Chapter 13 Missing
"We're almost there, I think." My voice came out choked, almost like I was crying.
We didn't say much on the way back. Neither of us had it in ourselves to talk about what just happened. It was probably an urgent topic, but we were going to talk about it with everyone else soon enough anyway. I just needed a few moments to breathe.
As we saw with Aria, mana really does have life-sustaining properties. Most of my wounds had at the very least clotted. I was still a long way away from being fully recovered, but I wouldn't be dying anytime soon.
I still couldn't bring myself to look at my left arm, though. I wasn't looking forward to everyone else's reactions to it either—especially Simon's.
The clearing was just in sight. Pressing against my cut arm, we reentered our base of operations. Immediately, a few eyes turned to check what had entered.
For a split second, their eyes looked relieved that it was just us. Maybe I just imagined that. Either way, that relief instantly transformed into concern as more people began to take notice of our condition.
"Oh my god!" That phrase, like a chorus, echoed from multiple voices before they began rushing over to us. Then, came the next set of typical questions.
"Are you guys alright?"
"What happened?"
"Are you okay?"
I couldn't even tell who said what; everyone just blended in.
"We were attacked." Nat was the one to give them an answer first.
Before anything else, they sat us down and helped us tend to our wounds. We didn't have any medical supplies, so the best we could do was clean them with water and wrap them up with extra bits of clothing people didn't need.
Some questions were asked throughout the process, but everyone waited till later to get a meaningful explanation.
When we were settled in as well as we could be, our friends gathered around us for the full story.
Nat and I explained everything that happened to us in turns. The details were excruciating to recount. When one of us had a hard time continuing, the other took over.
I pointed at my wounds while describing the fight, and spotlighted the behavior and power of the new roach.
We were awarded complete silence for the duration of our story. Their mouths may have been shut, but a myriad of emotions were expressed on their faces. Many of them cringed throughout our explanation only to form a hopeless expressions afterwards. Many of us hadn't adjusted to what we had already seen; no one was ready for more.
Once we finished, silence lingered for a moment longer. Suddenly, a sob broke out in the back of the crowd. Heads began turning toward the crying girl.
I recognized her slender build, straight brown hair, and bangs.
Emily.
The poor girl was probably overwhelmed by everything. She was always a bit fragile. Like most people, she had a visceral reaction to seeing Aria's charred body that I doubt she had recovered from. This must've been her breaking point.
A couple of people guided her away to comfort her.
Come to think of it, why hadn't I heard Simon once during my whole story? He'd have run to my side immediately and made a fuss throughout the whole story.
Growing uneasy, I asked. "Has anyone seen Simon?" Everyone paused and began looking around.
No sign of him.
Something was wrong.
I turned toward Simon's usual group. They too looked around confused. I centered my gaze around Andre, silently calling for him. We lived near each other, so I knew him best out of that group.
Catching my gaze, he walked up to me to tell me something. "Last I saw, he and Jessie left to go practice together. I haven't seen or heard from him since."
A knot formed in my stomach as I considered a horrible possibility. Andre must've had the same thought because his eyes widened. We stared at each other for a moment before Andre yelled for everyone to gather again.
"We think Simon and Jessie are in trouble. They both left for training and haven't come back yet." Andre bellowed out in a single breath.
After he finished, I continued. "They might have met those new roaches. We have to go look for them! Andre knows which way they went—who can help?"
I scanned the crowd. Heads were down; eyes looked everywhere but back at mine.
"Guys…"
My chest tightened. I knew what they were doing.
"Anyone…?"
They were all cowards.
"Jenny…" It was the voice of my close friend, Noah. "If Simon encountered the same kind of roach as you and Nat." He paused before continuing. "Then he's dead."
"You don't know that," I said in an angry sob.
"If we go looking for them and find those roaches, then more of us will get hurt; probably die."
No one else said anything, but I knew they agreed. They weren't planning on helping me.
I thought only to myself. How can I convince them to help me? How can I get them to value their lives? Why are they okay with letting this happen?
With that last thought, a small fury rose within me.
Looking up, I eyed the crowd of people. They all had looks of shame; no one was happy with their decision. It was then that what Noah told me really sank in.
I was asking them to die for people they were only, at best, friendly with. I was the reckless one—the one in love.
Ah, fuck it.
"I'm going. I'll go alone if I have to."
I understood why they couldn't go, but, even more so, understood why I wanted to. Nothing in this forest is going to stop a maiden in love. I cringed at my own thoughts but outwardly smiled anyway. I was resigned to this feeling; there was no point in being embarrassed about it.
I heard people speak but I zoned everyone out. They weren't going to stop me. Getting up, I walked past the group and headed to the forest.
