Kagali and I screamed at the same time:
“Master!”
“Alice!”
Alice and Gaien were sitting with Salamander, who was coiled around them protectively.
“Mama!” Alice exclaimed when she saw me running to her. She started waving happily.
“Kyuu!” Carol was still with her, perched on her head.
“Yer this child’s guardian? We met in the capital, no?”
“We’ve met, indeed. I’m Ellie Leis of Traitre. Thank you for watching over my daughter.”
“Ye’ve got no reason to thank me. This wee lass is the one who crushed the boulder I was stuck under and gave me water. She even made me wound hurt less. Who knows what state I’d be in without her?”
I looked down and noticed that one of Gaien’s legs was red and swollen. He couldn’t walk far in this state. It was no wonder that the simple water attribute healing spell Alice knew hadn’t been enough to cure him entirely.
“Tida,” I called.
“Yep. Coming.” Tida crouched next to Gaien. “Heal.”
As soon as Gaien’s wound disappeared, he stood up. He bent and extended his leg several times, testing its strength and flexibility.
“Yer quite the healer, lass,” he said.
Now that this matter had been dealt with, I looked up at Salamander.
“Why did you bring Alice here?” I asked.
The fire snake wriggled and suddenly Alice’s eyes turned vacant. Carol twitched and jumped off her head, but she quickly calmed down and climbed right back up.
“I apologize for employing such means, human,” said Alice. She was the one who’d spoken, but the words sounded like someone else’s entirely.
I hesitated, then turned to Salamander once more. “Are you... Are you the one who just spoke?”
“Indeed,” Alice—or rather Salamander—replied. “I have no shaman who can impart my will, so I’ve had no choice but to borrow this young girl’s speech.”
A shaman? If I recalled correctly, such people were said to have a profound affinity with spirits. I’d always thought that the title was only a symbolic position within the scope of Spiritanism, but based on Salamander’s words, it appeared that shamans might actually have the ability to communicate with powerful spirits such as archspirits.
“Does that mean...Alice has the makings of a shaman?” I asked.
“Indeed.”
This piece of information would be better off concealed. I didn’t want the institutions of Spiritanism to learn about it.
“Setting that aside, why did you feel the need to communicate with us?”
The answer came from Alice’s mouth once again. “To inform you of the abnormal change my body has undergone.”
“Abnormal...how?”
“Someone has left a strange trinket inside this mountain. It sucks up the energy of this land and transforms it into wicked mana. I have been absorbing that tainted mana and purifying it to protect this mountain, but I can no longer keep up with the sheer quantity of it.”
All of that mana must have been accumulating in Salamander’s body. In fact, I could sense an abnormal amount of mana within him.
“In other words, you need help dispersing this mana, correct? How would you like us to—”
“I’ll do it,” Gaien interrupted me. He seemed to have already heard Salamander’s explanation.
“What do you mean, Mr. Gaien?”
“I can craft magic weapons,” he said. “There be two ways to forge such weapons. Ye can either use materials full o’ mana and pour yer own mana into them as ye work. Or, ye can use materials that absorb mana well and let ’em take in the mana from their surroundings. An archspirit’s mana works like the natural kind—so I can trap the extra mana inside weapons if I forge ’em here.”
As he spoke, Gaien used earth magic to build an anvil.
“Can any of ye create water?” he asked.
“I can,” I replied. I filled the large bowl he’d just made to the brim.
“Och! Such high mana concentration. Ye make great water!” he commented.
“That should suffice to fix my body,” Salamander said through Alice. “Yet the issue of the wicked device remains.”
“Oh, I’ll take care of that,” Tida replied.
“You will?” I asked.
“Yep! In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s what I came here for. God’s message said I had to destroy a ‘cluster of evil,’ after all.”
“You still insist that you heard a divine revelation?”
Tida pouted. “It’s all right if you don’t believe me, Miss Ellie.”
“Sorry...” Even if Tida and I were close, I shouldn’t have said something like that. I’d failed to be considerate of her faith. “Well, if you’re handling it, then Misha and I will act as Mr. Gaien’s bodyguards while he works. I’d like to stay near Alice too.”
“Yes, Miss Ellie!” Misha exclaimed.
“That is wise,” Alice said. “My mana is keeping weaker monsters at bay, but once some of it drains, I fear they may approach us.”
In other words, the longer Gaien worked, the higher the risk of a monster attack would grow.
“What about me?!” Kagali piped up.
“Ye just stay put,” Gaien immediately said.
“B-But, master! Don’t you think my mystic eyes would be a great help with forging magic weapons?”
“Shut it. There’s no need for ye to forge blades.”
Kagali bit her lower lip in frustration and turned her back to him. She walked up to Alice and sat down next to her on a large rock.
Suddenly, Alice started running toward me. She seemed unsteady on her feet.
“Mama...” she said weakly, jumping into my arms.
Being a host for Salamander seemed to have taken a toll on her body. She fell asleep in my arms as soon as I pulled her close to me.
“Misha,” I said.
“Yes, Miss Ellie,” Misha replied, taking Alice from me.
“O water, grant your serene protection: Aqua Veil,” I chanted, casting a water barrier around Misha and Alice.
With that done, I looked around at the rest of my companions. Gaien was readying his working tools. Kagali was sitting away from the rest of us, but she wasn’t all that far, so I figured that protecting her wouldn’t be an issue. Tida had just set her bag on the ground so that she could move around more easily, and she was now checking the state of her staff.
“All right!” she exclaimed once she was done. “I’ll be going now!”
“Be careful,” I said. I watched her walk away, her gait as relaxed and carefree as ever.