The process had been a success. An exhausting, drawn-out success, but a success.
Ren had healed and woken from the first collapse and gone straight back to work. He spent the rest of that day on Selphira's arm, working at the pace the lower risk of that zone allowed, spending his energy without taking damage, finishing without another blackout. The second session was calr than the first because the arm was a manageable space after everything he had already navigated.
A day later he returned to the internal work, mid-level this ti, deeper than the first interior session, the pattern clearer in his head but the connections considerably denser than the outer layers had been. He managed it…
He also ended up unconscious again at the end.
Days after that, the leg took a full cycle of his energy and didn't knock him out. Progress.
He recovered in a day and moved to the internal upper section, the largest portion, the one that included one of the lungs and the biggest chunk of the beast's system, which he had saved for last deliberately, because last was the only position in the sequence where he would have accumulated enough practice before attempting the part with the smallest available margin for error. It had cost him more than any other session in every way sessions could cost sothing. He ended unconscious again. But when the healers evaluated Selphira afterward, what they found was a body with just recovery work ahead of it, and having recovery work ahead was the difference between no hope for her previous situation and being fully functional soon.
Three or four more days of sleep to clear the debt in Ren's body, then the remaining small crystals in Selphira's body were fixed in a final easier session.
Victor's full treatnt had taken ten additional days in total.
His crystallization had extended slightly further than Selphira's. But Ren arrived at the first session with Victor carrying more practice than he'd had when he started with Selphira, the sa determination from the beginning, and the result went in the sa direction: Victor Dravenholm, for the first ti in a long ti, had two functional arms.
A few days later, the most blocked section of his chest was treated, and Victor, like Selphira, recovered the ability to interact with his beast bonds correctly, the channels open again, no longer pressing against a solid prison.
♢♢♢♢
Ren had woken from his last three-day collapse a few minutes ago.
Or had been feigning to still be asleep for a few minutes, which wasn't exactly the sa thing.
His eyes were closed and he was perfectly aware that soone was sitting in the chair beside his bed, sitting with that stillness of a person who had been there long enough to find the least uncomfortable position and settle into it.
'Another dangerous problem,' he thought. 'The kind for which no fusion exists, no crystallization theory, no useful tool of any kind.'
Today was finally the day of the promised date with Luna.
He rembered the kiss.
He turned red with his eyes still closed. Which was already too obvious.
Her voice arrived close to his ear, closer than the chair would have justified if she had still been sitting in it
"Stop pretending to be asleep."
Quiet, with a thread of amusent distinguishable even at low volu. Close and warm in his ear. Considerably closer than expected.
Ren sighed through his nose.
"You pretended longer…"
Two seconds of silence.
"That was different." The tone had that specific inflection of mild indignation she used when an objection was technically valid and she wasn't going to acknowledge it. "I was in front of everyone."
'Though the only person I actually cared about not looking half-asleep in front of was one specific person,' Luna thought, and then pondered that this thought had no business leaving the space it was in.
Ren opened his eyes.
The recovery room ceiling was the sa ceiling. Luna was leaning beside the bed, arms loosely crossed, wearing the expression she had when she was pretending a thing wasn't the thing it was.
Ren brought his hand to his face and channeled a small amount of water mana, sothing he had learned to do when waking up and wanting to clear the heaviness quickly to do Lin's training. A ball of cold water rotated fast in his face.
Luna watched.
'That's what I should have done that ti!'
'Why didn't I do that? I also have water elent control. I had the exact sa need to not look like I had just woken up, and I just…'
'Because when I'm near him my brain operates at ten percent and the other ninety is occupied with not appearing to be occupied with anything?!'
'He's going to think I'm completely hopeless!'
Ren finished and held the water suspended a mont before shaping a small stone vessel beside the bed and settling it in.
"I'm sorry for how long the crystallization procedures took," he said.
Luna uncrossed her arms and cleared her throat.
"Don't apologize." She expressed with the firmness of soone who had thought this through before the conversation arrived. "It was sothing that had to be done first. That nobody else could have done." A pause, the pause of soone making a small decision to say the next part even though it left her slightly exposed. "I admire you for it... More than before."
'Which was already TOO MUCH before,' she added internally, at the intensity of thoughts one decides not to say out loud.
Ren went slightly more red. Not much, but enough. Enough for Luna to distinguish it.
'Oh! I see,' thought Luna, with a satisfaction she felt arriving in her face before she could stop it. 'Good. If he ends up equally embarrassed then maybe this is slightly more survivable for !'
"The truth is you're too brilliant and too talented," she said, with the boldness of soone who has decided what follows is completely justified, "your mind is the most extraordinary I've ever encountered, certainly the most brilliant in the world, so extraordinarily capable that I can't even imagine everything you've discovered across your life and now in this ti with the crystal treatnt…"
Ren looked at her.
Then he laughed.
Short, genuine, the kind that ca out when sothing surprised you at the exact mont you had been bracing for sothing else.
"Your mana is as honest as always," he said. "You don't have to exaggerate."
"I'm not exagger…"
"Luna."
Luna closed her mouth.
The tone had shifted, the particular shift he made when there was sothing more serious he wanted to say and needed the conversation at a different pace to say it. Luna recognized it because she had learned to recognize it, and the transition caught her slightly off-guard because she hadn't expected it here.
"I did discover sothing else."
"What?" The slight catch in the transition was smaller than it felt from the inside, but it was there.
"Your mother's crystal."
Luna looked at him.
"Can you show it to for a mont?"
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