Someone grabbed my hand. "Wait! Look at how hurt you are, Jenny! You're gonna die!" Noah gave a last-ditch effort to make me stay. Truly, I appreciated his concern, but my mind was made up.
"We're coming too." Andre stood in front of me, along with his two other friends. Ah, I guess not everyone was a coward. Simon had some good friends.
With that, Andre pointed toward the direction they'd gone, and we began to leave. More clamoring rang out behind me. This time Dwight was the one to reach out. With no more patience left, I ignored him and ran ahead. The chattering began to die down except for—two voices.
"Hey! Wait up!" Nat? I looked slightly behind me only to notice Nat and, once again, Dwight.
Puzzled, I asked them what they were doing. "I'm going to help you," Nat said as she caught up with me.
My emotions quickly changed into astonishment and then appreciation. Nat was just as injured as me; I didn't expect her to throw herself into more danger. "I owe you. You saved my life. Plus, I'm pretty strong, and you'll need some help."
Dwight immediately followed up. "I'll also help you." Now this was a real surprise.
"Not that I don't appreciate it, but why are you helping?" I asked him.
"Well, just like Nat, my mana is way more advanced than everyone else's. Plus, I'm not injured. I don't want anyone to die, and I can make a real difference if we run into any trouble. It was sorta a split-second decision, but I've decided to help."
I gave him a genuine smile before turning to assess the rest of our party. Simon's friends: Andre, Havi, and Sunny. I was sorta friends with Andre, but I didn't know much about Havi. He was really tall and seemed like a pretty cool guy.
Surprisingly, he along with Andre had reached stage 3 as well. I guess even without the samurai's guidance, these guys had figured out mana beforehand.
Now Sunny. I really didn't expect him to come along. Sunny was annoying, really weird, and I found him extremely unreliable. He wasn't very smart, and it cost me to work with him the few times I had to in the past. Honestly, I doubted if he could be of any help. Surprisingly, though, his mana wasn't half-bad. He wasn't too far from stage 3 at all—I'd say he was ahead of most people even. Maybe this forest really shaped him up. I certainly hoped so.
Andre stopped. "They said they were going somewhere around he—"
My trembling hands shot up to cover my mouth.
Just to the left of where we stopped lay a bloody battlefield. Red and purple stains were littered throughout the area; some on the grass, some on trees.
Roach blood wasn't red. All these injuries were from people.
Swallowing my nausea, I looked around some more. A couple roach corpses were strewn about, but no matter how much I looked, I couldn't find the one thing I was looking for. The one thing we should've noticed first.
"Where are their bodies?" Dwight said in a grim hush.
"Look around some more. Try and see if the fight went somewhere else," I said while looking around at everyone.
But if their bodies weren't here, maybe they had gotten away.
With rising hope, I followed the trail of bodies and blood to no avail. There were no signs of a migrating battle or a chase anywhere. The splatters and bodies were laid out almost randomly. It's like they were fighting but suddenly stopped before parting ways like old friends.
"Over here!" Havi's shout resounded through my ears. We quickly rushed over to him to see what he found.
"Look," he said, pointing to the ground. Drops of blood were streaked along the dirt and grass. It looked like just another stain.
"Why are you showing us this?" I asked him. "It's the same as everywhere else."
"This isn't what I wanted to show you." Walking forward, he beckoned us to follow him. After a bit, he stopped again. "Look." On the ground lay another splatter of blood.
"It's a trail," Dwight said from beside me.
"Let's follow it, as fast as we can!" As he said it, Andre continued forward, leaving no time for discussion. Not one to disagree with his urgency, I followed behind him causing the rest to come along as well.
As we followed the trail, the splatters of blood thinned and thinned. Eventually, we found ourselves unable to find any more.
"The trail ends here." Nat got up after searching one last time. "We've been all over, but we can't find or sense anything."
In a careful whisper, Dwight spoke from behind me. "Maybe it's time to go back."
I didn't say anything back, only turning around and giving him a look with my answer. We were not going back without knowing. If Simon died because I stopped looking for him, I'd never forgive myself.
"Just keep looking," I told the group with waning hope.
"I'll go check over there."
"I'll see if we missed something over there."
"We'll look around some more. Maybe there's something further out."
With that, the group dispersed; still in yelling distance if something appeared, but far enough away for me to be all alone.
I pondered what I should do. Should I go look for missed clues? Maybe search a little further out? Or maybe make a mad dash in some random direction and pray I find Simon.
I looked at the grass, my head feeling light from all the stress. I felt like lying down and crying, as well as running till my body gave out at the same time. I didn't know what to do. What more could I do? There has to be something.
I closed my eyes and tried sensing something, anything, but besides our group, there was nothing.
