Chapter 35

Kneeling in front of Eve, I recoiled from the violent shaking of her head after I asked her whether she wants to go live amongst her people.

I was honestly quite surprised, I thought for sure that she would accept my proposal.

She was extremely distant the entire time she was with us.

Not that we blamed her for something she couldn't even control, since she couldn't communicate at all, merely using some gestures to convey certain simple things.

Whenever we were around her, it seemed that she was never quite comfortable, always a bit tense, though that was likely due to the residual trauma.

In the beginning we tried to find some way to communicate with her apart from some crude hand signs, and one way I thought of was telepathy, which was a domain of the arcane that was extraordinarily obscure. 

The main reason telepathy was such an obscure art, was due to the perceived unreliability of the message spell. Approximately one hundred and fifty years ago, the city of Gartenbarg fell into complete ruin due to just a few falsified messages, and because of the fact that the city practically exclusively relied on that spell for long distance communication.

Civil war broke out, and not long after, the entire metropolis was annihilated, now used as a cautionary tale for those that would put their trust in this sort of magic.

Due to all this, it is uncommon to find anything that could produce the same results that a message spell could.

We tried to find any magical item that could allow for someone to commune with others, but that quickly proved to be a fruitless endeavor.

No matter where we looked, we couldn't find an item that matched our specifications, that being, communication without speaking, and being able to be used by basically anyone.

We found a few artifacts that would allow for telepathy, however all of them required a degree of spellcasting ability, and Eve just didn't qualify for any of them.

So, as a last resort, we turned inwards instead, turned to Verica.

We didn't want to since all knew that she herself held a high level of reservation and paranoia concerning the message spell.

Like all mages she was taught from a young age to never rely on the message spell, and was repeatedly told of the tragedy of the Voiceless City, the catalyst for the distrust for mental communication spells.

That is why she herself has never learned that spell, nor any spell aligned with it.

So, despite knowing of her qualms about this, we asked her to craft a spell that would allow for all of this, since at first we asked her to learn the message spell.

But, she adamantly refused, so we shifted our approach, instead feeding into her pride as a prodigious spellcrafter, we asked her to make a spell that could be used in place of the message spell, to surpass the past.

At the start she wasn't so sure, but it didn't take long for the researcher inside her to take over, and she became obsessed over the development of this spell.

Usually, for a spell of this caliber, it would only take a few weeks to complete the spell, however, this was in a realm she had never studied in.

She had actively avoided looking into this domain, deeming it as largely unnecessary, that the risks far outweigh the rewards.

But now, nearly two months since she began spellcrafting, she wasn't nearly done, due to the previously listed reasons, and the fact that she is primarily an elementalist, an elemental wizard.

Alas, we had already decided to bring her back, but we had lacked the foresight to foresee one more issue.

We had forgotten to account for what Eve wanted.

It was ever so easy to as well, since she couldn't speak, so most of the time she just agreed with what we were saying, but deep beneath the fear and trauma, laid someone so incredibly determined that it would give me pause.

That is what led us to this situation, with Eve before, not knowing what to say.

She just looked at me, with fire in her eyes, as she stepped towards, putting one of her small feet in front of another, without hesitation.

This also surprised me a bit, since she never initiated any sort of physical closeness, usually it was us that did so, whenever trying to comfort her.

I thought that she would stop, as I felt small trembles in her limbs, and teardrops built up in her eyes, but she never did, extending her arms forth.

She wrapped her slim arms around me, hugging me with all her meager strength, burying her face into my chest, reaching that level due to me being on my knees.

She shook with such emotion, that I feared that she was having a heart attack, as she gripped the back of my shirt with her tender hands.

Feeling wetness where her head made contact with me, I just wasn't sure how to respond.

But, instinctively, without me noticing, my arms started wrapping around her as well, reciprocating her gesture on their own.

I felt her go still, the burden of what she had done lifted from her.

I wanted to speak up, to tell her that she couldn't stay, that despite our desires, she would have to leave us, the ones who had liberated her.

And in her eyes, were practically her whole world.

I wanted to tell her all of this.

But.

For now. 

This was fine.