Chapter six… Just Like You

Banter was sitting propped up on his elbows with Li kneeling by his side by the time Keilin approached. He spoke slowly, as if each word hurt him. "I am glad you learned to control your magic in such a short amount of time. I underestimated you two—especially you," he added, inclining his head to Mako ever so slightly. "I have given you armor along with your magic. All that is left is a weapon worthy of a Magic Knight." He looked up at Keilin. "I do not have the strength left in me to awaken the powers of magic in you at this time. I can, however, give you the armor. Your magic will have to wait." He closed his eyes.

Keilin burst into flames.

At least, that's what Mako's first impression was. In truth, she had been enveloped in a column of light so brilliant that he could hardly see her inside. It covered her for nearly half a minute before fading, and it took that much time again for the purple dots burned on his retinas to die away.

Keilin was now wearing a breastplate very much like his own, a glove crowned with a green gem, and knee-high boots. Somehow, they made her skin and hair seem even paler than they had been.

The High Mage looked up and surveyed her with approval. "The second Magic Knight of Wind… may you live up to Ciela's legend." He broke off in a grunt of pain, and Li, looking anxious, helped him lay back down. "We'll have to find you a doctor or something," she said.

Banter shook his head. "No. I'm fine. There are more important things to do—"

"Oh, shut up," Li interrupted. "Look at you! You can't even get up. You're bleeding buckets, for heaven's sake!"

"I'm alright," Banter insisted, attempting to get to his feet again, as if trying to prove his point.

Li moaned in frustration. "Sit down. Hey—I said sit down—you can't just—will you listen to me? Mako, help me here!" she cried, throwing her shoulders under the High Mage's arm to steady him as he finally managed to stand.

Mako followed suit and immediately wished he hadn't. Banter, apparently unable to support himself, was allowing most of his weight to rest on them.

He wasn't a large man, save in height, but he wasn't scrawny, either.

Li must have been thinking along those same lines. She winced noticeably, but her jaw was set as she insisted, "We're getting you help if we have to drag you there."

"We probably will have to drag you there," Mako grunted. "Where are we going anyway?"

"There's only one village nearby," Banter replied, his tone heavy and almost drowsy.

Keilin frowned. "The one those monsters destroyed?"

Mako's legs almost gave way as Banter's full weight pressed down on his shoulders. The High Mage was out cold.

"Fantastic," Li groaned. "What are we supposed to do now?"

Mako turned his head to Keilin. "Where was that village?"

She paused. "He said west… but I don't know which direction that is."

Li looked to her left at the two monster carcasses. "Well, these things were the ones that got the village, right? And they came from…" Her eyes scanned the trees as she paused. "…that direction," she said finally, nodding in the general area between the snake and the ogre's first appearances.

"We could be attacked again," Keilin murmured.

"Or there might not be any village left to find," Li added.

She and Keilin both looked at Mako, as if waiting for a final say.

He stared at them. What, had they nominated him as their leader? He hadn't done anything. Why was Li waiting for his approval when she was so enthralled with Banter instead? And wouldn't Keilin be happier (if happier was the correct word for it) simply being lost in her own little realm of shadows rather than trying to save a man they barely knew?

He shocked himself, then, when instead of asking these things like he wanted to, he found himself saying, "We have magic and armor now, right? They protected us before. And besides, only seven people out of that village are… well, there had to have been more than seven there, right?" He readjusted Banter's dead weight before adding, "We'll go west and try to find some help there."

It was a long walk.

With the High Mage halfways trailing on the ground behind them, their progress was slow and hard. By the time the trees began to thin, the sun had begun to fall from its climax, and the temperature had gone up considerably.

"Stop," Li moaned after another five or ten minutes. "Please, let's stop, I can't feel my arms."

Keilin shifted Banter's weight onto her own shoulders, freeing Li from her hunchbacked position. "We need to keep moving. He doesn't have all the time in the world."

Sweat from the heat and the physical labor blurred Mako's vision. He almost spoke up to agree with Li's need for a break, but the thought of not being able to complete something—even the task of dragging an unconscious mage through a potentially monster-infested area in 70-degree weather—stirred up his explosive hatred for mediocrity, for weakness, for failure.

"She's right," he grunted, standing as straight as he could. "We need to keep going."

Li gazed at him curiously. "Are you alright, Mako? You look pretty red."

"I'm fine," he lied. "Let's move. At this rate, we'll never get there."

"If we're even headed in the right direction," Keilin added under her breath.

Mako tried his hardest to ignore that comment.

It was a very long walk.

"I told you people already! I am not taking any new tenants right now!" The innkeeper slammed the door shut with all the strength he could muster, shaking the tiny tavern with incredible force.

The knocking persisted.

The innkeeper shouted through the door. "Don't you understand? People died today! Monsters are out there somewhere, and you people are dancin' through Farway like you're on a holiday! It isn't safe here! Now go back to Wincrest where you belong 'fore I come out there meself and make you go!"

With that, he turned and stomped off towards the kitchen.

The cook shook her head as he entered. "More travelers?"

