Days passed in a peaceful symphony, one after another through the concert of familiarity. If I ignored my brushes with death then I was, ostensibly, as safe as I’d ever been. Free to train and grow my power in the embrace of a peaceful existence. Idyllic really, a blessed portion of my life where I knew no danger, knew no fear, and could wallow in my trauma in the embrace of civilization.

  City life was significantly different from my home, filled with a kind of manic hustle that was novel when I first came but had become a bit annoying. The people here didn’t know or care for one another, each living in their own fiction to supersede reality.

  The anonymity led to plenty of casual cruelty, but it also made the constant need for a mask almost non-existent. My every move wasn’t being subtly tracked by the denizens, though I was noticed more than most considering my heritage.

  It was refreshing. It was isolating. It was something different, a new way of approaching the world that I hadn’t had the pleasure of experiencing before.

  It was also extremely boring.

  Say what you will about the village, but there I at least enjoyed the monotony.

  Smithing was a passion I wouldn’t have expected myself to hold before coming to this world, and butchering couldn’t even come close to matching the satisfaction I got from shaping metal. Training just hurt, and I wasn’t a masochist, so that was a dud as well.

  At least the games with Riri and Gar were fun, I tried to get Xae in on our mischief but the girl just laughed in my face. Insipid bitch, all the more reason to push myself during our spars. Not that I needed any more encouragement beyond the burning desire for survival.

  I was plenty aware that training should’ve been my main focus, it was the cornerstone of my need to get stronger, my primary path to survival. But it hurt. It hurt so bad. Every night I condensed mana in my arm, more and more and more until the pain overwhelmed me and in that moment of weakness I would let go.

  There was progress of some kind, but I didn’t know what strengthening the borders of my pathways did. Let alone the amount of time it would take to bring all of them up to par. I could stay up all night if I kept subjecting myself to the suffering. My best so far had been two days. No nightmares, barely any thoughts at all beyond the pain! Aira noticed my lethargy and gave me a mighty scolding, so I wasn’t doing that again, unfortunately.

  Blessed variety arrived in the form of Loklan, and for a bit that was enough. Going out on short hunts that would only last a few days, killing wandering fauna using caveman methods. Sleeping in the forest brought back a bit of nostalgia for my vagabond days. I kind of missed the simplicity of traveling between ruined villages, as fucked up as that sounded. But eventually even the hunts became a bore, and a bit of a moral quandary. Killing so many innocent creatures wasn’t the best for my sanity.

  Technically sparring with Xae didn’t start until after Loklan’s introduction, but it was part of my routine now and therefore boring. Okay, not entirely. Fighting was a little fun when my life wasn't on the line. Even if it made me think of Isidro and Jiso. But…remembering wasn’t a bad thing, I had to remind myself of that.

  But hunting stalled in preparation for the Reudenmire festival. It was tradition for hunters to present a fine kill at the festivities, an excuse for some of the more lazy members to get off their asses and cull some real monsters, and a clout competition for the more competent teams to rid the forest of something horrifying. They didn’t do that for the festival back home, but they didn’t have proper hunters. Other than Patan.

  Who was he going to compete with? Himself?

  But with the coming festival meant a pause in hunting to allow the monster population to grow a bit, to attract some greater beasts for the proper teams to cull. Strange, considering the season was known for intense monster activity anyway.

  So I was stuck in this city, stuck in my routine which was necessary because I needed to be stronger because if I wasn't stronger then—

  Stop. Breath.

  All in due time, I just had to put in the time, and I was nothing if not dedicated, with everything being as it was.

  So I needed to focus on this stupid fucking game and stop daydreaming.

  Gar, Riri, and me made a triangle in front of something like a three-way chess game. Except the pieces moved differently to accommodate prism shaped tiles instead of square ones. It was called prism (how creative), but was, in all respects, chess. For some fucking reason someone decided to morph it into a three-way game and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why. Finding someone to play with was hard enough, finding two?

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  What kind of coincidence would it be to find three chess lovers in the same room willing to torture themselves with the attempt at induced cerebral palsy? Needless to say, I didn't care for this game, and wouldn’t have bothered if Riri didn’t shamelessly plead for my participation.

  Apparently it was pretty popular among the slum kids, but getting a proper board was expensive, so they either made their own or drew on the dirt. In this case, we were playing on a board Gar made a few weeks ago after selling his old one for a few coppers. Didn’t make much, but the carving of pieces was what kept him fed before I came along.

