Chapter Text
Laios
"Marcille, how are you feeling?" Laios asked Marcille almost imidiatly after setting her down.
The elf was sitting proped up against a wall. Her face was pale and she was breathing heavily. There was blood on her left thigh and her right hand hung limply.
"I stopped the bleeding in my leg, but I choose to conserve my remaining mana, as I am low on both mana and blood. My arm is probably broken and I will have some bruising. Ears are still ringing from the explosion. In other words situation normal." She stated in a matter of fact tone that reminded Laios of millitary reports. After a moment she spoke again sounding somewhat frustrated "Unfortunately we don´t have any mana herbs or a second spellcaster."
Her words, while not aimed at him, made Laios really wish he paid better attention when Falin tried to teach him healing magic.
"I am sorry." Marcille broke Laios out of his musings. While Laios usually found it difficult to notice how people around him felt unless they made it obvious, Marcille´s ears provided a useful clue when it came to the elf (it´s how Laios knew that she disliked the idea of eating monsters, but liked the taste of Senshi´s meals). Right now they were lowered, meaning, she felt pretty bad about what happened.
"If anybody should be sorry, it should be me." He replied. "I failed to catch you. You should probably lie down and rest for a bit."
"I need to make a sling for my arm first. Do you have a piece of cloth I could use?" Marcille asked.
"I´ll fetch you something, but I think it would be more practical if I tied it, instead of you doing it yourself." Perhaps Laios was lying to himself, but it seemed that Marcille´s mood ever so slightly slightly improved during their short conversation.
Marcille
Few Moments Ago
Marcille wasn´t quite sure what was the issue was. It´s not like she was getting naked or doing anything indecent. While she did apreciate their gesture, it made washing herself a bit ankward. Maybe her sense of privacy was oblitarated by living for several years in a tightly packed cabin. She tried to think how would her old self react and felt a bit relieved to realise that the Marcille of the past would act little diferent in the current situation.
This would probably be a lot less ankward if she still had female squadmates, who could watch her back while she washed herself. The (half-)elf tried not resent Namari and Shuro for leaving at such a critical moment. She understood their reasoning, or at least tried to. She had no reason to be as angry about it as she was. She wasn´t very close with either of them and niether of them were particularly close to Falin either, it shouldn´t feel this personal. Marcille was self aware to know why. Rationaly she knew this was different, then what happened to her, but it felt like being left behind all over again.
And she was done. She should have felt refreshed, but instead she was just angry at her former squadmates. It felt really tempting to just punch the water in front of her. Instead she started putting her clothes back on, starting by the protective vest and then her shirt.
As she dressed herself, she noticed Chillchuck was waking up Laios already. Good, the sooner they got on the move again, the better. Their party still had a lot of ground to cover. The half-foot returned to ask if she finished, almost exactly after she did.
There was some boiling water left in the pot. Marcille disabled the magical circle and quickly dumped the water where she took it from. She started to turn around, but then she noticed an odd sound. Imidiatly, she turned back, just in time to see an undine preparing an attack. She reached for a staff to disperse it with an explosion only to realize that she doesn´t have it with her. While she could cast with her hands, her distraction cost her enough time that she had to dodge instead.
While an undine could fire an inacurate many directional attack, it primarly used a single attack traveling in a straight line. If you could see the direction from which it was launched, you could avoid it by dodging to the side.
It was behind her now and prepared to attack again. Not having the time to cast, she dove to her side, towards the pool in the middle.
The cold hit her suddenly. She needed to get to the surface and quickly. The moment she reached the surface she casted the waterwalking spell. She could vaguely hear Senshi in Chilchuck talking through her water clogged ears.
Almost imediatly the undine attacked once again. This time she was ready, dispersing it with a blast, but she doubted that killed it.
This was bad, she was a pretty far from shore. Facing an undine on a shore was difficult, facing it on water water, where she couldn´t see where it was, was almost impossible. She will have to make a break for it.
