36: A Little Life

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## Summary

### The Hangover

The gang finds themselves in the early morning hours scattered around Mujie’s chamber in the palace guest quarters, and try to retrace their steps the night before. After dispatching the gnolls, Queena and Mujie, along with other healers, tended the wounded, before Queena was called off to investigate something in the ravine. While the party caught a lift back to the capital, Damhir flew Eton to the Military Academy, where Nuur and Beranh awaited audience with him. The pair sassed Damhir without even looking up from their communicators before he departed.

### Live a Little!

Nuur and Beranh welcomed Eton to the Academy and led him on a campus tour, even sitting in on a tactics class before interrogating him about what led him to be a “hero.” For their part, somewhere mixed up in all their youthful slang was a statement of their own purpose: to find a way to reopen the desert’s Sacred Place, and restore the Empire to the glory of days past.

As if at all connected to their quest, they asked Eton to help them “prank” Empress Mhiral. But to prove himself, he first had to prank Beranh. After Eton and Beranh slung a few wacky spells at each other, Eton went invisible and disguised himself as Empress Mhiral. Sensing something was up, Nuur gives Beranh some kind of signal, and he thunder steps away, before finally agreeing to teach Eton something useful. The pair then showed Eton how to use his Ark to modify and empower spells he casts, as well as teaching him Thunder Step.

### Tender Heart

Meanwhile, on the other side of the capital, Jinna took Mujie to visit a young child in the districts. She explained to him that, because of the course of the natural veins of Ark flowing through the Empire, certain regions in the Capital lack the resources of others. Worse yet, since the dormancy of the Arkspring, the districts had been among the areas most negatively impacted. While things had improved under the Empress’s reign, change is slow, and they must navigate how to provide for the impoverished districts while respecting the danger posed by redirecting Ark.

In a humble home, they found a young boy named Bino, who is ailed by a similar illness as Palani is back in Samsara. Jinna explained to Mujie that, while it is possible to stabilize the imbalance of one’s Ark, it is thought impossible to cure the absence of it. Even if one were to share their own Ark—the very fiber of their soul—with another, there is no guarantee it would heal them beyond a certain degree of sickness. To their dismay, the boy before them is devoid of Ark. While Jinna vowed to look into the previously unheard of disorder, Mujie couldn’t help but think of Pino, all the way on the other side of the continent.

Crestfallen, the pair left the apartment, but on their way back to the train station, they ran into an opportunistic mugger. Luckily, Jinna, ever prepared to protect her charges, taught Mujie a new trick: Warding Flare, an ability that may change the user’s fate. In addition, he learned two other techniques to improve his self-directed healing and even ease his companions’ burdens.

### Mahi and Minh Make Mischief

At the end of the day, Mujie returned to his chambers in the guest wing of the palace, only to find that Mahi and Minh hotboxed his room with a dangerously potent mixture of sea weed and Saints’ grass…?

## Quotes

#### *OK BOOMER:*

> DAMHIR: “Well, they’re you’re problem now. You two will bring him back to the palace after your training. *Right*?”
> NUUR: “Bet. Seeya Deedz.”
>
>

*—Damhir and Nuur, when Cat meets with the Twins*

#### *PRICE OF A LIFE:*

> “You can save a life. But in the process, you wager your own. Sharing your ark with someone… what that means can’t be understated. It’s a part of you, and to give it to someone else—it creates a bond that can’t be broken.”
>
>

*—Jinna, on sharing one's Ark to heal another*