Chapter 16

Jaune landed lightly on the crystal ground that seemed to make up the shared dreamscape today. He looked around, taking in the sights. The scene changed every night, so there was always something new to marvel at.

He went down to his knees to look into the mirrored Jaune in the ground. The pink crystals only distorted the colour, leaving the shape unchanged. He promptly stood up and looked away, remembering that he didn't like reflections.

And that he was here to escape nightmares, not reinforce them. Instead of looking at the ground, Jaune looked at the sky.

The boundless sky, speckled with stars so bright they burned at his eyes. Stars so big he felt like he could reach out and touch them. Suddenly the stars rearranged themselves. Coming together in twelve forms that started to scatter in all directions before he could make out what they represented.

Jaune watched, interested, as the distinct shapes disappeared, leaving a few stars and one big sun. Then a gigantic hole slowly opened up in the now darker sky and two creatures that resembled an animal that he believed to be a whale came out.

That is, if a whale was covered with crystals of different colours. Shiny crystals of different colours.

Crystals that the whales were seemingly shedding, sent flying in different directions. More than one coming at him.

Not interested to find out if the crystals were dangerous or not, Jaune forced himself to wake up.

From his position on the ground, he looked at the small window of Emanon's room in the inn. A few scant rays of light penetrated from the cracks of the shuttered window, signalling that it was about time to wake up.

He righted himself and put his sleeping bag away, and after muttering a quiet farewell to Emanon's still-sleepy form, slipped out of the inn.

It wasn't really the place he was going to stay at during his time in Brorusalem. It was homely enough, and Emanon was there as well. But he knew he could get better with his status as an adventurer. And the note he'd left the archer girl had specified the Adventurers Inn as a place to meet anyway.

/-/

"What do you mean you're full?!" Jaune exclaimed, looking around the unbelievably spacious inn. The place seemed big enough to house an army!

The bearded innkeeper shrugged. "Kid, I'm not happy about it either. It's the blasted tournament. Draws all the adventurers remotely near the city, causing the inn to become overfilled. It's a dereliction of my duty to not offer room for them. You'll just have to find some place else." The man looked sorry enough for Jaune to stop complaining.

It's not like the man could do anything about it anyway.

"What tournament?" Jaune asked. The man blinked in confusion, before seeming to decide that if Jaune was asking he really just didn't know.

"Well, you know that Brorusalem has an arena." The man looked at Jaune expectantly, causing the mage to nod. "Well, the heroes who fight there mostly stay the same, which is boring for them and for the audience." The man breathed in deeply. Maybe he wasn't used to talking that much.

"They got this brilliant idea that once a year, they invite all the heroes not from the city to come, and compete with the arena fighters in a tournament-style match-up." The man sized up Jaune, and apparently deciding he looked competent enough added, "There's even a bracket for people below the age of seventeen. Might be a good experience." The man laughed and shook his head. "Hell, you're dressed more professional than adventurers twice your age."

The man was right, that did sound interesting, his swordsmanship would definitely benefit as well. "When is this tournament exactly?" The innkeep held up one finger. "A day?" The man grinned and shook his head. "A week?" Jaune gasped. "You're telling me the inn is already full and the actual competition is a month away."

The man nodded, causing Jaune to curse. "Holy shit."

An elderly lady behind him slapped him over the head. "Watch your language young man."

She then turned to the innkeep and started discussing something with him, which gave Jaune the clear signal that he was neither wanted, nor needed. So he left.

Not before looking around, noting the people under seventeen. Scouting out the competition, if possible, was never a bad idea. He also noted that some of the them looked a bit, rough, for prospective arena fighters.

-/-

Jaune visited May again. After all, she wouldn't be able to find him in the Inn.

After entering her room he just sat down beside her bed and finally took a good look at her now-clean form.

Dark purple hair, greatly contrasting her white, sickly skin. One eye. One eye. Fuck.

"You look like you're suffering more than me, and I'm the one actually hurt," she said, drawing him out of his pity.

Her raspy voice just reminded him of her condition, though.

"Will you be fine?" he asked as he wrung his hands and crossed and uncrossed his legs. She glanced at him.

"I'm going to be perfectly fine in less than a week." She shook her head. "The healers really work miracles, when you actually consider it."

The silence returned until Jaune got fed up.

"What are were even supposed to talk about?!" he asked. More to himself than to her.

