“So what are you going to do about this?” Mushroombird gestured towards him again.
Minutes passed, or perhaps hours, in which Yves blanked out once more. By now, he could almost do it on purpose. Somehow, the sled continued to move forward nonetheless.
“Let’s phrase it like this,” said Twig. “Returning to your earlier question —“
“What question?” asked Yves.
“Please don’t interrupt,” said Twig. “We are talking about all these random things because you are distracting yourself.”
“From yourself,” added Mushroombird, still gesturing.
“What question?” repeated Yves.
“And you chose the topic of affection because you ran out of all the other, even more distracting things,” continued Twig.
“What question?”
“You wanted to know why we were discussing beauty and affection in the first place,” Mushroombird clarified. “Don’t pretend you don’t know.”
“In other words,” said Twig, “Why aren’t we talking about the important things?”
“Should we examine the artefacts?” Yves asked.
“No?” said Twig.
“No,” agreed Mushroombird.
“You’re not even trying to be subtle,” remarked Twig.
“It’s too dangerous,” emphasised Mushroombird.
“It’s also downright stupid. And too exhausting,” concluded Twig. “So what are we doing?”
Mushroombird’s gestures shifted from Yves to the desert ahead.
“First, I need a healer,” said Yves. “There is no reason to talk about anything until then. Everything else … comes afterwards.”
Yves needed so many things. He felt the strong desire to conjure a duck. He wanted to bury himself in ducks, but his energy reserves were perilously close to depletion. There was not enough Adhar in his surroundings to sustain his body and the Jabarrah. On top of that, he needed to constantly feed the Levitation Staff.
Yves was not just terribly wounded; his body was diminishing with each passing day. Like humans deprived of food, his body was eating itself. Even an uninjured wizard who refrained from using any magic would gradually lose his energy if he lingered too long on the Northlands Plateau. It happened to everyone without an adequate reserve of energy crystals. There was simply too little Adhar to even sustain the body.
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