Mariela woke up… underwater.

Or, at least, that's how it looked. As the world slowly came back into view and she came back to her senses, she blinked rapidly to try to force things to make sense. There were tentacles… everywhere. She could tell they were made of mana, but that didn't keep the sheer volume from being almost overwhelming, especially as she slowly came back into her body and realized that the pain she was expecting to find wasn't there.

"Oh, good, you're awake." A face appeared above Mariela and she shrunk back even as the older man gave her a kind smile. "I'm Owen; I work as the Wizard King's top healing mage. How are you feeling? Can you remember what you were doing before you came here?"

Mariela's eyes felt huge in her head as she finally stuttered out in response, "The… the Wizard King? You work for the Wizard King? Directly?"

Owen chuckled and nodded. "Yes, I do. In fact, he's the reason why you're here right now."

"M-me?" Mariela squeaked. This couldn't be good. What had she done? "I—I'm s-sorry—"

"No, no," Owen cut her off quickly. "You have nothing to be sorry for. I should contact him, though, he wanted to know when you woke—"

"I can't talk to the Wizard King!" Mariela shot up in the bed, barely feeling the cool water she splashed through in the process when the mana-made tentacles didn't move out of her way. "I—"

"He knows that about the curse." Owen cut her off firmly, and Mariela snapped her jaw shut. She knew that it shouldn't surprise her—she was sitting with the Clover Kingdom's top healing mage and the thin medical gown she was wearing let her know that at least one person had seen her shoulder and chest. It still made her feel so… vulnerable, having it laid out so plainly like that. But when she finally met Owen's eyes, they shone nothing but kindness and patience. "If you're concerned about that, you don't have to worry. It isn't a secret that you need to keep."

Mariela's hand went compulsively to her ruined shoulder to grip the thin white fabric covering it. "I…" she trailed off, averting her eyes. "It's not an evil mark. I swear. It isn't there because of anything inside of me or… or… anything that I did myself." She supposed that was technically a lie, but she wasn't about to let anyone think that she was in league with anything that would make her dangerous to let go… or let live, for that matter.

"It's okay. Really." When he placed a hand gently over her own, she flinched but didn't shrink away. When she finally raised her eyes to meet the doctor's again, the look in his eyes was sad even as the smile on his face hadn't budged. "That is actually part of the reason why the Wizard King wanted to speak to you, but it isn't for anything bad. Unfortunately, however, it isn't what I'm treating you for right now. That… that is something that not even I can heal."

Mariela shook her head immediately, eyes still huge and filled with skittish paranoia. "No! No, I wouldn't expect any help with it, it isn't even that bad, in fact I'm feeling much better, if you could—"

"Woah, woah!" Owen cut her off again, eyes wide as he tried to calm her down. With a gentle push on her hand, he signaled for her to lay back down. Very reluctantly, her eyes never leaving his face, Mariela complied. Once she had, he said finally, "Mariela? Your name is Mariela, yes?"

She blinked, caught off guard by the question. "Yes," she answered, voice cagey and eyes still suspicious. Just because the Black Bulls—and, she supposed, some of the Green Mantis—knights had been kind to her didn't mean she suddenly wanted to be fully immersed in this sort of world. It came much too close to family ties that she had a feeling she was better off never revealing, and that she knew she wanted nothing to do with either way. "Yes, I'm Mariela. I'm sorry, I didn't introduce myself."

"No, I'm sorry that this has been so… disconcerting." As suspicious as Mariela was, she still had to admit that Owen was yet another extremely kind person that she had never expected to meet in a situation like this.

Then again, she thought to herself a bit bitterly, I never thought I'd ever be in a situation like this. I was supposed to be helping run a farm.

Oblivious to her internal frustration, Owen continued, "I was told you were conscious when you left the actual battle area, but you were completely blacked out by the time we received you for treatment. Do you remember what happened, or where you were before you woke up here?"

