Kiava stared down at the porridge, and tried to eat it with enthusiasm. It wasn't bad, but she was a fan of chewing, always had been, and the gnawing in her stomach wanted meat not heavily stewed grains and vegetables. She glanced at the young man in the room and ate her food without complaining, she would not set a poor example. The bowl was empty quickly and Kiava looked beseechingly at Theon.
"Please, sir, may I have some more?" She attempted and offered her sometimes successful puppy-dog look.
"Of course, please wait a moment," the healer chuckled as he went to his office and returned with a larger container that he used to refill the bowl. "I expected you would need more than one serving after the healing."
Kiava ate a further bowl and a half of porridge before setting it aside and leaning back. Theon had used a crank to put the bed in a reclined position so she could lean back comfortably and face the room and not the ceiling. This was her first time seeing such a device and she was honestly thrilled by it's mechanical ingenuity even as her mind began to create a device that could do the same thing even if it was fundamentally useless.
Now that she wasn't distracted by her body's demands she turned to her guests. The boy she recognized as one of the children she saved, but the girl was a vaguely familiar stranger - it was not as if green hair was terribly common.
"Kiava Orben, this is Luka Volen, Archeus' sister," Theon said, ruffling he teeanger's hair affectionately as she swatted his arm. "The boy has not spoken since he was found and doesn't seem to know how to read or write. He has communicated through gestures."
Kiava patted the bed beside her and the boy jumped up to where she indicated, sitting on the edge and watching her with an earnest expression.
"Can you speak? If you can, it's okay if you don't." The boy hesitantly nodded. She smiled at him and rubbed his arms. "Then it's okay, as long as you aren't sick. Where I grew up there were sometimes younglings who came in like you, who lost their voice. Relax and let it find you again, it's okay."
The boy threw himself into her chest and Kiava winced as everything protested, but she wrapped her arms around him as wetness began to soak into her blouse. Luka stood and rubbed the boys back and Theon stood off to the side looking thoughtful. The child calmed quickly and pulled back, smiling at Luka and Kiava before hopping off the bed. He hugged Theon before waving to everyone and running out of the room.
"I hope he feels confident enough to speak again soon," Kiava sighed, reaching up to gently rub where the child had squeezed. Her hand was quickly replaced by the healer and the throbbing eased under a cool energy.
"Thank you, Healer Theon. I'm not used to feeling fragile."
"Entropy spells take a long time to recover from. Even after you've finished healing here you will get fatigued more easily until you rebuild stamina," Theon explained with a wince of sympathy. "It's one of the reasons they are illegal to use."
"If anyone but my brother had found you they may not have been able to save you in time. Because they are illegal, there are not many people who take the time to learn how to dispel entropy spells," added Luka.
Kiava smiled at the teen. "I will make sure to thank him for his timeliness. I wonder if it is possible to ward against entropy spells… so your brother and I will have a talk about that as well," she mused.
Kiava felt a fission of excitement at the prospect of picking the brain of one of the most talented mages of their generation. If he could explain the mechanism of casting and dispelling an entropy spell, she was sure she could fashion a ward against it using the Artificery languages she already knew.
"My brother will be thrilled to hear you say that," Luka said dryly, "but you may regret it."
"Archeus has questions about your luggage and handbag too, so I imagine your conversation will be very long and technical," Theon added with a laugh.
Kiava smiled, she had only ever really gotten to talk shop with her teacher and the few Artificers that worked in his shop. In fact, something that had excited her when she finally moved was the prospect of talking shop with peers instead of people twice her age. She was discouraged upon arriving to learn that Artificery was not in vogue among people her age.
When she first discovered her talent with magic she tried several different forms: magework and alchemy first, because instructors were easier to come by. Magework had felt wrong and often misfired, and Alchemy she could do but it felt something equivalent to working while wearing socks on her hands. With Artificery it just felt right and immediately made sense to her. She learned what she could from the other schools before dedicating all her focus on her chosen field.
Her teacher, Jole, a taciturn man who had moved to the border after his wife along with two of his fellow husbands. died in an accident, had not initially agreed to take Kiava as a student. After some hard work and a lot of study on her own, it was the handbag that now fascinated Archeus that convinced him to take her as his pupil. In the end, he also spoke with the Matron about his student's potential as an Artificer and that led to the decision not to make the young woman the next director of the orphanage.
Kiava loved the orphanage where she had grown up, and would have agreed if the Matron had asked, but knew it wasn't really the future she wanted. Now she would be talking magic with one of the leading minds in the country and it was honestly a bit overwhelming, especially on the tail of a near death experience.
A chill ran down her spine as that thought popped into her mind. She had almost died. If anyone other than Archeus had found her, she would have been a body in that alley. She rubbed her arms unintentionally.
"Are you alright?" Theon asked immediately.
"Oh, yes," Kiava tried to laugh but the sound caught in her suddenly tight throat. "I guess that as much as you all told me I almost died it hadn't really hit me until now," she explained after she swallowed her saliva desperately. Theon brought her a glass of water from his office and Kiava drank it, offering a small thank you. Her hand shook slightly but she managed to drink from the glass without spilling, at least. "I've never had a person try to kill me before."
That was an important distinction. Monsters had almost killed her before but that was in their nature, driven mad by the corrupt mana they were born from. This had malicious and cruel intent. She shivered again and hoped that with the help of the archmage she would be able to create a ward against that seeping coldness.