May answered nonetheless. "I don't know. You're the one who came here."

Jaune threw himself back in his chair, almost tipping over and arms flailing, making the archer laugh. "Well, you wanted to say something to me when your grandfather interrupted us. I left a note saying I'll be at the Adventurers Inn. But that place is full. And, and..." Jaune gesticulated wildly.

"You can stay with me, you know."

He looked at her oddly. "Really?"

May nodded, expression serious. "Really. I'll be released today; just be here and we can go home together." Home.

"What about your parents though?" Jaune asked. And before he even finished his sentence, he knew it had been the wrong thing to say. May's face grew dark and her eyes began to tear up?

Goddammit Jaune...

Jaune almost tripped over his tongue as he blurted out, "Forget I asked, I meant to say grandfather," causing May to once again start laughing quietly.

"You're weird," May said. And Jaune told her she was weird as well, in his head, that was. She laughed too much.

"A good kind of weird, I hope." He coughed and adjusted himself in his chair. Did they really need to make them so... uncomfortable?

She nodded, her eyes noticeably dropping. "Yeah, mm."

Jaune looked at her worryingly. "Are you feeling sleepy?"

The only answer he got was her nodding. Nodding off, that was.

She looked... serene in her sleep. Jaune didn't know what kind of relationship you had with people you saved the life of. But looking at her, he wanted to find out.

-/-

Jaune stepped into the Great Library of the City under the Sun that he had been eyeing since yesterday. A humongous building made out of sparkling marble, it was more a cathedral than a library.

When he stepped inside, however, his jaw dropped and he couldn't help but exclaim in amazement.

"Wow." The place was stacked with bookshelves that reached higher than some houses. Ladders were beside them so people could actually retrieve the books they wanted. The faint smell of old parchment in the air intermingled with dust motes, made visible by the rays of sunshine coming through the windows.

"It's pretty amazing, ain't it." A voice startled Jaune as he was looking at the sparse tables where people sat to read in peace. He eeped and spun around to find a slightly older looking boy with a shock of yellow hair, half of his face crisscrossed with what seemed to be burns.

The class above his head said mage, even if he wasn't dressed as one. His name was Sun Wukong.

Sun looked at him, causing Jaune to remember the words the boy had exclaimed from behind him.

"I never really imagined it was even possible to gather so many book in one place," Jaune said embarrassingly, probably outing himself as someone who lived in some village at the ass end of nowhere.

The monkey faunus smiled, and Jaune noted the yellow tail swinging behind him erratically, looking around wistfully.

"It's quite an amazing feat when you think about it. One of the few things that make it worth staying in this town. Except the bananas that is." Sun laughed at his own joke. "Though that might just change soon." He suddenly said more seriously.

Jaune wondered what made it not worth staying at this town, then remembered how mages seemed to be treated in general. Then his mind drifted off to the bananas. Were they really that good?

Sun continued on. "I can show you around you know." He gestured at the countless books surrounding them. "It can be pretty hard finding anything here. You need to learn the sorting system."

"I wouldn't want to bother you," Jaune answered, and it was true. Leading him around would take quite a while, and the other boy was here to read as well after all.

The blonde boy waved him off. "Let me, it's literally my job. I work here part-time, watching out so that no one takes books outside, and leading new people around."

Jaune shrugged. If it was literally his job, why not? "Show me the way then, oh wise one."

The monkey grinned and started raucously explaining the sorting system. "...And that's where all the porn is at..."

Once finished with the half-hour tour, Jaune had to admit he would probably have stumbled around confused for quite a while if he hadn't been told the system by which the books were sorted.

Someone should really invent a better one, honestly.

Waving his sunny-dispositioned (pun unintended) guide goodbye, he sat down at one of the tables with the books he'd sought out. Location-Based Behaviour of Mana, Swords and You, and Thus Dabbed Zarathustra.

The next time he even bothered to look up through one of the windows, the sun was already at its high point. Which meant he'd spent the last five hours reading. He looked down at the two still-unfinished books.

He sighed and put them back in their place. Next time when he visited, which was probably tomorrow, he would simply take them with him, policy of non-lending be damned.

Inventory would make the act easy and untraceable, which at the moment it wasn't, since Sun had seen him pick out the three books and would immediately know who was responsible if they went missing.

Honestly, it wasn't like he wouldn't return them. He'd finish them within a day, and bring them back quickly.

