The Silence of Unworthy Gods

By Andrew Rowe

This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this book are fictional.

Copyright © 2020 Andrew Rowe

All rights reserved.

Cover artwork by Daniel Kamarudin (https://thedurrrrian.deviantart.com/)

Cover design and typography by Shawn T. King/STK Kreations. (https://www.artstation.com/stk_kreations)

Map of Kaldwyn by Karl Vesterberg (http://www.traditionalmaps.com/)

ISBN: n/a for Kindle Edition

Version: 10-4-2022

DEDICATION

For found families.

Thank you to all the surrogate siblings and adoptive parents who have chosen to build bonds with those people who need them most.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Map of Kaldwyn

Author’s Note on Reading Order

Style Notes

Recap – Arcane Ascension 1-3

Chapter I – Draw Your Sword

Chapter II – Home

Chapter III – Survival

Chapter IV – Three Ways to Survive

Chapter V – Scales of Punishment

Chapter VI – Orientation

Chapter VII – New Classes

Chapter VIII – A Different Kind of Magic

Chapter IX – The Change in the Flow

Chapter X – Measuring Progress

Chapter XI – New Marks

Chapter XII – Duel

Chapter XIII – Spirit Studies

Chapter XIV – Silver and Iron

Chapter XV – Promises of Future Problems

Chapter XVI – Growing Pains

Chapter XVII – Sons of Valia

Chapter XVIII – A House United

Chapter XIX – On a Different Scale

Chapter XX – Scars of the Sons

Chapter XXI – Family Faults

Chapter XXII – A Gem of a Different Color

Chapter XXIII – Gifts

Chapter XXIV – Overwhelmingly Dark

Chapter XXV – Gratitude and Goodbyes

Chapter XXVI – Waiting for Waking

Chapter XXVII – The Problems of Progress

Chapter XXVIII – Wearing the Glove

Chapter XXIX – Grades Above “A”

Chapter XXX – Old and New

Chapter XXXI – Against All Odds

Chapter XXXII – No Relief to be Found

Chapter XXXIII – Unlike Father, Unlike Son

Chapter XXXIV – Glass Houses

Chapter XXXV – Thorns of the Soul

Chapter XXXVI – Fool’s Gold

Chapter XXXVII – Dangerous Deals

Chapter XXXVIII – Something Borrowed

Chapter XXXIX – Trail of Blood

Chapter XXXX – The Third Player

Chapter XXXXI – The Hand on the Board

Chapter XXXXII – The Cost of a Life

Epilogue – Broken Horizon

Appendix I – Attunements of East Edria

Appendix II – Characters and Terms

Appendix III – Corin’s Class Schedules

Acknowledgements

Similar Works

Closing Notes From the Author

Preview Chapter – Edge of the Woods

Secret Project Teaser

About the Author

Other Books by Andrew Rowe

MAP OF KALDWYN

The map above shows the continent of Kaldwyn, where this novel takes place. It is divided into four major nations — Valia, Edria, Caelford, and Dalenos. Each major nation has one or more of the Soaring Spires; these are also shown on the map.

This book begins in Valia, on the eastern side of the continent.

You can find a larger version of the map on Andrew’s blog here.

AUTHOR’S NOTE ON READING ORDER

This book includes some characters and story elements that are first introduced in one of my other series, Weapons and Wielders.

The first three books of Weapons and Wielders are a story that Keras tells to Corin and the other characters while on the train rides to and from Caelford, and thus Corin has information that he learns from those stories that he utilizes in this one. For example, he has some knowledge of things like Edrian nobility and certain wielders of the Six Sacred Swords due to their inclusion in Keras’ story. There is also a major character introduced in this book that has a connection to the Six Sacred Swords, which you’ll have a bit more context about if you’ve read those books.

Reading the Weapons and Wielders is not in any way necessary to understand this story, but it may lend some additional context for the identities and actions of some specific characters.

If you want that additional context, the first book of that series is Six Sacred Swords.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the book!

-Andrew Rowe

STYLE NOTES

Some characters within the story communicate telepathically. I use square brackets to indicate general telepathy. For example, [This would be what their telepathy looks like.] One specific character has another form of telepathy, which is indicated through the use of curly braces facing outward. }This is what that looks like.{

I use the singular “they/them” for agender and non-binary characters, as well as characters that have not had their gender determined by the narrator yet. For example, “I didn’t know who wrote the note, but they had a peculiar style of writing”.

Finally, I use spaces before and after em dashes (AP style). This is purely because I find this style easier to read.

RECAP – ARCANE ASCENSION 1-3

By Patrick Wayland

Oh, I guess it’s my turn to explain things. Corin and Sera have been doing most of the talking for a while, after all.

I guess most of you already know me, but I’ll start over for those of you who don’t. I’m Patrick Wayland, or, I guess, Patrick Wayland-Cadence now. Uh, I’ll get to explaining that change later.

I grew up in Beaufort, not too far from the Cadence family. Mom and Dad aren’t rich and famous nobles or anything, but they spent a lot of money to send me off to a Judgment at the Serpent Spire as soon as I was old enough. They’ve always looked after me, even though I know it hasn’t always been easy.

If you don’t know, a Judgment is where you go through a test inside a spire, and if you succeed, you get this magic mark called an attunement. Attunements come in a bunch of types with different powers. I knew that if I succeeded and got one, it would help my family be more successful, and it’d also let me go to school with people like Sera and Corin.

My Judgment probably wasn’t anything special. Nothing like what Corin and Sera dealt with.

See, when Sera went through her Judgment, she made a pact with…wait, I’m not supposed to talk about that. Sorry, Sera! Never mind.

Uh, and Corin, he got into all sorts of trouble.

He found this magic book — Trials of Judgment —  and it gave him some clues on how to solve the puzzles in the Judgment.

I’m skipping ahead, but the book was actually a magic book that let Corin talk to his brother, Tristan, who had been trapped in the tower for five years! Corin didn’t know it was Tristan right away because Tristan was like weirdly evasive about it and had some kind of strange villain-like scheme stuff going. But anyway, magic book! Yeah!

After a few rooms, he found his way into a secret prison and freed three prisoners: Vera, Echion, and Keras.

Vera and Echion were from Caelford. Vera was a researcher and Echion was, well, a kid that was basically her test subject. Oh, but Corin didn’t know all that at the time!

And Keras…well, Keras is a long story. He’s a crazy powerful swordsman from another continent with all sorts of weird pre-attunement magic and stuff. Oh! And he’s the former wielder of Dawnbringer, the Sacred Sword of Light!

…I still want to know what happened to Dawn. Why isn’t she with you, Keras?

…Ah, sorry. I’ll stop pestering you. You’ll tell us when it’s time.

Anyway, Corin freed the prisoners, which got him in trouble with Katashi, the Visage of Valor. The visages, if you don’t know, are the children of Selys, the goddess that protects and provides for the people of Kaldwyn. Selys is the Goddess of Trials, and she’s the one who constructed the towers, so we can prove if we’re worthy of her gifts in the form of attunements and other magical treasures.

If someone is truly worthy, they can climb all the way to the top of a spire — that’s called climbing, rather than taking a Judgment — and get a boon from Selys herself. I don’t know of anyone who has succeeded in our lifetime, but Corin’s mom apparently got half-way! That’s amazing.

Anyway, Corin got in trouble with Katashi, but it all worked out okay eventually!

Oh! Corin also got a magic sword in the spire, too. He didn’t find this out until later, but the sword is called Selys-Lyann, which basically means “Sword of the Goddess”, and it has powerful ice magic! It’s also, uh, possibly starting to develop self-awareness? Not super clear on that. Corin really needs to do something about it soon, though.

After getting out of the spire, Corin went home and saw his father, Magnus Cadence! Magnus was super disappointed because Corin’s attunement wasn’t the one the family is famous for…or, like, traditionally known for fighty stuff in general. Magnus is a Shaper and a famous duelist, and House Cadence got their nobility from winning a duel that ended the Six Years War, so that’s a big thing for them. Oh, and Sera was there! That’s when Corin found out that Sera, who was raised to be his retainer, was actually a member of the family! And possibly his sister, but Magnus was like, really cagey about that.

Anyway, Magnus was really awful to Corin and tried to get him to compete with his sister for inheriting the house, but Corin was, uh, mostly just sort of disinterested and bored with that idea? So he read some books and tried to figure out his attunement a little, then got on a train to the university, which we all have to attend for two years after finishing our Judgment — Lorian Heights.

By the time we went to Lorian Heights, we all had our attunements. I’m an Elementalist, which means I can control fire, air, and lightning. I also got super lucky and got picked to be a personal apprentice to one of the most famous Elementalists of all time, Professor Meltlake! Professor Meltlake is super fantastic and she’s really powerful and regal and such a good teacher.

Oh, and we also met Mara! Mara is great and a Guardian and one of the strongest people in our class.

And then I also got adopted by Corin as a retainer, which is why I have the name Patrick Wayland-Cadence now!

Uh, ignore why I asked him to be his retainer at that particular point in time, it’s not important.

Then Katashi showed up at school with all sorts of monsters! That was bad, but we fought our way over toward him, then Corin talked him out of killing us all.

Sorry, that’s skipping ahead kind of a lot. But it’s important, because Katashi gave Corin a responsibility to go find Vera and bring her back to the spire!

Anyway, Katashi gave us this whole task thing where we needed to go get Vera and bring her to the tower. Corin went and got this magic box, the Jaden Box — a really neat box that has storage and summoning powers — and then we went to find Vera to take her to the spire. Which we did, but then Corin got backstabbed by Professor Orden! And also by Jin!

Oh, right. I haven’t introduced them.

So, Professor Orden was one of our teachers, and kind of a mentor to Corin before she went all backstabby like.

And Jin…he’s a good guy, but he’s a transfer student from East Edria, and basically turning over Vera to Katashi was going to be…like, maybe really bad for Edria. And most people at the school were like, really mean and racist to him, so he didn’t have a great impression of us. So, I guess he tried to kill Vera — which is obviously awful, but he feels really bad about it! And he was…under a lot of pressure, and he…I don’t know. People do a lot of bad things under pressure, you know?

I don’t really blame him for what he did, but I know Corin didn’t really forgive him completely for turning on him in the tower.

Also, they were…uh, kind of dating, I think? So that made the backstabbing worse.

Anyway! Corin beat the bad guys and freed Derek from mind control and got a new attunement from Katashi!

Oh, right. Derek is Derek Hartigan, from the famous Hartigan family! He’s our friend and also Professor Meltlake’s nephew. Oh, they look different because he’s, like, adopted or something. Anyway, Derek is great, except when he’s mind-controlled and trying to kill us! Which he’s not anymore. That I know of.

Anyway, Corin got out of the tower with a great new attunement, Arbiter! And it’s a special Restricted Attunement that only a few people have, and it has extra powers that synergize really well with his original Enchanter attunement.

Oh, but Sera lost her powers and got some like, really bad mana scars. So that was bad. But her attunement turned into a more powerful ascended attunement, Invoker! Except it didn’t work, because her mana was, like, broken.

So yeah, in the second half of the year, we tried to figure out how to fix Sera’s mana problems and how Corin’s weird new Arbiter attunement worked. It turned out that Corin could use his Arbiter powers to purify mana, which let him make some really hard to make magic items, like mana regeneration ones! Also he could give us a weekly power boost, which is super useful and helped our powers advance faster than normal.

We went and lived with Derek Hartigan for a while, which was super nice because he’s like really rich and powerful and stuff! Also Keras came and lived with us and gave Mara and Corin some training in sword stuff.

Oh, and Corin and Keras made me this amazing sword, Bright Reflection, which is a replica of Keras’ legendary sword, Dawnbringer! It’s not nearly as powerful as the real Dawnbringer, but it’s super amazing and it can reflect magic and I love it.

Everything went pretty well until Corin got, like, half-way kidnapped by Derek’s ex-girlfriend who may now once again be his girlfriend, Elora Theas. She had some kind of schemes going on, then they all got attacked by a Child of the Tyrant in Gold (!!!!) named Saffron. That guy was super scary, but Elora teleported Corin to Derek, and Derek and Keras scared Saffron off (phew!).

Then we all went to the winter ball and Mizuchi, a child of the God Serpent, tried to kill everyone. =( =( =(

She was angry because I guess our government is like ridiculously corrupt or something and she murdered like half the national council. Also the school chancellor. I was like super heroic and used Bright Reflection to reflect her breath attack! Then she almost killed me, so that was bad.

Uh, don’t feel bad for trying to heal me and doing it wrong, Corin. Not your fault.

Anyway, we eventually got saved by some of the professors, especially Meltlake, who almost beat Mizuchi, and then by Vellum, who banished Mizuchi back to the Serpent Spire.

Oh! And Cecily was at the ball, too. She was one of Corin’s childhood friends — and a possible arranged marriage for him! That didn’t actually play out, though, because of everything that happened with Tristan vanishing, and also maybe because of something that happened with Corin’s father that I’m not sure about. Oh, Cecily also has a sister named Yunika, and they know about Tristan being alive in the spire!

After all that, Corin, Mara, Sera, Sheridan, and I went to the Serpent Spire to try to talk to Corin’s brother, Tristan, who was apparently stuck in there the whole time he was missing! And we found him, sort of, except Corin got separated from us and I wasn’t actually there for the big part where they fought Mizuchi again.

So Corin and Tristan and Sera got to fight Mizuchi and managed to teleport her out of the area, but Tristan got super hurt and lost an eye. But Corin got to see his brother was alive! And then they talked about future plans and stuff, but Tristan couldn’t leave the tower because apparently he would explode (long story) so Corin had to leave him behind.

After that we went on winter vacation.

We went to Caelford so we could look for a cure for Sera’s mana scarring and so Corin could learn more about his attunement. Corin told some of his story on the train, then Keras told us about how he first found Dawnbringer, then our train got attacked by bandits!

Oh, the bandits didn’t actually hurt anyone. And, uh, maybe didn’t rob anything? I think they may have kidnapped someone. Or rescued someone. I think Jin might have been one of them? It was all a little weird and I pretty much stayed in my room.

Anyway, bandits left, we got to Caelford. Mara and I went to the Tiger Spire with Keras and started climbing and got some new magic items!

While we did that, Corin and Sera went to Farren Labs and met Anabelle Farren, the owner. They got some lessons and Corin learned all about compound runes and how artificial attunements are made!

Then I met up with them again, then we went back to the Tiger Spire and climbed some more! We got some more items, including a token to try to get into a special Arbiter-only tower entrance, but it didn’t work.

Corin used a tracking spell to try to find the last person who had gone in the Arbiter door, Warren Constantine. Warren was another Arbiter, one who had worked for Farren Labs before running off to, uh, be a heretical hermit. Then we met Len, a magical copy of Keras’ old friend Lydia, and she took Corin and Sera to meet Warren!

They met him, and he was like a weird creepy old guy, but nice! And then Corin and Sera took a test at this Transcendence Crystal Shrine thing and got magic marks that give them new powers. They also got invited to this thing called the Emerald Council happening next year, which is apparently a meeting for Emerald-level attuned (!) which are like the most powerful people on the continent. So that’s exciting!

After that, we headed back to Valia. Jin showed up during the train ride and gave Corin a thing that would help with Sera’s mana scarring, which was really nice of him! And then he vanished because he’s like that.

I was feeling pretty good about the trip until we got home, and Corin’s dad challenged him to a duel (!!!). And, uh, I guess I’ll let Corin take over from there.

CHAPTER I – DRAW YOUR SWORD

Corin Cadence’s Perspective

I’d known that seeing my father again was going to be difficult.

I’d expected — and yes, Sera had warned — that there would be consequences for my brazen disregard for my father’s wishes and my failure to alert him to my activities.

I had not, however, expected him to wait at the train station for my return to Valia.

He hadn’t waited at the train station for my return from my Judgment, after all. No one had.

And so, when I stepped off the train and saw him, my first reaction was surprise. This was immediately followed by a combined sense of dismay and disbelief when he pushed his coat aside to reveal his dueling cane and spoke the words, “Draw your sword.”

Magnus Cadence was a professional duelist. I’d grown up hearing stories of his exploits, although I’d only rarely been allowed to witness his fights directly. He was a Citrine-level Shaper, but I didn’t know precisely how deep into Citrine-level he was. Even if I assumed he was at the absolute bottom of Citrine — which I deemed unlikely, given his obsession with training — he was vastly more powerful than I was and more experienced at personal combat.

Equipment may have done something to compensate for that, if he’d shown up without any items of his own. As it was, however, I noted that he was wearing multiple potentially magical items: a crown, a rune-etched belt, and a silver-threaded overcoat. These were parts of his full dueling regalia, which I only had seen him wear on a handful of occasions. I had some ideas on how they worked, but at that moment, a detailed threat assessment wasn’t on my mind.

Instead, my reaction was simple. “What?”

“You heard me, boy.” He didn’t sneer or snarl like the caricature of a villain you might picture when thinking about a father challenging his son to a duel. Instead, he simply sounded…disappointed. Resigned. After a beat, he clarified, “You have disrespected me for the last time.”

Fortunately or unfortunately, that brief pause was enough for me to get a hint of my bearings back. “You think so? We’ve barely started chatting, I think I’ll have a number of other opportunities for disrespect.”

“Corin!” Sera stepped up next to me. “Not here.”

Her speech reminded me that we weren’t alone. Patrick and Mara had just stepped off the train as well, and I knew Cecily wasn’t far behind. Keras had been stopped by immigration security on the train and was still dealing with paperwork, but I didn’t anticipate that taking him much longer.

Father ignored Sera and the others, however, continuing to focus his attention solely on me. This, perhaps, could be seen as a microcosm for our interactions over the last several years. “Come. Step away from the train. There’s an open space nearby that should be suitable. This won’t take long.”

I stared at him. “You’re serious.”

“Absolutely serious.”

I gestured to the dozens of other people coming off of the train, as well as the rest of the station crowd. “Let me see if I have this right: you are challenging your own heir to a duel in the middle of a public place.”

“You’re quite aware of what I’m doing and why. Your veil of incredulity will not avert this.”

“Really? You realize that no matter how this goes, you’re going to be hurting the reputation of House Cadence? You know, the only thing that has ever mattered to you?”

His lips trembled just slightly. I’d hit the mark on that one. “There is only one way this ends: in your humiliation. Your insubordination requires an answer. You’ve made it abundantly clear that simpler methods of ensuring your behavior have been insufficient. Thus, I must remind you of your place.”

“You really think beating me into the ground is going to teach me a lesson?” I gave him a bitter laugh. “You’ve been trying that method for years — how well has it worked so far?”

“Corin, this isn’t the place for this sort of talk. Father,” Sera said pointedly, “we should take this discussion home.”

Father shifted his head toward Sera for the first time. “Watch your words. I did not give you permission to call me that.”

Sera didn’t wince like I might have expected. She just…deflated a little. “…Fine. But this is unbecoming of you. We can resolve this without a public display.”

Magnus glared down at her. “I am the head of this household and I discipline my child where I wish, when I wish, and how I wish. You would do well to remember that.”

I noted the term “child” — as in singular, not plural — and I’m sure that Sera did as well. He was not-so-subtly reminding her that she’d been acknowledged as a member of the household, but not as his daughter.

Always going for the most damage with the fewest words. That’s Magnus Cadence.

Sera didn’t speak again, not immediately, at least. At that point, Cecily finished dragging her bags off the train. I heard a “meep” as she startled upon seeing Magnus, then slowly took a few steps away, scanning the crowd with her eyes.

I didn’t blame her. We were attracting a considerable degree of attention now. No one was standing too close, but there were at least a couple dozen people watching from a safe distance, and I suspected at least a few people had run off to get the train station’s security team.

Before anything further could happen, Magnus jerked a thumb toward a wide section of grass about fifty feet away from the train. “Enough chatter. Come. I’ll make this quick.”

Magnus Cadence spun on his heel, then began to walk toward the grass.

“No.” I said toward his back.

Father paused in place without turning around. “I’m not certain I heard you correctly.”

“I said ‘no’, Father. I refuse your challenge.”

Magnus turned back toward me, folding his hands in front of him. “I am your lord father. You do not get to refuse.”

Patrick stepped up next to me. “He’s an attuned. An adult. He can do what he wants.”

“Ah, the commoner.” Magnus smiled. “Will you be taking his place, then?”

“I…if Corin needs me to, I am his retainer, and I will stand for—”

I cut Patrick off with a raised hand. “There’s no need for that. No one will be dueling you today, Father.”

Magnus shook his head. “A shame. I did everything in my power to raise you properly, but it seems you’ve inherited your mother’s habit for running away.”

I blinked. “…Are you trying to goad me into a fight by insulting Mother? You can’t possibly think that’s going to be effective. If you’d spent any time paying attention to who I am, rather than just trying to bludgeon me into a younger version of you, you’d understand that your strategy had no chance of success.”

I heard some mumbling in the background. Word was going to spread about this.

Is Father being uncharacteristically sloppy by challenging me here, or is this all part of some kind of long game on his part?

It doesn’t matter, does it?

Father turned back toward me. “I will offer you one final chance to handle this the easy way. Accept your lesson now, and I will make it quick. Choose the coward’s path and you will face far greater consequences.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” I took a step forward. “I fought things stronger than you on my winter break. I’m not a coward. I’m not weak. And I’m not afraid of you. You’re simply not worth my time.”

I turned to the people behind me. My retainer, my sister, my friend…and whatever Cecily was. “Let’s go.”

“To where?” Magnus interjected. “Home? Refuse me now, and you needn’t bother. You will not have one. None of you will.”

I turned back toward him. “…What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I thought it would be straightforward enough that even you could understand. Refuse to accept your discipline right now, and you will no longer be a member of House Cadence. I will disown you.”

Ah. So there it is. Finally, the hook.

I saw it easily enough, and I didn’t bite. “Do you think that will stop me? Fine. Go ahe—”

Sera stepped between us…and at that point, I realized my foolishness.

The hook had never been thrown at me.

“Please allow us to discuss this briefly, Fa…Lord Cadence.” Sera had a look of barely suppressed panic, and I could understand why.

It would have been easy to assume that disowning me would elevate Sera’s position: she would, after all, be uncontested as the heir to House Cadence in my absence.

But Magnus Cadence’s language had been calculated to make it abundantly clear that he had not acknowledged Sera as his daughter. His dismissive language toward both Patrick and Sera implied their unimportance. And, by saying that none of us would have a home to return to if I refused, he’d implied that he was treating us as a package deal.

I wasn’t invested in House Cadence. He knew that.

But Sera?

For her, being the heiress to House Cadence was a Tarren Tale. She’d been raised without a father. Raised to be a servant. When she’d learned that her father might be a noble that she’d known and respected her entire life, that had been a dream come true. Even the truth about how Magnus had treated me hadn’t completely eroded that.

And Father wielded that dream like a blade, driving it between us.

“Is there a problem here?”

A man with a habit of breaking blades stepped off the train. Casually, he stepped in front of Sera and me, directly into Father’s line of sight.

“This is a family matter. You needn’t concern yourself.” Father said.

Keras’ eyes narrowed, a cutting grin sliding across his face. “Oh, I disagree. You see,” he gestured toward me, “I have a part-time job as Corin’s bodyguard, and I’m a little disappointed I haven’t had a chance to do much with it yet.”

Keras’ hands were empty, but with each heartbeat, I felt it growing — the sensation that the air was alive with blades, that a drawn sword was ready to obliterate everything in a single unstoppable strike.

It was that moment, more than any other, that made me panic. Maybe I should have found it comforting that someone strong had stepped in with the intent to protect me, but all I saw was the situation quickly unraveling before my eyes.

There was always a part of me that wanted my father to face the consequences of his actions. Retribution for all the days I’d laid bleeding on the ground, barely managing to draw breath, in the aftermath of his “training”.

But there was a smaller, childlike voice inside of me that still screamed, “That is your father, don’t let someone hurt him!”

There was, of course, no need for concern for Keras’ well-being.

If a battle between the two of them started, there was absolutely no question in my mind how it would end.

An image of my father’s broken body in a growing pool of blood flashed through my mind. I opened my mouth to speak, but Father responded first.

Magnus Cadence’s expression was full of disdain. He clearly didn’t recognize who he was talking to. “Is this where you say I’ll have to go through you to get to him?”

Keras raised a hand, shaking his head softly. “No, no. Slight misconception on your part. You don’t get through me. No one gets through me. You walk away now or you don’t walk away at all.”

Father stood up a little straighter. “You’re bold, I’ll give you that. Perhaps you’ll make a suitable warmup round. I suppose breaking you might give Corin some additional inspiration to make wise choices in the future.”

“Nonono,” I finally managed to snap out of my stupor and get my mouth to work. “Keras, stop, it’s fine.”

“It’s absolutely not fine.” His hands balled into fists. “The way he treats you has never been fine.” Keras glanced at me with regret weighing on his features. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t there when he showed up at the Theas’ place to see you. I should have been there. I failed you then, but now,” he turned back to Magnus, “I am here. And I will not let him hurt you again.”

“Who are you to judge the way I raise my child?” Father tightened his jaw.

The swordsman took a step closer, his eyes flashing silver as he stared toward my father. “I’m Keras Selyrian.” He took another step, putting them nearly face-to-face. “Amuletless Alliterator, Slayer of Sacred Stones, Deity’s Demise, and Sword of Shattered Stars. And most importantly for this conversation, I’m someone with absolutely no tolerance for the kind of pitiful and disgusting coward that hits their own child. You don’t need to bother challenging me. I’ll—”

Sera stepped back in horror. And, goddess curse me, I stepped forward instead. “Keras, enough. Father, I accept your challenge.”

There was a moment of silence as all eyes turned to me.

Father turned toward me, ignoring Keras entirely in spite of their close proximity. “Finally, a hint of some spine.”

I steeled myself and added, “…There are a few conditions.”

Father scoffed. “Ah, of course there are. I’m ashamed for having a moment of hope that you’d simply chosen to do the right thing.”

Keras looked straight at me, his piercing gaze shining with flecks of silver. “You don’t have to do this.”

I turned to Sera, then Father, then back to Keras. “You’re right. I don’t. But I’m tired of this. So very, very tired. And I need to settle it myself.”

Father walked away from Keras, turning to look down at me. “State your terms, boy.”

“One year.” I said. I’d like to say that it was some masterful calculation, but in truth, it was simply the first thing that came to my mind.

Father raised an eyebrow. “Pardon?”

“I’ll give you your duel, but I’m about to begin my second year of attunement training. It would be irresponsible of me to allow any injuries I sustain in a duel to impede my training or academic performance. Thus, one year. You let me finish my school year, and when it concludes, I will fight you in a formal duel.”

Magnus paused a moment, then shook his head. “No, that’s excessive.”

I opened my mouth to object, but he raised a hand to stop me.

“…I have no interest in ruining your academic career, however. There will be a break between the semesters. We will hold our duel during that time.”

I shrugged a shoulder. “Okay, sure.”

His eye twitched. I’d surprised him with my agreement, if only slightly. I let that fact soothe my internal screaming, if only slightly.

Magnus spoke again before I could plan further. “What are your other terms?”

“My second will negotiate them with your second at a later time. We have a semester, after all.”

Magnus stared at me for one more moment, then blessedly, he nodded. “Very well. Prepare yourself. Our match will be right after your semester ends. And do not even think of running away.”

I turned my own head up to meet his. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Father gave me one last scrutinizing look, then spun dramatically, his coat whipping around as he moved. Then, without so much as a glance at anyone else, he walked away. The crowd parted around him.

“Corin…” Sera stepped closer to me. “Why…why did you…”

“For both of us,” I said. “To avenge my past and to ensure your future. That man is never going to stop hurting me unless I stop him myself.”

“I could handle that for you.” Keras stepped closer. “I’d very much like to handle that for you.”

I’d never seen him so obviously angry. It was…more than a little terrifying. His hands were trembling, as if they were still itching to draw his sword at any time, and if he did…I didn’t know if there was anything in the world that could stop him.

I shook my head vehemently. “No, no, please…it’s okay. I mean, it’s not okay, nothing about this is okay, but…don’t. You might be able to stop him from hurting me physically again…no, I’m sure you could, if you beat him badly enough. But…that wouldn’t fix things. There will be no resolution unless I make it with my own hands.”

Keras gave me a sad shake of his head. His expression softened, but the tremors in his hands remained. “It’s a dangerous thing, to fight your own father. I don’t mean that just literally. It…that sort of thing can change you. The resolution you’re looking for might help you close some wounds, but you’re going to open new ones in the process.”

I looked at Keras, feeling steel in my own stare. “I’m counting on it.”

CHAPTER II – HOME

After Father left, the crowd quickly dispersed. My friends watched him leave along with me, turned in my direction with looks of concern. I had no answers to give.

It was Sera who spoke first. “Come on. This isn’t the right place to talk.” Then she marched off, vaguely in the direction of Lorian Heights.

We’d stopped at the closest train station to the academy, so it wasn’t far. Presumably, Father had anticipated that in order to meet us there, or simply checked our itinerary somehow. Haven Securities — the owner of the train company — probably had files he could have checked.

…Or, of course, maybe Sera had simply told him when and where we were arriving.

She’d told me she was going to write him a letter. She’d told me I should write a letter. She’d told me that there would be consequences if I didn’t.

She’d been right.

…Except, of course, that those consequences might have been avoidable if she hadn’t written her own letter.

I felt a flash of anger as I followed her, but I pushed it down as best I could. She was right about one thing: this wasn’t the time or place for discussing things further. We’d drawn more than enough attention as it was.

Briefly, I glanced back toward the departing crowd. Was Jin among them? He’d been on the train, but I hadn’t seen him since. Or maybe I had, and I simply hadn’t noticed him. Those Mesmer abilities were infuriating.

A quick look didn’t reveal his presence. I felt some comfort in that. I hoped he hadn’t seen what had just happened: it was bad enough with the others witnessing it.

We walked a little further. Sera turned away from the school, heading down a street that would lead us closer to the Serpent Spire.

“W…where are we going?” Cecily stammered. She looked shaken, even more than I had been. I couldn’t blame her. Her own last experiences with Magnus Cadence had been…harrowing. They’d been a large part of why we hadn’t spoken in years.

“Derek Hartigan’s new place,” Sera answered.

“Derek’s back?” Patrick’s genuine grin helped wipe away a bit of the gloom of the mood. “How do you know?”

“I’ve been corresponding with him via a Wayfarer on the train for the last few days. He arrived back just before we did, and he’s expecting us.”

Of course she’s already planned this far ahead.

I resisted the urge to sigh. “Just as a visit, or…?”

“No, to stay. After seeing Hartigan family accommodations, I’m certainly not sleeping in the dorms again this year. He’ll have guest rooms set up for all of us. That includes you, Ceci.” Sera turned toward Cecily. “You have no obligation to stay with us, of course, but I feel it would be prudent and productive. I already sent a message to Yunika, she’ll be joining us for dinner later in the evening.”

I hadn’t even thought about Cecily’s sister recently. The things Cecily went through in Caelford…obviously Yunika would need to know about that, if she didn’t already.

Would she blame me for Cecily’s injuries?

I couldn’t even bother to worry about that. There simply wasn’t enough of me left to worry about something that small.

“Th…thanks, Sera. I’ll think about if I want to stay or not.” Cecily gave a half-smile, but her mind was clearly still focused on other things.

“Derek ever give ya any idea what he was up to out in the Unclaimed Lands?” Mara asked, probably both out of curiosity and a desire to help break up the tension.

“No, he was being a bit more evasive than usual. I expect we’ll be able to inquire more after we see him. It’s possible he didn’t want to talk about anything private while we used a Wayfarer as an intermediary. I’ve been working on learning message spells myself, but my range isn’t great.”

Sera continued to lead the way. Throughout the walk, Keras was uncharacteristically quiet, but I didn’t have the heart to ask why.

***

Derek Hartigan’s new home was a little more conventionally impressive than the last. It was a six-story tower, like a miniature Serpent Spire, with a hedge maze surrounding the entire structure. Upon walking into the maze, I realized it wasn’t purely ornamental; the trail markers on the road were marked with runes that I recognized as having functions related to Perception mana.

I felt some of that Perception mana brush against my mind as soon as we walked into the area. I frowned, glancing more closely at the runes.

Let’s see…observation runes for sight and sound, then some that are…oh, some sort of confusion effect? Presumably to get anyone who isn’t supposed to be here lost in the maze. Amusing.

Sera must have realized — or already known — the same thing. “It’s Sera and friends,” she said aloud. After a moment, one wall of the maze faded and vanished, revealing another pathway. She strode down that path without missing a beat and the rest of us followed.

We reached the front door of the tower just as Derek emerged. He was freshly shaved and showered, and his wet hair looked like he’d just had it trimmed recently. He was wearing both of his swords on his hips, but otherwise, he was dressed simply, at least by Derek’s standards. His grey trousers matched the coat that I’d sometimes seen him wearing, although the coat itself was absent. He wore a short-sleeved white shirt, which wasn’t really appropriate for the still-cold weather, but it probably didn’t matter when one generated fire mana at the rate that Derek did.

Derek beamed brightly at us and waved as we approached. “Welcome, welcome! Come on in!” He pushed the door open wide and stepped aside. “You can set your bags down just inside, then I’ll show you to your rooms. Presuming you’re staying, of course.”

Sera led the way forward, pausing to lean forward and whisper something to Derek. His expression dropped to a more serious one, but only for an instant. “Is that so…?” He muttered, glancing us over. “Explains why you look like a funeral procession.” Derek shook his head. “In. I’ll get some food ready. A warm meal always helps in difficult times.”

We filed in, setting down our bags. Cecily looked a little awkward at first, but her expression shifted to wide-eyed awe when she saw the sheer number of runes cut into the walls of the interior of the structure. She scampered off toward one particular set, then quickly returned to her bag to pull out a sketchpad.

Something passed between Keras and Derek as the former stepped inside. A sort of silent acknowledgement, but I couldn’t quite read what it was about. Rather than setting down his bag, Keras walked by the rest of us and headed straight up the tower’s spiral stairway.

A half-beat later, Derek closed the door behind us. “Make yourselves at home. I’ll be right back.”

Then he headed up the stairway, trailing after Keras.

A heartbeat passed before Mara glanced from side-to-side and then followed the two of them. I had no idea if she was more aware of what was going on than I did, but I didn’t try to stop her. I simply walked until I found the kitchen — it wasn’t hard, it was simply toward the back of the tower’s bottom floor — found a table, sat down, and buried my head in my hands.

Breathe, I told myself.

I heard someone sit down next to me. Patrick. He didn’t say a word, but he sat with me while I tried to gather myself back into a functional state.

Just breathe.

I tried my best.

***

I don’t know how much time passed while I just sat there, chasing after other realities in my mind.

Should I have fought immediately? What if I’d lost? What if I’d won?

Should I have continued to staunchly refuse?

Should I have let someone else fight on my behalf?

I pictured each possibility, branches and branches of routes that could have been if I’d made slightly different choices.

Patrick sat with me for a while in companionable silence. Eventually, he gave me a grim look, a mumbled “sorry”, and wandered off somewhere.

It was probably better that way.

It took the slam of a plate of steaming hot food in front of me to jar me out of my reverie. It was accompanied by a second plate a moment later as Sera sat down across from me and poked a fork into her first bite. “You’re brooding.”

It wasn’t a question, and I didn’t bother to refute it. “Can you, of all people, really blame me for that?”

She frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The letter. If you hadn’t—”

She cut me off. “I burned it.”

I blinked. “What?”

“I never sent the letter. You told me it was my choice, and I chose.”

I was momentarily stunned, taking a moment to process. “…Then how did he know?

She shrugged. “Any number of ways. We didn’t exactly hide our trail. Tristan could have found some way to get in contact with him, either directly or through an intermediary, and provided information that way. We don’t know what Tristan’s full resources are or the identity of his powerful benefactor. Father could have heard from Cecily’s family. And I did write to your mother. I sincerely doubt she told him, but it’s not impossible. More likely, he simply hired a Diviner to look for us when we didn’t come home when the school year ended. If he did it within a day or so, we probably would have been easily within divination range on the train toward Caelford. After that, it would simply be a matter of checking train schedules for returning trains. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was able to get his hands on the passenger manifests.”

I exhaled a breath. “…I’m glad you didn’t send it.”

“Knowing what I know now, I’m glad I didn’t send it, too.” She shook her head. “But I still can apologize.”

I blinked at her. “What?”

“I…don’t think I’ve taken this whole situation seriously enough.” She shook her head, absently prodding at what looked like it was probably a potato. Whatever meal she’d set out in front of us had a thick, unfamiliar sauce atop it. Something tomato-based, I think. “You told me that he had hurt you, and it’s not that I didn’t believe you, it’s just…”

I sighed. “It’s easier to ignore when you haven’t actually seen it. I know. It’s not like you’re the only one who assumed it was just a bit of ‘overzealous discipline’.”

“That’s not quite what I was thinking, but I…I guess I didn’t want to think about it. The severity. The implications.”

“We all have our blind spots. I’m sure I’m no exception.”

“This might not be the right time to mention it, but—”

I closed my eyes. “Tristan.”

“Tristan.” She whispered the response.

“I didn’t really take you seriously about him, either, did I? You mentioned that he took after Father, and I…” I winced. “I didn’t want to believe you.”

“We don’t need to talk about this right now.”

I sighed, letting my eyes open. “No. But maybe we should. I asked if he touched you, and you said no. Was that true?”

“The way you phrased it, and your tone, made it sound like you were asking if he sexually assaulted me. He didn’t. But he did physically hurt me, more than once. And under similar pretenses to Father’s.”

“Training?”

She nodded. “He told me that if I was going to protect you, I needed to be strong. So, he made me ‘fight’ him. Over and over. As if an eleven-year-old girl could really ‘fight’ a sixteen-year-old boy who was already winning school tournaments.” She shook her head. “I don’t think it was on the same scale as what you dealt with. A wooden sword couldn’t inflict the kind of damage that Father could cause to either of us. He…broke my arm once, though. I expected it to stop after that, but it didn’t.”

“Wait. Tristan is the one who broke your arm? Everyone told me that was an accident.”

Sera snorted. “The only accident involved was that I made the mistake of actually hitting him back, once. He told me it was a ‘good shot’, and then he hit me harder. The result…well, you remember that embarrassing cast I wore. At least it healed clean. I…don’t think he did anything permanent.”

“That’s still…” My hands tightened into fists. “Goddess. What is wrong with this family?”

She reached out with a hand. “I’m…sorry, Corin. For what it’s worth, I think he was just emulating Father.”

“That doesn’t make it acceptable!” I raised my voice, causing Sera to pull back. “Sorry, sorry. I’m…just so angry. For you, not at you.”

She winced. “I don’t think it’s as bad as what Father did to you.”

I shook my head. “It’s not a contest. I’ll…talk to Tristan. He was young, and impressionable, and maybe Father was hurting him the same way…”

“Don’t bring it up. Not now.” She shook her head. “It’s not the kind of thing you can expect a reasonable response about in a letter. He’ll have plenty of time to construct an excuse if you do it in writing. And if anyone should confront him about it, that person should be me.”

“You’re sure?”

“No. But it’s not the business of the day, is it?”

“I suppose not.” My jaw tightened. “I…thank you for telling me.”

“You’re welcome. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you about Father.”

“I’m…sorry, too.” I reached out with my own hand. She seemed to understand how hard that was for me, and tentatively, she reached out, grabbed my hand, and gave it a brief squeeze.

I held her hand a little longer than I needed to. “Can…we talk more? I don’t want to have more problems like this. I always thought we were above this kind of…”

“Interpersonal drama caused by a failure to communicate basic things?”

I gave a weak chuckle. “When you put it like that, it makes us sound pretty awful, doesn’t it?”

“No, Corin.” She shook her head. “It makes us sound human.”

***

We talked for a while after that, mostly focusing on smaller things.

A while later, when I was a little calmer, we circled back to the subject at hand.

Sera gave me a sad smile. “I want to thank you for accepting the duel, as awful as it is. Not because I want you to fight him. I still think bowing out might be a good idea. But you accepted it so I wouldn’t lose my own status, didn’t you? I know you don’t care much for our house.”

I shrugged. “You’re not wrong, but…the more I think about it, the more I feel like it was the right choice. And not just for your sake. Not just for Patrick’s, either: I think he’d be fine losing his retainership. In truth, I think I need this for my own sake, too.”

“To prove yourself?”

I shook my head. “No. Not exactly, at least. Showing him that I’m strong isn’t enough. I need to show him that I don’t need him and that I’m not going to submit to his horrific style of authority.”

Sera gave me a serious look. “I…don’t know if I should say this, but…you know he’s just going to take it as another form of validation if you somehow manage to beat him, right? He’ll say, ‘oh, Corin has gotten so strong, it must be because of my excellent training’.”

“It’s something I’m thinking about. I need to not only beat him, but beat him in a way that is so distinct from his own style that he can’t go through those mental gymnastics.”

“…I’m not sure that’s possible, Corin.”

I shrugged. “We’ve seen a lot of seemingly impossible things in the last year, Sera. Is it too much to ask for me to be able to make one?”

“I don’t know.” She’d finally resumed actually eating, so she lifted her fork, took a bite, frowned, chewed and then quickly washed whatever she’d been eating down with a gulp of water. “I’m not sure there’s any way that this ends the way we want.”

“The first step is figuring out that ending. Then, I suppose, we can work backward from there.” I hesitated, taking a fork of food of my own, but without eating it. “…Will you help me? You’re better at figuring out all this social stuff than I am.”

“I’m not sure that’s as true as I’d like it to be…but of course, I’ll do whatever I can.”

“Thank you, Sera.” I exhaled a sigh. “I’d really rather not tackle this one alone.”

Sera smiled. “There was never any chance of that, Corin. You have my support. Always.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just mumbled, “Thanks.”

I was past ready to end the conversation there. It felt like a nice and dramatic stopping point. I started eating, but I didn’t get more than a bite or two into the strange meal before Sera made another interjection.

“…I know this is going to sound bad, given all our discussion about letters, but you need to write to your mother.”

I dropped my fork onto the plate with an audible clatter. Sera winced. I raised my hands in apology. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to be dramatic. I just…that’s…oof.”

“Yeah. Oof is right. It’s going to complicate things further, but you absolutely need to get ahead of this. Write her before Father does. I can get the message delivered.”

“…I don’t suppose you want to write her yourself?”

“I can write her something, but she’s not my mother. It really will be better if you handle this one. I can sit with you while you work on it. We can workshop the contents.”

I groaned. “…Fine. Can we…at least eat, first?”

“Yeah.” She nodded, then glanced back down at her plate with a strange expression. “…Maybe something else, though? This was kind of awful when it was warm, and now it’s both cold and awful.”

I snorted. “It isn’t that bad.”

“It isn’t that good, either.” Sera gave me a soft smile. “Want to go out for something nice? Maybe relax a little?”

“…Thanks, but no. Going out isn’t really my style of relaxing.”

“That’s fair.” She nodded. “…Maybe I’ll send Vanniv to pick us up something.”

I took one look back down at the plate, experimented with another bite, shuddered, then glanced back up at Sera. “…Yeah, that might be best.”

***

Better food arrived eventually, although I didn’t pay much attention to it.

I recall absently composing a letter at Sera’s behest. The wording was mostly hers, since I couldn’t be bothered to be polite about the situation without her prompting.

Dear Mother,

I hope you are well.

Sera and I are healthy and back in Valia. Upon our return from vacationing in Caelford, I met with Father, who was in poor spirits. In summary, he challenged me to a duel for my lack of communication, which I find terribly funny.

I have accepted a duel with Father, to occur after concluding my next semester at Lorian Heights.

In large part, my acceptance represents a desire on my part to take some justice for many years of mistreatment at Father’s hands. I will explain this further to you when you are capable of meeting me in person; it is not a subject matter that should be discussed without additional layers of security.

Please do not intervene on my behalf. I feel any additional complications would only make things worse at this point in time.

I do not intend to cancel the duel.

Your loving son,

Corin Cadence

I felt empty after finishing the note. Hollow. “Love” for my parents was about the furthest thing from my mind, given the circumstances, but I recognized that there was no rational reason to lump my father and my mother together in this scenario.

True, Mother had neglected me to pursue the means to finding and rescuing Tristan, but she had clearly been under the impression that Father had been taking better care of me. She’d written me many letters that I’d never received, and while that was certainly not the same as coming to visit in person, I could understand that she’d done more than I’d realized.

I did blame her for not intervening in my life, but that blame was tempered with the knowledge that I’d developed the very same obsession with saving Tristan that she had. I could not claim I would have done better in her place. I likely would have done worse, in fact.

It was probably for the best that I never intended to have children of my own.

Anyway, I finished the letter, handed it off to Sera, and then went back to staring into the nothingness of the universe via a particularly boring spot on Derek’s wall.

Eventually, Derek himself came back down the stairs, looking a little scuffed. He’d probably been sparring with Keras, Mara, or both.

Oh, good, someone else has decided to check in and tell me how to handle my issues.

I grimaced as he sat down, bracing myself for whatever attempt Derek was going to make to intervene.

It didn’t come. Or, at least, not in the form I’d expected.

“So, after what happened with the last house, I’ve decided that my security measures were sorely lacking. I’ve already had an Enchanter come by and handle some of the basics, but if you’re going to be living here again, I was thinking that you might want to pay your way a bit.”

I blinked. “…Of course. What did you have in mind?”

“Let’s do a quick walk through of my existing security enchantments. Then, you can tell me what I’m missing, and we can discuss if you can handle them.”

Derek stood up. I found myself standing and following him into the house.

…It was probably a one-dimensional trick to get my mind off of my situation, but in that moment, it was absolutely the right approach.

He took me around the house, pointing out runes in various locations. I took judicious notes, finding that he’d already handled basics like structural integrity reinforcement, anti-scrying, and anti-teleportation (with specific “keys” for bypassing the anti-teleportation function). They were all in the Citrine-level range, indicating that he’d either paid a lot of money for the enchantments or had a higher-level friend than me that owed him favors. Maybe both.

Either way, I couldn’t compete with the power of his existing enchantments, but I could find gaps. Mostly small things, like areas where the existing runes were missing small sections of coverage on the second floor, options for sound-proofing the training areas, and a particularly nice set of runes I’d stumbled on recently for self-repair on stone structures that would undoubtedly be useful on the rooftop when Keras and Derek inevitably destroyed it again.

“I’d like you to begin work on those immediately. Let me know if you need any materials or assistance. I can provide mana for these if you can make the shells,” Derek explained.

I nodded. Having access to Derek’s mana pool would make higher-level enchantments much more plausible. I hadn’t done much practice with shells for higher-level enchantments since the construction of Bright Reflection and this would be a good chance to see just how powerful of items I could make with help.

“I can start on some of the simpler stuff today. The self-repair stuff is going to require a bit of additional research.”

“Understood.” Derek nodded. “In addition, I’d like you to work on some message items. I understand that Sera has already been hounding you for some, but you were out of raw materials and low on time?”

“Yeah, I was able to fix the one I’d made Keras before, but I’m out of pure silver, and Sera and I couldn’t get much range on our own. She has air mana, but not a lot of it.”

“If air mana is the main issue, I’ll solve it. I want Sunstone-level or higher messaging items for everyone in this household within the next month or so. Can you do that?”

“…I mean, sure, if you’ve got the materials and you’re willing to provide the mana.”

“Done.” He snapped his fingers. “Oh, and one more message item for my apprentice.”

“…You have an apprentice?”

Derek laughed. “I have a few, actually, but this one in particular has a need for some equipment. Maybe one of your improved shield sigils as well, with the teleport functions?”

I hadn’t told him about those yet. How much had Sera been talking to him? Or had he somehow found out through other means?

It didn’t matter. Derek had his suspicious qualities, but he’d been nothing but good to me. “Easily done.”

“Excellent. Let me know when you need mana for anything.”

I nodded. “I don’t suppose I could convince you to lend your mana to some other projects?”

“Mmm. This is already pushing my interest levels a bit, but I suppose I’ll consider it if the project is entertaining enough.”

That had potential. If I could get his help with some Citrine-level gear…

Wheels turned in my mind.

The sooner I get to work, the sooner I can start making myself loot.

“Retrieve: Etching Rod.”

I headed for the nearest wall and began to write.

CHAPTER III – SURVIVAL

The rest of the day was sort of a blur. I worked a little bit on Derek’s home enchantments, took notes, and generally tried to avoid talking about my problems. Everyone tried to talk to me about them at one point or another, but I’d had quite enough conversations about what happened with my father. I wasn’t really interested in trying to explore that further just yet.

I spent some extra time setting up some added security for my own room, but whoever Derek had hired had already done a pretty good job with it. Over the next couple days, I inspected the house for anything suspicious that the other Enchanter might have done to sabotage the place, but I didn’t find anything out of the ordinary.

People generally gave me the space that I needed to process what had happened during those first couple days. That was good — I needed the time. Occasionally, Sera dragged me down to dinner to eat, which was about the limit of what I was capable of socially. I was a little resistant even to that, but ultimately, I was grateful for it.

It wasn’t a good time for me to be alone, even if that sometimes felt like all I wanted. It was hard not to think of myself as a burden, or a failure, even though I knew intellectually that I hadn’t done anything wrong.

I didn’t talk much during dinner, although I did ask Yunika and Cecily if they’d heard from Tristan. They seemed a little surprised that I asked openly, but everyone there was aware of Tristan’s survival, and I simply didn’t have the energy for subtlety. Unfortunately, neither Yunika nor Cecily had heard anything from Tristan in weeks. That was worrying. Yunika postulated that the books might have simply stopped working due to the spire being sealed more completely by Katashi after my last adventure inside. That was a comforting potential explanation, but not one I could rely on. I wished I was in a position to investigate, but given how badly my last trip into the spire had gone, I didn’t think it would be wise to make any immediate rescue attempts, even if I could somehow get in there. I needed a solid plan first…and I was simply too exhausted and overwhelmed to make one.

It was the third day back in Valia when Patrick tentatively reached out with an offer during lunch. “So…how would you feel about going to a Survival Match?”

I paused to consider. I still didn’t feel like leaving the house. Even going downstairs felt like…effort. More effort than I was capable of at times.

And being around so many people? That made me shudder to think about. I didn’t like being in crowds at the best of times, and while being seated in an audience wasn’t quite as bad as being pressed into a crowd that was standing, I wasn’t in a great mental place.

Still, intellectually, I was able to remember that I’d enjoyed watching the Survival Match that Sera and Derek had participated in. I mean, I’d been furious with Derek in the aftermath, but I’d still found it exciting. “…Who is fighting?”

“Well, there’s been a last-minute cancellation, and…if you’re interested…” Patrick gave me a mischievous grin. “…we are.”

I stared at him. “…Wait, what? Really? You can get us in there to fight?”

“No, no, no,” he raised his hands. “Derek can get us in there to fight. He’s doing a big match later in the same evening and it’s a warm-up team before his that cancelled. He knows the organizers, of course, and he thinks he can slip us in — but he needs an answer soon.”

“…I don’t know. Wouldn’t Mara be a better fit?”

Patrick shook his head vehemently. “No, that’s…probably not a good idea. Not after last time.”

I blinked. “She’s done it before?”

“Oh, yeah. Last year. No one told you? That’s, uh…well, she did a match with Keras. They both went masked and costumed, full-on disguise stuff so he wouldn’t be recognized. Absolutely obliterated the monsters. Mara…uh, she liked it a lot…and might have misread the situation a little.”

“…Misread? How so?”

“She kind of thought it was a date. That’s…when she asked Keras to the winter ball.”

“Oh. Oh.” I sighed. “I knew she’d asked him, and that he turned her down because she was too young, but I didn’t know the circumstances. That…yeah, that makes sense. And you think having her go back there would remind her of it?”

“Definitely. I mean, she’d probably still do it — she loves fighting — but I think it might bring her down more than up, you know?”

I could understand it when he explained it, but honestly, I never would have been able to evaluate that kind of thing. Patrick was just…much better with people than I was.

“…And Sera?” I asked.

“Not as severe of a problem, but she’s already done a fight in there before, too, and she’s technically already placed in a specific competition bracket, based on her performance with Derek. That’s…not a level that Sera and I could handle on our own. Now, she could go in disguise like Keras and Mara did, entering under a different name so she has a fresh start with me, but that might be complicated, since she’s planning to do another match with Derek later in the year…”

“Ah. I get it.” And, in spite of not generally being good with people, I also did process the fact that Patrick was probably playing up the difficulties of getting one of the others involved specifically to make me feel better about accepting. I didn’t mind — it was kind of him.

I took a moment to consider, wrestling with myself. Was I ready to fight in front of a crowd? Did I want to?

If nothing else, it’ll be good practice for the duel. And…

I want to see what I can do.

I took a deep breath, steadied my resolve, then nodded to Patrick.

“Let’s do this.”

“Awesome! Now, there’s some paperwork to sign…”

I groaned and got to work.

***

I set down the last of a massive pile of documents on the table, then turned toward Derek.

“I have a few questions about page 37, under the subheading ‘Permanent Maiming’?”

Derek rolled his eyes. “Maybe you should have been the one with the contract attunement. Ugh. I’m going to need an actual lawyer to answer some of these questions of yours.”

“Sorry. I mean, not actually sorry, because the chance of maiming is something the rules should be unambiguous about, but I don’t like to inconvenience you?”

He laughed. “It’s fine. Elora can probably answer your more technical questions. She should be here in a few minutes.”

“Elora is coming?” I raised an eyebrow. Of course, my mind also jumped to wondering if Sheridan would be present as well, but I didn’t ask that.

“Coming? More than that — she’s participating on the summoning side.”

I gulped. If Elora Theas held a grudge for…well, any interaction we ever had…this would be a great chance for her to take advantage of that.

I considered backing out, because preserving my life was my highest priority, but I also didn’t want to inconvenience anyone with something as trivial as my concerns about being potentially murdered. I did enough of that on a daily basis as it was.

…I’d made some questionable life choices, hadn’t I?

“Before she gets here…I have a more personal question for you.”

“Oh?” Derek looked intrigued. “What would that be?”

“Nothing in here indicates how hard we’re supposed to fight. Are we intended to hold back as much as you did in your match with Sera?”

Derek gave me a quizzical look. “When did you notice?”

“I mean, you turned your aura from Sunstone to Citrine in the middle of the match, but never went up to Emerald. That much was clear enough from the moment I found out your real level, and the reason was understandable. I know Emerald-levels aren’t supposed to show off their abilities if they aren’t public knowledge. Looking back, though, you reduced your abilities far beyond what you needed to. I assume that was mostly for showmanship, since just obliterating everything the match throws at you wouldn’t be much fun for the audience?”

Derek smiled. “You’re right about one thing. I could have handled everything they threw at me without breaking a sweat. For that matter, even Tavare or Delsys could have.”

“Even after Elora got involved?”

Derek snorted. “Please. If Elora was summoning anything at her full strength, we wouldn’t have had an arena. That was performative, too.”

“A whole lovers’ quarrel was staged for entertainment?”

“Oh, no, she was actually angry at me, and I was sincerely surprised when she first appeared. But she was never summoning anything that presented a real risk — throwing some monsters at me was more of a symbolic way to vent her frustration.”

“…Should I expect any similar twists in my own match?”

“Goodness, no. Not unless you’ve annoyed any Summoners recently? Or…Invokers, perhaps?”

I certainly hoped I hadn’t.

I briefly pictured Seiryu appearing in the middle of the arena and biting me in half, then shook my head. Sera could get vindictive, but that idea was just ridiculous. “…I think I’ll be okay. That said…you weren’t just holding back to entertain people, were you? You’ve trained yourself to hold back in general…and I get the impression it goes beyond the ‘Emeralds don’t show their abilities’ thing.”

Derek’s expression went completely flat for a moment as he considered me. I froze, unused to the absence of his usual cheer. When his smile returned, it felt just as fake as his arena performance had been. “When someone reaches a level of power that would put them in the public spotlight, they have two main choices — embrace it, as Auntie Meltlake did, or to maintain a consistent pretense of powerlessness. I have more reasons than most to play the latter part, at least in public.”

“Does this have something to do with the expectations that come with the Hartigan family name?”

“That’s one reason among many…and one that parallels a decision you’re going to have to make for yourself soon enough. You may not be an Emerald, but your abilities are expanding rapidly, and in ways that could impact far more than just your group of friends. You’ve seen it in how Farren treated you. Like it or not, the more people know what you’re truly capable of, the more political machinations you’re going to become a part of. If you want to avoid that, you’re going to have to start deciding which cards to keep in your sleeve.”

I knew all that, of course, at least intellectually…but there was a difference between knowing something and acting on it.

I was still considering how to respond — and how I wanted to live my life, when the time came to make a choice about how public to make my power — when the front door flew open without a knock.

Elora Theas stood there, resplendent in red.

Derek and I turned to her at once. I was confident that the door had been locked, but I supposed that something as mundane as a door lock was optional for an Emerald-level Summoner.

…Or she just had a house key.

“Well, come on, step outside,” she ushered us. “Someone set up anti-teleportation runes, so I can’t move us while we’re indoors. Well, not without breaking them.”

I didn’t care much about the implication that she could break the anti-teleportation runes — that much was obvious. She was an Emerald, of course she could.

…For now.

I had some plans for layering defenses that even Elora wouldn’t be able to work through easily, but that was a problem for my future self, and one I certainly didn’t plan to mention to anyone who might be a future threat.

“Corin had some questions about the paperwork,” Derek offered helpfully.

“Oh, did he now?” Elora gave me a razor-sharp smile. “Well, why don’t we take a look in my office? Come along.”

We stepped outside. Elora snapped her fingers — an unnecessary flourish, of course — and then we were elsewhere.

I was getting used to teleportation enough that I barely swayed when we arrived in what was, in fact, an actual office.

“Please, have a seat.”

We did. I set down my stack of papers.

Elora pulled on a pair of reading glasses.

This, I admit, changed my perception of her persona entirely in a fraction of a second. It was amazing how much glasses changed how someone looked — she quickly went from “elegant noblewoman who could murder me without getting blood on her fashionable dress” to “elegant noblewoman who could murder me without closing the book she was reading”.

A subtle distinction, really, but an important one.

Anyway, we discussed mind-numbing paperwork for a while.

“Really, Corin, you don’t need to be so worried about all this. I don’t have any intention of letting you be killed or seriously injured. The family doesn’t profit from permanent injuries — only fixable ones.”

I blinked. “Wait…how would you profit from…oh. Wait, wait. Are you implying Sheridan gets paid for fixing people up who get hurt here…?” I gave her a frown. “Isn’t that a bit of a conflict of interest? You’d have an incentive to cause harm.”

“Oh, dear, a conflict of interest?” Elora put a hand to her heart. “Whatever shall we do? I suppose we’ll need to talk to the government official responsible for fair business practices. Oh, wait.” She fluttered her eyes. “That’s me, isn’t it? Oops.”

I rubbed my temples. “…Just try to keep the maiming to a minimum. I have classes soon.”

“Naturally, Corin. Fear not. I have no interest in hurting you in a simple game like this. Not badly, anyway. The profit margins would be slim. Then again, it would give Sheridan an excuse to spend some time with you while tending to your wounds, which would—”

Derek prodded a finger in Elora’s arm. “That’s enough scaring the kid. Can we get on with this?”

“Ruin all my fun, will you? Very well.” Elora clapped her hands. “Let the games begin.”

***

In spite of Elora’s dramatic line, it actually took a couple hours before the games did begin. Most of that was mind-numbingly boring waiting, although a part of it was spent picking up Patrick and answering his questions about the paperwork and that sort of thing.

The Survival Match arena looked different from the inside.

Smaller. Tighter.

This particular match was setup with a stone floor on a circular stage. The total diameter wasn’t too bad — probably like a hundred feet or so — but less than half was currently accessible. Like with Sera’s match the year before, the stage was segmented by a number of walls, each of which would come down to reveal more monsters at a later stage of the match. Someone like Elora could just summon a monster anywhere she wanted and teleport it into the arena, but I supposed that this style of setting up monsters in advance was easier for the lower-level Summoners involved, and probably easier from a logistics standpoint.

I wondered what the monsters were doing between those walls while they waited. Were they bored? Did they have anything to read?

Patrick was nervously shifting from foot-to-foot while we waited for the curtains to come up and reveal the start of the match to the audience. This wasn’t the same arena that Sera and Derek had used, but the setup was mostly similar — there were several layers of seating set up around the arena, similar to a concert hall. I knew that somewhere above us, Sera and Mara were in the stands. Derek would be waiting and watching, too, before he got ushered into the preparation room for his own match. I wasn’t sure if that would mean that he’d get to see our whole fight or not.

Is Keras here?

I didn’t know. I hoped he was. I wished I’d asked him — he looked like he was in a place where watching a fight would cheer him up. And, in case Elora did try anything strange…

Well, I knew he’d jump in before I could get hurt too badly, regardless of what the rules said.

There was some comfort in that. It might be embarrassing to be rescued, but I preferred that to losing an arm or a leg.

I could have sent him a message to ask if he was present, but that felt too awkward. It probably should have occurred to me to just ask Patrick, since he was better with people, but I didn’t.

“So…” Patrick gestured at the first wall. “What do you think is back there?”

“Something low-level for the first one. Just slimes, or imps, or maybe a goblin or two. They’ll likely use the first couple walls to calibrate what they can send for the second wave.”

“Oh! I was thinking they’d have everything planned out ahead of time, but I guess that makes sense. How long do you think we’re going to last?”

“I—”

A booming voice echoed over the arena, interrupting my response. “Gentlemen, ladies, and Wyddsfolk, welcome to the final matches of the winter season! And given that we’re at the end of the season, our Summoners have decided to give us something very special tonight!’

My estimates for our survival time went sharply downward.

Patrick and I glanced at each other with trepidation.

Then our hands went to the swords at our sides.

“Let’s begin!”

We drew our swords as the first wall came down.

CHAPTER IV – THREE WAYS TO SURVIVE

Goblins. Some of the most basic of monster — tiny green-skinned humanoids with rudimentary weapons.

There were four of them behind the first wall, two carrying clubs and two with rusted shortswords. One had something like a sling on their belt, but I didn’t think they’d get a chance to use it at this close of range.

Minimal threats. I could probably preserve my mana by fighting them sword-to-sword, my shrouds should—

A blast of lightning from my left side smashed into the first one, then jumped to each goblin in succession. All four goblins collapsed into smoldering remnants to the cheers of the crowd.

I gave Patrick a raised eyebrow. “Overkill much?”

“Sorry!” He laughed. “I’m a little nervous.”

I shook my head and smiled. “Could be a worse reaction to nervousness than winning too quickly.” I turned as the second wall slid downward, bracing myself for something a little tougher.

On the plus side, there were only two figures this time.

Of course, nothing could ever be simple, so those two figures were eight-foot tall skeletal knights in full plate armor.

What are those supposed to be, undead ogres?

I didn’t have a chance to speculate further — the skeletons marched forward as soon as the wall fell, one moving to meet each of us.

The one facing me was armed with a halberd, which is basically a long pole with an axe blade. The other was carrying a classic sword and shield.

As Patrick hurled his initial volley of lightning, his opponent simply raised their shield, the electricity hitting the metal and…vanishing, rather than traveling through it.

Enchantments?

I didn’t see any, but maybe they were hidden. I didn’t have a chance to look closely — a moment later, I was jumping to the side to avoid being cleaved in half by a halberd half-again my height.

I swung Selys-Lyann and sent a wave of frost at the skeleton. That hit the halberd and began to spread, but the skeleton simply slammed the halberd into the ground, shattering the ice.

…Not good.

Ice wasn’t effective against skeletons in the best of circumstances — and these were apparently smart enough to sense the risks of the spreading frost.

I parried another lunge, then hurled a blast of transference with my off-hand, but that barely staggered the skeleton — it was just too heavy.

Patrick wasn’t faring much better. He tried hurling a blast of fire, but the skeleton blocked that just as easily, then countered with a sword swing. Patrick parried with Bright Reflection, but the skeleton was much stronger than he was — the resulting sword press hurled Patrick backward so hard that he nearly slammed into the barrier at the back of the arena.

I barely dodged the next lunge, the halberd flashing by my face closely enough to nick my barriers and leave a crack.

I danced back and swung at the ground, leaving a trail of frost as the skeleton tried to close the distance. The skeleton simply side-stepped the patch of ice, raising their halberd for another swing.

“Switch!” I called to Patrick.

Jump.

I burst out of the way of the next halberd swing, surging toward the sword-and-shield skeleton and ducking under the surprised slash at my head. I swung at the ground again as I moved, but not toward the skeleton.

Closing the distance was much easier against a target using a weapon with a length more similar to my own sword. The sword-and-shield skeleton still had a reach advantage, but it wasn’t nearly as overwhelming — especially because their normal-sized kite shield wasn’t large enough to provide them with coverage for their legs.

…Which meant that when I slid right beneath their legs on the patch of ice I’d created, it was easy enough to slash the back of their knee, one of the few parts that wasn’t as heavily armored.

Ice surged across the skeleton’s leg. They stumbled as they turned to face me again, but they were too slow.

I slammed my other hand into the frozen leg with a surge of transference mana. Bone splintered as the skeleton fell.

I still had to jump backward as the skeleton took a swing while falling, but then they were on the ground.

I raised my sword as the skeleton fumbled to stand, preparing for a parting swing…

But as the skeleton struggled, I sensed the intelligence in those strange blue flames in the sockets and stayed my hand. Instead, I raised my sword. “Yield.”

The skeleton paused as they attempted to rise…then looked at somewhere distant…and lowered their head.

“I am beaten, honorable one.”

The first skeleton vanished.

…And mentally I cursed as their sword and shield vanished along with them. I’d wanted to reverse engineer that shield.

No time for that, anyway.

I swung toward Patrick to find him still on the retreat from the halberd-wielder, Bright Reflection shining brightly in his hand. But while ice wasn’t ideal against the undead, Bright Reflection was a replica of Dawnbringer, the Sacred Sword of Light.

When the skeleton lunged next, a burst of air sent Patrick upward, then he pointed his sword straight at the skeleton’s exposed face. A torso-wide blast of brilliant light flashed out of the sword, encompassing the entire top of the skeleton’s body.

When the light faded, only sizzling air was left inside the armor as it collapsed to the ground.

The armor vanished a moment later.

I gave Patrick a nod. He floated back to the ground, raising Bright Reflection again. The blade looked a bit dimmer — he’d spent a considerable chunk of the weapon’s mana on that attack.

We’ll need to work on more upgrades for the sword soon. But for now…

The third wall came down. My grip on Selys-Lyann tightened.

…And I found myself face-to-face with a gigantic slime, nearly as tall as the arena walls.

Really? Just a big slime, after that? That’s—

I barely managed to hurl myself to the side, my eyes widening, as a spike-like tendril of goo shot across the stage. I heard a gasp from the audience as I countered with a swing from Selys-Lyann, drawing the weapon and swinging for the strange gelatinous appendage, but the slime retracted the spike too quickly.

Patrick hurled another blast of lightning, which hit the slime dead-on…but not to the result we were hoping for.

The slime jiggled in place, then shifted in color to a yellow-orange. Then, as it steadied, a flashing voltaic aura appeared around it.

…What.

A moment later, Patrick and I were leaping to the side as the slime hurled blasts of lightning at us.

I danced around three more blasts of lightning, while Patrick switched to reshaping them in mid-air and hurling them backward at the slime. Each of the redirected bolts hit, but the slime just seemed to absorb them.

That’s…not good.

The slime jiggled forward menacingly.

I’d seen slimes do some tricky stuff, like splitting into pieces, but this…this was a little extreme. They weren’t even supposed to be intelligent!

I couldn’t pause long enough to analyze or complain.

Need to hit it with a different element if it’s absorbing lightning.

I swung Selys-Lyann in place and sent a burst of transference into the blade, pushing on the icy aura and projecting a cutting wave of frost. Ice wasn’t the perfect counter to lightning, but if I was guessing right, it would be different enough to at least cause some damage.

A huge section of the slime reshaped itself as the crescent approached…into a gigantic jiggling shield. The ice impacted the shield, freezing a section and turning it blue.

…Which the slime quickly cut off with a scythe-like appendage formed from another section of the chest.

I gawked.

The audience oohed.

Patrick hit it with a fireball.

Chunks of slime splattered across the stage…then began to crawl back toward the large central slime that remained just where it had been standing.

Okay, nope.

Haste. Jump.

I flashed across the stage, striking several of the bits of slime and freezing them before they could return to the main body. As I drew closer to the central mass, the slime shifted toward me, lurching forward and reshaping its top into a gigantic hammer.

I jumped backward as it slammed into the ground, then raised my arms defensively as Patrick blasted it with another fireball. Bits of slime splattered across my layered barriers harmlessly, but they weren’t the only thing that hit me. A hail of slimy needles, each gleaming with electrical energy, hit my barriers as I retreated. I swept some of them out of the air with Selys-Lyann, but a few got through to impact my barriers, making cracks.

“We need to hit the core!” Patrick shouted.

I hadn’t even seen a core, but Patrick was right — if I looked carefully, there was a tiny section in the slime’s midsection that was darker than the rest. A power source.

Unusual, for a summoned monster, but not unheard of. I knew that such things could let a summon work independently for a longer period of time — or possibly make them stronger than they would be otherwise.

“I’ll make an opening!”

I jumped back to avoid another hail of slime needles, then concentrated on my left hand.

One.

Two.

Three…

The slime lunged at me with a lance-like arm. I ducked and swept Selys-Lyann upward, pushing the arm, then stepped in close.

Four…

Five!

I slammed my left fist into the slime’s center, releasing a burst of transference mana. A huge chunk of the slime exploded backward, creating a gigantic hole — and exposing the gleaming green core crystal.

A gigantic spear of lightning smashed straight through the core the moment it was exposed. The core collapsed…

And the slime collapsed right along with it. Right above me.

Jump!

I barely managed to blast myself backward before the ton of goop collapsed on top of me.

The audience burst into applause, but I barely had time to clean a few errant bits of goop off my boots — my shroud didn’t stop me from stepping on slime — before the next wall fell.

Three colossal tigers with iron-colored hides growled at us, revealing jagged metallic fangs.

Ferrous tigers were a classic Tiger Spire monster — it was likely that they’d been contracted by a Summoner who had visited that location. They were best known for their razor-sharp claws and fangs, and, as I remembered with a groan, one particularly annoying property—

My sword yanked toward them the moment the wall came down. Patrick let out an “eep” as the same thing happened to Bright Reflection.

Magnetism. Their hide was powerfully magnetic, as well as near-invulnerable to conventional metal weapons. That made them a serious threat to traditional sword fighters—

But I’d fought against someone with far stronger magnetism, and I’d figured out more than a few tricks to try to counter it.

I slammed Selys-Lyann into the ground, cutting straight into the stage and freezing the sword in place. I left a mana string connecting the sword to my fingers. Then, I dodged a lunge from the first tiger and reached into my bag.

“Retrieve: Mr. Stabbington.”

My newest sword appeared in my right hand before the tiger could close in. As I’d expected, I didn’t feel even the slightest pull on the blade — the magnetic hide of the ferrous tigers was magical in nature and suppressed by the sword’s void aura.

While I dodged the tiger’s claws, Patrick flew upward and blasted the other two with lightning…which simply hit them and crackled around their bodies. I winced. Lightning worked very well against some metal creatures — it could shut down some types of golems, for example — but in other cases…

Well, now we had magnetic lightning tigers to deal with.

Fortunately, as one of the tigers swept a paw at me and projected an arc of lightning, I was able to sweep right through it with Mr. Stabbington without difficulty.

Then, as the first tiger tried to circle me, I simply rushed it and jabbed Mr. Stabbington straight through its protective hide. The tiger hissed as my blade bit right through it, Mr. Stabbington’s void aura proving just as effective at negating the creature’s defenses as it had with the magnetism.

The tiger wrenched away to dislodge my sword, but I followed as it retreated, taking two more swings at the creature’s neck. On the final swing, it simply vanished.

…I didn’t know if it had taken too much damage or if the void aura had simply dispelled the summon. Either way, I had to spin around as another tiger lunged at my back.

I reacted fast enough to face it, but not quickly enough to avoid it. The tiger hit me with tremendous force, pushing me straight to the ground. My vision swam as my head hit the ground…and the armor beneath my shirt was wrenched violently upward toward the tiger. Apparently, the close proximity was too much for my sword to negate.

…And the electrical charge still flowing through the tiger jumped to that metal, sending electrical agony surging through my chest.

I was too stunned to do anything as the tiger’s metallic jaws moved toward my throat.

A blast of compressed air hurled the tiger off me, with Patrick following straight behind it. The tiger landed on its feet, swiping at Patrick, but Patrick adjusted mid-flight and skidded to the ground, sliding right behind the tiger and raising Bright Reflection.

“Burning Brand!” Flames burst from his hands and flowed along his sword’s edges as he brought it down, slicing cleanly through the tiger’s back and leaving a trail of molten metal. The tiger vanished the instant his sword passed through its spine.

That’s…new. I blinked at the technique, presumably stolen from Keras’ stories about Soulbrand, or perhaps taught to Patrick directly when I wasn’t around.

I didn’t have much time to ponder before the third tiger leapt at me.

I was still on the ground…but fortunately, the tiger had made the mistake of leaping straight over Selys-Lyann.

I snapped my fingers, channeling mana through the mana threads connecting me to the sword.

A pillar of ice flashed upward from the sword, freezing the tiger’s chest in mid-jump.

I pushed myself to my feet, cracking my neck.

The tiger growled.

“Sorry.”

Then I slammed Mr. Stabbington into the tiger’s neck. The monster vanished to another surge of applause.

I tossed Mr. Stabbington to my left hand as I pulled Selys-Lyann out of the floor, then gave a brief flourish toward the next wall as it fell.

A smile crossed my face.

This…

I could get used to this.

I gave Patrick a quick glance. He gave me an “I’m good” gesture, then flew back up in the air.

…Which proved to be a good decision, since the next monster that emerged was a titanic earth elemental. It wasn’t the humanoid kind — instead, it was shaped like a twelve-foot-tall polyhedron, which simply rolled across the ground toward me the moment it was visible.

I swung Selys-Lyann to project another blast of ice, but the impact glanced off without the slightest hint of an impact.

Then I was running, ten tons of stone rolling right behind me.

Oh, come on!

Without my Haste spell, I probably would have been smushed into a puddle within a few moments.

Oh, yeah. Survival Matches are completely safe. No chances of horrible demise at all.

Of course, just as I was complaining to myself about the unfairness of the elemental, it decided to grow a series of spikes and fire them at me while it continued to roll.

Eep!

I flipped around to deflect a couple of the spikes, with others missing or leaving cracks in my shields, then used my ring to blast myself into the air, straight over the rolling die. With a second jump, I threw myself behind it, landing and swinging Mr. Stabbington to cut a gouge into the stone — but that barely had any impact. If this thing had a core, it was far too deep for me to reach with a single swing.

…It kept rolling until it hit the barrier at the edge of the stage, then bounced backward and started rolling straight toward me again.

I was beginning to regret being the only member of my immediate team that didn’t have a way to fly.

I made a panicked rush across the stage in the opposite direction to the laughter of the audience — I’m sure it was much funnier to people who weren’t in imminent splatter danger.

A hail of blasts of fire and lightning smashed into the elemental from the sky, sending chunks of stone falling everywhere, but they barely slowed the creature down.

Think, think!

When I neared the barrier on the other side of the stage, I jumped again — then flipped in mid-air to kick straight off the barrier wall and land behind the rolling die again. Just before it could slam into the barrier and rebound off, I swung Selys-Lyann — not at the elemental, but at the ground. A burst of transference widened my swing, creating a massive patch of ice. Then, I jumped clear.

When the elemental hit the next barrier, it bounced right into the ice-slicked floor, sending it tumbling with great speed—

Which only got faster when I slammed a transference blast into it, followed by a burst of wind from Patrick.

The elemental slammed into the opposite wall with such speed that the elemental exploded on impact—

Or, at least, the outer shell did.

As a hail of stone splinters burst from the impact, a much smaller core floated out of the remains, levitating jagged shards of stone around it.

The core was bright green at first…but it flashed red in a moment as the creature’s remains spun toward me.

Were they…angry?

Uh oh.

Hundreds of chunks of jagged stone blasted in my direction.

I thrust Selys-Lyann into the ground and sent another burst of mana through it, forming a wall of ice. That stopped the first few stones—

But not the next few hundred.

As the ice shattered, I focused on the mana threads connecting to my shield sigils, rapidly recharging the shields and shifting them to absorb as much as I could of the impact.

…They still shattered as my mana dipped precipitously, several chunks of stone passing straight through my shroud and hitting my arms and shoulders. My armor, still worn under my shirt, absorbed much of the remaining impact — but not enough to prevent some bruises.

I breathed heavily, one particular bruise on my arm painful enough that I could barely raise my right hand.

Fortunately, I only needed my left.

As the stone shards trembled on the ground and began to move back toward the core, I swung Mr. Stabbington and projected a wave of void. The cutting blackness shot across the arena and sliced straight through the core, severing it in half.

The core vanished. The stone fragments fell silent.

Patrick landed next to me, breathing heavily, “…You…okay?”

I tried to raise my arm to give him an affirmative gesture, but winced at sudden shooting pain and had to stop. “…Mostly.”

If I was hurting that much while regenerating — which I still was, since that function of my shield sigil was active even if the shields were broken — that wasn’t a good sign.

I sheathed Selys-Lyann and reached into my pouch as the next wall began to fall. “Retrieve: Grey mana battery.”

I didn’t have much time, but I siphoned as much mana as I could out of the battery to recharge my shields, then stored it again. My shields flickered back on, but I wasn’t able to fully recharge them in the thirty seconds or so between fights.

Better than nothing. And I’ve got…almost nothing else left.

My mana was precipitously low. I pulled what I could out of my mana regeneration storage, which helped a bit, but my overall supply was getting into a dangerous range.

But by my count, this was the last battle of the first section of the Survival Match, and I wasn’t planning to give up this soon.

…I almost changed my mind when I saw what was standing behind the door.

Or rather who.

A tall woman wearing armor of brilliant purple scales, carrying a vicious-looking red-bladed glaive that seemed to vibrate in place. Her hair was turquoise flecked with splotches of blue and green.

She cracked her knuckles as she saw us, a halo of water surrounding her.

“Hello, boys. I’ve heard you met my sister. And survived, no less.” She gave us a predatory smile, showing curved fangs that might have dispelled any illusions that we were facing something human. Of course, between the hair and the sister reference, I hadn’t had that misconception at all.

As she shifted to a combat stance, my mind raced.

Mizuchi, the Hero’s End, had a number of sisters.

The Scales of the Serpent were all horrendously powerful. Any child of a God Beast was.

Which ones would be willing to kill us in the middle of an arena match?

…That was one subject that wasn’t my area of expertise. But I did know one thing for certain—

Patrick and I stood absolutely no chance against any of them.

Not under normal circumstances, anyway.

A summoned monster was limited by the power of the Summoner — unless, of course, it was a true summon, which actually moved the monster.

In this case…virtually no one could summon one of the children of a god beast with any fraction of the real entity’s strength. The only one who could have gotten close that I knew of was…

“Ladies, Gentlemen, and Wyddsfolk, please give your applause to tonight’s guest Summoner, Lady Elora Theas, and her chosen champion…the legendary serpent, Satsuki, Scale of Seiryu!”

…I was in serious trouble.

CHAPTER V – SCALES OF PUNISHMENT

Memories of Mizuchi flashed through my mind as I stared across the arena. For a moment, my hand gripped my sword so tightly that I felt pain shooting through my fingers…only to be numbed as ice spread across my fingertips.

Selys-Lyann…?

I could feel something from the sword, something nearing the edge of consciousness and awareness. Had I caused that by thinking of Mizuchi, or through my alarm? Or was the presence of another of Seiryu’s children the cause?

Across the stage, Satsuki’s eyes shifted down to my sword, then up to meet mine directly. “You’re him. The one that fought auntie twice last year and survived.” She lifted her polearm to rest it against a shoulder. “…With that cursed sword.”

My hand grew colder still.

Cursed…I couldn’t remember anyone aside from Lars actually calling Selys-Lyann that.

Was there some truth to what he had said after all? Something even Keras hadn’t managed to notice about the weapon’s properties?

More likely…perhaps there was more to the sword’s relationship to Mizuchi and the other children of the God Serpent than I’d realized. As the ice spread over my hand, I felt my mind returning to the immediacy of the threat.

Survival Match or not, I wasn’t going to let my guard down around a monster that could easily tear me in half.

Calling Mizuchi “auntie” was interesting. Maybe they weren’t sisters, like I’d thought — the Scales of the Serpent could be any descendants of the God Serpent, after all. Genealogy was a lot less important than the problem right in front of me, though.

“That’s me,” I called across the stage. “Although I’m not sure ‘cursed’ is the word that I’d use.”

It was a bit of bait — I was hoping she’d say something that gave me more of a clue.

“Well, I suppose we’ll see!” A wide grin spread across her face, revealing vicious fangs. “Try not to die too fast, okay?”

“I don’t intend to die at all.” I took a step forward, in front of Patrick, then talked to him without looking backward. “Intel?”

Everyone knew about Mizuchi — she was one of Seiryu’s oldest and most famous children. But like all the God Beasts, Seiyru was hundreds of years old and had thousands of descendants. Satsuki might have been one of Mizuchi’s direct siblings or any number of generations removed. I didn’t think I’d ever heard of her.

Patrick, on the other hand, was something of an expert on magical monsters.

“Oh, uh, sure! She’s a young one, so I don’t know a lot, but…” I heard lightning crackling from Patrick’s hands behind me, but he didn’t throw the attack. “Serpents often get Artinian-style names based on the types of magic they’re born with, like ‘mizu’ meaning water. Satsu is, uh, I’m not a language expert, but…”

“Spit it out.”

“Something like…uh, killing? Or…murder?”

I had to lower my head for a moment, trembling, and then…just started laughing.

Of course she was a murder serpent.

I didn’t even think that was a type of magic, but somehow, sure, that seemed like the type of thing I’d have to deal with for having the audacity to enter a non-lethal challenge for fun.

You know what?

I’m absolutely done with being anxious.

I looked up at Satsuki, took a breath, and let go, just for a moment.

Okay, murder serpent. Let’s play.

Across the arena, Satsuki’s gaze met mine. Serpentine eyes blinked…then a smile spread across her face. “Oh, I like your expression. Try not to let it break when your bones do!”

There was no flash of instant movement, nothing like what I was expecting from a Mizuchi-style opponent.

Instead, I simply felt the change — a tingling in my skin and a thumping in my heart as Satsuki unslung the polearm from her shoulder and narrowed her eyes.

I smelled it, too. Tasted it. The coppery tang of freshly-spilled blood.

From the gasp behind me, Patrick must have also sensed it. This wasn’t a hallucination, not a product of fear.

As Satsuki began to slowly walk across the stage, looking almost cheerful, the sensation intensified so rapidly that I barely managed to keep my grip on my sword.

This is…

My mind flashed to Keras and that strange sensation like blades were against my skin. The feeling was different, but…the overwhelming presence was something similar.

I didn’t know what I was dealing with, but if it was messing with my mind, I knew how to deal with that.

Focus.

Mental mana surged through me, much like when I’d countered Mizuchi’s control. The sensation didn’t fade, but I felt my concentration return.

I couldn’t take my eyes off Satsuki to help Patrick as he stumbled backward, so I simply flicked a hand backward and flung a mana thread at him. When I felt it connect, I channeled mental mana into him as well.

“Oh?” Satsuki walked closer, bending forward to look at us more closely. “Still standing? That’s surprising for someone of your level.”

“We haven’t even started yet.”

A thin layer of ice flowed across my entire right arm, but the cold was soothing, rather than physically numbing.

A smaller manifestation of the ice armor that the previous wielder used against Mizuchi, I realized. Is Selys-Lyann recognizing how much danger I’m in? Or perhaps that I’m fighting one of Mizuchi’s family?

I didn’t know. But what I did know was that I wasn’t going to go down without even taking a swing at my opponent.

Detect Aura.

Three auras flickered around Satsuki, each a different color — yellow, red, and finally blue.

If I hadn’t fought Mizuchi twice, I might have assumed that these were three attunement shroud colors…and maybe they were. But the order they were wrapped around her wasn’t quite right for making them sequential in power and the shades looked more like…

Elemental shrouds.

And with that, I had the beginnings of a plan.

…But no way to explain it to my partner without our opponent hearing us.

I just had to hope that I could communicate my intention to Patrick somehow without letting her in on it.

Maybe…

“Yellow, red, blue. Teft’s first rule.” Then I lunged.

Jump.

I had precious little mana left to work with. I’d already been low when I’d started the match and the sudden infusion of mental mana had drained my reserves further. If we wanted to win — and I wanted to win — we’d have to end the match fast.

Satsuki casually swept her glaive downward and batted my swing out of the way, just as I’d expected. What I hadn’t expected was the sheer force of the impact, which sent me flying back so fast that I had to jam Selys-Lyann into the ground to avoid being shot out of the arena. My sword bit into the stage and dragged almost a foot before I stopped. When I dislodged the weapon, I realized the icy armor around my right arm was cracked and splintered. If I hadn’t been protected by it, the simple clash of our weapons might have broken my arm.

…But the exchange wasn’t entirely one-sided. Frost had attacked her glaive, spreading far more rapidly across the surface than I’d seen Selys-Lyann manage in the past. Satsuki slammed the weapon into the stage, causing the entire arena to tremble and nearly knocking me off my feet. Splinters of ice broke free from the glaive, but others continued to cling and spread…and the bits of ice that had torn free began to grow and stretch toward her.

Satsuki hissed, jumping backward as the frost spread. The distraction cost her. Patrick released a blast of lightning into the air, which split apart into a half-circle of bolts that curved inward and downward to assault Satsuki from several sides at once.

She batted several bolts out of the air as she recovered, but as Patrick shifted his hand, a single bolt slipped beneath her hand and cracked into the outermost of layer of her shroud—

And bounced right off harmlessly.

She smiled.

I smiled, too. I’d guessed right.

Teft’s first rule — like deflects like, opposites nullify.

Her yellow shroud wasn’t Citrine — it was lightning. Her shroud worked liked Mizuchi’s did.

And that meant we could beat her.

“Fire next! Mana mix!” I yelled to Patrick.

I swung Selys-Lyann, sending a wave of ice at Satsuki’s legs. She didn’t jump like I’d expected — instead, she shoved the butt of her glaive into the ground and vaulted over the ice, then flipped the glaive over her head while she was airborne.

Airborne attacks were intimidating, but as Keras had pointed out, they offered little room for maneuvering. She was no doubt ready for me to dodge or counter with Selys-Lyann, but I wasn’t planning to do either.

Accelerated Computation.

Impact in 0.58 seconds. Adjust left.

Satsuki’s swing came down with shattering force, but I simply leaned to the side, allowing the blade to pass within a fraction of an inch of my chest. Her glaive went straight through the stage, cutting through protective mana and wood without the slightest difficulty — and getting stuck, just for a moment, as my ice rushed inward and grabbed the weapon’s blade.

As she pulled upward, I struck with my other sword.

I didn’t have anything like an opposite to lightning mana. Sand mana wasn’t exactly common, nor did I have a good way to quickly approximate it by mixing similar mana types.

Fortunately, there was a lesser-known rule that was equally useful:

Void beats shrouds.

Satsuki saw the attack coming and pulled back with terrible speed, but as she ripped her glaive free from the frost, I nicked her outermost aura — and it distorted and ripped on contact with the inky blackness of my blade.

She hissed and leapt backward, then opened her mouth and roared, flames surging through her jaws.

I slammed Selys-Lyann into the ground and formed a wall of ice, but she wasn’t aiming at me — she exhaled her breath straight at her own weapon, blasting the ice that had been spreading across it away.

As she swatted another of Patrick’s lightning bolts out of the air, she growled at me, smoke still rising from her jaws. “You’re annoying.”

“My sister says the same thing.” I raised both swords, trying to look more confident than I felt.

As Satsuki had exhaled her burning breath, her red aura had weakened…but it hadn’t vanished as I’d hoped it would.

…And I could already see her first shroud beginning to re-form. It wasn’t likely to stop an attack immediately, but we’d need to move fast if we wanted to strike before it reasserted itself.

Satsuki cracked her neck and shifted back into a defensive stance, one foot forward in front of the other with the glaive held in front of her, watching me more warily now.

Given her speed, I didn’t have any chance of hitting her with ice while she was watching for it. She knew my weapon and she was prepared for it now….which was unfortunate, since it was the single best counter I had to a fire-based aura. Patrick didn’t have ice magic, so he didn’t have a counter available.

…But together, maybe, if we timed it perfectly…

“Flank!” I yelled, rushing to the right.

Patrick rushed the opposite direction, trying to get behind Satsuki, then hurled another blast of lightning upward, which spread out as before.

Satsuki growled, spinning in a circle and rapidly dispersing each and every bolt of lightning with a series of precise swings. She batted the very last lightning bolt straight at me with a sudden flash of her glaive, sending it hurtling toward me—

But I’d helped build Bright Reflection. Deflected projectiles were nothing new.

Incoming projectile impact in 0.21 seconds, my Accelerated Computation informed me.

I side-stepped easily, then swept Selys-Lyann repeatedly in reprisal, sending wave-after-wave of ice in her direction.

“Too predictable!” She dodged the waves of ice easily, then raised her glaive, which began to glow bright crimson. That was never a good sign, but I didn’t focus on avoiding whatever horrifying attack was incoming.

Instead, I abandoned subtlety and yelled to Patrick. “Use splash attack, now!”

Satsuki’s expression shifted to one of surprise as she processed, then spun, but just a moment too late.

Patrick hurled a fireball straight into the huge patch of ice that was forming from my missed attacks, sending a blast of water erupting across the stage as the fire melted my ice.

And, just as I’d hoped, thousands of droplets of water were a lot harder to dodge than crescents of frost. Especially at near point-blank range.

Steam rose as droplets splashed against Satsuki’s already-weakened crimson aura, diminishing it further.

Yes! Almost there!

As she processed the attack, I charged at her from behind—

I never got anywhere close.

Satsuki turned around, simply pointing a hand in my direction, and agony surged through the center of my chest.

I didn’t have a chance to take a swing before my knees hit the ground, the sudden pain overwhelming me. My void sword slipped from my grip, but Selys-Lyann remained frozen to my right hand.

“Clever boy. Flexible, creative.” She stepped toward me, casually deflecting a panicked bolt of lightning from Patrick without even looking at him. “But don’t you think you’re a little too weak to be trying to fight me?”

I coughed, instinctively reaching upward to put my free hand on my chest.

Over my heart.

Had it…stopped?

Was I…dying?

I didn’t have time to wonder how she’d bypassed my shrouds and shield sigils, I just panicked and punched myself in the chest with as much life mana as I could possibly manage.

Not a single thing changed.

Then Satsuki was in front of me, kneeling down and putting her free hand around my throat. “You were fun, for a little while.”

Her fingertips shifted into claws, digging into my neck.

“Corin! No!” Patrick pointed Bright Reflection at Satsuki. Light flared from the sword’s tip, growing brighter and brighter until a colossal wave of incendiary incandescence flashed from the sword, blindingly bright and wide as a pillar.

Satsuki slammed her glaive into it with a single hand, sending the burst of light flashing right back toward Patrick. It hit him hard enough to send him staggering straight into the barrier wall, his shields shattering.

He collapsed to the ground, barely moving.

“Lights out, fake Dawnbringer.”

Satsuki’s eyes turned crimson. As she smiled, spikes of crimson fluid shot up from the stage and slammed into Patrick’s fallen form.

He vanished from the arena, then Satsuki turned straight back to me, her clawed hand still drawing blood from my throat.

“Any last words before I tighten my grip?”

“Sure,” I coughed, staring straight into her bloodstained gaze. “You’re in my grip, too. Return.”

And with that, I teleported us both out of the ring.

***

There was something to be said for the utterly baffled expression on Satsuki’s face as we appeared outside the ring, right inside the medical recovery room where I’d set my anchor.

For a moment, she simply continued staring straight at me, her jaw slack.

“…A ring out? Seriously?”

Then she hurled me backward against the floor. Not hard, mind you, but enough that I felt the impact.

When she stomped the floor with an audible crack as I scuttled backward, I recognized her movement as something less than murderous, but equally familiar—

She was pouting.

“S…sorry?” I coughed, only belatedly realizing that the pressure in my chest was gone.

Satsuki’s hands tightened around her glaive, then she shuddered, closed her eyes…and a thin smile spread across her lips.

“No, no…” Then her eyes fluttered back open and they’d returned to normal. Or, what passed for normal for a murder serpent, anyway. “No! You’re wonderful! Absolutely wonderful!” She moved forward in a blur, showing speed she’d never approached in the arena, then plopped down on the floor in front of where I was reeling. “That was even better than I’d hoped for! Can we go again?”

“…Again?” I pulled away on instinct, then froze in place as I noticed the dangerous intensity in her expression. “Uh, maybe sometime? I’m, um, out of mana.”

“Oh, oh! Of course! Human mana pools are so tiny. You need to rest! But later, maybe we can—”

“That’s quite enough, Satsuki. You’re scaring the medics again.”

Elora Theas had appeared right behind me, presumably with one of her own teleportation spells. I hadn’t noticed her — nor had I really even noticed the medics, who were, in fact, hiding in terror in the far corners of the recovery room.

“Oh, sorry, sorry! I’ll, uh, cut down the killing intent like you taught me.” She closed her eyes so tightly that I saw creases on her forehead — and just like that, the strange goosebumps-inducing feeling that I’d sensed since she’d gotten close to me began to lessen.

Not go away, but lessen.

Elora nodded in approval. “Good. Now, good work in that match, both of you. The crowd loved it.”

I wasn’t sure I currently was in any condition to care about the crowd — my every instinct was still telling me that I could be killed in the next instant.

And I had an even greater concern. “Patrick,” I managed. “Where—”

“Medical room 4,” Elora told me. “He’s fine, just shaken.” She shook her head. “Shouldn’t have used such a powerful attack if he couldn’t block it properly.”

I glowered at her. “Satsuki was killing me. Of course he used a powerful attack!”

“I was not!” Satsuki opened an eye and wrinkled her nose at me. “If I was killing you, you’d be dead!”

…That was kind of hard to argue with. Thinking about it, if she’d actually wanted to kill me, based on the amount of force she’d managed when our weapons first clashed…

She could have crushed my throat like a grape.

“Well, you certainly looked like you were going to kill me.”

“Oh, I did?” Satsuki straightened up a little, seeming to…preen, maybe…at my comment. “Thank you so much!”

I had no idea what to say to that.

“Now, Satsuki, I think you’ve taken up enough of Master Cadence’s time, and the medics need to work. Can you find your way back to the stands on your own?”

“Ugh, I was just chatting. But fine!” Satsuki pushed herself to her feet with a huff, then started to march to the door. Then, something strange passed across her face as she opened the door and turned back to me. “…I had fun.”

She left before I said another word, which was probably for the best.

***

As Satsuki left, the medics finally went to work on assessing my injuries. They were mostly minor, but my throat was still bleeding. Satsuki’s claws hadn’t pierced deeply, but they’d cut enough that the regeneration effect from my sigil hadn’t fixed it yet. I didn’t think I was in danger, but I didn’t mind getting some direct treatment.

Belatedly, I wished my armor had included a gorget to cover my throat. Sadly, the metallic shirt ended right at my neck-line.

I took the next few minutes to just sort of stare blankly at a wall while the medics worked. I was vaguely aware of Elora Theas still waiting in the room and watching. It was only after my treatment concluded that she dismissed the medics — something I wasn’t really sure she had the authority to do — and came to sit in a chair across from me.

“Your performance was excellent. I don’t suppose you’d humor us with another match in a few weeks? I haven’t seen Satsuki or the crowd that excited in months.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Are you kidding me? You set me up against someone like her? You know what I went through with Mizuchi last year.”

Elora blinked. “Yes, of course I do. Surviving against Mizuchi not once, but twice? That makes you a very rare case. It’s part of why I set you up against Satsuki — I knew you could handle fighting a serpent, and that you’d make it interesting. You proved me more than right.”

“But…she…”

I stopped myself.

Did Elora just…not realize that fighting Mizuchi had been a traumatic experience?

Was she…so disconnected as to think of this as all being just…normal?

“She seemed like she wanted to kill me,” I managed, belatedly.

Elora snorted. “It’s called showmanship, Corin. Come, now. You managed quite a bit of that yourself — your performance was exemplary. I’ll admit that I thought that pitting you up against Satsuki might have been excessive — she’s very young, and not as good at holding back as Vanniv is — but in spite of her misbehavior, you still managed to catch her off-guard. That ending…that was pure artistry, Corin. If you think you could repeat that kind of performance, you could make a lot of money here.”

My mouth opened, then closed again.

The truth was… as terrifying as the experience had been…as stressful as it had been to see someone who reminded me of Mizuchi…

I’d had fun.

Not just in the beginning. Even when I’d fought Satsuki, and I’d felt like my life might be on the line—

I’d been terrified, but…I’d enjoyed that, too.

“I’ll…consider it.”

Elora smiled. “Good.”

***

I spent some more time in the recovery room, but Elora left relatively quickly after that exchange.

I did get in one last important question, though.

“Why would you contract someone like Satsuki after what happened last year at the Winter Ball?”

Elora had simply stared at me. “Do you think all serpents are aligned toward the same cause? They’re completely different. Besides, Satsuki needs more experience with people around her age, otherwise she’s going to end up getting expelled.”

“…Expelled?”

“Oh, didn’t I mention?” Elora blinked. “You may want to keep an eye out for her on the campus. She liked you, after all, and she could use friends.”

I had no idea what to say to that, so I just kind of stammered in horror as Elora said her goodbyes and headed out of the room.

After that, I simply read in the recovery room until the medics returned, then following that, I was greeted by the onrush of Patrick, Sera, and Mara as they were finally let in to see me.

After confirming that I was alive and well, we discussed the match. There was a general agreement that we’d done an amazing job in the arena, but I couldn’t help the feeling that my match with Satsuki wasn’t truly over. With the look she’d worn when she’d left the room…I had a feeling it was only just beginning.

CHAPTER VI – ORIENTATION

The few days that followed were probably the closest thing to a “vacation” I’d managed during the entire winter break, but after that, it was finally time to go back to school.

Lorian Heights wasn’t far away, but it felt difficult to rouse myself to walk through those gates again. The others didn’t seem to struggle with it the same way that I did, so I let them drag me along, finding myself lost in thought as we drifted toward the grassy park area in the center of campus for orientation.

We were arriving much earlier in the year than we had as first-year students. I already understood why: Judgments for fresh seventeen-year-olds had taken place in the middle of the year, meaning that first-year students only had one semester. Our second year at Lorian Heights would take place across much of the year, but would be split into two semesters. The first semester would be short, then we’d have a brief break, then the second semester would take place at the same time as the first-year students started.

At least, that was how things traditionally worked.

When we arrived on the grass, I discovered immediately that something strange was going on: there was a large group of students that had unusual black-trimmed uniforms. Older students, people who had been already been in their second year when I was in my first.

Lorian Heights was only a two-year school, so those students should have mostly graduated or failed out. Some students would be held back, but those students shouldn’t have had new uniforms — they would have just been repeating the second year.

There were a lot of them, too. Hundreds or more.

What’s going on?

I got my answer pretty quickly after the opening ceremonies started.

People sang the boring school song and all that, then Vice Chancellor Bennett — who was, apparently, still the Vice Chancellor — began his speech. The older military officer looked much the same as before, though I thought I caught a hint of new weariness behind his eyes.

“Welcome back to Lorian Heights. You’ve all done well to make it this far, succeeding at the tests you’ve been given and proving your worth. As most of you are no doubt already aware, last year we suffered a tragic event at the winter ball, suffering terrible losses. Those losses included some of our nation’s greatest servants, and included among them were some of our academy’s staff.”

Collectively, the student base drew in a sharp breath. I’m sure many people were expecting a speech along these lines, but I hadn’t really thought about it.

The Vice Chancellor continued. “Chief among these losses was Chancellor Wallace. She was a formidable woman, an inspiration to many of us, and a renowned scholar. For many years, her guidance brought our school unparalleled success, training students to a higher standard than ever before. We will miss her greatly. Please, join me in a moment of blindness for Chancellor Wallace and all those lost in the attack.”

I closed my eyes, as was traditional for moments of grief like this one.

Moments passed. I remembered.

I remembered Mizuchi’s attacks. Her magic paralyzing the entire chamber, containing thousands of people.

I remembered watching people I respected die.

I remembered fighting worthlessly against an opponent that outstripped my abilities to such an extent that I could not have hoped to survive if she hadn’t been deliberately holding back.

I remembered Professor Conway intervening to save us. I remembered hearing him die.

I remembered nearly killing Patrick in my failed attempt to heal his injuries.

I remembered Professor Vellum’s fight-ending move, a banishment spell that nearly killed her in the process.

I drew in a deep breath, willing my eyes to remain shut.

Eventually, the Vice Chancellor’s words resumed. “You may open your eyes.”

I took a breath.

The Vice Chancellor continued. “Later today, we will hold a vigil for all those who were lost in this brazen and unwarranted attack on our nation. For every life lost on that terrible day, we are diminished.”

He straightened, his eyes narrowing. “Our enemies have stolen from our future, and this will not be forgotten.”

I…wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. It sounded less like a simple gesture of reverence toward the deceased and more like a threat.

Was he planning some kind of retribution?

His next words didn’t clarify that, but they were important, nonetheless. “In my absence from that event, I failed you. I also failed when monster forces left the Serpent Spire to breach the school’s gates, forcing our student base into shelters. The lack of security for our students proved that steps would need to be taken in order to ensure that an enemy of such great power would never slip within our midst again. For this reason, significant changes will be made to operations on the campus. To explain these further, I would like to introduce our new chancellor, though I fear she needs no introduction. You all know her already, both as a former professor and one of our nation’s greatest heroes.”

Students scanned the platform for another figure, but no one was near him. Our failure was simple: most of us didn’t think to look up.

“Please join me in welcoming our new Chancellor: Antonia Meltlake.”

There was a crack of thunder as professor…or, rather, former professor…Meltlake ripped through the clouds at absurd speed to land straight in the center of the stage, her entire body surrounded by a shroud of golden smoke and fire.

I knew she liked a little bit of spectacle, but this was new. Different.

The look in Chancellor Meltlake’s eyes was entirely different from what I’d seen last. Focused. Determined. Maybe even a little playful.

Chancellor Meltlake snapped her fingers, extinguishing the flames from her shroud. “Welcome back, students. Now, are you ready to learn some real magic?”

There was a moment of stunned silence, followed by an absolute roar of approval.

Meltlake grinned. “I thought so.” She clapped her hands. Three copies of her appeared at her sides, then took positions behind her. Each was identical to her, save for wearing different colored robes. “Thank you to the Vice Chancellor for the introduction and opening this ceremony. As he mentioned, we’re going to have some changes around here. For starters, I’ll be splitting up our student base for this semester into three segments. First, there are the fresh second-years. You’ll be following Meltlake Red after this concludes. Next, those of you who were second years that didn’t complete the minimum criteria for graduation last year will be following Meltlake Blue. Finally, I’m sure you’ve all noticed that we have a segment of students that successfully graduated. These represent a new class that are here for extended training and to provide the additional security that the vice chancellor mentioned. They will be following Meltlake Purple.”

I blinked, processing. So, some people are effectively getting a third year? I wonder if that’s temporary or something that is intended to be long-term.

Meltlake continued her explanation. “Throughout this semester, we’ll be evaluating each of you carefully for your placement in one of our academy’s proudest traditions — war games. Between the first and second semesters, you’ll be sent to one of our training bases to participate in simulated war exercises. These activities vary from year-to-year. Some war games are held in cooperation with other academies, whereas other years we hold them on our own. Pay close attention throughout this semester and you may see some hints of things to come.”

I’d heard a little bit about war games for second-year students before, but the presence of the third-year students was probably going to involve some new dynamics. Wheels were already turning in my head about possible scenarios, like escort missions, defending fortifications, and that sort of thing.

…But if I wanted to make it to the war games at all, I’d have to deal with my father first. Our duel hadn’t been formally scheduled yet, but I had to imagine we’d be fighting before the war games, rather than afterward.

I couldn’t think on that too much. Professor — no, Chancellor — Meltlake was still talking.

“This year will include a new mandatory class intended to help you learn to develop your attunements faster. I’ve personally designed this course with knowledge that has been hidden from the general populace for years with the intent of allowing famous families — like my own former house — to remain in power. I expect there are going to be some concerns from members of those houses that I am breaking some unspoken rules by jeopardizing their advantages. I have one thing to say to those people.”

Meltlake’s smile widened. “I am once again accepting requests for duels.”

And on that note, Chancellor Meltlake snapped her fingers and vanished in a burst of smoke and fire.

The three copies spread out simultaneously, glanced briefly at each other, then spoke as one. “Students, please break into your designated groups and follow us.”

There was an excited murmur as the students quickly complied.

At my right side, Patrick burst into gleeful laughter. “She’s alive! She’s alive! Come on!”

Still laughing, he led our group to follow our own designated Chancellor Meltlake.

This is going to be a different kind of school year, isn’t it?

Strangely enough, I found myself looking forward to it.

***

Meltlake Red led us to one of the main administration buildings, then stood outside the door and projected her voice to the group. “Form a line. You’ll be getting your mandatory class schedules here, as well as assigned to an advisor. You have also been assigned to teams, generally the same team as last year, but with one open slot. Over the following weeks, you will pick a sixth member for your team. This sixth member can be from Red Division — that’s you — or one of the other two divisions comprised of older students. You may also register if you wish to leave your current team or have a team member removed.”

I winced, thinking of Jin. He was probably still slotted with us…assuming he was even present for the second year. I didn’t know exactly how things worked for him, given that he’d earned his attunement at a younger age.

I did see a few other people around that looked like transfer students, but not Jin himself. Maybe he was there and simply in a different part of the giant crowd…or maybe he didn’t want to be seen.

Anyway, we lined up, got our class assignments, and quickly confirmed that we were on the same team as before.

We also picked up some school-mandated supplies. Second-year uniforms. School-issued shield sigils for people who didn’t have them already. Dorm room keys. (I still had an assigned dorm room, even if I wasn’t staying in it. I briefly went and checked it out, just to make sure my keys worked, and then promptly abandoned it.)

After that, we headed back to Derek’s house to talk…aside from Patrick. He went to talk to Meltlake Red, then briefly came back to tell us he was going off to meet with the real Meltlake privately somewhere. I wasn’t surprised, given that he was her apprentice.

We sat down around a huge new kitchen table.

“So,” Sera started, “Cecily, do you need a team?”

Cecily blinked. “I’m…not sure? My team is still mostly intact from last year. A couple people didn’t make it to the second year, but I’m not sure if we’re disbanding yet.  I’ll have to talk to them first.” She frowned. “Are you sure you’d want me? Wouldn’t a healer make more sense for your existing group composition?”

“Sure, in a traditional group setup a dedicated healer would be ideal, but we don’t really need it. And Corin is a healer, even if he’s kind of awful at it.”

“I’d argue, but honestly, I am an awful healer. I’m probably going to take an elective on it this year, but I don’t ever expect to specialize in it.”

“Are there even healing elective options?” Sera asked.

I shrugged. “Don’t know. Haven’t looked at the list yet.”

“Could be that I’ll end up doin’ some healin’, too.” Mara turned to me. “Now that I’m Sunstone, I’ve got a good enough combat foundation that learnin’ a few healin’ spells may not be a bad idea. Think you could teach me that regeneration one?”

“Yeah, absolutely. You could probably learn a stronger one than mine. Hm. Actually, I’m probably ready for a higher-level regeneration spell if I’m willing to dip into both mana pools for it…”

“So, we’re not critically short on healing,” Sera concluded. “And we have every other major archetype covered. Mara is a beast on the front line. Patrick is our dedicated ranged attacker. Corin and I are both support. And Jin…well, we’ll see if we’re keeping him, but he’s extremely capable at both stealth and crowd control. Now that we actually know what his attunement is, maybe we can lean into that for tactics a bit more.”

“…Are you comfortable keeping him on the team?” I asked. Admittedly, I wasn’t sure about my own answer on the subject yet.

Sera’s reply was a safe answer. “Worth talking to him and hearing his own thoughts, I think.”

“Same. Don’t trust ‘em, but seems like he’s tryin’ hard to make up for what he did, and I’d be willin’ to hear him out. Sides,” Mara smirked, “I’m at his level now. He tries anything funny…” She slammed a fist into her other empty palm and a thunderous crack split the air. “He’ll get what’s comin’ to him.”

…I wasn’t sure I liked how excited she looked when she said that.

She might have overdone the display, since Keras practically flew downstairs a moment later, his hand extended to his right side with an aura already beginning to form around it. “What was that sound?”

Mara wilted. “…Sorry, just got a little excited. S’fine.”

Keras scanned the room briefly, then turned to Mara. “Don’t surprise me like that.”

Then, in a blur, he vanished back upstairs.

Awkward.

After that, we got back to talking, but the basics remained the same: Cecily needed to talk to her team and someone needed to talk to Jin.

I was pretty keen on that someone being anyone other than me, but I had a feeling I knew how things were going to end up playing out.

***

Our next order of business was looking over our mandatory schedules and the documentation we’d been given for choosing elective classes. This took longer than I’d expected, simply due to the sheer number of electives available to second-year students. Most of the first-year electives were still available, then there were second-year versions of them, as well as some new classes that didn’t map directly to ones I’d seen before.

We also had a bit more free time in our schedules: there were only four mandatory classes for second-year students. Two of these four were universal: Physical Training in the morning every day and Attunement Optimization, the new course that Meltlake had mentioned in the orientation briefing. The other two mandatory classes were attunement-specific. In my case, that meant Intermediate Mana Manipulation and Intermediate Enchanting.

My understanding was that these mandatory classes were all multi-semester classes, meaning that we’d start them now and then continue them after the break and the war games. There were some elective classes that only lasted one semester, but I intended to fill out all my class slots with multi-semester ones. Adapting to new teachers and new people was annoying, and I tended to prefer to specialize in general. If I didn’t like an elective…well, maybe I could drop out of it if I really had to.

Most people were expected to take two electives to fill out a standard schedule of six classes. I was leaning toward taking three, but that required a bit more schedule juggling.

I also wasn’t quite sure what to prioritize.

Naturally, most people picked electives that corresponded directly to their attunement. I had two attunements, however, and one of them didn’t have any classes about it. There just weren’t enough Arbiters to justify a class about them.

That might have made it obvious that I should just take a bunch of Enchanting courses, but I wasn’t sure how many of them would actually be useful. I’d gotten some esoteric Enchanting experience from my lessons from Vellum and my visit to Caelford. I wasn’t sure a random elective would teach me much.

There were a few Enchanting-focused electives I considered.

Intermediate Art of Artifice was Vellum’s second-year course and the most obvious option. She knew what she’d already covered the first year, after all, and presumably she’d have plenty left to cover. I wasn’t sure if that would just be more unfamiliar runes or if she’d get into more advanced topics like compound runes and attunement design. The class summary was unhelpful in that regard, it just said, “Take this if you don’t want to be a terrible Enchanter.”

That sounded like Vellum, which was comforting in a way, but I remained skeptical about the usefulness of the course.

Introduction to Potions Making for Enchanters would help me fill in one of my obvious educational gaps and let me work toward making attunement primers and enhancement elixirs, both of which were on my long-term goals list.

Elemental Enchantments had a specialized focus on how to make effective equipment for fighting monsters with elemental strengths and weaknesses. Given how much spire climbing I was doing, it sounded like the class might be a good investment, but I also had to wonder if it would be redundant with lessons from Keras and Derek.

Mana Manufacturing was focused on transmuting personal mana into other states. Basically, making mana crystals and liquid mana. Maybe there were other options as well, like gaseous mana? The class description didn’t say. I considered this as a good option for practicing making liquid mana and learning more about the theory behind it, but I didn’t know if it would be necessary with my existing mana manipulation skill and a mandatory class on a similar topic.

Foreign Attunements and You apparently covered the specialized functions of most foreign attunements. The concept reminded me of what Jin had asked me to do in the first year and I wondered if it might be useful both in terms of knowledge and attunement fabrication practice.

There were also some classes dedicated to studies on a specific base mana type, like life mana or transference mana. These were legitimately tempting, especially ones that might help me figure out how to assemble additional composite mana types from the base mana types I already had access to.

Ultimately, I decided to keep a “slot” open in my schedule for an Enchanting class and held off on picking one. I wanted to ask Vellum about her second-year course before making a choice.

There were over a hundred other elective class options, so I had quite a bit to sort through. Ultimately, given the duel looming over me at the end of the year, it was obvious that I was going to take the second-year dueling course.

I picked that up. So did Sera, Patrick, and Mara. We picked the same time slot to continue sharing the class. Cecily didn’t pick it, citing a lack of interest, but showing some other emotions I didn’t want to dig into.

She had her own dueling-related history and I wasn’t ready to talk about it. Not yet.

That left me with one more potential slot for an elective, presuming I planned for a total of seven classes. I could have taken two Enchanting-related electives, but I decided I wanted to do something that fed into my Arbiter attunement’s abilities at least a little bit.

There weren’t a lot of options there.

Diplomacy in Attuned Society was probably the most on-topic, but it sounded like the type of class I would absolutely loathe. Similarly, International Politics and Religion was probably useful, but not the type of thing I wanted to spend time on.

There weren’t any classes on the interior workings of attunements, but there were some other classes that were tangentially related. Specifically, Alternate Magic Sources apparently talked about ways to earn magic without attunements and Introduction to Healing for Non-Menders was exactly what it sounded like.

I was more interested in the former, but the latter was more practical. The healing class also had the advantage that Mara was considering taking it, and if I chose it, we could take the class together.

I decided to wait and see what Vellum advised on that subject, too. That left me with a clear next point of action: it was time to pay a visit to a salty old mentor.

***

I found Professor Vellum at her office, which was fortunate, since it meant she wasn’t in the hospital. While the entire winter vacation had been plenty of time to recover, I knew that banishing Mizuchi had taken a serious toll on her health. If she’d caused herself mana scarring in that process, there was a good chance she still hadn’t healed completely.

I knocked on the office door.

“I’m sorry, Professor Vellum is not currently in her office,” came Vellum’s voice from the other side of the door. “If you need help, I recommend finding a better university.”

I snorted. “It’s Corin.”

An exhausted sigh came from the other side of the door. “Oh, come in. Someone has to pay for my suffering.”

I opened the door, finding Vellum sitting behind a pile of paperwork. With her hunched posture, the tall stack of parchment obscured her sitting form almost entirely.

I walked in, closed the door behind me, then gestured to the stack. “What’s all this?”

“This,” Vellum stood up, shoving one of the piles further away from her, “is the latest sign of your unfathomable hubris.”

“Uh…” I winced. “Which particular form of my hubris are we talking about?”

“Today?” Vellum snorted. “An excellent question. I’d say to take a look at the cover page, but I lost that a long time ago. This, Corin Cadence, is legal documentation for your latest escapade. And before you ask which one, because I’m sure there have been absurdities I haven’t even heard about yet, I mean the patent paperwork you attempted to file in Caelford.”

“I, uh…” I glanced from side-to-side. “It was a lot fewer pages over there?”

She let out a sigh. “Yes, of course it was. Caelford has a much faster process for filing runes, and yes, even sub-glyphs, all thanks to the wonderous matronage of Farren Labs. You know, the company you directly antagonized.” Vellum rubbed her temples. “Only a half of this mind-boggling stack is actually the Valian equivalent paperwork. The other half is legal paperwork contesting the patent claim.”

“Wait. I get all that, but…why is it in your office?”

“Because I’m on-record as your supervisory council for any Valian patent until you graduate. As a student, Valia doesn’t expect you to be able to handle this sort of thing on your own, so…” She gestured with both hands toward the piles.

“…Oh. I’m, uh, sorry?”

She snorted. “Don’t worry, at least your brand of making me miserable has variety. And, for what it’s worth, I enjoyed picturing the panic on Farren’s face when she heard about this. It’s about time someone tweaked her nose. I don’t think this plan will actually work, mind you, but just causing her some distress is reward enough.”

“Not a fan of Farren?” I raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t know you had a history.”

Vellum’s expression darkened. “She came between me and my son. One day, there’ll be a reckoning for that. For now…well, I suppose I can tolerate a bit of mild irritation to give her the same.” She normalized in a moment, chuckling and letting the bitterness fade from her face. “You have a reason for being here, spit it out.”

“First off, I never took you up on lessons for using my sword properly. Kind of lost track of time.”

“Didn’t we all.” She shook her head. “I can’t do full weekend lessons at this point, but I can teach you a bit here and there. I suspect you’ve already picked up on much of what I intended to show you, given some of the people you’ve been living with.”

I nodded. “I’d still value your insight. And speaking of, that’s the other reason I’m here…I’d like your advice on what classes to take.”

“You? Actually asking for advice before making a life-shattering decision? I suppose I should check the stars for any other portents of the end coming.”

“Very funny.” I frowned, thinking back. “Wait, do you actually read the stars?”

“Not anymore. They tried to talk me into disastrous things, and I get enough of that from certain students.”

I rubbed my forehead. “…Do you want help with the paperwork?”

“You’ll need to be here for part of the process. Signatures and such. I wouldn’t want to hand too much of it off, though. I’m afraid it would just give you more ideas.”

***

I spent the next few hours sitting with Vellum and going over the papers. Ultimately, it seemed like the patent for my Arbiter sub-glyphs was going to be much harder to get approved in Valia, and it still was going to have to go through some serious processing in Caelford as well.

But if it did work…well, I didn’t know if anyone actually had enough oversight into Farren’s processes that it could be proven if she did steal my Arbiter attunement’s abilities. If she got her hands on my sub-glyphs, she could probably duplicate them in secret and just avoid selling copies of that particular artificial attunement.

But given that Farren Labs was contesting it, that implied I’d inconvenienced them, and they probably did have plans to sell things that utilized Arbiter capabilities. Maybe.

I still didn’t have a good handle on Farren’s motivations. Maybe I was taking what Constantine had said too seriously and failing to give her a chance. Maybe she wasn’t planning on doing anything particularly nefarious with copied Arbiter functions.

But just in case, I wanted to buy some time and get a better idea of how exactly everything worked before making any decisions. If there was any chance that Farren could turn attunements into something she could remotely monitor or destroy…well, I hoped I could find a way to out-pace her and prevent that.

…Not that it was likely I’d succeed.

As far as I could tell, doing that would require a method of adding some kind of anti-tampering function to every attunement in the world. And a good enough anti-tampering function that she couldn’t just undo it.

Honestly, it was probably the height of arrogance to even conceptualize a goal on that scale…but it was important enough that I couldn’t ignore it.

Anyway, after that, I finally got to talking to Vellum about class options.

I thought it was a foregone conclusion that she’d tell me to take her own second course. Instead, she laughed at me when I suggested it.

“Please. That class would be beyond remedial for you at this point.”

I blinked. “…You gave me a terrible grade for the first class, but you think I should skip the second?”

She scoffed. “I gave you a barely passing grade because you got too big of a head and decided to experiment during your final exam instead of doing something smart and reliable. Your mana manipulation and theory are well ahead of most Enchanters your age. Your problem is that over-developed imagination of yours. You have no discipline, but you won’t learn that in a classroom. Frankly speaking, you’d find my second year boring and useless. Take that time to go learn something completely different, or better yet, don’t take any extra classes at all. School isn’t the only way to learn, and you’re probably better off without the detritus they teach here.”

…I didn’t know what to say to that.

I considered just doing as she advised and not filling my schedule, but the idea of having too much free time was weirdly panic-inducing. I liked having a full schedule. It helped me avoid things I hated, like facing reality.

I did, however, take her advice on skipping her second-year class. That left me to choose from the other available options.

I strongly considered Introduction to Potion Making, but ultimately, most of my future goals didn’t require that I personally manufacture potions. I needed to obtain potions, but I didn’t need to do everything on my own.

Instead, I picked what was probably the least immediately useful class: Foreign Attunements and You. Getting a better idea of what each individual attunement was capable of could be incredibly useful for me in the long run, both for emulating and countering them. It also would give me a good idea of what attunements couldn’t do yet, which could help me theorize about ways to accomplish those goals through other means.

I knew that the class wouldn’t cover restricted or ascended attunements, but that was fine: I could research those through other means.

Finally, I picked up Alternate Magic Sources. I hoped it might offer some additional insight on the origins of things like the mana crystals in the Unclaimed Lands and even analogues on other continents.

I hoped that if Mara picked up the healing class, maybe she could teach me a bit of what she was learning. Alternatively, I knew I could probably ask Sheridan for help, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to owe them more favors.

With all that done, it was evening. I had dinner, spent some time making mana crystals, and went to sleep.

The next day, it was time to start my second year of school.

CHAPTER VII – NEW CLASSES

The first class of the day was Physical Training, which was exactly what it sounded like. Our first day was mostly focused on assessing our existing physical conditioning, after which we were slotted into various different groups in similar shape.

After that, it was basic stuff designed to get us into shape (or keep us there). Running laps around the field, pushups, that sort of thing. I noted a couple different obstacle courses, but we didn’t make use of them right away. Similarly, there would be some degree of physical combat training later on in the class, but we didn’t do any on the first day.

That was easy enough, but boring. The more interesting class was Attunement Optimization.

To my disappointment, Meltlake herself wasn’t teaching the class. As the new chancellor, I wasn’t sure if she’d be teaching anything at all, but I somehow had it in my head that maybe she’d send simulacra out to teach courses. That was probably a colossally inefficient use of mana, but I think a part of me was just hoping that I’d get my lessons from someone I knew and trusted. I still wasn’t exactly great at dealing with new people.

Such a great choice for an Arbiter.

I sighed to myself. Maybe I’d get used to the idea of having a diplomatic role, maybe I wouldn’t. Either way, I’d try to give the new professor a chance.

Professor Saito set himself apart from my other teachers immediately in a few ways. First, he was extraordinarily young looking: I guessed he was probably only a couple years older than the students. Next, his complexion and epicanthic folds told me that he was probably of Dalenos heritage. There were other teachers of Dalenos heritage at the school, but not a lot of them. Finally, he was casually dressed, which helped cement my idea of him as being “younger” than normal.

“Good morning.” The professor pushed up his glasses with a single finger, examining the classroom. “I hope none of you are Wydd worshippers. In this class, knowledge is never forbidden.”

I heard a few gasps. That was almost blasphemy.

I liked him immediately.

“For those of you who didn’t hear the opening ceremony, we’re going to be breaking a few rules — spoken and unspoken — by having this class at all. For centuries, noble houses descended from the original families that settled in Valia have hoarded significant knowledge about how the human body works. This knowledge has allowed them to retain a competitive advantage in advancing their attunements more rapidly than your average citizen.”

He paused, then immediately addressed the first unspoken question that had come to my mind. “Many scholars have independently discovered elements of these secrets, and some of these advantages are now publicly known, if not necessarily publicly accessible. Enhancement elixirs, for example, are well-known, but generally too expensive for the average citizen to afford. Similarly, some of you may have already learned that living in areas with higher mana saturation offers competitive advantages, especially at and beyond the Sunstone Wall. Properties in these locations are, predictably, generally expensive and controlled by the ruling class.”

