The door closed behind me with a soft thunk. I’d gone to the Guild expecting to be put straight to work or given a quest, but now I had two days of downtime, a rarity for me. I wanted to sightsee while I had the time and would’ve done so right away if not for two things.
It was still far too early; only now, as I walked back to the Widow’s Mark, were people emerging from their homes to set up market stalls and unshutter store front windows. The second was that these two days provided a perfect opportunity to make up for lost training on my way here. The [Paladins] back home would’ve skinned me alive if they caught me wandering.
Back in my room. I settled down and, after some meditation, activated Beginner’s Shield Art. I tried to ignore the sensation of mana stolen from my core and instead followed its path into my soul. The effort was fruitless, however, as not only did the mana move too fast for perception; but as I followed the mana to my heart, I hit a spiritual wall. The feeling like trying to flip my eyes to look at the back of my skull.
The same Trainer materialized from the silhouette, and a shield appeared in both our hands as soon as its form gained substance. The Trainer began the session by settling into a stance beside me, which I copied. It held me down in the proper stance, but after fifteen minutes, let me go.
It didn’t rise from the stance, and we remained in that pose for another thirty minutes before the Trainer rose and moved perpendicular to me. I rose with it, but the Trainer waved me back with a lazy grace anathema to its rigid form.
Once satisfied I would remain where it placed me, the Trainer began a short set of footwork. Once it had finished and returned to the ‘beginner’s stance’ as I dubbed it in my head, I followed its example as best I could. I took each step with just enough speed to retain fluidity while giving the Trainer ample time to correct me. As I moved, the Trainer made slight adjustments to my foot placement or to the angles of my hips and arms.
Like its voice, the Trainer’s touch was a paradox. The sharp crystal of its touch pressed hard enough into me that it should’ve rent flesh from bone; yet, the Trainer’s touch was gentle. Its crystal fingers warm and soft enough to be skin and bone.
We spent the next two hours going over that simple set of footwork exercises. By the time the final diamond bead fell in the hourglass, I estimated I’d gone through that set a hundred times.
When my consciousness returned to the material plane, I could feel a notification waiting for me. There wasn’t any visual sign. I simply knew that when I was ready, I could open the notification, but it would not bother me beforehand.
I spent the next four hours of real time in a cycle between prayer, mediating mana back into my core, and spending that mana again to activate Beginner’s Shield Art. Each time I activated the skill, the Trainer had me spend at least half an hour in the ‘beginners’ stance’. After which it always ran me through the same footwork.
During my last skill session, the Trainer had me run through the footwork faster each time, and no matter how fast I moved, it was there to make minor corrections in my form with meticulous accuracy. By the end of the day’s last session, I moved through the footwork as fast as I could and made it through the set five times with no mistakes. It felt like we were about to move on from the footwork when the time ran out and it ejected me from my soul space.
Back in the material world, it was just after noon and time for me to accept the notifications that patiently awaited my consent.
Congratulations! Through your efforts you have advanced your skill “Beginner’s Shield Art” to (2/10)!
Congratulations! Through your efforts you have advanced your skill “Beginner’s Shield Art” to (3/10)!
The speed of growth for class skills depended on your experience in the area; and since all class skills started at level one, unlike general skills, people who already had a background of training or study in a skill leveled far faster than true beginners. Who often had to work for weeks before they saw their first skill levels. Even though I knew the mechanics behind my fast growth, they were still my first skill levels. With a smile on my face, I pulled up my status just to see the bigger number.
Status.
Name: Bran
Class: [Grove Guard], LVL 1
Attributes:
Strength – 15
Dexterity – 11
Constitution – 16
Endurance – 22
Wisdom – 6
Intelligence – 9
Aura – 6
Luck – 5
Class Skills: (1/5)
Beginner’s Shield Art (3/10)
General Skills: (1/3)
The Willow’s Wrath (24/25)
Mastered Skills:
None.
~***~
“Widow.” I said as I leaned on the bar, careful to avoid a soaked patch of sawdust next to my elbow. “Is there anywhere in the city with some trees?”
“Can’t imagine you’ll want to see the ones in the slums.” She mused. A rag floating next to her shoulder wiped a mug clean on its own. “There is a pleasant park down in the Old District you could check out.”
I thanked her and after some more small talk left to go find the park she was talking about.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“Dinner’ll be after sunset, don’t miss it!” She called after me. “A growing boy like you needs his food!”
