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“Was it scary, fighting so many servants at once?” asked Marcos.

“...A little.”

“Why did you have to fight them?” asked Ramira.

Dimas turned to his reaper, the blue wisp floating over his shoulder.

‘Don’t look at me,’ said Iziol. ‘If I tell the story, Ramira won’t hear it.’

Dimas’ face remained entirely unreadable as he turned back to his young audience. “...They were attacking a village. I stopped them.”

‘Wow,’ said Iziol. ‘I think they were hoping for a bit more detail.’

“...It was snowing.”

They waited in vain for him to continue.

“What a conversationalist,” said Diego Redwater. He lay on the couch across from Dimas with his hands behind his head.

Dimas had no retort.

Diego was a man of his early thirties, if appearance was to be trusted, sporting a simple blue t-shirt and gray shorts. He was one of the very few Rainlords with red hair, which he kept in short curls. His reaper hovered over him. Yangéra was her name, but Emiliana hadn’t heard her say a single word so far. Not that the reaper needed to. Diego was vocal enough for the both of them. “C’mon, Marcos. Why don’t you ask me about some of my great deeds? I’ve got all sorts of stories.”

Marcos smirked and looked back at Dimas. “Do you think you could beat up Diego?”

“...Certainly.”

Diego sat up. “Whoa, whoa, whoa...”

Their conversation gained a bit of vigor after that, but Emiliana had already lost interest and stopped listening. Instead, she just let her mind wander as she stared out across the waves in the dreary blue horizon.

Her thoughts drifted to the monster she saw before. Or hallucination. Or whatever that thing was. She’d asked both Chergoa and Shenado about it, but neither one could tell her anything. She was still trying to decide if she should ask someone else, trying to decide if she really wanted to know the answer.

The more troubling possibility had certainly crossed her mind. She might genuinely be going crazy. The mutation ability could do that, couldn’t it? She could have accidentally mutated a part of her brain when her power manifested. The horns on her face--two of them were right there on her forehead. It seemed entirely possible that they might have grown not just out from her skull but also into it. And if that was the case, then the horns could have done... something to her brain. Changed it. Broken it.