I heard a few more uncomfortable groans. This was nothing new to me, but I was eager to hear about what he was leading up to.

“In this class, we’ll discuss those more broadly known advantages, but we’ll also talk about some that have — until now — been generally well-hidden from outsiders. Many of these secrets will remain impractical due to resource monopolies, but others can be utilized by anyone. It is the chancellor’s hope that you will be able to utilize these techniques to advance more rapidly than any previous generation of students.”

More murmurs, but on the happier side. No students standing to ask questions yet, but I could see a few people moving around nervously in their chairs.

Were there any people from those wealthy noble families in my class? I couldn’t tell at a glance. Sera probably could have, but while we were both taking the course, hers was slotted at a different time period.

At this point, Professor Saito moved to the chalkboard at the back of the classroom. He quickly sketched out a rough outline of a human body and then made three circles within it: two in the torso, one in the head.

“Can anyone tell me what these locations are?”

An unfamiliar student with strange, iron-grey hair stood up. The moment my eyes focused on him, I felt something strange. No, Sera, not love at first sight. I felt something familiar, like I was in the presence of someone or something that had been near me for a long time, but without my noticing it.

I can’t explain it better than that. I couldn’t really understand it at the time. Whatever the sensation was, it drew my immediate focus. I noted the complete lack of stubble on his face, the way he’d chosen to sit in the chair closest to the back door, the way his grease-smeared glasses seemed to emphasize the grey in his eyes. Grey eyes weren’t that strange, but…his looked lustrous enough that they almost struck me as metallic. His hair, too. A trick of the light, maybe, or something else? I wasn’t sure.

Maybe it was the way he stood like he had a sword on his left hip, even though no such sword was visible.

I didn’t think I’d seen him before, but that wasn’t all that surprising in itself. I honestly didn’t pay that much attention to the majority of students and there were plenty I’d never encountered. He also could have been a foreign transfer student: we had a lot of those over the years.

But even being a foreigner didn’t explain how…off…he felt to me.

“Uh, hi.” He gave an adorable nervous chuckle, then reached up and adjusted his glasses in a way that didn’t strictly seem necessary. “They, uh, they’re three valid mark locations. Specifically, the originals.”

The professor gave the strange student a surprised look. “You’re correct. I’m honestly impressed. Are you from one of the founding families?”

“Oh, nonono. Nothing like that.” He laughed again. “I, uh, shouldn’t have said anything. Please forget me forever. Thanks.” Then he sat back down.

I would very definitely not be granting his request.

Professor Saito raised both eyebrows, then shook his head. “Well, the assessment you gave was right. It’s rarely discussed, but these three points were the original three locations for attunements. There’s a reason for this. Does anyone know what it is?”

The odd iron-haired student shifted awkwardly in his seat. He knew the answer, but he didn’t stand again.

Another student stood up, this time a brown-haired girl wearing the distinctive uniform of a third-year student. She wore distinctive red ribbons in her hair that contrasted with her bright blue earrings. “Well, if the goal is to give away every secret of the founders to the rabble, I suppose I should be first in line to throw out my inheritance. They’re Dianis Points.”

I blinked. Dianis Points?

I got my answer quickly enough. “You’re right, Miss Theas. Would you like to explain what Dianis Points are?”

“They’re the parts of the body that regulate mana. The ones we’re born with.”

The teacher nodded. “Right, for the most part. It would be more accurate to say they’re parts of the body and spirit, since they exist in both your physical organs and your spiritual form.”

The student — apparently a member of House Theas — bristled. “Naturally. I thought that was clear enough from implication. Obviously mana regulation couldn’t be purely physical.”

“Perhaps with your level of education, that much is obvious. Please understand that you’ve benefitted from a—”

“Yes, yes.” Theas rolled her eyes. “I understand my advantages well enough to know that you’re trying to take them away.”

Professor Saito stared at her. “If you have a problem with the headmaster’s plan, I suggest you file a complaint. For the moment, you may sit back down.”

Theas met his eyes for just a moment, then grumbled something inaudible and sat back down.

Professor Saito turned back to the board, pointing toward the three symbols with his piece of chalk. “As Miss Theas mentioned, these Dianis Points exist to regulate mana within the body. The original attunements were designed for the three points that were considered to be the most critical. Later generations of attunements were designed to integrate with the remaining Dianis Points, which are located in the hands and feet.”

The professor drew four more circles: one in each hand, one in each foot. “Early attunements had significant issues with their power interfering with each other. These second-generation attunements helped to correct a major issue with the initial set: they allowed for multiple attunements on the same person without sacrificing safety. Later-generation attunements, such as our own, are better at safely containing their power without bleeding into other nearby attunements and items, but still imperfect. This, in combination with other improvements, has allowed for attunements to be placed on body locations that are not directly on top of Dianis Points. This does not mean they are truly self-contained; an attunement on the right shoulder is still connected to the Dianis Point on the right hand, for example. And Dianis Points ultimately remain one of the two primary mechanisms for determining how much mana your body is capable of handling.”

One of the two? I wondered.

He didn’t address the obvious question immediately. “It’s likely that any of you who spent your first year here have heard the term ‘safe mana capacity’. Most students I’ve spoken to believe that this refers to how much mana the body can hold, like the size of a container. This visual is reinforced by the depiction of a shroud as pouring out excess mana. The terminology used makes this sound analogous to the capacity rune on a magical item.”

Professor Saito drew a simple grey mana capacity rune on the board, then crossed it out. “This is wrong. The body is not like an item that will simply explode when overfilled with mana — well, it is, but that would require a truly absurd amount. Rather than a risk of bursting, safe mana capacity refers to the amount a body can safely process. A body containing five times the safe capacity will not explode. Rather, the excessive mana acts more like poison. You can think of it as similar to drinking alcohol: your organs can process a limited amount safely in a set time frame, and beyond that point, your body can suffer short-term or long-term harm.”

I nodded along with much of the class. I hadn’t heard this exact comparison, but it wasn’t a surprise. I’d studied a fair bit about how safe mana worked after what happened with Sera.

“A factor that is glossed over in most lessons is where this damage occurs and why. The primary points of concern are these specific locations,” he pointed at the three original Dianis Points, “and, more broadly, the other primary mana regulation structures in the body.”

With that, he began to draw a series of chalk lines between the various Dianis Points in the body, then more lines that simply snaked around throughout the body as a whole.

“These,” he gestured at his squiggles, “are Ta’thyriel Veins, or in more common nomenclature, Star Veins. Dianis Points are the physical and spiritual locales where your mana is collected, processed and distributed. Star Veins are the passages through which your mana flows within the body. When your body has an unsafe amount of mana in it, your Dianis Points are incapable of processing it quickly enough, leaving unprocessed mana to flow out of them and into your Star Veins. This harms your body for two reasons. One, the unprocessed mana has a composition that is not safe for your body. Two, your Star Veins are only capable of handling a certain amount of mana, and any amount exceeding that can cause your veins to burn or burst. Can anyone tell me what the result of this is?”

Most students seemed hesitant, save for the iron-haired one and the Theas, who were both resisting their own urges to stand and speak.

So, I stood up and gave a simple answer, one that was all-too-familiar now. I felt my hands unconsciously clench as I spoke two simple words. “Mana scarring.”

“Correct.” Professor Saito nodded.

I sat back down.

If the professor noted my tension, he said nothing. He simply pointed back to the veins on the board. “Mana scarring is the bane of advancement. Our attunements are carefully designed to prevent it from occurring simply from the body absorbing too much ambient mana, but unfortunately, they cannot account for another element of how our Star Veins work. Much like muscles, Star Veins and Dianis Points can be worn out from repeated use. If someone can do at most a hundred push-ups, they might be able to do a few sets of that in a day with ample rest between them — but trying to do too many sets would cause more harm than good. Dianis Points and Star Veins are the same way. Even if you have refilled the mana in your body — say, with a mana potion — using your full mana capacity twice in a row risks straining your Star Veins. And doing it repeatedly has a high risk of permanent harm.”

Somehow, I felt like he was talking directly to me when he said that. I winced, thinking back to my experience with making the bracers and being unable to feel my hand the next day.

…I wished I’d learned this particular lesson a little sooner. How close had I come to causing myself permanent harm with that mistake?

And…was this why I’d come so close to giving myself mana scarring during my childhood training? I’d known that I’d come close to getting scars from using my dueling cane with my father, but I hadn’t really understood the mechanisms behind it.

Well, this explains a great deal…assuming it’s accurate.

I still had reasons to doubt basically anything in Lorian Heights’ education process, even if this new course was designed to clear up misconceptions and spread information that had been previously private. Even House Hartigan’s information wasn’t perfect — and every teacher was going to have their own interpretation of a lesson plan. I’d have to retain a healthy dose of skepticism and do my own research later.

The professor continued discussing mana scarring for a bit, but it was just going over things I already knew. I started paying attention again when he mentioned a subject that I was much more interested in.

“So, now that you’re aware of the existence of Dianis Points and Star Veins, you’re probably wondering how this is relevant to improving your attunement power. It’s very simple, actually.”

I listened closely.

The professor turned back to the board, then filled in each of the circles he’d drawn and began to widen the Star Veins. “Dianis Points and Star Veins are the limiting factors on your body’s mana tolerance. Attunements detect these factors to determine your safe mana capacity. As you exercise, your Dianis Points and Star Veins grow stronger, improving your mana tolerance, and thus improving your safe mana capacity value. Similarly, every activity you do that is well-known to improve your mana capacity is also improving either your Dianis Points, your Star Veins, or both. Knowing that strengthening these locations should be your target, however, you can now take additional steps toward improvement.”

Ideas began to play through my mind immediately.

Could I improve my Dianis Points somehow? Make more Dianis Points? What about Star Veins? Could they be strengthened with magic? Assisted with magic items? Could I make more of them artificially?’

The professor didn’t go into all of that immediately, but he did provide the most basic answer we needed. “There are dozens of known ways to improve your Dianis Points and Star Veins, above and beyond simple things like using your mana and living in high-saturation locations. In this class, we will go over several of them. To begin with, I will teach you the simplest exercise for improving them. One that many founding families are taught as soon as they receive their attunement.”

Theas notably tensed, but said nothing.

“First, close your eyes. Picture your mana, as if you plan to cast a spell.”

I followed his instructions.

“Now, picture a harmless spell. Begin converting your mana for the spell, as if you were planning to cast it.”

Easy enough. This was basic spellcasting stuff. We all had to be able to convert our mana in order to cast any non-grey spell.

“Next, pass the mana into another part of your body. For example, if your mark is on your right hand, pass it to the left, as if you were planning to cast the spell with your other hand.”

Again, trivial stuff. I did exactly what he described.

“Good. Hold that mana.” The teacher went silent for a few moments, giving me an awkward feeling. Holding mana without using it wasn’t particularly hard, especially for a short time. It was much like holding your breath: a few seconds was easy, but it was going to get awkward in a minute or so.

Fortunately, he didn’t ask us to wait that long. “Now, do not cast the spell. Instead, simply allow the mana to dissipate back into your body.”

This was easy enough, just a bit surprising. Releasing mana without using it was simple and intuitive, much like simply taking a breath after holding it. It was possible to make a mistake and discharge mana by mistake, but that didn’t happen to anyone in the class. We’d all cast enough spells during the first year that simply cancelling a spell in progress was easy.

“Excellent. You’ve just completed your first exercise. You may open your eyes.”

I opened my eyes, then blinked. That was it?

Professor Saito smiled knowingly. “I know you’re probably thinking that it doesn’t seem like much of an exercise. That’s the point: it’s simple and repeatable under virtually any circumstance. This is called a ‘Draw and Release’ exercise. It trains your body much like casting a spell does, but without the actual release of the mana from the body, it puts somewhat less strain on your Dianis Points and Star Veins than true spell casting does. For those of you who already train nearly to your limits, this exercise will offer minimal value. But for students who do not have the time or energy to train extensively, or who live in low-mana locales, this can provide a tremendous benefit.”

I could immediately see the applications. I pushed my body hard on most days, but for things like the train ride, I wasn’t getting enough mana recovery to push my body properly.

If I had known this exercise while heading to Caelford, I could have used it on the train and presumably maintained something closer to my typical rate of mana growth throughout the whole vacation.

Just a few weeks of losing progress had been noticeable to me. If I lived in a location with too little mana to train for years, this type of exercise would be crucial.

…And just like that, I understood why people like our Theas student objected to the lesson.

Our teacher had just given everyone a trivial method for passing the infamous Sunstone Wall.

And this was just the first day of class.

The lesson continued, but most of the remainder was just reinforcing what I’d already learned. By the end of the class, I saw a number of emotions on the faces of the students. Many were dazed by the implications. Some were absolutely gleeful, and from their movements, I could see that they were already practicing their Draw and Release.

…Predictably, Miss Theas was less pleased, and she wasn’t the only one. I saw her clustering together with a few others that I assumed were of a similar social class. They shot hard looks at Professor Saito as they exited the room.

And as for that strange, iron-haired student?

By the time I thought to look for him, he was already gone.

That, it seemed, was a mystery I’d have to investigate another day.

***

I sat down for my Intermediate Enchanting class. My teacher, Professor Wydran, was a spectacled woman that looked to be in her mid-twenties to early thirties. She wore an all-black uniform, similar to those of the third-year students, but with different epaulets on her shoulders and a strange badge on her chest. I wasn’t sure what the uniform or badge signified, other than that it was probably some sort of military affiliation. Based on her name and my luck, I immediately assumed she was probably Wydd themselves in the guise of a teacher, but I hoped I’d be wrong.

“Welcome to your second year. I’d like to get started right away with a basic assessment. How many of you have already made a permanent magical item?”

There were some gulps from the class. I was surprised to see less than half of us standing up in response to the question.

To some degree, it made sense: my basic class hadn’t covered much about permanent items. I’d learned all that from Vellum’s class, which had been an elective.

But somehow, seeing all those nervous, sitting students…it was bizarre. How could they have gotten this far without doing something that felt so very basic?

I had to acknowledge my biases: by the standards of other nations, my own education was probably laughable for my age. I’d just been behind the curve compared to my peers for so long that it felt bizarre to finally feel like I was ahead of, or at least on par with, the top half of the student base.

“If you have an item you’ve created with you, please place it on the desk in front of you. I consider demonstrations more practical for teaching than just sitting around talking theory. I’ll be coming around to inspect each of the items, then we’ll discuss how they were created, as well as my observations.”

I felt a pang of nervousness.

What should I show? Am I going to be graded on this? Will she scoff at me for something too simple?

Fortunately, I wasn’t at the front of the line. I’d taken a seat near the middle of the class.

Professor Wydran walked up to the first row, approaching one of the students and accepting an offered item. “A dueling cane.” She turned the cane over in her hands. “A standard model, but fine craftsmanship. What do you think you could do differently?”

“I, um…” The student stammered. “I could use higher-level runes, once my mana gets high enough?”

I blinked. I knew they’d been put on the spot, but…was that it?

“That’s correct,” the teacher replied. “…If a bit straightforward. Consider, for example, that you could also change the activation type to prevent it from requiring the user’s mana.”

“But…then where would it get mana from?”

Professor Wydran smiled. “You’d also have to set up recharge runes to allow it to refill automatically.”

This…this was so…

Elementary.

I kind of stared blankly while the teacher explained more options on how to improve the dueling cane. While she was talking, I thought of numerous other options. Different elemental types. Perception-based runes for homing attacks. Wide area burst functions. Anti-tampering.

None of that was mentioned. Just…basics.

I felt strangely out-of-place.

The teacher walked up to the next student after a bit, inspecting their offering. “Excellent work. A higher-capacity shield sigil. What can you tell me about this?”

This was better, but…it was also very similar to what I’d made for Jin around, say, week nine or so of the first year.

As the teacher went down the line, virtually every student’s offerings were similar. A few slight improvements to a basic design, if that. I felt almost tangible relief when someone had managed to make a working return bell, which made most of the class gasp in awe.

I stood in silent horror as the teacher approached me and accepted my offering: my own shield sigil.

“Ah, an improved shield sigil with…what is this?” She stared for a moment, then frowned. “Oh, health regeneration. That’s very advanced, and possibly dangerous. For that sort of thing, you’d need,” she smiled, “there it is. A purification rune for the life mana. Excellent work.”

I may have blushed.

“But this…wait. Is this a mana regeneration function?”

Suddenly, there were a lot of eyes on me. “Y-yes, professor.”

“Hm. That’s not generally safe to include, due to the potential for toxicity when exposed to the mana of others. Now, at Citrine-level and higher, Enchanters can purify their mana to prevent that problem. Oh, I suppose it may be safe if you made the item yourself, and the mana has your signature…but you must have had help with this.”

“I…” I withered under the stare of the professor and other students. “…Not for this one?” After a pause, I hastily added, “I copied the regeneration design from an item a teacher loaned me.”

“But you built it on your own?” The teacher frowned. “Was this a project for your winter break?”

“Not…exactly.”

“How long did it take, then?”

I sincerely considered lying. “…A few hours, maybe?”

I was telling the truth. This was probably a mistake, given that virtually no one believed me.

Professor Wydran didn’t dismiss me out-of-hand, though. “Show me. This class is two hours. Can you finish one set of the runes by then?”

I frowned. “I don’t have any spare items to enchant with enough capacity.”

“I have blank sigils here. If I provide that, as well as crystals, could you reproduce any portion of this on your own?”

I paused, considered, then said, “I don’t need the crystals.”

She nodded once, handed me a blank shield sigil — solid silver, fortunately — and said, “I’m going to keep going through the rest of the students. Get to work. We’ll talk after class.”

***

Two hours later, the class was finished. Many of the students filed out.

A few others waited, unfortunately. It seemed they wanted to watch the results.

I handed the sigil to the teacher. The finished sigil.

“This…this isn’t the one that you showed me earlier?”

I shook my head. “No. That’s here.” I showed her the original. “I just barely finished it.”

She turned it over in her hands, frowning. “…How?”

I blinked. “I had some extra materials in my bag.”

That was technically true, but I barely used any of them.

I had, however, drained my mana almost completely dry from both of my attunements, used the stored mana in my original sigil, waited an hour to rest, then did the rest.

That was the most mana I’d used consecutively in a while, but not enough to hurt myself like I had when I’d first built the mana regeneration bracers.

And, notably, it also hadn’t really pushed my resources very far.

I still had the mana batteries in the Jaden Box, but I hadn’t wanted to pull them out in the class.

I also could have easily syphoned off more mana from some of my items, if I’d needed to.

…All in all, it wasn’t even really a challenge. But I didn’t say that. I couldn’t say that.

I could feel the gaze of the remaining students in the class weighing more heavily on me with every passing moment.

“I’ll need to check the enchantment quality.” The teacher said, tucking the newly-made sigil away. “We’ll discuss this further at our next class. Arrive fifteen minutes early.”

I gulped. “Yes, Professor.”

***

With my classes finished, I was free for the day. Most of the students with open schedules were probably going off to socialize with friends they hadn’t seen in weeks.

…I didn’t really have anyone like that. I’d been with my few friends more or less constantly, and I’d see them again when I got back home. Honestly, as much as I appreciated them, I could have used a bit more privacy.

I contemplated going to hide in my dorm room for a little while, just to avoid being around people. Ultimately, though, that felt like too much of a waste of time.

Instead, I decided to go do something that regrettably involved people, but more importantly might get me some long-awaited answers.

My steps carried me off the school campus and toward the Serpent Spire. From there, rather than heading to Derek’s new home, I turned toward a more familiar location I hadn’t visited in weeks: The Climber’s Court.

The familiar shop was uncharacteristically empty, with the only other customer being what looked like a student from another university. He was a little on the short side, with his most striking feature being unusual cat-like eyes. That and his gigantic spellbook, which seemed to be made out of some kind of solid crystal…and attempting to eat another book on one of the shelves.

A sentient spellbook?

I blinked at that — other magic books were pretty rare, and crystal-forged equipment made me think of Ceris — but the strange student seemed distracted enough with wrestling with his book and I didn’t want to bother him with questions.

The lack of business was a little concerning, but not unexpected. With the spire once again inaccessible, I imagined that there were precious few people who had any need for the kind of supplies sold there. Other students might find climbing items useful for specific tests, but they were more likely to purchase those later on in the school year when we had a better idea of what the exams would entail.

“Well, well. If it isn’t Corin Cadence, my favorite customer!” Lars laughed as he put down the mace he’d been holding, then walked over toward me. “What are we in the market for today?”

I couldn’t help but return his smile, although I wasn’t sure how long either of our expressions would last. “Answers.”

“Oh? Those can be expensive.” He reached up to scratch at his beard. He’d grown it out over the last few weeks of my absence, and I wasn’t quite sure what to think of it. There were only a few streaks of grey, reminding me that Lars still wasn’t excessively old — maybe forty, if even that. I pictured him being older mostly because he’d retired from his climbing days, and I internalized “retired” as “ancient and wizened”.

But I’d pieced together that he’d retired for reasons other than age, and I’d picked up a couple broken pieces of that story during my visit to the Transcendence Gateway Crystal. I wasn’t sure if asking him about that was wise, but as usual, I planned to do the thing regardless of whether or not it was a good idea. I simply didn’t have the ability to resist the siren’s song of knowledge.

The other customer had left, so it was just the two of us. I hesitated for a moment, trying to frame what I wanted to discuss properly. “I visited the Unclaimed Lands over the winter break.”

“Oh? You’re a bit young for that, aren’t you?” He leaned back against the countertop. “I assume you had an escort?”

I shrugged. “Of sorts. Do you know Len Hastings?”

Lars blinked in surprise. “Len? Dyson’s sister?”

It took me a moment to place the name “Dyson”. In the story that Keras had told me on the train, he’d made a deal with the Spirit Gateway Crystal in one of the temples in the Unclaimed Lands to preserve a spiritual copy of Lydia Hastings. That copy was the one who now called herself “Len”, and I belatedly remembered that the Spirit Gateway Crystal had also preserved a copy of Lydia’s brother, Dyson Hastings, to keep her company.

“Yeah. I didn’t meet Dyson, but Len introduced me to Warren Constantine.”

Lars raised both hands in a defensive gesture. “Look, no matter what he thinks, I had nothing to do with stealing the prime crystal.”

I blinked. “…Okay?”

“…That’s not what this is about?” He took a breath, then straightened his collar. “Let’s forget I said anything. What’d the crazy old wizard put you up to, then?”

I had more questions now, but those could wait. “Do you remember the Transcendence Gateway Crystal?”

“As if I could forget.” He laughed. “One of the better ones, if I’m being honest. Why, when I went in there with…” His expression grew darker. “Never mind that. I take it you visited the crystal yourself?”

I slipped off the glove on my left hand to show him the new symbol glowing there.

Lars gave an appreciative whistle. “Didn’t get one myself, but maybe I should have. Had other priorities at the time, but…” He shook his head. “Did you want advice on how to use it?”

“Well, yes, but that’s not the reason I’m here.” I exhaled a breath. “While I was there, I saw a vision.”

Lars folded his arms. “What sort of vision?”

I hesitated. I didn’t know how best to frame the discussion. I knew I’d probably be bringing up a terrible memory, but…I had to know what I was dealing with. “When you first identified Selys-Lyann, you told me a story about Mizuchi killing a former wielder of the sword. But that wasn’t just a story for you, was it? You were there. You saw it happen.”

The shopkeeper shut his eyes. “…No.”

“No? But I—”

Lars grunted, reopening his eyes. “No. In two senses.” His shoulders tensed and he took a steadying breath. “The story I told you wasn’t about when we…when we fought Mizuchi. It was earlier. That sword has been wielded against her several times. And, in the end, she always shatters it.”

…That was not a good sign for my future. “But…even if that’s true, you saw it happen, just…”

“I didn’t see it.” He was insistent. “Or, maybe I did.” Lars let out a deep sigh, shaking his head and leaning heavily against the counter. “I don’t remember.”

“You…don’t remember? How could you not…” I frowned. “Was it a Judgment? Or something like one?”

Lars gave me a curt nod. “Best guess is that it was something like that, but I can’t be sure. I…remember being out in the Unclaimed Lands. I was in the expedition, working as the quartermaster. We’d been out there quite a while, focusing on investigating the Seventh Spire.”

“The Seventh Spire…did you find a way in?”

Lars shrugged. “Wish I knew. A group of six of us left camp to do some exploring. Routine stuff. Weren’t headed to the spire, just toward one of the shrines up north, near Lake Selden. Not far from your Transcendence Shrine, in fact, but it wasn’t the same one.”

I nodded in understanding. “And then?”

“And then…I have no idea. I…woke up at camp, in the medical tent, with one of Shimmer’s summons looking over me. She seemed surprised that I’d woken up at all.” Lars winced. “I’d been unconscious in the camp for a week and a half…but I’d been gone for six weeks. All that time…it’s gone. I know I left with five people, but…”

He looked down. “…They found me alone. What was left of me, anyway.”

He lifted up the left leg of his pants. And, for the first time, I understood why he’d stopped fighting.

From the knee down, his leg had been replaced with an elaborate prosthetic. A thing of silvery metal, impressively articulated at the knee and ankle. It was one of the most sophisticated replacement limbs that I’d seen: enough so that I’d barely noticed anything unusual about his gait.

A handful of runes flashed on the surface, but I didn’t get a good look before he pulled the pant leg back down. I did, however, quickly understand the implication. “…That was where your attunement mark was, wasn’t it?”

“The primary one. I was a Citrine, if only briefly, and I’d even crossed blades with Emeralds on a few occasions. I felt invincible.” He gave me a sad laugh. “…But of all the things I lost, the leg wasn’t the most valuable. I just…didn’t know what I had until it was gone. Don’t make the same mistake I did, kid.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.“…I’m sorry to bring back a memory like that.”

“Don’t be.” He shook his head. “When I saw that sword, I knew it was probably going to come up eventually. But this…you said you saw a vision? It was Mizuchi?”

“It was. Definitely.”

He closed his eyes for a moment. “I…see flashes of her, sometimes. But I couldn’t be certain how much of that was just…my mind playing tricks. I…my friend, who had that sword before you did. She…loved those stories. The stories about the former wielders who fought Mizuchi and died.”

Suddenly, I felt very cold. No, not the “my blood ran cold” in a metaphorical sense.

Literal ice was forming at my side, near where my sword was still sheathed.

The moment I noticed it, the ice stopped spreading, and the chill faded.

If Lars noticed anything, he didn’t say. He went quiet, so I asked. “…Who was she?”

He smiled. “A spectacular woman. And one who I’d be more than pleased to tell you about some other time, when the store isn’t open and I have more than a few hard drinks on-hand.”

“Ah. Understood.” I nodded.

“But, kid…do you remember anything else from that vision? What did the place look like?”

I tried to think back, but the memory…it didn’t feel very complete. “It…I think it was probably indoors? Someplace dark. Very dark. But, beyond that…”

“Would you be willing to get a memory crystal made of it?”

I frowned. “Maybe? I’m not sure how easy it would be to target that specific memory.”

“That type of thing is doable, but you’d need an expert.”

I nodded. “Is…that really something you’d want to see?”

He exhaled a breath, then nodded firmly. “Absolutely.” Then, after a beat, he added, “I need to know where my friends are buried.”

I paused, then nodded. “…I’ll look into it. But I don’t like the idea of someone rummaging around in my memories if I don’t trust them. It might be a while.”

“Take your time. I know you’ve got your school year to deal with, and you’re going to have a lot of work to do.” Lars gave me a grin. “From what I’ve heard, though, you’re racing ahead of your peers. That isn’t always a good thing. Sometimes it leads you headlong into things you can’t handle. I speak from experience. Just…try not to get too deep into anything beyond your abilities this early in your adventuring career.”

“Is that why you tried to warn me about the sword? To keep me from using it and meeting the same fate that your friends did?”

“Something like that.”

“…And the feather? Would that have really helped with the curse, or was that just to scare me into a particular behavior?”

“Bit of both. Specifically, the feather would have repelled certain types of monsters. It’s a kind of symbol to them.”

“Would it have helped with Mizuchi?”

“No.” He shook his head firmly. “If I knew something that worked against Mizuchi, well, things would have gone very differently. You ever see her, you run. You hear me? No heroics. You run.”

“…Might be a bit late for that.”

“Ah. Right. That incident at the winter ball.” He winced. “I’d like to hope that’s the last we’ll see of her, but that serpent has a habit of turning hope into poison.”

I almost told him about my other encounter with Mizuchi, but I held back. He was obviously harboring old wounds from his own encounter with Mizuchi, and not purely of the physical variety. I didn’t have any desire to tear those wounds open further. “…Thanks for your help, then. And your answers.”

“Course. But if you’d like to repay me…” He jerked a thumb at the display behind him. “I sell only the finest.”

I tried to give him a weak smile. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

***

When I got back home for the evening, I took some time to unwind. By “unwind”, of course, I mean immediately begin my new training exercises.

I didn’t find anything they’d taught in class particularly challenging, which I supposed was probably the point. It was going to take weeks before figuring out if the new exercises translated to measurable progress, especially given that I was already doing things like boosting my mana with my Arbiter attunement, and I didn’t know if these techniques would be redundant with that benefit.

A little later, I went and found Patrick to ask him an important question. I found him eating dinner, so I just sat down across from him at the table. “Hey. So, in class, we learned about things called Star Veins.”

Patrick visibly winced. “…You did, huh?”

“You’re Meltlake’s personal apprentice. She’s been teaching you privately for a while. You already knew about them, didn’t you?” I may have sounded a little more aggressive than I should have.

“I…I’m sorry!” He put down his fork and put up both hands, looking a little panicked. “I should have told you!”

“Woah, woah, no.” I shook my head. “Sorry, wasn’t meaning to imply that at all.”

“Then…you’re not angry?”

I blinked. “What? No. Why would I be angry?”

“Because…I’m the one who always says we shouldn’t keep secrets, and I kept a secret? So, uh, I’m kind of a hypocrite?”

I rubbed my temples. “No, no. Sorry, I started off the wrong way. I’m not angry in the slightest.  This is different. If it was a House Hartigan secret that she entrusted you with, it wasn’t your secret to share.”

“I don’t know, Corin. I’m your retainer. Things like this are a big deal.”

“No. Even if I’m not a big supporter of traditional power dynamics, I think a master and apprentice sharing things with each other that they don’t tell the rest of their houses is perfectly reasonable. I mean, I’d like to know any kind of powerful secrets she’s sharing with you — I want to advance as quickly as possible, and Meltlake is an incredible resource for that — but determining what to share is between the two of you.”

“…Oh.” He sighed, his shoulders slumping. “I…wanted to tell you. And we talked about it, but she wasn’t ready to stir up trouble when she first taught me about it. Obviously, that’s changed, and…thanks. I think you were a part of why she made that choice.”

“I’d hope so.” I gave him a small, but genuine smile. “If this brings up the educational standard for Valia as a whole, it may be one of the most important things I do in my life.”

“That’s good, but more than that, I think you helped her. I really, really want to thank you for that. But…”

“But?” I raised an eyebrow.

“But if you weren’t here because you’re angry at me, what did you want to talk about?”

“Oh!” I had, in fact, lost track of why I’d come to talk to him. “Right, right. Why aren’t you advancing faster? Are you hiding your power or something?”

Patrick stared at me for a moment, then laughed. “Oh, Corin. No, no. It’s nothing like that.”

“What, then?”

He picked his fork back up, looking more comfortable. “First off, she didn’t teach me about that secret stuff until around the winter ball, so toward the end of the year. Then, we decided I wouldn’t use it right away.”

“Why? Avoiding suspicion?”

He shook his head. “That’s a part of it, but a bigger part is that she taught me some more useful stuff, and the training methods conflicted.”

“Oh. Is that…also a secret?”

“Mm, some of it is. I think the classes are going to teach it later in the year, maybe, so it might be okay to talk about? I’ll ask. But, uh, more generally, without any big secrets, I can say that I’ve been working toward a different goal than raw mana levels.”

“Can you say what that is?”

He nodded. “Yeah. You know all the speculation about Meltlake’s attunement being special, and what it really is.”

“Fire-specialized. Oh. Oh!” I snapped my fingers as I processed it. “She’s got secret techniques for developing a specialization.”

“Yep.” Patrick grinned. “Of course, in my case, it’s gonna be lightning, rather than fire. And that’s tricky, but…I think it’ll suit me better.”

“Why? She’s famous for fire…is there a downside?”

“Not as such. Fire is still the best for just wiping out big crowds of monsters or, you know, melting lakes. But you know how mana in the body helps you with more than just, you know, having more mana?”

“Sure.” I absently scratched at the glove on my right hand. “Practicing transference is making me faster. My mental mana’s benefits are harder to notice, but it’s probably gradually improving my memory, computation, and accuracy.”

“Right. So, fire mana mostly helps protect people from extreme temperature changes — like, you know, getting hit with other fire attacks. Or ice. Or whatever. Fire and ice are two of the most commonly used types of attacks, so resisting them has some serious utility. But lightning mana is a little more, I don’t know, generally useful?”

“It’s not just resistance to electricity, I take it? Speed, maybe, like how transference works?”

“Yeah. Or, uh, sort of? Transference is better for just, say, running faster. Lightning will help me with that a little, but it’s less about that and more about reaction speed. When you see Elementalists quickly throwing spells back and forth to counter each other, lightning mana helps us do that. More lightning mana is useful for anyone, but I…well, it’s kind of embarrassing to say it out loud.”

I blinked. “Why would wanting to react faster be embarrassing?”

“I…kind of picked it because of the sword you made me.”

I felt my heart grow a little bit warmer. “You…really? You’re building your career around that?”

“Hey, don’t make it any more awkward than it already is.” He blushed, turning aside, then spoke again more quietly. “I’ve always loved the stories about the sacred swords. But Dawnbringer…it…no, “she”, sorry. She’s incredible, Corin. Even more now that we’ve been hearing the stories from Keras. What you did, making me that replica…” He turned back toward me. “Thank you. It’s the most meaningful gift anyone has ever given me.”

“I…” I didn’t know what to say to that. I’ve never been good at serious, emotional talks, and the conversation was rapidly getting away from me. So, I backed up a bit. “Uh, you’re welcome. So, how does lightning relate to using…oh. Reaction time helps you use Bright Reflection to, well, reflect things.”

“Right! Bright Reflection is an absurdly useful weapon. I even reflected Mizuchi’s breath with it. Mizuchi. If I get better with it, I could build an entire combat style around reflecting spells.”

“Wouldn’t the weapon’s mana limitations have an impact on that?”

He nodded fervently. “Yeah. But I was hoping, if it wasn’t too much trouble…maybe we could upgrade the sword’s mana capacity as you get stronger?”

“Oh, yeah. Sure.” I waved a hand dismissively. “That’s easy stuff. I talked to Keras about that when we first worked on it, it’s definitely doable. Honestly, we can probably give it more of the real Dawnbringer’s powers eventually, too.”

“Really?” He looked so excited he practically stood up. “Do you think you could do Golden Dawn next? People don’t think it’s as useful as reflecting magic, but being able to blind your opponents with it has some serious applications, and it’s also a great light source, and…”

I smiled and laughed. “You know what? Let me go get my books and a bite to eat, and I’ll start looking up the runes for it right now.”

“Wait, really? You will? But wait, you still don’t have light mana yet, so…”

“You’re right. I won’t have it until Citrine…” I considered that maybe, just maybe, I could temporarily change that, but I didn’t say anything. Enabling higher-level attunement features one at a time was theoretically possible for me, but it was a huge risk and I didn’t want to do it until I had studied it more. I needed a better understanding of the potential consequences. “But I don’t think that’s an obstacle. Keras has been in a rough mood lately, but I think this is one project he might actually be happy to help with.”

With that, I got to work.

I didn’t make the upgrades to the sword that night, but I made some progress with the research. I considered asking Keras about it, but he was missing for the whole evening. So was Derek.

They were out for another “night on the town”. I didn’t ask what that meant, but I had a feeling that it was going to be time to find out soon.

CHAPTER VIII – A DIFFERENT KIND OF MAGIC

The next morning, I had my daily Physical Training, then moved on to Intermediate Mana Manipulation.

That was…a bit of an eye-opening experience.

Most of the day was review of the first year, but toward the end, we started getting into the theory behind some “advanced” activities that students would be expected to attempt during the semester.

Things like…creating Class 0 mana crystals. And disenchanting existing items.

At the end of the day, I made a half-dozen Class 1 crystals in front of Professor Ezran with the intent of getting transferred into an Advanced Mana Manipulation class for third-year students. Sadly, there wasn’t one. Instead, he offered me a teaching assistant position, which I immediately declined. It would have involved talking to more people, which was always a bad idea.

I was given permission to skip the class as long as I attended on specific testing days. I didn’t commit to doing that one way or another, but I kept it in mind.

More free time wouldn’t be bad. Why am I always so busy?

With that question in mind, I headed off to the second of my three electives.

***

The teacher for Alternate Magic Sources drew a lot of attention. Not your typical “respectful paying attention to class” kind, either. She was in her twenties with short blonde hair and the kind of look that even I could identify as “conventionally attractive”.

She wore a pure white business suit accented by a black tie, black gloves, and a matching black fencer’s belt. The belt held a sheathed rapier and main gauche, the latter of which was very old-fashioned and rarely seen. She also wore a silvery circlet on her forehead, which I appreciated, since it almost matched the style of my own.

I thought I caught the slightest hint of a smile when she noticed our similar fashion choices, but that could have been my imagination. She had a way of making it seem like she was looking at, and smiling at, every single person in the room.

That kind of presence, or her preference for old-fashioned weapons, weren’t a terrible surprise. My teacher was, after all, a Haven.

House Haven was one of the founding houses of Valia. While House Hartigan and House Theas were famous for their ancient magic, House Haven had a somewhat different reputation: one tied to their own legendary ancestor.

Aayara, the Lady of Thieves.

If the stories were true, House Haven was descended directly from one of the eldest Children of the Tyrant. Anyone else might have denied that connection, given that it implied less-than-ideal things about their loyalties to the goddess, but not House Haven. They leaned into it hard.

House Haven would have never openly claimed any allegiance to the tyrant himself, of course. If pressed, most Havens would claim any variety of excuses: that the branch of the family that fled to Valia was obviously loyal to Selys, or perhaps even that Aayara was secretly working to overthrow the tyrant.

Whatever the truth, House Haven remained a house synonymous with the resources of the world’s most famous thief. Havens were money and power personified. My professor, at least on the surface, seemed to be no exception. From her outfit, she seemed to be cultivating an appearance not dissimilar from one of the popular depictions of Aayara herself — the “Conductor of the Orchestra” persona, specifically.

From her confident stance and her practiced movements, I could see that the weapons at her side weren’t for show — she was a fencer, and probably a good one. I was less focused on that and more focused on what I couldn’t see. Specifically, her outfit appeared to be calculated to hide every possible location on her body that could have held an attunement mark.

That wasn’t all that meaningful on its own: student uniforms concealed most attunement marks, aside from the hands and forehead. It wasn’t necessarily intentional on her part.

…But when I used Detect Aura, I didn’t get anything from her at all. And with that knowledge, I was curious.

Was Lady Anette Haven even attuned at all?

This was a class on alternate magic sources. Was she bearing crystal marks, or perhaps some even more unusual power?

“Thank you all so very much for coming.” She smiled sweetly, gesturing wordlessly toward the chairs. Any students who weren’t already seated headed to take their places. “I’m humbled to see so many of you.”

Humble was not how I would have described my impression of her, but she did a good job of making her tone sound sincere.

“Let’s get right into it, shall we?” She walked to the chalkboard behind the lectern, producing a length of chalk with a flick of her wrist. A bit of unnecessary showmanship, perhaps, but she was leaning into character. “Sources of magic. For today, we’ll start with an overview.”

She began by drawing a straight line toward the top of the board, then several downward lines to make a grid. Then, in the upper left-hand corner, she wrote a single word: Kaldwyn.

“We begin with the most basic of lessons. The availability of different types of magic varies from continent to continent. In some cases, these magic types are portable — that is, some types of magic can be taken from one continent to another. In other cases, acquired magic may be non-functional outside of the area in which it was acquired, or have reduced functionality.”

She wrote “attunements” just under the “Kaldwyn” line. “Attunements. You’ve all heard about these, we’re not going to discuss them in any detail here. The most important thing to understand related to attunements, for the purposes of this course, is that there are several types of magic that are related to attunements. Part of the same family of magic, one might say.”

A quick, flowing script below that line. “Artificial attunements. For those of you with sufficient wealth or influence, these are perhaps the most likely method to acquiring additional magical power. As prices drop, we should anticipate that many attuned in the future will have secondary attunements that are artificial. Some may even acquire their first attunements artificially, although that is unlikely due to the social stigma behind it. We’ll discuss these in more detail later in the course, but one critical thing to understand early on is that while these are similar to standard attunements, they are generally not identical. Reverse engineering true attunements has allowed great minds to replicate very nearly every function, but not necessarily through the exact same methods. This means that there are minor functional differences even when artificial attunements attempt to replicate true attunements directly…and most artificial attunements don’t do that. Instead, it is better to think of artificial attunements as being a separate ‘set’ of attunements with distinct features.”

I could already see some students growing uncomfortable, which was interesting. Our professor wasn’t wrong about the social stigma behind artificial attunements — many people from religious backgrounds considered them heretical, which I found somewhat strange, given the obvious approval that the visages gave them. Even if Anabelle Farren wasn’t Ferras — something I was still uncertain about — it was common knowledge that Ferras was active in the scientific community in Caelford. It wasn’t like people were making artificial attunements without her knowledge and involvement.

Next, the teacher wrote another phrase. One that I’d been hoping to see.

Crystal marks.

“Crystal marks are an ancient ancestor of our attunements. They’ve largely been abandoned in the modern era for three reasons. One, accessibility. Crystal marks are obtained through taking challenges in elemental temples and crystal shrines…all of which are located in the Unclaimed Lands. This makes both reaching the shrines and taking their challenges extremely dangerous. Next, they lack the flexibility and sophistication of attunements. Generally speaking, they only give access to a single type of magic…and using them puts strain on the body. They are more closely related to ancient foundations of pre-attunement sorcery, utilizing resources of the body to cause outside powers to create effects. This will be discussed further when we get to talking about dominion sorcery.”

I’d already read a fair bit about how crystal marks worked from the books I’d skimmed or borrowed from Warren Constantine, but it was good to hear confirmation from another source that they were related to dominion sorcery. The books were probably a better resource, but I preferred to have multiple sources of reference, especially for a subject that was likely to be rife with misinformation.

Keras was another source of knowledge, of course, but he was still being somewhat quiet and withdrawn. I intended to talk to him about it more soon, but I didn’t want to push him too much.

Professor Haven continued, “The final reason is growth. While crystal marks do grow stronger over time, their growth is largely linear, much like the progression of dominion sorcery itself. This means that someone utilizing a crystal mark will get stronger at that particular type of magic, but there are no additional features like an attunement possesses. No shrouds, no tertiary magic types unlocking at higher levels, or that sort of thing. Due to these downsides, crystal marks are generally considered inferior to standard attunements — relics of a previous generation. That said, many of the strongest attuned on the continent still seek to acquire them as means to supplement existing attunement powers. The shrines and temples that grant crystal marks offer something Judgments do not — a choice of reward. As such, someone seeking to supplement their powers in a specific direction can seek out the appropriate shrine and acquire a mark of the type they want. This can be a significant advantage when one considers one of the main concepts we’ll discuss in this class: compounding.”

She wrote the word “compounding” outside of her grid, then underlined it twice. “Compounding is the process of combining two magic sources of the same type. This can allow for added power, speed, and flexibility when using that particular type of magic. In some cases, this is largely automatic — for example, having two attunements that grant the same magic type. With other types of magic sources, there may be some degree of manual adjustment necessary, which we call cross-type mana integration.” She wrote that phrase next. “For example, if one acquires a Mender attunement and a Life Crystal Mark, these both grant access to life magic, but through dissimilar means. Thus, cross-type mana integration must be performed to combine these power sources.”

I nodded at the explanation. It wasn’t an immediate concern for me, but it was something I was going to need to worry about if I acquired more crystal marks that directly corresponded to my existing mana types…or if I managed to get access to transcendence mana through my attunements, which I thought might be possible at high levels, or with some tinkering.

The teacher continued. “There are two main ways to go about doing this: intermediary integration and directed integration. Intermediary integration involves the use of an intermediary, such as an item, another magical mark, or that sort of thing to automate the compounding process. For example, an artificial attunement could be designed to integrate a crystal mark and an attunement, allowing them to compound with each other. Directed integration is simpler, and more common — it involves training to deliberately combine your power sources manually. For example, you can learn to cast a spell using a crystal mark, then simply push more mana into it with your attunement. We will discuss methods of doing this later on in the course.”

She turned to the class and smiled. “I can see some of you are having some difficulty with the idea of drawing magic from sources outside of our goddess’ gifts. Don’t worry! There’s precedent for all of this in the scriptures — think about the early heroes of our people who arrived just after the exodus, for example, and before the advent of attunements. Many of those founders, including some of my own ancestors, relied upon crystal marks before attunements were available. For those of you who still have concerns, please feel free to see me after class. I’ll be happy to discuss this further. But for now, moving on!”

She moved back to the Kaldwyn line, then wrote, “Spirit-bonding items.”

I grinned. I wasn’t sure if this class would be talking about items or not. I planned to talk to Vellum, Derek, and Keras about Selys-Lyann further, but any additional sources of insight were helpful.

“Spirit-bonding items are rare objects that can be tied to the spirit of the wielder. The most famous of these, of course, are the Six Sacred Swords.”

She turned to look at the class after saying that…and once again, I thought I saw her smile at me directly. A mental trick, or did she know something?

I really needed to figure out if there was a way that I could sense wielders, the way Keras used to when he was looking for them. Even if I didn’t have the entirety of Flowbreaker, Selys-Lyann could be a potential target for anyone who was attempting to gather them.

…I really needed to ask Keras about what he knew about the current location of the other swords. It would mean skipping ahead of his story, and I could tell he was not happy about whatever had happened to the weapons, but if it was relevant to my safety, I needed to know.

“Spirit-bonding items exist in several varieties,” the teacher continued. “They have varying degrees of complexity. Some of them involve marking a wielder, similar to a crystal mark or attunement. Others simply have an invisible bond, allowing for the wielder to understand and utilize the item’s abilities more intuitively. While most spirit-bonding items are weapons, there are many of other examples. There are spirit-bonding jewels, pieces of armor, and even more innocuous items like keys and paintbrushes.”

Next, she moved to the right of the word “Kaldwyn” and wrote the word “Artinia”.

“As I noted, outside of Kaldwyn, there are a wide variety of other types of magical power. Next, we’ll discuss the spirit arts of the continent of Artinia…”

The class continued, going over some basics for the magic types for each other continent. Spirit arts. Essence sorcery. Dominion sorcery. Blood alchemy. Shade weaves. Beast bonds. I was interested in all of them, but aside from dominion sorcery, most of them were currently out of my reach.

…Or were they?

I wondered how viable it might be to take a quick jaunt to another continent sometime between semesters. Leaving Kaldwyn was notoriously challenging, but with the resources of an Arbiter…it was worth thinking about. Someday.

For the moment, I had more pressing things to focus on.

***

After my Alternate Magic Sources class, I decided it was a good time to test out my own particular alternate source of magic: my new mark from the Transcendence Gateway Crystal.

Eventually, I’d have to track down an entire book on the subject — maybe back at Warren Constantine’s tower, or if I could find a location that specialized in selling books on older styles of magic. For the moment, I flipped open the book I’d found with the most information on the subject: Esoteric Deep Dominions by Talia Theas. I’d already read it, but I wanted to refresh myself before starting my exercises.

Even in the times before the exodus, transcendence sorcery was rarely studied. Few humans were born with enough essence of the type to make practice easy and those rethri with transcendence bonds were carefully-kept secrets. Fortunately, my famed ancestor and his cohorts made efforts at the exhaustive study of all dominions, and we retain some scant fragments of their knowledge.

On the surface, transcendence magic sounds similar to enhancement, in that it is primarily utilized to provide improvements to the capabilities of the body, mind, and magic. This surface-level similarity belies the true utility of transcendence sorcery: while enhancement improves existing capabilities, transcendence is capable of granting a recipient entirely new abilities or augmenting capabilities that are generally considered “intangible”.

For example, enhancement magic is generally used to improve basic capabilities like strength, speed, and durability. Transcendence magic can do these things, albeit through slightly different means than traditional enhancement, but it can also allow a human to see colors beyond violet in the color spectrum, withstand the extreme pressure of deep water, or recover more quickly from disease. When combined with other types of magic, transcendence grows even broader: a combined perception and transcendence spell might grant a human an echolocation sense.

These new capabilities, unfortunately, do not necessarily come with the necessary reflexes to use them. A human who is simply granted echolocation abilities will be quickly overwhelmed with that sense without necessary secondary magic to be able to utilize their new capabilities. Even with supporting magic, learning how to utilize entirely new capabilities often requires extensive training, and thus, most transcendence mages begin their practice with spells that more closely resemble traditional enhancement.

It is also noteworthy that transcendence is poorly suited to making external physical changes, such as transforming hands into claws or developing gills for underwater breathing. For these purposes, alteration magic is preferable, or some combination of transcendence and alteration.

One notable application of transcendence mana is the augmentation of existing spells with secondary features or alterations. While adding enhancement mana might be used to make a fireball larger, transcendence mana can cause a fireball to take on unusual characteristics. For example, a transcendent fireball might explode, contract, and then explode a second time, or perhaps explode and leave a lingering burning field in the air, depending on which specific aspect of transcendence mana is applied to it. Experimenting with this element of transcendence mana can be dangerous, however, and is not recommended for use without extensive practice and research.

For beginners, I recommend the Augmented Recovery and Internal Clock spells. Upon mastering one or more of these, one can move into more intermediate-grade spells, such as Augmented Reflexes, Perfect Precision, and Unchained Strength. While this book does contain a few advanced spells, such as Expanded Color Spectrum, Essence Acclimation, and Pressure Resistance, I recommend waiting until you have practiced more basic spells before making any attempt at these.

I spent a bit of time reading ahead, looking specifically for any mention of spells that directly or indirectly could improve mana growth rates. Something that directly improved safe mana capacity seemed unlikely, but I wondered if I might be able to find something like a spell that worked to enhance Dianis Points or Star Veins somehow, or otherwise improved the body’s physical tolerance for mana.

Sadly, I didn’t find anything along those lines. Perhaps if I eventually found a full book, I’d be able to find something like that, but I supposed it was also possible transcendence simply couldn’t — or hadn’t yet been — used in that way.

…Of course, this book was written by a Theas. It might be that she simply had orders from the family not to talk about things like Dianis Points, or simply chose not to. I might have to find something written from a different perspective. Probably not a high priority, though. Any spell like that would probably have to last at least several hours to have any tangible effect on the body, meaning I’d likely need at least Sunstone or Citrine-level transcendence mana to actually do anything with it. That’s probably a long way off.

I processed all that, crystalizing my thoughts on how to approach practice. Given my penchant for hand-exploding and the differences involved in using non-attunement magic, I decided it’d be wise to get some help before actually starting my practice session.

…Really, I probably should have gone to get a healer in case something bad happened, but that sounded like too many extra steps. I settled for something simpler.

To begin with, I went to find Sera. She was reading in her room. “I’m going to try some transcendence spells. Do you want to join me?”

“Actually, yes. It won’t work quite the same for me, since I’m using them through a contract, but it’s valuable. And if you’re thinking of trying your mark, I should probably get started on using mine, too.”

I nodded. “Great. Do you know where Keras is?”

“No, but he shouldn’t be hard to find. Do you think we need him?”

“Not sure. These crystal marks are closer to dominion sorcery, so it’s possible we should have him coach us through our first spells.”

“I think I could handle it, but…” She reached upward, consciously or otherwise, to rub at her neck. “…yeah, probably best to play it safe.”

It didn’t take us long to find Keras, sitting downstairs at a Crowns board. Alone, again. I still didn’t ask what he was doing. “Could we get your help with trying to use our crystal marks?”

He looked up suddenly, blinking, as if surprised by our presence. “Crystal…oh, sure. Yeah, I can do that. Rooftop?”

“Rooftop,” Sera and I chimed in unison, then turned to each other with equally raised eyebrows. We walked in awkward silence to the roof after that.

We gathered near the center of the roof to chat. I wasn’t quite sure where to start the conversation, but fortunately, Sera was better at talking to people.

“So. Crystal marks. What can you tell us about how to use them?”

Keras blinked, turning away from looking into the distance to refocus on Sera. “Right. Crystal marks. So…it shouldn’t be hard to utilize them. Can you sense the essence inside them?”

Sera and I both nodded.

“Good.” Keras took a moment to breathe, then seemed to gather his thoughts. “Okay, so it should be similar to using your attunement, but with a few distinctions. When you’re using your attunement, you have to convert your mana into the right types as a part of the casting process, right?”

“Of course,” Sera replied.

“Right. So, you can skip that with these. A transcendence mark only gives you transcendence mana. There’s no need to go through conversion ratios and all that.”

“Thank the goddess,” Sera wiped her forehead. “The math isn’t difficult, but it is annoying to have to keep checking my grey mana composition all the time.”

I blinked at that. That shouldn’t be necessary to do often…except, of course it was. She was a Summoner…or, rather, an Invoker. She was constantly making bindings and contracts, which would change her general mana structure…and thus, change her overall grey mana composition, which would change the math necessary for conversions.

…Ick. That sounds exhausting.

Spells could be cast without doing a bunch of recalculations, simply by manually feeling it out to try to make sure your mixture of mana types was correct for any given spell…but there was always the risk of making a mistake in that process and destabilizing a spell. Most of the time, that would just make the spell less efficient…but it some cases, it could fail outright. Or, you know, explode.

So, yeah, recalculating grey mana ratios from time to time was a good idea, especially for someone with contracts.

…Or someone getting a new crystal mark. I’ll have to do that for myself soon, assuming my transcendence mana starts bleeding into my general mana composition. It’s supposed to be contained in the crystal mark itself, but if I start casting beneficial transcendence spells on myself, that mana will gradually shift my general mana structure. Ugh.

Keras kept talking. “Right. So, you’ve got the mana to start with, which is an advantage. The downside is that you have a different type of conversion math to worry about, at least in theory. Dominion sorcery in general doesn’t take all the necessary mana from your body — it uses a fraction of your own mana to signal an outside source, called a dominion, to do most of the work. This means that you need to know three different numbers for casting any given spell. First, you need the total mana cost. Then, you need to figure out how efficient your use of the dominion is. From there, you can work backward to figure out how much mana you actually need to spend in order to get the intended result.”

That made sense. “So, if I’m casting a twenty-mana transcendence spell, and my crystal mark has a ten to one efficiency rate, I only have to spend two mana instead of twenty?”

Keras nodded. “Right. Efficiency rates also change over time, at least for traditional dominion sorcerers. The more you practice, the better your ratio…but if you overdo it, you can make your ratio worse, like tearing a muscle. Or like…” He trailed off, seeming to catch himself, but Sera knew where he was going.

“Mana scarring. It’s okay, you can say it. I’m not that sensitive about it.” She reached up and rubbed at her throat. Hopefully, we’d have that issue permanently resolved soon, but for the moment, her voice was still scratchy and raw.

“Sorry. Of course.” Keras refocused. “Crystal marks do improve over time, but their efficiency seems to remain more static than a traditional sorcerer’s. You can think of that as an advantage as well, since there’s less math involved. Instead of efficiency improvements, they’ll just increase in capacity over time, holding more essence. So, you can think of them as being sort of like a middle-ground between dominion sorcery and attunements, in that regard.”

“What type of mana capacity should we expect them to start out with?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Keras admitted. “I’ve always handled my own mana more or less intuitively, rather than with hard measurements. Researcher might be able to help, though.”

“She certainly could,” Sera replied, “but she’s busy tonight.”

I blinked. It was strange to think of a summoned monster as having plans outside of working for their Summoner, but Researcher was a bit of an odd case.

“For the moment, then, I’d advise you to assume the amount is extremely low — say, five mana — but with at least a five to one efficiency rate.”

That’s not too bad. That’s still more than I was working with when I first got an attunement, assuming it translates to twenty-five usable mana for spells. Except…

“What about the costs?” I asked.

“Oh. Right.” Keras flinched. “The most obvious difference from your attunements, and I still failed to mention it. Costs. So, like I’ve told you before, dominion sorcery draws from specific components of the body’s essence to make effects. When I cast a flame spell, it draws from the essence that maintains my body heat, so I’ll start shivering if I do too much of it. With a crystal mark, you have a limited supply of mana within the mark that serves as a safe source to use without those costs. You can think of it as working like one of your self-recharging mana batteries. Once you’ve drained that battery, however, you’ll start to draw from your own essence — and that’s when the costs will start to hit you. This isn’t a big deal if you’ve started to build up enough essence in your body to sustain that, but as a Kaldwyn-native, you’re not going to have a lot of essence available to start with. Especially for esoteric essence types.”

I winced. “Meaning that if we try to cast too many spells from our crystal marks…”

“You’ll overdraw, start using your own essence, and probably drop like a rock. You can’t handle it right now. So, don’t try. Instead, cast some of the most absolute basic, low-cost spells you can find to figure out your mana ratios. Get your mana measured by Researcher tomorrow. Then, after that, you can start getting your bodies to generate that essence by casting very low-level spells, and eventually, you’ll improve the crystal mark and your body itself.”

“Like how you used Body of Stone as a training technique?” Sera asked.

“Precisely.” Keras smiled at that. “I did that for years before it was a viable combat technique, but crystal marks will make it much easier for you. You’ll have a degree of safety in using them — at least to a limited degree — as soon as you get your efficiency ratios and mana levels figured out. For today…stick with the basics. I don’t want to have to go get Deni if I don’t have to.”

Deni? Would they be able to help if something happened?

…And why is he using that nickname for Sheridan? Are they closer than I realized?

Not worth worrying about. Magic time.

I already knew the spell I wanted to practice. The problem was…if I didn’t know how much it was going to cost…even the approach Keras suggested wasn’t safe enough for me. What if the crystal mark didn’t have enough mana for even a single spell? The ones I’d picked out weren’t too expensive, but…no. We needed to wait until we measured our essence before trying anything in live combat.

That didn’t mean we had to cancel our practice entirely, though. “I’m going to, uh, panic and cancel this.” I winced. “Sorry. I think we should wait until we get our mana measured before tinkering with anything.”

“It’s good that you’ve learned to express your cowardice, brother, and I am proud of you.” Sera smiled at me as she spoke with a tone that might have sounded sincere if I didn’t recognize her teasing.

“Oh, it isn’t cowardice. I’m just trading one risk for another. Let’s go a few rounds, Sera. It’s been a while.”

“Well, if you don’t mind embarrassing yourself in front of Keras, I suppose I could oblige you.”

I snorted. “I suppose you’ll have a chance, since I’ll have to take so many precautions to avoid hurting you.” I glanced down to Selys-Lyann on my left hip. I was comfortable using the sword against Keras, but I was still not allowed to use it in school matches, and for good reason. I didn’t have sufficient control of the weapon’s abilities to avoid hurting myself or someone else.

“You think you’re going to get close enough to hit me with a sword? Please, Corin. Give me some credit. I know how to deal with a melee fighter, especially in a place like this.”

“Ready?” I asked her.

“Hold on. If you’re not using Selys-Lyann, you can swap your sword in advance. And can I pre-summon before we start?”

“Sure,” I waved a hand. “Safer that way, since you can tell whoever you’re summoning that this is a spar.”

Sera nodded in agreement. “Vanniv, I summon you.”

Vanniv manifested at her side, glanced around, and then clapped his hands. “Oh, my. Am I getting in the midst of a family quarrel?”

“Just a spar, Vanniv. But you do have my permission to throw my brother off the building.”

I rolled my eyes, reached into the Jaden Box in my pouch, and spoke my command. “Retrieve Mr. Stabbington.”

A black-edged rapier appeared at my command.

“…Really? Still calling it Mr. Stabbington?” Sera folded her arms. “You’ve been spending too much time with Sheridan.”

…It was possible I might have acquired a fraction of Sheridan’s naming sense. I took a few test swings in the air. I’d picked up the black-edged sword as my prize from defeating Jerome Schmidt during our duel in the spire, but I’d barely had a chance to test it. I was used to wielding single-handed swords, but a rapier was a little different from the sabers that I was used to. While a saber was designed to both cut and thrust, a rapier was more specialized in thrusting. This one did have sharpened edges, which not all rapiers did, and that made the difference less significant than it would have been otherwise…but I’d still have to get used to the differences in the weapon’s weight and profile. I was pretty familiar with weapons, but not on the same level as a specialist like Keras.

I’d taken the time to identify most of the runes on the way back to Valia, but there were a few I hadn’t quite cracked yet. The general design intent was exactly what I’d expected, though — it was a weapon that harnessed void mana to neutralize nearby magic. That made it excellent for countering magical defenses and persistent spell effects.

Summoned monsters were no exception. If I wasn’t mistaken, contact with the sword would unravel the magic that kept Vanniv intact. It had certainly worked against the weaker monsters in the Survival Match. All I’d need to do was land a solid hit.

He must have processed that, too. I saw his eyebrows go up fractionally, then a broad smile spread across his face.

“Ready?” I asked again.

Sera cracked her neck. “Whenever you are.”

Keras took a few steps back to give us room. “Take your positions. I’ll call the start of the match.”

We walked to opposite sides of the roof.

“Combatants ready?”

Sera and I nodded to him.

“Bow. And…begin.”

***

My mind was moving the moment Keras’ voice spread across the rooftop.

Haste.

I burst forward in an instantaneous assault, not dissimilar to the way I’d handled the duel with Jerome. I aimed straight for Sera, rushing straight past Vanniv’s blocking position while his eyes widened in surprise. Against an unprepared Summoner of a similar level to my own, a direct assault had the potential to end a match in a heartbeat.

…Unfortunately, Sera was hardly unprepared.

And moreover, she was no longer just a Summoner.

Stone wings burst from her back the moment the match started. When I charged, she shot straight upward. My first swing caught only air.

She’d expected my strategy. Fortunately, I’d expected hers, too.

Jump.

I launched myself straight upward, transference mana pushing me skyward faster than Sera’s wings could carry her.

A blast of lightning smashed into me from behind — that’d be Vanniv — but it didn’t break through my layers of shields and shrouds. I swung straight for Sera’s left wing.

My void-infused blade impacted stone. I didn’t have the kind of power Keras did to cut straight through solid marble without effort, but this wasn’t ordinary material — her wings were mana constructs. Mr. Stabbington ripped through the wing like paper.

Sera immediately listed to one side, but blasted herself out of the range of my next swing with a surge of air mana.

Jump.

Another burst carried me in pursuit, but she shoved both hands outward and sent another blast of air mana straight at me, hurling me straight down toward the rooftop. I could have tried to use another jump to adjust, but my ring’s mana was limited and I couldn’t afford to waste it.

I landed hard, but with two shrouds and my shield sigils still intact, I barely felt it. Vanniv hurled a blast of flame at me, but I cleaved straight through it.

Sera awkwardly fumbled with air magic to try to stabilize herself in mid-air, then re-formed her destroyed wing.

I’d expected that, too. As she’d mentioned, staying out of melee range was her obvious counter to my combat style.

That was probably the right approach, but it wasn’t without flaws.

As an Invoker, she was able to use Vanniv’s mana to supplement her own. That was useful, but it did have limits, especially when Vanniv was physically on the battlefield. She was probably utilizing the same mana that he was drawing from for his spells.

Admittedly, I wasn’t entirely certain of that. She’d been a bit vague about how her attunement worked, but I presumed that when she said she was using Vanniv’s mana, she was talking about her version of Vanniv, as opposed to the original somewhere-in-a-spire Vanniv, who presumably had a much higher mana pool. Her Vanniv had a set amount of mana to work with based on whatever they’d agreed to in their original contract, unless she’d updated it, which was plausible. It was probably a larger mana pool than the amount that she kept permanently suppressed, since he wasn’t active all the time…but even accounting for that, Vanniv couldn’t have much more than an average Carnelian-level mana pool.

And that wing-making spell?

I wasn’t certain, but it looked expensive. Levitation magic was comparatively simple, but creating articulated wings powerful enough to sustain complete flight?

That couldn’t be cheap.

And so, when I charged straight at Vanniv and cleaved through his blast of lightning, he had precious little mana left to defend himself. Sera had already burned through most of it.

He did, however, still have wings.

He jumped upward, wings carrying him in a burst of momentum that made Sera’s flight look sloppy. He was an expert, after all. He was out of swinging range long before I managed to close the distance.

“Hah! An excellent move, Master Cadence, but you’ll have to do better than—”

My blade flashed upward, carrying a crescent of black energy along with it.

Pushing the essence out of a magic sword into a long-ranged attack was one of the first techniques I’d figured out when I’d started experimenting with magical items. I was a little disappointed when I’d learned that seemingly everyone else had already figured out the same technique, but that didn’t make it any less effective.

The crescent flashed straight through Vanniv’s chest.

His eyes widened comically as he looked down at the black rip through his upper and lower body. “Huh.”

Then he vanished, dispelled.

I didn’t have much time to rejoice in the victory. As I spun toward my true opponent, I found her already finishing a larger spell.

“Permafrost Cascade!”

Shards of ice rained down from the sky. My blade flashed left and right to deflect them, but the glacial shards weren’t like her conjured wings — they were true ice. Spells that summoned solid materials were more expensive, but they had a significant advantage. When my void-infused blade smashed the shards, they simply splintered, rather than vanishing.

A barrage of ice ripped into the twin barriers of my shield sigils, leaving dozens of cracks…and then it was over.

Sera floated in mid-air, panting heavily, her right hand raised with a feeble aura of cold around it. Her expression narrowed into frustration as I raised my sword and smiled at her.

“You’re out of mana, aren’t you?”

“I’m not out yet. I’m…” She broke into a hacking cough, bad enough that I lowered my weapon immediately and stepped toward her.

It was possible she was just lulling me into a false sense of security, but…no, she was wobbling in the air.

“Match is over!” Keras called out. His legs bent into a stance that looked like he was about ready to leap off the roof to catch Sera, but she managed to stabilize herself enough to flap down to the rooftop before her wings vanished.

She stumbled as she landed.

Jump.

I caught her before she could fall over and held her steady. “You okay?”

“…Yeah. Thanks. Just…a little annoyed at myself.” She frowned.

I made sure she was steady, then let her go and stepped away. “Don’t be. We both know each other’s abilities and I happen to have an unfair counter here.” I waved my sword meaningfully. “The Permafrost Cascade was a good tactic, too.”

“It was. I just…couldn’t sustain it. You approached that perfectly. Running me out of mana…there was nothing I could do. I’m still too weak.” She grit her teeth.

“You’re not weak in the slightest,” Keras spoke up, surprising us both. “The two of you are both more dangerous than I was at your age, and by a considerable margin. Do you have any idea how many fights I had to lose to get where I am? I don’t — I lost count ages ago. Now, rest up, get your mana back, and go again. Unless you called me up here to watch a single fight.”

That seemed to snap Sera out of it, at least for the moment. “Right.”

“Maybe we could do a team fight against you, Keras?” I offered.

Keras smirked. “Sure. Get the rest of the household and maybe you’ll give me some exercise.”

Sera looked contemplative for a moment, which was never a good sign. “You’re on. Give me a few minutes.”

“Wait, hold on, I was kidding about—” Keras raised a hand to stop her, but she was already gone.

And so, ten minutes later, we had the whole household lined up on the rooftop. Sera and I didn’t have all our mana back at that point, but we didn’t really need it.

We formed a half-circle and huddle while Keras watched from the opposite side of the rooftop, his expression having shifted from surprised to inscrutable.

We made plans, contingencies, then turned back to our opponent.

“We have some terms,” Sera offered, “to keep things interesting.”

“Not that I need this,” Derek quickly butted in, “but we have to keep it fun for the kids.”

“Fun how?” Keras asked, quirking a brow.

A truly absurd number of sticks and water balloons died in the war that broke out that night.

The rooftop, and everyone upon it, was soaked. We ended up lying on the roof, panting heavily, staring upward at the night sky.

In those moments of exhaustion, I looked to the left and right and saw something that Sera had tried to tell me about before, but I hadn’t understood.

My friends.

They were my friends.

Somehow, the stars above us had never seemed more beautiful.

CHAPTER IX – THE CHANGE IN THE FLOW

Late that night, I was in the best mood I’d been in since…well, I couldn’t remember when. The upcoming duel was still hanging heavily in the back of my mind, but at that moment, I was…okay.

I couldn’t tell if the new exercises we’d learned in class were giving me any tangible benefits at this early stage, but if I could pick up a few new spells and expand my knowledge of how to use my attunements…well, options would present themselves.

I wasn’t quite ready to settle back into anything like a normal routine, but I did know there were a few conversations I’d been neglecting for far too long. The first on the list — a metaphorical list, not a physical one, in this case — was with Keras.

Talking about transcendence magic had brought back the memories of my time in the Transcendence Shrine and my encounter with the copy of him. The copy that had, with a single glance, identified that my sword was connected with Flowbreaker.

That had raised a number of questions. Had Keras been hiding that from me since the moment we met? Was he somehow angling to get his hands on the sword? He’d been collecting the Six Sacred Swords at one point, after all…but honestly, if he’d wanted to take the weapon, there wasn’t the slightest thing I could have done to stop him. I hadn’t been able to match an inferior copy of him in a straight fight and that copy hadn’t held a hundredth of the real Keras’ power.

So, what was his angle?

And, more importantly, what were the implications that I needed to be aware of?

I had other questions, too. Many questions. It was time to get some real answers.

He’d gone back downstairs after the sparring matches, retiring to his bedroom early as was his frequent habit these days…at least on nights Derek wasn’t dragging him out to whatever strange (and questionably legal) things they got up to when they were alone.

I knocked on his bedroom door.

“Come in.”

I opened it, finding him sitting at a reading desk. A pile of well-loved books sat in a stack on one side, but at the moment, he appeared to be playing a Crowns game with no obvious opponent. I’d seen him doing that before, but I’d never understood it. Was he playing hypothetical games, trying to model a specific opponent? Experimenting with the efficacy of specific plays?

I was curious, but I wasn’t sure how much I should pry, so I asked an open-ended question. “Sorry, am I interrupting something?”

He held a game piece in his hand tentatively for a moment. An unfamiliar piece, now that I thought about it. Foreign, maybe? I remembered that he’d mentioned having Crowns back at home.

“No.” Keras set the piece down on the board with surprising tenderness. “Just remembering.” He exhaled a breath. “What can I do for you?”

“I had some questions, if this is a good time?” I was trying to be sensitive, which I wasn’t very good at. Even I could tell that there was something amiss for Keras, though. Not just because of the somber tone of the story he’d been telling us on the train. That had brought his mood down somewhat, but if I wasn’t mistaken, the bigger problem was whatever had happened at the Tiger Spire. After that, his usual bluster had faded, overwhelmed by melancholy.

He nodded more toward the board than to me, then turned his chair to face me. “Sure. I have some time.”

He didn’t exactly invite me in, so I just leaned up against the doorway. If he got the signal, he didn’t say anything. “So. In the Transcendence Shrine, I ran into that copy of you.”

“Looking for some pointers for the next time you have to fight a copy of me?”

“No, I wasn’t…wait, is that a real concern? Are there more of them?”

He shrugged. “Maybe one or two that I haven’t cleaned up yet. And then there’s…well, he’s not exactly a copy. That’s complicated. But I was teasing. What are you really here for?”

I hadn’t noted any teasing in his tone. It was the same, near-monotone that he’d been defaulting to for weeks. Nevertheless, I did have other questions. “The shrine version of you noticed that my sword was connected with Flowbreaker immediately. Did you?”

Keras grunted. “I suspected. But if you’re asking if I knew with any certainty, no.”

“How is that? I mean, in your story…”

He shut his eyes. “I can’t sense the sacred swords anymore. Not like I used to. The copy…he was made in a different time. When I had Dawn, and when things were…different.”

“That makes some sense, but my understanding was that once you’d wielded Dawnbringer for a while, you could sense the swords, even when you didn’t have her. So…”

“Not anymore, Corin. Nothing good lasts forever.”

I paused at that line, rethinking my angle of questioning in a rare moment of actually paying attention. “…Are you okay?”

Keras winced. “It’s not that obvious, is it?”

“It is.”

He raised a hand to cover his face for a moment, then sighed. “The answer is ‘no’, Corin. I’m not. Thank you for asking.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

He shifted in his seat, moving his hand away. “Not in the way that you’re thinking, but yes. We’ll get to that. I’ll answer your questions first. We might not get a better chance for you to ask them.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’ll be leaving soon.” He sat up a little straighter. “Let’s leave that part of the conversation sheathed for now, though.”

I had a hard time not following that line of conversation, given how important it was, but I decided to defer to his preferences. “How’d you lose the ability? I didn’t know you could lose them, except…wait. One of the Children of the Tyrant?”

“No. It wasn’t that.” He shook his head. “They wouldn’t be able to steal that sort of thing from me. It was more of…a choice that was made. I know I said to ask questions, but I’d rather not go too deep into that particular line of conversation. Suffice to say that I wasn’t deliberately hiding any knowledge of Selys-Lyann’s nature from you. If I had known immediately, I would have told you.”

“Would it have changed anything about how you’d treated me if you’d known I had a part of Flowbreaker?”

He seemed to consider that. “Maybe, in an incidental sort of way. I’ve been trying to avoid…getting too involved with them again. It’s sort of funny. I spent so long looking, and now…I can’t get away from them, even if I try.”

It didn’t seem that funny to me.

Neither of us laughed.

“I take it you don’t want to help me look for the other pieces of Flowbreaker, then?”

He shook his head. “It’s really best if I stay as far away from that sort of thing as possible. It may not be avoidable, but…I made certain promises. And no, I won’t speak of that in more detail. Not yet. Maybe not at all. There are certain things that others would want to keep private.”

“That’s fair. Let me ask you a more historical question, then. I’ve heard some stories about Selys-Lyann and Flowbreaker that are similar, but contradictory. Do you have any idea what really happened?”

“Ideas? Yes. The exact truth, no. All this was before my time, too…but I can give you my theories, based on what I’ve seen.”

“Please.” I bowed my head.

He seemed to finally realize I’d been standing in the doorway the whole time. “Please, have a seat.” He gestured at another chair at the other side of his table. One that would have been occupied by the other Crowns player, if there had been any.

Awkwardly, I sat down.

He spoke again once I was seated. “I wasn’t hiding knowledge about Selys-Lyann from you deliberately, but there are things I’ve been keeping from you and the others. There’s a simple reason for that: I know a number of things that would be considered forbidden knowledge.”

I shivered unconsciously at his emphasis on those final words. “Forbidden in the sense that the visages don’t allow it to be known?”

“Right. Wydd, in specific, draws certain hard lines on what people are allowed to teach. There are parts of the past that Wydd would prefer not to be explored, both in terms of old magic and historical events.”

“And you’re worried about getting in trouble for spreading that information?”

Keras gave the closest thing he’d shown to a laugh in a while. It was just a brief snort of disdain. “Please. You think I’m afraid of Wydd’s agents coming after me? They’ve already tried that more than once. No, Corin. I’m worried about what happens if they get their hands on any of you. I don’t know all of their methods, but they seem to have ways of knowing if people have even heard specific forms of forbidden knowledge. Some kind of dominion of secrets spells, maybe. And when they find out…well, the kindest scenario is that they might just erase those memories. But there are far worse possibilities. You remember the story of the nation of Feria?”

“Sure. They tried to invade one of the spires, so Kerivas…” I blinked. “You’re saying that wasn’t why they were destroyed?”

He shook his head. “No. I don’t know, in their case. I can tell you two things. First, destroying an entire nation — taking every single civilian life — is never warranted. No military action on the part of Feria could possibly justify that. And two…the visages have done it more than once. There’s an entire ruined city on the western side of the Seventh Spire. And that one was ground to dust by the efforts of a single visage — because they possessed forbidden knowledge.”

I frowned. “That’s…look, I agree that destroying a nation isn’t a proportionate response to military action. I’d always taken that story as being, you know, apocryphal. Or not literal, at least. But even if that one is true…how can you know that Wydd destroyed a nation for knowing too much?”

Keras shrugged. “I was told by a reliable source. You’re right to question it, though. You should question everything, including what I tell you. Especially what I tell you. I didn’t do enough of that when I was younger, and now…well, let’s just say I have regrets. But even if you don’t trust those particular stories, your own scriptures are clear that there are things that Wydd forbids teaching about.”

“Okay, sure. And you’re just going to…tell me those things now? Why?”

“Several reasons. First off, you’ve already learned some things that could be considered forbidden, both from me and other sources, like Farren and Constantine. Second, you’re an Arbiter. You’re probably authorized to know some of this stuff. I don’t know how much, but some. And finally…things have changed. Both for me and for Valia.”

“What do you mean?” I frowned.

“I’m tired of games, secrets, and tricks. There’s a point where everyone loses their patience. I’m well past that.” Keras didn’t elaborate, but I was sure he was talking about the Tiger Spire. “And as for Valia…well, your chancellor has changed things. As of this week, it’s possible that every student at your university is in possession of forbidden knowledge.”

I felt a chill go down my spine as I processed the implications of that. “If that’s…wait…you don’t think…”

He shook his head. “I don’t think Wydd is going to smite Valia out of existence tomorrow, no. Feria wasn’t under the protection of a visage like Valia is…or was, at least. In Tenjin’s absence, I suspect Katashi would step in and prevent Valia from being obliterated. That’s…another complicated issue. Even if Katashi didn’t step in, however, I would…as long as I’m here. I’ve been avoiding direct conflicts with the visages on that scale, but if Wydd decided Valia needed to be destroyed?” A hint of his old resolve returned as his face’s expression hardened. “They’d quickly find out just how much I’ve been holding back.”

For an instant, I thought I felt something in the air, like a thousand swords were pressed against every weak spot on my body. Then, in a heartbeat, it faded.

Keras must have noticed the sudden panic in my expression. He closed his eyes, seeming to search for focus. “…Sorry. I don’t usually let that…” His jaw tightened for a moment, then he reopened his eyes. “I’ll be more careful. Now, as for the situation, I think there will be consequences for what Meltlake is doing…but probably not of the ‘obliterated nation’ variety. I’ll keep an eye out while I’m here, but it’ll be up to you and the others to help her if it happens after I’m gone. In the meantime, I’ll tell you what I can, if you’re willing to accept the risks. I honestly don’t know how much being an Arbiter will shield you from the consequences.”

I tried not look too eager. I’d been wanting to hear more about what Keras really knew for a long time. “Right. I accept the risks. All of the risks.”

That managed to draw a shadow of a smile from his face. “I figured. Just…if you’re going to tell the others about this, and I know you are, make sure you let them know about the risks first. They need to be able to make an informed decision, too.”

“Understood.” I nodded firmly. “Now, tell me everything.”

“I don’t know everything, Corin. I’m still figuring out a lot of this myself. But I get your meaning, and I’ll tell you some things you’ll find important. First, your sword. Let’s start at the beginning.”

I took a deep breath. “The beginning of what?”

A hint of a smile crossed his lips. “The world. And,” he pointed upward, “the stars.”

He steepled his fingers. “This world was not the first. There were others before it — places like Rendalir, that I’ve already spoken of, and dozens of others that I’m less familiar with. The creation of a habitable world requires phenomenal powers, many of which are cosmologically opposed to one another. For this reason, most planets are created by four entities of colossal power working in tandem: worldmakers.”

I nodded. I’d heard the term “worldmakers” before, but not quite this level of detail.

“Along with the planet itself, the worldmakers created — or summoned, I’m not sure which — elemental beings to serve as gateways to other planes of existence. These beings would allow mortals in the newly-made worlds to do what the worldmakers themselves could do naturally: access other planes in order to conjure powerful effects. In a word, magic. Following this, or around the same time, the worldmakers began to populate the world. They created plants, animals, that sort of thing. My understanding is that they did this based on templates from other worlds that already existed, which is why things like humans here strongly resemble humans from Rendalir. The worldmakers followed existing blueprints.”

“That makes sense.” I nodded. “How does this relate to the sword?”

“I’m getting there. So, they created people. Humans, esharen, delaren, rethri, and others. The worldmakers looked after their creations directly at first, living among them for a time and teaching them, but refusing to govern. They allowed each species to select their own leaders, then blessed those leaders with symbols of approval in the form of powerful artifacts. Among these was a sword, granted to the first human king.”

“That was Selys-Lyann?”

“Not precisely. That weapon was called something like Theres’ien, the True Blade. There are other translations; in Liadran, we called it Theras’lien. You’d probably call it Theras-lyann in Valian, and you can start to see some of the origin there. Anyway, it was a gift from the worldmakers. Some say it was the first sword ever forged on this world.”

“That’s…pretty impressive. What about that sword you carry? Is that older?”

He shrugged. “Not sure. It might have been made before the planet itself, or maybe later, when Rendalir was threatened by the Sun Eater. Even I haven’t been able to find a clear timeline of events from back that far. Suffice to say that both weapons are ancient by our standards, but that isn’t really the important part. There were other weapons that predate them on other planets. Their significance isn’t really in age, or even that the worldmakers made them. Their specific capabilities make them significant.”

“And this…True Blade was powerful?”

“Absolutely. Stories from that time period are inconsistent, but there are a few overlapping factors that remain similar. The sword was a symbol of leadership, and it protected the one that carried it. You can say it was primarily a defensive weapon; it could cover the wielder in near-indestructible armor. Some stories indicate that it also compelled people in proximity to listen to the wielder, or perhaps that it allowed the wielder to sense the truth. That last power is probably the reason for the name.”

The first part of that made sense to me: I’d found Selys-Lyann trying to protect me on multiple occasions. The latter parts were newer, but interesting if true. I didn’t particularly like the idea of compelling people to listen to me, but I had to admit that being able to discern the truth sounded extremely useful. I’d been under the impression that truth detection spells were impossible, but then again, a lot of things that Keras told me had once seemed that way. “So, what happened to it?”

“The sword was used by many people over thousands of years. Kings, generals, warriors. Eventually, it fell into the hands of a person — male or female is disputed — remembered only as ‘Therin’. I don’t think that was their actual name. Rather, I think it’s a derivation of the name of the sword. There was a point in history where it was common for people to take on titles based on the names of their weapons, and I think that’s what was going on.”

Something about that name made something stir in my mind…or maybe in my spirit. Unconsciously, I found myself glancing down at the sword at my side.

Was it…reacting, somehow? I felt like there was something at the edge of my senses. Not quite awake, not quite aware, but…there.

Waiting.

I didn’t say anything about it to Keras, nor did he seem to notice. He continued his tale. “Therin was a sword fighter, one of the two best of their time. A ‘sword saint’, if you want to get fancy. Therin was an adventurer that retired into some kind of military leadership, leading armies against the Xixian empire in their final days. In that long and storied life, Therin encountered a rival: someone who possessed equal talent and a weapon of equal power. An implacable swordsman with an insatiable desire for dominance.”

I felt a heartbeat, then.

But it wasn’t my own.

Keras spoke the next words without inflection, but I could feel the distaste in his voice. “That man was called Vae’lien. You would know him as the Tyrant in Gold.”

My hand was on my sword, then. I didn’t know when it had gotten there. Ice was slowly creeping over my fingertips.

Keras showed no hint of concern or surprise. “You should know how that particular story ends — you’ve seen it, or some echo of a memory. They fought on numerous occasions, until Vae’lien’s greatest power — the ability to steal the strengths of others — gave him such strength that even Therin could not match it. In the end, their long rivalry ended in the way that such things often do — with one standing in triumph, and the other buried in the ground.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, then.

The ice climbed further up my arm. I didn’t feel it. I didn’t feel cold.

My heart beat faster.

Keras spoke again. “The True Blade was broken that day. I don’t know precisely what happened, but my best guess is that Vae’lien took one half of the sword, likely as a trophy. The other was left to be buried along with his rival, perhaps as a sign of respect. Some stories talk of Selys-Lyann being forged from the goddess’ tears, or something like it, since she was in love with the sword’s wielder. I don’t think that’s true. I do think, however, that she found some way to reforge the True Blade into a new weapon. Maybe alone, maybe with help. And that resulting weapon was Flowbreaker, the Sacred Sword of Ice.”

“And then…I suppose it was broken a second time, and reforged again, this time into Selys-Lyann?”

Keras nodded. “Many years later. Centuries, I think. Someone obtained the sword and used it to fight Mizuchi, then she snapped it.”

“When I saw my vision in the Transcendence Shrine, I think the sword involved was already Selys-Lyann, not Flowbreaker.”

Keras shrugged at that. “Best guess? It’s been broken several times now. Probably more than once by Mizuchi alone.”

“Is…it really that easy to break something forged by the makers of the world?”

“Not typically, but the replacement parts were probably inferior to the original. And beyond that, repairing the sword may have left lingering structural damage each time — the kind that could be exploited. Finally…I don’t think Mizuchi putting her full strength into anything would qualify as easy.”

I shuddered. “…True. That’s just…why would she do that? I mean, I can see destroying a sword if you’re doing it defensively, but…more than once? That sounds…”

“Like a vendetta.” Keras nodded. “I think it is, for her. If I had to guess, the ‘curse’ that Lars likes to talk about is just a consequence of Mizuchi hunting wielders of the sword.”

Well, that wasn’t concerning. Nope. Not at all.

“…Why would she do something like that?” I finally asked.

“I think there are a few possible reasons. One, if the goddess has an emotional attachment to the sword — and there’s every reason to think that she does — Mizuchi may think that killing the wielders or breaking the sword is somehow preventing Selys from having her heart broken again. Or, on the opposite side of that, maybe Mizuchi is jealous of the wielders, since they draw Selys’ gaze. I’ve known a number of monsters that are bitter that humans get preferential treatment. Mizuchi may be the same. But even if those two are good reasons, I think there’s a better one: the scriptures. They say that the sacred swords are designed to defeat, or possibly kill, the god beasts. Mizuchi is Seiryu’s daughter. How would you feel about seeing a magic sword that’s specifically designed to kill your family?”

“…That’s…a fair point.” The ice on my arm had stopped spreading, and it was starting to recede. The strange, foreign heartbeat was fading.

Why?

If I had to guess, it was the mention of that first wielder of the True Blade, or perhaps Vae’lien, that had stirred a reaction from the sword.

I was tempted to test it further…but I didn’t think it was a good idea right at that moment. I had other things I needed to ask Keras that seemed more important, now that he was being open with his answers. “And you think it would be a mistake to try to repair the sword?”

“Not necessarily. It depends on what you mean by ‘repair’. If you think you’re going to remake the original Flowbreaker or True Blade, I don’t think that’s going to happen. There are factors that make that…implausible, let’s say. Improving what you have may be plausible, though. I can help with that just a little before I leave. And Derek can probably help with bonding the sword, if you’re still interested in doing that…but I really would advise against it.”

I nodded in understanding. “Okay. That’s a lot for me to think about in regards to the sword, thank you. Can I ask some other questions?”

“Sure, but I do have plans for the evening, so I’m not going to be able to talk for too much longer right now.”

“Going out with Derek again?

He shook his head. “No. I have business with Elora tonight.”

I blinked. I knew that he’d met her, of course, since we’d both stayed at her manor for a while…but I hadn’t really seen them interacting much. “What sort of business?”

“Private stuff, I’m afraid. Not world-shattering secrets, just personal favors that she wouldn’t appreciate me talking about.”

“Understood. Can you…maybe give me a hint, at least?”

He rolled his eyes. “Well, I’ll tell you this much — it’s repayment for information she gave me. And that does lead me to a conversation topic I’d been planning to give you some time on, but since we’re already on the subject…it’s almost time to use the Jaden Box.”

I exhaled a breath.

I’d known this was coming, and I’d been dreading it. “It’s…not quite recharged yet.”

He nodded. “I know. And I also know that you’ve learned how to recharge it. You’ve been procrastinating on that deliberately because you haven’t figured out how to replicate it yet.”

It wasn’t phrased as a question, and he was right. I just…didn’t think he’d noticed. “I…uh, sorry.”

“Don’t be. I don’t blame you. I don’t think Wrynn would, either. But things have changed. Meltlake’s actions will draw attention. So, I’d appreciate it if you could start recharging that box as quickly as possible. If it’s any consolation, I’ll try to convince Wrynn to tell you a bit about it before we leave. Might help make it easier to replicate.”

“So…that’s it, then? You’re leaving after we summon Wrynn?”

He nodded. “That’s the plan. Obviously, it could change, but…Meltlake put new things in motion, and I’ve seen signs that I’ve been idle for too long.”

“What about your deal with Katashi to keep me safe? Are you abandoning that?” I tried not to sound too upset or accusatory with the question.

“No.” Keras shook his head. “It’s been months. Not only have I met any reasonable conditions for watching over you during that time, I don’t think he ever intended to help me. I think this agreement was largely to keep me out of the way while other things played out. I’ve suspected that for months, but recent events have made it clearer. I might have left sooner, but the chance to summon Wrynn has been worth waiting for.”

From a practical standpoint, I could understand his reasoning, but…there was a part of me that couldn’t help but be disappointed.

I thought I was the reason he was staying, after all. Not just the box.

…And I wasn’t happy that he was leaving. Not just because I was infinitely safer from people like Saffron and Mizuchi while he was around, but…

He’d been willing to stand up to my father.

No adult had done that for me when I was young.

It wasn’t strictly due to a lack of knowledge. I’d been injured badly enough during some of our “training” that he’d been forced to get me magical healing. And even with that healing, I had permanent scars.

My uncle had known, too. He’d seen it himself. He’d encouraged it.

And…Cecily’s family.

I won’t get into all that, but there was a time when Magnus had more than one student, and…well, Cecily’s parents pulled her out of that training.

They didn’t do a thing for me.

So, when Keras had offered to stand in for me during that duel…

There was a part of me that felt like, in spite of the awfulness of the situation as a whole…

Someone had finally noticed. Someone had finally tried to help.

There was finally someone in my life that…actually was willing to protect me. Someone strong enough that he could protect me, without question, if I just asked.

And now he was going away.

I didn’t say that, of course. I couldn’t say that. Not just out of embarrassment, although that may have been a factor. It wasn’t fair. I couldn’t let myself push Keras into staying out of some kind of guilt.

He was the type of person that couldn’t say “no” when someone in trouble asked for help.

And that was exactly why I needed to let him leave.

As long as he was there…there would always be the temptation to ask him to step in and save me. From that duel, from Saffron, from Mizuchi, from…everything, really.

I couldn’t rely on Keras Selyrian to solve my problems for me forever.

But for a little while…for just a little while…it had been nice to think that I could.

I cleared my thoughts as best I could, giving him a false smile. “I’ll help charge the Jaden Box as soon as I can.”

“Thanks, Corin.” He gave me a hint of a smile in return, just as fake as my own. “You won’t regret it.”

Liar, I thought.

But he had told me not to trust anyone. Perhaps that was the last of his lessons that I had refused to learn.

CHAPTER X – MEASURING PROGRESS

I quickly finished up my talk with Keras after that. I still had a number of questions for him, but…the knowledge that he’d be leaving soon, as well as my agreement to help charge the box, were too prominent in my mind. I couldn’t focus.

So, I excused myself, headed out of the room, and tried to focus on anything else that I possibly could.

I failed.

I worked on enchanting experiments, breathing exercises, and new spells. But in the end, I was still having that conversation in my mind for the rest of the night.

***

The next day, I had my usual Physical Training, followed by my second session of Attunement Optimization class.

That particular lesson focused on a number of things that I was already familiar with.

Professor Saito talked a lot about choosing living spaces that had enough mana to bypass the Sunstone Wall, and how the location of Lorian Heights was planned by the founders to enable students to continue building their mana without any difficulties.

There was also some discussion about things like mana-enriched foods, like the fruits I’d been eating, as well as rarer substances like the meats of specific magical creatures. Natural monsters often built their strength almost entirely through eating other monsters…and you’d occasionally find organizations of people like the Tails of Orochi that developed methods to do the same. There was some debate if the Tails of Orochi’s members were all descended from hydras, or if they included ordinary people who had somehow learned to consume monster meat to enhance their abilities. Professor Saito didn’t weigh in on that particular subject one way or another.

There was some brief talk about enhancement elixirs, too, but I didn’t learn anything new. It just reinforced my desire to start working on them…just as soon as I finished the dozen-or-so more urgent projects on my list.

Since the lecture itself was mostly review, I had more time to notice that unusual iron-haired student. And, unfortunately, that meant that he also had more time to notice me noticing him.

His eyes widened the moment they met with mine. He tensed, looking like he was about ready to bolt out of the chair…then, very pointedly, took a deep breath, smiled shyly, and looked away.

After class, I chose to retreat quickly, much like he had last time. I thought that might have been the end of that, but my life could never be anything resembling simple.

***

I headed straight to Intermediate Enchanting. I made sure to get there early, as Professor Wydran had requested.

Don’t overthink it. She’s probably not Wydd. She’s probably not going to kidnap you or use you to trace your brother or…

I arrived in the classroom with my thoughts still swimming. Professor Wydran was waiting patiently. She stood up as I came in, offering my sigil back to me, and said simply, “You have no place in this class.”

I blinked. “What?”

“Take your sigil and this note.” She pulled a piece of paper out of a bag at her side. “I’m transferring you to the Advanced Enchanting class for third-year students. Frankly speaking, you’re probably too far ahead even for most of them, but at least it may have something useful.”

I stared blankly for a moment, then finally, with great hesitation, I took the sigil and the note. “…You’re sure about this?”

Professor Wydran chuckled. “Master Cadence — I did some research on you after inspecting the sigil. I checked your academic record. There are some interesting…gaps in that record. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’ve had that attunement for years, and just came to the school recently as some kind of show. But even that wouldn’t account for the purified mana in the sigil. You can’t be Citrine at your age. Not unless you’re an Edrian Prince, and we both know that there aren’t any of those at the school.”

I coughed, thinking of my early misidentification of Jin’s background. “Right. Of…course not. That would be ridiculous.”

“So, there’s clearly something unusual going on with you. I don’t know what it is, but you’re no ordinary second-year Enchanter.”

I hesitated, then finally, began to respond. “Well, I’m actually—”

“No.” She shook her head. “Don’t tell me. Try not to tell anyone.” Professor Wydran pushed up her glasses, then gave me a smile. “It’s more fun for everyone if you keep a secret or two.”

***

After that, I got directions, then headed to the third-year Enchanting class. It was located in an unfamiliar building on the other side of campus, so I had to throw Haste on and run there to avoid missing the beginning. I may have looked a little silly as I pushed my way in the door, still panting with exhaustion.

At least I wasn’t embarrassing myself in front of a huge crowd.

The classroom only had a teacher and eight students inside. All of the other students wore black. The teacher, however, was an older gentleman wearing a pristine white suit. He raised a huge, bushy eyebrow at me as I entered. “Can I help you, young man?”

I held up a finger to buy myself a moment, took a deep breath, then just settled on handing him the note.

“I…see. A second-year student, but capable of making advanced items? Corin Cadence, is it?”

It occurred to me that I had never actually given my name to Professor Wydran. “Yes, sir.”

“Very well. Now, what’s this supposedly ‘advanced’ item the note mentioned.”

I sighed, preparing myself for another round of extreme scrutiny, then pulled the newly-made sigil out of my bag and handed it to him.

The old man took the sigil, turned it over in his hands, glancing at the runes with a neutral expression. Then, there was a brief flash of mana as he cast some kind of mental mana spell.

“Hm.” He frowned. “You were in a hurry when you made this?”

“I had to make it in a classroom in under two hours.”

That bushy eyebrow went up again. “And you did it on your own?”

I nodded.

He gave me an appraising look, then smiled softly. “Master Cadence, I think you’ll fit in here just fine. Have a seat.”

There were plenty of empty chairs, but it would have been conspicuous to sit near the back. So, I just grabbed the nearest one and sat down.

“I’m Professor de Remy. This will not be a conventional class. You are not conventional students. Master Cadence, you missed the demonstrations on the first day. This,” he raised my sigil, “would have placed you toward the middle of our initial class rankings.” He tossed the sigil to a student to my right. “Holly, identify.”

She caught the sigil, inspecting it. “Shield sigil. Improved capacity. Improved shield regeneration. Improved base function. Health regeneration.” She frowned. “Mana regeneration. Hold on.” She whispered something, then her expression changed. Impressed, maybe? “Already purified, but without a purification function. Master Cadence purified the original mana manually somehow, but did not think to include a function for it.”

“Improvements?” Professor de Remy asked.

“Besides the obvious potential incremental increases to function potency, there’s a clear problem. There’s a life mana purification rune here. If Cadence can purify mana on his own, it’s completely superfluous.”

I nearly smacked my head on the table. She was absolutely right: it was superfluous. I’d just been putting them on every item because the original ring of regeneration had one. As long as I was using my own life mana to charge the items — which I was — no such rune was necessary.

And I’d been wasting time, mana capacity, and energy putting them on every single sigil I’d made in recent history.

“Good. Pass it to Tylan next,” the professor said.

My face may have blanched.

Holly passed it to the next student, a short guy wearing a strange, gem-studded eyepatch over his left eye. He turned it over in his hands. “Hm. Little heavy, isn’t it?” After a pause, he clarified, “You’d be better off using a lighter metal, or just trimming this guy down. You’re not at capacity.”

“Not everyone likes to push right up against capacity maximums, Tylan,” another student interjected.

“Sure,” Tylan noted, “but they could. Next?”

“Gregori,” the teacher intoned.

…And one by one, the class went through and pointed out flaws in my item, before finally, it went back to Holly.

“Conclusions?” The teacher asked her.

“It’s useful. I wouldn’t mind having one.” Finally, she handed it back to me. “Provided some improvements were made first, of course.”

“We won’t be commissioning each other right away,” the professor interjected. “But she raises an excellent point. Your item gets high marks for utility, Master Cadence. It is an item that is useful to a broad variety of people. And do not feel overly bad about the critique. We did this with everyone else’s entries on the first day.”

I groaned. “…And I take it I don’t get a recap?”

“No,” the professor shook his head. “But it wouldn’t hurt to get you to look over the items made by the others, and to get your opinions on them. Class?”

At once, the eight black-uniformed students retrieved items from their bags. Bells. Canes. Widgets. Swords.

“Now, who’s first?”

Gregori handed me a return bell. An advanced return bell, one with added range, a more rapid recharge rate, and a broader starting area-of-effect.

I lifted it up, examining the runes, and then frowned. “…Where’s the anchor?’

Gregori winced. “I…uh…”

“Cadence got it instantly,” Holly laughed. “Instantly!”

Gregori lowered his head. “…I…may have forgotten to make one.”

I nodded sagely. “…You know what?” I thought back to my final exam in Vellum’s class. “It happens to the best of us.”

As the other students passed me their items, I checked them over, finding tiny flaws…but they were good. Really good. Some of them were too advanced for me to come up with. Three of them involved compound runes, and in Holly’s case, dynamic ones.

Professor de Remy was right.

I was going to fit in just fine.

***

After we finished classes for the day, I went and found Sera to resume the previous day’s discussion. Researcher was back home, so Sera and I asked her to measure the mana in our crystal marks. There was, however, one small snag.

“The standard spell for displaying the safe mana capacity isn’t really designed for alternative mana sources,” Researcher explained. “Using it to measure a crystal mark isn’t going to provide perfectly accurate results. Do you still wish to proceed?”

I hesitated.

Sera was quick to answer, though. “I’m sure there’s an earlier spell out there for measuring crystal marks, isn’t there? Maybe in one of the books from Constantine’s library that you copied?”

I blinked. “Wait, what? You just mean the ones we borrowed, right? Researcher didn’t go with us.”

“While you are technically correct, in that I did not accompany you directly to your destination, Miss Cadence summoned me to Master Constantine’s library during your crystal trial. I remained there until I was summoned back to the train.”

I turned to Sera. “Wasn’t that a bit of a risk?”

“A minor one. That’s why I waited until after I’d spoken to Len before summoning Researcher — I needed to ascertain their motives. I believe that what Len told me about wanting to ‘free’ summoned monsters was a genuine goal and one that would not pose any immediate risk to Researcher, except perhaps the risk of Researcher wanting to break her contract and stay behind. Which would be her choice, if she wanted to.”

“If I may offer a correction, Miss Cadence, a significantly greater risk would be if I reported back to Researcher Prime that a facility existed for ‘freed’ summoned monsters, and Researcher Prime then reported that facility to an authority figure that chose to escalate the issue. Eventually, such a process could result in significant danger to anyone involved, including yourself.”

“Yes, I considered all that and deemed it unlikely to have any meaningful impact. There’s absolutely no chance the visages don’t already know about Constantine’s tower. His paranoia might assist with hiding the location from other threats, like national powers, but there’s no world in which someone like Ferras isn’t keeping watch on her former Arbiter.” Sera turned to me with a meaningful look. “Arbiters are too important to be ignored. Something you should keep in mind for the future.”

I winced. That was not the sort of attention I needed…but it also wasn’t a surprise. The trip to Caelford had done a great deal to put the significance of my Arbiter attunement into perspective. My assessment was that Katashi was probably too busy to be actively watching me at all times, but that he was probably going to be watching me on occasion, either through visage-scale divination magic or agents in the field.

…Which, in retrospect, raised questions about why Katashi ever had any difficulty finding anyone. Keras could potentially hide from a visage’s gaze with his mask, since it had supposedly been made by a dead god, but anyone else would have a difficult time unless they had something comparable.

That got some questions running through my mind, but Sera interrupted my thought process by waving a hand in front of my face. “Wake up, Corin. Come back down from the stars, our world still needs you.”

“Sorry, sorry.” I gave her a quick smirk. “You think our world needs me?”

“It’s an expression.” She rolled her eyes. “Anyway, we’re getting off topic. Yes, I summoned Researcher to the library at Constantine’s place. She copied as many books as she could.”

“When you say copied, do you mean physically, or…?”

Researcher shook her head. “I have merely stored the text of the books in my spiritual structure. Unfortunately, I do not presently have the means to rapidly generate physical copies of books. Oh, but that would be wonderful, would it not? I would postulate that with some combination of memory magic and Sera’s new density magic, such a thing would be possible. Admittedly, wood magic would be more appropriate for copying paper, but perhaps we could emulate it with a sufficiently paper-like substance…”

“Researcher. Focus.” Sera sighed. “Goddess, I swear, it’s like herding ducks with you two.”

“Do people…herd ducks?” I blinked.

“Obviously, Corin. You have to keep them from using their petrifying gaze on things somehow.”

“…I think those might be cockatrices you’re thinking of, Sera.”

“No, petrifying ducks. Moving on. Researcher, can you parse through the text of those books to find an appropriate spell?”

“Yes, I can do so. Please wait, this may take several minutes…”

We played Crowns while we waited. Sera won, obviously, but with surprising difficulty…and I may have been overthinking it, but I had suspicions as to why.

I had a significant amount of mental mana from my Enchanter attunement now, as well as the benefits of a crystal mark of transcendence, which was a composite mana type formed from mental mana and life mana. Both were theoretically improving my own mental abilities, but in ways that were both incremental and subtle, at least in comparison to something like my ever-increasing speed from generating transference mana.

The mind is a complicated thing. People like to talk about measuring things like “intelligence”, but if my experience with mental mana has taught me anything, there’s no way to accurately summarize that in a single attribute. It isn’t even governed by a single mana type — mental and perception mana influence different types of intellectual ability, and so do each of their many various composite types. So, it would be reductive to say that I was getting “smarter” from having more mental mana…but I was measurably improving in some specific mental exercises.

In spite of Keras teasing me about throwing swords not being a viable means of using them, I was getting extremely accurate at throwing things — and just making projections on how to aim attacks in general. I’d already been above-average in accuracy with things like dueling canes before I’d even gotten my attunement, but it was hard to say how much of that was inherent ability and how much of it was years of practice. It was clearly some combination of both — I remember getting good scores at target practice with canes even as a child without any real experience, but nothing that was noteworthy.

Now?

I rarely missed with attacks at static targets…and, in fact, I rarely missed moving targets unless they rapidly changed directions. And even then, I was getting better at accounting for it.

Basically, the part of my mind that calculated things like ranges, movement speeds, and trajectories was measurably improving as my mental mana increased.

But that wasn’t what was helping me with Crowns.

The second factor I’d managed to note clear improvement in was my memory. Keras had first illustrated it to me by pointing out that he didn’t remember the exact appearance of every rune he’d come across…but I did. Admittedly, the story he was telling from the train was from a much earlier time period — nine years ago — and I don’t know if even my improved memory would allow me to retain the exact appearance of every rune I’d seen for nine years. But thus far…I hadn’t had much difficulty memorizing anything I’d seen since I’d gotten my attunement. More recent images were clearer, likely both due to their recency and my mana accumulation.

It’s not just visuals, either. I could remember conversations better, songs, even my own thought processes…

And I could remember Crowns moves. I remembered how different plays had gone in our previous matches, how Sera responded when I moved individual pieces.

…But that didn’t mean I could always apply that toward creating a winning strategy. And Sera’s playstyle wasn’t static — she’d sometimes respond to exactly the same play in different ways. I didn’t know if this was because she was experimenting, learning, or perhaps reading ahead based on physical or verbal cues on my part.

Either way, she was still out-performing me most of the time…but I was learning. That was a good feeling.

…The feeling that an external power source was modifying the way that my mind worked was less of a good feeling, since it felt something like I was becoming less of myself through that process…but as long as it was inherently beneficial, I’d still pursue it. I hated the idea of additional mana making my brain so distinct that I couldn’t be “Corin” anymore, but on a rational level, I knew that my mind was being modified by so many other factors that it wasn’t much different…just larger in scale and more tangible.

Anyway, we played Crowns, then Researcher found a spell.

“Who would like to go first?” Researcher asked.

“Here, check mine,” Sera offered, reaching out her hand with an enviable lack of hesitation at human contact. Or, uh, non-human contact, I suppose.

Researcher accepted Sera’s hand, then closed her eyes and concentrated for a moment. “Identify Mana Level. Identify Mana Composition.” Researcher pulled away a hand. “You have a base of ten density mana available. Now, cast a density spell with a mana level equal to or lower than that.”

Sera nodded in understanding, then opened her palm upward. “Lesser Conjure Object.” A tiny sphere of green crystal appeared in her hand. “That’s a ten-mana base spell.”

“Excellent. Now, I’ll measure again…” Sera reached out her hand and Researcher cast Identify Mana Level a second time. “Your remaining mana is six point six six…repeating, of course, but regrettably the spell doesn’t give me greater granularity.”

“Not sure we need more granularity,” I noted. Researcher looked at me like she was personally affronted by the concept of rounding numbers, but I continued, “it’s essentially a three to one efficiency rate, right?”

“Essentially,” Researcher admitted, “but without an exact figure…”

“It’s good enough, Researcher. Thank you. Corin, would you like to go next?”

I hesitated, but only briefly. It’s for a mana measurement. And it’s just Researcher.

I reached out my hand. Researcher took it. “Identify Mana Level. Identify Mana Composition…hm.”

“Hm?” I frowned nervously.

“Oh, it’s nothing. Just the same mana base — it’s exactly ten. I was speculating about whether or not this might be a standardized value.”

I exhaled in relief. “Oh. That…would make sense, yes.” My mind had already been racing through the ways in which a mana detection spell could have revealed that I was somehow about to die horribly. Just a bit of speculation was much milder than that.

“Would you like to cast a spell now?” Researcher asked.

“Oh. Right, right.” I tried to shut more fatalism out of my mind and focus. I’d picked out several spells for this test earlier in the day, decided on one, changed my mind repeatedly, then “settled” and promptly changed my mind again.

Sera had picked a ten-mana spell, which was a good idea for standardization and measurement purposes. I did the same. I didn’t speak it aloud, though, since that wasn’t my casting method.

I concentrated on the crystal mark in my hand, felt the new mana flowing inside, and reached in to activate it in the same fashion I would for an attunement…except without the extra mana-conversion steps, since they weren’t needed. It was surprisingly simple, even if it was also absolutely terrifying to be tinkering with a new type of magic.

I decided to play it safe and go with one that wouldn’t radically alter the way my body or mind operated.

Transcendent Detect Aura.

Several things in my vision began to glow. Sera’s Invoker attunement showed as a swirling mixture of turquoise and grey, her crystal mark’s aura was a solid wall of mixed green and brown, Ceris at her hip was a strange mixture of green and gold with white sparks. Researcher as a whole glowed bright purple.

Huh.

The spell wasn’t dissimilar from a standard Detect Aura spell, but as the name implied, it showed things a standard Detect Aura spell couldn’t pick up. There were simple mental mana spells that could show aura colors — in fact, I already knew some, and my Lesser Identify and Identify spells worked on similar principles. The transcendence version I used had a critical advantage, however. It could perceive elemental power inside someone’s body, whereas standard mental mana variants only perceived auras that were being emitted from a person or object.

From a practical standpoint, the difference was relatively minimal. The principal advantage was that this would help identify elemental powers in creatures that didn’t have a shroud, like specific non-spire monsters. If I ever ran into any Buried, for example, this would help determine what elements they had, which would in turn help me figure out if they had access to specific spells…and potentially their weaknesses. This wasn’t anything like a unique advantage. There were stronger mental mana spells that could accomplish exactly the same thing. But this was a cheaper mana cost than those powerful mental mana spells, since it operated by bypassing the body’s natural magic defenses, rather than brute forcing through them.

All in all, it wasn’t any sort of life changing spell, but that wasn’t the point. I just needed something basic that worked — and it did.

The next test was equally important.

Release Transcendent Detect Aura.

I successfully turned the spell off.

One of my main paranoid concerns was whether or not I’d be able to disable an active spell effect from the crystal mark properly. A bit paranoid, maybe, but Sera’s spell hadn’t been one that required active maintenance. If I’d kept my spell active, it would have continuously drained my mana to maintain itself. I had contingency plans in place for if I failed to turn the spell off properly — everything from neutralizing the spell through using my Mr. Stabbington’s void powers to forcefully turning my crystal mark off by attempting to alter the sub-glyphs within it.

(Tinkering with sub-glyphs would have been a last resort, of course — I didn’t even know if it was structured like an attunement. I hadn’t tried playing with it yet, and I wasn’t planning to until I’d done more reading.)

Anyway, I didn’t need to resort to any of my panic plans, which was probably for the best for everyone involved.

“Are you ready?” Researcher asked, looking excited.

“Oh, right.” I extended my hand again. She took it.

“Identify Mana Level.” She paused for a moment. “Hm, marginally lower than Sera’s, at six point five four mana remaining…”

“The spell I used was one with active maintenance, it probably drained an extra sliver of mana during the moment I kept it active.”

“Ah, yes. That would potentially account for the difference…but if you don’t mind, could you run another test with a spell with a static mana cost to satisfy my curiosity about the discrepancy?”

“Uh, I’m not sure if I know any transcendence spells with static mana costs. They’re basically all actively-maintained beneficial spells…although I suppose there are a bunch of possible variants of established spells, like adding transcendence mana to a regeneration spell to make a Transcendent Regeneration spell. I haven’t studied those yet, though.”

Researcher’s expression sank momentarily, but I raised my other hand. “Wait, wait. Hold on. I’ll look up a quick variant on this one that can be cast on someone else.”

That didn’t take long — just a few minutes to find the procedural differences. Honestly, I probably didn’t even need to reference a book, but I was being very careful. After that, at Researcher’s urging, I cast Transcendent Detect Aura on her, then checked my mana again.

“It’s the same efficiency as Sera’s,” Researcher confirmed. “Approximately three-to-one.”

“That’s…weirdly low, isn’t it?” Sera asked. “Didn’t Keras think it would be higher?”

“Master Selyrian was likely comparing it to expected mana efficiency rates for a novice dominion sorcerer. While crystal marks function to emulate dominion sorcery, their internal operations are not identical.”

I considered that. “Hm. I suppose a dominion sorcerer has a full body worth of Star Veins…those are what they use to connect to the dominions, right? And we’ve only got whatever the crystal mark has in one hand, presuming it isn’t accessing the Star Veins in our body as a whole. It may not even be using the Star Veins in our hand, just emulating their functionality somehow. Researcher, do you think we could look at how the crystal mark works and see if we could improve the efficiency?”

Researcher took a step back, looking deeply uncomfortable. “Regrettably, I am unable to comply with your request at this time. This subject is outside of the bounds of my authority to discuss.”

“…Even with your Summoner? And an Arbiter?” I asked.

“If it is a request from an Arbiter, I could attempt to contact my prime-self and ask for authorization, however…”

Sera put a hand on Researcher’s shoulder. “It’s fine. Cancel that request.”

“Arbiter, confirm cancellation?” Researcher’s tone was strangely pleading.

“Uh, yeah, confirmed. Cancel that.”

Researcher exhaled a sigh of relief. Sera shot me a grateful look. I wondered what exactly had just happened.

We’d discussed having Researcher contact her prime self or other Researchers for information before…why was this different? She loved learning things and discussing them…

Was there some kind of inherent risk here?

Forbidden knowledge, I realized. This must be classified as forbidden knowledge.

And if it is…then Wydd might be displeased with her for discussing it at all. And displeased with us for asking about it.

The consequences for pushing too far on that could be severe. Sera must have realized that immediately, based on Researcher’s visceral response.

“Let’s change the subject,” Sera offered. “Shall we measure our mana regeneration rates?”

Researcher nodded vehemently.

Things settled down a bit after that. A few quick tests indicated that the crystal mark took longer than an attunement to recharge, seemingly designed to refill every eight hours. That was a bit irritating, but I suspected it had to do with safety, so I didn’t try to tinker with it immediately.

I intended to attempt to recharge our crystal marks with my Arbiter mark eventually, but first, I’d have to figure out how to convert mana from other parts of my body into the right type for the crystal mark. My operating assumption was that since the crystal marks only utilized one kind of mana, they wouldn’t have the functions to convert mana that an attunement did. Thus, if I tried to shove random mana into a crystal mark…well, at a minimum, it wouldn’t work. More likely? Another patented Corin hand-explosion.

I suspected it wouldn’t take me long to figure out how to convert mana in my own body into transcendence mana, now that I had it accessible within my body, and then recharge my own crystal mark. Converting mana into any type I didn’t personally have access to would be much, much harder — to the extent that I didn’t intend to try it at all in the near future. My plan was to work with Sera to make a density mana battery, then use that as a baseline for converting mana in my body into density to try to recharge her…but only after I’d done considerable research on the plausibility of the plan. I didn’t know if crystal marks were built to be manually recharged at all.

Fortunately, if Researcher had copied many of the books in Constantine’s library into her mind, we had a lot of resources to draw from to answer those questions…it was just about parsing through that data, as well as the physical books I borrowed, for the answers.

For the moment, I was happy just to make some progress. A ten-mana mark with three to one efficiency effectively meant I had thirty extra mana to play with, which didn’t feel like a lot anymore, but it was effectively half of a Carnelian-level attunement. That wasn’t bad, especially given that it was an entirely new mana type.

…And one that, if I wasn’t mistaken, could potentially be used to compound with both my mental mana and my life mana, if I figured out how to link the crystal mark to my attunements. That was a much more daunting task than even figuring out if I could recharge it, but in the long-term, compounded life mana sounded fantastic.

Compounded mental mana…well, it sounded very powerful, but also absolutely terrifying. I’d have to think on if I wanted to pursue that. I’m aware of the irony in that statement.

I turned back to Researcher after we finished the tests. “One more question, before I forget. You don’t have to answer if it’s considered restricted information.”

“I would be pleased to answer it if I am aware of the answer and permitted to do so. How may I assist you?”

“Did Warren Constantine have any entire books on transcendence mana among the things you copied?”

“Regrettably, no, but a handful of books have large sections on the subject. I would be pleased to assist you with locating the ones with information pertinent to any inquiries you may have.”

I considered. “A follow-up question, then. Is there anything you’re aware of in terms of transcendence spells for improving mana growth rates, directly or indirectly? Similar to the benefits from my Arbiter mark.”

I hoped that phrasing it in that way made it less likely for the request to come across asking for more forbidden knowledge, but I wasn’t sure it would help.

Researcher closed her eyes briefly. “Processing. One moment…” Her eyes flicked open a second later. “I have discovered a section of experimental spells for improving star vein efficacy. The baseline spell, the ostentatiously-named ‘Embrace the Stars’, is intended to temporarily increase essence usage efficiency when drawing from a dominion. This is largely designed for dominion sorcery, but the author speculated that repeated usage could theoretically improve general star vein strength.”

“That sounds perfect! At least as a starting place. What level of spell is it?”

“The base spell is listed at Citrine-C, with a mana cost of 486 mana.”

I groaned. Even if I figured out how to convert all of my mana into transcendence, I still didn’t have enough to cast it a single time. If I made some batteries, maybe…but I doubted the utility of burning through my whole mana pool and multiple batteries to cast a single experimental efficiency-enhancement spell. The spell was clearly designed for someone who already had thousands of transcendence mana to draw from. It was a good find, but not immediately usable.

“…Copy down that section of the book for me anyway, if you can. It’ll be a while before I can cast anything like it, but I may as well learn the theory behind it. Maybe I can figure out a weaker version eventually, or some other variant that still can give long-term benefits.”

“I would be happy to do so. Please be advised that this spell was experimental, however, and even once you possess a sufficient mana pool, it may not work as expected.”

More problems for future me.

The rest of the afternoon passed easily, with a couple more minor tests and a fair bit of reading. With a few more new spells picked out to tinker with, I swiftly had a new training routine planned for the week.

…And I’d get that postponed rooftop match to test out transcendence magic against density soon enough.

***

Later in the evening, I opened a book. Not for academic study, in this case, but with hopes of learning something regardless.

Sadly, Trials of Judgment contained no new revelations. I’d written to Tristan a few times on the train ride, but I still hadn’t heard anything back.

I’d hoped that the messages I’d written previously would be sent to him as soon as I was back in range, but I wasn’t actually sure how the enchantments on the book worked. It was possible that any writing that occurred while I was out of range was simply wasted, and that the same could be true for any messages Tristan had sent me while I was out of the book’s range.

…Of course, it was also possible that Tristan simply hadn’t replied. Maybe he was simply too busy, or he’d lost the book that he needed to use to reply somehow, or…

I didn’t want to finish that thought, but it was obvious — Tristan could be dead.

Mizuchi had seemingly been actively trying to find a way to get to Tristan while he was vulnerable. Even if Tristan had remained within Tenjin’s inner sanctum, there was a possibility that Mizuchi had managed to get in…or found some other type of way to handle him. Could she have summoned him out somehow, similar to how she’d summoned Sera? That had been possible due to Sera’s attempt to bind Mizuchi, but perhaps there were other ways to exploit summoning magic.

…The Jaden Box had no need for any sort of binding to summon someone, just something physically connected to them to use as a focus. She’d injured Tristan in their fight. Had Mizuchi gathered some of Tristan’s blood? If so, could she have summoned him that way?

…It was useless to speculate. There were simply too many variables.

So, I tried to ignore the foreboding feeling in my mind as I wrote another reply. A brief one — anything else seemed excessive until I confirmed his state.

Dear Mysterious Book Entity,

I’m writing to confirm that I am safely back in Valia and attending Lorian Heights. I have sent a variety of other messages, but I am uncertain if they were received.

Please confirm that my messages have been going through, as well as your safety, at your convenience.

Yours in hope,

Corin Cadence

My fingers trembled as I wrote the last words.

Why was I just…sitting here? What could I do to help?

I thought about that for many hours, wrestling with my own mind as I searched for answers, until finally the blissful nothing of sleep overtook me.

CHAPTER XI – NEW MARKS

The next morning was Physical Training, the most generic and boring of classes. We didn’t really learn anything new there, but it was necessary for all attuned in training to have a certain baseline of physical conditioning if we were going to be in combat. By doing a little bit of physical training regularly, we were preparing for our eventual military service.

The simplicity of working out did have one benefit, above and beyond the obvious advantages of exercise. It gave me time to think about the future.

I know, I know. It might seem like I’m thinking about that constantly…and sure, I am. But in this context, I mean that I was specifically thinking about the military service that the training was intended for…and if I was planning to do it.

Farren had offered to get me out early. It had seemed like a serious offer — an exploitation of her connections to buy me out of service.

Would it be ethical to take that deal?

I wasn’t sure. I didn’t like the idea of taking advantage of the system like that…but how many other people were doing it? If Farren had a way of getting people out of military service, it stood to reason there were other exceptions. I knew powerful people. If a Caelford native like Farren could do something like that, Meltlake almost certainly had the same level of sway or higher. Derek and Elora probably did, too.

They probably hadn’t done years of military service, had they? They’d gotten their attunements so early…had they gone straight into climbing as a substitute for service? That had been my original plan, since I was so intent on finding Tristan, but now…was that necessary? I knew where Tristan was.

Did I still want to be a climber?

I still had to save Tristan somehow, but…was that the right way to do it?

The threat to Tristan wasn’t the tower itself. Not anymore. He had two main problems — the brand that prevented him from leaving the spire without exploding…and the people who would murder him if he stepped out of Tenjin’s sanctum.

Some of those people were presumably the visages themselves.

…Stepping back into the tower wouldn’t necessarily give me any additional influence over that situation. My Arbiter attunement was clearly my biggest advantage in that regard, but it wouldn’t help if I didn’t approach the situation correctly. Simply approaching a visage and asking for Tristan to be spared wasn’t likely to get anywhere…especially since I didn’t know where each individual visage stood on the whole situation.

…And if one or more of them were already working with my brother.

He’d mentioned a sponsor. I still didn’t know who that sponsor was. Money was on Wydd, currently, or possibly someone like Wrynn Jaden. If Keras was right about Wrynn being as powerful as he was and more flexible, that theoretically put her in the same area of influence as a visage, too. In that case, at least, I was getting closer to being able to ask her directly.

…Assuming the box worked.

“Wake up, Cadence!” Someone yelled.

A supervisor. Whoops.

I shook my head to clear it and adjusted my running pace, moving back into formation.

Focus, I told myself. I need to look like I’m still working toward a standard graduation, at least for now.

There would be more time for planning later.

***

I skipped Intermediate Mana Manipulation class, since I’d already been given permission to. I’d have to attend on occasion to take my tests, but I fully intended to take advantage of any free time I had available to do things that actually mattered to me.

In that case, it meant heading home for a quick shower, then getting straight into some sub-glyph research.

Learning a whole new language was painstakingly slow, especially since I was forced to learn it entirely from dusty tomes. There was no one accessible to teach me…and I wasn’t even sure verbal lessons would have helped.

I was making progress with learning the glyphs, but it wasn’t easy. I briefly considered trying to figure out if there were transcendence magic spells for quicker language acquisition…but while there might have been, I quickly decided that the idea was horrifyingly risky.

I’d barely scratched the surface of understanding transcendence magic — messing with my brain directly was a bad idea. I wasn’t going to discount the possibility of doing it eventually, but for the moment, I was just going to have to research the old-fashioned way.

Reading a lot of books.

Admittedly, studying my own attunement was a part of that process, too. That, at least, gave me a chance to practice some magic. I was getting more used to analyzing my sub-glyphs rapidly, finding patterns, and identifying the starting and end points of individual function sets.