"Of course," the innkeeper replied wearily, dropping into a chair. "Curse this city for bein' on the main road between Wincrest and Adred, curse it, curse it!" He sighed heavily. "Why," he demanded of no one in particular, "did they come to Farway?"

The cook took they to mean the monsters.

"I mean," he continued, "we've got nothin' they'd want. Farway's a little traveler's town in the middle of nowhere. People here, resident or passerby, they shouldn't have to be afraid here. Right? Yeah. This should be a safe place. But it isn't." He dropped his head into his meaty hand. "My wife… my kids… I was so afraid they'd been…"

Another sharp, quick spurt of knocking interrupted his sentence. The innkeeper leaped to his feet.

"I told you, you aren't stayin' here!" he roared, stomping to the door and flinging it open—and then he froze.

A boy he had never seen before, drenched in perspiration, straining under the weight of a full-grown man and illuminated by the early evening sun beyond the tavern's door, gazed defiantly up at him, chest heaving but eyes steady. "We need help," he said, and the innkeeper dazedly stood aside to let them pass.

Li readjusted the cloth bandage on Banter's gash, then poured a third cup of cool water for Mako and carried it to him. For the entire four hours of their sojourn, she and Keilin had taken half-hour shifts supporting the High Mage's right side, but Mako had adamantly refused every offer they made to relieve him of his own burden, and when Li advanced from offers to demands and then on to threats, he dutifully ignored her and kept dragging himself on.

By the time they had found their destination, he was nearing heatstroke.

Now he was lying on a bed near Banter's, red and exhausted, but at least accepting the water. Li had been afraid he would turn it down.

Mako drained the glass. Li refilled it one last time and set it on the tiny bedside chest of drawers. "Get some sleep," she insisted. "Banter's fine. They said he just needs to rest for a few days. You aren't going to speed the healing by pushing yourself this hard."

Mako let his head fall back on the feather pillow and stared at the ceiling. "I'm alright. That was nothing."

"Liar," Li said sharply, but she left the reprimand at that. "Keilin and I are in the room next door." Here she almost added, "If you need anything, I'll be there," but at the last moment before she voiced it, she realized what a mistake it would be to say this to him. He was too much the independent type, and mothering him would only cause him to get impatient and upset.

She changed it to, "Don't do anything stupid."

Mako turned his head to look at her. "Excuse me?"

Li pretended this was what she'd meant to say all along. "You heard me. Just stay here and sleep like the rest of us mortals do at night. These walls aren't exactly soundproof. Keilin and I'll be able to hear every move you make."

"Oh, I'm glad you're alright too," Mako shot back sarcastically. He turned away from her.

Li glared at him, then flounced towards the door. At the threshold she turned and retorted, "Well, you're welcome for the water!" Feeling childish but elated at having the last laugh, she continued out into the corridor, and then into her own room.

Keilin wasn't there.

Kindred spirits.

That voice had called her a kindred spirit with itself.

Keilin, perched on a windowsill in a deserted corner of the tavern, stared absently at the darkening horizon past the pane of glass. She'd had four hours to brood upon the voice and its message, and yet it hadn't been enough time at all.

Kindred spirits.

She wanted to talk to him again, this nameless visitor. She wanted to hear him speak those two words again. She needed to know she wasn't alone, wasn't the only one struggling to find herself in the vast oceans of darkness.

Far-off lightning sparked in the sky noiselessly.

Without the faintest idea why, Keilin felt tears well up in her eyes. Without this person—whoever he was—she was on her own. Mako and Li could not understand, especially not now with their commitments to this world. She had been singled out, left without magic, identified as the one who caused the problems. She needed him, her mystery friend, her secret kindred spirit.

Why are you crying?

Keilin sat up straight. She hadn't expected him to come.

In the window, her translucent reflection had vanished. A foggy outline had replaced it.

Are you alright?

"Yes, I'm…" No. She would not lie. After all that had happened, she would not push herself away from this one who might just comprehend. "I'm alone."

What about your friends?

"They aren't fighting the darkness." This sounded a little strange, but she didn't know how else to word her feelings.

But you are?

She hesitated only briefly. "Always."

I know. I feel your heart's struggle.

"Who are you?"

My name is Cail.

"But who are you?"

I am another just like you.

Just like you. Those words echoed through her mind as if they had been shouted.

On the window, two eyes, the color of a stormy sky, opened on the outline of a reflection, so clear and distinct they might have been mirror images of reality.

Keilin lifted a hand to touch the outline, perhaps to prove to herself it was really there. It shied away.

Keilin Makawa, don't lose heart. They might not understand your battle, but I do. I am your kindred spirit.

"Cail?"

She did not remove her fingertips from the glass.

"How do you know me? How are we talking?"

The eyes, those warm, piercing eyes, closed. The outlined figure turned as if to leave, and in sudden desperation, Keilin planted both hands on the pane of glass.

"Cail! Don't go yet!"

I won't leave you. We're in this together now.

The outline vanished, and her own reflection swam into view.

One last web of lightning feebly cracked open the horizon's sky.

Keilin was alone again.