POV - Azra'il
The most relevant question of that morning was whether Lilia had made stew or whether fate had decided it was a turnip day.
This was, objectively, the most important question I had on my mind as I walked back from the waterfall with the particular satisfaction of someone who had spent hours cultivating and now had the moral right to eat something that was not roasted turnip.
〈Eos, probabilistic analysis of today's menu.〉
[Based on Lilia's purchasing pattern over the week and the ingredients available in the larder: 34% probability of meat stew, 28% probability of vegetable soup, 22% probability of turnip in some configuration, and 16% of something you will not be able to classify but will eat regardless.]
〈The 22% turnip probability is unacceptable.〉
[It is a statistical reality.]
〈I shall need to cultivate further to develop resistance to turnip.〉
[That is not how cultivation works.]
〈It should be.〉
The path back from the forest to the village had that particular quality of late mornings, the sunlight through the tree canopy making even the ordinary vegetation slightly more beautiful than it deserved to be.
I was processing the turnip question with the gravity it merited when I heard footsteps behind me.
I turned.
Rudeus was a few metres back with the expression of someone who had planned something and was discovering that the plan had failed before it had even begun.
"You were following me," I said.
"I was taking a walk."
"In the same direction as me."
"It is a coincidence."
"Rudeus." I looked at him with the patience of someone who has had this conversation in slightly different versions more times than they could count. "You were following me."
He abandoned the denial at the speed of someone who had calculated it was not worth the effort. "You disappear every morning for hours and you do not say what you are doing."
"Correct."
"That is irritating."
"Also correct."
He looked at me with the expression of someone waiting for an elaboration that was clearly not coming. Then, with the particular resignation of someone who had learnt when battles were lost before they began, he fell into step beside me.
We walked in silence for a few seconds.
"Will you tell me one day?" he said.
"Probably not."
"That is an honest answer at least."
"I am always honest."
"You are selectively honest, which is different."
I considered that. "That is a fair distinction."
The path left the forest and entered the edge of the village with that particular transition from dense vegetation to wooden houses and the smell of hearth smoke. The morning was advancing towards midday at the usual speed of time when you are thinking about something else.
"Do you think it will be stew today?" asked Rudeus.
〈He was also thinking about lunch.〉
[The compatibility between the two of you continues to surprise me.]
"34% probability," I said.
Rudeus looked at me. "How do you know?"
"Lilia's purchasing pattern."
He was quiet for a moment, processing that. "You monitor Lilia's purchasing pattern."
"Monitor is a strong word. I observe. There is a difference."
"They are the same—"
It was then that the shouting arrived.
Not adult shouting. Children's shouting, that particular pitch of young voices mixing cruelty and amusement in the way that only medieval village childhoods can produce with such efficiency.
Rudeus and I looked at each other.
We went to investigate.
We arrived at a beaten dirt path between open fields, one of the several that cut through the outskirts of the village.
There were four children, all between seven and nine years old judging by their relative sizes, arranged in a semicircle that pinned the victim against the edge of the path. The child crouching in the centre was clearly smaller.
The ground around her was damp with thrown mud. A small stone was rolling near her head.
The pattern was familiar in the way things repeated at sufficient scale become familiar: not because they were interesting, but because they were invariable.
The surrounding children were shouting words I had learnt to recognise as the standard inventory of provincial cruelty. Monster. Demon. Go away. You are not from here.
And then one of the children shouted "Superd" with the conviction of someone who believed entirely in what they were saying.
Beside me, Rudeus had gone still with that particular expression of someone recognising something they would have preferred not to recognise. I knew what he was seeing because I had seen the same thing in him. The isolated child, pursued, surrounded by something that had nothing to do with what she actually was.
He stepped forward.
I stepped forward too, slightly to the diagonal, so that we ended up side by side at the entrance to the situation.
The four children saw us.
The reaction was immediate and instructive.
Three of them looked at Rudeus with the quick assessment of children determining whether the newcomer was a threat or a potential ally. Then they looked at me.
And stopped.