Even after three days, the sensation of vulnerability under a clear sky remained. I missed the shelter and comfort the trees provided. The longing came most often while I meditated, but it was always there. My home was underneath the canopies and roofs of stone couldn’t hold a candle to it.
Widow had told me I’d know I was in ‘old town’ when I got there and she was partially right. The old district was a paradox of a name. Cut off from the rest of the city by a chest high half wall, every building looked new. None of the stonework had lost its color to time and freshly cut and stained timber accented most buildings. What revealed the most about the buildings’ age was their rune work. Almost every rune series I saw still glowed.
Runic series are easy to date depending on their size. As the runic ink used to paint the runes settles into the material, it becomes a fundamental part of that material and ceases to glow. The time it takes for a runic series to settle depends on the size of the runes, but none of the ones I passed were large enough to take over three years at a maximum. Yet, almost every building dyed the world around them in the color of their ink. The result was a district filled with closed shutters, stained glass, and a riot of color.
That the runes here were so new was odd. Once a runic series settled into an object, the series continues to grow in strength and no longer requires maintenance. It’s common knowledge and what makes artifacts so valued. Which was why it was so weird the residents of the old district had chosen to re-carve runes into their homes, and it wasn’t like the city lacked integrated structures as I’d seen buildings, including the Widow’s Mark, with integrated runic series.
Old town also set itself apart from the rest of the city with its architecture. Everywhere else in the city, I had seen buildings made of timber with stone or brick used as an accent or foundational material. Yet here, stone was primary. Each building a fort unto itself. As I passed through the district, I saw estates with baileys, towers, walls with machicolations and arrow slots, gates with murder holes.
The closed shutters, defensive structures, and riot of color created a palpable sense of paranoia throughout the district. There was no community in this place. Every person I passed as I walked was either a servant, skittish and afraid, or concealed within carriages designed like a house on a battering ram.
I walked deeper into old town and the buildings got bigger, more regal, more defensive. [Household Guards] manned the front of estates. The men and women who guarded these homes uniformly wore full-plate armor. Some wore tabards with household insignia prominent on their chests, others wore no decoration except polished steel.
Near the heart of old town, I passed a walled estate with a central tower and connected four-story keep. Stationed in front of the closed portcullis was a team of four [Honor Guards]. Each guard equipped with a full set of rune integrated plate armor. Draped across their chests was a tabard with an insignia of an emerald bee trapped inside a golden lantern on their hearts. What set these guards apart from the dozens I had seen so far were their visors. The visors, made of stained glass with integrated runes the color of the neighboring estates’ runic inks, prevented the light from disturbing their vigils.
By the time I reached the center of the district and the park came into sight, my hand had subconsciously drifted to my belt knife and I constantly scanned the surroundings like I would if I were deep within the Emerald Ocean.
Buoyed by the sight of the green space, I hustled to it, eager to get out of the quiet hostility that surrounded me.
The park was roughly a hundred meters in diameter and made with concentric rings of flower beds that held increasingly rarer species of flower the closer you got to the copse of old growth pines at the center. I paused briefly by each bed of flowers to admire the beauty of the plants.
There was something off about them, however. I knew what each flower I saw was, but everything about them screamed artificial. Summer flowers bloomed alongside winter ones; each flower spaced just perfectly from its neighbor to invoke the proper emotion. Not a single weed sprouted amongst the flower beds, and all the flowers were locked in perfect health.
The flower beds lacked the wildness that gave them beauty. Flowers were not beautiful merely for their shape or color. It was their struggle that gave them beauty. It came from the fact that each flower had killed competitors and outgrown its rivals. A flower’s beauty came from the husk of a weed amongst its roots, it came from their wind strengthened stems; it came from hardship. The flowers that surrounded me had never struggled for anything, had never forced back Decay and were mundane for it.
I left behind the flowers and instead pushed back the branches of the pine trees. Their needles attempted to pierce the calloused skin of my hands as I entered the small copse of trees. Part of me worried these trees were pampered like the flowers that surrounded them, but upon a closer look, I recognized these trees for what they were. I stood amongst elders, ancient trees which held court here long before this park ever had.
Surrounded by trees and sheltered from the open sky by their canopies, I took a moment to appreciate the elders I huddled beneath. The youngest of these trees was centuries old, and the eldest encroached on a thousand.
I sat amongst the youngest pine’s roots, comforted by the familiar feeling of rough bark on my back. For the first time since I left the Weeping Forest, a tension I hadn’t realized I carried fell away. I’d dedicated my entire childhood to learning how to move amongst and defend the forest. I hadn’t realized just how tense I’d been since leaving until I was back amongst trees, even if it was just five elders.
