Chương 41: Stubborn

Light. That was the only other type that responded. Every other type returned not even the faintest vibration. But light converted as naturally as arcane, crystal, and metal had, the mana shifting without resistance during the transfer. Four affinities, then. With the context the Guide had provided, it made sense. High-to-perfect grade affinities. The only ones a Magus could access. It also explained why Val struggled with earth and body, and why some of Sumi's elemental conversions were harder than others.

Everyone had a range. His was just narrower. The urge to weave them into his existing spell forms was immediate. Crystal threads in a Bolt. Metal reinforcement in a Shield. But the memory of his last failed modification was still fresh enough to keep his hands in his lap. Arcane was force and resistance. The results were fairly predictable. If a crystal thread shattered mid-construction or a metal thread failed, the result would be worse than the bruises he'd earned last time.

He needed to understand each type on its own first. What they did. How they behaved. How they broke. Enzo glanced at the window. The light had changed while he'd been working. The sky beyond the redwoods had gone dark, and the room was lit only by the candle on the workbench and the faint ambient glow of the mana crystal beside it. He'd been at this for hours. But he wasn't tired. His body hummed with the residual warmth of the circulation, the heart mana still pulsing through him in a steady rhythm.

If anything, he felt more awake than when he'd started. Murph lifted her head from the bed, ears forward.

"Yeah. Let's go for a walk." She was off the bed before he finished the sentence, tail swinging, already at the door, turning the knob with her teeth. He pushed himself up from the floor, and his knee answered with a grinding protest that buckled his stride halfway across the room. He caught himself on the workbench. Enzo reached for his cane. Then he stood there for a moment, looking at the bottle of painkillers beside the lamp. He'd been avoiding them.

They dulled his focus, and focus was everything when threading mana. He grabbed the bottle, shook two into his palm, and swallowed them dry. The stairs down were slow. Murph padded ahead, pausing every few steps to look back, checking he was still following. On the second-floor landing, he stopped. Candlelight flickered beneath the guest room door. Val was still awake. Sitting with Sumi, most likely. He thought about knocking but decided against it. Murph whined softly at the door, nose pressed to the gap.

"Come on, girl," Enzo said.

"Let her rest." Murph lingered for another second, then followed him down the last flight. He eased the front door open and stepped onto the porch. The night air was cool against his skin, carrying the smell of redwood bark and woodsmoke from someone's fire. He stretched his shoulders, rolled his neck, and let his eyes adjust. Lights flickered in several directions. Lanterns among the trees where the watch posts sat. A brighter glow at both ends of the street where the main positions were.

The settlement was quiet, but it wasn't asleep. It was being watched over. Enzo made his way down the steps and along the street toward the eastern perimeter.

"Hey, Lorenzo. Out for a walk?" Frank sat in a lawn chair in the driveway of a neighboring house, a thermos beside him and a crossbow across his knees. He raised a hand in greeting.

"Can't sleep," Enzo said.

"Thought I'd sit in on the watch for a bit." Frank nodded.

"East post could use the company." He took a sip from the thermos.

"Let me know if anything comes up."

"Will do." He continued east, Murph ranging ahead of him in the dark. The settlement had come together faster than he'd expected. Watch rotations, supply distribution, work crews. Frank ran the Watch competently. He'd been a project manager, if Enzo remembered correctly. The apocalypse hadn't changed much for him, even if the stakes were higher. The barricade came into view where the street met the main road. Cars pushed bumper to bumper across the pavement, reinforced with lumber and topped with wire mesh.

A ladder leaned against the side of the house on the right, leading up to the flat section of roof they'd turned into an observation platform. A face he didn't recognize looked down from the edge at the sound of Enzo's boot on the ladder. Enzo pulled himself onto the roof, then waved the man off.

"Go get some sleep. I'll take over until the next shift." The man didn't need convincing. He clapped Enzo on the shoulder, then climbed down, and disappeared into the dark without a word. Enzo settled into one of the folding chairs and pulled the binoculars from the hook on the makeshift railing. Murph curled up between the chairs, head on her paws, ears rotating. He didn't even question the fact that she'd used a ladder without hesitation. From here, the road sloped downhill toward the commercial district.

