Page 68 of Did It Have To Be Gnomes?!
Sigh.
Maybe I could get the kid to tell me himself.
I mean, it wasn’t like I wanted to use his magic for anything. I was just curious. Especially after what Aeson had pointed out.
An empath, a null, a necromancer, whatever Aeson was, and the kids didn’t even know Lyric was a sentire.
That was a lot of magic in one place. A lot of different and very, very rare magics. Very cool, but also very strange.
Most humans had no magic at all, and the majority of people with magic were just regular practitioners—most people called them regs—that cast spells and made potions and didn’t necessarily have a specialized magic like an empath or necromancer.
I’d never been around so many specialists at the same time.
It was a strange and heady feeling, but I kind of liked the mix of magics in the air. Well, I’d like it more if we got rid of the evil cursed magic, but even this was good too.
I shook off all the thoughts of magic and focused on the task at hand.
Right now, my only goal was to get everyone safely to the cursed seal, give Chaos time to examine it, and then get everyone the hell out of there so we could make yet another game plan for actually breaking the damn thing.
I said, “Alright, so now that I’m thinking about it, I think we should make a sort of circle around ourselves with the gates. I think that’ll be our best bet. Lyric, can you walk backward?”
“I can try. Not sure it’ll work, but I see what you’re going for. I’ll do my best.”
“Good.” I nodded at Miles and Chaos. “Can you two walk sideways and watch for attacks from the sides?”
Chaos nodded. “Sure thing.”
“Yeah.” Miles tugged nervously on the bottom of his glove—I’d noticed him fiddling with them a lot, like a nervous tick. “I think we need sticks or something to fend them off with.”
“Oh!” Lyric threw their gate down. “That’s a great idea. I’m on it.” They ran toward the garden in a flash.
“They didn’t even let me get a word in.” I snorted. “I guess we’ll have stick weapons, then.”
Miles grimaced and turned to face the teens. “I know we need to keep them off of us, but can you try not to hurt them too badly? I still want to release them into a gnome sanctuary when all of this is over with. It’s not their fault they’re attacking us.”
Chaos glowered, and I swore the cockatrice glowered along with him from her perch on his shoulder. “If they come at us, I’m not gonna let them hurt me or my brother.”
“I don’t want you to. Knock them back or throw them off, whatever you gotta do, just… try not to kill them.”
He huffed, looking exactly like the annoyed teenager he was. “Fine.”
Miles smiled. “Thank you.”
Chaos rolled his eyes, but Aeson grinned at Miles and held his hand out for a fist bump. Miles stared at the fist for a long time before glancing at his gloved hand and hesitantly bumping it against Aeson’s. The kid beamed and turned back to the front, looking ready for this mini-battle or whatever we were calling it.
From the look of surprise on Miles's face, I was pretty sure that no one ever asked to touch him, even through his gloves.
It kind of made me want to hug the kid because I had a feeling that Miles needed the casual touch a lot more than he was leading on. And it definitely made me want to touch the cute empath even more than I already had been. He was touch-starved.
That wasn’t surprising since it was an issue all empaths faced, but I hated that he didn’t have anyone in his life who helped him with that, and he hadn’t had anyone in a long time, if ever.
From the little he’d said, I wasn’t sure he’d ever had anyone at all.
The thought made me sad, but… but I was here now, and whether Miles ended up dating me—which I really hoped he would—or not, I was determined to at least be his friend.
With that in mind, I reached over and gave Miles's neck a small squeeze, offered a grin, then faced the teens. “You sure you’re okay with this?”
Chaos sighed. “Look, I appreciate that you’re trying to keep us safe or whatever, but trust me, this isn’t even remotely close to the most dangerous case I’ve been on lately. I deal with the dead and the cursed. I’m put in danger all the time. At least with this, we have a bunch of people helping protect each other. It’s more than I usually have.”
