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Chapter 17: Thunder in her heart

The next three days passed without incident. The makeshift team settled into a routine of nightly guard duty and sleeping during the morning. By the end of the second day Theo seemed exhausted when Leo, Arabella and Nova arrived at the inn. During the third night he had to take breaks in keeping his spell active. Nova wasn't too bothered, seeing as Gilbert had made rounds that night, going from one guardhouse to the next, checking in on them, making certain that they were all awake. She didn't like the silent Knight too much, but she appreciated the company. Her other nightly companion during the witching hours was the owl which definitely had a home somewhere nearby.

On the fourth evening, Theo wasn't able to keep up with the drain on his mana. He apologized before they left in the afternoon, saying that he would activate the communication spell the following day or in case of emergencies during the night. He told them that he could keep up the mapping one, because it was being boosted by a magical item, and if the bandits showed that they should move as much as possible in order to signal him for backup.

That night Nova's anxious thoughts kept her awake. Without Leo's laughter in her ear and Arabella's polite comments, she felt incredibly alone. She wished that Magna or Luck were with her. Or Will. Someone. She even considered waking Lucas up early for the shift, but didn't dare. While she may not have had the title of a Knight, the villagers had clearly considered her one. Even Leo had, having assigned her the same role as he'd assigned himself and Arabella. So, Nova listened to the owl, counted the time and waited. Her eyes were glued to the dark woods outside of the village borders, occasionally darting to the glimmering Solevia.

Gilbert didn't come that night. He had stayed in the city, resting. Their mission showed absolutely no signs of progress. That was when Nova heard the call. It was the call of a nightjar. A quick chirp. Then, the second kind of call, also from a nightjar, answered somewhere to the right. Nova sat up in her spot. She'd found a small alcove on top of the guardhouse, where she could barely fit her butt and legs in. She stretched, carefully leaning to hear better. Another quick chirp. But, it was off somehow. As someone who'd spent enough time by the woods of her home village, she could tell. The nightjar's call was much sharper, higher in pitch. This was a man-made call. Her friendly neighborhood owl was too silent, as well. Nova quietly stood, moving left and right along the fence as much as it permitted. She had to move in order to show Theo that she needed backup. But, there was no voice in her head. There was nothing but the off-sounding nightjar call.

Then, out of the dark tree line, Nova spotted hunched shapes of people rushing forward. She counted ten. She had to lean over the fence to see where they stopped, doing something. The panic in her rose and she quietly, but quickly, crept down the stairs, abandoning her watch. She quickly recalled the map on the table that Theo had showed them. Leo's watch tower was the closest to hers. If she ran across the village, she could get there fairly quickly.

"Lucas," Nova shook the older boy. "Wake up," she whispered. In the dark, he flinched, then opened his eyes. He looked at her, then opened his mouth. "No time to talk. Stay here, get George up. We've got visitors. I'm going to fetch Leo." And with that, Nova left the boy to scramble out of his bed. When she left the guardhouse she could hear scratching along the gates. The bandits were on the verge of breaking in. So, Nova tore through the village, heading for Leo's tower. She hoped that Theo would see her moving along the map and get their communication working.

Navigating the unfamiliar Trifton in the dark was horrendous. Nova tripped, fell, got up and ran again. Her knees were bruised and probably bloody. Her hands were scraped. She would bet that she looked like a right banshee out of hell. But, she couldn't stop. She knew, from her time with Luck and Magna in the woods, that she was a worse fighter than she was a healer, so she needed backup. She needed Leo.

Nova burst into the road that led through the small town and towards the exit where Leo was keeping guard. She waved her arms up, wide, and managed to get some air into her lungs.

"Leo!" The volume of her own yell rang out, surprising even herself. For a second, everything was still. The night was dark and the air was cool. Then, the quickly becoming incredibly familiar head of ginger hair popped up on the tiny walkway on the top of the guardhouse. Leo frowned at her, whispering back.

"Nova, what are you doing? We're supposed to be covert, not waking up every-"

"They're here," she gasped out, pointing back to the guardhouse she'd ran from. "They… the-they're breaking in." Leo's face quickly changed from a frown to wide eyes and then a grin. He jumped from the ledge, landing next to her smoothly.

