Arthur was only jogging. Really, he wasn’t even breaking a sweat. The only thing was that he was at bronze rank, whereas Valar was not. That meant that when Arthur jogged, Valar had to sprint like an umbral terror was at his heels in order to keep up.

  The route Arthur was taking didn’t make Valar’s job any easier. He dashed between people, made sudden turns and took shortcuts through narrow alleyways. Valar thought that he lost the man several times during his pursuit, but luckily, he always managed to spot him on the next street. The run took just about 10 minutes in total, and Valar damn near collapsed from exhaustion when they finally stopped. All in all, the run had been the most physical exercise he had gotten in two months.

  When Arthur stopped at the entrance to a workyard that was similar to the one they had departed from in Lyndale, Valar finally caught up. He was pretty sure that it wasn’t the one they had driven to when they had arrived in Rhondell, since the wagons looked markedly different. They were of similar design to the ones he knew but were most likely made by a different company. Not a giant surprise, as there were multiple caravan companies that hired adventurers for escort missions.

  Just as he was about to walk through the open gates, Arthur turned around and looked at Valar in confusion.

  “Did you just follow me from the guild? I swear I saw you at the guild,” he said without even the tiniest speck of tiredness in his voice. “You could’ve just yelled after me if you had something to say, you know.”

  Valar breathed heavily as he rested his hands on his knees. “I… tried… that. You didn’t hear me, so… I followed you.”

  “Well I was in a rush,” Arthur shrugged. “I still am, actually. My caravan is leaving in a couple of minutes.”

  The dreamy man turned back to the gate, but Valar yelled after him. “Wait! I want to join your team!”

  “Huh? But you awakened just a few months ago,” Arthur chuckled. “Finish your studies, then come talk.”

  “I did.”

  “That’s what I’m saying… Come back after-,” Arthur spun around with bronze rank speed and looked at Valar with his golden eyes. “You did? It’s been only a couple months.”

  Valar took one of his hands off his knee to point at the mage’s robe. “Yet I’m wearing this.”

  A wide grin started spreading on the archer’s face. He meandered over to Valar and looked at him with shining eyes. “I guess we both got lucky then… Welcome to the team, Villy!”

  Valar yelped with both shock and fright as Arthur took his hand and yanked hard, slinging the boy onto one of his padded shoulders. He took off towards the caravan that was already starting to move in the distance and laughed.

  “My name is not Villy!” Valar yelled over the rushing wind as Arthur ran for real. “That sounds like a name you would give to a snake that likes beer or something! Also, put me down!”

  “Sorry, we’re missing the caravan if I do, Wally!”

  “It’s Valar!”

  In the months since their team had been founded, Carla had been annoyed by Arthur’s antics many times. He had said and done stupid things, not said and not done intelligent things, and most importantly, he had been unapologetically himself. A man like Arthur Gladstone should have been at least a little apologetic about his existence, but the insufferable man was certainly not.

  That being said, she had never been quite as annoyed with Arthur as just now—their caravan about to leave for Lyndale without their archer because he had wanted to know how much they were getting paid. She had of course told him the answer to his question, but the man had still left for the guild because of a gut feeling. Like always.

  Carla had initially suspected that either the man didn’t trust her or women in general, but both of those ideas had been tossed out of the window with time. He occasionally listened to Carla, Ciel and lots of other women and men on different things. Then, without warning, he would completely reject one of their suggestions on a gut feeling and do his own thing.

  Ciel was much better at dealing with the blonde menace, so Carla tended to leave the job of babysitting Arthur with her. This time, even Ciel had failed to hold him back.

  “We’re leaving!” the caravan driver yelled. “We can’t wait any longer, or we’ll be late. Your archer can catch us on his own!”

  “Fuck…” Carla muttered.

  “Language, Carla,” Rodrick said mechanically. “He’ll come. He always does.”

  Carla usually agreed, but this felt different. Arthur had never been actually late, so this was new territory. Seriously, what’s holding him back? With his speed, he should be-.

  “It’s Valar!” the shout of a teenage boy rang out on the massive workyard.

  “I don’t care, we’re late!” Arthur’s voice echoed in the open area. “Carla and Ciel will yell at me if we’re even more late than this!”

  Valar? Isn’t that the name of the kid we saved in Lyndale. Why did that sound like him…

  Soon, she got her answer.

  Arthur appeared from the wagon-filled workyard, and he wasn’t alone. On his shoulder was a boy in mage’s robes, yelling at him to stop and let him down. What the fuck? What has he done now?

