Chapter 46: Promises and Effects

“Our wood and metal went not to building, but to craft implements meant to harm.”

“Hi, Mizu.”

“Arthur.” Mizu smiled, weakly. Arthur noticed that her blue skin was just a bit paler than normal. She was sitting up in bed, almost no different in appearance than she was the day before. It was terrifying, in a way. Here she was, maybe dying, afflicted with something that wore people down until they couldn’t fight any longer.

Well, not if I have anything to do with it.

“I brought you something.”

“One of your boba teas. Good. I’ve wanted one.”

“Well, this one might taste a little different. No guarantees. It’s special.”

“Special?”

“You’ll see. How are you feeling?”

“Not… very well. But better than I had thought I would feel. And odd.”

“Odd?”

“The medicine makes me stronger. And the poison makes me weaker. I think I could lift a heavier weight, right now, than before I was poisoned. But I don’t have the energy.”

Arthur placed his heat source out and on a table, and poured some water from Mizu’s well into it. It would be a few minutes before it boiled, and in the meantime, he went to the bed and sat on the side opposite Mizu, their knees more or less lined up as they faced each other.

“That is weird. Although a lot of things are weird for me.”

“Compared to your home?”

“Yeah. Earth. No skills, no magic. Just science. The only things I can think of that made you stronger like that in the short term were drugs that would just kill you if you used them too much.”

“Your sick just died?”

“No. We had science. Without skills, we learned details of how the universe worked and leveraged those into things that weren’t quite magic, but might have looked like it to you.”

“Could they have cured this?” Mizu held up her arm, which was bandaged around the elbow where she had been bitten.

“Maybe. Hard to say. Might have been beyond them, might have been as easy as that.” He snapped his fingers. “The water is boiling. I’ll be right back.”

He left the water on the heat as he prepared the tea leaves, then carefully poured the water of them in a cup.

“Hot or cold, do you think?”

“You can drink it hot?”

“Of course.”

“Hot, then, Please.”

He nodded, leaving the ice in his pack as he opened up the small jar he had stored the special boba pearls in. He added a healthy amount of them to the drink, and then a small amount of milk. Whatever the venom did, he figured a few extra calories wouldn’t hurt Mizu’s chances of fighting it off.

He had very little idea of how it tasted, which worried him. But so long as it didn’t make her throw up, it probably wouldn’t do more harm than good. As long as she would drink it, that is.

“Here you go. Drink up. And tell me what you think.”

Mizu took the cup and sniffed it lightly, then took a sip through the straw. It was a little weird handing someone hot tea with a straw and Arthur knew it, but he had no idea how she’d get the little pearls off the bottom without it, short of pouring them all into her mouth at the end of the cup. After taking her first sip, she paused for a moment, then let out a little sigh.

“Strong.”

“Too strong? I can water it down.”

“No, it’s nice. It’s clearing my head.” She took another sip. “How’s the shop going.”

“Well… not much progress. I think my tables and the new glasses Rhodia is making should be done in a couple days. But I haven’t been there much.”

“There’s that little to do?”

“Not exactly.”

Mizu paused mid-sip and eyed Arthur suspiciously.

“Arthur. What did you do instead?”

“I… hmm.”

“Arthur.” Mizu more or less always talked in a monotone with very slight variations. This was about as close to being firm or harsh that Arthur had ever heard from her. “Tell me what you were doing instead.”

“I sort of went hunting.”

“No!”

“With Karbo! It was safe.”

“It’s never safe. Not in the dungeon. Not even with Karbo.” She considered that for a moment, taking another sip of her tea. “Maybe even less, if he’s there. Did he make you fight much?”

“Every fight. But it was okay. I only got hit once. By a log.”

The log thing caught Mizu off guard. Not only did she laugh, covering her mouth to keep tea from escaping, but he thought he caught the slightest, cutest hint of a snort.

“A log? Really?”

“Yeah. A big mean one. With stingers. I got it, though. Won the fight.”

“With a log.”

“Yes.”

Mizu finished her tea, setting the glass off to the side.

“But again. Why?”

“Because… Okay, so, you have medicine. And spells, I think. But my tea works on top of all that. So I needed ingredients. To make tea that would help…”

Suddenly, Mizu’s lack of energy evaporated, and her mouth fell open as she looked at her now-empty mug. Then, all of a sudden, she was almost on top of him.

At first, Arthur was nervous and terrified, simply because they hadn’t so much as hugged yet. That ended quickly, as he became nervous and terrified about the fact that Mizu was actively slapping his arms and chest while yelling at him. Quietly yelling, somehow. Yelling in a restrained, dignified manner. Yet still yelling in the sense that he was in trouble. She was letting him know that he took things too far, and he was getting the message loud and clear.

Luckily, her already gentle beating became much more gentle only a few seconds in, fading to almost nothing as her already low stores of energy seemed to bottom out. Eventually, she was just leaning on him, one of her hands on each of his upper arms and her forehead on his chest. And, most alarming of all, she was trembling.