Houses and trees blocked most of the view, but he could make out sections of the city between gaps, and beyond them, the distant glow of lights that shouldn't have been burning this late. The Steel Soul Riders were still active. Hard to tell through the binoculars at this distance and with the tree cover, but the light was steady and widespread. They weren't just surviving over there. He lowered the binoculars and sat with that for a while, listening. The wind through the redwoods. An owl somewhere behind him.

Murph's steady breathing. The occasional creak of the house. No Eater cries. That was something, at least. They hadn't been a problem since they arrived, though the reason for that was unclear. The locals had rallied early on, but that alone didn't explain their absence. It was as if they'd been drawn elsewhere. One more thing to worry about. The sound of boots on the ladder pulled his attention away. A moment later, red hair appeared over the edge, followed by the rest of Signe.

She hauled herself onto the roof in one smooth motion. Enzo raised an eyebrow.

"Are you stalking me?" She dropped into the other folding chair, legs stretched out in front of her, and grinned.

"When I am, you'll never know." The grin softened.

"Frank said you were up here. How's Sumi?" This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

"Val's with her. Doc Hadley said she should recover." Signe nodded. She pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, looking out over the barricade toward the distant glow of the commercial district.

"Your aura's different again," she said after a while. Enzo glanced at her. She was looking at him sideways, chin resting on her knees. The mana synesthesia. She could see what others couldn't.

"Different how?"

"Fuller. There's more color now. Faint, but it's there." She tilted her head.

"You figured it out." It wasn't a question.

"Yeah." He set the binoculars down.

"You were right. The Guide had a lot to say about it once I confirmed it." Signe waited. She'd always been good at that. Pushing when it mattered, holding still when it didn't. Enzo told her what he'd learned. The manufactured genes. The combined mutation. The restricted affinities and the internal conversion mechanism. Earth becoming metal and crystal. He left out the mortality statistics and the side effects. Those were his to carry for now. She listened without interrupting, which was unusual for her.

"So you're basically a freak," she said when he finished.

"The Guide prefers 'Magus.'""I prefer 'freak.'" She smiled.

"Crystal and metal. That's very on-brand for you."

"And light." Her eyebrows rose.

"Really? Light too?"

"Seems like it."

"Huh." She rocked back in the chair.

"So what now?"

"Now I figure out what they do. Before I accidentally blow myself up again."

"Again?"

"Long story." Signe glanced at his cane.

"Seems there are a few of those I need to be caught up on." She stretched her legs out, crossed her ankles, and reached down to pat Murph.

"Starting with this beautiful girl. Since when did you have a dog?" Murph lifted her head, sniffed Signe's hand, then settled back down with a huff.

"Six months ago." Enzo smiled.

"Mom called to let me know Val was coming to stay with me for a while, and…" Signe laughed at that, head tipped back. The sound carried across the night before she caught herself.

"Oh, I bet you were just overjoyed at that."

"You know me too well."

"So Val just decided for both of you that you needed a slobber monster, huh?" Murph snapped around, looked right at Signe, and barked once. Signe froze, hand mid-pat, eyes widening. Enzo chuckled.

"That's what you get. Murph is a real lady. There's barely any slobber. Or fur on the couch." Murph settled back down with another huff.

"Did…" Signe hesitated. Turned to look at him.

"Did she?" She trailed off. He nodded.

"The blood rain changed her as well. She's been growing fast and seems to understand what we're saying. Unless I'm losing my mind, which I haven't ruled out yet." He reached over and patted Murph on the rump.

"Opens and closes doors, too." They sat in comfortable silence for a minute while Signe processed that. It was a familiar look. The patience was something she and Claire shared, and even wielded intentionally against him and Kenzo whenever they were in trouble. A howl echoed across the night from somewhere up the mountain. A second howl followed a moment later, further away. Murph's ears perked up. They both turned, but there was nothing to see.

Even during the daytime, the mountain wasn't visible through the trees from here. Signe turned back. She pulled her hair over one shoulder, twisting it absently.

"How's the leg, Enzo?" There it was. She'd held it for longer than he'd expected.

"It's a leg," he said.

"Still attached."

"That's not what I asked." He looked at her. Moonlight cast half her face in shadow. She wasn't pushing. She was just looking at him the way she used to when she knew he was deflecting and wanted him to know she knew.

