Valla POV
Finally, suddenly, there was no storm. There was no wind or rain, only emptiness. The floods had not reached them, luck and the Paving holding it back somehow. She could not let go of her Sight, but she dropped her control over the barrier, and it fell in pieces, cracking oddly in the sudden silence before searing brighter and disappearing. Doren was beside her, his aura gleaming. Alive. The storm was all around them. Valla Watched it, her mind still empty, the shards of her aura still grating against the collar. Her consciousness swirled, and she reached into the storm, looking for her lost comrade, the fallen elemental. Then she felt a flash of silver power rush through her, punishing and urgent. Her Sight snapped away all at once.
"You need to stop Looking. Valla. Valla!" Doren was shouting, voice a pathetic, shredded remnant of what it had been hours before. The power had been his. She turned her head, and looked at him, seeing only vague outlines through the fabric over her face. He was kneeling beside her, hand clasped on her shoulder. Had he been holding on the entire time? She could remember. She wasn't certain how long it had been.
"Fool," Doren spat at her, the vitriol shocking her into focus. "Fool! You said not to Look. You said we would take turns and then Look away. Then you pushed me out of the barrier and lost your mind."
She tried to answer but only managed a strangled grunt. He pulled her up, her back against one of the packs, and roughly pulled down her scarf. His whole face and head were shaking terribly. She raised her arm to try and pull down his face covering as well, but instead just managed to lift her hand up slightly and watch it shiver violently. Ah. He wasn't the one shaking. Then there was water in her mouth, and she swallowed mechanically. He had put a waterskin to her face. His face was still covered, and she managed to sort of paw at it until he shook her off and pulled it down himself.
"What were you thinking?! We need to work together, not shove each other aside and risk aether depletion or madness. You could have - you could have killed us both." He was still grasping her shoulder, grip uncomfortably tight. Right. He really was preternaturally strong. All martial aether users were. Which reminded her.
"How did you make such a good barrier? You aren't a crafter. Are you?" Her voice was still pathetic, thin, and barely there. Hopefully, there wasn't any permanent damage. Then she couldn't sing to him to calm him down anymore.
He was still glaring, his mouth twisted, but he answered. So they were alright, then. "I can do both. I have more talent for crafting than for martial Influence, though."
"But who- who would've taught –" She broke off into coughing. As though her coughing had reminded him of his own damaged lungs, he coughed too, then answered again. Relief that they were still talking flooded Valla, a welcome feeling after the desperation that had dominated her mind before.
"It's unusual but not unheard of. There was one older master left who taught me. Didn't make me popular in the martial training halls, though." His scowl returned in full force. "But unusual does not begin to describe what you did. What was that, Valla?"
Ah, perhaps he was more worried about what she was than what she had done. Not that she could blame him – nothing fully human could do what she had done. "I could not – the collar. It was hard to control the flow. I can, I think I could, before. But now, I have the power, it's there, I don't know why, but even though it's there – " more coughing – “it's not – I can't use it right. I tried."
He nodded, scowl easing. Remembering her earlier thought that she ought to be more up front with him, she noted that it seemed as though communication really did ease his mind. She felt an odd mix of delight and shame. Delight that she had calmed him, and even more delight that she could also infuriate him more later. Shame that she surely would try the latter more than the former.
"So you lost control."
Struck with another thought that felt like insight, she nodded shakily. "I did not mean to stop you. Yours was better. But I couldn't. It was my weakness, not yours."
He scowled again, and she frowned. Didn't he want approval and assurance of his competence before? And she was not lying. She knew he could tell whether she was lying if he tried. She was so tired. He was healing her, though, trying to supplement her power as though he were a medic and she had aura depletion. She grabbed his hand on her shoulder.
"Don't. It won't help. You know that."
He scowled harder and did not stop. "You aren't drained, but you used too much, or it was wrong somehow. It did some damage, and you need healing."
"We need to survive," she countered, voice raw, but no she was longer hacking with every other breath. "We have to survive the same thing again in a few minutes. You have more control. Let me lend you power."
He grimaced. "I cannot control that much; it would destroy me."
"But I can give you some. It will help. And I can follow my own power to support you more easily. I can't craft with this collar. I don't know if I ever could without it." That was a bit of a lie. She knew what to do to match Influence with intent, to persuade reality to bend according to the aether in it, even if she could not do it as elegantly as Doren clearly could. But she honestly did not remember ever having done so, and it was not until this storm that she had realized how debilitating the collar was to any sophisticated use of Influence. The collar did less to bind all her power than it scrambled her ability to direct it. That was certainly worthy of more thought, particularly since she hadn’t noticed it before. But she did not have the time for such reflection now.
Doren looked unconvinced, but he complied, stopping his flow of aether. Unable to hold back a weak groan, Valla began pushing more of her power instead, the process now almost unbearable where it would usually have been nearly painless. She strained to control the flow rate, knowing that if she did not, she would only cause Doren pain. Despite her efforts, she knew she had failed to do so adequately from how he winced as he cast up his working, the light of it a sharp relief in the eerie shadows of the storm.
"The storm is weakening somewhat," she said, struggling to note anything positive in their situation. They were still in the eye, but she now had the wherewithal to monitor the storm in brief glances, wary of losing her already flayed mind to the magnitude of it. Wary of being lost again in her grief. "You just need to craft a net to block the worst of it. We can weather it."
Doren scoffed, but did not scold her for Looking. "Obviously." And with that, they settled again behind their packs, resting but ready as he laid the lines of their new cover, Valla focusing on gathering her breath and her power for the fight ahead.
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