  “You know, if you're planning on boring us to death before the game ends, it’s certainly working. Make a move already,” Gar said to my left.

  I waved him off. “I was just thinking, shrimpdick.”

  “Thinking about what?” Riri tilted her head.

  “About you actually,” I said. “And how exactly you fed yourself before I came along.”

  Riri let out a very undignified snort. “What most of the rest do, steal! And help the weavers every now and again, but that’s a lame job for lame people. Only one I can find though, since the rest don’t let silly girls do their work.”

  There was some bite to that last bit, a little vitriol I wasn’t used to hearing in her voice. “So I wasn’t a special case then?”

  “You were special,” Riri huffed. “Especially rich, and supposedly easy.”

  I gave her a wicked smile, and Riri shivered.

  “You two never told me about how you met,” Gar pondered. “The fact it’s because Riri tried to snag some coins from you is somehow not surprising.”

  Riri grumbled out her dissatisfaction and the two of us let out mutual chuckles. The kids were certainly entertaining…and weak.

  Too weak for the end.

  “Want to be a hunter?” I said, sudden and revealing nothing.

  “Can I?” Riri’s eyes went wide and sparkled at my offer, like an innocent doe.

  “That’s a bad idea,” Gar interrupted. “What if she hurts herself?”

  “I’ll pay for the healer,” I said.

  “With what money? Surely your rat brain funds have dried up by now.”

  “Could always hunt another one, not like anyone would stop me.”

  “Can I come?” Riri asked.

  “No,” Gar and I said simultaneously, though Gar seemed surprised by my agreement.

  I raised a brow at him. “What? I said I’d teach her how to be a hunter, that starts with learning how to fight, not the fight itself.”

  “Can we just shelve this idea? The two of you are too eager to make stupid decisions,” Gar sighed.

  I shook my head. “No can do friend, now that I’ve put the idea in her head, she’ll be frothing at the mouth in hopes of doing it. Just how children work.”

  “You’re a child too,” Gar rebutted.

  “A special child.”

  Gar let out a sigh, a long suffering sigh. “Can you teach me as well if you're going to go out of your way?”

  Holding back a devious smile was a challenge. Hook, line, and sinker.

  “Sure,” I chirped.

  “Great, can we get back to the game now?” Gar said.

  I nodded and moved a pawn to a diagonal prism, forward right. Pawns couldn’t go back, so once it was dedicated to defend against one opponent, it was dedicated. Kept some of the game's spirit alive while adding a new challenge. Too bad I never liked chess.

  I lost, obviously. Gar usually claimed victory, but this time it was Riri. I would’ve liked to think that it was because Riri was particularly smart that day, but I could practically feel the anxiety eating up Gar at the prospect of being a hunter. Which was fine. I was going to teach them swordsmanship first, because that was what I knew, then we were going to hunt a Muri-Ursi together once I was confident in their strength.

  Should only be a few months of intensive training. If I acted as the vanguard then most of the danger would be on me anyway, so it wasn’t like I was putting children in danger. Just the opposite in fact, but if I told them my reasons they might not've gone along with it. I learned a long time ago that just telling people the world was ending without proof was a fantastic way to find them politely ignoring you. Or outright mocking, but that was rare.

  I headed back to the hunters guild, got my ass beat by Xae again, then did my nightly ritual of ethereal torture hoping that something changed.

  Nothing did. Nothing more than the usual at least, and I wasn’t sure if I was lasting any longer now. I tried to find time to get back into the habit of forming a ball of mana into my palm…and found that I could do it whenever, even when moving around.

  It didn’t do anything because it hadn’t crossed the threshold, and it was tiny compared to the palm sized ball I could make when staying still. Smaller than even my first attempt. Perhaps just a little bigger than a spec of dust. But the training? It was wondrous, the added difficulty a balm to sooth my soul in weary times. Argyle didn’t join me in butchering, he had been sporadic with the coming festival, but I hadn’t really learned anything about the boy. Not enough to care at least.

  Just that he was the son of one of the magisters, and that he may or may not have a crush on me?

  Hard to tell when all his focus was so heavily dedicated to butchering rather than socializing.

  I’d figure it out some day…for now? I needed to prepare for a hunt.

  It had been three months, and I wanted to see if I could kill a giant rat without draining the entirety of my mana and doing…whatever I did to the imp. It had been reticent, almost lazy. I had a feeling I couldn’t use him as a crutch again anyway.

  Once the morning came, I skipped my butchering, and headed straight for the sewers.