"Sorry." He took a breath.

"I was leading the seventh pitch on a route in Yosemite. Nothing crazy, just a long day out. There was a party above us on the same wall, maybe two pitches higher." Signe's expression shifted. She knew where this was going.

"They knocked some chunks loose. Some the size of a football, maybe bigger. One clipped my cam on the way down and ripped it clean out. Freak accident." He rubbed his knee absently.

"Some hit me, too. I came off maybe fifteen feet above my next piece, pendulumed into the wall, and caught a ledge with my leg."

"Full compression?"

"Tibial plateau. Shattered the top of the joint." He shrugged.

"I stabilized myself, then search and rescue took it from there." Signe was quiet. Her fingers had stopped twisting her hair.

"You didn't tell me how bad it was when I called."

"It wasn't, not really." He caught the look on her face.

"I know, I know. But they stuck some plates and screws in during surgery, and my physio said six months to a year of careful therapy and I'd be back to climbing." She frowned.

"I'm hearing an Enzo-sized 'but' coming." Enzo nodded.

"Yeah." He hesitated. Didn't want to admit the next part.

"Therapy was going well. About five months in, the pain was mostly gone, and I had almost full range of motion. Doc said my progress was ahead of schedule, but not to push it." He trailed off. She waited.

"I thought I'd ease back into it. Went on a little hike. Picked a spot to do some easy bouldering."

"Enzo…"

"It was a low wall. Maybe twelve feet. Something I should have been able to do with my eyes closed." He sighed. It shouldn't be so easy to make the biggest mistake of one's life. There should be bright red warning signs or something at least.

"I was wrong. They fixed the bone again, but the damage to the cartilage was too much." Signe studied him for a long time. He waited for judgment. He'd earned it. The thought of admitting his stupidity to his family and friends had kept him from coming home for years. The shop and his work had made it easy to stay away. She didn't. Signe looked back out over the barricade, fingers twirling her hair again.

"Yeah," she whispered.

"That sounds like you." Enzo let out a breath that almost became a laugh.

"That's it?"

"What do you want me to say?" She glanced at him.

"That it was stupid?"

"Wasn't it?"

"Obviously." He snorted.

"But you already know that," she said.

"You've known it every day since. Me saying it wouldn't add anything." Enzo looked down at his cane, thumb rubbing along the worn curve of the handle.

"I thought if I told people, that's all they'd see. The accident was bad luck, but the second time was me." Signe was quiet for a moment.

"I think that's the part I'm sorry about," she said. He looked at her.

"Not that you didn't tell me." Her mouth pulled to one side.

"I mean, I would've liked to know. I would've liked to have been there. But I get why you didn't." She looked back toward the distant lights.

"I'm sorry you thought disappearing was easier than letting people see you after." Enzo swallowed. Signe reached down and scratched behind Murph's ear. Murph leaned into it with shameless approval.

"You always did everything too hard," she said.

"Climbing. Fighting. Studying when you actually bothered. Pretending not to care. Hiding, apparently."

"Very supportive."

"I'm being incredibly supportive." She gave him a sideways look.

"This is my compassionate voice."

"Terrifying."

"Good. Then it's working." A small smile tugged at his mouth despite himself. Signe let the silence settle again, easier this time.

"For what it's worth," she said, "I don't think less of you." He looked away.

"I know," he said. And somehow, he did. Not completely. Not enough to scrape the old shame out by the roots. But enough to sit there beside her in the dark and not reach for another joke. Not yet.

"Maybe you can fix it with magic." He glanced at her.

"I think so, too. I just don't know how yet." Signe smiled.

"That's fine. If anyone's stubborn enough to figure it out, it's you." Neither of them spoke for a while. Murph's ears twitched at every sound from the forest, but nothing bothered them. The distant lights of the Steel Soul Riders burned on. The owl called once more, then fell silent. When the next watch arrived, Signe climbed down first. She gave him a wave without looking back, then disappeared between the houses toward her parents' street. Enzo watched her go.

Then he handed the binoculars to the replacement, grabbed his cane, and made his way home. He tried not to think about how Murph climbed backward down the ladder after him.