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It must be an extremely uncomfortable position for all of them to be in, wanting to not seem ungracious to our hosts but at the same time without any idea what was put into the food. Hashal is getting with retelling some story or other and keeping them quite entertained enough. Fiin is mostly just walking around the table keeping to himself, having given the excuse he has taken an oath to never eat before his master and strongly implies that he’s talking about Simon. They try and persuade him otherwise but don’t make any real motion to try and force him to eat. He actually starts doing something that I catch out of the corner of my eye and do the best to try and not pay any special attention to. Fiin will walk up to one of our group, whisper into their ear for a second before waving their hand over their plate for a second and then stands up and walks away. It takes me a bit to realize what he’s doing, but when that person starts to eat their plate after him doing this he must be either using some ability of his to make the food safe. Since Rophan has already started eating his, there is no real reason to do this for him and Rophan waves him away anyway. I get my answer when he makes his way to me.

“Trail rations,” he says before waving his hand over my plate. And though the bread is still there, I find a small morsel of meat now hiding underneath the bread. He also points at the corner of the room. I steal a glance in that general direction and out of the corner of my eye I can see a bunch of what looks like little rolled up pieces of paper. So that answers that question, he’s been swapping out everyone’s food with food we know is safe and putting the bad food aside for the time being. Meaning that we’re all safe for the time being from whatever was in that original food. Aside from Rophan, of course. Which I guess means we can use him to see what it’s doing. After a bit more into the meal, Simon returns and looks somewhat confused at seeing how everyone is now eating like nothing is wrong. Fiin catches his eye and puts a hand along his sleeve but I can’t see if he does anything more than that. Grunting, Simon moves over and sits down at his seat and picks up part of it and sniffs at it for a moment. Eventually he sighs and then starts to eat quietly and efficiently. Once the meal ends, their host sets us up in a guest bedroom. It’d be a bit cramped for us to stay the night all in this room, but it’s far too important for us to not go to sleep right away, what with the obvious deception. That said, my head is still swimming a little bit and I’m more than slightly tempted to go to sleep anyway.

“So how do we want to go about doing this?” Gregory asks.

“Well going as a full group would probably not be the best idea,” Simon says. “Too many variables.”

“Fiin should go,” I say, causing everyone to turn towards me as I fight off the desire to rest my head. “He can be small, and can disguise himself so that no one would ever know he was there.”

“I’m going too,” Ceirla says definitively. “There are questions I need answers to. And my little friend, here, can scout the area far better than anyone here probably can, and do it probably the most discretely of our group. Except for our little fox friend here.”

“I don’t really think there’s any reason for you all to go and check it out. Everything seems fine enough to me. But I will refuse to allow Mige to go on this foolish mission. He needs to recover,” Rophan says.

“I agree,” Gregory says. “We don’t want a large group and someone barely able to stay awake right now. I think just Simon, Fiin and Ceirla should be sufficient.”

I would be half tempted to try and complain about being left out, but honestly I can’t fault their logic and would really like to get some rest rather than go out and explore. Not to mention I’m still not entirely sure all that much help I will be. However I can still think of at least one thing I can do to help. I reach up and remove the amulet that contains the rune telling me if food is okay to consume or not.

“Well, take this with you,” I say as I place it on the ground in front of them. “I can’t exactly say I know for certain how useful it will be, but unless someone else has something to check for stuff like that it’s better than nothing.”

“I have something that will help,” Simon says as he picks it up anyway and wraps it around his wrist. “But it isn’t a passive check as this thing is and I’m not going to turn it away. Anyway, we should go ahead and get going. Be sure to grab your bow, just in case.”

After they leave I yawn and get up and stretch, trying to keep myself awake long enough to at least know what we’re dealing with. Rophan gets up and fetches a thing of water that was set aside and pours it into a little bowl for me. I lap from it, having already checked and made sure that the jug was made safe.

“So Gregory,” I say my head swimming still a bit but feeling a bit better for the water, “what do you know of the Raance Neuh spell.”

“The what spell?” Gregory asks, somewhat curious.

“Is that the one you used from before? Is it necessary?” Hashal asks.

“Not really necessary. But I figure with two people using it should be more than enough to keep us safe from any potential threat and with the two of us if nothing happens should be a low enough drain that I should be fine. It’s more of a concentration thing than actual drain.”

“What spell are you talking about?” Gregory asks.

“I think I’ve heard of that spell before,” Rophan says, scratching at the back of his head, “but I’ve never been good with magic so I wasn’t really paying much attention.”

I roll my eyes at the comment. “It’s a protection spell, of sorts,” Hashal says. “Saw it done shortly after I became acquainted with Mige.”

“Is it a difficult spell to cast?”