Mariela closed her eyes to think, wincing a bit at the sudden rush of pain that came to her head. It felt like she'd been slamming it against a wall for hours now that she was focusing on it. When her eyes finally opened, they were squinted and watery with tears. "I…" she said slowly. "I was at the beach. It was the middle of the night… there was a fight. There was a fight!" Mariela shot up in the bed again, eyes wild and the pain in her head totally forgotten as she looked frantically at Owen. "The Eye of the Midnight Sun! They went… they were following the Black Bulls! They hurt so many people, please, you need to get help—"

The doctor cut her off again, with a firm hand on her uninjured shoulder gently pushing her back down. When she had complied, he met her eyes and made sure he held them before saying, "The Black Bulls won."

Mariela blinked, unable to process what he'd just said. "What?" she asked dumbly.

Owen's eyes crinkled as he smiled at her. "The Bulls won, from what I heard. They're on their way back right now, we should be seeing at least some of them coming through for treatment any second now, in fact."

"Treatment…" Mariela breathed, eyes still wide. "You mean no one died? You mean they… they beat…"

"That's right," a new voice rang out jovially from the other side of the room. "They beat one of the Eye of the Midnight Sun's top-ranking members, one of the Third Eye. And they're all coming back to talk about it."

Owen straightened with a warm smile to look at whoever had just entered the room; the door was behind Mariela, so she couldn't see him, but she knew she'd never heard that voice before. Before she could straighten to look or ask who had entered the room, Owen was waving the visitor over and the next words out of his mouth made Mariela shrink into the bed she was laying on as much as she possibly could.

"Julius! I was just about to send word for you." Owen looked down at Mariela with a smile and nodded toward the door. "As I said, the Wizard King would like a word with you."

x

"Where—"

"If you ask me that one more time, I'm telling Finral to drop you off back at the Underwater Temple so you can cool down."

Gauche scowled at Yami, who returned the look with a dead-eyed stare. His captain broke the silence with a sigh, however, and moved to ash his cigarette through a window they were passing as the two of them- along with Charmy, Asta, and Finral- moved through the tower's elaborate halls. They had just returned from the beach, and Gauche was already annoyed at how long that had taken. Waiting for everyone to pack up and get ready to go had almost driven him insane. Yami had, surprisingly enough, been extremely understanding about his frustration… even as he had grown more and more irritated with the constant instance to hurry. Gauche had managed to curb the impatience right up until they'd gotten to the royal capitol—being this close to Mariela and still not knowing what was happening with her, however, was making it extremely difficult for him to keep his cool.

"I'm sure she's alright," Asta said with a big smile. Even with his arms wrapped up and totally useless, the runt hadn't lost whatever fire kept him going. Gauche couldn't help but be impressed… even as he glared daggers at Asta in the moment. Asta met the hostile look with wide eyes. "The guys said she hadn't been involved with the fight, right? She must have just tired herself out, I'm sure she's doing a lot better now."

"Exactly," Yami cut in before Gauche could open his mouth to retort. "Excellent note, kid. Anyway, I'm pretty sure we're around the corner from the room Mariela's supposed to be in, and I'm positive that's her ki in there, so everyone will be able to calm the hell down once they see she's just fine."

Gauche's scowl didn't waver, but he didn't open his mouth to comment, either. Yami was gruff on his good days, but he'd still found out where Mariela had been taken after finding out that the Green Mantis knights had sent her off while they'd all been gone. He wasn't about to push his captain any more than he already had if they were this close to getting there.

"—channeling mana." As the group finally entered the room, Gauche caught the tail end of whatever the Wizard King had been telling Mariela before both of them looked up at the newcomers—Julius with a welcoming smile and Mariela over her shoulder with huge, stunned eyes. Her face was frighteningly pale, but the weak smile she gave them as the five came around her bed seemed genuine.

"And it looks like more of the team is here," Julius stood from the seat he had taken at Mariela's bedside to look at Yami with a huge smile, eyes huge and gleaming. "I hear you can split dimensions now?"

Yami chuckled. "Yeah, something like that. Don't tell that beanpole lunatic, he'll think I got the idea from him."

"Are you okay?" Gauche, uninterested in waiting any longer for whatever pleasantries they were supposed to be exchanging, moved to Mariela's bedside and looked her up and down. She was in one piece—looking almost like she would pass out again from moving too quickly, but the smile on her face hadn't moved. Yami and the Wizard King were still talking—about Asta? Gauche wasn't certain, but he knew he didn't really care—so he took the seat that Julius had just given up and took one of Mariela's hands. He flinched when he touched her skin—she was freezing cold. He met her calm eyes, feeling even more panicked as he realized that she didn't seem to notice at all. "Do you need anything? You're freezing."

