The Verity barns were shoddy workmanship. But then, not every [Carpenter] could be Industry Rather, Dalliance supposed.

  The fine dust under his feet scraped as he moved his feet, sword up and ready, scabbard covering the deadly blade, Earnest, across from him, held his own blade low. It looked like he’d left himself completely open—but then, Dalliance couldn’t be sure of hitting it even if he lunged.

  He wasn’t predicting this time. It wouldn’t train his strikes, just where he aimed, and besides, his mind felt like a sore muscle. He’d been abusing his new skills, maybe. Leaden thought fell behind leaden thought, and he simply waited for Earnest to move, a silence behind his eyes. He wondered if this was what it felt like to be stupid.

  So far, it wasn't going well.

  Even Earnest said so, after yet another up-tempo exchange of clacks. "I can't get any leverage with this. If it were a hatchet, maybe I could pry bark off a tree. But this weighs so little, even with the casing. Or . . . are we supposed to use the point?"

  "Probably," Dalliance said.

  But there was no success to be found there either—the finer points of stabbing eluded them. Dalliance tried the obvious icepick grip, but the blade was too long. Earnest thought lunging with the sword, as with a rapier, was probably the right approach, but, if he wasn’t wrong, this still seemed to require higher stats or better form than either of them possessed.

  Lunging was accurate enough, but when they switched to stabbing hay bales, they discovered that their light hits—even with the most force they could manage in a stab with the blade out of the sheath—still didn't penetrate the bale. Not even a hand's-width deep.

  "We're doing something wrong," Dalliance concluded.

  They checked the sharpness. It was fine; the blades were nice and sharp. No, it was something else. Despondent, the two sat.

  Swordsmanship wasn’t something that came naturally. This came as an unpleasant surprise.

  Dalliance even pulled out his [Prediction] skill, trying to find better futures if he did different things. He found that yes, there was a specific alignment of wrist, arm, and motion that he could do that would drive the blade deeply, satisfyingly, into the hay bale. And so he did it.

  It was an almost useless, two-handed, icepick grip, blade pointing out to the right, past his right underarm. Then he just kind of fell onto the top of the hay bale, and the short sword bit nearly its full length into the densely packed straw.

  The two of them stared at the embedded sword for a little while.

  "I have no idea how you'd do that again," Earnest said.

  "I don't know how I did it the first time," Dalliance said ruefully. The two of them sat.

  "Is it okay if I know what your skill is?" Earnest asked after a second. "Because it's not fair. You hit a bullseye with your first shot at the archery butts, and I thought I saw you activate a skill just now, and then you manage to stab like that."

  "You can't tell anyone."

  "They can't make me tell," Earnest assured him.

  "Okay," Dalliance said. He hesitated . . . but Earnest was his friend. Trustworthy. "I can predict what people are going to do. Or things. Or . . . conversations."

  "Damn," said Earnest with genuine appreciation. "You're not a [Pupil]. That's not a common skill."

  "I am not a [Pupil]," Dalliance agreed.

  "Are you going to tell me what you are?"

  "No."

  "You're a ne'er-do-well of some sort," Earnest surmised. "Telling me will hardly make anything worse, will it?"

  Dalliance hesitated, then sighed. "Fine. [Scamp]."

  The word wasn't easy to say. He'd spent so much time and so much mental energy not saying it, being certain not to say it, not even to think it, around Da anyway.

  "That is so unfair," Earnest breathed. "Tell me the rarity, please."

  "What, you can't look it up?"

  "I'm not gonna go looking up your class! Don't you know anything about keeping a secret?" Dalliance stared at him. "Okay, yeah, you got me," Earnest admitted. "Fine. I promise I'm not gonna go look you up. And that means you need to tell me."

  Dalliance kept his eyebrow up but relented. "It's 'Rare'," he admitted.

  His friend looked even more dumbfounded. "Man," he said. "I could have lived with you being 'Uncommon' like me. But now, every time Charity tells me what a rare bird you are, I have to agree with her. It's a terrible thing you've done to me, friend."

  "She said what?" asked Dalliance.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  His friend cackled. "A cool skill doesn't mean you don't fall for the oldest trick in the book," he said.

  Strange as it seemed, Earnest’s mood hadn't changed an iota, even as they walked up to the approach of the dungeon entrance. He was truly irrepressible once he got the bit between his teeth. Dalliance, on his part, did his best to suffer in silence. The alternative was being complicit in his own embarrassment.

  Of course, he wasn’t just taking the piss out of Dalliance. Sterling got his, as well.

  "So," Earnest needled the stern-faced boy, "not doing a V again, are we?"

  "A phalanx," Sterling corrected. "Standard procedure for Monster Hunters." He’d carefully guided the group into a formation, roughly centered around Dalliance, Effluvia, and Charity. Sterling and a grim-faced Woebegone took the shoulders, their spear points creating a bristling cage. Civility fell in at his left, Servility on his right.

  The corridor—if you could call the weed-choked passage between old mangroves a corridor—yawned before them. Spiral, inch-long thorns coated every vine, dripping a black, brackish goo that smelled of rot. The path narrowed, forcing the phalanx to compress into a tight column, with Prudence and Immaculate taking the lead to hack a path forward.