No one would notice.

One concept that he had read about that wouldn't leave his head was the fact that he could learn spells outside his specialization if he tried hard enough and understood enough about the behaviour of mana. Jaune had known this before, but now he had an actual manual available.

One such spell he wanted was the light spell, a cheap spell that made a light follow him around. Much less costly than having an arcane bolt active the entire time. Much brighter too.

As he went to pick up May, Jaune wondered how he should go around learning such a thing, since there were different ways. He entered the hospital, once again getting glared at, and found her already waiting for him at the reception, legs swinging from the slightly too tall chairs.

She looked up, the lack of an eye causing an involuntary flinch. By the sad look on her face, it was a flinch she'd noticed. Even if the empty socket was bandaged up, he still knew it was empty. And that was enough.

"Sorry," Jaune said as she stood up.

May shrugged and started walking slowly beside him, limping slightly. "Its fine, I guess." It wasn't though, was it?

"It isn't," Jaune said. He looked at her, really looked. She was pretty, a bit small for her age. And still pale, obviously sick.

He laid a hand on her shoulder. "I'm going to carry you," he said, then turned and bent his knees slightly, stretching his arms out backwards.

After a few moments of hesitation, she jumped onto the offered piggyback ride. She was dangerously light. Underweight? Or maybe he was just that strong. Jaune laughed at himself in his head and started walking.

May put her head on his shoulder, lazily watching people walk past and streets change before she finally commented, "You're pretty strong for a mage."

Weirdly enough the innocuous praise was a reminder that maybe his training was paying off. That maybe, one day, he would be strong enough. Strong enough to save people like May, before they were crippled. Strong enough that just the fact he existed would be enough to protect everybody he cared about.

"Thanks," he managed to choke out.

-/-

"And this is where you'll sleep!" said May cheerily, throwing the doors of a guest room open with more strength than one would give her credit for.

Jaune looked inside. It was quaint, bigger than any room he would get in an inn. The entire home was, well, homely. Lived in, in a nice way, not the dirty feeling you got from inns knowing that hundreds of people had inhabited the place where you slept.

"Thanks. I know to appreciate this." And he did, not only for the monetary aspects. It was very trusting to allow someone you didn't know into your home.

But people who belonged to one particular group had to hold together. In this case, he thought as he glanced at the word 'archer' hanging above May's head, it was that they were both of the hero class.

The fact he'd saved her probably had something to do with it as well.

She started walking through the spacious hallways after motioning for him to follow. They arrived in a kitchen.

It suddenly hit him how much he missed home. Something stung at his eyes. What was with him getting so sentimental today? Jaune watched, maybe too interested as May bent over to fish out a pot from... somewhere.

"You can go get your luggage from wherever you put it. I'll make us lunch," she mumbled, seemingly embroiled in making preparations to cook something.

"I don't have any," he said. After all, everything fit into his inventory.

May looked at him pityingly, causing Jaune to blink. Well, she probably thought he was poor now. It didn't really matter.

He took the wabji root out of her hand to disperse the moment. "Let me cut this for you." She looked at him doubtfully. Then shrugged, opening her mouth to speak, but broke off as Jaune pulled his sword out his inventory and started cutting.

She closed her mouth, turned around, and muttered something about mages that she probably didn't want him to hear.

Jaune was delegated to chopping things by May, and after a few minutes of preparing the food, they were done with the work. Now the soup, sauce, whatever it was only needed to cook over a small fire for a few hours without any input of the chefs.

Jaune turned to May. "Where are the training grounds, actually?" he asked.

"Well, which one do you want to go to? The city has several. One for melee, ranged, magic, and supporting classes," she answered.

Jaune, meanwhile, was wondering what supporting classes were. Probably classes that were meant to support others and not take to the fight themselves. It was fairly self-explanatory. Probably classes like healers, druids, curse mages, and such.

He mulled his decision over for a few moments.

"Melee, I want to go the melee training grounds," he decided, showing his sword to May, who seemed impressed.

"Wow, it must be hard learning swordsmanship as a mage. Do you have the skill?" she asked.

A question Jaune didn't want to answer. He was fairly sure it was very rude to ask people about what skills they had, or which level they were at. Well, unless you were going questing with them.

May seemed to notice this a second later herself. "Sorry, you don't have to answer that," she hastily added. She blushed and started limping towards the door.