"Stay here," he instructed. "Wake the guards and wait for Theo to contact us." And Leo was gone, running off into the direction she'd come from, much more gracefully than how she'd arrived. Nova took a brief second to gather her breath and then, she ran into his guardhouse. She spotted the two sleeping men and gently woke them up and briefed them on the situation. By the time she managed to get them on their feet, there was screaming in the distance, fire magic flowing into the dark night sky, lighting it up like fireworks. Nova stood on the walkway, watching the commotion in the distance. The two guards from the village picked up their weapons and then made their way over there, as well, like two thieves in the night. Trembling from her adrenaline high, she tracked their dark shapes as they ran with a silent gaze. Theo still hadn't contacted them and Nova was beginning to worry. She hoped that he was fine, just drained. And that there was nobody on Arabella's side. Then, a nightjar chirped right outside of the village border and Nova looked out into the woods. She spotted a sight which made the dread she'd been feeling earlier return to her veins.

There was a group of huddled shapes right under Leo's guardhouse, too. Nova realized that they were being attacked on all fronts. There was no escaping it now. She would stand her ground, or they would lose. She let go of the blanket one of the guards had given her, letting it fall to the planks of the walkway. With trembling hands, she reached into her thigh pouch, the only supplies she had on her.

Three scalpels, one wrapped up, six rolls of bandages and a salve. Nothing much. Not enough. With a trembling sigh, Nova pulled out the Surgeon's scalpel. She unlatched the seal without hesitation, letting the line of white bandage with runes on it unravel. It fell to the planks. Instantly, there was a sense of that pull that she'd felt before wrapping it up securely. The dark whispers. The tendrils of magic. They soothed her adrenaline-filled trembling body and made it ready for battle again.

Respect for the Surgeon of Death.

"The Surgeon is dead," Nova whispered to the blade, tracing the pattern on the cool steel. "The Surgeon is dead and there's only me. Will you serve me or should I chuck you?" The magic remained. It wasn't hostile, or friendly, but it still had that pull. It was weaker than before. Nova took a deep breath and glanced over the wall. "Creation magic: OR." It extended easily enough, making the huddled figures jump when they saw the dome. They started scrambling, looking around. One of them spotted her in the guardhouse and shouted.

"Guard!" Then, a spell was fired her way. Nova had been waiting for that. If she was to take someone hostage and make them her puppet, she wanted someone magically-skilled. Ice magic would do. Nova evaded the icicle aimed at her head, surprised by how slowly it was moving. Then, she poked back over the wall and flung her scalpel down at the man. It sank into his chest, making him scream. "Get it out! Get it out!" Then, scrambling. Then, a cool feeling in her hands. Nova extended them into the dark, over the fence, the muscles in her fingers contorting. She gripped the feeling of cold magic tight and moved her fingers like she was playing a harp.

Screaming ensued. The ice mage under her control was showering his allies with icicles, beating them back into submission. Most of the bandits scrambled as their main fighter of the group turned on them. Curses were flying left and right. Nova, she was too focused to keep an eye on what was going under her. The icy magic around her hands, the feeling of the dark tendrils of mana intermingled, it was all difficult to keep steady and working. She was aware that her fingers were trembling as she made the man fire one spell after another, draining him quickly. Soon enough, there was silence under her.

Nova's arms dropped back to her sides, leaving her panting. She was exhausted. She felt like she'd been awake for two days straight. But, she had to check on the situation on the other side. On shaky legs, she managed to walk down. She was aware of the beads of sweat on her forehead and neck, rolling down. She felt gross. The loss of mana that had been poured into the scalpel's technique had left her beyond drained. She felt cold. Too cold. Her fingers were numb.

Nova pulled the lever and slid through a small crack in the gate. Under the dim light of the only lantern of the guardhouse, she could faintly see bodies lying everywhere. Some were moving and others were completely still. Dead. Nova felt her small meal from earlier rise to her mouth again. Her stomach turned and her arms ached.

