Chapter 30: Saga 30: The One They Almost Forgot
The infirmary at Renodin Regal Academy smelled of crushed silverleaf and antiseptic mana salves, the kind of scent that clung to the back of the throat long after you’d left the building. Kael hadn’t set foot in this wing since orientation, back when a nurse had scanned his mana core and pronounced him "unremarkable" in a tone that still stung a little, in retrospect. Honestly, he wouldn’t have come now either, if Claire hadn’t physically dragged him by the collar of his uniform down three flights of stairs.
"You seriously forgot about Denholm?" Claire’s arms were crossed so tightly her knuckles had gone pale, blond pigtails swinging with every irritated step down the corridor.
"Who?"
She stopped dead in the hallway and turned to look at him with an expression usually reserved for people who’d insulted her cooking. "THE STUDENT. The one who got clipped by the ogre stampede shockwave during the Sumbiya cover story we fed the academy. You know, the one whose ’training accident’ we all conveniently agreed to stop thinking about the second it was inconvenient to remember."
Kael winced, scratching the back of his neck. In the chaos of Paul, Black Rings, and hearts torn out of oak trees, a bruised freshman had genuinely, completely slipped his mind. "Okay, in my defense—"
"There is no defense. There has never been a defense in the history of defenses that would cover this." Claire shoved open the infirmary door hard enough that it banged against the wall.
Denholm Voss looked smaller than Kael remembered, propped up against three pillows in a bed that seemed to swallow him, one arm strapped into a sling laced with faintly glowing regeneration runes. He brightened immediately when he saw them, the way younger students always did around anyone even tangentially associated with Azure Blake’s public reputation.
"Council President! And—wait, are you the transfer guy? The one who solos monster nests for fun on weekends? People talk about you like you’re some kind of urban legend."
"That’s not—" Kael started, already regretting every choice that had led him here.
"He absolutely is," Claire said sweetly, pulling up a stool beside the bed like she owned the place. "Ask him about the ogre king sometime. It’s a great story. Mostly true."
Denholm’s arm, it turned out, had been fractured in nine separate places by a stray shockwave none of them had properly contained during the "training accident" cover story they’d all quietly agreed to stop thinking about. Claire had healed the worst of the internal damage weeks ago in a rushed, guilty five minutes between missions, but the school’s own medical staff had insisted on monitoring long-term nerve regeneration, since the injury pattern didn’t match anything documented in their entire archive of textbooks.
"Truth is," Kael said, finally sitting on the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping under his weight, "it wasn’t a training accident."
Claire elbowed him hard enough to leave a bruise on a normal person.
"It’s fine," Kael muttered, rubbing his ribs and giving her a look. "Kid’s not an idiot. He already knows something weird happened to him. Might as well toss him a bone before he starts digging on his own time and gets himself actually killed trying to find out the truth."
Denholm’s eyes went wide, sitting up a little straighter despite the sling. "So there really was something out there? In the highlands? I heard rumors but the official report just said ’unusual wildlife.’"
"There’s always something out there," Kael said, more seriously than he meant to.
"Bigger than you’d believe, worse than you’d want to know. Your job right now isn’t to understand all of it. Your job is to get strong enough that eventually it stops mattering whether you understand it or not."
He held out a hand, palm up, and let a small mote of golden light drift from his fingers, sinking gently into Denholm’s cracked arm. Not one of his Supreme Abilities—just a sliver of surplus mana, barely a fraction of what he carried now, but enough to speed the boy’s convalescence by a solid month.
[The host has completed a Minor Kindness Quest: Aid a wounded bystander. Reward: 200 EXP. Also, look at you, being an actual person. Character growth. I’m almost proud.]
’Shut up.’
[Making progress, are we? I’ll allow it.]
Denholm stared down at his arm, already feeling warmth spreading slow and pleasant through the joint where moments ago there had only been dull, constant ache. "Th-thank you. Seriously, thank you. I didn’t think anyone even remembered I was in here."
"We remembered," Claire said, guilt flickering briefly across her face before she smoothed it back into cheerful nonchalance. "Kael’s just an idiot with a bad memory for anything that doesn’t involve monster viscera."
"Hey."
"It’s true and you know it."
As they left, weaving back through the infirmary’s quiet corridors, Claire bumped his shoulder with hers, a small gesture that carried more warmth than her tone usually let on. "That was almost sweet, back there."
"Almost?"
"You still forgot about him for three weeks. Three whole weeks, Kael."
"I had a homicidal cult disciple actively trying to kill me and everyone I care about. Forgive me for letting the paperwork slide."
"Excuses, excuses." But she was smiling, and so, despite himself, was he.
They stopped by the guild hall on the way back, mostly because Claire wanted to file an official addendum to the Sumbiya mission report—something about ensuring Denholm’s medical costs got quietly covered by the guild’s discretionary fund rather than the boy’s family footing the bill for injuries none of them had properly disclosed.
"You’re really going out of your way for this kid," Kael said, watching her fill out the paperwork with unusual care.
"Someone has to. It’s easy to forget that the people around the edges of our fights are still people, not just background scenery for whatever we’re doing." Claire signed the last line with a flourish. "Besides, he reminds me a little of myself at that age. Curious. A little too willing to poke at things that could get him killed."
"You still are that person."
"I’ve gotten slightly better at not getting killed since then. Slightly."
The guild clerk processing the paperwork glanced up at them both, recognizing Claire’s disguised face from a dozen prior visits without ever quite placing why she seemed so familiar. "This should clear within the week. Anything else, Miss—"
"That’s all, thank you." Claire flashed a polite smile and steered Kael back out into the afternoon sun before the clerk could finish the question.
"You’re getting good at that," Kael observed.
"The deflecting."
"Three years of practice will do that to a person. Now come on, I still need to yell at you about forgetting Denholm existed. We’re not done with that conversation yet, not even close."
"I thought we were done."
"We are never done, Kael. Never."
—
End of Chapter—
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