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It had been a week since the Lady of Monsters had marked him, and only now had Tasuku finally managed to pull himself back to his guild. Trying to dodge people who were all caught up in the hype of someone having been touched by one of the gods was hard enough, and letting himself collapse onto one of the stools that were haphazardly scattered around the round wooden tables was almost enough to let the stress of everything that had happened drain right out of him. Ah, to be home again. He’d stay here for as long as he could stand staying in one place, and hope that would be long enough for everyone to forget about...his unwanted marking.
It must have been between classes or something, because Stella was the first one to greet him after she stepped out from the storeroom near the back. “Well hello again, o legendary hero! And just what brings you back here?”
Tasuku just groaned and slumped over the table. “Don’t call me a legendary anything. Don’t wanna be a cool legendary hero. Is there a free room anywhere because I’m going to dump my sword and armor and everything in it and give up being a knight. Maybe I’ll cut my hair so no one recognizes me...”
“Oh, Tasuku. What happened? We haven’t had any news of you recently.” She sat down on the stool next to his and put a hand on his head. Had it come from anyone other than the woman who’d trained him and taught him and taken him in after he ran away from his family, he would’ve smacked them for it. But Stella got special privileges, especially so for letting him take her last name so he didn’t ever have to be reminded of what he left behind. “It’s better to hear it directly from you, anyways. Stories have a way of getting twisted around before they find their ways here.”
“Ugh. It’s not like I did anything.”
Tasuku pulled himself up and looked over at Stella. It was embarrassing even to think about it, but she did have a kind of...calming presence. Her blonde hair, tied up securely in a bun, her eyes blue like the far oceans...gentle colors. Comforting. But less comforting was the mage’s robes she was wearing--she’d once explained to Tasuku how various fabrics and materials could influence the subtle flow of magic, and how certain ones were better for certain forms of magic. The forest green robes edged in gold looked perfectly unassuming, but Tasuku knew for a fact she only wore these for teaching young mages how to blow things up.
“You’ve said that about other things that were completely your fault. Better start talking, mister. Or maybe I’ll just happen to not have a room free for you.”
“Your cruelty knows no bounds,” he said drily, but finished sitting himself up and looked at her hard. “Did you know the Lady of Monsters actually really, really, really hates her kids?”
The Lady of Monsters was a tale told to scare little kids into obedience, but as Tasuku had discovered, she was less a legend, and more of an unfortunate reality. So the story went, she was the progenitor of all monsters--every single one could trace their lineage back to her, and the ones that had lived the longest and were the vilest in action were her immediate children. While she wasn’t really active anymore, she was still the kind of thing that could even shake up a cool and amazing legendary hero.
And a cool and amazing legendary hero, Tasuku narrated to his captive audience of one person, was exactly who she decided to contact for the first time in like, a billion years.
Tasuku, being a famed knight throughout the land, had of course been tasked to kill monsters before. It was what he did best. But some of the requests he’d taken on were bigger than that, and much closer to the Lady than he’d ever wanted to be. Slaying dragons is all fun and games until their mom projects her consciousness into your head.
“It was…” Tasuku hesitated. “Not...words. I don’t think she can actually speak. But she still communicated with me. I felt her hatred towards the dragons, and it burned...and the reason she hated them was because they left her behind. She gave birth to them and brought them into the world and they left her to go into the world on their own, without her, and she loathes them for that. She wasn’t angry at me for killing them at all. It was more like she was thanking me for it.”
Stella was silent, her hands folded on her lap. But if he’d been in her position, Tasuku wouldn’t have known what to say either, so instead of letting the awkward silence hang, he just kept telling the story.
“She told me she was so very pleased with what I had done, that she was going to bless me with the spirit of one of her children. That…” He felt a little sick, thinking about how something like that had been rummaging around in his mind. “That for killing so many of her children, I had become her most favored child of all.”
He glanced up at Stella’s concerned face and slapped a grin back on his face. He didn't like worrying her. “But that's not even the problem, y’know? Apparently during the connection I was like, floating and glowing, all that stuff. It took ages to get back here and convince everyone that I wasn't some newly chosen legendary messiah from the gods, but half of them won’t even listen to me when I say it was the Lady and not Shalsana or Glacious or Cassiade or someone actually decent.”
