Since June had already located him, he entered the room to join them in the drawing room.
"Am I interrupting sothing?" he asked.
"No," June said.
At the sa ti, the other person responded, "Yes." Andryl wore an annoyed expression, studying Warden as if questioning who this guy was. Finding Warden to be nothing to be worried about, he turned to June.
"We are finished here, Andryl," June stated as she stood up. "Now if you leave to my appointnt now."
"You are not making the right call," the elf guy said as he stood up reluctantly. "I will talk to you later."
Warden watched him leave and turned to her. "What's his deal?"
June shook her head, offering no explanation. "Sit down. I will make so tea."
"I don't need anything," Warden said.
"But I do," she replied and hurried to the kitchen. Perhaps she thought he might ask uncomfortable questions, so she quickly excused herself. Warden sighed and waited for her to return. He was curious with a burning question about what it was all about, but he did not press when she returned with the beverage.
He sipped his tea, silently studying her face. "Are you leaving?" he asked.
"No," June said firmly and instantly. "I'm not going anywhere."
"That's a relief," Warden said as he slumped back on the couch, visibly relieved.
June gave him a look but remained silent for a while, not even asking why he was here.
Obviously, Warden ca with the excuse of instructing her on Runesmithing, but before he could even get to that, she opened her mouth to say:
"I'm not in the mood for more training today."
"That's fine," Warden said. "You haven't had dinner yet, right? Just relax here a bit, I'll make you sothing nice."
"No, there's no need," June tried to argue, attempting to stand up, but Warden held her shoulder and pushed her back onto the couch.
"I've got this," he reassured her. "Just give so ti."
Warden quickly surveyed the kitchen, searching for the remaining ingredients. Considering she had cooked non-stop for him a couple of days ago with various nutritious and spiritually rich dishes, there wasn't much left. There were only leftovers, like red potatoes, cabbage, and other vegetable, along with eggs. Of course, he found flour and rice too.
After a few seconds of deliberation, he settled on vegetable fried rice.
A couple of minutes later, June entered the kitchen, bored being alone in the drawing room. By the ti, he had cut all the vegetables into small pieces, so he asked her to just watch from the background. Warden moved around the kitchen with finesse and an unknown familiarity.
It did not even take half an hour when the fragrance of the vegetable fried rice wafted out all around the kitchen. June helped set up the dining area, not that it was anything significant.
"You know," June said after a while, "you don't give the vibe of a ruthless barbarian in the kitchen."
"Is that what I look like outside?" Warden asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Kind of," June said. "With your no-nonsense temperant and cold personality with the students, that's pretty much how they were describing you.
Warden groaned audbily.
"You're becoming more and more popular in the Academy," June laughed, "though infamous might be the right word for it."
"I don't give the vibe of a well-read person, do I?" Even though he felt like an intellectually well-educated person inside.
June's smile was an answer enough.
"I still think you guys give too much leeway to the students," Warden said. "Anyway, enough about that. I am going on a dungeon dive with Jason tomorrow. It will probably take a whole day more to get back."
"Already," June sighed. "I thought you were going to take a break for the ti being."
"I am completely fine," Warden said. "The healer healed whatever was wrong, and I don't feel anything wrong within myself. Besides, I feel my attributes are the lowest among the combat instructors; it is about ti I rectified that."
Obviously, he was planning on using the newfound power he mastered and becoming tuned with that as well.
"I guess it's alright, but I hope you go there prepared."
Warden nodded, though he would leave all the preparation to Jason. After all, it was Jason's dream to make a guild leader and claim honour and everything else. He should be ready to take those responsibilities in full stride.
But before that... Warden studied June. There seed to be an invisible weight on her shoulder, dragging her proud figure down since that elf guy ca.
"Hey June, I know I am not the most brilliant person to take advice from, or if I can even give any useful advice, but you know you can talk to , right?" Warden said softly. "Sotis I think all you need is your voice heard."
They ate in awkward silence, asking common questions about the academy and students. But even after they had finished the al, they had their bottom remained arrested on the seat. Finally, it was June who decided to open her lips.
"There was a big accident when I was young," she said. "It had killed a lot of our kins, and severely injured ."
Warden listened to her because it was all that needed.
"Back then, I was very new to my empathic power, and sothing happened that overloaded my mind with…"
"Trauma," Warden said, trying to help as she looked horrendously out of place during her narration.
"Sothing like that," she sighed. "That event scarred my psyche, and almost broke my mind, leaving comatose for years. I sohow was awake in my mind the whole ti, though. perhaps, it was one of the quirks of being a mind mage. On our side world, it was about 15 years, but it felt far longer considering ti flows differently in our consciousness.
"Anyway, in that accident, I took so drastic steps to train my mind to heal my mind and my psyche. I was very young and probably didn't know what I was doing. When I ca out of my comatose, I found most of my empathic power was gone, mostly related to emotions... Thankfully, I had my emotions... though I feared I could barely be called a mind mage with my path broken."
Warden nodded slowly, taking her palms into his. He clasped them softly, as if trying to reassure her, or simply giving the warmth of another person she could talk to. He finally understood why she didn't use her empathic power at all, other than for common telepathic ssages and mind attacks.
Honestly, it should be impossible to do just that, as empathic powers tend to encompass everything while performing a single task. It takes serious self-regulation at the very minute to have this kind of effect. She probably had worked really hard in her comatose state, even though her trauma was far from being healed.
From what she said, it looks like she might have blocked it all, instead of reflecting on it...
"Since then, I was deviating from my actual path of a mind mage," June said. "After waking up from my comatose stage, I spent a year or two in the Elven Academy as well as the kingdom and finally decided to see the world for myself. The elders and others did not bother all that much since then, thinking I was only a disappointnt in my family's na.
It just irritates how they can co back now and tell they can fix it."
"What about your family?" Warden asked. "Your father?"
"He went missing during the incident," she said, biting her lips. "The elders have already announced his death and completed his cremation even without his body."
"The accident that did all this," Warden asked hesitantly. "What..."
"I don't know what happened," June said. After closing her eyes for a while, she added hesitantly, "I fear I might have sealed those mories from my consciousness. All I learned was that it was a Calamity that attacked."
Warden sucked in a deep breath. he had learned tidbits about what these calamities were. Apparently, they were the greatest threat to this realm, all the taint, the cursed creatures, the fiends, they were the source of it. In ancient records, there were four of them, but only four of them lived now.
They say if the four of them worked together; they were enough to level the entire realm, and nobody strong enough would be there to stop them.
"They want to fix you?" Warden said. At the sa ti, he felt how wrong that sounded, as if she had anything wrong to be fixed. And as if trauma could just be fixed with treasures.
June smiled ruefully.
It was tragically funny how he was deprived of all his mories, and there she was, having sealed a part of her mories, most probably the life-changing mories of her life. Obviously, Warden could not judge her for not overcoming trauma. He had no place to say anything about that, and neither did the elf elders, nor Andryl.
"On second thought, perhaps I can use so brain-racking runesmithing to calibrate my mind off things," June said after they cleaned the kitchen and the dishes.
"Fine by ," Warden said. "Perhaps I'll show you sothing new today."
"You know I'm not a baby that you need to coddle up," she said as they returned to the drawing room.
"Of course not, you're a big girl," Warden laughed, "ready to beco the mother of a baby herself."
Their runesmithing session went on for a long ti, but nobody complained has hours passed by in minutes. In the end, Warden simply stayed the night at her quarters again.
____________
Happy New Year!!!!
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