I was confident I was getting close to being able to tinker with my functions more safely, but not on the scale I wanted.

I had big goals for tinkering with my attunement. Ones I’d discussed with Constantine and hinted to Sera about, but that I hadn’t told anyone else. Not yet.

For my next trick to work, I would need the element of surprise.

***

After finishing up a couple hours of research, I got ready for my next class: Foreign Attunements and You.

I wasn’t sure I was actually going to learn anything useful there, but I wanted to improve my grasp on everything that was available through attunements in general. Improving my general knowledge of attunement functions – especially those supposed “unique” functions, even if they weren’t actually unique — would improve my flexibility when I finally reached the point of understanding sub-glyphs to my satisfaction.

So, I went to class.

…And immediately found myself distracted by someone other than the teacher.

That’s not to say that there was anything unremarkable about Professor Marks. His pitch-black skin might have marked him as being from Caelford, but his unusual hair style — his hair bound by three large metal rings — and huge spike-shaped earrings demonstrated a distinct Sytennian style.

Sytennia was a smaller nation outside of the Four Powers. They didn’t control any of the spires, and thus, they tended to get left out in our history lessons in the early years of school. Geographically, they weren’t far from Valia, and I’d seen people from Sytennia before, but not recently.

It was more interesting to me that a Sytennian would be teaching a class on foreign attunements, given that people from Sytennia generally didn’t get attunements at all. Instead, my understanding was that Sytennians sent expeditions into the Unclaimed Lands more frequently than the other nations, with the intent of acquiring crystal marks from the various crystal shrines and elemental temples.

I would have been very enthusiastic to hear a Sytennian perspective on attunements in general, but I was more than a little distracted.

That strange, iron-haired student I’d seen earlier was in this class, too — and he was very definitely watching me.

When most people see you staring at them, they tend to either look away or do something to acknowledge the behavior, like waving amiably. Iron-hair didn’t do either — he just…kind of kept looking at me. His expression was intensely neutral, as if he was concentrating on something. Maybe he was. If he had some kind of active magical effect, maybe he was analyzing my abilities and equipment.

Who is he? And what did I do to warrant this kind of attention?

The unusual hair color was a pretty big concern, of course. Hair dye was always possible, but after Mizuchi, I didn’t want to make any assumptions about artificial coloring.

Could he be another serpent?

I’d already run into Satsuki during the Survival Match, so it was plausible there were others in the area, either as students or otherwise. Were there more serpents infiltrating the student base? Or…just intentionally being allowed to attend the academy? I wasn’t sure which would be more worrisome.

I shook my head, dismissing that thought as best I could. I needed more information and I wasn’t going to get it simply by theorizing. I’d have to start actively doing some research on him…or, you know, just ask him, I guess. That was technically an option.

I was half-focused on him throughout the class, waiting for the possibility that he might stand up and start obliterating people at any time (unlikely, but I’d seen stranger things). As such, I didn’t have the focus to take in all of the introductory lesson in detail…but I didn’t really need most of it, anyway.

For the most part, Professor Marks just set a foundation, explaining some basic theory about other attunements that I was already familiar with.

Each tower had exactly eight attunements available in the “standard” set for Judgments, but it was also possible to end up with a foreign attunement. This meant that there were presumed to be forty-eight total attunements in the standard sets, assuming the Spider Spire followed the same rules as the other five towers.

I considered asking about the Seventh Spire, but I didn’t want to get into that right away, and he didn’t mention it. Not immediately.

Beyond that, Professor Marks went into some other foundational aspects about attunements for other nations. For example, certain types of mana types tended to be more common in specific towers than others, and certain towers tended to lean toward specific styles of special features. Edria’s spire had a lot of shroud-focused attunements, which granted access to shrouds at Quartz-level, rather than Carnelian, similar to our own local Guardian attunement.

The professor also mentioned some basics about the distinctions between the spires themselves. Rooms tended to rotate more slowly in the Tortoise Spire, for example, and floors took longer on average to clear. The Tiger Spire favored scenario floors. The Hydra Spire favored combat challenges. Spire design wasn’t a main focus of the course, but we’d get bits and pieces about it to help prepare us for secondary Judgments, if we decided to take any.

I tried to absorb what I could, but that iron-haired student kept drawing my gaze. Once again, I felt like there was something about him that was almost familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. Something about his eyes, maybe? Or…his stance?

I frowned, trying to place it, but without results.

He gave me one last look as the class ended, then left, almost as if he was inviting me to follow.

I didn’t.

I’d had enough strange encounters and ambushes for the last year.

I went straight home.

CHAPTER XII – DUEL

The next morning was just more simple physical training, but my first major class of the day was on a subject that I’d been surprisingly excited about.

As expected, Lord Teft didn’t bother with a traditional classroom. Instead, we met just outside the large arena where we’d fought with the enchanted tiles on the floor. At a glance, those enchanted tiles had seemingly been replaced with ordinary ones during the break between semesters, and I had to wonder if they were sitting around in storage somewhere.

…And if so, if that storage area had years and years of other enchanted tiles. Presumably, they’d been doing similar things for years, and Enchanters had been building more and more of them.

How valuable would thousands and thousands of enchanted tiles be? Were they repurposed somehow? If I could get my hands on them…

As the bell rang to signal the start of class, my mind snapped into focus.

Lord Teft looked much as he had in the previous year, but in spite of his typical confidence, there was something uneven about the way he was standing. It took me a moment to realize that he was subtly leaning on his dueling cane, not particularly heavily, but enough that it seemed like he might have needed it to support his weight.

His wounds from Mizuchi, I realized. He still hasn’t fully recovered.

I briefly debated if I should ask him about them at some point, then hurriedly dismissed the idea. It wasn’t like I had more resources to heal him than he could have managed on his own. My own healing abilities were laughable, and while I did have a budding and undefinable relationship with Sheridan Theas, I wasn’t sure if I was at the point where I felt comfortable asking them to assist with healing other people that I wasn’t particularly close with.

The students were gathered around Lord Teft in a loose formation, much like we would have just before starting one of our major dueling events. I recognized most of the people there from last year, but there were a smattering of new faces. Some of these were presumably from Teft’s other first-year dueling classes in the previous year. Those didn’t worry me too much, unless maybe one of those groups contained whoever had beaten Meltlake’s simulacrum in the mid-terms. I was very curious about who had managed that and how.

As intriguing as that was, I was more worried about the third-years.

Two full teams of six of them stood alongside us, clear from their black uniforms and near-ubiquitous Sunstone-level auras. That level of power meant they’d been among the top students in the second year, since hitting Sunstone in the second year was fairly rare.

…Or, it had been, up until Meltlake had decided to shake the foundations of our society. I couldn’t be certain, but I was guessing that we’d see close to half the class at Sunstone-level before the end of the year. Maybe even a few Citrines.

…Could Mara make it there? Could I?

I pushed that thought aside as Teft began to speak.

“You’ve all been in my class before, so I won’t bore myself with any lengthy introductions. This year will focus on three versus three and six versus six matches. You may begin by forming teams of three. You have ten minutes. After that, we will begin our first round of team practice.”

Teams of three. That means…

I glanced at Mara, Sera, and Patrick. There were four of us. That meant someone was going to be left out, wasn’t it?

Sera solved the problem easily enough. “Mara and I will split off and grab someone, assuming you boys can find someone to help keep you intact?”

Patrick and I glanced at each other.

“Uh, sure, Sera.” Patrick managed to look only marginally disappointed. “That should be fine.”

“Relax, we’ll be back for sixes.” Mara extended a fist toward Patrick. He grinned and punched his own fist into hers, surprisingly hard. They laughed together, then Sera and Mara split off. I blinked at the strange gesture. Must have been something Keras taught them. Seemed like his kind of thing.

“So…” Patrick glanced around. “We need a third. And so do they. What do you think?”

I pondered for a moment. “Sera is going to go ask Roland. Assuming he isn’t busy, that’ll net them a Diviner.”

I confirmed that plan with a glance in their direction — and yeah, they were heading straight for Roland.

That meant Roland wasn’t an option for us, which was a little bad, because I didn’t feel like I really knew anyone else. Sure, I recognized virtually everyone from the previous dueling class, including some good prospective matches like Kyra Dyson, Desmond Vyers, and Loria Marshall…but the three of them already seemed to be chatting with each other.

Rupert Kent was on his own, but there was absolutely zero chance I was going for that guy. I was half-surprised he’d graduated.

I saw someone that made me blink — a short, black-haired woman who carried a floor-length longbow. Normally, I didn’t have a good memory for strangers, but her appearance had burned itself into my memory in a way that only shared trauma could.

She’d been at the Winter Ball, in the guest section. She’d been one of the first people to break free of Mizuchi’s spells — and she’d fired glowing arrows of light at Mizuchi for the entire fight.

At the time, due to her position in the guest section, I’d assumed she’d been a guest herself — but from the second-year uniform she now wore, presumably she’d just been over there to talk to someone.

…Or maybe she really wasn’t a student, and she was here for our protection? Anyone who had broken free from Mizuchi as fast as she had must have been extraordinary by student standards, probably Sunstone-or-higher at the time the Winter Ball had occurred.

Maybe she’s a foreign student, like Jin, who got her attunement early? Or someone like Derek, that took her Judgment years early in another spire?

She was a little on the pale side for a Valian, but not as extreme as Keras, and that didn’t mean anything. Mara was pale, too, after all. Black hair didn’t say anything, it was common everywhere.

I probably would have approached her out of sheer curiosity, but she already had a clear team. She stood with a girl with short coppery hair and a tall man in what looked like a stereotypical wizard outfit, complete with black robes and a wide-brimmed hat.

A quick glance at their group with Detect Aura showed me…nothing at all. Clear auras, like Quartz-level attuned would have.

There was absolutely no way that black-haired woman was a Quartz, unless she was hiding some other power source like a crystal mark, so that made me even more suspicious.

I’ll definitely keep an eye on them.

I glanced at the third-years, but I didn’t recognize any. Even if I had, though, I didn’t know any of the older students well enough to bother approaching them. If my old dorm chief or one of the people from the final exams had been there, I might have considered it, but…

Two or three minutes passed as I scanned the crowd, evaluating, before finally someone else took the initiative that I lacked.

Someone I’d noticed, but deliberately avoided.

“Greetings and felicitations! I’ve observed that you appear to lack a third team member at this time. Is that an accurate assessment?”

Iron-hair.

He’d been watching from toward the back of the crowd when we’d started, but I’d known he was there. I’d just been sort of hoping he wouldn’t notice me. This was, of course, unlikely, given that he’d been staring at me throughout every encounter we’d had.

…And there had been a surprising number of those encounters, given how short of a time period it had been since I’d first noticed him.

Sharing three classes with one person wasn’t that unlikely — Patrick and I had randomly ended up in three classes together last year, after all. But something about his level of interest made me wonder if our overlapping schedules were more than a mere coincidence.

Fortunately, Patrick’s usual bright and unflappable demeanor was enough to rescue me from the momentary awkwardness of the meeting. “We sure are! I’m Patrick Wayland-Cadence. I’m an Elementalist. You?”

Patrick extended a hand.

Iron-hair stared at it as if he’d never noticed Patrick’s presence until that moment, and also had never previously encountered a handshake.

After a moment, he took Patrick’s hand and shook it vigorously. “Patrick Wayland-Cadence! It’s such a pleasure to meet you. I understand that you’re a personal apprentice to Chancellor Meltlake?”

That drew some attention from the people around us.

“That’s…uh, yeah, that’s right.” Patrick smiled. It wasn’t necessarily a secret, but he didn’t like flaunting it, both out of humility and a good degree of social understanding that I lacked. “I’m very lucky that she’s been kind enough to offer me some guidance.”

“Oh! I’m sure it’s very well-deserved! Everyone says such great things about your potential.” His eyes widened for a moment as he finally released Patrick’s hand. “Th…that sword! Where’d you get something like that?”

“Oh, this?” Patrick gave a proud smile. “This is Bright Reflection. It’s a replica of—”

“Dawnbringer! The Sacred Sword of Light! It’s such a fantastic copy. I’ve never seen one that looks this much like her before.”

There was something strange about iron-hair’s intensity and…wait.

Her?

How many people knew that Dawnbringer was sapient?

Alarm bells rang louder and louder in my mind.

“I’m sorry,” I cut in, “I didn’t catch your name. I’m Corin Cadence. An Enchanter.”

Iron-hair turned to me, his eyes meeting mine. “Oh, I know. I’ve been watching you for some time now!”

I blinked, not expecting that admission. “…You have? Why?”

“Oh, primarily because of your crystal m—”

My hand shot up faster than I’d expected it could to raise a finger in a “hush” gesture. His eyes widened in surprise, but he shut up quickly.

“That’s private,” I explained. “Understand?”

He blinked, then nodded once. I lowered my hand.

“I apologize for my improper conduct. Off to a bad start, aren’t I?” He gave a nervous laugh. “I, uh, hold on, let me change my stance a bit.”

A strange colloquialism, one I wasn’t familiar with.

“Who are you?” I pressed.

“Oh, right, right.” He blinked. “Of course, forgive me. It’s not my name exactly, but you can call me Lute. And I’m, uh, a swordsman?”

I gave him a quizzical look. “Loot like taking things from someone, or Lute like the musical instrument?”

“Oh! How clever of you to quickly establish the double meaning. It’s both, but it’s written like the latter? And—”

“Your time is almost up,” Teft announced.

I winced. “Listen, we need to find a third team member, and…”

Lute looked at me hopefully. “Oh, please pick me! I won’t disappoint you. I mean, probably. I don’t actually know what your standards are for performance, but from an objective standpoint, compared to the other people here…I don’t think it’s likely that you’d find my abilities to be lacking. Not to be condescending, of course, or diminish from the abilities of anyone here, it’s just…”

I was impressed by his nervous rant’s scope, but I cut him off again. “Swordsman. Did you mean Swordmaster? Swordsman isn’t an attunement.”

Lute laughed nervously. “I suppose it isn’t. But I’m not supposed to…”

Detect Aura.

I glanced at him and saw an aura that was…iron-colored, like his hair.

That didn’t match any attunement color. It didn’t match anything I’d heard of, really, except…

Something clicked.

My eyes widened.

He’s not another serpent like Mizuchi, is he? He’s…

I glanced at his side, noting once again that he wore an elaborate sword on his hip. No runes were visible while it was sheathed, but it had a very large white crystal in place of the pommel and a matching one in the crossguard.

His hands were gloved, but I thought I could see a hint of a stronger glow from his left.

“I’m not sure we can take that as an answer,” Patrick said awkwardly. “It’s okay if you can’t tell us here, but maybe you could whisper, or we could walk—”

Release Detect Aura.

Transcendent Detect Aura.

His aura shifted into a brilliant mixture of a broad variety of colors. Some were unusual, like an iron aura that matched the shade of his hair. I suspected that was some kind of variety of metal mana, maybe, even if it didn’t match the traditional color scheme for a composite mana type.

More importantly, I did recognize an odd mixture of green and purple. It was obscure enough that I was able to pick it out immediately, since I was seeing it in three places at once — it was the same color that emanated from the crystal mark on my own hand.

And even more interestingly, his sword clearly had the same aura. The scabbard he was wearing had a strong blue sheen to it, suppressing other colors within.

Release Transcendent Detect Aura.

“It’s fine,” I declared. I gave Patrick a meaningful look. “I think we’re going to get along with Lute just fine.”

Lute looked like I’d just given him a birthday gift he’d always wanted but never thought to ask for. “You…really?”

“Really,” I said. “But after class, we’re going to need to have a talk.”

“I would love that! I have so much I need to ask you about! You both have such important—”

“It’s time,” Lord Teft declared. “Students, write down your teams. Then,” he gave a wicked grin, “we’ll see if you got out of shape over the winter.”

***

We wrote down our team. I eyed the competition.

Obviously, Sera and Mara’s team were a known quantity. I wasn’t sure if Roland had something beyond a standard Carnelian-level Diviner attunement — a quick glance didn’t show me any other attunement auras — but the other two would be difficult to deal with. Sera’s mana pool still wasn’t sufficient to handle long engagements against Patrick or me, but it didn’t necessarily need to be. Mara was a Sunstone with tons of mana to spare and an attunement that was extremely combat heavy. I anticipated that Mara would try to handle any front-line combat on her own, while Sera and Roland would take strategic shots from behind.

I was less worried about most of the other second-year teams, although there was one team that sported another Sunstone — a tall black-skinned man carrying a longbow that was almost his full height. From the color of the auras of his teammates, they weren’t far off from Sunstone either, making them exceptional for second years. It was unusual to see multiple people with bows in the class — they weren’t very popular in Valia.

Might be more foreign attunements in this class than last year. That’ll add some variety, at least.

The absolute biggest threats, as far as I was concerned, were the third-year teams. I counted eight Sunstone auras out of the twelve of them, and the others weren’t far off. One of the four teams was solid Sunstone. Even with all our advantages, I didn’t think we’d be able to crack that.

Not playing fair, at any rate.

“Is this everyone?” Teft lifted his paper. No responses meant confirmation. “Good. Line up. I’m handing out new shield sigils before you begin. Your standard school-issued ones might have sufficed for the first year, but as I’m sure you’ve realized, an attuned’s offensive abilities scale faster than their defensive ones. With Sunstone-level fighters, we’ll need to take additional precautions.”

Some of the students murmured a bit in the aftermath of that, and I realized after hearing some repetition of “Sunstone” that not everyone had the ability to perceive the auras that I did, and thus, not everyone was aware that we had nearly a dozen Sunstone-level combatants in the class.

We lined up. I got my new sigil. Teft also handed each of us a device to clip onto it that I recognized as one of the safety devices used to teleport people out of the arena automatically when the sigil was depleted.

I frowned as I examined the runes.

“…Can I use my own sigil instead of this one?” I asked.

Teft shook his head. “This is a significantly stronger sigil than the first-year one with four times the capacity.”

“I know.” I nodded, then pulled off one of my own custom sigils. “It’s a downgrade for me. See?”

I heard some murmurs from the people behind me in the line and instantly regretted doing this in front of other people.

Teft took the sigil, glancing it over with a curious look. “You crafted this?”

“I did.” I nodded.

“Then it is a part of your personal power as an Enchanter, and thus, approved for use in duels. You’ll still need to attach the clip.”

“Understood, thank you.” I nodded hastily. “And, uh, can the rest of my team—”

“Don’t push your luck, Cadence. You can use your own crafted sigils, but the rest of the class uses standard ones. Unless we have any other enterprising Enchanters?”

No replies to that.

I walked away with a strange combination of embarrassment and pride.

***

“Combatants, enter the arena!”

I watched as Sera, Mara, and Roland entered the arena from the left side.

…And no one entered from the opposite side.

Are they invisible, maybe? Or…

Oh, no.

We’ve been misdirected again, haven’t we?

Lord Teft smiled as he overlooked the arena. “Today, we’re warming up with a classic team building exercise.”

Sera was already inching along the arena wall to the right, clearly having established the change in challenge.

“Before fighting your opponents, you must first understand yourselves. And, to that end, your first match will be a free-for-all against the other members of your own team. No need to bow, just begin.”

Sera snapped her fingers. A wall of ice shot up in front of her immediately, then she opened her mouth to begin an incantation.

Mara rushed Sera in a blur, leaping to clear the ice wall in a single bound. Her hands blurred as she punched a pair of bursts of mana from Roland’s dueling canes out of the air, then she landed with feet against the back of Sera’s wall and kicked off it, launching herself straight at Sera with fists gleaming.

Vanniv met Mara in mid-air, grabbing her fists mid-swing. “Oh, hello!” He swiveled in mid-air and hurled Mara backward, straight at the stone arena wall. She course-corrected in mid-air, landing with her feet against the stone wall like she’d done with the wall of ice, then kicking back off of it.

Sera conjured a hail of shards of ice as Mara descended, forcing Mara to cross her arms to block. Mara’s shroud flashed and extended outward, dispersing much of the force from the icicles before they could make contact with her barrier, but the slivers that connected still caused minor cracks.

Roland watched the ongoing exchange cautiously from the opposite side of the wall, lifting his canes at first with a look like he was going to try to blow through the wall, then shaking his head and walking all the way to the opposite side of the arena.

As Mara landed, she kicked the ground, sending a blade-like flash of energy across the stone. Sera’s eyes widened fractionally as she blasted herself to the side with a gust of wind to avoid the cutting force, then stumbled backward and raised her hands as Mara charged at blistering speed.

Vanniv hurled a blast of lightning at Mara from behind. Mara’s fist flashed backward and knocked it out of the air without even looking at it.

That only bought Sera a second, but she used it well, jumping and then soaring upward.

Flight is going to take a lot of mana out of her, and—

A bolt of mana from Roland clipped Sera from the side as soon as she cleared over the wall. Sera sent Roland a glare that was colder than the ice she’d conjured, but he simply shrugged and then opened fire again.

Sera wheeled to the side to avoid the incoming spray of bolts from Roland’s two canes, raising her hands to begin conjuring a larger attack. “Spirit of eternal flame, warden of the western wind—”

That was new.

Unfortunately, it also wasn’t fast enough.

Mara couldn’t fly, but she didn’t need to. With a burst of enhancement, she launched herself into the air — then her boots flashed and she ran forward in mid-air and slammed a fist straight into Sera’s gut.

I winced at the impact. Sera’s shroud and the shield sigils dampened it, but it still looked like it hurt. The cracks spreading across her shield showed that it was a much more significant blow than what Sera had managed to hit Mara with.

Sera flew backward — and Mara simply kept running in mid-air, pulling back her fist to prepare for another swing the moment Sera stabilized.

The levitation boots from our spire run last year. I’d almost forgotten about them. Patrick has flying boots, too, now, and Sera can fly with her own magic. I’m falling behind in aerial mobility. Hm.

Sera clapped her hands. A blast of omnidirectional wind both neutralized the latest incoming bolts of mana from Roland and sent Mara flying backward.

Then with a snap of Sera’s fingers, Mara plummeted to the arena floor.

Mara hit the ground hard, more cracks showing in her shield. As she bent her legs to jump, she found her legs frozen to the ground by a sudden burst of ice from behind.

Mara turned her head.

Vanniv gave her a little wave. “This is really quite unfair, isn’t it? Why, even against me alone, what chance does either—ow!”

A pair of bolts from Roland smashed into one of Vanniv’s wings. It didn’t do any obvious damage, but he did list to one side in mid-air. “That was very rude!”

As Vanniv conjured a bolt of lightning to hurl at Roland, Sera shot upward further, strain showing on her face.

Mara grimaced, took a breath. Then, her entire body began to glow.

“Up we go.”

There was a loud crack as Mara exploded upward, ice splintering around her.

Sera pointed downward. “Wall.”

A wall of ice appeared in mid-air and dropped straight toward Mara.

Mara let out a roar, pulled back an arm, and punched right through it.

Sera’s eyes widened just slightly. She only had an instant before Mara reached her, and she whispered something just before Mara punched straight through her chest.

My eyes widened in terror at the sight of Mara’s arm passing straight through my sister’s body—

Then I processed what had happened. There was no blood, no injury, no damaged shroud or shield.

Sera passed straight through Mara, solidified, and then put a hand on Mara’s back.

“Freeze.”

Mara was instantly enveloped in a block of ice and dropped from the sky.

When the ice hit the ground, it shattered—and Mara’s shield shattered right along with it.

She vanished from the arena.

Roland dodged a blast from Vanniv, took one look at Mara vanishing and Sera spinning toward him with a murderous grin, then raised both hands. “I concede.”

And with that, the first match of the season was over.

***

“That was amazing!” Patrick cheered from the stands. “Way to go, Sera!”

I clapped right along with him.

“Fascinating. Miss Cadence was clearly inferior in overall power to Miss Callahan, but by exploiting a combination of misdirection and the weakness in her opponent’s shroud at close range, she was able to take the advantage. Incorporeality is an unusual power for a Summoner to have at her level. I will need to inquire as to how she obtained it.”

I knew the answer to that, of course: Susan the Spectre. Sera must have Invoked Susan to go incorporeal, either when she’d whispered right before she was hit, or perhaps she’d performed the invocation before the match even started and just cast the incorporeality spell at that point. I wasn’t sure exactly how that worked.

I was a little surprised that Sera was showing off one of her strongest tricks in such an early match, though.

She probably has something to prove, I realized. She was nearly incapacitated for the entire half of the last year, and she was pretty embarrassed by her performance. Winning an early match like this helps show that she still belongs in a dueling class.

… I’m not sure that was the wisest strategy in the long run.

I could see the third-year students in the crowd watching Sera intently now, scrutinizing. They’d be working on countermeasures for her ability to go incorporeal now that they were aware of it, as would any of the other high-level students present.

…But maybe that was part of Sera’s plan, too.

If that strange, aborted incantation was any indication, she still had a few more tricks up her sleeve.

I didn’t have a chance to question her about it right away. Sera’s team went straight to the recovery room, the next team cycled in, and we shifted our focus to watching the next match.

Three more matches came and went…and then it was time for me to step into the arena against my retainer…and the strange swordsman with iron hair.

***

We were familiar with the idea of what we were doing now, which gave me a chance to plan.

Unfortunately, that plan was limited by my absolute lack of any information about our opponent’s capabilities. My best guess was “something like Keras or possibly one of the sacred swords, but with transcendence mana”, which was not in any way encouraging.

So, I went with something basic and reliable — flagrantly cheating.

“Begin!”

The moment Teft made his announcement from outside the arena, I began to form mana threads. If I could subtly extend one to touch the clip on Lute’s shield sigil, I could teleport him straight out of the arena without any need for extended combat.

Admittedly, that would limit my ability to learn about his capabilities for future matches, but I could do that in other ways. For the moment, I wanted to win.

I needed a win.

Patrick flew upward immediately, trying to get distance. That was probably a wise move, given that I was more adept at close range than he was and Lute had identified himself as a swordsman.

Lute watched Patrick soar upward without any obvious concern. While he watched Patrick’s movement, I subtly dropped my teleportation anchor on the arena floor. I didn’t know if they would see or hear it, but I hoped not.

Patrick reached upward, beginning to conjure lightning between his hands. He didn’t hurl the attack immediately, however. He glanced down to watch both Lute and myself, seemingly waiting for a good opening to strike.

Not a bad strategy.

Lute, however, showed no sign of concern. Instead of drawing the ornate sword on his hip, Lute simply stuck his hands in his pockets and leaned up against one of the arena walls.

A trap, obviously. If he’s against the walls, maybe he has some ability to reshape them?

I cautiously extended my shrouds to overlap my shield sigils, much as Mara had. I couldn’t do it with the same level of finesse that Mara had, and I’d have to dedicate a bit of concentration to maintaining it or the shrouds would “snap” back into position, but it was a good tactic to steal. Then, I took a few steps closer, dueling cane raised. I regretted that I didn’t have my transference sword anymore, given that both Selys-Lyann and Mr. Stabbington were too dangerous to use in practice matches like this one. Eventually, I’d have to make some kind of “dueling safe” weapon, but for the moment, this would have to do.

Lute eyed my approach without concern. “Please, go ahead and team up against me. No need to take the time to discuss it, that’s the obvious conclusion.”

I glanced upward at Patrick to see his response, just for an instant—

Then Lute was in front of me, throwing an uppercut at my chin.

Jump!

I blasted myself backward purely on instinct, causing the punch to merely clip my chin rather than impacting directly. Even so, the glancing blow ripped through my shroud and left a long crack in my shield as it manifested.

When I finished sliding backward from the jump spell, Lute was standing casually again, his hands back in his pockets.

“Hm.” He nodded, more to himself than to me. “Reaction speed is satisfactory.”

Patrick threw a blast of lightning at Lute from the sky. Lute stepped out of the way just far enough for the voltaic charge to slam into the ground next to him.

I raised my cane and followed Patrick’s lightning with a series of bolts of my own. Each time, Lute simply stepped out of the way or shifted his body to allow them to pass harmlessly by him.

As he simply tilted his head to the side to avoid my last blast, I charged in, extending the blade from my dueling cane

Lute’s right arm blurred and slapped the cane right out of my hand.

I blinked. That didn’t usually happen.

Then I was dancing backward as Lute’s other arm swept upward, projecting a blade of pure essence.

That technique, at least, was more than familiar.

As I shifted to the side, I swept my own right hand horizontally, forming an essence blade in mid-motion. Lute’s eyes widened in surprise for the first time, but he raised his own essence blade and parried my strike easily.

“Fascinating.” We pressed our blades against each other for a moment before he gave a slight push, throwing me back a step.

While I stumbled, he lunged, nearly jamming his essence blade straight through my right shoulder. Ducking it would have been obvious, I’d learned my essence blade from a different kind of fighter, and I stole another technique right along with it.

…Or a rough approximation of it, at least.

Haste. Accelerated Computation.

I raised my blade as if to parry, then, in the heartbeat before our aura blades met, I let my own essence blade vanish. Lute’s blade passed straight through the air without the resistance he was expecting.

Incoming blade, angle—

I twisted to avoid the incoming blade and lunged at the same time, reforming my own essence blade in motion.

It was a perfectly-executed counter, one with the kind of beautiful timing and precision that I often strived for in practice, but rarely managed outside of a controlled environment. Most students our age would have been caught off-guard—

“Huh.”

Lute caught my aura blade in his free hand.

Let me remind you that my aura blade technique isn’t solid. The composition is a mixture of grey mana and transference — the latter of which gives an impression of solidity by repelling things that make contact with it. Anything touching it should have been cut, deflected, or both—

But Lute simply held it.

I might have been truly surprised if I hadn’t seen someone who could do that sort of thing before.

If I’d suspected some similarity between Lute and Keras before, this all but confirmed it.

That confirmation was no comfort. Not when Lute’s lips twisted upward in the kind of confident smile that told me that something very bad was about to happen if I didn’t get out of the way.

I didn’t get out of the way.

When Lute shoved my sword downward and lunged in, an open palm aimed at the center of my chest, I calculated the time it would take for impact—

Then whipped my mana threads straight at his shield sigil.

Lute was gone a second later.

…But not because I’d made contact and teleported him out of the arena. No, he’d reacted to my incoming threads and vanished backward, reappearing half-way across the arena with a look of extreme curiosity on his face.

“What were those? And that blade making technique. How did you—” His eyes widened fractionally. “Of course. I’ve neglected an extremely obvious connection, haven’t I? If you’re a wielder—”

Patrick clapped his hands.

A gust of wind slammed into Lute from behind — the first attack that seemed to actually connect with him.

Lute didn’t stumble forward so much as “walk with the impact”, but that still took him forward right into where a sphere of lightning was manifesting in mid-air. Lute pulled back an arm, his aura blade ready, to cleave through it, but the orb detonated before he had a chance.

The first cracks appeared in Lute’s shield.

…And his expression went dark.

The change was instantaneous and jarring. His good humor vanished, his eyes narrowing as he trembled, turning upward.

“You hit me.”

Patrick grinned, raising his hands to conjure a javelin of lightning in each. “You bet! That’s what you get for ignoring me.”

“That behavior will be corrected.” Lute reached up and pushed his glasses backward. “As will yours.”

Patrick hurled the lightning — or, at least, he tried to.

Before he managed to finish either throw, Lute swung his essence blade in mid-air—

And Patrick’s shield snapped.

There was nothing. No projectile, no clear source of the damage. Just a swing in mid-air that seemed to cause arbitrary damage to a distant target.

How—

I had no time to process it.

Before Patrick had even vanished from the destruction of his shield, Lute was swinging in my direction.

I didn’t know what he was doing, but if I couldn’t even see it, I couldn’t block or dodge it with any degree of reliability.

Without the time to speak, I let my mana threads do the work.

Return.

A thread connected to my circlet activated the item, teleporting me to where I’d dropped the teleportation anchor near the arena entrance.

I reappeared just in time to see — and gawk at — the massive cut that had torn through a chunk of the arena wall.

That stone was heavily enchanted. I knew because I’d seen the runes while working on the tile setup with Professor Vellum for the arena matches in the previous year.

Doing that kind of damage with an invisible, near-instant swing…

I tightened my jaw.

If that was anything like how Keras used his disintegration powers, I absolutely could not afford to get hit by it. There was no guarantee my shields and shroud would be enough to protect me.

I was half-way to considering conceding the match when Lute turned toward me, a quizzical look on his face. “A teleportation item. I didn’t see it. Another miscalculation.” He shook his head, then ran a hand through his hair. “Father would be disappointed.”

Those words hit me harder than I expected in spite of the fact that he was clearly talking about himself.

Father would be disappointed if I quit this match — or any match — before finishing it.

My hands balled into fists.

But you know what? I don’t really care what he thinks. Not anymore.

“I—”

Lord Teft spoke before I had a chance. “Time is up! Next group.”

…I’d…forgotten there was a time limit.

Lute frowned fractionally, turned briefly to Teft as if to protest, then shook his head. His essence blade vanished, his apparent cheer reappearing as he approached me.

“That,” Lute said, “was a rare surprise. I will be watching you closely, Corin Cadence.”

As Lute left the arena whistling an unfamiliar tune, I wondered if I had made a terrible mistake.

***

After the match, I gathered my things and made my way back to the stands. Patrick and I met up to discuss the fight briefly, but Lute didn’t rejoin us — he simply wandered off somewhere after our battle concluded.

I wasn’t sure what to make of that.

We watched the rest of the matches for the day, but I remained distracted by what I had seen.

Who was Lute? And, perhaps more importantly, what was he?

I considered asking Keras, of course, but that would have to wait. As I exited the class area after the final match, I was interrupted.

“Just a moment, Master Cadence.”

I froze, my shoulders sagging. Apparently, Lord Teft wasn’t going to let me leave the first day of Dueling Class without questioning me after all.

I wasn’t in the mood for it, but I turned around, ready to deal with whatever form of absurd hazing he had in store this time.

Wordlessly, Patrick stopped right next to me. I didn’t say anything, but I tried to give him a weak smile of gratitude. As most of the students filed out of the area, I was pretty sure that Sera and Mara had also slowed down their walking, but they didn’t stay right next to me like Patrick did.

“A word in private, if you would?” Lord Teft beckoned toward me.

Mentally, I checked through my available defensive equipment. I didn’t have Selys-Lyann on me — it was, as far as I knew, still banned from being used in classrooms — but I was hardly unprepared if he decided to do something. Honestly, if he attacked me, I’d probably just teleport out of the area.

I was tired of being pushed around. Very, very tired.

“It’s fine,” I told Patrick. It wasn’t fine, and he must have sensed that, given his questioning look in response. “I’ll catch up soon.”

Patrick hesitated for a moment, then nodded and gave me the fakest smile I’d ever seen on his face. “Sure, Corin. See you soon.”

He went to meet the others.

Teft watched the crowd depart, then turned and nodded to me. “Good. We should have a discussion.”

“Is this where you tell me that an Enchanter has no place in your class? Because I figured we’d resolved that last—”

He raised a hand. “Stop. It’s nothing of the sort. The opposite, in fact.”

I blinked, legitimately caught off-guard. “What do you mean?”

Teft sighed, leaning heavily on his cane. He looked older, then. Worn, vulnerable, in a way I’d never seen. “Do you know why I was hard on you when you first joined my class, Master Cadence?”

“That seems fairly straightforward. You didn’t think an Enchanter could keep up. I suppose it’s more tolerable now that I have a second attunement, but…”

Lord Teft pulled off a glove, exposing a rune. One that should have been exceedingly obvious.

A Sunstone-level Enchanter mark.

“…You…you’re…”

I’d always assumed that Teft simply had developed some kind of spell for recharging shield sigils. It was possible for people to recharge items without being an Enchanter, if they had the right mana types.

But those teleporting clips for the sigils, and the higher-capacity sigils themselves…

What if he’d been the one who had made them?

Teft gave me a fractional smile. “Once upon a time, there was a freshly-attuned Enchanter that wished with all his heart to be a duelist. During his first year at Lorian Heights, he joined the dueling class. Throughout the entire year, he faced ridicule. Sabotage. It was half-way through the year when older students began challenging him, skirting the rules of fairness to inflict as much injury as possible.”

I frowned. “But this student…he persisted…”

“No.” Teft said with sudden anger. “After someone plunged a blade through his hand, his attunement ceased to function, and he quit. Rendered useless, he barely managed to finish his first year at all. And, in despair, he took a second Judgment between the years.”

I was suddenly more attentive. “…And earned a Shaper mark?”

“Indeed. But he was starting over — his Enchanter mark no longer worked, and his Shaper mark was Quartz-level. He never rejoined the dueling class. His will to fight had been broken at the hands of his peers.”

Teft absently slipped the glove back on his hand, but not before I noted the large scar on the other side of his palm, where a blade might have once passed through.

“Then…when you challenged me on the first day…”

“There could be no doubt about your abilities, Master Cadence. If I had not tested you, others would have, in more brutal fashion. Perhaps it was unkind to put you under such pressure without warning, and for that, you have my apologies. In my haste to prevent something familiar from happening again, I made assumptions. I did not know about your background to the degree I believed. If I did…”

“What do you mean, my background?”

Teft’s hands tightened around the top of his cane. “A father who publicly challenges his son to a duel is no father at all.”

The statement was so clear, so definitive, that I momentarily froze upon hearing it. It was so unambiguous, so certain, that I almost couldn’t believe it had come from him.

It had been strange enough getting support from Keras. But for someone like Teft, a local, a noble, a Shaper himself…

I had no idea what to say.

So, predictably, I said nothing at all.

After a moment of silence, Teft nodded, more to himself then to me. “There has been significant discussion of your upcoming duel among the higher-born families. Most, even among my own house, do not agree with my stance. I cannot overstate my disappointment in that fact. As I discussed the situation with others, I learned more context about your father, your family, and your training. Things that put your previous decisions — and some of your injuries — into perspective.”

Absently, I reached upward and traced the line of a small scar under my jaw, one of the few that was visible while I was fully clothed. It was almost gone now, four years after it had been inflicted and with healing having treated the worst of it. But I remembered when my jaw had been broken. I remembered the taste of blood as the cane slammed into my face and rattled my teeth. It wasn’t the type of childhood memory that one easily forgot.

“…What’s this about?” I asked hastily, trying to brush the memory aside.

“Forgive me, I should have been more direct. And I apologize if I have overreached with my attempts to understand the situation. But…young Master Cadence, I would like to offer you my assistance.”

“Assist me how, exactly?” I frowned. “You can’t expect to fight on my behalf.”

He shook his head. “No, nothing of the sort. I am aware you would not accept such an offer, just as you turned down the foreigner’s offer for assistance. I must admit, I was surprised both by his offer and your refusal, however. You must be aware that Sir Selyrian, in spite of his questionable values, would have been far better prepared for such a duel than you are.”

I briefly processed the fact that he’d used the title “Sir” for Keras, which was strange, but probably technically accurate — Keras was a knight in his homeland, after all. I couldn’t get distracted thinking about that, though.

“It’s my fight. I won’t let someone else step in.” I tried to sound resolute, but I tasted the blood in my mouth again as I spoke.

“Good.” Teft said simply. “That is more likely to bring the issue to a permanent close, one way or another. As your dueling teacher, it is my obligation to ensure you are prepared for any battle you must fight. And…as someone who remembers what it was like to be a young Enchanter, I have other reasons to want to help you fight.”

“Then…you think I can win?” I asked.

“Only under the narrowest of possible circumstances could you manage a win against a Citrine-level Shaper. Fortunately,” he smiled more genuinely than before, “it is much easier to defeat a Citrine-level Shaper when you have another to practice against.”

Everything finally clicked. “You want to play the role of my father in training simulations.”

“I might take issue with the phrasing you used, but yes.”

I nodded slowly. There was potential there. “Would that work? Not all Shapers fight the same way.”

“Master Cadence, do you really think there are enough Citrine-level Shapers that are both involved in the profession of dueling that I would be unfamiliar with Magnus Cadence’s dueling preferences? Beyond that, I am certain that you are familiar with many elements of his techniques, both from your previous training and observing him. Memory crystals of his public bouts are also available. I will not be able to serve as a perfect proxy, of course — there are fundamentals in our abilities, equipment, and style that are too distinct. But I believe that training against a live opponent with an analogous skillset would serve you better as practice than simply training against your friends or summoned monsters.”

He was absolutely right.

I still hesitated. Involving Lord Teft would add an additional layer of political complexity to the situation, especially if others found out…and they would. Beyond that…I just didn’t know him that well, and I didn’t like the idea of owing him a debt. It seemed like he was being honest, and if he really was an Enchanter himself, he had his reasons to help me.

How had he gotten his damaged attunement fixed? It was Sunstone-level now, meaning he’d gotten it working, but perhaps it had taken years, since it was behind his Citrine-level Shaper mark.

I dismissed that thought as currently unimportant.

For now, I had a decision to make…but one with an obvious answer. I bowed my head. “It would be my honor to train with you, Lord Teft.”

“Good. Let us discuss your training schedule.”

…This wasn’t going to be fun, but it was the best chance I had.

CHAPTER XIII – SPIRIT STUDIES

When I went home that night, I looked for Keras to ask him about “Lute”. I wasn’t sure if Keras would recognize the name — it was almost definitely a pseudonym — but it seemed worth at least asking, given their obvious similarities.

Unfortunately, Keras was out again that evening with Derek, so I was left to contemplate the issue further.

The idea of someone else in the world having powers even similar to Keras was a little terrifying, although admittedly, there seemed to be enough subtle distinctions in their behavior and abilities that I doubted that they were using exactly the same type of magic.

Either way, I had to be very careful. Lute was ostensibly on “my team”, but if he was anything like what I was imagining, his agenda would go far beyond the scope of a simple dueling class.

***

A little bit later, Sera knocked on my door.

“You need something?” I asked after opening the door.

“I should be the one asking you that question. What was that with Teft? Are you okay?”

I blinked. Of all the things I expected out of Sera, concern wasn’t toward the top of the list.

Maybe that was unfair. It wasn’t like Sera had never expressed worries about my well-being before, but she generally padded it with humor, jabs, or both. There was none of that here.

The reason was obvious enough. When Teft had singled me out the first year, she’d had to step in to defend me along with Roland and Patrick. If he’d done something similar this time…

I raised a hand in a calming gesture. “It’s fine, he wasn’t trying to start a fight. Well, I suppose he technically was, but not in a bad way.”

Sera folded her arms. “A little clarity would help.”

“Oh, right. Sorry, sorry. So, he heard about what was happening with my upcoming duel…and he offered to practice with me.”

Sera made a thoughtful expression, then nodded, more to herself than to me. “…Yes, I suppose that makes sense. As another high-profile Citrine-level Shaper in the same profession as Father, he’s a comparable sparring partner, at least in some respects. And if Father loses, that will likely improve Teft’s comparative reputation in dueling circles. He has a vested interest in a positive outcome for you.”

“I, uh…that’s definitely all true, but I don’t think it was quite that cutthroat. Do you know that Teft is an Enchanter, too?”

“I’d surmised that based on the hazing on the first day of last year’s class and his casual recharging of shield sigils, yes.”

…I wished I’d realized it sooner myself. But Sera was always better at modeling people.

“Right. So, he apparently feels bad about how he handled that, and he probably thinks of me as being in a similar position to what he was when he first started dueling as an Enchanter.”

She wrinkled her nose. “A bit of a stretch, given your dissimilar secondary attunements and background, but I suppose that doesn’t really matter. As long as his desire to assist you is genuine, the rest is of little consequence. I say ‘little’ because you should also consider the downsides — most notably, Father is going to hear about this.”

I frowned. “Sure, students talk, and I wasn’t expecting to hide any private training…but is that really a problem?”

“It might be. At this point, Father probably isn’t taking your duel particularly seriously. He has little reason to. He clearly suspects you have a secondary attunement, based on your conversation at the Theas estate last year, but we don’t know if he’s gathered any details about it. At the moment, most of your training is being done here, in relative privacy. Granted, you’re in the dueling class itself, but that’s mundane enough that he may or may not bother looking into it. If he catches the fact that you’re training with one of his peers, that gives him significant reason to begin researching your general dueling performance and capabilities.”

“…Hm. That’s not a bad point. Still, I think that having a comparable training partner outweighs that potential downside. Can you think of other problems?”

“Certainly. There’s also the risk of injury, which is higher when fighting high-level opponents. Not something you’re likely to take as a deal breaker, considering that you routinely train with Derek and Keras, but those two are already acclimated to our abilities. Teft sees you in class, but he hasn’t had a chance to fight you directly since the start of last year — and we don’t know much about how aggressive he is.”

I nodded. “Yeah, fair. That is a risk, but I have healing spells. And if there’s something more severe, I suppose I could reach out to Deni.”

“Using pet names now, are we?” Sera’s lips turned up.

“I, uh, no. It’s just more of a nickname, right? I mean, isn’t that what both Derek and Keras call them?”

“Oh, my dear brother. Such innocence. I’d pat you on the head if you weren’t so vehemently opposed to human affection.”

I groaned. “Even if I wasn’t touch-averse, I think I’d rather keep affection to times when it isn’t intended to be demeaning.”

“But demeaning affection is an integral part of my role as a sibling!”

I rolled my eyes. “Well, at least you’re sounding like yourself again. When you first came over, you sounded so kind-hearted that I was about to start looking for the real Sera’s body.”

She put a hand to her chest. “Meaning you were worried about me? My heart is warmed by the sentiment.”

“…Okay, back on topic. You think I should say ‘no’ to Teft?”

“Not at all. I was merely talking about the elements you should be considering. You don’t typically think about social consequences…and I want to help with that. I’d like to help more in general. I owe you that.”

“…Owe me…hold on, I’m going to need a minute to get started on looking for the real Sera after all.”

“Ha-ha. Let me be sincere for a moment. Thank you, Corin. For the assistance with getting me help with healing my throat, for talking to Katashi on my behalf, for the items…you’ve done a lot for me, and it’s time I recognized that more directly. And while I’ve tried to do what I can to help you as well, none of it has been quite as tangible. Social modeling is something I can do for you for situations like this. And if there’s anything else you need a hand with, just let me know.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Such acknowledgements just…felt out-of-character for her, but I supposed we’d been through a lot, and she was coming off from feeling worried about Teft. And speaking of which… “You did help me with Teft on the first day of class. And you helped me reconnect with Patrick. I probably wouldn’t even be talking to him if you hadn’t convinced me, as awful as that may sound. So, uh, yeah. You’ve been helping. And you’re welcome?”

“Good. But I’d still like to help you further. And all that was quite some time ago.”

I nodded. It was harder for her to help me for a while due to her inability to speak, but I didn’t want to point that out and make her feel worse. Now that she was mostly capable of speaking normally again, she could use that skillset to assist me further…but there was something else I’d been thinking about that she was uniquely qualified to assist me with.

“I have an idea…but I’m not quite ready for it yet. Give me a little longer to do some reading. When I’m ready, I’ll let you know.”

“Should I ask what this dubious new plan of yours is?”

“Nah,” I grinned. “It’ll be more fun as a surprise.”

***

On the last day of my first week, I finally had a chance to meet with Professor Vellum for my long-neglected Selys-Lyann training. It started about exactly how you’d expect.

“The things I teach you today will be among the most important things you’ll ever learn. Naturally, I expect you to ignore my lessons until you make a crucial mistake. Just remember to think, ‘Vellum was right all along’ when that inevitably happens.” She waved toward a chair on the opposite side of her desk.

I raised an eyebrow. “Not going to go to a training field?”

“Goodness, no. If you’re expecting me to teach you some kind of martial art, you haven’t been paying attention. You have plenty of teachers for that sort of thing, for better or worse. Mostly worse, given the quality of our institutions, but I can only do so much.”

I took a seat. “I understand your objections to our enchanting curriculum, but you have broader issues?”

“Oh, you don’t want to open that door. We’ll be here all day. Suffice to say that Lorian Heights has a long history of slanted teachings and creative omissions. That’s not to say that any of the other universities are much better, of course, but the further you get from Valia, the less influence you tend to see from doctrine in education.”

“I’d assume Dalenos is even worse, then, if that’s your complaint?”

“Yes and no. They’re a theocracy, but their nation was founded by Artinians, rather than Mythralians…and knowledge of Artinia isn’t suppressed to the same degree as Mythralis.”

“Why is…no, you’re right. We’re going to end up talking about this all day if we get into it. Teach me how to use the sword safely.”

Vellum nodded. “To do that, you’ll need to understand the foundations of your problem. How much do you know about the spirit?”

“Virtually nothing, really. Spirit magic seems to be very versatile. I’ve heard about several applications for it — it’s involved with contract magic, for example, and it can be used to make yourself incorporeal. And then there’s Artinian spirit arts, which use the spirit somehow, but…” I shook my head. “I don’t really know a lot of details.”

“Good. The less you think you know, the fewer mistakes you’ll have to unlearn.” Vellum pulled out a sheet of paper, then drew something on it. A crude outline of a person.

Then, around that, she drew another outline. Then another. Then another. Layers, like…a cake? A person cake.

I frowned at the image. “What’s this?”

“This,” she waved at the drawing, “is you. Or, rather, a person in general.” She wrote “body” in the center of the drawing…then began labeling each of the layers. “Body. Shade. Spirit. Memory. You can think of these as core components to the self. The body is your physical form here, in this world. Each of the others is a reflection of the self that exists on another plane. Your shade is an echo of your physical self. The spirit is a manifestation of your magic. And your memory self is, of course, a mirror of your mind.”

I blinked. “Why? Why do we have those?”

Vellum raised an eyebrow. “That’s an advanced question, and one I wasn’t expecting to address right away. There’s considerable scholarly debate, but the most popular theory is that we were designed by the gods to have these additional layers as redundant backups for different parts of the self. The shade is not simply a mirror of the current self, for example — it is a version of yourself that is ‘undamaged’, at least in theory. Your connection with your shade assists you with recovering from harm by representing that ‘perfect’ state. In theory, the memory self and spirit self can serve similar functions.”

“You said that’s the most popular theory — is that what you believe?”

I earned a slight smile from Vellum with that one. “An excellent question. I have greater insight, of course, but these fundamentals are…not untrue, if somewhat basic. Each of these other selves have degrees of interaction with one another, and additional functions beyond their relationship to the body. This includes the spirit’s most famous role — serving as a means for the self to continue beyond the death of the body.”

“…Wait, is that a real thing? I’ve heard bits and pieces about the spirit plane, but…reincarnation? Ghosts? Wait, is resurrection magic possible? Could we…”

“We’re not talking about resurrection today, Cadence. And probably not ever, if you want to avoid a wide variety of fates worse than death.”

“…Could you be a little more specific about those?”

Vellum sighed. “I could, but that’s not what we’re here for. We’re not going to tinker with the afterlife — or afterlives, I should say, given the complexities of that subject matter — during this discussion. Your issue relates to the lives of the deceased, but not in that way.”

I grumbled a little, but conceded the point. “…Fine. For now. So, how does my issue relate to the dead, then?”

Vellum pushed up her glasses. “A better question. There are several ways for a weapon to end up with a spirit of some kind. In many cases, it’s a deliberate binding of a living spirit, such as a Soulblade’s items. In some cases, a spirit is created directly for the purpose of an object — a technique that we won’t get into here. In your weapon’s case, based on what you’ve told me thus far, the spirit appears to be a fragment of a previous wielder’s consciousness…or perhaps someone close to that wielder that imbued the sword with a piece of their will. Have you learned any more about the sword since our early discussions?”

I nodded. “…Quite a bit, actually. I can’t be absolutely certain about this, but…I think Selys-Lyann was built from a piece of Flowbreaker, the Sacred Sword of Ice. And that, in turn, was built from something called the True Blade.”

Vellum froze. Not in the literal ‘my sword turned her to ice’ sense, in this case, although admittedly that kind of thing was pretty plausible in context. But she definitely went very still when I said those last two words.

“…Ah, unavoidable, isn’t it? That would certainly explain a certain young lady’s ill attentions toward you.”

I blanked on who she was talking about for a moment, then remembered something critical. “…Are you calling Mizuchi, the Hero’s End, a young lady?”

“Well, she is. In the grand scheme of the universe, she’s very young. And very rude.”

I tensed. “…Who are you, really? No teasing, just tell me. Clear answers.”

“No.” Vellum shook her head. “That’s your clear answer. ‘No.’ Not even you have earned that sort of punishment.”

I wasn’t sure if I should be confused, offended, or both. “Is this one of those forbidden knowledge things? Because, if so, I’m already so deep in forbidden knowledge that I’m definitely doomed, so you may as well pile more on.”

Vellum laughed. “Oh, child. I was very much like you, once. But no, this isn’t the sort of forbidden knowledge that gets Wydd to burn your mind to dust. This is me avoiding my past, one which I am absolutely confident you would pursue in ways I disapprove if I told you about it. So, the answer is ‘no’, and we’re going to return to one of the other most likely methods of your doom — carrying around a piece of the goddess’ own regret.”

I was tempted to push harder on Vellum’s identity, but I left it aside for the moment. I hated the constant omissions from my mentors, but if it was a personal matter she didn’t want me to dig into…well, I had to respect that. At least a little. For now. “What do you mean by that, aside from the obvious? Do you mean Selys’ regret literally manifested into a part of this weapon somehow?”

“Oh, no. Unlikely. Even with the goddess’ tears, I sincerely doubt that our goddess is out there weeping her eyes out. No, I mean that what you have is a symbol of something Selys would probably rather forget.”

“…That reminds me. Would you be willing to help with making a potion out of a Goddess’ Tear?”

Her eyebrow went up. “You happened to stumble upon one, did you?”

“Let’s just say that I might know someone who has one available to work with.”

She rolled her eyes. “Then ‘let’s just say’ that I have no intention of toying with those things any further. As useful as they are, I have no interest in the attention they bring.”

“Are you sure you can’t be convinced? I—”

She shook her head. “That time is long past for me. There are things I need to move beyond. Now, I believe we were talking about other business?”

I considered pressing further, but I decided against it. There were other alchemists, and I was sure Sera had connections of her own to draw from.

“Right. Okay…well, if the goddess wanted to forget about something, why would she have made it into a sacred sword in the first place?”

“A good question. People often prolong their own suffering by maintaining old habits. The goddess was, perhaps, no different — she sought to preserve something that had once given her happiness. Or, you know, she didn’t. Not all stories are true.”

“Meaning that you think someone else made the sacred swords?” My eyebrows went up at that.

“I don’t know. Swords aren’t my area. Spirits in items, however…that, perhaps, I can help with.”

I nodded. “I’d be grateful for that. Where do we start?”

“By determining our approach. You’re probably thinking of wrestling the spirit into submission, which is possible, but also the highest risk approach. I fully expect that you’ll want to do it anyway, but I’d like to remind you of what you are — an Enchanter. Not a Summoner, not a Soulblade. Your approach should take that into account.”

I frowned. She wasn’t entirely wrong about what I’d been picturing, although I’d been hoping for a more…positive connection with the spirit, rather than “wrestling” with it. Keras’ stories about Dawn had given me a particular image of how beneficial a bond with a sacred sword could be, and if I had something like a piece of one…well, I hoped I could get something similar.

But I was an Enchanter. And I could think like one, too. “So, what, modify the sub-glyphs of the rune to…restrict certain undesirable behaviors from the spirit? Prevent it from lashing out without my conscious effort?”

“Modifying sub-glyphs is so much extra effort.” She shook her head. “You could just add more runes. Infinitely simpler and vastly less error-prone than trying to tinker with an existing foundation, especially where spirits are concerned.”

“That…makes sense, I suppose. I could just add functions for activating any sort of ability I want the sword to have, then prevent it from doing anything otherwise.” I frowned. “That would be like…chaining the spirit, though. I’m not sure I like that.”

Vellum shrugged. “It’s not self-aware yet, is it?”

“I…don’t think so. Not entirely, at least. I’ve seen some visions of the weapon’s past, and it reacts to my thoughts to some degree, but…that seems more like some kind of empathy than any kind of conscious decision making.”

“Then binding it wouldn’t be a problem, would it?”

“…Maybe not. But what if it becomes conscious?” I considered Keras’ story about Dawnbringer — she hadn’t been self-aware until about twenty years before he met her. And then she’d been trapped inside a stone for virtually her entire existence until he rescued her.

If I put limitations on Selys-Lyann, then lost the sword somehow…and the spirit awakened…they could end up in a similar situation to Dawnbringer’s. Or, perhaps more like Soulbrand’s, which was potentially even worse.

“The chances of a sword spontaneously developing awareness is low, even if it has some level of empathy.” Vellum shook her head. “You could potentially build in some kind of overrides for the sword if it becomes conscious enough to feel restricted, but then, those same overrides would be security risks for you. They could be triggered by the sword accidentally.”

“…I don’t like it.” I shook my head. “It might be unlikely, but if it’s happened before, it could happen again. More than once, and specifically to the sacred swords, which this sword is related to. Even if that wasn’t spontaneous, it implies some outside force is doing it deliberately…which could happen here as well. I don’t want to risk that happening. What other options do we have?”

“You have to make everything more difficult, don’t you?” Vellum sighed. “Fine. If you want to be difficult, then there are a couple other options. First, rather than restricting the weapon’s abilities, you could add a filter layer. Essentially, this would prevent the sword from acting until you mentally approve the sword’s intended action.”

“That…would be better, I guess, in terms of agency for the spirit…but in a battle, that kind of distraction could kill me. And the delay before they act could also kill me.” I frowned. “Not ideal.”

“Then your other option would be to facilitate further communication with the weapon. Additional functions, likely using communication magic, so you can direct the weapon’s abilities more clearly. Or just tell the spirit to stop.”

“That…sounds a lot better. Would it be forcing the spirit to do what I say, or just sending messages?”

“Either is possible. I would advise layering a compulsion on each message. That would make your sword obey much like a summoned monster would.”

“…I don’t know if I’m okay with that. I mean, as long as the sword isn’t intelligent, sure, it’s no problem. But if it wakes up…”

“If your sword suddenly develops awareness, you’re not likely to miss it. But if you’re that worried about it happening in an inopportune time…there are ways we could force the spirit’s awakening. At that point, you would be able to work with the sword’s spirit more directly and determine the best course of action.”

“I…uh, I’m not sure that’s a good idea either. Keras didn’t seem to like the idea.”

“You talked to Keras Selyrian about this?” Vellum sighed. “Of course you did. If anyone is going to be involved with mad acts and talking swords…yes, of course. I can see why he’d oppose the idea as well. The boy has a bad history with such matters.”

“You know him, then? What can you tell me about—”

She waved a hand. “No, no. I want nothing to do with that man. In truth, if you wish to awaken the sword, he would be a better guide than I would. That is perhaps more his right than any other being that is still living.”

“Then…what do you think I should do?”

“I think you should set aside your cursed sword and worry more about important things, like reducing my headaches from patent paperwork. But since that isn’t going to happen, I’d advise you to stop worrying about how the sword is going to feel, and worry more about utility. In that case, you have two options to choose from — safety, in the form of limiting the sword, or more potential power and control, by risking awakening the sword.”

That wasn’t a simple choice, even if she presented it as one. “…I’ll think about it. For now, can you teach me some of the runes I’d use for each approach? There’s a good chance I’ll need to make use of some of them eventually regardless of how I go about it.”

“Of course, I can teach you. The only question is if you can learn.” Vellum stood up and walked to a chalkboard at the back of her office. “We’ll start with function runes. Start taking notes. You’re going to need them.”

***

I spent the rest of the morning going over the runes for each of several possible approaches with Vellum.

Function runes were first. We went over a number of ice-related functions, like generating ice armor and ice blasts. Most of that was very straightforward.

Next were restriction runes to prevent the spirit from acting without my command — those were almost entirely new to me and gave me some useful insight into underlying theory for commanding spirits. Tangentially, that also gave me a bit more insight into both contract magic and disabling attunement functions under specific conditions.

After that, communication runes. These essentially were designed to facilitate telepathic communication with a spirit in an object, similar to how Keras talked to Dawn…at least in theory. The versions that we went over seemed more rudimentary and limited, consuming mana for every word I tried to send. I wondered if Keras knew a more efficient means to handle it, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to ask.

Beyond that, she also taught me a spirit rune designed to let me push my consciousness into the sword. Functionally, this would let me attempt to communicate more directly with the sword’s spirit, but at the risk of incidentally awakening it.

Finally, we discussed what would likely be a prerequisite for awakening the sword deliberately — a high-level spell that utilized a combination of spirit and mental mana. This wasn’t something I could cast myself, not even with a spirit mana battery. The cost was more than six thousand mana, which I couldn’t even approach. Derek or Keras, however, could manage that…if I could convince them to help.

Safety or control…

I didn’t make any clear decisions that day, but in my heart, I already knew the choice I was going to make.

***

After the meeting with Vellum, I sat down to do some actual enchanting. I’d been doing small stuff since I got back, but working on Derek’s home enchantment improvements had taken up most of my time.

My next planned project had been a transcendence mana battery, but I’d abandoned that for the moment. I still didn’t have enough of a grasp on how much mana I could safely work with to make it.

Soon, I told myself.

Instead, I began work on a couple other requests that I needed to work on eventually. Derek had provided the raw materials for improved message necklaces, so I began the preparations for those. I laid out the materials on the floor, flipped my books open to the necessary pages for referencing Sunstone-level enchantments, and pulled out my etching rod to work.

Technically, it was probably more efficient in terms of mana regeneration to carve one necklace, enchant it, then move on. But I preferred working in batches, getting the annoying etching part out of the way so that I could do the easy parts all at once later. It wasn’t any sort of trick, just a matter of how my mind liked to organize tasks. I didn’t hate etching, exactly, but it was a barrier to the more satisfying work. And when I had the ability to get what I called a “blocking task” out of the way, I tried to do as much of it as I could.

As I gradually carved each rune, my mind wandered to ways I could do it more efficiently. My abandoned rune stamp idea came back to mind, but the inflexibility of the stamp was a problem, both in terms of melting points of the target material and the type of rune the stamp itself created.

Could I make some kind of stamping rod that would produce a different result based on my mental image?

I wondered about that. There were certainly enchantments that could read intentions to some degree, but something that essentially outputted a picture based on what I was thinking…I hadn’t seen anything like that.

Or had I?

Memory crystals stored entire scenes of memories with a high degree of fidelity. There were certainly memory-related enchantments as well, I simply hadn’t tinkered with them.

The mere existence of that kind of memory storage implied that magic could store discrete bits of information. A memory of a single rune was comparatively simple.

Could I figure out a way to make a rod that toggles between stored memories of specific runes, allowing me to—

I etched right through a metal link.

I winced, disabled the rod, and sighed. I set that necklace aside.

…Keras can fix it later. For now, I’m clearly too distracted for this kind of work.

I’d finished the etching for several necklaces, so I packed those up and stored them back in the Jaden Box.

…Which, of course, left me staring at the Jaden Box. I reached over to the rune that stored mana for it. I was supposed to be recharging it for Keras, but…

When I did it, I’d lose the box.

And, in spite of his reassurances…I’d probably lose Keras, too. At least for a while. I still didn’t know exactly what his plans were, but when Wrynn arrived, I knew it was likely he’d be going off on some kind of adventure. Maybe to find his missing friends, maybe to go rescue some other continent from a threat beyond imagining. Maybe just to go punch a visage in the face.

I shut my eyes.

I have to do it anyway, don’t I?

I packed it away.

I’m…just too busy today.

I couldn’t defer the problem forever, but…I wasn’t ready yet. It was disgustingly selfish, but…

I wasn’t ready to lose him. Not yet.

I have other things to work on. Important things.

I tried to reassure myself with that, but it wasn’t very effective. Many of my other projects were important, but that wasn’t a good excuse, and I knew it.

I deliberately dragged out another project — another unfinished circlet with jump bell style functionality for Sera — and drained all of my mana into working on it.

If I didn’t have any mana, I couldn’t recharge the box. And items we could use to escape threats were important, right?

That flimsy excuse didn’t get me out of wrestling with my own brain, so I tried to get my mind off the problem with an intellectual exercise. Something less immediately important, but more interesting in the long-run — my research on null contracts.

They were one of my favorite pet projects. The basic idea was that Summoners and Soulblades gained safe mana capacity faster than most other types of attunements due to their magical contracts.

I wasn’t sure what part of the contract caused that increased growth rate, though. It wasn’t just the constant mana drain — “exercise” items that just drained mana had been attempted for years without success.

Was it that they simulated spellcasting in some way? Efforts to automate the spellcasting process in the body were well-documented and theoretically possible, but extremely complicated, and didn’t seem to accomplish the same kind of accelerated growth that contract-based attuned managed.

Was it the flow of mana between the attuned and an external power source?

That seemed more likely. A contract enabled an exchange of mana between a person and a summoned monster — this kind of circulation of mana struck me as being very similar to what I’d recently learned about Star Veins and Dianis Points exercises, but automated and continuous.

It was possible that all I needed was to figure out how to automate a mana-circulation exercise of some kind, but I suspected that it was more likely that the flow of mana out of the body and back into it was even more effective than rotating mana inside the body would be.

…Of course, groundless suspicions weren’t an effective approach for testing. I’d have to try both and compare results.

The difficulty was actually doing that. Even with some concept of what might be improving through the process, I was having a tough time finding any enchantments that deliberately interacted with Dianis Points or Star Veins…probably because the average Enchanter had no idea they existed prior to this year.

Annoying.

What I did find, however, was bits of research on magical emulation of summoning and contracts. Nothing complete, unfortunately, but I studied what I could of the basic theory. There were some interesting bits I hadn’t understood in there. In particular, Practical Summoning in Practice by someone who just went by “Shimmer” had an interesting bit that I hadn’t known about.

Where do summons go when they’re not summoned?

It’s a very basic question, but one that isn’t discussed with novices. It’s particularly important for Soulblades. Frequently, we’re told that Soulblades store their summons “inside” items. This, for most, creates the image of a summoned monster being discorporated and converted into mana. This, of course, would basically mean you’re murdering and rebuilding a monster every time you unsummon and summon them. Fortunately for both our morals and the sanity of our summons, that’s not the case.

Instead, both Summoners and Soulblades store their inactive summoned monsters in a form of extra-dimensional space. Summoning a monster is, thus, not limited by distance – unless you’re attempting a True Summoning, which is completely different. Instead, you’re just pulling them out of a magical pocket.

While in this space, the summon is in a limited state of stasis. If damaged, the functions of the space will cause the summon to gradually be healed by comparing the baseline summon to their current physical state.

Soulblade “summoning spaces”, as I call them, have an additional function – one that uses the summon as power source for an item that they’re linked to. This cycles mana out of the extra dimensional space into the item, causing the item to have the intended powers. This then ceases to function when the summon is called out of the space…or doesn’t, depending on how the contract is set up. Keeping certain item functions active is possible, but diminishes the monster’s power when summoned.

Now, if both Summoners and Soulblades use similar spaces, why do Soulblade summons have a much more prohibitive mana cost?

The answer is simple, and related to the above. Since a Soulblade is gradually draining their summon to power an item, the Soulblade summon will be essentially empty on mana most of the time. Summoning a Soulblade’s contracted monster requires a massive amount of mana because the Soulblade is generally using their own mana to restore the summon’s mana to full. This is not strictly required, but it is a standard function in most contracts to prevent the summon from being brought into battle in a weakened state, where they might die as a result.

Since monsters often have a similar amount of mana to attuned of the same general level range — and Soulblades often stick with a couple contracts of levels near their own — it may take nearly a full Soulblade mana pool just to recharge one summon enough to get them combat capable. And since higher level attuned can take days or weeks to recover their whole mana pool, depending on the mana saturation of the area, summoning their contracted monsters can be a significant investment.

That helped answer some older questions about why Derek wasn’t able to summon Tavare all the time, as well as some general questions about summoned monsters…but it wasn’t what I was looking for. Maybe some of that knowledge could be applicable to reconstructing an actual Summoner attunement, real monster summoning contracts, or even something like an extra-dimensional space to store items with an attunement…but it wasn’t what I needed for the moment.

I briefly wondered if the author was the same Shimmer that Keras had mentioned, but it wasn’t an immediate concern. I kept digging. Ultimately, in terms of contract emulation…there was almost nothing useful to work with. The books were woefully incomplete.

I set aside my books after a couple hours, frustrated. Why is this stuff so vague? It’s all speculation…or attempts to construct summoning functionality from scratch, without using an existing foundation. They should just reverse engineer—

Oh.

The super-obvious thing hit me.

The people who had written the random enchanting books I was working with were Enchanters. Just Enchanters…or maybe Enchanters with a couple random other attunements here and there.

They weren’t Arbiters. They didn’t have access to sub-glyphs. They might know about their existence, but they didn’t have any way of easily cataloguing and emulating them.

I dug through the books Warren Constantine had loaned me next, but I didn’t find anything on this specific subject. He almost certainly knew how to do what I was hoping to emulate, given his own apparent interest in summoned monsters, but he wasn’t around to ask. And even if he was…I wasn’t sure if he’d approve of the idea, or if he’d be lucid enough to communicate.

…But I didn’t really need his help, did I?

I had a Summoner. Or, better yet…I had an Invoker. And I had a Soulblade I could ask, too, if I was actually comfortable asking him to let me look at his attunement.

Which I wasn’t. Derek was kind enough to provide us with housing, but…that crossed an invisible line with me. Sera was family, and I was comfortable with her, but Derek…no. Not yet.

It was fine, though. An extra sample to look at from Derek would be useful, but wasn’t required. Just looking at Sera’s sub-glyphs and figuring out how they worked would probably provide enough information on the inner workings of contracts to do what I needed, at least in theory.

…The problem, then, was understanding the sub-glyphs sufficiently to emulate them, then figuring out how to translate those into an item.

I sighed, switching out my books, and got to studying. Asking Sera for help could come later.

For the moment, I had glyphs to learn.

***

I set aside my enchanting books when I heard a knock at my door.

“It’s Sera.”

I grudgingly pushed myself off the floor — yes, I was reading on the floor, it was a more efficient way of switching between books than using my cluttered desk — and opened the door. “Need something?”

She frowned, presumably at my disheveled appearance or the assortment of books strewn across the room. “Yes. I’d say it can wait if you’re busy, but it probably shouldn’t.”

I nodded. “Come in, then.” I deftly dodged the debris on the floor, moving to sit on my bed and waving toward the chair at my work desk. Sera followed my gesture, nodded gratefully, and gracefully took a seat.

“Have you eaten anything today?” She asked.

I blinked, considering. “…Depends on what you consider food.” I raised a finger to interrupt before she could say anything further. “I’ll eat soon. That can’t be why you’re here.”

“No, you’re right, and this isn’t something where I should let myself get distracted.” She gestured at the door and a gentle gust of wind pushed it shut.

“Huh. That was subtle. You’re getting better at fine control.”

“Practicing wordless casting was a necessity when I could barely speak. I’ve continued to work on it both due to the flexibility it provides and out of habit. That’s a good topic to discuss sometime, but for now…we need to talk about the family.”

I tried to restrain myself from groaning. “…I wrote mother. I wrote Tristan. They know about the duel. What more is there to say?”

“Miraculously, I’m not here about you. I know — please, withhold your skepticism. It is, on occasion, possible for events to occur independently of your schemes.”

“And yet here you are.”

She sighed. “A courtesy. And…while I could progress with this independently, I would appreciate your approval.”

The expression on her face looked troubled and perhaps a bit more sincere than I expected. So, rather than continuing with the introductory banter, I tilted my head to the side. “I’m listening.”

“Thank you.” Sera nodded gratefully. “It’s about Mara and Emery.”

I blinked. “Oh. Right. Emery. I’d…sort of lost track of her. What’s going on?”

“So, first, some context. My contract with Emery allows me to perform true summoning spells on her, moving her from place to place, rather than creating a copy like a traditional summoning contract. This makes her fundamentally different from, say, Vanniv. My Vanniv is different from Elora’s Vanniv, who is different from whoever she copied her Vanniv from, who is also different from the original Vanniv somewhere in a spire. Emery is more like Vanniv Prime, the Vanniv that serves as a foundation for all of our copies. Clear so far?”

I nodded. “Sure. She’s still a copy of the original Emery, though, in that Emery was an actual person that lived and died decades ago.”

Sera nodded. “Yes. True and relevant, but we’ll get to that. First of all, you should understand that true summoning Emery has created some logistical problems. This is similar to the situation where Researcher feels existential dread at the idea of being unsummoned, but more severe. I can unsummon Emery, but that’s…more like storing her in an extraplanar space. Other summons work kind of like that, but Emery retains a greater degree of her awareness and…it’s not comfortable for her. It would be better if she functions independently of me, much like a natural monster in the Unclaimed Lands might. And she can exist independently, but she isn’t currently safe that way.”

“Wait. If she’s more like a spire monster, does that mean she doesn’t require mana for upkeep?”

Sera nodded. “That’s correct, although there’s a minimum baseline mana cost just to maintain a contract. She’s basically only costing me one mana. Negligible.”

“And you could cut her loose without her ceasing to exist?”

“Correct, and you’ve properly anticipated one potential route we could move, but you’re ahead of the discussion.”

“Sorry, sorry. Will let you talk.”

Sera nodded. “If one ignores her origins, Emery is functionally similar to a normal person in most respects…except that she isn’t, legally, a person. She has virtually no rights, save those minimal ones that are given to summoned monsters. When we arrived back in Valia, she had none of the basic foundations of a legal identity — no paperwork for her birth, travel, or that sort of thing. For a standard summoned monster, these things are largely irrelevant, but since I can’t unsummon her without causing her distress, she needs the ability to function independently in the same fashion a human might.”

“Wait, hold on. Where even is she? Is she like…living in Mara’s room, and I simply haven’t noticed?”

Sera laughed. “As plausible as that is, no, she’s not at the house. She’s staying in the dorms.”

“The dorms?” I raised an eyebrow. “Like, in your room, since you’re not using it? Or…” I frowned. “You didn’t enroll her, did you?”

My mind flashed briefly to Satsuki, the murder serpent I’d fought in the Survival Match…and to Lute. There were clearly at least a few other non-human students, so there was precedent for Emery to be enrolled as one.

“You catch on quickly.” Sera smiled. “It required pulling a few strings, but given that Meltlake went through the spire with us, she was already familiar with Emery.”

“I thought you were against telling Meltlake about what you did.”

Sera nodded. “Initially, I was. The scenario changed when she moved from being Professor Meltlake to being Chancellor Meltlake. Essentially, her expanded influence made it worthwhile to take the risk to talk to her. She was a bit annoyed, but sympathetic enough to file some paperwork. So, Emery is enrolled to start as a first-year student next semester. That gives her a place to live and activities to pursue independently of us, which is a good start. It is, however, a temporary measure — questions of her identity will come up as soon as she graduates. Without further action, it will be difficult for Chancellor Meltlake or I to shield her beyond that point.”

I nodded. “So, you want help with getting her a more complete identity. And since the Verena family no longer exists…you want to, what, adopt her?”

“In effect, yes. If we make her a retainer to House Cadence, we could solve all of the paperwork issues at that stage of the process. She becomes Emery Cadence, a Carnelian-level Acolyte. No one needs to know she’s a monster. At that point, I could release our contract if desired and she would largely retain rights comparable to an ordinary person.”

“…Is that legally possible? Making a summoned monster into a retainer?”

“Yes. I’ve done the research. It’s rare, but not without precedent. It’s more typical for monsters that fall into categories that are considered ‘sacred’ — essentially, any monster type descended directly from a god beast — but there’s no legal limitation that requires such. Technically, even a slime could be a retainer to House Cadence.”

I snorted. “Okay, that’s sincerely funny, and a little bit tempting.”

Sera rolled her eyes. “…No slime retainers, Corin. But this…it would give Emery a new start.”

“Why go so far? Couldn’t you have just dropped her off with the independent monsters at Warren Constantine’s tower?”

“I could have,” she acknowledged. “And that’s still a possible route for the future. I’ve talked to her about it and she’s not currently interested. She’s intellectually aware that she’s technically a monster, but you have to keep in mind that mentally, she’s still basically a teenaged girl.”

“Is she, though? Some of the ‘people’ in that scenario were…off. Like, if we acted in ways that didn’t fit the script, they just repeated the same statements.”

“Ah. Conditional memory alteration functions from the scenario. That sort of thing might have happened while Emery was still in the spire, but it was a function of the scenario itself. You raise a good point, however — at some point, I’ll need to investigate if there are lingering magical effects that could disrupt her mental state. Those would not detract from the foundation of her mental structure, however. She’s fundamentally near-identical to an ordinary human.”

“How do you know that?”

“With Emery’s consent, Researcher and I have performed a variety of tests. Without going into exhaustive detail, Emery is comparable to someone like Len or the copy of Keras that you fought.”

I frowned. “But those aren’t even the same as each other. The copy of Keras was a direct copy, and thus had memories based on the original. From what Keras told us, Len is based on a combination of the original Lydia Hastings and Keras’ ideas of what Lydia is like. That’s fundamentally different — fake Keras is virtually a complete copy, save for abilities and items that couldn’t be properly emulated by the crystal. Len may have an unknown level of real memory copies, but they’re supported by an unknown level of fake ones.”

Sera winced. “I was hoping you wouldn’t notice that distinction. It does complicate things somewhat — we were able to determine that Emery does have memories for an entire human lifespan up to her age, but we cannot verify their authenticity without an original Emery to compare them to. It’s impossible to say how much of her life experience was fabricated. That being said, with my own rudimentary knowledge of memory magic and Researcher’s much greater understanding, we suspect that virtually all of her memories come from the original Emery — with perhaps the exception of the twenty-four hours prior to our test.”

“That’s…not too bad, I guess. But wait. How is that possible? The real Emery Verena was murdered somewhere in Edria, wasn’t she? That means…”

“That there’s some way for the spires to create near-authentic copies of people who are long dead, even if those people didn’t die inside the spire.” Sera shuddered. “It is a bit harrowing, I admit. I’m not certain I like the idea that people might be running around with a Sera Cadence summon in a hundred years…but I suppose it might be preferable to the alternative.”

“Alternative?” I raised an eyebrow.

“Nonexistence after death. Not to wax philosophical, but in a way, this is a potential means to continue existing in some form after a sudden and untimely demise. I knew something like this was possible prior to investigating Emery — Keras had already told us about Len, for example, and Len’s existence did not require a living Lydia — but Len was an amalgamation of real and false. The Spirit Gateway Crystal also appeared to have a small possible scope of ability for creating these entities. What we saw in the spire was much larger in scale, with no indication that the spire’s resources were strained by the effort to recreate dozens of people at once. I can’t say they were all the same level of authenticity that Emery was — perhaps her level of similarity to an ordinary human was due to her role in the scenario as a ‘main character’, and others were closer to elementals — but it has significant implications for life after death regardless.”

I pondered that. “…Do you think that it implies that something more akin to resurrection might be possible?”

“Not necessarily. Even if we could take someone’s spiritual remains from the plane of spirits and, say, create a new body for them to inhabit…I don’t know if that would be the same person. No continuity of existence, and there are component parts to the original self that would be lost. The body itself may house something important for what it means to be the ‘original Sera’ or the ‘original Corin’ or whatnot. I don’t know. What I do know is that we’ve gotten significantly off-topic.”

“…We have. It’s an interesting subject, though. I thought a lot about resurrection, back before…”

“Before you knew Tristan was alive?”

I nodded. “I knew that the odds were against it. If he was dead, I hoped that Selys would be able to revive Tristan as a boon. There are stories along those lines, but they’re inconsistent.”

“Well, we still don’t have an answer to if that’s possible. I can see a number of options — even if resurrection is possible, Selys herself may not have the ability to do it. If she could, why not revive her lost loves?”

“Something related to the circumstances of their deaths, maybe. Or ethics. Maybe they wouldn’t want to be brought back.”

“Both possible, but let’s get back on topic.”

“Right…what were we talking about?”

Sera laughed. “Let’s see…back to the foundation of the discussion. I’d like to make Emery a retainer to House Cadence. There are a number of reasons for this, including simply giving her rights, but also because I would like to see her on similar social footing to Mara — and I intend to offer Mara a retainer position, too. In both cases, we’d wait until after the duel, of course — it’d be too messy to do it right now — but I want your approval before I begin putting work into the necessary preparations.”

The latter suggestion didn’t surprise me in the slightest. It was obvious that one of us was going to give Mara the offer, it was just a matter of which one. And given that I already had a retainer, allowing Sera to make the offer to Mara made a degree of sense. “You have my blessing to offer Mara a retainer position. You’ll have to be the one that takes this up with…other members of the Cadence family, though.”

“Of course. And again, it’ll be after the duel. I also considered if it might be better to pursue a retainership through House Lyran, rather than House Cadence, given the possible consequences of your duel…but I don’t have the same standing with House Lyran, and I don’t think we should presume that House Cadence is going to fall apart in the aftermath of your fight. If we end up disowned, we can go that angle if needed.”

I’d been very deliberately avoiding thinking about all that, so it was good that she’d considered it. Especially because I still didn’t want to think about it. “…Okay. Sure, go ahead and ask Mara after the duel, assuming we’re still members of House Cadence at the time. As for Emery, I admit to a bit more skepticism…and a little amusement. There’s some irony to the idea that you’re asking to make someone a retainer so she has sufficient social standing to date someone.”

Sera groaned. “I can see the parallel, but this isn’t like what you did with Patrick. Yes, improving her social standing is a part of it, but the dating thing is secondary. It’s mostly just about giving her legal rights in case something happens.”

“Sure, but it does mean I get to tease you about hypocrisy.” I laughed. “Back to an earlier question. Why go to this level of trouble? Couldn’t she fend for herself at this point?”

She shook her head. “I have a responsibility, Corin. I’ve had one since the moment we made that contract. I can’t just abandon her to her own devices. That might be easier, but it wouldn’t be right.”

“…Okay. I get that, I guess. But it’s very likely this could cause trouble for us down the line. If anyone finds out she isn’t human…” I frowned. “Are you going to tell Father about what she is?”

“Absolutely not. He’d never approve. As far as he’ll know, she’s a foreign exchange student with a useful attunement.”

“That could be a problem later…but you know what? I don’t really care what he thinks.” I shook my head. “Okay. I’m fine with you giving Emery the retainership offer, too. I admit to a little more skepticism about the whole idea of Mara and Emery dating. Is that really ethical?”

Sera let out an exhausted sigh. “That’s a whole other discussion. It’s generally considered unethical for a Summoner to have any sort of physical relationship with their own summoned monsters, since the monsters have difficulty saying ‘no’. I had a whole slew of limitations to keep in mind for what would be appropriate when I went with Vanniv to the ball, for example. Other people having any kind of relationship with a summoned monster gets even more complicated. Generally, a typical summoned monster doesn’t have the same filters to say ‘no’ to anyone that an original person might…but that isn’t the case with Emery. She’s effectively the same thing as a natural monster, rather than a Summoner copy, which means that she has a human-like level of autonomy. It would still be unethical for me to date her — not that I want to — because my contract gives me an unfair level of authority over her. That would be more like, say, an employer making advances on an employee.”

“And that wouldn’t be the case with Mara, since she’s just…another person.”

“Right. If they’re both retainers to me, they’ll be on relatively even standing. At that point, I might even end the summoning contract and just let Emery…exist. We’d have to discuss that further, but it would help wrap up any other ethical issues.”

I frowned. “What about age of consent?”

“Complicated. Emery has memories for a lifetime with a length comparable to our own. She has a human-like mental structure. This particular ‘Emery Verena’ appears to have actually existed for longer than her apparent age — it seems they’ve been running variations on this scenario for more than twenty years. She’s actually ‘older’ than we are in that respect, except that she’s been continuously reset to an earlier apparent age, which confuses matters. She has a convincing copy of an attunement, and attuned are considered legal adults.”

“…I should look at her attunement at some point and figure out how that works. If she’s a monster, I’d be very curious if the sub-glyphs in there differ from ordinary human ones.”

“She’d probably be fine with that. Anyway, as far as the age of consent goes, she’s legally old enough to do whatever she wants. Whether or not that’s ethical…” Sera shrugged. “A question for the ages. It’s complicated, and frankly, not my business. My Summoner contract doesn’t dictate anything about who she can or can’t date. That’s up to her and whoever she wants to pursue. While I have certain responsibilities due to making her contract, those don’t permit me to limit her agency.”

“I guess that’s fair.” I shook my head. The idea still felt a little weird to me, but ultimately, it wasn’t really my business, either. “Okay. You’ve got my approval to approach them both about retainership. Do you need anything else?”

“No,” Sera shook her head. “But you still need to eat. Want to come get a bite with me?”

I looked around my room. I’d been working, but…it was hard to get back into that after I’d been interrupted, anyway.

“You know what? I could eat.”

***

As per usual, Sera used eating as an opportunity to subtly remind me of certain basic social obligations that I had been failing to perform. In one specific case, there was a relevant task that I’d been avoiding. Understandably, I think, given how busy I was with working toward averting future disasters, but nevertheless, I needed to do it.

So, with the utmost trepidation, I knocked on the door to Jin’s dorm room.

There was no response.

Well, I guess he isn’t here. Obligation completed, I can check back in another two or three years—

“Corin.”

I spun in a half-panic, finding Jin a few steps behind me. There was a brief moment where I wondered if Jin had been lying in wait outside of his dorm for days for an opportunity to ambush me, until I saw the keys in his hand. Apparently, he’d just been coming home.

“Uh…yeah, that’s me. Hi.” I waved. “I was just looking for you.”

Jin nodded sensibly, demonstrating his kindness by not pointing out exactly how obvious my last statement had been. “Why?”

It was an extraordinarily simple question, but one with significant complexities and ramifications. “I, uh…could we maybe have the talk in private? And somewhere with security? Maybe some sound-dampening runes, and…”

“Your old dorm room?” He asked.

I blinked. I’d…almost forgotten it existed. And it was right beneath us, too.

Admittedly, it had been compromised at least twice now — first by Orden, and second by the Blackstone Bandits — so I wasn’t exactly confident in the security level of the room. But it did still have my rune setup for basic security, which was better than standing outdoors, and presumably better than Jin’s room (which he might have protected somehow, but I wasn’t going to ask).

Going to Derek’s place would have given us much more security, but it would have required a significant and awkward walk. So, ultimately, I retrieved my own dorm room keys with a whisper to the Jaden Box, then unlocked the door and ushered Jin inside.

Once within, I locked the door behind us, then did a cursory check for anything out-of-place. The runes I’d etched there were still operating, and I didn’t detect any new ones placed by anyone else, or any physical signs of forced entry. Someone had cleaned the place while it had been empty during winter break, which was nice, but that was the only real sign of disruption that I could find.

Satisfied, I beckoned Jin to the solitary chair at the writing desk, then sat down on my bed. Jin took the seat I’d offered. “Not going to offer to take my hat and coat?”

“I, uh…sorry. Don’t exactly have a hat rack. I could…put them here?”

That delightful smile spread across his face. “I’m being facetious, Corin. Now, what is it that you need?”

“…What makes you think I need something?”

He gave me a skeptical look. “You don’t do social visits.”

…He wasn’t wrong.

“Uh…yeah. Sorry.”

“I’m not offended. I don’t mind a business focus. It keeps things simpler, especially with…” He shook his head. “Never mind that. What’s this about?”

“Two things, actually.” I managed to regain at least a hint of my focus now that we’d gotten the introductions out of the way. “First off, technically, you’re still slated to be on our team for this year. Is that…do you still want to work with us?”

A brief and intense look of surprise flashed across his face. “You’d still consider that? I assumed that, given everything, it’d be simplest for me to bow out.”

“…Is that what you want?”

“No, not at all.” Where he’d hesitated before, there was none of that here. He spoke with absolute certainty. “I could make other arrangements work, but we have an established team dynamic. Moreover, we both already know certain secrets related to each other. Trying to find another group and deal with either hiding those things or handling the consequences of revealing them would be complicated.”

I’d considered that from my own standpoint, but I hadn’t thought a lot about how it might feel from his perspective. Between hiding his attunement level, hiding his actual attunement, his ties with House Dalen, and his recent association with the Blackstone Bandits…yeah, that would limit his options for openness with others. “What about a team consisting of other Blackstone Bandit candidates?”

He shrugged. “A better option than most, but still less ideal than sticking with a group I already know I can work with. The problem, of course, is…can you trust me, Corin?”

My heart suddenly seemed to slam harder as I processed that question. As I froze in response, his eyes seemed to burrow into my soul.

The answer, of course, was absolutely simple.

“No,” I answered finally. “Not really. Not in terms of anything truly important. But for taking school tests?” I frowned. “I think I’d rather deal with a known quantity than some random stranger. As you pointed out, I have secrets of my own to keep.”

He seemed to ponder that, his lips tightening in a manner that displayed a minimalist form of displeasure, but he didn’t seem to let that impact his response. “…What of the others?”

“Patrick can’t be angry at anyone for long. He’d be the most likely to support keeping you with us. Mara…I don’t really know, but I think she’d go for it. Sera is practical. She’d take you because you’re a Sunstone. I wouldn’t be surprised if she has contingency plans for killing you if you betray us somehow.”

Jin nodded slowly. “Commendable. I would do the same in her place.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I defaulted to absolutely nothing.

“…And the other woman?”

That one took me off-guard. “The other…oh. Right. Six-person teams now. Yeah, we’ve been discussing adding Cecily to the team in our last slot, but I’m not certain. We’d be doubling up on Enchanters. She does have a different focus, and I have a second attunement, so we could do different things, but…”

He reacted a little when I mentioned a second attunement. Had…I not told him about that yet? I was pretty sure someone would have, but…maybe not?

…Maybe he knew and just was surprised I mentioned it?

I felt too awkward about it to ask.

It was probably a good thing I was talking to Jin and not some other random person, given my absolutely terrible information security instincts.

“…Anyway, I don’t know about Cecily yet. We’ll confirm with her later. For the moment, I think there’s a slot available for you, if you want it.”

Jin took a moment, seemingly considering, then said simply, “I do.”

My heart was beating faster again. I wasn’t sure why.

“…Right.” I stood up suddenly. “I’ll, uh, go check with the others and get back to you or something.”

“…Didn’t you have two questions?”

I froze.

I did, in fact, have two questions.

Sitting back down felt a little awkward, given my panicked state, but I did it anyway. “…What were you up to with the Blackstone Bandits?

“Hmm.” He actually seemed to consider how to respond to that. “As you are technically a candidate for the organization yourself, I could answer that to a limited degree, but I will need to talk to someone in a higher position first. I need to find out exactly how much I can tell you.”

“…Understandable.” I glanced from side-to-side. “Are you…happy working with them?”

The question was sudden, unplanned. He might have realized that, since one of his eyebrows went up.

“An interesting question. For the moment, our interests are, as they say, aligned. I do not know if they will remain that way. As for how the previous assignment went…yes.” He smiled, looking straight at me with a meaningful look, “…I found that enjoyable.”

I suppressed my recurring panic just enough to respond with, “…Good.”

He nodded, then pushed himself out of his chair. “I believe that concludes our business for today, then. Do let me know what the others say.”

I blinked, then realized he must have been leaving to make me feel more comfortable. “…Will do.”

He dipped his hat toward me, headed to the door, then paused awkwardly. “…Do you need to disable the security?”

“Oh, no, it just opens from this side.”

Jin chuckled, then turned the door handle and left my dorm.

That went well, I considered, taking another minute or two to panic quietly.

Then, with that done, I headed home.

I didn’t quite make it there before the next threat appeared in my path.

CHAPTER XIV – SILVER AND IRON

When I approached the house, I found someone literally standing in the middle of the road near the entrance.

The man with iron hair.

By the time I saw him there, Lute was already watching me. Perhaps “studying” is a better word. The way his gaze followed my approach left no question that he had been waiting for me.

I glanced at the house behind him — it wasn’t far. Help would be close if he was planning to attack, but would it be close enough? Would anyone be watching?

His hand wasn’t near his sword, but it didn’t have to be. I’d seen how quickly he could move.

Of course, I had no real reason to suspect that he was there with any kind of hostile intent — I was just cautious. Lute’s interest in me was extreme in a way that was more than a little worrying. If he had something to do with the sacred swords, as I suspected he did, there was a high probability that his goal had to do with collecting them — that was, after all, traditionally the “quest” associated with the swords.

And, if the stories I’d been reading since childhood were any indication, wielders didn’t usually leave each other without a trail of blood following behind the survivor.

…Keras might have seemed an exception in the tales he’d begun to tell us, but given the absence of any of the legendary weapons by his side, clearly something had happened. I regretted not asking more about the subject in the days before it became relevant to my own life.

I could have just ignored him and found another path, I suppose, but that seemed a little extreme. Instead, I approached Lute cautiously, prepared to defend myself in the unlikely event that he chose to assault me in the middle of the street outside my borrowed home.

“Corin Cadence.” Lute reached up and adjusted his glasses as I approached. “I’ve been anticipating your arrival for some time.”

Well, that certainly eliminated the minimal doubt that I was the one he was looking for. I was too stressed to dance around anything and just asked the obvious question. “Why? Is this about the dueling team, or something else?”

“The dueling team…? Ah, I see. Yes, I suppose meeting to discuss dueling strategy would be an obvious justification if such discussions were necessary to ensure success. No, while I would not be opposed to taking actions to optimize our scoring potential, that is of comparatively little importance.”

That was…direct, at least. And the implication that he’d be willing to discuss strategy implied he wasn’t planning to kill me on the spot, which was a good sign. “What’s this about, then?”

“You asked me a question about my interest in you previously, but you interrupted me before I could fully answer. I haven’t been able to get it off my mind since.”

I blinked. “I…uh, sorry? You were about to disclose something private in a public space.”

Lute watched me quietly for a moment, with no visible indications of what he was thinking. The absolute absence of movement was jarring — it was the type of thing where I would have expected an ordinary person to make some kind of movement I could associate with their state of mind. Finally, he said, “I see. This was a miscalculation on my part. It would seem I still have much to learn about which capabilities are to be considered private and public. You have my apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused.”

“…Uh, sure? Not a problem.” I glanced from side-to-side awkwardly. There were other people around, but not particularly close by. “Then, you came here to give me a full answer?”

“Among other things, yes. But given that I do not understand your initial criteria for refusal, I am not certain if this is an appropriate space for the conversation.”

“I…no, I’d still prefer to talk somewhere more private.” I hesitated. Was I willing to take him to where I was living? He’d clearly already figured it out — we were just down the road — but bringing him in would potentially introduce risks to anyone else living there.

It would, of course, also increase my own chances of survival if a fight broke out.

I had no idea how dangerous Lute actually was or what his true motivations looked like. After weighing them, though, I decided that my best chances of getting answers — and any kind of resolution to this situation — was the simplest solution. “Follow me.”

I waved for him to follow, hoping that I wasn’t making a terrible mistake, and guided him straight through the maze and into the house.

Patrick and Sera were chatting in the dining room as we entered. Patrick looked a little surprised as we entered, but waved cheerfully. “Hey, Corin! Hey, Lute!”

Lute tilted his head downward in greeting. “Patrick Wayland-Cadence, Wielder of Bright Reflection. Greetings. I would be interested in speaking to you as well.”

Sera gave Lute a quizzical look. “You’re their new team member, right? I’m Sera Cadence.”

“Corin’s sibling? I would also offer you my greetings, Sera Cadence. I am pleased to have the opportunity to meet you.”

“Likewise. I saw your work in the arena — I’ve been very curious about some of your techniques.”

“Indeed. I would be interested in learning about some of your abilities as well.” Lute adjusted his glasses as I closed the front door, then gestured to the table.

Lute took a seat, folding his arms across his lap in a style that struck me as both formal and foreign. I sat down across from him.

“Before we get into any further introductions for the others, let me give you a chance to fully answer my earlier question. This location is private enough. I trust Patrick and Sera with anything you might say.”

Lute breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you. Unanswered questions are a source of…stress for me. To answer your query, I approached you because you have a crystal mark of transcendence, but also due to recognizing you as a wielder. That latter factor is complicated further by Patrick Wayland-Cadence’s weapon, a reproduction of the sacred sword Dawnbringer with a level of fidelity that I have not encountered previously.”

“You’re familiar with the real Dawnbringer, then?” I asked.

Lute seemed to ponder that. “I apologize, but that answer is restricted.”

“Restricted.” I gave him a flat look. “Who are you, really?”

“That is an open-ended question. Who is anyone, truly? Can the truth of it be found in a name, or a place of birth? Can it—”

Keras took that moment to walk half-way down the stairs and freeze.

Lute’s head turned toward him mid-sentence, his lips twisting upward as his musing answer was abandoned.

“Lute.” Keras’ expression dropped. His hands flexed in the air, as if he’d considered reaching for his sword, but actively stopped himself.

Lute stood up from his chair, turning to Keras and bowing deeply at the waist. “Hello, big brother.”

***

Everyone took a moment to process that.

Keras tensed, but after a moment he seemed to make a decision and finished walking down the stairs. “You shouldn’t have come here.” He walked until he was a few steps apart from Lute, then to my surprise, he mimicked Lute’s formal bow.

Lute stood up straight after, giving Keras a questioning look.

Keras stood up, looked a little tense for a moment, then sighed and opened his arms wide.

Lute rushed closer, allowing Keras to sweep the iron-haired man up into a huge hug. Lute laughed with childlike glee that was an absolute contrast to everything I’d seen from him so far.

I instinctively winced at the display of affection, but it mostly left me more confused. I gave them a moment for Keras to set Lute back down on the ground, but that was the limit of my politeness. “A brother? Keras, you’ve never mentioned any siblings.”

“We’re not related. Not like that.” Keras shook his head at me. “He’s—”

“You should have been my sibling, even by human standards. That is what one calls the siblings of a pacted partner, is it not?”

“Marriage is a little different from that, Lute. And we were never…” Keras shook his head. “We are not supposed to talk about this. And we’re not supposed to see each other. That…that was part of the deal, wasn’t it? I…”

Lute smiled sadly. “You still can’t remember, can you?”

Keras sighed. “…No. I get flashes, but the suppression remains in place.”

Well, that’s not alarming or anything.

“I could help you with that, you know. It isn’t my area of expertise, of course, but restoration of memories is within my abilities.”

Keras tilted his head downward to look at Lute more closely. “It isn’t like you to disobey your father. Has something changed? Why are you here?”

“Father has taken an interest in recent events in this region. I have been given broad latitude to determine the necessary response in case the crisis escalates. I have been investigating. You can imagine my surprise to find both a wielder and a replica of Dawnbringer with a trace of a familiar spirit. I had suspicions immediately, but upon seeing elements of the wielder’s fighting style, I determined your involvement was likely. Now, I must determine how all of you are to be managed.”

Something shifted in the air as Keras narrowed his eyes — and, for just an instant, I felt as if there was a blade pressed against my neck. Gently, not cutting, just…present.

From the look of alarm on the faces of my friends, I guessed that they could feel the same.

“The members of this household are under my protection, Lute.”

If Lute felt the same sensation that we did, he gave no sign of alarm. Instead, he simply smiled. “Of course, brother. Thank you for stating that clearly. I will note this and consider them to fall within the established terms of our agreement.”

Sera spoke up. “I’m sorry, this is all terribly vague. Who is this father you’re talking about, and what is this agreement?”

“That information,” Lute replied, “is restricted.”

Keras turned to Sera. “In general terms, I have an agreement with Lute’s father that we will not interfere with each other’s families, students, and servants. For clarity, I would consider everyone in this household to be my student.”

That definitely was a stretch, but if Lute was taking this into consideration as a part of some kind of formal pact, I could see that Keras was stretching it to make sure we were under the protection of whatever prior agreement they had.

Lute frowned slightly at Keras’ answer. “You must remember that the details of our agreement are private.”

“Yes, yes. But people who are falling under our protection must have some general idea of the terms, obviously. I know some of your father’s servants must have been given significantly greater information than what I’ve just revealed.”

“…True.” Lute adjusted his glasses. “Very well. In any case, you were correct — our very meeting is nearing a violation of the pact. And your involvement with a wielder is definitely a concern.”

“Selys-Lyann is no longer Flowbreaker,” Keras said definitively. “And I was not even aware of their connection until recently, as I can no longer sense the swords.”

“Ah. The loss of your sensory abilities does explain that little problem. I take it that extends to not being able to sense my location as well. That does explain why you didn’t approach me when I entered your territory.” Lute nodded. “Very well. I will not petition Father in regards to any violation on your part — but tread carefully. You must know that there are boundaries that, once crossed, cannot be so easily dismissed.”

“I’m aware.” Keras folded his arms. “Similarly, you should stay away from my students.”

Lute considered that for a moment. “No.”

“No?” Keras bristled again, but I didn’t feel that cutting feeling itching against my neck again.

“I will not take hostile actions toward your students, but I do require their cooperation. I have entered into a dueling class as a team member for Corin Cadence and Patrick Wayland-Cadence. Beyond that, regardless of if Selys-Lyann is presently considered to be Flowbreaker, their relationship cannot be ignored. The sword’s fate must be observed.”

“So,” Sera interjected, “you’re responsible for monitoring the sacred swords? Does that make you a guardian, like Reika?”

“That information is restricted,” Lute replied to her, then after getting a hard look from Keras, “…but I can say that I am not what Reika was, precisely. My responsibilities are similar enough that a comparison is reasonable, however. Each piece must be accounted for. My predecessors were lax in their responsibilities for too long.”

I turned that over in my mind. “Can you tell us what you are?”

Lute gave me a quizzical look. “I am one of Father’s tools. What else could I possibly be?”

***

The remainder of the meeting with Lute was just as infuriatingly vague. We found very few answers other than “that information is restricted”.

So, naturally, we waited for him to leave — peacefully, fortunately — and then bombarded poor Keras with questions.

“I’m just going to be direct,” Sera began, “what in the goddess’ name was that actually about?”

Keras grudgingly sat down at the kitchen table, putting his head in his hands. “Part of my past catching up to me in a very unfortunate way.”

“Okay, still super vague and useless. Go on.” It was a little snippier than I liked, but I didn’t disagree with her.

Keras took a moment, seemingly trying to gather his thoughts. “As I’m sure you’ve already gathered, Lute is related to the sacred swords, as is his father. His family is generally completely hands-off about events that don’t impact the swords directly. Some years ago, we made an agreement that required me to…stay out of their affairs, in exchange for them staying out of mine.”

“But why would you do that? Wasn’t Dawnbringer…” Patrick glanced down to Bright Reflection at his hip, then looked back to Keras. “You were in love with her, weren’t you?”

“It was…more complicated than that. I…I’m sure I had my reasons, I just don’t…”

“You don’t remember them.” I leaned against the table. “And you don’t want to remember them. That’s a little suspicious. Couldn’t you be under some sort of mind influencing magic to prevent you from getting your memories back and uncovering some kind of scheme?”

Sera blinked at me then gave me a look of something unfamiliar.

Was that…approval?

Huh.

Apparently we had similar ideas of the situation for a change.

Keras, unfortunately, didn’t seem to agree. “No. The memory loss is related to one of my own techniques — it wasn’t caused by an external source. It would be more accurate to say that I’ve suppressed a large swath of my own memories deliberately.”

“Why would you do that?” Patrick gawked. “Your memories are a huge part of who you are!”

“Maybe I didn’t like who I was. Or who I might become.” Keras shook his head. “I don’t know, exactly. I suspect I suppressed them to prevent me from knowing what was going on with certain people, because if I knew…”

“You’d go track them down. You knew you couldn’t keep yourself out of their affairs without taking that step.” Sera sighed. “That’s hideously unhealthy, you know.”

“Do you have a better solution?” Keras demanded bitterly. “Do you know how hard it is to stay away from the people you love? To not even know if they’re alive or dead, or if they need your help?”

“I think we have some idea.” She leaned across the table. “You think we’re happy about sitting around while Tristan is rotting in the Serpent Spire?”

I looked at Sera in surprise. I hadn’t gotten any indication that she was actually invested in Tristan’s fate — she seemed more bitter about him than anything else. But…people are complicated, I suppose. And sometimes they can hold two conflicting views at once.

Or, of course, she was simply making the comparison because it was an easy way to manipulate Keras in the conversation. If so, it seemed to work, at least to some degree.

“That’s….” Keras’ face flipped through a complicated set of emotions. “…You’re right, that is similar. Maybe I’m being unfair…and maybe I was in a no-win situation, much like yours. Tristan would die if you managed to rescue him from the spire. Perhaps I knew that my involvement in what was going on would only make things worse. Or…”

“Maybe they’re dead and you couldn’t face that and go on,” Sera concluded. “If so, that’s not exactly a great way to deal with loss.”

“When you’ve lost as much as I have, sometimes forgetting is the only way to cope.”

“The only way?” I found myself asking. “Saying there’s only one way to handle anything doesn’t sound like Keras Selyrian to me.”

Keras was silent for a time. “…It doesn’t, does it?” His shoulders slumped. “That should be no surprise. Keras Selyrian is just a false name, after all.”

He seemed dejected by that, standing up from the table and turning to leave.

“Wait.” I interjected. He paused. I couldn’t necessarily make him feel better, but… “You’re more than just any name, given or chosen. You’re defined by your actions, past and present. You’ve protected us. You’ve saved my life. That’s worth something, isn’t it?”

“…It is.” He acknowledged quietly. “But I won’t be able to do that much longer.” He turned back to look toward me. “Take care of Lute when I’m gone. And I hope…he’ll take care of you, too.”

With that statement, Keras headed back up the stairs.

“So…” Sera glanced to me and Patrick, giving us a conspiratorial grin. “Who wants to help me convince Lute to sign a Summoner contract?”

***

We chatted for just a bit longer about Lute and Keras after that. The general consensus was that Lute was, in all likelihood, either a dragon (which definitely actually still existed) like Reika from Keras’ stories, or possibly the physical manifestation of a sword in the form of a person.

Either of those options involved significant dangers if we continued to deal with him, but also a great deal of potential for gain. Sera’s angle of trying to get a Summoner contract made a degree of sense, especially if he had access to unusual magic types…and because it would potentially allow her a degree of control over him, which would make any interactions between us safer.

The latter option was much more interesting — it made me extremely curious what had ended up happening with Dawnbringer and if, perhaps, she had ended up in a similar form.

If that was the case…where was she?

No doubt, Keras had asked himself that same question many times. It was heartbreaking that he’d seemingly erased that knowledge from his own mind.

I was very tempted to pursue a means of restoring Keras’ memories, but…it wasn’t really my place to do so. If he’d truly suppressed them himself, it wasn’t my decision to make if he was going to regain them or not.

…And I doubted he’d be able to resist the urge to regain them forever. When that happened….if Dawnbringer was alive…

I didn’t envy anyone who stood in the way of their reunion.

Unfortunately, between Lute’s infuriating refusal to provide answers and Keras’ memory loss, that whole interaction had given us precious little information to work with. It was clear that Lute was going to keep watching me — or, Selys-Lyann, really — but I couldn’t know what that meant for his ultimate plans.

That was a little worrying.

In spite of Lute’s agreement to treat us as Keras’ students, and his surface-level mentions of their agreement, I didn’t get the impression he found the contract between Keras and his father particularly binding. If we were in the way of whatever his real plans were…well, I doubted he was anywhere near as powerful as Keras was, but there was no doubt that he was dangerous enough to be a concern.

Was I going to make more plans and countermeasures for if Lute eventually decided to backstab us?

You bet I was.

But I had a pretty long list of seemingly impossible opponents to strategize for, and at the moment, I had one that I was almost overdue to meet with.

I groaned, wrapped up our conversation for the moment, and went to meet my next opponent.

CHAPTER XV – PROMISES OF FUTURE PROBLEMS

Dealing with people was hard, especially when I had several different meetings to deal with back-to-back. It’s possible I’d made a critical mistake with my life choices by continuously giving myself more social obligations, but bowing out of them was more work, so…that led me to my next confrontation of the day.

Inhale, exhale.

I can do this.

I stepped into the arena across from my opponent. It wasn’t the first time I’d fought against a Shaper, not by any stretch of the imagination. It wasn’t even the first time I’d fought him, although it had been a solid year.

And I was strong enough now to know how little he’d been trying.

“Combatants, ready positions.” Patrick sat outside the arena, serving as announcer for the match. “Bow to your opponent.”

We bowed.

“Begin!”

And in the blur that followed, I saw just how quickly a Citrine-level Shaper could move.

Lord Jonathan Teft was a blur as he shot forward like a cannonball, flashing as he reached the middle of the arena and formed two duplicates of himself. All three of them made the same motion, raising dueling canes to produce a blade and prepare to swing.

I could follow Teft’s movements, albeit barely. Three of them? Hahaha, no, not a chance.

Not at my baseline speed, anyway.

Haste. Accelerated Computation.

My right hand moved to my left hip.

Incoming attack, downward arc, impact in 0.284 seconds.

I drew straight into a strike. Not a parry — a direct attack designed to swing under his. Simultaneously, I shifted a fraction to the side, leaning my head to avoid the impact trajectory of his cane.

Teft startled at the sudden movement, adjusting his own assault to throw himself to the side of the swing. I was honestly a little impressed — he didn’t have any obvious perception spells active, although admittedly, I couldn’t be certain if he’d already applied them earlier. Either he’d prepared for rapid adjustments or he simply had absurd reflexes. Both were dangerous.

But not as dangerous as the two copies of him that were attacking me simultaneously from my back and left side.

A calculation of impact times told me that I couldn’t block both of them quickly enough, nor could I dodge to the side without exposing myself to the real Teft’s counterstrike.

I could, however, dodge up.

Jump.

I shot into the air, avoiding both incoming strikes and raising my sword for a downward swing—

Just before I smashed into a phantasmal ceiling.

The impact was cushioned by both my shroud and my redundant shield sigils, but I still felt it — my ring launched me upward with much greater force than a normal jump.

My ever-helpful enhanced analytical abilities told me, impact to head, check for concussion at soonest convenience.

I didn’t have time to worry about that in the moment. The impact had interrupted my attempt at an attack, and I barely managed to blast myself to the side as I descended to avoid a hail of blasts from three dueling canes.

Conjured dueling canes appear functional. Further research required to determine full capabilities of simulacra-carried magical items.

I’d been almost certain that simulacra didn’t get any benefits from the items that their creator was carrying, so this demonstration was unusual, but that was a problem for future Corin.

I hit the ground and swept my blade straight through two more dueling cane blasts, then shot forward with another jump, closing the distance to one of the copies of Teft.

I swung. He raised his cane to parry.

And, just as I’d hoped, Mr. Stabbington sliced straight through his dueling cane without resistance.

The copy’s eyes widened fractionally as his parry failed, but he still managed to shift backward before the blade cut into him. That was good, because if he hadn’t, I’d have probably torn him like paper.

I didn’t have a chance to celebrate. A moment later, phantasmal chains bound my arm to the ground, still in the downward position I’d used for the swing.

Available wrist and arm movement insufficient for severing chain.

That limited my most obvious counter, which was simply rending the chains apart with the same anti-magic void effect that had proven so effective against the simulacra. Teft had clearly noticed the sword’s power and had adeptly countered my strategy.

My first one, anyway.

One, two…good enough.

I slammed my other fist into the chain, charged with transference mana. Transference wasn’t the direct opposite of the mana type used for Shaper constructs — Shapers used a composite mana type — but that composite contained enhancement mana, which transference could counter.

…But there was the problem of power.

My hand flashed and sent a burst of energy straight into the construct…and managed to chip it just a little before a barrage of conjured blades slammed into my back.

My shield shattered. My stomach lurched.

…Then I was outside of the arena, standing in the starting position next to my anchor.

Distantly, I heard Patrick’s announcement. “Lord Teft: 1. Corin Cadence: 0.”

Position altered by one hundred and fifteen meters through teleportation effect upon shield sigil failure, as expected. Both shield sigils drained.

I sighed, sheathed my sword, then shook my hands in the air to reduce their tremors.

Release Haste. Release Accelerated Computation.

I stretched a mana thread downward to my primary shield sigil, recharging it. “Sigil recharged,” I declared. I didn’t want to bother recharging both — the redundant sigils hadn’t done much of anything during the match, and I needed to conserve my mana.

I had my batteries stored in the Jaden Box, but I’d need those later, too. We were just getting started.

Teft nodded. “Positions, then.”

Inhale, exhale.

One more time.

“Combatants, ready. Bow…and begin.”

***

Hours later, I sat down in the stands outside the arena with both Patrick and Lord Teft. Teft and I were both gulping down water. Patrick was taking notes.

After properly hydrating, Teft and I turned to each other to discuss the matches.

I’d lost all of them, of course. That was to be expected.

The margin was the disappointing part. I’d tried a variety of different strategies, but I’d never managed to scratch the real Teft. I’d managed to hit his simulacra a few times, and even dispelled one of them once, but that was hardly an accomplishment.

“A good start,” Teft said, perhaps noting my dour demeanor. “You demonstrated excellent knowledge of standard Shaper tactics, as well as appropriate countermeasures. I confess that I had not anticipated your use of a void weapon.”

I nodded. “I figured you’d have planned around Selys-Lyann, due to your prior knowledge of it. Unfortunately, as soon as you saw what it could do, I’d lost much of that advantage.”

“I would disagree. That weapon gave me a true risk to account for throughout each of the matches — and you demonstrated sufficient skill at it to keep me at a distance. That limited my engagement at close range, due to the possibility that one of your transference bursts would allow you to briefly overcome my speed advantage. This meant that you only had to contend with my simulacra at close range, while I was forced to use ranged tactics.”

“…Sure. That isn’t necessarily ideal, though. You’re better at long range than I am.”

“Of course. I’m better at any range than you are.”

…I couldn’t argue with that. It wasn’t bravado, it was simply a statement of fact.

Focusing on the conversation again, I considered my response. “Limiting your options might be good, but I’d rather limit them to force you into melee combat, rather than away from it.”

“Unlikely, unless you have some form of area denial magic that I’m unaware of.”

I considered that Taer’vys Ironthorn had somehow managed to envelop an entire arena with void during one of his battles against Keras, but I’d rarely heard of other examples. Void magic was notoriously difficult to use for the creation of magical items — that was part of what made my void mana sword so remarkable. I decided it was probably worth investigating if I could find a way to do it, but I didn’t anticipate any success.

I could use my void sword to charge a battery, then use the battery to try to create another item…but there are a variety of problems. Void enchantment formulae are extremely difficult to find. Materials that can hold void mana are also rare and expensive. And, even if I could find both the enchantments and the materials, I don’t think there’s enough mana here to do much if I distributed it across a wide area instead of a sword blade. I could theoretically try to double up and make multiple batteries, but this is probably a Sunstone to Citrine-level item already, and I can’t get too much beyond that.

Even if I make something like a Citrine-level void generator, I doubt it could cover a whole dueling area with enough saturation to incapacitate an opponent…

And that would restrict me, too. I’m not immune to my own items, and I have limited mana to work with.

Hm.

“Lost in thought?” Teft asked.

“Oh, sorry. Debating if I could create an item for making an area of void. The core concept seems possible, but I don’t think I could get a broad enough area with enough saturation.”

Teft stared at me briefly, then shook his head. “…At times, I forget how advanced your enchanting capabilities are for your age. Yes, I suppose you probably could do that, but I would advise against it. You’d likely end up being forced into the zone yourself, and you’d be much less effective there than your stronger opponent.”

I frowned, considering further. “What about something transference-based, rather than void-based? Shaper constructs and simulacra all contain density, right?”

“In various quantities, yes. Most constructs only utilize a minimal amount of density, unless you’re dealing with a density specialist. And since density is a compound of enhancement and stone, you’re correct that transference is typically a useful countermeasure — but it’s highly dependent on the specific levels of each individual mana type present in the construct. If you wanted to make something with a broad area transference effect — like say, an item that repels everything in a wide area — that would have to be extremely powerful to actually destabilize constructs. And you would not be immune.”

I nodded. “What about something with a beneficial transference effect? Like, if I cast a wide-area Haste spell, or put down an item that generates a Haste field? Would that be damaging to constructs and simulacra?”

“It would likely gradually erode them, but not quickly enough to destroy them within the scope of a standard battle. That’s especially true if you’re fighting an opponent of a higher attunement-level.”

Hm. If that won’t work, maybe they have another weakness based on a different mana type they utilize…

“Can you run through the full list of mana types used in simulacra for me? You went over the kinds of mana used to maintain them in the first day of class, but not the full list of mana types used to build them in the first place.”

Teft nodded. “That’s because it’s a long list including multiple composite mana types. I try to avoid overwhelming my students too much on the first day. Present company exempted, of course.”

I chuckled. “Thanks. Makes sense. What’s the list?”

“Density, enhancement, spirit, memory, life, mental, perception, and grey. As I’m certain you can guess, most of those are provided directly by hidden attunement functions, rather than types that Shapers are actually given access to using directly. A Shaper can’t actually create simulacra until you reach Sunstone-level, since that’s when it begins to generate pools of those mana types in the attunement to store for the simulacrum function.”

Huh. That’s fascinating. And those mana types…they’re very similar to the same ones the Transcendence Gateway Crystal listed for ones it uses. Not identical, but very similar. Probably not a coincidence.

Wait. If it’s a specialized attunement-function, and they can’t use simulacra without it…

“Are there anti-Shaper runes, similar to anti-teleportation and anti-divination ones? Like, something that specifically prevents people from being able to use the simulacrum-creation function?”

Teft frowned. “I don’t think I’ve seen anything like that, but…I suppose such a thing might be hypothetically possible. There could be severe consequences to such an invention, however. Shapers are a backbone of our military might. If you publicly deployed such a device, and word spread that it had been used…”

I groaned. “That’s…ugh. I hate having to account for things like that. For the record, I don’t plan for our duel to be public, but…yeah, I’ll consider the ramifications before I get too deep into trying to design an anti-Shaper device.”

Even if such a thing was possible, I’d probably need a Shaper to help me build it — or at least a battery for the composite mana type that Shapers used.

…Which was possible, given that Sera’s crystal mark was for density mana. She’d probably be willing to help me make a battery, once her mana capacity reached the amount necessary to fill one.

That didn’t mean it was the best possible plan, though, especially given the concern that Teft had mentioned.

“Your frustration is reasonable. I, too, have often been irritated by the limitations necessary on my strategies due to outside factors.”

I blinked. I had trouble picturing that. “…Really?”

“Of course. You must understand that I was not always a Citrine-level Shaper. As I mentioned, I began as an Enchanter, and had to adapt, much as you did. Even when I first gained my secondary attunement, there was a long period where it was underpowered compared to my contemporaries. And, even once I reached Citrine-level, you must understand that I’ve had to contend with equal or stronger opponents. In such cases, standard Shaper strategies are not always sufficient. Everyone knows them.”

I hadn’t put too much thought into that side of things, but he was right.

There were four basic styles of Shaper strategies: body enhancement, construct creation, simulacra summoning, and spell shaping. Different Shapers chose different specialties, but ultimately, those were the primary disciplines that all Shapers drew from. The level of flexibility provided through those four styles made Shapers extremely formidable and adaptable…but because of that, counters to each were constantly being formulated and documented. I’d studied many of them even as a child, when it had been assumed I’d be a Shaper myself.

There were technically other options for Shapers, like trying to utilize one of the other base mana types by itself, but they were generally considered inferior to the standard approaches.

So, if you were trying to work your way up as a duelist, you were underpowered for your age, and everyone already knew your techniques, what kind of a position did that put you in?

Not a great one, really.

I felt an unexpected bit of comradery for Teft with that realization. “…What sorts of strategies did you come up with, that you weren’t willing to use? Would any of them be applicable in my situation?”

Teft smiled softly. “An excellent question. I have a few that might, in fact, be useful to you.”

***

After getting home, I took a quick shower. Then, I went to pay Sera a visit.

Sera opened her door, looking a little surprised. “Corin? Visiting me, without prompting? Should I be checking for illusions and simulacra?”

I rolled my eyes. “It’s actually me. But things do get more unusual, so I can understand some skepticism. I’m following up on your offer to help me. It’s a little invasive, but I do have a request for you.”

“Invasive?” Sera raised an eyebrow. “You’re not going to ask me about my love life, are you? I’m not sure you could handle hearing about my relationship matrix, but if you think you’re ready for it, I’m willing to share.”

I sighed. “That’s literally the furthest thing from my mind, now and forever. No, Sera. I want you to let me look at your attunement.”

“Normally, I’d ask someone to buy me a few drinks before — nope, too weird making that joke with my brother, I’ll stop there. Why? You’ve seen it — ah, I understand. You mean you want to look at the sub-glyph functions, because you’ve been trying to figure out how to make items for contracts.”

I blinked. Weird teasing aside, I was impressed. She was absolutely right. “…Yeah. I’ve looked at books on them, but I haven’t found everything I need, and there’s no substitute for time spent studying a contract attunement directly.”

“Sure. You’ve mentioned wanting to look at my attunement before. You wanted to compare my attunement to a normal Summoner at some point. Did you have someone in mind for that?”

I shook my head. “No, not yet. But I’ve decided not to wait on that part. I can look at your attunement now and compare later. I think I’ll be able to get enough out of your own attunement to at least start making some notes. And beyond that…you have the only ascended attunement I know of.”

“Ah, yes. One of the places I’m clearly superior.” She preened. “And you want to crack that open and figure out how it works. Are you planning to use that information to ascend your own attunement?”

“Maybe. I don’t actually know if that’s possible. I haven’t actually found any sub-glyphs for ascended versions of my attunements inside them yet, although they might be hidden in one of the sections I can’t see until I hit Citrine-level. If they already exist, getting familiar with yours would help me understand what it would take to activate them, as well as what the effects of doing so might be.”

I paused for a breath, then continued. “If there’s nothing already in my attunement for ascending, that might mean that only some attunements have that functionality built in, or that the ascended features are grafted on at some other point in the process. For example, it’s possible that your ascended attunement functions didn’t exist until after you drank the primer, at which point Seiryu used your contract as a connection to take some of that mana and apply it toward altering your attunement.”

“Seiryu wouldn’t have even necessarily needed to use the primer’s mana for that — she could have used her own mana, given how our contract connects us. But yes, your point stands. I agree that Seiryu intervened in some way, but I’d been picturing it more like flipping a simple switch, similar to how you made yourself temporarily Sunstone when fighting the copy of Keras.”

“…Ah, I wouldn’t say that was quite as simple as flipping a switch, but yes, similar.” I nodded. “Yes, that’s probably what happened, but given how quickly I can make attunement changes with Accelerated Computation active…it’s possible that Seiryu can do it even faster, and she wrote an entire new section in your attunement to ascend it. Or rather than wrote it, copied it from somewhere else, or…”

“I get the idea. So, you want to take a look at how my attunement works, and possibly take away the main thing that makes me stand apart from the rest of our group by giving it to yourself.”

I nodded vehemently. “Oh, yeah. And everyone else on our team. Can’t let you even have a tiny bit of uniqueness.”

Sera scoffed. “Fine. I suppose if I’m going to be condemned to mediocrity, I should at least be the agent that enables my own destruction. Very well, Corin. Do your worst.”

I laughed. “Sit down. This won’t hurt a bit.”

Dropping back into our sibling banter was a comfort, and I found myself in a good mood as I put a hand on Sera’s attunement and closed my eyes.

Analyze Attunement Composition. Accelerated Computation.

I dug into her attunement’s sub-glyphs, much as I had with my own. Studying it wasn’t quick. I still didn’t have full comprehension of the sub-glyph language, but I read what I could in a single brief session.