Telling Stella things like this was always awkward. She, of the two people working at the guild, was the one that more vehemently objected to Tasuku’s own adventuring and heroism, because it was too much for someone his age, or something. She didn’t approve of any of the young adventurers that travelled through their town, even though she herself had adventured and then retired at a young age. Or maybe it was because she’d done that. Tasuku loved telling stories to anyone who’d sit still long enough to listen, and telling them to Stella and her work partner, Tsurugi, was one of his favorite things. Maybe it was selfish bragging about his exploits to two retired heroes, but wasn’t it just fine to tell the people who’d taken care of him while he was getting back on his feet about all the amazing things he’d been able to do because of them?
Stella sighed, and then smiled. “You should probably talk to Tsurugi about this. He’s much more knowledgeable than I am about things relating to the divine.” She stood and fixed her skirts, and went back to her usual position behind the front desk, even though it was clearly a slow day today, and brought back a small key. “This is for the room at the very end of the hall on the second floor. You can stay as long as you want, but in exchange, you’ll be helping out around the place! Sound fair?”
“As it always does!” Tasuku grinned and snatched the key out of her hand, grabbed his things, and launched himself up the stairs to the room in question.
Despite his regular residency here, he didn’t have a specific room for himself like Stella and Tsurugi did, but being shuffled from room to room felt better anyways. When space was tight, that meant he’d get shoved onto the floor of one of the guild managers’ rooms with nothing more than a few blankets and a pillow, but he didn’t really mind that either. The other rooms were very sparsely furnished with whatever the pair could spare from what they got running the place, just enough to make several day stays comfortable enough, but Stella’s room was decorated with magical artifacts she’d acquired during her travels and heavy wall hangings and thick rugs, making it feel warm and cozy and all the colors made it look not unlike a forest on a summer day.
Tsurugi’s room was a lot more sparse, since paladins or former paladins or whatever didn’t care too much about personal effects, but it still had enough signs of his presence, with a few shelves of medicinal compounds, a kit for cleaning his sword and armor, and books on myths and legends from around the world. Getting shoved into his room wasn’t as comfortable as Stella’s, but it came with the benefit of always learning something new about the beliefs of others in the world around him.
The room at the end of the hall was directly across from Tsurugi’s room, and Tasuku appreciated its defensive positioning. He dumped his bag on the floor and then kicked it to the wall before carefully laying his sword on the bed and unstrapping his armor, piece by piece. Each piece was delicately placed on the ground, and then he had to actually go to his bag and get what he needed to clean each one. Proper upkeep of one’s armor was like proper upkeep of one clothes--it kept it looking nice and in top condition to protect him. Tasuku had given up on a full suit ages ago, much to Tsurugi and Stella’s chagrin, but you couldn’t become legendary by doing what everyone else did. Besides, this was lighter and let him be quicker on his feet, and that was what really mattered.
Cleaning his armor was a relaxing ritual for Tasuku, and just from that and being in the home he knew he could always return to was enough to almost make him forget about the events that had been lurking at his heels the whole way here. Changing into fresh clothing felt like changing out of the weird perceptions of him that had been haunting him for the last week and returning to being himself--who, for now, was just Tasuku, the annoying brat that wouldn’t leave Stella or Tsurugi alone, but would do any chores around the guild in exchange for food and a roof over his head.
Sometimes it was a lot easier being just Tasuku, instead of the great and powerful legendary hero Tasuku.
He scooted himself back downstairs, and from the sounds of it, Stella’s class had begun again while he’d been busy. There wasn’t any note behind the front desk, so that meant he was free for now. Which meant it was finally time to hunt down Tsurugi and ask if there was any way to get out of this...marking.
Stella had her classroom, where she taught the more delicate things like reading and writing and science and math and magic, but Tsurugi’s usual lessons were a bit more...hands on. He taught swordsmanship primarily, and to those who were interested, he would tell them about the many gods and goddesses that walked this world--the great lord Avalon, who lay far off in the afterlife, the goddesses Shalsana and Cassiade, of light and night respectively, great Tuval, whose oracles could divine any answer one sought of them, to name a few--and he spoke of them all equally. Most paladins mostly just spread word of their patron deity, but since he was so cagey about who he’d been the champion of, he had to speak of them all the same. Their strengths and their flaws, why to fear them and why to love them--it was almost less about spirituality and more about simply telling people how the world around them supported them.
Tasuku went from window to window, looking out and trying to find him, before finally spotting him and his students out the back. Even as a former paladin, Tsurugi still wore the shining white and gold armor that marked his former status, and unless he actually told you as much, you’d never be able to tell he wasn't still one. He seemed to prefer it that way, since it meant fewer bad guys wanted to try and raid this little village. “Former paladin” just didn't hold the same weight.
