In the end Ella gathered up the staves.
Because of the wound on her right arm, the way she held them, some straight and some curved, was faintly ridiculous.
One end of the bundle rode high and the other low, as though the whole thing might spill at any moment.
Elos led Ella toward the training ground inside the castle, glancing back now and then, waiting for Ella to make a fool of herself.
As it happened, Ella's grip on them was firm, and in the end it came to nothing worse than a few near misses.
"Hoo... hoo..."
Setting the armful of staves down, Ella leaned against a fruit tree at the edge of the training ground, eyes shut, wiping the sweat off her face with her left hand.
Denied the spectacle, Elos was a little disappointed. She picked a straight staff up off the ground at random.
Standing at the edge of the training ground, she recited in her mind an incantation she had recited more times than she could count, and every magic element around her gathered in.
A little way off, Ella frowned. Perhaps she imagined it, but the air seemed considerably thinner.
"Tch. Still... so boring."
Elos kneaded the elements gathered in front of her carelessly, and glanced sideways at Ella behind her. That one still couldn't see magic elements, apparently.
Hardly surprising. She was only the daughter of a minor house; not being able to afford the magic academy was normal enough.
"Burst, brilliant meteor. Crimson lotus, bloom."
She leveled one end of the staff at a point some distance away, and the crimson fire elements drew together, took on substance, and became visible to the naked eye at last.
A crimson lotus of fire fell out of the air, then blew apart.
Searing light came with a wave of heat, and Ella's long hair was blown back. Against the tree trunk, the drowsiness on her face lifted a little.
"Magic, huh..."
Ella murmured it under her breath.
You borrow mana from the magic circuit, and use it to reach the magic elements of the natural world; mana and element meet, and the mage's handling of them produces whatever effect is wanted. That was the principle of magic.
Ella knew the principle. Never having attended an academy, she still couldn't use any.
"Haaawn."
Her eyelids lifted, then sagged. The excitement did not last long.
Seeing magic changed nothing. She couldn't learn it for the time being, Elos wouldn't teach her, and probably wouldn't send her to school either.
"Well? Do you understand the difference between an idiot like you and this lady now?"
The explosion in the distance had blown a crater nearly ten meters across into the training ground. Elos lowered the staff.
She folded her arms and looked at Ella with expectation.
The girl in her sights showed no admiration and no envy. She was simply leaning there, against that damned tree.
Ella was sitting on the ground with her eyes closed, one hand over her right shoulder.
Elos's brow twitched.
"Hey! Who said you could sleep!"
"Nn... well, I carried the things over, didn't I? You don't need me for anything anyway. What's wrong with resting a bit."
Ella's mouth flattened. She still couldn't rouse herself.
The fire in Elos flared higher. She knew perfectly well Ella was right, that there was nothing for her to help with, but being ignored made her furious all the same.
Elos wasn't clear on what exactly she felt. Well, she was only a child herself.
Her eyes moved, and Elos landed on another bad idea.
"Ahem! Ella, do you want to learn magic?"
"...?"
Ella roused herself slightly, though her body was still weak.
"I do."
She nodded, took the hand off her shoulder, and reached instead to touch the jade pendant at her waist.
She wanted to get strong, wanted to learn magic. Well, the protagonist of a shounen manga always learns a pile of impressive techniques, beats the enemy, saves the world and gets a happy ending, don't they? And then—then she could go home.
"Stand up. Come over here. I'll teach you."
Elos dropped her usual mocking tone; the way she spoke now was almost serious.
Ella hesitated, not knowing what had come over her. Instinct said there was absolutely something behind this.
But because of what "magic" promised, Ella forced her body up anyway.
She was so tired. Simply standing felt as though both legs would snap, and her knees creaked like rusted gears grinding against each other.
That was an illusion. Human knees do not make the sound of grinding metal.
One swaying step at a time, it took Ella several minutes to cross the ten-odd meters to Elos.
Her vision was blurred, people doubling, and her hands hung at her sides, pinching aimlessly at the hem of her skirt.
"Staff. Take it."
Elos threw her an expensive redwood staff set with a ruby.
Ella fumbled and caught it.
"And then? What do I do? Cough, cough..."
Ella was coughing violently.
Elos looked at the girl's sick, fragile state and felt, suddenly, a flicker of worry.
Should she let her off, just this once? The thought surfaced for the first time. Of course, Elos threw the wholly uncharacteristic notion aside soon enough.
"And then... you really are stupid!"
The seriousness dropped off her face, and a mocking smile pulled at the corner of her mouth.
"Cool off, moron."
She waved a hand and called an enormous ball of water into being above Ella's head. Elos hadn't used an attack spell. She was only playing a prank.
After the rushing sound of it, the ball struck the ground and burst apart.
For a moment Ella's fevered body was cold all the way through. The world went quiet, and there was nothing in her ears but her own heartbeat.
The dress clung to her, her long hair stuck wet against her skin, her vision mostly blocked by the fringe plastered across it. Ella's mouth opened.
The staff fell from her hand and rang against the ground, and Ella's lips pressed tight. Her face went whiter.
She should have known. Elos was never going to teach her magic out of kindness.
Because she wanted so badly to get strong, wanted so badly to become a real "protagonist," Ella had fallen for it anyway.
"Ha ha, you look like a drowned rat."
Elos stood to one side, laughing at her. There was no laughter underneath it.
She was not far from Ella, and she could see the pale face, and those thin lips pressed shut.
Ella said nothing at all. She only walked back toward the tree she had been leaning against.
So tired, so wretched, her body so cold and so hot. Which was it? Ella didn't know.
"Hey! Hey, where are you going?"
Elos looked at her retreating back.
"You dropped my birthday present. I haven't punished you for it yet."
The staff that had fallen from Ella's hand was Elos's present from her seventh birthday, and she had always meant to use it as a pretext for making things hard for her.
"I..."
Ella didn't turn around. Her mouth opened, and her body swayed once.
The wrongs piling up in her chest kept piling. Should she let it out? Could she? Ought she?
Asking herself over and over, Ella swayed a few times, and fainted again.
"Hey! Ella. Ella?!"
The pink-haired girl collapsed beside that solitary tree, and Elos ran to her.
After a brief hesitation, she put a hand to Ella's forehead.
It was scalding, like one of Elos's own fireballs—which was, of course, only a figure of speech.
Elos gathered the girl up, glanced back at the small mountain of staves heaped at the edge of the training ground, and carried Ella toward the keep.
"When she's unconscious she's actually well behaved, too."
The thought was far too strange, and thinking it now was frankly heartless. But Elos could not stop herself thinking it.