

He put a lance into it from about a foot away. The last two took longer than the first five and cost him a good deal more, and by the end of it Adrien was standing in the middle of a slope covered in ice with blood coming through his shirt and his arms shaking.

’Seven. There were seven of them and they came at me from two sides.’

He looked at the bodies while he got his breathing back. Every one of them had ribs showing. Every one of them had been starving for a long time, and none of them belonged this far down the mountain.

’They’re coming back.’

’They got pushed out of that whole stretch of the high ground by eight cones of resin, and they’ve been living somewhere they don’t belong ever since, and I put those burners out days ago.’

’So everything that got shoved out of that territory is walking home right now. Through my forest and through Elyndor’s forest.’

Amelia reached him about ten seconds later and got a look at his side, and something in her face changed completely. She got him down onto a fallen trunk and put both hands over the wound, and the light came up, and she started talking about halfway through it.

”What is wrong with you?”

”It’s just four cuts.”

”I can count, Adrien.” Her hands did not stop working. ”That’s not what I’m asking.”

He looked at her.

”You were going to come out here alone.”

”That was the initial plan until you came with me, I wanted to see where I stand.”

”That’s not the point.” Amelia pressed harder than the injury required. ”You didn’t ask me to come. You didn’t tell anyone where you were going. If I hadn’t decided to follow you on my own, you’d still have come out here by yourself.”

Adrien glanced down at the blood on his shirt. ”I would’ve been just fine.”

”You don’t know that.”

”I killed them.”

”And they still got to you.” Her voice hardened. ”Look at your side. If that had been deeper, or if there had been ten wolves instead of seven, what then? You would’ve had nobody here to heal you, nobody watching your back, and nobody in Elyndor would even know where to start looking.”

”I’d have made it back.”

”You keep saying things like that as if wanting to make it back guarantees you will.”

Adrien went quiet, and Amelia’s hands slowed as the wound began to close.

”If I hadn’t followed you, nothing about your plan would have changed. You’d still be standing here alone, bleeding into your shirt, and you’d probably be telling yourself it was fine because you were still on your feet.”

Adrien opened his mouth and found the honest answer sitting there waiting.

’She’s right.’

He didn’t particularly enjoy that.

”Do you ever tell anyone what you’re going to do before you do it?” Amelia asked.

’No. Not once, ever. In my old life, telling somebody what you were about to do was exactly the thing that got you killed.’

”Not usually,” he said.

”No. You don’t.”

Amelia sat back on her heels, and the light went out of her hands, but she stayed where she was.

”Do you know what bothers me most?”

Adrien looked down at the closed cuts along his side. ”I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”

”I’m trying to get closer to you, Adrien.”

That made him look at her properly. Amelia held his eyes despite the colour that had started creeping into her cheeks.

”I’m not asking you to tell me every secret you have. I’m not asking you to trust me with your life.” She took a breath. ”But yesterday my grandfather sent me out of the room like I was a child, and you went along with it.”

”That wasn’t my decision.”

”You didn’t exactly object.”

”He had something to tell me in private.”

”And apparently that was enough.”

Adrien’s jaw tightened, and Amelia saw it and continued before he could answer.

”I know there’s a dragon beneath Elyndor.”

That stopped him.

”I’ve known since I was a child. Maybe not everything about it, but I know it’s there. I’ve felt it my whole life.” Her voice dropped. ”So this isn’t about me demanding to know what Grandfather told you.”

”Then what is it about?”

”You.”

Adrien said nothing, and Amelia stood.

”It’s about you disappearing into the forest without telling anyone. It’s about you coming back bleeding and acting like that’s normal. It’s about me trying to know you and getting the same door closed in my face that Grandfather has been closing for twenty years.”

”Amelia...”

”I’m not him.”

There was enough hurt in that line that Adrien stopped.

”Don’t put me in the same place as him because it’s easier.” She shook her head. ”If you don’t trust me yet, fine. We haven’t known each other long. I can understand that. But don’t decide what I am to you without even giving me the chance.”

That went in further than she probably intended.

Adrien stood up off the trunk with his shirt hanging open where she had been working, and he was tired and he was bleeding and he had just found out he had personally sent every predator on that mountain walking back through inhabited forest.

”You want honesty?”

”Yes.”

”Fine.” It came out harder than he meant it to. ”You know there’s a dragon under the city. Do you know where its heart went?”

Amelia’s expression changed, and Adrien pulled the shirt the rest of the way off his shoulder.

”Look at this.”

The scar ran from under his collarbone down across the left side of his chest, old and wide and closed on purpose by somebody who had known exactly what they were doing.

”That’s not a normal wound. Somebody opened me up when I was a kid, took the heart out of that dragon and put it inside me.”

Amelia stared at the scar, and then at him.

Adrien tapped his chest twice with two fingers. ”It’s still beating in there.”

”Adrien...”

”And that’s what your grandfather wanted to talk about.”

Her eyes lifted to his.

”So there. Now you know.”

”That’s not what I wanted.”

Adrien gave a short, humourless laugh. ”You wanted me to tell you.”

”I wanted you to trust me.”

”What’s the difference?”

Amelia stared at him, and for a second she actually looked hurt.

”A lot.”

Adrien’s expression hardened before he could stop it. ”People knowing things about me has never ended particularly well.”

”I’m not people.”

”I barely know you.”

The words came out immediately, and Amelia went completely motionless. Adrien knew he’d fucked it up before she even answered.

”No,” she said quietly. ”You don’t.”

She looked down at his chest once more.

”And somehow that was long enough for me to care whether you came back from this forest.”

That one landed. Amelia stepped away from him.

”I wasn’t asking for something I could use against you, Adrien. I was asking you to stop treating me like I might.”

He had nothing ready for that, which was unusual enough on its own.

Amelia turned and started back toward the city.

”Amelia.”

She stopped. Adrien opened his mouth, and nothing useful came out.

After a second, Amelia shook her head and carried on walking.

Adrien stood on a slope full of dead wolves and watched her go, with one hand on the back of his neck.

’Well done. Really well done.’

’That was too far and I knew it was too far while I was doing it.’

’It’s been years since I talked to anybody like that. And by the end of it I’d stopped talking to people at all. Trusting somebody was the fastest way to end up in a room with men and a chair.’

’She was asking me to trust her.’

That somehow made it worse.

’And apparently I brought that with me.’

He pulled his shirt back over his shoulder.

’Tch.’