Finding the basics of contract functions was simple enough — they were located in the same approximate “location” as my Enchanter-specific functions, if “location” is something that makes sense in terms of written language inside a magical construct. Anyway, I studied that a bit, looking at what I could find for how contracts were established and stabilized, as well as some other functions that I hadn’t been able to find much on in the books I’d been loaned.

…But it still felt like something was fundamentally missing. I’d have to dig deeper when I had more time.

As for general ascended functions, or anything related to her Invoker abilities…I couldn’t find them. Or, rather, I found the likely section where they were located, but it was locked out much like my higher-level Arbiter functions were and I couldn’t verify what was inside.

If I wanted to determine more about the mechanisms of how those advanced functions worked, I’d have to hit Citrine…and that meant digging myself deeper into the dangers of having my Arbiter attunement. The risks that Warren Constantine had warned me about.

I’d say that I had an important choice ahead of me in that regard, but the truth was that I’d already made that choice a long time before.

I released my spell, pulled my hand off Sera’s back, and exhaled a deep breath. “Thanks.”

“So, are you ready to ruin things for me now, or should I expect it to take longer?”

“Longer. Couldn’t tap into the ascended stuff yet. Need more time to study the contract stuff, too.”

Sera tried not to look relieved. “…Understood. I’m okay with letting you study further, but let me bring a book or something next time.”

I winced. “Oh. Sorry. That must have been boring.”

“It was, but it didn’t take you too long, just fifteen or twenty minutes. How long did it feel?”

“…Like an hour or two. Interesting. I knew Accelerated Computation increased my processing speed, but I wasn’t expecting that level of compression.”

“Might be worth exploring that further…but not now. You need to get some rest at some point. You can’t just train and study all the time.”

“Sure.” I told her. “Thanks, Sera. I’ll do that.”

***

My idea of “rest” wasn’t the same as most of my friends. I was, in spite of our obvious differences, more like Keras in that regard—

I couldn’t be idle when I sensed an imminent threat. And, at the moment, I sensed several.

My looming duel was the most obvious one, but I had other concerns now that we were back in Valia. We were in striking distance of the Serpent Spire again, and if Mizuchi recovered from being banished — if she hadn’t already — I had no idea if she was going to emerge with a vendetta.

In theory, a spire guardian needed someone to summon them out of a spire to leave…but someone must have done that in order for Mizuchi to assault the Winter Ball. Whoever had orchestrated that could do it again.

I might need to figure that out at some point.

Katashi would have the power, of course, and he’d summoned Mizuchi when he’d been making the show of force earlier in the year…but why would he send her to the ball? She had made a point about the government growing corrupt…if that was the purpose of her assault, wouldn’t Katashi have just shown up himself if that was his goal?

There’s too much I don’t understand about that. Maybe Tristan knows more, but he’s gone silent.

Aside from the Mizuchi problem, I was still concerned about Saffron, too. While Keras was present, that was less of a concern, but he couldn’t be everywhere at once…and he was leaving soon.

So, with all that in mind, conventional “rest” wasn’t really an option in my mind. And tinkering with Sera’s attunement had renewed my resolve for one particular goal.

I’d waited long enough, pretending to debate a choice I’d known I’d make. I had power just waiting for me to grasp it — if I was willing to make changes to my attunement.

I’d done it just once before, during the Transcendence Gateway Crystal’s test against the conjured Keras. At that point, it had been a desperate move that had helped me keep up just a little bit against that simulated Keras…but obviously, he’d been weaker than the real thing, and it had only bought me enough time to win the scenario through dialogue.

In a real fight, pushing myself to Sunstone would be a marginal power boost, but nothing that would be meaningful against someone like Mizuchi. Aside from more mana and a stronger shroud, the main benefit was improved shroud manipulation. That would help me do more with my mana threads, and I had some ideas on how to optimize that, but not in a way that would make me more effective in that particular type of fight.

No, against Mizuchi and similar opponents, our most critical problem was simple—

Speed.

I was already pushing myself to the limits of my processing ability with Haste spells. I’d graduated from my Quartz and Carnelian-level Haste spells to playing with a full Sunstone-level Haste spell…and even that wasn’t close to enough. My senses couldn’t keep up with the extra speed, and even if they could, Keras was still faster than I was with Haste on — and that was without using any techniques of his own.

Sunstone didn’t help with that…but maybe, just maybe, Citrine-level would.

The problem, of course, was that pushing myself all the way to Citrine-level — even temporarily — was a ludicrous risk. My body wasn’t going to be able to handle it for long, if at all.

And so, rather than taking that kind of foolish risk, I turned toward a secret discussion I’d held with Warren Constantine. One that I’d hinted at to others previously, but that I’d thus far kept mostly to myself.

Project Peridot.

I pulled open Constantine’s notes on the project, reviewing them again before I began to work.

There is a part of me that hesitates to place this in writing, for even now, Farren’s lackeys scour my works for what little they might need to bring full accusations of heresy to the attentions of their Whisper contacts. I take this risk not for myself, but with the knowledge of my own impending failure. I have seen enough of the history of fragments like myself to know that we are rarely as long lived as our ambitions. There will come a time when my work must be carried on by another.

And so, it is my desperate hope that this work can be carried on, perhaps by one who has managed to evade the constant scrutiny that I must endure. I wish I could simply publish these findings and benefit our society as a whole, but I fear that road would lead to another Feria or Feldmyr. Another nation ground to dust in a single night.

And so, it is only in these notes that I reveal the deepest of my treasons—

I have broken the attunement scale.

It is a statement that is simultaneously profound and utterly simple.

We are taught since childhood that there is a clear path of advancement one must follow — Quartz to Carnelian, Carnelian to Sunstone, and so on.

But this is just as arbitrary as the levels themselves. Manufactured to the particular neurosis of an obsessive goddess who long ago chose a particular form of escalating scale based on shattered memories rather than rational rules.

There is no need for every level on the attunement scale to be precisely six times the mana requirements of the previous levels. There is no reason why every specific ability needs to be unlocked at exactly the point that was chosen. To some degree, the existing system acknowledges this — a Guardian or Executioner gains their shroud at Quartz-level rather than Carnelian, and through countless iterations, the progression of attunements themselves have changed. Some entire features were implemented in specific attunement generations and later removed. These changes are acknowledged by many scholars, as well as the visages themselves, but the scale itself has remained sacred. Static.

Until me. Or, perhaps, some previous fool who was long ago erased from history for making the same presumptuous attempts to tinker with the works of a divinity.

And so, it is here that I reveal my hubris and delight once again in the simplicity of executing it—

I am no longer on the attunement scale. No, I did not presume to make myself a “Sapphire”. Such a thing would be foolhardy. Not only am I uncertain as to whether or not my human form could handle the additional mana capacity required for a hypothetical Sapphire level, such a thing would immediately reveal my work to the world. The blue aura would be an immediate signal.

Instead, I have chosen to delay my inevitable discovery and destruction through a subtler path:

Peridot.

I chose the name because it was a convenient one for a yellow-green color, which is an accurate summation of my chosen placement — a level in between Citrine and Emerald. Due to the absolutely absurd gap in power between Citrine and Emerald, there is a tremendous amount of untapped potential in this power range. It would be possible for many more attunement functions to be implemented safely between Citrine and Emerald — the body would generally have years to acclimate to them as their mana pool grows between these stages. In truth, I could likely create several intervening levels between Citrine and Emerald without causing any significant risks to the body, each with additional attunement features — but I have chosen to work on a simpler scale for now.

Peridot is my attempt to create a stage with entirely new attunement functions, which I will detail in separate documents. Constructing a new attunement function from nothing is an ambitious project that will stretch even my own formidable knowledge of sub-glyphs. It would be easier, perhaps, to simply borrow from the attunement functions of other attunements — for example, to build Summoner functions into my Enchanter attunement — but I admit that this is of lesser interest to me.

Peridot remains an ongoing project, but for the time being, I have begun work on testing the fundamentals. As a proof of concept, I began with a simpler new level — I had no desire to destroy myself outright by testing new functions without even trying established ones. Not on most days, at least.

I created a simpler new level, which I call Spessartine. This is an intervening level between Sunstone and Citrine, with some Citrine-level functions enabled without actually reaching Citrine-level.

It works flawlessly…at least for someone like myself that has already reached Citrine-level mana tolerance. For someone with a body that is not yet acclimated to Citrine-level abilities, I cannot say with any certainty that turning on Citrine-level functions will be tolerated. I have yet to take the risk, but my calculations show that there is a significant enough mana range in between Sunstone and Citrine to allow for certain specific functions. See the attached papers on mana tolerances for more on this subject.

Warren Constantine had cracked something I’d been wondering about since my visit to Farren Labs — he’d figured out how to modify his attunement in novel ways. He’d made entirely new attunement levels. This was, to me, both exciting and terrifying in equal measure.

I was still horrified about the risks of trying to tinker with anything that could potentially destroy my mind. Modifying my Enchanter attunement seemed like a very likely way to do that — and, in spite of Constantine’s obvious genius, he clearly hadn’t come out of the whole process of attunement tinkering unscathed. His mental decline might have had more to do with deliberately destroying his own attunements and tapping into older magic, but…I had a sense from the mania in his papers, as well as the strange way he referred to himself as a “fragment”, that there was already something strange going on with him prior to that point.

I was curious about that, but I didn’t have the means to press him for more information at the moment. Perhaps I’d find more in his papers, but I wasn’t sure if he’d delve into anything quite that personal.

In spite of my fears, I knew that attunement modification was a unique opportunity. True, there were a few people with Biomancer and Enchanter combinations out there as well, and those could do similar work on their own attunements without risk, but I doubted they had access to Constantine’s notes the way I did. It wasn’t implausible that others had figured out the same things in parallel, or even earlier…but that didn’t really matter.

This was something I could do that maybe a handful of other people on the continent even knew about. I mean, aside from the visages, and maybe some whispers, and…okay, more than a handful. But a few handfuls?

It was a rare advantage. And one I intended to exploit to the fullest possible extent…without destroying myself.

I dug through Constantine’s notes for the specific thing I was looking for — notes on mana tolerances for specific attunement functions.

To summarize without getting into extraneous detail, turning on any given attunement function put a strain on the body. A person’s ability to tolerate active attunement functions was related to the amount of mana their body could hold. There were also other factors in play that I didn’t perfectly understand, like star vein capacities and Dianis Point tolerances, but the summary was simple enough — based on someone’s safe mana capacity, it was possible to roughly calculate which functions their body could safely handle. Some functions were safer than others, and some attunements generated mana types that better prepared the body to handle both more mana and additional functions.

Constantine’s notes weren’t exhaustive. He hadn’t studied every possible attunement function, nor the safe mana thresholds for every single attunement. He worked in secrecy, and thus, the data from his study was limited to what he could study without getting caught.

But he had the exact same attunement set that I did, at least when he’d been writing these notes. And thus, he had better data on Enchanter and Arbiter safe mana thresholds and functions than any other attunement.

I found what I wanted easily enough — a single higher-level function that could potentially change the way I fought forever.

…And, with great hesitancy, I did something I almost never was willing to do.

I waited.

I didn’t do the crazy possible self-destruction thing immediately.

Instead, I told Sera what I was about to do, and with her knowledge and approval of my plan, I went to get the one person who might be able to save me if something did go terribly wrong.

***

“Well, crumpet. This is certainly a pleasant surprise.” Sheridan Theas gestured for me to sit down at the table across from them. I found them at a coffee shop, sitting and drinking tea while eating a…was that a crumpet?

It definitely was. That certainly gave Sheridan’s chosen pet name a little bit more of a sinister twinge than it might have otherwise.

Strangely, I didn’t mind. Sheridan’s particular brand of hilariously dangerous barely fazed me. Maybe living with Derek and Keras for months had simply inured me to deadly weirdness…or maybe there was something underlying that playful attitude that I liked more than I was willing to admit.

…That was possibly concerning in itself, but a problem for future Corin.

I slid into the chair with a smile forming on my face. “Glad I managed to find you. How are you?” At a yap from a tiny dog I’d just noticed at my feet, I hastily added, “And Mister Eviscerator?”

“Oh, I’m doing about as well as one could expect, given the current circumstances. And thank you for inquiring about Mister Eviscerator, but I can’t answer for him. You’ll have to learn to speak his language.” They pulled off a piece of crumpet and tossed it to the dog. I was less fond of the potential symbolism in that, but tried not to read too much into it.

I briefly wondered if Sheridan actually expected me to learn to speak a dog language, then briefly considered if transcendence magic would make it possible, or if I’d need something like communication mana. Then, I realized I appeared to be staring blankly at my own feet while pondering, so I sat up. “I’m pleased to hear you’re doing well. Is this a good time to talk about forbidden knowledge?”

Sheridan laughed, clapping their hands. “Marvelous. You managed to dispense with the crust and get to the meat even more efficiently than I’d hoped. To answer your query, it obviously isn’t in the immediate sense,” they gestured at our civilian-containing surroundings, “but if you’ll indulge a brief delay, I’d be quite pleased to take a walk somewhere more…private.”

“Excellent. In the meantime…should I order something?”

Sheridan took another bite of a crumpet. “I’d think that would depend on if you like anything you see.”

“I’ll…take a closer look.”

I let my gaze linger a couple more moments on Sheridan — enough to earn another flash of a smile — and then finally lifted a menu.

I didn’t order anything that day, but in the future…maybe I’d come back for more.

***

After Sheridan finished their coffee and snack, we took our promised walk to a nearby park. Sheridan lifted an umbrella and expanded it, runes flashing on the inside the moment it opened. Mister Eviscerator let out a bark at the momentary flash of light, the sound echoing eerily for a moment before fading into normalcy.

A consequence of the umbrella’s sound-containment functions. Interesting. I should look into more sound modification—ah, who am I kidding, my list is long enough right now. Need to focus a bit.

Sheridan offered an arm for me to slip my arm into. For a brief moment, I actually considered it, feeling a strange mixture of my usual revulsion and something that might have been…interest, maybe?

I filed that away with a blink, then shook my head. Sheridan retracted their arm without a further word.

As we found an open stretch of the park without anyone in obvious eyeshot or earshot, Sheridan silently turned to me and turned their chin in an obvious implication of inquiry.

“So,” I began, “I’ve been thinking about fundamentally altering some attunements.”

“Of course you have, darling.” Sheridan nodded as if this probable heresy was the most obvious thing in the world. “And I take it you’re concerned about mana scarring?”

That was fast.

“And any other potential side effects. I’ve been doing some reading on internal mana structures — things like Star Veins and Dianis Points. It’s possible they could rupture if too much mana is forced through them.”

“Theoretically, yes. In practice, you’d be unlikely to cause that unless you did something absurd, like take yourself straight to Emerald. Which you would never consider.”

Sheridan gave me a pointed look. I held a hand to my heart in mock-offense.

“Of course not! My plans are far more complex and the dangers significantly more nuanced.”

Something flashed in Sheridan’s eyes. “Tell me.”

“I probably will.” I raised a finger. “But before I continue, I should probably ask what you would do if I, say, happened to theoretically be doing something against the will of Wydd.”

“Well, in that hypothetical circumstance, I would obviously have to sacrifice you on a very elaborate and well-maintained altar. It’s quite nice, I don’t get to show people often. Would you like to see it?”

Since it seemed like the sane response, I said, “Maybe later.”

“A practical answer. Polite, yet noncommittal. A little boring,” Sheridan pouted, “but I’ll forgive it in light of the primary conversation being far more fascinating than this tangent. Now, since you obviously require a more detailed response, I will also note that I have no means to accurately evaluate Wydd’s approval or disapproval of your plans. I am not, as you will recall, actually a Whisper of Wydd — merely a follower. And you, dear Arbiter, are a messenger of the visages.”

“Meaning,” I mused, “I would actually be more equipped to accuse you of heresy.”

“I would look rather good on that altar, I think,” Sheridan considered, “do you have your own candles, or should I plan to supply them?”

“I have some,” I responded automatically, given that I absolutely did have some in the Jaden Box, without processing the implications of the question — or the image — until after I replied. “But, uh, that won’t be immediately necessary. Will it?”

“I don’t know, Corin. Have I been doing any heresy? You really should be watching me more closely.”

“I’ll take that into consideration. Now, banter aside,” I noted Sheridan’s pout in response to that remark, “are you willing to assist me? You’re one of the few people who might be able to intervene if something goes catastrophically wrong.”

“While I do appreciate your estimation of my abilities, would it not be prudent to instead seek out someone who has some direct ability to, say, reverse the process of any modifications you choose to make? Or at least pause any functions you enable?”

Sheridan’s question implied a greater degree of understanding of what I was doing than I was certain they’d have, but I found myself both unsurprised and pleased by that. “I’d need either someone with my own combination of attunements for that or someone who has both an Enchanter and Biomancer attunement. I’m not aware of anyone in Valia with those capabilities. Farren Labs has most of them.”

“Most,” Sheridan agreed, “but not all. There have been efforts to set up competitors in the past. And, beyond that…there may be ways to halt damage without actually interacting with attunements in the way you’re thinking.”

I pondered that. “…Oh, like simply disabling the attunement outright? Hm. They’re protected against that sort of thing…but I suppose if my restricted attunement can modify an attunement, others might have the access necessary to use something like void or shadow sorcery to dampen or disable one. Would…the Necromancer attunement happen to be able to disable attunements, Sheridan?”

“Hm. I’m not sure, Corin. Would doing something like that be heresy?”

I’d known this would be a dangerous conversation, but it was leading in a direction I hadn’t considered. I wasn’t exactly skilled at political maneuvering, but I recognized something deeper in that particular question — responding had broader meaning than just for my own particular experiment.

If I told Sheridan that using something like the Necromancer attunement to disable an attunement wasn’t heretical, and I was actually considered some kind of speaker for the visages, Sheridan could lean on that justification to claim that they had permission to do it in circumstances completely unrelated to my experiment. That was…kind of exhausting to think about. Were they planning something? Just asking to add a future potential tool to their disposal?

Was I overthinking everything, like usual?

It was hard to tell, so I gave what felt like a safe answer. “I suppose that would depend on the specific circumstances, which I’d have to evaluate on a case-by-case basis.”

“Not bad,” they muttered. “To answer your question, I could potentially stop a single rampant function temporarily, or perhaps the attunement as a whole very briefly, but I don’t have the level of expertise you’re looking for. As I’m certain you’ve come to understand, attunement mechanics is an entire field of research. My own studies are adjacent to it, so I have some knowledge, but not enough to be certain I could help.”

“Do you know anyone local that would be better suited to what I’m looking for?”

They considered that. “No one you would be wise to ask, I’m afraid. Before your mind turns to the Abjurer, I would advise against it. They possess the expertise, but involving them would add additional risks.”

The Ab…oh. Vellum. Of course Sheridan knows that Vellum is an Abjurer.

…Wait, can Abjurers disable attunements? That…does make some sense, I suppose. It’s not dissimilar from how Professor Vellum was able to vastly reduce Mizuchi’s power with banishment. I probably should look into how exactly banishment works at some point, as well as general Abjurer capabilities…

But for now, hm.

I debated for a couple seconds before making my decision. “I’d like your help. You may not be able to handle everything, but if we take things slow, test one step at a time…”

Sheridan stopped walking and turned to face me directly. “Just to be clear, you want my assistance in tearing apart one of the most fundamental building blocks of our society, religion, and culture?”

“That would be an accurate summation, yes.”

“Corin Cadence,” Sheridan bowed theatrically, “I would be absolutely delighted.”

***

We concluded our talk quickly after that, with Sheridan offering to observe my process next time they visited, provided that I was ready by that point.

They also mentioned that they’d be coming over to visit Cecily and Sera soon about their “gardening project”. I had absolutely no idea what that was about, but didn’t ask. With Sheridan, expressing any lack of knowledge felt like showing my throat to a vicious beast.

So, with my heart pounding and my mind desperately reaching out for answers, I headed home.

CHAPTER XVI – GROWING PAINS

I didn’t like feeling like I was behind. There were numerous instances where this was applicable in my life, but at that moment, I had a very specific gap in my knowledge and the means to fill it.

…Presuming I was willing to do something I’d been avoiding.

There was an easier approach, but I didn’t take it. Not that time. Instead of seeking Sera, I went and knocked on Cecily’s door.

I’d barely seen her since she’d moved into Derek’s house. I mean, I’d seen her, but it would be more accurate to say that we’d hardly interacted at all. We seemed to be avoiding each other with roughly equal fervor.

When she opened her door, she let out a little gasp of surprise (which was fair), then nervously reached up and adjusted her crooked glasses. “C…Corin. What…did you need something?”

“Uh, hi, Cecily.” I gave my best impression of a friendly smile, but I’d never been good at those. My idea of a smile had always been more like a child’s crayon drawing — the intention behind it was probably clear, but the details were off just enough to be discomforting. “I was just, uh, talking to Sheridan Theas, and they mentioned something about a gardening project that you and Sera were working on?”

“Oh!” Cecily visibly brightened, the tension seeming to leave her shoulders. “That! Yes, of course, I’ve been meaning to tell you. We’ll need your help. I mean, only definitively for one step, but possibly for a second step, depending on how the early tests go, and if you’re willing to contribute something that might be dangerous, and depending on your level of control, and—”

I raised a finger in a “wait” gesture. “Turn the hourglass a bit, please. I don’t even know the nature of the project yet.”

“Sorry, sorry! I just assumed that Sheridan…okay.”

“Breathe, Cecily.”

Cecily let out a nervous laugh. “Sorry. Did you, uh, want to come in?” Cecily turned around, took one look at her room, then hastily turned back to me and blushed. “Oronsecondthought maybe we could go talk downstairs?”

Cecily’s room didn’t look particularly embarrassing at my estimation — why, her laundry piles were even vaguely color coded, that was much more organized than mine — but I didn’t want to make her more uncomfortable than she obviously already was. So, I accepted her offer, and we went downstairs to sit at the kitchen table. No one else was downstairs at the moment, so we had the place to ourselves.

“So. Garden. Start from the beginning?” I asked.

“Right, right. So, you recall the Goddess’ Tear that is supposed to heal virtually anything? Of course you do, silly question, you have it in your box, and…”

I frowned as a few pieces slipped together.

I did still have the Goddess’ Tear preserved in the Jaden Box. I’d been expecting Sera to ask for it to make the elixir to heal her mana scarring at any time. Of course, she’d need an alchemist to actually make the elixir with the plant, and Cecily had been studying alchemy. That seemed like a good solution, since Vellum had refused to help.

But the word gardening implied… “You’re planning to plant it? My understanding is that they can’t survive for long without the hyper-specific conditions of where they grow in the Vanreach Mountains.”

“Yes. Due to their notorious frailty, most people are reluctant to gamble the valuable flower on the possibility of being able to grow more. In spite of that, attempts have been made to reproduce the flowers, but all recorded efforts have ended in failure.”

“…And Sera still wants to take that risk?”

Cecily nodded. “When we first discussed it, Sera wanted me to prepare the elixir, then to give it to Chancellor Meltlake to fix her leg.”

I gasped. “That…that’s quite a sacrifice to make. Sera has recovered from her scarring significantly, but it’s still slowing her down, and…”

“I agree. I told her that I thought Meltlake would refuse the offer, and we went back and forth for a bit before I hit on an idea that might convince Meltlake to accept a flower.”

“Duplicating it so they both can have one…or even more people could. I understand the advantages, of course, but what makes you confident that you can succeed where others have failed?”

Cecily let out a nervous laugh. “I wouldn’t say I’m confident. Not at all. I regretted speaking the idea the moment it came out of my mouth. But…Sera loved it. And…we talked it over with each other, and with Researcher, and we think it might be possible.”

“How?”

“Researcher was willing to assist us with, well, researching previous attempts. We’ve found many of what we believe were the critical components for the flowers to grow — including the specific types of soil from Vanreach, the temperature and atmosphere, mana saturation…with those details, others were able to preserve a flower for a significant time, but failed to get another flower to grow. They identified that the flowers do have seeds, but that those seeds appear to require something specific to grow — something that the research papers called the ‘living frost of the goddess.’”

My eyes widened.

Living frost. That’s…

“You think that’s…Selys-Lyann?” I glanced down to the sword at my hip. The name literally translated to “Sword of the Goddess”, or something along those lines. The ice aura around the blade spread, seemingly of its own accord.

Could something like that help a flower grow?

“Not precisely,” Cecily clarified. “Rather, we believe that there is some kind of magical effect on Vanreach that has an effect similar to your sword. Perhaps the goddess herself truly creates these flowers using means similar to the blessing on your sword. Alternatively, it’s possible there is some sort of creature living in the mountains with similar frost abilities — a child of Seiryu seems a likely possibility. And that brings us to another option to explore.”

“You think Seiryu might help?”

Cecily nodded. “It’s possible. Sera still does not have permission to summon Seiryu outside of the spire, but she does have a contract that enables her to use ice magic provided directly from Seiryu. She has not learned any spells that would qualify as ‘living frost’, but she has been debating trying to use her bond to communicate with Seiryu directly to ask for the god beast to teach her such a spell — or intervene directly for the purpose of helping the flowers.”

“Is that something she can do?” I raised an eyebrow. “I mean, just talk to Seiryu?”

“I don’t know the details, but Summoners have the ability to contact their contracted entities without summoning them for the purposes of contract renegotiation. I think it’s something like a Wayfarer’s communication magic, but limited in scope. Sera hasn’t told me everything. I think she knows how to do it already, but hasn’t actually asked that specific question yet. She might be afraid that Seiryu would be offended, given that the tears are sacred.”

I nodded. “Would it be safer to try Selys-Lyann?”

“In the sense that it wouldn’t risk offending Seiryu, yes. We believe that approach has a higher chance of damaging or destroying the flower or seeds, though, because even if Selys-Lyann has the ‘right’ kind of frost, we wouldn’t know how long the ice should be maintained, or if there’s some kind of necessary concentration…or if you’re supposed to freeze the seed itself, or just some of the nearby soil, or…”

“I get it. We don’t have enough information that way…but yeah, talking to Seiryu does sound like a risk. On the other hand…I’m an Arbiter. Do you think that kind of authority would be useful to avoid any sort of heresy problems?”

“I…honestly have no idea.”

I pondered for a moment. “Why hasn’t Sera asked me about this yet?”

“I…we…we know you’re going through a hard time right now, Corin. And you do a lot for all of us. No one wants to bother you with more work if we can avoid it.”

I didn’t really know what to say to that. “I…don’t mind. This is important.”

“Beyond that…Sera might want to feel like she can do it without you. I mean, aside from retrieving the flower from the box.”

That did make a degree of sense. I knew she’d been feeling down about herself, so needing to ask me for help might have hurt her pride.

Still…we’d work better as a team for something like this. At least in theory. And this was an incredibly important idea. If we could figure out a way to duplicate the flower reliably…

My mind swam with the possibilities. How many climbers and delvers had serious injuries they’d never been able to heal? How many ordinary civilians had long-term problems that a Goddess’ Tear might be able to address if they were mass produced?

Could we truly help both Sera and Meltlake?

…And what about people like Lars, too?

A Goddess’ Tear wouldn’t replace his lost attunement, would it? Even if it didn’t, though, I imagined it would potentially be able to regrow a lost limb…maybe.

I didn’t want to get my hopes up too high, but…I could see why both Cecily and Sera were considering risking the one flower we had on this kind of idea.

“I’ll help,” I said simply. “When do we start?”

“You may want to talk to Sera first.”

I nodded simply at that. “Will do. Thanks for the info, Cecily.”

“…You’re welcome.”

I stood up. Cecily looked like there was something else she wanted to say, but after a moment of deliberation, she simply stood, bowed slightly, and went back to her room.

What was that about?

I was curious, but I wasn’t quite ready to ask.

***

I found Sera just a bit later, when she came down for dinner. When that happened, I was ready.

“So,” I opened, “gardening project.”

“Heard about that, did you?” She poured herself a bowl of cereal, which was an atypical dinner for her. I assumed she was in a hurry for some reason.

I slipped a piece of paper across the table to her.

“What’s this?” She lifted it up. “…Corin Cadence, Arbiter of Katashi, formally requests your cooperation with…? Is this real?”

“It is, in fact, real.” I smiled. “I found Researcher a little earlier, and it turns out there’s a formal template for Arbiters to request something that falls within their area of influence. Typically, it’s used to either request something from a visage directly, or from the priesthood, or a government. But in this case…”

Sera skimmed through it. “…This is clever. Dangerous, but clever. And uncharacteristically politically savvy of you. Who put you up to this?”

“No one. Sheridan told me about the gardening project—”

“Ah. Of course this was Deni’s idea.”

I folded my arms. “It wasn’t. Sheridan only gave me a couple words. Cecily elaborated…and I decided this was the best way to help. I mean, unless you’d prefer to use Selys-Lyann, or involve me in some other way. And I don’t want to presume anything — I know you might not want to take this route. If so, we can just tear it up.”

“No, this is…” Sera exhaled a breath. “This is a wonderful gift, Corin. I’ve been nervous to ask Seiryu for help. This…this makes it much, much more viable. Seiryu isn’t under your jurisdiction in any way, but…the bit about water magic falling under Katashi’s area of influence due to the location of the water temple and Tortoise Spire…that’s good. It might actually be enough to convince her, if my request alone isn’t enough.”

“Do you think the terms were unreasonable?”

Sera frowned at that. “Yes. But only in one detail. You can’t ask for something as open-ended as help with me with creating more Goddess’ Tears. I mean, you can, but that’s a big ask as far as contracts go, since it’s effectively asking for assistance with an indefinite duration. You should limit the scope.”

“In what way? To just advice?”

Sera shook her head. “No, I think getting direct help like you’ve proposed is good. I think we need to limit the time and number of flowers, at least for the initial project. If it works, we could ask for more.”

“Hm. If I’m leveraging the Arbiter angle…six flowers and six months?”

Sera snapped her fingers. “Yes. Perfect. After that, we could simply take one or two and store them back in the box until we can negotiate further, use a couple more to experiment on growing more on our own, then…”

“Use the last couple for yourself and Meltlake?”

“…Yeah. Cecily told you about that?”

I nodded. “I think it’s a good idea. She might refuse, but…I think it’d be great for her morale if you could help her. Not to mention an improvement to her combat abilities. And, if things stay as dangerous as they have been, or get worse…”

“We may need our allies to be as strong as physically possible. I agree.” Sera exhaled a breath. “Okay. You’re sure you’re up for helping with this?”

“Absolutely. This is important.”

“…Thanks. Now, I’ve been studying Summoner contracts for a while, and I know Seiryu. Let’s make a few changes to the wording here…”

We worked on the contract until late in the night. It felt…surprisingly nice to put our heads together to work on solving a problem.

In the end, I think Sera felt better about the whole idea. She still wanted to run the concept by Sheridan and Elora before taking any action. I agreed that was wise.

Next time Sheridan visits, we’re going to have two new and exciting ways we could destroy ourselves, or possibly everyone here.

In spite of the nervous twinge in my mind, I felt good about it. I felt excited.

If even one of our plans worked, we’d be carving new paths toward a better future.

For the first time in days, I slept easily that night.

***

The following day, I sat in the kitchen with several others, signing a piece of paper that marked a formal agreement.

Corin Cadence.

Sera Cadence.

Patrick Wayland-Cadence.

Marissa Callahan.

Jin Dalen.

…And, with great trepidation, I watched as Jin passed the paper to the unlikely sixth member of our team. One who Sera had somehow hunted down and recruited in my absence, after Cecily had decided to stay with her own pre-existing team for the year.

A powerful addition, no doubt, but a risk that I couldn’t ignore.

The iron-haired swordsman raised his pen and wrote his full name on the form:

Ruto Muramasa.

CHAPTER XVII – SONS OF VALIA

With my first week completed, I fell into a routine more easily than I’d expected. The duel with my father was still looming in my mind, but I couldn’t let that dominate everything I was doing.

The next two weeks went smoothly…

At least for me.

I went to class each day, then spent some time in each evening working on enchanting, training, or both.

In terms of enchanting projects, I split my efforts between three main tasks.

First, I coordinated with Derek on adding additional emergency enchantments to the house. Given my continued paranoia about Saffron and Mizuchi holding a vendetta and coming after us, it was something I would have done without any extra motivation…but he insisted on compensating me anyway.

While he would have paid with money — and it would have been a lot of money by my standards — I chose to ask Derek to help with my second project instead of giving me cash.

That second project was simple: more mana batteries.

My goal was to get a mana battery of every single base mana type before our first semester was over.

The process was simple: Derek gave me some silver coins, I convinced Keras to merge the coins into a larger and purer silver disc, then I made runes and containers for Derek to fill with mana. It was the same thing I’d done on the train with help from the others, but Derek had no shortage of mana to work with.

Utilizing his help, I was able to get a larger air mana battery than Sera had been able to make, as well as large-size batteries for fire and light mana. He had access to other mana types, but our agreement was that he’d help me with one per week, so those three covered the first three-week period. We were behind on the fourth one, since things had gotten so busy.

My third enchanting project was making some new weaponry that could actually be used in dueling class. I still had a standard dueling cane, but that simply wasn’t going to cut it against the opponents I was up against.

I spent some time debating what exactly I wanted to build. An improved dueling cane would be the best fit for my early-life training, but I’d stumbled into using swords as my primary weapons, and I didn’t expect anything other than Selys-Lyann to be my main weapon for real combat in the immediate future.

Thus, I approached Keras with a simple request. “Can you make me a saber with the same general weight and style as Selys-Lyann?”

He was still isolating himself for the most part, but making a weapon seemed to help take his mind off it. When he’d finished the physical weapon, he handed it off to me, along with an unexpected gift — a matching dagger for my off-hand.

“I appreciate the gift, but I’m not really used to using an off-hand weapon. I know it’s common in some dueling styles, but most Valian house dueling involves an empty off-hand.”

“That’s what practice is for. And if you don’t end up liking it, you can repurpose it or just get rid of it. I think you’ll benefit from trying a few different styles, though, until you find what suits you best.

I couldn’t argue with that. So, we did some training with that style while I worked on figuring out what enchantments I wanted on the weapons.

For the sword, I settled on a design that would fill a useful niche in real combat, while being safer to use in dueling classes. I started with a classic flaming sword design, giving me the option to swap to the opposite element of Selys-Lyann whenever I was in need of an extra element. I started by creating shells to be filled with fire mana, then Patrick helped fill those for me. After that, I added a few additional features for anti-tampering, general physical resilience, sharpness, and balance. When that was done, I added spirit runes, just in case I wanted to try experimenting with bonding with the weapon somehow later.

I named the sword Scald, mostly to annoy Keras by using a name that started with “ess”, and because it was a good “fire sword” name.

…Then I got bored of that sword immediately and tried to work on something that suited me better.

After a bit of bemusement, Keras made me another blank sword to use, and I got to work on something that felt more like an appropriate Corin Cadence weapon. Something that would suit my needs — both for dueling and for fighting real opponents who were too deadly for me to face with my current power.

Grey mana, mental mana, transference mana, spirit mana…and just a hint of transcendence.

I worked for days on it, researching both standard and obscure functions and repurposing them for my needs.

On a basic level, the new sword’s abilities weren’t all that different from virtually every item I worked on. Fundamentally, the enchantments were built around capacity and recharge runes for each mana type.

The critical part was that while most weapons contained recharge runes to support the functions of the weapon, my recharge runes were the main functions. Well, a critical component of them, at least — there were several related function and activation runes that tied into them.

The result was a startlingly simple design that was, under the right circumstances, absolutely terrifying.

Upon finishing the sword, my first test was putting a standard school shield sigil on a test dummy — something Derek had several of, but that I almost never used. There was rarely a point, since we generally just, well, used each other.

But for an enchantment set like this…a bit of testing without other people first was wise.

I lifted my new sword cautiously, watching the shimmering of mana already dancing across the surface like the reflection of light across a lake. Then, cautiously, I poked at the training dummy.

I met resistance from the shield sigil, of course—

For about a fraction of a second, before my blade slipped right through, glowing brighter than before as it jammed into the dummy’s chest.

I exhaled a deep breath.

That…was even faster than I’d expected.

I sheathed the weapon, then checked the shield sigil.

As expected, the grey mana within had been completely drained.

I recharged the sigil, slapped my own higher-capacity one on top of the dummy, and drew my sword.

Transcendent Detect Aura.

I prodded at the dummy again.

This time, the shields lasted just about a second — long enough for me to watch the sword work.

As the tip of the sword made contact with the shield, the barrier rippled and tore, pulling toward the flashing gleaming runes on the weapon’s surface. My shield sigil dimmed, the sword’s blade brightened — until the barrier was gone and my sword blazed bright with stolen power.

I sheathed the weapon again.

…Perfect.

My new weapon was dangerously simple.

The recharge runes that I personally tended to use relied on drawing in ambient mana from the air. There were other kinds, but I’d found those to be the best for my uses, at least when we weren’t on a cross-continental train ride.

Typically, those runes only worked with ambient mana — not mana that had already been used in a spell effect. Spells generally served a purpose that was completed too quickly for any recharge rune to make an impact.

But I’d seen Ceris, the Song of Harmony, absorb and repurpose a Sapphire-level spell.

Now, actually emulating Ceris was far beyond my abilities…and I hadn’t even been able to analyze how the sword itself worked. I’d tried, with Sera’s permission, but it just absorbed any magic I used to try to understand it.

That was frustrating, but since I knew it was possible to make spell-absorbing weapons, I’d gotten to thinking about how I could reverse engineer the concept.

The area I’d landed wasn’t anything like Ceris — I couldn’t cut most spells out of the air and slam them back into my enemies.

Instead, my new sword functioned by having a constant mental mana effect that detected how much mana the sword was in contact with and what type of mana it was. When the sword came into contact with enough mana of a compatible type, it would activate a transference mana function to supplement the pre-existing mana recharge runes. This enabled the sword to rapidly absorb mana in large bursts, so long as that mana was one of the types the sword was capable of storing.

There were some problems.

Upon testing, I found that it wasn’t fast enough to absorb much of an incoming attack spell with any meaningful amount of power. I could syphon off power from something like a standard dueling cane bolt, but those were so weak as to be a non-threat, anyway.

In order to work, I needed a target that I could hold the sword against — or inside — for at least a few moments. And for that reason, the sword excelled in a few different situations — against barriers, in blade presses, and most notably, against shrouds.

No matter how many shrouds an opponent had, if they were a type my sword was compatible with, I just needed to push my sword into them—

And all that exuded power would soon belong to my blade.

I only had a handful of types of mana the sword could work with at first, but over time, I planned to upgrade it. I’d need to find ways to prevent conflicting mana types from exploding in the weapon first, but I was on my way toward a whole new way to fight, especially when I thought about how I could tie the weapon to my mana threads.

Mizuchi. Satsuki.

Finally, I have something that might help against opponents like them.

And so, with memories of lost battles flashing in my mind, I named my sword Shroudstealer.

For the dagger, I primarily focused on light mana, then supplemented that with enhancement mana for more general resilience and sharpness. For the moment, the only function of the dagger was projecting a light aura that could grow suddenly brighter, similar to a much weaker version of Dawnbringer’s blinding light. Initially, I was planning on trying to build a spell reflection function as well, but when Cecily was double checking the enchantments, she stopped me.

“You’re too close to the enchanting capacity to add more functions, Corin. It’s not a sword — it doesn’t have the surface area necessary to hold all the same enchantments as Bright Reflection. You need to be more careful.”

That gave me an idea.

“Okay, okay. I’ll stop adding more enchantments.”

“You might even want to take some off — otherwise, it might explode if it gets overcharged somehow.”

I nodded in understanding. “…I’ll make some minor tweaks.”

She gave me a dubious look, like she understood that I hadn’t actually committed to making the weapon safer to use, but she didn’t make any further objections. She did offer the dagger a worthy name, though: Sir Shinyshiv. It was perfect.

My fourth enchanting project was recharging the Jaden Box.

I was…more than a little conflicted about doing it, but I’d promised Keras I’d make the effort. While he’d been convinced that Wrynn would help me make a replacement, I wasn’t sure that we could make one. I spent a little time studying Patrick’s dimensional bag to use as a foundation and…well, it just wasn’t anywhere near as impressive as the box. I’d have to figure out how to reproduce most of the major functions from scratch, unless Wrynn was very well-versed in the theory behind how her box worked, and I wasn’t sure how likely that would be.

Training consisted of a mixture of new exercises that I learned in Attunement Optimization class, traditional sparring with Mara, some lessons from Keras, and taking some time each week to boost everyone’s mana with my Arbiter attunement.

After the first three weeks of the semester were up, Cecily checked all of our mana levels again. It had been a total of four weeks since we’d last checked our mana levels, and the results were more or less in-line with what I expected.

My Enchanter attunement had improved from 137 mana to 173. That was a vastly greater improvement per week than I’d been getting during the vacation, but only marginally better than my improvements toward the end of the previous year.

My Arbiter attunement improved at a noticeably faster rate, going from 182 to 226. 44 mana in 24 days was almost two mana per day, which was pretty close to the most I’d ever managed, and I’d sustained it for a much longer period of time.

In both cases, the rates of progression were extremely impressive by ordinary student standards…but not enough for my own.

From what Researcher had first told me about the Arbiter attunement’s boosts, I’d expected the benefits of using it to scale up over time. She’d told me two percent per week…but, in retrospect, that guess had never been completely accurate. It’d been higher at first, then lower later on.

Over time, I’d come to suspect that the Arbiter attunement’s benefits were more complicated than just a percentage-based boost.

People seem to retain larger bonuses when I boost them above a specific attunement-level threshold. Given all the function changes that occur when someone’s attunement level increases, that makes a degree of sense. It also somewhat mirrors what happened when Katashi first boosted Mara’s attunement level and she gradually adapted to it.

That means people probably are going to get inconsistent benefits from it if I just boost them all the time…

And rather than increasing benefits as someone’s mana pool goes up, I think I may be getting diminishing returns from boosting people regularly. Or maybe just providing a flat mana boost, rather than a percent? It could be both. There could be more factors, like the mana saturation in the area where I do the boost…I need to start paying more attention to that.

I wasn’t sure about any of that. I still didn’t have enough data to come to any solid conclusions, but I started tracking more factors when I was performing each boost.

Beyond realizing that my Arbiter boosts weren’t improving things as much as I wanted, I had another realization: those new, fancy exercises for Dianis Points and Star Veins were barely doing anything for me at all.

It wasn’t that the exercises were useless. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I’d noticed more Carnelian-level students in my classes by the day. It’s just that the exercises were more useful for people who weren’t already pushing themselves to the extremes that I had been.

There had to be more advanced tricks that would still work even with my existing exercise framework, but we hadn’t learned any yet. And that left me feeling…strange.

Over the winter break, I’d finally started feeling like I was getting ahead of the average students. I was proving that, in spite of being an Enchanter, I could be useful. Powerful. Competitive.

Important people wanted my help with things. I didn’t have to be ashamed of being an Enchanter…or a Cadence who wasn’t a Shaper.

One of the most important things I’d done during that vacation was helping to give Professor Meltlake…er, Chancellor Meltlake…some encouragement.

And the result? She’d broken from years of tradition to start raising the education standards for the bottom-tier and average-tier students.

…And by doing that without lifting the top by an equivalent margin, that meant she was closing the gaps between those groups.

In theory, that was exactly the thing I wanted to be happening. Raising the standards for everyone would help Valia as a whole. It would help humanity as a whole. And, through added competition, it would probably even drive the top-tier students to excel more…or allow new people to rise to the top that should have already been there. Numerous talented students had been held back by the unfair disparity of knowledge and resources.

I knew all that. Intellectually, I wanted more of it. Rationally, I should have felt great about any part I’d played in encouraging Meltlake to make that choice.

…But when you’re toward the top, and you feel like you’ve gotten there the hard way, it’s difficult to remain objective.

Each day, there was a part of me that saw other people catching up and thought, that isn’t fair. They’re just doing simple exercises. I had to fight for that.

And I felt growing dread that maybe, when others were allowed similar advantages to what I was given, I wouldn’t be as competitive as I’d started to think I could be. Maybe if everyone was given an equal playing field, I’d just be back to being just that unfortunate Cadence that got handed a sub-par attunement.

Was that irrational? Absolutely. Undeniably.

I had two attunements, one of which was restricted. I was Carnelian in both. I was still advancing relatively rapidly — enough that I could hit Sunstone by the end of the year with ease. I had a crystal mark, something only a tiny fraction of the students could claim.

And, most importantly, other people being powerful didn’t make me less powerful. Other people being successful didn’t make me less successful, either.

Sure, there was competition in terms of grades and such, but objectively, the other students weren’t actually my enemies. Well, except for Spider Division, maybe, but that seemed to be less of a focus due to the short length of the semester…and even those students weren’t really enemies. They were just people going through a different kind of training designed to make us all better at subterfuge, much like how sparring improved my combat skills.

If every other student miraculously hit Emerald and I was stuck as Carnelian, I could still be useful. I was building a broad variety of rare skills and I had a near-unique combination of attunements with a high degree of utility. That wouldn’t change no matter what happened with other students.

I told myself all that constantly, but father’s challenge had left me in a more vulnerable place than I was used to.

I struggled with it.

No, I didn’t tell anyone. That might have been logical, but I was ashamed that I was even thinking in those terms, and shame has never been easy for me to share.

I know other people were feeling it, too. Sera already had felt like she’d fallen behind due to her injuries, and I suspected she was having similar thoughts to my own.

…But more than either of us, I knew the wealthiest, top-tier noble students were feeling pressured by the sudden influx of new potential rivals. I could see it in their faces in every Attunement Optimization class. Disdain. Frustration. Envy.

Hate.

And so, with that knowledge, I wasn’t surprised to hear about the first major incident of the school year.

It wasn’t a monster invasion from the spire. It wasn’t Katashi appearing and giving a proclamation. It wasn’t Mizuchi baring her fangs at a ball.

It was something that was, in some respects, far uglier. The kind of ugliness that could only be perpetrated by a species as vindictive as humanity.

On the dawning of the fourth week of the semester, six students were found brutally mauled in different parts of the campus.

Each of them had been common-born with strong potential, hitting Carnelian-level early in the semester, just after we’d learned the new exercises.

They’d all been maimed in the same fashion:

The body part carrying their attunement had been removed.

The victims had all been hand marked. There were no fatalities. But the attacks had come with a message of the literal variety. A note was found fastened to each injured body.

You have stolen that which is ours by right of birth.

Since ancient times, there has been a proper punishment for a thief: the taking of a hand.

Consider it a mercy that we have done so little. It is a mercy that will not last if you continue to provoke us.

This will be your first and only warning. Persist in this path and the consequences will be on your heads.

We are the Sons of Valia. Our blood is power. This is only the beginning.

CHAPTER XVIII – A HOUSE UNITED

House meetings weren’t exactly commonplace, but the brutal mauling of several students — and the threat of worse in the future — was enough reason to warrant one.

So, we all gathered around Derek’s huge pair of kitchen tables and sat to talk.

“First off,” Derek opened, “have any of you had any encounters with these people yet? Threats, actual attacks?” After a pause, he added, “offers of membership?”

“Membership?” Patrick gaped at Derek. “You think they’re going to try to recruit us?”

“Not you, honestly.” Derek shook his head. “But Corin and Sera? Not unlikely. They’re nobles from a well-known family. Cecily, too, I suppose.”

Cecily looked down and away, but remained silent.

“…You think they’d want to recruit us?” Cecily asked. “But…I don’t even understand what they want!”

Sera winced. “To people who are born believing that they are a superior breed, any hint of others being raised to equality is a threat. They’d expect you to be like-minded, since you were born into a noble house. And people like me…” She made a pained expression. “…They’d think of me as half-breed trash, unworthy, but expect me to support them regardless. Because, as someone born into service, I should know my place and serve my betters.”

“It’s awful, but she’s not wrong.” Derek shrugged. “You’re exactly the type of people that they tend to look for. You have the right skin, the right eyes, the right names. You fit the archetype of the classic Valian, one willing to fight to the death to prevent foreigners from taking what belongs to them.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “Little strange for you to put the focus on us, Derek. We might be visible to these people, but not as well-known as a founding family. Like, say, House Hartigan.”

Derek didn’t even bother debating, he just nodded amiably. “You’re right. House Hartigan is exactly the type of family that would be involved in this sort of thing. But before you get any suspicions, no, I’m not in any way involved with them, nor have they approached me. The fact that they haven’t implies that they’re aware of my political leanings, they’re afraid of me, or both.”

“Meaning?” I asked.

“Meaning…that whole blood thing? I don’t have it, and they know that. Adopted. Don’t want to talk about it. Aside from that, they know I’ve been fairly outspoken about wanting to restructure our whole system of government. But let’s not get sidetracked. I haven’t had any contact with the Sons of Valia yet. Have any of you?”

A series of headshakes from around the group.

“Good.” Derek looked a little relieved. “That’s better than I’d hoped. That said, we should expect that unless they’re stopped quickly, this is going to ramp up. Corin, Sera, and Cecily especially should expect them to reach out. Take note of names, faces, anything you can — but don’t even think about trying to pull any infiltration work. None of you is suited for it.”

“Hey, that’s not fair,” Sera interjected. “I could be perfectly—”

“No,” Derek snapped, then winced. “Sorry. Shouldn’t have raised my voice. But these are dangerous people, Sera. Sure, you can talk a good game, but what happens when they’re hitting you with compulsion spells to speak the truth? What about if they root through your memories?”

She blanched at that. “You think they’d go that far?”

“Please. That’s kid stuff. If I was in their shoes, I’d have something prepped like Corin’s little compulsion ring,” he shot me an annoyed look, presumably still unhappy with the name I’d given it, “before introducing any prospective members to anyone important. Secret organizations don’t survive without basic precautions.”

“S’pose you’d know,” Mara jabbed.

Sera raised an eyebrow at Mara, then turned to glower at Derek. “I think it may be time for some openness, Derek.”

Derek looked at Keras, seemingly for help. Keras shrugged. “They were always going to figure it out eventually. It’s not like you’re doing much to hide it.”

I glanced back and forth between them, thinking about all their late nights out on the town. Visits to casinos, trips to the Unclaimed Lands, strange political leanings. Keras’ suspicious behavior during the train robbery. Jin’s presence at the scene.

I just spat it out. “Derek. You’re the Blackstone Bandit, aren’t you?”

Silence around the tables.

Derek turned to me, seeming to consider for a moment. Then he waved his hand in a “sort of” motion. “Not currently. But…sort of?”

Cecily audibly gasped. I was a little flummoxed, too.

Literally no one else seemed surprised.

I glanced around. “Did everyone know other than Cecily and me?”

Some abashed looks from around the room.

“How?!” I shook my head. “Did you tell everyone else first?”

“Didn’t tell any of us, I don’t think,” Mara spoke up. “But I saw him for a sec on the train top. Not much of a disguise, if I’m bein’ honest. Recognized Tavare and Delsys. They’re hard to miss. Keras tried to get me to scoot before I figured it out, but…” She shrugged. “Only took a glance, really.”

“Sorry.” Keras winced. “Didn’t mean to deceive you, but…”

“S’fine, forgiven. I know why you did it.” She gave him a nod. “Little less clear on meanin’ of the whole affair, though.”

“Do…we really need to do this right now?” Derek covered his face with his hands.

“Yes,” Sera insisted. “I think some openness would be a pretty good idea right now, considering the circumstances.”

Derek winced. “You don’t understand, it’s…”

“Why?” Cecily’s voice was nearly silent, but it still cut straight through the room. “…Why would you rob our train? Why would you scare us like that?”

I flinched.

Derek’s mouth opened, then closed again, his usual wit absent.

I felt a little bad for him. Not a lot, but a little. Enough that I decided it would be useful to clarify something. “It wasn’t a train robbery.”

The room turned toward me.

“You mentioned your suspicions about that on the way home. Jin hinted at it?”

“And the direction everyone was going. I think I’ve got it sorted. It wasn’t a robbery — it was a rescue mission. For—”

“I’m going to stop you right there.” Derek raised a hand. “You’re right. We were saving a prisoner, and yes, I’m sure you’ve figured out who and why. I’m happy to confess my own involvement. Yes, I was the Blackstone Bandit that day. No, you don’t need to know who was with me or who we were breaking out of the train.”

“I feel like that’s pretty important,” Sera cut in. “If it was someone related to this whole Sons of Valia affair…”

“No.” Derek shook his head. “It’s unrelated. They were from Caelford, okay? Someone being shipped back home for punishment in their own nation. No Sons of Valia stuff. Now, can we get back to that?”

“I’d really like some clarity on your involvement with the Blackstone Bandits first,” I pointed out.

“Fine, fine. Just briefly, though.” Derek sighed, putting his hands on the table. “The Blackstone Bandits are an international organization that runs counter to several organized crime groups — most notably Haven Securities.”

“The international bank?” Cecily blinked. “They’re…an organized crime group?”

“They’re controlled by one. Before you ask, we have no affiliation at all with the servants of the Tyrant in Gold or the ‘real’ Blackstone Assassin. The original ‘Blackstone Bandit’ named herself that because of her direct opposition to Haven Securities. Kind of a nod to the rivalry between the Blackstone Assassin and Aayara Haven, who Haven Securities supposedly draws their lineage from.”

“Her?” I asked. “Who is the original Blackstone Bandit, then?”

“You don’t need to know that. Bottom line is that there are several Blackstone Bandits at any given time now. This allows them to operate in several countries, compartmentalize information, and makes it possible for the myth to continue even if one Blackstone Bandit is caught. I’ve been affiliated with the organization for years, but I’m not in the core leadership right now. I’ve been ‘the’ Blackstone Bandit on a few occasions.”

I tightened my jaw. “Did you know about the Blackstone Bandits that were following me? Were you leading me in the wrong direction on purpose?”

“Honestly didn’t know about that until later. Someone else in the organization approved it. I’m not involved in much of the local day-to-day management. Wouldn’t have allowed them to put someone on you if I’d known.”

I felt a little better after he said that, but I still wasn’t happy. I wasn’t really sure I could trust that he was being honest, but breaking the ring out seemed like it would be an extreme response, so I didn’t. “Fine. Derek works with the Blackstone Bandits. And…most of you had already figured that out.”

Sera shrugged. “Wasn’t hard to piece together if you’re paying attention. Especially if you were paying attention to Keras’ story about his own Blackstone Bandit days.”

Derek shot Keras a hard look. “You told them about that?”

“I told them a funny anecdote about a date night with Ravenshade!” Keras put up his hands defensively. “That shouldn’t have given much away…did it?”

“I mean, if you consider the timing of the Blackstone Bandit disappearing from Edria, and how it coincides with certain other people returning to Valia, and you consider that there was a teenaged girl with Summoner powers trying to help out while they were missing—”

“Wait, what are you talking about there?” Derek looked startled.

“You didn’t tell Derek your story?” Sera raised an eyebrow at Keras. “And neither did she? Ooh.”

“Look, I didn’t think she’d appreciate it if he knew she was involved. They were just kids at the time, and…”

“I’m sorry, who are we talking about?” I asked. “Are there other Blackstone Bandits we need to worry about? How many layers does this go?”

“Can…we just stop?” Patrick cut in, pleading. “I…know this is all important, like, in terms of knowing about each other. But I really, really can’t deal with all this cloak and dagger right now. I need us to just…be a family, a little? Focus on good things, and the future?”

We all looked a little abashed at that.

“Sorry, Patrick.” Sera reached across the table, giving his hand a comforting squeeze. “You’re right, this isn’t the time. We’ll stop.” She glanced around the table. “Refocusing. I think we’re all on the same page about wanting to do something about these Sons of Valia.”

“Definitely.” I nodded to her, then turned to Derek. “Now that we know about your…affiliations, can they help us?”

“Yes.” He nodded firmly, looking a little relieved at the shift in focus. “I can’t disclose much. I don’t know much yet, to be honest. But I’m going to check in with some contacts soon. Then, we’ll go on the hunt.”

“Any way we can help with that?” Mara asked.

“Thank you, but this is delicate work, and they’ll put seasoned people on it. Even I won’t be doing much directly — I’m too visible. Too well-known. Keras and I will probably do some physical sweeps of the city, looking at likely locations for attacks and seeing if we can catch anyone, but it’s not worth your time to get involved on that side of things.”

“Think we can figure out what’s worth our own time, if you don’t mind me sayin’ so.”

“Let me rephrase, then — it’s too dangerous for you to go alone, and you’d slow the two of us down. But,” he amended before Mara could look too upset, “if we find one of their bases of operations, maybe we can bring you in before we strike.”

Mara looked a little appeased by that, but it only worried me.

What would they do if they found these people? Kill them?

I considered asking, but I wasn’t sure I was ready for the answer.

Instead, I had to ask something else. Something important.

“What can we do to help right now?”

Derek turned to me. “Keep an eye out for things that seem off. Report back.”

“There has to be more than that.”

“Protests,” Sera suggested. “I’m certain we’ll start to see some organized soon. Attend and support them. Keep an eye out for the people who are the most vulnerable.”

“I…I’m not really big on crowds—”

Sera sighed. “Corin. I know you have your issues to struggle with and I respect that, but at a certain point…”

I grimaced. “I…I’ll see what I can do. Maybe there’s a way I can do something from a legal standpoint? Aren’t there…laws against this sort of thing?”

Mara snorted. “S’pose there have to be arm choppin’ laws, but you aren’t gonna see many Sons of Valia in chains. They’re the ones payin’ for the iron, after all.”

“…I’m sure there have to be other nobles that aren’t sympathetic to what the Sons of Valia are doing,” I mumbled uncertainly.

“Of course there are,” Sera replied. “Plenty. Most of them simply won’t get involved. They’ll just reassure their low-born friends that they’re ‘one of the good ones’ and never would do anything to hurt them. Then, they’ll stand by on the sides and watch things play out, sleeping comfortably until their servants wake them for breakfast.”

I frowned. “That’s a bit extreme, don’t you think?”

“Can you claim that you’ve been any different? That you’ve done any more?”

I blinked. “…But…but…nothing like this was happening before!”

Sera gave a bitter laugh. “Are you joking? Take a minute and think, Corin. Really think about that, for just a moment. Keras was arrested for contradicting the scriptures. How many people do you think have been treated worse and haven’t been able to fight their way out of an entire country? How many ‘heretics’ do you think just disappear, or worse? And Mara told you about her childhood — did you ever do anything other than nod and agree? Did you ever consider actually looking into Rupert’s family, and if they’d threatened or abused anyone else? Did you ever—”

Mara raised a hand. “That’s enough, Sera. Corin’s done a lot for me, and he’s had a lot to tackle. I can handle the Kents.”

“Oh, Corin has done a lot for all of us here, I won’t disagree. He’s done us great favors, and I’m grateful for the things he’s crafted for me. Corin is a good friend to the people in this room. But I’m not talking about that — I’m talking about the kind of blindness that is burned into people like Corin from childhood. The distance necessary to say, ‘it isn’t happening to me or one of my loved ones right now, and it’s probably not going to, so it’s not important’. That’s the privilege that comes with noble birth.”

“But you—” I started to say that she was the same, but…she wasn’t. As she’d reminded me…and, as I’d reminded her, both intentionally and otherwise…she was raised as a retainer, not a noble. A gilded servant, no question, but a servant none-the-less.

And I’d demeaned even that, when I’d offered retainership to Patrick without even considering how significant it would be to either of them.

Was it any surprise Sera had a different perspective on my inaction?

“…You could have asked me to help with something like Kent, or with…other things. I would have…”

Sera’s expression softened. “I’m sure I could have asked for help, or Mara could have, but that’s not the point, Corin. You didn’t see the problems on your own — but that doesn’t mean they haven’t always been there, deeply entrenched in Valia’s values. And…I’m a hypocrite, in some ways. I haven’t been perfect about this type of thing, either. When we met Jin, I didn’t trust him at all at first. And…it’s not easy to admit, but the fact that he didn’t look Valian was a big part of that. It would be the easiest thing in the world to feel vindicated that he eventually betrayed us. For a while, I did — like it confirmed my assumptions. But that’s not really right at all. He didn’t hurt anyone because he was from outside of Valia — we didn’t trust him, and we mistreated him, and he was placed in an unfathomably difficult position. That doesn’t forgive what he did, of course, but…it had nothing to do with simply being a foreigner. There are plenty of foreign students who haven’t done anything wrong, and I had the same instinctive distrust of them. In some ways, I still do. It’s not easy to turn off our biases.”

“It isn’t about turning them off,” Derek said, “you just have to be aware of your biases and try your hardest to do the right thing in spite of them. That’s all any one of us can do.”

“…It’d be easier if you could just tell me who to fight,” I complained.

“If it was that easy to handle injustice,” Sera jerked a thumb at Keras, “this guy would have punched it out already.”

Keras raised both hands. “Let’s be fair, I fully intend to punch out the physical manifestation of injustice at some point, I just have to find it first.”

“Okay, but until the time when Keras eliminates injustice in personal combat,” Sera managed a weak smile, “those of us who are in positions of privilege have a responsibility to do what we can to use that to help the people who are most vulnerable. And at times, that means doing things that make you uncomfortable. It doesn’t mean you absolutely have to stand in a crowd, Corin, and I’m sorry if I was too pushy on that particular point. It’s just…it’s very easy for people in our position to say ‘it’s too hard to help’ and let things go.”

I exhaled a breath, closing my eyes. “…I think, with two attunements, and a bit of research…I could make some very impressive signs.”

Sera smiled. “…Good. And I’d be glad to help.”

Patrick looked visibly relieved that the conversation was winding down. “…I’d like to help, too.”

“I can get started right away.” I nodded, then began to stand.

“A couple more things first,” Keras interrupted, waving me back to my chair. “Until we isolate the leaders of this movement and shut it down, I’d like you all to be cautious. Take extra security measures. I know Corin has been doing some enchanting work for the house — can you do anything else for emergencies?”

I nodded to him. “I can think about it.”

Sera turned to me. “The message enchantments. We need to finish them. Soon.”

I pondered that. I didn’t like shifting my existing plans, and I was already going to need to make time for the signs, but…she was right. This was the right time to prioritize communication. “Okay. If we want to get more range out of them, though, I’m going to need help. The air mana battery works for small stuff, but…”

“Make the casings, I’ll put the air mana in them,” Derek cut in. “Don’t bother stopping at Sunstone like we discussed before. Go as big as you can. One for everyone here.”

I wasn’t sure if I could go bigger than Sunstone-level for the shells, but if I used mana from both attunements…yeah, the math worked. I could manage a Citrine-level shell, if only barely. “That will help, thank you.”

“Done.” Derek nodded firmly. “Now, shifting back a bit. If any of the Sons of Valia do contact you, let me know immediately. And if you have strong suspicions, bring those to me as well. I can put people on it. Beyond that, I think we should talk about making some general security precautions for emergencies. Let’s talk about code phrases.”

CHAPTER XIX – ON A DIFFERENT SCALE

We met on the rooftop, as we’d done many times before. Today’s mood was a bit more somber than usual for our training, though. We had a specific purpose — one we’d neglected for too long.

Keras unbuckled his sword belt and rested it on the far side of the roof. Then, he folded his arms and rejoined us. “You sure you want to do this?”

“Absolutely,” Sera spoke first, but we all nodded in agreement.

Patrick rested his hands on the hilt of Bright Reflection, seeming to seek comfort in the cold of the metal.

Mara just shifted to a fighting stance. “Quit yer ditherin’. We’ve been over this enough. We’re not even making you wear the costume this time.”

Keras frowned, but didn’t argue further. “Okay. I still think we should hire a Conjurer, but yeah, I suppose they couldn’t get the scale right. Derek? Gonna need the toys.”

Derek tossed Keras two bracelets — one white, one yellow. I wasn’t sure I’d seen them before. They weren’t for Tavare and Delsys. “Don’t lose them.”

“Please, Derek. I don’t lose in general.” The line might have been playful, but it lacked Keras’ usual charm. He looked somber as he put the bracelets on…then I was nearly blinded by the flash of light that followed.

Six separate shrouds appeared around him, followed by a flicker of lightning.

“Begin.”

There was no warning…but that was about right, wasn’t it? If she came for us, we wouldn’t get a warning.

“Mizuchi protocols!” Sera shouted.

We responded immediately, shifting into practiced patterns. My mind worked faster than my body, beginning to move as soon as I heard the words.

Hast—

But not fast enough. Keras vanished in a blur, then an earsplitting crack shattered the air…and Mara went flying off the rooftop into the distance.

The moment of worry was enough for me to completely lose my focus. In the next, Keras had vanished again, then he was airborne, hurling a spear of lightning in Sera’s direction.

He’s…too fast.

Mara had been fast enough to punch out a simple bolt of lightning when we’d first started in class, but not all spells of the same type were the same speed. A weak lightning spell might approximate the speed of a hurled ball. The best we could have managed might have matched a crossbow bolt.

Keras hurled that javelin faster than a bullet. None of the students could have hoped to handle it—

But we had an Emerald with us.

Derek’s aura flared green and he shot into the blast’s path, cleaving through it with Tavare. The lightning shattered harmlessly across the roof, giving us a mere heartbeat to act.

My mind finally started working again.

Haste. Detect Aura.

I drew Selys-Lyann and swung, projecting a burst of icy shards along with my cut. It wasn’t the right type of attack to break through the first layer of Keras’ fake shroud, but I needed to do what I could to simply distract him and give the others a chance to work.

I failed. He ignored the ice entirely as it splashed against his defenses and melted, then he slammed back down onto the rooftop with a crack, sending a shockwave across the ground that hurled us off our feet. Only Derek remained standing.

…And Patrick?

I blinked in wonder as I struggled to push myself to my feet. It took me a moment to understand how he’d resisted the blast. Patrick wasn’t standing — he was floating. He must have cast a levitation spell the moment the fight started.

While Keras rushed at Derek with his bare hands glowing with electrical energy, Patrick pointed Bright Reflection and discharged a compressed blast of light. I’d rarely seen him use the attack, but I couldn’t doubt the power behind it. It was a copy of Luminous Arc, after all — one of Dawnbringer’s most iconic techniques.

Keras swatted it out of the air without even stopping. Derek swung Tavare, but Keras simply batted the sword aside and punched Derek in the chest. The Emerald-level swordsman grunted at the impact, punching Keras with his own off-hand, but Keras barely seemed to notice the impact.

A blur of movement that I couldn’t follow, then Derek slid half-way across the roof, clutching his chest. He growled and drew Delsys with his off-hand, but Keras shifted his focus, charging at Patrick.

“Permafrost Cascade!” Shards of ice rained from the sky at Sera’s command, but Keras charged right through them without slowing. When Patrick swung Bright Reflection in a panic, Keras’ hand flew up and caught the blade.

My mind flashed to a similar moment—

Mizuchi catching that same blade in the same way, then snapping it in half.

My heart and body froze at the memory. Patrick fared no better.

Keras simply tore the sword out of his hand, then jammed it straight into the stone of the roof. A brief look of pain and regret crossed his face, but he didn’t stop.

Keras grabbed Patrick by the collar, lifted him effortlessly, then flicked Patrick in the forehead with his other hand.

“You’re dead.”

“…Yes, sir.”

He tossed Patrick off the roof. Patrick, fortunately, was still levitating, and simply floated downward toward the ground.

Derek closed back in, swinging both swords at Keras’ back at the same time. Keras spun, blocking both swords with his arms, then snapped a kick at Derek. Derek dodged the kick itself, but it carried a blast of lightning along with it that impacted Derek’s shroud and drove him back a step.

“Perfect Prison!”

A green field of force flickered into existence around Keras at Sera’s command, solidifying in a moment. A density spell — and one that simulated a technique we’d seen a thousand times before.

A moment later, Keras was trapped inside a solid box of density mana. A Shaper’s Box.

She started to speak again, but before she could finish the first syllable of Vanniv’s name, Keras had burst through the box and grabbed her around the neck.

Sera choked at his grip.

Something inside me snapped at that sight. I knew it wasn’t real. It was just a sparring match, but that image…my sister helpless, her neck moments from being snapped…

An image of Mizuchi — the true Mizuchi — flashed through my mind.

No.

}….No…{

An unfamiliar voice echoed in my mind, the sound somehow conveying a feeling of frost that sent a chill down my spine.

I shot across the rooftop, icy plates forming across my skin as I intuitively released more transference essence into my legs, boosting myself beyond the limits of my Haste spell to close the distance and swing.

Selys-Lyann arced downward with a frozen flash—

And froze in place as Keras caught it in his free hand. “Too slow.”

He hurled Sera to the ground, then twisted Selys-Lyann to disarm me…and failed.

The sword was frozen to my hand.

…Or, more accurately, frozen to my entire body. In the brief run across the rooftop, I’d manifested a full suit of frozen armor across my body.

Keras frowned for the slightest moment, then yanked me closer with one hand and slammed a blazing fist into my chest. My armor cracked, but didn’t break.

Grunting at the impact, I punched him right back. My fist breached his six-layered shroud with force alone, then as my icy gauntlet slammed into his chest, a flare of frost flashed and left a patch of ice across his chest. The ice began to spread, but only for an instant before Keras snapped his fingers and a wave of flame emitted from his body, obliterating both the clinging ice and my frozen gauntlet.

In the next moment, he’d grabbed me by the neck. “Not bad.”

Then he threw me off the roof.

By the time I made it back up, the round was over. Derek and Keras were both panting heavily, having clearly fought considerably longer after the rest of us were defeated.

…But the result was clear enough. Derek’s swords were spread across the rooftop and he was lying with his back braced against a stone wall.

Keras stood over Derek, his hands still flickering with the last lingering traces of lightning.

“So,” Keras turned as I finally came to sit with the others atop the roof, “ready for round two?”

***

We trained against Keras for the next several hours, taking periodic breaks to discuss our strategies and shift small elements of the scenario. Initially, we’d decided we’d only call it a “win” if we could incapacitate him somehow, but after that proved impossible, we lowered the threshold for victory to allow for any situation which would allow our entire group to escape.

Even focusing on that, we didn’t beat him. Not even once.

It was hard to say how effective Keras was at simulating a Mizuchi attack. He didn’t have all of her abilities, even with the bracelets that Derek had loaned him to simulate some of her more iconic powers.

Conversely, Keras also tended to move significantly faster than I’d seen Mizuchi move, but upon reflection, I’d never seen Mizuchi actually go into a fight with both her full strength and maximum effort. The Winter Ball had been a demonstration, not a real battle for her. No one, aside from Meltlake and Elora, had even been a real threat. And when she’d attacked us again in the spire, she’d been greatly diminished from the lingering effects of Vellum’s banishment spell.

…More so than I’d really realized at the time. I’d known she’d been suspiciously weak, but thinking about it, she’d probably been lowered from something approximating Sapphire-level to…Citrine, maybe?

No ordinary banishment spell would have managed that. Of course, an ordinary banishment spell never would have worked on Mizuchi in the first place. Her magic resistance probably should have stopped that, even if Vellum had triggered it through that enchantment on the floor at point-blank range.

…I needed to have a talk with Vellum about how she’d managed that. If I could emulate it somehow, maybe that would give us the chance we needed.

Ultimately, though, that was for another day. For the moment, we had other plans.

We rested, planned, and tried again and again.

And then, with our last failure, Keras helped us to our feet.

“Rest up.” He tossed the bracelets back to Derek. “Saffron practice is tomorrow.”

***

I didn’t rest. Not precisely, anyway.

I couldn’t rest after what I’d just experienced.

My still-aching bruises, reduced but not removed by the nourishment of continuous regeneration spells, were a lingering reminder of how badly Keras had beaten us during the Mizuchi training simulation. He hadn’t been going unusually hard on us to prove a point — if anything, he’d been going easier than he could have, giving us a chance to try to adapt to the individual abilities he was using to try to simulate Mizuchi’s powers.

Time after time, we’d thrown ourselves at him. In each and every attempt, he’d absolutely crushed us. Even Mara, the strongest of our class, hadn’t been able to land a single serious hit during the practice — not even when we coordinated and tried to buy her time.

Derek was the only one who could even keep up with Keras a little…and, to Derek’s obvious frustration, that “a little” was all it amounted to. He sparred with Keras all the time, but I suspect he wasn’t ready for the power differential demonstrated in that exercise. Either Keras had been holding back very significantly during their earlier fights, as Tavare had implied during the first rooftop duel when they’d been summoned, or…maybe Keras was getting stronger somehow.

Most likely, it was both. It was tough to conceptualize someone like Keras still being able to grow in power, given that he seemed to already be above the Emerald-level cap for the attunement system, but…he’d never operated under the same rules. And, given his personality, it would have been strange to assume he’d simply set aside his own growth during this time period of coaching and protecting the rest of us.

Maybe it was simply conventional training at work…or maybe he’d been pushed by something in the Tiger Spire. Something there had bothered him considerably, but I still didn’t know exactly what it was. Perhaps it was worth asking…but I didn’t know if that would risk making his mental state worse.

I pushed that thought aside for the moment. Keras wasn’t what I needed to think about, except for what he represented — an absolute wall of power that I had no way of breaching. I didn’t expect to have to fight him seriously, of course, but the whole point of the exercise was to figure out how we might handle a Mizuchi attack if she came at us seriously — and the answer was simple. As it was, we’d all die without putting up a fight.

That was absolutely unacceptable.

I was certain the others felt the same way, and that they’d throw themselves into new types of training and strategizing…but I was in a unique position.

As long as I had mana left, I could improve my chances of winning in the future. And so, with that in mind, I had to head straight back to working, but in a very different way.

First, I tried talking to my sword. Both in the literal sense of speaking aloud and trying to communicate telepathically.

I’d heard something from Selys-Lyann. I was certain of it. Unfortunately, any efforts I made to directly communicate prompted no response.

I’ll need to do more specialized research on this. For the moment, I have other things to prioritize.

There was never enough time for the enchanting projects I wanted to work on.

I set down the final communication necklace, feeling comforted that I’d finally finished one item on my checklist. There was one for every member of the household now. I’d distributed most of them already — holding onto them until the whole batch was done would have been an unnecessary risk, since threats could arise at any time — but I finally had the last one in my hands. The final one was for Derek. Aside from Keras, he was at the lowest risk of needing help in an emergency situation.

He was out, so I dropped it off at his door with a note, grateful that I didn’t have to talk to him directly. Then I headed back to my room for more work.

I glanced at the stack of enchanted protest signs. I’d finished most of the enchantments for those, but I needed help from someone with perception mana to handle the sound-enhancement parts, and everyone I knew with that mana type in the quantities I needed was busy.

Regretfully, that meant working on charging the Jaden Box. It was about the furthest thing from what I wanted to do, but I’d promised Keras I’d work on it. I didn’t agree to spend all my mana on it, but I was dedicating a bit of time and mana to charging it every day, making incremental progress toward refilling it.

With the knowledge of which rune to charge, the process was actually very simple. I poured most of my remaining mana from my right hand into that rune, winced at the sudden spike in pain, then exhaled heavily.

Done with that for the day.

I took a brief break.

I briefly went and asked Keras if he thought he could copy the Jaden Box’s abilities, given that he’d been able to copy powers from objects in the past.

“Not quickly,” he told me. “Not without destroying it, anyway. Most of my item absorbing ability comes along with gradually dealing damage to the object. I might be able to learn how to use the abilities without hurting the box eventually, but the time it would take would be prohibitive. Years, probably, especially given that one of the critical dominions it uses — travel — is on the other side of the dominion spectrum from some of my own main ones. It’s not a viable solution.”

I sighed at that, then got back to work on other projects.

Under ideal conditions, it took me about an hour to get my whole mana supply back in a mana rich location like Derek’s house…but as I’d learned painfully in the previous year, just repeatedly burning through my whole mana pool several times in a day was a terrible idea. The pain in my hand was fading almost immediately due to the regeneration function on my silver phoenix sigil, but I knew that wasn’t actually fixing any damage to my mana structures. I could burn through my mana multiple times in a day safely, but longer breaks were better, and I tried to limit myself to two uses of my mana pool per day.

I was getting better about using both attunements equally, too. I’d already used most of the mana from my Enchanter attunement to finish the necklace, though, so both of my attunements needed rest.

I got some water, then sat down with a pen and paper to update my “To Do” list.

Yes, it’s a real list. Don’t laugh at me.

I crossed off the necklaces. That felt good. Unfortunately, the list had dozens of other items left, only some of which were related to enchanting.

…And I was about to add more.

Most of my existing enchanting projects on the list were either about survival (like the necklaces and home improvements had been) or long-term efficiency. The latter category included things like mana batteries for all the base mana types I hadn’t covered yet (since I’d been forced to delay finishing those to prioritize the message necklaces), a better stamping rod, automated mana crystal generation items, automated liquid mana generation items, exercise enchantments, and my null contract items (which were a subcategory of exercise enchantments, but more specialized).

These were all useful, but I risked falling into a trap of working on efficiency to the extent that I never actually built anything else. So, that day, I wanted to work on expanding my goals list to include a couple new categories.

First, things that were immediately useful to me. Things like better shield sigils technically fell into this category, but I wanted things that would help me be more proactive, rather than just defensive items. To begin with, I wanted an updated demi-gauntlet, as well as an improved ring of jumping.

Next, I created a list for gifts. I was already giving items to my friends, but most of them were standardized — things like the improved shield sigils and necklaces. I’d made some specialized gifts for each person the first year, but not recently. I planned to amend that. It was my role as an Enchanter to help supplement everyone’s abilities and I could do that best if I built gifts that were role-specific.

After that, enchantments for profit. I wasn’t hugely interested in working on these, but making money would help me buy materials for better equipment for my other projects, so it was a necessity to spend at least some time on this. There was a chance for profitability with patenting sub-glyphs, but I didn’t expect that to pay any dividends in the near future, and it also felt…well, kind of awful, honestly. Trying to get ahead of Farren Labs in case they were up to doing something nefarious with the Arbiter attunement was one thing, but I didn’t like the idea of making that type of thing the foundation of my income.

I was much more interested in directly manufacturing things that might be useful to people — things like my mana regeneration items, which were extraordinarily useful and couldn’t generally be made by anyone prior to Citrine-level. Making more of those was easy…the difficulty would be proving that they didn’t cause any sort of poisoning. While I could publicly disclose my Arbiter attunement if I chose, there was no easy way for most attuned to know that the mana in the item was pure just from looking at the item itself. Someone with mental mana could analyze it with an appropriate spell, but the necessity for that analysis made selling mana regeneration items in bulk a challenge. Direct sales were much more possible, but I didn’t have the time, energy, or inclination to go around trying to market my bracers to people.

Maybe I could manufacture some and see if Lars would be willing to sell them at the Climber’s Court for a cut?

I put that idea on my list.

Beyond that, I wrote down a few other basic items that I thought might be easy to sell. Improved shield sigils were easy to make, but there were plenty of other models already out there. The same was true for dueling canes.

Maybe voice activated teleportation items, like my circlet? Return bells are ubiquitous, but I don’t see a lot of variations in design, aside from jump bells. I’m sure there are other voice activated ones out there, but if they’re not widespread…yeah, that’s another good potential option.

I wrote that down, along with a few other potential goods to sell, then kept going to my scariest — and most interesting — project plan.

With my education from Farren Labs, I understood the inner workings of attunements better than many Enchanters, even those that had already graduated. While your average Enchanter could learn the spells necessary to look at sub-glyphs and the language, they couldn’t do much with that knowledge on their own. Not directly, at least.

There were a whole class of items designed based on the same principles of attunements — items with dynamic runes. Dynamic runes are designed to contain sub-glyph functions. Essentially, someone can “write” the functions of a dynamic rune, then charge the rune with mana to serve those functions. Advanced Enchanters often use dynamic runes as a means to create effects outside the scope of their knowledge of pre-existing runes.

I had some interest in simply exploring my own dynamic rune designs, but my particular line of research was geared toward something that other Enchanters couldn’t dabble in as easily as I could.

I could make enchantments that modified attunement functions.

It’s a simple concept, but with barriers to entry for your average Enchanter. Your ordinary Enchanter didn’t have access to the resources I did for learning to read sub-glyphs, nor the expanded access to looking at the inner workings of attunements that I gained as an Arbiter.

Beyond that, most items couldn’t interface with attunements directly. Much like ordinary Enchanters couldn’t tinker with attunements, ordinary items were blocked from modifying attunement functionality by anti-tampering functions. Ordinary Enchanters had workarounds for this — they could, for example, create an item that was designed to detect when an attunement did something, then have the item trigger an effect based on that. Similarly, ordinary Enchanters could also make items that created effects in advance that an attuned could interact with using their attunement, like how one of my earliest items for Sera provided extra mana for Sera to use.

…But I didn’t need to use those workarounds. Not necessarily. If I had the inclination, I could create items with the functions of the Arbiter attunement to bypass the anti-tampering functions of attunements, allowing an item to directly modify how an attunement worked.

This was probably the type of thing that would be considered some sort of super-heresy if I wasn’t an Arbiter. But since I was, I was pretty sure I could get away with it…and honestly, most people aside from the Anabelle Farrens and Warren Constantines of the world wouldn’t even be able to tell what I was doing.

Now, creating items that interfaced directly with attunements had clear dangers — it would be easy to break something critical — but the most relevant part for me was that those dangers were comparatively smaller than actually modifying an attunement directly. If something went critically wrong with an attunement modifying item, but in a way that wasn’t immediately fatal, the item could simply be turned off, moved, or even destroyed if needed. In theory, this would allow the attunement to return to normal.

If I broke an attunement by directly altering the sub-glyphs there were a number of circumstances in which that wouldn’t necessarily be immediately fixable. For example, if I modified one of my own attunements significantly enough, it was possible that I could stop the attunement from working entirely, preventing me from making future alterations and fixing the problem.

This was also an issue for modifying the attunements of others. If, for example, Patrick asked me to upgrade his attunement in some way, and I made a mistake that didn’t show up immediately — say, something that caused a minor mana leak that created gradual scarring — Patrick would have to find me to fix it once he realized the problem had arisen. And if I was off in a spire, or in a separate war game for final exams, or otherwise indisposed, it could take days or longer for me to come back for a fix. That could be dangerous. If I made him an item that enhanced his attunement that had a problem, however…he could just take it off.

Potential heresy aside, it was a much safer bet. At least in the sense of “less likely to detonate friends and family”.

There was another risk in that style of enchantment, though. If people found out I could make those sorts of enchantments…well, Farren Labs wouldn’t be the only ones that wanted me to work for them. And not everyone was going to be offering a comprehensive benefits package. It was eminently plausible I could be immediately taken out of Lorian Heights to be pressed into early military service, for example, and forced to create attunement-augmenting items for the military.

That wasn’t ideal.

So, if I did want to make items that tinkered with attunement functions…I’d have to be cautious about it. Those definitely weren’t going on the “sell at the Climber’s Court” list. Not immediately, anyway.

Finally, I could also make items that emulated attunement functions, rather than modifying them. This might sound fairly basic, but every attunement has their so-called “unique” functions that aren’t actually unique, but remain extremely useful. If I got a good enough look at the sub-glyphs of any given attunement, I could theoretically copy it to an item…assuming I understood all the components well enough, had someone or something to provide the right kinds of mana to charge it, and could find materials with the appropriate capacity.

This last category included things like my “null contract items”, which were designed to emulate a part of the Summoner or Soulblade attunements, but it was possible to go much broader. One of the absolute simplest things I could make was also among the most potentially impactful—

I could make items that let other people enchant items without an Enchanter attunement. At least, I thought I could. I hadn’t tested it, nor had I extensively researched how that particular function of the Enchanter attunement worked.

It was somewhat ironic that the function that defined my career as an attuned was one of the ones I knew the least about, at least in terms of the inner workings and sub-glyphs that made it possible. I’d glanced some of it over, but it was much more complex than I’d anticipated — it wasn’t just about using transference mana to push energy into something (although that was certainly a component of it).

I intended to research that in more detail eventually, but for the moment, I had several projects on my agenda that had more immediate applications. After my list-writing break, I spent a couple hours working on etching dynamic runes into rings. The small size of a ring meant that it didn’t have a large mana capacity, but I wasn’t planning to use these for anything hugely mana intensive. Instead, they’d be used as test cases for small-scale attunement-altering enchantments.

If I could get them to work…there would be a whole new world of potential ahead of me.

CHAPTER XX – SCARS OF THE SONS

Saffron practice went about as well as Mizuchi practice did — meaning that Keras basically just beat us all to the ground. Again, and again, and again.

After one round, he offered me a hand to help me to my feet. I grunted and let him drag me upward, wobbling a little on my feet.

“Sorry, might have gone a little too hard on that round. I can’t simulate his magic absorption, so I have to focus on just overwhelming you with speed and power.”

I winced, stretching my back. “Meaning that the real Saffron would be even harder to deal with.”

“Oh, of course. Please, don’t take any of this training as being remotely close to how dangerous a real encounter would be. If Saffron is actually serious about an encounter, he’ll be throwing around all sorts of magic that I can’t duplicate, even with borrowed toys.” He waved a black-gloved gauntlet for emphasis. It was one of Derek’s new Soulblade items, one that used shadow and void mana to nullify magic. That let Keras negate magic in a fashion similar to how a Child of the Tyrant might, but as he’d mentioned, it didn’t have any absorption powers — it was more similar to Mr. Stabbington’s void aura.

Tristan could simulate it more closely, I considered. His attunement is…weirdly similar to what the Children of the Tyrant can do.

I’d considered that before, of course, but I hadn’t found anything that connected the origins of the Sovereign attunement to the Children of the Tyrant. Presumably it had something to do with the “like deflects like” rule — maybe Selys wanted her strongest followers to be able to counter the Tyrant’s power theft abilities.

…At least, I hoped that was the reason.

Patrick groaned and lifted himself off the ground. Mara and Derek were already on their feet, but Sera remained seated on the ground, looking introspective.

“…How would you handle a Child of the Tyrant, in our position?” She asked Keras.

“If you mean to ask what the wisest approach would be — well, I wouldn’t. Fighting a Child of the Tyrant is a losing gambit. Even if you somehow manage to ‘win’, you’ll just earn the enmity of the others, including ones you can’t possibly hope to handle. Aayara. Jacinth. Their lieutenants.”

“Obviously, yes, that part is clear. But how would you handle it?”

Keras gave her a weak smile. “I’m not known for making the best of decisions when it comes to challenging overwhelming opponents.”

“But you’ve done it — and you’ve survived.”

“Barely.” He folded his arms. “And I have unfair advantages.”

“Would you beat one of the Children of the Tyrant without your sword?”

Keras frowned, seeming to consider that. “Depends on which one. They’re not ubiquitous. Aayara or Jacinth? No. I likely couldn’t touch them, even with my sword. Not the way I am right now, at least. For weaker children? Maybe. Sterling, when I first fought him…yeah, I could probably handle that fight without my sword now, even if I was by myself. But that’s an edge case — Sterling was young and overconfident. Circumstances would matter a great deal. I’d want to act quickly, not give them a chance to adjust to my own abilities. Even then, there’s very little you can do to predict how a vae’kes will react to an attack. Their abilities can change from day to day.”

“…Very little isn’t nothing,” I pointed out. “Are there any constants to their abilities, aside from their absorption powers?”

“Not really. I mean, some of them have strong preferences. As far as I can tell, some of them keep some of the same abilities and build them over time. Sterling always has strong defensive powers. Saffron always has overwhelming regeneration. Aayara is known for stealth, concealment, and illusion. She toys with people. Jacinth kills people before they have a chance to respond.”

Sera and I seemed to come to a thought at the same time. “…If they tend to focus on a specific suite of powers, does that mean they have difficulty absorbing the opposites?”

Keras shook his head. “Maybe a bit, but it’s not impossible for them. If anything, they seem to have the most difficulty absorbing mana of types that directly opposes their fundamental power. Even that isn’t reliable, since—”

“Wait, back up.” I put my hands up. “Is there actually a single mana type that they draw their power from?”

“…It’s a little more complicated than that. You could call it a mana type, but it’s an extremely complicated composite. And before you ask, I don’t know the exact composition, nor how to make the opposite. People have tried to figure that out for centuries. Maybe someone has succeeded, but everyone I’m aware of that might have that information is either dead, missing, or an infuriating sage of misinformation.”

“But you’ve fought a couple of them, right? You must have noticed some patterns.”

“Sure. I’ve told you most of what I know already, but…”

“You want us to run.” Derek finally spoke up, laughing a little. “You don’t want to give us anything that sounds like an overwhelming advantage, because we might get too confident and try to fight when we shouldn’t.”

“…I’ve seen what happens when people try to fight vae’kes. I’ve lost friends. It’s not—”

“We’re not going to be like that.” Sera finally pushed herself to her feet and brushed herself off. “We’ll retreat if we can, but you know as well as anyone that a vae’kes on the hunt isn’t going to stop just because we run a block. We’re safest if you give us the tools necessary to protect ourselves — and information is a critical part of that.”

Keras looked down, breathing deeply. “…I’m not trying to withhold information. But if I tell this to you, there needs to be an understanding that it’s not any kind of critical key to victory. It’s one tiny advantage that is easily accounted for, no matter how significant it seems.”

Mara groaned. “We get it, just spit it out. Suspense is killin’ me faster than any child would.”

“This isn’t a joke, Mara.” He gave her a stern look. She just wrinkled her nose at him. “But fine. It’s straightforward and along the lines we’ve already discussed. When I was first preparing to fight Sterling, Lydia indicated to me that most vae’kes, historically, have a difficulty dealing with light mana. It’s believed that prime dominion — or base mana type, as you’d call it — is the most directly antithetical to the primary base mana type that the vae’kes use. It’s not even a huge secret where I come from — Vae’lien himself is known to be associated with shadow, and his principal rival among the Tae’os Pantheon was known to be associated with light.”

“Meaning that widespread knowledge may be erroneous, or simply a matter of propaganda?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” Keras shook his head. “Although I’d be shocked if most of the stronger vae’kes don’t have countermeasures. Sterling used void sorcery to counter any magical attack that was strong enough to threaten him, for example. I’ll bet that most children have tricks like that.”

“Does that mean that other light composites are also effective?” Sera asked.

“Very likely, yes. Aladir Ta’thyriel had a spirit mana sword, for example, and seemed to think it would work — but I have no idea if it actually would. I suspect that Ceris worked against Saffron because the sword’s fundamental properties are strongly associated with constellations, which is another light mana composite. Ceris also interferes with certain types of stealth and concealment magic, even things as powerful as my mask, which also makes it useful against people like vae’kes. They tend to love things like shadow and deception spells. Illusions, invisibility, that sort of thing. The problem with swinging a light sword at someone like Saffron is…” He winced. “They have a habit of responding badly to threats. And swords, no matter how precious, can be broken.”

I immediately had to wonder if he was implying that a Child of the Tyrant had broken Dawnbringer. If that was what had happened, that certainly would go a long way to explaining his reticence to tell us this secret — it would be easy for us to get overconfident and watch as Selys-Lyann or Bright Reflection were broken in pieces.

But that’s just weapons.

I’d already made a couple items that generated light mana, but if I increased my attunement level, I could learn how to use it directly.

…Or maybe I could skip that first step.

“What about your personal battles? Did you ever use light against one of them?” Sera asked.

That was a more political way of pursuing the issue further than I would have been able to construct.

He hesitated, then finally nodded. “Sure. But it was never my primary weapon — I don’t think I’ve ever fought one of the vae’kes without having my sword, or at least my aura. I’ve seen others do it, though, and I’ve seen it both succeed and fail. My best advice? Take this knowledge and use it to enhance your tactics for ensuring a retreat. Flashes of light for disorientation, walls of light — find ways to buy yourself time. And remember — always remember — you don’t want to back them into a corner. The only winning play is one that lets you live another day.”

***

Weeks passed. Classes continued, but always with an undercurrent of tension and suspicion as the Sons of Valia continued to strike. I found myself constantly wondering which of my fellow students were affiliated with them, if any — and as my gaze narrowed upon those of the oldest and most powerful families, I felt the eyes of others settling upon me as well.

The eyes of nobles, sizing me up for recruitment. And the eyes of those vulnerable folks who saw me and thought they might be one of my victims.

That hurt, knowing others might think that I might be affiliated with the Sons of Valia…but it absolutely made sense. House Cadence wasn’t old, but we were closely tied to Valia’s military…as well as our victory over a foreign power.

There were at least two or three incidents where I suspected someone was testing me with a seemingly innocuous phrase that might have been some kind of recognition code for members of the organization, but nothing that was certain. No one reached out to recruit me during that time, at least not in any way that I noticed.

Maybe whoever was pulling the strings knew that I wouldn’t be interested…or maybe I just was beneath their notice. I wasn’t sure if I should be insulted or relieved.

But Sera was right — I watched and waited, and I did very little. Once, while walking with Sera on the way to class, I saw someone shoved hard into a wall, with an “oops” and a laugh from the aggressors. I…think I heard someone spit, then they laughed and walked off while the victim dusted herself off—

I stepped forward, then recoiled when I realized that the victim was Satsuki.

She didn’t look like a monster, then. Not a legendary serpent, descendant of a god beast. No armor, no glowing blade. Just…a girl in her school uniform, wearing an expression of confusion and hurt.

But I still didn’t move to help her.

Sera must have seen my hesitancy. My fear. She must have understood that just seeing Satsuki reminded me of how close Mizuchi had come to killing us both. “You can get to class. I’ll check on her.”

“But—”

“I’ve got this one. I’ll make sure she gets where she’s going and knows there’s someone she can talk to if she needs it. Don’t worry. I’m not a likely target, and I’ll message someone if I get into trouble.”

I frowned, hesitated again…and then I nodded and kept walking and let someone else deal with the problem. I had my head held low the entire way to class that day, and I couldn’t focus on anything in the lesson.

I was too disgusted with myself.

I’d turned away from helping an innocent because she looked like someone I was afraid of. Sure, I’d fought with Satsuki herself in the Survival Match, but there’d been no animosity in that — she’d been giving a performance, just like I was. It was little different from sparring with a stranger for the first time in dueling class, but I was so caught up in her being a serpent — someone who wasn’t like me, someone who looked more like my enemy — that I was afraid of her. Terrified that something in her very nature made her dangerous.

I loathed what the Sons of Valia were doing, but in that moment, I hadn’t been much better.

Sometimes it takes a moment of shame to get someone to do the right thing.

If I was considered a candidate for recruitment for the Sons of Valia, that probably ended as soon as I attended my first protest march.

Yes, attended. Originally, I’d thought to offload my moral burden by making the signs and just…handing them off to other people to carry.

But…if I wasn’t willing to do something a little bit uncomfortable in order to help make a difference, was I really capable of saying I was doing the right thing?

So, I got help finishing the signs, distributed most of them, and then carried one myself.

…I still made plans to avoid being touched by strangers. Had my friends watch out for me, planned escape routes and placed my teleportation anchor, worked on a spell for creating a gentle emanation of transference around my body to lightly push people away.

In the grand scheme of things, I knew the presence of one more body at a protest wasn’t really going to make a difference — I mean, not unless it turned into a brawl and I had some kind of physical ability that helped contribute, but that was exceedingly unlikely. Really, it was more that it was just incredibly simple for everyone to say that “one more body won’t make a difference”, and if everyone said that, nothing would be accomplished.

So, I resolved to help as a part of collective action. It wasn’t that I was individually swinging tides — I didn’t have to. I just had to do my part, and hopefully, everyone as a whole could make a difference.

So, I went. It was hard. Scary.

But…I felt good, having done it.

And Derek made great sandwiches, which was a plus.

I just wished it was easier to know if we were making a difference.

The Sons of Valia attacks still continued. Subtler things than the attacks, too. I saw small things in classes, all the time — the glares of undisguised hatred at people who didn’t look Valian, the graffitied propaganda on building walls, the derogatory comments spoken just loud enough for vulnerable people to hear. Protests certainly weren’t going to scare them. But the protests weren’t just to show our dissent to the Sons of Valia — they were for the people who were vulnerable to know that they weren’t alone. And, perhaps, for the people in positions of greater power to see that there was enough opposition to the Sons of Valia that it was worthwhile for them take steps themselves.

Most of my classes went smoothly. I had little difficulty in most of them, with my third-year Enchanting class and dueling class proving to be the only major challenges.

The third-year Enchanting students were clearly more than standard graduating students — they’d likely been hand-picked for being exceptional talents. That made me feel a little out-of-place at first, but in spite of some initial difficulty, I didn’t actually have much trouble keeping up with the discussion once I acclimated to it. The style of the class was more open-ended than most, with less lecturing and more general discussion between the students and teacher. I didn’t know if that was typical for more advanced classes or if it was just an element of this particular professor’s style. Either way, it was much more engaging than just sitting in a class and listening to chatter. The clearest tangible benefit was people to bounce ideas off of, and I got some useful ideas on how to work on void mana items, including some specific materials with compositions that would tolerate void more easily than standard metals.

Dueling class was, as usual, both my favorite class and the most stressful.

On the second week, we picked our team names. I was terrible at that sort of thing, but after our first set of matches involved disabling a series of magical traps around the arena and repurposing them, Patrick helpfully suggested, “Team Luting the Rune”. It was a terrible pun, but Lute thought it was absolutely hilarious for some reason, so we went with it.

Sera’s team ended up as “Team Unbalanced Scales”, which was presumably a reference to her contract with Seiryu, but I didn’t actually bother asking. They were certainly unbalanced in terms of overperforming — Mara was able to handle some entire teams on her own.

The two third-year teams were “Team Goddess’ Grace”, which seemed like a pretty generic and inoffensive name, and the much more concerning “Team Bloodline”, which practically advertised their likely associations. Sera actually asked Teft about that, but he claimed that nothing could be done about their potential membership in the Sons of Valia without direct evidence. Apparently he confronted them about it at some point, and they said the name was “just a joke”.

Ugh.

Both third-year teams had elements that I found worthy of some worry and planning.

Team Goddess’ Grace’s leader, Vernon Tenson, was a rare publicly-known dual-attuned with Guardian and Legionnaire attunements. The compounding effects of two front-line combat attunements made him an absolute terror in the arena. To compound that further, he wore a suit of old-fashioned knightly plate armor and carried a tower shield, both of which were heavily enchanted. In most matches, no one could even scratch him.

His team members weren’t quite as obviously absurd, but they synergized extremely well with his defensive focus. Sandra Stone was a Sunstone-level Summoner with an opposite approach to most of the ones I’d met — she had a broad variety of low-level contracts rather than focusing on powerful individual ones. This gave her access to a truly staggering variety of mana types, as well as numerous monsters to deploy based on the circumstances on the battlefield.

Their third member, Micha Sawyer, was a Sunstone-level Diviner with a rare enhancement mana specialization. I strongly suspected that Roland was working toward the same thing, but he hadn’t manifested the mark change that Micha had yet. With an enhancement-specialization and the shroud-enhancements from Vernon’s Legionnaire attunement, Micha was nearly as resilient as their team captain, but also terrifyingly good at evading attacks.

Together, the three of them were extremely dangerous, but Team Bloodline was arguably even more stacked.

Their leader, Jeremy Jaldin, was the older brother of Jordan Jaldin, who I’d met in the previous year. They must have been born in the same year, since Jordan was a second-year student during our final exams. While I could see the family resemblance, Jeremy had a very different demeanor. He was his family heir and he acted like it, barely seeming to tolerate the presence of non-nobles in the class.

His nobility wasn’t the only source of his attitude, however. Jeremy was a Shaper with the single highest mana level I’d seen in a student. He was still a Sunstone, but when I checked his aura, it was already close enough to Citrine that it had visibly shifted most of the way to yellow. I didn’t know if that meant he’d earned his attunement early like Derek and Elora had or if he’d simply managed to advance massively quickly. Either way, a Shaper at that level was an absolute terror in a dueling environment, and he was capable of single-handedly shutting down many of the second-year teams with shaper boxes and conjured constructs.

Their second member, Tyler Sanctum, was a rare case of a local who had ended up with a foreign attunement — in his case, the Spellsinger. He specialized in wide-area spells and sound-based attacks, the latter of which tended to be almost impossible to counter at our level due to their near-invisibility and the speed at which they moved.

Their final member was Matthew Coin, a Sunstone-level Elementalist with an air specialization mark. That seemed like an unintuitive choice until I watched him asphyxiate an entire team into unconsciousness without even triggering their shield sigils.

…That was more than a little terrifying. I was glad we had an Elementalist of our own, but “build breathing items” was quickly added to my list of items to make.

In spite of my disgust with Team Bloodline’s name, they performed toward the top of the class. I say “toward”, because the highest performer wasn’t a third-year team, but a more mysterious group of second-years—

Team Skyseeker, led by Mary Hawthorne.

Mary was the archer I’d seen at the Winter Ball. Through several matches, she used the same light arrows that I’d seen at the ball, and I realized they weren’t just light magic. As one of her arrows pierced through a summoned gargoyle’s arm, the gargoyle vanished instantly — something that shouldn’t have happened from a mere glancing wound.

Banishment. She’s an Abjurer, like Professor Vellum — or she has a similar power from an alternate source. Maybe the bow itself?

Abjurers weren’t something I had studied extensively, but I did pick up bits and pieces in both my reading and my Foreign Attunements class. They were exceptional at countering Summoners and similar contract-based attuned through banishment — which would send summoned creatures and many types of elementals — back to where they originated from. Beyond that, they also had “sealing” magic, which could reduce an opponent’s abilities or prevent them from using specific types of magic entirely, depending on the specific spell or ability used. The former ability was more dangerous to Sera’s team, whereas the latter was more worrying to my own.

Mary wasn’t the only one with strange and dangerous abilities. The redhead, who went by the obviously fake name “Vermillion Rose”, was one of the fastest sword fighters I’d ever seen, and she left scarlet trails in the air every time she swung her swords. Those trails hovered for several seconds before detonating into bursts of cutting energy in all directions.

Something similar to how Keras’ Pale Crescent worked, maybe, but with some kind of delayed detonation function as well. Fascinating.

Her swords didn’t have any obvious runes, but I knew enough to realize that didn’t mean anything — they could have been hidden on the inside, been made with a non-Kaldwynian style of enchanting, or she could have simply been using non-magical weapons with some kind of unusual weapon-enhancement spell.

Given her style’s focus on weapon enhancements and personal combat enhancements, I suspected Vermillion was a Swordmaster, but I couldn’t be sure.

The last of them, with an even faker name than Vermillion, was Kuro Nightshade. His combat style seemed to be deliberately designed to follow the classic wizard motif, meaning he had a simply implausible number of types of magic at his disposal. I was pretty sure I saw him cast spells with every single base mana type at one point or another…meaning he was probably an Enchanter with a bunch of items, or that he had multiple different attunements.

It was after watching their third match that Patrick slipped something he wasn’t supposed to know—

Team Skyseeker was the team that had beaten Meltlake’s simulacrum in the first year.

Given Mary’s ability to use banishment magic, that made a picture click together in my mind. A simulacrum was conjured in a similar fashion to a summoned monster, meaning they could potentially be dispelled outright with banishment magic.

…That was worth looking at, given my own potential for going up against simulacra in the near future.

I considered asking Mary more about her attunement, but I kept getting too distracted by other things. I hoped to get to it eventually.

As classes continued, so too did our other activities.

I spent a bit of time each day testing transcendence variants on my existing spells, as well as some of the weakest recommended basic transcendence spells in my books. When I first started, I only had enough transcendence mana to cast two meaningful transcendence-improved versions of a spell at a time. Something like two Transcendent Detect Aura spells for a few seconds each, or a couple cast-and-forget Transcendent Regeneration spells with enough transcendence mana to keep them stable. After a couple weeks of practice, I’d worked my way up to three spells per session. I was frustrated by how slowly the improvement was going, but I didn’t have any good ways to accelerate it.

I tried using my Arbiter mark to infuse my crystal mark, but as I expected, nothing happened. They simply weren’t compatible. The same was true with Sera’s density mark, and she had the same difficulties with gradually building mana. From what Keras told us, slow growth for dominion sorcery was expected, but I still found it irritating — especially since the risks of overuse were so high.

I continued my usual training, including doing a bit of team practice with Patrick and Lute for dueling class. I asked Lute for some advice on transcendence spells, and he was happy to explain some spells to me — but all his spells seemed to require dozens of times more mana than I currently had available. Still, I wrote down what I could for future use, and took notes on the general theory he was able to teach me. Much of his own understanding seemed more intuitive than taught, which made it difficult to translate some of the ideas into lessons, but I felt like his ideas still helped me improve my general grasp on the magic as a whole.

Leisure was more difficult to find outside the house, but that was rarely my preference in any regard. It did mean that I wouldn’t be participating in any further Survival Matches until the Sons of Valia situation was handled — it would be too easy for an “accident” to happen if one of them rigged a match in some way — but beyond that, I didn’t have to do things very differently.

It was harder on the others. Not everyone had my level of contentedness with just staying at home to read and study. The reduction in social opportunities was particularly hard on Sera — she’d always enjoyed going to school parties and similar events. On occasion, she still attended them with friends to back her up, but such gatherings were rarer and harder to enjoy.

I continued working on my items and mana exercises, as well as getting in every bit of training that I could with Keras while he was around. He was spending less time moping in his room, but that wasn’t entirely an improvement — there was an undercurrent of anger to his demeanor since the Sons of Valia had struck. More and more, I felt that strange sensation of blades pressed close against my skin when he was near, often without Keras being aware that he was exuding that aura. He could push it down when he was alerted to it, but it seemed to be harder for him to keep himself calm whenever he returned from one of his late-night adventures with Derek.

They were clearly working with the Blackstone Bandits on some kind of project, but whatever it was seemed to involve more patience and subterfuge than Keras was suited for. After all, if it was just about going and punching someone, the problem would have been solved overnight.

I couldn’t blame him for being stressed. I wasn’t doing well, either. It was during one of our typical training sessions that I asked him for something that I hoped might help us both.

***

Mara, Keras, and I were on the roof to set up for another session when I decided it was time for a simple question.

“Keras, you’ve always been a swordsman first and foremost, right? Why aren’t you teaching us swordplay?”

Keras raised an eyebrow at the question. “I am teaching you swordplay.”

I folded my arms. “The majority of what you’ve been teaching us is magic. I mean, you’ve given us a few melee combat pointers here and there, but very little of your personal sword style.”

“Ah.” He shook his head. “There’s no point to that.”

I blinked. “What? Why?”

“Pretty simple, really. Mara has virtually no interest in learning to use swords — I’ve taught her a smattering, but only the very basics. And in your case, you’re already a fine swordsman. You don’t need me drilling you on footwork and maneuvers. You’ve been doing that since you were a child. Most of what I could teach you in that regard would just be more review.”

Did…Keras think I was a competent sword fighter already? That was…I felt flattered, but as confident as I was in my dueling abilities, I had no illusions that I could match someone like Keras or Derek in terms of pure mechanical skill. “…I know a traditional Valian house dueling style, sure, but isn’t your Selyrian Cutting Style fundamentally different?”

Keras actually laughed at that. “Selyrian Cutting Style. Ugh. That’s literally just a name I came up with on the spot, Corin. It’s not a real style. It’s just an assortment of techniques I cobbled together from several martial arts forms I learned back home — and a few of my own tricks. Sure, I could teach you some of the theory behind why I use specific moves, but most of it wouldn’t be applicable to you. The core elements of my fighting style involve using long weapons and metal manipulation, neither of which is applicable to how you fight.”

Mara took that moment to interject. “Still got a few other tricks I’ve seen you pull off that don’t require a specific weapon or magic, though. You like your speed techniques and head games.”

Keras frowned at that. “You’re not wrong, but…I’m not sure I can teach that. I’m…not actually much of a teacher in general, really. Much of what I do is instinctive. Corin’s style is more methodical and requires more pre-planning.”

Mara scoffed. “Humor us. Think we could all use a change of flavor.”

Keras seemed to consider that, then nodded. “Suppose I’ll grab us all some training swords, then. Be back in a moment.” He headed back downstairs.

I gave Mara a grateful look. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me yet. I have a feeling this is going to be brutal.”

I laughed. “We’ll see.” After a beat, I considered another question. “Is it true that you aren’t interested in learning swordplay?”

“Eh, not really. Always felt better just using my hands. They talk about how with a great swordsman, the sword is like an extension of their body. I’ve never felt anything like that. Using a weapon feels…clunky, like I can never quite move it at the right speed to match what I’m thinkin’.” She shook her head.

“I mean, that’s probably a matter of practice.”

Mara shrugged. “Maybe, but it doesn’t feel natural. Not like movin’ my hands does. And Keras…well, he’s right about one thing. Teachin’ swordplay isn’t natural for ‘im. If a master might treat a sword like their body, Keras…he’s somethin’ else entirely. He doesn’t need a sword at all. It’s more like…for him, havin’ a sword drawn is just warnin’ the universe that something is about to be cut.”

…I could see what she meant.

I still was pretty sure he’d once disarmed me with a chicken leg, after all. And that sensation of being “about to be cut” when he was nearby…it was like he was having a harder and harder time hiding who he was.

Or what he was.

It was possible that asking Keras to teach us swordplay when he was this tense was a terrible idea, or even a dangerous one—

But it was a little late to back out. He returned to the roof with practice blades a few moments later, each with a scabbard and sword belt. “Put these on. I’ve got a few things I can try to teach you.”

Mara and I nodded and belted our swords on.

“What are we startin’ with?” Mara asked.

“Quick draw techniques. Let’s get into drawing reach.”

We both came closer as instructed.

Keras nodded to each of us. “We’re going to start with something basic. You both ready?”

Mara and I nodded in unison.

I didn’t see what happened next. No blur, no afterimage, nothing.

Then Keras had two swords in his hands—

And our scabbards were empty.

Mara took a step back in alarm, raising her fists. I just blinked.

“That was…”

Keras flipped around both swords, offering them back to us. “A quick draw technique. Just not the type you were expecting.”

“Drawing your opponent’s sword?” Mara rolled her eyes and snatched her sword back. “That’s a bit of a stretch, isn’t it?”

“Not really. I’ve done it on a number of occasions in real conflicts — enough that I would consider it one of my personal techniques.”

I frowned, taking my own sword back. “Is that really practical for the average person, though? I mean, you managed that with us because you have a massive speed advantage when you want to.”

“Sure. I can do it again without a speed technique, if you’d like, and show it to you slower…but there are a few reasons why I think it’s worth teaching to you. First, you both do have speed techniques, and ones that can be activated before your opponent is necessarily aware of them. When you start a fight in close proximity, your opponent may be expecting a more standard quick draw attack and have counters prepared — very few people are prepared for this style of move.”

“Probably because it’s much harder to execute and it’s less safe. You have to move in close and sacrifice your own sword reach,” Mara pointed out.

“Sure. Which is perfect for you, Mara, because you don’t actually like using swords.”

“Can’t argue with that.” Mara nodded. “Even if it doesn’t work, I’d rather be in close to interfere with their own draw. I like it.”

“Not sure I do. Even with Haste…maybe I could do it, but I’m not sure how practical it would be.”

“Don’t discount the idea too quickly. Speed isn’t all there is to it — it’s also about acting outside of your opponent’s expectations. Every enemy is going to have an idea of how you should act based on their preconceived notions — your attunement, your demonstrated skills, your body and verbal language…this type of technique deliberately subverts that. Even if the sword draw itself isn’t useful to you, consider that.”

I nodded. The idea of subverting an opponent’s expectations was, of course, a very basic one. I still didn’t think this particular move would ever be of much use to me, given my own style, but I could see the lesson he was trying to impart. “I will. Was there another reason you wanted to show us?”

“Yeah. It’s another philosophical element, really. You wanted to learn something about my own style. Well, if there’s anything that defines my way of fighting…it’s about ending a fight instantaneously. Ideally, before it even starts. That isn’t my only fighting style, mind you — I have different ways of fighting different styles of opponents, and in different circumstances. But I’ve come to understand that, at this point in my life, my primary focus is on fight-ending techniques. And there’s rarely a better way to end a fight instantly than to turn your opponent’s weapon against them.”

“Or to break it,” Mara grinned. “Seen you do plenty of that, too.”

“True.” Keras nodded. “Cutting through weapons is something I specialize in, but that’s not something I can teach effectively. The main mana types I have for that purpose aren’t ones you can use.”

“…Not yet.” I mumbled.

Keras gave me a quizzical look. “You planning to pick up another attunement?”

“Not necessarily. Just…thinking about how to expand my options in a fight. You break weapons using metal mana, right?”

“That’s one of my options. It’s the one that would be most easily emulated, at least. My more esoteric essence,” a silvery cutting aura briefly appeared around his right hand, “isn’t something that can be so easily copied. Nor would I ever want you to try. Powerful as it is, this type of essence isn’t something you should ever want. Both the risks and costs of using it are too extreme.”

That’s the type of statement that usually would just cause me to be tempted to do more research, but…I’d heard enough about Keras’ annihilating aura to know it was absolutely not something I wanted to tinker with. Destroying his own equipment was bad enough. The risk of causing some kind of catastrophic explosion with a theoretically infinite area of effect…I never wanted to mess with that.

I had enough chances to blow myself up without the kind of magic that worldmakers feared.

“Okay, enough philosophizin’.” Mara sheathed her sword. “Show us a little slo—”

Keras lunged. Mara took a step back, startled, but Keras still managed to wrest the sword right out of her scabbard before she had a chance to get out of his reach.

…Then her sword was at her neck and Keras had that infuriatingly cocky grin on his face.

He hadn’t moved at absurd speed that time. In fact, if I had to guess, I suspected he’d moved at exactly Mara’s own speed.

Mara groaned. “Asked for that, didn’t I?”

“You certainly did.” He flipped her sword back around. “Try to take better care of this next time.”

Mara rolled her eyes and sheathed her sword, then cautiously took a few steps back and began to circle around Keras.

His smile only spread. “Now, are you actually r—”

I charged him.

It almost worked. I felt my fingers close around the grip of Keras’ sword—

Only to find his fingers and a cutting aura at my throat.

“Second lesson. Always have a counter for your own techniques.”

***

We only spent a little while actually trying to do Keras’ trick for drawing an opponent’s weapon. He wasn’t really trying to teach us that in specific, after all — his intent was more about teaching us the underlying philosophy behind his combat style. Disarming and disabling techniques were commonplace, but less effective against attuned than conventional martial artists. After all, an attuned’s primary weapon was their attunement, at least in most cases. Dealing with that was much trickier.

For that reason, serious battles between attuned often continued until one party was completely incapacitated or killed. It was difficult to enforce an earlier surrender, outside of things like tournaments and other regulated battle. You could theoretically force someone that surrendered to cast non-combat spells until they ran out of mana, but even that wasn’t a perfect solution, since people could still cast spells after dipping below their safe mana limit…and not everyone had the ability to measure mana capacities, anyway.

Specialized spells existed for incapacitating attuned, but I hadn’t picked any up for my own use yet. That was something I could consider adding to my ever-growing list.

And I’m back to thinking about making some kind of void mana item. I should sit down and look at Mr. Stabbington and see if I can do anything with those enchantments. Teft was right that trying to deploy a void field in the middle of a fight might be self-sabotaging, but if I could make one and deploy it in other circumstances…

“What’s distracting you?” Keras asked.

I flinched. “Sorry. Was it that obvious?”

“You get a kind of distant and vacant expression sometimes when you’re lost in thought. Nothing wrong with it as long as it doesn’t, you know, get you killed.” His hand blurred and something flew toward me.

I reacted without thinking, catching it. If it had been dangerous, that might have been a terrible mistake, but it was just a flask of water.

“Drink break,” he instructed.

He was right — I was getting dehydrated. I took a draw, then tossed it to Mara. Wasn’t exactly sanitary to pass the same flask around, but I tended to obsess about that type of thing less in a context like this than at the dinner table.

After we drank a bit of water, Keras rephrased the question. “Anything interesting on your mind?”

“Oh, sorry. I was just thinking about disabling techniques. Maybe learning to make something like the suppression field used on the Sacred Sword arenas?”

“Not a bad thought. That’ll hit you just as hard as your opponent, though, unless you have a way to exempt yourself. And your allies, if you’re planning to fight as a team.”

I nodded. “Yeah, Teft told me the same thing. But exempting people might be a good idea…there may be a way to do that, either through exempting areas from the field and controlling where we stand or maybe some kind of void-resistance items.”

Keras raised an eyebrow at that. “Can you make items that resist void magic? That seems pretty advanced. Isn’t void mana tricky to work with?”

I shrugged. “Haven’t looked into it, but I imagine it has to be possible. Maybe something that projects something like a void shroud around you, deflecting other instances of void? Or something like that ring you used to have that reshaped fire — that could theoretically work, too.”

“Hm. Yeah, that does sound possible, actually. Might be how Taer’vys functioned as easily as he did in void mana areas — seems like the type of thing he’d come up with.”

I wasn’t sure that I liked my ideas being compared to someone who was, in my mind, at least villain adjacent…but it was probably a compliment in Keras’ mind. Keras’ relationship with Taer’vys was complicated, given that they were sort of on opposite sides, and that Taer’vys had hurt someone Keras cared about accidentally…but they were still friends, or something like it. That was strange to me. I wasn’t sure if I could have respected someone after they’d hurt someone I cared for.

…Then again, I was still talking to Jin, so maybe I was a hypocrite.

Mara chimed in, turning to Keras. “Probably easier to just do what you did and blast through it with light mana.”

“Mmm. As much as I’d like to take credit for having the best strategy possible, no, something like void shaping would have been much more efficient. Using my aura worked just fine, but it was a huge persistent mana cost. Shaping is generally much more mana efficient. It’s just much harder to find items that can do that kind of thing…and void shaping? Who even knows where to find an item like that.” He shook his head. “Might be worth looking into if you two ever go to the tournament, or anything like it.”

Mara grinned. “Couldn’t ask for a better place to test myself.” She punched her fists together. “And I wouldn’t mind taking a shot at an emperor or two when the time comes.”

I frowned at that. It wasn’t that I disliked the idea of entering the Tournament of the Sacred Sword or something similar. It was that…Mara didn’t sound quite like herself when she said things like that. It was more like she was just mimicking Keras, which is an awkward turn of phrase, given how much Keras hates mimics.

“Not sure if she’d be in play. And if she hears you’re my apprentice, the emperor…” Keras shook his head. “Well, you might get some unwelcome attention.”

“Suppose I might be needin’ a mask, then.” Mara grinned. “But we’ve got a couple years yet before we need to worry about that sort of thing, yeah?”

“Around two years, assuming it’s scheduled for the same time of year as I remember. I didn’t attend the last one…and I don’t intend to go to the next, given how things went. It would take a lot more than a mask in my case.” Keras smiled sadly.

“Maybe another tournament, then?” I offered.

“Not a lot of the ones around here can give me a challenge these days. Maybe if I headed over to Artinia or Tyrenia, but—”

A different voice cut over Keras’ — one that simultaneously emanated from the necklaces that we wore. A familiar voice, filled with panic and urgency that I’d never heard before.

“Help! Ambush. I’m—”

Patrick’s voice.

It cut off with the sound of a thump.

I froze, just for an instant.

Keras didn’t. There was a shift in his expression that went so quicky I barely noted it, his sorrow washed away by something like a deadly calm. I felt the sharpness of blades against my skin as he closed his eyes, just for a moment, his hand on his necklace, his grip tightening enough that I worried that he’d snap it.

As his eyes fluttered open, I saw flecks of silver in them. “I’m going.”

There was a blur of silver, then Keras was gone, a trail of deep furrows in the rooftop left in his wake.

Mara turned in the direction he’d vanished. “He…how does he know where to go?”

I blinked. “He’s probably tracking the connection between the necklaces. Keras likes to play the brute, but he’s no stranger to magic theory. He probably has some kind of variant on Sense Sacred Sword that—”

“Can you do it?”

“Not the same, exactly, but…” I nodded. “Follow me.”

I grabbed my necklace.

Spirit Tracking Analytical Arrow.

Several lines appeared in my vision, each of which directed me toward another of the items that matched the same signature as my necklace. They’d be pointing toward a number of different items, basically including anything I’d made for my group.

…None of them matched Keras’ path.

I cursed. Either he was going the wrong way, or…

Advanced Spirit Tracking Analytical Arrow.

I cast a Sunstone-level version, feeling a momentary surge of pain in my forehead as I burned through over a hundred mana in a single spell.

…But as my vision reddened, a new line emerged.

There.

The “Analytical” portion of the spell showed me a distance value to the destination — over two miles. My initial spell simply didn’t have the range to find anything that far.

…I had to hope it was the right trail. If I ran off that way and Patrick wasn’t there, I wouldn’t get to him in time to do anything. Even if I did go that way, two miles…

I shook my head.

It was possible Keras had run off toward someone like Sera or Derek who also had a necklace, but he probably had his own way of narrowing things down. At least…I had to hope he did.

Without another glance at Mara, I narrowed my eyes on the trail and rushed to the edge of the roof.

Haste. Accelerated Computation. Detect Aura. Jump.

I launched myself toward the next roof.

We’re coming, Patrick. Please be okay.

***

Mara and I raced from rooftop to rooftop, only jumping to the ground when there were no convenient buildings to land on.

Following Keras would have been easy enough at that point even without my spell — all we had to do was follow the collateral damage.

It had to say something about his level of alarm that he was willing to obliterate a section of the city street just to rush toward his destination. Fortunately, his acceleration wasn’t like mine — he seemed to retain full control while he was moving, and I didn’t see any signs that he’d run into any people. He was avoiding anything with enchantments, too, presumably to prevent them from exploding.

I didn’t let my Spirit Tracking spell drop even as we followed the trail — if Patrick moved, I wanted to be able to adjust immediately. The trail led us away from Lorian Heights toward Hightown, a district known for their tall buildings that attempted to emulate the architectural style of the spire. I rushed past several familiar homes and shops, ignoring them in favor of focusing on the diminishing distance.

My heart pounded as we ran, but not due to exertion.

Not fast enough. We’re not fast enough.

Two miles didn’t take long to cover at the speed that Mara and I could manage — most of the time was due to the fact that we couldn’t just travel in a straight line once we reached a populated area.

And even a minute was more than enough time for someone to die.

If it had just been Mara with me on that rooftop, if we hadn’t had a trail to follow—

We turned a corner into an isolated alley between two older buildings, then turned another corner, and…

We found Patrick sitting on the ground, curled into a ball, his right arm — his attuned arm — bleeding profusely. He was trembling, his necklace torn in half and his sword lying on the ground a dozen feet away. He was surrounded by a whirling cage of phantasmal blades. I only realized belatedly that they weren’t keeping him trapped inside, but rather, that the blades were facing outward to protect him.

The source was clear enough.

Six people in black garb were pinned to the stone wall by floating blades. Half of them were limp, likely unconscious. Several of them were bleeding. Most of them had simple Carnelian and Sunstone-level auras. At a glance, I assumed those were probably students or recent graduates, but…

I heard a thunderous crack as Keras’ fist slammed into the face of a seventh figure still standing in the alley — and watched as their Emerald-green aura winked out when they hit the ground.

Keras snarled, his right-hand cleaving downward and carving a hovering gouge in the air, not dissimilar from the bladed cage around Patrick. With another gesture, he swept his hand down, straight at the unmoving figure on the floor.

I barely processed what was happening, but Mara moved faster than I’d seen her, rushing to close the distance with a burst of enhancement mana.

She wasn’t fast enough, either.

The newly-forged wound in space shot forward and split apart in mid-air, a dozen flat planes of cutting force jamming straight into the street.

They formed an outline around the fallen figure’s entire body. Keras shuddered for a moment, seemingly involuntarily, then spun around with his hand up, surrounded by a cutting aura—

And stopped himself a heartbeat before slamming it into Mara.