Jaune rolled his eyes. "I have a skill for it if you must know." He swiftly overtook her limping pace and put a hand on her shoulder, stopping her in her tracks. "And you have another thing coming if you think I'm letting you limp halfway through the city at this time."

May's face lit up. "You know, I might have an idea."

-/-

"I'm not sure how to feel about this," Jaune commented as he pulled May through Brorusalem's winding streets in a small wagon. For one, he much preferred carrying her, body pressed against his back, her legs in his arms.

Where were those thoughts coming from? It was disturbing.

"What are those two doing?"

"Are her legs broken or-?"

He winced as he heard more versions of the same words from the crowd around them. That was the first thing he disliked about this.

The second thing was that it looked ridiculous.

"Turn right here!" Not that this seemed to bother May, who'd been shouting out directions cheerily the entire way.

Thankfully, after this turn, the training ground finally came into sight.

It was a wide area cordoned off by a wooden fence, and a rack of wooden swords and many other weapons were by the entrance. Jaune pulled May to the rack, took a sword from it, and left the way-too-cheery girl at the stands, a few other spectators also present.

Brorusalem, if possible, was even hotter than the area around Sanshu. Which meant he would probably die if he trained in his standard black garbs.

He faintly heard some whistling from the stands, which now that he looked closer, were mostly filled with young women. Had they watched him undress? Jaune asked himself, unsure about how he felt about that.

He started his training routine, trying to ignore the fact that apparently it was acceptable for perverts to watch heroes train.

It wasn't long before an older man came over to him. Another swordsman, not to ridicule him, as had sometimes happened at Sanshu, but to ask for a sparring match. It was a chance to try out the sword style Jain had suggested.

Jaune lost, but Berald, the swordsman, offered a few simple tips before leaving. Jaune blinked at the experience. "Well that was surprisingly helpful of him," he muttered to himself.

"Yeah, he often helps out younger swordsmen. He must have been specifically interested in you because you're a mage." Jaune jumped at the voice and spun around.

Only to find himself staring at a grinning Sun, the boy from the library.

Wasn't dimensional comprehension meant to warn him of this? Jaune scowled and narrowed his eyes at him. "Please don't do that," he said. Sun awkwardly shrugged at that.

"Sorry, I have a stealth skill, and it's good training. I justify it with the fact that sneaking up on people helps their situational awareness as well," he replied.

Jaune blinked. A stealth skill. On a mage. And what was a mage doing in the melee training area?

Looking at Sun's hands... apparently training his staff skills. It was a simple design, a stick of sturdy wood with a leather wrapping in some areas, which he presumed to be there for grip.

A mage who also trained his melee skills. Jaune couldn't help but grin. He just hoped he wouldn't beat the other boy to one-sidedly.

"Hey Sun." The boy looked at him curiously. "Wanna fight?"

-/-

Dodging a twirling strike of the staff, Jaune concluded that the beat down was in fact one-sided, just not the way he'd wished it to be. The other end of the staff came around and smacked him in the face.

Getting up after being thrown flat on his back for the third time since they'd started fighting, Jaune was reconsidering his life choices. Though taking his stance, made hard by the bruises that were gathering on his body, Jaune couldn't help but smile.

This was sparring. He'd missed it, not being able to partake in the pure unadulterated improvement and subsequent depression since parting with Jain.

Now if only he could actually use his magic to fight as well... but he couldn't. It was common courtesy not to while fighting in the melee training grounds. Nobody except his partner was really giving him any attention, and if he missed it could injure someone.

Raising magical skill proficiency was better done somewhere else.

Jaune raised a hand, halting Sun in his tracks. The blonde didn't even seem winded.

"I think I'm done with sword training for today. I'll be heading over to the mage training grounds now." Jaune looked at the staff-wielding boy.

Sun was a mage too. He had almost forgotten the fact over how profoundly he'd been beat down.

"Wanna come with me?" Jaune asked.

Sun's face darkened at the question, the burn scar on his face making the expression even more ugly. A great contrast to his usual disposition.

"Not really," Sun answered brusquely, then halted. "Sorry, that was rude of me," he added. He turned around and started walking away, but then spoke again. "I'm here most afternoons though, if you want to spar again." Sun waved over his shoulder with a strained smile and left, presumably to look for a different sparring partner.

Jaune gained a contemplative look.