Maggie looked at me with a look I could only describe as immense relief and turned to Nora.

  “Are you okay with being the face? It’ll mean some extra practice for social situations.” Maggie said, before her gaze moved to encompass all of us. “Though, all of you are going to receive {some} training.”

  “Sure! Sounds fun!” Nora said with a smile.

  “Thank the Divines.” Maggie said, just loud enough to be heard. “Y’all have no idea how much I worried about that. One in ten parties split before their first campaign because they can’t decide on a face.”

  “Is it seriously that contentious?” Ellen asked.

  “It shouldn’t be. The face is just the social version of the combat leader with even less scope. I’m the one who’ll handle most of the negotiating. My mentor thinks it’s so contentious because of people like Ajax and Vanessa.”

  Both were famous adventurers, but I noted how casually she said their names. Usually, people included their titles and referred to them as only Ajax Ironside and Vanessa the Tyrant Breaker – or Tyrant Breaker for short.

  “And why is it their faults?” Nora asked

  “You’ve all heard their party’s name is the Crusaders, right? Well, in a profession filled with glory hunters, how many people want to be Ajax or Vanessa and how many want to be ‘the Crusaders’?” Maggie asked. “The ridiculous thing is that neither Ajax nor Vanessa is their party’s face. It’s their [Sorceress] Zoe.”

  “Ah.” Ellen said. “Still feels like a silly thing to break a party over.”

  “Nine out of ten parties agree.” Maggie joked. “Y’all ready to work? I’ve got some drills I want to run. Hopefully, we’ll work out some of the new party kinks before I bring you out in the field.”

  What followed was an hour of what my trainers would have called ‘the flailing of children’. Mika and Ellen worked and moved well together, but when we involved Nora, the three of them stepped on each other’s toes. When you factored me into the drill, things only got worse.

  Each of us tried to do what we thought best, and expected the others to follow along. Mistakenly, I moved through the drill as I would if surrounded by three other Black Hands. The people I grew up with would’ve been able to flow along beside me seamlessly. Instead, Ellen and I got in each other’s way and then in the way of Mika and Nora’s spells.

  When Maggie finally called an end to the sham, she was smiling. She didn’t just look amused with our mistakes; she looked like she was having the time of her life.

  “I don’t know about y’all, but I don’t think this is working. How about this? What if we do a drill I used to do all the time when I was in the Raiders?”

  “Please.” Nora begged. She was the most frustrated. Over the course of the hour, her patience thinned and I could see her temper fray in the shake of her hands and the way she stalked about the training yard between drills.

  “Since we aren’t actually in the field yet, I’m going to call out combinations of enemies. I want to see how you react. Afterwards, I’ll give a rundown on where I think each of you can improve.”

  Maggie backed off to the edge of the sparring ground and called out.

  “Five wolves! North!”

  As soon as I heard the direction, I stepped forward, shield raised to put Nora and Mika behind me. I took a couple slow steps forward and waited to see whether Ellen would rush forward or come join me before I charged. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her rush east, moving to flank the imaginary foes.

  I wasn’t sure what Mika and Nora would do, but I heard three solid impacts on soft sand as he dropped his golems. Now that I knew where Ellen was, I moved slightly forward to provide a larger shadow for Nora and Mika. Ideally, I’d be able to rush up and occupy the space the ‘wolves’ were in; but I was the only line of defense between our [Mages] and the enemy, so I had to wait for the other side to commit to an attack before I could do likewise.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Maggie called out an end to the scenario before I could get five feet away from Mika and Nora.

  “Alright! Better than what you were doing. Mika, good instinct to take out your golems but was there anything you forgot to do before that?”

  A small blush crept into his cheeks and he looked to the sand as he mumbled out an embarrassed.

  “Call out commands.”

  “Right. Nora, the instinct to cast right away is good, but I’d like you to do going forward is step behind Mika right away. We don’t have a defensive [Mage], so we’re going to have to be really careful about positioning, especially you [Mages]. Speaking of, Mika, when you get your golems up, always keep one with you and Nora watching your blind spot.”

  “Makes sense.” Nora said, a small smile on her face.

  Maggie nodded at her before she shifted to Ellen.

  “Once again, you had the right idea in circling to flank them. But you should’ve waited for Mika’s golems. No matter how good Bran is, one man can’t hold back the world. Mika’s golems are a fantastic way for our relatively small party to inflate our numbers. So, until the extra bodies the golems provide are on the field, you and Bran need to stick together.

  “Bran, like everyone else, you did the right thing, had you been by yourself. You’ve got two squishy [Mages] behind you –“

  “Hey!” Nora protested, mock offended. “I’m not squishy, I’m delicate.”