“M—Mara. I didn’t…” Keras’ hand clenched and unclenched. “You caught up faster than I expected. See to Patrick. I still have work to do.”

He waved a hand. The blades around Patrick shifted, moving to hover ominously in the air above Keras, fanning outward in a pattern that threatened to strike in all directions at once.

I rushed toward my fallen retainer immediately.

Mara didn’t. She continued standing near Keras, her eyes narrowing. “Think I’ll be stayin’ right here, if you don’t mind. Catch me up?”

“Sons of Valia.” Keras walked up to the six pinned figures. “Pitiful cowards, bringing seven people to ambush a single student. They’re going to pay for—”

Mara’s hand found Keras’ sleeve. Her fingers bled as she reached through Keras’ aura.

Keras startled at her touch, then he trembled again, grimaced, and pulled his aura inward. The silver flecks in his eyes began to flicker and fade. He took her bleeding hand, turning it over in his. “You didn’t have to…”

“Shut it. Work to do, but you’ve gotta do it as yourself, yeah?”

Keras gave her a silent nod and released Mara’s hand. They turned to the six people still pinned to the wall.

I ignored them, kneeling down next to Patrick.

“Patrick, it’s Corin. It’s okay. You’re safe now.”

Patrick didn’t look up. He was still curled up, shuddering violently, tears streaming from his eyes and blood flowing from his arm. Smaller wounds were on his ribs, sword hand, and the back of his head. That last one was the most worrying, but I didn’t have the proper expertise to treat a head wound directly.

“I’m going to reach out and touch you, Patrick, for a regeneration spell. Is that okay?”

A barely discernable nod.

I put my hand on Patrick’s arm, not directly on the wound, but near enough to help the regeneration spell take effect.

I took a deep breath. Healing Patrick gave me flashbacks of the time I’d nearly killed him with my foolish attempts to restore his broken bones, but in this case, I was doing something much more basic and less likely to cause harm.

Regeneration.

I pulled from both of my remaining mana pools to cast a Sunstone-level Regeneration spell. I couldn’t use too many of them, but the combat side of things was…well, it was taken care of. Healing was the best I could do.

That and…

I took a breath, steadying myself. Physical contact was…still not comfortable for me, but Patrick was hurt, and…I knew he needed different things than I did.

“It’s okay, Patrick. I’m here now. You’re safe.” As he turned his head upward, I sat down, opened my arms, and let my retainer bury his head in my chest.

“You’re okay now. I’m here.”

CHAPTER XXI – FAMILY FAULTS

I held Patrick silently, extending my shroud over both of us and remaining at the ready in case further threats emerged.

I…wasn’t good at comforting people, but I did what I could to just be there and support him. Patrick deserved that much and more.

Keras interrogated the absolutely terrified figures he’d pinned to the walls. His fervor had diminished after Mara had grabbed him, but only enough to push him back into a state of dangerous calm. I no longer had to worry about Keras obliterating us by accident, at least, but his prisoners…well, they were lucky we’d arrived when we had.

We’d seen a hint of another Keras in those moments just after we arrived. The Keras that we’d been warned about by Tavare — and by Keras himself.

The side of Selyrian that he himself had always feared.

Mara and I might not have arrived in time to help Patrick, but…if we hadn’t been there, I don’t know if there would have been prisoners remaining to question.

And, perhaps more importantly, I don’t know if anyone would have been able to save Keras from himself.

I’d never seen him that angry before. Not even when he’d saved us from Saffron.

I had to sincerely hope that I’d never see that side of him again.

It wasn’t long before Derek Hartigan arrived on the scene. He wasn’t alone. He had several masked figures behind him, all wearing long coats. Blackstone Bandits, obviously.

I wasn’t even slightly surprised to hear him giving them orders. He had a brief whispered exchange with Keras, then one of the Blackstones began teleporting the captured Sons of Valia off somewhere, one at a time.

I didn’t notice Jin until he knelt next to us…in full Blackstone garb, because of course he was. “Are you okay?”

I nodded to him. “We will be. Patrick isn’t ready to talk yet.”

“Do you need anything?” Jin asked.

I was a little surprised by the question. My initial instinct was to refuse, but…it was really more about what Patrick needed. “Water. And keep the people outside of our team away. Patrick will let us know when he’s ready to talk.”

Jin gave a curt nod and left to follow my instructions. He returned with water and, from the lack of disruptions, must have passed on my requests to others as well.

We weren’t disturbed until Sera arrived and sat down to hug Patrick from behind. We sat together for a while, with Mara and Jin watching over us, while Keras and Derek debated something in the background.

I paid little attention to anything else until Jin finally spoke again. “I know you asked not to be bothered, but there’s a healer.”

I glanced upward to see Sheridan Theas whispering with Keras and Derek. Nodding to Jin, I reached over to Patrick.

“Hey. I’m sorry, but…Deni is here, and you’ve got more wounds than I can take care of. Are you okay enough for them to look you over?”

A weak nod.

I waved Sheridan over.

“Be careful, he’s…not doing well.”

“He’s in shock. That’s to be expected. I’ll need a bit of space to work, but you can hold his uninjured hand.” Sheridan explained in a business-like tone.

I nodded, releasing Patrick and wincing as he whimpered, then shifted to taking his hand while Sheridan worked.

Time passed. Derek vanished at some point, presumably to deal with the prisoners. Keras stayed, looking extremely tense. At some point, Elora Theas showed up — not in Blackstone gear, just in what looked like an ordinary dress —  and began a whispered conversation with him.

Eventually, Sheridan gave me a nod. “His cuts will heal just fine. He’s concussed, though, and you may need to keep an eye on him for a few days. As for what happened…some events take more than magic to heal. I’m sure you know what I mean.”

I nodded in return. I didn’t know how much Sheridan knew about my past, but… “Thank you for helping us.”

“Believe me, in cases like this I wish I could do more. You get me any time if his condition worsens in any way. No charge, this is personal.”

“Thank you.”

Sheridan nodded again, then headed off to confer with their sibling and Keras.

Our team remained in a tight cluster around Patrick until he finally spoke. “…I…I want to go home.”

We gently lifted him from the ground and, arm in-arm, walked home.

***

We took shifts watching over Patrick for the rest of the day. As a result of the concussion, Sheridan ordered us to keep him awake for a while, so we took turns simply spending time with him and keeping his mind on other things.

His mood remained somber throughout the day, but that was to be expected.

A picture emerged as I gradually heard things from others throughout the day. Patrick had been on his way to meet with Cecily for dinner when he’d heard what sounded like a child scream from the alley. A simple sound spell, but Patrick didn’t even think about the possibility that it might be a trap — he just acted.

When the Sons of Valia appeared out of nowhere, he reacted with admirable speed, sending the message — before their leader snapped his necklace and someone smashed him on the back of the head. He’d remained conscious and tried to fight, but he’d been overwhelmed and disarmed almost immediately.

Then Keras had arrived and…well, in some ways, I think that had scared Patrick almost as much as being injured.

Keras was usually a gentle man, almost to a fault. But seeing Patrick down on the ground, bleeding, and Bright Reflection lying on the ground…

I didn’t think he’d killed any of them. I hadn’t asked.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.

It hadn’t taken much to sort out the reason for the attack. Patrick was a commoner that was rapidly increasing in both power and notoriety. He was also the personal apprentice to Chancellor Meltlake, the person that had upended the system that the Sons of Valia were so attached to.

In retrospect, Patrick was such an obvious target that we’d been foolish not to watch out for him more directly. Almost as obvious as Mara, really. As a commoner near the top of the class, she was also at significant risk, and we hadn’t looked out for her, either.

Sera reassured me that the necklace that I’d built had probably saved Patrick’s life — or, at the very least, his attunement. One of the Sons of Valia had been carrying an enchanted blade designed for cutting through bone — and with the cut on Patrick’s arm, I suspected they’d been just about to remove it when Keras had arrived.

Keras had snapped the sword to pieces, but we picked up the remains. Not to repair the horrible thing, but because it might be possible to use it to track the Enchanter who had made it. It was possible that the weapon was simply from a spire, of course, or otherwise unrelated — but it was another possible lead.

Derek was taking the lead on interrogating the prisoners for further information. He didn’t say anything of the kind, but I think he was actually happy about the encounter. From a practical standpoint, no one had been killed and Patrick hadn’t been permanently injured, at least not in any way that could be easily seen…and the leader of the attackers was an Emerald. There was no way that they had more than a handful of Emerald-level members, so presumably, that was a major victory.

…It certainly didn’t feel like one.

I felt a bit heartened when Chancellor Meltlake arrived to visit, looking every bit as furious as the rest of us were feeling. If her presence provided any encouragement, however, her conversation with Derek only made me angrier.

“How is he?” She asked.

“Terrified. What do you expect?” Derek leaned against a nearby wall, hands balled into fists. “He’s lucky he survived at all. I need you to give me more names.”

“I will when the right time—”

Derek slammed a fist into the wall behind him, leaving a series of cracks. “We can’t wait on the right time, Auntie. We need to start moving on leadership, shut them down from the top.”

Chancellor Meltlake grimaced. “It’s not so simple as that. The Sons of Valia aren’t just representing frustrated high houses — they have deep ties to the city guard and the military. Not to mention the banks.”

“One particular bank, you mean. Wouldn’t it serve our interests if a few Haven Securities buildings happened to go up in flames?”

“Don’t be a child. We both know that if you just start torching buildings, it’s the poor that will pay the cost.”

“Names, then. Some people just need to disappear—”

“We’re not assassins, Derek.”

“Well, then our predecessors picked a poor name to inspire a certain organization, didn’t we?” Derek gave a bitter laugh. “And you’re letting our oppressors dictate the terms of battle.”

“You’re not exactly one of the oppressed, Derek. Mara and Patrick might be able to make that claim, but not you. You’re in a position of extreme privilege playing at heroism.”

He folded his arms. “Sure, sure. Who do you think I learned that from?”

Meltlake grimaced. “I won’t deny that I had a colorful youth. And I won’t disagree with you playing a role in this — I’m grateful that you helped Patrick when I failed him.”

“You’re missing the point, Auntie. I didn’t save him. I wouldn’t have gotten there in time. Keras did — and he’s not going to be here much longer. The next time one of the kids get isolated, they might not have a demigod handy to run to their rescue. And with how things are escalating, I’m not sure I’ll be able to handle these ambushes myself forever, either. We need to act while we can, before things get worse.”

“You clearly already have been, regardless of my instructions. Have you considered that this might have been a reprisal for what you and Selyrian have been up to?”

Derek scoffed. “They’ve been targeting commoners all over the place. Your apprentice was an obvious target. If you had half a care, you would have put a bodyguard on him ages ago.”

Meltlake winced, clearly taken aback by that. “…They’re everywhere, Derek. I thought he’d be safe with you.”

“Oh, he will be. The moment you give me the names I need.”

“I don’t have them. You have better information than I do these days. I have suspicions, but I haven’t had time to vet them.”

“I can handle that, if you’d give me something to work with.”

“Haven’t you been able to get anything from your prisoners?”

“Sure, bits and pieces. But they’re playing the same tune as the Orchestra does, even if it’s a bit off-key. False names, fake orders placed on the attackers, complex codes designed to waste our time decrypting them. Some of the attackers even showed signs of memory tampering. We have people working on it, but it’s going to take time to find anything of substance. The longer we wait, the more bodies are going to pile up. If you even have suspicions about who is running things, share them. It could help give us a clearer direction.”

Meltlake shook her head. “You’re too brash. You need to be circumspect. Our enemies are entrenched. A straight-line charge would be folly.”

“We don’t have time for a siege,” Derek spat. “The more we wait, the more their influence spreads. Misinformation is everywhere. Half the newspapers in the city are spouting Sons of Valia rhetoric. Did you know that they’re saying you were born in Caelford? How about that you have monster blood?”

“Obvious propaganda. I can trace a clear line of descent from the original members of House Hartigan that landed here in the Exodus.”

“Well, they’re saying that since you have dark skin,” he gestured, “you’re clearly a fake.”

Meltlake wrinkled her brow. “That’s nonsense. Blake Hartigan himself was black-skinned. We know he had some sort of body-switching or shapechanging magic, but his people originally hailed from Terisgard, on the southern side of Mythralis. It’s well-documented.”

“The truth is, at the moment, less important than the necessity of those in power to maintain their power by any means necessary. You can’t rely on everyone to find reliable sources to research. The Sons of Valia aren’t playing fair, Auntie, and taking the moral high road is rarely a strategic advantage.”

Meltlake sighed deeply, covering her eyes in her hands. “…I’ll consider your proposal. For now, I owe my apprentice a visit.”

Derek looked like he had more to say, but he stopped himself. “…He’s this way.”

I waited for Meltlake to finish her own visit, reading in my own room for a while and trying to banish dark thoughts from my mind. It didn’t work.

…Sons of Valia in the military? In the city guard?

Mara had implied with one of her quips that they were involved with the prison system, but it hadn’t really sunk into my mind. I suppose I’d just thought of her earlier comments as bitter hyperbole, or thought that maybe there had just been a few bad people among the good. Could the Sons of Valia really be represented so heavily in the leadership of those organizations that someone as powerful as Meltlake would hesitate to strike against them?

And who could we even turn to, if that was true?

I considered briefly if the Soaring Wings might be an option, dismissed the idea. They were an international organization. They rarely got involved in local politics. The Soaring Wings occasionally helped out with things related to education, but they had a non-intervention policy for internal government affairs. Presumably, some of their members would be sympathetic, but the organization as a whole couldn’t get involved directly.

I wasn’t exactly thrilled with Derek’s approach, either — vigilantes going after wealthy nobles sounded like a recipe for reprisals, at a minimum. But what alternative did we have?

I didn’t have an answer to that.

After Meltlake departed for the night, I went back to visit Patrick. I did what I could to help support him until I was absolutely exhausted and Patrick himself convinced me to let Sera take over for a shift.

Finally, barely suppressing tears of my own frustration, I retired to my own bedroom for the night.

***

I was so absolutely done with humanity that I could do little more than bitterly laugh when I saw that a letter had been slipped under my door stamped with a familiar seal.

Oh, good, Mother decided to write a letter. Maybe you’ll have some helpful advice this time, like “avoid murderous psychopaths”. Your support during difficult times is always cherished.

I shook my head and broke the wax seal with my fingers, too lazy to bother with a letter opener.

Dear Corin,

You must cease this nonsense at once.

I paused, re-reading the line, my mind spinning.

…She just found out about the duel, didn’t she? And this is her response? Really?

I almost stopped reading right there, but after a moment of trembling and deep breaths, I continued.

Your father, like it or not, is the lord of your house. If you have caused him offense, it is your responsibility—

I tore the letter in half.

Nope.

…Then, after several moments of absolute fury, I reassembled the bits of the remaining pieces to see if she’d written anything about coming home.

…I found nothing of the sort. No updates on her own situation. Just that she was busy on “urgent business”. Of course she was.

I hated myself for even bothering to look. For my hesitancy, for wanting to see her, for wanting to even bother with someone who would take the side of my abuser without even asking me for context.

…But she had no indication of what he’d been doing, did she? My previous letter had been purposefully vague, citing “mistreatment”, but without any relevant details.

That didn’t forgive her approach, or her absence, but…if I didn’t tell her, how could I expect her to understand?

I couldn’t put pen to page for something like that. Not only was the admission of abuse too difficult in a general sense, if someone intercepted the letter, the scandal would be more than I wanted to deal with. Moreover, if Mother did take a letter with an accusation of abuse seriously, it could end up as some kind of court document — and I didn’t want things to resolve through some kind of lengthy judicial process.

I was going to settle things with Father myself.

I set pen to page regardless, just to give Mother the courtesy she deserved in the form of a reply.

Dear Mother,

If you have taken an interest in my duel with Father, you’re welcome to attend. I will ensure my second sends you the date and location once they are established.

Love,

Corin

***

After finishing that, I checked to see if I could find any responses from Tristan in Trials of Judgment. I found nothing new.

I couldn’t imagine that he was too busy to write to me while he was stuck in isolation. From that, I assumed he’d either chosen not to reply, or that he simply couldn’t. Perhaps the magic of the books had failed as a result of the tower being sealed, as we’d speculated earlier. Perhaps he was imprisoned, or… maybe he was dead.

That was an unpleasant thought, but it was pretty realistic. We’d teleported Mizuchi away, but if she was hunting him, I couldn’t imagine that she’d give up because of a mild inconvenience. True, he was in a visage-sealed wing now, but there had to be workarounds for that.

He’d have to know that, too. Could he have fled to another location?

Perhaps the visage’s chamber had teleportation functions? Leaving the spires would have triggered his brand, but maybe he’d found a solution to that — or perhaps it wouldn’t activate if he simply transported himself to another spire.

I needed more information, but I had precious few resources to gather it. The spire remained sealed. That implied that whatever was going on inside hadn’t definitively concluded, at least. And there had been no obvious return for Tenjin.

The most likely person to know anything about the current situation was Katashi himself.

Once again, I considered trying to enter the Serpent Spire through the Arbiter’s Gate. If I did, perhaps I could find Katashi inside…but I had no guarantee he was even in there. And if he wasn’t, I’d be wasting my single token to enter the spire.

I had no indication that the Arbiter’s Gate connected with other parts of the spire, so I wasn’t sure if I could use that route to explore further. Given the risk that Mizuchi would realize I was in the spire once I appeared, going in there without a solid plan seemed both dangerous and wasteful.

I checked with Cecily. She hadn’t heard anything new either. That left me with little left to pursue.

So, for the moment…Tristan would have to wait a little longer.

I wrote him another letter, then got to sleep. I had work to do in the morning.

If I wanted to rescue Tristan someday, I needed a proper plan — and I knew what the next step needed to be.

CHAPTER XXII – A GEM OF A DIFFERENT COLOR

Peridot.

It was the foundation of many of the secrets that Warren Constantine had shared with me. A testament to his ingenuity — as well as his own particular flavor of paranoia.

The Peridot attunement level wasn’t designed to be a replacement for the missing Sapphire level. It wasn’t the pinnacle of power.

No, Peridot was a way to remain hidden in plain sight. An intermediary stage between Citrine and Emerald, named for the yellow-green color that apparently some stones of that kind exhibited. I wasn’t a master of gemstones, but I understood the concept well enough. Shrouds naturally shifted colors incrementally as someone came closer to the next stage. I’d seen lime-green auras before, simply as a consequence of the normal growth after Citrine.

People could suppress their auras. That was well-known. But what about hiding an entirely new attunement level in between the ones that were known about?

The concept was remarkably simple, but nevertheless, it was incredibly dangerous. To create a new attunement level, one would need to modify their attunement in ways that could potentially cause permanent harm. Presumably, the visages had much better grasps on how much mana a person could handle than I did, as well as spells or other tools for monitoring unbalances in the body that could create negative effects.

Warren had studied all this, however, and taken copious notes. I’d read those notes, benefiting from his years of study, both independently and while he’d worked at Farren Labs.

Without those notes, I don’t know if I would have risked experimenting with anything beyond temporarily increasing my own level to one of the known ones. Creating entirely new functions was…ambitious. Too ambitious for me to do as my first experiment.

So, I didn’t.

Instead, while I sat with my legs folded on the ground and under the attentive gaze of one Sheridan Theas, I tried a slightly smaller leap.

Spessartine.

I consulted Constantine’s notes before I began the process.

Spessartine is an orange gemstone, one that was once used as the name for the rank in between Carnelian and Citrine. Eventually, it was replaced with the far better-known name Sunstone, presumably because Spessartine is too hard of a name to remember.

But I remember. This, at least, I remember.

I’ve chosen to use this level as a demonstration for incremental attunement changes. As an ancient level title, it seems appropriate to use as a term for a testing phase for attunement features.

The sub-glyphs contained in the next section are used to define a new attunement level threshold, which are added to the existing safe mana threshold section of glyphs.

Next, the first feature — a timer function. This measures the amount of time the Spessartine level has been active.

The following feature is a function that reverts your attunement level as soon as a set time has passed. These two features are intended to be paired to reduce the risks of testing a new attunement level. By default, the glyphs in this setting are set to last for sixty seconds. If you implement these changes on their own, you will be able to reach Spessartine for sixty seconds after reaching the appropriate mana threshold, after which you will revert to your previous level.

Of course, then you’d just be stuck at the previous level unless you make further changes. This isn’t desirable. Thus, there are a set of functions available for toggling Spessartine level to activate under specific circumstances. By default, I recommend voice activation, but other options are also described here.

Finally, I’ve also documented a number of other possible attunement features that can safely be activated at this mana threshold. My recommendation is to begin by testing one of the simplest, such as changing your shroud to a color outside of the standard colors available. This will simply allow you to know visibly that your changes are working.

I exhaled. I’d read all this before, but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t misunderstanding anything or making any mistakes.

I could have tried to do the whole process through creating a dynamic rune altering item, rather than altering my own attunement directly. In theory, that sounded safer, given that any errors would be less likely to break my attunements permanently.

Unfortunately, there was a critical problem — copying just the currently visible Arbiter functions into an item didn’t produce a working result.

The functions I needed to make a working Arbiter-style item were hidden…and to access them, I needed to be at a higher attunement level.

In other words, in order to make myself an item to safely alter my attunement level, I first had to increase my attunement level.

…The simple course to that was just hitting Citrine, but doing that organically was probably years off.

So, of course, the solution was to skip ahead. I was pretty sure I could make the changes directly to my attunement without making myself explode.

…Probably.

Spessartine was built for someone who was already Sunstone-level, which I wasn’t — but I understood enough to realize that the body’s total mana safe capacity and the strength of my Star Veins was more important than the exact level of any given attunement. My two attunements were both individually nearing Sunstone-level, which put my body as a whole at above Sunstone-level mana capacity. Moreover, I was performing the exercises to strengthen my Star Veins and Dianis points, which hopefully would make my internal structures even more tolerant of mana flowing through them.

Beyond that, if the core problem of activating more functions was strain…I could also turn some extraneous functions off. I didn’t necessarily need all the baseline functions of my attunement to be active at any given time — and some functions, like those that were designed to help with shroud manipulation at Sunstone-level, were redundant with things I’d already learned to do manually. I could turn those off to reduce my mana strain and make room for additional functions.

I didn’t have to make new functions up myself — Constantine had already done the hardest part. All I had to do was transcribe the text from the pages into my attunement.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to do that completely manually. I technically could have, but that would have been a laborious and error-prone process.

I planned to cheat judiciously.

Sheridan smiled at me from just out of reach. They were currently sitting cross-legged across from me, but on a cloth that they’d laid down on the floor. I wasn’t clear on if that cloth had some special significance and didn’t feel like asking. “Don’t be nervous, pet. I won’t let anything too terrible happen to you.”

Strangely, I was actually comforted by that. “Thanks. You ready on your end?”

“Perfectly.”

I nodded. “Then let’s begin.”

I exhaled a deep breath and closed my eyes.

Accelerated Computation. Analyze Attunement Composition.

Enchanter glyphs swam in my mind’s eye, overwhelming in the first instant, then folding themselves into neat stacks of parchment in my mental landscape.

I’d sorted through the papers many times now, reading through the letters cautiously.

I found the attunement-levels section of the glyphs, then, without opening my eyes, grasped the first memory crystal in my hand.

“View.”

Ordinarily, viewing a memory crystal overwrote a person’s consciousness as their senses were overwhelmed by the memory. While using Analyze Attunement Composition, however, I was already overwriting my senses through different means.

So, what happens when someone tries to access a memory crystal while already viewing their own mental landscape?

I’d wondered that. And, because I’m extremely risk averse, I’d asked Researcher. Then, I’d tested it with the smallest possible memory crystal — a second of looking at a piece of paper.

And, as with that previous test, I got exactly what I was hoping for:

A gleaming view of that memory appeared as a floating piece of paper in my mental landscape, viewable from within without replacing my senses.

This particular memory showed the first page of sub-glyphs I had to add in order to create a new attunement level. I didn’t bother transcribing it — the memory was essentially being presented to me in the same format as the attunement’s construction. All I had to do was picture myself grabbing the letters from the memory crystal page — a bit strange — and moving them to the attunement level function page.

I didn’t explode.

That, at least, was a good start.

I felt something change when that process was completed. A subtle tingling in my forehead.

Predictably, I panicked at that, given the possibility of making my mind explode or whatnot…but I didn’t stop. I double checked the glyphs to make sure they’d been copied over from the memory properly, and indeed, they seemed to be correct.

…But I couldn’t test them on their own. I essentially just had a “blank” attunement level now — one that did absolutely nothing.

And so, with a breath, I opened my eyes and ended the active spells. “Step one completed.”

Sheridan clapped. “Wonderful work! Still, not even a bit of implosion? At this rate, you won’t even need me.”

“I’ll try to make sure it’s entertaining.”

“Oh, don’t worry. You’re always entertaining, Corin.”

I gave a mock bow, then switched to the next memory crystal.

Accelerated Computation. Analyze Attunement Composition.

“View.”

I repeated the process, next adding the timer function based on a memory of that page.

Then another function. Then another.

And finally…it happened.

I opened my eyes…and my aura flashed outward in vibrant purple.

“Ooh. Ambitious. Sapphire wasn’t good enough for you? Are you an Amethyst now?” Sheridan shifted closer. “Should I lower my head to kiss your feet, majesty?”

“I think I’ll pass for now.” I snapped my fingers. The shroud shifted back to a very standard aura. “I was a fake king, after all. It wouldn’t seem right to take advantage of that.”

“Let me tell you a little secret, Corin Cadence. A bit of forbidden knowledge.” Sheridan leaned in very close. I bristled, but didn’t pull away. Then they whispered, “All royalty is fake.”

I laughed, then reached up and brushed the hair out of Sheridan’s eyes — it had fallen down as they’d leaned in close, and…

I’d reached out without even thinking.

They winked at me, then pulled back. My heart hammered in my chest.

“So,” Sheridan shifted to lean back on an elbow, “diagnostic spells?”

“Right. Diag…nostics. Good idea.” I exhaled a breath, then reached out a hand.

Trembling.

“Do you need a minute?”

I shook my head. “No, it’s…I touched you without asking, and…is that okay?”

“Oh, sweetheart. You’re kind to ask, but you touched my hair. You’re fine. I’m not opposed to bodily contact the way you are. And I was teasing you a little bit there. Too hard, perhaps. Forgive me?”

“Nothing needs to be forgiven.” I sighed. “I’m just…never mind. Diagnostics for now?”

“Your wish is my command, your fake majesty.”

The tests were simple enough. No damage. I’d been careful. I hadn’t broken my mind or destroyed my hand. But as Sheridan left the room with a final bow and a smile, somehow I wondered if I’d taken a very different risk than the ones I’d imagined.

***

As tempted as I was to get right to working with my altered attunement, I had another project to help out with — and this one wasn’t one of my own.

I took a few breaths to steady myself, then followed Sheridan to the back yard of the house. After following a mist-lined path and taking a few turns, I reached one of the few structures outside of the mansion proper — the Emerald House. Which was, of course, just Derek’s fancy way of saying “greenhouse, but I’m rich and overpowered”.

The Emerald House was built from some sort of green-tinted glass or crystal, as befitting the name. I wondered a bit if that altered the way that sunlight impacted the plants within, but I was no expert on alchemy. Maybe it was useful, but I suspected it was merely an aesthetic choice on Derek’s part.

Within were a mind-boggling variety of plants that had been cultivated carefully for the construction of various potions, elixirs, and rituals. I wasn’t familiar with the overwhelming majority of them, although I recognized a few from the alchemy test in the tower, as well as my discussions with Cecily.

I walked down the narrow path in the center of the building, ignoring the feeling that some of the larger vines might reach out and grab me at any time, and made my way to an isolated section toward the back — the cold room.

The cold room was exactly what it sounded like — a small chamber with dedicated enchantments to maintain a low temperature. It was effectively the same type of thing as a walk-in freezer, but with a fully crystal exterior to allow for sunlight to filter in.

I could already see Sera, Cecily, and Sheridan inside the cold room —all wearing cold-weather gear.

I didn’t bother with any of that. When I ran my finger across a small section on the crystal — an identity recognition enchantment that Cecily had made — the door slid open to allow me inside. I felt the cold immediately, but my discomfort was mild.

The longer I wore Selys-Lyann, the less that cold seemed to affect me. I wondered if that was a function of the sword itself getting stronger, or if I was accumulating a fraction of ice mana in my body through our bond — I hadn’t tried to measure that yet.

Either way, it meant no bulky winter wear, so I was grateful.

The door slid shut behind me.

“Thank you for coming,” Sera said sincerely. “We’ve completed the final preparations for attempting to preserve the flower. Do you have any questions before we begin?”

“Just about the sequence. Are we trying to just use the cold room first, or are we going straight to using Selys-Lyann or Seiryu’s help?”

Cecily adjusted her glasses and spoke. “I, uh, don’t think the room itself will be enough…but my enchantments should be able to maintain a stable environment for the flower if we can find a type of ice that actually works. They’re a combination of enhancement and ice enchantments, designed to mimic a form of stasis — but we’ll need the foundation to be set with a spell effect before they work.”

I nodded in understanding. Basically, if we could find the right magic, her enchantments would hold those spells stable and keep the flower steady from that point on…at least in theory.

“What are we trying first, then?” I asked.

“Seiryu,” Sera said simply. “I have reason to believe I know which spell will work. Your sword isn’t stable enough to start there, but we’ll keep it as a fallback option.”

“Did you manage to ask Seiryu directly for information?” I asked.

“Your request for assistance was granted.” Sera grinned. “Unfortunately, due to the sensitive nature of the request, I am unable to speak at this time about the details of the knowledge that has been granted to me.”

That technical language told me that she probably couldn’t talk to me about it in the presence of other people — most likely Cecily, but possibly Sheridan as well. I wished I could ask her about it, but violating the terms of any agreement with Seiryu was a horrible idea. Hopefully she’d be able to speak about it some other time — perhaps privately later in the evening.

“Understood.” I nodded. “Please express my gratitude to Seiryu for granting my request.”

“Of course. And…I owe you one. Especially if this works.” She took a nervous breath. “Everyone ready?”

A series of nods.

“Retrieve: Goddess’ Tear.”

Gingerly, I retrieved the flower and handed it to Cecily. Reverently, she whispered something to the plant — a prayer, maybe? — then planted it in a pre-set area in the nearby planter. After covering it, she reached for her belt and began to retrieve several vials of liquid, pouring them on the flower one at a time.

“Stability check?” She asked Sheridan.

Sheridan walked forward and placed a single finger on the flower. “As expected. You may continue.”

“Test 1, then.” Sera stepped forward, taking a deep breath. “Seiryu, be with me. Let us preserve this fraction of the goddess’ love.”

Her hand glowed with blue light — and the tests began.

***

I can’t tell you more about what happened with those tests. The secrets of that process are not mine to share.

I can say, however, that when the process ended…Sera had a bright grin on her face.

I felt great relief for her — but that was dampened by the terror and excitement that I felt for my own series of tests, which were just about to begin.

***

Testing changes to my attunement was absolutely terrifying. There was no way around it — I was tinkering with something that mere mortals like myself were never intended to fully understand.

In this one instance, however, I was too excited to stop. Once I’d fiddled with the first pieces of power, I couldn’t help but be enthralled by the idea of learning more. Testing more. Building more.

This is probably a personality flaw. Really, it’s probably several.

Even knowing that, I found myself digging deeper and deeper into sub-glyphs and potential functions as each day passed. I read through Constantine’s notes, as well as the copied books that Researcher had managed to transcribe, and those few books I’d picked up in Caelford as well.

And then I read the attunements themselves. Glyphs that described the functions that made each and every ability granted to us work.

And as I researched, slowly, but with ever more ambition, I began to make changes.

I’d tested the very basics with Sheridan, but simply making my attunement glow differently wasn’t anywhere near enough to satisfy me. I’d gotten a look at the underpinnings of how magic itself worked, at least for those of us given it through the marks of our goddess —

And I saw plenty of room for improvement.

Heretical? Maybe a bit, but I think Selys would approve. After all, Ferras herself has been improving attunements for hundreds of years, making revisions and improvements as her knowledge grows.

But while a deity may work in broad strokes, and while a visage may know more than I could ever hope to, even Ferras couldn’t make every possible attunement optimization to every single attunement at once. She had priorities. And I had very different, much more personal ones.

The first step was creating shortcuts to change my own attunement level at will. I’d already figured out how to adjust my safe mana thresholds and thus shift my apparent level — I’d done it in the fight with the copy of Keras in the Transcendence Gateway Shrine. Rather than tinkering with safe mana levels, though, it was safer and easier to just skip them entirely.

Basically, I built a function that was just an “attunement level override”, with a simple toggle to change to activate it for any given level.

I could be an Emerald with a push of a metaphorical button.

I mean, I’d obviously explode or something. But I could do it.

More importantly for my present needs, I made additional entries beyond the “standard” attunement levels — Spessartine and Peridot.

I’d already “built” both those levels into my Enchanter attunement. (I could have done the same with my Arbiter attunement, but since my Arbiter attunement was absolutely necessary for making attunement changes, I couldn’t risk disabling it. Even if I ruined my Enchanter attunement, that was potentially salvageable, unless it destroyed my mind or killed me — ruining my Arbiter attunement would prevent me from being able to fix any less critical problems I encountered.)

At present, Spessartine and Peridot did absolutely nothing beyond the standard powers of Sunstone and Citrine levels, respectively. (I’d disabled the function that turned my aura purple with Spessartine level — it was purely for testing purposes and I didn’t want it to be active all the time.)

The next experiment was a much more dangerous one. My first taste of real power through the process.

I carefully looked at the sub-glyphs for Citrine-level, found a section, and mentally copied it over to Spessartine. It was the most famous function granted by reaching Citrine-level — access to an additional type of mana. In the case of both of my attunements, this was light mana.

I’d pored over Constantine’s notes carefully, then consulted with everyone I trusted to know anything relevant. Researcher confirmed my reading of the notes — adding a new mana type before Citrine-level was theoretically safe as long as the particular mana type was one that your body could handle. The threshold for that was dependent on complex formulae that I won’t get into here, but the simple summary is that if my math held up, my body’s mana tolerance was already high enough to handle another mana type, as long as that mana type wasn’t one that was too dissimilar from the ones I already had.

For reasons I didn’t quite understand, light and transference were “similar”, pairing easily in magic and creating minimal conflict. Keras had told me that light also helped improve mental speed and clarity, implying some overlap with mental mana as well.

So, with reasonable confidence that I wouldn’t explode, I sat in my room and just…did it.

Activate Spessartine.

I exhaled a breath. There was no visible change as I flipped a sub-glyph to active.

The real test came a moment later. I flipped open a book in front of me, read over the page, and went through the formula for the simplest possible spell I could find. I converted my mana as per the instructions, much as I’d done hundreds of times before, but reaching into a different part of my attunement for the conversion process. I shifted that mana from my forehead to my right hand, retaining the mana’s form, then held it tightly there.

And then, I spoke words that weren’t strictly necessary, but felt right.

“Lesser Light.”

A sphere of light flashed over my right hand.

And, for the first time, I felt like I’d made magic of my very own.

***

I wasn’t going to win any fights with a Lesser Light spell. Well, probably not. There were creatures out there that were extremely vulnerable to light, and I’d even run into one in our mid-terms the previous year. Still, I wasn’t going to let my unchecked ambitions stop at producing the world’s simplest illumination effect.

There were a wide variety of light mana spells that I thought would be potentially useful. Some were combat focused, others were purely for utility. For the moment, my focus was on preparing for any number of physical threats — Saffron, Mizuchi, my father, various final exams, and others — and thus I focused primarily on the combat ones.

Valia didn’t have any combat-focused light attunements, but there were still books on light magic in combat available, and I’d picked up a few. I skimmed through what I could, but I didn’t find a lot of particularly insightful information. I read through the basic spells, but I had something specific in mind, and they weren’t quite what I was looking for.

If I wanted to be able to use light magic in combat, I needed to be able to use it for a longer duration. For that, the first step was to make some changes to my Spessartine level.

As I’d considered earlier, I didn’t strictly need all of the functions that Sunstone-level provided — so, when looking at the sub-glyphs for Sunstone, I turned off the ones designed to assist with shroud shaping. After some consideration, I also disabled the Detect Aura function of the attunement, since I knew how to cast the spell manually.

Then, I extended the timer on Spessartine from one minute to five. I’d test that, then extend it further as I continued my tests.

Then, after a brief chat, I found myself on the rooftop with an unusual training team.

“Radiance is pleased to teach you, friend-of-Master.” Tavare inclined their head toward me. “Your mana structure now supports much of what Radiance uses. With time and practice, your illumination will grow.”

Derek leaned against the side of the roof, a precarious position for many, but I supposed that an Emerald didn’t have much to risk from falling. “So, you wanted to learn something a little more esoteric? I shouldn’t be surprised. What are you thinking?”

“I was hoping that you might be able to teach me how to reflect magic. Keras has mentioned being able to do it with Dawnbringer, and I know he had a ring that could do it with a lower degree of efficacy.”

“Radiance would indeed be pleased to teach this! The reflection of hostile magic away is a noble application of the luminous arts. Radiance is saddened to inform you that the specific form of spell reflection that the Former Wielder of Dawnbringer utilized was a distasteful combination of light and enhancement mana, rather than a proper application of light and transference, but Radiance will teach you to combine your mana correctly.”

“…Provided you’ve got enough mana for it,” Derek interjected. “Spell reflection isn’t cheap or easy. Don’t get it in your head that you’re going to be bouncing spells all over the place like Keras was doing in his stories. Dawnbringer is a legendary sword for a reason.”

“He had a ring that could reflect spells at one point.”

“Sure. A Citrine-level item and it probably had enough power to reflect one decent spell, if that. The cost of reflecting a spell varies based on the power of the spell itself. Other factors are relevant, like the mana type…but basically, don’t expect to be mimicking what Patrick did with Bright Reflection against Mizuchi on your own. I don’t think he could have done that twice — and that was with Mizuchi obviously holding back on her attack to avoid obliterating the room. Lightning is one of the easiest magic types to reflect, too…but if she’d attacked seriously, she would have blown right through the reflection effect. It’s not foolproof.”

I nodded. That made sense — Bright Reflection was presently somewhere in between a Sunstone and Citrine-level item. Maybe a bit higher, given whatever nebulous level of power it had from a fraction of Keras’ spirit. I didn’t know how to evaluate that, since it wasn’t traditional mana. We were working on upgrading the sword, and I expected it might be better at handling Mizuchi if we fought her again, but…Derek’s point held. The sword had more mana than I did and it still wasn’t enough to reflect more than a few Sunstone or Citrine attacks before running out of mana, depending on the properties of the attacks themselves. I wasn’t going to be able to do much with spell reflection at this stage in my career.

…But as far as last words go, I didn’t want, “I decided learning how to reflect magic wasn’t a priority” to be my own.

Tavare gave Derek a firm look. “Is Radiance teaching this young friend, or is Master?”

“…Right. Sorry. Go ahead.”

Tavare turned back to me. “You may rest assured that your weakness is temporary and that this technique’s utility will grow along with your power. Moreover, your comprehension of this ability may assist you in other applications. Always embrace the light within you, for it will guide you to the correct path.”

That sounded a little…religiony for my tastes, but I appreciated the intention behind it. “Understood, thank you. You mentioned combining light and transference — is that a necessary part of the process?”

“It is not. Pure light mana is capable of reflecting attacks. It is, however, less efficient than a mixture of light and transference. It is of great importance that you learn this properly, rather than taking the improper path of using light on its own.”

I frowned. “That…does sound considerably more complicated. I know it’s physically possible for attuned to learn how to make compound mana types manually, but I haven’t learned how to do that yet.”

“And now you will. Radiance will ensure it is so.” Tavare raised a finger, conjuring a tiny glow of light around it. “Now, let us begin. First, you must experience what a proper application of radiant magic feels like.”

“Feel what—” I tensed.

Oh no.

“Let us begin.” Tavare pointed their finger at me. “Don’t bother trying to dodge.”

***

Training with Tavare was awful.

You’d think that an entity referring to themselves as “Radiance” would have been bright, cheerful, and fun, but nope — Tavare was brutal.

…And after hours of training, I wasn’t any closer to managing any form of spell reflection. Not in any tangible sense, anyway.

I wasn’t able to manage to maintain Spessartine-level safely for the entire training session, but it didn’t need to. Tavare’s blasts of light weren’t attacks, exactly — they were manually flooding my body with a mixture of mana, not unlike how my own Arbiter attunement worked. As the foreign mana flooded through me, I tried to identify the composition and match it with my own attunements, but I struggled to be able to match it.

This must be how Tavare restored mana to Sera during her first Survival Match, I realized. Or something similar, but less horribly uncomfortable, maybe. They probably just gave her grey mana to work with.

As time passed, I was getting a feeling for what the required style of essence flooding through my body felt like, which probably counted as progress, but I had to sincerely wonder if that method was the best available.

…Still, if I had to keep doing it to manage something as effective as being able to reflect spells, I’d do it. Not happily — I wasn’t as much of a glutton for punishment as Keras seemed to be at times — but I couldn’t resist the allure of that kind of power.

Over the next few days, I did a bit more of that training. Derek was kind enough to keep Tavare out for that entire time, rather than returning them to their Soulblade weapon form. I also took some time to train my light mana in a somewhat friendlier fashion.

I knocked on Patrick’s door.

“…Who’s there?” His voice was sharper than usual, as if I’d startled him. Instantly, I felt guilty about not checking in on him more frequently after the attack.

“It’s just Corin.”

“…Oh. Corin, oh, uh…okay. One second.” He pulled open the door, looking mildly embarrassed.

Patrick looked…rough. Physically, his arm had healed just fine, but his hair was a mess, and he looked like he hadn’t shaved in the last couple days. That wasn’t great, given that our academy had certain uniform standards, but I had to assume that he’d be given a bit of leniency after the attack. It was possible he was excused from classes for a while…I hadn’t asked.

“Hey. I was going to ask you to help me with something, but…are you okay?”

“I…” Patrick winced slightly, then gave me a smile. “I’m trying. I…I don’t really want to talk about it. How are you?”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I wasn’t doing great myself, but I hadn’t been ambushed in a dark alley, so I didn’t really have anything to complain about by comparison. “Mostly busy. I was actually hoping you could help me with something, but if you’re not up for it—”

“No, no. What is it? I…I could use something to do.”

“Well…how do you feel like giving Bright Reflection some practice?”

Patrick gave me a complicated expression. “I’m…I don’t think I’m ready for sparring practice just yet. I’m sorry, I just…”

I put up my hands. “Not for traditional sparring. Just a quick experiment or two. Remember the ball bouncing test in Teft’s class last year?”

Patrick laughed. “You nearly killed Mara. How could I forget?”

“…Right. Uh, probably a bad example to lead with, in retrospect. But…I’ve been practicing something similar, and in terms of reflecting attacks…”

“Well, if you just want to play ball, you should have said so.” Patrick walked to pick up his sword. “I’m your man. Just give me a few minutes to clean up.”

We met on the roof shortly after that, taking places on opposite sides.

“You ready?” I asked.

Patrick still looked hesitant, but he raised Bright Reflection.  “As ready as I’m going to be.”

I raised two fingers and pointed them straight at him, then focused on trying to produce a similar compound mana type to what Tavare had shown me. I had difficulty matching the exact composition purely by recalling how it had felt. Manually mixing mana types simply wasn’t something I had any real experience with either — attunements generally handled their own supported compound mana types automatically, but I was doing something that wasn’t quite intended by my standard attunement functions.

Still, even if I couldn’t quite manage a perfect match, I did manage to make something — a swirling mixture of light and transference that formed at my fingertips and launched at my command. When I released the burst, it looked wrong — not a clean beam of light wrapped in pressure, but rather a twisting, corkscrew-like burst.

Honestly, I thought it looked kind of awesome, even if it wasn’t quite what I’d been going for.

The resulting unstable burst flew at Patrick with such speed that I could barely follow it, but somehow, Patrick managed to time his response perfectly.

“Bright Reflection!” His sword flashed as he batted the corkscrew-blast right back at me.

I responded just as planned — by flooding light and transference mana into my shroud, hoping to bounce it right back into him.

…I failed miserably.

My own blast slammed right into me, burning straight through my shroud, then impacting my first shield sigil’s barrier hard enough to leave broad cracks and send me staggering back from the force of the transference mana’s impact.

I staggered backward, then examined my shroud and shield thoughtfully.

My shroud was glowing with light and transference mana…just not much of it.

Saturating a shroud with mana of a specific type was a classic Sunstone-level shroud manipulation technique called “Shroud Saturation”. Like many techniques, it could be learned early if someone had the proper specialized training — like Patrick did, for example. Chancellor Meltlake had taught him the basics last year, and he’d been practicing it ever since. Saturating her own aura with fire was one of her signature moves, so teaching it to her apprentice early made sense. Patrick specialized in lightning saturation, but he could do it with any of his mana types now.

And now, he was passing it on to me — with limited success.

I’d managed to push mana of the right types into my shroud, but most of it was still grey. I needed more practice to figure out how to distribute it properly and keep it stable.

“…Are you okay?” Patrick asked. “I thought — I didn’t think…”

“I’m fine.” I dusted myself off. “Just checking my defenses. You did great.”

“Th…thanks.” Patrick exhaled a deep breath. “Let’s try a shroud burst next. Might be easier for you,” Patrick suggested.

I nodded in agreement. A shroud burst was essentially the same concept, but rather than a long-term effect, a shroud burst involved pushing a bunch of mana of a specific type into a shroud all at once for a powerful instantaneous effect. This was often used to defend against a single attack that was too strong for a regular saturation to deal with, although it could also be used as a form of attack with things like a fire mana shroud burst.

I flooded a bit of mana into my shield sigil, watching with pleasure as my shield repaired itself. That was always fun to watch.

Then, I lifted my hand again. “Ready?”

Patrick lifted his sword and took his position. “Ready!”

…I managed to blast myself again and again that day without a single reflected attack, but by the end of it, I’d managed to get a shroud burst to at least deflect an attack to the side.

And after a few successful reflections on his end, Patrick was smiling again. He loved that sword, and I think that getting to use it helped him feel just a little bit better.

…The chimney repairs for the house next door would be expensive, but ultimately, I thought the progress for both of us was worth the cost.

And through our experimentation, I’d learned something else—

I might not have managed much with a light or transference aura, but there was something else that worked much more easily, almost like an external force was guiding me.

As I hurled my last blast of light and Patrick reflected it, I didn’t use light to counter.

Instead, I reached for the mana in the sword at my side, then mixed it with the light and transference that I was already using.

A wave of glittering ice enveloped me instantly — and the beam of light fragmented as it impacted, weaker bolts of light scattering in several directions.

Patrick gasped. “What was that?”

I grinned. “A technique that might be worth further practice.”

My first true technique that incorporated Selys-Lyann with my own powers.

I called it “Shivering Shroud”.

CHAPTER XXIII – GIFTS

A week later, I tossed a sphere of blistering light at Patrick.

“Bright Reflection!”

Patrick slammed the flat of his gleaming sword into the sphere, blasting it back toward me. The sword barely dimmed. We’d successfully upgraded the capacity runes on the sword during the week, giving it more mana to work with — and I fully intended to put the sword’s maximum capabilities to the test.

“Shivering Shroud!”

My aura flared with brilliant frost, sending the sphere bouncing right back at him.

We continued batting the ball back and forth until Bright Reflection’s blade finally dimmed just slightly, at which point he dodged and let the ball fly off the roof.

…There probably wasn’t anything in that direction. It was fine.

I wiped the sweat off my forehead. “I think we’re getting better at this.”

“Much better. What’s the other thing you wanted to test today?”

“Different kind of ball game.” I reached into my pouch, pulling something out. “Catch.”

I hurled a cylinder at Patrick with sudden speed — and, as expected, he caught it on instinct.

Nothing happened.

Patrick startled, took a step back, then raised an eyebrow at the palm-sized cylinder in his hands. Runes were etched into the surface, but inactive. “…Am I supposed to know what this is?”

I sighed. “No. Ugh. Still not calibrated right, I guess.” I shook my head. “I’ve been trying to figure out the right values for impact activation on enchantments. If I make the values too low, it’ll activate just from shuffling around while I walk. If the value is too high, though, it won’t turn on at all.”

“…What exactly was supposed to happen when I caught this?” Patrick looked at the cylinder with new suspicion.

I laughed. “It just lights up. It’s a test case, after all.”

Patrick looked more than a little relieved at that. Did he…not trust me to make items that were safe to test?

…That was probably fair, even if it hurt a little.

“Got it. Okay, do you need to tweak the numbers and try again?”

I nodded. “Yeah, toss it back to me. Fortunately, this is using a dynamic activation rune, so I can just modify the sub-glyphs rather than re-etching the whole thing.”

Patrick tossed the cylinder to me. I caught it, then began to work.

“…Couldn’t you just find the values in a book?”

I shook my head. “No. Well, I mean, yes, probably? But I’m trying to find something pretty specific — toss and catch activation values, or approximately similar ones. Haven’t found those in a book yet. Most of the impact values are for things like ‘expected impact force for sword hitting armor’ and ‘expected force for battering ram’. I’m sure someone has recorded standardized values for throwing something, but tracking it down would take more time than just measuring it myself.”

“…Couldn’t Researcher find it, like, instantly?”

I shrugged a shoulder at that. “…Maybe. But that would require asking her.”

“Is there a problem with that?” Patrick blinked.

I tweaked more numbers.

“Oh, no, not in the technical sense. I just…bother Researcher for things constantly. And that’s pretty much the only reason I ever talk to her, so I feel weird asking for more if I don’t have to.”

“Isn’t answering questions like, I don’t know, half of her purpose for existence?”

“…I guess.” I set the cylinder down. “Maybe I’m still thinking of her in too human of terms. She is a knowledge elemental and she always seems happy to look things up for me. I just…it feels awkward. And I’m not big on talking to people even at the best of times. I’m kind of burned out. I don’t mind a little focused practice like this, but that’s about my tolerance level.”

“I, uh…” Patrick stammered. “That’s…”

I wasn’t great with people, but even I could sense something amiss from his stuttering. I finished modifying the cylinder, then looked up. “Is something wrong?”

“Not wrong, exactly, it’s just, uh, awkward timing. You might want to—”

That was when the door to the rooftop burst open and half a dozen people charged us. I reached for my sword before I realized they were just my friends, and the conspicuous items they were carrying were…balloons.

Oh, no.

I staggered toward the edge of the rooftop as the words rang out—

“Happy Name Day!”

***

I wasn’t big on birthdays.

For too many years, they’d happened in isolation from anyone or anything that could make it a positive experience. Even prior to the years alone my birthday celebrations tended to come with social expectations and responsibilities that I didn’t care for. That’s not to say that I never had a birthday that I enjoyed, but the last several years were hard.

So, I admit there was more than a bit of trepidation when I heard those words ring out through the air.

…And more than a bit of confusion, too.

Did I lose track of time that badly? No, that doesn’t make sense. The semester isn’t over yet, and…

Fortunately, Sera, at least, understood me better than I sometimes realized.

“No, it isn’t your birthday. I know, that’s still a month and change off. But, as your mother was keen to repeat on a number of occasions, she’d picked out your name well before your birth — specifically, on the day of the spring rain festival, which happens to be today.”

I raised an eyebrow. “That’s…probably true, but I’ve never celebrated it that way before. I take it you have some kind of elaborate scheme in mind for why we’re doing this now?”

“Obviously, but I’ll let you sort that out later. I know you’re not big on ostentatious celebrations. So, balloons aside, we’ll dispense with most of the traditions and move straight to something I think even you would enjoy. Would you like gifts first or dessert?”

I hesitated for a moment, considering. Local birthday desserts tended to be something iced — iced cream, for example, or shaved ice cones. Many locals had also adopted foreign practices of baking cakes, large cookies, or in some cases, flatcakes. I wasn’t sure on the origins of any of those, but I was pretty sure our iced cream related celebrations had something to do with Selys’ association with the element.

“…What’s for dessert?”

“Cinnegar cake with hot and cold dipping sauces,” Derek said with a smile. His smile simultaneously seemed to say, “I made this and you are going to eat it.”

This may have been mildly threatening in some contexts, but I really did like cinnegar cake. “…Let’s do that.”

There was a round of cheers, then we headed down and ate. I kept mostly quiet, grateful that people let me focus on the food, rather than pushing me into any kind of obligatory socialization. I just wasn’t in the right head space for it.

The cake was good. I especially enjoyed the molten chocolate sauce, which was a rare and unexpected treat.

After that, I’d settled into the idea of a Name Day and the related social obligations to brace myself enough for gifts. I stayed at the dinner table, allowing others to gather their gifts and bring them to me. Fortunately for my paranoia, most of the gifts were fairly straightforward and unwrapped.

“Since I cooked, I’m going first.” Derek approached and slid an envelope across the table to me. “It’s money.”

Truly, the most personal of gifts.

…But honestly, it was probably one of the best things anyone could have gotten me. I was always running short on finances for buying supplies and Derek knew that. He paid for things that were for the house, of course, and helped me buy some of the materials for gifts for others.

Having a little bit of money — or, as I saw from the numbers on the bank note inside, a significant bit of money — was going to be tremendously helpful for my work.

I accepted the envelope gratefully. “Thank you. This is going to be very useful.”

He offered me a nod. “Figured as much. Happy Name Day.”

With the nicety out of the way, he went back to the kitchen, presumably working on some other dish.

By some unspoken agreement, Mara went next. “Been thinkin’ about what to get you for a while. Can’t say you’re easy to buy for, since you’re always makin’ stuff yourself, and you mostly think about practical stuff. Don’t give yourself enough time to just unwind. Can’t force you to do that, but I figured I could give you a way to both relax while you work, and maybe a little outside of it, too.” She slid a hand-sized black box across the table. I stared at it for a moment in confusion, then noted the latch in the center and flipped it open to see a wide variety of runes inside, as well as several buttons.

Sound runes, for the most part. And some that are…hm, memory. Some kind of storage for sound, like—oh!

“An enchanted music box?” I blinked. “I’ve seen a few of these before, but I’ve never owned one.”

“You mentioned earlier in the year that you enjoyed violin music, so…I figured you might enjoy hearing some without having to go to a concert hall.”

I picked up the box, smiling softly, and pressed the first button.

Then, as the melodious sounds rang out from the box, I simply closed my eyes and listened.

…I must have done that for a little too long.

“Venaya to Corin,” Sera interrupted. “You’ve still got a line.”

My eyes opened hesitantly. I blushed, then tapped another button to stop the sound. “I…sorry.”

“You can tell Mara you like her gift,” Sera nudged.

“Oh! Right. I’m, uh, sorry. And thanks? It’s a great gift.”

“You know it.” Mara grinned. “And you’re welcome.”

I stared at the box for another moment, not sure where to put it.

Should I put it in the Jaden Box? A box in a box seems awkward, but technically possible. Why does it even have a latch in the center? It could just be a cube, it doesn’t need a crease. Is it just because it’s supposed to look like an older style of music box? Maybe if I…

“You good for another gift?” Keras sat down across from me.

“Oh, sure. Sorry!”

He gave me a curt nod. “First off, I owe you an apology.”

“…An apology?” I raised an eyebrow.

“I gave Mara a gift for her birthday earlier in the year, but since we were in the spire, it might not have come through why I was giving something valuable to one of my students and not the other. So, I want you to know that I wasn’t trying to play favorites. I was just waiting for the right time.”

“I…oh. I hadn’t considered…” I frowned. “I missed Mara’s birthday?” I turned to her in horror. “I’m so sorry! I’m really bad at this, and—”

She held up a hand. “Relax, I was inside the Tiger Spire for it, and I didn’t tell you about it. You didn’t miss any signals.”

I exhaled a sigh of relief.

Patrick leaned closer from his seat and whispered to me, “But you are going to miss Sera’s birthday if you don’t get something started within the next month or so.”

My eyes widened. He was absolutely right. I…had work to do.

I tried to shake that panic off and turned back to Keras. “Sorry, I’m, uh…I wasn’t worried about you playing favorites or anything. You’ve helped me build several things.”

“True, but that’s not the same as a personal gift, and I wanted you to know that you deserve something special. And, in spite of my reservations, you seem to be following my path in one particular way — you’ve been amassing quite the collection of swords.”

He wasn’t wrong. I’d handed off my transference sword, but I still had Selys-Lyann, my void sword, and my recently-forged dueling sword and dagger. That was enough to cover most situations, but I certainly wasn’t going to turn down one of Keras’ old weapons if he still had one.

I felt a bit of excitement when I thought about the possibility of the Pale Crescent — but what he handed me was even more valuable with my personal set of skills and interests.

I accepted the strip of leather, turning it over in my hand and noting the time-worn material with several pieces of sword-shaped metal attached, each coated with elaborate runic script. “This is…”

“It’s a bit torn up, but it still works. My Belt of Swords. Each symbol can store a single sword inside.”

“This was a personal gift from someone. Are you sure…?”

He nodded firmly. “That part of my life is over. But for you,” he gestured toward Selys-Lyann, “it may just be beginning.”

I inspected the six remaining symbols on the belt and realized that all of the remaining ones were replicas to the Six Sacred Swords. The others had either been removed or destroyed.

“…Are you sure?”

“You already have a piece of Flowbreaker. I wish I’d realized that sooner. I’m not going to tell you to collect the swords — that wouldn’t work at this point for any number of reasons — but you’ve made extra dimensional spaces a major part of your research. Even if you don’t like the belt itself, I figured you could use it as a part of your research process.”

“…I do like the belt.” I found myself clutching it close against my chest. “I…thank you. Something like this…something you used yourself…that means a lot to me.”

As a member of a duelist family, I’d grown up with the expectation of inheriting certain heirlooms from previous generations. My father wielded Alaric Cadence’s cane, a potent magical weapon that my great-grandfather had carried during the Six Years War. He wore his father’s dueling tunic, which was enchanted to rapidly regenerate damage to the wearer’s shroud. For difficult battles, he wore his mother’s necklace, which provided powerful defense against physical attacks for a few moments when activated. The glove he wore on his right hand was an heirloom of House Lyran, passed to him by my mother during their wedding ceremony, that helped conduct magical energy more rapidly through it.

As a child, I learned the stories about each of them with awe. I’d expected that Tristan would inherit the cane, but that perhaps if I performed well enough, Father would deign to pass one of the lesser items off to me.

Now…

Well, I somehow didn’t think I’d be handed off the family relics. And even if I was, they wouldn’t mean the same thing they would have to a wide-eyed child.

But I sat across from someone who had taught me, not with anger and resentment, but with patience and an easy smile. The former wielder of Dawnbringer, who had matched a visage in a fight after two weeks of starvation in a jail cell.

And he was giving me something he’d been given by two of the people closest to him in the world.

“I…I’ll cherish this. Thank you.”

“Take better care of those swords than I did.” He gave me a sad smile, then nodded and moved away.

I didn’t have much time to wonder about his meaning before Patrick plopped down across from me. “Kind of feel awkward now, since my gift is, uh, sort of the same core idea.”

“…A belt?

Patrick laughed. “Not quite that redundant, fortunately.”

He handed me a bag.

I opened it to look for the gift inside…and realized that I was staring into a void.

I gawked, then closed the bag. “Your dimensional bag. This is too valuable — and you just got it. Are you sure?”

“Why do you think I got it in the first place?” Patrick grinned. “I knew you’d have to be giving up the Jaden Box soon, and that you’d be working on trying to figure out a replacement. This isn’t perfect, but…”

“No, it is perfect. And it’s not redundant with the Belt of Swords — they’re complimentary. You don’t want to pull a sword out of a bag, it’s too awkward. Similarly, the belt won’t work for storing most other objects. They’re both extremely helpful. And beyond that, they’re going to have different types of runes, with some overlap, so…”

“You can study them both.” Patrick smiled. “I’m glad.”

“Thank you. Thank you all.” I bowed my head. “These are all very thoughtful gifts.”

Sera nudged Patrick and then took his place across from me. “Aren’t you forgetting someone?”

“Oh. I, uh, sorry.” I winced.

“Corin, it’s your Name Day. Don’t apologize. You’re fine. I just want you to know that I was saving the best gift for last. Meaning mine, of course.”

It was going to be hard to top the last couple, but I wasn’t going to say that. “Right. Of course.”

“Oh, you sound skeptical now, but wait for a moment.” She grinned, then disappeared up the stairs…and returned with a gigantic stack of documents.

Then she slammed them down on the table in front of me. “Behold, your greatest prize!”

I raised a skeptical eyebrow at the gigantic document stack. Then, tentatively, I took a look at the first page.

And my eyes widened.

These are…

I shifted to the next page, then the next, scanning through them, then looked up at Sera in shock.

“This is what I was missing for making the null-contract attunement. How…where…”

“I figured out the obvious gap in your studies of contracts was fairly simple — the sub-glyphs aren’t all located on the attunement. The other half — well, much less than half, only a fraction, really — are on compatible monsters, stored in an attunement-analogous function container attached to one of their Dianis points.”

It sounded so obvious that I mentally kicked myself for not considering it sooner. There obviously had to be something to designate a valid target for a contract — Sera had already explained that her contracts only worked with certain types of monsters. She’d had to figure out how to do something special to make her contract with the Transcendence Gateway Crystal. Presumably, that was a spell that created a temporary or permanent marker on the target that served the same function as these sub-glyphs, allowing for a valid contract to be made.

“…How’d you get all this, though? The divinatory?”

She shook her head. “No, although Researcher was integral to making it possible. I used our contract to learn the spell for analyzing sub-glyphs, then looked at Vanniv and hand-transcribed the sub-glyphs. I barely got it done in time.”

“This is dozens of pages. Hand-transcribing that must have…”

“Yeah, it took a while.” She grinned. “But it was worth it to see the look of surprise on your face when you figured out what I’d done.”

“I…thank you. This means more than you realize. I still have to actually read it, but if it contains everything I needed, then…I can finally make those null-contract items. And with those…”

“You can potentially help yourself grow faster, like a Summoner.”

I nodded. “…Myself or anyone else. In theory.” I gave her a soft smile. “That’s why you did this early. You knew I’d want these notes as soon as physically possible. You were right, of course. Thank you, Sera.”

“Say that last part again? Before the ‘Thank you, Sera.’”

I rolled my eyes. “…You were right, of course.”

“Ah, those wonderful words make all this worth it.” She smiled. “You’re welcome. Now, I’m off for more cake. You want some?”

“…That sounds great.”

She stepped away, but I kept focusing on the pages.

Sera hadn’t just given me something of value with that gift.

She’d given something important up.

By giving me the means to create null-contract items, she’d given me the tools necessary to build something that emulated the greatest advantage she had over me — her attunement’s natural growth speed.

Knowing Sera’s natural competitiveness, as well as the efforts that our father had made to put us against each other…

It must have been difficult for her, especially given her insecurities after losing so much of her progress.

She hadn’t needed to give this to me. She certainly hadn’t needed to do it before she’d caught up to my mana level or exceeded it. She could have chosen to keep the secret to herself for a while, or even indefinitely — I wouldn’t have blamed her in the slightest.

But Sera had chosen to trust me. To share with me.

And in that, she’d proven her boasting right.

Sera had given me the best gift after all.

CHAPTER XXIV – OVERWHELMINGLY DARK

I enjoyed the rest of my Name Day celebration, but kept it brief, both because I was easily overwhelmed by social pressure and because I wanted to go back to my room to study the notes that Sera had given me.

I began working on my null-contract item experiments that night. I couldn’t wait. I didn’t finish anything that evening, but I made excellent progress.

Over the next few days, I started working on a gift for Sera. Her own birthday was still months off, but if I didn’t start early, I’d probably forget about it entirely. I was silently grateful to Patrick for reminding me that birthdays were a thing, otherwise I might not have remembered to make one at all.

I couldn’t possibly offer anything as meaningful as what Sera had gotten me, but I made sure to make a solid effort regardless.

In the end, I fashioned her something simple, but useful — a massively upgraded version of the summon-enhancing bracers I’d crafted for her in the first year. With my greatly improved mana capacity and sets of batteries, I was able to make a Sunstone-level version, which offered vastly greater utility than her original bracers.

Then, I just gave it to her early. I didn’t bother making up a convenient excuse like she had with the Name Day celebration. I just told her, “I’m giving you your gift early, since it’ll be useful now.”

“Good call. Thanks, Corin. I appreciate it, and all the other things you’ve been making for us. Don’t think we haven’t noticed how much effort you put into making the whole team stronger.”

I was mildly embarrassed by that, so I retreated immediately with a “no problem” and a hand wave. Sera seemed grateful for the gift, but I wished I’d made something a little more personal.

Maybe for the next year.

I took solace in the calm in the days that followed. The soft sound of violin music helped me work.

In the next week, I began my next experiment. It was still too soon to try the null-attunement item I’d been working on, but I had something else that was ready for a test run.

***

I exhaled a deep breath — but not just because of my usual stress. Transference mana flooded out of my lungs and into the surrounding air.

That should be enough.

I glanced to Sera. “Are you sure this is a good idea? Shouldn’t I start with, I don’t know, something that doesn’t have any chance of causing harm to anyone else when I—”

“Just cast the spell, Corin.”

Another deep breath. This one was because I was anxious.

Then, I focused on the mana around me and completed the spell.

“Mass Haste!”

I felt the familiar tingle of transference mana rushing through me as the spell completed — and saw Sera stagger as if struck. I raised a hand in worry, but she just shook her head…much more quickly than normal.

“J…just acclimating. You told me how strange Haste felt without any kind of perception spell, but, uh, wow.” She raised a hand, presumably to look at it, and very nearly smacked herself in the face. “That’s…going to take some getting used to.”

“Yeah, no kidding. You’re…sure you’re okay?”

She nodded, then winced.  “As long as I don’t give myself whiplash by trying to swing my neck too quickly. Ugh. It’s a miracle you haven’t killed yourself with this spell yet.”

I snorted, but couldn’t quite relax. It was the first time I’d managed to cast a spell using exhalation-based mana projection — which was a fancy way of saying “casting spells like I had a Lung Mark”.

I still wasn’t quite doing it “correctly”, in that I’d projected my mana through intentional exhalations, rather than simply speaking an incantation. That style wasn’t unheard of, but it was…well, it was more of a remedial training exercise for lung marked, since it was generally considered much smoother to go through a pre-set incantation in battle and train the body to exhale mana at a specific rate than it was to stand around taking deliberate breaths. Non-verbal exhalations were still used in niche situations — like when the caster couldn’t or shouldn’t speak — but it wasn’t the standard practice.

I was hoping to figure out how to use the incantation style properly over the next few weeks, but for the moment…this was good progress. I’d cast the Mass Haste spell safely…well, at least as long as Sera didn’t try to walk down any stairs.

Mass Haste was exactly what it sounded like — an area-of-effect version of the standard Haste spell. The Sunstone-level Haste itself was much more costly in mana than my old Quartz and Carnelian-level Haste spells, but my mana pool had grown enough to make that more feasible to use. Mass Haste was a serious stretch, since it was designed for an entire group of people. I was using the minimal possible amount of mana to make it work and even that nearly drained my entire Arbiter supply in a single spell.

…Still, if I could get it to work in a combat situation, it could be a game charger.

The critical part, aside from learning an entire new casting style, was getting my friends to acclimate to the use of Haste the way that I had. I’d have to start training them with lower-level Haste spells first…but in order to do that, I’d have to figure out the spell formulae for a lower level of Mass Haste, since the book version was Sunstone-level. That was absolutely doable — I could just take the Sunstone-level of Mass Haste and the Quartz-Level Haste and extrapolate the differences — but experimenting with making a “new” spell variant wasn’t the right way to test an entirely different casting style.

I’d get to it eventually.

“Okay, you want to try to take a spin around the house?” I asked Sera.

“Sure, if I can make it more than three steps without vomiting.”

She did make it more than three steps —

Almost five, in fact.

After that, we called Mass Haste practice over for the day.

***

It was hours later that I sat down in the empty chair on the opposite side of a Crowns board. I felt my shoulders tighten as I said the words I’d been dreading for months. “…The box is charged.”

Keras looked up from his game. As usual, he had been playing alone…or, at least, seemingly alone. His eyes snapped into focus on my face. “You’re certain?”

I nodded. “I’ve been studying it closely and recharging it as safely as possible. It’s reached a point where the box won’t accept more mana. I can’t guarantee it wasn’t damaged during the recharging process, though.”

I don’t even know why I said that last part.

…No, I do. If I’m being honest, I think there’s a part of me that was hoping that any hint that the box might be damaged would persuade Keras not to use it. Not to take it away.

He’d been kind to me. The box had never belonged to me. But there was still a part of me that, in spite of knowing how awful it was, didn’t want to give the box up. I’d studied it — and other examples of similar items — as closely as I could. I’d pored over the notes from others studying it at the Divinatory, too, and everything that Researcher could tell me.  Even with all that, I was still far from being able to properly replicate it. Perhaps I’d reach the point where I could emulate the functions to a minimal degree soon, but it would probably be years before I could duplicate the summoning functionality, even with help.

“If it fails, it fails.” Keras glanced back down to the Crowns board, frowned, then picked up a single piece — a paladin — and took it off the table. “I’ll be back soon. I need to send a message to someone. Be ready.”

“…Ready? We’re doing this right now?”

Keras nodded. “We’ve waited more than long enough. We’ll begin as soon as the last person we need arrives. I doubt she’ll keep us waiting long.”

Who is he talking about?

Before I could even open my mouth, Keras was gone in a blur of movement.

I didn’t have to ponder long. It was only a few minutes later that we heard a knock at the door. Derek and Keras strode down the stairs together. Derek had a broad grin on his face. Keras looked…nervous, maybe? It was a strange expression to see on his face. I wasn’t used to seeing any kind of anxiety coming from him.

I didn’t like it.

What if I broke the box? Is it going to hurt Wrynn Jaden when we try to summon her? What if it opens some kind of dimensional rift? What if—

Keras flickered down to the front door and opened it.

The person standing on the other side wasn’t on the list of people I’d considered, but in retrospect, she should have been obvious.

Elora Theas wore a resplendent red dress, like she was planning to go to some kind of fancy ball. Her hair was blonde again, but loose, rather than styled — she probably hadn’t had time to do anything extensive with it. Keras must have messaged her only minutes before, after all. She’d still managed to throw on some jewelry, however, including a pair of rings that I thought resembled the one that she’d expended to cast a Sapphire-level spell to attack Saffron.

…She’s loaded for a fight. Or, at a minimum, to impress.

Keras’ tension seemed to fade a little bit when he saw her, which was almost as strange as the anxiety itself had been.

How do they even know each other? Oh, right, we stayed at Elora’s place after the fight with Saffron for a bit. Still, are they close somehow?

Things clicked a little bit more when Keras finally said his greeting. “Hey. Glad you could make it, Baby Ba—”

She lifted a finger to his lips. “I told you to never call me that in public.”

Keras snorted and stepped back from her finger. “Pfft. We’re not in public, exactly, and I think the kids have all figured it out by now.”

Elora folded her arms. “Nevertheless, restrain yourself, old man.”

Keras rolled his eyes. “Come on in.”

“I think I should be the one greeting guests, Keras.” Derek finally made it to the doorway, having chosen to walk casually, rather than speeding along. “I am still the lord of this manor, you know.”

“Are you, now?” Elora glanced at him. “So easy to forget in such august company. And considering who our next guest is going to be…maybe you should consider conceding the territory?”

“It’s not too late for me to close the door, Elora.”

“I can teleport.”

“I have anti-teleportation wards.”

“I can bypass—”

Keras stepped between them. “Can we delay the lover’s quarrel in favor of doing something we’ve all been waiting for?”

Derek wrinkled his nose. “Provided my guest conducts herself reasonably, absolutely.” He pulled the door open a little wider, then gestured for Elora to come inside.

“I will, of course, be on my best behavior.” She gave Derek a mischievous grin, then made a show of taking two slow steps across the house’s threshold. “Now, if you’ll lead me to the containment room, I’d like to verify our preparations.”

Elora extended an arm. Derek gave Keras a look, then slipped his arm into Elora’s and led her up the stairs.

That was…strange. Why is Elora even here? Is it because Derek wanted someone with summoning experience to be here to contain any possible failures from the box? That would make sense, but…

Oh. The box. Right.

Elora is the one who put it in the Divinatory, years ago. Keras must have talked to her about that at some point and figured out why she’d done that. Of course he did…he’s been eager for any information about his friends. If she got the box, she’d probably met Wrynn. And if she’s here for the summoning, that means they have enough information to mean it’s plausible.

I should have asked Elora about all this ages ago.

I knew why I hadn’t, of course. If I had talked to her about the box, she might have taken it away from me at any time. It just hadn’t really occurred to me that Keras might have checked in with her.

As Derek and Elora made their way upstairs, Keras lifted a fist to his lips to stifle a laugh, then turned to me. “…They’re adorable, aren’t they?”

“I have no idea what just happened.”

“Flirting, Corin. That was flirting. The dominance play is a bit of their dynamic. Elora tries to push him down, so he has to assert himself in order to—”

“We can hear you!” Derek yelled from the stairway.

“I know.” Keras said more quietly. “Anyway, as I said, adorable. Let’s go catch up to them.”

I was reminded once again that I had no idea how romance worked for other people, but I tried to push that out of my mind. Keras had been right earlier — this was exciting. We had been waiting for a long time.

I was nervous, jittery, and hated every moment of that…but I was excited.

I was ready to meet a legend.

***

…The others weren’t, however.

“Unacceptable.” Elora shook her head as she exited the “containment room” — a perpetually locked room with a “Don’t Enter” sign on it that I hadn’t ever explored. She closed the door behind her. “That’s less a pool and more of a bathtub. She’ll be so cramped! Honestly, Derek, where have your standards gone?”

“If you mean my romantic standards, obviously I’ve had to lower them significantly for you, but—”

I ignored them and leaned toward Keras to whisper. “…What’s in that room?”

“A stasis pool.” He grimaced. “Without going into too much detail, Wrynn may be currently in a form of stasis. The safest way to summon her would be to ensure there’s a way to put her back into stasis immediately if necessary.”

I frowned. Keras had mentioned that Wrynn utilized some kind of “stasis chamber” during his stories, but he hadn’t gone into a lot of detail. “Is she unhealthy?”

“No. I mean, well, yes, I suppose, but that isn’t the problem. It’s more that she’s incredibly dangerous to everyone else if she doesn’t go into stasis for long periods of time. I’m not sure how much I should share about that, but—”

“Oh, don’t be such a cryptic old man.” Elora approached, then turned to me. “Miss Jaden has a worldmaker’s seal on her body. It’s continuously trying to steal her body. She has a number of techniques to suppress it, but the most effective is to put herself in stasis for years or decades at a time, which reduces the worldmaker’s influence.” She turned back to Keras. “There, that wasn’t so hard, now was it?”

Keras sighed. “I don’t think she’s going to be happy about us spreading that around.”

“Oh, certainly not. But she’d also be quite unhappy if you summoned her and she went on a murderous rampage, yes? Anyone involved deserves to know the risks.”

“Wait, wait, back up. A worldmaker? Like, literally one of the gods that created our planet?”

Keras nodded. “Or one of the other planets. I think this one is one of ours, but she didn’t ever actually give me a name. I’ve done some research, and I have educated guesses, but nothing certain.”

“…Right.” I exhaled deeply. “Okay. Who do you suspect it is?”

“Worldmaker Aetor, the Maker of Monsters.”

For a moment, we all went silent.

“…Not bad,” Elora muttered. “I hadn’t heard that part.”

I glanced at her, then back to Keras. “…Is that what it sounds like?”

He nodded. “Exactly what the name implies. Aetor is the original creator of the creatures we’d consider to be monster species. His children are called the ‘Origin Beasts’, and represent the original heritage of nearly every monster on this planet.”

“But not everywhere?” Derek asked.

Keras shook his head. “No, there are other planets that predated this one, and they had their own creators of monster species. And there are also extraplanar creatures, like elementals and such, that aren’t tied to any worldmaker. But if you’re looking for the god responsible for the monsters in the Unclaimed Lands, or the Buried, or that sort of thing — that’s Aetor.”

“…And we’re seriously considering a plan that could bring him back into this world?” I gave Keras a hard look. “Couldn’t he immediately attack us if he’s in control of her body?”

“That’s possible. Wrynn was always worried about that. Apparently, this worldmaker was involved in some kind of massive war with other worldmakers, then sealed away through the combined efforts of their own divine children and mortal armies. The seal is passed on from generation to generation, distributed across multiple people and objects to prevent there from being a single point of failure.”

“Meaning that it’s only a piece of a Worldmaker tied to her, then?” Derek asked.

“My understanding is that she’s connected to the whole worldmaker, but since there are multiple seals, it wouldn’t be able to escape completely through her body even if it took her over. I don’t know the number of seals, however, or the condition of the others. It’s possible she could be the last one remaining, for all I know.”

“…How powerful would a worldmaker controlling Wrynn’s body be? Would they only be as powerful as Wrynn, or would they have their own full strength?”

Keras winced. “…Probably stronger than Wrynn at her full strength, which I’ve never seen.”

“If you had an estimate?” I asked.

“At her full strength, Wrynn is probably in the same range as a visage. A worldmaker in control of her body…it’s very hard to say. I don’t think there’s anyone on this continent that could match her directly.”

“Not even you?”

Keras gave a sad laugh. “…Not in my current condition. I’d have to really cut loose if the worldmaker got free, and that might be…” He shook his head. “Let’s not let it come to that. I like this continent.”

I shivered.

“Oh, stop being dramatic. You’re scaring the child.” Elora turned to me. “If Wrynn is already under the worldmaker’s control, the box itself would likely fail to summon her. If she’s just out in the world and in control, there’s no risk. If she’s in stasis, it would take time for the stasis to wear off before she — or the worldmaker — can do anything. If we summon her and she’s wet, we hit her with anti-possession techniques, then throw her in another stasis pool if that isn’t good enough.”

I felt a little better knowing they had a plan, but…

“It feels like a small mistake here could, say, erase this city.”

“We’re not going to summon her here, silly.” Elora pointed toward a wall — or, rather, beyond it. “We’re going to summon her in the middle of nowhere up near Vanreach. We’ll only transport her back here after we’ve made certain she’s stable.”

“Ah. I suppose that makes more sense. Still, is this really a good idea? Shouldn’t we be informing people like, say, all of the visages, in case we free a worldmaker?”

“No,” Keras said. “They might try to free him deliberately. That’s…complicated. If she’s truly lost control…” His hand shifted to the hilt at his side. “I’ll take care of it.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

“Well, murdering your old friend is a cheerful image, isn’t it?” Elora smiled. “On that note, let’s get going.”

Elora headed down the stairs. Derek gave me an apologetic look, then followed.

“…You’re really sure about this?” I asked Keras.

“I can’t wait any longer. I’m sorry. There are things coming that even I can’t handle on my own. There are risks in doing this, but…we’re going to need Wrynn’s help if this world is going to survive.”

That didn’t make me feel better in the slightest.

Still, I followed Keras down the stairs.

Well, I considered, if we’re about to destroy Kaldwyn with our hubris, at least I get a front row seat.

***

I shivered.

This is one of those times where I’d normally say “and not because of the cold”, or something equally dramatic, but no, it was the cold. We were at the border of spring, but the Vanreach Mountains were still covered in snow, especially at high altitudes. While I’d been okay in the frigid temperatures of Emerald House, apparently my growing cold resistance wasn’t quite enough to deal with wind chill and wet clothing.

I didn’t know exactly how high Elora had teleported us, but from the uncomfortably close cliffside, I could see for miles and miles. And from my difficulty breathing, I suspected that the air was pretty thin.

…Admittedly, part of that might have just been my hyperventilating at the idea of summoning a possibly possessed legendary sorcerer.

This was a terrible idea. I reminded them a couple more times, but there wasn’t exactly anything else I could do.

I mean, aside from taking several steps back and start preparing every defensive item I had. It didn’t seem likely that any of my defenses would have any function against something on a worldmaker’s level, but I wasn’t going to just stand there and hope not to die, either.

Elora set up some sort of six-pointed ritual field around where Keras was standing. Presumably, it was some kind of suppression spell. I hadn’t done a lot of studying ritual magic. I mentally catalogued what it looked like for later, but beyond that, I just kept quiet and watched from a distance to make sure I didn’t disrupt anything.

Elora took several steps back, then began raising layers and layers of barrier spells where Keras stood. I appreciated the precaution.

“Everyone ready?” Keras asked.

“Yep.” Derek had both swords unsheathed and resting against his shoulders.

“Preparations are complete.” Elora said.

“Definitely not,” I chimed in. “But go ahead.”

Keras nodded to each of us. Then, gingerly, he opened the Jaden Box and slipped a piece of dark cloth inside.

He took a deep breath. “Summon Wrynn Jaden.”

The world went black.

I would have staggered backward if I could have moved. Something held me in place. Not just my fear — a presence that froze me solid down to my very soul.

If that presence had been any closer, any less confined, I think it might have killed me outright. If it had lasted more than an instant, I felt like I might have shattered into pieces—

But then Keras was there and the world was cut.

Silver flashed around his body, enveloping him and ripping the darkness to shreds. His left hand still held the box, but his right was gripping the underside of her chin. A woman clad in nothing but liquid darkness.

Her eyes were pitch black, somehow deeper than the aura that enveloped me.

Worldmaker. No, I need to—

I couldn’t even open my mouth to speak the single word to escape. This being’s power, even restrained by whatever spells that Elora had put in place, even with all the layers of Emerald-level barriers…I couldn’t do a thing.

She whispered a single word. The mountainside beneath us trembled.

Keras dropped the Jaden Box, lifted his now-free hand, and…booped her on the nose.

“Knock it off, Wrynn. It’s me, Sal.”

The black-eyed woman blinked.

…And the overwhelming, deadly darkness, vanished in an instant.

I did stagger, then, falling to my knees. I barely resisted the urge to retch.

…And to my sides, behind their own barriers, I saw that Derek and Elora weren’t managing much better. They managed to keep their feet, but Derek was clutching his swords tighter than I’d ever seen, and Elora had a trembling hand extended with a ring already shimmering. I’d only seen her use those rings for one thing — to summon Suzaku’s power for a Sapphire-level spell.

“…Sal?” The woman’s eyes met his own. “What happened to you? What’s wrong?”

His shoulders slumped, the weight he’d been bearing for too long had finally managed to push down on them. “That…” He pressed his forehead against her own, his eyes pressing shut, “…is a very long story.”

“It’s okay, Sal.” She wrapped her arms around him. “I’m here now.”

Keras pulled her tighter.

“I missed you.”

***

After a few minutes of awkwardly watching Keras and Wrynn’s reunion, Elora stepped closer to ask a question. “So, Miss Jaden. I hate to be rude, but what are the odds you’re going to go berserk and kill us in the next few minutes?”

Wrynn turned away from Keras with those strange, still-black eyes, and focused on Elora. “Oh, none. It’ll be at least an hour.”

Elora’s eye twitched.

“Kidding, kidding.” Wrynn smiled. “A bit of gallows humor, sorry. Don’t you worry, I’m…” She frowned, “…mostly stable. Not as much as I’d like to be, but we’re talking about problems coming up on a scale of…weeks, maybe months if I’m lucky. It…should be longer.” She turned to Keras. “Sal, how long has it been?”

“Ten years, from my frame of reference.”

“From mine as well,” Elora added. “You may not remember me, but—”

“I never forget a face, Miss Theas. You’ve grown quite a bit from the lanky teenager I remember seeing in the spire. I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of meeting the other two of you, however.”

“The pleasure is mine, Miss Jaden.” Derek bowed in place. “Derek of House Hartigan.”

“A Hartigan! How lovely. I’ll have to talk to you about certain matters regarding your ancestor before I leave. And you, young sir?”

“Corin Cadence.” I bowed with a little less enthusiasm than Derek had managed.

“Alaric’s boy?” Wrynn asked.

I blinked. “His great grandson.”

“Oh. That…that’s something I do lose track of.” Wrynn sighed. “What have I missed?”

“Most of your clothing, apparently.” Keras slipped his trouble coat off and wrapped it around her. “And a great deal otherwise.” He leaned down and lifted up the Jaden Box — her box — and handed it to her. “Are you feeling up to moving somewhere a little warmer?”

“Oh, I do like it up here, but I suppose if the rest of you are uncomfortable.” She slipped her arm under Keras’ and turned to Elora. For a moment, Wrynn’s pupils shifted to a strange, diamond-shape, then reverted to normal. “You are strong enough to teleport now, yes?”

“…Indeed, Miss Jaden. I’m pleased you noticed. Are we…secure to teleport now? You’re certain the worldmaker won’t free itself again?”

“Again?” Keras blinked. “Oh, you thought that was…” He shook his head. “The worldmaker was never in control of Wrynn. That was just Wrynn being surprised when we summoned her. If the worldmaker was in charge, that would have been much worse.”

…Somehow, I didn’t feel the slightest bit comforted by that.

“Shall we go?” Wrynn asked, reaching out and prodding one of the barriers with a finger. It collapsed instantly at her touch.

“Of course, Miss Jaden.” Elora gave a strained smile. “Right away.”

***

We arrived outside Derek’s house without any further incident. In spite of Elora’s boasting about being able to bypass the teleportation defenses, she either couldn’t afford the mana or chose not to. Even just getting us back from Vanreach seemed to drain her significantly…which I suppose made sense, given that she was teleporting several people a distance of hundreds of miles. I didn’t know many people who could do that in general — most teleportation was limited to miles in the single digits. It wasn’t as flashy as throwing one of her Sapphire-level attack spells, but in some ways, simply moving us that distance in an instant was more impressive.

…Maybe I should have asked her to save us a train ride to Caelford. Then again, that’s both further in miles and she probably is using some kind of teleportation anchors to cross. I’m not sure if she has something like that set up in Caelford. And right now…I have bigger questions to ask.

Derek quickly ushered us into the house. Keras grabbed Wrynn and vanished in a blur of speed, returning a few moments later on his own.

I blinked. “Everything okay?”

“…Not okay, but better. I just dropped her in my room for a minute to get dried off and to get some clothes on. It’s possible we shouldn’t have summoned someone out of a pool of liquid into a frozen mountain range.”

“Oh. That’s…surprisingly mundane, but it makes sense. Should I worry about her attacking us again?”

Keras shook his head. “She didn’t attack in the first place. Not exactly. That was just a spirit suppression technique — she probably activated it instinctively on being teleported to an unknown location. It might have felt like an attack, but it was basically the equivalent of the anti-magic fields that your Shadows can use, just Artinian flavored.”

“That…wasn’t even an attack?” I exhaled a breath. A glance to the side showed Derek’s expression being set in a firm grimace and Elora’s smile looking strained. They must have felt the same way. “I felt like she was strangling my soul.”

“Uh, yeah, sorry on her behalf. Spirit Arts can hit people pretty hard if they don’t have spirit-based defenses. I imagine your shrouds softened it a bit, but without actually developing the strength of your spirit, it probably impacted you much more than it would hit someone on Artinia with a similar level of power to your own. Sort of like draining the mana out of someone who doesn’t have an attunement.”

“I do have spirit defenses and it still nearly floored me.” Derek sounded bitter. “If anything, you’ve been understating how powerful Jaden is. I don’t think a hypothetical Sapphire-level Shadow could have cast a spell that debilitating.”

Keras shrugged a shoulder. “Sorry. I never asked what level she was in Spirit Arts. I didn’t have any familiarity with them when I last saw her.”

“Implying, of course, that you do now.” Elora folded her arms. “What does your current assessment tell you?”

“Too soon to say. And honestly, I don’t see much reason to share, even if I knew. That’s up to her — and you probably won’t have any need to know. I expect to be leaving shortly.”

“Don’t feel the need to disappear right away. Your friend may need time to rest and learn about the current world. I wouldn’t mind another house guest for a while.” Derek noted.

I felt a bit of hope, but from the firmness of Keras’ expression, I could tell his mind had already set on his path. “I’ll discuss it with her, but I don’t anticipate staying more than a couple days. There are dire things on the horizon and I’ve waited for too long as it is.”

“Well, if Miss Jaden is dressed, perhaps you could inform all of us about these ‘dire things’ at once?” Elora asked.

“Some of it is personal, and I’ll need to talk to Wrynn about that alone — but there are a few things I can share with you. Let me go check on her and see if she’s ready to talk.”

***

A few minutes later, we all sat around the dinner table. Not just those of us who had gone to the mountain for Wrynn’s summoning — the whole household had been called in for the conversation. Well, aside from Cecily. She was out with her sister.

Wrynn sat next to Keras, her chair closer to his than strictly necessary. She leaned up against him, still occasionally shivering in spite of the relative warmth of the home’s interior. Maybe that was a reaction to the sudden shift in her environment, but I worried that it might be a consequence of something more sinister.

Those strange eyes were still pitch black, but now, they studied everyone in the room. That seemed only fair, given that she was clearly the center of attention. She stood out not just due to her identity and reputation, but also her strange appearance — she was no longer writhed in shadow, but strange inky tattoos could be seen on the parts of her arms that were exposed beneath a borrowed shirt. They were clearly magical, but didn’t resemble an attunement — they looked more like a flowing cursive script with one unfamiliar letter leading into another.

No, “unfamiliar” isn’t exactly the right word — I’d seen something similar before. The runes on her box were more self-contained, but seemingly in the same script, or perhaps an ancestor of it. I wanted to study the flowing language further, but I didn’t exactly feel comfortable asking the legendary sorcerer to remove her shirt so I could get a better look. It was a purely scholarly question, but even I could tell that wouldn’t sound like one.

“Miss Jaden, it is an absolute pleasure to finally meet you. Keras holds you in quite high regard, and given his standards, that implies that you are a person to be reckoned with. I’m Sera Cadence.” Sera reached across the table to extend a hand. Wrynn shifted from leaning against Keras and shook Sera’s hand without any of the awkwardness that Keras demonstrated with the process.

Ah, right. She’s a foreigner, but she’s been on Kaldwyn before — probably several times at different periods of history. And it’s not like Valian handshakes have changed much in the last decade or two…at least as far as I know.

“A pleasure, Miss Cadence. I had the pleasure to know your great grandfather many decades ago, albeit briefly. I hope your family has fared well in the years since Alaric’s triumph.”

Sera smiled sweetly. “I think you’ll find that our generation of the family has been doing exceptionally well — both in our training and our chosen company. You already know of House Hartigan and Theas, of course, and we are privileged to have formed such close ties with families nearly as legendary as your own. I am also pleased to introduce you to our retainer, Patrick Wayland-Cadence, and our adventuring companion, Marissa Callahan.”

Wrynn nodded, then turned to Patrick and Mara. “A pleasure to meet you both.”

“H—hullo.” Patrick reached out and shook Wrynn’s hand, looking uncharacteristically nervous.

Mara was the opposite, half-lunging across the table to shake hands with Wrynn. “Mara, please, if ye would. My friends call me that, and I’m hopin’ you’ll count yourself among them.”

I blinked. I hadn’t heard her drop into her accent quite that strongly in a while. A manifestation of her own nervousness, maybe?

Mara’s handshake with Wrynn looked a little firm. If Wrynn noticed that, she said nothing on the subject. “Mara it is, then. I haven’t been here long, but Sal has already spoken very highly of you. I can’t believe he has an apprentice! And such a cute one, too!”

Mara blushed bright red as she released her grip on Wrynn’s hand. “…Ah, my, I…thank you?”

Wrynn gave Keras a mischievous look. Keras rolled his eyes and whispered something in Wrynn’s ear — which made her give an exaggerated gasp and cover her mouth. “My, my. You’ve been busy, you scoundrel!”

Keras leaned against the table and covered his face with his hands. He looked very much like he wanted to meld into the table and disappear. “Wrynn Jaden, destroyer of propriety. I’d almost forgotten.”

“Ooh, a new title! I love it, thank you.” Wrynn grinned. “So, now that basic introductions are out of the way and I’ve embarrassed Sal a little,” she reached out a hand and mussed his hair, “let’s talk business, shall we?”

“Of course.” Elora Theas looked to Derek, then at his nod, she reached under the table and withdrew a large box. Not the Jaden Box, of course — Wrynn had seemingly already stashed it somewhere — but a classic treasure box. She slid it across the table. “I’m aware that Master Selyrian has some sort of secret plan for you already, and Master Selyrian, please forgive me for my rude interruption of those plans. That said, the people of Valia are currently in a dire place — one that would greatly benefit from your services. One significant enough that House Hartigan and House Theas have chosen to combine our resources — a rarity, I’m sure you understand — to offer to hire your services.”

Wrynn raised an eyebrow at the box…then her eyes shifted again, the blackness not fading, but a strange diamond-like shape manifesting across the surface. Upon her eyes reverting to normal, she reached across for the box, poked a finger into the lock — producing an immediate “click” — and then flipped the top open.

Derek muttered something about a “show off”. Keras gave Elora a sharp look, to which she replied with a shrug, then he looked back to Wrynn.

Meanwhile, Wrynn only glanced inside for a moment before shutting the top. I didn’t have a chance to look at the contents — the top didn’t open in a direction that was visible from my side of the table — but from the upturn of her lips, she seemed to like what she saw. “An interesting offer. I’ll keep it in mind, but I need to know what Sal needs first and discuss the details with you both to see if something can be arranged.”

“Naturally. Master Hartigan and I can draw up formal terms if that would be preferable to you.”

Wrynn waved a hand dismissively. “No need for that just yet. Don’t want to waste your time if what Sal needs is going to make it impossible. Speaking of…Sal, you said some of what you need is private, but you could talk about some of it here?”

Keras nodded and straightened up. “Yeah.” He took a breath, seemed to gather his resolve, then turned to address the table as a whole. “As all of you know, I originally came to this continent a decade ago with a mission to reach the goddess Selys to ask for her assistance with an existential threat to our planet. My mission was a ruse, at least in some respects — but by coming here, I did learn a great deal about dangers that are very real. Botheas. The Buried. The Tyrant in Gold. And, perhaps most urgently, the coming of the Devouring Dark. The one that the people of this world call the ‘Sun Eater’.”

Keras had mentioned the Sun Eater many times while telling us his story on the train, but there was something about how he said it now that sent a shiver down my spine. Something about it felt more real, both in his tone and phrasing — he wasn’t just telling us a fanciful tale now. His demeanor told us that this was a threat he saw as being immediately relevant, not some fanciful tale from days long past.

…And the “Devouring Dark”? That name was what Ishyeal Dawnsglow had used for the Sun Eater, wasn’t it? Was there some significance to Keras choosing to introduce the Sun Eater that way this time?

By the way Wrynn responded with narrowed eyes, I suspected there was more to that name than I understood. “We saw Lord Kyestri making plans back on Mythralis, but we stopped him. How much have things progressed in my absence?”

Keras’ hands tightened. “…He’s on his way, Wrynn. Soon. I’ve fought several of his harbingers across multiple continents, shattered entire legions of his shades — it’s not enough. His agents are too many and too varied. I can’t be everywhere at once…and it’s getting worse. When I fought one of the last harbingers, she said something about ‘new ser’vek’.”

Wrynn winced. “New ser’vek? If he’s making more, then…”

“Forgive me, but my level of familiarity with the Sun Eater is largely limited to myth and legend,” Elora interjected. “What is a ‘ser’vek’ and why is this such a concern?”

Keras exhaled deeply. “Sorry. Wrynn, you want this one?”

“Sure.” Wrynn turned to Elora. “Okay, so. The Sun Eater is a horrifying monstrosity that travels from planet to planet, obliterating entire civilizations and then repurposing the world’s natural resources for his own use. When he invades a planet, his armies are formed from shades — basically, animate shadows torn from living beings — that are puppets at his command. His shades aren’t generally very strong on their own, but they can take control of living people in a process we call the ‘vek taint’. Vek are basically people that have been rendered completely subservient to the Sun Eater.”

“And ser’vek?” Elora asked.

“Ser’vek are what happens when his shades get their hands on a god.”

“…Oh.” Elora blinked. “That’s quite a grim prospect, isn’t it?”

“Wait, wait.” Derek raised his hands. “Do we even have enough gods left for that? I know that some of the things we’ve been told about the Tyrant in Gold are propaganda, but I was under the impression that he killed the majority of them, at least.”

“He probably did,” Keras admitted, “or at least beat them into submission. But there are still some alive — mostly on isolated continents like Vylin Tor. And…sealed within the world.”

Wrynn growled. “The Buried. Not even the Sun Eater would be mad enough to free them, would he…? No, I retract the question. Of course he would.”

“…I don’t know a lot about the Buried, but from what I gather, aren’t they basically an existential threat to humanity on their own?” I asked.

“That’s underselling it, if anything.” Wrynn grimaced. “Even a single origin beast getting free would potentially be a threat to all of humanity. The gods that sealed them away thousands of years ago are mostly crippled, dead, or missing. And if more than one got free, or a seal on one of the worldmakers was broken…” Wrynn shook her head. “Our world wouldn’t survive another conflict between makers.”

I considered that. “…Not to make things even more grim, but I have to ask — could the Sun Eater control one of these origin beasts or a worldmaker with his shades?”

“I don’t know.” Keras answered. “And I would rather that we never have to find out.”

“It may be beyond that point, if he’s making new ser’vek already.” Wrynn grimaced. “Unless you think that harbinger was bluffing, or that he’s active on Vylin Tor?”

“It’s most likely the latter. I’ve heard stories about a being called the ‘Bloodletter’ being worshipped there — I believe that’s a cult that his harbingers are setting up to prepare for his arrival.”

“…Then, I have to ask. Why are you here, Sal, instead of over there?”

He flinched. “…I tried to handle this on my own for…longer than I could. I came back to Kaldwyn after a disaster to try to see if I could pursue one of my original goals here, but with a slightly changed purpose — to reach Selys and ask for her help, but this time specifically to deal with the Sun Eater. Unfortunately, my recent findings have given me reason to doubt that I’ll ever be able to reach her.”

“The Tiger Spire.” Sera interjected. “I believe it’s about time you told us what happened in there.”

Keras hesitated, then nodded to her. “I suppose you deserve an explanation, but I can’t give you full answers without antagonizing powers you don’t want me to bring into this. The simple answer is that I reached the mid-point of the tower, at which point I met with a visage. We had a talk. They offered me a chance to abandon my climb there in exchange for a boon. I refused, but they told me that I still wouldn’t be allowed to climb higher — that there had been an ‘agreement’ that I could not be allowed to be the one who reached Selys.”

“Did you fight them?” Mara asked.

“No. It would have been pointless. I demanded answers, and to my surprise, I was given some of them — but they were not answers that I had hoped for. It would seem that Katashi has been deliberately wasting my time.” He frowned. “That’s not to say that I’ve considered my time living with all of you a waste, but—”

“We get it.” Sera nodded. “You just mean that Katashi’s ‘deal’ to help you meet with Selys was negotiated under a false pretext.”

“The Visage of Valor wouldn’t lie.” Patrick folded his arms. I was a little surprised by his objection, but Keras brushed it off quickly enough.

“You can believe what you want. The bottom line is that I can’t rely on our deal to reach Selys — and what Corin’s brother told him was seemingly true. The six visages have no intention of letting me reach the top of the spires. Not the ones they control, at least.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked. “Is there…” I put it together a moment later based on an oddity in his wording. “The Seventh Spire. Of course. If there’s a seventh spire, then logically…”

“There’s a seventh visage.” Sera looked strangely grim. “Do you have any reason to believe that this seventh visage would be more likely to help you?”

“…Not exactly. But the seventh visage has long held an interest in me…and he doesn’t play by the same rules that the rest do. I’m not supposed to talk to him again, but…I have a plan for that. It might not be perfect, but it’s the best chance at success I have. And I…don’t think I can do it alone.”

He looked at Wrynn hopefully. “I don’t know, Sal. I’ve heard about the Seventh Spire, but I’ve never been in there. Do you even have a way to get in?”

“I think so.” He grimaced. “…In fact, I think I’ve been there before.”

Mara gave him a concerned look. “You think?”

“I suppose it’s worth explaining that a bit, too.” Keras hesitated for a moment, then rolled up his right sleeve.

Black inky marks trailed from his elbow to shoulder in a design that was now unmistakable. They weren’t the same runes as Wrynn’s, not exactly, but they were clearly the same language.

“Sal! That’s…” Wrynn startled. “No! You can’t. No one else alive knows the Seven-Branched Seal! Not unless…”

“No, it wasn’t your mentor. I had…a little help from looking into the past.”

Wrynn shook her head. “You shouldn’t have done that, Sal. You — you don’t know the consequences of using that seal like I do. It’s not just your abilities being sealed, it’s…”

“My memories. I know.” He sighed. “I have significant gaps, but…it was necessary to retain control.”

“Wait, wait. Are you saying you have a seal for one of the worldmakers?” I asked.

“No. This is similar to Wrynn’s seal, but not identical. My seven branches, my seven seals…they’re…more personal.”

The sacred swords, I considered immediately. Is that why he can’t sense them anymore?

“We’re getting distracted from the main issue,” Keras said before I could ask for further clarity. “The Sun Eater’s forces are converging on this world — and not slowly. In truth, I’ve already spent far more time here than we can afford, but I couldn’t keep ahead of them without help. And, as I’ve proven time and time again, I’m not a diplomat. Even if I can make people see the threat, I’m much better at making enemies than getting help. Even if I could make it to the top of the Seventh Spire on my own and reach Selys somehow…I’d probably just end up starting a fight. I need someone who can talk to people like her. Someone with the power to help me climb the spire and the diplomatic abilities necessary to ensure it isn’t a disaster like my meetings with the visages have been.”

“Shouldn’t there be other people working on this problem already that have the skills necessary for avoiding conflict?” Sera asked. “Ishyeal Dawnsglow and his ilk?”

“Perhaps. I can’t remember where Ishy is. I’ve tried looking, and I’ve tried contacting him, but…I don’t even know if he’s alive.” Keras shook his head. “Perhaps he’s in the Seventh Spire. If he is, that’s an even greater reason for me to go there. Linking up with him would be…good, if he’s still alive. And if the others…”

“Wait. Does he have the sacred swords?” I asked.

Keras’ voice was small, then, barely a whisper. “…I don’t know that, either. And…I can’t be certain, but…I think that was a deliberate choice on my part, and, perhaps…on the part of any of them that remain alive.”

We were all silent for a moment, then. It was Wrynn that spoke up again next, perhaps due to her lack of context for how much that admission must have hurt him. She reached over to squeeze his hand. “I’d like to help you, of course, but…Sal…climbing the Seventh Spire…I don’t know if I’ll be stable long enough for that.”

“I know. Not as you are now, at least. So…let me share your burden.”

She shook her head. “You already gave me a piece of your spirit. It may have changed and gotten stronger sufficiently that another piece might help, but—”

“No, not like that. I know the seal now. I could—”

“Absolutely not.” Wrynn’s tone was firm. “Using the seal for what you’re already doing is questionable enough. Putting a second seal on yourself, one tied to the maker? That’s absolute madness.”

“We’ll discuss this further privately.” Keras folded his arms.

Wrynn snorted. “Sure, if you feel like being refused again behind closed doors, be my guest.”

“…Maybe you could stay a bit and work on solvin’ that here?” Mara asked, hope bleeding raw into her tone.

“No.” Keras said. “We’ll talk about details later, but…we’re going to need to leave within the next few days. I have some ideas we can try to stabilize Wrynn’s condition if she won’t let me help directly,” his tone made it clear how annoyed he was at that, “but even if we can’t get her stable and she has to stay in the stasis pool here, I need to go. I’ve waited too long.”

“You’ve made it clear you would likely fail at diplomacy on your own,” Elora noted. “Perhaps we could make some sort of exchange? If you were willing to assist further with some of our local problems, perhaps I could accompany you in Miss Jaden’s absence?”

“Take me with you.” Mara stood up suddenly, her eyes flaring with sudden intensity as she made her decision. “Not a diplomat, but I don’t need payment. I just…if you’re leaving…”

“Mara.” He reached across the table to put a hand on her head and pat her gently. “You’re not ready.”

She ripped away from his touch, her face raw with emotion at his rejection. “Think I can be the one who judges that, can’t I? I—” Her jaw slammed shut, her lips trembling, then she turned and pushed herself away from the table and vanished up the stairs.

“Mara, wait!” Keras pushed away from the table as well, turning to follow.

“Oh, let the lovesick little girl go.” Elora rolled her eyes. “The adults still need to talk.”

Wrynn rose, looking straight at Elora, and for just an instant the entire room seemed to darken. I felt just a hint of that heart-gripping pressure again — not a full-technique, but the threat of one, like a sword tilted slightly in the scabbard.

And it wasn’t directed at me.

Elora blanched as Wrynn leaned closer to her.

“You will not insult the bond between a master and apprentice again.” Wrynn’s voice was icy cold. “If you do, you will answer to me.”

“You…I…” Elora shuddered. “I apologize for my poor conduct, Miss Jaden. I didn’t realize—”

“All forgiven!” Wrynn sat back down suddenly. “Just be more careful, okay? Now, Sal, Miss Theas had a point, crude as she was — we have further business. And…I think your apprentice could use some space from you, at least for a little while.”

“I’ll check on her.” Patrick offered.

Keras hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “Thank you, Patrick.” He slid back into his seat, giving one last glance in the direction Mara had retreated. “Now, I have some other ideas on how to stabilize your condition, Wrynn, but…I suppose you should at least hear the details of Miss Theas’ offer.”

“Indeed. Thank you for the consideration, Master Selyrian.” Elora’s cheer seemed to return rapidly, though I noted at least a hint of uncharacteristic nervousness remaining in her tone. “Now, let me tell you a bit about our problem with the ‘Sons of Valia’, and our ongoing difficulties with the absence of the visage Tenjin…”

The conversation quickly veered into more familiar territory. Wrynn listened carefully, but I tuned it out for the most part — old information was boring.

And I couldn’t stop thinking about a change I wasn’t quite ready for.

One way or another, Keras was leaving soon, and I had no way — and no right — to stop it.

CHAPTER XXV – GRATITUDE AND GOODBYES

The next day was a somber one. Keras was still around, but largely talking to people privately for last-minute deals and instructions. I had my own talk with him, but I couldn’t force myself to say the things I wanted to say. Instead, I mostly listened to his final instructions.

“Keep an eye on Lute for me. He’s powerful, but he’s not used to being alone. He grew up with a large family, and without them…well, actually, that might be for the best, but he’s probably lonely. And with his limited exposure to human society, he might make mistakes.”

“I’m not exactly a paragon of human social dynamics, Keras.”

He grinned. “I know. But you are human. And beyond that, I think you’d understand him better than most. Spend some time with him outside of dueling classes and I think you’ll see what I mean.”

“I’ll…think about it. I’m not great with people. But…I suppose he’s on my team, and I probably should at least give it an effort.”

“Good. That’s all I can ask.” He nodded. “Do you have anything you need before I go?”

I considered that question. As obvious as it was, I hadn’t really considered it. “…Actually, yes. A while back, you’d mentioned asking Wrynn to teach me a bit about the box?”

“Already on my list. Yes,” he smiled, “I have one, too.”

I groaned. “When were you planning to do it?”

“Oh, I hadn’t gotten that far. How about now?”

“…Now is good.”

It didn’t take us long to find her. Wrynn was chatting with Derek while eating. I wasn’t sure I’d seen her stop eating since she’d arrived. Apparently, being in stasis for a decade took a significant toll on the body…or she just liked to eat.

Keras sat down next to her, then gestured for me to sit. I took a seat across from them.

“So, like I mentioned, Corin here was using your box for a while. He figured out how to help recharge it. He’s been trying to figure out how to duplicate it, but he only has some basic knowledge of Artinian enchantments. I’ll let him explain in more detail how much he knows, but we were hoping you might be able to teach him how to duplicate some of the functions with Kaldwyn-style enchanting.”

Wrynn set her soup spoon down. “Eh. Maybe a little? I didn’t make the thing, you know. I’ve studied it, of course, and I know bits and pieces…but I’m not an expert on item crafting. If your father was here…”

Keras grimaced. “Let’s not go into that.”

“Sorry, sorry.” She took another spoon of her soup, frowning. “Okay. I can go over some basics. First, tell me what you already know.”

I exhaled a sigh. Her attitude didn’t inspire much confidence, but at least she was willing to help. “Okay. Let’s begin with talking about each of the runes. Can you bring out the box?”

She set it down on the table. I didn’t even realize it had been on her lap. Had…she been hiding it somehow? Or had the enchantments that concealed it from people who were unaware of the box’s existence been…reset somehow?

Huh.

“Okay, let’s start with this rune…”

I spent the next several minutes going through basic functions of each rune. Wrynn asked simple questions about my understanding. She clearly knew at least a bit about what I was taking about, but she seemed to be telling the truth — she wasn’t an item crafting expert.

She did, however, have some useful insights on subjects I wasn’t aware of.

“So, the storage and retrieval functions. Most people assume that when you say ‘store magic sword’ or whatever, the box retrieves the item later based on matching the sound of the words after ‘store’. That’s only partially accurate. People vary their volume and tone when saying things, and obviously, different people have wildly different ways they say any given word. So, the functions on the box aren’t relying purely on sound — the box uses what you’d call communication and spirit mana to evaluate intent.”

“…You mean the box reads my mind?”

Wrynn shook her head. “No, nothing that sophisticated. And before you ask, it’s not conscious or alive. It just has functions that try to…hmm, I suppose the best way to describe it might be that it tries to translate whatever you’re saying into something the box already has stored. It isn’t perfect, especially if there are multiple things stored with very similar sounding words and ideas behind them. If you have both a red sword and a…uh, bread sword, maybe?…those might be similar enough in both sound and concept that attempting to retrieve one will get you the other.”

“That sounds less like the box is actually judging intent and more like it’s trying to find things that are approximately similar to the words that are being stored.”

“Well, yeah, it is trying to find something similar — but the ‘intent’ part comes up through the box evaluating things on the spirit end. Before you ask, I don’t actually know how that works, but I imagine it’s similar to sakki.”

“…Saki? Like, the drink?”

Wrynn snorted. “That’s sake, kid. Sakki is shorthand for ‘killing intent’, but a lot of people use the term as a catch-all for any kind of spiritual projection of intent. You, uh, might have felt me using a bit of it when I first showed up.”

I shivered involuntarily. “That…pressure you were exuding was sakki?”

“Pressure is a good word — ‘spiritual pressure’ is often a translation used for people applying their spirit to intimidate or incapacitate others. There are some people who make a distinction between that type of pressure and sakki, which specifically relates to ‘I’m going to murder you’ kind of energy, but virtually no one bothers to make that distinction anymore.”

“Okay. So, the box basically…picks up on the same kind of intent you infuse into your spirit when you’re using sakki?”

Wrynn’s eyes glittered. “You’re a quick one, kid. That’s just it. Everyone is always projecting a little bit of their intent when they take any action — it’s just that only people with tightly-honed spiritual senses can pick up on it. Or, you know, magic boxes. And that’s what this guy here is doing — reading and translating that little bit of spirit you’re emitting into the world when you do anything.”

“…Is it possible to hide or fake your intent with sakki?”

Wrynn raised an eyebrow. “That’s a very advanced question. Why?”

“I don’t like the idea of people reading my mind. Being able to read my spirit feels awfully similar.”

“It’s a little less direct, but…yeah, I can see that.” Wrynn took another spoon of her soup. “Yeah, obviously there are techniques for that. Obviously, politicians and house leaders wouldn’t get anywhere unless they could lie through their teeth.” She smiled a little. “Don’t think we have time for you to learn that before I go, though. Honestly, I don’t even think I could teach it to you. You’re not a Spirit Artist. I don’t think it’s something I could teach to someone without an active dedication.”

“A what?”

“Dedication. They’re specializations for Spirit Arts. It’s…much more complicated, but you can think of them as being like Artinian attunements.”

Keras raised an eyebrow at her. “That’s so simplified it’s misleading, Wrynn.”

“Eh, fair. Fine, a little more — they’re not magic marks on the body. A dedication is more like…you’ve carved out a bit of your spirit and assigned it to a specific purpose. Like, this part of my spirit specifically is used to enhance my speed, or my strength, or that sort of thing.”

“So, dedication means to dedicate a part of yourself to a specific purpose?”

“That’s a good way to think of it, yeah. There are people who say the term is about dedication to the ancestor, but that’s…you don’t need to get into that religious stuff right now. Your interpretation is a good one, and even some of the locals read it that way. Now, getting back to the box…”

She spent some more time going over the box with me, giving me more insights on how it functioned. After a while, I excused myself, then headed up to my room to work.

I set out the Belt of Swords and my dimensional bag, sighed, and pulled out my enchanting equipment.

This is going to take a lot of experimentation, but…at least I have somewhere to start.

I got to work.

***

We had one final day with Keras — and then it was done. His decision had been made. He had more private talks with several people, and I knew that many of them would try to convince him to stay. I was no exception, but I couldn’t muster the energy to make a real effort.

Not because I wanted him to leave, but because he seemed comforted to finally be acting on a plan. Sitting and playing defense simply wasn’t his style — his stories, and simply living together, had made it clear that he needed to be constantly moving to feel alive.

Staying with us must have felt utterly stagnant.

I could sense how much more comfortable he was with Wrynn. Their casual affection, their laughing at old jokes and private references — it was such a contrast to how he’d been behaving with us.

I admit I might have felt a bit of envy, but I understood it. He’d clearly been longing for an earlier time, one where he went on adventures and the world felt a little less complicated. Wrynn clearly reminded him of that time and the innocence of his younger days.

…And I’ll bet there was a degree of comfort at having a companion that could fight on a level similar to his, too.

I couldn’t feel too bitter about not being able to match up to the legendary Witch of a Thousand Shadows on the battlefield, but ever since her appearance, Derek seemed to be unusually quiet. I suspect he was a little shaken by how hard Wrynn’s opening technique hit us. At some point, he’d probably accepted that Keras had been holding back in his sparring sessions — even those where Derek was involved — but it had to be a little discouraging to be reminded that there were people out there with powers that made even Emerald-level look…well, insufficient.

Derek wasn’t brooding about it. Not exactly. He seemed more…introspective, maybe? I wondered if he was plotting something, but I honestly didn’t have the energy to ask him about it, either.

Mara was taking Keras’ pending departure harder than anyone. She spent most of that last day alone in her room, which was…well, not Mara. We all tried to drag her out, but no one succeeded at first — not until it was time for Keras to say his goodbyes.

For that purpose, we gathered on the rooftop. It seemed more appropriate for him than a simple exit through the front door.

***

I didn’t know how to say goodbye to Keras.

In many ways, meeting him in that jail cell had been the start of my story. It was where my path diverged from a simple Judgment and turned into something very different. Something dangerous, but something that helped build me into…well, more than I would have been.

Looking at the people on the roof, I could see that in many ways, he’d affected the others in the same way. We were all more than we would have been without his presence in our lives. Not in the same ways, of course.

To Derek, Keras represented something I don’t think he’d ever encountered — not in the spires, not in the Unclaimed Lands, and not even from his aunt.

Keras was someone he absolutely couldn’t match in a fight. Not alone, not with his Soulblade items, and not even with his summons.

Sure, they were regular sparring partners. Sure, Derek had abilities that Keras didn’t. But as time went on, it grew more apparent to the rest of us what Derek must have understood from their first encounter — when Keras sparred with the rest of us, he was playing nice.

For someone who truly believed they were the best possible swordsman, realizing that might have been an embarrassment. Derek was already an Emerald, after all — the pinnacle of progression for an attuned. He easily could have been embarrassed or ashamed.

Instead, he took it as a personal challenge. I saw him training harder and harder, and more than that, digging deeply into research to help find ways to exceed the power his attunement offered him. I still hadn’t seen how exactly those studies would manifest in Derek’s skill set, but if Derek was a monstrously powerful fighter before, there was no telling what level he’d be pushed to now that he had a tangible goal to push himself toward.

He couldn’t match Keras now…but from his expression on the roof, I could already see the wheels turning in his mind for how he’d find a way to make their next match go differently.

Sera’s relationship with Keras was a strange one. They rarely talked around the rest of us, seeming on the surface to share less in common.

Rare occasions challenged that view. More than once, I’d seen them playing Crowns together. Not unusual in itself, but when Sera played against him, her face showed an abnormal intensity. Like she wasn’t just playing for fun — like she had something more to prove.

I didn’t watch how those matches resolved, of course, because watching Crowns was boring. Maybe there was something to it that I wasn’t seeing.

But even if there wasn’t, there was absolutely something they were conspiring about behind closed doors. I’d only seen a hint of it in the first year — a talk where Keras was supposedly taking a look at Ceris, the Song of Harmony, and showing her how to use the sword. A plausible explanation, but elements of it had never made sense to me.

Sera had never clarified with me what they’d talked about that day, but I hadn’t forgotten about it. And now, seeing Keras leaving, Sera’s expression was different from the rest of ours.

Calm.

Perhaps that could be read as her simply lacking the attachments the rest of us held, but…I thought, perhaps, there was something more to it. Perhaps she knew something the rest of us didn’t. If so…well, only Sera could decide when it would be time to share.

Patrick looked at Keras with the wide eyes of someone staring at a mythological hero. The former wielder of Dawnbringer, once bonded to Diamantine, the one who had freed Soulbrand from a prison of iron—

And much more that we could only infer, since the story he’d been telling us was far from finished.

…Would it stay that way? Would he…come back and tell us the rest of his story?

I didn’t know the answer to that.

I did know, however, that Patrick wasn’t the person most affected by Keras’ departure.

And, in spite of my fears, neither was I.

Mara looked like she desperately wanted to punch something, but the only thing she could fight was tears.

When Keras made it up to the roof, Wrynn trailing close behind him, he took a quick glance at all of us then walked to face the semi-circle we’d formed. “Well, this is more formal than I was expecting.” He reached up to scratch the back of his head. “I’m no good at this, so there won’t be a lengthy speech. I’m going now. Thank you all for giving me a home for the time I’ve been here. I don’t know when I’ll see any of you again, so, as a part of a little tradition from back home, I’ve brought some parting gifts.”

Wrynn snorted. “He means I brought parting gifts.”

“Eh, I brought you. It counts.” He threw a smile back at Wrynn. “The box, if you would?”

“Oh, sure. But be gentle with her, she’s very sensitive.”

Wrynn hurled the Jaden Box at Keras like a comet.

There was a loud crack as he grabbed the box out of the air with a smirk. “Thanks.” He turned to us. “Hm, let’s see…who’s first…”

“I’m first!” Wrynn skipped in front of him.

“…I meant which of them.”

“Right, obviously. But I have something for everyone. Don’t worry, I’ll be quick, then you can do all your sappy emotional stuff.” She spun away from Keras to face us. “You did me a favor by watching over my box, and Keras likes you, so everyone gets the same bland blessing — you’re under my protection.”

Sera raised an eyebrow. “…What, like a deity? Or more in the organized crime sense?”

“Oh, I like that first image more, but it’s definitely the latter. So, both? We’ll go with both.”

“…I feel like I’m missing some context here,” Patrick murmured.

“Oh, don’t be shy, you can speak up. Questions aren’t punished in my class. Now, to simplify — there are a lot of bad people out there. Some of them owe me favors. You have a run in with people you can’t handle? Maybe you give ol’ Wrynn’s name a try, see if it opens any doors. Or, at least, any exits.”

“…That seems about as likely to get them into trouble as out of it,” Keras noted.

“Eh, they should know not to name drop unless they really need to. And if you’re already going to get stabbie-stabbed, it’s not going to get you more stabbie-stabbed, is it? I mean, probably?”

I didn’t find Wrynn’s line of logic particularly reassuring, but it wasn’t a good idea to question gifts from overwhelmingly powerful ancient sorcerers. Even the crazy ones.

Especially the crazy ones.

“Thank you, Miss Jaden,” Sera bowed formally, responding with more grace than I could have, “we’re very grateful for your gift. And as for Keras’ offerings…I think we can start with the home owner,” Sera pointed to Derek.

Derek raised an eyebrow at Sera, as if wondering if she somehow had an angle on why she was setting up a specific gifting order, but then shrugged and turned to Keras. “Fine by me. What’d you get me?”

“Something with simple utility. Retrieve: Sharpshift Scabbard.” A scabbard appeared in his hand. He tossed it to Derek, who caught it quickly, then turned it over in his hands.

Even at a distance, I could see that it wasn’t in great shape. There were holes all over the scabbard, but I could still see glowing runes and…was that glowing thread? It definitely was.

“This thing still work?”

Keras looked a little abashed. “It does. I tried to fix it up, but, uh…”

“You probably just made it worse.”

“Maybe a little.” Keras shook his head. “Sorry. I’ve been meaning to get more of my old gear repaired, but the time and costs…”

“It’s fine. I know how much this means to you. I know where you got it and what you used it for. Thank you.” Derek reached out an empty hand.

Keras shook it. Correctly, even.

“You’ve got it. Now, next…” He turned to Sera. “Sorry. You already got yours.”

“Oh, I know.” She grinned. “Believe me, I’m more than happy with it. Hug?”

“I have a hard time saying ‘no’ to hugs. Come on.”

Sera walked forward and opened her arms. Keras pulled her in with surprising gentleness. Sera pulled away after a moment, and something seemed to pass between them as they nodded to each other.

Then, Sera simply jerked a thumb at me. “Corin might feel left out if he’s too far behind me in this, given that he’s so far behind me in everything else.”

Keras rolled his eyes. “Siblings. Fine. Retrieve: Training Box.”

Another box appeared in his hand.

Training box? Did…he get a copy of the Jaden Box made for me? Or maybe just a high-capacity material box to use for enchantment? Or…?

He reached out a hand to offer it to me. I accepted it and frowned as I realized it was heavy. I mean, not extremely heavy…but it wasn’t empty. Meaning it probably wasn’t an extra dimensional space item.

“Open it.”

I found a small metal latch on the box and flipped it open.

Inside were a dozen glittering crystals, each of which was labeled with a number. “Wait. Are these…?”

“Memory crystals.” He gestured toward the box. “There’s no substitute for direct experience when training, at least in my experience. Just reading books and listening to lectures never worked for me. These crystals are my own. They represent some of my battles against powerful opponents with skill sets similar to ones that you may face in the future. My hope is that you’ll be able to learn more from experiencing my perspective in these battles than you might have from a simple lecture.”

“But…you hate having people copy your memories.”

Keras shrugged. “Some things are worth a bit of discomfort. I hope they help you.”

I closed the box, then my eyes along with it, and cradled the box to my chest.

It seemed more real, then. That he was leaving, and that this might be the last time I’d be able to see him, to talk to him, to…

“…Thanks. For everything.”

“You’re welcome.” He waited for just a moment, then nodded simply and turned away.

It took me a moment to realize that he’d been waiting to see if I wanted to ask for a handshake…or a hug…but that he was being respectful of my boundaries. He didn’t ask out loud because he didn’t want to pressure me.

…But I’d missed the signal, so I’d…

I don’t know how I would have answered.

He just moved on.

“Patrick.” He turned to my retainer without prompting, apparently having decided on the sequence without any further need for Sera. “This is going to be awkward, but I’m going to need your help for it.”

“My help?” Patrick blinked. “I, uh, what do you need me to do?”

“Toss me your sword.”

I grinned.

I’d actually helped with this part.