"Oh, that was probably the treatment." An older man came up on the other side of Mariela's bed and took her other hand gently as if to check her temperature before putting it back down and brushing her messy hair out of her face to lay his hand against her forehead briefly.

The doctor, Gauche thought mildly, stifling annoyance at watching the man's hand linger on Mariela's face. When the man met his eyes, however, the look there was one of fatherly concern.

"I'm the medical mage that's been working with her; my name's Owen. I use water healing magic, you see. It's helping her, but…" the doctor trailed off, suddenly looking uncomfortable. Gauche watched as he glanced down at Mariela, who just sighed.

"Because of how mana travels through my body," she explained, "the healing magic isn't… well, sticking."

"What does that mean?" Gauche asked immediately, dread building in his stomach. This was exactly what he'd been concerned about; what happened if she pushed herself too far and burnt out? Was this something she could recover from?

"I'm going to be okay," Mariela said quickly, as if she could hear his increasingly frantic thoughts. She squeezed Gauche's hand softly, and he was startled to realize that he hadn't put it down since picking it up. Despite her cold hands, she gave him a warm smile that only served to remind him that he couldn't trust what she was saying as long as it was about her own health. Instead, he looked up at the doctor.

"What does that mean?" he repeated.

After a second of hesitation, Owen explained, "Typically, my magic would travel through the same channels your body's mana would travel through, mixing with your magic and infusing with your body to reinforce and heal. That's why water magic is so useful for healing, you see; the body is made of so much water that the absorption process is easy and quick. Mariela's condition, however… because mana doesn't absorb into her body, it just passes through it, my magic isn't healing her nearly as well or as quickly. It's like the equivalent of dumping medication on an open wound and seeing what sticks—some of it is getting in, but most of it is seeping out. That's why her skin is so cold and clammy."

"So, what does that mean?" Gauche asked again, trying not to let his worry make him snap.

"It just means that I'll have to heal naturally," Mariela cut in, the smile on her face tired but sincere when Gauche forced himself to look at her. Purple eyes shining brightly, she added, "It's not so bad, I'll be just fine in no time."

Gauche looked again at Owen. "Will she?"

Owen smiled and nodded. "She's going to be fine. In fact—"

"You're taking my housemaid?" Yami's voice—and, more importantly, what he was saying—cut through to Gauche, who snapped his head up to look at his Captain. Yami didn't look upset—just bewildered, staring at the Wizard King with raised eyebrows. Julius just smiled back.

"Well, that's the rude way to put it," he conceded, "but I guess you're technically not wrong."

"What does that mean?" Gauche asked immediately, suddenly extremely frustrated. He had now asked that damned question three times in the last two minutes, and every answer he'd gotten had left him feeling more confused than before.

"Mariela's condition is fascinating," the Wizard King's eyes were huge and gleaming again as he answered, even as Gauche's scowl deepened—he was not exactly thrilled to hear her literal curse be referred to as a 'condition'. But Mariela seemed to be totally fine with it, even looking up at the Wizard King with a shy smile that twisted Gauche's stomach a little. "Because of how mana moves through her body, the best way to heal her seems to be to have her doing healing work herself. So, we were thinking—"

"Isn't that why she's here?" Gauche interrupted. On some level, he felt a little bad for interrupting the Wizard King of all people, but this plan was already not making sense. "She did too much healing work out on the beach, and then she ended up overexerting herself, right? How is more of that supposed to fix her?"

"Well," Owen started, placing a hand on his chin thoughtfully, "it's less about fixing her, and more about finding a way that she can consistently practice her magic without hurting herself like this." Before Gauche could ask that same question for a fourth time, Owen looked down at Mariela with a smile. "Is this alright to be telling everyone? I can stop if you'd prefer that."

Mariela shook her head with a blush. "No," she said quietly, voice barely above a mumble. "I'll feel silly trying to explain it."

Owen laughed but looked back up at Gauche. "While she doesn't absorb mana or access her own, she does retain some of it when she channels it from one natural source to another. That's how my healing magic is doing anything at all; she's not getting all of it, but the amount she's getting is still enough to replenish her blood loss and stave off the pain she'd be feeling right now."

