“OK, just to try it then, and not because I couldn’t deal with this myself, but would you be willing to heal one of the blisters I got from the hike?” Danielle asked. “The one on my right ankle is the one that hurts worst. Hopefully it’s small enough it’ll be a one-pointer anyway, but maybe it’ll give you a better feel for how the Skill actually goes.”

  “Oh, you should’ve asked right away!” Heather exclaimed. “You already knew I took the Healer Class!”

  “Well yeah, but we haven’t actually been here that long, and there was no point asking before we were all the way here, and – ” Danielle paused and sighed. “Well, we don’t know what tomorrow will bring, so I hate to spend mana on something that doesn’t really need it. Except you have a point about not wasting generated points on a full pool, and if you need to use it once anyway to learn how – ”

  “It’s not that minor. We can’t afford to let things go and get infected either, you know?” Heather interrupted. “Let me see.”

  “Yeah, OK. Thanks,” Danielle said, taking her boot off. She pulled off the sock too, then turned over and flopped face first on her bed so Heather could get at the back of her ankle. “I should practice my Diagnostics Skill too, I guess, but I’m already so low on mana, I’m thinking I’ll wait for tomorrow.”

  “That’s fine,” Heather said. “I’m already at eight, though, like Sadie, so it makes sense for me to do it now. I guess six generation is one every four hours, so if we sleep in, I could be hitting my cap. Better to use a point or two tonight. Oh! OK, the bad news is, your blister popped, and this is a two-point healing; the good news is, I see how the token thing works now. When I activate the Skill, it tells me how much mana to complete the healing, and asks me if I want to use my own mana or token mana. I’ll just use mine and get you sealed up here.”

  “OK, I’m paying attention for – yeah, there it is,” Danielle replied.

  “There what is?” Akari asked, but both Danielle and Heather ignored her. “Um, guys?”

  “Done,” Heather announced. “Sorry, it takes some concentration.”

  “Yeah, for me too,” Danielle added. “Remember, I said Mana Deflector can interfere with other people’s Skills that they’re using on me. I felt her Skill, that’s what I meant by ‘there it is,’ and I needed to concentrate on letting it through.”

  “I think there might be a Skill in the Healer tree for getting around that,” Heather said thoughtfully. “I’ll have to read my Skill tree more thoroughly next time.”

  Sadie gave her an odd look. “Next time what?”

  “Next time I can read it? I guess whenever we go find a wild Access Point?” Heather said uncertainly.

  “You can read your available Skills now,” Sadie told her. “We might need the Access Point to check for new ones, I’m not sure, but I checked while you guys were listening to gossip, and you can see all your unlocked Skills and even take new ones any time you have mana for it. I tried, and I got a “not enough mana” message, but nothing about going to an Access Point.”

  “That’s good to know. I really need to read all my stuff, too,” Danielle admitted. “I was so focused on learning from everyone else while I had the chance, I barely glanced at my own status beyond the decision-making part.”

  “So back to reading, then? First status, then books?” Akari asked.

  Danielle chuckled. “Heh, I guess so.”

  The evening passed fairly quietly after that. There might have been a few cries from outside – as best they could tell, people shouting “What?!” or something like that. They joked that someone had just been informed about being locked in for the night, but there was no real way to tell. They all ended up taking notes, Akari using her lunch bag for note paper.

  Danielle went through the Skill descriptions of all her Skills, including at least a quick skim of the ones she hadn’t taken (or in some cases, even looked at). In the Dome of Decision, she had noticed the Observation Skill tree (for example) was unlocked, but with more obvious priorities, she hadn’t even opened the tree to see what the actual Skills were like; she’d gone straight to the Living Awareness Skill tree. Now she rectified that (learning, for example, that the observation Skills mostly highlighted things in her field of view – which specific things would depend on the Skill).

  Then she spent some time reading in A Firmitatem Ranger’s Guide to the Outside, which turned out to have more information about the System than she had ever been taught inside Firmitatem. She jumped to the chapters on how Classes, Careers, and Skills worked, and found herself alternating between the book and her System as she began to connect ideas with the reality in her interface. She took a break about 9:00, according to her new watch, to trace over the words of the SHAD Party charter in her journal with ink and then erase away the light pencil writing underneath – the charter was active, there would be no more easy changes.

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  Eventually, she glanced at the watch again and saw that it was 10:00. “It’s getting late, guys. Let’s get some sleep. We might need to get moving early in the morning.”

  Heather looked up from copying out drawings of some plants into a spiral notebook. “Here’s another idea: what if we stay in tomorrow morning, and let the crazies get out of the area first?”

  “We don’t know if they’ll leave the area,” Sadie said. “I hate not having a window here. How are we supposed to even know if there’s someone waiting outside our door to ambush us?”

  “Hostility Sense,” Akari said.

  “And Sense Mana Source for me,” Danielle added.

  “You’re actually the only one without some way of sensing other people by their mana, I think,” Heather said.

