Other than the ward I had noticed earlier, the protections around this community were all physical. Just the wall and people guarding it, enough to repel most enemies they’d have to face. Maybe not all, I could readily remember several foes that would have made short work of it, either by circumventing it or by breaking through it outright. Still, against the usual Shattered and Undead, the wall was completely sufficient. And, by the looks of it, they hadn’t been challenged in some time. There was no damage to the wall, no traces of battle, nothing that indicated the wall had been altered or repaired after an attack.
“Murray, would you mind showing Miss Jade around? I’d like to get my students so they can learn from her,” Daniel asked, sounding quite eager to get this on the road.
“Certainly,” Murray simply nodded, “Would you follow me, Miss Jade?” the massive guy asked, looking at me with a single, raised eyebrow.
“Sure, why not?” I easily nodded in response, “I’d like to see a bit of your town, what do you call it by the way?”
“We do not really have a name for it; it just is the town. Or sometimes home,” Murray replied, his voice a little quieter than usual, making it little more than a whisper as he usually spoke in a soft, sombre voice. In many ways, he was the human embodiment of the adage "Speak softly and carry a big stick."
“Children, you can follow, but do not disturb our guest,” he added, his voice pitched to carry over to the group of five children who had been lurking around the gate when we entered.
“Are there many children in town?” I asked after looking around the area and noticing that the square we were on was deliberately designed to serve as a kill zone if enemies ever managed to breach the gate. The roofs in the area were mostly flat, with crenellations to provide cover. If I were a betting person, I would be willing to put quite a bit of money, or the equivalent, down on those roofs being easily accessible from the other side or from inside the building. Additionally, the square we were on had multiple structures that looked somewhat like wave breakers on a beach, but would serve as excellent cover if anyone managed to get through their gate.
“Four children have been born since the change and survived to this point. Then there are twelve children we think are under the age of ten. Additionally, twenty-five claim to be under the age of sixteen,” Murray explained, reminding me just how devastating the Change had been for children. The town had roughly two thousand people living in it, at least that was my best guess. And only forty-one of those were still considered children. The realisation made something within me ache with a strange, strained sensation.
“Maybe you’ll get to know little Sam and Jade, two of the infants who have been born here,” Murray added, making me stare at him in disbelief.
“Excuse me?!” I snapped out, not quite believing what I was hearing, “What are those kids called?”
“Sam and Jade,” he repeated, “Their mothers decided to name them in your honour when they learned that you had taught the healing magic that prevented complications during the birth. Apparently, it was highly effective.”
For a moment, I felt as if the world wasn’t spinning correctly, as if gravity had tilted a little off to the side and I was being pulled off-centre.
“Oh,” I managed to mutter, trying to catalogue and conceptualise the sensations swirling through my mind. This hadn’t happened before, and I wasn’t sure what was causing it. I had an idea, but certainty? That was an entirely different thing.
By the time I had managed to regain a semblance of mental and emotional equilibrium, a few more children had joined the initial batch. It looked like we had all the younger children, along with a few of the older ones who might have been their caretakers.
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From somewhere deep within me, I could feel an impulse well up, but I controlled it. I wasn’t sure what would have happened if I had given in, but I wasn’t about to experiment on children in the central square of a small town. That could go wrong in so many ways, it wasn’t even worth joking about.
Luckily, Daniel returned with a small group of people, all of whom looked to be at least young adults, most of them being somewhere between twenty and forty in my estimation. In other words, it was a group that reflected the demographics after the change well, with only a tiny minority older than middle-aged, or in their teens or younger.
“Miss Jade, these are my students,” Daniel introduced me, before introducing each of his students by name and speciality. The majority of them were working with Water or Earth, two were Blood Mages, and a smattering of other elements was mixed in, too. Again, no surprise there, it matched what I had taught Daniel, so it wasn’t unexpected that he had passed on those lessons.
“Greetings,” I gave them a nod, which was returned by way of polite bows. “Now, let us walk and talk about magic,” I suggested, gesturing to Murray to guide us through the town, while Daniel’s students and Daniel himself began asking their questions. It was a relaxed atmosphere, though I noticed that some of the questions Daniel’s students asked were quite basic, which made me wonder whether Daniel had slacked off in teaching those aspects. Or maybe his understanding was simply shaped by the way his mind worked alongside his relatively high general affinity to magic, as opposed to the specific elemental affinities people usually had.
Eventually, we came across a young woman holding an infant in her arms. The child looked incredibly small and vulnerable, making me briefly think of Sebastian, the infant son of my old friend Chris. I hadn’t seen Chris, his wife Jenn, or their son since leaving Apple Gate Farm, but somehow, I had a feeling Sebastian was alright. I had no idea where that feeling came from, nor did I understand why I felt another instinctual nudge to do something to this toddler, but, again, I pushed the instinct down.
“Miss Jade,” Murray spoke up after being silent for quite some time while I answered questions about magic, “This is the child named after you, Jade, and her mother, Lenora.”
The mother’s name caught me even more off guard, reminding me of my feathery friend back on Mundus.
“Greetings,” I gave the pair a polite nod, and the mother stepped forward, bowing deeply to me, something the child held to her chest wasn’t too happy about.
“Thank you, Miss Jade,” the mother said, while the toddler made unhappy noises. “Without the things you have taught, neither of us would be here.”
“The thanks should go to those who used those lessons,” I reminded her, “But know that I am glad that you and your child are healthy.”
When I spoke those words, I felt a faint trickle of power flow through me. Or maybe past me, it wasn’t really coming from me; I was only the conduit of the power. And, to make matters even stranger, the power I felt wasn’t Astral Power; it was Divine Power. The power surrounded the toddler in a silvery halo for a moment before being infused into the child. The toddler’s eyes widened for a moment, and then she started to giggle, her earlier complaints forgotten.
“Oh, my,” Daniel whispered, his voice filled with awe.
“What was that?” Lenora asked, her voice filled with a mixture of awe and apprehension.
“A blessing,” I answered, entirely confident in my answer. I wasn’t sure what had happened, but I knew the outcome. And the result was a blessing for this child, ensuring she would grow up as healthy and happy as possible.
“How does that work?” One of the students asked, confused about the events, as this wasn’t something an Arcane Spellcaster would be able to achieve. Certainly not without some form of preparation and a physical anchor.
“Let’s go with ‘It’s complicated’, and leave it at that,” I replied, unwilling to go into the topic of divinity and certainly not into the confusing mess that was my relation to that topic.
“It will not harm my child?” Lenora pressed, her voice hard, despite the lingering awe. A worthy mother to her child, trying to defend the child in a completely unfamiliar situation.
“Never,” I assured her, still confident in my words.
“Thank you,” she repeated her earlier words, bowing again, and this time, the toddler only giggled harder, waving her tiny hands around as if this was the greatest game of all time.
“Let us continue our lesson,” I suggested, even if I wanted to leave the town already. Things were getting confusing, and I didn’t like the confusion, especially not given that the blessing wasn’t from any old deity. No, little Jade had been blessed by the Mother. And I had no idea how that had come to pass.
