47 – Not Yellow

He returned to Igrette, who was still lying down. He could see that the snow around her had shifted, though, and it was obvious that she had been sitting up, probably ready to come to his aid if he needed it. But in the end, he didn’t need it, and all she had done was sit up, so Jonny didn’t bring it up.

He told her about what happened, and she breathed a sigh of relief when he described the beast.

“A wolverine,” she said. “Solitary scavengers. We don’t have to worry about more of them, at least for now.”

“That was a wolverine?” asked Jonny.

“Yes. Relatives of badgers, but usually larger and stronger. Carnivores, but usually not hunters.”

“Huh.”

I thought that wolverines were yellow…

“Are you hurt anywhere?” asked Igrette.

“Just a little scraped up on my knuckles,” said Jonny. “But I’m fine. I told you, I’m strong. You don’t need to protect me. You just heal up, and I’ll keep us safe.”

He wished that he was as confident as he sounded.

“Alright,” she said, clearly not believing him.

Jonny gritted his teeth and turned away, determined to get back to his training. If he wasn’t strong enough yet, he would just have to become stronger. It was simple.

But it was not easy.

The rest of the day passed, and then the night, and the next day, and the next night, and while Jonny got marginally stronger with each passing day as his body adjusted to his mana, internal gravity continued to elude him.

Igrette improved, but only by a little. Under Jonny’s orders, she only ever got up to go to the bathroom, and spent the rest of her time laying on the stone table, absorbing mana and using it to heal. Jonny was glad that she was at least able to do that on her own, because he wouldn’t have known what to do otherwise, but he was also worried that even that little movement was worsening her health.

If it was, she didn’t tell him about it. She seemed resigned to her fate. She hadn’t given up entirely, but she acted as though her death was inevitable. Her time spent healing was not for her own survival. It was so she could fight one last time to protect Jonny when he needed it most. And despite Jonny repeatedly telling both her and himself otherwise, he was starting to have trouble believing it.

Every day that passed where he was unable to understand internal gravity magic was a day he knew could be Igrette’s last. If something he couldn’t handle tried to attack them, that would be it. He would try to fight it off and fail, and then Igrette would step in at the cost of her life.

Jonny grew more anxious with each passing day, despite how uneventful they were. Four days passed, and the only other magic beast they saw was the same cloud hawk, descending to feed on the frozen corpses of the deer and wolves. Jonny had grown accustomed to seeing it descend in a cloud of mist, and had even gone out to watch it a few times, just to take a mental break and let himself unwind between training sessions. It had been wary of him at first, but now it feasted before him without a care in the world, always taking a piece of meat with it as it left.

Its babies must be very hungry, he thought idle as he watched it fly away with yet another wolf head.

Half of both the wolf and deer corpses were entirely headless now, with the cloud hawk now returning multiple times per day for more. He knew it probably only took the heads because Igrette had conveniently severed them, and the full corpses were probably too big, but he also found himself thinking amusing thoughts about what its nest must look like. At this point, it could probably have made a nest out of the skulls if it really wanted to. And barring that, there had to be a pile of skulls all around at this point.

Wait, do they even form nests in trees?

He thought about it for a few seconds, then marked it down as another thing to ask Igrette. Unfortunately, as he had found out, she was not the internet and did not have an answer for every question, and sometimes, when she did have answers, they weren’t fun ones. For example, when she asked about whatever magic she used to move through the bedroom without making a sound, she confirmed that, unfortunately, it was external magic. On top of that, she didn’t know any proper stealth spells that relied on purely internal mana. If he wanted something like that, he would have to figure it out himself.

The list of things that he would have to figure out himself was ever-growing. So many things that Igrette knew about, or was even aware of, relied at least partially on external magic. Weapons were basically completely out of the question for him, since there was no material in the world that was strong enough on its own to stand up to even ordinarily infused steel, let alone the more mana-receptive metals, like mithril. His body would eventually be stronger by itself than any other material, and using a weapon would actually be weaker than just punching.