  “Rub it in, Heather.” Sadie frowned.

  “I didn’t mean it that way!” Heather protested with a huff. “I meant, if you need to know, you can ask any of the rest of us!”

  Danielle nodded. “She’s right – you’re our bow using, twine-making person, we’re your sensing-ambushes people. It’s all part of being in the party, right?”

  “Oh. Well – yeah, all right. I pity the room that doesn’t have anyone with those Skills, though.” Sadie put down her own notebook and rubbed her eyes. “I guess I am pretty tired. And sore.”

  “Watch for Rapid Muscle Recovery to become available in your Traits – I’m guessing we’re all going to get enough exercise to have it available soon enough. It’s amazing, I’m actually feeling better already.” Akari stretched, as if to emphasize the point. “We should get to sleep anyway, though, because if it’s too dangerous to go outside at dawn, then it will probably also be too loud to sleep. Because there’d be screaming.”

  “Well there’s a pleasant thought,” Heather complained.

  Akari shrugged. “Not really, but it’s still true. I’m going to wash my face and take my – oh, right, I’m not wearing contacts. Well, take the pencils out of my glasses case, I guess, and – I don’t even know. They didn’t really give us pajamas.”

  Danielle sighed. “I’m going to wear my sweaty underwear overnight and change in the morning when I take a shower, I think.”

  “I’m going to shower tonight and change in the morning. And we need to figure out laundry, because we don’t have a lot of clothes,” Heather pointed out.

  Sadie made a small sound of agreement. “Food may be first, but there’s a lot of other stuff to figure out.”

  “Tomorrow,” Akari said. “After it’s dark outside, probably. When you’re camping, you have to do all the physical stuff while there’s light but then you can sit around and talk until late around the campfire. We have light in here – as long as the generators are good, but hopefully that’ll stick – but outside we still have to work while there’s daylight. Even with all the stuff you guys brought, we’ve only got so much light from flashlights and lamps and stuff, and we’ll need to save it for emergencies, and for when we’re actually sleeping away from the Rooms.”

  “So you’re saying we should plan to turn the lights off early and talk in the dark?” Danielle asked.

  “Well, I don’t know if we have to do that in the room,” Akari admitted. “I’m just saying, we should work outside in the day, and do planning and figuring and book reading in here at night. And if you’re ready to go to bed, maybe we can turn off some of the lights now? Does the kitchen area have a separate switch?”

  “Danielle’s right, it’s late and we don’t know what’s happening at dawn when the doors unlock,” Sadie said. “If you guys want to keep talking, please do it quietly. I’m going to try making a mana token, and then go to sleep.”

  A little investigation revealed that yes, all four lights could be switched on and off separately, and the light over the countertops was small enough that with the light over the beds turned off, the bedroom proper was, if not dark, at least relatively dim. Danielle lay down and tried to doze off, but while it was perhaps restful, she didn’t really fall asleep as Heather and Akari showered, complained quietly to each other about the lack of towels, and got in bed. Sadie seemed to have lain down at the same time as Danielle and was at least quiet if not asleep. Akari finally turned off the kitchen and sink lights, leaving the one in the bathroom proper on as a nightlight, to help her find her way to bed without running into anything.

  Danielle couldn’t stop the whirl of thoughts through her mind. Diagrams from the guidebook danced through her head interspersed with fragments of the guide’s “orientation” ramblings, snippets of Skill descriptions, and bits of gossip from the fields. Under it all coiled a strange braid of worry and assurance. Part of her wanted to panic as she lay in a new room in a new place – almost a new world. High mana environment! (Abandoned; cast out and abandoned!) Yet another part flowed with an inexplicable current of peace and confidence. It was going to be OK in the end; she was Sent out, not discarded; she was made independent, not fully abandoned; she had her friends and their Party charter, and her parents were undoubtedly praying for her back home.

  Which reminded her, she was probably overdue to pray about all this. It seemed like a lifetime since the last time she’d taken the dorm bus to the church her parents had authorized on her student activities sheet, but it had actually been all of six – five? It had been five days. Things moved fast when a draft Sending was announced, obviously to keep students from trying to run away. Announcement on Wednesday, family visits and the Necessities Store on Thursday, and this was Friday. Tomorrow would be Saturday. She hadn’t even missed a weekly service yet – that would be the day after tomorrow. Would they say a prayer for the Sent during morning services?

  “God, please help us stay alive,” Danielle prayed silently. “I don’t know what we’re doing out here, but I know I want to get to level ten and still be a sane person who can come home to my family and not scare them. I want to help my friends and stay away from atrocities and – and be good. I know I’m always praying for you to help me be good, but I think it’s about to get harder than it’s ever been before, so I’m asking extra. Help me. Help us all.”

  Somewhere between that thought and figuring out what else she should pray for, Danielle must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she was aware of was a loud voice, as if someone was not quite shouting, right next to her head.

  short chapters, which I'll be cramming into one week, so together they count as long.

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