  “Fine, you’ve got two delicate [Mages] behind you, and until Mika has his golems up, you need to be on them like white on rice.”

  Part of me disagreed with the critique. I had stayed behind; I’d given them a shadow to shelter beneath. But I tried to put her critique in the context of being an adventurer. Back home, what I’d done would have been perfect. I made myself large enough to obscure sightlines amidst the trees while remaining close enough to fall back and support.

  Yet here, when the people behind me weren’t [Mages] trained since childhood to fight amidst the trees, Maggie was right. I was too far forward, the five feet of space provided too much room for an arrow or spell to slip past me.

  “Nora! An arrow just landed by your left foot!”

  I stepped in front of her left side, shield up. I took a step forward, just enough to create a silhouette for Mika to hide behind. To my right, Ellen stepped halfway out from behind me, half of her body exposed, creating a bigger meat shield for the two behind us.

  Absently I heard Mika call out for us to do the things we were already doing and ignored that to focus on Maggie.

  “That was good guys! Ellen, Bran, y’all did well. Ellen, good thinking only presenting half of yourself. However, even if you don’t have a shield, use the big lump of metal on a stick to cover some of your vitals.”

  When I looked at Ellen, she was looking to her maul like she’d never considered the idea before.

  “Mika, try not to call out commands for your party to do the things they’re already doing. Makes them tune out what you say.”

  That was true enough, and Mika agreed, because he just nodded in response.

  “And Nora, you stepped behind Bran, which was good, but try to get a little closer. You’re still a little far back. You’ve got a sentinel the size of a juvenile troll, with a shield the size of a dwarf. Don’t be afraid to use him for protection.”

  We spent the next two and a half hours in the training yard going over reactions and formations in response to various scenarios. Most of what Maggie called out were fairly common experiences, like being ambushed by starving bandits or beasts. Yet every so often she threw out an oddball, like coming across the emperor’s carriage overturned in a ditch.

  Maggie lay face first in the sand of the training yard, a spilled water bottle on her leg meant to be a cut artery. Nora and Mika huddled over her, discussing how to use a curse to slow the bleeding. The two of them got deep into the weeds, discussing whether Mika could narrow the concept of the spell enough to get it to focus on a single wound.

  “Why not apply a tourniquet?” I asked.

  Ellen, who stood on the opposite side of the ‘emperor’ from me, looked down at the crouching Mika with an amused smile.

  We had no supplies to bind the wound, so Maggie called a halt to the scenario. She turned it into a lesson on narrow thinking for an embarrassed Mika and Nora.

  Eventually, we all fell into roles. I’d take up the center and either hang back until Mika had his golems up, or rush forward, depending on the threat. Ellen, more often than not, wound up waiting beside me for Mika to power his golems. Afterwards, she always rushed to flank or single out our imaginary foes.

  Nora, as a mainly damage focused [Mage], didn’t get many chances to shoot off her spells since Magie always called a halt before she could. She did, however, get better at positioning herself in reaction to the rest of us. Mika fell into the roll he was supposed to and, throughout the exercise, got more comfortable giving us commands. He stopped ordering us to do things we were already doing, and according to Maggie, got even faster at powering his golems as he did it repeatedly.

  By the end of the session, Maggie gave us what she wanted us to work ongoing forward along with a training exercise we could do by ourselves. For Mika, she wanted him to practice animating and depowering his golems. Her hope being that in the coming months they could take the time to power them down from a couple seconds each to a half a second each time. She gave Ellen a stretching routine she was to do each night.

  Maggie saw her move a little stiffly during the youth program and wanted her to work on flowing around opponents rather than charging through them. Nora was told to practice free form mana movement. Not casting spells, just materializing mana and moving it around herself. She told Nora to practice making shapes and creatures with her mana. An idea that caused Nora’s eyes to sparkle. Similar to Ellen, I got a stretching routine I could do for my wrists and ankles, something I planned to add to my usual stretching routine. Along with that, Maggie pulled me aside briefly.

  We left the other three in the sparring pit we used and navigated briefly through the crowd of people who’d entered the training yard as we practiced towards the wall.

  “You’re doing good in there.” Maggie said. “But I need you to remember you’re not in the forest anymore. A lot of what I see you doing would be perfect for a forest. I can tell when you look for a tree to put your back to or look to see where the tree roots are. A lot of your instincts won’t work out here. We need to focus on translating those for the plains.”

  Together, we walked back to the group. I was a little confused about why she’d pulled me away from the group for that. It was a valid point, but I wasn’t going to question her right after I’d put myself under her care.

  “Alright guys, I’ve got something to go over with y’all before I let you go for the day. Follow me.”