'I really need to talk to this girl,' Leon thought when he and Sarah limped their way back to the shed they were currently sharing.
Thanks to Leon's prior warning, they didn't suffer much from the shockwave passing over them. And yet, for one reason or another, they couldn't move as quickly as they would normally want to.
For him, the reason was obvious. The stress from the situation from before when nothing appeared to make sense weighed down on his mind which in turn burdened his body. It wasn't much of a struggle for him to walk, yet his steps turned undeniably heavier as if reacting to the weight of all the thoughts bursting in his mind.
On the other hand, Sarah was free from all the considerations that Leon had to think through. Yet, it didn't mean she had it any easier.
The process of refinement, something that Leon was too accustomed to give two shits about, for her was the simplest and greatest example necessary of his competence reaching far beyond anything she could imagine. And for this kind of person to sternly warn her not to look at something... after she already did it?
It wouldn't be a lie to say that while the thoughts occupying the heads of the two of them were different, both of them brought a massive weight to bear down on their minds even if their thoughts did so in a completely different way.
'I need to talk to her,' Leon continued to tell to his soul, yet he was unable to find the right words to actually start the conversation. 'I need to talk to her,' he thought when they limped on their way back to the house. 'I need to talk to her,' he thought when they took a moment upon reaching the proximity of the house to inspect the damage the shockwave caused to its roof. 'I need to fucking talk to her!' he inwardly screamed out when the two of them went inside only to instantly get to work of moving the straw outside and then throwing it back up on the roof's wooden frame.
"I think we need to talk a little," Leon finally uttered those words. 'I can tell that the topic of her bloodline isn't something she can lightly talk about, but I really want to know more.'
"What do you want to know, sir?" Sarah replied impassively without even looking at the bloodmancer.
It wasn't that she was ignoring him or intentionally reverting back to how she used to refer back to him. Leon needed just a single glance on her face to tell that she was so deep in her thoughts that it wasn't actually her replying but her reflexes.
'Seeing how she can keep up a simple conversation while in such a state...' Leon thought, squinting his eyes for a moment only to then turn his eyes away, slightly ashamed for intruding upon the girl's private affairs like that. 'It speaks a lot about her upbringing.'
This kind of ability wasn't something that simpletons would naturally develop. Just like with any other skill, one had to practice it properly for a long time before becoming a master at it. And given how this sort of skill assumed the lack of presence of mind of its user...
It could only mean Sarah was actually used to being too deep in her thoughts to care about the outside world while being forced to actively partake in whatever was going around her. And while, on its own, it wasn't something necessarily bad, it spoke wonders about what she had to go through in her past when combined with the reality of the underdeveloped world around them.
"Girl!" Leon barked, forcing the girl to snap back to reality.
"Hai!" Sarah jumped a little, instantly turning her head towards the bloodmancer. Her eyes then widened up when she understand what just happened only for terror to fill her face as she bent her body in half, ready to fall down to the ground and beg for forgiveness.
"Stop it before you start it," Leon quickly reprimanded the girl. "I just wanted to speak to you, not to your automatic secretary," he spoke right off his mind, only to end up biting himself in the tongue just a second too late.
"Automatic... what?" the girl turned her head to the side. "Sex...retary?" she then attempted to repeat the word she had no prior knowledge of.
The fear quickly receded from Sarah's expression. And once she believed to connect the dots, a look of understanding and a strange form of relief replaced it.
"If it's sex you..."
"I told you already," Leon cut the girl off before she could drift into the scenario her circumstances made her think off. Yet, he then rapidly turned his head to the side instead of finishing up what he wanted to say. "I promised I won't make you sleep with me," he then added, staring off into the darkness of the night. "And while I intend to keep this promise, I will need you to play along with what I'm going to say," he said in a low, monotone voice. "Oh, and try to think hard about something that will make you furious or embarrassed."
"O-okay?" Sarah replied in a hesitant voice. She then shut her eyes tight. Her fingers curled up towards her palm, soon turning her hands into fists. Her jaw initially tightened... only to relax right away when the girl involuntarily shrunk in herself and turned her face away despite keeping her eyes closed.
"Hey!" a new voice entered the scene a mere minute after Leon's strange order. "You guys okay?"
"Yeah!" Leon shouted back in a casual manner, picking up a huge stack of straws only to hold it on his shoulder. "Come to the side of the house, we are still fixing it!"
A man came close enough for Leon to see him despite the pitch-black darkness of the night.
"Was it your doing?" the villager then asked, while keeping something hidden behind his back.
'Just like I expected,' Leon thought, easily noticing the silhouettes of a huge group of villagers hiding deeper into the darkness behind the man. And contrary to the one that confronted him, they didn't bother hiding spears and pitchforks they had in their hands. 'As for the soldiers...' Leon then turned his eyes in the direction of the road, only to see a dot of light already approaching the edge of the village.
"What am I, some kind of wizard?" Leon then replied out loud, only to chuckle a moment later. "If I were one," he asked, only to raise the stack of straw from his shoulders before chucking it towards one of the several holes in the roof of his temporary house. "Would I be using this kind of method to fix this damn roof?"
"Roof? What roof?" the villager then asked in a confused voice, right as the sound of straw falling all over the place answered his question.
"Sir...?" Sarah spoke out, taking a step closer to the commotion, eager to follow Leon's orders... but unable to wrap her head around what they entailed.
"You keep doing what I asked you to do," Leon shut down the girl's attempt at getting closer. "The roof won't fix itself and I have no wish to sleep with wind smacking my naked ass," he added, only serving to confuse the girl even further.
'But I have no idea what you want me to do!' Sarah protested in her thoughts, gritting her teeth as she could feel a hint of anger, formerly suppressed by her fear of the man, take root in her soul.
Yet, rather than acting up on it, the girl used her anger to connect Leon's most recent order with the one he gave. And just like the obedient girl she was, she took a step back before going back to imagining herself flashing her body before the gathering of the entire village.
"Hey!" another voice then entered the fray, turning Leon's temporary house into a makeshift village gathering. This time, however, it wasn't the voice of some random villager that Leon never met before, but a voice he could actually recognize.
'Damn, they are fast,' the bloodmancer thought, only to allow himself a momentary smirk when the torches carried by Leynel's bannermen illuminated the crowd of railed villagers.
The torch-bearer approached the front of the gathering only to reveal himself to be no one else but Leynel himself.
"What the hell happened here?!"