Dark Divide ✓ [WLW]

Chapter Five - The Patience of Peace

──────⊱⁜⊰──────

𝐕𝐀𝐑𝐄𝐈𝐀 𝐌𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐇𝐀𝐕𝐄 𝐇𝐀𝐃 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐀𝐁𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘 𝐓𝐎 𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐄 𝐔𝐏 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐒, but she was not good at making plans. Evylyn was quickly learning that.

"Wouldn't they recognize me immediately?" she asked the peppy forest elf, who turned to her with a frown.

She placed her hands on her curves as she jutted her lip out in a pout. "C'mon, Evylyn. You don't trust my plan?"

"Not really, no. I met you two days ago."

"That was..." Vareia blinked before turning her attention back to her steaming mug of tea. "Never mind."

Sarcasm?

She'd been told a lot of what Vareia had been saying recently was sarcasm, but it went over Evylyn's head every single time. So she simply grinned and nodded whenever the Cimibil said so.

She tried to smile as an apology, but almost immediately let it falter as the sides of her mouth twitched. Smiling did not come naturally to her, and she was convinced that her resting expression was doomed to be a sullen frown for the rest of her life.

"My point stands," she said. "I'm not exactly a nobody. In Ensceas, at least. They'll have my head the second I walk in there."

Vareia remained silent for a moment before, in one swift motion, she'd pushed herself away from the table while squealing. "Oh! What if I used illusion magic on you to disguise you?"

"Wouldn't that wear off after a while?"

"I mean, I'm strong. I could keep it going for as long as you need."

Evylyn was certain Vareia could hold an illusion spell for several hours. But the question Evylyn was doubting the answer to was whether Vareia would keep the spell up. Sure, Vareia seemed nice, and sweet, and friendly, but she could have been fooling Evylyn for the past few days. So Evylyn wasn't holding her breath when trusting the Cimibil.

"And you have the energy to hold a spell up for that long?" she asked. Her own mug of tea was steaming beside her, albeit slightly cooler than how Vareia had been preparing it before. She didn't even like the tea, but she didn't have the heart to tell Vareia that, surprisingly enough. So she'd settled on telling the demigod the tea was too hot for her liking whenever Vareia commented on her lack of appetite or the slight pout on her lips while holding her cup.

"Do you know any types of magic besides necromancy magic?" came Vareia's response. Evylyn raised an eyebrow.

"How is that relevant to what I asked?" she grumbled, taking an indignant sip of her tea and swallowing the shiver that threatened to crawl up her back.

"We don't use as much magic as mortals do. It's easier for us to keep spells going for longer," Vareia said, tracing the grooves of her table; her honeyed eyes were intensely trained on the circular patterns, until she dragged her gaze up to meet Evylyn's. "I'm not a fighter. You can probably tell by looking at me. I don't look like I could strangle you to death, but I do look like I'd bake you an elderberry pie, which, for the record, I would. But I am a mage, and as a mage, I've taught myself how to limit my powers so I'm not overexerting myself."

"You mean... you were barely trying when Judge came in here?"

"Judge?"

"The bounty hunter after me," she said, a sliver of a smile growing on her lips as she fought back laughter. She hadn't truly laughed in years, and she wasn't going to waste the few times she did on someone like Judge. "I forgot to tell you his name."