said, looking Bren over closely. “I will guard you, but don’t expect me to pamper you like a maid,” Phena added, her lip twitching slightly as if she wanted to smile.
Bren found one of the soldiers that stood outside of the house. “We had another person in our party that was injured,” Bren said, looking the man over closely. “Can you show us where he is being treated?”
The man didn’t say anything, instead he just bowed and started walking down the street. Bren and Phena quickly followed behind the man and found that his pace was more a light jog than a walk. They ended up at a small white building close to where the elder’s residence was.
The inside of the building smelled strongly of herbs and alcohol. The smell was so strong that it burned Bren’s nose and stung at his eyes. They found Cass in a small room sitting in a small white bed looking stoically out of the large window at a small tree that grew in the courtyard. The first thing that Bren noticed was that Cass no longer had his left arm, all that was there was a stump that stuck slightly past his shoulder covered in bandages.
Before Bren could think of anything to say, Phena walked over to the obviously sulking man and slapped him hard in the back of the head. “You only had a small wound like that, and we find you wasting your time in here instead of doing your duty.”
Cass gave Phena a smile that was somewhat warm yet sad at the same time. “How am I supposed to protect someone with only one arm?” Cass asked bitterly, not even noticing that Bren was even in the room. “How often do you even use your left hand to fight with?” Phena asked, giving Cass another hard smack. “If you lose an arm, just learn to fight twice as well with one.”
“She’s right,” Bren said, causing Cass to look at him for the first time since he had entered the room. “You fight better with one hand than most could hope with two and twenty extra years of training.”
“Well you might at least be able to best me now during training,” Cass said with a weak smile. “I know you all mean well, but I will need time, not only that, while they healed the worst of it, there is only so much magic can do. I will need to rest and wait for the skin to grow over the bone before I can do much of anything.”
“Well just don’t spend too much time sulking here even if the nurses are good looking,” Bren said with a smirk earning him an ugly look from Phena. “When you feel ready, I will be waiting on my friend and guard.” Bren noticed that Phena made no move to leave, and the air in the room had changed dramatically. “I think I will head back to our house. I have a lot to prepare for, and I would bet that I won’t get near as much time for it as I would like.”
Phena gave him a withering glare. “Phena why don’t you stay and make sure that my master guard doesn’t spend all his time wallowing in self-pity,” Bren added quickly.
“If you insist,” Phena said quickly, turning back to her new charge.
Not wanting to stay in the room any longer, Bren ran more than walked out of the medical building. As soon as he was outside, Bren slowed his pace to a meandering walk. The village was much the same as any other with the exception that everyone was dressed in the same dark clothing that covered them from head to toe. Most of the time they left the face covering off, but many of them left it up so that only their eyes showed. There was also the mountain that the village was built against. It was tall, stretching high into the sky, and the very top of the mountain was surrounded by thick dark clouds that even from a distance, Bren could tell were filled with a very strong concentration of magical energy.
It was odd, the sky above them was filled with more magic than Bren had ever felt in one place, but where they sat had only a small portion of that. The farther the clouds stretched, the closer they got to the ground and the weaker the flow of magic got. It was obvious to Bren the reason that mages