Mana was everywhere, even more abundant than air. It seeped into the ground, the trees; it was in everything, but it didn't belong to anyone. Ambient mana felt distinctly different from mana belonging to a sentient being.
I kept searching, hoping for something new to pop up. I couldn't even tell how far I could sense—just that it was farther than my arms could reach, but not as far as my eyesight.
This new form of sense was a complete mystery to me—just something that I could do from the moment I woke up. Was it the same for everyone? Was everyone's mana sense the same as mine? Could some people sense further?
Can I expand my range?
The thought shot like lightning throughout my body. It was a long shot, but I had nothing else. I had to improve. I had to figure out how.
I closed my eyes and began to focus. I sensed everything, the ambient mana, the mana of all of my friends. There were no changes. Nothing felt different; I couldn't feel if my senses were expanding or not. Would I even be able to tell if it did?
I sat down and adopted a meditating posture. This is how you usually improve a mystical sixth sense, right? It was the only idea I had.
Once again, I tried to sense as far as I could. And once again, nothing felt different. I could feel my friends, feel them shifting about, but nothing else.
What do I do? How do I do this?
My frustration began to grow. I had no idea what I was doing. Why wasn't this working? I took a deep breath to calm myself.
Getting angry won't help me solve this. In the first place I was just imitating what every piece of media that ever existed did in these situations. I had no good reason to think that would work here. I need to be more scientific.
Trial and error, right? That was how we learned. I guess I'd start with the most rudimentary idea of them all: cycling as much mana as I could. I filled my body with as much mana as I could. Breathing to help steady myself, I didn't let up.
I felt myself grow stronger and my natural senses sharpen. Beyond the strain of outputting this much mana, my body felt better than ever. But still, I sensed nothing new.
Nothing… new…
There was nothing new. But… It felt like more. Then I realized it. My sense had expanded. Immediately I reeled in my mana and relaxed my channel.
So what did this mean? My senses improved with mana density? The more I output, the more I could sense. Yeah, I could work with that. Still, that wasn't enough to find anything. I needed more. Could there be another way to better sense things?
I went over everything I knew about mana. None of what I was taught really stood out as being helpful. I mean, most of what the samurai told us was about efficient ways to use mana. We learned only one fundamental application, and that was channeling it into our bodies. There was nothing else we could do—
A lightbulb flashed in my head. There was something else we could do! It just felt so redundant and pointless that I didn't even consider it.
We could push mana outside our bodies. As far as I've observed so far, it did absolutely nothing. But maybe…
I channeled a bit of mana and pushed it out of me. Little by little, I began expelling bits of mana. Inside me, they felt like a stream, but outside, they felt more like individual motes or particles.
As I expelled more mana, I began to push it farther away from me. As I did this, I felt my connection to them get weaker and weaker. Eventually, I felt some of it disconnect from me completely and mix with the ambient mana. I decided to stop spreading my mana any further and just observe.
I stood with my eyes closed, focusing only on sensing mana. It worked. My range had expanded, but there was still nothing new.
I didn't lose heart this time. While experimenting, an idea had formed in my head. I didn't know why it worked like this, but after individually observing the motes of mana, I learned something.
My sense wasn't "evenly spread" so to speak. Within my overarching sphere of spread-out mana, the places where it was clumped closer together allowed me to sense further in that direction.
It was with this that I made two hypotheses. The first: A greater mana density boosted the sensory capability of that entire "cluster" of mana. The second: mana wasn't naturally spread to maximize sensory efficiency—meaning that keeping it in your body was a really non-optimal way to sense.
If every mote of mana had a vision cone representing how far it let me sense, a wider dispersion of mana would give me a wider sense, but a denser dispersion would let me sense farther in a specific direction.
The big idea, however, came from the fact these properties could be combined.
There was just one more thing I needed to test to know if my idea would work, but I decided to get the answer while simply doing it instead.
Pushing myself to my limit, I output as much mana as I could before blasting it in a concentrated tunnel behind me. As I thought, the distance I could push my mana was farther if I didn't spread it out in different directions. Maybe the density had something to do with it as well, but I didn't care.
It worked. My ability to sense mana was completely through the roof in that specific direction. I could even sense the camp.
Then, I began turning. Dragging my beam of mana with me, I did a full 360 while standing in place before ending my outpouring of mana and collapsing to my knees.
For that brief moment, I had become a mana radar.
Leaves rustled as footsteps made themselves apparent.
No doubt spurred by a sudden mana burst, everyone had come back.
"Jenny!" Dwight called out. "What happened?! Your mana was going crazy!"
While still on my knees, I turned to look at Dwight with a smile on my face.
"I know where they are."