She noticed her party members on the shore. She had to warn them. "The spell has worn of!" she screamed as she ran towards them.
Suddenly pain exploded in her left thigh. The wound caused Marcille to fall towards thr surface. She made it barely halfway to the shore. She was a sitting duck. Somebody screamed something, but Marcille wasn´t paying attention.
The undine surfaced again allowing her to disperse it with another explosion. Maybe that brough her some time, but the next attack was likely to kill her. Even if it didn´t, without Ambrosia, she did lack the accuracy to hit or the mana effciency to be able to keep dispersing it like this, she was runnig low as it was. If she died on the water, there was almost no chance of her corpse being retrieved, before her spell run out. Even know, when it was a real possibility, the thought of dying pernamently worried her less, then it probably should.
There was, she realized, only one way she could reach the shore. She needed to angle the spell correctly, as well as estimate the nescessary power and distance. Both too much and too little meant an almost certain death. As she started channeling her mana, she braced herself. This was going to hurt.
The blast went of beneath the water, the shockwave sending the (half-)elf through the air. Next thing Marcille knew, her right arm was in pain and her ears rung horribly. There was somene speaking, but she could not hear what they were saying. Everything was incredibly bright. Somebody was carrying her somewhere.
The world stopped moving. The ringing was subsiding. Her arm still hurt. She probably had a broken ulna, but she managed to cast a spell to stop the bleeding. The squad leader was asking her something, she answered mostly on instinct. But why did he look like a tallman? And why did he look like exactly like Laios? Wait, that was Laios. She should probably apologise, she messed up and put Falin´s rescue in jeopardy.
Senshi
After their mage disturbed the undine, Laios called for a party meeting, to discuss how to proceed next. Well, it was mostly the rest of the party that was having a discussion, while Senshi was grilling. He still kept an ear out, in case he he could help, but magic was outside of his realm of expertise.
Marcille was still siting against the wall, where Laios put her after their retreat from the water spirit. Despite being in pain her face remained mostly impasive. Marcille was probably the party member Senshi was the least familiar with. She did fit the "aloof elf" stereotype in some ways, keeping her distance from rest of the party, possibly even more so then Chillchuck. That was not to say that she didn´t care for her party members. Even if you ignored, the fact she was taking part in a rescue mission of a party member, her worry for Laios, when he got the parasite was quite noticable.
The elf put down her empty cup. "The issue is that I don´t have enough mana to both heal myself and fight the undine." She explained as Laios to poured her more tea.
"Could you even beat it in your current state?" Questioned Chillchuck.
Marcille finished sipping her drink and aswered. "If we figure out a way to keep it from retreating into the pool, I should be able to destroy it, but afterwards I doubt that I could cast much more then the waterwalking spell."
"Could you use the trick we used against the kraken again?" Asked the half-foot, as Senshi gave him a piece of Kelpie round steak, he just cooked.
It was a bit stringy, but good, even if the taste (not quite like a horse) brough back some uncomfortable memories.
While Laios and Chilchuck ate, the mage gave her answer. "I would have to get close for long enough to cast the spell. I was considering covering the water with oil and setting it on fire, but I doubt we have enough oil to cover the whole pool." Senshi nodded in agreement, that would probably require a whole barrel of it and there weren´t many fire traps on this level, so it was unlikely there would be any nearby. The liver was almost ready, he noted.
"Alternatively, we could try making a break for it across the solid ground, I should have enough mana to keep it supressed, even if I heal my leg..." Marcille continued. "...But if one of us gets hit, I can´t help them, even if they make it to the other side."
As Senshi shared the next round of Kelpie meat, Laios spoke. "So if I understand correctly, we go with either of these options you wouldn´t have enough mana to heal yourself, right Marcille?
The elf in question finished chewing her piece of liver before she answered. "If I grit my teeth and use my staff for support, I should be able to keep up with our usual pace."