She found the ice mage she'd been using as her puppet easily enough. He was the closest to the gate. With her OR still active, she managed to locate the scalpel and pull it out. The Surgeon's weapon came free without a drop of blood on it. Nova gripped it tight and checked for pulse on the bandit. There was none. She'd drained him completely. Then, she turned the man over from where he'd fallen and this time, she didn't manage to hold onto her dinner. Nova puked next to the carnage she'd left in her wake.

The rest of the night passed by in a haze. After the battle was won, as apparently Theo had managed to get his communications up and Gilbert had arrived, not too long after Nova's warning, to Arabella's side. They'd managed to push the assault back. Leo had, singlehandedly, protected Nova's gate. The medical work Nova did after passed by her like a routine. She stitched, she bandaged, she provided instructions. She wasn't shaking. She didn't feel her fingers at all and her arms ached, like she'd been climbing a mountain the whole night. But, she didn't shake. She kept her head and she operated on pure adrenaline and autopilot. Even Leo came over at one point and asked her to take a break.

"Nova," he began, entering the townhouse they were using as a medical center. "You're exhausting yourself. You need a break." He walked over to the bed where she was working on a deep burn, but she didn't look up. She wasn't even using any of her spells, other than her OR to maximize her endurance.

"I'm fine," she told him, eyes focused on her work. "If I stop now, I'll be too tired to continue. I can't stop now." Leo gave her a tentative look.

"They have medics in Solevia, we're put in a call for a healer and some assistance," he told her. "You don't need to do everything here." Nova briefly glanced up at him, but then turned to grab another set of tweezers to get the difficultly placed debris out of the wound.

"I'm fine," she said. "I'll stop when they get here." Leo nodded and then left her after patting her shoulder.

"I'll bring you some food," he promised. Nova didn't turn to thank him or to tell him not to. She knew that she wouldn't be eating any time soon. The call of the scalpel still had her on edge and her stomach wasn't settling because of it. But, she'd welcome a hot beverage, for certain, preferably something with a lot of caffeine.

The medical backup from Solevia arrived together with the morning light, accompanied by Theo. When the kind-faced, elderly healer, who reminded Nova of the traveling merchant Oliver who was a frequent face around her own hometown, greeted her politely, she deactivated her OR, finally. She updated him and his two assistants, a woman in her forties and a young girl who was looking wide-eyed at the carnage from the fight, on the state of the patients. And then, Nova bid them farewell and stepped out into the morning sun, stretching her arms above her head.

"Nova!" Arabella's voice made her look to the side. Sitting on a wooden bench outside of the townhouse were all four of her Crimson Lion teammates, in different states of tiredness. Leo was properly conked out, taking up most of the bench, with his head in Arabella's lap. The woman was waving at the girl with a large smile, only her singed clothes betraying that she'd been in battle. Theo looked positively exhausted, much like Nova supposed she did, dark bags visible on his pale skin. Gilbert was eating something out of a bowl with gusto, but he nodded at the healer when she came over.

"Is everyone okay?" Nova immediately asked, looking them over.

"Minor cuts and bruises," Gilbert spoke to her cordially for the first time. He then put his spoon back into his bowl and extended his hand to her. "Good work." Nova shook it, unable to keep surprise off her face.

"It's my job," she said, aware of the heat on her cheeks. Theo smiled at her, walking over to ruffle her hair.

"You did good for a non-combatant," he said. "I'm sorry I wasn't there when you needed me. I ended up passing out." Nova immediately checked him over, going around him.

"Have you eaten?" She asked, her training kicking in. "Make sure to eat something salty, mana drain affects blood pressure. And also, if there is alcohol you can drink some, because it will help with-"

"We're fine, Nova," Arabella interrupted, reaching out with her hand to grasp the healers. "We've been Magic Knights for a few days longer that you assume, you know?" Nova instantly felt chastised.

"I'm sorry, I just-"

"Will take a break and sleep," Gilbert interrupted her. "We're taking a caravan back to the capital. Meanwhile, it would do you good to take a page out of sir Leopold's book." Nova looked down at Leo's sleeping face, amazed at how young he looked.

