Gilded showed up half an hour later, well dressed, but with the imprint of a pillow on his face and his hair sticking up in all directions.
"Why am I here?" he said, rubbing his eyes. "And does anyone have a hangover potion?"
Oh, yeah. Good point.
I purchased some from the System Shop and slid one to him across the table.
We both drank ours. I offered one to Llewellyn too, but he just sat at the kitchen table with even worse bed hair than Gilded's, looking morose and… still feverish.
Through the bond, I could feel he was struggling to keep his eyes open, which made me feel on edge about anyone else being around him.
I supposed the good thing was that Gilded was too hungover and grumpy to pay him any attention.
"Terrible potion," he said, bumping his head on the table. "Still dying. And Tiernan rings me at the crack of dawn and he's not even here yet?! I will sue the entirety of TAPESTRY and all their lineages past and future! My head. Who invented that Whiskey! I need to sue them, too."
"…"
How dramatic can a person be?! I was honestly speechless.
"I'm making a bucket of coffee," I told him. "Don't die while my back is turned."
"Nobody can tell me what to do!" Gilded said.
Just then the doorbell rang. Tiernan—also looking extremely hungover.
"Hangover potion?" I asked.
"I had three," he said, looking resigned, kneeling down to scratch behind Lumos's ears. "Phelan's Whiskey is just too good."
"Wonderful," Gilded said. "So we're all dying. What a productive morning. I'm suing Phelan first."
"You can sue him after we've figured out what's going on," Tiernan said, sitting down. He glanced at Llewellyn. "How are you holding up?"
"I'm fine," Llewellyn said, crossing his arms. "This is unnecessary."
"This what?" Gilded said. "I'm still waiting to hear why I'm here. I thought I'd been clear that I don't want to be involved in your mess."
He looked down and noticed Penguin, who was trying to climb his leg. He picked him up.
"Hello, you," he said, setting him on the table and patting his head. "Lovely to see you. I didn't miss anyone else."
Penguin chirped and sat down, content.
Well.
I couldn't be too rude to him when he was nice to Penguin, I suppose. And he'd also saved my life.
I rummaged in one of the kitchen cupboards for some cookies and tossed them on the table before giving everyone a mug filled with coffee. I sat back down with my own and reached for a cookie.
"Please let's get started," Tiernan said. "Before there's another Destabilized Necktie or something and I need to run to take care of it."
What? No, I didn't want to know.
"Alright," I said. "Um. So. After we left the Rusty Chalice yesterday and sent Llewellyn's dog home, one of my Attributes activated. We followed it and got teleported to the middle of a forest somewhere. There was a glowing pool under the trees, and—we heard a voice. Then, Llewellyn's dog popped back up out of nowhere and… er… went to drink from the pool."
"What," Gilded said, like he couldn't believe this bullshit.
Tiernan shushed him.
"Penguin tried to rush to the pool too. I held him back, but he got upset. He levitated a bunch of water from the pool and dumped it on us."
"A course of action I'd normally endorse," Gilded said, "except when it's some weird magical water! Penguin!"
Penguin chirped, a bit dejected.
Gilded rubbed his face and patted Penguin's head again. "Go on," he told me.
It'd just occurred to me that Llewellyn and I hadn't told anyone about Living Magic or its existence and hadn't really decided what to say if this came up.
"We got some weird notifications after that," I said, more slowly. I was going to have to wing it. "Including one about Innishaean Magic and a… Blessing of the Land. Nothing weird came from it for Penguin, Lumos, and me. But Llewellyn got an extra notification that said his Vital Signs had been stabilized. We didn't know they had been unstable. I thought it might be because of the Destabilized Whiskey we'd had, but I don't think that's the case. I drank more than him and I didn't get any notification about it. After that, Llewellyn wasn't looking too well. Both the System and the voice insisted giving him the water from the pool would help, so that's what I did, and… he's been out of it for most of the night."