  The archer reached the caravan quickly, as the wagons were not moving much faster than a normal walking pace.

  “What have you done now, Arthur?” Rodrick asked. “Also, put the kid down.”

  Arthur practically threw Valar off his shoulder, but the kid managed to hold himself upright with a few stumbling steps. “Look guys! I found us a new healer!”

  Rodrick sighed. “Arthur… didn’t we wheel him off to the academy just a couple months ago? How could he have graduated that fast?”

  “Actually, I did that just today,” Valar said as he brushed off his robes. “I want to do the iron rank internship with your team, if you’ll have me.”

  Carla inspected the boy’s robes. “Those are the real deal, aren’t they? It’s hard to believe that you finished your studies that fast, but you can’t get those robes from just anywhere. You know what, walk with us!”

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Carla, need I remind you that I’m the team leader,” Rodrick grumbled as Valar fell into step with the team. “But yeah, let’s talk.”

  “What do you want to know? I’m keen to start adventuring right away!”

  “What spells can you cast?” Carla asked. “Lesser Fortify and Lesser Restoration? Those are the mandatory ones they teach, right?”

  “Yeah. I do have the book on life magic runes with me, so I’m expecting to learn some more body enhancement in the future too.”

  “That’s great! Are you coming with us on this caravan? That would be wonderful!”

  “There are rules in place, Carla,” Rodrick butted in. “We’re supposed to do all kinds of forms and applications to take on an iron rank intern. He can’t just come with us right now!”

  “Why not?” Ciel asked. “The mission would be much less risky if we had a healer. You wouldn’t need to use so many potions, we would have shorter recovery times, durability enhancements are useful…”

  “There are rules!”

  “Who cares,” Arthur said with a grin on his face. “Wal… Vel… Valar here would be a wonderful addition, and we can register him to our team in Lyndale! I’m guessing you want to come with us, right? You wouldn’t have run all the way here otherwise.”

  “Yeah,” Valar smiled. ”I didn’t really plan it, but I have all my things with me and nothing to do in Rhondell.”

  Rodrick looked at Valar and his own party, everyone else seemingly having agreed to accept the boy in their team. He let out a mix between a sigh and a growl filled with frustration and started walking in the direction of the first wagon. “I’ll go talk to the driver… We should have enough rations, and Valar can sleep in our room. Think of this caravan escort as a trial run, ok?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Stop that. We’re adventurers, not guardsmen,” Rodrick said over his shoulder. “Go toss your things in the caravan and get ready for a long day of travel.”

  I think we just got ourselves a healer!

  Valar was downright giddy as the caravan rolled through the western gate of the capital. Just being outside of city gates... It made Valar feel free. During the two months he spent in Rhondell, Valar hadn’t thought of himself as a prisoner even once, but the comparison appeared in his mind the instant he left the city. The masses of people, the dark alleyways and everything else just made him feel like he was out of his element. Here, in the wilderness, the feeling was just the opposite.

  It reminded him of the time he had walked out of the Lyndale sewer and encountered the forest for the first time in a decade. Everything had seemed beautiful, just like today.

  “What crops are they growing?” Valar asked. “Do they have mage assistance? How do they get all the water they need for the crops?”

  “Relax, Valar,” Carla laughed. “You seem to like it here. Adventuring certainly seems like a good job for you.”

  “Yeah! I tried the weeklong internship in the infirmary, and it sucked! I was halfway sure that I would be adventuring even before it, but I was sure after the week!”

  Carla shrugged. “I had a similar experience when I needed to intern at the water purification plant in Thornton. I knew I was becoming an adventurer the first day I was there!”

  “Carla, Valar, need I remind you that you are guarding a caravan?” Rodrick’s shout came from ahead. Even if you aren’t scouts like Ciel and Arthur, I’d like you to at least look around yourselves every once in a while!”

  “We aren’t even in the forest yet!” Carla yelled back. “What’s going to attack us on the plains?”

  “I don’t know… A big bird or something?”

  “A big… bird? Or something?” both Carla and Valar asked incredulously.

  “It’s entirely possible,” Rodrick muttered under his breath as Carla laughed uproariously. “Flying beasts aren’t even that rare…”

  The pair of mages did stay more vigilant after that. As much as they laughed at Rodrick’s fears of big birds, nowhere outside of the city walls was truly safe. Beasts or even bandits could roam from the Ronaheim forest, and even silver rank threats weren’t that rare. Those were all beasts though, as human silver rankers were quite a bit rarer.