But that didn't matter right now. What mattered was that Tasuku needed Tsurugi’s boundless knowledge of deities. So he slammed the back door open and yelled, “Okay guys! Class is over, I need to talk to Tsurugi.”
They ignored him. There was just no respect for legendary heroes anymore.
“Alright,” Tsurugi said, putting his hands together and smiling at his students. “Who wants to practice on a moving but unarmed target?”
And then pointed directly at Tasuku.
After a rather amusing few minutes that ended with Tasuku up a tree, Tsurugi called the actual end of the class. Once his students all left to hit the baths, he came over to the tree Tasuku was now calling home and put his hands on his hips. “You can come down now.”
“Of course I can’t,” Tasuku said, clinging to a branch. “Who knows what other heinous, un-paladin-like acts you might commit?”
Tsurugi just laughed. “I knew you'd be able to handle yourself. It’s good practice for them.”
“As much of a vote of confidence that is for my ego, what if I got hurt? What then?”
“You didn't actually get hurt, did you?” And Tasuku couldn't keep teasing him anymore, not after that note of genuine concern touched his voice.
“Uh…” He double checked himself. “Got some scratches from getting up here so fast. But nothing else.”
“Come down here and I'll close them up.”
“They're just scratches, jeez.”
But he finally dropped down from the tree, and permitted Tsurugi to fuss over him until he confirmed there were no serious wounds, and watched as Tsurugi removed his gloves and carefully touched one of the scratches that had been deep enough to bleed. At the contact, Tsurugi’s magic flared to life--a warm, minty glow that closed up each scratch right before his eyes.
Tasuku watched in awe, as he always did--with just the tiniest bit of magic, the cuts could be closed up tighter than Stella’s bodices. “I-I have a healing wand of my own, you know.”
“Yes, yes. Blessed by Shalsana and Cassiade. But what if,” Tsurugi said, back to their more playful teasing, “what if you'd bled out on the way to get it?”
“Don't be so dramatic.” Tasuku rolled his eyes, but he couldn't help grinning. Tsurugi was so easy to talk to.
“Ah, that's right.” Tsurugi nodded, satisfied that the cuts were closed, and put his gloves back on. “On the subject of being dramatic, what was it you wanted to talk about?”
After all the excitement, Tasuku had almost forgotten why he'd nearly gotten beat up by sword-wielding teenagers in the first place. He just about started to spill the beans right then and there, under the big tree that grew to the side of the guild, but then realized talking about how he'd been blessed a monster out in public would be bad for his reputation. Even the stories circulating still just said he'd been blessed by one of the gods. “Can we, uh, go inside to have this conversation? It’s about a, um, crisis of faith.”
“I didn't know you had faith in anything but yourself.”
“Shut up!”
They went back inside, Tasuku trying to bicker with a Tsurugi who just wouldn't reciprocate, and he planted himself in the main hall again as he waited for the nosy paladin to change into something more comfortable than his fancy armor. He would've rather had this talk somewhere else, maybe inside one of their rooms, but it was finally getting late enough that the only people who might still be around were the guild’s permanent residents and some of Stella’s students asking her for advanced tips and tricks on how to blow stuff up better. But soon enough Tsurugi came back down from the second floor and sat next to Tasuku.
Without any prompting at all, he told Tsurugi the same story he told Stella, but this time he couldn't hide his worries. Tsurugi was the only person who might possibly know how to maybe undo or get rid of the blessing that now marked him, a constantly itching outline of a pair of dragon wings etched into his back. But at the same time, Tsurugi was a paladin, someone who was sworn to protect the world from that who had become tainted by evil, and even as an ex-paladin he still held himself to that. Would telling him that he was now someone other paladins would have hunted down without a thought really end as well as he was hoping?
Great and powerful legendary heroes didn't get scared often, but the idea of disappointing Tsurugi made a stone of crystallized dread settle into the pit of his stomach.
When he was done telling his story, Tasuku fell silent, praying to whichever gods might still favor him that Tsurugi couldn't see how nervous he was or hear how his heart was pounding. “Stella said I should talk to you, and...really, that was the whole reason I came back here. I don't know what to do. I…”
Whatever he was going to say next just kind of died on his lips, not able to bring himself to say much more. Tsurugi looked deep in thought, and the silence stretched out for painfully long years and decades and eons until he finally spoke.
