While most of the surface of an island rose above the float line, there were some places on the interior below that height, such as the harbor’s lake bed. Miasma gathered in these depressions, and where miasma gathered, monsters spawned. There just so happened to be such a depression very close to the Spellblade Academy, and Narro loved training against the monsters there.

  Three students made their way down a slope and into the bowl-shaped valley. The dirt path soon gave way to mud that squelched underfoot. The air here was thick with the stench of miasma. Damp grasses tickled their legs as they followed the path into a swamp darkened under a canopy of towering cypress trees.

  Shortly after entering the swamp, they entered a small clearing on a small but dry hill. Several other paths from deeper in the swamp all exited here, and a shabby cabin haunted the far side of the clearing. At the center of the hill stood a stone monument with a crystal at its zenith — a monster ward. This was the swamp’s safe zone.

  “I knew he’d be here! Look, there’s his pack,” shouted Lerrum, noticing a bag bursting with various monster parts resting against the cabin. In response, Evran raised his hand and shot off a magic flare into the sky. The flare glowed yellow, a signal universally understood as a request to meet up with your party.

  “Wow, he’s been busy,” said Arietta, fingering a pile of various hides stacked on the cabin’s front porch. A look of curiosity appeared on her face after she paused at a particular hide. Abandoning the hides, she turned to digging through Narro’s pack without a hint of shame. She pulled out a leather bag that rattled with bones inside. “Basilisk fangs, maybe?” She didn’t bother checking as she set the bag aside and continued to dig. “Ew, slime!” She winced as she placed a few bottles of green slime on the weathered boards of the porch.

  “What are looking for?” asked Evran.

  “Bog troll boogers! I saw its hide, so I figured…”

  “And why would I loot its boogers?” shouted Narro as he waltzed into the clearing. Lerrum and Evran said their hellos, but Arietta ran right into his arms. They started kissing.

  So that’s why she wanted to come with us. Evran looked away, feeling slightly envious of Narro. Though he had no feelings towards Arietta, he wasn’t in the mood to be reminded of how single he was.

  “Gross, you two,” teased Lerrum. “Anyway, we came to see if you wanted to go shopping for the practical. Interested?”

  “What practical?” Narro said, Arietta now clinging to his side. They explained the details of the upcoming trip to a virgin island after the next storm. “Hell yeah, that sounds fun. I have to sell all this crap anyway. Let’s go!”

  “Ahhhhhhh!”

  Screams came from the path exiting the swamp. Everyone in the group looked at each other in confusion. Arietta’s eyes widened. “That sounded like… Wahl!”

  The four upperclassmen rushed to the source of the screaming, Arietta in the lead. They came across a small boy desperately clinging to a stump on the side of the path. His face and stomach were covered in mud. A thorny green vine had wrapped itself around the boy’s bleeding ankle and was trying to pull him off of the stump. “Help!”

  The source of the vine emerged from behind a cypress tree. A giant pitcher plant hissed and thrashed its other thorned appendages about. A second vine grabbed onto Wahl’s leg, its poisonous thorns piercing the boy’s flesh. Wahl lost his grip against the combined pull of the vines. They lifted him into the air and began lowering him into the fanged mouth of the pitcher plant.

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  Arietta jumped off the path and barreled toward her brother. Narro followed close behind, but Lerrum and Evran continued on the path to get a different angle.

  “I got left!” Lerrum shouted.

  Without explanation, Evran understood and aimed for the vines on the right side of the monster. Both unleashed an air slash attack simultaneously. The blades of wind severed the vines holding Wahl above the pitcher monster, and the boy tumbled toward its gaping mouth.

  His big sister arrived just in time. Arietta took a mana-enhanced leap out of the marsh and caught Wahl midair. Her momentum carried the two safely overhead. With the boy out of danger, Narro closed in on the monster. He unsheathed his twin skysteel swords and poured his mana into them. The bluish steel of his blades shone with a faint glow, and a pale mist spilled from the blades.

  Narro slashed at the body of the pitcher monster. Ice crystals began forming where his blades tore into the supple flesh of the creature. The crystals quickly grew, thrusting deeper into each wound. Narro felt the roots of the pitcher plant ensnaring his feet, but he could not pull away in time. “Oh, come on!” He shouted disappointedly as he fell backwards into the mud.

  Lerrum doubled over laughing at his friend’s misfortune. Evran couldn’t stop himself from chuckling, either. The pitcher plant’s body was mostly frozen over from Narro’s attacks, but new tentacles began to regrow and thrash about. Narro was busy floundering the mud, and Arietta was occupied with carrying Wahl back to the path. As for Lerrum, he appeared to be in genuine pain from laughing at Narro. With everyone else occupied, Evran figured the coup de grace was his.

  He held out his hands and magically gathered nearby mud into a large mass above the monster. After summoning enough mud to match the size of pitcher plant, Evran froze the mud solid and unceremoniously dropped it on the poor creature. The frozen mud boulder crushed the plant, shattering the ice crystals that had grown over its wounds and splashing digestive fluids over a nearby Narro. Poor Lerrum had only just recovered from laughing at his fall.

  With the creature dead, Evran shifted his attention to the wounded. He left Lerrum to deal with Narro and jogged over to check on Arietta and Wahl. She had already done an excellent job of using healing magic on the boy’s leg.

  “It’s not broken, just cut up real bad,” she explained. “Do you have an antidote?”

  He reached into his satchel and pulled out a small vial of green liquid. Evran made a mental note that this was his last antidote, having used one the day before. It’s not as if he hadn’t already planned on buying more, but he might be in trouble if he got poisoned before that could happen. Lerrum offered him one yesterday, so he probably had some in stock at least.

  After receiving the vial from Evran, Wahl held his nose and quickly downed the unappealing antidote. He seemed surprised to find that it had a pleasant taste.

  “You can mix in sugar and peppermint oil without negatively affecting many potions. Sadly, not all of them,” lamented Evran. He recalled the foul concoction Grist had him take earlier. Though he’d avoided tasting it, the burps had terrorized him until lunchtime. “There isn’t much I can do about the tears in your pants, but I can get the mud off if you’d like.”

  Wahl nodded in agreement. He stood up, and Evran began using combination magic to conjure warm water above Wahl’s head. If poured over Wahl, washing the mud off his face and body. Arietta took the opportunity to splash the mud off her boots as well. With the two Finters mostly clean, Evran switched to blowing hot air in a vain attempt to dry them off.

  “This is the best I can do. If I tried pulling the water off of you, I’d likely damage the fabric, not to mention your skin.”

  “That’s okay, I appreciate it,” replied Arietta. “Really, thanks for saving my idiot brother.” She glared at Wahl.

  “Thanks for saving me,” he said rather sheepishly.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  They all wandered over to Lerrum and Narro to find them engaged in a similar cleaning effort.

  “Too hot!” Narro shouted. “Let Evran do it; he’s better at that stuff.”

  Evran smiled at the compliment and took over for Lerrum, who went to fetch Narro’s stuff from the cabin. Once everyone was cleaned up and ready to go, they made their way out of the swamp and back to the safety of the training hall. Everyone collected their tags from the pegboard while Arietta gave the instructor at the gate an ear-full.

  “Hey Ari, you coming shopping with us?” asked Narro.

  “No, you boys have fun by yourselves. I have to take Wahl home. Our parents are going to kill us.”

  Lerrum and Evran waited at the gate back to town while Narro kissed his girlfriend goodbye. Wahl made a snide comment, which quickly earned him a smack on his forehead from his already irritated sister. She clearly felt bad about it and bent down to give her brother a big hug. Angry as she was, Arietta was grateful to still have him.