As comfortable as I could manage in the middle of the siege ready district, I tried to meditate. First, I opening my bond with Ylena. Like always, I felt her domain suffuse me. Renewal, Growth, Decay, Stagnation and all their forms filled me, the sensation as familiar as a childhood toy. I made no prayer to Ylena, yet her attention turned to me. It was only for a moment, a brief glance to check that I was okay, yet I still felt it as manifestations of her gaze spread across my skin like living tattoos only to recede as she focused elsewhere. I focused and slowly allowed my mind to clear. Faintly, I felt the currents of mana as it moved through the surrounding air.
Like I’d been taught, I moved the mana already within my core in a spiral until it resembled a whirlpool, and the momentum of my mana drew on the external mana. Normally at this stage I’d focus on spinning the whirlpool faster to draw mana in faster. However, I bent my attention towards feeling the mana I was intaking instead.
To my slight disappointment, the mana remained muddled. I bent my will towards the task even further and zeroed in on a single strand of mana as it circled the whirlpool of my core. Focused as I was, I could break down the parts of the mana I took it in. Rather than the overwhelmingly wood-aspected mana of the Weeping Forest, a thin vein like a flower’s roots in stone contained all the wood-aspected mana.
A side effect of the inspection was that I learned the dominant aspects of Woodsedge’s mana. Strongest of all was stone, but underneath that were heavy doses of wind mana, metal mana, and something I could only think of as ‘hunger mana’. I had now way to be sure if that was the proper way to describe what I felt, but all the same the mana felt hungry. Like it needed more of everything, and yet nothing it consumed would ever be enough to sate it.
I sat underneath those old pines for hours hoping to relax, yet I could not shake the question of how constantly absorbing mana tinged with that kind of hunger would affect a person. The body purified all the mana it absorbed, but I couldn’t help but feel constantly subjecting yourself to that kind of need who change who you were as a person. More than that concern, however, I wondered where that hunger mana came from.
Once I broke my meditation, all that remained of the sun was a red tinged sky. I hurried through the old district on my way back, unwilling to say in that den of paranoia for longer than I had to. When I got back to the inn, the smell of Widow’s food drifted through the common room and people filed into tables and seats at the bar, both from outside and upstairs. I saddled up to what I was coming to think of as ‘my seat’ at the bar as Widow exited the kitchen with a tray of plates all with the same meal, a heavily sauced meat of some kind resting on a bed of rice and carrots, and joined her employees in handing out meals and collecting payment.
“Raise you hand for dinner!” Widow called as she looked over her shoulder and headed back into the kitchen.
Almost everyone without a plate in front of them, myself included, raised their hands. She reemerged shortly afterwards, a tray in each of her hands that she passed off to the servings girls before she disappeared back into the kitchen to grab another.
She repeated that four more times before everyone had been served and Widow settled down on her own stool at the center of the bar. Idly I watched the [Innkeeper] survey her domain as her [Waitresses] and [Bartenders] dashed about to hand out drinks and collect coins.
The food was good; the meat tender, the grains perfectly cooked, and the sauce – while a little heavy-handed – was spicy and sweet. I ate in near silence, content to enjoy the food and eavesdrop on the people around me. All the conversation was mundane aside from one man who admitted to an affair with the [Tailor’s] [Apprentice] to his friend. When I finished my food, I slid the plate forward slightly and looked up to see Widow across from me with a smile that showcased too many of her shiny white teeth.
“Hey Widow.” I said and tried to return a smile of my own.
“That’s the fakest thing I’ve ever seen. Don’t smile like that kid.” She replied. Her own smile never slipped. “You enjoy the food?”
“I did, thank you.” I replied as I took a silver from my pouch and slid it across the bar to her.
“Fantastic! Will you be wanting breakfast as well?” Widow’s smile eased into a smirk and I could’ve sworn I saw disappointment in her eyes.
“I will. I also wanted to ask if I could use your backyard to train?”
“Don’t see why not, as long as you’re careful to avoid the herb garden.”
“I will. How much do I owe you?”
“Ah, don’t worry about it. Most of it’s just empty space anyway, not like I‘m using it.”
Widow and I talked for another twenty minutes. I asked her about some of the regulars and she went on incredible tangents about local gossip. None of it held any real value to me, but it was still fun to know that a local [Tanner] had stolen his alchemical recipe from a guild in the capital and drank himself silly in worry, or that a local [Bronze Smith] was about to adopt his third child and was beside himself in excitement.
