78 Seeds and Scrolls (2/2)

Li closed his fist around the ordinary grain and focused. His eyes shut, and he tried to focus as much of his superhuman senses into his hearing. Of course, he wasn't physically hearing, but he realized that wanting to hear was a good trigger to activate his spiritual hearing.

Once again, Li frowned as his hearing dulled, like he was trying to make out sounds underwater. He could hear the beating coming from the grain, but it was garbled, distorted, and muted with static.

Opening his eyes, he said, ”Nothing. Too muted. Just like before.”

”Try again. I will assist you, this time.” Iona reached out her hands and wrapped them around Li's fist. Her hands felt cold, but that coldness sharpened his senses. ”Though I am not your root yet, spirits such as us are still capable of some level of communing, though I worry that your greatness may be far too much for me to meaningfully affect.”

Li closed his eyes and listened again, and this time, he could feel the chill resonating within him, through his spiritual hearing, numbing out the muting static. The sounds were still faint, but he could now make out a distinctive song echoing from within the kernel, from deep within that tiny little seed so full of potential to sprout life hundreds of times bigger than itself.

”I can hear it,” said Li, somewhat surprised. He opened his eyes and saw Iona trembling, her breath shaky. The dark bags under her eyes became accentuated, and it almost felt like she had gotten thinner than she already was.

”Do not mind me,” she said. ”For spirits to commune, the channels we open flow both ways. I thought you similar to Dagda, so I did not brace myself properly for the incomprehensible volume of power residing within you. It is entirely my mistake.”

”Take it easy.” He saw her reaching for his other hand, and he pulled back. ”If you want me to learn, then I can't be worrying whether you're going to drop dead on me.”

Iona took in a breath and rolled her wispy shoulders around. ”It is fine. I have adjusted. I could not bear it if my weakness held back your growth.”

Li read Iona's face, making out a nod of determination, her eyes set at a level and firm stare with him.

”Alright, I trust you. Let's try it out for the other, more important kernel at hand,” said Li.

A shuffle of various footsteps approached the stall.

”I'm-I'm not interrupting anything am I?”

Li looked to see Sylvie nearing the stall, Jeanne and Azhar behind her.

”Not at all,” said Li. He nodded to Iona, motioning with that nod to the worktable where there were various elixirs readied. ”Need something for your new hunt? Though I only have some basic healing stuff for now.”

Last night, when Li and Old Thane had seen Triple Threat off, they had talked about their next big adventure. As a gold-ranked team, they out-leveled most of the treats in Riviera now, so they headed down south, near Duvin, the land of mystical vines and fields, where a nasty Gigantopede had made a nest in one of the most profitable vineyards in Soleil.

The hunt was time sensitive, but Triple Threat had a couple of days to prepare in Riviera before they had to make their way down, and during that time, Li figured they would try to prepare as much as possible.

”I…suppose,” said Sylvie as she looked past Li, to Iona. ”You two seem to know each other well. Was that whole hand-holding thing an herbal extraction method of some sort?”

”You could say so,” said Li. He unclenched his fists and let the grain kernels drop on the counter. When he saw Sylvie's quick eyes track them, he said, ”It's an exercise for getting to know the plants you work with.”

Li saw as Sylvie visibly exhaled in relief.

”I'm assuming you haven't come here to buy some cheap [Restorations],” he said. ”Gigantopedes are no joke. You'll need some higher-ranked elixirs to guarantee you take it down safely.”

”That is correct,” said Sylvie as she regained her usual analytical and steely composure. She started to list off elixirs. ”[Truesight], [Flameward], [Antivenom], and [Stillness] are what we need.”

”Good choices.” Li jerked a thumb up where a wooden sign was nailed below the plaque that read Arboretum. ”But none of those are in our inventory. We don't have any of the ingredients to make them either.”

”Will you take special requests?” said Sylvie hopefully.

”For a commissioning fee, sure,” said Li. He wanted to drive a hard bargain because, though it wasn't the end of the world if he didn't make money, that didn't mean he would give up chances either. ”And the ingredients?”

”We can hunt them down in a few days at most.” Sylvie looked behind her, making sure her teammates were a distance aways, out of earshot.

”We have a deal, then. To be honest, I've been getting tired of making basic stuff.”

Sylvie nodded before leaning in, tip-toeing so that she could get closer to Li's height. She started to whisper, ”And the scrolls and manuals? What did you make of them?”

Li figured the conversation would come to this. As agreed upon, she had dropped the items she studied off of to Li so that he could decipher them. Considering he had Allspeak as one of his racial traits, that wasn't all too difficult. But what he found was quite interesting, to say the least.

”I read them. But telling you about what I found will take quite a while. Make sure to drop by the cottage tonight.”