"Blood loss?" It was Asta this time that asked, his brow furrowed as he looked down at Mariela in concern. "Were you involved in the fight? The Green Mantis guys—"

"No, no," Mariela corrected quickly with a firm shake of her head. "I wasn't involved in the fight. I, umm, lost the blood while I was healing." She looked up sheepishly at the Black Bulls that had come to see her. "When I heal, I take some of the damage that I heal. It's like the tradeoff for being able to tap into mana that isn't my own, you know? There were… most of the guys on the beach, they had lost so much blood…" Mariela trailed off, her face going ashen at the thought. Eyes wide and unfocused, she said quietly, "I was giving them some of my blood with the magic. My healing… displaces some of the stuff I heal, I guess. I take some of it in. Not all of it—but there were so many injured men… so much blood…"

Mariela trailed off and squeezed her eyes shut. Owen put a hand on her shoulder in comfort, but Gauche was still not ready to let this go.

"If that's how it works, how could doing more healing work possibly be good for her?"

"What she's describing is the way that magic lingers in her body as things are," The Wizard King cut in. "Think of natural mana as water—as the ocean. Think of your own magical abilities and prowess as a bowl filled with water. If you were to dip your bowl into the ocean of mana and pull it back, there would be natural mana in it, but the bulk of it would still be your own. Healing magic requires a mage to immerse their bowl into another person's mana—for most people, this is just taxing, making sure the channeling and technique go smoothly and in one direction. But for Mariela, who's working with an empty bowl, the mana she works with travels through her without any resistance or challenging force; she fills her bowl entirely with different mana, then empties it entirely. Hers is less a bowl and more a pipeline. Those channels, in the process, are totally open to both give and receive. The same way that Owen's magic is running through her and leaving her with residual magic, so to speak, when she heals, she takes in the damaged mana in a person in the form of the damage she's healing. Not all of it, but more than enough to do more than just tax her. Depending on how much healing she's done, the damage she transmutes in the process of healing will do… well, this."

Gauche thought of the way she'd been keeping her brother alive, and a terrible thought struck him. Before he could think better of it, the question was out of his mouth as he looked Mariela dead in her violet eyes: "When you treat Marlin, are you pulling that curse magic into yourself?"

The room went silent, and Mariela's jaw clenched. Her eyes steely, she answered quietly, "I'm keeping him alive. That's all I know."

"I can teach her how to heal without hurting herself," Owen interjected, apparently sensing the mounting tension. Gauche didn't stop studying Mariela's face, but the look in her eyes and the clench to her jaw had disappeared as she gratefully looked up at Owen. Whether she was grateful for the offer to train her or the interruption, however, Gauche couldn't say.

"Yes—" the Wizard King started, but hurried steps up the corridor interrupted him right before his assistant burst into the room, his blue hair and eyes frazzled.

"Julius!" Marx panted slightly. "I have been looking everywhere for you!"

"I was just—"

"No time!" Marx snapped. Waving a hand, an image appeared in front of them all. It took Gauche a second to realize what was happening, but slowly the picture cleared into a battle that was tearing apart a town—if a battle were what one would call it. Gauche personally thought it looked more like a massacre—troops, Diamond Kingdom by the look of them, were rampaging through a Clover Kingdom town and slaughtering anyone in their way.

"Word of our issues with the Eye of The Midnight Sun has clearly spread," Julius said, tone grave, as he put a hand to his chin and studied the violence unfolding before him. Without taking his eyes away, he asked, "And the Magic Knights we have there?"

"A team from the Purple Orcas is already there," Marx answered immediately, "but they're being overwhelmed quickly. Request for backup from the Golden Dawn has already been sent, but things are not looking good right now."

Julius' face darkened at that, but he didn't look surprised. "The Golden Dawn might be enough to even things out for now, but not even they can't take on three of the Shining Generals without amassing a casualty count I would rather not think about. But we're out of options."

"I'll go," Yami said immediately, hand on the hilt of his katana. And, before anyone else could say a thing, a loud voice piped up from beside him right on cue.

"I want to help!" Asta was almost shouting, the energy vibrating off him almost tangible. Gauche had to stop himself from rolling his eyes—the kid still had the equivalent of broken noodles for arms, why wouldn't he be volunteering to dive immediately back in?

