Chapter 21.1: The Next Day

When Minkus opened his eyes the sun was already up, well above the jagged horizon of the Shiverpeaks. Something about that seemed wrong. He blinked a few times, his head falling back to his mat.

Another moment passed, and his brain seemed to crawl into motion. Something was wrong. The sun, it was too high. That height would normally mean it was at least a couple hours past dawn, but that shouldn’t have been. He had been assigned to second watch, just as he had every night for the last several days. He should be awake well before the sun. Had Penny not woken him?

He opened an eye. Why? Why hadn’t Penny woken him? For that matter, he wondered, why hadn’t the sun woken him?

Minkus opened the other eye and shuffled to get his arm underneath him, pushing himself off his sleeping mat. He scanned the camp for his friends, but before getting very far, he lost balance and collapsed into his blanket. For a second he stared into the iridescent morning sky, and the world spun around him.

“Big Brother,” he heard Jinkke call from not far away. She shuffled toward him through the sand and scattered grasses, popping into view between him and the sky above. “You scared me,” she accused. “Stop doing that!”

“Doing what?” he mumbled.

“Scaring me,” she said, putting hands to her hips as she towered over him. That was an odd experience. Jinkke never towered over anyone, least of all him. “I know you’re a deep sleeper,” she continued, “but smoke and sparks, I couldn’t even shake you to consciousness.”

More slowly this time, he tried again to push himself to a sitting position. “What happened, Jinkke?” he asked, shaking the fog from his head. “I feel— very tired.”

“I don’t see how that could be,” Skixx replied, stepping just into view beyond Jinkke. “You’ve been sleeping soundly for the last eleven hours.”

“Eleven hours?” Minkus yipped, hopping to his feet despite still lacking some balance. He wobbled but caught himself. “Why am I so—” He stopped, taking in the rest of the camp and the area just beyond. Jinkke, Yissa, and Skixx were all awake and staring at him from around the camp. Jinkke had two waterskins in hand, and Ventyr still slept on his mat. “Where’s Penny?” Minkus asked.

The other asura exchanged glances, but Jinkke was the first to speak again. “We aren’t certain, Big Brother. When I woke, no one was on watch; the four of you were asleep; and the human, along with all of her belongings, was absent. It seems the most logical assumption that she’s attending to a task the sergeant assigned to her, but I can’t say definitively. You’re the one I was concerned about.”

“Task?” Minkus pondered, scratching his head. “I don’t think we had any—”

“So you don’t know what happened either?” Skixx asked, cutting him off. The smaller asura frowned at him, as though deep in thought.

“No.” MInkus mumbled, trying hard to piece the information together. His gaze flitted about the camp again before landing once more on Jinkke and the waterskins in her hands. “What are you doing with those?” he asked.

She shrugged, giving him a sheepish smirk. “I was coming to wake you and the sergeant.”

“Wake me and the— ?” Minkus looked at Ventyr, then at the sun and back again. He scratched his ear, swimming through his muddled mind for a thought he knew was around the bend. He found it: Ventyr hadn’t woken for his shift on watch either; he always preferred third shift so he could see the dawn.

Minkus stumbled a step before gracelessly regaining his balance. “You haven’t been able to wake him? Is he alright?” He took another step toward the sylvari sergeant.

“No, we haven’t, but yes, he is,” Yissa answered, suddenly very close behind him. She got a hand up under Minkus’ arm to steady him, though he wasn’t sure he needed it. He felt a squeeze at his bicep and looked down to find the scholar looking at it instead of him. She went on, “We haven’t woken him—”

“Hence he’s still laying there, asleep,” Skixx interjected with a grumble.

“Yes, that.” Yissa nodded. “He is still very clearly sleeping, but to your other question, he appears to be in fine condition: his breathing is steady, his color is unaltered, and his sap seems to be flowing nicely. Medically he’s just fine indeed, but we’ve been entirely unsuccessful at waking either him or you. Someone mentioned a good splash of water being a good means for bringing a person back to consciousness, so we were about to give that a shot, though I personally agree with the old dwarven healers that a good dose of smelling salts is the better cure for—”

“It wasn’t someone,” Jinkke broke in. “It was Skixx. And of course smelling salts are more effective. No one disagreed with that assertion, but we don’t have any.” She nudged past Yissa and knelt at the sergeant’s side, exhaling to collect herself. “Let’s just rouse him and resolve all this.” With a shrug Jinkke uncorked the skins and poured them over Ventyr’s face, both bags at once.

The water rushed down the sylvari’s face and into his open mouth, pooling before running out and down the sides of his head to the mat beneath him. The stream flowed without interruption, the bags thinning as they emptied. It seemed to be less effective than the others had believed.

Suddenly Ventyr gasped, spewing a stream of water onto Skixx’s bare feet as he reeled forward. The asura took a step back, shaking his foot with a disgusted sneer.

“What— where— ?” Ventyr started, sitting up. He looked uncertain of his surroundings, barely catching himself as he wobbled, his eyes darting between the people around him the the camp around them. Minkus could empathize. His own movement was still slow, if now stabilized.

“It’s us, Sergeant,” Jinkke reassured. “Jinkke, Minkus, Yissa, and Skixx. You’re alright, generally speaking. You were sleeping very, very deeply.”

“‘Deeply’ doesn’t scratch the surface. You were nearly showing signs of a coma,” Yissa said. “Your vitals have appeared normal and—” Jinkke snapped around and shushed her, stilling Yissa’s mouth instantly. The scholar scowled but remained quiet.

Minkus slipped out of Yissa’s grasp and knelt in the thin tufts of grass beside his sister, putting a hand to Ventyr’s chest. He felt compassion well up inside him, and though it took some time to overflow, it finally did. The glow of healing magic danced lightly around Minkus’ fingers, but there was little to heal in the chest: nothing, in fact. Minkus moved his hand up the sylvari’s chest and neck, finding nothing out of the ordinary until he reached Ventyr’s temple. He felt severed connections in the sergeant’s mind, pieces that were slowed and processes that were all but halted. The foggy and diffused thoughts begin to re-entwine as Minkus opened himself. However, that healing was too fast, too simple to be the true source of the problem. Ventyr’s dizziness and instability were rooted elsewhere. He moved his hand back down the body, past Ventyr’s chest and into the belly.

“Um, what is he doing?” Yissa asked from behind.

“I think he’s healing him?” Jinkke replied, with only slightly less unsurety. “He’s healing his dizziness— in his abdomen,” She now shared Yissa’s entirely unsure tone.

“That’s where the problem is,” Minkus affirmed, still keeping focus on the friend before him.

A few moments passed, and the sylvari’s wobbling ceased. Hands planted firmly in the grass on either side of his mat, Ventyr sat stable, still scanning the group around him. Water still ran down the wooden grooves of his face and settled along his tunic’s seams. “What happened?” he asked, moving Minkus’ hand aside with a slight nod of thanks. “What’s the hour?”

“We doused you with water, Sergeant,” Yissa answered. “And it’s a few hours past dawn.”

Minkus watched Ventyr process that information for only a second before his hand snapped to his chest, sliding and patting its way across the height and width of his black and gray tunic. His other hand joined the search, the two now slipping in and out of each pouch at the soldier’s belt, sliding into his pockets, patting down his thighs, and systematically feeling across the length of his sleeping mat. Without a word, Ventyr climbed to his feet, grabbed the satchel beside him, and rifled through its contents, finally dumping them on his mat and scouring through them repeatedly.

Minkus and the others only watched, until finally Ventyr stood upright once more. He cast a long and dark gaze at the four asura. “Where,” he asked, “is the jade?”