“I can't remove it from you.”
Tasuku felt like he'd just shattered into tiny fragments.
“But,” Tsurugi said, smiling kindly, “that doesn't mean it's impossible to. I’m sure another god would be able to remove it, or at least cancel it out.”
“Wha-- Really?!” He practically pounced on the paladin. “Go ask your god! Right now! Get them to fix it!”
“Like I’ve said before, we aren't exactly...on speaking terms anymore. But,” he said with a smile, “I might still be able to get a line to them. I'm not sure if they'll help you, though… They're not really interested in helping out anyone else I know.”
“Why not?”
Tsurugi hesitated, looking a bit unsure about what he was about to say. “They're the clingy, jealous type.”
“What does that mean?”
“Anyways,” Tsurugi said, ignoring Tasuku entirely, “I can also try a more basic remedy for it to weaken the connection.”
“Then do that! I don’t--” Tasuku stammered, unable to keep any sort of front up against Tsurugi. “I don’t...want this.”
Tsurugi, like Stella before him, reached out and ruffled Tasuku’s hair. “It's because you don't want it that I can help you. You may have a monster’s blessing, but that doesn't make you a monster.”
As always, Tsurugi knew exactly Tasuku wanted to hear without him having to ask him to say it. Tsurugi and Stella were probably the best place Tasuku could’ve ended up all those years ago, and he was more grateful for them than he could ever try to express.
Stella finished sending the last of her students home, and came to their table and told them she’d start preparing dinner now, so the two of them were free to do whatever they wanted until it was done. So they went up to Tsurugi’s room, where he kept all of his medicine and magic items and stuff, the wooden boards of the stairs creaking under their feet. This late in the season there weren’t any other residents of the upstairs rooms, and to be honest, it felt a bit lonely. Tasuku didn’t really want anyone else but Tsurugi and Stella to know about the blessing and marking, but after travelling through so other villages and kingdoms, not having so many other people around just felt weird.
Tsurugi opened the door to his room, way at the back of the hall, and Tasuku stepped inside. It was almost exactly like he remembered, with the man’s bed as plain as it always had been, its low bookcases crammed full of books, except for the two shelves on the one closest to his bed that had all sorts of jars and vials of medicinal compounds. He probably could’ve been described more as an alchemist than a paladin at this point, if not for the fact that Tasuku knew he took pride in being someone who could heal, not just fight. The god he had served had even granted him healing magic--Stella had told him once that Tsurugi had no natural capacity for magic--and regardless of whatever had happened between him and his god, that magic was something he still had. Rather than continuing to be a warrior in the name of his god, he chose now to be a healer, protector, and teacher.
Tasuku admired him more than anyone else in the whole world for these things, mostly because he didn’t think he’d ever be able to give up adventuring.
“You said she...marked you?” Tsurugi went over to she bookcase with all the jars, leaning down in front of it and looking them over. “Where is it?”
“Yeah,” Tasuku said, hanging back towards the door. “It’s on my back.”
“Can you show me?”
Tasuku took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. It felt shameful, showing the mark to anyone, much less to Tsurugi, but if it’d help… “Yeah,” he said again, and then turned around and pulled his shirt off. He heard Tsurugi’s footsteps as the man walked over to him, and Tasuku was glad he didn’t have to look at him right now.
The mere statement of saying the mark was on his back felt like an understatement. It covered his entire back--a pair of dragon wings, the upper tips creeping over the tops of his shoulders, extending from there down past his hips. He couldn’t see it, but he could feel it--itching, prickling, burning all the time. Tasuku had gotten used to it after a week’s worth of dealing with it, but it was still there at the very edge of his mind. He had never been able to bring himself to look at it more than just the parts that peeked over his shoulders, but he knew it was a physical mark as well as a magical one, the wings looking like they’d been carved into his skin by a knife. And in those lines was the spirit of a dragon that Tasuku had killed. The knowledge made him feel like his body was going to start rotting away at any moment.
Tsurugi was silent, probably thinking about how horrible it was. Or maybe not. Part of what Tasuku admired him was because he was so kind, even in the face of worse things than this. “I think,” he said slowly, “I might at least be able to heal the scarring.”
“Really?!”
“I said I might. It depends on how tied to the Lady’s power the scars themselves are. With any luck, they were just an aesthetic choice by an overdramatic god.” Tsurugi didn’t sound very hopeful, but maybe that was just Tasuku’s imagination. “Sit down for me, would you? This might take a little more effort than usual.”