It took a second for him to realize she wasn’t doing that out of anger.

She’s sobbing. Shit.

Very slowly and impossibly gently, he lifted his arms and wrapped her up in a hug as she melted into his chest, still crying hard enough that he could feel the moisture in his shirt.

“Stupid.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry. It was the only way.”

“I don’t care. Promise you won’t do it again.”

“I won’t.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise I won’t.” As he said the words, Arthur knew he probably would. He’d need more ingredients. Better ingredients. Food Scientist would send him back down to the poison floor, sooner or later, to pump different kinds of venom into different kinds of monsters until he found the perfect, most overpowered antivenom possible.

In fact, I bet Karbo would take me back tomorrow if I asked, and then I could get a head start on…

“No. Believe your promise. Now.”

He had no idea how Mizu knew, but she knew. As much as he wanted to argue, when she lifted her tear-filled eyes up and met his, he knew she had already won. She really didn’t want him to. Worse, she looked like she’d be mad if he did. Worst, she could apparently see right through him, and she might not drink the tea if he broke his promise.

And so it was decided, whether he liked it or not. She had the right to say no, and she was saying no. He’d have to find another way.

“Okay,” He said, and the moment he said it honestly, it was enough for her. She lowered his head back into his chest. Slowly but surely, she got her crying under control. They sat like that, for a while.

“Arthur?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you. Not for the risk. But for why you took it.”

“Yeah.” He gulped. “It was… it seemed worth it.”

He waited for her to respond for a bit before he realized she was asleep. He gently set her back on her side of the bed, resisted the urge to kiss her pale blue forehead, gathered his things, and left.

—

“The young man, Ella. The offworlder. I need to talk to him.”

After the longest day Arthur could remember having since he arrived into the demon world, he fell asleep so fast and so hard he didn’t actually remember getting into bed.

He slept long, hard, and dreamless. He might have even said that he slept like a log if it wasn’t for the fact that logs on this world seemed to want to eat people. Now, with the sun beaming in through his open window, he was suddenly aware of a pair of loud voices arguing on the street below.

“I know who you are and I’m more than aware he’s an offworlder. I’m just not going to let you wake that boy up. And I’m certainly not going to let you scold him before I get a chance to. He went to the dungeon with Karbo without even telling me. There’s an entire bag of bark in my cooler, and I have no idea why. You have to wait your turn. I’m the lady of the house, and I get to kill him first even if you’re a doctor.”

“Dammit, Ella, I don’t want to yell at him. It’s about the girl. She’s…”

As if he realized he was talking about a medical matter out in the open, the doctor’s voice suddenly muted. Arthur could hear them talking still, but couldn’t make out the words to gain any more information. Still, knowing it was about Mizu was enough to get him out of bed, no matter how good his pillow felt.

Splashing some water on his face, Arthur made his way downstairs. Ella had pulled the doctor inside, and was now angrily yet graciously serving him a generous, expertly cooked breakfast. The doctor, in turn, looked suitably daunted by her mom-rage and also grateful for a heaping pile of pan-fried meat and eggs. As Arthur came into view, their conversation ground to a stop as they both turned to look at him.

“Arthur, you don’t…” Ella started, apparently still mother-and-protector mode, regardless of what she said to the doctor.

“It’s okay, Ella. I’ve slept. If it’s about Mizu, I want to know.”

Ella reluctantly nodded and crossed the kitchen to fix Arthur a plate. The doctor pulled out a chair, and Arthur sat, pulling in his food as soon as it was on the table.

“Well?”

“In the interest of time and patient confidentiality, I won’t explain much in the way of details. But your tea is working.”

Arthur sat up a bit straighter in his chair, suddenly hopeful.

“Really? She’s doing better?”

The doctor slumped a bit. “Not exactly. If I had to quantify it, I’d say she’s doing significantly worse. She has less energy. Her color is worse. She’s having more trouble resting, and that’s bad news with this kind of thing.”

“So in what sense did the tea work, then?” Despite his best effort to control it, Arthur was sure his voice leaked just a bit of despair as he spoke. “It sounds like a failure to me.”

“It worked because she’s better than she should be. This isn’t the first time I’ve treated this condition, Arthur. Far from it. For a young woman her age, she’s been progressing about how I expected in all respects, at least until last night. She’s doing poorly. At best, these are always a close thing. But she should be doing worse and she’s not. And the only variable is your tea.”

“Don’t say it, you bastard. I’ll take that breakfast back,” Ella chimed in.

“He has a right to know, Ella. And you know that.” The doctor turned to Arthur with a serious look on his face. “The honest truth of it is that Mizu has less than even odds of surviving this. It’s an endurance race, one she’s losing. And there’s only one variable we have any chance of adjusting.”

The metal elemental stood, took a few last bites of his breakfast, and spoke to Arthur one last time before he left.

“The long and short of it is this. If you want that girl’s chances of getting through this to get better, you need to get your tea making skill working better. Fast.”