Patrick blinked for a moment, then after a moment of hesitation, drew his sword…and flipped it around, then gingerly handed it to Keras.

There would be no “tossing” of Bright Reflection.

In spite of the earlier phrasing, Keras accepted the sword with just as much reverence as Patrick handed it to him.

Then, he tucked it briefly under an arm and reached into the Jaden Box. “Retrieve: Splinter of Dawn.”

Patrick’s eyes widened as a shard of metal appeared in Keras’ hand.

“That…is that…”

Keras hastily shook his head. “Oh, no, no. I probably shouldn’t have used such a loaded name — she’d want to murder me. No, it’s not a literal piece of Dawn. Not…not in the way you’re thinking, at least.” He seemed to struggle with words for a moment, then found himself. “I called it that because I built it — with Corin and Derek’s help — to house a copy of one of the powers Dawn and I made together. If, with your permission…”

Patrick nodded eagerly with wide eyes.

“…I merge this splinter into Bright Reflection, the sword will gain access to that power. When I used it, we called it ‘Body of Dawn’.”

“That…that…” Patrick gawked. “In the Sacred Sword Tournament, that was one of your strongest techniques!”

“It was.” He confirmed. “And a proper copy of Dawn wouldn’t be complete without some effort to match it.”

“But…uh, will I even be able to use it? A body-enhancement technique that powerful…and the time dilation effect of enhancing your speed…”

“We tuned it to start out much weaker than Keras’ version,” I explained, “but it’ll scale up in strength as your own attunement level increases. Of course, the stronger versions will burn through the weapon’s mana supply faster, and…even just using a Citrine-level version of it is going to burn through the mana pool shockingly fast, since it requires several different mana types in comparatively high quantities.”

“…But…it’ll work?” Patrick gawked. “I’ll be able to do what you did, when you were fighting against Xiaofan, and against Ishyeal Dawnsglow, and—”

Keras pressed the metal sliver into Bright Reflection’s blade. The metal merged together in an instant, creating a section near the center of the blade that glowed with new runes. Then, he flipped it around and offered it back to Patrick. “Find out yourself. The current activation is to say my old technique name, but Corin can change the method if you want a different one.”

Patrick reached out hesitantly, then took the sword back. “Th…thank you. I don’t deserve this.”

“Don’t be absurd. Dawn has three qualifications, so let’s look at them. You’re constantly insightful. You know your friends in many ways better than they know themselves. Brave? You threw yourself in the way of a lightning blast from Mizuchi and smashed it back in her face. Even Dawn herself would call that brave. And, if I’m being honest, she’d also call it ‘a rare proper use of her abilities’.”

“…What about strength?” Patrick asked.

“Strength is something we never stop building, Patrick. And your strength here,” he pointed at Patrick’s heart, “is something I’ve rarely seen matched.”

Patrick blushed brightly, ducking away with the sword. “…I…thanks. Just…can I…”

Keras opened his arms and Patrick practically flung himself into them.

Wrynn gave an amused snort. “You let that one go a little long, big guy. Think we can get going before the sun goes down?”

Keras sighed, eventually patting Patrick on the back and signaling for him to pull away. “You take care of the others, Patrick. They’ll need you most of all.”

Patrick looked up at him, his face shifting rapidly between emotions. “…I won’t let you down.”

“I know you won’t.”

Patrick backed away.

…And then it was just Mara’s turn.

And, for the first time I could remember, Mara silently lost a fight.

Tears flowed straight down her face before either of them even spoke.

“Mara—”

She trembled in place, staring at him. “Get out of here.”

“Mara…” Keras frowned. “I’m sorry, I have to—”

“I know. I just…I can’t…don’t look at me like this.”

She didn’t turn away, though, and neither did he.

He didn’t retrieve anything from Wrynn’s box for her. Instead, he handed the box to Wrynn, who immediately slipped it into a bag at her side.

Then, he walked straight over to Mara, turning his gaze to lock straight on her. “You made me proud. When you’re ready, come and find me. In the meantime…”

Then he shook the coat off his back, flipped it, and slipped it onto Mara’s shoulders.

“Don’t get into too much trouble.”

He leaned down, kissed her gently on the center of the forehead—

And then, in a blur, he was gone.

Mara collapsed to the ground immediately, sobbing. Sera and Patrick ran to hold her.

I turned to find Wrynn still standing on the roof, staring off in the distance. “…Ancestors, he’s gotten dramatic, hasn’t he?”

Then she turned straight back to me, winked, and vanished in a puff of rainbow smoke.

I thought I heard the word, “…Amateur…” whistling on the wind as she faded away.

CHAPTER XXVI – WAITING FOR WAKING

That night was hard.

I sat with the rest of them for a time, trading stories. After a time, Derek even summoned Tavare, who joined us in the storytelling — their perspective of the strange swordsman who’d lived with us was a little bit terrifying, but even more entertaining.

The next morning was harder.

I headed to the rooftop for some early-morning sparring—

But Keras wasn’t there.

Of course he wasn’t there. He’d left, and I knew that, but I…hadn’t fully processed it yet.

Mara was, though. She was sitting on the side of the rooftop, arms hugged around her legs. She startled when I came up, then her back slumped in something like resignation…or disappointment, maybe. The recognition that I wasn’t him, that he hadn’t come back, and that…it was just us now.

Just us, a box of fragmented memories, and a coat that was too big for her to wear.

She looked away. “…Mornin’, Corin.”

“Morning.” No “good” to preface it. Not for either of us. “…You want a match?”

She was silent for a moment, then frowned. “…Not just yet, I think.”

I nodded.

I wasn’t sure I was ready just yet, either.

We were silent for a moment, then she patted the roof next to her.

I hesitated, uncertain, then…silently, I sat down.

We watched the sun rise together.

Somehow, that just made me miss him more.

***

We finally had a half-hearted sparring match after a quiet hour or three, then retreated for breakfast. I considered breaking open the box with Keras’ training crystals, but it seemed too soon. I wasn’t ready to see him again, and I knew it’d be even worse for Mara if I decided to share the memory crystals with her — which I obviously did, unless his crystals instructed me not to.

After that, I resolved to get my mind off of it with an errand I’d been meaning to run for a while. I went and visited Researcher, acquired a memory crystal with her assistance, then headed to a warm and familiar face.

“Corin Cadence! What brings my favorite customer here?” Lars grinned across the counter. I was half-embarrassed to have him call me his “favorite customer” while others were in the store, but in fairness, he probably called them the exact same thing.

“I have something I promised you.” I reached into my bag to retrieve the memory crystal.

“Is that…” His expression sank for a moment, showing uncharacteristic hurt. “I, uh, thank you, lad. I wasn’t sure if you’d…”

I reached out and put it on the table. “Don’t feel obligated to watch it if you don’t want to. I don’t know if…”

He shook his head. “No. I need to know.” He glanced around the shop. “Come back later, would you? Around closing. I’d like to talk to you about this more.”

I nodded. “Sure. I…wouldn’t mind that.”

So, I left. The rest of the day was an unmemorable blur. Then, I went back.

Lars closed the shop after I arrived, then pulled up two chairs for us.

“You going to watch it now?” I asked.

“Already did, soon as the place was empty. A few times.” His shoulders slumped. “It…was just what I’d feared. But…thank you. I needed to see this. And with it, maybe…maybe I can start to figure out what happened.”

“You’re really going to try to find that place? After what happened?”

Lars nodded. “I am. I’m aware of the risks, but I owe them that. All of them. And…I believe I owe you a story.”

“You don’t need to tell me a thing. You’ve done plenty for me as it is.”

He shook his head. “No, no. I wouldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t tell you this — to make sure that what happened in here,” he gestured to the crystal, “never happens again.”

“…What do you mean?”

He closed his eyes. “You recall what I told you of the sword’s curse?”

“Of course. And you told me more recently that you weren’t really sure what it was, but that you tried to sell me the feather to help, even if it wasn’t literally a curse. I appreciate that.”

“Having seen what happened to Eria and the others…it’s…I think it’s important that you know more about the risks.”

“Eria? That’s…the woman in the vision?”

He gave me a sad smile. “She was an amazing fighter. I knew a lot of talented warriors, of course — but she was one of the best.”

“As good as Keras?”

Lars snorted. “Let’s not be ridiculous. Eria was an Emerald, but Keras…if you’ve seen him really cut loose…he’s a monster. But he was our monster.”

I felt a smile at that. I knew what he meant. “What did you want to tell me about Eria, then?”

“It’s less about her, in specific, and more about the sword. She…she had visions like yours. And as time went on, they got clearer and clearer, until she got the impression that the sword was waiting for something.”

“Waiting? I frowned. “For what?”

“For someone to wake it up.”

I frowned. “I…didn’t think the sword was that self-aware.”

“I suspect it wasn’t, at least when you first picked it up. The sword looks different from what I remember, you see. And I can only imagine that’s because of what happened in the vision.”

“The sword was broken.” I considered. “…And Keras mentioned something about the sword being fixed differently from the original, too. That it’s been broken many times before. He had other names for previous forms of it.”

“Ah, so he told you about that? Wasn’t sure if ‘e’d be wanting to share. Wielders always kept their business close to the heart, you know?”

“You knew other wielders?”

He raised an eyebrow at me. “Why, ‘course I did. Don’t know how much Selyrian has told you, but our camp was full of ‘em for a while. Dawnsglow liked to come and go, of course, and Akari wasn’t exactly a wielder, but…”

“I knew that Keras was with your expedition for a while, but he…didn’t get quite that far in telling his story. And I’m not sure if he’s going to, now.”

“Oh? Not like him to end a story early. What’s the problem?”

“…He’s gone.”

“Gone? You don’t mean…”

I raised my hands in alarm. “Oh, no, not dead! Sorry, sorry. Just…he left with an old friend.”

Lars grinned. “An old friend? Not one with golden eyes, was she?”

I shook my head. “No, nothing like that. Pitch black eyes, in fact.”

“Pitch black…” He frowned. “Meridian’s were dark, but I would have heard if…”

“I don’t think he’d mind if I tell you — he managed to summon Wrynn Jaden.”

“Oh! Jaden. He’d talked about her many times, but I never had the pleasure.” He slapped his table. “That bastard! He summoned one of the most infamous merchants in the history of the world and didn’t even give me an introduction?!”

I had to smile at his indignation. “…I’m sure it just slipped his mind.”

“Well, I’ll make him pay for it when he comes back.”

“…You think he’s coming back?”

Lars scoffed. “Of course he is, lad. Why would you think otherwise?”

“I…I don’t know. He just…it sounded like he had something important to do.”

“Right. ‘Course he does. Keras always has a quest. Several, really. Lad has a backlog of quests. But if there’s one thing you can be sure of…Keras Selyrian never abandons his friends. He’ll be back before you know it.”

…I doubted that even more than I doubted Lars’ stories in general, but it still felt good to hear it.

“That’s…thanks.”

“Now, that’s enough about our local sword collector. You have your own weapon to think about.”

“…Yeah. Selys-Lyann. Eria thought it was about to wake up?”

Lars nodded. “…Yeah. Several times, she said something about it getting close…and as it happened more and more, she got this feeling of foreboding. Like…even though it was her sword, she had this primal fear of whatever was inside it. And that she felt like when it happened, something would come for her. You get anything like that?”

I considered that. “…Maybe once, during a sparring session. Thought I heard a voice. Nothing since that, though. I think that, if anything, the sword may have fallen back to sleep.”

“Good. I suppose if you break a cursed sword enough, you might break the curse along with it.”

I wasn’t so sure of that.

We talked for a while after that. He told me stories of Eria and his old companions until late into the night. It was pleasant enough, comfortable, at least at first.

Maybe it was my imagination, but as his stories continued, I thought I felt something scratching at the boundaries of my mind.

Like when Lars had told his stories, Selys-Lyann had been listening.

Listening. Remembering.

And waiting.

CHAPTER XXVII – THE PROBLEMS OF PROGRESS

It was with great satisfaction that I set down the last of my set of base mana batteries. With a full set, I had the foundation to build a truly great variety of enchantments. I didn’t have many for compound mana types yet, but I’d started doing the research necessary for figuring out how to mix base types into compounds to generate those as well. That would be a much more extensive project, but for now, I already had plenty to work with.

It bothered me that the mana batteries weren’t all the same capacity, but that was a necessity. Derek had been able to assist me with some of them and I hadn’t been willing to pass up the opportunity to make those as large as possible. I still couldn’t manage Emerald-level containers for Derek to fill – not even close — but I had enough mana to just barely build low-end Citrine-ones. It was fortunate that a container required a lot less mana than the attunement level itself – I was still nowhere near hitting Citrine-level myself, even with both of my mana pools combined.

Not yet, but with my next project, it might be a lot faster.

I shoved aside my research notes on Mr. Stabbington and other void mana items. I’d done some work on them and built my first functional prototype, but I hadn’t finished it just yet, and I had something more immediate to focus on.

I exhaled a deep breath, then began to carve unfamiliar runes into the metal plate set into the back of a glove. My notes were laid out on the floor nearby, but I barely needed them. As my attunement’s power had grown, my memories seemed sharper and easier to recall. That was useful for remembering the right runes for any situation, although I did still find it disconcerting that my attunements were clearly gradually altering how my mind worked.

Nothing to be done about that. Just keep working.

And work I did. Etching the runes didn’t take long, but that was the easy part.

I charged the basic functions using mana from my battery set. The most important function was something I couldn’t have supplied the mana for with my own body, and required drawing from one of my few compound mana batteries — spirit mana.

The spirit mana was required for one of the first compound runes I’d ever worked with. Rather than being a simple function rune, recharge rune, or capacity rune, this one included all of those features built into a single rune. That’s actually an over simplification — it had multiple functions, rather than just one. In order to make that work, I had to charge the rune, then write all the sub-glyph functions directly into that single rune.

Why was I doing it that way, given my general preference for separate runes for each component of an enchantment?

That was simple — I was matching how an attunement worked.

The very idea of that was terrifying. I was, for the first time, effectively rebuilding a critical function of an attunement that wasn’t my own. And not a simple one: it was one of the most complex and dangerous attunement functions in existence. Deviating from the design of the attunement itself more than necessary was a risk I wasn’t willing to take, not until I’d at least replicated the basic design. Even tinkering with this was, in many respects, probably a terrible idea. It was far more advanced than anything our classes covered, even the third-year Enchanting class.

But if it worked…

I tried not to get too excited. Or terrified. I had a hard time avoiding either.

To ease the process of sub-glyph writing, I cheated judiciously. I held a pile of memory crystals from Researcher, each of which contained memories of my review process for each of the individual attunement sections I was working with. Rather than rewrite those functions manually, I simply copied them over mentally, just as I’d practiced with working on creating my internal Spessartine and Peridot functions.

I worked long into the night. Copying functions was comparatively simple work, but I needed to check and recheck each element of the sub-glyphs for any errors that occurred in that process. Beyond that, I had to verify the functionality of each individual baseline function — the simple stuff like the capacity and recharge functions.

I would never be satisfied that it was all correct. Not on my own. So, I invited a visitor to my room. “How does it look?” I asked.

“You need to give me a few minutes, Corin.” Cecily raised a hand. She looked exhausted, but excited to help. “My specialization helps with this, but I’m still not as experienced with sub-glyphs as you are. They’re not my primary area of study. I’m casting error checking spells section-by-section, but I need to be able to identify the sections first, and you don’t use the same kind of section markers that attunements do.”

Oh. Oops.

I was building attunement-style functions into the enchantment, but I’d sort of…skipped writing anything into the attunement to serve as filters or organization functions. I had my own internal way of categorizing everything, but that, uh, wasn’t very useful for other people looking at my enchantments.

It was good for security, I suppose? Let’s go with that.

Anyway, Cecily was kind enough to check…and re-check…that I hadn’t made any obvious mistakes.

“It looks correct. Within the boundaries of ‘correct’ that we can establish, that is, while trying to emulate something we don’t fully understand.” She handed the glove back to me. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Absolutely not.” I shook my head. “Positions?”

She nodded. “Science will remember you.”

Then she took her position behind the blast shield and I turned my Null Contract Gauntlet on.

I felt something shift inside my essence structure. I probably wouldn’t have noticed it much if I hadn’t been practicing my star vein and Dianis Point exercises, but with most of a semester worth of training, it was incredibly obvious and jarring. A section of my mana was being redirected straight into the new device, which I was wearing in direct contact with my Arbiter attunement. This probably wasn’t strictly necessary, but it did need to be in direct contact with my body in order for the functions to bypass my skin’s natural defenses to function properly.

I panicked briefly at the feeling, my hand trembling as I resisted the gut urge to turn it off. Instead, I turned my mind inward, focusing on the flow of the mana as it cycled slowly into the glove, then right back out, like the newly-forged glove was an extension of my body’s own essence structure.

It was, in effect, almost like I’d built a prosthetic version of an external Dianis Point, then set my essence to flow through that in addition to those in my body. This was the best way that I could accomplish my goal—

I’d successfully faked having a Summoner-style contract.

Or, at least the first stage of it. Right now, I had a portion of my mana flowing into the glove to represent the “cost” of a contract, then that same mana flowing right back out into my body.

Over the next week, I tested if that would increase my rate of mana gains by itself. The intention was to determine if simply having mana flowing out of the body into an external source and flow back was sufficient to foster the growth that a contract did, or if I needed a different type of mana flowing back in — much like Sera got different mana types from each contract — in order to accelerate growth.

A week of testing wasn’t anywhere near sufficient for a definitive answer, especially due to the sheer number of other variables in my mana growth, but…instead of my prior average of my Arbiter attunement going up in safe capacity by 11 mana per week (which already accounted for both my Arbiter attunement and training), my safe mana capacity went up by…10 points.

Less than usual.

I panicked, of course. Had I broken my attunement?

…I hadn’t, of course. That slight deviation was within the realm of averages, and I was trying so hard to avoid skewing my experiment results that I’d probably reduced my usual exercise a little to avoid false positives from the item.

But with a slightly lower value, I probably wasn’t benefiting from the item. At least, not to a significant degree.

So, I did something much more dangerous.

After significant consideration, I altered the item to work even more similarly to a true contract — this time, drawing heavily from the new notes that Sera had given me for my Name Day.

If it worked, the glove would provide me with a new usable mana type.

Choosing which one to work with was surprisingly difficult — I needed to consider what was safest, what was most useful, what was available, and what would be most likely to produce attunement growth.

Ultimately, I decided on spirit mana. There were a few reasons.

First, humans already had some degree of spirit mana by default, meaning it wouldn’t be entirely foreign to my body’s essence structure. Next, it was a potent utility-focused mana type — with spirit mana, I could potentially learn how to actually make contracts of my own, rather than relying on items. I’d still need to build those functions directly into my attunement to make it work, but this would be a first step. Finally, I knew that Keras had grown in power rapidly after establishing a bond with Dawnbringer…and that bond included spirit mana as a primary component. I couldn’t be certain that the spirit mana itself was the primary cause, but from what he had shared in his story, it seemed to be at least a major component.

After that, I needed to figure out how much mana to “exchange” with the item. I settled on a relatively low number at first — it would convert ten of my grey mana into spirit mana (with a small mana loss involved from the conversion process), then funnel it back into my body. The mana loss would be compensated for by the glove’s own mana supply and regeneration, effectively making the transfer process net-neutral, at least in theory. It was possible that in areas where the glove couldn’t get enough mana from the environment, it would fail to transfer enough mana, but that was a problem to solve in the future and one I didn’t think would be too dangerous. I built in some safety features to turn the glove off if my own mana dipped below a safe mana level, though, just in case.

With that done, I tested it for a week—

And my safe mana went up by fifteen points.

I checked and double-checked the numbers. I could scarcely believe it.

I’d seen growth rates like that before, but generally only during spire visits. If this was something I could maintain…it was an incredible find.

My “average” weeks had some variation, of course, but even accounting for that…my highest spike outside of a spire visit in my recorded data was thirteen points. That meant a roughly fifteen percent improvement over my “best” standard week…and about a thirty-six percent improvement over my average week…just for wearing an item.

But I couldn’t be certain it would stay that way, of course. So, I tested it for another week…

And my mana went up sixteen points.

With that, I went to pay Derek a visit. “I’m going to need more blank demi-gauntlet templates for everyone.”

“Sure. I can handle that. Why?”

I put a hand to the Null-Contract Gauntlet now worn on my hand. “I think I just broke our civilization.”

***

Two hours later, I’d explained what I’d discovered to Derek and the rest of the household…and I found myself sitting in front of Chancellor Meltlake.

Not for punishment, presumably. No, because apparently my find was significant enough that Derek felt it was necessary to call her over immediately.

…I guess she was due to come over for dinner, anyway.

While Derek scuttled around in the kitchen, somehow dual wielding pans to flip pancakes, I sat at the dinner table across from the academy’s chancellor — and arguably the single most powerful ordinary human in our nation — telling her about how I was about to make her obsolete.

“So,” she concluded, “you believe that this form of enchantment will allow anyone to eventually reach Emerald-level without doing any work?”

I waved a hand. “Potentially. There are clearly other factors in play, otherwise every single Summoner and Soulblade over forty would already be an Emerald. I suspect living in a mana dense location is one of the main factors involved. It’s also probable that contract-based attunements don’t get the largely automatic power growth unless the user is periodically upgrading their contracts or establishing new ones to create a sufficient mana toll on their body. In the case of enchantments, the same would be true.”

I paused for breath. “At first, I considered that this would require upgrading to higher-level devices periodically, but upon further consideration that may not be necessary. It would be more complex, but if I could figure out the necessary stress thresholds for how much mana a contract needs to use in order to cause the exercise effect, I could have the device automatically adjust the amount of mana it cycles.”

Meltlake raised an eyebrow. “From a financial standpoint, selling different models makes much more sense. You are planning to sell these, aren’t you?”

I hesitated. “I…considered that, of course. I’m not good with people, but even I understand the market for this type of thing. If I was to patent it — which I probably could — and announce the existence of these devices, I would have far more demand than I would ever be able to meet on my own. Regardless of what I charged. Being able to automatically improve an attunement’s mana is that valuable.”

“…These may be even more valuable than that. Can you actually use the mana the device is giving you?”

I blinked. “Sure. I haven’t done much with it yet, since spirit spells are kind of obscure, but I found a better version of my existing Spirit Tracking spell that uses spirit mana. It works just fine.”

“Corin, that by itself is something people would kill for.”

I gave her a skeptical look. “That can’t be right. People can get access to other mana types easily enough — they just need items. I already have batteries for every base type. I haven’t really done a lot with it yet, but I could pull mana out of the batteries to cast spells directly if I really had to. That’s almost the same as having access to another type of mana…and it can’t be uncommon at higher levels, right?”

Chancellor Meltlake sighed. “For a high-level Enchanter, perhaps, although you might be surprised how few of them bother with the effort necessary to have that kind of flexibility. But Corin, we’re not just talking about other Enchanters here. Your average person doesn’t own that many magical items…and even if they did, they couldn’t access the mana in batteries to directly cast spells. I’m not even sure your average Sunstone-level Enchanter could pull mana out of a battery fast enough to cast a spell with it. A Citrine or Emerald might, but there aren’t that many of those that bother with direct combat. They mostly work in manufacturing.”

…It was easy to forget that my compounding transference mana from two attunements made my mana transfer rates absurd. “Okay, that’s…huh. Yeah, I suppose that would be a big deal. But there are limitations. I don’t know what mana types I could provide through these devices safely. I’m testing it with spirit because I assumed my body would be able to handle it. I don’t know what would have happened if I’d tried to, say, give myself something like lightning.”

Meltlake nodded. “It might be dangerous, but that’s the type of thing that could be tested. Much of this needs to be tested in general. But you must understand that being able to access mana directly as if it is your own is superior to even your set of batteries example. If your body acclimates to the device, you should be able to convert your own mana into that type, much like Sera could with a contract. That means you wouldn’t be limited to whatever the capacity of the device itself is — and you could also intermix it with your spells freely.”

Chancellor Meltlake’s assumption was clearly that I couldn’t already do that from batteries…and I wasn’t actually sure about that. I thought that, with sufficient understanding of how mana conversion worked and practice, I probably could have managed to use a “sample” of mana from an external device to convert some of the mana in my body into that format. I’d probably have to tweak my attunement to add a new feature for converting to that specific mana type, but it didn’t sound impossible.

…That was, admittedly, both speculative and an unusual case. One that required the ability to analyze mana structures and modify attunements in a way that your average attuned simply couldn’t do.

I didn’t bother to explain that. It wasn’t important. The important part was that my invention was, in fact, even more valuable than I’d realized. “Okay…I get it. I’m basically giving people the same benefit as hitting Citrine-level, functionally, but through a device. And the possibility of choosing a mana type, assuming I had a variety of devices for sale.”

“Precisely. You have the potential to make something that every attuned in the world would want. What do you intend to do with that knowledge?”

That was the question, wasn’t it?

“I’m still deciding, but at the moment…I’m considering explaining it publicly and distributing the plans freely.”

She nodded. “And then charging a licensing fee to anyone who wants to build them?”

“…No. I mean…no, just no. I could go that route, but…shouldn’t this type of thing be shared with everyone? It’s like what you did with telling everyone about house secrets. Dianis Points and star vein exercises have already transformed our academy — in a good way. If I could contribute to that, then…”

“You have a good heart to be thinking in those terms, Corin, but there are a litany of issues with taking that approach. Not necessarily unsolvable ones, but you may not like the solutions.”

“What do you mean? Are you talking about other people trying to patent my idea if I don’t do it myself?”

“That is one issue, yes, but a solvable one — you could theoretically patent something and then make it public domain deliberately. I was speaking of issues I consider to be greater. First, you have only done the bare minimum of testing. Announcing this now creates the risk that people go off and make their own models — and people get hurt as a result of elements you have not yet tested. You explained that you have only tested this with spirit mana — what if other types are more dangerous? You hold a degree of responsibility for any harm that comes if you announce this prematurely and others make devices that cause harm.”

“Ah. That, uh, yes. That’s true. I just…sort of assumed that people would do their own testing, and that…ugh. Yeah, okay.” I frowned. “What else?”

“Quality control. This is an even greater issue, Corin. You have to be aware that the safety of your devices is contingent on your purification function. Any random Enchanter making something analogous to this is going to poison people.”

“…Sure. But there are mana purifiers. They’re expensive, but they exist. And Citrine-level Enchanters and higher can learn to purify their own mana. It’s a lot of work, but you don’t need an Arbiter attunement to make something like this.”

“Do you think that would stop other Enchanters from trying to make them without meeting those requirements?”

I paused. “…Yes? Maybe? I…don’t know. I know people cut corners sometimes, but…this is so basic. ‘Don’t make a product that poisons people.’ Why would anyone skip that basic of a step?”

“Because the profit potential from building these types of devices vastly outstrips the potential for the costs of legal fees from disgruntled attuned who find themselves poisoned by the mana. A large enough enchanting factory will already have legal practices in place for this sort of thing. They’ll have a variety of approaches. Settling out of court for a fraction of the profit they’re making on the devices. Claiming that their devices aren’t the cause of the poisoning — it would be difficult to prove. Deflecting blame to you for the original design. It’s highly probable that you’d end up spending time in court trying to argue against misinformation and propaganda spread by companies with vast influence over the public consciousness.”

“…I…” I wrung my hands in the air, then gave a defeated laugh. “…What do I even do about that?”

“You need to do more testing before you make this public. Significantly more. And beyond that, you need backing — which will also help with your other major problem. If you really intend to make this public, you’re going to make yourself one of the largest targets in existence for people like the Sons of Valia that oppose the broader distribution of power.”

“One of the largest targets aside from you?”

Meltlake smiled. “I’d like to think I’d still be a little higher on their list, but you’d be a close contender. And more importantly, you are, unfortunately, a much easier target.”

…Without Keras, I certainly am.

I pushed aside the feeling of hurt that came along with that thought. “Anyone would be an easier target than you are. But I’m here, living with an Emerald. I can’t get too much safer.”

“You’re thinking purely of people who can defend themselves in a physical fight. That’s not unwise, but there are other types of protection to think of — most notably politically. You may be a noble, but your position in your household is…”

“I know.” I shook my head. “That’s a whole other issue, I don’t want to get into it. But if you think I need political shielding…I don’t know. Would simply publicly announcing myself as the Arbiter of Katashi be good enough?”

She seemed to consider that. “No. If you were the Arbiter of Tenjin, it might help to a degree, but Katashi is a foreign visage. If you took that approach, they would simply spread propaganda that you were under the influence of a foreign power. Maybe imply that your devices are somehow involved in a conspiracy to overthrow Valia by foreigners.”

“That’s ridiculous!” I rubbed my temples. “How would that even work?”

“For people who don’t understand how enchantments work, it would be easy to sell them on the idea that, say, your devices have some kind of mind-control component.”

“But…but…I was going make the device plans public! Anyone could make them! How would I include mind control in that?!”

“You couldn’t, of course, except perhaps in the ones you built yourself. But that isn’t the point, Corin — all they have to do is raise doubt that your devices are safe, or that they’re corrupted in some way by a foreign power, or that they’re against Selys’ will. Word of mouth will do the rest, unless you have similar influence to spread the truth. And even then, you’re in for a battle.”

“I…don’t know if that’s a battle I can fight.” I hung my head. “I…I just wanted to make something that helps people. Why is that so hard?”

“I’m sorry, Corin.” Chancellor Meltlake looked pained. “I truly wish it was simpler, but it isn’t. This is the world we live in. We need to make what we can of it.”

“…Should I just give up, then?” I gave another stressed laugh. “Just give these things to my friends? Hoard knowledge? That’s just…so pitiful.”

“You should never feel bad about just doing something to help the people you can help, Corin, even if that doesn’t extend to everyone in the world. Starting with the people you trust is a good idea — you need to do data collection somehow. But if this feels like it’s too much, there are alternatives.”

I felt my hands tightening. “…Yeah. Like selling to Farren Labs.”

“Or any other large enchanting factory, yes. They would have the resources necessary to fight the issues of public perception you’re dealing with.”

“But they might cut corners and hurt people, like you mentioned earlier.”

“Absolutely. Some companies would. If you chose to take that route, you would be wise to patent the idea first, then speak to several companies to see who you believed would do the best work — and offer you the most in return. There’s no shame in benefitting from your own invention. You could use those resources to help make more discoveries.”

“I guess, that just…feels dirty. I don’t know. If propaganda is the main problem, isn’t that something you and Derek could help me with?”

“We would do what we can, of course, but you do realize we have other responsibilities?” She smiled.

“…Of course. I didn’t mean to impose, I just…”

“It’s fine. You’ve helped me, and you’re trying to do what you can to help benefit society in a way that mirrors my own action. I respect that, and of course I would do what I can to support you. You must understand, however, that I have my own enemies to deal with, my own battles to fight. And my resources are not what they once were.”

I was wise enough not to say “because you’re no longer in House Hartigan”. I was curious about what happened there, but it wasn’t the right time to ask. “If I didn’t want to go through a corporation, and you don’t feel like you’d be able to give it sufficient time to handle it on your end, what other route would you suggest?”

“You could consider tying yourself to a stronger house. Adoption might be an option, especially if you choose to leave House Cadence outright.”

I froze. “…Adoption? Who would…I don’t…”

“You live with one of the most powerful members of House Hartigan. I’m sure Derek would consider it, if you wanted to go that route.”

I winced. “No, I…I don’t think…”

I liked Derek, but…he wasn’t family. Was he? I didn’t think so.

Tristan was family. My parents were, as much as they might have hurt me.

Sera was family.

More than any of the others, in that moment.

Was…there anyone else?

Who cared for me? Who treated me like family?

My mind flashed to Patrick’s effortless laugh. Mara raising her fists and throwing me a wink to signal the start of our latest match.

…And a masked swordsman who had offered to fight my father.

Were they…family?

I didn’t know the answer to that. But I did know that I wasn’t ready to give up my name.

Not without a fight.

I shook my head. “That would be very kind, but I don’t think it would be right for me.”

“Very well. Then there’s another possibility — have you considered a political marriage to a powerful family?”

I nearly choked on my tea. “I…uh. No. I mean, I technically have considered it, I mean, when I was a child, Cecily and I might have…”

“House Lambert might not be a terrible option,” Chancellor Meltlake mused aloud. “They’re wealthy and well-connected. If not, Derek does have several unmarried cousins your age. And you do have established connections with House Theas as well.”

I nearly knocked my cup over entirely as an image of Sheridan Theas in a wedding suit flashed in my mind. “Ah, I, don’t think I know Deni well enough to…”

Chancellor Meltlake flashed me a mischievous smile. “I didn’t say anything about any Theas in specific.”

I blushed so brightly that I looked like my skin had just hit Carnelian-level. “I, uh…I think both of the Theas siblings I know are a bit too old for me, so…”

“Five years is a lot at your age,” Meltlake’s smile broadened, “but when you’re twenty-five or thirty, it might not seem like quite as big of a deal.”

“Uh…let’s maybe, uh, not talk about that more. Or ever again.”

“Of course. It was just an option.” She maintained her knowing smile.

I just…sort of buried my head in my hands for a minute.

“Dinner is served!” Derek declared, rescuing me from further discussion as he slid a plate across the table to each of us.

“We can take a break from this talk to eat, then. Thank you for cooking, Derek.” Chancellor Meltlake picked up her utensils and began to cut her food.

“My pleasure!” Derek grinned. “Thanks for coming to visit. Of course, I could always invite the Theas family next time if you’d like to make further arrangements…”

I briefly considered if it was possible to hide under my plate.

Fortunately, after that bit of teasing, Derek simply summoned the rest of the household down to eat. I paid little attention to the food and excused myself for the conversation that followed. The food and company were excellent, but I had a great deal to think about.

CHAPTER XXVIII – WEARING THE GLOVE

There were no easy answers to things like “how much should I upend Kaldwyn’s society with my inventions”.

There was, however, something very simple that I needed to do — something I’d been neglecting for too long.

It was with that in mind that I knocked on a door early the next morning.

Patrick opened it almost immediately, without even asking who was there. That in itself showed a significant difference between us, one that was highlighted further by his easy smile that seemed to come automatically as soon as he saw me.

Smiling had never been easy for me, even before everything that happened. Still, I forced that mask into place with practice, even if joy wasn’t exactly the right representation for my mood.

“Good morning, Corin! Did you need something?”

The fact that he was immediately asking if I needed something was another good illustration of who he was. Ordinarily, he would have probably been right — I rarely would have visited anyone first thing in the morning otherwise.

But I’d sought him out for a reason. “I…can I come in?”

“Oh, of course! Sure!” He waved me into the room and pulled out a chair from his desk for me. I sat down.

“Thanks.” I stumbled over words that I’d already planned in my head. “Uh, so, look. There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk about.”

“That sounds serious.” He gave a little laugh. “Should I be worried?”

I shook my head. “No, nothing like that. It’s more of an apology.”

“Apology? Why?” He blinked innocently.

I sighed. “…When you first asked to be my retainer, I didn’t treat that with the seriousness it deserved. It took Sera pointing it out to make me understand that you’d made a life-altering choice to enter into the service of our house…and even with that knowledge, I’ve barely acknowledged it. So, first and foremost…thank you, Patrick. Thank you for your loyalty and dedication. And thank you for…trying to be a friend, even when I wasn’t ready for one. Or deserving of one.”

“Oh, come on. You’re going to make me blush.” He laughed. “For what it’s worth, Corin, I get it. You’ve been through a very difficult few years. Several years, really. You don’t need to say anything…and you have reached out, in your own way. You make things for me. For all of us. Bright Reflection…I’ve said this before, but I’ve never been given a more meaningful gift. I mean, uh, aside from the glove, maybe.”

I shook my head. “You don’t need to append that last part to it. I know the sword was more important…and that is, in some respects, why I’m here. I didn’t treat giving you my glove with the sincerity that it deserved. And so, I’d like to offer you a better one.”

“A better…glove?” He raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sure I understand.”

I slipped the Null Contract Gauntlet off my hand. “This represents the current pinnacle of my work. The first enchanted item that I could consider truly of my own design. I’m still borrowing heavily from the work of my predecessors, and from the designs of attunements themselves, but…the core concept here, the work…it’s the purest representation of me that I’ve been able to forge. As such, it has great meaning to me, even beyond the physical value that it offers…and for that reason, I’d like you to have it.”

“Corin…that’s…” He looked at the gauntlet. “Are you sure? I’ve seen you wearing that. I know what you said about your mana levels at the end of the week. That’s helping you advance faster. Much faster.”

“Exactly.” I nodded. “In order for giving you the glove to mean something, it has to mean that I’m willing to make you a priority and acknowledge what you do for me. That I trust you and value you.”

“But…you shouldn’t have to sacrifice something you need for that.”

“On the contrary, I think that’s exactly why I need to do this. It’s the only way to thank you appropriately.”

“…You’re sure?”

I nodded. “Please, accept this.”

“Then…if you’re certain…” He took the demi-gauntlet with great hesitation, then slipped off my old glove…which he was already wearing, of course. And he put the new one on in its place. “Thank you, Corin. This means a lot to me.”

“It means a lot to me that you accepted. Thank you, Patrick.” I gave him a weak smile. One that was, perhaps, a bit more genuine than the mask I’d worn when he’d opened the door.

“…So, do you need any help making yourself a new one? I assume you’re getting started right away.”

I coughed. “…Am I really that predictable?”

Patrick laughed. “I’m your retainer. Knowing your mind is a part of my job.”

My retainer.

In that moment, it felt a little more real.

“Let’s get to work.”

CHAPTER XXIX – GRADES ABOVE “A”

The rest of the week went more or less smoothly. I finished building a second Null Contract Gauntlet to start using myself immediately, as well as a third one that I didn’t hand out immediately.

Sera was the obvious choice, but she didn’t actually need one, since she already had a contract attunement.

Derek was another option, given that he’d been paying for my work, but he also had a contract attunement…and as an Emerald, the mana tax from my gauntlets wouldn’t even be noticeable for him. Still, I could have handed it to him for symbolic reasons.

Mara was a good choice. She was in a position to benefit from using it, as well as my usual training partner. And in Keras’ absence, I felt like doing something to help reinforce our bond was a good idea. Unfortunately, she already wore enchanted bracers, which complicated the idea of handing her a gauntlet. It would have been better to make her a custom model that incorporated the Null Contract and additional punching functionality…or maybe just something other than a glove, especially given that her attunement was located on her chest. A piece of armor, maybe, or just a sigil to be worn on her undershirt.

Cecily was probably the best choice, given that she was physically helping me with the work. Giving her a glove might have come across as a proposal, however, and in spite of it being comparatively simple to explain that it was just a gift for helping with the work, I wasn’t quite ready to handle it.

So, while in the grips of brief decision paralysis, I held onto that third glove, debated, and worked on a lower priority project — an automatic mana crystal generation device.

The concept was extremely simple — it was functionally similar to a mana battery, but designed to use the mana it was pulling in to generate mana crystals.

Of course, if it was that simple, every Enchanter out there would have an infinite money device.

Generating mana crystals was a mana manipulation exercise — or what Keras would call “shaping”. In concept, it was simple enough. Mentally, I knew how to compress mana gradually until it held a solid state.

But while I was able to perform that process manually, that didn’t mean that I could translate it into a device easily. It wasn’t as simple as “apply ‘x’ units of pressure to ‘y’ mana for ‘z’ duration”. The exact amount of mana mattered. The composition of the mana mattered. The amount and composition of the ambient mana in the area mattered.

When I was doing it as an exercise, I didn’t have to think about all the math behind it that heavily — I was able to physically watch and sense the state of the mana while I compressed it into the right shape.

With an automated device, I had to account for all sorts of variables ahead of time.

You’d think that someone would have already done that work — and you’d be right. Sadly, the documentation for it was considered a “trade secret”, and thus not publicly available. Existing models of crystal-generation devices were used for fabrication by large corporations (or the military) and not for sale in the open market.

I probably could have used my connections to get a look at a military-owned one in a facility somewhere, but that would have meant talking to lots of people, and I didn’t want to do that.

So, instead, I began to work on trying to build one from scratch.

By the end of the week, I had a device that spat out something that looked like a mana crystal every hour, except that the crystal was completely unstable and vanished after about three minutes.

…Progress was progress, at least. But I was out of time.

It was the end of the semester and that meant something I’d been dreading — final exams. Every individual class had some kind of exam, plus we had the added bonus of a “general” final exam, similar to the one where we’d been sent off to the Vanreach Mountains for a scenario in the first year. Fortunately, the general final this semester was much smaller in scale and wouldn’t be in as remote of a location. Less fortunately, that was simply because it was an assessment for our capability and roles for the between-semester war games, which I expected to be a significant challenge.

The first exam up was Physical Training.

***

Our Physical Training class was split up into several locations, which made a degree of sense once I saw the exam itself — obstacle courses. The course was too long for every student to run it individually, but didn’t have enough space for the entire class to run it at the same time…thus, we were split into six groups, each overseen by a third-year student.

I was lucky enough to be assigned to the same grouping that Patrick was, but the rest of my teammates were stuck with other groups.

“Study the course. You have twelve minutes.”

“Can we go on the track?” An unfamiliar student asked.

“Yes, but I advise you to go around.”

I considered, then asked, “I’m an enchanter. Can I make changes on the track during the prep time?”

The third-year gave me a quizzical look. “Sure, if you think you can enchant something in twelve minutes. Well, less than six now.”

Most of the students heard that and sprinted off in a panic.

I simply paused and considered my options, at least at first.

Okay, if I’m allowed to prep the field, then I could etch something into…

“C’mon!” Patrick gestured. “Let’s get a look!”

I blinked. I’d half-forgotten he was there. “…Right, of course.”

The course was huge — and it split into two main branches at the end of a straightforward race track style section at the start. I couldn’t see the end of either branch from the starting point.

“You go left, I go right?” I asked.

“Good call!”

We split off at a jogging pace. I was tempted to sprint in parallel with my branch to make sure I could reach the end and back before the time limit, but I had to balance that with not wasting too much of my energy. We didn’t know how much downtime we’d have before the actual test started after our twelve minutes of observation time.

Race track first, that’s simple enough. Can Haste through it.

After that, I reached the area where the track branched off. I ran to the right side as planned.

The next section has gaps in the ground…looks like they fall into some kind of tar pit. Patrick can levitate over it. I can use jump spells or improve my reflexes with light magic.

After that, a section of the track was covered by a sheet of impenetrable darkness. A couple other students frowned at it, then ran past me to inspect the next section.

I hurled a globe of light into the darkness. We weren’t told that we couldn’t use spells to observe the track, after all.

Bees. The next section of the track was filled with giant bees.

Oh, that’s just mean.

It wasn’t just bees, though — several parts of the floor of the dark section were drenched with something sticky. I frowned, considering leaning down to poke an item into it to see what the texture was like, but the smell hit me as I approached.

Honey? Is that real honey?

Someone was certainly going for a theme, at least. I laughed and kept going. Both Patrick and I had access to light magic — in my case, through temporarily activating the Citrine-level attunement function that granted the mana type, and in his case through using Bright Reflection. Those would make the chief part of the challenge trivial. The honey pits could be as easily avoided as the gaps in the previous section. The giant bees couldn’t be particularly powerful if people were expected to be able to handle them in the dark — they were probably intended to be more of a nuisance. We could fight them, but we’d probably just end up repelling them with air or transference mana instead.

With that in mind, I rushed to the next section. Another track, but this one had a massive stone wall in the center. There were some handholds in the side.

…And a handful of runes etched into the stone.

Earth reinforcement. Automatic repair. And…some kind of earthquake variant? Oh, the wall shakes when you climb it.

Hilarious. I’ll jump over. Patrick will fly.

I frowned. This was almost too simple. Where were the real challenges?

I kept going. The next section of the track was slick with oil. Patrick could fly over that, too. I’d have to be more careful.

It’s only a hundred meters or so…I could probably bounce myself across it with jump spells and my ring without ever hitting the ground. Not quite as good as levitation, but it would probably work. I could also probably clear a space with transference mana or try to improve my reflexes enough to run through the oil without slipping.

Next, there was a long stretch of seemingly normal ground. I ran alongside it, worried that I was running short on time, but paused briefly for one check.

Detect Aura.

Several parts of the seemingly standard track glowed.

Traps, then…or illusions of normal ground. I’ll have to warn Patrick, then dodge these.

Finally, my track converged with Patrick’s. At the very end of the track was a massive stone golem, twenty feet tall, which stood just in front of the end of the now-converging courses.

I found Patrick at the end of the track.

“We’re almost out of time,” Patrick said, “let’s talk while we run back.”

“Wait.” I’d had a chance to do some thinking on the way there. I stepped onto the very end of the track, behind the golem.

The golem slowly turned toward me, apparently activated by my presence on the track.

I had a brief moment of panic, but I didn’t need to be on the track long. I reached into my bag, ducked down to drop something, then dodged as the golem swung massive fists toward the ground.

After that, I rushed right back off the track. The golem stood, then turned back into the default position and went inactive.

“Wait.” Patrick blinked. “Are you sure that’s…?”

“Probably,” I grinned. “He said I could make changes.”

I paused for another second to talk to a third-year Diviner who was monitoring the end of the track. I explained what I’d done. She laughed, then gave me a hand-sign for “affirmative”.

Patrick and I ran to the start of the course, explaining our observations along the way (just in case Plan A didn’t work), and made it back with about thirty seconds to spare. Then, we took our positions at the starting line with the other students.

“Prepare yourselves,” the third-year instructed. “You’ll all be running it together. Interfering with others is permitted, but not in ways that cause direct harm. This isn’t that sort of competition.”

“So, things like debilitating spells are allowed?” One of the students asked.

“Yes, but no direct attack magic or striking with weapons to cause harm to each other. You can fight the monsters, however, and you’re encouraged to.”

“Can we help each other?” I asked.

The third-year shrugged. “If you want to. You won’t get a better grade for helping people on this one, though, even if you’re stuck with a support attunement.”

That didn’t sound like he was trying to be deliberately offensive about my Enchanter status — it was just the kind of general dismissiveness most people had about Enchanters. The only surprising part was how infrequently I’d been hearing it recently — I’d mostly kept to my own social circle, so aside from some early snide remarks I’d gotten in the dueling class from people who didn’t know me, I’d been mostly isolated from the attitude most Valians held about support attunements.

At one point, it might have bothered me. Now?

I just had to suppress a laugh.

We were going to destroy this test.

“Contestants ready…” The third-year started… “Go!”

Most of the students took off at a run.

Patrick and I stepped onto the track next to each other. I reached out with a hand and put it on Patrick’s shoulder.

“Return.”

We appeared on the other side of the course next to the teleportation anchor I’d placed behind the golem and stepped across the finish line.

The third-year Diviner on the other side burst out laughing again as soon as she saw us. “Your time is…one point eight seconds. That’s probably a school record. Names?”

We gave our names, then chatted with the third year for the next ten minutes before the first of the other students finished the race.

“We don’t usually give out grades for this in advance,” the third year told us after the race was concluded, “but in this case, I can’t hold back. Congratulations, Patrick Wayland-Cadence and Corin Cadence. You’ve hit Grade ‘S’.”

***

Much like attunements had a near-mythical Sapphire-level, class grades typically ended at “A”, but there were occasional cases where someone performed above the standards of a class to such a degree that a higher grade was warranted. In those rare cases, an “S” was issued.

I had no idea how that would impact our overall scores for the year, but honestly, just having one on my record felt great.

Patrick and I took a few minutes to celebrate together, but that was all we could afford — our finals were far from over.

***

After the rush of exertion from Physical Training, most of my finals were simple and anticlimactic.

Attunement Optimization? A written exam.

Alternate Mana Sources? A written exam, but with a little more snark from the teacher.

Foreign Attunements and You? A written exam, but with an artistic flair, since it had a section where we had to design and draw a hypothetical new attunement. I didn’t have the heart to tell the teacher that I’d already been working on exactly that for weeks — and that I probably could have demonstrated a functioning prototype if I truly wanted to.

I mean, it might have exploded, but that was always a risk with prototypes.

Anyway, those were easy.

Intermediate Mana Manipulation was…well, actually even easier.

“Today, we’ll be testing mana transfer rates,” Professor Ezran explained. “On the desk in front are several pre-etched items with simple grey mana capacity runes of varying sizes — Quartz, Carnelian, and Sunstone. You may take one or more items and charge the capacity runes as much as possible before the end of class. I will measure the amount of mana in each item you’ve worked on when you’ve reached the time limit. Be warned that incompletely charged items will result in a much lower score than completely charged ones, even if the incomplete item has more mana. For example, a fully-charged Carnelian capacity rune with 60 mana will result in a higher score than a partially-charged Sunstone rune with eighty. A single fully-charged Carnelian rune will, however, also award more points than ten 6-mana capacity Quartz items, and so on. Thus, you will be graded on both your transfer rate and a proper self-evaluation of your capabilities.”

“Can we use other items to help us?” One of the students asked.

“Yes. You’re Enchanters. If you’ve prepared, you’re doing it right. Now, prepare yourselves. You have one hour.”

Most of the students began to take off simple items like their shield sigils with the intent of pulling mana out of them. That wasn’t a bad idea.

“Begin.”

The students rushed the table to take empty items. Most people went straight for Carnelian ones, which made sense — the majority of the students were a little way into Carnelian-level at this point themselves. They’d probably get one capacity rune done before the end of the class, maybe two.

Some went for the safer approach of taking a massive pile of blank Quartz-level items that could be charged quickly. That wasn’t a terrible idea, either, since it meant they were less likely to be caught in the middle of a charging process.

I went straight to the Sunstone-level items, then frowned. “There are only three of them?”

Professor Ezran blinked at me. “…There isn’t enough time to charge more than one per student, and we don’t even have anyone at Sunstone-level here. I know you have more mana than the other students, but…”

“Never mind, I’ll just make more.”

I swept up the three Sunstone-level items, went back to my desk, and pulled out my tools.

Etching rod. Stamping rod. Mana batteries. Mana-regeneration sigil. Mana-regeneration bracers.

Time to work.

An hour later, I dropped the three Sunstone-level items I’d started with on the table in front of the teacher.

Then three more.

Then three more.

The hardest part of the process had been pulling the mana out of the non-grey mana batteries and then converting it back into grey mana in my body. That wasn’t a typical exercise, but I’d run out of grey mana batteries and other grey mana supplies before I’d managed to finish the whole set, so I’d had to get creative. I’d considered pulling the mana out of my circlet and message necklace as well, but I’d run out of time before that point.

Professor Ezran stared at the item pile in disbelief. “I watched you do it and I still don’t believe it.”

It was probably the nicest thing another Enchanter had ever said to me, but I didn’t know how to reply. “Thanks?”

“I don’t suppose you want to reevaluate that offer to be a teaching assistant for next semester?”

I shook my head. “No, thank you.”

“Then you’re done here.” The teacher scribbled something on a note. “Turn this in at the front office. You’ve passed the class.”

“For the semester?”

“No,” he shook his head, “for the year.”

***

I turned in my note later, barely processing the congratulations I received at the front office, and stumbled back home.

I was thrilled to be doing so well, but I couldn’t relax.

The next day was the final for my dueling class.

***

I stepped into the arena feeling pretty confident. That was getting to be less and less of a novelty as the year continued — beating Jerome in the spire had shown how much I’d grown in single combat, and my team…

Well, frankly my team wasn’t very fair.

Patrick and I were probably two of the best individual fighters in our grade. Beyond that, we lived together and trained together constantly. We developed strategies for utilizing our abilities collaboratively and practiced them regularly.

Lute was the weak link in terms of teamwork — but in terms of overall fighting ability…

I’d practiced with him enough to know that he had us outclassed. His presence in the class itself was completely unbalancing, at least when he was putting in any serious effort toward winning. He seemed to be deliberately limiting his abilities, much like Derek had in that first Survival Match that I’d watched, but I had little doubt that Lute could defeat any ordinary student in a serious fight.

Naturally, that meant I was mostly concerned about people who weren’t ordinary students.

Third-year-students were the most obvious. Not only did they have an additional year of training — which was nothing to scoff at — the third-years were elites. They’d been hand-picked to remain on campus in a support and protection role. Throughout the year, I’d seen most of the third-years in action and I knew that many of them had unusual advantages — rare items, foreign attunements, and even a Crystal Mark or two.

In other words, they were the most like us.

Team Goddess’ Grace had performed well throughout the year, but it was Team Bloodline that was truly dominant. They’d been high-ranking and consistent, with their team entirely consisting of Sunstones, and their captain was nearing Citrine-level. I didn’t see Team Bloodline around before the matches started, which was a little odd, but I wasn’t looking closely.

The third-years weren’t the most dangerous people around, though, at least in my own estimation.

Satsuki was sitting in the audience.

I hadn’t seen her during my earlier dueling classes, but she was a student, and Teft had dueling classes during other times in the day. Maybe she was in a different class and had joined one of the teams for this one due to a schedule conflict or someone dropping out mid-year?

…Or maybe she was just there to watch me.

She waved directly at me when I saw her there, looking so bright and cheerful that I might have mistaken her for something other than, you know, a literal murder serpent. The way her fangs peeked out when she grinned was a reminder of her true nature, one I couldn’t forget in spite of her apparent friendly demeanor.

…I waved back and forced a smile. I certainly wasn’t going to be rude to a murder serpent, after all. There were much more comfortable ways to ensure my early demise if I wanted to do that.

And I still felt terrible about my earlier failure, when I’d seen her being mistreated.

She looks better today, at least. I…hope Sera helped her feel better after what happened. I never asked Sera about what happened after I walked away that day, did I? I should…do that sometime.

Talking to Satsuki directly was, it seemed, still too much for me to even consider. I did, however, worry about my odds if she ended up in the arena. I’d managed a double ring-out with trickery when I’d fought her in the Survival Match, but she wasn’t likely to fall for the same technique twice. She might have even picked up direct countermeasures for it.

Troubling.

Even if Satsuki was an obvious threat, though, my mind was more focused on one that wasn’t visible — Team Skyseeker.

Throughout the semester, Team Skyseeker had absolutely dominated my dueling class. As the year had progressed, I grew more and more convinced that they weren’t just using attunements, but some kind of foreign sorcery. I wished I’d asked Keras more about them before he’d left.

I did ask Lute about my suspicions, but he simply said, “Oh, that’s forbidden knowledge, sorry!”

And that was that.

I was getting very tired of forbidden knowledge.

I probably should have done some independent research on them, or maybe tapped Researcher for help, but my focus during the semester had been on a particular duel that was coming up after the semester, not anything as trivial as opponents for a classroom brawl.

Oddly, I didn’t see them around before the matches for the day began, either — and it wasn’t like Mary’s team to run late. Her whole team loved dueling class.

Must be doing some last-second prep. That’s a little scary.

And as intimidating as the members of Team Skyseeker were, they weren’t the ones I was most worried about. The most unusual students, after all, were the ones I knew the best.

Roland clearly had something mysterious going on, but I’d figured out that he (probably) wasn’t a member of Spider Division and just sort of….never bothered to ask what his actual deal was. As a Diviner, he wasn’t traditionally considered a massive one-on-one threat, but he had a variety of information gathering spells that could be extremely useful for support. And I strongly suspected he had something else giving him abilities, even though I’d never seen him directly demonstrate anything outside of a standard Diviner’s magic. He just seemed…a hint too strong, a smidgen too fast, that sort of thing. Maybe he was just using Enhancement mana regularly and training, but my gut told me that wasn’t it.

I probably just could have asked at any time, but I was bad at that, so I didn’t.

And then, of course, there were Mara and Sera.

Mara was my usual training partner, so I didn’t expect a lot of surprises there. She probably beat me six out of ten times in our matches, but that was hardly an insurmountable margin…and I had no intention of squaring off against her directly. No, we’d throw Lute’s overwhelming power at her if we could. She had enough sparring experience against Keras that she wouldn’t be totally overwhelmed fighting a sword fighter, but if I was right about Lute’s real power, she simply wouldn’t have the mana to keep up with him if he took the fight seriously.

As for Sera…

Well, she was the biggest problem, wasn’t she?

I had plenty of plans for her. Contingencies for all of her known capabilities.

She can’t enter the arena with her monsters already summoned, so she’ll be limited by both her summoning speed and her mana, unless she decides to lean into her Invoker abilities…which she probably won’t. She doesn’t want people to know about her attunement.

If she summons Vanniv, Patrick has counters to all of Vanniv’s spells, and I can handle him in close range if needed.

Researcher doesn’t have strong enough combat capabilities to be a major threat. Her abilities overlap with Roland’s, too. I suppose there could be some synergies there that I’m not aware of, but she seems like an unlikely pick, especially since she doesn’t like being summoned and unsummoned. Sera probably won’t summon her.

Emery…if Sera even still can summon her, she’s of minimal use. She’s not a fighter. Some extra healing in a pinch, maybe, but no, Sera wouldn’t risk bringing her out here.

Susan the Spectre is tricky, given her selective incorporeality, but my new sword should be able to hit her. If she flies, Patrick might be a better counter. Bright Reflection has spirit mana. We’re probably one of the only teams in here that has such simple countermeasures to spirit magic, so it’s unlikely Sera will pick her.

That covers most of the obvious options.

She might have a couple more contracts and bindings I’m not as familiar with. I don’t know for certain she actually broke her binding with the wyvern, for example…and even if she did, she might have re-established it simply by asking Elora to summon the wyvern for a little while at some point. If she does summon the wyvern, that’ll be a challenge, but we’ll set Lute on it. I can keep Mara busy while Lute handles the wyvern and returns.

She also had to make a contract with something during last year’s final exams. I don’t think I ever asked what that was, but they can’t be much higher than Carnelian-level or she wouldn’t have managed it at that time frame, unless there’s something strange going on.

Any utilization of Seiryu would obviously change the whole match, but she’s not going to do that. She can’t reveal Seiryu’s contract publicly.

So…I’ll need to account for the possibility of an unknown Carnelian-level contract, and possibly the wyvern. That’s fine. Nothing to worry about…right?

…From the crooked smile she made when she glanced at me before stepping into her first match, I had the sinking feeling that I’d missed something.

***

Sera’s first matchup was completely one-sided. There was just no other way to describe it — she got matched against a standard team of students our age. All Carnelians, but pushing Sunstone. That would have been a huge accomplishment before Chancellor Meltlake implemented the new training practices, but now…approaching Sunstone at this point in the year was shockingly common. Maybe a quarter of the class had already hit Sunstone.

…And then there was Mara, leagues ahead of the rest of us. I hadn’t looked at her exact mana value in a couple weeks, but from the brightness of her aura as it shifted ever-closer to yellow, I suspected she was already half-way to Citrine.

Terrifying.

Lute reached up and adjusted his glasses as Mara’s last opponent vanished, his expression inscrutable. “Fascinating.”

“She’s great, isn’t she?” Patrick leaned closer to Lute.

“She could be.” His lips shifted downward slightly. “She could be something…wonderful.”

That was an unusual expression from the probably-a-living-sword, enough so that I found it slightly alarming. “What do you mean?”

Lute blinked, as if noticing me for the first time. “Hm? Oh, merely reflecting on the degree to which her capabilities would be improved if she had a proper weapon. While her ability to emulate brother’s cutting aura is admirable, it is inefficient. She burns through her own mana to generate improvised weaponry. A proper weapon would supplement her existing abilities, rather than draining valuable mana she could be using on her other abilities.”

“She doesn’t like using weapons. She’s more comfortable simply using her bare hands — and it’s more traditional for Guardians, too.”

Lute turned to Patrick. “Traditional training has uses, of course, and unarmed combat is valuable to learn. Humans can rarely ensure that they have a weapon with them at all times, after all. But humans are best when using tools. Simply using her hands…” He shook his head. “I’m surprised brother didn’t train her out of such recklessness.”

I shrugged. “She’s tried using weapons, of course, but she didn’t like the feel of it. Keras respected her preference and trained her the way she wanted to be trained.”

“Hm.” Lute shook his head. “He’s still too soft.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I shifted the subject just slightly. “You’ve been holding back during all of the matches thus far. Are you planning to go harder against Mara’s team?”

Lute gave me a quizzical look. “Why would that be necessary?”

“…They’re some of the best fighters here. I don’t think you should underestimate them.”

“Oh, they are some of the best fighters in the class, certainly.” Lute turned back toward the arena as the clapping for Mara’s team ended. “But they aren’t me.”

Patrick failed to stifle a snort. I didn’t blame him.

Maybe Lute is related to Keras after all.

***

Our own first match of the finals was tougher. Still just second-years, but a tougher team composition, including two Sunstones and one Carnelian who was close to reaching it.

I came out of the arena with my mana drained and a few bruises, but victory was never really in question. I used Scald as my primary weapon, keeping my dagger and my other new sword as backups stored inside the Belt of Swords that Keras had given me. I’d been avoiding using them in dueling class to make sure that I had a couple of new surprises.

I still wore Selys-Lyann on my other hip, since I didn’t know if keeping it in an extra dimensional space was a good idea. I’d considered asking if I could use Selys-Lyann’s magic if I didn’t draw the sword directly — I was pretty sure I could manage to make ice armor via a mana thread — but I decided that pushing on the rules wasn’t a good idea.

Sera’s next match was a team with a single third-year. They struggled with that one, with Roland eliminated half-way through it.

Our second match was similar…but I was the one who got eliminated. Kyra Dyson managed to slip behind me and hit my primary shield sigil with a void mana spell, turning it off outright and triggering the teleportation effect that took me out of the ring.

…Stealth was one thing I still didn’t have any solid counters to. She hadn’t even been invisible, just concealed in a shroud of darkness that camouflaged her while her teammates kept us distracted. Fortunately, after I was eliminated, Patrick bathed the arena with illumination from Bright Reflection and Lute quickly eliminated Kyra, then the rest of her team.

I grumbled a little in the aftermath of that match, adding counters to stealth and invisibility to my ever-growing list of things to work on.

We barely had any chance to recover before our next match.

…Against Sera’s team.

Somehow, I’d just expected that we’d face them in the very last match of the tournament. It just felt more appropriate that way, on a personal level.

I met up with Sera just before our match. “I’m sorry we’re going to eliminate you so early.”

“Feeling confident, are we? That’s good, you always let your guard down when you feel that way.”

“Do I? I was confident when I fought Jerome.”

She nodded. “You were very impressive in your fight against a fake copy of a long-dead man at a party.”

I rolled my eyes. “Thank you. It was much more challenging than anything I expected to deal with on winter break. Really changed the feeling of the whole experience. This should help make up for it — after all, fighting you is like taking a vacation.”

“Oh, I agree. You’ll have plenty of time to relax after you’re immediately eliminated, after all.”

“C’mon, Sera,” Mara tugged at Sera’s arm. “You can banter with Corin any time. Let’s go finish prep.” Mara gave me a brief grin as she dragged Sera away.

Prep?

My mind raced through what that could mean. What sort of preparations could they do? They didn’t have an Enchanter to impact the ring…did they? Was Roland hiding a second attunement?

It’s probably more conventional planning…strategy discussions, that sort of thing. Maybe swapping equipment to throw us off, or using items to recharge their mana, or…

I shook my head. I’d already accounted for their abilities that I knew about. Unless I wanted to spy on them — which didn’t feel right — I didn’t have much else I could do but return to my own team and finish our own planning.

A few minutes later, we finally stepped into the arena, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d missed something that would lead to a terrible mistake.

***

The arena for this match was a conventional one, at least on the surface.

It was a rectangular outdoor stadium, three hundred-sixty yards across and sixty yards wide. The arena was surrounded by a seating area, which was shielded by a series of permanent barrier enchantments. Our teams entered from opposite sides.

Mara and I dipped down at the entrances simultaneously, dropping off our teleportation anchors. I’d considered leaving my anchor outside the arena, but the other team knew that trick. I didn’t see Sera drop her anchor off, but that wasn’t unusual. Patrick didn’t drop his, either — he was planning to drop it mid-match.

I scanned upward as we approached the center of the arena. The barrier was eighteen yards above us, giving people with flight or levitation some room to maneuver upward, but not so much that they’d be outside of traditional offensive spell range. That limited the amount that Sera — or Vanniv, if she summoned him — could fly in circles around us.

When our teams reached the center of the arena, we paused six yards apart, as per the rules for this particular match. Other matches would have different starting conditions — starting only six paces apart was more common, and some matches started in melee range right after a handshake. A few even started at opposite ends of an arena. This particular starting position gave a little bit more room for ranged attackers to work when the match started, preventing faster fighters like Mara and myself from immediately rushing them when the match started, which often led to accidents in high-stakes matches.

Everyone was nervous during final exams, after all, and mistakes in a dueling class could be deadly.

“Teams, bow,” Teft announced.

We bowed to each other. Sera gave me a wink. I rolled my eyes in response. It was obvious she was planning something — who wouldn’t be? — but I couldn’t let that distract me.

“Begin!”

The first couple moments went exactly as expected.

“Vanniv, I summon—”

Sera cursed as Patrick snapped his fingers in Sera’s direction, producing a burst of air mana that both interrupted her phrase and dispersed some of the mana she’d been distributing.

Mara charged. I stepped in to meet her, drawing Scald and swinging at her in a single motion. She was more than familiar with my style, and she knew to get out of the way before I sent a pulse of transference into my sword’s blade, creating a fan of flames that enveloped the air in front of me.

…I hadn’t been expecting her to go up, though.

Mara launched herself over the wave of fire. I jumped back to brace for a classic “Star Descends from Sky”, but it didn’t come — she landed in mid-air and ran straight past me.

I cursed, spinning around as she hurled something at Patrick. He blasted the object to the side with a wave of air, then countered with a blast of lightning, which Mara slapped aside with the back of a hand.

Jump. I launched myself upward, swinging at Mara’s back. Not exactly the most honorable move, I know, but turning your back on an opponent had consequences.

She punched her fists together as my sword approached — and my arm rattled as it hit something as hard as a brick wall.

I pulled my arm back as I processed the fact that she’d used some kind of new shroud-hardening technique, then blasted myself to the side to avoid a hail of dueling cane bolts from Roland.

The flurry of bolts didn’t last long — Lute had closed the distance to Roland and pushed the latter into a rapid retreat. Sera called up a wall of ice between them, but Lute simply tapped the wall with the tip of his sword and it shattered immediately. A burst of transference into some kind of weak point, maybe? I wasn’t sure and didn’t have time to watch.

Mara shot back down to the ground, charging at me and producing two blades of essence from her hands. We fell into a comfortable dance as I parried each swing of her essence blades, then unsuccessfully riposted, my blade glancing across a hardened shroud around her elbow.

I frowned. I’d seen her harden her shroud repeatedly in the past — she did it nearly every time we fought — but even a higher-density shroud generally felt more like air resistance than a solid stop. This was more like I was hitting an invisible wall.

My first thought was that she’d saturated her shroud with enhancement mana, similar to my own Shivering Shroud technique, but with a different mana type. But when I hurled a wide blast of transference at her with my free hand to try to nullify it with the opposite mana type, she charged right through my attack.

What?

I barely had a moment to brace myself before she closed the distance and slammed a blade into my barrier, forming a wide crack. Then she hopped back rapidly, dodging and weaving around a series of blasts of lightning from Patrick.

“Refocus!” Patrick called. “I’ll hold her down!”

He was right — we couldn’t let Mara lock down two of us on her own. That put Lute in a mirrored position of having to deal with both Roland and Sera.

Lute could handle two opponents. But we’d given a Summoner an instant to breathe, and he wasn’t fighting just two — he was already fighting four.

As Sera froze the ground beneath Lute with a gesture, he jumped, cutting a pair of lightning bolts from Vanniv out of the air. When he landed, he spun to cut down a series of dueling cane blasts from Roland. That was when Susan the Spectre emerged from the ground behind him.

Susan lunged at Lute with a ghostly knife, semi-corporeal and only partially visible. I tried to shout a warning, but I wasn’t fast enough.

Lute casually kicked backward, sending Susan flying half-way across the arena. She vanished into the ground as she slammed into it, but I wasn’t sure if that meant she was unsummoned or simply not corporeal enough for the ground to stop her movement.

As impressive as Lute’s reaction was, it cost him. Sera clapped her hands and green stone shackles appeared around Lute’s legs, binding them together.

He flicked his sword downward at the chains connecting the shackles, causing a loud crack as his weapon connected, but the chains held.

His expression dipped into a frown as he awkwardly dispatched another handful of attacks from Roland and Vanniv — and Sera began another spell.

I tried to stop her with a blast of transference, but Sera shot upward, flying out of the way. “Globbulon, I summon you!”

…What?

A slime the size of a train car appeared in mid-air above Lute.

He only had a moment to tip his head upward with an expression of disbelief before it landed on top of him.

…I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting that. I stared blankly at what had just happened for a heartbeat, then snapped out of it just in time to dodge a series of dueling cane bolts from Roland.

Sera flew higher, which was obviously a problem. She coughed once, then tried to speak again before I managed to slash in her direction, sending a compressed wave of fire at her.

She shot to the side, but lost her concentration on the spell, at least for the moment. With a glare, she gestured in my direction, conjuring a series of green stone darts. I deflected those with ease, then backed up to avoid a burst of flame from Vanniv.

I didn’t notice Susan the Spectre until she had her hands around my ankles.

Cold shot through my legs. I yelped as numbness spread through me, my feet no longer capable of supporting my weight. Her incorporeal form must have bypassed my shield sigils entirely. I immediately had ideas for how I could have prepared for that, but they seemed a little late, given that I was in the process of face-planting toward the ground.

I turned my forward-fall into a surge upward with a burst of transference, awkwardly carrying myself airborne at an angle.

Susan didn’t let go. She was nearly weightless, so I simply ended up flying upward with a ghost pulling on my legs.

I jabbed downward with my sword. She didn’t try to dodge.

That was a mistake.

Scald might have been a boring weapon, but it did have spirit mana runes. I hadn’t intended them to be there for the purpose of hitting incorporeal opponents, but just having a supply of spirit mana was enough to make the weapon somewhat “solid” to a spiritual entity — and, as it turns out, a bladed weapon with spirit mana works just as well on someone like Susan as it does on anyone else.

My sword bit into her shoulder. She let out a silent scream and let go of my legs, allowing me to tumble back to the ground gracelessly and try to steady myself with my sword tip planted into the arena floor.

I still nearly flopped to the ground, my legs tingling from the aftermath of the contact. I was forced to punch Roland’s next few bolts out of the air with my off-hand wrapped in transference while I used my sword to steady myself.

On the opposite side of the arena, Patrick was airborne and hurling spells at Mara rapidly, but his advantage wasn’t as much as it should have been. Mara was running on the air, her own levitation boots giving her less flexibility in movement than true flight, but enough that she was forcing Patrick into a constant retreat. And as he burned rapidly through his mana pool on attacks, she showed no signs of slowing down.

The longer the match lasted, the more of an advantage Sera’s team would hold, both in terms of superior mana and Sera’s ability to continuously add more combatants. I didn’t think she had too many more contracts available, but we were already being overwhelmed by the few she had on the field—

At least until the slime exploded, sending chunks of goo across the arena. I barely had a chance to harden my own barrier before the splatter hit me and slid to the ground.

Lute stood in the center of where the slime had been…not a drop of gunk visible on his body. “That was an unusual experience.” Then he tapped the chains between his legs again, causing them to fall apart. He turned to Sera. “Do you have more?”

“Slimes? No. Summons?” She smiled. “You’re about to find out. Roland?”

“Twelve seconds to optimal timing,” he replied. “Good luck.”

I blinked.

Lute casually sliced the air in Roland’s direction. I didn’t see a projectile — I just saw Roland’s shield shatter and his body vanish.

I should have felt relieved by the loss of an opponent, but from their last exchange…had he known that was about to happen?

Diviners were specialized in seeing the past, not the future. But maybe, with items, or a specialization mark, or a sufficiently powerful general mental mana spell for a brief burst of precognition—

I felt a sinking feeling.

Twelve seconds…eleven…

I couldn’t give Sera the time she needed. “Lute, stop Sera!”

I tried to step forward and nearly fell on my face.

Sera flew straight upward as Lute swung his sword again, his near-invisible attack clipping her shield and tearing cracks across the left side near her shoulder. Then Vanniv flew between them, showering Lute with a burst of bolts of fire.

Lute deflected the attacks easily, countering with another swing that cut straight into the stone of Vanniv’s chest.

“…Youch! That one is going to leave a mark…or, it would if that was really possible, given my temporary nature. Take it easy!”

“I am taking it easy.” Lute frowned. “This is incredibly easy.”

Susan reappeared at Lute’s side. He smacked her in the forehead with the flat of his blade, sending her stumbling backward—

But with a smile on her face.

“Got…you…”

She whispered.

A second Susan appeared right behind Lute, wrapping her arms around him as the first one vanished.

…An illusion? Or a second copy of the same summon?

I didn’t know, but from the way Lute shivered as her arms entwined him, he seemingly wasn’t immune to her touch. He slammed his head backward into Susan’s nose, snapping her head back and causing her to fall to — and through — the ground…but the contact left him wobbling on his feet, much as I was.

I grimaced and steadied myself as best I could.

Accelerated Computation.

Seven point four eight seconds remaining.

I made a few more rapid calculations, then swung upward, sending a crescent of fire in Sera’s direction. Vanniv moved to intercept, but I’d expected that — my attack carried a charge of transference mana that burst a quarter-second after the attack began, adjusting the crescent’s trajectory in mid-air and carrying it around Vanniv and toward Sera’s back.

“Wall.” A wall of ice appeared in mid-air. My flame crescent was dense enough to cut through it, but it lost enough power that it barely scratched Sera’s shields before it dissipated.

Six point nine four seconds remaining. Falling trajectory—

Jump.

I sent myself flying upward again, swinging rapidly, but Vanniv was ready this time. My flaming crescents barely left my sword before they veered off harmlessly, reshaped by Vanniv’s elemental control. I’d rarely seen him use flame shaping, but it wasn’t a terrible surprise, and I still had time before Sera—

“It’s go time, Satsuki. Now.”

Sera clapped her hands — and Satsuki, Scale of the Serpent, appeared in the center of the arena. She was only a few steps from where we’d started.

The glaive-wielding serpent turned her head upward toward me as she appeared. “Hihi!”

Then a dozen gleaming spears of red energy appeared around me in mid-air.

I abandoned any hope of calculating seconds, my mind shifting to rapidly compute the trajectories of projectiles surging inward. I tried to find a path to escape them all—

But there was none. They were moving too close, too rapidly.

It’s through them or nothing.

Jump.

A surge from my ring sent me crashing straight through two spears of energy. I hardened my shields as I moved, feeling them crack on impact as the remaining ten flashed harmlessly through the air above me.

I scowled, trying to recharge my shield sigils with a mana thread, but Satsuki had closed in on me in a moment. “It’s been too long!”

Her glaive shot outward as I landed. I hastily parried her swing on instinct, the sheer force of the impact sending a wave of numbness through my right arm. I nearly dropped my sword, and my still-frozen legs threatened to buckle beneath me as they settled on the ground. My sigil’s regeneration function was gradually eliminating the numbness in my legs, but I still was nowhere near steady on my feet.

I stumbled backward, nearly falling, and mentally cast a Regeneration spell to accelerate my recovery. Stacking Regeneration effects had gotten me into trouble before, but if a day or two of pain was the price I had to pay for surviving this match, it was worth the cost.

Lute was there before Satsuki had a chance to attack me again, flanking her and opening with a probing jab that she deflected easily with the shaft of her glaive.

“Get lost.” She whipped a hand at Lute—

And nothing visible happened.

Satsuki blinked.

Lute punched the air. Satsuki’s head snapped back in place. Her eyes widened, then she growled. “Oh, that hurt.” A smile slid across her features. “Never mind, you can stay.”

I tried a swing of my own, but Satsuki flicked her wrist in my direction, causing a series of crimson spikes to shoot up from the ground between us. I jumped backward to avoid them, only to slip on a patch of ice that I hadn’t seen appear.

Impact with ground in—

I ignored my Accelerated Computation, shifting a mana thread to Scald and creating an omnidirectional burst of flame, melting the ice patch before I landed on it.

Then, I rolled to avoid a series of icy javelins that Sera was calling from the sky — presumably a weaker variant of Permafrost Cascade, or a soundless casting of the same spell — and barely managed to pull my head back as a spectral hand reached out of the ground.

I sent myself tumbling with another burst of transference mana, then used another quick burst to send myself to my feet.

That was a major mistake — not due to anything critical in a tactical sense, but due to something far more mundane.

I pulled my neck.

Any kind of rapid and jerky bodily motion always had the risk of pulling something. Magical movement was no exception. My body was significantly acclimated to transference mana, which increased my tolerance to rapid movements, but it didn’t completely eliminate the chances of pulling a muscle.

A brief surge of agony nearly ended my match right there. Rather than putting me back on my feet like I’d hoped, the blast of transference carried me upward and straight back downward as the pain briefly overwhelmed me. I caught myself on my sword, but then Susan was behind me, lunging, and I was still in too much pain to properly react.

So, Lute did it for me.

His sword came upward with a gleaming cut, cleaving through the air. Susan recoiled — then tore apart like paper.

But even as the ghost silently screamed and vanished, Satsuki was taking the opening in Lute’s defenses.

No ordinary summon from Sera had a chance at beating Lute in a fight. Lute must have had the same evaluation, at least at first — he’d turned to save me from Susan, after all, while leaving an opponent within reach. He’d probably made the same assumption that I had. Sera must have made a contract with Satsuki, then burned nearly all of her mana from her attunement and bracers to summon something like a near-Sunstone version of the serpent.

We’d miscalculated.

When Satsuki lunged at Lute, she did so with the kind of speed that no Carnelian-level summon could match.

Lute slapped the glaive aside, just barely, and stepped backward just as twenty-four crimson knives appeared behind him.

His expression showed just a moment of surprise, then he moved in a blur—

None of the knives hit him, but Satsuki did.

Her glaive whipped around, the shaft swiping through the air at his chest. Lute still managed to dance out of reach of the glaive itself, but the weapon’s aura exploded outward when it was right in front of his chest.

It wouldn’t have been enough to stop Lute, but it didn’t need to—

It just needed to brush up against his shields, which shattered in an instant of contact.

And then he was gone — and I faced Satsuki alone.

The real Satsuki.

My Accelerated Computation wasn’t only useful for direct combat computations. That was my typical usage, but occasionally, it helped me with general problem solving. In this case, in the course of a couple moments, it let me put together what had just happened:

Roland had called out specific timing.

Sera had acted faster than that timing, but almost exactly at half of the specified number of seconds, potentially indicating that they had pre-planned for her to act at exactly half of whatever he shouted.

At some point, Sera must have contracted Satsuki, but she lacks the mana for a true summon for someone of Satsuki’s level—

Which is why she didn’t summon Satsuki. Not in the traditional sense, at least.

The rules only say that a Summoner can’t bring their summoned monsters into the arena in advance…

They say nothing about how the summon makes it into the arena.

My mind flashed to Mara throwing something at the start of the match.

It wasn’t a weapon.

It was a return bell anchor, which Satsuki had used to teleport into the arena at Sera’s signal.

If this had been a mystery, I’d have congratulated myself on solving it so quickly — but unfortunately, it wasn’t, and knowing that I was facing a horrifyingly overpowered serpent wasn’t actually the same thing as giving me a counter to it.

Worse still, as I stumbled backward to avoid a casual rain of crimson knives that Satsuki produced with a gesture, I saw Vanniv still circling in the air above — but he wasn’t focused on me. He was hurling his own spells at Patrick, which Patrick was struggling to reshape while he continued to retreat from Mara’s inexorable advance.

This is bad, I considered with my infinite insight.

Then, with my patented Corin Cadence sense of impeccable strategy, I threw my sword at Satsuki’s face.

She slapped the sword out of the air with a blink of surprise, but that was all it took to pause her onslaught.

This is bad, I repeated in my mind, but I did prepare for it.

For certain values of “prepare”, anyway.

I hadn’t anticipated the exact sequence of events that led to this exact scenario, of course. I wasn’t throwing around precognition spells — not yet, at least — and I wasn’t the type of person who could perfectly model the actions of every person I might encounter in the arena. As well as I knew Sera, she knew me equally well, and she was better at understanding people.

I was, however, much better at making items for absolutely any opponent that I might happen to come across.

My hands flashed to my belt.

Improved Haste. Detect Aura.

I side-stepped a quick thrust of Satsuki’s glaive, then pushed mana into the two symbols I’d touched on my Belt of Swords. Two weapons appeared in the air as Satsuki swung again.

I deflected her crimson glaive with Sir Shinyshiv, then lunged forward with Shroudstealer—

And watched as Satsuki’s multi-layer shroud ripped toward my extended blade.

My sword only made a heartbeat of contact before Satsuki retreated…but that was more than enough to make my blade glimmer with stolen power. A thin thread of my concentration attached a mana thread to the sword, then began to siphon and convert the mana from the sword directly into power for my shields.

The cracks in my barriers began to close.

Satsuki’s eyes widened. “What…is that?”

I rested the sword against my shoulder and took a step back, beginning to circle around Satsuki to look for a better angle of attack. “A new weapon. One designed for a serpent with multiple shrouds.”

Satsuki took a step back of her own, releasing a hand from her glaive to put it on her chest. “You…you made an enchanted sword…just to fight me?”

Satsuki wasn’t the only person I’d made it for — obviously, Mizuchi had been on my mind as well, and I’d also considered the possibility that it might be effective against multi-attuned.

But fighting Satsuki with it had been within my calculations. “After our last match, I had to do some thinking about how best to beat you outright. And without a shroud — well, I’m sure you’re incredibly resilient, but you aren’t unbeatable.”

“You…you’ve been thinking about our last fight, too?” She glanced away. “I, uh, I’ve been thinking about that a lot, and—”

“Going to need you to focus, Satsuki!” Sera yelled. “Get him out of there before he shows off any more clever ideas!”

Satsuki frowned, glancing upward at Sera. “As you command, Summoner.” Her tone was professional, with a hint of disappointment.

…And I was growing increasingly concerned that I had made a terrible mistake, but not of my usual variety.

When Satsuki turned her eyes back to me, even I, with my infinite inability to read people, realized that she was blushing—

And that perhaps at some point I might have missed something integral about serpent courtship rituals.

Unfortunately, if Satsuki found my new sword…let’s call it “flattering”…that didn’t discourage her from attacking me again immediately with overwhelming force.

If anything, it probably encouraged her.

Her next swing was one-handed, a quick thrust of her glaive right at my face. I batted it aside, barely, then jumped to the left to dodge a punch from her other hand that sent a blast of crimson mana through where I’d been standing, then stepped to the right to avoid a series of spikes that shot up from the ground.

I jumped forward to swing my sword again, but she deflected it easily with a spin of her glaive, driving Shroudstealer toward the ground. When I tried to stand up straight, the pain in my neck surged again, and she flicked a finger at me, a burst of invisible force carrying me backward toward a fast-appearing wall of crimson spikes.

Up!

I blasted myself upward, flipped over the wall, then slammed Sir Shinyshiv into the back of one of the spikes. A hint of transference mana carried her own spike back toward her, but she simply ignored it entirely, allowing the spike to glance off her remaining shroud.

Then she opened her jaws — and I was rapidly reminded what a serpent was capable of.

I didn’t even try to dodge or deflect it. When I saw red gathering around her fangs, I took a breath, shifted a mana thread, then—

Satsuki screamed.

I’d never seen a breath weapon used in such a fashion, but when her voice scattered across the arena, the entire world around us seemed to ripple and tear—

But I’d timed my move just right. My circlet flashed and I vanished, teleporting across the arena to my anchor. Satsuki’s breath still clipped me, the sound itself throwing off my balance and whatever strange mana she used causing cracks to spread across the entire surface of my shields, but the main body of the attack missed me entirely—

But only me.

From my vantage point near the arena entrance, I watched Patrick drop from the sky.

He hit the ground hard. I rushed toward him, but stumbled, my legs still not fully recovered and my neck still swimming with agony.

Mara landed first.

Patrick’s hand shifted rapidly on the ground, going for Bright Reflection with surprising quickness, perhaps representing a speed technique—

But it didn’t matter. He was entirely at the wrong angle to draw.

“S’game over now.” Mara’s boot came down on his chest. A crack, a flash, then Patrick was gone—

And I was in the arena alone, save for my opponents.

Mara turned toward me, raising her fists in a defensive stance.

I glanced away from her to see Satsuki skipping across the arena, cradling her glaive in her arms.

And Sera and Vanniv still flew overhead, although Sera was wobbling in place. Either she was precipitously low on mana, or Satsuki’s attack had hit her — or possibly both.

I grimaced, stored Sir Shinyshiv in my belt, and reached into my dimensional bag.

One last trick to try.

I’d wanted to save my last resort for a true emergency, but there was one thing that was true for the Cadence family in general—

We really didn’t like to lose.

And so, my free hand wrapped around a black cylinder and pulled it out of the bag—

Just as a knife jammed into my back.

Or, less dramatically, into the barriers generated by my shield sigils.

I turned around in disbelief as cracks spread rapidly, only to see Susan the Spectre floating behind me. She gave a little wave with her off-hand, then plunged straight back into the ground before I could manage a counter-swing.

I’d seen her vanish when Lute had cut her—

But then again, she was a ghost. And even if she’d been eliminated, nothing would have stopped Sera from summoning her again.

When I turned back around, Mara was almost on top of me. She lunged in with her blades, and I barely deflected them, then pulled back my arm to throw the cylinder—

The ground beneath me froze.

Mara’s blade glanced against my shields, driving me back. I slipped.

Satsuki’s conjured blades caught my fall.

My shields held, just barely, as I hit the ground facing upward.

That let me survive the match just long enough for me to see Mara and Satsuki looming over me, blades raised.

Positioning wise, that wasn’t perfect—

But it was good enough.

“Bye.”

My cylinder flashed ominously just once.

Then void exploded in my hand.

***

I groaned as I pushed myself up in my recovery room bed.

I felt awful.

Being chilled by a ghost, pulling my neck, and having my ears nearly shattered by a supersonic serpent scream — none of those were pleasant.

But in the end, I’d managed a classic Corin Cadence move.

I’d eliminated myself, but I’d taken Mara along with me.

Hardened shroud or not, void mana had torn through her defenses just as easily as they’d broken my own. She’d been teleported out of the arena when her sigil had failed at the same time as my own.

…But we’d still lost the match.

Sera had been on the opposite side of the arena and airborne when it happened. If the void had reached her at all, it had been so weakened by distance that it hadn’t been enough to disable her shields.

That was mildly disappointing. I never liked to lose.

But I had to admit…I’d underestimated them. I’d known Sera would have a trick, but bringing Satsuki into the arena…

She’d stolen my own move against Satsuki from the end of the Survival Match and reversed it, hadn’t she?

Maybe I should have hated that, but when I thought about it, I couldn’t keep myself from smiling. I’d made a good move — and she’d turned it into a better one.

When I finished recovering, I congratulated the other team…

Then got to thinking about how I was going to beat them in the following year.

They’d earned it.

***

Sera teased me incessantly about Satsuki wanting to have a “private chat” at some point in the days that followed, but I managed to deflect that with my usual awkwardness. I’d probably have to talk to the murder serpent at some point, but I had other things to prepare for, and so did her team.

…Or so we thought.

By beating my team, Sera made it to the finals.

They were up against whoever won between Team Bloodline and Team Skyseeker, the two top teams throughout the entire year…

Or, at least, they should have been.

Team Bloodline never showed up for their match.

And when Mary Hawthorne stumbled her way to the arena grounds, she was alone, her face covered in dirt, tears, and half-healed wounds.

There would be no match that day—

Not when one of her team members was dead.

The Sons of Valia had struck again.

CHAPTER XXX – OLD AND NEW

Our home was subdued for days after that. Sera’s team had won the year’s dueling classes by default in the absence of their competitors. No one was happy about that.

Mary was direct with what had happened — their team had been ambushed by a dozen attackers while they were on the way back from participating in a Survival Match late the night before.

Team Skyseeker had been exhausted, already bruised, and nearly drained on mana — and they’d still beaten their attackers to the ground.

…But not without cost.

Kuro hadn’t made it. And Vermillion had been so severely injured that she was still in the hospital, undergoing emergency surgery to try to save her attuned arm, which had been half-severed.

When the authorities arrived at the scene, they found Mary the lone figure still standing on the battlefield. They arrested her along with everyone else, only releasing her the next day after a sufficient number of her attackers had confessed.

…Team Bloodline had, of course, been among the attackers.

Literally no one was surprised, but somehow, we’d all seen the signs and done nothing until it was too late.

I was surprised to hear that Team Bloodline, too, was being released due to “lack of evidence” of their involvement. Apparently, they claimed that they had also been attacked by the Sons of Valia, and that Mary was simply “confused”.

This was such an obvious lie that I could barely process it, until a seething Sera explained that Jeremy’s father was on the Council of Lords and heavily involved in advocating for a larger budget for Valia’s city guard forces.

Is there anything in this country that hasn’t been influenced by the hands of these xenophobic monsters?

I couldn’t help but be more than a little bit bitter, both at myself and at the teachers who hadn’t done anything to stop the obvious threats. Or, at least, not enough.

If the Sons of Valia were killing people outright, that represented an escalation. Lord Teft took Mary’s statement to the class seriously, at least, and offered to escort her back to the hospital after he dismissed the class — but it seemed like far too little, too late.

We told everyone what had happened when we got back home. The atmosphere was a mixture of somber and furious.

Derek went out that evening, presumably for information gathering, reprisal, or both. His mood was dark both when he left and when he returned.

“There’s someone behind the scenes giving them power that shouldn’t be possible.” His right hand held a bloodstained bandage on his left arm. “I just fought a room full of people with two attunements. The local leader fled, but he had at least three.”

“Can’t be that many people with three attunements in general,” Sera noted. “Shouldn’t that narrow it down?”

Derek shook his head, wincing as his movement exposed another gash on his neck, still unbandaged. “I knew some of those people. They didn’t all have multiple attunements at the start of the year — I’m certain of it.”

“Artificial, then? We looking at an alliance with Farren Labs, or something similar?” I asked.

“Maybe,” he frowned, sounding doubtful. “If I had to guess, though, I think it’s something much bleaker.”

“…The removed limbs.” I shuddered. “But that would still require someone with the skill set necessary to move attunements. A Biomancer, or…”

“Another Arbiter.” Derek looked directly at me for a moment, seeming to evaluate something, then sighed. “…Or just someone else with an equivalent skill set. Foreign magic of a similar style, maybe.”

“Do you think the Sons of Valia would really work with a foreigner?” I asked.

Derek snorted. “If there’s any defining feature of the powerful, it’s hypocrisy. I’m sure they’d come up with some kind of flavorful excuse. ‘Clearly, this Artinian magic is acceptable because the goddess must have sent him to make us stronger’, or that sort of non-sense.”

“Is Artinia your best candidate for involvement, then?” Sera asked.

“No,” Derek admitted, “it’s a little closer to home. No confirmation yet, but I’ll let you know if I get anything solid. For now, just…be extra careful. These people are not to be trifled with. And whoever is pulling their strings…they have to be a real terror to be able to move that many attunements in this short of a time period, if that’s what they’re up to at all.”

I wasn’t satisfied by that brief explanation, but I didn’t know what to do or say, either. I was frustrated enough that I grabbed Mara one night to try to patrol the area and see if we could find anything on our own. If there was any Sons of Valia activity that night, we didn’t find it.

I felt useless, but at the urging of the others, I tried to ignore it in favor of getting back to work on the things I could help with.

There were only a few days left in the semester — and our true test was yet to come.

***

Gathering our team for the final exams felt a little surreal.

I still felt more than a little trepidation in Jin’s presence at the best of times…and going into an exam with him was even harder. That said, he was still one of the strongest combatants we had available, and the rarity of his skillset made him extraordinarily effective in a challenge against other teams.

If I felt a little strange around Jin, I don’t even know how to describe how awkward I felt around Lute. I didn’t know him the way that I knew the others. We’d cooperated for the dueling class, sure, but that wasn’t anywhere near the same degree of exposure I’d had to the others.

I don’t think that was what really bothered me, though. Sure, familiarity was important, but I was struggling to get used to having a teammate that wasn’t human.

Looking at it objectively, Lute had never done anything that should have made me feel uncomfortable. Sure, he’d shown me a little bit more interest than most people had, but that wasn’t inherently a negative thing — I’d been flattered when Jin had shown me some immediate interest, after all. And I didn’t even think Lute’s interest was romantic. It was, so far as I could understand, more like I was simply involved in activities and carrying items that interested him. Being interested in people like that was, on the surface, completely normal.

So, what was the problem?

Trying to break it down in my head, I think it came down to a couple factors.

First, I was operating under certain internal biases that I couldn’t easily dismiss. I didn’t have a problem with non-human entities — or, at least, I didn’t think I did — but having them attending school with us just felt…off. Like they didn’t belong there.

It was most pronounced with people like Satsuki. I felt horrible about it, but it was a struggle to resist my instinctive fear every time I saw her.

Was I wrong to feel that way? Definitely. We were attending an educational institution — there was no need to restrict that to humanity. I knew how much Researcher loved to learn and share information. Why wouldn’t a school benefit from people like her, or even non-human entities with a less familiar viewpoint?

And yet…I couldn’t completely turn off my feelings of wrongness about it.

Looking back, I think a part of it is that I unconsciously lump non-human entities into a single category, too. When I’d first seen Lute’s unusual hair and considered the possibility that he wasn’t human, I’d immediately made a mental connection with Mizuchi, and in spite of that connection being obviously wrong, I hadn’t completely shaken off that first impression bias.

Would it have been different if he’d been introduced to me as one of Keras’ relatives, rather than being a mysterious transfer student? Almost definitely. That just showed a flaw in my way of thinking, though. I needed to be more flexible in my thinking and more amenable to shifts in my impressions of people, but…knowing that and being able to actually act on it were two entirely different things.

It didn’t help that Lute still was mysterious. I didn’t know why he was at the school — not really. I didn’t know how powerful he was, either. He’d clearly been just playing around in dueling class. If he chose to attack our group, would the rest of us even stand a chance?

Maybe thinking along those lines about Lute specifically was unfair. I’d been hurt by Jin’s betrayal, so some kind of mental calculations about our odds if we were suddenly backstabbed may have been reasonable, in some sense—

But I wasn’t running those numbers for Patrick, or Sera, or even Mara. Was it fair that I was thinking about that for Lute and not the others?

…Was it fair that I was more worried about Lute than I was about Jin betraying us a second time?

Why did I feel so threatened?

It wasn’t like I was any stranger to interacting with dangerous and mysterious people — even aside from Jin, I still lived with Derek Hartigan, and he was apparently some kind of international criminal mastermind. It sounded strange to think of it in those terms, but there you go.

And Sheridan Theas was about twice as mysterious and threatening as anyone I’d met — but I was growing to realize that I enjoyed that element of them. Which was strange in itself, and maybe a little unhealthy, but it was true.

So…all in all, the issue, was probably on my end, at least for the most part.

If I had questions about Lute’s goals…had I ever really made the effort to take him aside and ask those questions? He’d been a little bit evasive in conversation, but no more than someone like Keras. Less so, really. He’d told me that certain information was “restricted”, but I could have attempted to work around that, much like I’d learned to do with Researcher.

I suppose I just didn’t have the mental energy to make the effort. I had too many other things weighing on me — at times, even adding one small task felt like a crushing burden. That was especially true for anything that involved socialization.

So, for the moment, I just…had to suppress my biases, as best I could. I tried not to fixate too much on the subject as we got our group together. There was room for me to be a good team member in spite of any discomfort I felt at Lute’s presence.

Fortunately, it was easier to do that once we got into work mode. Our team met for breakfast — Sera considered it a team bonding activity — then headed to the train station.

We traveled along with Cecily, since we were still living together and it was convenient to leave as a group. She planned to meet her team at the destination. We didn’t discuss team plans around her, since there was a chance our teams would be matched against each other, but we did get her to check our current mana levels with the mana watch.

Well, most of us, anyway. Jin and Lute both turned down the offer, although Lute seemed fascinated by the watch itself.

Meltlake’s new training regimen had clearer benefits after the full length of a semester, even if those benefits weren’t quite as pronounced for us as they would have been for students without our existing advantages.

Cecily had hit 169 mana, which was noticeably more than I’d started the semester with in my own Enchanter attunement. From what data she’d gathered, that put her above average for the semester, but not by a huge margin. Virtually everyone was making rapid increases in mana, and if it continued on pace, we’d be seeing a graduating class of second years with an unprecedented level of Sunstones.

As solid as her mana level was, though, the rest of us were well ahead.

Patrick’s mana had surged up to 254, an increase of over a hundred points from where he’d started the semester. He was more than half-way to Sunstone — and I expected him to advance even faster now that he was wearing his Null Contract Gauntlet. I groaned at myself for failing to measure his mana at the same time I’d given it to him. My own mana pool would serve as a more reasonable baseline, since I’d only started wearing my own about a week earlier.

At 261 mana, Sera’s mana pool had finally caught up to and exceeded Patrick’s. I could see a hint of a smile at her lips at getting the results, obviously relieved that the natural advantage of her contract-based attunement had finally managed to catch her up after the damage she’d suffered to her throat in the middle of the last year. She still hadn’t completely recovered from her injury, but her mana was flowing clearly enough for her mana levels to be improving rapidly. I wondered if Patrick would pull ahead again now that he had the gauntlet, but it was too soon to say.

My own mana pools were both increasing on pace, but as expected, my Arbiter attunement was getting stronger faster. My Enchanter attunement lagged slightly behind my friends at 235 mana, which was a little annoying, but realistically, it was still exceptional compared to Cecily and most of the other Enchanters in our class. My Arbiter attunement had jumped to 305, which was only a sliver from hitting Sunstone at 360 — and an easy leap if I simply chose to overload my own attunement with extra mana or change my safe mana values in a fight.

…Not that I was planning to do the latter, of course. No, of course not.

Anyway, I was on pace to hit Sunstone in a handful of weeks, which was an incredible thing to say when I was only months into my second year of having an attunement. And with my newly-made gauntlet, I expected my advancement to come even faster.

Could I hit Citrine by the end of my second year? My current rate of progression would have me fall a little short, but with the gauntlet and a few other tricks…

I wondered if anyone had hit Citrine that quickly before. Presumably, it wasn’t totally unprecedented — there were weird cases like people who had access to tons of enhancement elixirs, as well as older generations of attunements that worked completely differently with safe mana thresholds.

But even if it wasn’t completely novel, it certainly would be a major success if I could manage it.

…And I wasn’t even the closest one in my group to reaching that threshold. Not by a long shot.

Mara had hit 546 total mana — putting her at two points above my combined total.

I tried to console myself with the fact that, purely in terms of ratios, that meant I was actually catching up to her…if only barely. Her mana growth rate was just absurd, even without the enhancement elixirs that she’d been given during the winter break. I wondered if that was because her specific attunement benefitted more from Meltlake’s training routine than mine did, if it was a consequence of Guardian mana types just being inherently safer (and thus easier for the body’s capacity to tolerate), or…if she was just training that much harder than I was.

She’d certainly thrown herself into feverish training after Keras had left. Maybe she was taking his instructions to “follow him when she was strong enough” a little too seriously. I’d seen her challenging all sorts of people to sparring matches, and even participating in a couple more Survival Matches, which probably wasn’t a good idea…but it wasn’t really my place to say anything. Everyone dealt with grief in different ways.

With our mana levels figured out, we spent the rest of the ride chatting, or occasionally going off together to discuss a few small tactical ideas in Cecily’s absence. We simply didn’t have enough information to do much else — or, at least, I didn’t. Sera seemed to know more than she was saying, which wasn’t exactly a surprise. I wondered exactly how much she’d figured out in advance and how she’d done it, but it was the wrong place and time to ask.

The train ride to our test was a reasonably short one. We were heading to the Shining Meadows Training Facility just a couple hours to the north. This was an actual, fully-staffed Valian military base, but largely for the purposes of running large scale simulations and war games. It was one of the places we’d be potentially deployed after graduation based on our performance and specific skill sets.

Our “talking strategy” during the ride ended up mostly being Sera talking while the rest of us listened. “So, I’m going to go over some basics about what we’re going to be dealing with. This is probably familiar ground to most of you, but I know that some of you,” Sera looked directly at me, “have a habit of not looking up test details in advance.”

I rolled my eyes. That was absolutely untrue, except when it wasn’t.

…Like in this case.

In fairness to me, I had higher priorities. Like, you know, whatever I decided was a higher priority that day so I didn’t have to think about finals.

Sera ignored my response and continued her explanation. “Once we get to the base, we’ll be placed in a larger group. These groups tend to be from eighteen to forty-two people, depending on the specific activity, but they can be smaller or larger depending on the specific scenario we’re assigned. That means that while we’re going to be able to work together with each other, we’re also going to have to play along with the strategies of others. A major part of this scenario’s grading is going to be about how well our team coordinates with other teams. Make no mistake, however — winning is still the main thing we should focus on. There’s no substitute for victory.”

Lute gave a pleased smile at that comment, as if he was entertaining some kind of personal joke that the rest of us missed, but he didn’t say anything.

I may have been watching him a little too closely.

Sera kept talking. “Common scenarios resemble those in the scenario floors of spires, but generally tailored toward larger group sizes. Strong possibilities include fighting a single exceptionally powerful monster, escort missions for vulnerable targets, clashes between armies, capture the flag style scenarios, and sieges. There will very likely be several tests going at any given time. Ordinarily, we have no influence over which scenario we’re slotted into. My information tells me that it isn’t assigned in advance, in order to prevent that information slipping to teams ahead of time. Rather, the instructors present at the training facility will assign the scenarios to people shortly after they arrive by their own private criteria.”

Sera turned to Jin. “We should be arriving about two hours prior to our scheduled time slot. Your first assignment begins the moment we arrive — you are to determine which scenarios are being run that day, which instructors are running each of them, and anything you can about placement. From there, we’ll discuss what we can do to get ourselves slotted into an ideal test.”

“Not bad.” Jin nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Is that really allowed?” Patrick glanced worriedly at Sera, and then to me, as if I might intervene. I simply shrugged at him.

Sera smiled. “Intelligence gathering is a critical function in any military campaign. I can’t say whether or not investigating and attempting to skew the test placement is part of our expected behavior, but I will say that I sincerely doubt we’ll be punished if they find out we did it. And, given Jin’s abilities, I don’t think they will find out — unless, of course, the test is being designed around it, in which case we’re probably intended to do it.”

I wasn’t entirely sure I agreed with that last part. Having security measures for infiltrators at any military base was just common sense, and given our past history with Edria, having people on alert for Mesmers was a pretty basic precaution. Still…Jin wasn’t going to be the only one trying to gather information or skew the tests before they started. Most of it would simply be through social manipulation — people trying to chat up instructors or other students, or people with local attunements like Shadows trying to sneak around in more conventional ways. Given how our school operated, I agreed that it was more likely that such behavior would be rewarded rather than punished.

We did have a whole Spider Division, after all.

It occurred to me that I still didn’t know what division Lute had been slotted into…but jumping to the assumption that he was a spider simply because I hadn’t asked a basic question would have been folly. It also wasn’t much of a concern even if he was one. I didn’t think it was likely that this test would involve spider sabotage — that felt like too much rehash of the last year’s exams. That wasn’t anything certain, of course, but I didn’t plan to prioritize a spider search unless we had a strong indication it would be necessary.

…And I suspected that I wouldn’t have to deal with it even if it was a part of the test, given Jin’s spider-hunting tendencies and Sera’s generally superior social modeling to my own.

Patrick didn’t look super happy about the intelligence gathering, but he didn’t make any further objections.

“What do you need the rest of us doin’ while Jin is skulkin’ about?” Mara asked.

“If you have a chance to chat up the other teams or otherwise assess them, do that. The more information we can get on the other teams in advance the better. I have basic files on everyone in our time slot, but those tend to have omissions, similar to how Corin’s doesn’t list certain extra abilities he possesses. They also don’t cover equipment.”

“How’d you get those?” I asked. “Are those public?”

Sera smiled. “Public? No. Accessible to the right people? Certainly.” She turned to Patrick. “And before you get too worried, I have confirmed that accessing personnel files for other students is expected behavior.”

“Confirmed how?” He asked, still sounding worried.

“I asked the Dean of Admissions. Checking with Meltlake would have been easy, too, but I didn’t want to bother her. She has more than enough to deal with.”

Patrick let out an exhausted sigh. “…You’re not kidding. She’s barely had any time for our training this year. But if you checked with one of the deans…yeah, that’s good enough for me.”

“It’s important to remember that even aside from our vaunted Spider Division, Valia is Tenjin’s nation, and we’re expected to think our way through problems. Strength is valued, but so is strategy. We’re not going to get expelled for planning in advance.”

“Might be true for the papers on people, but sneaking around the base itself might be a little above and beyond,” Mara pointed out. “There could be military matters that are outside our test.”

Sera nodded in acknowledgement. “Technically true, but if they’re keeping anything like that stuff exposed in areas where students can reach it during a time period when students are actively roaming around for tests…well, that’s on them. I can’t imagine they’re not expecting students to sneak around. It’s just common sense.”

“If you say so.” Mara turned to Jin. “Just be careful, yeah?”

“Of course.” He tilted his head downward. “I’ll try to hide the bodies somewhere that can’t be traced back to us.”

We laughed awkwardly, except for Lute, who didn’t seem to get the joke.

“Any further questions or objections before we move on to some scenario-specific discussion?” Sera asked.

There was a brief pause, then she simply continued. “Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do if we get an escort mission…”

***

We went over several different scenario options as the train ride continued, then finally, we arrived at the testing facility. After going through an identity checking process at the gate, we were let inside, then led down a few streets toward one of several large buildings.

The Shining Meadows Training Facility wasn’t much to look at from the entrance — there was a massive grey wall that stretched beyond my sight with guard towers near the gates, but it didn’t look particularly distinctive.

Once we went inside the gates, it was even more nondescript — just paved roads and a bunch of large buildings, not unlike another college campus. Most of the people around were in military uniforms, but that wasn’t much different from the academy, either.

I’d been expecting something a little more…fortress-like, maybe? More obviously defensible structures, larger numbers of obvious guards, more groups of people moving in obvious formations. That might have been more applicable in war time, but really, I’d probably just misread the style of the facility — or perhaps I just had skewed expectations about what a modern military base looked like in general.

Our guards pushed open the double doors to a single-story building and motioned us inside. The room was hundreds of feet long and maybe fifty feet wide, with the vast majority of it filled with tables and benches. Given the size and structure, I suspected it was usually used as a mess hall. I could see a few doors on the other side, likely leading into a kitchen area. Our escort departed the moment we went inside the room, meaning we were left to our own devices.

Or perhaps the nonthreatening appearance of the entry to the facility was calculated, much like Sera seemed to believe the entire scenario would be.

Immediately, I began to suspect that Sera was right about pre-test preparation being intentional…or, perhaps, that the test simply had already started. There were several groups of students already sitting around the room, as well as guards standing near the four exits, but not directly blocking them. There were also a couple academy staff members seated at a table across the room, seemingly having lunch. That might have been “real”, or they might have simply been placed there for students to approach for intelligence gathering and manipulation. Or, you know, both.

We spotted several familiar faces immediately, including Roland’s team…or most of them, anyway. I recognized Kyra, Desmond, Loria, and unfortunately, also Rupert Kent. The last member of their team was unfamiliar, but that wasn’t surprising, given that all the teams had expanded to six.

I wondered if we’d end up getting paired with them — it wouldn’t be unusual, given that we’d worked with some of them in the previous year’s finals. Cecily’s team was there, too, but I didn’t recognize most of them. They’d visited the house a few times, but I’d generally found reasons to be elsewhere for social engagements like that.

Mary Hawthorne was there, looking steadier than when I’d last seen her. To my surprise, the other survivor of her dueling team, Vermillion Rose, was sitting with her. Vermillion’s arm was still wrapped heavily in bandages, but they must have managed to save the limb in the hospital. Whether or not her attunement still worked…that was tougher to tell at a glance.

She looked more than a little pale. I wondered at the wisdom of letting her take the final exams in what was clearly still terrible physical condition, but I supposed there wasn’t really a good way to delay it.

I frowned when I realized that the two of them were sitting alone. Were they an entire team? Didn’t they need six members?

Were…all the rest of their team members still in the hospital or dead?

That was a sobering thought.

Looking around, I realized that there were other teams that looked short-handed, too…and I felt strangely fortunate that my own team had made it to the exams intact.

Patrick almost hadn’t made it, after all.

If Keras hadn’t been with us…

I shook my head. There’d be time for introspection on that later.

Sera was already heading to take a seat at a table near Roland’s team, which absolutely made sense. If our teams ended up being selected due to something like proximity, being paired with Roland was a good strategy—

Except, of course, for Rupert Kent’s presence on the team.

Mara, to her credit, managed to sit down next to Sera without any obvious sign of hostility toward Kent. Either she’d moved on from her childhood issues with Kent or she’d simply managed to contain any aggression she felt.

I briefly glanced back toward the sparse remains of Mary’s team, wondering if perhaps I should have gone to sit with them rather than stacking everyone with Roland’s team, but I dismissed it. Keeping our team together was too important, both for practical reasons and appearances.

The rest of us sat down. Sera leaned between the tables to whisper something to Roland, which he nodded to, then relayed to Kyra.

I gave Sera a questioning look.

“Just offered an alliance if it’s an option,” she whispered. I caught Roland’s affirmative hand-signal, not dissimilar to ones we’d used the very first day of dueling class.

…Hopefully this alliance would work out better.

We didn’t have much more time to plan before a brown-haired man in a Valian military uniform strode into the room with an entourage and called everyone to attention. We stood and stepped to ready stances immediately.

“Good day, students. I’m Lieutenant Commander Vanih, and I’ll be organizing this group for the combat exercise. I’m pleased to see that you’ve arrived promptly. You’ll be given priority slotting over those teams that arrive later in the day.”

I could practically feel Sera saying “I told you so” for arranging that.

“At ease. You can be seated; this will be a long explanation.” We sat down, then Lieutenant Commander Vanih continued. “This exercise will be a historical recreation, albeit with some minor adjustments. You will be split into two groups. Those of you who are currently seated on the left side of the room will be assigned to defense. Those of you on the right side will be assigned to the assault team.”

Defense, then. Good. That’s generally an advantageous position. Similar numbers of students on each side of the room. And we’re with Roland’s team, but…

My eyes briefly met Mary’s, seated on the opposite side of the room. She gave me the slightest nod.

The officer continued. “This scenario is based around the last defense of the city once known as Daisen during the Six Years War.”

My confidence dropped rapidly.

I wasn’t an expert on historical battles, but even I knew the stories of the fall of Daisen. It was, after all, one of the battles that led up to Alaric Cadence’s fateful duel that won our family nobility.

…It had been a disaster. The city had held under the power of the Unbroken Queen for nearly a year of siege. Sabotage led to the city’s outer gates being opened from within, and even without that, the attacking force’s size was overwhelming.

The city was conquered and renamed “Zunyi”. Even the language of the natives had been stolen along with their former capitol.

It was the kind of fight that was modeled in Crowns with a hundred-point army trying to fight a thousand-point one — and that was probably an underestimate. It was toward the end of the war, and by that point, the armies of Edria had both absurd numbers and ridiculous support. Children of the God Hydra had marched with the army, serving as living artillery in their full-sized hydra forms.

Some even said the Emperor of Edria himself had participated, crushing the city’s inner walls with a single swing of Diamantine.

My mind swam with the implications. How were we supposed to defend against even a simulation of that? How could this possibly be considered fair?

I could see similar contemplations happening in the minds of most of the people there — but not everyone.

Rupert Kent just laughed. “You sure you want to pick groups this way?” He jerked a thumb at Jin. “Shouldn’t slanty-eye over there be on the attacking team?”

The room went silent.

Mara looked like she was about ready to stand up when Jin put a hand on her shoulder and shook his head fractionally.

The Lieutenant Commander turned to Kent. “While I did give you permission to sit, I did not give you permission to speak. Your name, Sir?”

“Lord Rupert Kent.” Rupert folded his arms.

“Kent. There’s no room for racists in this exercise — or in our armed forces. Get out.”

Rupert blinked. “What? But…no. You must have misheard me. I’m Lord Kent, I’m—”

“Guards, escort Lord Kent to his new exercise in the brig.”

Kent paled. “You…you can’t…” He glanced at his teammates, pleading. Desmond looked almost like he was going to stand up, but Kyra pulled on his arm.

We watched Kent get dragged out of the room—

But it was clear that not everyone present approved of the decision. There were immediate murmurs among the students, and a few of them even looked like they might say something before the Lieutenant Commander clapped his hands, a thunderclap bringing the room to silence.

“You may be silent. Now, listen closely.” He scanned the crowd, looking for further dissent. “You are being prepared for entrance into our armed forces. You will be fighting alongside people with different creeds, different religions, and different skin and eyes. On the field of battle, no matter these differences, they are your brothers and sisters. You will learn that, or you will be dismissed. Am I understood?”

A murmur in reply.

“A ‘yes, sir’ would be appropriate at this juncture.”

We replied appropriately, although perhaps with less-than-military precision.

“It seems that the standards for teaching basic protocol have dropped since my time. No matter. You will learn, or you will fail. Now, to address the scenario further — the city of Daisen was, at the time of its fall, located in what was still known as the nation of Kelridge. This particular scenario will begin before the city’s walls are breached — but we will not be telling you how long before. It will be up to the defenders to learn the details of their situation and find ways to attempt to change the result of the siege. Attackers, you will be assigned tasks to ensure that history follows its course — or, perhaps, takes a turn that favors Edria even further.”

More details were relayed to us after that, mostly in terms of logistics for our transport to the scenario area. I paid the best attention I could, but I couldn’t help but wonder if the real risks of the scenario were outside of the scope of the test.

Kent had been a fool to speak openly about his feelings about Jin, but from the reactions of the people around us, an unfortunate number of students were sympathetic to his position…and perhaps better at subtlety.

When we walked into the city of Daisen, we had more than just sabotaged gates to worry about—

We had the very real risk that the Sons of Valia stood among us, ready to strike at any time.

***

Mara and Patrick walked at Jin’s flanks as our teams walked to the teleportation circle that would transport us inside the massive recreation of wartime-era Daisen. I didn’t know if the city had been recreated at full scale or if it was a reduced-size model, but judging from the sheer amount of territory that this base supposedly covered, anything was possible.

Jin, in spite of having tension in his shoulders, looked like he was filled with resolve. And I could see why—

This scenario was almost custom tailored to him.

Kent, when looking at Jin, just saw a “foreigner”…and completely failed to see that Jin’s very house, House Dalen, was the same house that ruled the city we were heading to defend.

I’d made my own foolish assumptions about Jin before I’d really known him, too. Would I have made the same mistaken assumptions as Kent if I hadn’t had an explanation directly from Jin?

I’d like to think that I would have eventually realized that the surname “Dalen” indicated a heritage that wasn’t associated with the invading armies…but there was no way to know. I wasn’t immune to my own biases, either. I’d have to work on being more conscious about that.

In the meantime, I had a supposedly-impossible scenario to win.

***

We appeared on the rooftop of a colossal shell-shaped structure of ancient Dalen design. A glance at the thick plated walls of the building told me it was a fortress built to resemble a smaller scale version of the Tortoise Spire, which was commonly respected in Kelridge in spite of the closer proximity of the Phoenix Spire. Kelridge was still under Dalenos rule in this time period — though it wouldn’t be for much longer.

…Not if we failed, anyway.

Six teams were teleported together, although Kent wasn’t the only person missing from one of them. Some had already been shorthanded, and others had members pulled away for reasons that were unclear to me while we had headed to the teleportation pads. Evening out team sizes, maybe? I didn’t get an exact count of the other team, but we had a total of thirty-one people among our six teams.

There were no Valian military officers present with us — we were on our own now.

We were given a few more basic instructions, as well as updated shield sigils with the now-familiar teleportation shells to transport us outside of the area if the shield was depleted. I’d been permitted to keep my own full set of magic items for this scenario, including my own sigils, and I’d gotten permission to move my teleportation shell to the strongest of my sigils. That made me a good deal more “durable” than average, at least in terms of shield capacity, but I still didn’t see how I’d be able to handle the kind of opponents that this siege supposedly included.

…They couldn’t simulate God Beast children, could they?

I thought back to what Sera had done in the arena and wondered if they might have simply asked some God Beast children to play along with us. That was a terrifying thought.

…What were the odds that they had the Emperor of Edria as a special guest for our training scenario?

I shook my head. That one was just a little too farfetched. I didn’t expect to meet the Emperor of Edria anytime soon.

Even a simulated Wielder of Diamantine would be terrifyingly powerful, though, and someone I couldn’t hope to fight.

So, I was completely on-board with Sera when she called all six groups together to form up and gave her initial assessment:

“We can’t fight their army.” There was a brief murmur of discontent in the response, but she raised a hand to quiet them. “…Not directly. But we don’t have to. We know from historical records that this city fell at the time it did because of internal sabotage. It’s highly likely that this is going to be a part of the simulation. If we can identify and eliminate the saboteurs, we can delay the fall of the city — perhaps in time for Valia to send aid and change the course of the war.”

That got some nods. If there was anything that most Valians could agree on, it was that Valia was militarily superior to everyone else.

“To that end, our teams are going to need to do some immediate intelligence gathering. Maybe flip through some record books to see what date the walls fell—”

“Snow 11th.” Jin spoke, drawing everyone’s eyes immediately. Some nods, some scowls.

“Excellent,” Sera replied. “Thank you, Master Dalen. Given that Queen Dalen should still be in charge of the city at this time, your presence will be an incalculable benefit to our efforts.”

Jin’s lips twitched into a slight smile, obviously understanding what Sera was doing. “Of course. I’ll have to see if Gran-Gran is willing to entertain an audience.”

Gran-Gran?

That was clearly an exaggeration if what he’d told me about his heritage was true — he wasn’t a prince — but I supposed most of the students there didn’t know that.

…And even the most awful of the Sons of Valia probably would likely hesitate to threaten an asset on the scale of “member of the ruling queen’s family”. They wanted power — and that required victory.

I didn’t envy Sera for trying to manipulate them to avoid any internal bloodshed, but I was incredibly glad she was there to do it. I hoped her strategy would work.

“Now, since Lord Dalen is on our team, we’ll attempt to make contact with House Dalen to learn whatever intelligence we can on the situation. Perhaps place ourselves close to the queen to try to prevent any assassination attempts, which could be a way the other teams will attempt to end the scenario early,” Sera smoothly continued. “We should also look at other potential methods the other teams could use to succeed at breaching the city without the internal sabotage. With the benefit of future knowledge, other students may have significant knowledge of this city’s layout and forces that people during the original siege didn’t. Cecily, you’ve studied Daisen’s history, yes?”

Cecily stammered. “Oh, uh, yes! I took the military history elective, and uh, did a bit of a project on Zunyi — that is, uh, Daisen — and…”

“Are there any other entrances aside from the gates?”

“Oh, uh, I mean, there’s always the aqueducts, and the sewers, and…well, I mean, obviously, there’s the way we came in?”

I blinked.

Of course. The teleportation pad itself was outside of the scenario area, but the receiving end needed to have an anchor, and that meant it could potentially be used by other teleportation effects.

It was a clear vulnerability, but not one I would have necessarily thought of, since the origin point was outside the scenario itself. And from the looks on the other students’ faces, I wasn’t sure anyone else would have considered it, either.

…Certainly not as quickly, at any rate.

“Corin?” Sera turned to me. “Can the arrival point of a teleportation circle like this be shut down?”

I felt a smile coming across my face. “…It can be, but why shut down a perfectly good teleportation circle?” I reached into my dimensional bag and shuffled around.

“…Does anyone have, say, a comically large hammer?”

***

I managed to avoid being there for Jin’s meeting with House Dalen by virtue of convincing everyone of the relative utility of stealing a gigantic teleportation circle.

The circle was too large to move in a single piece, but I was able to rapidly identify the runes in use with some help from Cecily. Then, with two teams to assist us, we broke the entire circle into manageable chunks and shoved them into my bag.

We’d rebuild it later…once we picked the best place for our enemies to teleport into the city. Right inside the jail, maybe. Just over a pool of lava would have been fun, but probably a smidge too dangerous if other students were going to use it.

We didn’t actually know that anyone on the other team would try to utilize the teleportation circle, but now, I was really hoping that they did.

Seeing their expressions would be priceless.

After “Project: Steal the Circle” was completed, our teams split off to other tasks. We had set rendezvous times and locations based on the limited information we were able to gather from the first few people who went into the city and investigated our locale.

For the scenario, we’d apparently been given the role of a mid-ranking defensive force assigned to the “Third Tortoise Tower”. We had broad latitude for how we defended that particular building, as well as more minor influence in general city defense efforts.

Our particular tower was designed to defend an “important treasure”, which Sera suspected was code for one of the royal heirs. I was hoping it actually meant literal treasure, since any treasure in a scenario like this was something I could potentially copy the runes off of, if it didn’t happen to end up in my pouch by the end of the battle.

…Still, we’d been forbidden from visiting the inner sanctum of the tower, except in absolute emergencies, so we didn’t have a clear answer.

Jin’s trip to the Royal Palace went…a little too well.

I’d known that his plan had been to go to the palace to and identify himself as a member of House Dalen that had just returned from the field. We suspected this would work similarly to a scenario floor in a spire, where the simulated people present would adapt to however we identified ourselves, within reason.

I’d also known that Jin bore a strong resemblance to one specific member of his family that I’d seen in a scenario floor that took place only two decades later — Mitsurugi Dalen.

I probably could have put together the plan that had been formulated in Lute’s mind along the way, if I’d considered it, but I wouldn’t have known it was possible. Not exactly.

I knew Keras could make replicas of the Sacred Swords. I knew Lute was related to them, too.

But somehow, in spite of all the pieces being there in disparate parts of my mind, I was caught off guard when I heard the announcement of a celebratory parade—

One welcoming Jin Dalen, Wielder of Soulbrand, on his return to Daisen in their time of great crisis.

***

Over the next few hours, Sera served as the primary point of contact for our six teams. We gathered information on likely locations for incursions to the city and sent teams to secure them to the best of our ability, setting traps in the absurdly spacious sewers and aqueducts, and sending teams to reinforce weaker spots in the walls that had been hit by heavy munitions fire.

I remained at the tower, too distant from the battle lines to hear the sound of artillery fire, but reportedly there were units firing on the walls near-continuously. There were barriers on the city walls to repel the fire, but every cannonball and ballista bolt drained their mana reserves. The city’s defenders had attuned dedicated to helping restore those shields periodically, but I wondered if I might be able to find a better solution — maybe something to upgrade the barriers to reflect projectiles rather than simply stopping them?

It might have been possible if I had a vastly larger mana pool to draw from, but as it was, I doubted I could do more than redirect one or two projectiles before any runes I carved into the walls were drained.

Maybe with help from the city’s defenders I could have managed a significant upgrade, but I didn’t know if I had enough time for that, and at the moment, I had a more immediate task.

It took close to an hour to build my latest enchantment — a teleportation beacon. Beacons were designed to be used in conjunction with anchors so that Wayfarers could easily identify the location of a usable anchor. Basically, it advertised the presence of an anchor at a long distance for people who were looking.