There was a specific difference between how people looked at Rudeus and how they looked at me. Rudeus was the Greyrat boy, son of the knight Paul, a magic prodigy, essentially normal aside from the absurd talent. People saw him and processed him as a gifted child.
I was another category.
White hair. Blue eyes that shone in ways eyes should not shine. Skin too pale. The posture of someone who had never learnt to make themselves smaller for anyone else's comfort. And five years of accumulated village rumours, spread with the particular efficiency of small communities with free time and fertile imagination.
I heard the murmurs with the clarity of trained hearing.
"It's that strange child."
"My mother said not to go near her."
"My brother once saw her talking to herself in the forest."
"They say she is neither a girl nor a boy."
I stayed where I was and let the murmurs run their course.
〈Fascinating.〉 I processed with the neutral interest of an anthropologist. 〈Five years and I am already a local legend. In some lives it took me decades to reach that status.〉
[You have particularly striking physical characteristics for this world.]
〈That is one perspective.〉
One of the larger children, the one with the particular posture of someone accustomed to being the bravest in the group by comparison with the others, took half a step forward with his jaw slightly projected. "What do you want?"
"We were passing by," said Rudeus, in the reasonable tone of someone attempting to de-escalate.
"This is none of your business."
"The child on the ground seems to disagree," I said.
The comparatively brave child looked at me with the specific calculation of someone assessing whether I was the kind of threat worth confronting or the kind better left alone.
"She is a Superd monster," he said, with less conviction than he had had thirty seconds earlier. "She has green hair."
〈Green hair. Pale skin. Red eyes. Supposed Superd.〉 I processed the information with the particular weariness of someone who has seen this kind of reasoning in many different worlds. 〈Roxy mentioned that the most distinctive characteristic of the Superd was the red stone at the centre of their foreheads. I see no stone from here.〉
[Correct. The Superd are known for having green hair, but their primary distinguishing characteristic from other races is the red crystal located on their foreheads.]
〈Humanity truly never makes the effort to innovate.〉
[For historical context: you have witnessed versions of this same pattern in approximately 1,847 different civilisations across your cycles. The rate of originality is statistically close to zero.]
Rudeus had begun forming a water sphere in his palm with the fluency of something completely internalised, the soft glow of the mana visible to anyone paying attention. The children paid attention.
"You enjoy throwing stones at people smaller than yourselves," I said, looking at the group with the clinical interest of a naturalist observing species behaviour. "So you would not mind receiving the same treatment, correct? It would merely be consistency."
One of the children behind the ringleader took a step back.
I formed a water sphere similar to Rudeus's, held stable with the control that years of practice had refined. Then I directed intention into it, adjusting its form from within.
The sphere froze.
The sound was subtle. The result was not: a perfect sphere of ice, dense, with that quality of real weight that genuine ice has, unlike any imitation.
Rudeus looked at me with the expression of someone calculating trajectories and arriving at concerning conclusions. "Azra'il—"
I threw it.
Not at the children. The trajectory had been calculated with the precision of someone who had studied applied physics across enough worlds not to err by accident. The ice sphere passed half a metre from the ringleader at the speed particular to something thrown with real intent, and found the tree beside the path.
The impact produced a sound I would classify as satisfying.
The tree shook. Leaves fell. Where the sphere had struck the trunk there was now a considerable concave hole, the wood splintered around it with the specific evidence of force applied beyond what the material had been designed to receive.
The silence that followed had texture.
The four children were looking at the hole in the tree with the expressions of people who had just received information about consequences they had not calculated.
The child closest to the exit was the first to move. The other three followed immediately with the speed particular to priorities reorganised in real time.
Within fifteen seconds the path was empty except for the three of us.
"Cowards," I said, with the neutrality of someone making a factual observation. "I did not even use that much force."
Rudeus was looking at me with the expression he used when he could not decide whether he was impressed or concerned and had given up trying to choose.
[Corporeal Refinement has produced measurable results in throwing force.]
〈I noticed.〉
[I should note that the tree had no say in the matter.]
〈The tree will recover.〉
We approached the smaller child.
It was then that I saw clearly.
Short green hair partially covered in mud. Red eyes, with that particular intensity of something not common in any race I knew well in this world. And the ears: long, pointed, with that curvature belonging to no purely human race.