"I think it will indeed," she agreed with a laugh, giving up on her fight.

"How was your mission?" Magna burst into the office of the Healing Tower, in his usual manner, Luck hot on his heels. Nova didn't look up, focused on her paperwork.

"Fun."

"Any good opponents?" Luck hopped onto the desk, munching an apple noisily. Nova glanced at him, tugging the papers from underneath his ass away. He leaned to the side so that she could move them.

"Sure."

"Let's get lunch, I'm starving," Magna said, walking around the office, touching this and that. "Captain Yami is out and the base is chaotic. This idiot ate my pudding again." Nova did her best to focus once more. Patient came in complaining of a rash and itchiness. Poison plant encountered during the journey. Stinging nettle infestation near Jarow. To be investigated and cleaned up. Petition to be sent it at a later date. Patient was treated with salve and sent home. Further care to be sought if necessary.

"Well, it was there," Luck shrugged. Nova felt it before she heard or saw it. The telltale blaze of Magna's magic.

"Oh, hell no!" She threw her pen at the Knight, hitting him square in the forehead. "No magic in the Tower! No fire in the records room!" She stood, rounding on Magna whose bat extinguished itself.

"Nova, I wasn't gonna-"

"Someone's in troubleee," Luck said in a sing-song voice, giggling. Nova turned to him next.

"Out!" She yelled, which made him raise his hands.

"I didn't do anything," he defended.

"Out! Out! Out!"

There was a weight on her shoulders, her neck and her legs. Like someone had decided to toss her into a pool of water, fully clothed, and then suggested she walk it off. Every movement was difficult. And, there was that magic. Something darker than her own. Not evil. Just… dark. It slithered around her limbs, around her neck, in her eyes, in her mouth. The food which was tasty while she ate it, laughing with Magna and Luck, was now churning in her stomach like acid. She felt like she would either faint or puke.

"Nova?" A warm hand grasped hers and she forced her head up. Luck's baby-blue eyes were inspecting her, head to toe. "There's something wrong." He stated, more than asked. Nova didn't reply, but she allowed him to pull her into a half-hug, supporting her as they walked. "Did the mission tire you out?"

"I'm okay," she replied in a tired voice. Magna was ways ahead, walking and twirling his bat, firing a spell here and there into the air, lighting the way. The night was cool, but smelled of summer, like it always did in the Clover Kingdom. But, Nova was strangely cold.

"You feel like death," Luck said in a low tone. Nova looked up at him, eyes pleading. "I won't tell Magna unless you want me to. But, you should tell someone if there's a problem." Nova sighed, leaning onto him as she walked.

"Remember that time we went to a dungeon together?" He nodded, those long strands of hair jumping as he did. "Remember the scalpel I used?" Another nod. "I used it during this mission. I didn't want to. I've kept it sealed for a while now, but there was no other way to win."

"Is it a cursed object?" Luck asked after a moment, his eyes narrowing.

"I… don't know," Nova admitted. "It used to belong to the Surgeon."

"That healer you like?"

"Yes," she said. "I think… It's affecting me. I used to dream about it, heard it talk to me." Luck stopped, making her stop, too. Nova looked up at him, finding his eyes hard and expression serious.

"Don't use it," he said. "Seal it again. We need to look up the origins and the magic more thoroughly. It could infect your own magic, if it's a curse." Nova nodded. "Where is it now?"

"In my room."

"Okay," Luck said, then turned to her. "Don't scream your head off this time." And then, he picked her up. Again, he tossed her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and next, with a flare of his own crackling magic, he zipped forward. Nova heard Magna yell something and saw his angry face, but then, it was just rushing streets and then trees, clouded in dark shadows of the evening. Luck zipped through, taking to the roofs and then hopping between trees towards the Tower at impressive speeds. Nova didn't have the strength to argue. She allowed him to carry her.