There was a pause.
"I don't even know where to start," Gilded said. "You gave him water from a random magical pool you just found?! Just like that?! How have you people managed to survive so far?! No, actually—you haven't! Almost twice!"
He proceeded to throw a Penguin-level tantrum, repeating, "I can't believe this bullshit! What is wrong with you people!"
It was annoying because, now that I thought about it… he was right.
Still. What had he expected me to do?!
"That's because you don't trust the System," I said, annoyed. "I've had no reason not to; it's saved my life and Llewellyn's multiple times."
"After putting you in the situations that made it so you needed to be saved in the first place!" Gilded said. He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Let's rewind. You got Pure Magic, System Magic, and Innishaean Magic all converging here. First—where was this?"
Right, good point. I hadn't actually checked. Between the Whiskey and Llewellyn collapsing, it hadn't even crossed my mind.
"System?" I asked.
[System Notification: Pool of Living Magic is located east of Liorim Forest.]
"Pool of Living Magic?" Gilded asked immediately. "What's that?"
"…"
We were not going to mention that!
Looked like the System had other ideas, though.
"It's fine," Llewellyn said through the bond. "Don't sweat it. Just tell them what we know. We'll go from there."
Penguin also chirped from his place in front of Gilded.
I slumped against my chair.
"Alright," I said, scratching my head. "Let me go back a bit."
***
I started from the time we'd tracked Gilded's Dungeon in the forest and found the shard. Then I talked about the Pool of Living Magic, and how the System had explained that the difference between them was about crystallization and fluidity.
"So," Tiernan said. "When you say Living Magic… You mean Pure Magic making itself visible? Where's the shard now?"
"I think so," I said. I still didn't want to mention Gléonwon here. "The System also calls it Sleeping Magic. The shard is safe, but… I don't have it with me."
That should do it for now.
Well, it looked like it did, because they didn't press it.
"Sleeping Magic," Gilded repeated, pondering. "So Magic at rest. Go back to yesterday's situation. You said you heard a voice. What did it say?"
I cleared my throat.
"It was something like, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome…"
Llewellyn snorted.
What? It was a terrible imitation, but… it got the point across.
Besides, it was nice to see Llewellyn relax a bit now.
Gilded sat up straighter.
"Four times?"
"What?"
"It repeated that four times?"
"Yeah," I said. "I think it repeated everything four times."
"And it didn't feel scary or make you feel under threat, right?"
"No," Llewellyn said, apparently deciding it was time to join in. "The situation was highly unusual, but it didn't feel threatening."
"That's true," I said. "Penguin and Lumos had been relaxed too. The voice welcomed us, and when Llewellyn started being affected, it wanted me to give him water and keep him safe."
"Mmh!" Gilded said, still in his thinking pose. "If I'd known this is what it was about, I'd have brought my books to double che—"
Before he could even finish his sentence, Tiernan took a huge pile of books out of his inventory and dumped it on the table.
"…"
We all stared.
"What?" he said. "I knew it would come to this. I grabbed them before coming here."
Gilded started to say something, then changed his mind. "Never mind. Give that here," he said, pointing at one of the books.
Tiernan passed it over. Gilded flipped through it quickly.
"Here. Fourfold repetitions, message of welcome, and so on, and so forth." He turned the book around toward us, so we could see it. "Éisne."
…Who?
The page depicted a young-looking and graceful figure sitting in the lotus position. It had blue skin, a serene expression, and was wearing flowy clothes.
"May I?" Gilded asked, extending his hand toward Llewellyn.
Llewellyn didn't seem too happy about this, but let himself be scanned.
Gilded frowned. Then he did the same with me, Penguin, and Lumos.
"The good news," Gilded said, "is that I'm fairly sure that was Éisne. Éisne's impulse is to heal and protect, so you're fine. The bad news is that somehow Llewellyn's condition got so bad you two coalesced a latent Innishaean god."