"There is no point in running yourself ragged Marcille." The tallman replied. "Even if we reach the dragon at the same speed, I doubt we can beat it without your magic, the same goes for ressurecting Falin."
"He is right." Senshi agreed. The next few moments past in silence as they ate. Marcille chewed on the liver without much enthusiasm. Chilchuck occasionally looking at the map. The flank was much more tender, then the round stake and the fat gave it some sweetness.
"How does it look?" Laios asked, looking over the locksmith´s shoulder (or more accuarately his head).
"Two more days, if we go around" Answered Chillchuck.
"Would then be enough to regain your mana?" Asked Laios before taking a bite of tender loin. Senshi did the same, it was even softer, melting in his mouth.
The elf seemed to think about a moment, before replying. "Assuming that, I won´t strain myself too much on the way, I would be at least capable of participating in the battle, but not at my full capacity."
An idea flashed through Senshi´s mind. "If, not straining yourself would help you with regaining mana why not just rest?"
"I will still have to face the undine afterwards, which will cost me additional mana. For it to be the more efective option, I would have to rest for two or three days." Marcille´s ears dropped slightly further. "Even a single day can mean the difference between being able to ressurect Falin or not."
She took another peice of kelpie liver, throughtly chewing, before washing it down with more tea, while Senshi decided to try the tail. It was a bit tough to chew, but not bad. The flavour was unusual. He decided to save the tail meat for a soup.
"She seems to be a bit better." Laios noted and Senshi agreed. She did look much less pale now.
"Liver truly does wonders." noted Chillchuk, before Marcille corrected him. "It´s probably the fluids I drank, as those absorb much quicker then the nutriens." Senshi guessed it was a good sign. She had a bit of a habit to share her knowledge on any topic, sh was knowledgeable in when they encountered it. Like how on the second floor she explained that decapitating a mandrake, before harvesting it would cause it to loose value.
"If only there was also a meat that recovers mana." Said Laios with his mouth full of grilled onion.
"Why did we have to stuff the basilisk with mana herbs?" Groaned Chilchuck in response.
Before Senshi could defend his decision, Marcille jumped back into the discussion. "Those herbs did belong to Senshi, so their use was up to him, even if the way he used them was somewhat wasteful." She paused to drink. "I would have still tried to get him to use them more sparingly, but I was preocupied at the time with making sure Fionil´s friend doesn´t die from the venom." Senshi was reminded of an argument he had with her after the roasted basilisk. It didn´t help at the time, that Marcille might already not have had the highest opinion of him after he interupted her against those plant monsters.
Maybe it was different on the surface, but as far as he knew, for Marcille food had a single purpose: to keep her alive and able to continue dungeoning. It wasn´t that she didn´t apreciate the value of proper nutrition, she simply did not care about the enjoying the food she ate. Despite that, she very much did apreciate Senshi´s cooking and clearly not just for it´s nutritional value. While it was subtle, he could see that she liked eating it and her commentary on the food he made showed her enjoyment as well. It was a strange contradiction.
He was disturbed from his musings by the mage herself. "It´s not there isn´t mana in meat. Kelpies probably have a lot of mana, considering their abilities. The issue is that, the mana is distributed more or less equily throughout their whole body and starts to evaporate once they die." She commented on Laios´s earlier words.
"Wouldn´t it be possible to somehow extract the mana from the meat?" Wondered Senshi aloud.
Marcille seemed to be in thought as Laios helped her lie down on her bedroll. "As far as I know there isn´t, but this does give me an idea..."
Before she could say more, Chilchuck interupted her "I hear foosteps. A group of maybe five. They are armed too. And they noticed as well. They´re coming closer."
"I will tell you more later." Marcille said pulling her hood over her head. "This is a conversation, that should be held in private."
While it may have flown over their party leader´s head, to Senshi that sounded rather sketchy and going by the half-foot´s reaction, Chilchuck thought the same. There was however, no time to dwell on it further, the other party was aproaching.