  Dalliance gripped his shortsword, feeling useless. It was hardly the grand adventure from a clapbook, standing around while others did the work. He swung experimentally at a vine and flinched as several heads turned to give him a scornful look.

  "It just feels like I should be helping," he muttered.

  Sterling shot him an incredulous glance. "This is rosa spinosa indicia. Quite poisonous. Better to let the folks with the long handles deal with it."

  From somewhere in the back, Rotter laughed. "You would know that, you ponce."

  "Quiet," Woebegone growled, his voice a low threat.

  The air grew thick and still, the evening light filtering down through the dense canopy in sickly, desaturated rays. An egret stood on one leg in a clearing ahead, unnervingly motionless.

  "We are in the dungeon proper," Effluvia whispered from behind him. "The magic is different here."

  A cold knot formed in Dalliance's stomach. He pushed his will outward, trying to engage his [Prediction]. Nothing. Just a vague, cold pressure pushing back, alien and hostile.

  Panic flared, hot and sharp. He pushed again, harder, pouring his fear into the skill. It flickered and took hold, the world overlayed with ghostly afterimages. But he saw nothing—no lurking monsters, no hidden traps. Only the faint foreshadows of his own party, moving through the waist-high thorn bushes. What was he even looking for?

  The first sign of trouble came from the front. As Civility hacked into another thick vine, the severed halves didn't fall. They writhed. Thorns erupted from their surfaces, shooting from an inch to a foot long in an instant.

  Civility screamed—a breathless, reedy sound as the black thorns pierced him from all sides.

  And in that instant of chaos, Dalliance saw the real enemy.

  It wasn't a snake. Snake was too small a word. This was a serpent, horned and armored, with bone nodules running down its spine. Its eyes blazed like green forge-coals, trailing vapor in the humid air.

  Dalliance’s prediction flared, showing the creature’s path—a blur of motion too fast to counter.

  "Prudence, run!" he yelled, but the warning was already too late.

  A V-shaped wave cut through the algae, and the thing exploded from the water, sinking its teeth into Prudence's face. The sheer weight of it bowled her over. She fell sideways, already wrapped in scaly coils, her frantic axe swings barely chipping its hide. Green, sparkling blood welled from the cuts, but she was dragged under before he could see what effect it had.

  Then the creature changed. Its flesh hardened and bristled, bark spreading across its scales, thorns sprouting from its body. In a heartbeat, it froze, becoming just another gnarled log in the water, a solid-wood effigy of a serpent, still coiled tight around the drowning girl.

  "Prudence!" Civility screamed, charging forward to claw at the woody coils holding his sister under. Immaculate was right behind him, his bearded axe raining blows on the serpent-log, sending chips of splintered wood flying.

  "[Healer]!" Dalliance shouted, but his eyes were already scanning, tracking the ghostly afterimage from his prediction. It was moving, coiling for another strike. Circe. It was going for the smaller opponents first.

  Prudence’s struggles had weakened to mere twitches. There was only one chance.

  He poured every ounce of his fear into his skill, focusing on the ghostly serpent. His voice broke as he shrieked, "Over HERE!"

  [Deflection successful].

  The world seemed to slow. The serpent’s afterimage, which had been arcing toward Circe, twisted in mid-air. Its blazing green eyes locked onto him.

  He had its attention.

  Time crashed back in with a roar. The real serpent erupted from the water in a wave of black mud. Even as it lunged, he heard Circe cry out a single, sharp word of power. A bolt of raw force slammed into the creature's back with the crack of a splitting tree. The charge faltered, but its momentum was too great. It hurtled forward, a nightmare of fangs and green fire.

  Dalliance was already moving. He sidestepped, letting the serpent's head shoot past where he'd been a heartbeat before. He brought his shortsword around in a tight arc, dragging the blade along its belly. Sparks flew, but the steel skittered off the thick scales, doing no real harm.

  It hit the water with a tremendous splash and circled back. It was coming for him again. But what was Sterling doing? Dalliance’s prediction showed him pointing his sword and then . . . stopping. Oh no. He's going to set it on fire.

  "Don't use the sword!" Dalliance begged, seeing futures flicker before his eyes: friends screaming, patting at flames that wouldn't go out, jumping into the water only to burn.

  Sterling just gave him an incredulous look. The serpent surged from the water. Dalliance dodged back as Sterling pointed his blade and chanted.

  A flash of light, a sound so loud it felt like his head was wrapped in cotton wool. Lightning struck the water inches away, and suddenly everything was on fire. Including him.

  Burning water sluiced off the creature in incandescent streams. He dodged the serpent but couldn't dodge the fiery rain. He threw his arms in front of his face, a useless gesture against the agony.

  He shrieked and stumbled back, fighting to see what was coming next.

  [Through their ongoing ambivalence to your advice, your trusted companions have proven its worth! Your merits have been witnessed.]

  [Trait gained: Call Me Cassandra.]

  And his prediction went dark.