“Not really,” I say. At the town I had known of the basics of the spell. It was a really useful one. But I had an understanding of all the basic principles behind the spell and how it worked and the other ones helped me refine the technique. I’m not entirely sure that his training in magic would be similar enough to know of the spell, let alone me being able to accurately explain it to him. “Though I don’t know exactly how well I’d be at trying to teach the spell. Only one way to tell, I guess. You got something to make magic?” I ask as I go into my pack and drag out my Rooshou. I look up and see Gregory has pulled out a simple wand and is taking a curious glance at my tool. “What? I can’t exactly use tools like you can. It has to be held in my mouth. I then turn around slightly so that we’re facing the same direction. “I’m going to need you to recreate this symbol as best you can. Then turn it and push it into the ground. Then you need to turn the symbol one direction while turning the magic in the opposite direction. Do this until they form a circle. If you can do yours on top of mine the areas will overlap and build off each other.”

I make the Rooshou into my mouth and then push a bit of magic into the tip, causing it to light up. I then make a point of doing a very slow and deliberate motion, tracing out the symbol I need to carry out this spell and then let it sit there a little while. I am quite pleased with the notion that I don’t feel any particular dizziness from using this spell, letting me know that though I haven’t fully recovered from the illness having no magic gave me, I at least now have enough magic that I can use lesser spells without issue. Also means I can rely on being able to use my Anaelin if I need to. After giving him a good moment to try and study the image I push it into the ground and then finish the spell. I can feel a bit dizzy from this act, though I think it’s more from it being taxing on my concentration rather than on magic drain.

Having no more of a need of it I drop the Rooshou and then take a look at the quality of my work. It’s extremely thin at the moment, looking like a bubble that’s only seconds from popping. But that’s just about the best I can do at the moment. Gregory and Rophan are staring at it curiously, Rophan even going so far as to try and touch the wall to see if he can feel it. But it just lets his hand pass right through. If I was stronger I might have been able to restrict motion, but as I am there isn’t much I can do about it. As it is I’d know if something were attacking us but wouldn’t be any real help in protecting us. Gregory is trying to assess the spell’s capabilities.

“So just how much can this protect? It doesn’t look like it would really stop a direct attack.”

“Well right now? Probably just about nothing.”

“I know it can be very strong when combined with multiple people.”

“It can’t protect against physical attacks, no. It’s a selective spell, the more people contributing to the spell the more it can defend against,” I say in response. “It’s not as good as an active barrier and won’t really do much of anything against any active attack. What it does best is protect against much more subtle measures. It costs very little to maintain. With practice you can even sleep with it still up.”

“Can it protect you from the death magic from Draaknei?” Rophan asks.

I lie down to hide the fact of me rolling my eyes at the comment. “Well I had just said as it is now it won’t protect us from anything. Not even confident it could protect us from a foul odor. It filters based on concentration and as I’m still recovering, I can’t focus that much on what all to leave out. But if it were stronger, sure. I see no reason why the aura of death from those evil creatures couldn’t be stopped by the spell.”

“Well then,” Rophan says, apparently thoroughly convinced. “that’s settled. Human, you should cast the spell as well so that we can all sleep safely tonight without having to worry about the servants of Gerhart getting to us.

Gregory still looks extremely reluctant to just obey the order but eventually seems to mentally concede. He raises up his wand and seems to almost set the tip on fire rather than just make it glow. He then approximates the symbol as best he can, using the one I have placed on the ground as a guide. But it isn’t a very good approximation and I can feel nothing from the symbol. It also doesn’t seem to be all that responsive to his motion. But he does complete an attempt at it and manages to push it to the ground right on top of mine. And when he tries turning them he turns both the symbol and the magic in the same direction.

“No, you need the magic and the rune to rotate opposite each other.”

“It’s not that easy a thing to do. I’d like to see you,” he catches himself mid-complaint, probably demanding to see me do the thing he literally just saw me do a moment before. “This isn’t exactly the kind of thing that most schools would teach. If you could give better instruction I might be able to grasp it. To think you’d find a spell like this to be simple.”

“I already said I suck at teaching. And I don’t have hands like you do. The only advantage I have over all you other races is that magic is much more densely packed in my body than yours. Magic is the only real defense we have, that and our weapons we forge with our magic. So then naturally we should have a lot better understanding of magic. I remember hearing from my family of the first spell I had ever cast. I don’t remember it because I was only like six months old, but had apparently made flowers grow out of one of the Siira. They apparently took it in good humor and was much more surprised that I pulled it off to such an extent than that I caused them to smell of lilacs for over a month. But how we are taught magic is very different because we all know the basics at a very young age and are taught by our own kind. Unless you were trained in the same way I don’t know how to explain it better. At any rate, I know the elf will probably start nagging at me if I spend too much time trying to train you on this spell rather than trying to sleep. There are some severe limitations to this spell and it won’t necessarily protect us tonight. If you want to practice it some more, then feel free. I’ll leave it up to you. If you decide it’s beyond your abilities to work at a spell that only protects against passive measures, then that’ll be up to you.”

I close my eyes and go about resting, knowing it won’t be as restful as it would be without the spell, but all things considered I’d probably feel much safer even with this limited protection. But it’ll still be decent enough rest, especially with trying to recover from my illness. After a minutes of this as I’m about to lose consciousness I can hear Gregory trying to copy the spell again. But it doesn’t matter much to me if he gets it or not. Hopefully it isn’t something that we’ll need but it’ll be nice to have someone else who can also do that spell on the rare occasions where it is at its most useful.