〈Interesting.〉 I revised the previous classification. 〈This appears to be an elf or half-elf. The combination of green hair with red eyes and long ears suggests some mixture of lineage that I do not yet have sufficient reference to classify precisely in this world.〉
[The hair and eye colouring has similar characteristics to what Roxy described. But without the stone at the centre of the forehead and with elven ears, the classification is ambiguous.]
〈Ambiguous is not Superd.〉
The child was watching us with the quick assessment of someone deciding whether the new situation was better or simply different from the previous one. A small graze on the left temple where a stone had struck. The posture of someone who had learnt that remaining still was sometimes safer than moving.
Rudeus stepped forward with the care of someone who did not want to startle her.
"Are you all right?" he said.
I looked at him. Then at the child. Then back at him.
"That is a strangely optimistic question," I said, "for someone who has just been pelted with stones and is covered in mud."
"Azra'il."
"I am assessing the situation."
Rudeus had raised his hand with his customary fluency and directed a simple healing spell with incantation at the graze on the child's temple. The familiar greenish light dissolved the dried blood and closed the skin with the efficiency that basic healing magic had on surface wounds.
The child remained completely still throughout the process with the expression of someone who had expected something different and did not know what to do with what they had received.
"Magic?" she asked, in the low voice of someone unsure whether the question was safe.
"Basic healing magic," said Rudeus, in the casual tone of someone describing something entirely ordinary. "Nothing complicated."
I had noted the particular care with which Rudeus was handling the situation. Not his general care with people in difficulty. Something additional, in the way he had when something had caught his attention in ways he preferred not to make obvious.
〈Chubby little pervert.〉
"What is your name?" I asked.
The child hesitated. Then: "Sylphy."
"Sylphy." I repeated the name with the attention of someone filing it away. "Do you live nearby?"
"At the edge of the village. With my father."
"Do those children do this often?" asked Rudeus, in the tone of someone who already knew the answer but wanted the confirmation.
Sylphy looked at the ground. Which was confirmation enough.
Sylphy raised her eyes to me with that continuing cautious assessment. "You are the knight Greyrat's daughter," she said. "The one with white hair."
"I am."
"The children were talking about you."
"Yes, I heard."
She hesitated. "You do not mind what they say?"
I considered the question with the gravity it deserved.
"I have been called many things in many places," I said. "Some of them inventive. Most not." I looked at her. "What people call you does not define what you are. It defines what they are capable of seeing. They are different things."
Sylphy looked at me for a moment with the expression of someone who had received something they had not expected and was still processing where to put it.
Rudeus was smiling with that smile he had when he thought I had done something good and knew I would not appreciate him remarking on it. I decided to ignore it pre-emptively.
"If those children come back," I said to Sylphy, with the practicality of someone conveying useful information, "you can come to the Greyrat house. It is the stone house near the main path. The two of us are there."
Sylphy looked from me to Rudeus. Then back to me.
Then, with the particular hesitation of someone unaccustomed to offers without an implicit cost: "Why?"
"Because those children will try again," I said. "And because you clearly did nothing to deserve the treatment you received." I stood up. "Those are sufficient reasons."
There was in Sylphy's expression that quality of someone recalibrating something internally. Not dramatically. Simply the particular adjustment of a perception that had encountered contradictory evidence.
She gave a slight nod and went on her way down the path with the walk of someone carrying something that had recently changed in weight.
Rudeus watched her leave.
"He seems like a shy boy," he said, thoughtfully.
I stopped to process the sentence.
〈It appears he does not know.〉
[Apparently not.]
I decided not to correct him. It was the kind of discovery that had more impact without external intervention.
"Let us go and have lunch," I said, turning in the direction of the house.
Rudeus followed. "Do you still think it will be stew?"
"34% probability."
"I am rooting for the 34%."
"So am I."
〈Eos, note that today was a productive day.〉
[Corporeal Refinement, dispersal of bullies, first contact with a child of indeterminate lineage, and the 34% stew probability still unresolved. Recorded as productive.]
〈Very good.〉