  A silver rank member of one of the sapient races was generally considered a much bigger threat than a beast of the same rank. Even though their strength was comparable, an intelligent opponent who could strategise was much harder to deal with than one who attacked based on instinct. Some silver rank beasts—especially solitary hunters—were smart enough to avoid stronger opponents and fight intelligently, but they couldn’t form complex thoughts or strategies just yet. That was a true blessing.

  “Hey Valar,” Carla started. “Did they teach you how to store spells? If I remember correctly, most people learn it when they start adventuring.”

  “No, I didn’t learn how to do it,” Valar said. “Is there some trick?”

  “Not really. It’s easy really, but some can’t do it because of a faulty mindset. How would I teach this…. What is a spell?”

  Valar looked at Carla with clear confusion. “It’s a set of runes I channel my mana through to make something happen. Why are you shaking your head? It’s just that!”

  “Nope! I want you to think of the spell as just the channeling and the effect. Excise the idea of runes being part of your spell from your mind.”

  “But I couldn’t cast spells at all if I didn’t use runes! That’s completely stupid!”

  “The runes are only a frame for the resulting spell,” Carla explained. “You need to be able to stop the process of your casting just before you start channeling your mana to cast a spell, and the easiest way to do that is to just think of the runes as preparation for the spell, not the spell itself. Look.”

  Four runes appeared quickly along Carla’s pale wrist, their colour ice blue. Just when Valar expected the woman to start channeling her mana, the whole spellframe seemed to turn inert and colourless. The casting had been stopped, but the spell didn’t turn unstable.

  After Valar had learned his first spell, Elaine’s substitute teacher had taught him how to cancel a casting. It was a slow process and amounted to backtracking your steps slowly and carefully. That could only be done before the spellframe turned unstable.

  Valar hadn’t considered that an active casting could be stopped like Carla just did. “Can you still cast it? What about cancelling the spell?”

  “I can do both, although cancelling the spell can be difficult at this point,” Carla said. “You can start training it with your simplest spell in the evenings. I suppose that would be either your restoration or fortify spell’s self-cast variant. I recommend that you start with Lesser Fortify Self, as that’s the most useful in the heat of battle. Your iron rank healing will be mostly useful after the fight.”

  “I’ll do that, thanks for the lesson! Can I come to ask for help if I don’t get it?”

  “No problem,” Carla smiled. “And don’t hesitate to ask for help. If you’re to be my teammate, I want you to be as useful as possible.”

  In Valar’s opinion, Carla was actually quite a good teacher. He hadn’t had the chance to experience a lot of different teaching styles, but Carla’s laid back approach helped him grasp the concepts in question much more easily. He suspected that he would have needed a full lecture from Brynn to truly understand what he was supposed to do, but Carla’s simple example and explanation crystallised what he needed to learn to an easily digestible package.

  I think I will be able to do that in a few tries. I’ll need to start preparing a Lesser Fortify or two just in case I get attacked by beasts, since the spell isn’t really useful at my casting speeds if I get into an actual fight. I’d have to just run and hope for the team to save me, unless… No! The fire is out of question. I can’t reveal it to anyone!

  His unwillingness to use his fire meant that he really needed to train preparing spells quickly. That would be essentially the only means of self protection he had, as self healing was way too slow at iron rank. But that’s the life of a healer, isn’t it? My affinity sucks!

  The following hour was filled with walking among the massive fields of wheat and barley, waving to the farmers and general boredom. They were not going at high pace like the earlier trip, as they had not been ambushed by bandits just yet. Instead, the caravan driver had chosen to take the relaxed approach and save the horses’ strength.

  The caravan had left from the city around an hour after lunchtime—quite a bit later than usual—but it still had time to cross the Ronaheim forest before nightfall. That just required the horses to really push themselves during the time of crossing, but the approach had been good enough that the company used it regularly.

  That meant that they would be entering the forest in the late afternoon and emerging out the other side just before nightfall.

  “Prepare for combat!” a sudden yell broke Valar’s train of thought. “Some kind of big bird is attacking the caravan!”

  What? Is this a joke?

  It was indeed not a joke.

  An admittedly ‘big’ bird soared through the sky and dove towards the slowly moving caravan full of tasty goodies. The bird itself was a large yellow creature with wings that shouldn’t have been enough to hold it in the sky. Its head was small and its beak was long and thin—most likely used to spear its enemies. That beak would not be something that Rodrick wanted to try and block.

  Valar’s first fight as an adventurer would be against a big, yellow bird. And that bird was angry.

  SCREECH!