The canvas, as she’d called it, was more like a box as far as my magic could tell. The splattered paint was closer to a bunch of sticks turned every which way. And what she was wanting me to do was find which pieces of wood to glue in place, so I could burn away the rest.
Klix had assured me that she had warned Tres of what they’d found and done so before Whisper had made it there. I didn’t know what the bandit was going to do about the seal, but I couldn’t worry about that now. I’d made sure he’d been warned and that was all I could do.
I was also the only one who could do this. Klix had given me the skill
The other three could have joined in if they had enough Magic. Klix wasn’t sure how much exactly was needed, but it was at most ten. Ether had only four while Rix had one that only left Pixie to be able to help and we would have had to work in tandem.There was a chance that I might have been able to resonate with Ether off of our connection and Klix wondered if our ‘cousin-bond’ would be strong enough for me to work with Pixie, but I didn’t want to chance it. Being Nevah’s kid made her my great niece, not my cousin and while that was family, it wasn’t nearly as close as Klix thought it was.
I could tell that this was also uncomfortable for Gesai. I had to constantly reference the seal on her, so she was stuck on a cot on the other side of me from Astrid. It was like trying to copy a sculpture when you could barely color within the lines. When Klix had said that it was going to take most of the day, she had vastly underestimated how long it was going to take.
The good news was that Klix was able to watch everything that I was doing, so some progress was being made, but by the end of the day, I was wiped and I’d barely gotten 5% of the seal finished.
“You need a break.” Klix patted me on the back when I stopped to breathe. The focus that it was taking was nauseating and I could understand why she had advised me not to eat. Just thinking about food was turning my stomach.
“I thought you said that I can’t stop?” I still had my hand on Astrid’s seal and was trickling mana into it.
“You’re going to wipe yourself before you finish, so now is a good time to see if the work you’ve done so far will hold.” Klix took a step back.
That didn’t inspire confidence if she thought that something might explode. I closed my eyes as I cut off the connection to the seal. Nothing seemed to happen, so I peeked with one eye to see if there was a visible change.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“Well…” Klix walked over and looked at the blue dot. “It doesn’t look like it’s fading…” She picked at it with one of her talon-like nails. “It is fading, but not too fast.” She looked at me. “If you connect to it a couple of times through the night, it should stay mostly intact.”
“I’m going to…” I swallowed as I did math in my head. At the rate I was going, it was going to take me nineteen more days to finish. And that was if I could keep my current pace and my estimation was correct. Today was the 10th of Sail, with twenty eight days in a month, there were eighteen days left. Which meant in forty-seven days the rest of the team was supposed to start competing for the Adventurer Games if they waited until I was done and I didn’t hit any snags. I wasn’t sure that I could keep up the pace I had been going without a few breaks.
I looked over at Gesai. “We need to talk about our timeline.”
The redhead sat up on the cot. “What about it?”
I started to tell her what I was thinking, but I saw Fray stir on her cot and changed topics. “How is she doing?”
“Better.” Ether walked over to me. “She’s weak, but not getting worse. I think it would help if we had a real Healer helping her.”
“I AM a real Healer!” Pixie heard the jab and marched over from where she had been sparring with Rix.
I had to admire her dedication, but I could also tell that Rix was going easy on her. Eventually the former bandit was going to get agitated and wipe the floor with my sister, but for now it was proving to be a good way for both of them to let off steam.
“I think she meant one who could do things without spells.” I looked at the four of them. “Have you noticed anything different with your seals?”
They all shook their heads.
“Other than it starting to heal, no.” Rix grabbed some fruit from the bench that we’d been using as a table.
“What are you thinking?” Gesai eyed me.
“I need someone here to reference their seal and Fray can be that.” I looked at the teacher. “The rest of the class needs to get ready for the preliminaries. It’s going to take me at least nineteen more days at the rate I’m going to finish this.”
I could tell that she understood what I was saying by the look on her face. I turned to Klix. “Gesai really needs to work with the five of her students that she can to get them ready.” I saw hesitation on her face. “Or I guess she could forfeit like our team had to.”
“What do you need?” Klix looked at the teacher.
Panic began to creep across Gesai’s face. “Trent and I hadn’t talked about anything specific yet, so I can only go off what he did to us…” She shook her head. “But I’m not confident that I would be able to keep them safe for some of what we did, so I’ll have to modify what I remember a bit.”
Klix sighed. “What do you need?”
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