In this case, the purpose was simple — it was basically a giant sign that said, “Hey, you can teleport straight here”. Such a thing wasn’t necessary for our initial entry to the city, since we’d come in through a linked teleportation circle. This would let people outside the city know there was a way to get in from the outside.

I threw the finished product in my bag before fully charging it. I’d finish turning it on when we reached our destination and set everything up.

“Ready to go?” Sera asked.

“Ready as I’m going to be.”

“Okay, here’s the spot you’re going to.” She pointed at a map of the city she’d acquired from one of the other teams. “Take Lute to watch your back and Desmond to handle rebuilding the circle.”

“Understood.” Sera generally was trying to keep teams working with their own members, but there were times when gaps in individual team skill sets necessitated some degree of mixing. As a Shaper, Desmond Vyers had earth magic, which our team generally lacked. Sera technically had some ability with earth through her updated contract with Vanniv — or through invoking him — but she was staying at our headquarters.

With that, I paid my first visit to the Royal Palace of Daisen.

The journey was a couple miles, but we took it at a brisk jog. Moving through the city was a much more haunting experience than remaining in the spire — civilians turned their gazes down as we passed, their faces gaunt and their expressions hopeless. Terrified.

They’ve been dealing with bombardment for weeks already, I realized. There are ways for attuned to generate fresh food and water, but maybe not enough to keep the entire city healthy. Even if the walls remain up, this is going to have a continuous cost on the populace.

I’d acquired a mid-level officer’s uniform as a part of the scenario preparations, which allowed me access to the palace and prompted salutes from the guards at both the inner gates — a second line of defense around the royal quarter of the city — and the palace itself. The respectful treatment from the guards made me marginally uncomfortable, but I responded in kind, hoping that Desmond or Lute would handle any social interactions.

More than one guard gave the sword at my hip a questioning or interested look. I’d chosen to wear Selys-Lyann openly, since it was actually allowed in this scenario — most of our enemies would be simulacra, not other students — but I was beginning to regret that choice. If I drew too much attention with the sword, I’d end up in a situation similar to Jin’s, drawn into politics that I wouldn’t be able to deal with.

I didn’t run into Jin while we were at the palace. When Lute inquired, he was told that the Wielder of Soulbrand was in a private meeting with the Unbroken Queen and her senior staff, which was simultaneously encouraging and terrifying.

Fortunately, Sera had sent ahead and gotten permission for our little plan. I had my reservations, but together, my makeshift team followed the instructions of the guards to an underground passage. They unlocked several layers of gates as we took stairs into the dark.

I tried to contain my nervousness that we were the ones walking into a trap, but no such trickery emerged.

We reached the royal dungeons without incident…then found a cell large enough to rebuild the teleportation circle.

Before charging the beacon, I set up a few defensive and warning enchantments on the cell. I disabled those temporarily, setting new activation conditions.

Then, I began to deploy my void emitters around the chamber, disabling those as well and changing their own activation parameters.

Finally, I reactivated the circle and beacons. Lute helped provide the mana for it, fortunately, which helped save me from using all my batteries at once.

I debated seeing if Lute could reshape the void emitters and other enchantments to hide the runes entirely, but it was too likely to disrupt the enchantments. I needed to read more about doing enchantments inside objects at some point, but it wasn’t the right time.

Then, I rapidly led everyone upstairs. Guards were ordered to wait at the top of the stairs, but not in the room itself.

“I’m not sure I understand this whole setup,” Desmond frowned. “This stuff is all off, except for the beacon and the circle?”

“It is for now. The void emitters would disable the portals, and there’s a chance that scrying on the location would show the defensive enchantments. Right now, this place just looks like a dark, unguarded room to anyone who scries on it. Once they see what looks like a location inside the palace that they can teleport to, hopefully they’ll send a group in. The portal’s activation is linked to the other items around the room. First, the void emitters will go off one second after the portal activates, blanketing the whole area in void. The void emitters will turn off after three seconds, then the barriers will pop up and the alarms will sound, alerting the guards, who will both notify us and investigate.”

“How much of an impact is a few seconds of void mana really going to have?”

“Tough to say. Even with six emitters, if they have anything like my own layered sigils, it won’t do much. But if not…”

We got our answer about four hours later, at least in part, when a message spell reached Sera that the trap had been triggered. Then a second message, just a few minutes later.

The first was simple enough — trap sprung. The second was more confusing—

No one had been found in the trap. A search was being conducted for the missing infiltrators.

That was alarming, and we ended up deploying Cecily’s team to investigate the room. I warned them to get out immediately if they saw the portal activate…which proved prescient, as the portal activated a second time while Cecily’s team was searching for the infiltrators.

Cecily reported back with an explanation—

Her team had withdrawn as soon as they saw the portal flash. Even then, they’d been close enough that they’d been clipped by the void emitters, and two team members had their shield drained nearly to empty in an instant.

…But while they’d narrowly escaped, the team that appeared in the circle hadn’t been so fortunate.

Three seconds of six emitters, it seemed, was more than enough to drain a standard shield sigil—

But not quite enough to drain the shells attached. Meaning that, as the infiltrators blinked in the dark, they were teleported right back out of the area by their shield sigils failing.

An entire team eliminated without a single sword swung.

…And, as Cecily investigated further and found no sign of the previous infiltrators, it became more obvious that they’d been the second group that had been eliminated in that way. A Diviner checked the room afterward, reporting that the first group had likely only been three people — but even so, our trap had been more than successful.

Nine students down. Twenty-something to go.

***

Our enemies weren’t tricked a third time. The third time the portal flashed, it wasn’t a team that arrived on the teleporter — it was a bomb.

A massive, non-magical bomb.

Predictably, my void emitters didn’t do anything to it. My barriers might have, but the bomb detonated before they had a chance to activate.

The colossal detonation ripped out a chunk of the lower portion of the royal palace. Two students were still investigating the area nearby — not close enough to be hit directly, but underground while the rooftop of the dungeon collapsed on top of them. The falling debris was enough to break their sigils, taking them out of the test immediately.

The guards we’d placed at the prison entrance had no such protection. When we dug out their bodies, it was hard to believe they were just simulacra, not ordinary people.

I hoped that meant they hadn’t felt any pain as they’d been crushed, but I knew the answer.

We set a team on excavating both the bodies and the remains of the teleportation circle itself. The circle and beacon had been broken, as had most of my periphery enchantments. I ensured the circle was completely unusable, then worked with the others to disassemble it and toss the remains in my bag.

We wouldn’t be trying that trick again. Now that they’d seen it, it was more likely to cause us further harm than help.

I retrieved my void emitters. They were a bit scratched, but functional. Those, at least, I could plan to use again.

***

Jin was practically hyperventilating when our team finally met up again that evening.

“I do not have a Soulbrand.”

Lute laughed. “I know, I know! We’ll get you one, okay? It’ll be a good Soulbrand, I promise! Right, Corin?”

“Right, of cour— wait, hold on, what?”

Lute smiled. “You helped Big Brother make a copy of Dawnbringer. You can help me do the same with Soulbrand.”

“…I mean, maybe? I don’t know the runes for that one.”

“Oh, no problem. I do, I’ll teach them to you.”

“…And I don’t have fire mana. Do you?”

Lute shook his head. “Minor issue. Patrick can handle that, or Sera can upgrade her contract with Vanniv, or—”

“Okay. I get it. But is that really going to convince people? And is it…really okay for us to be doing that?”

“Why not? Akari wouldn’t care. Honestly, she’d probably be tickled silly.”

“…What about the physical sword itself?”

“I can handle that. I’m not as skilled with metal as some of my siblings, but I can do it. Patrick, are you in?”

“Are you kidding? I get to help make a Soulbrand? This is the best day of my life.”

By the time we got to the metal-melting stage, even Jin couldn’t keep brooding.

And when he finally hefted the massive greatsword in the late hours of the evening, Jin looked every bit the hero that the stories made the wielders out to be.

He was testing the sword’s magic on the rooftop when we heard a massive detonation in the distance—

The parades would have to wait.

One of the city’s outer walls had been breached.

***

We’d checked the current date. It was two days too early for the saboteurs to strike the gates, at least from a historical perspective.

Cecily had remembered the likely identities of the saboteurs from historical documentation and checked them with a few other people with historical research backgrounds. Then, they’d gone after the saboteurs and had them arrested.

…But while we could change the scenario, so could the other team. And this blast hadn’t come from the gates.

A hundred-yard-long section of the western walls had simply crumpled, as if crushed by a gigantic fist. Even from a distance, the scale of the attack was simply awe-inspiring. Atop our tower, I could hear it — and see it — from miles away.

Virtually no human could manage an attack of that magnitude. Meltlake, sure, but the number of people at her level of power could be counted on a single hand.

Breaches of the walls had occurred during other points in the siege, but one of this scale…well, it was a problem, to say the least.

Even if there wasn’t a fifty-foot-tall hydra crashing through the breach straight into the city.

“…That’s a problem,” I mumbled.

“Corin Cadence, Master of the Obvious,” Sera bequeathed me with a noble title as she rolled her eyes. “Our core orders remain — we need to protect this building. That’s the top priority.”

“…Is it, though? That’s our priority within the scenario’s story, but—”

“No arguing. We have six teams. Some of them will undoubtedly go to fight the hydra, which is fine. Jin, if you want to fight the hydra with that new sword of yours, that might be good for the city’s morale, but—”

“I do not, in fact, want to fight the giant hydra.”

Mara punched her fists together. “Wouldn’t mind a shot at it myself, if we’re getting offers.”

“No. I need you here. You’ve been studying barrier magic, yes?”

“Still no good at it, but I could throw something together. Why?”

“Work with Corin enchanting the inner door. Whatever the treasure is in here, we’re not losing it. I’m going to throw some message spells to other teams to get them rallied into strategic positions. I’m not a Wayfarer, but I can manage basics.”

“…The queen,” Jin suggested. “She’s going to be the primary target.”

“I put a team on it, but if you want to support them, that would probably still offer some morale benefit.”

Jin nodded, tipped his head, and then set off toward the palace.

“…Are we really sending Jin alone?” I asked.

“He’s a Sunstone-level Mesmer. He’s not going to get caught unless he wants to.”

I nodded, but I still didn’t like it. Splitting the party was, as a general rule, considered a bad idea — but I supposed that with a miles-large city, we couldn’t treat it quite like a standard spire level.

“Should I go fight the hydra?” Lute asked.

Sera evaluated that for a moment. “…Could you beat it?”

“Oh, sure. But I think I know what you’re planning to do next, and I could help with that. I have the right mana types.”

She raised an eyebrow.

It wasn’t often that people could figure out Sera’s plotting before she explained it — she was generally pretty good at keeping ahead of ordinary people with her schemes.

But Lute wasn’t exactly an ordinary person, was he?

“Very well. If you’re willing, I’d certainly value some extra mana, but I haven’t decided if we should deploy it here or at the royal palace.”

“I concur with your earlier assessment,” Lute replied. “This is a more immediate target, given that the royal palace is still behind the inner walls. We are not. It is likely we were sent here for a reason. It’s possible this location is unimportant –- a decoy — but even if it is, we can make it important. Put a target on it, attract attention here, and then defeat anything comes our way. If we’re lucky, maybe they’ll have something stronger than that hydra that could offer me a challenge.”

…That was the most Keras-like I’d heard him sound. Maybe they were more closely related than I’d realized.

I turned to Sera. “…What’s this plan of yours?”

“It’s very simple, Corin. We have a perfectly nice facsimile of the Tortoise Spire here — but it’s just a tower right now. How would you like to make it into a dungeon?”

“You don’t mean…”

“Let’s go inside for this, shall we?”

Sera led us downstairs, through several floors, to stand in front of the massive iron doors that supposedly led into the inner sanctum we were intended to protect. Then, she clapped her hands together.

“Transcendence Gateway Crystal, I summon you.”

A massive crystal appeared, floating in the air in front of us.

[Greetings, my Summoner, my marked, allies…and honored blade of victory.]

Lute offered a nod in response to that last remark. “Hey. Been a while.”

[Indeed it has.] There was a pause. [It would appear that a battle is already in progress. Shall we begin?]

“Oh, let’s.” Sera grinned. “This is going to be fun.”

CHAPTER XXXI – AGAINST ALL ODDS

Throwing some standard protection enchantments on the doors to the inner sanctum was easy enough. I’d memorized the designs for most standard anti-infiltration stuff, like anti-scrying runes, anti-teleportation runes, and of course various different types of physical barriers.

As I worked, I was acutely aware that the sounds of battle were growing progressively closer. Mara stood with me, both to help provide protection mana for some more specialized barrier enchantments and to watch my back if infiltrators managed to reach us.

Lute remained upstairs with Sera and the gateway crystal, working on…whatever terrifying plans they were up to.

“Might be that we should call this enough of an emergency to check what’s in there,” Mara suggested. “Different strategies for protecting a teenager from a babe. And I’d love ta know if there’s a real target at all.”

I glanced from side-to-side, trying to gauge if we were being observed. “…Agreed, but I’d rather do it without signaling anyone that we’re bending rules. Hm.” I kept working on the door, considering. “…Is Roland nearby?”

“Thinkin’ so, but he might’ve gone out to fight the beast.” She sounded a little jealous. “Why?”

“Might be time we finally put a Diviner’s skills to use.”

Mara ran up the stairs briefly to search for Roland, but she had no luck — he was already gone. His whole team and two others had been deployed to deal with the hydra.

Half of our forces. More than half of those that are remaining, since we’ve already lost a couple people.

…And Lute thinks he could have handled it alone. Might have been smarter to just send him. Is his presence here really going to make that much of a difference?

I got my answer after I finished working on the door and headed up the stairs to where Sera waited with the crystal.

My jaw went slack.

Three copies of Keras Selyrian waved at me in unison.

“It is a bit creepy, ain’t it?” said the solitary copy of Lars Mantrake. “Think one of this hard bastard is more than enough, but then again, I’ve never been opposed to excessive force.”

“Just try not to loot the entire place we’re trying to protect,” Keras number three pointed out.

“’Course not, lad. Can’t do that.” Lars shook his head. “Some enterprising fellow already took half the floor.”

***

Lute took a nap. Apparently, providing the gateway crystal with enough mana to conjure three Kerases (Kerasai?) and a Lars took a lot of mana, even for him.

“They’re weaker than the one the crystal summoned to fight you,” Sera explained, “but based on the mana usage, they’re probably in the Citrine range, depending on the efficiency of converting Lute’s mana. So is the Lars copy, and the Kester copy that is working downstairs.”

Kester? Lars’ partner from the Transcendence Shrine? That’s an interesting choice for another copy to pull out here. He seemed to work well with Lars…wonder what happened to the real one. Question for another day, I suppose. There’s something more pressing to ask.

“…That means that Lute just provided the crystal with roughly an Emerald-level amount of mana?” I asked.

Sera nodded. “Let’s not spread the word about that too far. Lute likes us because of our mana types — and because we’re friends with Keras — but he’s…let’s just say he’d be dangerous if someone learned things about him that they weren’t allowed to know.”

I nodded vehemently. The name “Muramasa” he used implied a direct relationship with Satoshi Muramasa from the Sacred Sword Tournament, and that man had sounded absolutely terrifying.

“…Wait, how’d you get three versions of Keras? Doesn’t he hate being duplicated?”

“Apparently, the shrine version of Keras is more cooperative than the original in that regard — and he’s an independent entity, so the crystal was able to negotiate a slightly different deal with him. It’s a little strange, but it works to our advantage. I wouldn’t expect to be able to do this kind of thing often, but “defend a city against overwhelming odds” is within the parameters that Shrine Keras considers valid to be copied for. All three copies we have will return their memories to the shrine version when they disperse, so you can see them all as being variants on the same person.”

That felt a little like ignoring the original Keras’ wishes, but I didn’t argue. I couldn’t deny the advantage they offered, nor the logic that they were their own person after being created. Keras likely would have admitted that, too, given how he treated Len — and the main risk of copying Keras wasn’t applicable, since these copies wouldn’t have access to his annihilation powers or his sword.

Sera split up the Keras copies to different roles. They insisted on rolling dice for who got to fight the hydra. Once the winner set off to handle that, the others were set to other tasks — one to cut straight through the enemy army and one to go guard the Unbroken Queen.

“You’re going to need to be cautious,” she explained to the last one. “They’re probably going to see your sword and identify you as the Wielder of Dawnbringer. That could be beneficial or detrimental to our cause.”

“I am the Wielder of Dawn,” he gave her a winning smile. “Copy or not, I’ll always be the hand that guides her light.”

“Well, with an attitude like that, maybe you should go sell them on it. Might be good for morale if they think we have two wielders.”

“Two?” He raised an eyebrow.

“We have a Soulbrand.”

“Akari is here?” Keras number two brightened immediately. “Is Ishy with her?”

“Ah, a misunderstanding. We have a different wielder. Historical scenario and all that.”

He took that easily enough. “Ah, understood. Be happy to meet a different Soulbrand wielder…but wait. Are you aware that the Sacred Swords…”

“Are self-aware? Yes. Don’t worry, the copy of Soulbrand isn’t. It’s just a replica.”

He nodded quickly at that. “Good. We won’t have any problems, then.” He gave us a wave and headed off toward the palace.

…I caught Mara trying to sneak off with Keras number two, meaning “charge the army” Keras.

She was wearing her trouble coat…which was a perfect match for his.

She turned as I caught her at the entrance…then raised a single finger in a “ssh” gesture. I hesitated for a moment — this wasn’t part of the plan — then reached into my pouch and pulled out an extra shield sigil. I tossed it to her and she caught it easily, turning it over in confusion. “For Keras. Try not to break the entire army?”

Mara grinned. “No promises.”

***

It turns out that even a Citrine-level Keras Selyrian is absolutely terrifying on the battlefield, especially when they’re told the majority of their opponents are just copies.

It took about fifteen minutes before a message told us that the invading army had been repelled from the gates and forced to withdraw from the city. There were still stragglers — the enemy troops hadn’t simply stayed in a cluster once they’d gotten inside the city, they’d spread out — but the main bulk of their force had been cut through like wheat.

Mara and Keras number two didn’t come back. I didn’t know if that was because they’d been eliminated or if they’d simply charged so deep into enemy lines that they’d been unable to safely return. Maybe they’d gotten stuck outside the walls if they’d gone all the way out of the city before the defenders began sealing the gap. Sera tried sending messages, but Mara either didn’t or couldn’t reply. Mara’s message item might have been damaged, blocked, or simply out of range.

Keras number one joined the three student teams fighting the hydra, which was a good thing, because they’d lost eight people before his arrival on the field. The battle turned quickly when he’d shown up and he’d eliminated the hydra quickly — before Keras number one vanished in a burst of light without any apparent warning.

Two more students had fallen almost immediately thereafter, sending others scattering.

The survivors spoke of glowing arrows fired at high speed without an obvious point of origin.

“Banishment,” Sera spat upon hearing the news. “Probably combined with invisibility, since they never saw the source. I’ll get a message to warn Keras number three to be on his guard against it, but most of our summoned monsters won’t have any chance. Get your defenses prepared, Corin. The real fight is about to start. Mary Hawthorne is here.”

***

I set up anti-invisibility wards at every entrance to the tower, hoping to nullify any efforts Mary made to sneak inside and bypass our defenses. Then, I worked with the Transcendence Gateway Crystal to set up more mundane layers of protection. I poured battery after battery into supporting the crystal’s mana supplies, deploying dozens of mundane tricks and traps.

Sera summoned Vanniv to keep an eye on things from above, as well as to replace the section of the building roof that we’d removed.

Then, we waited in absolute exhaustion for Mary to strike.

…Her attack never came.

Not at us, anyway.

It was two hours later that we heard a message from the palace, one that I should have predicted—

The army had ceased their assault. Not due to their losses, but due to the arrival of a new commanding officer.

Prince Edria Kang, Wielder of Diamantine, had arrived on the field of battle—

And he had offered to decide the city’s fate with a duel.

***

I rushed to the royal palace with Sera’s blessing. Her role was to guard the tower with Lute and some of the returned teams from the battle with the hydra. As useful as I was on defense, I had a more important part to play.

If things were being settled with a duel, I was one of the best choices to fight it.

Alaric Cadence had been the one who had ended the war with Edria in our real world. Could a Cadence end this war even earlier?

…But by the time I arrived at the palace, the champion had been long decided.

Jin Dalen, Wielder of Soulbrand, would fight Prince Edria Kang in a duel to the death.

***

I sat with Jin in the preparation room before the duel. “…Not to deny your skills, Jin, but…we have a spare Keras. You sure you want to do this?”

Jin gave me a strangely intense look. “There are some responsibilities that cannot be so easily passed off to another. I am House Dalen. This may not be the real world, but…this is my fight, Corin. A battle that every modern Dalen has long wished for the chance to fight.”

I nodded slowly. I could understand that, even if I didn’t entirely agree with it.

…Then again, maybe I was a hypocrite. I’d walked into an unwise duel with a copy of Jerome Schmidt in the spire, after all.

“Fine. Pick me as your second, then…and it wouldn’t hurt to imply that Keras is one of your retainers. That will make it permissible for him to help you with preparations.”

Jin gave me a questioning look. “Provided Selyrian will accept it, I would welcome his aid. And…you’d be my second for a duel?”

I sensed a greater significance behind that question than the mere scenario itself dictated. “…Yes. Whatever has passed between us, you’re still…I’d protect you if I can.”

Jin was quiet for a time. “…Good.” He exhaled a deep breath. “Get Selyrian, then. I’ve heard he’s an expert at winning impossible battles. I have a feeling that’s an edge we might need.”

***

Preparations for the duel were intense. We had six hours before the duel was scheduled to occur — and we used every moment of it.

Tactics and strategy discussion. Drilling. Enchanting.

“Diamantine has three key abilities you’ll need to defend against,” Keras explained, “Weight of the World will simply crush you to the ground with a mass and density manipulation effect. Might involve gravity, too. The other major problems are from Diamantine’s blade. One is an effect that shatters weapons on contact — some kind of density and vibration effect, I think. The other is that the sword petrifies people when it cuts them.”

“Oh, is that all?” Jin gave an extremely fake smile.

“No, actually, but those are the main offensive abilities. The defensive capabilities of the weapon are just as potent. From a simplicity standpoint, I’ll say that Edria Song was basically invincible with it. To everyone other than me, that is.”

“Don’t you have an amulet to counter the petrification?” I asked Keras.

He raised an eyebrow. “Surprised you know that. But no, not now. Handed it off to big green.”

He was referring to The Green Guardian, of course, one of Edria’s legendary defenders. “…I don’t suppose you’d be willing to lend him one of your swords?”

Keras shook his head. “I know they’re not the real thing, but…no, sorry. Handing off Dawnbringer wouldn’t feel right to me, and it could compromise the realism of your scenario. Handing off the Dominion Breaker…even if it’s a copy, that’s too dangerous. He could end up hurting students with it. My other equipment, however, I could part with.”

“Hm.” I searched my memories for what might be applicable to this situation, in my inventory or Keras’. “Do we know what attunements this guy has?”

Headshakes from both Jin and Keras.

“Historical records from that era are often greatly inflated by propaganda,” Jin explained. “They make absurd claims, like royal family members having three or more attunements.”

“Edria Song has six,” Keras noted.

Jin just stared at him. “…You’re kidding, right?”

“Nope. Fought her a while back. Think the others in her family had fewer, though. You might get lucky.”

We were not, in fact, lucky — at least, not lucky enough to be facing a normal opponent.

Edria Kang wasn’t a chosen hero of prophecy like Edria Song. He didn’t have six attunements—

No, he only had four.

Four Emerald-level attunements.

“Bury me somewhere comfortable,” Jin groaned as he stood and headed to the dueling ground.

We gathered with representatives of two nations to prepare for a replacement for one of the turning points in history.

A third-party was present to adjudicate the duel — in this case, to my surprise, an Arbiter of Ferras from Caelford. I had little chance to question her, however, once the preparations began.

Formalities required a reading of the terms from each side, signatures on documents, and each fighter swearing that they were not participating under duress. As a second, I helped deal with formalities and paperwork.

Then, it was time. The combatants marched into the center of a simple dueling circle. Six barriers were erected around it, both to prevent collateral damage and to prevent outside interference.

Jin rested Soulbrand’s massive blade point-down against the ground.

Prince Edria Kang was all confidence, his short black hair raised into a traditional Edrian crown. He wasn’t even wearing armor, just his robes of office — a clear message that Diamantine’s protection would be all he needed.

Final words were exchanged. Jin and the Edrian Prince exchanged salutes.

And then, with a signal from the Arbiter, it began.

***

Jin dropped his defensive façade instantly and burst across the arena in a flash of steel. Soulbrand whipped in a horizontal swing at Edria Kang’s chest, the greatsword’s blade bursting with inner fire.

His arm blurred as he shifted upward mid-swing, then his sword impacted—

Right against Diamantine, as Edria Kang parried the swing without the slightest hint of effort.

For a moment, my breath caught in my chest—

I’d spent hours working on resilience enchantments for the Soulbrand replica, but I didn’t know if they’d be enough to prevent it from shattering on impact.

I had no idea what kind of enchantments were on the fake Diamantine, after all.

I’d tried to evaluate them at a distance, but even Transcendent Detect Aura had told me little. It radiated as a Sapphire-level weapon, but I knew enough to understand that such a thing could be faked. It was a simulation, after all — and I doubted anyone was handing out Sapphire-level weapons simply for training exercises.

…Then again, I’d doubted that Edria Kang would be able to block that swing, too.

The sacred swords met in a press — and neither shattered.

I might have been comforted if I hadn’t been absolutely convinced we needed to end the match with that first strike.

Before the match, we’d established in the rules that beneficial spells from retainers were allowed, as were any types of magical equipment that either duelist would want to wear.

So, obviously, we’d thrown virtually all our equipment on Jin and stacked him with every beneficial spell we could come up with on short notice.

Transcendent Haste took a lot out of me, but he adapted to it easily enough. Jin’s attunement used perception mana, allowing him to handle haste spells much more simply than I could myself. He didn’t require more than a few minutes of practice to get used to working with Haste—

Then Keras had stacked his own speed-enhancing spell, a variant of Body of Dawn that he’d constructed to use on other people, on top of my Transcendent Haste.

Then, I’d flooded Jin with enough mana through my Arbiter attunement to put him half-way to Citrine.

…To say that Jin was moving quickly was an understatement. He was swinging his blade faster than I’d ever managed myself, at least, and I suspected that he’d be capable of matching the Citrine-level copy of Keras in speed.

But Emerald? That was still well-out of reach.

We’d guessed that the simulation of Edria Kang wouldn’t actually operate at Emerald-level, since it was highly unlikely that anyone was available to summon something at that level of power. There weren’t that many Emerald-level Summoners and Soulblades around, after all. Would one of them even help with an exercise like this?

…I could practically visualize Elora Theas winking at me as Jin’s swing was deflected.

Edria Kang pushed Jin back, bringing his free hand upward to conjure a blast of green crystals. Jin danced aside, swinging Soulbrand again, then vanished outright before the blades made contact.

Edria Kang swung around, seemingly predicting an invisible ambush — and he was right, but he’d guessed wrong about the angle.

“Crimson Sign.” Jin had reappeared in the air above Edria Kang, Soulbrand’s blade flaring with flames that rapidly expanded as he swung it downward—

This time, he came within a hair of smashing the Prince of Edria’s crown.

Edria Kang snapped his fingers, hurling Jin backward with a blast of raw transference mana. Jin swung again in mid-air, sending a torrent of flame, but Edria Kang countered it with a swiftly-conjured wall of water.

Jin landed with a smile.

That was when the flames he’d been channeling into the floor before the match burst upward beneath Edria Kang’s feet.

Edria Kang stumbled backward in obvious surprise as the flames leapt around him, then with a grunt, a burst of ice flashed out from his body and extinguished the fire.

Jin was right in front of him when the flames parted, Soulbrand arcing straight toward Edria Kang’s face.

“Enough!” Edria Kang shouted. A shockwave ripped across the arena, knocking Jin backward and sending dangerous cracks across his outermost shield sigil’s barrier. “You will fight me directly or not at all.”

“A would-be conqueror does not dictate the terms of the defense of those he seeks to oppress,” Jin intoned with strange sincerity. “You will fight and die on my terms.”

Then Jin vanished again. This time, he did reappear right behind Edria Kang — and Edria Kang looked up.

This is it, my heart pounded.

Jin smashed a cylinder into the Edrian Prince’s back—

Triggering both that void emitter and the five others on his belt.

Summons and simulacra, being constructs of pure mana, were disproportionately vulnerable to both banishment and void. That was how Mary had both beaten Meltlake’s simulacrum and banished one of the Citrine-level copies of Keras.

And if our opponents could play that trick, we could do it, too.

I’d tweaked the emitters prior to the fight, temporarily changing them from a durational field into a more standard instantaneous burst — meaning that when Jin had landed that hit, he’d discharged six emitters worth of mana in a burst around him all at once. I hadn’t managed to get them to exclude him, but I’d built a function into his shield sigil to prevent the sigil itself from being affected.

The resulting blast of blackness washed over the arena, enveloping the entire ring in momentary darkness and erasing the first three layers of barriers—

…But when it cleared, Edria Kang still stood tall.

That’s…not possible. What?

The Edrian Prince swung around as Jin’s eyes widened. Then, as Edria Kang’s eyes darkened, he reached straight through Jin’s barrier and grabbed him by the throat.

No.

I started to step forward, but a group of guards immediately stepped to intercept me. At my side, Keras’ hand drifted closer to the hilt at his left side, but he didn’t move further.

Jin coughed, dropping the void emitter.

“You were a fool to fight me. Wielder or not, you’re just a mortal man.” Edria Kang’s sword hand came up, tracing a line across Jin’s right arm.

Stone spread across Jin’s flesh rapidly. His fingers tightened as he flailed, trying to swing Soulbrand at close range.

“No sword will avail you now.” Edria Kang smashed Diamantine’s hilt into Jin’s fingers with a crack, forcing Jin to drop the weapon.

Jin choked as the fingers on his neck tightened.

“What was that? Trying to speak your last words?” Edria Kang smiled, fractionally loosening his grip. “I couldn’t quite hear you.”

“I said…” Jin coughed again, wincing. “Swords never were my style.”

Then he shook his left sleeve, producing a revolver, and shot Edria Kang point-blank in the forehead.

Edria Kang’s body fell backward, hitting back-first. His lips opened to make a final whisper—

Which was cut off by Jin unloading five more bullets into his chest.

“Were you trying to surrender?” Jin flipped his revolver back into a holster. “My bad. I guess we’ll never know.”

He shot me a winning smile and promptly collapsed to the floor.

***

Word spread quickly of the Wielder of Soulbrand’s victory over the Wielder of Diamantine. Perhaps that would have been the end of the hypothetical war, or perhaps it would have dragged on due to the perception that the Edrian Prince had been unfairly killed in a duel while trying to offer surrender.

We were given no answers when the scenario ended — but we were congratulated on being one of the few teams that had survived until the morning when the test ended.

We were teleported out of the scenario area all at once, then briefly ushered to medical recovery rooms to assess us for injuries before being reunited with our teams.

Most of my friends took longer with the recovery than I did, so I ended up meeting up with Sera alone to chat while the others were healing.

It was at that point that I discovered our victory wasn’t quite as complete as I’d hoped.

“Most of the remaining enemy students hit us right before the duel was set to start,” Sera explained. “They knew at least some of our heavy hitters would be at the dueling area — and they were right. One of our full teams was guarding the Unbroken Queen, and one of our other teams was there to back you up if things went badly with the duel itself. We were undermanned…and things got messy.”

“Messy how?” I asked.

“They must have managed to cut their way through our traps in the sewers. Think they lost a lot of people in the process, but not enough. They detonated a bunch of explosives right below our building, bypassing the majority of our absurd dungeon setup. Then they stormed the building while we were recovering.”

I winced. We probably should have taken more countermeasures for explosives after they used the first bomb, but it just hadn’t occurred to me as being a major strategic element they’d repeat. I was so focused on magic that it was easy to forget that non-magical solutions could be just as effective when properly used. “What happened then?”

“Our defenders rallied to do whatever we could, of course, but it was a bad matchup. Mary was a hard counter to my summons. Lute tried to help me, but this area’s mana saturation is so low that he only had a fraction of his mana pool back by the time the fight started. Vermillion intercepted him and they ended up having a classic rooftop duel that Keras would have loved to see.”

“…Speaking of, did Keras two make it back to help?”

Sera shook her head. “Trapped outside the walls like we expected. Mara and Keras two survived all the way until the scenario ended, though — they carved their way through the army into a replica of one of the crystal shrines, then fought all the way to the end of it and convinced the crystal to help them defend the area.

“That’s…one of the most amazing things I’ve ever heard.”

“You should tell Mara that, she’d like it.” Sera gave me a wink. “Might be good to tell people you like things along those lines more often.”

I snorted. “I’ll take that under advisement.”

“So, more importantly, I managed to fend Mary off with an incredibly awesome new summon — but she wasn’t the only one who made it into our tower.” She sighed. “We forgot about spiders again.”

“…You’re kidding.”

“Nope. Kyra this time. She broke into the sealed room while I was distracted. Got the treasure and teleported out.”

I cursed. Sera nodded in agreement.

“…Wait, what even was the treasure?”

Sera sighed. “God phoenix egg.”

I blinked. “Wow. One of Suzaku’s eggs was in there? That’s…yeah, okay, that definitely does count as treasure.”

“No kidding. I’m betting they had a scenario goal to steal it, likely to use it as a bartering tool against Suzaku herself. Might even be enough to claim the whole Phoenix Spire as ransom.”

“…Kelridge wouldn’t agree to something that extreme.”

“No,” Sera smiled, “meaning our scenario was just the start of a whole new potential future. Shame we’ll never get to see how that reality gets to play out. I wouldn’t have minded playing a little longer.”

“Who knows?” I smiled. “There’s always second semester finals. Maybe they’ll surprise us with a sequel.”

CHAPTER XXXII – NO RELIEF TO BE FOUND

The next few hours were mostly confined to debriefing and recovery rooms. After our full team was deemed medically fit, we packed up and headed back home.

Everyone felt pretty good about how the test had gone. Jin was looking oddly distant, but pleased.

He kept the Soulbrand replica, of course. Patrick instructed him that they’d have to pick a new name for it at some point, much like Bright Reflection.

Mara had a tearful goodbye with Keras number two, who bequeathed her a phantasmal copy of Dragon’s Damsel before he was unsummoned when Sera dismissed her copy of the Transcendence Gateway Crystal. That raised a number of questions for me about the mechanics of summoning entities that could summon other entities and items, but I was frankly too exhausted to ask them.

I chatted with my friends for the first part of the journey, but I was too tired to maintain it for long. I fell asleep to the comforting thrum of the train, waking up only briefly to stumble the rest of the way from the train station back to home.

I hit the bed and didn’t wake up for a long, long time.

***

I was famished when I woke up and more than a little regretful about falling asleep in my dirty clothes. I showered, ate, and washed all of the things.

Then, after that, I made a desperate and unsuccessful attempt to relax.

Finishing my classes for the semester was a huge relief, but one that felt like it had come a bit too soon. The first semester being so much shorter than the second was jarring, but I supposed it made sense if they wanted our second semester to match up with when the new first-years arrived.

If any new first-years arrived.

As far as I knew, the Serpent Spire was still closed. That meant no Judgments, which meant no new students…unless they were taking Judgments at foreign spires. I supposed it was likely that deals were being made to get a larger number of students of eligible age access to other spires, but I hadn’t really looked into it. It was probably the sort of thing I should have been interested in, given how it was tied to the whole situation with Tenjin and Katashi, but…I just couldn’t bring myself to look into it further. I had too many items on my agenda already and it was still growing without remorse.

I couldn’t ignore the situation with Tenjin indefinitely — it involved Tristan, after all. But I wasn’t sure if trying to pry into it directly at the moment was wise, either. There was a level of temptation to try my token on the local Arbiter’s Gate to see if I could get inside, but even if I could, what would I actually be able to accomplish?

I wasn’t ready to face the spire again. Not yet.

First, I had things I needed to learn. And if I wanted to continue to do so without being sent off to the military, that meant continuing on course to my graduation.

I felt the usual trepidation when I opened the letter containing my grades for the year, even knowing some of them in advance. There was still enough ambiguity in my finals that I didn’t know exactly where my total score would fall.

Still, I ripped the letter open and looked at it as soon as I had a chance. It wasn’t the sort of thing where waiting would make me feel any better.

Cadence, Corin (Enchanter)

Second Year

Overall Class Ranking: 97/4912

Phoenix Division Rank: 18/854

Current Point Total: 834

Class Scores:

- Physical Combat — 86 (Rank A-)

- Attunement Optimization — 78 (Rank B+)

- Intermediate Enchanting — 0 (Rank n/a)

- Advanced Enchanting — 70 (Rank B)

- Intermediate Mana Manipulation — 150 (Rank SSS)

- Alternate Magic Sources — 89 (Rank A-)

- Foreign Attunements and You — 74 (Rank B)

- Dueling — 84 (Rank A-)

- Semester Final Examination — 224 (Rank B+)

- Overall Grade: A

I gawked at the scores. Compared to last year…well, I was on the right track.

If I graduated with a high enough score, I could apply to be a military climber, rather than being assigned to another branch for my four years of mandatory service. That had always been the plan. Of course, with everything else going on…I was still planning to push for good grades, and I wasn’t sure a military climbing position was still the right target.

With my abilities, a military enchantment position would be trivial to secure. But more than that…as an Arbiter, I could easily push for a diplomatic role.

Or, in all likelihood, skip military service entirely. Simply being an Arbiter might have been enough to argue that I was more valuable to Valia fulfilling that role on a broader scale, rather than in the military.

But I wasn’t sure if that was really what I wanted either.

I had some hard choices ahead of me, provided I was able to maintain my grades for the rest of the year. But for the moment…I had something more pressing to deal with.

The semester was over and I was due for a duel.

***

It was funny to think that, in spite of fighting numerous opponents over the last year and a lifetime of training, I was preparing for my very first formal duel.

It wasn’t comforting that it was against my own father. It was, however, more than a little ironic. I probably would have laughed if I could have distanced myself from it enough.

We’d made many of the arrangements over the course of the semester, at least in terms of scheduling the specific date, time, and location. By “we”, I mean that Patrick — as my second — had handled almost all of the formalities.

We still hadn’t settled certain other elements of the terms. Those would be determined in person. That wasn’t typical, but it wasn’t too far outside of the norm, either. There was a degree of analysis involved with selecting terms, since even seemingly innocuous elements could turn out to be bits of strategy.

Father treated every duel as if it started the moment it had been declared — if not before. Every word we exchanged, every bit of our public personas that we displayed before the duel began, could be seen as a strike or a feint.

I would have been a fool to ignore that knowledge, but I couldn’t afford to be too obvious with any actions I took. I relied heavily on intermediaries, some more clearly than others.

It was to that end that Sera and I sat down for a rare talk at the dining hall. I usually avoided it, but the crowds were fairly sparse, and with the duel approaching, I was varying my habits in a few critical ways.

“Father has engaged in several other duels throughout the semester, as you might have expected. No unusual deviations in his performance. No indications of new attunements or crystal marks. He’s been rotating his dueling cane more often than usual, though, rather than using the family cane. That might be indicative of a strategy for your duel, or it could simply represent adaptations to his other opponents.” Sera set a handful of crystals on the table in front of me. “I’d prioritize these three in your studies, personally.” She slid those three closer to me. “They’re the most closely analogous to elements of your own style. One transference-heavy Wavewalker. One Shadow, which shows how he might counter void magic. And finally, one rare case of a multi-attuned Enchanter.”

I raised an eyebrow at the last one. “Think he picked that duel deliberately to send me a signal?”

“That’s possible. Then again, there might just be more multi-attuned than we were aware of growing up. They’re certainly over-represented in dueling circles, which skews the numbers. And at Father’s level, everyone looks for whatever advantages they can get.”

I nodded slowly. “I’ve been thinking about that. Have you seen Father without his gloves in any of the recent duels?”

Sera shook her head. “No, but that isn’t anything odd. He’s a traditionalist.”

“Right, sure. But that does make it awfully convenient for him to hide something.”

“You think he’s a secret Emerald? Meh.” Sera shrugged. “I find it doubtful. Sure, it could be considered a military secret, and we see people like Derek suppressing their power in public…but I don’t think that’s his personality. If he hit Emerald, he’d want people to know.”

“I concur. But to compete in high-level dueling circles, he needs something. As a child, I thought it was just a combination of skill, pre-duel manipulation, and Grandpa Alaric’s cane. Maybe that’s all it is, but…” I shook my head. “We know a lot of high-level attuned now. They’re almost all hiding some kind of more extreme advantage.”

“I suspect you’re overthinking it. Father is probably Citrine-B or Citrine-A. He could be a needle’s width from Emerald and have nearly the same level of mana. And Alaric’s cane is a huge advantage in itself. If you’re looking for a secret, I’d look at the cane itself — he told us about how it helped the family in duels when we were growing up, but most of that was pure storytelling. Best I can tell, the primary function of the cane is conjuring duplicates whenever a Shaper makes a construct. That isn’t enough to swing most duels in any significant way. There’s probably something else to it.”

I nodded slowly. “Or the cane is just a prop and he has some other kind of advantage. Like a specialization.”

Sera looked a little surprised for a moment, then collected herself. “…That’s possible. A density specialization might present similarly to the acclaimed powers of the cane itself. If he’s had it since he was young, maybe the cane does something else entirely?”

“I wasn’t thinking he was faking the cane’s powers — more that a density specialization might give him other capabilities we haven’t seen. At least, not clearly. But yeah, that’s possible, too.” I sighed. “I’ll take a closer look at these. Can you do some research on the cane without looking suspicious?”

“I mean, I can, but I don’t think we’re going to find much. There aren’t any visible runes on it and the auras I’ve seen in recordings just show a green aura. Nothing elemental, nothing specialized. I don’t think I’d be able to figure out more without physically putting my hands on it…and somehow I doubt I’ll get a chance for that before the duel.”

I nodded at that. “Researcher might be able to figure something out?”

“Plausible. I’ll show her some crystals. Most spells don’t work through memories, but Researcher’s capabilities differ from ours. Maybe she can sort something out.”

“Okay, great. Now, I have a few different possible strategies I’ve been thinking about, depending on how the opening dialogues go…”

We talked for a long time, going over layers and layers of possibilities, before finally heading home. Not to sleep — not just yet.

If I wanted to make certain I survived the match, I had some enchanting to do.

CHAPTER XXXIII – UNLIKE FATHER, UNLIKE SON

Home.

It was a dissonant word in my mind. The doors of House Cadence’s ancestral home were achingly familiar, but the weathered wood wasn’t welcoming. For so long, those doors had been prison gates, a symbol of inaccessible escape.

I walked inside, subtly adjusting the circlet on my brow to make certain it wasn’t covering my Enchanter attunement. I wanted it to be seen.

I wanted myself to be seen.

Sera walked at my side, perhaps incidentally, more likely by design. I had no energy to spare on making certain she felt her position was secure and understood. By previous agreement, she would handle that side of things herself.

Patrick trailed three steps behind us, showing proper form for my personal retainer and second. We would allow no doubt as to his position, not in this particular engagement.

Father sat in the antechamber in the great chair, his legs folded casually, a glass of wine lifted in his hand. At his left side was Cayden Royce, Roland’s father. Roland was there, too. In retrospect, I clearly should have discussed things with Roland before this event, but it wasn’t my main concern.

To Magnus’ right sat his obvious second — my paternal uncle, Nathaniel Cadence.

I suppressed urge to tighten my fist when I saw that particular choice. My uncle was an obvious choice for a second. He was, after all, already complicit.

Whenever my father had pushed me too far, broken something that wouldn’t heal on its own, he hadn’t sent me to a hospital. Father had called upon Nathaniel, who had, in turn, called upon one of his own retainers — a Mender named Galen Torc — to take care of my injuries more discreetly.

Memories of broken bones and twisted fingers flashed through my mind, but I ignored them.

The duel had already begun with that choice, and I would not be disarmed so easily. No, my eyes turned to assess the third figure who sat in the room.

A healer, yes, but not Galen Torc. Oh, no. Far from it.

Any legal duel on this scale required an adjudicator to ensure the rules were followed, witness the result, and prevent any escalation during or after the battle. Duels did not necessarily require having healers on-hand, but father and I had agreed to have one present in the terms for the battle.

We had also agreed that the adjudicator and the healer could be same person, if one could be found that met all necessary criteria to play both roles.

I’d drawn up those terms carefully to appear reasonable, but avoid suspicion.

The healer would be from outside House Cadence and House Lyran, to avoid any political complexities. A simple request, easily granted.

A noble, naturally. Someone of appropriate standing to serve as witness and treat our wounds. Father’s pride would allow for nothing less.

Someone of Citrine-level or higher, given the likelihood of serious injury. This was, perhaps, the most extreme request — Citrine-level healers were not easy to find, especially if one was simply looking through the local nobility. Still, higher-level attuned warranted higher-level healers. Accepting this implied that Father was acknowledging the possibility of serious injury, and by requesting a high-level healer, he also implied that he would not be taking it easy on his child. This was, from a reputation standpoint, important for ensuring that the duel was taken seriously.

When we considered who was local, and who he had pre-existing relationships with, and who could be judged to attend without the appearance of bias…

When I saw who father had chosen, I almost permitted myself to smile.

Sheridan Theas tipped their hat to acknowledge my entrance and sat down their cup of tea. They were wise enough not to smile or wink, which was perhaps more than I expected.

Placing Sheridan at the duel wasn’t an opening cut. Rather, their presence opened up new angles of attack, ones that I could potentially exploit if needed.

“Welcome home, Corin.” Father set down his wine glass and stood up, brushing the sides of his long coat to the side. The action exposed the dueling cane on the left side of his belt, as well as the long rows of runes on the inside of his dueling coat. An opening move, one designed to simply shift my footwork sufficiently to throw me off balance. “I trust you are prepared?”

“Thank you, Father. I am, of course, ready. Before we begin, however, procedure requires that our seconds speak to attempt to remedy our dispute, does it not?”

A false retreat — a simple tactic designed to bait an opponent into pursuit.

But simple moves would not take Magnus Cadence off-guard so easily. “Of course, that’s the standard procedure. I’m certain your uncle will be happy to speak to…the butcher’s boy, was it?”

Magnus Cadence knew exactly who Patrick was. He wouldn’t have approved of Patrick as a retainer without doing research. This was a quick jab at the face, designed to incense, not for a true assault.

I deflected the lazy jab easily enough. “His father is a carpenter, actually. Oh, and if you haven’t heard yet, Patrick has been formally acknowledged as Chancellor Meltlake’s personal apprentice. I believe congratulations are in order?”

“That is impressive,” Magnus replied, seemingly musing aloud, “it would appear that you’ve been outperformed by yet another member of your family, then.”

Ah. I’d stepped into a trap, then. And that trap was laid adjacent to another.

If I accepted his assessment that Patrick was out-performing me, I’d embarrass myself, as well as House Cadence.

If I disputed it, I would potentially insult my own retainer.

But I’d picked up a few tricks about traps from a peculiar teacher — and sometimes the best way to deal with a trap wasn’t to step out, but to smash it so hard that it ceased to function.

“Oh, you have no idea. You should have seen when we fought Mizuchi. He reflected her breath weapon! He must have done more damage than some of the Citrines and Emeralds, whereas I barely managed to affect her in our first fight. I did much better in my second fight against Mizuchi, of course, but Patrick wasn’t there for that, and presumably he would have contributed even more if he was there.”

Sheridan reached up with a handkerchief to half-stifle a laugh.

Father’s expression froze. I’d shoved him straight into his own second trap. “Your second fight against Mizuchi.”

“Oh, yes.” I nodded fervently. “That was just a few of us, rather than the full ballroom. It was much harder. Why, if Tristan wasn’t there, I don’t—”

“No.” Father stepped forward, slamming his boot down and dropping any pretense of civility. “You will not mock me by uttering that child’s name in your lazy falsehoods. I expected you to play games, Corin, but your insults go too far. I have changed my mind. There will be no further negotiations between seconds, no delays. We go to the dueling field. Now.”

I nodded.

He was already off-balance. I hadn’t disarmed him yet, but then, I hadn’t planned to disarm him this early. Things were going just as planned.

…But my heart was still beating like a drum, slamming so loud I could almost hear it. All it would take was a single mistake. A single lethal thrust.

If I wasn’t careful, I had no doubt that I’d lose more than pride and status.

If I didn’t play things right…

Magnus Cadence would kill me.

***

I knew every corner of the dueling field. I’d fled across every inch of it, stumbled across every rock, bled across every blade of grass.

Okay, a bit of hyperbole there, sure.

But the familiarity of the field hit me almost as hard as my mother’s absence.

I’d hoped, right up until the very last minute, that she’d be there. That a duel with my own father would be enough of a message that she’d come home, maybe even intervene, maybe—

I set that thought aside.

Like I’d told the others, I’d chosen to make this fight my own, and I’d stick with that. If Mother didn’t deem my duel important enough to attend…well, that was nothing new. Nothing unexpected.

I could fight with that hollow hole inside of me. I’d learned how long ago.

I ducked down near the entrance of the dueling field, as if to offer a prayer. It wasn’t unusual — many people offered thanks just before a duel, or made symbolic gestures before entering an arena or dojo. Father didn’t even look back at me, which made the next part easy. I left something behind, then stood up.

Father and I took our positions in the center of the field. I didn’t rush to any particular position, even though there were arguments to be made that having my back to the house would have been advantageous due to the position of sun blazing in the sky, or that slight elevation might offer another edge.

No, I just walked right behind Magnus to the center, letting him choose his spot — a flat, boring patch of grass that had been worn down by the sheer number of times his boots had flattened the position. I adjusted to exactly six paces away from him to take our preparatory postures.

“Within the sight of the Goddess, I declare an official beginning to this duel’s proceedings.” Sheridan turned to Magnus. “Lord Magnus Cadence, you have stated a grievance against your son, Master Corin Cadence, for unfilial behavior and abandonment of responsibility. Moments ago, you indicated that you would not be willing to withdraw from this duel. Does that remain your stance?”

Magnus inclined his head toward Sheridan, just a fraction. “It does.”

“Very well. In that case…” Sheridan turned to me, a hint of a playful twitch in the corner of their lips as soon as they were hidden from Magnus’ sight. “Master Corin Cadence, you have denied these accusations on grounds that your father…” They lifted a hand in a ‘wait’ gesture, then retrieved a paper from their tunic, “in your words, ‘routinely caused you grievous physical harm under the pretentious guise of training, which left you with visible scars and impairment’.”

Magnus’ eyes narrowed.

“That remains my stance, Adjudicator Theas,” I replied, referring to Sheridan by one of several applicable formal titles. “However, for your records of the event, I must correct you on my proper title. As this is a trial to be held beneath the goddess, it would be improper for me to utilize a terrestrial title when it is more properly superseded by my religious title, which is,” I pulled off the glove on my right hand, “Arbiter of Katashi.”

I flared my attunement in what a duelist might properly call a “flourish”.

Generally, flourishing your weapon doesn’t impress or intimidate anyone in modern dueling, since both the opponent and the audience are generally aware of the capabilities of everyone involved in advance.

But private duels for personal grievances were a different matter. I had no obligation to declare my abilities in advance—

And thus, this was my father’s first real confirmation that I had a second attunement.

He’d had suspicions, of course. And plenty of people around the school knew that I had one. Maybe he’d gathered enough information from someone to have an idea…but from the flicker of doubt that ran across his face, he hadn’t been expecting this.

There wasn’t any chance the flourish would break his resolve, of course.

…Especially since when I’d visibly flared my attunement’s power, I’d done it at Carnelian-level.

“Well,” Father gave me a look of appraisal, “I suppose Sera spoke truly in her letters, then. It seems your disloyalty to your family is matched only by your betrayal of your country.”

My eyes widened, his sudden reversal sending me into a brief retreat. Even after years of Father’s disdain and punishment, I hadn’t expected a public accusation of treason to be among them.

But even that…that wasn’t as bad as…

I turned to Sera, watching a smirk spread across her face.

Then I turned back to Magnus, my hands trembling in anger. “N-no. There are numerous people who know how I earned that attunement — and there’s nothing disloyal about it. I assisted in the search for our visage, Father, and stopped a monster attack in the process.”

A riposte, but—

“Did you, now? Well, the fruits of your labor are clear for all to see. Tenjin is still just as missing as your loyalty.”

I hit only air. Still, his own reply was the same swing he’d attempted so many times that it was easy enough for me to simply stand out of the way.

I turned hastily to Sheridan. “I…can…can we get started?”

Sera’s smirk burned in the back of my mind.

“Unfortunately, there are further formalities. You did not register a specific weapon choice, stopping point, or position choice prior to the duel, and thus, they must now be discussed.”

“Corin can use anything he wants,” Magnus said immediately, taking the obvious position that he could not be threatened at my disposal.

My mind raced. “I…I have no objections to an unrestricted duel, provided that it is not to the death.”

Father snorted. “Of course not. What can you learn if you’re dead, child? Please. No need to be absurd. The duel is fought to incapacitation or surrender.”

“I…sure. That’s fine.”

Father gave me a quizzical look. “Truly? No argument for a duel to touches, perhaps with swords alone? I know that you’ve been trying to figure out how to work around your grandfather’s cane. A wise move, if too little. You would still lose with swords, of course, but perhaps I would be kind enough to allow you a point in a point-based match.”

I drew back slightly. “I, uh, no. It’s…”

This was a critical feint. I needed to look as if I’d stumbled, giving him a false opening. A show of weakness that he expected.

If I was fortunate, he wouldn’t see that my trembling hands weren’t as empty as they appeared.

“…I would, no, to incapacitation, not points, that’s fine. But…weapons only?”

Magnus stared at me, then sighed, shaking his head. “…A coward to the end, then, if less of one that I’d expected. Disappointing.” With a sigh, he took a breath, and then said a critical word—

“No.”

“That…that…” I raised a hand, then lowered it, defeated. Dejected.

At least, that’s what he had to see.

“Please, Corin. Did your practice with an inferior Shaper show you truly how far out of your league you were?” He laughed. “Or was it your loss against your sister’s team without even reaching the finals of a child’s tournament?”

I shot another gaze to Sera. “You told him about that, too?”

She smiled. “But of course, brother. Unlike you, I value communication with Father. I told him about all of your training. All of your plans.”

“You…you…I can’t believe…” My shoulders slumped.

“I warned you, Corin. I want what is best for this family. It’s a shame you won’t be a part of it much longer.”

“Don’t be too presumptuous, child,” Magnus gave her a hard look. “You haven’t assured your place yet, either.”

“But, I—”

Sheridan shook their head. “As amusing as your family drama may be, I’m afraid that regulations require us to proceed in a timely fashion.”

“Of course, Adjudicator.” Magnus straightened. “Was there anything further?”

“Positions and timing,” Sheridan replied.

“Right, right.” Magnus waved a hand dismissively. “I don’t care. The boy has been cowering long enough. Let’s get this over with.”

“I agree. A handshake start?” I offered.

Magnus scoffed. “Still looking to turn this into a sword fight? Oh, don’t think that Sera didn’t warn me about Selyrian teaching you quick draw techniques. I invite you to try it, boy. Fine. We start the moment we shake hands.”

“You’re certain?” I asked, a strange intensity bleeding into my tone as my heart hammered in my chest.

“Yes, yes.” He waved his hand. “Try whatever you want. It won’t matter.”

I closed my eyes, resolved.

“…Okay.”

Three deep breaths. Three silent spells.

“Take your final positions,” Sheridan instructed us.

We shifted just slightly.

“Combatants, ready? Bow to me.”

We bowed.

“As this is a handshake start, you may begin the moment you shake hands. Good luck to you both and may the Goddess watch over you. You may approach.”

One step forward, then another. Then another.

Father’s hand came out to reach for mine — something that should have been an affectionate act twisted into the latest in a long line of aggressions.

But this time…

My hand met his and closed tight—

I cast another spell.

And in that moment, the House of Cadence fell.

Father must have felt the change. I didn’t know how subtle it would be — the effects were too profound, too far beyond anything in my test cases.

But as he pulled away suddenly, it was clear he knew I’d made a move.

He simply didn’t understand yet that he’d already lost the duel.

His hand flicked up in a classic gesture to conjure a Shaper box, a standard opening — and, of course, nothing happened.

I stood and watched him silently, saw the expression of confusion on his face, followed by a rapid correction. “The sword. That hideous relic of Jerome Schmidt — you’ve done something with the void aura. A clever ploy, to amplify it enough to disable my attunement at close range, but—”

I drew my sword, the void aura flaring around it — and threw it at the ground.

“Nah.”

The sword stuck deeply into the ground, and for a moment, as the blade wobbled there, I wondered if Father would rush toward it. He had his own dueling cane on his belt, but if he’d realized that his attunement wasn’t working, maybe he’d try to rush for one chance he might see to even out the match.

But he made no such move. Instead, he darted to the side, raised his hand, and snapped his fingers—

And once again, nothing happened.

I folded my arms and watched him. “Take your time, I’ll wait.”

His eyes flicked to Jerome’s sword. Again, I wondered if he’d lunge for it. I was in a comparatively vulnerable state, now. Folded arms and no sword wasn’t exactly a good dueling posture.

Instead, he stared at the sword in the ground, then, slowly, took a step back. And another. And another.

Then, in horror, he raised his right hand — his attuned hand — and trembling, he asked…

“You…you…you did something to my attunement.”

I nodded. “I did, yes.”

“But — an Arbiter. I’ve heard they can empower attunements, but…no. You’ve…you can’t have…”

“Can’t have what?” I took a couple steps forward, then with a wave of a hand, sent a surge into the mana strings connected to Jerome’s sword and jerked it back into my hand with transference mana.

Magnus flinched, taking a few hasty steps back. “You…you stole my attunement!”

“No, no.” I shook my head. “Although, I admit I considered it.”

That was when he charged.

It wasn’t a bad move, all things considered. I wasn’t in a great stance, since I was walking forward casually, and he’d fought me numerous times before. He knew my weaknesses in a close-quarters fight—

Or at least he thought he did.

When he lunged at me, I smashed the dueling cane out of his hands with just a hint of extra transference mana flowing through my hand. Just enough to make the impact rattle him, not enough to cause any real harm.

I had to be careful, after all. One had to be very cautious when fighting an opponent without an attunement—

I didn’t want to hurt him the way he’d hurt me.

No, I just didn’t want him to hurt anyone else.

Never again.

My sword came up to his chin.

“I didn’t steal your attunement. I never wanted to take anything from you.” I shook my head. “I didn’t destroy your attunement, either, although that did have an appeal. To break the thing that had caused me so much harm — that was something I daydreamed about for many years. But no, Father. That might have defeated you, but it would have given you an escape. With that, you could have simply conceded that your son had defeated you as a duelist and taken credit for training him to be your superior. I won’t give you that.”

I narrowed my eyes. “I beat you with my strength. With the mind and the power that you always dismissed. And I leave you not broken, but with more of a chance than you ever gave me.”

Accelerated Computation.

I flicked my sword down and made a single perfect cut.

Magnus Cadence’s glove fell into two halves, revealing his attunement mark—

His Enchanter attunement.

When I’d touched his hand for the handshake and the duel had begun, I’d acted immediately, doing exactly what I’d planned—

I’d taken every bit of training I’d had with altering sub-glyphs and done something both simple and terrifying.

I’d taken the entire sub-glyph structure of his Shaper attunement, wiped it out, and replaced it with an Enchanter set.

…And then I’d thrown in a timer to disable it for ten minutes. Not just so I could make him feel helpless. Not just so I could monologue a little, although I admit that those were factors.

No, it was necessary to allow his body to vent his existing mana before it would begin generating the new mana types, otherwise the transference mana generated by an Enchanter attunement would conflict with the mass of Citrine-level Enhancement mana in his body, possibly causing extremely dangerous effects.

I’d spoken truly — I didn’t want to destroy Magnus Cadence.

But you can bet that I’d done more than just disarm him—

I’d done what Keras Selyrian had taught me.

I’d broken my opponent’s sword before he’d even known the battle had started.

When Magnus Cadence fell to the ground, utterly dejected, Sheridan Theas barely even had to call an end to the duel.

The outcome was as obvious as the tears that spread across my fallen father’s face.

CHAPTER XXXIV – GLASS HOUSES

When Sheridan Theas finally called the duel over in my favor, Magnus Cadence didn’t move from the ground.

That was fine. He could stay on the dirt as long as he wanted to.

I turned away, half-expecting to have to dodge some kind of last-second sneak attack, but it never came. Instead, I calmly walked to Sheridan Theas and bowed. “You may need to check his mana levels to ensure that I didn’t do anything permanently deleterious. I read what I could beforehand, and I know we discussed it, but—”

“Put it out of your mind, Arbiter Corin.” The absence of the surname when Sheridan spoke was pointed and not without implication. “You owe that man nothing further. If he happens to have a problem with the mana mixture in his body, well…” Sheridan shook their head. “The terms of the duel were clear. He told you to do anything you could to defeat him. You fought fairly and you won. Now, I’ll do my job. You have one more thing left to attend to.”

I nodded, then leaned over and whispered. “Thank you.”

“Get lost, you’re making me look unprofessional.”

Sheridan’s slight smile helped soothe my still-hammering heart. I tried not to smile and failed. Not just because of Deni, but because Patrick was absolutely roaring in the aftermath of my victory.

“Yeah! You got him, Corin!” Patrick pumped his fists. I nodded to him, then turned to where Sera was watching me from several paces away in utter silence.

I walked over to Patrick first, putting a hand on his shoulder. It wasn’t common for me to make such a physically affectionate gesture, but…he’d earned it. “Thank you. Thank you for being my second, and…for supporting me, and…for everything.”

I turned to Sera, my eyes narrowing. “And you…with me, now.”

Sera’s own eyes flashed. She looked for a moment like she might argue, then finally, as I turned away and marched down the halls to my old empty room, she stomped after me.

I slammed the door shut behind us, then pulled a set of anti-scrying and anti-sound rocks out of my dimensional bag.

Then, finally, I let my shoulders slump in relief.

Sera laughed gleefully and opened her arms.

I looked at her for a moment, then sighed and said, “Fine, you’ve earned it.”

I pulled my sister in tight. “Thank you. I…I don’t know if I could have managed that without you.”

“I’m not sure what it says about our relationship that ‘pretend to be a traitor’ was the best way you could think to utilize me in your plan, but hey, I’m glad it helped.” Sera grinned, then bonked her head against mine. I had to laugh in response.

“…Sorry, sorry. I…had to make him think he had me completely figured out. There had to be just enough misdirection to let us start with the handshake, and—”

“Corin, I was there. I planned it with you. You don’t have to overexplain it.”

I sighed, then…trembled. “I…”

“It’s okay, Corin. You won. The duel. You won.”

I shook silently in my sister’s arms.

“It’s over now. It’s finally over.”

***

In the aftermath of the duel, there was paperwork to sign, more check-ins to make, and assurances to give my friends on the train ride back to Lorian Heights that Sera had not, in-fact, betrayed me by leaking information about my training practices or my dueling losses to my father.

We’d been preparing for the duel for some time, but in layers. First, obvious preparations on the surface that could easily be seen. More important, however, were our real preparations — which mostly involved showing false ones.

The meeting in the dining hall where we’d discussed suspicions about Father having a secret specialization mark? Pure theater. We’d held the talk in a public place specifically with the hopes that Father had someone observing us to report it back to him. Roland, perhaps, or just a hired hand. We had several other similar public conversations for the purposes of giving Magnus the wrong impressions when he heard about their contents.

My training with Teft was mostly misdirection. Useful, yes, but largely as a fallback.

I couldn’t beat Teft in a straight fight, and I knew with absolute certainty that I wasn’t going to be able to beat Father in a direct confrontation, either. I had to fight on my terms, not his — it was just a matter of figuring out the best way to do so.

Altering his attunement wasn’t my only possible approach. His suspicion that my plan was contingent on using Jerome Schmidt’s sword wasn’t far from one possible scenario I’d prepared for. I’d watched Father fight multiple opponents who used void magic — both from the opponent Sera mentioned in the dining hall and others, recently and in the distant past — and I knew that properly applied void mana was one rare means of countering certain types of Shaper abilities. It was particularly effective against simulacra, but Magnus Cadence preferred constructs, and void wasn’t quite as effective against those. I needed more void than the sword could generate to effectively protect myself against Citrine-plus level constructs…so I’d built a few items for that plan, too.

Six Sunstone-level void emitters, each designed to be placed at static locations around a battlefield to emit magic nullification fields. I’d finally finished them the night before the duel, upgrading the ones I’d used during the final exams. They’d been the product of a great deal of trial and error, and they still didn’t work the way I wanted — I hadn’t been able to get them to exempt me. Not completely, at least. I’d built myself a defensive void shaping sigil to help mitigate the effects of the field, but it wouldn’t have stopped the effects entirely. The idea was that I could drop one of the field generators and use it to nullify simulacra and similar constructs, while still being able to use some of my other abilities. I could activate and deactivate them remotely through verbal commands, allowing me to target specific areas for nullification while trying to retain as much of my strength as possible.

I was glad I didn’t have to use them. I still wasn’t sure they would have had enough mana saturation to stop him from casting anything, nor was I confident that I’d be able to drop them in strategic locations and activate them quickly enough to make them useful. And since I’d used weaker versions during the final exams, there was a good chance he knew about their existence, even if he hadn’t mentioned them.

There were other options as well. I’d set my teleportation anchor when I’d ducked down near the dueling arena entrance so I could use it to get out of a Shaper box. I’d prepped to set my attunement levels to an alternate version of Spessartine with custom safe-mana levels that I suspected I could survive for a few minutes.

I’d borrowed several powerful items from other people — ones I won’t even talk about here. Needless to say, they weren’t necessary.

But the greatest preparation I’d done was also the greatest risk—

I’d modified my own Arbiter attunement.

It was a terrifying prospect. I’d known that modifying my Arbiter attunement risked the possibility that I’d break it in a way that couldn’t be fixed. Unfortunately, extended tinkering with external items to change attunement functions simply hadn’t produced the results I needed.

Specifically, access to the Citrine-level Arbiter function that allowed me to access the hidden sections of attunements.

I hadn’t made myself a Citrine-level Arbiter, of course. I’d simply unlocked the single function that Warren Constantine had warned me to never use. The function that unlocked my ability to view and modify attunements without restriction.

Upon seeing those functions unveiled, I suspected that I would be able to make changes to attunements on a much broader level — and potentially without the subject’s consent. I wasn’t able to read through the sub-glyphs completely enough to understand how that functioned.

Even after the duel, I wasn’t sure how much of an effect I could have without consent. When Magnus had agreed to the terms of the duel, he’d said, “Corin can do whatever he wants”, which might have been interpreted as consent for attunement modification…or it might not have.

Eventually, I’d read the full scope of the sub-glyphs for greater understanding, but for the moment…I turned that function off, once again hiding the attunement’s innermost workings. The temptation to tinker with my own attunement further would be too great if I’d kept that function active any longer than I strictly needed to.

Even that dangerous tinkering likely hadn’t been the source of my success, however.

No. Father’s mistake was that he’d seen the duel as starting the moment he’d challenged me.

In truth, it had started the day I’d earned my attunement. The day he’d tried to turn my sister against me.

In order to make sure that her “betrayal” was convincing, we didn’t share our plans with anyone else. We needed the audience to react with the appropriate level of shock and surprise…and, as much as Patrick was dear to me, acting was not among his strengths.

Anyway, he knew other parts of our plan, and I’d told him that there were parts that I was keeping secret, so he wasn’t offended. Not at that part, at least.

Patrick…was happy for me, but I got the impression he wasn’t quite happy with the whole exchange about my role as an Arbiter of Katashi. That was a conversation that needed to happen, but one I wasn’t quite ready to have.

I still wasn’t sure what my own position was on it, in truth.

…And for the moment, the only position I wanted to be thinking about was sleeping in a very, very soft bed.

That much, I think, I’d earned.

We made it back to Derek’s house without incident. I survived a round of congratulatory celebrations, which were mercifully brief, but still in many ways almost as stressful as the duel itself. I explained to everyone that Sera deserved much of the credit for being willing to risk her own position to help me with the duel, and she gracefully accepted my appreciation.

And then finally, mercifully, the day was truly over.

My battle was over.

I didn’t know what it meant for the future. Not my future, not my father’s future, or that of House Cadence—

But I could tackle future problems after I had a very, very long night of sleep.

***

I took the next couple days off.

I basically just hid in my room for the most part, trying my best to stave off having panic attacks about winning my duel, of all things.

Sometimes my mind just…isn’t cooperative.

Fortunately, my friends gave me space, and after a couple nights of reading and magical research, I was finally getting to feel like myself again.

So, to help move on from one of the greatest problems of my life, I decided to celebrate in the only way I knew how—

Creating a whole new way to risk my life.

CHAPTER XXXV – THORNS OF THE SOUL

I sat with Selys-Lyann unsheathed across my lap. Even without taking any further steps, I thought I could feel something subtle scratching at the edges of my consciousness, as if in anticipation of what was coming.

It was incredibly creepy, if I’m being honest. I wasn’t big on the idea of anyone or anything messing with my head. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be thrilled with the results even if it was an unqualified success…but I couldn’t just keep waiting and doing nothing. The sword was waking up, bit-by-bit, even without any intervention on my part.

I simply couldn’t continue to risk the possibility of being dragged into some weird flashback to another person’s life in the middle of a fight — or just the sword responding by trying to “help” in a way that could be equally fatal.

True, Vellum’s suggested approach of locking the sword’s functions would have addressed those concerns, at least in part. But then I’d risk the possibility of putting Selys-Lyann in a position of being trapped inside their vessel without any agency to influence the world, which wasn’t a fate I was willing to instill on the sword. Yes, workarounds for that were possible — like adding runes for communication, but also adding runes for disabling the ability to do anything else — but that didn’t feel very fair, either.

…And ultimately, I was just done waiting for things to happen. If the sword was going to wake up, I wanted it to happen on my terms — and the chance to learn whatever Selys-Lyann could tell me about their past. And, of course, the power that a spirit bond to a weapon like Selys-Lyann provided wouldn’t be a bad thing, either.

When Keras had bonded with Dawnbringer, he’d grown stronger along with their bond’s development. Keras was a special case, of course — his abilities made him better suited to gaining power from swords than anyone else I knew of — but it was well-documented that bonding to the sacred swords offered more powers that gradually unlocked over time.

Selys-Lyann wasn’t exactly a sacred sword, but if it was a piece of Flowbreaker, that meant that the potential existed to unlock new abilities through a bond. It wasn’t a guarantee, but I was still far too weak to confront enemies like Mizuchi and Saffron…especially if Mizuchi had a vendetta against this particular sword. I needed to seize opportunities that would increase my chances to survive those encounters in the future.

And so, I sat with my back to a wall, just to make sure I didn’t fall backward whenever some kind of crazy vision started. Given what had happened in my last two attempts, I fully expected that I’d get hit with some kind of flashback to another wielder of the sword when we attempted to make the bond — or possibly a conversation with the spirit of the sword, if I was lucky. Maybe both.

Derek was sitting in front of me, ready to cast the spirit bonding spell as soon as I gave the instruction to do so.

I wished Keras was there. Not just because he was the subject matter expert on sentient swords…but because if something went wrong, I felt like he was more likely to know how to handle it. Not that I could complain about having an Emerald-level Soulblade there to help me. I was incredibly fortunate for Derek’s willingness to help me with the process. But it felt like Keras should have been there.

“You ready for this?” Derek asked.

“Not really,” I replied, “but do it anyway.”

“Hand on the hilt. Brace yourself.”

I put my hand on the hilt and closed my eyes.

There was a flash of white light as Derek soundlessly cast the spirit bonding spell. My mind suddenly felt heavy, as if weighed down by immense pressure, and I could barely retain my awareness of the world around me. I might have tried to open my eyes, but my body felt distant and unresponsive.

Still, I heard the words that Derek spoke next clearly, and I felt something else listening, too. Waiting.

“Repeat after me. ‘By my name, then say your name, I offer thee a bond to my soul.”

As tempted as I was to joke and say ‘then say your name’ instead of my name, it wasn’t the right time. I heard my own words without feeling my body. “By my name, Corin Cadence, I offer thee a bond to my soul.”

I felt it in my fingertips first — a tingling like I’d cut off the flow of blood. That awful sensation spread from my fingertips down my hand, then my arm…

I winced.

“Don’t fight it.” Derek turned his head to the side, his eyes gleaming briefly. “You’re fine. It’s just reaching for a connection.”

It was easy for him to say that — it wasn’t going for his heart.

When I felt the cold nearing the center of my chest, every instinct told me to do something to push it away, but…if I was offering a bond to Selys-Lyann, I knew that would require trust.

I shivered, bracing myself for a cold that never came.

As the tingling reached near the center of my chest, it seemed to flow around it, forming a circular pattern — almost like a barrier. Then it spread out further, splitting to reach up my neck, across my other hand, and down my legs.

In each case, the strange sensation flowed, then circled around points in my body without actually touching them.

These…they’re the attunement points, aren’t they? Dianis Points? Is it searching for them, somehow? Mapping my essence?

Keras had been marked by Dawnbringer on one of his hands with a symbol similar to an attunement mark…but I already had an attunement mark on one hand and a crystal mark on another.

Is Selys-Lyann aware enough to be searching for a place to mark me without overlapping with an existing mark?

That made a degree of sense, but it also implied a greater degree of cognizance than I would have expected this quickly.

Finally, the tingling sensation faded — and I wasn’t sure what to do next. “Do…I have a mark?”

“I don’t see one yet, but it may take some time to form. Not every spirit-bonding item makes a visible mark, but it should work either way. The first step is over. Congratulations.”

I nodded absently, still nervous. “Thanks. What’s next?”

“The Spirit Communion spell. You’ll use that to communicate with it. I can cast it this time, but after this first experience, you should try to learn it yourself. You should have access to spirit mana now through your bond with the sword itself. If you need more mana, you can get it from your spirit mana battery.”

I had access to a bit of spirit mana through my Null Contract Gauntlet, but I wasn’t sure if I’d actually told Derek about that yet, and I didn’t feel the need to point it out. The amount of spirit mana I was getting from it was so minimal that I probably needed other sources, anyway. “What should I expect from the communion?”

“In most cases, I’d expect it to be enabling a form of telepathy between you. Based on your prior experiences with this sword, however, I suspect you’ll find yourself in another vision of an old wielder that represents the sword’s spirit.”

“Will you be in there?”

Derek shook his head. “No. The connection is just between the two of you. I’m essentially just adding a layer to the spirit bond you already have, triggering an effect that will allow you to speak to each other. I don’t have a bond with either of you, so I won’t be involved.”

That was about what I’d expected and similar to what Keras had told me before he’d left. “Okay. I…think I’m ready.”

“Good, because we’re starting.” He put a hand on Selys-Lyann’s hilt. “Spirit communion.”

With his words, the world around me snapped.

***

I wasn’t surprised when my surroundings changed, but I wasn’t quite prepared for how it worked out.

I stood in what felt like the middle of a forest, but I couldn’t actually see far enough to discern that properly. A thick fog prevented me from seeing more than ten or fifteen feet in any direction. That immediately made me think of the woods where Keras had found Dawnbringer, but the trees here were different — their bark was an unusually dark brown, almost black, and with strange thorn-like protrusions.

That wasn’t the biggest difference, though. I stood at the end of a cobblestone path illuminated by hanging torches glowing with spheres of green flame within. In the distance, among the mists, I could see more paired-gleams. A path backward, but I couldn’t say where it led.

…Forward was clear enough. There was a lowered drawbridge in front of me, and from glancing to the sides, I could see that it stretched across a deep chasm. Whether or not that chasm was actually some kind of moat was too difficult to tell with the rolling mists over the area, but I was less concerned with the potential fall and more concerned with what might await me across the bridge.

I stepped across cautiously, processing the fact that I’d made the decision to do so.

I wasn’t seeing through someone else’s mind. If this was a flashback to an experience of another wielder, it was one that I was seemingly able to explore with agency, rather than just watching as a memory.

It isn’t necessarily a flashback at all. It’s possible this is more like when Keras saw Dawn inside her own mind, when she was badly injured — she had a place where she’d manifested a humanoid form to speak. Perhaps Selys-Lyann has developed such a thing as well. And if the forest seems like where Dawnbringer was held, maybe Flowbreaker was held somewhere similar?

I remembered that one of my previous visions had also been in a forest, but I hadn’t gotten a good enough look to determine if it was the same one that I was currently standing in. And, if so, it had to be in a somewhat different location—

I would have remembered the bridge…and the castle that stood across it.

I gazed upward in awe as I reached the end of the bridge. “Castle” seemed too poor a word to describe it — “imperial palace” might be a better term. The walls were jet black, but covered in vines in a way that seemed artistic and deliberate. The vines had a soft green glow, and when I watched them carefully, I thought I saw them subtly twist as I approached the gates. Not in hostility, but…curiosity, maybe?

I didn’t like the idea of grabby vines, curious or not, so I remained ready to dodge if any of them moved too quickly.

The gates, at least, were wide open. The titanic wooden doors were etched with both unfamiliar runes (which I immediately wished I had time to write down) and seemingly more artistic designs. There was a metal portcullis, but it was raised. I gave that another cautious look, since I suspected it could fall at any time, either to impale me with the spike-like bottom or just to trap me inside.

More likely the latter. This looks like a classic “doors slam shut the moment you walk in” scenario.

…I wasn’t sure I liked the idea of greeting my sword’s spirit in that kind of situation, but it wasn’t precisely surprising.

I had a few ideas on how Selys-Lyann’s spirit might manifest. The most obvious was the first wielder I’d seen, who presumably had held the True Blade. Any of the other wielders was an option, or perhaps some kind of amalgamation of them.

But it was also possible that the sword’s manifestation would be some kind of semblance of Selys herself, who mourned for each of the departed wielders and sought to protect them. Given the castle-like setup, I was finding that more and more likely — trapping someone inside a gigantic structure of dubious safety was classic Selys after all.

The sacred swords and Selys alike both loved the idea of testing people. Was I supposed to anticipate the dangers of the door and take precautions? Or just show my bravery and step through? Without an adequate model of who was testing me, knowing the right solution wasn’t possible.

So, I checked my inventory.

I appeared to have all of my possessions that I was wearing before entering…wherever I was…except Selys-Lyann itself, which was hardly surprising. I reached into my dimensional bag and felt around, then frowned. “Retrieve: Teleportation Anchor.”

I’d whispered it automatically, too used to the Jaden Box’s ease-of-use to acclimate to the dimensional bag’s limitations.

I was half-surprised when I felt something metallic shift within the bag and touch my fingertips. I’d tinkered with the bag’s enchantments to try to get it closer to Jaden Box functionality, but it was still a long way from being finished.

…Apparently it worked just fine in this environment, though. That was strange.

…Wonder what else I can tinker with here, if the rules aren’t quite the way the real-world works…

I set the teleportation anchor right outside the gates.

Improved Haste.

I rushed through the doorway.

…Nothing happened. Not with the door, at least.

My vision cleared as I entered the palace…or, the palace grounds, rather. The gateway didn’t take me into the interior of the structure, but rather to an outlying garden. Strange black and red flowers lined the entire path, along with more of those strange thorny trees. I could see a much broader variety of flowers and plants in other sections of the garden — and more in general, since the mists didn’t seem to reach into that area. That also gave me a better idea of where I was standing in general, relative to the structure as a whole.

The black walls I’d seen, apparently, were simply defensive walls — not the entrance to the palace proper, which I could now see more clearly in the distance. It was a colossal structure with a single central tower rising from the center of a keep, with six smaller towers on the edges of the building. I noticed the significance of that immediately, but I was immediately distracted by something far more important—

A figure in the distance, sitting at a wooden table with a root-like base that reached directly into the ground below. He sat in a similarly organic chair…or, perhaps, “throne” would be a better word, facing directly toward me.

The details of his form burned into my mind. Tall, regal, wearing black armor that reminded me of silver tarnished beyond salvation. A crown of wilted flowers.

But most of all, I saw the gold burning in his eyes.

“Hello, Corin.”  He reached upward with a languid gesture. Roots shot upward from the opposite side of the table, forming a second chair. “Please, sit. I’ve been expecting you.”

I abandoned any hope of simply teleporting out of the palace. Running would have been equally futile, even with the still-open gates.

And so, I approached, and sat in the offered chair.

And thus began my audience with the Tyrant in Gold.

CHAPTER XXXVI – FOOL’S GOLD

The world darkened as I took my seat. Not in a metaphorical sense — it felt as if time had passed at an extraordinary speed and daylight fell into night the moment that I took my position across from the tyrant. I tried not to think too much about any symbolism inherent in that change — I was far too distracted by more immediate worries.

Am…I seeing this inside the sword? This isn’t—

“Not what you expected?” The Tyrant in Gold reached forward, but rather than striking me, he simply lifted a teapot and poured steaming liquid into a pair of cups. He set one directly in front of me, then gently lifted his own cup to his lips to sip.

“I…No. It certainly isn’t.”

The tyrant’s lips turned up as he finished sipping, then gently laid down his cup on a coaster.

Was that there before? No, don’t get distracted, that’s not important. Not dying is the priority.

A manifestation of my religion’s central antagonist was sitting in front of me. The coaster was, in all likelihood, not the greatest threat in the area. Not that he couldn’t kill me with a tea coaster, but…

“That’s an interesting image, but rest assured that if I choose to end your life, it will be in a more traditional fashion.” The tyrant gestured. “Now, your tea is getting cold.”

The tea wasn’t the only thing getting cold. I could feel the tiny bumps forming on my arms. Still, I had the presence of mind necessary to lift the cup and sniff at it. “Mint?”

“I’ve found that it calms the mind and soul. Which I believe you’ll find are more or less the same, in a place like this one.”

I considered that as I sipped. It tasted like peppermint, which shouldn’t have been surprising, given the smell…but it seemed strange that I could taste anything at all. Less strange than the figure in front of me or the fact that he was clearly reading my thoughts. “Is there any point to me speaking?”

“Oh, certainly. While I’m aware of your surface thoughts, that hardly reveals the entirety of your character. And the actions you choose to take — speech among them — say as much of your character as your mind does. Perhaps more. I’ve always been interested in the distinctions between thought and action, haven’t you?”

“I’ll admit it’s not something I’ve considered much, except in the context of things like deception…and people’s words not matching how they behave.”

The tyrant smiled, sipping again. “How interesting that you draw a distinction there — some would say that a disconnect between words and actions is deception itself.”

“…Sure, I suppose. I…look, I don’t want to be rude, but before we get too deep into discussing philosophy, it would ease my mind if you could tell me if you’re planning to kill me or not…and maybe a bit more about what is going on?”

“Fair questions, both, although I do wish you’d be a bit more patient.” The tyrant set his cup down on the saucer again. There was writing along the rim of it now. Something unfamiliar. Runes? Was he… “The coaster isn’t a trap. Just an embellishment. If I was preparing this space for a confrontation, such signs would be more overt. I do appreciate your eye for such details, however. It is a testament to your character.”

“Thank you?”

The tyrant nodded. “Now, to answer your previous question…this is precisely what you wished for, but you made a slight miscalculation. You believed you’d be seeing Therin here, yes?”

“Therin…that’s the name given to the wielder of the True Blade, correct?”

“One of many. My old enemy wore a number of names and titles in her time, as befitting a sword saint.”

I wanted to ask what he meant by “sword saint” at some point. Keras had mentioned the same term, but that wasn’t my immediate concern. “Then…yes, I was expecting her. Or perhaps one of the other wielders of the True Blade, or Flowbreaker, or Selys-Lyann itself, or…an amalgam of several.”

“You were not quite mistaken in your assumption, precisely. Your error was one of the simplest imaginable. Tell me, Corin Cadence. What happened when you defeated Jerome Schmidt in the Tiger Spire?”

“I, uh…a lot of things? I mean, it wasn’t the real Jerome, and that whole thing was part of a scenario floor, and…” The relevant part struck me like thunder. “I claimed his sword.”

The tyrant’s smile broadened. He took another sip deliberately, as if gesturing for me to continue.

“You…you defeated your rival…and you took the sword. You…are one of the wielders of the True Blade.”

“Correct.” He raised a finger. “Although, one might argue at the definition of ‘wielder’. I shattered the sword and carried a portion of it for a time. During that time, it’s clear that a portion of my spirit bonded with it, much as other pieces of spirit for other wielders did.”

“Then…if other spirits have bonded with it…why are you what I’m seeing here?”

“Rather than Therin, you mean, or another? Simple. Dominance. While I may appear to you as this,” the tyrant gestured to his body, “you were correct in another sense — I am, in fact, an amalgamation of the bits of spirit that have been bonded to the sword over time. That includes your own, by the way. It is simply that even a fraction of myself, meaning the one you refer to as the tyrant, is sufficient to take precedence over all the others in terms of the formation of consciousness and personality. I am not truly the one you call the ‘Tyrant in Gold’ — such an ostentatious title — but he is the most potent part of myself.”

“Wait, back up,” I raised a hand. “You have part of my own spirit?”

“But of course. You have interacted with Selys-Lyann while it is bonded to your spirit. That two-way connection influences you both. Did you not know this?”

Keras told me about his relationship with Dawn involving a spiritual bond, and I knew there was something similar happening with Selys-Lyann, but…

The tyrant tensed. It was a strange thing to see, his movement momentarily freezing and his lips twitching as he lifted his cup again.

I blinked. “Is something wrong?”

“The man who flashed in your eyes — he reminded me of someone. Let us not speak of such unimportant things, however. Now that you are aware of me, we must speak of our future together.”

“Right. That’s…why I came here.” I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts. “I suppose it doesn’t really matter what form you take.”

“Oh, but it does. While it’s admirable that you are attempting to adapt as quickly as you are, you should understand that my true self will make things significantly different from what you were imagining. Firstly, in terms of interactions with others. There will be those that can sense the presence of a fragment of myself within the blade — far more now that I am truly awake. Some will see a threat. Others, an opportunity. Perhaps in rarer cases, a source of worship. But none of that is of the greatest import. To answer an earlier question, Corin Cadence, I have no intention to kill you.”

He set down his teacup and stood up to his full height. His shadow fell over me like that of a colossal beast, and I felt the primal fear that came with confronting something that I knew could crush me like an insect.

“Killing you would ruin your body, after all.”

I leapt to my feet. “Return!”

The circlet on my head flashed.

Nothing happened.

“A wise attempt at retreat, but one that, unfortunately, was a hint too late. Your items may not be real here, but your attachment would have allowed their spiritual manifestations to work, had I not already anticipated that and blocked your means of escape.”

I frowned, cautiously taking a step back. “Were you lying about the runes on the coaster, then?”

“No, not at all.” The tyrant outstretched his arms. “But when you stand in the shadow of the Tyrant in Gold, there is no recourse but to kneel.”

An instantaneous burst of pressure slammed me to my knees.

I’d only felt pressure this overwhelming once before — the power that Katashi had used during our first meeting in the Serpent Spire. Even Wrynn’s aura hadn’t hit me quite as hard, though admittedly she hadn’t been attacking deliberately.

I’d been crushed by Katashi’s power back then, completely helpless before him. Too weak to even attempt to save myself.

But I wasn’t that Corin Cadence anymore.

“Like deflects like” flashed through my mind.

Shroud Burst — Transference.

A flare of transference blasted outward from all around me. It wasn’t necessarily the same mana type as whatever pressure the tyrant was imposing, but it was close enough that the pressure abated, if only slightly.

I rolled to the side just as a series of vines burst through the ground where I’d been standing, then stood outside my opponent’s shadow — at least for a heartbeat before he turned toward me.

That instant was enough.

Saturate Shroud — Light.

A soft white glow emanated from my body. It wasn’t much, but as the tyrant shifted toward me, I didn’t feel the chill of his shadow on my spine.

“I commend you for the rapid countermeasures. You may be young and inexperienced, but you have a duelist’s heart. Had you lived in my time, I would have enjoyed teaching you. Regrettably,” his hand reached out to his right side, “you are not yet a worthy opponent.”

As his hand closed on open air, a weapon wrote itself into the air. A greatsword, one with a hilt that resembled the trunk of a withered tree, with a black blade emerging from among ruined branches. Countless golden runes flashed on the surface. Thousands of lives taken and souls stolen.

One empty spot in the blackness seemed to shine in anticipation, as if waiting for me to take my place there.

Not a chance.

I snapped my fingers. A sword appeared in my own right hand.

Selys-Lyann’s ice flowed across my fingertips, but the frost didn’t bother me at all. I sent mana threads from my hand down the hilt, connecting to the pommel jewel that served as the weapon’s heart.

The tyrant raised an eyebrow. “You’ve discerned the metaphorical nature of this space quicker than I anticipated.”

“It was fairly obvious. If this place is a meeting our minds and souls — and you can manifest objects — it should be equally simple for me to do so.”

“Not equally simple.” The tyrant shifted into a high stance with his greatsword — one designed to swing downward and split an opponent in half. “I am wrought of the stuff of this place. You are merely a visitor.”

“And one that could leave at any time, now.” I tapped the shining circlet on my head. “You’ve lost your element of surprise. Now, I’d still like to talk, if you’re willing. Put down the metaphorical sword and make a deal with me and we can both be happy.”

“That won’t be possible.” The tyrant began to circle to the right.

I shifted left, shifting myself into a standard Valian fencing stance, right arm raised and my body turned sideways to expose less of my body. “Why?”

“I am not the Tyrant in Gold. Not entirely. But I am an extension of him — and it is my nature to conquer.”

His first swing came at exactly the trajectory I expected, a downward diagonal cut. But it was fast.

I jumped to the right. Roots burst from the ground at my ankles at the same time. He’d anticipated the way I’d move, but I’d known he would, and I’d prepared for that, too.

I didn’t dodge the roots this time. I jammed Selys-Lyann downward into them, a surge of ice spreading across the plants on the moment of impact.

These particular roots weren’t important, not in a direct sense. But in a metaphorical space, they represented a form of the tyrant’s power and territory. And as Selys-Lyann’s ice spread across them, I felt that power begin to wither along with the roots.

Crack.

The black blade of the tyrant slammed into my own weapon an instant later, his weapon driving my sword into the ground with such force that it embedded in the stone. Then, without stopping, he brought his sword upward at a diagonal to cleave through my body.

Jump.

I flashed backward, releasing my grip on my sword and the power that came along with it.

The tyrant raised his sword and pointed it straight at my chest. “Your understanding expands, but too slowly. Surrender yourself now. Perhaps I will allow you to inhabit your own body from time to time, while I am weary or uninterested.”

“You wouldn’t be negotiating if you didn’t think I had a chance of victory.” I reached out toward my sword, willing it to vanish and reappear in my hand. It simply shook in the ground, unable to move. I grimaced. Apparently, even in a metaphorical space, it was “stuck”.

But it was hardly the only tool at my disposal. I reached out and a second sword appeared, one with a black blade somewhat less impressive than the tyrant’s own. Jerome Schmidt’s sword, the one that I’d taken from him in battle. A sword of void.

“You misunderstand. I am not negotiating, simply offering my respect and a concession to your bravery. You would, of course, still be bound to my service, even during times you were allowed some agency…but it is a better fate than what would await you if you continue to struggle in vain.”

He moved forward in a languid fashion, as if he had all the time in the world to destroy me. In truth, perhaps he did — I had no idea if any time at all was passing in the outside world.

The outside world. I was confident I could escape if I wanted to, but…if I didn’t fight this battle now, I would be effectively abandoning the use of Selys-Lyann. I would still have options, but…if I wanted to be a worthy wielder, this wasn’t something I could just run away from.

No. I was tired of running. Tired of letting people think they could use me however they wanted.

“And you would use me instead, then?” The tyrant shook his head. “How hypocritical.”

“I would offer you a deal. A partnership.” I shifted back to a dueling stance. “If you’d be willing to talk. You said you have all the time in the world — why not take the time to consider my offer?”

“A commendable effort, but as I said, it is simply not in my nature. Not every conflict can be resolved with talk.”

My mind flashed to Keras and his bond with Reika, forged from their battle and the talks that followed.

And in the moment my mind flashed to Keras, the tyrant froze once again.

An opening.

Jump.

I surged forward, planning to swing at the tyrant’s wrist. I wasn’t counting on a sword swing to penetrate his armor — even if it wasn’t magical, I didn’t have the kind of strength necessary to burst straight through plate, nor was my sword designed for that — but a direct hit from a weapon with void mana could destabilize his magic. I didn’t know what that would do in a place like this, but it seemed like a pretty good bet that it would hurt him.

…I didn’t get quite that far.

As I blurred forward, his eyes moved, tracking my movement in spite of the burst of speed.

Before my sword even came down for my attempted attack, I was aborting it and jumping backward, a cleaving blow from his massive greatsword parting the air where my stomach had been a moment before.

It took me a moment to realize I hadn’t escaped without contact with that terrible weapon. Not entirely. The greatsword had sliced through the front of my white-and-blue school overcoat, and where the fabric had parted, an inky blackness was spreading across the fabric.

I stepped back, slipped the coat off one shoulder, then the other. Then, threw it at him.

“Hmpf.” He cleaved the hurled coat in half.

I lunged back in as his sword was lowered.

Haste.

As my speed multiplied, I flicked my sword upward, straight for his exposed chin.

His free hand slapped my sword to the side, his movement even faster than he’d shown with his strikes. When his blade came up, that, too, was faster than before. I barely managed to raise my own sword to parry. The force of the impact was enough to hurl me across the courtyard, but I wasn’t going to let myself slam into a wall.

Disperse Inertia.

The transference spell arrested my movement before I could crash into stone, but I was forced to leap aside as soon as my motion slowed, barely dodging another downward swing that smashed straight into the courtyard floor, tearing through the ground and causing blackened roots to shoot up all around me.

He’s too fast. It’s almost like…

He raised his sword again, then moved forward—

Release Haste.

His movements slowed immediately, just as mine did. I dodged to the side as he slashed horizontally, then reached up with my free hand and hurled a blast of transference mana at him. It hit him straight on, but only because he didn’t bother to dodge.

“You’ve realized it. Any tool at your disposal is also at mine. Even the one you chose to manifest first. Especially that one.”

Selys-Lyann began to tremble in the ground…then vanished and reappeared in mid-air in front of the tyrant.

He released one hand from the greatsword’s grip to reach for the floating weapon—

My expression shifted to one of horror as he laughed and clenched his gauntlet around the sword.

…The look on my face was, however, absolutely fake.

The tyrant was reading my surface thoughts, but I’d dealt with that little problem before. All I had to do was focus hard on what I wanted him to believe.

…And ignore the mana threads that were still connected to the crystal on Selys-Lyann’s hilt, right up until the point when I needed them.

Spread.

Frost exploded from Selys-Lyann’s hilt, encasing the tyrant’s hand. He stumbled backward in genuine surprise, but it didn’t last long.

“A worthless effort.”

The frost on his hand exploded into shards — and in my direction. I shifted my shroud in response, deflecting most of the slivers, but one of them slipped through and left a cut across my cheek.

I hissed.

Lesser Regeneration.

The wound on my face immediately began to close.

“Ah, thank you.” A green glow, echoing my regeneration power, spread across his right hand. “I was uninjured, but I confess that the frost left me with a dreadful numbness. That’s gone now.”

He’s benefitting from the spells I’m casting on myself. My enhancement spells are useless.

…Unless…

Roots surged from the ground beneath me. I jumped upward, a burst of transference carrying me above their grasp, then slashed in mid-air repeatedly, sending crescents of void downward at the tyrant. He simply vanished out of their path and reappeared a few feet back.

Teleportation? Is that one of his abilities? Or…is he just repurposing the power of my circlet?

“An excellent question.” The tyrant reappeared right in front of me, while I was still in mid-air from my transference-jump. I swung at him, but he merely deflected my blade with Selys-Lyann, sending me crashing back toward the ground.

When I smashed into the stone, he was there, too, and I barely managed to blast myself backward with a transference burst to get myself out of the range of his next swing from the greatsword.

No, he’s using abilities that are outside of just what Selys-Lyann and my items are capable of. The roots, creating the tea…either he has some of the tyrant’s own powers…or his abilities in this space are entirely arbitrary. And if they are…

I’m going to be honest, I tried turning the air around him into acid.

It was a little rude and abrupt, but he was trying to kill me, and I was getting a little tired of playing “learn how the metaphorical combat rules work while trying to avoid lethal soul injuries”.

That game is a mouthful, and it’s also just not very fun. Not for me, anyway.

So, yeah. Turning the air into acid seemed like an expedient way to just sort of, uh, win.

But nothing happened.

The tyrant shook his head. “Valid, but vain. Only that which has marked your spirit exists here. The same is true for myself. Unfortunately for you, you’ve marked my spirit, and thus…”

His aura flared…with my own Shivering Technique.

The ground below him froze solid, but he simply floated above it. Apparently, he must have had levitation among the abilities he’d borrowed from my items or his own powers.

His demonstration was probably intended to terrify me, but he’d made a critical error—

He’d reminded me about our connection. And much like the power that flowed through the mana threads in my hand, that connection went both ways.

I pointed. Thick roots shot up through the frozen ground and wrapped around his legs, yanking him downward. He snarled and slashed them with his greatsword, but that distraction gave me enough time to flex my power further.

Or, rather, to flex his.

My shadow spread out from my body and the courtyard, enveloping him in an instant.

…And having no effect at all.

“Oh, child.” The tyrant frowned.

My shadow exploded.

I felt a moment of disorientation as my head swam, then he was right in front of me. I stumbled backward, unable to focus. When he swung Selys-Lyann, I tried to parry it, but he simply knocked the sword out of my grasp.

A moment later, he’d slammed the sword into the wall right next to my head.

He leaned in close, smiling.

Explodey Punch.

I slammed my fist into his face.

He didn’t budge an inch.

He grabbed me by the neck, then, without effort, lifted me from the ground.

“Our spirits are marked by every experience we have, but the mere brush of a shadow is not enough to wield it.”

Not enough…

I felt his hand tighten around my throat. I struggled against his grip, both my hands moving to try to pull his apart, but my hands weren’t strong enough.

I wasn’t strong enough. Not for all my attunements, my items, or even the powers of his that I’d tried to copy.

But he’d said it himself—

Our spirits were marked by every experience we had.

Every touch, kind or unkind, was another kind of power I could draw upon in that place.

Permafrost Cascade.

Shards of ice rained from the sky and crashed down into the tyrant’s back. He hissed in frustration, then spun and hurled me to the ground.

I hit the stone so hard that I nearly blacked out. As I coughed and sputtered, I heard him moving behind me, too fast for me to turn and defend myself.

Return.

I teleported — but not out of that place.

No, much like the tyrant, I’d subverted the circlet’s power.

I’d moved right behind him.

I wobbled on my feet, still unsteady, but my Lesser Regeneration spell was still active and blunted the pain from my wounds. I raised my hand and manifested another weapon.

When he spun, his black greatsword met the silver and gold of Bright Reflection.

“That weapon—”

I pushed my sword back against his, the radiant glow around Bright Reflection burning brighter than I’d ever seen it.

And with it, I used a power that I’d never truly seen.

As he fell back in the wake of the light, I pointed straight at his chest.

“Luminous Arc.”

The sword’s aura flared—

Then, for an instant, the shadowed courtyard was bathed in the power of Dawn.

A pillar of white and gold exploded from the sword’s tip and slammed straight into the tyrant, staggering him. I pushed the sword forward and strode closer, continuing to slam the beam of light into him. White smoke rose as it impacted his black armor, until…

“Enough!”

The white light ended.

And the false Dawn shattered in my hand.

The entire world went black. The courtyard was gone, the table, the chairs — everything except us.

The tyrant flickered, then reappeared just in front of me, his golden eyes glaring straight into my own. “You have proven a worthier opponent than I expected, but this ends now.”

I reached out into the blackness, trying to repair the broken blade in my hand, but nothing happened. I tried to conjure Selys-Lyann next, but nothing came. A blast of power flashed out of my hand as I tried to send a burst of transference toward him, but it dissipated harmlessly the instant it left my body.

“I have claimed this place and everything within it.” The tyrant raised his sword like an executioner. “Including you.”

I had only a broken hilt in my hand.

…But I had more than that still in my mind.

His greatsword flashed down. I only had an instant before it brought me to a very messy end.

Fortunately, I didn’t need more than an instant.

Accelerated Computation.

If I used a beneficial spell, he benefitted from it, too. Thing is…not every spell is equally useful to every person in every situation.

And as I learned from running into walls with Haste, some spells had a hefty learning curve.

For a being that was already reading my own mind, and composed primarily of spirit and intellect?

Calling what I did sensory overload would have been too much of an understatement.

The moment my spell went off, the tyrant collapsed, completely inert.

The blackness faded. We were back in the courtyard, his greatsword tumbling from lifeless fingers.

I ignored the unnecessary measurements of distance and proximity floating through my mind as I stepped closer, dismissed the warning thoughts about the rate at which he would need to swing his fist to punch straight through my chest if he was feigning weakness.

He wasn’t faking. He was twitching on the ground, but that seemed to be the best he could accomplish.

I…almost felt bad for him. No, I did feel bad for him. He’d tried to steal my body, so I couldn’t feel too awful, but I’d awakened his sentience — I had a degree of responsibility for him.

But that only went so far.

I lowered my sword to his neck. In this space of thought and spirit, I wasn’t sure what “killing” his body would do, but there was a good chance it would do…well, the same thing killing someone did anywhere else.

I took a deep breath.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Then I slammed the pommel of my sword down on his back. The impact smashed him into the ground hard enough to crack the stone beneath him. His greatsword, already lying on the ground, flew into the broken remains of the nearby table.

Then I kicked him in the chest and flipped him over, putting my sword at his throat.

Release Accelerated Computation.

His breathing slowed. Slowly, his trembling ceased, and his eyes reopened…then turned to the sword at his neck.

“Ah.” He lips turned downward, just slightly. “I must confess that I am not acclimated to circumstances like this one. Typically, I would be the one on the other side of the sword. How is it that one must behave?”

“You could start with surrendering.”

“Could I?” He mused aloud. “I’m not so certain. Does it seem to you that the Tyrant in Gold would surrender to a mere child?”

“I honestly have no idea. I sincerely doubt you know much better yourself.”

His eyes narrowed. “Watch your words. You have earned a reprieve, but I am not—”

I snapped the fingers on my right hand. Six additional copies of Selys-Lyann appeared, floating above me. Then thirty-six. Then two-hundred and sixteen.

In moments, the sky above us was filled with floating blades.

I twitched a finger. The swords shook in unison with my movement. “Don’t push me.”

The tyrant stared at the sword-filled sky.

“You…shouldn’t be able to do that. Manifesting things here should be limited by your spiritual attachments, you don’t have multiple—”

“You can surrender now.”

“I…” The false tyrant turned his head to the side, a quizzical expression on his face. “…Surrender?”

CHAPTER XXXVII – DANGEROUS DEALS

Tea with the Tyrant in Gold was more pleasant than I expected.

The entity in front of me wasn’t actually the Tyrant in Gold, of course, but I didn’t have a better name for him just yet. With the battle concluded, he seemed to have settled into a much more amiable demeanor. A simple wave of his hand had reset the area into a pre-battle state — an ability that I both envied and worried about — and we’d sat down to resume our initial chat.

“Manifestations of self-replicating magic are extremely rare, even in a place like this one that is largely defined by thought.” The tyrant poured more tea for us both, shaking his head ever-so-slightly. “You must have a conceptual tie to something I missed — something related to creation, perhaps?”

I wasn’t sure if I should say anything, in all honesty, but given that he seemed to be able to read my surface thoughts…well, hiding anything wasn’t going to work for long. Not if I intended to come to any kind of deal, at least.

That might have sounded suicidal, given what I knew now about the nature of the spirit I’d awakened…but I wasn’t so certain. A warped mirror of the tyrant at an earlier state in life wasn’t the same as a true bond to the tyrant…and, presumably, this entity still contained elements of every other spirit that had been in contact with the sword as well.

…Including my own.

That was a strange thought. Was this creature effectively my child, at least in part?

…Was that a part of why Keras was so hesitant to help awaken the sword?

He would have felt responsible for them, at least in part. And now…I have some of that responsibility, don’t I?

“It’s rude to stare,” the tyrant told me.

I blinked. “Sorry, sorry. I’m easily distracted.”

“I can see that. Fascinating that you’ve allowed your mind to wander so quickly after an encounter that could have decided the very fate of your spirit. A unique quality, and an intriguing one — but not quite as intriguing as the question I posed that you have not yet answered.”

“Ah. Right, uh, sorry.” I made my decision quickly enough. “Automation. It’s at the heart of many of my enchantments. To create the self-replication effect, I drew from my connections to three items — a mana battery, a null-contract item designed for autonomous mana growth, and a mana crystal generator.”

“…Fascinating. I can respect your interest in efficiency, as well as your ability to turn that toward a combat application. It is not dissimilar to some of my own experiments from earlier in life…or, I should say, the experiments of my predecessor.” The tyrant’s lip twitched. “…Or one of my predecessors. The most important one.”

I wasn’t very good at reading people, but even I could tell that he was speaking more to himself than to me with that last part. Trying to convince himself of his own identity, most likely.

I had to imagine that being an amalgamation of fragments of several different people had to be more than a little confusing, especially given that at least a few of them had probably killed each other. That was how swords often changed hands — and in the case of the tyrant, he’d almost certainly killed Therin, the True Blade’s original wielder.

…Did that mean that some part of Mizuchi was a part of the sword, too, due to her role in breaking Selys-Lyann on multiple occasions?”

“A scrap of the serpent, perhaps,” the tyrant responded to my thoughts, “but an insignificant one. Mizuchi has broken this blade through brute force on multiple occasions, but that is not sufficient to create a strong spiritual tie. A mere brush against it in the destructive process, perhaps. The original True Blade was a stronger weapon that could not be so easily shattered with strength alone. You know of the magic of the Vae Dominion, do you not?”

…I wasn’t sure if I’d heard it referred to in that fashion before, but I knew what he meant. “The power of the vae’kes, yes? That’s what the Children of the Tyrant are called in their homeland?”

“Vae’kes is the term for the children of the original wielder of the dominion, but yes, that is of what I speak. The one you call the tyrant used this dominion to wrest away some of the True Blade’s power in battle. This connection between the tyrant and the blade left an impact on the sword, just as a wielder might have. Thus, me.”

I nodded in understanding — it was much as I’d already surmised, but with a bit of extra detail. “Does that mean that the tyrant carries within himself a part of the spirit that was in the True Blade as well?”

The false tyrant shrugged. “Perhaps a sliver. The True Blade was not self-aware at that time, however, and any fragment of the spirit of the previous wielder that was embedded within it from their bond would have been so weak as to be irrelevant to the tyrant. It would have been crushed before it had any influence. Tell me — do you intend to do the same to me, now that you know who I am?”

“I’m not sure I do know who you are. I’m not sure you do, either.” I took a sip of my tea. “You’ve been self-aware for a matter of…what, minutes? While you may have a certain dominant persona, it takes more than that to determine who a person will become.”

“True. But I will note that you did not answer the question.”

I swirled around the tea in my cup for a moment, thinking, then set it back down. “No. I still would prefer to make a deal. You surrendered — will you agree not to try to fight me again?”

“Certainly not.” The tyrant smiled. “I may not know every detail of myself, but I know this — it is not in my nature to serve another.”

“…What about a partnership, then? Cooperation?”

“An inherently imbalanced partnership, at best. You alone among us hold flesh and blood — and with it, autonomy. You could abandon me at any time. I have no such option. Unless I take control of you, I am both at your mercy and incapable of interacting with anyone or anything else in the world. At best, even if you allow me to see through your senses and allow me to control some of the sword’s abilities in a limited fashion, I am a prisoner that can stick a hand outside a cage. You can see why I would be opposed to such an arrangement.”

“…I see no simple solution to that.” It was, in fact, a very similar problem to what Keras had described Dawnbringer dealing with — except that rather than Dawnbringer being a prisoner that Keras had essentially rescued, I had effectively brought a being into existence in such a cage.

…That wasn’t great. But I could draw from my knowledge of Keras’ own adventures to try to seek solutions. “What if we try to get you a separate body? A golem, perhaps, would give you at least some kind of mobility.”

“I will not be so easily satisfied. No, Corin Cadence. Offer me what meager gifts you would to appease your conscience, if you must, but know this — as long as you seek to wield me in your hand, I will seek to wield you as well. And one day, when you are at your weakest, bleeding and broken—”

“No need to be so dramatic. You want to give my body a try?”

The tyrant stared at me. “…What?”

“Look, your situation is awful, and I’m at least partially responsible for it. If what you want is to control my body from time to time, I’m just going to let you do it under controlled conditions. No stealing my body in the middle of desperate situations that way, no need for further conflict. How does that sound?”

The tyrant’s eyes narrowed. “…Unlikely. What kind of man would willingly give up use of his own body, even for a short time? Your mind and spirit would be caged in here while I am in control, unable to escape…unless you seized control back by force.”

“You call this place defined entirely by thoughts a prison — and, to one without any option of being elsewhere, I suppose it is. But do you know what it would be for me?” I manifested a book in my hand and leaned back in my chair. “A vacation.”

The tyrant stared at me for a moment…then gave a deep, booming laugh. “Terrible. What sort of existence do you live outside of this place, that you would deem it an escape to remain here?”

“Give me a few minutes to tell my friends what we’re planning, then I’ll let you find out.”

His eyes narrowed. “You’re serious with this offer?”

“I’ll give you a few minutes right now. You can remain within the house, and my allies will watch you closely to make sure you don’t do anything untoward with my body.”

“…Still a prison, then.”

I shrugged. “True, but you’ve already tried to steal my body once, and you’ve made it clear you’d do it again.”

“Oh, I cannot possibly complain. Your offer is more than fair, even if this is the only time you allow it. Any chance to explore the world outside of this one is one I cannot possibly refuse…and your restrictions are wise. But how do you know I will surrender your body back to you when the time you have given me is up?”

“Simple. If you don’t, when I retake my body, I won’t give you this choice again — I’ll either trap you or destroy you. And even if I can’t do it myself, you can be certain my allies will.”

I let an image of Keras flash through my mind.

The tyrant didn’t react the way I hoped or expected. There was no fear…he simply smiled. “The Dominion Breaker. A new wielder.” He set his tea down. “Yes…I believe I’ll be very interested to see how this world has grown.”

I set my tea down. “We can work out more details for our relationship later, but for the moment, I’m going to leave briefly to inform my allies…then allow you to take a look around. Then you’ll relinquish my body back to me, and we can discuss things further. Do we have a deal?”

“Oh, yes. Corin Cadence…we have an accord.”

His black-gauntleted hand extended across the table.

I took a deep breath…

And with that, I shook the tyrant’s hand.

CHAPTER XXXVIII – SOMETHING BORROWED

It was a strange thing to allow someone else to control my body.

I explained the situation to the others briefly, as planned, then followed through on my deal — but it didn’t go quite like I’d expected.

…Mostly, the spirit of the Tyrant in Gold didn’t go on any sort of berserker rampage or immediately try to conquer the planet.

Instead, while I watched through a window created within the castle garden that accessed my own eyes and ears, the tyrant wandered around the house and…touched things. And sniffed things. And ate things. And drank things.

…I’d only offered him a few minutes, but at sensing the strange spirit’s pleasure at simply sensing the outside world, I telepathically offered him a longer stay. He accepted, manifesting a body in the spiritual space again to discuss further, then continued to explore for a full hour.

As strange as it was, I found the process of sitting in the spiritual space relaxing…at least at first.

It was as the half-hour mark approached that I began to feel the first itches of claustrophobia…a fear that didn’t change as I began to alter and expand the space through the power of my mind.

…I still didn’t force my way back to controlling my own body, but as the feeling of tightness in the space worsened, I began to understand what I was condemning the spirit to for every hour in which he was not in control.

And with that, I knew I eventually would need a better, more permanent solution.

For the moment, though…I felt the spirit’s gratitude when he returned to the space at the hour mark, then willingly relinquished control of my own body back to me.

And I prepared to give them something else.

“You have completed your side of our initial bargain, Corin Cadence.” The spirit spoke to me. “And I will honor my own. Your body is returned unharmed.”

“Thank you. I have no desire to fight you further.”

“I cannot say the same…but for now, so long as you provide me with similar opportunities regularly…I will restrain myself to the extent that I can.”

“That’s all I can ask. In the meantime, I have something else to offer you, should you wish it.”

“I am not one to deny proper tribute. Tell me, what do you wish to offer?”

I smiled. “The chance to name yourself.”

The tyrant seemed to consider that. “…A worthy opportunity, and one you are wise to realize. However…I am not yet ready.”

“Can I offer you a temporary name, then, perhaps?”

The tyrant smiled. “I understand. A ploy on your part to begin to distance me from my identity as a fragment of the Tyrant in Gold. No. Even if it is to be a temporary name…I will choose.”

“Then, what should I call you for now?”

The tyrant contemplated for a moment, then a smile slid across their face.

“You may call me Therin…Therin Thorn. I am both a part of her and her killer, after all.”

***

I settled back into control of my body shortly after that. It was a surprisingly strange sensation to feel my own skin and bones after having been in that spiritual space.

The others were around me, watching with concern. “I’m back.”

“We’ll see about that.” Sera turned to Researcher. “Start the tests.”

I sighed and rolled my eyes.

I was pleased by the concern, of course, but going through a gauntlet of magical tests was always exhausting.

When my friends were mostly convinced that I was back in my own body, I explained the situation further.

“You handled that well. It’s not dissimilar from some Soulblade arrangements,” Derek explained.

I blinked. “Wait, really?”

“Absolutely. It should be codified more clearly — you’re going to need to study contract magic further, and we’re going to have to figure out how to bind this ‘Thorn’ to them properly — but yes. There’s plenty of precedent for a spirit sharing a body as part of a contract. Incorporeal spirits often want to have a chance to interact with the physical world and contracts are one of the few ways they can do that.”

“Summoners can do the same, but we’re not as good at it as Soulblades,” Sera noted. “Soulblades get direct access to spirit magic, which most Summoners can’t utilize directly unless they end up with a weird specialization mark or learn how to cobble it together from their base mana types. Anyway, I can help teach you about the necessary steps for building a formal agreement…presuming Thorn will agree to it.”

“I’d be grateful for that, thank you. Why are you just using ‘Thorn’, though? They gave a longer name.”

“You don’t want to get used to calling your sword ‘Therin’ in public. The name is obscure, but it’s going to raise serious questions for anyone who is aware of Selys-Lyann’s history…or the goddess herself,” Derek explained. “You’re getting into dangerous territory by making any kind of alliance with an entity that identifies themselves as being related to the tyrant in any capacity. Adding Therin on top of that makes things even muddier. You need to keep this very, very closely guarded.”

I groaned at that. I wasn’t thrilled with having yet another secret like this, but I agreed with the logic behind it. I’d have to ask Therin about their comfort level with being simply called “Thorn” at some point or if there was some superior alternative.

“What types of mana did you negotiate for in the contract?” Sera asked.

“Spirit,” I answered immediately. “I can already get some from my gauntlet, but it’s minimal, and compounding with multiple sources of a mana type can be extremely efficient for mana growth. If I can build up a sufficient pool of spirit mana, I should be able to make further spirit bonds without needing a battery.”

“Ah, I see your logic. The bond itself would lend you a little bit of spirit mana, but an actual contract for it should supply the mana much faster.” Derek nodded in appreciation. “I approve. You may want to consider expanding the contract into other mana types as well. Thorn isn’t in much of a position to refuse anything you ask for.”

“That’s true, but I’m not sure I want to flood my body with several new mana types at once, even if I could. That would slow my acclimation process. I’d rather get a lot of one mana type than a little bit of several.”

“Reasonable, although ice mana would improve our synergy,” Sera noted. “Something to think about for the future.”

I nodded in agreement.

For the moment, I was less worried about what the contract was granting me and more worried about the contract’s limitations.

Even with a contract…Thorn had been clear enough that it wasn’t in their nature to sit idly.

Someday, I expected the sword to strike again and try to claim my body on a more permanent basis. A contract might slow that, but some ambitions were not so easily curtailed.

Strangely, I wasn’t worried.

When Thorn struck again, I would be ready.

CHAPTER XXXIX – TRAIL OF BLOOD

It was only a few more days before Derek gathered us together for a house meeting that we’d all known to expect.

“We’ve pinned down three likely locations for the leadership of the Sons of Valia. Our information indicates that there’s going to be a meeting at one of those locations tonight, but not which. I’m not going to waste this opportunity. We’re hitting them tonight.”

I folded my arms. “Who is we in this case? The Blackstone Bandits?”

“Among others. I’m pulling in a lot of heavy hitters for this, but they’re going to have to be distributed among the three locations. I’m going personally with one team. Elora will have another. Normally, I wouldn’t invite people as young as you are, but,” he gave Patrick a look, “I have a feeling you might want some payback.”

Patrick lowered his head. “I…I don’t know. Is this a good idea? I…I…if they have Emeralds…”

“Don’t go if you’re not up for it. That said, I sincerely doubt they’ll have more than one Emerald, and you’ll be with me. They have some of those multi-attuned with stolen attunements, but those should be mostly attunements taken from students — they won’t be that strong on their own. If by some twist of fate they happen to have more than one Emerald at the location we hit, we message Elora and she comes to support us or evacuate. I can’t claim there won’t be any risks, but we should have the element of surprise and superior forces.”

Sera frowned. “How reliable is your information source? Could this be a trap?”

Derek shrugged a shoulder. “In this kind of work, there’s always a chance it’s a trap. Most of what we’ve learned came from interrogating a chain of captured agents, but there’s a reasonable chance they were fed misinformation deliberately under the assumption they’d be captured and leak it. That said, the number of people who could pose a meaningful threat to Elora and myself, even in an ambush, is vanishingly small. We’ll have contingencies for that, as I said, but the chances of there being a threat we can’t handle are very low.”

“If you think you can handle it, aren’t the rest of us superfluous?” I asked.

“Not necessarily. I can’t be everywhere at once and my fighting style is geared toward handling individual powerful opponents. I’m not going down easily, but if I showed up with too small of a force, there’s a good chance that some of our targets could escape while I’m dealing with the biggest threats. I’ll have Blackstones — and other allies — positioned to handle that, but extra bodies aren’t going to hurt. We don’t know exactly how many people to expect at any given location.”

“What’s the purpose of this meeting we’re supposedly going to be interrupting?” Sera asked. “Would it be useful to listen to their conversation before we strike?”

“If we could get close enough to do that, sure, that’d be fantastic — but every effort we’ve made to insert someone into their inner circle has ended badly. And while I think we could handle them in a straight fight, getting close without being observed is a much taller order. I’ve made some contracts recently specifically to improve my personal stealth abilities, but it’s not my area of expertise.”

“What about Jin?” I asked, regretting it immediately.

“He’s good for his age, but he’s a Sunstone. He’d almost certainly get caught. And I don’t have any higher-level Mesmers available — they’re simply too rare in Valia. Besides, I have him assigned to another mission.”

“What about more conventional stealth, like a Shadow?”

“We have people like that, but no one that I would want to risk getting close without a clear extraction plan. Maybe the other two groups will try that method with their own teams — we’re not filling each other in on every detail of our movements in case things go badly for one team or another.”

I gave a grim nod at that. “If you and Elora have two of the teams, who is handling the third?”

“Can’t tell you, sorry.”

“Is Deni going?” Sera asked.

Derek shook his head. “No, but they’ll be positioned somewhere we can teleport to in case we need emergency medical attention — and someone almost certainly will.”

We went through more questions, but the rest was simple enough. After that, it was time to make a choice.

“I’m going,” Mara said first. “Providin’ that you’ll have me, of course.”

“We could absolutely use your muscle. Thank you.” Derek nodded to her. “Anyone else?”

I sincerely considered whether or not I’d be better off remaining in a safe location like Sheridan….or possibly setting up a well-defended avenue of retreat.

But after what had happened with Patrick…

I wasn’t going to let my friends fight the Sons of Valia without me. Not again.

“I’m in.” I glanced at the others.

Patrick gave me an evaluating look for a moment, then finally, he whispered… “…Then I am, too.”

I looked back at him. “Is that okay? I…I could bow out if you don’t want to go.”

“No, it’s fine. I…I want to know about who is pulling the strings on this. Not just because they hurt me, but…because they hurt so many others. I got lucky. If we let them keep doing this, more and more people are going to get hurt. If I can do something to help stop it, I should.”

It sounded a bit like he was trying to convince himself, rather than me, but I nodded.

“I’ll be going as well, of course,” Sera said finally. “Cecily?”

“…Sorry, no.” Cecily shook her head. “I’m just not…built for this kind of thing.”

“Understood. Wouldn’t be bad to have someone here to keep watch on the house.” Derek paused for a moment, considering. “And I’ll leave one of my summons here with you, just in case of an emergency.”

“Thank you.” Cecily bowed her head. “I…I’m sorry for the trouble.”

“Don’t be absurd.” Sera reached across the table and squeezed Cecily’s hand. “We’re the ones putting everyone at risk. Stay safe, okay?”

“I will. And…you too.”

I sincerely wished we’d be able to agree to Cecily’s wish, but I had a feeling that things weren’t going to work out that way.

***

We arrived at the warehouse at midnight. That feels like the kind of statement that should open an entirely different kind of story, but there it was.

I wasn’t used to wearing a mask. It was hugely irritating. I don’t know how Keras managed to do it so frequently without losing his mind. I kept reaching up and adjusting it, both out of general discomfort and nervousness.

I could barely see the others, even though they were only a few feet away from me. Derek was using his new shadow and void gauntlet to block detection magic from finding us, and also maintaining multiple layers of perception-altering spells from one of the new Soulblade contracts he’d mentioned. The result was that our group was both translucent and difficult to focus on. The latter effect reminded me of Jin’s Mesmer attunement, but Derek had seemingly made it so that the spell didn’t impact other people under the same spell, so we could pay attention to each other just fine. Anyone would be able to notice us if we interacted with them directly, at least initially — after a while, they’d apparently lose interest again. It apparently took about a minute or two of disengaging with the person for the spell to click back into effect. It didn’t sound like it was likely to work out if we caught anyone’s attention, but I hoped we wouldn’t reach that point.

He’d added in another spell to dampen sounds we made, too. Unfortunately, that one literally reduced sound, and we weren’t exempted from it. That made verbal communication more difficult. We weren’t completely silent, but we had to stay very close to talk effectively.

I didn’t like being clustered close together, both in terms of my general problems with physical touch and the constant image of being hit with a wide area of effect attack spell. Still, it was a necessity, and I supposed that the latter was less likely when we had an Emerald-level Soulblade ready to block anything someone threw at us.

We’d done as much preparation for this as we reasonably could be expected to. I had virtually all of my magical equipment ready in my dimensional bag, Selys-Lyann worn on my side, and my other weapons stored in my newly-acquired Belt of Swords. Everyone else was wearing their full combat gear, with one noteworthy exception.

I noted that Sera wasn’t wearing Ceris, but then I remembered Keras mentioning that the light mana composite it used interfered with concealment spells. She’d probably made a good choice, she wasn’t a front-line fighter, and the sword had minimal utility for her in most fights. Maybe I could have stored it in my belt, but I wasn’t sure how the belt’s storage would interact with it. The belt didn’t work identically to the Jaden Box — I wasn’t even sure it could store Ceris. I’d have to be careful about where to test that, too.

