As 'The Lady' sailed away from the fires and the stranded pirates, my eyes landed on a green mass of land I hadn't noticed before, having been too occupied.
Had it always been there? Had I really been that blind? This way, most of them would survive. In fact, most of the pirates had already started swimming toward it.
"Tsk. They'll survive." Someone had voiced my thoughts. It was Phoenix, who rarely spoke out loud. He was withdrawn, and other than Sheriya, he didn't share conversations with anyone. But he was obedient. If you asked him whether he could do something, he would simply do it.
So it was rare to hear him speak his mind like this. He had turned back into his human form now that his magic had returned.
When our eyes met, he flinched and quickly looked away. So it hadn't been my imagination after all. He was afraid of me.
I turned from the green island to the three piles of fire that had once been their ships. Even from this distance, I could still hear the wood crackling. The flames swallowed it hungrily, as if they had been starved for centuries.
Then I tore my gaze away from the devastation I had left behind and searched for Rei.
He was sitting beside Ivanna, pouring some of his magic into her to stabilize her. Of all of us, she was the one most badly affected by the nullifying of her magic. Did witches work differently from the rest of us? I wondered.
As I drew closer, as if he had heard my unspoken question, Rei began to explain.
"Witches are creations of magic. Unlike shifters, and unlike us sorcerers, they're made artificially. They are products of magic. It happens when a witch decides she has lived long enough and performs a creation ritual. It's essentially cloning herself, but at the same time it isn't. The witchling looks exactly like her mother, but the soul inside is different, because the witch invites a stray soul to inherit the body she has created. She pours almost half of her magic into the witchling, and over the years the witchling slowly absorbs the rest of her mother's magic, until the day the witch fades away, leaving no magic behind. That's why nullifiers are so dangerous to witches and witchlings alike. If they're skilled enough, they can erase their existence entirely, because witches don't truly have physical bodies, not like ours, at least. We're lucky that one was an inexperienced, arrogant, ignorant brat."
That made sense, and yet it didn't. It meant that Olga, Ivanna's mother, had wanted to die. Or vanish, rather. And what did Ivanna think about that? Did she know she would absorb her mother over the years until she faded from existence altogether?
After a minute or two, Ivanna seemed to be in much better condition. The magic Rei had poured into her didn't mesh with her green magic, but it circled her in soothing loops, protecting her while she lacked magic of her own, until it returned from her mother. A thread, almost invisible now, still connected her to Olga at its other end. Though the distance between them had grown, the steady flow of magic had found her all the way out here.
"But it hurt like hell," Ivanna said with contempt, watching the burning ships.
"That's because you were dying…" Rei shrugged.
"Can we counter it?" Mr. Benedict asked. "If this happens every time we run into them, it'll become a problem. We were lucky to have Rhia with us. But what if she hadn't been? What if we meet another powerful one in the future? What should we do then?"
Until now, he had been inspecting the ship's hull, which was riddled with holes from the harpoons, clicking his tongue in annoyance. It seemed he had finished his thorough inspection and had finally decided to join us.
Rei smiled at his question.
"I'm glad you asked. In fact, I have something to show you." He turned toward me. "May I?"
He asked politely for my hand, the one adorned with 'The Bliss', to be specific. I looked at his outstretched hand for a second or two before offering mine. His fingers closed softly around it as he held it up for his crew to see.
Was it just me, or was he smiling? He looked… really happy, for some reason.
"See this, all of you?" he said, showing them the bracelet.
It was intact. In fact, it was in perfect condition. Even inside the area of the nullifying effect, it hadn't dimmed in the slightest. The stone shimmered just as beautifully as before.
"How is this—" Ivanna began, inspecting the jewelry.
"So you found a solution after all," Mr. Benedict said with a tsk.
"Please explain," Ivanna said, wanting to know the reason behind it.
Rei released my hand gently, but not before softly sweeping his thumb across my palm.
Then he showed them his own accessories, which were also engraved with magic and served different purposes. His necklace held a ruby whose shimmer was gone, leaving it an ordinary stone. The rings he wore on both hands, each set with a different colored stone, had all lost their shimmer too. Their magic had been sapped away.
"See the difference?" he asked.
They both nodded as they compared them side by side.
"So what did you do differently?" Ivanna asked, somewhat impatiently.
"I went through the exact scenario we faced today while making 'The Bliss'. If it were sapped of its magic, that would be a catastrophe. So I decided to think outside the box…" Rei said.