Tasuku plopped down onto the floor by the door, crossing his legs, and he heard Tsurugi sit down behind him. Soon enough, the familiar warm feeling of his magic was on Tasuku’s back, slowly and carefully tracing the lines of the wings. “S-So, um, did anything happen while I was away? Anything interesting?”
It was an awkward and horribly clumsy attempt at trying to distract himself, and the both of them knew it. But Tsurugi responded anyways, as best he could. “Unfortunately, there hasn’t been much. I think the most interesting thing that’s happened since you were last here is one of Stella’s students managing to successfully blow up one of her training dummies. We were all very proud of her, and her parents were too.”
Magic. That was a conversation topic Tasuku could work with. Even as Tsurugi continued his work, Tasuku couldn’t help the fear that his god-given magic was going to somehow interact badly with the marking of the Lady and blow up in both of their faces. Anything to keep from thinking about that possibility. “Tell me how your healing magic works, then. You told me once you couldn’t do magic naturally, right?”
Tsurugi shrugged. “Yeah, that’s true. I was told that there’s some sort of...spiritual circuit or something, and if things don’t line up right, you can’t do magic. When I sold my soul or whatever, my circuit got aligned properly, and now I can do this.” He drew a little circle onto Tasuku’s back, breaking away from the lines. “I can’t do any of the big flashy stuff Stella can, but she’s not too good at healing magic, so it balances out.”
“How does it work, though? Stella told me that her magic...uh.” Tasuku had to take a moment to remember that lesson. It’d had a lot of big words, and he’d been kinda young at the time. “Takes the natural ambient energies of the world and turns them into something...bigger. Like turning a breeze into a windstorm, or sunlight into fire.”
“Got it in one. But healing magic is still a little bit different. It’s still just manipulating energy that’s already there, but…” Tsurugi thought for a moment. “Natural energy is just out there, floating in the world with no particular aim or goal. It just exists. But healing magic has to control the energy in the body, and all of that is working desperately towards keeping whoever it’s inside of alive. Healing magic has to take that chaotic mess and point it where it should be going. So it’s basically directly manipulating the life force of whoever it is I’m healing. And to make the strain of that less heavy on whoever’s getting healed up, it also draws from natural energy, and from my own life energy as well.” He paused. “Or...something like that. It’s been a while since a certain someone gave me that explanation.”
Tasuku thought that over, rolling the words around in his head. Magic had never been his strong suit, and it wasn’t something he had much of a proficiency in, although it was more than Tsurugi had. He could at least make a few sparks happen when he really put his mind to it, but that was the extent of his talent, not that Stella hadn’t tried to turn him into an amazing sword-wielding mage. “So...wait. Wait. You’re using your life for this, too?”
“Yes, Tasuku. I just said that.”
Thoughts connected slowly, like a river moving lazily downstream. And then Tasuku bolted up, spinning on his heels, and frowning at Tsurugi. “I don’t want it, then! I mean, that’s okay for littler cuts and stuff, but…” He put a hand on his shoulder, feeling the raised scar tissue under his fingers. “Not something this big.”
Tsurugi had looked surprised when Tasuku suddenly sprung up, but he was smiling now. “If you insist, but it’s not that much of a deal. As long as I don’t use it in excess, then it shouldn’t have any lasting effect on me. But it’s probably for the best regardless, since it didn’t look like it was helping all that much.”
Tasuku sighed. He’d figured as much, since the prickling hadn’t been going away. “Is there...anything else you can try?”
“Yes, that wasn’t my only option, and not even the one I asked you up here for.” Tsurugi stood up and went back to the shelves of medicines. “I didn’t really expect that to work, but I thought it’d at least be worth a try. But magic tends to work opposite magic--so if that didn’t work, then my original plan probably will.”
He picked up a jar of viscous-looking amber liquid and set it on top of the bookcase, and then after scanning the shelf again, decided against grabbing anything else. He gestured for Tasuku to turn around and sit down again so he did, and he almost jumped up again when he felt whatever was in that jar against his back. It was cold.
So naturally, the first words out of his mouth were a slightly shrill, “Hey, what is that, anyways?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“That’s really threatening when you’re applying it to my skin, did you know that?”
Tsurugi laughed. “It’s honey. Before you jump up again, let me tell you that honey has a host of medical uses, from soothing burns to keeping open wounds clean. I’d actually recommend you start keeping some on you when you’re adventuring off on your own.”
