Chapter 39
Dain's Story
Dain told him on a Friday night in the garden behind Dormitory B -- the same spot where Cyan practiced releases, which Dain had found out about two weeks ago and had started using as a general gathering point on the basis that nobody official came there after dark.
They'd been sitting in silence for a while, which was something Dain was capable of in small doses and which Cyan had learned to use rather than fill.
Then Dain said: 'You should probably know how I got here.'
Cyan looked at him.
'Not the official version,' Dain said. 'I have an official version -- guild sponsorship, based on exceptional dungeon performance, blah blah. That's real, technically. It's just not the whole thing.'
Cyan waited.
'About eight months before I came to the Academy,' Dain said, 'I was running a standard Bronze-rated dungeon in the Reaches with a four-person team. Mid-tier guild, contract work, nothing unusual. We'd done the same dungeon four times that season.' He paused. 'On the fifth run, something went wrong in the second chamber. The rating was wrong -- we found out later the rift had shifted internally, the classification had been updated in the central registry but the local guild copy hadn't been synced. Silver-rated beasts in a Bronze-rated zone.'
He said it matter-of-factly. He'd had eight months to process the facts.
'My team was Pira, Senn, and old Grav. Pira was the strongest -- low Silver, she should have been running better contracts but she liked the Reaches. Senn was Bronze like me. Grav was Iron and mostly handled extraction.' A pause. 'The beasts came from two directions. Pira handled the left flank. I handled the right. Senn was trying to get Grav to the exit.'
Another pause.
'Pira didn't make it. Senn didn't make it. Grav made it to the exit and sealed it, standard emergency protocol. He came back with a recovery team six hours later.'
Cyan said nothing.
'I was the only one left,' Dain said. 'I'm Bronze rank. Silver-rated beasts. I shouldn't have been the one left. I've spent eight months trying to understand why I was and I still don't have a clean answer.' He looked at his hands. 'What I know is that at some point in those six hours I stopped being afraid. Like a switch. And after that the beasts -- I can't explain it. I absorbed hits I shouldn't have been able to absorb. I don't mean I blocked them. I mean they hit me and the mana in them went somewhere and I kept standing.'
Cyan was very still.
'It's not the same as you,' Dain said, looking at him. 'I know that. I don't have a Mark, I don't have your absorption radius, it's nothing like what you do. But something happened in that dungeon and afterward my output tests were slightly different -- not ranked differently, but different in quality, in a way the guild's equipment flagged as unusual.' He paused. 'The sponsorship came from a guild master who saw the flag and wanted to know what it meant. He didn't tell me what he thought it was. He just said I should go to the Academy and see what they made of it.'
He fell silent.
Cyan thought about the sealed letters. Three null results in one cohort. Dain's unusual mana quality flag.
'Has anyone at the Academy looked at your ability profile?' he asked.
'The standard assessments. Nothing flagged unusual on those.' Dain looked at him. 'I haven't told anyone the dungeon part. You're the first.'
'Why me?'
Dain was quiet for a moment. 'Because when I watch you manage what you're managing, I think we've both been in a dungeon that did something to us that the standard framework doesn't have words for.' He paused. 'And because you don't look at things and pretend they're simpler than they are. That's rarer than it should be.'
Cyan looked at the garden.
'Thank you,' he said.
Dain nodded once. They sat in silence for a while longer.
Cyan thought about Dain in a collapsed dungeon for six hours, absorbing hits he shouldn't have been able to absorb, and the specific quality that showed up in post-incident assessment.
He thought about what it might mean.
He filed it.