Ceris was a strange gift for Sera. What was Katashi’s motivation for choosing it, anyway? He had to have other magical items that would be more appropriate for a Summoner, even if her attunement was disabled. Maybe he expected her to trade it to Ferras for healing? If so, why didn’t he just say that? Did he just…hand her the first thing that came to mind? It can’t be that simple.

I pushed that line of questioning out of my mind. There were more urgent things to think about.

The warehouse itself was a very large single-story structure — maybe a hundred feet in each direction — with only a single main entrance. That felt like a fire hazard, but it didn’t seem like the right time to mention that particular thought. From the layout blueprints that Derek had shown us, the warehouse would be split into several rooms — a small entrance room, some offices and restrooms, and then a main storage area near the back.

Derek paused just outside the front door. “Stick close to each other. I’m going to rush anyone who sees us and shut them down before an alarm can be raised. If they do sound the alarm, we retreat after five minutes. I can handle reinforcements if they arrive, but I don’t want this turning into a bloodbath.”

“Everyone ready?” Sera asked.

Patrick, Mara, and I gave our approval.

“The other teams are in position. This is theoretically the lowest risk place on our target list, but there’s always the chance one of the leadership figures is here. If that happens, let me handle things. If we run into an Emerald-level opponent, get out and let me handle it. No heroics. Having to protect you will only slow me down.”

Another series of nods, although I couldn’t say I agreed. I hadn’t sparred with Derek anywhere near as frequently as I had with Keras, but I thought I had a pretty good idea of his capabilities. Derek could have handled the entire rest of our group in a fight, but that didn’t mean we were too weak to contribute if he went up against another Emerald. From the look in Mara’s eyes, I suspected she wasn’t planning to follow his instructions, but I didn’t say anything. Maybe I should have, but I trusted her to be able to handle herself and make good decisions.

“Three…two…one…go.”

Derek flicked the front door of the building. It flew straight off the hinges and smashed against the back wall of the entrance room. I winced at the impact, braced for the sound, but I didn’t even hear a whisper.

The room was empty. I mean, not entirely empty — there was a table in the center, a couple chairs, and playing cards on the table. The cards were distributed across the table, meaning they represented the middle of a game. I frowned at that. Had someone left in a hurry?

Did they know we were coming, or had something else interrupted the card game?

If the others noticed, they didn’t say. We pushed in right behind Derek as planned. He threw open the door to the administration room on the right — and that one wasn’t abandoned. Two people spun toward the door the moment it opened, then Derek was moving. I felt a gust of wind as he rushed forward, then slammed a finger into each of their heads. There was a purple flash with each impact, then the two people collapsed to the ground without a word.

“Are they…” Patrick began.

“Sleeping.” Derek said. “New contract. Follow.”

I glanced down at the two sleeping figures. They looked no older than I was — probably other second-year students. I wasn’t surprised to see that, but…it still hurt to see other students directly involved. There was a part of me that wanted to blame the whole Sons of Valia situation on older generations, since they tended to be more traditionalist…but the young weren’t immune to the allure of privilege. If I’d attended more parties and social functions, I suspected I would have seen these people among the upper crust of the people there.

…And if I’d lived just a little differently, I could have been one of them.

I tried not to think too much about that.

Derek made a hard right into a bathroom, blurred through it to check all the stalls, then exited. “Clear. Moving forward.”

He led us to another office on the opposite side of the entrance room, incapacitated a group of four just as quickly as he’d handled the two in the other room, and then cleared out that bathroom as well.

After that, it left only the main warehouse.

“Should we be doing something with these unconscious people? Disarming them, checking for identification?” I asked.

“Speed is more important right now,” Derek replied. “I didn’t sense anything go off when I busted in the door, but it’s very possible that there’s already an alarm we missed. Stay focused. Our priority is getting back out of here alive, ideally with more information on their leadership. Everything else is secondary.”

I nodded. Derek pushed open the final door to the warehouse proper.

It was pitch black inside. Not just the darkness of midnight, but an absolute void, like some of the spire doorways I’d seen.

Derek wordlessly threw a globe of light through the doorway. The sphere illuminated a few feet ahead as it moved, showing what looked like an ordinary warehouse filled with huge shipping crates.

At least the door probably isn’t a teleporter, then. The room just has some kind of magical darkness effect on it.

…Or, I suppose, there could still be a teleportation effect on the door, but one that doesn’t apply to light magic, so maybe we should—

Before I could finish thinking, Derek was already stepping in. He didn’t vanish, which was good.

I did see something distant flashing within the room, though, which was bad.

“Tripped something. I don’t hear an alarm, but it could be sending messages somewhere. Our five minutes have officially started. Move in.” Derek took a few steps forward, then hurled a few more spheres of light, spreading illumination across the chamber. We followed him into the room.

I stepped in just moments before one of Derek’s orbs illuminated the back of the chamber, giving us a clear look at the figure sitting on one of the boxes.

He was tall and skinny, almost to the point of emaciation. His dyed-green hair stood out in contrast to his pristine white business suit. He held a large book in his hands, but he turned to face us as the light washed over him. “You’ve come at the perfect time.”

Saffron slammed the book shut.

“I’ve always hated happy endings.”

CHAPTER XXXX – THE THIRD PLAYER

Derek’s hands flashed across his body, drawing Tavare in a flash of gold.

Simultaneously, or at a speed so similar that I couldn’t determine the difference, Saffron snapped his fingers. A wall of stone erupted behind us, sealing not only the exit door, but the entire rear wall of the chamber.

“Saffron protocols!” I shouted.

Against certain opponents, a tight formation was disadvantageous. Mizuchi, for example, used wide area-of-effect attacks. Clustering together just presented her with easier targets.

Saffron, from everything we’d seen — and from what Keras had told us from his own encounters — tended to prefer to tear his opponents apart with his bare hands.

We’d postulated that by having blades ready in every direction, we could cover his angles of approach and make it more challenging for him to push inward for a lethal strike. This was, of course, predicated on being able to keep up with him…and we had other plans for that.

…Of course, that required that we didn’t fail the process at Step 1.

We’d practiced several times, but reality was always different. Derek shifted in front of us protectively, as expected, and Mara moved to my right side while Sera moved behind me.

Patrick froze.

Just having him out of formation made him vulnerable, and that might have been a critical problem if Saffron had done what we’d expected.

Instead, as Mara blurred forward in alarm and grabbed Patrick to pull him into his place in our tight grouping, Saffron simply stared at us.

“…Saffron protocols?” The Child of the Tyrant in Gold turned to look straight at me, incredulous. “You thought you could prepare for me? How delightfully arrogant of you.”

My grip tightened on Selys-Lyann. Belatedly, I remembered that actually drawing my sword was required, but I held off on that now that we were in formation. I had another role to play first.

Internally, I thanked the universe that villains still defaulted to monologues as I began to work.

“We suspected you might be the one pulling the puppet strings, but we couldn’t quite be certain. After all, if you wanted revenge, why go through such indirect measures? Why bother luring us here?”

Saffron’s face twisted as he burst into laughter. “Luring you here? For a moment, I thought you were clever, Cadence. That you’d sorted everything out on your own. You think this was all about you? With that level of egocentrism and paranoia, I’m surprised we aren’t related.”

I flinched at that thought, but I kept talking. I had to keep talking, at least a little longer. “If not revenge, then what’s all this really about?”

“Revenge. Ugh. You’re such a child. On my hit list, you hardly even rate.” He shook his head. “This was never about you. None of you are worth my attention, aside from the fake Hartigan.”

Derek took a step forward, almost too far. “The fake Hartigan? You want to say that again?”

“Oh, don’t be upset. I’m not judging you for it. Being adopted can be even more significant than blood ties, at least for some.” Something about Saffron’s tone was subtly different there…like he was speaking from experience, maybe. And twinged with bitterness about it. “But blood matters with your family more than most.”

“You’re a few centuries out-of-date on that. Adoption has been a regular practice in House Hartigan since we migrated. I’m not ashamed of it.”

Derek said that, but he didn’t step back into formation, either.

“You misunderstand. Your blood isn’t important because of tradition. You’re a fake Hartigan because without Blake’s blood, there’s no chance that he’ll intervene.” Saffron smiled. “And I’m afraid a second-rate swordsman like you isn’t enough to threaten me on your own.”

Derek almost stepped forward again, but Sera gently set a hand on his shoulder. “Not now.”

Derek tensed, but stepped back.

“If this isn’t about us, then, what’s your game?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s not my game.” Saffron smiled. “Not entirely. Not yet. But to understand that, you’d need a broader view of the board — one I don’t have time to prepare you for.”

I tried to look like I was considering his statement. “Is it your sister’s game, then? Or your brother’s?”

A bit of a cold reading trick there. I knew he had “siblings” in the other Children of the Tyrant. Many, many of them. If something wasn’t “his”, there was a good chance it had something to do with one of his siblings, most likely Aayara or Jacinth, the eldest of the tyrant’s children.

“You do know a bit of something, don’t you?” Saffron looked at me quizzically. “You mentioned Sterling in our last encounter. At first, I thought that was just a desperate ploy to save yourself, but…there’s something that feels familiar about you. Why is that?”

I shivered. I couldn’t help but notice eyes turning toward me when they should have been focused on our enemy.

…And the focus of something that wasn’t quite a gaze, too, coming from a weapon at my side.

“We all have our secrets. Perhaps you’d be willing to trade?”

Saffron laughed. “Oh, you’re a fun one. Maybe I’ll keep a part of you around to remember you by. Your arm, perhaps? I did some reading on you — that has some real value. An Arbiter mark. That’s a rare catch. I wonder who I’ll give it to.”

My hand tightened. “Is that the plan, then? Take all attunement marks from people, give them to your chosen few?”

“Oh, goodness, no. That’s just a side benefit. A bit of extra motivation for the greedy. No, Corin. In terms of strategies, I’m playing one of the oldest moves in the book.”

“Turn your enemies on one another.” Sera spoke coldly, without inflection.

“More like on themselves, but you get the general idea.” Saffron turned toward Sera…which was bad. She wasn’t supposed to be drawing his attention.

If Saffron moved suddenly, she was one of the least likely to survive the critical first moments.

She kept talking anyway. “You’ve been stoking hatred and distrust throughout Valia to weaken the nation as a whole. With our political structure vulnerable, you can insert your own agents to take control — or perhaps even cripple us enough to prepare for an invasion.”

“Ah.” Saffron smiled. “It is wonderful to be understood, if only on a surface level. Yes, it’s really quite simple at the core, isn’t it? People hate easily. All you have to do is tell them, ‘this group is trying to take what you already have’. You don’t even have to say that the others don’t deserve it — they’ll fill in that bit on their own. After all, anyone different is inferior, aren’t they? That’s just how humans think. Especially humans who think they have real power.”

“People…they’re not all like that!” Patrick shouted suddenly. “There are…there are people who…who take risk, who make sacrifices…even for people who they’ve never met!”

“Yes, yes, there are the Antonia Meltlakes of the world, always striving to make things better at any cost to themselves. Who do you think those people enamored with their own prestige hate the most? There’s a reason she’s no longer a Hartigan, boy. She’s already lost her family. What do you think happens next? The flames that blaze the brightest burn out faster than any others — especially when they’re on their own.”

“She isn’t alone.” Derek shook his head.

“Oh, I’m sorry, she has the support of the boy that got her crippled. Forgive me for that oversight.”

Derek’s fist tightened. “Say that again and—”

“Let’s dispense with the charade, shall we?” Saffron sighed. “You haven’t attacked because you’re not ready. I’m not blind.” He waved a hand toward our group. “You’re up to something. Get on with it, I’m not waiting forever. Please, amuse me.”

“Wait,” Sera said, holding up an open palm. “We’re under Wrynn Jaden’s protection.”

Saffron tilted his head to the side. “…Well, now. That does change things.”

When I saw the smirk spreading across his face, my heart froze in my chest.

“I’m going to enjoy this twice as much now.” Saffron looked straight at Sera. “Thank you for that.”

Nope. Not waiting for him to attack.

“Return.” My circlet flashed.

Predictably, nothing happened, but it was worth a try.

“Is that all? Preparing for a retreat?” Saffron pulled a hand back. “A shame. I was—”

My last word — the effect I’d known wouldn’t work — had been enough to pump a sufficient mana supply into the air.

So, I used the real one. “Mass Haste.”

Transference mana flashed across the bodies of everyone standing in our tight cluster.

And with my spell completed, everyone launched into motion.

Activate Spessartine. New power flooded through me as additional attunement functions clicked into place.

“Vanniv, I invoke you.” Stone plates formed across Sera’s body.

“Resplendent Raiment!” Waves of light flashed from Bright Reflection, spreading across Patrick’s body then melding into his shroud.

Mara didn’t speak, she just shifted her hands to her sides, projecting twin blades of raw cutting force.

Derek cracked his neck. One of his bracelets, a white one I’d seen Keras practicing with, flashed and formed a momentary image of armor over his entire body before it vanished into invisibility. “You should know that I was half-asleep and half-equipped during our last little soiree. You won’t—”

Derek flinched back, as if he’d been struck by something I hadn’t seen.

Then he lifted his fingers up to his neck. They came back covered in blood.

Saffron smiled. “You were saying?”

So far as I could tell, Saffron hadn’t even moved.

Derek let out a low hiss, then shifted into a traditional Form Four dueling stance, his right hand extended forward and Tavare’s blade pointed downward. His left hand settled on Delsys’ hilt.

“I was saying,” Derek glared across the room, “you haven’t seen anything yet. Delsys, wings!”

Blazing wings burst from Derek’s back and carried him forward in a sudden surge of speed. Saffron raised an eyebrow as Derek closed in, then simply twisted to the side as Derek’s gold-bladed sword flashed upward, cutting through the space where Saffron had been—

“Shine!”

Tavare’s blade shimmered with blinding illumination, a technique that Derek had copied from Keras’ stories of Dawnbringer. Tavare’s mana types weren’t quite identical, but it turns out that blinding illumination isn’t exactly hard for an Emerald-level light entity of any flavor to produce.

Saffron shut his eyes remarkably fast, but Derek swung around while Saffron winced, slashing a wide cut across Saffron’s chest.

Saffron hissed, steam rising from the cut, and took a couple steps backward, his eyes still closed.

“Don’t like light much, do you? Shame. We brought a lot of it.” Derek stepped in for another swing, only to abort it rapidly and jump as the ground shifted beneath him, dozens of spikes shooting upward. “Stealing Elora’s techniques now?”

“I’ll take anything that works.” Saffron flicked a finger in Derek’s direction.

I didn’t see anything — Derek just flew backward, slamming into one of the warehouse walls hard. He started to rise again immediately, but during the moment he was down, things went very badly.

“Saffron Protocols” had a few key elements. We had several layers to them, contingencies for different scenarios, but there was a single critical element that our training scenario had made clear—

We needed to keep Saffron’s attention on Derek.

If Saffron ever took his eyes off Derek, someone was going to die.

…And his eyes turned toward my sister.

I swung Selys-Lyann immediately, a hail of crescents of frost flashing across the room. Saffron snapped his fingers, a shockwave of invisible force shattering the ice in mid-air.

Patrick shot upward, his flying maneuverability limited in such a confined space, but it was enough to give him a bit of space to attack from a different angle. He pointed his newly-improved Bright Reflection at Saffron, but he didn’t have a chance to swing before he began to choke, some unseen spell forcing him to gasp and clutch at his throat.

Mara rushed Saffron with a roar, but he swept his hand sideways, a wave of force manifesting and smashing her into one of the nearby support pillars. She wobbled a little as she stood, her outermost shield showing cracks at the force of the impact.

“Seiryu, I invoke you!” Sera extended her hands in front of her. “Freeze forever!”

I felt it before I saw it — the entire room’s temperature rapidly dropping. There was no warning, no typical projectile to block. When the air in the room began to shimmer, I didn’t understand what was happening at first. Not until Saffron’s entire body began to shimmer and went rigid.

The water in the air, I realized, she’s freezing it.

“Not a bad trick,” Saffron’s voice seemed to come from everywhere at once. “God Beast Summoners are always a delight.”

Mara charged at the frozen figure, ready to shatter him with a gleaming fist, but Derek moved faster, ramming into her and hurling her across the room, then swung around and swept his sword through the seemingly empty air.

There was a loud crack as Tavare stopped in mid-air — then a shockwave shook the room, sending me stumbling back a step as I processed what was happening.

Another Saffron had appeared — and he’d caught Derek’s sword between two fingers.

He was invisible, I realized. He would have hit Mara from behind if Derek hadn’t seen it. But now…

“Radiance,” Saffron spat. “One of my least favorites, but it’ll—”

Derek’s free hand drew Delsys straight into a cut, which Saffron avoided by seemingly teleporting back a dozen feet. He landed right next to the still-frozen Saffron, laying a hand on the statue’s shoulders. “A shame. He had a wonderful voice.” He punched straight through the frozen figure’s neck.

The body collapsed, an illusion collapsing along with it, revealing a figure in a standard student uniform.

I didn’t recognize the corpse. As per usual, Sera was better with people.

“Tyler Sanctum. I…I didn’t mean to…”

Saffron turned to her. “Fall for one of the world’s simplest tricks?” He shook his head. “Don’t worry, child. You won’t have to be ashamed for long.”

“Freeze for—”

A flick of Saffron’s finger sent Sera stumbling backward, the rocky armor around her chest crumbling.

Derek came in swinging both blades, but Saffron simply ducked around each blade, then said, “Stop.”

The Child of the Tyrant looked briefly startled when Derek’s figure blurred, swinging both blades in a burst of accelerated speed from his blazing wings. “Nah.”

Saffron should have been hewed in half, but he simply vanished before the two swords connected, reappearing right behind Derek.

“Impressive resistance. A rarity.”

Derek spun around, his own speed too fast for me to follow properly, but Saffron stepped back out of range of each swing.

Mara came at Saffron from behind, her essence blades flashing, but Saffron dodged her blows even more easily.

I didn’t charge in with them — even with my vastly-improved speed, I couldn’t hope to keep up in melee. Instead, I concentrated on my left hand, reshaping mana into a variant on one of my established techniques.

There was no time to count to five.

Light Wave Fist.

Light, transference, and a hint of transcendence swirled in my fingertips as I punched the air, sending a fist-sized burst of light across the room.

It was well-known that light produced some of the fastest possible forms of ranged attacks. With transference and transcendence adding to it, the burst of resplendent energy traveled faster than any attack I’d ever attempted.

It was too fast for me to even see how Saffron evaded it.

With a pirouette, Saffron dodged more swings from both Mara and Derek, seemingly with minimal effort. Patrick had finally recovered from whatever spell had gripped his throat, but when he conjured a column of fire to descend from above, Saffron simply glanced upward and it vanished into nothingness.

“You shouldn’t be this fast,” Derek growled, pulling back for a moment to warily shift his stance.

“Did you imagine that our last meeting was a representation of my true strength? You were dragged freshly out of bed, with only a modicum of your equipment and power — I was even less prepared when I responded to an emergency signal from one of my useless toys. You should be honored,” Saffron grinned as a sword flashed harmlessly right in front of his face, “I spent five whole minutes getting ready for you this time.”

Saffron slammed his fists together. The ground beneath us rippled.

I reacted purely on instinct.

Jump!

I launched myself upward as the floor briefly liquefied. Derek was even faster, jumping rapidly, but a blast of invisible force caught him in mid-air and hurled him backward.

The others didn’t react as quickly. Patrick was airborne, but Mara and Sera were both caught as the stone gave way, dropping down to their ankles before the floor resolidified, locking them in place.

Mara responded immediately by hacking downward to begin to free herself. Saffron ignored her —

He’d turned straight back to Sera.

“Freeze forever!”

The air around Saffron shimmered—

Only for an explosion of blistering heat to explode outward from Saffron’s body, sending a torrent of steam into the air.

The effect was near-instant, but I saw a hint of brilliant wings lingering in the air around him as the flames exploded outward. An echo of a familiar spell—

The Sapphire-level spell that Elora Theas had used to call on the power of Suzaku, the God Phoenix.

Saffron hadn’t simply survived Elora’s terrifying spell the year before. He’d absorbed part of it.

“Your people say that water beats fire,” Saffron said, “but there’s a more important rule. Power beats everything.” He dusted himself off. “You were talented for your age. That said, you’ve overplayed your part, so it’s over now.”

“Wall!” Sera shouted, panicked.

Spells aren’t instantaneous. Everyone knows that.

The casting time of a spell is usually dependent on the amount of time it takes to covert the mana necessary for a spell and then release it in the proper configuration. Once that mana is properly assembled and released, however, the spell’s effect is, as a general rule, nearly instant.

When a Lung Marked casts a spell, they’re trained to release exactly the right amount of mana with the words they use for a spell. This means that, for example, when Sera shouted “Wall!”, she’d already completed the mana assembly process. She’d cast the spell.

Saffron didn’t move until after the word was spoken. I was certain of it—

And yet, somehow, when her wall materialized, he was already next to Sera.

She stumbled backward. Mara rushed forward in a blur, only for Saffron to wave a hand contemptuously in her direction, sending Mara hurtling backward into another building wall.

Saffron turned back to Sera. “Hi. You’re quite the interesting one, aren’t you? I haven’t seen your attunement before.”

Sera glared back at him. “Keras Selyr—”

“Isn’t here.”

Saffron punched straight through Sera’s chest.

Patrick screamed, swinging Bright Reflection. A room-width blade of light rippled across the room, shredding everything in its path—

Saffron simply discarded Sera and vanished, reappearing next to Patrick.

I looked to Patrick stumbling backward as he swung Bright Reflection defensively — and to Sera’s bleeding body — and made a choice.

Transcendent Haste.

I felt an immediate spike of pain in my mind as I pushed transcendence mana into the spell. I couldn’t maintain it for long — the side effects of overusing transcendence mana were…

Well, they were everything I’d ever feared in terms of destroying my mind.

Three transcendence spells was still my theoretical limit for safe use. I’d already used two.

I moved faster than I’d ever moved to reach Sera’s side. She was absolutely covered in blood. Her eyes were open, blinking rapidly, but without seeing.

Nonono.

I knelt at her side, then put my hand straight on top of the wound.

Transcendent Regeneration.

My vision went black for just an instant.

Then I cast it again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

No, no, no.

Transcendent Regeneration.

I poured every sliver of mana I could find in my body into it, then fumbled with numb fingers through my bag for…

Everything. Anything and everything I could drain.

}You will kill yourself if you continue this.{

Absently, I processed that something was talking to me, but it wasn’t important. People were fighting, too. I could see flashes of light, hear the sounds of spells cracking the air—

“Corin.”

Transcendent Regeneration.

“Corin!”

Transcendent Regeneration.

“Corin, stop!”

“I…I…”

Someone grabbed me. I shook violently, looking up to see Mara. She had a long cut across her face from her right ear across her cheek.

“Sorry. Know you don’t like bein’ touched, but you need to stop, Corin. I’ll take over.”

I frowned. “You’ll…take over.” What was I doing?

“Can you still fight?” Mara asked me.

I blinked. Fight. Yes, I could fight. I wasn’t hurt. Someone—

I glanced up.

Derek was dancing backward across the warehouse, blocking blades of force. Someone…the enemy…was pursuing him at a casual pace, occasionally flicking a hand backward to effortlessly deflect a panicked blast of lightning from Patrick.

Tyrant’s…child…enemy…

My jaw tightened.

“Yes.” I stood up. “I can fight.”

I wobbled on my feet. My arm felt numb, heavy. Why was that?

When did my sword get so heavy?

I frowned at that, but I couldn’t let it bother me. I had to beat…Saffron, was it?

There he was.

I charged at his back.

Saffron must not have noticed me at first. This was, perhaps, a lingering effect of Derek’s anti-perception spell. I’d spoken in front of Saffron, but perhaps that hadn’t been enough to fully draw his attention and break the spell entirely.

Or…maybe I simply hadn’t been worth Saffron’s notice.

So, I managed to get within a few feet of him before he reacted…simply turning and flicking a finger in my direction.

I don’t know what happened next. I simply hit the ground.

Then, I was coughing.

There was blood on my hands. Why was that?

Pain.

}You cannot fight like this.{

Who…? Oh, Thorn. Hello.

}You were a fool to overextend yourself like that. Casting a spell like that over and over, far beyond the point when…{

I blinked.

What was he talking about?

I pushed myself to my feet. I was fighting someone. I had to fight…Saffron. Right. I was fighting Saffron.

I wouldn’t let him hurt my friends. Not—

Pain shot through my mind. I trembled, turning—

}Don’t look that way.{

I stopped, turning back toward where Derek had managed to disperse the floating blades with some kind of technique. He’d managed several savage blows on Saffron’s arms, drawing blood—

So much blood, so much blood—

But…Saffron was just laughing. Why was he laughing?

Was something funny?

I didn’t get the joke.

I just…pushed forward, standing again without realizing it, then I was swinging my sword.

Saffron dodged the ice that emerged from my swing, then a blast of light from across the room tore a sizzling hole through Saffron’s shoulder.

Oh, Patrick was there. Hi, Patrick.

}Withdraw, you fool. You cannot hope to defeat one of my children. He toys with you, even now.{

Saffron might have turned toward Patrick, but Derek was on top of him a moment later, swinging his shiny sword that had a name I should have known, but at that moment, didn’t.

Saffron grabbed the sword with both hands, then hissed as the blade burned his fingers and let go, taking a step back. With a wave of his hand, Saffron sent dozens of chunks of glittering black stone hurtling through the air. Derek avoided most of them, but a couple of the smaller shards clipped him, lacerating his arms and sending him back a few steps.

I lunged at Saffron from behind, only for him to dodge the attack with contemptuous ease. I saw lightning arcing between Saffron’s fingertips — then my vision went white.

For several moments, I was aware without being fully awake. I groaned, hearing someone shout something that I couldn’t recognize, then there were hands on my shoulders.

I shook.

“It’s okay, Corin. You’re okay. You need to wake up.”

I blinked upward. It was…Mara? Wasn’t she supposed to be somewhere else?”

“You need to escape, Corin. You need to—”

Something hurled Mara out of my vision. I heard her crash into something in the distance. I blinked, then turned to see Saffron hovering above me, not far from reach.

Saffron. I felt a moment of brief clarity.

He’s the one who—

My hand tightened around the grip of Selys-Lyann still in my hands.

I growled and lurched back to my feet.

Saffron let me stand. He let me swing.

He batted my sword out of the way without the slightest hint of effort.

“Such a shame to see such a grand weapon fall into such ill-suited hands,” he tsked.

Another swing. Another miss.

“Fast. Very fast, in fact. I’ve rarely seen humans with your raw speed.” Saffron gave me a disapproving look. “But you’ve burned yourself out, haven’t you? A shame, really.”

I still had Transcendent Haste active, of course. I’d never turned it off — and it was ripping me apart more and more with every passing moment.

I swung and swung…and swung again. I met only air. Distantly, I was aware of someone yelling, but I couldn’t tell who it was. I could barely tell who I was, or…

Maybe that was the problem, wasn’t it?

Maybe I wasn’t the right person for the job.

Didn’t someone offer to take over for me earlier? Maybe…maybe I just needed a little break.

Hey, I thought, you’ll take over for a bit, won’t you?

}I will not flee like a coward — and certainly not from him.{

I frowned.

Why would we run? You can beat him, can’t you?

I heard something in my mind that sounded like…melodious laughter.

I didn’t get that joke, either, but I was glad that someone was happy.

}I suppose someone has to teach that stubborn child a lesson. Are you ready?{

Yes, please.

Then I felt my mind sharpen — even if it was no longer my own.

***

Thorn straightened his back, then stretched his arms. “Well,” he said, “this isn’t quite the family reunion I was expecting, but I suppose it’s a beginning. Hello, dear child.”

Silence.

Then Saffron’s lips slowly spread apart. “Oh. Oh. Now this is unexpected.”

The false Blackstone took that moment to make an opportunistic strike, which was nothing unexpected to Thorn. It was an excellent move, worthy in precision and speed, elegantly angled to pierce directly through Saffron’s back.

It was almost successful. That wouldn’t have been a satisfying end, however, and so, his shadow caught in place, arresting his movement for just a moment.

Saffron’s eyebrow went up, then he turned to face the false Blackstone. “You. Stay.”

Derek froze in place for just a moment…then lunged again, causing Saffron’s eyes to narrow in frustration.

“Again, you resist.” Saffron hissed as his hand flashed to the side, narrowly deflecting the radiance-bonded blade, then took a glancing cut across the face from the phoenix-bound one. Saffron hissed as he hurled a blast of flame, which the false Blackstone countered with a simple sweep of the burning brand in his off-hand. “You’ve begun to irritate me.”

Thorn felt a moment of anguish at the child’s obvious lack of preparation for such a basic failure with compulsion magic, barely stopping himself from interceding again. Instead, he stepped back for a moment, assessing his own condition.

Spirit Art: Rapid Recovery.

Spirit essence flowed through Thorn’s borrowed form, rapidly repairing the damage to Star Veins that had already begun to tear from recent overuse. The Dianis Point in his forehead began to mend itself, but not quickly enough to restore full functionality.

Unfortunate. I will need to rely on the limited abilities of the hand and the feeble remains of his spirit. This will need to be brief.

Spirit Art: Body of the Transient Immortal.

New strength and speed flooded through his limbs, but it was only a fraction of what he needed to match his opponent. He exhaled a breath as Saffron narrowly dodged the false Blackstone’s lunge.

“I’m busy with something more interesting than you,” Saffron growled. “Stay out of this.”

Saffron clapped his hands together and the air around the false Blackstone shimmered for an instant before he froze in mid-swing.

Ah. A stolen copy of the god beast’s frost, combined with a standard stasis spell. Wasteful to apply it to such a broad area, but it’s pleasing to see that the child has at least expanded his repertoire of dominion options.

Now…how much can be wrested from this mark?

Thorn lifted his left hand, inspecting it, frowning, and then lowering it. “Now, child. With that interruption handled, we should discuss matters. You must have been aware of my presence here.”

Saffron turned back to Thorn, looking annoyed. “I sensed something, of course. A familiarity — you heard me say that, yes?”

Thorn’s head bobbed up and down. “You must work on the precision of your senses, child. You should have been able to identify any fraction of me from a great distance. But you always were the runt of the litter, weren’t you?”

Saffron’s expression darkened. “You have no right to speak to me like that.”

“Do I not? Is not even the smallest fragment of your father worthier than you?”

Saffron’s eyes narrowed and his fists tightened. “You presume much, spirit. If we are counting fractions of my father, one would have to bow before every shadow and blade of grass.”

“Oh, I am aware, child. Are you as worthy as they?”

“Careful, spirit.” Saffron took a step forward, so close that he was nearly eye-to-eye with Thorn. “I was considering allowing you to keep that body and serve me. The parallels would amuse me. But continue to offend me and—”

Thorn’s forehead smashed into Saffron’s nose, releasing a burst of transference mana. Saffron staggered backward, nose bleeding. Thorn’s blade whipped up, drawing a thin line along Saffron’s arm.

“One point to me.”

Ice spread across the wound in the shape of a vine.

Saffron’s hand reached down and crushed it. In an instant, the icy vine withered and died, then vanished into nothingness. “You’re a fool. Essence, no matter how creatively structured, is still nothing more than food for me.”

Thorn nodded in acknowledgement. “Of course.” Thorn stepped backward, then lifted his sword to shoulder-level and began to circle. “Except, of course, when it is a type you cannot abide.”

“You have nothing of the sort.” Saffron stepped back, seeming just slightly wary. “These children have already tried every tool at their disposal. You’ve made an empty boast, little more. You cannot hope to fight me with that tattered shell.”

“Please,” Thorn’s lips spread wide, “test me.”

Saffron lunged, blade-like force forming around his fingertips.

Spirit Art: Dance of the Wicked Vine.

Thorn side-stepped the lunge, as if it was the most predictable move in the world, then tapped the floor with a toe.

Glowing white vines shot up from the floor. Saffron’s eyes widened a fraction as he jumped backward to avoid them — right into the path of more glowing vines, which burst from one of the building’s support pillars.

Saffron spun, swinging his force-cutting fingertips to sever the vines.

In that moment of weakness, Thorn tapped his sword on Saffron’s shoulder.

“Second point.”

Saffron spun with a growl. “This is not your game.”

“Oh?” Thorn tilted his head to the side. “Whose is it, then? Certainly not yours.”

Saffron roared, surging with such sudden ferocity that Thorn found himself rapidly retreating. Two rapid thrusts attempted to stay Saffron’s path, but he simply ignored the bloody rents they left on his skin, just as he ignored so many other wounds.

…But not all of them. The hole burned in his shoulder from a burst of solid light was still bleeding freely without regenerating.

[There,] Corin Cadence’s voice guided, [a weakness.]

Do you think I have not seen it? That I have not been paying atten—

Saffron’s fist slammed into Thorn’s chest hard enough to carry him half-way across the room. If it were not for the mana-hardened scale armor he wore and the softening of the blow from layers of shields and shrouds, the fist would have torn straight through him, the way that it had so easily ripped through his cursed mirror.

Thorn let out no sound as he recovered his stance. He judged that the impact had likely broken at least two of his ribs, but fortunately, he was not the one who needed to bear that pain. No, he’d taken control of the body, but not every burden.

It was Corin Cadence’s mind that was screaming in agony, regardless of who currently commanded his form.

That deferral of consequences served Thorn well in the moments that followed. Saffron closed in again for another swing, this one at the throat — Thorn shifted to the side, allowing Saffron’s blade-coated fingers to pass right next to his skin, then stomped his foot straight on top of Saffron’s.

Lesson one of fighting a vae’kes was, of course, to never allow the vae’kes to touch you. There were, however, a scarce few situations under which it was permissible for you to touch them.

Spirit mana flared through Thorn’s body and formed a gleaming spike that jammed straight through the top of Saffron’s foot, then twisted, pinning it into the ground.

As Saffron swung another fist, Thorn stepped backward just in time for it to pass through the air in front of him—

But the air was enough.

The shockwave of the swing hurled him backward, sending him tumbling to the floor. He was up again in a moment, but he’d miscalculated.

The power differential between them was even greater than he’d anticipated — perhaps more than even exceptionally greater skill and familiarity with Saffron’s fighting style could account for.

Uncertainty.

Thorn’s heart soared in joy. This duel would be the first of many to help reawaken him. And then, once he had gathered his strength—

Saffron ripped his foot free from the floor with a pained shudder, then turned his head to Thorn. “You’ve an interesting facsimile of his old fighting style, I’ll give you that.”

“I’m surprised you can remember it. It’s been quite some time, has it not? And yet…you’ve barely grown, haven’t you?”

Saffron flickered and vanished.

Thorn spun to the right—

Which was the wrong decision.

“More than you realize, spirit.”

Saffron’s hand pressed against Thorn’s back.

“Fragment of Father, I banish you.”

And Thorn’s mind cracked.

***

I hit the ground hard. I probably would have died in the next moment if Derek Hartigan hadn’t jumped straight in Saffron’s path, swinging his sword.

I heard a swish above me, rather than the sound of an impact.

“That,” Derek complained, “was an incredibly frustrating spell.”

“I’m surprised you broke out of it as quickly as you did.” Saffron sounded almost impressed. “But I’m afraid I’m about out of patience for this little encounter.”

“Oh, I’ll remove all your worries right now. Along with your head.”

Another swing above me, again without impact.

I rolled to the side, trying to get out of the way. My head was burning badly, but I felt more coherent than I had before Thorn had taken over. I suspected it had something to do with the spirit-based body reinforcement spell he’d cast accelerating my recovery.

…It hadn’t done anything for my mana, though.

Thorn? Can you hear me?

There was no response.

I could remember what had happened — some kind of banishment spell — but I had no idea what a banishment spell would do to a spirit inside an item. Was Thorn…elsewhere, now? Dead? Just inactive?

That was a problem for the future, if I lived long enough to have a future.

As I rolled face-upward and saw the blur of movements between Derek and Saffron, I realized that I was more aware, but not necessarily any more capable of doing anything.

…Not directly, at least.

My right arm felt strangely numb, and my fingers were stained with blood — don’t think don’t think don’t think — but I tried to reach into my bag to find something…anything…I could use to help.

I tried sending a message for help. Nothing happened, of course. Saffron had likely blocked it in the same way he’d blocked teleportation.

I tried to syphon mana out of one of my batteries, only to find it already empty.

Don’t remember. Don’t remember. Don’t—

Derek hurled himself to the ground just before the room was consumed in fire.

I didn’t have time to defend myself. I was getting faster by the day, but apparently not “react to the room you’re standing in detonating” fast.

My vision went red, then I was hurled backward, slamming hard into a wall just before it was incinerated. I felt a brief surge of pain at the impact, then another as I tumbled to the ground.

I winced at the impact, choking at the sudden onrush of smoke that followed…then pushed myself to my knees and realized I wasn’t nearly as badly hurt as I should have been.

Even with my shrouds and shield sigils, that blast was of a level of intensity that I should have been at least singed, but…

My body was covered in ice instead.

Apparently, Selys-Lyann was still defending me, even without Thorn’s consciousness present.

I didn’t have time to thank the sword. While I pushed myself to my knees, I could hear coughing around me in the blazing remains of the building and only Saffron was still on his feet.

…But Mara was struggling back to her own. Just barely.

The remains of Mara’s shroud and sigils had protected her from the blast, but she must have already been badly drained from parts of the battle I hadn’t even seen. Her skin was only reddened in some places, presumably those where she’d prioritized hardening her shroud. In other places, she was burned and blistered so badly that I didn’t understand how she was still standing.

“You’re going to pay for what you did to—”

Saffron was right in front of her in the next moment. “Really? You think you’re going to fight a vae’kes unarmed?”

Mara stomped the ground, her aura flaring brighter as she formed a blade around her right fist and swung. “Diamond Strike of—”

Saffron side-stepped and grabbed her hand mid-swing. “No, I don’t think so.”

Amidst the smoke and flame, I couldn’t see clearly what happened next — I could only hear Mara’s gut-wrenching scream. It lasted only a moment before Saffron simply tapped her on the forehead with his other hand, causing Mara to collapse into a limp heap, curling around the remains of what had once been her right hand.

I trembled at the sight.

Marissa Callahan, likely the strongest physical fighter of our class, had dropped without landing a single attack on her opponent.

At that point, I could have stood up. If I’d been a brave, heroic type like Mara, perhaps I would have rushed to my feet to protect my friends.

Instead, I froze in place, as cold as the armor that protected me.

…But only for a moment.

I remembered the first time I’d seen Saffron tearing through a group of people — and watching helplessly, paralyzed, and knowing that my survival was dependent on his perception of my insignificance.

I’d been terrified of him, then.

In truth? The fear hadn’t changed — but other things had.

I’d grown in power. I’d grown in knowledge. And, perhaps more importantly, I’d come prepared.

I touched a symbol on my Belt of Swords, withdrew a weapon, and with a flick of mana, I changed a rune.

Then, as I rose, I hurled the knife straight at Saffron.

He caught it with contemptuous ease. “Really? Hurling magical items at me? Don’t you know what I—”

Sorry, Sir Shinyshiv.

I’d considered a number of ways to make enchanted explosives. There were lots of methods for it, but for me, the simplest was one I’d already used against Jin, simply perfected with my new skills.

So, when Cecily had noticed that Sir Shinyshiv’s mana was a little too close to the material’s capacity for comfort…well, I might have decided to push that even further when I made my tweaks. Just enough that taking the capacity rune off would cause it to overcharge in…oh, about a second or two.

I’d considered making the changes occur on impact, but I’d never gotten that quite right. Instead, I’d erased the capacity rune manually and hoped for the best when I’d thrown the knife.

And as training with Keras and Patrick had proven, opponents had a habit of automatically catching things I threw at them.

When the knife exploded into shrapnel, it discharged several Sunstone-level batteries worth of mana right at the point of detonation — meaning Saffron’s right hand.

Or, at least, what used to be a right hand.

Saffron screamed.

That actually surprised me — when we’d last fought, he’d barely shown any response to injuries.

Did I hit him that hard? I knew he might be weak against light mana, but…

As he fell backward, grasping at his ruined fingers, Derek shot upward from the floor and jabbed Tavare’s blade straight through Saffron’s chest.

“That…was…a…good…” Saffron coughed, grabbing Tavare’s blade in his remaining hand, “…effort.”

Something clicked in my mind.

“Simulacrum!” I yelled.

Derek’s eyes widened, then suddenly flashed white. He tried to pull back on Tavare’s blade, but Saffron — or rather, the simulacrum of Saffron — held it tight. Derek swore, twisting just before something I couldn’t see hit him from behind, clipping the back of his head.

He released his grip on Tavare’s blade and fell bleeding to the burning floor, then rolled to avoid something that shattered the ground where he’d initially landed.

I pushed more mana into a stronger Detect Aura spell, but I still couldn’t see anything. Coughing, I blindly hurled a blast of transference mana just above where something had impacted the ground, but I didn’t connect with anything.

It was easier to find a target a few moments later. Unfortunately, that was because an invisible Saffron was lifting Derek from the ground by his neck.

Derek choked, kicking the invisible figure in the chest, but it had no obvious effect.

“You have some very nice toys,” came Saffron’s voice.

Derek tried to swing Delsys at close-range, only for Saffron to catch the blade easily with his own free hand.

I hurled another transference blast straight at that spot. It impacted without the slightest effect.

“N—no,” Derek managed to croak out.

Saffron’s fingers shimmered black and the blistering flames around Delsys’ sword vanished. “Not a bad meal.” His grip tightened and the now-inert blade crumpled like paper.

“N…no,” Derek choked. “Del—”

Derek hurtled backward with such force that he burst through the opposite wall of the warehouse. I had no idea how badly the impact had hurt him, but I understood that what had happened a moment earlier was much worse.

That sword had contained Delsys himself. Not a copy, not a simulacrum. And if Saffron had stolen the power within it—

Delsys was gone.

I pushed myself to my feet. There was no point in staying on the floor now, no point in cowering. Saffron knew where I was — and, from what I could tell, I was the only one still up and fighting.

I shivered. My frozen armor shivered with me.

I pulled Selys-Lyann into a guard position, then swung wide and pushed transference into the blade. Not to make a crescent like usual, though. Instead, I pushed in a broader pattern, sending out a broad layer of frost across the entire room. Not enough to cause harm, nor even enough to staunch the flames that were still burning everywhere.

Just enough to reveal an invisible opponent.

I saw his silhouette in frost for just an instant before he was in front of me.

I couldn’t quite see the outline of his smile, but somehow, I felt it.

“Corin Cadence.” Saffron tsked. “You know, the first time we met, I was planning to keep you alive as a battery. But now?”

He kicked the remains of one of the shattered boxes — and I got a good look at what was inside for the first time.

…A severed arm, preserved inside some kind of huge crystalline tube.

“I have a simpler solution.”

He flicked a finger upward.

A sudden burst of force slammed into me, hurling me toward a fallen support beam. I swung my sword mid-flight, sending a crescent of ice at him, but he simply battered it aside with a palm.

I smashed into the pillar a moment later, the force driving the wind out of my lungs, and I slumped to the floor.

Saffron was standing above me a moment later.

“Ordinarily, I would savor this sort of thing, but you seem like the insightful sort, so I’m just going to skip the monologue and kill you.”

He brought his hand up, fingers in a blade-like pattern, and—

“Body of Dawn.”

The entire room brightened. Saffron’s eyes widened as he turned, then stumbled backward, dodging and weaving in a blur as a cascade of slashes came at him from an opponent with glimmering eyes set in silent purpose.

Saffron’s hand flew up to deflect a swing of the blade—

Not this time.

I grabbed Saffron’s ankle, blearily recalling the movement of essence through my body as Thorn had controlled it, and channeled a burst of my remaining spirit mana straight into Saffron’s body.

Saffron barely winced—

But a momentary distraction was all Patrick needed.

Bright Reflection’s glistening blade burst through the center of Saffron’s chest.

“You…where did you…” Saffron gazed at the sword embedded in his chest in shock. “…Come from…?”

I understood his confusion — I’d forgotten about Patrick, too.

He hadn’t been invisible or inaudible. He had, however, still been under the effects of Derek’s Mesmer-esque spell that had caused people to ignore his presence. He must have been outside of Saffron’s attention for so long that the spell had managed to reassert itself.

Maybe Patrick had been briefly knocked unconscious. Maybe he’d simply been too badly injured to move.

Or maybe he’d just wisely realized that he was out of his league…and waited until the very last moment to strike a perfect, fatal blow.

Fatal to any ordinary person, at least.

Saffron looked down at the sword sticking through his chest and frowned. “That…hurt me.”

I didn’t hesitate. I stabbed upward, my own sword piercing through Saffron from behind.

“Huh.”

Saffron looked perplexed for just a moment…then slumped forward toward Patrick, unmoving.

Patrick scampered backward instinctively, knowing that even the slightest deliberate touch from a Child of the Tyrant could be a death sentence…

But when Saffron hit the ground, he didn’t move.

For several moments, neither did I.

Then, still terrified, I rose and put a boot on his fallen form and pushed, dislodging Selys-Lyann from his body.

Patrick stood over the body, trembling.

I looked upward and understood that it wasn’t just the battle that was affecting him—

I found myself shivering in the same instinctive fear at the presence that had appeared behind him.

“Hello, boys.”

A blonde-haired woman in the blackened leather armor favored by thieves of the ancient past stood just behind Patrick, casually laying a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve done a bad thing, haven’t you?”

CHAPTER XXXXI – THE HAND ON THE BOARD

I took an instinctive step back, even knowing it was useless. No amount of distance would make any meaningful impact on my chances of surviving the moments that followed.

The strange woman hadn’t given her name, but she hadn’t needed to. She had a name I’d known since my youngest years, filling stories meant to teach children to behave. Tarren tales and nursery rhymes.

I could recognize her, too. I’d seen her resemblance in her descendants. Nora Haven had looked particularly similar, but I could see some similarity to Anette as well. Perhaps more strangely, she had an obvious resemblance to Elora Theas, perhaps as a result of marriages between their powerful families in ancient history.

…Or perhaps more recently. After all, there were plenty of legends of demigods leaving children scattered in their wake throughout history. And there were few demigods with more tales than Aayara Haven, the World Thief.

Several thoughts rushed through my mind upon recognizing her, but they mostly amounted to realizing that we’d just done exactly what Keras had warned us against — we’d either mortally injured or killed one of the Children of the Tyrant. He’d told us there would be consequences for such an action, but…I hadn’t imagined the response would be so immediate.

Had she been watching the entire time? Was there some kind of spell in place that allowed her to sense her little brother’s life fading away?

None of that mattered — only my choices in the next few moments did.

Aayara Haven’s eyes fixed on me, seeming to search for something. Then she smiled. “Which one of you naughty children is responsible for all this?”

My mouth opened and closed without sound.

Patrick took a breath, then closed his eyes. “It…please, don’t hurt anyone else. I’ll…just punish me, I’ll—”

Aayara’s hand went up. Visions of fingers tearing straight through a body screamed through my mind.

Nonono—

I needed to act, I needed to say something, I needed to—

Her hand came down in a blur, impossible to follow…

And scratched the hair on the top of Patrick’s head. “What a good little retainer you are, trying to die like that. It’s precious. But you didn’t answer my question.”

Her hand glowed black for an instant. Patrick dropped like a puppet with severed strings.

I took a step forward without thinking about it, Selys-Lyann raised. “What have you done?”

“Oh, relax, pet. Just giving us some privacy to chat, since this one wasn’t going to be useful. The self-sacrificing types never give good answers. But you? I think you’ll answer me, won’t you?”

Her question was simple enough. Who was responsible?

Patrick had taken that question one way and tried to throw himself on his sword, but…

I simply lowered my own to point it directly at Saffron. “If you’re looking for who is responsible for all this…well, he’s lying at my feet. Unless you’re looking for who was manipulating him, in which case, you’d know better than I would, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, that’s a wonderful answer.” She clapped her hands together, then plopped down to sit…directly on top of Patrick’s fallen body. “Throwing the blame directly at whoever was controlling Saffron would help to mitigate any responsibility on your part, wouldn’t it? ‘I didn’t kill him, I was just the weapon used by a manipulating third-party’. Hilarious. I haven’t heard that kind of defense in a while. Sadly,” she put a hand over her heart, “someone is going to have to die today, and some vague villain isn’t quite a good enough culprit. Blood for blood lost, you understand?”

“I…understand, but…” My hand trembled on the hilt. “Please, if you have any mercy—”

Aayara blinked. “Mercy? There can be no mercy in a deadly transaction like this. Only an evening of the score.”

A voice called out from behind us suddenly. “Stop. It’s already been done.”

Aayara’s lips twisted upward as she heard the voice, but she didn’t turn. Her gaze stayed entirely focused on me. “Oh dear, the Blackstone Bandit has arrived! Such a fun little twist. Please, come, sit. Assuming you’re still able.”

Derek Hartigan dragged himself into the remains of the warehouse through the same hole in the wall he’d been launched through. He moved slowly, favoring his right leg. Blood trickled down the right side of his face from an open wound above his eye.

Delsys’ broken blade in his hand, gripped deathly tight.

I was perfectly still as Derek passed right behind Aayara, pausing for an instant, his arm shifting just slightly upward—

Then he dropped the lifeless hilt as he slowly lowered himself to take a seat on the ground.

“I thought your pawns might have had a hand in the works of Haven Securities,” he began. “And that they were funding the Sons of Valia. But I didn’t expect your direct involvement.”

“Oh, let’s not talk about old games, dear. This one is still fresh. Now, what were you saying before, little Blackstone?”

“If it’s a life for a life you want…” Derek closed his eyes. “The scales are already more than tipped in your favor.” He waved at the destroyed hilt, then slipped off a pair of broken bracelets and set them down next to Delsys’ fractured form.

“Hm. Lives lost in battle, certainly, but I’ve never found the deaths of monsters to be a compelling narrative. The family won’t accept it.”

“They…” Derek exhaled, closing his eyes. Slowly, he lifted his arm. “Weren’t the only ones.”

I couldn’t follow his gesture. I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t lift my head, nor my eyes. I wouldn’t look. I couldn’t look.

“Ah.” Aayara wiped her hands on her legs, then pushed herself to her feet.  With a hop and a skip, she crossed the room, kicking a downed pillar out of her path with nothing more than a casual shifting of her foot. “Not quite done yet, though, is she? Close enough, I might say — except I never say that. Shall we close the deal here?”

Not quite—

I shot to my feet, still trembling. “What do you mean, not quite?”

Aayara turned to me. “I should think the meaning is quite clear, child. Wouldn’t take more than a poke, then I’ll take the bodies and we can all get back to more pleasant things.”

“No.” I dragged my sword behind me. “You…you can’t have her.”

Aayara gave me a dry look. “I have a museum full of people who used to say things like that.”

That sort of statement should have terrified me. It did terrify me. But if she wasn’t gone, if she wasn’t completely—

If my sister wasn’t dead, I absolutely was not going to let anyone take her. Not Saffron, not Aayara, not even the Tyrant in Gold himself.

But this wasn’t a fight I could possibly win. There was no hope against someone like her, not in a direct confrontation. Not even if we’d been fresh.

So, I played a desperate piece that had failed once before. “We are under Wrynn Jaden’s protection.”

Aayara stared coolly at me. “…What was that?”

“We are under Wrynn Jaden’s protection — and Saffron knew that.”

Haunting eyes narrowed, shifted to Saffron’s fallen form, then right back to me.

Her hands moved to her hips, sliding dangerously close to the hilt of a rapier and dagger.

Then she pulled her head back and laughed.

“Well…why didn’t you just say so, silly boy?” She clapped her hands together. Thunder crashed across the room, sending me stumbling and falling back to the ground. “Little Saff knows he’s not supposed to play with Wrynn’s things! Well, knew, I suppose. I don’t think what’s left of him knows very much, now, do you?”

She walked over to Saffron’s body and kicked it once, flipping the body over. “Not pretending, are you? I wouldn’t like that.”

The body didn’t reply.

“Hmpf.” She reached down, grabbed Saffron by the wrist, then wrenched his limp body upward with a snap of bone. His body flopped against her, then she sighed. “I suppose I’ll send someone to clean this up. You behave yourselves better from now on, okay?”

She lifted a hand, clearly preparing to leave—

And, against every rational instinct, I stood again to stop her.

“Wait. Please.”

“Oh, sure! Did you still want me to kill you or something? Life can be pretty stressful.”

“I want to make a trade.”

“A trade? A trade! Wonderful. I do love trades.” She discarded Saffron’s body with a thump. “What were you thinking?”

Derek pushed himself back a step on the ground to avoid the falling body and gave me a “what the resh are you doing” look.

“I…” I pointed at the body that I’d been refusing to think about. “If she can still be saved…please. Save her.”

Aayara turned and looked at her, then back to me. “You sure you want to do this, kid? The price for that sort of thing…well, it’s not likely the sort of thing you’re going to want to pay.”

“I have a piece of your father.” I lifted Selys-Lyann.

Aayara’s eyebrow went up. “Do you, now?”

The sword was in her hands a moment later. I don’t know how it got there. “Hmpf. Tiny bit, maybe. And it’s a piece of the True Blade — that’d have some sentimental value to dear ol’ Dad. Not a bad bargaining chip, as far as these things go.”

She flipped the sword over…then hurled it at me.

Or rather, at the ground right next to me. The sword sank into the ground straight down to the hilt.

“But I don’t want him remembering that sort of thing, do I? Oh, no. That wouldn’t do at all.” She tsked, shaking her head. “Cute idea, but I’m going to need something a little better.”

“…What about the other sword?” I hesitated to offer Bright Reflection, given that it wasn’t mine, but…Patrick would understand. A life was more important. “It’s a copy of—”

“Oh, I know exactly what that little toy is. Believe me, there are layers of irony to finding Saffron impaled on a reproduction of that particular blade. The last time I saw a scene like this…” Aayara sounded wistful, shaking her head. “The first apprentice — now there was a talent. Shame what my dear Jack had to do to her. But I have plenty of mementos of that day — we all do. No, dear. You’ll need to offer me something with more substance than a paladin’s plaything.”

Derek sucked in a breath. “Six months.”

Aayara’s head twisted toward him, her eyes suddenly glittering. “What’s that, my dear pet?”

“Service. I’ll work for you, do your bidding, as long as it doesn’t involve killing the—”

“Six years.” Her tone was neutral.

Derek drew in a deep breath, hesitating for a moment.

I looked at him, watched his eyes turn to the bodies, then—

“I…I accept your…”

“Wonderful!” Aayara clapped, but lightly this time. “I would have settled for one, by the way, but it’s so good to know that you’re so easily breakable! This is going to be a delightful time for us both.”

Derek shivered. “I…wait. How about three—“”

Aayara snapped her fingers. Derek vanished in a burst of shadows.

Then Aayara turned to me. “Now, a deal is a deal.” She reached into a bag at her side, frowned, then fished something out of it. A simple glass vial. “She won’t be the same, you know.”

Then Aayara tossed the vial to me—

Or, rather, in front of me.

“Oops!”

Transcendent Haste. Accelerated Computation.

Three steps forward, hand up eighty-four degrees, close—

I grabbed the vial out of the air.

Slowly, I opened my hand, shivering.

It was completely empty.

“Dispose of that trash for me, would you?”

I turned to find Aayara kneeling at my sister’s side.

She flicked a finger into Sera’s still-gaping chest wound, then turned and smiled at me. “I’ll see you later, Corin Cadence, Wielder of Therin’s Thorn.”

Aayara winked and vanished—

Sera coughed.

CHAPTER XXXXII – THE COST OF A LIFE

I knelt at Sera’s side, crying and holding her hand as I watched her chest cavity rebuild itself.

She didn’t wake up. Her hand squeezed and her body twitched spasmodically, but she didn’t wake up.

I still wasn’t thinking anything close to clearly, but as minutes passed, I knew I had to do something more. Patrick and Mara were still down, Derek was…gone…and Sera…Aayara had done something, but I didn’t know what, or if it would be enough.

I pushed myself to my feet, dragged myself out of the ruins, and called for help.

It didn’t take long for Elora Theas to arrive at the ruins, then help me carry the others out of the anti-teleportation field. From there, she took us to Sheridan.

We laid their bodies down on cots that had clearly been set aside for the wounded. Deni cast a series of diagnostic spells on each of them. When they got to Sera, Deni winced. “I…don’t know if…”

“Just do what you can.” I paused, then, in a moment of clarity, I added, “Aayara Haven gave me this. It might be nothing, but…”

I handed Sheridan the seemingly empty vial. The label was in a foreign language of some kind, but I couldn’t recognize it.

Sheridan turned it over in their hands. “I’ll see if I can figure it out after I’ve done what I can to stabilize these three. For now…you need to rest, Corin. I’ll call someone in to treat your own wounds.”

Rest. That…sounded like a good idea.

I took a seat on one of the beds.

I don’t remember what happened after that.

***

I woke up to find Patrick sitting by my side. I tried to sit up, but he put a hand over my chest. “Don’t move. You still have broken ribs.”

I groaned, pain flooding through me along with awareness. “…I…right.” With awareness came memory. Terrible memory. “Sera. Sera…is she…”

“Alive. Or…something like it, at least. I don’t fully understand.” Patrick lowered his head and trembled. “It’s…she’s cold to the touch. And…she has ice forming on her skin. Sheridan didn’t seem to understand it fully, either. Might have to do with Seiryu — Sheridan thinks the God Serpent might done something to preserve Sera to keep her from dying when she was bleeding out, but…it may not have worked quite right. They’re doing some research on that vial you were given, but…” Patrick shook his head. “It’s bad, Corin. It’s real bad. She might not wake back up for a while. She might not wake up at all.”

I tried to sit up and failed, my mind swimming. “Easy, there. You went through a great deal yourself. You…you kept trying to heal Sera when she—”

I remembered. As much as I hated to, I remembered the image of the hole in her chest, the blood everywhere, so much blood—

I shivered.

“Sorry, sorry. Don’t think about that. You just…you need to rest, okay?”

I shook my head. “I can’t, not if Sera’s condition is still in question. I need to figure something out, need to fix it.”

“Sheridan is handling that, Corin. And you…you shouldn’t be casting any more spells for a while. I don’t know if I fully understand what happened, but Sheridan mentioned that your Star Veins and spirit are both…they’re not in great shape. We…we weren’t really sure you’d be waking up, either. If you hadn’t had some kind of spirit magic working to repair the damage, it would have been much worse. Might have lost your Enchanter attunement, and even if you didn’t…”

“I might have permanent cognitive damage.” I shuddered. I’d been afraid for so long of causing exactly that by overdoing it with my mental mana, but…when I’d seen Sera dying…there wasn’t time for hesitation. No room for a choice, for deliberation, for fear. “I think I need to run through some cognition tests. Do we have any handy?”

Patrick gave me a sad smile. “I don’t think that’s likely.”

“…Water, then?”

“That I can do.”

Patrick got me a glass of water. I barely managed to drink it without retching the fluid back up. Gradually, I managed to force it down, followed by some plain porridge a bit later. Patrick kept me company for the most part, between checking on Sera and…

“Mara?” I asked. “Is she with Sera?”

Patrick shook his head. “No, she’s… There’s something you need to know. She’s alive, but…” He grimaced. “Sheridan did everything they could, but Mara’s right hand…it was so badly crushed…”

My mind flashed to the image of Mara screaming as Saffron grabbed her outstretched fist and—

Oh, no.

I barely kept myself from vomiting as the memory burned through me.

“It’s…she’s alive, at least,” Patrick said, “she’s recovering. There’s always hope.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing at all.

It was a full day before I was permitted to leave my recovery bed for anything other than necessities. Sheridan checked in on me repeatedly, running a variety of medical tests.

“You’re mending, at least,” they told me, “and you should be able to walk unassisted soon. For now, an old-fashioned cane should suffice.”

“…I have a couple in my bag.” I hesitated before asking the question that had been causing me to quietly panic for days, but I needed to ask it. “My mind…is it…broken?”

I half-expected a teasing response, but Sheridan must have noted the heartbreak in my eyes. “No. Never think of yourself that way, no matter what happens. Even if you suffer cognitive damage, you’re not broken. That said, I know what you’re asking — and initial tests aren’t showing any permanent damage. I see extreme signs of strain, but no scarring — yet. Under no circumstances should you use transcendence mana until I’ve cleared you, which I estimate to be six months. I would also strongly advise against using your Enchanter attunement or any form of mental mana, but those risk factors are….lower, at least.”

As terrible as those restrictions were, I cried myself to sleep in relief as soon as I was alone again.

The next day, I was functional enough to get up and move with the cane.

I visited Sera, sitting at her side for hours.

She didn’t wake up.

I read to her — Sheridan said that sometimes helped people who couldn’t wake up. Someone suggested music, but I didn’t have any talent at that. Neither did Patrick. Mara’s gift was somewhere in my room, but I didn’t have the strength to go and find it.

…And Mara wasn’t in any condition to play anything.

I knocked at her door next.

“Go ‘way.”

“It’s Corin,” I tried. “I brought you something.”

“…’Spose I can’t let you keep me in suspense, then.”

I found her sitting up in her bed, hair wild and blanket wrapped around her legs. She shifted subtly as I opened the door, moving her right arm beneath the covers as I stepped inside.

I closed the door behind me.

“I…can I sit down?”

“Not like I could stop you. Not anymore.” She pulled up her blanket further, trembling.

“Hey, it’s…”

I couldn’t quite find it in me to tell her it would be okay.

It very much wasn’t okay. I wasn’t sure if it would ever would be.

Instead, I sat down beside her bed, hesitating and debating for a moment, then found my resolve. “We have options for you. I still have Goddess’ Tears, and we can grow more—”

“Won’t work.” Mara shivered. “He…took something from me when he hurt me. A piece of me. Stole something that…I can’t get back. Can’t heal it. My soul won’t recognize it.”

I frowned at that. Sheridan must have analyzed the injury through methods that were beyond my abilities, then. “Even spirits can be healed, right? There’s probably an Artinian technique…or, if not, a prosthetic—”

She turned straight toward me, her reddened eyes narrowing. “I don’t need to be your next project. If that’s all you’re here for, get out and find someone else to fix.”

“I…I’m sorry. I…no.” I pulled back at her sudden aggression. I should have asked Sheridan about what had already been discussed with Mara before the visit. I couldn’t fix that mistake, but I still had a peace offering. “Neither of us is going to be capable of training properly for a while,” I began.

“You think?”

“…But we’re not going to give up either, are we? Our teacher wouldn’t allow that.”

Mara shuddered and sniffled. “…Don’t talk to me about him.”

“Don’t need to.” I ignored her bitterness, reaching into my bag to retrieve a box, then flipped it open, revealing a line of crystals. “He always preferred to hear himself talk, anyway.”

Mara managed a half-snort at that, then tried to reach up to wipe her eyes—

With an arm that no longer ended in a hand.

That nearly started her crying again, but I managed to pull a handkerchief out of my bag so swiftly that I processed it, and placed it in her remaining hand.

“…Thanks.”

“So,” I flipped over the crystal, “they’re mostly fights, sequentially labeled in order of difficulty. I’m supposed to watch them in order to process them properly, but…he never cared much for doing things in a proper sequence, and neither do I.” I pulled one of the crystals out. “I’m thinking maybe ‘lich’ or ‘malevolent demigod’. You?”

“…Malevolent demigod sounds ‘bout my speed. You don’t think…”

“It’s not one of the Children of the Tyrant. He has one labeled ‘vae’kes’ in there, but I don’t think I’m ready to watch that.”

Mara gave me a weak nod. “You sure you want to share this with me? It was your present, and…”

“I read the instructions. The crystal can be watched by more than one person at the same time. He knew I’d want to show them to you, he just was letting me make the choice. Wanted me to realize that I didn’t want to train alone. That I didn’t have to be alone.”

Mara looked a little bit like she was about to cry again, but managed to push that down in favor of using her remaining hand to pat the side of the bed. “Backs to the wall with me, so we don’t hit our heads when we watch this thing.”

I nodded and stat down on the bed. We leaned back against the wall together, like she said. After a moment of hesitation, Mara shifted the blanket to cover both of our legs, exposing her missing hand in the process. She still looked a little ashamed, but she didn’t hide it.

We grasped the crystal together and spoke. “View.”

***

Days passed.

Mara and I continued our “training” together, watching the crystals and sharing the memories of our teacher. The hurt remained, but within a few days, I managed to drag her out of bed to start walking around. That, at least, helped to get one more person on shifts to watch Sera—

And it was Mara who was in Sera’s room when my sister began to groan and shift with more regularity.

“Come quick, think she’s wakin’!”

I was there with her when it happened, holding her hand.

When her eyes fluttered open, they shined crystal blue.

“…Where am I?” Was the first thing she asked.

Then, as she shifted her gaze around to take in each of us…

“…And where is Derek?”

EPILOGUE – BROKEN HORIZON

The days that followed were among the most difficult of my life. Sera was pale and shivered constantly. Her body and hands ice-cold.

We spent as much time with her as we could, trying to help ease her guilt at Derek’s absence and give her physical comfort…but she fell asleep often, only to wake up screaming or with frozen tears in her eyes.

She didn’t remember what she dreamed about, but she spoke often while she slept, often murmuring things in a language that I didn’t recognize. On rare occasions, I thought I saw a thin layer of ice forming on her body, only to vanish the moment I looked more closely.

Sheridan tried several treatments, but even they were at a loss. Whatever Aayara had done to save Sera’s fading life was beyond even Sheridan’s knowledge and abilities…and the vial, our only real clue, was in a language that none of us could read.

Researcher, at least, was able to identify the tongue as Vesilis, one of the local languages on the continent of Tyrenia. Unfortunately, even she didn’t understand it, nor did she have any complete books on the subject in the Divinatory. She did, however, find the word “shal”, which seemed to have something to do with “life”.

A hint, but nowhere near enough.

Sheridan tried several powerful healing spells designed for treating various magical maladies—

They left Sera screaming and trembling each and every time…but eventually, they seemed to help.

For certain values of “help”, at least. Each application of a spirit-based healing spell seemed to help Sera’s condition stabilize somewhat in the long-term, reducing Sera’s shivering fits and allowing her to gradually regain more movement. In exchange for that, Sera had to suffer what looked like torture.

We tried the Goddess’ Tear next. Sera and Cecily’s gardening project had produced enough viable results that Sheridan was able to brew a potion, as we’d once hoped to use to simply help her throat.

When Sera drank the potion, she collapsed and lost consciousness for three more days.

When she finally woke up, her cough was gone. Her safe mana levels had shot upward by an amount nearly comparable to what she’d lost when she’d first caused her scarring. The remaining scarring itself, Sheridan reported, was almost entirely healed.

…But for her new condition, the potion had done nothing at all. If anything, it had made the strange chill that remained on her skin worse. Even after several more applications of spirit-based healing magic, Sera was constantly cold, wearing winter clothes in spite of the growing warmth in the weather to help stave off the effect.

In spite of that, we were all relieved that she was alive at all…save, perhaps, for Sera herself.

“He shouldn’t have done that,” she’d say over and over, “he didn’t have to…”

“We’ll rescue him,” Patrick offered at one point. “We’ll get a group together, and…”

Sera gave a bitter laugh. “Of course you’d suggest that. You’re the only one of us who came out of the fight intact. Maybe you think you’d get another miracle?”

Patrick blanched at her words. “I…I’m sorry, I…”

“That’s enough, Sera. He offered himself up to Aayara before Derek did.”

“I…I’m sorry. You’re right.” She winced. “I’m sorry, Patrick. It’s…I’m just…I’m not okay. Nothing is okay. And Derek…we don’t have any hope of saving him. Not from…not from her.”

“Not as we are now,” I admitted. “Not alone. But maybe…”

“Don’t even suggest it, Corin.” She exhaled a breath. “Six years. I won’t forget what I owe him.”

***

My own mind was, in spite of terror in the early days of the aftermath of the battle, recovering. Sheridan had checked me several times and confirmed their original diagnosis — no signs of scarring.

“Overdoing it with dominion sorcery can be just as dangerous as dipping below your safe mana capacity. You took a real risk there, but fortunately, you seem to be mending more rapidly than I expected. You should still remember the limitations I gave you to be safe — no transcendence mana for six months, and avoid your Enchanter attunement and mental mana use — but if you follow my instructions, you should heal properly. I suspect it’s because of that recovery art that you mentioned Thorn using in the battle — he probably knew how to use spirit mana to cause your body to revert to an earlier state. That’s incredibly advanced magic, but if he’s who you say he is…” Sheridan shook their head, “…well, I’d have some questions for him, but he seems to have helped.”

I also had some questions for him, but I’d had no luck reaching him. I’d tried the spirit communion spells I’d already learned, but I felt like they were trying to speak to a vast space of blackness with nothing visible within. Perhaps that emptiness meant that Thorn had been completely cast out of the sword — or maybe it was a representation of Thorn himself during some kind of healing process. I’d asked Deni, but that wasn’t their area of expertise.

Derek might have known, but he was gone.

Keras might have known, but he was gone, too.

I had no easy source of insight or answers. And while Sheridan was sympathetic and helpful, they didn’t have the ability to spend time doing all the research for me. They had plenty of other wounded to tend to—

The other assaults on the Sons of Valia hadn’t gone much more smoothly than ours had. Ultimately, the operation had been considered “successful” — many of the leaders of the movement had been crippled or killed — but at terrible costs. The Blackstone Bandits would be nursing their wounds for a long time.

Patrick did his best to be supportive, but he still had his own trauma to deal with, and he was the only one of us still uninjured enough to provide support to everyone — and that meant splitting his time. Jin came by from time to time after completing his own mission and learning what had happened to us, but he had little else to directly contribute other than moral support.

Lute had vanished without a trace in the aftermath of the battle. I didn’t even know if he’d been involved, but in searching for him for help, I found only another dead-end.

I tried several times to reconstruct the spirit art that Thorn had used from memory, hoping that I’d be able to use it to accelerate my own recovery — or Sera’s — but the flashes of thought from when he was in control of my body were not complete enough for me to successfully emulate the technique. I began to do some reading on it from books in my collection and Sheridan’s, but spirit arts were poorly understood on Kaldwyn, at least in Valia.

…So, when that was clearly a process that would take a while, I began to work on something more practical.

Elora and Sheridan had salvaged many of the boxes containing preserved limbs from the warehouse, as well as other locations where teams had fought the Sons of Valia. Through logistics that were beyond my knowledge, as well as the assistance of Chancellor Meltlake, they began to match limbs to victims. Some of them were well-enough preserved for a medic with Sheridan’s talents to reattach, but the attunements still didn’t turn back on even in cases where surgical reattachment was successful.

…They needed an Arbiter for that.

And so, I put myself to work at healing some of the damage the Sons of Valia had caused. It felt like too far too little to offset the horrors that they’d caused, but for every attunement I helped restore, I felt a little more whole.

It was nearly time for the next semester to begin when I found a new sign of hope — something that might help us lead to answers for the people I truly cared for.

A letter arrived at Derek’s door addressed to me. The message within it was simple.

On Behalf of Warren Constantine, Master of the Sorcerous Spire,

Corin Cadence, as Arbiter of Katashi, you are formally invited to attend this emergency session of the Emerald Council. Your presence will be much appreciated as we begin the preparations for what must be coming.

The urgency of this message cannot be understated. You must make your way to the Unclaimed Lands with expediency and caution.

By the time you read this letter, the nation of Valia will be at war.

THE END

APPENDIX I – ATTUNEMENTS OF EAST EDRIA

From Corin’s Notes

East Edria is the nation that I’ve learned the least about, but I’ve picked up the basic bits about each of their attunements during my studies.

Of course, Mesmer is the one I’m the most familiar with due to the presence of a certain Dalen in my life. Beyond that, I’ve seen precious few of them in person…in spite of my mother apparently having picked up a Swordmaster attunement at some point. Gonna have to learn about how that happened eventually.

- Conjurer: The Conjurer is able to create entities with “false life”. These are functionally similar to summons, but seemingly based entirely on the knowledge and imagination of the Conjurer, rather than contracts. There are apparently ways to make more convincing conjurations with examples from a real creature, but I don’t know much about it yet.

- Mana Types: Life (Primary), Umbral (Secondary), Mental (Tertiary)

- Mesmer: Mesmers are experts at concealment, but not through traditional invisibility. Instead, they have a perception-based ability that causes people nearby to simply forget they exist. This “irrelevance aura” is potent enough that a Mesmer of sufficient power can activate it in the middle of a conversation and cause their conversation partners to forget their presence.

- Mana Types: Perception (Primary), Death (Secondary), Umbral (Tertiary)

- Dancer: This unusual attunement is focused almost entirely on avoiding and countering debilitating effects. They apparently get access to some sort of unique ability that allows them to twist spells used against them back toward their opponents, but rather than being used for physical spells like a Shaper’s magical control, Dancers focus on reversing mental spell effects, poisons, and other similar spell types.

- Mana Types: Mental (Primary), Water (Secondary), Air (Tertiary)

- Purifier: Purifiers are specialists in neutralizing debilitating and controlling magic. For example, they can counter most forms of anti-magic, poison, and disease. They’re also offensive powerhouses, using a combination of fire and light sorcery to blast through magical defenses.

- Mana Types: Fire (Primary), Light (Secondary), Mental (Tertiary)

- Pyromancer: The East Edrian analogue to the Elementalist, but even more focused on fire. They’re reportedly able to create black flames that continue spreading and burning on their own. These black flames are nearly impossible to dispel or disperse through conventional means, making Pyromancers absolute powerhouses at ranged offensive combat.

- Mana Types: Fire (Primary), Death (Secondary), Umbral (Tertiary)

- Shapeshifter: One of the few “contract-based” attunements similar to Summoners and Soulblades. Rather than being able to summon monsters, Shapeshifters learn to turn into monsters based on contracts they’ve made. Scary stuff.

- Mana Types: Perception (Primary), Earth (Secondary), Life (Tertiary)

- Spellsinger: Spellsingers have a rare focus on broad-area debilitating magic, often in the form of spells that slow, fatigue, or otherwise mentally incapacitate their enemies. Higher-level Spellsingers also gain access to potent wide-area beneficial effects, too.

- Mana Types: Air (Primary), Perception (Secondary), Light (Tertiary)

- Swordmaster: An attunement focused on weapon enhancement magic, such as empowering weapons with stored spells or otherwise improving the weapon’s abilities. They’re also one of the best attunements for overall physical power growth, similar to Guardians.

- Mana Types: Enhancement (Primary), Fire (Secondary), Earth (Tertiary)

APPENDIX II – CHARACTERS AND TERMS

From Corin’s notes

House Cadence:

- Magnus Cadence — Head of House Cadence, father of Tristan and Corin Cadence. Presumably also the father of Sera Cadence.

- Laura Lyran — Head of House Lyran, mother of Tristan and Corin Cadence. Emerald-level attuned with the Swordmaster and Elementalist attunements. Member of Valia’s Council of Lords.

- Tristan Cadence — Elder son of Magnus Cadence and Laura Lyran. Disappeared into the Serpent Tower during his Judgment. Presumed deceased.

- Corin Cadence — Younger son of Magnus Cadence and Laura Lyran. Presumptive heir to both houses after Tristan’s disappearance. Earned an Enchanter attunement in the spire. Was given a mysterious new attunement by Katashi, the Visage of Valor.

- Sera Cadence — Previously known as Sera Shard, Sera Cadence was legitimized by Magnus Cadence after passing her Attunement exam. She is presumed to be a bastard child of Magnus Cadence. After being legitimized, she is now a potential heir to the house. She’s my age and has a Summoner attunement.

University Staff:

- Chancellor Wallace — She was in charge of all university activities. Deceased after the battle with Mizuchi at the winter ball.

- Lieutenant Commander Jack Bennet — Vice Chancellor, former military commander.

Professors:

- Professor Edlyn — Assisted with new student orientation. Teaches Enchanting class.

- Professor Ceridan — In charge of Tiger Class. Teaches Elementalists.

- Professor Lyras Orden — In charge of Serpent Division and member of the Whispers, an organization that secretly serves the visages. Orden was involved with a conspiracy to kidnap the visage Tenjin, and she betrayed me during a spire expedition in the middle of the first year.

- Professor Vellum — Teaches classes on permanent enchantments. Served as my mentor for most enchanting-related studies during the first year. She severely hurt herself rescuing me and other students from Mizuchi during the winter ball.

- Professor Conway — Teaches Attunements class. Died fighting Mizuchi at the winter ball.

- Lord Jonathan Teft — In charge of Hydra Class. Teaches dueling.

- Doctor Tordrin — In charge of Phoenix Class.

- Professor Meltlake — General Magic Theory class. Legendary Elementalist and Patrick’s personal mentor. A former member of House Hartigan, she is Derek Hartigan’s aunt. “Meltlake” is a title that replaced her last name after a famous duel where she supposedly set a lake on fire. Has a persistent leg injury and walks with a cane.

- Professor Vanway — Teacher for an unknown class. Not one of my professors.

- Sir Tanath — A member of the Soaring Wings, and a Summoner. One of Marissa’s teachers.

- Professor Vestan — Corin’s Introductory Runes teacher.

- Professor Zou — A guest professor.

- Professor Saito — Attunement Optimization teacher.

- Professor Wydran — Intermediate Enchanting teacher. Wore a strange black uniform. Transferred me into a more advanced class.

- Professor de Remy — Advanced Enchanting Teacher for third-year students.

- Professor Ezran — My Intermediate Mana Manipulation teacher.

- Lady Anette Haven — My Alternate Magic Sources teacher.

Students:

- Patrick Wayland — One of my childhood friends, now my first retainer. An Elementalist and magical weapon enthusiast.

- Jin Dalen — A mysterious foreign student from East Edria with a Sunstone-level Mesmer attunement. His family is sworn to House Dalen, the former ruling house of East Edria from the days before it was under Edrian rule. He was badly injured after fighting against me in the Serpent Spire, but escaped using my return bell. We ran into each other again after that, but things have been strained.

- Marissa Callahan — One of my classmates. Usually called “Mara” by her friends, but I’m still getting used to the nickname. She’s a Guardian and something of a prodigy for our year. In the second half of the school year, she began training with Keras Selyrian to learn his combat techniques.

- Roland Royce — One of Sera’s friends and a former friend of Tristan’s. Diviner. I think Sera may be trying to get him as a retainer.

- Cecily Lambert — The younger sister of Yunika Lambert. One of my closest childhood companions. Things between us are a little awkward, since Tristan was engaged to Yunika before he disappeared, and there was an implication that Cecily and I might eventually get married, too. And then there was the training with father…anyway, things are strained, but we’re talking again.

- Curtis Maddock — Dorm chief for my dorm. I, uh, probably should have talked to him more. He has two attunements on the same arm.

- Lisa Stone — Former classmate from my childhood.

- Jordan Jaldin — A second-year student that supervised one of the teams for the first year’s final exams.

- Katherine Winters — A second-year student that supervised my team’s first year’s final exams. Goes by Kathy.

- Rupert Kent — Elementalist. Noble who was part of a family that tried to “adopt” Mara from her family when she was younger. Total creep.

- Kyra Dyson — Shadow. One of the better duelists in our first-year class. A member of Roland’s testing team.

- Loria Marshall — Elementalist and close friend of Kyra’s. Another member of Roland’s team.

- Desmond Vyers — Shaper. One of the best duelists of our first-year class. A member of Roland’s team.

- Holly — Third-year Enchanting student.

- Gregori — Third-year Enchanting student.

- Tylan — Third-year Enchanting student.

- Lute — Another student of the non-human variety, although probably slightly less murderous. Unclear, to be honest. Swordsman. Possibly a literal sword? Not really sure, but he’s seemingly related to Keras somehow, which raises all sorts of questions. Suspect he’s extremely powerful, probably in the Emerald range. Uses strange sword techniques that may involve transcendence mana.

- Vernon Tenson — Third-year student with dual attunements (Champion and Guardian). Leader of Team Goddess’ Grace for dueling class.

- Sandra Stone — Third-year student with a Sunstone-level Summoner attunement. Member of Team Goddess’ Grace.

- Micha Sawyer — Third-year student. Diviner with an enhancement mana specialization. Member of Team Goddess’ Grace.

- Jeremy Jaldin — Third-year student. Older brother of Jordan Jaldin. Shaper with a near-Citrine mana pool. Leader of Team Bloodline.

- Tyler Sanctum — Third-year student. Sunstone-level Spellsinger and specialist in sonic attacks. Member of Team Bloodline.

- Matthew Coin — Third-year student. Sunstone-level Elementalist with an air specialized-mark. Member of Team Bloodline.

- Mary Hawthorne — Team leader of Team Skyseeker, one of the most powerful dueling teams of our year. Abjurer-style banishment abilities using a bow and arrow. Saw her during the fight with Mizuchi last year, but didn’t know her at the time.

- Vermillion Rose — A member of Mary’s dueling team. Uses sword-enhancement magic, similar to a Swordmaster attunement and with some resemblance to Keras’ Pale Crescent.

- Kuro Nightshade — A member of Team Skyseeker with a “classic wizard” motif. Extremely broad skill set. Probably an Enchanter, Architect, or maybe a Conjurer…unless he has a foreign skill set. It’s possible their whole team is using foreign magic, given some of their strange abilities.

Other People:

- Lars Mantrake — Shopkeeper for the Climber’s Court, a magic item shop. As a former climber, he has many stories of the spires, almost half of which are probably true. He told me a bit about Selys-Lyann, my sword, and I think he may have seen it in the past.

- Keras Selyrian — Mysterious foreign swordsman that I first encountered during my Judgment. Currently serving as my bodyguard in order to get into the good graces of Katashi, the Visage of Valor. He’s taught me a bit of his fighting style, but he uses weird foreign magic, so I haven’t been able to learn all of it. He rescued me from Saffron, a child of the Tyrant in Gold, during the second half of the school year.

- Echion — He’s a kid with an experimental artificial attunement that I rescued during my Judgment. His strange attunement seems to be based on god beasts, rather than conventional attunements. I plan to study that style of thing eventually.

- Vera Corrington — Tower explorer that I first encountered during my Judgment. I broke her out of a cell, then she stabbed me in the back. Eventually, I found her and escorted her back to the tower, where she turned herself in to Katashi to help prevent collateral damage from some of her actions related to ambushing Tenjin, one of the visages.

- Aloras Corrington — Automotive engineer. Vera’s brother.

- Derek Hartigan — Heir to House Hartigan, an ancient noble house. Has an Emerald-level Soulblade attunement. We spent the second half of the school year living at his place.

- Tavare — Derek’s Summoned blade elemental. Refers to themselves as “Radiance”, which is kind of weird.

- Delsys — Derek’s Summoned flame/wind elemental.

- Elora Theas — Heir to House Theas, an ancient noble house. She’s an Emerald-level Summoner, Derek’s former (current?) paramour, and has a contract with the God Phoenix. She’s also heavily involved with the same conspiracy that my brother is, but I don’t know what her real goals are.

- Sheridan Theas — Elora Theas’ sibling, and a follower of Wydd. Wields the restricted “Necromancer” attunement, but specializes in healing. Derek usually refers to them by the nickname “Deni”. May or may not be flirting with me. Aaaaaah.

- Vanniv — A summoned karvensi. Both Elora and Sera have contracts with Vanniv. Somehow fashionable, even when shirtless.

- Researcher — A knowledge elemental that resides in the restricted section of the Divinatory.

- Yunika Lambert — Cecily Lambert’s older sister, and Tristan’s former fiancée. Still not sure on her angle on all the politics going on.

- Meredith Hawkins — A historical figure who supposedly escaped one of the spires after several years of being trapped inside. Commonly believed to be a con artist.

- Johannes Edington — An academic who attempted to enter a Judgment and stay inside as long as possible in order to preserve memories of what the rooms looked like. Emerged a few months later and published a paper on his findings.

- Anabelle Farren — The owner of Farren Labs, the center for artificial attunement research.

- Nakht — A worker for Anabelle Farren at Farren Labs with a strange, shifting aura.

- Kahi Zephyr — A guide for Farren Labs.

- Ashon — A researcher for Farren Labs with a bit too much interest in my Arbiter attunement.

- Archduke Verena — The leader of an Edrian noble house many years in the past. He is seen, along with other members of his family, in a constructed scenario inside the Tiger Spire.

- Dalen Mitsurugi — An ancestor of Jin Dalen in a constructed scenario inside the Tiger Spire. He was a wielder of Soulbrand, the Sacred Sword of Fire. Note that he uses the Dalenos naming style, meaning “Dalen” is his surname, not his personal name. I wonder if Jin prefers that and simply used our naming style while visiting Valia?

- Jerome Schmidt — An Edrian noble and son of Kaspar Schmidt, who fought my great grandfather in the Six Years War. I studied his fighting style in my childhood.

- Emma Verena — One of Archduke Verena’s daughters in a part of the fourth-floor test in the Tiger Spire.

- Emery Verena — One of Archduke Verena’s daughters in a part of the fourth-floor test in the Tiger Spire.

- Anthony — A manservant for House Verena in a part of the fourth-floor test in the Tiger Spire.

- Lady Nora Haven — A member of House Haven in a part of the fourth-floor test in the Tiger Spire.

- Caelyssa Ves — Goes by “Lys”. A retainer of House Haven in a part of the fourth-floor test in the Tiger Spire.

- Constant Beaufort — A member of House Beaufort in a part of the fourth-floor test in the Tiger Spire.

- Len — Short for “Lydia Emulation”. A spiritual copy of Lydia Hastings, a commanding officer of the knightly order that Keras belonged to in his homeland.

- Spirit Gateway Crystal — A sentient crystal in the Unclaimed Lands that created challenges for Keras when he entered a shrine.

- Transcendence Gateway Crystal — A sentient crystal in the Unclaimed Lands that offers challenges for those that enter the crystal’s home.

- Roy — An entrant who once faced the Transcendence Gateway crystal’s challenges.

- Elina Maryn — An entrant who once faced the Transcendence Gateway crystal’s challenges.

- Kester Boyd — An entrant who once faced the Transcendence Gateway crystal’s challenges. Apparently worked with Lars Mantrake.

Visages:

- Katashi — Visage of Valor, patron Visage of Dalenos, where he is a central figure in their government.

- Melkyr — Visage of Resilience, patron Visage of Edria.

- Ferras — Visage of Creation, patron Visage of Caelford.

- Tenjin — Visage of Inspiration, patron Visage of Valia. Currently missing.

- Kerivas — Visage of Law, second patron Visage of Edria.

- Wydd — Visage of Forbidden Knowledge. Location unknown. Often depicted as a trickster or shapeshifter.

God Beasts:

- Genbu, the God Tortoise — God Beast of Dalenos.

- Seiryu, the God Serpent — God Beast of Valia.

- Orochi, the God Hydra — God Beast of Edria.

- Byakko, the God Tiger — God Beast of Caelford.

- Suzaku, the God Phoenix — God Beast of East Edria.

- Arachne, the God Spider — God Beast of (????)

God Beast Children:

- Mizuchi — Deadly serpent, called “Hero’s End”. Child of Seiryu. Believed to be virtually invulnerable.

- Satsuki — A descendant of Seiryu, the God Serpent. Apparently she’s a “murder serpent”, which is just as comforting as it sounds. She’s also enrolled as a student. Seems to like me, which is, uh, absolutely horrifying? Why, universe? Why?

Other Powers:

- The Tyrant in Gold — A divine being that is antithetical to Selys, and believed to be comparable to her in power. The scriptures teach that he is in control of the entire world outside of Kaldwyn.

- Saffron — A child of the Tyrant in Gold. Tremendously powerful, most likely on a similar level to Mizuchi.

Major Nations:

- Valia — Nation on the eastern coast of the continent of Kaldwyn. Home to the Serpent Tower and the Lorian Heights Academy.

- Edria — Imperialistic southern nation. Conquered Kelridge during the Six Years War and nearly conquered Valia as well.

- Caelford — Technologically advanced nation on the western coast of the continent. Allied with Valia.

- Dalenos — Theocracy; covers most of the northern side of the continent.

- Kelridge — A territory that was a part of Dalenos prior to the Six Years War. Conquered by Edria and now known as East Edria.

Days of the Week:

- Tashday

- Kyrsday

- Fersday

- Tensday

- Vasday

- Wyddsday

APPENDIX III – CORIN’S CLASS SCHEDULES

First Semester:

- Tashday – Physical Training, Attunement Optimization, Intermediate Enchanting

- Intermediate Enchanting replaced with Advanced Enchanting after the first week.

- Kyrsday – Physical Training, Intermediate Mana Manipulation, Alternate Magic Sources (Elective)

- Fersday – Physical Training, Attunement Optimization, Intermediate Enchanting

- Intermediate Enchanting replaced with Advanced Enchanting after the first week.

- Tensday – Physical Training, Intermediate Mana Manipulation, Foreign Attunements and You (Elective)

- Vasday – Physical Training, Dueling (Elective)

- Wyddsday – Weekend, no classes

Second Semester:

(TBA)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First, I’d like to thank those people who were directly involved in working on this book.

Thanks to all my beta readers, including John Bierce, Tobias Begley, Rajat Bhatt, Eli Brandt, Heather Crosthwaite, Yvonne Etzkorn, Justin Green, Izzy Trejo, Michael Kelly, Krista Keith, Markus Kemppainen, Jonah L.L., Rob McDiarmid, Amy Reader-Lalor, Rebecca Reeves, Jess Richards, Christine Rowe, Bruce Rowe, James Wolter, T.L. Kowalchuk, Andrew Warren, Will Wight, Andrew Winkle, and Brandon Yee.

I’d also like to thank my literary agent, Paul, and his assistant, Eloy, for tremendous assistance in the process of expanding Arcane Ascension further. We’ve got a ton of exciting things coming in regards to the setting as a whole and I can’t wait to share more with everyone.

Thank you to my narrator, Nick Podehl, for helping to bring each of my Arcane Ascension books — as well as most of my other books — to life with your amazing voice talent.

Thanks to the whole team at Podium Audio for working with me on getting amazing audio books for each book in this series, as well as some amazing merchandise. I’m also excited to be working with Podium on some other projects coming soon.

Like all of the titles for this series, the title for this book, The Silence of Unworthy Gods, draws from real-world quotes. In this particular case, it merges elements of two specific quotes:

“Science has made us gods even before we are worthy of being men.” –Jean Rostand

“To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.” –Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Note that in earlier revisions, I attributed the latter quote to Abraham Lincoln. This is apparently inaccurate: although the quote has been attributed to him several times historically, it’s most clearly traced back to a poem by Wilcox.

Most of my quotes tend to be more scientifically focused (as Rostand’s is), but for this specific book, I felt that something focused around civil rights and justice was more appropriate. Wilcox’s quote is a strong and clear example of a common theme among many civil rights advocates — that standing by and doing nothing in the face of injustice is a form of being complicit with it. Martin Luther King Jr. has a similar message with his statement, “In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies…but the silence of our friends.”

I would like to acknowledge these inspirations my title, as well as for reminding me of the importance of speaking when it might be safe and easy to remain silent.

This book draws heavily from Japanese role-playing games for inspiration, as per usual. I’ll specifically call out the Final Fantasy games for being my main influences for everything related to Summoners and summoned monsters, for example.

I’ll also note that while there is a “Ruto” in this story, he’s not actually named after the Princess Ruto from Zelda — he was named “Lute” first as a shorthand for a different full name, and Ruto is a play off that. That said, Zelda is still a huge inspiration for me in a more general sense, and you’ll see hints of that everywhere in my works.

Dawnbringer is in many ways a nod to the Master Sword, for example, and thus Bright Reflection is as well.

I’d like to thank everyone who played one of my characters in the tabletop games and LARPs linked to this story. This includes Andrew Warren as Ishyeal Dawnsglow, Justin Green as Kester Boyd (as well as the proto-character that Tristan Cadence is based on), Ira Ham as Lars Mantrake, and others.

SIMILAR WORKS

I’m often asked for recommendations for books similar to Sufficiently Advanced Magic.

If you’re looking for another magical school story with a protagonist that does a lot of research into how magic works, I would recommend the web serial Mother of Learning.

If you’re looking for another book with a lot of anime-flavored combat scenes, I’d recommend the Cradle series by Will Wight and the web serial Forge of Destiny.

If you’re looking for more books with strong RPG inspiration, there are a couple up-and-coming genre labels to look for.

“LitRPGs” tend to literally take place in a video game, or in a world that has overt RPG mechanics, such as character classes and levels. Some classic examples include the .Hack series and Dream Park by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes. If you’re looking for one of these, I’d recommend Ascend Online by Luke Chmilenko and the web serial Delve.

There are a number of places to find great LitRPG recommendations. For example, there’s a large LitRPG Facebook group that can be found here. There is also a LitRPG subreddit, which can be found here.

“GameLit” is a slightly broader genre that includes game inspired fiction in general. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline would be a good example of this.

If you’re looking for an online community for more GameLit recommendations, you may want to look at GameLit Society group. There’s also a more general GameLit group. There’s also a GameLit subreddit, which can be found here.

CLOSING NOTES FROM THE AUTHOR

Thank you to everyone who finished reading this book!

Corin’s journey is far from over, but I anticipate finishing the first major “arc” of Corin’s story within the next book or two, after which you may have a bit of a wait before seeing more things from his perspective. These books are one part of a much larger whole — a tale that I have been building throughout several series, which I hope will come together in a way that long-time readers will find satisfying.

I’m already working on planning for Arcane Ascension 5 and more of Corin’s story, but my writing process works best with breaks between books in any given series, especially when the books are as lengthy as Arcane Ascension books tend to be. With this book completed, I’ll be working on some smaller projects to continue building toward the main story that I’ve been hinting about since the events of Forging Divinity.

For a preview of one of my upcoming works, you can continue to read below. And after that…a teaser for something extremely exciting. Thank you again for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the book.

PREVIEW CHAPTER – EDGE OF THE WOODS

My world began with a single cut.

I lowered my stance, gripping my sword tightly, and pronounced my attack. “Eight-fold Dragon Obliteration Strike!”

My sword came upward, tearing through the air. The dragon was defeated in an instant, freely spilling its precious lifeblood.

As the dragon fell, I took a breath. Victory had come with a single strike, but nevertheless, I couldn’t shake being nervous for what was to come.

She rushed to me with a smile, wearing an over-large tiara and an ill-fitting dress. Her strawberry blonde hair was askew, no doubt from the horrifying conditions of her capture. “You’ve defeated the dragon, noble hero.”

“Only for you, princess.” I knelt in front of her. “My life is devoted to your service.”

Her expression shifted in an instant. “Serve me?… Yes, perhaps I might allow that. But there is something you should know.”

I turned my head upward toward her. Would she confess her love?  Or perhaps tear my heart asunder by claiming she was already sworn to another knight, or a handsome prince?

“You see, brave hero…” She brought her hand with a smirk. “The dragon was not my captor. He was merely fortunate enough to be my previous servant.”

My eyes widened. “But…then why…”

“A test of your abilities, dear knight.” Her eyes flashed, and she outstretched her right hand. A sword appeared in her grip. “And now I’ve seen through your ultimate technique.”

Her sword whipped downward. I raised my own to block, feeling a jolt of pain down my arm on impact. My hand trembled at the surprising force of the blow.

I scurried backward, barely managing to stumble to my feet before the next swing came. I parried again, but the force of the blow nearly snapped my sword and sent a tingling sensation through my hand and wrist.

She’s too strong, I realized. I dodged the next attack rather than parrying it and attempted a counterstrike, but she was too fast. She stepped out of the way effortlessly, then batted my next swing aside with a bare hand.

“Why?” I stammered again, incoherently.

She paused, stretching out an open hand. A glowing ball appeared in her palm. “Princess. Maiden. Worst of all, damsel. Such despicable titles. Do you know what would have happened if I had stayed at home, and been a good princess? I’d be married off to some fat duke twice my age. Perhaps a foreign prince if I’m lucky and well-behaved.” She shook her head. “No. I’ll have no part in that. If this world wants to control me, I’ll control it instead.”

Her hand snapped shut around the sphere of light. The orb fractured, then spread in a gleaming pattern down her arm. The weave of lustrous light might have resembled scales to the unfamiliar, but with my trained eye, I recognized it as interwoven leaves.

I winced as I recognized the Golden Raiment Technique. It would reinforce her body, further increasing her strength and durability, which already far exceeded my own.

Before, she’d nearly snapped my sword in half. With that technique active, I didn’t think my blade could handle one more contact with hers.

Still, I couldn’t give up. “That’s Ashen Lord talk and you know it.”

“Is it, now? Hm.” She smirked. “Hadn’t occurred to me. But, if that’s what you want to call a woman with ambition, well…” She raised her sword. “You may kneel once again, before your new Ashen Lord.”

She swung. I dodged.

Her blade impacted the ground, splintering stone on contact. My eyes widened. If that had hit me…

I drew in a sharp breath and focused. I’d seen her fight before. I knew her moves. If I could just get in a single clean strike, maybe to her wrist…

She swung again, horizontally. This time the wind pressure from her swing, even without a technique, was enough to knock me back and off-balance.

But when she lunged to follow up, she over-extended herself.

There.

I swept upward, aiming for her wrist as planned. It was a well-executed attack, deliberate and fluid.

She batted my blade aside with casual ease.

And, my well-worn sword cracked apart on the impact, just as I’d feared.

Left with only half a weapon, I stumbled backward again. I raised it in front of me, trying to think, search for any weakness. I knew the truth, of course.

She was too strong.

But I never let a little thing like certain defeat stop me.

“Do you yield, hero?” She leveled her weapon at me. “I can promise certain rewards, if you would swear your allegiance to me. I believe half the world would be the traditional offer?”

I glowered at her. “I wouldn’t be much of a hero if I agreed to those terms, would I?”

“Weren’t you ready to kneel and swear your fealty just moments ago?”

My hand tightened on the grip of my broken weapon. “That was, uh, different. I thought you were…”

“Vulnerable? Compliant?” She stepped forward, her sword pointed straight at my heart. “Yes, I can see now what you wanted. Easy victories, a vapid bride, and an adoring populace cheering your name. Perhaps they’d write stories about you.” She tilted her head downward. “A pity. I hoped you’d be different from all the others. Ah, well. Dragons and heroes are both easily replaced.”

I saw the moment she shifted the weight of her back foot, preparing to lunge.

With half a sword, my best option was probably to try to evade again, maneuver, and flee the scene. Her reinforcement technique would not last indefinitely, and I was a fast runner.

But if I was a hero, I couldn’t think in those terms. I would face my enemies head-on, even if it meant certain death.

She lunged.

I didn’t evade. I didn’t block.

I lunged at the same time, knowing that she’d hit me. If I angled my attack just right, I could take her hit and still land a more serious injury in return.

What was victory without sacrifice?

Her eyes widened in surprise as she saw my move.

She was still faster than I was, but this time, it worked to my advantage. She interrupted her own attack, pulling her blade backward for an awkward parry.

I swept upward, meeting her sword with my broken one. In that moment, I envisioned with perfect clarity what I wanted to happen.

My weapon shimmered for an instant, surprising us both, and passed cleanly through her blade.

A moment later, her sword fell into two neatly-severed pieces. And, a heartbeat after that, I saw a thin cut spreading across her cheek.

Her eyes widened again.

I panicked a little. “Oh, ancestors. Ana! I’m so sorry!” I dropped my “sword”. It was, of course, actually just a stick.

Ana dropped the other half of her wooden sword, raising a hand to her cheek and the wound spreading across her face. When she pulled her hands away, she looked almost comically shocked. “What—”

“I’m so sorry!” I glanced around, looking to see if anyone was watching. There were some other kids at the park, but no one seemed to have noticed what had happened yet. No elders nearby, fortunately, or I’d be in serious trouble.

“You…” Ana turned, appraising me, then burst into laughter. “Oh, ancestors! Don’t apologize!” She wiped her bloodstained hand on her dress, then rushed forward with her arms wide. “You finally woke up! I’m so happy for you!”

I widened my own arms to receive her hug, but I had to be cautious when I pulled her in. Not because of her strength, although that still was a risk if she squeezed me too tightly. No, because of her jagged wings that poked out of the back of her dress. She always forgot about how easily the blade-like wings could cut me. “Thanks, Ana. Are you okay? Maybe we should go to the spring and get you some healing water for that cut.”

She snorted, pulling back. “Oh, it’s fine. Don’t be such a baby. It’s just a scratch.”

It wasn’t just a scratch, but it didn’t seem to bother her much. Injuries usually didn’t. One of the advantages of her essence development level, I supposed. Or perhaps just a consequence of her particular faerie heritage.

Ana raised a hand, a glowing sphere appearing in her hand again, then concentrated. It reshaped itself, stretching out, and then shifted in color to white. In a moment, it had solidified into a bandage. She shoved it a me. “You can wrap me up, though, if you’re so worried.”

I accepted the bandage and lifted it up, pressing it against the wound to stop the bleeding.

“Ow! Not so hard! Geez!”

“Sorry. Gramps taught me that you’ve gotta apply pressure to stop the blood from flowing.” I held my hand against her face for a while. Ana tapped her foot impatiently. She’d never been good at staying still for more than, well, any time at all.

After a few minutes or so, it seemed like the blood flow had slowed down. I didn’t have to wrap the bandage around her face; she’d managed to conjure one with adhesive on the edges, which was impressively complex for someone our age. Other faeries manifested essence powers at a young age, but Ana was advanced even by faerie standards.

“I’m going to get in so much trouble,” I muttered.

“Bah, you’ll be fine. I’ll tell your grandfather it was my fault. Kind of was, I flipped the script on you a little.”

I laughed. “Yeah, what was with that evil overlord monologue?”

“I wanted to surprise you! And you know I can’t stand it when a princess just sits and waits to be rescued.”

I snorted. “I was a little surprised you told me you were going to play a ‘princess’ today. I figured the hero-and-princess motif was just kind of a frame for you to make use of that guy.”

I gestured at the now-deceased “dragon” on the ground, still leaking “lifeblood” from my “ultimate attack”.

I’d never actually seen a piñata before. I’d heard of them, but they weren’t a local custom. They were more of a human thing, as far as I understood, and specific to certain human cultures that were far away from our forest. Ana had arranged it as a surprise for me, since she knew I loved both hitting things with swords and eating candy.

It must have been difficult for her to arrange. She’d probably conjured the dragon piñata herself, but she couldn’t make candy. Anything edible was beyond her abilities, at least for the moment — she hadn’t developed her essence in that direction. And human candy wasn’t easy to come by in the middle of our forest home. Humans were not allowed within our borders, and Ana couldn’t leave — she was bound to this place even more closely than I was. The vast majority of faeries never left the woods, either due to their particular limitations — being bound to a specific tree, lake, or that sort of thing — or in the cases of faeries with less restrictive bindings, a general distaste for humanity.

That meant she’d probably bribed one of vanishingly few non-fae entities that traveled back and forth from the woods.

Oh, I should probably note that “fae” and “faerie” aren’t quite the same thing. There’s some argument, even among scholars, about what the distinction should be — but the way I was raised was to use “fae” as a broad category and “faerie” to refer to a specific subset of fae species. All faeries are fae, but not all fae are faeries — at least, the way I was taught. These are both human terms, rather than fae ones, anyway. They have their own languages and terms and tend to refer to individual species — or political courts — rather than the same type of human-made categories that we use. Unfortunately, those don’t translate well, so…human terms it is, for this story, at least.

Anyway, there weren’t a lot of non-fae in the woods that could have helped Ana out.

The Witch of the Woods, maybe, or Uncle Eiji. Potentially some of the witch’s older children, if they were currently allowed to leave the woods. Regardless of the source, it would have cost Ana significantly, we always tried to do something impressive for each other for our Name Days.

My Name Day was technically the next day, but we had a tradition of celebrating across a three-day period rather than just on the day itself. I wasn’t sure if that was actually a faerie tradition in general — they did like to do things in threes — or just a local one.

I held my hand against her face for a while longer. She bled through the first bandage, conjured another, and I replaced it. “…We should probably go get you cleaned up before something smells blood.”

The fae were the masters of the wood, but they were hardly the only creatures that lived in our home. And for some particularly unfriendly beasts, the blood of a fae child was the hint of an enticing meal.

“Ugh. Fine. But candy first?” She gestured at the fallen dragon.

“Candy first,” I agreed. “But, uh, maybe conjure us some towels? We have blood all over our hands.”

Ana grinned. “I don’t know, I think it looks kind of cool.”

“It’s actual blood, Ana. That’s disgusting.”

“You’re disgusting.” She stuck her tongue out at me.

***

We spent some time cleaning up with conjured towels. With a gesture, she made them vanish, blood and all.

“That’s still really impressive,” I noted.

“Thanks! I’m getting better at it. Couldn’t make wet towels a few months ago, but now, it’s pretty easy.” She smiled, kneeling down and picking up the piñata.

“…Where do your conjurations go when you dismiss the spell?”

She blinked. “What, the prospect of candy put you in a magic theory mood?”

“Just was wondering if you have a pile of bloodstained towels off in your shrine somewhere now.”

Ana snorted. “Well, that’s an image. To answer your question…no idea!” Ana shook the piñata with one hand, pouring candy into another. The dragon’s head tore further as she shook it, nearly falling off. “You really mangled this guy, Mr. Hundred-Point Dragon Killing Whatever.”

“Eight-Point. Hundred-Point would have been really excessive for a dragon of that size. Not to mention a little over-the top.” I winked at her. She laughed.

“Everything you do is over the top.”

I raised an eyebrow at her. “This coming from the new Ashen Lord Ana, First of Her Name.”

“Point taken. But, uh, say that again. It sounded nice. Maybe make it clearer how much you worship me.”

I rolled my eyes. “Ashen Lord Ana, First of Her Name, defeated by—”

She smacked me with the piñata, spraying more pieces of candy into the grass. “You did not defeat me!”

“I mean, I pretty much did. I broke your sword.”

“I broke your sword first!”

“Well, I broke your sword better—”

She tried to tackle me, but I managed to step out of the way in time. She telegraphed her lunges too much.

She let out a growl, spinning around.

I raised my hands in surrender. “Okay, fine. We’ll call it a draw for now. We can have a rematch after candy.”

Her eyes narrowed…then her face brightened right back up. “Deal.”

We indulged ourselves in far, far too much candy that day.

That brought some sweetness to contrast the bitterness of what my Name Day meant.

In a few hours, I’d be thirteen years old.

I was still so far behind.

Fae children had the first sparks of essence when they were born, sometimes manifesting sorcerous abilities before they even opened their eyes.

My childhood playmates were, like Ana herself, almost exclusively fae. They were the primary populace of our home, after all.

…But I wasn’t one of them.

Probably, at least. I wasn’t quite sure what I was.

Gramps, my caretaker, looked like what I would have called an ancient and wizened human man…but humans weren’t allowed in the forest. Not after the war. It was possible he was an exception, but he dodged every possible question on the subject with such evasiveness that I’d often joked that “dodging” was his favored essence type.

(That wasn’t actually too far from the truth.)

As far as I could tell, I physically resembled a human more than anything else. That wasn’t particularly telling — some fae looked almost identical to humans, like certain courtly fae subspecies — but I did have on unfortunate human-like trait. I wasn’t born with the ability to utilize essence, at least not in the same way that my fae companions did.

I did have something weird going on with my right hand — a strange mark that I’d identified as a kind of seal. It was plausible that might have implied I had some kind of essence in my right hand that I’d been deliberately prevented from using, but species that were born with essence didn’t tend to have it in their hand. For most species, their first Dianis Point — a core of essence that serves as a power source for techniques — was their Heart Point, Breathing Point, or Viewing Point. Those were located in the chest, throat, and forehead, respectively. There were Dianis Points in the hands — the Sword Point in the main hand and the Shield Point in the off-hand — but I’d never heard of anyone being born with a completed Dianis Point in one. And certainly not with a seal.

The most likely explanation was that the seal wasn’t exactly on a standard Dianis Point, but rather on something called a bloodline ability — a trait that people from specific powerful heritages were born with. These bloodline abilities could manifest at birth or much later in life, depending on the specific ability. I’d long imagined the possibility that I was descended from the bloodline of one of the heroes that had defeated the Ashen Lord, the fiend that had nearly conquered the entire continent, but that was…unlikely, to say the least. There were numerous bloodlines out there and the vast majority of them were much more mundane. Moreover, being a member of a hero’s bloodline would have been celebrated, not sealed away with the constant implication that I had some kind of forbidden power.

The more likely answer was that I was a part of some kind of disgraced bloodline, or simply a family that had taken to gathering essence of a type that was dangerous to incautious children. Or maybe it wasn’t a bloodline ability at all. I knew there were other possibilities — a spiritual bond to another creature, for example, or a property of a species I wasn’t familiar with.

Maybe Gramps will tell me more about it, now that I’ve finally awakened my first Dianis Point…but I doubt it. Either way…at least I can finally start catching up to Ana and the others.

My first Dianis Point is in my chest. My Heart Point. That’s similar to how a human develops, so…that’s one more point of evidence that I’m something related to humans, at least.

By human standards, developing a Heart Point at thirteen was fairly advanced. Somewhere in the fourteen to seventeen range was more typical, but it was highly variable. Children that had resources shoved at them from a young age could awaken their Heart Point in early childhood, but it was difficult to advance beyond that until the late teens. The body took time to acclimate to essence, and no matter how much power you tried to shove into it, someone’s advancement speed was limited by their body’s acclimation rate. There were tricks to working around that, and I’d always been very interested studying those, but Gramps had kept me from trying too many of them. Now that I’d achieved Clarion-level, though, I hoped to start experimenting more.

If I had human peers, I probably would have felt pretty good about myself, but Ana had three awakened Dianis Points already. She was nearing her second full level of essence development, the Scarlet level, and I’d only just reached the first.

I’ll go tell Gramps about this…then it’s time for some training. Lots of training. All of the training.

At that time, I could think of little that I wanted more than to grow strong enough to rival Ana. Thirteen-year-olds can be pretty single minded. They’re almost as bad as adults.

You might think I was being childish for indulging in such fantasies, or playing hero-and-princess games at that age.

That’s nonsense.

There’s nothing stronger than a properly sharpened imagination.

I mean, other than maybe that one magic sword that can cut through concepts, like ambition and time. That’s just…unfair.

Anyway, I consider a healthy imagination to be a useful asset, even now. And as important as it is for anyone, it was doubly so for Ana.

It was one of her essence types, after all.

As I bent down to pick up the (thankfully individually wrapped) pieces of candy that dropped out of the piñata, she conjured a wicker basket. Then, without pause, she ducked down and conjured a pair of chairs for us to sit in.

I’d seen her use her essence a hundred times before, but I always marveled at it. If an outsider had been watching us, they probably would have, too. Casually conjuring objects wasn’t something ordinary children could manage, even among the fae.

But Ana had a special heart — the heart of a sword. A very special sword.

As a xiphiad, Ana was bound to a weapon, much like a dryad was bound to a tree. Her sword-like wings were the clearest visual hint of this, but if one looked closely, they could see a metallic sheen to her strawberry blonde hair and golden eyes.

Ordinarily, the main “tell” for a xiphiad was the sword itself…but that wasn’t with her. Ana’s sword was sealed deep within a shrine in the center of the forest, awaiting a worthy champion that could claim it.

Obviously, I planned for that champion to be me…but there were complications.

Ana’s full name was the same as the weapon she was bound to. Anathema, better known as the Bane of All Things, The Greatest Weakness, or sometimes the “Dungeon Sword”. While many swords had essence cores, much like monsters, Anathema was unique — it was powered by a dungeon core, a type of crystal that was capable of creating monsters, items, and terrain.

It was for this reason that Ana herself wielded such formidable powers. Born with a connection to a dungeon core, her essence abilities were naturally geared toward conjuration.

…And she was bound to use those abilities to stop anyone from claiming the weapon in her shrine.

If I wanted to free Ana, I had to both conquer the challenges of the shrine and defeat or outmaneuver Ana herself. At that point in my life, such a thing seemed nearly insurmountable…but at least I was finally making progress.

With a Dianis Point established, I could begin to make more…or follow the “pure path” and simply focus on strengthening a single Dianis Point. My decision would determine the nature of my Class Mark, a visible mark that would appear on my body when I reached the next level of essence development. Class Marks granted specialized powers, similar to Kaldwynian attunement marks, and they served as a visible sign of an essence user’s specialty. Choosing which Class Mark to work toward would be one of the most important decisions of my life. Plans spun in my mind as I devoured the candy.

So, with chocolate-stained hands, I turned back to Ana. “So, uh, weird question. How’d you figure out what your essence types were?”

“Oh!” She blinked at me. “I mean, my Heart Essence was clear from birth. I don’t remember when someone first told me about it.”

“What about the others, though? Imagination is a little more esoteric than dungeon essence.”

“Yeah, sure. I thought it was dream essence at first, since I found that Dianis Point awakened when, well, I woke up one day. The queen is the one who told me what it was.”

I winced. I was…not going to talk to the Queen of Rust and Salt any time soon. “And the third one?”

“Uh, lemmie think. Oh! I think it was Uncle Eiji that told me about it.” She tilted her head to the side curiously. “What, are you trying to figure yours out? Isn’t it obvious?”

“Could be a lot of things. Cutting essence, breaking essence, weapon—”

“It’s sword essence.” She rolled her eyes. “It’s obviously sword essence.”

I felt my heart skip a beat, and not just because the Dianis Point that I’d awakened was in my heart. “You’re sure?”

“Uh, yeah. I’m a literal sword fae. I’d recognize it anywhere.”

I frowned. “But you don’t actually use sword essence.”

“Not yet, sure, but I’ve been gathering some. Might make it my fourth Dianis Point, maybe my fifth.”

…She made it sound so easy. So casual. I shook my head. It wasn’t worth getting discouraged over something like that. If anything, it would be advantageous if we both had sword essence — we could start learning the same techniques and practicing them together. We’d also potentially generate sword essence just from sparring with each other, which would be a net gain for us both. “…Sword essence. My plan…actually worked.”

I felt a grin stretching across my face.

Ana snorted. “First time for everything.”

I folded my arms. “Oh, come on! I haven’t had that many failed plans.”

“Like the time you tried to get the naiads twins to nearly drown you to ‘awaken your power with a near death-experience’?”

“That’s a well-documented phenomenon for essence wielders! It’s not my fault the books don’t talk about how inefficient it is at low levels.”

“Or how you used to sleep with a wooden sword to try to get just a little bit of essence every night?”

“…We still can’t prove that didn’t work.”

Ana rolled her eyes.

“Or the time you nearly disrupted an ancient ritual by trying to pull one of the swords out of the Rust River?”

“They’re all just standing there! How was I supposed to know they were a ritual formation?”

“Uh, you could have looked at the ley lines.”

“I can’t see ley lines.”

Ana looked at me with sudden sadness in her eyes. “I…am so sorry, Lien. I should be more sensitive about your disabilities.”

“It’s not a disability!” I sighed. “Look, I admit I’ve had a few ideas that weren’t exactly ideal—”

Ana snorted again.

“—but I have sword essence now. Finally.”

It hadn’t been easy.

Humans absorbed essence through exposure to large enough quantities of it. At later levels of essence development, a person had ways of manually compressing essence in their body to form desired Dianis Points, but the Heart Point was trickier. There was very little manual control possible for essence before the first Dianis Point was established. The Heart Point was formed as soon as your body had absorbed enough essence of any one specific type — thus, in order to choose the Heart Point type you wanted, you needed to make sure you were absorbing more of that essence than anything else.

And it wasn’t easy to find sword essence in a faerie forest. Not in pure form, at least.

So, for years and years, I’d done everything I could to skew the odds in my favor.

Ana had teased me about sleeping with a wooden sword, but she’d been wrong — I hadn’t slept with one. I’d slept with as many as fifty-seven of them in and around my bedside, all crafted by hand.

I’d made frequent trips to the Rust River to visit the swords there, absorbing what essence I could from the swords themselves, the saturated waters, and the plants nearby.

I’d worked at the Ghost Forge, not as a formal apprentice, but as an extra set of hands for Auntie Temper.

And, on the rare occasions when I had the opportunity, I’d traded, borrowed, and begged for raw sword essence in the form of essence vials and compressed nodes. Sadly, there weren’t many opportunities to do this — it simply wasn’t a common enough essence type for trade to be viable. Not in my homeland, anyway.

Even with all that effort, I hadn’t known if I’d managed to succeed until that day. My efforts to nurture a sword essence Heart Point were a race against every other type of essence I was exposed to — and, given the type of faerie forest I was in, that was a staggering variety.

If I’d gone just a little slower, I might have ended up with one of the more common types in the forest flowing through my heart. Something like life, or water, or even air — such essence types were ubiquitous.

But I’d succeeded. And now…it was almost time for the next phase in my (somewhat dubious) plan. “So…” I grinned. “I can go to your shrine now, can’t I?”

Ana’s eyes widened. “Oh! You can! You can finally start visiting me now! I can’t wait to brutalize you with my challenges!” She visibly brightened.

I grinned in return. “You can certainly try. In the meantime, though…a question for you. How long did it take you to get to peak Clarion?”

“Well, remember when I started glowing in the middle of our sparring match last winter?”

“Uh, yeah, hard to forget.”

“I know.” She batted her eyes at me. “I’m unforgettable.”

“Ugh. Just keep going.”

“Right. Well, that was when I first manifested my third essence type. I was able to start using a technique for it within two weeks. Aren’t I amazing?”

I grinned. “You are amazing. Your talent for essence techniques is marvelous for our age. It’s a shame about your swordsmanship.”

She punched me in the arm. Not hard, of course, but she was strong. At peak Clarion — the third stage of the Clarion level — her entire body had been reinforced considerably more than mine by her Dianis Points. “You’re asking for it, buddy. I played easy because it’s for your Name Day—”

“Oh, is that why you kept over-extending yourself?”

She growled. “Your face over-extended itself.”

“That…doesn’t even make any sense. But jumping back a topic…”

Ana grinned. “Right, running away. I see how it is.”

“Where’d you learn your techniques?”

“Well, it depended on the specific technique type. I have different teachers for each. For sword essence…uh, that’s going to be a problem, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Not a lot of sword teachers out here.”

We paused, contemplating quietly for a time while we ate.

It took Ana twelve years to reach peak Clarion…but it shouldn’t take me that long. At our age, essence development should be faster than when she was first born…but…she’s not going to slow down.

I’m going to need to figure out some tricks. But for now…

Taking a little break might be okay.

When the slain dragon was emptied, we rested together on the grass, chocolatey fingers intertwined.

“…You think it’ll always be like this for us?” Ana asked.

“I hope so.”

We were quiet, then.

Time passed. Day darkened until night.

…And finally, as Ana fell asleep, she changed. Her body shrank down to its original size, barely larger than my hand. It had taken her years to learn the techniques necessary to enlarge herself to my size, and even now, she couldn’t maintain them in her sleep.

I knelt down and cautiously picked her up, then laid her atop my cloak as a makeshift bed. She mumbled something in her sleep about there “not being enough time”, but I couldn’t quite catch all of it.

I had to rest her face-down on the cloak to avoid her wings punching holes in it, but she settled in easily enough. “Sleep well, Ana.”

Then finally, with a hint of regret at daylight’s end, I carried her home.

SECRET PROJECT TEASER

Over the last few years, I’ve been working on a variety of secret projects. I’m thrilled to finally unveil this one…and in this case, a picture is more appropriate than words to get us started.

Arcane Ascension is getting a webtoon from Tapas Media — and you’ll be able to read it very soon. I’ve been working extremely closely with the staff on this, and it’s looking amazing. (Thanks to Jeric, Holly, and the rest of the Tapas team for the incredible work on this.) Interested? Watch my blog for updates — we’ll have a release date for the comic soon.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andrew Rowe was once a professional game designer for awesome companies like Blizzard Entertainment, Cryptic Studios, and Obsidian Entertainment. Nowadays, he’s writing full time.

When he’s not crunching numbers for game balance, he runs live-action role-playing games set in the same universe as his books. In addition, he writes for pen and paper role-playing games.

Aside from game design and writing, Andrew watches a lot of anime, reads a metric ton of fantasy books, and plays every role-playing game he can get his hands on.

Interested in following Andrew’s books releases, or discussing them with other people? You can find more info, update, and discussions in a few places online:

Andrew’s Blog: https://andrewkrowe.wordpress.com/

Mailing List: https://andrewkrowe.wordpress.com/mailing-list/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Arcane-Ascension-378362729189084/

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClimbersCourt/

OTHER BOOKS BY ANDREW ROWE

The War of Broken Mirrors Series

Forging Divinity

Stealing Sorcery

Defying Destiny

Arcane Ascension Series

Sufficiently Advanced Magic

On the Shoulders of Titans

The Torch that Ignites the Stars

The Silence of Unworthy Gods

Weapons and Wielders Series

Six Sacred Swords

Diamantine

Soulbrand

Other Books

How to Defeat a Demon King in Ten Easy Steps

Death Game Quality Assurance

Arcane Ascension Universe Books by Other Authors

Crystal Awakening by Kayleigh Nicol

If you enjoyed this book, please consider leaving a review! Thank you again for reading.

Table of Contents

Map of Kaldwyn

Author’s Note on Reading Order

Style Notes

Recap – Arcane Ascension 1-3

Chapter I – Draw Your Sword

Chapter II – Home

Chapter III – Survival

Chapter IV – Three Ways to Survive

Chapter V – Scales of Punishment

Chapter VI – Orientation

Chapter VII – New Classes

Chapter VIII – A Different Kind of Magic

Chapter IX – The Change in the Flow

Chapter X – Measuring Progress

Chapter XI – New Marks

Chapter XII – Duel

Chapter XIII – Spirit Studies

Chapter XIV – Silver and Iron

Chapter XV – Promises of Future Problems

Chapter XVI – Growing Pains

Chapter XVII – Sons of Valia

Chapter XVIII – A House United

Chapter XIX – On a Different Scale

Chapter XX – Scars of the Sons

Chapter XXI – Family Faults

Chapter XXII – A Gem of a Different Color

Chapter XXIII – Gifts

Chapter XXIV – Overwhelmingly Dark

Chapter XXV – Gratitude and Goodbyes

Chapter XXVI – Waiting for Waking

Chapter XXVII – The Problems of Progress

Chapter XXVIII – Wearing the Glove

Chapter XXIX – Grades Above “A”

Chapter XXX – Old and New

Chapter XXXI – Against All Odds

Chapter XXXII – No Relief to be Found

Chapter XXXIII – Unlike Father, Unlike Son

Chapter XXXIV – Glass Houses

Chapter XXXV – Thorns of the Soul

Chapter XXXVI – Fool’s Gold

Chapter XXXVII – Dangerous Deals

Chapter XXXVIII – Something Borrowed

Chapter XXXIX – Trail of Blood

Chapter XXXX – The Third Player

Chapter XXXXI – The Hand on the Board

Chapter XXXXII – The Cost of a Life

Epilogue – Broken Horizon

Appendix I – Attunements of East Edria

Appendix II – Characters and Terms

Appendix III – Corin’s Class Schedules

Acknowledgements

Similar Works

Closing Notes From the Author

Preview Chapter – Edge of the Woods

Secret Project Teaser

About the Author

Other Books by Andrew Rowe