“I don’t need stuff like that. I have my magic paintbrush, remember?” Tasuku wiggled a little bit, trying to make having honey smeared on his back more comfortable, but it didn’t help at all.
Tsurugi just sighed at him. “Really, do you have any idea how amazing that item is? Blessed to be able to heal by Shalsana and Cassiade. Healing magic used by humans taps into the user’s life force, but your magic paintbrush is directly connected to the life forces of the lover goddesses. You could probably reconnect limbs without an issue with magic like that. Depending on the actual size of the injury, you might even be able to close up otherwise fatal wounds.”
“...I mean, hopefully, that never comes up?”
“But if it does,” Tsurugi said, patting Tasuku’s back with sticky fingers, “you’ll be able to do something about it. More to the point, honey is more than just a useful medical tool, in this context at least. It’s an item sacred to--” He hesitated. “...a certain god, who will we not name, but it represent both light and the sun, as well as the cyclical nature of life. I’d at least hope that it might ease how the mark feels, or maybe even counteract it some other way.”
And Tsurugi’s words were true. It felt stupid beyond words, but the honey was making the burning start to go away. It barely felt like anything anymore, actually. He wasn’t sure if that was the magic in it or just because that’s how honey handles injuries, but either way, he was grateful. Tasuku still didn’t know who Tsurugi’s god was or what they represented, but they’d clearly done something decent for him today.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t tease Tsurugi about it. “So, now that I know one of their sacred items, what is there to stop me from figuring out who it is, huh?”
“Well, I suppose there’s no real barrier to it now. But of course…” Oh, Tasuku didn’t like that tone of voice. Sure, it sounded perfectly friendly, but Tasuku could tell without having to look at his face that Tsurugi had that faintly lopsided grin that meant he was getting teased in return. “That means actually going through my whole collection of books, doesn’t it?”
Tasuku shuddered. The shelves were so full of books that there were basically crammed in there, and taking out one book would actually mean taking out two or three. And on top of that, a few new stacks of books had started forming on near the foot of Tsurugi’s bed, either new ones or older ones he’d been looking over that had gotten their place on the shelf replaced by new ones. All of them weren’t even divine texts, some of them picked up from a travelling apothecary or two or ten, but the concepts of medicine and worship were so closely intertwined that if Tasuku actually wanted to know anything he’d have to go through every single one. “Ugh. No thanks.”
“I guess it will just have to remain a mystery to our favorite legendary hero forever. And more importantly, I’m done preparing you for dinner.” Tasuku’s whole back was sticky with honey, and while it felt disgusting, the burning had almost completely died off. “I hope it’s working, otherwise I just wasted all of that.”
“As much as I hate to say it, it’s...made it feel a lot better. That doesn’t mean I’m going to forgive you for the weirdest medicinal remedy ever.”
Tsurugi just laughed at him, before going and putting the jar of honey back in its place on the shelf. “You should go wash all of that off now, then. Unless you fancy having to do all the laundry tomorrow because you slept on our nice clean blankets like that.”
“Gross! Absolutely not!” Tasuku went to leave, but then hesitated with his hand on the door. “...Um, will the effects stay even after it’s washed off?”
“I’d say...probably. Even if not, we do know that it helps now, so…” Tsurugi shrugged. “I’ll see what else I can do later, but for now, this should be good enough. Now go on, or else Stella’s going to finish cooking before you’re done and everything’s going to get cold.”
That was enough motivation to have Tasuku down the hall and down the stairs to the little room their bath was held in. Tub on top, insulated pit of firewood below. Burn the wood, the water heats up, and that’s your bath. Tsurugi would’ve had to ask either Stella or Tasuku to get the wood burning for him, but Tasuku was determined to at least try to ignite it first before asking for help.
Stella was a strong enough mage that regardless of the lack of resources, like sunlight or any preexisting source of heat, she could get the fire started. But Tasuku didn’t have that same kind of raw natural talent that she did, and the sun had already set a while ago. Stella was always saying that the truly talented mages could find their own ways to do any kind of magic. So it was a long shot, but…
...the warmth of being around people he trusted, people he cared for and who cared for him in return. He focused on that, closing his eyes and holding out one hand, trying to will that concept of warmth into actual heat. There was a sound, a cracking of sparks, and when Tasuku opened his eyes, he saw a blazing flame larger than any of the sparks he’d ever managed to make before.