Yami clearly agreed with Gauche, because he snorted loudly and put a heavy hand on Asta's head. "Someone with your injuries would only hold me back. You're sitting this one out."

Asta's immediate response was lost on Gauche; he sure as hell was not arguing to go back to the front lines right away. Instead, he turned his attention back to Mariela. She was sitting up and talking quietly to Owen, who had released his healing spell and taken the seat next to her. He looked… excitable was the only word that came to mind, which didn't sit well with Gauche. Taking the other seat next to her, he very shamelessly dropped immediately into their conversation… and felt his stomach drop at what he heard.

"— sure we can find you a place to stay here."

"You're leaving the hideout?" Gauche blurted and realized that the room had emptied of the rest of the Black Bulls as his question seemed to rebound loudly in the sudden quiet. Mariela turned bashful eyes on him.

"I… think I should do this." She sounded nervous, but Gauche didn't miss the hopeful note in her voice. She was clutching at the blanket in her lap so tightly that her knuckles were white. Turning to look back at Owen, she asked, "Do you really think… do you think my healing capabilities would actually improve if I trained with you?"

Owen smiled at her, but it was the Wizard King who answered with wide, gleaming eyes and a bright look on his face. "If you learn how to control it, it's possible that this condition could actually expand your healing capacity past what you would have been able to do without it."

"Sir," Marx said from behind Julius, his tone weary. The Wizard King's face fell a bit, but he nodded and, with a short goodbye, the two men quickly left the room.

Gauche could feel the blood rush to his face—it was all he could do not to snap, and he was sure the only thing keeping him from doing so was the fact that not even he wanted to disrespect the Wizard King. But hearing him talk about Mariela's curse like it was a gift… it was enough to make him want to blast something to pieces. The look on her face, however, was pure joy. He could almost hear her thoughts, so what she said next when she turned to look at him didn't surprise him… even if it did make his blood pressure spike and his teeth grit.

"Marlin. Maybe—"

"It's a curse," Gauche cut her off, thankful that his voice didn't hold the tinge of desperation he was starting to feel. "You can't heal a curse, Mariela."

"But what if channeling more mana to him wakes him up?" Mariela argued. "I'm cursed, and I'm going to live with it. We can do it together, especially if I have a good job."

"You shouldn't be planning to just live with this curse," Gauche gritted out, his jaw clenched. "We can find a way—"

"—to heal him," Mariela cut him off firmly. Her violet eyes were set on his, and it was all he could do not to look away from the determination he saw there. "You heard what they said. I might be better with things the way they are now."

"Look at your shoulder!" Gauche snapped before he could help himself—and immediately regretted it. All the blood drained out of her face immediately as she dropped her eyes, the small smile that she'd had disappearing completely.

"I…" she trailed off, then cleared her throat and locked her eyes firmly on him once again. With an edge of steel to her voice that he hadn't heard since the misunderstanding with Yami when he'd first brought her back to the hideout, Mariela said firmly, "I don't think it's any concern of yours what any part of my body looks like."

"I want to study that injury, actually," Owen cut in, and Gauche almost thanked him for it. He had no idea what the hell he was supposed to say in response to that. She was right—it wasn't any concern of his what her body looked like. But the look on her face had let him know exactly why she thought he cared, and how the hell was he supposed to tell her that it wasn't how her shoulder looked that bothered him?

But the light had come back to her face as she asked him excitedly, "What? Do you think we could heal my shoulder? Really?"

"I can't make any promises," Owen replied, his face apologetic, "but I do want to study it a little to see if there's anything that can be done for it. As your friend said, curses can't necessarily be healed… but they can be treated, just like any other illness."

"It might… not look like this anymore?" Her voice broke slightly as it hitched in her throat, and Gauche was sure his heart broke at the same time. For all her bluster, she wasn't fooling anyone—she wanted her shoulder healed. And he knew, more than anything else, what she wanted was her brother back, no matter what it might cost her… no matter if it meant honing a curse that decimated her mana channels into a permanent tool and committing herself to it for life. So even though Gauche bit his tongue so hard his mouth flooded with blood when she responded, what she said wasn't any sort of surprise.

"I'm in."