Luck was warm. Warm and tingly. His shoulder was hard, digging into her stomach. She let her hand go to his back, clutching the fabric there. Luck was hard everywhere. He was so different than any other person she'd known. Not just the hardness, but the gentleness, too. When he wanted to, he was vulnerable and child-like. When he wanted to, he was battle-ready and severe. It was a different mix. A different sort of person. Unlike anything Nova had ever known.

They stopped and Luck set Nova down onto her feet. She was a bit winded from the quick run, turning around in a circle. They were in her room at the Tower.

"Where is it?" Luck asked, looking down at her. He was taller than her, Nova realized. Just a bit taller than last time she'd seen him. He'd grown.

"Here," she fished through her nightstand to get the scalpel. Luck didn't touch it, but looked it over in her hands.

"Those markings… I feel like I've seen them somewhere before," he commented, hand going to his chin as he thought about it. "Have you looked through the Cursed Object History yet?" Nova shook her head. "I have it, I'll lend it to you tomorrow." Then, he pulled away from her hands. The buzz in the air, the crackle, didn't leave. "Can you bind it here or do you need special items?"

"I'm good here," Nova shook her head, going to her nightstand. She found a bandage and quickly penned down the familiar runes onto it. It was a spell she'd found one day, while researching medical techniques on her own time. The runes were a ward of sorts, old magic, which wasn't commonly used nowadays. Some Knights utilized it for Trap Magic, but that was a rare skill. The theories and practices which Nova had read about, those weren't useful in combat. So, they had been deemed useless and ended up forgotten. Quickly, Nova wrapped the scalpel in the bandage, muttering the names of runes as she went. "Done," she said to Luck when it was secure. He extended his hand.

"I'll keep it safe for you, I promise." She nodded, placing it in his open hand. He stuffed it into his pocket as he headed for the open window. Then, he stopped and turned around, crossing the room in a few quick strides. Nova found herself in his warm embrace, arms wrapping around her, holding her tightly against his chest. She took a deep breath, aware of the insane beating of her heart as she returned the hug. "Please be careful, Nova. These curses…" he murmured into her hair, his breath tickling her ear. "I don't know what I would do if I- we lost you to them." Nova felt his grip on her tighten.

"I promise I'll be careful," she said, surprised by how out of breath she sounded. Her heart was beating so loudly in her ears she was certain he would hear it and tease her about it.

"Sleep well," Luck said, pulling away. Then, he grinned, his usual air of mischief returning to his face. "I gotta go grab Magna. Left him in the dust back there." He cheekily waved at her, then jumped out of her window. Nova stepped up to it, watching the sparkling crackle of his Lightning Boots vanish into the dark night. There was a scent of rain in the air.

Then, lightning flashed in the distance. A rumble followed across the skies. Nova looked up, seeing fluffy dark shapes of clouds illuminated by the next flash. A drop hit her window sill, making her look down. Then, another fell. And soon enough, it was pouring. She didn't close her window. Instead, Nova hugged herself, standing there, watching the rain fall with every flash of lightning in the distance. Every time the skies lit up, she was reminded of the boy with bright blue eyes who held her affections. She felt like her heart was thunder itself, always chasing the lightning, never managing to catch it. Still, the warmth his hug had left her with gave her a sense of comfort she hadn't had in a long time. Selfish. She was all too selfish. But, she wanted another long, warm hug, before she returned to chasing the lightning which would always be out of her reach.

That's all folks!

Reviews:

kadienewberg:
Thanks so much for the review!
I'm doing a bit better, I think... Now that the whole funeral and everything is out of the way. I'm just glad that I had managed to reconnect with my dad before this happened.
On the other hand, writing helps so much. I adore thinking about this whole other world and all the plots I have planned out. It's been nice to get lost in it for a while, and I hope you will enjoy the update :)
Best!

VG00:
Thanks for the review! I hope to keep amusing you :D

KEZZ 1:
Thanks for the review!
Hope that the update was good :)

AmericanNidiot:
Thanks for the review!
Wrestling with the Bulls seems both interesting and dangerous, if that's possible xD
Thanks! I'm honestly glad that I managed to connect with my dad before he passed, kinda made it a bit easier to handle...
I hope that you enjoyed the update!